Can wikipedia be trusted when doing serious research?

1. 72

   retellectposted 12 years ago

   Can wikipedia be trusted when doing serious research?

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2. 79

   Uninvited Writerposted 12 years ago

   No...it should only be used as a first step and then with some scepticism.

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3. 66

   peepingtombposted 12 years ago

   I just posed this question to a search engine and wikipedia had an answer to it. Wiki is usually at or near the top of all search engine inquiries. I think that wikipedia is fairly accurate. I would say it can be trusted warily as an introduction to a subject or a starting point. I would definitely corroborate the information at least through another website or better yet take a trip to the library.

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4. 60

   whoisbidposted 12 years ago

   A lot of non commercial topics are great on Wikipedia. The problem comes with topics that affect buyers e.g. people's explanations of certain technologies favoring one over the other by editors who team up together to control a certain part of Wikipedia. I wrote about my experiences of this here http://whoisbid.hubpages.com/hub/WHY-I-HATE-WIKIPEDIA
   
   There are teams of people who are benefitting financially from Wikipedia (not from links but from explanations) and it is very difficult to stop this because some organizations have so much time and money on their hands that they can continually monitor the Wiki and make it revert back to the way they want it when some poor guy is trying to make the information a bit more balanced.

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5. 93

   Faceless39posted 12 years ago

   Yeah, to a point.  Research topics that you find on Wikipedia further elsewhere, like peer-reviewed articles.  They're easy to find and free to use:  http://scholar.google.com

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6. 65

   Aley Martinposted 12 years ago

   As a college English professor the definite answer is NO!

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7. 0

   no mac saladposted 12 years ago

   I think anything on the internet should be taken with a grain of salt. Wikipedia has been at the butt of many late night jokes. But curiously, if you look up something on Wikipedia, say "string theory" for example, you'll see at the bottom of the article all the references that was used to compile the piece. If you Google "string theory", you'll find many of the same that was referenced on Wikipedia.
   
   With this in mind, I think Wikipedia is as serious as anything else on the internet. However, If you need to turn in a paper and you list "Wikipedia" as your reference, then I don't think your paper will be taken too seriously. But if you list, "Kaku, Michio (April 1994). Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 384. ISBN 0-19-508514-0." as a reference, then your paper will look much more serious (got that from Wikipedia BTW).

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8. 60

   infoforumposted 12 years ago

   No, usually there is incorrect information and thats a risk when doing a serious research

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9. 60

   MickSposted 12 years ago

   People engaging in serious research work would be wise to folllow the old maxim of using at least 3 sources, then they cannot be misled by the errors that may be present in one source.

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