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CAN I USE WIKIPEDIA AS A CREDIBLE SOURCE?
According to the Wikipedia site itself..
Wikipedia is not considered a credible source. 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. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may be considered unacceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible or authoritative source.
In other words, If you are looking for an answer to a universal question such as: What is that actors name who plays Harry Potter? or What year did Britney Spears release her first album? Then Wikipedia is most likely able to answer your question correctly for you.
If, however, you are conducting some serious research for an assessment or if you are looking to ensure that your own work is reliable. Wikipedia is not considered a credible source.
WHY CAN’T I BELIEVE WIKIPEDIA WITH ALL MY ANSWERS?
“Researching with Wikipedia points out that few articles are of encyclopedic quality when they first appear—they may be unbalanced, biased, and incomplete, and it takes time for contributors to find consensus.” (Ghajar, 2014)
Wikipedia is an open forum, anyone can post just about anything on this website which means there is no way of knowing that each and every piece of information presented on the site in credible. You would need to back the information up with another credible source and therefore you might as well have done that in the first place.
REFERENCES
Ghajar, L. A. (2014). “Wikipedia: Credible Research Source or Not?”. Retrieved October 31, 2015, from http://teachinghistory.org/digital-classroom/ask-a-digital-historian/23863.
Harvard (2015). “What’s Wrong With Wikipedia?”. October 31, 2015, from http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k70847&pageid=icb.page346376.