61–70 of 129 posts
A while ago the Oxford English Dictionary wrote a letter to the US Supreme Court asking them not use the OED as an authority. They said the OED definitions are based on imperfect collections of common use, and aren’t “right” or “wrong”. They also said the OED often uses SCOTUS decisions as a source, which creates an incestuous link.
I searched for this online, but couldn't find it. Might you have a link handy? Much appreciated!
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The 77 cases that were given a Wikipedia article saw a 17% increase in citations after publication. One significant outcome of giving a case a Wikipedia article described in the paper but not in the article is that the case receives an infobox visible at the top of search results for most search engines.
Maybe there's a rising tide of interest in certain cases that lifts both Wikipedians and jurists.
This is all in the article.
>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 s…
I mean technically yes they are "studying" a subject but this is not a scientific experiment, but it will almost certainly be cited as such just because it's called a study.
Can we stop calling stuff like this a "study"? This is not science, this is essentially journalism. I mean technically yes they are "studying" a subject but this is not a scientific experiment, but it will almost certainly be cited as such just because it's called a study.
After watching a female judge sentence a child with autism for killing his rapist and childhood abuser, after he was acquited by a male judge years before, I kind of lost faith in all types of judicial process. AI needs to take over for such things.
You mean when she sentenced a 25 year old with autism of stabbing a bedridden post-stroke 74 year old to death? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-62332824 You're really misrepresenting the case, and I doubt a good AI would rule favorably on those circumstances. The judicial system doesn't tend to go easy on stabbing defenseless people to death, even if you can argue that they were bad people or otherwise des…
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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 infor…
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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 natur…
>>What are we alarmed about? While I think the study has some major deficiencies addressed in other comments, if it was true, the alarm for me would be that Wikipedia has clearly become politically partisan in many area's and topics, including some that would intersect the law Wikipedia is hardly a "neutral" site of just facts
I’m not saying there isn’t bias, but the existence of bias in certain controversial subjects isn’t necessarily evidence that articles about cases are subject to the same kinds of issues. I’m not saying they’re immune either, but it’s not clear that the two are related.
Biased judges like this, love circular reasoning, to find justifications. Hence why Wikipedia is useful. Keep in mind wikipedia change the definition of a recession recently, than when challanged changed the definition of definition. Just last week.
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I think it depends on the topic and section of wikipedia. If you get into the political area's of wikipeda, I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of PragerU. If you stick to the pure hard sciences (physics as an example) and non-controversial events (like an earthquake) then sure they are unbiased
Can you give an example of a wikipedia page that you think shows bias on the same level as PragerU?
For example:
> Mohammed Zakir (also known as Meyra) was an Ethiopian Oromo nationalist. Regarded as "legendary Oromo hero", he is noted for his high contribution to keep the lights of Oromo nationalism shining after the martyrdom of his two hero colleagues called Elemo Qiltu and Ahmad Taqi ... the Oromos would never forget this early exemplary hero. And above all, history will always remember Meyra and his heroism.