Read, Brock. “Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?”. Chronicle of Higher Education 10/27/2006, 53, Issue 10.

In Read’s article on Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit, he informs the reader that Wikipedia as many good aspects as well as bad. Read points out that Wikipedia’s advantage is also its disadvantage: any one can edit the material, which can lead to incorrect information. In one incident, a professor of communications went into different articles on Wikipedia and purposely edited article to include wrong information. A number of the changes made by the professor were obvious while others were harder to fact check; despite this corrections were made quickly. Read’s informs the reader that many of the free encyclopedias science articles are often more accurate that the humanities article, this is attributed to the tech savvy type of person that is attracted to Wikipedia. The founders of Wikipedia have been making an effort to include more input from the academic community to increase the credibility of the encyclopedia. Some professor have been contributing to the site while other refrain from doing so because their work can be edited and little of their original text will remain.
Like anything, Wikipedia has its place whether that place is anywhere close to the university level is the question. In my opinion Wikipedia can be a very useful source of information if used properly. I use Wikipedia early on in my research for a paper. I especially use the site when I know little about the subject and I often end up using sources citied by the author of the Wikipedia article but never Wikipedia itself. Many of my professors share this opinion on Wikipedia. I caught one of my professors who is less than enthusiastic about the use of Wikipedia using the online encyclopedia. I was happy to hear from reading the article how quickly the mistakes were fixed but I also see where the people are coming from who dislike the concept of Wikipedia because of the lack of credibility.