How Students Use Wikipedia 170
crazybilly writes "First Monday recently released a study about how college students actually use Wikipedia. Not surprisingly, they found, 'Overall, college students use Wikipedia. But, they do so knowing its limitation. They use Wikipedia just as most of us do — because it is a quick way to get started and it has some, but not deep, credibility.' The study offers some initial data to help settle the often heated controversy over Wikipedia's usefulness as a research tool and how it affects students' research."
Wikipedia is an important research tool (Score:5, Informative)
In the natural sciences Wikipedia is an important tool in research. In independent reviews the accuracy was on an equal level as other encyclopedias (Britannica), see for example: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Wpausstellung-18.pdf [wikimedia.org] (german language).
It provides a free source with fulltext search. In many cases the original research is cited, so that you can look for more detailed information.
Just imagine trying to get quick information about something without. I am currently working on Quantum criticality. A quick google search provides you with tons of information, the wikipedia entry is a accurate one-page document which cites the most important theoretical papers from the past few years.
Re:reverse plagiarism (Score:3, Informative)
Wikipedia keeps history. You can use that history to prove the edit was made after the essay was written.
Plus, if you include parts, you'd probably list the essay as a source.
Re:Credibility (Score:5, Informative)
Established, peer-reviewed journals?
Re:Hate (Score:4, Informative)
...he/she wasn't referring to the OP, just that people who copy word-for-word from a site as big as Wikipedia likely get failed due to the anti-plagiarism programs that a lot of universities are no providing their professors with.
They weren't saying anything positive or negative about Wikipedia; just that the people who copy directly from it likely do (or at least should) get caught.
Re:As a source of sources, it is invaluable (Score:5, Informative)
Definitely true. I've used Wikipedia many times to get a heads-up on the topic and learn what sources are good for further reading. I would never cite Wikipedia itself; it's a bit too unreliable and, more importantly, changeable to use directly as a source
That's why you cite not WP:Monkey, but http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Monkey&oldid=345367034 [wikipedia.org], which is guaranteed never to change again.
my teachers to that too (Score:2, Informative)
Some of my teachers do that too. I'm in a non-english speaking country, but I'm studying in english, so teachers have to translate their courses.
Once I was having problems understanding something from a pdf from my teacher, so I thought I'd look up the subject on wikipedia. It was the exact same text.
I should have figured it out sooner since a lot of the words in the pdf were underlined (they were links from wikipedia)
Re:The China Problem (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a little shocked. Just going through, lots of claims, little evidence. Some of them don't cite a claim, and the article doesn't say its not completed, or that it needs citation for that part.
Re:What's wrong with limited plagiarism? (Score:3, Informative)
Specifically, the concept of plagiarism (which is really only meaningful in an academic context, the rest of the world is only concerned about legal matters like Copyright infringement) is the use of specific ideas that are not your own without citing the source of the idea.
A paper that consists entirely of a long verbatim quote from some other source, but where the source is cited, and it has been made clear what was an exact quote is not plagarism. It would almost certainly fail to meet the requirements of the class.
On the other hand, if one paraphrases an idea they got from some other source, even without any exact quotes, if the source is not cited it is plagiarism.
However, plagiarism should not be the main concern of citing sources. The main concern should be to document where you got an idea, or a number, etc. One does not need to repeat all the evidence that supports an idea if one cites a source that provides said evidence, or equivalently one need not may a persuasive argument for some idea if one can site a source that provides said persuasive arguments. This allows you to focus on supporting your conclusion with evidence or arguments as the case may be, without having to justify every population statistic, or philosophical idea you use.
Citing sources can have other benefits too. It can help protect your reputation. If you used a source that should be reliable, and it is later determined the source had faulty data, by citing the source people will know that you were being mislead, and not that you were intentionally perpetuating bad data.
Re:What's wrong with limited plagiarism? (Score:3, Informative)
That is exactly correct. By citing a source, I'm not saying "I'm too dumb to have figured this out myself, so I'm just copying this guy". Instead, it says, "My findings are supported by the credible research of these other people as well". Or they just show your readers that you've adequately reviewed existing materials in the field of study that lends more value to your findings.