Citation is in part the process of giving credit to and signaling credibility of an author. Since Wikipedia has no authors, you shouldn't cite it as evidence for claims. But sometimes, it's super helpful!
- Use it primarily as background info - to give you a broad overview, to discover useful keywords and to understand controversies in a topic. These will be helpful terms to use in searches in encyclopedias and books.
- Many Wikipedia articles are full of citations. Use them! You can copy and paste a citation in Wikipedia into the search bar on www.lib.utexas.edu to see if we have access to that original source that would be more appropriate to cite.
There's a lot to know about Wikipedia if you want to use it responsibly:
- View History and Talk sections in an entry will give you insight into who (albeit under a username) actually wrote and edited the page, as well as see conversations between editors about the content. It can be really fascinating to see how things have been debated over time. You see the investment that editors have in a subject.
- Many pages will mention that they need more citations. This is a call for editors to give this entry more credibility with evidence, rather than opinions or conjecture. Here is an example: Literary Theory
- About 90% of Wikipedia editors are men. Most are white. Most are not experts in what they are writing about and editing. What does this mean for the entries? How can they be biased?
