> From: Finkelman, Paul
> I do not think it is about being academically PC; it is
> about worrying that what is on Wikipedia is often
> wrong and there is no test to know what it wrong and
> what is not and it can be changed by anyone. That makes
> it dangerous to use if you want to truly understand something.

Again: Yes, it's undeniably true that Wikipedia is often wrong. Again: Yes, 
that crowd-sourced, ever-evolving online phenomenon is dangerous to trust as 
a direct source of facts for use in scholarly writing. But what about its 
potential as a convenient starting point when a complicated investigative 
side road suddenly appears? Or as a route to the important _other_ sources, 
often quite credible, that Wikipedia articles regularly cite and link to? Or 
as a means to locate and study photos or illustrations that might aid a 
truth search? Is every single effort "to truly understand something" really 
so rigidly constrained in all of its stages? What I perceive as at least 
implied in some of these messages is a final, total judgment that 
crowd-sourced Wikipedia merits no use of any kind in any circumstances. I 
hope my perception is as wrong as any such judgment obviously would be. 

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