Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed'

[TechBear_Seattle]

Wikipedia study 'fatally flawed'

A study on the accuracy of the free online resource Wikipedia by the prestigious journal Nature has been described as "fatally flawed".

The report, published in December last year, compared the accuracy of online offerings from Encyclopaedia Britannica and Wikipedia.

Nature found that both were about as accurate as each other on science.

Encyclopaedia Britannica has hit back at the findings, calling for the paper to be retracted.

In a document on its website, Encyclopaedia Britannica said that the Nature study contained "a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results".

The scholarly slanging match prompted an equally robust response from Nature.

"We reject those accusations, and are confident our comparisons are fair," it said in a statement.

Nature said it did not intend to retract the original article.

The article continues at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4840340.stm

[nickinSTL]

1. Why am I not surprised?

n/t

[aden_nak]

2. Britannica price "fatally high".

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. And therefore, they have a vested interest in discrediting the article

That was pretty much what one of my co-workers said when I mentioned the article to him.

[Book Lover]

4. Related article at The Register

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/23/britannica_wikipedia_nature_study/

Nature mag cooked Wikipedia study

...

Independent experts were sent 50 unattributed articles from both Wikipedia and Britannica, and the journal claimed that Britannica turned up 123 "errors" to Wikipedia's 162.

But Nature sent only misleading fragments of some Britannica articles to the reviewers, sent extracts of the children's version and Britannica's "book of the year" to others, and in one case, simply stitched together bits from different articles and inserted its own material, passing it off as a single Britannica entry.

...

In one case, for example. Nature's peer reviewer was sent only the 350 word introduction to a 6,000 word Britannica article on lipids - which was criticized for containing omissions.

...

Nature accompanied this favorable news report with a cheerful, spin-heavy editorial (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438890a.html) that owed more to an evangelical recruitment drive than it did a rational analysis of empirical evidence. It urged readers to "push forward the grand experiment that is Wikipedia."

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The original Nature article is here http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html

[treegiver]

5. Orlowski and community

Orlowski is offended by the idea that cooperation could yield quality results. It's like he's never heard of Linux.

In his http://theregister.co.uk/2006/03/25/britannica_wikipedia_nature/"">strange world, cooperation is equivalent to stalinism (or fascism, or something). He blandly quotes "reader tim" who lumps the feature editor for Nature with "creationists, Intelligent Designers, the French Communist Party ..., the White House's belief in Iraqi WMD's, et al." They're all lying to push the party line. So what's the evil party line in this case? Apparently, it's the "open" side of the old open source vs. closed source debate.

I find the whole thing interesting because Britannica and Nature are both establishment instruments. Britannica's financial motives are clear, but there are ideological issues too. Is there Trouble in Paradise?

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process - Carroll Quigley

[Book Lover]

6. Bad link in your post

What's the full link?

[treegiver]

7. Link

Sorry. Works OK in Safari, but not, I now see, with all browsers. Here's the link http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/03/25/britannica_wikipedia_nature/index.html

(Firefox doesn't show the original link at all. I'm pretty sure I had the syntax right and everything looked good in Preview. Is this a known problem or did I screw up somewhere?)

[Emperor_Norton_II]

8. Linux? Quality? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~!!

:rofl:

Oh man, that's the funniest thing I've heard all day. Linux... quality! :rofl:

[treegiver]

9. Gosh,

it's hard to argue with that. I bow to your logic.

Perhaps you could offer a better example. Or perhaps you agree with Orlowski.

Truth unfolds in time through a communal process = Carroll Quigley

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

11. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Occulus]

12. I've been running one lin distro or another since the days of

RedHat 4.5.

Linux is a quality OS comparable to any other; you just need to know what the fuck you're doing to get the most out of it.

Sorry if that leaves you out.

[Lithos]

13. Side question

RH 4.5, 1997? 2.0 Kernel? That does go back a bit. I'm a neophyte in comparison having started back in 1999 with a copy of SuSE 6.1

Sure, Linux has a few unpolished applications, but then again so does MS. The real issue is actually which software development methodology is better in the long run. For the most part OSS has shown itself superior in creating code with fewer defects and faster implementation. Even Apple recognized this and borrowed extensively from the BSD micro-kernel architecture in OS X. Funnily enough, Apple did in about two years with OS X what MS has not been able to do in 5 years with Vista - namely do a complete rewrite while supporting backward compatibility. And given the huge announcement of major rewrites and delays, it seems that MS is lacking something somewhere in their methodology and hence the final quality.

L-

[DrGonzoLives]

14. So, Linux is the OS for computer snobs?

I see, if you're not a computer expert, you don't "deserve" to use Linux. How very populist.