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I missed this one, but what's wrong with citing an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia? :: prepared to learn something new today ::

by tiffani 16y ago

MartinCron 16y ago
It has been a long time since college for me, but I vaguely remember this one. Just like Wikipedia, encyclopedias are not generally original source research. Citing more specific original or closer-to-original sources gives the evaluator more tools in considering the relevance or validity of an argument.
- tiffani 16y ago
  Makes sense.
- mattmichielsen 16y ago
  I always used Wikipedia as a reference for my college papers, but cited the pertinent references from the bottom of the Wikipedia page.
- Perceval 16y ago
  This is pretty close to the reasoning. You can broadly categorize sources into three tiers: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary sources are the actual documents or individual recollections involved in an event—a treaty, a memoir, a transcript, etc. These are the archival documents that historians love. A programming-language-analogy might be writing something in a close-to-the-metal language like Assembly or C. Secondary sources are usually synthetic works that comment on primary sources and other secondary sources, or strongly advance/test a certain hypothesis. These would be the works produced by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and so on analyzing the historical data and evaluating the theories of other social scientists. Most books fall into this category. The analogy would be higher level languages like Java and Ruby. Tertiary works are produced for the general reader. Rather than providing new scholarship or advancing a hypothesis, they generally try to summarize the existing consensus in a concise manner. Because encyclopedia articles aim to give the generalist reader an overview, they are usually a good starting point for someone with no background in a particular area. But, the idea behind writing analytical or research papers is to get the student beyond just a general familiarity with a subject, and to get them to engage some part of the debate. Citing encyclopedias, while in and of itself not wrong, it usually evidence that the student hasn't really engaged the topic. Presumably, if they've read 3-6 secondary sources, they would have all the citations they needed and the encyclopedia would be extraneous. The programming analogy here would be using very little code to paste together a bunch of libraries that you don't understand. Wikipedia has an additional epistemic problem that other encyclopedias usually don't have. Other encyclopedia entries are usually written by experts in their field. There is no such guarantee for Wikipedia articles: they could be written by experts, they could be written by 14-year-old Singaporean communists writing from their mother's basement (I speak from experience as an admin who's had to deal with this scenario). While studies have shown Wikipedia to be comparable in terms of quality to mainstream encyclopedias, there's no way of telling at any given moment which revision you're viewing and who it was last edited by and what their level of expertise is. For that reason, Wikipedia is usually especially discouraged by academia, which as an institution places emphasis on linking the authority of a piece with the person who wrote it.
sqrt17 16y ago
Citing usually has multiple functions: 1. You use the authority of the source you cite. (If a well-respected researcher has made the point, I may be more likely to assume it's sensible than if it just came to your mind). This is why citing Wikipedia or single newspaper articles or popular science books may be a less-than-good idea. 2. You point the reader to someone who has invented/first described a certain phenomenon (i.e., recognition of achievement). It's debatable whether that is relevant at an undergraduate level, but it's probably not a bad idea. (Encyclopedias and textbooks are clearly bad on this criterion). 3. You point the reader to a place where he finds more extensive material on the topic. Many encyclopedias do not cite their sources, which makes them less-than-useful on this account. Note the conflict between 2. and 3.: If Someone Else published a cryptic paper in the 50s about something, yet no one understands that one until they've read the excellent overview paper by A. Random Researcher, 2. would say you should cite the Else paper from the 50s, whereas for 3. it may be better to cite Researcher's more recent paper.
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Regarding 1, that's a huge problem I had with every college writing class I took. Either the argument being made is correct, or it's not. The fact that Joe Bloe, PhD agrees with me doesn't change things one way or the other. It's almost as if my professors wanted to instill in me the belief that I should trust credentialed experts rather than trying to figure things out for myself.
  - count 16y ago
    > It's almost as if my professors wanted to instill in me the belief that I should trust credentialed experts rather than trying to figure things out for myself. Well, yeah. That's exactly what they're trying to do. They have a vested interest in it! I spent a entire class arguing that it was a logical fallacy ('appeal to authority') with my Eng. Comp. professor, when he required that x% of your work be cited. He finally did agree, but declined to change the requirement. I dropped the class (and the college!). It remains to be seen who 'won' :)

I missed this one, but what's wrong with citing an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia? :: prepared to learn something new today ::

by tiffani 16y ago

I missed this one, but what's wrong with citing an encyclopedia other than Wikipedia? :: prepared to learn something new today ::

MartinCron 16y ago

It has been a long time since college for me, but I vaguely remember this one. Just like Wikipedia, encyclopedias are not generally original source research. Citing more specific original or closer-to-original sources gives the evaluator more tools in considering the relevance or validity of an argument.

tiffani 16y ago
Makes sense.
mattmichielsen 16y ago
I always used Wikipedia as a reference for my college papers, but cited the pertinent references from the bottom of the Wikipedia page.
Perceval 16y ago
This is pretty close to the reasoning. You can broadly categorize sources into three tiers: primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary sources are the actual documents or individual recollections involved in an event—a treaty, a memoir, a transcript, etc. These are the archival documents that historians love. A programming-language-analogy might be writing something in a close-to-the-metal language like Assembly or C. Secondary sources are usually synthetic works that comment on primary sources and other secondary sources, or strongly advance/test a certain hypothesis. These would be the works produced by historians, political scientists, sociologists, and so on analyzing the historical data and evaluating the theories of other social scientists. Most books fall into this category. The analogy would be higher level languages like Java and Ruby. Tertiary works are produced for the general reader. Rather than providing new scholarship or advancing a hypothesis, they generally try to summarize the existing consensus in a concise manner. Because encyclopedia articles aim to give the generalist reader an overview, they are usually a good starting point for someone with no background in a particular area. But, the idea behind writing analytical or research papers is to get the student beyond just a general familiarity with a subject, and to get them to engage some part of the debate. Citing encyclopedias, while in and of itself not wrong, it usually evidence that the student hasn't really engaged the topic. Presumably, if they've read 3-6 secondary sources, they would have all the citations they needed and the encyclopedia would be extraneous. The programming analogy here would be using very little code to paste together a bunch of libraries that you don't understand. Wikipedia has an additional epistemic problem that other encyclopedias usually don't have. Other encyclopedia entries are usually written by experts in their field. There is no such guarantee for Wikipedia articles: they could be written by experts, they could be written by 14-year-old Singaporean communists writing from their mother's basement (I speak from experience as an admin who's had to deal with this scenario). While studies have shown Wikipedia to be comparable in terms of quality to mainstream encyclopedias, there's no way of telling at any given moment which revision you're viewing and who it was last edited by and what their level of expertise is. For that reason, Wikipedia is usually especially discouraged by academia, which as an institution places emphasis on linking the authority of a piece with the person who wrote it.

sqrt17 16y ago

Citing usually has multiple functions: 1. You use the authority of the source you cite. (If a well-respected researcher has made the point, I may be more likely to assume it's sensible than if it just came to your mind). This is why citing Wikipedia or single newspaper articles or popular science books may be a less-than-good idea. 2. You point the reader to someone who has invented/first described a certain phenomenon (i.e., recognition of achievement). It's debatable whether that is relevant at an undergraduate level, but it's probably not a bad idea. (Encyclopedias and textbooks are clearly bad on this criterion). 3. You point the reader to a place where he finds more extensive material on the topic. Many encyclopedias do not cite their sources, which makes them less-than-useful on this account. Note the conflict between 2. and 3.: If Someone Else published a cryptic paper in the 50s about something, yet no one understands that one until they've read the excellent overview paper by A. Random Researcher, 2. would say you should cite the Else paper from the 50s, whereas for 3. it may be better to cite Researcher's more recent paper.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Regarding 1, that's a huge problem I had with every college writing class I took. Either the argument being made is correct, or it's not. The fact that Joe Bloe, PhD agrees with me doesn't change things one way or the other. It's almost as if my professors wanted to instill in me the belief that I should trust credentialed experts rather than trying to figure things out for myself.
- count 16y ago
  > It's almost as if my professors wanted to instill in me the belief that I should trust credentialed experts rather than trying to figure things out for myself. Well, yeah. That's exactly what they're trying to do. They have a vested interest in it! I spent a entire class arguing that it was a logical fallacy ('appeal to authority') with my Eng. Comp. professor, when he required that x% of your work be cited. He finally did agree, but declined to change the requirement. I dropped the class (and the college!). It remains to be seen who 'won' :)