Wikipedia's Accuracy Compared to Britannica

Raul654 writes "Nature magazine recently conducted a head-to-head competition between Wikipedia and Britannica, having experts compare 42 science-related articles. The result was that Wikipedia had about 4 errors per article, while Britannica had about 3. However, a pair of endevouring Wikipedians dug a little deeper and discovered that the Wikipedia articles in the sample were, on average, 2.6 times longer than Britannica's - meaning Wikipedia has an error rate far less than Britannica's." Interesting, considering some past claims. Story available on the BBC as well.

Comments

Accuracy - Good, Writing Poor

[ehaggis]

As the article states, the writing style in Wikipedia can be poor. Low diction, poor grammar and bad structure contribute to the chaos.

Most research I do on Wikipedia does not depend on good writing, but accurate information, especially on pop culture items or obscure "geek" subjects. Wikipedia does well in this. I have seen defaced articles "heal" with ten minutes of the incident.

As a contributor to Wikipedia, I am glad it is gaining widespread notoriety and validation.

Comparable length entries were judged

[Acy James Stapp]

From the results page at http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/ 438900a_m1.html

"All entries were chosen to be approximately the same length in both encyclopaedias."

Are you all idiots? I guess I don't really need to ask that question.

Re:I challenge an assumption

[iocat]

IWAE (I was an editor) and I can say that when writing about a technical subject, it's rare to find a copy-editor (proof reader) who is as technically knowledgeable (for a variety of reasons). This inevitably results in small errors -- and sometimes large ones -- entering the text, as the copy editor tries to make the orginal text flow more in line with the english language, hit certain word counts, avoid widows and orphans, etc. If the author, or a technical editor, doesn't have time to carefully reread the text (which is almost always the case), you end up with errors.

This isn't just a problem with encyclopaedias, of course. Most PhD dissertations are riddled with errors, some very obvious, even though the author may have spent years on the document. (I mean errors that result from trying to convey information, not intentionally included wrong information -- missing words that change the meaning of a sentence to the opposite of what the author intended, dates the contradict other dates on the same page, etc.) The world's an imperfect place.