Wikipedia:External peer review/The Independent February 2006

The Independent

• Source: The Independent
• Date: February 12, 2006
• Title: Wikipedia under the microscope over accuracy
• URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/media/article345103.ece

Findings

The paper reviewed the following articles:

• Muslim
  • "Yesterday, the entry "Muslim" was changed 12 times. Over the past week, it was changed more than 50 times...these ranged from the puerile...to suggestions which are deliberately offensive...Wikipedia, which constantly checks that changes improve rather than insult, reverted to the previous entry in less than a minute."
• Russian Revolution of 1917
  • "reads like the work of a second-rate undergraduate student... It is a simplistic account"- Orlando Figes, professor of history at Birkbeck College
• Kate Moss
  • "Factually, this is dead accurate, though it is cloaked in po-faced language...it does not mention that she never gives interviews and has never been known to purposefully utter a word in public" - Marcel D'Argy Smith, former editor of 'Cosmopolitan' magazine
• Ann Widdecombe
  • "I think overall that the entry is much better than Dod's parliamentary guide...The references to the 2001 leadership election are categorically wrong...The entry is pretty good though, I would give them 9.5 out of 10." - Ann Widdecombe
• Tony Blair
  • "That is the problem with Wikipedia - most of it is very good and reliable, but it depends on people interested in a subject being able to pontificate... It is opinionated and written from an anti-war point of view" - John Rentoul, biographer of Tony Blair
• In vitro fertilisation
  • "This would undoubtedly serve as a useful introduction for those with little idea about the subject; this entry would actually be more useful to the average inquirer with its links than would anything in the Encyclopedia Britannica...its politics are probably closest to those of Liberal Democrats... I am considerably impressed with the quality of information" - Robert Winston, fertility expert and television presenter
• Philip Larkin
  • "A good and fair account. It sounds approving of Larkin, which is nice, but it is overall a dispassionate account, as one would expect from a dictionary...Though I can see there is an opportunity to whitewash with Wikipedia, the few times I have used it, I have been impressed with it." - Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate
• BBC Radio 1
  • "Accurate, but with an odd conglomeration of facts without a clear idea of what purpose Radio 1 serves or who listens to it. The odd mixture of facts does not tell you about the wider picture." - Simon Garfield
• Punt (boat)
  • "I am impressed by the amount of information on punting; the two key books on punting are mentioned, as are the clubs...I am impressed. It works on the presumption that by and large people will correct things, and I changed one small thing on my own biography." - Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery

Responses

Most of the articles were tagged with {{High-traffic}}.

• The criticisms of Tony Blair all relate to assertions added over that weekend to the leading paragraph which were never previously present in the article and were quickly reverted (by me, once I had got back from a weekend break). I think it's a pity because it gives a completely misleading impression of the article. David | Talk 15:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
  • The comment about him "saying he would only serve 2 terms" was only there for 19 minutes before I removed it! -- Arwel (talk) 23:18, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
    • I think there was another reference which had escaped me which was in the intro and has also been removed (it was a too literal interpretation of the supposed Granita pact). Incidentally the reviewer makes his own howler when he says Lord Liverpool became Prime Minister in 1824. It was actually 1812. David | Talk 09:57, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

• The reviewer of the punt (boat) article mentioned two specific minor criticisms: The reference to 1ft is too narrow; the narrowest punt is 1ft 3 inches. The reason given for racing punters to stand in the middle of the punt [...] is slightly bizarre. Thruston has fixed both and added a section on racing. Telsa ((t)(c)) 08:23, 15 February 2006 (UTC)