A Breakdown of Quality Flaws in Wikipedia
Authors | Maik Anderka Benno Maria Stein |
|---|---|
Publication date | 2012 |
ISBN | 978-145031237-0 |
DOI | 10.1145/2184305.2184309 |
Links | Original Preprint |
A Breakdown of Quality Flaws in Wikipedia - scientific work about Wikipedia quality published in 2012, written by Maik Anderka and Benno Maria Stein.
Contents
Overview
Wikipedia, the widely-used online encyclopedia, serves as a prime representation of the growing trend of user-generated content on the Internet. However, despite its success, it frequently faces criticism for its perceived low-quality information. This largely stems from Wikipedia's core policy, which allows anyone to edit its content. Given Wikipedia's status as a primary knowledge resource for countless individuals worldwide, the identification and addressing of such low-quality information is a critical task. Existing research on Wikipedia's quality assessment tends to focus either on small article samples or on individual quality aspects, such as accuracy or formality. This study, however, sets its sights on a comprehensive exploration of quality flaws, providing the first all-inclusive delineation of Wikipedia's quality flaw structure. The authors carried out an in-depth exploratory analysis, unearthing the existing quality flaws, their distribution throughout Wikipedia, and the extent of the flawed content. A key revelation of the study is that more than a quarter of English Wikipedia articles contain at least one quality flaw, with 70% of these issues related to article verifiability.
The distribution of these flaws across topics was established based on Wikipedia's category system, with "Category:Articles" being the primary point for examining categories containing only articles. The authors employed the 24 direct subcategories of "Category:Main topic classifications" as the top-level topics.
Relation to Information Quality on Wikipedia
The study has significant implications for the information quality on Wikipedia. The in-depth analysis of quality flaws, their distribution, and the extent of flawed content provides valuable insights that can aid in the development of more effective strategies for identifying and addressing low-quality information. The authors' findings, particularly the high percentage of quality flaws related to article verifiability, underscore the importance of establishing robust mechanisms for verifying information and managing user contributions. This could contribute to the improvement of Wikipedia's overall information quality, enhancing its reliability as a primary source of knowledge for users around the world. The study also underlines the potential of using Wikipedia's category system as a framework for assessing and improving information quality across different topic areas.
Embed
Wikipedia Quality
Anderka, Maik; Stein, Benno Maria. (2012). "[[A Breakdown of Quality Flaws in Wikipedia]]". ACM International Conference Proceeding Series 2012, pp. 11-18. ISBN: 978-145031237-0. DOI: 10.1145/2184305.2184309.
English Wikipedia
{{cite journal |last1=Anderka |first1=Maik |last2=Stein |first2=Benno Maria |title=A Breakdown of Quality Flaws in Wikipedia |date=2012 |isbn=978-145031237-0 |doi=10.1145/2184305.2184309 |url=https://wikipediaquality.com/wiki/A_Breakdown_of_Quality_Flaws_in_Wikipedia |journal=ACM International Conference Proceeding Series 2012, pp. 11-18}}
HTML
Anderka, Maik; Stein, Benno Maria. (2012). "<a href="https://wikipediaquality.com/wiki/A_Breakdown_of_Quality_Flaws_in_Wikipedia">A Breakdown of Quality Flaws in Wikipedia</a>". ACM International Conference Proceeding Series 2012, pp. 11-18. ISBN: 978-145031237-0. DOI: 10.1145/2184305.2184309.
