A US APPEALS COURT has ruled that Wikipedia entries, which anyone might edit, are not authoritative sources of information suitable for federal judges to base their decisions upon.
In particular, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals decided last Friday that the Department of Homeland Security should not rely upon information found at Wikipedia in deciding whether to admit asylum seekers applying to enter the country.
The appeals court reversed a ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals that said it wasn't an error for DHS to cite Wikipedia in its decision to deport Lamilem Badasa, an Ethiopian woman who was seeking asylum in the US, claiming her laissez-passer travel permit didn't prove her identity.
The government used a Wikipedia entry to convince an immigration judge that the document was just a one-way travel document based on information provided solely by the applicant.
In overturning the Board's decision, the appellate court noted that, because anyone can edit Wikipedia, there was no assurance that the information the government found there was accurate. The court said that looking up information on Wikipedia might have misled and tainted the government officials' decision in the case.
The court of appeals remanded the case back down to the Board of Immigration Appeals to explain why it believes that consulting Wikipedia did not taint the decision-making process.
That's the appeals court's restrained and oblique manner of saying to the judges down at the lower court, "You have got to be kidding." µ
See Also
Wackypedia dodges defamation claims
Wackypedia wants to take down Google
Public servants censor Wikipedia entries
Plus 200 more using Search...
The seal of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals 
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security was wrong in using the online encyclopedia ''Wikipedia'' as a reference when deciding whether to allow asylum seekers to stay in the United States.

The department used the ''Wikipedia'' article named laissez-passer to decide whether the document was a valid form of identification. This is despite the fact that the article had a large orange notice at the top of the article saying that "this article does not cite any references or sources."
Wikipedia logo 
The Board of Immigration Appeals has stated that it doesn't "encourage the use of resources such as Wikipedia.com sic in reaching pivotal decisions in immigration proceedings." They said that they allowed the decision to stand due to the fact that the information seemed accurate.

The appeals court noted when making the decision that Wikipedia admits that articles will stay inaccurate and unbalanced for long periods of time. Below is the extract from the court documents that makes this point:


Cary Bass, the volunteer coordinator of the Wikimedia Foundation, gave Wikinews the following statement on this issue: