Hi research community,
I have been struggling to find a way to present the subject of Wikipedia's
quality to newbies for the LearnWiki video series.
On the one hand, I have heard of studies that compare Wikipedia favorably
to Britannica, and studies showing that medical students and licensed
professionals consult Wikipedia. On the other hand, we have lots of stub
articles, and in the August WMF Metrics and Activities meeting we heard
that some users are skeptical of the quality of an encyclopedia that anyone
can edit.
I am thinking that quality of an article, as well as quality of Wikipedia
as a whole (in varied language editions), could be measured in terms of
completeness, verifiability, and neutrality, assuming that measures of
those three dimensions are possible.
For completeness, I found
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Completeness, which has fascinating
if somewhat unhelpful descriptions of encyclodynamics and encyclostatics.
Another resource, which may be a bit more helpful, is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessme…
.
I believe that there have been studies about vandalism reversions, and the
accuracy or inaccuracy of Wikipedia science articles. I am wondering if
there have been any more holistic studies of Wikipedia completeness,
verifiability, and neutrality, either using sampling methods or using
automated tools.
Thanks,
Pine