If you’re in the mood for a good tongue-lashing, there are several things you can do.

If you’re a Cardinals or White Sox fan, you can show off your favorite team’s attire at Wrigley Field. If you’re fishing with me, you can snag my most expensive lure on a submerged log. Or, if you’re writing a research paper for a class, you can cite Wikipedia as a source.

Since 2001, Wikipedia has been a source of information on nearly every conceivable topic, from Yellowstone Park to Rosa Parks to parking meters. It has also been one of the most criticized sources of information, because anyone can edit entries.

Some of Wikipedia’s biggest critics come from the academic world.

“Anyone can edit the information and there aren’t enough checks and balances in place for me to consider it a good academic source,” said Jodie Summers, senior staff member at the Writing Center.

It should be obvious to students that Wikipedia and papers that require scholarly sources do not mix.

“Wikipedia is a good starting point or for resolving disputes among friends, but I wouldn’t treat it as a good source or an arbiter of knowledge,” said Ben Bean, junior marketing major.

However, there are numerous classes where an encyclopedia is a perfectly fine source for research.

My 100-level English class at Rock Valley College was one such class. My instructor was a harsh critic of the Web site but wasn’t against using Encyclopedia Britannica. One would be led to believe that Britannica was a much more accurate encyclopedia than Wikipedia.

This is not always the case, as was proven in a December 2005 study in the scientific journal Nature.

In a peer-reviewed study, researchers were given science entries from both Wikipedia and Britannica, but weren’t told which entry was from which source. The results were a bit startling: Researchers found that Britannica just barely beat out Wikipedia in terms of errors per entry. How could an encyclopedia that anyone can edit do just about as well as Britannica?

I believe it is a testament to Wikipedia’s ability to stop vandalism. When Wikipedia did its own study on vandalism of entries, it found that most instances of vandalism were resolved in fewer than 13 hours.

Students should be able to cite Wikipedia as a source for non-scholarly research papers. It isn’t perfect, but neither is the best encyclopedia. In the Wikipedia world, those who edit entries to deceive appear to be vastly outnumbered by those who wish to genuinely inform.