Techdirt: Should Judges Cite Wikipedia?
Techdirt: Should Judges Cite Wikipedia?
In fact, the article notes that one case was later overturned when a higher court had problems with the lower court’s use of Wikipedia — though, ironically, to make their point, they too cited Wikipedia (though, they focused on the site’s disclaimers, which are just as editable as any other page so present the same problem the lower court supposedly had in citing them). It appears that most judges that cite Wikipedia do so on mostly unimportant matters, to fill in details or explanations on issues that are not central to the decision-making.
This issue could be helped by using the Harvard suggestion for citing Wikipedia. The Harvard citation format requires one to cite to the time in the article’s history that you are citing. By clicking on the history tab at the top of an article, one may then navigate to the actual text that the clerk has cited. (Also, maybe it shouldn’t be that “judges” are citing Wikipedia, as much as their law clerks are.)
The deeper issue is that encylopedic knowledge is harder to find and less trustworthy than it used to be–back when we had no other “better” option. Other than Wikipedia, my best bets are Encarta or Britannica (both of which charge for usage) or the Columbia Encyclopedia. But none are as exhaustive as Wikipedia.
But for non-essential uses, clerks merely need a source to cite for sub-common knowledge, i.e., knowledge that not everyone knows, but everyone could know if they did a Google search.
People’s knowledge bases are no longer limited to what they have on the tips of their tongues or at the fore of their brains, but common knowledge might also include information one can find from a few minutes selecting links from a Google search result.
January 30, 2007 1:15 am 1 Comment
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By Sean FWJ Fowler, Esq., January 30, 2007 @ 4:01 pm
Perhaps the trick is not in trusting Wikipedia as an entity but in trusting its entries. While the Wikipedia administrators work to keep all Wikipedia entries at a high level of quality and reliability, two different Wikipedia entries may still be like night and day in comparison. For instance, compare coverage of Tulane:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulane_University
with Christopher Lloyd:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Lloyd
While both have all sorts of links to other Wikipedia entries, the Tulane entry is riddled with footnotes to credible references. The Christopher Lloyd entry has no such references, has a virtually blank discussion page, and is as of yet unassessed by Wikipedia’s biography project. While the Christopher Lloyd biography may be entirely true, I would dare not rely upon it, as I would for the Tulane entry. As such, I feel that each Wikipedia entry should be assessed on its merits as an individual work.