On 12/1/05, SJ <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote:
1) Wikipedia is important enough to significantly
injure the reputations
of people/organizations that are known elsewhere on the web. It may
provide 2 or more of the top 10 search results for content about them.
An old problem, but getting worse with increased popularity. This is
the most egregious case I have seen.
Perhaps I simply considered this 'old news' more than many.
3) This article was linked to from other pages. It was
noticed and
wikified. At this stage, something could have been done about it.
If the first page of our style guide included not only "how to bold the
topic" and "how to link out", but also "how to flag emotional or
controversial content" and "how to mark short, unsourced articles" --
this
might have been noticed and fixed during the ensuing three months.
Good point. Wikification should start including such things, as well
as formatting fixes.
I think it's also the case that we should be especially careful about
unattributed claims about living persons. It's the topic where
misinformation can be most hurtful.
Why not? Requiring a 'references' section for
every article (thanking the
heavens that WP is not paper), and reminding every editor that *every* new
article should come with at least one reference, seems a responsible thing
to do. Can you offer a reason not to have such a section for any article?
I meant that more than that is hard to automate. You're right that
the bare minimals can be easily checked. However, I can't see that we
can automate much beyond that with ease.
If you're writing about one of those topics that
is a) not private
research/analysis of your own, but b) has never been written about
anywhere else [that you know of], then we need a new class of references :
"personal observation by [user]", with a relevant tag not unlike the
original-reporting templates used on Wikinews. Then it will be crystal
clear that readers should visit your page, and see whether they trust you
as the primary/original observer/author.
Much of this falls under 'original research', doesn't it? Or are you
talking about the cases where someone believes that something is true
but doesn't have the references to hand?
-Matt