“Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?”
Brock Read, Chronicle of Higher Education
10/27/2006, Vol. 53 Issue 10
Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia has been a source of controversy and conflict within the academic community. Surprisingly, it’s user-created pages seem in general to be accurate. However, the problem that many scholars have with the site seem to do with the ease of access to change and edit the site, thus giving it a transitory nature unable to be peer-reviewed or even referenced with any consistency. The academic supporters of the site say that the site’s format encourages amateur scholarship, but the site’s opponents disagree with Wikipedia’s philosophy of free-source editing and refusal to set standards for admissions. Granted, the site’s editors are diligent in fact-checking the site’s thousands of entries, but the article points out that marginal errors in a sea of facts are still errors.
I agree with the last quote made by Mr. Wales in the article – the question is not about whether or not the information is factual, it’s about being able to discern the validity of an article found online (or anywhere). I feel like this has a lot to do with being information and web literate. Almost all of my teachers have warned against using it, so I’ve never really used it for class. I see their point, and I personally would not use it for any academic work, but I feel like it has its place. When I go on Wikipedia, I normally use it in the context of answering a random or obscure trivia debate among friends. When I stop to think about it, it really is pretty crazy to think that such a tool is freely available and accessible. I feel that in the future it may grow to be something incredibly interactive – on the level of The Matrix or something, but hopefully not as sinister.
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