It is my opinion that Wikipedia should be allowed as a citation by students for any paper that you would allow the citation of the Encyclopedia Britannica or other top flight encyclopedia. Since most of us don't allow that, then it is a moot point. I'm surprised to see the citation in the peer reviewed article that is not specifically about Wikipedia.
The reason I have that opinion is the studies that have shown Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia have a similar number of errors in scientific articles. If they are comparable in error, aren't they comparably trustworthy? But, students have to cite it correctly, which means getting the stable link to the version of the page they used. Each Wikipedia page has at the left margin a link for a toolbox entry called 'cite this page.' That takes you to a link that has a reasonably correctly formatted entry for APA and other styles for the version of the page you were using. For instance, this is the citation for the current version of the page for "Probability Density Function." Probability density function. (2010, May 15). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 01:05, June 9, 2010, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Probability_density_function&oldid=362226506 Paul C. Bernhardt Department of Psychology Frostburg State University Frostburg, Maryland -----Original Message----- From: Mike Palij [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tue 6/8/2010 7:32 PM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Cc: Mike Palij Subject: [tips] Wikipedia Citations in APA Journals I got my copy of Psychological Methods today and was reading the article by Peter Bentler and Albert Satorra titled "Testing Model Nesting and Equivalence" (about testing models in structural equation modeling) and I was somewhat shocked and surpised to see on page 117 a footnote that included a quote from the Wikipedia entry on "Continuous Probability Distributions". Now, Bentler and Satorra as no slouches but I find it hard to believe that they would cite Wikipedia especially for such a technical topic instead of a standard textbook on probability theory. I assume that the entry is correct and Bentler and Satorra are competent enough to know whether it is right or wrong. However, recently on the EdStat mailing list it was lamented by a few members about how some of the elementary statistics entries on Wikipedia were incorrect or needed modication. Perhaps I have been limited in articles that I read but have research articles in the APA journals and those of professional organization been using Wikipedia as a credible source? If so, how widespread is the practice? This raises the question of whether or the extent to which students can/should use Wikipedia as source/reference instead of, say, journal articles. -Mike Palij New York University [email protected] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13441.4e79e96ebb5671bdb50111f18f263003&n=T&l=tips&o=2979 or send a blank email to leave-2979-13441.4e79e96ebb5671bdb50111f18f263...@fsulist.frostburg.edu --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=2981 or send a blank email to leave-2981-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
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