Wikipedia:The CIA World Factbook

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This Wikipedia page is currently inactive and is retained as a historical archive. A historical page is either no longer relevant or consensus has become unclear. If you want to revive discussion regarding the subject, you should seek broader input via a forum such as the proposals page of the village pump.

This is a proposal, to deal with this widely-cited source. It has not been adopted as policy.

The CIA World Factbook, as a public domain source, is widely used as a source by Wikipedia. Some of the statements in it are undisputed and can be used without further qualification. This includes:

• Geographic data, except in the case of certain international conflicts
• Population data
• Communications
• Transportation

On other matters, however, the factbook takes a non-neutral point of view. Information on those matters must thus be made NPOV-compliant, either by looking for other sources or by attributing the claim to the factbook. This includes, most importantly:

• Area comparative, which has an USPOV
• International Disputes
• Economy - Overview, which includes many opinions.