Is Wikipedia Ever Wrong?

[NeutralMunchHotel]

OK, we all know the old adage: 'You can't trust Wikipedia, it can be edited by anyone!' But... how often do you find that to be true? I personally use it as my go-to source of information, and when I go to other sites to check some other facts they always seem to agree with Wikipedia.

So, how often do you find Wikipedia to be wrong? And, as a bonus question, what would you say is the clearest mistake you've ever seen on there?

 

[Pandalisk]

Wikipedia is always true, i know because the wikipedia article on Wikipedia told me so

 

[alxhrmn]

I guess with Wikipedia being a community-edited resource, there is going to be some factually incorrect information on there. I've yet to find any, however.

 

[thenumberthirteen]

I saw an article on Mice that said they were secretly planning to take over the world.

 

[reg42]

It's not often wrong, but I've seen a few stupid edits on it.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

I've seen it be wrong, quite a while ago now.
Unless Dave really is the King of Malaysia.

 

[Marter]

Most of the time, if it is wrong, you will be able to tell. It'll then get fixed within the hour.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

It can be wrong early on in an articles life, but it gets quickly edited.

 

[Internet Kraken]

Personally I've never noticed a mistake on wikipedia before. This is mostly because I use wikipedia to look up obscure information that is normally very hard to find on other sites and even then in small quantities. Since I usually know little about these topics before looking them up, I can't really verify if they are incorrect.

I imagine if I looked up articles on wikipedia that talked about current issues I would find a lot more inaccuracies, usually due to the bias of people who are editing the articles.

 

[Cpt_Oblivious]

I saw an article on Mice that said they were secretly planning to take over the world.

Well that's obviously wrong. They've always been in charge, those pan-dimensional beings payed for the creation of the Earth.

 

[Jfswift]

The few times i've done reports and actually used wiki as a reference, I made sure to cross reference it with other sources. I'd have to say for the most part that the people writing those entries (I know one person in fact that does) take their time and do their research. The problem is I don't think the wiki staff or readers always have the time and resources to verify everything on there. Also, once in a while I find some of the articles to be very opinionated.

 

[Arkhangelsk]

A few times, but it can be trusted 90% of the time. At least the English one. The Swedish one is utter shit.

I once saw the article on Paul Gray being edited every minute shortly after the announcement of his death. One time it said "Cause of death is Still Mudkipz" or something like that.

 

[pneuma08]

YES.

With Wikipedia, there is a direct correlation between popularity of information and correctness of information. Try looking up something obscure with it.

 

[Flamingpenguin]

Hmm... I usually trust it. The admins are really quite good at catching errors and false edits, and I've never been steered wrong by it. I would say it's right at least 95% of the time. And once [Seriously don't quote me on this one] I heard someone say it consistently averaged more correct than Encyclopedia Britannica, but that was a year or two back, and just something I heard them say. But I'd believe it.

I still think teachers should let us students use it.

 

[The Only]

well there was that one time there was a "EMINEM RULEZ" quote on the Paraguay page... and he does not rule so im going with Wikipedia is wrong.

 

[Troublesome Lagomorph]

Yes.
Sometimes it has good info but you can never be sure.

 

[Soulgaunt]

I saw an article on Mice that said they were secretly planning to take over the world.

And that means that there's false information on Wikipedia? Damn mice...

OT: Well, I don't usually go to Wikipedia, but when I do, it usually looks reasonable/ correct.

 

[Low Key]

The only time I ever see any mistakes outside of vandalism is on rarely visited pages. You can tell which pages are popular by the size of their talk pages.

Aside from that, the only mistakes I really see are regarding grammar and spelling. The info seems to all be correct.

 

[rockingnic]

I see errors on every page that I already know something about. I even catch spelling and grammar errors and I am not that good at editing either.