Reflections on Wikipedia

I never thought very highly of Wikipedia, especially when my former students (and we are talking university students) often used it as their main source for research papers, and/or copied verbatim from it.  It struck me as being similar to using an Encyclopedia, and what a shame when there were dozens of sources written by known experts on a given subject.  I'm beginning to rethink my attitudes towards it, however, as I find myself using it more and more to find information, especially as an initial source. I would never ever ever think of using it as a source in a bibliography though, unless it was a research paper on Wikipedia.  The way in which Wikipedia uses information and produces knowledge, in a collaborative effort, that can be changed, edited, and corrected, or totally rewritten is also appealing.   Vannevar Bush in 1945 predicted this collaborative research and production of knowledge in his article originally published in the Atlantic Journal.  As a scientist, he predicted many technological innovations, writing that "a records if it is to be useful to science, must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted."   He suggested that in the future, encyclopedias could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox.  Although I think he was considering microfilm (which is already outdated and extinct), yet he also writes about pressing buttons which would enable readers to consult library books "with greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf."  Was he imagining Google Books? He certainly predicted the creation of Wikipedia, writing that "new forms of encyclopedias will appear," with specialists (or self-proclaimed ones) writing with "associative trails" about given subjects.  Isn't this what Wiki is? A new kind of encyclopedia, where all kinds of people collaborate together, and where links can take readers to associated subjects? The featured entry now about the 2014 FIFA World Cup has links to the reunification of Germany, winning teams in previous years, players, controversies, protests, injuries, etc. Not exactly the dry entry that one might find in the Encyclopedia Britannica, is it?