Joseph Reagle wrote:
On Friday 15 February 2008, Stephen Bain wrote:
<shameless plug> I also blogged about a similar subject last year </shameless plug>:
To continue the shameless I just posted how often court citations are misunderstood :).
2008 Feb 15 | Reference works and judicial notice
The import of the use of reference works in court cases is frequently misunderstood, and in this case Wikipedia is no different. Wikipedia has been used as a source across culture (e.g., in cartoons, on TV), by governments -- for different reasons -- and a lot of attention is given to examples of Wikipedia as a court source. Seemingly, if a court cites a reference work it connotes authority and legitimacy upon the source. However, the legal meaning is quite different: the principle of judicial notice applies to information introduced into the court record that is so commonplace that it cannot be refuted. It is not a case of authoritative or expert evidence being recognized, as it is often misunderstood to be, but closer to a recognition of popular notability.
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So, first, Wikipedia is not the first reference work to be used, or misunderstood, in this way. Second, the interesting thing that is happening here is the degree to which a reference work's selections are an appropriate proxy for judicial notability, and a reliance upon Wikipedia perhaps indicates a more up to date, but also much more expansive, scope: print encyclopedias rarely ever exceeded a hundred thousand articles, the English Wikipedia has millions.
Good point. I think that some Wikipedians still need to learn that the demand for substantiation can sometimes be taken to extremes when they expect proof for "facts" that are a part of common knowledge. This is not to say that all common knowledge should go by unchallenged, but real challenges should be based on genuine doubt rather than a mere absence of documentation. If this is good enough for the courts we too should have our own "judicial notice" provisions.
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