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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26279
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/26279
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I think most of the answers here are missing something important. It is not about credibility (Wikipedia is as credible as most sources, which is to say that it contains a certain number of errors and omissions, just like everything else). It is about traceability. What matters when you cite a source in an academic paper is that you provide tracability for your assertions. Everything is supposed to be traceable back to the original research so that if someone has doubts about the assertions in support of your conclusions, they can trace it back to your original sources.

But Wikipedia, by its own rules, is not a source of original research. Every assertion in Wikipedia is itself supposed to be traceable back to the original research. So citing Wikipedia has no traceability value. It does not get the scholar any nearer to the original source of the information that you are asserting in support of your conclusions. That is why it is not appropriate to cite Wikipedia in an academic paper.

Outside of the academic world, there are generally no such traceability requirements and so citing wikipedia as a convenient source of additional information on a topic makes perfect sense.

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