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Quality of Wikipedia articles and standard references
== Unreliability of Wikipedia ==
== Unreliability of Wikipedia ==
The quality of Wikipedia articles varies greatly. Some articles, particularly about narrow topics and those of little interest, are well written and and appear to have input from one or more subject matter experts. Articles about broader topics and with high viewership naturally have more editors, many of whom are not well versed in the subject matter. In determining the quality of an article it is helpful to check the sources or references to see if one or more of the standard references for the topic is heavily cited. Often the most valuable feature of an article will be to direct the reader to standard references.
Wikipedia relies on self-selected "editors" to write and compile articles, with no preference given for scholars in the fields about which they are writing. This fact may disqualify Wikipedia from being considered a genuine encyclopedia, ironically even by its own standards. An encyclopedia is supposed to be a collection of articles by "well-educated, well-informed content experts."<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia</ref> Theoretically, Wikipedia is supposed to compensate for this weakness by requiring references to reputable secondary sources. But editors can delete, without collaboration, any text or entry they dislike, citing one of the many Wikipedia guidelines for doing so. Entries posted by scholars in the field, based on peer-reviewed, academic articles are deleted by editors with an ideological bias. Wikipedia, then, only represents the majority view of its editors.
Wikipedia relies on self-selected "editors" to write and compile articles, with no preference given for scholars in the fields about which they are writing. This fact may disqualify Wikipedia from being considered a genuine encyclopedia, ironically even by its own standards. An encyclopedia is supposed to be a collection of articles by "well-educated, well-informed content experts."<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia</ref> Theoretically, Wikipedia is supposed to compensate for this weakness by requiring references to reputable secondary sources. But editors can delete, without collaboration, any text or entry they dislike, citing one of the many Wikipedia guidelines for doing so. Entries posted by scholars in the field, based on peer-reviewed, academic articles are deleted by editors with an ideological bias. Wikipedia, then, only represents the majority view of its editors.