When junior Mickey Leibner went to see the movie "Good Night, and Good Luck" last week, his curiosity about the movie's subject - CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow's fight against 1950s McCarthyism - was piqued. So when Leibner got home that night, he did something that has become a habit for him: he visited the free, interactive online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
"I looked up Edward Murrow because I was interested in how factual the movie was," said Leibner, who visits Wikipedia "probably once a day."
Leibner is far from alone. Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia - which utilizes "wiki" technology that enables site visitors to edit any and all of its entries - has grown into a go-to reference source that boasts entries on everything from historical figures to scientific advances to pop-culture ephemera.
About 350,000 people have added to or edited the site's two million-plus entries, more than 814,000 of which are in English - and accessing those entries has become a part of many college students' daily routine.
"I usually visit Wikipedia at least once per day," junior Liz Kulik said. "I check the main page to see what's in the 'current events' or 'this day in history' sections. [And] when I have a bet with someone about something, whatever Wikipedia says is the answer!"
"I am a huge Wikipedia supporter," said sophomore Will Kent, who estimates that he visits the site at least four times a week. "It's dangerous, though, because I could spend hours on it."
Within the academic realm, however, Wikipedia's popularity has implications that are potentially dangerous in a different respect: when conducting research or putting together a paper, students may overestimate the site's authoritativeness and forego the use of more traditional - and more trustworthy - sources.
"A student may want to use Wikipedia as a quick starting point, but I'd want them to use library resources to double-check any facts that they've found," said Anna Neatrour, an associate librarian at the Tisch Library who specializes in emerging research technologies. "I hope that [students] realize that it isn't an authoritative source of information."
Neatrour, who visits Wikipedia when she's looking for fast information "about computer programming languages or pop-culture topics," added that the library subscribes to "hundreds of online dictionaries and encyclopedias for students to use that are more authoritative sources than Wikipedia."
And professors expect their students to rely on those sources rather than Wikipedia. "Usually, for researched essays, I'll ask my students to stick to peer-reviewed journal articles and books," said English Lecturer Brian Jordan, adding that he doesn't believe any of his students have referenced Wikipedia in their papers.
"Information must always be checked, but especially in the case of unregulated sites, where anyone can post anything," said Associate English Professor Sonia Hofkosh. "I urge my students to consult sites that are managed by scholarly institutions or organizations."
It might not have a place in an academic paper's official bibliography or footnotes, but Wikipedia can in fact play a role in getting that paper off the ground. Though she "would never try to cite Wikipedia because [she doesn't] think it's really an academic source," Kulik found the site to be a helpful jumping-off point for a research paper she was writing during finals last semester.
"I didn't really know where to begin, [so] I Wikipedia'd my subject and used the broad, overview-type info to point me in the right direction," she said, adding that "Wikipedia also provides a list of real, published sources and helpful websites for most entries."
"I have used Wikipedia for courses - IR, Spanish, Intro to World Music," Kent said. "There is some really comprehensive stuff."
"It helped me with a presentation I was doing - I used it to research some general stuff," said junior Jeff Bourgeois, who only recently began visiting Wikipedia. "So far, with what little experience I have, it seems to be a valid Web site for me to conduct general research. Perhaps not for formal papers, but if I was looking to do some informal research for an informal paper or essay, Wikipedia is probably the first place I'd look now."
Leibner has also found Wikipedia to be, "in a limited sense," academically useful. "When writing papers, I sometimes refer to Wikipedia for background purposes - to check a date, for instance," he said. "I never quote or cite it, however, because I don't think it's reliable or authoritative enough to have a place in an academic paper."
But it is "an interesting and successful use of social software," according to Neatrour, who is currently using the software that powers Wikipedia for a library project. Though she said she is "sometimes concerned that people may use Wikipedia instead of a more reliable reference book or encyclopedia," she also said that she thinks "wiki software in general opens up new possibilities for collaboration in academia."
Neatrour cited the example of Bowdoin College English professor Mark Phillipson, whose wiki collaboration with his students was featured in a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article. According to the article, Phillipson is one of a growing number of educators that view wiki sites as a way to "promote a more casual, flexible form of class discussion than blogs and message boards."
The casualness and flexibility of wiki technology plays into its popularity.
"I think Wikipedia is popular because it is quick and easy to use," Neatrour said. "Bloggers often link to Wikipedia articles, which will cause Wikipedia to come up often in Google search results. Wikipedia also covers topics that traditional encyclopedias don't, such as current events or recent pop culture topics."
"A lot of things wouldn't be interesting if we didn't know that we could find details and background on Wikipedia," Kulik agreed.
And of course, the same thing that makes Wikipedia a non-authoritative academic source - the fact that anyone who visits the site can contribute to it - also fuels the site's allure.
"Um, yes, actually," said Leibner when asked whether he had ever contributed to a Wikipedia entry. "It was a politically oriented article, and I revised it to remove a few phrases that were obviously, in my opinion, biased in favor of the right-wing point of view."
