What is the use of Wikipedia if anyone can edit it?

I mean come on obviously thre are people out there who would just want to write B.S and all sorts of crap.. So then is it a reliable site? Are all the things that are edited checked and affirmed?

Wikipedia is the best thing that happen to this generation, I learn alot of things from wikipedia that I couldn't ask ppl or aren't in most of the websites. Its free information, with no advertisement or no membership. Plus its from the ppl, its not from the government or one group or organization. Everybody could write what they know about their ppl, country, religion and history.
Sometimes there are stupid ppl who think they won't get caught, that they usually get caught and their IP address is banned if they do it again. Just be cautious, and double check it, but most of us could tell the truth from the lies.

thanks! Wikipedia is best no matter what ppl say. Organization and governments want to hide information and control ppl, but Wikipedia is exposing them. Report It

This is why WIKIPEDIA is good, because it can be edited. If someone wrote BS then it can be deleted or reported and the right stuff written on top of it. The community of users allows WIKIPEDIA to be better than a company sponsored site.

Yes they are scanned and checked thoroughly by wikipedia staff. Although anyone can edit it, anyone can report an article for being dodgy...if you do quote something from an article make sure they give a source and that the source is legitimate and reliable.

Wikipedia can be just as credible as any other source. You just need to read the info with a grain of salt. Make sure they cite data and make sure that the sites it comes from are credible.

You also need to recognize that a team of moderators are consistently monitoring and revising edits made by users, so its not as easy as you may think to spread false information.

yes these things r checked by the site members n other users online who can edit out the mistakes.

Wikipedia utilizes several measures to counter "B.S.ings" of articles. The fact that thousands upon thousands of people are visiting the site constantly means that nothing that's wrong and blatant about it will exist for more than a short period of time. Furthermore, they have citation standards for articles' sources, and articles that lack proper sources are labeled up at the header. Lastly, Wikipedia is working on ways to check the consistency between edits to articles and their original sources (see link below).

yep, so get encarta and look up

naruto
g o a t s e
pwn
lossless data compression

and see how far you get.

You see, the beauty of wiki being available to anyone who has knowledge they want to share is that you can get information on virtually any subject. Yes, there are occasionally errors of fact, but the upside of this is the diversity of information - which no 'professionally edited' encyclopedia can match.

We have encarta - its crap! There are real limits to the extent to which a single publication can be comprehensive. So, Hope this answers your question as to what the use of wiki is!