Selected articles get expert ratings
The media continued its dissection of Wikipedia quality this week with a story in The Guardian, which brought in several experts who assigned ratings to an article apiece. On a scale ranging from 0 to 10, the ratings ranged from 0/10 at the very bottom to a more forgiving 8/10 at the top, with most coming in a bit below that mark.
The article, published on Monday, 24 October, was entitled "Can you trust Wikipedia?" Introducing the reviews, the story alluded to the recent coverage of Jimmy Wales' admission that some Wikipedia articles are "a horrific embarrassment" (see archived story).
The reviewers chosen were journalist Mike Barnes for Steve Reich, Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman on Haute couture, author Mark Kurlansky on Basque people, two biographers of T. S. Eliot and Samuel Pepys (Anthony Julius and Clair Tomalin, respectively), magazine editor Derek Barker on Bob Dylan, and Robert McHenry for the Encyclopedia article. McHenry, a former Encyclopædia Britannica editor whose best-known comment about Wikipedia has been to compare it with a public toilet, gave this article a 5/10, describing it as "a school essay, sketchy and poorly balanced."