As Deutsche Welle notes, Wikipedia in certain areas can indeed compete even with Britannica, but one of its main problems is that content can be changed at any moment.
Can the quality of a publicly accessible online encyclopedia be measured in principle? The quality of an article is virtually impossible to assess by the number of words or characters in it. It only seems that long texts contain more details, and therefore they were worked on longer and more carefully. Especially since the same formulations in different languages are conveyed by completely different numbers of words, letters, and characters.
The same sentence in German will consist of six words, while in some other language it will take up two lines. File size also does not play a significant role in the debate about objectivity, since some systems require more storage space than others, notes one of Germany's leading Wikipedia experts, Martin Rulsch.
Rulsch is an employee of the German branch of Wikimedia, the organization behind Wikipedia. Having worked on this project for many years and administered content in different languages, he knows where the weak and strong points of the encyclopedia are. According to the expert, an article does not always become better if many people worked on it: if the first version was carefully crafted, then hardly any changes or additions would be needed.
How many authors a particular reference text has and who they are is not so easy to determine in individual language versions. As a result, it turns out that assessing quality by some formula is virtually impossible.
What should an ordinary Wikipedia user do?
"First of all, you need to evaluate the article by formal criteria," recommends media expert Nenja Wolbers of the German foundation "Digital Opportunities." For example, if the text contains spelling or punctuation errors, then the information contained in it should not be blindly trusted.
There are also substantive evaluation criteria. Is the article written neutrally enough? Does it present only facts or does it contain someone's opinion? Are different points of view on a particular issue presented in the text? Are there any facts in the article that contradict each other?
Verifying sources is very important, Nenja Wolbers is sure. How and with what are the claims supported? Are the sources correctly indicated at the end of the article? Where exactly was the information taken from? Who stands behind it? "Sometimes it really makes sense to click on the link," noted the media expert and media literacy trainer.
Nenja Wolbers herself actively uses Wikipedia to get initial general information on a topic of interest: "That doesn't mean I have the final answer." She recommends: "As a user, you should always remember that Wikipedia is a site used by many authors and where something can be changed quickly." If you make allowances for this, the encyclopedia can be useful.
Why do different language versions of Wikipedia differ so much?
Each language version of Wikipedia is a separate project, notes Martin Rulsch. This means that articles on the same topic are written and edited in different languages by different authors. They may have different priorities. It may happen that politically sensitive issues are interpreted differently in different languages.
One striking example is the situation around Crimea after 2014. DW journalists compared articles about the peninsula in German, Ukrainian, and Russian. And it turned out that in the German version, Crimea is a "Ukrainian peninsula." In the Russian-language version, it is not called "Ukrainian," but at some point it is indicated that Crimea is the subject of a territorial dispute. In Ukrainian, the article is titled "Annexation of Crimea (2014)," while the corresponding article in Russian is "Annexation of Crimea to the Russian Federation."
"I think there is neither truth nor neutrality. But Wikipedia's goal is to get as close to them as possible. And if there is no neutral point of view, then several opinions should be presented," Rulsch believes. In critical cases, media expert Nenja Wolbers recommends viewing versions of articles in other languages, as well as searching for additional information in other sources.
What does Wikipedia do to protect information?
Wikipedia constantly updates the list of articles containing false information. And such articles are marked in a special way. The longest-lasting article in the encyclopedia (remaining undetected for almost 15 years!) was an English-language article about a fictional animal that supposedly went extinct. Martin Rulsch confirms that such blatant lies can still be found in Wikipedia today, and the more absurd the topic and the fewer people read the article, the easier it is to manipulate information.
To prevent this process, various mechanisms have been developed. Wikipedia partly relies on self-regulation within the community. Often, authors who notice inconsistencies or lies in other people's articles begin to double-check data and links, thus exposing negligent "colleagues."
In case of violations, administrators can deprive certain users of the right to publish new articles or make changes to old ones. Administrators can also lock articles, after which no one except them can make changes to the texts. As Rulsch explains, protection is most often placed on political articles, texts on esotericism, and materials on controversial topics. For example, in the English version, many articles about genitals are locked.
In larger language versions, additional quality assurance measures have been developed, explains Rulsch: "In the German Wikipedia, changes must be confirmed by a so-called editor-sorter before they become visible to everyone." In the English Wikipedia, new articles can only be written and published by previously registered users. Automated bots have been enlisted to screen texts for profanity. Additionally, in articles, it is possible to track what changes were made, by whom, and exactly when.
Is Wikipedia a reliable source?
The facts in many articles of the free online encyclopedia are carefully verified and supported by references to trustworthy sources. Undoubtedly, Wikipedia's advantage lies in its rapid updating. However, even now, 20 years after its inception, Wikipedia still cannot be considered an absolutely reliable source of information, because falsehoods are not always detected immediately. Wikipedia's openness assumes that its users are capable of critically evaluating the data published in it.