Is Wikipedia a reliable source?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m looking to download this thing into a PDA, but was wondering how trustworthy the information is. Just as a check, I compared its entry for the Battle of Salamis against that in the Columbia Encyclopedia, which only mentions it as a sentence in its article on the Persian Wars – but then, Wikipedia contains nothing on the Persian Wars at all, which I’d think would be a larger and more important subject. Strange.

Also, is Wikipedia somehow related to GNUpedia? Both date from mid-January 2001.

Finally, if I wasn’t such a cheapskate and were to actually pay for an electronic encyclopedia, does anyone have any recommendations? Based on Amazon’s reviews, Britannica on CD/DVD seems to have some user interface issues, and Encarta has always seemed to me to be heavy on multimedia razzle-dazzle and light on substance (just IMO, which could be wrong). Britannica’s web site was great until they made it a paid-subscription service.

2

Wikipedia is, generally speaking, fairly reliable. However, it is reader made. All articles were contributed voluntarily (although they are checked for errors, bias, etc.). That’s why it’s not complete. It’s constantly growing.

3

And there’s the problem.

I will agree that they are fairly reliable.

4

I have a bit of a stake in the answer. Constant revision and rewriting does tend to make an individual article converge asymptotically on accuracy. I’d say the major problem is omission, not errors.

5

There are decent articles about the Battle of Marathon, Darius I and another Greek war, the Peloponnesian war, to name a few that come close.

Wikipedia is a work in progress by definition and will never be finished. Some areas are covered already remarkably well, others are not there yet. Still it contains a massive amount of pretty trustworthy information. Someone will start an article about the Persian Wars (you?), others will jump in, extend, discuss and correct it.

Considering its briefs existence 310 Mb of text in 140,000 is quite impressive in my opinion. There will always be errors and omissions, but not so many in areas of general interest. If someone writes an article about the local pop-celebrity it may go unnoticed and unchallenged for quite a while. Take at a look at the history page of any major article and you will see how revisions it went through!

One area that I consider not too wel covered yet is the Arts department. So I took a deep breath and wrote articles about Rembrandt, other famous Dutch painters, the Dutch Golden Age,
among others. The satisfaction is enormous, besides I learnt a lot more than I would have when only reading somebody elses article about it. Do not underestimate the power of peer-review.

I do own Encarta and Brittanica as well (among others) but while I do think Brittanica is a very respectable encyclopedia, I tend to use it rarely. It has an advantage over Wikipedia due to its long existence and esteemed board of editors, the style in which it is written does seldom make me want to finish reading the article.

Lots if info about the Pocket PC, Palm and EPOC versions of the Wikipedia, including screenshots, at http://members.chello.nl/epzachte/Wikipedia

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Marathon
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darius_I_of_Persia
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rembrandt
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Golden_Age

6

Wikipedia is also a “hands on” experience. I recently edited out some gross bias in the Enver Hoxha article, for instance.

7

IMHO, Wikipedia is one of the few “amazing new hoozits” of the information age that really is exciting and new. I enjoy watching articles evolve.

[slight hijack]There are very few definitive references – and even those are best used as a jumping off point. I realize you’re asking about having a handy reference on your handheld and not about ways of knowing, but it seems my generation (and I’m guessing you’re my age or younger) and especially some of the allegedly educated people I’ve worked with are quick to close a discussion on the basis of one cite from one source, even when that source is not well-respected or when the cite doesn’t make much sense.
[/slight hijack]