Interesting post in Lorcan Dempsey's blog (influential librarian-blogger)
relates two interesting stories (neither of which are unique/new to us, but
interesting nevertheless):
"Using Wikipedia" February 13:
http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/002155.html
Story one.
"Edward Glaeser includes a reference to Wikipedia in the acknowledgements to
his new book, *Triumph of the city <http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/650211168>*
:
'Following common practices, Wikipedia is not listed in the bibliography or
citations, because any Wikipedia fact was verified with a more standard
source. But I still have a great debt to the anonymous toilers of Wikipedia
who made my research much easier at many points in time. I apologize if any
phrases from that, or any other source, crept into my prose - one research
assistant was assigned the explicit task of purging such inadvertent
borrowing - but mistakes do sometimes get through. [272-273]' "
Story two.
"My daughter (a sophomore in high school) was given an assignment to
introduce errors into Wikipedia. Presumably, the intention was to
demonstrate that entries could be 'unreliable'. Now, she chose a popular
page, and had her changes corrected almost straightaway, to the extent that
it was not possible to complete the assignment as given. In fact, she ended
up being barred from editing pages as her behavior was seen as
unacceptable."
From which he goes on to say...
"Wikipedia is a collection. ... One cannot summarily judge its value in the
way that one might have done when deciding whether or not to buy or
recommend a reference book. Judgements about 'authority' and utility have to
be made at the article level, and who has the time and expertise to flag
individual articles in this way? Rather than continuing a tedious Wikipedia
good/Wikipedia bad conversation, we should recognize the attraction it has
as an addressable knowledge base, understand the variety of uses to which it
is put, and remind folks of the judgments they need to make depending on
those uses."
Nice.
-Liam
wittylama.com/blog
Peace, love & metadata