User:FT2/Verifiability

I like this one:

As Wikipedia writers, we know published statements can be unreliable. Most statements in reputable media aren’t contentious, but it can happen. A person can lie 2 years about their age in a review. Even a celebrity author can make a claim which critics raise eyebrows at. Honest mistakes happen. Pillars of the community can make inaccurate statements. Our editorial policies are designed to handle it.

Many statements are so widely agreed upon as that they aren’t much disputed. Round earth. Steve Jobs founded Apple. NYT published a letter from Mr Roth. But if there’s serious cause for doubt, we’re honest. We state only that a given source has expressed that view or assertion. We invite, we welcome doubt. A reader can retain skepticism, do research, and form a view on it for themselves. If there’s reasonable doubt, we get clear exactly who said what, we make it transparent and publicly checkable, and we avoid claiming to know the correct answer to the question. We do this by aiming to be very accurate in our reporting of claims. Even if a claim is uncertain, the facts about the claim and who claimed it still normally remain reasonably certain. It’s all those tags you see next to a fact:   and the rest. They all say, in so many words, Wikipedia wants a reader to understand the boundaries of a documented claim and to critically consider how much it can be relied on. We aim to be almost fanatical about contentious claims having citations and attributions, though a long way to go, and we’ll probably be more so in future. We will report which credible sources have been on record as saying so, and what they said, and whether credible others agreed or disputed the issue. Even if we can’t guarantee whose view is “the truth” we can report those facts so the reader can research further. Wikipedia doesn’t have a policy of arbitrating omnisciently between commentators if there’s serious doubt. Encyclopedia, not tennis match. Not now, not ever. Maybe they are all true, or none of them. We aim to present what is known including transparency over our limitations. We state what we found, how we found it, encouraging the reader to check it and think for him or herself.

Hence Wikipedia’s widely mis-understood principle: Wikipedia is based on verifiability, not truth. We provide information so anyone can in principle re-verify any statement we ourselves checked or reported. We note where statements or opinions were made, and who made them. We note when and where the reader can check for themselves if they wish to double-check our page, and we invite them to improve Wikipedia in turn. We do not claim further omniscience or ask the reader to trust us an inch further than they can thenselves re-check.