The latest issue of the ACADEMIA magazine published an article on the automation of the content quality assessment process in multilingual Wikipedia. The work briefly presents the advantages and disadvantages of the open nature of this encyclopedia, differences in the quality assessment systems and distinctions for Wikipedia articles between language versions, and issues related to the assessment of the reliability of information sources. Additionally, the publication raises the issue of open semantic databases (such as DBpedia and Wikidata), which, through their ability to structure and understand complex relationships between data, constitute the future of information management, enabling more effective data processing and analysis in various fields.
The Internet is characterized by openness, allowing access to diverse perspectives and opinions. Currently, there are over a billion websites on the Internet offering information on various topics. Wikipedia, as one of the most famous online platforms, provides over 60 million articles in over 300 language versions. This provides access to knowledge to people from all over the world. Additionally, many popular websites, including Google and ChatGPT, use materials from Wikipedia to improve the quality of their services.
Wikipedia in each language is created by a unique community of users who shape and interpret quality standards for their language version. Therefore, each language version has slightly different criteria for content quality, resulting from community discussions and experiences. As a rule, each language version has special awards for articles that have achieved the highest quality standards.
Although Wikipedia has its own standards for assessing quality, the criteria may vary depending on the language version and may change over time. Grading is often subjective, which requires cooperation and agreement between editors. Automating the assessment of the quality of content on Wikipedia, through the use of algorithms, can help in objectively assessing content, quickly detecting errors and problems, and identifying vandalism or disinformation, which in turn increases the credibility and effectiveness of editing.
More information can be found in the article entitled “Information Quality on Wikipedia” in the ACADEMIA magazine, published by the Polish Academy of Sciences. The journal has been published quarterly since 2003 and promotes the achievements of Polish researchers in Poland and abroad. The in-depth analyzes are written in a language accessible to a diverse group of scientists, students, pupils and all other readers interested in popular science topics.