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Getting Familiar with Wikipedia: Scientific Value or Just Warm Words?

How to use Wikipedia?

Nowadays everyone knows Wikipedia (WP). It is the reference point for gathering quick information about almost any topic we can imagine. Wikipedia provides information about topics from A to Z to its users, no matter if scientific or about an everyday life topic. Almost every topic that is considered relevant for public interest is covered by a WP article. When looking up a certain topic on Google, the first information you get is most often from Wikipedia. Therefore, it may be claimed that Wikipedia offers the biggest pooled collection of information that is available in today’s world. However, despite the fact that there is no broader collection of knowledge than Wikipedia, we apparently perceive limits of relevance. For everyday use, WP may be the best device of finding the information we search. But does this hold true for scientific research as well? Can the information provided on WP be in fact a reliable source for academic purposes? Continue reading “Getting Familiar with Wikipedia: Scientific Value or Just Warm Words?”

Analyzing disparities of Wikipedia articles in different language versions: What’s different and why?

Article comparison between the German & English version of the Wikipedia article about the German government


The task of our university seminar was to compare two Wikipedia (WP) articles about the same topic, but of different languages, concerning site content, structure and activity. While looking for a topic I found out that very often there is a difference in the size of articles concerning their content, which turned out to be mostly language-based. Continue reading “Analyzing disparities of Wikipedia articles in different language versions: What’s different and why?”