wikipedia

i use Wikipedia to gather some ideas but i still open 5 or more resource to assure that my information is accurate

 

Wikipedia is good but dont use it for advertising purposes

 

It has been pounded into my head in high school and my first few years of college... DO NOT USE WIKIPEDIA FOR REFERENCE... well I still use it to get a good idea, that's what it's for.

 

i think it depends on what you are doing .... if you need basic stats or info, its great. However if you need in-depth information, your solution is to turn to books .... If Wikipedia is not credible, what makes most other sites have credibility?? Nothing will beat quality books or journals.

 

I think some of wikipedia's content are also coming from the site or blogs who sign-up for account. My friend created an account at wiki and wiki used his blog post as source when someone is searching for a particular thing. So that means that content from wiki is not 100% coming from them, other are also coming from different sites.

 

Before you discount wikipedia as a source of information, look at this:

http://science.slashdot.org/science/05/12/15/1352207.shtml?tid=95&tid=14

Long story short, Nature magazine looked at the accuracy of Wikipedia vs. the Encyclopedia Britanica and found them to be similarly accurate.

Buyer beware, of course, but wikipedia isn't as easy to dismiss as statistically inaccurate as most people think.

 

Problem 1: Wikipedia itself isn't a true "source." As there's no "official" editorial review process, the source is the user who added the material. Those sources may only be handles - not something to cite or trust. Citing Wikipedia itself is like going to my Myspace profile, quoting me, and saying "Myspace says...."

Problem 2: The study isn't accurate. It's shallow. It only looks at 42 articles, which means nothing on a site that size. It also only covers one broad niche (science) - a niche heavily documented online and off with "real" source material that many of the Wiki editors probably pulled from.

Problem 3: It's laughable that they'd claim Wikipedia's longer articles mean they have a lower error rate. What it more likely means is that it's filled with bloated text. Professional writers are more concise.

 

I would add another point to the above observations.

Anyone whose background education is not judged to be insufficient can detect countless data innacuaries across the wiki texts such as one I found yesterday claiming that Mexico is located in Central America, something that any K-12 student knows is absolutely wrong.

 

Was that intentional

Some information is outdated, incomplete and so on.
Wikipedia should be the side dish, not the main course.

 

LOL, I didn't realize that misspelling.

My ISP provider was temperamental with Ajax features if you know what I mean.

I was trying to edit a typo (formerly accross instead of across) and the never ending arrow took place dragging such text

 

I thought you were trying to drive home the point you were making.

 

Wikipedia , I will use it for very, very basic information , but unfortunately many people take it as gospel ( so to speak ) I edited a very controversial article there for 3 months, about a living person , it became a means for people with a axe to grind to skew the article in an extremely negative manner and it was an eye opener to the lengths people would go to try and discredit some one
So on one level it has become an easy target ( since all can edit and argue for inclusion of material ) for personal attacks on people as well as supply often useful information. However since this experiment and knowing how editors operate I would never cite important matters from it.

 

Does Wikipedia gain traffic if we submit articles there? I've just seen some of their features but seems quite difficult to do do.

 

So where do you get your information from, rather than wikipedia?

 

It's generally best to look for primary sources - For example, if you need stats on something where official government documents exist, you use those. Or if you need background on something, you speak directly to an expert source who you can then cite from your interview. If you were looking for something on some scientific data, you would look for original test results directly available from the source conducting the tests. etc.

If you can't find anything like that, you look for secondary sources. This would include things like commentaries. For example, if you wanted to write about a new social media tool that was launched, the primary source would be the company launching the tool, while a secondary source might be citing comments about it from an industry expert's blog post.

Here's a link for you with a nice run-down of types and examples of sources: http://www.library.jcu.edu.au/LibraryGuides/primsrcs.shtml

 

Just like my old history assignments, you always need a primary, and a secondary source.

 

i've never seen anything on wikipedia that's wrong, and i've done son cross referencing. I've included information from wikipedia in essays.

 

Wait a minute... are you all trying to say that there is information on the internet that is not accurate? I guess I'll have to go back to getting my facts from the 6 o' clock news.

 

They're quick on updating information as it happens. Mostly in the entertainment sector and influential peeps..

I think they're a good source to site if you do some quick research yourself for accuracy..

 

I will check them out for some quick reference, but always have to check the facts as many times they are wrong. Since anyone can add anything they want, many of the so called "facts" are NOT and are more opinions that haven't been researched. IMHO (In my humble opinion)LOL