As an ancestry researcher I research many information sources which includes Wikipedia. A single source should never be taken as correct but often provides a good lead.
With this in mind how reliable is Wikipedia?
I think the answer is - āit variesā, for purely factual/scientific stuff it can be pretty accurate and often a good enough introduction to an unfamiliar topic for interested individuals who have a decent level of background education/understanding.
But there have been some famous (or should that be infamous) bits of misinformation on there, often deliberate so Iād certainly agree that sources should be checked.
Which can be difficult when almost every online reference just lifts the wikipedia text and reformats it 
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isnāt there aa disclaimer in Wikipediaā¦ that they are not responsible for the veracity of the contentā¦ 
EDIT having saidthatā¦ I often use wiki for general infoā¦
Iām a great Wikipedia fan, I even donate 
but caution is advised. There are protections to prevent and track spurious editing by bad actors, butā¦ Iād always verify before using Wiki info for any serious purpose.
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Iām sure thatās universal these days Stella 
buried in the reams of online T&Cs that nobody has the time or inclination to read but which we have to sign to use a product or access a website. It really is a disgrace. I mean, who has ever read Microsoft Office T&Cs for example, Or the very popular, "by accessing this website you agree toā¦ "
not hidden, as I recallā¦ although it was quite a few years ago that I noticed itā¦ and it seemed quite reasonable, as it is all volunteers doing their bestā¦
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scroll to the bottom and click ādisclaimerā
and it brings up the bumpfā¦
No, Iām sure not, the Wiki founders are good guys. I was referring to the universality of Pontius Pilate T&Cs online.
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Undergrads are explicitly discouraged from using Wikip as anything other than a convenient starting point for researching something more thoroughly and lose marks if they havenāt been sufficiently arsed to dig deeper, even if itās only following up the source references in a Wikip entry (like too many jounros and politicians).
Meanwhile many new students arrive at university, not merely being ignorant of plagiarism and referencing, but are incapable of organising information from disparate sources into a coherent essay.
Mentioning Wikipās unreliability in the other thread was in reply to Janeās post on Fun Night wildness in Lancashire, as it had struck me that the entryās emphasis largely concerned recent US practices, whereas an authoritative encyclopedia article would more likely after a brief definition consider the possible historical roots of the custom.
So in the above example it was not really an issue of unreliability, but fragmentary incompleteness, in part due to multiple anonymous authors (a bit like the Gospels)
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Thanks, for the link, I suspect the author of the Cayley-Newbirth operation matrix may be one of my oldest friends who was marking the arrival of yet another progeny.
I do consult Wiki and find the reference given quite useful for digging further afield. Like @John_Scully I contribute a small but regular monthly sum to support the philosophy of sharing knowledge.
Can also be quite fun watching how the editors scramble to fix posts, especially on a China interest topic. 
I expect Russia is also busy trying to rewrite truth.
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At least the edit history is available - which slightly mitigates the problem.
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Exactly!
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Surely that is what every nation has done since the dawn of time. The winners always rewrite history. And do we know what ātruthā is, since we all have a different interpretation of the same event, seen from our individual perspectives and filtered by our individual prejudices.
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True. However, there are historical accounts that would do as better record without the propaganda and rhetoric.
School texts in Japan on WWII and 19th-20th century accounts of events in China do not help educate, but are to indoctrinate. Without free access to many sources for critical comparison, entire generations are growing up in those countries with a completely skewed understanding of global events.
No one says that one sole account is the only truth but it is vital to be able to enable critical debate to measure fact from fiction by cross referencing multiple sources.
As for Russia, once a nation of great minds and thinkers, now silenced. Manipulated historical accounts can be toxic.
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I really only use Wikipedia for those āI wonder what happened toā¦?ā moments when someone pops up in a film who I havenāt heard of for some time.
Iām pretty sure being dead is on the whole, reliable. 
Then, if they are younger than me I can feel a bit smug, on the other hand, it gives food for thought if they are just a year older. 
Wikipedia is no more reliable than the rest of the internet.
The problem is that verification of material is done by comparing to other material on the internet - so if an error is widely made, then it is nourished and propagated. In the end, the correct information is swamped by misinformation.
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Multi-authored Wikip entries are often a mixture of things from peer reviewed sources, stuff scraped off the net and things off the top of the authorās head (sometimes incorrectly recalledĀ°.
Back in the day, when I saw DVD drives were beginning to disappear, I copied all my software (including the peer-reviewed Encyclopaedia Britannica, Photoshop, MS Office and the Concise OED) onto a flash drive -theyāre quite elderly now, but continue to do whatās required of them. The only one thatās not aged well is PowerPoint, but since retiring Iāve had no further need of it.