Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 1

message: I copied Oliver's procedure to the article. Needs tweaking, but it's a good start. I added checking the talk page, which seems obvious, but should be said.
Personally, my procedure is slightly different, I've realised:
# Check with sources in article, talk page, and other easy stuff.
# If can't verify easily, copy statement onto talk page - ask if anyone has an easy way of verifying this.
# If no response after a few days, make a further effort to verify - this might involve emailing someone, or heavy googling, etc.
# If still can't verify, move statement to talk page - say that I removed it as unverifiable.
Oliver's procedure has my stages 2 and 3 the other way round, but I think my way is often more efficient, especially if an article is being edited by lots of people who know more about the subject than me, or if the author is still around. Martin
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In general, I find that I agree with most of what Eloquence and Martin have said.  I like Oliver Pereira's checklist, though shortcuts may well be appropriate in some cases.  And I can see Tim Starling's point in many areas, especially that material should not be removed simply because someone happens along and can't verify it in the first two minutes of checking. I also see his point about long-term verifiability.  I have this to add:
* Fact checking is tedious, time consuming, and not particularly rewarding.  It is unfair to make later editors dig for sources, particularly when the initial content is questionable.  Those who write articles likely to be deemed in need of fact checking (because of obscurity, implausibility, novel nature, controversy, author conflict of interest, or author reputation) should expect to assist by providing references, ideally when the article is first written.
* For an encyclopedia, sources should be unimpeachable.  An encyclopedia is not primary source material. Its authors do not conduct interviews nor perform original research.  Hence, anything we include should have been covered in the records, reportage, research, or studies of others.  In many, if not most, cases there should be several corroborating sources available should someone wish to consult them.  Sources should be unimpeachable relative to the claims made; outlandish claims beg strong sources.
* Similarly, sources should be reasonably readily available. They needn't be on-line, but a check at a suitable library (perhaps a specialist library for in-depth articles on certain scholarly topics) should turn up a suitable source.  Interlibrary loan is widespread, and it should be possible to check anything of remotely encyclopedic interest that way.
Kat 23:13, 11 Aug 2003 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oliver's procedure 

message: I copied this from the obscure topic talk:criticism of Prem Rawat because I thought it gives a good example of a debate of this difficult question. I hope that general guidelines can be expanded soon to cover first hand accounts. Andries 10:28, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: [..] Are there any standards for what is quotable or not quoatable?  If tomorrow an exfollowers alleges this or that and writes in Usenet a "testimony", is that quotable? --Zappaz 15:40, 10 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Zappaz, I think the guidelines are out there in the collective consensus more or less amorphously, even if not explicitly stated. From my background I tend to approach things from the standpoint of legal evidence rules, and whether or not this material if it were offered as evidence could be shown to a jury. Hence I refer to those "indicia of reliability." We can see the difference between the Dettmers allegations, which I support for inclusion, versus the notion of Prem Rawat knowing of Jagdeo's activities, which I don't. With Dettmers we have someone whose organizational title gives plausibility to his having had personal access and knowledge, and who tells a fairly detailed story of specific events, for example a drunk and abusive Prem Rawat offending a particular woman on a particular occasion. I didn't include that here because it's not particularly informative, but it means Dettmers is daring to put out specific items that he knows are subject to being specifically tested and disputed, by counter-testimony, corroborative documentation, discrepancies in the details he gives (similar to an alibi), whatever. He says, "I was there and this is what I saw." Now, the guy may be lying through his teeth, but we can't say he's assembling conclusions from other people's info without a basis in his own personal experience. With the Jagdeo thing, by contrast, there just is no one and nothing that pins down Prem Rawat to knowing about it. That's the kind of inference we keep out. Even in Dettmers' stuff, I left out his characterizations—Prem Rawat is a coward, Prem Rawat is abusive, there is a climate of fear around him—because those are of no help to us; instead, we can read the specific events Dettmer claims to have witnessed and decide for ourselves. I did put in one characterization, about Prem Rawat being not cynical but instead believing himself beyond restrictions, because that characterization goes against the more obvious one of hypocrisy being drawn by other ex-premies, and so the very fact of it coming from our witness is somewhat informative. So, to (finally!) answer your question, if an ex-premie gives a testimony on usenet tomorrow, before including it we would ask, Is it specific? Is it testable? Does it come from his personal observations, and not someone else's hearsay? Do the testimony's or the person's situation make it plausible that he might be telling the truth? Is it corroborated? [..] --Gary D 23:13, Sep 10, 2004
I agree that this is a very useful comment.  But -- helpful as it is, it is of limited use.  Different sciences for example have different standards than a law court (indeed, in the US criminal and civil courts have different standards).  We can draw on the above for ideas, but we can't apply it strictly to Wikipedia, which is not a court.  Applying these evidentiary standards might be appropriate in some cases, but if we try to use this for articles in social science or the humanities we will only stir up unnecessary conflict. Slrubenstein 17:35, 27 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Copy from a debate about an obscure topic about first hand accounts of events

message: After some discussion on Wikipedia talk:Confirm queried sources, I would propose the following to replace the "suggested procedure for verifying content". Thoughts? -- Beland 02:27, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed amendment 

message: An important policy discussion has started concerning ways in which our content-related polices, such as NPOV, No original research and Verifiability could be better enforced. I've made a proposal to give the Arbitration Committee the ability to consult Wikipedia users who are knowledgeable in   subject-areas that apply to cases before them. Such consultation is needed due to the fact that the ArbCom does not by itself have the requisite knowledge to easily tell what is NPOV, original research, or a fringe idea in every field. Please read my proposal at  Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RFC#Alternate solution #9 by mav. Content subcommittee and comment. Thank you! --mav 02:50, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/RFC]] 

message: I've tightened this to remove a few weasel words (Some say, Other[s] say, etc.) and off-topic talk about what should be included.brenneman(t)(c) 02:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes to [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Obscure_topics|obscure]] section 

message: I'm sure that the section noted above is good, but is it necessary?  I'm for "shorter is better".  brenneman(t)(c) 23:40, 25 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Verifiability#Verifiability.2C_not_truth]] 

message: is the line about tape recording a conversation with Stephen Hawking meant to be a joke? if so it's in pretty poor taste. Nateji77 06:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure when exactly it was added(you can check the history if you want), but I agree, it is in poor taste, and it's not necessary.  I've reworded it to make the physisist, like the theory, unspecified.  Thanks for bringing it up. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:13, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Because I'm crazy, I took the time to track down the insertion of the example.  It was moved by Uncle G from WP:NOR, where it was added by Slrubenstein from the draft version of that page.  On the draft version it was (originally, as far as I can tell) added by SlimVirgin in this edit at 17:36, 8 December 2004.  Interesting.  And people claim you can't tell where the text on Wikipedia comes from.  Sigh. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:40, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hawking example 

message: Hi Jesse, I removed the topic because it's potentially confusing. It says: "If an article covers a subject which has never been written about in published sources, or which has only been written about in sources of doubtful credibility, it is difficult to verify the information." Well, that means it must not be written about — so why are we even mentioning it? SlimVirgin (talk) 07:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That makes sense.  Let me try and rephrase it.  How 'bout this version?  I've slimmed it down, and made it more clear that subjects with no reputable, published sources should not be included in Wikipedia. The part I value is the description of obscure topics: "never been written about in published sources, or which have only been written about in sources of doubtful credibility" and the connection being made to NOR. JesseW, the juggling janitor 07:45, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good to me. — mark ✎ 09:21, 29 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Me too. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:51, 30 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obscure topics