30 Times People Found The Coolest And Most Interesting Wikipedia Articles

Bored Panda reached out to Lisa McLendon, Ph.D., from the University of Kansas, for her thoughts on the reliability of news sources and why, at this point, Wikipedia may be better than artificial intelligence-generated information. You'll find the insights she shared with us below!

We asked McLendon, the William Allen White Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications and the coordinator at the Bremner Editing Center, to what extent people should rely on Wikipedia for accurate information. She was kind enough to shed some light on this for us.

"Research has repeatedly shown that most content on Wikipedia is correct and 'vandalism' of pages is generally corrected quickly. The problem is that people don't automatically know which bits of content aren't correct," she told Bored Panda in an email.

"This is why I always tell my students, 'Start there, don't end there.' I give the same advice with AI—always check it against original sources."

According to McLendon, Wikipedia is more reliable and a better source than AI-generated summaries because of all the material cited at the bottom of each page.

"These links allow readers to head back to the original source for the information and check it out themselves. Some AI tools will provide sources, but people should still check them," she said.

With so much misinformation floating about in this day and age, we asked which news sources continue to be reliable and trustworthy.

"Most 'legacy media' follow established standards of journalism regarding fact-checking, sourcing, ethics, etc., and as such are reliable," McLendon told Bored Panda.

"Some examples are the Associated Press, the BBC, Reuters, CBC, the Globe and Mail, AFP, BNO News, Sky News, New York Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal, PBS, NPR, the Guardian, the Independent, Financial Times, Bloomberg," she said.

"Many newer media outlets also adhere to these standards. A few examples are ProPublica, Bellingcat, the Hill, Vox, Axios. Readers should be careful to separate news coverage from commentary/opinion pieces, which many of these outlets also publish."

If you’re a millennial or a member of Generation Z, it’s very likely that your school teachers or university professors told you to avoid using Wikipedia as a source when writing essays or doing research. Back in the Before Times, it was considered a subpar source, even though the articles are often rigorously edited, maintained, and fact-checked by the sprawling Wikipedia community.

These days, however, Wikipedia’s reputation is rising very quickly. And it mostly comes down to the rising use of generative artificial intelligence and large language models, which sometimes ‘hallucinate’ facts and aren’t fully reliable (yet).

For example, CNN’s Allison Morrow notes in a recent piece how Google’s AI overview couldn’t correctly answer how old Marlon Brando was in the legendary movie ‘The Godfather.’ Meanwhile, Wikipedia offered a straightforward and reliable answer. (If you’re curious, the actor was 47 years old and turned 48 after the film’s release.)

“You can’t trust something that anyone can edit, the thinking went, and so it became a bad word in journalism and academia. Don’t cite it; don’t even look at it. Or if you do, for God’s sake, don’t let anyone see you,” Morrow said, explaining what the attitude toward Wikipedia was like in the past.

“But over the past two decades, the free-to-use online encyclopedia has carried on with its mission, expanding its global community of volunteer editors, known as Wikipedians, and ultimately resisting the kinds of platform decay that have claimed other 2000s-era internet phenoms like Facebook, Twitter and, to some extent, Google.”

That being said, Wikipedia still isn’t ‘perfect’ or anything remotely close. This crowdsourcing model isn’t without flaws. For example, some people have ‘vandalized’ articles before, and Wikipedia itself keeps a list of hoaxes on its site.

But, when somebody tries to edit Wikipedia, this fact gets flagged and hundreds of Wikipedians who keep tabs on changes to pages get notified of this event.

Researcher and Wikipedia editor Molly White told CNN: “People who are trolling or expressing their own political beliefs are not tolerated on the site.”

What are the most interesting or most bizarre Wikipedia entries you’ve ever read in your lives, dear Pandas? Have you found anything unusually captivating on the site recently?

How much do you rely on Wikipedia for your job, studies, etc.? We’d love to hear from you! Let us know in the comments below.