Wiki-Wiki-Wikipedia

It is really refreshing to hear an academic speak positively about Wikipedia. It often gets such bad press unfairly, in my opinion. I have heard another professor plug it though. When I was in Nevada, I was an AV facilitator for distance education classes and the professor told a story. He read an article in a news paper about how Wikipedia had some kind of incorrect fact somewhere important, like a featured page. As the story goes, Wikipedia editors realized before the article came out that the error was there and were able to correct it before the article was even printed. I really appreciate that about Wikipedia. And I love the idea of using it to get kids excited about research and writing.

I am one of those people who should donate to the Wikipedia Foundation because of how much I have learned from it.



There also is counter proof of Wikipedia's dependability. I have personally read material on pages that had nothing to do with the topic in the title because editors sometimes fool around, I guess. Also, I am aware of a story about an editor who was a fraud who lied about his credentials and edited THOUSANDS of articles:
 http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2042333_2042334_2042575,00.html

So the bottom line is that a person has to use judgement and be proactive about checking sources and doing good research when using Wikipedia just like any other resource.