Wikipedia is the trusted online encyclopedia that is open to editing for anyone. Because of the vulnerability, many educationists often restrict students that they can never in any circumstances be referred to as it has a reputation to be unreliable.
As with all the considerations, the situation is thin on the ground than this. Since Wikipedia is by no means a replacement for the books and research articles, but it can be of vast use a fact-finding and primary source. I don’t say that its perfect resource and the contributions always need to be judged with a keen eye, though much of the challenge that surrounds the website comes from the place of negligence.
So if you are still concerned about the reliability of the Wikipedia, what type of resource it is and how you can be one among the professional Wikipedia editor we got you covered. The question of whether Wikipedia is a credible source it has stormed both offline and online users from past decades. The research studies have depicted that Wikipedia is coarse as reliable as the other sources might have considered as accurate.
Questionably the one to determine this first was the journalist Giles, with a tag line internet encyclopedia go head to head. Giles combined the articles on Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica the results among them was the difference in accuracy, and specifically Wikipedia had our erroneous entries, as well as Britannica, has three.
So the studies don’t say that Wikipedia is perfect and has no errors. Since it’s a human product and similar to other human inventions it’s bound to have the flaws and inaccuracies. The reason there is no one responsible who solely ensure that all the articles are for the specific standards. Some items, as well as the contributions, may have grammatical errors may not be well organized and sourced from the ancient sources. In some inferences, the items are cited from the reliable sources, but they are misrepresented or doesn’t meet the standards.
However, probably the riskiest is that the Wikipedia articles are highly criticized and controversial based on the topic available. This can be particularly true for the articles published about celebrities, places or other essential but controversial topic.
In subjects of controversies, the unprincipled editors often attempt to put forward an agenda that carefully word the certain lines by adding bases. As their behavior cannot be justified, it can be concluded that these editors are cunning. After they have come to know that Wikipedia is used so regularly and they can spread their controversies through the contributions. They can nearly manipulate the minds of the readers and bias their opinions at the subjects at hand. Often the bias can be spotted as an unskilled Wikipedia writer often unintentionally include what we say the peacock terms in their writing.
What the peacock terms are as per Wikipedia
Wikipedia defines peacock terms as extravagant words that are often taken in to promote the subject of the articles, while neither differentiating nor concluding the correct data. Such as the phrase, The ABC enterprise has the best software solution all across the globe. The peacock term can be easily identified that is best in the world.
While the other pitfall made by the unskilled readers is the use of the vague term. As per the Wikipedia policies, these words create an impression that something is particular and meaningful needs to be said and when in reality something ambiguous is imparted. For instance; some writers say that enterprise ABC is the leading software solution providers from the past ten decades. So the contributions that carry specific ambiguous terms are written by unskilled writers and look like the billow pieces and promotional press release more than an informational article
In other cases, the bias in the contributions can be more treacherous. One of the more thought-provoking examples of this category is gender inequality. As per the survey conducted by the MIT technologies, in spite of the well-visited efforts to overcome the disparity, the Wikipedia contributions are intensely biased considering the women say the researchers who have survey six different language publishers of the online encyclopedia.
Well, the news of occurrence is that Wikipedia’s gender inequality has recently been discussed and put to light. So it’s now rest assured with the current and future contributors to add quality content and sourcing to the articles, thereby minimizing the biases based on gender inequality and others to make it more reliable.
