[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia's provable anti-expertise bias

[Philip Sandifer]

On Nov 22, 2005, at 8:31 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> That's exactly what I always say.  We strive to be (and sometimes, but
> not yet nearly as much as we'd like) Britannica or better quality.   
> But
> even at that level of quality, frankly, it's just not appropriate to
> cite any encyclopedia at the university level.  That's not the role of
> an encyclopedia in the process.
>
> The proper role is what Tony describes here -- you use the  
> encyclopedia
> to get started, to get an overview, and *then* you do your  
> homework, and
> hopefully a lot more effectively than you would if you took a random
> stab at the library catalogue.

I think I'm just going to quote Jimbo verbatim next time I tell my  
students not to cite Wikipedia in their papers, but to go and use it  
to find better sources.

-Phil