Putting my life on the line: defending Wikipedia

Okay, don't shoot! At least hear me out first.

Wiki's and Wikipedia have a place in the internet world. It is not a place to find information to include in your research paper. It is a place to find and share information, ideas and opinions. My mind was fully changed today when I found out the book "And Tango Makes Three" was a true story. i knew this title was ALA's 2006 most challenged title, but i did not know its main characters were real. I wanted to find out how or if this changed any feeling about the book. I did a Google search and Wikipedia popped up. Here I found links to several articles which were very informative, in fact they were exactly what I was looking for. In this case I was more interested in what other people thought about the topic rather than the facts so a wiki worked well!

I by no means think that people should base research on what they find in Wikipedia, let alone a google search, but wikis do have their place.

What kind of information do we want?

While looking for information today on a piece of writing called "Libraries should reflect majority values" by Phyllis Schalfly which, appeared on an instructional materials list for the schools I work with through my library (don't worry they were also reading "Libraries should reflect diverse views" put out by the ALA) I came across a conservative answer to "Wikipedia" called "Conservapedia: The Trustworthy Encyclopedia". This made me think about where people get their information from and also where they WANT their information from. It seems so often now that people may not want the unbiased facts, but they want the facts that are skewed to their liking. I wonder how often this effects the process of answering a reference question in a library? Or how this effects libraries in general?