[WikiEN-l] The dangers of not citing Wikipedia

[Fred Bauder]

The problem is that we have tens, even hundreds, of thousands of students
who routinely consult Wikipedia when doing research, but don't cite it,
and perhaps are not allowed to. There are a lot of folks who don't
understand plagiarism, thinking it applies to copying material, but not
to use of information.

The typical response is "Well, I look at the Wikipedia article, but don't
use it. I use the sources it cites... Using those sources is using
information from the article. They are part of it. To say nothing of
orienting themselves regarding the subject by reading, and using the
ideas from the Wikipedia article.

Fred

> 2008/8/10 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/09/AR2008080901453.html
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
>
> You mean you may run into some power tripping professors. There isn't
> much to be done about that problem.
>
> I find the "despite an 8,000-some-volume library and the digital
> online collection with access to more than 300 databases" thing to be
> worrying.
>
> 8000 books isn't actually very many particularly when you consider
> that most will be out of date (if they aren't your field of study is
> effectively dead and it's time to move elsewhere well either that or
> you are studying core maths) and a pretty high percentage of the
> remainder will be written to allow the author to push their point of
> view rather than actively inform. 300 databases sounds good until you
> realise that we have no idea if they are on topic and how database is
> being defined. Access to more than 300 databases could mean that they
> have access to a bunch of back issues of chemistry physics and biology
> journals quite possible if they just have access to the standard
> University of Virginia research database.
>
>
> --
> geni
>
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