> From: John Carter
> I had a ninth grade history teacher who once told me, when writing
> a term paper, "Do not use the encyclopedia as one of your references."
> I would say the same applies to Wikipedia.
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> From: Paul Finkelman
> Sadly much of this Wikipedia entry is wrong -- why are we not surprised?
> This is the danger of using a source that has no scholarly oversight.
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I see what these commenters mean, and I hear similar concerns from the 
scientists who surround me in my day job. But at the same time, doesn't some 
real usefulness emerge from the evolving practice of crowd-sourcing 
knowledge with the Internet?  What shifted me in this direction was that 
often-cited 2005 article in the international science journal Nature. It 
carried the headline "Special Report: Internet encyclopaedias go head to 
head: Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the 
accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds." 
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html) 
Wikipedia's possible usefulness doesn't undermine the advice to students not 
to use encyclopedia articles as term-paper sources, and it doesn't reduce 
the weight of Professor Finkelman's caution that serious scholarship 
requires serious peer review.  Nevertheless I believe I see Jeffersonian 
dimensions here -- not just technological but intellectual and social. So I 
usually speak up for Wikipedia and for what it represents, in principle, in 
the Internet age. Thanks.
Steven T. Corneliussen
http://www.physicstoday.org/daily_edition/science_and_the_media

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