Three months after the prestigious science journal Nature published a comparison of the accuracy of 42 science articles in the online version of Encyclopædia Britannica and Wikipedia (see archived story), Encyclopædia Britannica Inc (EBI) has published a response to the study. The 20-page open letter, titled "Fatally Flawed", was published in PDF format and linked from the "EB News" box at http://www.britannica.com/ on 22 March. (An HTML version is also available.)
According to the Associated Press, an email from Patricia A. Ginnis (Senior Vice President at EBI) was sent to 5000 customers pointing towards the PDF file. The Wall Street Journal [1] said that EBI will also publish half-page-advertisements[2] defending their position on Monday 27 March in a group of English newspapers.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. denounced the Nature study, stating that "almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading," and called for the journal to make a public retraction of the article. EBI criticized Nature for rearranging, reediting, and excerpting Britannica articles; mistakenly identifying inaccuracies; reviewing texts that were not part of the encyclopedia proper; failing to fact-check the inaccuracies its reviewers cited; and misrepresenting its findings in the article headline and in the editorial which accompanied the news article.
EBI then went on to detail their disputes with about half of the errors found by Nature, in many cases simply rejecting the criticism outright. They indirectly acknowledged that the other half of the errors were correctly identified, and Tom Panelas, EBI spokesman, was quoted as stating that some of the errors were already known but so far had not been corrected. Neither Nature nor EBI identified how long these errors had been known at Britannica.
The Associated Press story about the dispute was widely covered in the mass media (see further press coverage).
On 23 March, the staff of Nature published a similar PDF document, responding to EBI's accusations of "misrepresentation, sloppiness and indifference to scholarly standards". Nature firmly rejected those accusations, and stood by their belief that the comparisons were fairly made; they do not plan to make any retractions.
Nature says that EBI objected privately to the article when it was first published, but that after they (and Wikipedia) were given access to the reviewer's comments a few weeks after publication, the journal "did not receive any further correspondence until the publication of its open letter", and says it regrets the public and acrimonious nature of this exchange.
One of EBI's most vigorous objections is that the reviewers were given short excerpts of longer Britannica articles, or versions taken from their Student Encyclopedia or from past editions of their Book of the Year (which, by design, includes more personal opinion and theory than the standard EB article). Nature countered that on each website, researchers compiled whatever material was presented to them upon searching for the scientific term in question, and that the student and yearbook editions appear prominently in Britannica's search results.
EBI is correct that the study undertaken by Nature was not one of their usual, rigorously peer-reviewed scientific articles; it was a more informal survey made by journalists on their news staff, and published in their news section, separate from the articles at the heart of the journal. However, Nature says that while some editorial judgement was involved in turning reviewers' comments into numerical scores, that judgement was applied "diligently and fairly" to both encyclopedias, and that "because the reviewers were blind to the source of the material they were evaluating, and material from both sources was treated the same way, there is absolutely no reason to think that any errors they made would have systematically altered the results of our inquiry."
Neither founder Jimmy Wales nor the collective staff of Wikipedia have made a public response to EBI's accusations. They have, however, gathered some reference information for Wikimedia Foundation volunteer press representatives to use in answering media questions. That document notes a project to correct all Wikipedia errors noted in the Nature study, created on 22 December, the day Nature released the data. Thirty-four days later, on 25 January, all errors were reported corrected (see archived story).
The document also says, in part, "Wikipedia, and all Wikimedia Foundation projects, are not in competition with EBI or other companies in the business of reference works. Our goals differ significantly from other reference publishers, and only overlap in that we are all striving to create accurate and useful knowledge tools."
Since its inception in February 2004, the Community Portal has gone through many redesigns. One redesign was enacted in October 2005, and another concluded just a few weeks ago that resulted in the current layout.
The current layout may not last long, however. The Main Page recently received a makeover, introducing design elements such as a white horizontal header and blue, green, and purple boxes, and users have proposed a similar design for the Community Portal. Elements of the new Main Page have already been incorporated into pages such as the Uncyclopedia Main Page.
At first, the most recent redesign was going to use the elements from the Main Page. After a hiatus of two weeks, Go for it! uploaded a very different design that, with tweaking, became the current version of the page.
But that version may not last long. A new redesign is picking up roughly where the old one left off — using the components of the Main Page as a base. The redesign is still in draft stage, though discussion on the issue seems to indicate support for the design. Go for it!, however, comments that "Homogenous page design like this can make the user feel lost. The community portal needs its own identity." On the other hand, many users think that "homogenous page design" is desirable consistency. Go for it! rebuts: "There are always a few people who complain. But there are far more people using the page than complaining about it. [...] We've gotten complaints about almost every permutation of the Community Portal. [...] Complaints are totally normal[.]"
Two more Wikipedians were granted CheckUser rights this week: Mackensen and UninvitedCompany. Both are former members of the Arbitration Committee; Mackensen was elected in the January elections and served until he resigned in February, while UninvitedCompany was a member of the initial Arbitration Committee who served until his resignation in February of 2004. This brings the total number of CheckUser status on the English Wikipedia to 14, including Essjay and Ambi, who were both granted access last week.
A noticeboard for reporting and enforcing decisions of the Arbitration Committee was proposed this week. Although similar to the existing page from ArbCom requesting administrators to implement Arbitration decisions, the new proposed noticeboard would be for users to report violations after the respective Arbitration case had already closed.
The English Wikinews' Arbitration Committee closed its first case this week. The case, which involved an administrator's deletion of userboxes, resulted in the Arbitration Committee ruling for the creation of a "userbox whitelist", which would include language and localization userboxes, as well as others approved by the community.
The Czech Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee closed its first complete case this week, against Rosta. Although it was actually the second case accepted by the Czech ArbCom, it was the first case to run through the entire Arbitration process.
Fifteen new Wikipedias have been created, in the following languages: Piedmontese, Dutch Low Saxon, West Flemish, Ligurian, Kalmyk, Tetum, Papiamentu, Romani, Samogitian, Ripuarian, Pennsylvania German, Franco-Provençal/Arpitan, Cantonese, Banyumasan, and Norman.
Encyclopædia Britannica Inc have responded to the Nature study published in December (see archived story) with a 20-page open letter, titled "Fatally Flawed". The document was released on their website on 22 March, and strongly denounced Nature's study as flawed and unscientific, demanding a retraction of the article. Nature declined (see related story).
On 23 March, the Associated Press agency ran a story about the dispute which was widely reprinted, with media outlets including Yahoo!, USA Today, Forbes, ABC News, CBS News, Newsday, The Washington Post, and many more.
In addition, original reporting on the story included:
In "Group adds to Nussle's entry in Wikipedia", an article in the Des Moines Register, members of the ONE Campaign took credit for POV edits made by User:67.155.175.170 to the article of United States Congressman Jim Nussle. The edits support the agenda of the ONE Campaign's parent organization Make Poverty History, which, however laudable, are out of place in the encyclopedic articles of individual politicians.
Journalist, broadcaster and author Mark Lawson mentioned some errors in his Wikipedia article in The Guardian column "My life as a Catholic Jew"; they were promptly corrected by User:Piotrus.
Six users were granted admin status last week: Makemi (nom), Rune.welsh (nom), Redvers (nom), Samuel Blanning (nom), Scm83x (nom) and Pepsidrinka (nom).
After a one-week hiatus, seven articles were featured last week. Albatross, Bruce Johnson, J. R. R. Tolkien, Roman Vishniac, Sassanid Empire, Turkish literature, and United States Bill of Rights.
The following featured articles were displayed last week on the main page as Today's featured article: Sun, Cape Horn, Bath School disaster, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Canberra, The Jackson 5, and Electrical engineering.
A record number – eleven articles – were de-featured last week: Johnny Cash, SARS, This Charming Man, Submarine, Blackadder, Golden Age of Arcade Games, Western (genre), Single malt Scotch, Nicolas Sarkozy, Fountain pen and Gough Whitlam.
One list reached featured list status last week: Test cricket hat-tricks.
One portal was featured last week: Portal:Christianity.
Nine pictures reached featured picture status last week:
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Server-related events, problems, and changes included:
The Arbitration Committee closed four cases this week.
A case against Jason Gastrich was closed on Tuesday. As a result, Jason Gastrich was banned for one year, indefinitely banned from Louisiana Baptist University and The Skeptic's Annotated Bible, and limited to one account (additional remedies were passed, but were superseded by the ban). Gastrich had used sockpuppetry, invited meatpuppetry, and engaged in personal attacks, self-promotion, and general disruption.
A case against Karmafist was closed on Tuesday. As a result, Karmafist was placed on civility parole, and restricted on the use of welcome messages. Karmafist welcomed many new users, linking to "wikipolitical" pages, which the Arbitration Committee ruled could be misleading to new users. Additionally, Karmafist was found to have assumed bad faith, ignored consensus, and acted uncivilly.
A case against Licorne was closed on Friday. As a result, Licorne was banned for one year, and placed on indefinite probation and personal attack parole. Licorne had made personal attacks, engaged in POV editing, and refused to participate in his arbitration case.
A case against editors on Shiloh Shepherd Dog was closed on Saturday. As a result, Tina M. Barber was banned for one year. Additional remedies included an article probation, a ban on meatpuppeting, and a warning for all editors on the article to remain civil. Tina M. Barber revealed personal information about another editor on the article, and Barber and other involved users had engaged in personal attacks and attempted to claim "ownership" of the article.
Cases were accepted this week involving Marcosantezana (user page), users DarrenRay and 2006BC, and FourthAve (user page). All are in the evidence phase.
Additional cases involving Locke Cole (user page), administrators involved in a userbox-related edit war, editors on Depleted uranium, ZAROVE (user page), and Agapetos angel (user page) are in the evidence phase.
Cases involving Lou franklin (user page), Tony Sidaway (user page), editors on Bible verse articles, and Lapsed Pacifist (user page) are in the voting phase.
Motions to close are currently on the table in cases involving users IronDuke and Gnetwerker, and the case against -Ril- (user page).
