Verifiability on Wikipedia
This three-language study provides foundational understanding for how editors work with available resources to meet the standards required for article quality.
Overview
To better understand the need of Wikipedia editors in their efforts to provide verifiable information in their articles, the Design Research team conducted a three-language comparative study of editor behavior in Basque, Korean, and German. Conducted in local languages by research partner Spiegel Institut based in Mannheim, Germany, this research delves into editors’ perceptions of what a “reliable source” was in their local context, accessibility of resources, collaboration between community members, concepts of media verifiability, work flows, and other aspects of finding, curating, and providing verifiable content for articles. This research provides the foundational understanding for how editors work with available resources to meet the standards required for article quality in medium-sized Wikipedias.
Top High Level Takeaways:
- Increasing scope: Often, one activity leads to another, as interesting topics/sources/pictures are found.
- Correcting references: Systematic “patrolling” rarely happens. Instead, a major issue in corrections is fixing dead links to online resources.
- Difference in cultural expectations: standards for quality and verifiability differ between projects, so editors are cautious in using references from other languages.
- Availability of information in Wikipedia Library varies: Wikipedia Library is used less often in Korean and Basque than German. One Korean editor cited a lack of information in Korean Wikipedia Libirary.
- Video searches vary by project: While videos were considered a “top notch source” in English, Koreans consider it an invalid source.
- Physical vs digital: while digital sources are preferred due to convenience, physical sources are considered more reliable because it’s less changeable.
- Information rot is a problem: specific article links become invalid over time or changes, posing difficulties to verifiability.
- Foreign-language sources: In communities like Basque where fewer references exist, other language sources, particularly “common” languages like English, French, Japanese, and Chiinese, may be more acceptable.
- Paywalls articles are acceptable: Across all three languages, Wikipedians agree that using paywall articles are acceptable as they are accessible by everybody in principle. However, most prefer to use sources without a paywall.