Personally, it's just as good as finding information from, even better actually. Especially with important topics like World War II, Philosophy and so on...
Hell, they have detailed pages on Sheldon Cooper and the conspiracy about Paul McCartney's "death".
The best part is that they have sources for information, and they heavily moderate the pages. Some even getting locked up for vandalism.
Basically, Wikipedia is like a forum. In a way;
You share information, you link to your evidence. There are moderators that help and do the best job they can, and there are many contributors.
What are your thoughts about Wikipedia? Do you disagree that it's a good source of info?
I agree with you. I think it's stupid that people think it isn't credible. Like you said, it's heavily moderated and stupid things are taken off. It is a giant source of knowledge and we should be aloud to tap into it without any consequence academically. So many professors and teachers won't accept anything from Wikipedia even though they probably all read off of it in their spare time.
I think that Wikipedia lacks quality. And that's ok. It's the place where you go if you want some general knowledge or need some pointers. It's not intended to be a place where all the knowledge of the world is stored. Besides, if you just follow the references in an article and google around a bit on your own, you can find much more credible sources easily. And I think that this is one of the greatest feats of Wikipedia.
@Zexion: No, that's actually ok. Wikipedia is not a complete source. But I think that a Wikipedia article should be able to be a secondary source.
I agree with Blizzard, that's what sources are for.
Well some articles aren't reliable, but that's in part due to them not being looked at that much anyway, so therefore there would be little moderation on those articles.
Also, copying and pasting directly off Wikipedia is what I think the professors/teachers find undesirable. That's what thesauruses are for...
Yeah, if you quote something, it really shouldn't be Wikipedia.
I remember reading, some time ago, of a study conducted that compared the accuracy of information available on Wikipedia to those of a standard, print encyclopedia. From the random sample, the articles on Wikipedia averaged more accurate. Of course, I don't remember the source of the study, so maybe it in itself was inaccurate, but I think the most important lesson from all of this is that encyclopedias in general, while a good source of general information, shouldn't be a primary source in an important work. Instead, authors should probably go to scientific journal articles, or other places that specialize specifically in the field or subject of their topic.
Exactly.
Not all bodies of work, print or not, will ever have the whole and complete facts and truth, I guess.