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[radiojedi]

I ban my students from using it.  I take off points if they have it in the Works Cited. But several of those sneaky little bastards still think that can just copy and paste from that awful site and it's their "speech."  What I fail to understand about my students is that they have to submit their scripts to Turn It In and they have to analyze their Turn It In reports for plagiarism.  This means they can see as easily as I can that they copied from that damned source when they know better!

[Schnerby]

It's banned at western universities for a good reason...

It is useful for one thing, gathering resources. Sometimes when I was a little short on resources I would check Wikipedia's citations at the bottom of a page. There were links to some good articles there - things like peer reviewed journals which really are good sources of information. Unfortunately, this is beyond many students.

Apart from that Wikipedia is only useful for the most general of enquiries to allow you to narrow down your search to more valuable things.

[Pashley]

Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org) was started by one of the WP founders as an attempt to move toward a higher quality encyclopedia. No anonymous changes, expert editors,  system of "constables" to keep discussions civil, ...

So far, it is fairly small but it is growing; there's some really good material, and some enormous gaps, but not much rubbish. It needs more contributors in both author & editor roles.

If anyone has a bit of spare time, I need feedback on something I wrote there, an article on block ciphers (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Block_cipher). Main question is whether it actually makes sense to someone who does not know the area.

[MK]

It is useful for one thing, gathering resources. Sometimes when I was a little short on resources I would check Wikipedia's citations at the bottom of a page. There were links to some good articles there - things like peer reviewed journals which really are good sources of information.

Yeah, as a teacher and a Master's student I use Wikipedia as a starting point all the time, but when it comes to my students using it, it's one of those 'don't do as I do, do as I say' things. Dangerous if used wrongly.

[radiojedi]

Citizendium (http://en.citizendium.org) was started by one of the WP founders as an attempt to move toward a higher quality encyclopedia. No anonymous changes, expert editors,  system of "constables" to keep discussions civil, ...

So far, it is fairly small but it is growing; there's some really good material, and some enormous gaps, but not much rubbish. It needs more contributors in both author & editor roles.

If anyone has a bit of spare time, I need feedback on something I wrote there, an article on block ciphers (http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Block_cipher). Main question is whether it actually makes sense to someone who does not know the area.

This is really encouraging to hear of this alternative. 

[kitano]

for what it is wikipedia is amazing imo

you can look up pretty much anything and get a rundown. the amount of things i've learned from there is staggering. it should absolutely be banned from being used as a source for study because it just isn't, but it isn't meant to be that.

personally if i was marking uni papers and someone used wiki as a reference page i would treat it the same as if someone cited 'something i heard in the pub'

i absolutely love it tho, for example last few months i have been interested in ancient gods and i have spent all my breaks reading up about egyptian, roman, zoroastrian etc gods on wiki. it isn't the same as reading a book about them of course, but thanks to wiki i have a rough idea what loads of them are called and what they did

big up

[radiojedi]

for what it is wikipedia is amazing imo

you can look up pretty much anything and get a rundown. the amount of things i've learned from there is staggering. it should absolutely be banned from being used as a source for study because it just isn't, but it isn't meant to be that.

personally if i was marking uni papers and someone used wiki as a reference page i would treat it the same as if someone cited 'something i heard in the pub'

i absolutely love it tho, for example last few months i have been interested in ancient gods and i have spent all my breaks reading up about egyptian, roman, zoroastrian etc gods on wiki. it isn't the same as reading a book about them of course, but thanks to wiki i have a rough idea what loads of them are called and what they did

big up

I use it to look up information on bands and other "non-scholarly" things when I am quickly looking for information. 

[Escaped Lunatic]

I gave a research assignment to some American middle school students (during what I very generously refer to as "My year in hell").  I would have been thrilled if they could have actually listed a wikipedia url.

Most of the referrals (despite CLEAR instructions not to do this) were one of two things:

www.google.com
www.ask.com

I swear some of them got more stupid as the year progressed.

My worst day with Chinese middle school students was better than my best day with American middle school students.

[AMonk]

Were they percgance 7th Graders, EL?  Sixes are usually kinda cool, and 8's start to be a bit better....but the 7's!

[Escaped Lunatic]

Had all 3 grade levels in different classes.  Each had their own unique methodologies of stupidity, but almost none of them could understand the concept of referencing anything other than the search engine they used to find it.
 

[MK]

almost none of them could understand the concept of referencing anything other than the search engine they used to find it.

That's funny...I teach academic writing on a university foundation year, and we always have the same problem at first, but we usually manage to beat the habit out of them get them using some semblance of good referencing by the end of the first semester at least.

[Foscolo]

I absolutely love Wikipedia. Before that I used Microsoft Encarta which was very limited in comparison, and had to be paid for. But you have to take it as you would anything you read here in the Saloon, for example - nothing is guaranteed to be error free.

Having said that, I was looking up some stuff about evolutionary biology recently, and somebody had added in some Creationist claptrap. It's probably been deleted already, but it's a disquieting sign.

[ArialFont]

I like wikipedia. If I just need an idea of what something is or a nice summary to clarify something in my head, it's very useful. Referencing it in a paper, however, would be like referencing a search engine. It's just laziness.

[radiojedi]

I like wikipedia. If I just need an idea of what something is or a nice summary to clarify something in my head, it's very useful. Referencing it in a paper, however, would be like referencing a search engine. It's just laziness.

I seriously have seen people reference www.google.com in a Works Cited page. 

[MK]

I seriously have seen people reference www.google.com in a Works Cited page.

Me too