It’s also fabulous for public domain graphics. I use it a lot for that.

The women vs. men business? I don’t think it makes any practical difference in content, for all the reasons AL mentions. Having dabbled for a month or so, maybe it’s that the editorial culture is a little, how to put it… pushy? Confrontational, I guess. That tends to be a milieu where men feel more comfortable than women, for whatever reason.

In particular, it is invaluable for understanding Internet slang and shorthand, particularly of that oft-impenetrable acronym variety. The first time I saw NSFW I thought the writer was trying to refer to “single white female” and had made a typo. Wiki gave me the answer with blinding speed. I suppose there are other reference sources that cover this area, but Wiki is quick and I know how to get to it because I have it bookmarked. There you have it.

It’s also superb for pop culture of the manga/comic books/Star Trek ilk. In short, it TELLS ME WHAT I WANT TO KNOW WITHOUT A LOT OF FUSS AND SEARCHING.

I found this interesting:
http://microbiology.se/2011/02/01/underpinning-wikipedias-wisdom/

The argument here – and elsewhere – is that instead of railing against the new dominant force in reference, academia should be helping to make it better. And to do that, you need to provide incentives to academics (including librarians) to do so.

Librarians at my library finally came around to this way of thinking when we admitted that WE often resorted to Wikipedia. Quite often, a student would come to the reference desk with a question about a subject area for which we had no background. What would we do before advising the student? Google the subject, which would almost always bring up a Wikipedia article, which we’d read. Then, we’d have a better idea of what search terms to use in our catalog and databases, what alternative terms we should try, what broader or narrower topic we should search. Bad reference skills? Nope – very efficient.

Wikipedia is certainly of limited use (and always will be… I’m not sure there’s anything that isn’t of limited use.) But, many of the complaints about it which were true several years ago are not true… or not “as true” today. It actually has very detailed and correct articles on a wide range of topics – so much so that at my library we have switched from telling kids that Wikipedia is evil, to telling them that it can be a great starting point for research. Just know that not everything will always be correct (and often, articles are flagged and that will tip you off) and they can’t base their research on Wikipedia articles. But for a basic orientation to a topic, including giving students an idea of an area of a broad topic on which they might like to focus, it’s often just as useful as a reference book… and sometimes more so.

There are many well-crafted articles with lengthy lists of citations. There are other well-crafted articles which, from what I can tell, are blatant examples of plagiarism… but they doesn’t make the content any less accurate.

I think that rather than telling students “you can’t use Wikipedia” we should be teaching them how to evaluate the content, the references, flags, etc. to determine legitimate content, just as we do when teaching them to evaluate Google results, or even paper sources. Librarians at my library finally came around to this way of thinking when we admitted that WE often resorted to Wikipedia. Quite often, a student would come to the reference desk with a question about a subject area for advising the student? Google the subject, which would almost always bring up a Wikipedia article, which we’d read. Then, we’d have a better idea of what search terms to use in our catalog and databases, what alternative terms we should try, what broader or narrower topic we should search. Bad reference skills? Nope – very efficient.

Look at the Judith Krug page history, for example. The Judith Krug page was created on 6 July 2005 by Jonathan Kelley who worked for Judith Krug. In violation of Wikipedia policy against using Wikipedia as a soapbox for advertising purposes, it was a word for word copy of the ALA’s promotional material. Here is what Jonathan Kelley added. Here are the exact same words the ALA used for its own benefit. Only when I got involved starting 5 October 2005 did the page start to become compliant with Wikipedia policy, and I had to fight Deborah Caldwell-Stone, another person who worked for Judith Krug, every step of the way.

Then Caldwell-Stone went on to use Wikipedia to promote ALA pecuniary interests and astroturf anonymously for George Soros and Free Press on the issue of net neutrality. See ALA Pushes Net Neutrality on Wikipedia; Political and Pecuniary Interests Promoted Anonymously by ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom May Violate Ethical and Tax Codes. Members dues paid for this. Only later did George Soros essentially buy the services of the ALA’s OIF with about half a million dollars.

What a disgrace that a Deputy Director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom would lower herself and the ALA in such a fashion. An ironic disgrace at that–”intellectual freedom”? What a further disgrace that the ALA has taken no disciplinary action against her for her actions. That indicates complicity.

Of course, all this is my opinion. ;) But “criticism from librarians is particularly interesting”? You bet it is. In reality, the ALA thanks its lucky stars it has such an effective means to propagandize on behalf of itself and its liberal causes that have little to do with libraries.

Gee, I wonder if that is why the ALA apparently started the effort that led to my being blocked from editing at Wikipedia for blogging about Caldwell-Stone’s anonymous propagandizing on Wikipedia.

As far as the reason why women don’t contribute to Wikipedia nearly to the extent that men do, I think it has to do with the fact that women use the Internet much more for social networking purposes than for research purposes. This does not mean that women don’t use the Internet to get information, but that they exchange information in more socially-oriented contexts (Facebook, blogs, Twitter, etc.).

As far as Wikipedia being relevant, it is and always will be. Go ahead and get over it. I use Wikipedia all of the time, and think that it is an excellent “learning tool”. If I were doing professional and/or academic work, I would seek out authoritative sources because Wikipedia is not perfect (come to think of it, neither are the authoritative sources, but never mind). If people view Wikipedia as a learning tool instead of a work tool, I think that they will understand the benefits and disadvantages of using it better.