Wikipedia’s open-edit model and collaborative nature can lead to an environment of inconsistent, biased, or unreliable information. Below, we explore the risks this presents for content marketers looking to use Wikipedia as a resource for content creation.
Open to Anyone: Wikipedia’s Vulnerable Editing and Content Creation System
We all know Wikipedia. The free online, community-curated encyclopedia is one of the most popular resources for finding information. With over 56 million pages, anyone can contribute to writing entries. But how does it work, and what challenges does this platform pose for content marketers?
Anyone Can Edit
A big issue with Wikipedia’s open-edit system is that anyone, regardless of qualifications or expertise, can edit entries. Wikipedia operates through self-regulation, with its community of volunteer editors working to enhance the quality and accuracy of its content. Nearly 300,000 people from around the world edit Wikipedia articles each month, reflecting the “wisdom of crowds” practice.
Contributors are strongly encouraged to support factual claims with reliable references and authoritative sources whenever possible. However, pages can still become targets for people who insert false information or abusive content. The dynamic nature of Wikipedia’s crowd-sourced model requires constant monitoring to safeguard the integrity of information.
Wikipedia’s open editing system is a key strength that democratizes information and enables rapid content creation. However, this openness also presents a significant vulnerability. Their policy permitting anyone to edit entries can result in a lack of control over the content and distribution of inaccurate information. As entries may be altered by individuals without expertise or people with biased intentions, this poses significant challenges for content marketers.
No Guarantee of Expert Content Creation
Contributors do not need to demonstrate subject matter expertise. Entries are often written or edited by individuals without the necessary knowledge or qualifications. This can lead to unreliable or questionable content, especially on complex or specialized topics. The absence of a formal vetting process means that even well-intentioned contributors may introduce errors or misrepresentations.
Information presented on Wikipedia should be looked at through a critical lens. Otherwise, posts that lack proper citations or authoritative references can create an environment for misinformation. A rising number of people struggle to evaluate the validity of the content they’re consuming on the internet. More than a third of internet users are unaware that online content might be false or biased. Combined with the fact that Wikipedia’s open-editing platform comes with no guarantee of expert content creation, this creates a significant concern.
For content marketing managers, the inability to verify contributors’ expertise can lead to the inclusion of misleading information in marketing materials, undermining the credibility of their content.
Outdated and Misinformed: The Risk of Stale Content
While Wikipedia is often seen as a quick reference tool, relying on the platform for current industry insights poses significant risks, especially for marketers who need accurate, up-to-date information. The vast user-generated content is not always promptly updated, which can lead to outdated information that fails to reflect the latest trends or data. Wikipedia articles have an accuracy rate of 80% compared with 95% accuracy of other sources. This makes it a less reliable resource for marketers seeking timely insights into fast-moving industries.
Stale Information
In rapidly moving industries—like technology, fashion, and digital marketing, among numerous others—information becomes outdated quickly. Wikipedia entries can lag behind, as articles often do not reflect the latest developments or data.
Content created using stale information risks being irrelevant or inaccurate, which can harm a brand’s credibility and authority. Content marketing managers must ensure that their messaging aligns with the most current industry trends, but Wikipedia’s failure to provide real-time updates makes its information an unreliable source.
The Misinformation Problem
Beyond outdated content, Wikipedia also has a problem with misinformation. The platform’s open-edit policy makes it vulnerable to hoaxes, false claims, and errors, which can persist for extended periods before being corrected.
In some well-documented cases, like the Seigenthaler incident, this inaccurate information continues to spread when people take it from Wikipedia and use it in books and articles. For marketers who rely on factual accuracy, this uncertainty can undermine their ability to trust Wikipedia as a reliable source, making it a risky choice for research or content development.
Bias and Inconsistencies: Why Marketers Can’t Rely on Wikipedia
While Wikipedia aims to present neutral and objective information, the platform’s reliance on volunteer contributors and editors can lead to biases in the content. This can create a skewed view, particularly on controversial topics. For marketers, this introduces another layer of complexity when trying to build balanced and accurate messaging, as the content found may be misleading.
The Role of Bias
Content is influenced by the perspectives and biases of its contributors, which can lead to distorted narratives. For instance, in October 2019, only 18% of biographies on Wikipedia were about women, demonstrating a bias. It could be argued that this is a common bias and that the biases found in Wikipedia content will obviously echo the same ones found in society. However, as there is so much content on Wikipedia, much of it will go unchecked, and biases that lean into more harmful narratives may go unchecked for far longer.
Sources are often not reviewed thoroughly, which can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation or, more concerning, biased information that readers may not critically analyze and, as a result, fail to recognize as biased.
This risk of bias also bleeds into the open-editing side of Wikipedia as well. People will ‘police’ pages for subjects they feel strongly about, and they control the content according to what they believe should be on the page. Any contradicting contributions from others are regularly monitored and removed. Even when contributors initially attempt to correct the bias, it becomes exhausting to attempt to battle with the person continuously or people appropriating the subject.
Therefore, biases can result in Wikipedia content that presents a skewed or one-sided view of a topic, which can mislead marketers looking for objective, factual information. For content marketing managers, relying on biased content from Wikipedia can lead to messaging that is not aligned with the brand’s values or customer expectations, potentially alienating the target audience.
Inconsistencies in Quality
The quality of articles varies significantly, depending on the editors and sources used. While some entries are well-researched and thoroughly cited, others are incomplete, poorly written, or lack reliable sources. This inconsistency makes it difficult for marketers to trust Wikipedia as a dependable resource. Content creation requires consistency in quality and reliability, and Wikipedia’s unpredictable nature in this regard makes it a difficult foundation for producing high-quality marketing content.
Wikipedia claims that studies find its accuracy comparable to The Encyclopedia Britannica. However, due to its open, collaborative nature, the writing quality varies tremendously in comparison to more venerable print resources.
While errors can continuously be corrected on Wikipedia, they can also continuously be inserted, and the quality of each individual article is constantly gambled.
Low Authority Score: Why Wikipedia Doesn’t Pass SEO Content Creation Standards
Wikipedia is a high-traffic site, so it shouldn’t be surprising that many marketers link to Wikipedia pages in the hope that search engine giants like Google will notice their site and give it some reflected authority.
However, Wikipedia uses a “no-follow” attribute on all external links, which means that search engines will not consider these links when calculating a page’s ranking. They implemented this policy to cut down on spam as users were attempting to randomly drop links into Wikipedia to increase SEO.
So, to begin with, Wikipedia is not a great source for marketers seeking SEO optimization for their content. On top of that, credibility issues surrounding Wikipedia contribute to a poor authority score and how it’s valued in SEO rankings.
Lack of Citation by Reputable Sources
One key factor contributing to Wikipedia’s low authority in SEO is its lack of citations from reputable sources. Many credible organizations and publications avoid citing Wikipedia due to its open-edit structure and potential for inaccuracies. For marketers focused on improving their SEO rankings, this presents a challenge.
SemRush calculates authority scores through factors like link power, organic traffic, and spam factors to measure the credibility, trustworthiness, and influence of a website. Creating quality content, earning backlinks from trustworthy domains, and reducing spam factors all help improve authority scores and SEO results. Due to Wikipedia’s inconsistency in quality and the fact that many credible sources avoid citing Wikipedia, this weakens its authority score in search engines.
Authority scores are a key component of a digital marketing strategy, as they can help improve a site’s visibility, traffic, and conversion rates. Search engines value content backed by authoritative sources, and Wikipedia’s low citation rate diminishes its authority in the eyes of search algorithms. As a result, using Wikipedia as a primary source for content creation can create serious SEO limitations.
Tertiary Source Status
Wikipedia is classified as a tertiary source because it mostly compiles information from primary and secondary sources rather than generating original content. For content marketing managers who prioritize authoritative, well-researched content, Wikipedia’s tertiary status makes it unsuitable as a primary reference.
Marketers who rely on primary or secondary sources for developing their content strategies will find Wikipedia’s lack of original research to be a major limitation. In content creation, using tertiary sources like Wikipedia can lead to diluted or less impactful messaging, reducing the overall authority and trustworthiness of the content.
An individual in a forum on the topic gave an excellent example of why Wikipedia’s tertiary status presents an issue as a source for content marketers:
“If there was a Wikipedia entry and they got your birthday wrong, you can show them my birth certificate, and they wouldn’t accept it. But if you talked to Fox News and said your were born in year X, then now it’s a good source for Wikipedia.”
Circular inaccuracies can also occur in the following scenario:
- Someone adds nonfactual information to Wikipedia.
- A mainstream publication republishes this information because Wikipedia is “generally trustworthy.”
- Someone at Wikipedia notices the factual discrepancy and removes the information.
- Article or information gets reinstated due to using a “verifiable” reference to publication from step 2.
Thus, this initiated a looped inaccuracy that contributed to the previously mentioned misinformation problem.
A Media Literacy Tool: Using Wikipedia for Education, Not Marketing
So, should this be the end of open collaboration in the information space? No. While Wikipedia may be unreliable for content creation, it still holds value as a tool for media literacy education. For marketers and educators alike, Wikipedia can be used to teach critical thinking and fact-checking skills through practices like lateral reading.
The Role of Lateral Reading
Ultimately, anytime you have a free and open source for information and education, it is going to run into accuracy issues. However, it could be argued that Wikipedia’s purpose is not to be a completely verified source for content creators but rather a jumping-off point for learning about a topic. It is the responsibility of content creators and marketers to do research and further find credible sources.
Wikipedia is a useful starting point for verification, helping to initiate the process of fact-checking with trusted sources. This approach is known as lateral reading. Lateral reading helps you determine an author’s credibility, intent, and biases by searching for articles on the same topic. While Wikipedia’s content may not always be reliable, it can still serve as a gateway for further investigation. Content marketers might use Wikipedia as a starting point for their research. However, they should always validate the information with reputable primary sources before including it in their content.
Wikipedia as a Teaching Tool
While unsuitable for direct marketing, Wikipedia can be valuable in an educational context for teaching media literacy and research skills. It offers a wealth of information that, while not always accurate, can be analyzed critically. Doing so can help students and professionals develop the ability to discern credible sources. Content marketing managers can benefit from using Wikipedia as a tool to refine their research skills. But freelancers and marketers shouldn’t rely upon as a standalone resource for content creation.
Marketers Should Look Beyond Wikipedia for Content Creation Sources
For content marketers, Wikipedia is a minefield of inaccuracies. Its lack of authority makes it unreliable as a source for creating trusted, high-quality content. Marketers must rely on credible, reliable sources that offer accurate and up-to-date information. Wikipedia should serve only as a jumping-off point, at most.
While it might be a nightmare for marketers, Wikipedia never intended to act as a credible marketing source. Its purpose is to benefit readers by presenting information across all branches of knowledge. It also aims to guide them toward additional resources for deeper exploration. And in that realm, it still succeeds.
Wikipedia’s open-edit model and collaborative nature can lead to an environment of inconsistent, biased, or unreliable information. This article explores the risks and challenges this presents for content marketers looking to use Wikipedia as a resource.
About the Author: Rhianmôr Thomas
I am a freelance writer living in Los Angeles. With an undergraduate in Screenwriting and an MBA, I write for a variety of mediums.
Most days, you can find me working on client blogs, articles, website copy, product descriptions, and more. Currently, I write on a range of topics, specializing in B2B & B2C marketing, fashion, film, social media, higher education, and ecommerce.
I always aim to write copy that makes the reader think – about a better way to do something, the future of an industry or just about their opinion on the topic. When you can blend the goals of the client with the ability to make the intended (or unintended!) audience think – that’s successful copywriting.
To learn more about Rhianmôr, check out her writing profile here: Rhianmôr Thomas