Using Wikipedia: Crash Course Navigating Digital Information #5

Summary

In this Crash Course episode, John Green discusses the reputation and utility of Wikipedia, highlighting its evolution from a platform with questionable reliability to a valuable starting point for research. Despite its open editing policy, Wikipedia has implemented stringent content policies and a community of volunteer editors to ensure accuracy. Green emphasizes the importance of lateral reading and using Wikipedia's breadth of topics as a guide to further research and verification, rather than a definitive source.

Takeaways

• 😀 John Green introduces himself and acknowledges the potential bias in personal websites, emphasizing the importance of lateral reading and using multiple sources.
• 📚 Wikipedia, despite its reputation, can serve as a starting point for research due to its breadth and the community effort behind its content.
• 🌐 As the internet's largest general reference work, Wikipedia contains over 40 million articles across 301 languages, providing a vast array of topics.
• 🔍 Wikipedia's utility lies in its ability to offer an overview of topics and direct citations to sources, acting as a guide for further exploration.
• 🚫 Wikipedia's initial reputation was marred by ease of editing, leading to potential inaccuracies, but it has since matured with stricter content policies.
• 🛡️ Rigorous content policies, including neutrality, no original research, and verifiability, are enforced by Wikipedians and bots to maintain article quality.
• 👥 The Wikipedia community consists of volunteers, administrators, and bots, working together to create, edit, and monitor content for accuracy.
• 🔒 Protection mechanisms are in place for contentious or vandalized pages, with varying levels of editing restrictions to ensure accuracy.
• ⚠️ Warning labels and notes on Wikipedia pages alert readers to potential issues with the content, such as bias or lack of sources.
• 🔗 The citations found on Wikipedia pages are valuable for lateral reading and can lead to more authoritative sources for in-depth research.
• ⚖️ While Wikipedia has made significant strides, it is not without flaws, including issues with accuracy, gender and racial biases, and reliance on published sources.

Q & A

Who is the host of Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information?

The host of Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information is John Green.

What are some of the roles John Green has in addition to being an author?

In addition to being an author, John Green is also a vlogger, writer, producer, actor, editor, and educator.

What is the importance of reading laterally when evaluating new information?

Reading laterally means looking to other sources to provide context and ensure that one is not relying on a single source, which can be biased or incomplete.

Why has Wikipedia been criticized for being unreliable?

Wikipedia has been criticized for being unreliable because it is editable by almost anyone, which can lead to the introduction of inaccuracies or misinformation.

What is the Wikimedia Foundation and its relation to Wikipedia?

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization that owns and supports Wikipedia, which is the Internet's largest general reference work.

How has Wikipedia evolved since its launch in 2001 to address concerns about its reliability?

Wikipedia has grown up since 2001 by implementing more rigorous content policies, requiring registered users to create articles, enforcing notability standards for article topics, and having a community of Wikipedians and bots to prevent and correct bad edits.

What are the three key phrases that summarize Wikipedia's core content policies?

The three key phrases that summarize Wikipedia's core content policies are: 1) A neutral point of view, 2) No original research, and 3) Verifiability.

What is the role of administrators within the Wikipedia community?

Administrators within the Wikipedia community have a higher level of authority and can delete pages, respond to vandalism, or lock a page so only certain people can make changes.

How can one tell if a Wikipedia page is locked for editing?

A Wikipedia page that is locked for editing will have a padlock icon in the upper right-hand corner, with different colors indicating the level of protection.

Why shouldn't Wikipedia be used as the sole source for in-depth research?

Wikipedia should not be used as the sole source for in-depth research because it is not always accurate, and its content is a product of its community, which can reflect biases. It should be used as a starting point for research and lateral reading.

What is the significance of the citations found in Wikipedia articles?

The citations found in Wikipedia articles are significant because they provide a way to verify the information presented and can lead to more authoritative sources for further research.

Outlines

00:00

📚 Introduction to Wikipedia's Role in Digital Information

John Green introduces the topic of navigating digital information with a focus on Wikipedia. He discusses his personal biases and the importance of not relying on a single source. Green emphasizes the need for lateral reading and using Wikipedia as a starting point for research due to its breadth and accessibility. Despite its reputation for unreliability, Green argues that Wikipedia, with its rigorous content policies and community of volunteer editors, can be a valuable resource when used correctly.

05:01

🔍 Understanding Wikipedia's Editorial Process and Community

This section delves into the editorial process of Wikipedia, highlighting the community's role in maintaining content quality. It discusses the transparency of Wikipedia's editing history, the presence of administrators, and the buddy system that ensures accountability. The paragraph also touches on the various levels of article protection and the use of warning labels to alert readers to potential issues with content. The importance of using Wikipedia for lateral reading and not as a sole source of information is reiterated.

10:01

🔎 Evaluating Wikipedia's Reliability and Using It as a Research Tool

The final paragraph addresses the criticism surrounding Wikipedia's reliability and the community's efforts to maintain accuracy. It discusses the mixed results of studies comparing Wikipedia's accuracy to other reference works and acknowledges the platform's weaknesses, including issues with gender and racial biases. The paragraph concludes with advice on using Wikipedia as a starting point for research, suggesting that it should be treated as a launchpad rather than a comprehensive source. It encourages viewers to use Wikipedia's citations to find more authoritative sources.

Keywords

💡Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, online encyclopedia that allows anyone with internet access to contribute and edit its content. It is a collaborative project run by the Wikimedia Foundation and is known for its extensive coverage of topics in multiple languages. In the video, Wikipedia is highlighted as a starting point for research and lateral reading, despite its reputation for potential inaccuracies. The script discusses how Wikipedia has evolved to implement stricter content policies and relies on a community of volunteer editors to maintain its quality.

💡Lateral Reading

Lateral reading is a critical thinking strategy where one consults multiple sources to verify and contextualize information. The video emphasizes the importance of not relying solely on one source, like Wikipedia, but using it to find other, more reliable sources. This approach helps in evaluating the credibility of information found online, as demonstrated when the script suggests looking at Wikipedia's citations for a topic to find authoritative sources.

💡Notability

Notability, in the context of Wikipedia, refers to the standard that a subject must meet to be considered worthy of an article. The video mentions that Wikipedia has guidelines requiring that topics have a certain level of recognition or significance before they can be included in the encyclopedia. This helps maintain a certain quality threshold and relevance for the content on the platform.

💡Neutral Point of View

A neutral point of view (NPOV) is a core policy of Wikipedia that mandates all articles must be written from a balanced perspective, representing fairly, proportionately, and without bias. The script explains that this policy is crucial for maintaining the encyclopedia's credibility, as it ensures that all viewpoints are considered and presented objectively.

💡Original Research

Original research on Wikipedia is prohibited, meaning that all content must be derived from published, reliable sources. This policy is in place to prevent the spread of unverified or unreviewed information. The video script uses this term to illustrate the importance of sourcing information from reputable external works rather than creating new, unverified content.

💡Verifiability

Verifiability is a key principle for Wikipedia articles, requiring that all information must be able to be checked against reliable sources. The video script discusses how this principle ensures that readers can validate the information they find on Wikipedia, contributing to its reliability as a reference tool.

💡Administrators

Administrators on Wikipedia are volunteer users who have been granted additional privileges to manage the platform, such as deleting pages, responding to vandalism, or locking pages to prevent edits. The script mentions that as of the time of filming, there were 1,206 administrators for the English Wikipedia site, highlighting their role in maintaining the quality and integrity of the content.

💡Vandalism

Vandalism on Wikipedia refers to the act of intentionally adding false or inappropriate information to articles. The video script notes that certain articles, especially those on sensitive or controversial topics, are more prone to vandalism, and Wikipedia employs various protective measures, including locking articles, to prevent such incidents.

💡Citations

Citations on Wikipedia are references to reliable sources that support the information presented in an article. The script encourages viewers to use these citations as a way to find more in-depth and authoritative sources for further research. Citations are seen as a bridge from Wikipedia to higher-quality research materials.

💡Thought Bubble

The 'Thought Bubble' segment in the video is a hypothetical scenario used to illustrate how to apply the concept of lateral reading. It demonstrates how to use Wikipedia to evaluate the credibility of an unfamiliar website by cross-referencing information and examining the citations provided.

Highlights

John Green discusses the importance of not relying on a single source and the concept of lateral reading.

Wikipedia's role as a starting point for research due to its breadth of topics.

The evolution of Wikipedia's credibility and the community's efforts to ensure accuracy.

Wikipedia's policies on neutral point of view, no original research, and verifiability.

The structure of Wikipedia's community, including volunteer editors and administrators.

How to use Wikipedia's 'Talk' pages and 'View History' tabs to understand the article's development.

Wikipedia's protection mechanisms against vandalism and controversial edits.

The use of warning labels on Wikipedia pages to indicate potential issues with content.

John Green's personal experience using Wikipedia citations to find authoritative sources.

Critiques of Wikipedia's reliability and the mixed results from various studies on its accuracy.

Discussion on Wikipedia's community biases and how they affect the content.

Advice on using Wikipedia as a launchpad for research rather than the final destination.

John Green's recommendation to use Wikipedia as one of several lateral reading sources.

The importance of treating Wikipedia as a general overview and a stepping stone to more in-depth research.

John Green's humorous note on the value of real-life friends, including pets, over online sources.

Transcripts

Hello and welcome to Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information, I’m John Green.

According to my Wikipedia page, I’m an American author, vlogger, writer, producer, actor,

editor, and educator.

I’ve released some books, won some awards, got married, had kids, and I have a brother

named Hank.

There’s also a photo of me from VidCon in 2014 in which I’m wearing a football scarf

which is very on-brand.

Now, you could’ve learned a lot of that stuff from my personal website--but then again,

I have a certain bias in how I present myself.

For instance, I would never write about Hank on my website.

He can start his own web site if he wants that free promo.

Also, as we’ve discussed through this series, you shouldn’t use one single site as a definitive source.

When evaluating new information, we have to read laterally.

That means looking to other sources to provide context.

Now it’s not always easy to find sources to consult, but when used correctly, Wikipedia

can be a great place to start.

Right, I know that wikipedia can be unreliable.

My own wikipedia page once briefly said that I was a professional Lacrosse player.

And I am an actor only in the sense that I was cut from the one movie I appeared in,

but I do think we can use wikipedia for good.

INTRO

So, many of us have been told by teachers,

librarians, parents, peers, coworkers, friends, pen pals, babysitters, nieces and nephews,

celebrity spokespeople, Instagram famous dogs, our favorite baristas, particularly cogent

toddlers, religious leaders, Jeff Goldblum, long lost cousins, and anonymous twitter trolls

never to use Wikipedia.

You’ve probably heard that Wikipedia is full of totally unusable, unreliable information

written by random internet users.

I’m here to dispel that myth.

Well, me and my friends at MediaWise.

Now, it’s true that Wikipedia is editable by almost anyone, and its content is created

by a community of mostly volunteer Wikipedians.

The whole network is owned and supported by a non-profit, called the Wikimedia Foundation.

And Wikipedia has become the Internet’s largest general reference work, with over

40 million articles in 301 languages, including over 5.7 million articles in English.

While you’re there, you can learn about anything from the Gothic Bible to Whitney

Houston’s 1985 hit “How Will I Know” to the absolutely terrifying star-nosed mole.

I don’t know what it is about the star nosed mole, but it freaks me out so bad.

I’ve had dreams about it.

Anyway.

It’s got a great Wikipedia page.

Now, you’re not going to learn every single thing about a topic by reading its Wikipedia

page.

The universe is much more complicated than even an endless online encyclopedia could

account for.

But what makes Wikipedia useful to citizens of the internet is its breadth.

It provides information on more topics than any print encyclopedia could, and a top-notch

Wikipedia page can provide a solid overview of a topic and also provide citations to sources

for it’s claims.

It’s kind of like a tour guide -- it gives you a general lay of the land and shows you

where to discover more.

Even fact checkers use Wikipedia to familiarize themselves with unknown topics.

Now, when Wikipedia first launched in 2001, it got a bad reputation because of how easy

it was to create and edit articles.

Essentially anyone with an internet connection could log on and update their high school’s

“notable alumni” to include their own name.

You could also delete your brother’s Wikipedia page on the grounds that he wasn’t a notable

person.

Not that I ever did that!

I mean that, that would be terrible.

That flexibility, to put it diplomatically, is likely why teachers and others have warned

you against it.

But Wikipedia has grown up a lot since 2001.

It’s nearly 18.

Wikipedia is almost an adult--and it’s starting to act like it.

Today anyone with an internet connection can still edit most pages on Wikipedia, but

there are much more rigorous content policies in place and more Wikipedians and even bots

around to prevent and correct bad edits.

Like, if you repeatedly add yourself to your high school’s notable alumni section, you

can bet an editor will be close behind to keep you humble.

You also now have to be a registered user to create an article and article topics have

to meet a standard of notability before they can even be created.

Wikipedians also adhere to a set of rules when editing and writing content.

Their core content policies are summed up by three key phrases.

1.

A neutral point of view, meaning content must be represented fairly, proportionately and

without bias.

2.

No original research, meaning all material must come from a published, reliable source.

And 3.

Verifiability, meaning people reading and editing articles must be able to check that

the information comes from a reliable source.

Now, policies and rules are all well and good, but they’re only as good as the people who

enforce them.

So volunteer Wikipedians act as writers and editors and also they keep each other in check.

There are also administrators, who have a higher level of authority, and they can do

things like delete pages, or respond to vandalism, or even lock a page so only certain people

can make changes.

But they’re not all-knowing gods.

They’re regular Wikipedians in good standing with the community because they’ve proven

themselves to be responsible editors who use accurate, documented information.

As of the day we filmed this video, there are 1,206 administrators for the English Wikipedia

site.

In contrast, there are over 34.8 million registered Wikipedians, about 134,000 of whom have edited

in the past month.

The good thing about this giant buddy system is that it has to be pretty transparent in

order to function.

At the top of a Wikipedia article you’ll see little tabs.

One says Article, that’s pretty self-explanatory.

And then there’s Talk.

That’s where you can see the conversation Wikipedians have had about editing that article.

On the American Civil War page, there’s even a Frequently Asked Questions section.

And under a page’s View History tab you can see how and when an article has been edited,

and by whom.

Some pages are especially prone to vandals who alter their content by adding inaccuracies

or violating Wikipedia policies.

This most frequently happens to sensitive or controversial topics.

And so if an article is contentious or prone to vandalism, it may be locked for protection.

There are different levels of protection under which certain users might be able to edit

a partially locked page.

The pages of the Quran and the Big Bang, for example, are both semi-protected.

That means no new or unregistered users can edit it.

But there are also other kinds of protection.

To find out if a page is locked, look to its upper right hand corner for a little padlock

icon.

Locks appear in many different colors, with gold denoting the highest protection -- only

administrators can edit those pages.

On Wikipedia you might also come across different notes and warning labels at the top of a page.

Some substandard pages have problems with their structure, or their sourcing, or even

their tone.

So Wikipedians add attention-grabbing notes to alert readers to any problems.

For instance, the page for the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Netherlands has been flagged.

It warns: “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement.”

Wikipedia pages are supposed to have a neutral point of view, so that note gives readers

a heads up that this one might not.

The freestyle monster trucks page also has a warning: it doesn’t cite any sources.

That certainly breaks the verifiability rules.

Although now I really want to know what a freestyle monster truck show is.

Anyway thanks to these policies and warnings, Wikipedia can be a really useful place for

getting a bird’s eye view of a topic or starting more thorough research.

But -- and you knew there was a but coming -- that’s not permission to use Wikipedia

as a one-stop shop for conducting /in-depth/ research, nor is it permission to cite it

in your work.

Honestly, citing an encyclopedia of any kind just isn’t a good look for research projects.

And Wikipedia isn’t perfect, and it’s not always accurate.

As we’ve said before in this series, when navigating digital information, there is no

magic bullet.

There is no one perfect or objective source, partly because everything was made by fallible

humans, and partly because the people using sources are also fallible.

That said, Wikipedia does have real power, and its biggest power lies in using it for

lateral reading and harvesting its citations.

Let’s try it out in the Thought Bubble.

So imagine your friend shares the following post in your feed.

Thanks to this site I know exactly what’s good for my body and, more importantly, WHAT

ISN’T.

It links to a website called Natural News that you’ve never heard of.

When you visit NaturalNews.com and check the about page, they call themselves a “science-based

natural health advocacy organization.”

And the site is jam-packed with words and pictures.

But since you’re an excellent lateral reader, the next thing you do to evaluate this information

is open a new tab to conduct a search.

Pro tip: search the website’s URL and the word “wikipedia” to surface its wikipedia

entry.

Wikipedians call Natural News a “website for the sale of various dietary supplements,

promotion of alternative medicine, controversial nutrition and health claims, scientific fake

news, and various conspiracy theories.”

That’s, you know, a significantly different characterization than their own about page.

The Wikipedia entry also has a section for criticisms and controversies,

which talks about scientists, writers, and journalists who have called out factual inaccuracies

on Natural News.

Throughout this section you’ll see superscript numbers in brackets in between words and at

the end of sentences.

Those link to citations -- hover over them to find either direct links or references

to where the corresponding information came from.

Citation 22, for example, leads to a peer-reviewed journal article calling Natural News a website

that spreads "irresponsible health information."

Citation 35 links to a post from climate change site the Grist titled, literally, “Don’t

believe anything you read at Natural News.”

Thanks Thought Bubble So, Now you have a clear understanding that this website and its content

are very controversial and considered unreliable by other outlets.

And whenever you are interested in a fact on a Wikipedia page, look for the embedded

citation.

You can then check in on those sources and follow up to confirm the information you find.

I’ve been using this in my own life.

For instance, I recently reviewed the Taco Bell breakfast menu for my podcast, The Anthropocene

Reviewed, and I started at the Wikipedia page for Taco Bell, which through the citations

led me to the AMAZING biography of Taco Bell founder Glen Bell, “Taco Titan: The Glen

Bell Story.”

So if you click any of those superscript numbers on a Wikipedia page, you’ll find the full

list of references for that page at the bottom.

And those also link back to their locations in the text, like an index.

Now not all pages have citations, and not all citations are reliable citations.

But this is a place where you can quickly look for more information from authoritative

sources.

The main criticism of Wikipedia concerns the reliability of its information.

As we discussed earlier in the episode, the community does have policies in place to regulate

its articles.

They have ways of letting readers know about inaccuracies or incomplete articles, too.

Which are certainly helpful.

But plenty of bad information does slip through.

It sometimes even leads to editing wars between Wikipedians who edit back and forth to try

to set the record straight.

Over the years a variety of studies have evaluated how Wikipedia measures up to similar reference

works or examined the accuracy of selected articles.

And the results of these have been mixed, with some finding Wikipedia comparable to

commercial encyclopedias and others finding pretty serious errors of omission.

And accuracy isn’t Wikipedia’s only weakness.

Its community has also been criticized for gender and racial biases, both for the kind

of community it fosters, and for the topics it covers.

The content on Wikipedia is a product of those who get to participate, so it will inherently

reflect any inequalities in its community.

One example of this is that the article about Toilet Paper Orientation is incredibly carefully

written and cited, whereas the English-language article on the Indus Valley Civilization city

of Harappa is much less detailed.

Wikipedia is also dependent on published sources, which have their own gender and racial biases

and contribute to what is and is not verifiable on Wikipedia.

But as we know from our last episode, it’s possible to use sources that are systemically

skewed towards one group’s perspective, as long as we take that perspective into account

when evaluating its information.

In this case, that means treating Wikipedia as a launchpad, not a finish line.

It’s not where you should do all of your research and lateral reading.

But it’s a good place to start.

One last note: Some researchers skip the body of a Wikipedia article entirely and head straight

for the citations to look for trustworthy sources.

After all, some pages have hundreds of references to primary sources, scholarly journals, and

other strong publications.

We should think of Wikipedia as another tool in your information evaluation tool kit.

You go there for a general overview of a topic, or a stepping stone to more references, or

to use as one lateral reading source among several.

And as long as you know how and when to use it appropriately, Wikipedia can be a great

friend.

But it shouldn’t be your only friend.

And actually, now that we’re talking about it, I feel like like all your friends, really,

they should probably be people.

Or dogs.

Or a cat, if you’re that kind of person.

Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.