Hi James,
This paper suggests that Wikipedia has become more influential than a large
I am not sure that is the correct conclusion from the paper you mention.
To quote the conclusion:
"We find that ... the Wikipedia community favors reputable authors and
trending topics. Second... Wikipedia does serve as a collaborative social
filtering system which is able to favor “classical” papers, authors, and
topics, and recommend them to the general public."
Unless I have missed something (and please let me know if I have) it
doesn't compare Wikipedia's influence with that of journal publishing,
merely observes that the same authors and topics are mentioned on Wikipedia
as are heavily mentioned in journals (and thus that the two are reflective
of the same corpus of knowledge)
my assertion that systemic bias in the English
Wikipedia's economics articles has deleterious real-world implications...
Do you think this topic is something that the Foundation should study?
I wouldn't place it high up the list of things WMF ought to be worried
about. I remember hearing something vaguely about studies looking at
"left-right" bias among academic economists and in media coverage of
economics. In principle the same techniques could be applied to Wikipedia
articles and that might yield some insights into what could be done better.
Equally, economics isn't a very well covered area and has never attracted
that many editors, so the problems probably woudln't be fixed without a
couple of dozen more strong economics editors able to write about things in
a neutral way.
Regards,
Chris