It’s Sunday morning and you’re still recovering from the weekend. You have a paper due in the next few days but you don’t have the willpower to get started. It’s a short paper, but it’s research-heavy and you just aren’t in the mood to make the hike to Green to get the preliminary investigating done.

What’s a chronic procrastinator to do?

Eventually, you decide to tear yourself away from Facebook to Google your topic. The first result is a link to a Web site called Wikipedia. Intrigued, you follow the lead to discover an encyclopedia-quality entry containing all the basic points of your topic with links and textual references for further study.

Ah, the wonders of the Internet.

Wiki technology was first introduced to the Web in 1995 by Ward Cunningham, an electrical engineer and computer scientist. The Web-based code provides an open-source database that can constantly be edited, changed and updated by anyone that visits the site.

Started in 2001 by Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org) is an amalgamation of the words “Wiki” and “encyclopedia.” Since its launch, it has exploded in popularity, now containing more than 715,000 articles and 224 million words published in dozens of languages.

Wikipedia is nearly eight and a half times bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica and more than 13 times bigger than Encarta.

The effectiveness and popularity of Wikipedia have stemmed from the ability of any user to make submissions, corrections and additions — all of which become visible and searchable instantaneously. On its Web site, Wikipedia states that “Wikipedia’s goal is to create a free, democratic, reliable encyclopedia — actually, the largest encyclopedia in history, in terms of both breadth and depth.”

Freshman Stephan Goupille says that Wikipedia is the first place he goes to get basic background information on a topic.

“It’s just bigger and easier to access than any other encyclopedia,” he says.

But many remain skeptical of Wikipedia’s credibility. Although the online encyclopedia is relatively well self-policed, there are occasional inaccuracies which cause some critics to see it as a potential fountain of erroneous data.

“It’s just too open-ended to be relied on as a strong academic source,” says freshman Maria Duzon. “You can use it to get some basic information on a topic, but you shouldn’t cite it in a paper.”

Faculty members have been very wary of the Wikipedia revolution. In the past, many teachers have been vehemently opposed to the use of the source in formal papers.

However, while this still seems to be the majority opinion, the concept of the Wiki is becoming more widespread.

“I don’t think it helps students to divide the world into approved sources and forbidden sources,” says Jonathan Hunt, who teaches a course in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR). “Obviously, an article on Wikipedia is not the same kind of source as The Wall Street Journal or a research article in a peer-reviewed journal, but all sources should be regarded with some suspicion.”

“Critical thinking, we sometimes call this,” Hunt adds.

And the Wiki concept is not just limited to Wikipedia. Some Stanford professors use Wiki technology to create forums for group discussions about course materials or teaching issues.

Such use of Wiki is also making a definitive impact on the academic world.

“This is a new kind of tool, and I think that the scholarly consensus in writing studies and communication studies hasn’t yet solidified,” Hunt says. “For that reason alone, it is reasonable to approach Wikis with caution. However, this is true with any source — even a professor’s lecture. Even a ‘reliable’ source should be approached with critical awareness rather than blind acceptance.”

So while Wikipedia is far from becoming an official benchmark for research, it is definitely making strides in reaching its goal of becoming the world’s “biggest, most diverse and most reliable” source of information.

“It’s a great idea that has created a great resource,” says junior Rishi Mandal. “While it may not yet have the credibility of the older information banks, it’s definitely going in the right direction.”