How to use Wikipedia (for school)

Given the large number of students here, I though of writing this post, as I have to deal with the same problems occasionally, but from a different perspective.

How teachers react to Wikipedia.

When doing research for a paper in school or college, Wikipedia is often the first destination. However most teachers will not accept Wikipedia as source. When a student is presented with a "D" on his homework, he'd usually go to his teacher with a big "...why!?" on his lips, but it's usually never up to debate. I'll try to explain "why" in this blog post.

We all know what Wikipedia is...right?

I don't think I have to explain what Wikipedia is. It is a free encyclopedia. Wikipedia doesn't belong to anyone, it is a group effort. It's the arguably easiest way to publish information. Articles are subject to review by a lot of people, who correct articles, add source material, or simply tidy things up.

Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, either by adding new articles, or editing existing ones. It's great, the encyclopedia can grow that way, but at the same time, half-wits may add incorrect or plainly wrong information. Even though a great number of users will usually review the articles. 

I teach courses myself, and I encourage my students to use and edit Wikipedia, however I will not accept Wikipedia as a source for research, for the aforementioned reasons. This might seem paradoxical, but for a teacher it's difficult to tell whether an article has genuine information, or if it was compiled out of questionable knowledge. The easiest and most secure way is to simply dismiss Wikipedia as a whole. This stigmatizes use of Wikipedia as a source for sub-par information, unfortunately. However, it doesn't mean that using Wikipedia is bad practice, on the contrary, actually. It's simply a question of how to use it.

So what is Wikipedia after all?

Think of Wikipedia less of a source of information itself. Instead, think of Wikipedia as a report on several sources. Every Wikipedia article relies on source material. A good article has many, genuine sources, a bad article has only few, or none at all. But what is a genuine source?

Basically, there are three types of sources:

• Primary sources
• Secondary sources
• Tertiary sources

For the sake of simplicity, I'll use an example: Say a car manufacturer claims to have build the fastest car on earth. The manufacturers press release statement is the primary source. It is a claim, that is open to testing and debate. A secondary source would be an institute or company, testing such claims, in our example that would be a race or a speed test. A tertiary source might be a magazine or newspaper reporting on those tests:

• Primary: "We've build the fastest car on earth!"
• Secondary: "We tested the supposedly fastest car on earth. Here are our results..."
• Tertiary: "Fastest car on earth tested."

Wikipedia relies on secondary sources. An article using secondary sources is a "good" article. Primary sources are basically just claims, Wikipedia guidelines discourage using primary sources. Using tertiary sources is complicated, because it might be considered stealing and copy-pasting a news report done by someone else.

What if a report uses primary sources themselves, is that a secondary source? No. It's still a tertiary source, with the secondary one basically missing, which makes it even worse. On the other hand, one report using another tertiary source is equally bad (apart from being bad journalistic work). A combination of both things also exist, but that's pretty much tabloid journalism and doesn't even deserve a discussion here.

• Missing secondary source: "Car manufacturer claims to have build the world's fastest car."
• Reporting on someone else's report: "Newspaper writes about test results of world's fastest car."

(Note the word "claims" in the first line.)

Incidentally, reports on other reports, is what a lot of our press is made of these days. Blogs and news reports shamelessly copy from one another quite often, which is sad, but it doesn't mean you have to be suckered into such bad practice.

• Articles using secondary sources, is what makes Wikipedia awesome.
• Articles using primary sources (and to a certain extent tertiary sources), is what makes Wikipedia unreliable and biased, and that's the reason for teachers not accepting it.

Before you read on, a word of warning: Knowing this, don't run to your teacher and try to convince him your sources are "good", because the article you used, referenced secondary sources. It won't change your teachers opinion about using Wikipedia as a source, trust me...

Quick How-To.

Wikipedia articles give great overviews, and sometimes good detail information, but when using it in your own work, always use the sources referenced in that article. Never use what's on a Wikipedia article itself, use the article as a road map to the information you need. Use the linked sources as source material. Read the sources, check what kind of sources those are, and report on them, not on the Wikipedia article. This might seem like a batch of extra work, but it's what makes the difference between a lousy researched report and a good one.

Wikipedia is not a news paper, hence, it's not a tertiary source. It cannot be a secondary source either, as it doesn't evaluate, check or test primary source's claims. Doing this, is actually forbidden in the guidelines.

Sometimes it is uncircumventable to link to a Wikipedia article, because the article itself might be focus of the work. In that case, always remember to to link to the version you use. Wikipedia has very sophisticated version control. If you cite the version of the article, it's possible to check what was in that article at the time of you writing your paper, otherwise it is not.

What if the Wikipedia article you want to use doesn't have genuine sources? Well, then you're basically on your own. A Wikipedia article citing no sources, is as valuable as a novel or personal opinion, when it comes to research on a subject. I other words, it's pretty much just an uneducated statement, nothing more.

So should you use Wikipedia at all?

Sure you should! Use it as a launchpad to get you started, and see where the references and citations take you. Just don't use Wikipedia verbatim and as direct source.