Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 26

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Need for some item without published verification to be used

There are some item of interest that should be included that can only be obtained from eye witnesses without formal verification. These are generally to do with events that at the time are not highly reported, but become more relevant due to later occurances. There should be the possibility of including them in wikipedia (possibly with a "not verified" tag). Some knowledge of events would then not be lost after the death of the eye witness. DonJay (talk) 02:38, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Wait, what? If no reliable source states that something has happened (or even been claimed or suggested), then it definitely should not be on Wikipedia. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:31, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia isn't the right venue to record such material. Doing so would violate not only this policy, but also WP:NOR ... ie two of our core policies. If you are worried that an eye witness account of an event will dissapear with the death of the witness, write a book about it, put it on a web page, or record it in some other way. Then if the event does become "relevant" and notable, it can be found, analyzed and discussed by independant reliable sources. Blueboar (talk) 04:09, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
Information directly from eyewitness accounts and not previously published is called original research, The no original research policy says Wikipedia isn't the place to publish this type of material. If it's of interest, you'll be able to publish it somewhere else. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 04:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Isn't it policy that WP can't be used as a source at all?

[Inserted the next day: I mean "source" and "cite" the way journalists, publishers, academics and technical writers use the terms, and my sense is that the previous discussions that I linked used these terms the same way. I'm not saying Wikipedia is a bad place to get information, in fact, I believe just the opposite, for many topics. That caused some confusion in the debate. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 16:41, 14 March 2008 (UTC)]

Okay, I am definitely missing something, and I can't find an answer in the most recent discussion on the subject, Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 23#Wikipedia as an SPS. This is from WP:SPS, part of this article, and therefore policy: "Articles and posts on Wikipedia may not be used as sources". But if you look at the left on any article page, you'll see a tool called "cite this page". So...we're supposed to cite an article, and then say, "but whatever you do, don't believe us, because Wikipedia can't be used as a source"? And if the tool isn't helpful enough, we have an entire page devoted to teaching you how to cite Wikipedia as a source, WP:Citing Wikipedia. I'm stumped. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:59, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps other people may want to cite wikipedia, apart from article writers here. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:14, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
You are absolutely correct... Wikipedia should not be used as a source in Wikipedia... (or to be more exact, one Wikipedia article should not be used as a source in another Wikipedia article). However, I don't think that is the intent of WP:Citing Wikipedia. I think the intent is to tell people how to cite Wikipedia elsewhere... ie in some other venue, such as a school research paper or on another wiki somewhere. The article could probably make that clearer. Blueboar (talk) 04:26, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
(copied from WT:WPMoS) Wikipedia cannot be used as a source for Wikipedia articles. People can use whatever sources they want, including Wikipedia, elsewhere. In context I don't think this is at all confusing. Christopher Parham (talk) 04:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

←That's a reasonable guess based on what WP:V says. After all, there are many reasons you wouldn't want for WP to reference WP, including the Telephone game. And that's exactly why it would be better if we change the language in WP:V back to what it was six months ago, when it was on a different page ... because the reasonable guess is wrong. I've found the discussions, and it doesn't reflect them at all. They didn't say that WP could be cited elsewhere but not in WP; they said that no one should cite WP as a source.

I need to report back to WP:WPMoS, which is a project to work on all style guidelines until they reflect consensus, are easy to understand, and don't contradict. Clearly, there's work to be done here. I already mentioned the link at Archive 23, and there's a long and nuanced discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 21#Links to other WP articles do not count as references. What's really interesting is the historical page at Wikipedia:Attribution/FAQ. The "Are wikis reliable sources?" subhead says:

Wikis, including Wikipedia and other wikis sponsored by the Wikimedia Foundation are not regarded as reliable sources. However, wikis are excellent places to locate primary and secondary sources. Many of them license content under the GFDL, which might be worth importing into Wikipedia, but once imported, the material is subject to Wikipedia:Attribution and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Despite the above, some Wikis sponsored by the wikimedia foundation are in fact intended to be reliable sources. Notably the Wikisource and Wikinews projects, which provide notable documents in the public domain and copyleft, and events in day-to-day news, respectively. If circumstances require linking to a wiki page — for example, if the wiki itself is a notable project — it is best to use the permalink feature common on wiki software. Common wiki platforms, including the MediaWiki software which underlies Wikipedia, incorporate a feature allowing one to link directly to a version of a page as it existed some time in the past.

So that clears up one mystery...the "cite this page" link at the left of article pages is for when circumstances require linking to a wiki page. Examples from the discussion at Archive 21 included articles about Wikipedia itself. But the mystery at WP:Citing Wikipedia remains; it is completely out of sync with the three links I gave. It doesn't get to "You should not cite any particular author or authors for a Wikipedia article, in general" until the 12th sentence, so it's easy to miss. It also completely contradicts both the two linked discussions and Wikipedia:Attribution/FAQ (which is historical, but it's very recent history, and that part of it had strong support over a long time). Again, Wikipedia and other wikis are "...not regarded as reliable sources. However, wikis are excellent places to locate primary and secondary sources". And this just makes sense; it's not a slur against Wikipedia, it's a simple acknowledgment that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, and they do. This also makes Wikipedia Version 1.0 all the more interesting ... because it will not be a wiki, and won't be editable, so if we want to make a case for a version of Wikipedia that could conceivably be a useful source, that would be it.

As I say, all the discussion I read was quite clear, and I don't see any reason why the long-standing language I just quoted about reliable sources was dropped; there was no support for dropping it. The article became historical for other reasons, and the language never made it into WP:V. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 05:45, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

There is a complete separation between:
  1. Internal citation - one wikipedia article cites another. In this case, our internal definition of "reliable source" applies, and we don't approve of internal citations.
  2. External citations: Jane Q cites a wikipedia article in some other setting. For this, Jane's personal standard of reliability applies. If she judges an article is reliable enough, she's free to cite it.
All of our discussions regarding WP:V and WP:RS are about #1. But the "cite this page" link is for #2. They are completely independent. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:19, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
In which case... would it not be a good idea for WP:Citing Wikipedia (and by extension, the "Cite this page" link) to clearly state upfront that it refers to citing Wikipedia in other settings? This would avoid any potential confusion. Blueboar (talk) 13:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I think that WP:Citing Wikipedia could be improved in many ways. It does assume that the person reading it has a great amount of contextual knowledge that it only implicit in what it written. Special:Cite use Mediawiki:cite_text, which could remind editors not to cite wikipedia in wikipedia articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:05, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I agree with Blueboar on both counts. Carl, I am with you halfway. Clearly, people do cite Wikipedia as a source, and clearly, we're not going out of our way to stop them ... we provide a tool to help them do it on every article page, even if we do say on a historical page that that tool is for circumstances require it (in the sense above). And using a common dictionary definition of "cite" ("to quote by way of example, authority, or proof" - Webster), it's also fine. Jane can tell her neighbor that she looked at the Wikipedia article and can say that she believes it, because she found the authors credible, or because she could tell a lot of people were checking after the author, or for any other reason. And anything that Jane can say, she can put in writing, in her homework or her garden club newsletter.
But that's not what academics and technical writers mean by the word "cite", they mean something more like "using as formal support in an academic, technical or specialized article". And I don't see anything in the discussions but consensus that we don't think that's a valid use of Wikipedia. Does anyone really want to argue in favor of the following? "Jane Q chose completely on her own to cite Wikipedia, we had nothing to do with that, so it's not our problem. All we did was hide (not intentionally, as a consequence of rendering "historical") the previous long-standing position by members of the WMF and everyone else that Wikipedia was meant to serve as a guide to primary and secondary sources, not as a source itself, and use language in the policy that only applies to citing in Wikipedia articles, and provide a tool on every article page to help people cite Wikipedia, and write and maintain a long article in our Help pages, WP:Citing Wikipedia, that makes it clear that we do expect academics to cite us sometimes. But hey, if Jane wants to cite us, that's up to her." - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:34, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Please don't read any of this as an attack on Wikipedia's credibility; my position is exactly the opposite. When I ask random people what they think of Wikipedia, they generally are astounded that it's so accurate about things that no one got right before, and I'm optimistic about the direction of Wikipedia, including the effects of Wikipedia Version 1.0. But Wikipedia has a very dominant position on the web these days, so it's very important not to oversell our product, because there are more than a few journalists and publishers who are trying to poke fun at us and take us down. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 14:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
That is true some large percentage of the time; but the remaining percentage ranges from intentional distortion to the current crop of as-yet-unfixed vandalism. A (true) assertion that some people regard WP as an ihherently unreliable source should not be read to imply that the others regard it as a reliable source.
Wikipedia 1.0 will be no better than the assessments it's based on. The present state of FA suggests that almost all of its articles will faithfully follow arcane codes of punctuation, many of them will be bad writing based on abominable sources, and hardly any of them will be trustworthy. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:15, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Among other things, Wikipedia is a primary source about itself. If someone wanted to cite a wikipedia article because they had directly quoted its text, or referred to the development of an article, or something like that, it would be just fine. The position isn't that people shouldn't cite wikipedia in academic papers, but that they already know not to cite encyclopedias when more direct citations are possible. So I don't really follow what change you are advocating. It think it's very reasonable for us to say, "If someone wants to cite us, and is aware of the nature of our site, more power to them." There's no reason for us to go out of our way to tell external editors they shouldn't cite our articles even if they think it's appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:12, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
Describing and documenting the debate is important here, and I'll do my best to be accurate and impartial on that, but I admit that one point here seems more important than the others, to me: people on Wikipedia are not sufficiently aware (but Jimbo certainly is) of the increasing level of snarkiness towards Wikipedia by journalists, publishers and some academics. (And btw, I'm not considering what Septentrionalis just wrote as snarky, just as a subjective assessment, which I know he can back up with examples, which is neither entirely true nor entirely false. I'm talking about people who don't really know anything about Wikipedia, except that people now go there for information, and it pisses them off.) That snarkiness will go up when Wikipedia Version 1.0 appears, because some of them will feel even more threatened by a printed version, and the surrounding "buzz". The very best way to poke a hole in the credibility of any person, institution or encyclopedia is to catch them in the act of overselling themselves. The disconnect between all the previous discussion I can find (those 3 links I gave) on the subject of whether Wikipedia can and should be cited academically, vs. what WP:Citing Wikipedia and WP:V say, gives more than enough ammunition to anyone who wants to take a shot at us. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 15:42, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
I don't see it as a disconnect. WP:V is about internal citations from one article to another. The other page is about external citations. Perhaps WP:V could explain why we don't cite ourselves, or the other page could remind people that citations are provided for external use, but their utility has to be decided by the person making the citation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:58, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

If you mean "cite Wikipedia articles in other Wikipedia articles" that would be circular and useless (Explanation: I write some rumor in article X, then "cite" this "source" (X) in Y, but that does no more good than simply writing my rumor in Y directly. The point is to not originate things on Wikipedia, and to keep all on-Wikipedia material traceable to off-Wikipedia sources. Wikipedia is a journalistic agency.). So no, you cannot "cite Wikipedia" in that sense. I think the "cite this page" stuff has more to do with citing this page somewhere else outside of Wikipedia (Wikipedia cited by outside) not Wikipedia-article - Wikipedia-article citation. mike4ty4 (talk) 19:57, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Radical change of impostation to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English_sources

I must move strong objections - actually, the strongest I've ever felt necessary to make in my three years here - to the change made to Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English_sources. Apparently a very minor change - the text became "Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of sufficient quality" instead of the long accepted "Because this is the English Wikipedia, for the convenience of our readers, editors should use English-language sources in preference to sources in other languages, assuming the availability of an English-language source of equal quality". As an editor who pass most of his time on topics where non-Anglophone scholarship play a decisive role, and is generally considered of superior quality (French scholarship, in the cases I cover), I'm fully aware of how - sorry if this sounds a bit too apocalyptic - devastating to the quality of many articles. Wikipedia is a collaborative project, so even if somebobody has knowledge only of English, he can easily ask for the help of polyglot editors, who are especially rich for those countries that have evolved a vast and elaborated scholarship, like German, French, Spanish, Italian, to quote just the most obvious. Let me make an example taken from a neglected area, of which few translations to English from other languaguages are made: Francophone Africa. The best scholarly sources, the most reliable, are here very commonly in French; under this change from equal to sufficient American newspaper articles with little understanding of the context and history in which the events evolve, often full of factual errors (it's easy to make them if you don't have a close knowledge of the events and the sources). The change made is also a perfect receipt for emptying of any sense the project of countering systemic bias, as demoting heavily the povs different from those offered by Anglophone sources, or anyway through its mediation. Sorry if this came so long, but I feel it's an important point, that can be imposed through a fait accompli.--Aldux (talk) 16:26, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

It seems to me that regardless of which word is used, we would want to have the very best sources available, as long as we can have some confidence in the process that created them, in the faithfulness of the process that brings them to our pages, and in our ability to understand what was said. It's not that people whose native language is not English can't understand everything I have to say, and vice versa, it's that we often sometimes won't understand each other, because we have read different sources of information all our lives. I would support a position that is halfway in between what I hear in the words equal and sufficient, because of the Telephone game. The more hands information has to pass through before it gets into the English Wikipedia, the less reliable the information will be. And if it's not translated, then most of us here won't be able to review the source or check the article for information that might be out of sync with it. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 23:41, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
On what thing we certainly agree: "we would want to have the very best sources available". Even if I think you shouldn't be so afraid of a misunderstanding among editors of different native languages: mediating in the Balkans, I've had the opportunity that editors from different backgrounds can understand themselves, and many are always ready to help when you have doubts regard the source or fear the editor who put a certain source is too biased to be trusted easily. Also, keep in mind that "equal" means that the editor who wants to insert a foreign language source will have to give proofs that the source is really better than English sources (for example by peer reviews and mentions in literature), or has an undisputed reputatation (like the AFP, the French version of Reuters). Certainly, verifiability may not always be easy: for example, it can be very hard for a schoolboy in the heart of Alaska to verify an article of a scholarly journal nowhere to be found online, even if in English; not for this we say that web sources are to be preferred, as this would by a detriment to quality.--Aldux (talk) 16:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
I see you put the wording back to "equal". If it's true that this was the wording used for years, then I have no problem with leaving it exactly like it is ... there will be a paper trail of interpretations that will make it clear that people should be careful to check verifiability when using foreign-language sources. (And btw, my heart is on your side ... I wish U.S.-Americans in particular paid more attention to foreign-language sources, in many things, and I'm doing my part, staffing the #wikia-de irc chatroom. But this discussion is just about verifiability of sources.) - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Academics and journalists

How useful is Wikipedia to academics and journalists? I mentioned above that previous consensus seemed to lean towards representing Wikipedia to non-Wikipedians as a great place to get summary information and pointers to sources, but there was a strong message that Wikipedia itself should not be trusted, as a corollary to "anyone can edit". It now seems to me that Wikipedia is reaching a tipping point of greater participation in all respects by academics and journalists, and IMO we should encourage that. WP:Flagged revisions, coming in mid-April, might have a huge impact on the top objection of academics and journalists to Wikipedia, that they have to constantly "baby-sit" their work to keep it from being vandalized or degraded. The printed WP:Version 1.0 is not far off, and academics and journalists have a preference for printed material, even though they often access it in online form these days. WP:Wikipedia in academic studies, WP:Wikipedia as an academic source, Reliability of Wikipedia, and WP:Researching with Wikipedia and http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikiquality-l/ have all been very helpful to me. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

P.S. to the very knowledgeable folks who patrol this and similar policy pages: I want to help. If I point someone to a page, but another page would have been more on-topic, please let us know. If I say anything that isn't right, please jump in immediately, I don't want to give people bad advice. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2008 (UTC)


Changing the opener

Hi.

I don't like this wording:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. ..."

This makes it seem that anything verifiable is game for Wikipedia, when really this is not the case (and this is a long-standing rule of Wikipedia that is codified in WP:NOT, WP:N and many other places.). To avoid confusion of newcomers to the encyclopedia, I'd suggest an alternative phrasing, like this:

"Just because a claim is true does not automatically make it viable for inclusion in Wikipedia. Rather, it must be, among other things, verifiable. ..." (with WP:NOT link included.)

What do you think? mike4ty4 (talk) 20:05, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Several things come to mind.
  • I might agree with you that the sentence could be more explicit ... not different, just harder to misinterpret ... but the lead paragraphs in the core content policies are the result of a lot of haggling, and I wouldn't want to make a change without understanding the history.
  • You mention WP:NOT and WP:N, but the only relevant sentence I could find was "merely being true or useful does not automatically make something suitable for inclusion in an encyclopedia" in WP:NOT. Were you referring to that or something else from WP:NOT and WP:N?
  • There's a delicate dance in policy pages; they try to say only enough to establish the policy, without getting into how-to. So it's a common criticism that they don't quite seem to nail down the policy; but just as in the courts, the interpretations do nail down the policy. My point here is that you're partly right: there's a trade-off, and some things would be gained by being more explicit, as you suggest, but other things would be lost. For instance, you'd get an increase in people who say, "No, I couldn't find any sources, but WP:V makes it clear that anything that's true is allowed in Wikipedia, and I'm sure this is true". More importantly, people rely on policy pages to change very slowly or not at all. Policy pages are kind of like a national constitution; when they change, then your interpretation of all the laws and all the lower court rulings has to change, and that can be a hassle. So, give us an example of some bad thing that's going to happen as a result of the current wording. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 20:31, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Commentary, opinion, and authority

Would suggest a section mentioning somewhat broadened sourcing for matters of commentary, opinion, and authority. Journalistic sources are more likely to be relevant and may be more reliable than academic sources; various commentators are nationally or internationally syndicated and well-known. In addition, on many matters of religion, politics, and similar matters that involve authority, authoratative sources are reliable. Vatican publications are reliable for what Catholic authority and doctrine is, for example; statements by the Democratic National Committee are generally reliable for its policies. Authorative sources (by authoritive expositors of a well-known viewpoint) are a category that isn't really what's intended by self-published sources, but are also a distinct category from academic sources. They're different from self-published sources because they're vetted (by a kind of peer-review process) to represent a viewpoint and can do so with authority in a way self-published sources can't. In that sense they really are reliable within they're scope and don't need special qualification. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 05:11, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not clear on what you're saying. Articles related to sex, religion and politics often have POV issues, and both for that reason and because of WP:SELFPUB, WP:COI, WP:NPOV and maybe other things in WP:V, I can't see using a publication from the Vatican concerning Catholicism for any purposes other than those allowed by WP:SELFPUB. Could you give us a specific document and tell us what use you wanted to put it to that is not currently allowed by WP:SELFPUB? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 23:51, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
There are many subjects on which a Catholic opinion would be significant besides Catholicism itself, including interpretations of the Bible, views of and relations with other religions, various social issues, philosophical matters, and much else, just as there are many subjects besides science proper where a scientfic viewpoint would be significant. Self-published sources could have very limited use in such matters, but authoritative sources have wider use. One critical difference is that authoratative sources are peer-reviewed in the sense that they are vetted to ensure that they reliably represent a particular viewpoint, whereas self-published sources aren't. I think your thinking that presenting a Catholic viewpoint as a violation of COI or NPOV is a misunderstanding of these policies; it is no more so than presenting scientific sources on subjects considered as having a science angle would be. The community has consistently rejected specially prefering scientific points of view to other points of view (See WP:SPOV and the rejection thereof). W:V should not be used to make an end-run around it. Otherwise NPOV would mean nothing more than "what I agree with." The rejection of WP:SPOV means that Wikipedia doesn't make a distinction between scientific and (say) Catholic viewpoints so long as both are significant. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 01:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
One particularly pernicious example was the Ezra article. A Christianity-oriented Old Testament academic wrote in a 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica article that Ezra was regarded as the second Moses by Judaism. We had people insist that anything Jewish sources said about Ezra's role in Judaism was trumped by anything an academic said and once someone from a university religion department said something about Judaism, no source from within the religion could be heard to say otherwise. We need to make sure WP:V doesn't provide ammunition for this sort of nonsense. The idea that a religion's's authoritative scholars would be considered "self-published" when they don't happen to work out of universities is simply silly, and there isn't consensus for such a position for good reason. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 02:02, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Disclaimer: I'll follow your example and use the Vatican, but this applies equally to any group. Your definition of "peer-reviewed" doesn't match that in WP:PR, or in Peer review, or in the dictionaries. From Peer review: "Reviewers are typically anonymous and independent." Having one Cardinal review what another Cardinal writes is the opposite of "peer review", although it can be useful as a way of taking a survey among the group. I certainly do not think of "a Catholic viewpoint as a violation of COI or NPOV"; or rather, I don't know what that would mean. The Vatican's view of the Vatican is no more and no less COI than my viewpoint of me or your viewpoint of you. If the Vatican publishes something which is written by the Vatican, that's self-published, at least as defined in Wikipedia. See Self-publishing, which requires a third-party, established publisher. "Not working out of universities" is not the issue; the issue is the lack of the application of standards by an established publishing house which is independent of the author or authors.
This doesn't prevent any of the things you were worried about from showing up in Wikipedia. The Vatican's positions on "other religions, various social issues, philosophical matters..." easily achieve the standard of notability, and not only could be covered, but are covered, as the Vatican's positions. I don't understand the example of Ezra; it seems self-evident that the Tanach (Jewish Bible) serves as the scriptures of Judaism, just as the Christian Old Testament serves as part of their scriptures, and clearly each religion should be able to define for themselves their significance and meaning. I'm agnostic on how finely you divide it up, how many different sects of Christianity have a "notably" different take on their scriptures; it's not my field. But clearly, the Jews and Christians should get to speak for themselves on their own scriptures.
I'm not clear on your first sentence, "There are many subjects...", where you seem to say that the Vatican's viewpoint should be treated in the same way as "a scientific viewpoint". You know, I'm sure, that the scientific method ... form hypotheses, gather data to test it, record the results, verify it independently, build on that ... is what Wikipedia is based on. You also know that representing the views of any one group as truth is not what Wikipedia is based on. Could you clarify that part? - Dan Dank55 (talk) 03:49, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
Actually, strike that; more helpful would be An argument probably won't help me understand what you're saying; give me an article where you don't like the contents because you think that the viewpoint of the Vatican or any other group didn't compete fairly with "a scientific viewpoint", in your words. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 04:10, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
A practical example: On matters of traditional Jewish ritual law, an opinion from the website of a single congregational rabbi is generally not considered a reliable source because it's not peer-reviewed, while an opinion taken from the works of Moshe Feinstein is considered a reliable source because of Moshe Feinstein's wide acceptance by the religious community as a religious authority. My interpretation of this distinction, which I intuitively want to make, is to say that the wide acceptance of Moshe Feinstein's scholarship constitutes a kind of peer review, and makes his works different from self-published ones, even though he operated outside the academic world. (Actually, his views on a small subset of his writings, particularly on medical ethics, have been discussed by academic scholars because of their general interest as an approach to ethics, but in my view this is not what makes him an authority on religious law). An interpretation of WP:V that lumps both views together and calls them both self-published would essentially destroy efforts to adapt core policies in a manner that would provide meaningful reliability guidance on these types of subjects. In addition, on articles where facts and values intersect, neutrality among the viewpoints is particularly important, and WP:V shouldn't undermine the ability to source both viewpoints. Best, --Shirahadasha (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
If I understand Shirahadasha correctly, this is an NPOV and not a V issue. Wikipedia should include all notable views. In some cases it is evident that a view is "more" or "less" notable - I think when it comes to expressing a Catholic POV, an official statement from the Vatican is more notable than why a parish priest says. But in other cases, all we can do is distinguish different kinds of views. What do Jews think? Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews may be divided on an issue, and we should include both views, properly identified and contextualized. Similarly, official representatives of a/the Jewish community and a critical sociologist or historian of religion may have different views on what Jews believe. I do not think we should say that one view is the truth and the other is not. They are different views, and should be properly identified and contextualized. Wikipedia should favor neither a "scientific" POV nor a "religious" POV; it should favor neither an "insider's" view (e.g. what President Bush has to say about American values) nor an "outsider's" view (e.g. what Fidel Castro has to say about American values ... or what a historian or social scientist has to say about AMerican values). All of these views should be presented. The author of the 1911 EB article may reflect a dated view, but the fact that he is not Jewish, or that his views are not shared by most Jews, does not mean his view should not be represented in an article. But this is not an either/or issue. I see no problem with following a quote from the EB providing statements from Jewish sources that present either an insider's or a religious view. No other editor should get in the way of including these other views. I do see one possible point of contention, which is Wikipedia's preference for secondary over primary sources, long a bane of contention by some at the NOR policy talk page, but long part of the policy. Perhaps Shirahadasha is refering to a case, or hypothetical case, where NPOV and NOR may conflict. But I do not see this as a V issue. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:55, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Intriguing WP:SELFPUB question! A little help, someone? When someone says "X's wide acceptance qualifies his opinions as...", I sometimes hear something like, "I'm not disputing that, but we have to have some kind of dividing line for inclusion or exclusion, and the dividing line we've chosen is that some publishing house or academic or journalist thought you were right." But I really don't know the answer and I'm looking forward to finding out myself. My personal feeling is that we should be very sensitive with religious matters and allow people to tell their own stories in their own ways, whenever possible. And I agree, it's a bit difficult to separate out the WP:N and WP:NPOV issues here. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 02:58, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Question - unpublished facts / verifiability

I'm not sure if this is the right place, so apologies if not. Is there any way that the subject of an article could contribute information to the article that is not published by any third-party sources? Could someone contact Wikipedia, though OTRS for example, to verify a fact that could then be used in an article? I'm talking about relatively minor details to flesh out an article, not facts that are relied upon for notability. --BelovedFreak 16:09, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

In a word... No. Even relatively minor details must be verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 17:40, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I generally satisfy myself with the idea that if no reliable source mentions it, then it's probably not worth mentioning, anyway. Someguy1221 (talk) 17:56, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks for the reply. --BelovedFreak 17:57, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Policy changes and consensus

This started out in an above thread in response to my suggestions for rewording WP:SELFPUB. I moved it down here because I want that thread to stay focused on that issue, and also because the question raised is a very valid one. PSWG1920 (talk) 05:27, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

The latest modification I have suggested is simply a reorganization. As for the first change, the section previously started with Material from self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources in articles about themselves, which was first of all a bit unclear, and secondly, grammatically questionable. "Material ... may be used as sources"?
Also, I dispute your characterization that I am "pushing" anything. If I had come here and seen a general agreement that the policy was fine as it was, I wouldn't have bothered to suggest how it could be rewritten. But, as the above section shows, that was simply not the case. Others had already suggested rewrites for at least part of it. "Pushing", it seems to me, implies that consensus is decidedly against what is being suggested, whereas I am looking for a way to resolve issues which others have raised. PSWG1920 (talk) 04:29, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
And how is it reasonable to assume that the existing policy has such a consensus? I certainly don't get that impression from this talk page. PSWG1920 (talk) 07:27, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Well, you can request comment if you want to. I'm just asking why you think this current policy has such a broad consensus in light of everything on this talk page and in the archives of it. Let me point out a bit of an inconsistency in your reasoning. You assume that "existing core policies like verifiability enjoy an extremely broad consensus, and that substantive changes to those core policies would also require an extremely broad consensus". However, if the second point is true, that would prevent a change that 51% of commenters were in favor of. It is a false dichotomy to suggest that any point of a policy either has an "extremely broad consensus" for it or against it. PSWG1920 (talk) 17:40, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
I would never presume to make a substantive edit to a policy myself; I would always leave that up to the admins, since they are the most familiar with how the rules are applied in practice and what the shortcomings are. I am merely suggesting changes (as have others on this page.) PSWG1920 (talk) 19:30, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
Not sure what's going on here, but Dlabtot made an edit to the talk page that caused some posts to be repeated several times, so I've reverted. SlimVirgin talk|edits 17:41, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Let me try again: It was inappropriate to move my comments out of the discussion and into this new section. My comments don't make any sense taken out of context, in my opinion. Dlabtot (talk) 18:16, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe I was wrong to move this discussion; however, I did link to the thread in which this started, so your meaning is not obscured. See my response to you on my talk page for further comments on this. PSWG1920 (talk) 20:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I want to be clear: the comments I made in another section, don't belong in this section, they don't make sense in this section. The meaning of my comments was dependent on the context in which my comments were made. I'd like to respectfully ask that no one add anything to this section and sign my name to them. Thank you. Dlabtot (talk) 07:14, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

I am really sorry for the mess I have effectively caused here, and I have crossed out my responses to now non-existent comments. Admins, feel free to delete my crossed-out comments completely if you feel it is best to do so. PSWG1920 (talk) 07:52, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Citations for list entries

Please can folk here look at the discussion at Wikipedia talk:When to cite#Citation in lists. The old "If you've got wikilinks, who needs sources" argument. Thanks. Colin°Talk 17:56, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Is it? Yes, please have a look, I'd like feedback too. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 22:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

At what point does something become unverifiable

I am faced with an interesting question relating to verifiability. The article on Leonard Neale (1746 — 1817), the first US Citizen to be ordained a Roman Catholic bishop, includes the following paragraph:

  • "A story said to have been passed down by both George Washington's slaves and by the Jesuits is that several hours before Washington's death a Catholic priest was sent for from across the Piscatawney River. According to Jesuit tradition the priest was Father Leonard Neale. Both stories suggest that Washington converted to Catholicism on his deathbed."

Now, the idea that Washington became a death-bed Catholic certainly falls under the "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources" clause. It directly contradicts several eye-witness accounts which state that no clergy (of any denomination) were called to Washington's deathbed. So I and several other editors have been questioning this claim and carefully examining the sources given. At first the claim was (apparently by mistake) cited to an article from the 1950s that supposedly appeared in the Denver Catholic Register. This citation is given in several other more modern sources which repeat the claim. However, a volunteer editor checked this out in the Denver Library, and discovered that no such article ever existed in the DCR. When challenged on this, the editor who added the information explained that the citation to the DCR was an error and changed the citation to the National Catholic Register (which, according to its website, was the national edition of the DCR). Now, I suppose that it is possible that a story like this was printed in the national edition of the magazine, and not the local one... even though I think it unlikely. So... today, I went to the New York Public Library to verify the new source. It turns out that while the NYPL does have back editions of the NCR on file, they do not have any for the years in question (the earliest they have is in the 1960s) and neither do any of the other libraries and accademic institutions the NYPL is in partnership with. However, The editor who insists on keeping this legend in the article says he has a copy in front of him, and Assuming Good Faith, I should believe him.

This situation has all sorts of issues that relate to policy ... there are questions relating to WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE (the story takes up a fifth of the entire article) and probably several other policies and guidelines... but those can be discussed on the relevant talk pages and noticeboards for those policies and guidelines ... my question here is simply one relating to verification: At what point can we call a source unverifiable? If an editor claims to have a source in hand... but, after reasonable search in some of the largest public libraries in the US, it is impossible for anyone else to obtain a copy... can it be called verifiable? Blueboar (talk) 19:43, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

This gets even better... an editor has checked with the Library of Congress... they don't have it either. Blueboar (talk) 21:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
The archivist Karyl Klein at the Denver Catholic Register can be reached at archives@archden.org or Karyl.Klein@archden.org. Karyl e-mailed me the two articles from The National Catholic Register. Here is the publkic site where I got the contact information: http://www.archden.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=section&id=11&Itemid=421Dwain (talk) 22:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Filling the gap between fact-checked pubs and questionable sources

Full disclosure from the get-go: I'm involved in what some might perceive as a citation dispute in eNom. I hope readers will consider the possibility that sometimes -- maybe even this time -- disputes might illuminate legitimate gaps in policies.

In this case, the disagreement is over citing a press release from an organization that grants annual industry awards, in the article about a company the award was granted to. No news media covered the award, so no citations exist that meet the strict guidelines of independent fact-checking, and yet within the context of the article, and the industry, the award is significant and it seems clear that citing the press release from the awarder is preferable to citing the press release from the awardee. I've seen similar questions raised about press releases about company acquisitions, and I think it's a safe guess that there are plenty of other examples from "long-tail" situations -- the enormous number of topics with relatively small followings that don't get coverage in mainstream media or peer-reviewed literature. So the question I'd raise is: WP:V is a beautiful treatise if read uncritically, but possibly suffers from leaving too much grey area between what's clearly acceptable and what's clearly not. Would it be reasonable to try to reduce the gap, at least in the limited case of press releases re: industry awards? For reference, previous discussion has suggested that such citations are "less than ideal", but have been allowed to remain (see summary sentence by Visviva at top of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/GURPS_4e_Basic_Set_%282nd_nomination%29 ). Thirdbeach (talk) 21:40, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Hm

The phrasing can be misleading. It implies that there's a distinction between truth and verifiability (which there is, and not just in a Popperian sense); and for a slogan, that's not a good thing there is. It's not that we exclude the truth, after all.

Not just truth, but verifiability.

You see how that "just" changes the connotations of the sentence? DS (talk) 19:51, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Though the Popperian in me winces at the statement, I'm not actually sure we should disentangle truth and verifiability. "Truth through verifiability" comes very close to what we mean. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:58, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
It may come very close to what you mean, but I don't believe your use of the word 'we' is really appropriate in this context. Dlabtot (talk) 20:04, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The alternative seems to be the statement "We don't care if we get everything wrong as long as we can find other people who also get it wrong." If that is your belief, you ought not contribute to the project. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The policy says (or did when I last looked) that the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth. That simply means that my believing something to be true — or even knowing it (e.g. if I saw it with my own two eyes) — isn't enough. Truth is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for inclusion. There is nothing controversial about that. No science journal, for example, will include a claim without evidence. Our requirement is simply the prior publication of the material by a reliable source. Again, this is not controversial. Lots of publications operate along the same lines, especially when dealing with unknown writers, as we do. SlimVirgin talk|edits 20:38, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Truth, at least in the small-t form, is a necessary condition for inclusion. Phil Sandifer (talk) 20:57, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Only in the sense that we have to know it is true that A said X, and that this is in a publication, or published by a publishing house, we would normally trust; or in some circumstances that A is a person we trust no matter who publishes his material. We don't have to know that X is true. SlimVirgin talk|edits 21:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I suppose if you want to open a gray area between true and not-false you can, here, but for the most part I disagree - if our assessment of a piece of information is other than "it is true" than we should not put it in even with a reliable source. The lighthouse example above is a good one - Mangoe, in practice, is absolutely correct to figure out the correct location of the lighthouses and report that instead of presenting all of the various claims. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:15, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
That's a simple exercise of editorial judgement, not a repudiation of our verifiability or neutral point of view policy. Dlabtot (talk) 02:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Except that, as I've clearly stated the policy forbids what Mangoe did. Phil Sandifer (talk) 03:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
This policy doesn't forbid it. If someone were to challenge Mangoe, he'd need to find sources, yes, but otherwise he's okay. Having said that, I know that there are people who make unreasonable challenges, and that has started to concern me too in the last year, because I keep seeing ridiculous ones. I think it would be worth drafting a section to remind people that challenges have to be reasonable. SlimVirgin talk|edits 06:37, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, let's try a nastier case that Blueboar and I have been involved in. There is apparently a Catholic legendarium wandering around that says that Leonard Neale came over from Maryland and converted George Washington to Catholicism on his deathbed. This thing was originally cited (through some website or another, as far as I can tell) to a pair of "Denver Register" articles from the 1950s, and to an inventory of Washington's personal effects. Well, the problem with the latter is that possession of a pair of holy cards doesn't prove much, even though it can be verified that he had them. That's a matter of judgement, and could be accused of being OR. The issue with the articles is more interesting, because they don't exist as cited. Someone graciously went the library and checked this out for us. However, it does seem possible that the articles were actually published by the National Catholic Register; we aren't sure because we haven't gotten our hands on them to assess them. Assuming the articles are real, there's then the problem of how to assess them against the testimony of the eyewitnesses on the scene. Right now we're stuck with the story in the article on Leonard Neale, albeit with the disclaimer that it probably isn't true, because the apparent fact of the articles' publication means that the story is verifiable, and therefore should be included. Personally, I'm inclined to leave it out entirely, because I think repeating apocrypha, even when disclaimed, lends merit to the dubious statements. But maybe that's just me. Mangoe (talk) 17:16, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
It's not just you - I think you're spot-on in this one. (And it's comforting to see that many of the editorial situations I'm familiar with from popular culture articles carry over to more traditional articles) The issue is that nobody actually writes an encyclopedia article with an eye towards verifiability over truth. (And nobody reads one that way either) Similarly, nobody writes an article "from sources" as such - they write it from their knowledge that has been informed by sources, and then go back and cite the sources to help make clear the links between the sources and the knowledge. Which is how all research works - one reads the sources, understands them, and then writes about the material with citations to establish the connection. The problem with WP:V right now (and to an equal extent WP:NOR, which I'm going to move on to after this discussion wraps up) is that it presumes a model where we somehow directly translate reliable independent sources into encyclopedia articles. The relationship between a researched document and its sources is nowhere near that straightforward, and simply does not work as described here. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I look forward to your comments about WP:NOR. Do you want to completely discard that policy as well? Dlabtot (talk) 18:36, 4 April 2008 (UTC)
I haven't looked at it closely enough to know yet - but it's certainly become something other than its original intention. But that's largely off-topic here (and I don't want to completely discard this policy - just its current wording.) Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Apologies for backtracking on the conversation . . . DS's suggestion of "not just truth, but verifiability" does an exceptionally good job of both uniting and drawing the distinction between the concepts. Like others, I find the current text "verifiability, not truth" to be logically untenable. On first reading it expresses -- doesn't just imply -- a hostility toward truth; therefore it distracts and derails the reader. I think it fails to achieve what the writer intended. I think DS's alternative achieves the intent. Thirdbeach (talk) 01:49, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Specific changes

There've been a lot of (often quite good) changes suggested since I made my detailed analysis, and while I still would prefer a more radical solution, I think it's certainly prudent to introduce some of them to the policy. Here are the ones, looking at the talk page, that seem to me to have consensus or, at the least, widespread support:

  • Change the slogan to "Not just truth, but verifiability," thus stressing the goal of accuracy in Wikipedia.
  • Slimvirgin's proposed change to the section that is currently handled via Jimbomancy.

On the latter, I still remain skeptical of "Any edit lacking a reliable source may be removed." For one thing, we ought think about content as information, not as edits. But more significantly, I don't think that's an appropriate standard - what we want, roughly, is that any information that is suspected of being inaccurate or unverifiable may be challenged, and in the event of a genuine dispute over the verifiability of the information, the burden of proof is that the information must be shown to be verifiable. Once a sensible challenge is made the burden of proof is on the people trying to add the information - but there's an initial and lesser burden of proof that needs to be met before the challenge is made - that is, a reasonable belief that you're identifying a problem as opposed to a hoop to jump through.

But there are a number of other issues I raised that I think need to be looked at and changed.

Two are relatively easy:

  • De-academification. That is, while peer reviewed sources are clearly great and are essential for a number of topics, the academic bias of this policy doesn't reflect the sourcing issues involved in most of the material on Wikipedia.
  • Fixing self-published sources. This is related to de-academification. Simply put, though self-published medical research is obviously not something we want, material like the Gray's Anatomy Writers Blog is self-published but can obviously be used as a reliable source without third party confirmation. J. Michael Straczynski's well-confirmed Usenet posts and writings in his self-published collections of his Babylon 5 scripts can obviously be used as reliable sources for statements about the actors and directors involved in Babylon 5 - even for negative material about them. In that case it should be clearly attributed, but his accounts of contentious interactions surrounding the show are clearly reliable sources. A formal review process is not nearly the be-all and end-all that it is treated as.

Two are harder:

  • A realistic sense of what sources are available. Because commercial publishing is, well, commercial, decisions about what is and is not published are based on more than accuracy or even importance - they're based on marketability. The rise of the Internet and easy self-publication has made this more pressing - there's a lot of information that it's no longer worthwhile for a publisher to publish simply because there are people willing to compile and publish it for free on the Internet. We can't assume the information we need for subjects is stated straight-out in third party sources.
  • Relatedly, we need to be realistic about how sources are used. No research happens "from sources" in the sense of just being taken directly from a text and dropped into Wikipedia rephrased and cited. Articles, like any research, are written by people who have read sources, learned stuff, and then write about the stuff. The point of citations in research is not to establish every fact, but to leave a paper trail that can be followed up on. Thus we need to both understand that synthesis is inevitable (because research is not just rephrasing sources) and that some information will need to be reflected in a general "references" section instead of line-by-line.

As I said, the first two, I think, can be accomplished with language rephrasing, albeit at times large scale rephrasing. The latter two are more fundamental shifts, but I think they are no less necessary. Thoughts? Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:25, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the two changes that appear to have solid support. They're good ideas. Could you elaborate a bit more about "de-academification", both in terms of what you see as problematic and what you see as the solution?
I'd be a bit uncomfortable with such a liberalization of self-published source usage, both because of potential abuse concerns and because it runs contrary to common good practice on-wiki. However, much of your point could simply be covered by removing the tether from expert status to "reliable third-party publications". That portion of the policy could be simplified as simply requiring that the author be an "established expert" (leaving it, like much of policy, to local consensus regarding the specific meaning/application). That would move towards the goal of loosening the language of the policy appropriately, while maintaining the expert connection that is strongly supported. The use of the GA writers blog would already be permitted under the current policy (as they're established experts, published in a relevant field in a reliable publication), but such a change would further clarify the permissibility.
The use of such sources to comment about living people would need to be addressed at Wikipedia:Biographies of living people, as the reason for restriction on such articles arises from that policy. On a similar note, your concerns about synthesis would need to be addressed at Wikipedia:No original research, which covers such issues.
I am not convinced that the internet has had the effect on the print publishing industry that you indicate. I am an avid reader and involved in the treeware publishing industry. While the market has contracted to some degree, I have not seen the phenomena that you indicate is problematic. While traditional publishing markets have been somewhat slow to adapt, they have been (and are) adapting. Out-of-print books can be commonly purchased easily second-hand or in PDF format. Online libraries are thriving with business (largely bolstered by institutional subscriptions). Most periodicals now have online versions (and some have even made the move to new media versions being the version of record, including academic publications) and many have a thriving subscription business for archives or simply make archives freely available. That is my experience and perception of the matter, but I would be interested in hearing more about your concerns on this topic, including any examples you may have encountered. Vassyana (talk) 18:50, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
By de-academification, I mean that much of this policy is written for academic subjects in a way that is just not useful elsewhere, and, if followed elsewhere, could even be problematic. As far as I can tell I'm one of two scholars to write substantively on Calvin and Hobbes. I have a peer-reviewed article on it. But I'd be mortified if that article got used as the major source for the article due to its supposed reliability.
"Established expert" is a much better phrase - that should get added straightaway.
The issues certainly touch NOR and BLP, but BLP is ultimately just "Be super careful about V, NOR, and NPOV on these articles," and so I'm unconvinced that we can't deal with the self-published issue here.
As for the Internet, you're right inasmuch as I oversimplified the issue - certainly the "Internet is killing treeware" idea is wrong. What is perhaps more accurate to say is that commercial publishing is profounding influenced by, well, what's commercial. Even academic publishing is - I've routinely seen articles rejected from ImageTexT (the journal I work for) not because they're wrong or uninteresting but just because ImageTexT isn't quite the right place for them. Most of them are material that absolutely should go into an encyclopedia article on a topic, but aren't suitable for a theoretically-minded scholarly journal. And this happens in tons of other places - stuff isn't published in reviewed sources not because it's not true and important, but because it's not sufficiently innovative/interesting/marketable to make money off of. And a good amount of it falls into the gap between obvious and non-obvious synthesis - stuff that is obvious enough to be not worth publishing, but not necessarily obvious enough to be unsourced under our current policies. Again, we're approaching NOR territory here, but V and NOR are deeply intertwined policies. And certainly I intend to move on to NOR after this policy is fixed up a bit. Phil Sandifer (talk) 00:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I knew it would be a good discussion, because I saw who was responding, and these people are very clued-in. You're doing a good job too, and some changes have already been made to WP:V, and more may come. Here are some responses to your points, and I hope you're starting to notice a pattern here: statements in WP:V that on the surface look like they're not good enough to get the job done do in fact represent quite a lot of blood, sweat and tears; it's just not always obvious.
First a general answer: lots of the things that you would like for people to talk about are talked about, every day, at WT:OR, WP:RSN and other places. For the sources they haven't been able to accept yet that you would want them to accept, my guess is that the software behind WP:Flagged revisions will eventually get us all the way to where we need to go. This is being tried first by the German Wikipedia, and maybe soon by the Russians and the English Wikibooks. Roughly speaking, it's intelligent data-mining that asks people to rate whether changes to articles ought to survive, and then makes assumptions about the reliability of the posters based on those ratings. Nothing too grand, but at least enough to sort out who the vandals are. In the same way, it could be and hopefully will be used to give us a rough idea of what we think about different sources. See the Wikiquality-l mailing list archives for detailed discussions.
Re: "Not just truth, but verifiability". I think we could be a little more pro-truth on this page. Truth is great, but in an imperfect world where we often haven't found the truth, and we often disagree, verifiability is quite often the best we can do and quite often good enough. Oppressed people come to us often and say, "Our people are dying because our governments can control the media; why aren't you telling the truth?" And all we can do is sadly reply that we'll do our best, and we want to help, but we have not found a satisfactory way to make Wikipedia any better than proven, reliable sources of information. Also, reaching for absolute truth has, at times, resulted in very bad results. Before you blame us for pushing verifiability over truth, look into the history of what has happened when we have tried it the other way around.
Re: "Any edit lacking a reliable source may be removed." I deleted the part about "unsourced information should be removed" a few days ago, and no one has reverted. It contradicted the part in bold, and it needed to go. The part you are quoting continues, "but editors may object if you remove material without giving them a chance...", and we've suggested some language to add to that in this discussion, but the bottom line here is that we've provided solid protection here for the editors trying to retain the unsourced information, because people take the "impose one's own view of 'standards to apply' rather than those of the community" clause from WP:POINT seriously around here. The sentence could be tweaked, but it's good enough to get the job done. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 00:32, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, to be fair, it's not that I don't think that WP:V represents a lot of hard work. Nor do I think that it's up to doing the job as such - rather, I think that a lot of work has been put into actively damaging this page by pursuing an unrealistic and untenable vision of what research is.
Flagged versions will certainly be helpful, but I think the sorts of policy changes I'm indicating are necessary too.
You're misunderstanding my comments here - it's not that I don't think verifiability is essential. Unverifiable information should be removed. However untrue information should suffer the same fate. Hence "Not just truth, but verifiability," which makes clear that we do not want to publish untrue information, as opposed to the current version, which actively suggests that we are neutral on truth.
I like the language you're proposing, but it seems to me to remain the case - we do not mean to remove every edit without a reliable source, nor to consider that. We want to remove unverifiable information, and because you can't prove the negative that means that we remove unverified information. But fundamentally, the reason you remove should not be "I don't think it is verified," but rather "I don't think it can be." Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

←I wasn't proposing language, but we've had enough input now for a language proposal; give it a shot. I agree with your general point that WP:V has added language over time targeted at unsourced material, without spending equal time dealing with other problems, and that this may give WP:UNDUE weight to one point of view. I have some recommendations for how you can increase interest in your point of view:

  • Read WP:RSN#Talking Points Memo Election Central (this link will go red soon when it's archived) and other conversations at WP:RSN, both to get a firm command of the details of sourcing, and so that you can discuss your points in terms of other people's arguments. People are much more interested in hearing their own ideas and words tweaked and reflected back to them.
  • Keep track of the progress of WP:Flagged revisions, especially discussions about progress at de.wikipedia and en.wikibooks. Effort there could pay big dividends when it gets deployed, and it's not on the radar yet for many Wikipedians. (As always, there's a bias towards what's "hot" and "now".)
  • WP:WHEN and its talk page are a very nice start on some of the issues you are interested in; perhaps more work could be done there and it could be promoted to a guideline.
  • When trying to get people to pay attention to something they haven't paid much attention to before, there is no substitute for a large, careful, random survey of articles to demonstrate your point. If you leave any of those 3 adjectives out, it won't work. It also doesn't work to say "it's not just me saying this...", because that's not how Wikipedia works. Wikipedia is not a representative democracy; instead, a "wide" invitation (the width can vary) is issued, and if people don't show up, their voice isn't heard. - Dan Dank55 (talk) 17:16, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made the two changes suggested at the top, and added a section below suggesting a change addressing de-academification. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Religious Texts

How are religious texts or scriptures viewed in terms of verifiable material? Paulrach (talk) 08:24, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

They're only really good for verifying what they say themselves... any interpretation of that would need a secondary source, and in terms of trying to verify historical information, they're not really appropriate. SamBC(talk) 11:55, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
Absolutely. WP can and should report that source A says X and source B says Y, but should refrain from taking a position regarding the validity of either X or Y.-- Boracay Bill (talk) 12:31, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

De-academification

The policy currently reads:

In general, the most reliable sources are peer-reviewed journals and books published in university presses; university-level textbooks; magazines, journals, and books published by respected publishing houses; and mainstream newspapers. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is.

Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history, medicine and science. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text.

The logic here is clear, but given the number of popular and non-academic subjects we cover, seems unhelpful - especially because academic sources can be, erm, problematic for some areas. I'm one of a few scholars to have published on Calvin and Hobbes in a peer-reviewed journal, but I will personally revert anybody who tries to rewrite the article to focus primarily on Lacanian interpretations of the strip.

Which isn't to say that academic perspectives aren't important, even on popular subjects. Here's the language I'd propose:

For areas of academic research like history, medicine, or science, peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used in these areas, particularly if they are respected mainstream publications. The appropriateness of any source always depends on the context. Where there is disagreement between sources, their views should be clearly attributed in the text.

For non-academic areas, sources such as magazines, journals, mainstream newspapers, and books published by respected publishing houses are often the best sources. Academic sources may and often do exist for subjects that are not primarily academic, and should be carefully consulted and included, but may be inappropriate as the primary basis for an article. As a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny involved in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the evidence and arguments of a particular work, the more reliable it is.

It could probably be cleaned up, as I am often needlessly wordy, but what do people think? I think it eliminates some advice that is not bad, as such, but is also not terribly helpful. Phil Sandifer (talk) 18:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I think the intent was to keep this policy tightly focussed; as you noted, you were getting "needlessly wordy". Perhaps your clarification belongs in the Guideline WP:RS or even more appropriately in the essay WP:Reliable source examples. --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 18:54, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
To be fair, my text is only 21 words longer than the existing text. That comes from a lone sentence of clarification - "Academic sources may and often do exist for subjects that are not primarily academic, and should be carefully consulted and included, but may be inappropriate as the primary basis for an article." (And that's actually 32 words long, so I managed to trim 11 words from the existing text.) And so it's not like I'm trying to introduce a new wordy section. I was mostly just figuring a few words could be trimmed here and there.
If you want to move the whole discussion over to RS or RSE, I won't object, but right now this page is providing misleading advice about the use of academic sources. If that language is going to remain on this page, it should at least be made correct and useful. Phil Sandifer (talk) 19:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't believe its misleading. I believe its where an encyclopaedia ought to go. I particularly disagree with the "primary basis" statement. --Relata refero (disp.) 10:14, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
You really think that Calvin and Hobbes should be rewritten with this [1] as its major source? (It's one of two published engagements with Calvin and Hobbes I'm aware of. There are probably a few others, to be fair, but it's one of a few, in a peer-reviewed academic journal). Phil Sandifer (talk) 14:10, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Nice piece, Phil! Why not? --Relata refero (disp.) 21:25, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
More to the point, if that article focused less on recurring plotlines and more on critical analysis, it would indeed feel more encyclopaedic. Also, I would certainly think that rewriting the article around the piece would violate UNDUE as an unnecessary privileging of a Lacanian symbolic language.. so the "material from reliable non-academic sources" would be required for those areas that haven't had the beady eye of academia turned in their direction. --Relata refero (disp.) 21:33, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, and to be fair, I think it's a good article too, and I wouldn't oppose in the slightest it being mentioned in the article. I mean to add notes about existing scholarship to comics articles where it exists. But as you point out, were the academic material on Calvin and Hobbes to be the primary basis for the article, it would be a problem of NPOV. Which is my main issue on areas where academic criticism is only a small aspect of the overall treatment of the subject - it's an NPOV problem. Where academic criticism exists I'm all for using it. Just... not always as the primary basis for an article. Phil Sandifer (talk) 02:59, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Develop image cleanup project

I know images aren't typically considered under the "Verifiability" criteria, but the rule generally applies: Sourcing information needs to be complete so that it can be verified the license is correct. This would be a small part of the education of this planned project:

Help is needed to develop an "image cleanup month" (June). The goal is to "Educate, cleanup and move images here at Wikipedia". You don't need to be an expert or knowledgeable about images here to help. Need folks who can write well, copyedit, design connections/templates, organize, group, communicate, have connections to users to help advertise (once the month starts) or just want to help in any other capacity. Not knowing about images would be helpful as we can test our pages on you. Being knowledgeable you can help write the content. See the project central location at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Image Monitoring Group#Wikipedia Image Cleanup Month (June) and dive right in to help. MECU≈talk 17:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:REDFLAG

"Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included. Also be sure to adhere to other policies, such as the policy for biographies of living persons and the undue weight provision of WP:NPOV."

This is simply not true. Exceptional claims which are notable -have been covered in an RS- need Attribution, but may be included even from unreliable sources. This should read something like:

Exceptional claims must be notable in order to be included in Wikipedia. Claims and ideas concerning fringe topics which do not come from a reliable source must be carefully attributed. Also be sure to adhere to other policies, such as the policy for biographies of living persons and the undue weight provision of WP:NPOV.

As it is, this passage contradicts a lot- including BLP where it says that you can include someone's personal website. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think you're failing to make a sufficient distinction between including the claim, and including the claim of the claim. That is, X might be a controversial claim; John claims X is not controversial if we can reliably attribute it to John. The relevance of that statement is entirely a matter of significance and not verifiability. Someguy1221 (talk) 23:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I thought of that, but if the claim is exceptional to begin with, we have no business claiming it as fact, no matter how reliable the source. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:54, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
It also says the material should simply not be included if not in an RS, rather than saying that the material should be well sourced. A distinction should also be drawn between exceptional on a topic, versus an article whose subject is the exceptional claim. Yes, this is really the problem. The current wording is aimed at exceptional claims in articles which are not about the claim. Yet, it is being used to apply to articles where the subject is the exceptional claim. Which is how I came to be here. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:58, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
If someone adds to the article Abraham Lincoln the claim that he was abducted by aliens, that needs a reliable source. If someone adds that he claimed to have been abducted by aliens, that still needs a reliable source. If someone adds Abraham Lincoln to a list of alien abductees, that also needs a reliable source. But not every sentence in the article Alien abduction needs a footnote to a reliable source. --FOo (talk) 02:40, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I know. Here is how it is actually being used [2]. In other words, it is being used to exclude fring sources from fringe articles. That's the key: people are taking REDFLAG this way:
"Exceptional claims in Wikipedia require high-quality reliable sources; if such sources are not available, the material should not be included, even in articles on said exceptional claims."
In other words, you said it right, but that isn't really what the text says, and that's what it should say, because people are mis-using it. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 03:03, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

The addition of Welsh placenames to English places

(I've also included this message on WT:NCGN, and I would welcome further opinions about the issues I raise.)

There is currently a discussion ongoing (its latest phase is on User talk:Jza84#English exonyms) about adding Welsh places names to places that are in England. Most of these places are close to the English-Welsh border, but not all of them, and so in some cases, it is reasonable to consider adding the Welsh names. However, there is some disagreement between myself and an editor about verification of the facts added when one wishes to add a Welsh name to an English place. I maintain that to add a Welsh name to an English place one needs two kinds of verification (a) an appropriate reference (say, to a suitable dictionary) that can confirm that the added Welsh name is accurate, because we have had disputes or incorrect names added previously (e.g., Hereford, as can be seen from its edit histories and discussion page, though there is at least one other place which I cannot find just now); and (b) some justification, appropriately verified, as to why the addition of the Welsh name to a particular English place is reasonable (for example, if a place in England was frequently used as a stopping point on an old droving road by Welsh farmers that it gained a Welsh name that it was used and by which it was known by in Wales, and if this can be verified by means of a suitable citation, then it should be used to justify the addituion of the Welsh name in a suitable place within the article for the English place.) Of course, sometimes one single source could serve both purposes. I maintain that these requirements are merely a working through of the normal wikipedia requirements for verification and citing sources of any non-obvious factual information that is added to an article. The one person who is objecting to this has said in a previous discussion that this is an unfair extra burden to be placed on the addition of Welsh names. I would like some advice about this from others. The present discussion can be viewed for a bit more information. If previous discussions are needed, I can search them out if requested. Many thanks.  DDStretch  (talk) 23:53, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

You certainly need a reputable reference, not just several people's opinions. It may be a burden, but then getting a reference for anything may be a burden, so that argument doesn't impress me. You also need some sort of justification I'd say.Doug Weller (talk) 13:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
It strikes me that adding Welsh place names for places not in Wales, given this is the english language wikipedia, would be a case of WP:UNDUE unless there's a source giving a good reason for it. Do the articles for London and Dover give the French-language names for those places? Okay, Dover does, but only because it's an indication of the importance of Dover in international terms, which is rather the point I'm making. SamBC(talk) 19:01, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
See Wikipedia:Writing better articles#Use other languages sparingly. -- Boracay Bill (talk) 23:47, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
I have made some revised suggestions at User:Ghmyrtle/Sandbox 2. I am conscious that this may not give as much rigour as some might like - though personally I tend towards flexibility rather than rigidity of approach - and also that it tends to focus on the Wales/England issue, which has been my main concern and has generated many words on many talk pages. I haven't changed Jza84's suggested usage table, simply because I'm undecided how useful it would be (although I'm very grateful for the stimulus it has offered). All comments and thoughts welcome. I'm copying this message to various pages, but I suggest that further discussion should be coordinated at the WP:UKCITIES talk page. Ghmyrtle (talk) 20:26, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:SELFPUB and Yelena Tregubova

Article on Yelena Tregubova heavily relies on her book, which is heavily sensationalist (evident from name "Kremlin Mutants"). I have a feeling that it crosses borders described in WP:SELFPUB (especially 3, 4 and 7), but I was involved in a number of disputes with wikipedian who inserted various claims in the article using said book. I would like somebody uninvolved and more experienced in Verifiability analysis to take a look. Thank you in advance, RJ CG (talk) 15:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

This user t