WikiHow : Free Encyclopedia

Wikipedia is a free, open content online encyclopedia created through the collaborative effort of a community of users known as Wikipedians. Anyone registered on the site can create an article for publication; registration is not required to edit articles.

It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from freshman students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything, and as a quick "ready reference", to get a sense of a concept or idea.

However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not a reliable source.[1][2][3]

Most colleges and universities (Especially in some high schools and private schools) have a policy that prohibits students from using Wikipedia as their source for doing research papers, essays, or anything equivalent. This is because Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any moment. Although when an error is recognized, it is usually fixed.

However, because Wikipedia cannot monitor thousands of edits made everyday, some of those edits could contain vandalism or could be simply wrong and left unnoticed for days, weeks, months, or even years.[4]

However, it can be noted that Wikipedia's Good Articles and Featured Articles are some degree more advanced, professional, and generally more credible than an article not labeled Good or Featured. It is because these articles are reviewed heavily and edited many, many times, passing various "tests" before being confirmed Good or Featured, that they can be used for some deeper research than usual.

It is Wikipedia's Featured Articles that are especially trustworthy in contrast to normal or even good articles, as they have to pass even more rigorous "tests" to become featured, as they are to be "the best of Wikipedia", "a model for other articles", and thus, a more reliable source than average articles. Even with Featured Articles, though, an uninformed editor may introduce incorrect information.