User:Maio~enwiki/Proposals/Wikipedia as reference work

Proposal for the addition of Terms of Use, Disclaimers notes, and Warnings on Wikipedia

Background
Before you read this proposal, understand that:


 * this proposal is a personal point of view.
 * this proposal does NOT express the opinions of other Wikipedians.
 * this proposal does NOT express the opinions of the Wikipedia Project.
 * Wikipedia does NOT encourage the creation of personal pages on User pages.
 * Wikipedia is not a discussion forum.
 * I'm not a lawyer, and therefore can't contribute to the writing of Wikipedia's Terms of Use.
 * I'm just a concerned Wikipedian.

Purpose
The purpose of this proposal is to further expand the discussion on Replies to common objections and Why Wikipedia is not so great for further development of Wikipedia's General Disclaimers, Wikipedia's Risk Disclaimer, and possibly, Wikipedia's Terms of Use.

Aims
The proposal aims to one of the following intents:

Wikipedia Should Not Be Used As Reference Work
 * an addition to Wikipedia's Disclaimers with the following text or any other similar:
 * Instead, use it as background information or as a reference with no guarantee of validity.


 * the creation of Wikipedia's Terms of Use in which the above text or any other similar is used.

Acknowledgements
The following persons contributed to the writing of this proposal:


 * Add persons here with a link to their Talk page

Essay: Should Wikipedia be used as reference work?
Warning: the following text is a personal point of view, and should NOT be taken as part of Wikipedia's Disclaimers.

The answer is no.

Wikipedia is a free content encyclopedia. Free in the meaning of free to use and free to edit. Because of this, Wikipedia becomes an unreliable source with no guarantee of validity, as some articles may provide inaccurate and misleading information. 

Wikipedia is a wiki, meaning that it can be edited by anyone, thus allowing the storing and presentation of erroneous, innacurate, misleading, or invalid information, opinions, and personal point of views. Because of the nature of the project, only a few pages are protected of any edits. For example, one of the Wikipedia namespace pages that were going to be used for the the writing of this essay, could not be used as reference because it was not a protected page &mdash; the Wikipedia:About page. As of today, all Wikipedia articles have a hyper-text link to Wikipedia's Disclaimers, but these disclaimers don't point out that Wikipedia should not be used as reference work; although they explain Wikipedia's guarantee on its articles validity. 

Every text of Wikipedia is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. There is a warning on Wikipedia's Copyrights in relation to editing or adding content to it. However, as of this writing, Wikipedia doesn't have any written information on its Terms of Use &mdash; a popular legal document template used by many websites to free the people behind it of any responsabilities by the use of their website. 

Wikipedia needs a Terms of Use document, for the simple reason that not having one risks the project itself, and most importantly, its main contributors &mdash; such as its developers and administrators. The document would free the Wikipedia Project and its contributors of any responsabilities, and also serve as a legal warning regarding any contribution or use of the project.

In conclusion, Wikipedia is a great and powerful project; it would be a shame that all the work done by past, present, and future contributors ends up being lost because a simple legal document didn't provide a freedom of responsabilities to its contributors. Long live Wikipedia.

Maio Wikipedian