What is a text without sources to back it up, to support its claims, to validate such information? What is an article without reliable, credited, published information? These are the things that I have always been warned about when using Wikipedia, the online free based encyclopedia. With the ability to be collaboratively written and published, Wikipedia articles have been scrutinized for its format which allows amateur writers and editors to contribute to their articles. These articles are then situated to be constantly analyzed in order for some of the information to be published on their site. It is in deciding if the sources are credible or not that in turn determines the credibility of the Wikipedia article. You wouldn’t read a publish encyclopedia and expect a bias or skewed interpretation of information. Therefore to maintain some that stature, Wikipedia must be mindful of what exactly is being published under their domain.
For this analysis, I chose an article about Ramón Homs from the “Did You Know…?” section of the Wikipedia homepage. Homs appeared on the page with the tag line that he was a Spanish alpine skier, a Para Olympian who had lost his arm in an amputation; pretty straight forward. The article itself followed suit and was quite brief and direct, only about 3 short sections in length. But it does, however, have 18 sources listed in the References section; 18 sources to validate only about 3 paragraphs of information. So at first glance, one might assume that this article must be beyond validated if such little information is supposed to be cited by all of these other resources. But under a closer investigation, I realized that these external sources were not as reliable as I had originally assumed.
Wikipedia classifies their credible sources by certain criteria and holds academic and scholarly work to be the highest and most reliable standard of work. Homs brief entry, however, is only supported by news reports and organizations. While still considered credible, there is a larger margin for opinion or error in these resources. I skimmed the list and noticed that they were all published in Spanish, which is not an issue of credibility but more of one in trusting the translator didn’t lost some of the facts along the way. Regardless of what language these articles are published in, they might not be as well respected in the Wikipedia community as would a scholarly piece about this Para-Olympian might be. I also noticed that in following some of these citations, the resources they led me to be not long in length either; more of a blurb or side note than an actual article or study. One link I followed wasn’t even an article about him, but instead about another skier and he was merely mentioned as a competitor.
I ran into some frustration in trying to check random facts throughout the piece. There would only mentions of a general topic in the source but in the article there were facts and information listed that could not be found. The first section about his personal life was composed from his skiing statistics, but as for the rest of the information, I could not find it in the listed and cited source. After translating most of the sources listed, they all seemed to summarize the same information. With this, I came to the conclusion that this article could be trusted as generally reliable, in the sense that most of the information listed could be traced to a secondary source. But due to the vagueness of some of the sources listed, I would find it difficult to trust some of the details mentioned in the article if they could not be followed or traced back to an original and reliable source. Yes, I would believe him to be a skier, but the races he completed and the awards he might have won leave some room for doubting their credibility at first glance.
Honestly I feel as though I have underestimated what it takes to write, edit and publish an article on the Wikipedia platform. In reading up on all of the different aspects that go into each page or topic, it is much more collaborative than I had originally understood it to be. In using Wikipedia myself, I always tried to follow the listed resources as the more credible option, but never did I think to question their credibility. This platform is not something to be taken at face value and this will definitely be something I take away and try to apply to future endeavors with Wikipedia, including our upcoming project.
Short Assignment 4
