Let's get this right out there: Wikipedia is a great source of quick information, and mostly accurate. But in the same way that you (or more likely, your grandparents...) would not depend on the World Book Encyclopedia for all of your information needs, you should also not plan to rely on Wikipedia to be your sole or even your main source of knowledge. And Wikipedia should never be quoted from, or cited as a source in a written assignment; it is simply not considered an appropriate resource for college-level work (or for high school level work, for that matter).
However, you can certainly think of Wikipedia as a jumping-off place. Need to know more about the new Prime Minister of the UK? Or how Pokemon Go works? How about a complete list of "Game of Thrones" episodes with plot summaries? (Wikipedia is especially good at episodes lists.) By all means, take a look. You might find alternate search terms or, at the bottom of a Wikipedia article, further references or external links to other websites to check out.
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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Contribution_Team/Welcome/Help_out |
Things to know:
- Every week, Wikipedia creates a list of its 25 most popular articles, The Top 25 Report, which is really quite interesting. If 25 isn't quite enough for you, there is also a Top 5000 list. The creator of that list notes that "Certain articles are inherently popular. Others map to cultural phenomena and recent news events. When an "unusual" topic appears prominently, sometimes a recent Google Doodle is to blame."1 That's why they call it the Web, folks! It's all connected.
- From any page in Wikipedia, you can click on "What links here" to go to a list of all hyperlinked content in the article.
- Speaking of hyperlinks, they are the reason a Wikipedia result pops to the top of almost any list of search results; Google's PageRank algorithm prioritizes pages with heavy linking, that is, articles that link to and from lots of other articles. (Again: Web!)
- Wikipedia's Main Page provides a daily featured article, and sections of "In the news," "Did you know?" and "On this day." At the top right of the page, you can select from many portals, such as Arts, History, Society, Technology, etc., and go to a page that further subdivides that subject matter and offers features similar to those on the main page.
- And purely FYI: Wiki means quick or hurry in Hawaiian. From Credo Reference (a useful online source that we will get to shortly), we learn that Ward Cunningham developed the first such website in 1995 and named it WikiWikiWeb...after the Wiki Wiki Shuttle at Honolulu International Airport." The original website described itself this way: "All Wiki content is work in progress. Most of all, this is a forum where people share ideas! It changes as people come and go."2
The takeaway: Start with Wikipedia and everything it has to offer, but do not stop there.
Inquiry Exercises (to be completed at this Survey Monkey link):
1. From the Wikipedia Main Page or from one of the portal pages, choose an item of interest to you and skim (or really read, it's up to you) the article on it. Scroll down to the references at the bottom of the article and click on one that looks good. (You might have to try a few.) What article did you start with? What reference did you click on? Where did it take you? Provide your links for all answers!
2. Do as you did for number 1, but this time, go to the External Links. Same deal.
3. Using SOMETHING that you have learned from working through numbers 1 and 2, go back to one of the tools you used in Thing 1 and search that. What tool did you use, and what results did you get?
4. Using that same something or a new something, go to Credo Reference on the Spring Hill College Library's home page (you haven't been told this yet! You are having to figure it out as you go!) and search there. Which result was most interesting to you?
Bonus! Can you get Credo Reference combined with Easy Bib to help you create a citation for the article you found in number 4? Use MLA format for now.
1 West, Andrew G. "Popular Pages." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 July 2016. Web. 21 July 2016.
Inquiry Exercises (to be completed at this Survey Monkey link):
1. From the Wikipedia Main Page or from one of the portal pages, choose an item of interest to you and skim (or really read, it's up to you) the article on it. Scroll down to the references at the bottom of the article and click on one that looks good. (You might have to try a few.) What article did you start with? What reference did you click on? Where did it take you? Provide your links for all answers!
2. Do as you did for number 1, but this time, go to the External Links. Same deal.
3. Using SOMETHING that you have learned from working through numbers 1 and 2, go back to one of the tools you used in Thing 1 and search that. What tool did you use, and what results did you get?
4. Using that same something or a new something, go to Credo Reference on the Spring Hill College Library's home page (you haven't been told this yet! You are having to figure it out as you go!) and search there. Which result was most interesting to you?
Bonus! Can you get Credo Reference combined with Easy Bib to help you create a citation for the article you found in number 4? Use MLA format for now.
1 West, Andrew G. "Popular Pages." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 17 July 2016. Web. 21 July 2016.
2 "The Wiki." 100 Ideas That Changed the Web. London: Laurence King, 2014. Credo Reference. 6 May 2015. Web. 21 July 2016.
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