Wikipedia to Tinge Suspect Entries With Orange Cast

"Wikipedia is not riddled with errors, in Testa's view: "Nine times out of 10, I would say, an entry is accurate."

The problem is that 1 percent of errors."

Only out by a factor of 10. Still, pretty bad for an article about accuracy of information.

Even at 1%, the three million (plus) articles on English Wikipedia have about 30,000 articles with errors.

Would that be comparable to the Encyclopœdia Britannica?

I think so, Gus. The EB has about 65.000 articles. The majority very short (under 750 words) and only 699 long in-depth articles. I'm sure there are at least 650 articles in there that have errors.

One of the things that makes Wikipedia problematic isn't their "error rate", since anything made by people is going to have errors. What I've seen statistically is that the Wikipedia rate compares well with other "professional" publications. A little more, a little less, but not by huge margins.

The problems are the small number of very well-trafficked articles which people deliberately alter to fit their opinion of "correct" without regard for what is "fact".

With that regard, I am really looking forward to Wikipedia's new moderation system that vets changes before they appear. IMHO Wikipedia's main problem is that anyone can contribute without any oversight. Imagine anyone having commit access to the Linux kernel tree and that all changes could be committed without review from one of the subsystem maintainers!

Sander --

It will be interesting. Hope it doesn't dampen the enthusiasm of good contributors. I doubt that it will. It's more interesting to be part of something good.