I wrote a reply on YouTube to someone about this a few days ago. One very serious problem with it, for our (i.e historical context) is that it is very good for what IS. It is progressively worse the further back in time the events in question are. This is, of course the case for any information recording service, but Wikipedia "compounds" this problem due to the way it prohibits citations of REAL primary source documents, and encourages instead referencing of published works.
This also is--or at least was--standard practice for encyclopedias. The fancier ones featured signed articles by recognized authorities. But the principle was the same: they are for well-digested information.
The newer the development, the chances of the published works on it being accurate, numerous and accepted is obviously very high. But, as we go back in time, we do not have published works on many topics at all, and many others are full of dramatic errors. In history, cutting edge historians and researchers doing real work, are correcting these errors in archives. But we cannot then publish these results to Wikipedia ! Because we cannot cite archive files.
I do not agree that there is any correlation between time and accuracy in this or any other reference work. The medieval material (my own one-time specialization) is generally quite good, for example. Modern corporate and political coverage is, on the other hand, notoriously variable, because there are too many interested parties and too many outside agendas involved.
While I agree that the Wikipedia management can be unnecessarily pedantic about their rules, they are in principle correct as far as encyclopedias go. Authors of articles are supposed to cite reliable, published, peer-reviewed, secondary works that not only cite primary material but also analyze them, synthesize conclusions, and thereby predict likely avenues for future research.
Secondary sources are important, because, as I've said before, primary sources are not truths. Nor are they the "real past". They are merely present day facts that historians--like scientists--correlate and explain in order to get closer to truth, either by correctly predicting future discoveries or, often, by later being proved wrong. Archives have their own historical and collection biases that need to be corrected by careful thought (I'm sure that your book didn't regurgitate the archives you slogged through--it made tentative sense of them).
My favorite example of raising questions for the future comes from medieval and renaissance historiography. Two great historians, Huizinga, in his Waning of the Middle Ages, and Jacob Burkhardt, in The Civilization of the Renaissance, reached dramatically opposite conclusions about the fundamental character of the 15th-16th century. For the latter, the period was all about expansion: Humanism, science, the rise of high finance, and the "rediscovery of man and his world". For Huizinga it was all about contraction: the plague, population collapse, economic and political crisis. Both used and cited primary sources contemporary with the period. Huizinga drew many of his examples from his analysis of northern European art, which might seem less solid than a purely documentary approach. But, surprise! When I was an ndergraduate in the '70s, the French cliometry (historical metrics) movement compiled monastic, parish, tax, and market records on a large scale and applied statistical methods, Huizinga was proved right. Europe's population reached its all time height in the 12th and 13th century, crashed by 25-50%, and never recovered thereafter, with all of the economic and political upheavals Huizinga indicated.
Works like Huizinga's and Burkhardt's are real history because they pull scattered primary sources together, draw conclusions, and, explciitly or implicitly, make testable predictions about future research findings. Burkhardt's book is not worthless when seen in this light. Far from it. Once his statements are reread in light of Huzinga's insights, he too reveals a deep understanindg of the period that still has something to teach, long after his primary sources have become some among many.
The only reason I have been able to fix a few errors in Wikipeadia, is because I have been able to cite my OWN BOOK as the source, which I know, is accuate as I obviously know its all from archive files. But I think everyone can appreciate that the circular referencing this creates, is (in principle) highly irregular, and not to be encouraged.
Agreed. But yours is a bit of an odd example. The histories of the internal combustion engine have not been numerous or in wide demand (which is why I am still having no luck getting your book through US distributors--hopefully the publisher still has a few).
On the other hand, while Wikipedia bars citations of original research and primary materials, it encourages them in the links and further reading sections, which often point to online primary source repositories, such as the the Guttenberg project. WikiSource also collects public domain primary materials and cross-references them to the articles, when available. So connecting Wikipedia/WikiSource with primary material is another way of improving the effort.
This will never change, as Wikipedia relies on amateur fact checkers, the vast majority of whom do not have archive access, but DO have access to modern published books, which will be dramatically more numerous on contemporary matters, than aviation history.
The common belief that Wikipedia's non-expert fact checkers cause inaccuracy has not been born out by the facts. When Wikipedia's accuracy was spot checked and compared to the Britannica, Wikipedia actually proved somewhat more accurate on average, not less. The reason is probably that Wikipedia has many, many more fact checkers than Britannica has expert editors. Even in our own fields, we experts all have our habits of thought, pet peeves, prejudices, and things we just think we know. The sheer volume of editors on the Wikipedia project tends to drown these personal prejudices out.
Of course, the narrower the community of interest around a topic, the more individual bias--or outright deceit in some cases--will tend to survive. This is why I suggest that our experts write or correct aviation articles whenever they can. I have followed Wikipedia closely from its beginning, for professional and technical reasons. Aviation topics were almost nil at the beginning. Now they are proliferating. The interest is there, so its time for the quality to improve. You probably shouldn't cite your own books, as you say. But you can cite those of others--they do exist, even on engines--or else weigh in on other related topics where others have written books.
Wikipedia has inadvertantly been set up to be the antithesis of what a sound historical data source should look like, sadly. It will therefore, remain useful at only the must surfacic level, when someone who has no idea what a spyplane is, migh want to read up on the SR-71, and so on. I would myself, NEVER cite it in any book I write, because it is not reliable at the "coal-face" of research, its just a compendium of "probably correct-ish" information in a useful and accessible format. Ok for a quick scan of a new subject to spot new leads to study, but little more (at least as far as history is concerned, as I say, for stuff like contemporary physics and so on, its probably very good, as the works people can cite will be far more accurate).
I`m glad Wikipedia exists, and I often take a casual look at it for various things, but never for gathering serious, accurate historical data for publication, the chances of an error are very high.
Again, Wikipedia is not and is not meant to be a research source. Encyclopedias are consumers of research, not producers. And like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia is meant to cite, not to be cited.
I used to teach research methods to undergraduates and bored them silly by repeating that an encyclopedia is useful for orienting oneself to the subject and maybe choosing subjects for research (instead of asking the harried instructor) but not suitable for citation IN research. An encyclopedia is just a tool. It works as a research source about as well as a hammer works as a screw driver. But that does not mean that it is bad for driving nails.
To me, Wikipedia is a fascinating phenomenon and very close to realizing the intent of the French revolutionaries who created the first Encyclopedie. It is already a great resource industry (my go to for getting an overview of industrial fieldbus implementations and references to their respective governing bodies). It can be a great educational tool as well--if supported by knowedgeable people. {Disclaimer: I have no official or unofficial connection with the Wikipedia project, beyond finding it useful and interesting).
