Wikipedia is viewed by many[citation needed] to be an inferior reference, because anyone can edit its pages. I disagree that it is, and find that much relevant information is expertly written, and the fact that it can be corrected by anyone may sometimes improve its reliability.
Referenced information can change through later edits, and that is a problem. If a paper is influential enough to induce changes in an applicable wiki, the paper may end up referencing itself, which we all know can cause pretty serious spacetime anomalies. However, these issues can resolved by referencing a specific dated version of a wiki page.
So it's settled. Citing wikipedia is no problem. I decided to do so and before finishing the paper, found that my first reference no longer existed. That is a problem!
It turned out that the entire topic that I'd referenced was deleted, because it "appears to be original research and has no relevant citations". Unfortunately, old versions of any deleted pages are not publicly visible, in case they contain plagiarized material. The irony of course is that if the page is correctly deleted because it is original material, it is incorrectly hidden because it might not be! In this case, the information must be removed from public sight because it might be both original and copied.
It must be an indication of unreliability if your wikipedia reference ends up deleted. If the wiki is well-cited, it might be better to copy the citations from the wiki rather than reference the wiki itself. If it is not well-cited, it might be better to include the "original research" in your paper.
This is an example of perverse results of the law of unintended consequences; Pages are purged from view to prevent copyright infringement, making it now preferable to copy information from a wiki page than to properly cite it.
Wikipedia seems to be trying to avoid being a citable reference.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
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