Why is Wikipedia so inaccurate?

This is a question that comes up a lot, worded many different ways, and usually half the answers are just "because anyone can edit it." Like it or not, Wikipedia is a major force in our culture today, and we owe it to ourselves to examine the question a little deeper than "anyone can edit." Another problem with that answer is that it shows such a lack of faith in ourselves. None of us individually has all the answers, but among all of us, we might very well know everything. Yet Wikipedia at best reinforces popular misconceptions and oversimplifications, at worst it disseminates the lies of crackpots.

Just because anyone can edit it doesn't mean everyone does. Having everyone edit Wikipedia is desirable only if everyone edits on what they're actually knowledgeable, and leaves the other subjects to those knowledgeable in those subjects. Instead the Wikipedia game system encourages people to edit on a wide variety of subjects regardless of their expertise. And maybe some people have the good sense to limit themselves to spelling and grammar corrections in subjects they know little about, but other people are so arrogant as to believe that they know everything.

Even the few credentialed experts who bother with Wikipedia fall into this trap. Mathematician Arthur Rubin (assuming that he's really the user with that user name) started out in 2005 editing articles about mathematics, a topic on which he actually knows something, since he was good enough for Erdős to co-author a paper with. He still edits articles about math, but a lot of his time and talent is wasted on topics like global warming, ecology and psychiatry. Even in math articles he's reduced to a janitor, reverting idiots who want the article on the number 9,000 to say "It's over 9,000!"

Most experts, however, quickly become disillusioned with Wikipedia and lose any hope they may have had to help it. There is an even larger number of experts who never contribute to Wikipedia because they realize it is very flawed before they allow themselves to become trapped in its quicksand. Without experts, the vast majority of people editing Wikipedia are those who see it as a game, and whose chief concern is not the veracity of the articles but their personal accumulation of points and privileges.

As has already been pointed out, there really are no paid editors on Wikipedia. Some of the people on the Wikimedia Foundation board do edit Wikipedia and its related projects, but they would get paid even if they didn't. If you really do mess up a Wikipedia article, you're not messing with anyone's livelihood. That feeling of possessiveness that you're encountering has more to do with the MMPORPG aspects of Wikipedia. Unless you're willing to pay due obeisance to the better game players, you won't be able to accomplish any lasting corrections of Wikipedia's contents. But if you're willing to do that, you'll be too busy playing the game to bother with factual accuracy in any article.

It can't be emphasized enough that Wikipedia is a game that just happens to look like an encyclopedia. The point of the Wikipedia game is to stroke your own ego while smashing the egos of your opponents. Articles in a real encyclopedia would come to a point where they don't need to be edited again until there is an actual need to do so, like a new development in the topic. There wouldn't be all the stupid disagreements over the colors of the infoboxes while ignoring that the content of those boxes is all wrong.

Because experts are generally not allowed to edit it. Not that many of them want to. They have plenty of places to which to contribute their expertise, getting paid money or at the very least in prestige. What's the most they can hope for from working on Wikipedia? Getting some pictures of barn stars and maybe a promotion in the game. The few experts who do participate wind up contributing outside their areas of expertise, to areas of which they're just as ignorant as the others editing those articles.

First of all, there are no paid editors on Wikipedia. Wikipedia pays neither money nor bylines. Even just bylines would be a huge incentive for editors to get facts right.

There are editors who will react to you as if you were destroying their magnum opus. They're not getting paid anything. On second thought, maybe they are getting paid with better armor, better weapons, magical powers... no, sorry I was thinking about Evercraft and Warland. They get paid with adminship or sysopship, tools to revert their enemies more quickly, things of that nature. The game can get just as addictive as Soldier Realms or Atlantica Front.

Wikipedia is so inaccurate at times for certain things because anybody who has access to a computer can add info to the subject. But if you add an answer it first goes to the people at wikipedia and they decide if it gets added by deciding on if it sounds accurate.

Hope this helps. ; )

Jimmy Wales and the ineffectual Board of Trustees have had it within their capability for over two years to make Wikipedia more accurate by implementing an already-developed tool called "Flagged Revisions", which would quarantine new edits until a more experienced user could come by, review it, and publish it if it's good content (if not, the edits would get rejected).

This terrifies Jimmy Wales and the "free culture" nitwits he's surrounded himself with, even as he publicly describes how important implementation of Flagged Revisions is to him. Flagged Revisions will make it less "fun" to introduce vandalism and defamation into Wikipedia, which is going to drive down participation levels, which will reduce Wikipedia's traffic stats. This would have an adverse effect on fundraising and speaker's fees, which is really Jimbo's biggest nightmare.

The con is that Wikipedia is not about content. It's about endless participation that is at cross purposes with other editors.

My knee-jerk response would be: because anyone can edit. But wait a minute: Why would they be so ungrateful when people try to help? No one gets paid to edit Wikipedia (at least, not that I know of) yet some of them act like you're threatening their livelihood when you edit something they wrote. Since none of the donation money goes to paying editors, I would hope at least most of it went to technological expenses.

There are no paid editors on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is maintained by people like you and me. Some people mistakenly put false information into a wiki, others do so on purpose. Mistakes are corrected by the masses. The more people who use Wikipedia and who make changes, the more accurate Wikipedia will be, but at the same time the chance of errors grows bigger when more people edit information of course. In the end, they trust that the masses will correct the errors there are.

Wiki is renowned for the the problem you have stated.

Its edited and added to by the masses.. hence a lot of sections are inacurate

because anyone can edit it