I have always been all the fence about wikis (specifically Wikipedia), and in all my years as a student only one teacher of mine has ever incorporated the use of wikis into the curriculum and encouraged using wikis as a research tool. Reflecting on the articles citing the potential inaccuracy problems with wikis, I found that these scenarios are ultimately my hesitation with relying on wikis as a scholarly source. In Danah Boyd's article, "on being notable in Wikipedia", she cites several inaccuracies regarding both her personal and professional life that were posted as facts on Wikipedia. If I were doing a research paper on Danah Boyd, if I trusted Wikipedia as a source for factual information I may have included information on my paper that was incorrect. That being said, I am not entirely against wikis/Wikipedia. The graduate course I took that required students to create a collaborative wiki with the instructor as the lead editor was very interesting; however, this wiki was private and other than the instructor only those enrolled in the course could view/edit entries. When it comes to Wikipedia, I do believe that it is generally a trustworthy source to look up quick facts about something that you may be at least somewhat familiar with so that any glaring inaccuracies will pop right out. There was an instance when I was asked to do a last minute talk to a group of students about Teleost fish. I literally had 10 minutes to throw something together for a group of twenty middle-schoolers. Giving an overly scientific talk would not only be boring, but would also go over a lot of the kids heads. I turned to Wikipedia to jot down some quick easy facts about Teleost fish that I could combine with what I would normally include a more scientific talk about them to come up with a decent talk that I hope the kids enjoyed. Generally speaking, I have found that Wikipedia entries related to wildlife and natural history are fairly accurate as there are plenty of peer-reviewed scientific papers out there to validate all of the information posted on a Teleost fish Wikipedia page, for example. Going back to the Danah Boyd article, I think there is probably more inaccuracies on recent notable figures, such as pop culture figures, politicians, etc. who are still living and portrayed in a certain light due to the image the media portrays of them.
Taking a look at the PlanetMath Wiki, I was definitely impressed. This is a great resource for many important math-related topics from the description of rational integers to Multiple Recurrence Theorem. This wiki has a lot of activity and appears to be used heavily by those at all levels from students to those with a PhD and many years of professional engineering or teaching experience. A math wiki is somewhat similar in terms of "minimal room for error" as a wildlife wiki is today. Though there are always changes and advances in these fields, inaccuracies are easily caught by those that use this information for professional purposes daily.
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