Wikipedia

[Penguin]

I've been wondering about this bad boy for years- how far can you go with Wikipedia?  I'm a strident supporter of the site, and know it well enough to recognize a bad page and edit it or move on.  Others say that due to it's infinite editability, Wikipedia cannot be trusted, and some (to my amusement) say that Wikipedia is 100% false in all ways. 

Gentlemen (note GENTLE), what are your opinions on this matter?

-Penguin

PS I'm wondering if I should sign up and pay the 15 USD for that big scholarly articles site.

[MachFly]

Most of the information you find on wikipedia is true, however since it can be edited by anyone you can not use it as an official sours because you don't know who wrote it.

[Yossarian]

Which site do you mean?  Do some background checks on it before you sign up to anything.

And about Wikipedia's reliability: a few years ago, Nature did some study which found that Wikipedia's scientific content was roughly as accurate as that of Encyclopedia Britannica's.  Here's a link to it, but you have to pay to access it.  With regards to the overall content, always look at it with suspicion.  If an article feels like it's biased, assume that it is.

[Penguin]

Most of the information you find on wikipedia is true, however since it can be edited by anyone you can not use it as an official sours because you don't know who wrote it.

Even if were to, what could I do about it?

-Penguin

[Imowface]

I use Wiki as merly a tool, then cross reference with various other sources, as anyone should do with any form of research 

[MaSonZ]

I use Wiki as merly a tool, then cross reference with various other sources, as anyone should do with any form of research 

if I have to do research I do this....but if the teacher wants some background info in one or two sentences I run to wikipedia.

back to OP, I trust it...to an extent. None of my teachers will believe what I say if i say I got it from Wikipedia. Becuase it can be openly edidted by anyone at any time anywhere in the world it is very likely what you read isnt 100% accurate. I saw a Post about Britannica...if its almost as right as britannica then it must say something about the site. but there is that chance some 13 year old in the middle of china somewhere put a BS line in that his half genius brother wrote.

[MarineUS]

just look for cited sources on Wiki - check 'em out and go BAM

Use the sources as a source

[saggs]

Like others have said, it's usually true, but never cite it in a paper.

For actually scholarly reports and such I used Google Scholar search a lot.  It only searches peer reviewed published studies so you can be safe citing them.

[Tac]

What Marine said. Even for college I use wiki to get a quick 'overall' read of the topic then I scroll down to their sources and browse them (checking them for accuracy as well).

Wiki is sort of a metaserver for source and info

As for accuracy... to date I've not seen a single article that has been wrong (except for some dates when it comes to historical things) and in fact wiki is updated to the very latest info. Its amazing to see a newly discovered thing pop up with an almost complete explanation when that info is hard to come by from official sources or news orgs.

[GNucks]

I remember when I was in school wanting to smack teachers that would start throwing hissy-fits if they saw a Wiki page open on someone's system. I'm raging and clenching my fists just thinking about those days.