FYI

Rick Uttich

http://employees.oneonta.edu/uttichrm/

November 27, 2006

Wikipedia Passes Another Test

Several scholars have taken stabs at assessing the credibility of Wikipedia, the open-source encyclopedia that seems to harbor more errors in theory than it does in practice (The Chronicle, October 27). And most of those experts -- including, most famously, the editors of Nature -- have come back with at least guarded praise of the site.

Add Thomas Chesney to the list of relatively satisfied scholars.

Mr. Chesney, a lecturer in information systems at the University of Nottingham, in England, recently completed a study in which he sent Wikipedia articles to more than 50 professors. Half of those professors were asked to review articles within their areas of expertise, while the other half were assigned non sequitur entries chosen by the encyclopedia's own random-article generator. Both groups of scholars then completed a survey describing their views on the articles and on Wikipedia as a whole.

"The experts" -- that is, the professors who read articles about their chief subjects of study -- "found Wikipedia’s articles to be more credible than the nonexperts," writes Mr. Chesney in First Monday. "This suggests that the accuracy of Wikipedia is high."

The study should not be taken as proof that Wikipedia is trustworthy across the board, though. As Mr. Chesney admits, his sample size was small. And experts did say they found mistakes in 13 percent of the articles they reviewed. --Brock Read

Posted on Monday