Sunday, July 22, 2012

In Defense of Wikipedia (sort of)

Last night I announced a plan to limit my academic research sources to Wikipedia and to the sources cited in related Wikipedia articles. In the light of day, my resolve to this effect remains, though I most likely will not cite Wikipedia at all in any bibliography or list of sources. I wish to make a statement, but I do not wish to commit academic suicide.

Perhaps I should share my method for authoring compositions. I only write papers on topics I know about, so I do not consult sources in writing papers. After I've completed whatever paper I'm writing, I then look for sources that back up what I've already written. Locating the sources is typically a fairly quick and straightforward process. Only on a couple of occasions have I needed to use creative measures to cover my bases.

My mother, who has worked as a school psychologist and school administrator, describes my technique as "just wrong, Alexis" while declining to give any specific criteria  as to define precisely what is so very wrong with the method I use. Since I've never received anything lower than an A (no minuses, even) on any paper I've written, however,  I see no reason to change horses in midstream. No one else has ever received lower than an A on any paper I've written, either, but that's probably a topic best saved for another day, perhaps sometime after I turn eighteen.

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