Can we cite Wikipedia? What if it was more reliable than its detractors? (2025)
The article discusses the ongoing debate about the reliability of Wikipedia as a source for academic citation. It argues that Wikipedia's systematic rejection in academic circles is often based on outdated biases, despite its widespread use among students and educators. The author suggests that Wikipedia's verification mechanisms and the issues within traditional academic publishing deserve more recognition.
- ▪Wikipedia is widely used by students and professors, raising questions about its citation in academic work.
- ▪The manuscript explores the reasons behind the rejection of Wikipedia as a credible source.
- ▪The author argues that Wikipedia's reliability is often underestimated compared to traditional academic sources.
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Story provenance
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Record
| Original publisher | arXiv.org |
| Canonical URL | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.02462 |
| Publication time | Mon, 18 May 2026 04:49:54 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-05-18T05:04:56.107Z |
| Last seen | 2026-05-18T05:04:56.107Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | aEgL7kfTTvu_ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Computer Science > Computers and Society arXiv:2509.02462 (cs) [Submitted on 2 Sep 2025 (v1), last revised 26 Nov 2025 (this version, v2)] Title:Can we cite Wikipedia? What if Wikipedia was more reliable than its detractors ? Authors:Mohamed El Louadi View a PDF of the paper titled Can we cite Wikipedia? What if Wikipedia was more reliable than its detractors ?, by Mohamed El Louadi View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Wikipedia, a widely successful encyclopedia recognized in academic circles and used by both students and professors alike, has led educators to question whether it can be cited as an information source, given its widespread use for this very purpose.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at arXiv.org.
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