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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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.

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It seems that the battle is heating up.

Ars.Technica is reporting:

Quote:

The Encyclopedia Britannica has stepped up its attacks on the journal Nature by taking out large ads in both the New York Times and the London Times this past week. The unusually public dispute began last year when Nature published a study showing that Britannica and Wikipedia had almost the same level of accuracy. Britannica was obviously not pleased with this conclusion, but made no objections until March, when it at last published a set of objections to the study. Not pleased with Nature's response, Britannica is now taking the controversy to the masses.

The ads call on Nature to issue a "full and public retraction of the article," and the Britannica editors give five major reasons why they believe the methodology of the study was deeply flawed.

• You reviewed text that was not even from the Encyclopedia Britannica
• You accused Britannica of "omissions," on the basis of reviews of arbitrarily chosen excerpts of Britannica articles, not the articles themselves
• You rearranged and re-edited Britannica articles
• You failed to distinguish minor inaccuracies from major errors
• Your headline contradicted the body of your article

You can read Britannica's full-print ad, copied from the New York and London Times, here.


I wonder how far this dispute will go? I've got money that says Britannica will take Nature to court.

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