When using Wikipedia, you may have asked yourself some variation of the question, “Is Wikipedia reliable?” Indeed, this particular question isn’t the easiest one to answer. Many scholars and academics have denounced Wikipedia’s claims of reliability because it does not feature any of the actual scholarly influence found in print encyclopedias. Indeed, Wikipedia is primarily edited by individuals who do not live in the ivory towers of academia. Regardless, Wikipedia claims to have one of the most reliable resources for information gathering anywhere in the world. The opposing sides have quality arguments, but, in the end, who is right?
If you don’t have any integral knowledge of how Wikipedia operates, it might seem like they rely primarily on the goodwill of volunteers. It’s as if the creators of the website simply hope that upstanding individuals will come together and provide the most factual information possible. But, that is often not the case at all. Obviously, any time you put something on the internet that can be manipulated in any way, it’s probably going to be manipulated if only for the purposes of vandalism. Scholars have pointed to this vandalism as the key component in determining why Wikipedia isn’t quite up to snuff. When facts, opinions, and sometimes outright falsities can come together on a single page, it doesn’t engender much confidence in the service.
Of course, this is just one side of the story. Is Wikipedia reliable? If you ask one of the many different independent researchers that have conducted studies on Wikipedia’s reliability, you’ll likely find that it exceeds or equals the reliability of any print encyclopedias. In addition, the wealth of knowledge on Wikipedia is something that really couldn’t be bound. It’s also not restricted t
o events or data from the past. It’s constantly being updated and constantly being monitored by dedicated volunteer editors who want to ensure the website’s longevity and reliability.
Even though Wikipedia’s guidelines for page creation and content changes are rather strict, they will still encourage you to use it with some caution. It is not meant to be the defining source for any one entity, but it does work well as a starting point, particularly for academic research. The way information and the website itself evolve is naturally going to lead to some general errors. But, for this interested merely in learning about something, Wikipedia provides some of the easiest access to information that you can imagine. With their requirement of reliable sources, they’ve also got a wealth of scholarly knowledge that’s often just a click away.
So, is Wikipedia reliable or is it all just a ruse? In theory, Wikipedia is closer to being reliable than it is anything else. Of course, you are always bound to come upon an entry that is un-sourced and is clearly spouting lies, but the benefit of Wikipedia is that that kind of information can be deleted with relative quickness. With any print publications, errors are only made known when the next issue is released. So, even though Wikipedia might be edited by a conglomerate of individuals who don’t have the expertise of some scholars, it still manages to be one of the most reliable resources on the planet.
