Beware Wikipedia

I love Wikipedia, I really do. But I never, ever use it as a source in papers, and never will. I've used it on this blog, but generally only for background stuff. Not that I think it is by definition sloppy or widely wrong, but you only need to be caught on something like this a few times:

Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Seigenthaler he had written the material suggesting Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.

Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws.

His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia — and by extension the Internet — and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed.