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Is Wikipedia Underrated? - Page 2

post #16 of 22
10/27/09 at 2:42pm
Wikipedia is a spearhead to deeper research. It provides a good overall summery with (hopefully) sources that you can then go and getter a better, in-depth, understanding from. One of my professors said that it's a great site and people should use it but you can't quote it and you can't use it as a source on your paper.
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post #17 of 22
10/27/09 at 3:44pm
it helped me through uni
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post #18 of 22
10/27/09 at 4:07pm
Underrated on the Internet, overrated in Japan.
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post #19 of 22
10/27/09 at 6:08pm
Wikipedia is a fantastic source if, say, you want to find out George Washington's birthday. It is also a great introduction to many subjects in the hard sciences.

However, almost all Wiki articles about businesses are written primarily by those businesses. Further, the CIA itself has written over 2000 of the articles on Wikipedia. A complete and unbiased article is hard to find.

Still, it is a great starting point for research, and anyone with at least 4 brain cells should be able to sort out the useful information.
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post #20 of 22
10/27/09 at 6:42pm
Its a nice place to sometimes start research along side something like Google Books. Its not where you want to end though.
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post #21 of 22
10/27/09 at 8:55pm
It's also very useful for finding out about things that might otherwise result in less than savoury hits on google. The interlinked articles can be fascinating to click through, Encarta used to have something like this when it was still around.

I was researching new methods of using a type of point triangulation and almost made a huge mistake in my paper because I took a wikipedia entry at face value. The mistake in the article was very subtle! I learned my lesson; now I am just a tad more wary of wikipedia

Wikipedia is king when it comes to esoteric information few people care about, but caveat emptor if you're doing something based on what's in an article.
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post #22 of 22
10/28/09 at 1:06pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrGreen View Post
It's overrated.
Everyone links it, everyone loves it. Only the critics are using their head.
Its not the issue that anyone can edit it at any time, its the fact that it is not peer reviewed correctly that is the main issue.

You know what is underrated? The good old book.
Books are by no means immune to the sort of misinformation from which Wikipedia occasionally suffers...
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