The joys of Wikipedia

I get asked about Wikipedia all of the time. What I've found is that librarians and even other subject professionals have reviewed wikipedia, it's often with mixed results - some things manage to stay very up-to-date and other subjects and topics have incorrect information.

To be brief, I appreciate wikipedia for a very quick and dirty look up of something that I'm not knowledgeable about, however if I'm going to do in-depth research, I want information from other sources - at the very least more sources. I do find it interesting that even the founder of Wikipedia discourages academic use.

Generally speaking, it's not terribly different from asking students to look for subject encyclopedias edited by specialists in a field or area rather than using a general encyclopedia like World Book or Encyclopedia Americana. The general encyclopedias are obviously edited more than Wikipedia, but oddly enough, in some cases Wikipedia is probably more up-to-date and in some cases even more specific than a general encyclopedia, but that is the nature of the beast.


For those unfamiliar with Wikipedia, there's a basic lowdown here.