On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, of course readability analysis is done by automation. I've yet to find a consistent readability assessment that doesn't use automation. It's not an area where subjectivity is particularly useful.
And that was an average of 18 minutes per article, i.e., 36 minutes: 18 minutes for the WP article and 18 minutes for the PDQ article. How long do you really think it should take? I read several of the articles in under 5 minutes on each site. Of course, the reviewers wouldn't need to look up the definitions of a lot of the terms that lay people would need to look at, because they were already professionally educated in the topic area, so that would significantly reduce the amount of time required to assess the article.
It took me more than 18 minutes to write the last e-mail in this thread. :)
The lung cancer article, for example, which was among those reviewed, has well over 4,500 words of prose, and cites 141 references. That's a reviewing speed of 250 words per minute. I don't know if you have ever done an FA review ...
Andreas, you seem to have pre-determined that Wikipedia's medical articles are all terrible and riddled with errors.
And I think you are being needlessly defensive. I have an open mind as to what the results might be. What I am sure of is that neither you nor I nor the Foundation really know how reliable they are. Why not make an effort to find out?
Realistically, they're amongst the most likely to receive professional editing and review - Wikiproject Medicine does a much better job than people are willing to credit them.
Yes, and many editors there are sorely concerned about the quality of medical information Wikipedia provides to the public.
Incidentally, there was a discussion of the JAOA study in The Atlantic today:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/can-wikipedia-ever-be-a-de...
A member of WikiProject Medicine is quoted in it, as is the study's author.
—o0o—
So both sides acknowledge: There are errors in Wikipedia’s health articles. And that’s a problem, because people use them.
—o0o—
The biggest weakness to the articles - and I've heard this from many people who read them - is that they're written at too high a level to be really accessible to lay people. I thought the point that the study made about the benefit of linking to an "English" dictionary definition of complex terms rather than to another highly technical Wikipedia article was a very good one, for example. We could learn from these studies.
Indeed, many science articles are mainly written by professionals in the field (I noted math and physics earlier, but chemistry and of course a large number of computer articles are also written by professionals). The biggest challenge for these subjects is to write them in an accessible way. Note, I said "science" - alternative medicine, history, geopolitical and "soft science" articles are much more problematic.
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