Google anything and you are likely to find that the first hit belongs to the massive online encyclopedia that is Wikipedia. Google ‘wikipedia’ and you will get about 260 million hits. It is an easy source of information and it will save you time. The downside to this is that it makes it hard to look beyond this information that is served to you on a silver platter, and to do some further research. Also, there has been a lot of speculation about how reliable and trustworthy this source is. Time to find out!

Because this well-known digital encyclopedia can be edited by anyone, the content is, by critics, said to be doubtful. However, studies showed that wikipedia is not far behind on more acceptable sources. In 2005 the scientific journal Nature published their results after comparing wikipedia with the printed encyclopedia Britannica. The outcome was that the number of factual errors was not much different. Also, studies done by IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) researchers showed that poorly edited articles and vandalism are repaired so quickly that most users will not notice its effect.

This still does not undo the fact that you should not rely on wikipedia a 100 percent. At any time, an article you use as research material could be under the process of being edited and therefor give different information than the day after. Also, writers of articles often fail to include their original source and their knowledge on the subject cannot be checked.

So next time you need information on a subject, do not hesitate to use the online encyclopedia. However, keep in mind not to take your findings for granted. Do some further research and double check the information you come up with. It will only give you more perspectives!

source: www.wikipedia.org

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