Wikipedia Scholarship

MIT's Technology Review has an interesting article on Wikipedia Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth: Why the online encyclopedia's epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy.

The author has an interesting perspective on Wikipedia and its standards for truth and accuracy and the question of how do you know what to question on Wikipedia and what to believe.

...Wikipedia's standard for inclusion has become its de facto standard for truth, and since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it's the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.

That standard is simple: something is true if it was published in a newspaper article, a magazine or journal, or a book published by a university press--or if it appeared on Dr. Who.

Worth reading and thinking about in light of reliable resources and student research.

I had to look up epistemology.