Evaluating Websites – Wikipedia Example
Prepared by Davida Scharf, Librarian
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Van Houten Library
August 2010
Global Warming. (2010, August 8). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved August
8, 2010 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming 1
.
AUTHORITY
Many Wikipedia authors are identifiable by their handles, but their true identities are
anonymous. Therefore, it is usually impossible to know what qualifications the
authors may have to write about the topic at hand—and there are many authors over time.
For an article like this one, it would be impossible to check up on every person who ever
edited this article. Also, the Wikipedia organization itself is not editorially responsible
for the content, So to determine the reliability of the information presented in a
Wikipedia article, you must judge by the content and the documentation of sources
supporting the content.
SUPPORT & OBJECTIVITY
The first thing I do to assess a Wikipedia web page is to look immediately for reliable
references. In this case the very first reference was for the IPCC, which I had already
learned from my previous research was the main international body reviewing the
scientific evidence for climate change. This was a solid start. Next I read the first
paragraph carefully, then skimmed through the article, and determined that the language
was strictly factual and neutral in tone. As I skimmed the article, I clicked on several
footnotes and continued to find the source documentation more than adequate. For
example, the writer does not assume you are familiar with the IPCC and further states:
These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 45 scientific societies and
academies of science . . .”
You could further research these societies to see if they had indeed endorsed the IPCC
conclusions. Thus, the author of this article provides support for the authority of the
IPCC as a reliable source of information. This is excellent—in case you were not
familiar with the IPCC.
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To cite Wikipedia in APA format, refer to the Wikipedia page on citing sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citing_Wikipedia
Evaluating Websites – Wikipedia Example
Next I wanted to see what others thought of the page. So I first looked at the discussion
pages and discovered that the article had been a long-time featured article and is part of
several prominent Wikipedia projects. (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming) A featured article in Wikipedia
actually must go through a review process by Wikipedia editors (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles) . Indeed the article had been
so thoroughly evaluated and discussed that it had its own FAQ page to address recurring
points of argument. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Global_warming/FAQ ) It
also mentioned that it had been covered in the media—and I didn’t do it – but one could
check up on those links to media coverage and other uses of the article as well by
conducting further research on the web and at the media organizations mentioned.
PURPOSE / INTENDED AUDIENCE
This article was aimed to inform a general audience of educated readers about an
important current topic. This is recognizable largely from the vocabulary, writing style,
and quality of the documentation used.
CURRENCY
Though Wikipedia articles do not display publication dates, I looked at the dates of the
references to see how current they were. Among the references were sources from 20072010 as well as earlier sources. This shows the article is being updated regularly. In
addition, the history tab revealed frequent and recent updates. I was still concerned that
perhaps there was an IPCC report more recent than 2007 that had perhaps not been added
to this Wikipedia article, so I went to the IPCC website to check. There I found the next
IPCC assessment report on climate change has not yet come out, but there are committees
working on updates and I did locate more recent material.
CONCLUSION
This Wikipedia page is an excellent place to begin a search on the topic of global
warming. It is typical of a well-researched encyclopedia-type article that provides
references to the important sources of information on the subject. It is a good example
of the best of Wikipedia, an article that follows the Wikipedia editorial guidelines.
However, I would not cite Wikipedia as a source for a college-level research paper, but
would consult the sources cited in Wikipedia, evaluating each on its own, as well as other
independent sources.
Prepared by Davida Scharf, Librarian, NJIT Van Houten Library, August 2010
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