Wikipedia is a free and open-access encyclopedia which has problems related to credibility of its authors and general accountability. Critics have tried to bring down wikipedia as a source of valid information and compared it to the Encyclopedia Britannica which has more accurate reference.
To further the investigation, Nature chose articles from both sites and sent them to field experts for peer review. As a result, the journal found eight serious errors like general misunderstandings of vital concepts from both site. They also discover a few misleading statements, factual errors and omission and was told that wikipedia has 162 problems which Britannica had 123.
Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia and president of the encyclopedia’s parent organization says that he is pleased with the research as their goal is to get to Britannica quality or better. He also added that there will be greater involvement by scientists that would lead to a “multiplier effect”. The quality of the article will have huge improvement since most entries are edited by enthusiast and examine by researcher. (Terdiman,2005)
Wales also introduce a new “stable” version of each entry. Every entry that reaches a specific quality, will be tagged as stable and further edits will be made to a separate “live” version that would replace the stable version when it is believe have significant improvement. Wales states that this is one method for users to rate article quality.(Terdiman,2005)
Reference:
Terdiman, D. 2005, Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica [Online, accessed 4 June.2007] URL: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
Nature, 2005, Internet encyclopedia goes head to head [Online, accessed 4 June. 2007] URL: http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
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