First Monday · 2012 · 13 citations · 0 references
EducationEnglishInformation RetrievalReading ComprehensionReading DevelopmentReadingReading Comprehension DifficultiesReading DifficultiesText ComprehensionReadability
Wikipedia is widely regarded as a reliable encyclopedic source, yet concerns persist that its articles may be written in language too difficult for most visitors. The study aims to assess these readability concerns by applying the Flesch reading ease test to all English Wikipedia articles. The authors compute Flesch scores for each article to evaluate readability. Results show overall readability is poor, with 75 % of articles scoring below the desired threshold, and even the Simple English Wikipedia falls short of its target audience. A demo of the methodology is available at www.readabilityofwikipedia.com.
Wikipedia is becoming widely acknowledged as a reliable source of encyclopedic information. However, concerns have been expressed about its readability. Wikipedia articles might be written in a language too difficult to be understood by most of its visitors. In this study, we apply the Flesch reading ease test to all available articles from the English Wikipedia to investigate these concerns. The results show that overall readability is poor, with 75 percent of all articles scoring below the desired readability score. The ‘Simple English’ Wikipedia scores better, but its readability is still insufficient for its target audience. A demo of our methodology is available at www.readabilityofwikipedia.com.