Using Wikipedia as a Reliable Reference

There’s no sense resisting Wikipedia. It’s a good resource if used wisely. It’s becoming the planetary encyclopedia. Follow a few simple rules, and citing Wikipedia as a reference is fine.

Wikipedia logo

Wikipedia is fast becoming a legitimate information resource. Since meeting its funding goals for 2009 and beyond , Wikipedia has invested in people and technology to make great strides in its information monitoring and quality control. There is no need to download Wikipedia or install it on a computer. It is available all the time, form any computer connected to the internet.

Reliability of Wikipedia

Wikipedia isn’t 100% accurate and unbiased – almost no source of information is. However, if a Wikipedia entry meets some basic quality requirements it is likely to be as reliable as just about any other source of on-line or printed information. Unlike printed encyclopedias, Wikipedia is updated many times each day. Professionals, educators, students and researchers are using Wikipedia more than ever.

When to Cite Wikipedia

To have a reasonable degree of comfort using information from a Wikipedia page, bear three things in mind.

1) Don’t use the page if it’s a stub. A stub is an article that is essentially a place holder. Stubs are underdeveloped, and need more content to meet Wikipedia’s standard for thoroughness. The content of a stub varies from a sentence or two to a few paragraphs. It usually isn’t hard to find a more comprehensive treatment of the topic somewhere else.

2) Don’t use flagged Wikipedia pages. How strictly you follow this rule, depends on how certain you want to be of the information’s legitimacy. Pages with flags for insufficient references, questionable or possibly biased content, or other quality standards should be avoided.

Sometimes a flag will indicate that the text lacks desirable stylistic attributes (it might be wordy, inconcise, or have too many examples). One might go with that. On the other hand, such problems are an indication of a lack of a professional touch, and such a source is probably best avoided.

2) Check the edit history for the page. It takes a bit of practice to decipher a page history and gain some insight into the evolution of the page itself. The history tab leads deeper into the inner workings of Wikipedia.

Watch out for pages that have a lot of reversions. An editor reverts a page to get rid of someone else’s edits to return the page to a previous state. If this happens a lot it can mean there is truly a disagreement about something (but not necessarily something substantial), or that less-than-knowledgeable editors have been at work.

Use the Revision history statistics link on the history page to find out who is doing the most recent and frequent editing. You may or may not be impressed.

Cross Check Wikipedia Internal Links and References

A common use for Wikipedia is to get a quick refresher on a topic that you already know something about, or to learn about something related to a familiar topic. In this case you are probably a pretty good judge of the information quality. Does the information confirm what you already knew (but perhaps just couldn’t remember)? If you are in doubt about anything, Google it and see if a university or government-based website can confirm some of the facts or assertions appearing on the Wikipedia page. Check the references at the bottom of the Wikipedia page to see if they are legitimate, accessible and relevant.

Judging the worth of Wikipedia information is admittedly somewhat of a subjective art. If you follow through on some basic quality control measures, you shouldn’t have qualms about using and citing Wikipedia as an information source.

Note: This is a re-post of an article originally appearing at Suite101.com.

June 7, 2011 Tags: citing references, Wikipedia Posted in: How To, Technical Writing