[disown]

> Wikipedia is incredible.

It's good for surface level stuff. The apolitical superficial knowledge is where wikipedia excels.

> I find it frustrating when friends say it's unreliable/not to be trusted.

In terms of depth and breadth of knowledge of topics, it is sorely lacking. And it is highly untrustworthy when it comes to anything remotely political/historical/economic/etc - which are ultimately all political.

> Of course it's not perfect, but I've learned plenty enough from it to be well worth the trade-off

Definitely. It has it's uses like everything. But it is extremely flawed.

[bawolff]

> It's good for surface level stuff

Almost like its trying to be an encyclopedia or something ;)

If you go to wikipedia looking for a university level course in something, im not sure why you would expect that.

As far as quality... its not perfect, but that's still a relative measure. Its generally significantly better than its competition in my experience.

[simonh]

Also it usually has excellent references to more in depth articles and sources if you do want to dig deeper.

[nsajko]

Doesn't even have to be political. Moneyed interests and fanboys and cultists use Wikipedia for PR and similar all the time. See Falun Gong, for example.

There are also groups of Wikipedia "editors" who coordinate off-wiki to influence its workings. (Sock-puppeting and meat-puppeting)

Even if we disregarded all the malicious actors, harmful incompetence is rampant on Wikipedia.

And I was just talking about the English Wikipedia here, there are many "small" Wikipedias which are much much worse.

[70rd]

What's the issue with the page on Falun Gong?

[leokennis]

It’s an encyclopedia. For facts, it can by definition only touch the surface. For subjective debates and subjects (like politics) it can by definition only give a high level overview of the different points of view.

Saying it’s “extremely flawed” is like saying Superman is weak because he’s vulnerable to Kryptonite.

[antibuddy]

You would be right, if Wikipedia would not cover the opinions/subjective topics as well. Nowadays it is often used as a column for some higher-up contributors/journalists.

It is still valuable for the scientific topics and I would not call that superficial at all, but you need to be very critical of anything that goes further than that. And actually even for the scientific topics you need to be aware if PR is involved with the article, because then you have to take anything with a grain of salt as well.