Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia. Users are continuously modifying it. In order to make a change on Wikipedia, one does not need to be an expert with a degree in a particular field. This has caused much controversy. The question that evolves is, is the information on Wikipedia factually correct? The answer is the information is correct some of the time. However, the Encyclopedia Britannica is also not entirely correct. In one study that was conducted, expert-written pages of the Britannica had three errors per article while Wikipedia had four errors per article.
Regardless of these results, Wikipedia is still questioned as a reliable source, especially within colleges. Professors want students to dig deeper then Wikipedia and use academic journals. Students must learn to verify all information used in papers. Some universities are taking this idea to an extreme by creating rules that if a student uses Wikipedia, the consequence will be a grade deduction.
I believe that colleges have a right to recommend that students use certain research data, but I do not think that they should enforce consequences based solely on the student’s source of information. As long as a student does not plagiarize, I think they should make the final decision on the paper’s content and where it came from. However, if they use information from Wikipedia and they did not double check its accuracy, a grade deduction is appropriate if it is wrong.
This debate is continuing to increase and I wonder what Butler University
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