Today's vilified, dangerous Web is the Wikipedia, according to a Washington Post article. Ahrens writes with a breezy mixture of sneer and fear:
Unlike, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia has no formal peer review for its articles. They may be written by experts or insane crazy people. Or worse, insane crazy people with an agenda. And Internet access.
The author backs up towards balance by the end, although the steps are odd (the Wikipedia is good at Star Trek?) and overshadowed by what went earlier. Which, ironically, is a case of what the author complains about: people iterating and correcting the 'pedia over time.
In educational settings, I'm still getting signals that the Wikipedia is a sort of nexus for academic dislike of all things digital.
(via the Technology Liberation Front)
I have the impression that in academic settings, Wikipedia is the kind of thing that you outwardly express mild suspicion of, but use all of the time from the privacy of your laptop.
Posted by: EB | July 19, 2006 at 10:04
Recently, I was talking with a reference librarian about wikipedia and how to convince the students not to use it. After reading EB's comment (Kudos for putting that truth out there.) I wonder if the answer to getting students to dive deeper into resources is to use wikipedia as a starting point and a platform to dive deeper from?
Posted by: James | July 24, 2006 at 16:34