Reference Risk: A Research-Based Approach to Source Reliability in Wikipedia
🎥 Session recording: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2026_%E2%80%93_Reference_Risk_A_Research-Based_Approach_to_Source_Reliability_in_Wikipedia.webm](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania_2026_%E2%80%93_Reference_Risk_A_Research-Based_Approach_to_Source_Reliability_in_Wikipedia.webm)
To ensure knowledge integrity, Wikipedia content must be verifiable and supported by reliable secondary sources. Over the years, Wikipedia editors have developed mechanisms to enforce these policies in order to reduce the presence of unreliable references.
This session will showcase recent research conducted at the Wikimedia Foundation on source reliability, with a focus on understanding and characterizing the mechanisms that editors apply to assess and manage references such as perennial sources lists (WP:RSP). We will present findings on how reliability is defined in practice, how it varies across contexts, and how editors coordinate their efforts to maintain high sourcing standards. Finally, the session will introduce **[Reference Risk](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:ReferenceRisk)**, a novel language-agnostic approach designed to strengthen and scale these efforts across all Wikipedia language editions.
The ultimate goal of the session is not only to maximize awareness and adoption of these research-driven approaches among Wikimedia volunteers, but also to create space for feedback, dialogue, and collaboration.
