The problem with Wikipedia is that I cannot be certain that
the information I receive from it is accurate.  Nor can I be
certain, if I make a correction, or if other scholars make
corrections, that the corrections themselves will not be
amended, changed, indeed undone at some point in the future.

The fact that Wikipedia can be altered anonymously makes it
even more suspect.  Signing your name to something amounts to
taking responsibility for it.  When I publish something and
sign it, I am putting my scholarly reputation on the line. 
That pretty much guarantees that I will do my best to ensure
that what goes out under my name is as accurate as I can make
it.  The prospect of public embarrassment is a huge incentive
to do careful and scrupulous work.

I don't care how many medals Wikipedia has received--it is not
useful for the purposes I would like it to be.  I do not think
that in saying this, I am a technophobe or a neanderthal. 
Technology has to empower me responsibly for it to be useful,
and Wikipedia does not do that.

There are other on line resources that are much more reliable
than Wikipedia, to which I direct my students.  These include,
for my pedagogic purposes, the DAB and the DNB, both of which
my students can access just as easily as they can Wikipedia. 
I publicize these alternative sources, and penalize use of
Wikipedia.  Desipite Dan Morrow's spirited and thoughtful
defense of Wikipedia, I won't be changing this policy any time
soon.

Democratizing access to knowledge is not the same thing as
democratizing the production of knowledge.  I am all for the
one, and deeply opposed to the other.  When I say I am opposed
to democratizing the production of knowledge, what I mean is
that there are good standards in place to ensure that certain
kinds of knowledge claims are advanced on the basis of
rigorous and responsible methodologies, by careful and
qualified scholars.  You do not have to be an academic to
adhere to these high standards.  But it certainly is the case
that those of us who complete academic training are, by virtue
of that training, somewhat more likely to know how to employ
those rigorous and responsible methodologies for producing
knowledge.

"Sola Scriptura" may perhaps be a fine principle when applied
by "heart religion" protestants to attack the work of church
historians and theologians (as an Episcopalian, I am not
willing even to grant this much, but I will concede the point
for purposes of this discussion).  But unlike an earlier
author on this thread--who seemed to believe, like the heart
religion folk I know, that everyone is equally competent to
produce knowledge--I believe in standards and in meritocracy.
 The mechanisms we have in place to ensure rigorous standards
are worth striving to maintain, even if in practice they are
more imperfect than we would like.  To the extent that
Wikipedia undermines these mechanisms and those standards by
empowering less than competent people uncritically to assert
knowledge claims, it is not something that people in the
academy (or at least those who care about quaint notions like
"truth") should be supporting.

Technology is not the issue here.  Its how we use it that matters.

All best,
Kevin
Kevin R. Hardwick, Ph.D.
Department of History
James Madison University