While reading Chapter 2 of a book that was discussed in class called Cult of the Amateur I came across a quote from Stacy Schiff of the New Yorker who stated that “Wikipedia may be the world’s most ambitious vanity press". What Schiff means by this statement is that Wikipedia allows anyone who has access to the Internet aka Amateurs to post information on topics like Astrophysics raising them above paid professionals which in this case would be Astrophysicists.
In thinking about it I do agree with Schiff's statement because there are Wikipedia users like "Essjay" who according to Keen's book is someone who claimed to be a scholar but in reality he is just a High School Graduate that posts false information. However with that being said I don't want to give the idea that Wikipedia is a useless resource, but I would not think about it as something that can be used on Works Cited page. Instead, I would call it a list of links to websites that focus on a certain topic based on the fact that most of the information featured on a Wikipedia is matched up with a numbered citation that leads to an article from a legitimate news source such as The New York Times.
Examples of the numbered citations that can be found on a Wikipedia page.
List of legit references used to compose a Wikipedia page.
On a personal level I use Wikipedia when I write a spec script of a TV Show for my classes at Columbia College to ensure that my episode fits within the continuity established by previous episodes or to make sure that the characters personalities a portrayed correctly. Also during the school year or when I am working on a film, I read bios of comic book characters in order to keep the story arcs I want to use as a way to get a job at DC and Marvel Comics updated without having to read comics every week when I don't necessarily have the time. I guess the bottom line I'm trying to get at with these examples is as long as you know that characters like "Essjay" are out there Wikipedia can be a good resource if you know how to use it.
Like everything else, it should be taken with a proverbial grain of salt (which I could link to that phrase!).
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