Do you trust Wikipedia?

Its written by people. Do you trust random people?

 

Well, because its me you quoted, allow me to elaborate on my comment, because the person who it was directed toward posted in here and filled in what was implied just like I thought.

Wikipedia is a good site for learning the basics. They're able to state common facts like the first President of the US was George Washington or Kangaroos can be found in Australia. Therefore, it serves as a pretty good tool for those who have teachers dumb enough to not look up even one sentence in an entire research paper that I'm sure doesn't sound like a student, etc or someone that needs to "dumb down a paper".

On the other side, my quote was about someone talking about (as I recall) the number of civilians killed in Iraq per day. Knowing my school, my younger brothers middle school, and older brothers college all don't accept Wikipedia as a source, it shows me that theres obviously some kind of reason. Looking into it further, I noticed on a number of their pages, "Citation Needed" seems to appear quite a bit. When they do site something, I've also noticed (at least in terms of the only one I bothered to look into - the War in Iraq page) a number of sites like "antiwar.com", CNN (who wouldn't make their money without one sided facts), or dead links.

In terms of that specific body count fact, you have to go to another Wikipedia page to learn that the numbers the poster seemed to accept into fact that "IBC's online database shows the newspaper, magazine or website where each number is reported, and the date on which it was reported. However, this has been criticized as insufficient because it typically does not list the original sources for the information: that is, the NGO, journalist or government responsible for the number presented. Hence, any inherent bias due to the lack of reliable reports from independent or Allied sources is not readily available to the reader". To begin with, one can tell from their purpose that rounding up is more likely than not, and that it is nobody other than those in this group check through the numbers. Wikipedia offers a paragraph and whole page about this source, and gives harly a line to the UN quote, which I would trust far more.

Beyond that, the arguement that anyone can edit anything, they stray away from hot topics, and because its your every day person using card stacking to swing the page in the writers way isn't difficult at all. Beyond that, its your every day person. Thats a problem in its own. Odds are the person giving all the details on the latest info/treatment/research on cancer isn't a doctor. If they're out of their area of expertise, how can they be held as an authority on the topic? To wrap things up, as many have mentioned, they avoid the hot topics. On their abortion page, they make the page almost entirely about the simple medical fact of the issue, and then offer a page that gives a link to a page specifically about the sides (so you know they're weighted and about one side) as opposed to making the entire article a giant critisism of the war like the War in Iraq article.

So, we go back to my original statement, "Everyone knows Wikipedia is a horrible site for facts, so I was wondering if he got it from somewhere else before I completely discounted it." Even if Wikipedia brought them to the place they got the info, I wanted to see what the actual source of the fact was, not the biased article the person read it from. There's a big difference between everything on Wikipedia being wrong and Wikipedia being inherently biased. Because of that bias, lack of expertise from the common person, the common person being able to input information, and having difficulty proving the credibility or the source itself. To top it off, until they can get the basics right (like Finniscool mentioned) they have no business being considered an authority on a situation that changes constantly. In the end, Wikipedia is a horrible site for facts, and directly stemming off that and the extreme bias for their own article, you quote from their page about themselves doesn't prove much at all.

 

I trust wikipedia to inform me and to be reasonably accurate.

I don't accept it as a credible source for professional reports or debates though.

 

It's a good place to start for an introduction to a topic, but I would never use it as a source for a piece of work, however the sources at the bottom are often very useful so it's good as a place to start and get a helping hand from.

 

I'd also like to point out that it is HUGELY OBVIOUS when an article has been tampered with.

 

well its great for your own knowledge but its not a reliable source

 

Not really. One could easily change the date by a day that Adams became President of the United States and I can't see many people seeing it THAT easily.

This isn't much of a discussion if pretty much everyone seems to be in consensus....

 

I trusted it, but my teachers don't let us use wikipedia knowing that everyone can post on it, and you can be reading and using wrong information. But why would someone do that just to piss you off?

 

Ive used it dozens of times on many school papers and its never let me down yet so yeah...

 

Because wikipedia can be changed by anyone it is an unrealiable source. Like I could on right now and change anything to anything i want although it gets changed when its seen any people who read it will have incorect information. which is why it is unrealible.

 

Seems trustworthy enough, I mean if you try and edit something and put something retarded in there, it'll be gone within 10 minutes

 

I use wikipedia a lot and I have yet to find any mistakes on wikipedia.

Its always gives you the answers to things in a more human way and things you would need to know.