Almost everyone has had that class: the one where the professor takes 10 minutes, after handing out paper topics, to lecture the class on the danger of using the ever-unreliable resource that is Wikipedia. Despite such warnings, as the hours before the big exam become fewer and fewer or that paper nears its due date, I often find myself frantically checking Wikipedia for dates, summaries or any information I can possibly glean about that one particular Supreme Court justice.An encyclopedia that allows anyone, regardless of academic credentials, to edit almost any article should not be one that students frequent when writing a paper or studying for a test-or should it?

According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wikipedia is far more reliable than people give it credit for. The article reported about a professor who chose to challenge the online encyclopedia simply because so many others in the academic community had never before done so. Hoping to discredit the site, he planted several falsehoods in completely random articles to see how long it would take for someone to notice and correct them.

Guessing his contributions would remain online for months unnoticed, he was completely shocked when every single one was fixed three hours after being posted, The Chronicle reported. Apparently, the self-appointed editors at Wikipedia take the integrity of their site pretty seriously and strive vigorously to correct any falsities that are added to the articles as soon as possible.

Deciding to test this for myself, I planted five such fake facts in completely different articles, ranging from "Louis Brandeis" to "John Mayer." Having always believed the site had very few, if any, editors, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that within an hour, three of the five were corrected, and two hours later all of my input to the encyclopedia was edited out. It has to mean something when a group of editors takes a falsity in the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" article seriously enough to delete it in under an hour. Regardless of topic-academic or pop culture-the editors appear to take the site's integrity and record of truthfulness quite seriously.

The site also does not allow every posted entry to be edited by just anyone. Articles on well-known historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson do not permit unregistered or newly registered users to edit the information that appears in the entries; this is, however, a relatively recent change. Only experienced registered users may touch its content; certainly the information provided in such articles is more substantiated than that in others that are open to the general public.

Surprisingly, compared to other online encyclopedias, Wikipedia more than holds its own. The well-known and respected Encyclopedia Britannica averages three mistakes per topic in comparison to Wikipedia's four mistakes on the same topics, according to The Chronicle. While this is clearly not foolproof evidence that the free encyclopedia is as reliable as other encyclopedias, it certainly makes this "Wikipedian" far more comfortable about frequenting the Web site.