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The reliability of Wikipedia (primarily of the English-language edition), compared to other encyclopedias and more specialized sources, has been assessed in many ways, including statistically, through comparative review, analysis of the historical patterns, and strengths and weaknesses inherent in the editing process unique to Wikipedia. Incidents of conflicted editing, and the use of Wikipedia for 'revenge editing' (inserting false, defamatory or biased statements into biographies) have attracted frequent publicity. An early study in the journal ''Nature'' said that in 2005, Wikipedia's scientific articles came close to the level of accuracy in ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' and had a similar rate of "serious errors".〔 The study (which was not in itself peer reviewed) was cited in many news articles such as this: 〕 The study by ''Nature'' was disputed by ''Encyclopædia Britannica'',〔(Fatally Flawed: Refuting the recent study on encyclopedic accuracy by the journal Nature ) ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Inc., March 2006〕 and later ''Nature'' replied to this refutation with both a formal response and a point-by-point rebuttal of ''Britannica''s main objections. Between 2008 and 2012, articles in medical and scientific fields such as pathology, toxicology,〔 oncology, pharmaceuticals,〔 and psychiatry comparing Wikipedia to professional and peer-reviewed sources found that Wikipedia's depth and coverage were of a high standard. Concerns regarding readability were raised in a study published by the American Society of Clinical Oncology and a study published in ''Psychological Medicine'' (2012),〔 while a study published in the ''European Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology'' raised concerns about reliability. Wikipedia is open to anonymous and collaborative editing, so assessments of its reliability usually include examination of how quickly false or misleading information is removed. An early study conducted by IBM researchers in 2003—two years following Wikipedia's establishment—found that "vandalism is usually repaired extremely quickly—so quickly that most users will never see its effects"〔(history flow: results ) IBM Collaborative User Experience Research Group, 2003〕 and concluded that Wikipedia had "surprisingly effective self-healing capabilities".〔Fernanda B. Viégas, Martin Wattenberg, Kushal Dave: (Studying Cooperation and Conflict between Authors with history flow Visualizations ). Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 575–582, Vienna 2004, ISBN 1-58113-702-8〕 Several incidents have also been publicized in which false information has lasted for a long time in Wikipedia. In May 2005, an anonymous editor started a controversy when he created an article about John Seigenthaler containing several false and defamatory statements.〔 The inaccurate information remained uncorrected for four months. A biographical article in French Wikipedia portrayed a "Léon-Robert de L'Astran" as an 18th-century anti-slavery ship owner, which led Ségolène Royal, a presidential candidate, to praise him. A student investigation later determined that the article was a hoax and de L'Astran had never existed.〔 == Wikipedia editing model == Wikipedia allows anonymous editing: contributors are not required to provide any identification, or even an email address. A 2007 study at Dartmouth College of the English Wikipedia noted that, contrary to usual social expectations, anonymous editors were some of Wikipedia's most productive contributors of valid content. The Dartmouth study was criticized by John Timmer of the Ars Technica website for its methodological shortcomings. While Wikipedia has the potential for extremely rapid growth and harnesses an entire community—much in the same way as other communal projects such as Linux—it goes further in trusting the same community to self-regulate and become more proficient at quality control. Wikipedia has harnessed the work of millions of people to produce the world's largest knowledge-based site along with software to support it, resulting in more than nineteen million articles written, across more than 280 different language versions, in fewer than twelve years.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=WikiStats by S23 – List of Wikipedias )〕 For this reason, there has been considerable interest in the project both academically and from diverse fields such as information technology, business, project management, knowledge acquisition, software programming, other collaborative projects and sociology, to explore whether the Wikipedia model can produce quality results, what collaboration in this way can reveal about people, and whether the scale of involvement can overcome the obstacles of individual limitations and poor editorship which would otherwise arise. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Reliability of Wikipedia」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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