cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/23066599
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 less biased 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.
In that case the issue is that it’s user generated content. Just as you’d cite the references listed after a Wikipedia article for the source of that information rather than Wikipedia itself, Wikipedia policy favors references to established publications over those compiled by users in a manner similar to Wikipedia itself.
For the information to be verifiable, its original source has to be both clear and reputable.