29 December 2005

Wikipedia Pretty Accurate

According to a recent nature.com study of Science coverage in Wikipedia.
However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

Wikipedia is growing fast. The encyclopaedia has added 3.7 million articles in 200 languages since it was founded in 2001. The English version has more than 45,000 registered users, and added about 1,500 new articles every day of October 2005. Wikipedia has become the 37th most visited website, according to Alexa, a web ranking service.

Due to its collaborative nature, Wikipedia will never offer a consistent written presentation of encyclopedic entries. The writing will vary vastly, in tone and in quality. But that doesn't mean on the whole, it is less accurate than an old fashioned dead tree compendium. In fact, I would point out that the millions of eyeballs and individual empowerment to create, add, update, (and delete) articles trumps the edicts of a lone editor or small annointed circle that refrain from expanding topics where controversy may erupt or plaster a sanitized Disneyesque theme across the board.

Yes, some fool can instantly commit an act of virtual grafitti, or purposefully deceive, either with serious intent or in the spirit of prankfulness. Again, the millions of eyeballs will laser in on an egregious offense if the topic has any relevance whatsoever. Just peruse all the pages on history, and if you take the time to review the meta material (i.e., history of updates, past versions, article "discussion"), it reveals far more than a dry, lifeless legacy encyclopedia article ever could. For example, this page on the USS Liberty incident that happened in 1967 — even with the stated mission of NPOV (neutral point of views), writers from all sides sqaure off, including survivors of the attack, who are able to add a perspective from thier own personal experience. Even just the reference links, pointing to books, news articles, other web sources of contrasting dispositions is invaluable, with no equivalent in any dead tree encyclopedia.

Comments

Point made, Naum. Perhaps my earlier post this morning has too much verbal gas, but books in my view will always trump the internet.
It's interesting as well comparing to the encyclopedia. It explains why I'll do my best to have my son pursue real references, rather than copy out of the encyclopedia.