Wikipedia - a trustworthy source of knowledge?

I love wikipedia, i love all open-source projects and software and such. Anyways i had this history teacher that wouldnt let me use wikipedia as a source on my essays because its "not trustworthy" since anyone can edit it. Ive found that many people believe this.

What do you think? I think its more trustable than any other source because it can be changed by anyone - you never get a biased opinion on anythin, just facts. And if someone vandalizes something, it is fixed, or locked down and reviewed 99% of the time (i have yet to encounter any vandalism on wikipedia)

Besides its not like official sources are always correct, they make mistakes all the time, and are often biased. So would you trust wikipedia over websters or something?

I wouldn't consider Wikipedia to be a trustworthy source of information. Interesting yes but accurate, somewhat.

I LOVE WIKIPIDIA i never had missleading info and i like the
fact that peoplecan edit it since ....ISNT THAT WUT THE INTERNET IS PEOPLE SHARING INFO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I certainly use Wikipedia but I don't depend on it for resource - I look around other sites too. Sometimes Wikipedia doesn't have the information I want, but it is still very useful!

I love Wikipedia too. I think it is mostly accurate, but if you are using it for an assignment I would definitely check up on the facts presented in it just to be sure since it is not completely accurate.

Wikipedia is good for everyday knowledge because I figure that for every person who types in something wrong, someone is going on that will correct it.

However if your doing academic writing you need a good source...Peer Reviewed Journals are a good source since they are edited. They may be biased, but if you cite them well the misinformation is their fault not yours. If you use wikipedia people will be less likely to take your work seriously as well.

Wikipedia is a great resource, but never an actual source. The problem with wikipedia is that while 99% of the information you read there is good, you could happen to source an article there right after some retard spent three hours rewriting it with the completely wrong information. By the way, there is a bias there, just not apparent to thos who aren't familiar with the community. If you have a research project, wiki[edia is a great place to start, do some research on wikipedia to find some basic information, then use the sources listed at the bottom of the articles you;re using to find the actual facts that you are looking for

I think generally the information on Wikipedia is correct. However, as a general rule, if all i'm looking for is general knowledge for myself then I'll use it, but if I have to cite my sources in a paper or essay for school then I find the information elsewhere.

its actually incredibly likely that you'll get a biased opinion. just recently it was released that wikipedia can track who edits websites, and the major contributors are often corporations who want their pages to read favorably.

Some people make false edits to Wikipedia, these people don't want the truth out there.
Always check the pages edits before believing what you read.

I go to Wikipedia EVERY single day if not every single hour. I just love it. But it doesn't mean it's faultless. For instance there is a debate between Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica about the accuracy and authority of the contents of both.

Every good things some with some bad aspects. You agree? When the good part of such an open encyclopedia is the unbiased opinion (or just simple statement of fact), the nature of it also bring some disadvantages: when anybody can be an author, and it's impossible to verify everybody's credentials on a certain topic, this could bring to the encyclopedia too many non-professional contributions. They are heartful and they should be thanked yes, but how could we determine if that's the best answer or not? In contrast, writers of Encyclopedia Britannica are experts in their own fields and trained to write entries of an encyclopedia in a professional way.

So when I use that a lot, I still don't believe I can't rely on Wikipedia as an authoritative source if you are doing something really serious.

Definitely a great secondary source-- that being said, however, it shouldn't be used as a primary point of reference for a major paper. It does make a good tool to familiarize one's self with the subject of the topic. It's best to use other sources as primary sources, i.e. Encarta, a World Encyclopedia, etc.

Wikipedia isn't a good final source for such research, for several reasons:

(1) It isn't permanent. This is actually a problem with citing most of the content on the 'net, with some notable exceptions (for example, major newspapers have permanent links to articles that will always be the same as those that were in the printed page). A printed encyclopedia can always be checked to verify it says what you claimed, unlike Wikipedia, which may have been corrected or updated.

(2) It is secondary. The people who create and edit Wikipedia are (ideally) supposed to base their words on more authoritative sources, from academic articles to verifiable newspaper articles. This frequently doesn't happen -- for example, I've help document my own neighborhood in San Francisco, as well as some other topics, without 'sources' -- but for important or controversial points, there should be a footnote that leads you to another authority.

Those footnotes should be your key to research. Use Wikipedia to learn the basics about a topic, then examine the sources listed at the bottom and follow-up. (People do the same thing with professional academic journals.)

Of course, because anyone can edit Wikipedia, there is a tiny, tiny, tiny possibility that you'll read an article that had bogus information. (You could click 'Random Article' for a long time before you found such an error, though. Assuming you had the patience). But *all* pages have people that 'watch' them looking at what has been changed (there are volunteer administrators that do this even for pages that no one else wants to watch), and take pride in fixing errors. Vandalism happens all the time, but keep in mind how huge Wikipedia is: with "over 2,039,895 articles comprising of over 885,142,350 words" the amount of good stuff vastly outweighs the bad stuff.

The best test is your own commonsense. Go to a few articles in Wikipedia about something that you already know about, and see how accurate it is.

And if it isn't accurate, change it.

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I've added some of the interesting articles to the links below. Most from the New York Times (I just happen to read the NYTimes, and can recommend it, but if you are really curious you should look up your own sources.) They are interesting, and should help you understand Wikipedia's culture, and why and how it is accurate, and sometimes inaccurate.

Finally, if you happen to be a high school student, make sure you read the last article. You'll see why.

You can trust Wikipedia.It is my number 1 source of info.

Wikipedia is very trustworthy. If an article is innacurate due to some jerk, it is so obvious, and easy to detect

I think Wilkipedia is trustworthy 99% of the time but I don't use it for school because it is considered an "Unacceptable Source." But it is great for personal use.

Almost all of the information on Wikiepdia is accurate. However, since anyone can edit it, I would think that some information is inaccurate since anyone can create an account and change information. Once, I was looking for information on identical twins and I saw that every other sentence, someone has pasted "EM AND JO ARE IDENTICAL TWINS!!!" or something like that. I don't really remember. The next day, I went to the same article and found that it had been filtered. I think Wikipedia's articles are filtered by the staff if there is any suspicions on inaccurate information. To conclude this answer, I will say: Yes, Wikipedia is a trustworthy source of knowledge. But I always look at other informational websites to support information I find on wikipedia. But, you can use your own logic and common sense if you find an article like the one I found. Teachers don't like students to use wikipedia for information on their homework, because they don't want to take the smallest chance that what the students will find on wikipedia is inaccurate.

Hope this helps! :-)

I trust wikipedia all the time!! I even have a userpage there!

Some Wikipedia entries are not trustworthy. If you are looking at a Wikipedia article and think it's false, just use your common sense to figure out the real answer.

Well, although it is editable, there is a talk page to debate on the contributor's credibility. And yes, it is quite accurate, in a sense.

here's advice from your neighborhood friendly Immortal ninja!

it's a good source but don't just rely on it. You can't really say it's inaccurate because people can just edit the articles there. I believe there's a board of credible writers/editors who screens the articles and changes made before posting it. People can refer to Wikipedia but do not make it your primary source.

People edit only certain sections of wiki information. Wikipedia members usually just copy information from other sources (the source list that is at the bottom of every wiki). Google is trying to own Wiki because we usually get directed to wikipedia first before going to other links. So through Google; Wikipedia is getting great traffic and views.

You are right . Wikipedia is a trustworthy place to get informations for everything. Even it had issues with people edit wrong infos on some articles.

The Wikipedia teenies are not trustworthy. No way.

I looked up the TV show Meerkat Manor on Wikpedia about 6 weeks ago. They said the Flower was going to get killed by a snake. After watching a few more episodes of Flower still being around I figured it was someone just messing around on Wikpedia until two weeks ago when Flower got killed by a snake. I'd have to say its pretty reliable.