Improving information quality of Wikipedia articles with cooperative principle

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of cooperative principle on the information quality (IQ) by making objects more relevant for consumer needs, in particular case Wikipedia articles for students. Design/methodology/approach The authors performed a quantitative study with participants being invited to complete an online survey. Each rater evaluated three selected and re-written articles from Wikipedia by four IQ dimensions (accuracy, completeness, objectivity, and representation). Grice’s maxims and submaxims were used to re-write articles and make them more relevant for student cognitive needs. The results were analyzed with statistical methods of mean, standard deviation, Cronbach’s α, and ICC (two-way random model of single measure). Findings The study demonstrates that Wikipedia articles can be made more relevant for student needs by using cooperative principle with increase in IQ and also achieving higher consistency of students’ scores as recent research. In particular, students in the research perceived the abstract, constructed with cooperative principle, more objective and complete as reported in recent research. Practical implications The work can benefit encyclopedia editors to improve IQ of existing articles as well as consumers that would obtain more relevant information in less reading time. Originality/value This is one of the first attempts to empirically investigate the application of cooperate principle to make objects more relevant for consumer needs and impact of this on IQ. IQ improvement evidence is provided and impacts on IQ dimensions such as objectivity, completeness, accuracy, and representation for research community to validate and compare results.