Crowd-sourced websites

You can find all kinds of interesting stuff on crowd-sourced websites, but they are NOT good information sources for a school research assignment.

There's no way to know who really posted the information, what their expertise is on the topic, or whether they're known for representing the truth fairly and accurately.

Most crowd-sourced websites do not have editors who check for fairness or accuracy.

WIKIPEDIA IS THE EXCEPTION.

Wikipedia does have editors who check for fairness and accuracy.

It can be a good source for basic, factual information (as opposed to thoughtful analysis of that information).

However, you do have to watch out for warnings at the top of a page. Warnings tell you that particular page has some problems and you should avoid it.

See some examples of Wikipedia page warnings -->

There are some other crowd-sourced websites that have editors, but as a general rule, they are NOT the best choice for a school research assignment.

If you use a crowd-sourced website other than Wikipedia, it will show that you were in a hurry and used the first thing you could find :)

Clues that a website is crowd-sourced (other than having "wiki" in the name) include:

  • You could post something if you wanted to

  • You could like or vote on other people's posts

  • People use made-up screen names, not real names

Again, crowd-sourced websites are useful for all kinds of things--just not school research assignments.

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