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Re:School vs. Wikipedia by mountainb on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:26PM (#33123468)
Horsehockey. Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource. Occasionally, its citations can be cited. But generally, if you have ever tried to actually follow those citations, you will frequently discover that the authors and editors of the page are full of shit, and you will see why professionals tend to issue the blanket recommendation to avoid ever using it for anything.

Minute for minute, research time is better spent on a real resource than it is spent trying to sift something useful from the trillion page shit-vault that is Wikipedia.

Newspapers and textbooks aren't serious sources either, which is why academic research manuals usually forbid their usage except in some specific circumstances (such as using them as primary sources, for illustrative purposes, as evidence of what media reported at the time, etc.).

Re:School vs. Wikipedia by whatshisface on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:31PM (#33123547)
These threads always reveal that different people have had wildly different experiences with Wikipedia. I wish everyone would clarify what those experiences actually were so we could answer questions like "is it only some parts of Wikipedia."
Re:School vs. Wikipedia by mordae on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:42PM (#33123713)
If you date your citation, you can easily find it in the page history. Revisions are immutable.
Re:School vs. Wikipedia by AlotOfReading on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:33PM (#33123583)
What are you talking about? Wikipedia has a perfectly adequate page on how to cite it [1] and provides tools that account for how dynamic it is in generating citations. Newspapers and textbooks are also regularly cited to demonstrate general facts of knowledge and are usually accepted anywhere other tertiary sources would also be appropriate.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia

Re:School vs. Wikipedia by jacobolus on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:37PM (#33123638)
Okay, you don’t like Wikipedia, newspapers, or textbooks as sources.

What about journal papers and monographs published by academic publishing houses? I read academic works on a daily basis, and they are chock full of nonsense, even from high-impact journals. Sometimes just sloppy scholarship uncritically repeating dubious claims, but other times intentional fabrications. In the academic literature you can find false history, faked study data, invented interviews, legends presented as factual, promotion of snake oil, apologies for genocide, and whatever else you might worry about in a source.

Re:School vs. Wikipedia by gmfawcett on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:35PM (#33123615)
It's trivial to cite a specific snapshot of a Wikipedia page. A citation isn't an authoritative source in itself, its sole purpose is to point the reader at the source of information, whatever it may be. There are plenty of bona fide academic citations that point at sources of terrible quality.
Re:School vs. Wikipedia by raegis on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:34PM (#33123607)
To be fair, you can cite a Wikipedia page along with the last revision date. And the complete revision history is available, I believe. I would expect researchers to include revision dates with any Wikipedia citation.
Re:School vs. Wikipedia by nico on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:34PM (#33123609)
> because it is not a static resource

What do you consider a “static resource”?

Re:School vs. Wikipedia by cycomanic on Friday October 07, 2022 @12:53PM (#33123894)
Those are some incredibly broad and strong statements. What do you mean by professionals? What field? I know plenty academics who often start looking at Wikipedia as a first entry to a topic, and it is not uncommon to cite Wikipedia for example for a common definition. Yes for many things you would not cite Wikipedia because you would rather cite primary sources. That's also why I don't understand your statement about newspapers, there are plenty of fields (e.g. Political science, history) where newspapers magazines are important primary sources. The argument that things change is also week, books change as well so we cite the Edition, similarly you should cite Wikipedia (as well as other online sources) with a retrieval date.
Re:School vs. Wikipedia by jefftk on Friday October 07, 2022 @04:26PM (#33126503)
> Wikipedia cannot be cited because it is not a static resource

Regardless of the merits of citing Wikipedia, if you do want to cite it you can reference a specific revision. Or include the date and time you accessed it, from which anyone else can determine the revision. This puts Wikipedia in a much better position than citing URLs in general, which are mostly not version-controlled.