This is obvious now, but just to reiterate, some academic facilities suspect that Wikipedia is unreliable due to the fact that articles can be edited publically.

The school I attend encourages students to visit Wikipedia only to use it as a "shortcut" to what their articles cite. According to popular opinion here, citations support work... Unless we are talking about WP. Isn't treating work like a "Links" page to more "trusted" (read: relevant) material kind of an eff-yew to competent contributors? The site is not exactly held in high regard here.

I suppose the real issue (again, probably just stating the obvious) is that people believe that the information on Wikipedia can change at any moment, and that every editor has the intellectual capacity of a nasal discharge. I can only assume the articles are tracked, and competent individuals will revert when they know a moron has come through. Thing is, can they keep up if such hypothetical chimpanzees are the majority of Wikipedia community?

How much do you trust Wikipedia? Do you think it will become more or less reliable over time?

It depends on what I'm looking for. Most technical articles are pretty accurate.

As with any information on the internet, check and recheck.

Yeah, mathematical articles have rarely been an issue. As for checking and rechecking, I am curious how much "re-checking" is possible given that a WP article already had people do that checking for you, hence the citations and the writing standards they have set.

Neutrality is a guideline for the articles, and challenging that code earns the article a warning banner and starts a debate on the talk page. If standards are met, wouldn't this imply that bias is kept to a minimum? Isn't biased knowledge the sole ingredient for unreliable information? It seems that a well supported, neutral article needs little additional research (outside of what is done to develop the thesis), assuming the material is relatively simple, or not subject to as many changes due to shifting conditions.

I'm not suggesting that WP can make an infallible article under certain conditions, but I am saying it may be a little hasty to jump on the "WP is unreliable" bandwagon.

More on your point, I never look at a WP article when it is new, or is attracting the attention of zealous individuals. I just go to Google then. Pop culture and controversy have some real problems when trying to converge at WP, but I still believe a high-quality article can be made based on different Rogerian-esque approaches.

wikipedia is good for anything that people don't have any reason to vandalize

learning differential calculus? wikipedia is probabily accurate on that

trying to figure out how really bad was GWB government, or which one is the strongest pokémon? better go somewhere else

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Original post by zyrolasting Yeah, mathematical articles have rarely been an issue. As for checking and rechecking, I am curious how much "re-checking" is possible given that a WP article already had people do that checking for you, hence the citations and the writing standards they have set. Neutrality is a guideline for the articles, and challenging that code earns the article a warning banner and starts a debate on the talk page. If standards are met, wouldn't this imply that bias is kept to a minimum? Isn't biased knowledge the sole ingredient for unreliable information? It seems that a well supported, neutral article needs little additional research (outside of what is done to develop the thesis), assuming the material is relatively simple, or not subject to as many changes due to shifting conditions. I'm not suggesting that WP can make an infallible article under certain conditions, but I am saying it may be a little hasty to jump on the "WP is unreliable" bandwagon.

I would put myself in the Wikipedia is unrealiable bandwagon. I love trivia games, and one of the games I use to play on XBox was a multiplayer trivia game. Sadly, there were tons of people who would complain about incorrect answers basing their source off of wikipedia. (That's not to state that some of their answers weren't incorrect, but there were more inaccuracies with wikipedia than the trivia questions).

It's a great source to find references, but not a great source for solid information. True, mathematical and technical articles may be accurate for the most part, but anything else I'd take with a grain of salt.

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Original post by zyrolasting I'm not suggesting that WP can make an infallible article under certain conditions, but I am saying it may be a little hasty to jump on the "WP is unreliable" bandwagon.

I agree completely here. There was a time where is wasn't reliable, and once that mindset got started, it really never wore off. Still, take anything you read on the internet with a healthy amount of scepticism. It is just too easy to pass along false information.

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better go somewhere else

For how long? Social issues are hard to record now, but we don't seem to dispute things that happen before <insert distant past period here>.

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It's a great source to find references, but not a great source for solid information. ... It is just too easy to pass along false information.

Nothing is a good source for solid information, and lies are not limited to the net.

It seems that information is something to maintain, much like a system. When a flaw is noticed, it attracts more attention than the working "true" information does. Since Wikipedia had a reputation for leaving flaws, it is now coming back to haunt them, even when they grow.

I agree that doubt and skepticism are valuable tools, but they apply anywhere, and putting additional focus on WP (as people do here where I live), is a little silly. Word of mouth, books, television and the net are subject to human flaws, and I just never got why WP is "more unreliable" than anything else.

I'd trust Wikipedia on certain topics (basically whatever article it says more citation is needed, or that the article may contain original research) as much as I'd trust an unverified student essay. Many Wikipedia articles are very good, but for some things it just is not something you can point at and say "this is the truth". Quite a few things have opinion.

MANY articles are excellent, but there are also MANY articles which just aren't worth citing on a research paper.

Yep, no argument there. [smile]

Still, I would defend WP to the extent that having a worldwide pool of contributors (intelligent or not) is more of a blessing than a curse. It seems that info is chaotic at first, but becomes more orderly and "true" over time. It just seems to me that wikis can accelerate this process by letting everyone be an author to one article as opposed to individuals being authors to individual articles.

Ugh, I'm almost sounding like a WP zealot now. [rolleyes]

The articles do seek a mean as more contributors are added, but you shouldn't assume that "stable" means "objective" or "comprehensive". The primary issue that Wikipedia has that a standard encyclopedia doesn't have is that a person edits a page because she wants to edit the page. For an article like, say, Diffeomorphism, that means mathematicians, which is fine, because math is their job. It does lead to overly technical content at times, but what it lacks in readability it makes up in comprehensiveness and accuracy.

In contrast, take a look at an article like The Black Adder. In a paper encyclopedia (presuming that they'd actually make an article for it) that would be written by someone in the field of media studies. It would examine the subject from a disinterested point of view, and objectively position it within and relative to the culture of the time. But at Wikipedia, the vast majority of people who edit that article edit it because they're fans of the show. So there's quite a bit about plot and character, and some stuff about production. There's very little about critical reception, or the wider impact of the show, or its relation to other shows and works.

Note that this is distinct from "POV pushing". All of the editors involved may be trying and succeeding to present an unbiased view of the topic, and yet the direction from which they approach it unavoidably skews the resulting content. They're not trying to put the best face possible on the topic. They're just writing what they know, and what they assume is important to put in.

The WP community recognizes the potential for "systemic bias".. that is, the sort of content which results from WP being edited mostly by middle- to upper-class well-educated white male English-speaking Americans. But there's also this "meta-bias", where each article is edited by people interested in editing it for free...a trivial-sounding point, but one with strong implications.