Can we trust what Wikipedia says?

It's ok for little things that you were just curious about, but don't use it for anything for school. The thing about Wikipedia is that anyone can post any information on it, so it could be completely accurate or it could be completely wrong.

Wikipedia by far is very up to date and very technical across many fields....science, engineering and math..you can't go wrong with these fields since they deal with facts and figures...not a piece of writing/essay......

i do

yes!!

I don't trust it 100% because virtually anyone and log in can edit the information. I've seen subjects and bios that contained information that I personally know to be incorrect.

Not always. Always double check what you look up. Most of it is credible, but people can actually edit the material on the website.

NO!!!! It is not a reliable source. While most things may be accurate, anybody can change it to say anything they want! Do the people on here always speak the truth? No, so why would they on Wikipedia.

They are only human, but 99.99% of the time, the things they say are right. Usually if they aren't it says at the top of the page "This page needs cleaning up" or similar.

i agree with cameo because one of my teachers told the class not to use wikipedia for research because all those articles are typed by alot of people and sometimes they get their sources wrong.. so no i dont trust wikipedia

Generally, entries on Wikipedia are policed pretty well. A good rule of thumb is the article has verifiable references, then the information is probably solid.

Because the data is, for the most part, user-contributed, you have to be wary of information provided by people who simply don't know what they are talking about (incidentally, the same is true of responses here on Yahoo! Answers). If you are relying on a Wikipedia entry for info, I would do the following things:

-Check the reference links. If an article has few or no references cited, then the information should be treated as suspect.

-Look at the page history. From here, you can see the edits that have been made to the page, and the disscusions about why those edits were made.

-Verify the entry with outside sources (sources other than Wikipedia).

If you do these things, and all the data jives, then you can consider the article to be accurate.

Yes, we can. Some statistics even say that Wikipedia is like 97% correct. If someone puts false information, information without a source, or vandalizes an article, it gets removed fairly quickly. Unfortunately, my school disagrees with me and I can't use information from wikipedia for any school projects, essays, or anything. Wikipedia is probably the best online encyclopedia there is.

People say that it isn't accurate because anyone can edit it, but being an open source encyclopedia that anyone can edit allows them to have a wider variety of information.

will be regarded as a bible in the future...machine artificial intelligence foundation....you will remember that you was part of the beginning and used Wikipedia in its infancy......yes, trust it now...to believe will come later

For just about anything, I would say yes. However, if you are doing research or writing a paper, it is not acceptable to be used as a reference because it can be tampered with and many entries are closer to opinion than verified fact.

If you need definitive reference material, written or on-line encyclopedias or technical journals specific to your subject material are the preferred medium.

Wikipedia is a user written encyclopedia. Anyone can go in and change information and much of what you read is not exactly accurate. You are better off avoiding it.

yup.

studies have been done to show that wikipedia is about as accurate as encyclopedias.

with pop culture stuff, one should be more wary, but it is generally still good info. there are alotta mechanisms through which you can note the validity of the information.

but, as for factual information, ive never run into problems.

On most topics. Sometimes wikipedia uses other sources that are not that reliable but once you're accustomed to using it you can easily tell that it has or has not been properly verified. (It tells you, you just have to look for the small print.)
This is especially true of recent event info. and very controversial topics. There tends to be cases of censorship at times.
But on a whole it is a great online resource.

Not always. Certain subjects, like math and science should be accurate, since those are stated facts, but then it also depends on if the person who wrote the subject actually knows what he/she is writing about. Wikipedia is a user-written site, so pretty much anyone can write their opinion. Be wary, and if you need the info for homework or something important, double-check it with an official website, if possible.