Doe's anybody else think that allowing Wikipedia to let anyone edit an article is a really bad idea?

It's a bad thing because like someone might put random stuff on accurate articles wich can lead people to get inacurrate information.

It's a COMMUNITY encyclopedia, that's the point.

The admins / mods for wiki would check out the entries before they make it through.

Well, it's both bad and good. By allowing the public to modify it's contents, Wikipedia ensures that it stays the most updated encyclopaedia in the market. This compensates to a good extent for the bad guys who engage their time in destroying it's contents. Moreover you hardly find any wrong information in the Wikipedia pages; pages with wrong information count about one in every 1000.

:)

ya... its a good way to mess things up. like youtube... they wanted people showing what they do and ended up with a bunch of stripper videos

You're not supposed to go to Wikipedia for accurate information, its just a basis for you to start with.
And it has more slang and cultural things than a regular encyclopedia would have. Like... Brad Pitt lol

Yeah, faux-experts will pop up and put wrong information on wikipedia and it will probrobly stay there if hidden carefully enough. Go to Encarta, where there are accually experts verifying the claims, like a true encyclopedia.

It is a wiki that is what is there for. if you are using Wikipedia as your only reference to something that is a bad idea.

ya i totally get whay your saying.my friend was doing a report once and she went to wikipedia bcuz she didn't know that people could edit it,anyways it turned out that she got the whole report wrong and got a F.doesnt that totally suck

If Wikipedia wasn't open to edit to the public, then there would BE NO Wikipedia.

Wikipedia was made that way, and therefore has articles on many things that you wou;dn't find in conventional encyclopedias.

All sources are biased and potentially wrong, Wikipedia is just another source.

yeah. they would put stuff that is not true.

You can find some pretty accurate info on wikipedia but dont believe everything you read

Well, it's bad, but there wouldn't be any articles if there wern't any users. Most go on Wikipeida to do good edits, only a few vandalize.

Its a wonderful idea that has made Wikipedia into a giant place full of information for the common man. And if someone puts garbage onto an article it is easy to revert.

Apparantly they are very good at verifying correct information, very quickly. I saw a TV programme where they "doctored" some mis-information on a city in England. The team at Wiki quickly corrected the errors. If you look at George W Bush on Wiki you will see you cannot edit it because so many folk have tried to vandalize information.

Wikipedia has its good and bad points. The advantage of everybody being able to edit it is that it is updated quickly, efficently, and has more information than other encyclopedias.

Most of the articles are generally accurate, and I've seen that vandalism is corrected quickly.

that's why i don't consider wikipedia a reliable source.