Not allowed to use it on papers? Better yet: let's completely ban it from all US schools and libraries.

because burning books is so old-fashioned
 

Ahhh... good ol' Ted Stevens. Leave it to him to demonstrate, perfectly, a point I'm having difficulty articulating.

I just wish educators were as sceptical of nonsense that sneaks into text books as they are of a self-correcting on-line information source.

Yes... I'd like to see a textbook that updates itself every three hours. Clearly, we should fight to stamp out this new evil. Burn- I mean BAN it!

*thinking outloud*

stop bringing that gwaddamn place up.

He may be an AG'er "4-EVER!!!1!", but you'll notice he is, in fact, still on the Cellar and logs in almost everyday.

Once you've descended into The Cellar, you never go back up the stairs.

The difficulty with wikipedia isn't that it might contain errors or factual inconsistencies, but that there is no peer review to ensure the quality of the research and analysis. We haven't been comparing it to school text books, rather we've been comparing it to independant and original pieces of scholarship.

Again, Wikipedia is under more frequent peer review than any published journal. Just look through the discussion pages on any given topic to see additions, alterations, debate, and discussion. No journal, article, or published textbook could receive equal peer review the way WP does.