[MD] An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility

[Ron Kulp]

"No difference was found between the two groups in terms of their
perceived credibility of Wikipedia or of the articles' authors, but a
difference was found in the credibility of the articles - 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."

 

"The experts rated the articles as being more credible than the
non-experts. Therefore no support was found for H1a or H1c but support
was found for H1b. This difference in the articles' credibility needs to
be examined. 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."

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue11_11/chesney/

 

 

 

Nature recently investigated Wikipedia and compared it (in the article,
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
<http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html>  by Jim
Giles) to Encyclopaedia Britannica, and they discovered that

The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among
42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly
great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four
inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.

 

http://liblog.libraries.claremont.edu/archives/2005/12/15/wikipedia_a_cr
edible_source.html

 

The lesson might be that we should always verify information we find
both online and in print. And since online resources are often open to
questions of credibility, we should take additional steps to verify the
accuracy of the information.

So, check your sources, but in the mean time:
The Libraries of The Claremont Colleges provide access to:
Britannica Online
Encyclopedia Americana