Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2014-09-24/Recent research

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Hey Max, wouldn't a more appropriate statement be that 0.75% of Wikipedia biography dates "do not match" those in standard reference works? I've worked on at least two articles (one was John Latouche - see the talk page) where I'm sure I established the correct dates even though many reference sources provide different ones (I even got the Library of Congress to amend their dates for Latouche). Maybe that's also true for the rest of the .75%. So it's not that WP is wrong, it's just different and possibly more accurate. kosboot (talk) 06:18, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have also experienced email exchanges where the referenced party changed their data thanks to Wikipedia and my inquiry. So I would agree that mismatches do not always indicate that Wikipedia is inaccurate. Wikipedia's "blue-link" feature and all of the "checkwiki" bots make it possible for people to quickly realize that a grandson cannot be born before his grandfather and so forth. These basic checks lead to cleaner data in the long run. Jane (talk) 07:28, 28 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The method used was to find biographies that were both in Wikipedia and 9 reference databases, which are sadly not named due to the wishes of an "anonymous sponsor" of the paper.

This is pretty suspicious, particularly since the exact reason for not naming is not mentioned (a violation of journalistic ethics). Am I the only one who finds this suspicious? (As mentioned in the article, it could be a red flag) Narutolovehinata5 ^tccsdnew 12:34, 29 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]