Why you SHOULDN'T trust wikipedia.

Actually anyone can post on Wikipedia, qualified or not.

i trust wikipedia... i guess it has been proofread before its posted..

I have a little story about something very wrong in wikipedia and it's actually very funny too! So yeah, here it is: I was at school a few years from now and as always the teacher, the french teacher to be more precise, give us homeworks, naturally, but she tells us that she wants us to read some book of which I don't remember the title (I didn't read it anyways...), so yeah she asks us to read the entire huge book in the weekend. Obviously I planned to have a social life instead of growing a beard in my closet reading an old book (don't ask me why I would be in my closet, I don't know). So yeah and she gives us, actually she tells us to write something down, so I naturally opened a book and wrote: Devoir, which is homework in french, and then she starts saying the author's bio, the origin of the book and all that stuff. «But where is wikipedia in this?», are you telling me ? Haha, it's coming, keep reading... So blabla bla and bla she finishes and tells us that we have to make some summary of the book. Euh. No. So as a good student, the night before the last day we had to complete the work, I go on WIKIPEDIA (here it is) and search for a summary of the book, even if the teacher told us: «Don't go on wikipedia, I've checked the informations and there are some mistakes and anybody could write anything there.» But what's the funny part? Here it comes... So yeah I go there and read a little about the book just for info, because I didn't wanted to read the book and then I realize something. What I didn't tell you is that a few months before we had this assignement, I went on wikipedia and submmited multiple false bio facts about authors of the books we had to study that years just to mess with people's brain. And then I realized that the teacher went on wikipedia and COPIED word for word everything single thing I had wrote. So the author was a former horse lover and this is why all his books can relate to horse and things like that. In my book, was written some stupid things about horses, that I had wrote, what is creepy though, is that the book might have had some relation with horses according to a friend, but I wouldn't trust him that much.. So yeah I wrote a boggus article, the teacher told us not to go on wiki beacuse it was fake, and her notes about what she was teaching is came from wiki, and were in fact bad notes that I had wrote. Since that day, wiki is my best reference for anything that I'm sure is not important:P

I have no problem using Wikipedia. I use it regularly because when I search using MyLot Search Engine, Wikipedia is always on top of the search results. Knowing the information there are only posted by people like me, I double check the information I got from Wikipedia by checking other search results like information coming from Answers.com. Being a pharmacist, I search a lot for newly launched medicines. So far, most of the information I am getting from Wikipedia are all accurate.

no doubt wikipedia is the large source of getting information on any field or topic but one thing we also keep in mind that all these data, theories are submitted by peoples,users and possibility to have inaccuracies in it.but we can compare these data on wikipedia with other reliable source of search engine.

if feel wikipedia shall be trusted as there is no specific reason not to trust

Well, I’ve always known that but to me the greatest benefit of Wikipedia is that its always available whenever I need to check out something. Being an open portal, the articles are written by people who’ve done some research themselves and can be edited by anybody but at least you get some info which you can cross check with other sources. Imagine having to go to the library for everything and then browsing thru so many books to prepare your report… I mostly research on articles for my son’s school projects and as I said, I take the info from a various sources, corroborate them and then prepare the final version. I think if you follow it that way (all the different pages on the net itself), you’ll have less chance of making an error.

Ive been using wikipedia for my research and for good readings, though im not only depending on that site alone. But i dont find any irregularities with it in terms of information it gave me. Though, we should also consider that the information that they have in wiki are also taken from people who would like to share ideas on a certain topic. Its better to have a lot of information than getting one only like wikipedia.

One should never trust any one source completely. Being an history student through my graduation, I have learnt never to judge something or write about something depending on one source. so when it comes to Wikipedia, why again depend on just that one web site. One should alway collaborate the information from some other website too. Wikipedia is not the only website giving us information. So this is not an horror story for me.

I never can trust information in the wiki because too many writers that can not be known science background him. To me wiki no more just webblog

Of course, that's why its free. So research at your own risk. Anyone can edit or put a wikipedia. There's no wiki police. Although I have been guilty to quote wiki as an authority at one time or the other. :-)

I agree about how many people can edit the wiki pages. I have tried messing around with it before. I changed it and the very next day, it was changed back,

I've never encounter any bad experience using wiki to do research. However one should really not just rely on the findings on wiki for research because wiki is just a place for all the people who can go online to actually put in the facts that they think are true. So I would advise you if you are just looking for a read up, then you can go to wikipedia but if you are looking for facts for research then don't. However using wikipedia as a reference guidance is acceptable. Cheers.

Wikipedia is actually very accurate. Whenever someone edits something into the page and it is inaccurate information, people are usually VERY quick to correct it. So yeah, while anyone can edit anything, people usually fix false stuff. It's still not advisable to ever list wikipedia on a work cited page for a research paper though because people do view it as an unreliable source.

Why would you not have considered taking Wikipedia articles with a grain of salt? You should look critically at all sources, regardless of what it is. Put on top of that that Wikipedia is user generated and only reviewed by moderators. Wikipedia SHOULD NEVER BE USED AS A CITED SOURCE IN A PAPER FOR HIGH SCHOOL AND ABOVE. Everyone in college should know this already.

just like other email disclaimers, this message posted on that site is like a disclaimer. of course wikipedia has made it's engine on the priority list (i guess) for any searched topic, but there are exact sites where i rely searching for what i want to know.

I take Widipedia's information with a grain of salt.. Normally, I used to read stuffs from there, but since then not so much, because I find some of the information not updated. But certain things, like factual stuffs, I can rely on it. Not so much though, thanks for this update.

Hi Gemma, I very rarely use Wikipedia but next time I do I will beat this in mind if I am looking up information and also go for a second opinion from another site. Good luck with your studies. My eldest daughter seems to live in the library at present, final exams looming. Huggles. Ellie :D

Hi Gemma, I use wikipedia a lot but when I went back to school they were really against it. At first I didn't understand why but when people are posting things on there all the time I can understand why. What if there view on something isnt actually accurate and then you get the wrong information. Makes sense when I thought about it.

I've always known it's not always accurate. I've seen Wikipedia claim that diamond is the hardest metal known to man, and other vandal edits of Wikipedia articles. But Wikipedia is still a convenient source of general information for me, so I still use it all the time.