[Suggestion] Disallow the use of sources deprecated by the Wikipedia editing community for unreliability - eviltoast

Since 2017, Wikipedia editors have compiled a list of news sources from which articles are highly likely to employ systematic bias, lack professional editing and/or journalistic standards, regularly misrepresent sources, and/or fabricate information.

While its list is by no means a complete list of publications with the aforementioned problems, it has helped make Wikipedia articles more reliable by basing them off of sources covering the same events and information from a more objective and factual point of view.

To make Lemmy news communities better than their Reddit counterparts, I think avoiding links to those sources in favor of more reliable alternatives would be worthwhile.

  • breadsmasher@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I think it’s a good idea in principle. It will likely upset a subset of people no matter how you slice it. If someone’s favourite source is on the list, they’ll decry the list as being “anti-chosen world view”

    • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      5 months ago

      The reason the list is relatively short, in comparison to how many websites likely fall under its scope, is because adding entries to it requires the consensus of dozens or hundreds of Wikipedia editors, and only if that unreliability is consistent. Notably the list doesn’t exclude some questionably reliable sources, such as Fox News, as its purpose isn’t to remove sources of bias, rather sources of misinformation.

    • mecfs@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      The list is pretty short. And mostly includes:

      1. State sponsered propaganda outlets: Russia Today, Global Times etc
      2. Very Low quality news that might aswell just go find the same story with a better source: Daily Mail, The Sun
      3. Far Right Super Biased News: OANN, Breibart, National Enquirer etc