On 4/7/08, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.com wrote:
It's also part of the contract between the project and the readers. As a project, we don't have people who are paid (or even focus on as volunteers) fact checkers. We assume that people generally aren't putting false or subtly biased info in, and hope that we catch it if they do.
Given that, we can't be asserting the truth on matters. We need to remind them, and the people writing articles, that the info here is only generally and statistically accurate, and that any claims that are made here should be supported by external sources that did go through some level of credible fact checking.
Again, though, you're not talking about the statement that's being made in the policy. Now you're into the site disclaimer, where we admit that any article could be total shit at any given time. But this is a policy page - its normative. It's intended to describe what articles should be.
Again, we should be able to say that any piece of information that goes into Wikipedia *ought* to be accurate as well as verifiable. That is to say, inaccurate information should be removed. (Again remembering that the only information we ought to be having one way or another is NPOV presentations of things - i.e. not "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" but "Newton says..." Thus the distinction between accuracy and verifiability is a very, very narrow one.)
-Phil