NT Gateway Weblog

As Jim West says, it is good to see that Bible and Interpretation is back, and with a slick new design. Perhaps along with welcoming their return, I could put in a request for an RSS feed?

Jim West has an article in the new edition about Biblical Studies on the web. He returns to the question of Wikipedia and its use in academia and makes one remark that surprises me:

Yet rather than providing reliable materials many academics adopt the default position that "it's already out there on Wiki and people just need to read that." This is, I suggest, a grave mistake (and potentially even a touch of laziness).

I am troubled to hear that academics are adopting that kind of position -- it is not something that I have come across. My own view is that students should not be reading it so much as writing it, testing it against their critical review of the secondary literature. I realize that that is aspirational, but I like to get the best out of my students.

Labels: Bible and Interpretation, Wikipedia

---

This one, from BBC News, is likely to generate a bit of comment:

Students 'should use Wikipedia'
By Alistair Coleman

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has said teachers who refuse students access to the site are "bad educators".

Speaking at the Online Information conference at London's Olympia, he dismissed the long-running controversy over the site's authority.

He said he now thinks that students should be able to cite the online encyclopaedia in their work . . . .

. . . . Since the controversy, in which it emerged that the "free editing" policy had allowed articles containing inaccuracies and bias to appear, the site has introduced a system of real-time peer review, in which volunteers check new and updated articles for accuracy and impartiality.

Despite advances in technology, there are no plans to automate this process. "There is no substitute for peer critique," Mr Wales told delegates.

As I have mentioned in previous discussions of the issue here, I am not in favour of citing Wikipedia as an "authority", if by this we mean using it as a means of establishing points without any further discussion. I encourage my students, who are preparing for examinations at the moment, to engage critically with a range of secondary sources, one of which may indeed sometimes be Wikipedia.

Labels: Wikipedia

---

One way of testing claims about the intrinsic and insurmountable problems with Wikipedia is to ask how good it tends to be in its entries on individual scholars. Ben Witherington recently commented on the problems he saw with Wikipedia, with a strong "keep away" message. It made me wonder what the Wikipedia article on Ben Witherington looked like and in fact, it is not bad. The only problem with it is that it is a little on the terse side; it needs someone with some knowledge and expertise to add some more detail. Indeed, it is one of those articles that has been tagged: "This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources."

That reminds me that I have only ever created one new Wikipedia page myself, and that is on Michael Goulder. I wanted to do this in part to test the claims about the unreliability of Wikipedia. Would people come in and deface what I outlined on Michael Goulder? On the contrary. There is simply a welcome invitation, to me or someone else, to improve the article:

This article or section needs sources or references that appear in reliable, third-party publications. Alone, primary sources and sources affiliated with the subject of this article are not sufficient for an accurate encyclopedia article. Please include more appropriate citations from reliable sources.

This is something that seldom gets mentioned by those who prefer not to engage critically with Wikipedia, that it actually encourages authors and editors to provide proper citations for the claims that are being made, a very useful encouragement to students who are learning about academic writing.

The only other one I've contributed to has been the entry on E. P. Sanders, where I made one or two minor edits to improve accuracy, and added a couple of references. That was over a year ago, and they have not been changed or edited away in the interim.

In this category, my feeling tends to be more sympathetic to those who wish to engage critically with Wikipedia than with those who wish to turn their backs on it, but perhaps that will change in time as the site continues to grow.

Labels: Ben Witherington III, E. P. Sanders, Michael Goulder, Wikipedia

---

An interesting article entitled Student's program sends PR chaos in Wiki scandal has been doing the rounds on the internet; it is on the MaltaStar.com:

One American student sent major corporations, governments and even the Vatican on the defensive after coming up with Wikipedia Scanner, a software program that reveals who changed Wikipedia entries . . . .

. . . . What Virgil Griffith did was come up with a program that reveals who edits these articles, via a system where it scans the I.P address and cross-references it with the I.P. directory.

One of the things that I find interesting about the report of this new "Wikiscanner" is that some see at as an invitation to discredit Wikipedia in toto rather than as a positive development with the potential to sniff out the some of the worst aspects of Wikipedia. Since we all knew that this kind of thing was going on (didn't we?), I would have thought that the invention of a tool that shines a spotlight on the worst offenders is something to be celebrated. I am grateful to Michael Pahl for sending me over an article from CBC News that reports on the "Wikiscanner" in a way that hits the right notes:

New 'WikiScanner' exposes underhanded editors

Wikipedia touts itself as the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," but a new online tool now makes it harder for those with an agenda to edit it in a sneaky fashion.

Ordinarily Wikipedia allows anyone to edit its articles, and the encyclopedia has become a target for vandals, revisionists and spin doctors. In an effort to keep Wikipedia more honest, U.S. graduate student Virgil Griffiths created WikiScanner, a site that can trace the IP addresses of computers that have made edits to Wikipedia entries in the last five years . . . .

. . . . Griffiths said his project is not intended to eliminate anonymity, but rather to preserve Wikipedia's credibility.

"I do not believe something like WikiScanner, which identifies people, is necessary. Overall — especially for non-controversial topics — Wikipedia already works," he writes. "For controversial topics, Wikipedia can be made more reliable through techniques like this one. For any sort of 'open' project, I strongly prefer allowing people to remain anonymous while also doing various back-end analyses to counteract vandalism and disinformation."

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales obviously appreciates the effort.

"It is fabulous and I strongly support it," Wales told the Associated Press.

Notice the parts that the first article quoted above does not tell you.

Now a couple of bibliobloggers have commented on the first of the articles above, the more negative take on "Wikiscanner", most recently Jim West and before him Ben Witherington III. The latter uses it as an opportunity for expressing concern about internet resources in general:

Lots of my students, unfortunately, use the Internet as a substitute for good careful research. It's seductive and easy and quick. It forestalls long hours in the library. It often leads to shoddy research and worse papers.

I have several problems with this kind of broadside. I think "the Internet" is already so vast that it is not possible to talk about it in these general terms. "The Internet" includes vast numbers of reproductions of peer-reviewed journal articles, for example, including some of Ben Witherington's. I don't think we are any longer in a place where we can talk meaningfully about "the internet" in these terms. Of course I'm all for hours in the library. I practically lived there for a decade in Oxford, and I'm the kind of person who still feels a warm glow, a sense of eager anticipation when I go through the doors of the library here at Duke. Yet, even when through the doors of the library here, the first thing I see is a bank of computers, all down the left hand side as one walks in. And there are faculty and students there accessing academic resources.

Of course some students use resources that are not ideal, and some do the kind of "shoddy research" that Ben rightly frowns upon. This is the kind of reason that I have spent huge portions of my life working on internet resources, so I appreciate the reminder of the fact that some students will continue to be below par in their work. But the best students will embrace the best that the internet has to offer, just as they will enjoy browsing books and journals that are not available on the net. In other words, the problem here is not with "the internet"; the problem is with laziness, with those who are not prepared to invest time doing decent research.

Ben also writes:

I can tell you right now that some of the most popular sites which they use are not at all reliable sources of information. One of those is Wikipedia.

But here I would simply want to reiterate what I have often said before, that Wikipedia is not a "source", it is a "resource". As such, it requires critical engagement in the same way that other resources require critical engagement. The model I work with is one in which students themselves analyse and test resources in the light of their reading of the primary sources (e.g. In defence of Wikipedia, with further discussion under the label Wikipedia). The moment when students are themselves editing and contributing to Wikipedia in the light of their careful research and reading of the literature is the moment when they have begun to understand something very important about the educational process..

Ben's view of internet resources tends towards what I would regard as a "top down" one:

When doing work in theology or Biblical studies or the cognate fields don't trust websites not recommended to you by your instructors or the experts in the field. Period.

I have some sympathy with this view; I like to recommend good internet resources to my students when they are working on a topic, so I am disinclined to criticise this perspective. Nevertheless, I must say that I feel particularly happy when a first class student recommends a really good internet resource to me. On occasions like that, the student has realized that the educational process is one of engagement and mutual learning.

Wikipedia is here to stay. It is going to grow and grow. There is no question about that. The question is how we, as academics, deal with it. Is it going to be a process of critical engagement, of mutual learning and interaction with our students, or is it going to be one of turning our back and walking away? I continue to think that critical engagement is the way ahead.

Labels: Ben Witherington III, Wikipedia

---

I have maintained for a while that one of the best ways for academics to deal with the massive growth, in size and popularity, of Wikipedia, is to get stuck in and contribute themselves. It seems that this is happening to an ever increasing degree and yesterday's Chronicle points to an entry in Cliopatria: A Group Blog which lists dozens of historians who are dedicated to improving Wikipedia with their contributions. All strength to their arms, I say.

Labels: Wikipedia

---

I mention this since it is an occasional topic of conversation on this blog, and a correspondent mentioned the programme to me the other day. This week's Radio 4 Choice Podcast is The Wikipedia Story, presented by Clive Anderson. Go to the Radio 4 Choice Podcast page to download if you don't already subscribe, or listen to the stream.

Labels: BBC, Wikipedia

---

Back in March, I wrote In Defence of Wikipedia and followed it with In Defence of Wikipedia Response, specifically to criticize the trendiness of academic sneering at a resource that students are using more and more. I offered a range of reasons to suggest that our reaction to Wikipedia should be more nuanced. Putting our fingers in our ears and closing our eyes is not a realistic option. As always, the academic's best option is critical engagement. Inevitably, some misread the posts; others disagreed. It is encouraging to see John Hobbins writing intelligently about Wikipedia, Bible Study and the SBL, from which this is an excerpt:

How might Wikipedia’s presentation of biblical and related literature be improved? Let me count the ways. Coverage is spotty and sometimes amateurish. Links are not always top-notch. Bibliographies often seem slanted.

But, as I said before, improvement over time is noticeable.

Wikipedia does not adhere to the shameful practice of much scholarship in the humanities, whereby essays published decades ago are republished unchanged with nary a nod to developments in the field since original publication.

Wikipedia is a community effort. It is up to scholars to stop griping, roll up their electronic sleeves, and improve it themselves.

The ever reasonable and always interesting Doug Chaplin has a nice follow-up on Metacatholic headed Wikipedia or Wickedpedia? with the message "Wikipedia is here. Deal with it." One of the most important ways of embracing this challenge is the one suggested by John, echoing my own earlier suggestions of getting involved. If one is serious about rigorous academic life, then one should be serious about being a critical participant rather than a critical outsider.

Jim West criticized my earlier piece and he now does the same again. As Doug mentions, I earlier suggested that a way out of the impasse would be to test Jim's claims by means of the Wikipedia article on Zwingli. I would be interested to know if Jim has taken up that challenge and how he feels about the resulting product. Jim suggested that I too test things by working on the Wikipedia article on the Q document, which I have been doing, just every now and then. So far, I've been pleased with what I have seen. The article is looking OK, though with some work still necessary, but when I make changes, they usually stay. To be honest, the real challenge would have been the Synoptic Problem article, which is a bit of a mess and needs some serious work. But I've recently written a lengthy encyclopaedia article for a print volume (which therefore will get far less exposure than Wikipedia) on that topic, so I am loathe to end up duplicating my work there, all the more so as I already have something of a web presence on this topic. So perhaps others would enjoy taking up this challenge?

One last thing: I was shocked to see that there was no Wikipedia article on Michael Goulder, so I have added one. At the moment it's just a skeleton, but I hope to add to it in due course, or perhaps you would like to?

Labels: Michael Goulder, Q, Synoptic Problem, Wikipedia

---

A further brief comment on my previous post which mentioned again the death of Reginald Fuller: there is a good summary of his life on Wikipedia, including a select bibliography:

Reginald H. Fuller

I think I remember hearing that Fuller's wife, Ilse Barda, is Rudolf Bultmann's daughter. Can anyone confirm that?

Labels: Reginald Fuller, Wikipedia

---

I have enjoyed the responses to my post In Defence of Wikipedia. Jim West says that he has disdain for Wikipedia, "Disdain because Wiki are “edit-able” by any Tom, Dick, or Harry who may, or may not, know what the devil they are talking about." This confirms my analogy with what many academics were saying about the internet in general a decade ago. The same thing was often said, that any Tom, Dick or Harry can put up their own website. Was the answer to discourage students from using "the internet"? Well, that was exactly the response that many engaged in at the time, but there is now a broad consensus that that was wrong, and that the answer in fact is to point students in the right direction on the internet, and to encourage them to engage critically and to assess the sites they are using in the light of their other reading. The same is becoming true, and will continue to become true with Wikipedia. We can disdain it all we like, but the fact is that it is here to stay, and it is only going to get bigger and better. We may as well get involved if we want to have a stake in the future. And let me throw in another analogy. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can start up a blog. Why should we get involved with the blogosphere when it is clearly so full of dilettantes?

Here's my challenge for Jim, which will help us to test the academic value of Wikipedia. I suggest that he goes to the Wikipedia article on Zwingli, find all the errors and correct them, add any additional important information, and then monitor it over the next twelve months to see whether any Tom, Dick or Harry comes in and spoils his work, and, if so, how straightforward it will be to make further adjustments.

In comments, an anonymous student says that s/he has lost marks by using Wikipedia, something that also confirms my point, which is that academics should encourage their students to engage critically with Wikipedia and not to rely on it indiscriminately. Similarly, Billy V in comments says that "I will not allow wikipedia as a legitimate source; I will however encourage students to go there as an introduction and as a gateway to other material." I am not keen on the term "source" in this kind of context. Wikipedia is a resource, not a source, and as such I encourage students to engage with it critically in the light of their other reading, and especially their reading of primary source material.

Another anonymous commenter (please sign comments) criticizes my use of the term "fear", and I think that's legitimate and, to be honest, I was using it to generate a reaction. But if the Middlebury decision to ban it "was driven by the fact that faculty members were annoyed at student research laziness", then I can think of much better ways of dealing with the latter. The problem here is not Wikipedia but student research skills. Judy Redman's comments essentially agree with the kind of critical engagement model I am suggesting, adding that "The exercise of validating data would be useful."

Labels: Open Source, Pedagogy, Wikipedia

---

It is becoming fashionable among academics these days to have a go at Wikipedia. This is inevitable for a variety of reasons. Academics are often behind their students in the use of new technology, and this brings about a reaction of fear. We witnessed the same thing with the advent of the world wide web in the 90s and now that fears about the academic value of internet resources has diminished, a new, narrower target has been found. It is an easy target because its open source basis makes it often apparently "unreliable". The presence of errors, curious slants and incomplete information have confirmed many academics' instinctive disapproval of the resource.

Negative reactions to the use of Wikipedia in the classroom, however, are unnecessary and should be discouraged:

(1) Fear of Wikipedia will eventually catch up on critical academics in the same way that fear of "the internet" caught up with academics who were complaining about it ten years ago. It is still recent history that some academics were forbidding students to access any internet resources in the writing of their papers. I well remember regular disparaging remarks about "the internet" taken as a whole. It is now easy for us to see that it was absurd to discourage students to use the internet and instead the way forward was (and is) to guide and interact with our students in their use of internet resources, not least given the sheer number of academic articles that are available on-line. In due course, broadsides against Wikipedia may look as absurd as broadsides against "the internet" now look.

(2) One of the strengths of Wikipedia is that it is much more up-to-date than its print counterparts. Regularly, almost always, students will find much fresher material in Wikipedia than they will in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is also, of course, becoming ever more comprehensive.

(3) I like the fact that Wikipedia often acts as a gateway and points beyond itself. Its encouragement to all its writers to source their statements sometimes makes it more rigorous than print counterparts, which find it easier to get away with value judgements and even sleights of hand. The multi-author, multi-reader interaction that is at the heart of the whole idea of Wikipedia also helps a great deal in assuring less jaundiced viewpoints and more balance.

(4) Using Wikipedia is risky. That's often taken as a negative ("How can I rely on information found here?") rather than a positive ("How shall I assess the material I find here?"). Criticisms of Wikipedia often proceed from an inadequate model of the educational process, a kind of text book culture in which people find themselves lazily reliant on a limited number of supposedly reliable text books. The sooner that students realize that their text books too should be questioned, the sooner they will begin to learn effectively. This is especially important in the humanities, and nowhere more so than in teaching Religion, where the last thing one wants is narrow reliance on a limited number of viewpoints. It is surely essential for students to embrace the riskiness and uncertainty of our knowledge base in the area, and to avoid the reactionary and lazy temptation to close down the scope of secondary resources consulted.

(5) It is useful, in my experience, to engage with students' use of new technology and resources and not to find oneself lagging behind them. Ideally, it is good to know more than your students do about resources in your own area. Rather than making broad attacks against Wikipedia, therefore, it is far preferable to familiarize yourself with what Wikipedia has to offer in your own area and then you can recommend the best articles in Wikipedia on your area to your students. This is very straightforward to achieve. You know your own area far better than your students know it and it does not take long to assess key articles which you might want to recommend to them.

(6) Where Wikipedia falls short, think about flagging up the offending article for working on yourself or, still better, encourage your students themselves to work on the offending article and engage with them in their updating of it. They will love being involved in this kind of process and it is difficult to imagine any more useful way of getting your students thinking through the necessary issues connected with writing a good encyclopaedia article on the subject. It is a great shame that so many academics have taken the route of criticizing the existing provision rather than attempting to improve it. Do we just sit around and complain about all the existing books and articles that don't do just what we want to do, or do we try to write new ones?

I am not alone, I am happy to say, in this backlash against the negative take on Wikipedia. Last week (H.T.: Gypsy Scholar), this article appeared in the New Republic:

Wikipedia is good for academia
Source Wars
by Eric Rauchway

The article begins with reference to the decision at the History Department at Middlebury College which last month banned students' citation of Wikipedia. The Stoa Consortium (e.g. Middlebury Wikigate Revisited and Wikipedia editing as a teaching tool) has been weighing in and Cathy Davidson, from the English department here at Duke, wrote an excellent op-ed on the issue in The Chronicle last week, reproduced at Hastac:

We Can't Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies
http://chronicle.com
Section: The Chronicle Review
Volume 53, Issue 29, Page B20
By CATHY N. DAVIDSON

May the backlash continue!

Labels: Open Source, Pedagogy, Wikipedia

---