It has occurred to me that, for all its avoidance of responsibility and accountability, there are a lot of matters over which Wikipedia might have its feet held to a legal fire.

There are a lot of matters over which laymen are prohibited from giving advice. Medicine, for example, or law or investments. If I dispense medical or legal or investment advice to my neighbor, without carefully making clear that my advice has no grounding in any legally recognized expertise, I can find myself in heap big trouble. Why should Wikipedia be any different?

What I would like, as I've written before, is for Wikipedia to have a big disclaimer at the top of every page making clear that the information should not be relied upon in any way and that neither Wikipedia, the Wikimedia Foundation, nor any of the employees or representatives of either of these assume any responsibility for any of the information in Wikipedia (which of course is just the simple truth of the matter). El Jimbo surely does not want to do this because it will make Wikipedia's reputation more accurate and less lofty, and cut into his speaking fees.

But if he gets a sternly worded letter from the AG of a state or two about their concern that the page on STDs, for example, has no fail-safe protection against it being stated that burying a cat at a crossroads will cure syphilis, he might just get religion.

Thoughts?

There has been long discussion of medical information on the various WP forums for that sort of thing. Section 230 immunity does not apply only to defamation, in fact at least two leading cases involved a fair housing question. Section 230 isn't even limited to civil actions:


Still many other (non-US) jurisdiction may be concerned about this kind of thing. Of course a state Attorney General may be in an excellent position to lead the attack on Wikipedia's Section 230 immunity.

The boilerplate disclaimers linked at the bottom of every article say stuff about none of the content being intended as medical, legal, or financial advice.

Ultimately, though, these are not crossword puzzle matters: people suffer harm due to hearing bad advice; there is a very good reason for all the requirements that Section 230 pisses all over.

Maybe there would be more traction in trying to get a requirement that a prominent disclaimer be displayed in order for Section 230 exemptions to apply.

The truly odd thing is that if an article is deemed not NPOV or otherwise unencyclopedic they have no problem placing huge templates that greatly disfigure the article, indicating great concern for internal rules. But no such concern is shown when potential victim is the public, not some faction or concern internal to the "encyclopedia."

Here is an article about "Magic Mushrooms" Here is one for "Islam in Pakistan". Apparently thery're at least twice as much concerned about getting the "facts" right about religion in Pakistan than kids ingesting psychoactive plants. The Mushroom article also offer kids this diddy as trustworthy external link, which the encyclopedists describe as "Report by the Dutch Government Stating Psilocybin's Harmlessness."

My not-well-thought-out opinion is that some old granny is going to have to lose her house, or some little kid lose his life -- based on information solely obtained in Wikipedia -- before this line of legal recourse will actually be seriously tested.

Natural selection. The level of stupidity required to rely on what is essentially an online multiplayer Notepad for advice that affects your health or your finances would be worthy of a Darwin award.

Not when people are repeatedly told that Wikipedia is as good as other encyclopaedias. You do know that Jimbo has been going around saying that it is good enough to be used as a school resource. And Google presents it at the top of the search lists. And there is no big red sign saying "You are stupid if you believe this." or "You do realise this is written by a bunch of school kids without a life?" It all looks plausible enough: whose fault is it that someone might believe that something designed to look authoritative is taken as such?

Yes but they -do- have a disclaimer that I think mentions medical etc stuff, it's just I think linked to at the bottom of the page, rather than the top. I'm not disagreeing with you that maybe they could put it a bit more visibly, I just think they probably have their backs covered in that regard.