Oh God don't get me started on that Wikiasari crap I've read about in da n00z.
Newspapers, while not the accuratest (and we all know how bad journalists can be) (this is coming from a journalist), are really the best thing available for current things since they're the very first authority on it. Once current events turn into events and there's books and such that probably took longer to write than the average news article, then we should wean from the newspaper and focus on the books.
On 12/29/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Article warning templates should go on the *article*, not the talk page:
http://www.hyperorg.com/backissues/joho-jul23-06.html#wikipedia
"The fact that Wikipedia encourages us to use these notices give us confidence that Wikipedia is putting our interests over its own.
"So, why is it that you don't see such frank notices in traditional sources such as newspapers and encyclopedias? Is it because their articles don't ever suffer from any of these human weaknesses? Oh, sure, newspapers issue corrections after the fact, and "This is non-neutral opinion" is implicit on the Op-Ed page. But why isn't there any finer grain framing of the reliability and nature of what's presented to us in their pages? Can we come to any conclusion except that traditional authorities are more interested in maintaining authority than in helping us reach the truth?"
That second para is important: newspapers are not Reliable Sources. Anyone who's been following the Wikiasari media-vaporware non-story may be surprised to know there *is no story* - Wikiasari was the name of an older project, search.wikia.com was a ghost site they've had to reactivate in the wake of this story ... the whole thing came from an idle Jimbo quote about Google and a journalist spotting search.wikia.com, and adding 2+2 and getting 2237943297729432.
My arse newspapers are a "reliable" source. Not if accuracy is your interest. Easily checkable is not the same thing.
- d.
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