[Foundation-l] Charity Navigator rates WMF

Sat Oct 10 10:41:34 UTC 2009

2009/10/10 Anthony <wikimail at inbox.org>:
> On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 7:41 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:

>> In my experience, high-school teachers were 90/10 anti Wikipedia 3
>> years ago, and are slightly in favor of it today.  This sort of thing
>> would be a fascinating survey to run year after year.

> I don't know.  My evidence is all anecdotal, but the vast majority of
> what I hear from high school teachers about Wikipedia is playfully
> derogatory.  Not that they're against Wikipedia, any more than they're
> against Twitter or MySpace, but that they don't take it as a serious
> source of information.  "I read it on Wikipedia" is taken as about
> equivalent to "I read it on the Internet".

Which is, of course, entirely true. My consistent line for press calls
is: We're useful but we're not "reliable" as such, so always always go
to the references. If there aren't any, that tells you something too.

- d.