[Web4lib] Wikipedia vs Britannica

Thu Dec 15 13:05:00 EST 2005

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On Dec 15, 2005, at 8:36 AM, James Jacobs wrote:

> 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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