Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Im in love as fuck with wikipedia at the minute.

Students have never had it so easy.

any student that relies on wikipedia is insane, it's one of the most inaccurate information sources on the net.

Its great for a little background knowledge, but because it relies on the general public to populate it, the information is often inaccurate or highly biased.

Yeah i know. The other day i was reading about English Bull Terriers and it said they had six legs.

But im using it for the First World War, so it should be alright.

its good for technical data, helped me with loads of stuff at Uni

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/06/15/wikipedia_can_damage_your_grades/

listen to the man.

'the site, which is popular with teenagers and the unemployed'



There is alot of innaccuracies on wikipedia, but things like wars and that tend to be quite accurate.

I find Google books and scholar are much better.

I would not have been able to hand my dissertation in if it werent for Google Books. I hadnt referenced the pages of my quotes from the books I had used, and I have given myself two hefty blisters thumbing through books to try to find the quotes. Then Google books popped into my mind, and I managed to sort out the full 12000 words in 10hours. lol

not entirely sure i'd agree, imo it's a very useful first stop for information, and is generally pretty accurate on most topics. It has it's limitations, and you shouldn't rely on it or probably quote direct from it, but most of the material on their is referenced with links to the source material, so you can use wiki to quickly get links to relevant source material that you can quote from.

as with any source of secondary research material you need to understand how the data was collected & what it's limitations are etc. but IMO it's better than most general info sites on the web, though you really need to dig through the source material as well as the actual wiki overview.

eta : actually i think I'm probably agreeing with you as you definately shouldn't rely on wiki as your only source of information, and it can be biased and incomplete as well, but it shouldn't be discounted and can be very well researched and unbiased as well.

wikipedia is alright for background knowledge on things, but as said, i wouldnt rely on it. we've been told we're not allowed to use it at uni

It's good, you just have to check the links that it gives you, to ensure it comes from an uptodate and reliable source.

:wub:

You cant really beat Encarta 96 though can ya

Ha ha. Remeber Encarta... and that shit as fuck game on it!