Wikipedia
As good as Wikipedia is, many students need to remember that it isn’t completely a reliable source yet. It stems from all kinds of people ranging from professionals to everyday commoners sharing together what they know. Unlike an encyclopedia where it’s a finished product, Wikipedia is an on-going process, meaning that it’s ever-changing to meet with today’s current times in history in order to stay accurate as possible. The purpose of Wikipedia is to have everyone share their knowledge with one another to create an instant summary of “all human knowledge.” A lot of debates and discussions revolve around Wikipedia on what is considered accurate and what is considered garbage (to be thrown out). Proof of this is seen in the History tab of a certain Wikipedia topic, as you see changes being constantly removed and/or added as well as in the Talk tab where anyone can question or debate over something’s credibility.
Monitors for Wikipedia has grown less, actually, as volunteers find themselves leaving. However, they’ve become better at managing what stays on the Wikipedia and what doesn’t. Though a lot of the monitors for the site are very male-dominated, people fear it’s going to create a biased monitoring community on how women may want to change things. Wikipedia are trying to get more females into the team, but their efforts result in little gain.
As for teachers being afraid of students using Wikipedia, there’s really not much they can do besides educate their students what Wikipedia actually is instead of completely dismissing it away. To give them the understanding of Wikipedia’s purpose, students are then reliable for their own actions whether or not they choose to fully believe everything on Wikipedia.