Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia as a court source

2005 compilation of court citations
A list of court citations has been compiled. --Michael Snow 21:02, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Leaving a note on article talk pages
I think it is interesting for editors to know that an article has been cited in a court decision, especially by appellate courts or courts of last instance (but probably less so if the citation is in amicus curiae briefs, parties' motions etc.). I've starting leaving the following sort of notice on the relevant Talk pages:

What do you think? Sandstein 19:58, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Good. I tried to improve it with this.Remember (talk) 21:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Here is the text for how to put in the template above:

Is this supposed to be for citations of the English language Wikipedia only?
Which would be a shame, since at least in the German-speaking countries there have been a number of decisions by senior judicial bodies that have quoted the German Wikipedia. They don't (yet) seem to collect those citations in de:, though. Sandstein 20:11, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Well, this is the English wikipedia, so I think we should limit ourselves to citations of the English version. Feel free to create a similar page in German Wikipedia and add interwiki links, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

US citations
Tech Law Prof Blog on June 19, 2006 said that Westlaw gives 20 citations of Wikipedia by US federal courts, one in 2004 but mostly in early 2006, compared to 105 for Encyclopedia Brittanica. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:25, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

United States vs. Muhammed Salah and Abdelhaleem Ashqar
On October 24, 2006 in the Federal District Court for Northern Illinois, Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Ferguson asked the government's expert witness Matthew Levitt "Have you heard of wikipedia?" and "Do you consider it a reliable source?" Ashqar's Defense attorney, Bill Moffet, objected and Judge Amy J. Steve sustained the objection. It's not known how the prosecution intended to use wikipedia as evidence. Bjd773 12:28, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Does this count?
http://www.citizen.org/documents/ACFDB9C.pdf is a "certified complaint" in Nickolas v. Fletcher, et al. It mentions "blogs" a little ways in, but I don't know if it's legit. 68.39.174.238 01:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Conversion into table
The equivalent of this list in the German Wikipedia has been converted into a sortable table. This seems quite useful and well arranged to me. Why not proceeding similarly here? Framhein 18:29, 1 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Please take a look at my suggestion of how the table could look like. If nobody should complain, I will exchange the present list for that table. Framhein 17:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia in judicial opinions
I was not aware of this, so I started Wikipedia in judicial opinions. However, the entry I started contains the actual quotes showing use - should we connect or merge these projects (I plan to keep building my list up). bd2412 T 18:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I would rather not merge the lists. In most cases, the full quotes seem to contain only little valuable information. Including them in this list on a regular basis would make the really interesting quotes - e.g. where judges reflect on the reliability of Wikipedia - only harder to find. Those who want to read the quote in context can easily follow the link to the text of the opinion. Framhein (talk) 19:52, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Malaysia court case
I've added archived. While it's just an additional ref to support what appears to be an uncontentious claim about the history of the Lord Chancellor in the UK, the court case it self is fairly significant I believe see. I came across this specific example a while back but wasn't aware of the article at the time. I put the date of the judgement not the date the case was heard. Nil Einne (talk) 13:24, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Why is this page in project space?
Is it not notable enough for mainspace? Leucosticte (talk) 00:32, 17 June 2012 (UTC)
 * This is part of Wikipedia in the media, which, when it was created over seven years ago, was originally intended as publicity pages (i.e. the common argument used in advertisements that experts and other people use the product too). Zzyzx11 (talk) 16:57, 23 June 2012 (UTC)