I LOVE Wikipedia, I think it’s one of the best websites of the internet.
But the fact is that Wikipedia has many flaws:
- Editing became very hard on Wikipedia based on the amount of rules to respect
- Wikipedia is biased, many cultures and minorities are not well represented among editors and pages.
- Wikipedia is a dependence, I can’t imagine Wikipedia disappear, I think it already changed the way people see knowledge, not as something fixed anymore, but as something dynamic that changes and evolve.
- Wikipedia ‘sources admission’ are also very… Weird. Because you can be a professional in a special field, it doesn’t mean your contribution will be accepted, just because your source is not coming from a ‘reliable source’, even if YOU are this reliable source.
There are other problems as well, but I think those are the most important ones.
What do you think about it? If you could change anything or everything to Wikipedia, what would you do?
My professors always told me this: when doing any serious research, only use Wikipedia for the linked sources, and read those instead of the article.
The way wikipedia chooses its sources is also very problematic. Many good sources are not allowed at all. This comment has some details.
That IS alarming. I guess because I only really use it for science and technology research, I haven’t really noticed.