Hi,
Many people in my professional circle berate the quality of Wikipedia (without any grounds, IMHO). It occurred to me recently that one simple example of the quality of Wikipeida is the fact that you can almost guarantee (IME) the correctness of the spelling in WP.
Has anyone ever done a systematic analysis of the number of spelling errors compared to 'other' sites? It seems that when reading read-only corporate or academic websites, spelling mistakes are not infrequent.
This would be a nice factoid to be able to throw out when the next person says "well, I read it in WP so...". (Of course I'm assuming spelling is a proxy for overall quality, which is clearly arguable, but it's a good sign ;-).
Cheers, Dan.
On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 12:36 PM, Dan Bolser dan.bolser@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
Many people in my professional circle berate the quality of Wikipedia (without any grounds, IMHO). It occurred to me recently that one simple example of the quality of Wikipeida is the fact that you can almost guarantee (IME) the correctness of the spelling in WP.
Has anyone ever done a systematic analysis of the number of spelling errors compared to 'other' sites? It seems that when reading read-only corporate or academic websites, spelling mistakes are not infrequent.
This would be a nice factoid to be able to throw out when the next person says "well, I read it in WP so...". (Of course I'm assuming spelling is a proxy for overall quality, which is clearly arguable, but it's a good sign ;-).
Cheers, Dan.
If you're interested in this topic I would *definitely* look at and talk to the "Guild of Copy Editors" on English Wikipedia.[1] This is a very effective WikiProject which has monthly backlog elimination drives.[2]
wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org