When Wikipedia was touted as a reliable source in this course, I immediately drew on years of bias and reservation toward the site. Years of teachers telling us not to use Wikipedia because "anyone can write anything" made me untrusting of using the site for anything besides bibliography mining.
Something funny about this mistrust though ... that same criticism isn't used for biased news sources or websites that end in ".org." I remember one project in particular where fourth-grade Cassandra researched a nineteenth-century American inventor and told my entire class that he batted another inventor for title of "Superior Wheat Harvester" at high noon. My teacher kindly gave me an A-minus and reminded the class to stay off Wikipedia, even though I had found that information on a blog-style website recommended on the school computers.
As I've grown, I notice the same people who told me to stay off Wikipedia sharing Facebook "news" based on the headline. People young and old know not to use Wikipedia, but have no issue trusting almost any other website. In social media and television, there is a growing movement to share "both sides," even if one "side" of the argument is completely false (Dr. Oz, I'm looking at you.) In the name of hearing everyone out, we've allowed fake news to run rampant. It's the Illusory Truth Effect. If we hear something false enough times, we subconsciously believe that it's the truth.
As noted by Feldman's Intelligencer article, Wikipedia has no problem deleting false information. Moderators from all viewpoints decide what they can generally agree to be true, and there is no incentive for Wikipedia to benefit from user data or advertisements because of its publicly-funded model.
Teaching students to navigate Wikipedia goes further than scrolling to the "Resource" section. We can ask that students only use articles GA or above (GA, A, FL, FA). While finding primary sources is important, well-reviewed secondary sources are huge in academia. I looked for information on Joseph Bologne and was disappointed I didn't read through all the information before writing a fifteen-page research paper a few years ago. Why reinvent the wheel piecing together his life when I can look for someone else's research.
Wikipedia, like all sources on the internet, shouldn't be taken at face value. Despite years of being told not to touch the site, I'm a convert and feel inspired to help edit a couple articles of my own.
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