It’s Wikipedia Day, and in honor of the free-content online encyclopedia that has turned the world over as the one source you shouldn’t use for any type of research, we decided to turn the table and actually take a look at some of the smart ways you can use it to gather information.
Use It To Get A General Idea
With any big school or university project, the beginning stages of research are all about getting a big-picture perspective on the topic. That’s where Wikipedia comes in; you can use it to get a general feel for your topic by skim reading through several pages. Then, you can dive deeper and check more in-depth resources to write your paper.
Longer Equals Better
When reading through a Wikipedia page, there’s this fun trick to check the maturity of the article. It’s really simple: the longer the article, the better, as it indicates that more work, effort, and contribution was put into it as well as research.
Dive To The References At The End
With any Wikipedia page, avoid all the information at the top of the page and just scroll to the very bottom where you’ll find the footnotes and references. These are the original, primary sources of information that were used to write the page.
Clicking the hyperlinked footnotes will direct you to a wealth of primary information that’s much more reliable than Wikipedia and can be used in your research.
Take A Look At The Talk Page
Not many people know about this, but on Wikipedia, there’s a special section called the “Talk Page.” This section offers readers a look at the history of the article, including when it was created, how many people contributed to it, and how the contributors communicate with each other. It’s a discussion page used by contributors which will give readers a more behind-the-scenes look at the creators of the page.
By taking into consideration all these tricks and tactics, you’ll get the most out of Wikipedia, but at the end of the day, you still cannot use it as a source, and for any research, you need to have reliable primary sources to write up an authentic study.
