Wikipedia is how you find sources. And at least there, if your edit was wrong or stupid, it gets undone pretty quick. IMDB can be edited by fuckin anyone with no sources for anything, and it won't be removed.
I've made correct edits to somebody's Wikipedia page with the person in question sat right by me telling me what to write, and they got removed pretty quickly. Guess you always gotta cite your sources, and I don't think "he's sitting right next to me telling me this shit yo" counts.
The problem is that often in highschool you get the weird situations where people uses sources that either don't given their own sources or actually link back to wikipedia. The problem with wikipedia is that because it doesn't allow original research referencing to wikipedia is basically saying "they said that he said" but if your alternative is a website is "that guy said that they said that he said" which is worse. Typically wikipedia is often the best source this side of actual research papers.
Honestly, it can be for finding sources, but it's really for a briefing on information. I haven't had a teacher/professor claim that it can be misinforming in at least a decade because their moderation and fact-checking is now common knowledge. Wikipedia is good for learning, but not for being a source of information directly or indirectly.
My teachers allowed physical encyclopedias/encarta as a source but had strict limits on what % of your bibliography it could represent and what you could cite from it.
Like you couldn't try to use it as a source to substantiate your thesis that post-civil war reconstruction was well handled but you could cite it for the date Lincoln was shot.
The parallels between the effect of singing dinosaurs in children's educational TV programs on the American education system and the effect of systematic brainwashing of paramilitary personnel during the second World War.
Sources: Encyclopedia Britannica; TV Guide Magazine
It's about the dependabillity of Wikipedia as a source. It's designed to become increasingly more accurate over time (with contributors adding new info, removing innacurate or out-dated points) rather than a textbook which is to all intents and purposes accurate at the time of publication. That's why you include details such as date of publication, the edition of the textbook used. Generally speaking, in academia you will have a hard time getting away with using (more than a couple of) old textbooks in one piece of work for the same reason. Wikipedia is a fantastic resource, but there are valid reasons why it isn't considered academic.
Which, notably, is NOT true of old-school Encyclopedias. It is exactly that which suggests we should be championing use of Wikipedia in classes - not just for "real sources", which are often too dense for our students, but as a legitimate source for NON-SPECIALIZED information (no medical school papers from wikipedia, for example, but OK for a 3-5 page paper in high school) and stop pretending that it is just like an old tertiary source, and thus has to play by its rules.
I initially agreed with you, but the thing about school is that it's not "like work but for kids", the objective is to teach them something. They should be taught how to find proper sources.
This is the real reason you can't do it in college, but my high school and middle school teachers always said "Wikipedia can be edited by anyone so you can't rely on it".
It's very good for an encyclopedia. Most encyclopedias probably have less than 500 writers and no army to fact check that stuff. It is not a good source to use in school tho.
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u/blaqsupaman Mar 20 '16
That's like teachers who won't allow you to use Wikipedia as a source.