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.
...
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.
Ec