What about Wikipedia or the Urban Dictionary?
Crowd-sourced reference sites like Wikipedia and the Urban Dictionary can be hit-or-miss as far as the quality of information goes, but they do have their uses! If you were writing a paper on graffiti art, you might want to use the Urban Dictionary to verify some slang terms you had read - and that's totally legit! But be aware that both Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary have tons of errors and downright misinformation on them, so use with caution!
- A good Wikipedia article tends to be longer and carefully curated and will also have cited sources, with links and notes about where the information comes from.
- For example, check out the Wikipedia article on the Pony Express. You can see the sources cited at the bottom and that it’s a longer, more detail article.
- Compare that one with the article for the abandoned stagecoach stop Griswell Station. This article is short, does not provide much detail and has only one reference.
- You still do not want to use Wikipedia as your final, cited source, but if you are entirely new to a topic, or are looking for different keywords or approaches to a topic, it can help you in your brainstorming.
- One thing to be aware of is bias in Wikipedia. The average editor of Wikipedia is a formally educated, white man from a developed nation. This impacts what is on Wikipedia (there are fewer articles about women and people of color, for instance) as well as the approach, tone, and style of the articles (for example, pages on African and South American countries are often written from an outside perspective). Learning to spot bias is a crucial skill for any savvy navigation of the web.
