There's been a lot of controversy lately about whether or not Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, is reliable. From Stephen Colbert challenging his viewers to vandalize Wikipedia articles, to Attack of the Show's Kevin Pereira having his biography altered, there are plenty of examples of the problems with Wikipedia. Those problems can be easily summed up: basically, Wikipedia trusts the public. Major no no.
But in Wikipedia's defense, you do get what you pay for...which is nothing...because it's free...so you don't pay. Do you see what I'm getting at here? You shouldn't be using Wikipedia for any important research or school papers. It's just not reliable enough. Does that mean they should disband the site and throw themselves into a volcano? Of course not. Their venture is a valid and noble one, allowing people to share information on the topics they really care about, and letting them do it for free.
So what did we learn today? If you have to write a paper on the economic downfall of the former Soviet Union after the end of the Cold War, avoid Wikipedia. But let's say you want to know how many hot dog eating championships Takeru Kobayashi has won, then feel free to go to the free, editable encyclopedia.
1 comment:
Vandalism on wikipedia is easily detected and almost always instantly reverted. Furthermore, it's easy to distinguish vandalism from the rest of the text. So its impact on content is minimal. Where Wikipedia does run into problems is areas where there is a legitimate space for conflict, and these spaces are usually well-demarcated by the presence of conflict tags in WP articles. So it's not true that WP is unreliable for doing school reports, etc. - in most cases articles of a historical nature are easy to write, and usually have sources listed for contentious topics that may be used for verification... what more could you want?
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