| | Another bias is from "show and tell." Some Wikipedia editors have not outgrown their need to show off what they have found on the internet. Again using the obscure sport of netball as an example, the editor found a photo posted on flickr that was labeled, "The Girls Netball Team"<ref>http://www.flickr.com/photos/51132506@N00/1954358144</ref> even though it did not show anyone playing netball. The editor then captioned the photo, "A Malawian netball team" and placed it along side a few other obscure facts to create a Malawi section of the netball article.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netball&oldid=420915334</ref> So how can the reader trust that the people in the photograph are really in Malawi and that they really play netball?<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Netball_in_Africa#Malawi_image</ref><ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Netball/Archive_3#Should_image_of_Netball_players_not_playing_be_used</ref> Adding photos to articles is the most visible form of the "show and tell" syndrome. The need to "show and tell" can also result in including random, obscure facts and data in an article. For example, an editor can find a data source from years ago, but if the data is included in the article without proper emphasis of the date, it creates the implication that the data remains true today.<ref>E.g., {{cite web|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netball_in_Brunei&diff=502678275&oldid=502670120|title=Netball in Brunei|date=July 16, 2012}}</ref> | | Another bias is from "show and tell." Some Wikipedia editors have not outgrown their need to show off what they have found on the internet. Again using the obscure sport of netball as an example, the editor found a photo posted on flickr that was labeled, "The Girls Netball Team"<ref>http://www.flickr.com/photos/51132506@N00/1954358144</ref> even though it did not show anyone playing netball. The editor then captioned the photo, "A Malawian netball team" and placed it along side a few other obscure facts to create a Malawi section of the netball article.<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netball&oldid=420915334</ref> So how can the reader trust that the people in the photograph are really in Malawi and that they really play netball?<ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Netball_in_Africa#Malawi_image</ref><ref>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Netball/Archive_3#Should_image_of_Netball_players_not_playing_be_used</ref> Adding photos to articles is the most visible form of the "show and tell" syndrome. The need to "show and tell" can also result in including random, obscure facts and data in an article. For example, an editor can find a data source from years ago, but if the data is included in the article without proper emphasis of the date, it creates the implication that the data remains true today.<ref>E.g., {{cite web|url=http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Netball_in_Brunei&diff=502678275&oldid=502670120|title=Netball in Brunei|date=July 16, 2012}}</ref> |
| − | Errors and bias can be introduced by robotic submissions. For example, many Wikipedia articles about populated places in the United States were created by robots using 2000 census data. A standard paragraph on demographics which included 2000 data was automatically included in each article. Wikipedia has not been able to program a robot to update all of those statistics, so most articles about places in the United States do not have more recent data from the 2010 census. Robots tagged each Wikipedia article that had an article name in common with those in an early edition of ''Encyclopedia Britanica'' as having that book as a source -- even if nothing in the article was based on that book. | + | Errors and bias can be introduced by robotic submissions. For example, many Wikipedia articles about populated places in the United States were created by robots using 2000 census data. A standard paragraph on demographics which included 2000 data was automatically included in each article. Wikipedia has not been able to program a robot to update all of those statistics, so most articles about places in the United States do not have more recent data from the 2010 census. Robots tagged many Wikipedia articles that had an article name in common with those in an early edition of ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' as having that book as a source -- even if nothing in the article was based on that book. |