Is Wikipedia reliable?

I turn to Wikipedia many times during the day, particularly for background information when I'm blogging. It has a reputation for being unreliable -- students are advised not to cite it in their papers -- but I'm familiar enough with judging the quality of information from many years as a journalist and editor that I'm comfortable with it.

Here's what Wikipedia says.

As a wiki, articles are never considered complete and may be continually edited and improved. Over time, this generally results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a neutral representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start: they may contain false or debatable information. Indeed, many articles start their lives as displaying a single viewpoint; and, after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument, they gradually take on a neutral point of view reached through consensus. 

Others may, for a while, become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint which can take some time—months perhaps—to achieve better balanced coverage of their subject. In part, this is because editors often contribute content in which they have a particular interest and do not attempt to make each article that they edit comprehensive. However, eventually, additional editors expand and contribute to articles and strive to achieve balance and comprehensive coverage. In addition, Wikipedia operates a number of internal resolution processes that can assist when editors disagree on content and approach. Usually, editors eventually reach a consensus on ways to improve the article.

I would not rely on Wikipedia for anything critical or controversial, but I'm okay using it for, say, biographical notes on people. It's easy to judge the reliability of a piece by the information it contains and by checking the footnotes, which I do often. Obviously, what it says about health matters is useful, but I wouldn't self-diagnose from it. Or anything else on the Internet. Duh.

One thing: it doesn't reveal the author of an entry, and that's important in assessing reliability of any writing. Here are some fascinating facts about Wikipedia that illustrate Wikipedia's sourcing.

• It has 3,407,151 articles, and 21,482,217 pages in total.
• There have been 411,792,023 edits.
• There are 849,873 uploaded files.
• There are 13,019,628 registered users, including 1,754 administrators.

Those numbers come from Wikipedia's own entry about itself, which is constantly updated. And this is one of the strengths of the site. As it says:

Unlike printed encyclopedias, Wikipedia is continually created and updated, with articles on historic events appearing within minutes, rather than months or years.

Because I'm usually looking for basic facts about something, I'll go to Wikipedia first. And for most topics, I've found, Wikipedia is nearly always at the top of a Google search.


James Bridle at the website Booktwo printed off every activity at Wikipedia on its The Iraq War and turned the result into dead tree books. Here's what they look like.