Wikipedia Founder Discourages Academic Use of His Creation

A daily glance at education-technology headlines
for Monday, June 12.

A service of The Chronicle of Higher Education
June 12, 2006

Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia compiled by a distributed
network of volunteers, has often come under attack by
academics as being shoddy and full of inaccuracies. Even
Wikipedia’s founder, Jimmy Wales, says he wants to get the
message out to college students that they shouldn’t use it
for class projects or serious research.

Speaking at a conference at the University of Pennsylvania on
Friday called “The Hyperlinked Society,” Mr. Wales said that
he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who
complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into academic hot
water. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper
because I cited Wikipedia’” and the information turned out to
be wrong, he says. But he said he has no sympathy for their
plight, noting that he thinks to himself: “For God sake,
you’re in college; don’t cite the encyclopedia.”

Mr. Wales said that leaders of Wikipedia have considered
putting together a fact sheet that professors could give out
to students explaining what Wikipedia is and that it is not
always a definitive source. “It is pretty good, but you have
to be careful with it,” he said. “It’s good enough knowledge,
depending on what your purpose is.”

In an interview, Mr. Wales said that Wikipedia is ideal for
many uses. If you are reading a novel that mentions the
Battle of the Bulge, for instance, you could use Wikipedia to
get a quick basic overview of the historical event to
understand the context. But students writing a paper about
the battle should hit the history books.