preview

With five billion pages a month and millions of topics covered by those five billion pages, one

Decent Essays
With five billion pages a month and millions of topics covered by those five billion pages, one might argue that Wikipedia is a legitimate research method. So what? There is five billion pages covering numerous topics. Who writes these pages? Are they credible authors and certified experts on the topics? Probably not because according to “Wikipedia: About,” “Wikipedia is written collaboratively by largely anonymous Internet volunteers who write without pay” (Wikipedia 421). Due to the fact that anyone can edit a page, its anonymous volunteer authors, and the fact that it helps kids take the easy way out when researching, Wikipedia is not a legitimate research method. Who would you trust more when researching information for a class, a…show more content…
Though one might argue that some pages have authors who are certified experts, most pages are anonymous and not credible. This same person might point to “The ‘Undue Weight’ of Truth on Wikipedia” which states, “Wikipedia requires its contributors to rely on secondary sources” (Messer-Kruse 412). This being said, Wikipedia requires authors to have their information published previously, whether that means a book or a website. Let’s be honest for a second. How hard is it to create a website and write something on there? Not very hard, and that’s a secondary source right there. With anyone being able to create a web page and use it as a secondary source, Wikipedia is not a credible research method. When a teacher assigns a research paper, they expect the class to surf the internet and go to multiple web pages and actually learn something through the research. The point of research papers is not to type the topic into google and click on the first site and get all the information from that web page. The teacher wants the students to go digging for information from many different web pages and look around and click, click, click on tons of links and find out opinions and facts and random information on the topic. With Wikipedia, one click can lead to all the information in one spot and there was no real research done. Wikipedia makes it too easy for students to get their
Get Access