The
reliability of Wikipedia, compared to both other
encyclopedias and more specialized
sources, is often assessed in several ways, including
statistically, by comparative review, by analysis
of the historical patterns, and by strengths and weaknesses
inherent in the Wikipedia process.
Because Wikipedia is open to
collaborative editing and can be
edited anonymously, assessments of its reliability usually include
examinations of how quickly false or misleading information is
removed. An early study conducted by
IBM
researchers in 2003 (not long after Wikipedia started in 2001, see
History of Wikipedia) found
that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so quickly
that most users will never see its effects " and concluded that
Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing
capabilities."
An investigation reported in the journal
Nature in 2005 suggested that for
scientific articles Wikipedia came close to the level of accuracy
of
Encyclopædia
Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors."
These claims have been disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica.
Areas of reliability
The reliability of Wikipedia articles is a function of several
criteria:
- * Accuracy of information provided within articles
- * Appropriateness of the images provided with the article
- * Appropriateness of the style and focus of the articles
- * Susceptibility to, and exclusion and removal of, false
information (a criterion specific to the Wikipedia process)
- * Comprehensiveness, scope and coverage within articles and in
the range of articles
- * Identification of reputable third-party sources as citations
- * Stability of the articles
- * Susceptibility to editorial and systemic bias
- * Whether the articles are well-written.
The first four of these have been the subjects of various studies
of the project, while the presence of
bias is
strongly disputed on both sides, and the prevalence and quality of
citations can be tested within Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia editing model
The allows anyone to edit, and relies on a large number of
well-intentioned editors to overcome issues raised by a smaller
number of problematic editors. It is inherent in Wikipedia's
editing model that poor information
can be added, but over
time quality is anticipated to improve in a form of
group learning as editors reach
consensus, so that substandard edits will very
rapidly be removed. This assumption is still being tested, and its
limitations and reliability are not yet a settled matter –
Wikipedia is a pioneer in communal
knowledge building of this kind. It
contrasts with many more traditional models of knowledge and
publishing, which attempt to limit
content creation to a relatively small group of approved editors in
order to exercise strong
hierarchical
control. Theories of
critical
pedagogy argue that consensus alone maintains the status quo;
new knowledges only emerge from a dialectical exposure of power
structures. In order to improve reliability, some editors have
called for "stable versions" of articles, or articles that have
been reviewed by the community and locked from further
editing.
Wikipedia's model of knowledge creation is relatively novel, since
widespread collaborative projects of its kind were rare until the
arrival of the
Internet, and are still rare
on such a large scale. Over time, Wikipedia has developed many
editorial tools that have been found to be useful, based largely
upon trial and error.
While Wikipedia has the potential for extremely rapid growth and
harnesses an entire community – much in the same way as other
communal projects such as
Linux – it goes
further in trusting the same community to self-regulate and become
more proficient at
quality control.
Wikipedia has harnessed the work of millions of people to produce
the world's largest knowledge-based site along with software to
support it, resulting in more than ten million articles written,
across more than 200 different language versions, in less than
eight years. For this reason, there has been considerable interest
in the project both academically and from diverse fields such as
information technology,
business,
project management,
knowledge acquisition,
software programming, other
collaborative projects and
sociology, to explore whether the Wikipedia model
can produce good results, what collaboration in this way can reveal
about people, and whether the scale of involvement can overcome the
obstacles of individual limitations and poor editorship which would
otherwise arise.
Another reason for inquiry is the growing and widespread reliance
on Wikipedia by both websites and individuals using it as a
source of
information, and concerns over such a major
source being susceptible to rapid change – including the
introduction of misinformation at whim. The proponents of such
concerns tend to seek reassurance of the quality and reliability of
articles, and the degree of usefulness, misinformation or
vandalism which should be expected, in order to
decide what reliance to place upon them.
Anonymous editing
Wikipedia allows anonymous editing: editors are not required to
provide any identification, or even an email address.
A 2007 study at
Dartmouth
College
of the English Wikipedia noted that contrary to
usual social expectations, anonymous editors were some of
Wikipedia's most productive contributors of valid
content.
The study also found that the quality of Wikipedia articles varied
widely. Some articles were excellent by any reasonable
measure—authored and edited by persons knowledgeable in the field,
containing numerous useful and relevant references, and written in
a proper encyclopedic style. Many articles were amateurish,
unauthoritative, and even incorrect, making it difficult for a
reader unfamiliar with a given subject matter to know which
information to rely upon. In addition, Wikipedia contains many
stubs—very short articles that provide a brief mention of
a subject, and little else. The Dartmouth study was criticized by
John Timmer of the
Ars Technica website
for an inexact measure of quality of Wikipedia articles.
Assessments
Accuracy of articles
One way in which reliability of information can be assessed is by
comparison of Wikipedia articles to their parallel articles in
other reputable sources.
A common source of reliability criticisms is the open process that
is involved, which means that any article can be modified for
better or worse at any time, and the fact that no privileged
versions of articles currently exist in the main encyclopedia. This
fluidity has been assessed by specialists both positively and
negatively, as has Wikipedia's model that focuses upon rapid
correction rather than initial accuracy.
Comparative studies
On October 24, 2005,
The
Guardian published an article entitled "Can you trust
Wikipedia?" where a panel of experts were asked to critically
review seven entries related to their fields. One article was
deemed to have made "every value judgement... wrong", the others
receiving marks from 5 to 8 out of a notional ten. Of the other six
articles reviewed and critiqued, the most common criticisms were:
- Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
- Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key
omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
- Poor balance, with less important areas being given more
attention and vice versa (1 mention)
The most common praises were:
- Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4
mentions)
- Much useful information, including well selected links, making
it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)
Nature reported in 2005
that
science articles in Wikipedia were
comparable in accuracy to those on
Encyclopedia
Britannica's web site. Out of 42 articles, only 4 serious
errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in
Encyclopedia
Britannica, although more than a hundred lesser errors and
omissions were found in each and Wikipedia's articles were often
"poorly structured."On March 24, 2006,
Britannica provided
a rebuttal of this article, labeling it "fatally flawed", to which
Nature responded. Among Britannica's criticisms were that
excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were
used, that Nature composited parts of different Britannica texts to
make a text for review in one case, that Nature did not check the
factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points which the
reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion.
Nature responded that any errors on the part of its reviewers were
not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it
used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that
Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before
publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.
A web-based survey conducted from December 2005 to May 2006
assessed the "accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles."
Fifty people (a fairly low response rate) accepted an invitation to
assess an article. Of the fifty, thirty-eight (76%) agreed or
strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and
twenty-three (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete.
Eighteen people compared the article they reviewed to the article
on the same topic in the
Encyclopedia Britannica.
Opinions on accuracy were almost equal between the two
encyclopedias (6 favoring Britannica, 7 favoring Wikipedia, 5
stating they were equal), and eleven (61%) found Wikipedia somewhat
or substantially more complete, compared to seven (39%) for
Britannica. The survey did not attempt random selection of the
participants, and it is not clear how the participants were
invited.
The German computing magazine
c't
performed a comparison of
Brockhaus Multimedial,
Microsoft Encarta, and the
German Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts
evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score,
Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points (B-).
A second test by c't
in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely
evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann
Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium
2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. It concluded:
"We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia
than in those of its commercial competitors."
Viewing Wikipedia as fitting the economists' definition of a
perfectly competitive marketplace of ideas, George Bragues
(
University of
Guelph-Humber), examined Wikipedia's articles on seven top
Western philosophers:
Aristotle,
Plato,
Immanuel Kant,
Rene Descartes,
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel,
Thomas Aquinas, and
John Locke. Wikipedia's articles were compared to
a consensus list of themes culled from 4 reference works in
philosophy. Bragues found that, on average, Wikipedia's articles
only covered 52% of consensus themes. No errors were found, though
there were significant omissions.
PC Pro magazine (August 2007) asked
experts to compare 4 articles (a small
sample) in their scientific fields between
Wikipedia, Britannica and Encarta. In each case Wikipedia was
described as "largely sound", "well handled", "performs well",
"good for the bare facts" and "broadly accurate." One article had
"a marked deterioration towards the end" while another had "clearer
and more elegant" writing, a third was assessed as less well
written but better detailed than its competitors, and a fourth was
"of more benefit to the serious student than its Encarta or
Britannica equivalents." No serious errors were noted in Wikipedia
articles, whereas serious errors were noted in one Encarta and one
Britannica article.
In October 2007, Australian magazine
PC Authority
published a feature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia. The
article compared Wikipedia's content to other popular online
encyclopedias, namely
Britannica and
Encarta. The magazine asked experts to
evaluate articles pertaining to their field. Wikipedia was
comparable to the other encyclopedias, topping the chemistry
category.
In December 2007, German magazine
Stern published the results of a comparison
between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the
15-volume edition of
Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. The test
was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based
WIND
GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each
encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science,
culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion)
on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity),
and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average
(1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for Brockhaus with lower =
better). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete
and up to date, however Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly
written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being
too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.
In its April 2008 issue British computing magazine
PC Plus compared the English Wikipedia with the DVD
editions of World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopædia Britannica,
assessing for each the coverage of a series of random subjects. It
concluded
The quality of content is good in all three
cases and advised Wikipedia users
Be aware that erroneous
edits do occur, and check anything that seems outlandish with a
second source. But the vast majority of Wikipedia is
filled with valuable and accurate information.
A peer-reviewed 2008 study examined 80 Wikipedia drug entries. The
research team from
Nova
Southeastern University found few factual errors in this set of
articles, but determined that these articles were often missing
important information, like
contraindications and
drug interactions. One of the researchers
noted that "If people went and used this as a sole or authoritative
source without contacting a health professional...those are the
types of negative impacts that can occur." The researchers also
compared Wikipedia to
Medscape
Drug Reference (MDR), by looking for answers to 80 different
questions covering eight categories of drug information, including
adverse drug events, dosages, and mechanism of action. They have
determined that MDR provided answers to 82.5 percent of the
questions, while Wikipedia could only answer 40 percent, and that
answers were less likely to be complete for Wikipedia as well. None
of the answers from Wikipedia were determined factually inaccurate,
while they found four inaccurate answers in MDR. But the
researchers found 48 errors of omission in the Wikipedia entries,
compared to 14 for MDR. The lead investigator concluded: "I think
that these errors of omission can be just as dangerous [as
inaccuracies]", and he pointed out that drug company
representatives have been caught deleting information from
Wikipedia entries that make their drugs look unsafe.
Expert opinion
Librarian views
In a 2004 interview with
The
Guardian, self-described information specialist and
Internet consultant Philip Bradley said that he would not use
Wikipedia and was "not aware of a single librarian who would. The
main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications,
the publishers have to ensure that their data are reliable, as
their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all
that goes out the window."
A 2006 review of Wikipedia by
Library
Journal, using a panel of librarians, "the toughest critics of
reference materials, whatever their format", asked "long standing
reviewers" to evaluate three areas of Wikipedia (popular culture,
current affairs, and science), and concluded:
"While there are
still reasons to proceed with caution when using a resource that
takes pride in limited professional management, many encouraging
signs suggest that (at least for now) Wikipedia may be granted the
librarian’s seal of approval". A reviewer who "decided to
explore controversial historical and current events, hoping to find
glaring abuses" concluded "I was pleased by Wikipedia’s objective
presentation of controversial subjects" but that "as with much
information floating around in cyberspace, a healthy degree of
skepticism and skill at winnowing fact from opinion are required."
Other reviewers noted that there is "much variation" but "good
content abounds."
The
library at Trent
University
in Ontario
states of
Wikipedia that many articles are "long and comprehensive", but that
there is "a lot of room for misinformation and bias [and] a lot of
variability in both the quality and depth of articles." It
adds that Wikipedia has advantages and limitations, that it has
"excellent coverage of technical topics" and articles are "often
added quickly and, as a result, coverage of current events is quite
good", comparing this to traditional sources which are unable to
achieve this task. It concludes that depending upon the need, one
should think critically and assess the appropriateness of one's
sources, "whether you are looking for fact or opinion, how in-depth
you want to be as you explore a topic, the importance of
reliability and accuracy, and the importance of timely or recent
information", and adds that Wikipedia can be used in any event as a
"starting point."
An article for the
Canadian
Library Association (CLA) discusses the Wikipedia approach,
process and outcome in depth, commenting for example that in
controversial topics, "what is most remarkable is that the two
sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the
article that both can more or less live with." The author comments
that:
- "In fact Wikipedia has more institutional structure than at
first appears. Some 800 experienced users are designated as
administrators [Update: As of 2009 some 1600 on English Wikipedia
alone], with special powers of binding and loosing: they can
protect and unprotect, delete and undelete and revert articles, and
block and unblock users. They are expected to use their powers in a
neutral way, forming and implementing the consensus of the
community. The effect of their intervention shows in the discussion
pages of most contentious articles. Wikipedia has survived this
long because it is easier to reverse vandalism than it is to commit
it..."
Information Today (March 2006) cites librarian Nancy
O’Neill (principal librarian for Reference Services at the Santa
Monica Public Library System) as saying that "there is a good deal
of skepticism about Wikipedia in the library community" but that
"she also admits cheerfully that Wikipedia makes a good starting
place for a search. You get terminology, names, and a feel for the
subject."
PC
Pro (August 2007) cites the head of the European and American
Collection at the British
Library
, Stephen Bury, as stating "Wikipedia is potentially
a good thing - it provides a speedier response to new events, and
to new evidence on old items." The article concludes: "For
[Bury], the problem isn't so much the reliability of Wikipedia's
content so much as the way in which it's used. "It's already become
the first port of call for the researcher", Bury says, before
noting that this is "not necessarily problematic except when they
go no further." According to Bury, the trick to using Wikipedia is
to understand that "just because it's in an encyclopedia (free, web
or printed) doesn't mean it's true. Ask for evidence .. and
contribute."
Academia
Academic circles have not been exclusively dismissive of Wikipedia
as a reference. Wikipedia articles have been referenced in
"enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in
Science. The
first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was
a 2002 paper called "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light", and
many enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then.
However, these links are offered as background sources for the
reader, not as sources used by the writer, and the "enhanced
perspectives" are not intended to serve as reference material
themselves.
An
empirical study conducted in 2006 by a Nottingham
University
Business School lecturer in Information Systems,
the subject of a review on the technical website Ars Technica, involving 55 academics asked
to review specific Wikipedia articles that either were in their
expert field (group 1) or chosen at random (group 2), concluded
that "The experts found Wikipedia’s articles to be more credible
than the non–experts. This suggests that the accuracy of
Wikipedia is high. However, the results should not be seen as
support for Wikipedia as a totally reliable resource as, according
to the experts, 13 percent of the articles contain mistakes [10% of
experts reporting factual errors of unspecified degree, 3%
reporting spelling errors]."
The Gould
Library at Carleton
College
in Minnesota
has a web-page describing the use of Wikipedia in
academia. It asserts that "Wikipedia is without question a
valuable and informative resource", but that "there is an inherent
lack of reliability and stability" to its articles, again drawing
attention to similar advantages and limitations as other sources.
As with other reviews it comments that one should assess one's
sources and what is desired from them, and that "Wikipedia may be
an appropriate resource for some assignments, but not for others."
It cited Jimmy Wales' view that Wikipedia may not be ideal as a
source for all academic uses, and (as with other sources) suggests
that at the least, one strength of Wikipedia is that it provides a
good starting point for current information on a very wide range of
topics.
In 2007,
the Chronicle of
Higher Education published an article written by Cathy Davidson, Professor of
Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Duke University
, in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used
to teach students about the concepts of reliability and
credibility.
A 2009 survey asked U.S. toxicologists how accurately they rated
the portrayal of health risks of chemicals in different media
sources.
Conducted by the Statistical Assessment
Service and the Center for Health and Risk Communication at
George Mason
University
, based on the answers of 937 members of the
Society of Toxicology to a
questionnaire prepared by survey firm Harris International it found that
these experts regarded Wikipedia's reliability in this area as far
higher than that of all traditional news media:
- In perhaps the most surprising finding in the entire study,
all these national media outlets [U.S. newspapers, news magazines,
health magazines, broadcast and cable television networks] are
easily eclipsed by two representatives of "new media": WebMD and Wikipedia. WebMD is the only news
source whose coverage of chemical risk is regarded as accurate by a
majority (56 percent) of toxicologists, closely followed by
Wikipedia's 45 percent accuracy rating. By contrast, only
15 percent describe as accurate the portrayals of chemical risk
found in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street
Journal.
The academic world's view of Wikipedia has improved during the last
few years, as can be inferred from the increase in the number of
citations in international scientific journals. , a search in the
ScienceDirect database (a
large online collection of published scientific research produced
by
Elsevier) for academic and scientific
articles citing Wikipedia yields the following result:
| Year article published |
No. of articles citing Wikipedia |
|
| before 2003 |
0 |
|
| 2003 |
1 |
|
| 2004 |
9 |
|
| 2005 |
28 |
|
| 2006 |
129 |
|
| 2007 |
358 |
|
| 2008 (as of August 11) |
490 |
Editors of other encyclopedias
In a 2004 piece called "The Faith-Based Encyclopedia," former
Encyclopedia
Britannica editor
Robert
McHenry criticized the wiki approach, writing:
- "[H]owever closely a Wikipedia article may at some point in its
life attain to reliability, it is forever open to the uninformed or
semiliterate meddler… The user who visits Wikipedia to learn about
some subject, to confirm some matter of fact, is rather in the
position of a visitor to a public restroom. It may be obviously
dirty, so that he knows to exercise great care, or it may seem
fairly clean, so that he may be lulled into a false sense of
security. What he certainly does not know is who has used the
facilities before him."
Similarly,
Britannica's executive editor,
Ted Pappas, was quoted in
The Guardian as saying: "The premise of
Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection.
That premise is completely unproven."
Other
Information Today (March 2006) comments on Wikipedia and
Britannica that it is comparing "Apples and Oranges" and that:
- "Even the revered Encyclopaedia Britannica is riddled
with errors, not to mention the subtle yet pervasive biases of
individual subjectivity and corporate correctness... There is no
one perfect way. Britannica seems to claim that there is. Wikipedia
acknowledges there’s no such thing. Librarians and information
professionals have always known this. That’s why we always consult
multiple sources and counsel our users to do the same."
BBC technology
specialist
Bill
Thompson wrote that "Most Wikipedia entries are written and
submitted in good faith, and we should not let the contentious
areas such as politics, religion or biography shape our view of the
project as a whole", that it forms a good starting point for
serious research but that:
- "No information source is guaranteed to be accurate, and we
should not place complete faith in something which can so easily be
undermined through malice or ignorance... That does not devalue the
project entirely, it just means that we should be skeptical about
Wikipedia entries as a primary source of information... It is the
same with search engine results. Just because something comes up in
the top 10 on MSN Search or Google does not automatically give it credibility or
vouch for its accuracy or importance."
He adds the observation that since most popular online sources are
inherently unreliable in this way, one byproduct of the
information age is a wiser audience who are
learning to check information rather than take it on faith due to
its source, leading to "a better sense of how to evaluate
information sources."
A study conducted in early 2007 by the
Pew Research Center found that 8% of all
online Americans consult Wikipedia on a typical day. The study also
found that 36% of all US internet users use Wikipedia, with this
fraction increasing with education level. About 22% of those with a
high school-level education use Wikipedia, 36% of those with some
college use Wikipedia, and 50% of those with a college degree use
Wikipedia.
The Supreme Court of India in its recent judgment in Commr. of
Customs, Bangalore vs. ACER India Pvt. (Citation 2007(12)SCALE581)
has held that "We have referred to Wikipedia, as the learned
Counsel for the parties relied thereupon. It is an online
encyclopaedia and information can be entered therein by any person
and as such it may not be authentic."
In his 2007
Guide to Military History on the Internet,
Simon Fowler rated Wikipedia
as "the best general resource" for military history research, and
stated that "the results are largely accurate and generally free of
bias." When rating WP as the No. 1 military site he mentioned that
"Wikipedia is often criticised for its inaccuracy and bias, but in
my experience the military history articles are spot on."
In July 2008,
The Economist magazine
described Wikipedia as "
a user-generated reference
service" and noted that Wikipedia's "
elaborate moderation
rules put a limit to acrimony" generated by
cyber-nationalism.
Another
incident where false information was posted in an article occurred
when an University
College Dublin
sociology student, Shane Fitzgerald, added an
incorrect quote to the article on the recently deceased composer
Maurice Jarre. Fitzgerald
claims that his intention was to conduct an experiment regarding
the range of sources journalists used in writing their articles.
Although Fitzgerald's edits were twice removed from the Wikipedia
article for lack of sourcing, on the third addition they were
copied into obituary columns in newspapers worldwide. In an
interview with the Irish Times, Fitzgerald wrote that journalists
are lazy, and believes that if he hadn't come forward his quote
would have remained in history as actual fact.
Information loop
Criticism and concerns are expressed about possible occurring
circular reference forthcoming
from information on Wikipedia. Imaginable situation: A Wikipedia
article contains information A. Wikipedia is no. 7 of the most
viewed sites on the Internet and often the first information
source, also for journalists. Journalists are known to write their
own sentences and can in some case rewrite the content of Wikipedia
in his own article B. Then a critical reader adds a ' ' right after
information A. Another editor incorporates the article B written by
the journalist as a source. An example of Wikipedia's circular
reference has happened to
Sascha
Baron Cohen:
edit 'A' followed by an article published in
the Independent written by a
journalist and
information of the Independent article put back in
the Wikipedia article.
Removal of false information
Viégas, Wattenberg, and Dave (2004) studied the flow of editing in
the Wikipedia model, with emphasis on breaks in flow (from
vandalism or substantial rewrites), showing the dynamic flow of
material over time. They found that most acts of vandalism during
May 2003 were repaired within minutes. However, it is unclear
whether or not this finding applies to all forms of vandalism,
including so-called 'sneaky' vandalism (which resembles genuine
editing and is by nature harder to detect). Lih (2004) compared
articles before and after they were mentioned in the press, and
found that externally referenced articles are of higher quality
work. A 2002 study by
IBM found that most
vandalism on the English Wikipedia was reverted within five
minutes, though some persisted for much longer:
- "We've examined many pages on Wikipedia that treat
controversial topics, and have discovered that most have, in fact,
been vandalized at some point in their history. But we've also
found that vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly--so
quickly that most users will never see its effects."
A further informal assessment by the popular IT magazine "PC Pro"
for its 2007 article
Wikipedia Uncovered tested Wikipedia
by a similar device to those described above, by introducing 10
errors that "varied between bleeding obvious and deftly subtle"
into articles (the researchers later corrected the articles they
had edited). Labeling the results "impressive" it noted that all
but one was noted and fixed within the hour, and that "the
Wikipedians' tools and know-how were just too much for our team." A
second series of another 10 tests, using "far more subtle errors"
and additional techniques to conceal their nature, met similar
results: "despite our stealth attempts the vast majority... were
discovered remarkably quickly... the ridiculously minor Jesse James
error was corrected within a minute and a very slight change to
Queen Ann's entry was put right within two minutes." Two of the
latter series were not detected. The article concluded that
"Wikipedia corrects the vast majority of errors within minutes, but
if they're not spotted within the first day the chances... dwindle
as you're then relying on someone to spot the errors while reading
the article rather than reviewing the edits."
A study in late-2007 systematically inserted inaccuracies into
Wikipedia entries about the lives of philosophers. Depending on how
exactly the data is interpreted, either one third or one half of
the inaccuracies were corrected within 48 hours.
Susceptibility to editorial bias
WikiScanner
In August 2007, a tool called
WikiScanner developed by
Virgil Griffith, a visiting researcher from
the
Santa Fe Institute in New
Mexico, was released to match anonymous IP edits in the
encyclopedia with an extensive database of addresses. News stories
appeared about IP addresses from various organizations such as the
Central Intelligence
Agency, the
Democratic
Congressional Campaign Committee,
Diebold,
Inc. and the
Australian
government being used to make edits to Wikipedia articles,
sometimes of an opinionated or questionable nature. The
BBC quoted a Wikimedia spokesperson as praising the
tool: "We really value transparency and the scanner really takes
this to another level. Wikipedia Scanner may prevent an
organisation or individuals from editing articles that they're
really not supposed to."
The WikiScanner story was also covered by
The Independent, which stated that many
"censorial interventions" by editors with vested interests on a
variety of articles in Wikipedia had been discovered:
Reliability as a source in other contexts
Although Wikipedia is stated not to be a primary source, it has
been used as evidence in legal cases. In one notable case, the
trademark of
Formula One racing
decision, the
UK
Intellectual Property Office considered both the reliability of
Wikipedia, and its usefulness as a reliable source of evidence:
- "Wikipedia has sometimes suffered from the self-editing that is
intrinsic to it, giving rise at times to potentially libellous statements. However, inherently, I cannot
see that what is in Wikipedia is any less likely to be true than
what is published in a book or on the websites of news
organisations. [Formula One's lawyer] did not express any concerns
about the Wikipedia evidence [presented by the plaintiff]. I
consider that the evidence from Wikipedia can be taken at face
value."
The case turned substantively upon evidence cited from Wikipedia in
2006 as to the usage and interpretation of the term "
Formula One."
An earlier case (Allegheny Defense Project appeal, 2005) heard by
the
Third Circuit (USA) also saw
Wikipedia
referenced, in which Wikipedia was used as a
source for the term "
Understory."
Wikipedia
has also developed into a key source for some current new events
such as the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake
and related tsunami, and the
2007 Virginia
Tech massacre
. In the latter case, it cites the
New York Times, noting with
750,000 page views of the article in the two days after the event:
- "Even
The Roanoke Times, which
is published near Blacksburg, Va.
, where the university is located, noted on Thursday
that Wikipedia 'has emerged as the clearinghouse for detailed
information on the event'."
The
Washington Post
commented similarly, in the context of
2008 Presidential election
candidate biographies, that despite occasional brief vandalism,
"it's hard to find a more up-to-date, detailed, thorough article on
Obama than Wikipedia's. As of Friday,
Obama's article -- more than 22 pages long, with 15 sections
covering his personal and professional life -- had a reference list
of 167 sources."
Coverage
Wikipedia has been accused of deficiencies in comprehensiveness
because of its voluntary nature, and of reflecting the systemic
biases of its contributors.
Encyclopædia Britannica
editor-in-chief Dale Hoiberg has argued that "people write of
things they're interested in, and so many subjects don't get
covered; and news events get covered in great detail.
The entry on Hurricane Frances was five times the
length of that on Chinese art, and the
entry on Coronation Street
was twice as long as the article on Tony Blair." Former Nupedia
editor-in-chief
Larry Sanger stated in
2004, "when it comes to relatively specialized topics (outside of
the interests of most of the contributors), the project's
credibility is very uneven."
Wikipedia has been praised for making it possible for articles to
be updated or created in response to current events.
For example, the
then-new article on the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake on its English edition was cited often by the press
shortly after the incident. Its editors have also argued
that, as a website, Wikipedia is able to include articles on a
greater number of subjects than print encyclopedias may.
Broad assessments
Several commentators have drawn a middle ground, asserting that the
project contains much valuable knowledge and has some reliability,
even if the degree is not yet assessed with certainty. Many of the
librarian and academic reviewers of Wikipedia cited above take such
a view.
Others taking this view include
Danah
Boyd, who in 2005 discussed Wikipedia as an academic source,
concluding that "[i]t will never be an encyclopedia, but it will
contain extensive knowledge that is quite valuable for different
purposes", and
Bill
Thompson who stated "I use the Wikipedia a lot. It is a good
starting point for serious research, but I would never accept
something that I read there without checking."
Information Today's March 2006 article concludes on a similar
theme:
- "The inconvenient reality is that people and their products are
messy, whether produced in a top-down or bottom-up manner. Almost
every source includes errors... Many non-fiction books are produced
via an appallingly sloppy process... In this author’s opinion, the
flap over Wikipedia was significantly overblown, but contained a
silver lining: People are becoming more aware of the perils of
accepting information at face value. They have learned not to
consult just one source."
Dan Gillmor, a Silicon Valley
commentator and author commented in October 2004
that, "I don't think anyone is saying Wikipedia is an absolute
replacement for a traditional encyclopedia. But in the
topics I know something about, I've found Wikipedia to be as
accurate as any other source I've found."
Referencing
Linus's law of open-source
development, Larry Sanger who is a co-founder of Wikipedia, stated
on
Kuro5hin in 2001 that "Given enough
eyeballs, all errors are shallow."
Seemingly, and "in theory", an unsupervised mass collective effort
should not work well. But in practice it does, in part because of
the social and psychological structures that motivate participants
on both content and maintenance tasks.
Sheizaf Rafaeli and Yaron Ariel report how
"most people agree that at least the English version of Wikipedia
is approaching critical masswhere substantial content disasters
should become rare."
Likewise, technology figure
Joi Ito wrote on
Wikipedia's authority, "[a]lthough it depends a bit on the field,
the question is whether something is more likely to be true coming
from a source whose resume sounds authoritative, or a source that
has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people (with the
ability to comment) and has survived."
Loc Vu-Quoc, professor for Mechanical and
Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida
, has stated that "sometimes errors may go for years
without being corrected as experts don't usually read Wikipedia
articles in their own field to correct these errors".
Gregg Jaeger, an assistant professor at
Boston
University
, has characterized Wikipedia as a medium that
fosters "anarchy and distortions", in a letter to the editor of
Physics Today responding to a review
of his book "Quantum Information: An Overview" that had questioned
"whether there is an audience for such encyclopedic texts,
especially given the easy access to online sources of information
such as the arXiv e-print server and
Wikipedia.".
Notable incidents
False biographical information
Inaccurate information may persist in Wikipedia for a long time
before it is challenged. The most prominent cases reported by
mainstream media involved biographies of living persons.
The
Seigenthaler incident
demonstrated that the subject of a biographical article must
sometimes fix blatant lies about his own life. In May 2005, a user
edited the
biographical article on
John Seigenthaler Sr. so that
it contained several false and
defamatory
statements. The inaccurate claims went unnoticed between May and
September 2005 when they were discovered by
Victor S. Johnson, Jr., a friend of
Seigenthaler. Wikipedia content is often mirrored at sites such as
Answers.com, which means that incorrect
information can be replicated alongside correct information through
a number of web sources. Such information can develop a misleading
air of authority because of its presence at such sites:
Seth Finkelstein reported in an article in
The Guardian on his efforts to remove his
own biography page from Wikipedia, simply because it was subjected
to
defamation:
In the same article Finkelstein recounts how he voted his own
biography as "not
notable
enough" in order to have it removed from Wikipedia. He goes on to
recount a similar story involving
Angela
Beesley, previously a prominent member of the foundation which
runs Wikipedia.
In
another example, on March 2, 2007, msnbc.com reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton had been
incorrectly listed for 20 months in her Wikipedia biography as
valedictorian of her class of 1969 at
Wellesley
College
. (Hillary Rodham was not the valedictorian,
though she did speak at
commencement.)
The article included a link to the Wikipedia edit, where the
incorrect information was added on July 9, 2005. After the
msnbc.com report, the inaccurate information was removed the same
day. Between the two edits, the wrong information had stayed in the
Clinton article while it was edited more than 4,800 times over 20
months.
Attempts to perpetrate
hoaxes may not be
confined to editing Wikipedia articles.
In October 2005
Alan Mcilwraith, a former call centre worker from Scotland
created a Wikipedia article in which he claimed to
be a highly decorated war hero. The article was quickly
identified by other users as unreliable (see ). However, Mcilwraith
had also succeeded in convincing a number of charities and media
organizations that he was who he claimed to be:
There have also been instances of users deliberately inserting
false information into Wikipedia in order to test the system and
demonstrate its alleged unreliability. Television personality
Stephen Colbert lampooned this
drawback of Wikipedia, calling it
wikiality.
Wikipedia considers Vandalism the insertion of false and misleading
information in bad faith. The Wikipedia page Researching with
Wikipedia states:
Other false information
In June 2007, an anonymous Wikipedia contributor became involved in
the
Chris Benoit
double murder and suicide because of an unverified piece of
information he added to the
Chris
Benoit English Wikipedia
article. This information regarding Benoit's wife's death was added
fourteen hours before police discovered the bodies of Benoit and
his family. Police detectives seized computer equipment from the
man held responsible for the postings, but believed he was
uninvolved and did not press charges.
The
IP address from which the edit was
made was traced to earlier instances of Wikipedia vandalism. The
contributor apologised on
wikinews saying
"I will never vandalize anything on wikipedia or post
wrongful information.", and added "I will never post anything here
again unless it is pure fact ...".
On 29 August 2008, shortly after the UEFA cup first round draw was
completed, an edit was made to
AC Omonia's
article, apparently by users of
B3ta, which
added the following erroneous information to the section titled
"The fans".
"A small but loyal group of fans are lovingly called
"The Zany Ones" - they like to wear hats made from discarded shoes
and have a song about a little potato."
On 18 September 2008, David Anderson, a British journalist writing
for the
Daily Mirror, quoted this in
his match preview ahead of Omonia's game with
Manchester City, which appeared in the
web and print versions of the Mirror and the nickname was quoted in
subsequent editions on 19 September.
Content disputes and conflicts of interest
Political interests and advocacy
While Wikipedia policy requires articles to have a neutral point of
view, it is not immune from attempts by outsiders (or insiders)
with an agenda to place a
spin on articles. In January 2006 it
was revealed that several staffers of members of the
U.S. House of Representatives had
embarked on a campaign to cleanse their respective bosses'
biographies on Wikipedia, as well as inserting negative remarks on
political opponents. References to a campaign promise by
Martin Meehan to surrender his seat in 2000
were deleted, and negative comments were inserted into the articles
on U.S.
Senator Bill Frist
and Eric Cantor, a congressman from
Virginia
. Numerous other changes were made from an
IP address which is assigned to the House
of Representatives. In an interview,
Jimmy
Wales remarked that the changes were "not cool."
In April 2008, the Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle
East Reporting in America (
CAMERA)
organized a campaign to correct perceived Israel-related biases and
inconsistencies in Wikipedia.
On August 31 2008,
The New York Times ran an article
detailing the edits made to the biography of
Sarah Palin in the wake of her nomination as
running mate of
John McCain. The editor
responsible for adding many flattering details was identified as
single-purpose account of a McCain campaign volunteer.
Editing for financial rewards
In January 2007 Rick Jelliffe claimed in a story carried by
CBS and
IDG News Service that
Microsoft had offered him compensation in
exchange for his future editorial services on
OOXML. A Microsoft spokesperson, quoted by CBS,
commented that "Microsoft and the writer, Rick Jelliffe, had not
determined a price and no money had changed hands - but they had
agreed that the company would not be allowed to review his writing
before submission". Also quoted by CBS,
Jimmy Wales expressed his disapproval of
Microsoft's involvement: "We were very disappointed to hear that
Microsoft was taking that approach".
In story covered by the
BBC, former
Novell chief scientist
Jeffrey Merkey claimed that in exchange for a
donation his Wikipedia entry was edited in his favor. Jay Walsh, a
spokesman for Wikipedia, flatly denied the allegations in an
interview given to the
Daily
Telegraph.
In a
story covered by InformationWeek, Eric Goldman, assistant law
professor at Santa Clara University
in California
argued that "eventually, marketers will build
scripts to edit Wikipedia pages to insert links and conduct
automated attacks on Wikipedia", thus putting the encyclopedia
beyond the ability of its editors to provide countermeasures against the attackers,
particularly because of a vicious circle where the
strain of responding to these attacks drives core contributors
away, increasing the strain on those who remain.
Conflicts involving policy makers
In February 2008, British technology news and opinion website
The Register published an
article called "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'", in
which it was pointed out that despite the fact that a prominent
administrator of Wikipedia, Jossi Fresco, declared a conflict of
interest related to
Prem Rawat, the
article alleged that not only did Fresco edit the article of Prem
Rawat to keep criticism to bare minimum, he altered the Wikipedia
policies over personal biography and policies regarding "conflict
of interest", to favour his alleged "biased" editing. The article
pointed out that Fresco was also involved in Wikipedia's "Conflict
of Interest Noticeboard", the situation which the Register article
described as "a conflict of conflict of interest". The article
ended with the claim:
Some of the most scathing criticism of Wikipedia's claimed
neutrality came in
The Register, which in turn was
allegedly criticized by founding members of the project. According
to
The Register:
See also
- Resources
- Articles
References
- history flow: results IBM Collaborative User
Experience Research Group, 2003
- Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave: Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors
with history flow Visualizations. Proceedings of the
SIGCHI
conference on Human factors in computing systems, 575-582,
Vienna 2004, ISBN 1-58113-702-8
- The study (that was not in itself peer reviewed) was cited in
several news articles such as this:
- Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on
encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature Encyclopædia
Britannica, Inc., March 2006
- Illich, Ivan
D., Deschooling society (Penguin, Harmondsworth, UK, 1976)
- See
- See
- Michael Kurzidim: Wissenswettstreit. Die kostenlose Wikipedia
tritt gegen die Marktführer Encarta und Brockhaus an, in:
c't 21/2004, October 4, 2004, S.
132-139.
- Dorothee Wiegand: "Entdeckungsreise. Digitale Enzyklopädien
erklären die Welt." c't 6/2007, March 5, 2007, p. 136-145. Original
quote: "Wir haben in den Texten der freien Enzyklopädie nicht mehr
Fehler gefunden als in denen der kommerziellen Konkurrenz"
- Bragues, George, "Wiki-Philosophizing in a Marketplace of
Ideas: Evaluating Wikipedia's Entries on Seven Great Minds" (April
2007). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=978177
- PC Pro magazine, August 2007, p. 136, "Wikipedia
Uncovered"
- Wikipedia: Wissen für alle. Stern 50/2007, December 6,
2007, pp. 30-44
- Wikipedia schlägt Brockhaus Stern online,
December 5, 2007 (summary of the test) Google translation
- K.C. Jones: German Wikipedia Outranks Traditional
Encyclopedia's Online Version. InformationWeek,
December 7, 2007
- Simon Williams: Wikipedia vs Encyclopaedia: A question of trust?
Are online resources reliable or should we stick to traditional
encyclopaedias? Techradar.com, April 21st, 2008
- accessed 25 Sept 09
- Self description taken from blog biography,
- Trent University Library : About Wikipedia
- (subscription access only)
- Study cited in
- The study explains that "In the survey, all respondents under
Condition 1 were asked if there were any mistakes in the article
they had been asked to read. Only five reported seeing mistakes and
one of those five reported spelling mistakes rather than factual
errors. This suggests that 13 percent of Wikipedia’s articles have
errors." Thus 80% of the 13% related to factual errors and 20% of
the 13% related to spelling errors.
- “We Can’t Ignore the Influence of Digital Technologies,”
Chronicle of Higher Education, March 23, 2007,
http://chronicle.com/subscribe/login?url=/weekly/v53/i29/29b02001.htm
- S. Robert Lichter, Ph.D,,: Are chemicals killing us? Statistical
Assessment Service, May 21, 2009
- (login required)
- B. Sinham Appeal (civil) 2321 of 2007, Supreme
Court of India.
- Fowler, Simon Guide to Military
History on the Internet, UK:Pen & Sword, ISBN
9781844156061, p. 7
- Fowler, Simon Guide to Military
History on the Internet, UK:Pen & Sword, ISBN
9781844156061, p. 201
- Cyber-nationalism | The brave new world of e-hatred
| Economist.com
- " Irish student hoaxes world's media with fake
quote"
- Shane Fitzgerald, " Lazy journalism exposed by online hoax",
The
Irish Times 7 May 2009.
- " Unreliably informed", The Irish Times,
8 May 2009
- John Timmer, " Wikipedia hoax points to limits of journalists'
research"
-
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0507/1224246059241.html
-
http://www.jonathancrossfield.com/blog/2008/09/wikipedia-and-misinformation.html
- http://www.seomoz.org/blog/a-reputation-20-problem
- http://www.hypercustom.com/informationloop.pdf
-
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/26/britannica_slaps_google/
-
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/news/baron-cohen-comes-out-of-character-to-defend-borat-424656.html
- Magnus, P.D. Early response to false claims in Wikipedia.
First Monday, 13 (9): 1 September 2008
- - cyberjournalist.net cites this article for the above
quote.
- "", Wikipedia, 22:53 April 13, 2005.
- Vu-Quoc, L., Configuration integral, VQWiki, 2008.
- Jaeger, G., Bits on Quantum Information, Letter to the
Editor, Physics Today, Jul 2008, p.10.
- Seth Finkelstein (Sep. 28, 2006) "I'm on Wikipedia, get me out of here" The
Guardian. Inside IT.
- Mirror duped by Wikipedia 'fact' (Web
User, 19 Sep 2008)
- [1]
- [2]
- Metz, Cade, " US Department of Justice banned from Wikipedia,
The Register,
April 29, 2008.
- Noam Cohen (August 31, 2008) "Don’t Like Palin’s Wikipedia Story? Change It"
Technology. The New York Times.
- Brian Bergstein (Jan. 24, 2007) Microsoft Violates Wikipedia's Sacred Rule The
Associated Press. Retrieved on 2008-09-03.
- Nancy Gohring (Jan 23, 2007) "Microsoft said to offer payment for Wikipedia
edits" IDG News Service. Retrieved on 2008-09-03.
- Nancy Gohring (Jan 24, 2007) "Microsoft's step into Wikipedia prompts
debate" IDG News Service.
- March 12, 2008 Wiki boss 'edited for donation' Technology. BBC
News.
- Metz, Cade, "Wikipedia ruled by 'Lord of the Universe'",
The Register, February 6, 2008.
- Cade Metz (March 6, 2008). " Why you should care that Jimmy Wales ignores
reality". The Register. Retrieved on 2008-09-03.
External links
- Wikipedia project pages
- (list of cited uses)
- (list of cited uses)
- (list of studies)
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