At its best, wikipedia presents a concise nugget (possibly a large one) of information on a topic. At its worst, however, it is a mishmash of unverified information, advertising, vandalism and constant editing. You may have some luck with any science that is not controversial. Everything else is likely to come under fire from people who have nothing better to do (there are many).

At its best, wikipedia presents a concise nugget (possibly a large one) of information on a topic. At its worst, however, it is a mishmash of unverified information, advertising, vandalism and constant editing. You may have some luck with any science that is not controversial. Everything else is likely to come under fire from people who have nothing better to do (there are many).

You should rely MOST on peer-reviewed journal articles and conference presentations. Wikipedia MAY have good information, but it is not considered to be a quality course.  Use it to help understand what key words to search in scholarly article databases, but avoid citing it in your writing.

Dear Salwan,

There has been much discussion recently, pertinent to your question, here:

https://www.researchgate.net/post/You_often_use_the_possibility_of_Wikipedia

HLWIKI (Health Librarianship) is quite serious as a source of information and is reliable for users http://hlwiki.slais.ubc.ca/index.php/HLWIKI_International

Wikis can be quoted, they are already included in citation guides and styles, and so are comments to blogs and contributions in RG or other social media: 

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/

http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

You can add 'last edited' or 'modified' on [date] to cite the version accessed. You can see that on the left hand side of the wiki under ''permanent link" (you will see on top 'Revision as of'' ) or at the bottom of the page accessed (''This page was last modified on..."'). Any web page may change, be modified or disappear. Only you can decide whether it is pertinent to quote the wiki (unless this decision is subject to approval by a supervisor), the same question on credibility may be asked in respect to many other sources.

Sometime you can consider it as review paper (secondary reference), however, it is not one of the best sources for referencing. My advice is to cite the primary reference.

You can see the references used in Wiki to find the primary reference. 

Regards,

Ahmad  

In fairness to Wiki, it helped and still helping many researchers, especially the beginners and the students who do not have access to good journals. I had also used this in my Masters thesis in mathematics. But as they say, always be cautious on what information you are going to use and if possible, double check such with other available references.

There are a number of quality wikis managed by subject matter experts. If you use material from them (or any online source), then it is  necessary to refer to them.

Examples:

1 nLab: ncatlab.org

2. Proofwiki: proofwiki.org

3. Rationalwiki: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/RationalWiki

etc

George, you may need to edit your post.

we can refer wikipedia to learn the basics and to get a basic overview of some topic. But I do not think that we can use it as a credible source for research. Anyone can contribute data to wikipedia. Some data may not be verified by experts in the particular field. But if anyone is using wikipedia's data he/she has to cite those pages of wikipedia.