Wikipedia and company information

I, like the majority of Internet users, use Wikipedia. Sometimes it's hard not to, as it's the one of the first results returned when you search for something. I do however take Wikipedia with a pinch of salt, usually looking at the cited sources for an article and I'd never NEVER use Wikiepdia for academic purposes (unless I was looking, again, at cited sources). The following news snippet is a good example of why you shouldn't use Wikipedia for academic purposes, and it has extra relevance as it involves company information...

 Up to 60% of Wikipedia entries about companies are incorrect, according to research published in the Public Relations Journal. It doesn't matter the provenance of those mistakes, be it just plain wrong information or attempts at sabotage, but what is more important is that the mistakes don't necessarily get fixed very quickly.  Researchers surveyed 1,284 PR people and found that of those who contacted Wikipedia about factual errors on their company entries, 40% heard back in days, 12% weeks and 24% never received any reply at all. Fair enough, Wikipedia is not a public relations tool, but you'd expect errors to be corrected quicker than that.

So the moral of the story is, if you want accurate company information, use the library's electronic resources.  We have a series of guides on finding good business information:

Case Studies: Advertising

Case Studies: Business

Company Information

Industrial Sector Information

Market Research Data

Product Information

SWOT Analysis

Look at these, not Wikipedia!  And in case you don't believe me, here's the research itself:

DiStaso, M. (2012) Measuring Public Relations Wikipedia Engagement:How Bright is the Rule? Public Relations Journal 6(2) 1-24

***** Update ******  Very interesting comment left (thanks for that Nihiltres), which critically analyses the research and suggests that it is lacking in rigour.  That doesn't mean you should use Wikipedia for academic research however.   
      

Britannica Online

Back in the day, as part of their punishment for academic impropriety, students had to attend a presentation by yours truly on avoiding plagiarism (having attended the presentation, they felt duly punished). While researching the presentation, I generated enough material for another presentation, on evaluating websites. Some of the material can be found here, though not this germane cartoon or this one. Type "AIDS facts" into Google and click on result number 3. Do you think this page is accurate?

Basically, anyone can write anything on the Internet, and a lot of the time they do. When you are using the Internet for research purposes (why are you doing this? Use the library's electronic resources first!) you cannot use the same criteria as you do when you are surfing the net for pleasure. Wikipedia is often the first port of call for students doing research, and it's a great site. I use Wikipedia frequently. However I don't use Wikipedia for research purposes because I wouldn't trust it to be accurate. Fair enough, the vast majority of vandalism is noticed and removed quite quickly, but what if you visit the page before heinous errors are corrected? I once looked up Swinford (County Mayo) on Wikipedia and found that the town is notable for werewolves and pot smuggling. Yeah, right.
If you want to look something up, for academic purposes, use an online encyclopaedia, the library subscribes to Britannica Online, the online version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). EB has more a lot more cachet and credibility than Wikipedia for academic topics. There was a study published in Nature in 2005 comparing Wikipedia and EB. Surprisingly, Wikipedia was claimed to be nearly as accurate as the EB, however this study has been comprehensively refuted (albeit by EB themselves). So please use Britannica Online where you can.

Britannica Online is available directly on-campus and via EbscoHost Integrated Search off campus