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peacius

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Dec 13, 2006
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stone-one.blogspot.com
how do you all feel about wikipedia? i i know that a lot of people are against it, but why exactly? i realize that it is a site where the general public can post the information, but does that mean that its all unreliable? i have looked at a lot of info from there, and then looked in encyclopedias and stuff and found the into to be right! so whats the beef with wikipedia?

this site is supposedly about how bad it is or something.. dont know: www.wikitruth.info...

anyway, what do you all feel about it?
 
Even though there is a lot of crap and bullshit on wikipedia, it's still almost a godsend for some quick info.
If you really need to be sure that the info you have is correct, check the sources for the wiki article, or simply get more sources for it yourself.
 
ya, i felt that way too. i did some thinking about existentialism and laws of nature and whatnot, and i used wikipedia just to get a little more background info to make what i was saying more believable. and i was attacked for doing it, so i was just wondering... i personally really like wikipedia! haha.
 
Wikipedia is, to put it simply, awesome. Is there something you don't understand, but need a mild understanding of it quickly? Wikipedia is your answer.

Dunno why some people dislike it. =/ I love it. :p
 
Wikipedia is great for lazy people like me. Of course it is not a reliable source but nothing in the internet is a reliable source anyway.
 
People dont like it cause ANYONE can edit wikithatmeans that I can go and delete anything I want and not get in troble.

IT is still king thogh
 
ldrkf said:
People dont like it cause ANYONE can edit wikithatmeans that I can go and delete anything I want and not get in troble.

IT is still king thogh
Click to expand...

Actually, if you do it... Wiki tracks your ip and bans you :P
There are obviously easy ways around it, but people that can do that probably wouldn't waste their time on something ast petty as this :P
 
Wikipedia is great, alot of times when someone posts bad information, weather malicious or not, good people in the know will fix it. The only reason not to like it is because it's not a professional, acredited source. Because of this use for research like a traditonal encyclopedia. Because of this, when students use it for research teachers and professers often reject the source making any work compleated on wiki information worthless.
 
The problem academic types have with wikipedia isn't that it's inaccurate, it's the nature of wiki it's self. Because wikis can be edited by anyone you can't really attach an author's name to it, so you can't tell if the people writing the article have the sort of background that would allow them to be informing others on the subject. When your writing college essays or professional papers you can see how this can be a problem since you need to be really sure your sources are written by respected, knowledgeable people. For regular people to be relying on wikipedia for knowledge is fine, for an expert to rely on wikipedia for knowledge it's worrying.
 
As an academia (and for me, as a regular person), you cant trust any single source of information to be correct. Always, if the correctness of the information is important to you, double or triple check the information.

I found plenty of dictionaries with errornous information - do not presume just because it was in a dictionary that it is always 100% correct.

Wikipedia is a enormous effort of an community and it is interesting to see how/if it works, regardless if it produced 100% accurate information or if it produced 30%.

I do use it now and then - but I am also aware of its flaws. Check the discussion page and a dictionary as well.
 
I have nothing bad to say about Wikipedia, its especially helpful when I want to know about some random fact or introduce myself to something I know nothing about. Plus it also helps me with my upper div math courses =p
 
True. Wikipedia does offer a lot of useful information but if you guys are still skeptical about it then find the bibliography section. There you can find more resources about the subject matter you're looking for, don't rely on the internet 100%. :destroy:
 
I can't count how many times wiki has saved me. It's really usefull when you need some random fact and you need it now. Also good for archived stuff that dissapeares of the internet in minutes. But there is some crap in there also, but hey, it's the internet after all. XD
 
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