how popular is wikipedia?

Recently, I read a Global Neighbourhoods blog post made by Shel (the author of Naked Conversations) that talked about wikipedia. The post was entitled "Wikipedia. Just how popular is it?"

The post talks very briefly about the validity of wikipedia articles. First, it discusses a recent report by Steve Rubel that claims that roughly one third of online Americans have used wikipedia. Though the exact percentage may be debated, the point is that a LOT of people are using wikipedia. Since millions of people are relying on wikipedia for accurate information, the question of how accurate it actually is seems to be very important. Shel discusses how he used wikipedia when writing Naked Conversations and all of the information he found turned out to be 100% accurate. Shel brings up the concept of "Wisdom of Crowds" which is a book written about the theory that with a lot of people contributing, things will be accurate. The idea is that with countless people contributing to wikipedia, the end result should be accurate.

Several people commented on this blog post, throwing in their own opinions about the accuracy of wikipedia. Personally, I think wikipedia can be flawed at times. After doing this wikipedia project in class, I've realized that if I can just edit a wikipedia article about something and totally make it up, then I don't think it can be 100% accurate. However, I think that the accuracy largely depends on the topic. Popular, well known topics that many people are interested in and knowledgeable about seem to be more accurate because there are more people editing, whereas less common topics seem to more hit or miss.

Though wikipedia isn't perfect, I still use it regularly and have enjoyed learning more about it this semester!