TeaChat

To what extent is the tea info on Wikipedia reliable?

I sometimes use it to learn details of tea knowledge outside my area of comfort, but have often wondered about its accuracy.

Thanks.

Best wishes,
sherubtse

I've found some of the info to be very reliable and helpful, especially the discussions on tea processing with the diagram demonstrating the really basic elements for each type of tea, but once it goes outside the basics, I get more skeptical. But I'm only comparing it to what I've learned in a few years on online forums, tea blogs, and a couple of tea books, so I'm not the most knowledgeable critic.

debunix wrote: but once it goes outside the basics, I get more skeptical.

Agreed... I've seen dubious (and often impossible) claims regarding chemical transformations; they sound more like a vendor's wild claims than anything. When I see such problems, I request editors change the (usually uncited) information accordingly; but I rarely visit any of those pages to see if anything else dubious has been added...

I guess, same rule for everything else on wikipedia, evaluate information based on the reference listed

If only someone would make a wiki just for tea.

But yes, I would be wary of being too trusting of any online encyclopedia about something like tea where there's so much misinformation and so few authoritative references. But I do think that this tea processing flow chart is great.

Of course, the good thing about Wikipedia is that if the information is wrong, you can always fix it.