Can you use Wikipedia as a trusted source?

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"I found it on Wikipedia." Often, that phrase, in one way or another, is a cause of mistrust in information one of us gave us in an interview on a scientific, social, or political topic. We know that Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia, One to enter into any of its themes and adjust them as he wishes, so you can enter it and put your opinion, your political, religious, or ethnic orientation, and then come out to say that it is information found in Wikipedia, is not it ?!

Yes, in fact, it is much more complicated, but let's start by talking about the quality of an encyclopedia edited by 141,000 active members representing only half of all editors. We ask about the reasons why people go to Wikipedia, We know that the number of times people read topics on Wikipedia goes beyond 18 billion times a month. This means only a few dozen decimal places of three subjects per month per person on the planet. Wikipedia will help us answer that question.

Why do you access Wikipedia?

A few months ago, the free encyclopedia published the results of a survey of 215,000 readers in 14 languages, asking its readers in general, "Why do you read this article on Wikipedia today?" Here, 35% The readers of Wikipedia said that they came to search for a specific fact, while 33% said they had just come to a topic, and 32% said they came to Wikipedia to look more deeply on a particular topic. When we asked respondents about motivation Which prompted them to access Wikipedia and search their own topics, whether it was a personal decision or a result For issues raised through various means, the results came unexpectedly.

Where the basic desire to learn first place, followed by the search for a topic raised on the means of communication or television, then that recently with others raised their desire to research, and then homework, the current events, until we find that it was only for the purpose of random exploration. Wikipedia, therefore, is gaining the trust of most of its readers. They see it as a source of learning, especially when 55% of them admit that they have a great deal of familiarity with their themes and the way they are presented.

At that point, we can turn to a famous study published in the 2005 edition of the famous Nature journal, which attempts to compare 42 scientific subjects from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia Britannica, the most famous encyclopaedia The idea is simply that a group of specialists will study these articles and look for their mistakes, then write each of them a presentation of the article, then the team analyze the data and extract the results.

Wikipedia is at stake

Of course, although there are signs of the thinness of the language in which the Wikipedia articles have been written in comparison with the British Encyclopedia, and the more bad the way they are presented, the results have spawned a large wave of controversy that still exists. Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia. To add a subject about the ratings of stars, but anyone else is not competent also has the same ability to modify the article itself, in contrast the British Encyclopedia is a completely different case 5 , written by 100 full-time employees, and more than 4400 competent shareholders, including award-winning Nobel, does not allow random adjustments.

On the other hand, Journal of Clinical Oncology, in 2011, tried to search behind the mechanism obtained by cancer patients and their relatives on the information on the Internet, and the accuracy of their sources, there were 6 comparison between articles on 10 types of cancer in Wikipedia and specialized sources to say that both exporters had the same accuracy and depth, and even Wikipedia, according to the results of the study, more updated academic sources, but in those subjects about cancer, was the least popular source, because the method used by Wikipedia articles was more Complex and less visible to them.

The Guardian 7 also tried, in a special report on trust in Wikipedia, to do a kind of survey by asking a group of specialists on articles related to their specialization in Wikipedia and give them grades from 0 to 8 on the quality, accuracy and ease, here came the views of most specialists To say that for accuracy and depth of information, Wikipedia is largely true, but there are problems, however, that include poverty or complexity of style, and poor balance by giving points, or areas, unimportant attention more than others.

In fact, with a little research, you will always find many studies 8, 9, 10, 11 and surveys that show that the quality of Wikipedia, in particular scientific subjects, and medical on a more private face, is greater than you think by a clear margin, Indeed, all of this confidence is one of its pioneers, but that sensitivity gradually disappears as we get closer to more controversial topics, even in science. For example, an important study 12 in the famous journal PLOS ONE several years ago showed that there is a problem Clear some dialectical issues such as evolution, climate change, and acid rain.

When the topics are controversial, invisible battles begin between people who do not know each other to modify articles on certain topics to suit their orientation

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Where the researchers compared these subjects with three other undisputed continental drift, general relativity, and the standard model of particle physics. Here the results came to say that the rates of entry by editors of the free encyclopedia and the fact that they have already edited those articles of controversial domains such as It is clear from those that occur in the case of less controversial topics such as the standard model of particle physics, for example.

In subjects such as climate change, we can monitor changes on the same page at a huge rate per day by one, with a great possibility to delete or add a lot of information (110 words a day), like a full paragraph, for example, in exchange for deleting or adding something Approximates only ten words per day for the less controversial scientific topics, and of course this clearly affects the degree of information stability, and therefore its accuracy, in the free encyclopedia, especially when those changes are highly biased and completely wrong.

Wars of liberation!

Within the English Wikipedia, the most controversial topics were George Bush, then Anarchism, then the Prophet Muhammad, then the list of WWE heroes, then global warming, circumcision, the United States, Christ, race, intelligence and Christianity. In which the greatest religious controversy took place, Ash'ariyya came first, with other subjects such as the Shiites, Sunni Islam, the Prophet Muhammad, Ali, Syria, Egypt, and Yasser Habib, a controversial Shiite cleric. In fact, Easy to read, from the sources below and see the rest of the languages, It's really interesting.

When we add overlaps between languages, the basic observation is that "every one cries for his own", meaning that each geographical area looks at topics related to its politics, history, cultures, etc. But only in the Middle East does the controversy become universal, The wars of Gaza, the Holocaust and the Prophet Muhammad are a controversial area in almost all languages ​​and on all geographic domains, especially Europe and America. For example, you will find that there is a high frequency in the editing of the Prophet Muhammad page by the Arabic and Persian languages , As well as the controversy over the subject of "Israel" across several languages, but light The most important thing in the Arab region between Arabic and Hebrew is the "wars of liberation" in Wikipedia, which is a real reflection of the reality of debate on the ground.

But when we look at the more turbulent subjects, 15 because of the wars of liberation, of course, politics (25% of the whole debate), politics, political parties, ideologies and political movements are the most controversial, followed by topics related to geographical locations , Followed by history, then sex, gender issues, human rights and the environment, followed by only 6% of the controversy, especially on specific topics we talked about earlier, while less The controversial topics are those related to music (3% p I).

We can conclude that Wikipedia is very safe when we talk about scientific subjects, but even closer to the specialized university and non-open encyclopaedias such as the British Encyclopedia. Despite all these editorial wars on dialectical topics, for example, Are some of the great sources at the bottom of each article, and although there may be a clear bias in the selection of those sources, in dialectical issues, sources can be tracked to discover these degrees of bias yourself.

The wisdom of the crowd

Next time, when you visit Wikipedia, expect to see more content than you think, but it is also a more troubling issue in dialectical topics, especially about personalities, or subjects that have a political or religious dimension. But in the end, For the general reader, or the researcher for specific information in order to write a school research, scientific report, or the work of a script for a video knowledge, here we mean - unfortunately - the English version only, is two points:

The first is the ability to provide strong entries in several topics through which you can get acquainted with the general overview of this subject, and then you do your search for these side topics more specifically, Wikipedia then give you tree and branches, and you can follow the branches as You love, and the second is its sources, the encyclopedia articles contain a fascinating and fun source of resources that can open to you, while reviewing a topic, several doors to learn more deeply on this subject. For the purposes of learning, Wikipedia is, to date, the best possible source.

In fact, this leads to some reflection. Although there is a great possibility that someone will destroy all of this vast source of knowledge, this does not happen. The encyclopaedia is getting stronger day after day, and it is becoming more widespread. The number of subjects and the number of editors increases. And deep, we are here in front of the Crowed model, where a huge group of humans, each with their own purpose and abilities, is interacting to make something even greater in its total power, something we see only in the highly organized ants and bees worlds Is evidence that humans can be wiser, and we are in front of a very new world Audacity, in front of an open future, and the potential breadth of the galaxy, so; let me quote here from Vilsovi favorite "Karl Popper," Our duty is to remain optimistic.