{"id":657,"date":"2004-10-04T04:15:48","date_gmt":"2004-10-04T08:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2004\/10\/04\/experts-report-passion-outclasses-flas"},"modified":"2004-10-04T04:15:48","modified_gmt":"2004-10-04T08:15:48","slug":"experts-report-passion-outclasses-flashy-sex-appeal-wikipedia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2004\/10\/04\/experts-report-passion-outclasses-flashy-sex-appeal-wikipedia\/","title":{"rendered":"Experts report : passion outclasses flashy sex appeal [Wikipedia]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a541'><\/a><\/p>\n<p><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.heise.de\/ct\/\">c&#8217;t<\/a><\/b>, a popular german magazine for computer engineering, just<br \/>\nreleased a six-page spread detailing a study they conducted of the three major <b>digital encyclopedias<\/b> in Germany &#8212; Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently) Wikipedia.  They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of multimedia content.<\/p>\n<p>The content test was the most elaborate : first they divided content<br \/>\nin three broad fields, <b>Science<\/b>, <b>Society<\/b>, and <b>Culture<\/b>.  They further subdivided these into 22 total subject areas, and within each subject selected an easy, a moderate, and a difficult topic.  They then searched for the best matching article (and supplementary content) in the encyclopedia.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, they brought in experts in each broad field who rated the<br \/>\narticles from 1 to 5, based on technical correctness and completeness<br \/>\nof the texts, and on their comprehensibility.  Once this was finished,<br \/>\nthe results were totalled at each level of conceptual difficulty,<br \/>\nwithin each broad field, and across <b>all 66 topics<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p>The net result: Wikipedia ran away with the top prize, a comfortable<br \/>\ndistance ahead of its predecessors.  &#8220;<i>Brockhaus Premium<br \/>\nsurpassed the competition from Redmond,<\/i>&#8221; the review reported, &#8220;<i>but must concede defeat to Wikipedia<\/i>&#8220;.<\/p>\n<p>Happily, the reporting of the test was detailed &#8212; a full breakdown of the experts&#8217; ratings for each topic were published with the article, so that each encyclopedia might benefit from the spot check.<\/p>\n<p>Grab a copy of the original at your local international-publications shop, if you can, or browse the current <a href=\"http:\/\/www.heise.de\/ct\/inhalt.shtml\">table of contents<\/a> online:<br \/>\n<u>Lexica: Wikipedia gegen Brockhaus und Encarta<\/u> (pg. 132, not online yet) <\/p>\n<p><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mathiasschindler.de\/text\/2004\/10\/brockhaus-wikipedia-encarta-lexikontest\/\">German review of the article<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<p><a href='http:\/\/www.heise.de\/ct\/inhalt.shtml'>Experts report : passion outclasses flashy sex appeal [Wikipedia] &#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>c&#8217;t, a popular german magazine for computer engineering, just released a six-page spread detailing a study they conducted of the three major digital encyclopedias in Germany &#8212; Brockhaus, Encarta, and (most recently) Wikipedia. They tested the encyclopedias on breadth, depth, and comprehensibility of content, ease of searching, and quality of multimedia content. The content test [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[206],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-la-mod"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-aB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}