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  • Hello and welcome to Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information, I'm John Green.

  • According to my Wikipedia page, I'm an American author, vlogger, writer, producer, actor,

  • editor, and educator.

  • I've released some books, won some awards, got married, had kids, and I have a brother

  • named Hank.

  • There's also a photo of me from VidCon in 2014 in which I'm wearing a football scarf

  • which is very on-brand.

  • Now, you could've learned a lot of that stuff from my personal website--but then again,

  • I have a certain bias in how I present myself.

  • For instance, I would never write about Hank on my website.

  • He can start his own web site if he wants that free promo.

  • Also, as we've discussed through this series, you shouldn't use one single site as a definitive source.

  • When evaluating new information, we have to read laterally.

  • That means looking to other sources to provide context.

  • Now it's not always easy to find sources to consult, but when used correctly, Wikipedia

  • can be a great place to start.

  • Right, I know that wikipedia can be unreliable.

  • My own wikipedia page once briefly said that I was a professional Lacrosse player.

  • And I am an actor only in the sense that I was cut from the one movie I appeared in,

  • but I do think we can use wikipedia for good.

  • INTRO

  • So, many of us have been told by teachers,

  • librarians, parents, peers, coworkers, friends, pen pals, babysitters, nieces and nephews,

  • celebrity spokespeople, Instagram famous dogs, our favorite baristas, particularly cogent

  • toddlers, religious leaders, Jeff Goldblum, long lost cousins, and anonymous twitter trolls

  • never to use Wikipedia.

  • You've probably heard that Wikipedia is full of totally unusable, unreliable information

  • written by random internet users.

  • I'm here to dispel that myth.

  • Well, me and my friends at MediaWise.

  • Now, it's true that Wikipedia is editable by almost anyone, and its content is created

  • by a community of mostly volunteer Wikipedians.

  • The whole network is owned and supported by a non-profit, called the Wikimedia Foundation.

  • And Wikipedia has become the Internet's largest general reference work, with over

  • 40 million articles in 301 languages, including over 5.7 million articles in English.

  • While you're there, you can learn about anything from the Gothic Bible to Whitney

  • Houston's 1985 hitHow Will I Knowto the absolutely terrifying star-nosed mole.

  • I don't know what it is about the star nosed mole, but it freaks me out so bad.

  • I've had dreams about it.

  • Anyway.

  • It's got a great Wikipedia page.

  • Now, you're not going to learn every single thing about a topic by reading its Wikipedia

  • page.

  • The universe is much more complicated than even an endless online encyclopedia could

  • account for.

  • But what makes Wikipedia useful to citizens of the internet is its breadth.

  • It provides information on more topics than any print encyclopedia could, and a top-notch

  • Wikipedia page can provide a solid overview of a topic and also provide citations to sources

  • for it's claims.

  • It's kind of like a tour guide -- it gives you a general lay of the land and shows you

  • where to discover more.

  • Even fact checkers use Wikipedia to familiarize themselves with unknown topics.

  • Now, when Wikipedia first launched in 2001, it got a bad reputation because of how easy

  • it was to create and edit articles.

  • Essentially anyone with an internet connection could log on and update their high school's

  • notable alumnito include their own name.

  • You could also delete your brother's Wikipedia page on the grounds that he wasn't a notable

  • person.

  • Not that I ever did that!

  • I mean that, that would be terrible.

  • That flexibility, to put it diplomatically, is likely why teachers and others have warned

  • you against it.

  • But Wikipedia has grown up a lot since 2001.

  • It's nearly 18.

  • Wikipedia is almost an adult--and it's starting to act like it.

  • Today anyone with an internet connection can still edit most pages on Wikipedia, but

  • there are much more rigorous content policies in place and more Wikipedians and even bots

  • around to prevent and correct bad edits.

  • Like, if you repeatedly add yourself to your high school's notable alumni section, you

  • can bet an editor will be close behind to keep you humble.

  • You also now have to be a registered user to create an article and article topics have

  • to meet a standard of notability before they can even be created.

  • Wikipedians also adhere to a set of rules when editing and writing content.

  • Their core content policies are summed up by three key phrases.

  • 1.

  • A neutral point of view, meaning content must be represented fairly, proportionately and

  • without bias.

  • 2.

  • No original research, meaning all material must come from a published, reliable source.

  • And 3.

  • Verifiability, meaning people reading and editing articles must be able to check that

  • the information comes from a reliable source.

  • Now, policies and rules are all well and good, but they're only as good as the people who

  • enforce them.

  • So volunteer Wikipedians act as writers and editors and also they keep each other in check.

  • There are also administrators, who have a higher level of authority, and they can do

  • things like delete pages, or respond to vandalism, or even lock a page so only certain people

  • can make changes.

  • But they're not all-knowing gods.

  • They're regular Wikipedians in good standing with the community because they've proven

  • themselves to be responsible editors who use accurate, documented information.

  • As of the day we filmed this video, there are 1,206 administrators for the English Wikipedia

  • site.

  • In contrast, there are over 34.8 million registered Wikipedians, about 134,000 of whom have edited

  • in the past month.

  • The good thing about this giant buddy system is that it has to be pretty transparent in

  • order to function.

  • At the top of a Wikipedia article you'll see little tabs.

  • One says Article, that's pretty self-explanatory.

  • And then there's Talk.

  • That's where you can see the conversation Wikipedians have had about editing that article.

  • On the American Civil War page, there's even a Frequently Asked Questions section.

  • And under a page's View History tab you can see how and when an article has been edited,

  • and by whom.

  • Some pages are especially prone to vandals who alter their content by adding inaccuracies

  • or violating Wikipedia policies.

  • This most frequently happens to sensitive or controversial topics.

  • And so if an article is contentious or prone to vandalism, it may be locked for protection.

  • There are different levels of protection under which certain users might be able to edit

  • a partially locked page.

  • The pages of the Quran and the Big Bang, for example, are both semi-protected.

  • That means no new or unregistered users can edit it.

  • But there are also other kinds of protection.

  • To find out if a page is locked, look to its upper right hand corner for a little padlock

  • icon.

  • Locks appear in many different colors, with gold denoting the highest protection -- only

  • administrators can edit those pages.

  • On Wikipedia you might also come across different notes and warning labels at the top of a page.

  • Some substandard pages have problems with their structure, or their sourcing, or even

  • their tone.

  • So Wikipedians add attention-grabbing notes to alert readers to any problems.

  • For instance, the page for the National Aerospace Laboratory of the Netherlands has been flagged.

  • It warns: “This article contains content that is written like an advertisement.”

  • Wikipedia pages are supposed to have a neutral point of view, so that note gives readers

  • a heads up that this one might not.

  • The freestyle monster trucks page also has a warning: it doesn't cite any sources.

  • That certainly breaks the verifiability rules.

  • Although now I really want to know what a freestyle monster truck show is.

  • Anyway thanks to these policies and warnings, Wikipedia can be a really useful place for

  • getting a bird's eye view of a topic or starting more thorough research.

  • But -- and you knew there was a but coming -- that's not permission to use Wikipedia

  • as a one-stop shop for conducting /in-depth/ research, nor is it permission to cite it

  • in your work.

  • Honestly, citing an encyclopedia of any kind just isn't a good look for research projects.

  • And Wikipedia isn't perfect, and it's not always accurate.

  • As we've said before in this series, when navigating digital information, there is no

  • magic bullet.

  • There is no one perfect or objective source, partly because everything was made by fallible

  • humans, and partly because the people using sources are also fallible.

  • That said, Wikipedia does have real power, and its biggest power lies in using it for

  • lateral reading and harvesting its citations.

  • Let's try it out in the Thought Bubble.

  • So imagine your friend shares the following post in your feed.

  • Thanks to this site I know exactly what's good for my body and, more importantly, WHAT

  • ISN'T.

  • It links to a website called Natural News that you've never heard of.

  • When you visit NaturalNews.com and check the about page, they call themselves a “science-based

  • natural health advocacy organization.”

  • And the site is jam-packed with words and pictures.

  • But since you're an excellent lateral reader, the next thing you do to evaluate this information

  • is open a new tab to conduct a search.

  • Pro tip: search the website's URL and the wordwikipediato surface its wikipedia

  • entry.

  • Wikipedians call Natural News a “website for the sale of various dietary supplements,

  • promotion of alternative medicine, controversial nutrition and health claims, scientific fake

  • news, and various conspiracy theories.”

  • That's, you know, a significantly different characterization than their own about page.

  • The Wikipedia entry also has a section for criticisms and controversies,

  • which talks about scientists, writers, and journalists who have called out factual inaccuracies

  • on Natural News.

  • Throughout this section you'll see superscript numbers in brackets in between words and at

  • the end of sentences.

  • Those link to citations -- hover over them to find either direct links or references

  • to where the corresponding information came from.

  • Citation 22, for example, leads to a peer-reviewed journal article calling Natural News a website

  • that spreads "irresponsible health information."

  • Citation 35 links to a post from climate change site the Grist titled, literally, “Don't

  • believe anything you read at Natural News.”

  • Thanks Thought Bubble So, Now you have a clear understanding that this website and its content

  • are very controversial and considered unreliable by other outlets.

  • And whenever you are interested in a fact on a Wikipedia page, look for the embedded

  • citation.

  • You can then check in on those sources and follow up to confirm the information you find.

  • I've been using this in my own life.

  • For instance, I recently reviewed the Taco Bell breakfast menu for my podcast, The Anthropocene

  • Reviewed, and I started at the Wikipedia page for Taco Bell, which through the citations

  • led me to the AMAZING biography of Taco Bell founder Glen Bell, “Taco Titan: The Glen

  • Bell Story.”

  • So if you click any of those superscript numbers on a Wikipedia page, you'll find the full

  • list of references for that page at the bottom.

  • And those also link back to their locations in the text, like an index.

  • Now not all pages have citations, and not all citations are reliable citations.

  • But this is a place where you can quickly look for more information from authoritative

  • sources.

  • The main criticism of Wikipedia concerns the reliability of its information.

  • As we discussed earlier in the episode, the community does have policies in place to regulate

  • its articles.

  • They have ways of letting readers know about inaccuracies or incomplete articles, too.

  • Which are certainly helpful.

  • But plenty of bad information does slip through.

  • It sometimes even leads to editing wars between Wikipedians who edit back and forth to try

  • to set the record straight.

  • Over the years a variety of studies have evaluated how Wikipedia measures up to similar reference

  • works or examined the accuracy of selected articles.

  • And the results of these have been mixed, with some finding Wikipedia comparable to

  • commercial encyclopedias and others finding pretty serious errors of omission.

  • And accuracy isn't Wikipedia's only weakness.

  • Its community has also been criticized for gender and racial biases, both for the kind

  • of community it fosters, and for the topics it covers.

  • The content on Wikipedia is a product of those who get to participate, so it will inherently

  • reflect any inequalities in its community.

  • One example of this is that the article about Toilet Paper Orientation is incredibly carefully

  • written and cited, whereas the English-language article on the Indus Valley Civilization city

  • of Harappa is much less detailed.

  • Wikipedia is also dependent on published sources, which have their own gender and racial biases

  • and contribute to what is and is not verifiable on Wikipedia.

  • But as we know from our last episode, it's possible to use sources that are systemically

  • skewed towards one group's perspective, as long as we take that perspective into account

  • when evaluating its information.

  • In this case, that means treating Wikipedia as a launchpad, not a finish line.

  • It's not where you should do all of your research and lateral reading.

  • But it's a good place to start.

  • One last note: Some researchers skip the body of a Wikipedia article entirely and head straight

  • for the citations to look for trustworthy sources.

  • After all, some pages have hundreds of references to primary sources, scholarly journals, and

  • other strong publications.

  • We should think of Wikipedia as another tool in your information evaluation tool kit.

  • You go there for a general overview of a topic, or a stepping stone to more references, or

  • to use as one lateral reading source among several.

  • And as long as you know how and when to use it appropriately, Wikipedia can be a great

  • friend.

  • But it shouldn't be your only friend.

  • And actually, now that we're talking about it, I feel like like all your friends, really,

  • they should probably be people.

  • Or dogs.

  • Or a cat, if you're that kind of person.

  • Thanks for watching. We'll see you next week.

Hello and welcome to Crash Course: Navigating Digital Information, I'm John Green.

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