世論 What Japan Thinks

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.