I’ve recently become interested in learning more about history—different time periods, civilizations, wars, important figures, and so on. While searching for information, I often come across Wikipedia, but I’m wondering how reliable it is for these topics.
How accurate and detailed is Wikipedia when it comes to history? Is it a good all-in-one resource for learning (or as a starting point), or should I rely on other sources as well? Do professional historians generally consider it trustworthy?
Bonus question:
How well-documented is the French Wikipedia compared to the English version? I’ve heard that it tends to be more detailed when it comes to French and Francophone history, but how does it compare for other historical topics?
Thanks in advance for your insights!
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Wikipedia tends to be better to provide basic factual information for topics on the history of the country/ies the language applies to, and gets exponentially worse if we move away from this, with English often being a kind of middle ground in badness.
For example, to cite my own experience and going in order of languages from most relevant to my own native, Japanese history is typically really good and absurdly in-depth in Japanese, quite dissatisfsctory in English and utter garbage in German, and from the three or so sites I checked on it in French (my French is very bad but I can see how long an entry is in comparison and look at what the references are), that is also likely close to the German side in this field of inquiry.
I’d only “trust” it as far as you can imagine from the above paragraph.
That being said, probably all historians look at Wikipedia as a cursory step at one point (even to just scowl at it), but no one in their right mind would (=should) actually depend on it or trust it. (The most useful part of Wikipedia on any topic tends to be the references/bibliography.)