What are threads?

Actually, threads are clothes (this whole thread has it wrong).

@MIHIR_KATTI said in #8:

Sorry, my friend. Wikipedia is not a trustable source.

According to whom?

en wikipedia is pretty trustworthy overall. Sure, there are a few articles of low quality here and there (and if that's the case it usually says so in a disclaimer above the article). Often articles are written by volunteer enthusiasts in their free time rather than experts. But the requirement to provide external sources for the claims made and the fact that anyone can edit and correct the text make wikipedia articles self-correcting (to a certain degree).
Wikipedia articles are a great starting point into any subject. And if you do not trust that the authors of the article did a good job researching the topic at hand, just have a look at the references. Often you'll find scholarly texts, textbooks, scientific literature, scientific papers, educational websites and the like. All of which can be used to check for yourself whether or not the wikipedia article was accurate.

Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum#References
https://www.jstor.org/stable/505123
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066304
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520201781/representations

Harvard University press and University of California press are trustworthy sources. If your curiosity is not satisfied by the wikipedia article you can go to the local library and borrow one of the books linked in the references. Or just look for a trustworthy source that's available online.

@Thalassokrator said in #12:

According to whom?

en wikipedia is pretty trustworthy overall. Sure, there are a few articles of low quality here and there (and if that's the case it usually says so in a disclaimer above the article). Often articles are written by volunteer enthusiasts in their free time rather than experts. But the requirement to provide external sources for the claims made and the fact that anyone can edit and correct the text make wikipedia articles self-correcting (to a certain degree).
Wikipedia articles are a great starting point into any subject. And if you do not trust that the authors of the article did a good job researching the topic at hand, just have a look at the references. Often you'll find scholarly texts, textbooks, scientific literature, scientific papers, educational websites and the like. All of which can be used to check for yourself whether or not the wikipedia article was accurate.

Example:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum#References
www.jstor.org/stable/505123
www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066304
www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520201781/representations

Harvard University press and University of California press are trustworthy sources. If your curiosity is not satisfied by the wikipedia article you can go to the local library and borrow one of the books linked in the references. Or just look for a trustworthy source that's available online.
Anyone can edit Wikipedia. People can post articles on Wikipedia based on their experience. This is why some of it will have inaccurate information. You don’t know which.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia. People can post articles on Wikipedia based on their experience. This is why some of it will have inaccurate information. You don’t know which

You didn't read post #12, did you? :)

Threads are pieces of string.

@Frogster64 said in #14:

You didn't read post #12, did you? :)
I did. But I don’t want to be explaining everything. In fact, if you want me to explain, here is my explanation:
Ok, then. @Thalassokrator will say that Wikipedia is accurate, despite some ups and downs. But then, how do u know which info is accurate and which is inaccurate? Sure, go on different websites, but you are not relying on Wikipedia for it.

and you can say we've definitely lost the thread when the marketplace of ideas becomes the marketplace of words.

@Thalassokrator said in #12:

According to whom?

en wikipedia is pretty trustworthy overall. Sure, there are a few articles of low quality here and there (and if that's the case it usually says so in a disclaimer above the article). Often articles are written by volunteer enthusiasts in their free time rather than experts. But the requirement to provide external sources for the claims made and the fact that anyone can edit and correct the text make wikipedia articles self-correcting (to a certain degree).
Wikipedia articles are a great starting point into any subject. And if you do not trust that the authors of the article did a good job researching the topic at hand, just have a look at the references. Often you'll find scholarly texts, textbooks, scientific literature, scientific papers, educational websites and the like. All of which can be used to check for yourself whether or not the wikipedia article was accurate.

Example:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Forum#References
www.jstor.org/stable/505123
www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674066304
www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520201781/representations

Harvard University press and University of California press are trustworthy sources. If your curiosity is not satisfied by the wikipedia article you can go to the local library and borrow one of the books linked in the references. Or just look for a trustworthy source that's available online.

Even my school says that Wikipedia is an unreliable source.

@MIHIR_KATTI said in #16:

I did. But I don’t want to be explaining everything. In fact, if you want me to explain, here is my explanation:
Ok, then. Thalassokrator will say that Wikipedia is accurate, despite some ups and downs. But then, how do u know which info is accurate and which is inaccurate? Sure, go on different websites, but you are not relying on Wikipedia for it.

TL;DR for the impatient below.

Now that's an interesting point!
Remember what statement of yours I disputed: "Wikipedia is not a trustable source." That's an absolute statement, it says that you cannot trust Wikipedia at all. At least that's the way it came across to me. From context it even implies that Wikipedia is not a trustworthy source, not even on largely unpolitical topics like archeology or ancient roman history. That's the statement I took issue with.

Now you bring up a very good point: If anyone can edit Wikipedia, that means that people can degrade the quality and factual accuracy of an article by editing it. Either maliciously (as in intentional propaganda or advertisement) or by simply not knowing any better (layman editors misunderstanding the subject).

And that's certainly true and probably happens thousands of times each month! You raise the question how we can come to know whether or not the article at hand is accurate. Excellent question!

There are several ways to find out how trustworthy a given version of a Wikipedia article is. The first way was already pointed out by you: Check the references!
Wikipedia operates on the premise that (ideally) only information that is based on external sources should be included in an article. Of course the article's accuracy stands and falls with the accuracy of the external sources referenced. So you should check them out for yourself, when you need to be extra certain of something! And probably consult additional sources as well.

But isn't that a lot of work? It is. And aren't we then ceasing to rely on Wikipedia? Aren't we relying on the external sources instead? All valid questions!
Yes, we are, at least to a certain degree. You see, Wikipedia has many ways to help you in that process:

First of all, sections of an article which lack a sufficient number of inline citations visually stick out. You'll notice when the little blue [1]s and [2]s are missing. And if you don't notice, someone else will and a warning will usually be displayed above such a section (or as the header of the entire article) which says something along the lines of: "This section does not cite any sources. (October 2023)"
In some cases unsourced sections get removed entirely after some time.

There are custom templates that can be used for all sorts of cases, have a look:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_index/Cleanup/Verifiability_and_sources#Combined_message_boxes

Next, what is a reliable external source? This is often subject to intense discussion among Wikipedia editors on the article's talk page. If you didn't already know, every single Wikipedia article has a talk page, where users can make suggestions, express doubts, point out errors and inconsistencies, propose merging several articles, discuss about recent or planned changes to the article and the like. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines

Talk pages can also be a good tool for you to find out whether or not a particular article is actively monitored. They will help you identify potential problems with the article even in the absence of verifiability and sources templates in the article itself.

Another great tool you can use for gauging the reliability of an article is the page history (hidden behind the button "View history" at the start of every article). Here you can see all of the changes that were ever made to a given article in chronological order and directly compare different versions. You can see who changed something, how extensive the change was and what motivated the change. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Page_history

This page helps identifying vandalism and edit wars.

Keep in mind that you are not the only one who has access to these tools (and more). There are 46,412,562 registered usernames on the English Wikipedia alone. 122,075 of whom have edited at least one article within the last month. You you have a HUNDRED THOUSAND active users, some of whom are constantly monitoring and vetting articles, repairing acts of vandalism, using templates to indicate problems, finding additional sources, deleting unnecessary or unsourced sections, merging and dividing articles, the list goes on an on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians

I'm regularly amazed by how up to date Wikipedia usually is (updated within minutes).

So you are not JUST relying on the external sources when using Wikipedia. You are also relying on the work of hundreds of thousands of volunteer editors who constantly change and (in my experience) usually improve Wikipedia. That's what I meant when I said that Wikipedia is "self-correcting (to a certain degree)" in #12.
And you are relying on Wikipedia for providing you with a preselection of (mostly) relevant and accurate external sources in the first place! It would be very cumbersome to compile such a list of references all on your own.

Of course the demographics of Wikipedians (84% male as of 2011, mostly from the US, Western Europe and India) introduces some biases and potential sources of inaccuracy.

A final thought on your central question:

But then, how do u know which info is accurate and which is inaccurate?

You don't. You simply don't know for certain (beforehand). But Wikipedia is not special in this regard. This foundational principle of epistemology applies to every source of information, every scientific paper, every university textbook, every print encyclopaedia, every school textbook, every non-fiction book, every news article. All of them are susceptible to errors, inconsistencies, misconceptions, oversimplifications, outdated information and in some cases even vandalism or deliberate misinformation.

That's why you should never rely solely on one source of information when it really counts. Always consult multiple sources when you need to be sure. At the very least Wikipedia is a great way to quickly find multiple sources.

And I don't know whether or not you are old enough to remember the time prior to the proliferation of the internet and how things used to be done back then. But let me tell you, print based encyclopaediae suffered problems of their own. It took years or even decades to revise all the information contained in the well-respected Encyclopaedia Britannica. These things were physically huge. Thirty volumes! You don't write that in a day! And the team of editors and consulting experts putting it together was certainly a lot smaller than 100,000 people. It also wouldn't have been economically viable to try to sell a new edition every year. So it was pretty much one or two volumes every year (so after two years and hundreds of £ you'd have volume 1 containing words beginning with the letters Aa-Aw all the way up to volume 4 containing words that start with Ci-Da). And when after five years you got to volume 10, they'd start publishing revisions and error corrections to volume 1 in a futile effort to keep it somewhat up to date. Still missing half of the errors and misconceptions which were originally contained in volume 1. Even despite these efforts, after 35 years the entire encyclopaedia, revision volumes and all, would be totally outdated and filled with irrelevant and wrong information sprinkled in on every page. At that point they would decide to publish a new edition of the Britannica, which would take them 10 years at least, and you would have to pay thousands of £ AGAIN for informations that's not quite as dated.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopædia_Britannica#Other_criticisms and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Non-Wikipedia_disclaimers

Compare this speed of updating outdated information (several years at least) with the speed of Wikipedia (a few weeks to a few months at most). Projects like Wikipedia are one of the main reasons why this is considered the information age. Never since the invention of the printing press in 1440 has humanity made such a great leap in information promulgation as it did with the invention of the internet. This comes with associated risks AND benefits.

The problem of erroneous information and misconceptions by the way also applies to all sorts of textbooks and school environments (even up to the university level), a few examples include:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10698-023-09475-w
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10763-016-9715-0
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2002-14044-001

The last one illustrates the possibility that not even teachers (or university professors) are 100% reliable sources of information.

Should we therefore generally distrust teachers, professors, textbooks, scientific papers, encyclopaediae or Wikipedia? Should we consider them generally unreliable and untrustworthy?

No, of course not! We should realise that all of those are generally good and reliable sources of information (to a certain, varying extent). And that we can use them for our own benefit and the benefit of all. While always keeping an open mind and thinking critically about the information we receive from various sources, gauging how reliable it is through a diverse set of means.

TL;DR:
I don't say: "Blindly trust everything you read on Wikipedia, it's 100% reliable."
I'm saying:

"You can use Wikipedia for your own education as long as you take the same precautionary measures you would take with any other mostly reliable source of information. No source of information is 100% accurate and up to date. Critically question any important information you receive. Notice when the presented information is likely of low quality or unreliable, keep an eye out for signs of bias, vandalism, fabrication or misinformation. Have a look at the references, at the talk page, at the page history. Consult additional sources of information: Use search engines or a local library to find additional material that can help you get a broader picture on the subject. Wikipedia possesses great utility (as do traditional encyclopaediae etc.) and can benefit you enormously. Use it responsibly and you'll be fine!"

@ThisUsernameIsNotFun said in #18:

Even my school says that Wikipedia is an unreliable source.

Well, your teachers are probably trying to say that you should look for primary and secondary sources (scientific papers, textbooks, non-fiction books) yourself! Instead of mindlessly regurgitating what you read on Wikipedia ;-)

That's a noble intention and I fully agree. You should do that, learn how to use your local library, the sooner you start the better! Writing "Source: Wikipedia" is not a good idea for homework or a presentation/school report. That's not specific enough, you might as well write "Source: The internet".

Even Wikipedia itself doesn't allow Wikipedia articles to be used as references in another Wikipedia article in order to avoid circular reporting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reporting).

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source
And notice the disclaimer:

This page is about using Wikipedia as a citation in another Wikipedia article and NOT about using Wikipedia in general.

Does that mean that you shouldn't use Wikipedia for personal education or school at all? No, of course not! You can use it for both and it will usually be very helpful! Just be careful with how you use it, for example cite an external source (given in the references section of any Wikipedia article) directly instead of citing "Wikipedia" (which might change from one day to the other).

For more details you could read post #19 if you're interested or at least the very last TL;DR paragraph of that post.

In an academic setting (at university), caution is advised when citing Wikipedia (many institutions do not allow it). Problems and partial solutions are outlined here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia#Problems_with_citing_Wikipedia