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

[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

[freeweed]

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

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.

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.

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.