I think "the point" you are getting at is what academic standards for undergraduate research are, and, perhaps more importantly, what the goal of such assignments are. Most undergraduates are not assigned papers on topics because the instructor doesn't know about them or really wants the undergraduate to know about them -- it is usually an exercise in whether the student can properly do research, synthesize it, and write it up according to the tropes of the discipline.
As someone else noted, citing Wikipedia is probably at about the same level as citing Encyclopedia Brittanica, though it probably falls even a bit lower than that since 1. Wikipedia is not know for its accuracy or reliability and 2. it is even easier to access than EB and could in that respect reflect a lesser amount of effort made under some interpretations.
All of this is, of course, just one possible rationale for why people might penalize for citing Wikipedia. Whether instructors think that much about it on the whole is probably unlikely, but they do probably get sick of seeing so many citations to one electronic resource, especially one without any expert-based content control.
FF
On 11/21/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
Isn't this whole argument about academic institutions penalizing people for citing encyclopedias missing the point?
If the Wikipedia article is any good it should cite sources, and if you're at a university you have access to those sources and should check them and cite those where appropriate.
Suppose two of my students turn in essays on the Milgram experiment, one citing Wikipedia as the source and obviously relying on the Wikipedia article on that experiment, the other citing Milgram's paper and Blass' fairly recent critiques, and demonstrating a knowledge of the material. Well odds are that both went to Wikipedia first, but the second one actually did his homework. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l