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Reliability of Wikipedia
referenceCredibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: Wikipedia
Relevant for AI safety researchers who use Wikipedia as a knowledge source or training data, as understanding its reliability limitations informs how AI systems may inherit or propagate errors from this widely-used corpus.
Metadata
Importance: 20/100wiki pagereference
Summary
This Wikipedia article examines the reliability of Wikipedia's volunteer-driven editing model, reviewing studies, surveys, and historical patterns of accuracy and error. It documents both criticisms and improvements over time, noting that while misinformation can persist, vandalism is typically corrected quickly and reliability has generally improved since the 2000s.
Key Points
- •Wikipedia's reliability has been tested through comparative reviews and statistical analysis, with mixed but improving results over time.
- •False information can persist for years and propagate widely, as illustrated by the 'Brazilian aardvark' hoax lasting six years.
- •Vandalism is typically repaired very quickly, with most users never encountering it, according to studies including a 2003 IBM analysis.
- •Wikipedia's English edition has been generally praised for reliability in the late 2010s and early 2020s, a notable improvement from earlier criticism.
- •Structural weaknesses include article instability and susceptibility to cognitive biases inherent in crowdsourced editing.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| AI-Era Epistemic Infrastructure | Approach | 59.0 |
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HTTP 200Fetched Mar 20, 202698 KB
# Reliability of Wikipedia
Reliability of Wikipedia
This is an encyclopedic article discussing Wikipedia's reliability. For Wikipedia's own standpoint on reliability, see [Wikipedia:General disclaimer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer "Wikipedia:General disclaimer").
[](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CoatiNosara.jpg) A [South American coati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_American_coati "South American coati"). In July 2008, a 17-year-old student added an invented nickname to the Wikipedia article [Coati](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coati "Coati") as a private joke, calling them " [Brazilian aardvarks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_aardvark "Brazilian aardvark")". The false information lasted for six years and was propagated by hundreds of websites, several newspapers, and even a few books published by university presses.[\[1\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-NewYorker_May19_2014-1)[\[2\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-RegisterKolbe-2)
The **reliability of Wikipedia** and its volunteer-driven and community-regulated [editing model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#Wikipedia_editing_model), particularly its [English-language edition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Wikipedia "English Wikipedia"), has been questioned and tested. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia "Wikipedia") is written and edited by volunteer editors (known as [Wikipedians](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedian "Wikipedian")) who generate [online content](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_content "Online content") with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process.[\[3\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-3) The online encyclopedia [has been criticized](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia "Criticism of Wikipedia") for its factual unreliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and [editorial processes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Wikipedia#Criticism_of_the_community "Criticism of Wikipedia"). [Studies and surveys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_studies_about_Wikipedia "Academic studies about Wikipedia") attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; its English-language edition has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.[\[4\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#cite_note-Wiki20-4)[\[5\]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia#
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