Academia vs Wikipedia. Should schools and colleges ban Wikipedia in student work? At the end of Scott Jaschik's article, "A Stand Against Wikipedia," Temple University librarian Steven Bell frames the issue this way: Do we tell students what information to trust or do we teach them how to make the judgment themselves? (After all, students shouldn't be trusting us, either.) If schools make room for process and judgment, then students are headed in the direction of adult responsibilities. If we hide the process and make the judgments for our students, we condescend to them, and we miss the chance to show how knowledge works.

I'll propose one more idea: college and high school assignments that can be completed with a general encyclopedia, such as Brittanica or Wikipedia, are themselves condescending. (See David Blakesly's comment on the article, too.) Via Dave Winer. [0 & P]