Use Wikipedia!

Wikipedia. One of the most loved and most hated sites across the internet. It contains well over two and a half million articles in English (2.847m as of this writing), and even more in other languages. Want to Google something random? Wikipedia will be in the top 5, unless it doesn’t have a page on that topic (which is unlikely). However for some reason people hate this site. I can’t understand why, the arguments are silly. You don’t become the 7th most visited site by being an unreliable source (alexa ranking).

When in school, and told to “cite sources”, students are often told or even rhetorically asked, “what site will you not use?”. The answer, of course, being Wikipedia. Is Wikipedia wrong? Sometimes. But no more than another site.

‘Anyone can post anything on the internet’. A saying most of us have heard several times. This rule is true, and there’s no reason to argue with it. Ask yourself if you think it is true. Now that you’ve agreed with it, put it into perspective.

How is Wikipedia any different than other sites? Wikipedia.org, informationcenter.net. The second site is hypothetical, but will serve a purpose. Why is Wikipedia any less accurate than informationcenter.net? Anyone can post on either of these. Wikipedia is owned by a larger company, the Wikimedia Foundation, which has 27 staff according to their official site. How many do those other sites have? Likely 2-3 (1 admin and 1-2 writers).

Is Wikipedia the only source? No, and in fact there should never only be one source for something. This goes back to the point: ‘Anyone can post anything on the internet’. Just as you would check other sources, you should also be cross-checking (not with a hockey stick, but with research) Wikipedia with other sites. For recent events, search news sites. For sports, search on sports sites. To get better results, use sites that are catered to what the research needs to be done on.

So there you have it, why Wikipedia shouldn’t be hated by anyone, unless they also dislike other sites. Wikipedia is just another site in the grand scheme, so there’s no reason to trash talk it like so many people do. No Wikipedia? Before you know it, Google won’t be allowed.


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