Why Wikipedia Got COVID-19 Right
Amidst a sea of misinfo and hot takes, Wikipedia editors were — as a new study finds — cautious
This pandemic has been a crapshow of disinformation, conspiratorial mutterings, and partisan rancor over basic facts of science.
How has Wikipedia weathered the storm?
After all, COVID-19 is a popular subject at the online encyclopedia. Wikipedia has dozens of articles mentioning COVID-19, and the main one (“COVID-19 pandemic”) was Wikipedia’s most-viewed article for all of 2020. One could imagine the heady challenges facing a volunteer-written wiki where everyday randos have edit privileges. Epistemology is the new ideology, and Wikipedia’s now a key part of how the world settles facts.
But lo, here cometh some good news!
A recent study argues that when it comes to publishing articles on COVID-19, Wikipedia editors did a remarkably good job of focusing only on high-quality info.
What’s more, the process (i.e. how they kept quality high) turns out to be even more interesting than the result (i.e. that they kept quality high). As I read this new study, “Citation needed? Wikipedia bibliometrics during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic”, I gained a better appreciation of why Wikipedia has remained as…
