Jump to content

Wikipedia and Britannica about as accurate in science entries, reports Nature

From Wikinews, the free news source you can write!

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

This article mentions the Wikimedia Foundation, one of its projects, or people related to it. Wikinews is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Wikipedia logo

An investigation performed by the scientific review, Nature, on Wikipedia and Britannica science entries, found that the two encyclopedias have similar degrees of accuracy in their content.

Nature used peer reviewing to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science. In this study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopedias without being told which article came from which encyclopaedia. The reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told where the information came from.

Among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not significant: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three. In the pairs of articles reviewed, eight serious errors such as misinterpretations of important concepts were detected, four from each encyclopaedia. Reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 in Wikipedia and 123 in Britannica. Additionally, it was found that Wikipedia articles are 2.6 times as long as Britannica articles, meaning that there is a lower error/ommision per word ratio in Wikipedia.

The main criticism about Wikipedia was on its readability, with several reviewers commenting that the articles they read were poorly structured and confusing.

As well as comparing the two encyclopedias, Nature surveyed more than 1,000 Nature authors and found that although more than 70% had heard of Wikipedia and 17% of those consulted it on a weekly basis, less than 10% help to update it.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales welcomed the study. "We're hoping it will focus people's attention on the overall level of our work, which is pretty good," he told BBC News.

Source

See also

Share this:  E-mail this story Share on Facebook Share on reddit.com Share on LinkedIn.com Share on twitter.com



This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.

Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_and_Britannica_about_as_accurate_in_science_entries,_reports_Nature&oldid=4497934"