  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 alpha, 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.

Computers and Society