Wikipedia - A Reliable Source for Students? - Nay

As you probably all know, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, but what makes it different from all the other encyclopediae is that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can edit what is written on it, with little exception.

One example of this is the page of William Shakespeare; One day I typed his name into www.wikipedia.org and the opening line stated “William Shakespeare is dumb”!! Now I don’t think that Britannica or Encarta would say such a thing! (Admittedly, at time of this article going to print, the site has been corrected, but regardless, the fact alone that this unsupported claim was made visible should deter anyone from using Wikipedia as a credible reference).

So I ask you this; can Wikipedia really be used as a credible source of information? I mean are you going to put the fate of your grades in the hands of total strangers who are able to make up total bulls**t about a topic they might know nothing of? I think not! For those of you who have to do research for various assignments, you know that there are more ways to get your required information off the internet as there are a lot more credible sources than Wikipedia. I know that when you type something into Google, Wikipedia is one of the first hits but, come on people, there is usually more than one hit for your particular query.

While writing this article, it has come to my attention that lecturers will dock marks if they notice students using Wikipedia as a reference for any of their assignments due to the deceitful nature of the site. I know from personal experience that if we were found to have used Wikipedia when researching for a particular topic, we would get 40% automatically! I don’t really want to fail so I think I’d find a more reputable means for research and I think that all students would.

Now I have come to the topic of citation of pages. Yes I know that every page on Wikipedia is cited but let’s discuss the process of citation. When a page gets edited the updated page is immediately displayed and the page itself goes into a queue to be checked and changed, if necessary. Certain pages are not allowed to be changed as too much filth has been put on this; one example of this is the page of George W. Bush.

I think that if a person wishes to give information to a certain page they should be able to e-mail their suggestions to Wikipedia who will then take what is said into account and edit the pages if necessary. This would do away with the need for citation, as random strangers wouldn’t be allowed change what ever they wanted to do.

So, all in all, Wikipedia can be used for a laugh but I ask all the intelligent people out there not to use it as a reliable source of information.