When using popular search engines, such as Google, to ask a simple question there are millions of sites that offer information. The problem is knowing which website is reliable and gives accurate information. There are many unreliable resources available on the internet that give inaccurate information to the general public. These inaccuracies are why choosing sources for valid information is an issue when using the internet. Sites such as Wikipedia.com, Yahoo Answers, Ask.com, and Youtube.com are examples of sites that use crowdsourcing as then main function of their website. Generally, these sites are greatly trusted throughout the internet community, but the reliability of these websites is not what the perceived standard is.
The reliability of the website Wikipedia.com, an online encyclopedia, has been questioned by many. The site that allows anyone with an account to edit a webpage, has been criticized many time for its inaccuracies and the credibility of the encyclopedia has been questioned many times. Wikipedia.com is not a reliable source because any person that has no expertise or valid knowledge on a subject can pass off incorrect information as accurate, especially since Wikipedia is an encyclopedia .
In a test study done to determine the credibility of Wikipedia there were two groups under two conditions.One group was a group of experts that read articles from Wikipedia that were in their field of expertise.The second group were randomly chosen people that may or may not have had a large field of knowledge about the topic of a random Wikipedia article. “The article’s credibility was measured with five items: believability, accuracy, trustworthiness, bias and completeness” (Chesney). Chesney, an accredited researcher, found that the experts and random participants both found inaccuracies in the Wikipedia articles. Wikipedia can not be seen as a credible online encyclopedia if there are flaws in what is supposed to be credible information.
Wikipedia has been ridiculed a myriad of times because of its well known feature that allows anyone to edit a webpage,but although the site says that anyone can edit the page it does not always let any editor change the webpage.Timothy Messer-Kruse, a professor at Bowling Green State University and the author of "The Trial of the Haymarket Anarchists”, spoke about how he tried to change an inaccuracy on a wikipedia page related to the Haymarket trials and after seemingly changing the inaccurate information the webpage reloaded without the corrections.”They[Wikipedia] don't rely on primary sources like transcripts of the trial but rather on the preponderance of secondary sources.” The option on Wikipedia that allows authors to not let anyone edit their webpage blocked him from making any changes regarding the invalid information. “I tried again and was told that I needed to represent a majority viewpoint, not a minority viewpoint, namely my own, and that Wikipedia was about verifiability, not necessarily about truth.”,said Messer-Kruse. Although Wikipedia’s creators have always contradicted accusations of the site being inaccurate they have openly admitted to not relying on the truth (Conan).
Wikipedia’s statements of verifiability over truth justifies the low credibility of the encyclopedia,especially if the information is used as a source for school or any other setting requiring accurate information.Generally educators tell their students to not use Wikipedia as a reliable source and some say to not even use it at all. “Purdue professors are reluctant to allow their students to use this website as a source. Sorin Matei, a communication professor studying the collaboration aspects of Wikipedia, said the biggest problem is the disparity in level of truth to each article” (Westberg). Westenberg, a journalist reporting on an article released earlier in the year, also reported on the use of Wikipedia in and out of the classroom. Many educators think that Wikipedia is more of a way to understand the general basics of a topic and then use other sources of information as a credible source. “Nancy Peleaz, a biology professor, said although she does use Wikipedia in her classroom with her students, she does not find it to be a reliable source” (Westberg). There are some articles on Wikipedia that are majority accurate, but the problem is knowing which article are credible and which are just made up misleading information from an unreliable source. Using Wikipedia as a credible source for any credible cause is not suggested or recommended by educators and experts.
Some experts conduct studies on the credibility and accuracy of Wikipedia and come to a conclusion that Wikipedia is in fact credible. “The degree to which Wikipedia is lacking depends heavily on one’s perspective. Even in the least covered areas, because of its sheer size, Wikipedia does well, but since a collection that is meant to represent general knowledge is likely to be judged by the areas in which it is weakest...” (Halavais). Wikipedia being the large database that it is has a hard time verifying the credibility of every article.Often times Wikipedia is judged because of its status of a popular online encyclopedia and not as a website using crowdsourcing. With crowdsourcing there are eventually bound to be some errors and many researchers have noted that.
Even with the knowledge that Wikipedia is a large site that cannot verify every detail of information that is posted on the site the credibility of the encyclopedia is still very low. With the knowledge that most articles on Wikipedia are written by crowdsourcing it verifies that inaccuracies are inevitable. “ It cannot be a coincidence that two areas that are particularly lacking on Wikipedia—law and medicine—are also the purview of licensed experts” (Halavais). Many experts do not see Wikipedia as a credible website and know that their information would not be seen as valid if posed on Wikipedia. “Many attorneys have taken up blogging with open arms and medical research is now frequently published in open access journals, both suggesting that there is not always an impediment to these groups contributing to online resources” (Halavais). The lack of experts posting on Wikipedia justifies that it is not a credible encyclopedia with a valid and accurate information.
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