It came as no surprise to me when I came across an article that stated a study shows how interesting screwed up things are on the Wikipedia web site concerning “edit wars”.
Anyone who knows Wikipedia knows that the information there is not always accurate. In fact, there are many times when article information presented is just flat out wrong (Note: Feel free to post a comment if you’ve ever encountered this on Wikipedia). I’m not talking about Wikipedia vandalism (which still happens quite a bit), but rather that the information presented on many articles simply isn’t correct.
I have never recommended Wikipedia to anyone as a primary source of information. Yes, I do at times use that site as reference material when posting articles here, but only if I am reasonably sure the linked article contains accurate information.
If you’re conducting research, my suggestion is simply this: Don’t use Wikipedia as your only source of information. Google is your friend here to find other places for reference sources.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
I’ve used Wikipedia for college reports but not as a source. It’s often (not always) a great way to get an overview of a subject or topic that you need to write about. Then, you can look for scholarly reference sources both in printed form (best, because the instructors won’t bother to check them) and online, too. If you quote sources like Wikipedia or Reader’s Digest, be prepared to have your paper downgraded for not using a scholarly source. I got away with using a Reader’s digest article for a short report but I explained to the instructor that, though the magazine itself was not considered to be a good source for college papers, this particular author was a good source of information. She agreed and let me use that RD article without downgrading the paper. A fellow student used a RD article and lost a grade for it. If you do use a source like that, be prepared to explain ahead of time why you feel it amounts to being a scholarly source.
Unfortunately, college is a lot about learning how to give the instructor what they are expecting to see, which means finding out what they want before you turn in the paper or homework. It’s less about actually learning anything, at least as far as the grade is concerned. Hopefully, while you play the academic games with the instructors, you WILL learn something about the subjects you are studying and writing about.
I always pinned the instructor down on how many pages they expected in a report or a paper. They never wanted to give a figure, so I played the game of high/low with them. Will 10 pages be enough? (the instructor usually would say, no, it should be more). Would 25 pages be enough? (the instructor would usually say it’s too high) and so on, until I got a small range to shoot for, then I would add about 1 page more than that range, just to be safe.
I used to think using Wikipedia as a source was pretty good, but nowadays it’s clear that’s not the case. As noted by previous commenter, it’s a good place for an overview, but in most cases it’s just a general conglomeration of information found elsewhere. If it _doesn’t_ have [good] sources, then it’s not a good article. In any case, however it’s a great starting point, and any article worth its salt will have loads of these source references, which are where you will find the gold for a bibliography.
Here’s the rule of thumb, don’t cite a Wikipedia article, cite the article’s citations (that is of course if you have clicked through, read them over, and found that they are not crap).
Learn to avoid [citation needed], but also be wary, [46], etc. is not proof that a source is good, scholarly, and unbiased.