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

Re:I challenge an assumption

[Dun Malg]

You (and implictly the submitter) are assuming longer == more content. Typically, better writers can say more with less words.

You are assuming that in this case "fewer words" necessarily means "more concise" rather than possibly "less information". Unless someone here examines the articles in question, this argument is pointless.