Beware of wikipedia, yes or no?

Wikipedia is a very accurate source, on almost all subjects. The science, technical, and historical kinds of topics especially, are monitored by thousands of people who are experts, and they are extremely reliable. Articles must use reliable sources (news articles, professional journals, etc.,) to source statements (so those articles that have references to statements, the source is what you'd want to use if you were writing a paper), what is written must be verifiable, and be written without bias.

Wikipedia also has a strict set of policies that experienced editors are familiar with, and follow. They include Neutrality (writing facts, not opinions), Sourcing (citing where the information written came from, using reliable sources), Notability (a topic must be worthy of being in the encyclopedia - you can't just create an article about whatever you want), Verifiability (what you write must be able to be verified by secondary sources, such as news articles, journals, etc.) and a whole set of style manuals for each topic. The general manual of style is a derivative of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Wikipedia also has an extremely strict policy about Living People: All articles on people who are alive have to be sourced extremely well, for legal reasons, obviously.

The site does get a lot of vandalism, but I can tell you from personal experience as an editor there for over 5 years, that vandalism is handled very quickly, and repeat abusers are swiftly blocked from editing. There are many tools that Wikipedia uses to flag vandalism, there are automated accounts that quickly revert obvious abuse, like when someone blanks a page, or inserts inappropriate images or links, and there are pages where repeat abusers are reported to administrators who quickly take care of them. Trust me, vandalism does not stay around long at all.

One of the biggest issues arises with "hot topics", such as when a celebrity dies. A lot of anonymous editors will come in, not knowing or understanding how editing works (there are a lot of policies and guidelines that are followed on Wikipedia, very well thought-out and organized), and they will insert information without sources, or insert blatantly false information. Again, I can tell you from personal experience that in those cases, the information is quickly removed, or a source is found to back it up, and if the article is getting a lot of abuse, the page will be "locked" to only registered users, thus cutting down on the vandalism.

I think the area that may not be as reliable would be things that are "niche" topics, that may not have as many editors keeping an eye on them, and thus, could go without sourcing or proper style. However, almost all of these articles would have a tag at the top that says "This article needs reliable sources for verification." to let you know that it may be written without sourcing, or written as an opinion (which is also not allowed, one policy is called "No Original Research", meaning you can't just write what YOU personally think.)

Any of the Featured Articles are absolutely reliable, though - they are constantly monitored and refined by people who are well-educated in Wikipedia policy, who are familiar (and often experts) with that topic, and any changes to those articles must follow the policies and guidelines.

Here are but ten of the many, many reasons why we all should be wary of Wikipedia:

1) Except for a handful of protected articles, editing of articles on Wikipedia is open and instant. This means that any troll, vandal, fanboi, spammer, propagandist, revenge-seeker, political hack, conspiracy theorist, tinfoil-hatted nutter, narcissist, power-tripper or libeler can add their "improvements" to it.

2) Wikipedia's central "Neutral Point of View" policy ("NPOV") is fundamentally illogical and has nothing to do with what the rest of the world understands as "neutrality". As a result, "NPOV" means whatever the admin putting the boot in on you says it means. It is the most gamed rule on Wikipedia.

3) Anonymous editing, a thing strongly protected on Wikipedia, encourages people to be abusive and irresponsible toward others. Wikipedia is basically Usenet 2.0.

4) Despite continuing lame attempts to get more experts to participate, Wikipedia has always harbored a culture that is very hostile to experts. The opinion of a Teenage Mutant Wiki Admin means far more than that of an expert would has studied the subject for decades.

5) Wikiality (wikispeak: "consensus"), the process by which truthiness is determined. Like so many other common words used on Wikipedia, "consensus" does not bear even a passing resemblance to its meaning in the dictionary.

6) Wikipedia exploits the mentally ill and those with addictive personalities without pity or scruple. It is an unhappy and unhelpful place for such people.

7) Wikipedia's badly designed and vaguely defined system of governance resembles a primitive feudal system. Wikipedia is essentially run by online warlords.

8) Wikipedia serves as a convenient platform revenge and defamation, and it has often been exploited by unscrupulous people for just that purpose.

9) Drama, drama, drama!

10) Last, but certainly not least, wikipediots. That is, wiki zealots who are quite convinced that Wikipedia has already achieved a state of near perfection, and who respond with hostility and derision to any serious criticism of Wikipedia, or to any serious reform proposal. Wikipediots also have a strong tendency to be confused by facts. Accordingly, attempting to reason with them is inadvisable.

Wikipedia is a reliable resource, but you will probably want information on a topic before you put complete trust in it. A few weeks ago I read that president of the United States was George Bush. It is considered an acceptable resources by most of my professors.

guess you would look for problems in any kind of knowledge representation.

You sounded like an arrogant to me. Where do you expect knowledge to come from in your sources? from around the snob-hood?

_' '" '_

@..@

.^-{}-^

Sorry, it feels like a living room discussion and arguments amongst friends.

I hope I am not offending. I am just impulsively jumping...lol

Thing is, the Wiki project is fantastic and contributors are basically professionals.

I think they deserve respect for their effort.

It is up to us to look for more references about the subject of our interest.

If there was a professional institute publishing an online encyclopedia, it would take years to approve each term, and years to edit and update it. Also, an institute can never be objective about some subjects.

I should say that in my education time, I got some subject wrong (history,Geography and more) being based on the best knowledge and recognised institutes- but the only ones and non-objective.

Wiki exposes us to a vast information, for the good and the bad, and it needed to be handled carefully, as you said. Wisdom is within the masses and we need to extract it rather than be oriented, and led to it by few "declared wisdom owners"

Absolutely, I think we are wired to be dumb when it comes to reading anything on the internet in general, it's easy to assume, if it's written, it's fact, and that isn't always the case especially, with something like wikipedia.

f*ck all the haters, wikipedia is the next best thing to youtube.

It has some basic information, but it also has LOTS of mistakes.

Its a place too start...

Your question is a lazy--question..

I suggest you grow up.