It’s understandable Wikipedia has taken some heat for many years as being ‘slightly inaccurate’ and not ‘official’ in its topic and subject definitions. Research is steered away from the site for the sake of more ‘reputable’ sources you’d normally find in more specialized sites like Science Daily or Web MD. Yo have to understand the importance of open source content, though. The reason why Wikipedia has gotten somewhat of a slightly bad rap is actually the same reason why Wikipedia is so incredibly valuable.
It’s research put into the site that makes research so easy! It’s a global encyclopedia on anything and everything because of the open source content. It makes research on the internet actually quite easy, just a click away and with no problems with web surfing–all because of the open source content.
These days the content, too, on Wikipedia has truthfully become even more reliable. A feature updating automatically the site continually states that the information on any given subject after a certain amount of time ‘needs to be updated’, leaving contributors with the task to do the work. And that’s the point of Wikipedia. All the content is willingly posted by anyone for the sake of pure information. And literally anyone can post stuff on it.
That’s originally the fear behind doing the research on such a site, because how can you trust just anyone to give you quality information? An experiment was conducted on Wikipedia, though, judging the measure of quality, as someone tried posting deliberately inaccurate content that was then later actually CORRECTED by another user who posts regularly! Now that’s dedication to the prestige of research. When someone cares about the validity of content that much, you know you can trust it.
Don’t shy away from Wikipedia. It’s a decent site to get information, and as long as people care about continually updating the information, research online will continue to be a breeze, a state of free enterprise.