Most teachers agree on one thing, the website known as Wikipedia should not be used in a research paper. I don't agree with this statement one bit. My current research paper on the public's perception of violent video games and their affects on children is largely driven by "the public's perception." On the website Wikipedia, anyone is free to post information on a certain topic. Therefore you get to find out what the public's view is on certain events because even events such as the Columbine shooting, the Beltway murders, and the Virginia Tech massacre all have opinion and what the public perceives from the event. Sure a bulk of each of these topics is straight facts such as the times, dates, locations, etc. but after you unravel all of the cold, hard, facts, you are left with a lot of opinion and what the public believes is to be blamed.
Take the Columbine school shooting for example. On the Wikipedia page for the Columbine school shooting they go through a list of "rationales" as to why Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold might have caused the school shootings. Under one subcategory is "video games," and after unravelling all of the cold, hard, facts, I was able to come to the fact that the public's perception, even though not the entire publice created the page, thought that video games did not play a large role in the Columbine school shootings.
Teachers can bad-mouth Wikipedia all they want, but in reality Wikipedia is more then just cold, hard, basic, knowledge to a certain object or event. Instead Wikipedia is a way to divulge deeper into what the popular opinion is on a certain event, in my case violent video games and three seperate rampages.
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