do you trust wikipedia

[Ivar T]

I am in awe of how strong the common culture among wikipedians to keep good quality to the articles is. It makes me trust wikipedia often, but I do see that eg criticism sections of articles on controversial organizations have been edited so that the criticism sound less valid, probably just to descredit the critics.

 

I guess articles on any controversy might become unreliable. I don't mind articles on controversies that speak my mind though ;-p - like the thimerosal and MMR controversy articles.

[AcidBakeD]

i trust Wikipedia it has alot of info about alot of stuff its not like if the site is falling apart.

[Ashoat]

OK, you're getting banned.

[PerfectChaos]

Well if Wikipedia had something wrong on it, I'd go fix it!

So I trust it.

[samspar]

I tend to think that like anything from a 'trustworthy' site on the net you have to trust a little but also take it with a grain of salt.

 

 

I'd have to go with the view that Wikipedia is kinda like open source.

is there a risk factor involved yes there is. but as with any Open source project the larger the community the lower the risk. i don't really see 2 million people from around the world conniving together just to bring YOU wrong information, do you?

 

[HellHound]

--------------------

[xzondax]

Wikipedia is only a general knowlegde book. If you want to have exact information, you should base on many sources from the internet.

[firzenr]

Why not? Wikipedia has always been a good friend to the internet, however some very biased people will say it is inaccurate because anyone can edit it.

 

Those people likely haven't used Wikipedia much, and probably got blocked for vandalizing. They fail to see the [citation needed] tags, the [1] [2] [3] tags citing sources. They don't know how Wikipedia works. They don't understand how citing sources is a guideline to follow.

 

Nice try non-believers. Nice try.

[loki]

Yeah. But like everything, grain of salt.

 

At worse...try not to use it as a source for anything. It should satisfy personal curiousity.

[Ivar T]

If the article is about an organization and is recently established, it is very likely to have bias from sympathizers of the organization - like this article about an extremely controversial AltMed group:

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_Autism_Now!

 

They might look all sciency with big complicated words and stuff, but I can assure you - they are not. It's many who has been fooled though. Especially when there's all this anecdotal evidence supporting them. It's hard to sum up what's wrong with the group, here's abit of it:

 

- they actively use anecdotal evidence to convince people that their treatments works even when mainstream medicine reiterates that anecdotal reports can be misleading.

 

- they continue to market a hormone called secretin as a treatment for autistic kids, even when several double-blind studies rejects their claims.

 

- they use dubious test methods to determine whether autistic people are heavy metal poisoned - sending urine test to a lab in Paris because the lab there is allowed to write a medical assessment of whether or not the person is heavy metal poisoned based on the amount of porphyrins, even when the accuracy of determining heavy metal toxicity out of the amount of porphyrins in urine is poorly studied.

 

- they support the notion that autism can be caused by, or worsened, by vaccines - a notion that has been discredited by dozens of studies.

[Alstertheonly]

Wikipedia has helped me on many occasions. Then again it's also let me down

But if I do find anything wrong with the info (and I know what's wrong) I'll go and add to it. And lots of people do the same. So, do I trust Wikipedia?

Well I do, most of the time.

 

<------The Content of this post has been disputed------>

[wugga-tech-manager]

I don't like to use Wikipedia for the simple reason that anyone can edit the information on their website. If I know that I am using it for something someone will not read, then I will use it, otherwise, Google is a wonderful option.

[AverageJoe]

I don't like to use Wikipedia for the simple reason that anyone can edit the information on their website. If I know that I am using it for something someone will not read, then I will use it, otherwise, Google is a wonderful option.

If your on this forum then you probably know how easy it is to make your own website. In that case anyone could make a website with what the call factual information. I could make a site that says JFK was an alien and that he killed Hitler. Unlike wikipedia, however, people could not correct the misleading information on my site.

 

Truthfully any source you get could be false and they can only be verified by getting multiple sources with reliable and similar information.

 

 

 

[raccess]

Theres too many people, so I put no, but I'm rethinking because they are very strict about checking their site and seeing what things everyone is adding and such. I guess I say yes now.

[JcX]

To argue this question, we shall take a look at the poll result.

85% yes, 15% no so far...

We can roughly guess it...

And if you take a look at wikipedia site,

Why it could establish for such a long time? On what basis?

 

Professionals might think that wiki's info contains some discrepancies,

but not the beginner who's trying to learn.