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Schools Ban Wikipedia

District officials not bullish on popular online encyclopedia

By Kevin Spak, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 27, 2007 5:38 PM CST

(Newser) – Wikipedia's so quick and easy—too easy, ruled a New Jersey school district, the latest of many to ban use of the popular online encyclopedia by its students and block it on school computers, fearing potentially erroneous information from the communally edited site will pollute minds and papers. “Kids just take it for gospel, they really do,” fretted the librarian leading the charge.

Few look at Wikipedia as a citable source. Anyone can edit it, sometimes leading to biased “vandalism,” like the white supremacist info school officials found on Martin Luther King’s page. The Wikimedia Foundation admits its site’s limitations, saying it should be used for background information. “It’s not a primary source,” said a spokesman.

"Just say no," is becoming a popular policy on Wikipedia among teachers and librarians who have a distaste for the sometimes difficult to validate information site. (KRT Photos)

Jimmy Wales, co-founder of online collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia, answers questions during a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, 08 March 2007. (TORU YAMANAKA/AFP/Getty... (Getty Images)

Wikipedia has long been discouraged in more rigorous academic environments, but some institutions are edging toward outright ban. (Index Open)

Wikipedia is no stranger to controversy, but in some schools, faculty is uniting in supporting outright ban. (Wikimedia Commons)

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