[WikiEN-l] UIC Journal: Evaluating quality control of Wikipedia's feature[d] articles

[Sage Ross]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 2:30 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 19 April 2010 18:46, Nathan <nawrich at 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