Wikipedia's policies are what provide the guide to creating a successful encyclopedia. They create a way to show what is needed in a user created encyclopedia to be successful. The policy about verifiability says that all information that is not common knowledge must be attributed to a reliable source. This means that even controversial material on Wikipedia must be supported by another source. Another policy reffered to as Neutral Point of View (NPOV) says that each topic must be explored from all points of views to create an accurate article on a topic. This allows Wikipedia to be a reliable source when learning about a topic

The community that creates Wikipedia is an essential component as it applys the policies on Wikipedia to create an accurate encyclopedia. It is also the people who work to keep Wikipedia an inviting place to find information. This environment is created by many advances in technology; most notably Wiki technology.

There are many sources of information on the Internet. Some have guidelines which help decide which information to add to an article. Often times the best place to find information, is the place that brings information from other places together. 

Sheep dung, Brittanica , oh my!

Now, you must be thinking what most of my teachers are thinking. That Wikipedia is an unreliable, hacker filled, pile of sheep dung. Well, that's what I thought when I first read about, and viewed various Wikipedia pages. But, later on in my life I have come to the conclusion that Wikipedia is a far better source of information than places like Encyclopedia Britannica, and InfoPlease, mainly because of a study that was recently conducted by Nature Magazine. This study showed that Wikipedia has 4 errors to Brittanica's 3 errors in the average science article. But here is the funny part, one of Wikipedia's errors came from a book that was written by a staunch anti-Wikipediaist. So that makes Wikipedia even with Britannica.

Truth vs. Fact

I really love this subtitle, "Truth vs. Fact" that makes almost no sense anyway you think about it. Yet, there is a very subtle difference between truth and fact. That difference is that facts are like mass, it will always be the same no matter what the force of gravity is. But truth is like weight, weight is dependant of factors like gravity to define its total.... wait for it... weight. So, basically my point here is that the people who write Encyclopedia Brittanica can all believe in one truth, even if that truth isn't really practical. For example, to the Nazi's Hitler was correct and truthful about the Jew's being the source of Germany's problems, yet the fact was that Germany was suffering because of the agreements that they made with the Allies after World War I. So, if you see something that is the truth, you can change it to the fact.

User Fixability

As a person who takes great pleasure from getting down in the dirt with beta's, alpha's, pretest's, and the likes of those, when I see that someone is calling the Phylum of an Amoeba "Crudeacrestantus" when it should be "Amoebozoa" I can't change that with school databases, or Encyclopedia Britannica. With Wikipedia it would take me all of 30 seconds that fix the classification of that poor little Amoeba. If you were to suggest a fix for Britannica, you would have to submit a formal error fix form, and back that up with proof, and then back that proof up with testimony from people in the profession. Then show that those people in the profession are actually in the profession. Finally you would have to wait a considerable amount of time before you would actually see the change. So several thousands of people would see it prior to it being fixed.

Community

I love communities. I love forums. I love chat rooms. They are places where I can sit down with a cup of grape juice and enjoy the technological company of others. Wikipedia offers this type of thing with Talk pages, Discussion Pages, and History Pages. But other encyclopedia (especially book copies ;-) ) lack these features. The main advantage of these pre-installed communities is that you can discuss and debate what should be in an article or not, but it is also a great place that you can kick back and chat about what has happened in real life.

Conclusion

So, if you want to get decent information from a reliable source, for free, that spans over 2,138,523 topics, Wikipedia is the way to go. But if you would rather cash out and splurge on boring old Britannica, with its aggrandizing words, complex phrases, formulas, and unhelpful errors, then shell out $69.95 for the online service (or a whooping $1,325.05 for the books!). Or, on a lighter note, if you prefer things that everyone has their say in then Wikipedia is the way to go.