Wikipedia:The CIA World Factbook
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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.