On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:30 PM, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 19 April 2010 18:46, Nathan
<nawrich(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I wonder if there might be a subtle bias playing
into these reviews.
Perhaps if reviewers begin with the assumption that the article was
written by amateur hobbyists, that influences the outcome. If Lindsey
went back to them and let them know that the articles had been written
or comprehensively reviewed by recognized experts, would that alter
the results?
This is why the useful reviews of quality (e.g. Wikipedia vs
Britannica for Nature) were done at least single-blind.
I don't think blinding could make much difference; I doubt the results
of the Nature study would have been any different without it. Several
reviewers (including ones who rated Wikipedia articles favorably)
commented that they could easily tell stylistically which articles
were from Wikipedia.
Comparable tertiary sources are different enough from Wikipedia that
experts are generally going to be able to tell which articles are from
Wikipedia regardless of how accurate and comprehensive they are.
-Sage