Wikinews talk:Correction policy

Deletion of Proved-Wrong Articles?

Relates to: [[Wikinews:Deletion_requests#London_bombing_investigators_reportedly_find_timing_device|]]

Do we want to delete articles that have been proved wrong but published at some point?

Some things to consider:

1. We often send articles back to {{develop}} that are POV, factually inaccurate, or insufficiently comprehensive.
2. Future researchers might stumble onto one of our factually inaccurate articles and take it as fact, including it in their papers, articles, etc.
3. We might look better if we delete false stories, because taking those stories off the record would make them unavailable to news analysts who might be forming judgements of WikiNews.
4. We might inadvertantly be contributing to someone's misinformation campaign by extending the effects of the misinformation by holding onto it.
5. We might look bad if someone brought up point #3. (Think "Scandal: WikiNews Coverup!")
6. We might look bad anyways if we keep factually inaccurate articles.
7. Intentionally reporting false news is irresponsible.
8. A date can get put on an article way before its published. It's conceivable to imagine a timeline such as this:

• • • Day 1: Article created, wrong, biased, etc. {{publish}}'ed.
    • Day 1: {{delete}} tag added.
    • Day 3: Information comes out that proves article wrong.
    • Day 2-8: Article is revised, expanded, pictures added etc - ending up in a very nice looking article...except it's still all wrong and was proved wrong days ago.
    • Day 16: Someone comes around and reviews the deletion request, and seeing the date as "Day 1", says that at the time of "Day 1" the information was thought to be true - but the information was written after Day 3. So the Date tag is not necessarily when the information was written down.

Suggested Solution: Creation of a new tag to the effect of "Warning: Since publication of this article, other facts have come to light revealing some or all of the information in this article to be false."

--RossKoepke^Talk 02:45, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Retraction

I suggest that retractions like this one: http://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Kanchi_Shankaracharya_Jayendra_Saraswathi_in_custody&diff=156044&oldid=103309 (for more information on this see Jayendra_Saraswathi: informal mediation on sources to be in/excluded) should follow a well-defined format, e.g. have their own section with the header Retraction.

It might be useful to have a Category:Policy Violation to mark articles (even non-editable articles) that appear to be in violation of a policy by adding their talk page to the category. --Fasten 18:04, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Several of the article tags which might be applied an article, such as {{NPOV}} (article does not meet Neutral point of view policy) or {{Sources}} (article does not have or may misuse sources), add the article to the Category:Disputed. The use of a disputed category is because "policy violation" is a matter of interpretation.

When an article might be tagged with several different Wikinews:Article flags, the usual practice is to put a single tag on the article, and additional issues on the talk page when the article tagger explains why the article has been tagged.

Your idea for a retraction template is interesting to me. We also had an article - I believe in August - in which Wikinews (and many other news sources) were hoaxed into the belief Mr. Bush jr. would be attending a convention in Sydney, Australia. I believe a retraction was added to that article; perhaps we could model a template on that. - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 18:20, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

I have looked at that "addition" the article, and removed it. Wikinews articles can, and likely will, be incorrect on occasion. Unlike Encyclopedias, news articles reflect what was known or believed about a news event at the time the article was written. When that information is proved to be incorrect, a retraction article (such as you suggest) should be written. Retractions (or updates, depending on how you views news article archives) are news in and of themselves; new information is available about a news event which refutes what was previously known.

The Wikinews:Archive conventions are the guidelines concerning archiving articles. After an article has been (or should have been, in this case) archived no further content edits should be made to the article. A link to a retraction article might be added as it is not a content edit. - Amgine | ^{talk en.WN} 18:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

{{Correction}} is apparently used for cases like this, see George H. W. Bush to attend Sydney CEO conference. --Fasten 10:46, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Correction of archived and other long published stories

Reminder for me to fill in something here tomorrow. --Chiacomo ^(talk) 06:42, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Reminder for me to fill in something here after I graduate college. —this is messedr͏̈ocker (talk) 18:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)