User:Starclan0444/sandbox

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"Wikipedia hoaxes" redirects here. For a list of hoaxes that have occurred on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia.

Vandalism of a Wikipedia article. The section on the left is the normal, undamaged version; and on the right is the edited, damaged version.

The reliability of Wikipedia (primarily of the English-language edition), compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, has been assessed in many ways, including statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia.[1] Recent incidents of conflicted editing, and the use of Wikipedia for 'revenge editing' (inserting false, defamatory or biased statements into biographies) have attracted frequent publicity.[citation needed]

An early study in the journal Nature said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in Encyclopædia Britannica and had a similar rate of "serious errors".[2] The study by Nature was disputed by Encyclopædia Britannica,[3] and later Naturereplied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of Britannica 's main objections.[4] Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology,[5] toxicology,[6] oncology,[7] pharmaceuticals,[8] and psychiatry[9] compared Wikipedia to professional and peer reviewed sources and found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Concerns regarding readability were raised in a study published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology[10] and a study published inPsychological Medicine (2012),[9] while a study published in the European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology raised concerns about reliability.[11]

Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects"[12] and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".[13]

Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous editor started a controversy when he created an article about John Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.[14] The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolène Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student investigation later determined that the article was a hoax and de L'Astran had never existed.[15]

Contents
[hide]
 * 1Wikipedia editing model
 * 1.1Areas of reliability
 * 2Assessments
 * 2.1Comparative studies
 * 2.2Expert opinion
 * 2.2.1Librarians' views
 * 2.2.2Academia
 * 2.2.3Science and medicine
 * 2.2.4Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica
 * 2.2.5Information loop
 * 2.2.6Other
 * 2.3Removal of false information
 * 2.4Susceptibility to bias
 * 2.4.1Individual bias and the WikiScanner tool
 * 2.4.2Coverage
 * 2.4.2.1Notability of article topics
 * 2.4.2.2Liberal bias
 * 2.4.2.3American and corporate media bias
 * 2.5Reliability as a source in other contexts
 * 2.6Broad opinions
 * 2.7Tools for testing the reliability of articles
 * 3Notable incidents
 * 3.1False biographical information
 * 3.2Other false information
 * 3.3Conflict-of-interest editing on Wikipedia
 * 3.3.1Political interests and advocacy
 * 3.3.1.1Arab-Israeli conflict
 * 3.3.1.2Corporate public relations industry
 * 3.3.2Editing for financial rewards
 * 3.3.2.1Conflicts involving Wikipedia policy makers
 * 3.3.3Scientific disputes
 * 4See also
 * 5References
 * 6Further reading
 * 7External links
 * 7.1Wikipedia project pages

Wikipedia editing model
Wikipedia allows anonymous editing: contributors are not required to provide any identification, or even an email address. A 2007 study at Dartmouth College of the English Wikipedia noted that, contrary to usual social expectations, anonymous editors were some of Wikipedia's most productive contributors of valid content.[16] However, the Dartmouth study was criticized by John Timmer of the Ars Technica website for its methodological shortcomings.[17]

While Wikipedia has the potential for extremely rapid growth and harnesses an entire community—much in the same way as other communal projects such as Linux—it goes further in trusting the same community to self-regulate and become more proficient at quality control. Wikipedia has harnessed the work of millions of people to produce the world's largest knowledge-based site along with software to support it, resulting in more than nineteen million articles written, across more than 280 different language versions, in fewer than twelve years.[18] For this reason, there has been considerable interest in the project both academically and from diverse fields such as information technology, business,project management, knowledge acquisition, software programming, other collaborative projects and sociology, to explore whether the Wikipedia model can produce quality results, what collaboration in this way can reveal about people, and whether the scale of involvement can overcome the obstacles of individual limitations and poor editorship which would otherwise arise.

Areas of 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[19]
 * 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
 * Stability of the articles
 * Susceptibility to editorial and systemic bias
 * Quality of writing

The first four of these have been the subjects of various studies of the project, while the presence of bias is strongly disputed on both[which?] sides, and the prevalence and quality of citations can be tested within Wikipedia.[20] In addition, the scientiﬁc research in the area of computational mechanism for trust and reputation in virtual societies was oriented to increase the reliability and performance of electronic communities such as Wikipedia with more quantitative methods and temporal factors.[21]

In contrast with all the previous intrinsic metrics, several "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.[22]

Comparative studies
On October 24, 2005, British newspaper The Guardian published a story titled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" in which a panel of experts was asked to review seven entries related to their fields, giving each article reviewed a number designation out of ten points.[23] Scores ranged from 0 to 8, but most received marks between 5 and 8. The most common criticisms were: The most common praises were: In December 2005, the journal Nature published results of an attempted blind study seeking reviewer evaluations of the accuracy of a small subset of articles from Wikipedia andEncyclopædia Britannica. The non-peer-reviewed study was based on Nature's selection of 42 articles on scientific topics, including biographies of well-known scientists. The articles were compared for accuracy by anonymous academic reviewers, a customary practice for journal article reviews. Based on their reviews, the Wikipedia articles were described as containing, on average, 4 errors or omissions, while the Britannica articles, on average, 3. Only 4 serious errors were found in Wikipedia, and 4 in Encyclopædia Britannica. The study concluded that "Wikipedia comes close to Britannica in terms of the accuracy of its science entries",[2] although Wikipedia's articles were often "poorly structured".[2]
 * 1) Poor prose, or ease-of-reading issues (3 mentions)
 * 2) Omissions or inaccuracies, often small but including key omissions in some articles (3 mentions)
 * 3) Poor balance, with less important areas being given more attention and vice versa (1 mention)
 * 1) Factually sound and correct, no glaring inaccuracies (4 mentions)
 * 2) Much useful information, including well selected links, making it possible to "access much information quickly" (3 mentions)

Encyclopædia Britannica expressed concerns, leading Nature to release further documentation of its survey method.[24] Based on this additional information, Encyclopædia Britannica denied the validity of the Nature study, stating that it was "fatally flawed". Among Britannica 's criticisms were that excerpts rather than the full texts of some of their articles were used, that some of the extracts were compilations that included articles written for the youth version, that Nature did not check the factual assertions of its reviewers, and that many points which the reviewers labeled as errors were differences of editorial opinion.[25] Nature acknowledged the compiled nature of some of the Britannica extracts, but denied that this invalidated the conclusions of the study.[26] Encyclopædia Britannica also argued that a breakdown of the errors indicated that the mistakes in Wikipedia were more often the inclusion of incorrect facts, while the mistakes in Britannica were "errors of omission", making "Britannica far more accurate than Wikipedia, according to the figures".[25] Nature has since rejected the Britannica response,[27] stating that any errors on the part of its reviewers were not biased in favor of either encyclopedia, that in some cases it used excerpts of articles from both encyclopedias, and that Britannica did not share particular concerns with Nature before publishing its "open letter" rebuttal.[28][29]

The point-for-point disagreement between these two parties that addressed the compilation/text excerpting and very small sample size issues—argued to bias the outcome in favor of Wikipedia, versus a comprehensive, full article, large sample size study favoring the quality-controlled format of Britannica—have been echoed in online discussions,[30][31]including of articles citing the Nature study, e.g., where a "flawed study design" for manual selection of articles/article portions, the lack of study "statistical power" in its comparing4 × 101 articles from > 105 Britannica and > 106 English Wikipedia articles, and the absence of any study statistical analyses (e.g., reported confidence intervals for study results) has also been noted.[32]

In June 2006, Roy Rosenzweig, a professor specializing in American history, published a comparison of the Wikipedia biographies of 25 Americans to the corresponding biographies found on Encarta and American National Biography Online. He wrote that Wikipedia is "surprisingly accurate in reporting names, dates, and events in U.S. history" and described some of the errors as "widely held but inaccurate beliefs". However, he stated that Wikipedia often fails to distinguish important from trivial details, and does not provide the best references. He also complained about Wikipedia's lack of "persuasive analysis and interpretations, and clear and engaging prose".[33] Wikipedia's policies on original research, including unpublished synthesis of published data, disallow new analysis and interpretation not found in reliable sources.

A web-based survey conducted from December 2005 to May 2006 by Larry Press, a professor of Information Systems at California State University at Dominguez Hills, assessed the "accuracy and completeness of Wikipedia articles".[34] Fifty people accepted an invitation to assess an article. Of the fifty, seventy-six percent (76%) agreed or strongly agreed that the Wikipedia article was accurate, and forty-six percent (46%) agreed or strongly agreed that it was complete. Eighteen people compared the article they reviewed to the article on the same topic in the Encyclopædia Britannica. Opinions on accuracy were almost equal between the two encyclopedias (6 favoring Britannica, 7 favoring Wikipedia, 5 stating they were equal), and eleven of the eighteen (61%) found Wikipedia somewhat or substantially more complete, compared to seven of the eighteen (39%) for Britannica. The survey did not attempt random selection of the participants, and it is not clear how the participants were invited.[35]

The German computing magazine c't performed a comparison of Brockhaus Multimedial, Microsoft Encarta, and the German Wikipedia in October 2004: Experts evaluated 66 articles in various fields. In overall score, Wikipedia was rated 3.6 out of 5 points (B-).[36] A second test by c't in February 2007 used 150 search terms, of which 56 were closely evaluated, to compare four digital encyclopedias: Bertelsmann Enzyklopädie 2007, Brockhaus Multimedial premium 2007, Encarta 2007 Enzyklopädie and Wikipedia. It concluded: "We did not find more errors in the texts of the free encyclopedia than in those of its commercial competitors."[37]

Viewing Wikipedia as fitting the economists' definition of a perfectly competitive marketplace of ideas, George Bragues (University of Guelph-Humber), examined Wikipedia's articles on seven top Western philosophers: Aristotle, Plato, Immanuel Kant, René Descartes, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Thomas Aquinas, and John Locke. Wikipedia's articles were compared to a consensus list of themes culled from four reference works in philosophy. Bragues found that, on average, Wikipedia's articles only covered 52% of consensus themes. No errors were found, though there were significant omissions.[38]

PC Pro magazine (August 2007) asked experts to compare four articles (a small sample) in their scientific fields between Wikipedia, Britannica and Encarta. In each case Wikipedia was described as "largely sound", "well handled", "performs well", "good for the bare facts" and "broadly accurate." One article had "a marked deterioration towards the end" while another had "clearer and more elegant" writing, a third was assessed as less well written but better detailed than its competitors, and a fourth was "of more benefit to the serious student than its Encarta or Britannica equivalents." No serious errors were noted in Wikipedia articles, whereas serious errors were noted in one Encarta and one Britannica article.[39]

In October 2007, Australian magazine PC Authority published a feature article on the accuracy of Wikipedia. The article compared Wikipedia's content to other popular online encyclopedias, namely Britannica and Encarta. The magazine asked experts to evaluate articles pertaining to their field. Wikipedia was comparable to the other encyclopedias, topping the chemistry category.[40]

In December 2007, German magazine Stern published the results of a comparison between the German Wikipedia and the online version of the 15-volume edition of Brockhaus Enzyklopädie. The test was commissioned to a research institute (Cologne-based WIND GmbH), whose analysts assessed 50 articles from each encyclopedia (covering politics, business, sports, science, culture, entertainment, geography, medicine, history and religion) on four criteria (accuracy, completeness, timeliness and clarity), and judged Wikipedia articles to be more accurate on the average (1.6 on a scale from 1 to 6, versus 2.3 for Brockhaus with 1 as the best and 6 as the worst). Wikipedia's coverage was also found to be more complete and up to date; however, Brockhaus was judged to be more clearly written, while several Wikipedia articles were criticized as being too complicated for non-experts, and many as too lengthy.[41][42][43]

In its April 2008 issue British computing magazine PC Plus compared the English Wikipedia with the DVD editions of World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopædia Britannica, assessing for each the coverage of a series of random subjects. It concluded The quality of content is good in all three cases and advised Wikipedia users ''Be aware that erroneous edits do occur, and check anything that seems outlandish with a second source. But the vast majority of Wikipedia is filled with valuable and accurate information.''[44]

A 2008 paper in Reference Services Review compared nine Wikipedia entries on historical topics to their counterparts in Encyclopædia Britannica, The Dictionary of American History and American National Biography Online. The paper found that Wikipedia's entries had an overall accuracy rate of 80 percent, whereas the other encyclopedias had an accuracy rate of 95 to 96 percent.[45]

In April 2011, a study was published by Adam Brown of Brigham Young University in the journal PS Political Science & Politics which examined "thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and officeholders". The study found that while information in these articles tended to be accurate, the articles examined contained many errors of omission.[46]

A 2012 study co-authored by Shane Greenstein examined a decade of Wikipedia articles on United States politics and found that the more contributors there were to a given article, the more neutral it tended to be, in line with a narrow interpretation of Linus's Law.[47]

Reavley et al. (2012) compared the quality of articles on select mental health topics on Wikipedia with corresponding articles in Encyclopaedia Britannica and a psychiatry textbook. They asked experts to rate article content with regard to accuracy, up-to-dateness, breadth of coverage, referencing and readability. Wikipedia scored highest on all criteria except readability, and the authors concluded that Wikipedia is as good as or better than Britannica and a standard textbook.[9]

A 2014 perspective piece in the New England Journal of Medicine examined Wikipedia pages about 22 prescription drugs to determine if they had been updated to include the most recent FDA safety warnings. It found that 41% of these pages were updated within two weeks after the warning, 23% were updated more than two weeks later, and the remaining 36% had not been updated to include the warning as of more than 1 year later as of January 2014.[48]

A 2014 study in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association examined 19 Wikipedia articles about herbal supplements, and concluded that all of these articles contained information about their "therapeutic uses and adverse effects," but also concluded that "several lacked information on drug interactions, pregnancy, and contraindications." The study's authors therefore recommended that patients not rely solely on Wikipedia as a source for information about the herbal supplements in question.[49]

Another study published in 2014 found that Wikipedia's information about pharmacology was 99.7% accurate when compared to a pharmacology textbook, and that the completeness of such information on Wikipedia was 83.8%. The study also determined that completeness of these Wikipedia articles was lowest (68%) in the category "pharmacokinetics" and highest (91.3%) in the category "indication". The authors concluded that "Wikipedia is an accurate and comprehensive source of drug-related information for undergraduate medical education."[50]

Librarians' views
In a 2004 interview with The Guardian, self-described information specialist and Internet consultant[51] Philip Bradley said that he would not use Wikipedia and was "not aware of a single librarian who would". He then explained that "the main problem is the lack of authority. With printed publications, the publishers have to ensure that their data are reliable, as their livelihood depends on it. But with something like this, all that goes out the window."[52]

A 2006 review of Wikipedia by Library Journal, using a panel of librarians, "the toughest critics of reference materials, whatever their format", asked "long standing reviewers" to evaluate three areas of Wikipedia (popular culture, current affairs, and science), and concluded: "While there are still reasons to proceed with caution when using a resource that takes pride in limited professional management, many encouraging signs suggest that (at least for now) Wikipedia may be granted the librarian's seal of approval". A reviewer who "decided to explore controversial historical and current events, hoping to find glaring abuses" said, "I was pleased by Wikipedia's objective presentation of controversial subjects" but that "as with much information floating around in cyberspace, a healthy degree of skepticism and skill at winnowing fact from opinion are required." Other reviewers noted that there is "much variation" but "good content abounds."[53]

In 2007, Michael Gorman, former president of the American Library Association (ALA) stated in an Encyclopædia Britannica blog that "A professor who encourages the use of Wikipedia is the intellectual equivalent of a dietician who recommends a steady diet of Big Macs with everything."[54]

The library at Trent University in Ontario states of Wikipedia that many articles are "long and comprehensive", but that there is "a lot of room for misinformation and bias [and] a lot of variability in both the quality and depth of articles." It adds that Wikipedia has advantages and limitations, that it has "excellent coverage of technical topics" and articles are "often added quickly and, as a result, coverage of current events is quite good", comparing this to traditional sources which are unable to achieve this task. It concludes that, depending upon the need, one should think critically and assess the appropriateness of one's sources, "whether you are looking for fact or opinion, how in-depth you want to be as you explore a topic, the importance of reliability and accuracy, and the importance of timely or recent information", and adds that Wikipedia can be used in any event as a "starting point."[55]

An article for the Canadian Library Association (CLA)[56] discusses the Wikipedia approach, process and outcome in depth, commenting for example that in controversial topics, "what is most remarkable is that the two sides actually engaged each other and negotiated a version of the article that both can more or less live with." The author comments that:

Information Today (March 2006) cites librarian Nancy O'Neill (principal librarian for Reference Services at the Santa Monica Public Library System) as saying that "there is a good deal of skepticism about Wikipedia in the library community" but that "she also admits cheerfully that Wikipedia makes a good starting place for a search. You get terminology, names, and a feel for the subject."[57]

PC Pro (August 2007) cites the head of the European and American Collection at the British Library, Stephen Bury, as stating "Wikipedia is potentially a good thing – it provides a speedier response to new events, and to new evidence on old items." The article concludes: "For [Bury], the problem isn't so much the reliability of Wikipedia's content so much as the way in which it's used." "It's already become the first port of call for the researcher", Bury says, before noting that this is "not necessarily problematic except when they go no further." According to Bury, the trick to using Wikipedia is to understand that "just because it's in an encyclopedia (free, web or printed) doesn't mean it's true. Ask for evidence ... and contribute."[39]

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.[58][59] 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.[60]

Because Wikipedia can not 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.[58][61][62] 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.[63]

An empirical study conducted in 2006 by a Nottingham University Business School lecturer in Information Systems,[64] the subject of a review on the technical website Ars Technica,[65] 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)."[66]

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.[67]

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.[68]

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.[69]

Geoffrey Nunberg, an adjunct full professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information, has criticized Wikipedia for relying too much on citing sources even though the said sources may not be more accurate than Wikipedia itself.[70][71]

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",[72] 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".[73]