I'm not the only one rushing to defend Wikipedia See my post below. I am, however, a bit concerned at some of the criticisms of the school library media specialist. J points to a post aggregating other posts on the original Syracuse article. J, SC, and I all went to library school so we know what's taught about evaluating the authority, etc., of resources. It's a big deal in collection development and in user education/information literacy. My point is that the school librarian should 1) not have used Wikipedia as an example of a bad resource and 2) a more nuanced, sophisticated method needs to be taught when dealing with new resources. Evaluating print materials is pretty much under control. How to evaluate wikis, blogs, and new types of electronic resources is not well taught.

I also feel that it's unethical to intentionally sabotage wiki articles for the sake of testing the reviewers. For a university professor to do that is, well, kind of crappy. The mistakes were caught, but how much time was spent fixing them when it could have been spent improving other articles on the site? In your studies, do no harm! It does matter. Plus, I won't trust any changes he makes from now on -- maybe the wikipedia editors should search his name or IP and delete all his changes.
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