When most of today’s population thinks of or hears the word encyclopedia wikis often do not pop into their minds. Of course, a good portion of the world’s population remembers hard bound encyclopedias that used to be used as reference books and works, so it is obvious why they do not immediately think of encyclopedia wiki as a potential useful tool. But these people need to start thinking differently, because even though anyone can create a wiki page and can populate that page with whatever they wish, these wiki pages are excellent to use as encyclopedias too.

When most of the younger generations hear the word encyclopedia wikis come instantly to mind, though. This is because today’s youth has more of a skew toward the Internet as a main source of information. There is nothing wrong with this, since it often is the way that research is conducted these days. However, young people should be made aware that when they create a wiki article they are not automatically becoming authorities, nor is everything they put on their pages entirely accurate unless it is backed up.

This is why when people create wiki page marks designed to be encyclopedias of sorts, they usually will reference them. When most people use an encyclopedia wikis are quite useful in this realm, because they can both populate their own sites with useful information and use the reference works that appear on other people’s wiki pages. When they create these pages through the wiki site, these people then can become authorities of sorts themselves, causing others to follow them and letting others know about the things that they know, thereby creating more knowledge for everyone using them.

A word of caution should be thrown out to anyone using encyclopedia wikis as reference works, though. They must back up this research with at least one other source, since these pages do have the ability to be altered by their administrators and users. This means people can make changes to the information that is there on their encyclopedia wikis, which could either confuse others or lead to inaccurate information. Wiki sites have long been known as sites that are not always going to be held in the highest regard statistically or accurately speaking, but they do prove useful as one of many resources when people are researching a paper or wanting to learn additional information on a particular subject.