Is Wikipedia Polluting the Web?

Is Wikipedia Polluting the Web?

Anyone using the net will surely have come across Wikipedia - the online interactive encyclopedia. It has been hailed for being the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet with over four million articles and still growing. It is also 12th ranked Website in the world.
But the big question is how reliable or credible is wikipedia?

The bone of contention against Wiki is the very foundation of its “free encyclopedia that anyone can edit” concept. A defining characteristic of wiki technology is the ease with which pages can be created and updated. There is no review before modifications are accepted. Wikis generally practice the philosophy of making it easy to correct mistakes, rather than making it difficult to make them.

Wiki in the News: For all the wrong reasons -
There was recently a scandal surrounding the academic qualifications of one of the editors at Wiki. Wikipedia administrator who stated that he was a professor of religion with advanced degrees in theology and canon law, was exposed as a 24-year-old community college drop-out. However Jimmy Wales the Founder of Wikipedia went on record to say of Wikipedia editor and Wikia employee Ryan Jordan (nee “Essjay”): ““I accepted his apology, because he is now, and has always been, an excellent editor with an exemplary track record.”

“I regard it as a pseudonym and I don’t really have a problem with it.”
- Wikipedia CEO Jimmy Wales stating that lying on Wikipedia is OK.

But rest of the world don’t seem to agree don’t seem to agree with Wales.

Wikipedia has been banned as a citation source by all major American Universities, as the source is anonymous and totally un-credible.

Wikipedia has also been accused of supporting terrorism

The author goes on to state - “Wikipedia’s Achilles heel is that it is open to any 8-year-old child or perverted mind to edit matters from nuclear physics to Islamic terrorism.”

True, when everyone can write, some write crap. While no one can dispute or challenge the knowledge aggregator that Wiki has come to represent the debate over the legitimacy over the sources of information rages on.