Collegiate Times

What if any information you could ever think of acquiring about any subject was encapsulated into a single, constantly-expanding entity, waiting for you to ask it a question? And what if that entity could be accessed for free with the simple click of a mouse or touch of a key? Brace yourselves, because believe it or not, it does exist. Chances are you?ve used it before; maybe you?re even using it as you read this column. The collective hive of information of which I speak goes by the name Wikipedia.

Oh yes, Wikipedia, the publicly-updated information website containing almost 4 million articles in 200 languages on every subject from the surface area of Lake Titicaca to Paris Hilton?s complete filmography.

According to the site, Wikipedia was started in 2001 and it is now the most used Internet reference site in existence, tracking an average 60 million hits a day. The term ?wiki,? now a widespread web term, apparently comes from a Hawaiian word that means ?informal.? This ?wiki?-encyclopedia is not maintained by scholars with Ph.D.s who legitimize and cite their research. Anybody can use, add or change the information contained in its massive online database.

Sometimes this information is considered controversial, biased or even slanderous. In 2005, a former aide to Robert Kennedy wrote a scathing indictment of the site because the article concerning him implied that he was a suspected assassin of his former boss.

Wikipedia creator Jimmy Wales responded to this criticism by disallowing anonymous users from creating new articles on the site.

However, he did not disallow anonymous users from editing articles already in existence. This means I could hypothetically modify the article on George Washington ? a rather comprehensive page on the founding father ? to say whatever I wanted.

For example, I could claim that despite what the beloved legend says, Washington actually did lie to his father about chopping down the cherry tree. I could contrive a story claiming that the young Washington witnessed Chuck Norris roundhouse-kick his father?s precious tree into splinters and then threaten to do the same to the future first president?s face if he snitched on him. Young Washington, motivated by fear of a vengeful Norris, took the blame for the incident, simultaneously telling his first lie.

Thankfully, ludicrous claims such as these, (called vandalism by Wikipedia administrators) are read and subsequently removed by various editors of the articles. But what if, during the short time frame between when I post my alternate history about Washington and Norris to the time when it is removed by the Wiki-info police, a 10-year-old elementary school student, researching Washington on Wikipedia includes my story in a biography report for his class?

This is the inherent problem with using something like Wikipedia to get all of your information. Most of what you will read there might be true, consisting of dates, names, numbers and other easily-traced objective facts. However, you cannot legitimately cite Wikipedia as a source for your own academic research because the people who write for it could be anyone, and they may or may not be qualified sources for your chosen subject. Your professors realize this too. How many times have you been instructed to include ?non-Internet sources? for research papers? This is frustrating news for the busy college student. I certainly wouldn?t mind it if my paper?s bibliography included Wikipedia.org as the only source. Yet your professors insist that you go that extra mile by to citing dates from an ancient almanac you dug up in the recesses of Newman that took you an hour to find, instead of a Wikipedia article that took seconds to skim.

Because of that extra effort, you?ll be more inclined to remember the information and care about it later. You might not care about the research for a paper comparing Latvia with Lithuania, but somewhere down the road, you?ll be thankful that you learned how to research thoroughly and efficiently, when the quality of your research might be a part of your job.

Fast, instant information is a quick solution to a problem, but you will ultimately gain no satisfaction in doing it that way. To quote Socrates, ?Employ your time in improving yourself by other men?s writings; so that you shall ? ? um, well I forget the rest. I had better check Wikipedia.