Does highschool and up allow the use of wikipedia for essays and reports etc? My 8th grade EN teacher is saying no, and I think I've heard this question asked before. Whats the deal?

Maybe some teacher might accept the use of wikipedia, and maybe some do not. It just might be your teacher, and your teacher doesn't allow it, there is nothing you can do. Perhaps because wikipedia's approach that anyone can add content, teachers might feel that the information is not reliable, and would prefer a more approved resource, such as a hard copy encyclopedia, and this is not just high school, college and university professors usually dictate what resources you can and cannot use. Its just the way it is.

Ask your teacher, it's usually their own call. But in all honesty, I wouldn't allow it either if I were a teacher or professor. A site that allows just about anyone to signup and edit pages for an online encyclopedia doesn't seem fully credited to me. It's a great resource but you can't trust or believe everything you read on the internet. Any one person could login, make a few minor changes to make something totally false, etc.

But yeah, ask your teacher cause they're the one who grades your paper.. not anyone else but them!

well the deal as you call it, is that when you are given an essay or an assignment, you are supposed to do your own work. That means, you look up things in references etc and then write in your own words your "own" interpretation. A reason could be that when using material from internet, students very often simply 'copy n paste' stuff, which ofcourse is cheating. And besides what you get from wiki or other websources does have a very important issue, and that is of "correctness and realiblity". Since wiki can be edited by almost any one, it is not recognized as a "realiable" (although in my experience, it is mostly correct)source of information as far as acedamics goes, meaning it has not undergone the extensive proof reading and "corectness" checks.

By the way, copy pasting from sources other than wiki would also count as cheating .....

So my advice to you would be, you may use wiki as a means of getting generall info but refer to other more realiable sources for further information that you can interpret for your assignment. Learning to "find" correct and realated information is also part of learning experience. (By the way wiki can be good source for more formal references).

I hope this clears things up a little bit.

Some say yes, others say no.

Wikipedia is often incorrect, or not accurate. This is due to how its developed, due to its open edit nature, and the broad scope of its contents, it would be impossible to audit all the articles for correctness. As such, some teachers will allow it, while others will not. In any case, basing a whole idea on something said in wikipedia is not a good idea, but wikipedia is a very good starting place to find information that can then be used to google for more accurate articles. And as always, wikipedia articles should have external links to better information you can use, but just be sure to double check for accuracy, like any good report should.

Its really up to the teachers, but some schools/districts seems to be heading to a official policy on this, forbidding citations direct from wikipedia (but as a loophole, wikipedia citations should be backed up by external articles that it should link to .. so read wikipedia, then search to make sure its accurate, and dont just quote wikipedia.

As you go through school, you will constantly have to face the moral dillema: "Is the teacher always right?" 99.99% of the time the answer will need to be "Yes!"

I would save any bucking of the system for cases where you think the teacher is doing something immoral or unethical. Otherwise, roll with the punches---you'll have the whole rest of your life to get even.

Just don't copy and paste from wikipedia. You can use it generally to get an idea of some subjects and indeed in rare instances, wikipedia might be the only online source available to you.

If teachers really want work that is not "copied-and-pasted" they should probably also insist on hand-written essays, not on computer print outs... you would have ten times more trouble in copying manually using a pen and paper from an online source.

People have lost the art of hand writing.

Is any singe source acceptable? Any information should be verified from a second independent source. Obviously, if a specific source has been expressly forbidden then don't use it. As a lecturer in a former life I would let my students use any source to get information but what I was looking for was have they inwardly digested that information and been able to put it into the context that is being discussed. External information must be referenced and obviously a "cut and paste" approach to scholarly activity is forbidden (and often quite easy to spot)

I'm not quite certain, but might there be issues with plagarism here? Let's imagine that you use some unique information that is found on Wikipedia. Now suppose that information is not common knowledge and was placed there by some random person who happened to copy it from someone's research. Even if you somehow find a way to give a proper citation to the authors of the Wikipedia article, you wouldn't actually giving citation to the person who did the actual research. Plagarism is a very tricky subject and very careful measures must be taken to ensure that authors recieve their due credit.

Wikipedia is an excellent source for a very specific sort of information: interpretations of cultural phenonia; exposure to various controversial perspectives on an issue or person. Is Wikipedia useful for personal enrichement? Sure. But is for a source to use on a paper? Generally no.

For fact-oriented information, Wikipedia is highly unreliable. Don't think I am defending traditional Encyclopedias as being any better than Wikipedia. Encyclopedias, even those published by a company, are generally contain inaccuracies. The authors simplify issues so much that the real meaning, the real information is lost. Essentially, the authors aren't experts on the subjects, I am guessing based on the quality of writing, that their job is just to write a bunch of short articles. So you can sometimes run into cases there they confused archaic words with their modern heteronyms. Textbooks are the same way.

Don't get me wrong, Wikipedia is a great site, I read it almost daily. But would I use it for papers? Never.

generally speaking if you are from the place where wiki* things are born and nurtured(not neccessarily in that order though) ... then it should be ok ...


//or else , ask your teacher what he/she want from you ...


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Plagiarism is always a tricky area, but if a piece is properly referenced then there is no issue of plagiarism, even if the piece referenced is found to be plagiarised. That is why referencing is so important. But where possible it is important to verify the material a second independent source. Also many wikipedia pages have themself references to other sites, so using wikipedia as a starting point for your reading can be a fruitful exercise.

In my experience, most teachers and professors will not let you use Wikipedia as a reference because a lot of articles don't list where they get their information. If the Wikipedia article you are looking at has a bibliography, look those up and use them as source material.

Now something about that just seems ironic.

Well... My vote here will not be fully objective, but nearly everybody from my school uses Wikipedia as a source of information.
'copy n paste' is the most popular method of using wikipedia, sometimes pepople are mixing pieces of information from many sites.
But the main thing is that in Poland everyone at school is cheating in some way. It is nearly impossible to become familliar with everything.

My feeling on Wikipedia is to use it to get a general idea of the topic that you are researching. You can then go to the library where there are books (remember those ) and periodicals that you can use to get accurate information. Wikipedia is useful because then you have a broad, albeit shallow and possibly misinformed, view of your topic.

Obviously, any copy and pasting directly from any online source, be it Wikipedia or any other website is just as serious and wrong as copying directly from a book.

Of course, if you use Wikipedia in the way I have suggested above, it must go in your Bibliography. Maybe not each individual page you have glanced at, but certainly en.wikipedia.org and any other pages that you feel you should reference. If you teacher will not allow this, then obviously you shouldn't use it at all.

--Ian