It is not that editors fail to care or that there is a decline of volunteer editors willing to address the issues, it is based on Wikipedia policy which has backed editors into a corner.
I have previously written about my favorite comedian Brian Regan and his take on the accuracy of Wikipedia. Regan believes that Wikipedia is entirely wrong. This, after finding out the first three things about him on his Wikipedia page are wrong. Understandably so, reading such inaccurate information tends to make people question the reliability of Wikipedia. As in Regan’s case, I doubt that you will see him advocating for people to support the Wikimedia Foundation anytime soon, but hopefully I can shed a little light on why Wikipedia’s information is often times inaccurate and why it is difficult correcting factual errors on Wikipedia.
For those reading this article who know little if anything about me, I make a living out of correcting factual errors on Wikipedia. I have been doing so successfully for many years and have a long list of clients who contact me on a regular basis because of Wikipedia’s endless policies and guidelines that accrue on a daily basis. The more rules they implement, the harder it is for someone new to Wikipedia to correct a factual error. Many times new editors are scolded for correcting the information, even though they know the edit they are making is not vandalism. Wikipedia has been a backward system ever since the founding of the Wikimedia Foundation and will continue to frustrate people to the point of hiring someone like me to perform edits on the site for them.
With that out of the way, let’s take a quick look at why Wikipedia has caused its own problem with being inaccurate. It is not that editors fail to care or that there is a decline of volunteer editors willing to address the issues, it is based on Wikipedia policy which has backed editors into a corner. If you have spent any amount of time on Wikipedia, you will have seen someone make the comment that Wikipedia is about “reliability” and not “truth.” What? Yes, you read correctly. Wikipedia gives more weight to something printed in a reliable source than it does do factual information. As an example, if the Chicago Tribune (which is considered a reliable source by Wikipedia) prints that Jay Cutler was finally cut by the Chicago Bears, then that is the information that is used in his article. Even if Virginia herself comes out and says that it’s not true, that doesn’t matter. Wikipedia gives the weight to the reliable source, not the truth.
Now, obviously the Tribune would not print something that they do not “fact check” (you have to read that sentence with the level of sarcasm in which I wrote it), which is why there are other sources that would come out such as NFL.com and the Bleacher Report which would report that Cutler had not been cut by the Bears. So, correcting egregious factual errors are rather easy with Wikipedia (most are reverted as vandalism), it is simple things like what Brian Regan dealt with that drive people crazy. An editor added his date of birth wrong, which in turn calculated his age wrong. Correcting factual errors on Wikipedia such as these become difficult as the date of birth was likely taken from a reliable source that printed it incorrectly. As Wikipedia gives weight to the reliable source, then that is the date of birth that was placed on his profile. Hence, Wikipedia’s rule of verifiability over truth has caused the site to ignite its own problem with reliability.
What makes things worse is that Wikipedia editors are always slow about addressing inaccuracies. A study discussed by the Daily Mail in 2012 showed that 1 in 4 complaints about inaccurate information on Wikipedia received no response from editors. This means that someone had requested (normally through the article talk page) to have an independent editor without a conflict of interest review the inaccuracy and correct the information, yet were completely ignored. Through my experience, correcting factual errors on Wikipedia is something that editors do not like to deal with as they themselves do understand the difference between “facts” and “information in reliable sources.” For the other 3 instances of factual errors, it is unlikely that the information was corrected, even though an editor reviewed the request.
So while I will continue to attend a Brian Regan show every chance I get, I am willing to bet that he won’t do the same for Wikipedia. As many people struggle with Wikipedia’s reliability and its use as a source for doctors, writers, and even judges, Wikipedia will continue to be its own worst enemy when it comes to reliability. Many of its policies, created by the volunteers who edit the site, are flawed and need to be changed if the Wikimedia Foundation wants to change the way people see Wikipedia. Unfortunately, knowing the Foundation, they will be too busy begging for donations as opposed to focusing on issues with the site. Until something does change, I will continue correcting factual errors on Wikipedia for paying clients who have tried and failed thanks to the endless guidelines and policies that keep them from easily correcting the errors.