Wikipedia:FAQ/Schools
Appearance
Schools' FAQ
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
This FAQ page deals with some questions that teachers, librarians and school administrators might have about the content of information in Wikipedia, and use of Wikipedia by students. If you are thinking about assigning Wikipedia as a class project, see Wikipedia:Student assignments. For more general information, please see Wikipedia:Advice for parents.
What does wiki mean?
- The term "wiki" is derived from the word wikiwiki, which is the Hawaiian word for "quick". A wiki is a web site which allows people to contribute content; see our article on wikis for more information.
Is Wikipedia accurate and reliable?
- The reliability of Wikipedia articles is limited by the external sources on which articles rely on, as well as by the ability of Wikipedia's editors to understand those sources correctly and their willingness to use them properly. Therefore, articles may or may not be reliable, and readers should always use their own judgment. Students should never use information in Wikipedia (or any other online encyclopedia) for formal purposes (such as school essays) until they have verified and evaluated the information based on external sources. For this reason, Wikipedia, like any encyclopedia, is a great starting place for research but not always a great ending place.
- Wikipedia is rapidly developing, and its editors strive, over time, to increase its reliability as a source of information. Readers are encouraged to compare articles to what they already know from reliable sources and improve the articles' accuracy and detail. Because of its growing utility, Wikipedia is cited almost daily in the press.
- It is possible for a given Wikipedia article to be biased, outdated, or factually incorrect. This is true of any resource. One should always double-check the accuracy of important facts, regardless of the source. In general, popular Wikipedia articles are more accurate than ones that receive little traffic, because they are read more often and therefore any errors are corrected in a more timely fashion. Wikipedia articles may also suffer from issues such as Western bias, but hopefully this will also improve with time.
What prevents someone from contributing false or misleading information?
- Wikipedia's content control mechanisms are reactive rather than preventive: anyone can go to almost any page and change information to be false or misleading. Although the majority of edits attempt to improve the encyclopedia, vandalism is frequent.
- Fortunately, such deliberate errors tend not to linger. Hundreds of Wikipedia contributors monitor real-time edit feeds (particularly for important or controversial articles) and quickly revert most inappropriate edits. Many articles are on one or more editors' personal watchlists (and major articles are watched by hundreds of editors), and this provides a second layer of content control. Wikipedia's huge user base is constantly analyzing and improving articles, undoing vandalism as it is found. If a user changes a statistic or date by even a little bit, without justifying their edit, they are particularly likely to raise a red flag. If an individual continues to vandalize after being warned, then they may be blocked from further editing.
- The key to this reactive system is that Wikipedia, unlike mainstream print sources, keeps a full history of every change to every article. Nothing is ever lost, and no abuse is permanent. See Wikipedia:Edit history for more information.
- All that being said, Wikipedia is not perfect. A reader may have the bad luck of arriving at a page just after it has been vandalized and before it has been repaired. There have been incidents in the past where vandalism has been discovered still in place months after the fact. At any given time, there is some inaccurate information somewhere in Wikipedia. It is for this reason that readers must be particularly diligent in verifying Wikipedia against its external sources. It is also a good idea, if you feel uncomfortable about an article, to check its history for recent bad edits. If you find a piece of uncorrected vandalism, you can correct it yourself.
Can students cite Wikipedia in assignments?
![]() | Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information in this encyclopedia. Caution is advised when using Wikipedia as a source. In most academic institutions, references to Wikipedia, along with most encyclopedias, are unacceptable for research papers. |
- It depends on what teachers accept. Wikipedia can be an excellent starting place for further research. Teachers might ask students what they did to validate the information they learned from Wikipedia. Using a comprehensive search engine, students can compare Wikipedia content with information from other reputable websites. Most Wikipedia articles also contain an "External links" section at the bottom, which often leads to other relevant sites. Students can compare information in Wikipedia with information in other encyclopedias or books. As a general rule, contributors to Wikipedia are encouraged to cite their sources, but, of course, not all do. For the sake of verifiability, it is advisable to cite an article that has listed its sources. Most of our better articles have sections such as "References", "Sources", "Notes", "Further reading", or "External links", which generally contain such information.
- For purposes of establishing authorship and finding more sources, students may also find the articles' "View history" tabs useful, as these detail every contribution, the contributor and often a summary of what was contributed. All of our contributors have user talk pages for leaving them messages. If you are logged in, a toolbox link ("E-mail this user") is also visible beside the user pages of many registered contributors. Other means of contacting Wikipedians are listed at Wikipedia:Contact us.