 | This help page is ahow-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one ofWikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels ofconsensus. |
 | This page in a nutshell: The following is to help students of all ages with usingWikipedia. |
| Readers' FAQ |
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Wikipedia can be a great tool for learning and researching information. However, as with all reference works, not everything in Wikipedia is accurate, comprehensive, or unbiased. Many of the general rules of thumb for conducting research apply to Wikipedia, including:
As a student you are expected to submit your own work rather than directly copying material from elsewhere. This is calledplagiarism and is not tolerated in education and may be an infringement ofcopyright. Teachers and lecturers are able to detect plagiarism either directly from the content, or by using special software to check if the submitted material is copied from the internet.
To produce high quality work for school, college, or university information should be gleaned from a wide variety of sources. With Wikipedia you can follow the links supplied in the references or read the books which an article mentions. Often anISBN for a book is given and clicking on it will let you check to see if your local library has a copy. It should be remembered that theinternet has only existed for a very short time compared to thehistory of printing andpublishing so there is a huge amount of material that is only available in undigitized book form.
For students, especially at a tertiary level of education, Wikipedia should only be seen as an entry into a new field of learning. The references supplied will open out into the vast resources of the internet that we are now fortunate to have at our fingertips.
