WR 151/WR 153: Environmental Horror

Consult these sources for general information on topics related to science fiction, speculative fiction, and anthroplogy.

You may have heard your professors warn against using Wikipedia as a source of information when writing a scholarly paper.  These admonitions are meant to stop students from ending their research at Wikipedia (i.e. using it as an authoritative source and including it in your bibliography), but starting your research with Wikipedia is perfectly fine.  Like any encyclopedia, Wikipedia contains no new information; it is intended to provide a tour of published information on a given topic.  Proper uses of Wikipedia include:

• Getting an overview of a topic
• Learning new vocabulary related to a topic
• Discovering related topics and subtopics
• Using the bibliography at the end of a Wikipedia article to find authoritative sources

Despite the advantages of Wikipedia's collective authorship, currency, and availability, it should never be included in your bibliography--unless you're writing about Wikipedia--because:

• Wikipedia is not the original source of information on any given topic; it only compiles previously-published information
• The identities and expertise of the authors of Wikipedia articles are uncertain
• There have been documented instances of misinformation, whitewashing, and propaganda on Wikipedia

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