Teaching intelligence: putting Wikipedia at the heart of a class

The best lesson you can teach any student is this - it saves you absolutely no time at all. This is the con-trick Wikipedia is pulling on everyone, even those who profess to know it so well they can teach it. I could explain the theory in detail, but the horrific reality is, you pretty much have to have studied Wikipedia for years, get to know all the terrible ways it can bite you, before you eventually come to the conclusion it is a worthless resource, for readers anyway. Literally the only way it can save you time as a reader, is if you make the sort of assumptions about it that even they absolutely tell you not to do. Wikipedia simply has no mechanism by which any part, any word, can be trusted. Everything has to be checked from first principles, every time. Nothing they tell you about any article, no checks or ratings of banners, makes a blind bit of difference to this basic reality. As for using it as an aid to teach your students how to research and write and communicate, why should those who have not already figured out what it is suffer by potentially consuming their mistakes as if it were legitimate knowledge?

Well-written piece. Wikipedia is a great resource that we need to engage with; it is our duty as academics and educators.