I remember in high school, my teachers always would say “NEVER USE WIKIPEDIA AS A SOURCE.” I used to think I really cracked the system when I would use the references on Wikipedia as my source and not the actual wikipedia page. The teacher’s main reason for not us to list wikipedia as a source was because anyone can edit it and make changes, which we may not necessarily know if they are true.
Years later, I realized that this is a gross misconception of wikipedia and what is it. While, yes, it can be edited by anyone with a wikipedia account, many Wikipedia’s work to review, edit, make changes, and cite all of the information they include on the wikipedia page. There are large scale Wikipedia edit-a-thons that take place globally to ensure that the information on wikipedia is as accurately referenced and cited. I would advise anyone who is trying to research about a particular topic to start at Wikipedia, but to also recognize that is it not a primary source.
When I began learning about adding to wikipedia pages, it was very daunting and intimidating. I didn’t know where to begin because the possibilities were endless. The editing began with merging my interests with the editing. I had found a series of paper detailing the ecology of some of the smaller Dutch West Indies islands and I thought this was the perfect place to begin. The visual editing interface was extremely beginner friendly and very similar to the WordPress interface, even adding sources and links was just a click of a button.
Overall from this experience, I gained a new skill and further improved my scientific communication techniques. What I was essentially doing with the pages I editing was making the knowledge in those papers known and more widespread as well as learning how to extract and summarize important points. The information in the series of papers I used as a source was originally published in 1997, but I had never heard of them ever. By editing pages with information extracted from these papers, I shared knowledge with a whole new audience.
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 