Since 2001, college students have been using Wikipedia.org as a resource for all sorts of information. Many professors shun using the Web site as an academic resource because of its unreliable sources, since anyone with Internet access can edit the encyclopedia entries.
One real-life example of how Wikipedia functions took place in July this year. Stephen Colbert asked viewers of "The Colbert Report" to edit the African elephants entry to say that the endangered species' population had tripled in six months. He wanted to establish a "wikiality" (truth by consensus), which is one of the basic principles of Wikipedia.
Do students actually use Wikipedia? "I use it when I'm talking with my friends and we need to find something out quickly," sophomore Ariane Stern said.
"I'm a strong advocate of Wikipedia," senior Justin Ho said. "I use it virtually every day, for everything."
Wikipedia is an easy way for some students to find information in a hurry. "I do use it for research sometimes, but only when I don't want to go to the library," junior Faith Cummings said.
Despite a study published last year by the scientific journal "Nature" saying that Wikipedia is about as accurate as "Encyclopedia Brittanica," none of the interviewed students said they would use Wikipedia as an academic source for a paper. "I've never trusted it that much," sophomore Melodie Eastmond said. "I had a teacher in high school who said you can't use it, so that stuck with me."
One student has found factual errors in entries: "Sometimes it just doesn't seem true. I was looking up historical figures, and I found things that didn't sound right, so I checked in a book and it turned out they were untrue," Cummings said.
Even Ho, who uses Wikipedia regularly, said that he doesn't totally trust it. "I think people should just take what they find with a grain of salt," he said.
Several students wondered about how controversial events and people would be portrayed. "If someone says that something happened, and someone else says it didn't, what would happen then?" Cummings said.
One of the co-founders of Wikipedia has recently founded an off-shoot called Citizendium.org, which will potentially have real academics editing and supervising. It will not allow everyone the same privileges, as Wikipedia does, but it may be more trustworthy.
"The idea of having people who are qualified editing the information sounds good, because it would be sure to be factual, and it would make Wikipedia more academically approved," Eastmond said.
But students asked who would bother to edit on a volunteer basis and why: "Why would they do it? It's possible that a professor could have their own agenda in editing - it could be biased," Ho said.
As for Wikipedia, Eastmond thinks the information there will never be totally true. "If anyone can add to it, that means people can just make up lies and no one would know any better," she said.
