Wikipedia references a source of anxiety (The Australian) Academe's concern is misplaced, writes Eric Raunchway...
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The history department at Middlebury College in Vermont, the US, has banned students' citation of Wikipedia, saying the free online encyclopedia that anyone can edit "suffers inevitably from inaccuracies deriving in large measure from its unique manner of compilation."
What's at stake here isn't error. It's how we in the professional knowledge business greet our new overlords: the plain people of the internet. Right now, we're lobbing fibs at them of just the kind the internet is good at puncturing and, indeed, of just the kind the losing side used the last time our civilisation endured a revolution in the ownership of knowledge.
Wikipedia's founder Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales agrees with the Middlebury historians. "Basically, they are recommending exactly what we suggested: students shouldn't be citing encyclopedias. I would hope they wouldn't be citing Encyclopaedia Britannica, either." All encyclopedias stand several degrees of separation away from the events on which they report.
But by "barring Wikipedia citations without mentioning other encyclopedias", as Middlebury American studies professor Jason Mittell says, "it would seem that their problem is with the Wiki, not the pedia"....
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THE AUSTRALIAN, Wed, Apr 11, 2007 Page 36 (Higher Education)