What is the Best
for Students?
I think the common answer to this would be “no”. The reasoning: “Wikipedia tends to be a ‘free game’ website, where people can edit it and post lies,” said Laurie Carmack.
“Even though most information is more accurate than not. I still highly encourage to look elsewhere,” added Jason Wawrzeniak. While both teachers teach English and Writing classes as clubs, they both agreed by saying that it is a quick site to go to, but you shouldn’t rely on just Wikipedia.
Has Wikipedia really been striving to better their site from inaccuracies?
The answer is clearly yes, but is it accurate enough to be used as a resource for school work?
With over 29 million articles, and with Wikipedia constantly expanding, it’s difficult not to see it when researching a topic. 300 million words this summer helped, expand, edit, and make Wikipedia a more respected and factually based website for all of the viewers.
As all of these changes occur, mistakes still exist. Lead singer of the famous American Indie rock band Passion Pit, Nate Donmoyer, found ten minor errors in the band’s Wikipedia article. Even though drastic editing processes have been made, scattered mistakes still may exist within a given article. Wikipedia’s approximated accuracy overall is 81%, when a normal website’s accuracy stands at a stronger 95-96% accuracy rate. Does that mean Wikipedia shouldn’t be trusted?
Passion Pit, Nate Donmoyer, found ten minor errors in the band’s Wikipedia article. Even though drastic editing processes have been made, scattered mistakes still may exist within a given article. Wikipedia’s approximated accuracy overall is 81%, when a normal website’s accuracy stands at a stronger 95-96% accuracy rate. Does that mean Wikipedia shouldn’t be trusted?
Many times, these tests include articles that an amateur writer may have not had a clue about what he was writing about. People will input their opinions in a fact-based article, making the article falsified, thus making the test rates of accuracy falsified as well.
During the tests for Wikipedia’s accuracy, many examples show that Wikipedia, along with having bad articles, have accurate articles as well. During a test only four serious errors were among forty-two articles after they were analyzed by experts. Experts also analyzed the level of accuracy about ten articles on cancer. The articles had the same level of accuracy as the Physician Data Query, which was written by the National Cancer Society.
The most believed rumor about Wikipedia is that people can go into any article and edit it. Since Wikipedia edited many articles in early July and let the writers put a restriction on an article, thus vandalism on Wikipedia has seized.
Should Wikipedia Be Used for Important Research in School?
By: Sean DeBiase