Has everyone seen the wonderful Steven Courbert "report" on wikipedia--where he shows how easy it is for anyone to "edit" it?
 
I see it as a symptom of a wider problem: the use of many internet sources that are in no way edited or necessarily reliable. I've had students site an "article" as scholarly that came from a .edu. (It was part of a pre-presentation biblio in a Gen Ed course. They were going to be talking about the impact of pornography on violence against women, and they were supposed to be using legitimate social science research.) I warned them that they had better find out what they could about the author because I would be asking questions about the reliability of their sources and I didn't want them to be embarrassed. Turns out they "couldn't" find anything. But I did: it was written by a student for a frosh seminar. This I learned by contacting the teacher of the class for which it was written. Since then, I've made every person do an exercise in evaluating sources. 

	-----Original Message----- 
	From: Academy of Legal Studies in Business (ALSB) Talk on behalf of David Opderbeck 
	Sent: Sun 10/29/2006 5:07 PM 
	To: [log in to unmask] 
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	Subject: Re: It had to happen
	
	
	
	I've cited Wikipedia in published work.  There is a Wikipedia entry referencing many publications in "A" journals in various fields in which Wikipedia entries have been cited.  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_as_an_academic_source)  I don't see any reason to be biased against it, and many solid reasons why it can serve as an excellent basic reference on many subjects.  Obviously, it shouldn't usually be a sole source, but if you need support for a basic definition (say, the definition of "open source"), why not?
	 
	David W. Opderbeck
	Assistant Professor of Business Law
	Baruch College, City University of New York
	(646) 312-3602
	<mailto:[log in to unmask]@baruch.cuny.edu</A><BR><DIV><BR></DIV><FONT color=#990099>----->