2008/8/11 <WJhonson(a)aol.com>om>:
Interesting.
As to the point about secondary citation, it is standard practice in classes
that teach about research and writing to cover how to do secondary citation.
For example look at
_http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/apadocu.html_
(
http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/apadocu.html)
The way we should approach citing a reference *through* someone else's
citation is
"so and so as cited in such and such"
It's really a matter of courtesy that we cite *in some way* the actual
source which we actually consulted. Of course that isn't the issue here. It
would appear, reading-between-the-lines, that exact quotes or paraphrases were
lifted from the Wikipedia article without either en-quoting, or acknowledging
the source whatsoever. Or perhaps merely acknowledging it by way of a simple
bibliography, which really isn't sufficient if you are quoting.
As I understand it, that's for what you've only looked at the "such
and such" source and are just taking its word about what it says in
"so and so". In that case, your source for the information is "such
and such", so that's the source you need to cite. That's a bad idea,
generally, though. It's just better to actually find a copy of "so and
so" and then cite that directly. Especially when you have no idea who
the person claiming that "so and so" includes the information is,
which is the case with Wikipedia.