Wikinews talk:Correction policy

Deletion of Proved-Wrong Articles?
Relates to: Deletion_requests

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

Some things to consider: 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."
 * 1) We often send articles back to 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. 'ed.
 * Day 1: 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.

-- Ross Koepke 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 (article does not meet Neutral point of view policy) or  (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 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 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. —     18:06, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

We need a formal policy
I believe it is becoming a priority to formalize a correction policy. Increasingly there is consideration for promoting new reviewers., An increase in new reviewers will increase the likelihood of needing corrections. It is neither adequate nor nimble to solely depend on experienced reviewers, especially when the number of active reviewers is low (our perennial problem).

One key issue we've run into recently is how a correction policy interacts with the archive policy. As of this writing, that discussion is on-going for a specific article. However, the problem I think needs to be resolved more generally and permanently, within both the correction policy as well as the archive policy.

Once that issue is addressed, I think we should move forward with formalizing the proposed correction policy. I have, hopefully not too boldly made some changes to the proposed policy. These changes include defining minor and major errors, as well as mentioning the first 24 hour grace-period post-publication. I also removed the recommendation to un-publish the article, as only reviewers can do that on a sighted article.

I would like to do more work on the policy, but I'll wait to see what reception these changes have and how the conversations go here and elsewhere. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Published) 18:10, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I replied to some of the points in the first paragraph when they were raised on the talk page of the Crocus City Hall attack article. Depending on reviewers' experience is exactly how en.wn has long operated.
 * To clarify, since the adoption of the modern review system, no one's been permitted to unpublish articles. An error can be addressed with, for example, a correction, a retraction, or by fixing it. What you're seeing is again that this page was written well before the era of modern review; at the time (July 2005), FlaggedRevs wasn't in place, and any one could publish or unpublish an article at will, just by removing publish. Heavy Water (talk) 18:27, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Last summer, actually, I was myself thinking about overhauling this and proposing it be made a policy, but I decided we didn't need a correction policy. I can't remember why, but I think it may have been that such a policy may end up largely duplicating WN:ARCHIVE. Heavy Water (talk) 18:44, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Do you still think we could largely achieve what we need through only the Archive conventions? If not, what was your main goal when you considered overhauling it? Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Published) 22:56, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I still think so. I'm open to being shown wrong. I didn't consider the issue with any further depth than "we should have a policy specifying when we issue corrections, why (for ethics, for reputation, to keep ourselves accountable) and how". Heavy Water (talk) 00:07, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think we need at least a formal and updated guideline for issuing corrections and retractions. I don't think relying on institutional knowledge is effective when we have so few active reviewers. That is especially so when there is only a 24 hour grace period after publication.
 * The guideline would be much more valuable if you were to record your institutional knowledge by heavily contributing to it. We could shift Correction_policy to a guideline and continue that work if it's the quicker/easier route. And then work on updating WN:ARCHIVE so the two complement and agree with each other. Michael.C.Wright (Talk/Published) 13:49, 3 May 2024 (UTC)