Wikis

I posted to the library2oakton wiki, and found it very easy to edit and update. It's nice to get to know everyone better; kind of like a group blog.

I have mixed feelings about Wikipedia - it's a love/hate thing. Working in a high school library I see WAY too much casual use of Wikipedia when better sources should be used. On the other hand, I do trust it more than I used to. I had a freshmen that hacked into an article (just because she could) and added random lies to an article on 'Grace Hopper'. I monitored it, and noticed that the bad info was removed in 2 hours - much faster than I thought it would be. The school's IP address could have been banned from ever making changes on Wikipedia, so I discussed with her why not to do this.

I went to a lecture several months ago where an expert on this subject said there are several thousand editors out there for Wikipedia. My question would be whether they are all truly subject experts, or how is it otherwise monitored? I will say that it is a good source of certain current topics where online encyclopedias are WAY behind, or not in scope. An example: try looking up Camtasia (a type of software) in Encyclopedia Britannica online and you get nowhere. Look it up in Wikipedia, and you get a pretty clear definition.

Ted