The Headteachers Blog Issue 7

What Wikipedia Teaches Us About Trust

My apologies in advance, this is quite a long blog. I have resisted an urge to take head on the increased instability of the international networks of governance and business that we have been used to across the Atlantic. To flirt around the issue, I have admittedly written a much longer piece than usual.

I have always been fascinated by the simple fact that Wikipedia exists.

I grew up in the pre-internet world as we now know it. I was reliant on traditional custodians of knowledge including publishers, broadcasters, academics, institutions. They were the gatekeepers to authority and power, and we largely trusted them because there was no real alternative. Knowledge came from on high, filtered down through systems that were assumed to be rigorous, impartial, and well-intentioned.

So, when Wikipedia arrived, it was frankly unsettling. And being a teacher at the time I was deeply distrustful. An encyclopaedia that anyone could edit? That felt chaotic at best and dangerous at worst. How could something built by everyday people possibly be trusted? Surely expertise had to be controlled, protected, managed.

And yet, here I am, 25 years on celebrating its very existence and in fact holding it up as potentially a beacon of hope in an age of much disquiet.

As we move deeper into an age where many of the systems of power we once trusted have become visibly flawed, politicised, or abused by those with alternate agendas, something interesting has happened. We’ve become more reliant on the power of people rather than institutions. That shift is both unsettling and oddly hopeful.

In fact, as I watch the world order I once took for granted come under attack from within, it is genuinely bamboozling to realise that I now often find something like Wikipedia more reliable than parts of the establishment. Maybe it was always this way and I was simply naïve. Or maybe the balance really has shifted.

What’s easy to forget is that Wikipedia doesn’t run itself. It is held together by an enormous number of unpaid volunteers including editors, moderators, and administrators. They all take accuracy seriously. These aren’t anonymous troublemakers acting on impulse. Many are academics, researchers, or people with deeply scholarly instincts. They follow formal policies around neutrality, sourcing, and verification, not because they’re paid to, but because they believe it matters.

The Wikipedia’s founders still work as volunteers and take no direct income from the platform. That alone tells you something about its DNA.

The real strength of Wikipedia isn’t related to blind trust almost the opposite; it teaches you how to read, research and be objective.

Used properly, it forces you into excellent academic habits. Check the sources. Follow the references. Read the original material. Question how conclusions are drawn. In that sense, Wikipedia isn’t just a source of information; it’s an educational tool that actively encourages critical thinking. It doesn’t ask you to accept authority, it asks you to interrogate it.

Yes, there are bad actors. Of course there are. It is certainly not perfect. The key is that Wikipedia’s mechanisms for exposing them are open and visible. Every edit is logged. Every dispute is public. Errors don’t get buried, they get challenged. Sadly, a regime of being that is not so common amongst some of the most prominent world leaders.

That level of transparency is increasingly rare.

At a time when even historically trusted news organisations are under scrutiny, and when claims of “free speech” are often weaponised by those pursuing narrow interests, Wikipedia quietly demonstrates something powerful: that large groups of ordinary people, given open systems and shared rules, can self-correct.

It’s easy to become despondent about the world right now. But from Wikipedia, of all places, we can take a surprisingly hopeful lesson, about honesty, collective responsibility, and the quiet competence of people who simply care about getting things right.

If only those who are given power through democratic processes could learn the same lesson, separating responsibility from self-interest, we would all feel a little more confident about watching the news without grimacing.

It’s a fascinating time indeed.