A Stand Against Wikipedia As Wikipedia has become increasingly popular among students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online encyclopedia produced by readers. Many professors have complained about the entries' lack of accuracy or completeness, and some have discouraged or tried to prevent students from using it. “As educators, our job is to reduce the spread of misinformation,” said Don Wyatt, department chair. “While Wikipedia may have some value, particularly that of leading students to citable sources, it is not in itself an appropriate source for citations,” he said. The department made what Wyatt called a consensus decision on the matter after discussing the issues with professors. we saw how students cited incorrect information from Wikipedia in articles and tests. In one case, Wyatt said, a professor noticed several students offering the same incorrect information, sourced from Wikipedia. There was discussion in the department about trying to ban students from using Wikipedia, but Wyatt said that didn't seem appropriate. Many Wikipedia entries have good bibliographies, Wyatt said. And any outright ban would simply be ignored. “There is the question of freedom of access,” he said. “And I am not in the business of promulgating unenforceable edicts.” Wyatt said the department did not specify punishments for citing Wikipedia, and that the primary purpose of the policy was to educate, not to be punitive. He said he doubted an article would be rejected because it had a single footnote on Wikipedia, but that students would be told they shouldn't do so and that multiple violations would result in reduced grades or even failure. “The important point that we… half of the document… from the University, said about Middlebury's approach: 'I applaud the effort of wanting to direct students to good quality resources,' but said it would behave in different way. “I understand what their concerns are. There's no doubt that [on Wikipedia and similar sites] some things are great and some are questionable. Some pages could be from eighth graders,” he said simply 'not using that' could lead students in the wrong direction from an information literacy perspective." Today, students are faced with "an ocean of information", much of it of poor quality, so a better approach would be to to teach students how to “triangulate” a source like Wikipedia, so they can use other sources to determine whether a particular entry may be reliable. “I think our goal should be to equip students with the critical thinking skills to judge .”— Scott Jaschik