Wikipedia as Bathroom Graffiti

Using Wikipedia as an authoritative source is like using bathroom graffiti for relationship advice–it might sound confident, but after a while you’ve got to wonder who wrote it.

If you’ve struggled to explain to students why Wikipedia is not a reliable source, Mark Moran at FindingDulcinea has written The Top 10 Reasons Students Cannot Cite or Rely on Wikipedia.  Among his points:

  • You can’t rely on something when you don’t know who wrote it.
  • Sometimes vandals create malicious entries that go uncorrected for months.
  • There is little diversity among editors.

I wish I would have had Moran’s article about four weeks ago when my eighth graders were deep into the research portion of their I-Search projects. I will certainly be using it next year.

The list is a must-read for anyone teaching research skills at the junior high or high school level.  And don’t miss FindingDulcinea’s guide to Wikipedia in the Classroom.

4 Responses

  1. Greg says:

    Yes, you’re right about citing Wikipedia, of course.

    But I always amaze my students when I tell them that Wikipedia is a terrific resource. They’re so used to every teacher telling them it is pure evil and should never be used.

    But the reality is that Wikipedia has real value as a *resource*, not a source. Some articles are better than others, but it is often a good place to start, to “wrap your head” around a topic, to get some background information, and even to find links to legitimate sources.

    But still, it’s not a source you want to cite.

  2. Nick says:

    Yes, I agree completely, Greg. It’s often one of the first places I go when I am unfamiliar with a topic, just to get “the lay of the land.” It’s also a great site to use to help teach critical thinking skills, by having students evaluate different articles for bias and accuracy.

  3. Mrs DeRaps says:

    Yes, I think that we have to help students to differentiate between a source and a resource. Just last week, I asked a student to find the exact birthday of an author. It think that it was Mark Twain. The student came back looking perplexed and said that wikipedia came up as a result, but that he couldn’t trust it. Someone in our school district has done a wonderful job of scaring kids away from wikipedia completely. This is crazy–I use wikipedia all the time to verify simple facts. It’s a source, not a resource.

  4. Lisa Mele says:

    Thanks for this article. We will be starting a research project soon and I will certainly be sharing that with my students

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