Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica

[GONNAFISTYA]

Clicky

While some Britannica officials have publicly criticized Wikipedia's quality in the past, Panelas praised the free service for having the speed and breadth to keep up on topics such as "extreme ironing."

While I never think that wikipedia is the be all end all of information, it would seem that it can usually be a good reference.

[DooMer]

Too bad there are jerks like Skeletor out there. I hate that asshole.

[seremtan]

OLD

[Emit]

Wikipedia is sometimes alright to check some random information but I would not use it in an essay. I don't understand how people expect it to be accurate when, pretty much anyone can write for it. Things that are popular will be corrected but most other things can easily be manipulated or be incorrect. It’s funny that people are upset when information about them is inaccurate, fix it yourself then.

Also I can’t seem to find the link, but there some mention of Wikipedia science articles only being 30% accurate.

[+JuggerNaut+]

Clicky

While some Britannica officials have publicly criticized Wikipedia's quality in the past, Panelas praised the free service for having the speed and breadth to keep up on topics such as "extreme ironing."

While I never think that wikipedia is the be all end all of information, it would seem that it can usually be a good reference.

slowpoke.

[phantasmagoria]

Indeed, for popular things it's great but for anything specialised it's hit and miss.

[PhoeniX]

I couldn't live without Wikipedia. Though, it can be confusing editing articles. I've edited a few and uploaded a couple of images I understand the need for all the different image types so as to legally cover them but it's just plain confusing a lot of the time as to which license to use etc.

[Foo]

A lot of the Quake 3 article on wikipedia hath been touched by my FACTUALLY INNACURATE hand.

[^misantropia^]

Indeed, for popular things it's great but for anything specialised it's hit and miss.

Some of its sections are more than decent though (CS comes to mind). More up to date than the Encyclopedia Britannica too, obviously.

[Ezekiel]

Did somebody mention Skeletor?

[[xeno]Julios]

Had come across that wiki article - interesting about the moderate standard of accuracy for britannica. They both have their own problems, but what it does show is that there is real knowledge value in wiki.

[mjrpes]

I've gotten so much use out of wikipedia I am going to donate to it.

[mjrpes]

The thing about wiki vs. britannica is only scientific wiki articles were compared. If you get more into cultural 'n controversial stuff there may be more inaccuracies.

[Foo]

I'm not sure why so much emphasis is placed on wikipedia being held to the same standards as a real encyclopedia anyway, after all the only similarity is in the name.

Wikipedia is basically just a moderated version of the internet as a whole. Anyone can put data up, and one would have to be a fool to take anything found on the internet as gospel. That doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it, though.

Seriously, people are st00pid.

[+JuggerNaut+]

Wikipedia is basically just a moderated version of the internet as a whole. Anyone can put data up, and one would have to be a fool to take anything found on the internet as gospel. That doesn't mean you can't learn anything from it, though.

Seriously, people are st00pid.

exactly right.

[[xeno]Julios]

I'm not sure why so much emphasis is placed on wikipedia being held to the same standards as a real encyclopedia anyway, after all the only similarity is in the name.

That's exactly why it is so surprising that wiki science articles are just about as accurate as britannica's.

[+JuggerNaut+]

I'm not sure why so much emphasis is placed on wikipedia being held to the same standards as a real encyclopedia anyway, after all the only similarity is in the name.

That's exactly why it is so surprising that wiki science articles are just about as accurate as britannica's.

i don't think it's so surprising. think about it. there's a group of guys that would love to "leave their mark" regarding a particular subject and are experts on it. they want to contribute to wiki simply because they've not had such a public outlet like this before.

[[xeno]Julios]

the point is that many would not have forseen wikipedia as having such high accuracy, since even if there are experts who wanna leave their mark, any old joe could come and change it.

by and large, this has not happened.

wikipedia is an empirical experiment and the results are pretty good so far.

there is real knowledge value there.

[Foo]

the point is that many would not have forseen wikipedia as having such high accuracy, since even if there are experts who wanna leave their mark, any old joe could come and change it.

by and large, this has not happened.

It has happened, but the reviewing process and ability to compare version history in MediaWiki is a powerful tool. Factual innacuracies are very easy to put right. Unfortunately the achilles heel of the system is that even with a 99.999% sucess rate, you've still got a fair few mistakes sitting there. The whole thing is just so damned big now.

For the most part, errors in articles are either deliberate or accidental. For the deliberate (vandalism) errors, they're normally not subtle and with a few clicks the article goes back to the previous version. Subtle vandalism is much rarer and less widespread because it takes time to create, is less widespread, and even subtle differences are easily picked up on with the history system.

Accidental errors come up in 2 forms as well, new information or re-written information. New information poses the biggest problem, because if it's a highly specialised article then the number of people with the knowledge to overrule that information is much less than in fields which enjoy widespread academic support (science).
Re-written information is easier to fact-check. For one, the original author is often still available to engage in a debate via the discussion page linked to each article (mediawiki's most powerful tool in this cause), and secondly the original information is still available in the page history, and anything that's altered can be fact-checked via the standard routes (literature be it web or physical documents).

[+JuggerNaut+]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... ion_policy