People always wonder how reliable Wikipedia is. Many teachers don't allow you to use it for researching. It is commonly thought of as unreliable. Let's see how reliable Wikipedia is.
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What was Wikipedia meant to be?
Wikipedia was meant to be a free, online encyclopedia. They never run ads, and run only on donations. It's supposed to be that if you are smart on a topic, you can edit a document with your info and share it with the world. And then anybody can use it for research.
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Overview of Wikipedia's reliability
Having aproximately 600,000 total articles, Wikipedia is a big site. They have 800 experienced administrators who review and fix the articles when they are vandalised. Wikipedia was made to be a place where anybody could go on and put information to share about the topics. Although, it is relatively hard to edit Wikipedia articles and the trained administrators can quickly fix the vandalism. Wikipedia is said to be right approximately 85-95% of the time. Although, Wikipedia is not always right, and you should never rely on only one source for your research.
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How to know if you are on a reliable Wikipedia page
At the top right of Wikipedia pages, there is a "view history" button. You can try checking there to see if the last person to edit it was a completely random person or an administrator. Even if it was a random person, it still may be right info. If the info is completely random or doen't look right, try another source. You should always use multiple sources for research.
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I hope you found this helpful!
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