Wikipedia

From QBWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia edited by people who may or may not be specialists in their fields. Because of this, the quality of any given Wikipedia article is highly variable, and some articles are downright wrong. Additionally, the significance or notability of an topic on Wikipedia often cannot be accurately gauged and is in no way related to an article's length. Thus, Wikipedia should be used sparingly for ACF and several mACF tournaments.

Despite this, many teams continue to use Wikipedia as their only reference source when writing questions. Several tournaments have sought to rectify this problem by introducing extremely stiff fees for Wikiplagiarism.

There is currently a $25 penalty for using Wikipedia as the sole source in a packet submitted to an ACF tournament.

Wikipedia apparently does not abide by its own conflict of interest rules.

Wikipedia has an article on quizbowl. The article has no person with general experience in the topic of the article to give it a focus and prevent it from becoming a combination of a grab bag of trivia and a battleground for various uninteresting personal crusades. This is likely due to the difficulty of finding sources covering quiz bowl on the Internet, along with Wikipedia's insistence on a policy of neutrality that by nature forbids anything on the distinction between good quizbowl and bad quizbowl. Thus, it is much like any article on Wikipedia.

Some current and former quizbowl personalities were once very active on Wikipedia, notably including Adam Bishop and David Levinson. Conversely, Matt Weiner and Eric Kwartler would probably be more active in the anti-Wikipedia community if the "anti-Wikipedia community" actually cared about the legitimacy of references sources and was not just dedicated to online drama and calling people by racial slurs.