Wikipedia....Should it be banned..?

If someone asks a question on here, is it not fair to assume they want an answer from a human being and not a site like Wikipedia?

Any idiot can look an answer up from them, so why do people answer with 'wikipedia answers'?

I'm not knocking wikipedia...I'm just saying we can go there for ourselves if we want to.

If I ask a question here I want an answer from a living, breathing human being...not another web site.

Do you mean in relation to answers on here? (I thought this was blatantly obvious, but people seem to be answering as if you're asking in general). If the question is trivial and trite, perhaps it only deserves a Wikipedia link. For example, you couldn't answer this question with a Wikipedia article, despite what some have unhumourously tried to do.

And hey, sometimes a Wikipedia link can be expansive and informative; it would be a more just contribution than just repeating what has already said, as many people are prone to doing.

Wikipedia has its advantages as i use it sometimes to get a quick synopsis of a novel, so for that reason i dont think it should banned, but used in better ways.

how many idiots do you know that can read,
bob, baby!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:B...

I have noticed that too, why doesn't the asker just look on Wikipedia for themselves in the first place. I have been looking at the questions on here and to be honest most of them appear to be penned by either people of school age or people with just no common sense.

People use what they know and asking a question on here and they might not have remembered to use Wikipedia

We can choose the best answers, so its the users option to decide if wikipedia answers are valid and good answers

i would agree with person above me, how many people can ACTUALLY READ?!

Wikipedia gives a quick refererance or review of something, but i dont get my answers off wikipedia, i only answer the questions i see that i know.....or in this case, argue against.

So i dont think it should be banned, as if you wanted someone to post the wikianswer (as i call it), then youd have done that in the first place

it appears that 'any idiot' can in fact NOT look up an answer in wikipedia....

some even directly say so....
If the answer is relevant they are free to read it and follow the link or not, clearly, if ALL answers were direct copy and pastes from exactly the same source, it would be tedious to say the least, but with all the variety, it is often worth covering all the angles, surely?

wikipedia was written by people
but i see where you're coming from

Well, Wikipedia does have some advantages.

For a start it doesn't shout at you and call you an ugly old cow when you ask a perfectly respectable question.

But it's not so hot on the "am I pregnant" "does he fancy me" stuff.

Hmmm...a thought provoking question there, RC.

I don't answer with Wikipedia. I've never even been on it. My answers are all my own. However, the thumbs down brigade don't seem to like them very much.

Everyone is competing for the best answer, and while there are some who are great at thinking out of the box or thinking off the top of the heads, there are others who are not quite so literate and need a bit of help to present themselves in a good light, hence they turn to websites like wikipedia and others. Hope this helps!

becuase its easy to access, easy to find information from, and it is also data from "human beings". plus the wikipedia company have people working 24 hours on editing the information being put in to make sure it is correct

The idea is to provide an answer to the user question. If that means that Wikipedia provides this answer, let the asker be the judge and save us a lot of time. If the asker is not happy with the answer, he/she can not choose it as the best answer.

Second, you are assuming that every asker knows how to search on the web. Perhaps the user doesn't know how to search effectively and efficiently for what he/she desires.

I understand your frustration, but I don't think Wikipedia should be banned.

Wikipedia to be fair is usually accurate and to be fair more often accurate than some of the answers on here?

Does it give any answer more credence than another?

Anybody that can toggle a search engine is going to find more specific answers to any question by looking on topic.

Is using the net to answer a question fair should be the real question?

Suppose it depends on the question???

maybe some people just dont know where to go to find the answers that they need and from here they get a variety of answers/opinions from others. not sure what the problem is if someone chooses to give an answer from wiki.

Well I personally think that this site is worse. On Wikipedia, users are encouraged to edit and improve that particular subject, and wildly inaccurate information is usually deleted.

Here the only incentive given to answer questions is points, leading to the popular answer "I don't know" or "2 points". Especially for the more intellectual questions. I think a lot of the time people only ask questions because they cannot be bothered to look for the information themselves and want it quickly. So to sum it up nah, I think we should keep Wikipedia.

I agree. I also get annoyed when people just copy and paste reams of writing from any site.

because most of the people who come here and ask questions are to lazy to do their own research.

This is a philosophy question in a way. I think the answer is that people want immediacy and the chance to interact. Despite the (almost self-evident) fact that Wikipedia is more likely to have information on every subject, sometimes people want the nuances as well as the raw information. Wikipedia is good on the raw part but sometimes the nuances get edited away.

Still, "any idiot" can ask a question - often because they are too lazy to do the research. I've stopped answering Chemistry questions precisely because I refuse to do someone else's homework. I've already got my academic degrees (yes, plural - "Doc" in my signature is not an accident). I don't need (and won't get) the grades that the questioners get when they turn in homework they don't understand.

When someone asks a question that doesn't look like homework, I'm more likely to answer now. But the truth is, I refuse to be responsible for helping someone else "dumb themselves down" by not doing their own homework.

Which is why I sometimes send someone to Wikipedia rather than just answer it. If it looks like homework and sounds like homework and smells like homework, odds are it isn't a random question. In which case I want someone to do for himself/herself. Not every answer needs to be laid out on a silver platter.

*giggle*
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo_answe...

A lot of people aren't really willing to go to the effort of searching for something in Wikipedia ...

Actually, when you get right down to it ... why ask anything in Y!A, you can just go and search the internet. Most of us (or at least me) will give the answer and then put the Wikipedia (or any other webpage) we got the answer from as a reference ... to prove our answer as it were.

No I wouldn't say so as they most of the people asking the questions have never heard of let alone encounterd Wikipedia hence them asking the questions on here.

I think answers are better personalised rather than straight copy / paste, however Wikipedia is a fantastic site crammed full of useful information.

i looked up wikipedia to answer your question and it said 'bog off.......shorty........' ....how did it know that....?

i agree that the questionaire should look it up themselves. though then i ask why are we doing homework for the kiddies on here. it's a matter of deciding to answer their question or not. i try to answer questions that don't require me to do the research for them.