I can understand why my teachers aren’t happy with Wikipedia being quoted as a source, but it eventually brought up the question: If the individual can edit a Wikipedia page and it’s not acceptable, why is it that an individual that wrote a book is more credible?
The first thing that comes to mind is the numbers of people that can edit Wikipedia and the number that can write a book. Anyone can write a book, but getting it published is just a matter of knowing the right people or having enough money, neither of which is a quality that defines a credible person.
Another thing that would be brought up is the number of people that go into making/publishing a book serve as a safeguard of sorts against false claims and the like. This could also be contested because there is always the chance that they could select a group of people to do this that also believe in things (see: religious books, political publications, product advertisements, etc.) and will allow them to go through.
The main thing you really need to watch out for is blatant edits of falsehood. If you read on Wikipedia that Abraham Lincoln owned a Harley, you’d be able to assume this isn’t true simply by looking up when he lived, which is before the motorcycle was invented. You’d have to assume that the majority of what you check is correct, though. For instance, on a topic such as abortion, there is likely to be “scientific evidence” supporting both sides of the argument; this evidence could have been rounded in favor of the scientist’s personal preference. The average person doesn’t get the opportunity to study a fetus or talk to Abraham Lincoln about the biker gang he rolled with, so it’s hard for them to check facts.
As far as a source goes, however, when Wikipedia is used correctly, it is merely a reaffirmation of the sources it used, just as those sources are an updated version of what they were referencing. If you were truly submitting an assignment based on what actually happened/happens, the goal would be to discover the source of the information and channel it through your work in the best possible way. Would anything that wasn’t source-direct even matter in any way other than being a route to the original information?
