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