Reliability of Wikipedia
By Andrew Medworth @ 19:05 | Filed under: GeneralI’ve recently used the Wikipedia online free encyclopedia to do a lot of fact-checking and research. It’s a cool-sounding idea, to have an encyclopedia which anyone can contribute to, but that’s a weakness as well as a strength. It’s remarkably similar to the Internet in that sense: you get a lot of stuff you would never see otherwise, but in some cases there are good reasons why you would never see it.
I bring this up now because there are two posts on The Volokh Conspiracy calling the reliability of parts of Wikipedia into question. The posts are here and here.
Perhaps I had better be more careful when citing Wikipedia as a source in the future. It doesn’t mean everything on there is worthless — everything I’ve seen on there in my own fields of expertise has proved pretty reliable — but caveat emptor.
October 20th, 2004 at 00:00
Wikipedia accuracy under fire
– so, it’s back on with the Glossary?…
October 20th, 2004 at 00:03
In my own field ie trains, it seems accurate enough. Maybe it is the case that the more controversial the subject, the worse things get. What the answer is, though, I really don’t know. Perhaps only trust it for factual stuff.