Got roasted by a professor for citing Wikipedia in a poli sci paper

During my sophomore year at Ohio State, I turned in a 5-page paper on campaign finance and cited Wikipedia like 3 times. The prof wrote "are you kidding me" in red ink across the top and gave me a D. I switched to using Google Scholar and the campus library database after that. Has anyone else had a teacher absolutely wreck them for bad sourcing?

2 comments

2 Comments

sean_park823d ago

Why not just ask the prof about their Wikipedia policy first? Some professors actually allow it for background reading just not for citations. I had a TA freshman year who said Wikipedia was fine for getting a basic understanding but never as a real source. Saved me from getting roasted later.

taylor_fox23d ago

Funny how that applies everywhere honestly... people hear "bad at this" and think it means never look at it, but most things work better as a starting point than people give them credit for.