wikipedia debate

last spring, i spent the semester traveling around the world on a ship taking classes and stopping at various ports to travel. choosing to go was the single greatest decision of my life, but that is neither here nor there. if curious: semesteratsea,org

while on the ship, we took classes through UVA and of course they required us to do research. the internet on the ship was very limited. we had an allotted number of minutes to use for the entire semester of internet time in addition to free websites (mostly news websites and online journals). one of our free websites was, and thus became our first step in getting information on a new topic. our professors even encouraged us to use it. granted, we didn't have much of an alternative, but we all sat in class perplexed at the fact our professors were encouraging the use of wikipedia. isn't it everything the academic world is against? we weren't to site it in any papers, but they did expect us to use it to gather information and they said that it is mostly trustworthy due to the vast number of authors constantly reviewing articles. the small articles could have incorrect facts for a long time due to the low traffic, but when researching the history of the great wall of china, chances are incorrect information won't last more than a couple minutes, if they even post it at all. moral of the story: on the ship, wikipedia was encouraged.

day one of class in clemson, my professor literally said these words verbatim: "if any of you cite wikipedia as a source i will automatically fail you, no questions asked." now, she was not saying you will get a failing grade on that one paper. she literally meant that you will fail the class altogether.

in a matter of months, i went from a learning environment which was an extension of the number one public school in america saying wikipedia was good to clemson, number twenty three, acting like wikipedia is the devil. the debate is real.