I remember learning how to write a research paper in high school and being flat-out scared to use Wikipedia because it was so stressed by my teachers that Wikipedia was pretty much the worst source you could use when doing research. I began to associate using Wikipedia with lazy, horrible research. I stayed true to this way of thinking throughout college and the many scientific research papers I wrote. My world was turned upside down in July of 2022 when Jeff Utech informed my class of MIT graduate students that... Wikipedia is reliable. It is reliable and might even be more reliable than other trusted articles or textbooks. This was so exciting to hear but also a bit infuriating because so much of my life in academia I had not known this and therefore had not been able to reap the benefits! I am grateful to know how Wikipedia grades its pages and how there are hundreds of eyes that review a Wikipedia page and continue to change it as new information surfaces. I hope to give this newfound information to my students, but more than that I want to give my students the answer to why it is reliable and give them the tools to assess the reliability for themselves. I think that it's important to have these discussions in class not only for scientific research but also so that our students begin to question why they trust the sources they do for all information. When doing my own research online for an article that talked about the reliability of Wikipedia, it's grading system, and the process of review, I had to search pretty hard to find any information on this at all. This shows me that many people are still in the same boat I was in for twenty-four years and that for many, Wikipedia still remains an untapped resource.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/wikipedia-the-most-reliable-source-on-the-internet
No comments:
Post a Comment