Introduction介绍
在过去的二十年里，多数网络社区发展迅速，其中最具代表性的是维基百科。这是一个高效率的写作作者社区。鼓励个人通过增加知识和修改他人的在线作品来为开放内容百科全书做出贡献。作为它的口号“自由百科全书”，维基百科是可以被公开访问并且是免费的。任何主题的学术信息都可以在维基百科上找到。正是由于这样的性质，大学生往往通过查阅和检索在线百科全书上的信息来开始写作论文。然而，维基百科作为高校论文的参考文献，由于缺乏权威性和质量问题，无法得到高校教师的认同。在整个咨询服务的发展过程中，只有专业人才才能让省为资源的创造和生产作出贡献。作者，编辑，甚至志愿者都应该被确认为有是影响力的专家。出版物是已建立的出版商和数据库供应商的特权，他们同意在创作和生产中强调专业知识，以确保参考资源的质量。本文认为维基百科对论文的撰写和研究具有参考价值。The last two decades saw a tremendous growth of prolific online communities, the most representative one of which is Wikipedia. It is a highly productive community of collaborative authorship where individuals are encouraged to contribute to an open-content encyclopedia by adding knowledge and revising others’ work online. As its slogan “the free encyclopedia” goes, Wikipedia can be openly accessed and is free of charge. Academic information on whatever topic can find its entry on Wikipedia. It is due to such nature that college students tend to start their papers by referring to and retrieving information from the online encyclopedia. However, Wikipedia as a reference of college papers cannot be accepted by college teachers because its lack of authority and quality issues. Throughout the development of reference service, there are only professionals who can have the province to contribute to the creation and production of resources. Authors, editors and even volunteers should be recognized as identifiable and influential expertise. Publication is the privilege of established publishers and database vendors, with an agreed understanding on the emphasis of expertise both in creation and in production to ensure the quality of reference resources. This paper argues that Wikipedia is of reference value in preparing and researching papers. It comprises of three main parts. The first part of this essay introduces William Katz’ six criteria, which include purpose, authority and accountability, scope, audience, cost and format to assess what a qualified reference is. As what follows, the author analyzes the real practice of Wikipedia under the six criteria and present arguments justifying Wikipedia’s contribution as a reference in college students’ paper preparation. The next section provides some counterarguments against the thesis. The following section provides evidence to demonstrate that Wikipedia is of great reference value in writing research papers. The last part draws this whole essay into a conclusion.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Wikipedia is a great reference source that student can look up to, as far as the author is concerned in this article. The free online encyclopedia has sparked off a debate on its reference value since it came into being in 2001. There are many people believing that Wikipedia is a great invention that could be the mainstream academic media due to its convenience, fastness and comprehensiveness. However, criticism is also focused on it due to its authority and inaccuracy, which was elaborated on more clearly and soberly in the article. The author believes that undoubtedly, there are limitations about Wikipedia, including lack of authority and inaccuracy of information, but it is not reasonable that only professional and man of known expertise can have the authority to contribute to the creation and production of resources. However, Wikipedia is qualified to be a reference source by meeting the six criteria in judging whether a source can be reference. The six criteria are purpose, authority, scope, audience, cost and format. The purpose of Wikipedia is to deliver information to people all over the world. From authority, Wikipedia can attract famous researchers to contribute their articles to the website. With regard to scope, Wikipedia has a substantive content in which people can find whatever they want in it. The audience of Wikipedia includes the ones who need to write research papers. Wikipedia is also cost-free and fast in retrieving information. The format of Wikipedia is an interactive platform being constructed by a legio
