Wikipedi Wikipedia

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Trust in the Internet With the internet being part of our everyday life information can be accessed from almost any corner of the world. Whether it’s used for playing games, communicating with friends, or even just streaming movies, the internet is intertwined with essentially everyone on the planet in some sort of fashion. With the abundance of articles and information that is easily attainable in today’s society problems occur when the information is incorrect or not justified. Wikipedia is taking the majority of the heat and is frequently called an unreliable source. Because of the easy read and quick basic overview, Wikipedia is a go to source for students as well as teachers and is a helpful tool to get minimal information. However Wikipedia should not be used as research tool on academic papers because of its lacking credentials. …show more content…

Wikipedia is community driven, so it allows anonymous authors to post information. This brings up the first flaw of Wikipedia. Since everyone is able to edit or post on the page the quality could be lacking. Timothy Messer-Kruse, an avid historian who experienced conflictions with Wikipedia firsthand. Messer-Kruse was intrigued by the Haymarket Riots and led extensive research on the topic and eventually becoming a published author on the subject. One day he was attempting to edit the article about the Haymarket Riot but was unable to because of Wikipedia’s policies. The policy that held Messer-Kruse back was the Undue Weight policy. Messer-Kruse states, “Undue Weight doesn’t give minority view as much credit compared to popular opinions.” Despite having factual evidence Messer-Kruse still has a minority opinion in the eyes of Wikipedia. Wikipedia’s flaw is that anyone can post to it as long as it is in the popular opinion anyone can post. Messer-Kruse is just one example of how Wikipedia can have its

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