Reliability of Wikipedia no relation volunteer editors
The reliability of Wikipedia concerns the validity, verifiability, and veracity of Wikipedia and its user-generated editing model, particularly its English-language edition. It is written and edited by volunteer editors who generate online content with the editorial oversight of other volunteer editors via community-generated policies and guidelines. This editing model is highly concentrated, as 77% of all articles are written by 1% of its editors, a majority of whom have chosen to remain anonymous. The reliability of the project has been tested statistically through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in its editing process. The online encyclopedia has been criticized for its factual reliability, principally regarding its content, presentation, and editorial processes. Studies and surveys attempting to gauge the reliability of Wikipedia have mixed results. Wikipedia's reliability was frequently criticized in the 2000s but has been improved; it has been generally praised in the late 2010s and early 2020s.Select assessments of its reliability have examined how quickly vandalism—content perceived by editors to constitute false or misleading information—is removed. Two years after the project was started, in 2003, an IBM study found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects". The inclusion of false or fabricated content has, at times, lasted for years on Wikipedia due to its volunteer editorship. Its editing model facilitates multiple systemic biases: namely, selection bias, inclusion bias, participation bias, and group-think bias. The majority of the encyclopedia is written by male editors, leading to a gender bias in coverage and the make up of the editing community has prompted concerns about racial bias, spin bias, corporate bias, and national bias, among others. An ideological bias on Wikipedia has also been identified on both conscious and subconscious levels. A series of studies from Harvard Business School in 2012 and 2014 found Wikipedia "significantly more biased" than Encyclopædia Britannica but attributed the finding more to the length of the online encyclopedia as opposed to slanted editing.The prevalence of non-neutral or conflict-of-interest editing and the use of Wikipedia for "revenge editing" has attracted publicity for inserting false, biased, or defamatory content into articles, especially biographies of living people. Articles on less technical subjects, such as the social sciences, humanities, and culture, have been known to deal with misinformation cycles, cognitive biases, coverage discrepancies, and editor disputes. The online encyclopedia does not guarantee the validity of its information.  It is seen as a valuable "starting point" for researchers when they pass over content to examine the listed references, citations, and sources. Academics suggest reviewing reliable sources when assessing the quality of articles.Its coverage of medical and scientific articles such as pathology, toxicology, oncology, pharmaceuticals, and psychiatry were compared to professional and peer-reviewed sources in a 2005 Nature study. A year later Encyclopædia Britannica disputed the Nature study, whose authors, in turn, replied with a further rebuttal. Concerns regarding readability and the overuse of technical language were raised in studies published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology (2011), Psychological Medicine (2012), and European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2014). Wikipedia's popularity, mass readership, and free accessibility has led the encyclopedia to command a substantial second-hand cognitive authority across the world.Assessments
Criteria for evaluating reliability
The reliability of Wikipedia articles can be measured by the following criteria:
Accuracy of information provided within articles
Appropriateness of the images provided with the article
Appropriateness of the style and focus of the articles
Susceptibility to, and exclusion and removal of, false information
Comprehensiveness, scope and coverage within articles and in the range of articles
Identification of reputable third-party sources as citations
Verifiability of statements by respected sources
Stability of the articles
Susceptibility to editorial and systemic bias
Quality of writingSeveral "market-oriented" extrinsic measures demonstrate that large audiences trust Wikipedia in one way or another. For instance, "50 percent of [US] physicians report that they've consulted ... [Wikipedia] for information on health conditions", according to a report from IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics.Academia
Academics have also criticized Wikipedia for its perceived failure as a reliable source and because Wikipedia editors may have no expertise, competence, or credentials in the topics on which they contribute. Adrian Riskin, a mathematician in Whittier College commented that while highly technical articles may be written by mathematicians for mathematicians, the more general maths topics, such as the article on polynomials, are written in a very amateurish fashion with a number of obvious mistakes.Because Wikipedia cannot be considered a reliable source, the use of Wikipedia is not accepted in many schools and universities in writing a formal paper, and some educational institutions have banned it as a primary source while others have limited its use to only a pointer to external sources. The criticism of not being a reliable source, however, may not only apply to Wikipedia but to encyclopedias in general—some university lecturers are not impressed when students cite print-based encyclopedias in assigned work. However, it seems that instructors have underestimated the use of Wikipedia in academia because of these concerns. Researchers and academics contend that while Wikipedia may not be used as a 100 percent accurate source for final papers, it is a valuable jumping off point for research that can lead to many possibilities if approached critically. What may be missing in academia is the emphasis on critical analysis in regards to the use of Wikipedia in secondary and higher education. We should not dismiss Wikipedia entirely (there are less inaccuracies than there are errors of omission) but rather begin to support it, and teach the use of Wikipedia as an education tool in tandem with critical thinking skills that will allow students to filter the information found on the online encyclopedia and help them critically analyze their findings.An empirical study conducted in 2006 by a Business School lecturer in Information Systems at the University of Nottingham, the subject of a review on the technical website Ars Technica, involving 55 academics asked to review specific Wikipedia articles that either were in their expert field (group 1) or chosen at random (group 2), concluded that: "The experts found Wikipedia's articles to be more credible than the non-experts. This suggests that the accuracy of Wikipedia is high. However, the results should not be seen as support for Wikipedia as a totally reliable resource as, according to the experts, 13 percent of the articles contain mistakes (10% of the experts reported factual errors of an unspecified degree, 3% of them reported spelling errors)."The Gould Library at Carleton College in Minnesota has a web page describing the use of Wikipedia in academia. It asserts that "Wikipedia is without question a valuable and informative resource", but that "there is an inherent lack of reliability and stability" to its articles, again drawing attention to similar advantages and limitations as other sources. As with other reviews, it comments that one should assess one's sources and what is desired from them, and that "Wikipedia may be an appropriate resource for some assignments, but not for others." It cited Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales' view that Wikipedia may not be ideal as a source for all academic uses, and (as with other sources) suggests that at the least, one strength of Wikipedia is that it provides a good starting point for current information on a very wide range of topics.In 2007, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article written by Cathy Davidson, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and English at Duke University, in which she asserts that Wikipedia should be used to teach students about the concepts of reliability and credibility.In 2008, Hamlet Isakhanli, founder and president of Khazar University, compared the Encyclopædia Britannica and English Wikipedia articles on Azerbaijan and related subjects. His study found that Wikipedia covered the subject much more widely, more accurately and in more detail, though with some lack of balance, and that Wikipedia was the best source for the first approximation.In 2011, Karl Kehm, associate professor of physics at Washington College, said: "I do encourage [my students] to use [Wikipedia] as one of many launch points for pursuing original source material. The best Wikipedia entries are well researched with extensive citations".Some academic journals do refer to Wikipedia articles, but are not elevating it to the same level as traditional references. For instance, Wikipedia articles have been referenced in "enhanced perspectives" provided on-line in the journal Science. The first of these perspectives to provide a hyperlink to Wikipedia was "A White Collar Protein Senses Blue Light", and dozens of enhanced perspectives have provided such links since then. The publisher of Science states that these enhanced perspectives "include hypernotes—which link directly to websites of other relevant information available online—beyond the standard bibliographic references".
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