Problems

As Wikipedia is a Website where everyone can edit contents, several problems appear.

Interaction with other Media
Information is copied from Wikipedia by other media
 * without proving whether this information is true or false
 * Wikipedia authors then use these media as sources for articles
 * unproven "Facts" are distributed

Criticism

 * Everybody can edit articles so that you cannot rely on their contents
 * There is no claim for the correctness of information or completeness of the articles
 * The extent of an article gives no prove whether the content is important or not
 * Some topics are less detailed then other, e.g.Iris Berben vs. George Clooney


 * Different interest groups (political, religious, economical) try to influence the articles --> e.g. PR-Agencies delete negative information out of biographies of famous people
 * There is no/ limited control over the contents, no checking by a neutral organisation
 * Some rules are too strict so articles are deleted so fast that nobody is able to improve them
 * Censorship, for example in China
 * The wrong majority can win over the right minority
 * Articles written by new authors are deleted more often than ones from the “elite group”, regularly writing editors
 * Half of the articles available in Wikipedia are written by 2,5% of all users --> big influence
 * On the other hand Wikipedia loses new active authors

Quotation
“The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him. Wikipedia [is a] faith-based encyclopedia.“ (Robert McHenry)

Read on

 * Other forms of Wikipedia