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Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 51

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Latest comment: 13 years ago by Maunus in topic Has Verifiability become the new Truth?
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Machine translation

Latest comment: 13 years ago97 comments16 people in discussion

The guidelines for non-English sources (WP:NONENG) include the following statement: "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations." I propose that this guideline should be revised. Translation is a complex cognitive task, and while machine translations may sometimes be accurate, assurance of quality requires a human agent. As the relevant article correctly states "Relying exclusively on unedited machine translation ignores the fact that communication in human language is context-embedded and that it takes a person to comprehend the context of the original text with a reasonable degree of probability. It is certainly true that even purely human-generated translations are prone to error. Therefore, to ensure that a machine-generated translation will be useful to a human being and that publishable-quality translation is achieved, such translations must be reviewed and edited by a human." The policy should state that fluently bilingual Wikipedians may use a machine translator, provided that they evaluate and correct the output, but that unassisted machine translations should never be permitted. I'd also suggest a new requirement for all translations to be independently checked by another editor. Rubywine . talk 02:23, 5 August 2011 (UTC) On second thoughts it's impractical to impose a proofreading requirement. Rubywine . talk 11:43, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Unassisted machine translation pretty much has to be permitted, because we don't always have another good option, especially for less-common languages. A machine translation is more friendly to the readers who don't read the other language than presenting them solely with a completely unintelligible quotation in a foreign language. We have non-English quotations and phrases in all kinds of languages, and it is unreasonable for us to assume that any of our readers know anything other than English—much less that any single reader will be able to understand العربية and 한국어 and Македонски and 文言—and in the course of reading the English Wikipedia, they might easily encounter all of those languages at least once.
When and if we get a competent translator to that article, then the machine translation can and should be replaced by a good translation by a skilled human, but that doesn't mean that we have to leave readers in between wondering what it says.
Additionally, WP:Nobody reads the directions, so no matter how much you discourage it, it's actually going to happen. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:08, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't agree at all. There is no need to include machine translation into the article at all, in fact in doubt you would classify them as an unreliable source. The fact that we cannot expect readers to be versed in all those language is somewhat irrelevant, as all that the reader actually has to do is plugin the text into an automatic translator (such as Google). The notion that we have machine translation of foreign language quotes seems rather unappropriate to me.--Kmhkmh (talk) 06:04, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Fluently bilingual (and multilingual) Wikipedians may use a machine translator, of course. Using a machine translator but evaluating and correcting the output is what I do when I'm translating, and I don't see a problem with it. As for the requirement that all translations should be independently checked—my question is, by whom? I certainly don't offer to spend my volunteering time checking other people's translations on a regular basis. I'll consider doing so on specific, respectfully-worded request on my talk page. No policy is going to require me to do it.

The basic problem with translations is the misapprehension that any editor is entitled to require other editors to help them check sources. I've seen editors demand that independent editors run around translating texts in languages they don't speak, on various occasions, and the answer is "bugger off".—S Marshall T/C 09:14, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

No policy requires you to do anything at all. Nobody here is entitled to demand anything from anybody. Regardless of how much translation work you volunteer to do, there's no reason for any policy to accommodate your personal disinclinations. There are thousands of bilingual and multilingual Wikipedia users; if translation work is only being undertaken by a very small group, that is undesirable and unnecessary. I am in favour of an active drive to engage a great many more people in this work. Rubywine . talk 11:11, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
I think nobody has an issue with machine translationen being used as tool. The issue here is merely that we should not include unassisted machine translation into articles (as quote or citation translations). Any unassisted machine translations shouldn't be a part of the article itsself due to potential unreliablity. That unsassisted machine translations are used by editors to perform a crude check of foreign language sources or on discussion pages to support an argument is perfectly fine of course. If somebody is using them for assisted translations that's probably fine, though personally I'm a bit skeptical there. However how an editor exactly produces a translation is out of our control anyway and probably not really our busines to begin with (as long as there is no legal issue like a copyright violation). The only thing that matters is the quality of the translations when he enters it into WP and that is responsible for it (rather than some program).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:04, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Kmhkmh in every respect. WhatamIdoing, you seem to be proceeding from an underlying set of assumptions which I think are wrong, and inconsistent with policy. Wikipedia: Translation specifically states: "Translation takes work. Machine translation often produces very low quality results. Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing." I see no reason to take the view that unedited machine translations of smaller quotes and phrases are any more acceptable. The worst possible outcome is for readers to be misled and misinformed. Rubywine . talk 11:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
Machine translations are vaguely accurate but can introduce problems. At the very least the grammar is usually very poor; at worst the translation is misleading and just plain wrong. It really depends on their usage - if it's copy/pasted without checking then no, it shouldn't happen. However I and I'm sure many others have used a machine translation to inform and suggest content which is then written/copyedited into prose. That is fine. violet/riga [talk] 14:34, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It sounds like you you've all missed the context of this question. Machine translation is only mentioned once in this entire policy, and it is mentioned solely in the context of supplying information about non-English reliable sources. This is not about translating whole articles: This is not about the fact that Bacterial pneumonia is way better over at the Spanish Wikipedia and I'd like to have some competent person translate it for us, or any situation even remotely like that. For that purpose, which has nothing to do with this entire policy, I agree that machine translation would be inadequate.

This recommendation appears in WP:NONENG and is specifically about direct quotations from non-English sources. There are only two reasons why you might be typing a direct quotation from a non-English source into Wikipedia:

  1. You've been asked for a quotation from a non-English source, and the person who asked you doesn't speak <fill in the blank>, so you've been asked to provide a translation into English.
  2. The article needs to include a famous quotation, book title, or similar short phrase for some purpose.

The policy says that in such cases, you need to supply the best translation you can, which means (in order):

  1. A proper translation by a reliable source is best.
  2. A translation by one of our competent editors is second-best.
  3. If all else fails, a machine translation is better than nothing.

This means, to give a practical example, that at Thomas Corneille#Notes, we don't stop with just "In a letter to her father, shortly before her execution, Charlotte Corday quotes Thomas Corneille: "Le Crime fait la honte, et non pas l’échafaud!"" and leave the 97% of the world that can't read French wondering what it means.

Instead, we add "(The crime causes the shame, and not the scaffold!)", which is a decent translation (since we have one) immediately afterwards. If we didn't have this decent translation, then we would add the worse-but-not-too-awful machine translation, "(Crime is a disgrace, not the scaffold)". What we don't do is leave all the people who don't read French scratching their heads over why that sentence is in the article and what it means. [ip address redacted] User:Fred Bauder Talk 19:41, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts and comments, and also for pointing us to the relevant policy - that's most helpful. However, you're wrong to think that we've all missed the context. Yesterday, after quoting Wikipedia: Translation: "Wikipedia consensus is that an unedited machine translation, left as a Wikipedia article, is worse than nothing", I said "I see no reason to take the view that unedited machine translations of smaller quotes and phrases are any more acceptable."
Your argument has actually consolidated my viewpoint. Direct quotations are very likely to be idiomatic, so I disagree with WP:NONENG re machine translation. The example you've given is not bad at all, but I'm confident there'll be worse ones. I'd rather provide readers with a foreign-language quotation than with a hit-or-miss, potentially very bad translation of an idiomatic phrase. I think it's ok to leave the readers scratching their heads. They can look elsewhere for a good translation, or, if we really want to be helpful to them, we can source one for them ourselves. Rubywine . talk 18:18, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
Now consider the other situation: Someone asked you for a quotation to show that the source really does support the text. You provide a quotation, and the other editor says, "But I don't know what that means; I don't read ____". And you say, "Well, that's too bad, because I'm no good at rendering it in English, and Rubywine refuses to let me give you a machine translation." Is providing no translation, on the grounds that you can't provide a really good one, going to help that editor at all? Would that not be exactly the sort of rule that is described as "a rule that prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:55, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
If the machine translation of the quotation is merely clumsy, then it's probably better than nothing. However, there's every chance that a machine translation of an idiomatic expression will be nonsense, or far worse, completely misleading. A machine translation can convey the precise opposite of the original text. Providing misinformation is not improving and maintaining Wikipedia, it is damaging it. And that is why I believe we should either go to the effort of sourcing a good translation, or we should provide none. It is much better to say "I don't know" than to tell a lie. What's more, I think it is unlikely that we will often be in a situation where a good translation of a direct quotation cannot be externally sourced. Throwing in an unedited machine translation amounts to laziness. Rubywine . talk 19:12, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
It depends entirely on what class of direct quotation you're talking about. Professional translations are very frequently available for famous proverbs (which is convenient, because aphorisms are hard). Good translations are often available for titles of major books and plays.
However, they are almost never available for sentences in non-English sources that we are using to support article content. There are thousands of academic journal articles and millions of newspaper articles that are not written in English, and there are almost never professional translations available for them. If someone asks for a quote and a translation, and the best we can do is a machine translation, then we definitely should provide that.
On the general question, WP:There is no deadline. Translations do not have to be perfect on the first try. If providing a poor translation (whether due to machine translation or a lack of skill in a human translation) is the best we can do, then perhaps the existence of the poor translation will inspire some more capable editor to improve it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:05, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
No we shouldn't! Why should we offer unreliable ,questionable translations? Editors should never include content they can't really vouch for and that's exactly what an unassisted machine translation is. If a reader wants to roughly verify the accuracy of some citation or quote he can copy it into a translation machine (such as google) himself, there is no need for us to include such "rule of thumb" reasoning into the article itself. If you're afraid the reader is unable to use or find a translation engine, provide him a link to some online translation machine like google in the footnotes, but do not include that translation into the article or worse create the possible impression to readers the translation was actually produced by somebody who knew what he was talking about.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:16, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
One answer is that we can offer "unreliable questionable" translations when they ipso facto support the relevant point.  See [Jaakko Pöyry], in which the mostly-incomprehensible machine translation of the name of the book is a strong indication of the notability of the subject.  English-only readers entirely get both the point that this is a machine translation of idiomatic Finnish, and that Jaakko Poyry is a man who has come from a hinterland to a world-wide stage.  Unscintillating (talk) 13:06, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
I would take such a translation to be evidence that an assertion is verifiable, but not verified, and would suggest that they would be useful in AFD, or on the talk page of the article to help others help find a decent translation, but I would be very hesitate to accept such as cited references in the article. Of course, it would depend on how bad the translation is, but comes a point that an editor who does not have the language in question cannot evaluate the quality of the translation. Here I speak from the experience of rereading works in various languages after having improved my skills--my early understanding from 2-3 years of instruction of such were very poor. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:36, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I certainly agree that it's irresponsible to add material to the encyclopaedia based on a machine translation of a language you do not speak.—S Marshall T/C 17:24, 7 August 2011 (UTC) I don't think machine translation can ever be considered a reliable source. Indeed, the meaning can easily be the opposite of what the original said. If the person providing a machine translation is in a position to check that the translation is adequate, it effectively becomes his/her translation, and the fact that it is (based on) a machine translation needs only be mentioned for the purposes of intellectual integrity. If he/she is not able to verify the correctness of the translation, it should not be used. The editor introducing the translation must assume responsibility for its accuracy, preferably explicitly. Perhaps we could change the text to something like

Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians. If the translation is not the editor's, it must be attributed. If the translation provided by the editor is substantially the result of machine translation, this should also be mentioned, but an editor should never provide a machine translation unless he/she is in a position to confirm its accuracy.

--Boson (talk) 19:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Machine translations, even between major languages, can come up with just the opposite of original meaning of a text. It's better to leave a text untranslated, because a machine translation conveys the appearance of accuracy, and it's even worse if the machine translation is being smoothed by someone who does not know the original language. We may look at the issue in five years again, and maybe machine translators have made further progress until then. In the meantime, I suggest that we advise against using machine translations, and that an editor must take personal responsibility for all translations. An editor who can confirm the accuracy of a machine translation will also be able to translate the text without the help of a machine translator. I also don't think it would be helpful to indicate whether an editor used a machine translation, as it would also not be helpful to indicate whether the editor used a dictionary or not.  Cs32en Talk to me  11:33, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
It depends on the language in question. I notice, without any surprise, that every single person opposed to machine translations, and who identifies a language on his or her user page, speaks German. I've seen some truly lousy machine translations from German (double negatives seem to be a real problem). On the other hand, I've never seen a really poor machine translation from Spanish. It's often a bit awkward, but it's never the opposite of the original. You're basically proposing that nobody be allowed to use a tool merely because it doesn't work so well for your particular language.
And, again, I think you're overlooking the context. This is primarily about providing a translation when you're using the |quote= parameter in the {{Citation}} templates. You'd be supplying both the original language and the English translation, and any person who read the language could correct or improve the translation at any time. If someone cited a source as supporting a statement, based on a machine translation or a plain old misreading, then we need to know this. "Showing their work" by providing the mistaken translation helps us find and correct errors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
Google translate does fairly well with Romance languages. It's not to be trusted for others.—S Marshall T/C 16:53, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
And so you would issue a universal ban. That does not seem appropriate to me, nor does it seem like it reflects the actual practice of the community. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
What I'm saying is that from my personal experience, I would trust google translate (but not babelfish) to turn French into tolerably accurate English. I would not trust google translate with German or Dutch, and I definitely wouldn't trust it with something highly inflected like Finnish. If in doubt, I would have to reject the machine translation unless confirmed by a human speaker.—S Marshall T/C 22:51, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I am German, but I almost never have used translations into German. Translations to German are so bad that I - at least for the last two years - have always used translations from various languages (Spanish, Italian, Japanese) to English. My comments are based on my experience with machine translations into English and have nothing to do with the German language.  Cs32en Talk to me  23:41, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Under NONENG, all translations are to English, not from English. There is never any excuse to translate something into any language except English under NONENG.
WP:V and NONENG are not the general translation guide. NONENG is about what to do when somebody cites a Polish paper to support some claim in an article, and nobody knows for sure if the Polish paper says anything even remotely like what the original editor claims it says. NONENG says that in such cases, it's best to get a professional translation, second-best to get a Wikipedian to translate, and if all else fails, you can ask Google translate to have a go at the title—and that having that machine translation is better than leaving a citation in a state that is unintelligible to 99% of the world's population.
NONENG always moves to English. You would never translate anything into German under NONENG. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:51, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Of course, we are talking about translations to English. If "nobody knows for sure if the Polish paper says anything even remotely like what the original editor claims it says", then, with a machine translation only, still nobody knows whether the Polish paper says exactly what the editor claims it says. It is not sufficient to know whether the papers says something remotely similar to the content of our article, and therefore a machine translation is not helpful in such cases.  Cs32en Talk to me  20:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

A proposed rewording of WP:NONENG

Thank you everyone. Maybe it's impossible to reach consensus but I'd like to try. I have the impression that most people favour a change. I don't feel there's much point in trying to formulate fine-tuned rules about the translation process; it's really about whether the editor has the language skills to take full personal responsibility for the translation. Based mainly on Boson's suggestion, but with some alterations, this is a proposal which I think is in line with the majority view:

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians.
  • A Wikipedian may only use a machine translation if he/she speaks the source language and is able to confirm the accuracy of the translation.
  • All translations must be attributed to the translator by name.

Do you agree or disagree? Rubywine . talk 20:53, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with everything except the first point. People add information based on machine translations for languages they don't understand (well enough) every single day. If they paste in their machine translations, we increase the likelihood of finding their errors. We also use machine translation for purposes far outside the subject of this policy, e.g., to decide whether the person who says "this five-page magazine article in Chinese is entirely about this company" is telling the truth. That's a perfectly legitimate use of machine translation, since even the most busted machine translation is going to reliably identify whether the name of the company appears repeatedly throughout the five pages. This sloppy statement would ban any and all use, not just uses that are higher risk.
Also, the names of the editors who did the translation have no business appearing in the article under any circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Contributor names are always recorded in the usual Wikipedian way, of course. If the translator was a reliable source, then it's not just reasonable but strongly encouraged to attribute them, since not attributing them is potentially plagiarism or breach of copyright. As for your second point, who will police this and who will enforce it?—S Marshall T/C 22:29, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Yes of course. On my second point, who can stop dissenting translators, determined to foist unassisted machine translations upon the unsuspecting world? I don't know. The existing WP:NONENG guidelines can't be policed or enforced. Most other guidelines can't. The system assumes that the majority respect consensus. Rubywine . talk 01:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • The existing policy is enforceable by individual editors on talk pages (with backup from uninvolved administrators if necessary). The proposed version would require editors to know which language other editors can speak, before being enforceable.—S Marshall T/C 07:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • No it doesn't, it only requires that other people can speak the source language. If an editor's submissions were found to match unassisted machine translations, and were deemed to be incompetent by a consensus of competent speakers, then they could be asked to stop. That's all. It is unlikely that this scenario would arise. Rubywine . talk 12:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • That means that we have to decide who's "competent" to pass judgment. It would be far simpler for these competent people to simply fix bad translations when they find them, in exactly the same way that I fix bad grammar when I find it.
    Given how few pages I see with any non-English content, I find it hard to believe that we have a widespread problem with seriously misleading machine translations in our articles. This issue may not be worth the time we're spending on it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
  • We don't need to decide who is competent. Firstly, because consensus about correct use of language is implicit in every discussion we have on Wikipedia, and there's no real difference here. If anything, it's easier than usual. Any human being can recognise a bad machine translation of a language they speak; there's nothing subtle about it. Secondly, because the enforcement scenario is a red herring. The point of this guideline is not to enforce and police, the point is to guide. There have been instances of bad translations being submitted, which have been mentioned by translators, and that is avoidable and regrettable. It's clear that most people in this discussion say there is no place for unassisted machine translations on Wikipedia. We just need to reach a consensus on the wording of guidance to that effect. Regarding your point that there are few pages with any non-English content - I think that is likely to change. There is a vast quantity of non-English material which has been requested for translation. This issue will be increasingly relevant in the future. Rubywine . talk 22:06, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
No, if you're going to have "a consensus of competent speakers", then you have to decide who qualifies as a "competent speaker".
Requests for translations of articles from other Wikipedias has nothing to do with this policy. NONENG is not about whole articles. NONENG is about what to do when somebody cites a Polish paper to support some claim, and nobody knows for sure if the Polish paper actually says what the original editor claims it says. What you need to do is explain why omitting the translation of the paper's title, on the grounds that we don't know how it was translated, would improve Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:31, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
I suggest two changes:
(a) Change "is able to confirm the accuracy of the translation" to "confirms the accuracy of the translation". Maybe a comment can be added that this can be done either on the talk page or in the edit summary.
(b) Translations should not be attributed to the name of editors, but they should be attributed to real world sources if such sources have been used. If not, as with all other content, the attribution is in the history of the page, plus the confirmation on the talk page (or talk page archive) and/or the edit summary.  Cs32en Talk to me  23:48, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I agree with your suggestions and I'm happy to adopt them. In the absence of an explicit RS attribution it would be implicitly understood that the editor was the translator. I'll leave this a bit longer in case anyone else wants to comment. Rubywine . talk 22:13, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

A proposed rewording of WP:NONENG #2

The revised proposal is to replace this sentence in WP:NONENG :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations.

with the following :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, and should always be attributed. A machine translation may be used only if the Wikipedian speaks the source language and confirms the accuracy of the translation.
Footnote: Attributions and confirmations may be provided on the talk page or in the edit summary.

Rubywine . talk 16:41, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

When we say that something "should always be attributed", we normally mean that it requires WP:INTEXT attribution. Your first sentence is therefore going to confuse a lot of people. Also, the name of the translator is commonly unknown and therefore cannot be "always" provided in any form. Furthermore—who cares who the translator is, except for the translator himself (who presumably would like to build his career)? If the translation is published by a reliable source, then we don't need to say "Translation provided by Bob Smith, who was hired by The London Times to provide a translation for this phrase in their article."
I firmly disagree with the second sentence. A machine translation may be used for many purposes that have nothing to do with verifiability, and your proposal fails to acknowledge that. Furthermore, as admitted above, machine translations aren't always bad, especially for Romance languages. Finally, since WP:Nobody reads the directions, and this rule is directly counter the community's actual practice, it's both ineffective and inappropriate. Written policy must describe the actual policy, and the actual policy is determined by what the community actually does, not by what a couple of people wish they would do instead. (It would be appropriate to say "Be cautious in using machine translations, which are lousy for many languages".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:18, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
"Be cautious in using machine translations, which are lousy for many languages" would be a step forward. The rest is ground we've been over before. WP:Nobody reads the directions is a weak argument. People try to read guidelines; long pages of tortuous prose get ignored because they're taxing and not understood. WP:NONENG is not a remotely arduous read, so instruction creep doesn't really apply here. If guidelines were so uninfluential, so universally ignored, you wouldn't spend so much time arguing over them! Rubywine . talk 03:05, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Holy cow do I have a lot to say on this subject... I'll try to be concise. It touches on several different translation issues, actually. Some exclusive to Wikipedia, some not.

  • Machine translation: I do make use of Google's app, which does make readily recognizable glitches. At times producing a translation that is actually the complete opposite of what the original text is saying. Yes, I am fluent enough to recognize this, and I still find the translation apps useful. If I look up a single word, and it doesn't suit the context of the original text, I know enough to do more searching with other tools, look in a thesaurus, etc.
  • Professional translation is preferred: Did someone in WP:NONENG say that a professional translation is preferable? I do translation work in my capacity as a professional with the federal gov't of Canada. I've been tested and assigned a formal evaluation of my abilities. Do I qualify as a 'professional translator' by Wikipedia standards? (This is in my second language, French, so I do consider myself qualified to do French -> English translations, and vice versa, up to a level that includes technical language in a handful of fields. I've done editing for an academic journal in both languages, years ago.)
  • A specific example: I just did a translation of a biography article (Anita Aubspurg) that appears in the French, Italian, and German Wikipedias. The original article appears to be the German version, all the references are to German books/Websites. The Italian version just copied and pasted the German references, and that's what I did too. No, I don't know German. My Italian isn't as good as my French, but I can read it pretty well. (The French version was all but empty, they didn't translate the Italian or German article in full at all). I used a translation app on both the Italian and German versions of the article, compared them side by side, and edited the article so that it would be coherent in English.
  • Citing sources: I've been reading quite a few French Wikipedia articles, and glancing through some Italian and German, and guess what? Articles using inline cites to references are in a small minority. Who's enforcing the Wikipedia reference rules for the non-English Wikipedias? If the articles are acceptable in those Wikis without inline citations, why are they not acceptable in the English one? Should the articles in the non-English Wikis be purged if they do not meet that standard?
  • Citing sources, part 2: No, I can't verify the original source texts used by the original article author. But then, I can't do that for an English article if it's citing books, journals, etc. that I don't have access to. I could read the original French books if I had access to them, but if all the copies are in France, or Senegal, or Cote d'Ivoire, or Tunisia, what should I do then? What would you do if you were editor for an English language article that was citing documents in the library of Oxford University, but you live in California? Does the article get purged? If the original article is on a subject for which information only exists in publications in a language for which English translators are rarely available, is the consensus that it not be translated at all? FWIW, I do try to look for some equivalent English sources online to add to articles I've translated, but for many subjects, there's just no information in English. (Doesn't mean the topic isn't noteworthy.)
  • My two cents' worth -- I think it comes down to a question of reasonable due diligence. When you read an article in Wikipedia, or the New York Times, or a paper encyclopedia, you do take a certain leap of faith that the article isn't complete fiction with imaginary sources. But I think if an article contains inaccuracies, the open nature of Wikipedia is that it will be found out and either removed or corrected by someone more knowledgeable.

OttawaAC (talk) 01:24, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

OttawaAC, thanks for your comments. There's an awful lot of context here that you'll need to get a handle on. Please read through the previous parts of this discussion topic. This is just a quick reply to your point number 2. In this context, reliable source doesn't mean professional translation; a Wikipedian can't be recognised as a professional translator. A reliable source on Wikipedia means a published, third party, reliable source. Of course you could cite your own externally published work, but only in the same way that you could cite someone else's. Rubywine . talk 02:17, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
OttawaAC, in theory, NONENG has nothing at all to do with interwiki translations... but you wouldn't know that from Rubywine's proposal. Rubywine's proposal would ban the use of machine translation for any and all purposes, even for figuring out if a long article that is alleged to demonstrate notability in an AFD discussion actually talks about the subject. I do not know whether this is what Rubywine intended, but it is what s/he actually hopes to put in this policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, this is ridiculous. You are misrepresenting my intentions and the scope of the policy. Tiresome. Rubywine . talk 03:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the proposal as written is ridiculous. Writing policies is hard. If you say "no machine translations unless you understand the language", then people will believe that you actually mean "no machine translations unless you understand the language", full stop. They will not magically know that you mean "no machine translations unless you understand the language, and, by the way, this only applies to direct quotations in the text of the article, because discussing sources on the talk page, translating whole articles from other Wikipedias, and figuring out whether a non-English source indicates WP:Notability in a deletion discussion are outside the scope of this policy, and we know that Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Content demands that we maintain the scope of the policy without wandering into off-topic stuff, like what's okay at AFD", which is what you probably mean to say.
Writing policies is much harder than you think it is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
I have amended the text of the proposal to rule out this plethora of unlikely misunderstandings and threats to personal liberty. Rubywine . talk 03:43, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I actually don't think that the amendment is necessary, because I don't think editors will fear getting blocked for posting a machine-based translation on a talk page. I support both the amended and the original version of the proposal.  Cs32en Talk to me  19:23, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
(original version=#2, amended version=#3)

For the sake of continuity I have restored the original text of #2, have moved the amendment to #3, and have copied Cs32en's comment below. Rubywine . talk 22:11, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

A proposed rewording of WP:NONENG #3

Do you support the proposal to amend the guidance in WP:NONENG regarding the use of machine translations, as given at WP:V:talk?

Please note that the scope of WP:NONENG is limited to the translation of non-English sources for use in English Wikipedia.

The proposal is to replace this sentence in WP:NONENG :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations.

with the following :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, and should always be attributed. A machine translation may be used in the text of the article only if the Wikipedian speaks the source language and confirms the accuracy of the translation.
Footnote: Attributions and confirmations should be provided on the talk page or in the edit summary.

Rubywine . talk 03:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)


I actually don't think that the amendment [to your previous proposal] is necessary, because I don't think editors will fear getting blocked for posting a machine-based translation on a talk page. I support both the amended and the original version of the proposal.  Cs32en Talk to me  19:23, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

No, they won't fear getting blocked, because violating WP:V almost never results in blocks. But we would have some tendentious editors who use such unqualified statements for obstruction. This change dramatically reduces my concerns about including this sentence.
Rubywine, are you prepared to explain what "should always be attributed" means now? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to remind you that this is an open discussion, and not a 1 on 1. The idea came from Boson. It was strongly supported by S Marshall, and then phrased as an amendment by Cs32en. I have reworded it more concisely, and nobody else has objected. It is clear and unambiguous, since the footnote rules out the possibility of in-text attribution. It won't confuse anybody. Rubywine . talk 01:12, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
The footnote does not rule out anything at all. It rules in additional options. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I have never seen an inline attribution on a reference, i.e. a nested attribution, and I doubt that it is possible to create one. Even so, I have changed the wording so that the only options are talk page or edit summary. Rubywine . talk 17:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
We use the word "attributed" in Wikipedia's content and sourcing policies to mean two specific things: as a synonym for "supported by an inline citation", and to refer to WP:INTEXT attribution. I think introducing a third meaning is a very bad idea that will inevitably lead to confusion. I suggest that you drop the word "attributed" entirely and merge the footnote into the text: "* Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians. Please leave a note in the edit summary or on the talk page to tell other editors who did the translation." WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I'll do that. It's totally clear and I cannot imagine that anyone would change their vote to oppose it. Rubywine . talk 00:43, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

A proposed rewording of WP:NONENG #4

The problem this RfC seeks to resolve is that WP:NONENG allows people to put unassisted (therefore totally unreliable) machine translations of sources into the text of articles. This may be done in good faith, and in the belief that any translation is better than no translation, but we don't agree. An unassisted machine translation is worse than no translation, because it may be highly inaccurate. Its usage in article text is contrary to the principle of upholding quality and reliability.

Please note that the scope of WP:NONENG is limited to the translation of non-English sources for use in English Wikipedia.

The proposal under discussion is to replace this sentence in WP:NONENG :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations.

with the following :

  • Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians. Please leave a note in the edit summary or on the talk page to tell other editors who did the translation.
  • A machine translation may be used in the text of the article only if the Wikipedian speaks the source language and confirms the accuracy of the translation. If using a machine translation, please confirm its accuracy in the edit summary or on the talk page.

Rubywine . talk 01:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Q: Why do people who can translate the source language need to use a machine translation at all? Why can't they do it all themselves? A. Some skilled translators find machine translations useful in the initial stages of their work. A machine translation can speed up the process of reaching an initial draft by translating 75%-90% of the text with reasonable accuracy, allowing them to focus on the difficult 10%-25% remaining.

For the purposes of judging the success of this proposal, the RfC started at #3. Since the change between #3 and #4 alters only the wording, not the meaning, I hope that noone will object if I leave the remainder of the discussion below this point. Rubywine . talk 01:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Support: I think the new version (#3) is better, but I don't think there will be much difference in practice between the two (#2 and #3). I suggest that "speaks the source language" be replaced with "is familiar with the source language". People can sometimes read a language but not be able to speak it. For example, Latin and Classical Chinese, are written languages that few can speak outloud. --LK (talk) 10:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Good points. We need a third clause to address extinct languages unless we accept your suggestion.
    • Non-speakers who can read will have a limited grasp of pragmatics and idiom so depending upon what they are translating, they might have difficulty. Then again, so will some non-native speakers. Should we trust that non-speakers will confirm a translation only if they are confident about its accuracy? On reflection, I think we should.
    • I'm willing to change "speaks the source language" to "is familiar with the source language". What do other people think? Rubywine . talk 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Weak support If a wikipedian speaks the source language, why not translate it him/herself? That said, I see no problem with allowing the use of machine translation. Perhaps a friendly ammendment, and if it isn't I won't make a big fuzz: still say that a translation by a wikipedian is better? This is to encourage the translators among us to do it and be recognized.
Also, I might misunderstand, but I think what you are saying can be achieved with Template:Ref series templates, and I have seen done - even to borderline copyvio.--Cerejota (talk) 11:05, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Three cheers for encouraging and recognising translators! I'd like to put some energy into supporting that, independently of this RfC.
  • "Why not translate it him/herself?" In earlier discussion some translators said they use machine translations for convenience and speed before deciding on the best source to use. If they decide they can't improve upon the accuracy of a machine translation, it effectively becomes their own. If we were to say " a translation by a wikipedian is better" that would leave open the possibility of using a machine translation without human intervention, which is precisely what we're trying to rule out here. So I think that doesn't fly. Is there a different rephrasing that might work better?
  • Template:Ref is a great template, but this idea would entail adding notes about source translations to footnotes in the article, when they are really metadata. So I think previous discussion on that points rules this out. But thank you for the useful information. Rubywine . talk 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment. I support that reliably published translations are preferred. Not sure about requiring Wikipedians to understand the language of a machine translation. Which Wikipedians would we be referring to? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:58, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I think the point is that we cannot rely on a machine translation to say anything remotely like the original, so an editor adding a machine translation assumes responsibility for the translation being accurate, which is not appropriate if he/she cannot understand both the original and the translation. I take "Wikipedian" in this context to mean the editor adding the translated text." --Boson (talk) 11:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I suppose the thing that concerns me is (a) if the Wikipedian understands the translation, then she could do it herself; and (b) it leaves us open to people saying machine translation is acceptable under the policy simply because they personally understand it. In fact, we should allow editors to approach these things on a case-by-case basis, because machine translations are sometimes fine as sources, sometimes not, depending on many factors. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
But machine translation is acceptable under this policy if the editor can understand the source language. Some translators will start off with a machine translation for convenience (perhaps they want to run English language searches on it to determine relevance). If they understand some text they want to quote and they can't improve upon its accuracy, it effectively becomes their own. If the machine translation matches the best human translation, that's fine. What this amendment is designed to exclude is a machine translation that's not understood. Rubywine . talk 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose as written, as I believe it is not sufficiently flexible. Some information is more complex and open to translation errors than others; some machine translations are better than others; there is wide diversity in degree of familiarity with a language and how people self-assess that. I have encountered people who have claimed fluency in languages where they are plainly not fluent, and I've been told that I myself tend to underestimate my own facility. A machine may well help to adequately supplement with straightforward information where it might fall down in philosophical or subtly nuanced content. I would support discouraging contributors from relying on machine translations where content is controversial or errors are more likely, but not altogether. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 17:24, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment Where the translation is not the editor's own work, I think it should be made clear that attribution is obligatory - in such a way that the author of the translation (i.e. the derivative work) is visible to the reader of a book or PDF file created from the article. In other words, an edit summary or a note on the talk page is not sufficient. The reader should also be able to establish whether a Wikipedia license or fair use applies to the translation. --Boson (talk) 21:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I would agree that third-party translations should be attributed, although I think that this should be discussed in a separate RfC. I'm not sure whether short translations necessarily subject to copyright restrictions. At least in Germany, you can only claim copyright for something that is sufficiently elaborated. A translation of a novel or a complete newspaper article would meet that condition, but a single sentence would probably not.)  Cs32en Talk to me  22:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)
I am not a copyright expert, but my understanding was that German copyright law is based on "creativity", but with the barrier so low that anything much more than an unordered list or a statement that cannot possibly be phrased differently is subject to copyright. Of course, fair use permits large chunks to be quoted, but that still requires attribution. Without attribution, I would say the editor is probably claiming copyright and releasing it under a Wikipedia license, which explicitly permits commercial use and modification (which is not permitted under fair use). This is OK for original-language quotes, because they are usually attributed (that is the whole point of citation), but the translator's work also needs attribution. Often, the cited source will be the translation of a whole work, so attribution is covered; where it is not, the translator needs to be attributed separately. Perhaps the citation templates should be expanded to include trans_quote and translator. One special case that occurs to me is quotation from laws and regulations in the body of an article, which is quite common (eg. Volksverhetzung, Strafgesetzbuch section 86a). Depending on the jurisdiction, the laws may be free of copyright, but I suspect that does not apply to translations (possibly depending on where they are published). --Boson (talk) 09:09, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Question. Ruby, could you say briefly what is problematic about the current policy, i.e. what problem does the RfC seek to resolve? The policy says: "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations." SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:26, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment  I don't see an example of the problem that is being solved.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose  The article Dictum states, "legal practitioners in the U.S. colloquially use dicta to refer to any statement by a court that extends beyond the issue before the court."  Machine translations are a tool, they can be used and they can be misused, and in this case without examples of misuse we assume good faith.  In the event that examples surface, I would not agree that the current factoring of the proposal works, since we already have a bullet point at WP:NONENG focused on "quoting a source".  And as to what extent we need to discuss who did the translation, this is a different topic than machine translation.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:36, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
    • The proposal seeks to replace one sentence in the existing policy with alternative text with exactly the same scope. Please reread it and if you still have an issue, explain what factoring problem you perceive.
    • This proposal has nothing whatsoever to do with bad faith or misuse of tools. This is a policy amendment. In the scenario that a source is available in a language that the editor does not understand, and where no reliably sourced translation is available, the existing policy gives the nod to an unassisted machine translation. This is based on the implicit assumption that a bad translation is better than no translation. Those of us backing this amendment say that this assumption is wrong - no translation is better than a bad translation. Some experienced and multilingual translators have reported having seen highly misleading machine translations. An editor who doesn't know the source language can't recognise one of these and may add it to Wikipedia - in good faith, as the RfC states. This proposal changes the policy in order to remove that possibility.
    • We also argue that knowingly introducing any material of unknown quality into an article contravenes core principles of Wikipedia: to uphold quality and reliability of sources. Again, this criticism is targeted at WP:NONENG, and not at editors.
    • The requirement to identify the translation source is a separate issue, as you say, but it is a related one, and it is no longer contentious. I'm assuming you mentioned that because you didn't wish to argue the point. Rubywine . talk 14:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
      • I think that this proposal over time has had a reduction in the scope such that the scope is now within the bullet point mentioned.  But I think counter-proposals are not constructive when this appears to be a problem that is better solved by waiting until we have an example to facilitate discussion.  The following premise remains speculation: that there is an article that needed a foreign-language quote for which there were no published English translations, and the machine-language quote just happened to be one of the ones that was highly misleading, and the editor who thought the quote was essential for inclusion was at the same time unaware or willful about the nature of the English machine translation, and that no other editors intervened when this happened, and that the best solution for this problem is by changes to WP:V—this premise remains speculation.  Unscintillating (talk) 15:55, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Comment I am sympathetic, and agree that there is an issue that needs to be dealt with, but I'm not sure this is the way to do it. Currently we do not require translations of non-English sources, so an editor could comply with this suggestion by simply not providing a translation and we'd have no idea whether anyone had verified the source. For online sources, or sources that are readily available off line, this is not so much an issue, but I do see a problem with more obscure sources. --Nuujinn (talk) 18:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Support Any machine translation must be checked by someone who can read it at least well enough to tell if it's totally off base. ("Is familiar with the source language" is fine with me.) For some examples of catastrophically bad translations, see the Lost in Translation postings on Language Log. The writers of this blog are all highly trained linguists (i.e., language scientists). --Thnidu (talk) 21:39, 20 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I am not happy with encouraging attribution solely in edit summaries or on the talk page. On reflection, however, I think the question of attribution is a distraction at this point and should be discussed separately. I think the main point is not to give the appearance of recommending the use of machine translation where the editor does not know the meaning of the original text. On balance I think it might be best not to mention machine translation at all, and merely state "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians." --Boson (talk) 10:05, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
    • Thanks for your comment, although needless to say I can't agree. It leaves the same loophole wide open, but offers less guidance than the current policy. I'd just like to point out that attribution was first introduced into this proposal at your own suggestion. I am now left wondering what attribution format you had in mind when you posted the message below, but never mind, it's not worth discussing further. This RfC has clearly failed to gain enough support.
I don't think machine translation can ever be considered a reliable source. Indeed, the meaning can easily be the opposite of what the original said. If the person providing a machine translation is in a position to check that the translation is adequate, it effectively becomes his/her translation, and the fact that it is (based on) a machine translation needs only be mentioned for the purposes of intellectual integrity. If he/she is not able to verify the correctness of the translation, it should not be used. The editor introducing the translation must assume responsibility for its accuracy, preferably explicitly. Perhaps we could change the text to something like
Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians. If the translation is not the editor's, it must be attributed. If the translation provided by the editor is substantially the result of machine translation, this should also be mentioned, but an editor should never provide a machine translation unless he/she is in a position to confirm its accuracy.
--Boson (talk) 19:25, 7 August 2011 (UTC)
Rubywine . talk 17:35, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that's why I wrote " On reflection . . .". I regard the issue of attribution as important , but the discussion here convinced me that we would not come to a consensus on the text in a reasonable time frame unless we limited the discussion to the essentials. If we don't mention machine translation at all, we don't put ideas in people's heads, and attribution can be dealt with separately. We don't have to solve all problems at one go. Attribution for sourced translations can be done in the normal way by means of a footnote, and all translation not done by the editor should be sourced. If a translated work is being cited, we should be doing this anyway. --Boson (talk) 19:23, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
But we're not, and it's not in the policy, and this RfC would have solved that, had it succeeded. Everyone has different ideas about priorities. Some people expressed strong opposition to the idea of putting source translation attributions onto the article page, which is why we ended up with the edit summary/talk page idea, and now there's strong opposition to that idea. I suspect this opposition would not have arisen if I hadn't accepted an unnecessary and wordy rephrasing (#3 > #4) which did not change the meaning to try to reach consensus. In hindsight I agree that an incremental approach would have been better from the start, but back then most people seemed in agreement. After two weeks of trying to move this forward and making compromises to try to reach consensus, and now finding that previous supporters have fallen away, I'm tired. If you would like to propose a new amendment to WP:NONENG then go for it, but I can't support your new suggestion. Yes it would remove the implicit nod to unassisted machine translations, and yes it would avoid suggesting machine translations to new editors, but editors who cite non-English sources aren't going to forget about machine translations just because WP:NONENG goes silent about them. It wouldn't be quite so bad if this were a first draft of WP:NONENG but to amend it to be less clear just strikes me as wrong at every level. Rubywine . talk 21:04, 21 August 2011 (UTC)
  • weak support. I'm somewhat fuzzy about the attribution part. If we have a translation by a reliable external source it should be directly attributed (footnote) rather than on the discussion page or edit summary. If there's no such attribution, I'd assume a translation by a wikipedian anyhow, so noting that in the edit summary doesn't harm but is redundant.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:36, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Closure

  • I removed the RfC tag on the discussion of #4. It has clearly failed to reach consensus. I'm not sure what the protocol is. From my own point of view this discussion topic could be archived. Rubywine . talk 05:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps proposing an additional sentence offering guidance would be enough, Ruby. For example (new sentence in bold):
"Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians, but translations by Wikipedians are preferred over machine translations. When using a machine translation as source material, editors should be reasonably certain that the translation is accurate and the source is appropriate."
Would that go far enough for you? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:49, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes thanks, that's a good suggestion and I support it. However I need to take a break from editing, so I'm not taking this further myself. Rubywine . talk 07:54, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that's acceptable, and better than what we have. Machine translations are often imperfect and sometimes disastrous, and it would be appropriate to acknowledge that. I'll add SV's suggested language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:39, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm glad our two weeks of discussion have been productive. SlimVirgin, many thanks for your help. Rubywine . talk 15:40, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability section

Latest comment: 13 years ago60 comments15 people in discussion

Notability section, tweaking

[subsection inserted above] Unscintillating (talk) 03:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone mind if I tweak the writing of the part in bold? Or do we even need it? I had difficulty understanding it when I first read it.

"Wikipedia's General Notability Guideline says that the subject's notability is established by the publication of independent, reliable sources, regardless of whether the names of any such sources have yet been typed into the article.

I assume it means notability depends on whether published sources exist, not whether they've been added to the article. But that's what the first part of the sentence says already. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I also believe that's what it means. Considering this is a summary of another policy, if it is to be an actual convenience to readers, it should include the critical points from the other policy. It is a critical point that articles should not be nominated for deletion if nearly everyone knows the topic is notable, even though the independent sources are not cited. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
In the recent edit history of the page, it went from this to this. What would the "tweak" consist of? It might be best to put the proposed wording here, in talk, first. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I was going to tweak it, but then realized it doesn't need to be there in the first place. The first part of the sentence says: "the subject's notability is established by the publication of independent, reliable sources." The bolded second clause just repeats that, but in an odd way. No one would assume that, if I created a stub that said only, "Queen Elizabeth II is the queen of England," that the lack of sources on the page at that moment in time would mean Queen Elizabeth wasn't notable. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:07, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to hear from the editor(s) who made the change about why they wanted to add that wording, before making a decision. I agree that it sounds odd, as written, but I have a feeling (ie, guess) that the idea was to point out that sources can exist even if they haven't been added to a page, so a page shouldn't be deleted without checking for sources first – as though these editors have had experiences where your hypothetical Elizabeth II stub was nominated for deletion (and stranger things do happen). --Tryptofish (talk) 19:16, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree that it's redundant, but AFD has significant and persistent difficulties with people who do not (choose to) understand this relatively simple point. Repeating it seems to get the point across more effectively than stating it once. The point that needs to be made is that {{unref}} and {{nonnotable}} are completely separate issues. If you want more formal language (which I've been finding less effective recently), then something like "Notability requires only that suitable independent, reliable sources have been published; it does not require the citation of any sources at all in the article" would probably suit.
There was discussion earlier about removing the entire section, since there's no particular reason to for WP:V to say anything about all about WP:N. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I would prefer to go back to the previous text, which simply said: "If no reliable secondary source can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." That's the only part of the issue that concerns V. It was expanded on August 7, [1] and again on August 8. [2]
If we can't have the old version, I'd like to tweak the new sentence to say: "Wikipedia's Notability guideline says that a subject's notability is established by the publication of independent, reliable sources, not by whether such sources have actually been added to the article." SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Two thoughts... 1) Does not the existence of a tertiary source on the topic (such as an article on the topic in some other encyclopedia or almanac) go towards notability? (if so, we should avoid the word "secondary"). 2) There is a difference between "I can't find any sources" and "No sources exists".
I think the point of this section is to tell editors: "Don't create an article if you (the creating editor) can not find any sources that discuss it"... but it is being misunderstood as saying "I should nominate an article for deletion if I can't find any sources about it". The first is correct... the second isn't. Blueboar (talk) 21:03, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, first of all, the original is one diff earlier, and it says not one word about secondary sources. It refers to WP:Third-party sources (aka independent sources), not WP:SECONDARY sources, and as you know, WP:Secondary does not mean independent. A first-party secondary source (and there are many in the hard sciences) does not demonstrate notability.
"Can be found" has unfortunately been interpreted as "can be found by lazy deletionists who refuse to look any further than a section named ==References== in the current version of the article". I suggested "have been WP:Published" last month, and the discussion was de-railed by a long digression by one editor who wanted to ban unref'd articles entirely, and the distraction of the endless not-truth discussion.
Similarly, I'm concerned that "whether such sources have actually been added to the article" may be more susceptible to misunderstanding than "whether someone has typed the names of such sources into the current version of the article". I had a long and discouraging conversation last month with an experienced editor who seemed to have trouble distinguishing between adding content from a published book (e.g., typing "Only 5% of women die from breast cancer" into an article) and actually WP:Citing the book (=typing the author's name, the title, and the date into the article), so my belief in the average editor's ability to understand plain English is at an all-time low. Someone might well think that "adding sources to the article" referred to including the full text of primary sources rather than to typing up the author, title, date, and publisher for any source that you used. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
For years it said "third party sources," and that would be my preference. But someone recently changed it to secondary sources, and I don't mind that either. The only concern I have is extending it to say things covered by the guideline. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
The long-standing version was "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it" (e.g. here). I also wouldn't mind: "If no reliable secondary or tertiary sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." But I don't see the need to say more than that here. The details are dealt with in the Notability guideline. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I think these comments by both Blueboar and WhatamIdoing are very helpful to me in understanding the issue. Perhaps the key issue, then, is the wording about whether WP "should" have an article on a subject. That does, indeed, sound like an invitation to lazy AfD. Instead, maybe the wording should be about whether "content" (as opposed to article) should be "added" (as opposed to exist), with the "added" part what is most important. What I mean is to frame it in terms of adding material, as opposed to responding to material previously added. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)
I think we should go back to third party sources, as the issue of the independent coverage is pretty essential. And I concur with Tryptofish's last observation. --Nuujinn (talk) 15:11, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

How about: What matters is whether such sources exist, not whether the article presently cites them.? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:45, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

So, delete the bolded part above, and add that sentence in its place? I like that. I think it's a good idea. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:54, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability section, WP:V is content policy

WP:V is content policy, see WP:N#NNC.  If the purpose of the notability section in WP:V is to repeat parts of the WP:N guideline, the section can be deleted.  Blueboar has mentioned that "the language...originally...was meant to relate to how the concept of WP:Verifiability could be applied at the article level (as opposed to a sentence or paragraph level)."  Given the burden of deletion at Wikipedia, I think we need to be moving in the direction of encouraging more sourcing by article creators, which in the absence of new proposals is best done by leaving the current language.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Its a guideline not a policy. Lets not mix the two up. I say eliminate that section altogether. Its also misleading because it only covers the GNG, when if you click on that link it says an article is notable if it meets the GNG OR one of the secondary guidelines listed on the right. Dream Focus 03:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
Two points: first, the policy now says that the GNG says something that I can't find it saying. Does anyone have a link to where the guideline says this: "that the subject's notability is established by the publication of independent, reliable sources (regardless of whether the names of any such sources have yet been typed into the article)"?
Secondly, a bit of historical context. This policy contained the sentence about "no third-party/secondary/reliable sources = no article" in some form since at least Feb 2006, six months before the Notability guideline was created. So this sentence of ours—"If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it"—[3] is a verifiability issue, entirely independent of whatever the Notability guideline might say. We therefore shouldn't say anything here that implies this policy follows that guideline. That's why I think we ought to return to that one stand-alone sentence without elaborating. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 18:11, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
I was wondering where that sentence got to - that's a very critical sentence that outlines fundamental verification policy. That needs to be put back in. --MASEM (t) 21:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
That a notability issue was described here when no other suitable page existed does not mean that "we should not have an article" is actually a matter of verifiability rather than notability. It could merely be a legacy of what seemed convenient at the time.
I do not believe that this sentence deals with verifiability. Material can be 100% verifiable without coming from a third-party source—exactly as this policy has said for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
The point of the sentence is the can be found part. It's find to use first-party, dependent sources as long as they are reliable (SPS comes into play here, for example), as long as we know there also exist third-party sources that discuss the topic; the first party source may be the best source to use in that case (such as using the award organization's list of winners on their webpage than a newsreport reporting the same - the key is that the newsreport has shown interest in it. Without any third-party sources in existence, a topic has no relevance to anyone but those directly involved with the topic, and thus there's appropriateness for an article on that topic. That's a key aspect of verifyability, that someone else has at least considered the first party source as factually correct. --MASEM (t) 21:58, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I am beginning to think that we made a mistake in trying to tie the sentence in question directly to the WP:Notability guideline. I think the original intent of the sentence was to say:

  • If no Verifiable information exists on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topic.

While that idea is similar to the concept of notability, it isn't quite the same. Blueboar (talk) 13:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Yea, I have no idea why the idea was tied to notability. "Third party" source is one, by definition, would have had to do some research to validate the facts since they were not privy to the first-hand details; the more reliable that source is, the more fact-checking they have likely done. Requiring that some third-party sources exist is a basic metric for verification of a topic, and has little to do with notability which is more about how deeply that topic is covered in sources as to make for a good encyclopedic article. --MASEM (t) 14:00, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
That sentence was never meant to be tied directly to the Notability guideline. It spent a lot of its life under Burden of evidence. I moved it not long ago to a subsection called Notability under the "Verifiability and other principles" header, but the intention was not that it derived from the Notability guideline. Perhaps we should simply move it back to Burden of evidence to break that connection. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 18:49, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability section, proposal to put sentence back under "Burden of evidence"

The proposal is to delete the notability section and move the sentence back to the "Burden of evidence" section.  The sentence is:

  • Oppose. The only interpretation of "topic" for which this statement is correct (never mind which policy it belongs in) is the article as a whole. But it would be too easy for people to interpret as the topic of a specific addition, or a topic that is broader than the article. Also, the statement only belongs in the notability policy, or a summary of notability in this policy. It is not a statement about verifiability. I could give a perfectly verifiable statement about the location of a state highway culvert, from a first-party source (the state highway department). The reason for not having such an article is that nobody cares, not a lack of verifiability. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:16, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
    • It has nothing to do with notability, that's the thing. A lack of third-party sources means we have no assurance on the reliability and verification of the information on the topic, and thus should limit its coverage from "none" to "part of a larger article". --MASEM (t) 23:20, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
  • A Supreme Court decision is a first-party source, but is absolute proof of the decision. It is certainly verifiable, although there are many reasons, which fall outside this policy, why reporting just the decision would make for a bad article. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:02, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
  • But at the same time, a SC decision will be covered by third-party sources as well, even though we'd likely to use the actual decision for sourcing statements about that decision. The issue is when only first-party or second-party sourcing is available. --MASEM (t) 00:30, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
  • A SCOTUS decision is not a first-party source for everything. It is a first-party/affiliated source for the new decision it contains, but it is is a third-party source for (e.g.) any prior court case the decision describes, laws it mentions, facts relevant to the specific case, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 15 August 2011 (UTC)
  • No, SCOTUS is a part of the US government, so is a first party source for its own decision, and any federal court decisions, quotes from federal prosecutors, federal legislation, etc.
  • No, that's not enough to make them first-party. SCOTUS is a first-party, primary source for what SCOTUS says; it is a third-party/independent source for what some independent branch of the federal government, i.e., the Executive or Legislative branches, says. And it's certainly not "affiliated" or first-party with respect to the claims put forward by the opposing sides in the case. When they wrote in Brown v Board that "This segregation was alleged to deprive the plaintiffs of the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment", SCOTUS was not a first-party source for that material. (Primary, yes. Affiliated, no.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:09, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I would say an appellate court is a secondary source when describing the evidence placed before a lower court, and it's a primary source when discussing the arguments made before it, and its own decisions. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 02:14, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
  • If it merely repeats what was said by someone else, then it is not a secondary source. It's not merely a matter of counting up chains in the link. If I quote Masem, and you cite me, then that's still primary material, even thought your step is third-hand. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:47, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
  • That sentence is about notability, not verifiability, so it does not belong in WP:V. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:35, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
    • The sentence is not about notability, it is about the existence of third-party sources to provide an unbiased and reviewed facts about a topic, needed for WP:V. --MASEM (t) 03:04, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
      • Here is what the first paragraph WP:Notability says about the sentence.
"... if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics."
Bob K31416 (talk) 15:32, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
      • Third-party sources are only needed to show notability. An article written using entirely first-party sources (e.g. a biographical article using only a published autobiography by the subject of the article, or an article about a scientific experiment sourced only to a reliable, peer-reviewed paper where the experiment was published) could meet WP:V without meeting WP:N. There are many reliable first-party sources (and unreliable third-party sources). — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:53, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Such an article would violate V, because of the lack of at least one reliable third-party source. The point of requiring this is to make sure someone other than the primary sources (the authors) deem the material worthy of comment; the requirement is also in place to avoid OR. The requirement has been in this policy (a core content policy) for years, since before the Notability guideline existed, and was regularly acted on. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:17, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
    • No, WP:V has nothing to do with "third-party" sources, that is purely the domain of WP:N. It may be that this policy had language about notability before WP:N existed, but that is years in the past and no longer relevant. Now that WP:N does exist, we have a distinction in policy between verifiability and notability: it is possible to have a verifiable article on a non-notable topic, and an unverifiable article on a notable topic. These independent considerations are covered by separate policies, and language about notability doesn't belong here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:46, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
  • N is a guideline. V is a core content policy. It has been the case for as long as I remember that articles had to be based on reliable secondary sources. We are meant to offer an overview of the literature, and to do that a literature has to exist, at least in the minimal sense that a third-party source—someone other than the primary source and the Wikipedian who created the article about it—has deemed the issue worthy of mention. That's not just an N issue. It is a V and NOR issue, which is why this policy has included mention of it since at least 2006.

    You can't (by definition) have an unverifiable article on a notable topic, and I can't think what a verifiable article on a non-notable topic would be. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:57, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

  • Mostly, I agree with SV's analysis, but it is certainly possible to have a verifiable article about a topic which is non-notable for encyclopedic purposes. Millions of newspaper pages of "society events" and such drivel have been published, rendering the parties described verifiable. Some of these were even written by reliable journalists. But the parties would not on their own merit be notable topics for WP, would they? There needs to be a little more to it if we don't want Emma Smith's 1875 cotillion in New York City. LeadSongDog come howl! 22:17, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

WP:N is only a guideline, not a policy, because if a separate article is created on something that is non-notable but verifiable, no great harm is done (provided other policies, such as NPOV, are followed). Another way of saying this is that if a few facts that really belong as a heading in a broader article are instead a separate article, this is merely a guideline non-compliance rather than a policy violation. Jc3s5h (talk) 22:27, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Apart from society events (like LeadSongDog mentions) another way to get a verifiable article on a non-notable topic is to take a paper in some academic journal, on a topic that has only ever been studied in that one paper, and write an article that directly summarizes the results of the paper. We often delete or merge articles like that for lack of notability, but nobody argues that they are unverifiable if every claim they make is literally present in the paper being used as a source. Regarding "You can't (by definition) have an unverifiable article on a notable topic, ...", that brings out the fundamental difference between WP:V and WP:N. N is about the article topic, independent of its actual content, while V is about the actual content, independent of the worthiness of the topic. These should be treated separately, which is why we have separate pages for them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:10, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

There's no point in tying ourselves in knots, because this isn't rocket science. If someone creates an article on "John Smith's fishing technques," it needs a source that isn't My Fishing Techniques by John Smith, or Smith's wife's blog. That is, we need a reliable, published third party—not John Smith and friends, and not the Wikipedian who created the article—to tell us (a) that this issue is worth mentioning, and (b) what kind of thing we should saying about it to avoid OR. That's the only issue that V has ever commented on. All the details belong in N. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
We both agree that article needs another source besides that one. But I am saying that fact belongs in WP:N, not here, because it is not related to whether the material that is included in the article is verifiable. Knowing whether "the issue is worth mentioning" (that is, whether we should have the article) is entirely a WP:N issue. The other thing you mentioned seems like an NPOV issue. If Smith's book is the only source in existence, then (essentially by our wiki definitions) its viewpoint is the NPOV viewpoint on the matter, and descriptive claims taken from it are verifiable and not original research. My response to the RFC is that this policy should stick to verifiability, not repeat things that belong in other policies. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I do not agree, actually. Per WP:SELFPUB, a primary source is a perfectly good source to V itself and the basic facts about itself. I have a dictionary here. I don't need a third party source to tell me that it exists, nor what year it was published. I can cite the primary source itself. That's neither enough to 1) comment on specific controversies, awards, etc. or 2) demonstrate notability. But the "we need secondary sources to meet V!" mantra is just not correct. No matter what the particular wording of V is changed to, it doesn't make sense to say that a published work is not an authoritative source on its own existence and publication date. Jclemens (talk) 01:39, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
I just meant that article needs more sources to meet WP:N. I agree with what you said. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
To take the example of "John Smith's Fishing Techniques", if the only sources are the book and the blog, we have way to consider if this source is even close to reliable, working on the assumption that John Smith here-to-date was a unknown person. Ergo, without any third-party addressing the book, we cannot even assure it meets the basic "verifiability, not truth" aspect. Maybe the entire book is a work of fiction published as a non-fiction title, maybe it plagiarizes Joe Jones's Fishing Techniques, we don't know. We'd not be able to verify that what John Smith has written actually took place; we'd only have John Smith's word on it, which is not sufficient. A reliable third-party source that would at least consider the work, determining if the account is legit or not but without otherwise introducing additional analysis (eg a primary third-party source) would at least provide something towards verifiability. Furthermore, a third-party source would still show the work existed even if only ten copies were made and destroyed without the original text surviving; without a third-party, in such a case, even if you can remember the general ideas of the text in your head, there's no way for any other user to validate it, ergo, it would fail. However, even for a published book, there is nearly always an ISBN number, and therefore some record of the book's existence in a third-party catalog (maybe LOC) even if that is just a primary source.
Note that this is nothing about secondary, transformative sources. Third-party != secondary. WP:N asks for secondary sources as a basis to build a good encyclopedic article. WP:V asks for third-party so that we know we're putting in facts that the reader can check themselves. --MASEM (t) 13:11, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Masem commented, "WP:V asks for third-party so that we know we're putting in facts that the reader can check themselves."
  • The subject sentence is, "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it."
  • And here is the subject sentence in the first paragraph of WP:Notability, "... if no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, then it should not have a separate article. Wikipedia's concept of notability applies this basic standard to avoid indiscriminate inclusion of topics."
Bob K31416 (talk) 14:31, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
An ISBN catalog is not a third party source, nor is a library catalog. Those help Wikipedians locate the primary source, but that's essentially it. I could probably get an ISBN for my cat (if I had one, which I don't), and then get it cat-aloged (ha ha) somewhere, but those entries wouldn't prove the existence of a work: the ability to look up, purchase, check out, or otherwise acquire the primary source for verification is what's really happening, and catalogs and listings are merely aides to that end in this context. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jclemens (talk • contribs) 02:00, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Time to centralize discussion

STOP... it seems that there is a debate at GNG that is centered on what this policy says about notability.... and a debate here that is pointing to what that guideline says. I suspect that both pages are being improperly edited in order to skew the debate at the other page. Please, do not edit one policy or guideline in order to win a debate at some other policy or guideline page. Instead, we need to create a centralized discussion so editors on both pages can reach a consensus as to what should be said on both pages. Given this confusion... I am going to revert both pages back to their last stable versions while we centralize the discussion and reach such a consensus... I suggest that WT:Notability is the better venue for that discussion. Once we figure out what the notability guideline should say, then we can come back and make any edits to this page that are needed. Blueboar (talk) 20:07, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Assume good faith! First off, different people are editing these articles. The debates for each page should be on that article's talk page, not mixed together. Dream Focus 20:29, 13 August 2011 (UTC)
OK... I suppose it is possible that it is not a deliberate thing... but the problem remains... both discussions are pointing to similar bits of language that exist in the other policy/guideline page. Neither page can have a meaningful discussion or resolution when both sections are being edit warred over. Blueboar (talk) 20:56, 13 August 2011 (UTC)


Let's end the "Verifiability, not truth" topic

Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Discussion of the first sentence is at WT:Verifiability/First sentence. Bob K31416 (talk) 14:41, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Long-term sourcing/removal policy

Latest comment: 13 years ago73 comments15 people in discussion

I find a contradiction between different aspects of policy, and between policy and the real world:

WP:PRESERVE says not to remove material unless it's more than merely unsourced. WP:V says "Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed... You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it. How quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references."

Have any of you read this or similar article?

Wikipedia has many, many articles filled with unsourced material, which are almost certain to never be sourced. The community needs to decide what's more important: having a lot of unreliable content, or letting people remove unsourced material which has been appropriately tagged for a (long) period of time.

I'm of the opinion that if material has been tagged as unsourced for a long time (say a year) it should be removed, and that the Encyclopedia is too large to require the editor who removes material to try to source it (per WP:BURDEN). But I was recently informed that such removal is a major issue for some people. Can you help with this, and can we clarify policy on it so I and others like me will know where Wikipedia as a whole stands? Be——Critical__Talk 23:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we would deal with such issues on a case by case manner. We're all volunteers so dictating actions can be problematic. Can you point us to the problematic discussion? We may be able to make some concrete suggestions. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Oh, I'm a bit embarrassed really... see, I had been just editing according to the principle above: if it was tagged for a year or more, I removed it. I did that on a whole bunch of articles, and was reverted maybe once last time I looked. But when someone thought I was an admin I said I wished I was, and later they said they wouldn't vote for me because I'd been deleting that text. See my edit history. Be——Critical__Talk 00:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, this isn't really the forum for this kind of discussion, but I don't see much wrong with deleting unsourced material, esp. if an article or section has been tagged for a year or more. But I would say that if you balance the deletions with efforts to find sources and improve articles, too, that's better for the project in the long run. I wouldn't worry about becoming an admin, just focus on being a good editor. Just my two cents, worth less every day. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:26, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks (; You're right it would be better to source things given time. I'd really like to know if policy can be made clear on this, so is there another place I should post this? Be——Critical__Talk 00:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi, that part of the policy means only that we should ask for sources, ideally help to find them ourselves, and wait a decent period before removing unsourced material (not counting BLP and other pressing issues). But I would say a week or few days, definitely not a year. That's assuming it's something that really needs a source. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:43, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Hi SV, OMG, the opinions are really all over the place on this issue. Any suggestions for how to go about consensus building for policy change? But I'm not sure what you mean by "really needs a source." For example, does a history section on an article about a high school need a source? Be——Critical__Talk 13:42, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
A lot depends on what you mean by "need a source". all information in Wikipedia must be verifiable... but not all information needs to be actually verified ... in other words, a source has to exist, but the article does not necessarily need to contain a citation to that source. That depends on the specifics of what is said in the article and whether the material is "challenged or likely to be challenged".
In other words... we allow removal of unsourced information, but we don't require it. Whether to remove or not depends on the specifics of the article, and the nature of the information in question. Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
If you have a bunch of facts stated, and those facts are not common knowledge that any reader will have, doesn't it require a citation? I know you don't have to cite that the sky is blue. I see a problem with the following text: "To show that it is not original research, all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source," because without a citation, how do you know it's "attributable?" I have been interpreting that to mean "To show that it is not original research, all material added to articles which is not common knowledge must be attributed to a reliable, published source or it may eventually be removed." Be——Critical__Talk 17:01, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it's largely a matter of personal judgement, to be applied in good faith and a good dose of common sense. Vast quantities of very useful (and perfectly sourceable) information has been sitting around uncited in Wikipedia for a very long time - by removing that type of information, you'd be making the encyclopedia worse, not better. But if it's not cited because it's wrong (or even if it is cited and it's wrong, which is also very possible) then by removing it you're doing a service. The more you know of the matter, and the more you've made the effort to look for sources yourself, the more capable you're likely to be of judging whether it's case A or case B (though often anyone with common sense will have a pretty good idea).--Kotniski (talk) 17:14, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, that's good common sense. I went and looked at one of the articles whose unsourced text I removed. What I see there is that the information is outdated, might have been original research or copyvio to begin with (see the very first edit), and includes so many facts that full sourcing would be a pain. On the other hand, it's fairly detailed information. It might be of use to someone... if it's accurate. I also notice that if it wasn't original research to begin with, it would have been extremely easy to cite (as in one cite per section). What do you guys think of it?
Kotniski, what about the good-faith argument that non-subject-matter-experts need to be able to determine the reliability of Wikipedia material, and that the lack of such citation is a basic problem that needs to be dealt with, so that WP can become a reliable encyclopedia, and not just another site? Be——Critical__Talk 18:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Just an aside regarding your example article Salmon High School: The source of the verifiability problems was lack of notability and I added a template. Bob K31416 (talk) 19:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
OMG, well in that case there are just hundreds and hundreds [4]. I've always had a problem with NOTABILITY, in that it sets the standard way too low: so low that a subject that meets the criteria doesn't have enough sources for a well-rounded article. Be——Critical__Talk 20:29, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, OMG. I wonder how many of the high schools in that list are not notable. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Sorry Kotniski, but "even if it is cited and it's wrong" is exactly what wp:NOTTRUTH is about. Unless we have reliable sources to show that the cited one is wrong, simple removal is purest wp:OR. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:06, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I didn't think he was questioning NOTTRUTH, just saying that text has to be in accord with citations. Be——Critical__Talk 19:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I had in mind the case where a citation was given but didn't support the text; but there are many other reasons for removing text besides that one: not relevant; undue weight; source not sufficiently reliable - and yes, source got it wrong (though in the last case it might be necessary to contrive some other reason, if confronted with some wikilawyering goon who thinks we have to include information in Wikipedia even if we know it's wrong).--Kotniski (talk) 10:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Most frequently, one need contrive not "some other reason", but "a better source". The way we know that (for example) "most women die from breast cancer" is wrong is because we can easily provide dozens of high-quality sources that say only 5% of women die from breast cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

And as a further response to Kotniski, those of us who hang around and edit a lot of different articles are the ones responsible for the overall health of the information on WP. We can't be responsible for citing information that might or might not be reliable. That's the responsibility of the person who added the text. Why is it that we wouldn't remove information after at time simply because it hasn't passed the basic criteria for inclusion, which I would say is proof that it is not original research? In other words, it seems to me that it's an impossible task to try and source the contributions of others, because of the volume of text to be sourced and the fact that there are fewer and fewer editors. Isn't that why we have WP:BURDEN? Perhaps we need to slightly strengthen BURDEN:

"You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it. How quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. It has always been good practice to try to find and cite supporting sources yourself, but it is better to remove text which is uncited than to let it remain indefinitely. Be——Critical__Talk 21:09, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think it's reasonable to expect an editor to go searching for sources for someone else's text - I commend anyone who does. The other options mentioned above are good: 1) tag unsourced material (if questionable); 2) wait a reasonable amount of time (1 year?) for the original editor to provide a source; 3) revise (if possible) or remove the tagged text. Sometimes, because the text was interesting even though unsourced, I've moved it to the talk page with an explanatory note. I strongly disapprove of any removal of properly sourced text, even if it's "wrong". WCCasey (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

One thing to remember is that WIkipedia in the past was not as strict about sourcing as it is now, and in-line citations were even unusual. Many good articles written in those years do not meet today's sourcing standards. Gutting such articles on that basis is not to the general benefit of Wikipedia. The correct approach is to fix them, bring them to the attention of some project, tag them, or leave them alone for someone else to do one of those things. Zerotalk 09:45, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, some of the above comments about "responsibility" rather miss the point. This is a cooperative project where we're all trying to make the "encyclopedia" better. You can in practice do pretty much anything you like around here until someone objects, but I think humanity would be grateful if people's edits were directed towards improving that encyclopedia, not enforcing some half-baked rules. The fact that no citation has been given for something for a very long time is not in itself conclusive evidence that it is not good (i.e. potentially sourceable) information. It's quite destructive to the encyclopedia just to remove information at random due to the lack of citations - you ought also to have some reason to expect, based on your own knowledge, research, common sense or something, that it really is wrong or unsourceable. Particularly since once information's gone, it's gone - whereas if it's left (say with a citation-needed tag) it remains visible to other editors who might know what ought to be done with it.--Kotniski (talk) 10:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I essetially agree with Zero0000 and Kotniski. There is no point in deleting unsourced content just because it is unsourced alone, as this is not is spirit of an collaborative project and it leads to a waste of good content and work of others. If you come across content that it is unsourced but looks ok otherwise, you should simply tag it. But if there are is an additional reason such as the content looks fishy, content contradicts your context knowledge, you have reason to distrust the author, the content is controversial, etc. then should delete it, but only then.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:46, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we are all saying the same thing... Sometimes it is best to remove unsourced information, and sometimes it isn't. We each draw the line between when we remove and when we retain in slightly different places. That's OK too... The line between Removal vs Retention really is a matter of editorial judgment, based on the specific situation in a specific article. I don't think we can (or should) try to draw that line as a matter of policy. Blueboar (talk) 12:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
That's fine with me and I agree that doesn't need to be codified in the policy. However the policy should make clear that formalistic (mindless) removal of unsourced content is not wanted nor any crusades in that manner.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:32, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I think we make it clear enough. And remember, going through a bunch of articles and assessing whether to remove material that has sat unsourced for a long time is not necessarily "mindless"... or a "crusade". I go into "clean up" mode from time to time... going to random articles and seeing if there are problems. As long as each individual removal/retention decision is made on a case by case basis (remaining open to the idea that sometimes it is best to leave the material in the article with the tag, and asking whether it would be better to remove or retain this specific material in this specific article), doing such "clean up" sweeps isn't wrong. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I was talking about going through articles and systematically removing any unsourced content on the sole reason that it is unsourced and not about any systematic (fesired) cleanup. The discussion here is relatively clear, but it also shows that we have editors misreading the policy in the sense that is described above.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, as I have observed before, this policy (and many others) seem to be written so as to be almost deliberately unclear. (And SOFIXIT doesn't apply, since there's a group of editors here who have no intention of allowing anyone to FIXIT.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
And yet how is the policy as you-all describe it to be reconciled with the oft-spoken-of goal of being reliable? What I'm getting from the above could be summarized as "remove only what you have reason to doubt." In such a system, it's guaranteed that vast amounts of original research of dubious reliability will remain (and could be vandalized by anyone smart enough to insert false info in a convincing way, thus raising BLP issues). It seems to me like WP is basically conflicted between the need to retain useful information and the need for reliability. But I'm not really convinced that removing only overtly suspicious material is an adequate compromise (and sourcing it one's self isn't practical).
I also think that there is a possible technical solution: have a   Removed template or marker of some sort. Then one of two things happens: 1) When an editor tries to edit the page, they are presented with a message saying that large amounts of text were removed for [reason], and they might want to review that before editing, or 2) The template simply says that text has been removed for [reason] and gives a link to the page prior to when the template first appeared.
When I get time I think I'll canvass around a little bit. This is a long-term kind of thing, and brought to a head, for me, because of statistics which say our editorship is at best probably not going to expand. Be——Critical__Talk 14:55, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
If people ask themselves whether the material is likely to face a reasonable challenge, it's usually clear whether something needs a source, and how long to wait for it. The problem with trying to generalize is that everything will depend on the particular case. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 15:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Exactly, but that way of doing things overall means that WP has vast amounts of unreliable information. So it's a choice: do you prune the branches which have fruit on them to make the tree strong, or leave the fruit and have a tree that is less sturdy overall. WP is set up on the principle that information is guilty until proven innocent, but doesn't seem to follow through on that. It places the burden on the person who wants to remove text, and what I'm saying is: that might have been a bearable burden in the past, but it's not any more. To improve, WP needs to prune as well as refine and expand. Be——Critical__Talk 16:36, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Most of the time, as a reader, I'd rather see something than nothing, so long as it's not harmful or very silly. As editors we might cringe, but as readers we might be grateful for it. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 16:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Well as far as the pruning analogy goes, "mindless" pruning is not yielding a healthier tree or a better harvest, it just kills the tree.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:49, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think you need to set the bar at "information we doubt"... I may not have any reason to doubt the unsourced information, and still remove it... if I think the information constitutes Original Research. Of course that isn't "mindless" either. Blueboar (talk) 20:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
well you can formulate it in a positive manner, one should not delete unsourced content one assumes to be correct.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
Isn't "assuming information to be correct" exactly what we're not supposed to be doing? And how can anyone know what is original research minus a source? You can't tell from the level of detail. Why do we have to have a positive opinion that something is OR, why not just insufficient reason to think it isn't? And given that each editor is informed of our sourcing policy, can't we pretty much assume that anything which is blatantly lacking in sources is OR? As far as SlimVirgin saying she likes something rather than nothing, of course that's true, but is it encyclopedic? Isn't all this "benefit of the doubt" stuff actually, when it comes right down to it, basing Wikipedia content on what we like or agree with? Be——Critical__Talk 23:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)
You write as if policy requires everything to be sourced, but that is not and has never been the policy. It only requires sources for content "challenged or likely to be challenged" (emphasis in the original). So, no, you don't have policy support for assuming anything unsourced is OR. Zerotalk 00:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Common knowledge doesn't need to be sourced, and I'm only talking about removal of material which has been challenged by way of a request for sources. Material which is not common knowledge does need to be sourced: "a source must exist even for material that is never challenged." Posted a question/request on Jimbo's talk page [5]. It seems like people here are putting the burden on the person who wants to remove text, whereas the overall gist of policy is that it's the person wanting to include text who has the burden to prove that it should remain. Be——Critical__Talk 00:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
It says "must exist", not "must be given". I believe that is deliberate, otherwise it obsoletes the first part of the sentence. My main concern is that the hard work of editors who wrote articles years ago when there was no culture of sourcing everything should be accorded some respect. The culture has changed now, but we should update those articles in preference to gutting them. Only material unlikely to survive a sourcing attempt should be automatically deleted. Zerotalk 00:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes that's a valid concern, however, I'm not aware that the culture has changed for at least 5 years, and I'm not talking about older material- my example was started in 2008 [6]. This is from an essay, but I think its statement is worth quoting here: "Responses must be forthcoming: Editors who wish to respond to the challenge [such as a tag] should do so in a timely manner. If no response is forthcoming, the challenger may tag or remove the statement in question... the challenger should await a timely response prior to removing material.[7]" And WP:OR says "The only way you can show your edit is not original research is to cite a reliable published source that contains the same material." [8] Again, I'm only talking about material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time. Be——Critical__Talk 01:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Another break

I have noticed that you are now stating that you are "only talking about material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time"; however, your proposal is still that "You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it." Which view do you really take, because there is a big difference. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

There is also something to be said regarding the reliability as a motivation for "direct sourcing". There is big danger here confuse one tool (direct sourcing/footnotes) with the goal (reliability). Having a lot of of footnotes doesn't make an article more reliable per se. For that we would need reliable editors to check/confirm the sources themselves, i.e. actually reading the the sources rather than just checking whether a source is given. And top of that we need a revision control (flagged versions) to manage which article versions have been proof read.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes wonder if it would help to expand this policy and indicate its relationship to PRESERVE with a statement like:

"If you personally believe:

  1. that the challenged material is accurate and appropriate to the article and
  2. that reliable sources have been published that support the material,
then you should not remove the material solely because no volunteer editor provided an inline citation before an arbitrary date."

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a good suggestion. We would also have to change all the templates, and other parts of policy which say "unsourced text may be removed." And also WP:BURDEN etc. WP should not be saying two things at once. Some editors think that policy is actually saying only one thing, but the discussion at Jimbo's page, where Jimbo and others agreed with me that unsourced text should eventually be removed shows that there is genuine difference of opinion on this. This difference shows in the slightly ambiguous policy, even though there is more support for removal than for perpetual preservance. So, I think it's a bad idea, but I support you trying to have it changed, as that might be a consensus-building and clarifying exercise. What I'm totally against is putting text like that in without making the other changes I mentioned. Be——Critical__Talk 19:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Response to Ryan Vesey: sorry I didn't see your post above. My position is one should only remove material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time, unless one knows it to be inappropriate. So, one may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it after it has been challenged for a long time. How long varies with the judgment of the editor: I was using a year, Jimbo would use 6 months. What changed was that I had to make clear that I wasn't advocating just removing material before it had been challenged. If you go over my edit history you'll see it in action. Kmhkmh, you're right sourcing is only a step in the right direction, and I would say it's a minimum requirement to keep text. But as you say, reliability requires checking/reading sources, and that supports my position: we can't expect anyone but the original author to thoroughly go over the sources. If the original author didn't even bother to name a source, we should be able to assume the text is original research or otherwise flawed enough to remove. We can't be obligated to read/view the sources ourselves (on say an article on a local high school or Barbie character), it's too much of a burden. Be——Critical__Talk 01:32, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Well from my perspective this is simply not how WP (currently) works and probably not even how it should work in the future. Several points here:
  • Why should we remove any correct material at all just because it is unsourced? From my perspective that is just a waste of resources.
  • The notion that we can only expect the original author to go thoroughly over the sources (and maybe the correctness of the content as such) is imho exactly the opposite of reliability. It is exactly how we cannot work in an open system such as WP. The reliability of articles rests on being proofread by others (the community) over time.
  • I can't really see why it would be too much of burden to check sources. Of course since all work here is voluntary nobody is obligated to do that. However I see no reason why we should have less expectation of those who voluntary perform quality control than of those who contribute content. In other words if somebody is seriously reviewing articles then yes we should expect them to check sources or at least corroborate the correctness of the content by alternative sources. If quality control doesn't do this (admittingly cumbersome) job then it essentially reduced to window dressing (spell checking, layout, "formal sourcing"). But frankly in my eyes that's no encyclopedic quality control at all, from the encyclopedic perspective the primary quality control needs to be the correctness of content and citations.
  • As far as "if original author didn't even bother to name a source" is concerned I essentially agree but with a caveat. Yes, if an author is unwilling to provide sources, we should delete his contribution. However there's a time window here that matters. As this approach only works if you catch such an author in time (not too long after his contribution and when he is still active in WP). Because only then you can really determine whether he is unwilling to provide sources or not. But that doesn't really work if you catch him late and he is not active anymore, then there is no way of telling ,whether he was actually unwilling to provide sources or whether he was simply not aware of our guidelines. This applies in particular to our legacy material but also to new contribution which have been caught late. Most authors contribute before reading all our guidelines or they might not even read them all. In such cases we should simply judge the content, if it is correct and good material we keep it, tag it and source it over time and if it isn't then we delete it. And yes we can and should approach this rather conservatively, i.e. in doubt always delete it, but there is no reason for are "mindless" automatic deletion independent the correctness and quality of the content in question.
--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:36, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
I hear you. Ideally, that is how we would deal with everything. So how would we balance those concerns against the goal of becoming a real encyclopedia which is reliable, while acknowledging that most of the the peripheral articles are never going to be improved from the state they're in now? Are they better than nothing? That's a judgment call and I don't think so. They often just aren't content that really belongs in an encyclopedia (but there's currently no way to get them deleted). They should ideally be reduced to redirects, as Ryan says in his essay. My whole thing is future-oriented: how to deal with content long-term when there are few new editors and the old ones aren't going to be sourcing the peripheral articles.
  • "Why should we remove any correct material at all just because it is unsourced? From my perspective that is just a waste of resources." Because we value reliability over simply having content. If it's not common knowledge, we should either source it or remove it. If we don't have time to source it, remove it (but let future editors know where to find it: that's very important).
  • "The notion that we can only expect the original author to go thoroughly over the sources (and maybe the correctness of the content as such) is imho exactly the opposite of reliability. It is exactly how we cannot work in an open system such as WP." But in articles like some local high school or a Barbie character, that's all we're going to get... we have to be real about our resources.
  • "I can't really see why it would be too much of burden to check sources..." It's not on the more important articles.
  • "However there's a time window here that matters..." Yes that's a problem. In the current state of the encyclopedia, though, we have to choose between unsourced text forever and deleting it. From now on, we should have a bot that automatically gives new users a heads-up on how to source and edit. Such a bot already exists and is used on other wikis. Be——Critical__Talk 22:55, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Becritical, do you understand the difference between "may" and "should"? You may go out on the sidewalk and scream if your Internet connection fails, but you should not irritate your neighbors this way. Similarly, you may remove unsourced material, but you should not remove material that you know or believe to be accurate, sourceable, and appropriate.
Imagine, for example, that I edit Common cold to say that "Very few people die from the common cold each year". For whatever reason—perhaps I think it too obvious to bother, or perhaps I'm new and haven't figured out how to cite a source, or perhaps I've run out of time, or perhaps the source I have in mind is at my desk and I can't remember the title of the source—I do not follow that material with a citation.
Would Wikipedia actually be improved by removing this sentence? You may remove it, but should you? Does your rule about deleting apparently good, but currently unsourced, material really help you improve Wikipedia? Or does it only allow you to enforce your "right" to remove perfectly good information, regardless of the consequences for the overall project?
Does it really matter if that kind of sentence, whose accuracy should be obvious to anyone over the age of seven, remains unsourced for more than a year? For more than ten years? Forever?
I suspect that Jimbo would leave such a sentence in the article, just like he'd leave the unsourced sentence about how many fingers are normally found on the human hand (which, yes, was tagged as "citation needed" several years ago). Jimbo uses good judgment in articles. He does not mindlessly remove perfectly good information merely because some arbitrary date has passed.
There is no contradiction between these policies and my proposal. One tells you what you are permitted to do. The other tells you what you should do, if you want to be a good editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
As a general answer, most of the responses I've been getting don't take into account the basic factors that we're losing or not gaining editors; and that no one is ever going to improve most of these articles. No one has an answer for that, no one wants to address it.
"Does your rule about deleting apparently good, but currently unsourced, material really help you improve Wikipedia?" Oh, very much so: the only way to create a reliable encyclopedia is to prune out the cruft. I think this is a noble project, thus to me, "may" is "should." But it's interesting to me that you admit that I "may."
"whose accuracy should be obvious to anyone over the age of seven..." NO, absolutely not, it doesn't need a source and should be left in. I'm talking about stuff that's only obvious to an "expert" or someone familiar with the sources.
We're getting to the point in this discussion where it's too complex and I'm repeating stuff cause editors TLDR. The stuff I was taking out was about local affairs/conditions, and leaving it in means the encyclopedia is not just unsourced, it's out-dated. Be——Critical__Talk 01:29, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
You seem to mainly look at the aspect of too many users contributing questionable (unsourced) content ("cutting the cruft", problematic content contributors). Whereas I'm mainly looking at the aspect of a bureaucratic (often mindless) quality control obsessed with formal aspects and window dressing rather than content or real content improvement ("removing correct content over formalistic arguments", problematic qualiy control). Both are real problems in WP and various methods to address them might be conflicting and the issue is to find an appropriate balance that works in practice.
Moreover I think we also have fundamentally different views and how WP works (and in which time frames), how and why it is used and how to achieve reliability or even what constitutes reliability. From my perspective your approach is simply not offering a (real) solution, it just deprives readers of correct but yet unsourced content. Which seen from my perspective is even a deterioration.
Where we agree however that we should attempt to catch (new) unsourced content contributions early and contact the authors immediately. A (smart) bots might be helpful here indeed. Any larger text contribution or new article without sources could trigger an automatic notification to the author.
--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Kmhkmh. WP:There is no deadline, not even for providing inline citations to apparently good information. Don't worry about the number of editors; now that so much vandalism fighting and other routine actions have been automated, we actually need fewer editors per article than we used to.
But what you're describing in your latest comment is not removing material solely because it has been unsourced for over a year, which is what my proposed addition addresses. You're talking now about removing unsourced content primarily because it is outdated or inappropriate to the article, which is a completely different issue.
When you are dealing with outdated or inappropriate information, WP:PRESERVE tells us to fix it if possible, and to remove it if not possible. People add stuff all the time that is impossible to fix: you should remove that, even if the unfixable stuff is provided with a source. If it seems like it probably could be fixed—just not by you—then you ought to leave it for someone who can fix it (or, if you're not sure, then move it to the talk page). If you can fix it, whether by asking your favorite web search engine if there are any easily located sources, then you should fix it yourself rather than removing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I would agree that your views were appropriate 5, or even 3 years ago. But as I say here, Wikipedia is no longer in that stage. At any rate, to support your views, you need to edit policy so that it is unequivocal, and editors like me can't come along and make a case for removing SOME (but not all) text which has been challenged for a long time, in the name of improving the general reliability of the encyclopedia. Be——Critical__Talk 19:48, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
There are also other arguments, which are more general and which I don't bring up due to the need to back things up per policy. One is, as Jimbo I think pointed out, that the deletion process is broken because the bureaucratic process for getting non-notable articles deleted is too much to go through. As I said, Wikipedia is geared to fast expansion, but that era is over and we need to think about long-term maintenance, and whether we want to be reliable or out-dated and unreliable while preserving possibly useful content. There is also the problem of getting anyone to decide anything, for instance whether we can remove unsourced text or not. You two would say, basically, not for all intents and purposes given our manpower. The template writers and others have said yes, as do some parts of policy. This is obviously the result of a basic non-consensus among those who wrote the policies. BTW, there's a good list of reasons why we need to source, which is also a summary of why I think lack of sourcing is eventually enough reason to remove text [9]. Also as noted here, reliability of text is lower if not cited. I don't dispute that it's good practice to try to find and cite supporting sources, I just dispute that you have to and that this is a realistic goal for peripheral articles given the probable future of WP. Be——Critical__Talk 22:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Nope: You have once again confused what you may do with what you must do. The editing policy tells you that good editors attempt find sources for (apparently good) material. The verifiability policy tells you that you are permitted to mindlessly destroy unsourced content. Unless the unsourced material represents contentious matter about living people, there are zero policies that require you to delete apparently good material.
And while we're on the point of what's permitted, your fellow editors are not only permitted to believe that anyone who mindlessly destroys good content solely because the content is not currently followed by an inline citation is a lazy, destructive editor, they are likely to do so.
The policies permit editors to use their judgment when they encounter unsourced material. The community hopes that your judgment is the good kind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Now it seems as if you are getting angry, but also not responding to what I really said. So, peace. We can stop this. I never said anything about destroying good content. Be——Critical__Talk 00:29, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Interjection by another editor

This thread has become so hard to follow and there are many issues that need to be addressed so I am just going to do that in this section. First, there are some notability issues about high schools. While slightly disputed, it has been accepted that while all schools (elementary and middle schools) are not notable, all high schools are. To address some questions on removing unsourced information. I think this is a ridiculous idea. Information should not be removed for the sole reason that it is unsourced. Information should only be removed if there is a valid reason to challenge the information. If a citation needed tag has been added it has been challenged. The key assumption to take when viewing unsourced information is WP:AGF. Assume that all information that was added was added in good faith. Deleting this information hints at an assumption of bad faith. If there is reasonable belief that the information is false, or if it is an unverified statistic it can be deleted. It is also important to remember that the citation needed tag helps encourage editors to cite unverified information. Before removing the information, it is often useful to add the citation needed tag instead. Ryan Vesey Review me! 02:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I have commented on the notability of high schools at Talk:Salmon High School. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
I was fairly sure this was all covered by Wikipedia:Verifiability#Other_issues. Removing material without tagging first, leaving a reason=, or a talk page note should only be done under limited circumstances: obvious errors, such as "the Sun is a green gas giant"; vandalism; blp claims that may be libellous or otherwise defamatory; flammable material that might cause a volatile page to descend into chaos, "this country attacked first and committed genocides, the other country was simply defending itself when it invaded them back"; etc.
It seems that fewer and fewer people are reading MoS before starting on campaigns to "clean up Wiki" - I found one instance where an article was tagged with a citation needed and within two days the editor had removed both paragraphs, even though most of the material was fairly innocuous and easy to ref. A reasonable period of time is really related to the amount of editing the page receives - if the last edit was over a month ago and the last talk page post was three months ago, a reasonable period might well be six months. Page views need to be considered also, if such an article is getting 10 views a month it is less necessary to change it than if it is getting 1000 views a day. I also think that editors should try and source before even tagging with a cn, and least put a reason= into the template. Drive-by-tagging is becoming an issue and will only increase as Wiki approaches the point where less and less articles can be created and maintenance becomes the only way for new editors to measure their worth. In the old days it was possible to create a hundred articles in a month and do that for several months, nowadays new topics that are not already covered are much less frequent. Chaosdruid (talk) 04:55, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
it has been accepted that while all schools (elementary and middle schools) are not notable, all high schools are'. Perhaps it has been accepted, but that doesn't make it policy or a guideline--is there a policy or guideline supporting that notion. I think it is safe to say one can generally assume that most all high schools meet GNG, but if notability is challenged, sources would need to be produced to show that the school in question has some significant coverage in reliable sources. Failing that fails GNG, I think. --Nuujinn (talk) 10:47, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
That's true, but if someone challenges the info and no one is around to respond to it (for a myriad of reasons), that doesn't mean that that person can then redirect or try to delete the article without bothering to check for sources themselves. I personally feel that WP:BURDEN goes both ways. People should only be challenging something if they have proof that it is wrong, via a source, or can't find any sources for it after checking. If they're challenging something with no backing, then they should be thoroughly trouted. SilverserenC 10:55, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Silverseren. Unsourced material is fair game for anyone to challenge - but it should still be up to someone to challenge it. They should have some iota of suspicion that the information is actually wrong, and not just take it out solely due to the lack of a recognizable inline citation.
This is also important because when people are free to take out unsourced information with no further examination, it's very likely that they're going to start taking out information with a citation in the next or previous paragraph... or the next or previous sentence... those old articles with a bibliography at the end are right out. The only way to ensure your information will stay in (at least for this one reason) will be to cite the end of every sentence, even if they're all from the same source. Wnt (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability is about article topics... Verifiability is about article content. While both are established by citing reliable sources, they are quite different concepts. Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Wnt, that's a very good objection. How do you differentiate between sourced and unsourced, when sources exist for some of the text (what I did was to remove entirely unsourced content)? I think that if there are sources given at the end of a section, it's usually incumbent on the person removing text to know that the source offered doesn't have the info. And I think that's a reasonably easy principle to put into policy. But, I don't think that one should have to have reason to believe information wrong before taking it out: that requires, for example, that before I took out any unsourced information on a local high school, I should basically live near or be a student there. Requiring that level of expertise isn't practical. Be——Critical__Talk 20:40, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
I didn't say you need to have proof something is wrong; merely an "iota of suspicion". Maybe an unsourced section offers information you can't really picture having proof of, maybe it sounds like someone might have had a partisan perspective; maybe you found something else in the article that was wrong and now you're ticked; maybe the account that added it had a record of Wikitroubles; maybe you think it's wrong. But the point is, whatever reason you choose to challenge a fact, it is a reason. Siccing a bot on the task, or acting like a bot, goes beyond that, and that's a bad thing. Wnt (talk) 02:31, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
And why would anyone take out any information if they didn't think it was wrong? This gets more bizarre by the day. If there is a suspicion that the info is wrong, do aquick google search, no hits, mark it with a citation needed. Date it and give a reason-, come back in a fortnight or three weeks and if no-one has added anything, put a note on the talk page, find a frequent editor and inform them, come back in two weeks and move it to the talk page...really, removing things today just because there is not ref today is a bit extreme. Chaosdruid (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Re "And why would anyone take out any information if they didn't think it was wrong?" - I recall an experience where an editor did that because he said he was a "purist". Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 22:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
That would be a nice way of doing things, but utterly impractical given the limited number of editors and the thousands of articles. We can't/won't be doing that, so we have to choose between a streamlined way of eliminating questioned/questionable information, and doing nothing. Be——Critical__Talk 22:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, to me it sounds like either laziness or POV removal. Chaosdruid (talk) 23:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Sure it does. But engage the argument, and tell me this unreliable text is not going to be sitting there in 5 years, 10, 20... We have to decide between reliability and permanent unreliability. Be——Critical__Talk 19:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Except that you're not talking about "unreliable text". You're talking about "uncited text". That's not the same. Text becomes unreliable only if no reliable source has ever published that information. It is not unreliable merely because no editor has (yet) bothered to type up the bibliographic citation for a published source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
To rely on something is all about the source: you can't rely on text when you don't know where it came from. What else would reliability be about? You would "rely" on anonymous editors? On one level reliability is about truth, but in an imperfect world reliability is all about the source used, and whether it is properly conveyed. But text is always unreliable if we don't know the source, because we can't rely upon it. Be——Critical__Talk 05:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Sure I would. I'm perfectly willing to rely on the text written by some anonymous editor that says the human hand normally has four fingers and a thumb, even though that editor failed to provide an inline citation for that material.
On the other side, I'm entirely unwilling to rely on text that says homeopathy is an effective treatment for invasive cancer, no matter how many thousands of citations the editors supply. The presence of citations in the text is not what makes the material verifiable. What matters is the presence of citation in the real world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Again as I just said above, you're not responding to what I actually said. The truly obvious doesn't need sourcing. The threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth: if there were RS cited per WEIGHT to say homeopathy works, that is what "reliability" means in WP. Further, there are millions of real-world "citations" vouching for the effectiveness of homeopathy, but one should rely on the RS for a better understanding of it. But let's drop this, if it's going to lead to bad feelings, else we might not work together well on other things in the future. Be——Critical__Talk 00:35, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

"A lot of editorial guidelines… are impenetrable to new users." -- Jimbo Wales

Latest comment: 13 years ago33 comments10 people in discussion

"A lot of editorial guidelines… are impenetrable to new users." -- Jimbo Wales, (Aug 4, 2011) from the article Wikipedia Is Losing Contributors

Would anyone care to comment about how this quote relates to WP:Verifiability? Thank you. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 15:23, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Not? It's not an editorial guideline, but a fundamental policy, and the basics are pretty easy to grasp for most new users in my experience. Doesn't mean that it can't be improved of course. Fram (talk) 15:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Since Jimbo was speaking to the Associated Press, I think he used common language, rather than the specialized jargon of Wikipedia. So "editorial guidelines" meant policies and guidelines IMO. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 15:43, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Starting editing Wikipedia is jumping down the rabbit hole into whole new universe. An immense amount of this byzantine alternate universe needs learning. North8000 (talk) 15:48, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Yep, rabbit hole. I can just picture the hooka-smoking caterpillar sitting on the giant mushroom saying to Alice, "verifiability, not truth!" Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 16:00, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
And I can hear our new theme song "White Rabbit"  :-) North8000 (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I mean, fundamental policy or not, it's quite badly written, if it's supposed to serve to explain anything. Like most Wikipedia policies, in fact. There are indeed things you need to learn when becoming a Wikipedian (and other things you might wish to learn as time goes on); but there's no reason why we should make it harder for people to learn those things by concealing the explanations under pseudo-legalistic constructions and unnecessary weird jargon.--Kotniski (talk) 19:25, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If the problem is having too many guidelines (said in plain language), then the way to fix it would be to reduce the number. Rather than using the same forking system we use for articles, we should aim to have long but few policies/guidelines, rather than many short ones. Many ones should be merged elsewhere or demoted to essays; but as a core concept this one should be one of the few that would grow Cambalachero (talk) 19:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To be honest, I wouldn't consider the core policies to be confusingly written, other than a few infamous phrases. Probably the worst problems with them for new comers are that, if taken literally, they are detached from the reality of how wikipedia actually works. That disparity also enables bullies and wikilawyers to easily beat up on newbies. One of the things that takes forever to learn is all of the compensating fuzziness (e.g. enforce and interpret by consensus) that has been put in place to make them work despite such issues. North8000 (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I take it more of a problem of today's "instant gratification" than the way the net was before the Endless September, where the mantra was "lurk and learn". WP's policies are easier to understand in practice than as written, and seeing how they are applied before making one's own edits go a long way. While we want to encourage editors to participate, we need to be clear that random nonsense is not the type of info we seek. --MASEM (t) 19:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage people to lurk before they start editing? If we do, we could give them advice on how to do that (which is far from obvious), but I fear that if people were actually to find out what went on around here, they might be put off for ever. Better to give them some brief and clear advice about what the idea is, and let them get stuck in - then hopefully by the time unpleasant things start happening to them, they might be too addicted to let it cause them to give up.--Kotniski (talk) 20:12, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
The idea of starting slowly is fine, but not trying to use that as a cop out in lieu of fixing that it is unnecessarily byzantine, confusing and hard-to-learn.North8000 (talk) 20:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm not saying that we can ask people to lurk with an anonymous contribution system, only advise towards it. It's more the problem that the average internet user today wants instant gratification, which works against any system that has some type of formal procedure or the like. It is not something we can correct as long as we have formal processes in place - chaos vs order, effectively. --MASEM (t) 20:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Relevant and well-taken point. But it shouldn't take an immense amount of time as it currently does. And many of the causes of that problem are the causes of numerous other problems, so fixing them would be a win-win situation. For example, things that lead to "experts" commonly misstating policies to newbies, and the newbies then having to take a long time to learn that they were wrong? North8000 (talk) 20:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
I do think that the sheer volume of policy is daunting and confusing, and sometimes very badly stated such as "Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia." Maybe one way of effectively rewriting policy in an easier-to-understand form would be to write a very simple general guide for new users. The thing is to make it simple enough. How about something like this?:

What is the basic logic behind Wikipedia policy?

Wikipedia strives to be reliable encyclopedia. This goal leads to all the other aspects of our content policy:

When writing an article, Wikipedia editors should:

  • Accurately represent those sources.

To accurately represent our sources, editors have to do two things:

  • Edit from a neutral point of view. This means that editors do not present the sources with any type of bias. A person who reads a Wikipedia article should come away with the same general impression as a person who read the original sources.

In order to prove both to readers and other editors that we have been doing our job, all information added to Wikipedia should state where it came from. If you do not tell readers and other editors where you got the information that you put in Wikipedia, it may eventually be removed unless it is common knowledge.

Thus the goal of being a reliable encyclopedia naturally leads us to embrace our policies on reliable sources (RS), no original research (NOR), and the neutral point of view (NPOV), and to cite our sources.

Be——Critical__Talk 21:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That covers a lot of ground, (and scope beyond just wp:ver) so would need work, but good idea to start in one place, which includes what to DO, not just what not to do. North8000 (talk) 22:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

A new editor has a subject they want to get going on, and we just want to give the most basic info to help them do it right, along with point them to more info. Something like this would be the 5 min version of policy. Be——Critical__Talk 22:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
What you've written there is pretty good and might well fit into the scheme of things somewhere, but we already have various simplified and introductory pages for beginners - that doesn't change the fact that we still have lots and lots and lots of other policy and guidance pages that those beginners are going to quickly come across (for example, by clicking the links in what you've written there, or on the WP:XYZ shortcuts that many editors use in disputes as a substitute for arguments) and be made to feel are important. All that stuff needs to be put in order and made into a reasonably clear and concise description of wiki-reality. @Masem: I don't know what you mean by "formal processes" (by and large we don't have formal processes, do we?), nor do I see how anonymous contribution would count as lurking (it would still be active contribution, just with the absence of various standard conveniences like watchlists).--Kotniski (talk) 05:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
@BeCritical - I really like that, up above.
I'm all for anything which makes our policies, guidelines, and etc. clearer to all. I'm darned sure that, if we really tried, we could actually cut down the length of a load of that stuff by removing repetitions and (sorry!) waffle from the pages, so that they don't appear as a TLDR wall of text. These guidelines / policies really shouldn't take that amount of verbosity to explain, and we also don't need to use college-level language to explain them. We can do it better than that. I think in many cases the concepts are simple - but they way we've explained them makes them look daunting. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
BeCritical, Good work. You might want to put that in an essay as collateral reading with respect to policies, for those wanting to learn about editing. Unfortunately, if it gets attention, it may get edited by the same consensus that led to the present policies that are impenetrable to new users. Catch 22. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Pesky's remark is consistent with Jimbo Wales' assessment of Wikipedia editorial guidelines in general: they're impenetrable to new users. Writing guidelines by consensus has failed to make them clear. I think that Wales needs to hire a professional technical writer, who has a reputation for clarity, to clean up the mess. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 11:28, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Those of us who think they need a rewrite might just go ahead and do it. It would have helped me if someone had explained the logical structure, rather than just present them as a bunch of rules. Wikiproject:Simple policy. Want to create it? Be——Critical__Talk 15:16, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
The trouble with "just going ahead and doing it" is that there are a lot of people who have come to regard the policies in their present form almost as a kind of immutable scripture, and will revert and block any significant attempts to improve them, out of a fear that we're somehow "changing the rules" by writing them in different words.--Kotniski (talk) 17:39, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Should have left in the fun stuff about the "shadow government in waiting." Took it out because you know how words can get misinterpreted around here or used wrong. I'm not talking about rewriting policy pages, but making a new, parallel complex of policy pages re-written to be simpler and to show the logic of the structure. They'd be designated as essays or whatever at first. The only thing that should draw flack from other editors would be if we linked them to current policy pages. Getting the new pages certified as policy would be way in the future. Probably someone has already done this, but I don't know where to look. Be——Critical__Talk 18:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I have been seriously considering writing a parallel "here are the rules in simple format" user essay for quite some time now! I may just go ahead and work on it ... when I have some spare time and energy! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 09:36, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you familiar with Wikipedia:Five pillars and Wikipedia:Trifecta? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:05, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that it's a great idea but to make it really useful you need to figure out what things are really difficult for newer folks to learn and address those. North8000 (talk) 11:27, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, obviously "you have to cite your sources" is one that is hard to learn. NOTABILITY is another. MAINSTREAM is another horribly phrased part of policy. NOTTRUTH, obviously. Someone who works more with the contentious articles might have a list for us here? And BTW, is IAR ever relevant anymore? Even a couple or three years ago it might have been, but really.... when is it ever usable? Be——Critical__Talk 23:06, 28 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure the data supports that. That might be what bugs you about newbies, but I don't think that's what bugs the newbies.
Moonriddengirl (Mdennis) posted a link to comments from newbies at one of the Village Pumps a while ago. Most of the complaints indicated confusion with basic editing/formatting or unhappiness that the pages they tried to create were deleted within minutes, without an opportunity to explain or fix the problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
So when not protected by some rule like "all high schools are notable," they basically get bitten instead of cultivated. Sad. Be——Critical__Talk 00:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
If they get that far. The link is here. The first three comments are "too much code", "i don\'t know how to edit the picture", and "I haven\'t been able to get on to create the page since I registered and now I don\'t know how to start again." It's not clear that any of those people got far enough to get bitten. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

If there is an interest, I'd be happy to try to list key things that newbies have a hard time learning. But here wou;ld be a few items:

  • Bigger letters on "Don't bite the newcomers" The worst problems I've seen are royally beating up newbies when they make a mistake instead of helping them.
  • Extra overview in key areas where wp is different than the real world. hat takes a while to really sink in. wp:notabilioty is not about rw:notability. Sourcing is everything. would be a few.
  • The basic "how to" is missing / obscure / indirect in large amounts of our "instructive" pages.
  • Clean up policy wording so that mis-quotes by the "experts" are less common. North8000 (talk) 16:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I put the essay out there under a different title: Wikipedia:The logic behind Wikipedia policy Be——Critical__Talk 18:57, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Verifiability as currently defined would eliminate large chunks of wikipedia

Latest comment: 13 years ago34 comments13 people in discussion

Applying the verifiability principle as it is written, which is strictly about being able to source a statement from a reliable source, would eliminate large portions of good articles in Wikipedia. For example take a random physics article, Stress (mechanics). The entire section Stress (mechanics)#Equilibrium equations and symmetry of the stress tensor does not cite a source, yet, it my mind the truth of the section is verifiable by checking the provided proof. Yet, it is not Wikipedia verifiable, because Wikipedia Verifiability is strictly about reliable sources. Dig around the science and math articles and many more examples will be found. I believe that the Wikipedia principle of verifiability as currently written is frequently ignored. For mathematical sections and many science articles, providing the proof in terms of first principles is far more verifiable for another mathematician or scientist than citing a journal article since verifying by the journal article requires looking up the journal article, and then the proof in the journal article needs to be checked, which adds a step to the process. The first non-stub version of the page [10] included the sentence "Therefore, include nothing that you cannot verify." and recommended citing sources as an easy way to do that. I think that the verifiability policy should support the very common pattern in mathematics pages of using a proof as sufficient verifiability. Jrincayc (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If the proof of the concept is being published first on Wikipedia, that is strictly against WP:OR. Instead, and more likely, I would suspect that you can eventually find textbooks and papers that have first (or at least, prior to WP) published these proofs. Remember, verifyability is about the ability to verify the information, so pointing to a journal or textbook is completely within lines. --MASEM (t) 22:54, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Does the section Stress (mechanics)#Equilibrium equations and symmetry of the stress tensor need to find a reliable source for satisfying verifiability, or is it sufficient as is? Jrincayc (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
If anyone challenges the material in that section for being unsourced, yes, one would need to find a reliable source for the statements therein. If the material is solely dependent on the proof provided by editors here, it's OR. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Mind you, in a situation like that, a general catchall reference (eg defined outside the numbered reflist) for standard textbooks, reference guides, or the like, would satisfy WP:V. Remember, we're a tertiary source - we want to be able to point readers to where they can learn more. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that's a good point--the information must be verifiable, but that bar can be met a number of ways. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
It should be also noted that straight forward "calculations"/derivations being obviously true for anybody with "reasonable domain knowledge" are not really WP:OR and are essentially covered by WP:CALC (though that's subject to debate).--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Though, and importantly, if the end line of a proof is a novel statement made purposely to support a topic, even if drawn from these core calculations, that treads dangerously on OR. --MASEM (t) 02:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes though "novel" is to be understood in a scholarly/scientific sense and not as in it has not been literally written in that way before.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
"If anyone challenges the material in that section for being unsourced" is not correct; "If anyone challenges the accuracy of the material in that section" is. Until and unless someone says that a particular unsourced tidbit is incorrect, it is OK to continue to exist as unsourced. It can be tagged, and should be improved, but it only need be removed if someone disputes its accuracy. Jclemens (talk) 00:54, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
For a while, but not indefinitely if we are to continue the project of making WP a reliable encyclopedia. Be——Critical__Talk 01:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Reliability of (correct) statement does really change or improve by sourcing. The reliability you seem to have in mind is achieved by proof reading by domain experts (and/or reliable editors) and for we need flagged revisions. Sourcing arguably becomes even less important in that context.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:54, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Jclemens, I sooooo wish that you were right, but you are wrong. They can challenge it saying absolutely nothing except that is unsourced. North8000 (talk) 01:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Around the loop again, we wouldn't be able to determine if it were accurate without a source.... --Nuujinn (talk) 01:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Again: verifyability is minimally satisfied by knowing a source exists. I borrow a math proof from my HS calc book and replicate it here for some reason, WP:V is not broken, just bad sourcing (which is fixable). --MASEM (t) 02:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
"Until and unless someone says that a particular unsourced tidbit is incorrect" - I would prefer "is suspect". It takes far less effort for a bad-faith editor to make up rubbish than it does for a good-faith editor to determine that it's untrue. If I know an editor has a history of making dodgy claims that don't hold up, I shouldn't feel obliged to check all their claims - even cursorily - before requiring a source for the ones that smell fishy. In an extreme case, if I assert that the Axiom of Choice is untrue... well, nobody can ever prove me incorrect, but I think they'd still be entitled to a "cite needed". --GenericBob (talk) 03:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree that "is suspect" is a better principle. Good faith editors often just do original research. It's often obvious that this has happened, but you can't point to anything specific. Or you may just be at a loss when you see a lot of text but no citations. At any rate, at some point the lack of citation itself becomes a reason to think that it's suspect. The only way to determine the reliability of the encyclopedia is to actually cite sources. In fact, a large part of reliability is knowing that something is reliable, and the only way to know is to see that it's sourced. So it's not true that "Reliability of (correct) statement does really change or improve by sourcing." Actually, it does, because it allows you to rely upon it. Be——Critical__Talk 03:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
Well, yes and no - the fact that it's sourced is in itself neither here not there - it certainly helps the reader to research it, and gives some assurance that it wasn't just a made-up statement added by a one-off vandal (although in some subject areas I would actually place less reliance on a sourced statement than an unsourced one, but that's another story) - but to be sure that the information is reliable, the reader would have to check (a) that it's really what the source says, (b) that that source really is reliable in that reader's world view, and (c) that there do not exist other "reliable" sources that contradict it. --Kotniski (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
That's true, it's not a guarantee. But much of the time such verification only takes a glance, especially on non-controversial subjects: "okay, it's a textbook and it sounds right" actually helps a lot. Be——Critical__Talk 13:21, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The last few comments are stating the intent of wp:ver, not its actual wording. And they deal only with the specific case (where there is an actual concern/question about the material) where the two work together. After years of thinking I've decided that the most high impact change-for the good in core policies would be adding the following two sentences which would bring the two together: "When challenging a statement for sourcing, indicate your concern with the material in addition to noting that it is unsourced. This is just to assure that there is a good faith concern; after that, any discussion about the concern has no effect on the requirement for sourcing." This would keep wp:ver at 100% full strength while eliminating the 100,000's (probably millions) of misuses of it. North8000 (talk) 10:15, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't need to reference that "the sky is blue", and we have a guideline that forbids disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point. The article Cylinder (geometry) does not reference that the volume of a cylinder is πr2h, but that's trivial knowledge, as trivial and undisputable as the colour of the sky, so many attempt to remove it in referencing grounds would be swiftly undone Cambalachero (talk) 12:33, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If I challenged you on the "Sky is blue" statement, the policy wp:ver would trump that guideline and force you to source it. My proposed change would force me to sound silly by saying "I question the sky is blue statement" to challenge it, which most of the time would prevent me from doing so. The more real world example of mis-use is to knock out material in a POV war. The clever warrior-wikilawyer knows that this not only invokes basic sourcing, it invokes the more difficult gauntlet of very high bullet-proof grade sourcing. North8000 (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
See WP:NOTBLUE. As an aside, I don't feel silly saying that the sky is not blue--today, it's grey. Each time this comes up, it strikes me that sourcing trivial knowledge is, well, trivial. I still just don't see a problem here. POV pushers are going to be disruptive, that's their nature. If I'm challenged on the assertion that Paris is the capital of France, it's trivial to source it and put an end to the discussion that way, rather than arguing about what's true and what's not, or what's common knowledge or what's not. When I taught intro to Lit, we did a segment on Magical Realism, in which a mostly realistic novel contains non-realistic elements. One interesting thing is that none of the students questioned the classification, but when we were discussion specifics, they disagreed with one another about which plot elements were realistic and which weren't. Common knowledge is not homogenous. But I agree it's good form to indicate why challenges a statement for sourcing, but I think we need to keep that as a suggestion, not a rule. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I think that adding that even as a suggestion would be a great move. Sincerely North8000 (talk) 17:02, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I gave it a shot. Likely be reverted. Such is life. ;) --Nuujinn (talk) 20:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)
I think you need to read WP:MINREF. This policy says only that it must be possible to find a published reliable source that contains the material. This policy does not require that unchallenged material be supported by an inline citation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't mind seeing words to that effect in that section. People are too quick to tag. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
What do you think about tweaking the second paragraph along these lines?
"To show that it is not original research, it must be possible to attribute all material added to articles to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. In practice you do not need to attribute name your sources for everything. This policy requires that all quotations and anything that has already been challenged or seems likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of followed by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material."
(The strikeouts and underlining are not exact, but I think it gives the general feel.) Or would it be better to address that in BURDEN (or both)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I kind of like the attributable/attributed distinction, but that may just be a hang-up from having worked on that policy (ATT). SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 03:43, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
I like it too; "attributable, not attributed" is a convenient slogan. But some days, the difference between the two words appears to exceed the reading comprehension skills of some users.
What are your thoughts on addressing this in the lead vs elsewhere? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Are you guys seriously considering lessening, rather than increasing, the sourcing requirements? I would suggest: "To show that it is not original research, it must be possible to attribute all material added to articles to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. In practice you do not need to name your sources for common knowledge. However, all material which is not common knowledge, or which has been challenged or seems likely to be challenged, must be attributed in the form of an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material." That would eliminate the loophole which allows people to come write whatever they want, even if it's OR, just because they don't think the article is likely to come under challenge. Wikipedia has a problem with unreliability, not a problem with people who are sticklers for reliable sourcing. In controversial articles, you have to source every little thing. That's frustrating, but it works to make the articles more reliable and NPOV. Without a strong sourcing policy, many "obvious" statements such as "the sky is blue" (when it isn't always), cannot be challenged. The difficulties above with "common knowledge," only serve to illustrate that nearly everything needs to be sourced. Really, what we need is the following: "Although not every statement needs to be directly attributed to a source in the form of an inline citation, such attribution must be possible, and the sources of all statements in each article section must be given within that section." Be——Critical__Talk 01:15, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
No, we're seriously talking about making the policy say exactly what it says now. The policy as written right now does not require inline citations for anything unless (1) it has already been WP:CHALLENGED or (2) the editor, using his or her best judgment, believes the material is WP:LIKELY to be challenged.
A 100% unreferenced article can fully comply with this policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems like we've gone off track in this discussion. Jrincayc's initial comment was really just minimizing what we can use as a Reliable Source, which personally I feel is one of the most misunderstood guidelines on Wikipedia. So many people include or exclude sources that might or might not be reliable based on somewhat rigid or flexible standards (yes, I know), that it is really a wonder we get anything to be called or not be called 'Reliable'. -- Avanu (talk) 01:20, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Does it ring a bell with you that sometimes people don't realize that what is or is not an RS or acceptable source varies with the circumstance? I mean, like the subject of the article etc.? Be——Critical__Talk 19:01, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Large scale edit warring and borderline vandalism on this talk page.

Latest comment: 13 years ago23 comments6 people in discussion

Cerejota, please self revert this controversial unilateral attempt to close four discussions and splash dead horse pictures all over the talk page. This is edit warring and bordering on vandalism. There was NO consensus to exclude this from this talk page. North8000 (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

There is consensus that all discussions regarding the "First Sentence" belong in the sub-talk page. It is you who is unwilling to accept this consensus. Enforcing consensus is not vandalism, it is protecting the project from disruptive editors who play deaf.--Cerejota (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I just went through it. I count TWO people who said move it, plus a third (me) who said have the main discussion there but explicitly NOT exclude it from this page. Where is this alleged consensus that you are speaking for this huge and extreme action? Please self-revert. North8000 (talk) 19:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
As I responded in your talkpage, strawpolls are not votes, they gauge consensus. There was no strong opposition compared to the broad participation in the sub-talk page, which spans years. As I said, this is being deaf and beating dead horses. The sub-pages exist, have existed for a long time, and recently been re-confirmed. Consensus can change, but it hasn't. --Cerejota (talk) 20:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
OK, if TWO people counts as a consensus for such a huge thing as to shut down 4 discussions here and scatter dead horses all over this talk page, that would make for quite a mess here in the future. North8000 (talk) 20:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
And who appointed you Talk page police? I am not edit warring over this, but you are completely wrong, capito?--Cerejota (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Now that we're past the strong-arm stuff, I'm open to the idea of incubating this elsewhere for a few weeks if that's what folk's prefer, including freezing my proposal to implement Jimbo's suggestion. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
You keep saying this, North, but then you open another straw poll. You're now the third highest poster on this talk page, though you've only been posting here for a year—a post on this page every 11.24 hours for one year!—and most of them have been in the last few months on this single issue, despite multiple people pleading with you to stop. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:52, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I don't think anybody asked me to stop (or move), or that thee has been much asking around here period. Lots of insulting, villainizing, name calling, throwing dead horses around, mocking of people who donate their time here trying to make things better, but no asking. (I'm not referring to you specifically.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs)
No one has asked you to stop?? North, multiple editors have been begging you to stop for weeks. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:14, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't really care whether we hold discussions on the sub-page or here... but can we please choose one or the other and stick with it. Blueboar (talk) 20:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Thats pretty much the point. Some people just don't get the point of WP:Centralized discussion and want to re-invent the wheel.--Cerejota (talk) 20:43, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
OK, how 'bout voluntarily moving it there for a while, but without forbidding it from here. I'll move the section I started over. If Blueboar or anybody else who posted there objects, I'll move it back. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
Please move all discussions about the first sentence to Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence, as agreed. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
  Done, although with a raised eyebrow about the "as agreed" part of that. More accurately, it's been done and nobody's chosen to object.—S Marshall T/C 21:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
I strongly object, and I don't feel you've given any time for a discussion on this, since just this morning the discussions were fine, and you had a few vandals pop by and mess things up. I don't think consensus is found in just a few minutes of asking. -- Avanu (talk) 21:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC) (restoring my comment after SlimVirgin removed it, presumably by accident)
I strongly object your strong objection There has been nearly a year of discussion since the last RFC, and the discussion "this morning" was among the anti-V Cabal. Also calling editors in good faith vandals, specially those who have done much more than you for the encyclopedia is beyond the pale. Next time you use language like that, you WILL be blocked and sanctions banning you form this topic WILL be sought. The consensus was not created this morning, and you know it. It is long standing. Besides, it is a common sense approach. Your objection is invalid, and you behavior and accusations appalling. Why don't you leave Wikipedia if it is so awful?--Cerejota (talk) 17:23, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Avanu, I don't agree with Cerejota's assessment or nastiness, but, with the strong-arm stuff set aside, I think we're all just "going with the flow" and working at the sub-page, but not necessarily ruling it out from this page. North8000 (talk) 17:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Cerejota, you aren't an authority figure here and you can't block anyone. This isn't the first time you've tried to throw your weight around on WT:V. Please desist.—S Marshall T/C 18:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
You are not a neutral party, Avanu can accuse people editing in good faith of being vandals and you remain silent? That is highly suspect. We have as much authority as the next person, but such personal attacks do lead to blocking and sanctions - do not encourage unproductive behavior by saying that is not true. If you read carefully, I didn't say I will block or topic ban. But someone will. No doubt in my mind.--Cerejota (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
It's true that I'm not a neutral party, but that doesn't invalidate what I say. There are substantial differences between what Avanu said and what you said. Avanu was protesting, and he used a strong characterisation of other editors. What you did was to issue a direct order, and you backed it up by threats. That's really, really unhelpful here. It's particularly unhelpful when you've already taken it upon yourself to close and archive discussions that were in progress. You've used contemptuous imagery of dead horses and facepalms in the process, and you've used highly scornful language.

Below, you admit to coming at this like a bull in a china shop, and that's exactly what you have done ever since your rather recent arrival on this page. You need to stop, breathe deeply, accept that you aren't in charge, and engage other editors in discussion as if they were your equals. Okay?—S Marshall T/C 00:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I just want to clarify, when I said 'vandals', I was mainly going from what the title said and wasn't singling out regular editors, hence the phrase "pop by". My objection (and comment) was centered not on vandalism, but on people somewhat strong-arming the page rather than being a bit more patient. My apologies if these distinctions were not clear. -- Avanu (talk) 00:33, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Please inform Foundation

Latest comment: 13 years ago8 comments7 people in discussion

(This is a copy of the note I've left on the sub-talk pages too; Wifione ....... Leave a message)

  • Note/suggestion: I presume there are legal implications of having the "verifiability, not truth" version up there. Whenever this discussion moves forward or there is a consensus towards a changed/updated version of the "verifiability, not truth" pillar, the suggestion is to make sure the Foundation is informed in advance, especially Geoff or Michelle. Wifione ....... Leave a message 03:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
My impression of all the various discussions is that no one actually wants to change what the meaning or intent of the policy is, but simply express the same thing as what it says now in an improved manner. While I agree with you that notifying the Wikimedia Foundation is an excellent idea, I don't think anyone is actually pushing for a change that would truly "change" the way policy works. -- Avanu (talk) 03:58, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
I can't see any legal implication of this. Feel free to contact them if you feel the need, but I think this is a completely unnecessary step. Fram (talk) 07:26, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
There is no problem because we are only trying to prevent the dangerous misunderstanding that Jimbo explains here. Hans Adler 07:56, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
Moreover, what Jimbo is describing is nicely handled by our FRINGE provision. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
"My impression of all the various discussions is that no one actually wants to change what the meaning or intent of the policy is" – not so. At least a couple people very active in this discussion do want to change the meaning of policy. Specifically they want to remove "not truth" entirely, apparently to be able to exclude cited material on the basis that they consider it not true. Quale (talk) 04:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
There are cases in which we should removed cited material on the basis that it isn't true. Existing policy allows for this and encourages this but the "not truth" meme leads people to think that we should be simple transcribers, as opposed to editors. I propose that we change it to "and truth" to prevent that misunderstanding but in any event, separating the words is a good start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:18, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for providing one example of someone who actually wants to change the meaning of the policy. It's not an improvement though, this fixation on wanting Wikipedia spreading the truth, it sounds way too much like some preacher. Who is going to decide what is or isn't true? This will only lead to more heat and less light. Fram (talk) 06:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

RfC: Tendentious editing of policy Wikipedia:Verifiability

Latest comment: 13 years ago88 comments28 people in discussion
  The consensus was "facepalm".—S Marshall T/C 23:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Summary

There is a lot of contention around WP:V, and the policy has been placed under protection because of edit warring. Since this is a core policy, such behavior is to be dealt with seriously by the community. The goal of this RfC is to get the policy placed under community sanctions as described below. These sanctions would apply to all editors in this topic area. The goal is to protect a core policy from tendentious editing, and to provide an environment that leads to positive improvement of the policy.

This RfC is not intended to endorse the current version of the policy, and supporting this RfC cannot be considered as such, rather it addressed serious concerns with editor behavior in the talk pages and serious edit warring in the actual policy. It includes a general amnesty for involved editors, providing a clean slate from which better practices can emerge. Cerejota (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Sanction proposals

Scope
  • The policy page Wikipedia:Verifiability, associated talk page, any associated sub-pages or sub-talkpages, and any formal arena (for example, RfCs in other pages) in which changes to the verifiability policy are discussed in a formal fashion that can result in the policy being modified - this scope is to be broadly construed and some discretion as to what constitutes the topic area is given to enforcers as to the application of the sanctions as long as it meets the broad definition
  • An involved editor is considered anyone who has significantly edited within the scope in the year before these sanction comes into effect, it excludes those who have simply reverted obvious and unquestioned vandalism or other uncontroversial housekeeping tasks (such as fixing spelling mistakes) and doesn't include any participant in this RfC who wouldn't be otherwise involved - Any admin whose participation is limited to tool-use based on good faith reports for action is not considered involved, but admins whose participation is of the same nature as involved editors are considered involved admins
  • These sanctions will be in force until a further RfC with similar participation and notification or ArbCom overturns it
Sanctions on editor behavior in policy space
  • WP:V Policy is to be protected for a month after this RfC is over - any editing must follow an RfC process and request the consensus edit be performed by an admin under the page protection
  • After protection, Wikipedia:Verifiability is placed under indefinite one revert rule (1RR), except in cases of obvious and unquestioned vandalism, in which uninvolved admin assistance is to be requested
  • Any major changes to the policy, regardless of protection level, should be performed via RfC and wide community attention, not by localized discussion, edits other than minor housekeeping can be subjected to sanction enforcement by uninvolved admins
Sanctions on editor behavior on talk pages
  • Due to persistent abuse of the straw polling method, straw polling is prohibited unless sanctioned by an uninvolved admin - a request for a sanctioned straw poll can be made and allowed under un-involved admin discretion
  • Editors are encouraged to not repeat the same arguments in a tendentious manner, hoping for a different outcome - tendentious proposals can result in sanctions being applied by uninvolved admins
  • All proposals for significant changes must be done with an RfC
  • Any proposal that didn't reach consensus must wait at least six months before it can be proposed again, even if different editors propose it - Speedy Close of significantly similar proposals by different editors can be performed by uninvolved admins; this a bright line, if after six months it is felt that the proposal is disruptive or not useful it can be closed by uninvolved admins and the proposer sanctioned
  • Repeated actions of any nature can be seen as disruptive and can result in sanctions being applied by uninvolved admins
Enforcement
  • Any uninvolved admin can impose topic bans or blocks as seen fit to enforce these sanctions, generally starting at one week for topic bans and 24 hours for blocks, upon evaluation of a report at WP:ANI and/or an appropriate noticeboard set up for this purpose (as per the RfC closing admin's discretion) - they must evaluate evidence provided, and calls for enforcement without evidence are to be ignored, with some reasonable discretion as to what enforcement action to take based on the sanction log and the evidence
  • A copy of these sanction would be kept at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Sanctions/ and this would be used to notify editors as needed
  • A log of enforcement actions is to be kept at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Sanctions/Log/ - initially the log will be used to log notifications then the log will be updated with all notifications and enforcement actions as needed; notifications do not need to be performed by admins, but must be logged, and a notification template created for use in user talk pages as a new message.
  • A warning template notifying of the sanctions is to be placed in the different talk pages in the topic area, broadly construed, to alert editors of the existence of the sanctions - this is not a substitute to formal notification
General amnesty
  • Sanctions on behavior are considered to start immediately after the RfC is closed as consensus and upon formal notification of sanctions to users - a general amnesty for previous behavior is provided, and in case of enforcement requests behavior previous to the sanctions entering into effect is to be ignored
  • This amnesty is for the behavior previous to the RfC being proposed, any possible issues that were being formally addressed or that happened during the RfC discussion period are to be handled in the normal fashion - this is to discourage unproductive behavior knowing that an amnesty is possible

Support

  1. Support as proposer. --Cerejota (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  2. Support I checked out the top of the project page, and it read the following:
(Core content policies) have wide acceptance within the community, and are relied upon every day to make editorial decisions and resolve disputes. Stability is therefore paramount. For that reason, please do not change the meaning or focus of this policy without clear consensus.
Accusations of this proposal as wikilawyering is in itself an overreaction. This isn't just any article, it's a policy page. It's what we use to justify our claims as editors whether it's on WP:XFD, a merger discussion, or when talking about removing or adding content to an article. Looking over the past 500 edits of WP:V, almost 200 of them appear to be reversions or undoing of revisions due to vandalism or, more often according to the edit summaries, changes or additions without consensus. To claim that "dealing with the problems directly" has been effective in resolving issues of consensus with editing behaviors on the page is inconsistent with the fact that disagreements have been pervasive and will likely remain that way. It also seems viable that these disagreements may escalate and could ultimately drive editors away from the project. I agree with Cerjota's sentiments that non-trivial changes to WP:V in terms of its coverage, what constitutes an WP:RS, how the burden of evidence works, or other sections require more oversight per the above proposals. I, Jethrobot drop me a line (note: not a bot!) 02:12, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

  • Oppose. An over-reaction. Rules and solutions are overly formulaic. The proposal confers far too much arbitrary authority to admins over ordinary editors. The spirit of the proposal is contrary to the concept of a "community run project". Good faith but disruptive editing should go to dispute resolution, not arbitrary saction by any individual. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:21, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Strongly Oppose in the most strenuous fashion. We don't need more Wikilawyering happening here, where in fact WP:IAR needs to be followed more often than not. This is an attempt to codify a rigid practice that I don't think needs to be applied on Wikipedia except possibly in the most exceptional cases, and even then it should be a case by case basis where experienced moderators are being brought into the discussion and/or ArbCom has decided to lay down some special rules for a particular article. There are far too many rules on Wikipedia as it is, and this set of rules simply destroys what should be a much more casual conversation on talk pages. If there is a problem, deal with those problems directly where the problems are at. Certainly any situation needing this rule is seriously lacking in WP:WikiLove. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose sanctions, unless and until we see the diffs.—S Marshall T/C 23:54, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose WP:TLDR, absent any examples, this feels like a H-Bomb to crack a nut. Mtking (edits) 02:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose, although I would support a 1-month ban of Cerejota from this policy to contain the disruption. Hans Adler 02:04, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose The problems that led to the proposed sanctions are real; but the above proposal undoubtedly creates more problems than it hopes to solve. I think there needs to be less acrimony overall at Wikipedia, especially here, but the above isn't going to be workable. --Jayron32 03:26, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose  WP:TLDR  Yes, we know we are a dysfunctional talk page, is there a problem with that?  If you can produce a cat-herding license, this attitude will turn into instant respect, until then, we already have a bully editor and an owner thank you.  A moderator for WP:V/First sentence we could use, pictures of dead things are just one more attitude to deal with.  This is paradoxical how the effort to take a 4-week break in our discussion about the first sentence has created a vacuum that has editors arriving in numbers to take ownership.  Nothing personal here, btw.  Please come back in about six-eight weeks as we might have some work for you by then.  Sincerely, Unscintillating (talk) 03:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Now I wish *I'd* gone to cat-herding school, damn the missed opportunities. :( BTW, if this page is about Verifiability, Not Truth, where does that leave Schroedinger's cat? Can we herd cats that are in a quantum flux? -- Avanu (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose It is unfortunate that this RfC was started in the midst of a completely nonproblematic and productive discussion. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:19, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose As Hans points out this proposal itself might be considered disruptive, and the same could be said about many editing actions which appear to be aimed at blocking sensible discussion about the good faith and rational concerns of a large number of Wikipedians. There are real good faith disagreements being hammered out, and it would not be helpful at all to spend too much time on any meta discussion which would inevitably involve picking one side as good and the other side as sanctionable. Which side is which?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose This is problematic in a multitude of ways. Most of all it itself is the nastiest behavior that I've seen on this page. North8000 (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose Too creepy. We have hundreds of policy pages and it is impractical for them to have long lists of local bylaws. If 1RR is a good idea for this page, say, then it's a good idea for every page. We should have general and uniform rules of behaviour, not local, idiosyncratic ones. Warden (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose... overkill. While I think it would help if everyone took a break from this endless discussion, I don't see a need for "enforcement" or "sanctions". Blueboar (talk) 12:42, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose I'm not aware of the context of this RFC. All I will say is that this proposal is too restrictive. Most editors can edit this page civilly. If a few editors become tendentious, deal with them individually. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - definite overkill! I agree we could all do with chilling a bit from time to time, and sharing a beer rather than a heated debate - but, really ... something like this is like nuking London to deal with the litter problem. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 00:55, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Seems a bit too much. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 01:52, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Oppose - until Cerejota actually provides an answer to my question about the sources of this problem, I have no basis for supporting these measures. -- Avanu (talk) 03:14, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

General Discussion of Proposed Sanctions

Replies to specific !votes

Other comments

  • Well, just when we got this page cooled down, someone throws the above ridiculous gasoline on it. North8000 (talk) 23:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict)I disagree with this assessment that "things have calmed down", and your comment is a prime example of why it is impossible to edit in this topic area without some sort of community-wide sanctions imposing a modicum of proportionality and common sense into the process. I hope your un-constructive dismissal for a request for wide community discussion and attention is not a common thread in this RfC, because this is core policy that requires the utmost respect and community involvement, regardless of where one stands in the debate.--Cerejota (talk) 23:26, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • There are no diffs, which makes it impossible to know what any of this is about for those of us who haven't followed the page's recent history (and maybe even for those who have). postdlf (talk) 23:22, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
    • The problem with including diffs here, is that it would give the appereance of trying to sanction some people rather than other people - which is also why I proposed amnesty. If others want to include diffs or independently investigate, I hope this is done. Quite frankly, I just got here after a few years, and found a distrustful, WP:OWNy, cabalistic environment, and I came in a bit of bull in a china shop, but reflection let me see this was because of an echo chamber effect due to the lack of community attention. Of course, feel free to bring up any specific behaviors in the last two years or so.--Cerejota (talk) 23:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
      • The point of an RFC is to get wider comment on a dispute or issue. So I saw your RFC notice on the Village pump and came here, and...what am I supposed to see? Without diffs, I have no idea what "tendentious editing" you might be talking about or by whom or whether any problems rise to the level that would justify the sanctions. postdlf (talk) 01:42, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
    • I agree - I don't know what the problem is beyond the vague assertions already stated. Even a few examples would be helpful. This is especially important given the broad scope and very high bar (RfC for any edits???) that is being proposed. ElKevbo (talk) 02:12, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • It seems to me that the sentiment behind this RfC is worth exploring, but the actual scope of the proposal is far too broad and non-specific to have a hope of succeeding. From my own perspective the guideline on verifiability is routinely distorted by editors and administrators alike to serve agenda (like deletionism or retentionism). As for the cliques or cabals mentioned by Cerejota, these are inevitable, but not necessarily always harmful. Most disconcerting in this discussion, however, is Postdlf's anti-intellectual, mechanistic insistence on diffs as a pre-requisite to addressing a potential problem; we are supposedly human beings capable of abstract thought, creative imagination, and forward-thinking planning, not robots capable only of making rulings according to fixed criteria. My personal observation has been that each single instance of distorting verifiability criteria, or of cabalistic behaviour, or of excessively mechanistic intervention is best addressed on its own merits. If Cerejota believes distortion of verifiability criteria in policy articles will invalidate common sense or rationality, then that is what editors and administrators are making of this encyclopaedia and nothing will stop it. At that point, though, many contributors who do not regard themselves as robots beholden to mechanistic rules rather than rationality will cease to give their time and effort. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 00:27, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Question - Would it be possible for you Cerejota, to explain what issues or decisions are contributing to the "contentious" atmosphere? You simply say that it is contentious, but don't mention any reason or cause, which seems to imply you just have problematic editors. What are the issues? What is it people are trying to fix or break or fine tune? I'm not convinced this is really "tendentious" (which is a word people only use in Wikipedia, and is really a term much more ripe for the types of debates I've seen here, but I digress.), as much as it is a herd of cats that just need a cat herder. -- Avanu (talk) 03:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • Suggestion. I was the person who requested the protection. Obviously, we don't need these sanctions, but I'd like to suggest that, once the protection is over, editors choose to voluntarily conduct themselves as though the sanctions were in effect. In other words, please don't jump at the opportunity to edit war over the wording of the page. Instead, discuss what you propose to change, and be patient with the fact that others may not agree with you. I kind of like the idea that non-trivial changes should only be made when there has been a proposal in talk that has achieved consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:52, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Continued general discussion

  • Comment  What makes no sense here is that an outsider, Cerejota, has started this RfC less than 24 hours after we opened a new page at WP:V/First sentence and began polling there.  We are actually as productive today as I have ever known.  Is there anyway we can close this RfC and plan for it to come back in eight weeks?  It might help to know that this proposal or some alternative community involvement will return in eight weeks if no new consensus has emerged.

    As for the skills that are currently here on this page, the encyclopedia could use some philosophers at WT:V/First sentence and WP:V/First sentence right now working out the theory to explain the current divide between the change camp and the keep-it-at-a-no-consensus-status camp.  Pilate asked the question, what is truth, and Jesus did not answer.  Is there a place for accuracy and truth on Wikipedia?  Unscintillating (talk) 04:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

    I wouldn't call Cerejota an outsider at all. This user has been a major contributor to the disruption in the last days by closing several discussions simultaneously, putting satirical illustrations at the top that favoured Cerejota's POV, and then edit warring to keep the discussions closed and the images in. [11] Hans Adler 07:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

One feels all this is rather disruptive. We're prohibited from discussing the policy's opening statement on the policy's talk page; people even try to remove the flag that says that the sentence is being discussed on another talk page, which seems particularly paranoid - and yet we're now being asked to discuss some weird procedural proposal that has nothing to do with the content of the policy page. Why is it that those who would defend the present version of the page, and its opening sentence in particular, are so desperate to avoid discussion of that toipc? Could it be that even they now realize that their arguments manifestly fail to hold water, and the only way they can achieve the objective they've become emotionally attached to is to ensure that the opposing arguments - which do hold water - are effectively suppressed?--Kotniski (talk) 09:57, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Avoid discussion of the topic? Ye Gods! How many months has it been discussed with no consensus?
Some of us are simply tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again for months and months after strawpolls and rfcs galore have failed to reach consensus about how the page should be changed (and that is what is required--the argument that there's not consensus to leave "not truth" in is a strawman, as consensus has to be reached for a specific change, not just "we don't like it the way it is", and there's not even consensus for that). It has seemed to me for month now that continuing to push for a change despite the lack of consensus is clearly disruptive, and some number of editors have a bad case of ownership on the issue. Some of us are taking a break from the main discussion in recognition that we are not getting anywhere in the discussions and haven't for months. Some of us tried for compromise wording to address the concerns of others who wish to clarify the policy, but were rebuffed by those who are stuck on removing "not truth" and will not hear of anything else. Some of us simply disagree that there's a problem in the first place, and do not see a reason to change the opening sentence to a core policy statement. It's been discussed here and at the pump, endlessly. At what point do we put the issue aside, even for a brief period, in recognition that we're just not getting anywhere? Or is it the case that this page will be held hostage indefinitely by those who will not let go of a change they want, who are incapable of convincing others that the change is needed? --Nuujinn (talk) 10:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
The hostage-holding is being done by those who can't defend the way the page is written at the moment, and yet have decided they like it for some reason, and so block all efforts to reach a wording that is satisfactory, knowing that this means they get to keep their preferred wording, even though we all know by now that it is unsatisfactory in many ways. This isn't how consensus is supposed to work - we all have to make the effort to find a solution that addresses all the genuine concerns that have been raised. If no such solution has yet been found, we should keep trying until we do. Those who are tired of the topic can simply walk away and do something else.--Kotniski (talk) 11:13, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
I agree. I propose that we archive all this meta-discussion and get rid of that subpage and just start discussing it here. The delaying tactics are frustrating.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Start discussing it? Most of us have been discussing this for months, through RfCs and so on. The people wanting to change it never reached a consensus for it (and never really agreed on what to change it to as well). They can't seem to accept this. The "delaying tactic" is not a delaying tactic, but an expression of the reality that when something has been discussed ad nauseam and you don't get the result you want, it may be time to take a break from it. WP:DEADHORSE and all that... Fram (talk) 11:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Fram, we're dealing with something about which there's genuinely no consensus. Some of us are trying to discuss, engage new editors in the discussion, and move forward. Others would be quite happy for the "no consensus" situation to continue forever, because while it persists, the policy reads as they want it to. Could we please stop pretending that a lack of consensus means the status quo is akin to Gibraltar? If editors new to the discussion agree with Kotniski, Jimbo and I (among many others), then there's a prospect of real change here.—S Marshall T/C 12:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Fram is correct. We have been discussing this for months now. We have had repeated RfCs, polls, and proposals. We have spent months trying to find consensus. Numerous compromises have been suggested and rejected by one side or the other in this debate. The endless debate is causing people to solidify their positions at the extremes, and we now have people (on both sides) who refuse to consider any alternative other than "keep it in" or "take it out". At some point we really do need to say "OK, that's enough for now - everyone take a break" ... if only to give people time to think about the valid points raised by the other side and back away from their hard line positions. Blueboar (talk) 12:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Do you have an alternative to "keep it in" or "take it out"? Write it in small type? In brackets? I tried debolding it at one point, but even that was reverted.--Kotniski (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Yes... "keep it, but add a second sentence to explain it". A few weeks ago, we actually came very close to a compromise consensus using this approach ... but for some reason the approach was abandoned. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
We have a second sentence (or rather, a second half of the same sentence) to explain it, don't we? --Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Yes, check the archives, numerous changes have been suggested as compromises. Blueboar, North8000, and Tryptofish amoung others have pretty consistently sought to engage editors in discussions of possible compromises, but a small number of editors opposed the compromised suggested. I'm sorry that Jimbo Wales sees any of this as delaying tactics, but I would suggest anyone who has not read all of the archives going back for say, three months, please do so to get a feel for how the discussions have been going. The horse is dead, decayed, gone, with no trace left and there's now a lake where the field where the horse died was. A number of us have come to the conclusion that a break is needed, others disagree and keep rehashing the same arguments. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
Interrupting the discussion was reasonable when the discussion was stalled. Now that there is a big influx of new editors with new ideas, the informal moratorium has become obsolete, and insisting on it is disruptive. Hans Adler 13:34, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
"The horse is dead" seems to be the substitute for an argument that we keep getting around here. One could equally well say that the horse of the defenders of the status quo is dead. With any number of dead horses lying around the place, we have to continue the search for one that's just taking a nap.--Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I should say for any newcomers that for me, "not truth" is just one of several annoying problems that this policy has. The other main ones are its existence (as a separate page from WP:NOR, of which it has been made into a straightforward fork), its title (we are not concerned with verifiability any more than we are concerned with truth, really - it's about sourceability - and it's that mismastch that makes writing the first sentence so difficult), and its first word (it's not "The" (only) threshold, as has continuously been pointed out, but they won't let anyone change even that much).--Kotniski (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest trying to formulate drafts for new RFC now and table them in a few weeks for now. As I wrote here a few months ago, the issue was never the discussions, rather starting RFCs which then forces people who feel strongly about the issue to participate here. If we have an agreement on the date for posting RFCs, then the people who are tired of the discussions can safely stay away. Count Iblis (talk) 16:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate Nuujinn's comment. It's true that some (not all) of the editors who want the most sweeping changes have repeatedly stonewalled sincere attempts at compromise, either because compromise versions are not good enough for them, or because they actually enjoy talking this thing to death, and finding a solution would mean that they would have to look for an endless argument somewhere else. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 31 August 2011 (UTC)


(ec) First, I want to make it clear that Verifiability is NOT a fork of NOR; the verifiability policy is older than NOR and in fact NOR began as a fork from the Verifiability policy.
Secondly, there is a relationship between verifiability and sourcing, but they are not the same. The verifiability policy is a principle, that we must be able to verify that someone (in fact, enough of the right people to make it "significant") actually holds this view. In this sense, Verifiability is a corollary or fork of NPOV. Our policies on sources are not principles, they are criteria for what kinds of sources constitute sufficient evidence to satisfy the verifiability policy.
Third, I think anyone participating in this discussion ought to read the original statement concerning "truth." I have removed this from the old NPOV policy and have added it to this essay: Wikipedia:Truth. Smokey Joe (I think) has proposed that this essay be made a part of the Verifiability policy. I added another proposal, that it be added to WP:NOT. "Not truth" is I grant an odd phrase, but the original answer to the question "Well, if it is not about the truth, what is it about" was not "verifiability," it was "neutrality" - understanding why WP is not about "truth" is a predicate for understanding our NPOV policy. This is why we say that neutrality is not itself a view (because that might suggest that the neutral view is the true view), it is a principle that leads us to provide multiple points of view, when they are verifiable (i.e. one of us did not invent this view, it is actually a view that is "out there"). Slrubenstein | Talk 19:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
SLR, I believe what Kotniski was referring to was to say WP:V has become a fork of WP:NOR in effect, not out of a clear plan or intention. I do like you reflections on this history though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
We are actually getting somewhere. Let's not stop this process now! The polls on ways forward are being conducted in as close to an exemplary manner as one could expect from decisions about changing stuff on major policy changes. There is clarity and a certain level of consensus appearing. We are beginning to have something resembling teamwork there. This is an amazing leap forwards - let's not stop moving now, just as things are perking up. :o) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 01:03, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
My point about forks is that, regardless of what the history may have been, the concepts of V and NOR have now been redefined so as to mean exactly the same thing (that everything we say must be properly sourceable), so there is no reason to maintain the two separate pages as forks of each other. Also I don't think that either of their titles is the right choice for the combined page ("no original research" is too narrow, and "verifiability" is the wrong word). Ideally, I think that what we've come to call "neutrality" should also be dealt with together with the V/NOR topic - these are very closely entangled principles which bascially say that our mission is to reflect what reliable sources say (for particular values of "reflect" and "reliable").--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, I appreciate your point. But I think it is widely understood that NPOV, V and NOR are all parts of a comprehensive package, three core policies that complement and reenforce one another and are meant to. Personally, I think a single policy/page is a no-starter - AAA was an attempt to begin merging policies and it ended (for better or worse) in disaster.
What do people think of making "Wikipedia is not about truth" a part of WP:NOT? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I think it is pretty clear there would be no consensus for this. The problem is the same old one: in terms of normal English meanings, which is still something we should refer to, it sounds like we would be saying pretty much the same as saying "Wikipedia is unreliable", "Wikipedia is not accurate", "Wikipedia is full of wrong information and does not even aim to be otherwise", etc. That is in fact not what "initiates" to these exegeses understand by "not truth" in WP:V at all? Do we all agree that if possible, such essays should be comprehensible to a person who reads English well but has no experience with WP jargon?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:00, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
This is not a reason to change our principles. It is a reason to explain them clearly. Wikipedia is a wiki - that already makes it unlike real encyclopedias in a profound way. If someone wants to use Wikipedia they need to understand its basic principles (true for other encyclopedias too of course). I think one can make a pretty compelling argument that Encyclopedia Britannica is not the truth. The problem is not this claim, but the fact that so many people believe it is the truth. Wikipedia does an invaluable service to the world in saying it is not the truth. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
On explaining things clearly: yes, precisely, which is why we shouldn't (for example) split a single topic over two or three pages and pretend they are separate principles. We shouldn't have pages doing weird metaphysical things like "complementing" and "reinforcing" each other - we should just say, in one place, clearly and concisely, in ordinary English if at all possible, whatever it is we've got to say. As to this truth thing, I don't see why it's an issue. Other books and websites don't have a need to contain the disclaimer "what is written here might not be the truth" - readers are expected to know this. Of course we should emphasize on the appropriate pages that Wikipedia is written by anyone and therefore contains some complete nonsense - but that's a separate issue from that of core policy, which is about what we aspire to - and aspirationally, I don't think we are entirely indifferent to whether what we write is true or not.--Kotniski (talk) 11:31, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
(ec)I think no one is asking to change policy, and it is surprising that you would claim the opposite? The question is indeed about clear explanation? Your philosophical interests on this matter are, I am quite confident, somewhat separate from the question of what most people will read in our current attempt at clear explanation. I honestly do not think most people, initiates or newbies, read our WP:V as a philosophical position raising doubts about all claims to truth. 99% of all people are only going to read the sentence under discussion in one of two ways: Wikipedia does not aim at telling the truth at all, or, the more subtle and correct position according to most of us, Wikipedia editors should not rely on personal "unverifiable" opinions about truth. (Verfiable just means that something can be checked as being truth.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:33, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
PS. Just noticed Jimbo Wales with a similar formulation on his User page today: "Why people misunderstand it is a complex question, but I think the main point is that they do. To be fair to them, the phrase - taken as a standalone - is ambiguous. "X, not Y" may mean "The more important thing is X, not Y" or it may mean "The only thing that matters is X, and Y is not of any interest at all." To repeat SLR's words for comparison: "This is not a reason to change our principles. It is a reason to explain them clearly." So let's talk that way and let's not spend time on the straw man argument that this discussion is about people who want to change the policy and principles of WP.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree that no one is claiming they would like to change the policy, but I think that removing "not truth" will, in fact, change the policy, so it does not strike me as a straw man argument. Also, given the number of inexperienced editors who argue for including information because it is true, rather than because it is verifiable in reliable sources, I believe the statement as it states serves a very useful purpose in that regard. I do welcome the efforts of others who wish to clarify wording explaining what we mean by it, but "verifiability, not truth" is, to my way of thinking, the simplest and clearest wording of policy on WP. And, I would suggest, we do not aim at telling the truth at all--we should aim rather at accurately reflecting what reliable sources say about what is true. Trying to tell the truth just gets us in a jumble, because in most areas we simply have no way to know what is the truth aside from referring to reliable sources. X, in this case, is more important than Y, and this is a philosophical issue. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I appreciate how useful "verifiability, no truth" can be when one or two editors are trying to deal quickly and efficiently with a new editor who wants to add unverifiable but supposedly true information. If all such cases had to be escalated until a consensus against inclusion is formed among a wider group, we would all have a lot more to do. But there are ways of serving the same purpose without the potential that it is misunderstood as "verifiability, regardless of falsity". Example: "If it's not verifiable, it can't go in." Hans Adler 12:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Nuujinn, did you really mean to write that "Verifiability, not truth" is the "[...]clearest wording of policy on WP"? Surely all this discussion has shown that, while it might be simple, it certainly isn't anywhere near clear (indeed, the very fact that we need to follow it with an explanation that when we say it, we really mean something else, is evidence that it is intrinsically unclear). And removing a statement of what the policy is not can hardly change the policy - we could say "not apples", "not oranges", even "not verifiability" in fact (because it's not actually verifiability, it's sourceability) and we wouldn't be changing the meaning of the policy, because what matters is what the condition is, not what it isn't.--Kotniski (talk) 13:57, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Nuunjiin, your paragraph, when parsed, shows the problem very well. You are saying that we do not aim at truth simply, but at a certain type of truth, truth which can be verified as opposed to truth which can not. But verifiable truth is a type of truth. So to say we do not at at truth at all, is logically wrong. We aim at one type of truth and not an other ("personal opinions"). All this can be said in everyday English. The problem is the same one Jimbo mentioned today: "Not X" can be read two way, and the simplest and most obvious is "not X at all or in any way". This is definitely not how WP jargon tells us we should read it. So the policy is clearly being wrongly explained.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
"The threshold for winning a gold medal at the 100m sprint is average speed, not style". This doesn't mean that we don't want style at all or in any way: in many cases, the athlete with the smoothest, most appreciated style is also the fastest. But in the end, we cannot decide who has the best style ("de gustibus..."), but we can decide who is the fastest. Each analogy is imperfect, of course, but I don't see how "not style" can be misunderstood here, and similarly, I don't see how the current policy wording can be misunderstood. Fram (talk) 14:21, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Bad metaphor I think. Speed and style are different in kind, not two different sub-types of one thing. It is more like saying, that speed is NOT the aim of the 100m, because MAXIMUM speed is not the aim, only average speed. Does that make it clear? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I mean, you're not adding anything to that statement by saying "not style" - so why not remove the possibility of misunderstanding by leaving it out? Again, you could equally well say "not apples".--Kotniski (talk) 15:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
But many sports are decided partly or completely on style (from ski jumping to synchronous swimming), while none are decided by "apples". Similarly, many scientific works are defined by their search for the truth: these are primary and secondary sources. Tertiary sources, however, are not searching anything, they are compiling: the "not truth" makes an easy and clear distinction with other non-fiction sources, just like the "not style" makes an easy and clear (and relevant) distinction with other sports. Verifiability and truth are not subtypes of one thing any more or any less than speed and style are for deciding who wins a sports event. It is verifiable who were the parents, grandparents, and so on of many notable people, as their genealogies have been noted in primary sources and unearthed in secondary sources. However, 1 out of 10 persons supposedly has in reality a different biological father than his "registered" father. We are not able to list those "true" fathers, we only know who was the "official" father. It's verifiable, even if in a significant number of cases it isn't true. Fram (talk) 19:15, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I think I have already covered this below in the reply to Nuujinn and here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I would also point out that judging the reliability of sources is just as much a subjective activity as judging what's true. I would suggest that the reason we are concerned with using reliable sources is exactly that we think that those sources are the ones whose statements are most likely to be true. So emphasizing "not truth" is as if to de-emphasize the reliability of sources.--Kotniski (talk) 14:05, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Did I mean "Verifiability, not truth" is the "[...]clearest wording of policy on WP"? Yes, that it my opinion, but I have a background in philosophy of language and literary theory. And I'm more afraid of the truth seekers in the fringe areas, the nationalists, the ethnic POV pushers than editors that misunderstand the intent of the policy. Truth and Verifiability are not sub-types of one another, and the only way I can see that we can know the truth in general is to verify a statement in reliable sources. People often do not really judge what's true, they believe in the truth, and it's easier to argue about what can be verified and what sources are more reliable than it is to argue about what's true and not true. Personally, I think it's better/easier/clearer to state that we are not about truth. Yes, we engage in subjective actions, but the policies must necessarily guide how we engage in those subjective actions, and I simply fail to see any advantage in striving for truth, when verifying and accurately representing what reliable sources say is how we'd do that, and the only other ways I can see to strive for truth would be to rely on personal knowledge or engage in OR, which we definitely do not want to do. And when we disagree about what sources are reliable, we shouldn't be doing that on the basis of which ones are more likely to be true, but whether those source have a reputation for checking the facts or are vetted by experts in the field--we are always in one way or another relying on the expertise of others. So, in short, I don't see the problem with reading not truth the "wrong" way, because mechanically, I do not think it makes a difference in how we do things here. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
The logic. "Truth and Verifiability are not sub-types of one another". That is correct, but aiming at one is one indirect way of aiming at the other. And there are other indirect ways of aiming at the other. The same way, aiming at having the highest average speed is not the same as aiming at the highest maximum speed. Both might be considered as possible strategies to achieve a third thing: crossing the line first.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Exactly my point--to aim for truth as a practical matter, we have to go for verifiability anyway, and I think telling people to aim directly at verifiability and not at truth at all gets us to (the only practical definition of) truth we have faster by avoiding the "but I know it's true discussions" that crop up enough as it is. I like the notion of cut to the chase, and avoid those discussions.
Think about it this way, pretty much everyone here in these discussions agrees fairly well about how we mean "not truth", even if they do not like the phrase being used in the policy. So I don't think it's all that hard to explain, although I suppose we could do a better job of it. I can't recall having much trouble explaining it to new editors myself, so I'm still not seeing that there's much problem with it in practice. --Nuujinn (talk) 19:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
(not really important, but having the highest average speed = crossing the line first, no?) Fram (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Unless you swerve. Or start ahead of the gun ;) --Kotniski (talk) 07:15, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks Nuunjinn. Your response shows a lot of common ground, which helps define where the remaining differences are. I am sure we all spend a lot of time explaining WP:V to newbies, and not so newbies. You say you can't recall having much trouble with it, but I definitely find many people have problems getting a practical understanding of it. Anyway, as Jimbo pointed out it is not just the newbies who stick around to talk about it we should worry about, but also the ones who leave, and also the readers who get the wrong impression.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:35, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
I know that Jimbo said that, but seriously, how many readers ever read WP:V? Pages like WP:V, or actually every behind-the-scenes page, are intended for editors, and will only be read by editors and the occasional would-be editor. Readers really shouldn't be a factor into this discussion. Fram (talk) 06:58, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
I dunno, this is advertised as a "key policy page" - I think many members of the general public, interested in what's behind Wikipeida, must land here on occasion, even if they have no intention of editing. Which is another reason, for me, why we should try to do a good and cogent job of expressing our key philosophy, and not be satisfied with a phrase that's been found to work reasonably well as a baseball bat.--Kotniski (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Simple interim solution to the first sentence problem

  • "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth— whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

The deleted words at the very least don't add anything, do they? so we lose nothing by leaving them out. And it's surely reliable source that are the key words in all of this, so that seems to be where the bolding should be.--Kotniski (talk) 15:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I think "readers can check that" is needed in order to avoid saying that everything in Wikipedia needs a footnote. Citations are not needed for everything in practice but in principle it should be possible. Otherwise I think it would be an improvement, but it is close to proposals under discussion?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Andrew, I don't see how it implies that everything in Wikipedia needs a footnote. Since you are usually on the mark with your comments, there apparently was something in it that gave you that impression. Could you explain what it was? Here's the sentence with the lined out parts removed.
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
--Bob K31416 (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Hi Bob, well, I think I am right, but if this connects to another well-discussed issue of this sentence which is that it calls verifiability "the" threshold, implying "the only". I think having the verb "can" helps show that the point is that the reader can do it if he or she thinks it necessary. You are right that it is not logically needed. I am seeing something between the lines.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
I think a synthesis of the above two is pretty close to the mark. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 15:59, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, "the threshold" is another problem with this sentence, but I don't think that can be solved just by leaving redundant words out, which was the aim of this (interim) proposal. I'm not too fussed about "readers can check", but I think it doesn't belong in this first sentence, as it might imply to some that it's important for sources to be readily available (online, even).--Kotniski (talk) 07:04, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

wp:aboutself

Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

Item 2 of WP:ABOUTSELF needs clarity. It doesnt specify exactly what involvement of the third party can and cannot be. Maybe "it does not involve claims about third parties" should be changed to something like: "it does not involve claims about third parties. But it can be about what the blogger's opinions are on something the blogger has done that involves third parties." Or just clarify what involvement exactly means?

Let me give you an example to clarify: In boobquake, Jennifer McCreight's blog is used as a source. But that source involves a third party (i.e. Kazem Sedighi). So (the way it's currently written), we cant use that source for that article.

Please revise that statement, and spare us the headaches of edit wars.--Nightryder84 (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Department of unintended consequences: I looked at that page and the associated BLP, and my reaction is that we don't need to make it easier for you to cite a blog, but we may well be looking at an AfD or two. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
AFD wont solve anything, only erase the symptom and postpone the issue. Ive already witnessed cases of edit wars because of this very problem (vagueness of "involvement" of third party). The way item 2 is currently written, one can justifiably go around erasing all blog sources on WP that mention the blogger's opinions about any "third party".--Nightryder84 (talk) 22:46, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, technically, you should only do that if you believe such a change would improve Wikipedia, and no one should do it if s/he has reason to believe that a proper reliable source could be produced. We care about whether sources exist, not just whether the sources have been typed into the article.
But that is actually the goal: we do not want blogs or other self-published sources used to talk about other people, even if the "talking about" is as benign as "Joe Film and I, Sally Celebrity, will be appearing in the upcoming movie, When Joe met Sally". We have two purposes here: One is to reduce libel, and the other is to reduce trivia. If something is so incredibly unimportant that not one proper reliable source has mentioned it, then we don't really need to include it either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:BRRD by Avanu regarding a section header

Latest comment: 13 years ago20 comments5 people in discussion

(Would an uninvolved editor please collapse this? I'm not sure what Unscintillating is so upset about, but there's probably a better forum than here for it. Thanks, Avanu (talk) 03:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC))

Avanu, the essay is called WP:BRD not WP:BRRD, do you understand?  Unscintillating (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

If this is about me reverting your latest attempt at refactoring the page, then you can save the lecture. The Talk page is here for editors to collaborate, not for you to re-order, re-factor, move, create sub-pages and the like. My edit summary to you was clear. While I believe you are editing with good intentions, it is tiresome to try and follow the web of your refactoring of things, so please just stop, OK? -- Avanu (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
What I get is that Avanu is incapable of discussing his/her role in WP:BRRD, and refuses to revert himself/herself.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
I didn't revert anything except you changing someone else's wording, if I'm mistaken and this is about something else, let me know. But you keep going through the page making fairly aggressive edits of other people's stuff, all I did was set it back. -- Avanu (talk) 22:58, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, the word "restore" means something.  Avanu remains focused on escalating unrelated issues, and has no actual objections to any of the edit, including the part of the edit that was refactoring.  Since Kotniski's original refactoring had a reasonable point, there is nothing left here but to revert Avanu.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:37, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
The problem has been that you've been so quick to move or refactor other's comments and reluctant to get consensus for it that I reverted you mostly on the principle of simply doing things right. I have nothing personal against you, but I'd like to see more cooperation in these things and less mass bravado. I think boldness is a useful and admirable trait in Wikipedia, but please try to make sure you have consensus also. -- Avanu (talk) 01:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
An open admission to a WP:POINT revert is not an example of "doing things right".  Unscintillating (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
It wasn't done to be pointy. You refactored someone else's edits, I reverted it because I figured you were just being pushy again. Again, as I said above, please correct me if I'm mistaken. But keep in mind, I wouldn't have thought this without your recent actions informing my decision. -- Avanu (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, but attacking newbies makes for a small fish fry.  Avanu should have found a way out when it became clear that Avanu had made a misguided revert of a constructive edit, as this section is not a platform for making accusations against any convenient target, for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:26, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I have no idea what your point is now. Are you the "newbie" or is someone else? I think you are making this entire thing into something it's not. You're the guy who has been refactoring a bunch of stuff, if your recent change *has* to happen, make the change I guess, but you're going to have to be more clear on whatever the point is here. -- Avanu (talk) 03:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
WP:TROUT (for both of you (and without even trying to figure out w/o diffs what the heck you're talking about.)) Crazynas t 01:54, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Here are the diffs, as requested:
Unscintillating (talk) 13:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
OK, so looking at that, you create a thing talking about postponing discussion, the next day, Kotniski changes the title because the thread has taken a different turn, then two days later, you decide to 'fix it' and move things around. So unless I was carefully following all these diffs, how am I supposed to know this is you 'fixing' versus you doing what you did the other day, when you ripped every 'first sentence' thread out of the main Talk page, moved the contents to several different pages and then 'stood guard' to make sure no one reverted all your changes, which should have had consensus, but didn't?
My impression of your edit was that you were just doing 'more of the same', and it gets old really fast. Normally I wouldn't have even worried about someone doing what you did, except in your specific case, you have a recent history of doing massive changes without consensus. My apologies for misinterpreting your action. I still fail to see how this is BRRD, since I only reverted once, but I'm guessing it's just frustration talking. Regardless, as I said in my initial reply, please try to get consensus if you're going to do a lot of massive changes. -- Avanu (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
You thought you saw the opportunity to make a statement, and you made a revert.  Your ongoing attempts at escalation do not merit any response.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I didn't make a big issue of it. You did. I don't know what your point is, but I asked above to close this several comments ago. As long as you don't edit in an overly aggressive fashion, I'm sure things won't be a problem. If it becomes necessary, I'll do whatever is needed to keep any of us in line. -- Avanu (talk) 20:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I have found this whole discussion difficult to follow, and Unscintillating's insistence on continually refactoring everything is a big part of why. Avanu is right to object to it. Why can't Unscintillating just leave people's comments where they put them? This user has a history of policing and refactoring other peoples' comments, even futzing around with long-closed AfDs sometimes. It's annoying and inappropriate, and this has been made clear to Unscintillating many times. Just knock it off and let people have their say without continual meddling. Reyk YO! 02:54, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Reyk offers me a hook, but I am a small fish, and the best response is WP:Don't take the bait.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:18, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I am not baiting. It is a legitimate complaint about disruptive, irritating behaviour. I'm not the only person who finds this complex web you've woven to be confusing. I ask again, why is it necessary to refactor these discussions the way you have been? Try to answer without calling me a troll this time. Reyk YO! 03:56, 5 September 2011 (UTC)
I am also unhappy with Unscintillating's thread moves. SlimVirgin's thread moves were not so irritating, but they were a precedent for worse. Please don't move other peoples comments. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:53, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Example which tests the rule

Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

The article BrowserChoice.eu has the line In August 2010, Microsoft removed GreenBrowser and Sleipnir from the choices, replacing them with Lunascape and SRWare Iron.[citation needed] The original article dealt with a notable event with reliable sources. There was later a minor unannounced change which made the article no longer accurate in terms of describing the current position, so the article was changed. However there only seem to be three sources for documenting when the change took place: two blogs [12] and [13] from the new browsers on 25 and 26 August 2010, and Wikipedia itself where another issue meant we could date the change to the period 19-26 August 2010 as we had a screenshot of the position on the earlier date. None of these meet the test of reliable sources, but the statement is clearly verifiable.--Rumping (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I would think the website itself would be a reliable (primary) source for the browsers they list on the website. Blueboar (talk) 01:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
But it is not a reliable source for when the change was made. As for what the change was, that seems to be (in Wikipedia policy terms) original research, since only by knowing what it was and what it is can we deduce the change. There is no external source (reliable or not) stating which choices were removed even if it is obvious they are not there now.--Rumping (talk) 11:11, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, if past versions are stored at something like internetarchive.com, then we could say something like: "Prior to August 1010 BrowserChoice included GreenBrowser and Sleipnir <cite to July version of page using wayback>. In the current version these have been replaced by Lunascape and SRWare Iron <cite current version of page>"
Alternatively, we could just cut the line entirely. Focus the article on the browsers that are currently listed and don't bother to mention those that used to be listed and were removed (does the article really need to talk about the past?) Blueboar (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

SPS (Self-published sources) on local topics

Latest comment: 13 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

Whilst generally agreeing with the text at WP:SPS, there are cases where a SPS may be the only one available. For instance, topics of very local interest, such as an individual building. Unless the building is of at least regional importance, then a major publisher is unlikely to publish a book. A local historian however, may research the history of the building and produce a booklet himself. If the booklet shows evidence of such research, then it should be considered reliable enough to use as a source. Therefore I propose that SPS be added to with an exception for these typse of sources. Mjroots (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I've been meaning to throw together a chart which describes the different sorts of sources we have. While there's a lot of folks who think in Boolean "reliable" vs. "not reliable", in fact every source is an amalgam of at least four traits: Reputation for accuracy, Independence, Primacy, and Depth--which could potentially give us 16 sorts of sources, which have varying contributions to both verifiability and notability. Jclemens (talk) 06:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
You could also just call it editorial judgement and leave it at that ;). On a more serious note, although the other critera make sense to me, I'm confused about 'primacy' is that distinguishing primary, secondary and tertiary sources? Crazynas t 06:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I could, but I raised this as I've got a GA candidate where I can see that the reviewer might question the source as being a SPS. I'm satisfied myself that the source is reliable, based on what is stated in the source as to research carried out. There is also another SPS dating from 1766, which can be argued as being reliable due to the fact that many books of that time were published by their authors. Mjroots (talk) 09:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Right. While normally secondary sources are independent (and primary sources are not), there are such things as non-independent secondary sources--for example, DVD commentary. Then, we have independent primary sources, such as licensed sourcebooks, movie tie in novels, or games based on a fictional franchise. Jclemens (talk) 07:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
If an SPS is the only source to discuss the building (or other topic) then the problem is not WP:V. The problem is WP:Notability - an SPS is not enough to demonstrate that the building (or other topic) should be considered notable enough for its own article. Blueboar (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Notability is not a problem here, the building is Grade I listed, so is de facto notable. There are plenty of other sources, but the source I have in mind has been useful to flesh the article out with. Mjroots (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Then use the other sources to establish notability, and the SPS to do the "fleshing out". We don't ban the use of SPS ... we just limit their use. What you describe seems to be within the limits. Blueboar (talk) 13:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I was involved in another article (on a specialized area) where it was generally acknowledged that a SPS (a book) is not only very reliable, but also the best / highest quality source in the world. North8000 (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Blueboar, the article is linked in my post of 09:18. Take a look at it and see what you think. The SPSs are Ward, 2006 and Burr, 1766. Mjroots (talk) 14:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't see a problem. I don't know enough about the topic to comment on specifics, but it looks like the sources are being used appropriately to support minor, non-controversial facts. I also don't see anyone contesting or challenging the information or sources. So, unless someone does challenge them... I would say the article is fine. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
Mjroots, there are common-sense caveats to all the sourcing policies (except maybe BLP). I've used a local-history video I found on YouTube as the source for a specific point about a building that's notable enough for an article (Grade II listed), but that's not had a huge amount written about it. So long as it's not a contentious issue, I can't see the problem. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 02:18, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

sub-page consensus diff

Latest comment: 13 years ago13 comments7 people in discussion

SlimVirgin or Unscintillating or any editor, can you place a diff here or in the sub-page notification box at the top of this page about where consensus was theoretically reached for putting all 'first sentence' discussion into a sub-page? -- Avanu (talk) 03:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I second that request. My eyes are glazing over trying to stay abreast of this topic on four different pages. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 11:42, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't think there was one, and certainly no consensus to exclude it from this page. But we mostly voluntarily took it there. Myself after the attempted nasty strong-arm tactics regarding that ended. So for the sake of centralized discussion, my request is: could y'all voluntarily keep it at the sub page? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 14:29, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
But as is shown by the above thread, discussion of other fundamental issues regarding this policy tends to lead back round to the issue of the first sentence anyway. Unless we're to have a dedicated subpage for all discussion of this policy (what would be the point of that?), I don't think it's going to be possible to keep that issue off this page except by force.--Kotniski (talk) 15:13, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't know how to answer that. I was just going with the flow. When people are nice I'm such a pushover. :-) North8000 (talk) 15:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I too disliked the idea of creating a sub-page. But there comes a time when you just have to say... "Oh well, what's done is done - it's too late to complain about it now"... and then get on with resolving the issues rather than focusing on how or where we resolve the issues. Whether it was created by consensus, or not... The sub-page now exists. More to the point, it actually seems to be helping us work towards compromise and consensus on the issues. That, in itself, is a good thing and worth continuing. I suggest that we stop worrying about whether the initial creation of the sub-page had consensus or not, and continue to work towards finding a compromise that everyone (or mostly everyone) can live with. Blueboar (talk) 13:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely certain you have consensus on a lot of these things now. The conversation is far too fragmented and its hard to say whether people are in agreement or if minor/major groups are in agreement. In a couple of these conversations, I've seen people in 100% agreement, which seems odd since there wasn't agreement before, but makes sense if a lot of people aren't following all the subpages and polls and so on. I think if there wasn't consensus before, then we need to move things back together and wait until there is consensus. I, for one, am having a deuce of a time trying to read all these polls and suggestions and conversations and then pull together a clear picture of who is in favor of what. What I am seeing is that a lot of people are willing to share common opinions, but in the end, unless it is approved HERE on this page, I don't see it as consensus for the policy page. -- Avanu (talk) 22:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

While the use of a subpage for focused discussion may be a good idea, I find that the cut-paste moving of established threads from WT:V to a focused subpage has been disruptive. I think we should agree here and now that this practice of refactoring between different talk pages should stop. Direct a new commenter to a focused page by all means, but any comment or question made at WT:V should stay at WT:V until archived into the regular archives. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

That I agree with entirely. As part of pointing to the subpage, we can request that the person posting a comment or question refactor his/her comments himself/herself... but we should not take it upon ourselves to move comments to another page without the poster's OK. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Agree, except with the writer's permission. North8000 (talk) 12:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
Concur, to refactor others' comments without permission is generally unhelpful. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:07, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
I think this sort of thing can be the right thing to do (I remember occasions at WT:MOSNUM when certain very specific topics - date linking, or whether to use "kibibytes" - flooded the talk page in an out-of-hand way), and it's not always realistic to ask everyone's permission before moving a thread to somewhere more appropriate; but I think in this case, where the topic in question was the very premise on which this whole policy is apparently based, it might not have been a great idea (though people say that some progress is being made on the subpage, so maybe it was OK after all). --Kotniski (talk) 16:57, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

FYI, today I posted the following Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/First_sentence#Clarity.2C_please to seek clarity about process and ends. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 05:23, 8 September 2011 (UTC).

Latest comment: 13 years ago7 comments4 people in discussion

I had added an external links section to the page, which I had the intent of adding other links to, though it was removed by one user, which prompted the following discussion:

I don't want to be one of those super annoying people, but I noticed you removed my external links section, which is completely fine with me. Would you be bothered if I readded it, possibly with the youtube channel, Facebook page link, and Twitter link, as well as the home page link? -Poodle of Doom (talk) 17:17, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

That section was redundant, because that link is already provided in the article's Introduction. A Facebook or Twitter link would likely be considered spam and would certainly not be reliable sources. Such a link would definitely be removed. SMP0328. (talk) 18:23, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
The only reason why I'm interested in creating the section is because many other similar topics have one. This would seem standard for most articles of a similar class. Having just browsed similar topics, I've noted that in all of them the site is used as it is currently on the Neurotically Yours page, and still listed as an external link. The main difference between this section on other pages, and here, is that they also include places like amazon.com, newgrounds, and the like. Now, I could provide shop links, newground links, and various similar official sites (or semi official depending on how you look at it). Not to mention, pages that are directly controlled by JIM. I think these pages are definitely worth mentioning. But I digress,... If you think they aren't worth mentioning, I'll leave them out. I simply think there's enough credible, and fairly official pages to link to. -Poodle of Doom (talk) 18:38, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Having cut my thoughts short, I'd also like to point out that the youtube channel has been used as a reference, and that reference had been made to the Facebook page (though it wasn't cited). -Poodle of Doom (talk) 18:39, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
The link is also provided in the Infobox. An "External link" section is not required, so there's no need to add one just for the sake of having one. SMP0328. (talk) 19:15, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Actually, the youtube channel, facebook, twitter, and official newgrounds pages (all of which host official Neurotically Yours content) are not linked to in the infobox at all. The only thing referenced there was the illwillpress site. Again, I refer to the fact that there are several sites hosting official Neurotically Yours content that could be linked to, and used as an official source of establishing information in the article at a future date if need be. These sites seem relative to the articles development. -Poodle of Doom (talk) 20:23, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
Read this. This is why I believe using Facebook or Twitter as a source would likely be disallowed. SMP0328. (talk) 20:39, 2 September 2011 (UTC)
And I quote:

There is an important exception to sourcing statements of fact or opinion: Never use self-published books, zines, websites, webforums, blogs and tweets as a source for material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the biographical material. "Self-published blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources and WP:BLP#Using the subject as a self-published source.

Since the information contained there in is published by the individual who's content the article is about, and through use of the information you have cited, I'd believe that this kind of information could be used in this article (though I personally wouldn't). That said, I'm not looking to use these as source material, but to create an external link section. It seems even more appropriate now. -Poodle of Doom (talk) 22:30, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

This conversation spawned the idea of doing a little research on the subject, of which I have found some valuable information here, and here.

The first thing I would like to point out is that the overview of identifying reliable source states the following:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. This means that we only publish the opinions of reliable authors, and not the opinions of Wikipedians who have read and interpreted primary source material for themselves. The following specific examples cover only some of the possible types of reliable sources and source reliability issues, and are not intended to be exhaustive. Proper sourcing always depends on context; common sense and editorial judgment are an indispensable part of the process.

The section that I would particularly like to draw from is the part stating that we should only publish the opinions of reliable authors. As I understand this, we should not only use this for "opinions", but for facts, figures, and relevant information in regards to edits made. As I see it, as far as reliability is concerned, it is no more reliable that content published, via whatever means, by the original author whose work is being written about.

With that in mind, the next piece of information I'd like to address is as follows:

Self-published material may be acceptable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications.

The above quote can be found here. The reason I bring this up is due to the fact that many of these sites I am about to propose be added to the External Links Section I am looking to create are contained self published material (i.e., information coming directly from Mathers himself).

Continuing on, in the next section of the same article, I'd like to quote another portion of text:

Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1.the material is not unduly self-serving;
2.it does not involve claims about third parties (such as people, organizations, or other entities);
3.it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;
4.there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5.the article is not based primarily on such sources.

This also applies to pages on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Now, the content I am looking to suggest will not provide any material that is not unduly self serving, will not make claims about third parties, only offers information directly related to the subject matter, and is not based on sources that would cause this to be anything other than an accurate statement in the future. Further more, considering the content of such sites comes directly from the author, whose content the article is about, we have no reason to doubt it's authenticity.

In regards to what constitutes a reliable source, I quote the following:

The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings: the work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, The New York Times). All three can affect reliability.

Again, the content I will be suggesting for this proposed section contains all of the above information. It shall include the work itself, content coming directly from the creator of the work, and published by the original author.

At this point, I would like to suggest that an external links section be added; containing links to the homepage of Neurotically Yours, the Facebook page, Twitter page, and Youtube Channel. At this point some of you may be asking why it is I have quoted all of the above information regarding sources, and what any of it has to do with the four links I am looking to add. This is all relative due to the need to maintain, and update, the article as time moves forward. As I see it, the content contained within each of these suggested "External Links" can be considered a reliable published source from a reliable author (Mathers himself). Furthermore, though controlled by the original author of the work, the works themselves, and various content, and information, is being published on a third party source. It maintains its reliability due to the relationship the author maintains with the sites, and controlling the content being portrayed. At that, as I have previously stated, the content I am looking to add will not provide any material that is not unduly self serving, will not make claims about third parties, only offers information directly related to the subject matter, and is not based on sources that would cause this to be anything other than an accurate statement in the future. Further more, considering the content of such sites comes directly from the author, whose content the article is about, we have no reason to doubt its authenticity.

My point on the most basic of levels is this: These sites, being the official Facebook page, the official Twitter page, the official Youtube channel, as well as the homepage site (this link will be included to help bulk up the section) all contain information directly published by the author, and may contain relevant information worth including in the future. They are reliable sources, which can be used to verify information. Current standards seem to allow for third party sites (such as Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube) so long as the information therein contains verifiable, reliable information, which they do, as the information comes directly from the author. At that, the Facebook page has been made reference to in particular sections (though not used as a source). Many of the older cartoons are hosted on Youtube, and many of the citations link there. The Twitter feed could possibly contain information worth using in the future to expand upon the article. To beef up the section, I'd personally add a link for the homepage to make it look bigger. That said, if these sites are not listed in an "external links" section, and personal knowledge of the official site for future editors aside, whose to say to these people that the various youtube references are capable of being used? Or that the references to the Facebook posts were an accurate reflection of what really transpired? My point is simple. If we create an "external links" section, then this shows relevant source material to future editors, and maintains the validity of the article in its current state. Furthermore, it gives reletive source material for future use.

I'd like to extend this as a discussion to the wikipedia public. I know that it's only four links, and I know that it's not particularly that big of a deal. However, I do see it as being extremely relevant, and worth having. It seems like a bit of a standard to most articles. What do you all think? -Poodle of Doom (talk) 05:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

First, long drawn out comments like this , particular repeating what's been said elsewhere, is discouraged, and posting it to multiple places.
More specifically, you are looking for our policy on External links, which is very different from verifability and reliable sourcing. External links are to give a location for people to look to find more information on a topic that we would have covered in WP if not for copyright issue or the like. Thus, a show's official , or close to official, webpage would be appropriate, but we've long decided that social media sites - unless that is specifically what the show, person, etc. is known for - are inappropriate since they can usually be found through the official site of the show, person, etc. (as definitely the case here, with Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube icons predominate on the website). If the person is specifically known for their presence on that media, then it may make sense to include that as an external link.
This is not excluding these from being used as sourcing within the article - as long as its understood social media sources are self-published and generally of questionable quality. Just that we do not need to list all possible channels that a topic is associated with in the external links but instead focus on the most encompassing ones. --MASEM (t) 07:00, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you kindly for the reference and the explination. As for repeating the articles, I was simply trying to express relevant information, and tie it all togethor in my argument for the section. I know I had added it once before, thinking it was appropriate, but had it removed, therefore, needed to look towards policy and procedure. Again, thanks for the information. -Poodle of Doom (talk) 14:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

What is a 2000 word discussion about putting external links to twitter in the external links section of a particular article doing on this page? Suggest moving it. North8000 (talk) 13:40, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

I simply took the suggestions I was given. I'm new at this, for this wiki. I'd appreciate not being hounded by an established commuity, when I was looking to make good faith edits in accordance with policy. -Poodle of Doom (talk) 14:57, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Welcome, Poodle of Doom. One of the many confusing things about the English Wikipedia is that what goes under the ==External links== heading has completely different rules from everything else on the page. This entire policy has nothing to do with that section. The WP:External links guideline is what matters. Your question may be fully answered in that guideline, especially its WP:ELOFFICIAL section, but if you still have questions or need help resolving a dispute, then I suggest posting a note to the WP:External links/Noticeboard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:08, 8 September 2011 (UTC)
Poodle of Doom, I didn't realize that you were told to come here. And my comment was directed as much at ourselves for not steering it elsewhere as it was at you. My apologies for the comment sounding rough and in a way that could easily be taken as directed at you. WhatamIdoing's advice is good advice at this point. And you have a good point which I missed. Some of those are somewhat becoming the equivalent of the subject's web site. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:39, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
Latest comment: 13 years ago6 comments4 people in discussion

If there's consensus for this, or simply no objection, I'd like to propose we go ahead and add a link to the essay, WP:Verifiability, not truth to the See Also section of the WP:Verifiability policy page. The polling subpage seemed to have strong support for adding this, and just so we aren't surprised by new objections or issues, I'm just posting notice here. Let's say, if there are no objections within 2 days, or if we have consensus within that time, we go ahead and add the essay link. (For more info see WP:Verifiability/First sentence#Poll V_FC_P_11 Essay on Verifiability, Not Truth ) -- Avanu (talk) 03:49, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

IMO consensus for the addition at ==See also== was established a couple of weeks ago, in the discussion visible at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence#Wikipedia:Verifiability.2C_not_truth.2C_an_essay. The only objections were from Bob, who reverted it repeatedly but later said he "do[es]n't feel strongly about it", and Unscintillating, who says in the poll that he "support[s] adding it to the See also section for now". We should just do this and quit talking about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:05, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I support doing this, and I agree that the support seems pretty widespread. But given the fact that discussion is so spread around, I also support Avanu's plan to wait 2 days or so. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:46, 9 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree that there is clear consensus to add it. However, we should note that this is not de facto cementing of the words in the first sentence. One might argue that the essay is needed because the first sentence is confusing. It would also make sense to link the essay even if first sentence were not there. It is a good essay that is highly relevant for a small proportion of editors. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:18, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
As Tryptofish recognized in his comments, my suggestion of a short delay is not about lack of consensus on the previous page, but making sure that a general consensus exists here on the Main Talk page for WP:Verifiability. While the other pages have a purpose and are helpful in determining a 'pre-consensus', I believe there is no substitute for ensuring that we have a more general consensus by giving editors a bit of time to protest here. Rather than hastily add it and cause ill will, a couple of days of hesitation to allow people to weigh in can't hurt, and from the looks of things people are in agreement, and coming together more so each day on compromise positions, and I would like to do all I can to encourage that same attitude. -- Avanu (talk) 02:54, 10 September 2011 (UTC)
Per notice, and seeing no objections, I am adding the link to the essay on the main WP:V page. -- Avanu (talk) 03:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

verifiability and self published sources.

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Found at the following website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SELFPUB#Self-published_and_questionable_sources_as_sources_on_themselves

Sources that are usually not reliablePolicy shortcuts: WP:NOTRELIABLE WP:NOTRS WP:QS

Questionable sourcesQuestionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or which lack meaningful editorial oversight. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, or promotional, or which rely heavily on rumor and personal opinion. Questionable sources should be used only as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves; see below. They are unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties.

Self-published sourcesPolicy shortcuts: WP:SPS WP:SELFPUBLISH WP:BLOGS

Further information: Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Avoid self-published sources Anyone can create a personal web page or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published media, such as books, patents, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs, Internet forum postings, and tweets, are largely not acceptable as sources. Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications. Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so.

Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer.


Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselvesPolicy shortcuts: WP:ABOUTSELF WP:SELFPUB WP:TWITTER WP:SOCIALMEDIA

Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the requirement in the case of self-published sources that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1.the material is not unduly self-serving; 2.it does not involve claims about third parties; 3.it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source; 4.there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity; 5.the article is not based primarily on such sources. This policy also applies to pages on social networking sites such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Hope this doesn't cause more conflict than already exists! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.233.128.241 (talk) 22:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Did I miss something?

Latest comment: 13 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

Isn't this a misleading edsumm?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:44, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I would say that labeling such significant changes as tidying a link would be ill advised when discussions here have been so long ongoing and contentious. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:05, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
The diff you show says "(2 intermediate revisions by one user not shown)". The diff link is the real problem there, not the edit summary. SlimVirgin used appropriate edit summaries for each individual change, the problem is that Wikipedia (via the diff you show) is being misleading. Check again via the history and you'll see its all fine. -- Avanu (talk) 20:26, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
My mistake. This seems to be the diff then. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
Ah, excellent, thanks for pointing that out! --Nuujinn (talk) 22:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
"Tweaked writing", though, is a pretty poor reason to give for reversing a deliberate and apparently accepted change for which reasoning was given in its edit summary. But this editor has been constantly taken to task about her unreasoned knee-jerk reverting on this page, and it seems the criticism just washes off, so there probably isn't much hope for change in this regard.--Kotniski (talk) 10:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure that I really care about the actual changes to wording, which seem fairly trivial either way, but I'm sympathetic to Kotniski's point that disputing something where other editors do care about it shouldn't be summarized merely as "tweaking". --Tryptofish (talk) 19:36, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Newspaper columns called "blogs"

Latest comment: 13 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion

The newspaper column/blog section says: "Several newspapers host columns they call blogs. These are acceptable as sources if the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control."

Wifione has twice added the following:

"The burden of evidence for proving this lies with the editor who adds or restores a blog material." Then in a footnote: "The mere presence of the blog on the newspaper's website is not evidence of the newspaper exercising full editorial control."

That is, he is saying editors have to "prove" that a column called a blog is under the newspaper's editorial control before it can be used as a source. How would editors prove that, except by pointing out that the column is hosted by the newspaper? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:30, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Wifione may or may not be a he. Some additional food for thought - a paper like News & Record (Greensboro), one of the largest newspapers serving Guilford County, North Carolina, perhaps the largest even, hosts unreliable blogs under its website. This is just an example, as there are many others. As this interview of John Robinson (editor of the News & Record) by Alex Jones (director of the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics & Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) shows, 'unverified' content is put on these blogs hosted by the newspaper. I'll reproduce one particular excerpt from the interview for your benefit. "Jones: Do you put information that would be considered unverified, whereas you would not put that same unverified information in the newspaper itself? Robinson: Yes." In another example, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Business Exchange section allows its registered users to post stories under its website. You can register on BusinessWeek Business Exchange and then click on the link [14] to post your own story. They'll appear under BusinessWeek's website. So while Grocott's Mail online, apparently South Africa's oldest independent newspaper, has blogs that can be posted by anybody on its website, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette again allows users complete freedom to post blogs under their website. So is the case with Golfweek and many other otherwise reliable newspapers and magazines. These are not comments being posted, but blogs. What I wish to question is not the professional background of the writer posting a blog under a newspaper's website - I'm simply saying that a blog appearing under a newspaper/newsmagazine's website is not evidence enough of the newspaper exercising full editorial control. Of course, there are many newspapers and magazines that exercise full editorial control over their blogs - but there are many who don't; and even allow unverified content onto these blogs. Therefore, the fact that a blog is under a newspaper's website is not reason enough for the same to be considered reliable as per our verifiability standards. How is a Wikipedia user supposed to find out whether a blog is under a newspaper's editorial control? It requires a combination of talk page discussion and editors' judgments - however, simply saying that a blog is reliable because it's hosted on the newspaper's website is clearly a wrong stereotyping. I'll await your comments before adding back the change. Thanks. Wifione Message 05:50, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
That's backwards and unduly burdensome. If a newspaper hosts blogs it doesn't control, there should be a signup feature and/or disclaimer(s) to demonstrate that those blogs aren't reliable. We don't require people adding book sources to prove that they weren't published by a vanity press: rather, the editor who seeks to impeach the source can challenge it. I don't see any reasons to treat newspaper-hosted blogs to a higher standard than books. Jclemens (talk) 05:58, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
Are you saying that an editor who adds a newspaper blog (under a newspaper's website) should not be responsible for proving that it's under the newspaper's editorial control, until he/she is challenged by another editor to prove the same? Wifione Message 06:09, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
No, I'm saying that any editor who believes a newspaper-website-hosted blog to NOT be under the newspaper's editorial control properly has the burden of demonstrating that the blog in question is not in fact under the newspaper's editorial control. Presence on the newspaper website creates a presumption of editorial control in my view, which can be easily overcome per the evidence types I outlined above. Jclemens (talk) 07:11, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm alright with your view. In other words, let the policy on newspaper blogs remain what it is. I presume there's no opposition to the other addition I made - which was expanding the reference to the UK commission statements on newspaper blogs - and therefore will re-add them. Thanks. Wifione Message 07:36, 14 September 2011 (UTC)
It might be worthwhile to ponder over the situation where these newspaper "blogs" are used to source negative information about living people. Thoughts?MW ℳ 09:06, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

STORM ON TEAPOT ALERT - Nearly all the RS that host user generated blogs clearly delimit what are generally called reader/community blogs (user generated, hence not reliable, from staff/editorial blogs (generally reliable), from op-ed editorial blogs (which are semi-reliable). For example, the post-gazette.com named above does this. Other publications, like Wired do not have user blogs, but have topic blogs that are often not subjected to editorial control of the main publication, but rather are published by a sub-set of the editorial team, or even self-edited by a reporter or blog team - these should be treated on a case-by-case basis. In general, we are no longer in the early and mid-naughts, and most reliable sources have learned to make the different explicit in some form, to the point that soon even Twitter will become an RS.--Cerejota (talk) 09:16, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

More on the first sentence

Latest comment: 13 years ago25 comments9 people in discussion

Information or material?

Again I see my edit being reverted without any explanation - presumably the "thinking" of the people who strive to make this page their own is that because some aspect of the first sentence is under discussion, the whole sentence has to remain exactly in whatever sorry state it happens to be in, and those who want to preserve it are absolved from presenting any arguments in support of their actions. This all seems rather counterproductive - but anyway, let's discuss this relatively trivial matter - it's not the case that "material in Wikipedia has to have been published..." - that sounds like an instruction to commit copyright violations (and to do nothing else). Surely "material" is the wrong word here - we mean information, or assertions, or something, don't we? --Kotniski (talk) 07:54, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

You have many good points there. And information is the objective of Wikipedia. But IMHO in this sentence we want the most all-encompassing term possible and I think that "material" is broader, including via. its vagueness. What I'm imagining is someone saying "but what I am putting in is not an assertion / information and so therefor wp:ver does not apply". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 09:27, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
But if the "material" is an image, or a precise form of words, then they're quite right - wp:ver does not require it to have been published before. Not for the first time, it's being asserted that we should deliberately phrase our policy in a vague or misleading way, just to make it easier for people to win arguments in certain situations.--Kotniski (talk) 11:13, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
(ec)We have a page for first sentence discussions at WT:V/First sentence.  Unscintillating (talk) 11:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC) [discussion continues in next thread]
Sorry, I think "information" has the implication of truth, and I'm not seeing support for this change. Considering the word's prominence in the policy, I think it needs a bit more general agreement. Jayjg (talk) 00:22, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Isn't it a good thing that "information" has the implication of truth? Particularly to (very slightly) counterbalance the "not truth" wording that we have there already? If not information, then "statements" or "assertions" or something, but certainly not "material" - that to me implies the stuff, the words and images and layout - and in most cases it not only isn't a requirement, but it would be very wrong, for our material (in that sense) to have been published in another source, as we would be violating copyright.--Kotniski (talk) 07:19, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Another solution, instead of changing "material" to "information", would be to change "has been published by" to "can be supported by", which I think is more the intended sense. But then we would probably want to lose "readers can check" as well - but that's good too, as the "-ability" in "verifiability" seems to be more to do with editors' ability to do something (provide sources) than with readers' ability to do something (what? look up the sources that are provided? presumably not, since there might not be any, so - look up the sources that might potentially be provided?) In fact this first sentence is wrong in so many different ways, and clearly doesn't have consensus, that it would probably be best to simply remove it, until a satisfactory replacement can be found; it isn't needed for anything, and the rest of the policy (without it) is mostly pretty good.--Kotniski (talk) 07:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

In all honesty, the word we choose there doesn't matter much, it could just say "things" or "stuff". The Verifiability policy first and foremost applies to text, and then to photos, sounds, animations, diagrams, etc. How do we "verify" that a photo is properly sourced? Probably via text in some publication, not a picture of a guy holding the first photo and a sign saying "I made that".
So just pick one, "material", "information", "anything", etc... doesn't matter, because the point is clear -- 'Stuff you put into Wikipedia needs to be sourceable'. -- Avanu (talk) 12:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
But it doesn't say "sourceable", it says (paraphrase) "must have been published before". And none of the stuff you mention needs to have been published before (usually, indeed, it shouldn't have been).--Kotniski (talk) 13:37, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
The policy uses "material" because it covers more than just information, but also opinions, arguments, etc. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 14:02, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Well... that first sentence doesn't make sense if it's supposed to be about opinions and arguments, only if it's about information about opinions and arguments. (I mean, the fact that an opinion has been published is no reason for Wikipedia to publish it as an opinion.) So if for you, "material" means "information, opinions and arguments" (which it doesn't to me) then it's still wrong. In fact the sentence is so, so wrong in so many ways that you're probably right, it's not worth talking about just one word of it, since it still won't be anywhere near right if we change just that one word. But the fact that there is so much to object to in this one sentence is hardly reason to ring-fence it and forbid anyone from changing it or even discussing it - for me it's a reason to tear it up, remove it from the policy (to which it adds nothing but confusion), and work on a replacement (if one is felt to be needed) from a clean slate.--Kotniski (talk) 14:23, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand your point. The word "information" implies that the material is propositional and true. The word "material" is broader, closer to "stuff." So we use the broader term. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 14:41, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, that is my point - "stuff" (images, words) doesn't have to have (and usually shouldn't have been) published before, so using "material" here seems wrong, because it is too broad, if anything.--Kotniski (talk) 14:52, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree that the current wording is inaccurate; we do not require that our material/stuff/content has been published elsewhere; we generally require the converse for reasons of copyright or plagiarism. This wording would be best corrected by removing the disputed sentence. The nutshell which precedes it seems more accurate and to the point. "Other people have to be able to check that you didn't just make things up. This means that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." This makes it clear that we are wanting attributions and citations not the copying of other people's material. If we remove the disputed sentence, then the nutshell will segue nicely into the next paragraph which makes the same point at more length. And without that wretched sentence we have no need to explore the thesaurus for alternatives to truth, material, threshold or other problematic words. Warden (talk) 17:16, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  • What the Colonel said. Well, almost... I think the nutshell also needs to say something to the effect that all statements should be attributable, before saying that those 2/3 things must be attributed. --Kotniski (talk) 17:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
There have been several objections to discussing this issue on this page—objections here and on WT:V/First sentence (see here). People there are trying to come up with a proposal, and it isn't fair to keep opening discussions about the same sentence on other pages. So, please, open a new section there so they can take this issue into account if need be. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:35, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  • We have moved on to discussion of the nutshell. This is the essence of the policy; the succinct summary which gives the reader the take-home message. The sentence to which you refer has no such special status and so it is absurd to discuss it in isolation, as it is just a small part of the whole text. My point is that it is inferior to the text which immediately surrounds it and seems to introduce a jarring discontinuity. We should therefore remove it and spare ourselves further aggravation. Warden (talk) 20:46, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  • I'd prefer "information" over "material" for the sake of conveying a consistent message to the newcomer. Information is what an encyclopedia primarily contains, and information is subject to WP:V. We don't present opinions or arguments directly, we provide information on opinions or arguments, if they are notable. Information is very much the core of our focus. It is different to facts or wisdom. Wikipedia does not aim to be a source of facts or wisdom, but of information. "Material" is very broad. What is the distinction between material and not-material? What is "material" that is not information and this is welcome for inclusion? Images? Media files? Code? Navigation aids? WP:V does not speak to these things. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Procedural points

(this was originally part of the previous thread; splitting it off so it doesn't fill up the edit window for that thread)-Kot.

(ec)The community announcement to use WT:V/First sentence was posted in this diff by Kotniski.  This undiscussed post on 28 August directly resulted in the breaking of the working consensus to take a break from "first sentence" discussions until 15 September.  This post was also part of the pressure on 29 August that broke the previous working consensus that discussions regarding the "first sentence" would take place on WT:V/First sentence but that final decisions would take place on WT:V.  Kotniski, is there some reason that you are posting on WT:V instead of following the pointer that you added at WP:V?  Kotniski also claims special status to post his/her ideas for changes to the first sentence directly on WP:V; while other editors, respecting the local societal norms, post their ideas for changes at WT:V/First sentence and work to build consensus for them there.  Unscintillating (talk) 11:09, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
No-one is forbidden from making apparently reasonable changes to the wording of the policy or from raising pertinent issues on this talk page. If this material/information thing has been discussed on the other page, please link us there, but my udnerstanding was that it was all about the "verifiability not truth" thing.--Kotniski (talk) 11:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Folks, let's move this to talk, not an edit war!!! North8000 (talk) 11:06, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

What North said. Please see Wikipedia:Verifiability/First sentence#Recent changes. I'm perfectly receptive to the substance of what Kotniski proposes, but it's head-spinning to have conversations in multiple places. For better or for worse, there is a dedicated page for discussing changes to the first sentence, so please use it. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:33, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with having discussions about what seems to be the most controversial point in the first sentence (the "verifiability not truth" mantra) on a dedicated page, but discussions about other issues that happen to concern the first sentence (and might still turn out not to be particularly controversial at all, if people would concentrate on the substance of them) on this page.--Kotniski (talk) 18:25, 13 September 2011 (UTC)
I'd also like to ask that first sentence issues be discussed on the dedicated page, and that the sentence not be changed until after that page has come up with a concrete proposal for discussion. Otherwise there's no point in holding the discussion. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 14:04, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Unscintillating, the post you were talking about was first added by SMarshall, days earlier. diff It was removed by SlimVirgin.

@Everyone now, some editors are more bold and some editors and more patient. We also have some editors who revert the boldness without taking a chance to actually evaluate the additions (which I think is a bad behavior). While I think it is actually a useful thing to have a subpage for the first sentence, we need to remember that consensus at the subpage does not necessarily mean there is consensus here at the main Talk page. I love boldness, and I appreciate fresh thinking, but I even recognize that for anything to get permanent support, we need to do it with a clear process. Eventually, it will have to come back here, probably in RFC form, but a simple request of approval would be perfectly fine also.

One thing we don't need is an enforcement officer type thing at the page who constantly acts like they're the boss of the page and the sole arbiter of who decided what and how and when. No one came to a consensus to use the subpage, YET, in the interest of getting things done, we're tending to use it (so it is consensus). No one came to a consensus to not take a break, but editors did talk, so hey again, its a consensus, of a sort. We don't need to be reminded about things that 'broke consensus' over and over, unless we're identifying a pattern for some disciplinary action.

I think the most helpful thing would simply be to politely suggest that people take their comments to the subpage, and guess what, if people stop using the subpage, there was consensus for that also. I was initially unhappy with the pushy way we got the subpage, but as it has worked out, I think it is good to have. But in a discussion that apparently has taken months, we need less of people quoting rules or instantly reverting, and more of people thinking about changes, and ways to solve the debate and work together and compromise. Who 'wins' is not as important as all of us winning by helping get things back to normal.

My apologies if I went on too long. I just worked 3 very very long days on a project that has pretty much worn me out, but I hope we can all stay focused on what's best and get a happy ending soon. -- Avanu (talk) 13:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Contradictory sources

Latest comment: 13 years ago53 comments17 people in discussion

I suggest adding a short section giving advice on how to apply this policy in the case that existing reliable sources give factually contradictory information.  --Lambiam 11:52, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

For example? I cannot think of any situation where this might be true: either the definition of RS is a bad one, or other parts of verifiability are being ignored, but RS almost universally agree n factual information. In fact, a good way to identify an RS is if other RS agree with it on factual stuff.--Cerejota (talk) 12:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Cerejota, factually contradictory information exists in reliable sources on just about every article. Dealing with it is part of the source evaluation process which Lambiam is referring to above. This issue has been coming up for years with no adequate response from the owners of these policies. When you say that you cannot think of any situation where this might be true, I begin to question if we are speaking the same language and if we are editing the same website. Recently, I dealt with this problem on The Magapie (see Talk:The_Magpie_(Monet)#Notes), on Brownie Mary (see Talk:Brownie_Mary#Errata), and I'm currently dealing with it on an article I'm developing in my user space about the King Kamehameha Golf Course Clubhouse (see User_talk:Viriditas/King_Kamehameha_Golf_Course_Clubhouse#Errata) Now, the answer to Lambiam's question is easy. The four ways editors deal with reliable sources that give factually contradictory information involves the following: 1) evaluating for accuracy (sources can and do make mistakes) 2) evaluating for currency (newer sources often supplant older ones; pluto is no longer a planet, etc.) 3) evaluating for authority (Astronomer at the Naval Observatory vs. Joe Sixpack) 4) evaluating for neutrality (is this a controversial, partisan, fringe, or extreme opinion or is it an accepted, centrist position that has wide support?) This is neither difficult to understand nor controversial, yet the people maintaining this policy have fought long and hard against adding this. Why? Viriditas (talk) 09:02, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
The average reporter is no more conscientious than the average Wikipedia editor. Their mistakes don't magically become correct just because they are published. Reliable sources almost universally get many details wrong. I first learned this when many years ago my father gave information about his local church to a reporter and was then quoted under his real name, but referred to as the pastor. I therefore have a reliable source proving that my father was once a pastor. Other articles in the same newspaper got it right, though, and referred to him as a member of the presbytery. Hans Adler 19:32, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Some examples. Sometimes even reliable writers make mistakes. Just look at the bottom of this article ("Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30"; "Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26"). In this case corrections were published, but even without such corrections it is easily verified that the information as originally reported was wrong – although "verifiable" in the Wikipedia sense – simply because it was contradicted by a preponderance of sources. However, the information on the length of the Rhine found here also was contradicted, at the time of publication, by a preponderance of eminently reliable sources – but in this case the preponderance had got it wrong. There are also cases where it is hard to find out which of several contradictory sources is wrong. Here is one example. The Encyclopaedia Brittanica gives the birthdate of Komitas Vardapet as October 8, 1869. Vrej Nersessian, in Essays on Armenian music, has September 26, 1869.  --Lambiam 13:08, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
But what exactly is "factual" stuff in particular from WP perspective? It seem to that your procedure above is used for identifying the factual stuff rather then identifying reliable sources (i.e. something is considered "factual" if (almost) all RS agree on it).Moreover I'm not sure whether the term "factual" really helps here, i.e. intuitively I read the question just as: "How to deal with contradicting RS?".--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Crejota - I have to disagree... contradictions between sources is very common in the humanities... for example, historians often disagree as to "the facts". The same is true for political science (will lowering taxes increase revenue?... depends on which political economist you ask, and which model you look at.)
Lambiam - Instruction and advice on what to do when two or more reliable sources give contradictory information is dealt with at our WP:NPOV policy (in brief, we mention what both sources say, giving each its due weigh in accordance with its promenence). As long as we point readers to that policy, there is no need to mention it here. Blueboar (talk) 12:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Blueboar that this is covered by WP:NPOV. So if anything, WP:V should only give a link to there. (But we can not put something about every subject which does NOT come under WP:NPOV, only ones which people might be very often confused not to find there.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:38, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
This is vaguely connected with the issue raised in the WP:REDFLAG section of V. Perhaps a section on contradictions between sources could be added before or after that. (I don't mean a long section, jus basically Blueboar's summary and a link to the relevant places in NPOV.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
NPOV is about "significant views" and REDFLAG is about views which are typically not significant – so useful advice to our editors would be to determine which of several contradictory statements contradict "the prevailing view" (if such exists) and then apply WP:REDFLAG (that is, ignore them), and apply WP:NPOV to the remaining others (that is, treat them on an equal footing); all while minding WP:COMMONSENSE.  --Lambiam 13:23, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I think I didn't explain myself well enough. I take factual information to be things like birth dates - nearly universally incontrovertible: even if a firm birth date is no available for a subject, RS will nearly universally say so, so WP:V's as written today covers that. - we use WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE - in other words, nothing to do with WP:V. So Blueboar, I agree with you, but we are talking about two different kinds of facts: WP:V facts, and WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE facts. I am not trying to wikilawyer or win or anything like that, its just my first response was intended to solely address WP:V facts (ie verifiability, not truth), not the other kind of facts, which are to be handled on a case-by-case basis via BRD, under the guidance of policy and guidelines.--Cerejota (talk) 13:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) It's common for a wp:"RS" to conflict with another. Keep in mind that that "RS's" per the WP definition are often unreliable, particularly in the context of the topic at hand. The resolutions are myraid. One example is where on a matter of fact where the editors all agree that one source is obviously in error and the other is not. Then they just leave out the "in error" one. Yes folks, that's how it often really happens. Other times it gets to weighing in on both sides of a question, in which case that operative part of wp:npov kicks in and they both go in. So a broad range of things come into play such as policies, guidelines, consensuses, editorial judgment etc.. I think that the best thing that wp:ver can do is (as long as the material is sourced per wp:ver) remain neutral on that debate. North8000 (talk) 14:43, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
@Lambian, I do not agree with the implication that the subject matter of material which comes under REDFLAG is going to not be significant in the sense of WP:NPOV. I think indeed that good faith REDFLAG material is normally going to be significant, so needing coverage if possible, but unusual, so needing especially good sources to be sure that it significant. Therefore REDFLAG is correctly described by Kotniski as a part of WP:V which cross references to NPOV a bit. Redflag material requires a balancing between two policies. However this is not the only type of situation where sources disagree. As Blueboar said, in some fields there can be two strong mainstream positions which have good strong sourcing possibilities. So it is a more general issue than REDFLAG.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:28, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Generally where there's a conflict between reliable sources the more recent source prevails. For example, I can show you a perfectly reliable source written by a recognised expert that says Pluto is a planet; or one that says the human genome has not yet been sequenced. Newer scholarship supersedes the old.—S Marshall T/C 14:59, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
I guess that would be info about how the lead classification organization classified/classifies Pluto, somethign which changes over time. I guess another example is if one RS said that its diameter is 2,200 KM and the other said 2,200,000 KM, the editors would simply leave out the latter due to being an obvious error. North8000 (talk) 15:14, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Editors should leave out the latter due to being an obvious error, except that we have this stupid "verifiability not truth" rule that we're trying to get rid of...—S Marshall T/C 15:57, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Well some of us are trying to get rid off, some of us do not care, and some of us are rather fond of it. :) However, I think you are stretching the point a little, and the example is malformed: we would use what the majority of the sources use, which is the first. This discussion here has been illustrative of a clear confusion, that of what is "factual" and what is "verifable" - the two are often, but not always related - and "truth" is not a synonym of "fact" in the context of NPOV. The reason for "v, not truth" is because it defends NPOV vs Bold Truths Sayers who treat their beliefs as fact. --Cerejota (talk) 16:17, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
We don't need that particular form of words to defend against such people - we can tell them that assertions of truth have to be backed up by reliable sources, not lie to them that "we don't care about truth". Of course we can go with the vast majority of sources when there's a contradiction, as in North's example; but another situation is where one source makes a "surprising" claim that isn't logically excluded by anything any other source says, but still appears wrong because of its omission from all other sources.--Kotniski (talk) 16:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

So while this topic (like most others on this page) drifted back to a discussion of the first sentence - does anyone object to including a short section in the policy, about what happens when sources contradict each other (and indicating that the main page for this kind of issue is NPOV)?--Kotniski (talk) 08:14, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Lambiam's point is not an issue of NPOV, i.e. bias. Suggest a careful rereading of Lambiam's messages. --Bob K31416 (talk) 10:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Well I suppose not, literally, but it's the sort of thing that the advice in NPOV applies to.--Kotniski (talk) 13:39, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Not exactly, although checking for bias is part of evaluating a source. Sources often contain errors, mistakes, typos, distortions, and out of date information. As editors, we need to have a set of tools that enables us to evaluate sources for these problems, recognize them, and know how to deal with them. One of the major problems with the policies is that they contain little practical "how-to" and too many ambiguous statements that are misinterpreted by a large percentage of editors. Just today in fact, an editor repeated the myth about verification in a discussion about adding controversial content to BLP's, saying once again "if reliable sources print it, we report it". This user has previously been corrected on this point, but continues to repeat and misinterpret the "verifiability, not truth" mantra. This indicates that most editors are entirely confused by this and other policies. When editors know how to check sources for accuracy, currency, authority, and neutrality, then we are giving them the necessary tools to deal with the problems that keep coming up again and again with no end in sight. All sources are not the same, and as editors we do not blindly report what sources say without evaluating the sources for accuracy, currency, authority, and neutrality. I realize that many will disagree, but this is how we use sources every day on Wikipedia and the policies need to reflect this practice rather than trying to confuse people. Further, the ultimate philosophical goal of policies and guidelines is not to create a bureaucracy where individual editors require the guidance of a priestly policy wonk just to edit a page and decide on a source, but to actually decentralize the authority vested in the theoretical foundations of editing Wikipedia, and to give the practical skills inherent in those theories to editors in the form of working knowledge, so that they may edit in a responsible manner, secure in the knowledge that these tools are used universally, so that even if two different editors from disparate POV and backgrounds approached the same subject, they would inevitably make the same or similar choices based on their application of the same practical approach to the problem. Viriditas (talk) 10:07, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Viriditas, I agree with a lot of what you say (but not all; for example, I don't think editors are confused on the whole, though I take your point), so here's a suggestion. Why don't you, Kotniski, and any other experienced editors who have a working knowledge of how sources are actually used on Wikipedia, set up a proposed policy page and start drafting a new sourcing policy? That would make far more sense that spending months trying to change the first sentence, or tweak any other part of this one. You could call it Verifiability, or Attribution, or something else entirely; and suggest it as a replacement of this policy alone, or of this one and NOR together. It would be interesting to see a coherent clean start, then compare it to what we have. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Viriditas, I thought your comments were useful. RE "This user has previously been corrected on this point, but continues to repeat and misinterpret the "verifiability, not truth" mantra." - Could you give a link to this? --Bob K31416 (talk) 18:39, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I would like to point to Talk:Conspiracy_theory#The_first_recorded_use_of_the_phrase_.22conspiracy_theory.22_dates_from_1909.3F_WRONG.21 of an example of the disconnect that exists between Verifiability and OR:

"The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates back to a history article from 1909." (Knight, Peter. "Plots, paranoia and blame". BBC News 7 December 2006)

As far as WP:RS goes it was good--a Senior lecturer in American Studies from the University of Manchester being quoted in a well respected paper. The problem is it was factually wrong as demonstrated by the following sources:

"The fact, however, which makes the conspiracy theory completely illogical is that the political leaders in the slave states were not united in support of the southwest- ward movement, nor those in the free states against it." (Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University

"The authoritative action of this caucus, taken in connection with the array of Northern contemporary and later writers that support the conspiracy theory," (History of the United States from the compromise of 1850 copyright 1895 New York, Harper)

"I must content myself with saying that the class-conspiracy theory of economic development may generally be considered false,..." (The Economic review: Volume 1 Christian Social Union (Great Britain) Oxford University Branch 1891 Page 540.)

"Such a view of the case, if it were generally entertained, would have an important bearing on the conspiracy theory." (Ellis Thompson, Wharton Barker The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890 Page 67)

"There is more and more doubt of the conspiracy theory. None of the Cabinet officers approve it, and the President himself does not believe in it." (McCabe, James Dabney (1881) Our martyred President ...: The life and public services of Gen. James A Garfield pg 556)

"It was at least more plausible that the conspiracy theory of Mr. Charles Eeade, and the precautionary measure suggested by Dr. Sankey of using a padded waistcoat in recent cases of mania with general paralysis..." The Journal of mental science: Volume 16 Association of Medical Officers of Asylums and Hospitals for the Insane (London, England), Medico-psychological Association of Great Britain and Ireland, Royal Medico-psychological Association (1871)

This wasn't me thinking it was not true but me demonstrating it was not true with Harvard University and Oxford University in the mix and other editors were crying OR making statements like "An editor here proving Knight wrong by researching primary texts which are not about conspiracy theories, but which happen to use the phrase, would be a pretty clear violation of NOR." (Nuujinn) and "Literally speaking, citing early uses of the phrase is OR, until someone else publishes the claim that the phrase goes back that far." (Phiwum) which was totally and utterly INSANE.

"WP:OR is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists...". But it was Verifiability that the phrase "conspiracy theory" could be found before 1909 but some editors for some reason could not understand that since the information came from existing reliable, published sources that it could NOT be OR. It was what has to be the most bizarre interpretation I have seen of a core policy in a long time.--BruceGrubb (talk) 19:37, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Bruce, I'm not really following your point here. A secondary source said "the phrase 'conspiracy theory' was first used in 1909." But primary sources were discovered that used the phrase before 1909. Therefore the secondary source and the claim were removed from the article, because she appeared to have made a simple error. The only thing editors were objecting to (I believe) was using the primary sources to make further statements about first or early usage of that phrase. I think that's what they were calling OR. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:57, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
You seemed to have missed the editors comments stating emphatically that doing this was OR. According to Phiwum this would be OR:
Peter knight states "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates from 1909" (ref); however, the phrase "conspiracy theory" also appears in Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University pg 31(ref) and The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890 Page 67(ref)
despite the fact that EVERY point in this sentence meets Verifiability ("citing early uses of the phrase is OR") and THAT is the problem.
"Looking for sources using the phrase "conspiracy theory" is indisputably original research." (Rklawton) Simply looking for sources that show Knight's information what wrong is OR?!? THAT IS BEYOND INSANE. We look for sources to back up statements all the blasted time; that is how we meet Verifiability!--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:06, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that would be a form of OR, and odd editing. If you find that the professor of mathematics at Cambridge misspoke and said "2 plus 2 equals 5," we don't add that to an article, then say "However, numerous sources say it's four."
Editors found a secondary source that mistakenly said X, so if all agree that it's a simple error, just remove it. Or look for a secondary source that says otherwise. Or you could perhaps write something like "early uses of the term 'conspiracy theory' include ... (so long as you're very sure of the dates of the primary sources, and so long as no-one objects; Google Books often gets publication years wrong, for example). If there's any doubt, best not to mention it. What does the full version of the Oxford English Dictionary say? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:16, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
According to Knight the 1997 version of the Oxford English Dictionary implied that it first appeared 1909 American Historical Review article which considering the 1891 source above was itself published by Oxford University Branch shows that somebody at Oxford dropped the ball on that one. It's really embarrassing when an older publication of one of your own university's branches shows beyond a doubt you flubbed it.--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:33, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
But what does the OED (full version) actually say, rather than what Knight says it "suggests" (whatever that means)? That would be the place to start—go to a public library and look at the OED. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 20:42, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
The [online version] states Conspiracy theory (1909) and the [link] has 1909 Amer. Hist. Rev. 14 836 as the first listing. Many other dictionaries have Conspiracy theory (1909) as well which as the above shows is WRONG. So Oxford really blew it as demonstrated by...Oxford!--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:53, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
The online version is usually quite different from the full version. In your shoes I would get me to a library. :) SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:13, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
This is a clear copout as the online version is still "published" by Oxford University Press (meeting the RS requirement) and it clearly is WRONG and no special pleading of the full version is different is going to change the FACT that a RS of 2011 by Oxford has WRONG information as demonstrated by an older source by one of their own branches. DEAL WITH IT.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

When equally reliable sources give different accounts we should include them both. In the words of the great American philosopher Yogi Berra, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."   Will Beback  talk  23:41, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

And when no sources at all say "Source X is wrong when it declares 1909 to be the first use, because some Wikipedia editor found a source that uses this term in 1903", then you must not include that claim. You may omit what you believe to be wrong according to your WP:Editorial discretion, but you may not de-bunk the published sources based on your own personal original research. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Again, "The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists". Since a source showing the term was used before the date claimed EXISTS it is BY DEFINITION NOT OR.
It is a Verifiable fact that the phrase "conspiracy theory" is used before 1909--you can hem and haw and special plead til the cows come home but at the end of the day that fact is Verifiable and one of those sources is from a branch of Oxford University itself! Claiming Verifiable facts are somehow OR only shows a mammoth misunderstanding of what Verifiability and OR really mean.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:44, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Excuse me for butting in, folks, but:

  • The online edition of OED is now the authoritative edition, but
  • OED does not promise to show the earliest usage of a word, and never has. The earliest use it lists is 1909, but that does not at all contradict the existence of earlier uses. There are tons and tons of similar examples in OED. So the real problem here was citing OED incorrectly.

Zerotalk 07:06, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but citing OED incorrectly was NOT the real problem.
The real problem was "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates back to a history article from 1909." (an exact quote I might add) came from Peter Knight "Senior lecturer in American Studies, University of Manchester" in a BBC-Two 2006 article called "Plots, paranoia and blame". In that particular article Knight does not say what he based his conclusion from and his earlier Conspiracy theories in American history: an encyclopedia. 1 ABC-CLIO. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-57607-812-9. states that the Oxford English Dictionary implied that 1909 was the first appearance of the phrase. How Knight went from implied to first recorded use is unknown--he simply doesn't say and to date no source explaining his position has been found.
If you read both of Knight's works it is easy to do WP:SYN in your mind and connect the two statements together--in fact one of the editors stated "The source was published and vetted by the Oxford University Press, so it is certainly a reliable source." which as I pointed out via looking for "conspiracy theory" inpublisher:"Oxford University" inauthor:"Knight" and getting "Your search - "conspiracy theory" inpublisher:"Oxford University" inauthor:"Knight" - did not match any documents." for my trouble was NOT true. THIS was the real problem--WP:SYN ie OR in the mind resulting in editors claim things about the source that simply were not true.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:00, 19 September 2011 (UTC)


There may be various misunderstandings taking place here, but one issue we are again forced to notice is that Wikipedia has taken the English words "verifiable" and "original research" and given them non-standard meanings, leading to misunderstandings all round when we come to discuss them. (And since the non-standard meanings we've given them express the same concept, the corresponding policy pages come to be forks of each other.) We should try and develop some terminology that expresses these concepts using words which more or less look as though they're supposed to mean what we want them to mean.--Kotniski (talk) 08:41, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Take a look at the claims several editors have added to Hippie (etymology). Here is only one example:

The word hippie is also jazz slang from the 1940s, and one of the first recorded usages of the word hippie was in a radio show on November 13, 1945, in which Stan Kenton called Harry Gibson, "Hippie".

Note, this so called usage has only been observed by a Wikipedia editor who cites a radio show where they heard the word. Note also, that they cite a secondary source as well as the primary, but the statement is not supported by the secondary. Is this original research? I would say that it is, because it is making an original claim based on the opinion of an editor. Viriditas (talk) 09:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Ok, so it appears that an editor used a primary source. I think that's inappropriate, but has there been any discussion of the issue? Any attempt to correct it, or find a better source? Are we expecting people to automagically agree about everything we do. I can accept that we use "verifiable" and "original research" with a more specific meaning than the common language use, but that pretty much required, since common usage flops around like a trout out of water. Take the words "thesis" and "dissertation"--working on the RS wording to handle the various meanings of these academic terms relative to policy was not trivial. We mean "verifiable" and "original research" in a particular way on purpose. I don't see a problem here. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:53, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
It was discussed extensively on Talk:Hippie and Talk:Hippie (etymology) in 2008 and Morgan Wright (talk · contribs) was indefinitely blocked, however he has used sockpuppets to add disputed material back into multiple articles. In any case, that's neither here nor there, the point is this is material that can be verified, but only by consulting the primary source and making an editorial decision to link it to this subject. The majority of the reliable secondary sources on the subject, however, claim that the first use of the term in the context of the topic, was in 1965. To quote the now blocked Morgan Wright:

Although it's been clearly shown that the word was being used in the early 60's to describe beatniks, bohemians, and hip people in general, in many places of the world, one of the writers here has continued to claim that a September 1965 use of the term was "the first contemporary" use, merely because it was the first use of the term to describe San Francisco hippies, as if the earlier uses of the term were describing something else.

In fact, all the so-called "earlier uses" of the term have only been discovered by Wikipedia editors and added to this article. There is no reliable source that has published this usage or used it in the context of an article about hippies or the etymology of the term. In other words, anyone can "verify" that the word is used (or appears to be used), but nobody can verify that a reliable source has discussed this usage in the context of the subject. This is clearly original research and it is found throughout the project, even in featured articles. Viriditas (talk) 13:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
I still don't see what the problem is in terms of our use of "verifiable" and "original research". There was a discussion, perhaps heated, in 2008, an editor got blocked, used socks (which suggest to me an inclination to push a particular view, although in fairness, I have not looked at the old discussions or the discussions that lead to the block). It looks like OR to you, I take it, and it looks like OR to me, so I removed it. If there's a consensus that it is OR, it will stay out, so long as anyone bothers to work on the article. That's how things work around here, it seems to me, and how things should work around here. As to how the word hippy and hippie were used in different times and places, I certainly cannot make any determination of that, and if we're using primary sources, we're supposed to be very careful. For example, '"the first contemporary" use' cannot be asserted just because that's the '"the first contemporary" use' found by us, for that we require a reliable secondary source, yes? If an article is a mess, let's by all means fix it, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that any wording of policy will prevent individuals with a strong POV and lack of desire to more towards consensus by working with the community from acting badly. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:11, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Re "I still don't see what the problem is in terms of our use of "verifiable" and "original research". " -
The general problem with Wikipedia policy pages in this regard is that new definitions of existing english words and phrases have been made.
You cannot find wikipedia’s definition of verifiability, original research, or truth in any dictionary. It’s interesting that a similar situation arose in George Orwell’s novel 1984 in which the ruling political party had slogans like “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery”, and “ignorance is strength”. In Wikipedia, there is the slogan “verifiability, not truth”. In both the societies of ‘’1984’’ and Wikipedia, one could say that those societies were still able to function, so why change.
In Wikipedia, unpublished original research by Wikipedia editors is not allowed in articles because it is unreliable. The original ideas and analysis of Wikipedia editors are not allowed. This is because anyone can edit Wikipedia, whether or not they are qualified to originate useful and correct information. Editors who are unqualified in this regard can still successfully contribute to Wikipedia if the material they contribute is from reliable sources.
The policy pages are a different situation. The contributions to policy pages are the unpublished original ideas of anonymous Wikipedia editors. That’s the source of the problem that results in common english words being redefined, and results in the nonsensical and Orwellian slogan “verifiability, not truth”.
The Wikipedia terms “verifiability” and “original research” have gained a significant foothold in Wikipedia culture and would be difficult to change because of that. But the nonsensical phrase “verifiability, not truth” is used far less, and can be removed from policy without any disruption. Any editors who like nonsensical phrases can still use it by referring to the essay Verifiability, not truth.
Note that this approach of redefining words could have fostered the phrase “peanut butter, not jelly” if one defines “peanut butter” in Wikipedia to mean material that has been published in a reliable source, and “not jelly” to mean “not what Wikipedia editors think is true”. There could then be an essay Peanut butter, not jelly that editors could refer to. --Bob K31416 (talk) 21:55, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Re: You cannot find wikipedia’s definition of verifiability in any dictionary... Huh? Try Webster's online. Granted, our usage is the legal definition, and not the more general one, but it is a standard definition. The most apt synonym for our usage is: "authenticate". Blueboar (talk) 22:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
I'm confused - what definition is it you're referring to? I can't find anything on that page that corresponds to our definition.--Kotniski (talk) 08:29, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, and I find the comparison to Orwellian Newspeak and the "Peanut butter, not Jelly" comparisons pretty thin. We are not redefining either term into it's opposite, but rather explicitly refining the standard definition to something more strict and specific as a means of codifying usage to ease discussions. It is very common for communities to do this, such as Naval definitions of "boat" and "ship", or the various definitions of Line used by different fields and professions. And I simply disagree that the phrase “verifiability, not truth” is non-sensical. (I hear a song, softly, as from a distant point in the past... A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse of course. That is, of course, because the horse is the famous horse that's dead.) --Nuujinn (talk) 22:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
That it's nonsensical is shown by (among others) my essay WP:Truth, not verifiability. The same point can be expressed equally validly with the buzzwords reversed. --Kotniski (talk) 08:33, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

I would say that it is more the way "Verifiability" and "original research" are explained that is the problem then any difference in definition form average English. In a nutshell they are as follows:

Verifiability--statement backed up by a published reliable source

Original research--statement for which no reliable, published source exists

For example the statement Schweitzer grouped Sir James George Frazer with John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, and Arthur Drews meets "Verifiability" as it is supported both in Schweitzer's 1913 and later editions of his The Quest of the Historical Jesus as well in his 1931 autobiography Out of My Life and Thought. Similarly Sir James George Frazer stating "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth" also meets "Verifiability" as this is a direct quote of the 1913 edition of The golden bough.

Saying Schweitzer was wrong would be original research as no reliable, published source exists that states this. However it is NOT original research to note the conflict between the sources as demonstrated below:

Despite Sir James George Frazer stating "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth" in volume 9 of The golden bough in 1913, [22] Schweitzer continued to group him with John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, and Arthur Drews in subsequent printings of his The Quest of the Historical Jesus and repeated this classification in his 1931 autobiography Out of My Life and Thought with the statement "I especially wanted to explain late Jewish eschatology more thoroughly and to discuss the works of John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, James George Frazer, Arthur Drews, and others, who contested the historical existence of Jesus." [23][24]

(22) Frazer, Sir James George (1913) The golden bough: a study in magic and religion, Volume 9 pg 412

(23) Schweitzer (1931) Out of My Life and Thought page 125

(24) Bennett, Clinton (2001) In search of Jesus: insider and outsider images page 205

For a long while many editors tried to argue the above was original research even though the actual statements made were backed up by published reliable sources. It took nearly two YEARS of fighting incorrect interpenetrations of Verifiability and original research to get that simple passage (and many other conflicts) in the Jesus myth theory article. THAT is the type of nonsense we editors face--merely pointing out source conflicts in of itself is viewed as OR by some editors.--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:10, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski, I read your essay, and I think while it is a good start, it is an over simplification, and I simply disagree that the same thing is said by reversing the words. In practice, I find "verifability, not truth" very useful in explaining what V means. But I encourage you to continue working on it as that is a useful exercise for the project, much as I find both BLUE and NOTBLUE useful.
BruceGrubb, I took a look at Jesus myth theory and I think it is OR, esp. since there's no discussion or treatment of Frazer's work other than the one statement that he assumes a historical Jesus, and I would suggest that the only thing that can be said about the subject in Frazer's work is that one statement, it's undue weight to include it in the first place, and more undue weight to include Schweitzer's characterization of Frazer's work from his autobiography, esp. if his work The Quest of the Historical Jesus does not treat Frazer's work. Linking the two seems pretty clearly to be SYNTH to me and generally sloppy. But I haven't read Schweitzer's work, and it's been about 30 years since I read The Golden Bough, so there may well be more there that the article does not convey. My only other comment would be that there can be multiple reasons for discussions to take place over a long period of time, and I think that most often, the length of discussions has more to do with editor behaviour than the "truth" of the matter.
I think many of us are wanting the policy to do something that it cannot do, that is, to change editor behaviour. Policies and guidelines only affect the behaviour of users who are willing and interested in following them, and, at heart, they represent an expression of how we believe we should behave. There are a number of them that I disagree with pretty fundamentally, but I follow them anyway. But editors that have a different agenda skirt policies or lawyer them, and no matter what we do here, that will remain the case. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:17, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Policies have a lot of influence in situations involving persons who are not following them. The folks advocating change are basically saying that the current infamous two words do damage in areas which have nothing to do with wp:ver. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 12:54, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
"since there's no discussion or treatment of Frazer's work other than the one statement that he assumes a historical Jesus". ARE YOU BLIND, Nuujinn?!?
"While Frazer did not doubt that Jesus had lived, or claim that Christians had invented the Jesus myth, his work became a source book of ideas and data, his work became a source book of ideas and data for many who did. In fact, Schweitzer includes Frazer in a list of scholars who 'contested the historical existence of Jesus . . . John M. Robertson, William Benjamin Smith, James George Frazer, Arthur Drews' (1998a, p125)" (Bennett, Clinton (2001) In search of Jesus: insider and outsider images page 205)
The supposed OR passage is in reality has a source meeting Verifiability which was already provided: Bennett, Clinton (2001) In search of Jesus: insider and outsider images page 205.
Oh the 1998a, p125 reference in Bennett above is to the 1998 printing of Out of My Life and Thought by Johns Hopkins University.
I should mention that the 2001 edition of The quest of the historical Jesus mentions the 1890 and 1900 versions of Frazer's The Golden Brough by name in the references section on page pg 529 and Frazer is mention by name in the main body text on pages 382, 384, and 385 easily findable through Google books.
Claiming SYN on a passage that is actually a paraphrasing of one of the referenced sources is TOTALLY INSANE and another clear demonstration of how editors rush to claim OR (ie no Verifiability) without understanding just what it means or even bothering to check the material referenced.--BruceGrubb (talk) 16:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC
BruceGrubb, color blind, yes. Blind in general, no. The Bennett quote looks fine, and if one wanted to put in a section explaining Frazer's influence on others relative to the subject of the article, that would work well. But there is no such section. My point is that linking the quote from Frazer to the quote from Schweitzer is SYNTH, as is done in both mentions of Frazers's work. Using just the Bennett quote would not be OR, but us linking the two isn't appropriate. And I think including the information about Frazer seems undue, since there's no material explaining Frazer's influence. Do please stop shouting, it doesn't help anything.
North8000, I understand your point, but these are not good examples. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:29, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Nuujinn, your position on what is OR is looking more and more bizarre. WP:NOTOR expressly states "Comparing and contrasting conflicting facts and opinion is not original research, as long as any characterization of the conflict is sourced to reliable sources." The conflict between Frazer and Schweitzer was noted by Bennett and each point is directly referenced ie meets Verifiability.
I should mention that the section of the article is addressing "Definitions of the theory" and clearly shows via Verifiability that for whatever reason Schweitzer put a man who said "My theory assumes the historical reality of Jesus of Nazareth" in the people "who contested the historical existence of Jesus" category even after some 18 years had passed. We can't speculate as why Schweitzer did this but noting the conflict does exist especially when when a source backing up the conflict exists is NOT OR. Again totally bizarre interpretation of what Verifiability and OR mean.--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:51, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

OTRS as verifiable source

Latest comment: 13 years ago12 comments5 people in discussion

I recall once reading that messages received through OTRS can cited as verifiable sources. I now want to do this but I cannot find the relevant page and am questioning my own memory.

Does anyone know what I am referring to or am I totally wrong? --RA (talk) 22:27, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability...—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source ..." - What you are referring to appears to be unpublished private emails, so it fails to meet this requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia. --Bob K31416 (talk) 22:52, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I know and this is why I am questioning my memory. My memory is that OTRS was considered "verifiable" because a member of the OTSR team could verify the fact by checking the ticket. My memory is that when citing a fact by OTRS, the ticket number had to be cited as well so that an OTRS team member could be asked to verify it if it was questioned.
This memory is from some years back tho. Things might have changed. (Or I could have dreamt it.) --RA (talk) 23:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I remember the same thing. Let's hope that someone with more precise knowledge will respond. Hans Adler 23:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Do we mean it's verifiable that the author of the message wrote the thing in question; or that the thing in question is itself made verifiable? Presumably only the former, and even that goes against our normal principles, though it might be a way of giving subjects a "right of reply" to the things we say about them. (A different question is whether private messages can be considered to cast doubt on the accuracy of sourced information - I would say they can, for example if a subject writes to say that our source has got their birth date wrong, and we have no reason to suspect the subject of lying.) --Kotniski (talk) 06:28, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
RA may have meant "reliable source" when he wrote "verifiable source". --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:37, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

RA, You might try asking your question at WP:OTRS/N. --Bob K31416 (talk) 13:32, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with what might have been said in the past, but I cannot possibly imagine how such an e-mail would be considered to pass WP:V today. Otherwise, I could send any sort of nonsense I choose to OTRS and then claim that what I said was suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:07, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Strike that last part, as we are only discussing V here (self-administer dope slap). But it still seems to me to be pretty hard to argue that it would be verifiable. We consider something verifiable even if, for example, a reader has to travel to a distant library to find the source, but there is still an expectation that, somewhere, the source material is available for inspection in some manner. Here, we are talking about material that must be treated as confidential, so I don't think it passes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:11, 20 September 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I've misunderstood the kind of situation that this is about, but presumably if the writer of the message is wanting some statement to be included in the encyclopedia, then by definition they're prepared to waive confidentiality as regards that statement?--Kotniski (talk) 06:39, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
"Here, we are talking about material that must be treated as confidential, so I don't think it passes." - I don't know about this. OTRS deal with many things that are confidential but not everything is confidential. Indeed many things received via OTRS are explicitly public. For example, the granting a licence to otherwise unusable text or media.
As I said tho, this is quite a distant memory and I cannot find any reference to this in current practice (if indeed it every was practice!). --RA (talk) 08:19, 21 September 2011 (UTC)
You both make good points, and it may depend on that. If the communication to OTRS is made with the intent that it be public, then it could well pass V. However, a license doesn't sound to me like what the original question was about. If something were published on Wikipedia with permission from such a license, one would cite the "something" that was published rather than the permission. For something other than a permission, I don't really see a reason to send it to OTRS rather than just post it directly, if it is intended to be public. All that, of course, would be subject to WP:CIRCULAR. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for comment

Latest comment: 13 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Television#Sourcing plot sections.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 15:19, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Lets stop selling anecdotal evidence as "truth" - show the beef, please

Latest comment: 13 years ago70 comments17 people in discussion

I want to be shown a long lasting (a year or so) consensus (ie a result not of under-attention, but of willful misintepretation of policy by a set of editors) edit in which the sources are contradictory and there is counterfactual information shown as factual information. I do not care about the wikilawyering POV warriors and Fringemongers do in the talk pages - people constantly argue even against explicit policy if they believe they can get editors convinced -, I am talking about actual, live, article content that is not factual but is presented as factual. I have yet to see one such example. When those edits happen they get reverted, and rather quickly. If shown one, I will change my position on "v, not truth".--Cerejota (talk) 16:27, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, in the article on Frederic Chopin: "The French passport was issued on 1 August 1835, after Chopin had become a French citizen." This is based on what one source says (about his "changing his citizenship"); no other source has been found that mentions any change of citizenship (as we would expect them to if it happened), but (a form of) this statement was forced into the article by an editor saying "we have to go with what the source says". Hence a prominent Wikipedia article is probably telling the world an untruth, and has been for - what - well over a year, I think.--Kotniski (talk) 16:37, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)But the truth is he did become a French citizen!--Cerejota (talk) 17:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
No it isn't. Chopin's father was French, which makes him a French citizen from birth. See footnote 18 in the French article, which is based on the same source (Szulc) that appears to have been used to put forth the claim that he became French. Szulc stated the facts, and then drew a conclusion that appears to be incorrect. If this conclusion was not widely reported in reliable sources, it is dubious and we should not report it either. Hans Adler 07:29, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I should perhaps have said that the statement is (probably) literally true (if he became a French citizen at birth, then he did get his passport "after" (a long time after) becoming a French citizen), which is probably why we gave up trying to take it out, but its obvious apparent meaning - that he obtained citizenship fairly immediately before getting the passport - is (probably) false.--Kotniski (talk) 07:43, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Cerejota, there are examples, and in fact many are examples I, and many others who are worried about the "not truth" wording, think should occur. For example every time we do NOT put in the latest news on a scientific subject because we are waiting for a proper publication. That sort of "wrongness" is ok. Remember that people worried about the not truth bit are not asking for "yes truth" either. We just want existing policy explained clearly. But I would like to raise a couple of points about the way you set your challenge up:
  • First you exclude examples which involve "POV warriors and Fringemongers". But because there is no sharp definition about who these are (they never self identify) it means you could argue, if you wanted to, that by definition any example is disqualified.
  • You demand to see live article content. Why? Not only can things which are live examples be acceptable, but I think most people would agree that things which do not survive as live content can still be problems for Wikipedia's normal operation. They can slow down or stop improvement of controversial articles. And they can also chase away new editors. Do we ignore these problems?
  • A point I made elsewhere about "truth": when a well informed newbie arrives and says an article is not up to date, because he knows of new information on a subject which is not yet published, should we chase him away and tell him we do not care about truth on Wikipedia, or should we say "Great, but do you know when it will be published?" The answer our community chooses will have an impact on the quality of the result. It sets a tone.
It seems a bit like a challenge that will take discussion nowhere?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:16, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
But the truth is he did become a French citizen!--Cerejota (talk) 17:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict)And constantly claiming that "verifiability, not truth" is a problem without concrete evidence of this being a problem does move the discussion forward? My challenge is not out of the blue, it is a direct response to the claim that there is a problem that quite frankly doesn't exist - because not a single example of the problem in the wild is shown. Just one. I completely disagree with your second critique: WP:BRD is how the joint works, has worked, and should continue to work - the process of reversion of good faith edits is as important as the process of adding information. Your third point is thoughtful and thought inducing, and the kind of argument I am amiable to, even if I am not convinced at this time of its validity - I do agree however that the impact on new users of how policy is worded is an important consideration. --Cerejota (talk) 17:42, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Well, this won't be productive. The pro-change party run round finding examples, and the anti-change party quibble them. Didn't we do this for about eight months before?—S Marshall T/C 17:29, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
That is only how long you have been involved in it. I was an editor (IP I think, but maybe already account) when the phrase was added to the first sentence. It has never been completely accepted. However, V is the most successful of policies, more successful than NPOV even, and perhaps second only to BLP. And it has been a success with the damn sentence. If ain't broke, don't fix it.--Cerejota (talk) 17:47, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Cerejota, both sides of the dialogue agree V is important. It is a question of whether we can improve the tone of the exact wording. Saying, as we hear time and time again (as in your edsumm) "if it ain't broke don't fix it" begs a question of whether this folk wisdom is always automatically correct. Of course everyone knows it is not. I think a similar argument confronted Galileo? Please also consider what you would think if you were being continually challenged to show a concrete live example of the two words "not truth" improving an article. It is an example of rhetorical skill to deflect discussion in this way, but....--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 18:36, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
I think we need a Godwin's law for Galileo. :) I can provide you a clear example: September 11 attacks. "V not truth" has kept truther conspiranoia from tainting that article. And I have tons of other examples. Even here, ITT, the Chopin example: it is clear that Chopin became a French citizen, and this is well sourced, yet an editor, ITT, claims this not to be true. Well, I answer: verifiability, not truth. Find me the reliable sources who say Chopin didn't become a French citizen. You can't, because they do not exist. And so on. --Cerejota (talk) 04:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, what are you talking about? It is sourced that he became a French citizen, but it is not clear at all that he became a French citizen (unless you have some more information to contribute, which would be very welcome). You seem to be demonstrating the exact problem that you claim doesn't exist - because we can't find sources that say "he didn't become a French citizen", and there is one source that implies that he did, there are editors (including apparently you) who think that our work as encyclopedists is done, and that we should unthinkingly include the (probably inaccurate) information in the article, to the obvious detriment of Wikipedia's usefulness as a source of accurate information. Of course we can't show a direct causal link between the wording "verifiability not truth" and this kind of irrational editor behaviour, but - well, you said if you got an example you would change your view on that matter, and you've now got an example, so I assume your view has indeed changed.--Kotniski (talk) 06:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
And as to the September 11, it isn't "verifiability not truth" or any other policy statement that has kept conspiracy theories out of the article, but editors who know what WP's principles are and are prepared to "fight" to uphold them. If they are helped in doing that by the ability to quote policy statements that describe those principles, then they would be helped just as much (or even more) if the relevant policy statements described those principles accurately.--Kotniski (talk) 07:07, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. When we are keeping fringe theories or poorly sourced content out of an article, what we are doing is evaluating for accuracy and authority. This has nothing to do with "V not truth", and everything to do with evaluating sources. The only thing "V not truth" has achieved, is that it has confused editors by falsely attributing an equivalency between all sources and their respective content. Many editors read "V not truth" and assume that it if it can be sourced, it can/should be added. That this is still in the policy is unbelievable. Viriditas (talk) 10:29, 17 September 2011 (UTC)
This is degenerating back into tossing and parrying talking points. Cerejota, I feel that there are several flaws in what you just said. But I don't intend to go back there. We are working on a compromise. North8000 (talk) 18:49, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Yeah. We went this way before. Evidence gets produced, and quibbled. More evidence gets produced, and quibbled. The way to deal with editors who refuse to be convinced is to disregard them and seek to convince their audience instead.—S Marshall T/C 19:39, 15 September 2011 (UTC)
Actually I've followed the discussion for quite a while, and your implication that evidence was provided "for about 8 months" is false, as far as I know. Evidence was requested for 8 months, but only in the last month has any real evidence been provided. To "quibble", I'd say it's of varying success in demonstrating a problem, but some of it is interesting and relevant. Also although you have been beating this drum since near the beginning, if you ever provided any evidence yourself then I didn't see it. Quale (talk) 00:25, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  --Cerejota (talk) 04:57, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
The point is that any example you can bring will be just as controversial or uncontroversial as examples of the opposite. We already know this can go back and forth forever. But for the reasons I gave above, in the end such examples are simply not a convincing argument that we should not try to improve the wording of a policy. There is no logical connection. In other words it is a red herring, not part of any possible constructive conversation, but rather aimed at trying to block any discussion about whether the wording can be improved. In the end this approach comes down to the "if it ain't broke" excuse for any status quo.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 05:54, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
  • Quale, the reason I don't run around producing evidence on demand is that I've been editing Wikipedia for a long time and I've learned some things about editor behaviour. (I learned quite a bit more from this page...)

    A balanced picture of the discussion is that while I produced only one example of evidence in support of my view, I also asked for evidence from others in support of retaining "not truth" for a similarly long period, without any result at all. It took until a couple of weeks ago for your side to produce any evidence at all—and, in stark contrast to the behaviour of others in this debate, the moment your side did produce evidence, I acknowledged it and changed my position.—S Marshall T/C 07:40, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I've responded with the requested examples of the current problems many many times, as have others. Except for a few cases where someone does this User:North8000/Page2 the thread typically just ends when the example is given. Then, shortly thereafter, someone again says "give an example" or "nobody gives examples".  :-) North8000 (talk) 11:27, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Just an aside on the Chopin debate... the factual debate isn't really about whether he became a French citizen... the factual debate is about when he became a French citizen (at birth, or at some later point?). The sources are inconclusive. The point is... its ok for sources to be inconclusive and contradict each other. Its why we have WP:NPOV... When reliable sources disagree we present both sides of the debate... phrasing the different viewpoints as being the opinions of proponents of each side, and not stating them as fact. Blueboar (talk) 12:34, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately in this case it's not quite like that (at least, based on the sources we had at the time - of course, if someone's found some more since then, the whole question might be moot). There was no reliable source that said he became a French citizen at birth, or anything else that would directly contradict the claim that he changed his citizenship to French later. There was one source that said he changed his citizenship. So there was no contradiction between sources, no factual debate to report... The contradiction was between what that one source said, and the conclusion that intelligent Wikipedia editors came to based on various evidence that I could go into if you wanted (including the fact that no other source mentioned such a change). According to the "verifiability not truth" crowd, we don't care about the other evidence, we just parrot the one source and think we've done the world a service.--Kotniski (talk) 13:58, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
It is one source in the article, many sources otherwise. However, and again, why you say this is not "true"? Here is the thing people are missing: truth in wikipedia is determined by the careful evaluation of sourcing, NPOV, and generally known as facts. We have different policies for each of those things: WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:FRINGE. I consider the position that Chopin didn't become a french citizen to be WP:FRINGE.--Cerejota (talk) 18:12, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, as long as we are getting into it, there are basically two things when talking about accuracy (or the accuracy-related meanings of "truth"):
  1. The framework of the answer, and is it at least 99% agreed on? For example, the framework of "who won the 2001 USA World Series of Baseball" is 100% agreed on (per the rules of the governing body) The framework of "is Pluto a planet" is maybe 90% agreed on (the word of the most accepted body) and the framework of "is Obama a good president" (e.g. what does "good" mean?) is nowhere near 99% agreed on .
  2. Per that framework, to what certainty is the answer known per normal accepted objective methods?
And occasionally, you have chaos until you precisely define the question, e.g. with global warming, after which you can start on the above. 18:52, 16 September 2011 (UTC)
Replying to Cerejota - yes "truth in Wikipedia" (well, I thought you were against the concept of "truth", but I know what you mean) is indeed determined by the careful evaluation of sources. What was done in this case was not careful evaluation at all; it was "one source says X; no source directly says NOT X, therefore X is true". This kind of careless reasoning is, it seems to me, likely to be encouraged by wording like "verifiability not truth" and "the threshold", which imply that once a source has says something, we are compelled to switch off our critical faculties and unquestioningly include that information in Wikipedia.--Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

A long time ago when I was active on some Israel/Palestine related aticles, there was this dispute on the Hamas page about a sentence in the lead, saying something along the lines of "Hamas is best known for terrorist attacks" and that cited to a reliable source. That sentence was the focus of editing disputes; but at the time I was editing there, you could't get it removed and replaced by a more factual statement. It had stayed in the article for a very long time.

The problem was that any argument was shot down because that statement was in a "reliable source" and therefore protected by Wiki-policy. You couldn't argue that the source, a book about the Mid East, makes the statement as just an opinion of the author which isn't intended to be taken to be taken serious a reliable scientific statement. That would be "OR" and my attempt to remove that statement and replacing it with something along the lines of "Hamas has committed terror attacks" with sources led to me getting a warning by an Admin (I think Humus Sapiens) on my talk page.

I can only guess why particularly the pro-Israeli editors were feeling so strongly about keeping that non-factual sentence. My guess is that they wanted to stick to using Wiki-policies as a tool to protect what you couldn't otherwise protect. So, if they were to give ground on this issue, even if that meant an improvement from their perspective on that particular point, they could no longer invoke Wiki policies on other points in other articles in this way.

So, there were estabished editors who were active WIki-editors for many years and quite a few Admins, who were behaving in that way for years here. After I left, there have been one or more ArbCom cases, and I think things have changed, but I haven't followed the I/P related articles and thse ArbCOm cases. But I don't think ArbCom has ever made an issue about editors following Wiki-policies being a problem, so they may not have identified all of the relevant problems.

Another area that I have followed closely for years are some climate change related articles. There there was pressure from climate sceptical editors to include unreliable opinions from sources. They didn't succeed, but the reason why they didn't succeed was, as seen by ArbCom, due to disruptive elements (note that while William was perhaps always a bit controversial in the way he acted, other editors like KimDabelsteinPetersen were also topic banned). Count Iblis (talk) 15:25, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

But what did the sources say Hamas was best known for at the time? If the sources generally agreed that Hamas was best known for terrorist attacks (as opposed to, say, their many charitable endeavors, and now their many difficulties with running a government), then it's not unreasonable for us to report this. What Hamas is best known for among certain subsets of people might be different (and a very interesting subject), but I suspect that the statement was actually factual, at least to the extent that you were considering only the statements from English-language sources about what Hamas was best known for at that time. These results "best+known+for"+-wiki+-wikipedia suggest that the sources might have supported the claim that you have labeled as false. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
Yet another example of a situation where a simple rewrite would have resolved the issue. Statements about what a subject is "best known for" are, by definition, opinion, rather than fact. So the sentence should have been attributed... along the lines of "According to X, Hamas is best known for terrorist attacks <cite X>". This would make the statement a) verifiable, b) not OR, and c) presented with a neutral point of view. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
I would say it's something of a grey area. I don't think "Neil Armstrong is best known for being the first man on the moon" would be regarded as pure opinion, and to attribute that statement to a source in-text might well be regarded as a violation of NPOV, as implying some doubt where there is none. (Of course, it's not normally necessary to make such statements - you just say appropriately early in the lead that Armstrong was first on the moon or that Hamas do terrorism.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:05, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I think what would make the Hamas case different is that there was no consensus. When there is no consensus, we should err, I believe on the side of inclusion and attribution, which is also apparently what Blueboar is saying. But where does WP:V tell people this? If I understand correctly Count Iblis is saying that WP:V was successfully used as an excuse to avoid this correct approach. If so, then perhaps this was another example of what I have been calling the imperialism of the current WP:V wording, whereby it seems to over-ride the other core content policies.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Do you mean consensus between editors, or consensus between sources? If the former, it's hard to speak of consensus when the discussion is flooded with people with a point of view to push. If the latter, then the problem is often that one source makes a statement that no other source directly contradicts (e.g. we might not have a source saying explicitly "Hamas is best known for its charity and educational work"), but nevertheless appears not to be supported sufficiently by the body of sources as a whole for us to state it as fact (or even report it at all).--Kotniski (talk) 08:22, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
I meant consensus between editors, and I recognize the two problems you mention. No policy will ever stop such problems completely, but the normal practice when everyone is working according to best practice and good faith is that strong conclusions such as "there is a consensus" or "Z is most famous for X" should either be uncontroversial, like with Niel Armstrong, or else there should be editor compromise by using things like attribution, and inclusion of balancing context.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:41, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
And back to the subject, I think the concern is that WP:V does not give any indication that such best practice exists, and it therefore tends to be used by some editors in order to edit in ways which are not best practice.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:43, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

We can't cover every possible area of best practice in WP:V, though. All we can do is try to write a simple policy that makes sense, which acts as a springboard for editors to use their judgment. My position is that WP:V needs to be stripped down and simplified, not added to.—S Marshall T/C 11:07, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The two aims are not necessarily in conflict with each other.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:44, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Re Andrew's question: But where does WP:V tell people this? - I think we need to ask a more fundamental question first... Is attribution something that is within the scope of WP:V... or should it be said in some other policy (such as NPOV)? In other words... is this something that should be said in WP:V?
(Note... I am of two minds on this question... which is why I decided to address it in my proposed re-write at WP:V/First sentence) Blueboar (talk) 11:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Well yes something could be mentioned or a cross reference to another policy could be give, but I guess that prior to needing to consider adding in something about it, one point is that WP:V should at least allow room for the fact that certain matters require consideration of more than just WP:V.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:02, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
More fundamentally, we should decide whether WP:V should exist at all. Only once we've discussed rationally whether we really do need two separate pages (V and NOR) will be be in a position to know what the scope of each is supposed to be. (And even if we do have two pages, we ought to consider what their titles ought to be, to reflect the scope we've selected.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)
Looking at WP:V and WP:NOR I agree there is a LOT of redundancy between the two pages.
Much of what is in WP:NOR could be moved to WP:V and WP:NOR streamlined with better examples (WP:SYN's are somewhat poor) and some ideas pulled from WP:NOTOR to clarify things.
For example a WP:SOURCECONFLICT section where examples of how NOT and how to handle RS that conflict would be a welcome addition to the WP:NOR page (as this how fun filled mess shows we need one).--BruceGrubb (talk) 16:46, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Strong support for "verifiability, not truth," What a citation says can be agreed upon by editors of diverse opinions, "truth," is not so amenable. Other issues of reliability and POV and relevance should be discussed elsewhere, and cross referenced. If some reliable source suggests Chopin was a citizen (if it is relevant), we should report that. If no reliable source says he was not a citizen, perhaps it is irrelevant but that does not effect what a reliable source in fact says.Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:02, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The flaw in this way of thinking is that, while it may be that editors will nearly always agree on whether a source says something, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to whether a given source (possibly in isolation) is reliable on a given point. We do humanity no service if we switch off all our other critical faculties and just report everything we read in any book, journal or newspaper as if it were unquestionably true. No source is 100% reliable, and we know that. We would be extremely incompetent encyclopedists if we really did adopt that philosophy (fortunately, in practice, we usually don't).--Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I do not think Alanscottwalker's thinking is flawed, even though I think I see Kotniski's point. And I think most editors who want to tweak the "not truth" wording agree with his explanation, even if they want "not truth" expanded upon or moved out of the particular position it currently has in the first sentence. The main concern is that not everyone understands the current sentence. @Kotniski, I see what you mean, but in reality I think our policy pages aim to make verifiability a simple criterium for inclusion, whereas concerning "reliability relative to a subject" (which is something very hard to distinguish from "due weight" - watch WP:RSN) we actually want editors not to use simple rules, but rather to discuss the details of the context. For me "verifiability, not truth" is about telling editors not to waste time debating about what is true, but to spend time more constructively debating about what is the right way to weight things and get the wording right on a particular subject. In simple words, the way we avoid getting stuck arguing about what is true is by limiting ourselves to writing about what is published. That is not because we do not care about what is true, but because that is the only practical way we can work. (I am thinking about a recent comment of User:Cerejota here and basically saying that WP:NPOV is what requires WP:V. If WP:NPOV was not so important and difficult, we would not need WP:V.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree that it is not Alanscottwalker's thinking that is flawed, IMO it is the premise that the phrase "verifiability, not truth" has a well-understood meaning that is flawed.  And yet by Alanscottwalker's own logic system, we have that editors cannot agree on what is truth, so he/she should readily also agree that editors also will not agree on the meaning of "verifiability, not truth".  Unscintillating (talk) 11:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I certainly agree with that last point; though the same applies not only to "truth", but also to "verifiability" - not only is verifiability a suboptimal word to express a concept that is really more like "sourceability" or "attributability", but also, editors do not agree on any simple definition of this magic concept. To imply that there is some relatively simple "threshold" is in itself misleading, quite independently of the facts that "verifiability" is the wrong word for it and that "not truth" is a redundant and potentially misleading addition.--Kotniski (talk) 11:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
I agree, and I take your point that we are now dealing with fallout from the poor choice made in settling on the word "verifiability" way back when.  SlimVirgin said as much, that veritas means truth, but that that is not why the word was chosen.  Meanwhile, we have Jimbo, coming from the viewpoint of a fuzzy thinker, who genuinely wants an accurate encyclopedia, reasonably mis-associating "verifiability" and truth.  IMO, we must strive to simultaneously integrate all of these multiple viewpoints in order to find a common viewpoint.  Unscintillating (talk) 12:53, 24 September 2011 (UTC)


"The flaw in this way of thinking is that, while it may be that editors will nearly always agree on whether a source says something, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to whether a given source (possibly in isolation) is reliable on a given point."

The flaw in your thinking is an obsessiveness about words out of context and an inability to distinguish different issues, under "verifiability, not truth" the way to show a particular soucre is unreliable is by references to other verifiable sources. (other issues of pov and relevance are dealt with elsewhere)

"We do humanity no service if we switch off all our other critical faculties and just report everything we read in any book, journal or newspaper as if it were unquestionably true."

Other critical faculties? We have constraints within this policy and other policies to deal with that. We do humanity no service (is there a more puffed up way you could put it?) by misrepresenting or denying reliable sources because you think you know what truth humanity needs. (eg., Do you have a citation to your service to humanity?)

"IMO it is the premise that the phrase "verifiability, not truth" has a well-understood meaning that is flawed."

If we cannot read in context then there is no point to writing anything at all. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
If you can assert that there is no ambiguity in "verifiability, not truth", then you have the unifying knowledge that we need that integrates all of our various viewpoints.  Please lead on and explain what it means.  It should include at least these three viewpoints:
  • "verifiability, not truth" is a jolt of psychological force applied against editors with crackpot theories, and means that Wikipedia editors don't want to spend time discussing such theories that are not sourceable.  In this context, editors may refer to truth using scare quotes, "the 'truth' " or as trade-marked, "TruthTM".
  • "verifiability, not truth" means that Wikipedia editors don't want to spend time discussing genuinely useful material that is not sourceable, i.e., being true isn't good enough if we can't blame someone else.
  • "verifiability, not truth" means that Wikipedia editors don't want to spend time discussing potentially inaccurate material, i.e., if it can be sourced, then no questions need be asked, expediency is that we publish it and move on.
Unscintillating (talk) 18:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
And indeed, even if all established editors had the same understanding of the phrase, that would still be no justification for using it - we are writing for people who don't know yet, not for people who already know, so we must try to use words which really do (in the real world) mean the things we want them to mean, not words which we've got together and decided will mean something special for us. (We do actually define "verifiability not truth" in the same sentence, so my objection to it is more philosophical dishonesty and abuse of language than actual misleading; I think the real ambiguity - which is not explained - stems from the phrase "the threshold".)--Kotniski (talk) 18:27, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Philosophical honesty and abuse of language. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.' Two words have multiple connotations and shades of meaning; they are deduced by context. That's not abuse; that is language.-- Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:40, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
It is if the meanings we give them are so far removed from their normal meanings that they can only be deduced from context if we step back and completely reword what we've just said in words that really do have the meanings we desire.--Kotniski (talk) 19:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
So you claim that you understand the meaning of the phrase "verifiability, not truth" using your ability to interpret context, are you then able to explain it?  Unscintillating (talk) 20:53, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
To quote Kotniski: "We do actually define "verifiability not truth" in the same sentence ..." You should read it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:05, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
So the problem of ambiguity in "verifiability, not truth" is not a real world problem, but is a problem of the perception of editors that lack skill in interpreting meaning within context, and who would benefit from reading to the end of the sentence.  Did I get that right?  Unscintillating (talk) 21:35, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
The problem of ambiguity arises with almost all words; words have multiple meanings, connotations, and shades of meaning. The approach to claim of ambiguity, is straight forward. The word asserted to be ambiguous cannot be judged in the abstract; it cannot be read alone. It can only be read in context. So, the claim that "verifiability, not truth" is ambiguous fails when it is read in a sentence defining what it means. You may not like the definition, but that's a different issue. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:11, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
The slogan "verifiability, not truth" is contradictory and nonsensical. It's used out of the context of WP:V. Note that one could similarly have a context which defines the words in the contradictory nonsensical slogans of Orwell's fictional work 1984: "war is peace", "freedom is slavery", "ignorance is strength". It's better writing to use the common meanings of words instead of changing them. The two words "not truth" are not needed in the first sentence. The sentence means the same thing without those two words and wouldn't foster the nonsensical slogan "verifiability, not truth" if they were removed. --Bob K31416 (talk) 14:42, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Do you read your own overheated examples? If you did, you would know how absurd your argument is. The phrase is not, "verifiability is truth," the phrase is, "verifiability, not truth." They are two different words. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:04, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
I suggest you reread my message and note what the slogans all have in common: They are nonsensical and contradictory. --Bob K31416 (talk) 15:20, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
I reread your message. It is still absurd because you claim unlike things are the same. They are not; just as, verifiability and truth are not the same, as the phrase says -- they mean different things. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:37, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
In fact, verifiability and truth are a lot closer in meaning than this phrase makes out (something is verifiable if we can ascertain that it is true, so a reasoned assertion that P is true is more or less the same thing as a reasoned assertion that P is verifiable). But what we are contrasting in this sentence is not verifiability vs. truth at all (as we see by reading the second part of it): it's the published claims of reliable sources vs. the personal convictions of editors. This is just one of the reasons why "V not T" is wrong; and that's just one of several things wrong with this sentence (not to mention the title of the policy).--Kotniski (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability is the ability to verify -- in this sentence, the ability to verify that a reliable source has said something. Truth is not the ability to verify, it has no ability in it - it's an assertion, an ipsa dixit. In the scheme of what editors are doing, it makes sense that we first require them to come to agreement that a reliable source has said something, and agree what that something is (no misrepresentation or mistake because, we know the truth). This is the humility required of us -- we must first take the source on its own terms, even when (especially when) we disagree with it because we know the truth, because in most (all) cases we don't in fact know the truth, and we should in any case assume we and our readers do not, when first approaching the source. Moreover, in practice, and by the dictates of this policy, one editor cannot convince another editor that they have the truth (don't tell me the truth, that's irrelevant, convince me with evidence). Only then can editors proceed to agree on correct representation of the source, contextual reliability, relevance to the topic, POV and other considerations for putting it in an article. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:30, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
This is all doubtless the case, more or less, but "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability not truth" doesn't even begin to express it. (Any attempt to glibly summarize all this without mentioning the key concept "reliable sources" simply must be wrong. As must anything that implies that there is a single threshold - necessary/sufficient condition - for inclusion.)--Kotniski (talk) 08:42, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
Stepping back from philosophy: otherwise reliable sources can be mistaken (not merely misread) - they are then unreliable on that point; but we show this by verifying that the consensus of otherwise reliable sources disagrees; in Chopin's case, adding that he was a French citizen by birth, with a note citing the books that say so. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:45, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Quite right. We don't know, who his father truly is, only his mother could know (and she might not), but, don't despair, we can report what reliable sources have said. Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
That presupposes we know which sources are reliable on this point. That, unfortunately, is something else we don't truly know. (Remember: we didn't have a source that said directly that he was a French citizen from birth.) This whole idea that we reduce a subjective judgement to an objective one using the magic formula "reliable sources" is what I mean by philosophical dishonesty - we're actually replacing one subjective judgement with another, but we pretend otherwise when we describe what we are doing as "verification".--Kotniski (talk) 19:47, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Question: why doesn't WP:REDFLAG cover the Chopin-type case? --FormerIP (talk) 20:30, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
It probably should, though as it's currently worded it fails to make clear that it would cover that sort of case - and we were talking about the lead of the policy, which ought to be consistent with the policy (the fact that important exceptions are described, somewhere a long way down the page, is no excuse for making an oversimplification in the lead).--Kotniski (talk) 06:15, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Oh, you want to discuss "reliable sources." That's different talk page. See instructions, at the top of this page.Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:02, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Is that directed at me? You might want to clarify, but REDFLAG is a provision of WP:V, not WP:RS. --FormerIP (talk) 21:33, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
No. Sorry, I was responding to the one above you, but I did not want to cut in.Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

A flaw in WP:SPS

Latest comment: 13 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

The following chain is misused too often:

  • Post something on your webpage - say, name, birthdate, birthplace, etc., which disagrees with (reliable) sources.
  • Change this information on wikipedia, saying "error correction" per personal webpage.
  • After a while, this is picked up by the echo. Done.

WP:SPS does not prevent this, only otherwise - if the 5 criteria are met (and they are), the procedure is fine. Materialscientist (talk) 04:16, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

What do you suggest we do about it?--Kotniski (talk) 06:10, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Discuss and update the policy page, limiting the use of information from the personal web pages which contradicts reliable sources. Materialscientist (talk) 06:14, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Um... When you say "Post something on your personal webpage", who are you talking about? It matters. The point of WP:SPS is that a self-published source (such as a personal website) is a reliable source for statements about the author of that self-published source, but is not reliable for statements about other people.
So... it is important to ask who the "you" in your scenario is. Let's say that a notable politician is the subject of a Wikipedia article. That politician looks at the article and notes that we have his birthday wrong. So he tries to correct the information. We respond by saying... "Sorry, but the sources say you were born on the date given, and by our rules we have to follow the sources." So he goes to his personal webpage and posts the correct date. His personal webpage is considered a reliable source for information about himself. So, we now have a disagreement among reliable sources, and we must weigh the relative reliability of the sources (see WP:DUE). This is not a "misuse" of our rules... it is an acceptable way for someone to try to correct misinformation about themselves and set the record straight.
Now, let's change the scenario... Joe Blow is working on the article about the politician. Joe Blow thinks that the article has the politician's birthday wrong, and tries to "correct" it. We respond by saying "Sorry, but the sources say that the politician was born on the date given, and we must follow the sources". So, Joe goes off to his personal website and posts what he thinks is the correct date. In this case, we don't care what Joe posts on his website. Joe's personal website is not considered a reliable source for information about the politician (unless Joe is an acknowledged published expert, writing in his field of expertise). If Joe is just some random guy then his opinions carry no weight. So... if Joe comes back and tries to change the article, citing his website... we would appropriately challenge his change. Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Allowing for economics in verifiability

Latest comment: 13 years ago5 comments5 people in discussion

This is a genuine concern affecting the academic community at the moment, so I thought it should be considered on Wikipedia also. Because of the cost of running peer-reviews and especially formally publishing material, it has been observed (in the Times Higher Education Supplement, and other sources) that publishers are simply refusing to review material for reasons unconnected with veracity, simply because it is not profitable for them to do so. As a result, some fields have been forced to change their expectations: for example, academics in English were generally expected to write and publish a book, but this is now becoming an unreasonable expectation because publishers will not publish an academic book that is likely to only sell a few copies, regardless of its quality (also from THES). The fact that Wikipedia benefits from the fact-checking services of these publishers without compensating them and while, in fact, competing with them has been another concern.

Do we need to consider different paths to verifiability that are not so affected by economic and political concerns? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyphz (talk • contribs) 18:38, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Because Wikipedia is written by non-experts, "verifiability" on Wikipedia means--and can only mean--"able to be checked against reliable, published sources". Academic sources are, for many topics, the most reliable ones we have. We rely on academic publishers being willing to publish high-quality research. If they are unwilling to publish material, then we must conclude that it is unreliable.

    Wikipedia does not compete against academic publishers. We aim to provide a neutral summary of human knowledge on a given topic, but a summary written by anonymous non-expert volunteers does not in any way compete with a reliable academic source.

    It is unfortunately true that money has an impact. Before science can be a quest for knowledge, it must first be a quest for funding, and the only way to make a small fortune in academic publishing is to start with a large one. But Wikipedia is not to blame. Even if it weren't for Wikipedia the internet would have had a massive impact on academic publishing.

    The future for academics wishing to publish important research involves university websites rather than heaps of dead trees, and Wikipedia's policies already reflect this truth.—S Marshall T/C 09:26, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

  • Re "Because of the cost of running peer-reviews and especially formally publishing material, it has been observed (in the Times Higher Education Supplement, and other sources) that publishers are simply refusing to review material for reasons unconnected with veracity, simply because it is not profitable for them to do so." - Are you referring to page charges made to authors? If so, these charges existed long before there was Wikipedia. Or are you referring to rejection because journal editors don't feel material is worth peer-review because there would not be enough interest in a particular article if it were published? If your point is that journals reject material because the information would be put in Wikipedia, then wouldn't that be a reason for the journals not to publish any material, not just reject some material?
Re "Do we need to consider different paths to verifiability that are not so affected by economic and political concerns?" - I don't see what those paths could be. What do you have in mind? --Bob K31416 (talk) 17:25, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
I question whether we are "competing with" scholarly publishers. It often seems to me that we are their single most effective advertising service. Not only do Wikipedia's editors buy books and journal articles for the purpose of writing articles, we also cheerfully provide convenient links to the publisher's paywalls. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)
We have a small overlap, where we could be seen as a competition to academic publishers, that is academic encyclopedias. Though Wikipedia is not a academic encyclopedia as such nor possess a comparable reputation or quality control, it nevertheless is increasingly covering their topics as well (sometimes in more detail even) but with a slightly different slant. However the real comptetition in this area probably comes from academic wikis (scholarpedia, citizendum, various scholarly or science wikis) and from (free) online journals, ebooks and electronic lecture notes where publication, editorial processess and (peer) reviews are facilitated by scholars without the involvement of traditional publishers.
But whatever the future will bring there, WP will simply use the best/reasonable reliable the academic/science community has to offer, no matter whether it is published through traditional publisher or other venues.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:38, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Just going back to the original question, questions like this come up often on WP:RSN. Basically this question is probably more suitable there. It is clear that different fields have different types of publications, and some are unfortunately pretty poor. In an extreme case it might even be argued that Wikipedia should not cover a certain subject because the sourcing just is not good enough. This seems to normally happen with things like pop culture and hobbies, like maybe dog breeding, and generally there are constant debates about finding the right approach on WP. Then we have other controversial cases where respected people are publishing complex stuff outside the older styles of peer review system, for example on web pages, or using "crowd sourcing" of some type. This is clearly going to happen more and more, and we simply can not give one answer which covers all fields and possibilities. But I think the general rules are like this:-

  • Try to identify and learn about what publications exist for a field, and who are the right types of qualified experts whose opinions are the ones that define the field. There should be some which are relatively uncontroversially respected. Sometimes it might just help to see who newspapers cite and talk to when they have a question. (In the end, if there are no uncontroversial publications of experts we have a problem to cover the field at all.)
  • If many of the publications are of un-traditional form, for example web-pages, you should try to get evidence that shows that those particular webpages or whatever are cited by and treated seriously by, the above mentioned recognized experts and publications. This is how I understand the spirit of WP:SPS.
  • The basic idea is to make sure that our sources "have a verifiable reputation for fact checking".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:54, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Has Verifiability become the new Truth?

Latest comment: 13 years ago69 comments12 people in discussion

I think in some editors mind's Verifiability is truth and as a result anything presented on the talk page challenging that truth gets labeled as OR regardless of how reliable it is.--BruceGrubb (talk) 18:55, 29 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, and particularly for some science articles that go into the techinical details this can be a real problem. This is why I wrote up WP:ESCA some time ago. Count Iblis (talk) 00:46, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Bruce... perhaps you are not aware that OR is allowed to be discussed and explored on talk pages (especially if that discussion is relevant to the process of editing the article)... so it does not matter if something that is being presented on the talk page gets labeled as OR. WP:NOR applies to what is written in the article, it does not apply to what we discuss on the talk page. This is true for all of our content polices - in fact its why they are called content policies (they apply to the content of articles). Talk pages are governed by our behavioral policies, not our content policies. So, as long as we don't violate a behavioral policy, we can discuss just about anything on a talk page... even things that a content policy says should not be added to an article (as another example, there is nothing wrong with discussing unverifiable information on a talk page if need be... even though that unverifiable information should not be added to the article). Blueboar (talk) 01:36, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
I point you to the mess that started as Talk:Weston_Price/Archive_1#Weston_Price_and_Stephen_Barrett_in_their_own_words became Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_79#Is_a_paper_.28possible_blog.29_by_a_psychiatrist_valid_regarding_old_claims_regarding_dentistry.3F and degenerated into the barrel of utter insanity that was Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents/Problem_on_BLP_noticeboard and Talk:Conspiracy_theory#The_first_recorded_use_of_the_phrase_.22conspiracy_theory.22_dates_from_1909.3F_WRONG.21 as example of editors that do NOT understand this.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:04, 30 September 2011 (UTC)


Yes, there is a belief that wp:verifiability is truth, and that the purpose of Wikipedia is to report what reliable sources say, without concern for correctness.  I would note that this is a fringe theory for which no reliable source exists to support the view.  True believers in WP:V do not accept discussions of inaccuracy, unless a reliable source can be found that so says.  Unscintillating (talk) 02:13, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Here's an excerpt from Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth by Simson L. Garfinkel, Technology Review, MIT, November/December 2008
"So how do the Wikipedians decide what's true and what's not? On what is their epistemology based?
Unlike the laws of mathematics or science, wikitruth isn't based on principles such as consistency or observa bility. It's not even based on common sense or firsthand experience. Wikipedia has evolved a radically different set of epistemological standards--standards that aren't especially surprising given that the site is rooted in a Web-based community, but that should concern those of us who are interested in traditional notions of truth and accuracy. On Wikipedia, objective truth isn't all that important, actually. What makes a fact or statement fit for inclusion is that it appeared in some other publication--ideally, one that is in English and is available free online. "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth," states Wikipedia's official policy on the subject."
At the end of the above excerpt, please note what its author has concluded from "verifiabiity, not truth", i.e. "On Wikipedia, objective truth isn't all that important". BTW note the wikilinks I gave above for the author etc. --Bob K31416 (talk) 03:01, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Anyone who has watched James Burke's The Day the Universe Changed (especially the episode "Worlds Without End") knows there is no "objective" truth--not even in the hard sciences. The concept of an "objective" truth is a Newtonian view of how the universe worked and has been replaced by the relativity of Einstein and the probably of Mach.--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:10, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Garfinkel's critique needs to be tweaked. Shame he was writing on a wiki. "Wiki truth" is based on "consistency or observability". We look at what can be consistently observed in reliable published sources. That's verifiability. We practice our "science", our pursuit, dare I say, of the truth, at least one step removed so to speak, because we aim to be an accurate tertiary source, not researchers in any normal sense of the term.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:55, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
That's quite a good summary but rather idealistic - in many cases it is far from clear whether something is "consistently" observed in sources, or whether those sources are "reliable" (or even "published"). In making judgments on those questions, our desire to be accurate does (or at least should, and in practice probably normally does) lead us to think beyond just what words we can find on what page.--Kotniski (talk) 09:15, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Of course it is far from clear. And our "tertiary researchers" are therefore constantly debating these things, as they should be, and policy writing can not or should not seek to stop this. This is what we want them to debate, as per our other content policies. But what WP:V is about is that we do not want editors debating as if conducting primary research concerning what is true, only about what is true about what is published (or otherwise verifiable) about what is true.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:51, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Doesn't "or otherwise verifiable" open the door to conducting primary research? (I'm not saying it shouldn't; just that I don't think we've succeeded in properly formulating this principle yet, assuming there is one to formulate.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:37, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
I think this has been discussed many times, and I think common sense tells us how to handle the definition of limits between something needing sourcing because it is original, and something which does not. I'm sure we've all seen people edit war based on a demand for proof of how the English language should be written. I do not think WP:V needs to be written in such a way that it implies that things like punctuation or word choice decisions can or should be tagged for sourcing. But even those things are verifiable in the end, one way or the other, so the principle holds always, even if demands for footnotes to explain the meaning of every word would not be justified.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:13, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Not if we retain NOR. And we do engage in original research in determining what to include and how to include it, but we do not use our OR in article space. So we think beyond what is on the page, and we discuss that, and we make judgments about how to phrase things so as to not include our conclusions or ideas in aritcle space, but rather to accurately reflect (as best we can) what the best sources (as far as we can determine) say (to the best of our ability to read them). Idealistic in this regard is a good thing--we set a high bar and we will pretty often fail to reach it, but the end results are better than setting a lower bar. Much like what Merleau-Ponty wrote about phenomenological reduction being both desirable and ultimately impossible, the goal sets a good course even if we do not actually reach it. Andrew Lancaster puts it very well in noting that we are about what true in terms of representing what others have determined the truth in a given context to be. I don't know that we'll ever be able to formulate it to everyone's satisfaction, and leaving wiggle room is probably a good idea--we could try to have a rule for every case, but then we need a rule to determine which rules apply, and so on, infinitely trying to refine rules instead of writing articles. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:25, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Well, we could start by removing the first sentence of this policy (are people still discussing that? has anyone come up with a good alternative yet?), which implies something quite different from what you've just eloquently described.--Kotniski (talk) 13:25, 30 September 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for the compliment. I don't think, myself, that removing the first line outright would help, and would likely cause harm overall--I really like the first line in the lede the way it is. But I do think that Blueboar's proposal as it has been worked out is a reasonable compromise given the problems that others have with it, and I look forward to seeing what the community's reaction to it will be. Once that's done, if anyone is interested, I would be happy to work in a group to hash out an essay on how V, NPOV and NOR intersect with examples on what is considered reasonable and good practice in applying same. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:30, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

@Kotniski, I think I came up with a good alternative--take what we have and streamline it while getting rid of the whole "not truth" headache:

The threshold for the inclusion of information in Wikipedia mainspace (articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions) without exception is verifiability— ie being attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. This requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material.(See the discussion about sources in WP:NOR that describes summarizing materials in your own words, leaving nothing implied that goes beyond the sources.) For how to write citations, see Citing sources. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.

This is the guts of what we currently have but restructured so that you don't have the kind of wonky misinterpretations that occurred over on Talk:Conspiracy_theory#The_first_recorded_use_of_the_phrase_.22conspiracy_theory.22_dates_from_1909.3F_WRONG.21--BruceGrubb (talk) 05:41, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

Certainly seems an improvement over the present start to the policy, though I still don't like "the threshold" (which implies a single necessary, and hence sufficient, condition), nor do I like the wikijargon "mainspace" so early on. Then I think the rest of the paragraph gets a bit breathless, trying to mention everything without a proper logical structure. But if it's a choice between this and the present version, I'd go for this. (Fundamentally "verifiability" is still the wrong word if we mean specifically attributability; and this page should still be deforked by merger at least with WP:NOR.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:51, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Hm, please do both of you keep in mind that in the various strawpolls and rfcs that have been held for the last several months here and elsewhere, about half the editors have wanted to keep the not truth "headache". Personally, I think the first line is neigh perfect rhetorically, but I'm not going to let my individual vision of the perfect interfere with community's desire for some changes, so I will oppose any compromise that removes "not truth" from a prominent position in the policy. Moving it down, as per Blueboar's proposal, is not desirable, but that, coupled with other changes intended to clarify what "not truth" means, seems a reasonable compromise to me. 12:22, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Why not just say what "not truth" means, without using those words? (Because the words don't really mean what we are using them to mean - there's little point in introducing terms of art purely for the purpose of saying that they mean something quite other than you would expect them to. Same applies to "verifiability".)--Kotniski (talk) 12:52, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Folks... could we please stop talking about "not truth" in quotes as if it were a term of art (or even a concept) that is discussed in the policy and needs to be defined... the policy is discussing the term (concept) "truth" (in its common everyday meaning)... not the term "not truth"... and says that truth is not a threshold for inclusion. The phrasing may be confusing, but what is clearly intended is: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is Verifiability - Truth is not the threshold for inclusion." Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Blueboar I think the position you are criticising deserves a bit more credit. Verifiability is one type of truth, a truth about what can be verified, and that is still the case. The word "truth" in the first sentence has qualifiers which are "understood". It is personal beliefs about what is true concerning the subjects of Wikipedia articles which is intended, right? If the sentence was expanded out to distinguish the two types of truth being distinguished, it would look more visually cumbersome.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:58, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
If that really is the intention, then it's doubly wrong (or triply, or something - I can't keep track of the number of things that are wrong with that sentence) - anything that implies that there is one simple "threshold for inclusion" in Wikipedia is just wrong. And to pick "truth" out of all the things that it is not - if "truth" is to have its ordinary everyday meaning (as opposed to being some unattainable philosophical ideal) - is quite bizarre, since for the most part we would exclude something that appears not to be true; and if you're also claiming that "verifiable" has its ordinary everyday meaning, then that's wrong as well, since we certainly don't insist that people be able to verify the information (by doing experiments or their own synthesis of primary sources or whatever). We have to face up to the fact that these are terms of art; they are bad choices as terms of art; and we don't even need terms of art here (except for "reliable published sources", I guess). And there is plenty more wrong with the sentence. And the whole policy is a fork of (OK, I said that already). --Kotniski (talk) 17:54, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree with Blueboar. I think it is important to make clear in this and related core content policies that WP does not claim that it contains the truth and that editors should not aruge over what is thr truth, as this is a waste of time. My understanding of "threshold" is that it is the basic or minimum. Not the only requirement or criteria for inclustion, just the starting point. And it does not make sense except in contrast to the "not truth" because of what we are verifying. We are verifying that others believe x to be true and the point is that this is quite different from actually saying that it is true. I suspect that the concern motivating this thread (V=T) is that many users interpret V simply to mean that one can find reliabl sources. This completely avoids the questions, hat is the value or use of these sources? For those editors who just skim V and go diretly to RS, many mistakenly believe that enough RS is "like the truth" or even "the truth." Reliable sources are a means of establishing that X really is a view that many hold. But the point is that what we mean by "verifiable" is that some pople believe x to be true. Anyone who comprehends this sentece cannot mistake it for saying it is the truth. Is this the only criteria for inclusion? No, weight thenb becomes a major question, obviously, but hey, one step at a time. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:25, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
Ack, Blueboar's statement is confounded by multiple meanings, for example, some editors will be looking at Blueboar's sentence and seeing:
  • The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is Verifiability - TruthTM is not the threshold for inclusion.
which is close to the reading of:
  • The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is Verifiability - "Truth" is not the threshold for inclusion.


True believers will be looking at that sentence and seeing:
  • The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is Verifiability - Truth is not the threshold for inclusion and we don't allow it to be a consideration for inclusion, only verifiability matters.
If there are those here claiming to be high priests with the inner knowledge of what the first sentence means, they need to broaden their theory so that it explains disparate viewpoints, and so that we can build consensus.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:07, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
You miss the point of my request. It was a plea to stop placing the two word phrase not truth in quotes. The two word phrase not truth (when placed in quotes) can be confused with the one word term untruth... and the point I was making is that the current policy says nothing about untruth. That omission is something I have tried to fix in my proposal. I think it is a flaw... but we should not imply that the policy currently discusses something that it doesn't. That's all I was asking. Blueboar (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)
I won't deny that I am missing the point, meanwhile the point I am taking is that your request is ambiguous.  We need WP:V reform because "untruth" is going into the encyclopedia.  The phrase "not truth" is a figure of speech.  Figure of speech says, "A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning...clarity may also suffer from their use, as any figure of speech introduces an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation.  I hope this doesn't sound harsh, but you have to agree that there is still a huge gap in our ability to build encyclopedia-wide consensus, so there may be more here than just a simple disagreement or simple misunderstanding.  Unscintillating (talk) 05:27, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Blueboar's comments over at Wikipedia_talk:These_are_not_original_research#Accuracy_conflict shows the kind of misunderstanding we have regarding Verifiability and OR:

"If reliable sources say that the phrase was first used in 1980, and you (a Wikipedia editor) discover that the phrase was used before the date ... it certainly is OR to premiere your discovery in an article." (Blueboar)

Take a look at what OR actually states: "The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists."

Source A presents as a fact that a phrase existed no earlier then 1920. Source B from 1910 demonstrates the fact that the phrase did indeed exist before 1920. But Blueboar is saying presenting the Verifiable 1910 source (ie a source that exists) is OR--HOW does THAT make any sense?!?

Discovery is NOT OR--if it was then looking for any source meeting Verifiability would be OR and that is just plain nuts. This is the same argument that made the Jesus myth theory a two year exercise in head banging and making the Weston Price article a similar exercise in frustration.

Here is an example of what we are actually dealing with:

"The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates back to a history article from 1909." was made in a BBC Two article (Plots, paranoia and blame) written by Senior lecturer in American Studies, University of Manchester. RS by any reasonable standard.

"The fact, however, which makes the conspiracy theory completely illogical is that the political leaders in the slave states were not united in support of the southwest- ward movement, nor those in the free states against it." (Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University pg 31 again RS by any reasonable standard.

"I must content myself with saying that the class conspiracy theory of economic development may generally be considered false,..." (The Economic review: Volume 1 Christian Social Union (Great Britain) Oxford University Branch 1891 Page 540) also RS by any reasonable standard.

The kicker to all this was in his earlier ABC-CLIO vetted book Knight stated on page 17 regarding conspiracy theory: The phrase first entered the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary in 1997. (...) However, the entry suggests that the first recorded usage of the phrase was in an article in the American Historical Review in 1909." As good as BBC Two is I think we can all agree that is is not on the same academic quality level as ABC-CLIO. Also the "The first episode of The Conspiracy Files: How Diana Died was broadcast on Sunday, 10 December 2006 at 2100 GMT on BBC Two." that ends the BBC Two article makes one wonder if it was a reaction piece.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Bruce, you are focusing on what OR "is not." The policy page like everything else here has gone through many changes; it used to be clearer about what OR is but it is still clear to me reading the entire page that OR is forwarding one's own views in WP.
Editors will go around and around over how to use the word "fact" which is certainly a term of art - when Comte proposed that science is about facts he also made it clear that facts do not exist without theory. There are still serious debates among scientists and philosophers and sociologists of science as to what a "fact" is but they all distinguish "facts" from "the truth."
Moreover, "not truth" is not a figure of speech. The problem &ndahs; meaning, the source of much confusion and endless pointlss debate – is that "not truth" is shorthand. It is shorthand for "neither truth nor falsehood." The point is that the concept of truth depends on the concept of falsehood; although opposites, this pair of words go together because one only makes sense in relation to the other. When we say Wikipedia is about verifiable views, not truth, the full sentence "Whether or not we include something in Wikipedia depends on whether or not we can verify that it is a significant view, not on whether it is true or false" Editors who know little about science and philosophy often think that when we say WP is not about truth, we imply that it is therefore about falsehood. They are mistaking a categorical claim (it is not about "true versus false") for an empirical or descriptive claim ("That's not true!!"). Anyone reading a policy or principle should expect categorical claims rather than empirical ones. Alas, many of our readers do not understand the distinction, and this being a Wikipedia, these readers are also editors. It is the great paradox of Wikipedia, that it is so often the people who need to read more encyclopedia articles instead try writing them. Be that as it may, as long as we explain that whether or not we include something in Wikipedia depends on whether or not we can verify that it is a significant view, not on whether it is true or false" and that any shorter phrase, or slogan, is simply shorthand for this longer proposition, we would avoid a lot of this confusion. Slrubenstein | Talk 06:46, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
This goes to my contention of Verifiability vs believed truth. The statement 'Knight's BBC Two claim of "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates back to a history article from 1909." is wrong because the phrase "conspiracy theory" occurs on page 31 in the 1906 book Westward extension, 1841-185 edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University , on page Page 540 of 1891 The Economic review: Volume 1 Oxford University Branch article, and on Page 67 of the The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890' is a Verifiable truth. You can go to your local library and Verify that statement is true by checking the three pre-1909 works provided and seeing if they do indeed contain the phrase "conspiracy theory".
Obviously doing this is in the article space is not a good idea but it is still not a believed truth but a Verifiability truth. It certainly doesn't help that WP:NOTOR confuses things a bit regarding SYN via Verifiability: "Comparing and contrasting conflicting facts and opinion is not original research, as long as any characterization of the conflict is sourced to reliable sources. If reliable references cannot be found to explain the apparent discrepancy, editors should resist the temptation to add their own explanation."
The problem is when Verifiability is viewed as truth--the 'it is verifiable therefor it is true' mindset. This results in trips to WP:RSN and other misguided endeavors to try and keep inaccurate information out of article space via the 'if it is inaccurate it does NOT meet RS ie Verifiability' route which really don't help anyone.--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:43, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
The problem is you keep making claims about the truth. Neither you nor any other editor can ever prove to me that x is the earliest recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory." All we can say is that the phrase occurs in such and such a source in 1890. Bruce, all you are talking about is providing an accurate account of a particular source and what it says. That is not the same thing as saying that any claim is "true."
As for Kinight's BBC 2 claim, well, first of all we can discuss on the talk page whether any BBC 2 show is a reliable source on historical information. I personally think that no television program, not even Richard Starkey's or Simon Schama's, are reliable sources; if they say anything of importance it is in a book or article that went through a much more rigorous review process than any TV show. But, if I lose this particular argument, there is still no point in saying that Knight's claim is "false." This would be a clear violation of original research as you are making your on synthetic claim. All we need to do is say "Knight claims that the earliest usage is in 1909" and that "Y used the phrase in 1890." We are just providing accurate accounts of what sources say. It is still not for us to make rulings on the truth.
Would we keep a source like BBC 2's show out on RS grounds? First of all, I see absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. Discussing whether or not a source is reliable is one of our jobs as WP editors!!! But in some cases we will include a view that we believe to be demonstrably wrong because right or wrong it is nevertheless a significant view. We will always have to say that "many people today believe that in Columbus' day, people thought the world was flat" because it is a significant view. They key is not to judge whether it is true or false, but rather to attribute this view properly, and to provide other views. This is our system. It works. Any editor who introduces the concept of "truth" is unnecessarily screwing with a working system. The concept creates more problems, and solves none, because so far all the problems you bring up are easily managed through the proper application of current policy. Slrubenstein | Talk 08:14, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
"All we need to do is say "Knight claims that the earliest usage is in 1909" and that "Y used the phrase in 1890." We are just providing accurate accounts of what sources say." Well this example has been labeled as SYN OR by some editors:
"Peter Knight states "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates from 1909" (ref); however, the phrase "conspiracy theory" also appears in Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University pg 31(ref) and The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890 Page 67(ref)"
Mind explaining how the above is OR and your example isn't as they are basically the SAME EXACT THING!--BruceGrubb (talk) 10:09, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
You do not understand what the word synthesis means, and I am beginning to wonder about your understanding of NPOV and NOR. In my example, I simply observe that source a says one thing, and source b says another thing. This is not a synthetic statement. It is simply following NPOV, which demands that we include all significant views (for present purposes I am assuming that both sources are reliable and both views are significant. I am using the examples you provided simply because they are the examples you introduced. Obviously were we editors working collaboratively to decide that one of the views is fringe or one of the sources unreliable, we would not include it. But you were the one who raised the question of how to deal with contradictory claims. My point is only addressing the question of what to do when we have two reliable sources each presenting significant views that are contradictory or in some way irreconcilable.) NPOV requires us to include all significant views not "despite" their being irreconcilable; on the contrary, it is because two significant views are irreconcilable that we must include both (or all if more than two). This is what makes our article not only neutral, but so informative - we strive to include all significant views. Doing just so is never in violation of NOR.
You did something more than what I did. You wrote and I quote, "the statement 'Knight's BBC Two claim of "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates back to a history article from 1909." is wrong because the phrase "conspiracy theory" occurs on page 31 in the 1906 book Westward extension, 1841-185 edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University ..." You wrote the words "is wrong because." You were not quoting another reliable source, you were forwarding you own argument based on your reading of different sources. This is "synthesis." A synthetic proposition is a proposition whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept. In your sentence, the subject refers to one source, and the predicate says it is wrong because of another source. The claim that it is wrong is not in the subject. Even if you rearranged it to say "Source A says x and source B says y" (a nominal phrase) and therefore source A is wrong (predicate) it is still a synthetic statement as long as source B does not itself say that source A is wrong.
I really do not know how you can say that you and I are saying the same thing. I am simply complying with NPOV by saying "source A says x and source B says y." I am providing all significant views in a neutral way. There is no synthetic proposition. You, however, are saying that "source A says x and source B says y therefore source A is wrong" This is the simplest, most basic version of a synthetic proposition. Since it is you who are making it, you are not writing in a neutral way and you are also violating NOR by introducing your own argument into the article.
As NOR explains, we can include synthetic propositions as long as they are themselves significant views found in a reliable source. If y="view x is wrong" (the = mans that y explicitly states) we editors of Wikipedia are not saying view x is wrong; we are simply reporting that there is a significant view in a reliable source stating that view x is wrong. This is wholly consistent with what I wrote; what I wrote is wholly consistent with NOR. What you wrote is not.
If we include a source y and y="view x is wrong" (the = mans that y explicitly states), then: "this is not truth" — we are not saying that this view is true or false, we are saying that it is significant; "this is verifiability" because we can verify that out there in the world – that is, not in my mind or your mind or any wikipedian's view – we canverify that someone important, or a large number of people, hold this view. This is the point of "not truth, verifiability." It's pretty simple. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:03, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
This should probably be discussed at WT:NOR or NORN... but I don't think we can comply with NPOV by saying "Source A says 1909 and source B says 1906" ... because in this case source B (Westward Expansion) does not actually say that the term 'conspiracy theory' was used in 1906, it simply uses the word. Westward Expansion is a primary source for claims about when the term was used. Contrasting these two sources with "A says x, and B says y" improperly compares secondary source opinion with primary source evidence. Opinion can be contrasted with counter-opinion, and evidence can be contrasted with evidence, but it is synthetic to contrast opinion with evidence. More importantly, no reliable source has noted this evidence before. Instead an editor has discovered it. To mention it in the article definitely crosses the line into OR.
However, the evidence does exist and it does "prove" that Knight (source A) is inaccurate. While it is improper to mention this "proof" in the article, it is not improper to discuss it on the article's talk page (we are allowed to discuss OR on talk pages). I think this "proof" is a very good argument for saying that we should omit Knight's opinion as inaccurate.
To relate all this to WP:V... I think this situation highlights that there is a distinction to be made between the single threshold for inclusion (verifiability), and the many thresholds for exclusion (or omission)... one of which is inaccuracy (or, if you will, truth). In other words, truth is not a consideration when determining whether something can be added, but it is a consideration when determining whether something should be omitted. I have tried to address that distinction in my proposal. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

As I have stated over at Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research many of these problems are in reality WP:NPOV issues and NOT OR ones. Slrubenstein stated "All we need to do is say "Knight claims that the earliest usage is in 1909" and that "Y used the phrase in 1890." and I asked why editors consider "Knight claims that the earliest usage is in 1909, however Y used the phrase in 1890." as OR and got nothing that addressed the issue I actually asked about.

"Sources should directly support the information as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made." (sic WP:RELIABLE and also presented with no bolding in WP:SOURCE).

"Peter Knight states "The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates from 1909"" is directly supported via Knight, Peter. "Plots, paranoia and blame". BBC News 7 December 2006

"the phrase "conspiracy theory" also appears in Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University pg 31(ref) and The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890 Page 67(ref)" statement is also directly supported by the sources presented.

By Slrubenstein's own example everything is alright with the world but we use the word however to join these two directly supported statements and everything supposedly goes pearshaped into SYN-OR land. The use of the "wrong" conjunction suddenly messes everything up?!? Does this argument really make any sense?--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:08, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


@BruceGrubb, I wrote that your 07:43, 2 October 2011 included a statement that was SYNTH and violated OR. I was clear about hat I was referring to. And I was clear about how it is SYNTH and an OR violation.
Your argument is premised on the claim that Knight is a verifiable authority on this specific matter, the date of the first usage of the phrase. I do not agree with your premise. I will explain in my reply to Blueboar.
@Blueboar, I agree with the point you make about the 1906 case. However, I was deliberately shifting to abstract language (source A says view x) to make a point about what our policy is, as this is the policy page. That is, our talk here has to be directly towards improving the policy page e.g. through clarifying it - this really is not the right place to discuss other articles.
For what it is worth, I left a lengthy comment at the article on Conspiracy Theory talk page. That article should not use Knight, not because he is wrong per se but because he is not an expert on this specific issue. "Verifiability has long meant that we verify that x holds a certain view, and that we verify that x's view matters. Perhaps the policy, as it has changed over the years, no longer makes this clearly enough. Knight has a degree in literature and is also an expert on popular culture. His own research is on the interpretation of conspiracy theories, and for this reason his is a verifiably significant view on the meaning of conspiracy theories, especially those he has analyzed. But he is not a historian or philologist, and this mans that his is not a verifiably significant view on the dating of English language usage.
As an analogy: a biologist is not a historian of science, and while she may be an expert on the current understanding and uses of evolutionary theory, her views on the history of evolutionary thought may well not stand up by the standards of academic history. An expert tennis player may not know the etymology of "tennis." For editors to apply "verifiability" appropriately and effectively (the effect being a top-notch encyclopedia) it is not enough for them to find a quote in a book, even a quote in a book by a scholar on the topic. Academe, an the study of human beings both culturally and biologically, is now so specialized that someone with a PhD in biology may not be an appropriate source for views on all things biological.
A couple of years ago James Watson, who was one of those awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine for the discovery of the structure of DNA, made a comment about the innate intelligence of some group (I forget, women or blacks). Needless to say, some people thought that this was a significant scientific view to be included in the article on race and intelligence. The consensus was not to include it. Watson got the Nobel Prise because he trained in molecular biology and spent years researching the structure of DNA. That makes him an expert on the structure of DNA (and of course whatever else he has conducted scientific research on). Just because he made a comment on blacks and intelligence does not mean that he actually did research. His statement was a personal opinion and didn't rise to our standards. Hey, his Nobel Prize is in physiology and medicine - it does not mean he is an expert on all fields of medicine!!
We really need to make clear to users that sometimes, you actually need to know more than the title of the book or the academic title, to verify that the book or person in question is a verifiably significant view. All I had to do was go to Knight's website to see that his research is not on the history of the concept or phrase "conspiracy theory" so I would not use his book as a reliable source for the first recorded use. Academic books and articles typically make a range of claims some of which are central to the author's argument and based on considerable research and others of which are practically "throw away" lines. Editors need to be able to recognize these distinctions to use sources properly. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:31, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
BruceGrubb should know how academic research works, and how someone with a degree in x, or the editor of a volume on x, really has much narrower expertise. And if we want to write a great encyclopedia, verifiability must mean verifying not only that someone has a view, but that their view matters. Knight's views on the cultural meanings of conspiracy theories matter, but his views on the history of the English language do not. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:33, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
What is surprising is that instead of arguing that we have no definitive source on the first usage of the term (unless the OED provides it), BruceGrubb wants to insert Original Research into Wikipedia. Bruce, the reason we have an NOR policy is precisely because it is inevitable that some WP editors will want to put original research into wikipedia. Aren't the reasons obvious? First, in the whole wide world of knowledge, most things actually have NOT been the object of good research. We need a lot more original research! Second, many Wikipedian's are good researchers and thus tempted to do original research. It is because people will want to do it that it is proscribed; there is no need for a proscription against something no one wants to do. But our NOR policy is about a simple commitment: that all that OR that needs to be done should be done through other venues. If you want to do original research you are welcome to do it, you just cannot use Wikipedia as a venue for self-publication. WP is for publishing established research. It is as simple as that. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:38, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

@Slrubinstein, Ironically you claim to know the truth that "not truth" is not a figure of speech.  Your belief system does not make this true or correct or accurate.  Nor does my opinion have standing as being "correct" given that you/others disagree.  What we have is evidence, which I hope you will consider.  To repeat, [Figure of speech] says, "A figure of speech is the use of a word or words diverging from its usual meaning".

Some editors report a "jolt" from reading the first sentence of WP:V.  This jolt does not come from the literal reading of the words, the jolt comes from seeing a meaning diverging from the usual meaning.  The jolt is the contrast between an expectation that an encyclopedia should be truthful to the extent possible, with (what can be read as) a stark denial that Wikipedia is intended to strive for truth.  This is the key element that makes "not truth" a figure of speech.  But a figure of speech also has a literal meaning.  Continuing to map this out, we find that the literal meaning is itself multiply ambiguous.  (1) Some readers see the words "not truth" and read it as "not TruthTM", meaning that the sentence is targeted toward blocking crackpot theories from being discussed.  (2) Other readers see "verifiability, without regard to truth or the lack of truth" as a staging point from which they can use WP:IAR to backdoor truth into the encyclopedia.  (3) Yet other readers take the literal reading on its face value that truth is not a consideration at Wikipedia.  This last, IMO, is a destructive view that has been propogated into other policies by removing discussion of truth or accuracy therein.  Unscintillating (talk) 16:25, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Unscintillating, if figure of speech means just what you say, then I can only conclude that what "truth" usually means to you and what it usually means to me are quite different things. Be that as it may, I never claimed "to know the truth that "not truth" is not a figure of speech. " I have only claimed to have an internally consistent understanding of Wikipedia policy that has matched my experience editing here over the past ten years. I am not surprised that readers of WP who wish to edit Wikipedia feel "a jolt" when they read our policies. I think that they would feel a jolt if they stood graduate level courses on philosophy or in the sciences, where such bracketing of truth claims is common (and in the sciences, standard). I also think that they would feel a jolt if they ever tried to write a scholarly article for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal. Most people consume information without really examining what they mean by knowledge, and most people read newspaper accounts of scholarly research or encyclopedia articles, without having any comprehension of the work that produced the knowledge and researchers' own understandings of their work. This sometimes has some really contentious consequences, when you see people in the US and many other parts of the world who do not believe in evolution or global warming, or people who believe in it but don't really understand how it happens - dangerous controversies when these same people vote for those who make policy. Other times, it is utterly inconsequential. But here at Wikipedia we want to manage an encyclopedia that anyone, including people who do not have a solid grasp of the sciences or humanities, and people who have not gone through the long training usually required to, say, write an encyclopedia article. And that requires policies that work. It is not at all surprising that anyone who has never written an encyclopedia article would feel a jolt, or that people who are used to writing peer-reviewed journal articles and have a good grasp of the conventions of academic writing might also feel a jolt when they have to collaborate with people who have no knowledge at all about these conventions. Wikipedia is still a relatively new idea. It certainly is unique. One thing a scientist knows when encountering something new is to be open-minded and expect something new. Why would people who arrive at Wikipedia fir the first time, and have no experience in writing wikipedia articles not expect new groundrules? Frankly, this is what gives me a jolt. If I saw you playing a game I had never played and I asked if I could join in, I would expect the rules to be different from football, baseball, or basketball. That anyone might come here thinking that they might not have to learn entirely new groundrules really surprises and baffles me. This is a very particular project. Whatever rules you use when you hang out at a coffee shop or pub or at home with guests, talking about whatever you believe about God or whether people should be forced to go to school or why are some people gay — why on earth would anyone expect that the same rules apply here? So strange. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes. Citation to reliable references (verifiability) is not an ordinary element of writing, nor is it an ordinary element of truth. Moreover, it requires some effort, not generally expected of people (even those people who know the truth). Yet, we require it. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2011 (UTC)


The problem here is as Slrubenstein shown with his "Knight is a lecturer in American Studies and his expertise is literature and popular culture. His expertise is not history or philology." comment is that editors are not always clear what a expertise in certain field entails. Expertise in literature and popular culture would logically include the history of these two fields (ie when a word became popular or first appeared). By Slrubenstein's logic only historians can write reliable histories--the reality is most histories of fields are written by non historians.
By Slrubenstein's "logic" Pallasch, Thomas J. DDS; MS, and Michael J. Wahl, DDS (2000) "The Focal Infection Theory: Appraisal and Reappraisal", Journal of the California Dental Association is totally unreliable for the history of focal infection theory because Pallasch is NOT a historian. That is just plain nuts.--BruceGrubb (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2011 (UTC)
First, it is you who has been insisting that Knight's statement about the history of the phrase is unreliable. So, which is it: is Knight right or is he wrong? If he is wrong, you are just proving my point. What is nuts is that you will say Knight is wrong then you will say he is right, whichever one at the time you think will somehow justify your desire to use WP as a venue for self-publishing your original research.
Second, please do not put words into my moth. Please do not fabricate fictions. Pallasch and Wahl make claims about a theory. is their account of the history good history? I have no way of knowing. If someone found evidence that they were wrong, as you found regarding Knight, I would know. Or, if a real historian wrote a critique of their work, or presented a contrasting history, I would know. I await empirical evidence. Then I apply the policies in a reasonable fashion. But at this point it is clear that you just don't like WP policies. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:33, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Random break 1

To put it as blunt as possible--is it verifiable that the phrase "conspiracy theory" appeared before 1909--yes or no? We don't want to hear anything else but if the statement "the phrase "conspiracy theory" appeared before 1909" is verifiable. Yes or no.--BruceGrubb (talk) 03:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
At the risk of jumping into the middle of this conversation, I think the issue is that we can agree on the Discussion page, based on the evidence and as per WP:Inaccuracy, that there is a strong likelihood that "conspiracy theory" appeared before 1909, but we can't make this statement on the Article page because we have no source for such a statement, i.e., the statement is not wp:verifiable.  Unscintillating (talk) 14:56, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
As I understand the issue as described, we do have a source for such a statement, namely the very source that uses the phrase before 1909. Sometimes (and this is yet another thing wrong with the opening statement of the policy) we can make statements not because the statements themselves have appeared in a reliable published source, but simply because we can see they're true by inspection of a reliable source (we do this every time we say "X has written Y" with a citation to X). --Kotniski (talk) 18:45, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Eh, yes, we expect editors to be able to read.  You've reminded me of something I wrote at Pandora Reef, "The name Pandora Reef dates back to at least 1925.[1]".  This edit may contradict my previous post here.  Comments?  Unscintillating (talk) 19:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
If so, then I firmly believe that your edit was right, and your previous post (and, once again, the first sentence of the policy) has it wrong.--Kotniski (talk) 19:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
This all goes back to how OR itself is defined: "The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published source exists."
Source A presents as a fact that a phrase existed no earlier then 1920. Source B from 1910 demonstrates the fact that the phrase did indeed exist before 1920.
Regarding the Pandora Reef example above I popped "Pandora Reef" (with quotes) into Google books and found these pre-1925 references to it:
"Pandora reef: 5 1/2 miles West of Fly islet, is a dangerous coral reef, nearly three-quarters of a mile long east and west, and a quarter of a mile broad." (1920) Australia Pilot United States. Hydrographic Office Page 414
"Pandora reef, 5 1/2 miles West of Fly islet, is a dangerous coral reef, nearly three-quarters of a mile long east and west, and a quarter of a mile broad." (1889) Australia directory, Volume 2 Great Britain. Hydrographic Dept pg 300--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:20, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Unscintillating, I think your edit at Pandora reef was fine, and I would not object to it being changed to say "at least" 1889 based on the source that Bruce Grubb presented above. But this is not a parallel example to the one from the Conspiracy Theory article, where the issue is SYNTH. There's no SYNTH in your example. We do have primary sources that Bruce Grubb presented that establish clearly that the term was used prior to 1909, there's no debate about that and that's why we removed the date from the article. We may put it back, but we have to figure out how to do that without violating OR, and Hans Adler made a good suggestion as to how to approach it. Or we could simple use a statement similar in structure like "the term was in use as early as X", but I personally find that less interesting since the connotations associated with the term have changed over time. So I don't see a V issue in regard to the discussion Bruce Grubb is presenting as a problem. Indeed, given that the matter was settled in a few days, I don't see much of an issue at all, this largely seems to be a tempest in a teapot.

I think the fundamental problem in these discussions is that Bruce Grubb fails to grasp the essence of SYNTH. For example, he said "Actually, per WP:NOTOR (comparing and contrasting conflicting facts and opinion is not original research, as long as any characterization of the conflict is sourced to reliable sources) the second WOULD be allowable but only if it was done like this: Peter David states 'The first recorded use of the phrase 'conspiracy theory' dates from 1909' (ref); however, the phrase 'conspiracy theory' also appears in Garrison, George Pierce (1906) Westward extension, 1841-1850 Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart LLD Professor in history in Harvard University pg 31(ref) and The American: a national journal: Volumes 19-20 May 10, 1890 Page 67(ref)." Leaving aside the NOTOR is an essay rather than policy, that kind of phrasing, strictly speaking and in my opinion, violates SYNTH, in that the juxtaposition makes an implicit judgement of David's work and is based on Bruce Grubb's research into primary sources, and both are things NOR enjoins us not to do. There have been extensive discussions of this issue at the Conspiracy Theory article, and at the talk page for WP:NOTOR following Bruce Grubb's edits of that page, in case any one is interested. For what it's worth. But I do think it's pretty clear that the issue has nothing to do really with V. --Nuujinn (talk) 22:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

When NOTOR talks about "as long as any characterization of the conflict is sourced to reliable sources" it is talking about something like this:
  • "As Joe Expert notes: Peter David says the first use of the phrase appears in 1909, however the phrase appeared in Westward Expansion which was published in 1906.<cite Joe Expert noting both facts together>"
In this example, we are merely reporting a comparison that Joe Expert made... Joe Expert discovered the 1906 date and uses it to correct the 1909 date ... not a Wikipedia editor. The comparison does not originate on Wikipedia, thus it is not OR for us to note that Joe made it... but, without a source like Joe acting as an intermediary between us and the facts, the comparison is WP:SYNTH, and thus it is OR. Blueboar (talk) 23:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I think that is correct, and I think if we had just "Joe Expert says the first use of the term appeared in 1705", we could contrast these views by saying something like "The date of the first use of the term is variously given as 1909 and 1705", citing both sources. But unfortunately, we have no such sources. What we do have are the primary sources uncovered by Bruce Grubb, and we have used those to verify that David's assertion is incorrect, and removed the inaccuracy. Would that that were all there was to it. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:46, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Is that not all there is to it? What are people still arguing about?--Kotniski (talk) 08:40, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I wouldn't really say most people are arguing at this point, most of the discussions are really about interpreting SYNTH, which is relatively subtle, and on which I readily admit I hold a narrow view. Bruce Grubb has proposed a new guideline, Wikipedia:Inaccuracy (which is a pretty good essay) and has been seeking to alter WP:NOTOR to support his view, and continues to push his view here, at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence and at Talk:Conspiracy theory. From his contributions, I take it that this issue seems very important to him, but I think he's misrepresented the nature of the initial mutual misunderstandings of positions and subsequent discussions at Talk:Conspiracy Theory, and spun this up more than necessary or beneficial to the project, characterizing the discussions there as a long battle and a disaster and expressing undue emotion when he believes that other editors disagree with him. I leave it to others as to whether any of our actions rise to the level of tendentious editing, but I just do not see a real issues from Talk:Conspiracy Theory beyond WP:SYNTH and WP:DUE. Certainly I do not see any issues related to verifiability. I have not read through the entire discussion at Talk:Jesus_myth_theory, however, so there may be some meat there, but mostly I see very little chicken --Nuujinn (talk) 11:18, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski summed up my position perfectly--"We can make statements not because the statements themselves have appeared in a reliable published source, but simply because we can see they're true by inspection of a reliable source (we do this every time we say "X has written Y" with a citation to X)"
No matter the handwaving done the statement "the phrase "conspiracy theory" appeared before 1909" is verifiable
As for claiming I don't have a firm grasp of SYN I suggest editors read the archives of Talk:Jesus_myth_theory especially Talk:Jesus_myth_theory/definition#Defining_.22Christ_Myth_theory.22_via_the_reliable_sources and try to continue to make that claim. The "directly states" plea was used by several editors to ignore the fact there were conflicts in the very definition of the term which was acknowledged to have several synonyms. That is anther reason that the article was a two year headbutting migraine--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:28, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Random break 2

This seems to be going back and forwards between a discussion of policy and a content discussion for a particular article. For an encyclopedia editable by anyone, it's important to have verifiability be absolutely, categorically, without exception, a criteria for inclusion. Most folks intend "Not truth" to reinforce this, by specifically addressing and ruling out the most often claimed exception to verifiability. ("But it's true!") IMHO it is well intended, and it does some good, but also misfired into various wrong interpretations in other areas. IMHO the proposed change keeps the "does some good" part, keeps "not truth" with a context explanation, while reducing the "misfires". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:43, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

"The problem is "But it's true!" can be "But it's true, because this source says so!" and that is where the whole "Not truth" argument falls apart. One of the main reasons the Jesus myth theory article was a two year exercise in head banging was that editors would use one source to determine if another source was talking about the Christ-Jesus myth theory. in addition to the the exact phrase nonsense (Talk:Jesus_myth_theory/Archive_33#Wells.2C_Price.2C_and_Doherty) you had editors using other sources and interpreting passages to say what people thought saying rather than what they actually said (talk:Jesus_myth_theory/Archive_34#Background_and_definition_section.
For example, I pointed out that Bromiley stated "This view states that the story of Jesus is a piece of mythology, possessing no more substantial claims to historical fact than the old Greek or Norse stories of gods and heroes,..." and that saying a story of a person is a piece of mythology is NOT the same as saying the person himself didn't exist but some editors were so hung up on what other sources had said that they literally forced Bromiley into saying something he was not actually saying.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:18, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I mean, this is the fundamental point - a fact does not become verifiable because a source says it, any more than it becomes true because a Wikipedian thinks it. So "verifiability", and especially "verifiability, not truth", is just an abuse of language, that doesn't mean what it's intended to mean. Put it together with "the threshold", implying that there's a single condition for inclusion of information (or as we wrongly call it, "material"), and we have a complete mess of a sentence, that no-one can even remotely defend except by saying "there is something behvind it that it's supposed to mean", "we like it", or "it's been here for a long time, so ha ha, we're going to revert anyone who changes it". To me it is ludicrous that one of our core policies, which is being read by the outside world as well as those on the inside, continues to be headed with a sentence so manifestly absurd. --Kotniski (talk) 08:47, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
Well, the proposal to change it, developed over many months, is nearing completion. North8000 (talk) 11:53, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
If you view wp:ver as simply stating a requirement for inclusion, NOTHING more, it is fine with respect to all of the above. The first sentence has caused problems by contributing to lots of other claims and chants that it doesn't say. For example:
  • that an editor can use verifiability/sourcing as a mandate to force inclusion of the material.
  • that potential falseness of sourced material can't be discussed when discussing possible exclusion/leaving out of material (recognizing that in special cases wp:npov trumps this discussion and provides a mandate for inclusion)
  • That meeting verifiability means that it is true.
  • That wp:verifiability weighs in on the side of inclusion of material rather than just setting a condition for it.
  • That accuracy is not an objective of Wikipedia
North8000 (talk) 12:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
If it really is just stating a requirement (not a sufficient condition) for inclusion, why are we not allowed to make that clear, by changing "the threshold" to something unambiguous like "a minimum requirement"? Does anyone actively disagree with doing at least that (I mean have any real arguments against doing it, other than "this sentence is under discussion so it can't be touched")?--Kotniski (talk) 12:49, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
I agree with your logic and reasoning. I think the main venue would be at the talk page of the first sentence page where it is up for final tweaks. My thought is that logically "Verifiability is a requirement for inclusion" says it precisely and totally. But it doesn't provide sufficient impact. Everything else is for additional impact and impression. Anything that does this without doing harm is OK, (e.g. "initial", "fundamental", "threshold", "absolute") although superfluous or imprecise from a logical standpoint. But also folks who said "let's deal with that later, not try to to change too much at once", and I sort of agree with that. North8000 (talk) 13:57, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
But "verifiability is a requirement for inclusion" is still wrong, because the requirement is not "verifiability" in any normal meaning of the word, but (something closer to) "sourceability" or "attributability". However I agree that small change in the right direction is better than no change at all (though things have come to a pretty pass when the rewriting or removal of just one sentence is held up as too big a step to take in one go).--Kotniski (talk) 18:41, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with "verifiability is a requirement for inclusion" as long as we explain what verifiability actually means. In my own field of anthropology the term "culture" must have an provided context to understand how it is being used--that is why I suggested this restructuring:

The threshold for the inclusion of information in Wikipedia mainspace (articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions) without exception is verifiability— ie being attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. This requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material.(See the discussion about sources in WP:NOR that describes summarizing materials in your own words, leaving nothing implied that goes beyond the sources.) For how to write citations, see Citing sources. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.

Take a good look a how that first sentence in the above paragraph is structured:

1) It establishes verifiability as a threshold requirement

2) It establishes where verifiability actually applies--Wikipedia mainspace (articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions)

3) Finally, it spells out what verifiability actually is--being attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question.

This is all there in the current lead but it is broken up into disjointed segments that don't flow together into a unified whole. As a result you have some editors going for "Verifiability soundbites" where one disjointed segment is presented while other equally valid ones are ignored. This restructuring should hopefully minimize that--BruceGrubb (talk) 20:03, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

All of which can be summed up in one simple sentence... "Verifiability--whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source." Hmmm... I think I have read that somewhere before. Blueboar (talk) 22:35, 3 October 2011 (UTC)
That is one of the "Verifiability soundbites" I was talking about. Note what is missing:
1. It says nothing about verifiability as a threshold requirement
2. It does not state where verifiability actually applies--allowing the it applies to talk page nonsense presented.
This don't address the actual problems raised here.--BruceGrubb (talk) 04:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
What do you mean by a "threshold requirement"? Why not just say "a minimum requirement" or simply "a requirement"? But certainly the article should be "a" and not "the" - as pointed out ad nauseam, if we say "the" then the phrase is naturally interpreted as meaning "the only", and is therefore liable to be read as referring to a sufficient condition, which is Wrong.--Kotniski (talk) 08:46, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
The online Oxford advanced learners dictionary defines threshold as the "the level at which something starts to happen"
The general Oxford online dictionary defines threshold as "the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested"
It is clear that passing a threshold is only the start of the process but given the wonky way editors have used this we only need to add one word to shut the kind of nonsense that you suggest could happen:
The first threshold for the inclusion of information in Wikipedia mainspace (articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions) without exception is verifiability— ie being attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. This requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material.(See the discussion about sources in WP:NOR that describes summarizing materials in your own words, leaving nothing implied that goes beyond the sources.) For how to write citations, see Citing sources. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.
That should address everything as far as WP:V is concerned as this
1) It establishes verifiability as the first threshold requirement (implying there are others)
2) It establishes where verifiability actually applies--Wikipedia mainspace (articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions)
3) Finally, it spells out what verifiability actually is--being attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question.
There would be the rest of the article explaining all this in detail but this boils verifiability down to its key components: the first threshold, where in Wikipedia it applies (mainspace and NOT talk page), and finally formally defines it.--BruceGrubb (talk) 09:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)
I still don't see why you want to use such an unnatural phrase as "threshold" or "first threshold" when we can just say "a requirement". --Kotniski (talk) 10:49, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

If you take a hard look at WP:CCPOL you will see that WP:V and WP:NOR are in essence mirror images of each other.

Note the way No original research is defined on that page: Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source. This makes it clear that verifiability is the "first threshold" for inclusion but a work meeting verifiability may not get in due to it failing other policies or guidelines. Let me use an example I presented long ago:

"There is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived, to give an example, and Christianity is based on narrative fiction of high literary and cathartic quality." (abstract) and "It is not possible to compare the above with what we have, namely, that there is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived." (main text body) (Fischer, Roland (1994) "On The Story-Telling Imperative That We Have In Mind" Anthropology of Consciousness American Anthropological Association Volume 5. Issue 4. December 1994 Pg 16 - 18)

A peer reviewed statement in a recognized professional journal published by the American Anthropological Association--clearly Verifiability...and it fails to pass WP:WEIGHT muster. No matter how Verifiability the above is--it remains an obscure one time hiccup against the mountain of other references that were found. But to even argue for possible inclusion you had to first meet the Verifiability requirement.

This is why verifiability is the "first threshold"--it is the first hurdle an editor must clear to even have a chance of the view being presented to be taken seriously. It, in theory, makes editors realize that they have to produce high quality sources rather than use questionable things like tabloids or self published works.

This why I try to use the highest quality sources I can for my arguments--it addressed the WP:V issue right from the beginning so one can go to WP:NPOV issues.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

  • comment The reason that "not truth" is important is that it stresses that wikipedia does not make any judgements or evaluations of what is true. We only represent other people's ideas of what is true, and we represent them weighted in accordance with the degree of agreement that it is true. Verifiability means that in order to include statement X we have a source that shows that it is true that some person publishing in an appropriate forum has stated that X is the case. If there is no such source then the statement X is not verifiable. Whether the statement X is true or false is not relevant for whether it should be included in the encyclopedia. False statements can be included, and indeed they have to be included if they are notable, i.e. held by a significant group of people. E.g. wikipedia does not judge whether it is true that evolution produced the diversity of life on earth. Because what matters isn't whether its true, but that most scientists believe it is true. Truth value is simply not a part of the calculation in figuring out what to include. That is what "Verifiability not truth" is supposed to mean, and why it is importance.
Now of course we shouldn't include rumours of dubitable veracity in articles about living persons, but that is not because they are likely to be untrue, but because they are likely to be non-notable and could create potential legal liabilities of a court decides they are not true. The fact that this is the case can be seen by the fact that we can and do include rumours of doubtful veracity as long as they are 1. attributable to sources that can be considered accountable for the statement and 2. have received sufficient coverage to be notable. The reason we want sources of high quality is not that statements in them are more likely to be true, but that they are more likely to be significant, and in BLP cases because the source is more likely to be legally accountable. E.g. if a peer reviewed article writes that celebrity X was running around naked in downtown London we can include that whether or not the statement is in fact true because the journal that published the claim is the one that will be legally liable if it turns out to be untrue, and not wikipedia who merely repeated their statement. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 18:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
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