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Facts, Fibs & Wikipedia

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missb
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" The accuracy of Wikipedia entries has been a subject of hot debate, but Wikipedia can only do so much to prevent false information from leaking to the Internet at large. Although Wikipedia's own self-policing resulted in the rejection of a quotation because it lacked attribution, many blogs -- and a few newspapers -- were less cautious and published the fake quote.

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia More about Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

I have always relied heavily on Wikipedia to get my facts straight, and son o' mine uses it for researching school projects and for homework. Now I'm not so sure, I never really did like the way anyone could go in and edit anything they pretty much wanted.

Read the full article here

Wikipedia the Free Not So Accurate Encyclopedia

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Re: Facts, Fibs & Wikipedia

My oldest had to do this one assignment for a internet class he had in middle school (few years back). The teacher gave them 35 odd random questions and they had to find the answers, answer them and provide a link to where they found them. The work had to be turned in on either a CD, a Flash DriveFlash Drive or they had to use the school computer. One of the rules were you were not allowed to use Wikipedia. I was surprised helping him *cough yeah right - more like doing it* how often wikipedia was off on the answers (curiosity I checked). I still use wikipedia but not just as my only reference. I learned a lesson that day too.

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Re: Facts, Fibs & Wikipedia
It seems as though the article is saying the Wikipedia is more reliable than most blogs, or other journalism articles. Shane Fitzgerald did a test against Wikipedia and other journalist outlets, and Wiki won.
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missb
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Re: Facts, Fibs & Wikipedia

They may have caught the error eventually but it was too late, dozens of newspapers, bloggers etc had already gotten the misquote from the site and printed it around the world. So obviously these people rely heavily on the information in there to be accurate, so my point is not to do that. I will still use the site but I will definitely be crosschecking the facts going forward.

Re: Facts, Fibs & Wikipedia

Wikipedia is GOD. Though, I always go and check the sources they use to write the articles, and if there are sources missing, I'll double check... Still love the thing.

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