Wikipedia:So how exactly do you verify a Wikipedia article?

They say that Wikipedia is reliable and accurate but they also that you have to verify the information it contains for yourself. So how exactly do you verify a Wikipedia article for yourself? Should you be happy at the absence of warnings in orange? Or can you relax at the sight of blue footnote numbers?

Does the source actually exist?

Most citation templates make the text of citations tiny. You may have to make your browser magnify the text. Once you can actually read the citations, the next question to ask is: do they even exist?

Here's a listing of five medical journals. Which ones are real and which ones are fake? Answers at the bottom.

• Medical Acupuncture
• Medical Applications of Microengineering
• Medical Device Law Weekly
• Medical Entuberance Monthly
• Medical and Surgical Reporter

The importance of chapter and verse

Homosexuality is a sin. The Bible says so.

Well, the Bible says lots of things. You're also not supposed to shave, eat fruits from trees less than five years old, touch your wife after her period, etc. Leviticus would be the first place to look for the more prohibitive directives, but many are also to be found in Deuteronomy and other books.

Fortunately, the Bible is very easy to search online. Much more voluminous reference works of more recent vintage are also available online, but require a subscription. Suppose you found this statement in an article about music:

According to the New Grove, Haydn and Werner wrote several polkas for glass harmonica when the Prince vacationed in Bohemia.

If corroboration for this statement is to be found anywhere in the New Grove, there are at least five places you'd have to look; five different volumes in fact. Not everyone's mommy and daddy buys him a subscription to Grove Online; in fact, a tiny number of Wikipedia users are mommies and daddies who after paying the Internet bill can't afford to buy anything else beyond that. To verify this would take a trip to the library and perhaps asking a librarian for five different volumes of... wait a minute, which edition of the New Grove? The Wikipedia article didn't say!

This is a fictionalized example. Sad to say, not by much.

Does the citation say what Wikipedia say it does?

Maybe a citation passes the first two tests: it points to a real book or journal, and it has a volume number (if applicable) and page number that allows you to find it in the book. The last step now is to read it with your own eyes and see if it really says what you expected it to say.

Say you're researching the prime number theorem. Wikipedia says:

According to Dan Rockmore, in Stalking the Riemann Hypotheses, at 36n., the prime number theorem is $\lim _{x\to \infty }{\frac {\pi (x)}{x/\ln(x)}}=1,$

The cited book says:

The number of primes less than N is approximately equal to N/log(N). Also: The Nth prime is approximately equal to N X log(N).

Well, I'm no mathematician, and maybe there is a reason Wikipedia refers to 3.14159 and ln while the book refers to N and log. Or maybe Wikipedia and the book are saying exactly the same thing. Or maybe they're not. And what's all that stuff about lim and infinity?

Can you ever be sure if you're not an expert in the topic?

Answers

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