WIKIPEDIA, CREDIBLE NOWADAYS?

THE WIKIPEDIA LOGO GONE UP IN FLAMES; GRAPHIC BY ELLIOTT CISCO

Wikipedia is the website that always seems to show up for any search you make. It’s full of tons of juicy information and links; seemingly the perfect source for your paper. But time and time again, you’re told that Wikipedia isn’t credible. Is this really true, and how can you use Wikipedia to its fullest power?

Bad Reputation

Ever since its debut, Wikipedia has had a bad reputation for disinformation and hoaxes. After all, anybody can edit articles. Malicious actors will grief pages, setup bots, and maybe even quietly insert a few words that completely change the meaning of a section.

So, why can “anybody” edit articles anyways? It all started when Wikipedia was first created, with the intent of making information more available to people. Because Wikipedia was non-profit, it needed volunteers to write articles. This is where the “anybody can edit articles” came from. 

Now what about the hoaxes? Over time, many large disinformation and Wikipedia vandalism acts have occurred. According to Wikipedia themselves, multiple disinformation campaigns and acts of vandalism have occurred on their website. Take Willy on Wheels, a vandal who changed thousands of titles to end in “on wheels”. While a vandalization like that isn’t that harmful, some have changed actual information, created disinformation, or deleted entire articles and replaced them with “YOU SUCK!”.

Over time, these things combined with news producers reporting on the events garnered enough attention to solidify Wikipedia as an unreliable source, especially for things like citations and evidence. But a lot of these hoaxes happened a good while ago. So, has anything changed since then?

A Misconception?

According to the New York Times, Wikipedia has only a few more errors per page on average than Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica is one of the most credited and trustworthy encyclopedias out there, made and edited by professionals. So, nowadays, if you’re looking for facts and are concerned about whether a source is credible, Wikipedia is usually a very factual source. This is especially true on popular pages where moderation will frequently look over for malicious edits or griefs. So, about that moderation; how does it work now and how has it changed?

Back in the good ‘ol days, there were much less people who were actively working on Wikipedia, and moderation programs and features were not nearly as sophisticated. Due to this, it was much easier to deal damage that would last longer and be more harmful. Fast forward a few years, and many new features have been added. There are also many more moderators, in the thousands.

Now, pages that get too many edits or attacks can be “locked”, where they can not be edited at all. When things eventually calm down and people are deterred, the pages can be unlocked again. 

Wikipedia also tracks the IP address of editors that have made multiple malicious edits, so if they make a new account, they can be IP banned (IP banning is banning by location, not by individual account). Even if attackers use VPNs or move to change their IP, Wikipedia moderators can track down the style of edits and methods one uses to trace multiple accounts to one individual. 

There are also several bot programs implemented into Wikipedia to help reduce the total workload of the moderation team. What’s most surprising out of all is that this is from the cooperation of a bunch of random volunteers from around the world, all working together to create a very coherent, stable, and protected source of (mostly) credible information. Even then, professors and educators might not want you to use Wikipedia as your source. Why?

Using Wikipedia to its Fullest Power

When browsing almost any Wikipedia page, you’ll be sure to find tons of blue links and footnotes scattered about. Some of these just link to other Wikipedia articles, but many of them link to sources used for the article. These sources are usually credible, and if not, there might be a note at the top of the page saying that the sources need refinement or fact checking. You can click on any of these links to go right to the direct source of that page’s information. At the bottom of most pages there are also citations for all the sources. For example, when browsing the page for “List of bumblebee species”, you can scroll down to “Bombus Expolitus” and click the link. This leads to a Wikipedia page, where you can find that “Bombus Expolitus” is in fact not an exploding bumblebee, but a species of cuckoo bumblebee. You can then click the link for “cuckoo bumblebee” and find another Wikipedia page explaining what a cuckoo bumblebee is. That page is full of links to other pages, and more importantly, the sources they used.

Those sources might go into more detail or explain a more specific part of that thing. On the page for “Bombus Expolitus”, there is also a note stating that the page is a “stub”, and you can help Wikipedia by expanding it. Other notes like this can be found on unfinished or not fully fact checked pages, so be sure to be on the lookout for them. So, all these sources used by Wikipedia are important. They are important more so if you might be looking for information to cite for, say maybe an essay assignment. There’s a reason why professors might not like Wikipedia as a source, and according to Concordia University, it’s because the information on Wikipedia is very generalized.

Educators might not want such general information for an essay, and would rather you cite something more specific or in detail.

So, here’s the plan for how to use Wikipedia to its fullest power: start by using Wikipedia to get the general idea in your head. Once you’ve done that, or if you already know, start using the sources in Wikipedia to help you find more specific information to learn or cite. These sources might have their own sources, and so on. The more specific, the better. If you’re ever unsure of the credibility of a source, fact check it. There’s also a decent chance Wikipedia has a page on the source you’re looking at, and whether it’s credible. Wikipedia was made to make information more accessible, so use it that way. Wikipedia can help you fast track your source finding and allow making a factual, in depth essay or research project much easier.

Summary and Opinion

Wikipedia is a very impressive collection of people, systems, and information. Most of the time it’s very factual, and discrepancies and uncertainties are made transparent to the user, such as an article being unfinished or sources not fully verified. Wikipedia runs off of entirely volunteer work and donation money, and donating just a little bit can help a lot to keep this system running. While direct citations from Wikipedia may not be desirable, using the huge collection of sources on each page can be very powerful. 

It’s pretty unfortunate that Wikipedia got such a bad reputation, considering all the hard work that is put in and the genuine factuality of most of its pages. The events that happened then were simply the outcome of a smaller, fledgling community and not yet fleshed out systems. While attacks still happen all the time, malicious users are quickly banned and edits are corrected.

So, the next time you’re using Wikipedia, whether that’s to learn about a subject, fact check a tidbit of info, or help find sources for a bigger project, think about how fortunate it is that we have such a big, factual, and free source of information created by mostly random people from around the internet.