Wikipedia: Do you think it's reliable?

Wikipedia is a great resource website. There are a lot of interesting topics to read there.

I would stick to articles from academic and research magazines rather than rely on Wiki. As you said, Wiki is great as a quick reference guide, but as far as basing any type of research for classes on it, it is not reliable. One of the things that Wiki does have, which is almost its saving grace, is at the end of almost every article, there is a list of references and links to other websites. So Wiki might be a good place to start a school project, and you can go from there. Granted, if I knew I could get away with it, and it were in a class I didn't really care about, I'd probably abuse Wiki, write the paper as fast as I could, and call it done.

I know it is not very reliable line to line. But I refer it to know something about anything. it is good in that respect to get initial knowledge.then there are many things which are quite through in wikipedia

Wiki is a good resource because many times it has a lot of sources listed (usually websites, documents, books, videos, etc) related to the topic. It's a good starting point. I wouldn't recommend using it as a resource itself for school (or really anything else). I think other sources would be better. It's nice as a quick reference & to explore topics further with the resources listed. Pablo

I think Wikipedia is good for general information on any particular topic and as a general outline or framework to work on. After using Wikipedia for some time I realised it is not as reliable as I would have liked it to be. It cannot be denied that there are good articles but there are articles which do not tell the truth and articles which twist available facts to suit the viewpoint of an individual or organisation.

I'd never use it as an academic source, I've come across lots of rubbish there, and the style and content just isn't suited for academic purposes. You never know who has written the article, what's their authority? I'm not saying the things on Wikipedia are wrong, not at all, but it's just as in real life, so many people are convinced they know very much about some subject, they can talk about it for hours, but actually they're wrong, new research might have been done, stating something different, someone might just be sharing his/her opinion, which can be other than yours, or other than mainstream/academicly accepted. Still, I do use Wikipedia to know some basic stuff about something, or just if I come across something I don't know and want to know quickly what it is about. I usually start my search there, because you get everything you want to know in a nutshell, and generally speaking it's quite correct, because it's checked and edited by the other people. This only counts for plain facts, for more difficult topics, or topics people are discussing heavily, I'll rather turn to more specialized sites or books.

I don't use it as a reliable source, but just if I'm looking up some quick info on something I'm curious about. It will usually give me a good starting point though and I can find real info from other sources.

Well since it can be edited by anyone anytime, I really don't think it is reliable when it comes to facts about History, Science, and other academic related stuff. Maybe if it was for banal and ordinary things maybe there is a degree of reliability to it. I don't use wikipedia for research because it is not allowed.

Hello Zezloler! I don't think that wikipedia is a reliable source of academic information. As what I have heard, anyone can give the information there and I agree with you that it can be falsified.

I think that overall, Wikipedia is fairly reliable. Any erroneous information is quickly corrected by other users. I understand that teachers frown on it's use for gathering information for reports. My stepdaughter has run into that a lot in her classes. All, or most of the facts are cross-referenced to a source. I tell her to use the sources listed to gather her own information. She hasn't gotten in trouble for that, so I guess it's ok.

yes. I have used wikipedia for my assignments and researches for schoolwork. But not as my only source of information on subjects. There are also other online encyclopedias and resources that are more reliable than wikipedia. I only use it for quick information. But not for important research for thesis or school reports.

I think it's reliable enough. It does have some wrong info here and there, but so do real books. If I was a teacher I would not only let my students use it, I'd encourage it. But then again, I would make them do some real research and demand for them to try and confirm the info from one source with a second one. At least that's how I think research should be done, but that wasn't your question so I'm not going to expand on the idea. Rich

i find Wikipedia to be reliable only in certain matters, in the case of politics, i doubt any factual information will come of that, because politics is so full of many opinions, that it hardly paints a fuller picture of that topic. but i find wiki to be reliable in most other subjects, simply because it cross references other sites that have some sort of credibility, especially in subjects that vary, i dont see a reason why wiki would not be reliable, because its based on a strange honor system, someone else will edit the information, for several reasons, but the most factual of information, remains on wiki, if someone changes any page on it, its almost usually to change it to factual information, no one finds it funny to mess with factual information, unless like i said, in politics.

Wikipedia has always been my place to start in school not all articles are full of knowledge that is not legit, most of it is backed up and reliable. I mean I know it can be edited by anyone like the time I saw the Russia page completely erased to say dirty communists. That is good enough to scare anybody away from a source, but it seems to have the knowledge grouped in the best way and is usually up to date. I would not recommend you use for a paper or anything but for basic knowledge or a place to start something it is a great site.

Some of the things on Wikipedia are ok but I would certainly never use it for important research as anyone can change an entry for any subject. There are plenty of online encyclopedias that are a lot more reliable and which you should.

I think,wikipedia is quite reliable and can be used in researches.

Wikipedia is a great source of information! We just have to be careful on how we cite it as a source - instead of actually citing it directly, we can opt to cite the sources that it cite instead :D if it lacks those, then that's a Wiki-article that you should skip. It's not like they're making us believe that it's a bullet proof article, they actually tell us if citations are needed and stuff so we can decide for ourselves :) Thanks for commenting in my discussion!

Hi frnds, Yes i think that wikipedia is a reliable and good one site. The wikipedia site is a good site and we can get a any information and we can gain knowledge.We can search any information in the wikipedia.Wikipedia is same like of encyclopedia.Its a good site for search any informations.

I don't know but it is okay to me.