Is Wikipedia accurate

Slashdot It! "I think anyone using Wikipedia has to be skeptical about the content, but people should be skeptical about all the content they read," said Alexander Halavais, a professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn.

Can never judge the book by its cover

"It appears to be professional in quality," he said.

He believes that the encyclopedia gets a lot of things correct -- but there's no guarantee, and some entries read like a list of factoids with Wikipedians posting notes such as "citation needed" on every other line.

"Citations and the review process in academia and journalism can be discouraging and can prevent you from jumping on a story immediately, but it can also prevent you from making blatant mistakes," Cadden said.

These days, Cadden is taking his classes on field trips to the campus library.

"Students now almost exclusively get their information on the Internet, and you see Wikipedia popping out. They've totally forgotten there is a thing called a library where there are things called books," Cadden said.

Almost everything is online now

Encyclopedias and other reference books have been gathering dust as today's students turn toward online sources of information. The current favorite has been Wikipedia, launched in 2001. The site has more than 3.6 million articles and allows anyone to write or edit an article.

Wikipedia's popularity has been self-perpetuating, since the more people use it, the higher it is ranked by Internet search engines, which often list sites in order of popularity. The higher ranking attracts more users.

Some teachers and professors ban their students from Wikipedia, while others actively urge their students to become Wikipedians.

Some teachers said they would welcome the opportunity to teach their students about online research through Wikipedia and how students themselves can participate in generating articles to share knowledge.

"I think anyone using Wikipedia has to be skeptical about the content, but people should be skeptical about all the content they read," said Alexander Halavais, a professor of interactive communications at Quinnipiac University.

No one is perfect

"There is no screening of articles before they are posted; however, there is a listing of new pages, which many active users keep an eye on to monitor new material; though the system is not perfect, the majority [of errors are] caught and taken care of quickly; there is also a listing of all recent changes to articles, which many users monitor to catch vandalism -- including our over 1,000 [administrators] who have the power to block users, delete pages, and temporarily 'lock' pages from editing," she said.

Wikipedians who agree see this as a source of collective wisdom unleashed by the Internet, but as yet unrefined.

"I think the idea of a mostly reliable resource that includes millions of articles for free is astounding. I use it, as does almost everyone I know who is some form of 'knowledge' worker," Halavais said.