Prior to University, my experience with Wikipedia was fairly broad, I would use it to find information on topics that interested me such as famous actors, movies and books. Earlier on in my education I found that I was being told not to trust Wikipedia and that most of the information on there could be incorrect.
Wikipedia is most commonly compared to Encyclopedias, the central difference between these two sources is that Wikipedia is an open product and Encyclopaedia is a closed product, however some people can still find similarities between the two. Wikipedia is open to collaborative feedback and contribution as any user can edit the sites and the information on there is constantly editable.
Being open source software, Wikipedia has come under the fire with the possibility of false information being posted.
“John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960′s. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven.”
— Wikipedia
Seigenthaler wrote an article about how he felt about these false claims being made against him on USAtoday.com, the article can be found here http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2005-11-29-wikipedia-edit_x.htm. In this article Seigenthaler clearly establishes his frustration with the fact that someone can post a “malicious ‘biography’” (Seigenthaler. 2005) such as this. Clearly the open source product has negative aspects of it that is evident in Seigenthalers story. It is stories like this that prompt Wikipedia to aim to enhance its reliability as a source for information; Wikipedia has attempted this by requiring sources and citations on all the pages. However, it will always have its many flaws, with no professional editor many pages are poorly written with many errors. “But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written… There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor.” (The British journal Nature. 2005). So when it comes down to it, as much as Wikipedia tries, it will never be perfect. I personally think this is part of the charm of Wikipedia, knowing that users can read articles in there and they are most likely written in everyday terms.
I used to be told not to trust Wikipedia at all and to never go there for information or resources. My use of Wikipedia currently is predominantly leisurely; however I am finding that I am using it more and more often as a beginning research area for assignments and educational reasons. Most of the time it can provide a basic knowledge of the topic in question and includes a list of references and in text references that can help for further more reliable research. I have noticed a clear change in my opinion of Wikipedia and I think this is due to Wikipedia trying to get rid of their ‘unreliable’ tag that they previously had and that I had been made aware of.
