Talk:Runyon Heights, Yonkers

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City-data.com is not a reliable source

The basic problem with city-data.com is that you never know where they dug up the data. The statistics are all crowdsourced, so the majority of the content is just uploaded by whoever wants to. It's no more reliable then an open wiki. Yes, they have a pretty map with neighborhood boundaries on it, but where did they get the data? Open Street Map has pretty crowdsourced maps too. That doesn't meet Wikipedia's standards. Better to have no citation at all than a link to a source that gives false confidence. The fact is, whether you're looking at an uncited Wikipedia fact or a city-data.com page, all you're getting is what some anonymous guy on the internet wanted to say. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:50, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's better to have something until you can replace it with something better. Do you have any other reason to believe the map doesn't define the borders of Runyon Heights? Maybe somebody from Yonkers or nearby should join this discussion. ---------User:DanTD (talk) 03:53, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia's verifiability policy doesn't agree that it's better to have a dubious source than no source. WP:BURDEN makes clear that it's up to the one adding the information to Wikipedia to provide the sources to support it. It's been said that some of city-data.com's content is reliable, but I have to ask, which data? How do you know if they crowdsourced one thing and not another? If there was transparency, then you'd have something to work with.

The fact that http://www.cityofyonkers.com/ doesn't publish neighborhood maps tells me that it wouldn't have been cheap and easy for city-data.com to get the correct neighborhood boundaries, and I don't believe they spent money going to city archives and scanning a paper map. The safest assumption with city-data is that they did the no-cost thing: waited for somebody to upload whatever and called it good. Again, I more than willing to challenge this source, so the burden is on you to show what makes it reliable. They warn us that "a lot of content on our site is user generated. For example, city photos, forum messages, city facts, and business profiles are all submitted by visitors." And " City-data.com does not guarantee the accuracy or timeliness of any information on this site. Use at your own risk."

They really, really want you to know that it's unreliable. -Dennis Bratland (talk) 04:13, 8 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]