An empirical examination of Wikipedia's credibility

Abstract

Wikipedia is an free, online encyclopaedia which anyone can add content to or edit the existing content of. The idea behind Wikipedia is that members of the general public can add their own personal knowledge, anonymously if they wish. Wikipedia then evolves over time into a comprehensive knowledge base on all things. Its popularity has never been questioned, although its authority has. By its own admission, Wikipedia contains errors. A number of people have tested Wikipedia’s accuracy using destructive methods, i.e. deliberately inserting errors. This has been criticised by Wikipedia. This short study examines Wikipedia’s credibility by asking 258 research staff with a response rate of 21 percent, to read an article and assess its credibility, the credibility of its author and the credibility of Wikipedia as a whole. Staff were either given an article in their own expert domain or a random article. No difference was found between the two group in terms of their perceived credibility of Wikipedia or of the articles’ authors, but a difference was found in the credibility of the articles — 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.

Janitors of knowledge: constructing knowledge in the everyday life of Wikipedia editors

“…One way this issue has been approached is by empirically comparing content in Wikipedia with other encyclopaedias or with what are regarded as external facts (eg. Chesney, 2005;Giles, 2005;Holman Rector, 2007). Another way of approaching the trustworthiness of Wikipedia is from an epistemological perspective, taken from philosophy.…”

Digital Media and Perceptions of Source Credibility in Political Communication

“…Although research to date has not focused on the credibility of Wikipedia for political information specifically, studies have shown that user-created entries in Wikipedia are about as accurate as well-regarded print encyclopedias such as Encyclopaedia Britannica (Andrews, 2007;Giles, 2005;Williams, 2008), and entries from Wikipedia have been evaluated as credible, particularly by area experts (Chesney, 2006). This is true despite Internet users' concerns about the credibility of the information found there (Metzger, Flanagin, and Medders, 2010;Nofrina et al, 2009), which may be driving results of studies showing that people perceive the same information to be less credible if they think it comes from Wikipedia than if they think it comes from Encyclopaedia Britannica Kubiszewski, Noordewier, and Costanza, 2011).…”

A New Way to Use Wikipedia in Education: A Pilot Study of Map-like Wikipedia Visualization on iPad

“…Actually, the quality of Wikipedia was compared and found close to that of Encyclopedia Britannica [5]. However, another study showed that Wikipedia was not a totally reliable resource [6]. Nevertheless, even Wikipedia itself claimed 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."…”