User talk:Sanke09

I thought I would quickly drop by, having seen your comment on Jimbo's page. The answer is unfortunately that it is always possible to say that Wikipedia can be an unreliable source, simply because anyone can edit here. However, I suggest you can put your teachers mind at rest by telling him or her that, while anyone can edit a fact in an article, there is an army of well informed experts on that topic that patrol the article regularly and remove factual inaccuracies. In other words, yes people can post false, unreliable facts here, but there are so many experts on the subject that such false facts won't last long.

Furthermore, if you quote in your school work only facts on Wikipedia that are clearly cited, you can further assure your teacher that you are using facts from published works :) Hope this helps you! SGGH 15:45, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also saw your question to Jimbo, and I've got some thoughts for you that you might also consider.

I love Wikipedia and I've edited here for a couple of years, but I agree with your teacher; Wikipedia is not a reliable source. There are a lot of well-informed, well-intentioned people editing here, but there's also a lot of people who don't fit that description. Wikipedia will always be editable by almost anyone; that's the whole point. But as a result, Wikipedia will never be 100% reliable. Don't use Wikipedia as a source for your paper; instead, use Wikipedia as a starting point for your research. A good Wikipedia article will give you ideas and point you in new directions, and a great article will be referenced with footnotes, giving you the names of books and authors that you can cite. Those will lead you to even more sources.

Wikipedia is a wonderful resource complement to the library, but it will never replace traditional sources. A Train ^{take the} 16:03, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]