I was talking to my wife and one of her friends at dinner tonight at a restaurant. I had spoken with my wife before and my youngest daughter about this before but really hadn't had a definitive conversation like we had tonight before. I was saying I like to use Wikipedia as a research tool. My wife and her friend just had a daughter each graduate from the same prestigious prep school and both said to me I shouldn't use wikipedia because often the people who compile information and research for Wikipedia are not experts in that particular field they are writing about.
My point of view is that Wikipedia often has the most information (also footnoted) on a given subject. However, they reiterated that most private prep schools and 4 year private and public colleges won't accept Wikipedia for research even though many public schools through Junior college or sophomore college level will.
I was sort of testing them to see if this was just elitism or if there was something more to this. I also asked the question, "I haven't found as good a source as wikipedia is on most subjects. Their response was that one should look at the top ten responses when you google any subject which also made a lot of sense to me.
So, what came out of this for me is I'm still going to use wikipedia because I find it the most comprehensive source on most subjects but I will also go to sites that represent people in that field of endeavor who specialize in that subject more as well. So, hopefully I can bring you even higher quality information than I have been doing all along in further refining my research methods at this blog.
No comments:
Post a Comment