On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Risker <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, of course readability analysis is done by automation. I've yet to > find a consistent readability assessment that doesn't use automation. It's > not an area where subjectivity is particularly useful. > > And that was an average of 18 minutes per article, i.e., 36 minutes: 18 > minutes for the WP article and 18 minutes for the PDQ article. How long do > you really think it should take? I read several of the articles in under 5 > minutes on each site. Of course, the reviewers wouldn't need to look up > the definitions of a lot of the terms that lay people would need to look > at, because they were already professionally educated in the topic area, so > that would significantly reduce the amount of time required to assess the > article. >
It took me more than 18 minutes to write the last e-mail in this thread. :) The lung cancer article, for example, which was among those reviewed, has well over 4,500 words of prose, and cites 141 references. That's a reviewing speed of 250 words per minute. I don't know if you have ever done an FA review ... > Andreas, you seem to have pre-determined that Wikipedia's medical articles > are all terrible and riddled with errors. And I think you are being needlessly defensive. I have an open mind as to what the results might be. What I am sure of is that neither you nor I nor the Foundation really know how reliable they are. Why not make an effort to find out? > Realistically, they're amongst > the most likely to receive professional editing and review - Wikiproject > Medicine does a much better job than people are willing to credit them. > Yes, and many editors there are sorely concerned about the quality of medical information Wikipedia provides to the public. Incidentally, there was a discussion of the JAOA study in The Atlantic today: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/can-wikipedia-ever-be-a-definitive-medical-text/361822/ A member of WikiProject Medicine is quoted in it, as is the study's author. —o0o— So both sides acknowledge: There are errors in Wikipedia’s health articles. And that’s a problem, because people use them. —o0o— > The biggest weakness to the articles - and I've heard this from many people > who read them - is that they're written at too high a level to be really > accessible to lay people. I thought the point that the study made about > the benefit of linking to an "English" dictionary definition of complex > terms rather than to another highly technical Wikipedia article was a very > good one, for example. We could learn from these studies. > > Indeed, many science articles are mainly written by professionals in the > field (I noted math and physics earlier, but chemistry and of course a > large number of computer articles are also written by professionals). The > biggest challenge for these subjects is to write them in an accessible way. > Note, I said "science" - alternative medicine, history, geopolitical and > "soft science" articles are much more problematic. > > Risker/Anne > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe> > _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
