Learning 2.0--Wikipedia: Ms. Grammarian has a field day

I'm a dabbler in Wikipedia.  I usually add links, citations where needed, or correct grammar.  For a long while in college I dreamt of working as a Ms. Grammarian, a copywriter, but the field practically disappeared.  (Just check the spelling on your next newspaper to see).  So, Wikipedia articles gives me my 'fix' to correct other people's grammar or provide more complete citations.  Plus it's not as irritating as insisting people say, "whom" instead of "who"...yes, we all know these people.

Wikipedia editing can also be great practice for online searching for a librarian.  We often teach students about the importance of citations, but we can practice it ourselves in Wikipedia articles actual people may read.


On what to tell students about Wikipedia:
I usually tell students that Wikipedia is a great place to start researching a topic they are unfamiliar with, but by no means should they cite it as a source.
When I get the chance, I'd like to have a citations workshop for adding citations to Wikipedia.  It's a great way for students to learn to conform to citation styles and also to let them feel they're contributing to the world of knowledge.
I met another librarian who plays a fun Wikipedia game with her students: the challenge is to get from X article to Y article using only internal Wikipedia hyperlinks.

Extra: Wikipedia's 'dirty little secret' that helps us all

A community "of about 800 people has emerged to curate and administer Wikipedia as needed. These administrators are granted special priveleges: undoing a vandal's work by reverting pages to previous versions, freezing pages that are rapidly flipping back and forth in an edit war, even banning a contributor because he repeatedly restored edits without explaining why.
This type of hierarchy may be anathema to bottom-up purists, but without it, Wikipedia would not work."

-Weinberger, David. (2007). Everything is miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder.  NY: New York. p.139