There was a good comment<\/a> about wiki being unreliable and indeed pointing out that a student could reference themselves.<\/p>\n

Fair points. But I still feel that universities should not still be teaching people to refer to authorities. They should be teaching people to think critically and evaluate the materials they get.<\/p>\n

I believe the reference to authority was something from the medieval era, when it often served to stifle original thought pre-renaissance. Until people realised that, whatever the value of the ancient thinkers, they weren’t always right, human progress stalled. The knee-jerk assumption that certain texts cannot be questioned underpins fundamentalism of all kinds. If people treat wikipedia like that, surely it’s a flaw in the nature of education.<\/p>\n

I have to concede that many errors don’t get fixed, or even challenged. At least there are mechanisms for doing so.<\/p>\n