[Web4lib] Wikipedia vs Britannica

[Jeremy Dunck]

On 12/14/05, Sloan, Bernie <bernies at uillinois.edu> wrote:
> "Jimmy Wales' Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the
> accuracy of its science entries, a Nature investigation finds."

While I am generally happy (as a user) with Wikipedia, I thought this
writeup was a bit too charitable to them and to Wales.

The same number of major flaws, but 1/3 more minor flaws.  Also, the
article selection methodology tried to isolate mature content (by
matching article length), which is to say, perhaps the sample is not
representative of Wikipedia in general.

Perhaps more to the point, I hope that Nature publishes the details of
their survey (including expert feedback).

I'm a Wikipedia researcher in my copious free time, and have been
waiting for something like this.