How Accurate Is Wikipedia?

[abminara 0]

Take a guess. Flip a coin. But I doubt that it is going to help you in answering the following question: Is Wikipedia accurate? If so - how accurate, and in which aspects? Recently I've read an article in USAtoday, it said the following:

Two weeks ago prominent journalist John Seigenthaler Sr. revealed that a Wikipedia entry that ran for four months had incorrectly named him as a longtime suspect in the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert.

This information worries me a bit. But then, I looked at the further information about the topic and it said that this scandal was a very rare occasion. As of today Wikipedia is considered to be as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica. As of now Wikipedia hosts over 3.7 billion articles (yes, that is 3.7 with 8 zeros at the end) in more than 200 languages. It is 37th most popular website in the whole world. And, yet, many people have dropped their opinions about it due to thouse unfortunate incidents.

I know, that Wikipedia might be an excellent source for primary and secondary sources for research papers, but could it be a reliable resource all by itself? What do you think?

[jlhaslip 4]

I think that you have summed up the situation correctly when you listed the volume of the articles and the comparison to an Encyclopedia.

Encyclopedias are historical information and carry with it the opinion of the author of the Article. The Wiki is no different. Depending on who writes the article will determine the contents. If Alex, the Flat-Earth-proponent, wrote an article about the shape of the Earth, it would be flat, not round. Get my point?

When discussing Wars, the History lessons belong to the victor, so their opinion and reports skew the data and opinions about the War. See what I mean?

So, the Wiki might be a good source for 'General Information' about a Topic, or a good starting point while researching a Topic, but the more current reports from Researchers in the field will have better information.

 

Compare it to finding out about the current weather condition. Which will provide more accurate results about the current weather where you are? Looking it up on Google (the Encyclopedia approach) or stepping outside (The current researcher method)??? Definitely the step outside.

[abminara 0]

I think that you have summed up the situation correctly when you listed the volume of the articles and the comparison to an Encyclopedia.

Encyclopedias are historical information and carry with it the opinion of the author of the Article.

Well. if you go into history, then initially the Encyclopedia - I mean - The very first one was nothing like Wiki, or Britannica, or any other big book/online reference website today. It consisted of 17 volumes of handwritten notes and illustrations made by the european philosophes that tried to portray their view of life and human nature. Later all the articles were combined by Denis Diderot and some guy (can't spell his last name, very bad at French) D'Alenbert into the 17 volumes, which were successfully banned by the French Government shortly after being published.

 

So I'd not call any of the todays' encyclopedias encyclopedias if you take the original as a point of reference (as you would do in any everyday situation)

[tricky77puzzle 0]

I think Wikipedia is a great source. As of 2005, the content management system became a lot more different than it is today, and there are much more rules about citing sources and other things today than there ever were before.Wikipedia has a great editor system now, and should always be trusted as a source for general information. (Note I said general. If it's something as specific like the number down to the ones' digit about a country's population, I'd say check the source.)

[midnightvamp 1]

Yea, I think that it has a wealth of information in it, and that most of it is probably correct, but the problem with it is that parts of it are bound to be wrong because it can be edited by anyone. I've seen pages that were sabotaged on purpose with faulty information being written... that were later "locked down" so to speak so that changes wouldn't be so easy to make until a later date to try and stop acts like this. But if someone were to come to that page before it was reverted back to it's older version and locked, they might have read that page and took it as truth, because it was written in the wikipedia (and things in there must be true, right?)Another problem with it, is that people may themselves have their facts wrong. A person could edit a section and in all honesty think they are providing accurate information on the topic, when they indeed are incorrect in some of their facts. They may not mean to be writing false information, but since they believe it to be the truth, that's what gets up there until someone comes along later and discovers that it's not quite right.I think it's because of things like this, that schools don't allow you to source your information from wikipedia when you are submitting a major paper. They know it's not necessarily going to be correct all the time (though often it is) and would rather see highly credible sources be named so that they know the facts used in the essay or whatever are the correct ones.Either way, I'm constantly looking things up on that site, because it truly is a wealth of information... but I'm not necessarily believing everything that I read, and important things that I need the most correct and up-to-date information about, I tend to look up elsewhere first, and if I can't find anything else, I then go back to wikipedia to see what they say about it.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

Another problem with it, is that people may themselves have their facts wrong. A person could edit a section and in all honesty think they are providing accurate information on the topic, when they indeed are incorrect in some of their facts. They may not mean to be writing false information, but since they believe it to be the truth, that's what gets up there until someone comes along later and discovers that it's not quite right.
I think it's because of things like this, that schools don't allow you to source your information from wikipedia when you are submitting a major paper. They know it's not necessarily going to be correct all the time (though often it is) and would rather see highly credible sources be named so that they know the facts used in the essay or whatever are the correct ones.

Not to mention that sometimes content "isn't encyclopedic"... I had 1 edit reverted because of that. (My username on Wikipedia is Ztobor, and the article was "Albert Einstein".)

I think the error correction response time is much faster than it was before. Also, the response time is faster for major pages than it is for minor ones. (for example, on a disambiguation page for M, I made an edit that said "M is the roman numeral for 1000". About 53 minutes later, it read: "M, 1000 (number), Roman numeral and Unicode".)

[Saint_Michael 3]

Of course that is the problem with wikipedia that since it is completely open source in that anyone can edit it, colleges do not accept any sources with wikipedia on it. However, wikipedia is a good jumping to learn more about a particular subject that is what google search engine is so efficient because how specific you can get with keywords. Of course it would be helpful in knowing something about the subject and that way if you do find questionable material you can disregard it or fix it, but of course that has been a major problem in the last 7 years because of the whole 9/11 thing, but it still is a good place to learn something new and go googling for more info and whatn ot.

[master_bacarra 0]

While I think it's a great source of information, it's not the information you want to be placed on your class paper. I have a classmate back in college that use Wikipedia as their source for some of the information for their thesis. We gave him a warning before he submitted the paper or his professor won't accept it and probably would have dropped him in the class. Of course you could see some external links provided in the search results to provide back up article on the information stated, but even those external links might not provide the "real" information you might need. There are sites that needs to be verified for the contents they post, after all, it's the internet, anyone can post anything. Although I must admit, it's the first thing I access when I need to know some information about shows that I watch that usually run on a different time, somewhat like a spoiler (I'm a sucker for spoilers ).oh and mike, you might want to change the arrangement of your sigs. it's affecting the IE window (yeah I know, the office use IE. that sucks...)

Edited February 11, 2008 by master_bacarra (see edit history)

[bishoujo 0]

Wikipedia has been banned from my school and many universities as a research souce. I refer to it when I'm just reading up on something for leisure, but it can prove pretty unreliable sometimes.It also depends on who writes it and on what topic. Some wikipedia entries are very well-written and even have a good list of sources to back up the writings. Others are not so.

[suberatu 0]

My school does not consider Wikipedia a 'scholarly' source either.

 

I, however, take issue with that. I do concede the point that article quality on Wikipedia is indeed all over the place (ranging from masterful to terrible/spam). However, many of the articles are indeed informative and reliable. It all depends on the people submitting them and reviewing(editing) each specific article.

 

One interesting case I know about, is that one of my friends' brother had a chemistry professor in college who required his students to submit their papers to Wikipedia after they were graded and (re)revised. His philosophy was that "if you hand it in to me, I don't benefit anything" (after all, he does teach the subject), "but if you submit it to Wikipedia, many people benefit". I would think that scholarly papers such as these are pretty reliable and could actually help other students doing research on similar topics.

[etycto 0]

i think the accuracy of wikipidia depends on the topic and how much people either hate it or like it beacause they tend to be biast on how they present the idea. when it comes to reaseache, wikipidia is not the best place for research paper's and projects. i've had personal experience with this. but if you where to be looking for just some simple braude information wikipidia is ok i guess especialy the first few words but if you where to read a whole wikipidia article i bet there would be a good ammount of inaccurate information.

[sheepdog 10]

Wikipedia and accurate should not even be used in the same sentence. I hear very frequent reference to reasearch done there, how on earth can you take anything learned there when ANYBODY can go in and type any story/information they want to? It almost seems like many people think this site is for real and believe anything they see there, which makes it rather scary if you ask me.

[Absolute Zer0 0]

Wikipedia is generally fairly accurate, but because anyone can edit it, it's usually best too look at some other sites for more info on the subject before you write an essay or report on something, just to be safe.

[tricky77puzzle 0]

Wikipedia is generally fairly accurate, but because anyone can edit it, it's usually best too look at some other sites for more info on the subject before you write an essay or report on something, just to be safe.

Of course that's true. But, my science teacher doesn't allow Wikipedia for a source either, and Wikipedia cites a LOT of reliable sources for the information that it provides. Sure, anyone could just go up there and type anything, but what's the incentive? I know for a few more controversial topics, like abortion, the page is frequently edited to say that "Abortion is a cruel, heartless process that kills babies" where the whole page is deleted and this text is inserted.

[Forbez 0]

Everyone and anyone can sumbit anything onto Wiki. Wiki itself is not responsible for how accurate it's data is. The person who submitted is to blame.Wikipedia is a community site which needs people like you and I to submit the correct terms and meanings for words, phrases and events. Wikipedia needs people like you and I to inform them of incorrect data. The concept of creating a site like Wikipedia is a brillant idea.How accurate is Wikipedia? You have a huge range of accuracy, from information submitted by Professors and Doctors to information submitted by teenagers who thoguht it'd be a laugh to.