Wikipedia Is Not A Reliable Source

Is Wikipedia an Acceptable Source for Academic Writing? Wikipedia is the ultimate source for information. It has articles on nearly every topic and has millions of editors around the world. However, just because it has a lot of information doesn’t mean that it is all good information. Academic writing is a very accurate type of writing that can require many unbiased, reliable, credible, and relevant sources. I do not think all Wikipedia articles are held to these standards and so, I do not believe Wikipedia is an acceptable source for academic writing. Wikipedia is largely supposed to be an unbiased source by their own standards. However, not all articles are monitored enough to keep people’s biases from sticking through their writing.
This small excerpt from Wikipedia’s disclaimer page shows that it recognizes its own unreliability. Using Wikipedia as a source is like taking advice on writing papers from someone who says they don’t know much about writing papers. When using information from a source it must be relevant. Relevant meaning that the information given must relate to the topic. Wikipedia also holds itself to the standard of relevance (Relevance), but sometimes the editors can go off on tangents and the information becomes less related to the topic and more obscure. This obscurity can be dangerous because if the information is not related to the main topic it could be harmful to someone’s writing or argument when used as a source. For example, in an article about the character Macduff the article goes on a tangent. The Wikipedia article is supposed to explain who the character is, but an editor included a section about feminism. While it could be argued that the play portrays women as evil this has more to do with the overall play and less to do with Macduff as a character. This information could weaken this article as a potential source as some of the information is very off topic