Wikipedia’s Bad Rep
It would not be absurd to say that everyone reading this article, have used Wikipedia as a reference at one point or another. The usefulness, quickness, and accuracy of Wikipedia is incredibly suitable for everyday life. I asked three of my suite mates at Wake Forest University if they considered Wikipedia a reputable source. The first said, “Never, in any circumstance, No” (word for word)! The next said, “Unfortunately not, but I have had professors accept it”. The other said, “No, but I almost always use it to gain a greater understanding of a topic I might be writing on.” At least two of the three, from these simple responses, find Wikipedia helpful in some way, and express regret that most professors don’t accept it as reputable. But is deeming Wikipedia, a database that has been around since 2001, unreliable still suitable?
Wikipedia, since it is largely run by volunteer editors, has received a harmful reputation that is outdated. Wikimedia has greatly grown in numbers since 2001, and stops countless instances of questionable content every day. But Wikipedia receiving a bad rep, is not only inaccurate, it is unfair. In his blog post Just How Accurate Is Wikipedia, Steve Tobak admits that any “reputable journalist” must concede that Wikipedia may be a questionable source; he then writes that not much of what we read online is actually reputable. “Very little, actually. And that’s very frightening”. With all the false information online, it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish actual news from fake news. When one reads about a problem from news sources, the magnitude of the problem may be exaggerated to generate interest to a certain news source over another. For instance, in his New York Times article titled, Why Rumors Outrace the Truth Online, Brendan Nyhan writes, using the “missing Libyan Jetliner” as an example, that “Initial false reports can be circulated much more widely than later corrections”. Rumors online more often than not have more a goal of gaining the attention of a reader, than actual valid stories. In conclusion, Wikipedia has largely been accused of being unreliable and imprecise at times; however, it contains many administers and scholars who work constantly to keep its information truthful. One must also be careful in immediately valuing many other online news sources, even from mainstream networks or platforms, over Wikipedia. Though it does not always receive the respect it deserves, Wikipedia’s benefits far outweigh its shortcomings.
