Beyond Wikipedia: Researching and Exploring Online
Every few weeks I seem to see clusters of discussions about "young people" and technology. Typically, it starts off as I notice someone doing a news story or just spouting off in a restaurant about how amazing it is that "kids today" are growing up with computers/cellphones/iPods and how amazed they are by how adept and sophisticated they are in using those devices.
Nearly always, within 1-2 days, I see another article or just happen to see an incident that points to just how wrong that generalization is. From computers ripe with thousands of viruses and bits of spyware to reports of college professors citing how poorly students grasp the very concept of citing sources and the simple basics of research, examples seem to point to a much more complicated picture.
It's clear to me that there seems to be a segment inside EVERY age group that seems to just "get" technology. Many of the sharpest technologists I know are in their 50's or 60's and some of the most clueless are 16-25. Of course, the plural of anecdote isn't data, but there certainly seems to be enough indication that the full spectrum from tech novice to tech genius exists in nearly all of the age brackets.
One of the criticisms leveled at the non-savvy portion of the younger brackets is how often they will pretty much stop at the first level of Wikipedia when researching a topic. It's so common that many colleges and Universities have had to put actual bans on citing Wikipedia in academic papers.
Given that I was told that the encyclopedia stopped being a valid primary source at some time in 8th grade, this troubles me like it does many others. Wikipedia and Google are starting points for exploring or researching a topic.
I've mentioned before how often I've been asked how/why I know something. That's been followed more than a few times by people asking how I manage to learn as much as I do about the topics that sparked the discussion in the first place.
As I recently used my "normal" process just recently on a topic, I took note of how I dig into a topic and I thought I'd share. This isn't an approach to writing a formal paper/thesis/dissertation. Rather, it's an approach to to satisfying curiosity, getting acquainted with a topic, and getting a dedicated hobbiest level of knowledge in a given topic.
Taking Notes
First, particularly if you aren't particularly practiced at any sort of methodical digging into a topic, you're going to need a way of taking notes. It can be regular paper notebooks (like the Moleskine), 3×5 notecards or software, like the recently launched Ript or a mindmapping tool like Freemind. Regardless, you need a way to keep track of the stuff you find.
As you get used to this approach to information gathering, it's pretty likely that you'll figure out your own best way to keep track of the new information.
For the most part, I mostly do a small notebook that goes with me everywhere in combination with lots of online bookmarks. Regardless, the very act of writing information down itself has been shown to increase your retention of the information. I've seen that effect so strongly that I could often write something down and then throw the paper away and have the exact same result.
Vocabulary
The key thing that I think about when I want to dig into a topic is that it's really rare that I have the right vocabulary for the topic I'm interested in. That means that my starting point is indeed a combination of Wikipedia and Google. In order to get very far in learning about a topic, you have to know the terms used for it.
For instance, the topic I was recently digging into came up in an article where someone offhandedly mentioned the raising of tilapia and hydroponic vegetables together as a way of raising your own food. I was interested and hit Google, looking for "tilapia" and "hydroponic". It didn't take visiting many of the results for it to be clear that the term for this was "aquaponics". That term derives from 2 others: aquaculture and hydroponics. All 3 terms go onto a vocabulary list. The more I already know about a topic, the less literal my vocabulary list becomes.
That list of vocabulary becomes the list of search terms used in future digging.
Wikipedia
As soon as I have a few terms, I move on to Wikipedia. Most of the terms that make good entries on the vocabulary list also have their own Wikipedia page. I check for each vocab term and read the entry. This often yields another few terms for my list. It also often helps me start a couple of other lists: names, dates, sites and other resources.
Basically, everything up to this point is used to generate a set of lists of search terms as well as giving me enough of a quick overview to determine whether it's worthwhile even going further into the topic. For lots of things, this is the end of the road and I don't really go any further. For the rest, I rarely return to this point again. Wikipedia becomes just a stopping point on the journey and an early one at that.
Beyond
As these lists of search terms grow, I gradually spiral outward and into greater detail. I take the list to Google and start searching for those terms, in combination with several other regular patterns, usually visiting the first 20-50 links in the Google results.
Some of the patterns I use (adjusted where they wouldn't make sense) are:
- searchterm FAQ
- searchterm tutorial
- searchterm overview
- searchterm history
- searchterm shopping
- searchterm accessories
- searchterm buy
- searchterm kit
- searchterm sucks
- searchterm rocks
- searchterm magazine
- searchterm industry
- searchterm expert
- searchterm beginner
- searchterm whitepaper
- searchterm theses
- searchterm paper
- searchterm conference
You get the idea. The goal here is to start getting a look at all of the sides of the topic. Anything that's remotely interesting online, I bookmark for future reference. I repeat much of this same process on several other websites that serve as decent aggregators of various other views of the world.
For instance, I search Amazon.com for products related to the terms where that would make sense. This usually yields a list of books, as well as the information necessary to have an idea of, in the case of hobby-like topics, how much participating in this new hobby is likely to cost. If I'm really interested, I take the list of books, sorted by customer rating and read through those reviews. Usually, there are one or 2 that have good reviews and are available used for a fraction of the new price. That can often cost little more than $10-15 to get 2-3 books on the topic.
Similarly, I hit sites like Technorati to look for blogs/feeds that relate to the topic, del.icio.us for popular bookmarks on the topic, Flickr for images of the bits or to get an idea of what things look like, YouTube for interviews with the people or how-to videos or presentations at conferences on the topic, visit the forums found in earlier phases and search for postings on the subtopics, etc.
This whole cycle repeats with more and more granular searches. As a dead-end is reached, I go back up a couple of levels. You know you've reached a dead end when you see the exact same links over and over or you've already seen every page Google knows of for that search term.
Over the course of a few hours, it doesn't take long before your notes on the topic are pretty extensive. You've got a working vocabulary of the topic, lots of bookmarks, a couple of books, some feed subscriptions and a much better understanding of the topic.
If you are looking at a more academic bent to your research, this whole approach can be used as topic exploration and to determine whether a topic has enough "room" for the kind of paper you'll be writing. At that point, the actual rigorous research needs to kick in, where you cite actual research, actual experts, actual studies, etc. The benefit of going through this process is that you have a much better idea of where that research, those experts, those studies, etc. actually reside.
And, if you, like me, are just plain interested in knowing about something or in pursuing something in a hobby capacity, this is a process that can really get you the information and learning you're after. It works well for article research, for getting background for a presentation or just getting a Cliff Clavin level of useless trivia sure to keep you in a corner by yourself at parties.
At any rate, it's a process I use on an ongoing basis for nearly everything that piques my curiosity. I'd be interested in hearing augmentations of the approach that other people use.
