As we currently exist in an era that named “post-truth” as its international word of the year, the on-going battle to find out what is fact and what is not has never been more vital.
Today it was announced that Wikipedia has voted to ban contributors from referencing anything with a citation to The Daily Mail, as they were deemed to be too ‘unreliable’.
The move taken by Editors of Wikipedia’s English-language site, who are all volunteers, was first suggested in January.
The Editor who proposed the ban, Hillbillyholiday, motioned: 'Should we prohibit the use of The Daily Mail as a source? I envisage something just short of blacklisting, whereby its introduction to an article could be accepted only upon there being a demonstrable need to use it instead of other sources.'
Opposition to the ban argued that links to unreliable sources from The Daily Mail were the fault of the Editor for not using an appropriate source. They used the argument that it obviously could not be used to support a claim related to ‘science’ or some other academically related factual detail.
But, this is where it becomes a slippery slope. It is not just in the Sciences that we have 'fact,' people’s lives also have facts. If you are like me and immediately scroll towards a celebrity or public figures ‘Personal Life’ page when we find ourselves on their Wikipedia page – how do we know that it is factually correct? Can we really believe that something is true when it has been cited by tabloid speculation?
This thought was echoed by support for the ban as they argued that they could not use the source for anything and that the decision: 'centred on the Daily Mail’s reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism, and flat-out fabrication.'
This move comes off the back of Wikipedia announcing a bid to fight fake news in January by promising to push a policy of verifiability. In the pinned tweet announcing this, it declared that: ‘We are not in a post-fact world. On Wikipedia, facts matter.’
The Mail is certainly not known for being dedicated to the truth or taking a conscientious approach to their work. As recently as this week Melania Trump filed a $150 million libel suit against them for their claims that she worked as an elite escort.
Although, this may seem rather ironic due to her husband’s strikingly similar dodgy dealings with the truth.
Nonetheless, is it fair that Wikipedia has left out other questionable news sources from this discussion? And will the singling out of one particular source solve Wikipedia’s issue of unreliability and fake facts?
The Wikipedia committee responded to these questions by saying: 'This point is outside the scope of this RFC, which concerns only the Daily Mail. However, the discussion is closed without prejudice towards future discussions on such sources.'
So, let’s hope that this is the start of something productive and not just fulfilling a vendetta against one publication.
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Follow Katharine Gemmell on Twitter @katharinegemmel
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.