Wikipedia’s quick rise as a popular site for research and information has many concerned. The site has become a source of news for many, including students, bothering teachers and sparking a conversation about its role at a panel on Saturday.

The panel, “Blogs & Wikis: Creating a Convergent Global Village and Citizen Journalism: Global Initiatives, Local Reverberations,” discussed such sites as Wikipedia and the growing popularity of sites that allow regular people to play the role of “journalist.”

It was sponsored by the International Communication Division and Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group.

A wiki is a site where “anybody who signs up or registers [with the website] can contribute and change not only what’s up [on the site] but anyone else’s work as well as their own,” explained Mike Yamamoto, executive editor of CNET News.com.

The most popular wiki site is Wikipeida, an online encyclopedia with articles that anyone can edit.

Joining Yamamoto on the panel were Clyde Bentley, associate professor at the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Barbara Iverson, professor of journalism at the School of Media Arts at Columbia College in Chicago.

Janet Kolodzy, associate professor in the journalism department at Emerson College, moderated the discussion.

When it comes to quality and accuracy, Yamamoto says it requires passion on the part of those who monitor the wiki. He believes that Wikipedia is in good hands.

“A successful wiki or a type of project like that depends on self policing by the people who participate,” Yamomoto said. “Wikipedia is fantastic for that.”

As such sites continue to become more mainstream, the stability and future of journalism comes into question. Some say the future of news could be reported primarily by the public but Kolodzy disagrees.

During the discussion she pointed to a comment by a frequent contributor to the site, WikiNews, which is affiliated with Wikipedia but primary offers current events articles.

“I’m discovering that this journalism thing is really hard,” Kolodzy said quoting the contributor. She explained that the contributor stopped posting on the site because it was consuming too much of his life.

Kolodzy believes that citizen journalism will therefore be “complementary and supplementary” to traditional journalism, not replace it.

Part of the task to find citizen journalism’s place is up to those in journalism education. At his university, Bentley has taken one of the first steps.

The school has created a site of community journalism where stories online are contributed by people in the area.

On Saturdays, some of the best content is put in their community journalism newspaper. The paper has a unique approach to bylines for those who submit stories.

“Every byline on [the paper] says ‘Shared by’ and that’s the key,” said Bentley. “Six days a week we publish a newspaper, one day a week [the community] publishes a paper.”

As the session continued, the issue of breaking news came up. The panelists compared whether a traditional media or citizen journalism source would be the better place for incoming details on a developing story.

“WikiNews, I think, is going to prove to be better for the kind of context,” an online user would want on a story, Iverson said. It would not be ideal for the latest information on “ a breaking story.”

Bentley clarified what he thinks is the public’s place in reporting news.

“Citizen Journalism, by and large, is going to do a poorer job on the actual international [story],” he said. “Than they are on local [news].”

Panelists also added that the blogsphere and sites with citizen journalism are dependent in part on established news organizations for their own coverage.

What bloggers and citizen journalists write about generally comes from traditional news media sources, they said.

When addressing the credibility of citizen journalism sites, even those on the panel who were advocates, cautioned against relying on one source for news and information.

“Would you trust one person to tell you everything you ever needed to know about San Francisco?” Kolodzy asked. “No, of course not”

“It’s another tool but it’s a tool that needs to be used responsibly,” Yamamoto said.