This is not a cut-and-dried issue, and we should treat it with respect.
Say you're tasked with quickly determining if a fact is true. You decide to find at least two reputable sources mentioning the fact -- and moreover, you look briefly at each of their references, if any. You're under deadline; so shaving 5 minutes off your search time a dozen times a day is helpful.
Wikipedia offers a fast way to snag one of these sources. But is it reputable enough to count? Or is it only useful as a portal to its own references -- where you'll have to scour each one to see if it contains the specific morsel of data you were searching for[1]?
In theory, for some highly-edited articles, it /is/ reputable enough to count, as are other encyclopedias or reporters -- that is, it serves as confirmation that one or two reasonably-informed people did basic background/literature checks and found something to be true. Of course primary/secondary sources are far better still than these two classes of information.
In practice, WP *gives the visual impression* that all articles are comparably reputable. As such, it is problematic to include it alongside the World Book as a tertiary source usable as "one of two" sources verifying a claim. Every active editor knows that not all articles -- not even all finished-looking articles -- are equally reliable. Most of us have our own reflexive "can I trust this revision" routines - scanning for format quirks, or signs that a true style-guide expert has been here, checking the talk page, checking the recent history. We must find better ways to float this information up to the casual user.
SJ
[1] NB: if we fix our referencing system, this will no longer be true.
On 12/7/05, Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com wrote:
If true, oh crap:
From: [New York Times business editor] Larry Ingrassia To: [Business staff] Subject: wiki-whatdia?
Colleagues,
You probably saw Kit Seelye's smart Week-in-Review story about inaccurate information in Wikipedia. In case you didn't, please take a look. Since the story ran, she has received a number of e-mail messages about other inaccurate information on Wikipedia. We shouldn't be using it to check any information that goes into the newspaper.
Larry
From: http://poynter.org/forum/view_post.asp?id=10748
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