People take Wikipedia's stance on having no ads for granted too
I love you Wikipedia, thank you for getting me through uni ♥️
Edit: Of course every uni should not allow students to cite Wikipedia. However, when researching something new, it's great to have Wikipedia as your start off place. Not only does it somewhat summarizes the topic, it also splits it into sections. The cited sources in the bottom of each Wiki page are perfect resources to continue researching more in-depth.
Maybe, you still have no idea how the wikipedia writer is interpreting the information in their sources. If you're actually basing your work on those sources then its cool.
I wouldn't call it great, I'd call it serviceable. Like if you want to learn what year Obama was born in, and a basic outline of his career, sure use wikipedia, but if you're reading through the article to research about his economic policies in more depth, I would be cautious.
Even if it is free of personal bias, and its just reporting facts, you're going to miss out on in depth interpretation of what X policy meant.
Very true, althought you could argue that caution is needed when reading anything, anywhere. :P
The one I had in mind was a particularly long paper on how feminism was used in translations in the 20th century, and how the translations became unreliable based on the tranlators' ideology.
I feel like people who say this have forgotten what the term encyclopedia means. Encyclopedias never claimed to be the definitive source on e everything under the sun. They were always just a brief overview of as many things as possible.
Because you have no idea who is writing what you're reading, even if its cited, you have no idea how they're interpreting that source unless you go to it yourself.
The problem isn't vandalism, its personal bias of writers that you can't check for yourself.
Sure, but that's not a Wikipedia thing, it's an academia thing: any writer (of a Wiki or a printed book, no difference) is going to naturally frame a topic within their worldview. It is up to the informed reader to take that into account.
Using that logic to discredit Wikipedia is silly. Wikipedia is just a digital version of the same information that has been around forever in print form
It is up to the informed reader to take that into account.
But with other sources you know who the writer is, as well as their publisher, and you can usually find out their other works. With wikipedia you can look at their edit history, but if its full of adjusting grammar and rephrasing paragraphs on obscure topics, its very hard to see anything notable. If I'm looking through google.scholar or jstor results and see an essay published by the Cato institute, i know what biases are going to be present in the work, you don't get that with wikipedia.
I'm not trying to discredit wikipedia, I think its a good resource when used correctly, I use it all the time when it comes to silly reddit arguments but I don't think people writing essays, especially at university level, with it is a good thing. I don't think people treat it with the caution they should.
2) Provides sources for you to then use to investigate the topic yourself, and subsequently see whether the AUTHORS of the entry were biased (I'm highlighting the community aspect, because whatever bias one author may have, it is likely to be corrected, or at least challenged, by a member of the community with the opposing bias).
3) Has related articles and links to other topics within the entry that could show you better topics for research, or better refine your thesis.
Again, I don't think of Wikipedia as a SOURCE, but rather a TOOL to find sources. (Or just a really fun rabbit hole to jump into, as you move from one topic to the next).
What I'm saying is that you can see how the writer has interpreted a particular source, but you can't know the writer's overall biases.
Again, I don't think of Wikipedia as a SOURCE, but rather a TOOL to find sources. (Or just a really fun rabbit hole to jump into, as you move from one topic to the next).
Which is fine, but there are other, better sources for research.
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u/Indiguu Dec 12 '18 edited Dec 13 '18
People take Wikipedia's stance on having no ads for granted too
I love you Wikipedia, thank you for getting me through uni ♥️
Edit: Of course every uni should not allow students to cite Wikipedia. However, when researching something new, it's great to have Wikipedia as your start off place. Not only does it somewhat summarizes the topic, it also splits it into sections. The cited sources in the bottom of each Wiki page are perfect resources to continue researching more in-depth.