[Web4lib] Wikipedia vs Britannica

Sloan, Bernie bernies at uillinois.edu
Thu Dec 15 12:37:33 EST 2005


It's not a question of good form or bad form. It's a question of
observing copyright law.

Bernie Sloan

-----Original Message-----
From: web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:web4lib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of James Jacobs
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 10:36 AM
To: Web4lib at webjunction.org
Subject: [Web4lib] Wikipedia vs Britannica

I know it's bad form to post an article in its entirety to a list, but I

hope you'll forgive it this time in the interests of scholarly
discussion. 
Below the article is also the the editorial that ran in the same issue.

Regards,

James Jacobs
________________________

>From 'Nature'.

Nature 438, 900-901 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438900a
Special ReportInternet encyclopaedias go head to head

Jim Giles
Top of page
Abstract

Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the
accuracy of 
its science entries, a Nature investigation finds.

One of the extraordinary stories of the Internet age is that of
Wikipedia, a 
free online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. This radical and rapidly

growing publication, which includes close to 4 million entries, is now a

much-used resource. But it is also controversial: if anyone can edit
entries, 
how do users know if Wikipedia is as accurate as established sources
such as 
Encyclopaedia Britannica?

everal recent cases have highlighted the potential problems. One article
was 
revealed as falsely suggesting that a former assistant to US Senator
Robert 
Kennedy may have been involved in his assassination. And podcasting
pioneer 
Adam Curry has been accused of editing the entry on podcasting to remove

references to competitors' work. Curry says he merely thought he was
making the
entry more accurate.

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.

Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem 
surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on
the Sun,
but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic
background.
Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.

But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the
encyclopaedia's 
parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida,
says 
the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says.
"Our goal
is to get to Britannica quality, or better."

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.

But critics have raised concerns about the site's increasing influence, 
questioning whether multiple, unpaid editors can match paid
professionals for 
accuracy. Writing in the online magazine TCS last year, former
Britannica 
editor Robert McHenry declared one Wikipedia entry  on US founding
father 
Alexander Hamilton  as "what might be expected of a high-school
student". 
Opening up the editing process to all, regardless of expertise, means
that 
reliability can never be ensured, he concluded.

Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not
be 
great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries
were 
chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a
broad 
range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer
review.
Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two 
encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which
encyclopaedia.
A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were
then 
examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important
concepts, 
were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each
encyclopaedia.
But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading 
statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

Editors at Britannica would not discuss the findings, but say their own
studies
of Wikipedia have uncovered numerous flaws. "We have nothing against 
Wikipedia," says Tom Panelas, director of corporate communications at
the 
company's headquarters in Chicago. "But it is not the case that errors
creep in
on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written.
There 
are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor."

Several Nature reviewers agreed with Panelas' point on readability,
commenting
that the Wikipedia article they reviewed was poorly structured and
confusing. 
This criticism is common among information scientists, who also point to
other
problems with article quality, such as undue prominence given to
controversial
scientific theories. But Michael Twidale, an information scientist at
the 
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that Wikipedia's
strongest 
suit is the speed at which it can updated, a factor not considered by
Nature's
reviewers.

"People will find it shocking to see how many errors there are in
Britannica,"
Twidale adds. "Print encyclopaedias are often set up as the gold
standards of 
information quality against which the failings of faster or cheaper
resources 
can be compared. These findings remind us that we have an 18-carat
standard, 
not a 24-carat one."

The most error-strewn article, that on Dmitry Mendeleev, co-creator of
the 
periodic table, illustrates this. Michael Gordin, a science historian at

Princeton University who wrote a 2004 book on Mendeleev, identified 19
errors 
in Wikipedia and 8 in Britannica. These range from minor mistakes, such
as 
describing Mendeleev as the 14th child in his family when he was the
13th, to 
more significant inaccuracies. Wikipedia, for example, incorrectly
describes 
how Mendeleev's work relates to that of British chemist John Dalton.
"Who wrote
this stuff?" asked another reviewer. "Do they bother to check with
experts?"

But to improve Wikipedia, Wales is not so much interested in checking
articles
with experts as getting them to write the articles in the first place.

As well as comparing the two encyclopaedias, Nature surveyed more than
1,000 
Nature authors and found that although more than 70% had heard of
Wikipedia and
17% of those consulted it on a weekly basis, less than 10% help to
update it. 
The steady trickle of scientists who have contributed to articles
describe the
experience as rewarding, if occasionally frustrating (see 'Challenges of
being
a Wikipedian').

Greater involvement by scientists would lead to a "multiplier effect",
says 
Wales. Most entries are edited by enthusiasts, and the addition of a
researcher
can boost article quality hugely. "Experts can help write specifics in a

nuanced way," he says.

Wales also plans to introduce a 'stable' version of each entry. Once an
article
reaches a specific quality threshold it will be tagged as stable.
Further edits
will be made to a separate 'live' version that would replace the stable
version
when deemed to be a significant improvement. One method for determining
that 
threshold, where users rate article quality, will be trialled early next
year.

[text box]

Vaughan Bell, a neuropsychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in
London, UK, 
has reworked Wikipedia's entry on schizophrenia over the past two years.
Around 
five others regularly contribute to the reworking, most of whom have not

revealed whether they have academic backgrounds. Bell says that is not a

problem, as disputes are settled through the discussion page linked to
the 
entry, often by citing academic articles. "It's about the quality of
what you 
do, not who you are," he explains.

While admitting it can be difficult settling arguments, Bell says he
often 
learns something by doing so. One user posted a section on schizophrenia
and 
violence that Bell considered little more than a "rant" about the need
to lock 
up people with the illness. "But editing it did stimulate me to look up 
literature on schizophrenia and violence," he says. "Even people who are
a pain 
in the arse can stimulate new thinking."

Others, particularly those who contribute to politically sensitive
entries, 
have found the editing process more fraught. William Connolley, a
climate 
researcher at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge, has fought for
two 
years with climate-change sceptics over the entry on global warming.
When 
Connolley was insulted by one of the sceptics and the editing became a
'revert 
war' - where editors repeatedly undo each others' changes - the matter
was 
referred to the encyclopaedia's administrators.

Two of Connolley's opponents were banned from editing any climate
article for 
six months, but it was a bumpy process. The Wikipedia editors who
oversaw the 
case took three months to reach a decision. They also punished Connolley
for 
repeatedly changing the sceptics' edits, placing him on a six-month
parole 
during which he is limited to one revert a day. Users who support
Connolley 
have contested the decision.

"It takes a long time to deal with troublemakers," admits Jimmy Wales,
the 
encyclopaedia's co-founder. "Connolley has done such amazing work and
has had 
to deal with a fair amount of nonsense."

Jim Giles

[editorial in same issue]

Editorial

Nature 438, 890 (15 December 2005) | doi:10.1038/438890a
Wiki's wild world
Top of page
Abstract

Researchers should read Wikipedia cautiously and amend it
enthusiastically.

Sometimes the stupid-sounding ideas turn out to be the ones that take
off. 
Almost five years ago, a free online encyclopaedia known as Wikipedia
was 
launched. To those familiar with the peer-review process, the premise
behind 
the new publication seemed crazy: any user, regardless of expertise, can
edit 
the entries. It sounded like a method for creating garbled and
inaccurate 
articles, and many critics said so.

Fast-forward to 2005, and some of that criticism is looking misplaced. 
Wikipedia is now a huge reference source, with something approaching a
million 
articles in the English version alone. It's true that many of its
entries are 
confusing and badly structured; some of them are badly wrong, and
sometimes the 
errors are deliberate. After the discovery of an outrageously false
description 
of John Seigenthaler, a former editor of The Tennessean newspaper,
Wikipedia's 
publishers introduced registration in an attempt to discourage (though
it 
cannot prevent) "impulsive vandalism".

But as an investigation on page 900 of this issue shows, the accuracy of

science in Wikipedia is surprisingly good: the number of errors in a
typical 
Wikipedia science article is not substantially more than in
Encyclopaedia 
Britannica, often considered the gold-standard entry-level reference
work. That 
crazy idea is starting to look anything but stupid.

So can Wikipedia move up a gear and match the quality of rival reference
works? 
Imagine the result if it did: a comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date 
reference work that can be accessed free from Manhattan to rural
Mongolia. To 
achieve this, Wikipedia's administrators will have to tackle everything
from 
future funding problems - the site is maintained by public donations -
to 
doubts about whether enough new contributors can be found to increase
the 
quality of the mushrooming number of entries. That latter point is
critical, 
and here scientists can make a difference.

Judging by a survey of Nature authors, conducted in parallel with the
accuracy 
investigation, only a small percentage of scientists currently
contribute to 
Wikipedia. Yet when they do, they can make a significant difference. 
Wikipedia's non-expert contributors are, by and large, dedicated to
getting 
things right on the site. But scientists can bring a critical eye to
entries on 
subjects they study, often highlighting errors and misunderstandings
that 
others have unintentionally introduced. They can also start entries on
topics 
that other users may not want to tackle. It is no surprise, for example,
that 
the entry on 'spin density wave' was originated by a physicist.

     Scientists can bring a critical eye to entries on subjects they
study, 
highlighting errors that others have unintentionally introduced.

Editing pages is not always straightforward, as some users may disagree
with 
changes. In politically sensitive areas such as climate change,
researchers 
have had to do battle with sceptics pushing an editorial line that is
out of 
kilter with mainstream scientific thinking. But this usually requires no
more 
than a little patience. Wikipedia's users are generally interested in
the 
reasoning behind proposed changes to articles. Backing up a claim with a

peer-reviewed reference, for example, makes a world of difference.

Nature would like to encourage its readers to help. The idea is not to
seek a 
replacement for established sources such as the Encyclopaedia
Britannica, but 
to push forward the grand experiment that is Wikipedia, and to see how
much it 
can improve. Select a topic close to your work and look it up on
Wikipedia. If 
the entry contains errors or important omissions, dive in and help fix
them. It 
need not take too long. And imagine the pay-off: you could be one of the
people 
who helped turn an apparently stupid idea into a free, high-quality
global 
resource.
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