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How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

csail.mit.edu

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Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#31

Post by stevenjgarner »

corrral wrote: post #6
mikece wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be the best alternative to Wikipedia at getting a list of citations on a topic quickly? For academic research I consider the content of the page as "Yeah, maybe" but the citations to be more useful in terms of digging to deeper sources faster. The argument could be made that the ability of almost anyone to edit Wikipedia is a form of peer review but for edge topics it's tough to tell who has the chops to b…

> What would be the best alternative to Wikipedia at getting a list of citations on a topic quickly? If you're looking for major/important sources to read on a topic, not just a quick way to halfway-fake a works-cited section, I've found it valuable to locate some representative, recent academic book in the field and read the author's introduction and other pre-chapter-1 material. These will often include a lot of na…

Don't forget to search on https://news.ycombinator.com/ !

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#33

Post by actually_a_dog »

jasonhansel wrote: post #32

This research seems...ethically questionable, since it sought to sway judicial outcomes and did so without the consent of the experiment's subjects.

I disagree. The actual paper shows it was approved by the ethics boards of two universities. Here is a quote from the paper describing the actual methodology for creating the articles:

> The experiment featured Wikipedia entries authored by faculty and by law students under faculty supervision, who each had access, through their university library, to all the relevant primary and secondary legal materials available to judges and their clerks. This assurance of accuracy and of informed analysis in the content of the entries — though short of that offered by a specialist textbook — indicates that judges or lawyers would be unlikely to be misled by what they might read.

I find nothing ethically questionable at all about publishing accurate legal analysis on a case anywhere, including Wikipedia.

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#34

Post by dpifke »

jimbob45 wrote: post #27

The partisanship on Wikipedia is becoming more and more visible. Here’s my favorite example [0]. One of the candidates has clearly been given a subpar picture and then had his profile locked from editing so that it can’t be changed. A quick Google search shows scores of better pictures, leading me to believe that this is intentional sabotage by the opposing candidate. Fortunately, this is the kind of thing we can all…

Photos need to be Creative Commons licensed; Wikipedia can't just use ones from a random Google search.

The image for Mark Ronchetti was uploaded by a user who shot a video of him in 2020. Since they created the video, they own the copyright to the image and can license it to Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Ronchetti.jpg

Searching for other CC-licensed images doesn't return anything:

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=mark+ronchetti&iax=images&i...

https://www.google.com/search?q=mark%20ronchetti&tbm=isch&tb...

I've emailed his campaign to ask if they have a photo they can license appropriately and upload to Commons. If you have a better photo of him (that you took yourself and are willing to license for free use), you can upload it here:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:UploadWizard

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#35

Post by dhosek »

jacobolus wrote: post #16
Dma54rhs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to impossible to impossible to actually fix those mistakes on Wikipedia. Its good theory only on paper without any change in real life.

It is entirely possible to fix those mistakes (one at a time) on Wikipedia.... if you do the research work to find out what happened. But this takes significant effort (like, a half-day of research to sort out one claim), and then sometimes back and forth with other Wikipedians to convince people that you actually chased down the real story. The problem is that for every mistake someone is willing to put effort into…

I wrote about some interesting discrepancies within Wikipedia for my sporadic newsletter last year: https://dahosek.substack.com/p/something-interesting-eda

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#36

Post by dhosek »

retcon wrote: post #23

Hang on, doesn't deliberate manipulation of the consumption of counterfactual legal precedent by a sitting judiciary (withholding with measurable effect the countering case references is the study method) only result in a spate of mistrials? Ed. legal precedent replaced sources for clarity of this significance

“consumption of counterfactual legal precedent”

I think you misread the article (or I’m misreading you). There were no counterfactual legal precedents published. They took a set of cases and for half of them published Wikipedia articles on them for half, did not publish them (the non-publication was the counterfactual case, not the contents of the articles).

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#37

Post by [deleted] »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #18
jacobolus wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is entirely possible to fix those mistakes (one at a time) on Wikipedia.... if you do the research work to find out what happened. But this takes significant effort (like, a half-day of research to sort out one claim), and then sometimes back and forth with other Wikipedians to convince people that you actually chased down the real story. The problem is that for every mistake someone is willing to put effort into…

I find obvious errors all the time, but the pages are locked. This is enough of a barrier to stop me from trying to fix it. Sometimes the discussion will have the same correction listed but overruled by partisan Wikipedians.

[deleted]

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#38

Post by sien »

jacobolus wrote: post #16
Dma54rhs wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to impossible to impossible to actually fix those mistakes on Wikipedia. Its good theory only on paper without any change in real life.

It is entirely possible to fix those mistakes (one at a time) on Wikipedia.... if you do the research work to find out what happened. But this takes significant effort (like, a half-day of research to sort out one claim), and then sometimes back and forth with other Wikipedians to convince people that you actually chased down the real story. The problem is that for every mistake someone is willing to put effort into…

Not always. Any particular two or more wikipedians who decide they don't want something in can sometimes stop it.

For example, in Australia there is a body that does sport participation statistics, Ausplay. They do this every year. It's a great source for sport statistics on Australia.

Two wikipedians decided that these statistics were not permissible in the sport in Australia article. They won :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sport_in_Australia#RFC_on...

This is sport in Australia, which is not that controversial. Now things that are controversial like IQ or the role of heritability in ability are surely going to be problematic.

Re: How Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#39

Post by easrng »

jacobolus wrote: post #4
stevenjgarner wrote: post #2

It seems the greatest value of Wikipedia is consistently as a repository of citations. The reliance of moderation or review of those citations is the question. EDIT: I hear complaints from students all the time that they are not allowed to cite Wikipedia. I tell them no you should instead cite the Wikipedia citations. They invariably tell me how much better they do academically because of that.

It’s really unfortunate that people copy claims made in Wikipedia (often without double-checking any other source) but then don’t cite Wikipedia. Often the claims made by Wikipedia are wrong, misleading, sloppy, one-sided, etc., and this (widespread) practice helps to perpetuate those problematic claims by making it seem that other authors are independently claiming the same thing. Then when future Wikipedia editors…

Relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/978/
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