From distrust to celebration, Wikipedia’s reputation is changing yet again
Logo via Wikipedia.org.
One of the first lessons I was taught, when learning to research, was to be wary of Wikipedia. My teachers would caution that, because any old fool can post information to the site, we were likely to run into all kinds of falsities.
However, in the present day, when every old fool is posting to the internet, it is becoming clear that misinformation exists in nearly all corners of the internet. And that, perhaps, Wikipedia is not as untrustworthy as we assumed.
Wikipedia, around the time of its creation and through to today, is not well trusted or seen as a “reputable” source. Most would scoff at the suggestion of citing it in any academic bibliography. The site itself even has the disclaimer, which states that “Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here.”
However, in recent years its image has been changing. The Economist applauded the site’s crowd-sourced and peer-edited model for its 20th birthday in 2021. Even the World Health Organization (WHO) collaborated with Wikipedia during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure that up-to-date information on the virus was available.
UVic MFA grad and instructor in the Writing Department, and ex-wildlife biologist, Neil Griffin described Wikipedia as “ the last reliable place of sourced, moderated, peer-edited information” on the Internet.
“I think the editors have a strong sense of pride about that as well,” he said.
Since the website’s inception in 2001, it has garnered over 65 million articles, and attracts over a billion visitors each month. It’s free, regularly updated, and relies on crowd-sourced and fact-checked information — those who contribute are known as Wikipedians.
One of the main policies outlined for contributors is that all information must be verifiable by reputable sources. Even if contributors were to add misinformation to an article, they have to cite where it’s coming from. This strategy, while regarded by any academic as common sense, is largely lacking elsewhere on the internet.
For example, the inescapable “AI Overview” on Google is not beholden to any measures — factual, ethical, or otherwise. Meaning, the results it spouts can be “inaccurate and offensive.” There may be a few articles in the sidebar, pointing to where the information is coming from, but more often it is simply a hodgepodge of buzzwords that can be better sorted through by reading the top search results.
Wikipedia also operates on a fairly democratic basis. Although some articles cannot be edited by everyone, so as to prevent “disruption and vandalism,” nearly all of the content in the encyclopedia is up for debate and rigorous fact-checking.
To ensure this, every page has a “talk” tab, allowing for open discussion about how to improve the content of the article and also to check its verifiability. The tabs include information such as archives of past versions, whether or not the article falls under the “good article” criteria, and it also encourages editors to engage in meaningful discussions and avoid “personal attacks.”
“I hope that people who are engaged and [sincerely] interested in ideas of truth that are starting with Wikipedia are hopefully still going to a book, perhaps a library, perhaps a librarian,” said Griffin. “But, I would hope that … if your choice is [between] Google or Wikipedia, [you’d] choose Wikipedia.”
This model of open dialogue, along with the encyclopedia’s not-for-profit basis, makes Wikipedia so successful, and such a sanctuary for fact-checked information in an increasingly AI-polluted internet.
Wikipedia is owned by the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a registered American non-profit. The foundation is not responsible for creating any wiki-affiliated content, but rather provides the structure and support for volunteers to do so. The funding for these projects is provided mostly through crowd-sourced donations, with occasional grants given by philanthropic and tech organizations.
This profit model (or rather, lack thereof) is the encyclopedia’s other greatest strength. Their freedom from shareholders means they are less susceptible to certain kinds of bias and can continue operating on a volunteer basis, where most contributors are simply passionate individuals who edit for the fun of it, and for the enjoyment of being in a community. The lack of profit incentive has protected Wikipedia from the “enshittification” or “platform decay” that is the downfall of many for-profit or ad-based digital services.
However, Wikipedia is not without its own biases. According to Katherine Maher, Wikimedia’s executive director and CEO, the majority of writers and editors on the site are males, who live in North America and Europe and have the time to contribute to miscellaneous articles about topics they are interested in. Wikipedia actively runs campaigns to try and broaden its editor demographics.
The shift in attitudes towards sites like Wikipedia demonstrates how much further, and more quickly, we are spiraling into a new frontier of the internet. With people losing trust in online sources of information, perhaps it’s time to turn back to our roots — and maybe even take a step further and go back to paper-bound encyclopedias.
Although, Griffin said, “Wikipedia is probably more aggressively fact-checked than most books that are published these days.”
