Students Should Use Wikipedia?

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Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, says that students should use his site and that teachers that block access to the site are “bad educators.” This is a complete turn around from what he said two years ago that students “deserved an F” for using Wikipedia.

"You can ban kids from listening to rock 'n' roll music, but they're going to anyway," he added. "It's the same with information, and it's a bad educator that bans their students from reading Wikipedia."
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Wikipedia is a great resource but we all know it can be horribly inaccurate as well. I personally think you should use Wikipedia at your own risk and it isn’t the smartest thing to use for schoolwork….not when your grades are riding on it.
 
Honestly I use it as a start to when i work on papers, even some of my professors now agree with this, they just recommend not using it as a source, only as a guide.
 
As long as the students peruse the resources offered at the foot of every articles and reports it should be okay. Don't just take Wikipedia's word for it (when I say Wikipedia, I meant the public who entered data into Wikipedia).
 
I would never cite Wikipedia as a source for facts, but it's often a great starting point. Most articles are well annotated with credible links and sources you can go to in order to verify facts.
 
Lethal said:
I would never cite Wikipedia as a source for facts, but it's often a great starting point. Most articles are well annotated with credible links and sources you can go to in order to verify facts.
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Exactly. Wikipedia makes it easy to find information, but citing a Wikipedia page is like citing a library catalog rather than a real source.
 
I have had teachers/professors with a "citing Wikipedia = auto fail" policy. As others have said it is a good starting point but is not to be used as a real source.
 
Wikipedia is a great resource of correct and incorrect information. It is up to the student to sort that all out. Thusly, wikipedia is a great resource for smart students.
 
As a teacher I agree, use it!

I am currently in IT, but when I was teaching in milwaukee, it was very frustrating.

Each student gets 7k worth of funding from taxes.

Each student cannot take home their books.

Each student shares books with 8 other classes (so 1 book, is used in 8 diff 1 hour classes) .Each student is told they are not trusted with books... even though the gov't pays 7k$ a year for their education.

So how are they suppose to write a paper or do homework or study when they are not even allowed to take their fucking books home? Why are white kids given books to take home? Were does the 7k$ in funding go to?
 
I've actually had professors who have given Wikipedia articles as required reading. They're nice for quick information on things, but I don't know about it being a credible scholarly resource yet.

Also, I'm waiting for the political bullshit that's going on with them to die down. I don't know how much of it is true, but it sounds ridiculous.
 
more ranting: Milwaukee public schools

3 IT people at each high school total in 120k salary
50 teachers x 40k (average) = 2,000,000 salary
books are bought once every 5-6 years, 40 per classroom.
- in white schools it is 40 per hour per class, so about 160-300 books per class! compared to 40! every 3-4 years!

7,000$ (each pupil) x 1,000 students = 7,000,000$ a high school in funding

7mil
-4mil (costs)
= 3 fucking million dollars missing, "hiring freezes" and "down sizing"

My students did not have paper, often had to argue/fight to give students photo copies because the school was cheap, teachers made fun of wikipedia since they were snobby, but there were no other resources... wtf
 
I allow my students to use it in order to generate ideas. I do NOT allow them to use it as a source. Any information found on Wiki must be verified by a reliable source. That "reliable source" is what they cite in their bib.

I find Wiki very useful, hell, I use it often myself to look up obscure information. I never assume that anything posted there is true.
 
Steve said:
Wikipedia is a great resource but we all know it can be horribly inaccurate as well. I personally think you should use Wikipedia at your own risk and it isn’t the smartest thing to use for schoolwork….not when your grades are riding on it.
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That has always been my stance on Wikipedia. Especially whenever it comes to anything or anyone political.

I use it myself often, to get the general idea about something, but always go else where for the nitty gritty of the subject. Never would I trust it when a grade depended on it.
 
See, the one thing I love most about Wikipedia is it can be edited and published by anyone in the world. Wikipedia doesn't suffer from "history is written by the victor" epidemic.

Following up on facts, links and researches below articles and on your own, Wikipedia is a gold mine of raw information.
 
Agreed, Wikipedia is nothing more than a starting point. You must assume that it is all inaccurate until you learn otherwise. That's all there is to it.
 
I have a brother-in law here in Michigan who teaches in Oak Park. His classes are mostly black students (if not all, I'm not sure).

Anyway, his impression is that these kids come from households who don't care much about their education. The parents. My impression is that most of the kids have (if lucky) one parent and not usually both seeing to it that they do good in school.

When he has a parent-teacher conference, he maybe gets 1 PARENT to come and talk to him to check on progress. Sometimes he tells me that the parent will say "why should I care about school, look at me, I never graduated high school and I'm ok...".

Basically, the point is that the parents don't care much about the school.

What happens? Well, the ADMINISTRATORS bring in all their family members or friends and fill in the positions. They get paid a lot of money, and a lot of stuff goes on that people WHO CARED ABOUT THEIR KIDS EDUCATION would be furious over. However, since none of the parents give a crap, the deeds by the administrators go unnoticed. The deeds definitely do not work to make the school better.

For example, the person in charge of ordering books does it when he/she is back after summer break. You know, kids are in class already, and no books because they were not ordered yet. Kids wait 6 weeks to finally get the books. And same scenario, only 1 book that must be shared. Can't take home, because the school does not have any extra.

But the school gets the 7K or whatever per student. Where does it all go? Ask the administators.

Now he has a wife who teaches in another district. According to her, the parents are in constant touch with what is going on at the school. If someone is slacking off, it DOES NOT GO UNNOTICED. Parents are all over the shite of administrators if things look strange or odd.

So, there is one answer. The administrators need someone looking over their shoulder to make sure things get done properly and money gets spent where it was supposed to. Who does this? The friends that they hired to go along with the plan?

I'm sure there are other answers, this is only an example of what I was told by someone who sees what is happening and is concerned about the students but finds that it is very difficult to make changes since the parents WILL NOT BACK him.

By the way, a good movie to see on this subject is "Freedom Writers". Excellent.
 
Yes, Wikipedia is a GREAT (easily the best) place to START your research. Don't rely on it, but follow the links and its citied sources. Check them against each other, find proper words to use in your searches for further information, etc. Great place to start as a guide, teachers need to teach their students HOW to use it.
 
lol, my last research paper in college, one of my books from the library cited Wikipedia multiple times :p
 
I'm with all the sentiments regarding wikipedia as a great starting guide when doing research.

This semester I've been using it to find information about several chemicals that I needed for organic chemistry lab. My lab professor even suggested using it. Wikipedia has such a huge database on specific chemicals/reagents that only the most arbitrary ones aren't on it.
 
jroe52 said:
more ranting: Milwaukee public schools

3 IT people at each high school total in 120k salary
50 teachers x 40k (average) = 2,000,000 salary
books are bought once every 5-6 years, 40 per classroom.
- in white schools it is 40 per hour per class, so about 160-300 books per class! compared to 40! every 3-4 years!

7,000$ (each pupil) x 1,000 students = 7,000,000$ a high school in funding

7mil
-4mil (costs)
= 3 fucking million dollars missing, "hiring freezes" and "down sizing"

My students did not have paper, often had to argue/fight to give students photo copies because the school was cheap, teachers made fun of wikipedia since they were snobby, but there were no other resources... wtf
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I am with brother !! Up here in Ontario its to the tune of 9+k per child! :mad: And 89% of that goes to teachers salaries.

Books ? Whats books ! :rolleyes: My wife and I have to fork out at least a grand extra per year,for our 17 year old daughter.The average teacher salary up here is about 72k to start plus simply incredible benefits !
 
Well said, it's all about the culture and attitudes of the parents and students... other neighborhoods care more, so more gets done, plain and simple. It's nothing to do with a racism issue like jroe52 is trying to proclaim :rolleyes:.

SnapperDragon said:
I have a brother-in law here in Michigan who teaches in Oak Park. His classes are mostly black students (if not all, I'm not sure).

Anyway, his impression is that these kids come from households who don't care much about their education. The parents. My impression is that most of the kids have (if lucky) one parent and not usually both seeing to it that they do good in school.

When he has a parent-teacher conference, he maybe gets 1 PARENT to come and talk to him to check on progress. Sometimes he tells me that the parent will say "why should I care about school, look at me, I never graduated high school and I'm ok...".

Basically, the point is that the parents don't care much about the school.

What happens? Well, the ADMINISTRATORS bring in all their family members or friends and fill in the positions. They get paid a lot of money, and a lot of stuff goes on that people WHO CARED ABOUT THEIR KIDS EDUCATION would be furious over. However, since none of the parents give a crap, the deeds by the administrators go unnoticed. The deeds definitely do not work to make the school better.

For example, the person in charge of ordering books does it when he/she is back after summer break. You know, kids are in class already, and no books because they were not ordered yet. Kids wait 6 weeks to finally get the books. And same scenario, only 1 book that must be shared. Can't take home, because the school does not have any extra.

But the school gets the 7K or whatever per student. Where does it all go? Ask the administators.

Now he has a wife who teaches in another district. According to her, the parents are in constant touch with what is going on at the school. If someone is slacking off, it DOES NOT GO UNNOTICED. Parents are all over the shite of administrators if things look strange or odd.

So, there is one answer. The administrators need someone looking over their shoulder to make sure things get done properly and money gets spent where it was supposed to. Who does this? The friends that they hired to go along with the plan?

I'm sure there are other answers, this is only an example of what I was told by someone who sees what is happening and is concerned about the students but finds that it is very difficult to make changes since the parents WILL NOT BACK him.

By the way, a good movie to see on this subject is "Freedom Writers". Excellent.
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Shouldn't be using the Jew-biased hate & war mongering site anyways.

So pre-semetic & anti-Arab ... most distasteful web-site on the net.
 
-MikeHawk- said:
Shouldn't be using the Jew-biased hate & war mongering site anyways.

So pre-semetic & anti-Arab ... most distasteful web-site on the net.
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Wow, I had not noticed that about them. Please take the accusations of racial bias crap elsewhere. People really only pretend to care about it anyway, when it does not directly affect them.
 
Lol, Wikipedia got me through a tough top tier university program.

Granted, i was smart enough to understand why it shouldnt be ones only primary reasource, but i sneakily used it as a shortcut to find out whatever i needed to know, even drew from it, and then corroborated the information from somewhere else (once you have it, it's not easy to find elsewhere in the likelyhood that it is accurate, which it honestly usually is) and use that source to cite it.

Anyhow, while i couldnt use Wikipedia as a citation reference, i almost always used it as a research tool anwyay, and if i had to cite my sources, well thats when the actual accuracy check occured, but it still saved me alot time and headaches.
 
Given all the scandals they've had recently over what would be considered by most to be inappropriate administration, I have very little faith in the unbiased accuracy of the site these days. It's certainly an excellent place to start: search your term(s), and promptly scroll down to the external links and citations. Make use of those resources, and then if they all agree look for something contrary to make sure you get your research right; the wikinazis have been known to lock down articles while they have very biased information, preventing an opposing viewpoint from being presented there.
 
Steve said:
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, says that students should use his site and that teachers that block access to the site are “bad educators.” This is a complete turn around from what he said two years ago that students “deserved an F” for using Wikipedia.
Click to expand...
At least his opinion isn't biased. :p

Wikipedia makes my head hurt sometimes. There is so much "everybody knows" type of completely inaccurate information, especially in the computer related articles, that it's a disservice as a source. Mythbusters could do a whole 24-hour a day channel on that type of stuff.

Then there are the boneheads who jealousy undo any corrections because they're willing to put in any amount of effort to beat the other guy. Unfortunately for everyone else, they usually win.
 
Advil said:
Agreed, Wikipedia is nothing more than a starting point. You must assume that it is all inaccurate until you learn otherwise. That's all there is to it.
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Why not go the other way and assume it is probably accurate until proven otherwise? Why automatically assume it is inaccurate? I'll tell you why. Because most people believe what the the media tells them. They put out a few high profile news stories of malicious people deliberately posting misleading info and now the general public thinks all of wikipedia is ful of BS. Of course you should always cross reference but researchers say wikipedia is no less accurate than the encyclopedia Britanica. If teachers won't allow wikipedia to be referenced then they shouldn't allow any encyclopedia to be referenced. Any professor who says using wikipedia means an automatic fail is obviously a dumbass who listens too much to the media instead of doing their own research on the matter and is not fit to teach.
 
milkweg said:
Why not go the other way and assume it is probably accurate until proven otherwise? Why automatically assume it is inaccurate? I'll tell you why. Because most people believe what the the media tells them. They put out a few high profile news stories of malicious people deliberately posting misleading info and now the general public thinks all of wikipedia is ful of BS. Of course you should always cross reference but researchers say wikipedia is no less accurate than the encyclopedia Britanica. If teachers won't allow wikipedia to be referenced then they shouldn't allow any encyclopedia to be referenced. Any professor who says using wikipedia means an automatic fail is obviously a dumbass who listens too much to the media instead of doing their own research on the matter and is not fit to teach.
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The reason a professor might ban Wiki use is because it's not real "research" in the purest sense of the word. It's typing the term or phrase into google and clicking the first link, then reading what Wiki has to say and having all your references lain out in front of you. That's not research. Research involves working to find sources, not clicking the footnotes at the bottom of an article. Plus, citing Wikipedia just screams of laziness, since Wikipedia is a research paper in and of itself: It's an article devoted to a subect with citiations from academic articles, etc... Citing Wiki amounts to copy/paste and instant research paper. Want your students to learn like that? No way! Actually learn to do the research, it'll do everyone good in the long run.
 
What's research these days? Searching for other grad students papers, professors works, etc. I'm sorry, but there is no "real" research in these days by your definition. You act like research must be hard, it doesn't have to. Research is easier and smarter to do these days. It's an advancement. Wonderful stuff this technology.
 
Technology has come a long way since the card catalog, of course. That's not what I'm really talking about, though. Citing Wikipedia means that you paraphrased a paraphrase. It means that you're just taking the easiest way out, and students who do that by using Wikipedia really need to learn to take 15 minutes to at least make their work LOOK quality. I'm not against Wikipedia, I use it all the time, but when I do a paper, the first thing I do is go to Wikipedia, because it has a good consolidation of sources on the topic. Then I look at each individual source at the foot of the article, and often go back through the sources that the source articles cited! That's research. It's much easier than it used to be, certainly, but it is actually putting forth work to find a well-cited example instead of just doing the "copy and paste" dance.
 
Crap, no editing and I minced my words.

What I mean is that Wikipedia IS helpful and should be used. It's there, why not use it? Directly citing it, however, is just asking for trouble and smacks of shoddy work. Using the sources at the bottom helps because you get more in-depth material, not just the quotes from the Wiki article. Also, doing my own paraphrase prevents inadvertant plaigarism.

I'm not saying ban Wiki. I'm saying use it as far as you can throw it. It's a good tool to jump-start research as a consolidation of sources. It's not a crutch, and should not be used as a primary source for a serious collegiate level paper.
 
[Tripod]MajorPayne;1031773971 said:
The reason a professor might ban Wiki use is because it's not real "research" in the purest sense of the word. It's typing the term or phrase into google and clicking the first link, then reading what Wiki has to say and having all your references lain out in front of you. That's not research. Research involves working to find sources, not clicking the footnotes at the bottom of an article. Plus, citing Wikipedia just screams of laziness, since Wikipedia is a research paper in and of itself: It's an article devoted to a subect with citiations from academic articles, etc... Citing Wiki amounts to copy/paste and instant research paper. Want your students to learn like that? No way! Actually learn to do the research, it'll do everyone good in the long run.
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Yea, and I said *do* cross reference your research. That doesn't mean also quoting a wiki page and your other refence material means it should be an automatic fail. Some articles at wiki are more up to date than an article written 20 years ago. Anything can be further researched on the internet it just requires a few more clicks of the mouse button. How is that any less lazy? Or are only books in the library to be trusted now? That would be a fools method of research if it is a history topic because it is well known that many history books are written from a biased point of view. Even many anthropolgy books are written in a biased way because the writer wants you to believe what they say is true even though it may well not be because it is just their opinion or is based on flimsy evidence.
 
Skrying said:
What's research these days? Searching for other grad students papers, professors works, etc. I'm sorry, but there is no "real" research in these days by your definition. You act like research must be hard, it doesn't have to. Research is easier and smarter to do these days. It's an advancement. Wonderful stuff this technology.
Click to expand...

Not to mention that some students are so lazy they pay other people to wite their papers.


This is my opinion of Wikipedai. One of the great aspects of the internet is that it has the capability to one day contain the complete knowledge of mankind and Wikipedia is a good step in that direction so don't knock it.
 
Wikipedia is the single greatest source of information in the world. The vast majority of it is right, and what isnt right usually isnt really wrong either.

I use Wikipedia almost exclusively to gather information for classes and such at the number one college in Ohio. I dont cite it, no, but i do get information from it. A few times i actually wrote a paper using just wiki info then quickly searched for a random research paper to cite well after it was written.

The truth is, despite its amazing ability to be abused, wikipedia is almost always accurate.
 
Wikipedia is only useful when the information is sourced. Essentially, Wikipedia is a repository of sources; so you don't cite Wikipedia, you cite the same sources that it does. It makes it a starting point of sorts for your research.

However, most articles are not properly sourced, if at all.
 
milkweg said:
Not to mention that some students are so lazy they pay other people to wite their papers.


This is my opinion of Wikipedai. One of the great aspects of the internet is that it has the capability to one day contain the complete knowledge of mankind and Wikipedia is a good step in that direction so don't knock it.
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QFT!
 
I always use Wikipedia to guide the way through a report, and to accumulate some background info, but I would never cite it as a source.
 
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