[Air-l] Nature on wikipedia

[Steinberger Peter]

Nature, the best in science journalism as they say about themselves, has
compared Wikipedia with (the old and edited and therefore better???)
Encylopaedia Britannica.

Nature writes:
Yet Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be
great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were
chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a
broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer
review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two
encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which
encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent
out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts,
were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each
encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or
misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica,
respectively.

http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html