Evaluating Websites: What about Wikipedia?

Started in 2001, Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia with entries that can be created, added, and edited by anyone. Wikipedia is great as a general encyclopedia, but at the college level, your professors are looking for more than that. When it comes to academic research, there are some great ways Wikipedia can help you, Wikipedia articles contain many links to newspaper articles, books (often with ISBN numbers), radio programming, web-based sources, etc. But using a Wikipedia entry as a source can compromise the quality expected in an academic assignment.

• Wikipedia is not an Academic Source. It says so on Wikipedia.

  Wikipedia is not considered a credible source. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from freshman students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible or authoritative source.[1][2][3]
• Wikipedia Criticisms
• Researching with Wikipedia (according to Wikipedia)

  According to the Wikipedia article:
  First you should question the appropriateness of citing any encyclopedia as a source or reference. This is not simply a Wikipedia-specific issue, as most secondary schools and institutions of higher learning do not consider encyclopedias, in general, a proper citable source. Citation of Wikipedia in research papers has been known to result in a failing grade.[2][3][4]