Wikipedia is very good, but ALWAYS look for more than one source.
Wikipedia is a terrible source, but it’s a great source for other sources.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
Wikipedia is a terrible source, but it’s a great source for other sources.
Lol! That’s what makes it a great source, not a terrible one. It compiles a wide variety of sources on different subjects, and cross references them with related subjects, so that additional information is easy to find.
Wikipedia itself should never be what you’re quoting. Quote the sources you find there.
The more you research a specific topic the worse Wikipedia seems as a source. For a general overview before writing a paper and starting real research? It’s great.
For actually researching and compuiling that paper? Terrible. The Wikipedia editors are people too and they cant know everything.
I love Wikipedia and have donated and will donate again but looking back on it there’s a reason that most schools don’t let you source it as Wikipedia and make you look at the actual sources that Wikipedia uses.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
You know, that’s an excellent point. I am surprised that, in 2025, there isn’t an automatic Internet Archive service in place that does that for any link added to a Wiki entry.
ETA: logistically, there’s quite a bit entailed thinking on it more. Besides developing a queue system for existing and new links on Wikipedia’s side, they’d now be non-trivial extra traffic on IA’s side. Probably need to have some deal in place first. Otherwise, Wikipedia would need to run their own archive service, which instantly adds to the overall size. As of Jan 2024, it’s already ~88GB for just raw text.
Wikipedia is a terrible source, but it’s a great source for other sources.
One of the biggest problems with the site is that it doesn’t archive the linked material. So you can have a bunch of dead links to older historical entries, which undermines the value over long terms.
Lol! That’s what makes it a great source, not a terrible one. It compiles a wide variety of sources on different subjects, and cross references them with related subjects, so that additional information is easy to find.
Wikipedia itself should never be what you’re quoting. Quote the sources you find there.
The more you research a specific topic the worse Wikipedia seems as a source. For a general overview before writing a paper and starting real research? It’s great.
For actually researching and compuiling that paper? Terrible. The Wikipedia editors are people too and they cant know everything.
I love Wikipedia and have donated and will donate again but looking back on it there’s a reason that most schools don’t let you source it as Wikipedia and make you look at the actual sources that Wikipedia uses.
You know, that’s an excellent point. I am surprised that, in 2025, there isn’t an automatic Internet Archive service in place that does that for any link added to a Wiki entry.
ETA: logistically, there’s quite a bit entailed thinking on it more. Besides developing a queue system for existing and new links on Wikipedia’s side, they’d now be non-trivial extra traffic on IA’s side. Probably need to have some deal in place first. Otherwise, Wikipedia would need to run their own archive service, which instantly adds to the overall size. As of Jan 2024, it’s already ~88GB for just raw text.
I could swear that on some occasions Wikipedia sources have sent me to a wayback machine archived site
Often a better link than the original, since Wayback is better supported and not prone to the whims of a billionaire oligarch.
But it isn’t mandated nor is it integrated with Wikipedia.