User:Aidelprin/Is Wikipedia Reliable

Using Wikipedia To Find Credible Sources

So Wikipedia is not reliable. That's nothing new or surprising. Teachers tell students not to cite Wikipedia for information about a topic and say that it is not reliable. The creator of Wikipedia himself even says that the site should not be a final source of information. While you should never cite Wikipedia as a final source it can still be a very useful tool. People can use the cite as a place to find sources on their topic because Wikipedia articles are required to be backed up by reliable sources. There was a study that asked students their views on Wikipedia and they said that they are slow to trust the articles on the website but they use it to find reliable sources for their topics. In the study  % of the students do not trust Wikipedia at all and stay away from it, % of the students use it for every day fact checking but not for important school work, % use Wikipedia as it should be used for school work and find reliable sources for their topic on the site, and % of students completely trust Wikipedia and see nothing wrong with using it as a final source.

Is Wikipedia Itself Actually Reliable?

Anyone can edit so it is easy for false information to be added to an article. One white lie could throw off the entire article's validity. For example, if you thought a friend always told you the truth but one day you find out that at least one thing that they have told you was a lie. If they easily lied to you and let you believe them about that one thing then it can be hard to trust them again, after all what is there to stop them from lying again, or how many other things that they have told you have been lies? The exact same thing happens with Wikipedia articles. If there is one bit of false information that an editor is passing off as true then how can you trust the rest of the article? Wikipedia articles themselves should not be trusted. The articles are far from a reliable source and should never be cited as a final source of information. The creators of Wikipedia themselves have said that Wikipedia is not reliable and should not be cited. Wikipedia is open access and anyone can edit. Wikipedia could easily be manipulated so the information should always be taken with a grain of salt and should be checked for accuracy before trusting the information in the articles. While anyone can edit a study shows that articles are typically fairly accurate except for articles about celebrities. Live Science saw these studies and did a study of their own. They had an expert on dark energy read the Wikipedia article for dark energy and he reported that it was about 90% correct. However, when a band member reviewed the article about their band they found that most of the information was incorrect or just completely made up. Most of the Wikipedia articles are like this. The celebrity information comes from unreliable sources so the information is false but for other topics editors are able to get reliable sources so their information is typically correct and can be trusted. Even though Wikipedia is mostly accurate it is still not a reliable source and should never be cited or used as a final source of information but you can use and rely on it to find other good sources of information on the topic that you are researching.

Conclusion

Wikipedia itself while it is typically accurate it is not reliable. Anyone can edit articles and the smallest white lie could throw off the credibility of the entire article. Even the creators of Wikipedia say that it should never be used as a final source. That being said it can still be useful. Wikipedia should be used to find reliable sources of information on whatever topic someone is researching.