more on wikipedia
A clarification on the post below: I wouldn’t actually sabotage wikipedia; it’s easy enough to figure out when students have plagiarized without resorting to tampering with what is an excellent free resource. That said, it seems that quoting from wikipedia in an academic context is not really a good idea, regardless of whether the instructor has been nefarious. The New York Times reports that a history department has banned citing wikipedia as a research source. Why do they use wikipedia so often? I realize it’s free, online, and easy to access. However for most college students this is also true of many (potentially more vetted) online resources, including many encyclopedias, made available by their academic institutions. As long as wikipedia remains the lazy student’s plagiarism source, it will continue to be easy for instructors to spot the lazy students.