By Stvila, Twidale, Smith, Gasser (2008) Betsy Mahoney and Jill Hoskins

This article is a case study on the information quality of Wikipedia and what makes the information ‘reasonably good’. This article explores each of the editing processes of Wikipedia - how and why they maintain a relatively high level of IQ in a situation that could easily degrade into chaos.

 Wikipedia “A community based encyclopedia established in Now it is available in over 100 languages and the English version has over 10 million pages.  Information Quality (IQ) The “fitness for use of the information provided” and is subjective for each information system.

 Wikipedia users can be divided into three different groups Unregistered User – identifiable by IP address Registered User/Editor – identifiable by user name Administrator – registered users with special system privileges can protect, delete or undelete pages can block and unblock user names and IP addresses

 Bots – automatic processes that perform simple, repetitive tasks implemented by administrators.  Examples of bot functions:  Spell-checking  Editing for vandalism  Checking for copyright violations

 Because of the open nature of Wikipedia, the users are aware that each article might not be entirely correct, and that all of the processes may not be working to ensure information quality.  It is the discussion of these problems within the editing community makes Wikipedia unique.

Assurance Models: Conventional vs. Wikipedia  In a conventional database, IQ assessment is completely separate from the information creation process. In Wikipedia, all processes are integrated. (pg 32)  Wikipedia’s model focuses on “quick and inexpensive recovery” rather than initial information accuracy. Because of the subjective nature of IQ, the speed of the fix is as important as the problem itself. (pg 33)  Wikipedia had “almost no quality assurance guidelines or assessment criteria” in 2003, but has developed “a whole infrastructure of quality evaluation” in the last 3 years. (pg 34)

 Has anyone edited an page on Wikipedia?  When you use Wikipedia do you look at the edits log?  Do you feel like Wikipedia is a more reliable source after reading this article?  What other information systems would benefit from user initiated evaluation?