Wikipedia, this great and good sharing of knowledge, is how I imagine I'd like all information to be. In my imagination, all information is free, always. It's of unimpeachable quality. It's in-depth. In my dreams, governments are forced to give its citizens access to (almost all) information at no cost, in a timely fashion.

There is no real reason to be sniffy about Wikipedia - since 2006, academic specialists in information quality, such as Thomas Chesney, have said that it's at least as good as other encyclopedias (remember them? They smelled so good and your parents forked out a tonne of money on them).

Maureen Henninger, the Australian author of The Hidden Web and an academic at the University of Technology Sydney, where I work, says: ''Wikipedia is a valuable resource, which like any good encyclopedia, is excellent for background information, providing references to its sources. However, as long as it does not give an author's identity, its authority and bias must be questionable.''

So I tell my students they mustn't ever use Wikipedia as a source. That it's too much like jelly. That it's not peer-reviewed in any normal way. That it's crowdsourcing at its worst. Or at its best. That it's not certain. And I quietly tell myself, as if anything can ever be certain.

I use it myself. Sometimes it's the first place I look - how to spell a name, what's the capital of a country, what's the unit of currency. Unlike the encyclopedias of your childhood shelves, you don't need to wait for the next edition of knowledge in Wikipedia.

If you know something, you can head straight over and edit most of the pages to your heart's content. I've been in there myself. If I hear that someone has died, or been promoted, or got divorced, I'll pop in there and put in the new information. It's pretty simple.

For those of you who aren't obsessive Wikipedia editors, you should know that over the weekend those who were furious with Scott Morrison's decisions about asylum seekers decided to enter the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection's Wikipedia page and make changes. If you look at the history of revisions on that page you will see dozens of changes.

Sometime on Sunday, you would have seen that same page was now adorned with a lock. That lock indicates that the page is now being protected from persistent vandalism. There are all kinds of rules about how you get that lock - but basically, it's a hell of a lot harder to edit a page once the lock is applied.

On Saturday night, if you'd been looking for the Wikipedia entry of Mr Morrison, you would have found a battle of ideas going on.

Here's how some of it read: ''[Mr Morrson's] parents were full of hope for young Scott, and didn't realise he would grow up and turn into a morally bankrupt arsehat.'' And: ''Mr Morrison is well-known for his gleeful denigration and cruelty towards asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.''

Also: ''Thus far, Mr Morrison has not been sacked from office for his comments and conduct.'' Photos of boats crammed with asylum seekers adorned the page briefly.

While all of this may make the editors feel free, able to vent their spleen on a minister who is behaving without compassion, I'm not sure that editing a Wikipedia page to include falsehoods is what we really want.

Instead, just take heart from Matthew 7: 16. ''You will recognise them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognise them by their fruits.''

We don't need to use the words arsehat. Or evil. Or cruelty. And I'm using the historic document of the Bible not because I'm a believer - but because there have always been rotten apples.

We just have to provide the evidence that a man decided that a new mother should not have day-long access to her newborn baby. That a man decided a disabled four-year-old Tamil boy should be sent to a detention centre with little available support or medical help. That a man decided he would turn back boats, boats filled with people desperate to come to Australia.

There's a lot already on Scott Morrison's Wikipedia page that would freeze the warmest heart. And it's the truth. In the Minister for Immigration's case, you don't need any more than that.

Twitter @jennaprice or email jenna_p@bigpond.net.au