Because of the collabortive nature of Wikipedia and because changes are being made by anyone at any time, Wikipedia articles constantly change and develop at different paces. They also differ in quality, and Wikipedia has developed a system to evaluate an article's quality.
Evaluating Wikipedia Articles: A Checklist
Remember, Wikipedia articles are not appropriate sources of information for college level work. But Wikipedia can be a good starting point to find other, more appropriate sources of information. Please use Wikipedia responsibly.
- Look at the article's history page and talk page
- Check the article's creation date.
- Look to see how many editors have contributed to the article. Has the article been created by only one or two people, or has it been a collaborative effort among many editors?
- Has the article been subject to heavy or continued vandalism?
- Have there been discussions about the article's validity?
- Does the article appear to be controversial?
- Pay attention to the template messages that appear at the top of, or within, an article.
- Make sure to read the template messages (the boxes at the top of the page or section) if they appear in Wikipedia articles. They can inform you of any issues with the article such as lack of references and sources, the presence of unverified or unreliable information, or if the article requires clean-up, etc.
from https://libguides.lmu.edu/c.php?g=323798&p=2169061
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