Is Wikipedia Ever Wrong?

[joshthor]

i havent seen any articles that are wrong, however, i know 12 year olds think its cool to mess with wikipedia articles... (little douches). but, for papers and stuff wikipedia is good to look through simply for resources. although, its good to look other places as well.

 

[Viptorian]

More often than not with wikipedia, it isn't that it is 'wrong' in an overarching sense, but that the details are either incorrect, misleading, or incomplete.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

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.

My history teacher puts entries into it and fully advocates its use. Best history teacher ever.

 

[Plurralbles]

wikipedia articles can be spun in a way that creates opinionated trash quite often. Even if the infomration is correct, it can still give the wrong feel and omit important information.

I know why acadamia doesn't trust it. It's better not to. I only use wikipedia to find sources of information in their citations and use information from those.

Wiki is good to get a feel for a topic though as it's concentrated.

 

[e2density]

I've seen a few mistakes on Wikipedia...most notably, I know people who have vandalized Wikipedia and the material stayed up for 2+ weeks.

 

[Captain Pancake]

Frighteningly, It actually is extremely accurate by my experience, and extremely detailed too. Some day it will become self aware, and use the collective knowledge of the world to destroy us all.

 

[Queen Michael]

It's usually right. Sure, not ALWAYS, but what source is? And when Wikipedia is wrong, it's often a case of obvious vandalism you easily spot.

Biggest error? It said Dan Brown sold his soul to the devil to earn some money. Probably not true, that.

 

[Cpt Corallis]

Yes, wikipedia can be wrong. According to the site, for three years my school was run by pirates and goblins. This stayed up for some time...

 

[GothmogII]

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

To be fair, vandalism is always going to be a problem as long as it's so open to everyone to edit. While stupid pages like that do pop-up now and again, the Wikipedians are quick to jump on such pages and fix them. If you don't feel you have the knowledge to edit the page back yourself, you can always easily report it to help out.

In general, I've rarely found it to be blatantly incorrect where vandalism wasn't involved.

But, at least Wikipedia pages are updated frequently, whereas print encyclopaedias are generally yearly affairs, even longer depending on the company. One of the problems with Wikipedia however, is that despite it's many articles, they're usually aimed at what people find interesting rather than having a focus on being concise, so you may find several pages worth of info. on a popular anime or tv show, and only a page on a renowned author or scientist.

That said, Wiki-pages I find tend to have more information on a given subject than a print encyclopaedia will. This isn't really surprising since the web is generally free from the kind of constraints print media has, particularly related to cost.

 

[spectrenihlus]

Yes, wikipedia can be wrong. According to the site, for three years my school was run by pirates and goblins. This stayed up for some time...

You mean your school isn't run by pirates and goblins?

 

[Biffy Cakeo]

I found the winegums article interesting. When i read it told me a sotry about a father and his child. Wikipedia is correct on alot of things. I read something about it a while ago saying that it rivaled experts on its information. However it isn't very friendly to the random user. Since it is editied by many people information is sometimes very confusing.

 

[dmase]

I saw one factually wrong error about a ruler in europe. I can't remember exactly what it was about but i couldn't find the person in my euro history textbook so i looked him up online and found him on wiki. It had a year that was wrong according to to another source but honestly the other place i went to didn't look that reliable. I just made that paper a little more general when i got to that point.

Also i've looked through and some articles have little flags about the controversy surrounding an article. I think Wiki actually has quality control people that evaluate the edits on important articles. Like the Stephen Colbert stunt where the people that watch him all changed an article so that a certain type of elephant wasn't endangered, they locked the article and corrected it. They don't let much get by and I don't think there is as much bias as watching the daily news.

 

[Cpt Corallis]

Yes, wikipedia can be wrong. According to the site, for three years my school was run by pirates and goblins. This stayed up for some time...

You mean your school isn't run by pirates and goblins?

Well, not for three years... more like two and a half. But the little details are important!

 

[Rarhnor]

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

Who says they're not? ಠ_ಠ

 

[Keava]

The general rule is simple. If you want just most basic information on things, wikipedia is generally right, if you want to write an essay/do your homework or actually want to be sure the information is reliable - you check the sources yourself.

 

[HerrBobo]

I remember I saw one about an ancient battle, Sparta against Thebes, I think. It said that the Spartans took 1 million losses for a flanking attack.

Info Fail!

 

[soren7550]

The only mistake that I've ever noticed on Wikipedia (not counting the gaming Wikis) was one made by a fried of mine where he edited the Joanna Hex page to say how his friend played the confederate soldier Scratchy McParts (his friend actually played an extra).

The edit has since been removed, but I printed out the page beforehand.

 

[mokes310]

I personally use it as my go-to source...

Please tell me that you don't use it as your "go-to" source for academic purposes?

 

[Brandon237]

Normally it is correct, if the article is old and popular it is always right. Studies have shown that there are generally 2 errors per page of an official encyclopaedia or Uni book, and 4 per wiki page. And considering most of wiki's mistakes are blatantly obvious or due to a heavy bias, they are easy to spot as is.

That's right kids, wiki can be trusted.

 

[The Diabolical Biz]

Wikipedia is the place to go for basic, pretty mainstream information. On that front I've never found it to be incorrect, apart from the obvious vandalism. I generally don't use Wiki when I'm looking for the more obscure information