"Amir Doolab"

In June 2016, Alireza Alifar, the legendary Persian football commentator dropped a massive Bombshell in television and football community.

During one of the games that he is commentating, he said something strange about the stadium information:

"The stadium took about two years to reconstruct, and it was relaunched at September 2013. the Vinci company was the Project manager and Doolab Amir was the Architect"

Amir Doolab is an ordinary citizen in iran who has noticed Alireza Alifar is make use of Wikipedia for the source of his commentaries. He watched several football matches before this event and thinks with himself : "Well. this guy is speaking about stadium information in every commentaries. he is probably using Wikipedia for that because its the best and fastest way of accessing to that same kind of information. Anything goes let's try!"

Who To Blame?

Wikipedia? The commenter? or that naughty boy Amir Doolab for misusing the wikipedia?

Well, i think Alireza Alifar is primarily responsible for the issue. the reliance on potentially unreliable sources like Wikipedia can put you in lot of trouble. especially when you as a commentator expected to provide a credible information.

Wikipedia

The website it self addresses this types of concerns in some articles.

For example the academic use page states :

Wikipedia is not a reliable source for academic writing or research.

What it exactly means is, you should not include "Wikipedia" as a source of your information. But it means we should not use it at all? I dont think so.

the only thing you need to consider is : Do your research properly and wisely. Remember that any encyclopedia is a starting point for research, not an ending point**.**

Tips

I was wondering Why isn't Wikipedia full of false information, since everyone can edit articles there? I found these tips in the answer of this question.

• Most Wikipedia paragraphs are referenced to external sources, which is often considered good practice for contributors. Collaborators on Wikipedia are encouraged not to write content solely based on their own knowledge; instead, they should back up their statements with external references. Consider the wiki page of Youtube for example. there are about 300 references exist on this page. These references can be seen at the end of the sentences (using small numbers) and at the end of the page.
• Not Everyone can edit every articles. Wikipedia has something called Protection policy. This usually applied to some pages that is considered highly controversial. See the Donald Trump Article Page for example. you will see a little lock icon on the right side of the article. And you probably can not edit the page without meeting the condition specified in the Protection policy page.
• Talk Pages. Each article has an associated "talk page" where editors can discuss changes, raise concerns about content.

Conclusion

Academic Point-of-view: Yes. Wikipedia is not a reliable source. But that doesn’t make it useless. It is a good choice for starting point.

Controversial Topics Point-of-view: Think of Wikipedia as some Repository that sums up the mainstream news media.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post!