Wikipedia very highly trusted in Japan
japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, carried out an online poll amongst the goo Research Monitors to find out what they thought about Wikipedia. They surveyed 1,060 people, 55.6% female, over a few days at the start of April. The age demographics were 24.6% in their twenties, 43.7% in their thirties, 23.7% in their forties, and 8.0% in their fifties.
I personally only trust Wikipedia to a small degree; to be honest, I can only fully trust articles I know myself to be correct, I trust items on non-controversial subjects to a lesser degree, so I suppose that makes me one of those who doesn’t really trust it. I edited the Takarazuka Theatre article, for instance, but I have seen some of my information removed, and now the article is descending into trivia, bad writing, and inconsistent information - I can see at least two mistakes in a quick scan. Controversial subjects are the least trustworthy, as the alleged “neutral point of view” ends up as being given to either the side who shouted first or loudest, or has the most friends in high places. As with a lot of Open Source, everyone wants to stamp their mark, but few want to just fix other’s stuff, and even if they do, they often unwittingly trample on the ego of those who want their information preserved.
A good example of the above is Japanese Name. This needs a complete rewrite, as the same information is repeated twice or even thrice, there is trivia galore, showing off (some valid, some invalid), falsehoods and slack wording.
Q1: Do you know the online encyclopedia “Wikipedia”? (Sample size=1,060)
Yes, and I have visited it 46.5% Yes, but I haven’t visited it 9.7% No 43.8% When asked how they came to view Wikipedia (multiple answer), the top reason was due to it turning up in search results, with 57.4% using this method. Next was 41.4% using it directly to look up information, then some unstated percentage just hopping around the hyperlinks of related articles.
Q2: What do you think are the great features of Wikipedia? (Sample size=493, multiple answer)
Votes Percentage All keywords are linked together 305 61.9% Encompasses lots of keywords 284 57.6% The contents of articles are up-to-date 140 28.4% Edited by ordinary users 138 28.0% Other 18 3.7% Some of the other reasons were that it had information not available in normal dictionaries, not too many difficult terms or vague wordings, and that it has rabid fan information.
Q3: Do you think you can trust the contents of Wikipedia? (Sample size=493)
I can trust it sufficiently 14.4% I can trust it quite a bit 79.9% I cannot really trust it 5.3% I cannot trust it at all 0.4% Q4: Have you ever edited a Wikipedia entry? (Sample size=427, not sure why!)
Yes 4.3% No 95.7% Just as a point of reference, on the 9th of April 2006, the Japanese version of Wikipedia surpassed 200,000 articles. The 150,000 article mark was passed less than six months ago, on the 24th of October 2005. This last 50,000 article increase took 129 days; from 100,000 to 150,000 took 255 days, and from 50,000 to 100,000 took 261 days.
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Ben Bullock said,
April 18, 2006 @ 11:44
Does “maa maa shinrai dekiru” really translate to “I can trust it quite a bit”? I would translate “maa maa shinrai dekiru” as “It is somewhat reliable” or “It is partly reliable”.
Nihonjoe said,
April 18, 2006 @ 11:59
You do realize that you can rewrite an article if you think it’s written poorly? Perhaps rather than whine and complain that a collaboratively-written article is poorly written, you would consider writing (or rewriting) it yourself?
Sir J said,
April 18, 2006 @ 16:45
You could well rewrite an article that you think is poorly written. Many have, and have spent much of their time doing so. The problem is when someone else disagrees and rolls the page back, erasing all of your work.
Ben Bullock said,
April 18, 2006 @ 20:50
The author does actually mention that he has edited articles on Wikipedia, only to see his edits being removed and the article quality gradually degenerating.
Ken Y-N (Seron) said,
April 20, 2006 @ 01:04
Hi Ben, yes, I could have translated “shinrai” as “reliable” instead of “trust” and produced a perhaps more literal translation, but I felt “trust” had a better impact. “Reliable” perhaps also has connotations of uptime or availablity of content; for example I always rely on Google to find matches for my searches, but I don’t always trust how it chooses what to rank highest.
Sir J, that’s what I’d have said to Nihonjoe too!
And finally: Ben, my first draft of this article actually mentioned you by name as one of the guys doing useful work.
PS: Would you want to hear my critique of the Japanese_Name article?
PPS: I’ve now probably blown my chances of getting my blog cited on other articles in Wikipedia!
One in eight Japanese might trust this blog » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
May 5, 2006 @ 23:28
[…] At the end of April, japan.internet.com, in conjuction with goo Research, published the results of a survey into how much people trust various internet sources. This survey comes hot on the heels of an astonishing (to me) poll that discovered well over 90% of Wikipedia users trusted the contents to some degree. Here they interviewed 1,012 members of the goo Research monitor group via a private internet poll. The demographics were 57.6% female, 3.3% were teenagers, 24.7% were in their twenties, 40.4% were in their thirties, 24.0% in their forties, and 7.6% in their fifties. […]
How has Wikipedia improved? » 世論 What Japan Thinks said,
June 29, 2006 @ 22:50
[…] You may remember a couple of months back I wrote about how the Japanese_name article in Wikipedia was a bit naff. Well, just today I’ve been having a number of hits from that article in Wikipedia, which seems mostly unchanged to me. So, rather than be negative again about it, I think I’ll point out all the bits that seem wrong to me. Common surnames in Japan include Aoki (青木), Sato (佐藤), Kato (加藤), Suzuki (鈴木), Takahashi (高橋) and Suto (須藤). […]
Almost all Japanese Wikipedia users trust it » 世論 What Japan Thinks - Japanese Opinion Polls, Marketing Data and Japanese Market Research Translated into English said,
December 22, 2006 @ 23:43
[…] These figures can be compared with a similar survey in April 2006, when just 46.5% had visited the site, and another 9.7% knew about it but hadn’t visited; the number of visitors has increased by 50% in just eight months […]