[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia references a source of anxiety (The Australian)

[Frederick Noronha]

Wikipedia references a source of anxiety (The Australian)
Academe's concern is misplaced, writes Eric Raunchway...

Quote:

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"....

Close quote.

THE AUSTRALIAN, Wed, Apr 11, 2007 Page 36 (Higher Education)

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