[WikiEN-l] Inaccuracy

[Andrew Gray]

On 19 March 2012 15:36, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
> http://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=11381.30
>
> The situation:
> 1) Wikipedia says game on PSP is emulated.
> 2) Person who looked at code himself says it's not emulated.
> 3) Since Wikipedia got its information from a "reliable source", wrong
> information remains on Wikipedia.  (Actually, if you read the "reliable
> source" carefully, the company representative didn't even say it was emulated;
> the interviewer claimed that and the company representative just didn't
> contradict him.  I am tempted to remove it on this basis, but someone might
> argue that we must assume that the interviewer's statements, being part of a
> published work, are fact-checked).
>
> Your call as to whether this is verifiable-but-false, or a problem with
> the reliable sources or original research rules.

In cases like this, where a presumed-authoritative source appears to
be reporting something visibly not the case in the facts, the approach
you're looking at in #3 is best - re-examine the source, see if it is
actually saying the thing it seems to be saying, and if it's dubious,
either whip it out or include a brief digression in a footnote
explaining the ambiguity.

The onus is on supporting the *inclusion* of the claim, after all - if
we have other evidence which casts reasonable doubt on the source, we
should tend towards removing it until we find better support for the
claim. We do this all the time when judging sources to be reliable or
unreliable; if it seems problematic, and the claim is unusual, we
often remove it without further ado.

That said, I've seen many cases of this form - source claims X, third
party looks at the facts and reports not-X, Wikipedia insists on X -
where the third party turned out to be wrong in their interpretation
of the facts, for one reason or another. So it does require a certain
level of caution and common sense...

-- 
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk