Avoid Wikipedia, Warns Wikipedia Chief

Wikipedia is definitely not a reliable source for accurate information. Yes, it offers some level of novelty, but even the founder warns not to bank on it where it counts.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales has warned students not to refer to Wikipedia, reports the US education weekly The Chronicle.

Wales said that he gets about 10 e-mail messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has earned them fail grades.

“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,” the journal reports.

Wales didn’t, alas, suggest renaming the project to something more appropriate, like “Jimbo’s Big Bag of Trivia”, as we’ve advised before. He put the blame squarely on the students. And while Wikipedians love to blame everyone but themselves for their predicament, in large part, he’s correct…. Source: The Register