Wikipedia:The deadline is now
 |
This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion. Essays are not Wikipedia policies or guidelines. |
When an article contains unverifiable content, it needs to be corrected now before someone reads it and is misled by it.
Contents |
Why misinformation matters[edit]
Google any word, and there is a good chance a Wikipedia article will be the first or second search result. Moreover, many of the results lower down the rankings are likely to be sites that mirror Wikipedia. Wikipedia is unavoidable.
For this reason Wikipedia is frequently the first thing people read when, for example, they wish to find out about a political party during an election. Although it ought not be the final stop for someone seeking information of this kind, its ease of access frequently does make it the first and last source of information for many people.
Some people will tell you there is no deadline, because all errors will be corrected in the long run. That may or may not be true, but most people won't keep revisiting the article every week as it gradually improves. They will only read one version of the article: the one that is up there right now. It is for this reason that if an article contains false or unverifiable content, you should correct it as soon as possible.
Circular references[edit]
The worst-case scenario is when misinformation percolates from the Wikipedia article to some published secondary source. That source is likely to match Wikipedia's guideline on selecting reliable sources, so now it can be used as a citation to back up the inaccurate article on Wikipedia, and to give it still more credibility. A vicious circle emerges, in which false information in Wikipedia article is included in a book, then a book is cited in a journal, and then a journal is cited again on Wikipedia.
Wikipedia's focus on 'verifiability over truth' means that Wikipedia policies are now powerless to discredit this untrue, but now apparently reliably sourced, claim. Wikipedia policy notes this danger in WP:CIRCULAR. This way falsehoods grow on Wikipedia like weeds, and it requires a great effort with many reliable sources (truly reliable sources, that is!) to uproot them.
In 2012, the authors of the Leveson report were taken in by a Wikipedia editor who named a fellow student as a co-founder of The Independent newspaper.[1] The Leveson report would easily meet Wikipedia's criteria for a reliable source, and would be likely have been used to support the original claim if the prank had not been discovered.
Fortunately this error was corrected, but how many times have similar mistakes happened and never been detected? Rather than let this happen, it is far better to remove manifestly false content from an article, now.
What if the article isn't that important?[edit]
We can disagree over whether this or that article is about something important. Importance is highly subjective. But whatever your views, a great deal of Wikipedia articles are about something important to you. There are articles about everything under the sun, the sun itself, and everything beyond it.
If an article has been written at all, then its subject is important to somebody. If an article survives deletion proposals, or is never nominated for deletion, then it satisfies Wikipedia's notability criteria, and its subject is important enough to deserve accurate treatment.
Wikipedia has a massive effect on what people think: there wouldn't be any point to Wikipedia if it didn't. If a corporation uses Wikipedia to unfairly disparage a competitor or if a government uses it to smear an enemy country, they will succeed for as long as they remain unchallenged. A Wikipedia article that tells the truth, and tells it well, will be the greatest ally of the reader against deceit.
