Is Wikipedia trustworthy?

Ohhh...I love Wikipedia. I thought it one of the places online that I could trust with info. I hope this isn't true. I will ask my son if his school mentioned the same thing. I wonder is there is another site that is just as good or even better.

I think Wikipedia is trustworthy to an extent. If the people writing the articles can back them up with legitimate sources. I wouldn't trust any article there on its own merit. Because there can be ones that aren't correct. I would use it as a stepping stone. To get a general feel for a topic and then to explore further from other sources as well as making sure the Wikipedia article got it right in the first place. As for students not being allowed to use it, well, I don't know for sure, but I imagine it might be because of fear that students will not research further once they find something there. That they'll accept something on Wikipedia as fact without digging deeper to clarify that it is.

I think I know why it's not trustworthy because any Jane Richard(can't say The short form of this name) and Harry can go on and post an article. I don't know if it's online, but MSN Encarta is trustworthy I think lol, not quite sure about that either. Years and years ago when my mom first got a computer we had MSN ENCARTA on a cd-rom and it was actually fun to use. I was like 12 then.

It is true that Wikipedia is not necessarily written by experts on each subject, and it may not be as up to date as it should be, but it's pretty damn good in my opinion. And it's free! Some people will complain about anything. As I understand research, especially college level, one should always cross-check and take multiple sources of data. In this scenario, Wikipedia is very well suited to the job.