Can online Encyclopedia be trusted?

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VS.

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As a student, I rely a lot on online information especially when we live in this era where we are very dependent on online resources to do our assignments. Some of the online sources that I highly rely on is the 'WIKIPEDIA' and 'ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA'. According to Diana Reep (2006), a website's content has to be relevant to the users and whether the users need or want the information and as a student I find that both of these sites essential. However my lecturers advised us, the students, not to use Wikipedia but we are allowed to use Encyclopedia Britannica due to the fact that it is considered more reliable and credible when both are compared to each other. But how sure are we that Encyclopedia Britannica is a better source than Wikipedia?


Research Conducted by the Nature

Three years back, The British journal, Nature, conducted a research that examines the credibility and reliability of these two sources. Experts from that research have found that the level of accuracy for Wikipedia is not far apart from Encyclopedia Britannica. The study shows that Wikipedia had 4 errors per article whereas Encyclopedia Britannica has 3 errors per article (zonk 2005) and the type of error is misinterpretation of concepts. According to the BBC news (2005) report, 162 factual errors and false statement was found in Wikipedia whereas Encyclopedia Britannica has 123. Though Wikipedia has more errors when compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, but the difference between the two sources are not that far apart. Therefore Wikipedia is almost as accurate as Encyclopedia Britannica.


How can Wikipedia improves on its credibility?

Nielsen and Morkes (1997) stated that credibility of the website is important because online users wouldn't want to feed by false statement. In my opinion, Wikipedia should do a proper citing and referencing for their websites in order to gain the user's trust. Nielsen and Morkes (1997) also said that outbound hypertext links will increase the credibility of the website and make the site more believable. Currently Wikipedia has outbound links in their websites therefore they should maintain that. If Wikipedia follows these instructions, one day it might be accepted by our lecturers as an academic source for assignments.




Reference List:
1. Morkes, J and Nielsen, J (1998), Applying Writing Guidelines to Web Pages, viewed on 10 June 2008
http://www.useit.com/papers/webwriting/rewriting.html

2. Reep, DC 2006, Technical writing: principles, strategies, and readings , 6th edn, Pearson Education , Inc, New York.

3. 'Wikipedia survives research test' 2005, 15 December 2008 BBC news, viewed on 10 June 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4530930.stm

4. Zonk 2005, 'Wikipedia's Accuracy compared to Britannica', SlashDot, viewed on 11 June 2008
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/12/15/1352207&tid=95&tid=14