Wikipedia Prevails

One of the articles from Reading 3 talks about the proliferation of Wikipedia and how its rival Britanica battle it out against each other for "logical truths". The idea of battle in the case of Wikipedia is another case seeing as how they've had to adopt policing strategies to prevent vandals from deleting and twisting information for their own amusement, at the sake of a larger audience. Now the problem here is can Wikipedia be trusted? Well can it? Speaking on a personal level, I for one start most my of research from there itself, where it serves as a great source for references and a means of getting started. Also, from a student's point of view, having a free easy to access website loaded with information is a much better, and dare I say convenient option, as opposed to Britanica which has to be paid for if to get the "whole truth". In an ever changing digitised world, with the open source revolution on the rise, Wikipedia's gaining and has gained more ground than Britanica has. In fact, I can't even remember the last time I used it myself. There was once a saying that if enough people believe something to be true, then it must, and if you put Wikipedia in the same context, then surely there must be some truth to its content- especially considering the special efforts taken to keep it "clean".

Scholars will always have their arguments over the correctness and reliability of Wikipeida. And if you think about it, yes, there are issues with that platform. However, if you take into consideration a broader public space, and mass culture, Wikipedia holds more ground only because of one simple reason, it's more convenient.