Listen to Wikipedia, not your professors - Indiana Daily Student Options

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<img alt="" height="1" width="1" />Listen to [b]Wikipedia, not your professors[/b]
Indiana Daily Student
By Nico Perrino | IDS His class was just assigned a research paper and told it needed to use five outside sources. “Online sources are fine so long as they're reputable,” the teacher responds. “Things like Wikipedia don't count. Just use common sense, ...



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[thekohser]

Comment:

Nico, your assessment of Wikipedia reveals a juvenile depth of research skills. For example, I suggest you read Nicholas Carr's critique of the Nature "study" that was a news gimmick, not a peer-reviewed exercise. Even still, Wikipedia came out measurably worse than Encyclopedia Britannica. I would also suggest you take a look at this example of Wikipedia's so-called self-correcting power: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_y...10113346AALxOqU

If you're open-minded enough, I would also point you to a presentation I delivered recently to a class of gifted and journalism students at a local high school, which you'll want to view in slide show mode: http://www.wikipediareview.com/File:Use_At_Your_...003_version.ppt

Another problem with Wikipedia is that while juvenile minds may come to think it is the best source on the Internet for all subjects, this is not at all true. Compare Wikipedia's article about "consumer economy" (which comes up #1 in a web search for the term) with an article on a competing website (which comes up #19 in a web search):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_economy
http://www.wikipediareview.com/Consumer_economy

Which article is more thorough and better-sourced?

I realize you are only a college student. With time, you will hopefully become more educated about the pernicious elements at work in the world around you.