Wiki Thing, again

I went to a small high school whose biggest weakness was preparing students for college-level paper writing. I frequently used Wikipedia for information, and then didn't cite it so the teacher couldn't give me a heads up that Wikipedia was totally unreliable. When I started college in 2006, I used Wikipedia for my first essay in a political science course. I'd talked to my professor about my lack of preparation for these types of things so he let me rewrite the paper after gently telling me that Wikipedia was basically full of crap.

That being said, I don't see how I could ever recommend Wikis as a source of academic information. However, if a patron was looking for a bit of trivia, these types of sites would be good for reference. I was watching a rerun of The Cosby Show a few weeks ago where Cliff has a dream involving Muppets. I'm a big fan of Jim Henson and was familiar with all the characters except one- an insanely creepy scientist-guy that really weirded me out. I needed to know his name and why on earth he had been created. I turned to Muppet Wiki for the answer. He was a character on a short lived Henson show that apparently wasn't very good, was on when I was an infant, and never made it to video or DVD. Hopefully I will never run into him again.

Because there are so many possibilities for the spread of misinformation, I don't think that wikis would be very valuable to "advancing the library's mission." Feel free to correct me on this, though.

This guy will destroy your soul.