Research:The role of citations in how readers evaluate Wikipedia articles/Trust taxonomy
This set of categories represents the reasons given for trusting, or distrusting, the content of Wikipedia articles provided by over 400 readers between January 7-9 2019. Two researchers independently analyzed samples of responses, discussed common themes, and iteratively refined the emerging categories and heirarchy based on additional examples.
The reasons listed in the taxonomy below...
- can be multivalent: one person might call out a specific reason to explain why they trust an article, while someone else called out the same reason to explain their distrust.
- are not mutually exclusive: many survey responses called out multiple reasons for (dis)trusting the article they were reading.
- are not equally represented within the source data: some reasons were much more common than others
- reflect the researchers' own understanding: some reasons are based on researchers' interpretations of ambiguous survey responses
Taxonomy of reasons for (dis)trusting Wikipedia articles[edit]
Prior experience: Assessments based on the reader's personal experience with the content of Wikipedia
- Direct familiarity: Degree that info the reader was looking for, or other info in the article, matches their prior knowledge of the subject
- Wikipedia familiarity: Degree that info on Wikipedia in general matches reader's prior knowledge
Citations and external links: Assessments based on the prevalence or characteristics of cited sources or other external links
- Presence of sources: Whether the article contains (any) sources
- Number of sources: How many sources the article has
- Perceived authoritativeness of sources: the reputation or ethos of cited sources
- Accessibility of sources: The degree to which the information in the article may be independently verified by checking the cited sources
Prose style: Assessments based on the textual characteristics or writing style of the article
- Authoritative tone: Degree to which the tone of the article is professional or suggests expertise
- Neutral tone: Degree to which the article contains biased or opinion-based language
Risk of incorrectness: Assessments based on the reader's judgement of the likelihood that this information could be wrong or misleading
- Topic coverage: Perceived availability of reliable information on the topic in external sources
- Atomic information: Degree to which the information sought is simple or unambiguous
- Motivation for bias: Perceived likelihood that an unknown author would want to want to present wrong or misleading information on the topic
- Potential for bias: Degree to which information on this topic could be presented in a wrong or misleading way
Article structure: Assessments based on the overall size, coverage, or structure of the article
- Perceived comprehensiveness: Degree to which the article presents all relevant information on the topic
- Raw size: The length of the article
- Structural features: Visual or organizational elements of the article content or user interface
Wikipedia process: Assessments based on reader's prior knowledge (or beliefs) about how Wikipedia content is created
- Open collaboration: Perceptions around the impact of low technical barriers to contribution and voluntary participation
- Evidence of gatekeeping: Observations of specific indications that the article is actively monitored and moderated by people with decision-making authority
- Transparency: Degree to which the reader believes they can inspect the article development history
Reputational measures: Assessments based on reputation or perceived popularity of Wikipedia
- Popularity: Perceptions about how many people consume or contribute to this article
- PageRank: Observation of the ranking of this article in search engine results pages
- Hearsay: General perceptions about how much other people trust this article, articles on this topic, or Wikipedia as a whole
- Specific incident: Indirect knowledge of specific incident(s) that influence credibility judgements
Other measures: Assessments based on no clear or specific criteria
- Blind faith: Unquestioned belief in the trustworthiness of the content
- Common knowledge: Perception that the information in this article is widely or universally known and accepted
