This document provides guidance on evaluating the quality and reliability of information on Wikipedia pages. It discusses how to use article ratings, look for features of high-quality articles and warning signs of low-quality pages. The document also recommends reviewing the talk history pages, using the WikiTrust tool to analyze an article's edit history, and checking for reliable references and "[citation needed]" tags. Overall, the key points are how to leverage available tools and metadata to critically assess Wikipedia page content and identify potentially unreliable information.

1. How to Judge the Quality
of a Wikipedia Page
by Tim Farley
whatstheharm.net &
skeptools.com
Granite State Skeptics in the Pub
September 13, 2010

2. Introduction & Agenda
•Why is Wikipedia important?
•Using article ratings
•Features of good articles
•Warning signs of bad articles
•Using the talk & history pages
•Using WikiTrust

3. Skeptical of Wikipedia?
•Editing is open to anyone
• Includes anonymous editing
•No significant central editing authority
•Yes, there is much junk
•Quality & editing is uneven due to reliance on volunteers

4. Some of Wikipedia is high quality
•Nature study in 2005 showed science articles are
comparable between Wikipedia & Britannica 1
•Other studies also found much to praise 2
•Studies not without their detractors
• 1“Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”, Nature 438 (7070) p900-901;
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/438900a
2Also see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_of_Wikipedia

5. Some articles can be quite bad
•Lots of crap articles (“stubs”)
•Lots of vandalism (often corrected quickly)
•People have been libeled
• John Siegenthaler incident
• Wikipedia has been sued on more than one occasion

6. Why should we care?
•Is very well known
•Content is freely licensable, and thus appears elsewhere
as well
•Ranks very highly in Google

7. Search engine results are crucial
•Users rely on search engines 1
• 88% will start with a search engine when asked to do a
random online task
•“Google Gullibility” - Users use only the top results2
•Therefore search engine results are important - hence
the emergence of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
• 1Jacob Neilsen’s Alertbox, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20040816.html
2Jacob Neilsen’s Alertbox, http://www.useit.com/alertbox/user-skills.html

8. #1 hits in Google
• acupuncture, Adam Savage, AIDS denial, alien abduction,
Andrew Wakefield, astral projection, attachment therapy, ayurveda, Ben
Radford, bigfoot, Breatharian, Carl Sagan, Charles Darwin, chiropractic,
Christian Science, clairvoyance, colloidal silver, craniosacral, creationism,
critical thinking, cryptid, cupping, debunking, Derek Colanduno,
detoxification, double blind, dowsing, Edzard Ernst, evolution, EVP,
exorcism, facilitated communication, faith healer, feng shui, ganzfeld,
ghosts, Harry Houdini, holistic health, Holocaust denial, homeopathy,
hypnosis, Illuminati, intelligent design, iridology, Jehovah's Witnesses,
Jenny McCarthy, Kevin Trudeau, Loch Ness monster, Martin Gardner,
Matthias Rath, mediums, MMR, moxibustion, naturopathy, new world
order, numerology, ozone therapy, parapsychology, Paul Kurtz, Peter
Popoff, poltergeist, pseudoscience, psychic, psychic surgery, quackery,
Ray Hyman, Rebecca Watson, reiki, reparative therapy, Sai Baba,
Scientology, skepticism, Steven Novella, thimerosal, Uri Geller, witchcraft

9. Wikipedia article grades
• FA - Featured Article
A - Class A
GA - Good Article
B - Class B
C - Class C
Start - Good start but incomplete
Stub - Very basic
Unassessed - Nobody has given it a rating yet
FL - Featured list
List - An article that is only a list
• See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment

10. So where are these grades?

11. An easier way - gadgets

12. Article assessment with gadget

13. Other things on Talk Pages
•Discussion pages contain many other things...
• Further warnings about editing the article
• Discussions between editors, particularly when edits are
controversial
• Whether or not the article was proposed to be deleted in the
past
• Other notes & links to related administration pages

14. No assessment? Look for references
•References should be a variety of reliable sources
•Inline footnotes for each fact in article

15. Red flag: [citation needed]

16. Red flag: warning boxes

17. Who are the volunteers that do this?
•All content comes from volunteer editors
•This includes assessments, warning boxes, etc.
•Who vets individual editor actions? Other editors.
•That other editor might be you.
•Wikipedia keeps an extensive edit history - use it.

18. Revision history

19. Manual history review
•Tools are not very sophisticated - one edit at a time
•Majority of edits on most articles are simple copy
editing (punctuation and so on)
•Finding when a given piece of text was added can
involve a very tedious search
•How do you know if the editor involved has any
credibility?

20. New Tool: WikiTrust
•Analyzes the edit history of an article for you
•Shows you the result right inside the article
•New, untrusted text is highlighted in orange
•Older, trusted text appears normal

21. WikiTrust

22. WikiTrust pros and cons
•Advantages
• Requires no special knowledge
• Doesn’t require you to log in to Wikipedia
• One click takes you to the associated history
•Disadvantages
• Requires Firefox browser

23. Thank you!
•Follow me on Twitter, Facebook or FriendFeed:
twitter.com/krelnik
facebook.com/krelnik
friendfeed.com/krelnik
I post skeptic news & a Skeptic History item every day.
•What’s The Harm is
http://whatstheharm.net
•Skeptical Software Tools blog is
http://skeptools.com