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Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

news.mit.edu

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Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#31

Post by specialist »

tomrod wrote: post #10
coffeeblack wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the news sources that Wp trusts have gone completely bananas over the past decade.

Citation, please.

IIRC, as an example, Newsweek lost its trusted status as it adopted a news tabloid format. Further, they no longer have fact checkers and do not print corrections. Surely that's a disqualification right there.

Though I don't see that specific criteria listed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_guidelines

FWIW, here's Wikipedia's roundup of sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#32

Post by squeaky-clean »

headsoup wrote: post #21
exadrid wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has a very clear pro-science and pro-reality bias, and that's a good thing. You would not want news like OAN to be cited on their.

Depends if it's true though, right? Let's not dismiss everything because culture wars.

If it's true there's probably a less controversial source that reported on it. If a controversial source is the only place to report on something, it's probably not true.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#33

Post by zinekeller »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #28
smrtinsert wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be alarming. Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic. Seeing PragerU influencing the court would be alarming.

> Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic It isn't, that's the point of the study - not all court decisions are on wikipedia and those that are, are getting cited more. Judges, Lawyers, Clerks have access to the original decisions and court transcripts in electronic form going back decades and longer. If they're relying on whats on wikipedia - they're either doing poor research or are too lazy to write their own sum…

... and then rely on LexisNexis et al.? Unfortunately it seems that (US) courts don't really have a good collation of cases (as opposed to collated laws which exists as the US Code).

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#34

Post by ajross »

feet wrote: post #9
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence. It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behav…

My guess is that law clerks are using wikipedia as an easy way to find info on cases, which isn't entirely surprising to me

Exactly, Wikipedia is the first step for almost every expert professional in every profession. We all do it, and the world is better for it.

Also the causality of the argument in the linked article seems clearly backwards anyway: it's not that "Getting a wikipedia page for your case makes it more likely to be cited", it's "More important/citable cases are more likely to have a wikipedia page". Which is sort of an obvious point.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#35

Post by jorgesborges »

>Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts... The researchers suspect this is showing that Wikipedia is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction.

This makes sense. I don't know anything about the legal profession but they must have their own search tools and databases? Is it not easily accessible or digitized for all levels? I don't get why it would be easier in the first place to search Google or Wikipedia.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#36

Post by mjw1007 »

ajross wrote: post #34
feet wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that law clerks are using wikipedia as an easy way to find info on cases, which isn't entirely surprising to me

Exactly, Wikipedia is the first step for almost every expert professional in every profession. We all do it, and the world is better for it. Also the causality of the argument in the linked article seems clearly backwards anyway: it's not that "Getting a wikipedia page for your case makes it more likely to be cited", it's "More important/citable cases are more likely to have a wikipedia page". Which is sort of an obv…

The linked article is describing a randomised trial, which looks like it was set up in a way that's good enough to be sure the causality goes in the former direction.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#37

Post by _fat_santa »

jorgesborges wrote: post #35

>Unsurprisingly, the increase was bigger for citations by lower courts... The researchers suspect this is showing that Wikipedia is used more by judges or clerks who have a heavier workload, for whom the convenience of Wikipedia offers a greater attraction. This makes sense. I don't know anything about the legal profession but they must have their own search tools and databases? Is it not easily accessible or digitiz…

If I had to bet, they have those systems but they are a pain to use. If I had to speculate, it would be a lot like those citation search sites you used in College, they simply didn’t have the usability of Google. You had to enter search terms very specifically, whereas with Google you just search for what you want and Google figures out how to structure the query best to give you the results you want.

I can totally see a scenario where a clerk needs to look something up on a Friday afternoon, the though of pulling up the proper search catalog pains them so they shortcut, googling the thing they are looking for a reading the citations on Wikipedia. If I was a law clerk I would 100% do this.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#38

Post by Mountain_Skies »

Tostino wrote: post #26
bacchusracine wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sir, I'm afraid your bias is showing...

Pretending PreagerU is anything but blatant propaganda is silly.

Pretending Wikipedia isn't also, is silly. This week's nonsense with the definition of 'recession' is proof enough of that. If you want to argue magnitude, you've already conceded what Wikipedia is (and I don't deny PragerU is what you claim it is).

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#39

Post by photochemsyn »

feet wrote: post #9
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence. It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behav…

My guess is that law clerks are using wikipedia as an easy way to find info on cases, which isn't entirely surprising to me

I think law clerks and other legal professionals would be using a curated service (most likely LexisNexis) as their primary information source, not Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is quite unreliable on any major legal case, controversial issue, political personality, corporate entity etc., as the relevant wikipedia pages end up being heavily manipulated by agenda-driven editors who often erase or alter the most important information.

Re: Study finds Wikipedia influences judicial behavior

#40

Post by roenxi »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #7

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence. It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behav…

It isn't that obvious that this is alarming. What are we alarmed about?

The point of judges is that they make judgements. The citing of other law is just to try and keep some consistency between the judgements to make them predictable. In theory they could even give out inconsistent judgements and that would also be workable, it just happens that it usually means something bad is happening because judges aren't naturally more pleasant people than the horrible Mass of Humans that causes so much grief. So we want judges to put in an effort at consistency and if they are consistently using Wikipedia as a reference then it is easier for the rest of us to guess what the system is about to do.

It is easy to influence judicial opinion on a case. There are even professionals hired to do it as a full time job! We call them lawyers.

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