At 10:35 AM 1/27/2010, Jed Rothwell wrote:
There was a well publicized comparison made of Britannica versus
Wikipedia a few years ago. Conclusion:
"Wikipedia is about as good a source of accurate information as
Britannica, the venerable standard-bearer of facts about the world
around us, according to a study published this week in the journal Nature."
http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
Goes to show. That study has been impeached.... this is about
equivalent to citing the MIT study on cold fusion. You know, the one
with the hacked data.
Wikipedia articles are often very good. Most articles are
unreferenced and a mess, but those are articles on relatively obscure
stuff. There appear to be something like 80,000 biographies of living
persons with no references at all, and a big flap over what to do about it.
Wikipedia articles, when there is controversy, are often very bad.
Basically, it depends on which side can marshal the support of a core
group of editors and administrators, and which side is better at
manipulating the structure.
Lots of good theory behind Wikipedia, in fact, but not the structures
to make it so.
I hate to admit it, but Wikipedia really is a good source of
information for many topics. It is not good for some controversial
and politicized topics such as cold fusion, but for matter, neither
is Nature magazine, Scientific American and probably not Britannica.
(I haven't checked the latter.)
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/421667/nuclear-fusion/259125/Cold-fusion-and-bubble-fusion#ref=ref917674
Pretty bad, actually. There are positive statements that aren't
justifiable. Never were, actually. This is just what would be called
a stub on Wikipedia, very brief, and that text wouldn't be likely to
survive long at Wikipedia. The problem with Wikipedia and cold fusion
is more about balance and the persistence of an overall coloring of
the article. And, of course, the meddling of certain administrators
using their privileged tools to warp the article and usable sources,
plus the selective banning of editors who were actually working for
neutrality, civilly and moderately (such as Pcarbonn and myself),
while the most utterly outrageous behavior on the part of admins and
editors goes practically unnoticed.
It's really an aspect of the problem of scale. Those who could do
something about it are overwhelmed and must make snap judgments, so
when an issue is complex, really bad decisions are made.
The Wikipedia article on Japanese language had some serious problems
when I last checked it. I described some of the problems in another forum:
I am not sure if the problems are still there . . . There were
mistakes that seemed to be written by an enthusiastic person who has
recently begun studying the language. He or she was trying to
construct sample sentences in Japanese that were too much like
English and that no native speaker would use. If you are going to
use samples, you have to either find them in Japanese text somewhere
or ask a native speaker. You might copy one from a highly
authoritative source such as Martin, which has thousands of sample
sentences, all carefully sourced.
The problem was not that the person was obstinate or aggressive. He
just does not know enough about the subject to write about it.
Very common on Wikipedia, "the encyclopedia anyone can edit."
There is inadequate structure, and a lot of resistance to the
formation of what would be necessary.
