Poll: Is Wikipedia unreliable? (not in my opinion)

[dyre]

Wikipedia is usually as reliable as it says it is. That is, pages with no complaints are probably completely trustworthy. Pages with warnings like "this page lacks citations" and "this page is biased" are, surprise surprise, often lacking citations and may be biased.

A lot of my peers treat Wikipedia like some kind of information deity, which I think might be just for the sake of an equal-but-opposite reaction to the idiots who claim Wikipedia is absolutely lies and slander.

It's a generally good site, and more importantly, an honest site. If it's not sure its information is accurate, it'll tell you in the warnings.

 

[Jerious1154]

It's perfectly reliable as long as the topic you're using it for is fairly straightforward. You can get into some trouble though if you're looking up something politically or ideologically charged. For example, I wouldn't use Wikipedia if I wanted an unbiased account of the life of Sarah Palin, because most of the people who decide to edit that page probably have strong feelings about her one way or the other.

 

[CODE-D]

I rolled my eyes throughout high school at my teachers ignorance of all mighty source.

 

[Gasaraki]

Yes it is unreliable in the most literal sense of the word but really it is mostly okay so long as you make sure the information is correct from other sources.

Dude, I just have to tell you. I'm sitting in the dark and there was a fly flying around my screen a few minutes ago, so I just spent like 4 minutes trying to kill your profile picture with a kleenex...
YOU DARE MAKE A FOOL OF ME?!

OT: In my experience it's pretty reliable. and you can always use it as a place to find proper sources if your professors don't accept it.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Tis unreliable, yes. For all but the most technical of subjects (physics, chemistry and so on) it is misleading, not always by directly altering facts but by leaving out key facts too.

 

[Artina89]

I used it for university and it served me well. I was careful, and made absolutely sure that I checked the sources. It's OK. I wouldn't ONLY use wikipedia, but it is definitely a good starting point from a research perspective.

 

[Denamic]

Hundreds if not thousands of moderators and contributors inspect the changes made, so false or otherwise bad information gets nuked immediately.
It's not like Dickhead A can just go in and make random changes on wikipedia and get away with it.
What he did will be around for like 10 minutes at most.

 

[aba1]

No, not at all. It is a huge myth.

Most pages on Wikipedia are far more reliable and comprehensive than anything else.

I agree alot of people don't relize that there are moderators whose job is to make sure all changes are credable and if somthing false is put up it ussually gets changed back fairly quickly.

 

[Scarim Coral]

If I'm just reading for the information than I think it's reliable but if I got essay to do than I think it's isn't reliable. Just because I like to look info on it doesn't mean the teachers feel the same way about it.

 

[Zantos]

It can be reliable, if I need to start any research topic from square one it's often my first port of call. However I always check the source or cross reference with a book if I'm actually going to use any of the stuff.

Also I notice sometimes it's a bit off the mark, not so much wrong as misinterpreted, which is odd because I thought the people that made mistakes like that for the whole world to see were the people who just read the Wikipedia page and thought it made them an expert, so I'll be interested to find the source of these types. Maybe I'll look it up on Wikipedia.

 

[scorptatious]

All I know is that in the schools I go to, they forbid people using Wikipedia to cite their papers. They call if a "graffiti website". I can kind of see why, since anyone can place what they want on there. Although I did hear there are people on that site dedicated to making sure their information is up to date and factual. So I'm kind of torn on the issue.

 

[FinalHeart95]

I remember some kid in my chem class saying how wikipedia is all bullshit and I wanted to knock his teeth out. The only reason people think that is because teachers say it, and I don't think they're entirely sure how wikipedia works. And the random edits that people do for fun, but 99.9% of the time those edits are so blatantly obvious that if you don't recognize them as such you need to be put in an institution.