Dear Ms. Penrod,

I’m a Japanese international student at De Anza College.

I read your article which is about the use of Wikipedia for academic research.

As three interviewees insisted in the article, I disagree with using Wikipedia for an academic purpose because Wikipedia is not written by professional researchers.

Therefore, the information in there is highly possible to be different from different point of view.

For example, about the events that happened in Korea during the period when Japan had colonized Korea, the information is completely different in Japanese and Korean version of Wikipedia. In Japanese version, it’s stated as Japanese people feel better while it’s stated as it gives the feeling that Japanese people were absolutely evil in Korean version.

It is because it was written by Japanese people for Japanese version, and Korean people wrote about it in Korean version.

It shows Wikipedia is not based on the real equal research but researches or opinions by different stand points. Therefore, I never agree with using Wikipedia for academic purpose.

Sincerely, Kentaro Sugita