Ways to make best use of online Encyclopedias

Summary:

Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia- an open medium of gaining information, which implies that anyone and everyone is allowed to gauge the information from Wikipedia. Hence, it is quite a good source of knowledge, however there has been a feeling of friction between it and various academic websites, courtesy to its vastness and too much information on almost anything and everything in a single piece of article. This guide will try to throw some light on the ways so as to utilize Wikipedia to the best of your abilities.

Wikipedia is quite a useful tool and it truly assists you. To be able to make proper use of Wikipedia has proved to be an art which each student or even lecturers should be well aware of. When I say, "proper," the idea is to highlight ways that would help you in achieving that.

• Know what you want

While using Wikipedia for gaining information on a particular topic, one needs to have a structured approach to do that. One needs to be very clear with their requirements because Wikipedia is going to provide you links on almost every second word that comes your way while reading. If you do not begin your search with a formulated approach, you will end up wasting a lot of time on things that aren't quite vital. Hence, you will have a far tougher time, if you look thematically. Hence, in order to process your time efficiently, draw a proper hierarchical structure mentioning explicitly the topics that you would want to focus on.

• Explore more and more

Take a note that just reading isn't effective for learning. Of-course one may browse several essays and have an imprecise recollection of a bunch of facts. But if one is simply using wiki to browse, that would unfortunately not serve the purpose. With Wikipedia, your best bet is to remodel the content so as to resonate it with your learning activity. There are certain websites that help you with this learning activity by assisting you with image identification or language translation, etc. Utilise the free services available on the internet so as the gain maximum efficient content from your searches. This would not only help you in enhancing your learning process but will help you in achieving maximum utilization of Wikipedia.

• Understand your requirement

These two W’s will help you in understanding and channelizing your thoughts. If your mind is clear on these thoughts, you would be able to make your search a better experience. This would happen as the result of the logical progression of thoughts in your mind and hence you would go only for topics which are related to your area of research.

In the end, all I would want you to remember is the fact that whether your goal is to become a Jeopardy champion, or a scholar, your learning does not necessarily begin and finishes with wikipedia.org. It is your personal learning and the ability to put effort into those learnings that will take you places. These are just some little hacks that would help you in making your Wikipedia search a better experience, one that engages maximum efficiency and proper utilization of resources. Good luck!