Wikipedia:Academic use

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Shortcut WP:AUSE

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to distinguished professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything and as a quick "ready reference", to get a sense of a concept or idea.

However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable because Wikipedia is not a reliable source.^[1][2][3]

Many^[4] colleges and universities, as well as public and private secondary schools, have policies that prohibit students from using Wikipedia as their source for doing research papers, essays, or equivalent assignments. This is because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment. When an error is recognized it is usually fixed. However, because Wikipedia cannot monitor thousands of edits made every day, some of those edits could contain vandalism or could be simply wrong and left unnoticed for days, weeks, months, or even years.^[5]

It can be noted that Wikipedia's Good Articles and Featured Articles are some degree more advanced, professional, and generally more credible than an article not labeled Good or Featured. It is because these articles are reviewed heavily and edited many, many times, passing various "tests" before being confirmed Good or Featured, that they can be used for some deeper research than usual. It is Wikipedia's Featured Articles that are especially trustworthy in contrast to normal or even good articles, as they have to pass even more rigorous "tests" to become featured, as they are to be "the best of Wikipedia", "a model for other articles", and thus, a more reliable source than average articles. Even with Featured Articles, though, an uninformed editor may introduce incorrect information.

Follow two simple rules: