The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. Wikipedia carries the general disclaimer that it can be "edited by anyone at any time" and maintains an inclusion threshold of "verifiability, not truth". This editing model is highly concentrated, as 77% of all articles are written by 1% of its editors, a majority of whom have chosen to remain anonymous.[1][2] The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process.[3] The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual reliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results, with findings varied and inconsistent. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has improved over time; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.[4][5][6]
The prevalence of non-neutral or conflict-of-interest editing and the use of Wikipedia for "revenge editing" has attracted publicity for inserting false, biased, or defamatory content into articles, especially biographies of living people.[18][19] Articles on less technical subjects, such as the social sciences, humanities, and culture, have been known to deal with misinformation cycles, cognitive biases, coverage discrepancies, and editor disputes. The online encyclopedia does not guarantee the validity of its information. It is seen as a valuable "starting point" for researchers when they pass over content to examine the listed references, citations, and sources. Academics suggest reviewing reliable sources when assessing the quality of articles.[20][21]
Encyclopedia Britannica 2015 Ser
Its coverage of medical and scientific articles such as pathology,[22] toxicology,[23] oncology,[24] pharmaceuticals,[25] and psychiatry[26] were compared to professional and peer-reviewed sources in a 2005 Nature study.[27] A year later Encyclopædia Britannica disputed the Nature study, whose authors, in turn, replied with a further rebuttal.[28][29] Concerns regarding readability and the overuse of technical language were raised in studies published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2011),[30] Psychological Medicine (2012),[26] and European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2014).[31] Wikipedia's popularity, mass readership, and free accessibility has led the encyclopedia to command a substantial second-hand cognitive authority across the world.[32][33][nb 1]
Encyclopædia Britannica expressed concerns, leading Nature to release further documentation of its survey method.[43] Based on this additional information, Encyclopædia Britannica denied the validity of the Nature study, stating that it was "fatally flawed". Among Britannica's criticisms were that excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were used, that some of the extracts were compilations that included articles written for the youth version, that Nature did not check the factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points the reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion. Britannica further stated that "While the heading proclaimed that 'Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries,' the numbers buried deep in the body of the article said precisely the opposite: Wikipedia in fact had a third more inaccuracies than Britannica. (As we demonstrate below, Nature's research grossly exaggerated Britannica's inaccuracies, so we cite this figure only to point out the slanted way in which the numbers were presented.)"[44] Nature acknowledged the compiled nature of some of the Britannica extracts, but denied that this invalidated the conclusions of the study.[45] Encyclopædia Britannica also argued that a breakdown of the errors indicated that the mistakes in Wikipedia were more often the inclusion of incorrect facts, while the mistakes in Britannica were "errors of omission", making "Britannica far more accurate than Wikipedia, according to the figures".[44] Nature has since rejected the Britannica response,[46] stating that any errors on the part of its reviewers were not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.[47][48]
A web-based survey conducted from December 2005 to May 2006 by Larry Press, a professor of Information Systems at California State University at Dominguez Hills, assessed the "accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles".[53] Fifty people accepted an invitation to assess an article. Of the fifty, seventy-six percent (76%) agreed or strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and forty-six percent (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete. Eighteen people compared the article they reviewed to the article on the same topic in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Opinions on accuracy were almost equal between the two encyclopedias (6 favoring Britannica, 7 favoring Wikipedia, 5 stating they were equal), and eleven of the eighteen (61%) found Wikipedia somewhat or substantially more complete, compared to seven of the eighteen (39%) for Britannica. The survey did not attempt a random selection of the participants, and it is not clear how the participants were invited.[54]
The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Multimedial, Microsoft Encarta, and the German Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points (B-).[55] A second test by c't in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. It concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors."[56]
In October 2007, the Australian magazine PC Authority published a feature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia. The article compared Wikipedia's content to other popular online encyclopedias, namely Britannica and Encarta. The magazine asked experts to evaluate articles pertaining to their field. A total of four articles were reviewed by three experts. Wikipedia was comparable to the other encyclopedias, topping the chemistry category.[59]
In December 2007, German magazine Stern published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6 versus 2.3 for Brockhaus, with 1 as the best and 6 as the worst). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date; however, Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.[60][61][62]
A 2008 paper in Reference Services Review compared nine Wikipedia entries on historical topics to their counterparts in Encyclopædia Britannica, The Dictionary of American History and American National Biography Online. The paper found that Wikipedia's entries had an overall accuracy rate of 80 percent, whereas the other encyclopedias had an accuracy rate of 95 to 96 percent.[64]
Seife observed that when false information from Wikipedia spreads to other publications, it sometimes alters truth itself.[95] On June 28, 2012, for example, an anonymous Wikipedia contributor added the invented nickname "Millville Meteor" to the Wikipedia biography of baseball player Mike Trout. A couple of weeks later, a Newsday sports writer reproduced the nickname in an article, and "with that act, the fake nickname became real".[95] Seife pointed out that while Wikipedia, by some standards, could be described as "roughly as accurate" as traditional publications, and is more up to date, "there's a difference between the kind of error one would find in Wikipedia and what one would in Britannica or Collier's or even in the now-defunct Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia ... the majority of hoaxes on Wikipedia could never have appeared in the old-fashioned encyclopedias."[95] Dwight Garner, reviewing Seife's book in The New York Times, said that he himself had "been burned enough times by bad online information", including "Wikipedia howlers", to have adopted a very sceptical mindset.[96]
In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia", Robert McHenry, a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopædia Britannica, stated that Wikipedia errs in billing itself as an encyclopedia, because that word implies a level of authority and accountability that he believes cannot be possessed by an openly editable reference. McHenry argued that "the typical user doesn't know how conventional encyclopedias achieve reliability, only that they do".[113] He added: 2ff7e9595c
Comments