Wikipedia: "To Use or Not to Use, that is the question"

via Discussion
Forum - TeacherLibrarianNetwork by Ray Maseman on 11/13/08 Who out
there is deeply disturbed by Wikipedia? Who out there finds it a useful
tool?

Today I attended a HS librarian inservice on teaching research
strategies. Wikipedia got dumped on a lot. Once again, I found myself
wondering why their is so much antipathy towards Wikipedia among
educators. Here you have an information source that is easily
accessible (unless you have no web access at all), attractive to
students, free, available in numerous languages, and participatory. Yet
somehow the fact that it is not perfectly authoritative, and that it
may contain content from non-experts, means it is to be treated with
derision. I hear teachers (including librarians) complain that
information on Wikipedia is invalid because there is a perception that
there is no quality control. Because some articles may contain errors,
anything from Wikipedia is to be discounted.

I think the grousing over Wikipedia misses an opportunity. It makes a
great starting point for research on a topic, as well as being a
platform for all kinds of learning opportunities related to checking
information. Most importantly of all, students are already using it, so
it would be great if they could do so effectively.