Why is Wikipedia Not Considered a Credible Resource for Research Projects?

As a senior in high school in a college English, I hear on a daily basis that wikipedia.org is the worst source for writing papers, and that no one should be using it, that it's more of a resource that 6th graders should be using, since it's so horribly uncredible.

I however don't necessarily agree with this statement to the fullest. I'm not saying that wikipedia is 100% credible, but there definitely is some good information you can get from wikipedia.org, as well as any other wiki websites.

Wiki websites are sites that allow anyone to edit the content on the website through the simple creation of a free account, and sometimes, without even so much as the creation of an account. The only problem with this on an encylopedia is the fact that sometimes you're going to see information that isn't completely credible or may not seem as if it's credible.

The great thing about wikipedia is that since it's a wiki, you're going to get opinions from many other writers every day. It's nearly impossible to put false information on this website with so many people interested in these subjects constantly looking over it. For example: Paintball is a great interest of mine. If I were to be browsing over some paintball articles where something was obviously written wrong, I could easily report, change, or modify the article to make it true and suitable.

Not only are hundreds of people going to visit every page on wikipedia.org daily, but every single page of wikipedia.org is managed by the website creators and the people who are interested in managing the website for a non profit organization.

The wikimedia foundation is a non profit charitable organization has been the founder of many different wiki projects, and wikipedia.org is by far the largest online encyclopedia. I would recommend this to anyone who needs to get a good amount of information on a subject before doing any actual resource.

So is wikipedia.org to be completely forgotten about when it comes to doing research or any other type of papers and projects? I would definitely say not. Wikipedia is a great foundation to the base of your research. A lot of the time, before I actually start doing hard research, I browse through wikipedia and get a nice set of information before I actually start searching.

Not only that, but wikipedia is definitely more credible than people would like to believe. Articles are checked every few minutes. I've even tried to post false information on the website, just to see what would happen. Without a matter of seconds, the article was flagged, and within a few minutes, the article I wrote was completely gone and recorrected. It was amazing how fast the article was corrected. This basically proves that the content on wikipedia is completely true and watched over.

All of the articles on wikipedia.org also link to their sources, as well as other websites that contain similar information. This is great for research projects as well, because it'll get you sources for your project that relate directly, without having to do a google or database search. It can really save time.

So basically, wikipedia shouldn't be completely forgotten about, and I would trust the information on it, however, never use wikipedia as a source in your paper, only the sources that wikipedia cites, or search other databases after getting a good dip on information from wikipedia.