Parents' Guide to

Wikipedia.org

By Ellen Dendy, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 13+

Collaborative reference: Research with caution.

Website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
Wikipedia.org Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this website.

Community Reviews

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age 13+

Based on 21 parent reviews

Cyprus Movie Review Org
Cyprus Movie Review Org Parent
July 16, 2022
age 14+

Search Anything with Caution

Wikipedia is a good place to search things. Contributing on Wikipedia without an account exposes your IP address. Posting pictures on Wikipedia through Wikimedia foundation exposes your photos location taken. You can search any subject so keep children supervised.

This title has:

Too much sex
min F.
min F. Parent of 6 and 9-year-old
May 29, 2022
age 7+
See all 21 parent reviews

Privacy Rating Pass

  • Personal information is not sold or rented to third parties.
  • Personal information is not shared for third-party marketing.
  • Personalised advertising is not displayed.
  • Data are not collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
  • User's information is not used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
  • Data profiles are not created and used for personalised advertisements.
Learn more about our privacy ratings

What’s It About?

WIKIPEDIA.ORG fuses those 12 old-school volumes of hardback encyclopedias into one URL with a wealth of information on geography, the arts, history, and other standard encyclopedic categories, along with kid-friendly, pop-culture entries on comic strips, toys, and TV shows.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say (21 ):
Kids say (92 ):

The most important thing to know about this collaborative encyclopedia is that anyone with an Internet connection can edit entries, and while the site does have rigorous guidelines and a system to catch and eliminate bad content, they just can't keep up with the millions of constantly changing entries. (Malicious content is removed as quickly as possible and hard-hit entries are locked down from further editing.) And you can guarantee that your curious kid will find all the detailed entries you wished he hadn't (pornography, explicit song lyrics, long-winded definitions of dirty words). The carefully researched, comprehensive entries do exist, but a disclaimer states that stuff may be wrong and to use the site as just one of many reference tools. You might also want to check out the discussion areas before your kid freely posts or gets any messages.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about the nature of a collaborative encyclopedia. Why is it important to use Wikipedia simply as a launching pad for more extensive research? Families can also talk about the ways to double-check a Wikipedia entry against more formal references. How do you navigate through such large amounts of information and find what's important?

Website Details

  • Genre: Educational
  • Pricing structure: Free
  • Last updated: November 4, 2015

Did we miss something on diversity?

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