Wikipedia “is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model”. That what is written in Wikipedia to introduce itself. The project was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger in 2001. According to the New York Times, as in 2008 English Wikipedia had more than one billion words, making it 25 times bigger than the largest English print encyclopedia. Link
So, Wikipedia promote itself by saying basically that anyone can edit its content. But is that really a good thing? How can we trust a source that anyone from anywhere can edit it content? That is why many people now are against the Wikipedia phenomenon which led to creating websites to expose Wikipedia`s errors. For example, a website called Wikipedia-watch.org (Link) is set to claim that Wikipedia is evil and it has many claimed cases of vandalism and plagiarism by Wikipedia editors. Also this Youtube below shows some of Wikipwdia`s flaws:
In 2007 a BBC article by Jonathan Fildes “Science and technology reporter” investigated an online tool which revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries. “The Wikipedia Scanner allegedly shows that workers on the agency's computers made edits to the page of Iran's president” Link. This raise the concern that it is not normal people editing Wikipedia but also government agencies can be involved in that too, that means this massive free information service can be systematically edited for organisational own goals.
On the other hand many religion and celebrity biography are protected or semi protected which limit the ability to edit. The reason is that these kind of subjects are tempting for vandalism and mostly would be edited for the wrong reasons.
In the end Wikipedia is a great project with some errors and mistakes. It can be very useful to make an information background about anything. And the debate about its good and evil, vandalism and accuracy, will stand for a long time.
