Experts Rate Wikipedia Higher Than Non-Experts

Grooves writes "A new Wikipedia study suggests that when experts and non-experts look to assess Wikipedia for accuracy, the non-experts are harder on the free encyclopedia than the experts. The researcher had 55 graduate students and research assistants examine one Wikipedia article apiece for accuracy, some in fields they were familiar with and some not. Those in the expert group ranked their articles as generally credible, higher than those evaluated by the non-experts. One researcher said 'It may be the case that non-experts are more cynical about information outside of their field and the difference comes from a natural reaction to rate unfamiliar articles as being less credible.'" That's the problem people face when 'everyone who disagrees with you is a moron'.

Comments

A Possible Reason

[eldavojohn]

Whatever the reason for the results, they will cheer defenders of Wikipedia's accuracy, though Chesney urges caution in extrapolating too generally from his study. For one thing, the sample size was small. For another, 13 percent of those in the "experts" group reported finding mistakes in their assigned articles.

If I may speculate why this happened, I often encounter non-experts having a higher opinion on a topic than an expert. Part of being an 'expert' (in my opinion) is the ability to see all major sides of an issue that they are experts on. Case in point, I've found while watching the History channel that I judge a historian's greatness on whether he tells me what to think about history or whether he tries to cover as many of the major angles as possible in as little time as possible. Example on Nazis:

Historian A: "The Nazis were horrible awful people who killed and murdered millions of people during World War II. They created nothing but pain and suffering while seeking out total fascist control of the entire world."
Historian B: "Nazism is not a precise, theoretically grounded ideology. It consists of a loose collection of ideas and positions: extreme nationalism, racism, eugenics, totalitarianism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and limits to freedom of religion."

Now the reason I put those two up there is because your average person (I'm American so I may be biased on 'average') would probably favor historian A's perspective as opposed to historian B. Historian B is actually an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry. It's more encyclopedic as it's not opinion oriented. I'm not saying Wikipedia is free of opinions but what I'm proposing is that non-experts have an opinion and often when they read something that doesn't align with that opinion, they consider it to be incorrect.

The (on average high) neutrality of Wikipedia is most likely what causes non-experts to rate it as more erroneous than experts. Since the sample set was so low (as the report notes) then it is perhaps more likely that this happened.

I think that this is what the "Everyone who disagrees with you is a moron" article is getting at. I'm guessing experts are training not to suffer from that disease.

Re:A Possible Reason

[PieSquared]

While that may be the case, it could also be a matter of sample size, as the researcher himself said. 55 just isn't that big.

Re:A Possible Reason

[gigne]

Of all of the historical things you could used as an example, you choose Nazism. If you didn't have such a good point I might have called Godwin's law on you.

Re:A Possible Reason

[sheldon]

If you argue that evidence of Global Warming only proves a short term warming trend and that it is inconclusive whether it is influence by man or if it represents a long term climate change people will call you delusional even though you are correct ...

I'm pretty agnostic on the whole Global Warming debate, but it bothers me that the people who are so opposed to it argue on what they believe to be true, rather than what they think to be true. That is what you have done here. You've offered no substantial evidence to support your conclusions, rather you simply imply that all those opposed to your belief are morons.

So why are you so surprised when you are called delusional? You certainly don't offer anything to counter that impression.

Re:A Possible Reason

[freeweed]

As a non-expert in both Nazism and Godwin's Law, I'm highly sceptical of that article.

Re:A Possible Reason

[Gorshkov]

Is there a grounding for this in Mein Kampf or in speeches Hitler has made?

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: HELL, Yes.

When you read Mein Kampf, you realise a) exactly how out to lunch, sick & twisted Hitler really was, and b) how out to lunch Chamberlain & the other European politicos were to even TRY to negociate with him.

Commonly used in IP field for prior art

[maddogsparky]

Wikipedia is used all the time in the IP lawfirm where I work. If we need a definition or a quick rundown on a field before filing a patent, it's a good, well linked source.

Good to Know

[huckda]

that just by being a grad-student or a research assistant you become labeled an expert!

Re:Good to Know

[jbeaupre]

They were reviewing the articles on Ramen and sleep deprivation.

Ignorance breeds fear?

[lymond01]

Could this just be a case of someone saying, "That can't be right!" only because they don't know if it really is?

Why hate wikipedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand the people who attack Wikipedia....

It is free, a lot of people have put a lot of effort into it, and it is incomparable to any other repository of knowledge known to man.

Why the fuck would anyone want to piss on it? Don't like it? Shut up and go to a library.

I hope they didn't act on it.

[rdmiller3]

A new Wikipedia study suggests that when experts and non-experts look to assess Wikipedia for accuracy, the non-experts are harder on the free encyclopedia than the experts.

I just hope that those non-experts didn't feel the urge to "fix" anything.

The problem with this is...

[Secret Rabbit]

... that when it comes to academic articles (e.g. physics) the only people who know enough math/jargon to get it close to right are the academics. So, the acuracy is of course going to be fairly high.

BUT, when it comes to policitically charged articles (or other non-academic articles), b/c of people's "MY true is reality no matter what the facts say" mentality nowadays, the acuracy plumits.

Basically, this study is nothing but a false positive in favor of wikipedia.

Peer reviewed

[maddogsparky]

Isn't this the same criteria used for "well-respected, peer-reviewed journals"? You can abuse any such journal, just as wikipedia sometimes is.

However, wikipedia is different from such journals because it is a commons which is shared by people with differing viewpoints. It doesn't get the same bias that some journals may get where submitters and readers gravitate towards one of several different publications with slightly different biases (e.g. some journals favor publishing articles related to global warming as a concequence of human activities while others favor articles about it being a more natural phenomonon).

Debate is healthy, as long as it is reasoned. Wikipedia's nature enforces reason on debates about its contents. If a wikipedia entry gets edited by a person with a bias, a person with an opposing bias deals with it directly by editing the _same_ article, instead of proposing an alternate view somewhere else where it may not be seen by readers of the article. This beats the status quo , where oposing sides tend to just keep shouting their message without having any true debate.

Re:Peer reviewed

[OctaviusIII]

Problems still arise with bias, but generally they arise in some of the less travelled articles where individuals can cut what they don't like. For example, the article on the Laurentian Leadership Centre, where I happen to be right now, was expanded upon by one of the students. Another editor simply didn't like the host school and cut it back considerably (although it looks like the proper edits are back), censoring what he didn't like and creating a bias. It's like the plagiarism thing a while back - quality decreases when traffic decreases, but that's the nature of a Wiki project, I suppose.

Rawr

[Trashhalo]

Let me just say that I am so tired of the the rampant bias against wikipedia in education. I have had teachers go on 10 minute rants on how horrible of a site it is. I also am frustrated with the fact that during these rants generally there are no facts, studies or examples given to why they believe wp is untrustworthy only that anyone can change it so that means it is bad. Are there bad articles in wikipedia? Yes I dont think anyone would disagree with that. Are the bad articles the ones you will be looking at? I think thats the more important question. The more popular a topic is the edits it receives and the more trustworthy the information is. That is ofcourse ignoring the fact that now many big wikipedia articles cite sources. Another baseless concern is that at the time you are looking at the article some random false fact will have been inserted. Wp has this little feature called "history" I always check the last couple changes to a article before citing it in a paper. If something seems fishy I will cite a earlier version of the same article.

Anyways I guess in summary people are way too afraid of the wiki model.

One idea on why

[arodland]

The expert says "there are some good ideas behind this really shitty writing", and the non-expert says "wow, this is some really shitty writing." So the expert comes away with a higher opinion.

it's a question of open-mindness

[excelsior_gr]

I believe that the difference between the groups that this study used was not really the fact that in one group there were "experts" and in the other "non-experts", but that in one group there were "grad-students" and in the other "non-grad-students".

One of the things that one learns while doing his/her PhD is that he/she is NOT an expert in ANY field. It is only a matter of time for some big-headed know-it-all grad student to get crushed in a conference by a more experienced, better informed researcher. Being a grad-student and having research as your job makes you more open to new ideas and other people's opinions.

When you daily come accross many different approaches that try to solve the same problem, you are bound to learn that you must examine them all first before you decide. Otherwise you might miss a good idea that may eventually cost you your PhD. Sure you will have a favourite in the end, but that will be only after giving way to every possible option.

So a grad-student reading a Wikipedia article with an "alternative" (i.e. mistaken) point, would say "Hmm.. why not?", while a non-grad-student could say "WTF is this?" Of course, this would be the case only when the point is more close to being debatable and not obviously wrong.

Re:it's a question of open-mindness

[heroofhyr]

I believe that the difference between the groups that this study used was not really the fact that in one group there were "experts" and in the other "non-experts", but that in one group there were "grad-students" and in the other "non-grad-students".

And I believe someone should RTFA before weighing in on it. It wasn't divided into "people who are grad students" and "people who aren't grad students," it was divided into "people who are grad students or researchers in a certain field and are given an article from Wikipedia about that field" and "people who are grad students or researchers in a certain field and are given a random article from Wikipedia's 'Random Article' link in the Navigation Menu on the front page." Or maybe we shall let the study itself explain:

A total of 258 academics (research fellows, research assistants and PhD students) were asked to participate in the study. 69 (27 percent) agreed to take part with 55 (21 percent) actually completing the survey. Each respondent was randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. Under Condition 1 they were asked to read an article in Wikipedia that was related to their area of expertise. For example, a member of the Fungal Biology and Genetics Research Group (in the Institute of Genetics at Nottingham University; see http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/biology/Genetics/index .phtml) was asked to look at the article on metabolites. Areas of expertise were found from the academics' own Web sites with the choice of article being made by the author. If there was any doubt the expert was contacted for advice. Under Condition 2 respondents were asked to read a random article. Wikipedia's own random article selection feature was used to assign a different article to each Condition 2 respondent. (http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_11/chesney/ )

It's very short, so it's not too big of an inconvenience to actually read it.

"Caution ... needs to be used..."

[dpbsmith]

"Caution--and further research--needs to be used before citing anything learned from Wikipedia as a fact."

Yes, well, caution--and further research--needs to be used before citing anything learned from the Encyclopaedia Britannica... or the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics... or the World Almanac as a fact.

All of these are secondary sources. All of them are highly useful and are used as actionable sources of information every day, but none of them would be an acceptable citation in a research paper.

Furthermore, Wikipedia has always had policies that all information in Wikipedia must be derived from a published "reliable source" and that the source should be cited. Although these policies have mostly been honored in the breach, in the past year or so there has been an increasing tendency to cite sources explicitly. This is virtually a requirement for an article to become a home-page "featured article," for example. In some cases it is easier to trace the source of a fact in a Wikipedia article than in a traditional encyclopedia.

Re:Why I Doubt

[Sloppy]

I tend to take most things I read on Wikipedia that I'm not an expert on with a grain of salt, simply because I keep finding errors in articles that I am.

But that's why this experiment's results are so interesting. What you're saying reminds me of how people look at mainstream media's coverage of things. It appears somewhat reasonable when they're talking about things you don't really understand, but then once they get onto a topic you know anything about, suddenly you see how full of shit they are. Your ignorance allows you to trust them, and your expertise makes you distrust them.

This study perversely suggests that Wikipedia is having an opposite effect on people, than mainstream media does.

I wonder if it has to do with what happens when people find errors in things they're familiar with. When you find errors in Wikipedia articles, do you do anything about it? With mainstream media, you can't do anything about it, but with Wikipedia, you can. Maybe you don't correct errors, but eventually someone may, and perhaps the motivation to do that, is somehow proportional to expertise.

Re:Propoganda?

[bigpat]

Why is it when Microsoft/oil company/tobacco company is torched whenever they release a study saying Windows/gasoline/smoking is good because they are paid off blow-hards serving their masters but a Wikipedia study saying their articles are accurate (and make no mistake, that is what they are saying) doesn't raise an eyebrow?

Probably because wikipedia is a charitable non profit registered 501(c)(3) educational foundation which means that it is legally obligated by both the US government and State of Florida to serve a public purpose, in this case education. While those companies that you speak of are for profit multi billion dollar corporations trying to people their products and sevices and are often lobbying the government to pass laws to make it easier to sell their stuff.

Sure anything that adds to wikipedia's reputation for accuracy will make donors feel more comfortable about donating to wikipedia. But the simple fact is that every page view on wikipedia is an expense for the Foundation, they make no money directly from their content. The best way to judge a non profit is to look at the number of people getting paid by them. And so far, the Wikimedia Foundation still seams pretty lean compared to other foundations and they are keeping their other overhead expenses reasonably low as far as I can tell.

So, yes it is good to question all studies which promote one product over another, but this simply confirms something that we might have thought anyway. That if you know more about something than others, then you are in a better position to judge the accuracy of what was written about that something.

One possible reason

[MikeRT]

Increasingly people don't trust things that they aren't very familiar with because of the sort of political, under-handed, deceptive crap that has crept into so many areas of knowledge from the political world. Most people I know don't trust the mainstream media anymore and that ranges from people who are nearly communist in their left leanings to people who are practically John Birchers. Dispassioned, reasoned discussions are rare these days.

Think it's not the problem with even science? Why do so many people attack Bjorn Lomborg with a fanatical ferocity for daring to raise scientific questions about how, why and if global warming is happening? Why can't people who claim to operate on civilized values like reason sit down and have a friendly chat. "Interesting, Bjorn, let's look at your facts; Hmmm, interesting, but I don't think you considered the following (X, Y, Z); Touche, but I would like to present this, this and that to prove that global warming is not human-caused." Instead it's more like, "YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLE WHO ARE YOU TO QUESTION ANY ASPECT OF GLOBAL WARMING?!"

The truth is that there are so many people who are significantly maleducated today that it's no wonder why people are screwed up. I mean, it was a real eye opener for me, when I started reading up on my own time, about some of the cultural practices of the ancient world. Most of the people who look horrified at religion today have never even heard of such practices as Pater Familias nor know that their celtic ancestors (if that applies to them) often practiced human sacrifice. I honestly think that based on some of the conversations I have had since I started doing these things on my own, that the maleducation of the American public today is worse than the lack of education that existed 200 years ago. There is nothing worse than having a horrendously bad education--it'd be better to simply be a void that can be filled by actual knowledge.

Now, the reason that I brought up the global warming issue was not to beat a popular pinata, but to illustrate the fact that to many "laymen," the "experts" often come off as narrow-minded fanatics. That doesn't inspire confidence in the average person. What does inspire confidence is a calm ability to articulate on his or her level with facts that back it up. Problem is, too many people have an agenda and too many people are too caught up in it to be convincing to the majority who won't immediately accept what they say at face value as though it were penned by the hand of God.

Isn't it time Slashdot had a Wiki icon?

[gadfium]

There are regular stories on Wikipedia on Slashdot, and occasional stories on other wikis. Shouldn't there be either a Wikipedia icon or a Wiki icon to distinguish these stories? The Wikipedia "multilingual globe being built" is copyright (one of the very few things in Wikipedia which is) so you can't use that, but the Wikipedia "W" is fairly well known. Looking through Wikimedia Commons, this puzzle piece looked good to me. I don't know if the GFDL licence would be a problem for Slashdot.

The MediaWiki sunflower would only be suitable as an icon for Wikis powered by that piece of software. I don't have an idea for an icon to represent all wikis.

off-by-one error invokes thread exception

[maddogsparky]

It appears that Goodwin's law is not invoked for the first comment in a discussion. This come logically from the requirement that Goodwin's law apply to a discussion that involves the Nazi/Hitler example as a means to refute another comment.

Being the first comment, an off-by-one exception occurs, resulting in an aborted termination of the thread.

Re:off-by-one error invokes thread exception

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Ironically, the Nazi's observed no such rule. In the educated social circles of the Third Reich, anybody who used the term Godwin in any sense was immediately set upon by rabid guard dogs.