So in my attempts to prove how illegitimate Wikipedia is and there lack of general content, I decided to Wiki search someone that is very well known and can be provided with much information if presented correctly. I ended up looking up Theodore Roosevelt the 26th president of the United States. Before even I started reading, the table of context (so to speak) was extremely detailed and I was pleasantly ssurprised. Including family, education, when he was a cowboy, what he did after he was president, his legacy, his ancestry, when he was a writer, and much much more. I do wish I would of been provided more information on him personally because that would give more insight on him as a person. However, overall I was very pleased by the content this Wikipedia article provided.
Normally, I’m very cautious in trusting whatever I read on a Wikipedia Article, but with the way the website is run now and how well known someone like Theodore Roosevelt is, I trust that they were careful of what they added and in what matter. If there was something that I needed further explanation on or clarification, there were TONS of links provided for me to search more in depth. However, considering that the page was last updated today at 5 is both reassuring and alarming. It is reassuring in the sense that there is someone there to be able to make changes if necessary on the dot because so many people rely on its information in order to receive the research that they need. On the other hand, having it updated so regularly is slightly jittering because for something like a past president where they life has been lived and there really aren’t many updates to be made, you never know what was posted right before it was updated. It’s also the idea that anyone can update a section on an article, which means it could literally say anything.
With that said, I would still never use Wikipedia to cite in an academic essay because the name itself contains a stigma of not being legitimate and therefore the grader not taking the essay seriously. However, I would use the citations that Wikipedia uses for citing in my essay. Like for Theodore Roosevelt, if I wanted to know more about when he traveled to Africa, but didn’t wanted cite Wikipedia, I would go to where they got there information like in this case would be the Smithsonian Archives and cite that source.
In Summation, I am very impressed with how Wikipedia has built their credibility. Although I would use it to cite for essays, Wikipedia is still the first website that I go on if I need to quickly learn about a certain subject. I trust wikipedia enough to give me the general gist of something and If I want to learn more details, that when I would search more specific websites. Maybe if I tried to search for something that is a little less known as Theodore Roosevelt, I wouldn’t get a result that is as detailed and professional, but I would still general idea that other websites cannot provide. That’s what’s great about Wikipedia, not their information, but their diversity and ability to have a search page for nearly anything.