A Quick Wikipedia Trick

May 23, 2009

A typical Wikipedia page

Wikipedia. Millions of people use it everyday, and it’s one of the most easily dependable websites to rely upon… which, in itself, is a huge problem. Most Schools, Colleges and Universities don’t accept Wikipedia as a reliable source of information because it can be “Edited by anyone”.

Somehow they seem to think that being publicly editable and being wrong are the same thing… which, in itself, is misguided and stupid. Have you ever tried to edit anything on Wikipedia? I sure have. The moment I changed it, it was changed back. It was something entirely correct, too (I wrote “Microsoft does not publicly plan to release a Mac version of this software” on a page about Microsoft Communicator 2008, or something similar). Or at least it was under my impression that it was correct; if there was to be a Mac version, it would have been listed on Wikipedia. I think the only few contribution I’ve made on Wikipedia that hasn’t been removed is a photo I took of punk-rock band “The Offspring” at Download Festival 2008. Everything else is gone.

So for this magical “anyone can edit it” website, I sure can’t edit it, and I’m one of the people they’re referring to… Unless you have strong evidence of what you’re writing that is. And what’s classed as strong evidence? A website that has at least 90% accuracy on the subject, and is registered as a reliable source of information (not just any old person’s thoughts. For example, I could publish an article on this blog saying “Britney Spears has had another child” and it wouldn’t be accepted as evidence. Something like BBC News, for example, would be).

Anyway, what I was about to get onto was that there is any easy way to still use Wikipedia to do your research, but get around the stupid idea that Wikipedia is unreliable. Drum roll please…

Wikipedia pages' references

At the bottom of almost every Wikipedia page is a list of references that make up the wikipedia page. Wikipedia is basically just those sources combined together and written in a different way. Every page has them. Even pages about, well, anything! But if you’re not allowed to list wikipedia as a reference, you can use Wikipedia’s references. Most people don’t think anything of them and just overlook them, or don’t even scroll down far enough to realize they exist. They don’t really make sense to anyone… just a list of unrelated links. But they’re not, and if you see the little links with a number in next to what you’re reading, click it and you’ll be taken to the reference. Just go to the website, print it out, link it, whatever. You now have a valid reference with literally the effort of going to Wikipedia and searching for what you’re looking for. It speeds up a lot of time and gives much more reliable results.

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