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Jialin Wang
Prof. Elizabeth Hart
ENGL 101
7 October 2014
Response to Why You Can't Cite Wikipedia in My Class
Living in this modern society of booming technology, Internet plays an important role in
our lives. Today, as students, we often use the Internet to complete our research and gain
information. Wikipedia, as a powerful online open source encyclopedia, contains enormous
information and data. However, is Wikipedia an acceptable citation? Is it accurate? Can we use it
as a research tool? In the article, Why You Cant Cite Wikipedia in My Class, Waters states his
opinion that Wikipedia is not a proper citation for research, and I agree and believe that
Wikipedia is not a reliable and accurate citation which is supported by verifiable facts and
evidences.
In the article, Why You Can't Cite Wikipedia in My Class, historian Neil L. Waters
explains the reasons why students should not use Wikipedia as a citation in the class. Waters uses
his experience to show that erroneous information occurs in Wikipedia and it is not an
acceptable citation. He compares the both sides of Wikipedia, pros and cons. Also Waters
states that Google or other search engines usually guide visitors to Wikipedia before all else, and
a lot of people visit or agree doesn't mean it is accurate. Waters applauds Wikipedia could be a
fine place to start research, but it cannot serve subsequent stages of research. At the end,
Waters points out his opinion again; Wikipedia is not as rigorous as published books, journals or
other Scholarly resources.
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We should not fully rely on any sources for important information especially anonymous
resources. Everyone makes mistakes. Wikipedia is a place where everyone can publish, cheaply
and quickly, so it may have much erroneous information we dont know. Just like what happened
to Waters students, his students used the incorrect information in Wikipedia, and this wrong
information is still highly misleading students. Additionally, can you trust anyone when you
dont even know who they are? Absolutely not! Similarly, there are many anonymous editors in
Wikipedia. Unlike dedicated and knowledgeable editors, these editors, may through ignorance,
sloppy research, or, on occasion, malice or zeal, can and do introduce or perpetuate errors in fact
or interpretation (Waters 368). These erroneous and malicious entries could stay uncorrected for
a long time.
The contributor with high popularity often prevails in Wikipedia. As Waters said,
Popularity begets ease of use, and ease of use begets the democratization of access to
information. The validation of the entry depends on a vote. It indicates that often the contributor
who wins is not the one with the most reasonable and comprehensive information, but rather
the one with the strongest popularity. Validation is not conformity to verifiable facts or
weighing of interpretations and evidences but conformity to popular opinion (Waters 369). The
focus of our search should be on finding accurate information with a full picture of an issue,
rather than believing the first thing you read, and it is important to verify information by
confirming with multiple sources.
Reliable information cant be done without experts, but there are few accurate and active
contributors in Wikipedia. Accurate information need to be verified through multiple researches,
and it takes time and efforts. Do you believe an expert will really spend a bunch of time to edit
and work on the entries in Wikipedia? All scholarly newspapers and journals will be examined
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multiple times by experts before they are published, but Wikipedia doesnt. Just like Waters
asked, If you rely on experts, do you pay them or depend on their voluntarism? In a word,
Wikipedia cannot be used as a citation because the information there is not as accurate as
scholarly journals and newspapers.
In conclusion, we can use Wikipedia to start research, but we cant use it as a reliable
evidence or citation in our research because it is not as accurate as scholarly newspapers or
journals; also, it isnt supported by verifiable evidences or weighting of interpretations. To make
Wikipedia more reliable, it needs many necessary changes. First step, the contributors must leave
a record of their real names. Second, it should add a more rigorous fact checking system and
should be enough to cover 1.6 million entries.










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Works Cited
Reid, Stephen. "Why You Can't Cite Wikipedia in My Class." The Prentice Hall Guide for
College Writers. Tenth ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, 2014. 367-70.
Print.