Monday, February 5, 2007
545 Law Review Articles Cite Wikipedia!
So reports Blog Emperor Caron. He, discreetly, does not list the names of the authors of these articles, all of whom should presumably be blacklisted from scholarly careers (unless, of course, the citation was in the context of, "Wikipedia reflects the popular prejudice that..." or "Wikipedia records this error as though it were fact, proving yet again the unreliability of the Internet..." or "In this instance, actual scholarly sources confirm what Wikipedia reports...").
UPDATE: A timely example, involving the philosopher David Chalmers at the Australian National University, one of the world's leading authorities on philosophical and psychological work about consciousness, trying to correct some errors regarding the Wikipedia entry on the subject.
AND ANOTHER: One academic department has (quite correctly, I think) barred its students from citing to Wikipedia in their submitted work. (Thanks to Dean Rowan for the pointer.)
ONE MORE: Mary Dudziak (USC) brings us Steve Colbert's take on Wikipedia, which sums it all up: "the Encyclopedia where you can be an expert even if you don't know what the hell you're talking about." Kind of sounds like Cyberspace and the blogosphere more generally, doesn't it?
https://leiterlawschool.typepad.com/leiter/2007/02/545_law_review_.html