Wikipedia is a Credible Source

Greetings, I would like to begin this debate with three definitions: 1. Wikipedia: "[A] multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation and based on a model of openly editable content." [1] 2. Credible: "[Able] to be believed : reasonable to trust or believe." [2] 3. Source: " [One] that supplies information" [3] With these definitions established, I will now proceed to my one and only opening argument. I. Wikipedia is a Credible Source. Proving this claim is essential to this debate as it is the resolution itself. Let me start by seemingly disproving my position. According to Harvard University, "[The] information on Wikipedia is contributed by anyone who wants to post material, and the expertise of the posters is not taken into consideration. Users may be reading information that is outdated or that has been posted by someone who is not an expert in the field or by someone who wishes to provide misinformation ... Some information on Wikipedia may well be accurate, but because experts do not review the site's entries, there is a considerable risk in relying on this source for your essays." [4] Furthermore, Wikipedia itself admits: "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." [5] Now, do these quotations crush my assertion that Wikipedia is a credible source? As I will attempt to prove, the answer is a definitive no. There are three reasons why Wikipedia should still be considered a credible source. 1. Wikipedia is Peer-Reviewed. Perhaps what surprised me the most when I registered for a Wikipedia account is how difficult it is to produce false information. Why? Well, there is a system in place that alerts thousands of volunteer editors of literally every edit to an article. These editors then review the edit for correctness; errors or items of misinformation are usually spotted and either corrected or removed. Don't believe me? Read this: "There are about 70,000 active contributors working on more than 38,000,000 articles in 290 languages. As of today, there are 5,100,158 articles in English. Every day, hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world collectively make tens of thousands of edits and create thousands of new articles to augment the knowledge held by the Wikipedia encyclopedia ... What is contributed is more important than the expertise or qualifications of the contributor. What will remain depends upon whether the content is free of copyright restrictions and contentious material about living people, and whether it fits within Wikipedia's policies, including being verifiable against a published reliable source, thereby excluding editors' opinions and beliefs and unreviewed research. Contributions cannot damage Wikipedia because the software allows easy reversal of mistakes and many experienced editors are watching to help ensure that edits are cumulative improvements."[6] 2. Wikipedia is Credible as a Tertiary Source. While Wikipedia is not a primary or even secondary source, it is - by nature of being an online encyclopedia - a tertiary source. In short, Wikipedia contains summaries of various information with additional, more authoritative sources attached for further reading. This is the essence of a tertiary source. Now, given the facts the it is peer-reviewed, Wikipedia is a credible tertiary source. 3. Wikipedia is Intended for a Different Audience with Different Expectations. Professor generally do not allow their students to cite Wikipedia in their papers, and rightly so, because Wikipedia is naturally not a scholarly source. Notice that I said "scholarly", not credible. Sources can be credible even if they do not meet the stringent requirements of scholarship. Thus, the ban against citing Wikipedia has little to do with its overall credibility. Rather, the real reason that Wikipedia is prohibited is because it is simply just the wrong type of source for academia. But for the non-academic world, Wikipedia's general information suffice as credible information. For instance, if one forgets the year that the U.S. dropped nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he may look it up on Wikipedia for a quick refresher. He would find that the year was 1945. Everything considered, Wikipedia is indeed a credible source. Sources: [1] https://en.wikipedia.org... [2 ]http://www.merriam-webster.com... [3] http://www.merriam-webster.com... [4] http://isites.harvard.edu... [5]https://en.wikipedia.org... [6]https://en.wikipedia.org...