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December 15, 2005 3:35 PM PST
Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
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Over the last couple of weeks, Wikipedia, the free, open-access encyclopedia, has taken a great deal of flak in the press for problems related to the credibility of its authors and its general accountability.
In particular, Wikipedia has taken hits for its inclusion, for four months, of an anonymously written article linking former journalist John Seigenthaler to the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and John F. Kennedy. At the same time, the blogosphere was buzzing for several days about podcasting pioneer Adam Curry's being accused of anonymously deleting references to others' seminal work on the technology.
Growing pains for Wikipedia
In response to situations like these and others in its history, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales has always maintained that the service and its community are built around a self-policing and self-cleaning nature that is supposed to ensure its articles are accurate.
Still, many critics have tried to downplay its role as a source of valid information and have often pointed to the Encyclopedia Britannica as an example of an accurate reference.
For its study, Nature chose articles from both sites in a wide range of topics and sent them to what it called "relevant" field experts for peer review. The experts then compared the competing articles--one from each site on a given topic--side by side, but were not told which article came from which site. Nature got back 42 usable reviews from its field of experts.
In the end, the journal found just eight serious errors, such as general misunderstandings of vital concepts, in the articles. Of those, four came from each site. They did, however, discover a series of factual errors, omissions or misleading statements. All told, Wikipedia had 162 such problems, while Britannica had 123.
That averages out to 2.92 mistakes per article for Britannica and 3.86 for Wikipedia.
"An expert-led investigation carried out by Nature--the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science," the journal wrote, "suggests that such high-profile examples (like the Seigenthaler and Curry situations) are the exception rather than the rule."
And to Wales, while Britannica came out looking a little bit more accurate than Wikipedia, the Nature study was validation of his service's fundamental structure.
"I was very pleased, just to see that (the study) was reasonably favorable," Wales told CNET News.com. "I think it provides, for us, a great counterpoint to the press coverage we've gotten recently, because it puts the focus on the broader quality and not just one article."
He also acknowledged that the error rate for each encyclopedia was not insignificant, and added that he thinks such numbers demonstrate that broad review of encyclopedia articles is needed.
He also said that the results belie the notion that Britannica is infallible.
"I have very great respect for Britannica," Wales said. But "I think there is a general view among a lot of people that it has no errors, like, 'I read it in Britannica, it must be true.' It's good that people see that there are a lot of errors everywhere."
To Britannica officials, however, the Nature results showed that Wikipedia still has a way to go.
"The (Nature) article is saying that Wikipedia has a third more errors" than Britannica, said Jorge Cauz, president of Encyclopedia Britannica.
But Cauz and editor in chief Dale Hoiberg also said they were concerned that Nature had not specified the problems that it had found in Britannica.
"We've asked them a number of questions about the process they used," Hoiberg said. "They said in (their article) that the inaccuracies included errors, omissions and misleading statements. But there's no indication of how many of each. So we're very eager to look at that and explore it because we take it very seriously."
See more CNET content tagged:
Wikipedia,
Jimmy Wales,
encyclopedia,
article,
Adam Curry
-Jonathan
http://philoneist.com
Predicting your hardheadedness, you will find another reason to make a stink. But know this: the errors in the Britannica will have to wait until the next printing to be corrected. The Wiki's have probably already been changed.
Wiki is less reliable, but then again, how often do we need to know all the nitty gritty details of a subject? When trying to find out the distance to the Moon, f wiki causes me to be off by 100,000 miles, no big deal, to me.
But here is the big misunderstanding. Wiki is fast and growing. It has a MUCH broader range of topics AND you can directly link to external websites to find out more. If something happens in the news tonight, you can bet that Wiki will have something up tomorrow. It may not be 100% accurate, but I'll sacrifice a little accuracy for information now.
Additionally, you are not going to find an article on "1337 speak" in Britannica. Nor will you get an article "Stargate: SG-1" in Britannica. As far as American culture goes, Wiki is king. Also, there are alot of fringe interests out there that don't get a whole lot of attention by major publishers, but they have entries in Wiki.
All in all, I think that Wiki has done more to raise the "general" knowledge of people than Britannica, simply because it gives your the information you are looking for quick and gives you enough general information so that you can go from there and research the subject further.
Anything any joe says at any time can be a reference in a college level paper. The authority of the reference is the question. Wikipedia tracks the history of an article, so verfiying the overall validity of an article is as easy as browsing the history to view edits. Generally, the more people that have edited an article, the more accurate it will be. You can also easily spot POV or vandalism by content changed. It's too bad EB doesn't offer a history of changes broken down by source!
What Wikipedia really needs is a notification system for changes. That way anyone referencing or modifying an article could register for notifications and be immediately notified of any changes.
One more thing, when researching, always look at all sides of any issue. Wikipedia should be used as one of many references, and is great as a starting point. And once your research is completed and if you find the Wiki article lacking, then change it!
Dr. David Hill Chief Executive
World Innovation Foundation Charity
Bern, Switzerland Registration no.CH-035.7.035.277-9 - 11th July 2005, in the Canton of Bern
www.thewif.org.uk
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by pawdyest
September 27, 2008 7:40 AM PDT
- testing the reliability of the two sources-wikipedia.org and encyclopedia such as the britannica encyclopedia, is quite simple..
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See all 31 Comments >>there are lots of issues here, first is the reliability, the latest edition and revision..