“I was looking at a stack of final examinations,” said Waters, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, “and I found several instances of misinformation that [were] identical from one student to another.”
All of those students in Waters’ Japanese history class late last year had been steered wrong by the same source — Wikipedia
It is not hard to figure out why this happened. I personally like to use it because it is convenient and because it is free, and it covers a lot of topics that may be hard to find elsewhere. However, I would never trust it as a source for much unless the "facts" are attributed and at that, are themselves attributed to reliable sources. Often, this is not the case. However, Wikipedia is still a good place to start your search. My advice would be to go to the links and sources sections, though, and dig into those if you are doing any serious research on a topic.
On a related note, never trust it to be accurate on topics that touch subjects like politics and current events. For one thing, it seems that a fair number of people who edit Wikipedia are actually lefty whack-jobs, which doesn't help things at all. To counter the left-leaning wackiness, I suggest a link I found at Little Miss Chatterbox's blog called Conservapedia. At least there the, they are up front about the bias, and the bias leans in the correct direction.
1 comment:
I totally agree!! I think Wikipedia is a resource that most bloggers can't do without but you should never trust it as your only source for something. The only frustration with conservapedia so far is that they are new so they don't have as much info as wikipedia but I'm sure that will be overcome with time. Thanks for the hat tip.
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