Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?

Wikipedia is fast becoming a key information source for many despite criticism that it is unreliable and inaccurate. A number of recommendations have been made to sort the chaff from the wheat in Wikipedia, among which is the idea of color-coding article segment edits according to age (Cross, 2006)....

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Main Authors: LUYT, Brendan, TAY, Chee Hsien Aaron (ZHENG Zhixian), HONG, Cheng Kian
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Language:English
Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2008
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Online Access:https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/library_research/105
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spelling sg-smu-ink.library_research-11072018-02-08T01:12:11Z Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution? LUYT, Brendan TAY, Chee Hsien Aaron (ZHENG Zhixian) HONG, Cheng Kian Wikipedia is fast becoming a key information source for many despite criticism that it is unreliable and inaccurate. A number of recommendations have been made to sort the chaff from the wheat in Wikipedia, among which is the idea of color-coding article segment edits according to age (Cross, 2006). Using data collected as part of a wider study published in Nature, this article examines the distribution of errors throughout the life of a select group of Wikipedia articles. The survival time of each “error edit” in terms of the edit counts and days was calculated and the hypothesis that surviving material added by older edits is more trustworthy was tested. Surprisingly, we find that roughly 20% of errors can be attributed to surviving text added by the first edit, which confirmed the existence of a “first-mover” effect (Viegas, Wattenberg, & Kushal, 2004) whereby material added by early edits are less likely to be removed. We suggest that the sizable number of errors added by early edits is simply a result of more material being added near the beginning of the life of the article. Overall, the results do not provide support for the idea of trusting surviving segments attributed to older edits because such edits tend to add more material and hence contain more errors which do not seem to be offset by greater opportunities for error correction by later edits. 2008-01-01T08:00:00Z text https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/library_research/105 Research Collection Library eng Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University Information Literacy Library and Information Science
institution Singapore Management University
building SMU Libraries
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider SMU Libraries
collection InK@SMU
language English
topic Information Literacy
Library and Information Science
spellingShingle Information Literacy
Library and Information Science
LUYT, Brendan
TAY, Chee Hsien Aaron (ZHENG Zhixian)
HONG, Cheng Kian
Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
description Wikipedia is fast becoming a key information source for many despite criticism that it is unreliable and inaccurate. A number of recommendations have been made to sort the chaff from the wheat in Wikipedia, among which is the idea of color-coding article segment edits according to age (Cross, 2006). Using data collected as part of a wider study published in Nature, this article examines the distribution of errors throughout the life of a select group of Wikipedia articles. The survival time of each “error edit” in terms of the edit counts and days was calculated and the hypothesis that surviving material added by older edits is more trustworthy was tested. Surprisingly, we find that roughly 20% of errors can be attributed to surviving text added by the first edit, which confirmed the existence of a “first-mover” effect (Viegas, Wattenberg, & Kushal, 2004) whereby material added by early edits are less likely to be removed. We suggest that the sizable number of errors added by early edits is simply a result of more material being added near the beginning of the life of the article. Overall, the results do not provide support for the idea of trusting surviving segments attributed to older edits because such edits tend to add more material and hence contain more errors which do not seem to be offset by greater opportunities for error correction by later edits.
format text
author LUYT, Brendan
TAY, Chee Hsien Aaron (ZHENG Zhixian)
HONG, Cheng Kian
author_facet LUYT, Brendan
TAY, Chee Hsien Aaron (ZHENG Zhixian)
HONG, Cheng Kian
author_sort LUYT, Brendan
title Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
title_short Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
title_full Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
title_fullStr Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
title_full_unstemmed Improving Wikipedia's accuracy: Is edit age a solution?
title_sort improving wikipedia's accuracy: is edit age a solution?
publisher Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University
publishDate 2008
url https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/library_research/105
_version_ 1712301663873662976