I agree with Stephan. Because of its particular history and the type of writer it attracts, Wikipedia is a very good source for computer-related definitions and I have used it in my writing whenever I've wanted to give a quick definition of a technical term. However, I keep that kind of quoting to a minimum (I think I've used a Wikipedia definition at most once or twice in publications), nor would I trust Wikipedia on anything outside of the geek realm. Sylvie At 12:23 PM 5/7/2009 +0200, you wrote:

Hello everybody.

I think that Wikipedia is great for explaining technical details or information like "GSM" or "Atari", but not as a discussible source like primary literature. (With one exception: if Wikipedia is the object of investigation itself ;-) For people who know how to distinguish details Wikipedia can be a great help: If you know that the explanation of e.g. GSM is correct, so you can trust the Wikipedia article, why should you cite a user manual? My opinion is that the citation of a user manual looks quite strange in this context when you can use Wikipedia as well. Where should be the benefit of using the manual then?

And, of course, this whole topic still seems to be a question of socialization and misunderstanding. I suspect that old school researchers tend to use old school methods and sources too often.

Best

-- Dr. Stephan G. Humer Research Director, Digital Class, University of the Arts Berlin Senior Fellow, University of Applied Sciences Potsdam

For detailed contact information see www.humer.tel

...

Hi everybody,

recently I got the following comment from a reviewer of a paper of mine:

" *There is considerable use made of wikipedia and in an academic paper this is disappointing. *"

I was thinking, what is the general practice in using wikipedia in academic paper writing? and are there limits/rules/good practices that you follow, both in writing and in review processes?

If for example I am writing a paper on the peer review process in Open Source development, I often use wikipedia articles as references for technical terms, like "Diff", "CVS" or "Conditional Programming".

Not being a Computer Scientist myself and thinking that the audience of my writings won't be composed of Computer Scientists as well, I feel that it is good to provide some basic references for complex, technical and often obscure terms. In this cases I prefer to use wikipedia articles, rather than Computer Programming or Operating Systems manuals, because I think that those articles are better and can be easily reached by anybody.

On the contrary I never use wikipedia articles as references for sustaining an academic argument or as references for authors (e.g. I do not use the wikipedia article fo Harold Garfinkel, but I use the book Studies in Ethnomethodology; I never use the wikipedia article for referencing the "situated action" concept, but I use Lucy Suchman book).

So, any thoughts? comments?

S.

-- Italian Conference on Free Software 2009 http://www.confsl.org/confsl09/

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Sylvie Noël, Ph.D. (psychologie), M.Sc. (ergonomie) Chercheure scientifique | Research scientist Centre de recherches sur les communications Canada | Communications Research Centre Canada 3701, avenue Carling | 3701, Carling Ave. CP 11490, succursale H | PO Box 11490, Station H Ottawa (Ontario) K2H 8S2 | Ottawa, Ontario K2H 8S2 (613) 990-4675 | sylvie.noel@crc.ca | téléc./fax (613) 998-9648 Site Web/Web site: www.crc.ca Gouvernement du Canada | Government of Canada Blog: http://www.sylvienoel.ca/blog