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Does this paragraph suggests that we shouldn't rely on Wikipedia, and can you tell me the sentence it is suggesting? I asked this question , because i want make sure the article i read are reliable.

Criticisms of Wikipedia include assertions that its openness makes it unreliable and unauthorative. Because articles don't include bylines, authors aren't publicly accountable for what they write. Similarly, because anyone can edit any article, the site's entries are vulnerable to unscrupulous edits. In August 2007, Virgil Griffiths created a site, WikiScanner , where users could track the sources of edits to Wikipedia entries. Griffiths reported that self-serving edits typically involved whitewashing or removal of criticism of a person or organization or, conversely, insertion of negative comments into the entry about a competitor. Wikipedia depends upon the vigilance of editors to find and reverse such changes to content.

Its the third paragragh of the link: http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Wikipedia

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  • As the television show The Office says ironically: Wikipedia is the best thing ever. Anyone in the world can write anything they want about any subject, so you know you are getting the best possible information. In other words, don't believe anything you read on Wikipedia without checking its assertions against actual authoritative sources.
    – user6951
    Commented Jul 15, 2014 at 10:45

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The paragraph suggests more that one should read Wikipedia with a critical eye, and with an awareness of the fact that people can and sometimes do edit Wikipedia to further personal agendas. The paragraph then goes on to discuss the measures the editors take to deal with such vandalism, and to maintain a generally high level of reliability in Wikipedia.

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The paragraph says there are two problems with Wikipedia:

  1. People who are not experts might edit the articles and get things wrong accidentally.
  2. People might edit Wikipedia in order to do something other than tell the truth. For example (this is made up), what if someone from another car company edited the page on the Ford Focus to make that car look worse.

In general, Wikipedia is regarded as very useful and easy to use, but sometimes unreliable. You should be careful that the article does not seem biased, and careful that the article cites man sources, before you trust information from Wikipedia. Personally, when I use Wikipedia, I scroll down to the "References" section, which tells where the authors learned what they learned, and I read articles that I find there.

So the paragraph does not tell you to avoid Wikipedia, it just tells you to be careful.

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