I occasionally interact with writers who say Wikipedia was their source for a blog post, story, social media update, etc.
And I shudder.
Did you know that anyone can join Wikipedia? That means you could register under an assumed name and set up a page — with your own bias — on any topic. Or you could generate an article about one of your fictional characters. Or a page about you and your wonderful (fake) accomplishments.
Wikipedia itself admits it’s not a reliable source:
“Wikipedia is not a reliable source. Wikipedia can be edited by anyone at any time. This means that any information it contains at any particular time could be vandalism, a work in progress, or just plain wrong. Biographies of living persons, subjects that happen to be in the news, and politically or culturally contentious topics are especially vulnerable to these issues. Edits on Wikipedia that are in error may eventually be fixed. However, because Wikipedia is a volunteer run project, it cannot monitor every contribution all of the time. There are many errors that remain unnoticed for days, weeks, months, or even years. Therefore, Wikipedia should not be considered a definitive source in and of itself.”
You’ve been forewarned. Now you can approach Wikipedia, fully aware of the possible difficulties or consequences, and decide whether the facts you find on its site are authentic.
Let’s Consider a Possible Scenario
You find a Wiki article about a ball game called bont. Before you rely on the information in the article, you review the following page:
Aha, there it is: a hoax that has been online since August 17, 2006. Back to the drawing board.
Another Scenario
You create an outline for your WIP. Your protagonist believes that unicorns are real. You want to support her belief with evidence.
You end up at a Wikipedia article about unicorns, and you check the hoaxes page. The article isn’t listed. That’s a good start.
You scrutinize the unicorn info.
Hmm, not much support for my protagonist’s theory. The page refers to unicorns as legendary creatures, although they are mentioned in the King James Version of the Bible.
Now you scroll down to the References and External links sections on the source page and check every URL, eliminating links that go to other Wikipedia pages. You analyze the sites. Are they reputable?
Yes.
You sigh.
Well, either unicorns are mythical creatures, or … Wait a sec. Wikipedia isn’t the only source out there.
You google “real unicorns” and find a CNN page that says, “Real unicorn remains found.”
That looks promising. … Nope, not so much.
Although the Siberian unicorns mentioned in the story don’t look anything like the majestic animals of fairytales and mythology, now you have some facts to work with.
Did Wikipedia help? A bit, although you wasted a lot of time before you found a workable premise on another website.
But Don’t Ignore Wikipedia
Even though other sources might prove more reliable, Wikipedia can provide a foundation. Scrutinize whatever you find and evaluate the details, exercising caution with every cited source.
For example, if you’re looking for information about a medical condition, and the Wiki refers to WebMD, you can trust the information more than you would trust details on a site maintained by a hobby blogger.
The Writer’s Lexicon series
and additional resources on my Facebook page.
Alternatives
Online newspapers, encyclopedias, and fact databases provide excellent research fodder.
To locate specific types of information online, try searches similar to the following, retaining the quotation marks and filling in the blank:
“reliable sources of __________ information”
A few suggestions to get you started:
“reliable sources of medical information”
“reliable sources of historical information”
“reliable sources of scientific information”
“reliable sources of biographical information”
“reliable sources of civil war information”
And don’t forget the library! You’ll find a wealth of resources there.
Or maybe a digital library?
A Few Helpful Sites
Google Scholar: “Stand on the shoulders of giants” to find articles on just about any topic you can think of. Civil war? Yes. John F. Kennedy? Ditto. Gardening? You betcha. You can even find information on case law.
Online Etymology Dictionary: “The online etymology dictionary is the internet’s go-to source for quick and reliable accounts of the origin and history of English words, phrases, and idioms. It is professional enough to satisfy academic standards, but accessible enough to be used by anyone. The site has become a favorite resource of teachers of reading, spelling, and English as a second language.”
The CIA World Factbook: “… information on the history, people and society, government, economy, energy, geography, communications, transportation, military, and transnational issues for 267 world entities. The Reference tab includes: a variety of world, regional, country, ocean, and time zone maps; Flags of the World; and a Country Comparison function that ranks the country information and data in more than 75 Factbook fields.”
ProQuest: “… committed to supporting the important work happening in the world’s research and learning communities. The company curates content that matters to the advancement of knowledge, assembling an archive of billions of vetted, indexed documents. It simplifies workflows so that people and institutions use time effectively. And because ProQuest connects information communities, complex networks of systems and processes work together efficiently. With ProQuest, finding answers and deriving insights is straightforward and leads to extraordinary outcomes.”
JSTOR: “We help you explore a wide range of scholarly content through a powerful research and teaching platform. We collaborate with the academic community to help libraries connect students and faculty to vital content while lowering costs and increasing shelf space, provide independent researchers with free and low-cost access to scholarship, and help publishers reach new audiences and preserve their content for future generations.”
Dead URLs Don’t Always Mean Lost Information
The internet contains so many disappearing or changing URLs that it would be difficult to provide an accurate list of research resources in a post like this. If I were to locate a hundred sites, by this time next year, a few would be inactive.
However …
There’s a way to locate some pages that have disappeared from the online landscape: Archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
Why only some pages? Webmasters often block crawlers that disobey the directives in their robots.txt tile. A misbehaved bot can wreak havoc on a site with hundreds of pages to crawl, taxing server resources and frustrating users with pages that take forever to load.
Look at the snapshot I found for AltaVista search engine, April 5, 2001, 14:08:24. AltaVista used to be my favorite landing page. It was purchased by Overture Services, Inc. and subsequently acquired by Yahoo! Nowadays if you try to access AltaVista.com, you are redirected to a Yahoo! search page.
Takeaway
Double check everything you read on Wikipedia. Remember its warning: “Wikipedia should not be considered a definitive source in and of itself.”
The Writer’s Lexicon series
and additional resources on my Facebook page.
Discover more from KathySteinemann.com: Free Resources for Writers
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Hey! I actually write for Wikipedia part-time and this is actually a really big misconception. While this used to be the case many years ago- this isn’t the case anymore. To publish and write on Wikipedia, you have to have primary and secondary sources, and if you don’t know what that is, your contribution to Wikipedia will be taken off promptly by their moderators. If ANY bias is posted on Wikipedia- you will be banned for 2 years.
Trust me, there is a vetting process- you can’t even post content when your IP address is connected to a VPN service. There are a lot of hoops and source material to jump through to be able to post new content. Even to make a correction on an article, it requires you to have a primary source linked. If not- it is taken down.
Several years ago- you could write anything you wanted, however, not anymore. This is a misconception that the leadership at Wikipedia is trying to change. This type of false narrative is not helpful. In fact, many nationally recognized and accredited schools have partnered with Wikipedia and Wikimedia, and thousands of professors author articles on our sites.
Then why, Edw, does Wikipedia remind users that it’s not a reliable source? I realize it now has a warning at the top of hoax articles, but until Wikipedia deletes all the hoaxes and assures users that its information is accurate, it still can’t be trusted.
Excellent information, Kathy. Thanks for sharing. <3
And thanks for visiting, Colleen!
Thanks for this fantastic information Kathy! 🙂
You’re welcome, Debby! Nice to see you on the blog again.
Hi Kathy ~
I enjoy your writing tips and appreciate such great information. Now, please explain to me what a bot is all about because I don’t understand this term or what they are or what they do. And if they “misbehave” (?) what does one do about it?
Thanks!
Caroline
Thanks, Caroline!
A bot is an app that goes out on the internet and performs tasks like indexing pages for search engines. A well-behaved bot will stay away from pages specified as off-limits in the robots.txt file of a website, and will obey directives like only indexing (crawling) a certain number of pages per minute. For example, if robots.txt sets a crawl-delay of 10, bots are only supposed to access one page every 10 seconds.
The first avenue for webmasters to control bot traffic is to set up a robots.txt file. Good bots will look for the file and obey its directives. Bad bots may ignore robots.txt, or look for the file and disobey some or all of the directives. The webmaster may then decide to deny the bad bot via the site’s .htaccess file.
Thanks, Caroline, for asking the question and thanks to Kathy for answering.
When I can find my brain, I shall study Kathy’s reply and try to understand! (Not good with tech.)
Wishing you both a good weekend.
Ask away if you have any questions, Zarayna!
Thank you so much, Kathy.
I often start with a Wikipedia article and use it to find other references. The references lists at the end have often led me to useful articles and books, but I never take anything in Wikipedia at face value. I know the pitfalls. Thanks for your post. I found some new (for me) resources here.
I agree, Rosi, those reference lists can save hours of research, as long as the references are vetted.
Kathy, I love research, so thanks for a super helpful post! https://www.wordhippo.com/ is a must-have for writers: synonyms, antonyms, rhymes, translations etc. etc.
However, I’m intrigued by the notion of misbehaved bots. Are they the same — or different — from those naughty rogue bots? Pesky little critters turn up everywhere, don’t they?
Thanks for the reference link, Ruth!
The misbehaved bot from archive.org crawled my site at a much faster rate than I specify in my robots.txt file. More information about their bot can be found at https://archive.org/details/archive.org_bot. I might reallow them periodically — maybe once a year — so that my site shows some results. And if they behave, I may remove the restriction.
Speaking of bots, I think that’s the reason I’ve had problems posting in groups at Facebook.
A valuable post. I do use Wikipedia, but am fully aware of the pitfalls. I have discovered many sites by using a search engine that are much more reliable than Wikipedia.
For my current WIP, I have searched for things like how the Vikings celebrated Yule, how they built their longhouses, their religious beliefs and ceremonies like birth, marriage and death. There are lots of websites out there for almost anything if you search. OK, Wikipedia comes up, but always check using other websites, too.
Incidentally, I have discovered there is evidence that the Vikings did not celebrate Yule on the solstice, as many sites say, but in January or February, and it’s linked to the moon phases, not the sun, much like our Easter.
Right on, Vivienne. You know how to research the research. Many people don’t, and they accept Wikipedia as incontrovertible proof.
Interesting details about the Vikings. Thanks for the info.
Thank you for posting this reminder, Kathy.
I used to donate to Wiki until I discovered that big money folk ruthlessly smear anyone who threatens their ‘products’ however inadvertently.
In addition, there are ‘fragile’ folk with weird ideas, control freaks and just the plain delusional who have access to this resource and can remove or add what they wish should they be determined enough.
Thus, I use and am grateful for, Wiki when a topic is relatively unimportant but for anything else, I search wide and as deep as I can – guided by ‘follow the money and ‘who has the power.’
Thanks again.
Hmm, Zarayna. I never considered the big money angle. It makes sense. Thanks for offering more perspective!