Wikipedia as a Data Source for Political Scientists: Accuracy and Completeness of Coverage

被引：71

作者：

Brown, Adam R. ^{[1
]}

机构：

[1] Brigham Young Univ, Ctr Study Elect & Democracy, Provo, UT 84602 USA

来源：

PS-POLITICAL SCIENCE & POLITICS | 2011年 / 44卷 / 02期

关键词：

INFORMATION;

D O I：

10.1017/S1049096511000199

中图分类号：

D0 [政治学、政治理论];

学科分类号：

0302 ; 030201 ;

摘要：

In only 10 years, Wikipedia has risen from obscurity to become the dominant information source for an entire generation. However, any visitor can edit any page on Wikipedia, which hardly fosters confidence in its accuracy. In this article, I review thousands of Wikipedia articles about candidates, elections, and office holders to assess both the accuracy and the thoroughness of Wikipedia's coverage. I find that Wikipedia is almost always accurate when a relevant article exists, but errors of omission are extremely frequent. These errors of omission follow a predictable pattern. Wikipedia's political coverage is often very good for recent or prominent topics but is lacking on older or more obscure topics.

引用

页码：339 / 343

页数：5

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