Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Your Opinion of Wikipedia as a Source of Information???
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Old 08-15-2014, 08:08 PM
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From the pages of wiki, itself:

"Almost anyone who can access the site[4] can edit almost any of its articles." - no control over editing unless in the area of science.
"Wikipedia has earned a reputation as a news source because of its rapid updating of articles related to breaking news.[12][13][14] In addition, Wikipedia's high openness compared to previous encyclopedias and its inclusion of much unacademic content have received extensive media attention." - reputation for news rather than anything academic.
"Wikipedia's high openness has also led to some concerns, such as the quality of its writing,[15] vandalism and the accuracy of its information.[16][17] However, while some articles contain unverified or inconsistent information,[18]" - exception being greater accuracy n areas of science.
"An article is not considered to be owned by its creator or any other editor and is not vetted by any recognized authority.[27] Rather, editors are supposed to agree on the content and structure of articles by consensus. - no vetting."
"By default, an edit to an article immediately becomes available. As a result, articles may contain inaccuracies, ideological biases, and nonsensical or irrelevant text until an editor corrects such deficiencies"
"Edits misidentified by a bot as the work of a banned user can be restored by other users" - even wiki bots make errors.
"Edits misidentified by a bot as the work of a banned user can be restored by other users" - editing wars to be resolved by consensus!!!
"The Arbitration Committee presides over the ultimate dispute resolution method. Although disputes usually arise from a disagreement between two opposing views on how articles should read, the Arbitration Committee explicitly refuses to directly rule on which view should be adopted. Statistical analyses suggest that the committee ignores the content of disputes and focuses on the way disputes are conducted instead,[61] functioning not so much to resolve disputes and make peace between conflicting editors, but to weed out problematic editors while allowing potentially productive editors back in to participate." - what a committee!

As a high school teacher how accepting they are of wiki in any student bibliography!
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