Wikipedia talk:Attribution/Archive 7

message: It seems to me that the policy towards living persons is unnecessarily placed twice in the proposed page. The two entries are these:
Any unsourced material may be removed, and in biographies of living persons unsourced contentious material must be removed immediately.
:*Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source, as do quotations; the burden of evidence lies with the editor wishing to retain the material. Material lacking attribution may be removed, but use common sense: that Paris is the capital of France needs no source. This policy should never be used to cause disruption by prematurely removing material for which reliable sources could reasonably be found. The exception to this is when dealing with claims about living persons, where unsourced contentious material must be removed immediately and not be moved to talk pages.
and
Biographies of living persons
Editors must take particular care when writing biographies of living persons, which require a degree of sensitivity because they could negatively affect someone's life and have legal consequences. Remove unattributed, contentious biographical material immediately if it concerns a living person, and do not move it to the talk page. Wales, Jimmy. "Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information", WikiEN-l, May 16, 2006."Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information", WikiEN-l, May 19, 2006. This applies to material in biographies of living persons and to material about living persons in other articles, talk pages, and user pages.
My suggestion would be to cut the second one altogether but move the Jimbo references to the first one. The second one seems to be elaboration—I don't see any real need to split biographies from other contexts, which are all covered in the first occurrence (this is another example of breaking principles into sub-principles for no reason). The second occurrence could be moved to the FAQ.
 
qp10qp 00:16, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm sure they can be merged. And remember that the details are explained on the WP:BLP page - we need give no more than a reference to this page and a guide as to when you might wish to consult it, not a detailed exposition of what that page says. I suggest deleting the second para referred to above and changing the last sentence of the first para from "The exception to this is when dealing with claims about living persons, where unsourced contentious material must be removed immediately and not be moved to talk pages." to "When dealing with claims about living persons, unsourced contentious material must be removed immediately and not be moved to talk pages - see Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons." jguk 06:30, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Gobbet 2: Biographies of Living Persons

message: I'd suggest removing this.  It doesn't say anything useful that isn't already in the key principles section.  Opinions? JulesH 10:31, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's worth retaining because the Foundation regularly stresses the importance of the need for good sources in BLPs. SlimVirgin (talk) 12:18, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But the point is that it's covered in the key principles section. Nothing would be lost from the policy by combining the two parts that deal with the issue; but concision and focus would be gained. (IMO) qp10qp 13:58, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Qp10qp and JulesH. And as long as we link to Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons it is clear that further guidance is available for those wanting it. jguk 21:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Remove policy content that will exist in other policies when ATT replaces WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR. We are trying to get this down to 1000 words, right? WAS 4.250 21:42, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, we're not trying to get it below any particular number of words. It should be as long as it needs to be, with the emphasis on "needs." SlimVirgin (talk) 21:44, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: WAS 4.250 is right that this policy should not seek to duplicate what is in other policies. And being concise is a virtue in any rule or policy, jguk 21:52, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: To make my point clearer, there's no question of removing the  living-persons clause, which is actually one of the few non-negotiable principles here; what's needed is to give the guidance in one place on this page rather than two. It's just an issue of good writing and policy-page presentation. qp10qp 00:21, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  BLP section 

message: The advice about sources is still somewhat confused. First sources are mentioned in bold in the bold proper with a reference to "reliable" sources. Instead of a straight discussion or explanation of "reliable", we have a rule about "primary" and "secondary" sources, both of which need defining. We then have an alternative rule introducing concepts of "questionable" and "self-published" sources, both of which are defined away from their normal English meanings. This alternative rule is subject to three detailed exceptions, some of which are subject to further exceptions.
I'm sure this can be simplified. Maybe we could take the current wording in WP:V and work on improving that? jguk 15:34, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: A few thoughts:
#Generally, this is looking pretty good.  Congratulations to everyone who put in the hard work to get it this far.
#Reviewing the article at this point, I think it gets hung up on the term "published source."  Are "published source" and "self-published source" defined anywhere?  Do they need to be?
#If I were king of the universe, or at least the Wikipedia, I would be inclined to say that while combining WP:OR and WP:V into a single policy appears achievable, WP:RS may still need to be its own page.  This page would be a lot simpler if it just said that sources had to be reliable, had a single paragraph about what makes sources reliable, and then left self-published sources, exceptions, partisan sources, and all the rest for the RS page.
Sorry if all of this has been resolved before, TheronJ 21:05, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "This page would be a lot simpler if it just said that sources had to be reliable, had a single paragraph about what makes sources reliable, and then left self-published sources, exceptions, partisan sources, and all the rest for the RS page." Exactly. Will you volunteer to help write such a paragraph as I proposed above? WAS 4.250 21:49, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: TheronJ, you may have missed WP:ATT/FAQ. Please check if the FAQ takes care of your concerns. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 22:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Also note that there is an excellent explanation of "reliable" and "published" in the article itself under the Key Principles heading, subheading  "Wikipedia articles must be based on reliable sources" (copied below) ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 23:00, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Reliable sources are credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand. How reliable a source is depends on context. In general, the most reliable sources are books and journals published by universities; mainstream newspapers; and magazines and journals that are published by known publishing houses. What these have in common is process and approval between document creation and publication. As a rule of thumb,the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication. Material that is self-published is generally not regarded as reliable, but seebelow for exceptions. Any unsourced material may be removed, and in biographies of living persons unsourced contentious material must be removed immediately.
*The FAQ answers most of my comments very well.  I still see some possible ambiguity on "published," however.  This is a perennial problem with the existing guidelines - is a free weekly like The Stranger a "self-published" source?  Is an online only publication like Media Matters or Snopes self-published, and how do we tell?  Does it make sense to draft a section of the faq explaining the difference between "published" and "self-published?"  TheronJ 23:21, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Those nuances may be better left to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. The examples you provided can be good sources depending on the context and the specific situation, regardless if they are self-published or not. But sure, give it a go and add some material to the FAQ if you think it is necessary. ≈ jossi ≈ t • @ 15:25, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, I'll sleep on it and give it a shot.  (On reflection, the current discussion of "self-published" does offer a lot of guidance on this question).  TheronJ 15:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Some random suggestions 

message: I removed the sentence saying false statements aren't OR, because I couldn't see what it was getting at. If I add 2 plus 2 equals 5 to an article, and can't provide a source, it's OR. OR is anything for which no source can be found, and for which it's assumed no source exists (not attributable), because it's the editor's own opinion. Whether it's true or false doesn't come into it. SlimVirgin (talk) 19:52, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: In certain science fields, the OR policy is used to prevent fringe or "crank" theories from being published on wikipedia before they appear in peer-reviewed publications.  It is often impossible to determine whether these theories are true or false because they are so poorly presented.  The editors of these articles are skiled at wikilawyering to try to keep their inappropriate articles from being deleted. The burden of determing that something is not false before it can be called OR would make it very difficult to use the OR policy to delete these articles. The general definition of OR that is used to delete these articles is "if it hasn't appeared in a peer-reviewed publication, it's OR, whether or not it is correct". CMummert 12:15, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *It is irrelevant if we are unsure whether something is false or original research - because in both cases we don't want the information on Wikipedia. The point is, then, that we don't want unsourceable information regardless of whether it's "original" or "research" (or, indeed, "true"). (Radiant) 12:26, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, we don't want it.  As SlimVirgin said, "original research" has always meant "unable to be sourced" which made it easy to delete. If you change the definition of original research to really be about original research, it would become impossible to verify that anything is actually original research, because you would have to prove that it is original. That's the motivation for the strange meaning of the words "original research" we use. CMummert 12:43, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

text: *So basically what is being said here is that "original research" is a misnomer, since something on Wikipedia can be OR while being neither original nor research. If we're going to go by that somewhat misleading definition, this needs a footnote to clarify it to newcomers. I personally would never have considered "2 + 2 = 5" OR, but I would have removed it anyway. (Radiant) 12:52, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's it.  As WP:OR says "Original research is a term used in Wikipedia to refer to material that has not been published by a reliable source".  See note 1 in WP:OR for an explanation.  Maybe that note could be copied as a note into this article. CMummert 13:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: *Since one of the aims of this page is to supersede OR, I think it would be good to incorporate that note on the definition of the term. (Radiant) 13:44, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: But that's not what you did; instead, you changed the definition. It has nothing to do with what kind of information it is. All that matters is that it is not attributable. SlimVirgin (talk) 18:02, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Not OR if false

message: One sentence that I think is important was lost in the transition from WP:V.
If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it.
This proviso is needed to fully justify deletion of articles that have only unreliable sources, and/or are based entirely on self-published claims.  Some editors are claiming that WP:V explicitly allows use of self-published works to establish notability, whereas (as I have always understood) the exception is that one can use self-published works to the extent that they comment on the thing for which the publisher is notable, as established though third-party sources.  I cannot conceive that we allow notability to be established via self-published sources.
I would like to add this phrasing back to where it logically belongs, under the exceptions in "Questionable or self-published sources."  I boldface the additions for clarity on the talk page only -- there is no need for emphasis on the project page.
* * * 
;1. Questionable or self-published sources in articles about their authors
:Material from questionable or self-published sources may be used as primary source material in articles about that source's author. The material:
:*must be relevant to the person's or organization's notability, as established using independent, third-party sources;
:*should not be contentious or unduly self-serving;
:*must not be used to support claims about topics not directly related to the source or about third parties.
:*must not be the sole basis for the article.  If a topic has no third-party, independent sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topic.
* * * 
I think that this will address this misunderstanding, which I have actually seen.  Personally, I would extend the prohibition to articles where the only source is questionable, but I am not confident that will meet with approval.  I cannot think of a valid reason to have an article where the only possible sources are self-published.  Even if we use a notable person's or a municipality's website to write a basic, uncontroversial article, we are confident that there are other sources available, so the article should eventually be improved.  Robert A.West (Talk) 12:20, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Indeed that one sentence, "If an article topic has no reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on it" is a nice, concise alternative way of saying all that's in those paragraphs about no original research. jguk 12:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

text: <confused look>. This is the talk page for WP:ATT, and I have spend considerable time working on this page.  I am commenting on the existing text of this project, which omits the key phrase above and, IMO, does not address this particular misunderstanding so well as the current WP:V text.  Robert A.West (Talk) 19:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I do not oppose that phrase, just that it seems to be already covered on the first sentence. If you feel strongly for its inclusion, you may try consolidating these two phrases into one. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 05:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have been suffering through arguments that notability can be established via self-published sources.    I'll accept your invitation.  See what you think. Robert A.West (Talk) 05:56, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not entirely sure that the meaning of "The material ... must be relevant to the person's or organization's notability, as established using independent, third-party sources" is clear.  Perhaps changing "as" to "which must be", or adding a final requirement to the clause that the importance of a subject must be established by third-party sources before self-published material can be used, or similar. JulesH 12:36, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I see your point.  Unless I misunderstand, "Notability" here means not the fact that the person or organization is notable, which is a separate question, but the subject matter area for which he/she/it is notable.  Thus, an NFL quarterback's opinion on league policy is relevant.  His self-published opinion on foreign policy is probably not.   The fact that he is an NFL quarterback needs independent confirmation.  I'll try to rephrase more clearly.  Robert A.West (Talk) 12:53, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Provision of WP:V that is not here 

message: If this were analogous to the current WP:RS, the end of the sentence should have the bolded-underlined text added: “…except in articles about themselves or their activities.” Is this deletion intentional, and if so, why? Thank you. -- Avi 01:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't believe so; I think the text came from the version at WP:V which, as far as I can tell, has always been missing this clause.  I think it may have been added to WP:RS at a later stage and not taken across to WP:V -- exactly the kind of problem that this proposal is intended to prevent. JulesH 08:46, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Questionable sources redux 

message: "Material from questionable or self-published sources… must be relevant to the person's or organization's notability, as established using third-party, independent sources." In short, you may only use questionable or self-published sources when you have better sources? - Jmabel | Talk 08:21, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's an ambiguous sentence.  Does "as established using third-party, independent sources" pertain to "relevant" or to "notability"?  In other words, are we asking for better sources to verify the relevance of bad sources (silly) or asserting that, once something's notability is established, we can use unreliable sources (just plain wrong)?  Maybe the original thrust of the sentence was that unreliable or self-published sources, although they may be used in some connections, can't be used to establish notability.  I doubt the editor who wrote it meant to imply that, for matters not related to estabishing notability, it's a free-for-all. -GTBacchus(talk) 08:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

text: Material from questionable or self-published sources must be relevant to the article's subject, whose notability must be established with information from third-party sources, and must be in a field in which the author is considered authoritative -- for example, it is usually acceptable to use biographical details from a self-published source.
A bit wordy, perhaps.  And perhaps I've misunderstood the intent of the original sentence; I've never been entirely happy with it, even over at WP:V where it seems to have originated. JulesH 08:42, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

text: That is what I have always understood it to mean.  Once a person is notable for Q, you can, with care, use his self-published remarks on subject Q, and possibly on closely-related subject P, but certainly not on unrelated subject R.  Robert A.West (Talk) 22:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: How about this?  "Must be relevant to a topic for which the person or organization is notable according to reliable, third-party, independent sources."  Does that avoid confusion yet preserve brevity? Robert A.West (Talk) 22:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That is contradictory. The original formulation of "must be relevant to the person's or organization's notability" is sufficient to explain this point: If you use self-published sources, the material must be relevant to the person or organization notability. That is, you cannot base a claim about a person or organization, based on a self-published source, if that material has nothing to do with the person or organization's notability. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have added JulesH wording as it makes it quite clear what we are referring to. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 03:32, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

text: I like the new wording, it limits to exceptions, rather than seeming to give permission.  Atom 12:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The current version says, "Must be relevant to the person's or organization."  This is either an incomplete thought, with the word, "Notability" missing, or a stray possessive.  Frankly, I hope that the intention is to get rid of the ambiguous word, "notability," since I disagree with (and am astonished by) Jossi's (apparent) assertion above that it is acceptable to use self-published sources to establish notability. Robert A.West (Talk) 17:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Considering that "notability" is nothing more than a topic's having been covered non-trivially in multiple independent sources, it would be quite the contradiction to establish it using self-published material. -GTBacchus(talk) 18:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Begging the question 

message: It says: "For example, if a published source gives the numbers of votes cast in an election, it is not original research to calculate a percentage, so long as it is a simple calculation and the original numbers the source offers accompany it."
--- I don't see why the last part is necessary.  It should be enough that the source contains the original numbers.  The underlying principle is that readers should be able to go to the source and check without too much trouble that the information attributed to it is correct. An example where this issue is more clear:  suppose a source has a table giving the population of a city divided into age-group and sex, but omits the total.  We should be able to add the numbers up and just give the total in wikipedia, without needing to copy the whole table into wikipedia. I propose replacing "and the original numbers the source offers accompany it" by "and it is clear from the source which numbers should be used in the calculation". --Zerotalk 09:28, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with both comments, except where it says "Maybe it is sufficiently clear already," -- we wouldn't be having this discussion if it was clear already.... would we?  --Michael C. Price talk 09:32, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is not original research - two comments 

message: Hi.  I got pointed here from a discussion on Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research about whether a "synthesis" is permissible in some situations.  I posted a list of possible guidelines ( I posted an earlier version of this list to talk:NOR ), do these make sense? Squidfryerchef 03:07, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What is and isn't OR: a dozen comments 

message: Contradicting myself, I know, but the exception wasn't built with comics in mind as much as with any pop culture.  My expertise, such as it is and not strong enough to merit my thoughts being usable, happens to be in comics.  The problem is with the second exception, and the words professional, researcher and journalist.
I've argued time and time again that sources simply be weighed against the material being sourced and that strong claims require strong sources, but people feel differently.  The issue comes about because whilst USENET postings would be unacceptable in an article on some scientific theory, they are actually useful in documenting certain pop culture phenomena.  This is because different topics use different forums for discussing and researching ideas.  The problem tends to be that tradition held that diaries and letters were private and as such couldn't widely be cited.
Time has moved on and a lot of people make their diaries and letters public through email archives, USENET postings and blogs, making their citation and verification easier.  Now these sources shouldn't be inviolate, they should simply be measured for their worth, and summarised in a NPOV.  If the information contained within a source is some person declaring he has devised the theory of everything, then USENET is a bad place to build from, because in this instance the source has a bias.  However, USENET is being cited for instances of new words being coined by the OED, since the source can support such a fact neutrally.
Opinion can be sourced from USENET, as can the fact that something has been published on USENET.  An example, and yes I'm using comics here, it's a field I'm versed in, would be both Rich Johnston and Michael Doran, both of whom started by posting news and gossip to USENET, and both of whom have advanced in the field to become reliable sources.  The issue is not one of using unreliable sources, it is in using sources which are reliable within context, but which we can't actually nail down with a definition of context.
Take Eddie Campbell; according to the guidance here his blog is off limits because he is not a "well-known, professional researcher in a relevant field, or a well-known professional journalist".  His failing is in being a well known, professional artist in a relevant field.  And I tell you, I'd go all the way to arb-com to cite anything relevant he posts there, because not doing so is inane. It would be like disregarding Einstein's blog or Hitchcock's; again, not actually professional researchers or journalists, but practitioners and theorists. I mean, look at those words there.  Researcher and journalist mean very specific things; they don't cover commentators, they don't cover practitioners, they don't cover observers.  Sometimes this stuff is useful, mostly in articles on art, culture and society.  Sometimes this stuff is detrimental, typically in articles on science, but these are judgement calls which require constant revisiting and revising.  Luckily, a wiki is the best way to enable such revisiting and revising, and luckily that's what Wikipedia is.  Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
So how would I do it?  I'd remove the bits about journalist or researcher.  Whatever door you're trying to bolt there is already double locked by the rest of the second exception, which notes that "we can rely on it if material produced by that writer would normally be regarded as a reliable source. However, exercise caution: there may be a good reason no reliable third party has published the material. If there is reasonable doubt about the reliability of a self-published source, or the relevance of the material to the subject matter, don't use it."  That covers it.  If the person publishing the stuff would normally be a reliable source, that already covers well-known, professional researchers in a relevant field, or well-known professional journalists.  And I don't get why well known journalists can pronounce on any field.  Are Martin Bell's self published thoughts on flower arranging of more relevance than George Dyson's?
But look.  You don't need to suit me.  I'll just carry on editing as I always have.  When my contributions are judged as harmful to the encyclopedia, I'll have worked out that what I'm editing isn't really worth my contributions anyway. I think whilst this debate rages, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of articles where breaches of the more fundamental point, that of WP:NPOV, are being committed and allowed to fester. Whatever you write here isn't going to stop that. Hiding Talk 11:17, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: An earlier version of this proposal had 'expert' in place of reasearcher. What happened to that? JulesH 14:10, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Someone said define expert, at a guess.  Most likely there was a point made about how anyone can call themselves an expert and so it was defined as such.  Like I say, why not simply state that Where a person who would normally be regarded as a reliable source self publishes material we can rely on it to a certain extent.  However, the material should concern the field in which the writer is held to be a reliable source.  Further, it should be considered that there may be a good reason no reliable third party has published the material. If there is reasonable doubt about the reliability of a self-published source, or the relevance of the material to the subject matter, don't use it. Hiding Talk 14:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That leaves the question of when a person "would normally be regarded as a reliable source" -- how do we make this determination?  The current solution is to let reputable publishers make it for us. JulesH 14:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: When a person has multiple works published by reputable publishers, and also self-publishes material that concerns the same field, we may be able to rely on the self-published material to a limited extent.  Nevertheless, there may be a good reason that no reliable third party has published the material. If there is reasonable doubt about the reliability of a self-published source, or the relevance of the material to the subject matter, don't use it.  Robert A.West (Talk) 17:46, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure I like that solution.  The current policy doesn't require the author of a self-published source to be previously published, and I'd hesitate to introduce any new restrictions like that which could potentially invalidated sources in existing articles. JulesH 23:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: It's not just comics