Encyclopedia Britannica vs. Wikipedia

I went to the Encyclopedia Britannica web site and typed in "Ireland." Immediately I got a nice organized page with options to choose about the country’s attributes, population or other information. I typed the same thing in on Wikipedia and right away I got a lot of information thrown at me. First it talks about the name Ireland and where it came from. This is good information, but it just was not as organized as the Encyclopedia was. The information of Wikipedia was actually edited recently on October 25, 2007. In fact, there have been around 100 edits already this month. I found that to be incredible. I didn’t think that many people actually took the time to put their information on a site like this. The article on Britannica was last edited 2 months ago and that was the only edit I could see for a while. The Britannica one also had very good citations. There were also footnotes at the bottom of the page, along with sources. Wikipedia had some good citations also, but there were more than a couple instances where it said, "citation needed." If I saw that, I definitely would not use that information for a paper. Some one could have just made that up for all I know, and that is just another reason why people should not use Wikipedia for research. Even though Colbert’s video was kind of silly, it made a good point. So what if a lot of people just suddenly all put the same information on Wikipedia? Well, someone is going to use it! Or even worse, they may go ahead believing that the fact they just read is true when in fact someone just added it there for fun. Both web sites had good working links. None of then were dead links and they all were pretty useful. However, some of the links on the Wikipedia page pointed to people’s own personal web sites. This was another reason why I never used Wikipedia for research. How do I know that "Joe’s Geocitities Website" has good valid information? It seems like some people just copied information off someone else’s personal page and posted it on Wikipedia. The bad part is if nobody edits it, the information stays there. In another reference to Colbert’s clip, if a lot of people just go on Wikipedia and post the same false statements, it will stay. That is why Wikipedia is not a "real" encyclopedia and should not be used for serious research. However, overall both web sites contain the same information. The numbers are a little different but other than that, both are very similar. Although Ireland is somewhat of an easier topic to compare, I typed in Kuwait and got very different information from both sites. In the "discussions" section of Wikipedia, there was actually some controversy over the information, particularly the colors of the flag. Some people claimed that the color was not the right hue, and that the flag does not represent what it should. These people don’t seem to realize that someone just made that flag on their computer using a paint program. Britannica has a picture of an actual flag made of material, so there was no controversy over this topic on their site. I will agree that both sites provide a good overview of the topic, but I have to say with all honesty that the Encyclopedia Britannica is a much better choice for research. I have never used Wikipedia or anyone’s personal web page for information. It is just too unreliable. Both "pedia" sites can be very useful, though. If you want to get a general idea of what something is, then Wikipedia is great. However, if you have a big research paper to do, don’t use the information from Wikipedia. Use a service like Encyclopedia Britannica instead. This way at least you know the information is legitimate, or at least more so than information from another site.