-----Original Message-----
From: wmfcc-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wmfcc-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Mathias Schindler
Sent: 05 December 2007 17:16
To: Communications Committee
Subject: [Wmfcc-l] [PRESS] Magazine hails German Wikipedia as better
thanencyclopaedia
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/news/article_1378822.php/Magazine_hails_G
erman_Wikipedia_as_better_than_encyclopaedia
Tech News
Magazine hails German Wikipedia as better than encyclopaedia
Dec 5, 2007, 14:44 GMT
Hamburg - The German version of the do-it-yourself online reference
work Wikipedia is better than Germany's most prestigious commercial
encyclopaedia, the weekly magazine Stern asserted Wednesday.
It engaged WIK, a research institute, to compare 50 randomly chosen
articles from Wikipedia with 50 matching articles in the regularly
updated online version,
www.brockhaus.de, of the Brockhaus, Germany's
equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Wikipedia is a website which can be altered by anyone who notices a
mistake or wants to improve the information displayed, provided the
contributor presents sufficient documentary evidence to back up the
new information.
Stern said the Wikipedia's average rating was 1.7 on a scale where 0
is best and 5 is worst. The Brockhaus rated 2.7 on the same measure.
The articles were assessed for accuracy, completeness, how up to date
they were and how easy they were to read.
In 43 matches, the Wikipedia article was judged the winner.
The cooperative project trumped by being up with the news. It gave
Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti's death date the next day, but
Brockhaus had not noted this even weeks later. But Stern said
Wikipedia also had the lead in accuracy.
The German-language section of Wikipedia, numbering 673,000 articles,
is the second biggest after the English version (2,115,000).
Bilingual readers say the German articles tend to be more formal than
the English ones. The German editors often delete subjects they
consider unimportant, such as lists, details of manual skills or
television show plots.
(c) 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
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