Reliability of Wikipedia: Difference between revisions
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In May 2010, French politician [[Ségolène Royal]] publicly praised the memory of Léon-Robert de l'Astran, an 18th century [[naturalist]], [[humanism|humanist]] and son of a slave trader, who had opposed the slave trade. The newspaper ''[[Sud-Ouest]]'' revealed a month later that de l'Astran had never existed—except as the subject of an article in the [[French Wikipedia]]. Historian Jean-Louis Mahé discovered that de l'Astran was fictional after a student, interested by Royal's praise of him, asked Mahé about him. Mahé's research led him to realise that de l'Astran did not exist in any archives, and he traced the hoax back to the [[Rotary Club]] of [[La Rochelle]]. The article, created by members of the Club in January 2007, had thus remained online for three years—unsourced—before the hoax was uncovered. Upon ''Sud-Ouest''’s revelation—repeated in other major French newspapers—French Wikipedia administrator [[:fr:Utilisateur:DonCamillo|DonCamillo]] immediately deleted the article.<ref name="lemonde.fr"/><ref>[http://www.sudouest.fr/2010/06/07/leon-robert-de-l-astran-celui-qui-n-a-jamais-existe-110539-3415.php "Léon-Robert de L'Astran, celui qui n'a jamais existé"], ''[[Sud-Ouest]]'', June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2010/06/08/01002-20100608ARTFIG00346-segolene-royal-tombe-dans-le-piege-de-wikipedia.php "Ségolène Royal tombe dans le piège de Wikipédia"], ''[[Le Figaro]]'', June 8, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Actualite/Royal-toute-une-Histoire-198776/ "Royal, toute une Histoire"], ''[[Le Journal du Dimanche]]'', June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Robert_de_L%27Astran "Léon Robert de L'Astran"], article in the French Wikipedia, deleted on June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OIfWh714i6kJ:fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Robert_de_L'Astran+%22L%C3%A9on+Robert+de+L'Astran%22&cd=13&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr Cached version of the article "Léon Robert de L'Astran" prior to deletion]</ref> |
In May 2010, French politician [[Ségolène Royal]] publicly praised the memory of Léon-Robert de l'Astran, an 18th century [[naturalist]], [[humanism|humanist]] and son of a slave trader, who had opposed the slave trade. The newspaper ''[[Sud-Ouest]]'' revealed a month later that de l'Astran had never existed—except as the subject of an article in the [[French Wikipedia]]. Historian Jean-Louis Mahé discovered that de l'Astran was fictional after a student, interested by Royal's praise of him, asked Mahé about him. Mahé's research led him to realise that de l'Astran did not exist in any archives, and he traced the hoax back to the [[Rotary Club]] of [[La Rochelle]]. The article, created by members of the Club in January 2007, had thus remained online for three years—unsourced—before the hoax was uncovered. Upon ''Sud-Ouest''’s revelation—repeated in other major French newspapers—French Wikipedia administrator [[:fr:Utilisateur:DonCamillo|DonCamillo]] immediately deleted the article.<ref name="lemonde.fr"/><ref>[http://www.sudouest.fr/2010/06/07/leon-robert-de-l-astran-celui-qui-n-a-jamais-existe-110539-3415.php "Léon-Robert de L'Astran, celui qui n'a jamais existé"], ''[[Sud-Ouest]]'', June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/2010/06/08/01002-20100608ARTFIG00346-segolene-royal-tombe-dans-le-piege-de-wikipedia.php "Ségolène Royal tombe dans le piège de Wikipédia"], ''[[Le Figaro]]'', June 8, 2010</ref><ref>[http://www.lejdd.fr/Politique/Actualite/Royal-toute-une-Histoire-198776/ "Royal, toute une Histoire"], ''[[Le Journal du Dimanche]]'', June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Robert_de_L%27Astran "Léon Robert de L'Astran"], article in the French Wikipedia, deleted on June 7, 2010</ref><ref>[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OIfWh714i6kJ:fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9on_Robert_de_L'Astran+%22L%C3%A9on+Robert+de+L'Astran%22&cd=13&hl=fr&ct=clnk&gl=fr Cached version of the article "Léon Robert de L'Astran" prior to deletion]</ref> |
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There have also been instances of users deliberately inserting false information into Wikipedia in order to test the system and demonstrate its alleged unreliability.<ref>{{cite news|author=Gene Weingarten|date=2007-03-16|url=http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/553968.html|title=A wickedly fun test of Wikipedia|publisher=[[The News & Observer]]|accessdate=2006-04-08 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070320032706/http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/553968.html |archivedate = March 20, 2007}}</ref> Television personality [[Stephen Colbert]] lampooned this drawback of Wikipedia, calling it [[Wikipedia in popular culture#Wikiality|wikiality]]. |
There have also been instances of users deliberately inserting false information into Wikipedia in order to test the system and demonstrate its alleged unreliability. For example, Gene Weingarten, a journalist, ran such a test in 2007; however it was not conclusive as the false information was promptly removed the next day by a Wikipedia editor<ref>{{cite news|author=Gene Weingarten|date=2007-03-16|url=http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/553968.html|title=A wickedly fun test of Wikipedia|publisher=[[The News & Observer]]|accessdate=2006-04-08 |archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20070320032706/http://www.newsobserver.com/105/story/553968.html |archivedate = March 20, 2007}}</ref> Television personality [[Stephen Colbert]] lampooned this drawback of Wikipedia, calling it [[Wikipedia in popular culture#Wikiality|wikiality]]. |
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Wikipedia considers vandalism "the insertion of false and misleading information in bad faith". The Wikipedia page "[[Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia|Researching with Wikipedia]]" states: |
Wikipedia considers vandalism "the insertion of false and misleading information in bad faith". The Wikipedia page "[[Wikipedia:Researching with Wikipedia|Researching with Wikipedia]]" states: |
Revision as of 06:01, 31 January 2011
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b0/Wikipedia_vandalism.svg/300px-Wikipedia_vandalism.svg.png)
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The reliability of Wikipedia, compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, is assessed in many ways, including statistically, by comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia.[1]
Because Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, assessments of its reliability usually include examinations of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly — so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[2] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[3]
A notable early study in the journal Nature suggested that in 2005, Wikipedia scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[4] This study was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.[5]
By 2010 reviewers in medical and scientific fields such as toxicology, cancer research and drug information reviewing Wikipedia against professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a very high standard, often comparable in coverage to physician databases and considerably better than well known reputable national media outlets. Wikipedia articles were cited as references in journals (614 cites in 2009) and as evidence in trademark and higher court rulings. However, omissions and readability sometimes remained an issue – the former at times due to public relations removal of adverse product information and a considerable concern for fields such as medicine.
Wikipedia editing model
The Wikipedia model allows anyone to edit, and relies on a large number of well-intentioned editors to overcome issues raised by a smaller number of problematic editors. It is inherent in Wikipedia's editing model that misleading information can be added, but over time quality is anticipated to improve in a form of group learning as editors reach consensus, so that substandard edits will very rapidly be removed. This assumption is still being tested, and its limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter. Wikipedia is a pioneer in communal knowledge building of this kind. It contrasts with many more traditional models of knowledge and publishing, which attempt to limit content creation to a relatively small group of approved editors in order to exercise strong hierarchical control. Theories of critical pedagogy argue that consensus alone maintains the status quo; new knowledge only emerges from a dialectical exposure of power structures.[6] In order to improve reliability, some editors have called for "stable versions" of articles,[7] or articles that have been reviewed by the community and locked from further editing.[8]
Wikipedia allows anonymous editing: contributors are not required to provide any identification, or even an email address. A 2007 study at Dartmouth College of the English Wikipedia noted that, contrary to usual social expectations, anonymous editors were some of Wikipedia's most productive contributors of valid content.[9] The study also found that the quality of Wikipedia articles varied widely. Some articles were excellent by any reasonable measure—authored and edited by persons knowledgeable in the field, containing numerous useful and relevant references, and written in a proper encyclopedic style. Many articles were amateurish, unauthoritative, and even incorrect, making it difficult for a reader unfamiliar with a given subject matter to know which information to rely upon. In addition, Wikipedia contains many "stubs"—very short articles that provide a brief mention of a subject, and little else. The Dartmouth study was criticized by John Timmer of the Ars Technica website for an inexact measure of quality of Wikipedia articles.[10]
While Wikipedia has the potential for extremely rapid growth and harnesses an entire community—much in the same way as other communal projects such as Linux—it goes further in trusting the same community to self-regulate and become more proficient at quality control. Wikipedia has harnessed the work of millions of people to produce the world's largest knowledge-based site along with software to support it, resulting in more than ten million articles written, across more than 200 different language versions, in less than eight years. For this reason, there has been considerable interest in the project both academically and from diverse fields such as information technology, business, project management, knowledge acquisition, software programming, other collaborative projects and sociology, to explore whether the Wikipedia model can produce good results, what collaboration in this way can reveal about people, and whether the scale of involvement can overcome the obstacles of individual limitations and poor editorship which would otherwise arise.
Another reason for inquiry is the growing and widespread reliance on Wikipedia by both websites and individuals using it as a source of information, and concerns over such a major source being susceptible to rapid change—including the introduction of misinformation at whim. The proponents of such concerns tend to seek reassurance of the quality and reliability of articles, and the degree of usefulness, misinformation or vandalism which should be expected, in order to decide what reliance to place upon them.[clarification needed]
Areas of reliability
The reliability of Wikipedia articles can be measured by the following criteria:
- Accuracy of information provided within articles
- Appropriateness of the images provided with the article
- Appropriateness of the style and focus of the articles[11]
- Susceptibility to, and exclusion and removal of, false information
- Comprehensiveness, scope and coverage within articles and in the range of articles
- Identification of reputable third-party sources as citations
- Stability of the articles
- Susceptibility to editorial and systemic bias
- Quality of writing
The first four of these have been the subjects of various studies of the project, while the presence of bias is strongly disputed on both sides, and the prevalence and quality of citations can be tested within Wikipedia.[12]
Assessments
Comparative studies
On October 24, 2005, The Guardian published a story titled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" where a panel of experts was asked to review seven entries related to their fields, giving each article reviewed a number designation out of ten points.[13] Scores ranged from 0 to 8, but most received marks between 5 and 8. The most common criticisms were:
- Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
- Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
- Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)
The most common praises were:
- Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)
- Much useful information, including well selected links, making it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)
In December 2005, the journal Nature conducted a single-blind study comparing the accuracy of a sample of articles from Wikipedia and Encyclopædia Britannica. The sample included 42 articles on scientific topics, including biographies of well-known scientists. The articles were compared for accuracy by academic reviewers who remained anonymous − a customary practice for journal article reviews. Based on their review, the average Wikipedia article contained 4 errors or omissions; the average Britannica article, 3. Only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in Encyclopædia Britannica. The study concluded: "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries",[4] although Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured".[4]
Encyclopædia Britannica expressed concerns, leading Nature to release further documentation of its survey method.[14] Based on this additional information, Encyclopædia Britannica denied the validity of the Nature study, stating that it was "fatally flawed". Among Britannica's criticisms were that excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were used, that some of the extracts were compilations that included articles written for the youth version, that Nature did not check the factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points which the reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion. [15] Nature acknowledged the compiled nature of some of the Britannica extracts, but denied that this invalidated the conclusions of the study.[16] Encyclopædia Britannica also argued that while the Nature study showed that the error rate between the two encyclopedias was similar, a breakdown of the errors indicated that the mistakes in Wikipedia were more often the inclusion of incorrect facts, while the mistakes in Britannica were "errors of omission", making "Britannica far more accurate than Wikipedia, according to the figures".[15] Nature has since rejected the Britannica response[17], stating that any errors on the part of its reviewers were not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.[18][19]
A web-based survey conducted from December 2005 to May 2006 by Larry Press, a professor of Information Systems at California State University at Dominguez Hills, assessed the "accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles". Fifty people (a fairly low response rate) accepted an invitation to assess an article. Of the fifty, thirty-eight (76%) agreed or strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and twenty-three (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete. Eighteen people compared the article they reviewed to the article on the same topic in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Opinions on accuracy were almost equal between the two encyclopedias (6 favoring Britannica, 7 favoring Wikipedia, 5 stating they were equal), and eleven (61%) found Wikipedia somewhat or substantially more complete, compared to seven (39%) for Britannica. The survey did not attempt random selection of the participants, and it is not clear how the participants were invited.[20]
The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Multimedial, Microsoft Encarta, and the German Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points (B-).[21] A second test by c't in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. It concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors."[22]
Viewing Wikipedia as fitting the economists' definition of a perfectly competitive marketplace of ideas, George Bragues (University of Guelph-Humber), examined Wikipedia's articles on seven top Western philosophers: Aristotle, Plato, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke. Wikipedia's articles were compared to a consensus list of themes culled from four reference works in philosophy. Bragues found that, on average, Wikipedia's articles only covered 52% of consensus themes. No errors were found, though there were significant omissions.[23]
PC Pro magazine (August 2007) asked experts to compare four articles (a small sample) in their scientific fields between Wikipedia, Britannica and Encarta. In each case Wikipedia was described as "largely sound", "well handled", "performs well", "good for the bare facts" and "broadly accurate." One article had "a marked deterioration towards the end" while another had "clearer and more elegant" writing, a third was assessed as less well written but better detailed than its competitors, and a fourth was "of more benefit to the serious student than its Encarta or Britannica equivalents." No serious errors were noted in Wikipedia articles, whereas serious errors were noted in one Encarta and one Britannica article.[24]
In October 2007, Australian magazine PC Authority published a feature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia. The article compared Wikipedia's content to other popular online encyclopedias, namely Britannica and Encarta. The magazine asked experts to evaluate articles pertaining to their field. Wikipedia was comparable to the other encyclopedias, topping the chemistry category.[25]
In December 2007, German magazine Stern published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for Brockhaus with 1 as the best and 6 as the worst). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date; however, Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.[26][27][28]
In its April 2008 issue British computing magazine PC Plus compared the English Wikipedia with the DVD editions of World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopædia Britannica, assessing for each the coverage of a series of random subjects. It concluded The quality of content is good in all three cases and advised Wikipedia users Be aware that erroneous edits do occur, and check anything that seems outlandish with a second source. But the vast majority of Wikipedia is filled with valuable and accurate information.[29]
Expert opinion
Librarian views
In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, self-described information specialist and Internet consultant[30] Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and was "not aware of a single librarian who would. The main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data are reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window."[31]
A 2006 review[32] of Wikipedia by Library Journal, using a panel of librarians, "the toughest critics of reference materials, whatever their format", asked "long standing reviewers" to evaluate three areas of Wikipedia (popular culture, current affairs, and science), and concluded: "While there are still reasons to proceed with caution when using a resource that takes pride in limited professional management, many encouraging signs suggest that (at least for now) Wikipedia may be granted the librarian's seal of approval". A reviewer who "decided to explore controversial historical and current events, hoping to find glaring abuses" concluded "I was pleased by Wikipedia's objective presentation of controversial subjects" but that "as with much information floating around in cyberspace, a healthy degree of skepticism and skill at winnowing fact from opinion are required." Other reviewers noted that there is "much variation" but "good content abounds."
The library at Trent University in Ontario states of Wikipedia that many articles are "long and comprehensive", but that there is "a lot of room for misinformation and bias [and] a lot of variability in both the quality and depth of articles." It adds that Wikipedia has advantages and limitations, that it has "excellent coverage of technical topics" and articles are "often added quickly and, as a result, coverage of current events is quite good", comparing this to traditional sources which are unable to achieve this task. It concludes that depending upon the need, one should think critically and assess the appropriateness of one's sources, "whether you are looking for fact or opinion, how in-depth you want to be as you explore a topic, the importance of reliability and accuracy, and the importance of timely or recent information", and adds that Wikipedia can be used in any event as a "starting point."[33]
An article for the Canadian Library Association (CLA)[34] discusses the Wikipedia approach, process and outcome in depth, commenting for example that in controversial topics, "what is most remarkable is that the two sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the article that both can more or less live with." The author comments that:
In fact Wikipedia has more institutional structure than at first appears. Some 800 experienced users are designated as administrators [Update: As of 2009 some 1600 on English Wikipedia alone], with special powers of binding and loosing: they can protect and unprotect, delete and undelete and revert articles, and block and unblock users. They are expected to use their powers in a neutral way, forming and implementing the consensus of the community. The effect of their intervention shows in the discussion pages of most contentious articles. Wikipedia has survived this long because it is easier to reverse vandalism than it is to commit it...
Information Today (March 2006) cites librarian Nancy O’Neill (principal librarian for Reference Services at the Santa Monica Public Library System) as saying that "there is a good deal of skepticism about Wikipedia in the library community" but that "she also admits cheerfully that Wikipedia makes a good starting place for a search. You get terminology, names, and a feel for the subject."[35]
PC Pro (August 2007) cites the head of the European and American Collection at the British Library, Stephen Bury, as stating "Wikipedia is potentially a good thing – it provides a speedier response to new events, and to new evidence on old items." The article concludes: "For [Bury], the problem isn't so much the reliability of Wikipedia's content so much as the way in which it's used. "It's already become the first port of call for the researcher", Bury says, before noting that this is "not necessarily problematic except when they go no further." According to Bury, the trick to using Wikipedia is to understand that "just because it's in an encyclopedia (free, web or printed) doesn't mean it's true. Ask for evidence .. and contribute."[24]
Academia
Academic circles have not been exclusively dismissive of Wikipedia as a reference. Wikipedia articles have been referenced in "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in Science. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was a 2002 paper called "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light",[36] and many enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then. However, these links are offered as background sources for the reader, not as sources used by the writer, and the "enhanced perspectives" are not intended to serve as reference material themselves.
An empirical study conducted in 2006 by a Nottingham University Business School lecturer in Information Systems,[37] the subject of a review on the technical website Ars Technica,[38] involving 55 academics asked to review specific Wikipedia articles that either were in their expert field (group 1) or chosen at random (group 2), concluded that "The experts found Wikipedia's articles to be more credible than the non–experts. This suggests that the accuracy of Wikipedia is high. However, the results should not be seen as support for Wikipedia as a totally reliable resource as, according to the experts, 13 percent of the articles contain mistakes (10% of the experts reported factual errors of an unspecified degree, 3% of them reported spelling errors)."[39]
The Gould Library at Carleton College in Minnesota has a web-page describing the use of Wikipedia in academia.[40] It asserts that "Wikipedia is without question a valuable and informative resource", but that "there is an inherent lack of reliability and stability" to its articles, again drawing attention to similar advantages and limitations as other sources. As with other reviews it comments that one should assess one's sources and what is desired from them, and that "Wikipedia may be an appropriate resource for some assignments, but not for others." It cited Jimmy Wales' view that Wikipedia may not be ideal as a source for all academic uses, and (as with other sources) suggests that at the least, one strength of Wikipedia is that it provides a good starting point for current information on a very wide range of topics.
In 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article written by Cathy Davidson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Duke University, in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used to teach students about the concepts of reliability and credibility.[41]
In 2008, Hamlet Isakhanli, founder and president of Khazar University, compared the Encyclopædia Britannica and English Wikipedia articles on Azerbaijan and related subjects. His study found that Wikipedia covered the subject much more widely, more accurately and in more detail, though with some lack of balance, and that Wikipedia was the best source for the first approximation.[42]
Geoffrey Nunberg, an adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, has criticized Wikipedia for relying too much on citing sources even though the said sources may not be more accurate than Wikipedia itself.[43][44]
The academic world's view of Wikipedia has improved during the last few years, as can be inferred from the increase in the number of citations in international scientific journals. A search in the ScienceDirect database (a large online collection of published scientific research produced by Elsevier) for academic and scientific journal articles citing Wikipedia in their references, yields the following result to 5 June 2010:[45]
Year article published | No. of articles citing Wikipedia |
---|---|
before 2003 | 0 |
2003 | 1 |
2004 | 9 |
2005 | 31 |
2006 | 133 |
2007 | 330 |
2008 | 451 |
2009 | 614 |
2010 (as of 5 June) | 478 |
Science and medicine peer reviewed data
Science and medicine are areas where accuracy is of very high importance. The norm for usual science and medicine reference works includes peer review.
A peer-reviewed 2008 study[46] examined 80 Wikipedia drug entries. The research team from Nova Southeastern University found few factual errors in this set of articles, but determined that these articles were often missing important information, like contraindications and drug interactions. One of the researchers noted that "If people went and used this as a sole or authoritative source without contacting a health professional...those are the types of negative impacts that can occur." The researchers also compared Wikipedia to Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), by looking for answers to 80 different questions covering eight categories of drug information, including adverse drug events, dosages, and mechanism of action. They have determined that MDR provided answers to 82.5 percent of the questions, while Wikipedia could only answer 40 percent, and that answers were less likely to be complete for Wikipedia as well. None of the answers from Wikipedia were determined factually inaccurate, while they found four inaccurate answers in MDR. But the researchers found 48 errors of omission in the Wikipedia entries, compared to 14 for MDR. The lead investigator concluded: "I think that these errors of omission can be just as dangerous [as inaccuracies]", and he pointed out that drug company representatives have been caught deleting information from Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe.
A 2009 survey asked U.S. toxicologists how accurately they rated the portrayal of health risks of chemicals in different media sources. Conducted by the Statistical Assessment Service and the Center for Health and Risk Communication at George Mason University, based on the answers of 937 members of the Society of Toxicology to a questionnaire prepared by survey firm Harris International it found that these experts regarded Wikipedia's reliability in this area as far higher than that of all traditional news media:
In perhaps the most surprising finding in the entire study, all these national media outlets [U.S. newspapers, news magazines, health magazines, broadcast and cable television networks] are easily eclipsed by two representatives of "new media": WebMD and Wikipedia. WebMD is the only news source whose coverage of chemical risk is regarded as accurate by a majority (56 percent) of toxicologists, closely followed by Wikipedia's 45 percent accuracy rating. By contrast, only 15 percent describe as accurate the portrayals of chemical risk found in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal.[47]
In 2010 researchers at Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University, compared 10 types of cancer to data from the National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query and concluded "the Wiki resource had similar accuracy and depth to the professionally edited database" and that "sub-analysis comparing common to uncommon cancers demonstrated no difference between the two", but that ease of readability was an issue.[48]
Editors of other encyclopedias
In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", former Encyclopædia Britannica editor Robert McHenry criticized the wiki approach, writing:
[H]owever closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or semiliterate meddler… The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the facilities before him."[49]
Similarly, Britannica's executive editor, Ted Pappas, was quoted in The Guardian as saying:
The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection. That premise is completely unproven.[31]
Other
In one article, Information Today (March 2006) likens[35] comparisons between Wikipedia and Britannica to "Apples and Oranges":
Even the revered Encyclopaedia Britannica is riddled with errors, not to mention the subtle yet pervasive biases of individual subjectivity and corporate correctness... There is no one perfect way. Britannica seems to claim that there is. Wikipedia acknowledges there's no such thing. Librarians and information professionals have always known this. That's why we always consult multiple sources and counsel our users to do the same.
BBC technology specialist Bill Thompson wrote[50] that "Most Wikipedia entries are written and submitted in good faith, and we should not let the contentious areas such as politics, religion or biography shape our view of the project as a whole", that it forms a good starting point for serious research but that:
No information source is guaranteed to be accurate, and we should not place complete faith in something which can so easily be undermined through malice or ignorance... That does not devalue the project entirely, it just means that we should be skeptical about Wikipedia entries as a primary source of information... It is the same with search engine results. Just because something comes up in the top 10 on MSN Search or Google does not automatically give it credibility or vouch for its accuracy or importance.
Thompson adds the observation that since most popular online sources are inherently unreliable in this way, one byproduct of the information age is a wiser audience who are learning to check information rather than take it on faith due to its source, leading to "a better sense of how to evaluate information sources."
A study conducted in early 2007 by the Pew Research Center found that 8% of all online Americans consult Wikipedia on a typical day. The study also found that 36% of all US internet users use Wikipedia, with this fraction increasing with education level. About 22% of those with a high school-level education use Wikipedia, 36% of those with some college use Wikipedia, and 50% of those with a college degree use Wikipedia.[51]
The Supreme Court of India in its judgment in Commr. of Customs, Bangalore vs. ACER India Pvt. (Citation 2007(12)SCALE581) has held that "We have referred to Wikipedia, as the learned Counsel for the parties relied thereupon. It is an online encyclopaedia and information can be entered therein by any person and as such it may not be authentic."[52]
In his 2007 Guide to Military History on the Internet, Simon Fowler rated Wikipedia as "the best general resource" for military history research, and stated that "the results are largely accurate and generally free of bias."[53] When rating WP as the No. 1 military site he mentioned that "Wikipedia is often criticised for its inaccuracy and bias, but in my experience the military history articles are spot on."[54]
In July 2008, The Economist magazine described Wikipedia as "a user-generated reference service" and noted that Wikipedia's "elaborate moderation rules put a limit to acrimony" generated by cyber-nationalism.[55]
Information loop
Criticism and concerns are expressed about possible occurring circular reference forthcoming from information on Wikipedia.[56][57] Imaginable situation: A Wikipedia article contains information A. Wikipedia is no. 7 of the most viewed sites on the Internet and often the first information source[58] for journalists. Journalists are known to write their own sentences and can in some case rewrite the content of Wikipedia in his own article B. Then a critical reader adds a "{{Citation needed}}" right after information A. Another editor incorporates the article B written by the journalist as a source. An example of Wikipedia's circular reference has happened to Sascha Baron Cohen: edit 'A' followed by an article published in the Independent written by a journalist[59] and information of the Independent article put back in the Wikipedia article.
Removal of false information
IBM researchers Viégas, Wattenberg, and Dave studied the flow of editing in the Wikipedia model, with emphasis on breaks in flow (from vandalism or substantial rewrites), showing the dynamic flow of material over time.[60] From a sample of vandalism edits on the English Wikipedia during May 2003, they found that most such acts were repaired within minutes, summarizing:
We've examined many pages on Wikipedia that treat controversial topics, and have discovered that most have, in fact, been vandalized at some point in their history. But we've also found that vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects.[61]
However, it is unclear whether or not this finding applies to all forms of vandalism, including so-called 'sneaky' vandalism (which resembles genuine editing and is therefore harder to detect).
Lih (2004) compared articles before and after they were mentioned in the press, and found that externally referenced articles are of higher quality work.
An informal assessment by the popular IT magazine "PC Pro" for its 2007 article Wikipedia Uncovered[24] tested Wikipedia by introducing 10 errors that "varied between bleeding obvious and deftly subtle" into articles (the researchers later corrected the articles they had edited). Labeling the results "impressive" it noted that all but one was noted and fixed within the hour, and that "the Wikipedians' tools and know-how were just too much for our team." A second series of another 10 tests, using "far more subtle errors" and additional techniques to conceal their nature, met similar results: "despite our stealth attempts the vast majority... were discovered remarkably quickly... the ridiculously minor Jesse James error was corrected within a minute and a very slight change to Queen Ann's entry was put right within two minutes." Two of the latter series were not detected. The article concluded that "Wikipedia corrects the vast majority of errors within minutes, but if they're not spotted within the first day the chances... dwindle as you're then relying on someone to spot the errors while reading the article rather than reviewing the edits."
A study in late-2007 systematically inserted inaccuracies into Wikipedia entries about the lives of philosophers. Depending on how exactly the data are interpreted, either one third or one half of the inaccuracies were corrected within 48 hours.[62]
Susceptibility to editorial bias
WikiScanner
In August 2007, a tool called WikiScanner developed by Virgil Griffith, a visiting researcher from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, was released to match anonymous IP edits in the encyclopedia with an extensive database of addresses. News stories appeared about IP addresses from various organizations such as the Central Intelligence Agency, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Diebold, Inc. and the Australian government being used to make edits to Wikipedia articles, sometimes of an opinionated or questionable nature. The BBC quoted a Wikimedia spokesperson as praising the tool: "We really value transparency and the scanner really takes this to another level. Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an organization or individuals from editing articles that they're really not supposed to."[63]
The WikiScanner story was also covered by The Independent, which stated that many "censorial interventions" by editors with vested interests on a variety of articles in Wikipedia had been discovered:
[Wikipedia] was hailed as a breakthrough in the democratisation of knowledge. But the online encyclopedia has since been hijacked by forces who decided that certain things were best left unknown... Now a website designed to monitor editorial changes made on Wikipedia has found thousands of self-serving edits and traced them to their original source. It has turned out to be hugely embarrassing for armies of political spin doctors and corporate revisionists who believed their censorial interventions had gone unnoticed."[64]
Reliability as a source in other contexts
Although Wikipedia is stated not to be a primary source, it has been used as evidence in legal cases. In one notable case, the trademark of Formula One racing decision,[65] the UK Intellectual Property Office considered both the reliability of Wikipedia, and its usefulness as a reliable source of evidence:
Wikipedia has sometimes suffered from the self-editing that is intrinsic to it, giving rise at times to potentially libellous statements. However, inherently, I cannot see that what is in Wikipedia is any less likely to be true than what is published in a book or on the websites of news organisations. [Formula One's lawyer] did not express any concerns about the Wikipedia evidence [presented by the plaintiff]. I consider that the evidence from Wikipedia can be taken at face value." The case turned substantively upon evidence cited from Wikipedia in 2006 as to the usage and interpretation of the term Formula One.
Wikipedia has also developed into a key source for some current new events such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and related tsunami, and the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. In the latter case, it cites the New York Times, noting with 750,000 page views of the article in the two days after the event:
Even The Roanoke Times, which is published near Blacksburg, Virginia, where the university is located, noted on Thursday that Wikipedia 'has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed information on the event'.[66]
The Washington Post commented similarly, in the context of 2008 Presidential election candidate biographies, that despite occasional brief vandalism, "it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday (14 September 2007), Obama's article – more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections covering his personal and professional life – had a reference list of 167 sources."[67]
Coverage
Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systemic biases of its contributors. Encyclopædia Britannica editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get covered; and news events get covered in great detail. The entry on Hurricane Frances was five times the length of that on Chinese art, and the entry on Coronation Street was twice as long as the article on Tony Blair."[31] Former Nupedia editor-in-chief Larry Sanger stated in 2004, "when it comes to relatively specialized topics (outside of the interests of most of the contributors), the project's credibility is very uneven."[68]
Wikipedia has been praised for making it possible for articles to be updated or created in response to current events. For example, the then-new article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on its English edition was cited often by the press shortly after the incident.[citation needed] Its editors have also argued that, as a website, Wikipedia is able to include articles on a greater number of subjects than print encyclopedias may.[69]
Broad assessments
Several commentators have drawn a middle ground, asserting that the project contains much valuable knowledge and has some reliability, even if the degree is not yet assessed with certainty. Many of the librarian and academic reviewers of Wikipedia cited above take such a view.
Others taking this view include Danah Boyd, who in 2005 discussed Wikipedia as an academic source, concluding that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different purposes",[70] and Bill Thompson who stated "I use the Wikipedia a lot. It is a good starting point for serious research, but I would never accept something that I read there without checking."[50]
Information Today's March 2006 article[35] concludes on a similar theme:
The inconvenient reality is that people and their products are messy, whether produced in a top-down or bottom-up manner. Almost every source includes errors... Many non-fiction books are produced via an appallingly sloppy process... In this author's opinion, the flap over Wikipedia was significantly overblown, but contained a silver lining: People are becoming more aware of the perils of accepting information at face value. They have learned not to consult just one source.
Dan Gillmor, a Silicon Valley commentator and author commented in October 2004 that, "I don't think anyone is saying Wikipedia is an absolute replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. But in the topics I know something about, I've found Wikipedia to be as accurate as any other source I've found."[31]
Referencing Linus' Law of open-source development, Larry Sanger who is a co-founder[71] of Wikipedia, stated on Kuro5hin in 2001 that "Given enough eyeballs, all errors are shallow."[72]
Seemingly, and "in theory", an unsupervised mass collective effort should not work well. But in practice it does, in part because of the social and psychological structures that motivate participants on both content and maintenance tasks. Sheizaf Rafaeli and Yaron Ariel report how "most people agree that at least the English version of Wikipedia is approaching critical mass where substantial content disasters should become rare."[73]
Likewise, technology figure Joi Ito wrote on Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field, the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming from a source whose resume sounds authoritative, or a source that has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the ability to comment) and has survived."[74]
Loc Vu-Quoc, professor for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida, has stated that "sometimes errors may go for years without being corrected as experts don't usually read Wikipedia articles in their own field to correct these errors".[75]
In a letter to the editor of Physics Today, Gregg Jaeger, an associate professor at Boston University,[76] has characterized Wikipedia as a medium that is susceptible to fostering "anarchy and distortions" in relation to scientific information.[77] The letter was in response to a review of his book "Quantum Information: An Overview", that had questioned "whether there is an audience for such encyclopedic texts, especially given the easy access to online sources of information such as the arXiv e-print server and Wikipedia."
Tools for testing the reliability of articles
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/014-WW-Screenshot-Reliability_of_Wikipedia.png/220px-014-WW-Screenshot-Reliability_of_Wikipedia.png)
While experienced editors can view the article history and discussion page, for normal users it is not so easy to check whether information from Wikipedia is reliable. University projects from California, Switzerland and Germany try to improve that by methods of formal analysis and data mining. Wiki-Watch from Germany, which was inspired by the WikiBu from Switzerland, shows a five-star evaluation for every English or German article in Wikpedia. Part of this rating is the Californian tool WikiTrust which shows the trustworthiness of single text parts of Wikipedia articles by white (trustworthy) or orange (not trustworthy) markings.[78]
Notable incidents
False biographical information
Inaccurate information may persist in Wikipedia for a long time before it is challenged. The most prominent cases reported by mainstream media involved biographies of living persons.
The Seigenthaler incident demonstrated that the subject of a biographical article must sometimes fix blatant lies about his own life. In May 2005, a user edited the biographical article on John Seigenthaler Sr. so that it contained several false and defamatory statements.[80] The inaccurate claims went unnoticed between May and September 2005 when they were discovered by Victor S. Johnson, Jr., a friend of Seigenthaler. Wikipedia content is often mirrored at sites such as Answers.com, which means that incorrect information can be replicated alongside correct information through a number of web sources. Such information can develop a misleading air of authority because of its presence at such sites:[81]
Then [Seigenthaler's] son discovered that his father's hoax biography also appeared on two other sites, Reference.com and Answers.com, which took direct feeds from Wikipedia. It was out there for four months before Seigenthaler realised and got the Wikipedia entry replaced with a more reliable account. The lies remained for another three weeks on the mirror sites downstream.
Seth Finkelstein reported in an article in The Guardian on his efforts to remove his own biography page from Wikipedia, simply because it was subjected to defamation:[82]
Wikipedia has a short biography of me, originally added in February 2004, mostly concerned with my internet civil liberties achievements. After discovering in May 2006 that it had been vandalised in March, possibly by a long-time opponent, and that the attack had been subsequently propagated to many other sites which (legally) repackage Wikipedia's content, the article's existence seemed to me overall to be harmful rather than helpful. For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an "attractive nuisance". It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: "Here's an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be made prominent about the person, and reputation-laundered with the institutional status of an encyclopedia."
In the same article Finkelstein recounts how he voted his own biography as "not notable enough" in order to have it removed from Wikipedia. He goes on to recount a similar story involving Angela Beesley, previously a prominent member of the foundation which runs Wikipedia.
In another example, on March 2, 2007, msnbc.com reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton had been incorrectly listed for 20 months in her Wikipedia biography as valedictorian of her class of 1969 at Wellesley College. (Hillary Rodham was not the valedictorian, though she did speak at commencement.)[83] The article included a link to the Wikipedia edit,[84] where the incorrect information was added on July 9, 2005. After the msnbc.com report, the inaccurate information was removed the same day.[85] Between the two edits, the wrong information had stayed in the Clinton article while it was edited more than 4,800 times over 20 months.
Attempts to perpetrate hoaxes may not be confined to editing Wikipedia articles. In October 2005 Alan Mcilwraith, a former call centre worker from Scotland created a Wikipedia article in which he claimed to be a highly decorated war hero. The article was quickly identified by other users as unreliable (see Wikipedia Signpost article 17 April 2006). However, Mcilwraith had also succeeded in convincing a number of charities and media organizations that he was who he claimed to be:[86]
The 28-year-old, who calls himself Captain Sir Alan McIlwraith, KBE, DSO, MC, has mixed with celebrities for at least one fundraising event. But last night, an Army spokesman said: "I can confirm he is a fraud. He has never been an officer, soldier or Army cadet."
In May 2010, French politician Ségolène Royal publicly praised the memory of Léon-Robert de l'Astran, an 18th century naturalist, humanist and son of a slave trader, who had opposed the slave trade. The newspaper Sud-Ouest revealed a month later that de l'Astran had never existed—except as the subject of an article in the French Wikipedia. Historian Jean-Louis Mahé discovered that de l'Astran was fictional after a student, interested by Royal's praise of him, asked Mahé about him. Mahé's research led him to realise that de l'Astran did not exist in any archives, and he traced the hoax back to the Rotary Club of La Rochelle. The article, created by members of the Club in January 2007, had thus remained online for three years—unsourced—before the hoax was uncovered. Upon Sud-Ouest’s revelation—repeated in other major French newspapers—French Wikipedia administrator DonCamillo immediately deleted the article.[79][87][88][89][90][91]
There have also been instances of users deliberately inserting false information into Wikipedia in order to test the system and demonstrate its alleged unreliability. For example, Gene Weingarten, a journalist, ran such a test in 2007; however it was not conclusive as the false information was promptly removed the next day by a Wikipedia editor[92] Television personality Stephen Colbert lampooned this drawback of Wikipedia, calling it wikiality.
Wikipedia considers vandalism "the insertion of false and misleading information in bad faith". The Wikipedia page "Researching with Wikipedia" states:
Wikipedia's radical openness means that any given article may be, at any given moment, in a bad state: for example, it could be in the middle of a large edit or it could have been recently vandalized. While blatant vandalism is usually easily spotted and rapidly corrected, Wikipedia is certainly more subject to subtle vandalism than a typical reference work.[93]
Other false information
In June 2007, an anonymous Wikipedia contributor became involved in the Chris Benoit double murder and suicide because of an unverified piece of information he added to the Chris Benoit English Wikipedia article. This information regarding Benoit's wife's death was added fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and his family.[94] Police detectives seized computer equipment from the man held responsible for the postings, but believed he was uninvolved and did not press charges.[95]
The IP address from which the edit was made was traced to earlier instances of Wikipedia vandalism. The contributor apologised on wikinews saying
I will never vandalize anything on wikipedia or post wrongful information. I will never post anything here again unless it is pure fact ...[96]
On 29 August 2008, shortly after the UEFA cup first round draw was completed, an edit was made to AC Omonia's article, apparently by users of B3ta,[97] which added the following erroneous information to the section titled "The fans".
A small but loyal group of fans are lovingly called "The Zany Ones" – they like to wear hats made from discarded shoes and have a song about a little potato.
On 18 September 2008, David Anderson, a British journalist writing for the Daily Mirror, quoted this in his match preview ahead of Omonia's game with Manchester City, which appeared in the web and print versions of the Mirror and the nickname was quoted in subsequent editions on 19 September.[98][99]
In a 2009 incident, University College Dublin sociology student Shane Fitzgerald added an incorrect quote to the article on the recently deceased composer Maurice Jarre. Fitzgerald wanted to demonstrate the potential dangers of news reporters reliance on the internet for information.[100] Although Fitzgerald's edits were removed three times from Wikipedia article for lack of sourcing,[101] they were nevertheless copied into obituary columns in newspapers worldwide.[102] Fitzgerald believes that if he had not come forward his quote would have remained in history as actual fact.[101]
The death of Norman Wisdom in October 2010 led several major newspapers to repeat the false claim, drawn from Wikipedia, that he was the author of the lyrics of the Second World War song (There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover.[103]
After the 2010 FIFA World Cup, FIFA president Sepp Blatter was presented with the Order of the Companions of Oliver Reginald Tambo. The citation, however, read: "The Order of the Companions of OR Tambo in Gold - awarded to Joseph Sepp Bellend Blatter (1936 - ) for his exceptional contribution to the field of football and support for the hosting of the Fifa World Cup on the African continent," after the name on his Wikipedia entry was vandalised.[104]
Content disputes and conflicts of interest
Political interests and advocacy
While Wikipedia policy requires articles to have a neutral point of view, it is not immune from attempts by outsiders (or insiders) with an agenda to place a spin on articles. In January 2006 it was revealed that several staffers of members of the U.S. House of Representatives had embarked on a campaign to cleanse their respective bosses' biographies on Wikipedia, as well as inserting negative remarks on political opponents. References to a campaign promise by Martin Meehan to surrender his seat in 2000 were deleted, and negative comments were inserted into the articles on U.S. Senator Bill Frist and Eric Cantor, a congressman from Virginia. Numerous other changes were made from an IP address which is assigned to the House of Representatives.[105] In an interview, Jimmy Wales remarked that the changes were "not cool."[106]
In April 2008, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organized a campaign to correct perceived Israel-related biases and inconsistencies in Wikipedia.[107][108]
On August 31, 2008, The New York Times ran an article detailing the edits made to the biography of Sarah Palin in the wake of her nomination as running mate of John McCain. The editor responsible for adding many flattering details was identified as single-purpose account of a McCain campaign volunteer.[109]
In 2010, following a few incidents of bad press after the 2010 Gaza flotilla raid, a right-wing[110] Israeli organisation Yisrael Sheli said it intends to "revise" Wikipedia based on "national and ethnic interests."[111] They offered a course entitled "Zionist Editing for Wikipedia." They said the first seminar of 80 students was a success and they planned to offer more such courses.[112]
Following the announcement, the head of Palestinian Journalists Syndicate said there were plans to setup a counter group to ensure the Palestinian view is presented online as the "next regional war will be [a] media war."[110]
Editing for financial rewards
In January 2007 Rick Jelliffe claimed in a story carried by CBS[113] and IDG News Service[114][115] that Microsoft had offered him compensation in exchange for his future editorial services on OOXML. A Microsoft spokesperson, quoted by CBS, commented that "Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not determined a price and no money had changed hands – but they had agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing before submission". CBS also quoted Jimmy Wales as having expressed his disapproval of Microsoft's involvement: "We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach."
In a story covered by the BBC, former Novell chief scientist Jeffrey Merkey claimed that in exchange for a donation his Wikipedia entry was edited in his favor. Jay Walsh, a spokesman for Wikipedia, flatly denied the allegations in an interview given to the Daily Telegraph.[116]
In a story covered by InformationWeek, Eric Goldman, assistant law professor at Santa Clara University in California argued that "eventually, marketers will build scripts to edit Wikipedia pages to insert links and conduct automated attacks on Wikipedia",[117] thus putting the encyclopedia beyond the ability of its editors to provide countermeasures against the attackers, particularly because of a vicious circle where the strain of responding to these attacks drives core contributors away, increasing the strain on those who remain.[118] Note however that Wikipedia operates bots to aid in the detection and removal of vandalism, and uses nofollow and a CAPTCHA to discourage and filter additions of external links.
Conflicts involving policy makers
In February 2008, British technology news and opinion website The Register published an article called "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'", in which it was pointed out that despite the fact that a prominent administrator of Wikipedia, Jossi Fresco, declared a conflict of interest related to Prem Rawat, the article alleged that not only did Fresco edit the article of Prem Rawat to keep criticism to bare minimum, he altered the Wikipedia policies over personal biography and policies regarding "conflict of interest", to favour his alleged "biased" editing. The article pointed out that Fresco was also involved in Wikipedia's "Conflict of Interest Noticeboard", the situation which the Register article described as "a conflict of conflict of interest". The article ended with the claim:[119]
Jossi Fresco may bear the most extreme conflict of interest in the history of Wikipedia – and he edits the policy that governs conflict of interest.
Some of the most scathing criticism of Wikipedia's claimed neutrality came in The Register, which in turn was allegedly criticized by founding members of the project. According to The Register:[120]
In short, Wikipedia is a cult. Or at least, the inner circle is a cult. We aren't the first to make this observation.
On the inside, they reinforce each other's beliefs. And if anyone on the outside questions those beliefs, they circle the wagons. They deny the facts. They attack the attacker. After our Jossi Fresco story, Fresco didn't refute our reporting. He simply accused us of "yellow journalism". After our Overstock.com article, Wales called us "trash".
Charles Arthur in The Guardian said that "Wikipedia, and so many other online activities, show all the outward characteristics of a cult."[121]
See also
- Resources
- Multiple-choice self-test as a review of your understanding of this article.
- Articles
- Bourgeois v. Peters (one of the earliest court opinions to cite and quote Wikipedia)
- Essjay controversy
- Internet encyclopedia project
- List of online encyclopedias
- Veropedia
- Wikipedia in research
- WikiScanner
- Academic studies about Wikipedia
- Truth in Numbers? Everything According to Wikipedia (documentary)
References
- ^ New York Times
- ^ history flow: results IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group, 2003
- ^ Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave: Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 575–582, Vienna 2004, ISBN 1-58113-702-8
- ^ a b c Jim Giles (2005). "Internet encyclopedias go head to head". Nature. 438 (7070): 900–901. doi:10.1038/438900a. PMID 16355180.
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ignored (help) The study (that was not in itself peer reviewed) was cited in many news articles such as this: "Wikipedia survives research test". BBC News. BBC. December 15, 2005. - ^ Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., March 2006
- ^ Illich, Ivan D., Deschooling society (Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK, 1976)
- ^ See Wikipedia:Stable versions
- ^ See Wikipedia:Protection policy
- ^ Anthony, Smith, Williamson (2005 (Preliminary) 2007 (updated)). "The Quality of Open Source Production: Zealots and Good Samaritans in the Case of Wikipedia". Retrieved 2007-11-05.
We find that quality that is associated with contributor motivations ... Registered users' quality increases with more contributions ... Surprisingly, however, we find the highest quality from the vast numbers of anonymous 'Good Samaritans' who contribute only once. Our findings that Good Samaritans as well as committed "zealots" contribute high quality content to Wikipedia suggest that it is the quantity as well as the quality of contributors that positively affects the quality of open source production.
{{cite web}}
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(help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ John Timmer (2007-10-18). "Anonymous "good samaritans" produce Wikipedia's best content, says study". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2007-10-27.
Good samaritans with less than 100 edits made higher-quality contributions than those with registered accounts and equal amounts of content. In fact, anonymous contributors with a single edit had the highest quality of any group. But quality steadily declined, and more-frequent anonymous contributors were anything but Samaritans; their contributions generally didn't survive editing...The authors also recognize that contributions in the form of stubs on obscure topics might survive unaltered indefinitely, inflating the importance of single contributions...Objective ratings of quality are difficult, and it's hard to fault the authors for attempting to find an easily-measured proxy for it. In the absence of independent correlation, however, it's not clear that the measurement used actually works as a proxy.
- ^ Besiki Stvilia; Twidale, Michael B.; Smith, Linda C.; Gasser, Les (2008). "Information Quality Work Organization in Wikipedia" (PDF). Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. 59: 983–1001. doi:10.1002/asi.20813.
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ignored (help) - ^ Wall Street Journal
- ^ "Can you trust Wikipedia?". London: The Guardian. 2005-10-24. Retrieved 2007-10-28.
- ^ "Supplementary information to accompany Nature news article "Internet encyclopedias go head to head"". Nature. 2005-12-22.
- ^ a b "Fatally Flawed – Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature" (PDF). Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. March 2006. Retrieved 2009-06-30.
- ^ "Britannica attacks". Nature. 440 (7084): 582. 2006-03-30. doi:10.1038/440582b. PMID 16572128. Retrieved 2006-07-14.
- ^ "Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed'". BBC News. 2006-03-24.
- ^ "Encyclopaedia Britannica and Nature: a response" (PDF). Nature. March 23, 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ "Encyclopædia Britannica and Nature: a response" (PDF). Press release. 2006-03-23.
- ^ "Survey of Wikipedia accuracy and completeness". Larry Press, Professor of Computer Information Systems, California State University. 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ Michael Kurzidim: Wissenswettstreit. Die kostenlose Wikipedia tritt gegen die Marktführer Encarta und Brockhaus an, in: c't 21/2004, October 4, 2004, S. 132–139.
- ^ Dorothee Wiegand: "Entdeckungsreise. Digitale Enzyklopädien erklären die Welt." c't 6/2007, March 5, 2007, p. 136-145. Original quote: "Wir haben in den Texten der freien Enzyklopädie nicht mehr Fehler gefunden als in denen der kommerziellen Konkurrenz"
- ^ Bragues, George, "Wiki-Philosophizing in a Marketplace of Ideas: Evaluating Wikipedia's Entries on Seven Great Minds" (April 2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=978177
- ^ a b c PC Pro magazine, August 2007, p. 136, "Wikipedia Uncovered"
- ^ "PC Authority – 'Wikipedia Uncovered'".
- ^ Wikipedia: Wissen für alle. Stern 50/2007, December 6, 2007, pp. 30–44
- ^ Wikipedia schlägt Brockhaus Stern online, December 5, 2007 (summary of the test) Google translation
- ^ K.C. Jones: German Wikipedia Outranks Traditional Encyclopedia's Online Version. InformationWeek, December 7, 2007
- ^ Simon Williams: Wikipedia vs Encyclopaedia: A question of trust? Are online resources reliable or should we stick to traditional encyclopaedias? Techradar.com, April 21, 2008
- ^ Self description taken from blog biography, "Phil Bradley – biography". Phil Bradley. 2007. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ a b c d Simon Waldman (October 26, 2004). "Who knows?". The Guardian.
{{cite web}}
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(help) Template:Wayback - ^ "I want my Wikipedia!". Library Journal. April 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ "Trent University Library : About Wikipedia". Trentu.ca. 2007-04-30. Retrieved 2010-04-13.
- ^ Peter Binkley (2006). "Wikipedia Grows Up". Feliciter 52 (2006), no. 2, 59–61. Retrieved October 31, 2007.
- ^ a b c "Wikipedia and Britannica: The kid's all right". Searcher ("The Magazine for Database Professionals"), part of Information Today, Inc. March 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ Linden, Hartmut (2002-08-02). "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light". Science. Retrieved 2005.
{{cite web}}
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(help) (subscription access only) - ^ Chesney, Thomas (May 16, 2006). http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1413/1331. Retrieved 2010-01-20.
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ Study cited in "Experts rate Wikipedia's accuracy higher than non-experts". 'Ars Technica. November 27, 2006. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
{{cite web}}
: Italic or bold markup not allowed in:|publisher=
(help) - ^ The study explains that "In the survey, all respondents under Condition 1 were asked if there were any mistakes in the article they had been asked to read. Only five reported seeing mistakes and one of those five reported spelling mistakes rather than factual errors. This suggests that 13 percent of Wikipedia's articles have errors." Thus 80% of the 13% related to factual errors and 20% of the 13% related to spelling errors. Chesney, Thomas (May 16, 2006). "An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility". Retrieved 2010-01-20.
{{cite journal}}
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(help) - ^ Matt Bailey (October 2, 2007). "Using Wikipedia". Lawrence McKinley Gould Library, Carleton College. Retrieved 2007-10-31.
- ^ "We Can’t Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies," Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2007, http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/weekly/v53/i29/29b02001.htm
- ^ What is Happening in the Educational System of the Contemporary World and How "The State Program on Reforms of the Higher Education System in the Republic of Azerbaijan for the Period of 2008-2012" May Best be Carried Out (in Azeri). Khazar University Press, 2008
- ^ G. Nunberg, A Wiki's as Good as a Nod, NPR Fresh Air commentary 6/5/07 (Wikipedia: Blessing or Curse?). Quote: It explains the exaggerated deference that Wikipedians pay to published sources, even though a lot of the books and articles the contributors cite turn out to be no more reliable than Wikipedia itself.
- ^ G. Nunberg, Linguist Reflects On 'Years Of Talking Dangerously', NPR Fresh Air from WHYY, Jun 3, 2009.
- ^ "ScienceDirect Indexed Papers". ScienceDirect. Various dates. Retrieved 2010-06-05.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - ^ Clauson KA, Polen HH, Kamel Boulos MN, Dzenowagis JH (2008). "Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug Iinformation in Wikipedia" (PDF). Ann Pharmacother. 42 (12): 1814. doi:10.1345/aph.1L474. PMID 19017825.
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The nascent Web encyclopedia Citizendium springs from Larry Sanger, a philosophy Ph.D. who counts himself as a co-founder of Wikipedia, the site he now hopes to usurp. The claim doesn't seem particularly controversial – Sanger has long been cited as a co-founder. Yet the other founder, Jimmy Wales, isn't happy about it.
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External links
- Librarians' Claims and Opinions Regarding Wikipedia
- UCSC Wiki Lab
- WikiDashboard
- WikiRage
- Study Finds Cancer Information on Wikipedia Is Accurate, but Not Very Readable - Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals
Wikipedia project pages
- America's Top 100 Newspapers Use Wikipedia
- Celebrities who have been quoted as having used Wikipedia
- Comparison to Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Credibility
- Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia
- Errors in the New International Encyclopedia that have been corrected in Wikipedia
- External peer review/Nature December 2005
- Press coverage
- Replies to common objections
- Researching with Wikipedia
- Statistics
- Wikipedia as a court source (list of cited uses)
- Wikipedia as an academic source (list of cited uses)
- Wikipedia in academic studies (list of studies)