Wikipedia policy

"I like Wikipedia and often find it better than other encyclopedias. My colleagues say that is because I am trained to judge, but students aren't yet and can't be trusted with it. I say, they read all sorts of stuff all the time, they listen to talk radio, why should this be off limits?

I don't let people cite *any* encyclopedias as ultimate sources of truth, so the university's specific prohibition against citing Wikipedia in theses and dissertations doesn't affect me or my students. Encyclopedias are, however, great first reference sources. That includes Wikipedia, I have found."

- Professor Zero

Precisely correct. The other day someone asked me what 'hegemony' was. I gave an answer, which on reflection I thought was too vague, so I thought I should go and look it up. I nearly went straight to wikipedia, then, fearing that what it had to offer would be too tendentious and thrown in to confusion by arguments among Cultural Studies undergraduates, resolved to go and find a dictionary of political thought. I found two, though neither of them were much good (Roger Scruton's excellent handbook was nowhere to be found) and both carried appalling definitions of hegemony. So (surprisingly enough) did a dictionary of Marxism. So I dug out the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, only to be disappointed again (in this case, this otherwise first-rate reference work was showing its age - a lot has happened in the last 40 years as far as hegemony goes). After all that I went on wikipedia after all, and got a definition which was a long way from perfect, but a lot better than any of the others I had found in 'respectable' publications.