Source Notes is a Future Tense column that discusses the internet's information ecosystem.Sometimes, (a lot of time?) Wikipedia's internal politics mirrors those of real-world sources. The United Kingdom House of Commons initiated a parliamentary inquiry in January 2017 into fake news. It was particularly concerned about the impact of fake news stories on democracy and the impact on recent elections in the United States.Hillbillyholiday, an English Wikipedia user, launched a Request to Comment about the Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper. The Daily Mail was accused of spreading misinformation. This was based on the paper's recent sanctions by the International Press Standards Organisation. After a lengthy discussion, the Wikipedia editors decided that the Daily Mail was not a reliable source and should not be used for Wikipedia. Any user who tried to cite the tabloid in a Wikipedia article would be warned and asked to cite another reliable publication.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWikipedia's judgement about Daily Mail at the time generated significant media attention, particularly in the British press. The unprecedented ban was covered by the Times, Guardian and HuffPost U.K. Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's co-founder and a British citizen, agreed with the decision of the Wikipedia community. He noted that Daily Mail had perfected the art in running fake clickbait stories. The Daily Mail responded to Wikipedia's decision with an incendiary article attacking the site and its volunteers as well as the project.Wikipedians will reject publications that are flagrantly false, even if they are popular.In 2018, the Wikipedia community affirmed its decision about the Daily Mail. Since then, there has been much less media coverage about the site's relationship with the newspaper. An archived version from January 1, 2017 shows that there were more than 30,000 articles that used the Daily Mail as a source. Reddit user ronsmith7 posted earlier this month that Wikipedia had lost more than 10,000 Daily Mail references. Reddit user Ronsmith7 wrote that there has been no journalistic interest in the basic questions of why Wikipedia editors make these decisions and how they implement them.AdvertisementAdvertisementToday is your lucky day, Ronsmith7, because this journalist is very interested in these issues. The Daily Mail was criticized by the Wikipedia community. This shows that volunteers are unable to accept all publications as reliable. Wikipedians will reject publications that are flagrantly false, even if they are popular.According to ABC Data, an organization that monitors the U.K. media sector, the Daily Mail's print circulation is high. It has more than 960,000 copies per issue. The British paper is often compared with the U.S. tabloid, the National Enquirer.Steven Slater, a Wikipedia editor from Essex, England, was involved in the deprecation discussion. He told me via email that British people use the Daily Mail as a catchall for dishonest and poor journalism. Take this example: In 2015, the Daily Mail published an article entitled Read History as it Happened: Extraordinary Daily Mail pages From the Day Adolf Hitler Dies 70 Years Ago This week. The headline of that story was Hitler Dead, German Radio Tells World. The content was different. This is a bit strange, Huw Lemmey, an English writer.AdvertisementAdvertisementYou can find the Wikipedia verdict on sources such as Daily Mail by searching Wikipedia for WP.RSP. This will take you to a list called Perennial Sources. Wikipedia says that Slate is generally reliable. We are happy. Wikipedia has also given greenlight to traditional newspapers such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.However, certain publications are more difficult to get Wikipedia consensus. Wikipedia editors have identified the inconsistent editorial quality at BuzzFeedwhich is open for user-generated blogs, listiclesas opposed BuzzFeed News, which is a Pulitzer Prize winner and is considered reliable. Fox News opinion talk programs like Hannity or Tucker Carlson Tonight, which are not considered reliable sources for facts, should not be used on Wikipedia. Fox News, outside of its opinion programs, can be trusted for most news coverage. However, Wikipedians caution that Fox News should not be used when it comes to science and politics.AdvertisementWho decides what kind of journalism is acceptable for Wikipedia? Wikipedia's volunteer editors are responsible for making decisions about Wikipedia's content. This is often done via Request for Comment or RfC. Wikipedia editors can either support or oppose an RfC once it is submitted. It might appear that Wikipedia editors are voting on the topic, but this is not the case. Wikipedians quickly point out that this is not a vote. Wikipedians refer it to as a not vote or!vote. The! symbol is for logical nullification. This is because an RfC's goal is not to determine majority rule, but to have consensus-building discussions where the strength of each argument will determine the correct course.AdvertisementAdvertisementEditors who voted against the 2017 ban in the RfC mostly claimed that all newspapers made mistakes, particularly now that the industry couldn't afford proofreaders or fact-checkers and that it was unfair not to focus on the Daily Mail specifically. Many editors disagreed with the ban in 2017. They argued that Daily Mail's mistakes were more frequent than the occasional error and that selling sensational stories was part of the paper's business model. Guy Macon is a Wikipedia editor who has more than 15 years of experience. He pointed out incorrect Daily Mail news stories like the Amanda Knox verdict being published and falsely claiming Beijing residents saw sunrises on huge TV screens due to their inability to see natural light.AdvertisementAfter the comment period ended, volunteers reviewed all comments and determined that there was consensus to ban the Daily Mail from being used as a source. The Daily Mail responded by publishing a harsh attack on Wikipedia editors involved in this decision. In response, the Daily Mail published a scathing attack on Macon and Slater as Wikipedia editors with a biased agenda. It doesn't change the fact that Wikipedia editors were abused by a newspaper that circulates nearly 1,000,000 copies per issue to promote their Wikipedia-editing hobby.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementReddit user ronsmith7s mentioned that the number of Wikipedia citations for the Daily Mail has dropped dramatically over the three years since it was removed. Slater explained to me that it takes a lot of work to remove Daily Mail links. This includes finding the links on Wikipedia pages and analysing the context. Then, you can either remove them or find other sources.I was curious if the Wikipedia community thought of programming a bot that would remove Daily Mail links. ClueBot NG flags edits containing vandalism markers such as common swear terms. There are also bots that can perform basic tasks on Wikipedia. Editors made the distinction between the sources of Wikipedia, which should be reliable, and the content of articles, which may be correct regardless of source. Macon explained that while it would be simple to create a bot to remove all citations from the Daily Mail and then fire it up, we don't remove material because it was found in the Daily Mail. We carefully review it. Bots must be approved by humans according to the site's bot policy. This includes the Wikipedians who are part of the bot approvals group, or BAG. One member of the BAG stated that a bot which removed all Daily Mail links would not be approved. Unsupervised bots are not allowed to make context-sensitive changes that normally require human attention, according to the bot policy. The Daily Mail is banned in most contexts. However, it can be used as a source if it is used in an "about-self" fashion.AdvertisementAdvertisementThe pruning of the internet encyclopedia, Daily Mail, and other deprecated sources requires a lot of human effort. Wikipedia has been emphasizing the human aspect of its projects in recent years. The Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization, celebrated Wikipedia's 20th anniversary earlier this year. It also celebrated the volunteers, supporters, and humans who made Wikipedia possible. The human-interest theme, like many other nonprofit fundraising drives, felt a little too cute to me. This is how Wikipedia should be viewed. This project is human-led and involves emotions and messiness.Future Tense is a collaboration between Slate, New America and Arizona State University. It examines emerging technologies and public policy.
