[WikiEN-l] The dangers of not citing Wikipedia

[Thomas Dalton]

2008/8/11  <WJhonson at aol.com>:
> 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.