On 05/12/2007, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
Greetings,
Tomorrow's issue of Stern Magazin (think about it as a slightly softer version of Newsweek or TIME, more or less) has Wikipedia on its cover. They compared 50 articles from de.wp to the 15-volume edition of the Brockhaus publishing house to each other (the test was done by experts, of course :) ) and posted the results in a press release, pointing to the article:
http://www.presseportal.de/pm/6329/1096919/gruner_jahr_stern
The overall score for Wikipedia was 1,7 on a scale from 1 (best) to 6 (worst), Brockhaus got a 2,7.
In only 6 out of 50 articles, Brockhaus was considered to be better, in 43 cases, it was Wikipedia.
We were especially good in the topic of current events (how surprizing) and .... Correctness.
We only suck at readability right now, we are too tough for people unfamiliar with a topic.
All in all, I think this is excellent news that deserves to be discussed and celebrated. Of course, we should not make this journalistic article to be a direct statement from us, since there might be flaws in methodology. And a test sample of 50 is also not that large.
Mathias
Slightly balanced by someone trying to prosecute wikipedia for talking about the nazis in the wrong way.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUKL0616923220071206?feedType=...
I think this is the version they are complaining about:
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hitler-Jugend&oldid=39453619