On Wed, May 7, 2014 at 11:40 PM, Risker risker.wp@gmail.com wrote:
Ah, but the costliest conditions aren't actually comparable to the relevant Wikipedia articles. For example, the "costly condition" of cancer is compared to the article on lung cancer, despite the fact that we have an article on cancer. The costly condition of "trauma-related disorders" - a very broad topic that would include traumatic amputations, fractures, burns, and a multitude of other issues is compared to the article on concussion; the costly condition of "mental disorders" is compared to the article on major depressive disorder despite, again, haing an article on mental disorders.
Yes, and hypertension was compared to the WP article on hypertension, hyperlipidemia was compared to the WP article on hyperlipidemia, etc.
And each article is reviewed by only two people; when one looks at the
results, we see that in most cases the two reviewers provided very different results.
Frankly, the merits of this study are neither here not there. I just thought it might be of interest.
What troubles me more is that you seem to be saying that meaningful expert review of Wikipedia content is not possible; at least you have not given any indication so far that you think otherwise. Yet beyond the confines of Wikipedia, expert review happens routinely, and daily, and is widely relied upon.
Is it really your belief that academics have no better access to knowledge than does an undisciplined crowd of random people, and that there is no way one could design a study that would give meaningful insight into the current quality level of Wikipedia content? I would find that truly bizarre.