Wikipedia opposite the Croatian Encyclopaedia, a qualitative relation between a freely and a traditionally edited encyclopaedic text in croatian

Abstract

Freely edited encyclopaedias, of which Wikipedia has the largest number of articles and users, today represent a source of information that can not be neglected. Since the concept of their editing is based on anonymity and the freedom of data input, from their very beginning there have been discussions about the reliability and quality of contents edited in such a way. This paper tries to find out what is the current qualitative state between encyclopaedic sources created with a concept of free editing and those with a traditional editing. For sources of compared contents we chose the Croatian Encyclopaedia as a traditionally edited source and the Croatian edition of Wikipedia as a freely edited encyclopaedic content. The paper defines the elements used to determine their qualitative relation, which were tested in a review analysis in which 24 reviewers, experts in specific fields, participated. The results of the research show the current relation of sources according to the parameters of informativeness, accuracy of presented information, sufficiency, direction and objectivity. The results of this work are a part of a wider research with which a model for a qualitative comparison of information sources is established.