A Fine That Will Teach the Offender a Lesson
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Ian H
Legendary Member
Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopaedia functions in the country.
The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrdydkypv7o
The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdrdydkypv7o
AuroraSaab
Squire
Wikipedia is open to publishing defamatory content as it allows editors too much free reign to edit according to their own prejudices. Even one of its founders said it was no longer a reliable resource. It's good for looking up pop stars birthdays and how much a camel weighs but untrustworthy on anything serious. I'm surprised they haven't been sued before.
Ian H
Legendary Member
The fine appeared to have no impact on Google parent Alphabet, which saw its shares rise more than 5 per cent in after-market trading on Tuesday after beating its third-quarter earnings expectations.
Ian H
Legendary Member
Though a it of research suggests it's as accurate as other sources.
https://www.livescience.com/32950-how-accurate-is-wikipedia.html
View: https://www.reddit.com/r/PetPeeves/comments/18dsdpa/people_who_still_think_wikipedia_is_some/
matticus
Guru
AuroraSaab
Squire
Your link article analyses factual accuracy in science articles in Wikki. These kind of articles aren't really up for dispute - nobody is going to author a Wikki article on the moon that says it's made of cheese and get away with it. Even their own fact check was just articles on dark energy and then a pop band.
It's reliable for basic stuff but its articles are often written or edited with bias. As your article notes, some edits to articles have been traced back to activists and political opponents.
All sources should be subject to “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. I personally think Wikipedia has a sensible approach. Whilst anybody (pretty well) can make any edits, there is a system of scrutiny and protections. For most casual editors/contributors all edits they make are put in a list requiring "patroller" (admin/moderator) scrutiny. Whilst those edits will go live immediately they are in a list to be scrutinised by a "patroller" who can revert them and this reverting does happen and it's quite strict and the contributor might not notice their edit has been reverted (eg is made anonymously).
Often a revert (undoing an edit) can be for minor things like no citation - add a "fact" and in many situations a reliable source for the claim is required to be quoted as part of the edit.
Some pages are placed on additional scrutiny/protection whereby you have to have made a good number of edits before you can edit the given page eg pages about political figures or controversial events, etc. ie those more subject to mis-information.
Once you have made a good number of approved/patrolled edits as a registered user you can be set to "auto-patrolled" meaning edits you make are not put in the normal scrutiny list as you've proved yourself as reliable (ie your edits are automatically approved). I can't remember what the typical threshold number of edits before becoming auto-patrolled is but I've total about 16,000 Wikimedia edits and am auto-patrolled on 3 of the projects (incl. Wikipedia).
Ian
Ian H
Legendary Member
That's why, as with any webpage, you need to do due diligence. Wiki helps by showing sources and flagging articles that fall short.
matticus
Guru
icowden
Legendary Member
Whilst that's true to a degree, popular articles get regularly checked and anything written in the article is required to have a citation from a reliable 3rd party source to support its inclusion. Controversial topics are usually locked and only updated by editors who have reached a degree of reliability and impartiality.
So it's more reliable than you might think. Not 100%, but reasonably reliable on the important stuff.
lazybloke
Regular
Wikipedia has better accuracy about Chris Rea than some other internet resources.
AuroraSaab
Squire
I disagree. Wikki says he drives home for Christmas but I've seen him on a train from Euston in December at least twice.
