When educators say that Wikipedia is not reliable, what they usually mean is that serious work should be based on primary sources, not secondary sources like Wikipedia or any other encyclopedia.

Wikipedia is good for casual research, and in practice, I found the English Wikipedia very reliable, at least for scientific topics, but it is also pretty good on big controversial subjects. Reliability only starts to drop on minor subjects.

But educators want you to go beyond that. Here, Wikipedia is just a starting point, with its best feature being citations.

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Gander5739 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Wikipedia and other encyclopedias are tertiary sources.

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crazygringo 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

No, they genuinely mean it's unreliable.

Obviously popular articles are great -- they have so many eyeballs and editors that they're not just quite accurate, but often more comprehensive than other sources (in terms of describing competing schools of thought, for example).

But when you really drill down into more niche articles, there's a tremendous amount of information that is uncited or not found in the citation, has glaring omissions, and/or is just plain wrong. These are the kinds of articles that get 1 edit every six months.

It's those latter articles that are the reason Wikipedia is too unreliable to cite.

(Also, Wikipedia is a tertiary source, as it is meant to only cite secondary sources, not primary sources.)

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nearbuy 5 days ago | parent [-]

> (Also, Wikipedia is a tertiary source, as it is meant to only cite secondary sources, not primary sources.)

Wikipedia absolutely cites primary sources (as well as secondary and tertiary sources), and this is in accordance with their policy. Breaking news stories and scientific papers are some commonly used primary sources. You may be thinking of their "no original research" policy or their warnings against editors adding their own interpretation to primary sources.

	▲	crazygringo 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		Perhaps I was a bit strict, but Wikipedia is mainly meant to cite secondary sources. When they explain where primary sources are allowed, they emphasize they "should be used carefully": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_and_usin... Also "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_original_research... The general idea is that primary sources have not been judged as notable by anyone. The fact that a secondary source considers it notable to include a primary source is a strong signal that the information has passed a first, minimal bar for inclusion in an encyclopedia. And when primary sources are cited, Wikipedia is exceptionally clear that they must be cited only for verifiable statements of fact, not interpretations or synthesis. That's what secondary sources are for.