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Wikipedia
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
What's the deal with it? Why do some people hate it so much?
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My poli sci teacher said we CANNOT use wikipedia at all for our research paper. I could have done him right there.
I refuse to click any link to it. I can't believe anythign on it. I'd much rather use something reputable.
Really, in my opinion, its the myspace of the dictionary world. Same kind of people using it. The only thing it misses is the over the head photo shots.
I could claim that I invented the dishwasher if I so fancied.
... Now that I mention it...
Other than that.. meh!
Thanks.
Of course you can't use it for a paper! That's almost as obvious as the infomation on there. Bear in mind most resources on the internet aren't suitable for assignments, but that doesn't mean they're worth nothing
I find wikepedia useful when you know nothing about a subject, it gives a good introduction and links to where to follow up the information given. Like most resources on the internet you have to take it with a pinch of salt, but I have found it useful in the past
For example, reading about Directx 10, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directx_10 seems perfectly legitimate. I think it's when you find a contentious issue, for example Israel, that you find statements that seem to be more an anecdotal accout rather than facts.
"As tensions grew between the Jewish and Arab populations and Arab attacks on Jews increased, and with little apparent support from the British mandate authorities, the Jewish community began to rely on itself for defense."
If you're doing research, and find something on wikipedia, you can click on the reference next to whatever it is to find what academic journal / newspaper / source it came from. Then you would assess whether it was reliable, if it was use the information and use the citation.
May not be totally reliable but it is a good site so fuck ye's!
Granted, it's good to look up stuff you know nout about, just not a reliable source for acedemic purposes.
Well people writing stupid things are always doing that, that's why I said you need to take it with a pinch of salt. I think once there was something about an explosion in the number of african elephants to 3 billion or something silly like that.
Just learn to take everything you read with a pinch of salt (even more so if you read the daily mail)
:thumb:
Wikipedia - Make up your own facts
the odd shit you put into there will be deleted soon tho. I really like wikipedia and it helped me numerous times for any kind of uni assignment, not to speak of helping me to kill so much time...
look into an article, and tab-open 10 links out of that article that you have interest in, and keep reading.. I call it "knowledge surfing" (©),
Oh of course! Just making a point that there are some incorrect 'facts' on there.
Depends on what ya leave on it though. If you type shit about something important then it's gonna be down the next day, make up a random article about a local band then it'll take longer.
There was an invesatigation done a while back and wikipedia is as pretty reliable as any encyclopedia.
Thing is you can. If a bibliography is not needed, who is to know if you used it or not. ALot of teachers dont' mind if you use it and alot of students do.
Why would you want to use it? Any info it gives is just background sort of stuff. Books from the library are what ya want. :thumb:
Same.
The only thing is, if you see something that you know and can prove is incorrect, then alter it - that's how it works.
But you can find anything on there - and as long as you don't need every tiny detail to be 110% accurate, it's worthwhile checking there.
Cos I'm a lazy arse and would rather sit infront of the computer with a beer :razz:
Oh indeed. Wikipedia is just usually the first link that search engines bring up :razz:
It's also good to point you in the direction of other topics and related things that you may not have thought of on your own if you are doing research.
Even upping TheSite.org page, I think changes were corrected within minutes of the page going live, and changes we made were checked within minutes again the last time we edited it.
One of our supervisors then did go onto point out that it is of course entirely reasonable to reference the stuff wiki references.
I find it to be a handy summary and a good starting point as it often has good links to other 'reliable' sites.