I’ve been an administrator at Wikipedia for almost a decade so I’m more than passingly familiar with the culture and policies there.
Here’s the thing about Wikipedia… Each article is intended to be an aggregate of information drawn from reliable sources. By policy, nothing on Wikipedia is based from original research. You need to cite something that represents a legitimate analysis of facts. A good source would be a reputable newspaper, a peer-reviewed study, a book or article written by a respected expert in that field, etc. A bad source would be a random blog, or maybe a public figure making a self-serving statement about themselves.
But bottom line, a GOOD Wikipedia article is a well-sourced and unbiased article with relevant information for the topic. And a good article serves two useful functions; it acts as a helpful summary of the topic without going into too much depth, and it guides you toward the really reliable sources you should use for your own research and that you can read to get more detail on the subject.
That all describes a good article. A bad article may use misleading or poor sources (or none at all), or may misrepresent what is in a good source, or may present information in a biased manner, or may contain outdated and no longer accurate information. It may contain speculation, opinion, or even hoax material. The project has plenty of people checking the articles (most of them knowledgeable editors, administrators like me mostly try to enforce policies and keep disputes from escalating) but there are many articles and not nearly enough volunteers and things get missed. So don’t take what you read on Wikipedia at face value, follow the sources and use those if you can.
Years ago, I noticed Wikipedia had listed Rangsit as one of the 50 districts of Bangkok. While it is considered to be part of Greater Bangkok, it is not within the city limits but rather is a city in Pathum Thani province. I wouldn’t know how to go about changing that, but someone I knew changed it.
It also helps to have half an idea about what you’re reading, or to have access to multiple languages. Often, the entries in multiple languages fall into two different categories: either they’re a direct translation by google translate, or they have completely different information.
A few months back I was researching the exact degree of family relationship between Martín Azpilcueta and Francisco Jaso Azpilcueta (aka St Francis Xavier) (both names given under what would be the modern forms). Spanish wikipedia said the saint was señor de Xavier, Lord of Xavier:
There was never such a title as “lord of Xavier”, as Xavier happened to be a royal fortress. And it wasn’t a fortress built by someone else which the king had acquired: it had been built by royal order, to protect a stretch of the border with Aragon; it was never part of a señorío.
Francisco’s father was the steward for that castle. Its lord would in any case have been the King(s).
And Francisco was not his father’s heir, so even if the elder Jaso had been lord of the castle, the title would not have gone to that particular son. In fact, Francisco had the choice of becoming a soldier or a priest precisely because he wasn’t his father’s heir.
Why would someone think that being the Nth son of the steward of a royal castle was somehow “in need of fixing” is beyond me, but apparently someone did. Or maybe they didn’t know the difference between a castle and a turnip: I’m reasonably sure castles aren’t supposed to be edible, whereas turnips I merely dislike eating.
I have gotten some surprisingly esoteric mathematical facts from Wiki. But they are always associated with references that allow me to track down the sources and refer to them when I use them. And no, I have never found an error. Amazing resource.
Six weeks ago I was looking for information about the North American Regional Broadcasting Agreement, when I noticed that the person who started the Wikipedia entry about the treaty 11 years ago had incorrectly named the page “North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement”.
By now approximately 100 Wikipedia entries were using this wrong name, which I fixed – not too hard to do, but tedious. But there are now numerous web pages, and even a few of books, which have the wrong name–I assume they did a search for “NARBA”, as it is commonly known, and came across the incorrectly named Wikipedia page.
I thought I had found a really big blunder once… A map of the Roman Empire showed “Iberia” in the region of modern Serbia. Dummy on me: there was a region there called Iberia, having nothing to do with Spain at all!
I am currently trying to get an article removed that is totally fabricated. This island in Panama doesn’t exist, and all the information written about it is complete nonsense.
Nope; I’m good on Illyria. (One ‘l’ or two?) It was certainly Iberia…and it knocked me for a loop, 'cause I only knew of Spain. I kept wondering how Wikipedia could have made such a gross and primitive blunder…then I learned I was the one who was wrong! Oopsie!
(And…maybe I’m still wrong! Maybe the map was pointing to modern Georgia, not modern Bosnia. I looked and couldn’t find what I had seen, so… Well, gawrsh!)
