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Wikipeter founded the website in 1993 when he wanted to know more about model trains without having to visit the library
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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2026
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Honestly I think it comes from a misunderstanding regarding secondary sources vs primary ones. Wikipedia, as well as encyclopedias and textbooks, are secondary sources. It's not good practice to cite secondary sources without primary ones, but a lot of people (namely, teachers) don't grasp why which leads these sources to get classified as bad.
That, plus Wikipedia is accessible without the usual gatekeeping and money behind what textbooks and encyclopedias have, which adds to the sources "credibility." Money means marketing, including constant email campaigns targeting people like me trying to validate whatever textbook they're peddling. (And in case you wonder if they're evil, they sometimes offer kickbacks to adopt their expensive textbooks for my university classes).
Fedi users already get that, though, as that's a common problem FOSS usually has. Point is, wiki lives in a weird place because no, you shouldn't cite it just like you shouldn't cite textbooks, but yes, it's perfectly valid so long as you check those sources. And, speaking from experience, some students really don't understand as I see citations for so much worse.
Back when I was in school they outright censored Wikipedia. Fuck that shit
Same here, but everyone used it by...just siting the sources at the bottom of the page. It was honestly the dumbest logic ever. Professors telling you, you can't use Wikipedia because anyone can edit it, but being ok with the literal source the Wikipedia article used for its info...just made zero sense.
No, they are tertiary sources.
Ahem https://web.archive.org/web/20130627182408/http://www.lib.umd.edu/ues/guides/primary-sources
Very clear.
They do have a handy table later though:
Oh, snap, it is so on!
I'm on the fence about not citting primary sources. And especially in the sciences, where it's actually the slow, boring, long process of many publications and many datat sets coming together to conclude something 'in the aggregate '. Like I'll usually go to a review or meta analysis paper as a citation, because it's combining and comparing the results across studies.
And really, a living document like Wikipedia is more like that kind of review or meta analysis paper.
I'm not disagreeing that were taught to go for primary sources, but in some ways, they're actually less reliable than secondary sources if those secondary sources are taking in a a broader collection of primary sources, which something like Wikipedia is.