"where wikis are jibing with the culture of academe, and where they are not" #wymhm

In most cases, using wikis to pool human knowledge of various topics into single, authoritative accounts falls into the “not” category. Academic culture abhors mass authorship. This is not only because many disciplines are given to disagreement and conflicting interpretations, but because scholars tend to chafe at the notion of not getting credit for their work, or having it fussed with by others.

“Literature reviews and summaries of articles are never going to be entirely objective; it would be difficult to write useful ones, for example, that conformed to Wikipedia's NPOV [neutral-point-of-view] requirements,” says Jason B. Jones, an associate professor of English at Central Connecticut State University.

Anyway, Jones says, the professoriate is too entrenched in traditional publishing to summon much interest in helping curate academic wikis.