Comments on: Week 8 – Wikipedia

By: arbeez

arbeez — Sat, 02 May 2026 03:21:01 +0000

Wikipedia is definitely overly stigmatized within academics. Is it scholarly? No. But like you mentioned, it can provide key information needed to conduct one’s research. I find its bibliography feature to be the most convenient. It’s a great method to finding more details on claims. I think the reason its been so heavily stigmatized in school is because of its convenience. It’s easy to use it as a crutch and hinder the research process. As great as it is to acknowledge its usefulness, it’s also important to note why a non-collegiate student should avoid it. Not that I advocate for a full ban of Wikipedia K-12, but I think it does require some restraint that not everyone is willing to follow. Sort of like learning the rules before you break them.

By: li_05

li_05 — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:15:00 +0000

I found it very interesting to read about all the discourse surrounding Wikipedia. I’ve had teacher that have threatened to fail an entire paper if Wikipedia was used. He wasn’t a bad teacher, or even a particularly hard grader, he was so anti-Wikipedia. Mentioning it or if he saw our tabs open to Wikipedia would result in a long speech for the class! I remember when I first found the reference section of Wikipedia without getting caught and I wrote a paper using some of those references and when I turned it in I was surprised to find that he never found out despite him guaranteeing he would find out if we used it. Looking back I do understand why there was hesitation to use Wikipedia, however, by the time I was using it an academic capacity those bugs were already fixed and the process of adding new information was completely limited. I had friends who tried and within seconds were flagged and their “information” was erased from the site. Its such a useful tool that has such a bad stigma around it unfortunately. I still love using it to this day.

By: tacobell-CEO

tacobell-CEO — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:17:57 +0000

I will never understand why Wikipedia is talked about in schools the way it is. In my experience, all throughout high school we were not only told that Wikipedia isn’t a source (which is true!) but we were also told that Wikipedia is never reliable. This makes a lot of sense until you try to edit a Wikipedia page! Like you say in your post, it can be really difficult to edit a Wikipedia article, and there is a real culture around Wikipedia editing. In the case that misinformation does end up on the site, there are editors who have their “niche” that watch certain pages like a hawk. With a Wikipedia account, you can get email notifications when a page is edited. I completely understand saying “you cannot site Wikipedia” and encouraging middle and high schoolers to explore other resources, but the total writing-off of Wikipedia feels icky to me.

By: ipadbaby22

ipadbaby22 — Wed, 29 Apr 2026 05:13:31 +0000

Especially after working on the Verification Quest it shocks me how much Wikipedia is vilified in school; I have even been told not to use it in college courses for information I’m not sure where to find elsewhere, like dates of birth and such. And, as you point out the site offers plenty of sourcing through hyperlinks and footnotes. As well as protective features like the lock symbol and notices when information is lacking a strong source.

As you explain, Wikipedia can be extremely useful as a starting point of research. I think if schools stressed this aspect and still had requirements like 3+ academic sources, students would have stronger skills both on the Wikipedia site and while performing research online.