How Much of Wikipedia is True?
How to recognize unbiased articles from one that may not be? Even in what seems a well-written piece, we usually can’t be sure that every single sentence contains correct statements. As a rule, try looking at the number of references compared to the article length. A long article with little regard is likely to have been written recently by very few users, which means the matter hasn’t been quite discussing and reviewed properly yet. In contrast, one with many references is much more likely to contain correct statements.
The other main factors to take into consideration are the so-called ‘meta-data associated with it. Wikipedia, just like many other wikis, offers several pages related to the article itself, which very often help decide on whether you should trust its content or not.
Wikipedia
We all have browsed through it has pages. We all are aware of its so-called encyclopedic status. We tend to forget what a wiki is. User’s adding & delete & modify the content on the Wiki page upon their will.
Article length;
{number of references} / {article length} ratio;
Its protection policy;
The date of creation;
The article history;
The number of pictures, tables, etc.;
It is a quality rating.
Finally, you can still use Wikipedia for our research even if you are not too confident about the quality of the article. We can still use Wikipedia as a secondary source in cases like this by looking at the References and External Links sections.
Here’s just such as the opportunity for making money from writing. It combines Amazon and Wikipedia cleverly and effectively.
It would make a great, profitable little writing sideline. It also involves taking something (legally) you can get for free and selling it for money!
Let me explain. You’ll have heard about Amazon – the books-cum-almost-anything website that’s one of the biggest brands in the world.
And you’ll probably have heard about Wiki – the free online encyclopedia where you can find information on almost anything, often written by the world’s leading experts.
Well, a publisher called Books LLC has been taking the articles from Wikipedia for free, compiling them up into paper books as well as downloads, and then selling them on Amazon for £10 or £15 or more a time!
Now you might think that getting something for free and selling it sounds too good to be true. And that it would be illegal. But it isn’t. It’s all perfectly legal. You see, Wikipedia has published under an open access agreement that makes it public domain. Anyone can rewrite and republish it.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to do much the same yourself. Collect information on that subject from Wikipedia. Edit it, rewrite it, and add your content where appropriate. Make it up into an eBook. Then sell your eBook on Amazon, for example.
One point, though. If you do this, I think you need to choose your subjects for Wiki publishing, as I’m calling it, carefully. If you look at what Books LLC publishes, you’ll find many of them are books on very niche subjects, such as science, technology, the arts, and so on – things that are difficult to find info. On elsewhere.
Be fairly selective about the Wikipedia material you use. Remember, anybody can contribute information to Wikipedia. So, although some of the info. is from top experts and of excellent quality; some of it isn’t always as accurate as it could be. (And always remember o credit the source.)
You might wonder why people buy books from Books LLC when they could get the same thing for free from Wikipedia and print it out themselves. But they do. One of the reasons being convenience, I suppose. Not everybody is comfortable with searching for information on the Internet. Many people still like to have it on paper, even if it costs them a little more.
How much could you make from Wiki publishing?
Let’s be frank now, these kinds of the book probably won’t sell in their millions. But if you sell a few hundred or maybe thousands at £10 or £15 a time, well, you can see the potential, especially as they cost you nothing in the first place.
