Who’s using Wikipedia.com anyway?

November 12, 2007 at 1:18 am · Filed under Wikis and tagged: Wikipedia

Although Wikipedia is a very detailed and comprehensive on-line encyclopedia, it is not suitable for most non-collegiate students.  First of all, there are many controversial topics regarding Wikipedia.  The main issue with the site is that some of the information can be unreliable.  I understand there are tools for users to edit any vandalism or inaccurate information, but there are still many circumstances where students are getting misleading information.  Even Jimmy Wales, the founder of the site, has stated that it shouldn’t be used as a definitive source for class projects and research papers because some of the data might not be accurate.

With all of that aside, my main issue with Wikipedia is that it is not kid friendly.  I always hear people say that it is a good starting point for students to research information.  Maybe they are referring to college students because I’ve never once thought to have my students visit the site because the reading level is just too high for them (I teach 6^th grade).  It seems to me that some of the people who edit the site are taking it just a little too far with trying to sound like experts on the topics.  I mean, what’s a “complex language isolate” anyway or are my students really going to understand that the word “Egypt” comes from the Latin word Aegyptus derived from the ancient Greek word Aígyptos (Αίγυπτος) and that “the adjective aigýpti was borrowed into Coptic as gyptios, kyptios, and from there into Arabic as qubṭī, back formed into qubṭ.”  What?  O.k. that’s a bit of an extreme example, but my point is that most students will have an extremely hard time, not only reading the information, but comprehending it.  In turn, they won’t know what is considered relevant or not. 

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