discussion on the collaborative intelligence of wikipedia

I view Wikipedia as the grandfather, whom you ask for advice and get the answers for your questions. You may not agree with what he says or you might not quite feel that he knows what he is talking about. He might give you an idea as to where to look next, de-fragmenting information to smaller bite size chunks. Left as that, wikipedia can be anyone's accessible wisdom source, especially when discussing trivia.

No matter how collaborative this knowledge might be, the facts presented are merely half digested - it needs to be agreed with, verified and checked. It would be interesting to know how often we use Wikipedia, without verifying or checking the information. Of course, sitting here at university we know better not to even mention Wikipedia as a reference; I question if people at large are aware of this need to double check the information before using it as fact.

There is a real concern of falling for the idea that "if enough people agree - it must be true". However, avoiding Wikipedia as collaborative knowledge in the education process will not highlight these important pitfalls. Therefore we need to use it and discuss it in our classes.