Wikipedia: Not as chaotic as you might think

Wikipedia has four key policies to help ensure the project stays true to its original intentions. 1) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. 2) Respect other contributors. 3) Don't infringe copyrights. 4) Avoid Bias. It is very important to understand these policies before making statements about the purpose of Wikipedia. First and foremost, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia "Its goals go no further." Wikipedia is meant to be used as reference, but not as a primary source. As with other encyclopedias, Wikipedia's goal is to give a basic summary of the facts about a subject. Posting original research on Wikipedia is against the rules. Instead, users are encouraged to give a brief summary of the information and then cite the original source. Another very important aspect of Wikipedia is the fourth key policy. Avoid Bias. It takes a lot of effort to keep all of the articles in any encylcopedia free of bias and Wikipedia's sheer number of topics and articles makes it extremely difficult to keep them all unbiased. This is why the objectivity of Wikipedia's articles is a frequent subject of debate.

Wikipedia articles dealing with controversial or current issues present a challenge for users to regulate. Topics of this sort often include contradictory ideas, which obfuscate the truth. Some of the most difficult articles to keep objective are those dealing with political figures or issues. In a realm such as politics where the facts rarely agree with the "truth," objectivity is nearly impossible to maintain. An example of this is the article on George W. Bush. Even though the article is almost entirely composed of facts, many people would say the article is biased because of the importance or emphasis placed on certain facts. Even the Wikipedia entry for Wikipedia has a banner on a section of the article questioning the neutrality of the section. Although, because of this banner, that section of the article will likely be fixed soon.

Wikipedia is not the chaotic, unstructured blob of information some believe it to be. Wikipedia has many tools in place to make sure some amount of order is kept. This banner is a good example of these tools. Enough people said in the discussion section of the article that they did not like the section in question, but that they couldn't figure out how to clean it up properly so they decided to warn the readers that the neutrality may be compromised and to ask for help from anyone that had an idea of how to fix it. Wikipedia has implemented many measures such as these to assist those who want Wikipedia to be an objective source of information and are willing to put the time in to make sure it stays that way.