Encyclopaedia Britannica & Wikipedia

I don't know how many of you keep up with the news regarding Wikipedia, but apparently there's been a debate over whether Encyclopaedia Britannica trumps them in the "online encyclopaedia" front.

The article appearing on Nature Online last December:

Quote:

However, an expert-led investigation carried out by Nature — the first to use peer review to compare Wikipedia and Britannica's coverage of science — suggests that such high-profile examples are the exception rather than the rule.

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.

Considering how Wikipedia articles are written, that result might seem surprising. A solar physicist could, for example, work on the entry on the Sun, but would have the same status as a contributor without an academic background. Disputes about content are usually resolved by discussion among users.

But Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopaedia's parent organization, the Wikimedia Foundation of St Petersburg, Florida, says the finding shows the potential of Wikipedia. "I'm pleased," he says. "Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better."

Of course, Britannica wouldn't hear of this. They got off their ass and wrote a 20 page response in nifty PDF format. (link)
Basically all it says is that the article by Nature was researched incorrectly, that the magazine sent the judges "misleading" and "innacurate" versions of their entries.

Then last Thursday, Nature responded to Britannica's salvo:

Quote:

Britannica complains that we did not check the errors that our reviewers identified, and that some of them are not errors at all. We disagree with their claims in some of the cases (others are too specialized for an immediate response), but there is a more important point to make. Our reviewers may have made some mistakes — we have been open about our methodology and never claimed otherwise — but the entries they reviewed were blinded: they did not know which entry came from Wikipedia and which from Britannica. We see no reason to believe that any misidentifications of errors would adversely affect one publication more than the other. And of the 123 purported errors in question, Britannica takes issue with fewer than half.

Nature also issued a formal 2-page response (in PDF) which can be read here.


I think it's pretty interesting if you ask me. Here you have a totally open-source database of information on one hand, being maintained by regular people who have nothing better to do beside learning how to edit a Wiki; and on the other hand you have a source of information that has been around for four centuries and maintained by paid scholors.

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I personally don't see any problem using Wikipedia since most of the content I trust. It's pretty good to keep up with all the strange internet happenings and findings that I'd normally not come across daily life. Also, I find that Wiki contains more articles that partain to both the formal and informal topics. I don't think I'd find an entry on Hikikomori or ALL YOUR BASE in the Encyclopedia Britannica, perhaps since one is a perculiar Japanese phenomenon, and the other is considered internet slang, which generally are not part . So in short, I'm an avid Wiki user.

I used to use EB quite a bit prior to the advent of the internet for junior high research assignments. This littie sample is NOT meant to be conclusive to anything, I'm just seeing what sort of results these searches will yield. Quouting "all your base" and "hikikomori" was used to determine which feature would yield more accurate results, not to say X was better than Y as a whole, for this would be quite a biased test. From what I've observed, Wiki is aimed at the general public who wants to get a basic understanding of the subject matter, while EB is geared towards actual research papers and scholarly projects.

Wiki's article on EB: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia_britannica

Encyclopedia Britannica's article on Wiki: http://www.britannica.com/search?query=wikipedia&ct=

LOL

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Btw, my friend was in Boston two weeks ago for participating in some kind UN simulation. She said one of the instructor told if Wikipedia is actually not a valid source for bibliography, since it's edited by a lot of persons, the informations could be considered inaccurate. But hey, that what open sources are for.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Encyclopedia Britannica written by a whole bunch of specialists as well, not just one person? I mean you've got the botanists who write up all the stuff that has to do with plants, and you've got engineers/architects who write up all the construction articles and the like. So perhaps the EB has the advantage of "specialized" personnel writing it up than the general public with Wiki. But then as I've stated before, EB and Wiki have two seperate target audiences.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Except you have to pay to use the full extent of Britannica. Instant fail.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by eriol

Btw, my friend was in Boston two weeks ago for participating in some kind UN simulation. She said one of the instructor told if Wikipedia is actually not a valid source for bibliography, since it's edited by a lot of persons, the informations could be considered inaccurate.

Firstly, that's sort of an obvious thing to mention. Secondly, it's not really a fact that bibliographical articles written by a limited number of people are inherently more accurate than those that can be freely edited. There are arguments for and against both sides.

Double Post:

Originally Posted by Stealth

Except you have to pay to use the full extent of Britannica. Instant fail.

Um, well if you're just curious about a subject, then yes. However for people that need to do more serious research, I imagine accuracy is more important than a few hundred dollars.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Yes, but then you have this free thing called a library.

FELIPE NO

It's a bit more convenient to have all that information available on a CD/online, wouldn't you say? I'm not really defending EB, I love Wikipedia as well; I don't think, however, that you can say something is shit just because you actually have to pay some money for using it.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by eriol

Btw, my friend was in Boston two weeks ago for participating in some kind UN simulation. She said one of the instructor told if Wikipedia is actually not a valid source for bibliography, since it's edited by a lot of persons, the informations could be considered inaccurate. But hey, that what open sources are for.

I don't really agree with that.

I regularly check Wikipedia first during my research just to get general consensus of the things I'm looking up. Then I typically follow the wiki's "references" list and use those as my citations. Most wiki's are pretty accurate, and I've found over the years while writing various essays on research papers. And yes, my papers can entail some pretty intensive research. The paper I wrote regarding 'The Economic Effect of the Bubonic Plague in Europe' being my personal favorite.

What I find most amusing is that instructors will ban Wikipedia citations, but allow students to cite any other website. At least Wikipedia has a community of editors and contributors. Citing a website maintained by Joe Schmo (who might not know what he's talking about) would be the greater 'inaccuracy risk' in my opinion.

How ya doing, buddy?

Like I'm saying again, if people really want to get proper information instead of a general impression, I don't think money would be an issue for higher end research. Again, target/niche markets.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

When I want obscure information I generally go to Wikipedia. I can think of very little topics that I looked for on Wikipedia. Now what gets me is when a certain topic doesn't have enough information or doesn't answer a question that I think it should. Then again, the same could occur while reading any encyclopedia, but a part of me feels that Wikipedia should be "smarter than that".

I attribute inaccuracies not only to people who don't know what they're talking about but also to sources that don't know what they're talking about. Not every source (even books) is totally accurate and can also be outdated.

If the people who contribute are like me, they only add things when they have truly relevant information to be added.

I guess the question in my head is if Wikipedia will forever have inaccuracies or if it will continually head toward a(n unattainable) state of perfection.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Aardark

It's a bit more convenient to have all that information available on a CD/online, wouldn't you say? I'm not really defending EB, I love Wikipedia as well; I don't think, however, that you can say something is shit just because you actually have to pay some money for using it.

No doubt it's convenient, but if someone is doing serious research, I don't think it's too much to actually go to the library.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Of course it is. I haven't been to the library to do a research paper in years.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I prefer Wikipedia since it doesn't take 20 years to change an article in it with all of the approval processes needed with "real" encyclopedias. The thing is, Wikipedia is probably just as accurate as any other encyclopedia due to their strict editing policies.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Honestly, I love Wikipedia. Since many instructors are wary of it, even though the only major problems I've found are on non-school related material, I usually take the information from there and then go to other sites to verify the information. Ninety-eight percent of the time Wiki's information is valid. All published works have some errors, whether it be a misplaced comma or the listing of the wrong year in a date. If I can find the same information with the same percentage of accuracy as a physical encyclopedia, I see no harm it doing so.

FELIPE NO

I normally use Wikipedia for a starting point on whatever I'm researching. Hopefully, the article I happen to read will provide information for further reading so that I can go and check out a book at the library on the subject.
I think that EB is being a bit crazy here, obviously. While it is natural that they would protest any trial which found inaccuracies in their text, I think that EB is far too concerned on being more comprehensive than Wikipedia.
As far as I can tell, no encyclopedia is all that excellent for serious research on scholastic-type topics, or so to speak. Wikipedia does definitely win in the internet 'culture' department, though. (Especially considering how no published material, to my knowledge, lists all of that.)

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Wikipedia is fine as a quick reference, but it rarely has the kind of in-depth information that can be found through independant study, and oftentimes the "community" who discusses new information will shoot it down because they've never heard of it before, or don't have access to the same information the donator had.

This is especially true towards history and mythology.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I wonder if I could list Wikipedia as one of my sources for my next paper...

There's nowhere I can't reach.

just don't expect any high marks if you do.
some teachers still don't accept them as the 'right source' dispite various ways of convincing.

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Originally Posted by Maico

I wonder if I could list Wikipedia as one of my sources for my next paper...

Definitely not, however any good Wiki article should have a list of sources at the bottom, you might be able to use some of those.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Why not? Are you restricted not to use Wikipedia as bibliography? Well in my university it's fine actually.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I didn't even bother trying to list Wikipedia as a source for the team project I had to do at my university. I wasn't sure how they would take it...as far as I know, none of the other teams did either, although some of them did actually use it (probably for background info, further references, etc). I don't think it would have gone down well at all!

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

I feel like Wikipedia is a perfectly fine resource for most topics. You either get a good introduction in some areas, or a detailed description on some obscure topic that hasn't been really handled by another resource.

However, the main problem that probably exists with using it in research is the chance that you're using tainted data. For the most part, Wikipedia is good about fixing obvious vandals or labeling unverified data, but I'm sure that some of it gets through the cracks every now and then.

Really, if you use Wikipedia, you should probably follow up on the sources that they provide. It's a good starting point, but I don't think any article should be the focal point of any research. (I just realized this is what Aardark just said).

On Wikipedia vs. some site by random guy: Hopefully the random site will also list its sources and be done by someone of authority (an expert in the field) or otherwise you shouldn't be there in the first place.

FELIPE NO

Wikipedia Editor/User here
<---

The main thing I like about the site is, as someone else said earlier: You can find information about things that would be much less or not even covered at all in the EB, or other encyclopedias, stuff like "List of April Fools Jokes" or "4chan.org History".

For the few articles I have edited, I made sure to have a reliable source for backup, and even then I've gotten minor things innacurate. However, the wiki is on a whole very reliable. Besides, if you use common sense you can weed out the more obvious errors, or practical joke edits that sometimes appear.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Wikipedia is a great source for casual interest, finding off-beat topics that Brittanica doesn't cover, and even doing very broad research. As for scholarly works, Wikipedia doesn't come close to being a valid source - especially if the research is anything above the high school level.

The information on Wikipedia is no doubt thorough. It wouldn't be surprising if specialists were patrolling and editing various topics, but because of the fact that anybody can write, edit, and create entries, it leaves much room for tampering and lowers the level of authority - a huge necessity for scholarly work. Basic research for personal interest is probably the best use of Wikipedia.

Jam it back in, in the dark.