Wikipedia- Is it reliable?

I remember few days ago, I had a little talk with my friend who studies music. He seemed to be confuse on how he define the word “guitar” for one of his website article. At some point I brought up Wikipedia. My friend says that Wikipedia is unreliable as a resource. I had to agree. For some topics, the most recent article may be unreliable, but unlike an encyclopedia, Wikipedia lets you see every argument from every side of the story up until the current article. The history feature of Wikipedia lets you see the article as it is written today, and how it was written yesterday and even last year. There may hundreds of modifications to an article.

 

We looked up “guitar” in Wikipedia. There have been more than 1500 edits to the article since 2000. Every one of those edits is available for review. In addition there is a discussion attached to the article. Here the editors talk about the edits, why parts have been modified and what changes could be made in the future. Sometimes a real debate between experts is right there in the discussion. This insight benefits the learning and knowing process.

 

In my opinion, it is the process of determining what is correct that is most important to the educational process. Anyone can look something up using an encyclopedia. Today’s student should be able look at so many of information and determine what is correct. Wikipedia provides the opportunity for this kind of learning.