I’ve found it to be a fairly reliable source…on non-controversial issues. I find it to be a quick reference that I can use to find ideas about a subject. I can develop those ideas with further research from primary sources.

Sometimes the sources used by Wikipedia become my primary sources.

Using a wiki is similar to students copying paragraphs out of the Worldbook encyclopedia back in the 1970s. The difference is that Worldbook had an editor and based its success on the accuracy of the information bound within its covers. Wikipedia does not have that constraint.

Also, there is a plagiarism problem; students at times copy and paste whole paragraphs from wiki.

Some teachers won’t allow students to students to cite wiki or include it as a source. I usually say one and only one source in a Works Cited list can be an encyclopedia, and I don’t mind wiki. (I have taught for twenty plus years)

Most of the issues pro and con regarding the use of Wikipedia have been addressed in the responses already given.

As Lindsay (above) pointed out, the “3 source rule” is a good one to follow.

Also be extremely careful of using “data” from any .org site. These sites are often politically biased.

I ask my students to avoid it as a source in their research.

Why the difference? citing sources is important in research. click on ANY wikipedia page’s history and you’ll see that it was changed recently. The bigger the subjects the more edits. You cannot be sure of the accuracy when everyone has access to the changes. Just this month in moon landings there have been edits concerning “fake” moon landings.

Who are the people writing these accounts? people like you and me. No real academic expertise in the subject. It tends to be a gathering of secondary and tertiary sources which can be ok for an individual simply looking for quick answers, but is unacceptable in academic settings.

As far as accuracy, a lot of people like to criticize it, but I have *rarely* found anything substantial to be inaccurate, and I’ve never known a critic to be able to point to anything.

For purposes of using as a source, it is a great first resource for getting an overview of any topic, and for linking to other topics. (In fact, the hyperlinking is one very powerful advantage that wikipedia has over books.

And just as students should never cite any encyclopedia as a source, wikipedia contains many links to other sources that *can* be used as primary sources.

A student needs to learn the difference between a primary and a secondary source. Secondary sources (like encyclopedias) are great for getting information collected in a digestible way. It is a *launching off* point. In that respect, I think wikipedia is *great*!

The main reason why it can cause problems is that pupils generally don’t know enough about what they are looking up to tell if it is rubbish or not. Although there is some good information on wikipedia, there is a lot of nonsense too.

If all my pupils could be relied on to check the information (i.e. find at least 3 sources that agree), I would have less of a problem with it.

The thing is, it is subject to far more hostile peer review than a fixed book.

You are also allowed to see the revision process. They hide nothing.

You don’t get to see the first drafts of britianic before they tinker with it.

We need to screen and distill information from the Internet.

We have knowledge explosion here, so we need to be cautious on the reliability, validity and precision of the information including the authors credibility.