Karl Fish has a great post commenting on the recent article in the Denver Post that 4 out of 5 experts agree on the accuracy of wikipedia, Karl says.
“..there was no mention of whether any of the scholars contributed to the Wikipedia article they were reviewing…. It’s not like I expect the reviewers to take hours (or days) to clean up the articles, but you would think they might take an extra five or ten minutes to modify a few things since they’re there anyway. It almost seems like the thought never crosses their minds – or at least the mind of the reporter. It seems like such an obvious question to ask, and include the answer in the article.
… I find it interesting that the print version doesn’t include the URL for Wikipedia (much less for the particular topics), and that the online version doesn’t include links.
Here is what I said in response:
I agree – here is the difference — the expert can actually EDIT the entry (novel idea) so that the information IS accurate — can they do that with an encyclopedia? Can they do that with a magazine article?
Experts everywhere should be climbing into wikipedia and editing and not just reviewing.
I think the fact that the experts were asked to read and not write was a Web 2 article written in a very Web 1 way. Perhaps if they had been asked to review and edit and see if the information remained accurate would be a better measure of wikipedia’s accuracy.
I had to share, this topic will really get me going!
tag: Wikipedia, Karl Fisch
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OK, that was a pretty fast post!
I still haven’t heard back from the reporter – I’m hoping that maybe he’s contacting the five scholars and asking them my question about whether they edited their respective articles, but that’s probably wishful thinking.