I hear this a lot, and quite frankly, I’m sick of it: “Wikipedia isn’t a good source because anyone can edit it.” Yes, the second part is accurate, but the first part…well, it’s not so accurate. People assume that, because just about anyone can edit (or vandalize) Wikipedia, the information contained in its articles must not be reliable or even true. What such people don’t realize, however, is that information in Wikipedia must be verifiable and sourced. You can’t change George Washington’s birth year to 2021 and expect it to stick because anyone can look in a history book and see that it was really 1732. Disinformation is readily found and deleted by the army of editors dedicated to keeping Wikipedia reliable.
The thing is, Wikipedia is intended as a jumping-off point. You can find information in it for anything from the Constitution of the United States to Intel processors, with millions of things in between. Information from verifiable sources is compiled into one easy to read page. If you ever doubt the information, just go to the source. If there isn’t a source, look it up yourself. Wikipedia isn’t meant to be your only source for information. It’s more of a compilation of many sources. Think about that the next time you criticize someone for daring to quote a Wikipedia article.
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