Do you trust Wikipedia?
By taiguy
@taiguy (478)
United States
April 4, 2007 5:31pm CST
Wikipedia is by far the most conveinent location to imburse oneself in a lake of information. From fuel cells to the israel 7 day war. What is not to like?
It seems to me though that everything is gently brushed on. Kinda like a lowest-denominator affect. Don't get me wrong as there are plenty of articles that cite equations and such that will take me years to learn, but when you really have to get the complete knitty-gritty about something one generally ends up using "the google" in order to complete the reference material. Furthermore, I commonly find myself trusting the content of the articles like they were moses singing off the testaments of Jesus.
Do you feel Wikipedia provides adequate and trustworthy information in their articles?
2 people like this
3 responses
@Pluntt (232)
• United Arab Emirates
4 Apr 07
personally i think it is because if you have not noticed at the bottom of the wickipedia pages there are external links, these are what you need to go to after you have got the summaries on the wickipedia page them selves. use this to your advantage and check the sources out for your self, its to your own benifit. i know alot of school and univerties including my own has banned the use of siting from wikipedia BUT meanwhile they strongly recomend it for prelimanry research to get a general idea
cheers
Plunt
@taiguy (478)
• United States
4 Apr 07
Yah, for the most part there are plenty of external links that help with the subject. There are plenty of articles that deserve more external links to back up their sources, though. Unforunately it can be hard to cite sources on the internet when it's just a news article (anyone trust news more then wiki?). I am impressed, though, that on the popular articles they will tag the article with needing to cite it's sources when the occassion comes.
@web2samus (255)
• Uruguay
7 Apr 07
yes, it is. Wikipedia politics are strict and they state that every article must cite it's references, of course there are some irregularities sometimes but that happens on any enciclopedia (really).
You should check this: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html that is an study comparing the accuracy between Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica, they are almost equally trustable.
1 person likes this
@vbvbvb (85)
• India
5 Apr 07
The word is "Of Course" I am an engineering student and every now and then I have to drop here, for quick in fact the quickest and the briefest referrals. Wikipedia itself tells visitors about stubs and articles requiring citations, hence we can believe which articles are factual and pseudo!!!
1 person likes this
