Is Wikipedia a Reliable Source?

10/17/2013

2 Comments

 
We have all heard from many people how Wikipedia is unreliable. The information it has comes from the collaboration of many people all over the world. There are some pages that can be edited, and those that are protected can be edited through requests. However, Wikipedia is a good place to start with all your research. Wikipedia accumulates the important information and put it all together in one place. I, for one, like Wikipedia!

Why do people consider Wikipedia to be unreliable!?
What do you think?

Picture
Information comes from all over the world! People are Knowledge?!
JLL
2 Comments
Margaret
10/18/2013 05:24:18 am

Thanks for this provocation and insight! yes there are many critiques of wikipedia, I think you touched upon the issue of collaboration, why is collaborative work seen as less reliable than a single author? This post in great conversation with the questions of oral tradition we discussed yesterday! Thank you! Glad you like wikipedia too! unlike a dictionary, we have the opportunity to make wikipedia better!

Reply
Jason Li
10/19/2013 04:02:10 pm

I think people see Wikipedia as an unreliable source because people of any range of knowledge about a subject can edit a page. So someone with very little knowledge about a subject may not fully understand what they are adding to the page. Also, because Wikipedia has a lot of information on a subject, one can solely get information from Wikipedia only and neglect other sources. For example, a professor may want his/her students to look in a variety of sources to get information rather than just one source.

I personally think Wikipedia is a good source of knowledge and information because I usually get a more than basic view of a subject that I want to learn about.

Reply



Leave a Reply.