Why do teachers hate wikipedia?

Question

It owns and is G0dlike. It is time saving, so thorough, has neutrality i.e. isn't one sided. In the case that there may be personal beliefs portrayed more strongly by the writer it informs you at the top the neutrality of the article is disputed, etc.

Has many people review it in the discussion boards to ensure that it is accurate, is updated faster than any other encyclopedia, it never goes out of date, the articles have so many references! I can't think of anything bad about Wikipedia. It has taught me so much, has millions of articles!

So why do teachers always say NO WIKIPEDIA in your bibliographies?

Answer 1

they smarter than them,

Answer 2

They don't want you to start copying from Wikipedia and passing the work as your own.They also do not want you to depend too much on Wikipedia so much that you cannot do your homework without Wikipedia.They do not want to see the whole class all using Wikipedia and that they had to mark all your work which are all the same.

Anyway,maybe some of the articles in Wikipedia contains errors,and when you just copy all the text in Wikipedia,you may get lower grades compared to you using your own brain and knowledge to do the work.

Teachers think that school is a place for learning and that there is no 'cheating' when their students are doing the work they gave.It applies too to cheating during an exam.You can't possibly print out some short paragraphs on some articles on Wikipedia,and stick them underneath your table,and during the exam,cheat by refering to the paper.You will most likely get caught cheating this way.

Answer 3

They say it is bad becasue anyone can edit. But what the teachers do not realize is that the information that is wrong is changed back within minutes. Wiki is a netural point of view so you should get both sides of the story or issue. It gives sources for most articles so you can see were the information came from. Teachers do not like it becaue they are afraid of tecnolgoy, why do you think teachers so that you need so many sources from books. That is what they had when they went to school.

Answer 4

i can not comprehend that anti-Wikipedia hysteria. I certainly have been utilising encyclopedias because of the fact previously i could examine, and that i quickly found out that _all_ encyclopedias contain blunders and omissions! interior the previous paper encyclopedia's we had to place in writing corrections interior the margins. in a protracted time i all started encyclopedias on CD and DVD, and there i could not maximum suitable something! a minimum of in Wikipedia, i will dive good in and maximum suitable and upload info, understanding that 1000's of persons will come via quickly, and make certain my corrections. yet countless the time it is purely some small piece of vandalism that must be wiped sparkling up, and maximum of of the time I could be speedy approximately it, or somebody else would have carried out it for me. i don't think of that Wikipedia is the superb encyclopedia ever. however the actuality that hundreds of volunteers shop directly to date, make certain the articles and upload new info popular, makes it a _great_ encyclopedia which could carry its very own against the contest. it is only that _any_ encyclopedia has its _own particular_ weaknesses.

Answer 5

Teachers don't all "hate" Wikipedia. I have 1 teacher who often refers to Wikipedia articles during lectures and 1 who encouraged us to use it for a minor assignment. The reason that they don't like you to use it for actual research is for 2 reasons:

1. Like all encyclopedias it is a tertiary source, a condensed summary of published information. You should not be using that as a source. The printable version of the Wikipedia United States article is only 28 pages, compare that to a 1000 page US history textbook.

2. It is not always fact checked. Not every article has been checked for accuracy before you read it and it would not be indicated if it had been. This does not apply just to Wikipedia but much of the internet. Would you use Yahoo Answers as a source or any random website that you find?

Answer 6

unlike encyclopedias and other sources, wikipedia has yet to be identified as a "trusted" source, mostly lying with the fact that anyone can go in and alter information. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, for example, is backed by and written by scholars and academics and therefore is seen as trusted (and for many decades too). Wikipedia is still the new kid on the block though, so it will take time.

I personally believe that once "respected" individuals are placed to oversee the different areas of knowledge within Wikipedia, then maybe it will be seen as a more respected resource. But for the time being, it still has a ways to go.

Answer 7

Teachers don't want Wikipedia in bibliographies for a few reasons. One, it is no secret that the school system is designed to be biased and to indoctrinate children with pro-government views (why wouldn't the government use its schools to promote itself?). Due to the fact that Wikipedia doesn't exclude viewpoints other than that of the school system, they don't like it (there are actually college professors who quit Wikipedia because they are trying to bias the articles and usually, with the exception of Global Warming articles, can't do so).

Besides their bias against Wikipedia, they are overreacting to sensationalist media reports (the same phenomenon can be observed with Myspace) that portray Wikipedia as inaccuarate and filled with vandalism (in fact, Wikipedia catches almost all of the vandalism within 15 minutes and the article on John Seigenthaler is now one of the best-written articles on Wikipedia and nobody gets away with vandalizing it).

The best thing to do is to use Wikipedia, but to cite the sources from the Wikipedia articles instead of Wikipedia. That way, you still benefit from that information and the teacher still thinks that you didn't use Wikipedia.

Answer 8

I don't understand their hate for Wikipedia either, but I think it's because they don't take the time to learn how exactly it works or how they can tell whether something's reliable (who can blame them?).
The blue numbers as superscript after a sentence take you to the references they got the information from when you click them. Usually, the sentences that don't have the reference numbers are unsourced and therefore may be unreliable. That's what teachers are afraid of.
What I usually do when a sentence or section is good for whatever work I'm doing is I just go to the reference and use it as a reference myself. That way, I get the info, it's reliable, and good old Wikipedia helped me get it.

Answer 9

I totally agree with you that wiki rocks. All those points are strong it just takes one person to mess up an article. I could edit an article and it could be wrong. Now I've experimented before and in about an hour my topic was deleted. I tried a more obscure topic and it was deleted in about 30 hours. So if you would have read that topic and copied my info, it would have been wrong. It was changed back so if you were lucky you would have had the correct answer but teachers dont want you to be wrong at all. Theyd rather have you spend extra time to go to a reliable site and make sure it is correct.

Answer 10

Because it's too easy to get easy info off of. Anyone who says you can just go in an edit whatever is a complete liar. It has to be approved by a bot or admin to be put on a page. If you were to put false info on there, it will be denied and as well your IP will be blocked.

Answer 11

It spits in the face of the academic establishment. Education does not require degrees, tenured professors or brick-and-motor institutions, just the sharing of knowledge, which is Wikipedia. It threatens their stranglehold on the economy of education. In many communities in the US the local school district is the biggest business of the area.