Wikipedia - A general discussion of its validity

brennakimi writes:wiki may be a valid reference for common knowledge stuff (like the popular colors at christmas) but not for anything of contention. you need peer-reviewed or otherwise confidence bearing sources for this. wiki is an encyclopedia. just like all encyclopedias, it's written by encyclopedia writers and prone to error and non-specificity.

pink sasquatch writes:Wikipedia is open to editing by anyone, including you. So it's not quite like all encyclopedias.It can serve as a good starting point, especially for those who won't understand the primary literature due to technical style and language. However, entries should be reviewed for errors/issues by the person citing the entries (just like with any cite, really, including peer-reviewed ones...)

arachnophilia writes:moose -- i mentioned in one of the gd peanut gallerys (they might be giants) about the accuracy rating of wikipedia. it reportedly ranks at the level of most encyclopedias. which sounds good until you hear the number of errors that were found in common encyclopedias.wikipedia also has a tendency to acknowledge boths sides of issues that shouldn't really be under argument, which doesn't always make it the best source for debatable material.

brennakimi writes:yes. but it is not appropriate to use for the debate of obscure facts. i.e. no one should use it to determine how many women were imprisoned in rape camps under saddam hussein. instead, one should look at the records we recovered in the first gulf war. these things are not yet common knowledge and neither are facts about some crazy puerto rican who may or may not have decided to join a terrorist organization.