Wikipedia's Accuracy.

It is hard these days for anyone who surfs the net to ignore Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia which anyone can add content to or edit the existing content of. Its success is offset by accusations of lacking accuracy. After all, anyone can add their own personal knowledge (or lack of it), even anonymously if they choose to.

But a new study suggests that Wikipedia's accuracy is higher among experts than non-experts:

The researcher had 55 graduate students and research assistants examine one Wikipedia article apiece for accuracy, some in fields they were familiar with and some not. Those in the expert group ranked their articles as generally credible, higher than those evaluated by the non-experts. One researcher said 'It may be the case that non-experts are more cynical about information outside of their field and the difference comes from a natural reaction to rate unfamiliar articles as being less credible.'" (Slashdot)

That's pretty cool, except that the sample size was small (55 graduate students) and still 13% of the"experts" group reported finding mistakes in their assigned articles, and that's not a small number.