I didn’t see anything about it on Wikipedia’s site, but how would I cite Wikipedia for my paper? In case anybody is curious, the article I need cited is Transubstantiation.
You’d cite it like any other website, in the appropriate citation format.
For example, if you’re using the MLA style, you’d do something like this (taken from the Wikipedia entry for the MLA style manual):
“Plagiarism.” Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia. 22 Jul 2004, 10:55 UTC. 10 Aug 2004 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism>
(that second line would be indented. I just couldn’t get it to work this morning.
Okay, thanks Lsura. That’s the way I cited it, but I wanted to make sure that it was right, that there wasn’t a special form for online encyclopedia that I didn’t know. Plagerism is one of the few things you can get kicked out of this school for, so I have to be very careful that I cite everything exactly right.
There are two things here:
(1) Attributing things written by others to those other people, rather than pretending that you wrote them yourself.
(2) Having the correct form of citations.
If you do the first and not the second (e.g., you say something like “The Wikipedia on the Web says …”), you won’t get booted out of school for plagiarism, because you haven’t pretended that it’s your own words. You might, however, lose marks for not followingthe right form of citation.
I don’t know if citing Wikipedia for an academic paper is a good idea. While the majority of the information I’ve found there has been accurate, the open-source nature of the project means articles are easily corruptible. If your professor is familiar with the site, he may not accept the cites as completely reliable.
Depending on the professor (mainly English professors, but some others), incorrect citation equals plagerism. I don’t think I would be in trouble with this particular professor, but if I’m going to minor in English, I’d better learn to get it right. Also, Nightwatch, I agree with you, but all I was doing was pulling out a few definition of words, so for that, I felt safe using Wikipedia, as I knew what they meant, just wanted to put it into better language.
There was a question on citations last October:
Widely used formats for attributing information found on a website in a bibliography?
However, the important thing would be to go to your school’s handbook (or the dean of the appropriate college) and ask them what style they are using. I attended a school that used a modified MLA format, but we lost points if we followed the MLA exactly instead of the school’s close alternative.
(Treating a botched citation as equivalent to plagiarism (resulting in a failed paper or course) is, of course, reprehensible and a clear sign of incompetence as a teacher. Is this true? Has anyone protested?)
Wikipedia also provides its own page discussing Citing Wikipedia.
You get two offenses and you’re out. Most professors, as long as you’ve tried to cite, will let it go. They’ll do nothing more than take points off for it. But, most of the English professors here are very strict, and sometimes will turn you in for academic dishonesty (our nice technical term for plagerism). Upon the second one, you get a chance to defend yourself. That’s the price you pay for going to top-ranked schools, I suppose.
Yeah, i second this wholeheartedly. If one of my undergrads turned in a history paper with a Wikipedia citation, i’d make it quite clear that this was not really an acceptable source for an academic paper. The only possible exception might be for widely-known factual information, but for that sort of stuff i often don’t require a citation anyway.
I’ll also second this. Poor citation style does not equal plagiarism.
Sure, i’d like my students to adopt a scholarly and consistent approach to citations, but messing up the form a bit is something that’s easily corrected. Plagiarism is academic dishonesty; a genuine error in a citation is not.
Well, if you are going to a “top-ranked school,” i imagine that your school probably has subscriptions to online resources like the Oxford English Dictionary or Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. Both of those places would be much better sources for word definitions than Wikipedia.
Hell, even if they don’t subscribe to those services, free online dictionaries like Merriam-Webster or The American Heritage Dictionary are probably better than an open-source site like Wikipedia.
I agree – your college probably has online access to the Oxford English Dictionary, and the sort of prof that considers an incorrect citation as plagiarism is likely to look down on websites in general, let alone Wikipedia. If you don’t have online access to the OED (and you probably do), the library will certainly have a copy, or could help you with getting access online. (For example, they may have access on the university network, but they’d be able to help you set up a proxy if you live off-campus.) Old-school profs will certainly expect you to go to the library to do research; many view online research as a form of cheating by not doing as much work as they feel you should.
Again, you all raise very good points. I am pretty sure that the college has subscriptions to all the dictionaries mentioned and such, what it boils down to is I slacked off in one respect and did a google to find a definition. The first page that came up was Wikipedia, so I used it, feeling confident that if the entry was wrong, I would be able to catch it because I knew what it should mean, just maybe not the exact terms to put it in. If it had been a larger paper, or any other type of information, I would not have used Wikipedia. It probably was not the best choice, but it was the choice I made, and it was too late in the game to change it now, as the paper was due (and was turned in) at 1 today (Friday). As for the profs who take the plagerism definitions too far, I completely agree with you all, but I have no power to change it. I’m sure with the professor this paper was for, I would be okay, but I wanted to get into the habit of making sure I have all my sources cited correctly in case I do run into a Citation-Nazi. Will I use Wikipedia again in a paper? Probably not, but there may well be a situation that I do, though I can’t think of one now. Well, I just thought of another reason that I’m glad I asked, because if there was a different way to cite an online encyclopedia (Encarta, for another example) it would more than likely follow the same guidlines as Wikipedia, and I’m fairly sure I will use Encarta at some point in my academic career.
Wow, that post came out much longer and much more defensive than I wanted it to. I’m sorry, I was just trying to explain why I used Wikipedia instead of a better source, and it turned into that.