Using Wikipedia in Research

If you’ve ever had to do a research paper before, the title of this article may surprise you. We’re all told in school that Wikipedia is never a good source to use for research because it is a wiki space that anyone can edit. This is true, but I’m going to tell you that you’ve been using Wikipedia all wrong, and it is in fact an excellent source to find information on a topic.

If you don’t know what a wiki is, it’s basically a site the gives information on a specific topic that anyone can edit at any time. This poses a problem for Wikipedia because it makes it an invalid source of information in research. However, it always surprises me how few people actually know how to use Wikipedia properly. If you scroll down to the bottom of any Wikipedia article, you’ll see a references section. This is the bibliography that denotes every single source from which the information in the article was derived. You can click on those links and read the books listed there to find the information you’re looking for. In this way, Wikipedia becomes less of a wiki and more of a search engine. This applies not only to Wikipedia, but to any wiki, really.

This method of research is absolutely great for writing assignments in school or just for research in general. There are, in some cases, articles that do not have anything listed in the references section. These are the articles you’ll want to be careful of. If the author hasn’t provided a source to prove his information correct, it’s probably not an article you should take very seriously. There may also be a “see also” section following the article. In many cases, this can be very helpful also in finding information on sub topics pertaining to your research.

Please pass this information on. I hate to see people struggle with research when a perfectly good source of information is staring them in the face, just because their teacher or professor told them Wikipedia is a “banned” website.