Why is this news? What professor would allow a college student to turn in a history paper with wikipedia as a source? I like what one professor said:
Amen to that. If I ever had a student who used wikipedia as a source, well, lets just say I would count off some points for that :laugh: . Maybe the modern academic climate is so bad that a professor/instructor needs to put in their syllabus that wikipedia is not a source.
the only way I see that we'll discredit wikipedia as the focal point of research that every student is if we come in and sabotage all the information on the site....but we must also realize that ultimately the goal is to compress billions of books of information into the smallest of possible sizes since it will carry the other goal of evolving children into being able to memorize and process all of that information at once and even moreso.
The thing to do is use the sources at the bottom of the Wiki page to start or supplement your research.
The ideal Wiki pages have no original writings, but list every source (too few are ideal) and link to most of them.
==O, I agree 100%! In fact I use wikipedia to find sources sometimes. There is nothing in the world wrong with using it for that or for getting a general overview of a subject. However a college level student using it as a source in a college history paper, or any other kind of college paper, is not something any professor/instructor should be willing to accept. :thumbs:
It might make a good project to create or expand a Wiki page (sourced and footnoted as per the Wiki FAQ). Wiki maintains a history of changes, so it should be trackable.