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Wikipedia noob

Discussion in 'General' started by John Cena, 23 Apr 2006.

  1. John Cena

    John Cena What's a Dremel?

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    I don't get this wikipedia stuff......
    So I went into one of the articles on wikipedia, clicked edit, and typed in "sda" and saved it....it showed it on the live page. (Ofcourse, I edited it again and remove the "sda" part)


    But if Wikipedia allows users who are unregistered and have no such "encylopedia" credebility to edit such articles...how do we know that they are acurate? And how come there isn't any spam or people abusing the edit feature?????
     
  2. Herbicide

    Herbicide Lurktacular

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    Because anyone can edit and - hopefully it'll stay this way - there are more people who want it to be a serious resource than there are idiots/spammers/whatever.

    - H.
     
  3. TekMonkey

    TekMonkey I enjoy cheese.

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    Wikipedia is large enough that it has enough users dedicated to keeping the integrity of Wikipedia. When someone posts nonsense, it is immediately removed by other Wikipedia users.

    Yes, anyone is allowed to add information. But if someone else can disprove it or disagrees with it, they can remove it or discuss it on the Talk page for that article. You'll see some articles have "disputed information" warnings, telling you that the information may not be completely accurate. But for the most part, Wikipedia is successful in being generally accurate.

    Also, several large articles will have a works cited area at the bottom or link to pages to find more information.

    Wikipedia can generally be counted on for accuracy, but if you're doing something that absolutely requires 100% accuracy, you definately need to check in a more reliable source.
     
  4. hitman012

    hitman012 Minimodder

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  5. TekMonkey

    TekMonkey I enjoy cheese.

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    Anything Britannica says about Wikipedia can't be trusted as its a direct competitor. ;)
     
  6. Tibby

    Tibby Back Once Again

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    [​IMG]

    Had to be done.
     

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