> 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. - - - - - - - - - > 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. - - - - - - - - - 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 ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html