Is wikipedia a reliable site?
My teacher's always say I shouldn't use wikipedia, but my friend says it is reliable. I trust my teachers more than him, but I want to know if it is reliable or not, and how do you know? Even if it is, my friend was still kind of rude because he said "who are you going to trust, them or me?" like he knows more then the teachers. Well, tell me if it is or isn't reliable and how you know.
Comments
It's a good jumping off place, it tends to give a lot of good general back ground info on a subject.
it is NOT reliable. At all.
Why?
Because I can edit it. You can edit it. Anyone can edit it.
There are people who work for Wiki and try to keep things as honest as they can, but they can't keep up.
Use it for basic info and ideas, but never cite it and never rely on it.
Wikipedia has a lot of information, but many articles are incomplete, or they have very little information, and some words and phrases that should have articles do not.
So for "reliability" think of it as an interesting magazine article. Every magazine article has a bias of some kind.
I use it extensively just to look up an odd word or phrase to see what information is available. Sometimes there will be pictures of insects or animals that match what you are looking for.
Now about your "friend"
Any adult who says "who are you going to trust, them or me?" is a con artist or a liar or a jerk. It's one of the tell-tale phrases they use to dominate people. Wikipedia is just one source of information, there are many others. Watch him carefully as time goes by and see if he changes into someone who you cannot trust.
When the teacher says wikipedia is not reliable, they mean it does not qualify as a source for student reports. Students are required to seek out information from many sources, and it is too easy to sit at the computer and let the "Internet" provide all the information.
Wikipedia is reliable for information. They have done studies where wikipedia is more accurate than the encyclopedia brittanca.
However as it is not a peer reviewed journal it is inadequate to use as a direct source.
In other words, the information is very good and usually correct, but you shouldn't quote it in a paper. A good practice is to start with wikipedia to get general knowledge and either use that to search for better sources or look up the reference articles in the article's bibliography.
It is often belittled by people as being unreliable because it is publicly editable. However, it is much more reliable that most people understand. There is a strict system which monitors all edited content before it becomes permanently part of the page. try it yourself, go to a wiki page and write something random, the next day i bet you it will have been deleted. You can find lots of useful info on the site, as well as all the other wiki sites. Just be careful though, because its edited sometimes the info can be a bit confusing when reading about complex scientific/mathematical/historical matters. By all means use the site but still don't plagiarize, it wont help you.
I don't know about Wikipedia, Tyl, but it seems to me that your teacher and your friend are both very unreliable. I'm not paranoid, or anything, but I think they could be plotting against you behind your back. There's clearly an agenda of some sort going on. My advice is to (a) pretend to trust your teacher by not using Wilipedia, (b) use Wikipedia, but tell your friend that you didn't, (c) tell your teacher that your friend is plotting against him/her, (d) tell your friend that your teacher says he/she is "teh gAAyzz", and (e) spread rumours about them both being Wikipedia admins who are plotting to "bring down the school" for their "disloyalty".
You've got to be proactive with these people, Nate. Get them before they get you.
Teachers say it is not relable because anyone can edit it.
But my response to that is : "CHECK THE CITATIONS!!! They do it like a research paper, so pretty much all uncommon information is cited!"
wikipedia is never reliable to teachers, dunno why :S, but sometimes wikipedia has its own references at the bottom so u can use those i guess? or change the words around, thats what i do XD
No, this site is terrible for info... in high school and in college we were not allow to use wikipedia at all or we will get zeros...