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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.
Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, is intended to provide an overview of topics and indicate sources of more extensive and academic information. Many of the general rules of thumb for conducting research apply to Wikipedia, including:
If a Wikipedia article doesn't exist or you can't find an article that contains what you're looking for, you can ask a Wikipedia editor at our reference desk to research it for you. If you research the topic, you can add a reference and a summary of that source to the Wikipedia article, so that future Wikipedia readers can find that information.
Wikipedia is not a reliable source for citations elsewhere on Wikipedia, or as a source for copying or translating content. As a user-generated source, it can be edited by anyone at any time, and any information it contains at a particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or simply incorrect.
Wikipedia has been the center of a much heated and critical debate in academia pertaining to the relevance, accuracy, and effectiveness of using information found online in academic research, especially in places where information is constantly being created, revised, and deleted by people of various backgrounds, ranging from experts to curious learners.
Wikipedia, having contributors from many areas of the world, provides its readers with a "world view" that could not be provided simply by a few contributors from a limited region. This also serves to eliminate cultural bias in articles. To use an extended metaphor, Wikipedia is very fertile soil for knowledge.
In the past, research in Wikipedia has built an understanding of how Wikipedia works, [1] why people contribute, [2] how editors interact with each other, [3] what work is discarded and why, [4] how admins are chosen, [5] [6] and how to detect vandalism.
Wikipedians take pride on Wikipedia, knowing that they made it the great encyclopedia it is now. They defend it from vandals(the village jerk), copyedit, and research for Wikipedia to constantly improve it. And for what? Wikipedia is hated by the public, who demand "reliable" sources for essays and other research.