Nature: Wikipedia as Good as Britannica

Nature: Wikipedia as Good as Britannica

According to an article published on the website of the Journal 'Nature', the online encyclopedia Wikipedia is almost as accurate as encyclopedia Britannica. Wikipedia is a widely used free encyclopedia available on the Internet that consists of as many as 4 million articles in different languages contributed by volunteers. The accuracy of the articles however, has been questioned because they can be edited by anyone.

A team of experts with Nature have carried out a comparison of entries in Wikipedia and Britannica on 42 scientific topics. The “peer review” has revealed numerous errata in the articles ranging from errors of omission to serious factual and conceptual errors. While Wikipedia had on an average four errors per reviewed article Britannica had three. The reviewers came across eight serious errors, four in each of the encyclopedias.

Considering the fact that Wikipedia articles are written by unpaid enthusiasts and that of Britannica by paid experts, the findings are quite remarkable. “We're very pleased with the results and we're hoping it will focus people's attention on the overall level of our work, which is pretty good,” said Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia. “Our goal is to get to Britannica quality, or better.”

Britannica editors did not comment on the findings; however Tom Panelas, Director of Corporate Communications of the Company said “We have nothing against Wikipedia, “But it is not the case that errors creep in on an occasional basis or that a couple of articles are poorly written. There are lots of articles in that condition. They need a good editor.” Some of the experts of the Nature study also shared Panelas' point of view.

But Michael Twidale, an information scientist at the University of Illinois, defended Wikipedia's case saying that it had an upper-hand over Britannica due the speed with the articles can be updated. He attacked Britannica saying, “People will find it shocking to see how many errors there are in Britannica. Print encyclopaedias are often set up as the gold standards of information quality against which the failings of faster or cheaper resources can be compared. These findings remind us that we have an 18-carat standard, not a 24-carat one.”