When students ask why they can’t use Wikipedia for their research papers in school, many teachers respond with something like this: “It’s unreliable because anyone can edit it.” While this statement contains a kernel of truth, it vastly oversimplifies the reality of Wikipedia as a resource.
As a teacher, you may be wondering how to better explain the nuances of navigating information in the digital age and how to help students better understand why they shouldn’t use Wikipedia as a source and how they CAN use it.
Is Wikipedia a Reliable Source?
Wikipedia launched in 2001, and in its early days, it really was the Wild West of information! Pages could be created or drastically altered with little oversight, vandalism could remain uncorrected for days, and teachers rightly told students that it wasn’t the place to go for reliable information. This era shaped many educators’ opinions about the platform, and these opinions have persisted despite significant changes to Wikipedia over the years.
Today’s Wikipedia is a lot different than the Wikipedia of old. While it’s technically true that “anyone can edit” most pages, the reality is more complex:
- Popular pages are often semi-protected, requiring accounts to be a certain age or have a minimum number of edits before changes are permitted
- Dedicated volunteer editors monitor changes, often reverting vandalism within minutes
- Citation requirements are enforced more strictly
- Complex automated tools are now used to flag suspicious edits
When many of us were students, whole pages could be vandalized or deleted for days before anyone noticed and fixed the problem. Now, if you try to write baloney on Wikipedia, it typically gets taken down within minutes.
However, this doesn’t mean Wikipedia is flawless. Pages on obscure topics seem to receive far less scrutiny, and even well-monitored pages can contain errors or biased language. The key for us as teachers is teaching students to approach all sources—including Wikipedia—with critical thinking.
Why We Still Say “Don’t Cite Wikipedia”
When English teachers say “don’t use Wikipedia,” what we really mean is “don’t cite Wikipedia directly in your academic work.” Want to explain why in a better way for your students? Here’s what you need to say:
1. Wikipedia is a tertiary source
Wikipedia synthesizes information from other sources. Just like old, paper Encyclopedias, it doesn’t generate new knowledge. Typically, the information in the article is not a primary source, but the linked sources may be primary sources (though they are often secondary sources, which you’ll need to explain to the students as well). Academic writing generally favors primary and secondary sources over tertiary ones like Wikipedia or traditional encyclopedias.
Primary sources are original materials (like historical documents, experimental data, or creative works). Secondary sources analyze, interpret, or discuss primary sources (think scholarly articles or books). Tertiary sources, like Wikipedia, summarize or synthesize secondary sources, and sometimes refer to primary sources as well.
2. No clear authorship or expert verification
When citing a source, you’re essentially saying, “This expert/researcher/witness claims X.” With Wikipedia, you don’t know who wrote the information or their qualifications. If you’re citing what Wikipedia says, rather than going to Wikipedia’s linked sources, reading them, and citing them, you don’t really have an expert, researcher, witness, or even an author’s name to cite.
3. Content can change over time
While vandalism is quickly corrected, legitimate content can also be revised, expanded, or removed. The page a student cites today may be different tomorrow, making verification difficult. When we cite a source, we want our readers to be able to go back and verify what it says. That’s harder if we cite a changing source like Wikipedia.
4. It’s about teaching research skills
Perhaps most importantly, prohibiting direct Wikipedia citations encourages students to develop deeper research skills. As a teacher, do you want the kids to just repeat what Wikipedia says, or do you want to teach them to do their own research, ensure their sources are credible, and synthesize information themselves? If they are citing Wikipedia, Wikipedia already did the research, source-credibility work, and synthesizing work. All that’s left for the kids to do is repeat what Wiki says. They aren’t learning research skills.
When and How Students Can or Should Use Wikipedia
Rather than simply banning Wikipedia, you might want to think about teaching students how to use it effectively as part of a robust research process. Here’s how:
1. Start with Wikipedia for background knowledge
Wikipedia excels at providing general overviews of topics. You could tell students that it’s okay to begin with Wikipedia as a way to build background knowledge, understand key terminology, and identify major themes or controversies within a subject.
Although Wikipedia is generally reliable, students will then need to fact-check what they’ve read on Wikipedia by searching for sources that actually support the info they found.
2. Mine the references section
The most valuable aspect of Wikipedia for academic research is often the references section at the bottom of each article. Many teachers tell students to skim the Wiki page, get ideas for further research questioning and source searches, and then head to the bottom of the wiki article to click on the linked sources.
This approach turns Wikipedia from a forbidden source into a research tool. Students often balk at us saying, YOU CAN’T USE WIKIPEDIA. They don’t understand why we say that, and we need to explain it clearly, fully, and with honest advice that explains how they CAN use it in a way that supports their research. Explain to your students that they can essentially use Wikipedia as an annotated bibliography, identifying potentially valuable sources that they can then evaluate and cite directly.
3. Verify claims across multiple sources
Teach students to verify important claims they find on Wikipedia by cross-checking with other reliable sources. Explain the difference among primary, secondary, and tertiary sources, and ask them to look for primary and secondary sources that say what Wikipedia is saying. (Or maybe they can’t! In that case, Wikipedia’s claims may be unreliable and biased, and they may need to nix what they’ve found there right out of their notes!) This reinforces the critical thinking skills essential for navigating today’s information landscape.
4. Evaluate the edit history
For advanced students, Wikipedia’s transparency can actually be a learning opportunity. Show them how to check a page’s edit history to see how the information has evolved over time and identify potential areas of controversy. What’s been changed and why? Is the update accurate and reliable, or not? Where can they look to find out? These are the types of questions we can ask and model for students that will make them better researchers. We’re trying to teach them research skills, not “regurgitate Wikipedia” skills.
How to Teach Students About Wikipedia Use
For 9th & 10th Graders (and Younger)
- Explicitly distinguish between “using Wikipedia to gain background information” and “citing Wikipedia as a source”
- Create side-by-side comparisons of Wikipedia entries with primary and secondary sources; help them see the difference
- Introduce the concept of clicking through to sources & using those instead
- Demonstrate how to evaluate the quality of Wikipedia articles based on their citations
- Practice finding the information in Wikipedia within its cited sources
- Discuss why tertiary sources aren’t appropriate for citation
For 11th and 12th Graders
Do all of the above, plus…
- Analyze the edit history of controversial topics to identify bias
- Compare how Wikipedia and scholarly sources handle the same topic
- Practice “source mining” from the Wikipedia references sections
[Do you need a Research Paper Unit? Try these!]
Student Misconceptions About Wikipedia
Students often misunderstand teachers’ guidance about Wikipedia in several ways:
- “I can’t look at Wikipedia at all” – Clarify that reading Wikipedia is fine; it’s citing it directly that’s the problem.
- “Wikipedia is full of lies” – Explain that Wikipedia is generally accurate but has limitations as a tertiary source and may be biased.
- “The sources at the bottom are always good” – Teach students to evaluate these sources critically too—not all citations are equally reliable.
- “I need to find everything in books/journals” – For general knowledge questions, Wikipedia is perfectly adequate most of the time, especially if the topic is non-controversial; however, for our research papers, we need scholarly sources (primary and secondary sources we’ve vetted and determined to be reliable).
Teaching Information Literacy and Research Skills
The Wikipedia debate reflects a larger educational challenge: teaching students to navigate and evaluate information in a world where it’s abundant but of varying quality. By helping students understand Wikipedia’s strengths and limitations, we are helping them build transferable skills for evaluating all information sources.
The goal isn’t to demonize Wikipedia but to help students understand when and how different information sources are appropriate. Wikipedia works great most of the time for satisfying curiosity or building background knowledge. For academic writing, students should follow the research practices of scholars: seeking primary and secondary sources, evaluating evidence critically, and synthesizing information to develop original arguments.
By teaching students these nuances rather than simply saying, “Wikipedia is unreliable and you can’t use it in school,” we prepare them to be thoughtful consumers and producers of information in an increasingly complex digital landscape.
Conclusion
The next time a student asks why they can’t use Wikipedia, instead of dismissing it as unreliable, consider explaining its role as a tertiary source and showing them how to use its reference list as a starting point. This approach transforms a prohibition that often feels unfair or old-fashioned to the kids into an opportunity to teach valuable research skills that students will use throughout their academic careers and in their adult lives.
[Do you need a Research Paper Unit? Try these!]
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