Wikipedia: Final Discussion

I've been a huge fan of Wikipedia from the beginning (we even donate to their site).  I'm a big believer in the power of collaborative projects, especially when it comes to knowledge sharing and on-line projects.  With that being said, I was interested in this project from the beginning.  Like I said in a previous post, I use Wikipedia frequently and my own anecdotal feeling mirrored the results my more official scientific study confirmed: that Wikipedia covered many topics and was generally accurate.  Common sense says that if Wikipedia was as terrible as some academic heads claim it wouldn't be the 6th most visited website in the world. 

As mentioned, I had an interest in this topic to begin with, but I became more interested in the question as I progressed through my study.  As it turns out, there have been many previous studies published questioning Wikipedia's content, including studies regarding their medical content.  Many of the prior studies regarding Wikipedia's medical content found similar finding as my study: Wikipedia has a broad scope and is generally accurate, but lacks completeness.  Beyond these results, two of the more interesting studies showed (1) Wikipedia has been found to be more accurate than the Encyclopedia Britannica and (2) the accuracy and content of Wikipedia's articles improves with time and modifications to its articles.  Both of these results lead me to believe that with time, Wikipedia will continue to improve and be a more reliable source of information.

For my study, my results are encouraging and I got approval for a poster presentation of my study at the 2013 ACOFP conference at Las Vegas.  I plan on further development of my study in hopes of getting it published in a journal or journals. 

Wikipedia is the major elephant in the academic room.  My study, along with several other published studies show that it is a reliable source of accurate information, though it is somewhat incomplete.  It has been shown that as time progresses and the more an article is edited, the article becomes more accurate and improves.  This suggests that as time passes, Wikipedia will become more and more accurate.  My suggestion to those in academia is to quit denying Wikipedia and embrace it.  All of the available evidence says Wikipedia is a mostly reliable source that improves with time.  It has too large of an online presence to deny, and studies have shown its quality improves with time.  Some scientific journals even require Wikipedia publication before one's article will get published in their journal.  Wikipedia is here to stay.  It's pretty darn good.  All of the evidence says so.