Reliability of Wikipedia

[Abwayax]

I suppose we might as well have something in here that isn't religious, political, or sexual in nature, so...

This is one of the things I've been following closely for a while. People tend to take for granted the claimed self-corrective abilities of Wikipedia, the so-called "free encyclopedia". The idea is that any misinformation or vandalism will be reverted within hours. A study by the scientific journal Nature claims that Wikipedia is roughly as factually correct as the Encyclopedia Britannica.

However, is that really the case? Britannica itself challenges the Nature study. Wikipedia-Watch maintains screen shots of vandalism done to biographies, the effects of which can still be seen on "mirror sites" that copy Wikipedia content for AdSense. There is a chance that edits made to a Wikipedia page may last for even a day, and for a high-traffic website like Wikipedia, that means something. There are even stories of scandals - in particular, a guy who claimed to be a professor at some university who, in fact, has never taught a class in his life. And then there's the juicier stuff, like Wikipedia's founder having sex with a somewhat famous Canadian political commentator in exchange for giving her article preferable treatment.

Personally, I think the "wiki system" could work. The current problem as it is is that no one - not the volunteer editors, nor the Wikimedia Foundation, nor the founder himself, will take responsibility for it. The WMF likes to claim that it is a "service provider", sorta like Geocities or Freewebs, and that it does not have any control over the content of its projects, one of which is Wikipedia. So who does? The volunteers, including the "administrators" (who have technical abilities like the power to lock down an article or block an account from editing), operate from unverifiable pseudonyms. They do not even put names to their work, so who can say that they take responsibility for it?

The end result is that we have a "community" of editors each fighting for their own POVs while trying to game the system and become "administrator". At least that's how I see it. How does this affect the quality of articles, from an end user standpoint? If anyone ever bothers to look at what goes on "behind the scenes", on the various "project" and "talk" pages used by the editors, you might begin to wonder why all of these people spend their time fighting each other when they could be... writing articles?

But I digress. Do you consider Wikipedia reliable? Why or why not?

 

[ultraviolet]

While I like Wikipedia, I don't think it's a reliable source of information simply because it can be edited by anyone, and corrections aren't always made in 'hours' - many take days or even weeks. Honestly if you're properly researching anything you should use more than one source (particularly on the internet) anyway, so I hardly use Wikipedia at all if I want to learn about something new.
The problem is that a lot of information in other encyclopedias is that online it's nearly always 'full text for subscribers only'. What makes Wikipedia is that it's convenient and free, which is why I like it.

I think I read somewhere that 'Wikipedia is a good place to start, but not a good place to finish'. It's useful if you're wondering what x is and decide to look it up. Then once you know basically what it is (whatever it is), it's easier to go and look for more information because you know what you're looking for. But it's not a reliable resource that you could use for serious things like school, I don't think. It's a good 'general knowledge & trivia' tool.

 

[Harlequin]

When used properly, Wikipedia is fine. Check the sources. That's what they're there for.

 

[1. Luftballon]

Check the sources. They're there for a reason.

 

[Tarvos]

the problem is not wikipedia the problem is the sources. you simply need to check whether the sources are good and whether any calculations agree with common sense and reasonableness.

 

[Blaziking the God General]

I used to find it reliable.

Then my teacher told my class a story of how she and her friend edited a page on it so that it was entirely different when they were younger.

So now I only use it for small reports that don't matter a great deal.

 

[Abwayax]

Check the sources. They're there for a reason.

Ideally, there would be sources. However, 135,257 pages have the ubiquitous "citation needed" tag (Template:Fact). 127,664 pages have a notice that states that they are completely unsourced (Template:Unsourced). 46,379 have a notice stating that they need more sources (Template:Refimprove).

 

[opaltiger]

However, 135,257 pages have the ubiquitous "citation needed" tag

Out of 2.7 million. Even adding all three templates you mentioned, it still comes to only around 9% of all pages. That is actually a lot less than I expected.

 

[Ice tiger]

I use Wikipedia all he time for school stuff, it helps a lot, but I still check other sites to make sure that it's all true, and to get better information. Sometimes Wikipedia says things that aren't true though, once while looking up info on Lewis and Clark it said something about farts o.o Like they tried to make fart in a can or something >.> Obviously fake though.

 

[Zuu]

No way! Wikipedia is about as reliable as my arms when it comes to heavy lifting. You can't use Wikipedia! It's written by people!

[read: check the sources]

 

[Noctowl]

Considering people edit it all the time...nah.

 

[Dewgong]

I don't think it's totally un-realiable.

Bigger pages are locked.

Wikipedia edits their pages back to normal if useless information is added (vandalism).

 

[Dannichu]

I think wiki's really, really great when I have to do an essay on something that I have absolutely no idea about (like postmodernism), so I can look it up quickly and get a vague feel for what it is; I'm not going to cite it in my refrences list (all my seminar leaders deduct major points to anyone who cites wiki in an essay, and one fails you completely), but it's a really good place to get a basic understanding of the main concepts surrounding something; most textbooks about postmodernism, for example, assume you know what it is already, leaving me completely confused.

And if something's blatantly not true, it's fairly obvious if the page has been vandalised and the general information you're getting (as in, definitions of things rather than specific facts and figures) is wrong.

And it's a great place to go to find sources that you can cite in an essay situation. Google Scholar's better, yeah, but unless you're accessing that through a uni, most articles are locked/incomplete.

 

[Lucas₇₅₅]

I hate how teachers always tell you never to use Wikipedia, even though I tell them about the citations. But I suppose I could just use the citations myself.
I trust Wikipedia, but not for something way too important. I wouldn't trust it if, say, it told me to cut the green wire.

 

[Ruby]

Some people are just unable to grasp anarchist projects like Wikipedia. They can not imagine how anything can work that does not have a man in charge of it wearing a white laboratory coat or a suit and tie. In reality a thousand regular people will always be less biased than a scholar, because a scholar can write what he pleases but each regular person is held in check by the others. The kind of people who attack Wikipedia seem to see MIT professors as earthly Gods and every regular person as a lying clown. But it is the professor who is more likely to have an interest in lying: he is the one publishing books filled entirely with his own point of view who has given his life to his theories about a subject and is given money to study them.

'Encyclopaedia Britannica objected to the study that put it out of business' - I'm not sure what kind of argument this is meant to be, or whether it is an argument at all.

 

[FKOD]

Usually, if I have no clue what something is, I look it up on Wikipedia. I hate having to sift through hotels and blogs when I look something up on Google or some other search engine. Besides, if something is false on Wikipedia, it's usually obvious. Wikipedia is also a good source of photos, pictures, and diagrams.

 

[Abwayax]

re: scheming evil professors of doom who seek to rule the world push a point of view, professors are generally experts in their chosen field of study. Thus, their point of view is most likely an informed point of view (more informed than that of a 19 year old college student dabbling in said field who started the Wikipedia article on it, probably). Nor are experts always acting alone; they usually interact with other experts in that field, just like Wikipedia editors. An expert would also be under fire from her peers if she promoted an incorrect or malicious point of view, just like a Wikipedian would be reprimanded if he tried to push lies. If a particular point of view is shared by the majority of experts in a field, there is probably good reason for that. There are, of course, "experts" who hold disreputable positions, for example, the small percentage of scientists who think global warming is a hoax (and are motivated to make stuff up, probably by the funding given them by large oil companies that would stand to lose if more environmentally friendly energy sources were researched).

And per Wikipedia policy, which requires that articles use multiple non-trivial reliable sources, it is the position shared by the majority experts that ends up in the articles.

 

[Mirry]

I suppose I agree with the majority on this topic. I think that Wikipedia is really useful if I want to learn about what something/someone is in general, and it can be interesting to read if I'm bored. Would I trust it with my life? No. I wouldn't cite it on a paper from school, but if I wanted to research a topic I would start with Wikipedia and then look at the sources IT cites.

I think in general, though, it's a pretty accurate source. Not 100% accurate, but pretty reliable in my experience. Vandalism is usually pretty easy to spot.

 

[Vyraura]

I wonder how many people are aware of the amount of revision that goes into 'real' encyclopedias,

it's less than on Wikipedia. If something wrong goes in there, it stays in there as 'fact'.

 

[Yarnchu]

Why the heck people would use Wikipedia on school papers is beyond me. Sure, I read Wikipedia for information or some trivial stuff, or even to pass the time. But I have only used it once or twice for school, and only when I needed to find a starting point and some diagrams and pictures. Wikipedia is reliable if you dig through the articles, however; you would have to be as mad as a hatter to believe everything written in a website that can be edited by anyone.