Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 14

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Desperate help needed at the Black people article! Please get involved!!

This article is an absolute mess. It provides no coherent well sourced definition of a Black person and just rambles on and on about various people who were labled Black in different times, places, and languages, and tries to merge them all together as a coherent ethnic group. It would be like trying to merge Native Americans and people from India into a coherent article called Indian people. It makes no sense. We had requested mediation and the mediator said we should use the census as our source. Here's what the U.S. census says:

A Black is “ a person having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "Black, African Am., or Negro,"or provide written entries such as African American, Afro American, Kenyan, Nigerian, or Haitian.”

Black Africa is a synonym of sub-Saharan Africa and all of the non-African groups mentioned (i.e. African-Americans, Haitains) are descendents of the recent African diasporas. And yet we still have editors insisting that South Asians be given equal weight in the article and be considered Black. These people provide no cited definitions or census classifications to defend their assertions, instead they cherry pick from different sources in different countries for examples of South Asians being labeled Black, often in different languages. But by the same logic, I could argue that the Black Irish are Black. The point is the people editing that article need to be forced to adheare to a coherent sourced authoritative definition of a Black person, or the entire article should just be deleted as POV and unencyclopedic.

Dictionary.com[[1]], the free dictionary online[[2]]., the U.S. census[[3]], and the British census[[4]] all emphasize the idea that Blacks are of African origin-in fact it is against the law for a dark-skinned person of South Asian or Australian origin to claim to be black in the census. An article by the BBC makes a clear distinction between Blacks and the dark skinned people of South Asian ancestry[[5]]. This article about race in biomedicines says “The entities we call ‘racial groups’ essentially represent individuals united by a common descent — a huge extended family, as evolutionary biologists like to say. Blacks, for example, are a racial group defined by their possessing some degree of recent African ancestry (recent because, after all, everyone of us is out of Africa, the origin of Homo sapiens)."[[6]]. I really need help getting the editors of that article to stick to a coherent definition, instead of just pushing their own POV. Editingoprah 06:14, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so sure about the U.S. Census and it being illegal to "claim" a racial heritage. As I recall it is an optional question and a person may check one or write - in a response, but I could be mistaken. Your other points make sense and the article need attention. Terryeo 16:42, 1 October 2006 (UTC)

Nutshell

Here is version of the nutshell that david gerard added to the policy. It is out of sync with the actual policy and actually contains more information than the policy box, which defeats the purpose of the nutshell. The policy box is as follows: The policy

1. Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable sources. 2. Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor. 3. The obligation to provide a reputable source lies with the editors wishing to include the material, not on those seeking to remove it.

Obviously the nutshell needs be a concise version of this policy. My suggestion, was:

Articles should contain only material that has been published by reputable sources. Editors adding new material to an article should cite a cite these sources, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor.

This has been reverted so I am moving this disputed section here until we can work out a consensus wording.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 17:47, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

To emphasize that we are not stringing together quotes, information might be better than material. Tom Harrison ^Talk 18:00, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree with information rather than material because it is more descriptive. I do think the first thing a person should read on this page is the reason why it is so important that all of Wikipedia's articles contain ONLY verified information. Terryeo 18:15, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I was mass-restoring mass-removed nutshells. And did so without checking each case, which I really should have.

As is, this is actually stated too strongly - stronger than V is actually used as. Note that WP:RS has actually been disastrous in its present form, and I'm going to be going feral on it fairly soon. (It was originally strengthened earlier this year to make living bios better, but has had the opposite effect, and I get to hear a pile of complaints about it.) I might see what I can come up with.

Note, by the way, that changing the text in a nutshell doesn't change people's thinking, their behaviour or their understanding of the policy - it's not a lever to shape people's behaviour with directly. That is, even if it's policy, you still have to write something that people will be convinced by and act upon - David Gerard 20:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Is it soup yet?

Wait a minute... I don't see how it's "information" until it is verifiable. It is at best "raw material" or something of the sort. Let's see:

1. Knowledge derived from study, experience, or instruction. 2. Knowledge of specific events or situations that has been gathered or received by communication; intelligence or news. See synonyms at knowledge. 3. A collection of facts or data: statistical information. 4. The act of informing or the condition of being informed; communication of knowledge: Safety instructions are provided for the information of our passengers. 5. Computer Science Processed, stored, or transmitted data. 6. A numerical measure of the uncertainty of an experimental outcome. 7. Law A formal accusation of a crime made by a public officer rather than by grand jury indictment.[7]

Presumably we're talking about meanings 1, 2, or 3 here. "Gershwin is a poopy-head" is not information. "Rhapsody in Blue is sentimental and vapid" is not information. "Lawrence Gilman called the harmonic treatment in Rhapsody in Blue 'sentimental and vapid'" (New York Tribune, February 13, 1924) is information. Dpbsmith (talk) 18:38, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Information = facts (i.e. is true). Arguments, opinions, and inaccurate material don't constitute information. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:56, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify: my comment wasn't intended to contradict Dpbsmith's; "Lawrence Gilman called the harmonic treatment in Rhapsody in Blue 'sentimental and vapid'" is, of course, a fact (assuming it's accurate) because the opinion is attributed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:24, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, right. Candor compels me to say it's not a direct citation, though. And citing only this particular review violates neutrality, as other reviewers liked it... Dpbsmith (talk) 22:05, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Birgitte, could you leave the nutshell thing alone, please? There has been too much back and forth on this page of late and it's a policy so it needs to remain stable. There's nothing wrong with the current version, and changing "and" to "or," which appears minor makes it virtually meaningless, because of course all unsourced edits may be challenged. The point of the sentence is to stress they may also be removed. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:26, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Likewise, of course bogus information may be removed. —Centrx→talk • 23:50, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I somehow never noticed this comment before. I obviously had no further plans to edit the policy at that point per my note below. The main thing I thought wrong with your version was the same paragraph twice in a row once in the nutshell and immediately following outside the nutshell. I thought this was quite obvious, but I can see how if you were only looking at the yellow and green diff it could be overlooked. In regards to and/or issue. There is bunch of discussion about it higher on this page which cumulated in this edit. [8]

which still stands in the version of the policy you are preferring. I think it was simply oversight that this change was only made in the policy box and not also the introduction. I personally think it is a more stable policy when such things are consistent. I like Robert A. West's wording as well on this point, as that also keeps the policy consistent. But apparently jossi has some problem with it, he doesn't specify.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 22:54, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Those reverts on the fifth of October

To Slimvirgin and Jossi Please take a moment and read the policy, just read it. I would really appreciate if you would correct what has obviously an oversight on your parts. I cannot believe you actually intend the policy to read as it currently does. I would also appreciate it if you would contact me on my talk page whenever I am welcome to again collaborate at this project. I will let dryguy or someone else who has been paying more attention to this policy than the two of you correct your notions about the "and"/"or" issue (hint:read the policy box), as I will be at Wikimedia projects which are still operating by the process of collaboration. I suppose Wikipedia may still be using such a process, but I am obviously not on the invite list.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 23:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

The principles of collaborative editing apply to you too, Birgitte, and they tend not to involve arriving at a policy page you've never edited before, declaring that its regular editors don't understand it, and continuing to revert up to your 3RR limit. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 23:55, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

You obviously still have not read your version of the policy. And please look at my contributions and find the last time I have reverted something besides vandalism. I can never remember having reverted something twice before today. Your version of the page was so blatantly in need of improvement I could not believe you really meant to revert me the first time, as two other edits were reverted as well, including a needed formatting fix. When I was sure you actually disputed me, I moved it to the to the talk page so it could be worked out. I have been watching this page and participating in the talk page discussions for nearly two months before I felt comfortable editing this policy. Exactly how is a person able to pass the bar of never having edited this policy before? Your actions today have made it clear you either do not understand this policy or else you simply do not read it. I really do imagine it is the latter. I have never said the regular editors of this policy do not understand it, so please do not misrepresent me. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 00:15, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Jossi and I are two of the regular editors and you're saying we haven't read or understood it. And please don't use headers with editors' names. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I have said you and Jossi haven't read the version you are reverting to (not that you haven't ever read the policy!) I have never said the regular editors of this policy do not understand it. I suggest you go read the version you keep saving. If you don't want your name in the subheading this is fine with me but once again I must ask you to please not misrepresent me. You made it look as if I was addressing all editors on this page with your change. I really do not appreciate having my talk page comments altered in such a significant way. If you want me to change something you only need to ask me. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 00:32, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

..."reverting up to your 3RR limit." Now Slim, it isn't an entitlement. Sorry, I couldn't resist ;). Marskell 00:27, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, sorry. :-) SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:30, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

And vs Or

I don't think there is any serious dispute that some unsourced material should be challenged, and some should be simply deleted. I also don't think that there is a serious dispute that an editor who identifies unsourced material should do what he or she thinks appropriate, up to the limit of WP:POINT. It seems to me that the and/or argument arises because the sentence is in the passive voice, so I rephrased to the active voice. I hope I have expressed consensus. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:59, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Thank you, Robert, that's a good compromise. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 00:01, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that "Any editor may challenge or remove unsourced material as seems appropriate" is better put, and has not changed meaning. Why has Jossi reverted it? Septentrionalis 05:04, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Protected

I've protected this page because of the edit war that was going on. I have no particular opinion on the wording, but I will say that I don't see the point in repeating the exact same text twice (once inside the nutshell, once directly below it). >Radiant< 08:10, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I also do not see the point of the repeated wording. More troubling to me is Jossi's edit comment "rv to SlimVirgin. This is a long standing and agreed wording." Older, newer; neither is necessarily better. Previously agreed upon: maybe. If this specific wording was previously discussed to the point of forming consensus, then please point us to that discussion. Even then, who is to say the new version won't be agreed upon as better, until there has been some discussion to the contrary? If you are going to revert someone's good faith efforts, why not join the discussion and at least say what you found to be wrong with the new version? dryguy 18:19, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

This is particularly ironic when it includes a reversion of language SlimVirgin likes. Septentrionalis 18:44, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Practical question: What the heck am I supposed to do?

I have to say I'm suffering from a slight mental lock-up right now. Wikipedia's policies are really putting a big twist to my mind.

You see, I'm seeing a lot of stuff getting deleted, or proposed for deletion, due to lack of verifiability. And these motions seem to pass! I suppose I should go grab an {{afd}} bazooka, a machine gun that fires {{fact}}s, and the {{original research}}-armed railgun - but I would probably get immediately accused of violating WP:POINT, even if I don't intend it as such.

I'm slowly experiencing a little bit of a wikistress thanks to these seriously conflicting messages I'm getting about the increased inviolability of WP:V.

So, people, apologies for the coarse language in advance, but what the heck am I supposed to do with Expansion pack article?

Obviously, I should AfD it for it containing original research, weasel wording, and above all, absolutely no verifiable content. Where's the reliable source for the definition for the word "expansion pack"? ({{fact}} after the first sentence of the article. Not good.) Where's the study claiming the typical content of the expansion packs? (another fact slappery after the second sentence too!) Where's the historical article that describes the history of expansion packs, so we can sort out the wording "One of the first expansions (if not the first)..."? The article claims "The price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game", which is a fact that is obvious to everyone who's buying games, but stating truth alone isn't verifiable, for crying out loud! "As additions, most expansion packs require the original game in order to play." Correlation doesn't mean causality, and if you're demonstrating correlation, you have to add tons of examples! The paragraph goes on and on by providing a couple of examples of the phenomenons - we can't trust this based on just a couple of examples, we need real studies, claiming correlation is - guess what - the vile, condemned original research!

And so on.

I know this article is correct. I'm just not sure where the heck I can find a source for all these claims. For that matter, heck, I'm not sure if there even are such things, and even if they are, can we trust them?

You see, here's a big problem with articles that define fundamental issues of one field: it's hard to find references for issues that are obvious and trivial.

My personal view is that it used to be that you could say "the sky is blue" without providing a source, but if you claimed "the sky is blue because of the scattering of the sunlight in atmosphere", you needed a source. Nowadays, people are nominating articles on deletion because "the sky is blue" has no source. That's why I'm confused.

So what the heck am I supposed to do in cases like this? Is it that extremely fundamental issues that are obvious to anyone skilled in the field also need sources?

If someone wants a source and makes a good-faith request for one... yes. Because, unlike traditional print encyclopedias, readers have no way of judging which contributors are "skilled in the field." Dpbsmith (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Is writing about fundamental facts without sourcing entirely condemnable?

No, as a placeholder. But eventually the facts should be sourced. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:57, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I'm really losing my mind here. I'm not kidding when I say I feel slightly mentally unstable when I'm thinking about this issue. It makes me doubt everything I read that doesn't have a source tag. Yet I can't touch the articles to add such claims because that would be silly and bad.

Please help me. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 13:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Cheer up!. The Expansion Pack article looks a haven of sanity to me compared with some pages (including Wikipedia:Verifiability). A huge amount of WP material is not "verified" and some of it may be unverifiable in WP terms. Mercifully, most editors will not challenge or delete material simply because it is unverified. Material is most vulnerable when someone else thinks the information is false. And, of course, content sourced to reliable sources can also be removed if someone feels like it. It's simply that you will be more likely to get support when you try and restore things. The veriabliity policy got the way it has through the understandable efforts of people trying to protect articles in highly contentious areas from being messed around by bigots. Of course truth matters more than verifiability: it's just that this policy cannot bring itself to say so because of the problems which are created when people disagree about what is the truth. Even with the present policy, conflicting reputable sources can give more problems than a lack of sources. Thincat 14:12, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

A pragmatic way of looking at it is that WP:V is an ideal, but one that takes so much work to reach that the degree to which it should be approached is proportionate to the controversy surrounding the facts in question. In practice, this happens automatically – see articles like 2006 Qana airstrike in which the references-to-sentences ratio is a fairly large fraction of 1. Although interestingly, Israeli-Palestinian conflict has hardly any references at all, presumably because it's a super-high-level overview of hundreds of other articles which contain their own references. – Smyth\^talk 15:18, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

It's not hard any harder to reference "the sky is blue" than it is to reference "the sky is blue because of the scattering of the sunlight in atmosphere"

I don't see why people keep claiming that it's hard to find references for issues that are obvious and trivial. It's not.

And, as it says in WP:NOT (though in a different context) "That something is 100% true does not mean it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia." Dpbsmith (talk) 15:52, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Finding sources for Expansion pack may be harder, although I suspect the company sites would support much of it. But that's not the whole answer. Verifiability does not say (and should not) that everything must be sourced; it says anything without a source may be challenged or removed. If everyone who looks at an article has left it alone because they agree with it, there is consensus that it's right. It would be a good idea, an improvement to the article, to find and include sources before the arrival of the inevitable crank; but nowhere is this required. Septentrionalis 16:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

I've proposed before a simple restraint on requesting verifications, one that would not in any way affect those who request those verifications in good faith, but which would present an obstacle to agenda-driven editors who are twisting the mechanisms meant to encourage WP:V as a mechanism for bias-pushing or disruption.

Quite simply, the restraint would be that a request for verification that something is true is considered equivalent to a statement that you believe it might possibly not be true. You're still free to request a source for a statement such as "the sky is blue", but if you do, others are allowed to ask you "why do you think it might not be true that the sky is blue?" If you had a good reason for asking for verification in the first place, there's no problem. The editor who is demanding sourcing for even the fact that someone agrees with their position on the issue (I've seen it happen, believe it or not) will by contrast have a hard time explaining why they are so iffy about their own existence.

The only "drawback" I see to this plan is that it means being a bit more precise in separating our requests for verification for our requests for specificity. I don't view that as a bad thing. -- Antaeus Feldspar 20:14, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, "the sky is blue" is a really bad example. "The sky is blue" is not an example of common knowledge so much as it is an idiomatic way of saying "the weather is nice." It's a statement of a current condition, not a permanent fact.

Right now, as I look out my window, the sky is a mottled mass of white, grey, blue, and salmon pink. In a few hours, it will be black. In "South Pacific," a character sings about "when the sky is a bright canary yellow." In Matthew 16:2, Jesus says to the Pharisees "When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red." Stephen Crane's famous story, "The Open Boat," opens "None of them knew the color of the sky."

I'm quite curious to know the origin of the meme "the sky is [intrinsically] blue," rather than "[it's a beautiful day today], the sky is blue." I suspect it is from elementary school teachers giving students specific directions on how to color pictures with crayons. I did find one reference, in a book for elementary-school teachers, that talks about progressing from giving the kids to follow a single instruction: "color the sky blue," to giving them two directions: "color the sky blue, color the grass green," and on to longer sequences. Needless to say the blue crayola does not resemble the actual color of the sky any more than the color of "flesh" crayolas used to resemble the color of my own skin.

The "blue sky" is about as realistic as "the wine-dark sea." It's more of a linguistic convention than a fact.

The "common knowledge" is not that the sky is blue, but that "blue" is the conventional word that is expected to be coupled with "sky," just as "red" is the conventional word coupled with "rose." Dpbsmith (talk) 22:36, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

First I very much agree with your sentiments, but your proposal is oversimplifing the issue. It is not only "agenda-driven editors" making these unreasonable requests. It is also good faith editors who have decided that this is the article they are going to get up to featured status. Somehow we need to take these editors into account too.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:03, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

(outdent) Concentrate on writing the best article you can, source it as well as you can, and trust the wiki. Deletion for unverifiabilty means that there is consensus that no sources exist, not merely that the article is not-yet-sourced. Whenever I have nominated for deletion as unverifiable, I have been able to point either to a good-faith effort to find sources, or to a fairly -self-evident case that is probably also "not notable" and/or "unencyclopedic".

I'll add my $0.02 that nothing in verifiability requires a particular method of citation. While many editors are pushing for in-line citations galore, there are articles where they would be just silly, and a good bibliography would be fine. In fact, if we could get to the point where every non-stub has a good bibliography, Wikipedia would be much improved. Robert A.West (Talk) 18:09, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

Including the unqualified insistence on in-line references at "Good Articles". I have tried to argue that there should be the possibility of exceptions here. Septentrionalis 18:41, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

...and we proudly present: more lupine whimpering (hopefully a bit more rational this time)

Apologies for these long, tiresome rants. I just need to get this out of myself before I snap.

Anyway...

I purposely picked "the sky is blue" as an example because it supposedly illustrated the point. I know full well that there are sources that could back either assertion. But the fact is, at the moment, the sky article doesn't have those specific references. "During daylight the sky has the appearance of a deep blue surface,..." Eep! No source. No source! Why is this assertion without a source, if such comments are so trivial to source, I ask? (Okay, I know the answer: The article has another source, which asserts how colour of the sky is determined; Inferring that is syllogistic. "Sky is blue if light is scattered; this source asserts light scatters, therefore sky is blue.")

I picked that as an easily understandable rhetorical example. Please don't try to take that as a "real" example: atmospheric physics and optics are sciences with long and glorious history, one might say that they've discovered all there is to discover. Now try ludology, which has existed as serious a branch of science since about the turn of the millennium, according to the article. I went to Google Scholar, and yep, found a few papers that talk about expansion packs, but most seemed to take the term for granted. Anyone know of a paper that discusses what expansion packs are, their meaning to game business, their meaning from the consumer point of view. Good luck finding that. You can't exactly go deleting the article; the expansion packs have been in the stores for a heck of a long time, you can't dispute the fact that they exist. "The exact origins of the expansion packs are not scholarly catalogued and some suggest there have been expansion packs in 1991, but there are scholarly mentions of expansion packs that have been published as early as 1999" which, again, is a particularly crappy source for this statement, because it only shows a single example and not the full picture; just one example of particular expansion packs for particular game, and it's not talking about them generally, making it essentially worthless, off-topic, and skewering the truth.

Taking WP:V as an "ideal" is extremely fine with me. I don't disagree with the policy in general terms. But what, exactly, am I supposed to do when faced with editors who don't consider WP:V an "ideal", but a reason to delete stuff? Not everyone is "merciful". I hate it when people use WP:V as sole reason for deletion, for crying out loud; AfD is supposed to be about whether we need an article about some topic or not, not to claw with the content. WP:V only plays role if there's no source of any kind to explain notability. (There. I said that. Now hit me.) But that's just my interpretation.

What I'm fearing is that WP:V is turning into an useful for stacking additional charges to make sure the article stays dead. A weapon-grade policy. A tool for splitting hairs. A tool for meanness. A tool that could be turned against Wikipedia itself by sufficiently mean-motivated people, if you catch my drift. WP:V is a terrifying weapon for justice. It's also a terrifying weapon for nitpicking.

Expansion pack stands unchallenged only because people aren't following WP:V. Most people would say that in this particular case, that's not a problem. The problem is that one day, someone who wants to enforce WP:V will come around and go ballistic. And we can't really go any way with it. The policy-fan will go for deletion and just say "if you want it kept, it has to be sourced".

And the only thing that protects us from that is that Wikipedia editors don't tend to be mean.

WP:V is, however - if you allow me to describe the character of the policy itself - mean-spirited, strict, and properly jackbooted. Why can't WP:V encourage people be constructive? Why the policy has to encourage people to "hey, if it isn't sourced, rip it down! Now!" ... Why doesn't the policy encourage people to "hey, if it isn't sourced, slap those {{fact}}s around, spend six hours looking for sources yourself, and if those unsourced bits are still there after 6 months, then remove them?"

Likewise for deletion policy: It really would help if people would explain that no, they didn't think there was any source that would support the article's notability. Sorry to sidetrack again, but I'm particularly against use of WP:V as an argument that "the person/group/company/etc itself isn't trustworthy at all when claiming things". (Consider the implications: If we're discussing the number of users in a particular online game, what should we believe, the company that runs the game, or a "reliable third-party source" that basically parrots the numbers the company feeds them, because there's no other way to verify the number anyway?)

Everything else in Wikipedia says "We'll have a great encyclopedia, some time tomorrow." WP:V's implied tone is "We have a bunch of beep added all the time, and if you do that, we'll beepng kill you." This is the most severely attitude-damaged part of policy, but it wouldn't need that much to change it better. Only a little bit of encouragement for proactivity. (There, I said that. Now hit me again. I've deserved it.)

And once again, apologies for this stuff. I kind of started writing this here and it was meant to go to my LiveJournal but I somehow, in a fit of insane convulsion, decided to bring it here. Because, you know, it probably helps if people thought about these things. --wwwwolf (barks/growls) 19:45, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

As I see it, the policy is intended to allow you to use a self-published source for uncontentious information, although it is badly worded to the point where it actually states you can't in this particular case. Unfortunately, attempts to fix it tend to meet with stiff resistance, of the "there's no problem with the current wording" kind. I think it would be entirely within the spirit of the policy to use links to marketing material to back up many of these claims. In the case of the number of users of a game, unless there is better evidence, I'd go directly to the marketing claims.

Regarding Expansion pack, I'd proceed in the following fashion:

• Start off with sources that may not be particularly great, but at least show what you want to say. [9] would be a useful starting point.
• To substantiate claims of existence, only an example is necessary. Note that wikipedia is not a source itself... you'll have to link to an external resource that shows date of publication for e.g. Wing Commander: The Secret Missions.
• A few of the statements will need more work to back up. The ones that stand out are "the price of an expansion pack is usually much less than that of the original game", "expansion packs are most commonly released for computer games", "Grand Theft Auto: London, 1969 was the first expansion pack released for the PlayStation." I'd leave them in, but add a note on the discussion page that I'm actively looking for sources for them.

Hope this helps. JulesH 08:05, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

(to wwwwolf) By the way, notability is also used as a sole reason for deletion, too. Do like the policy-wannabe WP:N being used as a "sole" reason for deletion? 170.215.83.212 05:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:RS is the "ideal", WP:V is an absolute

I would say that the guideline on reliable sources represents an ideal, while this policy represents an absolute. Every statement must be traceable to a source that is reliable. What is reliable is determined by the facts and circumstances in each case.

A company's site would be a biased source for an evaluation of an expansion pack, whether produced by the company, a partner or a competitor. That is the case for which the wording in question is written. On the other hand, when two competing companies' sites make similar remarks about expansion packs in general, it is a reasonable inference that their points of agreement are industry-wide usage. You might get some flak about original research, but you would be safe on verifiability grounds. If the inference is simple and non-controversial, it seems within the bounds of source-based research to me. Robert A.West (Talk) 21:36, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Are you sure WP:V as an "ideal" is your intended sub-heading? From reading you comments I wonder if you meant to type WP:RS. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 21:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Ooops! Thanks! Robert A.West (Talk) 13:41, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

WHOIS results and Personal Sources

Question posed by: Signpostmarv 13:27, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Identifying the process

1. An article or sectin relating to a person or person's activities is created, or edits are made that require sources.
2. An edit is made to provide one or more source
3. According to WHOIS results, one of the sources are registered to the person the article or section relates to.

The questions

1. Is the source a personal source, thus violating Wikipedia:Verifiability#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29 ?
2. Are 3rd party sources that reference said source usefull sources in of themselves (e.g. if a respected source- newspaper, well known news site etc. links to the source in question as a source for their article, is their article usable as a source) ?

1: Yes, anything published on a domain that is owned by the subject of an article should be considered self-published for the purposes of writing that article. 2: The sources relied upon by the 3rd-party source is not really relevant to determining whether or not that source can be used. If they are a reliable source they will be assumed to have performed fact checking to ensure that the source they relied upon was reliable in & of itself. So, yes. But: a 3rd-party article that also quotes additional, non self-published sources may be preferable if one is avaiable. Hope this helps. JulesH 14:06, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

This is, however, a rebuttable assumption. If you can show that the source is publishing nonsensee, it's not reliable...Septentrionalis 05:39, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I really have a problem witht the idea that we can judge a source reliable or not based on what we think of the information it provides (i.e. whether we think it is "nonsence" or "true" etc.) If we allow such a thing we have allowed a circular argument. Foo thinks X statement is "nonsense" and removes it. Foobar restores X this time provides a source since it was disputed. Foo removes X stating the source is unreliable because it published "nonsense". Do you see how this is a problem? We have to judge the reliabily of a source outside of the information it provides. IMHO what makes a source reliable is that there are editors and fact-checkers which may be sued if they fail to do their job. When James Frey's story was published as non-fiction it was a failure of the editors at Random House and they have offered a settlement to all defrauded readers. This does no mean all Random House non-fiction books are unreliable, but rather that they are because such mistakes are too costly to make very often. An unreliable vanity publisher, which is technically a "printer" not a "publisher", does not promote an authors work or take this kind of liabilty on themselves. A periodical that issues retractions when it makes mistakes before they are court ordered etc. Basically what I am trying to say and reliabilty does not mean "correct" but rather "responisble", with idea that responsiblity leads to often being correct.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 12:56, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that Septentrionalis is simply arguing that we don't have to repeat obvious and provable errors. To take my favorite example, I found an otherwise-reliable biography of Alexander Hamilton that lists a birthdate in the wrong century. I regarded this as an obvious typo and ignored it. Would including this date improve Wikipedia? To take a more common example, major news organizations frequently broadcast/print things about breaking stories that are later shown to be false. Would Wikipedia be improved by taking those reports at face value? Identifying blunders is no more subjective than identifying small minority views. Robert A.West (Talk) 13:33, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll add that if a source routinely asserts things that are solidly refuted, then the source's reliability should be in question. The National Enquirer can be sued, maintains an editorial staff, etc. We don't consider it reliable because it routinely publishes nonsense. Robert A.West (Talk) 13:46, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Two things here first I think we are reading "show that the source is publishing nonsense" differently. I am sure there our sources to back up the fact that the The National Enquirer is unreliable, and I would add the fact that they do not retract anything till they get a letter form a lawyer is a another good sign. Any periodical that is reliable should be regularly making corrections and retractions of their own volition. About the the biography of Alexander Hamilton of course we should use the more authoritative date. However the fact that the date was wrong does not make the entire biography unreliable, which is what Septentrionalis's comment is implying with If you can show that the source is publishing nonsensee, it's not reliable...--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 16:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

No, of course it doesn't; although if the same biography says, say, 1784 when other sources say 1785, we should take the quality of the proofreading into account when deciding whether to discuss the issue in article text (especially when all of them state the date without discussing the difference). But what I meant was rather more limited: both that we need not include the claim that Hamilton was born in 1957; and we need not prove that any particular article published by the National Enquirer is tosh before treating it as a less reliable source. Septentrionalis 18:59, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't disagree with such a result in these examples. I think you are misunderstanding me though. I do not believe we should be judging a source reliable on an article by article (as in newspaper article not WP article). We are talking about reliable sources not necessarily reliable information. It is the entire National Enquirer that is unreliable and the non-fiction Hamilton biography as a whole is what is reliable. This means we use no information from the unreliable source and that the information from the reliable source can be used until proved incorrect by other reliable sources. However I do not believe we should judge a source reliable or unreliable soley based on a single article or piece of information. If we do this why bother with "reliable sources" at all as the dispute will effectively the same as whether people believe the information or not. I guess I am not explaining myself very well, but do you not see how you are advocating a circular argument? It is a problem if we deciding if a source is reliable based on the information in dispute.--Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 20:23, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

I think you are arguing against a stance that it not being taken. If I find one manifest typo in an article, it is valid and non-circular to double-check other assertions in that article. If I find one provably-wrong article in a newspaper, it is valid and non-circular for me to look harder at the next article I use from the same newspaper. If I find that article after article with provable factual errors, it is valid and non-circular for me to stop using it and to advise other editors to do so as well. They in turn are free to look at my evidence and make their own determinations. Also, publications may be reliable in one area, and not in another. Science articles in general-circulation newspapers routinely oversimplify to the point of misleading the reader. While newspapers of record are generally considered reliable sources, they are deprecated as sources on scientific topics, precisely because they often publish nonsense. This doesn't mean that we never use newspaper articles in writing technical articles, but we have to use them with care. Robert A.West (Talk) 23:32, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course you should check the information of even reliable sources I am not saying otherwise, but you should not judge a source unreliable based on whether the information in dispute in nonsense (if it is in dispute, another editor obviously disagrees that it is nonsense). I am doing a very poor job of explaining myself. Also the other problem with the conversation is you are often talking about what information we can use in an article and I am often talking of with whether the source is reliable. Which is only the first step in evaluating whether we use the information. I no longer believe I have the skill to help you understand me in this, so I am going to put this conversation aside and hopely a new insight into explaining this or a more illuminating example will come to sometime in the future. --Birgitte§β ʈ Talk 13:31, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I don't disagree with anything you said. I suspect that we are probably trying to explain minute differences in phrasing or emphasis to one another, which can be frustrating for both sides. Best wishes and happy editing! Robert A.West (Talk) 15:01, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

1. Interesting question. Assuming that the source didn't look self-published on its face, the first question is whether an otherwise reliable source counts as "self-published" for information about itself -- if I cite the New York Times masthead for a particular date to establish who the Editor in Chief of the New York Time is, am I citing a "self published source?" I am inclined to say yes, and that this would fall under "self-published sources in artciles about themselves." That said, without specifics, I couldn't say whether this particular use of an arguably self-published source is ok or not. TheronJ 13:17, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Attribution

A proposal that WP:NOR and WP:V be combined, and WP:RS ditched. All views welcome. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 05:20, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

Wow. I was just about to start a new section on this page calling for roughly the same thing. I agree wholeheartedly that NOR should be included in V, or some other new policy that V is included in as well, but I think that RS has some important information that should be included instead of simply being "ditched." -- Thesocialistesq/M.Lesocialiste 22:38, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

WP:ATT does look like an interesting proposal to me.

"reliable sources"

I gather there's some sort of dispute about linking to the page Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Offhand it looks like some folks don't think much of that page. I would have thought that the obvious solution to that problem would be to improve the page.

Regardless, there is no way that linking to reliable and sources is a sensible alternative. The former is an article about "reliability" in the field of statistics and scientific experimentation, and has no relevance of any kind to the subject at hand. The latter also doesn't seem to contain any information that would be of help to anyone trying to figure out what a "reliable source" was. At best, this alternative is useless. At worst, it obscures the fact that the link to Wikipedia:Reliable sources has been removed and suppresses a process of improvement that should clearly be happening.

So, shall we reason together? --Stellmach 13:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree and I am going to relink the Wikipedia:Reliable sources page as I do not see an argument here for removing the link. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It is verifiable that Jörg Friedrich, claims that "Winston Churchill's decision to bomb a shattered Germany between January and May 1945 was a war crime." (Luke Harding German historian provokes row over war photos in The Guardian, October 21, 2003). However is Jörg Friedrich who acknowledges being a revisionist, a reliable source, particularly as he does not explain which International Humanitarian Laws Churchill breached when making the accusation? This is what I see as the difference between a "Verifiable source" and a "Reliable source". To comply with NPOV I sometime find it necessary to include views which come from verifiable sources but which in the opinion of many are not reliable sources. --Philip Baird Shearer 18:46, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Individuals are not reliable sources. The phrase, "reliable source" refers to a published source of information. So, you see, a "reliable, published source" is a source of information, while an individual opens his mouth or writes things, those things are neither reliable nor published until they are put into the public's hands in some publication. Then, at that time, that information may or may not have been published by a reliable source. okay ? An individual might be of good reputation. Or of bad reputation, but it the "published by a reliable source" that Wikipedia is built of. Terryeo 19:33, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Individual reputations are in part what make a reliable source. For example David Irving's book on Dresden was considered by most to be a reliable source for more than 30 years. The book has not changed, but as his reputation has, and the book is no longer considered to be a reliable source. --Philip Baird Shearer 19:47, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd say people can be reliable sources, Terryeo, as can the material they produce. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 19:54, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Yes, clearly they can be reliable. Terryeo's statement to the contrary is illogical. I am in wonder where he gets his material.--Fahrenheit451 04:59, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Become relieved ! Read WP:NPOV and WP:V. For wikipedia's purposes "reliable published sources" does not make mention of "reliable persons". Terryeo 21:25, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Terryeo, before you make non-sensical statements, you should read WP:NPOV and WP:V. --Fahrenheit451 02:37, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

F, I'm just going to let your judgement about my statement go and not comment on it, thanks for sharing. Terryeo 16:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

It is much easier, Terryeo: A person that is a consided reliable source is very likely to have his/her opinions and research widely published. If he/she has not, it may be very well the case that that person is not such a reliable source. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 02:40, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course ! Terryeo 16:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Terryeo has a point of course: if my granny is an absolutely reliable source on a recipe for apple pie, that doesn't make her a reliable source to base Wikipedia upon:

• Wikipedia shouldn't interfere in the relation between myself and my granny, so that tomorrow I'd have to declare to her: "Hi gran, you've been declared a totally unreliable source by Wikipedia yesterday - the decision is final";
• On the other hand, if my granny never published anything, I wouldn't see why she would even need to be considered as a source for Wikipedia. Even if her major publication would've been a recipe for a delicious apple pie in a cookbook, she wouldn't be considered as a source for Wikipedia, while as far as I remember cookbook recipes are moved over to Wikibooks and not retained in Wikipedia.

Being "published" and being "reliable" is not totally the same. Whatever the policy/guideline names, that distinction should be made (and it is made currently, so probably Terryeo shouldn't worry too much). --Francis Schonken 08:34, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Keep the links to Wikipedia:Reliable sources. I'm getting tired of people coming up with their cure-all proposal somewhere else, and then sneaking in the back door to accomplish their desires when they don't have consensus for their changes. Like Stellmach says, if you have problems with the reliable sources page, the obvious thing to try to do is to improve it. Gene Nygaard 21:10, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

I'd say keep 'em, too. This entire mess needs to be sorted out, and should the Attribution proposal fail, the next alternative as far as I can see is to move any overlapping material to the page that needs it most. We'll need WP:RS to be linked in order to do that.

Besides, unlinking RS from here won't make it not a guideline. JulesH 07:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Its not that I'm worried. I'm confident that most of us understand articles are based on published information. Specifically, information presented to the public as the author of the information intended. Publications doing this time after time become of good repute. So there are always two questions about any information. One is, "what is the reputation of the primary source of this information" and the other, "what is the reputation of the publisher of this information". I do feel the first threshold is the second question. A piece of information needs be published in a reliable manner, by a publisher of reputation, (WP:V). But as editors contribute to articles I think editors look at "what is the reputation of the primary source of this information". Which explains why newgroups and google group postings get cited in articles. An editor sees someone they know or know of, posting in a newsgroup and considers that is good information because they are familar with the poster's reputation. I don't believe reliable published sources can be simplified any further. Terryeo 16:36, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

For those who have expressed a view that the link should remain, unless they join in the discussion on Wikipedia Talk:Reliable sources#Consensus (and address some of the concerns of SlimVirgin and others) then there is little point in the link remaining. --Philip Baird Shearer

I completely disagree with you for 3 reasons Philip:

• 1. WP:RS has stood for a long time, removing it would be a major step.
• 2. WP:V is a policy. A policy does not address specific issues but presents a philosphy and a direction and an intent which is to be followed. A specific guideline is very much needed to address what a reliable published source is, and is not. As the interenet comes on with easier, faster, cheaper publication, the issue of reliability becomes more and more important and we need the flexibility of a discussion page in the area.
• 3. Policy and guideline complement each other. As a guideline is needed about "how to cite" (WP:CITE), so to a guideline is needed about how an editor can know which previously pubished, reliable source of good repute is better than the one next to it. This allows us to create better articles and a more encyclopedic presentation for our readers. Terryeo 22:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

It is not I who wish to change the template at the top of WP:RS to essay from guideline, it is SlimVirgin and some others. If the RS page is changed to an essay then there is no point this policy linking to it in the nutshell as will no longer be a guideline. However this issue is also linked to SlimVirgin's proposal to junk the current pages and replace them with an integrated one currently a under the name Wikipedia:Attribution with a proposal template on the top. --Philip Baird Shearer 23:56, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Terry, editors have to allow the page to be, at least, copy edited to get rid of some of the bad writing. When even that can't be done, there's not much point in pretending the page carries any weight. Philip, this isn't connected to WP:ATT. That proposal includes getting rid of this page, but this page can be demoted without WP:ATT being approved. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:35, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Reliability (statistics)

Why is "reliable" linked to [[[Reliability (statistics)]]? Is that really the relevant meaning of the term? - Jmabel | Talk 20:24, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Dunno. I changed it to Reliabilism, which discussed the philosopical question. I don't know why this was changed from WP:RS as the link. Robert A.West (Talk) 20:57, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Could people please leave out the link to RS? The page is in a mess and there's no longer any consensus (if there ever was) for it to be regarded as a guideline. Everything that matters is in V and NOR; the rest consists of badly written platitudes. Attempts to copy edit it are being reverted, so improvement doesn't seem likely, and it was anyway never a good idea to have a source guideline develop separately from this one because of the likelihood of inconsistency. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:52, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Isn't one of the points of a policy to guide the development of guidelines? It sounds like you're taking up sides against the WP:RS editors, and want to use WP:V or WP:ATT to not only encourage or require the development of better "how to find and ascertain the reliability of sources" guidelines (which seems reasonable to me), but you're also trying to hijack that entire process and make it part of the policy of verifiability and/or attribution. This seems to me like scope creep and it's just going to draw the WP:RS folks into WP:V and WP:ATT, which would be counterproductive with all the back-and-forth it'd cause. —mjb 10:33, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Not sure I follow you, mjb. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 10:38, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

???? How the heck can an official policy leave one of its core concepts completely undefined?

If it's impossible to define what a "reliable source" is then the verifiability policy needs to be rewritten completely so that it does not use the words "reliable source" or "reputable source.

To say "you must use only reliable (or reputable) sources, and this is an absolutely fundamental policy which you really must follow, but we aren't going to give you a clue as to what we mean by a reliable source" is to reduce the policy to total nonsense. make the policy much less useful to newcomers and inexperienced Wikipedians. Dpbsmith (talk) 13:26, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The Constitution of the United States does not define "person", "income", "election" or a host of other terms, yet it must be followed, and it is not nonsense. The definitions are operational, and supplied by experience. Fundamentally, all human discourse must rely on undefined terms. Hilbert (and Euclid long before him) just accepted this and went forward. Derrida made a career out of using the point to challenge all discourse. I think it would be more useful for Wikipedia to side with James Madison and the mathematicians on this one. While I agree that Wikipedia should have strong guidance on how to find reliable sources (and therefore "guideline" is a good status for that page, whatever it is called), at some point it comes down to a value judgment: Is this source one that I would trust, that I would expect most reasonable people to trust and for which I can explain my basis for trusting it to a skeptical third party? That is a process, not a definition. Robert A.West (Talk) 14:32, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

I take your point, interesting, well said, and I stand partly corrected. But, the parallel isn't exact. "Person," "income," "election," had centuries of common law behind them and a substantial population of people with an expert understanding of their meaning, and was intended to be understood by experts. Ordinary citizens and would-be citizens are expected to spend a fair number of hours in a classroom reading explanations and passing quizzes on them. And as nearly as I can tell, nobody really knows whether the second amendment is talking about an organized state militia or individuals.

"Verifiability" and "reliable source" are technical terms with special meanings within Wikipedia, and the pages describing them are intended to be educational material, understandable to newcomers. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

The point about the constitution is an apt point, however it is used by laywers, judges and elected officials whose understanding is based on experience and whom we trust, experienced people. Wikipedia, on the other hand, may be edited by anyone. Thus, it behooves us to be able to clearly point out to inexperienced people, to people who learn English as a second language, what is meant by "reliable source", by "verifiability", by "attribution" and so on. We're not writing a constitution but a guideline, our audience is people who, like us, enthusiastically applaud the idea that our editing can be useful. Our audience defines how much definition we should supply. The amount of discussion about particular points on these pages should tell us as we write policy and guideline, should tell us what points need to be addressed on policy and guideline pages. While a "reliable source" is a judgement by an editor, we can supply him with parameters which will be helpful to him and which will minimize editing wars and editing arguements. Terryeo 16:46, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

That is why I think that the distinction between the policy (WP:V or WP:ATT) and the guideline (WP:RS or its successor) makes perfect sense. Policy mandates reliable sources. Ideally, we could get wide consensus about each source. In practice, we need to rely on a small group of interested editors for each article, and so it is appropriate to provide guidelines that encapsulate Wikipedia's collective experience and judgment.

I am sorry if the existing RS page has been hijacked, but I think that is a different question from whether there should be such a page, and whether it should seek the status of guideline. I think that guideline is just right for this task: policy would be too restrictive, and essay too limp-wristed. If we cannot handle the problem of one editor who is preventing consensus edits of a guideline, then we have a much larger problem, since this could happen to any page. Robert A.West (Talk) 18:59, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Policy is a term which does not provide specific, detailed directions. Policy does not say, "turn left here, cite a source there". Policy is a statement of intent, policy is to be followed. Guidelines provide the details and specific directions. For example, guideline would direct, "personal opinion appearing on personal website is not reliable enough for Wikipedia". While Policy would give the general philosophy, "cite only reliable sources". Terryeo 22:01, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Question

I asked on the talk page for Seabreeze Amusement Park, and was told to ask here, how verifiable the signs posted around the park (mostly in the carousel I believe) about the history of the park are? While I'm sure they're reliable, (as in the information isn't made up and false) I'm not sure how to cite them, or if the article would just be reverted 'cause of original research.. -- Zalethon (Talk) 23:09, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

It is not a conventional method. But perhaps you could cite a photograph of the sign. If I am wrong on this I hope other editors will correct me. HighInBC 23:20, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

You can add information you believe to be true even if you can't provide a verifiable source that we can use for attribution - and we can not use your assertion you read it on a sign. Anyone who honestly disbelieves an unattributed assertion can delete it. Hopefully, you will add the facts and someone (you or another) will eventually find a source we can use for attribution. WAS 4.250 23:31, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia permits non-contentious claims in verifiable, self-published sources in articles about themselves. As long as you cite the sign with enough detail to allow other editors to verify it, you're within the policies and guidelines. (You could also photograph the sign and upload it, but I'm not sure if there would be a copyright problem.) TheronJ 01:44, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the rules about self-published articles, or maybe just the title's confusing me. But thank you, anyway.. I'll probably take a photo of one of the signs next time I go. The article could do with photos anyway -- Zalethon (Talk) 02:16, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, the photo wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for the article. =) Some photos would be, but a photo of a sign probably not. =) The reference to self-published articles means that we can go to a company's website (for example) and use the information written there (like the current CEO or the location of the headquarters or the company's product line) as verifiable data for an article. We could do the same with a company's annual report or even a product brochure. I don't see the signs at SeaBreeze as any different, except perhaps that they're not as easily verifiable by the average Wikipedia user. That may be why a photo is being asked for, although I'm not sure it's necessary. Powers ^T 23:50, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

One suggestion I have is that if you are relying on the signs for facts in the article, then instead of saying something like

The Jack Rabbit rollercoaster opened in 1921,

say

Signs posted in the park say that the Jack Rabbit rollercoaster opened in 1921.

The point is that I don't know whether I would necessarily trust what the sign actually says—amusement parks being inclined to, let's say, commercial puffery—but, even though you are an anonymous contributor, I am reasonably inclined to trust your own statement that you saw such a sign.

Also, the sign, while not exactly being an easily verifiable source, exists in the here-and-now and can be seen by anyone who travels to the park, whereas roller-coaster history might require a bit more digging in newspapers or historical-society archives or what have you.

The key point is to say where you got the fact.

Put another way, "The rollercoaster was built in 1921" is a stronger statement, and requires better evidence, than "There's a sign that says the rollercoaster was built in 1921."

By the way, I've been reading about a Wisconsin tourist attraction called The House on the Rock and it seems pretty clear that prior to 1978 this attraction did have untruthful and exaggerated statements in posted signs and in their brochures, e.g. that the lamps on display were Tiffany lamps when in fact they were copies. So the distinction between "Thus and such is true" and "There is a sign that says thus-and-such is true" is a meaningful distinction. Dpbsmith (talk) 17:23, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

In a nutshell

We have a 57 word long policy, and an "in a nutshell" summary of the policy in 42 words. Not much saving, and yet the policy itself is much, much easier to follow than the "in a nutshell" bit. I reckon we should remove the "in a nutshell" bit, and move the 57-word policy box bit to where the "in a nutshell" box is located. It would make the page easier to read and, as far as I can tell, nothing would be lost, jguk 18:17, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. I've swapped them as you suggested, and I removed the first section while I was there because it was largely repetitive. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:36, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I very much like "THE POLICY" placed right at the beginning. And I like the way in which the 3 points are worded. It is clear, it is easy TO understand and it would be difficult to not understand. It gives editors a quick read of the essentials. It develops more later. It is just right. Terryeo 20:44, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

I've also tightened the writing a bit more. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 10:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

The TRUTH^tm

We are once again reverting each other about Verifiability, not truth. The concept of Verifiability is central and critically important, we can't create Wikipedia with out it. For clarification, I wish to point out that an encyclopedia persents information to a reader. The Holy Bible present The TRUTH^tm to the reader. Do you see a difference? The American Heritage Dictionary presents information to the reader. The Technical Dictionary of Dianetics and Scientology presents The TRUTH^tm to the reader. Do you see a difference ? Please, let us not jarringly juxtapose The TRUTH^tm up against our most central policy. If verifiability absolutely must be compared against The TRUTH^tm can we please do it in paragraphs later in the policy, where the two terms can be discussed and compared to each other and examples given ? Terryeo 20:57, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

But we're not referring to The TRUTH, just the truth. :-) Information is the truth too (the word "information" implies that the material is correct).

I think the "verifiability, not truth" concept is important. It instantly helps newbies to understand what they need to do. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 07:45, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

If an editor understands "the truth" as not being "The TRUTH", then it works fine. I'm trying to prevent that misunderstanding. Terryeo 16:27, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Does it make any difference? Neither of them is a sufficient condition for the material's inclusion, so why does it matter if some editors mistake one for the other? JulesH 06:46, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, why mention "truth" at all? The policy is about verifiability - why confuse matters by referring to something else? jguk 11:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Because it's helpful to editors. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 12:34, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

How? (As with other issues, I do believe that those wishing to include the words should justify their inclusion in some way. I'm happy to listen to alternative views, but me saying it is not helpful and you saying it is helpful won't get us anywhere.) jguk 16:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I can only say I've lost count of the number of times it has stopped newbies in their tracks; people who just weren't getting it, but who when told "we care about verifiability, not truth," suddenly did get it. It even stopped an RfAr against me once, brought by what appeared to be the friends of a neo-Nazi whose article we were editing, and who couldn't understand why they weren't allowed to add "the truth" about him to his page. The sentence used to say, "as counter-intuitive as it might seem, the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth." I'd quite like to restore that, because it acknowledged the apparent weirdness of it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 17:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In that circumstance, with those sorts of editors, the phrase makes sense, juxtaposing white against black, shocking through the emotional barriers. I see what you mean. I don't object at all to any of those phrases but have a separate sort of problem that arises. Might we use Verifiability, not 'known' truth ?

It's "verifiability not truth," whether known or otherwise. The point you make about shocking through emotional barriers is a good one. It makes people suddenly understand the point and they remember it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 18:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I just used the phrase yesterday to finally convince an editor to stop putting original research into an article; it's extremely useful in getting through the concept. Jayjg ^(talk) 18:28, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

LOL, so it fixes more problems than it causes, very well then, I submit, according to the prophesy. Terryeo 18:42, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm late to this party but I echo the sentiments expressed above. "Verifiability, not truth" has been very useful for me. First, I got this concept very quickly when I joined Wikipedia and I have used the concept not only to combat OR and POV but also to support inclusion of all POVs. A corollary to "verifiability, not truth" is that NPOV does not mean "No POV", it really means "include ALL POV that is verifiable but don't take sides except possibly to indicate which is the majority opinion and which is the minority opinion". In other words, you can insert the fact that person X asserts that blacks are inferior or Jews are evil IF you can cite a reliable source (and person X is notable). Thankfully, I haven't had to deal with those particular POVs but I have gotten involved in a few heated POV discussions where relying on "verifiability, not truth" has been important in finding a way to NPOV. --Richard 19:04, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

In the spirit of trying to address my concerns that the emphasis should be on verifiability rather than anything else, as well as accommodating concerns about maintaining an explicit reference to verifiability not being the same as truth, I have made this edit. The aim is to preserve the wording on the page, but to change the emphasis ever so slightly. In order to maintain a proper emphasis on the wording that was being reordered, I have tidied up the discussion about biographies on living people, thereby removing some duplication of ideas. I hope this is an amenable compromise, jguk 20:47, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Jguk, please don't move or remove it again. It has widespread support, as you must remember from the last few times you tried to remove it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:48, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I am extremely disappointed that you did not care to read my promised comment on the talk page before eliminating my attempts to resolve the matter within seconds. That is far from constructive, and taking an attitude that the current page is beyond improvement is not in the wiki spirit. I have noted my concerns, and I have attempted to address yours constructively. I note that maintaining a reference to verifiability not being the same as truth has widespread support, but I do not interpret that as meaning the current way of putting it cannot be altered. It would have been useful if you had allowed others to comment on my suggestion before, somewhat rudely and abruptly, reverting me within seconds. Is it too much to ask for a suggestion made constructively in good faith to be considered by others before you take umbrage? jguk 20:55, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Could you either discuss it here or on user talk, but not both? Copying my reply from your talk page.

Hi Jguk, it's just that we've been through this before. You spent a few weeks as I recall trying to get rid of "verifiability, not truth," and were opposed by multiple editors. People do like it, and it's very, very helpful. I've seen it instantly turn disagreements around, and it's succinct and clear: the kind of thing you usually like. That one phrase, "verifiability, not truth," sums up V and NOR. Of all the phrases we need to keep, that is the single most important one. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 20:57, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I would have to agree; it needs to be right up front, not buried somewhere in the bowels of the policy. Moving down like that deprecates the importance of this concept, which goes against the actual policy itself. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:03, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

It's hardly the bowels. Indeed, I have long argued that this project page needs to remain short so that it is easily read in its entirety and does not contain extraneous discussion. So I strongly suggest that nothing on the page is deprecated. I merely argue that the emphasis should be firmly on verifiability, as it is this that this policy covers. This should be supplemented by a short discussion on what that means in practice (which I accept can include a paragraph explaining that it is not the same as truth), jguk 21:10, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Your opinion on this is clear, but others simply do not agree, and feel that this critical statement needs to lead. That is why it has indeed led for many months now. It is this statement, more than any other, that clarifies the policy, and puts an end to tedious and endless protestations about "the TRUTH". Jayjg ^(talk) 21:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, Jayjg makes the obvious point: it needs to stated up front. FeloniousMonk 21:18, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm genuinely puzzled by SV's approach. WP:ATTRIBUTE, which is fast becoming a long, discursive text that most won't care to read, has been proposed by her as a replacement for the WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:RS, and yet does not include a single reference to "truth". I also think SV removed a paragraph discussing the selfsame point from WP:V. I fail to see why it is a big issue when I suggest some reordering of text, and yet the concept is readily rejected elsewhere. Don't get me wrong, I much prefer WP:V to WP:ATTRIBUTE: WP:V is concise and to the point. People may actually read it all (which is rare for a WP policy unless someone's looking for a loophole). I just don't understand why there is such vehement opposition to my mild suggestion, whereas SV's complete removal of all discussion on verifiability (and truth) attracts no comment (which is one reason why I did not feel my mild suggestion would attract much opposition), jguk 21:32, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

WP:ATT is just over 2,000 words at present, and is aimed at replacing V (850 words); NOR (over 2,000); and possibly RS (over 6,000), so it's not doing too badly, and may be shortened further.

The proposal did include the point that the threshold for inclusion is whether material can be attributed and not whether it's true, and will include it again. Remember that it's just a proposal and is still being worked on. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 11:50, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It is verifiability, not truth. The reason is simple:

Truth is subjective, not objective.

To a Muslim, Jesus was just another one of God's prophets and Mohammad was his final and greatest prophet; to a Christian Jesus was the only son of God, the redeemer; to an atheist he is a myth that people like to believe in. All of these views represent Truth to those who hold them. If we allow Truth, we open the door to fanatics edit warring madly. And it isn't just religion; it is everything from whether abortion is moral to which musical artist was the greatest in their field to which episode of SouthPark best highlights the political satire the series is known for.

Hence, verifiability. I can verify and state clearly, with sources, different views from different groups, being careful to not present the views in a biased fashion - see WP:NPOV#Undue weight - and not presume to know Truth, because all I can ever know is my very personal version of the Truth. The same is true for every human - you may agree on some things, but you do not agree on the Truth about everything with any one person. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua^?!? 23:33, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I've never understood the word "truth" in this context as having anything to do with Big Mr Truth who wears the gold trousers; I assumed it just meant that if a reliably published source says something I don't believe to be true, the reliably published version gets in the pedia and mine, tough potatoes, doesn't. The only way I can oppose the reliable source's display of nonsense is to produce another reliable source's counter-argument and place the two reliably sourced versions of the truth in juxtaposition, or three or four such versions of the truth. It would be quite futile my proclaiming on Wikipedia that the experts are wrong and that the Beast of Bodmin does exist because I've just seen it eating a weasel on my back lawn this afternoon in broad daylight

I tend to be against the expression "verifiability, not truth" for different reasons than the critic upthread. Since "verifiable" in any non-Wikipedia context means "able to be confirmed as the truth", our pet shibboleth literally means "able to be confirmed as the truth, but not the truth", which is delightful but semantic and philosophical bobbins. However, this isn't an argument I'm likely to win any time soon; I just have to accept the phrase as a piece of wiki-jargon with a perfectly clear meaning in the context of editing articles here, which is hardly an Athenian school of logic at the best of times. qp10qp 02:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the phrase is very important, but I agree that it needs to be explained. When Whales and Sanger set this project up they had a clear idea of (1) how popular the idea of "truth" is when people argue and (2) just how much it can get in the way of the project. In this I have no problem saying they were visionaries. At least once a month, usually more, someone contributing at least to the talk page of one of my watchlist articles makes some claim "but it's true!!" The phrase "verifiability, not truth" is for these people. They need it, and if they get it, they can end up becoming great contributors. I can't see how anyone can object to the extra two words (i mean, including the words does no damage), so I just don't see the fuss. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:12, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Truth and lies

Truth may at times not be able to be determined, but sometimes falsehood is. For example, if source A says that source B makes claim C, and we have source B, and it doesn't make claim C, then source A should not be cited. This is part of basic intellectual honesty. This isn't about some mystical TRUTH. This is about LIES (or at least errors). This is true even if source A has published in a magazine that we would usually consider citable. - Jmabel | Talk 04:32, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Are Hard copies NON VERIFIABLE

With reference to this edit [10] one user has suggested that hardcopy" publications which are unverifiable I would like to place my reservations over this statement. Is it a policy on Wikipedia that only Online Sources are Verifiable. I am afraid that we are perpetuating Systemic Bias with such opinions. I would like to know the opinion of the community over this and we need some concrete policies in this regard.  Doctor Bruno  08:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that edit summary was saying offline publications are unverifiable in general, but that the specific ones cited were. (It's an interesting example of how using "that" instead of "which" would have made the meaning clearer. :-)) Anyway, to clarify, offline sources are regarded as just as reliable, and often more so, than online ones, but they do have to be available to the general public. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your comments. I know that as per the policy Hard Copies are verifiable. But many editors (from American and European countries) immediately say "delete" in AFD discussion when they cannot find something in Internet. Most editors immediately dismiss Offline (as well as Non-English) sources as if they don't exist. Recently I encountered the following words few offline non-English books whose existence cannot be verified at [11] I pointed out that to him and he immediately agreed. When a lot of people have this opinion, I think it is time to highlight that there exists books and articles other than Internet that can be regarded as valid sources for Wikipedia. Another problem I face is the lack of ISBN numbers for most (not all) of the books published in India. You will find it hard to believe that 95 % of Indian Books don't have ISBN. Indian Books have ISBN, but 95 % of English Books published in India and 99% of Non-English Books published in India do not have ISBN. Please see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mariano_Anto_Bruno_Mascarenhas#ISBN for comments from other users as well. That was an old discussion I have brought to the talk page for you to see Please note that I am not arguing for one particular article or regarding one particular instance. Where ever I go (in Wikipedia) I encounter a lot of people who cannot believe that a newspaper here does not have an online edition or that 95% of books in India do not have ISBN.  Doctor Bruno  09:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

(Copied from user talk pages: DB, it's best to discuss this in one place):

Thanks for your comments. I know that as per the policy Hard Copies are verifiable. But many editors (from American and European countries) immediately say "delete" in AFD discussion when they cannot find something in Internet. Most editors immediately dismiss Offline (as well as Non-English) sources as if they don't exist. Recently I encountered the following words few offline non-English books whose existence cannot be verified at [12] I pointed out that to him and he immediately agreed. When a lot of people have this opinion, I think it is time to highlight that there exists books and articles other than Internet that can be regarded as valid sourced for Wikipedia  Doctor Bruno  09:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that we need to use books more and websites less, but I think the comment you referred to — "The only sources to support it is one website and few offline non-English books whose existence cannot be verified ..." — meant that the particular books cited could not be found. It's difficult when articles are based only on a few non-English references, because this is the English Wikipedia; editors have to be able to check that what the editor is saying is correct, and shouldn't have to go to unreasonable lengths to do so. What counts as "unreasonable" is decided on a case-by-case basis. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:32, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Another problem I face is the lack of ISBN numbers for most (not all) of the books published in India. You will find it hard to believe that 95 % of Indian Books don't have ISBN. Indian Books have ISBN, but 95 % of English Books published in India and 99% of Non-English Books published in India do not have ISBN. Please see here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Mariano_Anto_Bruno_Mascarenhas#ISBN for comments from other users as well. That was an old discussion I have brought to the talk page for you to see Please note that I am not arguing for one particular article or regarding one particular instance. Where ever I go (in Wikipedia) I encounter a lot of people who cannot believe that a newspaper here does not have an online edition or that 95% of books in India do not have ISBN.  Doctor Bruno  09:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I think the point to bear in mind is that this is the English-language Wikipedia, and therefore ideally sources have to be accessible to native English speakers, and reasonably available to people living in English-speaking countries. It's fine to make particular points using non-English sources and books that are hard to obtain, but to base an entire article on them means someone is likely to AfD it. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 09:40, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

And, although this does create a certain systemic bias towards a English-language view of the world, we can take the stance that, if the material in the non-English sources has value, then some English-language source should serve as a secondary source which refers to the primary non-English source. If no one in the English-language world has seen fit to make reference to the non-English material in a reliable English source, then the material is probably not appropriate for Wikipedia at this time EVEN IF THE MATERIAL IS TRUE. Consider this a variant on notability, a kind of "notability of factual material". --Richard 16:52, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

A better corrective may be not treating the en: WP as an island. If the fooian WP cites sources, copy them and give credit. Septentrionalis 04:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Another proposed development

Should there not be a central page for Wikipedians to raise issues about whether a disputed claim in an article is properly supported by reputable sources? Currently some people post such queries on the talk pages of WP:V, others on the talk page of WP:RS, and no doubt there are other queries elsewhere. Such a central page would give a proper avenue to raise such points (in much the same way as WP:AN is a proper avenue to discuss points needing admin attention). Comments from others would then have persuasive value in helping resolve such disputes. Thoughts? jguk 21:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sure, your user talk page. FeloniousMonk 21:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I certainly have neither the time nor the patience to offer a view on every dispute of this nature. Do you? Maybe we could use your talk page instead? jguk 21:22, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There will always be some tradeoff between a formal, organized process to settle every question and a catch as catch can sort of organization. I think Jguk is suggesting a sort of "routing page" for any editing difficulty. Terryeo 07:21, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Verifiability intro

Hi.

I noticed this in the intro: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth.". But it seems the actual threshold is often higher than this due to notability, which seems to provide additional criteria, as verifiable articles on "non-notable" subjects have been (and are being) deleted. Should this be changed? 70.101.144.160 02:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, it is debatable, I think it has to do with presenting the several thresholds for inclusion in an easy - to - understand manner. Besides "verifiable" (which seems to work most often), "reliable source" is also critically important since newgroups and blogs are archived and since personal websites (which might state just anything at all) are verifiable (often). Terryeo 07:18, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The way "verifiable" is used on Wikipedia means that material must already have been published by a reliable source. If you're finding that articles are being deleted for being non-notable, it means there isn't enough material from reliable sources to justify a whole article. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 11:54, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

But the fact is, verifiability is not the only criterion for inclusion. Lots and lots of verifiable, neutral articles that are not original research are deleted every day due to lack of notability, and thus I consider the opener misleading. It should say, perhaps "One of the criteria for inclusion", or "An important criterion/threshold for inclusion", or similar, but not "The threshold for inclusion", which makes it sound like it's the only one when it plainly isn't -- see WP:AFD. This is a factually incorrect statement. The baseline seems to be at least WP:V AND WP:N, not one or the other. Because of this, we really, really should promote WP:N to official policy soon. We would thus have four content-guiding policies -- WP:NPOV, WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:N, or three if WP:ATT passes -- WP:NPOV, WP:ATT, and WP:N. 170.215.83.212 05:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

A reliable source is one that stands up to academic scrutiny. It's not a difficult issue when approached in that way. Just ask yourself, is there really enough evidence to justify the assertion you are making?

Golly, that was short. And to think WP:RS takes four and a half thousand words to come to no conclusions on the point. Maybe we should add a brief sentence on what a reliable source is using the terms I suggest above, and get rid of WP:RS. Maybe if we then add a brief sentence or two on original research, we can unite WP:RS, WP:V and WP:NOR on this page in under 1,000 words! jguk 12:27, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm in favour of summarising all those pages in a thousand words, as I've said on the proposal page Wikipedia talk:Attribution; but we have to face the fact that there seems to be a consensus of adding strings of ifs and buts to any policy page, and that's where the instruction bloat creeps in. I'm not sure there's anything to be done about it, unfortunately. In the meantime, I have the useful page Wikipedia:Simplified Ruleset saved, which serves most of my purposes. qp10qp 14:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

A reliable source in Wikipedia is not only those that "that stands up to academic scrutiny", that is too narrow a definition. Read WP:ATT, Jguk. There is a vigouros effort made by many editors to clarify these issues. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

One thing you can say for sure about a reliable source (at least so far) is that it is attributable. Without the quality of attribution a piece of information can not be considered to have been reliably published.

Verbatim

Okay, this is a point we very much need to address. I'd already inserted it into the text of the policy, but it was removed on the grounds that such a change should be discussed first. So, okay. Here it is.

We absolutely positively have to explicitly say that "articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources" does NOT mean "articles should contain material that is copied-and-pasted from somewhere else".

We shouldn't have to, but we do. If something can be misunderstood, then it will be, and "material" can be interpreted not just as "information", but as "text".

This should be an addition to rule #1. And it can't be too lengthy or verbose, or people won't grasp it instantly.

Comments? DS 14:42, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, as you state it I don't understand if the issue is:

• Editors copy and paste whole pages, this clogs articles or
• Editors copy and paste individual sentences from a myriad of sources to produce a helter-skelter article that doesn't flow. Terryeo 16:07, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

You have identified a weakness of expression that occurs here and there throughout the policies. However, adding explanations is probably more laborious than it is worth. No-one has any excuses for reading this formula the wrong way, because below the edit-summary box on everyone's computer screen appears the injunction: Do not copy text from other websites without permission. It will be deleted. qp10qp 17:17, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Copying a sentence verbatim from a reliable website and citing it appropriately and in the references section, showing the link where the sentence (and its fuller information there) may be found is fair use of published information, is it not. Quite the same as quoting a sentence from a book and referencing the book as the source of the sentence. Terryeo 03:14, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

You forgot the most important step here: marking it as a quotation. So do many editors. Septentrionalis 04:33, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I stated "citing it appropriate". Usually I use one of two methods, depending on how it flows in an article. "quote marks" or markup markings, per statements in WP:CITE and its associated pages. But my question was, "ANY text from ANY website ?" Terryeo 14:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Burden of evidence; aka notable

If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.: I find this basically saying "the topic must be notable or else it does not deserve an article". Now, notability is a guideline and not a policy. I feel that this section forces the WP:NN guideline into a policy. --Zeno McDohl ^(talk) 22:22, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Just because a topic has reliable third-party sources does not mean it is notable. For example, the United States Naval Observatory is a reliable third-party source; that does not mean I should copy their star catalogs to Wikipedia. --Gerry Ashton 03:27, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Yep, since WP:NOT a directory. More reasons for notability becoming official policy!!! 170.215.83.212 05:45, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

Self-publishing experts/journalists are not reliable

Sorry, I took that part out. Reliable goes to the material, fact checked/peer reviewed...not the author. pK, its Good to be the King 23:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC) Plus, the "well known" status of the author or past reliability of an author is not a defense to defamation.

Not in general, but there are exceptions to this rule. Teaching material that can be found on webpages of professors is also self published. Suppose I use some very clever trick to solve some classical mechanics problem and put it on my teaching website meant for university students. Suppose some wike-editor wants to put that in a wiki article. He then gives a ref. to my website. That would not be an unriliable source. You can't say in this case that it should first be published in peer reviewed journals, because elementary stuff like classical mechanics not what physicists work on nowadays for research (except for a few topics like chaos theory). Even if you make an original discovery you still won't publish it in a peer reviewed journal. It's simply not done. Count Iblis 23:33, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

It is possible that a well known, published, recognized person runs a personal site and publishes up-to-the-minute information. In those rare situations then his work is soon picked up by eager publishers who wish to publish it (selling books, etc.) But a huge quantity of very very cheap publication exists on the interent. Any hairbrained idiot can run a website and publish his <eyeroll> high repute theory and opinion. It is that vast quantity of personal, self-published opinion that WP:V must address itself to because literally millions of webpages exist giving personal opinion on everything from drinking blood as a religious practice to seeming reliable opinions of high repute. Do you want some examples ? Terryeo 03:09, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

In many cases you are right. But there are cases, especially in the scientific field, where non-peer reviewed sources are necessary. I think the standard for wikipedia should just reflect the standard used in the relevant field in the real world. E.g., if many peer reviewed articles published in the Physical Review cite some unpublished preprint on the preprint archive or some self published lecture notes, then that source should be good enough for wikipedia. Count Iblis 12:56, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Well yes, of course I see your point. The problem is how to write the policy so it can guide people to such good references while filtering out the large body of poor references. Terryeo 11:42, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think this point is important because we want to make scientific articles on wikipedia accessible to laypeople as much as possible. We should be able to refer to this website if it's needed. That shouldn't be an obstacle to get FA status. I don't see why deleting such refs and giving a ref. to, say, a peer reviewed paper by Lorentz published in 1882 would be better. :) Count Iblis 23:48, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, classical mechanics is used especially in computational chemistry (docking & scoring functions, protein folding, conformational analysis) and drug design. People are definitely publishing in this area. Hookes law is alive and well. I think its the information that most important. So, how could we be assured the self publishing professor's solution plausible without independent evaluation. I surely wouldn't copy some guys unpublished/untested physics solution off the internet and try to use it for my homework. If we don't scrutinize information, are we really contributing to general knowledge? Why would anyone read an encyclopedia that was full of misinformation? Plus, what about this.....I think an education journal would publish the solution. pk its Good to be the King 00:07, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi Count Iblis....why would you go there when you could cite Feynman? Plus, don't you think you'd be doing the laypeople a disservice if the quality of information is poor?...Plus, I forgot about this...if you are in a quandry over this issue, check out the wiki entry on Ammonium Cerrium Nitrate (CAN)...the editors found a website that cited the relavent publications.....what about that? pK...out til tomorrow...its Good to be the King 00:12, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

The topic of self-published experts has recently been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Attribution#Professional --Gerry Ashton 00:20, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

One reason may be that the Feynman lectures or the books by Landau and Lifschitz are not online. Of course, you do need to cite the original peer reviewed works. But suppose that in somewhere in an article you give a detailed derivation from first principles to illustrate some method. If later on the article must be trimmed down and the derivation must be scrapped, then you may want to give a ref to some online source where that derivation can be found. In practice you should limit such refs to non-controversial simple to verify (for insiders) things. Count Iblis 00:32, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I see your point Count. pK its Good to be the King 15:56, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Query - subscription sources

Hi, A fact check has been requested on a statement made in an article I watch. I provided a citation for the statement using the OED online, as this is an authoritative source for entomology in a way that no other page could really be. However this does not appear to satisfy this editor as the OED online is a pay service, costing a fairly large amount to use. The editor has requested I find a non-pay source, but I consider this to be unreasonable as i) there is unlikely to be a reputable non-pay source, and ii) citations to pay sources are not prefered, but are not at all unprecendented. Is it reasonable for me to remove the ciation request as there is a citation that can be checked and verified by a large number of people (many libraries and universities offer access to the OED), although not by this editor? --Neo 11:21, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Of course pay sites may be acceptable sources. As you note, you could just as easily quote the OED book rather than the site as a source. Given that the reader you have a dispute with does not appear to have ready access to your source, is it possible that you can quote what it says on the relevant talk page? To answer your actual question, yes, if you have provided a citation you can remove the citation request - although it might be better to take the approach I suggest on the talk page first, so that this other guy does not just revert you, jguk 11:30, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

If there is a citation then the citation request should come off. If there is a dispute about a particular citation, first attempt resolution on the article's dicussion page, if it can't be resolved there, WP:RS or WP:CITE or even this page are reasonable places to get additional opinions. Terryeo 11:38, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I presume that "entomology" above means to say "etymology", since the OED is not particularly authoritative on the former. Is material only at the OED online and not in the print version of the OED? If it is also in the print OED, then that would be good to cite. - Jmabel | Talk 04:40, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Not that the print OED is exactly cheap; but you could try directing him to a library, which may well have one or both. Septentrionalis 04:20, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Nearly any public library should have the OED. It should also have an authoritative dictionary of etymology in the reference section. If an assertion is sourced to a work of general reference, such as a dictionary or encyclopedia, it can probably be looked up in other reference works in the obvious manner, and that is IMO a reasonable thing to do if the particular source cited is not available. Robert A.West (Talk) 05:04, 31 October 2006 (UTC)