The Sticky Wiki of Using Wikipedia as an Educational Resource

Should We Chuck It or Check It?

Ryan Jordan, a cheeky 24-year-old community college student, recently scandalized the global wiki community when his self-certified, but completely imaginary, credentials were exposed.

Posing as a crusty, tenured expert, holding not just one, but two doctorates,

Using Catholicism for Dummies as his definitive authority, he blithely edited articles, settled disputes and made like the big cheese, even granting an interview to the New Yorker magazine, which eventually led to the discovery of his deception, and his resignation from Wikipedia.

Jordan's antics have highlighted the concern many academics have been voicing over the reliability of the information found on Wikpedia. Some have even gone as far as banning Wikipedia as a resource for their students.

"Hogwash and swill were never so glorified as it is on Wikipedia", says one professor of journalism, "excepting, of course, in newspapers and history books."

Mark Twain wrote, "It has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper. That is the opinion intelligent people have of that lying vehicle in a nutshell. But the trouble is that the stupid people--who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations--do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper, and there is where the harm lies."

Substitute, 'wikipedia' for 'newspaper' and you have the perfect 21st century quote on the state of the new media and perhaps, especially wikipedia, which is written and edited by whomever takes the time and interest to do so.

The question is -- why aren't we teaching students to think critically about their sources rather than banning those sources altogether?