Re: [DIYbio] OFF-TOPIC: taboo on using Wikipedia (school settings)

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There is a false perception that Wikipedia is a random free-for-all and
that it's exclusively written by untrained individuals. Further, that
statements are poorly sourced.

This varies widely between articles, but if you treat Wikipedia like
any other source of information, you'll be fine. That is, if you insist
on seeing reliable citations, observe the background on the article
(check edit history and talk pages for useful debate on content), and
when citing Wikipedia, *cite the current revision, not the wiki page*.
That is, go to "history", and get a permalink to the present revision,
so that your citation doesn't change under your derivative article.

Of course, academics as a rule dislike Wikipedia for the same reason
they dislike most distributed education platforms, so expect heavy bias
against it.

And, of course, bear in mind that even the best cited Wikipedia
articles can be exactly as bad as the best cited research papers:
written and supported by biased industry bodies, riddled with seemingly
reasonable logical fallacies, and drawing false conclusions from sound
data. Wikipedia is an Encyclopaedia. The only difference between it and
other Encyclopaedias is that it grows and amends more rapidly, and has
a long memory for prior state.

On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 20:56:52 -0400
Jeswin <phillyj101@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was reading the commentary article "We Must Face the Threats" in J
> Neuro [1] and noticed that they cite Wikipedia. Now, I realize that
> this isn't a regular journal article but teachers and professors seem
> to treat Wikipedia as absolutely verboten. If an article in a journal
> can cite Wikipedia, then why can't it be used as a source in informal
> assignments like homeworks. A research paper would require harder
> stuff but in my experience thus far, Wikipedia is shunned by
> instructors.
>
> Comments?
>
> [1]http://www.jneurosci.org/content/29/37/11417.full.pdf
>