Wikipedia... The New and RELIABLE Encyclopedia?

It seems as though for anything you search through Google one of the first websites listed is a Wikipedia article on the topic. We've all heard the stories of how Wikipedia is an unreliable source that we must never use because of its false facts it tries to state. But are all of these stories of its unreliability true? If you simply type "is wikipedia reliable" into your search bar of Google and hit enter, the first result would be a Wikipedia article no less that directly states "Wikipedia is not a reliable source" in bold font.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source

The article goes on to say that anyone can edit the documents that Wikipedia produces, so it must not be a reliable source right? Wrong... well, kind of. The article is correct in saying that the documents on the site are editable by anyone, but does that then make it unreliable? One thing that most people don't often know is that Wikipedia has a scale of reliability of their pages. Yes, an actual scale to grade their articles, and the scale can be viewed for any of the pages they run. To view this scale, the viewer simply needs to click on the tab labeled "Talk" on the top bar of the page. The talk page of a Wikipedia article is used for discussing and viewing improvements and general information about the article. This section of the webpage is where the scale of reliability can be found on the webpage. For example, the "Talk" section for the Wikipedia page of the term "Dog" looks like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Dog

The bottom of this yellow box is where the scale of reliability can be viewed. For this particular page, Wikipedia has listed this "Dogs" page within three different WikiProjects and shows their scale within each project. Lets take a closer look at these scales. The first project for instance deals with Dogs/Breeds. Within this particular project, the article is rated as a "B-Class, Top-Importance" document. But what does that really mean. Going to the following page will show the scale Wikipedia uses to rate these articles as shown in the picture below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dogs/Assessment#Quality_scale

Wikipedia uses a two step process for their scale of reliability. The first is to classify the article within one of their nine categories that are: FA, A, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, FL, and List. Each category has a description of why an article may be listed within that. For instance, a "Start" article is "an article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete. It might or might not cite adequate reliable sources." This scale of classification is a sort of A-F grading scale commonly used within a classroom. Generally the higher the article is rated, the more reliable the article is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dogs/Assessment

The second step Wikipedia uses to scale the articles reliability is a scale of importance within the initial category and the project as a whole. This scale shows whether an article has Top, High, Mid, or Low importance overall.

So going back to the example of the "Dogs" article that has a classification of "B-Class, Top-Importance" within the WikiProject Dogs/Breeds. This classification means that the article is mostly complete and without major problems and is of the highest importance classification within the category Dogs/Breeds. Therefore, the article about "Dogs" seems to be pretty reliable according to Wikipedia. Lets take a look at an article that isn't rated so highly. For instance, the article labeled "The Last Airbender Trading Card Game" as shown in the image below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Avatar:_The_Last_Airbender_Trading_Card_Game

Within the "Talk" page for this article the document is listed within three WikiProjects, and in each it is rated as a "Start-Class, Low-Importance" article, therefore it seems as though it is less reliable in the grand scheme of things. This rating given by Wikipedia shows this article as being a fairly new (Start) article with little significance to the WikiProject... but how does Wikipedia decide that rating? Essentially the rating is determined by the group of people who run the WikiProject. These WikiProjects are run by groups of Editors with certifications that allow them to run the projects. These teams of editors are the people who determine the rating for the various articles. Anyone who is a member of an article page can request for their page to be reviewed by these teams of editors. If they disagree with the rating given to the page, they can request a review of the rating and ultimately get their articles reassessed (after a specified time from the initial assessment). These ratings are certainly subjective, as they are given to the articles by people (and everyone has some kind of bias despite efforts to remove the bias). However, by introducing a team of editors to review the articles, Wikipedia has reduced the amount of initial bias introduced to rate the articles.

It is true that Wikipedia does allow for anyone to edit and change the articles as they please, making it seem unreliable to most. However, Wikipedia has a group of editors to rate the article, so anyone that views the article can see how reliable that document is. This editability feature of the website led to mass panic by teachers of the early 2000's to try and get their students to not use the website for fear of it being an unreliable resource. However, Wikipedia offers a trackable categorization to the reliability of the document that is run by a team of editors. If we teach or kids and students to dig deeper and figure out for themselves whether the page is reliable and to view the scales given, Wikipedia can be one of the most useful resources we use to research various topics.

Wikipedia is a RELIABLE encyclopedia... IF we know how to use it.

Mr. Brandon Berk
Mt Spokane High School
Spokane Washington