Wounding Wikipedia

The Gotham Gal was at a dinner party this past week with a bunch of smart people we know and the discussion turned to Wikipedia. A comment was made that 50% of Wikipedia is wrong.

Talk about wrong. 100% of that comment is wrong.

The truth is that >95%+ of Wikipedia is true and there are thousands of people who make it their business every day to make that number go higher and higher. The BBC recently published a study by British academics that backed up the accuracy of Wikipedia.

But there are some concerns for sure. I spent time on Wikipedia doing research on Heather Wilson prior to posting my thoughts on her. I had to pause and wonder if what I was reading was true.

Because the NY Times had a piece in the editorial section about senate and congressional staffers editing out parts of Wikipedia entries on their bosses today. That is so uncool.

Tom Harkin, Norm Coleman, Dianne Feinstein, and Joe Biden's entries were mentioned as examples of entries that had seen mysterious edits of embarassing items.

Well those politicians just went down one more notch in my opinion of them. If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen. The truth may hurt, but if its the truth, it should not be edited out of Wikipedia.

UPDATE: The 95% number I use in this post is based on my personal experience. If you read the comments, there are people who think that's too high. One commenter says "I liken it more to 80/15/5 accurate/not quite right/incorrect". Whatever the number, its not 50% by a long shot.

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Posted February 11, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology

Comments

Wow, the comment that '50% of Wikipedia is wrong' sure is foolish. I'm surprised you'd follow it up with something equally as ludicrous as '>95%+ of Wikipedia is true'.

No one knows the percentages, and neither you or the Gotham Gal's super smart fellow partygoers have a bead on them. Jimmy Wales seems correct to me when he says that there are niches of Wikipedia that are much more 'stable' and consistent in their accuracy than others. Pop culture for example.

Anyhow, here's the article in the British journal Nature that you were likely referring to:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html

Your last paragraph is interesting when you read it after reading the first two sentences of your mantra. If the power of Wikipedia is in the editing, then who has the monopoly on the truth?

Posted by: Sebastian | Feb 11, 2006 2:47:49 PM

It's a great resource and I use it often - but I definitely wouldn't call it 95% accurate. I liken it more to 80/15/5 accurate/not quite right/incorrect. The recent nature study backs this view to some
extent.

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

Posted by: Patent Guy | Feb 11, 2006 3:09:37 PM

I wonder if you're taking the wrong message from that article.

Given the edit wars coming from government IP addresses, my take is that bios should be written by third parties.

Posted by: fishbane | Feb 11, 2006 5:01:43 PM

A while back some reporter from the Wall St. Journal picked three disparate subjects on Wikipedia and asked academics who specialize in each area to review the Wikipedia entry for substance and accuracy.

As I recall, each academic said of the entry he or she read something like "It's impressive. It gets most things right and doesn't leave out too much for an introduction."

Of course, three topics out of tens of thousands is hardly representative, but it destroys the idea that Wikipedia is wholly unreliable.

Posted by: Dave | Feb 11, 2006 5:48:47 PM

My daughter had a homework assignment about the biathlon this weekend. Her teacher gave the class a list of five websites about the olympics and they're just supposed to come in monday and talk about several "facts" about the sport they were assigned. we went through the sites together which included the official olympics site, the usoc for kids site, etc. - they were ok - we learned a few things. Then we hopped over to wikipedia. You can love or hate the wikipedia, but you can't beat it! Ten times the detail, neatly broken into history, past winners, rules, etc. It's the freaking biathlon and the wikipedia entry might as well be BiathlonFans.org it's so detailed. Is some minority percentage of it probably wrong? of course. The same thing can be said of any history text.

Posted by: Dick Costolo | Feb 11, 2006 7:25:37 PM

Spell check buddy.

"I liken it more to 80/15/5 accurate/not quite right/incorrect". Whatever the number, its not 50% by a long shot."

Its should be it is.

Posted by: Teddy | Feb 12, 2006 12:19:22 AM

Teddy-

Get a life buddy.

Who cares? Typos happen. Personally I think time is more valuable than grammatic accuracy when blogging.

Posted by: jackson | Feb 12, 2006 12:35:10 PM

I've seen some of the complaints about Wikipedia editting by staffers, and the other (likely bad) articles I've seen just had people outraged that staffers were editing them. I don't understand that point. Who else is going to give you the baseline bio?

Should Ted Kennedy's people write the bio? Yeah. Should they then go to war to keep people like me from mentioning the times he was kicked out of school, his apparent alcoholism, and that little incident with the dead girl and the non-floating car? Hell no. Too many people are in love with Wikipedia. It's not God, despite what Jimmy Wales says. It's good, especially for learning and a first pass at a subject.

Posted by: hey | Feb 12, 2006 7:44:42 PM

A VC

Musings of a VC in NYC