Wikipedia as an "Authoritative" Source?
As reported in Inside Higher Ed, the history department at Middlebury College decided to forbid students from citing Wikipedia as a legitimate source in any academic work. Students are allowed to consult Wikipedia as a source, but they just can't cite it.
For an interesting reply from a history faculty member at George Mason University (who has students write or revise Wikipedia articles as a course assignment), see Mills Kelly's blog entry.
Also, for detailed reviews of the quality of the articles on Wikipedia, see these two articles:
- Internet encyclopaedias go head to head, Nature's peer-reviewed comparison of science articles in Wikipedia and the Encylopedia Britannica, finding comparable levels of accuracy in the two encyclopedias.
- Can History be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past, Roy Rosenzweig's very thorough essay discussing the quality of Wikipedia as a source of historical and biographical information.