Yesterday's Legal History Blog post about U.S. judges citing to Wikipedia in opinions is here. My bottom line: U.S. judges should be held to no lower standards than undergrads. It's one thing to begin your research with a Wikipedia entry. But citing to it as authority, rather than a peer-reviewed secondary source? In an opinion? Yikes!
Here's a little from the Wyatt interview:
Q. When did the history department decide it needed to codify an official policy against citing Wikipedia?
A. We'd been deliberating on Wikipedia for almost half a year, but what really tipped the balance was the fact that we found there were multiple instances of students citing Wikipedia for the same misinformation. Wikipedia is very seductive: We all are sort of enamored of the convenience and speed of the Web. From the standpoint of access, it's a marvelous thing. But from the standpoint of maintaining quality, it's much less so.
For the rest, click here (requires a subscription -- try your library).
