In February 2017, Wikipedians
made a similar call for Daily Mail citations—that the publication would no longer be cited in articles as fact, due to its “reputation for poor fact checking, sensationalism and flat-out fabrication.” In April, when Facebook started marking fake news stories as fake with a popup linking to Wikipedia as a fact-checking reference, Breitbart
claimed that Wikipedia “is notorious for its bias, editorial unaccountability, and unreliable articles.” In fact,
Wikipedia is incredibly stringent about fake news and its editors are obsessive about accuracy (that doesn’t mean Wikipedia is
always correct, but mistakes are generally fixed quickly.) In addition to Facebook,
YouTube is also relying on the work of volunteer Wikipedia editors to fact-check its conspiracy theory videos.