[helsinkiandrew]

This is alarming but I'm not sure the study actually finds that "Wikipedia influences judicial behavior" in the way most readers would understand that term - influencing decisions and sentence.

It finds that "Getting a public Wikipedia article increased a case’s citations by more than 20 percent." That could mean judges are citing cases with wikipedia entries rather than similar cases without and their judicial behaviour remains the same.

[feet]

My guess is that law clerks are using wikipedia as an easy way to find info on cases, which isn't entirely surprising to me

[photochemsyn]

I think law clerks and other legal professionals would be using a curated service (most likely LexisNexis) as their primary information source, not Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is quite unreliable on any major legal case, controversial issue, political personality, corporate entity etc., as the relevant wikipedia pages end up being heavily manipulated by agenda-driven editors who often erase or alter the most important information.

[grumple]

I would guess that google and other search engines have much better search functionality than curated services. You'd find a case via google, then review the details on a curated service.

[merely-unlikely]

Curated services like LexisNexis aren't necessarily free from bias either. One need not use a single service exclusively

[ajross]

Exactly, Wikipedia is the first step for almost every expert professional in every profession. We all do it, and the world is better for it.

Also the causality of the argument in the linked article seems clearly backwards anyway: it's not that "Getting a wikipedia page for your case makes it more likely to be cited", it's "More important/citable cases are more likely to have a wikipedia page". Which is sort of an obvious point.

[mjw1007]

The linked article is describing a randomised trial, which looks like it was set up in a way that's good enough to be sure the causality goes in the former direction.

[stevage]

Your second comment is incorrect.

[roenxi]

It isn't that obvious that this is alarming. What are we alarmed about?

The point of judges is that they make judgements. The citing of other law is just to try and keep some consistency between the judgements to make them predictable. In theory they could even give out inconsistent judgements and that would also be workable, it just happens that it usually means something bad is happening because judges aren't naturally more pleasant people than the horrible Mass of Humans that causes so much grief. So we want judges to put in an effort at consistency and if they are consistently using Wikipedia as a reference then it is easier for the rest of us to guess what the system is about to do.

It is easy to influence judicial opinion on a case. There are even professionals hired to do it as a full time job! We call them lawyers.

[MichaelCollins]

The part that concerns ('alarm' implies surprise) me is the confirmation that activist wikipedians have levers and knobs to play with that impact court decisions.

And if Wikipedia does, you can bet Google does too.

[merely-unlikely]

Seems to me that any concern here is more around case discovery. Whether judges learn about cases from Wikipedia, Lexis Nexus, university publications, etc there is always a bias in which cases get surfaced. Wikipedia being more open than most other venues can be good (more contributors/diversity of viewpoints, easier to critique) or bad (more potentially unsophisticated/ignorant contributions). I tend to bias toward more open platforms given the choice.

[phpisthebest]

>>What are we alarmed about?

While I think the study has some major deficiencies addressed in other comments, if it was true, the alarm for me would be that Wikipedia has clearly become politically partisan in many area's and topics, including some that would intersect the law

Wikipedia is hardly a "neutral" site of just facts

[haswell]

Do those have topics have anything to do with the class of Wikipedia article mentioned in the study?

I’m not saying there isn’t bias, but the existence of bias in certain controversial subjects isn’t necessarily evidence that articles about cases are subject to the same kinds of issues. I’m not saying they’re immune either, but it’s not clear that the two are related.

[wisnoskij]

But that is what influencing is. By definition, these results show that cases given Wikipedia articles exert an otherwise unproportional influence on the legal landscape.

Not a particularly surprising result, but it shows how much of an effect such a little thing can have, and how big of an influence for example controlling what articles published vs not published could have over time.

[smrtinsert]

Why would it be alarming. Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic. Seeing PragerU influencing the court would be alarming.

[helsinkiandrew]

> Wikipedia is a fine entry into any topic

It isn't, that's the point of the study - not all court decisions are on wikipedia and those that are, are getting cited more. Judges, Lawyers, Clerks have access to the original decisions and court transcripts in electronic form going back decades and longer. If they're relying on whats on wikipedia - they're either doing poor research or are too lazy to write their own summations.

[zinekeller]

... and then rely on LexisNexis et al.? Unfortunately it seems that (US) courts don't really have a good collation of cases (as opposed to collated laws which exists as the US Code).

[bacchusracine]

Sir, I'm afraid your bias is showing...

[Tostino]

Pretending PreagerU is anything but blatant propaganda is silly.

[Mountain_Skies]

Pretending Wikipedia isn't also, is silly. This week's nonsense with the definition of 'recession' is proof enough of that. If you want to argue magnitude, you've already conceded what Wikipedia is (and I don't deny PragerU is what you claim it is).

[cmeacham98]

Wikipedia is not perfectly unbiased, but if you honestly believe it is even comparable to PragerU you should seriously talk to someone about your biases and perception of the world.

There are left-wing equivalents of PragerU (ex: the Gravel Institute) that are just as far away from Wikipedia as PragerU is.

[MichaelCollins]

The method of this study was to deliberately construct a bias on wikipedia, which the researchers were able to successfully pull off with measurable effect.

[phpisthebest]

I think it depends on the topic and section of wikipedia.

If you get into the political area's of wikipeda, I think the bias of Wikipedia is pretty clear polar to that of PragerU.

If you stick to the pure hard sciences (physics as an example) and non-controversial events (like an earthquake) then sure they are unbiased

[bacchusracine]

As the other poster pointed out, it's the pretense that Wikipedia is in any way shape or form neutral that shows the bias.