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
On 12/5/07, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
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:
Congratulations to the German Wikipedia community for this historic achievement! And all that without stable versions! ;-)
On Dec 5, 2007 12:45 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/5/07, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
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:
Congratulations to the German Wikipedia community for this historic achievement! And all that without stable versions! ;-)
With stable versions, we could obviously have gotten a 1,0 score :)
--- Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 5, 2007 12:45 PM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
On 12/5/07, Mathias Schindler
mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
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: score
Congratulations to the German Wikipedia community for
this historic
achievement! And all that without stable versions! ;-)
With stable versions, we could obviously have gotten a 1,0 score :)
Erik states that the report especially highlights the project's coverage of current events. I still fear that once the stable versions feature is introduced and has been in use for a year or two there will be many pages with changes submitted months previously that are still not visible to readers. That may well adversely affect the outcome of any attempt to measure a project's coverage of current events.
-Gurch
Erik states that the report especially highlights the project's coverage of current events. I still fear that once the stable versions feature is introduced and has been in use for a year or two there will be many pages with changes submitted months previously that are still not visible to readers. That may well adversely affect the outcome of any attempt to measure a project's coverage of current events.
Maybe there's a need for a new special page to list edits that are awaiting approval, or update an old special page to highlight (a la Special:Newpages) edits which have not been approved. As I understand it, once a Wikinews article is written and checked, it is protected from editing anyway, so there wont be a lot of changes to old articles that have simply never been checked.
--Andrew Whitworth
On 05/12/2007, Mathias Schindler mathias.schindler@gmail.com wrote:
We only suck at readability right now, we are too tough for people unfamiliar with a topic.
Which tends to be getting worse. Partly because unless a writer is exceptionally good readability will tend to an extent conflict with correctness.
2007/12/5, geni geniice@gmail.com:
Which tends to be getting worse. Partly because unless a writer is exceptionally good readability will tend to an extent conflict with correctness.
I think there are other reasons as well: * Corroborative editing, like we do on Wikipedia, works well to collect various aspects of a subject, but it also means that any structure in an article as a whole will degenerate over time, which strongly decreases readability * For correctness one needs to know about the subject and have good sources, for readability one needs to be a good writer. 'Professional' encyclopedias can choose their writers to be both knowledgeable and good writers (although they don't always do so). We have to do with the volunteers we have. Some of them are good writers, some are not. On the other hand, almost all of them have some subject they know much about, and often tend to work on these subjects. Thus, using volunteers, correctedness can still be achieved, but readability is a hit-or-miss.
On Sat, 2007-12-08 at 12:09 +0100, Andre Engels wrote:
2007/12/5, geni geniice@gmail.com:
Which tends to be getting worse. Partly because unless a writer is exceptionally good readability will tend to an extent conflict with correctness.
I think there are other reasons as well:
- Corroborative editing, like we do on Wikipedia, works well to
collect various aspects of a subject, but it also means that any structure in an article as a whole will degenerate over time, which strongly decreases readability
I agree with this. But thankfully, there are also re-writers that can help out here. More people should join the League of Copyeditors ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_League_of_Copyeditors ).
Watchlists are also important. I'm constantly watching articles that I've edited or otherwise know, just to check whether another person's minor edits fit in the article's tone and style.
Other than that, I can't see an easy solution to this problem.
Michiel Sikma michiel@thingmajig.org
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
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