How do I read a Wikipedia article?
Mindfully! At its core, Wikipedia is simply an encyclopedia, so it should be used as such – perhaps a starting point in a research project or an enhancement of a research topic. In no way should any Wikipedia article serve as a sole source that drives a research project.
That being said, because Wikipedia is an online, crowd-sourced encyclopedia, there’s a lot of functionality baked into each page that you don’t get in conventional print encyclopedias, starting with the article’s history, which you can access via the “View history” tab in the upper right corner of the page. The data provided under this tab allows you to see when the article was first created and by whom. If you’re looking at a political article, for instance, when it was created may provide more insight as to the content you’re seeing – if the political event just happened, the content may not be terribly fleshed out since the content is being captured in real time, much like modern, online journalism.
Like journalism, Wikipedia offers a first draft of history, but unlike journalism’s draft, that history is subject to continuous revision.
-Roy Rosenzweig
Luckily, these revisions are captured and tracked via the “View history” tab, so you’re able to see when the article was last updated, which user made the change, and what was changed/added/removed. To take it a step further (which you should!), click on the user name in the revision history log. Doing so takes you to that user’s Wikipedia profile, which often provides more background information so that you can understand more clearly who’s contributing content to an article.
For example, in the digital humanities article, when you navigate back to the original article, you see that Elijah Meeks was the creator, which is fitting since he’s a Digital Humanities Specialist at Stanford University. Other top contributors to this page don’t have a user profile, so their anonymity makes it a bit more challenging to vet their credibility on the topic, but you can employ basic researching techniques to analyze their content contributions:
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- Do they cite any sources? If so, are these sources from credible establishments, websites, books, etc.?
- Have they had any of their contributions flagged for discussion and/or removal? You can view of all an article’s discussion via the “Talk” tab in the upper left corner of the page. You can also view discussion threads specific to a user by clicking the “Talk” tab on the user profile Wikipedia page, so you have a couple of options to peruse discussions.
I think that the “Talk” functionality is particularly useful when considering a Wikipedia article because it allows you to get a behind-the-scenes look at the creative process. This discussion board isn’t always bad! It’s often a way for contributors to collaborate to organize the article, add or remove sections, vet the content, and ensure wider visibility to the Wikipedia user community.
Of course, there are also the slightly off-color conversations, like when a contributor soapboxes or adds profanity just to see how long it takes for it to be removed. Believe it or not, a lot of Wikipedia contributors are quite passionate, so they guard articles closely and ensure that they’re not sabotaged, which is another one of Wikipedia’s strengths – the articles can be updated immediately.
A few other considerations to keep in mind as you read any Wikipedia article:
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- As Roy Rosenzweig puts it, Wikipedia is “whatever-centric,” so be cognizant of the inherent biases in any article given the basic collaborative nature of the site.
- Wikipedia summarizes and reports conventional (and sometimes sensationalized!) topics – you’re not likely going to find any earth-shattering, groundbreaking revelations, nor should you, quite honestly. The site enforces four pretty stringent policies:
1. No essays, personal research, dictionary entries, reviews, or propaganda.
2. Avoid bias.
3. Respect copyrights.
4. Show respect to other contributors.
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Are there any tips to help me get started in Wikipedia?
I already touched on a lot of the basic Wikipedia functionality, primarily the “View history” and “Talk” tabs. There are two other features in the “View history” tab that I think are worth mentioning here:
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- As you scroll through an article’s revision history log, you can, at any point, select a past revision to compare with the latest version, or you can select two past revisions to compare. Wikipedia provides the line that was changed, the timestamp of the change, the user who made the change, and then a side-by-side comparison of the old and new articles. You can also edit and/or undo changes on this page, too.
- On the revision history page, make sure to check out the Page Statistics, which is a hyperlink in the row below the “Filter revisions” box. This statistics page is rich with data, from general statistics, to top contributors, to edit counts, all of which help paint a picture of how and why the article came to be, how frequently it’s edited, by whom, etc.
If you want, you can also edit content of any Wikipedia page, with or without creating an account. If you choose not to create an account, your IP address will be logged in the article’s revision history log and will be visible to the public. There are also two forms of editing available to you, depending on your comfort level using a wiki-style platform:
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- Visual editing allows you to edit without having to use wiki markup – it’s almost like editing directly in a Word document. If you’re just started with editing in Wikipedia, I’d recommend starting in this mode as it’s easier to visualize your edits and ensure that the formatting is correct.
- Source editing is a text-editor view that requires a working knowledge of the wiki markup language.
