Wikipediaâ€™s Founder: students should use Wiki

13th December 2007

Wikipediaâ€™s founder Jimmy Wales has responded to a campaign organized by American teachers, the purpose of which was to ban the online encyclopedia in their schools. In his interview to BBC Online, Jimmy said that in his point of view, students should be permitted to use Wikipedia, because recently it has become accurate and credible.
Earlier, one could frequently find in Wikipedia inaccurate data without reference to the original, but now all main articles in real time are reviewed by experts, thus, they can be trusted, according to Wales.
He pointed out, that restricting children's access to online encyclopedia is the same thing as if you would prohibit them to listen to Rockâ€™nâ€™Roll. "You can ban it, - said Jimmy, - but they will still do it. A teacher, who prohibits students to read Wikipedia, is a bad teacherâ€.
At the same time, the founder of Wikipedia noted that the use of encyclopedia for all academic works is hardly justified, because students should learn to do their own research.