Because academics use the internet too?Rutawitz said:how do we know that anything posted on the internet is true?
Wikepedia is just a jumping off point for research. You get links at the bottom and so it can be a useful source to further your peer reviewed research.Island said:i agree with you, and that's pretty much why i like Wikipedia. that's also why i don't consider the internet in general a valid source of information.MaxTheReaper said:That's just stupid.OneBig Man said:Now from what I have been told, Wikipedia is not a reliable sourse for information because of its user generated content. So my question is, when you do research, do you actually research or do you just Wiki it?
99% of everything on the internet is user-generated content.
At least with Wikipedia, if someone screws up, someone else will probably correct it.
So yes, I do. It's pretty easy to tell when something has been vandalized anyway.
I don't mean to sound as though I'm trying to patronise you, but are you or have you been in higher education? Unless you went through the system before Wikipedia was started you'd know that, as the above poster stated, no higher education institution will accept a Wikipedia reference.MatumbeJack said:Er.asinann said:Wikipedia is at best a secondary reference tool to be used after you have a couple of good sources.
Wikipedia by itself is not a reference tool. When a good academic university, or even my local community college allow it's use as a reference tool, I'll call it one.
Wikipedia is, by virtue of being an encyclopedia, a reference tool, irrespective of what 'good academic universities' (whatever that may mean) decide. The information contained within is consolidated from a variety of sources which, most often, sit humbly at the bottom of the page.
It's a bunch of information crammed into one place. Some of it's good, some of it's bad - but its left up to you as the researcher to assess its credibility by investigating the cited source. If you can't do that, you don't know how to research to begin with.
This. People say that it lies because users can edit it, but that's stupid. The information is almost always correct, and the people who edit it research the topic before they edit.LewsTherin said:Yes. If the information is already mostly correct and in one place, why shouldn't you use it?