Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellybean
prove that wikipedia isn't reliable.
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For starters, the fact that anybody can edit it means that not only can somebody sabatoge an article on purpose, but that an individual actually wishing to help has no peer review done by someone certified in the category. As such, every article is subject to mistakes which could continue to go unchecked without notice. The collaborative editing done has no relevance (from what I have seen) to help stop the inflow of mistakes and misinformation.
Infact, an actual wikipedia article over the reliability has this to say:
"At this point in time, a variety of studies to date have tended to suggest that the science entries of Wikipedia are of a similar order of accuracy (and similar rates of both serious and minor errors) to Encyclopędia Britannica, that it provides a good starting point for research, and that articles are in general reasonably sound. However, it does suffer from omissions and inaccuracies and sometimes these can be serious. A separate study suggests that in many cases, vandalism is reverted fairly quickly, but this does not always happen."
As well:
On October 24, 2005, The Guardian published an article entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a panel of experts were asked to critically review seven entries related to their fields. One article was deemed to have made "every value judgement... wrong", the others receiving marks from 5 to 8 out of a notional ten. Of the other six articles reviewed and critiqued, the most common criticisms were:
Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)
The most common praises were:
Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)
Much useful information, including well selected links, making it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)
Nature reported in 2005 that science articles in Wikipedia were comparable in accuracy to those in Encyclopędia Britannica. Out of 42 articles, only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 3 were found in Encyclopędia Britannica, although more than a hundred lesser errors and omissions were found in each and Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured".On March 24, 2006, Britannica provided a rebuttal of this article, labeling it "fatally flawed", to which Nature responded.However, Kister's Best Encyclopedias 2nd edtion (1994) compared the accuracy of Britannica to several other encyclopedias, and concludes that although more accurate than many, it is being ranked lower than encyclopedias such as Encyclopedia Americana, World Book Encyclopedia, and Compton's Encyclopedia.
A web-based survey conducted from December 2005 to May 2006 assessed the "accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles".[6] Fifty people (a fairly low response rate) accepted an invitation to assess an article. Of the fifty, thirty-eight (76%) agreed or strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and twenty-three (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete. Eighteen people compared the article they reviewed to the article on the same topic in the Encyclopędia Britannica. Opinions on accuracy were almost equal between the two encyclopedias (6 favoring Britannica, 7 favoring Wikipedia, 5 stating they were equal), and eleven (61%) found Wikipedia somewhat or substantially more complete, compared to seven (39%) for Britannica. The survey did not attempt random selection of the participants, and it is not clear how the participants were invited.
The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Multimedial, Microsoft Encarta, and Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points ("B-").
Viewing Wikipedia as fitting the economists' definition of a perfectly competitive marketplace of ideas, George Bragues (University of Guelph-Humber), examined Wikipedia's articles on seven top Western philosophers: Aristotle, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Rene Descartes, Georg W.F. Hegel, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke. Wikipedia's articles were compared to a consensus list of themes culled from 4 reference works in philosophy. Bragues found that, on average, Wikipedia's articles only covered 52% of consensus themes. No errors were found, though there were significant omissions "
Therefore, wikipedia is not a very good or reliable source. If it's all that you can have, then it's fine. But, more often then not, there's a much more reliable source elsewhere.
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