in the they might be giants peanut gallery me writes:
quote:
Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia is about as accurate on science as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, a comparison study has found.
The British journal Nature ran blind tests asking experts to compare scientific entries from both publications.
The reviewers were asked to check for errors, but were not told about the source of the information.
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia.
Reviewers found 162 factual errors in the Wikipedia documents, compared to 123 in the Britannica documents.
Nature also said that its reviewers found that Wikipedia entries were often poorly structured and confused. Wikipedia is a free resource edited by 13,000 contributors.
The Encyclopaedia Britannica declined to comment on the findings.
http://www.vnunet.com/...647/wikipedia-squares-encyclopaedia
i guess the moral of the story is that encyclopedias aren't all that accurate in book form either -- the GOOD thing about wikipedia is that it's almost evolutionary in nature. if something is wrong and someone knows better it gets changed much faster than the book form would. this of course can also work against it, but hopefully not very often.
162 errors, and four serious ones. it doesn't say how many articles they checked... edit: nevermind, found the nature article. 42 articles contained 162 errors. close to four errors an article, on average.
quote:
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.
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head | Nature
i find wikipedia good for looking up general knowledge stuff. stuff i already know but may not recall clearly. but for questionable and debatable materials, it's far from the best source
This message has been edited by arachnophilia, 12-21-2005 04:18 PM
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