Using Wikipedia: An Important Lesson

Any good writer knows that Wikipedia isn’t a reliable source. I still use it, and I’m not ashamed about that. With so many contributors and editors, much of the information on that site is correct, and because there are links to sources, I find that it is a good starting point when doing research.

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia founder. Image: Newscom

“Starting point.”

Unfortunately, for many writers, it is an ending point as well, and that’s where problems come into play. This past March, a Dublin student decided to run a little experiment. When a famous French composer died, Shane Fitzgerald made up a cheesy quote that would specifically appeal to obit writers and attributed it to the composer on Wikipedia. Although the quote was taken down by editors within minutes since it was not sourced, journalists gobbled it up. Ad, since online media sources had already snagged the quote, people began re-adding it to the Wikipedia page. It was taken down for not having an original source multiple times.

But the quote lived on, and Fitzgerald finally decided to contact major news outlets to out himself and come clean about the phoney phrase. He says that he’s convinced it never would have been discovered as fake had he not come forward.

We’ve all done it – snagged a fact, quote, etc. from Wikipedia or another online source without looking into the origin. If you’ve never done it..well, you’re a better person than I am. That doesn’t mean I’m a bad writer, and I do try very hard to make sure that whatever I write had been fully researched. We all make mistakes, though, and sometimes we see a bit of information that sounds so true we don’t question it.

Please, dear readers, question EVERYTHING you read online, even if you’re on a source that seems reliable.

I think the lesson people are getting from this is to not use Wikipedia, but that’s not the issue. You just have to use it carefully – and you should be using ANY online source carefully, as though it was a Wikipedia page. Unless you’re hearing something straight from the horse’s mouth, you can’t be sure if the information you’re reading is correct. After all, maybe the writer hired by that legitimate .org website you’re reading got HIS quotes from Wikipedia!

And as freelance writers, online content quality control is, in part, our responsibility…but that’s an argument for another day.

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