Japan thinks Wikipedia is an important and believeable source of info.
japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, carried out an online poll amongst the goo
Research Monitors to find out what they thought about Wikipedia. They surveyed 1,060 people, 55.6% female, over a few days at the start of April. The age demographics were 24.6% in their twenties, 43.7% in their thirties, 23.7% in their forties, and 8.0% in their fifties.
I personally only trust Wikipedia to a small degree; to be honest,
found by Andrew Orlowski
Do they have the actual Japanese they used in these questions? Translation issues can be rather tricky here.
What does it mean, anyway, to say “I trust it quite a bit?” Is that supposed to be more or less than “I can trust it sufficiently?”
To me, I don’t know if I’d quite say I trust it “quite a bit,” but I certainly do trust it “sufficiently” in that I trust it sufficiently enough that it’s worth the five minutes of my time it taked to actually look something up there and read a bit about it.
From the same people that brought you engrish.com
Before someone starts down the road that Wikipedia is biased, slanted, unedited, etc, I conceed that is all true. If anyone cares to check out (almost) any other resource, they might also find a bias. If the bias is along our beliefs we don’t see it, but when it follows another’s politics, then we care.
I find Wikipedia to be massively useful, and actually almost indispensable at times. I don’t trust it totally for important stuff like history, politics, ect but when you just want to know the engine displacement of a 1974 Golf, or what “felching” is where the hell else are you going to go, CNN?
felching????
Is there another meaning that I don’t know about?
When I’m doing research, I DO use Wikipedia. But only as one reference, and usually a jumping off point. But do get any meaningful information on a subject, you can’t use just one source at all. It’s the same way I view/read news too, I don’t just read one source of news.
The thing with Wikipedia is, if you find something in error based on your other research, you can fix it and list the reason and sources of your fix. But to glibly just say “I don’t trust it” is sort of Luddish.
Wikipedia is dangerous because you have to know your subject pretty well to find the errors. Trust it at your peril.
It’s interesting that Wikipedia gets worse as it gets larger – it’s subject to entropy:
From the article:
” I edited the Takarazuka Theatre article, for instance, but I have seen some of my information removed, and now the article is descending into trivia, bad writing, and inconsistent information – I can see at least two mistakes in a quick scan. Controversial subjects are the least trustworthy, as the alleged “neutral point of view” ends up as being given to either the side who shouted first or loudest, or has the most friends in high places. As with a lot of Open Source, everyone wants to stamp their mark, but few want to just fix other’s stuff, and even if they do, they often unwittingly trample on the ego of those who want their information preserved.”
and
Japanese Name. This needs a complete rewrite, as the same information is repeated twice or even thrice, there is trivia galore, showing off (some valid, some invalid), falsehoods and slack wording.