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Is it time to take Wikipedia seriously?

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Wikipedia may be humanitys best effort at collecting all our knowledge in one place. It has more than 6.5 million articles and is now 90 times larger than the full 120-volume Britannica.

Scientists have actually done a lot of work looking at how accurate Wikipedia is across all sorts of topics. Wikipedia is acknowledged as the best source of information online for knee arthroscopes, for example. Its cancer information is as accurate and in-depth as a database maintained by experts. Its nephrology information is comprehensive and fairly reliable. Its drug information is accurate and comprehensive, even when compared to textbooks. Its political coverage is accurate. Its a highly complete and accurate resource on musculoskeletal anatomy.

A review of 42 science articles by subject experts for Nature found Wikipedia was as accurate as Britannica. A study by Oxford University of 22 English-language articles, funded by the Wikimedia Foundation, concluded it was more accurate than Britannica.

But these are just samples; Wikipedia is uneven. Its not so good with history. Its articles on drugs miss key points. Its coverage of historic elections suffers from errors of omission.

Not all Wikipedia articles are equal, says ONeil, who is organising an academic conference on Wikipedia at the University of Canberra on Friday. When youre talking about topics of massive interest, like the Queens death, it attracts thousands of contributors. So theres a lot more scrutiny of any claim by the crowd.

But on a more obscure topic where theres less interest, less people will be involved in editing it, and so theres more scope for incorrect information to survive.

Still, a review of 110 studies published in 2014 concluded Wikipedia is generally a reliable source of information across almost all domains studied.

A lot of the studies of Wikipedias accuracy compare it to a reference source a textbook or peer-reviewed study. But is this fair? All sources of knowledge carry some level of error, be that encyclopaedia, news article or peer-reviewed study. Britannica carries errors. And scientists are increasingly discovering that peer review provides little protection against error or even outright fraud.

Wikipedia could be edited by anyone.,Credit:Eddie Jim

Theres no reason to expect Wikipedia to be accurate. As my high school teacher liked to remind me, it can be edited by anyone! It could easily look like the back page of a high school notebook covered in graffiti, anatomy drawings and expletives. It should be prone to indulging conspiracy theories. It should be awful.

And yet it isnt. Somehow a group of anonymous amateurs has created something that is more than the sum of its parts.

How? By evolving an encyclopaedia from something created by someone to something created by a process. Medicine has evolved from the ideas of a great man to knowledge created by experiment. In the same way the encyclopedia has evolved into Wikipedia.

Because Wikipedia has so many users, any new information at least on popular articles is scrutinised by a huge number of readers and editors, checking that it holds up to the sites published principles. Every edit is logged and subject to scrutiny.

Professor Amy Bruckman, author of Should You Believe Wikipedia? argues it is actually the most reliable form of information ever created.

Think about it a peer-reviewed journal article is reviewed by three experts (who may or may not actually check every detail), and then is set in stone. The contents of a popular Wikipedia page might be reviewed by thousands of people, she told PCMag.

Editorial controversies on Wikipedia are endlessly debated and these conflicts make the article better in a process Queensland University of Technologys Dr Kim Osman calls generative friction.

Consider the 2000-word discussion among editors over the question of the Queens personal popularity, canvassing multiple opinion polls to shape a single sentence in the article.

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The sheer number of reviewers is Wikipedias secret weapon; it is something other encyclopaedias simply cannot match.

On Wikipedia, everything is transparent. The whole process of producing knowledge collectively is there to be seen, and thats really important in an age of so much distrust of institutions, says ONeil. You have trust in the process.

Some scientists call it human computing, using computers to corral huge numbers of humans to create something that neither human nor computer alone could build.

Why do so many people continue to shun Wikipedia? I suspect in part because many gatekeepers of knowledge journalists, scientists, teachers, the Encyclopedia Britannica simply dont like the idea that anonymous amateurs are competing on their domain. And producing content that is just as fast and reliable. But it strikes me that turning our back on such an extraordinary resource is well, a little petty.

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Continued here:
Evidence suggests Wikipedia is accurate and reliable. When are we going to start taking it seriously? - Sydney Morning Herald