Monday, October 31, 2011

Wikipedia vs Britannica

At the speed that new information is created, it is hard for anyone to keep up with it. Even Encyclopedia Britannica falls behind now. However, with Wikipedia being a site created with mostly user generated information it does not falter in this way. "Between 2008 and 2010, articles in medial and scientific fields such as pathology, toxicology, oncology and pharmaceuticals comparing Wikipedia to other professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of the same high standards."

Of course that last quote came from wikipedia itself, but wikipedia is found to be more accurate on a constant basis than Encyclopedia Britannica because of the rate it is updated and reviewed, and subsequently changed to contain correct information. Whereas if Britannica is wrong, it tends to stay incorrect for a much longer period of time in relation to Wikipedia. In 10 years there will no doubt still be people who go into Wikipedia and put in incorrect information, purposely or not, but I suspect that more professional people will be adding correct information faster and there will be stricter policies to try and stem false information from entering their databases.

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