[Wikipedia-l] Why do we not make it clear that Wikipedia is a work in progress?

Mon Dec 5 23:32:44 UTC 2005

Why is there not a big, fat, clear warning at the top of every article that this
is a work in progess, has not been formally reviewed, may contain factual
inaccuracies or vandalism, and *should not* be used for reference without a very
large grain of salt?

I've gotten tired of having to remind people (even Wikipedians) that Wikipedia
is still a draft, and that we have *ZERO* reviewed-and-vetted-for-the-public
pages yet. We don't even have a review system in place yet.

The "Disclaimer" on en.wikipedia.org, such as it is, isn't even *visible*. You
have to scroll down to the *very bottom* to see a tiny "Disclaimers" link, and
then follow *that*. The other languages, do they even all *have* disclaimer pages?

Every time somebody discovers some bit of inaccurate or embarrassing something
in an article and trumps it up in their blog/magazine/international TV news
network, the hoo-hah is because we're seen as pretending to be a reliable or
respectable information source. *WE ARE NOT SUCH YET* and we need to make sure
that we're not seen to be claiming that.

We're not just a bunch of geeks hacking together articles anymore; we get
umpteen bajillion page views from random folks who probably don't have a clue
what we're about, and we get waaaayy too much attention that's based on the
impression that we're serving the public directly already. The recent affair is
just one in a long series of small and large fusses because we're not being
clear about what we are.

Wikipedia is a draft, and drafts that are circulated in public need to be
explicitly marked as such.

</rant>

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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