<story><title>School vs. Wikipedia</title><url>http://ratfactor.com/rss-club/school-vs-wikipedia</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacobolus</author><text>If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;978&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;978&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching students not to cite the sources they use is a horrible teaching practice which does harm to academia. Better is to teach students to critically examine every source they use and consider its limitations (in Wikipedia’s case, being a volunteer project by a wide range of pseudonymous strangers), follow up on claims made there, check other sources for contrary claims and analyses, etc.&lt;p&gt;Every source has biases and limitations. You can find plenty of fabrications and distortions snuck into e.g. New York Times stories, undergraduate history textbooks, or Supreme Court decisions. These sources should also be examined critically.</text></item><item><author>chatterhead</author><text>You should be fighting this at the school. Wikipedia should not be used as a source for academic purposes; the sources being referenced on Wikipedia very well could be though and as such Wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool for surface level research and schools should absolutely be taking this approach to using it.&lt;p&gt;They should not, under any circumstance, have children &amp;quot;Googling&amp;quot; the answer to questions. Most of these kids parents already use that phrase as a keystone of their parental pedagogy and they don&amp;#x27;t need that in school, too.&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is wonderful. They have more money then they will ever need so don&amp;#x27;t donate; but, they are great. Everyone should have a copy of Wikipedia locally updated yearly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tablespoon</author><text>&amp;gt; If scholars find something on Wikipedia and put it in their papers, they should absolutely cite Wikipedia.&lt;p&gt;Yeah, &lt;i&gt;but scholars shouldn&amp;#x27;t be putting things from Wikipedia in their paper at all&lt;/i&gt; (except, perhaps, in the very narrow case were Wikipedia is the &lt;i&gt;object&lt;/i&gt; of their study).&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Wikipedia isn&amp;#x27;t even a valid source for Wikipedia itself&lt;/i&gt;, and &amp;quot;scholars&amp;quot; citing Wikipedia could very well create a circular reference supporting some falsehood on a Wikipedia article.</text></comment>
<story><title>School vs. Wikipedia</title><url>http://ratfactor.com/rss-club/school-vs-wikipedia</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jacobolus</author><text>If scholars find some claim on Wikipedia and repeat it in their published work, they should unquestionably cite Wikipedia. When scholars fail to cite Wikipedia, a few years later other Wikipedia editors come back and cite that work as evidence for the original claim, sometimes for claims that turn out to be nonsense, and people trying to figure out what happened won’t notice that the citation chain is a circle. Cf. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;978&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;xkcd.com&amp;#x2F;978&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Teaching students not to cite the sources they use is a horrible teaching practice which does harm to academia. Better is to teach students to critically examine every source they use and consider its limitations (in Wikipedia’s case, being a volunteer project by a wide range of pseudonymous strangers), follow up on claims made there, check other sources for contrary claims and analyses, etc.&lt;p&gt;Every source has biases and limitations. You can find plenty of fabrications and distortions snuck into e.g. New York Times stories, undergraduate history textbooks, or Supreme Court decisions. These sources should also be examined critically.</text></item><item><author>chatterhead</author><text>You should be fighting this at the school. Wikipedia should not be used as a source for academic purposes; the sources being referenced on Wikipedia very well could be though and as such Wikipedia is an incredibly useful tool for surface level research and schools should absolutely be taking this approach to using it.&lt;p&gt;They should not, under any circumstance, have children &amp;quot;Googling&amp;quot; the answer to questions. Most of these kids parents already use that phrase as a keystone of their parental pedagogy and they don&amp;#x27;t need that in school, too.&lt;p&gt;Wikipedia is wonderful. They have more money then they will ever need so don&amp;#x27;t donate; but, they are great. Everyone should have a copy of Wikipedia locally updated yearly.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>thesuitonym</author><text>If scholars find some claim in Wikipedia, they should cite the source of the claim. If the source actually is Wikipedia, it should not be included in an academic paper.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s clear to me now that there is a divide between people who used physical encyclopedias (And thus know what an encyclopedia is for) and those who have only used Wikipedia. They don&amp;#x27;t understand that an encyclopedia is a place to get a quick overview of a subject, but then use the &lt;i&gt;actual sources&lt;/i&gt; of the information to write their papers.</text></comment>