to expect people to know...

[cheeseandchive]

that referencing Wikipedia is NOT ok at university level?!

YANBU. I once had to teach an entire 3rd year undergrad class this. Boils my piss.

lol, tell us more?

working with a group who have got majority wikipedia references for the research on a third year essay topic.

Not. Ok.

How do I tell them?!

I'm so glad the Internet didn't exist when I did my degree. There's so much information about stuff online. I could only use the uni library which made research much more compact somehow.

I'm a 3rd year and have always been taught that wiki is the devil
we had a lecture in first year about how reliable it is and hiw it can be changed etc

It's because they're not discouraged from using Wikipedia at secondary level. Don't even talk to me about cutting and pasting straight from it into a PowerPoint document.....

These kids are not taught about appropriate sources. And the teachers seem to think them using Wikipedia is ok. Bad habits....

I'm studying access at college, and we were told for unit one we could use wiki, but never again ever! Not sure how you can get to third year at uni and not know!

They blimin well are discouraged at secondary level! I detest it and give a U grade to any work which is copy and paste.

Do what my husband does when his students become attached to Wikipedia. Go in and edit the relevant information to a whole load of nonsense and embarass the hell out of those who use it.

Imagine it's pretty prevalent because the information is plentiful, if not accurate.

And quantity is ALWAYS better than quality, right?

I'm doing a Masters. Someone on my course used wiki referencing. Aaargh!

Posted too soon...

We are encouraged to use Google Scholar, and expand searches from there.
There are also lots of free papers on PlosOne.

I think you just have to tell them NO!

Ahh MrsCosmo, you totally win. Best of luck with that one!

Does your institution not have a student handbook that explains this thoroughly?Along with useful info on plagiarism? Point them in the direction of that, maybe?

My children have both been told in Primary not to use it and dd now at high school has been told not to use it either due to it often being factually incorrect.

a copy and paste would be a straight forward disqualification due to plagiarism.
at some unis, they would throw you off your course for that.

hell, i'm reluctant to give wiki as a citation on MN never mind in a degree course!

We all have the handbook, I don't understand how people don't know.

Just find it a bit frustrating as I'm doing the lions share of the work (voluntarily, admittedly) and have been really thorough in my researching, but seems a bit pointless if no-one else is doing the same!

lockets maybe I should work with your son!

DD is a 3rd year uni student and has never used a wiki reference, at the start of first year they were informed that any work submitted that had any wiki involvement would not be marked. The threat seems to have worked

I used to work on a peer-reviewed journal, and someone was asked to do an article for us - while editing this article, something needed checking and I discovered that the author had lifted the entire section from an online source. I then went on to check the rest of the article and around 90% of it was C&Pd from various online sources - needless to say it was not printed, and that author was never asked to contribute again!

YANBU at all.

Wikipedia is very big on getting references for all the facts that are stated - you could always use it as a place to find good "real" sources.

YANBU how can anyone think that it is ok to reference Wiki

It is the laziest thing I have ever heard!

OK start there and get some basics for your essay, but then check the bloody things, do another Google search use scholar back up what you have found on Wiki and then reference that.

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT!!!

This makes me so

When I was doing my Masters, I did read the wikipedia articles, along with everything else, but if I wanted to reproduce a point from wiki, I would go to the article footnotes and actually read the original source, as this is the only way to know if the wiki article is anywhere near accurate. The main problem I actually find with wikipedia is that most articles only give a very limited amount of information and a narrow perspective.

(We got training on how to use all sorts of online databases, but I am lazy).

I find it hard to understand how a 3rd year UG could think it is appropriate to cite wikipedia (in anything other than an essay about wikipedia or something else where it would be directly relevant).

I'm in the first year of an OU degree and we're told never to use Wikipedia as a reference although we can use it as a springboard to find other references.

I'm not entirely surprised though given the number of people who seem to believe that an article in a newspaper is fact and totally proves their point.