Dont ya hate how your teachers tell ya not to use wikipedia as a source because it cant be trusted.? Im damn lol.

Quite right too. Research is essential to learning, and that should include learning to discern the veracity of information. Use Wikipedia as a starting point by all means, but you really should seek additional sources, and reference those.

there are good reasons for this. publications in the academic world are very different from newpapers and magazines. colleges take the source material very seriously and wikipedia is not even an information source for them. this is from my own college personal experience.

Wiki only? Well, if that's so, then you are lucky. When I was in high school some teachers didn't want anything taken off the internet. Only books.

Once you start taking classes that are advanced enough you will realize that wiki has the bare minimum information and is useless for a research paper. Its a good starting point like someone else said but thats it.

Learn to read scientific publications.

Yes. There's a good reason too (when a source is freely editable).

I work with with professors and other research students at University, and we've spoke about using Wikipedia before. They generally think that Wikipedia has two main pitfalls with it being editable.

1. It can contain dubious information.

2. It can contain useless information.

People can hack and change the information freely. I know I've seen some things that I've thought are dubious and generally wikipedia are very good at staying on top of this.

But Wikipedia are not on top of people writing superfluous information. I've read a few wikipedia articles on subjects I know well (mostly out of curiosity) and thought that much of the information is superfluous and could be removed without damaging the article at all.

People are always well aware of the information potentially being false. But people don't generally know about the other end of the scale in that the article can contain irrelevant information, which is not good if you don't need to cover a subject in too much depth.

You need to build an understanding from other sources (preferably books, papers and other published material) because only then will you realise what is important and what is not, what needs to be included in your work and what doesn't.

If you read an article on wikipedia and use that as your main source, then you run the risk of including the same mistakes, but also you run the risk of using superfluous information because you believe it to be important because, hey, it's on Wikipedia.

It's reflected in the students work when you see they've fallen into this pitfall. Personally I think the latter should be emphasised more, it's rarely as covered (maybe because the potential for mistakes has more impact).

Part of learning is learning how to validate your sources and discern bullshit from useless information. I use Wikipedia a lot for trivial information such birthdates for celebrities etc but I take most wiki's with a pinch of salt to say the least.

Wikipedia is a compilations of sources into one article. If you want to use Wikipedia as a source, per se, use the sources that are creditted within the article, which are located at the end (bottom of the page).

wikipedia has helped me out ALOT ive probly learned more on there than i did at school and im not exaggerating, i go on wiki almost every day to try and find out new stuff, some people may think im weird but after all knowledge is power.

Like others have said, wikipedia can be used as a starting point, but only to find actual references. For most academic topics wikipedia will cite pivotal papers which should be looked at. From those you can draw your own conclusions and gain a greater understanding.

Another thing to be wary of is in certain areas, some individuals may wish to push their work more than others, leading to a bias in the wiki article. Find a range and variety of papers to reference to ensure you have a full understanding of what you're researching.