Why Is Wikipedia A Valid Academic Source?
Is Wikipedia a Valid Academic Resource? Wikipedia is considered a free encyclopedia that was created by the community that uses it and according to Wikipedia founders, “it is a special type of website designed to make collaboration easy”. Is a website that is always changing as is always being improved by its users, many of the changes occurs hourly (Wikipedia: Introduction, 2014). So what does that mean to the academic student? Who is this community? According to the Wikipedia website, anyone can contribute and make changes to “almost every page” in their site (Wikipedia: Introduction, 2014). Let us look at this a little closely as see how valid the information in Wikipedia is. In the following paragraphs, I will attempt to decipher
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In an article written by Young, he states that Jimmy Wales says that he wants every college student to understand why they should not use Wikipedia for any course projects or as for any serious projects (2006).
Jimmy Wales spoke at a conference in which he stated that he receive numerous emails from students stating that they received a poor grade in an assignment because they referenced Wikipedia. He goes on to say that, no college student should cite from an encyclopedia and that student should do more research to make sure that their findings are correct. He believes that Wikipedia is a good source but be careful and do your research, as the site is not a perfect and should not be used as the only method of source (Young, 2006).
Valid or Not Valid? While doing my research it was clear that there is more information as to why Wikipedia is not a valid source than a valid one. It was a challenge to find any articles that would see Wikipedia as a valid source of information. I did find an article written by the TeachingHistory.org called “Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?” In which they make a statement that in how the large amount of information found in Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool. They go on to say that although many of the information entered in Wikipedia is preliminary it can still be used to teach students how to evaluate and assess any large amount …show more content…
It was interesting to learn their findings in which they found “eight serious errors” in which four came for Wikipedia and four came from Britannica. They also found 162 factual and misleading errors in Wikipedia while only finding 123 in Britannica. Articles chosen for the study varied in subject and were review by field experts; they were not told who wrote the articles. Wales founder of Wikipedia was asked what he thought of these findings and he was pleased with the findings and stated that the “error rate for each encyclopedia was not insignificant, and added that he thinks such numbers demonstrate that broad review of encyclopedia articles is needed” (Terdiman, 2005). The importance of this article was to show that even in a controlled setting there is room for error. Although there is still a difference between human errors in a controlled environment than one like Wikipedia that is an open source in which many hands have access to the
In an article written by Young, he states that Jimmy Wales says that he wants every college student to understand why they should not use Wikipedia for any course projects or as for any serious projects (2006).
Jimmy Wales spoke at a conference in which he stated that he receive numerous emails from students stating that they received a poor grade in an assignment because they referenced Wikipedia. He goes on to say that, no college student should cite from an encyclopedia and that student should do more research to make sure that their findings are correct. He believes that Wikipedia is a good source but be careful and do your research, as the site is not a perfect and should not be used as the only method of source (Young, 2006).
Valid or Not Valid? While doing my research it was clear that there is more information as to why Wikipedia is not a valid source than a valid one. It was a challenge to find any articles that would see Wikipedia as a valid source of information. I did find an article written by the TeachingHistory.org called “Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?” In which they make a statement that in how the large amount of information found in Wikipedia can be used as a teaching tool. They go on to say that although many of the information entered in Wikipedia is preliminary it can still be used to teach students how to evaluate and assess any large amount …show more content…
It was interesting to learn their findings in which they found “eight serious errors” in which four came for Wikipedia and four came from Britannica. They also found 162 factual and misleading errors in Wikipedia while only finding 123 in Britannica. Articles chosen for the study varied in subject and were review by field experts; they were not told who wrote the articles. Wales founder of Wikipedia was asked what he thought of these findings and he was pleased with the findings and stated that the “error rate for each encyclopedia was not insignificant, and added that he thinks such numbers demonstrate that broad review of encyclopedia articles is needed” (Terdiman, 2005). The importance of this article was to show that even in a controlled setting there is room for error. Although there is still a difference between human errors in a controlled environment than one like Wikipedia that is an open source in which many hands have access to the