Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics. For example, the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodesics_on_an_ellipsoid was mostly written by the world’s foremost expert about geodesics on an ellipsoid, and would be a fine source.

Edit to add an aside: In my opinion it is worth teaching students to look at Wikipedia’s talk pages and history pages to help them critically examine articles.

> Wikipedia is an excellent source about many topics, and a mediocre source about many other topics.

Wikipedia is a moving target, so it could be a terrible source on a topic for the hour you're looking at it, and much better at other times. Trouble is, those other times don't do you any good. That inconsistency means it can't ever really be an "excellent" source.

It's not the inconsistency that disqualifies it from academic citation, it's that it's a tertiary source. The Encyclopedia Brittanica isn't a moving target if you cite the edition, but it's also a tertiary source, so it's just as citable as Wikipedia is, that is to say, not.

It's stupid to ban students from using Wikipedia- sure, Wikipedia isn't of uniformly high quality, but it can be a pretty good encyclopedia. It's just not something you're allowed to cite.

If a school doesn't want students to read Wikipedia at all they really should provide an alternative encyclopedia that the school thinks is high enough quality for students to use, I think you can get subscriptions to Encyclopedia Brittanica now? But that costs actual money.

> It's stupid to ban students from using Wikipedia- sure, Wikipedia isn't of uniformly high quality, but it can be a pretty good encyclopedia. It's just not something you're allowed to cite.

Actually, it's probably pretty smart for schools to "ban" students from using Wikipedia, in order to encourage them to develop habits to use better things. If you let them use Wikipedia for their research, you're putting them in a situation to slouch into using it for most of their research (except for some source laundering at the end).

Sure, if you give them access to a better encyclopedia, that's not a terrible idea, I just think it's silly to have an absolute ban- "read at least two different encyclopedias" instead, maybe? "Cite N secondary sources you didn't find on Wikipedia"? And then they can find out for themselves how good quality wikipedia is.

The thrust of the link here is that they aren't giving them alternatives, and just telling students to throw themselves into Google and hope they find something. Which, yes, isn't a bad skill to learn either- there's stuff to find out there- but it's setting them up for failure.

Have you actually used Wikipedia? Nothing on it is as fast moving as you’re making it out to be.

There are hundreds of unpaid volunteers at all times prowling for and reverting vandalism. The most popular articles are next to impossible to change. And to top it all off, if a large amount of vandalism happens on one article, it just gets reverted and locked for a while so no changes can happen, period.

Yes and books are moving targets as well, we have figured out ways to deal with that, cite the edition. Similar should most definitely cite the access date when you cite wikipedia.

Yep, if you cite Wikipedia (and you should if you're using it as a source) you can use the fixed URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Y_Combinator&oldi...

Then anyone following can see what you saw.

There shouldn't be original research on Wikipedia, so any citation of Wikipedia would be better sourced directly from the reference linked to by Wikipedia.

Circular references aren't only a problem when it involves Wikipedia. You shouldn't ever be citing sources who only claim to be communicating the work of others, outside of being an antiquities scholar when the original works have been lost.

That invented falsehoods “shouldn’t be on Wikipedia” is not much consolation when in practice academics, journalists, and others regularly copy false claims from Wikipedia without independently fact checking them or citing where they got them. Nor does it ultimately much matter whether false or distorted claims were deliberate or just mistakes, and whether they were invented on Wikipedia or invented somewhere else.

> You shouldn't ever be citing sources who only claim to be communicating the work of others

With the exception of secondary research, like systematic reviews. Conclusions are good to have.

> Wikipedia isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia itself,

First-hand direct presence isn't even a valid source for Wikipedia. Part of my account of the founding of amazon.com was removed because it wasn't "backed up by published citable sources". I pointed out that I would be the primary source cited by any such source, and was told that wasn't good enough: the contents had to be published somewhere else and then cited on Wikipedia.

Originally it was permitted, but too many people abused this and wasted a lot of volunteer time. :-(

Now you need to get cited by someone else before wikipedia will accept it. (and preferably someone else needs to be cited too of course)

It's outsourcing verification, and it mostly works, but "small tidbits" like you find in Hacker News comments now and then will likely never make it.

That's a good rule.

Anything you write on Wikipedia is written in "anonymous worker bee" mode. It doesn't count as written by you, even if you wrote it. Any editor could change what you wrote.

If you want to tell the story of something that happened at Amazon, you should write an article on your own website and publish it under your own name. Then anyone can cite it (including Wikipedia) as written by you, and it can't be changed or removed without your consent.

(Some might not think a personal blog is a good enough citation, but that's their problem.)

Personal blogs, facebook posts, self-published papers on arxiv, web forum comments, etc. are not in general credible sources (for Wikipedia’s purposes) but can be in this kind of circumstance.

PaulDavisThe1st: you should definitely publish your anecdote(s) and corrections somewhere, and not just for Wikipedia’s benefit.

> "scholars" citing Wikipedia could very well create a circular reference supporting some falsehood on a Wikipedia article.

Using Wikipedia and citing Wikipedia is perhaps ill advised.

Using Wikipedia and not citing Wikipedia is a real problem and how you create the circle of falsehoods.

This idea of not using Wikipedia introduces students to the academic dishonesty game. Priority one in writing a research paper is that it be a truthful reflection of your research, including limitations, accidents, mistakes, failures, etc, etc.