TIGblogs - Jack Butler

Jack Butler's blog

What is the value of non-scholarly references? Related to country: Australia
This is my first semester at university and I'm sure like others I'm finding some things very difficult. One arguement I am constantly having with my professors and tutors is over non-scholarly references. They pine and complain about references like wiki-pedia telling us they are terrible and to never use them for anything, but I just cant buy it. In our glorious age of information sharing does a masters degree really give your thoughts that much more value? Think about the amazing database of information contained in Takingitglobal, all of it according to my professors at least worthless because its not listed in a horribly boring scholarly journal that no one will ever read. what do you see as the future of higher education in a world in which information is so readily available at virtually no cost?

April 16, 2006 | 2:38 AM

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	Cherrie April 16, 2006 \| 3:06 AM

It's the whole peer-review business against the accuracy/foresight of the masses. The former is more scientific in that the information's reliability can be quantified and recorded accurately (i.e. you can cite the time and person/institution and critically assess this information in context of the political/philosophical atmosphere, etc). Wikipedia relies on the contribution and assessment by many many people - whose skills and expertise cannot be quantified or known. Citing something from there does not allow you to critically analyse it (for example, in science, you may want to critique their experimental technique) because mostly, you don't know the context in which it was derived. AND if you were to quote information from there that came from a textbook or paper anyway, why NOT go to the original source? It is hard to make somebody or some institution responsible for incorrect information with Wikipedia. You cannot "quantify" the reliability of the material. What I mean is, depending on the institution, author (and their status), you can judge how reliable the information is. Wikipedia is anonymous. In saying that, I'm not saying that respected journals are infallible. Sure, they may publish incorrect information (e.g. recently with Nature)... but by in large, they publish the best-known "truth" at the time of publication and is a concrete record.. I suppose this depends heavily upon the honesty of the writers as well. I guess if everyone took on the responsibility of "liberating" information more seriously, then you wouldn't need to have all these measures concerning intellectual property and reliability of "truth". Don't get me wrong, I think Wikipedia is useful - it is often a good starting point for understanding the general idea of things and actually, there are some really in depth entries there. But I still wouldn't cite it as a source of information - I would find a peer-reviewed text for that purpose. I mean, the bottom line is, everybody likes to think they are experts... =P

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