Wikipedia ranks higher than “leading German-language encyclopedia”.
Shane May 24th, 2008
It is ironic that I found this article. Just recently I had posted about my concerns that schools were banning Wikipedia, and a friend of mine commented here stating that he thought Wikipedia was unreliable. He is from Germany, that is why finding this NYTimes article is ironic.
It turns out that Wikipedia is actually ranked higher than some ‘real’ encyclopedias…
when WIND Research Institute made a comparison of German language Wikipedia to the traditionally leading German-language encyclopedia, Brockhaus, for Stern Magazine, it found that Wikipedia was of higher quality. On a scale where 1 is the best and 6 is the worst, Wikipedia’s average rating was 1.7, while Brockhaus average rating was 2.7.
Most importantly, Wikipedia is not as easily censored as a traditional encyclopedia. And if there comes a day that Wikipedia falls under the corporate glare, someone else can just create a new one.
Here is a random piece of information from Wikipedia that you won’t find in a traditional one:
Did you know that there are ‘Free Speech Zones‘ set up for important political events in the US? These are cages basically, where protesters are allowed to ‘exercise free speech’. They are only allowed to protest inside these designated areas.
Land of the Free…or tiny caged ‘Area of the Free’?
I mean, we wouldn’t want to disturb the President when he is talking, right?
I assume Im this german friend you are talking of
Ok, so let me tell you some things concerning this topic:
1) Again: I use wikipedia a lot, I totally second its private usage and I think wikipedia is the best invention on the internet I´ve ever seen.
2) Still I think its right to ban wikipedia from schools & unis. With “ban” I mean “not to allow to use it as quote in scientific sheets”. Reason: You dont know who has written the article on wikipedia you are just quoting, it can be an expert, it also can be a complete layman. Also if you quote today the articl may have been removed/changed by tomorrow. So if tomorrow people want to check the source of what you have quoted they probably find something completely different. That´s why wikipedia is not reliable in my opinion.
Hmm, ok point taken.
Damn you and your logic man! lol
I think there are multiple reasons that Wikipedia ranks so high. Briefly speaking, the keyword is in both URL and meta title and there are lots of contextual links on the web pages of wikipedia.
Whats really interesting is that the Stern magazine (which assigned the research company) and the “brockhaus publishing house are both subsidiaries of the Bertelsmann Group. Considering that the Brockhaus (book edition) experiences huge salary losses lately due to the increasing usage of online encyclopedias like wikipedia, I would have expected nother outcome of that research (=that Bertelsmann would have influenced the research to push Brockhaus).
btw; Is there a chance to get rid of that annoying bar at the right hand side of this blog? WHenever you write a long text it gets hidden behind that bar so that you cant see what you were just writing. I mean there isnt any content in that bar at all so why has it to be there? :S
What bar? Not sure what you mean. There is a sidebar that goes from the top to the bottom, has my xml feed, adverts and my del.icio.us links. do you mean that bar?
Yes…..but for me the bar continues after the del.icio thingy for quite a bit so whenever Im one of the first ppl to reply I face that named problem.
btw: Good find regarding the free speech zones. Its impressive (in a negative sense) how fast and still subtle democratic values can be abandoned.
On on a funny note–>
1st amandment zone for kids:
http://www.ml-matratzen.de/images/bbyby_lfstll_all_402.jpg
I don’t think that access to wikipedia should be banned in Schools. The innaccuracies contained within should be a valuable aspect of a students educational experience.
I think both Wikipedia as well as encylopedia are very imporatant and both give us immense knowledge.I think there is no point banning Wikipedia in schools as it contains good enough content.
To me, if you read one article on topic “A” and believe everything it says and never cross-examine it, then you aren’t very smart. I agree that Wikipedia gets stuff wrong as well as right, just like everyone else in this world. No matter what you hear from anywhere or anyone, you should do what you can to determine its accurateness.
The thing about the search engines is that they don’t read both articles and determine which is more true and thus ranking higher, so the truth doesn’t always float to the top.
Wikipedia rocks. I see no reason to ban it as it’s a great additional resource to use for researching…
The Wiki is an immense resource that really pulls together all that is good about shared knowledge and the power of the interweb. Education needs to embrace tools and facilities like this, not ban them.
Well I like Wikipedia a lot. it simply gives me the most simple to most complex definition of a particular thing. Whenever I had to start a search i always start it with Wikipedia
Now a day’s information about anything is available on the internet. We just have to do a little effort and we are able to search the thing which we want. It happens never when we are not able to find the information which we need.
Were regularly advised to avoid wikipedia at college on the basis that it is full of redundant dribble. It’s ironic that many of my essay compose of items that have been foudn on wikipedia and are scoring quite high.
It happens never when we are not able to find the information which we need.
here is a sidebar that goes from the top to the bottom, has my xml feed, adverts and my del.icio.us links. do you mean that bar?