Expert, Texpert, The Technoskeptic Wiki Laughs at You destinations like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Ebay. Chil- by Dan Rosenberg dren reflexively turn to Wikipedia when they- re search their school papers, eschewing traditional he World Book Encyclopedia boasts that encyclopedias. “outstanding scholars and specialists” from While it’s relatively harmless for a student to use major academic fields plan and evaluate its T Wikipedia to source a term paper, it raises eyebrows articles. when professionals use the site to find information, In contrast, World Book’s online competitor, particularly considering the site’s own declaration Wikipedia, cautions that some of its articles “are ad- that some of its articles are “rubbish.” One recent mittedly complete rubbish,” and advises users not to study, for instance, found that doctors frequently rely rely on Wikipedia to make critical decisions because on Wikipedia when researching diseases and medi- some articles contain errors. “We do not expect you cations. to trust us,” it warns. “Wikipedia is used by a very large number of… Yet increasingly, it appears people do trust Wiki- health care professionals as the first source of- in pedia. According to Alexa Web Analytics, which formation related to a particular disease or even a tracks Internet use, Wikipedia is the seventh-most particular medicine,” said Murray Aitken, executive visited web site, well ahead of popular director of the IMS Institute for Health Informatics, in a 2014 video statement that accompanied an IMS report on how doctors and patients use social me- dia. The report, titled, “Engaging Patients Through Social Media,” found that nearly 50 percent of U.S. physicians who go online for professional purposes use Wikipedia for information, especially on specific conditions. An analysis of Wikipedia articles on five com- mon health conditions showed that the content or meaning of the information in the articles had been changed an average of 16 to 46 times per month since they had been created, said Medscape, a medi- cal information web site. While all encyclopedias must keep current, it’s unclear whether every change in the Wikipedia ar- ticles about key diseases was necessary or accurate, and it’s not clear who made the changes and what their qualifications were to edit an encyclopedia article. A 2007 University of Minnesota study surveyed Wikipedia for cases of vandalism, in which incorrect information was deliberately inserted onto the accurate than other encyclopedias in existence in the site. The authors concluded that out of 51 billion total past. So it’s…never 100 percent, but it’s very high quality.” views during the study period, 188 million were damaged. Wikimedia responded to a request for comment on Eleven percent of these incidents persisted beyond 100 the site’s accuracy with citations of several of these stud- views, and a handful persisted beyond 100,000 views. ies that would seem to support their view that Wikipe- Wikipedia critic Gregory Kohs, founder of dia articles are actually more accurate than those from mywikibiz.com and co-founder of a Wikipedia discus- the online version of Encyclopaedia Brittanica, based on sion site called Wikipediocracy, said he conducted a matched pairs of a sample of articles in blind evaluations. months-long experiment in 2015 At the very least, these studies in which he deliberately inserted demonstrate that Wikipedia is ca- false information into 30 different “Would it surprise pable of generating some articles Wikipedia articles. In 63 percent of that are considered to be of a high the cases, he said, the phony facts you to learn that pain quality as evaluated by academ- lasted for weeks or months. from inflammation is ics in relevant fields of study. “Have you ever heard of Ecua- However, only two of the studies dorian students dressed in formal caused by the human were relatively recent (2012) and three-piece suits, leading hiking one of those was commissioned tours of the Galapagos Islands?” body’s release of by the Wikimedia Foundation it- Kohs wrote in a summary of his self. That study used only 22 ar- experiment, which the Washing- rhyolite, and igneous, ticles and did not specify how the ton Post referred to in a recent ar- volcanic rock?” articles were chosen. The report ticle. “Did you know that during the acknowledged that “no gener- testing of one of the first machines alisations can be made from this to make paper bags, two thumbs and a toe were lost to outcome.” There is also no comparison with print Ency- the cutting blade? And would it surprise you to learn that clopedias, ostensibly because no one is using them any pain from inflammation is caused by the human body’s more. release of rhyolite, an igneous, volcanic rock? In a quest for better accuracy, Wikipedia has become “None of these are true, but Wikipedia has been much more controlling about entries on the site, de- presenting these ‘facts’ as truth now for more than six manding that changes be sourced. “Wikipedia has a set of weeks. And the misinformation isn’t buried on seldom- policies and quality control processes,” its site says. “Edi- viewed pages, either. Those three howlers alone have tors can patrol changes as they happen, monitor specific been viewed by over 125,000 Wikipedia readers thus far.” topics of interest, follow a user’s track of contributions, tag problematic articles for further review, report van- dals, discuss the merits of each article with other users and much more. What are felt to be our best articles are awarded ‘featured article’ status, and problem pages are Alerts—like this one, more than six years old—clue readers into possible issues. nominated for deletion.” Wikipedia actively seeks to prevent and root out It’s this sort of rigid quality control that gives some vandalism, said Lila Tretikov, executive director of the contributors trust in Wikipedia. “I have some experience Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit charitable organiza- editing Wikipedia entries,” said Dave Freedman, co-author tion that hosts Wikipedia, among other wiki sites. “There of the 2015 book, “Equity Crowdfunding For Investors,” in are computer programs that scour the site for vandalism an email interview. “When doing so, I had a feeling, prob- and vulgarities, striking them out—almost instantly,” Tre- ably well founded, that my work would be scrutinized by tikov said in an interview on 60 Minutes last year. “Wiki- authoritative experts in the field, so I was careful to be pedians worldwide also act as fact checkers, looking for accurate. That’s accountability.” personal attacks and manipulation by PR people.” Kohs, however, says it’s relatively easy to post in- Tretikov added, “We’ve had numerous studies that formation on Wikipedia with poor sourcing and not get showed that as a body of knowledge, [Wikipedia is] more flagged by experts. “If you properly format nonsense in- serted into Wikipedia and especially include a reference source (even a bogus one) that conforms to Wikipedia’s style guidelines, there is a very good chance that your van- dalism will persist indefinitely,” Kohs wrote. Kohs, whose business writes Wikipedia entries for cli- ents, said companies have become quite good at updating Wikipedia pages about them or their products in ways that leave out parts of the story. For instance, he once wrote an article for Wikipedia about a company’s vaccine and included information in the article about some controver- sies involving the product. The article was published on Wikipedia with the controversial information. Then Kohs watched what happened. “By about a year later we saw the controversy section removed by what one might assume was an employee or other supporter of the medical company, and no one did The most edited Wikipedia page of all time. anything about it,” Kohs said in a telephone interview. “So for eight years the article has been devoid of any contro- 2010, according to The Wall Street Journal. While Britannica versial information about the vaccine.” said it could compete in the online world, it’s difficult for Political articles receive lots of give and take, as sup- any traditional encyclopedia when Wikipedia appears as porters and detractors of certain politicians fight over de- the number one result in Google for 56 percent of searches, scriptions. The most-edited Wikipedia article of all time, according to a 2012 study by Intelligent Positioning, Ltd. according to Wikimedia, is the one on President George W. In an interview in 2009 with online marketing or- Bush, with more than 45,000 edits as of 2014, or roughly 10 ganization Ecoconsultancy, Ian Grant, of Encyclopaedia changes per day, every day, for the 13 years Wikipedia had Britannica UK, said there’s a fundamental difference be- been online. tween his publication and Wikipedia. This “push and pull” on controversial people and sub- “I think the comparison is a non-debate, because we jects tends to give more emphasis to controversy than tra- offer something very different,” Grant said. “Wikipedia is a ditional encyclopedias, Kohs said. fun site to use and has a lot of interesting entries…but their “If you looked at how much media attention was giv- approach wouldn’t work for Encyclopaedia Britannica. My en to causes of the World Trade Center attacks, Wikipedia job is to create more awareness of our very different ap- should focus 95 percent on al-Qaeda and sleeper cells and proaches to publishing in the public mind. They’re a chisel, 5 percent on conspiracy theories,” Kohs said. “But I have a we’re a drill, and you need to have the correct tool for the job.” feeling a lot more attention is paid to the conspiracy the- In an email interview, Britannica spokesman Tom ory. It may get overplayed because there’s so much desire Panelas said close to 100 percent of the company’s revenue to document the theories, but also to prove why they’re now comes from online services. That’s up from around 60 wrong. So you get a lot of volume about things most ra- percent in 2009. The company continues to be profitable. tional thinking people deciding to design an encyclopedia He added that it’s not really accurate to compare wouldn’t spend a lot of time with.” Britannica’s business to Wikipedia’s. “For example, a big Indeed, Wikipedia features a 21,000-word article called, part of our job is serving students and educators with digi- “9/11 Conspiracy Theories.” That compares with 18,000 tal products specially tailored to their needs, something words in the main article on the Sept. 11 attacks. Wikipedia doesn’t do at all,” Panelas said. “We’ve gone Controversy or not, Wikipedia has changed business well beyond encyclopedias and reference in what we do models for traditional encyclopedias. In 2012, Encyclopae- today, but because the word ‘encyclopedia’ is there, people dia Britannica announced it was going fully digital. Print assume we’re doing the same thing as Wikipedia. We’re sales, which had peaked in 1990 at 120,000, fell to 12,000 in not.”