wikipedia

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by MrFun
Um, wouldn't the Catholic Encyclopedia be maintained by people who are biased in favor of the Church? To the extent that they might have unreliable information on some topics?

Everyone is biased.

[Locutus]

Yes, you always have be be wary of the bias and focus of the Catholic Encyclopedia (but that's true for any source), especially for religious topics, but the overall quality and depth of their articles is truely excellent. Most of the time I cannot detect any bias -- and that's coming from me, a staunch atheist who's always a bit (overly?) paranoid about Christian biases.

[Agathon]

Apart from controversial topics, where POV warriors tend to wreck pages, there's nothing wrong with the Wikipedia. It has no peer in any encyclopaedia for depth and sheer variety.

On the stuff I am an expert about (mainly Greek Philosophy), I think that Wikipedia is sometimes wrong, but it is a hell of a lot better than Britannica on the same subject, or at least it was last time I looked.

So for me, the claims made against it are moot. I wouldn't use it as a citation for a paper, but I wouldn't use any of the mainstream encyclopaedias either, because they are worse.

[Whaleboy]

On a scale of 1 - 10, I'd say Wikipedia is probably around 4. It needs checks and balances... perhaps some kind of incubation period for articles where they can become of sufficient quality, after which they cannot be changed unless it's by someone with credentials.

Brittanica is a far better source... probably an 8 or a 9

[Urban Ranger]

Last time when /. linked to a Wikepidia article somebody put something stupid in there, but it got removed quickly. I saw the passage, was going to remove it, but somebody beat me to it already.

As all encyclopedia, it's not the final authority on any subject, but it's a good starting point.

[Buck Birdseed]

The Wikipedia is about as reliable a source as the collective total of privately edited sites on the net is. In other words, it's hardly reliable at all, in and of itself, and you have to be very careful with the personal and ideological bias present, but it's certainly useful because of its unparallelled scope. Plus, if you know what you're doing (and know how to read history and comment pages, in this case), you can get a more balanced view from what is de facto several mutually controlling sources. As any journalist would tell you, what both sides in an issue agree on is very probably true.

That said, my own experiences with trying to edit articles in my field have been frustrating, to say the least. A lot of users just add a line or two without understanding the article structure, insert props for their favourite practitioners of an activity, or remove stuff others have written because they're biased in some way.

[Urban Ranger]

You are worried about article structure on the Wikipedia, Buck?

[DerSchwarzfalke]

Wikipedia is a very handy reference, one of the best available on the internet. Citing it in a serious paper would be madness or worse though; I would fail any student I found to be using it in a works cited page if I were a prof.

[OzzyKP]

I think Wikipedia is quite acurate. I'd give it a 7 or 8 out of 10. Again, its not something I'd cite in a formal paper, but overall I think it is an amazing project.

Mistakes and bias gets into everything, even big professional encyclopedias. The benefit of Wikipedia though is it has tens of thousands of editors combing through everything and fixing errors.

For instance, Locutus, your example 'proving' Wikipedia's innaccuracy was quite deceptive. If you go and check out that page now, it is updated and reasonably accurate: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?...Malcolm_Glazer

You went back and found an instance of the entry from a month ago. That vandalized entry lasted for exactly 2 hours and 6 minutes. Maybe if you had fixed it yourself instead of taking a screen shot in order to slander Wikipedia it would have lasted for less time. But honestly, is a vandalized entry that is public for just over 2 hours really the end of the world? Should we turn away forever from Wikipedia because some person came and vandalized an entry?

The information is all still there, and anyone (yes even you Locutus) can restore the good entry.

I think Wikipedia is an amazing resource, and I use it often.

[Bereta_Eder]

Thanks for the replies, my impression from reading them is that wikipedia is most certaintly not reliable. I didn't know (and that's why I was asking) how wikipedia is written, who are its authors, what were its sources etc.
Also I'll agree that very few sources if anything is unbiased but I prefer knowing where that bias comes from so I can classify it, counter it with its opposite and maybe start to get an idea about something. Thanks again.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by paiktis22
Thanks for the replies, my impression from reading them is that wikipedia is most certaintly not reliable.

Then make it more reliable by adding your own expertise to it.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Then make it more reliable by adding your own expertise to it.

From what I gather that would be useless. It can be re-written over and even if what I wrote about a subject was good, noone would know who I am what are my credentials etc so one would be justified to be suspicious of my work just as much as I of his. I'm not saying wikipedia is worthless but that it can't be trusted for serious work. Some of its articles are pretty much ok (the ones I checked and already know something about).

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by paiktis22
From what I gather that would be useless.

Seeing that there are a large number of good entries this does not appear to be the case.

Originally posted by paiktis22
I'm not saying wikipedia is worthless but that it can't be trusted for serious work.

Anybody who's doing serious work, or not-so-serious work won't depend solely on a single source, unless that single source happens to be some kind of ultimate authority in a particular field, such as Stephen Hawking.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


Seeing that there are a large number of good entries this does not appear to be the case.

You're right, it's not really useless but I don't think it's worth the trouble. Me, personally. But also bare in mind that I'm a very money oriented person. If you don't pay me, I do nothing for free

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Anybody who's doing serious work, or not-so-serious work won't depend solely on a single source,

Yes but you'll know which source it is each and every time. With wikipedia it can be anybody.