Research projects have been a staple of education for a long time. With the advent of the internet and its proliferation throughout schools, Google has made research efficiency something that our parents could only dream of, which often makes them quite jealous. The ability to access anything in the public domain in a matter of seconds with the press of a button is world-changing and too often taken for granted by overloaded and overstressed students who are filled to the brim with due dates and rubrics.

When classes begin a research project, teachers are always quick to firmly denounce the unholy, no-good, rotten center of false information known to us as Wikipedia. Some students groan, others laugh that anyone would consider such an obviously flawed online encyclopedia that anyone can edit. This routine has given Wikipedia its infamous reputation as unreliable in every sense.

This reputation that Wikipedia has been given comes from people who do not understand the purpose and usefulness of Wikipedia during research projects. Now, I know what you may be thinking. If anyone can edit it with whatever information they feel is like adding, how can it possibly be considered reliable and allow it for research assignments?

There’s a reason this infamous website shows up at the top of Google search results every time and there’s a reason it’s the largest encyclopedia in the world. Wikipedia is simply a hub to get you started on your research. Its purpose is to introduce you to the concept that you’ve taken the time to type into the search bar and gives references as to where to go from there.

Often unbeknownst to anti-Wikipedia advocates, almost every sentence on Wikipedia is followed with a small blue hyperlink, almost like an exponent. That is a citation that you can click on and will forward you to the source of the sentence that you just read. Most of the time, these citations are from scientific journals, university studies, news articles, historical essays, and other types of empirical evidence and publications.

As for the worries of fake information being embedded within accurate information, Wikipedia is not cyber-anarchy. There are moderators, administrators, locked pages, and algorithms that detect suspicious activity. Often times changes have to be approved by groups of trusted sources and more popular pages only allow changes by accounts that have existed for a certain amount of time or made a certain number of accurate edits to other pages.

There is a plethora of checks in place to keep Wikipedia the site that it is. Teachers need to exercise more faith in their students and teach them how to use a website that has so much value, instead of prematurely eliminating it for quick convenience and peace-of-mind.