Reliability of Wikipedia - General

My professors actually say to start a topic with wikipedia. It allows you to easily start researching a topic, as it gives you an overview, and is recent. Technical topics I find are accurate and up to date. Plus, you can use the sources in your papers :smug:

I don't understand why students complain so much about not getting to use wikipedia. We learned in grade school to never use an encyclopedia of any kind to cite information in a research paper. Wikipedia is great because it gives you a list of other places to find information, which is why you should use those sites, not wikipedia itself. You should always go directly to wherever they found their information, it's much more professional and a good habit to get into.

[QUOTE=Metalcastr;21339142]My professors actually say to start a topic with wikipedia. It allows you to easily start researching a topic, as it gives you an overview, and is recent. Technical topics I find are accurate and up to date. Plus, you can use the sources in your papers :smug:[/QUOTE] Wikipedia is great for this.

It is very reliable, Wikipedia is popular enough to hear itself within a matter of hours if not sooner.

[QUOTE=Yahnich;21340474]I usually just steal the sources from wikipedia.[/QUOTE] It's best if you mix some from wiki and some from your own. ~play it safe~

People rather like refining already existing articles and text than adding their own on Wikipedia. This results in one writer designing the article - determining which things about the subject are important - and the rest more or less following this. It'll be reorganized, the sentence structure will be altered, but the emphasis on certain things and the omission of some others will require a lot edits to change.

[QUOTE=Downsider;21332041]My History teacher's been bitching about how unreliable Wikipedia is. She says that anyone can change anything, and thus most of the information you'll find is usually false. However, I've argued that because of how popular Wikipedia is, and how much of the "iffy" information is cited on the bottom of the page, it has an effect to the point where it'll heal itself within an extremely quick amount of time. She argues that the Encyclopedia Britannica is [I]far[/I] more accurate, but I think it's logical to argue that the amount of mistakes in the Encyclopedia Britannica can be similar to that of Wikipedia, simply because of the time it takes for the false information to be removed being extremely short, and the Encyclopedia Britannica doesn't have the ability to modify, add, remove articles by more intelligent people. What're your thoughts?[/QUOTE] My English Teacher in High School was like this. Her advice was to use the sources listed in the article, the ones at the bottom of the page.

I always use wikipedia then cite some other bullshit book or something.

Lesser-known articles can be unreliable. For example, my hometown's article had details about the police department's 'Zombie Invasion Unit' for a long time. In the more popular articles, they're looked over obsessively by others, and even if you post factual information you'll need to cite it or you'll either get reverted, or a [Citation Needed]

I've read a study somewhere (let me find the source), where they compared Wikipedia with an established encyclopedia. Wikipedia had less errors :v: So, Wikipedia is actually more reliable. [editline]11:38AM[/editline] [url]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm[/url] There we go

The main thing with wikipedia is annotations. if you're trying to say why the article is reliable in your annotation, no author? no credibility except for more internet citations. It's more of a collaboration of information from other webpages than it's own information source. I personally don't use an article on the internet for history projects unless it's got an author at the bottom. My opinion i guess.

According to Wikipedia, the league of nations is a terrorist organization.

I've written a 5000 word report on the evolutionary links between avians and dinosaria using almost entirely Wikipedia or articles linked off Wikipedia pages. I would say at least 3000, if not more, of my report is comprised of information from Wikipedia, 1000 from a few books I have in my possession and another 1000 from other articles on the internet that delve into slightly more detail. Not to say that you shouldn't be weary and always check the page history and citations for serious work and you should never put it in a bibliography, but instead use the sources cited in the Wikipedia articles, but: [B]Wikipedia is reliable, trustworthy, fast and readily available. You'd be a fool not to use it.[/B]

Well, it highly depends on what articles you're reading, also you could probably notice if the information was false or not. If something isn't true it's probably not false on purpuse. For example I don't think someone would bother putting in some random false information about for example the fivedayweek.

My media teacher says the exact same thing.

[QUOTE=DrPompo;21345555]According to Wikipedia, the league of nations is a terrorist organization.[/QUOTE] Oh but it is.

[QUOTE=IAmAnooB;21345813]Oh but it is.[/QUOTE] Zing!

Teachers don't want you to use wikipedia because they know that everybody won't do any effort to look for sources themselves. Besides it really depends on the subject. There are some really bad articles, there are also some really good ones... [editline]05:04PM[/editline] And I agree that you shouldn't use Wikipedia for school work. Most of it is very distilled. If you have to gather information from multiple books, you get far better information. It's useful though for quick lookups or for a brief explanation of something.

Wikipedia is a great starting point to gather information on a subject. Then after that I usually turn to books targeted at specific areas that I need more in depth information on. I never cite Wikipedia as a reference though.

[QUOTE=Elecbullet;21332983][img]http://www.facepunch.com/image.php?u=283806&dateline=1271098695[/img] This man got his avatar from [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wiki-sball.png][u]Wikipedia[/u][/url]. The image is featured on the page for [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowballing (sexual practice)][u]Snowballing[/u][/url].[/QUOTE] Went to the Semen page, saw this: [QUOTE]Cultural practices In some cultures, semen is attributed with special properties of masculinity. Several tribes of Papua New Guinea, including the Sambia and the Etoro, believe that semen provides sexual maturation among the younger men of their tribe. To them, sperm possesses the manly nature of the tribal elders, [B]and in order to pass down their authority and powers, younger men of their next generation must fellate their elders and ingest their semen.[/B] This custom commences among prepubescent males and postpubescents.[45] This act may also be attributed to the culturally active homosexuality throughout these and other tribes.[46][/QUOTE] what

[QUOTE=Number-41;21346629]And I agree that you shouldn't use Wikipedia for school work. Most of it is very distilled. If you have to gather information from multiple books, you get far better information. It's useful though for quick lookups or for a brief explanation of something.[/QUOTE] I disagree with that. Using multiple books for information is pretty much exactly what Wikipedia is. It's funny because when I was writing my report that I outlined a few posts ago, I found Wikipedia to be my best source of impartial information, even if it wasn't the most detailed source. The articles I used clearly outlined different lines of arguments, the short-comings of research and areas of dispute. Most of the books I looked at, especially less recent ones, were far more biased in one direction or another. [QUOTE=MisterMooth;21347053]what[/QUOTE] What we would now view as homosexual practices have been in many cultures and societies for thousands of years from the Greeks to the Nazis.

Most articles are brilliant but some are shit. For example TV shows where the viewing audience is like "lol lets make a wiki article xD" and they put crap like "dave is the BEST character"

[QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;21347066]I disagree with that. Using multiple books for information is pretty much exactly what Wikipedia is. It's funny because when I was writing my report that I outlined a few posts ago, I found Wikipedia to be my best source of impartial information, even if it wasn't the most detailed source. The articles I used clearly outlined different lines of arguments, the short-comings of research and areas of dispute. Most of the books I looked at, especially less recent ones, were far more biased in one direction or another.[/QUOTE] When someone claims that they're writing neutrally, they're just disguising their own bias. One Wikipedia article cannot contain all the information multiple books do - some things must be left out, and this choice is usually made by the people who first wrote the article. After the article seems to have pretty much everything important about the subject, people refrain from adding new stuff to it, especially if the article's language and structure has already been refined extensively. Anything new you'd add would just clutter it. [QUOTE=ChestyMcGee;21347066]What we would now view as homosexual practices have been in many cultures and societies for thousands of years from the Greeks to the Nazis.[/QUOTE] Yeah well I think people have always viewed fellating another man as a homosexual practice no matter what their attitude towards male homosexuality was

Wikipedia is a fair source of information. I wouldn't use it to state facts on a research paper for something important but hey, if you want to learn something new, just go to a random page. There is in no way possible that every article on there is false and full of shit. Most pages are now protected and cannot be edited by regular users. Additionally Wiki moderators check newly changed articles constantly and delete ones that are stupid.

[QUOTE=ThePuska;21349425]When someone claims that they're writing neutrally, they're just disguising their own bias. One Wikipedia article cannot contain all the information multiple books do - some things must be left out, and this choice is usually made by the people who first wrote the article. After the article seems to have pretty much everything important about the subject, people refrain from adding new stuff to it, especially if the article's language and structure has already been refined extensively. Anything new you'd add would just clutter it.[/QUOTE] I'm not saying I read in a wikipedia article "I wrote this neutrally" and therefore I agree with it. I'm saying I have read the major sources from which some articles are comprised of and many sources from outside of the articles and, in my opinion, the articles sums up the subject(s) very impartially in comparison to many of the sources I viewed. This is only a few instances though that I am talking about. I can't in anyway comment on every article on the site. [QUOTE=ThePuska;21349425]Yeah well I think people have always viewed fellating another man as a homosexual practice no matter what their attitude towards male homosexuality was[/QUOTE] I don't think so. Greek soldiers used to partake in same gender sexual activities and it was not viewed as homosexuality in terms of two people of the same gender being 'in love' with each other, as such, but simply as a bonding process.

My physics teacher practically copy/pastes wikipedia articles and gives them to us as notes.

[QUOTE=Stupideye;21333329][URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia[/URL][/QUOTE] [quote]The [B]reliability of i poop myself[URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia"]Wikipedia[/URL][/quote] :haw: [/B]

Ban the collective knowledge of the human race and instead use only the knowledge voted on by a few idiots that like to write out Thomas Jefferson! Wikipedia is Fast Easy and fairly nice for general knowledge, The entire internet is, as a matter of fact. Should just do away with textbooks altogether in Public schools

[QUOTE=Sigma-Lambda;21333134]yeah man rage against the machine, screw those dumb teachers[/QUOTE] Not really. I am far from that. Just stating the obvious.

[QUOTE=TheTalon;21350286]Ban the collective knowledge of the human race and instead use only the knowledge voted on by a few idiots that like to write out Thomas Jefferson! Wikipedia is Fast Easy and fairly nice for general knowledge, The entire internet is, as a matter of fact. Should just do away with textbooks altogether in Public schools[/QUOTE] for anything even remotely specialised the internet is less useful than textbooks.