You may be under the impression that Wikipedia is an unreliable source of information, or maybe someone else has told you that they feel this way. On the other hand, you may believe that Wikipedia is a great source of information, and use it daily. Either way, you are partly right. Many people believe that Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be changed by anyone and everyone, but this is not entirely true. Students, you probably know what I am talking about. Your teachers tell you that Wikipedia is not an acceptable source for a project or essay. You may agree or disagree with them. You may disagree with them, but still use it at a source. Whatever the case, this article will prove them mostly wrong. While Wikipedia can be edited by anyone who wishes to contribute something, the same is true for most websites on the internet, in one way or another. Also, this is not entirely a bad thing. My first point is that Wikipedia is constantly being edited and revised, but this isn’t a bad thing. Most people who contribute to Wikipedia are honestly trying to give people valid information. Most people also add citations of where they got their information in the first place. This makes it incredibly easy to find out if a certain piece of information is accurate or not. Also, people are constantly reading the information that is posted on Wikipedia, and if they find something that seems incorrect to them, they either change it or remove it. In this way anything that is posted on Wikipedia that is not factually correct will be removed soon after it is posted, especially on popular topics. There are countless volunteer moderators on Wikipedia, and most of the time something incorrect is changed or removed by them or another member of the community. Also, if a piece of content on Wikipedia isn’t correctly, you usually won’t even get to it when searching for information on a topic. That is because if it doesn’t rank high on search engines, you most likely won’t be able to find it, as the way that most people get information is via search engines. Now, on to my second point, some people say that Wikipedia is unreliable because it can be changed by anyone. Well, anyone can put anything on the internet, and that makes the previous statement completely invalid. Anyone can put anything on the internet, whether it is true or not. In some cases it is even free. Just because it is not publicly editable does not mean that it is accurate. For example, let us search “The War of 1812” on Google, and look at the pages which we obtain as search results.
The first result is a Wikipedia page on the subject, and the second is a page from gatewayno.com. Which one of these is more reliable? Well, there isn’t any way to know. Anybody could have made the latter page and put anything that they want on it, and it could be completely wrong. The same goes for Wikipedia, the only difference is that since anyone can revise Wikipedia, if something is incorrect, then it can be fixed. On the other hand, if something on the second website is incorrect, no one can correct it and the next person that comes along will find that incorrect information.
Now, you may be wondering, why should I trust you? Well, test it out for yourself. Try writing something fictitious on a popular topic on Wikipedia, and see how soon it is removed (I do not advise you to do this, and take no responsibility if you decide to do so. This is just a way to test my theory.). Usually the answer is that it is removed in a matter of minutes, or even less.
In my opinion, these points prove that Wikipedia is just as reliable, and maybe even more reliable than other websites. If you will, please tell others about these points, and mainly your teachers, so that trust in Wikipedia will be restored. As always, please feel free to comment and post your opinions on the matter.
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