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I am posting this to inquire what you think of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia?
I will admit I have used them several times as a source of information. Whenever I Google anything it seems to come up with a Wikipedia entry. But then I began to think, their origin for information is just a bunch of ordinary individuals willing to spend their time and energy to contribute content. That means they are no more authoritative than anyone contributing here on C-D. I will give them credit they do try and cite sources.
So I am asking, how much do you trust the accuracy and reliability of information from Wikipedia?
Personally, I would rather trust them than what I get from the mass media. One has no financial gain, just pure interest. The other is all about financial gain.
BTW where does Wikipedia get the finances to maintain their site? I know they do not give away the servers and network connections required to maintain it. So what is the revenue stream?
Last edited by kjbrill; 10-30-2012 at 09:56 AM..
Reason: add content
Generally, the vast majority of Wikipedia articles are well-written and researched, with a good attempt to point out all sides of view. That said, a few articles get messed with (and it's usually obvious when it happens). It's good for a cursory look but for any academic purposes it's advisable to look at other sources. Generally, the Wikipedia article itself will provide dozens of sources you can go check out at the bottom of the page, solving the issue.
Some people - ahem, teachers and college professors - are a few decades behind the times. Throughout my time in school they've repeatedly said Wikipedia was not a credible source, don't even attempt to use it, etc.
I bet those are the same guys that said don't use anything on the Internet at all ten years ago.
I distinctly remember during my last year of college doing an economics paper in a lackadaisical fashion, submitting it to Turnitin, one of those online plagiarism checkers, and it returned a 25% match for the Wikipedia page on the topic. Because I used the exact same sources that the article used, the bibliography pages were an almost exact match. I got a funny look from the professor for that, because both she and I knew exactly what I did.
One thing I found amusing in college was that Wikipedia was shunned by all the liberal arts professors, but my Information Systems professors were alright with using it - in fact when doing reports on current technology wikipedia is a better source than any encyclopedia.
Well, generally I think (as an academic source) Wiki is shunned for the exact reason that other encylopedia's were ...
They are aggregators /summarizers. Its taking the cliff notes approach.
If you are writing a true research paper, they want you to research. Not say "Encyclopedia Brittanica (or Wiki in this case) did the reasearch for me".
But there limits in terms of academic usefullness, is also precisely why (for the general-non-academic public) encyclopedia's are so useful.
I want to know all the filmography and alternate worlds of Star Wars. Sure, I could read all the Star Wars sites and fanboy sites... or I could wiki it..
Since I'm not writing a paper and the knowledge is sought for simple personal edificaiton, wiki will quickly confirm for me that JarJar Binks was an abomination in the Lucas universe and the Clone Wars are pretty darn cool.
Even with the best of intentions and the same set of facts, it's almost impossible to put something together without someone's personal attitudes and beliefs crawling in somewhere.
One value as I see it is that what is presented is the tale as seen or held by that individual or group. Joe Greatperson's life is given the details he, his friends and/or his family think are important, not what a historical researcher or local media reporter sees as important.
I am a chemistry professor and I love wikipedia. The scrutiny that a scientific wikipedia page gets is far superior to the peer review that most primary articles ever get. That being said, it isn't a primary source and so cannot be used as anything more than a place to get started for scholarly research.
Location: A voice of truth, shouted down by fools.
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Reputation: 937
For me, Wikipedia is a great source of colloquial common knowledge, assembled in one spot.
I get a snapshot of prevailing thinking about a topic without having to dig a lot.
If I want to know more or I want to find authoritative sources, I can do so easily enough, and the terminology and words that I find in a Wikipedia entry is often a great starting point for detailed research.
Wikipedia is hardly authoritative. It's a database of curated rumors.
Wikipedia is actually usually pretty accurate. Good to find out information quickly, though it's never a bad idea to double check. I don't use it for academic reasearch per se, but it's a good place to start when I'm trying to think of topics or get ideas.
I like it a lot, but IMO when some entries veer off pure factual content, they can become slanted to liberal interpretations. But as a consumer of mainstream media, I've learned to expect it.
I like it a lot, but IMO when some entries veer off pure factual content, they can become slanted to liberal interpretations. But as a consumer of mainstream media, I've learned to expect it.
Depends on what you're looking up. Are there liberal interpretations of chemical composition?
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