About.com? (the website)?

Question

Is it a reliable website to gather information from?

I'm doing a research paper and my teacher has stated that we can't use Wikipedia since people are able to create an account and be able to change the things on it. Meaning invalid information.

I'm just wondering is about.com like that too? Can people edit the information and such just by creating accounts or are the authors legit and able to cite their sources as to where they got the information.

Answer 1

about.com is different from wikipaedia in that it is a managed source of information. WP has the problem your teacher has stated, however it's probably not wise to *completely* discount it as a source. I tell my students to verify info from any website (use more than one reference to back up any data source).

With about.com, the chances of info being plain wrong, are fairly small. With WP, the other side of the coin is that if someone does put up bad info, someone else can correct it (often within minutes)

Hope that helps.