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The last sentence of WP:SPS, is "Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer. I have started a few discussions recently regarding the Line of succession to the British throne article, (e.g. here), but this sentence in WP:SPS is particularly worrying. (Almost) all of the names in the line of succession article are of living people, and the Wikipedia article is primarily based off of this self-published website. Several editors who regularly edit the line of succession article, believe that the author of this website is an established expert, and that in this case we should be making an exception. But the wording of WP:SPS uses the word "never" is a way that appears to make this impossible.
I'll also point out that it's more than simply genealogical information - the website also excludes illegitimate children from the line of succession. In other words, this self-published source is what the Wikipedia article uses to conclude someone's children are illegitimate. For me this raises alarm bells, but it seems impossible to change anything to do with this article, due to others' determination to preserve the list (by the way, Wikipedia is the only place anywhere that maintains this detailed list in an up to date form). Any help, or advice, would be appreciated. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:03, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
By the way, I've started this RfC, at SlimVirgin's suggestion above. Mlm42 ( talk) 21:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Over the years Wikipedia, like any culture, has acumulated its share of jargon. Some of it is natural, and some is unnecessary and legalistically obstructive to understanding. Nowhere is this problem demonstrated than the first sentence in the WP:V policy, where two standard English words are used in a way that is nonstandard, and which tends to invite wiki-wars among people who assume unconsciously that the words they have heard over and over, are meant in their normal senses. Here is the first sentence of WP:V:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
This statement is quite deceptive, for it is full of jargon. In failing to define its terms completely and immediately, it sets up an odd dichotomy between "verfiability" (as we usually understand the word) and "truth." (as we usually understand the word). Iin the real world, where verifiable simply means provably-true, and provable is a loaded word, such a dichotomy exists between that which is true and provably true. In the real world, standards of provability are not those acceptable to Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia isn't trying. "Verifiability" is defined by Wikipedia in this opening sentence as consisting of two distinct parts: [1] Whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been "published" [at that point the "material" could be a flat-out mistake, lunatic idea, or a deliberate lie], and [2] That the publication occurs in a "reliable source." A "reliable source" is (in turn) defined lower down within the same policy, in the WP:V section on sources WP:SOURCES: "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
Now, "fact-checking" has to do with checking facts, which in turn are defined (see any dictionary) as statements that are TRUE. Likewise "reputation for accuracy" means "reputation for being true or close to true." Fact and accuracy are synonyms for truth and "truth-hood." (opposite of falsehood). Calling the idea of "truth" by another name (as well as putting synonyms like "fact" and "accuracy" farther down the policy page) unnecessarily obscures a simple meaning, and a simple goal. Wikipedia's goal is indeed truth. However, the very idea of that it is not, causes Wikipedia editors to go around cudgeling each other with the idea that "verifiablity," trumps "truth," as though they were using these words in their normal meanings, instead of their special "wiki-meanings."
So now, we require an exegesis. Let us find out what the first sentence of WP:V means in standard English, by getting rid of all jargon and wiki-meanings. We will unpack and rewrite the first sentence of WP:V in standard English, using the policy's own definitions for the wiki-words, as necessary. Ready? First, we replace "reliable" by "published, with reputation for fact-checking and accuracy," and then, we replace "fact-checking and accuracy" with "truth-checking and truthfullness." Here's what we get:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true.
That fixes puncutation and gets rid of the wiki-words and wiki-meanings in the last part. We are now in a position to get rid of the wiki-meanings in the first part, so that now ALL of the words are used in their normal standard English definitions:
The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true.
At this point, we have de-obscured the text, and with it, some of the problems. Wikipedia's own policies are actually all about "truth"- TRUTH is what reliability and fact-checking are about. When the policy says it is about verifiability and NOT truth, this is an obscurantist, for neither word is being used here as in standard English. In standard English, "verifiability" can mean many things, including what the reader can prove it to him or herself by checking by his/her own math, or by going to see for him or herself. Verification also has many possible meanings in the sciences and law, and standards differ from one discipline to another. The statement doesn't actually mean that Wikipedia is about "verifiability" as we all understand the word— it's about a particular documentary version of reality used by Wikipedia, which is narrower, not perfectly well-defined, and very much media-driven. For example, I might be a celebrity with a mole on my right hand. If the New York Times states it is on my left hand, then Wikipedia's use of the word "verifiability" departs from the standards of the English language. For here, Wikipedia doesn't mean the word in any way that has contact with either reality, or standard English usage. In such cases, I can't prove a thing to anybody who reads otherwise in their newspaper.
Likewise, when the WP:V policy states that the standard of Wikipedia inclusion is NOT "truth," it also does not use the term as it is usually understood. In this case, Wikipedia IS actually interested in truth as we normally understand the word "truth" when we speak of public truth, demonstrable truth, scientific truth, legal truth, or even journalistic truth. It simply isn't about personal truth or any other type of truth one could NOT use in a legal or science debate. It's not about your truth and my truth, unless some other "reputable" person or source has published it, and one can cite it, as in a debate or courtroom. Worse, the question of "reputation" of a publisher, is in the eyes of the beholder.
What this policy actually means to say, is that the threshold for Wikipedia inclusion is NOT what its writers think is true, but rather what some OTHER published writers, who have a "reputation" for telling truth, think is true, and have gotten somebody else to "publish" (whatever "publish" means these days). That seems to be a more narrow statement, but at least it is closer to what Wikipedia's policy actually means to say.
Alas, the problem of how a Wikipedia writer, independent of his or her own sense of "truthiness," is to identify these published truth-telling authors, and their truthy works and truthy reputations, is the rub. Some published writers are wrong, some ignorant, some are shills, and others are less than sane. This is the source of many an edit war, as an editor's personal idea of what is true, will naturally have heavy effects on their judgement of the truthfulness of available published sources. Must one include the writings of the confused, the ill-informed, the hacks and the crazies? But at least we're a bit closer to the root of the epistemological problem. First, one must lay out the policy in plain standard English.
(The above was written after a recent encounter with a few other editors of an article who had no idea what WP:V means, but it wasn't their fault. It was the WP:V policy's fault). S B H arris 01:23, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true.
If we're talking about this sentence, then: (a) not "the threshold" (there are various reasons we might or might not decide to include some statement in some article; this is just one of them); (b) not "that it has been published by" but "that it is supported by" or words to that effect; (c) not "not truth" or anything like that - we don't want sourced information that we know to be false. I would start something like this: "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles." -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Current | SBH "un-packed" | SBH "no jargon" | Fram | Kotniski |
---|---|---|---|---|
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in 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: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true. | The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true. | The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true. | It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles. |
I've placed the three versions under discussion above for easier comparison. My own first comment about SBHarris' proposals is that I believe the aim of using normal English is a good one, and I agree that this policy is not always well understood, but (a) trying to avoid all internal jargon ("un packing") makes sentences longer, which obviously does not mean easier to understand. (b) the attempt at reducing jargon also does not really work for me. Is "published-source truthfulness" normal English? I do not think so. Fact is that Wikipedia has developed some new concepts which are useful for discussion about Wikipedia and hard to discuss without using terms for those concepts. This is the type of situation in which neologisms and jargons are sometimes justified. (And wikilinking does make our jargon a little easier to learn.) That does not mean we should not be constantly careful of jargon, and constantly looking for policy areas where people are misunderstanding things often.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 10:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Somebody has noted that not everything in WP really must be proven (by cite) to have been published in a reliable source, so long as the editors all agree with the material, and there is no contention. So it's theoretically provable-by-cite (if you could find a cite for an obvious thing). But trying to cram that whole concept into "wiki-verifiability" is also a bad idea. Better to just qualify the idea of "needed publication" right at the beginning. Jimmy Wales is wrong that obvious facts are easy to find cites for. Example: you can't find me any published source that says Charles Dickens' novel The Pickwick Papers was originally written by Dickens in English. However, we all believe it since it's obvious to any thinking adult who knows anything about Dickens, and you could add it to an article without a {{citation needed}}. Wikipedia takes "judicial notice" of certain non-controversial facts. S B H arris 19:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Another different kind of problem occurs when a popular concept in (say) science is wrong, but so widely believed that even lower division college texts are more likely to have the wrong thing than graduate level texts and journal articles, which have the correct thing. One example I once fought through is the notion that mass can be "converted" to energy, so that the mass dissappears entirely, and leaves just the energy (this is true for matter, but is not true for mass-- they aren't the same). So "verification" in this case requires Wikipedia editors not only to know their physics, but to be able to sort out the graduate level texts and texts by relativity experts, from all the other physics texts- a thankless task.
When it comes to definitions, it's even worse. In the article on weight (for example) editor consensus has forced me to live with an article that defines weight in a way that differs from the ISO definition, just because most college undergrad physics texts define it another way that isn't as good (by the opening definition, orbiting space station astronauts aren't weightless, they are only "apparently weightless"!). And so on. The judgement of sources is not a job that can be fobbed off, but WP attempts to do it all the time. We are interested only in sources mostly likely to be TRUE, but that in turn cannot be determined without knowing yourself how truth is arrived at, in that area. That's a tricky and knowledge-area dependent process. S B H arris 21:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
So how about we combine my first sentence above with something about it not being about editors' opinion, e.g. "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. What matters is not editors' personal opinions as to whether something is true, but whether it can be supported through the proper use of sources. But I still feel a need to say straight away, either in the same paragraph or just after it, that the concepts of "reliable" and "proper use" (or whatever words we end up choosing to express those ideas) are not trivial or (necessarily) intuitive, and indeed the main purpose of the policy we're introducing is to explain what we at Wikipedia consider to be reliable sources and proper use of sources in various situations. (Oh, and I don't find it at all obvious that the sky is blue.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Are you proposing that we acknowledge any other kind of verifiability which isn't based on sources? It seems generally accepted that we can't ask people to verify something by, say, doing an experiment or even following the steps in a non-trivial logical deduction. -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
The WP:V policy page actually has an RS section which is pretty good, in part because it is vague. It says:
Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should directly support the material presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. 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.
That ends up leaving the standards in each field up to the experts in that field. The only problem for Wikipedia is that it takes some expertise to know who the experts are. The idea of "wiki-verifiability" is "you could in theory go look it up and verify that it's true" but the question then is "where do you go to look it up to be most confident?" The rest of the RS section in WP:V attempts to say more on this question, and says some questionable things. What is a "mainsteam newspaper"? Does that mean obituaries in the New York Times are reliable? And how do you tell that you have a "respected publishing house"? I pulled at random from my large shelf of quack health books and found Fit for Life, which was published by Warner Books, owned by Time Warner. It'a hilarious bunch of food combining nonsense, but it sold well (3 million copies already in 1985, which is when my edition was printed in paperback). So is it "reliable"? Reliable for what purpose?
The article WP:RS (now WP:IRS) attempts to expand on this theme, and succeeds in some areas and fails in others. If you want to know how complex this can be, look at WP:RSMED, which looks at the problem just in medical material. This is one of WP's better guidelines (no, I didn't write any of it; I do agree with most of it). However, there is no corresponding RS section for the physical sciences.
When it comes to journalism, the section in WP:IRS mentions churnalism (please read this), and that alone should either make you nod grimly or your hair stand on end, depending on your prior view of newspapers. But knowing that, NOW what do you do? You're stuck. There's really no way you can see what's going on behind the scenes at a newspaper, the way you can a science journal. Peer-reviewed journals or book publishers like Springer require many credentials from editors, and have many cycles of fact-checking that go on between author and outside degreed editors, before they publish. A newspaper journalist by contrast often will not read the entire article over the phone to the person it's about, or who supplied its expert-information, before print. And so on. Verifiability needs reliable sources, and WP:IRS can't walk people through all the problems with finding them, if they have no knowledge themselves. S B H arris 22:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I also think that we should discuss putting the two sections ("Anything challenged or likely to be challenged" and "Burden of evidence") back into one, as small sections have a tendency towards bloat. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Please can we rephrase this policy into the active? I'm thinking of using imperatives, e.g.:-
Current: This policy is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about living persons. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.
Proposed: Apply this policy strictly to all articles, lists and captions without exception, and particularly to material about living people. Consider removing anything that requires but lacks a source. Please remove unsourced contentious material about living people immediately.
Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.
Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
... and so on. I don't see a need to change the meanings, just to use simpler and less stilted constructions.— S Marshall T/ C 23:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.
Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Andrew Lancaster attempt: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources or paraphrase too closely unless you use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Andrew Lancaster attempt: Name a reliable source for all quotations or paraphrases, and for any material challenged or likely to be challenged. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
The aim of the above wording proposals is not to change the meaning at all.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 13:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: this was a subsection of the previous thread; changing it so it doesn't come in the edit window every time
On a related point, this policy appears to require both inline citation and in-text attribution whenever public domain sentences are incorporated into an article, which is definitely not consistent with community practice. I think that the section might benefit from a somewhat less refined writing style:
If this requirement actually applied to public domain sources, then we would need to repeatedly add the phrase "According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica..." to some 14,000 articles—and that's just for the one source.
On a related point, I'm not sure that we're hitting the right note with our strong statement on in-text attribution. In-text attribution is not always appropriate. Consider the case of a single negative-sounding word, e.g., "controversial". You might put it in quotations to indicate to the reader that it's not your editorial judgment (or to appease editors who would like to whitewash a situation). But if it appears in multiple sources, you don't want to say, "According to Alice and Bob and Chris and David and Emily, Frank's artwork is 'controversial'." It's a direct quotation, and you shouldn't have to resort directly to IAR to leave off the silly string of sources that use the word—and you definitely shouldn't name only one, because that leaves the reader with the inaccurate impression that only Alice says the artwork is controversial.
I think that the solution here is to say that direct quotations should normally be supplied with an in-text attribution.
As for "close paraphrasing" requiring in-text attribution: if it's "too close paraphrasing", you oughtn't be doing it at all, and if it's "permitted paraphrasing", I don't think that in-text attribution is normally appropriate. Consider this:
Is this a paraphrase? Certainly. Is it close enough to violate the copyright? No. (There are only so many ways to present this simple fact, after all.) Do you really want to require that editors start that sentence with "According to Medline Plus..."? No. Does the community, in fact, actually provide in-text attribution for paraphrases like this? No.
But that's what the policy currently says we must do: It makes no distinction between paraphrasing that violates a copyright and paraphrasing that is completely legal. According to the policy, both must be treated identically in terms of in-text attribution. I think this needs to be fixed. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Obviously inline citations are the normal way to cite, and someone has wanted to imply this in a rushed way by putting it in the sentence just quoted. But as the next sentence already says, there is actually a whole page, WP:CITE which describes the different ways of citing in different situations. (The same logical error occurs in WP:CITE's opening line, which is based on this policy page.In practice you do not need to attribute everything; only quotations and material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed, through an inline citation which directly supports the material in question.[1] For how to write citations, see Citing sources.
Two points:
I don't understand this revert - surely it's the wording as it stands that would (if read in a particularly literal way) ban all unsourced material on talk pages. The aim of my change was indeed to make it clearer that it's only potentially defamatory unsourced material that's not allowed on talk pages, this being the obvious intended meaning of the sentence (but it should be worded in such a way that it's clear that the conditional "if" clause applies to the whole sentence, including the bit about talk pages).-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
If you don't like my previous effort (or perhaps you do, now it's been explained), how about "In the case of unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, do not leave it in the article (and do not move it to the talk page either)." -- Kotniski ( talk) 08:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
So as to resolving this, is the wording "Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed immediately, and not tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either." OK with everyone? )(This is in the "burden of evidence" section, in place of "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.")-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) That's perhaps a good point, but I don't see what it has to do with this change. The change being proposed is from
to:
The effect is to remove the mention of organizations, and avoid the ambiguous grammatical construction ("X if Y, and Z"). Objections? -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Still this is being reverted with no explanation - well, it's being claimed that it would be implying that it's OK to defame organizations, but consensus above (and the BLP policy) imply clearly that we don't consider defamation of organizations to be an issue - at least, not on a par with defamation of living persons. Also where this same advice appears in this policy further down, organizations are not mentioned - so it's quite bizarre to insist on giving different advice here. Slim (or anyone else who objects to this change), please can you join in the discussion and say what you actually think we should be saying and why, instead of unilaterally reverting a change that everyone else seems to support? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
No further response, so I've tried again with "Special considerations apply to unsourced or poorly sourced material that contravenes our policy on biographies of living persons – please remove such material immediately, and do not move defamatory material to the talk page either. This uses the active voice, avoids the ambiguous conditional, and defers to BLP on what material is actually involved (so we don't have to say here to what extent it includes organizations).-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to remind everybody that this is a central policy, so please get an editorial consensus on the talk page before you edit.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 10:24, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem with the subsection is not so much that it existed, but that it was full of mistakes. What we have now is a sentence or two about copyright coming out of nowhere in a section that isn't about that at all; but at least what it says isn't manifestly wrong. If we want a separate section on copyright/plagiarism (which seems a perfectly good idea), then someone with genuine knowledge of the subject (and the ability to summarize clearly without loss of accuracy) needs to write it. -- Kotniski ( talk) 12:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I have reverted an edit by Slim Virgin, defended by OrangeMarlin in second edit, which, although the edit was just described as "tightening some writing" actually changed the wording so that mention of the useability of primary sources was removed, and the preference for secondary sources has been made absolute. Some comments:
Another reason to not rule out, or seem to rule out, primary sources is that the definition of "primary" and "secondary" is rather loose and varies from field to field, so an inexperienced editor might forgo the use of a fine source because in the editor's mind it is a primary source. Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I did some rephrasing to the Lead, particularly including a reference to reliable sources and what that means, in the first two paragraphs. Maybe it is a bit clearer? I agree that a sentence explaining the common misunderstanding and what it means could also be useful.
Some other things I'd like to see in the lead:
Another absurd thing is that when we propose merging WP:V with WP:NOR on the grounds that they're the same thing, people claim "oh no, not the same thing at all" - but now you have, in the second paragraph here, this policy being summarized in terms of original research - effectively defining original research to be exactly the same thing as what this policy forbids! Can you all make up your minds - if original research is a separate subject, then let's not say that this policy is about it - and if it's not a separate subject, then let's simplify and merge the two pages into one. -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I've tried with this sequence of edits to remove some of the most obvious and hopefully uncontroversial problems with the lead (as explained in the edit summaries and in the above posts) - I hope (perhaps too optimistically) they won't be reverted blindly, but (if at all) then for good reasons that will be presented to us.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I also notice that the old nutshell has been restored - can anyone explained why? I personally find nutshells a redundant and fairly silly gimmick - the policy should be summarized in the lead, not in a special box - but if we're going to have one, it should surely summarize the policy in as much generality as possible, not just pick one sentence from it.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Threshold. The word "threshold" implies movement and the beginning of a process. The valuation term "most important" suggests neither movement nor process. I have added the previous wording as a note because the word "threshold" is essential in the editing disputes which I have encountered -- see here; and such disputes are likely to continue to arise in articles about something to do with East Asia. -- Tenmei ( talk) 21:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Here is an idea. If I look at the opposed opinions, others do not see the word "threshold" as a logical breakpoint in a simple way, but the beginning of a process. Or maybe another way to word it is that they see it as the necessary and sufficient condition for words to be good enough for potential inclusion. Obviously people love the word threshold and they also want to avoid a big logical construction like "necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion" or "necessary and sufficient conclusion for potential use given other conditions are met" so I am wondering if this observation about how people seem to be reading it can lead to a small tweak that covers all valid concerns. For example:
Does this make any sense to others?-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 11:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
...readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source...: I think this should be changed to something like "material in Wikipedia can be supported by reliable, published sources", for reasons I've already given - readers' actual ability to check is not as fundamental a requirement as this makes it seem to be; and the material in Wikipedia need not (indeed usually should not) itself have been published before - what we mean is that it ought to be based on, supported by, published sources. Does anyone disagree, or was this revert collateral damage?-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Do we in fact want a nutshell? Do we want the current one? As I said above, though I can now sort of see why this one was chosen, it still seems to be misleading (by implying that this sentence sums up the whole policy, when what it actually does is state the most important practical consequence of it), and to provide clutter by simply repeating what's stated in the second paragraph of the lead.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
"Threshold" in a nutshell? This is a practical issue, not an abstract one. IMO, this thread wanders too far afield from lessons learned the hard way and the school of hard knocks. Yes, we can all acknowledge and agree that parsing distinctions between "necessary" and "sufficient" are valid concerns, but the "rubber meets the road" at a far more gritty level:
When " fact" (supported by WP:V + WP:RS) is defined as indistinguishable from " factoid" (supported by nothing), what next? This becomes an irreducible question, a shared " threshold knowledge" inquiry.
The words "threshold" and "verifiability, not truth" are married; and these words offer perhaps the only arguably constructive step forward. Have you not seen this for yourselves? -- Tenmei ( talk) 00:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a practical issue which affects day-to-day editing "where the rubber meets the road". This is a recurring problem and it is likely to get worse in the near future. The pointed clarity of words on this page will only become more important as our project continues to grow.
In the alternative, I support any arguable effort to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V as long as these few words are unaffected by editing changes.
At Wikipedia:Nutshell#Verifiability, our policy can be summarized succinctly: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Maybe the simple act of repeating the same thing over and over again is always necessary and never sufficient? -- Tenmei ( talk) 21:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
As for your second point, no. Do not try to "spin" my words to contrive a straw man. Again, no matter how many different ways I re-write using different words, you seem unwilling to take in this point, but some things are both valid and significant despite your belief or disbelief. The WP:V threshold focuses irreducible attention on the pivotal distinction between fact (which supported by WP:V + WP:RS) and " factoid" (which is associated with zero cited support). Your "re-framing" addresses follow-up issues.
Perhaps this can be explained by our edit histories. Although my 50,000+ edits are more than yours, I see that the range of unique pages you have edited is a little more than twice mine. I do not want to impede anyone's attempt to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V; but four words only must remain unaffected by changes: "threshold" + "verifiability, not truth". -- Tenmei ( talk) 13:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
While we're on this, some basic re-ordering might be helpful. For one, we refer to reliable sources in relation to 'other principles' before the section where we define reliable sources. So current section 1 should come after 2 and 3, if not at the very end. Also, WP:MOSHEAD suggests we not repeat phrases like 'reliable sources and...' if it's implied by the parent header/title.
The changes are: 1) section 1 is moved to after section 6. Section 1 headers are shortened to not repeat "reliable sources". Ocaasi c 15:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) Since no two editors, even if they support the split, ever seem to have the same view on what the split should be, it does certainly seem as though we have two policies which (whatever their original motivation may have been) have crept onto each other's territory so much that they have ended up largely as duplicates (with really only the SYN section being exclusive to WP:NOR). The potential two sides of the coin that I see are the aspirations and the practice - the actual content policy, the ideal we aim for (everything should be supportable by sources) on the one hand; and the practices we have for attempting to achieve that ideal (the informal "challenge - provide a source, or delete" procedure and its variants) on the other hand. But still, I wouldn't see a need for splitting those two things between two pages (I just think we should be more clear of the distinction when structuring our page(s)).-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Nevertheless, some kind of drastic shortening of WP:V is needed, since really all it adds to policy is that you should be able to "look up" all contentious information points, if you like, in order to verify for yourself that some "reliable source" says the same as WP. End. Everything else is WP:IRS, which is the (much, much longer) argument about which sources are "reliable" (likely to be other than clear error, lies, stupidity, and so on). Most of the outline that Kotniski produces at the head of this section above is about RS; it can go in the ISR article. If there are accessability issues, THEY should go into a discussion of "practical verifiability," as discussed above. But that's about it for what really could or should be in WP:V per se.
Wikipedia isn't about "absolute truth" any more than science or academia are; all we'd like is the nearest approximation to it that is available, and whenever we find clear error, we remove it, and "best approximation to truth" is whatever survives that process. But as in science, history, engineering, and so on, we can be concerned with approaching truth usefully, without being convinced that we have finally gotten there. At the same time, giving up the idea of absolute truth does not mean that all is relative and we don't care if the sources are true, but only that they exist. We do care, and if we don't, we should!
For those of you seeking amusement, I have posted a study attacking the reliability of metropolitan newspaper articles, over at WT:IRS. Primary news articles are full of error, only 2% of which is ever acknowledged by them, later, in error sections. The first response I've had, is somebody saying that that is why Wikipedia is "about verifiability, not truth"! [4] Honest-- go read it! Thus, once again suggesting what damage is done every day by having people come HERE to WP:V to get the impression that having a citation matters far more than truth, and then going to IRS and finding people saying that absolute reliablity of sources doesn't matter that much since the truth of the cite and source isn't really a basic WP issue, per WP:V. Ouch! S B H arris 04:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
In a few historical cases where no other sources are ever located (this happens a lot in the 19th century), we have to use what we have, as a semi-reliable source is better than no information at all. Historians must deal all the time with what to do with century-old news stories that come out a day after the event, but sometimes are not fully checked with their primary sources and witnesses (a story about something a journalists personally saw is not the same as a story about something a journalist reports on a deadline secondhand); and how to compare these with coroner or trial transcripts of what people say about the same event weeks or months later, vs. what people remember years later.
In any case, all these are WP:IRS issues, and probably shouldn't even be mentioned in WP:V. WP:V might speak to the usability of blogs, but only because they are evanescent. In these days of self-publication and small and smaller publishing houses (sometimes only 3 people only work for small imprint) the only reason to deprecate blogs is that you can't be sure they won't change, not because they are "self-published." Most organizations have publications these days, and they're all self-published. "Self-published" is hard to define, and in any case, the WP:V faults for it that we mention doesn't apply to print, nor to things reliably archived and available. Those things only have RS problems due to bias and relative lack of review by others, not V problems. And by the way, the evanscense problems apply to many on-line sources that are due to become deadlinked when somebody stops hosting them. YET that usually doesn't cause them to run afoul of WP:V even BEFORE they disappear, as appears to be the case for "self-published" works. S B H arris 16:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I disagree with the accuracy of :
The current rule, and the correct one, is that English sources are preferred if of equal quality. (I would rpefer to reword it as that the best sources should be used regardless of language, and also the best available English sources)This is the English Wikipedia in the sense that the articles are written in English, and in no other sense. It covers the world on equal terms, and for many or even most of the topics--when seen on a world wide basis-- there will not be English sources.
I also disagree that :
Such articles in most fields are not just good sources, but the best sources. All such material is available to un-university people also, through interlibrary loan as a last resort. They are not necessarily primary research, and even primary research articles in scientific journals invariably contain a synthesis of the state of knowledge. Yes, they have to be used with caution to make sure they are representative of the actual state of the field, but that is true of all sources whatsoever. A rule such as this limits our coverage of the science to the state of knowledge 5 years ago, which is the approximate amount such sources as textbooks are out of date, and to much further in many of the humanities. It would not even be appropriate for popular culture! The best available reliable discussions of popular culture are in professional-level paid sources. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I made the same point about all primary scientific papers containing targetted mini-reviews, as part of the discussion, at WT:IRS. People who want to pigeon-hole these things haven't read many of them. S B H arris 19:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps we've gone off into a side-issue here, but do I take it from the above posts that people generally agree that the emphasis on "readers can check whether..." in the lead sentence of the current policy is inappropriate, as argued in the #Readers can check... thread above? -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Any suggestions on how to put together a more concise version of this quarter's policy update for next week's Signpost? - Dank ( push to talk) 19:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
There is a section of this policy which is a bit confusing, even after searching the talkpace archives. Namely, frequently editors invoke the principle that anything can be a source on it's own opinions. However, reading this policy we see that if a source is "promotional" then it can't be used as a source on it's own (promotional) opinion since it becomes self-serving and that's one of the exceptions listed. On the other hand, it's accepted that sources don't need to be neutral. Now then, how do we tell the difference between a source that's not neutral but OK, and a source that's promotional and thus not OK? Could we add a bit of colour to the policy to describe what's meant by promotional? I agree with the idea behind this restriction but it should be more clearly defined, IMO. Cheers, -- Dailycare ( talk) 20:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Sure, that fixes the problem. We don't know if a white house press release will be promotional of the president's agenda. Could be objective. Could happen. Is it reliable? However, we can fix that problem by simply quoting the secondary source news agencies that attend the "white house press briefing" and regurgitate the press release documents which they reprint as newspapers-of-record. All fixed!
BTW, on another note has anybody noticed how many WP articles are totally controlled by manufacturers and businesses? Korg, Tropical Islands, and Caesar's Palace are not where you go to get non-COI info. S B H arris 17:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
This edit introduced the following paragraph:
First and foremost, for a source to be considered reliable it must be published - ie distributed to the public (whether in printed, visual or audio format). Unpublished materials are not considered reliable.
I have no problem with emphasizing the point at the beginning of the section, but the paragraph mixes different ideas. Printed material is visual, and it can be even more visual if it contains photographs and drawings. There are two points that could be made:
I'm not sure which point this paragraph is trying to make. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Am I understanding WP:TWITTER correctly...?
A may cite a quote by B about A provided that the Twitter account of B is a reliable source (i.e. verified or linked to official web page etc.). No other use of Twitter as a source is permitted at all. ( W090584 ( talk) 16:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC))
SV, re this, look at the paragraph directly above where it says "published in a reliable source". Using "reliable published source" immediately afterward is redundant and missing an opportunity to start introducing readers to what our jargon actually means. Why don't we wikilink the first reference and replace the second with 'reputation for fact checking and accuracy' (or reputation for fact checking and accuracy that is appropriate for the claim being made...)? Ocaasi c 19:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Nightscream added this to the policy: "Note that social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook can only be used to support personal information about subjects if the page in question can be authenticated as the official page of the subject with a secondary source." I fail to see what property a reliable secondary source has that makes it more suitable for this purpose than a reliable primary source. Jc3s5h ( talk) 23:48, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing what this is actually about, but I don't see any difference between X's Facebook page and X's official website, if we know that X maintains their Facebook page in much the same way they would maintain their official website if they had one. -- Kotniski ( talk) 18:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
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Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly. |
Can we agree that the passage can be restored on the policy page that a subject's SNS page can be used, as long as a reliable source establishes it to be the official one? If given info is on the subject's SNS page, but not on their official site, I can't see any reason not to be able to cite the former. Nightscream ( talk) 08:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Given the number of times I revert additions of material sourced to unverified SNS pages, I would say no, which is why I thought adding that bit of elaboration would make it clearer, particularly to newbies. Can we restore it? Nightscream ( talk) 08:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
SPS says "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities..." Now I know the word "source" can mean either the document or the author, but it shouldn't be changing its meaning in the middle of a sentence, and it seems to me that in the phrase "self-published and questionable sources" it has to mean the document, but "themselves" has to refer to the author - or perhaps not even the author, but the "owner" (in the case of corporate/entertainers' websites etc.) If anyone knows what this is supposed to mean, can they clarify? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm amused that anybody thinks that having a book published by a "reputable publisher" makes it somehow more reliable that if it were from a self-publication house. The threshhold there has nothing to do with reliability, and everything to do with how likely the book is to sell and make money. For example, I have half a bookshelf of JFK assassination conspiracy theory books. Here's a David Lifton book Best Evidence, a book-of-the-month club book in 1981 when it was published in hardcover by Macmillan (later softcovers by Carroll & Graf Publishers). This howler suggests that JFK's body, between the time it left Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital for autopsy 5 hours later, was switched with a duplicate coffin and subjected to a secret surgery in Bethesda, in the hour between when the coffin was offloaded from Air Force One and when it arrived at the naval hospital. JFK's personal physician Dr. Burkley who had chain-of-evidence responsiblity wouldn't talk to Lifton and the president's widow wouldn't either, and Lifton never considers that watches still set to CST Texas time might vary by an hour from Bethesda watches and reports that are EST. From this, a best-seller. My personal favorite in this collection is one called Mortal Error. which posits that a secret serviceman in the backseat of the secret service chase-car in Dallas immediately after the assassination, managed to accidently shoot JFK in the head with his AR-15 rifle, right past the driver of his own vehicle's ear, and nobody noticed. Publisher of this little fairy tale is St. Martin's Press. Need I go on? S B H arris 19:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't particularly think too many people believe that JFK's body was stolen before Lifton laid that idea on the public as his personal thesis, and I'm not even sure too many believe THAT, even now. But the book sold well and titilated a lot of fantasies, just like fad diet and health books do. Since there is a lot of notable nonsense, some of which is believed by some fraction of the hoi poloi, Wikipedia is now doomed to simply repeat it without making any judgements-- creationism must be given equal space with atheistic theories of the origin of the Earth and humans, for example, simply because more people believe in creationism, so it's more notable. And we're stuck with the fact that wide publication feeds on itself until a piece of pure error (as you saw in the magic bullet sequence in Oliver Stone's film JFK) becomes widely believed by people who see it on the Silver Screen as explained by Kevin Coster, but don't bother to check out some source like-- Wikipedia (which has an article that does NOT mirror public perception, but DOES mirror expert-perception).
So, in summary, sort this out: is WP:N going to sometimes totally disregard WP:IRS? And if so, what's the point of arguing WP:IRS at all? And are we to remove all reference to RS in the WP:V policy, since (after all) RS is really NOT essential? S B H arris 20:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
No. In English "reliable" means [6] "dependable, trustworthy," or (in regarding to information): 3. reliable - conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief; "an authentic account by an eyewitness"; "reliable information."
You are attempting to use a nonstandard meaning in English, making "reliable" mean "fair and balanced" (like Fox News, don't you know). If you want to say "reasoned, well-considered, and relatively balanced way," then use those words. Use "NPOV" if you like. But don't use the word "reliable," which normally in such circumstances, means something else. The present policy says about reliability: "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Fact-checking and accuracy have to do with truth, not with fairness, balance, or nonpartisanship. "Accuracy" is partisan-- anything else is error, and should be discounted as such if mentioned, or else not mentioned at all!
The idea that the problems of WP boil down to "mere scholarship" and could be done as well by a machine with no human experience (or perhaps the mythical scholar who was born in a library basement and never left it) is cute. However, it is impractical. It is related to the problem of artificial intelligence, wherein you wish the ideal editor of WP to lay aside all personal experience and pretend he or she is IBM's WATSON machine and database. None of us can. All that such a policy is going to do, is result in a lot of self-deluded editors who are convinced that their biased points of view are not really personal bias at all, but can be defended objectively in the literature (and if you disagree, then the bias is YOURS). And thus do we see Wiki-wars in which neither side is willing to admit any bias due to personal experience in the world. That's much like listening to Randroid Objectivists argue between themselves, and sometimes I think I know exactly where WP picked up these very bad philosophical ideas: Ayn Rand. Via Jimbo Wales.
There is not enough material in libraries to reduce the world and all that's in it, to mere scholarship. Yes, we are stuck with ontology. If you refuse to engage with ontology then you are left in the position Bertrand Russell talks of, regarding the lunatic who believes that he is a poached egg: all one can do is comment that he holds a minority opinion. Or perhaps (in the absense of democracy) that he disagrees with the government. The latter being closer to the WP case, since WP is not a democracy, so the same sentiment boils down to disagreeing with today's editorial power-clique. S B H arris 23:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Would people mind my attempting to drag them back to the original question? We are tolde that self-published ... sources can be used as sources of information about "themselves". Does themselves mean the actual sources, and/or the people who wrote the sources, and/or the parties whose agents control the sources (like, say, the pop group of which a website is the official site)? And if (as I suspect) we mean principally the third category, can someone phrase it in a more satisfactory way than "parties whose agents control the sources"? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we have a problem here. See WP:SOURCES, "The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings: the piece of work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, The New York Times). All three can affect reliability."
"The creator of the work" is certainly capable of writing about himself or herself. That—the creator, not the document—is the relevant definition of "source" for this particular sentence: Creators may be used as sources of information about themselves. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I have encountered what seems to me to be a general problem with this policy. The policy is generally sound, but I am finding a problem with it because of a possibly unforeseen situation: the developing news story.
The article that has highlighted this is the Jordan Lead Codices story. A couple of weeks ago a press release went out saying "manuscripts found in Jordan! More important than Dead Sea scrolls!" and the news media went with it. Academic bloggers were quickly on the scene. Some of these hold professorships. Others are scholarly, even if not so equipped. The people concerned all reference each other. These bloggers started to research the story, to write to the experts quoted in support by the original press release. It quickly became clear that the experts didn't actually hold the views attributed to them, and that the find was bogus. However the mainstream media did not pick up on this until a week later, because they preferred sensation to dull academic fact. The mainstream media is "reliable sources", to most editors.
BUT ... I was adding material as the story developed. People who wanted to believe the story used WP:BLOGS as an excuse to keep deleting material from them. The letters from the experts were published on one blog which, although scholarly, was not by a professor (although the academics all endorsed it). The editors kept removing it as not a reliable source! (And it isn't in there now). This means the wiki article is actually unreliable, in that it suppresses part of the story.
Nor am I blaming the editors -- under WP:BLOGS that is precisely what is supposed to happen.
The problem, I think, is that the policy doesn't recognise that, in a developing news story where new media like blogs are involved and developing the story, the blogs do need to be referenced. They may not be reliable, in the long term. But to rely on the mainstream media, with its love of sensation, is to distort the story.
Quite how to fix the policy I don't know. The basic principle -- that any old schoolboy could call himself an expert and write a blog -- is sound. But some blogs are more reliable than others, particularly in giving transcriptions of sources of information (I don't think their *opinions* are necessarily reliable). When they give scholarly data, that is available nowhere else, we have real problems if we ignore it.
So I think the policy is being too tightly drawn, and this is creating difficulties for editors. Yes, a blog is not an authority, unless produced by a professional scholar on his area of expertise. But it may be a source.
I encountered the same problem on another article, where online primary sources were being deleted under pretext "oh it's on a blog". So I suspect there is a general problem. Roger Pearse ( talk) 19:17, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
With the edit made by Kotniski and given that the text was introduced into the section by SV and SV said on this talk page "I wasn't keen on its inclusion, but at least it's not in the lead, and it's not being added to a sentence in a way that would make the sentence false. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)" and now that we have a mention of copyright in the lead, I am removing the phrase completely as is it an imprecise summation of the legal copyright requirements and the guidance given in guidelines such as WP:PLAGARISM. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
(And encouraging people to "internalize" the sources, whatever that means - incorporate them into your own belief system? presumably not, it just means understand, but we already say understand - also looks pretty silly.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Basically, "internalise" is what you do when you're genuinely acquiring knowledge. For example: Two different editors are writing articles on an obscure topic. Editor A has a degree in the subject. Her major reference work for learning was Book B. Editor A has learned what Book B says. Later she summarizes its contents for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, Editor R writes an article on a slightly different topic that's also covered by Book B, but Editor R has not actually learned it. He simply goes through Book B trimming it and paraphrasing in order to avoid any obvious copyright infringement.
Editor A is not infringing copyright. But Editor R is infringing copyright, even though he's using exactly the same source as Editor A. The difference is that Editor A has "internalised" the knowledge and then expressed it in her own words, whereas Editor R's edits went from the book to the article without passing through his brain in any meaningful sense.
If you can think of a better word than "internalise" for the process, then that would be great!— S Marshall T/ C 01:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, there have been various requests to concentrate discussion on the copyright section to here? (If not then please move this post to the right place.) Anyway, in this spirit I place a copy here of my proposal for the wording which I have mentioned elsewhere:
I also believe that the recent situation where copyright was handled as one among several other policies which need to be kept in mind, was the logically most correct one.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 08:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Can anyone cite a law or legal commentary where this concept of "internalizing" is shown to be relevant to avoiding breach of copyright? I rather suspect not, but I'm willing to be enlightened.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Some may prefer the proposal above, because arguably this is starting to try to explain something from another policy. Comments please.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 14:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)*Proposed (2): Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. For example, use in-text attribution when quoting copyrighted sources or closely paraphrasing them. And do not paraphrase too closely or reproduce direct quotes which are too extensive. Please read the sources, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words, saying where you got it.
Much better to go with minimalist. I suggest moving it up into the lead -- as mention of copyright is already there -- and not placing it in the body of this policy.
Phrases such as "When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution." Is not correct because it does not have the necessary exceptions to cover things like internal copies from other Wikipedia pages, etc. -- PBS ( talk) 18:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not seeing objections to implementing this, yet it is being claimed in edit summaries that there are some. Can we have them please? Or if there aren't any, let's do this and move on.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Public domain text is not the issue as it is not under copyright. As for the exceptions BB's text ("Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism.") does that. -- PBS ( talk) 07:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The Beatles were the "most popular rock band" of the 1960s and 1970s. The four members of the group were "known for their comedic personas", and later for their "attraction to Eastern religions".
(outdent) It seems we're getting sidetracked here by an issue that isn't really part of the scope of this policy - it's just a caveat that needs to be mentioned in passing. "Copying pages between WP articles" and the other things are being mentioned not because they have anything to do with the topic of this policy, but because they have something to do with the topic of the caveat - they provide example situations which demonstrate that the caveat as currently worded is not right. If you say something in a policy, it isn't enough that it be applicable just in the cases you happen to have in mind, it must be applicable in (pretty much) all cases, unless you make the exceptions explicitly.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Can anyone with any further objections to removing this wording, please speak up? We can't not do something just because there were objections - are there any objections now? If so, what? (Just saying "I support it" doesn't mean anything - we need answers to the multiple reasons that have been supplied for removing it.) -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I hope this will have been resolved by my making this into a separate section (so that it appears in an appropriate place in the policy, and can thus be addressed using more words to clarify what we mean and why we're saying it here).-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
- While ensuring that what you write can be supported by reliable sources, be mindful of the dangers of following a source's wording too closely, and thus committing plagiarism or breach of copyright.
Usual best practice is to represent what the sources say using your own words.When quoting directly from or closely paraphrasing a source, ensure that the source is clearly cited(normally by using in-text attribution)and that copyright is not being breached.
For one thing, the side issue about copyright and plagiarism now takes up more than half the text in a subsection which is actually supposed to be about a different and very essential issue for this policy. Perhaps someone with the knowledge and skills can write a separate section on copyright/plagiarism, perhaps down towards the end of the page, then this section could link to that one. (It has to be admitted that WP:COPY and WP:Plagiarism are themselves far from clear expositions of their subject matter, so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to summarize them here; but we shouldn't do so in a way that gets in the way of communicating this policy's subject matter, or in a way that risks misleading editors, even if only a minority of them.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
As for "knowing what they're talking about"--well, I'm not a copyright lawyer and I don't know anything about US law, which is about as relevant to me as the law of Timbuktoo, but equally, I'm semi-professionally interested in copyright and frankly, it isn't rocket science.
Copyright's in the expression of an idea. If you learn something, know it, and then explain it to someone else in your own words then you're not violating copyright. You're not even violating the copyright of the textbooks you learned it from, because the knowledge you're imparting is yours. It's the expression that counts.
If you don't know something, but you explain it anyway by copy/pasting it from a textbook, then you've violated copyright. This counts even if you change the order of the clauses, or use alternative phrasing, or other disguising methods, because in this event your expression of the idea is "derivative" (legal term) of someone else's.
This means that the optimal way to avoid breaching copyright is to learn your subject matter properly and thoroughly, and then explain it in your own words.
I find that Andrew Lancaster's suggestion of "Familiarise yourself with" doesn't quite encapsulate what I was trying to express with that sentence because it doesn't seem as strong to me as words like "learn" or "internalise". It seems like watering down what's actually a clear distinction: imparting your own knowledge in your own words -vs- imparting someone else's knowledge in phrasing that, if you don't personally have the knowledge you're sharing, must necessarily be derivative of theirs.
Make sense? And does anyone have a better wording suggestion?— S Marshall T/ C 12:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material.
How about if we use this wording for the time being? It has the advantages of brevity, simplicity and consistency with other policies.— S Marshall T/ C 16:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Current lede | Proposed lede |
---|---|
This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about
living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three. Articles must also comply with the copyright policy. |
This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about
living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.
Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material. Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three. |
Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - current | Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - proposed |
All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. (Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, then summarize what they say in your own words. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution.) | All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution. |
Moved to footnote | |
Read the sources, understand them, then summarise what they say in your own words. |
Notice the omission of the contentious "internalise" phrase for the moment. ("Understand" and "familiarise yourself with" is redundant.)
How's this?— S Marshall T/ C 16:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
SlimVirgin recently made an edit here ( Revision as of 19:39, 10 April 2011) in which she wrote: "pls open RfC if you want to remove this; it reflects the MoS, CITE, PLAGIARISM, and best practice; we can't contradict those here".
SV to the best of my recollection you introduced the wording about inline text-attribution for Cite and Plagarism, and I assume to the MOS. Is my recollection incorrect? If so, did you open a RfC to introduce any of the wording?
I ask because you justification on the talk page of Plagiarism for addition of in-text attribution into Plagiarism for close attribution was given in the section Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism/Archive 6#In-text attribution. In that you started the section with the comment "Hi Moonriddengirl, what's your objection to this? It's standard practice per V to use in-text attribution without quotation marks. SlimVirgin 15:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)"
Yet at that time what V said was "Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text: 'John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y,' followed by an inline citation." and "Where a news organization publishes an opinion piece, the writer should be attributed (e.g. 'Jane Smith has suggested...'). Posts left by readers may never be used as sources." This is very different from a general usage that you are currently proposing should be in the policy. As far as I can tell the wording you are currently supporting has its seed in this edit made on 20 December 2010. To the best of my knowledge (as the edit shows), before that date there was a prohibition in V to close paraphrasing (instead of quoting).
As a number of exceptions have been demonstrated here to using in-text attribution for all material used in Wikipedia artices, it would seem to me to be time to qualify the wording in the guidelines to incorporate those exceptions (although the wording in MOS#Attribution seems to be less detailed than in the other two and in its current form I don't think it needs qualifying). I would suggest the place to start in in the Plagiarism guideline, as the exceptions are already in that guideline and fixing it mainly involved moving the text currently in the lead into a section to do with standard copyright. In that -- PBS ( talk) 10:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
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The last sentence of WP:SPS, is "Self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer. I have started a few discussions recently regarding the Line of succession to the British throne article, (e.g. here), but this sentence in WP:SPS is particularly worrying. (Almost) all of the names in the line of succession article are of living people, and the Wikipedia article is primarily based off of this self-published website. Several editors who regularly edit the line of succession article, believe that the author of this website is an established expert, and that in this case we should be making an exception. But the wording of WP:SPS uses the word "never" is a way that appears to make this impossible.
I'll also point out that it's more than simply genealogical information - the website also excludes illegitimate children from the line of succession. In other words, this self-published source is what the Wikipedia article uses to conclude someone's children are illegitimate. For me this raises alarm bells, but it seems impossible to change anything to do with this article, due to others' determination to preserve the list (by the way, Wikipedia is the only place anywhere that maintains this detailed list in an up to date form). Any help, or advice, would be appreciated. Mlm42 ( talk) 18:03, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
By the way, I've started this RfC, at SlimVirgin's suggestion above. Mlm42 ( talk) 21:53, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Over the years Wikipedia, like any culture, has acumulated its share of jargon. Some of it is natural, and some is unnecessary and legalistically obstructive to understanding. Nowhere is this problem demonstrated than the first sentence in the WP:V policy, where two standard English words are used in a way that is nonstandard, and which tends to invite wiki-wars among people who assume unconsciously that the words they have heard over and over, are meant in their normal senses. Here is the first sentence of WP:V:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
This statement is quite deceptive, for it is full of jargon. In failing to define its terms completely and immediately, it sets up an odd dichotomy between "verfiability" (as we usually understand the word) and "truth." (as we usually understand the word). Iin the real world, where verifiable simply means provably-true, and provable is a loaded word, such a dichotomy exists between that which is true and provably true. In the real world, standards of provability are not those acceptable to Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia isn't trying. "Verifiability" is defined by Wikipedia in this opening sentence as consisting of two distinct parts: [1] Whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been "published" [at that point the "material" could be a flat-out mistake, lunatic idea, or a deliberate lie], and [2] That the publication occurs in a "reliable source." A "reliable source" is (in turn) defined lower down within the same policy, in the WP:V section on sources WP:SOURCES: "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."
Now, "fact-checking" has to do with checking facts, which in turn are defined (see any dictionary) as statements that are TRUE. Likewise "reputation for accuracy" means "reputation for being true or close to true." Fact and accuracy are synonyms for truth and "truth-hood." (opposite of falsehood). Calling the idea of "truth" by another name (as well as putting synonyms like "fact" and "accuracy" farther down the policy page) unnecessarily obscures a simple meaning, and a simple goal. Wikipedia's goal is indeed truth. However, the very idea of that it is not, causes Wikipedia editors to go around cudgeling each other with the idea that "verifiablity," trumps "truth," as though they were using these words in their normal meanings, instead of their special "wiki-meanings."
So now, we require an exegesis. Let us find out what the first sentence of WP:V means in standard English, by getting rid of all jargon and wiki-meanings. We will unpack and rewrite the first sentence of WP:V in standard English, using the policy's own definitions for the wiki-words, as necessary. Ready? First, we replace "reliable" by "published, with reputation for fact-checking and accuracy," and then, we replace "fact-checking and accuracy" with "truth-checking and truthfullness." Here's what we get:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true.
That fixes puncutation and gets rid of the wiki-words and wiki-meanings in the last part. We are now in a position to get rid of the wiki-meanings in the first part, so that now ALL of the words are used in their normal standard English definitions:
The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true.
At this point, we have de-obscured the text, and with it, some of the problems. Wikipedia's own policies are actually all about "truth"- TRUTH is what reliability and fact-checking are about. When the policy says it is about verifiability and NOT truth, this is an obscurantist, for neither word is being used here as in standard English. In standard English, "verifiability" can mean many things, including what the reader can prove it to him or herself by checking by his/her own math, or by going to see for him or herself. Verification also has many possible meanings in the sciences and law, and standards differ from one discipline to another. The statement doesn't actually mean that Wikipedia is about "verifiability" as we all understand the word— it's about a particular documentary version of reality used by Wikipedia, which is narrower, not perfectly well-defined, and very much media-driven. For example, I might be a celebrity with a mole on my right hand. If the New York Times states it is on my left hand, then Wikipedia's use of the word "verifiability" departs from the standards of the English language. For here, Wikipedia doesn't mean the word in any way that has contact with either reality, or standard English usage. In such cases, I can't prove a thing to anybody who reads otherwise in their newspaper.
Likewise, when the WP:V policy states that the standard of Wikipedia inclusion is NOT "truth," it also does not use the term as it is usually understood. In this case, Wikipedia IS actually interested in truth as we normally understand the word "truth" when we speak of public truth, demonstrable truth, scientific truth, legal truth, or even journalistic truth. It simply isn't about personal truth or any other type of truth one could NOT use in a legal or science debate. It's not about your truth and my truth, unless some other "reputable" person or source has published it, and one can cite it, as in a debate or courtroom. Worse, the question of "reputation" of a publisher, is in the eyes of the beholder.
What this policy actually means to say, is that the threshold for Wikipedia inclusion is NOT what its writers think is true, but rather what some OTHER published writers, who have a "reputation" for telling truth, think is true, and have gotten somebody else to "publish" (whatever "publish" means these days). That seems to be a more narrow statement, but at least it is closer to what Wikipedia's policy actually means to say.
Alas, the problem of how a Wikipedia writer, independent of his or her own sense of "truthiness," is to identify these published truth-telling authors, and their truthy works and truthy reputations, is the rub. Some published writers are wrong, some ignorant, some are shills, and others are less than sane. This is the source of many an edit war, as an editor's personal idea of what is true, will naturally have heavy effects on their judgement of the truthfulness of available published sources. Must one include the writings of the confused, the ill-informed, the hacks and the crazies? But at least we're a bit closer to the root of the epistemological problem. First, one must lay out the policy in plain standard English.
(The above was written after a recent encounter with a few other editors of an article who had no idea what WP:V means, but it wasn't their fault. It was the WP:V policy's fault). S B H arris 01:23, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true.
If we're talking about this sentence, then: (a) not "the threshold" (there are various reasons we might or might not decide to include some statement in some article; this is just one of them); (b) not "that it has been published by" but "that it is supported by" or words to that effect; (c) not "not truth" or anything like that - we don't want sourced information that we know to be false. I would start something like this: "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles." -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Current | SBH "un-packed" | SBH "no jargon" | Fram | Kotniski |
---|---|---|---|---|
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in 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: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true. | The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true. | The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true. | It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles. |
I've placed the three versions under discussion above for easier comparison. My own first comment about SBHarris' proposals is that I believe the aim of using normal English is a good one, and I agree that this policy is not always well understood, but (a) trying to avoid all internal jargon ("un packing") makes sentences longer, which obviously does not mean easier to understand. (b) the attempt at reducing jargon also does not really work for me. Is "published-source truthfulness" normal English? I do not think so. Fact is that Wikipedia has developed some new concepts which are useful for discussion about Wikipedia and hard to discuss without using terms for those concepts. This is the type of situation in which neologisms and jargons are sometimes justified. (And wikilinking does make our jargon a little easier to learn.) That does not mean we should not be constantly careful of jargon, and constantly looking for policy areas where people are misunderstanding things often.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 10:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Somebody has noted that not everything in WP really must be proven (by cite) to have been published in a reliable source, so long as the editors all agree with the material, and there is no contention. So it's theoretically provable-by-cite (if you could find a cite for an obvious thing). But trying to cram that whole concept into "wiki-verifiability" is also a bad idea. Better to just qualify the idea of "needed publication" right at the beginning. Jimmy Wales is wrong that obvious facts are easy to find cites for. Example: you can't find me any published source that says Charles Dickens' novel The Pickwick Papers was originally written by Dickens in English. However, we all believe it since it's obvious to any thinking adult who knows anything about Dickens, and you could add it to an article without a {{citation needed}}. Wikipedia takes "judicial notice" of certain non-controversial facts. S B H arris 19:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Another different kind of problem occurs when a popular concept in (say) science is wrong, but so widely believed that even lower division college texts are more likely to have the wrong thing than graduate level texts and journal articles, which have the correct thing. One example I once fought through is the notion that mass can be "converted" to energy, so that the mass dissappears entirely, and leaves just the energy (this is true for matter, but is not true for mass-- they aren't the same). So "verification" in this case requires Wikipedia editors not only to know their physics, but to be able to sort out the graduate level texts and texts by relativity experts, from all the other physics texts- a thankless task.
When it comes to definitions, it's even worse. In the article on weight (for example) editor consensus has forced me to live with an article that defines weight in a way that differs from the ISO definition, just because most college undergrad physics texts define it another way that isn't as good (by the opening definition, orbiting space station astronauts aren't weightless, they are only "apparently weightless"!). And so on. The judgement of sources is not a job that can be fobbed off, but WP attempts to do it all the time. We are interested only in sources mostly likely to be TRUE, but that in turn cannot be determined without knowing yourself how truth is arrived at, in that area. That's a tricky and knowledge-area dependent process. S B H arris 21:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
So how about we combine my first sentence above with something about it not being about editors' opinion, e.g. "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. What matters is not editors' personal opinions as to whether something is true, but whether it can be supported through the proper use of sources. But I still feel a need to say straight away, either in the same paragraph or just after it, that the concepts of "reliable" and "proper use" (or whatever words we end up choosing to express those ideas) are not trivial or (necessarily) intuitive, and indeed the main purpose of the policy we're introducing is to explain what we at Wikipedia consider to be reliable sources and proper use of sources in various situations. (Oh, and I don't find it at all obvious that the sky is blue.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Are you proposing that we acknowledge any other kind of verifiability which isn't based on sources? It seems generally accepted that we can't ask people to verify something by, say, doing an experiment or even following the steps in a non-trivial logical deduction. -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
The WP:V policy page actually has an RS section which is pretty good, in part because it is vague. It says:
Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should directly support the material presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. 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.
That ends up leaving the standards in each field up to the experts in that field. The only problem for Wikipedia is that it takes some expertise to know who the experts are. The idea of "wiki-verifiability" is "you could in theory go look it up and verify that it's true" but the question then is "where do you go to look it up to be most confident?" The rest of the RS section in WP:V attempts to say more on this question, and says some questionable things. What is a "mainsteam newspaper"? Does that mean obituaries in the New York Times are reliable? And how do you tell that you have a "respected publishing house"? I pulled at random from my large shelf of quack health books and found Fit for Life, which was published by Warner Books, owned by Time Warner. It'a hilarious bunch of food combining nonsense, but it sold well (3 million copies already in 1985, which is when my edition was printed in paperback). So is it "reliable"? Reliable for what purpose?
The article WP:RS (now WP:IRS) attempts to expand on this theme, and succeeds in some areas and fails in others. If you want to know how complex this can be, look at WP:RSMED, which looks at the problem just in medical material. This is one of WP's better guidelines (no, I didn't write any of it; I do agree with most of it). However, there is no corresponding RS section for the physical sciences.
When it comes to journalism, the section in WP:IRS mentions churnalism (please read this), and that alone should either make you nod grimly or your hair stand on end, depending on your prior view of newspapers. But knowing that, NOW what do you do? You're stuck. There's really no way you can see what's going on behind the scenes at a newspaper, the way you can a science journal. Peer-reviewed journals or book publishers like Springer require many credentials from editors, and have many cycles of fact-checking that go on between author and outside degreed editors, before they publish. A newspaper journalist by contrast often will not read the entire article over the phone to the person it's about, or who supplied its expert-information, before print. And so on. Verifiability needs reliable sources, and WP:IRS can't walk people through all the problems with finding them, if they have no knowledge themselves. S B H arris 22:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I also think that we should discuss putting the two sections ("Anything challenged or likely to be challenged" and "Burden of evidence") back into one, as small sections have a tendency towards bloat. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Please can we rephrase this policy into the active? I'm thinking of using imperatives, e.g.:-
Current: This policy is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about living persons. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.
Proposed: Apply this policy strictly to all articles, lists and captions without exception, and particularly to material about living people. Consider removing anything that requires but lacks a source. Please remove unsourced contentious material about living people immediately.
Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.
Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
... and so on. I don't see a need to change the meanings, just to use simpler and less stilted constructions.— S Marshall T/ C 23:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.
Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Andrew Lancaster attempt: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources or paraphrase too closely unless you use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
Andrew Lancaster attempt: Name a reliable source for all quotations or paraphrases, and for any material challenged or likely to be challenged. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.
The aim of the above wording proposals is not to change the meaning at all.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 13:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Note: this was a subsection of the previous thread; changing it so it doesn't come in the edit window every time
On a related point, this policy appears to require both inline citation and in-text attribution whenever public domain sentences are incorporated into an article, which is definitely not consistent with community practice. I think that the section might benefit from a somewhat less refined writing style:
If this requirement actually applied to public domain sources, then we would need to repeatedly add the phrase "According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica..." to some 14,000 articles—and that's just for the one source.
On a related point, I'm not sure that we're hitting the right note with our strong statement on in-text attribution. In-text attribution is not always appropriate. Consider the case of a single negative-sounding word, e.g., "controversial". You might put it in quotations to indicate to the reader that it's not your editorial judgment (or to appease editors who would like to whitewash a situation). But if it appears in multiple sources, you don't want to say, "According to Alice and Bob and Chris and David and Emily, Frank's artwork is 'controversial'." It's a direct quotation, and you shouldn't have to resort directly to IAR to leave off the silly string of sources that use the word—and you definitely shouldn't name only one, because that leaves the reader with the inaccurate impression that only Alice says the artwork is controversial.
I think that the solution here is to say that direct quotations should normally be supplied with an in-text attribution.
As for "close paraphrasing" requiring in-text attribution: if it's "too close paraphrasing", you oughtn't be doing it at all, and if it's "permitted paraphrasing", I don't think that in-text attribution is normally appropriate. Consider this:
Is this a paraphrase? Certainly. Is it close enough to violate the copyright? No. (There are only so many ways to present this simple fact, after all.) Do you really want to require that editors start that sentence with "According to Medline Plus..."? No. Does the community, in fact, actually provide in-text attribution for paraphrases like this? No.
But that's what the policy currently says we must do: It makes no distinction between paraphrasing that violates a copyright and paraphrasing that is completely legal. According to the policy, both must be treated identically in terms of in-text attribution. I think this needs to be fixed. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 17:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Obviously inline citations are the normal way to cite, and someone has wanted to imply this in a rushed way by putting it in the sentence just quoted. But as the next sentence already says, there is actually a whole page, WP:CITE which describes the different ways of citing in different situations. (The same logical error occurs in WP:CITE's opening line, which is based on this policy page.In practice you do not need to attribute everything; only quotations and material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed, through an inline citation which directly supports the material in question.[1] For how to write citations, see Citing sources.
Two points:
I don't understand this revert - surely it's the wording as it stands that would (if read in a particularly literal way) ban all unsourced material on talk pages. The aim of my change was indeed to make it clearer that it's only potentially defamatory unsourced material that's not allowed on talk pages, this being the obvious intended meaning of the sentence (but it should be worded in such a way that it's clear that the conditional "if" clause applies to the whole sentence, including the bit about talk pages).-- Kotniski ( talk) 17:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
If you don't like my previous effort (or perhaps you do, now it's been explained), how about "In the case of unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, do not leave it in the article (and do not move it to the talk page either)." -- Kotniski ( talk) 08:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
So as to resolving this, is the wording "Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed immediately, and not tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either." OK with everyone? )(This is in the "burden of evidence" section, in place of "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.")-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) That's perhaps a good point, but I don't see what it has to do with this change. The change being proposed is from
to:
The effect is to remove the mention of organizations, and avoid the ambiguous grammatical construction ("X if Y, and Z"). Objections? -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Still this is being reverted with no explanation - well, it's being claimed that it would be implying that it's OK to defame organizations, but consensus above (and the BLP policy) imply clearly that we don't consider defamation of organizations to be an issue - at least, not on a par with defamation of living persons. Also where this same advice appears in this policy further down, organizations are not mentioned - so it's quite bizarre to insist on giving different advice here. Slim (or anyone else who objects to this change), please can you join in the discussion and say what you actually think we should be saying and why, instead of unilaterally reverting a change that everyone else seems to support? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
No further response, so I've tried again with "Special considerations apply to unsourced or poorly sourced material that contravenes our policy on biographies of living persons – please remove such material immediately, and do not move defamatory material to the talk page either. This uses the active voice, avoids the ambiguous conditional, and defers to BLP on what material is actually involved (so we don't have to say here to what extent it includes organizations).-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to remind everybody that this is a central policy, so please get an editorial consensus on the talk page before you edit.-- Kmhkmh ( talk) 10:24, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem with the subsection is not so much that it existed, but that it was full of mistakes. What we have now is a sentence or two about copyright coming out of nowhere in a section that isn't about that at all; but at least what it says isn't manifestly wrong. If we want a separate section on copyright/plagiarism (which seems a perfectly good idea), then someone with genuine knowledge of the subject (and the ability to summarize clearly without loss of accuracy) needs to write it. -- Kotniski ( talk) 12:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I have reverted an edit by Slim Virgin, defended by OrangeMarlin in second edit, which, although the edit was just described as "tightening some writing" actually changed the wording so that mention of the useability of primary sources was removed, and the preference for secondary sources has been made absolute. Some comments:
Another reason to not rule out, or seem to rule out, primary sources is that the definition of "primary" and "secondary" is rather loose and varies from field to field, so an inexperienced editor might forgo the use of a fine source because in the editor's mind it is a primary source. Jc3s5h ( talk) 14:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I did some rephrasing to the Lead, particularly including a reference to reliable sources and what that means, in the first two paragraphs. Maybe it is a bit clearer? I agree that a sentence explaining the common misunderstanding and what it means could also be useful.
Some other things I'd like to see in the lead:
Another absurd thing is that when we propose merging WP:V with WP:NOR on the grounds that they're the same thing, people claim "oh no, not the same thing at all" - but now you have, in the second paragraph here, this policy being summarized in terms of original research - effectively defining original research to be exactly the same thing as what this policy forbids! Can you all make up your minds - if original research is a separate subject, then let's not say that this policy is about it - and if it's not a separate subject, then let's simplify and merge the two pages into one. -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I've tried with this sequence of edits to remove some of the most obvious and hopefully uncontroversial problems with the lead (as explained in the edit summaries and in the above posts) - I hope (perhaps too optimistically) they won't be reverted blindly, but (if at all) then for good reasons that will be presented to us.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
I also notice that the old nutshell has been restored - can anyone explained why? I personally find nutshells a redundant and fairly silly gimmick - the policy should be summarized in the lead, not in a special box - but if we're going to have one, it should surely summarize the policy in as much generality as possible, not just pick one sentence from it.-- Kotniski ( talk) 15:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Threshold. The word "threshold" implies movement and the beginning of a process. The valuation term "most important" suggests neither movement nor process. I have added the previous wording as a note because the word "threshold" is essential in the editing disputes which I have encountered -- see here; and such disputes are likely to continue to arise in articles about something to do with East Asia. -- Tenmei ( talk) 21:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Here is an idea. If I look at the opposed opinions, others do not see the word "threshold" as a logical breakpoint in a simple way, but the beginning of a process. Or maybe another way to word it is that they see it as the necessary and sufficient condition for words to be good enough for potential inclusion. Obviously people love the word threshold and they also want to avoid a big logical construction like "necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion" or "necessary and sufficient conclusion for potential use given other conditions are met" so I am wondering if this observation about how people seem to be reading it can lead to a small tweak that covers all valid concerns. For example:
Does this make any sense to others?-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 11:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
...readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source...: I think this should be changed to something like "material in Wikipedia can be supported by reliable, published sources", for reasons I've already given - readers' actual ability to check is not as fundamental a requirement as this makes it seem to be; and the material in Wikipedia need not (indeed usually should not) itself have been published before - what we mean is that it ought to be based on, supported by, published sources. Does anyone disagree, or was this revert collateral damage?-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Do we in fact want a nutshell? Do we want the current one? As I said above, though I can now sort of see why this one was chosen, it still seems to be misleading (by implying that this sentence sums up the whole policy, when what it actually does is state the most important practical consequence of it), and to provide clutter by simply repeating what's stated in the second paragraph of the lead.-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
"Threshold" in a nutshell? This is a practical issue, not an abstract one. IMO, this thread wanders too far afield from lessons learned the hard way and the school of hard knocks. Yes, we can all acknowledge and agree that parsing distinctions between "necessary" and "sufficient" are valid concerns, but the "rubber meets the road" at a far more gritty level:
When " fact" (supported by WP:V + WP:RS) is defined as indistinguishable from " factoid" (supported by nothing), what next? This becomes an irreducible question, a shared " threshold knowledge" inquiry.
The words "threshold" and "verifiability, not truth" are married; and these words offer perhaps the only arguably constructive step forward. Have you not seen this for yourselves? -- Tenmei ( talk) 00:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
This is a practical issue which affects day-to-day editing "where the rubber meets the road". This is a recurring problem and it is likely to get worse in the near future. The pointed clarity of words on this page will only become more important as our project continues to grow.
In the alternative, I support any arguable effort to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V as long as these few words are unaffected by editing changes.
At Wikipedia:Nutshell#Verifiability, our policy can be summarized succinctly: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Maybe the simple act of repeating the same thing over and over again is always necessary and never sufficient? -- Tenmei ( talk) 21:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
As for your second point, no. Do not try to "spin" my words to contrive a straw man. Again, no matter how many different ways I re-write using different words, you seem unwilling to take in this point, but some things are both valid and significant despite your belief or disbelief. The WP:V threshold focuses irreducible attention on the pivotal distinction between fact (which supported by WP:V + WP:RS) and " factoid" (which is associated with zero cited support). Your "re-framing" addresses follow-up issues.
Perhaps this can be explained by our edit histories. Although my 50,000+ edits are more than yours, I see that the range of unique pages you have edited is a little more than twice mine. I do not want to impede anyone's attempt to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V; but four words only must remain unaffected by changes: "threshold" + "verifiability, not truth". -- Tenmei ( talk) 13:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
While we're on this, some basic re-ordering might be helpful. For one, we refer to reliable sources in relation to 'other principles' before the section where we define reliable sources. So current section 1 should come after 2 and 3, if not at the very end. Also, WP:MOSHEAD suggests we not repeat phrases like 'reliable sources and...' if it's implied by the parent header/title.
The changes are: 1) section 1 is moved to after section 6. Section 1 headers are shortened to not repeat "reliable sources". Ocaasi c 15:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
(outdent) Since no two editors, even if they support the split, ever seem to have the same view on what the split should be, it does certainly seem as though we have two policies which (whatever their original motivation may have been) have crept onto each other's territory so much that they have ended up largely as duplicates (with really only the SYN section being exclusive to WP:NOR). The potential two sides of the coin that I see are the aspirations and the practice - the actual content policy, the ideal we aim for (everything should be supportable by sources) on the one hand; and the practices we have for attempting to achieve that ideal (the informal "challenge - provide a source, or delete" procedure and its variants) on the other hand. But still, I wouldn't see a need for splitting those two things between two pages (I just think we should be more clear of the distinction when structuring our page(s)).-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Nevertheless, some kind of drastic shortening of WP:V is needed, since really all it adds to policy is that you should be able to "look up" all contentious information points, if you like, in order to verify for yourself that some "reliable source" says the same as WP. End. Everything else is WP:IRS, which is the (much, much longer) argument about which sources are "reliable" (likely to be other than clear error, lies, stupidity, and so on). Most of the outline that Kotniski produces at the head of this section above is about RS; it can go in the ISR article. If there are accessability issues, THEY should go into a discussion of "practical verifiability," as discussed above. But that's about it for what really could or should be in WP:V per se.
Wikipedia isn't about "absolute truth" any more than science or academia are; all we'd like is the nearest approximation to it that is available, and whenever we find clear error, we remove it, and "best approximation to truth" is whatever survives that process. But as in science, history, engineering, and so on, we can be concerned with approaching truth usefully, without being convinced that we have finally gotten there. At the same time, giving up the idea of absolute truth does not mean that all is relative and we don't care if the sources are true, but only that they exist. We do care, and if we don't, we should!
For those of you seeking amusement, I have posted a study attacking the reliability of metropolitan newspaper articles, over at WT:IRS. Primary news articles are full of error, only 2% of which is ever acknowledged by them, later, in error sections. The first response I've had, is somebody saying that that is why Wikipedia is "about verifiability, not truth"! [4] Honest-- go read it! Thus, once again suggesting what damage is done every day by having people come HERE to WP:V to get the impression that having a citation matters far more than truth, and then going to IRS and finding people saying that absolute reliablity of sources doesn't matter that much since the truth of the cite and source isn't really a basic WP issue, per WP:V. Ouch! S B H arris 04:35, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
In a few historical cases where no other sources are ever located (this happens a lot in the 19th century), we have to use what we have, as a semi-reliable source is better than no information at all. Historians must deal all the time with what to do with century-old news stories that come out a day after the event, but sometimes are not fully checked with their primary sources and witnesses (a story about something a journalists personally saw is not the same as a story about something a journalist reports on a deadline secondhand); and how to compare these with coroner or trial transcripts of what people say about the same event weeks or months later, vs. what people remember years later.
In any case, all these are WP:IRS issues, and probably shouldn't even be mentioned in WP:V. WP:V might speak to the usability of blogs, but only because they are evanescent. In these days of self-publication and small and smaller publishing houses (sometimes only 3 people only work for small imprint) the only reason to deprecate blogs is that you can't be sure they won't change, not because they are "self-published." Most organizations have publications these days, and they're all self-published. "Self-published" is hard to define, and in any case, the WP:V faults for it that we mention doesn't apply to print, nor to things reliably archived and available. Those things only have RS problems due to bias and relative lack of review by others, not V problems. And by the way, the evanscense problems apply to many on-line sources that are due to become deadlinked when somebody stops hosting them. YET that usually doesn't cause them to run afoul of WP:V even BEFORE they disappear, as appears to be the case for "self-published" works. S B H arris 16:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
I disagree with the accuracy of :
The current rule, and the correct one, is that English sources are preferred if of equal quality. (I would rpefer to reword it as that the best sources should be used regardless of language, and also the best available English sources)This is the English Wikipedia in the sense that the articles are written in English, and in no other sense. It covers the world on equal terms, and for many or even most of the topics--when seen on a world wide basis-- there will not be English sources.
I also disagree that :
Such articles in most fields are not just good sources, but the best sources. All such material is available to un-university people also, through interlibrary loan as a last resort. They are not necessarily primary research, and even primary research articles in scientific journals invariably contain a synthesis of the state of knowledge. Yes, they have to be used with caution to make sure they are representative of the actual state of the field, but that is true of all sources whatsoever. A rule such as this limits our coverage of the science to the state of knowledge 5 years ago, which is the approximate amount such sources as textbooks are out of date, and to much further in many of the humanities. It would not even be appropriate for popular culture! The best available reliable discussions of popular culture are in professional-level paid sources. DGG ( talk ) 18:29, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
I made the same point about all primary scientific papers containing targetted mini-reviews, as part of the discussion, at WT:IRS. People who want to pigeon-hole these things haven't read many of them. S B H arris 19:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps we've gone off into a side-issue here, but do I take it from the above posts that people generally agree that the emphasis on "readers can check whether..." in the lead sentence of the current policy is inappropriate, as argued in the #Readers can check... thread above? -- Kotniski ( talk) 10:18, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Any suggestions on how to put together a more concise version of this quarter's policy update for next week's Signpost? - Dank ( push to talk) 19:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
There is a section of this policy which is a bit confusing, even after searching the talkpace archives. Namely, frequently editors invoke the principle that anything can be a source on it's own opinions. However, reading this policy we see that if a source is "promotional" then it can't be used as a source on it's own (promotional) opinion since it becomes self-serving and that's one of the exceptions listed. On the other hand, it's accepted that sources don't need to be neutral. Now then, how do we tell the difference between a source that's not neutral but OK, and a source that's promotional and thus not OK? Could we add a bit of colour to the policy to describe what's meant by promotional? I agree with the idea behind this restriction but it should be more clearly defined, IMO. Cheers, -- Dailycare ( talk) 20:16, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Sure, that fixes the problem. We don't know if a white house press release will be promotional of the president's agenda. Could be objective. Could happen. Is it reliable? However, we can fix that problem by simply quoting the secondary source news agencies that attend the "white house press briefing" and regurgitate the press release documents which they reprint as newspapers-of-record. All fixed!
BTW, on another note has anybody noticed how many WP articles are totally controlled by manufacturers and businesses? Korg, Tropical Islands, and Caesar's Palace are not where you go to get non-COI info. S B H arris 17:10, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
This edit introduced the following paragraph:
First and foremost, for a source to be considered reliable it must be published - ie distributed to the public (whether in printed, visual or audio format). Unpublished materials are not considered reliable.
I have no problem with emphasizing the point at the beginning of the section, but the paragraph mixes different ideas. Printed material is visual, and it can be even more visual if it contains photographs and drawings. There are two points that could be made:
I'm not sure which point this paragraph is trying to make. Jc3s5h ( talk) 16:05, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Am I understanding WP:TWITTER correctly...?
A may cite a quote by B about A provided that the Twitter account of B is a reliable source (i.e. verified or linked to official web page etc.). No other use of Twitter as a source is permitted at all. ( W090584 ( talk) 16:21, 7 April 2011 (UTC))
SV, re this, look at the paragraph directly above where it says "published in a reliable source". Using "reliable published source" immediately afterward is redundant and missing an opportunity to start introducing readers to what our jargon actually means. Why don't we wikilink the first reference and replace the second with 'reputation for fact checking and accuracy' (or reputation for fact checking and accuracy that is appropriate for the claim being made...)? Ocaasi c 19:14, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
Nightscream added this to the policy: "Note that social networking sites such as MySpace or Facebook can only be used to support personal information about subjects if the page in question can be authenticated as the official page of the subject with a secondary source." I fail to see what property a reliable secondary source has that makes it more suitable for this purpose than a reliable primary source. Jc3s5h ( talk) 23:48, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
Maybe I'm missing what this is actually about, but I don't see any difference between X's Facebook page and X's official website, if we know that X maintains their Facebook page in much the same way they would maintain their official website if they had one. -- Kotniski ( talk) 18:04, 3 April 2011 (UTC)
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Whack! You've been whacked with a wet trout. Don't take this too seriously. Someone just wants to let you know that you did something silly. |
Can we agree that the passage can be restored on the policy page that a subject's SNS page can be used, as long as a reliable source establishes it to be the official one? If given info is on the subject's SNS page, but not on their official site, I can't see any reason not to be able to cite the former. Nightscream ( talk) 08:48, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Given the number of times I revert additions of material sourced to unverified SNS pages, I would say no, which is why I thought adding that bit of elaboration would make it clearer, particularly to newbies. Can we restore it? Nightscream ( talk) 08:56, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
SPS says "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities..." Now I know the word "source" can mean either the document or the author, but it shouldn't be changing its meaning in the middle of a sentence, and it seems to me that in the phrase "self-published and questionable sources" it has to mean the document, but "themselves" has to refer to the author - or perhaps not even the author, but the "owner" (in the case of corporate/entertainers' websites etc.) If anyone knows what this is supposed to mean, can they clarify? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm amused that anybody thinks that having a book published by a "reputable publisher" makes it somehow more reliable that if it were from a self-publication house. The threshhold there has nothing to do with reliability, and everything to do with how likely the book is to sell and make money. For example, I have half a bookshelf of JFK assassination conspiracy theory books. Here's a David Lifton book Best Evidence, a book-of-the-month club book in 1981 when it was published in hardcover by Macmillan (later softcovers by Carroll & Graf Publishers). This howler suggests that JFK's body, between the time it left Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas and arrived at Bethesda Naval Hospital for autopsy 5 hours later, was switched with a duplicate coffin and subjected to a secret surgery in Bethesda, in the hour between when the coffin was offloaded from Air Force One and when it arrived at the naval hospital. JFK's personal physician Dr. Burkley who had chain-of-evidence responsiblity wouldn't talk to Lifton and the president's widow wouldn't either, and Lifton never considers that watches still set to CST Texas time might vary by an hour from Bethesda watches and reports that are EST. From this, a best-seller. My personal favorite in this collection is one called Mortal Error. which posits that a secret serviceman in the backseat of the secret service chase-car in Dallas immediately after the assassination, managed to accidently shoot JFK in the head with his AR-15 rifle, right past the driver of his own vehicle's ear, and nobody noticed. Publisher of this little fairy tale is St. Martin's Press. Need I go on? S B H arris 19:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't particularly think too many people believe that JFK's body was stolen before Lifton laid that idea on the public as his personal thesis, and I'm not even sure too many believe THAT, even now. But the book sold well and titilated a lot of fantasies, just like fad diet and health books do. Since there is a lot of notable nonsense, some of which is believed by some fraction of the hoi poloi, Wikipedia is now doomed to simply repeat it without making any judgements-- creationism must be given equal space with atheistic theories of the origin of the Earth and humans, for example, simply because more people believe in creationism, so it's more notable. And we're stuck with the fact that wide publication feeds on itself until a piece of pure error (as you saw in the magic bullet sequence in Oliver Stone's film JFK) becomes widely believed by people who see it on the Silver Screen as explained by Kevin Coster, but don't bother to check out some source like-- Wikipedia (which has an article that does NOT mirror public perception, but DOES mirror expert-perception).
So, in summary, sort this out: is WP:N going to sometimes totally disregard WP:IRS? And if so, what's the point of arguing WP:IRS at all? And are we to remove all reference to RS in the WP:V policy, since (after all) RS is really NOT essential? S B H arris 20:30, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
No. In English "reliable" means [6] "dependable, trustworthy," or (in regarding to information): 3. reliable - conforming to fact and therefore worthy of belief; "an authentic account by an eyewitness"; "reliable information."
You are attempting to use a nonstandard meaning in English, making "reliable" mean "fair and balanced" (like Fox News, don't you know). If you want to say "reasoned, well-considered, and relatively balanced way," then use those words. Use "NPOV" if you like. But don't use the word "reliable," which normally in such circumstances, means something else. The present policy says about reliability: "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Fact-checking and accuracy have to do with truth, not with fairness, balance, or nonpartisanship. "Accuracy" is partisan-- anything else is error, and should be discounted as such if mentioned, or else not mentioned at all!
The idea that the problems of WP boil down to "mere scholarship" and could be done as well by a machine with no human experience (or perhaps the mythical scholar who was born in a library basement and never left it) is cute. However, it is impractical. It is related to the problem of artificial intelligence, wherein you wish the ideal editor of WP to lay aside all personal experience and pretend he or she is IBM's WATSON machine and database. None of us can. All that such a policy is going to do, is result in a lot of self-deluded editors who are convinced that their biased points of view are not really personal bias at all, but can be defended objectively in the literature (and if you disagree, then the bias is YOURS). And thus do we see Wiki-wars in which neither side is willing to admit any bias due to personal experience in the world. That's much like listening to Randroid Objectivists argue between themselves, and sometimes I think I know exactly where WP picked up these very bad philosophical ideas: Ayn Rand. Via Jimbo Wales.
There is not enough material in libraries to reduce the world and all that's in it, to mere scholarship. Yes, we are stuck with ontology. If you refuse to engage with ontology then you are left in the position Bertrand Russell talks of, regarding the lunatic who believes that he is a poached egg: all one can do is comment that he holds a minority opinion. Or perhaps (in the absense of democracy) that he disagrees with the government. The latter being closer to the WP case, since WP is not a democracy, so the same sentiment boils down to disagreeing with today's editorial power-clique. S B H arris 23:33, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Would people mind my attempting to drag them back to the original question? We are tolde that self-published ... sources can be used as sources of information about "themselves". Does themselves mean the actual sources, and/or the people who wrote the sources, and/or the parties whose agents control the sources (like, say, the pop group of which a website is the official site)? And if (as I suspect) we mean principally the third category, can someone phrase it in a more satisfactory way than "parties whose agents control the sources"? -- Kotniski ( talk) 07:43, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we have a problem here. See WP:SOURCES, "The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings: the piece of work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, The New York Times). All three can affect reliability."
"The creator of the work" is certainly capable of writing about himself or herself. That—the creator, not the document—is the relevant definition of "source" for this particular sentence: Creators may be used as sources of information about themselves. WhatamIdoing ( talk) 16:28, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
I have encountered what seems to me to be a general problem with this policy. The policy is generally sound, but I am finding a problem with it because of a possibly unforeseen situation: the developing news story.
The article that has highlighted this is the Jordan Lead Codices story. A couple of weeks ago a press release went out saying "manuscripts found in Jordan! More important than Dead Sea scrolls!" and the news media went with it. Academic bloggers were quickly on the scene. Some of these hold professorships. Others are scholarly, even if not so equipped. The people concerned all reference each other. These bloggers started to research the story, to write to the experts quoted in support by the original press release. It quickly became clear that the experts didn't actually hold the views attributed to them, and that the find was bogus. However the mainstream media did not pick up on this until a week later, because they preferred sensation to dull academic fact. The mainstream media is "reliable sources", to most editors.
BUT ... I was adding material as the story developed. People who wanted to believe the story used WP:BLOGS as an excuse to keep deleting material from them. The letters from the experts were published on one blog which, although scholarly, was not by a professor (although the academics all endorsed it). The editors kept removing it as not a reliable source! (And it isn't in there now). This means the wiki article is actually unreliable, in that it suppresses part of the story.
Nor am I blaming the editors -- under WP:BLOGS that is precisely what is supposed to happen.
The problem, I think, is that the policy doesn't recognise that, in a developing news story where new media like blogs are involved and developing the story, the blogs do need to be referenced. They may not be reliable, in the long term. But to rely on the mainstream media, with its love of sensation, is to distort the story.
Quite how to fix the policy I don't know. The basic principle -- that any old schoolboy could call himself an expert and write a blog -- is sound. But some blogs are more reliable than others, particularly in giving transcriptions of sources of information (I don't think their *opinions* are necessarily reliable). When they give scholarly data, that is available nowhere else, we have real problems if we ignore it.
So I think the policy is being too tightly drawn, and this is creating difficulties for editors. Yes, a blog is not an authority, unless produced by a professional scholar on his area of expertise. But it may be a source.
I encountered the same problem on another article, where online primary sources were being deleted under pretext "oh it's on a blog". So I suspect there is a general problem. Roger Pearse ( talk) 19:17, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
With the edit made by Kotniski and given that the text was introduced into the section by SV and SV said on this talk page "I wasn't keen on its inclusion, but at least it's not in the lead, and it's not being added to a sentence in a way that would make the sentence false. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)" and now that we have a mention of copyright in the lead, I am removing the phrase completely as is it an imprecise summation of the legal copyright requirements and the guidance given in guidelines such as WP:PLAGARISM. -- PBS ( talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
(And encouraging people to "internalize" the sources, whatever that means - incorporate them into your own belief system? presumably not, it just means understand, but we already say understand - also looks pretty silly.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Basically, "internalise" is what you do when you're genuinely acquiring knowledge. For example: Two different editors are writing articles on an obscure topic. Editor A has a degree in the subject. Her major reference work for learning was Book B. Editor A has learned what Book B says. Later she summarizes its contents for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, Editor R writes an article on a slightly different topic that's also covered by Book B, but Editor R has not actually learned it. He simply goes through Book B trimming it and paraphrasing in order to avoid any obvious copyright infringement.
Editor A is not infringing copyright. But Editor R is infringing copyright, even though he's using exactly the same source as Editor A. The difference is that Editor A has "internalised" the knowledge and then expressed it in her own words, whereas Editor R's edits went from the book to the article without passing through his brain in any meaningful sense.
If you can think of a better word than "internalise" for the process, then that would be great!— S Marshall T/ C 01:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, there have been various requests to concentrate discussion on the copyright section to here? (If not then please move this post to the right place.) Anyway, in this spirit I place a copy here of my proposal for the wording which I have mentioned elsewhere:
I also believe that the recent situation where copyright was handled as one among several other policies which need to be kept in mind, was the logically most correct one.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 08:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Can anyone cite a law or legal commentary where this concept of "internalizing" is shown to be relevant to avoiding breach of copyright? I rather suspect not, but I'm willing to be enlightened.-- Kotniski ( talk) 12:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Some may prefer the proposal above, because arguably this is starting to try to explain something from another policy. Comments please.-- Andrew Lancaster ( talk) 14:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)*Proposed (2): Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. For example, use in-text attribution when quoting copyrighted sources or closely paraphrasing them. And do not paraphrase too closely or reproduce direct quotes which are too extensive. Please read the sources, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words, saying where you got it.
Much better to go with minimalist. I suggest moving it up into the lead -- as mention of copyright is already there -- and not placing it in the body of this policy.
Phrases such as "When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution." Is not correct because it does not have the necessary exceptions to cover things like internal copies from other Wikipedia pages, etc. -- PBS ( talk) 18:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not seeing objections to implementing this, yet it is being claimed in edit summaries that there are some. Can we have them please? Or if there aren't any, let's do this and move on.-- Kotniski ( talk) 07:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Public domain text is not the issue as it is not under copyright. As for the exceptions BB's text ("Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism.") does that. -- PBS ( talk) 07:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The Beatles were the "most popular rock band" of the 1960s and 1970s. The four members of the group were "known for their comedic personas", and later for their "attraction to Eastern religions".
(outdent) It seems we're getting sidetracked here by an issue that isn't really part of the scope of this policy - it's just a caveat that needs to be mentioned in passing. "Copying pages between WP articles" and the other things are being mentioned not because they have anything to do with the topic of this policy, but because they have something to do with the topic of the caveat - they provide example situations which demonstrate that the caveat as currently worded is not right. If you say something in a policy, it isn't enough that it be applicable just in the cases you happen to have in mind, it must be applicable in (pretty much) all cases, unless you make the exceptions explicitly.-- Kotniski ( talk) 10:27, 30 March 2011 (UTC)
Can anyone with any further objections to removing this wording, please speak up? We can't not do something just because there were objections - are there any objections now? If so, what? (Just saying "I support it" doesn't mean anything - we need answers to the multiple reasons that have been supplied for removing it.) -- Kotniski ( talk) 11:18, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
I hope this will have been resolved by my making this into a separate section (so that it appears in an appropriate place in the policy, and can thus be addressed using more words to clarify what we mean and why we're saying it here).-- Kotniski ( talk) 11:25, 8 April 2011 (UTC)
- While ensuring that what you write can be supported by reliable sources, be mindful of the dangers of following a source's wording too closely, and thus committing plagiarism or breach of copyright.
Usual best practice is to represent what the sources say using your own words.When quoting directly from or closely paraphrasing a source, ensure that the source is clearly cited(normally by using in-text attribution)and that copyright is not being breached.
For one thing, the side issue about copyright and plagiarism now takes up more than half the text in a subsection which is actually supposed to be about a different and very essential issue for this policy. Perhaps someone with the knowledge and skills can write a separate section on copyright/plagiarism, perhaps down towards the end of the page, then this section could link to that one. (It has to be admitted that WP:COPY and WP:Plagiarism are themselves far from clear expositions of their subject matter, so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to summarize them here; but we shouldn't do so in a way that gets in the way of communicating this policy's subject matter, or in a way that risks misleading editors, even if only a minority of them.)-- Kotniski ( talk) 09:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
As for "knowing what they're talking about"--well, I'm not a copyright lawyer and I don't know anything about US law, which is about as relevant to me as the law of Timbuktoo, but equally, I'm semi-professionally interested in copyright and frankly, it isn't rocket science.
Copyright's in the expression of an idea. If you learn something, know it, and then explain it to someone else in your own words then you're not violating copyright. You're not even violating the copyright of the textbooks you learned it from, because the knowledge you're imparting is yours. It's the expression that counts.
If you don't know something, but you explain it anyway by copy/pasting it from a textbook, then you've violated copyright. This counts even if you change the order of the clauses, or use alternative phrasing, or other disguising methods, because in this event your expression of the idea is "derivative" (legal term) of someone else's.
This means that the optimal way to avoid breaching copyright is to learn your subject matter properly and thoroughly, and then explain it in your own words.
I find that Andrew Lancaster's suggestion of "Familiarise yourself with" doesn't quite encapsulate what I was trying to express with that sentence because it doesn't seem as strong to me as words like "learn" or "internalise". It seems like watering down what's actually a clear distinction: imparting your own knowledge in your own words -vs- imparting someone else's knowledge in phrasing that, if you don't personally have the knowledge you're sharing, must necessarily be derivative of theirs.
Make sense? And does anyone have a better wording suggestion?— S Marshall T/ C 12:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material.
How about if we use this wording for the time being? It has the advantages of brevity, simplicity and consistency with other policies.— S Marshall T/ C 16:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Current lede | Proposed lede |
---|---|
This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about
living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.
Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three. Articles must also comply with the copyright policy. |
This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about
living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.
Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material. Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three. |
Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - current | Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - proposed |
All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. (Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, then summarize what they say in your own words. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution.) | All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution. |
Moved to footnote | |
Read the sources, understand them, then summarise what they say in your own words. |
Notice the omission of the contentious "internalise" phrase for the moment. ("Understand" and "familiarise yourself with" is redundant.)
How's this?— S Marshall T/ C 16:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
SlimVirgin recently made an edit here ( Revision as of 19:39, 10 April 2011) in which she wrote: "pls open RfC if you want to remove this; it reflects the MoS, CITE, PLAGIARISM, and best practice; we can't contradict those here".
SV to the best of my recollection you introduced the wording about inline text-attribution for Cite and Plagarism, and I assume to the MOS. Is my recollection incorrect? If so, did you open a RfC to introduce any of the wording?
I ask because you justification on the talk page of Plagiarism for addition of in-text attribution into Plagiarism for close attribution was given in the section Wikipedia talk:Plagiarism/Archive 6#In-text attribution. In that you started the section with the comment "Hi Moonriddengirl, what's your objection to this? It's standard practice per V to use in-text attribution without quotation marks. SlimVirgin 15:39, 8 October 2010 (UTC)"
Yet at that time what V said was "Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text: 'John Smith argues that X, while Paul Jones maintains that Y,' followed by an inline citation." and "Where a news organization publishes an opinion piece, the writer should be attributed (e.g. 'Jane Smith has suggested...'). Posts left by readers may never be used as sources." This is very different from a general usage that you are currently proposing should be in the policy. As far as I can tell the wording you are currently supporting has its seed in this edit made on 20 December 2010. To the best of my knowledge (as the edit shows), before that date there was a prohibition in V to close paraphrasing (instead of quoting).
As a number of exceptions have been demonstrated here to using in-text attribution for all material used in Wikipedia artices, it would seem to me to be time to qualify the wording in the guidelines to incorporate those exceptions (although the wording in MOS#Attribution seems to be less detailed than in the other two and in its current form I don't think it needs qualifying). I would suggest the place to start in in the Plagiarism guideline, as the exceptions are already in that guideline and fixing it mainly involved moving the text currently in the lead into a section to do with standard copyright. In that -- PBS ( talk) 10:49, 11 April 2011 (UTC)