Do you trust Wikipedia as a source?

[Naltic]

You never truly know something unless you dive deep into it yourself. I take Wikipedia as an introductory guide to the topics I am researching/searching, and I never take its word as absolute truth, because nothing ever really is "absolute", I think. A topic can have 100s of different opinions without any way to know which is true and which is false, it's here that I think Wikipedia does a good job and a bad job. It does a good job in the sense that it often incorporates many of the opinions, but it does a bad job at actually explaining the opinions in a factual and accurate way. A friend of mine has also noted that the citations it uses are bad, amongst other things. So, all in all, I think Wikipedia is a good general-use encyclopedia, but it falters when you want actual factual information.

 

[UnDubious]

So many dead links as sources, too, which is the nature of the Internet.

 

[fmsynthetic]

I do sometimes see people doing frustrating things there, like repeatedly editing Frank Miller's page to obfuscate the true fact that he wrote the lyrics to the ninja rap from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie.

These sorts of things are bad signs.

 

[JackNoir413]

it depends. normally the more "specific" the entry is the more accurate it is. i imagine it has to do with the ratio of "common people searching for this" and "professionals searching for this".
like, i wouldnt trust a wikipedia source about idk a historical event you're studying in highschool.
but if i forget how to calculate momentum and its energy i know wikipedia's got my back it even explains where the equations come from!

 

[What's His Face]

Any resource where anyone can enter and/or edit any data at any time anywhere with limited-to-no oversight isn't a resource worth utilizing. I learned this over 20-years ago during The Great Aeris-vs-Aerith Wikipedia Edit War.

​

 

[Clippy]

It's a decent source of information if you want to learn the basics of a given topic so long as it's not in any way shape or form political. Iirc one of the co-founders said that Wikipedia is compromised in that regard and that was years ago. If you want to delve deeper into something then you're better off checking out the reference links they post at the bottom of each article or foregoing the site entirely.

 

[Potapota]

You can trust it as much as you trust the sources listed in the pages. [according to whom?]

 

[Taukyrie]

I only really trust it for a simple quick summary, but it's better to look at the reference sources at the bottom for in-depth information.

 

[Another Iori]

i remember a friend of mine would edit popular wikipedia pages, screenshot the newly edited page, then revert the change afterwards citing that it was an accident
so he could post an image of a wikipedia article claiming italians were cyborgs

 

[solidbatman]

i tell my students that wikipedia is a valid starting point for researching. but we also do a lesson on how to use it where i give them a biography on an obscure political official from the late 1800s. we then attempt to confirm all of the biographical information by following the sources, only to find that the sources are relying completely on hearsay and are unverifiable and the wikipedia article is straight copypasted from said unreliable source. the point of the lesson is that if they cannot verify the information they find in wikipedia, they cannot use that information.

 

[Onionstarz]

Not really i was looking up a film i like and the big plot points where wrong and anyone who had actually seen it would spot it "The DEAF girl" she's blind

 

[Yousef]

I like Wikipedia a lot actually. There’s some Smaller articles I’d wish would get expanded upon but that’s about it.

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

I think Wikipedia's fine as a basic introduction to something or surface level info, but I wouldn't use it for more in-depth research.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

It's only correct when I edit articles and change every nation into Big Finger Country.

 

[Yousef]

It's only correct when I edit articles and change every nation into Big Finger Country.

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

Gotta be honest... This thread was a bit of an experiment for me, kinda like showing up with a bomb and seeing if anyone would lend me matches. I half-expected having to close it by page 2, but you were all excellent and made great points all across the topic.

Kudos to you all!

 

[Another Iori]

Gotta be honest... This thread was a bit of an experiment for me, kinda like showing up with a bomb and seeing if anyone would lend me matches. I half-expected having to close it by page 2, but you were all excellent and made great points all across the topic.

Kudos to you all!

 

[Sir Auriel of Lionel]

I do for inconsequential things like movies, video games, tv shows for credits, receptions, and synopsis but not much else probably since I don't do as much research out of school now.

 

[Mopeybloke]

English language wikipedia is a great source of information. It isn't a main source obviously. It aggregates info from other places. Where they shine is having the editorial process and being able to ask for and hash out disagreement on the validity of sources for their articles.

Essentially every problem you can cite for Wikipedia is true of most other online sources.

For instance, wikipedia is transparent about the date of edits, while many websites people would read contain information decades out of date, but you can't see that no one's touched the article since 1998.

Wikipedia has editors you could accuse of bias or malfeasance. Most other websites, a single person decides what goes where, and their bias can be completely opaque to you. They mostly lack an editorial process that searches and quells mistakes, and many times are funded by think tanks and other political forces.