According to Wikipedia, Wikipedia is the 9th most trafficked website in the world. From topics as broad as the color red to alphabetized lists of prominent celebrity sex tapes, there is a nearly endless wealth of information on Wikipedia. Operating as a non-profit, Wikipedia subsists on donations and provides its content ad-free. All the information on Wikipedia is provided by volunteers across the globe. This means that nearly anyone can contribute content—a double-edged sword.

For anyone who came of age with access to the internet, Wikipedia’s unreliability is a familiar talking point of teachers and professors. I remember middle school teachers harping on the dangers of trusting Wikipedia, leading me to believe that nearly everything on the website was false. Yet, as an adult, I turn to Wikipedia every time I have a question about anything. Sometimes, I’ll spend hours at night hopping from page to page, reading about topics like the geography of the city of Santa Fe, or simply the entire entry for “cement.”

Everyone is told Wikipedia is unreliable, but everyone uses it. Are we making ourselves dumber, or is the unreliability narrative simply untrue? To answer this question, I first turned to the Wikipedia entry titled “Reliability of Wikipedia.” The entry is nearly 16,000 words long with over 200 citations. The gist of the article is that Wikipedia is pretty reliable and serves as an excellent jumping-off point for any research topic. There may be some inaccuracies from time to time, but this is offset by the fact that most Wikipedia articles contain citations. Thus, if something looks off, you can check the citation to ensure accuracy. Like most Wikipedia entries, I didn’t read the whole thing, nor did I check every citation.

Not everyone agrees with Wikipedia’s assessment of Wikipedia. Harvard cautions that using Wikipedia is dangerous, claiming many articles are incorrect or intentionally misleading. The website Wikipediocracy is dedicated to fighting against “the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense” frequently encountered on Wikipedia. The site contains posts dating back to 2012 that point out the falsities in various Wikipedia entries. For example, the most recent post on the site lambasts the Wikipedia entry for Robert Prevost, the man recently appointed as Pope Leo XIV.

The University of Kansas has a wonderful article breaking down the history of Wikipedia, its reliability, and how to properly use the site. In the reliability section, the article cites a 2005 Nature article, “Internet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head,” which compared the accuracy of Wikipedia entries against those in traditional, hardbound copies of Encyclopedia Britannica. The study concluded that “the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.” The University of Kansas sums up the article well, stating that Wikipedia entries are made by humans, and like all humans, they are bound to make human errors.

Wikipedia may not always be accurate, but it is the premier destination for learning about fringe topics in a scholarly light. Where else can one go to learn about “anal winks” or “Alcohol and Drug Abuse Lake?” It may not be perfect, but Wikipedia probably accounts for most of the information people receive online (I don’t have a cite for that). Wikipedia is the perfect place to settle a dispute with friends or kill time reading about off-the-wall topics. If you’ve never played before, Wikipedia can also be used to play an extremely fun online game: start on a random page and then decide on a completely random, unrelated topic. Using only the hyperlinks contained within the article, try to see how many clicks it takes to get from the start page to the unrelated topic.

Despite its flaws, I fundamentally believe in Wikipedia’s mission. In this day and age, finding a reliable source of information can be incredibly difficult. It is also rare to find a website without ads or the need to subscribe. Personally, I donate $5 every year—my token of appreciation for the nonprofit. Maybe everything I know is total bullshit, but at least I’m trying to learn something. And according to the Wikipedia entry for learning, learning can be beneficial in certain environments.