As Mike Palij (yada, yada) is fond of reminding us, Wikipedia is an encylopedia with all of the defects of scholarship that observation may imply. Whether it merits a special warning compared with traditional print encyclopedias is another matter. I myself don't know how I managed to exist before it was available. And judging from the content of Mike's posts, he seems to agree.
Now a study has appeared which suggests that, at least for one topic where the risk of misinformation, both deliberate and accidental, seems especially high, we need not be concerned, or at least not specially concerned. The topic is politics. The main weakness of Wikipedia's coverage turns out to be omission, not commission-- what it fails to say rather than what it says wrong. The study is this: Brown, A. (2011). Wikipedia as a Data Source for Political Scientists: Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage. PS: Political Science & Politics, 44, ??-?? The abstract: In only 10 years, Wikipedia has risen from obscurity to become the dominant information source for an entire generation. However, any visitor can edit any page on Wikipedia, which hardly fosters confidence in its accuracy. In this article, I review thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and officeholders to assess both the accuracy and the thoroughness of Wikipedia's coverage. I find that Wikipedia is almost always accurate when a relevant article exists, but errors of omission are extremely frequent. These errors of omission follow a predictable pattern. Wikipedia's political coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics but is lacking on older or more obscure topics. A _Science Daily_ news item with some information on the study is here: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110414131855.htm which contains this quote from Brown, "We don't need to worry about Wikipedia just because it's not Britannica, but that does not mean it is your stopping point," . Just like all the others. Stephen -------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada e-mail: sblack at ubishops.ca --------------------------------------------- --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected]. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=10146 or send a blank email to leave-10146-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
