Wikipedia's Accuracy

[Eerors]

-scissor attack!-

What s/he said, and what everyone seems to be saying.

Wikipedia is okay for just finding out about stuff generally but some of the more specific/specialist articles can have mistakes in them. These articles are probably not going to be under as much scrutiny as more popular pages and so mistakes go unchecked.

As was said, the subject's specialists who could spot the error are not likely to go onto the page to see the error because they know the subject. Also, people who might spot the error could think that they are one's mistaken and thus it is again, not corrected.

The references are useful for finding hard to find research articles though ^_^ In that capacity it's more like an ideas exchange then an information hub....

 

[Junkle]

It is indeed very accurate. The fact that it can be wrong, however, leads to too many problems with verification and whatnot. I usually use it as a base for research, but use the sources and official publications for actual quotes and whatnot.

 

[oktalist]

The fact that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone has very little to do with it. As others have said in this thread, it's about as reliable as any other source. It frustrates me when people quote Wikipedia in support of some argument in a forum like this one, then someone comes along who disagrees but has no counter-argument and says "oh, Wikipedia, what a good source" with generous helpings of sarcasm. It's an internet forum FFS, not the Journal of Electronically Transmitted Memetic Studies (although that would be awesome).

Of course for serious work you should refer to the references of any article (articles in journals and news media can be wrong/misleading too). Proper journalists are required to always have at least two reliable, corrobarative sources for anything that they present as a statement of fact.

 

[Steel Ronin]

It's really accurate but there's the occasional ass that edits the stuff into being funny say Ben Franklin is known for being a total badass and won the Nobel prize for mustache but their admin team bans them and fixes it sooner or later.