Wikipedia Tutorial video

If you have students who are tempted to use the Wikipedia as their primary research tool you might want to show them the following video:

Comments

[Tim McLain]

Here's another video that focuses on the right and wrong ways to make use of both Google and Wikipedia...

http://www.proquestk12.com/demo/Google_ProQuest/Google_ProQuest.shtml

[Cathy Fraser]

Bravo! Loved this slideshow! Says it all and with rousing music to help it stick in the mind.

[Thomas Brevik]

Have a small problem with this video. Why should I trust it? It is not accurate, authoritative, comprehensive or current. If the author had stated: "do not Wikipedia as your ONLY source" I could see his point, but as it stands this is just twiddle-twaddle.

[Flea Circus Research Library]

Using a single source of information for any research project is risky, particularly if the topic is not subject to scientific review. Whilst researching the history flea circuses, I often come across apparently independant sources only to find out that they origionated from the same person. Knowing the whole provenance of a reference is often necessary to determine if references are truely independant.

Interestingly enough the video only uses one source of information so how do we know that is correct? Surely some external references should be used to back this up, otherwise we might conclude that the critism article is the one at fault.

[Flea Circus Research Library]

A report on Slashdot (sorry not backedup with other references) mentions that a false fact on Wikipedia was proved to be correct by reference to spiegel.de. It is believe that the writer from spiegel.de had used Wikipedia as their source hence demonstrating why you need not only multiple sources but provenance of those sources.

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/10/2211220&from=rss

[arthur]

From the slideshow: « In an interview, Wales noted that he gets several emails messages a week from students who complain that Wikipedia has gotten them into "academic hot water." »

Like Wales, I have no sympathy for these student. They don't have a clue. A college student shouldn't use Wikipedia, nor Britannica for that matter, as a primary source. An encyclopedia can be a good starting point, when the article is accompanied by a bibliography. Ideally, it provides the reader with a broad overview of a subject, but this is not a primary research source.