A Jester's Promenade: Citations to Wikipedia in Law Reviews, 2002-2008

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A Jester's Promenade: Citations to Wikipedia in Law Reviews, 2002-2008
Authors
Daniel J. Baker
Publication date
2012
Links
Original

A Jester's Promenade: Citations to Wikipedia in Law Reviews, 2002-2008 - scientific work related to Wikipedia quality published in 2012, written by Daniel J. Baker.

Overview

Due to its perceived omniscience and ease-of-use, reliance on the online encyclopedia Wikipedia as a source for information has become pervasive. As a result, scholars and commentators have begun turning their attentions toward this resource and its uses. The main focus of previous writers, however, has been on the use of Wikipedia in the judicial process, whether by litigants relying on Wikipedia in their pleadings or judges relying on it in their decisions. No one, until now, has examined the use of Wikipedia in the legal scholarship context. This article intends to shine a light on the citation aspect of the Wikipedia-as-authority phenomenon by providing detailed statistics on the scope of its use and critiquing or building on the arguments of other commentators. Part II provides an overview of the debate regarding the citation of Wikipedia, beginning with a general discussion on the purposes of citation. In this Part, this article examines why some authors choose to cite to * © Daniel J. Baker 2010. This is a revised version of the winning entry in the New Member Division of the 2010 American Association of Law Libraries/LexisNexis® Call for Papers Competition. ** Law Reference/Research Librarian, O’Quinn Law Library, University of Houston Law Center. B.A., The Ohio State University; J.D., University of Cincinnati College of Law; M.L.I.S., Wayne State University. The author would like to thank David DeKorte for his help in fine-tuning the methodology; Spencer Simons, Lauren Schroeder, and Emily Lawson for their editorial insights on earlier drafts; and Mon Yin Lung, Helen Boyce, Chris Dykes, Suzanne Gordon-Martin, and Saskia Mehlhorn for their support during the writing of this article. I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY FOR THE INFORMATION SOCIETY 2 I/S: A JOURNAL OF LAW AND POLICY [Vol. 7:2 Wikipedia and explains why such citation is nonetheless problematic despite its perceived advantages. A citation analysis performed on works published by nearly 500 American law reviews between 2002 and 2008 is the focus of Part III, from a description of the methodology to an examination of the results of the analysis and any trends that may be discerned from the statistics. Finally, Part IV examines the propriety of citing to Wikipedia, culminating in a call for tighter editorial standards in law reviews. In all that Author endure, of one thing Author am sure Knowledge and Reason change like the Season A Jester's Promenade1