Many students assume that the online, free encyclopedia, Wikipedia (Links to an external site.) is a valid, authoritative and useful reference source for their scholarly work as a student at NVCC. Many teachers say that Wikipedia is garbage and should never be used. Which is it?
Consider such questions as these to help you organize your paper:
Is the specific information contained in both the Wikipedia and BA entries the same or different? How different?
How much have the Wikipedia and BA entries changed (or not changed) over a period of at least six months?
Do we have any idea of the credentials/authority of the authors who created the Wikipedia and BA entries?
Do the entries footnote sources of reference information and provide suggested reading and websites? From your writing in the course, you already note that cited evidence is extremely important!
Your overall conclusion should then assess how does the Wikipedia information compare with the information in BA? Which encyclopedia do you find most useful for the term that you have selected.
Since you are writing a comparison, you need to be fair. For example, if you examine how many times Wikipedia changed, then you should examine how many times BA changed.
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Is Wikipedia good or bad? That is partly what you are answering in this assignment, but I would also like to point out that a Wikipedia article can often be an excellent starting point for research on a topic or a quick source of general information. For example, I use Wikipedia all the time if I am looking for the birth or death dates of a historical figure. of if I am looking for suggested sources of more information, as Wikipedia entries always have footnotes and a bibliography of books and websites. Finally, Wikipedia can be extremely useful on topics of relatively newer historical events. For example, in my HIS 242 (History of Russia II) course, I ask that students check the entry for the Beslan School Hostage crisis. (Links to an external site.)
Wikipedia is often also a pretty good source for recent cultural events or people, such as Camila Cabello (Links to an external site.).
