Why Lawyers and Law Students Can, Do, and Should Use Wikipedia | ACQ5

abernard102@gmail.com 2016-01-22

Summary:

"Wikipedia, the free Internet encyclopedia and seventh most trafficked website in the world, turned 15 years old last week. And as maligned as the crowd-sourced encyclopedia is, it certainly beats shoving an Encarta '96 CD into your computer or, God forbid, pulling a book off the shelf. Sure, Wikipedia can be unreliable, amateur, biased, unstable. But where would we be without it? After all, you use Wikipedia all the time. We all do. And it's nothing to be ashamed of. From Blazing Saddles to Anal Fissures First things first: there are better, more authoritative, and equally free sources of information out there. We at FindLaw, for example, think we do a pretty good job at providing free, reliable legal information for consumers and legal professionals both. (I'd even wager that we're better than Wikipedia.) And we'd hope no one uses Wikipedia's info for their legal, business, or health decisions. But for pretty much everything else? Yes! Why not! There are few other places on the Internet where you can start looking up Millard Fillmore and end up reading about Proto-Indo-Iranian languages. For background info, Wikipedia is a great resource, or at least a jumping off point. And it's been used not just by you and I for that reason, but by courts. While the Supreme Court has (appropriately, we think) spurned Wikipedia, the encyclopedia is increasingly cited by state and federal courts ..."

Link:

http://www.acq5.com/post/why-lawyers-and-law-students-can-do-and-should-use-wikipedia/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) ยป abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.law oa.wikipedia

Date tagged:

01/22/2016, 10:53

Date published:

01/22/2016, 05:53