Saturday, April 2, 2011

Use Wikipedia Like a Boss

So you realize that you have a 7 page paper due tomorrow morning and you haven't started it yet because you win at life. So you grab a cup of coffee and prepare for the long night of fun and rainbows ahead of you. After formulating your idea and writing an outline you are going to need a good source or two. 

This is where Wikipedia comes in. You know how your high school teacher always told you never to use wikipedia? Well im going to let you in on a little secret... SHE HAD NO IDEA WHAT SHE WAS TALKING ABOUT!!! (thats probably why she teaches high school in the first place) Wikipedia is a great place to find a source for a paper, just dont use it as THE source.

When an article is written on wikipedia, the author will list sources. Have you ever noticed the blue numbers at the end of some sentences? Thats a link to the source citation and its a great place to find your sources. Just make sure its a credible source and not some blog like the one you're reading now. 

2 comments:

  1. Wikipedia can be of real aid in subjects, and absolutely none in others

    For example, Engineering related wiki articles are often constantly developed and ammended by academics, with credible sources cited as practice

    But with say Law, you wiki a specific case, you will get nothing, and if you do it will be very brief and of no real depth unless the case was of particular significance to society

    Just from experience :)

    Mike.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I always use Wiki for research papers.

    ReplyDelete