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I understand that WP:V is a content policy, but I and a growing number of other editors see major problems with "truth" in the Wikipedia namespace. Specifically, there are multiple instances of editors making claims that they believe to be true, but are in fact not true. These claims are made without presenting any evidence, and can (and do) mislead other editors. The most egregious example has been WP:OUTCOMES, which until recently made scores of claims (some untrue) about "common outcomes of AfDs." Many of these have been correct thanks to a few editors who strove to clean that area up. However, it continues to happen in other areas.
Some claims about Wikipedia are immediately verifiable and don't require any evidence (e.g. anything that states or quotes a policy/guideline, and anything that states the obvious). However some claims are not (e.g. "In the last 2 years, all articles about elementary schools have been deleted in AfD for being non-notable").
My question is: shouldn't claims about Wikipedia which aren't immediately verifiable include some sort of evidence to back them up? The essay WP:Inaccuracies in Wikipedia Namespace is about this issue, and covers it in more depth. I think a well-written guideline could solve this problem once and for all, but for some reason editors seem loathe to regulate WP namespace.
I welcome all thoughts and suggestions. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 07:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Now that Mr. Negativity has had his say, I still welcome comments and suggestions. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 04:33, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
For a long time we have had language to the effect that:
with various explanations of what that means. When I joined Wikipedia the meaning was very clear: We don't say anything that cannot be verified. I have traced this back as far as February 2006, a time when two parallel versions of the policy were merged, and I guess it's not worth tracing it back even further:
This always meant that verifiability is necessary, not that it is sufficient. The word "criterion" was a bit misleading, so it was changed to "threshold". [2] A change in June 2006 preserved this:
After some more editing, the paragraph looked like this at the end of the year 2006:
Apparently this wording remained unchanged throughout 2007, but it was modified in April 2008:
After a period of some instability the text looked like this in May 2008:
This was tweaked in June 2008:
In January 2009 the paragraph was split:
As a result of this split, the first sentence became vulnerable to a fundamentalist interpretation: That we have an obligation to publish even clear untruths just because there is a "reliable" source stating them. Once something passes the verifiability threshold, it can be forced into the encyclopedia.
This is not a theoretical problem, as admins can verify by reading Talk:Sam Blacketer controversy. Non-admins may get an idea from reading the AfD. There are situations where our internal processes are perfectly capable of proving a "reliable" source wrong, and it is extremely hard to deal with wikilawyers who insist that truth is irrelevant and that we are under an obligation to parrot what has been erroneously reported. In that particular case libellous information about an arbitrator was edit warred into the encyclopedia, and information that showed the libellous information was incorrect was edit warred out based on the technicality that it was easily verifiable by our own internal processes (edit logs etc.) but not through a published source.
As someone mentioned above, and as I can confirm, "verifiability, not truth" is typically used as an argument for putting eccentric claims into our articles, i.e. it is typically used the wrong way round, as if it described a sufficient condition. That was the case even when the wording made it clear that it is only a necessary condition. Now it has become worse. What can we do to fix this? Hans Adler 09:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Hans, just noting here that "the threshold for inclusion" language dates back to August 2005 after it was suggested on another page set up to discuss how to present the concepts of verifiability and NOR. Describing verifiability as the "threshold" seems clearly to describe it as a necessary condition. So long as we emphasize the attributable/attributed distinction nearby, which I did yesterday but I see someone removed it, it should be clear enough that (a) not every single thing that's sourced can be added and (b) not every single thing that's added needs a source. SlimVirgin talk contribs 22:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Your version of Wikipedia would be " an Orwellian ministry of truth....That is a pass to which we ought not to come again." (From the British Chiropractic Association vs. Simon Singh appeal case.) BTW, there is nothing "absurd", "outdated or false" about the NSF/NSB statement. It's just as relevant today as it was in 2006. That pseudoscientific nonsense hasn't become scientific since then.
“ | The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. | ” |
“ | The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors may think it is false. | ” |
The stark contrast offered by the unbalanced bolded phrase is necessary to indelibly implant in the minds of editors that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not the many things that Wikipedia is not. If we are to shoot for clarifying balance in the lede sentence, the addition of true's opposite, "false", is all that is necessary. It might show that the "black and white" of "true and false" is made pale in comparison to the more desirable "verifiability". Just a suggestion.
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
03:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
We should add that verifiable information from reliable sources (or a single reliable source) that can be demonstrated to be factually wrong on the basis of reliable sources should either be removed from an article, or (if it is WP:DUE) be properly contextualized and presented with inline attribution. Cs32en Talk to me 14:00, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I would like to see the ending phrase of Paine's second proposal included: ".... not whether some editors think it is true while other editors may think it is false." -- Brangifer ( talk) 05:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I propose a second modification. After the statement, we can add "...with "truth" meaning "an obvious, indisputable or universally accepted fact", as not all topics can be completely described using only such statements. When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as to which is the truth about something, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who isn't, as it doesn't make original research. See the policy on neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly". MBelgrano ( talk) 13:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Here is the current version:
Combining Paine's and MBelgrano's suggestions we'd get this version:
When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as towhich is the truth about something's a statement's truthfulness, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who isn't is wrong, as it doesn't make indulge in
original research. (See the policy on
neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly.) Wikipedia documents the real world using verifiable and
reliable sources, it doesn't judge it. It is not an
Orwellian "
Ministry of Truth" which determines what is true. It only documents what reliable sources say about the matter.
I made some formatting changes and added a bit that may or may not be usable, ending up with this reading:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a
reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors think it is false. When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as to a statement's truthfulness, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who is wrong as it doesn't indulge in original research. (See the policy on neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly.) Wikipedia documents the real world using verifiable and reliable sources, it doesn't judge it. It is not an Orwellian " Ministry of Truth" which determines what is true. It only documents what reliable sources say about the matter. |
Are we getting closer to something that makes it clearer? It must be clear that "verifiability" refers to one thing, and "not truth" to another, and both elements must be explained. -- Brangifer ( talk) 15:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Here is a version of the first paragraph that I could support:
The main threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
This alerts the reader to the fact that there are other criteria, such as NPOV, that also may prevent addition. Hans Adler 06:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
The main threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors think it is false.
What we require for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
The following examples are from WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy. The colours highlighting some problematic parts are mine.
- Comment: "Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else ;) Is it really compatible with WP:BLP to have an article full of stuff which we know and can prove to be wrong, just by referring to our own archives? I have checked every edit Sam made to David Cameron going back to December 2007, when he became an arbitrator. Here is the edit apparently mentioned in the Daily Mail, where the Mail says he "tried to remove a reference to the Tories having a 'consistent' lead in the polls.". This is the only time I found Sam actually added content, rather than reverting vandals, since December 2007. Now, if you look at this edit, you will find that what he took out was running commentary on 2008 opinion poll results, cited to a 2007 (!) Reuters article http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL1310900320071013?sp=true – material which he replaced with cited material which noted that Cameron had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, and was said by the Daily Mail to have been presented to the world as Britain's "Prime Minister in waiting". And Sam inserted the information that the Tories were "consistently" ahead. Some Labour activist! Sam actually put in the information these "reliable sources" accuse him of having taken out, just like he took out the unflattering attack picture these sources accuse him of having put in! Perhaps they don't know that if you look at a diff, it's the right side that has the new text, or that red text is text added, rather than deleted. What do I know. Our article here, citing the Daily Mail, says that Sam was "trying to adjust the description of the Conservative Party's lead in opinion polls over the Labour Party." This stupid innuendo and twisting of facts is unworthy of an encyclopedia, and it is unworthy of our project. JN 466 22:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
- Keep or failing that, merge the salient points to an appropriate article. Given the extended international coverage, even by such publications as the Corriere della Sera ( [8]), our notability standards are certainly met. Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but WP:V's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues. Sandstein 21:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- What is astonishing to me is how many people are willing to simply ignore both WP:V and WP:OR, simply because the original research comes from Wikipedia itself. Unitanode 22:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- It is not original research. It is primary sourcing. There is a difference. And Wikipedia -is- a reliable source on actions at Wikipedia, hence ArbCom can use diffs and the rest to determine appropriateness of rulings. So, information found on Wikipedia about actions on Wikipedia are enough to determine that the sources, if they contradict it, are unreliable. The same is a source saying that a bluebird is naturally red when all pictures of the bluebird shows that it is, indeed, blue. The Reliable Sources noticeboard look at credibility of reporting, especially when there is direct evidence that there is a mistake. Plus, newspapers can take up to a month to make corrections, if they even bother. Ottava Rima ( talk) 23:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- Can anyone else make any sense out of what Ottava Rima just typed? "It is not original research. It is primary sourcing." According to what I understand, the definition of original research is using primary sources instead of secondary ones. What you wrote makes no sense at all, and is not a justification for deleting this article in any way. Unitanode 00:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- I detect shortcutitis (citing shortcuts without actually reading the relevant policy). Try the relevant subsection of WP:OR, which is WP:PSTS. Primary sources are sometimes permissible. Disembrangler ( talk) 00:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- I hardly know as many "shortcuts" as you do. I stumbled into this imbroglio, and am regretting every participating. Even still, a quote from your linked shortcut (does WP:IRONY, exist): "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." The relevance of this quote should be self-evident. Unitanode 00:19, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- The bit I was hoping you'd take away from PSTS was "Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge." WP logs can therefore certainly be used in this way to back up the simple factual claims people have made about what actually happened vs what newspapers reported. Disembrangler ( talk) 09:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Original Research is not primary sourcing, and primary sourcing is not original research. Original research is to determine what is not readily available from a source of information. If an author writes a book, then you can discuss what the book says without saying what someone else claims the book says. Please look up the definition of "original". A "primary" source would not be original. This is readily apparent from actually reading WP:OR. Ottava Rima ( talk) 00:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- To quote: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it." That sounds like "don't use primary sources" to me. Reliable, third-party sources have been found here. We don't like their interpretation of the facts, so we want to delete the article? That makes no sense. Unitanode 00:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Obviously, people applied the quote to why this should be deleted. The primary sources contradict the third party sources, thus making them unreliable. It has nothing to do with "not using primary sources". Primary sources are a source, but not a justification for notability. Don't dare confuse notability with verification. Ottava Rima ( talk) 03:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
[...]
- But we aren't about truth, we are about verification. Those are the standards we apply to other articles, those must be the standards we apply here. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 15:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- As per WP:BLP, it has to be both - "We must get the article right." That is one of our most important policies. A source on a BLP is not "reliable" unless it is extremely credible and not proven wrong. None of these sources meet the BLP requirements, as they hold factual inaccuracies that are blatant. Ottava Rima ( talk) 15:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Okay, I haven't been here that long, but even I know the "verifiability not truth" language. Do you really not know this? Unitanode 21:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Keep The deletion reasons are unconvincing. The deletion of the parent article does not affect this article the slightest.Many articles are unintelligible for people outside specific areas of interest but that in itself does not make it a good reason for deletion. Essjay controversy proves that it is in fact possible to write an article about a Wikipedia-related event based on external sources that is intelligible for people outside this community. Problems that the article might have in that regard can be solved via simple editing and while I understand the buzz the article creates here, we should apply our policies to all articles no matter the content. The article is sourced to multiple reliable sources (whether they got their facts right is not our concern, remember WP:V: Verifiability, not truth) establishing notability. Per WP:BLP1E this is not an article about the person but about the event. No other policy-backed reasons have been mentioned (NOTNEWS gets thrown around but this has continued for multiple weeks now). Regards So Why 10:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Note that even an experienced editor who was arguing for deletion because of the inaccuracies (Jayen466) and a high-profile admin (Sandstein) understood the principle "Verfiability, not truth" as demanding that we publish what we know to be false, merely because it's in the "reliable" sources.
The situation was bad enough. I want to prevent that such a fundamentalist reading of WP:V will be even more defensible the next time something like this happens. Hans Adler 10:01, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Firstly, User:Hans Adler & User:BullRangifer should seek dispute resolution in another venue. A policy talk page and WP:RSN are not for content disputes. Secondly, I propose changing the first paragraph to read something like:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. This does not mean false information should be added to an article; when reliable sources disagree, give due weight to the individual points of view.
I believe this would eliminate the misuse of the policy. I have not read the above discussion in full, as it is hard to cut through the content dispute to find what we are actually trying to fix here. Apologies if this has already been suggested. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 12:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
We can't reduce all our concepts to the level where every single thing is spelled out—not least because the more things seem to be spelled out, the more confusion we actually introduce. SlimVirgin talk contribs 15:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
-- hippo43 ( talk) 19:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)All material in Wikipedia articles must be verifiable. This criterion for inclusion is verifiability, not simply truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
“ | All material in Wikipedia articles must be verifiable. A main threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not simply truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true or not true. | ” |
I have a new proposal, independent of the discussion going on. I suspect the root of the problem lies in the effords to explain this concept in a compact size, of just one or two sentences long. Why not link the essay Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth in the statement, make all the explanations needed, and then turn it into a supplemental essay? There, we can provide all the explanations to all the concerns manifested here.
I should mention that the current wording of the essay is mostly my work, but feel free to rewrite it as needed. My proposal is the existence of a suplemental essay on this topic, it does not need to be this specific one. I provided the link just because it's the most natural name for such an essay to have (we may also move the current one to a new name and start a new one from scratch) MBelgrano ( talk) 00:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Currently, a source is defined as follows:
To my mind, however, only the first (a document, article, paper, book, or other material available to the public) can properly be considered a source in the wikipedia sense. The creator of the work may be the originator, but we do not have access to his thoughts except as they are placed in documents, articles, or etc., so the creator is not a direct source. The publisher may have a reputation or a practice such as peer review which helps to affirm that the sources it publishes (documents, articles, or etc.) are reliable, but the publisher itself is not a source since it only presents the material, but doesn't produce it. This distinction is important: allowing creators as sources leads towards wp:OR, since editors will start trying to intuit what the creator meant rather than focusing on the available documents; allowing publishers as sources can sidestep wp:V by giving minor documents more credibility than they might otherwise have simply by virtue of having made it into a publication that 'normally' publishes reliable material. I'm suggesting a rewrite of the 'Reliable Sources' section along these lines:
The word "source", as used in Wikipedia, refers to any piece of published material - an article, paper, book, or any other document available to the general public. A source is reliable when there is good reason to assume that it accurately reflects a notable position or point of view on the topic in question.
There are several factors that can be used in assessing the reliability of published material. Material that is published by independent (third-party) publishers with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy is preferred; such material is generally considered to be reliable, and avoids plagiarism, copyright violations, and unverifiable claims in articles. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources where available - such as in topics related to history, medicine, and science - but material from non-academic sources may also be considered reliable in these areas, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. University-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, and mainstream newspapers may also be considered reliable, with the consideration that these materials are not subject to the same level of review as academic works. Electronic media may also be used, subject to the same criteria. Other material may be considered reliable in specific circumstances, where encyclopedic demands require.
The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. Sources are reliable to the extent that they directly address and are appropriate to the material or claims presented in an article. Sources which make tangential claims about a topic, which mention a topic in passing, or which mention a topic as an example while discussing something else should not generally be considered reliable for that topic. Sources which themselves argue for a particular point of view - in particular, self-published material (see below) and material that comes from fringe sources - may be considered reliable sources for the purposes of outlining or describing a particular viewpoint, but should not be considered reliable for the sake of presenting mainstream or established ideas.
I wrote that quickly, but you get the basic thrust of it. comments? -- Ludwigs2 00:01, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
We can ask, for example: (1) Should we use this well-known expert even if he's writing on his blog and what he wrote seems odd? (2) Is the article just what we were looking for, even if we've never heard of the writer and the publication is a very minor one? And (3) Is this New York Times article something we feel obliged to use, because the newspaper is so reputable, even though the writer is unknown and none of us agree with his conclusions? Because the weight of each issue (writer, article, publisher) is constantly weighed up to determine reliability and appropriateness, I'd like the policy to retain those three senses of the word "source". SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:13, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
The policy contains the sentence which begins "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party (independent), published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; this avoids plagiarism, copyright violations..." This is only partly true. If a source contains plagiarism, and we include a fair-use quote or paraphrase in a Wikipedia article, we are spreading the plagiarism, so the sentence is right in that using high quality sources will minimize instances of spreading plagiarism this way, because high-quality sources will seldom contain plagiarism. However, using good sources, by itself, won't prevent editors from creating new plagiarism. Also, copyright violations are avoided not by using high quality sources, but rather by limiting the amount of material copied to what fair use allows, and by paraphrasing. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
I've been working on and off on a whole series of articles about film editing techniques, adding numerous citations.
The nature of the film industry tends to be one of word-of-mouth know how and picking up ideas by working with people. Many people with expert knowledge in the industry are also quite open, with information available on the Web which gives colour to the topic. While I currently avoid sources such as blogs (except as an occasional placeholder), what is the policy on providing (possibly multiple) blog entries to provide colour to an article - perhaps in addition to a traditional source?
For example, I am so far finding it hard to find referenced examples of establishing shots, as most reviews don't discuss the technical editing details of films, but there are multiple non-controversial examples, with thousands of establishing shots being broadcast every day. Recently, I have come across tvtropes.org which, as far as I can tell, seems to be as accurate as any newspaper article, and seems to be written by people in the industry. There are many sources of comparable nature, such as Masters Theses in film, which are secondary self-published sources when talking about films, and generally mutually self-consistent. The best blogs are written by professors in film studies and also seem to be reliable.
As film editing in not a black and white process (!), more opinions about how it should be done would seem to give the reader more context to assess the article contents.
An alternative would be to buy some books about films, and give only non-web accessible page numbers as references.
Most of the Wikipedia articles in this area seem to have been uncontroversial and written by experts or at least people who "knew what they were talking about" in the days when citations were a nice-to-have, so there is quite a lot of work to do tidying up the articles - not necessarily the actual content, but on referencing them in a way which allows the references to be checked against the text after the text has been re-edited over time.
Is it better to have an examples section with independent multiple self-published sources, or no section? Stephen B Streater ( talk) 22:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
"TV Tropes... is NOT written by anyone in the industry, its user edited"
I am disturbed by an attitude by one contributor at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ValhallaBot who seems to have low the standards for bots with the potential to make false changes. Looking through policies, I don't see a statement that lies are forbidden, nor do I see a statement that implementing automated processes with reckless disregard for verifiability is forbidden. I believe a new section should be added on this topic. Jc3s5h ( talk) 17:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Thought this quote from Jimbo Wales was interesting. [9]
I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. To take the example of a popular book that receives no reviews, what kind of encyclopedia article could you write about it? You could write an original review, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could write a plot summary, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could do some kind of original research, but that wouldn't be an encyclopedia article.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 09:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
This reflects current policy. Is there anything else we can do to make this more clear? Arskwad ( talk) 16:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
- an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions
- 1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable source
- The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work
So a highly cited professor always gets kept at AfD, even if there's no biographical third party reliable source coverage. The effect of this is that we basically allow unverifiable autobiographies to be published in Wikipedia if the professor is highly cited, since these articles are invariably based on university bio pages written by the professor themselves or someone close to them. Gigs ( talk) 18:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
The video is full of inaccuracies and has no business on a policy page. I could maybe see it as a "See Also" link. It amounts to a bad essay being transcluded into what is supposed to be a policy. Gigs ( talk) 19:38, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
You've probably seen Wikipedia, it's a free online encyclopedia built by people like you and me around the world. You might wonder how thousands of people build an encyclopedia together. Well first Wikipedia is a wiki website, a website anyone can edit, so on Wikipedia, editing or creating a new article happens with the click of a button.
But for these contributions to remain in wikipedia, they have to follow two basic rules. The first is verifiability. With so many contributors, wikipedia articles must rely on information from published sources like books or newspapers, resources known for fact checking.
Requiring contributors to cite these resources in articles and quotations ensures that wikipedia articles are factual and high quality. If it's not verified, it can't be in wikipedia. For example, you can write that the US unemployment rate in 1935 was 20.1% but you must also cite its source for it to remain in Wikipedia. In this case numerous history books could be verifiable resources.
The second rule requires a neutral point of view. All wikipedia material must be presented fairly and without bias, just like any other encyclopedia. This means wikipedia is not a place for contributors to share their own opinions. Lets say you are an advocate for vaccinations, and you write, "Every parent should get their children vaccinated". Unfortunately, this is biased and certain to cause disagreement. It can't be in Wikipedia.
However, published opinions of experts can be included. And if these opinions differ, the article should present all the major opinions without endorsing one over the other. For example, writing that "Vaccinating all US children saves an estimated 33,000 lives" and citing a reputable source is a statement of fact that can be verified.
And if there is an opposing view, it should also be included. For example, a quote from a reputable source like "Critics claim that vaccinations have never benefited public health" helps to balance the article and keep it neutral.
By following these two rules, contributors can help respect one another and help create a free encyclopedia, the largest encyclopedia in human history. Learn more at wikipedia.org.
WP:V and WP:NPOV aren't supposed to be viewed in isolation of WP:OR.
Actually, only information that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs citations. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 20:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
It is apparent to me that the video is intended as a short, broad summary of the policies on verifiability and NPOV. For a tutorial video, there is no great sin in committing "loss of fidelity in synopsis" (sometimes known as "oversimplifying" in English). It's fair to say that the core policy documents are not an appropriate place for an introductory video. But on the other hand, newbies get pointed at WP:V and WP:NPOV so often, these pages are arguably the best place to put them to guarantee that they will be seen by their target audience. I am happy to hear counterproposals. Tim Pierce ( talk) 20:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The NPOV policy currently contains two sections on specific topics: a 534-word section on pseudoscience and a 267-word section on religion. These sections were removed last month as being too specific after an RfC was posted on April 3. [10] The pseudoscience section was moved to WP:FRINGE, [11] and the religion section removed entirely. The sections have now been restored by others on the grounds that consensus was not established, or has changed. Fresh eyes would therefore be appreciated here on talk to decide whether to restore or remove the sections. SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The place for discussing the merits of the RfC is the RfC itself, not the space behind a neutral pointer to the RfC. Hans Adler 08:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
|
From WP:V - "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, and do not move it to the talk page." There used to be a link to WP:BLP included in the statement, however WP:BLP#Legal persons and groups specifically excludes organizations from this protection. To bring the policies into agreement, I propose that the words or organizations be removed from this statement. There was a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Groups about adding organizations to BLP protection, and it was rejected as WP:CREEP. -- Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 18:03, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
This edit which gave emphasis to the idea of "attribution" seems to be a subtle attempt to give the failed policy proposal at WP:Attribution more traction, as is apparent from views expressed at the proposal to rename it so that we can reuse the title for something more useful than a failed proposal. Gigs ( talk) 00:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Need a third party opinion about this. User:Alastairward has apparently begun to make statements that information from a military service record isn't a reliable citation for information in a Wikipedia article [12]. Forgive me, but a military service record is the absolute primary source for all military service information on Wikipedia military figure articles. I can't begin to think of how many articles have dates of rank, assignment histories, award citations, and countless other information obtained directly for official military files. As I pointed out to AW, we even have an entire article devoted to a service record: Service record of Reinhard Heydrich. So, need some third party advice in case AW begins removing cited material based on service record entires. - OberRanks ( talk) 01:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I guess having a proper cite from a military service record would be a good idea. Is there a standard format? - OberRanks ( talk) 01:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite web}}
is fine.. Ideally include enough information that if the URL changes the source could still be easily located though.
Gigs (
talk)
01:36, 11 May 2010 (UTC)The info was removed again from the Patton film article [13], under the same statement that the service record was not well cited. Interested users may wish to comment here. - OberRanks ( talk) 22:21, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Readers short of time are invited to read only the last few bold paragraphs at the end
Hi. If I'm raising this issue in the wrong place, or otherwise going about this in a manner that's sub-optimal, please enlighten and then forgive me. This will take a bit of typing to outline, so please be patient with me.
Verifiability policy indicates that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
However, we are also informed that "exceptional claims require exceptional sources" and so "claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions [emphasis added], especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons" require careful review of sources.
It seems obvious that an assumption is more or less something that readers (or editors) think is true. That's very different from something that is verifiable in the textual tradition of citation. Sometimes a lot of people share an assumption. On one hand the central guiding policy is verifiability, not truth. On the other, anything that challenges assumptions (as distinct from verifiable and reputable citations) is subject to special scrutiny. All this is more or less as it should be.
However there's an issue here in the gray area that any attempt to cover all circumstances invariably creates: cited and widely-held points of view that are not "mainstream assumptions" and that can be construed as facts (if anything can) are sometimes attacked as violating NPOV. Instead of citing sources to balance what is thought to be a non-neutral passage frustrated editors often cite policy (usually NPOV) to defend their assumptions.
I will provide an example here, and it will take more typing, so again, I beg the reader's patience. What follows might seem to be a bit of over-complicated analysis, but I see no other way to fully explicate the theme I'm trying to get my teeth into here. I should also explicitly say that in what follows I'm not arguing (here) for the issues in the example, rather that it is an example of a broader issue.
In the caduceus article there was a passage that stated that the caduceus symbol is often used erroneously in the US to symbolize medicine or medical practice. This has been repeatedly challenged as being in violation of NPOV. However, those that challenge the statement do not provide any citations showing that its use is not erroneous.
The stance of those who wish to see the affirmative statement stay in the article (and I'm one of them) is that all of the current specialized studies of the caduceus cited thus far indicate explicitly that it was adopted in the US by "mistake", in "error", or as a result of "confusion". While perhaps three studies from prior to 1930 defended the use of the caduceus as a medical symbol, claiming it was not selected in error or by mistake, those studies today have been characterized (by an academic and professional medical source) as based on "flimsy and pseudo-historical research", and refuted or ignored by all modern researchers. Masochists are invited to review the discussion if they want to see a list of sources. They are all reputable (JAMA, Royal Society of Medicine Press, Oxford University Press, The Scientific Monthly, The Classical Journal, etc).
The stance of those who wish to remove the statement (or neuter it, rather than make it neutral, by attributing it as a point of view of "some" people) is that the statement violates NPOV. None of them produce citations showing that it's use is not an error, or indeed that whether or not something is an error is a POV issue in the first place. Basically the gist of their case is that it is a known fact that the symbol is used to represent medicine, therefore it cannot be an error. Though they could easily cite less-specialized sources which simply say it is a symbol of medicine (and little more) they don't even do that. They just point to the fact of its use as an indication that it could not be an error.
There are a number of points that make all this tricky, of which I'll note a few:
1. The sources that do affirmatively state it is a medical symbol are general reference works that don't go into detail, they don't discuss the issue of the mistaken adoption or the unknowing emulation of the initial error. Many indicate that it is today used as a medical symbol. Nothing more. Arguments based on the silence of sources are obviously less strong than one's made based on explicit, affirmative statements in sources.
2. The sources indicating that its symbolic valuation is based on a initial mistake and the perpetuation of the error are also the specialized studies dealing with symbolism at length. It would seem that specialized studies dealing with a subject at length carry more weight than short reference entries that mention a subject in passing, provided all such sources are verifiable, reputable, etc.
3. There is a low level of semiological sophistication in most of the sources, which does not address the thrust of the arguments made by those who want to take out the content they don't like, which amounts to the firm conviction that a semiological mistake is no longer a mistake if enough people make it. That's all fine and good except that none of the sources dealing with the caduceus show that degree of semiological sophistication (which I here note is entirely distinct from knowledge of their given subject, in this case the symbolism of the caduceus itself), and none of the editors involved have adduced citations from disciplines armed with the tools or theory needed to address such an issue.
4. Regardless of its use today, there is no doubt that as regards its initial adoption the view that it was not a result of mistakes, confusion or error was not only a minority view, but is now a dated one that does not receive serious attention in contemporary sources. Hence there is academic consensus that the initial adoption was an error. No source thus far presented gives any indication that an error can one day simply expire. What do we do when the clear consensus is that it was adopted in error, and many specialized studies by academic or medical professionals (and sometimes both) indicate that its continued use is an error, while general reference works make little or no mention of any of this, simply stating today that it is a symbol of medicine?
All that by way of showing that there are many gray areas in this example (as is often the case), gray areas which should be clarified by recourse to citation of sources (not policy), rather than obliterated by uninformed regurgitation of assumptions that "everybody knows to be true". To my mind, the most important issue here is that people are citing policy about NPOV and trying to bring the content they don't like into line with their view based on assumptions that they do not feel require citation.
This brings me to the general issue, which I hope justifies the time spent by the reader here: it seems that very often, in content disputes (though I don't doubt there are many important exceptions) editors should start with citations of reputable sources before they turn to citation of policy. Daily, I see the issue of putative NPOV violations raised to justify the removal of something that somebody doesn't happen to like. All this is an intricate matter of how NPOV intertwines with Verifiability as two core principles, yet the separate treatment of NPOV and Verifiability entrenches, to some degree, their independent application in practice (no matter how many times we are reminded that in theory all of this is knitted together). Is there any policy or guideline that explicitly suggests starting with citation of reputable sources before thumping the policy bible to defend one's claims about NPOV? If not, were I to try to craft some such guideline, would I do it here (which is the first place that comes to mind) or associate it with the NPOV policy, or craft it for both locations?
To be more explicit: It seems to me that claiming an NPOV violation as justification for removal (or ham-handed butchery) of cited, verifiable content from reputable sources is most often not acceptable in and of itself. An alleged NPOV violation often requires citations to establish it as a fact. Hence, a presumed NPOV violation is often only a basis, or a context for the presentation of citations to:
1. establish that the content in question is actually in violation of NPOV, and;
2. provide a non-arbitrary verifiable basis for modification of content to bring it into line with NPOV standards.
Basically, it would be helpful to be able to direct someone to guidelines for when a corrective NPOV edit can be made without recourse to (non-policy) citation and when a corrective NPOV edit requires citation to establish that NPOV guidelines are even being violated, and to provide a context for modification based on Verifiability.
Help?-- Picatrix ( talk) 19:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Certainly:
It seems to me that claiming an NPOV violation as justification for removal of cited, verifiable content from reputable sources is most often not acceptable in and of itself. An alleged NPOV violation often requires citations to establish it (even arguably) as a fact. Hence, a presumed NPOV violation is often only a basis, or a context for the presentation of citations to:
1. establish that the content in question is actually in violation of NPOV, and;
2. provide a non-arbitrary verifiable basis for modification of content to bring it into line with NPOV standards.
It would be helpful to be able to refer to guidelines for when a corrective NPOV edit can be made without recourse to (non-policy) citation vs. when a corrective NPOV edit requires citation to establish that NPOV guidelines are even being violated, and to provide a context for modification based on Verifiability. Is there any policy or guideline that explicitly suggests starting with citation of reputable sources before thumping the policy bible to defend one's claims about NPOV? If not, were I to try to write some such guideline, would I do it here (which is the first place that comes to mind) or associate it with the NPOV policy, or mention it for both locations? All the other material above establishes an example context for this question. -- Picatrix ( talk) 08:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia's policy reliance on published works discriminates against politically incorrect persons and philosophies, such as Men's Rights -- as in the case of the recently deleted entry on Rich Zubaty. This is because Feminists are powerful enough to, and actually do, hinder the publication of anti-Feminist and Men's Rights works, with the result that there is little of this available to support a claim to Wikipedia article status. The media are similarly strongly influenced by Feminism and censor anti-Feminist views, so that media articles are also relatively rarely available to support a claim to Wikipedia article status. And even self-published sources are not given credibility by Wikipedia policy unless the self-publisher has previously been published by third parties. This results in the under-representation of politically incorrect views, issues and persons amongst Wikipedia articles. PeterZohrab ( talk) 08:22, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Says Zubaty: The publishing industry is terrified of women. When my first book came out the Fems went to the distributor and said: if you don't drop his book we will boycott your other 600 books.
The distributor dropped me like a stone. That violated our contract and I offered to sue the distributor. They put me back on the sales list, but years later I found out that anyone who called to order books was told they didn't stock them any more -- when they had 700 sitting in their warehouse!
Sabotage then, sabotage today. Deleting the Rich Zubaty wiki page is sabotage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lew Loot ( talk • contribs) 21:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone tell me exactly how to insert a non-English reference? Where do I put the original link, the transalted text? Or just direct me to a similar case and I'll see from there. Thanks Căluşaru' ( talk) 19:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I was told that this policy should not address topicality of something in an article. Can anyone tell me which policy this would fall under? The de facto rule is that any references cited have to at least make mention of the article topic in some way as a ground rule, and that any references being cited for some other purpose, that don't actually refer to the article topic at all, probably are in the wrong article. But the closest I've found where this is spelled out is WP:SYNTH; maybe there is another section to look in? Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 15:22, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
The policy currently uses some redirects to sections within policies, piped to appear as "below" or "above" -- when they actually redirect to whole other policies.
Wikipedia:SOURCES, for instance, is referenced in wikilinks that are piped to "above" and "below", but it really redirects to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources. Geo Swan ( talk) 21:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Could someone clarify the status of such blogs as reliable sources? Footnote #4 in the policy says "Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. In March 2010, the Press Complaints Commission in the UK ruled that journalists' blogs hosted only on the websites of news organizations are subject to the same standards expected of that organization's print editions (see Plunkett, John. "Rod Liddle censured by the PCC", The Guardian, March 30, 2010). " To me, that says that a professional journalist's blog, posted on a UK newspaper's web site is reliable. Is that incorrect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Momma's Little Helper ( talk • contribs) 13:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
For anyone interested, based on recent discussions here and on WT:NOR, I have started a draft version of a new proposed ATT policy under my user page, which includes the current versions of WP:V, WP:NOR and some material from WP:ATT. It is very much a works-in-progress, but comments would be appreciated on its talk page. Thanks, Crum375 ( talk) 00:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
In an earlier thread I proposed making the following change to the wording of WP:SOURCES:
Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking, accuracy and independence.
Independence means that a source is free from pressures associated with a strong connection to the subject matter (such as, but not limited to family relationships, close political affiliation, business dealings or other benefical interest) that may compromise, or can reasonably be expected to compromise, the source's reputation for reliablity.
At the time, most of the objections to this amendment were in relation to using autobiography as a source in articles. Having thought about this issue, I am not against using autobiographical sources, but I realise that they are a potential minefield, in the sense that, they are a form of self-published sources, and for that reason, are not strictly reliable in any case. For instance, if I were to quote an autobiograhical source in an article about a living person, I would do in a way that made it absolutely clear that I was doing so (e.g. "XYZ said in his book that...") to alert the reader to the fact that a person speaking about their own life may not be the unbiased source of information about events that affected them.
I feel that we should revisit this proposal, because independence is an important principle in the real world, that when compromised, can have catastropic effects (the Enron Scandal comes to mind in this regard) for those who regard reliable sources as an important form of external verification. It seems to me that independence and reliablity are two vital characteristics of high quality sources, and to ignore one or the other would fatally compromise this policy on verifiability. Would anyone care to support this proposed amendment? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 08:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
WP:NEWSBLOG currently says "Posts left by readers may never be used as sources." But is this not like letters to the editor? Does it not depend on whether the person or organisation writing can be identified as a notable expert on the subject under discussion? For example there was a magazine published during the Victorian period Notes and Queries Online, which was a sort of editorial overseen paper blog. Information from N&Q was cited and included in academic publications. In most of the cases I have seen academic selection of information extracted from N&Q was from from known experts in their field. -- PBS ( talk) 22:18, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Let us suppose that a opinion is published in a newspaper and added to the newspapers bloc site, in which the newspaper columnist claims that something in a recently published book was wrong, and that the author of the book replies on the blog with a clarification. It would be incumbent on the newspaper to check that it was indeed the author of the book and the author of the acknowledgement was one and the same person (if not they would leave themselves open to legal action). I'm thinking along the lines of David Irving's letter to the Times in 1966, but published in this day and age as a reply in a blog on www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/blogs/. -- PBS ( talk) 23:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I need advice on the implementation of this rule when the challenged fact is common knowledge. The example above that " Paris is the capital of France" is a trivial example that you would hope would never be challenged. But for the sake of example, what if it were challenged in good faith? How do you select a source for information that widely known?
Or to take a slightly more complex example, how do you source Pulley when all the facts in the article have been common knowledge (at least among engineers and the equivalent) since the time of Aristotle and can be found with trivial ease in any high school textbook? Unlike more modern findings, there is no breaking source or authoritative dissertation proving the mechanical advantage equations. Pulling out my highschool textbook seems inappropriate. Why should it be given precedence or credibility? Websites covering that level of basic information are equally speculative, often appearing to have been written for elementary students and containing no source information themselves.
By the way, sourcing the opening definition of "pulley" to the Oxford English Dictionary seems to me to be a massive waste of readers' time and a distraction rather than an addition to the page. Thoughts on a general solution to this problem would be much appreciated. Rossami (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The following works, to which the author acknowledges his obligation for valuable material, will be useful to teacher as well as pupil, in furnishing additional illustrations and in elucidating difficult subjects, viz.: Tait's " Recent Advances on Physical Science"; Arnott's "Elements of Physics" (7th ed.); Stewart's "Elementary Physics," also his "Conservation of Energy," and "Treatise on Heat"; Atkinson's " Deschanel's Natural Philosophy"; Lockyer's "Guillemin's Forces of Nature"; Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Physical Science"; Tomlinson's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy"; Beale's "How to "Work with the Microscope"; Schellen's "Spectrum Analysis"; Roscoe on "Spectrum Analysis"; Lockyer's "The Spectroscope," and "Studies in Spectrum Analysis"; Airy's "Geometrical Optics"; Nugent's "Optics"; "Chevreul on Colors"; Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy"; Maxwell's "Electricity and Magnetism"; Silvanus Thompson's "Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism"; Faraday's "Forces of Matter"; Youmans' "Correlation of Physical Forces"; Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea"; Atkinson's " Ganot's Physics"; Silliman's "Physics"; Tyndall's Lectures on light, Heat, Sound, Electricity, also his "Forms of Water"; Snell's "Olmsted's Philosophy " (revised edition); Loomis' "Meteorology "; Miller's " Chemical Physics"; Urbanitzky's " Electricity in the Service of Man"; Cooke's "Religion and Chemistry"; Darnell's "Principles of Physics"; Anthony and Brackett's "Text-book of Physics," and also numerous works named in the "Reading References" at the close of each general division. They may be procured of the publishers of this book. The pupil should continually be impressed with the thought that the text-book only introduces him to a subject, which he should seek every opportunity to pursue in larger works and in treatises on special topics.
Also related to the same conversation at WP:N, we now have an assertion that www.coca-cola.com, published by Coca-Cola, Inc., is not self-published. I think the rationale is that multinational corporations are too big to be capable of self-publishing a website.
Would anyone object to adding "corporate websites" to the list at WP:SPS? Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to provide a definition of non-self-published (i.e., something with both editorial independence [from the business side] and editorial control [of the reporters]). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I would say that for the sake of WP, a company's own website is not self-published, as in practice we treat self-published sources and primary sources (such as companies' web sites) differently. Most self-published sources are a synonym for "You probably shouldn't use this", while primary sources are mostly a synonym for, "You can use this, but be careful with it." Angryapathy ( talk) 20:45, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Example of self-published source | Example of properly published source | |
---|---|---|
Example of primary source | Grandma posting at Blogspot about her house burning down. | The first-hand, "eyewitness" report in the local newspaper written by the reporter who was dispatched to the scene of the fire. |
Example of secondary source | A meta-analysis posted on a researcher's own website. | A meta-analysis printed in a scholarly journal. |
Example of tertiary source | The dictionary mentioned above. | The current version of Merriam-Webster |
WI, there is no wikijargon here. When we say "self published", we mean it in the most common according to whom? way, i.e. an individual publishing stuff on his own, without help, or perhaps with a couple of his buddies. To take this simple definition and stretch it to cover Coca Cola, so a giant corporation becomes a "self publisher", that's a huge stretch, and we don't do it. Crum375 ( talk) 22:34, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, when WP says "self published", for example in WP:SPS, we mean published by the authors, with minimal if any vetting layers. This is independent of their primacy: they can be primary, secondary or tertiary, but generally they are not a reliable source, except for information about themselves, if it's not unduly self-serving. As far as your BP press release, a press release from a large corporation, like any other publication it produces, is not "self published" in the WP meaning, because the authors of the releases have to run them by other employees (e.g. lawyers and executives) who vet them before release. Typically, such releases are primary sources, since they discuss subjects with which the authors and their employers are involved. But again, the issue for reliability is the number of vetting layers, not whether it's a corporation selling widgets or newspapers. Crum375 ( talk) 03:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this dispute has to do with the fact that we use the notion "self-published" for at least two purposes, and in the case of large organisations publishing about themselves it makes sense to consider them as self-published for one of them, but not for the other:
When the New York Times writes about itself we can assume that the first point doesn't apply. The second point actually depends on the media they are using: An article about the NYT in the NYT will probably be written to the newspaper's normal standards and therefore should not be regarded as self-published in either way. (Or if it is, there should be a common sense exception for such sources.) When the NYT self-publishes a book about itself it's a different matter. In this case there is a good chance that it crosses the line to advertising. The first problem does not apply in this case, but part of the second does. The situation isn't very different from a self-published paper by a respected scientist: Many of the problems of self-publishing don't apply, but we still consider it self-published.
Like almost everything, whether something is self-published or not is not purely a matter of black or white, or even of shades of grey. The world is full of colours.
There can be communication problems if one editor argues from the plain meaning of the word "self-published", one argues from its wiki meaning as literally defined in policies/guidelines, and yet another argues from the spirit of the policies/guidelines. All these approaches are valid, and they may lead to opposite results. Hans Adler 22:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The SP policy says that the rationale is that anyone can easily self-publish and "claim to be an expert in a certain field". But what if the work is referenced not to substantiate a fact, but rather to demonstrate the existence of an opinion?
For example, I publish a website critical of a cult I used to belong to, which includes original source documents (MSM excerpts, advertisements the group published, etc.), as well as the stories of other former members. I think that the site would be a suitable reference for WP article statements such as, "Former group member Michael Bluejay now publishes a website critical of the group, asserting that it is actually a mind-control cult", or "Former members of the group now say that the group operates as a mind-control cult." The site isn't used to substantiate some special fact, only to show the existence of a claim being made. So I don't think this use goes against the intent of the policy, since the intent of the policy is to prevent using self-published sources to justify facts, not the existence of claims.
Taking this a step further, I'm hoping to quote another former member who described his cult experience as a factor in the failure of his marriage. Here again, the article wouldn't claim as a fact that ex-members' marriages failed as a result or their being involved in the group, only that they made that claim. Is the site acceptable to show that the claim has been made?
Incidentally, the overwhelming majority of sources we're using for the article aren't self-published, but in a couple of cases my site is the only source available for the bit in question. I know my site isn't not the best source, but I think it's better than nothing. The quote above by the former member about his marriage failure hasn't been published anywhere else. Hence my problem.
I'm keen on hearing others' thoughts about all this. Thanks, MichaelBluejay ( talk) 07:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, but I'm not sure you're listening to me. First, I gave an instance in which the publisher is *not* the author, but more importantly, you seemed to ignore my whole point that using a source to show the *existence* of thought (the source *itself* is such thought) seems to be quite a different matter from relying on a source to justify *facts*. Agreed that self-published sources are usually unreliable in the latter case, and the policy says as much, but doesn't really address the former. That's what I'm seeking some feedback on. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 16:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay guys, you're really hijacking my section here. I had some very specific questions that I opened up to discussion. I'm hoping to get some comments on them. Thanks, MichaelBluejay ( talk) 02:03, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, I've been quoted in newspaper articles as a former member of the group who is now critical of it, and I think at least one of them has mentioned that I run the website. I have a hard time believing that WP could ever be held accountable for content generated by its users. Has that ever happened? Finally, I'm really hoping to see the issue I raised discussed in a broad context, not just about my own website. That is, can a self-published site be a good source to show the *existence* of thought (i.e., the source *itself* is the evidence of that thought, inherently)? I know that a self-published source is usually insufficient to back statements of *fact*. What I'm asking about is entirely, completely different. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:24, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. We do have an admin leading the rewrite of the article and policing the sources. But anyway, again, I'm really hoping to see the issue I raised discussed in a broad context, not just about my own website. That is, can a self-published site be a good source to show the *existence* of thought (i.e., the source *itself* is the evidence of that thought, inherently)? I know that a self-published source is usually insufficient to back statements of *fact*. What I'm asking about is entirely, completely different. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
The bottom line is that we can reasonably assume of our reliable sources that they have a professional structure in place for checking facts and legal issues before publication. They have professional people who are paid to say "no, don't publish this." That is absent with personal websites and blogs where an individual or a small unprofessional group is publishing straight to the website. That is what we mean by self-published: that no one stands between the writer and publication. There are no checks and balances. No one is paid to say no.
That is never the case with The New York Times or Coca Cola or the White House, whether they're writing about themselves or something else. When writing about themselves, those organizations are primary sources of information about themselves, but they are never self-published sources within the meaning of this policy. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
If this is truly how Wikipedia defines "self-published":
By "self publishing" we mean individuals or small groups who have no or minimal oversight levels. Crum375 ( talk) 18:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The way Wikipedia defines "self-published" is absolutely correct. By "absolutely correct" I, of course, mean "completely wrong". See? I can misuse words, too (I apologize for being frank). If a corporation puts out a press release, that's self-published, because the entity itself wrote it. No matter how many vetting layers it has, all of those vetting layers exist within one entity. Whether something is "self-published" is completely separate from whether it can be used as a reliable source. If some actor publishes, on their website, the movies they've been in: that information is "self-published". That would also be a "primary source". Does that mean we inherently can't trust this information? No. If that same actor publishes, on their website, a blog that says "The director called me the best actor ever": that information is "self-published". That would also be a "secondary source". It's obviously not reliable. The same "self-published" source, both reliable at times and unreliable at others. With that said, if a corporation, on their website, publishes an indisputable fact (when they were founded, for instance), that's "self-published" and a "primary source". You get the point.
I do completely understand the intention of saying "we try not to use self-published material, such as blogs, etc, because they may not be reliable", but that has nothing to do with material being "self-published". At the very least, there needs to be a discussion on correcting how Wikipedia is telling its editors to interpret "self-published". Why would it be acceptable for Wikipedia to redefine a word?
As was said at WT:N:
There's no sense in a small number of editors making up its own definitions. These terms are used in a certain way in the academic world, so we should try to stick to that usage. It varies a little between subjects, but what's being suggested here is something I don't recognize at all. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
By the way, "By 'self publishing' we mean individuals or small groups who have no or minimal oversight levels." So, how many oversight levels is enough? How many individuals is too many? Chicken monkey 20:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
For example, let's imagine an article on a soft drink, where there's a dispute about the potential health effects of drinking it. The sources might be: (1) a full series of experiments by a professor at Oxford University, published by Oxford University Press; (2) a corporate press release by the manufacturer; and (3) a television interview with someone who got sick after drinking a can of Moxi-pop. Technically, all of these sources have been seen by someone who's paid to edit them, but you wouldn't give them equal weight, would you?
This is why I say it's about risk, responsibility and profit. The television interview gets least weight because the TV station is not to be held responsible for what the person being interviewed has said, even if there's been so much editing that the interview has been cut from half an hour to two minutes. The corporate press release gets the next most, but there's no independence and there's a profit motive. What you'd believe, and what you'd want the article to be based on, is the academic study.— S Marshall T/ C 23:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Experienced Wikipedia editors and admins understand what we mean by the policy and believe it's sufficiently clear. Objections complaining about jargon or denotations of particular words are worthwhile to clear up individual confusion regarding points. However - now that we have cleared up those points, the policy stands as it has stood for some time. It has withstood the test of time and multiple challenges by those seeking to abuse the site in some manner or another.
All Wikipedia policy is subject to ongoing review and evolution, but the proper venue for this sort of review is the Village Pump. I predict that a discussion there will with near unanimity support the existing policy, but anyone who believes that it's fundamentally flawed should feel welcome to take it up there and attempt to change people's minds. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 21:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
You can have a bunch of people get together and produce a wonderful, accurate, highly reliable and reputable product, or they can produce pure junk. This is why we specify that a reliable source must have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. If the reputation is that a source produces junk, then it's not reliable, regardless of whether it's self published or not. Crum375 ( talk) 23:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
There are no "code words": self publishing means the author presses a "Save" button and publishes the material himself. If he has to run it by multiple vetting layers before it can be published, then it's no longer "self" published. No codes. Crum375 ( talk) 23:13, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct that source "reliability" is not black and white, but it's also very much a function of the statement we are trying to support. There is no "absolute reliability", and we expect sources to be more knowledgeable than others about topics close them, although less objective. So corporations can tell us how very reliably how many types of widgets they sell, but not how good they are to your health, or how they stack up compared to the competition. And although a bigger corporation has more vetting layers of higher quality than the smaller ones, when it comes to their own products they would be likely be equally accurate, because the small corporation typically has a simpler product line and less information to process, so things may balance out. Crum375 ( talk) 11:17, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I propose adding the following text to the top of WP:SPS:
Self-publication is the publication of a work by its author, without the involvement of an established, third-party publisher. This includes any and all individuals, small groups, and corporate authors who publish their own works on paper, electronically, or in any other media form, so long as the author is also the publisher.
Self-published and non-self-published sources may or may not be independent of the subject. [1] Self-published and non-self-published sources can be primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. [2]
- ^ Examples: A book that is both written and published by a historian about the Roman Empire is an independent, self-published source. Memoirs written by a retired politician and published by a major publishing house is a non-independent, non-self-published source.
- ^ Examples: A blog posting about a house fire, written by the person whose house burned down, is a primary, self-published source. A newspaper story about the same fire, written by a reporter on the scene, is a primary, non-self-published source.
I propose keeping all of the other text in the section the same (except, possibly, cleaning up the comma splice in the first sentence). This does not change the policy; it only provides a basic, verifiable (e.g., [16] [17] [18]) definition of what a self-published source is and dispels some unverifiable myths whose existence is amply proven by this discussion. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I quoted you a source above, which says "The simplest definition of self-publishing is when an author produces and publicizes his own book for public consumption." There are two separate issues here, self publishing and reliability, which are very related. The more vetting layers, the more we consider a source "reliable" for WP purposes. But to be not self published, you just need to have "some" editorial oversight, so you can't just "produce and publicize your own book for public consumption", per the above definition. Not being self published does not make you a reliable source, but it is a step in the right direction. Crum375 ( talk) 00:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I mentioned above, we use the term SPS in its most common according to whom? meaning, which is an author doing the entire publication process on his own. I provided a link to that definition above. Therefore, once you introduce additional scrutiny and vetting layers, that author is no longer doing the entire publication process on his own, hence that is no longer an SPS. Thus the NYT is not an SPS, as expected. Not sure what else you want. Crum375 ( talk) 01:59, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
We define reliable sources by saying in WP:V, "In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source." This tells us that reliable sources have in place multiple layers of vetting, for legal issues, technical accuracy, etc. The WP:SPS section tells us "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—including but not limited to books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs, Internet forum postings, and tweets—are largely not acceptable." Clearly it focuses on "self published" as material published directly by the authors without professional vetting layers. SPS and RS are related, though not one-to-one, in that SPS is generally not RS, except about the author. But being non SPS does not make a source automatically reliable. Crum375 ( talk) 00:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I tried to explain to you, if you use your interpretation that "author produces" means "author plus a professional organization which screen the material produce", it would include the NYT as "self published source". Ergo, your interpretation is wrong, and "author produces" means what it says, and nothing more. Crum375 ( talk) 03:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times is not "self-published" in any sense, WP or otherwise. The New York Times is published by The New York Times Company, just like The Boston Globe. Journalism is filled with gray areas. Yes, The New York Times and The Boston Globe are part of the same entity -- The New York Time Company --, but in terms of journalism, they are separate. This is especially true in how Wikipedia should treat them and the journalists they employ. In terms of reliability, they must all be judged separately based on their integrity. Corporate press releases should be treated differently from journalism, whether you think it's "self-published" or not. If The New York Times Company puts out a press release, it is "self-published" even though it probably went through internal vetting layers, unlike The New York Times Company publishing The New York Times or The Boston Globe. Chicken monkey 19:42, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I think you may be confused. A publication is a piece of work, it's not an organization. A newspaper or magazine, as a legal entity or organization, is normally a corporation, as far as I know, though I am willing to learn more. Crum375 ( talk) 21:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Crum, can you look at these two sentences, and tell me if they are identical?
Again, for WP policies working definitions we don't need to follow some external definition verbatim, it's enough to be close, esp. since the external ones may vary. In this case, the wiki article says, "Self-publishing is the publishing of books, micropublishing on-line works and other media by the authors of those works", the definition I linked to says "self-publishing is when an author produces and publicizes his own book for public consumption", and WP effectively defines it as a the guy who can press some buttons, and with no paid professionals or a vetting mechanism to stop him, can send his stuff out to the world. Those are all consistent with each other, and as I said, I think we are going around in circles. Crum375 ( talk) 21:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The simplistic division of labor you specify, into an author (or authors) vs. a publisher (or publishers), is incorrect, even in large publishing houses, because there are intermediaries between the ones who do the writing and the ones who approve the release for publication. In fact, those intermediaries, who do much of the factual and legal legwork, contribute significantly to the overall vetting structure. But you don't need to have this polarized structure at all. You can have an author, a vetting organization, perhaps some final proof reading, and a final mechanical publishing step. The "big boss" could be uninterested in the daily details, only that the material is well vetted. And he himself may end up writing some stuff, which he expects to be vetted no less than that of his underlings. In such cases there is no "authors" vs. "publishers" dichotomy, simply one or more authors, a professional vetting structure, and a purely mechanical final publishing step. The "publisher" concept is not needed to make the output reliable, and not "self published". Again, on WP by "self published" we specifically refer to the concept of individuals creating and distributing their own content, with minimal if any professional vetting. This is the most common according to whom? definition of the term, and this is what we mean by it in our content policies. Crum375 ( talk) 00:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Self-publication is the publication of a work by its author, without the involvement of an established, third-party publisher. This includes any and all individuals, small groups, and corporate authors who publish their own works on paper, electronically, or in any other media form, so long as the author is also the publisher. Self-published and non-self-published sources may or may not be independent of the subject. [1] Self-published and non-self-published sources can be primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. [2]
"Largely not acceptable" means that by default they are unacceptable. You have to make a special case to show that they are acceptable, and normally it would be only when they talk about themselves, per WP:SELFPUB. Crum375 ( talk) 03:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Crum, I'm confused by your response. You don't think that the publisher of a large newspaper would generally be considered an "established publisher"? Or is your concern that editors whose answer to the question, "Who is the publisher?" is "I haven't the foggiest idea" would declare that "unknown publisher" is "same name as the author"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
There are lots of people around with misconceptions about our policies. In most cases, I think it's because they don't read them carefully. Do you have your own example of an article you were personally involved in, where in your view a change in WP:SPS wording would have helped? Crum375 ( talk) 19:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry but I don't have any special knowledge why other people do or say things. As I tried to explain several times now, SPS can come in all flavors: primary, secondary and tertiary. All of them are normally unreliable, except in limited circumstances, as described in WP:SPS. I am still waiting for you to show me the example from an article you have worked on, where you consider the existing policy problematic. Crum375 ( talk) 02:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, it seems that SlimVirgin has removed it as a "can of worms. She'd be one of the editors who has made up her own, unverifiable definitions, of course. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Maybe she stops being 'self-published' around step 4 or 5... when does she become a reliable source? I don't think the two necessarily are tied together. Cander0000 ( talk) 03:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
It's hard to follow what the aim of the above is. Could someone give a real example of a problem that's being caused by our current use of "self-published"? SlimVirgin talk contribs 21:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I stated above, I don't see what real-life problem is being "solved" here. I found the material inserted by WhatamIdoing today to be very confusing to the reader, and not particularly relevant to the policy. Jayjg (talk) 01:52, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I understand that WP:V is a content policy, but I and a growing number of other editors see major problems with "truth" in the Wikipedia namespace. Specifically, there are multiple instances of editors making claims that they believe to be true, but are in fact not true. These claims are made without presenting any evidence, and can (and do) mislead other editors. The most egregious example has been WP:OUTCOMES, which until recently made scores of claims (some untrue) about "common outcomes of AfDs." Many of these have been correct thanks to a few editors who strove to clean that area up. However, it continues to happen in other areas.
Some claims about Wikipedia are immediately verifiable and don't require any evidence (e.g. anything that states or quotes a policy/guideline, and anything that states the obvious). However some claims are not (e.g. "In the last 2 years, all articles about elementary schools have been deleted in AfD for being non-notable").
My question is: shouldn't claims about Wikipedia which aren't immediately verifiable include some sort of evidence to back them up? The essay WP:Inaccuracies in Wikipedia Namespace is about this issue, and covers it in more depth. I think a well-written guideline could solve this problem once and for all, but for some reason editors seem loathe to regulate WP namespace.
I welcome all thoughts and suggestions. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 07:35, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
Now that Mr. Negativity has had his say, I still welcome comments and suggestions. ɳorɑfʈ Talk! 04:33, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
For a long time we have had language to the effect that:
with various explanations of what that means. When I joined Wikipedia the meaning was very clear: We don't say anything that cannot be verified. I have traced this back as far as February 2006, a time when two parallel versions of the policy were merged, and I guess it's not worth tracing it back even further:
This always meant that verifiability is necessary, not that it is sufficient. The word "criterion" was a bit misleading, so it was changed to "threshold". [2] A change in June 2006 preserved this:
After some more editing, the paragraph looked like this at the end of the year 2006:
Apparently this wording remained unchanged throughout 2007, but it was modified in April 2008:
After a period of some instability the text looked like this in May 2008:
This was tweaked in June 2008:
In January 2009 the paragraph was split:
As a result of this split, the first sentence became vulnerable to a fundamentalist interpretation: That we have an obligation to publish even clear untruths just because there is a "reliable" source stating them. Once something passes the verifiability threshold, it can be forced into the encyclopedia.
This is not a theoretical problem, as admins can verify by reading Talk:Sam Blacketer controversy. Non-admins may get an idea from reading the AfD. There are situations where our internal processes are perfectly capable of proving a "reliable" source wrong, and it is extremely hard to deal with wikilawyers who insist that truth is irrelevant and that we are under an obligation to parrot what has been erroneously reported. In that particular case libellous information about an arbitrator was edit warred into the encyclopedia, and information that showed the libellous information was incorrect was edit warred out based on the technicality that it was easily verifiable by our own internal processes (edit logs etc.) but not through a published source.
As someone mentioned above, and as I can confirm, "verifiability, not truth" is typically used as an argument for putting eccentric claims into our articles, i.e. it is typically used the wrong way round, as if it described a sufficient condition. That was the case even when the wording made it clear that it is only a necessary condition. Now it has become worse. What can we do to fix this? Hans Adler 09:28, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Hans, just noting here that "the threshold for inclusion" language dates back to August 2005 after it was suggested on another page set up to discuss how to present the concepts of verifiability and NOR. Describing verifiability as the "threshold" seems clearly to describe it as a necessary condition. So long as we emphasize the attributable/attributed distinction nearby, which I did yesterday but I see someone removed it, it should be clear enough that (a) not every single thing that's sourced can be added and (b) not every single thing that's added needs a source. SlimVirgin talk contribs 22:22, 10 April 2010 (UTC)
Your version of Wikipedia would be " an Orwellian ministry of truth....That is a pass to which we ought not to come again." (From the British Chiropractic Association vs. Simon Singh appeal case.) BTW, there is nothing "absurd", "outdated or false" about the NSF/NSB statement. It's just as relevant today as it was in 2006. That pseudoscientific nonsense hasn't become scientific since then.
“ | The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. | ” |
“ | The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors may think it is false. | ” |
The stark contrast offered by the unbalanced bolded phrase is necessary to indelibly implant in the minds of editors that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not the many things that Wikipedia is not. If we are to shoot for clarifying balance in the lede sentence, the addition of true's opposite, "false", is all that is necessary. It might show that the "black and white" of "true and false" is made pale in comparison to the more desirable "verifiability". Just a suggestion.
— Paine (
Ellsworth's
Climax)
03:49, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
We should add that verifiable information from reliable sources (or a single reliable source) that can be demonstrated to be factually wrong on the basis of reliable sources should either be removed from an article, or (if it is WP:DUE) be properly contextualized and presented with inline attribution. Cs32en Talk to me 14:00, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I would like to see the ending phrase of Paine's second proposal included: ".... not whether some editors think it is true while other editors may think it is false." -- Brangifer ( talk) 05:27, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
I propose a second modification. After the statement, we can add "...with "truth" meaning "an obvious, indisputable or universally accepted fact", as not all topics can be completely described using only such statements. When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as to which is the truth about something, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who isn't, as it doesn't make original research. See the policy on neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly". MBelgrano ( talk) 13:48, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Here is the current version:
Combining Paine's and MBelgrano's suggestions we'd get this version:
When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as towhich is the truth about something's a statement's truthfulness, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who isn't is wrong, as it doesn't make indulge in
original research. (See the policy on
neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly.) Wikipedia documents the real world using verifiable and
reliable sources, it doesn't judge it. It is not an
Orwellian "
Ministry of Truth" which determines what is true. It only documents what reliable sources say about the matter.
I made some formatting changes and added a bit that may or may not be usable, ending up with this reading:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a
reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors think it is false. When there is no universal agreement between reliable sources as to a statement's truthfulness, Wikipedia will not attempt to settle who is right and who is wrong as it doesn't indulge in original research. (See the policy on neutral point of view to see how to manage disputes and polemic facts properly.) Wikipedia documents the real world using verifiable and reliable sources, it doesn't judge it. It is not an Orwellian " Ministry of Truth" which determines what is true. It only documents what reliable sources say about the matter. |
Are we getting closer to something that makes it clearer? It must be clear that "verifiability" refers to one thing, and "not truth" to another, and both elements must be explained. -- Brangifer ( talk) 15:10, 11 April 2010 (UTC)
Here is a version of the first paragraph that I could support:
The main threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
This alerts the reader to the fact that there are other criteria, such as NPOV, that also may prevent addition. Hans Adler 06:00, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
The main threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether some editors think it is true while other editors think it is false.
What we require for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
The following examples are from WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy. The colours highlighting some problematic parts are mine.
- Comment: "Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else ;) Is it really compatible with WP:BLP to have an article full of stuff which we know and can prove to be wrong, just by referring to our own archives? I have checked every edit Sam made to David Cameron going back to December 2007, when he became an arbitrator. Here is the edit apparently mentioned in the Daily Mail, where the Mail says he "tried to remove a reference to the Tories having a 'consistent' lead in the polls.". This is the only time I found Sam actually added content, rather than reverting vandals, since December 2007. Now, if you look at this edit, you will find that what he took out was running commentary on 2008 opinion poll results, cited to a 2007 (!) Reuters article http://uk.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUKL1310900320071013?sp=true – material which he replaced with cited material which noted that Cameron had appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, and was said by the Daily Mail to have been presented to the world as Britain's "Prime Minister in waiting". And Sam inserted the information that the Tories were "consistently" ahead. Some Labour activist! Sam actually put in the information these "reliable sources" accuse him of having taken out, just like he took out the unflattering attack picture these sources accuse him of having put in! Perhaps they don't know that if you look at a diff, it's the right side that has the new text, or that red text is text added, rather than deleted. What do I know. Our article here, citing the Daily Mail, says that Sam was "trying to adjust the description of the Conservative Party's lead in opinion polls over the Labour Party." This stupid innuendo and twisting of facts is unworthy of an encyclopedia, and it is unworthy of our project. JN 466 22:08, 9 June 2009 (UTC)
- Keep or failing that, merge the salient points to an appropriate article. Given the extended international coverage, even by such publications as the Corriere della Sera ( [8]), our notability standards are certainly met. Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but WP:V's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues. Sandstein 21:45, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- What is astonishing to me is how many people are willing to simply ignore both WP:V and WP:OR, simply because the original research comes from Wikipedia itself. Unitanode 22:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- It is not original research. It is primary sourcing. There is a difference. And Wikipedia -is- a reliable source on actions at Wikipedia, hence ArbCom can use diffs and the rest to determine appropriateness of rulings. So, information found on Wikipedia about actions on Wikipedia are enough to determine that the sources, if they contradict it, are unreliable. The same is a source saying that a bluebird is naturally red when all pictures of the bluebird shows that it is, indeed, blue. The Reliable Sources noticeboard look at credibility of reporting, especially when there is direct evidence that there is a mistake. Plus, newspapers can take up to a month to make corrections, if they even bother. Ottava Rima ( talk) 23:05, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
- Can anyone else make any sense out of what Ottava Rima just typed? "It is not original research. It is primary sourcing." According to what I understand, the definition of original research is using primary sources instead of secondary ones. What you wrote makes no sense at all, and is not a justification for deleting this article in any way. Unitanode 00:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- I detect shortcutitis (citing shortcuts without actually reading the relevant policy). Try the relevant subsection of WP:OR, which is WP:PSTS. Primary sources are sometimes permissible. Disembrangler ( talk) 00:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- I hardly know as many "shortcuts" as you do. I stumbled into this imbroglio, and am regretting every participating. Even still, a quote from your linked shortcut (does WP:IRONY, exist): "All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors." The relevance of this quote should be self-evident. Unitanode 00:19, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- The bit I was hoping you'd take away from PSTS was "Without a secondary source, a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by a reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge." WP logs can therefore certainly be used in this way to back up the simple factual claims people have made about what actually happened vs what newspapers reported. Disembrangler ( talk) 09:28, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Original Research is not primary sourcing, and primary sourcing is not original research. Original research is to determine what is not readily available from a source of information. If an author writes a book, then you can discuss what the book says without saying what someone else claims the book says. Please look up the definition of "original". A "primary" source would not be original. This is readily apparent from actually reading WP:OR. Ottava Rima ( talk) 00:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- To quote: "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article about it." That sounds like "don't use primary sources" to me. Reliable, third-party sources have been found here. We don't like their interpretation of the facts, so we want to delete the article? That makes no sense. Unitanode 00:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Obviously, people applied the quote to why this should be deleted. The primary sources contradict the third party sources, thus making them unreliable. It has nothing to do with "not using primary sources". Primary sources are a source, but not a justification for notability. Don't dare confuse notability with verification. Ottava Rima ( talk) 03:10, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
[...]
- But we aren't about truth, we are about verification. Those are the standards we apply to other articles, those must be the standards we apply here. -- Cameron Scott ( talk) 15:14, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- As per WP:BLP, it has to be both - "We must get the article right." That is one of our most important policies. A source on a BLP is not "reliable" unless it is extremely credible and not proven wrong. None of these sources meet the BLP requirements, as they hold factual inaccuracies that are blatant. Ottava Rima ( talk) 15:36, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Okay, I haven't been here that long, but even I know the "verifiability not truth" language. Do you really not know this? Unitanode 21:13, 11 June 2009 (UTC)
- Keep The deletion reasons are unconvincing. The deletion of the parent article does not affect this article the slightest.Many articles are unintelligible for people outside specific areas of interest but that in itself does not make it a good reason for deletion. Essjay controversy proves that it is in fact possible to write an article about a Wikipedia-related event based on external sources that is intelligible for people outside this community. Problems that the article might have in that regard can be solved via simple editing and while I understand the buzz the article creates here, we should apply our policies to all articles no matter the content. The article is sourced to multiple reliable sources (whether they got their facts right is not our concern, remember WP:V: Verifiability, not truth) establishing notability. Per WP:BLP1E this is not an article about the person but about the event. No other policy-backed reasons have been mentioned (NOTNEWS gets thrown around but this has continued for multiple weeks now). Regards So Why 10:24, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
Note that even an experienced editor who was arguing for deletion because of the inaccuracies (Jayen466) and a high-profile admin (Sandstein) understood the principle "Verfiability, not truth" as demanding that we publish what we know to be false, merely because it's in the "reliable" sources.
The situation was bad enough. I want to prevent that such a fundamentalist reading of WP:V will be even more defensible the next time something like this happens. Hans Adler 10:01, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
Firstly, User:Hans Adler & User:BullRangifer should seek dispute resolution in another venue. A policy talk page and WP:RSN are not for content disputes. Secondly, I propose changing the first paragraph to read something like:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. This does not mean false information should be added to an article; when reliable sources disagree, give due weight to the individual points of view.
I believe this would eliminate the misuse of the policy. I have not read the above discussion in full, as it is hard to cut through the content dispute to find what we are actually trying to fix here. Apologies if this has already been suggested. — Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 12:49, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
We can't reduce all our concepts to the level where every single thing is spelled out—not least because the more things seem to be spelled out, the more confusion we actually introduce. SlimVirgin talk contribs 15:46, 12 April 2010 (UTC)
-- hippo43 ( talk) 19:21, 12 April 2010 (UTC)All material in Wikipedia articles must be verifiable. This criterion for inclusion is verifiability, not simply truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
“ | All material in Wikipedia articles must be verifiable. A main threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not simply truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true or not true. | ” |
I have a new proposal, independent of the discussion going on. I suspect the root of the problem lies in the effords to explain this concept in a compact size, of just one or two sentences long. Why not link the essay Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth in the statement, make all the explanations needed, and then turn it into a supplemental essay? There, we can provide all the explanations to all the concerns manifested here.
I should mention that the current wording of the essay is mostly my work, but feel free to rewrite it as needed. My proposal is the existence of a suplemental essay on this topic, it does not need to be this specific one. I provided the link just because it's the most natural name for such an essay to have (we may also move the current one to a new name and start a new one from scratch) MBelgrano ( talk) 00:52, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
Currently, a source is defined as follows:
To my mind, however, only the first (a document, article, paper, book, or other material available to the public) can properly be considered a source in the wikipedia sense. The creator of the work may be the originator, but we do not have access to his thoughts except as they are placed in documents, articles, or etc., so the creator is not a direct source. The publisher may have a reputation or a practice such as peer review which helps to affirm that the sources it publishes (documents, articles, or etc.) are reliable, but the publisher itself is not a source since it only presents the material, but doesn't produce it. This distinction is important: allowing creators as sources leads towards wp:OR, since editors will start trying to intuit what the creator meant rather than focusing on the available documents; allowing publishers as sources can sidestep wp:V by giving minor documents more credibility than they might otherwise have simply by virtue of having made it into a publication that 'normally' publishes reliable material. I'm suggesting a rewrite of the 'Reliable Sources' section along these lines:
The word "source", as used in Wikipedia, refers to any piece of published material - an article, paper, book, or any other document available to the general public. A source is reliable when there is good reason to assume that it accurately reflects a notable position or point of view on the topic in question.
There are several factors that can be used in assessing the reliability of published material. Material that is published by independent (third-party) publishers with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy is preferred; such material is generally considered to be reliable, and avoids plagiarism, copyright violations, and unverifiable claims in articles. Academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources where available - such as in topics related to history, medicine, and science - but material from non-academic sources may also be considered reliable in these areas, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. University-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, and mainstream newspapers may also be considered reliable, with the consideration that these materials are not subject to the same level of review as academic works. Electronic media may also be used, subject to the same criteria. Other material may be considered reliable in specific circumstances, where encyclopedic demands require.
The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. Sources are reliable to the extent that they directly address and are appropriate to the material or claims presented in an article. Sources which make tangential claims about a topic, which mention a topic in passing, or which mention a topic as an example while discussing something else should not generally be considered reliable for that topic. Sources which themselves argue for a particular point of view - in particular, self-published material (see below) and material that comes from fringe sources - may be considered reliable sources for the purposes of outlining or describing a particular viewpoint, but should not be considered reliable for the sake of presenting mainstream or established ideas.
I wrote that quickly, but you get the basic thrust of it. comments? -- Ludwigs2 00:01, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
We can ask, for example: (1) Should we use this well-known expert even if he's writing on his blog and what he wrote seems odd? (2) Is the article just what we were looking for, even if we've never heard of the writer and the publication is a very minor one? And (3) Is this New York Times article something we feel obliged to use, because the newspaper is so reputable, even though the writer is unknown and none of us agree with his conclusions? Because the weight of each issue (writer, article, publisher) is constantly weighed up to determine reliability and appropriateness, I'd like the policy to retain those three senses of the word "source". SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:13, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
The policy contains the sentence which begins "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party (independent), published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; this avoids plagiarism, copyright violations..." This is only partly true. If a source contains plagiarism, and we include a fair-use quote or paraphrase in a Wikipedia article, we are spreading the plagiarism, so the sentence is right in that using high quality sources will minimize instances of spreading plagiarism this way, because high-quality sources will seldom contain plagiarism. However, using good sources, by itself, won't prevent editors from creating new plagiarism. Also, copyright violations are avoided not by using high quality sources, but rather by limiting the amount of material copied to what fair use allows, and by paraphrasing. Jc3s5h ( talk) 00:20, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
I've been working on and off on a whole series of articles about film editing techniques, adding numerous citations.
The nature of the film industry tends to be one of word-of-mouth know how and picking up ideas by working with people. Many people with expert knowledge in the industry are also quite open, with information available on the Web which gives colour to the topic. While I currently avoid sources such as blogs (except as an occasional placeholder), what is the policy on providing (possibly multiple) blog entries to provide colour to an article - perhaps in addition to a traditional source?
For example, I am so far finding it hard to find referenced examples of establishing shots, as most reviews don't discuss the technical editing details of films, but there are multiple non-controversial examples, with thousands of establishing shots being broadcast every day. Recently, I have come across tvtropes.org which, as far as I can tell, seems to be as accurate as any newspaper article, and seems to be written by people in the industry. There are many sources of comparable nature, such as Masters Theses in film, which are secondary self-published sources when talking about films, and generally mutually self-consistent. The best blogs are written by professors in film studies and also seem to be reliable.
As film editing in not a black and white process (!), more opinions about how it should be done would seem to give the reader more context to assess the article contents.
An alternative would be to buy some books about films, and give only non-web accessible page numbers as references.
Most of the Wikipedia articles in this area seem to have been uncontroversial and written by experts or at least people who "knew what they were talking about" in the days when citations were a nice-to-have, so there is quite a lot of work to do tidying up the articles - not necessarily the actual content, but on referencing them in a way which allows the references to be checked against the text after the text has been re-edited over time.
Is it better to have an examples section with independent multiple self-published sources, or no section? Stephen B Streater ( talk) 22:23, 18 April 2010 (UTC)
"TV Tropes... is NOT written by anyone in the industry, its user edited"
I am disturbed by an attitude by one contributor at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/ValhallaBot who seems to have low the standards for bots with the potential to make false changes. Looking through policies, I don't see a statement that lies are forbidden, nor do I see a statement that implementing automated processes with reckless disregard for verifiability is forbidden. I believe a new section should be added on this topic. Jc3s5h ( talk) 17:14, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Thought this quote from Jimbo Wales was interesting. [9]
I think that "If no reliable third-party sources can be found on a topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." is a good policy. To take the example of a popular book that receives no reviews, what kind of encyclopedia article could you write about it? You could write an original review, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could write a plot summary, but that isn't an encyclopedia article. You could do some kind of original research, but that wouldn't be an encyclopedia article.-- Jimbo Wales ( talk) 09:04, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
This reflects current policy. Is there anything else we can do to make this more clear? Arskwad ( talk) 16:14, 22 April 2010 (UTC)
- an academic/professor meets any one of the following conditions
- 1. The person's research has made significant impact in their scholarly discipline, broadly construed, as demonstrated by independent reliable source
- The most typical way of satisfying Criterion 1 is to show that the academic has been an author of highly cited academic work
So a highly cited professor always gets kept at AfD, even if there's no biographical third party reliable source coverage. The effect of this is that we basically allow unverifiable autobiographies to be published in Wikipedia if the professor is highly cited, since these articles are invariably based on university bio pages written by the professor themselves or someone close to them. Gigs ( talk) 18:52, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
The video is full of inaccuracies and has no business on a policy page. I could maybe see it as a "See Also" link. It amounts to a bad essay being transcluded into what is supposed to be a policy. Gigs ( talk) 19:38, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
You've probably seen Wikipedia, it's a free online encyclopedia built by people like you and me around the world. You might wonder how thousands of people build an encyclopedia together. Well first Wikipedia is a wiki website, a website anyone can edit, so on Wikipedia, editing or creating a new article happens with the click of a button.
But for these contributions to remain in wikipedia, they have to follow two basic rules. The first is verifiability. With so many contributors, wikipedia articles must rely on information from published sources like books or newspapers, resources known for fact checking.
Requiring contributors to cite these resources in articles and quotations ensures that wikipedia articles are factual and high quality. If it's not verified, it can't be in wikipedia. For example, you can write that the US unemployment rate in 1935 was 20.1% but you must also cite its source for it to remain in Wikipedia. In this case numerous history books could be verifiable resources.
The second rule requires a neutral point of view. All wikipedia material must be presented fairly and without bias, just like any other encyclopedia. This means wikipedia is not a place for contributors to share their own opinions. Lets say you are an advocate for vaccinations, and you write, "Every parent should get their children vaccinated". Unfortunately, this is biased and certain to cause disagreement. It can't be in Wikipedia.
However, published opinions of experts can be included. And if these opinions differ, the article should present all the major opinions without endorsing one over the other. For example, writing that "Vaccinating all US children saves an estimated 33,000 lives" and citing a reputable source is a statement of fact that can be verified.
And if there is an opposing view, it should also be included. For example, a quote from a reputable source like "Critics claim that vaccinations have never benefited public health" helps to balance the article and keep it neutral.
By following these two rules, contributors can help respect one another and help create a free encyclopedia, the largest encyclopedia in human history. Learn more at wikipedia.org.
WP:V and WP:NPOV aren't supposed to be viewed in isolation of WP:OR.
Actually, only information that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs citations. A Quest For Knowledge ( talk) 20:23, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
It is apparent to me that the video is intended as a short, broad summary of the policies on verifiability and NPOV. For a tutorial video, there is no great sin in committing "loss of fidelity in synopsis" (sometimes known as "oversimplifying" in English). It's fair to say that the core policy documents are not an appropriate place for an introductory video. But on the other hand, newbies get pointed at WP:V and WP:NPOV so often, these pages are arguably the best place to put them to guarantee that they will be seen by their target audience. I am happy to hear counterproposals. Tim Pierce ( talk) 20:40, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
Please see this section of Wikipedia talk:NPOV. The NPOV policy currently contains two sections on specific topics: a 534-word section on pseudoscience and a 267-word section on religion. These sections were removed last month as being too specific after an RfC was posted on April 3. [10] The pseudoscience section was moved to WP:FRINGE, [11] and the religion section removed entirely. The sections have now been restored by others on the grounds that consensus was not established, or has changed. Fresh eyes would therefore be appreciated here on talk to decide whether to restore or remove the sections. SlimVirgin talk contribs 00:03, 2 May 2010 (UTC)
The place for discussing the merits of the RfC is the RfC itself, not the space behind a neutral pointer to the RfC. Hans Adler 08:32, 2 May 2010 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
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From WP:V - "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, and do not move it to the talk page." There used to be a link to WP:BLP included in the statement, however WP:BLP#Legal persons and groups specifically excludes organizations from this protection. To bring the policies into agreement, I propose that the words or organizations be removed from this statement. There was a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Groups about adding organizations to BLP protection, and it was rejected as WP:CREEP. -- Joshua Scott (LiberalFascist) 18:03, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
This edit which gave emphasis to the idea of "attribution" seems to be a subtle attempt to give the failed policy proposal at WP:Attribution more traction, as is apparent from views expressed at the proposal to rename it so that we can reuse the title for something more useful than a failed proposal. Gigs ( talk) 00:06, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
Need a third party opinion about this. User:Alastairward has apparently begun to make statements that information from a military service record isn't a reliable citation for information in a Wikipedia article [12]. Forgive me, but a military service record is the absolute primary source for all military service information on Wikipedia military figure articles. I can't begin to think of how many articles have dates of rank, assignment histories, award citations, and countless other information obtained directly for official military files. As I pointed out to AW, we even have an entire article devoted to a service record: Service record of Reinhard Heydrich. So, need some third party advice in case AW begins removing cited material based on service record entires. - OberRanks ( talk) 01:16, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
I guess having a proper cite from a military service record would be a good idea. Is there a standard format? - OberRanks ( talk) 01:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
{{
cite web}}
is fine.. Ideally include enough information that if the URL changes the source could still be easily located though.
Gigs (
talk)
01:36, 11 May 2010 (UTC)The info was removed again from the Patton film article [13], under the same statement that the service record was not well cited. Interested users may wish to comment here. - OberRanks ( talk) 22:21, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Readers short of time are invited to read only the last few bold paragraphs at the end
Hi. If I'm raising this issue in the wrong place, or otherwise going about this in a manner that's sub-optimal, please enlighten and then forgive me. This will take a bit of typing to outline, so please be patient with me.
Verifiability policy indicates that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
However, we are also informed that "exceptional claims require exceptional sources" and so "claims that are contradicted by the prevailing view within the relevant community, or that would significantly alter mainstream assumptions [emphasis added], especially in science, medicine, history, politics, and biographies of living persons" require careful review of sources.
It seems obvious that an assumption is more or less something that readers (or editors) think is true. That's very different from something that is verifiable in the textual tradition of citation. Sometimes a lot of people share an assumption. On one hand the central guiding policy is verifiability, not truth. On the other, anything that challenges assumptions (as distinct from verifiable and reputable citations) is subject to special scrutiny. All this is more or less as it should be.
However there's an issue here in the gray area that any attempt to cover all circumstances invariably creates: cited and widely-held points of view that are not "mainstream assumptions" and that can be construed as facts (if anything can) are sometimes attacked as violating NPOV. Instead of citing sources to balance what is thought to be a non-neutral passage frustrated editors often cite policy (usually NPOV) to defend their assumptions.
I will provide an example here, and it will take more typing, so again, I beg the reader's patience. What follows might seem to be a bit of over-complicated analysis, but I see no other way to fully explicate the theme I'm trying to get my teeth into here. I should also explicitly say that in what follows I'm not arguing (here) for the issues in the example, rather that it is an example of a broader issue.
In the caduceus article there was a passage that stated that the caduceus symbol is often used erroneously in the US to symbolize medicine or medical practice. This has been repeatedly challenged as being in violation of NPOV. However, those that challenge the statement do not provide any citations showing that its use is not erroneous.
The stance of those who wish to see the affirmative statement stay in the article (and I'm one of them) is that all of the current specialized studies of the caduceus cited thus far indicate explicitly that it was adopted in the US by "mistake", in "error", or as a result of "confusion". While perhaps three studies from prior to 1930 defended the use of the caduceus as a medical symbol, claiming it was not selected in error or by mistake, those studies today have been characterized (by an academic and professional medical source) as based on "flimsy and pseudo-historical research", and refuted or ignored by all modern researchers. Masochists are invited to review the discussion if they want to see a list of sources. They are all reputable (JAMA, Royal Society of Medicine Press, Oxford University Press, The Scientific Monthly, The Classical Journal, etc).
The stance of those who wish to remove the statement (or neuter it, rather than make it neutral, by attributing it as a point of view of "some" people) is that the statement violates NPOV. None of them produce citations showing that it's use is not an error, or indeed that whether or not something is an error is a POV issue in the first place. Basically the gist of their case is that it is a known fact that the symbol is used to represent medicine, therefore it cannot be an error. Though they could easily cite less-specialized sources which simply say it is a symbol of medicine (and little more) they don't even do that. They just point to the fact of its use as an indication that it could not be an error.
There are a number of points that make all this tricky, of which I'll note a few:
1. The sources that do affirmatively state it is a medical symbol are general reference works that don't go into detail, they don't discuss the issue of the mistaken adoption or the unknowing emulation of the initial error. Many indicate that it is today used as a medical symbol. Nothing more. Arguments based on the silence of sources are obviously less strong than one's made based on explicit, affirmative statements in sources.
2. The sources indicating that its symbolic valuation is based on a initial mistake and the perpetuation of the error are also the specialized studies dealing with symbolism at length. It would seem that specialized studies dealing with a subject at length carry more weight than short reference entries that mention a subject in passing, provided all such sources are verifiable, reputable, etc.
3. There is a low level of semiological sophistication in most of the sources, which does not address the thrust of the arguments made by those who want to take out the content they don't like, which amounts to the firm conviction that a semiological mistake is no longer a mistake if enough people make it. That's all fine and good except that none of the sources dealing with the caduceus show that degree of semiological sophistication (which I here note is entirely distinct from knowledge of their given subject, in this case the symbolism of the caduceus itself), and none of the editors involved have adduced citations from disciplines armed with the tools or theory needed to address such an issue.
4. Regardless of its use today, there is no doubt that as regards its initial adoption the view that it was not a result of mistakes, confusion or error was not only a minority view, but is now a dated one that does not receive serious attention in contemporary sources. Hence there is academic consensus that the initial adoption was an error. No source thus far presented gives any indication that an error can one day simply expire. What do we do when the clear consensus is that it was adopted in error, and many specialized studies by academic or medical professionals (and sometimes both) indicate that its continued use is an error, while general reference works make little or no mention of any of this, simply stating today that it is a symbol of medicine?
All that by way of showing that there are many gray areas in this example (as is often the case), gray areas which should be clarified by recourse to citation of sources (not policy), rather than obliterated by uninformed regurgitation of assumptions that "everybody knows to be true". To my mind, the most important issue here is that people are citing policy about NPOV and trying to bring the content they don't like into line with their view based on assumptions that they do not feel require citation.
This brings me to the general issue, which I hope justifies the time spent by the reader here: it seems that very often, in content disputes (though I don't doubt there are many important exceptions) editors should start with citations of reputable sources before they turn to citation of policy. Daily, I see the issue of putative NPOV violations raised to justify the removal of something that somebody doesn't happen to like. All this is an intricate matter of how NPOV intertwines with Verifiability as two core principles, yet the separate treatment of NPOV and Verifiability entrenches, to some degree, their independent application in practice (no matter how many times we are reminded that in theory all of this is knitted together). Is there any policy or guideline that explicitly suggests starting with citation of reputable sources before thumping the policy bible to defend one's claims about NPOV? If not, were I to try to craft some such guideline, would I do it here (which is the first place that comes to mind) or associate it with the NPOV policy, or craft it for both locations?
To be more explicit: It seems to me that claiming an NPOV violation as justification for removal (or ham-handed butchery) of cited, verifiable content from reputable sources is most often not acceptable in and of itself. An alleged NPOV violation often requires citations to establish it as a fact. Hence, a presumed NPOV violation is often only a basis, or a context for the presentation of citations to:
1. establish that the content in question is actually in violation of NPOV, and;
2. provide a non-arbitrary verifiable basis for modification of content to bring it into line with NPOV standards.
Basically, it would be helpful to be able to direct someone to guidelines for when a corrective NPOV edit can be made without recourse to (non-policy) citation and when a corrective NPOV edit requires citation to establish that NPOV guidelines are even being violated, and to provide a context for modification based on Verifiability.
Help?-- Picatrix ( talk) 19:50, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Certainly:
It seems to me that claiming an NPOV violation as justification for removal of cited, verifiable content from reputable sources is most often not acceptable in and of itself. An alleged NPOV violation often requires citations to establish it (even arguably) as a fact. Hence, a presumed NPOV violation is often only a basis, or a context for the presentation of citations to:
1. establish that the content in question is actually in violation of NPOV, and;
2. provide a non-arbitrary verifiable basis for modification of content to bring it into line with NPOV standards.
It would be helpful to be able to refer to guidelines for when a corrective NPOV edit can be made without recourse to (non-policy) citation vs. when a corrective NPOV edit requires citation to establish that NPOV guidelines are even being violated, and to provide a context for modification based on Verifiability. Is there any policy or guideline that explicitly suggests starting with citation of reputable sources before thumping the policy bible to defend one's claims about NPOV? If not, were I to try to write some such guideline, would I do it here (which is the first place that comes to mind) or associate it with the NPOV policy, or mention it for both locations? All the other material above establishes an example context for this question. -- Picatrix ( talk) 08:53, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Wikipedia's policy reliance on published works discriminates against politically incorrect persons and philosophies, such as Men's Rights -- as in the case of the recently deleted entry on Rich Zubaty. This is because Feminists are powerful enough to, and actually do, hinder the publication of anti-Feminist and Men's Rights works, with the result that there is little of this available to support a claim to Wikipedia article status. The media are similarly strongly influenced by Feminism and censor anti-Feminist views, so that media articles are also relatively rarely available to support a claim to Wikipedia article status. And even self-published sources are not given credibility by Wikipedia policy unless the self-publisher has previously been published by third parties. This results in the under-representation of politically incorrect views, issues and persons amongst Wikipedia articles. PeterZohrab ( talk) 08:22, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Says Zubaty: The publishing industry is terrified of women. When my first book came out the Fems went to the distributor and said: if you don't drop his book we will boycott your other 600 books.
The distributor dropped me like a stone. That violated our contract and I offered to sue the distributor. They put me back on the sales list, but years later I found out that anyone who called to order books was told they didn't stock them any more -- when they had 700 sitting in their warehouse!
Sabotage then, sabotage today. Deleting the Rich Zubaty wiki page is sabotage. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lew Loot ( talk • contribs) 21:00, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Can anyone tell me exactly how to insert a non-English reference? Where do I put the original link, the transalted text? Or just direct me to a similar case and I'll see from there. Thanks Căluşaru' ( talk) 19:06, 17 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay, I was told that this policy should not address topicality of something in an article. Can anyone tell me which policy this would fall under? The de facto rule is that any references cited have to at least make mention of the article topic in some way as a ground rule, and that any references being cited for some other purpose, that don't actually refer to the article topic at all, probably are in the wrong article. But the closest I've found where this is spelled out is WP:SYNTH; maybe there is another section to look in? Til Eulenspiegel ( talk) 15:22, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
The policy currently uses some redirects to sections within policies, piped to appear as "below" or "above" -- when they actually redirect to whole other policies.
Wikipedia:SOURCES, for instance, is referenced in wikilinks that are piped to "above" and "below", but it really redirects to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources. Geo Swan ( talk) 21:43, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Could someone clarify the status of such blogs as reliable sources? Footnote #4 in the policy says "Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. In March 2010, the Press Complaints Commission in the UK ruled that journalists' blogs hosted only on the websites of news organizations are subject to the same standards expected of that organization's print editions (see Plunkett, John. "Rod Liddle censured by the PCC", The Guardian, March 30, 2010). " To me, that says that a professional journalist's blog, posted on a UK newspaper's web site is reliable. Is that incorrect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Momma's Little Helper ( talk • contribs) 13:42, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
For anyone interested, based on recent discussions here and on WT:NOR, I have started a draft version of a new proposed ATT policy under my user page, which includes the current versions of WP:V, WP:NOR and some material from WP:ATT. It is very much a works-in-progress, but comments would be appreciated on its talk page. Thanks, Crum375 ( talk) 00:29, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
In an earlier thread I proposed making the following change to the wording of WP:SOURCES:
Articles should be based upon reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking, accuracy and independence.
Independence means that a source is free from pressures associated with a strong connection to the subject matter (such as, but not limited to family relationships, close political affiliation, business dealings or other benefical interest) that may compromise, or can reasonably be expected to compromise, the source's reputation for reliablity.
At the time, most of the objections to this amendment were in relation to using autobiography as a source in articles. Having thought about this issue, I am not against using autobiographical sources, but I realise that they are a potential minefield, in the sense that, they are a form of self-published sources, and for that reason, are not strictly reliable in any case. For instance, if I were to quote an autobiograhical source in an article about a living person, I would do in a way that made it absolutely clear that I was doing so (e.g. "XYZ said in his book that...") to alert the reader to the fact that a person speaking about their own life may not be the unbiased source of information about events that affected them.
I feel that we should revisit this proposal, because independence is an important principle in the real world, that when compromised, can have catastropic effects (the Enron Scandal comes to mind in this regard) for those who regard reliable sources as an important form of external verification. It seems to me that independence and reliablity are two vital characteristics of high quality sources, and to ignore one or the other would fatally compromise this policy on verifiability. Would anyone care to support this proposed amendment? -- Gavin Collins ( talk| contribs) 08:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
WP:NEWSBLOG currently says "Posts left by readers may never be used as sources." But is this not like letters to the editor? Does it not depend on whether the person or organisation writing can be identified as a notable expert on the subject under discussion? For example there was a magazine published during the Victorian period Notes and Queries Online, which was a sort of editorial overseen paper blog. Information from N&Q was cited and included in academic publications. In most of the cases I have seen academic selection of information extracted from N&Q was from from known experts in their field. -- PBS ( talk) 22:18, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Let us suppose that a opinion is published in a newspaper and added to the newspapers bloc site, in which the newspaper columnist claims that something in a recently published book was wrong, and that the author of the book replies on the blog with a clarification. It would be incumbent on the newspaper to check that it was indeed the author of the book and the author of the acknowledgement was one and the same person (if not they would leave themselves open to legal action). I'm thinking along the lines of David Irving's letter to the Times in 1966, but published in this day and age as a reply in a blog on www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/blogs/. -- PBS ( talk) 23:22, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I need advice on the implementation of this rule when the challenged fact is common knowledge. The example above that " Paris is the capital of France" is a trivial example that you would hope would never be challenged. But for the sake of example, what if it were challenged in good faith? How do you select a source for information that widely known?
Or to take a slightly more complex example, how do you source Pulley when all the facts in the article have been common knowledge (at least among engineers and the equivalent) since the time of Aristotle and can be found with trivial ease in any high school textbook? Unlike more modern findings, there is no breaking source or authoritative dissertation proving the mechanical advantage equations. Pulling out my highschool textbook seems inappropriate. Why should it be given precedence or credibility? Websites covering that level of basic information are equally speculative, often appearing to have been written for elementary students and containing no source information themselves.
By the way, sourcing the opening definition of "pulley" to the Oxford English Dictionary seems to me to be a massive waste of readers' time and a distraction rather than an addition to the page. Thoughts on a general solution to this problem would be much appreciated. Rossami (talk) 22:10, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
The following works, to which the author acknowledges his obligation for valuable material, will be useful to teacher as well as pupil, in furnishing additional illustrations and in elucidating difficult subjects, viz.: Tait's " Recent Advances on Physical Science"; Arnott's "Elements of Physics" (7th ed.); Stewart's "Elementary Physics," also his "Conservation of Energy," and "Treatise on Heat"; Atkinson's " Deschanel's Natural Philosophy"; Lockyer's "Guillemin's Forces of Nature"; Herschel's "Introduction to the Study of Physical Science"; Tomlinson's "Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy"; Beale's "How to "Work with the Microscope"; Schellen's "Spectrum Analysis"; Roscoe on "Spectrum Analysis"; Lockyer's "The Spectroscope," and "Studies in Spectrum Analysis"; Airy's "Geometrical Optics"; Nugent's "Optics"; "Chevreul on Colors"; Thomson and Tait's "Natural Philosophy"; Maxwell's "Electricity and Magnetism"; Silvanus Thompson's "Lessons in Electricity and Magnetism"; Faraday's "Forces of Matter"; Youmans' "Correlation of Physical Forces"; Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea"; Atkinson's " Ganot's Physics"; Silliman's "Physics"; Tyndall's Lectures on light, Heat, Sound, Electricity, also his "Forms of Water"; Snell's "Olmsted's Philosophy " (revised edition); Loomis' "Meteorology "; Miller's " Chemical Physics"; Urbanitzky's " Electricity in the Service of Man"; Cooke's "Religion and Chemistry"; Darnell's "Principles of Physics"; Anthony and Brackett's "Text-book of Physics," and also numerous works named in the "Reading References" at the close of each general division. They may be procured of the publishers of this book. The pupil should continually be impressed with the thought that the text-book only introduces him to a subject, which he should seek every opportunity to pursue in larger works and in treatises on special topics.
Also related to the same conversation at WP:N, we now have an assertion that www.coca-cola.com, published by Coca-Cola, Inc., is not self-published. I think the rationale is that multinational corporations are too big to be capable of self-publishing a website.
Would anyone object to adding "corporate websites" to the list at WP:SPS? Or perhaps it would be more appropriate to provide a definition of non-self-published (i.e., something with both editorial independence [from the business side] and editorial control [of the reporters]). WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:54, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I would say that for the sake of WP, a company's own website is not self-published, as in practice we treat self-published sources and primary sources (such as companies' web sites) differently. Most self-published sources are a synonym for "You probably shouldn't use this", while primary sources are mostly a synonym for, "You can use this, but be careful with it." Angryapathy ( talk) 20:45, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Example of self-published source | Example of properly published source | |
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Example of primary source | Grandma posting at Blogspot about her house burning down. | The first-hand, "eyewitness" report in the local newspaper written by the reporter who was dispatched to the scene of the fire. |
Example of secondary source | A meta-analysis posted on a researcher's own website. | A meta-analysis printed in a scholarly journal. |
Example of tertiary source | The dictionary mentioned above. | The current version of Merriam-Webster |
WI, there is no wikijargon here. When we say "self published", we mean it in the most common according to whom? way, i.e. an individual publishing stuff on his own, without help, or perhaps with a couple of his buddies. To take this simple definition and stretch it to cover Coca Cola, so a giant corporation becomes a "self publisher", that's a huge stretch, and we don't do it. Crum375 ( talk) 22:34, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, when WP says "self published", for example in WP:SPS, we mean published by the authors, with minimal if any vetting layers. This is independent of their primacy: they can be primary, secondary or tertiary, but generally they are not a reliable source, except for information about themselves, if it's not unduly self-serving. As far as your BP press release, a press release from a large corporation, like any other publication it produces, is not "self published" in the WP meaning, because the authors of the releases have to run them by other employees (e.g. lawyers and executives) who vet them before release. Typically, such releases are primary sources, since they discuss subjects with which the authors and their employers are involved. But again, the issue for reliability is the number of vetting layers, not whether it's a corporation selling widgets or newspapers. Crum375 ( talk) 03:55, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps this dispute has to do with the fact that we use the notion "self-published" for at least two purposes, and in the case of large organisations publishing about themselves it makes sense to consider them as self-published for one of them, but not for the other:
When the New York Times writes about itself we can assume that the first point doesn't apply. The second point actually depends on the media they are using: An article about the NYT in the NYT will probably be written to the newspaper's normal standards and therefore should not be regarded as self-published in either way. (Or if it is, there should be a common sense exception for such sources.) When the NYT self-publishes a book about itself it's a different matter. In this case there is a good chance that it crosses the line to advertising. The first problem does not apply in this case, but part of the second does. The situation isn't very different from a self-published paper by a respected scientist: Many of the problems of self-publishing don't apply, but we still consider it self-published.
Like almost everything, whether something is self-published or not is not purely a matter of black or white, or even of shades of grey. The world is full of colours.
There can be communication problems if one editor argues from the plain meaning of the word "self-published", one argues from its wiki meaning as literally defined in policies/guidelines, and yet another argues from the spirit of the policies/guidelines. All these approaches are valid, and they may lead to opposite results. Hans Adler 22:43, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The SP policy says that the rationale is that anyone can easily self-publish and "claim to be an expert in a certain field". But what if the work is referenced not to substantiate a fact, but rather to demonstrate the existence of an opinion?
For example, I publish a website critical of a cult I used to belong to, which includes original source documents (MSM excerpts, advertisements the group published, etc.), as well as the stories of other former members. I think that the site would be a suitable reference for WP article statements such as, "Former group member Michael Bluejay now publishes a website critical of the group, asserting that it is actually a mind-control cult", or "Former members of the group now say that the group operates as a mind-control cult." The site isn't used to substantiate some special fact, only to show the existence of a claim being made. So I don't think this use goes against the intent of the policy, since the intent of the policy is to prevent using self-published sources to justify facts, not the existence of claims.
Taking this a step further, I'm hoping to quote another former member who described his cult experience as a factor in the failure of his marriage. Here again, the article wouldn't claim as a fact that ex-members' marriages failed as a result or their being involved in the group, only that they made that claim. Is the site acceptable to show that the claim has been made?
Incidentally, the overwhelming majority of sources we're using for the article aren't self-published, but in a couple of cases my site is the only source available for the bit in question. I know my site isn't not the best source, but I think it's better than nothing. The quote above by the former member about his marriage failure hasn't been published anywhere else. Hence my problem.
I'm keen on hearing others' thoughts about all this. Thanks, MichaelBluejay ( talk) 07:11, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, but I'm not sure you're listening to me. First, I gave an instance in which the publisher is *not* the author, but more importantly, you seemed to ignore my whole point that using a source to show the *existence* of thought (the source *itself* is such thought) seems to be quite a different matter from relying on a source to justify *facts*. Agreed that self-published sources are usually unreliable in the latter case, and the policy says as much, but doesn't really address the former. That's what I'm seeking some feedback on. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 16:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Okay guys, you're really hijacking my section here. I had some very specific questions that I opened up to discussion. I'm hoping to get some comments on them. Thanks, MichaelBluejay ( talk) 02:03, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, I've been quoted in newspaper articles as a former member of the group who is now critical of it, and I think at least one of them has mentioned that I run the website. I have a hard time believing that WP could ever be held accountable for content generated by its users. Has that ever happened? Finally, I'm really hoping to see the issue I raised discussed in a broad context, not just about my own website. That is, can a self-published site be a good source to show the *existence* of thought (i.e., the source *itself* is the evidence of that thought, inherently)? I know that a self-published source is usually insufficient to back statements of *fact*. What I'm asking about is entirely, completely different. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:24, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. We do have an admin leading the rewrite of the article and policing the sources. But anyway, again, I'm really hoping to see the issue I raised discussed in a broad context, not just about my own website. That is, can a self-published site be a good source to show the *existence* of thought (i.e., the source *itself* is the evidence of that thought, inherently)? I know that a self-published source is usually insufficient to back statements of *fact*. What I'm asking about is entirely, completely different. MichaelBluejay ( talk) 05:04, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
The bottom line is that we can reasonably assume of our reliable sources that they have a professional structure in place for checking facts and legal issues before publication. They have professional people who are paid to say "no, don't publish this." That is absent with personal websites and blogs where an individual or a small unprofessional group is publishing straight to the website. That is what we mean by self-published: that no one stands between the writer and publication. There are no checks and balances. No one is paid to say no.
That is never the case with The New York Times or Coca Cola or the White House, whether they're writing about themselves or something else. When writing about themselves, those organizations are primary sources of information about themselves, but they are never self-published sources within the meaning of this policy. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
If this is truly how Wikipedia defines "self-published":
By "self publishing" we mean individuals or small groups who have no or minimal oversight levels. Crum375 ( talk) 18:19, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The way Wikipedia defines "self-published" is absolutely correct. By "absolutely correct" I, of course, mean "completely wrong". See? I can misuse words, too (I apologize for being frank). If a corporation puts out a press release, that's self-published, because the entity itself wrote it. No matter how many vetting layers it has, all of those vetting layers exist within one entity. Whether something is "self-published" is completely separate from whether it can be used as a reliable source. If some actor publishes, on their website, the movies they've been in: that information is "self-published". That would also be a "primary source". Does that mean we inherently can't trust this information? No. If that same actor publishes, on their website, a blog that says "The director called me the best actor ever": that information is "self-published". That would also be a "secondary source". It's obviously not reliable. The same "self-published" source, both reliable at times and unreliable at others. With that said, if a corporation, on their website, publishes an indisputable fact (when they were founded, for instance), that's "self-published" and a "primary source". You get the point.
I do completely understand the intention of saying "we try not to use self-published material, such as blogs, etc, because they may not be reliable", but that has nothing to do with material being "self-published". At the very least, there needs to be a discussion on correcting how Wikipedia is telling its editors to interpret "self-published". Why would it be acceptable for Wikipedia to redefine a word?
As was said at WT:N:
There's no sense in a small number of editors making up its own definitions. These terms are used in a certain way in the academic world, so we should try to stick to that usage. It varies a little between subjects, but what's being suggested here is something I don't recognize at all. SlimVirgin talk contribs 17:32, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
By the way, "By 'self publishing' we mean individuals or small groups who have no or minimal oversight levels." So, how many oversight levels is enough? How many individuals is too many? Chicken monkey 20:36, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
For example, let's imagine an article on a soft drink, where there's a dispute about the potential health effects of drinking it. The sources might be: (1) a full series of experiments by a professor at Oxford University, published by Oxford University Press; (2) a corporate press release by the manufacturer; and (3) a television interview with someone who got sick after drinking a can of Moxi-pop. Technically, all of these sources have been seen by someone who's paid to edit them, but you wouldn't give them equal weight, would you?
This is why I say it's about risk, responsibility and profit. The television interview gets least weight because the TV station is not to be held responsible for what the person being interviewed has said, even if there's been so much editing that the interview has been cut from half an hour to two minutes. The corporate press release gets the next most, but there's no independence and there's a profit motive. What you'd believe, and what you'd want the article to be based on, is the academic study.— S Marshall T/ C 23:34, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Experienced Wikipedia editors and admins understand what we mean by the policy and believe it's sufficiently clear. Objections complaining about jargon or denotations of particular words are worthwhile to clear up individual confusion regarding points. However - now that we have cleared up those points, the policy stands as it has stood for some time. It has withstood the test of time and multiple challenges by those seeking to abuse the site in some manner or another.
All Wikipedia policy is subject to ongoing review and evolution, but the proper venue for this sort of review is the Village Pump. I predict that a discussion there will with near unanimity support the existing policy, but anyone who believes that it's fundamentally flawed should feel welcome to take it up there and attempt to change people's minds. Georgewilliamherbert ( talk) 21:35, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
You can have a bunch of people get together and produce a wonderful, accurate, highly reliable and reputable product, or they can produce pure junk. This is why we specify that a reliable source must have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. If the reputation is that a source produces junk, then it's not reliable, regardless of whether it's self published or not. Crum375 ( talk) 23:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
There are no "code words": self publishing means the author presses a "Save" button and publishes the material himself. If he has to run it by multiple vetting layers before it can be published, then it's no longer "self" published. No codes. Crum375 ( talk) 23:13, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct that source "reliability" is not black and white, but it's also very much a function of the statement we are trying to support. There is no "absolute reliability", and we expect sources to be more knowledgeable than others about topics close them, although less objective. So corporations can tell us how very reliably how many types of widgets they sell, but not how good they are to your health, or how they stack up compared to the competition. And although a bigger corporation has more vetting layers of higher quality than the smaller ones, when it comes to their own products they would be likely be equally accurate, because the small corporation typically has a simpler product line and less information to process, so things may balance out. Crum375 ( talk) 11:17, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I propose adding the following text to the top of WP:SPS:
Self-publication is the publication of a work by its author, without the involvement of an established, third-party publisher. This includes any and all individuals, small groups, and corporate authors who publish their own works on paper, electronically, or in any other media form, so long as the author is also the publisher.
Self-published and non-self-published sources may or may not be independent of the subject. [1] Self-published and non-self-published sources can be primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. [2]
- ^ Examples: A book that is both written and published by a historian about the Roman Empire is an independent, self-published source. Memoirs written by a retired politician and published by a major publishing house is a non-independent, non-self-published source.
- ^ Examples: A blog posting about a house fire, written by the person whose house burned down, is a primary, self-published source. A newspaper story about the same fire, written by a reporter on the scene, is a primary, non-self-published source.
I propose keeping all of the other text in the section the same (except, possibly, cleaning up the comma splice in the first sentence). This does not change the policy; it only provides a basic, verifiable (e.g., [16] [17] [18]) definition of what a self-published source is and dispels some unverifiable myths whose existence is amply proven by this discussion. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 23:10, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I quoted you a source above, which says "The simplest definition of self-publishing is when an author produces and publicizes his own book for public consumption." There are two separate issues here, self publishing and reliability, which are very related. The more vetting layers, the more we consider a source "reliable" for WP purposes. But to be not self published, you just need to have "some" editorial oversight, so you can't just "produce and publicize your own book for public consumption", per the above definition. Not being self published does not make you a reliable source, but it is a step in the right direction. Crum375 ( talk) 00:31, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I mentioned above, we use the term SPS in its most common according to whom? meaning, which is an author doing the entire publication process on his own. I provided a link to that definition above. Therefore, once you introduce additional scrutiny and vetting layers, that author is no longer doing the entire publication process on his own, hence that is no longer an SPS. Thus the NYT is not an SPS, as expected. Not sure what else you want. Crum375 ( talk) 01:59, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
We define reliable sources by saying in WP:V, "In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source." This tells us that reliable sources have in place multiple layers of vetting, for legal issues, technical accuracy, etc. The WP:SPS section tells us "Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason self-published media—including but not limited to books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, personal or group blogs, Internet forum postings, and tweets—are largely not acceptable." Clearly it focuses on "self published" as material published directly by the authors without professional vetting layers. SPS and RS are related, though not one-to-one, in that SPS is generally not RS, except about the author. But being non SPS does not make a source automatically reliable. Crum375 ( talk) 00:40, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I tried to explain to you, if you use your interpretation that "author produces" means "author plus a professional organization which screen the material produce", it would include the NYT as "self published source". Ergo, your interpretation is wrong, and "author produces" means what it says, and nothing more. Crum375 ( talk) 03:18, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The New York Times is not "self-published" in any sense, WP or otherwise. The New York Times is published by The New York Times Company, just like The Boston Globe. Journalism is filled with gray areas. Yes, The New York Times and The Boston Globe are part of the same entity -- The New York Time Company --, but in terms of journalism, they are separate. This is especially true in how Wikipedia should treat them and the journalists they employ. In terms of reliability, they must all be judged separately based on their integrity. Corporate press releases should be treated differently from journalism, whether you think it's "self-published" or not. If The New York Times Company puts out a press release, it is "self-published" even though it probably went through internal vetting layers, unlike The New York Times Company publishing The New York Times or The Boston Globe. Chicken monkey 19:42, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
I think you may be confused. A publication is a piece of work, it's not an organization. A newspaper or magazine, as a legal entity or organization, is normally a corporation, as far as I know, though I am willing to learn more. Crum375 ( talk) 21:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
Crum, can you look at these two sentences, and tell me if they are identical?
Again, for WP policies working definitions we don't need to follow some external definition verbatim, it's enough to be close, esp. since the external ones may vary. In this case, the wiki article says, "Self-publishing is the publishing of books, micropublishing on-line works and other media by the authors of those works", the definition I linked to says "self-publishing is when an author produces and publicizes his own book for public consumption", and WP effectively defines it as a the guy who can press some buttons, and with no paid professionals or a vetting mechanism to stop him, can send his stuff out to the world. Those are all consistent with each other, and as I said, I think we are going around in circles. Crum375 ( talk) 21:19, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
The simplistic division of labor you specify, into an author (or authors) vs. a publisher (or publishers), is incorrect, even in large publishing houses, because there are intermediaries between the ones who do the writing and the ones who approve the release for publication. In fact, those intermediaries, who do much of the factual and legal legwork, contribute significantly to the overall vetting structure. But you don't need to have this polarized structure at all. You can have an author, a vetting organization, perhaps some final proof reading, and a final mechanical publishing step. The "big boss" could be uninterested in the daily details, only that the material is well vetted. And he himself may end up writing some stuff, which he expects to be vetted no less than that of his underlings. In such cases there is no "authors" vs. "publishers" dichotomy, simply one or more authors, a professional vetting structure, and a purely mechanical final publishing step. The "publisher" concept is not needed to make the output reliable, and not "self published". Again, on WP by "self published" we specifically refer to the concept of individuals creating and distributing their own content, with minimal if any professional vetting. This is the most common according to whom? definition of the term, and this is what we mean by it in our content policies. Crum375 ( talk) 00:21, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Self-publication is the publication of a work by its author, without the involvement of an established, third-party publisher. This includes any and all individuals, small groups, and corporate authors who publish their own works on paper, electronically, or in any other media form, so long as the author is also the publisher. Self-published and non-self-published sources may or may not be independent of the subject. [1] Self-published and non-self-published sources can be primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. [2]
"Largely not acceptable" means that by default they are unacceptable. You have to make a special case to show that they are acceptable, and normally it would be only when they talk about themselves, per WP:SELFPUB. Crum375 ( talk) 03:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
Crum, I'm confused by your response. You don't think that the publisher of a large newspaper would generally be considered an "established publisher"? Or is your concern that editors whose answer to the question, "Who is the publisher?" is "I haven't the foggiest idea" would declare that "unknown publisher" is "same name as the author"? WhatamIdoing ( talk) 03:09, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
There are lots of people around with misconceptions about our policies. In most cases, I think it's because they don't read them carefully. Do you have your own example of an article you were personally involved in, where in your view a change in WP:SPS wording would have helped? Crum375 ( talk) 19:31, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I am sorry but I don't have any special knowledge why other people do or say things. As I tried to explain several times now, SPS can come in all flavors: primary, secondary and tertiary. All of them are normally unreliable, except in limited circumstances, as described in WP:SPS. I am still waiting for you to show me the example from an article you have worked on, where you consider the existing policy problematic. Crum375 ( talk) 02:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
Well, it seems that SlimVirgin has removed it as a "can of worms. She'd be one of the editors who has made up her own, unverifiable definitions, of course. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 20:37, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Maybe she stops being 'self-published' around step 4 or 5... when does she become a reliable source? I don't think the two necessarily are tied together. Cander0000 ( talk) 03:10, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
It's hard to follow what the aim of the above is. Could someone give a real example of a problem that's being caused by our current use of "self-published"? SlimVirgin talk contribs 21:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
As I stated above, I don't see what real-life problem is being "solved" here. I found the material inserted by WhatamIdoing today to be very confusing to the reader, and not particularly relevant to the policy. Jayjg (talk) 01:52, 3 June 2010 (UTC)