Researching with Wikipedia

Wikipedia can be a great tool for learning and researching information. However, as with all reference works, Wikipedia is not considered to be a reliable source as not everything in Wikipedia is accurate, comprehensive, or unbiased. Many of the general rules of thumb for conducting research apply to Wikipedia, including:
* Always be wary of any one single source (in any medium—web, print, television or radio), or of multiple works that derive from a single source.
* Where articles have references to external sources (whether online or not) read the references and check whether they really do support what the article says.
* In most academic institutions, Wikipedia, like most encyclopedias and other tertiary sources, is unacceptable as a source for facts in a research paper. Some encyclopedias such as ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' have notable authors working for them and may be cited as a secondary source in some cases; institutional policies will vary. For example,
Cornell University's online guide to APA style
uses citations from ''Britannica'' in some of its examples.
However, because of Wikipedia's unique nature, there are also some rules for conducting research that are special to Wikipedia, and some general rules that do not apply to Wikipedia.

Background knowledge for researchers about Wikipedia

:''Potential researchers and other serious users are strongly encouraged to read About Wikipedia for a summary overview and understanding of Wikipedia.''

A slightly longer "nutshell" summary

* For the most part, Wikipedia has similar strengths and weaknesses to any other encyclopedia.
* Major additional strengths:
** Keeps up to date well.
** You can ask questions.
** The history of an article and the process around how it was written are transparent.
* Major additional weaknesses:
** Articles vary wildly in quality and comprehensiveness.
** At any given moment, an article may be in a vandalized state (rare, but not negligible).
** Biases are unpredictable.

Overview of Wikipedia

In a wiki, articles are never "finished". They are continually edited and (usually) improved over time. In general this results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a fair and balanced representation of information.

Users should be aware that not all articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start. Indeed, many articles start out by giving one—perhaps not particularly evenhanded—view of the subject, and it is after a long process of discussion, debate, and argument that they gradually take on a consensus form. Others may become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint and can take some time—months perhaps—to regain a better-balanced consensus.

In part, this is because Wikipedia operates mainly on an informal process to resolve such issues. When editors cannot agree on content and approach, it is likely to take a bit of time before more experienced editors enter the picture. Even then, on inherently controversial topics, those more experienced editors may have their own axes to grind.

The ''ideal'' Wikipedia article is balanced, neutral, and encyclopedic, containing notable verifiable knowledge. Over time, an increasing number of articles have reached this standard. However, this process can take months or years, as each user contributes in turn. Some articles contain statements and claims that have not yet been fully cited. Others will later have entire new sections added. Some information now in the article may be considered by later contributors to be insufficiently founded and may be removed or expanded.

While the overall trend is generally upward, it is not uniformly upward. It is important to use Wikipedia carefully if it is intended to be used as a research source. Individual articles will, by the very nature of Wikipedia, vary in standard and maturity. This page is intended to help users and researchers do this effectively.

''See also'' the article Reliability of Wikipedia, which summarizes third-party studies and assessments of Wikipedia.

Notable strengths of Wikipedia

Wikipedia has certain advantages over other reference works. Being web-based and having a very large number of active writers and editors, it provides fast coverage of many topics and provides hyperlinking, unavailable in traditional media.

Also, it often provides access to subject matter that is otherwise inaccessible in non-native languages. Since English Wikipedia editors come from all around the world, the relative lack of non-Western topics found in many Western publications is significantly less noticeable on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia often produces excellent articles about newsworthy events within days of their occurrence, such as the 2007 Wimbledon Championships, Lal Masjid siege, kidnapping of Alan Johnston, or the Benoit family tragedy. Similarly, it is one of the few sites on the web even attempting neutral, objective, encyclopedic coverage of popular culture, including television series or science fiction. It is also developing across-the-board global coverage of subject areas where for one reason or another existing sources are highly fragmented, including sports such as football/soccer and golf.

In comparison with most other web-based resources, Wikipedia's open approach tremendously increases the chances that any particular factual error or misleading statement will be promptly corrected. As Wikipedia is a collaborative, ongoing project, one may also ask questions of an article's authors. And thanks to its extensive use of hyperlinks and external links, Wikipedia can be an excellent guide to other related material, both on and off Wiki.

Notable weaknesses of Wikipedia

Wikipedia's most dramatic weaknesses are closely associated with its greatest strengths. Wikipedia's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example, it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipedia is certainly more subject to subtle vandalism and deliberate factual errors than a typical reference work.

Also, much as Wikipedia can rapidly produce articles on timely topics, it is also subject to remarkable oversights and omissions. There is no systematic process to make sure that "obviously important" topics are written about, so at any given time Wikipedia may be wildly out of balance in the relative attention paid to two different topics. For example, it is far more likely that the English-language Wikipedia will have at least some material about any given small U.S. village than about a given moderately-sized city in sub-Saharan Africa.

Another closely related issue is that particular Wikipedia articles (or series of related articles) are liable to be incomplete in ways that would be unusual in a more tightly-controlled reference work. Sometimes this is obvious (as with a stub article) but other times it may be subtle: one side of a controversial issue may be excellently presented, while the other is barely mentioned; a portion of someone's life (not always the most notable portion) may be covered in detail, while other aspects may be presented only sketchily or not at all; coverage of a country's history may focus on the incidents that drew international attention, or may simply reflect the interest and expertise of some individual writer.

Another problem with a lot of content on Wikipedia is that many contributors do not cite their sources—something that makes it hard for the reader to judge the credibility of what is written. As of 2010, this problem has almost certainly been diminishing over the last several years, but it has not gone away.

Article quality in Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a wiki—a collaborative, open-source medium. Just as human knowledge evolves, so does our wiki coverage of it. Wiki articles are continually edited and improved over time, and in general this results in an upward trend of quality and a growing consensus over a fair balanced representation of information. It will tend to gain citations, new sections, and so forth. Dubious statements tend to be removed over time, but they may have a long life before they are removed.

However, few articles are of encyclopedic quality from the start. Indeed, many articles commence their lives as partisan drafts, and it may take a long process of discussion, debate, and argument to yield a consensus form. Other articles may, for a while, become caught up in a heavily unbalanced viewpoint, and it can take some time to restore a balanced consensus.
Wikipedia has various processes to reach consensus about an article, including mechanisms to bring in broader participation to controversial articles.

The ''ideal'' Wikipedia article is neutral, referenced, and encyclopedic, containing notable, verifiable knowledge. An increasing number of articles reach this standard over time. Because this is an open wiki, there is no guarantee that a featured article retains its quality over time, and of course an older featured article does not magically improve as Wikipedia's standards generally rise. As of August 2006, 19% of one-time feature articles degraded, or failed to rise with the general standards, to the point of losing their featured status.

Keep in mind that an encyclopedia is intended to be a ''starting point'' for serious research, not an endpoint. Though many casual inquiries will be satisfied merely by referring to Wikipedia, you will learn more by accessing the print and online resources we reference. We encourage you to verify our content by using independent sources. We also invite you to contribute back by fixing any errors you may find and adding relevant material that will be of interest to future researchers.

Editorial administration, oversight and management

The Wikipedia community is largely self-organising, so that anyone may build a reputation as a competent editor and become involved in any role they may choose, subject to peer approval. Individuals often will choose to become involved in specialized tasks, such as reviewing articles at others' request, watching current edits for vandalism, or watching newly created articles for quality control purposes, or similar roles. Editors who find that editorial administrator responsibility would benefit their ability to help the Wikipedia community may ask their peers in the community for agreement to undertake such roles. This approval process helps to create and maintain a structure which enforces meritocracy and communal standards of editorship and conduct. Administrative and other similar roles are achieved only after a nomination process and a poll that shows at least 75-80% approval, a standard which tends to ensure a high level of experience, trust, and familiarity across a broad front of projects within Wikipedia.

A variety of software assisted systems and automated programs help several hundred editors to watch for problematic edits and editors. An arbitration committee sits at the top of all editor conduct disputes, and its members are elected by an established enquiry and decision-making process in which all regular editors can equally participate.

Special research considerations concerning Wikipedia

Use multiple independent sources

Because Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL, its content is often reproduced, especially online. Researchers should be especially careful of the FUTON bias ("Full Text On the Net" bias) and ensure that a second article appearing to confirm a Wikipedia article is not (for example) simply a copy of an earlier version. One place to look for additional sources to use in assessing the quality of a Wikipedia article is to look at the sources it cites. An article that faithfully reflects the information and intent of a large number of high quality sources is likely to be a very reliable indicator of the current state of knowledge on a subject. An article with fewer or no sources listed or sources of lower quality may not reflect a researcher's desired high quality. The only way to ensure the article faithfully reflects the information in high quality sources is to read and understand the cited sources and perhaps others. Often at the least a Wikipedia article will be an excellent overview of a given subject, making it easier to understand the cited sources and know what type of information to look for.

Examine an article's history

The process of creating Wikipedia is radically open. As a result, unlike most reference works, it is possible that, even for a generally excellent and stable article, the latest version at any given moment may have been subject to recent edits which are not of the same quality as the rest of the article.

However, unlike most reference works, you can access the history of the article (previous versions and change comments) and the discussion between the editors who created it. Often, if you have questions about an article or are looking to do in-depth research on a subject, reading the history and talk pages gives you further insight into why the article says what it says and which points of the article (if any) are in dispute and may particularly merit further research.

Internal links

Wikipedia breathes new life into one of the initial dreams of the World Wide Web: hyperlinks. Hyperlinks allow Wikipedia authors to link any word or phrase to another Wikipedia article, often providing annotations of great value. Background information to an article no longer needs to be limited or even produced by the author of the article. This method has proved to have major limitations on the Internet as a whole, because for a variety of reasons links are prone to quickly become obsolete. However, internal links within Wikipedia can be made with confidence, and so Wikipedia serves a web of mutually supporting information.

Some articles are probably over-linked with important links liable to be lost like needles in a haystack. Also, someone may have linked a word without looking to see whether it leads to anything useful: you may follow up a link and find nothing more than what you just read, or even find an article on an unrelated meaning of the same word. In general, this problem is less common in the English-language Wikipedia than in Wikipedias in some other languages.

Categories

Wikipedia has had its own user defined category system (folksonomy) since the beginning of 2004. The category system is a collaborative categorization system using freely chosen keywords by all contributors to Wikipedia. This feature allows researchers to navigate Wikipedia via categories, which can be very useful.

Virtually all articles now have some form of categorization; however, the quality of this can be highly variable. In many topic areas contributors have created detailed and well-organized categorization; in other topic areas, categorization has occurred in a more ''ad hoc'' fashion and is sometimes poorly done.

In all categorized articles, you should be able to find a list of categories at the very bottom of that article.

Take advantage of "what links here"

One of the lesser known, but extremely useful, techniques for researching with Wikipedia is the effective use of the " What links here" link which appears on the left side of the screen, as the first item in the box marked "toolbox". This will give you a complete list of other Wikipedia articles which link to the current article. Even if the article you are looking at is a stub—or, more remarkably, if it is a blank article that has not yet been started—numerous related articles may be easily accessible through this feature. Sometimes these backward links will show you ways in which the article you started from is incomplete in one area or another.

Take advantage of "printable version"

Another feature of the "toolbox" is the "Printable version". Use it whenever you want to print articles for a printer-friendly version of the article. Browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox, that recognize the media print will automatically apply the printable version when printing with the default Monobook stylesheet.

Understand Wikipedia's biases

No good scholar expects any given reference work to be truly unbiased. Instead, one comes to understand the expected bias of a particular work. For example, in looking at the ''1911 Encyclopædia Britannica'', one expects to find some Anglocentric