Wikipedia

Over the past 25 years, Wikipedia has always been a controversial website. I have heard many things about Wikipedia, good and bad, through teachers, friends, family, the media, and random people online. Many have seen it as reliable because you can use it for anything and anyone, however, others have viewed it as unreliable because of how easy it is for one to add misinformation to the site. For example, in 2007, a professional wrestler named Chris Benoit killed his wife, son, and then himself. However, before the authorities discovered that the incident happened, someone wrote on Benoit’s Wikipedia page that “As Benoit was not there due to personal issues, stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.” That not only raised a lot of suspicion about the case, and the publisher, but about Wikipedia as a whole, and it questioned whether or not Wikipedia is a strong source or a weak facade. However, that’s a very niche detail about one person’s Wikipedia page out of everyone else’s, which is a very small percentage, so it doesn’t automatically kill Wikipedia’s credibility. Some things that might be helpful about Wikipedia are learning facts about your favorite topics, whether it’d be sports, TV shows, reality, crime, what have you. Some stuff that could be dangerous or harmful about Wikipedia are spreading false information, or potential personal bias on how articles are presented based on the publisher. Overall, I think there are more benefits than dangers when it comes to Wikipedia, especially when the bigger danger, AI, is taking over. I have used Wikipedia ever since the third grade because that was when I started using laptops in school, and that was also the year when I got my first personal laptop. For the past 11 years, I have used Wikipedia for school related topics, college projects, and information on professional wrestlers, MMA fighters, TV Shows, movies, actors, random celebrities, and other real-world topics. I’ve used it much more for personal “fun” reasons than I have for school-related reasons. Wikipedia has been a very reliable source for me for over a decade and has been an overall successful, reliable source for the entire world for 25 years now.