because the review process asked for a judgment on the question of bias, and reviewers were certainly careful to pay it due attention, even if occasionally they made it clear that the topic was not one, anyway, where issues of bias were likely to arise: "Not a very controversial topic" (Reviewer 3 – doctoral student – Mutation). Some references to bias suggest a slight modulation in the use of the term, such as in the review of Numero Racional, where the second reviewer considered that the Enciclonet article was "biased towards a formalist and algebraic point of view". In this instance at least it seems that ‘bias’ is used to described insufficient scope in the discussion of a particular topic, rather than deliberately preferential treatment for one particular point of view.
One of the few suggestions that a Wikipedia article showed bias of any kind came in one reviewer's comments on the Energia Renovable article:
- "There is a tendency to disregard nuclear energy, particularly fusion, which is a flawed view commonly supported by green energy advocates." (Reviewer 1 – Professor)
It was, in fact, more often the case that Wikipedia articles were credited with a distinct lack of bias, even with regard to topics where the risks of favouring one particular viewpoint (i.e. with respect to historical or political issues) might be considered to be quite high:
- "The second article [Wikipedia] was much more up to date, although not as much as it should have been. Both articles need to be updated – the first more so than the second. Given the ongoing political changes that are currently taking place in the Middle East, it is crucial to update these articles to reflect such pressing issues. Both articles were concise and fairly eloquent. The first one had more information, especially general information regarding climate and topography, etc. The second one focused almost entirely on political and economic issues in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the first one [Mawsoah] was much more biased and had a political tone to it, while the second one addressed such political issues from a seemingly objective point of view." (Reviewer 1 – research student – Middle East)
- "a very controversial figure. I don’t really see how one could be much more neutral." (Reviewer 1 – professor – Hugo Chavez)
5.2.3 Qualitative Judgments related to English, Spanish and Arabic Encyclopaedia Entries
As mentioned in Section 3, owing to the challenges of securing reviewers to participate in the study within the timescales, not all articles were evaluated by the same number of reviewers. Similarly, numbers of reviewers taking part in the study varied by language. There were eight reviewers for the Arab articles, eleven for the English articles and fourteen for the Spanish articles.
Additionally, owing to the difficulties of identifying a publication with a sufficiently wide spread of articles, two separate Arabic publications were used: Mawsoah and the Arab Encyclopaedia. Of those publications, the two articles taken from the Arab Encyclopaedia (on Algorithm and Mathematical proof) received very positive judgements. Each of these articles was evaluated by three reviewers, whereas two of the four articles compared to Mawsoah (which were generally less well received) were only evaluated by two reviewers.
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