People... make me wise... I've just tried editing an article in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.... and it got edited and changed!!...

tell me howcome can anyone just enter and edit???

in addition to that, if anything is editable... how reliable is this source exactly?

Who said Wikipedia is reliable?! Its not :p

I believe for Wikipedia you can get general information. But, not to the point of proving something.

Who said Wikipedia is reliable?!

I did it once for a topic about Islam I think !

As NF said, you can take the general idea not the reliable details.

As NightFace mentioned, it is good for general information but not a reliable source when it comes to prove a certain point in a debate since it is biased

last week i was reading a wikipedian article about an omani tribe,
there was a whole paragraph about its establishment.
the next day i went to see the same article again and that paragraph was removed :S

like WTF! how come any person can just enter and change whatever he wants, we still cant figure out how many mental-care hospitals provide internet service to its patients ...

I think Wikipedia is VERY reliable--in general.

I have certainly found mistakes in Wikipedia and sometimes I have corrected them.

But the thing we forget to ask is: reliable COMPARED TO WHAT?

Other sources which are fixed...like encyclopedias, newspapers, etc....are ALSO frequently biased. Experts and scholars are often biased, too.

What you have to remember in Wikipedia is to read the DISCUSSIONS, too, which is another tab. Then you can see who disagrees and why. And be sure to follow the footnotes--some of which are online--and the links, internal and external.

If you have controversial topics--like a lot to do with religions for example--there's a lot of hot editing and reediting that goes on with people trying to wrest control from each other. Sometimes these articles get locked or they get restricted editing. Or sometimes they open a whole new article.

But just consider: if an article is written about the War in Iraq, for example, how are you going to satisfy everybody that you aren't being biased? Or an article about the Holocaust? Or an article about Israel? Or an article about Global Warming? Or priestly celibacy in Catholicism? Or violence in Islam? Impossible. But usually you will get a taste of the argument on both sides and some good links and a good discussion section... But there will always be some things that will drive people crazy...

So, Wikipedia is fabulous and as reliable as anything else, because nobody has a monopoly on the facts. But of course, it's frequently biased or wrong, just like everything else is! You will find other sources that will satisfy you better if you have a strong opinion about something. But it's the best place in the world to START research on a topic or discover if your way of looking at things is the only way people look at them...

noway! You can edit!

Lol I use wikipedia for most of my assignments!

lol u can edit the text, and it'll be edited... but a moderator of wikipedia will come to see what changes have been done ...

noway! You can edit!

Lol I use wikipedia for most of my assignments!

Yes! I know one Omani blogger who is a fan of the show "Pimp My Ride." So, I put this sentence into the "Pimp My Ride" article:

Pimp My Ride even has devotees in Oman.

It's still there; you can see it! :p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pimp_my_ride

imagine millions of ppl comming on wikipedia and editing... they have to read and reread every page... that's a hassle...

^^

Yes, maybe even worse than the poor mods on Sabla! :p

wut the heck , so i can change the information there ..
so wut the point of having wikipedia with ppl editing wut in it ..
This editing idea is a bad one .. it is going to make i unreliable source ..
I thought I can trust such websites coz they are full of info about so many
things ,,

That's why I don't trust Wikipedia and never take it as an official source.

Wikipedia is simply people's thoughts/researches written there, thats why you see references at the end of an article.

last week i was reading a wikipedian article about an omani tribe,
there was a whole paragraph about its establishment.
the next day i went to see the same article again and that paragraph was removed :S

like WTF! how come any person can just enter and change whatever he wants, we still cant figure out how many mental-care hospitals provide internet service to its patients ...

wohooo... me too, i read about an omani tribe but in the arabic wikipedia, came after 2 days and it said all what was written before is wrong.:mmhmm:

ooh well so now no use of wikipedia