I asked my son the perpetual student who's about 4 months from his Phd what they do about wikipedia, in that he marks on average, about 300 papers a month from undergrads. He says it's become easy to spot the fakers who cut and paste, and that often he can just type in a piece of an arcane sentence in the submitted work and he gets a hit on wikipedia. He said usually they don't argue much about sources, but more over the fact that entire papers or sections of them are cut and paste jobs. He claims he gets about 1 a month, and usually in September the first year students all get stuff sent back the first time, and then they are careful after that.

As to references, due to the fact he's been at anthropology for 11 years now, he says he knows almost for sure that something is missing the quotation marks and source, mostly because the same subjects and sources have been used for years.

I asked about his contributing something to a wiki and got the academic stare, that happens when Dad is stupid enough to think someone with his level of education would stoop there. Odd.....

John Conley
Musica est vita