Nature has a special report at
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html , detailing
the results of an accuracy comparison between WP and EB. While the
Wikipedia articles often contained more inaccuracies than Britannica's,
they don't look at the article sizes in each case. With Maveric149's
help, I did:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Nature_follo…
Result: Average article size for Wikipedia: 6.80 KB; Britannica: 2.60
KB. Number of errors per 2KB for Wikipedia: 1.4; Britannica: 3.6.
Put another way: Wikipedia has 4 errors to their 3; our articles were
also 2 1/2 times longer on average.
It's not 100% accurate, but I was only going for a ballpark estimate.
Note: we copied the displayed WP text, not the edit box text, and
removed the TOC, See also, references, external links, and any other big
tables or lists. The WP text came from just before the Nature article
was published.
brian0918
Brian0918 has asked me to cancel his post; his Gmail appears to be
faulty so he cannot do this himself.
~Mark Ryan
On 15/12/05, Brian <brian0918(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Nature has a special report at
> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html , detailing
> the results of an accuracy comparison between WP and EB. While the
> Wikipedia articles often contained more inaccuracies than Britannica's,
> they don't look at the article sizes in each case. With Maveric149's
> help, I did:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29#Nature_follo…
>
> Result: Average article size for Wikipedia: 6.80 KB; Britannica: 2.60
> KB. Number of errors per 2KB for Wikipedia: 1; Britannica: 6.
>
> Put another way: Wikipedia has 4 errors to their 3; our articles were
> also 2 1/2 times longer on average.
>
>
> Can someone please check my math, I did this pretty fast, and was half
> asleep :) It's not 100% accurate, but I was only going for a ballpark
> estimate. Note: we copied the displayed WP text, not the edit box text,
> and removed the TOC, See also, references, external links, and any other
> big tables or lists. The WP text came from just before the Nature
> article was published.
>
> Raul654 and I separately submitted stories to Slashdot, and I would
> suggest anyone willing do something similar. The more requests they have
> for this, the more likely they are to accept it.
>
> brian0918
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Dariusz Siedlecki <datrio(a)gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org>
> To: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006
> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 23:31:11 +0100
>
> Just wanted to announce we'll be starting the 2006 Stewards elections
> in a few days.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006
>
> Please forward this message to wikipedia-l, and every other list which
> might be interested in this announcement.
>
> --
> Pozdrawiam,
> Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki
--
Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg(a)gmail.com>
Hi all,
Not sure if anyone has commented on this already (I don't see a
corresponding subject), but the tagline on wikipedia pages is now
reading "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit."
As I commented several days ago, it used to just read "From Wikipedia,
the free encylopedia". Interesting.
Is there any commentary on this change somewhere?
Steve
I wrote on wikien-l:
>Matt Brown wrote:
>>Katefan0 wrote:
>>>Mr. Sigenthaler's recent experience has encouraged me to send you
this note. As you know, I have been the subject of some discussion in
one of the pages you administer. Some of those comments I consider
libelous. I strongly suggest that you, as the party responsible for
this article and discussion, and/or Wiki executives take immediate
action to purge such false and irresponsible statements, and block
such from occurring in the future.
>>>Please forward this to Wiki executives.
>>>I look forward to your speedy response.
>> My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
>> history so easily.
>Seconded. This is an invitation to every POV pusher who doesn't like
>criticism.
I should emphasise here I don't mean John Siegenthaler - or, without
knowledge of the case, the person who wrote to Katefan0. I've dealt
with a number of cases of perfectly normal and decent people who
understand and respect our mission as an NPOV encyclopedia, but are
unhappy at being slandered by conspiracy-obsessed nutters who just
won't quit and aren't quite sure what to do about it. Usually we work
it out okay with a close watch on the article and (possibly) suitable
penalties for the antisocial editor. A recent example is [[User:AI]]
on [[David S. Touretzky]] (which AI started as a slander page and has
now been NPOVed quite well) and [[Keith Henson]] (which AI didn't
start but got heavily to work on).
However, we have *plenty* of the other sort. Examples include
[[Sollog]], [[Daniel Brandt]], [[Ashida Kim]], [[John Byrne]] (yep,
the famous comics artist), [[Barbara Schwarz]] ... I am *greatly*
reluctant to let people bowdlerise their article because they don't
like notable and well-documented facts.
Our concern is much more with getting things right than it is to
inexpertly second-guess the law. It's also far more within our
expertise! And once a case *comes to the community's attention*, the
article tends to get watchlisted by skilled and experienced editors
who will have familiarised themselves with the subject.
This may require removing particularly bad revisions in extreme cases
after due consideration, though that's a lot of tedious work that's
easily undone with one new edit re-adding the crap. But IMO, we can't
get into a habit of removing negative information on first request
just like that.
[cc: to arbcom list for consideration]
- d.
Mathias Schindler wrote:
> Here is the article list:
> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/multimedia/438900a_m1.html
>
> here is the full article:
> http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html
>
> Entry Encyclopaedia Britannica inaccuracies
> Wikipedia inaccuracies
> Acheulean industry 1 7
> Agent Orange 2 2
[snip]
What would be really interesting would be to get a list of the
inaccuracies themselves (not just the tallies of how many were found in
each article).
Then see how long it takes for Wikipedians to get the same articles to
pass peer review with No Errors in the entire sample.
If it was less than a month, that would vindicate the opennes of
Wikipedia. Less than a week would be mind-blowing.
And no fair taunting the peer reviewers with {{sofixit}}, either :-)
Ed Poor
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dariusz Siedlecki
Date: Dec 14, 2005 5:31 PM
Subject: [Foundation-l] Steward elections 2006
To: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
Just wanted to announce we'll be starting the 2006 Stewards elections
in a few days.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/elections_2006
Please forward this message to wikipedia-l, and every other list which
might be interested in this announcement.
--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki
Delirium writes:
> _Nature_ tends to have fairly rigorous review standards
> and a high level of article quality,
That's what I thought, until I saw this:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=A…
The worst article EVARR!!! I wouldn't have accepted a paper like that
in my College Algebra class.
Axel
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