For most of the faculty I know (a decent number, across a wide variety of disciplines) there is no 'problem' with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a tertiary source (i.e. it's not data or an archival document (primary) and it's not a report of research (secondary)…).
Student's in academically rigorous programs are being taught how to conduct and work with original research (i.e. creating and working with primary sources). As such, using tertiary sources of any kind is not acceptable -- they can't cite textbooks, paper encyclopedias, or dictionaries for the same reasons (or if they do they can be used only in particular, usually limited ways). There is a certain irony to a thread that notes that many Wikipedian's don't know how/when to use primary and secondary sources at the same time it is complaining about educators not being willing to let students rely entirely on a tertiary source (and hence not learn how to work with primary and secondary sources). It's not a case of sour grapes or "conservatism" -- it is a matter of different goals. … On May 21, 2012, at 2:51 PM, WereSpielChequers wrote: As for the idea that students use the pedia and professors disparage it, that is of course something of a simplification, a few months ago I met someone who'd been to a Cambridge meetup and been in the minority of non-professors present. But Cambridge will of course be ahead of the game in this sort of thing. I suspect the main issue here is conservatism, and in a few years time Academics who are hostile to Wikipedia will be as common as Academics who despise electronic calculators.
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