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Thursday, January 25, 2024

Students Using Wikipedia for Research

 from Edutopia:

Teaching Students How to Use Wikipedia as a Tool for Research

Wikipedia has moved far beyond its initial limitations, and is a helpful—and reputable—source for conducting research.

By Mike Caulfield, Sam Wineburg
January 24, 2024

Your middle school teacher threatened to give you an F if you cited it. A reminder hung menacingly in the computer lab: a thick black line slashing the word in two. Even now, you can find blanket dismissals bellowing from college websites: Wikipedia “isn’t a credible resource because anyone is allowed to be a contributor.”

In its early days, Wikipedia had no shortage of problems. Errors propagated like fruit flies. People used the site to spoof their friends and exact revenge on their enemies. The site’s flaws were legendary, sometimes scandalous. A 2006 article accused John Seigenthaler, an assistant to Robert Kennedy in the 1960s, of having a hand in Kennedy’s assassination. The false charge stayed on the site for 132 days before it was finally removed. But not before