You will find often hear admonitions to never use Wikipedia as a source “because it can be updated by anyone”. In fact, only a tiny fraction of pages on Wikipedia can be changed, and those are the ones at addresses such as this: Wikipedia. For each change to such a page, another page is generated that is permanent.
Wikipedia’s archived changes can be found by clicking the ‘View history’ tab at the top of each page. To get the permanent version of the current page, look at the ‘Toolbox’ on the sidebar of every Wikipedia article, and click on ‘Permanent link’. If you need to cite a Wikipedia article in an academic essay, click on ‘Cite’ (note that the MLA and Harvard styles do not guard against updates).
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Good to know. Thanks.
thanks for the info David.
Josh G
David, just a little question how do we need to present the blog posts on tuesday? do we have to hand them in print?
Thank you
Juliana
Hi Juliana,
The due date is Monday 25 October according to the reader and blog schedule. The latter says the blog schedule itself, with a cover sheet, must be submitted. I don’t believe the blog posts need to be printed, but I’ll check with Sarah.
Sarah has confirmed that the assignment is due 25 October. We need to hand in a cover sheet (with the URL of our blog clearly written on it) and the blog schedule (filled out).
re citing Wikiepdia in academic essays; admission of guilt here – I find Wikipedia to be a wonderful starting point. I can’t count the number of times I’ve found something useful and then just had a cursory glance at the source at the bottom of the page to make sure it was legit, and then referenced that source.
Even if there’s a lot of baloney there, the reference list at the bottom of each page can be a goldmine.
Hi James,
Wikipedia is a fantastic research tool, though its own articles always look best when either (a) they have wholesale infringed an expert’s copyright, or (b) you don’t know much about the subject yourself (I often get a nervous tic from looking at topics that I personally understand in-depth). But I think that most people these days learn a lot from Wikipedia — and no should feel guilty about that.