Thoughts on Wikipedia

Ever since Wikipedia started showing up in more and more bibliographies in high school and college, teachers and professors alike have been discrediting its authority. Honestly, it has no authority. Allow me to take a few minutes to rage about Wikipedia.

I have a big paper due on Tuesday but as soon as I ran across a scholarly resource that cited Wikipedia, I lost all faith in the assignment said "FUCK THIS SHIT" and spazzed for a little bit. Then I decided to complain here.

Look closely and you shall see that Kim Armstrong directly cited Wikipedia in her work. There are so many things wrong with this. I'm not saying that I want to be able to cite Wikipedia in my papers, but allow me to bitch for a moment. I graduated from high school in 2007 when Wikipedia was just starting its rise to prominence. We had been told over and over again by teachers that we were not allowed to use it in papers without any reasoning against it. When I got to college, however, we were suddenly made aware of the "sudden death" rule. The sudden death rule goes like this: If you are caught using Wikipedia as a source in your papers you will die... Well you won't die but you'll fail this assignment and possibly the class. I had one professor go so far as to tell us that it was cheating and that we would got to Hell. I don't believe in Hell in the religious sense but I believe in Historian and Librarian Hell. I will explain those two concepts later, but first let me explain why Wikipedia is not a credible source for ANYTHING.

Wikipedia contains user-created information. It allows its readers to edit information and while this is revolutionary, it is not credible. My grandma could edit something on Wikipedia. Your idiot neighbor could edit something on Wikipedia. The internet group "Anonymous" often declares war on Wikipedia by choosing a page at random to screw up. Do you seriously want to cite a moron in your paper? No. Let me send you to the following link for an example of why you should not cite Wikipedia: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/06/the-funniest-acts-of-wiki_n_522077.html#s224977&title=Blood_Libel_Entry

What really bothers me is that this person, Kim Armstrong, was able to publish in a scholarly journal even though she cited Wikipedia. She is a moron. I feel like this not only discredits her but also the journal that agreed to publish her: The Serials Librarian. I'm wondering if anyone else who reads The Serials Librarian has noticed this and has experienced the same rage and disgust for not only the author but also the publication.

Through the years I have realized that using Wikipedia is a cop-out for someone who is too lazy to look further than the first result in their Google search.

Feel free to tell me what you think.

UPDATE: So I was relating my frustrations to a professor who said that another problem with Wikipedia in academia is that since it is user-generated content there are times when it can reinforce general misconceptions about a topic. For example, children are taught the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree in elementary school so that they can learn about telling the truth even though the consequences for it may be less that desirable. Well, I feel like most of us know that this story is not true and was only made up to teach young children a lesson. But if someone posts on Wikipedia over and over again that it's true and more and more people reinforce this, then the public may eventually take it as historical fact. This is another problem that I have with the History Channel but that's another story.