Wikipedia: Reliable or Not?

In the article “It's a Wiki, Wiki World” by Chris Taylor and Coco Masters, they talk about the development of wikipedia, the ideas behind it, and how it relates to other open source software. Jimmy Wales is the creator of wikipedia, and a couple things led to his decision to undergo this challenge. First, Wales was home schooled, and loved reading the Encyclopedia Britannica and World Book. Then, in 1989, he discovered the internet, and began to meet people online. He decided that he would try to take both of these interests, which led to the eventual creation of wikipedia.

Wales' first attempt at an online encyclopedia was called Nubeia, and after two years, he had managed to post just twelve articles. Later, he realized that the reason Nubeia was not successful was because it had many stages of fact checking and peer-review. Then Wales thought of wikis and his knowledgeable online friends. He then launched wikipedia, allowing anyone to edit the content and improve upon the articles.

We all know the rest of the story. Wikipedia grew bigger than Nubeia in just two weeks, and today has over 1.5 million articles, making it the largest encyclopedia to date. However, the fact that anyone can write anything on wikipedia has led to the belief that it is inaccurate. This article challenges that claim in several ways. The one that I found most surprising was the statistic that, on average, if you post a bad word in an article, it will take less than two minutes for it to be removed. This is because enthusiasts about any subject can follow relating articles, get updates when they are changed, and then correct the changes if they are inaccurate.

Wikipedia also has the advantage of multiple viewpoints existing inside the same article, as each article has many authors. The more viewpoints, the better overview of a subject the reader gets. To compare it to class, you could say that while the Encyclopedia Britannica is more focused on the “they say”, wikipedia is packed with both “they say” and “I say”.

I think that wikipedia has become a much more reliable resource than it used to be, and it will only continue to improve. Like Wales, I am an optimistic person, but I think that the idea of people sharing knowledge online is important and a great tool. Like always, you have to be critical of any information you may find on wikipedia, but the same can be said for any website. The difference with wikipedia is that it allows for incorrect information to be taken down or changed by anyone, and has a large following that is willing to devote some of their day to keep it articles accurate.

What do you think of the use of online wikis such as wikipedia? Can we ever trust websites such as these to have accurate information? Should we only use wikipedia as a “first step” in our searches? Or should we completely disregard wikis, and only use sources that cannot be changed by the general public?

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