Having celebrated the tenth anniversary of Wikipedia last month, founders of the online encyclopedia are seeking to expand the site’s educational uses –– despite the doubts of many academics concerning its reliability.

Wikipedia attempts to be a tool

According to a May 2010 Wikimedia Foundation press release, Wikimedia introduced its national Public Policy Initiative for the 2010-2011 academic year in an effort to get professors and students involved in editing and clarifying Wikipedia’s entries as a part of their course curriculum. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, this initiative is aimed at creating a model for the use of Wikipedia as a teaching tool in the classroom. Schools such as Louisiana State University and James Madison University are already in the beginning steps of incorporating Wikipedia into curriculums and regularly using it in academics.

“As a teacher myself, I have built courses around encyclopedias as a base,” Rodney Vliet, Biola’s dean of library and media services, said. “It is an established practice to build curriculum out of these kinds of things, but the question is: is Wikipedia reliable enough to do that? I think it could work.”

Using Wikipedia as a resource will be beneficial

The Wikimedia Foundation claims this new model of Wikipedia as an education resource will be beneficial for the instructors and students, as well as for Wikimedia. Frank Schulenburg, head of public outreach at Wikimedia, stated in the Wikimedia press release that he hopes the initiative will enable Wikipedia to experiment and document best practices and, consequently, work with educational academics and institutions worldwide to improve the content and quality of Wikipedia.

Biolans suggest monitoring entries

Several people within Biola’s library administration and reference department said they believe these educational advancements have the potential to succeed, but only by monitoring the credibility of the entries.

“It could be successful only if there are dependable contributors, references that are cited properly and professors and faculty involved,” said Julie Ellis of Reference Information Services at the Biola library. “There would have to be measures put into place for quality control on these entries.”

According to Wikipedia, about 400 million people visit the website a month, maintaining a large influence with 17 million articles in over 250 languages circulating the web.

Students’ opinion increasing

As the company continues to move forward and expand its influence, students and faculty alike have begun to regard it as more reliable than its previous reputation held.

“I use Wikipedia for general answers because it’s usually reliable for that stuff,” sophomore Stacy Neitzer said. “It’s never given me anything off the wall.”

“Wikipedia has found a little more acceptance in regards to its reliability because of the number of people who are fact checking,” Vliet said.

Wikipedia seen as a jumping-off point

Several among Biola’s staff and faculty said they believe Wikipedia is a safe place to begin to gain basic information, but not a safe place for serious research.

“In some cases for a quick synopsis, or to get the main point of a subject, [Wikipedia] can be useful,” communications professor John Mosqueda said. “However, you don’t want to quote it as a credible source. It’s just to save time and get a general picture.”

Anniversary challenge issued to users

On the day of Wikipedia’s anniversary, co-founder Jimmy Wales posted a video online issuing a call to action. He challenged his viewers to take the time to make use of Wikipedia and contribute to the growing collection of knowledge by editing, adding and creating new entries.

“Even though we’ve got millions of articles, even though we’re in hundreds of languages, there’s still a lot of work to do,” Wales said in the video. “So, to everyone out there, if you’ve never edited Wikipedia, try it. You see a problem, click on edit. Fix it for us. We would really appreciate it.”

Wikipedia’s mystery often criticized

Many in the academic realm have criticized Wikipedia for their anyone-can-edit policy, which allows people who are not necessarily experts on what they are writing about to contribute and have their word taken as fact. Everyday editors of Wikipedia are unidentified, adding to the mystery as to where the information came from and if the editors are qualified.

“The main reason why there is a problem is that there is no real requirement for writing an entry,” Mosqueda said. Anyone can add or edit whatever he or she wants. On Wikipedia, you don’t know who wrote what, or if they’re qualified. Quality control is minimum.”

Wikipedia’s credibility growing

Other scholars contest that Wikipedia is growing in credibility and can be trusted as much as the next website or encyclopedia.

“The same is true for any kind of information source you use for research,” Biola reference and instruction librarian Juliana Morley said. “You should be checking the validity of your source and making sure its authoritative and scholarly. I wouldn’t treat it any differently than any other website you would go to get information from.”

Vliet agreed.

“The old problems of accuracy and reliability and the need for fact checking are absolutely essential, lest we fall into the trap of thinking just because somebody says something and spouts it out on the Internet somehow means it’s right,” Vliet said. “No, that’s not the case.”

Vliet said his job involves looking at and testing Wikipedia to see it its reliable for his own purposes, and he does find it reliable by and large.

“Wikipedia is okay, but not Wikipedia alone,” Vliet said. “I hope that their efforts to make it more established and to make more people trust it will work.”