FOOTNOTES
Every claim should be checkable
Wikipedia’s sourcing policy says people must be able to check that facts are not just made up. Quotations and challenged claims need an inline citation to a reliable source.
Check a claimWHAT THE RESEARCH SAYS
Read the notes,
then look sideways.
A wiki article is a starting point, not the last word.
Check a claim
[1]follow the footnote
- Follow the footnote
- Open a new tab
- Check the history
- A few minutes, better sources
Open wikis are written by volunteers and held together by footnotes. When Stanford researchers watched skilled readers judge websites, the fact checkers did best by leaving the page to see what others said about it.
Updated
THE SHORT ANSWER
Check the source,
not just the page.
Wikis are built to be checked.
Footnotes, history and talk pages show you how.
LATERAL READING
Leave the page to judge it
In a Stanford study, fact checkers opened new tabs to see what others said about a site. Historians and students stayed on the page and were taken in more often.
Try it
PAGE HISTORY
Every edit is on record
A wiki’s page history lists each previous revision with its date, time and the account behind it. The talk page is where editors discuss changes.
See the numbersA QUICK CLAIM CHECK
What does this claim
need from you?
Pick what you have found in an article to see how much checking it calls for. The bar shows how much work to do before you rely on it.
Based on Wikipedia’s verifiability policy and the Stanford History Education Group’s study of how fact checkers read online.
TWO NUMBERS WORTH KNOWING
We share quickly,
and check less often.
Two figures from Ofcom’s 2025 report
on how UK adults use and judge media.
24%
News sharers who always check reliability
Of UK adults who share news stories online, only a quarter said they always check the reliability of what they share, and 16% said they only share stories from outlets they have heard of.
SHARING NEWS · OFCOM
50%
Questioners who check on other sites
Among adults who say they question information online, half check it on other sites or apps, and 54% check who posted it. That is lateral reading in everyday form.
CHECKING · OFCOM
Around four in ten adults (38%) said they always or mostly consider whether news on social media is true, up from a third (33%) the year before.
FOUR HABITS TO TRY
A few minutes
of checking.
None of these needs special tools. They are the moves skilled fact checkers make, applied to any article or web page.
Follow one footnote
Pick the claim you plan to use and open its source. Check that it says what the article says it does.
Open a new tab
Search for the source or site by name and see what others say about it, instead of judging it only by its own pages.
Hold back on the first click
Fact checkers showed “click restraint”, scanning search results before choosing. The order of results is influenced by search engine optimisation.
Look at the history and talk page
The page history shows when each edit was made and by which account. A recent burst of edits, or debate on the talk page, is worth a look.
WHY NOT CITE THE WIKI?
Even the wiki says
follow the notes.
Wikipedia’s own sourcing policy counts open wikis among self-published sources that are largely not acceptable as sources. Its articles are meant to rest on published reliable sources, so the footnote, not the article, is the thing to cite.
The policy says content is determined by published information rather than editors’ beliefs or experiences: even if an editor is sure something is true, it must have been published in a reliable source before it can be added.
Questions
Questions people ask
Can I cite a wiki article in an essay?
Wikipedia’s own policy lists open wikis among self-published sources that are largely not acceptable as sources. The usual approach is to follow the footnote, read the original source and cite that.
What is lateral reading?
Leaving a page to find out about it from elsewhere. In the Stanford study, fact checkers scanned a site briefly, then opened new browser tabs to see what other sources said about it.
What does “citation needed” mean?
It marks material that lacks an inline citation. Wikipedia’s policy describes adding the tag as an interim step before removing unsourced material, to give editors time to add references.
How can I see who changed an article?
Open the page history. It lists previous revisions with the date and time of each edit, the username or address of the editor and an optional summary of the change.
Who took part in the Stanford study?
The researchers deliberately recruited skilled readers: 10 professional fact checkers, 10 PhD historians and 25 Stanford undergraduates. The fact checkers were the fastest and most accurate.