What makes Wikipedia less reliable than other encyclopedias?

Question

A lot of people say that Wikipedia is unreliable, but what makes it any less reliable than Britannica Encyclopedia, or MSN Encarta? I know that anyone can edit the articles on Wikipedia, but it's still people creating articles using their knowledge and sourcing information, which is what they do at Britannica or Encarta, but the only difference is they are employed by a company to do that. So why should Wikipedia be less reliable simply because regular people can edit it?

Answer 1

Professors don't accept it as a scholarly cite because of what everyone else has been explaining about how anyone with internet access can alter it. Though, I have never had any problem using Wikipedia as a starting point for research papers. I use it to find general ideas and points of interest, then I look into books and online journals to see if that information can be backed up. It saves the time of sifting through 5 or 6 useless books to find a few nuggets of relevance.

Answer 2

Wikipedia isn't less reliable, but rather more reliable. Britannica and Encarta have very short entries that barely mention anything of importance and often completely ignore viewpoints which they disagree with. Wikipedia, by comparison, covers minority viewpoints such as alternative theories of the cause of Global Warming and does so (usually) fairly.

Most of the time when a Wikipedia article is vandalized, it is blatantly obvious and anybody who knows how to use Wikipedia is able to go into the history and revert the vandalism.

There are also unsourced articles, but anybody with half an IQ can tell when a Wikipedia article has no sources. For any serious research product, you should not use any encyclopedia, especially Britannica or Encarta, but also Wikipedia, but rather the sources of the articles.

Wikipedia's reliability is made obvious by the fact that its articles on Wikipedia and Criticism of Wikipedia are unbiased and if anything are actually biased toward the critics. What other encyclopedia criticizes itself in its own pages?

There is a significant difference between the supposed experts and real people. Supposed experts are usually not as smart as they claim to be or think they are and read articles that make no sense in publications which nobody ever reads (that's a perfect description of peer review). Real people publish articles in publications that are actually read by other people and actually make sense.

From the beginning there have always been 2 traditions. One of them trusts the people and the other fears the people and trusts only elites. In America, Thomas Jefferson represents the type of person who represents the people, while the crooked Monarchist Alexander Hamilton is the personification of the supporter of an elite to tell everybody else what to think. Wikipedia comes down on the Jeffersonian side, while the competition comes down on the Hamiltonian side. Thus anybody who believes that real people should be trusted instead of elites is going to support Wikipedia, while anybody who believes the opposite is likely a critic of Wikipedia.

Answer 3

In my opinion, Wikipedia is just as reliable as any other source, the reason being that most articles that I've read are true, and the sources used are usually cited toward the bottom of the page. People think that it's less reliable than other Encyclopedias because the information going into Britannica or Encarta is checked again and again by different employees to make sure that it is true. But they forget that the only way to get the very latest in information (and opinions) is from the Wikipedia, because it's updated extremely often.

Answer 4

because ppl employed by encarta and britannica are paid to write solid undisputable facts. in the other hand i can log on to wikipedia right now and say george washington was a manwhore who killed al capone and was an unbeatable poker player. next 2nd grader doing a project on george washington reads it and turns it in to his teacher cause he thinks wiki is an encyclopedia. u cant do such thing in encarta or ne other encyclopedia. sometimes the articles arent filled with things that are so obviously incorrect. but there are lots of articles that have false facts which the editor believed were true so its not that he was trying to screw u over but the editor is misinformed and his information seems logical but are actually false

Answer 5

The reason some people say it is less reliable is because of thye fact that anyone with a computer and internet can edit it. Although it's not very common people might edit the page to say something not true either as a joke or because they think it's correct. The Diffrence between Wikipedia and other Encylopedias (with people who get paied to write the articals as you said) is that those articals are written, drafted, and checked many many times because if it's in-accurate the person who wrote it could be fired so there's more pressure on writing an accurate artical.

Answer 6

Just the fact that regular people can edit wikipedia does not seem to be 'reliable' to the community of educators and certain other such people. It tends to be way more complete than most other encyclopedias that you can find and even if someone changes something on a wikipedia page and puts something untrue it's changed very soon by other people visiting the page.

Answer 7

Actually... Almost anyone with an account can edit articles, UNLESS THEY HAVE BEEN TAGGED SO THAT ONLY CERTAIN PEOPLE CAN EDIT THE ARTICLE. (sorry for caps)
Some people go into Wikipedia and vandalize. I've seen several cases of that happening, but the true information is usually recovered quickly.
I, myself, actually do trust Wiki. You can immediately spot vandalism or false information when you see bad grammar/spelling/etc. You should be smart enough to know. I use Wiki all the time.

Answer 8

B/c ego comes into play in it, and edit wars can degrade its credibility.

I've added many things I've learned about on The History Channel, and stated as such, only to have them removed right away.

I am pissed w/ wikipedia right now because its stregth, is not as great as its weakness: Anyone can edit it.

Answer 9

Evolution isn't a 'left-wing' ideology. Social Darwinism, the applying of evolutionary concepts to human society, is frequently seen a techniques-top. a lot of arguable subjects are unreliable on Wikipedia, fairly something doubtlessly politically incorrect, alongside with human anthropology. yet no longer on the comparable scale as Conservapedia, the place a Bible quote is the suited source. it incredibly is going to be noted as Fundipedia.

Answer 10

Nothing! As has been shown by independent studies, Wikipedia is approximately as reliable as standard encyclopedias. For one thing, generally the worse the vandalism is, the easier it is to pick out and the faster it will be reverted. The people who go around saying how Wikipedia sucks and is never good for information just don't know what they're talking about.