 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
Many of our readers are students who understand the power of both the internet and Wikipedia. Due to the prevalence of online sources, it is getting to the point where a student can write a major paper without ever having to set foot inside a library or bookstore to find printed sources. Simply plugging in a search term for a topic on Google turns up potentially thousands of possible sources, while there are also many subscription databases now that allow students to access resources online. One could spend an entire lifetime surrounded by internet information and learn not even one small fraction of the astronomical knowledge available out in the real world.
Part of the knowledge is located on Wikipedia, and the fact that a student can locate information on Wikipedia that can be put to use in a report makes this a tempting first stop for those looking to get a quick start or early finish to a major paper, project, report, or other school-related task. In one sense this is a good thing: since Wikipedia was designed to hold this knowledge and share it with the world this proves that the concept is viable, and that an online encyclopedia can compete with printed encyclopedias. With the availability of the internet in most English speaking countries our knowledge is really only a click away, and that has been a major attraction of our site for quite some time.
In another sense, though, using Wikipedia for school-related work can be fraught with danger, academically speaking, as Wikipedia is a crowd sourced resource that (in most cases) anyone can edit. This means that sometimes information can be inaccurate, incomplete, or even blatantly false. There have been numerous cases where our articles have been corrupted deliberately or where those who should know better have plagiarized Wikipedia for their own benefit, and this has tarnished Wikipedia. It is for this reason that many teachers and professors refuse to allow information from Wikipedia to be used in school-related work.
To be fair, arguably students can safely use Wikipedia as a source if they understand and apply a few important rules. These rules can help a student make the best use of Wikipedia, and should enable them to incorporate information from Wikipedia into a school project in such a way as to avoid the controversy surrounding Wikipedia's reliability as a source.
© MMXXIII Rich X Search. We shall prevail. All rights reserved. Rich X Search