mcdonalk wrote:
eye95 wrote:
Well, it isn't. Anyone can sign up and edit an article. Advocacy groups have folks who keep eyes on some pages, making edits that favor their cause or removing edits that are unfavorable.
It's not a good source for information on controversial topics.
I would have thought you would like wikipedia. Do you know that you can go in and put in tags to show that you don't think a 'fact' is properly cited? Not only do I use wikipedia for information, I often check the sources that they cite on the bottom of the page. Even better resources on controversial topics are the :talk pages, and the edit history.
I love wikipedia. When one needs to look up a non-controversial fact, it should be the first place to go on the Internet. As a teacher, I used it all the time in the classroom. (I had a setup that allowed me to flash the contents of a web page on the board for all to see virtually instantly.)
For anything controversial, I'd never use it as a primary source. It's a great meta-source. The links and references at the end of the article are, for the most part, credible sources. But, wikipedia itself is a volatile and unreliable place to find information on subjects in dispute.