Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Archive 25

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IMDB as a source?

This issue is coming up enough that something about it should probably be established. Maurreen (talk) 19:34, 6 March 2010 (UTC)

Not really. The filmography is probably going to be reliable, but using it as the single source for a biography would be deeply suspect. It is user-generated, any information aside from the filmography cannot be relied on. Fences&Windows 21:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not saying what should be established, just that *something* should be established.
Instead of people having conversations about it in umpteen places, we would have a policy, guideline or at least central discussion. Maurreen (talk) 21:43, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Where has this been discussed most (conclusively/recently/historically/etc)?
I tried searching the first 4 pages of (search: IMDB prefix:Wikipedia:), and found these potential sources (Wikipedia:IMDb, Wikipedia:Citing IMDb, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 40#IMDB, again (July 2009), Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 22#IMDb (September 2008), those last 2 include numerous links to previous threads), but am unsure which are most pertinent, and don't have time to read them currently. Mention of IMDb is noticeably missing (currently) from Wikipedia:WikiProject Films/Resources.
Just a prompt for pointers and/or summations, please and thank you. :) -- Quiddity (talk) 23:18, 6 March 2010 (UTC)
Recent discussions are at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#IMDB and Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people#IMDB. To the degree that there is a consensus, it agrees with F&W above -- "The filmography (or credits) is probably going to be reliable, but using it as the single source for a biography would be deeply suspect. It is user-generated, any information aside from the filmography cannot be relied on." Maurreen (talk) 03:35, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I hadn't realized the existence of the pages listed by Quiddity, especially Wikipedia:Citing IMDb. But apparently a number of other people didn't either. So we need to make it more prominent. Maurreen (talk) 03:44, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
A big problem with citing WP:Citing IMDb is the {{failed}} at the top. Even a change to {{essay}} would be an improvement. Flatscan (talk) 04:48, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Duh, OK, I guess I didn't miss anything after all. :) Maurreen (talk) 05:46, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
I think the "Disputed uses" section of that page overstates the amount of dispute there is for cast listings that are "not WGA certified". It's my impression that a few editors muscled their opinion of IMDB being completely unreliable, causing the proposal to fail. Read its talk page for more background.
I do think the issue of what IMDB is reliable for needs fuller discussion than has taken place so far; that failed proposal was only discussed amongst a small and strongly opinionated set of people.--Father Goose (talk) 08:23, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
Internet Movie Database is not a reliable enough source to cite in Wikipedia articles, but it is a good jumping-off point for research. IMDb can be used as a resource to find credits, which are typically not disputable by anyone, but caution should be used when the film is less mainstream. It is popular enough to recognize as an external link for various purposes, though. The horse is dead and has rotted away; are we really going to resume beating the carcass? Erik (talk) 16:00, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
i tend to look on IMDb as a tertiary source per WP:RS "Tertiary sources such as compendia, encyclopedias, textbooks, and other summarizing sources may be used to give overviews or summaries, but should not be used in place of secondary sources for detailed discussion." translation: source, but prefer better secondary sources. if you think it's not reliable you need to review WP:RS. Pohick2 (talk) 22:14, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
This is a weird case because the best source for credits info is probably primary sources -- on-screen credits -- which is where IMDB claims to get most of their credits info from.
I have yet to see a horse carcass. My impression of what has been "decided" about the use of IMDB has been of the WP:CONLIMITED variety. I for one would like to see a well-designed, well-advertised RfC on the issue to really put it to rest. (I say well-designed because there needs to be a clear distinction between the different types of info IMDB hosts, some of which may be reliable, some of which are clearly not.)--Father Goose (talk) 23:30, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
A good starting point is WP:CIMDB. Please link me to the wheel-reinventing RfC when it happens. :) Judging from the reason why the original poster brought this up, though, it has more to do with citing IMDb in actors' articles. Should the matter not be brought up with WT:ACTOR, then? I see no notification there. Erik (talk) 01:41, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

So do we want to say the IMDB is usually OK for credits? Maurreen (talk) 05:47, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

Reminding everyone of the last discussion here: Wikipedia_talk:Citing_IMDb#IMDB_as_a_source.3F —Preceding unsigned comment added by Work permit (talk • contribs) 02:38, March 8, 2010
Maurreen, I believe IMDb is usually okay to point to. There is a small subset of information in film and actor and filmmaker articles that is unchallenged (mainly what is in the infobox). WP:V requires inline citations for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, so I think we are lenient about credits. However, if there is reason to believe that there is an issue, it is best to defer to reliable sources and not IMDb for inline citing. One particular example I can think of is when someone questioned the cameo of an actor in a film, and IMDb was not really clear about it. A quick Google search found more specifics, and we cited a reliable source to back that cameo. However, I tend to work in the mainstream area, so I cannot say for sure how much caution to exercise for very minor works. I will say this, though -- just because a work or a person is on IMDb does not equate notability. Significant coverage is needed. Does this cover what you're looking for, Maurreen? Feel free to ask other questions, and I'll answer to the best of my ability. Erik (talk) 15:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
To clarify my purpose -- I rarely or never use IMDB. I rarely or never edit the related articles.
I do get tired of seeing essentially the same discussion come up. I'd like to have something established that we can point people to, that at least adds a little clarity to such discussions.
Whether that something would say that IMDB sourcing should be handled on a case-by-case basis, or whether it would be more strict or more lenient, matters little to me. Maurreen (talk) 22:03, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
In case you're wondering, I am involved in the debates concerning unsourced BLPs, and the issue has come up there. Maurreen (talk) 22:07, 8 March 2010 (UTC)
Credits should be sourced to the film itself, since that's where IMDB supposedly gets its information from anyway. A supplemental source to IMDB (for ease of viewing by the reader) would be nice, but there's no reason to cite IMDB by itself when the most reliable source is the film's own credits. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 21:28, 9 March 2010 (UTC)
The Hand That Feeds You, the thing is that if we use imdb, much information can be added very quickly to thousands of articles. How do you imagine adding that same information directly from on-screen credits? Buying a dvd of each movie you want to create an article about? If you meant to say that we should get that information from imdb and lie that we got it directly from on-screen credits, please see WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT.
What is the alternative? If we agree that imdb is not a reliable enough, what source should we use for that information?--Tired time (talk) 16:12, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Um, Metacritic, Rotten Tomatoes, Box Office Mojo....just to name three. --293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 07:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

Impact factor usable?

Sorry, all of the previous discussions are unreadable, so I'll make it easy. While using impact factor alone to determine reliability is not acceptable, is impact factor a valid thing to look at to determine reliability? I've set up an easy and clear yes/no option.


Yes, Impact factor is a valid variable to look at when determining source reliability.
  1. Hipocrite (talk) 18:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
It should be clear that what is under dispute is not impact factor (citation index scores) on the journal level. The only thing under discussion is impact factor on individual papers. The malleability of the word source, whether it included individual papers or not in 2.1(4) is the cause of the mischief and a great deal of controversy. TMLutas (talk) 00:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
No, Impact factor should not be evaluated at all when determining source reliability.
  1. Any peer reviewed scientific journal should be considered reliable. Arnoutf (talk) 18:35, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
  2. Impact factor is too unreliable, too easily gamed, and controversial even on the journal level (if we had anything better, we would no doubt use it but there is nothing better for journals). It promotes a bad workflow where the initial flurry of news about a paper will inevitably lead to rejected attempts to include and only after a number of months will the paper be eligible for inclusion, if anybody still remembers or cares. This is a sure recipe for ill will if applied to individual papers. TMLutas (talk) 00:30, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Comments
  • "Impact factor" is not clear. Maurreen (talk) 19:24, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
Impact factor will clarify that. Hipocrite (talk) 01:25, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The practice of deciding reliability of individual peer reviewed papers based on their citation index scores is what is under dispute. New papers are being refused inclusion on certain pages (climate science related pages certainly but perhaps others) until enough time has gone by for their "impact" to be judged. There is a page on impact factor that may be helpful. The ability to game the citation system even in the case of journals has aroused some controversy according to that article. TMLutas (talk) 00:14, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this entire debate is a red herring that arose from the belief of some editors that Wikipedia's decision not to include very recent outlier papers in global warming (an article that is under continual pressure to include everybody's favorite hobby horse) was based on unreliability of the paper. Not so. The pertinent policy is the neutral point of view. I think it got caught up with this policy because there are one or two words about weight of sources in this policy. Obviously newer papers, especially those that have no had time to percolate, and especially those that contradict much of the science, tend not to carry an attributable weight, but given a few months we have a clearer view. We're writing an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, so we can afford to wait to see secondaries such as review articles and the like, especially in a situation where there is a problem with recentism. --TS 01:41, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

TS, there is no paper suggested for global warming. There never was. The paper that started it all was suggested in global cooling and deals over several pages alleging upcoming global cooling over the next 50 years. The Talk:Global_warming/FAQ was brought in by the exclusionist side stating that such a paper needed to wait for impact to become clear before being included in global cooling. The FAQ Q22 rests on a particular reading of what the word "source" means, a subject that is appropriate for discussion on this page no matter how things end up at global cooling or at Talk:Global_warming/FAQ. If source = just journals, there is no need to wait because citation index scoring is irrelevant for judging the paper's worth. If source = journals and papers then it makes sense to wait to assemble a citation index score on the paper and no new scientific papers can be added in wikipedia until a (yet to be specified anywhere I can find) ripening time. Anybody can exclude a new paper on any subject for several months. TMLutas (talk) 05:45, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

This is where you and I differ (and you'll be aware that I am the editor who raised FAQ Q22 at talk:global cooling). You continually conflate impact and impact factor, but others have addressed that. Sources in this case means journals, papers, and authors, all three and attempts to reduce the meaning to journals only are unlikely to prevail.

It is of course correct to say that new, as-yet unevaluated papers are far less suitable for inclusion than those whose impact (not impact factor, which is just one metric) is known. This speaks to due weight. --TS 16:11, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

What sources mean is exactly what is under dispute. But how are peer reviewed papers published in an RS journal "as-yet unevaluated"? And we're talking about criteria for exclusion, not how much balancing text needs to be included for a newly published paper. That's the difference between global cooling and global warming. In the former there's plenty of room for the appropriate text and in the latter there is not. But if you exclude it as an RS then you exclude it everywhere and therefore it's not a matter of weight. You can't exclude via WP:WEIGHT. You can only say that there's insufficient room in the article for the requisite balancing text so the paper needs to go elsewhere. TMLutas (talk) 16:43, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
  • I'm inclined to either (1) remove the sentence from the fourth bullet point of WP:RS#Scholarship, or (2) change it to read something like:

    "Individual papers are not considered reliable or unreliable based on impact factor of the journals in which they are published."

    My preference is to simply remove the sentence, at least until the participants in this project page can get clear on what the sentence intends to say. Citation indices are already mentioned elsewhere in that section of the guideline. I commented about the difference between a citation index and impact factor below. ... Kenosis (talk) 17:38, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
This proposal, if I understand it right, would mean that a paper published in Nature would not gain any reputation as a reliable source due to the fact of its being published in Nature. That would be... very interesting to see how it would play out. I confess that I can't see how that could possibly work as a practical matter. Am I misunderstanding you? TMLutas (talk) 23:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
Just above, you asserted "No, Impact factor should not be evaluated at all when determining source reliability." The example sentence I provided is completely consistent with your assertion above, and now you're making an argument against its possible practical effects?
..... A minimum inclusion criterion for a provision in this guideline ought be that the meaning of the provision, and its desired range of effects on the editorial choices of WP editors, are at least understood by the preponderance of those participating in discussing the provision. Further, there should be consensus about the desired range of effects, and that the understood meaning of the provision has a reasonable chance of achieving the desired effects. My reading of the discussion about this sentence indicates to me that no such understanding exists here, nor is there consensus about the desired range of effects. Therefore, I've removed the problematic sentence. ... Kenosis (talk) 00:00, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Question is improperly phrased

"Using impact factor alone to determine reliability" of WHAT? If this is supposed to be a simplified restatement of an unreadable question, it must contain whatever it is that one is trying to evaluate the reliability of. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:51, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

A paper. Hipocrite (talk) 15:37, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
You can't change the question after the beginning of the discussion. Start over. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:39, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
A quick history and several clarifications: After extended talk about various ideas related to impact factor and citation indices, on 20 Feb 2010 TMLutas inserted the following sentence in the fourth bullet point of WP:RS#Scholarship:

Individual papers are not considered reliable or unreliable based on citation index scores.

It sat there for about three weeks, then was changed by Hipocrite on 12 March to:

Individual papers are not considered reliable or unreliable based on citation index scores alone. [emphasis mine]

While I think Hipcrite's edit was helpful, I also think the sentence was potentially problematic from the outset, because its wording gives rise to several sources of potential confusion. First, the words "citation index scores" might easily be confused to mean "impact factor". A citation index involves no scores per se; it's merely a database of the published works that cite to a particular paper. An awareness of the published works citing to a particular paper can be helpful to WP editors in assessing a paper's status w.r.t. WP:WEIGHT, WP:PSTS and to some extent its potential reliability, by allowing WP editors to see its position within the stream of academic, scientific or technical discourse among the experts in its particular topic area. Some papers will have had no works which cite to it, others will have a few, and yet others will have many entries-- but there is no "score" involved. As a general rule of course, we consider peer-reviewed academic, scientific and technical journals to be reliable sources under this guideline and the underlying policy WP:SOURCES, preferable to blogs and papers that are published without any kind of peer-review process at all. But the reality is that countless peer-reviewed journals exist, which exercise varying levels of scrutiny of the material they publish, some of which may be more reliable than others, and some of which choose to publish WP:FRINGE material from time to time. A citation index can be helpful within WP, just one tool among many, in assessing these aspects of a particular published source (research paper or review article).
...... Impact factor is a different thing altogether. It's a somewhat controversial measure of the impact that a particular journal has, derived by a predetermined formula which attempts to use a single number to try to sum up a journal's extent of influence in its particular topic area. (See, e.g., Impact factor#Criticisms.) AFAICT, impact factor is potentially useful in WP only as one tool among many in making an assessment of WP:WEIGHT, and is generally irrelevant to the issue of reliability. ... Kenosis (talk) 16:00, 14 March 2010 (UTC)
The effort to amend 2.1(4) started from attempts by editors to claim that scientific papers that have been peer reviewed and published in RS journals must not be allowed in to wikipedia until a certain amount of time has passed (time period not defined) in order for impact to be determined (method never fully specified but it sounded like impact factor) and only then for the paper to be included. This was asserted as separate from WP:WEIGHT issues. Since I was on the other side of the issue, thinking that papers peer reviewed and published in an RS journal had already cleared the hurdle to be included as RS themselves (absent unusual circumstances), I wanted to know the time necessary and the method used. To this date, these specifics have never been forthcoming. Any effort devoted to amending 2.1(4) should, at a minimum, provide clarity. My edit improved matters. You cannot use this method and, with impact out the window entirely, methods for calculating impact become irrelevant. Hipocrite's edit reintroduced ambiguity by saying that impact could be a factor but not how much of one and without any clarification as to how this could be calculated so that mortal editors could decide whether a particular paper had passed the hurdle.
I would be open to restoring to my edit. I would be open to creating an improved clarification that gives normal editors a method to calculate whether a paper can go in or not before they hit some page campers who knock an inclusionary edit out for 'newness' and 'lack of impact' without ever defining those terms. What I think is a mistake is to leave 2.1(4) so vague that any determined group of editors can use it to keep out minority opinions, or even majority opinions by simply adopting unevenly implemented, arbitrary, and unreasonable standards of how much impact is necessary. TMLutas (talk) 19:15, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, when someone uses the unique turn of phrase "citation index scores," I assume they mean the only time citation indicies are looked at and things scored - ie - impact factor. If TMLutas was saying when he edited this policy was that it is inapropriate to determine if other sources have used the source in question - IE, do other papers cite this source, then I the page itself says, under "Usage by other sources" - "How accepted, high-quality reliable sources use a given source provides evidence, positive or negative, for its reliability and reputation." That is true for every source - if a paper is frequently cited by other papers, that is evidence that it has reliability and reputation. If the paper is uncited by all, that is evidence it does not have reliability and reputation. If TMLutas is trying to usurp that by saying that we should not look at if other papers cite a given paper at all, he's clearly ignored the bulk of this policy. Hipocrite (talk) 14:08, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

It's inappropriate to remove a study because it is new and has not yet been cited on the grounds that it is unreliable even though it is published in a peer reviewed journal that is generally accepted as reliable. That is the behavior that prompted me to come to this page seeking clarification. If an accepted, high quality journal uses a source, a paper, by publishing it, that clears the RS hurdle otherwise why rate journals at all except on the grounds of their editorial content. But editorial content isn't generally cited (though it sometimes is) so even rating for editorial content doesn't make sense.
As a separate issue, you can bring in citation frequency as a comparative filter to determine which study gets cut out of 3 or 4 saying similar things in an article. If my edit was blocking that type of usage then by all means let us get something better so long as there is a recognition that usage of a paper via the peer review publication process by a journal that is generally accepted as reliable makes the paper clear the hurdle unless something extraordinarily bad happened at which point you temporarily throw the guidelines to the side for that special case. This should be very rare. TMLutas (talk) 14:48, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
If the only reason for removing the study is its newnewss and lack of citation then yes, that is not appropriate. However, if the study is brand new, that is one thing to evaluate when determining if it is reliable or not. If a study is frequently cited, that is onne thing to evaulate when determining if it is reliable or not. While it is not dispositive alone it should be evaluated. Finally, you should not take disputes about article to policy and guideline pages - it is pointy and inapropriate to attempt to "win" content disputes by editing guidelines and policies - don't do so again. Hipocrite (talk) 14:59, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Ok, we agree on the position that edits including references to peer reviewed research should not be knocked out because the study is new. That's progress. Given that there seems to be a significant number of editors that you think can do exactly that, do you really think that leaving the door open for them to do it again is going to solve the problem? Would a statement that "peer reviewed papers are, by default, reliable sources" do the trick and replace both my prior edit and your modification of it?
I dispute the idea that I'm being 'pointy' which usually refers to WP:POINT. A quote from there might be helpful "A commonly used shortcut to this page is WP:POINT. However, just because someone is making a point does not mean that they are disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate it, which is the only circumstance under which someone should be warned about this guideline." I have been quite patient with this edit and let you have your way when you started edit warring after your initial edit without any attempt at reaching consensus for your POV. If anybody here is being disruptive it is you by your "edit first, talk later" policy. One of the annoying parts of participating in the climate science edit process on any pages whatsoever is the habit some people have of tossing rule violation accusations around when they simply do not fit. Please don't sign on to that behavior. It is improper.
A final point from me. The heading here is "Question is improperly phrased". Are you ever going to admit that we really should be starting over with a proper question? TMLutas (talk) 17:15, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't believe guidelines should be made inacurate to win content disputes on other pages. I do not agree that "by default," is correct. You did, in fact, disrupt wikipedia to prove a point - you edited a guideline to win a content dispute. This is disruptive, inapropriate behavior, and should not be repeated. If you contend you didn't mean to discuss impact factor when you used the meaningless "citation index scores," then yes, we should work together to determine the appropriate question. However, allow me to be clear - it will be, and will continue to be, appropriate to evaluate the acceptance, and thus, the reliability, of a paper by seeing how many times the work is cited. This is not open for discussion, at this point. Hipocrite (talk) 17:21, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
Hipocrite... I think I understand what you are saying... but I am not sure I agree with it. I don't think merely counting up the number of times a source is cited shows that the source is accepted or reliable... because we need to know the context in which the source is being cited. Some of those citations may well be instances where the source is being cited in the context of not accepting it (for example, referring to the source in order to correct or debunk it). The number of citations can indicate notability... but not necessarily acceptance or reliability. For reliability, we need to look deeper and see the context in which the source is being cited. Blueboar (talk) 18:07, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
It is not acceptable to just count citations and use that to determine reliability. However, it is not acceptable to say that citation counting is not ever an acceptable metric to use in determining source reliability. If a paper is cited 300 times, and a few of those times are reviewed and determined that it's not being cited to refute, is that not evidence of reliability? The old proposal would say that could not be evaluated at all, which is wrong on it's face. Hipocrite (talk) 23:48, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
I came to this page because there were divergent interpretations. I edited the page with the intent to clarify. In good faith it's perfectly appropriate to say that I did not succeed. It won't be the first time I've had a failed edit and I don't have the kind of ego problem that further edits to my clarification would be a problem. But that give and take to improve Wikipedia doesn't seem to be what you're after.
Your position seems to be that if one sees people in good faith misinterpreting a guideline, rule, policy, or essay to force an objectionable outcome that is actually against the guideline, rule, policy, or essay, it is inadmissible to go to that guideline, rule, policy or essay and fix the text so that the misinterpretation no longer happens. That seems to violate common sense at the very least. Your point is well taken that this sort of thing can go very wrong but it does not follow that necessarily it *will* go wrong. Rule making cannot be entirely disconnected from a practical interplay with content editing situations where the rules have gone obviously wrong.
Frankly, I've long ago ceased to care about global cooling or global warming from a content perspective, seeing the poor conduct and misinterpreted rules as being much more in need of correction than some paper that may or may not hold up. There is no real content dispute to worry about. The paper and edits related to it are more useful in terms of testing the rule and making sure that the process works right after the edit because edits to this page are like open heart surgery in the middle of a triathlon. I've been hesitating over this edit for a very, very long time. Whether the global cooling gets in or not is of minimal importance to me by comparison. I wouldn't say that the edit would be pointy, rather that it is an exercise in using intuitive logic to test the rule change on something very unimportant that I'd be willing to sacrifice in the service of getting the rule right. I'm using global cooling because I think it's a hoot that there are global cooling advocates around and that the page really ought to cover them. In the larger scheme of things, who cares. Global cooling advocates are 'dancing bears'. Their existence is their notability until they climb a very tall mountain of evidence going the other way.
Your attempt to take things out of play by simple declaration ("allow me to be clear - it will be, and will continue to be, appropriate to evaluate the acceptance, and thus, the reliability, of a paper by seeing how many times the work is cited. This is not open for discussion, at this point.") makes me ask, who died and made you king of Wikipedia? The non-hierarchical nature of editor rights to bring up points of view is very basic to the existence of this project. If you don't get that, you really need to study the subject a bit because your ignorance is embarrassing. Your POV may very well carry the day and with caveats I may even end up agreeing with you but no subject germane to the page is "out of bounds" to be brought up on talk so long as it serves the purpose of improving the page. TMLutas (talk) 23:43, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

For purposes of this guideline, a reliable source is one that is good enough to consider using in an article. Reputable academic journals are reliable sources, and that includes all the papers that they contain. If someone justifies a new claim in an article based on an unreliable source, such as an anonymous personal website, any editor would be justified in removing the claim without even reading the source, or spending 5 seconds thinking about whether the source might be right. Sure, some papers that appear in reputable journals turn out to be wrong, but unlike unreliable sources, they are worthy of examination and comparison to other reliable sources. Unreliable sources deserve no consideration at all. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:31, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

True that among the most important differences in level of general reliability are those between "reputable" journals that are "peer-reviewed" (normally by reviewers in the same field who are typically paid a modest fee by the journal to at least preliminarily vet the material prior to publication), and, on the other hand, blogs, tabloids, etc., with sources such as mainstream newspapers and popular magazines, whether in paper or online, generally being somewhere in the middle, at least as far as scientific, technical and specialized academic topic areas are concerned. These basics are, of course, already fairly well covered in WP:SOURCES and in this guideline page. Within WP, the "reputable academic journals" are reliable sources, as Jc3s5h says, because the policy and its derivative guideline WP:RS specifies them as such. The standard WP:Consensus process is, of course, the procedure by which the also-consensus-based policies and guidelines such as this one provide ground rules for the local consensus process to implement on a case-by-case basis. The conflict here, at least as I see it, originated in an attempt to further legislate these decisions on this page which runs across the entire wiki, starting out of a purely local conflict in only one topic area. Yet each participant in my estimation has provided some kind of insight into this situation, which is something I've appreciated seeing.
....... For argument's sake at least, I personally am willing to completely grant TMLutas' point that this extensive hullaballoo started essentially because one or more editors applied an incorrect criterion to a local situation that was already covered by other policies and guidelines such as WP:WEIGHT and WP:PSTS. And, if I correctly read the protracted series of varied and frequently inconsistent assertions, arguments, counterarguments, and counter-counterarguments leading up to here, from the getgo there was a great deal of confusion about what is actually meant by terms such as "citation index", "impact factor". This appears to me to have been exacerbated by several proposed attempts I was able to find online which attempt to "score" article-citation-index results in a way that is similar to what the controversial "impact factor" does with journals-- none of which have thus far become widely accepted in academia as criteria for reliability. (The citation indices are merely a guide that identifies which published papers, if any, have cited to a given paper or review article. If there are no entries in the citation index, the paper or article tends to be either new, or so easily dismissed that no other researchers care to even bother to comment. As Blueboar attempted to convey above in this talk-page thread, one needs to actually look in more depth and further analyze the actual works which cite to a particular paper or review article to derive further information other than that the particular paper has been noticed by authors of other papers).
....... This WP:RS-turned-WP:IRS guideline will, I trust, continue to evolve as WP policy-and-guideline participants gain an increasingly fine understanding of the various ways of parsing relative reliability, as opposed to, say, "either it's an RS or it ain't". But for now, it seems to me that a minimum prerequisite for provisions in this guideline should be for participants in this project page to possess a workable, readily shared understanding of what the applicable terms actually mean, and to have at least a rough idea of what the reasonably foreseeable range of possibilities is w.r.t. helping to guide WP users how to try to fulfill the intent of WP:SOURCES. I also think it's important to remember these are guidelines, not bright-line rules to account for every disagreement about every wiki page. Perhaps in the not-distant future a more widespread understanding of the various indices and proposed "factors" will allow a clear statement about a preferred method for dealing with attempts by various analysts to reduce citation indices to a handy formula. For now, I should think, perhaps best not to try to "over-legislate" such things. ... Kenosis (talk) 04:45, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
You have mistaken my intent. I wished, and still wish to maintain what I understand is the existing consensus to be in the face of an effort in at least one content area (but also perhaps others I am not aware of) to misinterpret WP:IRS 2.1(4). I do not wish to make new rules, to legislate as you put it. I'm seeking clarifying language to stop what I view is wrongheaded behavior by a significant number of editors that violates existing standards and is eroding the uniformity with which this section is interpreted across Wikipedia. I don't want the rule to change one bit, merely to stop being misinterpreted. The number of editors doing it is so high that I despair of ever carrying this point through except with the addition of clarifying language. If given a reasonable alternative that's less risky than changing WP:RS I would have moved ahead with that months ago. I have literally run out of alternatives so I'm left with sit down and shut up and let the misuse to continue or to go here. Give me a better alternative. Give me a better edit that establishes the long-standing consensus in a manner that even WMC and co cannot get around and I'll happily go with that.
The real world experience of the current rule is that you see a paper, note that it's peer reviewed, publish an edit, and get reverted quickly with a throwaway reference to one of the 9 rules referenced above in the original discussion on this page. If you persist in talk and knock down the irrelevant ones, the only one that does not get exposed as inappropriate ends up being this one for the linguistic reasons many times covered already. So let's at least fix the problem of the language so the next good edit that runs through this gauntlet of objections will end up disposing of all 9 bogus reasons. TMLutas (talk) 02:12, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
Does this edit help? I removed the words "number of" which might imply more importance is to be placed on the number of citations in an index than on the context of the citations to a given paper. I think it's fair to say that was part of my point and, if I understood correctly, that of Blueboar as well--i.e., that the number of citations to a work only tells us that it's been noticed by other authors, but to get more useful information we need to look at the context(s) in which the paper or review article was cited. ... Kenosis (talk) 03:11, 18 March 2010 (UTC)
It doesn't hurt so I'm not reverting it. It sidesteps the issue of whether a source is a paper. I've thought a bit more about the subject and have suggested that it should be made clear that 2.1(2) instead of 2.1(4) is the proper standard for papers. I can't see any construction that works otherwise. TMLutas (talk) 17:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

perhaps the issue is material v source

I looked at 2.1 in toto anew and noticed something that might resolve the issue a bit better. 2.1(2) says "Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." This has been around since at least February of 2009 and not touched by me so can we agree that there's a consensus on this? If papers are "material" and not a "source" then the problem posed by 2.1(4) seems to go away. The problem ends up being that papers are being misdefined as sources and coming under 2.1(4) instead of material and handled under 2.1(2). I don't feel too badly about that since a number of other editors missed the exact same thing.

But if papers *are* sources (and not to be handled under 2.1(2) ), what is scholarly material that is published and subject to peer review? TMLutas (talk) 06:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

There is a long backstory to this which can be found further up and on further referenced pages and policies at the link. The nub of the issue is not *whether* to deny inclusion on a page but how it is to be denied. Whether a study that is peer reviewed but new and a bit out there should not be deemed reliable anywhere in Wikipedia until its influence on its field is determined or shall it be shunted off to specialist pages dealing directly with its minority position and kept off the main topic summary page directly because too much balancing text would be required, ballooning the article beyond any reasonable limit. TMLutas (talk) 17:11, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

  • TLDR. What specific change do you propose in this guideline? If you are using the talk page of this guideline to agitate for changes in an article, you are using this talk page inapropriately, and need to stop doing that. Hipocrite (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
I looked up TLDR, not being familiar with the acronym. I take it back. If you didn't read the back story, you've no business commenting. Especially since you took part in the linked text when you reverted the original edit I had made. It is you, personally, who created the controversy by reverting my edit. Now not only did you create the controversy by that revert (without prior talk to gain consensus) you now claim you haven't bothered to read the relevant talk because it's "too long". Please stop imitating a bull in a china shop. Either go to the trouble of reading the relevant text or stay out of a topic that is too complicated to retain your interest. Blindly editing without understanding the issues is *not* helpful and that's been your history. TMLutas (talk) 20:16, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

"not likely to be challenged"

Why does it say "...that is challenged or likely to be challenged..."? Why not just say "everything"? What kind of thing are we talking about that would not be likely to be challenged? Stuff so obvious that no one could honestly disagree, or that no one would bother stating in a reliable source? I'm trying to understand the point of this clause. Is it trying to open some leeway for statements so obvious that no one notable would ever have published a sourse for it, like...well, I can think of several examples, but first I think it's best if someone else first gives me an example of the kind of statement that they had in mind when this clause was written, or if not, some explanation of the purpose of this clause. Chrisrus (talk) 05:53, 20 March 2010 (UTC)

There's some gray area, but here are a few examples:
  • George Washington was the first president of the United States.
  • Pi can be approximated as 3.14.
  • Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico. Maurreen (talk) 06:00, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
Thank you. I see what you mean. But that type of statement is easily sourced, so the only reason I can think of not to source them would be lack of necessity, like, why bother? But it's a bit lazy; we COULD easily source it, but it's more trouble than it's worth. I was wondering about statements that are obviously true but you find it necessary to say for some strange situational reason, yet they are the kind of thing that lie underneath sources, as tacit assumptions everyone agrees on. I'm reminded of the kind of thing they forgot to teach the computers when they were working on artificial intelligence, such as the fact that after people are dead, they don't go to work anymore, or some such, how could you site such things? Or how could you site a statement with encyclopedic words to the effect of such as "many people like dogs" or "books covers may have different colors"? I apologize for if the examples seem farfetched, but I'm trying to think of something that would be too obvious to cite, because no reliable source will have bothered to come out and say such a thing in so many words, knowing as they do that their readers are humans with some worldly experience, not AI programs that only know what you tell them. Is this a reason for the inclusion of the clause on this page?
Here's my point: do you think maybe this clause needs a little expansion?Chrisrus (talk) 06:31, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
No.
As far as I know, lack of expansion has not caused any problems. Maurreen (talk) 07:31, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree, the wording is good and useful even if not satisfactory for a court of law. I suspect the intention is to protect articles (and editors) from silly [citation needed] tags that could be applied to most clauses in every sentence. A consensus on a talk page might decide that it is (in the context used) necessary to cite "Pi can be approximated as 3.14", but the consensus could justifiably conclude that the request is unwarranted. Johnuniq (talk) 00:49, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
You may be right, but not when you say that a consensus on a talk page could change anything, because all that is needed is that it "be challenged", even once, by anyone, and out it goes, even if everyone else agrees. You can get together on a talk page and reach consensus that something shouldn't have been challenged, but you can't get together on a talk page and reach consensus that it hasn't been challenged by just one person, no matter how blatantly unnecessary the [citation needed] tag is. Chrisrus (talk) 13:25, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
This is simple folks... Do good preliminary research; line up your sources before you write an article or add material to an existing article; and cite those sources as you write. Base everything you write on the sources (ie don't write first and then go looking for sources for what you wrote... start with the sources and then write based on those sources). If you do this, you don't need to worry about frivolous citation requests... because everything you wrote will already be cited.
You don't need to cite every sentence or every statement... if an entire paragraph or section is based on one source, you can cite it at the end. But use common sense... some statements are likely to be challenged without a citation right next to them... in which case give it a citation (even if that statement could be covered by a citation at the end of the paragraph). Blueboar (talk) 14:05, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Experienced editors should try to do as Blueboar says. But this is a wiki. We let people add unsourced knowledge as they feel motivated to contribute such. We don't preemptively require sourcing. To do so would break our Wiki editing model of incremental improvement. There is evidence that most of our content isn't written by people who carefully add sources, it's written by people contributing their knowledge freely as they feel motivated to do so. If someone adds something dubious, it can be removed, and if anyone wants to readd it, then they are forced to find sources or leave it out. That's the basic framework for how things get written. It's nice when people do add citations when they add information, but to require it would go against the wiki process of imperfection leading to gradual improvement. A commonly cited principle is that we "tolerate things that we do not condone". That used to be in one of our policies, but I can't locate which one right now. In any case, I think it's still good guidance for those who can't fathom why we do what we do. Gigs (talk) 20:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

I think about five or six years ago, we had a page that specifically encouraged people to "write what you know." Maurreen (talk) 05:40, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

I decided to return to this topic after reading Wikipedia:BLUE. I think that readers of this article should be directed to this page for more information about where no citation is needed. Chrisrus (talk) 20:20, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Back to parent topic

Back to the original topic, about whether news organizations are only good for names and dates, well, there's all kinds of news organizations. The top tier, such as the Washington Post, BBC, Wall Street Journal, Agence-France Presse, Stratfor, Economist, and so forth tend to publish a lot of analysis and background pieces, not just breaking news. For certain topics, like articles about political or business practices, these types of sources are usually the best ones. The mix of how much to cite to news sources depends on the article; a botany article might cite very few news sources, while an article about a current event would cite mostly breaking news reports. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:18, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Google Maps

I am wondering if Google Maps is a reliable source if one directly links to the actual map they want to show. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 11:00, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

That depends on what you are using Google Maps to source. Google Maps is reliable for a statement that a road exists, and runs from Muchkintown to OZ City, but it is not reliable for a statement that the road is paved with yellow bricks. Blueboar (talk) 13:17, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
The satellite view might be. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:12, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I was going to show that a road, in this case an interstate, borders a certain town. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 13:19, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Why? Blueboar (talk) 13:25, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
I need it as a reference on the Roadways section of the Stephens City, Virginia page. It will help to visually show that the road, Interstate 81, is in fact, on the east side of the town and U.S. Route 11 traverses the town from north to south. Also it will show that Virginia State Route 277 ends in Stephens City. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:17, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Is there doubt about this fact? Is it something that has been challenged or is likely to be challenged? In other words, does it really need to be sourced? (and as a related issue... is this information that needs to be included in the article, or is it road-crufty trivia?) Blueboar (talk) 18:32, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I am trying to get the Stephens City article up to Good Article status, so I think they are just wanting a reference to be honest with you and nothing more. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 18:40, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
In which case, I would suggest simply removing the roadways section entirely... it really isn't that important to the broader topic (which is the city). Blueboar (talk) 18:49, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
I originially added it because I was trying to make the page look like all the other towns. I found some references and Google Maps was kind of a secondary reference. Thanks for your help though :) - NeutralHomer • Talk • 18:57, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Made in USA

Enterprise in the USA grew strong on the idea, that good quality work (and a solid education) is a waste of time: nobody needs to produce things to last a thousand years if they get thrown away in five (years, months, days). WP implements this principle (lousy work only means: room for improvement) with some success. An encyclopedia used to be written by people who knew everything about their subject, half of WP (I am not talking about the hard sciences or entertainment, sports, tv, manga, rock etc.) is written by people who know either nothing or very few things about their subject. So you have to have ISBN numbers to be sure the books are not only imagined and to give sources for every fact, because the suspicion is, the WP authors simply make them all up. Quality control in industry means: contol, that quality is not that high that it will cost too much. But this is not all wrong, WP can only be a success with (nearly) all its amateurs given a free reign (only obvious Vandalism is not really tolerated).--Radh (talk) 07:47, 24 March 2010 (UTC)

It seems to me that there are as many non-American as American Wikipedians. I encounter a large number of Brits, and far more Canadians and Australians than one would expect given the smaller populations of those countries. Maybe most Wikipedians are Americans, but it's basically a very international thing that has evolved in the way that it has not because the editors are American and so do things in an American way so much as because that's the nature of Wikipedia to settle on a "from mediocre to excellent" progression. Certainly "Made in the USA" is a mediocre way of characterizing Wikipedia, if not lousy. Chrisrus (talk) 14:08, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
There's a few things us American editors could say about the Brits, if you really want to go there. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:22, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Does this diatribe have any point to make, beyond "please use ISBN numbers when possible"? The rest of it seems to be just (insultingly) repeating parts of Wikipedia:Why Wikipedia is not so great, which we already know... -- Quiddity (talk) 18:21, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

If your book isn't really a book you might help the trade industry by reading it? "Lousy work" in this case means "absolute made-up rubbish". What would be the point in an encyclopaedia that is made up mostly of untrue information? See Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not for things made up one day ~ R.T.G 09:58, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Which article is absolutely made up rubbish? Chrisrus (talk) 13:46, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

News Organisations section

I have made an edit to the section about news organisations. It is poorly defined and needs some concensus and expansion to define it clearly. ~ R.T.G 18:26, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Dmcq's revert. I am also concerned about giving the impression that all news organizations are reliable sources. Each source must be examined individually for its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Dlabtot (talk) 18:53, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be possible to say a few things about what news organisations are good for and not? I think it is obvious that their first area of expertise is in events and critques of art and sport, and then graduates out from there. A lot more could and should be said in that section as newspaper reports are often the focus of dispute, should we add it? Should we not? etc. ~ R.T.G 19:16, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I agree with Dmcq and Dlabtot. I think we cover news organizations well... saying that they are generally reliable and not going into details. Sometimes less specificity is actually a good thing. Blueboar (talk) 19:22, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
Sources, citations, and the text they support have to be examined on a case-by-case basis. Dlabtot (talk) 19:31, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
They may need examined on a case by case basis but they should have some guidelines for doing that. It's sadly lacking, in that respect, in what might seem the most hotly debated area. There are definitely areas in which news organisations tend to have expertise. There are definitely areas in which they do not. Guidelines are intended to guide you into editing in the most agreeable manner. Writing "We're not very specific," "Make it up there," is not really a guideline at all and is in fact contrary to quite a few other guidelines. Is Wikipedia not capable of producing the broad standard of news paper reliablity or guide to evaluation? There is a project section on the reliablity of news organisations for video game article sources and they evaluate hundreds of publications on a case by case basis, making this page look pathetically weak in the same area. It does not define or even hint at how to evaluate. Newspapers are wrangled over on every talkpage at one time or another and I want to know why, and I want to see that why on Wikipedia. Otherwise I just can't trust Wikipedia about the subject, can I? I mean where is it then? I will have to find the information somewhere else, even if I am trying to apply it to Wikipedia, right? That's a simple but yet effective defeat of purpose. If that is not the purpose of this page it should be moved to another title because there are definietly no clues to help us identify reliable news sources. ~ R.T.G 20:54, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
A lot depends on the article. A local newspaper is a good source for local stories, but some editors will use them as sources for articles that have no connection with the paper's location. For example, a small-town newspaper in New Zealand should not be used for articles about Washington politicians. But high quality publications like the Times of London are good sources for news stories anywhere. Another problem is the tabloid press. While they may fact-check, they publish lots of trivial stories. If these stories are not picked up by the mainstream media, then they fail notability. The Four Deuces (talk) 21:49, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
RTG, there's a difference between evaluating news sources and saying that news sources are better for X than for Y, which I think is what you wrote in your edit. Which of these are you after, or both? Maurreen (talk) 23:46, 25 March 2010 (UTC)
I am only after one but they both make sense to me. Wikiproject Video Games are doing something similar for a long time on hundreds of sources. It's not perfect but they do intend to evaluate every possible source and that for which it is or is not reliable and they are much of the way through their list at this stage. The first expertise of news agencies is in events, that is undeniable and unequivocal. The second is in critical review, on the artistic, ease of use of something, enjoyability of another etc. At the second stage they become possibly contradictive. After that they become less suitable as a definitive source although they branch into everything with some reliability. Editors should be informed about these little things before being expected to evaluate anything. If you just say, "Some of them are high-end. Now, away you go and evaluate everything." That's not hindering anyone but it's not helping either. And a project evaluating sources in a similar manner to the Vidoe Games project sounds great. It's all encyclopaediac, what sources are reliable for what etc. It could go on forever but what harm in evaluating some? ~ R.T.G 00:31, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Note:Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Sources. ~ R.T.G 00:37, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Or better, the page telling us how to review:Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources with notes on limitations and long lists of blacklisted sources etc. etc. ~ R.T.G 00:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
As editors, we shouldn't be making value judgments on these sorts of issues. That the section being discussed here is vague is actually a good thing, because it does not put the encyclopedia in a position where we're choosing (to use an example mentioned above) what are considered to be "mainstream" publications over "tabloids" as a matter of policy. All sources stand before us as equals, until they show themselves to be unworthy (which many do, very quickly). You may not see news organizations as offering good science coverage, but the reality is that they normally provide much better materiel then the scientists do (many of whom can't write. I know, I work with some of them!). Incidentally, I don't know anything more then what you've said here, but it sounds to me as though Wikiproject Video Games is on the wrong track.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 10:16, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Nope. They are actually quite good. I had an arguement about a source with them once but it boiled down to notability like anything else. You should look at it they often weigh the full set of pros and cons about any particular source and list the whole thing in a template. Give it time and next thing you have lists of hundreds all lined up in sections for easy reference with details where neccesary. No reason why you couldn't re-review any of them. Are they snowed under? No way. I've been watching the page and they barely have an edit a day. I don't think it's fair to guide people into evaluating one thing and then just kick them out of the nest for the next. Folk want high quality around here with less hassle. Tell them how to do it in steps if you want it done. Give us examples of right and wrong. Those obscure NPOV sources will all be weighed individually in a multiple arena, i.e. impartial editors galore instead of being reviewed on the talk pages of articles with the topic: Dispute. I would suggest you review the games project page before telling us what track they are on. In fact, the work they have done on templates and style could prove to be a point of reference. I haven't seen any other project doing that before and they have a huge and detailed page dedicated to it, although I would say that they haven't linked to the archived concensus discussions quite well enough. The video games articles are reporting heavily on critical reviews, "reception" sections, scoring and all that so it's sort of natural that they developed this. Why would it be the wrong track? Aren't sources supposed to be reviewed before accepted for use anyway? ~ R.T.G 11:08, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
I don't mind the members of a specific topic project keeping a list of the best sources that cover their topic area, they are the ones who are likely to know the sources well and thus best able make such determinations... but I do have a problem with trying the same thing on a wiki-wide level. Video games and similar pop culture topics are different from academic topics in that there are no academic journals and very few traditional published sources that cover the topic... to source these articles editors must rely on thousands of internet websites that cover the topic. The project needs to establish which websites have a good reputation in the gaming community and which do not... ie which they consider reliable and which they consider unreliable.
However, such a list is not needed in other topic areas... and could, in fact, be detrimental to proper sourcing. I strongly feel that it is best to leave such lists at the project level, and not try to implement the idea at the policy/guideline level. Blueboar (talk) 12:36, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Yea, agreed.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 18:00, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree, project lists of good sources are useful for projects such as video games, music, etc. However, news sources range from high quality top end publications such as The Times and the Washington Post to some extremely low quality publications such as the Daily Star (United Kingdom) and The National Enquirer. Consideration has to be given on a case by case basis as to whether a particular source is reliable for a particular statement. For instance, this story in The Guardian, reports that The Times had apologised for a story about Charles Kennedy and a drinking problem. So in that case it was shown that The Times story was wrong, although in fact Kennedy later admitted a drink problem and stood down as party leader.

Citing news stories about Kennedy during this period (apart from libel considerations) would have been difficult and would have had to be done with care. Was The Times reporting fact or rumour? Was their retraction a consideration of possible libel damages? Was any of it motivated by the political views of Rupert Murdoch? Major news organisations are owned by people who may well have strong views of their own and may influence the way news is reported. So simple guidelines are in my view impossible to draw up. Editors have to learn how to use sources carefully and wherever possible seek out supporting stories from other news providers and even the opinions of news organisations on the reliability of other news organisations. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 19:02, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
Shouldn't all that be in the guidelines where we can read it or do we need an editor on call to check every source personally before we know what to avoid or watch out for? It's probably a good point, about the personal bias in media, and should be where we can all see and contribute to it. This talk page will be archived soon enough and such conclusions will be gone only to need dragged up from scratch some day if it is not put on the gudeline page. The best guidelines are worked over very carefully. I don't know of too many guidelines it is not possible to reference easily even when very long and the possibility of having to revise is a poor excuse for not acting. This guideline has not yet been written only noted to be neccesary. ~ R.T.G 20:44, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Look, the discussion about making a library of source reviews is less relevant. There is already a review of practically every resource on Wikipedia. The whole site is based on it today, 26th March 2010. I hoped to participate in catalogueing source reviews for a moment there. Reviews already exist. Detailed reviews already exist where neccesary for sources such as the old Jewish Encycloaedias and Britannicas, for instance. Listing those reviews in an index would have zero effect on Wikipedia except that they were now all accessable from a list. There is something more important first:-

  • The guidelines on news organisations for sources sucks the whole basket, i.e. it is the crappiest source guidline if not the crappiest guideline overall, and nobody is willing to see it improved. News organisations are the broadest in the range area of "Suitable"->"Not Suitable". You have everything from the Weekly World News to Reuters. To tell me to make up my own mind on the grey area with whoever I bump into on Talk:Santa Claus is just less than a lot of use. If my edit was no good, let's see some suggestions. I am an editor. I need guidelines. Don't send me away from the advice room unadvised or I must write the guideline myself so that the next person can share it. ~ R.T.G 18:52, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
  • What is the name of this page? ~ R.T.G 18:54, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
The Kennedy story does not present a problem. It could be added to his article when it was published but would have to be removed once The Times retracted. The story could only be brought back once later news articles were published. There is a risk that false information may be reliably sourced and relevant information may not be published. But the key is verifiability not truth. The Four Deuces (talk) 20:03, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
The key is guiding people who are trying to identify reliable sources, i.e. "Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources". How do you translate the Truth Vs Reliability in relation to evaluating the raliability of a news organisation? ~ R.T.G 20:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
I disagree... I think the guideline only sucks a tiny bit of the basket. A few tweaks is all that is needed. (and in that direction... I have made some) Blueboar (talk) 20:58, 26 March 2010 (UTC)
I concur with Blueboar's tweak, that seems to give sufficient guidance. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 10:44, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I think that case by case judgement needs to be excercised. We shouldn't say that everything published by a "news organization" is great stuff, but we should be able to recognize that things published by organizations with a high editorial standard are valuable material at least worthy of consideration. I don't support any list of "RS" news organizations, since those kind of tools are open to abuse. Saying that especially the "high end" of the journalistic market is of interest is good. Having said that, there are RS that have high standards, but nonetheless are biased with respect to some issues which brings us back to case by case judgement. --Dailycare (talk) 11:26, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

It is less open to abuse than case by case without reference. If I can get off these talk pages by next week I think I will try making a few subpages by going through the archives and just seeing what it would look like rater than telling everyone we are afriad of something x) ~ R.T.G 20:53, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
It is important to note that having a bias does not equate to being unreliable. Many reliable sources are biased. Blueboar (talk) 21:01, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The "abuse case" I have in mind is that a group of editors would ram e.g. Fox News into this "RS list", and then use it to edit in a biased way. I agree with blueboar in that there exist sources that are factually reliable but biased from an editorial point of view, these issues can be taken into account when proceeding case-by-case but less so with a "RS list". --Dailycare (talk) 19:33, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Right but say that I am reading an article from Fox News about something in New York. It relates to some pokey little article that nobody watches. Fox News is Fox News. I don't know what sort of bias they have. If it seemed to me that they said something significant I would write it into the article. I have no warning about Fox bias and nor would I anticipate one before you suggested it here. I still have no clue how to be cautious about this Fox bias. I still have no clue as to what it might be. I have started a few articles about American topics I know nothing of because they should be included already and that includes biography and politics. You want me not to bother the next time or to check every edit with you first? Wouldn't it be better if I could just look up Fox News on a list and become abreast of any bias or unreliability they might have in advance? Wouldn't such a list be written specifically to suit Wikipedia also, i.e. not only would I have the bias listed but wouldn't I have some advice also tailored to be relevant to Wikipedia editing and reviewed so that it wasn't to be used as a point to restrict freedom of information? It just interests me why one source is good for something or another is not. I think it is as encyclopaediac as anything else but not even nearly covered under one index. I don't recall such an index anywhere outside of conspiracy theorems. Nobody seems to want to do it here but I can't see it as anything less than interesting. I am sure that such topics are often a point of study. For who I don't know :) ~ R.T.G 22:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Examples of the requirement for guidelines

What examples?

I am not sure what that discussion is an example of? The issue seems to be about whether to mention the fact that the Sun's headlines during the Falkland's war were jingoistic ... not whether the Sun's reporting is reliable or not. Blueboar (talk) 03:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

The Sun newspaper of Britain, for instance, is particularly notable for being a historically poor reference but it is the highest selling paper in Britain so many people are going to take it for granted. There are 2,500 pages on Wikipedia that link to The Sun (newspaper), which probably means 2,000 references attributed to it, and not one guideline. It is being used a lot, for instance, as a primary source on critical acclaim of WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) events. Now WWE is the WWF, the big American wrestling body. The Sun is being used as the first reference of critique in quite a few articles. It is being used as the first reference overall for some Southpark episodes, Andrea Bocelli's discography, and for a whole host of things for which it should probably be reviewed. "Articles should be supported by reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." Sources have already been reviewed and get re-reviewed every day with no focus or even much connectivity bar these guidelines. Talk:The Secret Policeman's Balls is hardly the place to review the reputation of a newspaper or tv show only to have it come up again next week on Talk:A Poke in the Eye (With a Sharp Stick), and again here, and again there... Talk pages are for improving articles. Fear of preventing exceptions is no excuse to forego guidance. Fear is no good if you don't face danger. I might not be a big help but I will gladly try if someone wants to start reviewing or cataloging reviews of sources. It requires no permission and seems inevitable. So, think about the waste of time so far reviewing sources throughout the whole wiki only for the results to be lost in the archives all the time. As we take quite a few "high-end" publications for granted, where is the detail on that? I haven't seen it outside of talk page discussions. You have to respect and give credit as well as give caution, that is part of the heart of the open license too, isn't it? ~ R.T.G 09:39, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Nothing discussed here is lost, the archives are searchable. I just checked out the Sun in the noticeboard and found several good discussions on its reliability in specific circumstances. I personally would try to avoid using the Sun for references but editors need to learn how to evaluate reliability. It is part of the process of learning how to become a good editor. Producing lists of good and bad sources would not help. How many news organisations are there on the planet? Millions, and new ones appear daily. Lengthy lists will be ignored as too long to scan. –– Jezhotwells (talk) 10:44, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
The Sun, like all other news sources, is a very reliable source for some things, and not very reliable for others. We review sources at the article level (and not at a Wikipedia wide level) because we need to see exactly how the source is being used in a specific Wikipedia article to determine whether it is reliable or not. The exact same news story might be reliable in the context of one article, and not reliable in the context of another. Blueboar (talk) 13:11, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
I haven't read all of the above, but just want to add that I disagree with trying to pin these issues down. We need to allow space for editorial judgment, and we should also be wary of creating situations where wikilawyers will try to keep sources out because of some wording in a guideline that defines what a news organization is. SlimVirgin TALK contribs 04:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
Exactly. RS covers a very wide spectrum, and what might be a reliable source for a techncial or pop culture article might not be an RS for derogatory information about a non-public figure. We need to keep the guidelines loose for a reason, so questions can be brought to RSN on a case-by-case basis. And for the record, I don't see anything wrong with citing the Sun for articles about professional wrestling or South Park. Squidfryerchef (talk) 16:10, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
So The Sun is the best source on American wrestling? I don't see the sense in that. Would The Sun newspaper even agree with that? There should be a middle ground where we can have guidleines without affecting editorial judgement. It might not be important when first writing WWE Summerslam 2005 but when you wanted it to be a GA or FA it would be important. Most guidelines give us the FA or GA criteria and I don't see anyone complaining about those or over enforcing them. Having the Sun as the major source of info on the WWE or Southpark is like having the Toronto Times as the major source on Syndey Football Club. It just doesn't make sense. There are ample expert Syndey media who, I am sure, report about their football clubs much better than any media in Toronto. How about The Sun reporting on the Superbowl? As the first source? You maight say that you don't see anything wrong with that but to be fair... was there some sort of shortage this week? ~ R.T.G 09:44, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

clarify that articles are material

Proposal: Change the second bullet point of the scholarship section.

current text: Material that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.

proposed text: Material, such as an article, that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable; this means published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses.

This should clarify that articles are not sources, which has been asserted by some editors. TMLutas (talk) 19:03, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Comments

  • The word article could be read to mean wikipedia article. I assume that is not what you mean. Yaris678 (talk) 19:11, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
I meant an item that would appear in the index of a source. Do you have a better term? I've no objection to using a different word that would be clearer. TMLutas (talk) 02:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
  • There appears to be some confusion in the presentation of this RfC about a journal possibly being what is meant by the words "source" and/or "material", as differentiated from referring to a particular paper or article by a particular author (or authors), when the words are used to describe WP:RSs for citation purposes. Take the following two papers from the same journal, Nature:

    (1) Frank Keppler et al, "Methane emissions from terrestrial plants under aerobic conditions", Nature 439, 187-191 (2006) 12 January, 2006, and
    (2) Watson J.D. and Crick F.H.C., "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid", Nature 171, 737-738 (1953) April 25, 1953.

    Are these the same "source" or "material"? ... Kenosis (talk) 19:35, 29 March 2010 (UTC)
Nature would be a source, Frank Keppler et al would be an article. The former would be governed by the 2.1 section, bullet 4 and the latter by 2.1 section, bullet 2. I believe for the vast majority of editors, this is no different than today but there has been confusion on the part of some editors that both Nature and Frank Keppler et al would both be governed by 2.1 bullet point 4. I'm not wedded by any means to the formulation I suggested. Propose another so long as the confusion is resolved. TMLutas (talk) 02:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
That's certainly not the way I'm accustomed to thinking about these words. But I don't see the harm in adding the extra clause. I'll go do that right now. ... Kenosis (talk) 02:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
OK, done, here. While I'm thinking about it, I'm going to be bold and make another more substantive edit to that bullet point, having to do with presuming reliability of facts presented in a paper based solely on getting published in an academic press, as opposed to having been more thoroughly vetted by the scholarly community. ... Kenosis (talk) 02:38, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
OK, here's that follow-up. I imagine there may be some discussion and perhaps argument about this one, but I think at some point it needs to be dealt with in this guideline in some form or other. ... Kenosis (talk) 02:55, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Please be careful not to create a conflict with WP:V, which states: The word "source", as used in Wikipedia, has three meanings: the piece of work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, The New York Times). All three can affect reliability. Blueboar (talk) 03:15, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
Thanks, will do. Appreciate the note of caution. ... Kenosis (talk) 03:17, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
I'm not quite sure what the point of the second edit is. What is the problem it is trying to solve? TMLutas (talk) 13:59, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Exceptional claims require exceptional sources - Redirect is wrong?

I think the redirect for "Exceptional claims require exceptional sources" may be wrong. I've started a discussion here.[1] A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:11, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixed (now redirects to the same section in WP:V) Blueboar (talk) 01:31, 30 March 2010 (UTC)

In the article on Tony Lema, the golfer, it references his hometown as San Leandro, California. This information is incorrect. Lema's hometown is Oakland, California. Oakland was where he was born and raised. My source is Lema's brother and sister who I interviewed two weeks ago.

Paul Brekke-Miesner —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.106.16.123 (talk) 18:42, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

Photographs as references

Three times the last two days I've come across photographs used or suggested as references at WP:GAN. This ranges from complicated assessments derived from old postcards (see Landing Masonry Bridge) to photographs on the Commons of "official" monuments with text. Other ideas have been launched to use photos of trains to document their liveries. Are these acceptable? Arsenikk (talk) 21:27, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

In general (without investigating your particular examples) I would say that secondary sources with an analysis of a situation are required in order to interpret a photograph. An example would be Moon landing conspiracy theories where people would like to take a picture of a flag on the moon and say that x and y seen in the photo demonstrate that it is a fake and the landing did not occur (or the opposite). Clearly an analysis by someone with a clue is required, rather than editor or blog opinions (and the "someone" needs to be a reliable source). Even a photo of text needs an analysis (a reliable source might point out that in the next chapter, an opposite conclusion was reached). Johnuniq (talk) 00:29, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
If a reliable source has analyzed a photograph, we can mention what that source says and cite it (and include the photo as an illustrative image). What we can not do is include our own analysis of the photo in an article (that would be Original Research... see WP:NOR). Yes, you can cite a very obvious descriptive statement about what a photo depicts to the photo itself... but as with any primary source, great care is called for. Blueboar (talk) 03:33, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

How to document that published research has been superseded?

The Guideline currently says: "However, some scholarly material may be outdated, superseded by more recent research, in competition with alternate theories, or controversial within the relevant field." Unfortunately, it gives no guidance as to how to convince an editor that the sources being cited have been superseded and are now obsolete. There is some discussion of outdated sources in the archives [2] [3] but it doesn't address the issue of identifying unreliable (outdated) sources.

Often the situation exists where there is a long tradition of claiming X until new research demonstrates that X is not true, and then scholars stop discussing X since it is no longer an issue. For an editor to evaluate the claim that X is not true seems awfully close to OR but a naïve count of sources would leave the impression that there is this large body of scholarship asserting X, and only one or two sources denying it.

Can't the problem of outdated sources be addressed more explicitly in the guidelines and if so, how? Thanks --SteveMcCluskey (talk) 19:11, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think it can... determining whether a source is outdated is really a matter of discussion and consensus at the article level.
Please note that WP:OR applies to what we say in the article, not what we say on a talk page. In a discussion about the relative merits of sources, some degree of OR (and POV) is necessary.
A word to the wise, avoid the words "true" and "truth" on Wikipedia... better to phrase it as "an evaluation as to whether source X should be considered outdated, and thus no longer accurate or reliable, given what is said in more recent sources Y and Z". Blueboar (talk) 19:59, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Is Bloody-Disgusting a reliable source?

I've read articles that contain references leading to bloody-disgusting and now someone is saying that bloody disgusting is a "questionable source", is it a reliable source or not? heres the link: http://www.bloody-disgusting.com/

Usernamemehr (talk) 19:10, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

  • No. Guy (Help!) 19:17, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
Two points:

Hamsa.org

Can the above website be used as an RS? I reckon its not, but wondering if others would have a different opinion. The site had been used for a few wiki articles [5] but mostly anti-Christian. Cheers Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 11:39, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

According to the [About Us] page linked on the website, the site is edited and authored by Ishwar Sharan (aka Swami Devananda Saraswati). It would, at best, qualify as a self-published source (with all the caveats and limitations that go with that)... It might be usable for an attributed statement as to the author's opinion. However, that depends on whether the author and his opinion are worth mentioning. So... the broad sweep answer is: no, not reliable... but the more exact answer is: reliable only for statements about itself and its author. Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Much appreciated. Wiki San Roze †αLҝ 13:58, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eric Ely (2nd nomination)

There appears to be a test case forming at AFD centering around WP:BLP1E vs WP:RS/WP:N. If you are interested, please visit the discussion Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Eric Ely (2nd nomination).---Balloonman NO! I'm Spartacus! 14:21, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Open wikis as generally unreliable

First of all, what do we mean by "open wikis"? If a wiki uses mw:Extension:FlaggedRevs, and has a substantial base of volunteers, working under the aegis of a respected organization like Wikimedia, acting as reviewers, is it still "open?" I recently nominated MediaWiki for good article, and it failed largely because it extensively cited MediaWiki.org, which uses FlaggedRevs. Wikipedia has been shown by studies to be about as accurate as Britannica despite not even having flaggedrevs, so shouldn't MediaWiki.org be considered to be even more of a reliable source?

It doesn't seem right that so much perfectly valid information should be excluded from the MediaWiki article, or that it should fail GAN, just because MediaWiki.org is a wiki. A wiki is just another means of collaborating, and many of the users who collaborate and review articles at MediaWiki.org are the foremost MediaWiki experts. Some of the information in that wiki doesn't seem to be duplicated elsewhere, because there is no need to do so when you can just get it from the horse's mouth — especially when there is capability, through wiki editing, to keep that horse's mouth much more up-to-date than would be possible when referring to static sources. Should we exclude emails and books too from being reliable sources, simply on the grounds that anyone can write whatever they want in an email or a book? Reliable sourcing policy seems to be unreasonable and behind the times. Tisane (talk) 19:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

MediaWiki can certainly be used as a primary (self-published) source in an article about MediaWiki. But like all primary sources it should be cited sparingly, with extreme care, and for limited things (see WP:SELFPUB and WP:PSTS for more on this). What you need to find are reliable secondary sources that discuss the topic... sources that are independent of Mediawiki. Blueboar (talk) 20:43, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

MoS naming style

There is currently an ongoing discussion about the future of this and others MoS naming style. Please consider the issues raised in the discussion and vote if you wish GnevinAWB (talk) 20:53, 25 April 2010 (UTC)

The American Conservative magazine

Is the The American Conservative magazine a reliable source? There anti-immigrant hysteria, as seen [6] can hardly be viewed as a a neutral or fair source.--TM 21:22, 29 April 2010 (UTC)

We can not answer this without knowing what it is being used for. Specifics matter in determining reliability. For example, it would definitely be a reliable source for a statement as to what is contained in the magazine itself (although this does not address the slightly different question of whether a specific article should discuss what is contained in the magazine)... it probably could be considered a reliable source for a statement as to what a prominent Conservative politician has said. It might not be a reliable source for blunt statements of fact about immigrants... but might be fine for an attributed statement as to someone's opinion about immigrants (see what I mean about specifics being something that matters?) It would help if you could tell us the article and statement you are thinking of... or show us a dif. Blueboar (talk) 22:07, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
The Magazine is overwhelmingly and uncritically critical of Somali immigration to the US. It states, as the opening sentence, "The deconstruction of America is well underway." and continues later on to say "The latest community to enjoy the delights of Third World mass immigration is Lewiston, Maine...". The tone is overwhelmingly negative and written more like an op-ed than a not totally biased anti-immigrant piece.--TM 01:19, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
The paper may be somewhat critical in tone, but the facts it presents and which are relayed in this article are indisputable: The US government really has begun relocating upwards of 12,000 Bantu refugees in cities across the United States, most being small, sleepy towns like Lewiston; welfare and social assistance spending in Lewiston really did shoot up since the migration; the mayor really did write a letter critical of the immigrants' presence; other towns really did balk at accommodating the Bantus after Lewiston.
If we examine the actual statements that are specifically sourced to that paper which are included in the Wikipedia article, we come away with the following statements of fact (not value judgements):
  • "Most of the early arrivals in the United States settled in Clarkston, Georgia, a city adjacent to Atlanta, but the latter contend that they encountered problems there with local criminals."
  • "Somalis subsequently began trickling in to the former mill town, soon followed by hundreds of Bantus over a period of just a few months."
  • "Welfare spending quickly doubled. Public housing, although also available, now came with a waiting list due to demand by the influx of refugees."
  • "The letter angered some persons and prompted some community leaders and residents to speak out against the mayor, drawing national attention. Demonstrations were held in Lewiston, both by those who supported the Bantus' presence and those who opposed it."
These statements of fact are easily verifiable elsewhere (e.g. 1, 2), so I don't see what the fuss is. If the paper had been used to advance value judgements or if it were perhaps an unverifiable dead-link, then I could understand. Middayexpress (talk) 02:15, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
something that is important to realize... the "tone" of our sources does not affect whether it is reliable or not. In fact, reliable sources are allowed to be biased and non-neutral. We should be unbiased and non-neutral in how we present the information we include, but our sources do not need to be. Remember, bias is often in the eye of the beholder... what one editor may call an "unbiased source", another editor may call an "overly-politically correct white-wash" (ie biased), and a source one editor thinks is "biased and skewed" may be thought of as "fair and balanced" by another editor. Blueboar (talk) 21:17, 30 April 2010 (UTC)
If all of the "facts" to which the AmCon mag are supported elsewhere, which is not true, why do we need it at all? It makes original claims which are not backed up by other sources. For example, no other article I have read can expressly say that Somali migration is directly linked to an increase in welfare benefits. When an article uses extremist and hyperbolic language and makes original claims, how can it be viewed as a reliable source of information?--TM 00:03, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
As has already been explained above by two separate editors now, the paper may be critical in tone, but it is ultimately up to Wikipedians to ensure that it is used in an NPOV fashion. You again complain about some value judgements you believe the paper makes. However, this is irrelevant since none of those value judgements have been repeated in the Wikipedia article that makes use of this paper as one of its sources. The actual passages in the Wikipedia article that are sourced to that paper are clearly listed above; and they are all strictly statements of fact, not value judgements. You now argue that one of those statements is, in fact, a novel argument not featured elsewhere; specifically (and rather incredibly), that welfare spending increased considerably as a result of the migration. Actually, this too is well-documented, which should not come as a surprise since the resettlement of around 13,000 Bantu refugees in U.S. cities by the U.S. Department of State, with the help of various aid agencies, constitutes the single largest resettlement project ever from Africa (viz. 1). Middayexpress (talk) 03:39, 1 May 2010 (UTC)
Please note that this guideline does not require the use of any specific source. We want the most reliable sources possible. So, if you feel that some other source is more reliable for a specific statement than the one used, you can certainly discuss this on the article talk page and see if there is a consensus to replace one source with another. All we are saying is that sources do not need to be neutral... we do. Blueboar (talk) 11:26, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Types of sources?

I'm curious why the section on types of sources gives specific attention to scholarly sources and news organizations, and little or no attention to other types, such as books. Is that because these because these have been more problematic? This could be read as these are the only two types of sources. Maurreen (talk) 18:13, 1 May 2010 (UTC)

Ease of access to source?

Is there a WP policy on ease of access to a source? IE purchased scientific journals, documentaries/TV shows which you may have had to purchase to source material? Is a source invalid simply because the general public doesn't have access to it legally? (assuming it has shown up on youtube or filesharing?) Thanks! Max.inglis (talk) 15:18, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

The need to pay to access the source does not disqualify it - see WP:PAYWALL. However, YouTube videos are not usually acceptable and I imagine the same would apply to file-sharing sites, because there is no guarantee someone hasn't tampered with them. Barnabypage (talk) 17:29, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
There is an essay, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Cost, but I don't know of a policy that addresses this explicitly. Please note that legal access is different from free access. We all have legal access to the National Electrical Code because any member of the general public may purchase it. We do not all have reliable legal access to Barack Obama's birth certificate, because the State of Hawaii will only sell a copy to certain persons who are authorized by law. (Of course there are copies on the web, but they are often disputed).
Even though there is no explicit statement I know of in policy, it is generally accepted that any published source, that is, available for purchase or inspection by the general public, is acceptable from the ease-of-access viewpoint. (But, there might be other reasons for rejecting it). Otherwise, books, magazines, and newspapers could not be used, and Wikipedia would be the laughingstock of literate people everywhere. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:39, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
WP:PAYWALL does address it explicitly. Requiring payment is not a problem. Barnabypage (talk) 20:04, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
To clarify, I wasn't suggesting that a link to youtube or a file-sharing site was appropriate, just that thats where some or many may have seen said source, given that it might be paid-access. Its moot now, since another editor found a copyright-free version of the video in question (as opposed to the video in question, embedded within another broadcast) but thanks for the info. Max.inglis (talk) 22:05, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Great - glad it's all been sorted out. Just out of interest, what was the article in question? Barnabypage (talk) 23:22, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
Further, if a YouTube video is posted by an identifiable organisation, record company, news outlet,rather than a pirated copy, it may be RS for an opinion, etc. Needs to be examined carefully, case by case –– Jezhotwells (talk) 02:17, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Will It Blend? is a prime example of an article where YT content might be highly appropriate. --GenericBob (talk) 08:01, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

The article in question is PETA. There is a quote from Ingrid Newkirk where she says "Our goal is total animal liberation". The only source I could find was a video of her saying it, however that video was only (seemingly) available in an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit!. The argument was whether it was WP:RS or not, based on that fact it was in embedded in the show. It was not edited unfairly or misleadingly, but some of the pro-PETA editors felt it wasn't RS. We found a video posted on VIMEO by PETA itself with the whole speech embedded, so the problem has been worked around, but I was annoyed that after losing the argument about RS one editor decided to question my edit history, because I've had several to the PETA page, about 30% of my total edits (including talk pages, which were the vast majority). So I was just looking for justification from more experienced editors to put the link in. Perhaps someone with the experience could work this sort of example into the article? Thanks! Max.inglis (talk) 17:08, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Never mind about the example thing, I see WP:V has an example about ease of access to source. While I think that covers it, I wonder if a specific example or policy about documentary video and/or other video types should be included. Max.inglis (talk) 17:11, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
Youtube isn't an RS per se, but really the original source you tried to use was the actual P&T show. The only question may have been whether the youtube and/or P&T version was a fair and accurate representation of what she said, ie was it in context, edited for effect etc? That may make either the YT version or even the P&T version of the speech unreliable. The whole speech, published by the organisation, would be a [WP:SPS]], but acceptable for reporting her views. WP:V explictly states that accessibility is irrelevant, as long as it's publicly available. --Insider201283 (talk) 17:37, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

Is an organization a reliable source of informations about the organization?

An organization claims to have 2 000 000 members. No independent source confirms this information. Only 5% of the alleged members pay their fees. The organization is financed by the government and its leader is a politician, so the high alleged number of members helps to get financing and be reelected. Xx236 (talk) 08:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Best thing to do is state that the organization claims to have two million members, and cite it. Someguy1221 (talk) 09:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
So you mean that POV of leaders of this organization is "reliable" and critics aren't allowed?Xx236 (talk) 10:57, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
That depends on who the critics are... According to WP:NPOV we should mention all significant POVS. Someguy's reply only covered the claims of the organization because you did not ask us about what to do about the critics. To answer it now... you should do the same thing with the critics. Say what they claim and cite them. Blueboar (talk) 12:26, 11 May 2010 (UTC)
The leader is a government minister and organization has/had a large amount of influence in Germany's eastern foreign policy. It is under considerable media scruity, there would be a huge cost in credibility for both the organization and the leader if they were forging numbers. - Schrandit (talk) 17:17, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Foreign-language sources

What's our policy on foreign-language sources, which we cannot translate? For example, http://www.jhelumnews1.com/jhelumnews/show.php?id=6195 Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:08, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

We prefer English sources over sources of comparable quality in other languages. The quality of foreign-language sources will sometimes be higher than that of English sources because they may be closer to a topic. (It can also be more biased for the same reason.) Of course a source can only be used if someone who understands the language and has access to the source adds it. In cases of conflict about such a source it's best to draw other speakers of the language into the discussion. Hans Adler 12:41, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Per WP:NONENG, anyone may request that the editor adding material cited to non-English sources provide a translation of the source which supports that material. The translation and the original source should be included in a footnote, or on the talk page if it's too long. We prefer translations made by reliable sources over those by Wikipedians. Crum375 (talk) 12:57, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. Is there a template for making such requests, along the lines of {{Fact}}? Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:49, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Reliable sources— some of these babies are ugly

[simulcasted to wikien-l]

"Though he remains the president of the Wikimedia Foundation," ... "'He had the highest level of control, he was our leader,' a source told FoxNews.com. When asked who was in charge now, the source said, 'No one. It’s chaos.'"[7]

In the classic tradition of WP:POINT violation I very much want to go around to the "Wikimedia", "Wikipedia", and "Jimmy Wales" articles editing them to reflect these surrealist "facts" as reported by this "Reliable Source"... but that would be needlessly disruptive. (And I fear similarly inspired people would continue that initiative, grotesquely smearing Erik to reflect the repeated libel from prior articles.) So, for the purpose of discussion, imagine that I did.

Many of us have long been aware that the reporting in some professional media frequently has very little connection to reality. Many of us know that they usually perform little to no fact checking, and seldom even run their final drafts past someone with any experience in the relevant area for a sniff test. Since they apparently no longer suffer even the most minor harm from publishing some of the most outrageous errors, why should they? In particular, the online editions from many of these organizations appear to be fairly comparable to randomly selected blogs. Presumably they feel that they are just matching the qualities of their competition. So why do we treat them differently?

I don't believe that this is, by any means, only a problem with Fox although they might be the most obvious and frequent example.

Wikipedia reports what people say, not the truth of it— but we could report the words of a random blog in context exactly as we do Foxnews.com. We have an ethical obligation to not further misunderstanding when we know better, which is what I always saw as the most important justification for treating some sources as lesser than others.

We know high-profile groups with a reputation to lose are going to take more care to get it right, and that their errors are more likely to trigger others to publish corrections. We could reasonably speculate that their journalists' affiliation is primarily to the truth, and this might not be as true of other information sources. We can also argue that the views, even false ones, from a major news provider are obviously more notable.

But I can't say that these points really apply in many cases that we appear to be applying them: We would reject as reliable sources many hobbyist blogs (or even webcomics) with a stronger reputation to preserve, less obviously-compromised motivations, and _significantly_ greater circulation than some obscure corner of Fox News's online product. What can be the explanation for this discrepancy?

Can we really continue in denial when these so-called 'reliable sources' make such obvious and egregious errors about our own projects?

If nothing else, is it possible to write a circulation based criteria which reflects the reality that not all parts of a source have equal exposure?
--Gmaxwell (talk) 14:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Srsly.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 16:30, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


The Wikipedia's basic policy is subtle: you simply make sure you represent all points of view. Fox's point of view is neither unimportant enough to ignore, nor important enough to be overrepresented. Simply represent all points of view fairly: WP:NPOV now more than ever. It doesn't matter that they're garbage POVs half the time (particularly here). Simply include all the evidence and the reader will usually see that anyway.- Wolfkeeper 17:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
We don't have to do anything special. In fact I'm sure it's a bad idea to do something special. If we get trolled, people troll us all the more. We need to be like 'you say we have porn?', thanks! We've added that comment to the article. This guys over here says we don't. We added that as well. This guy over there says we have safe harbour, added...' etc. etc. 90+% of the sources aren't going to be trolls. It evens out. It really does. I know it's hard sometimes to believe in the Wikiway, but it works better than you ever expect. In principle wikipedia doesn't work, it only works in practice.- Wolfkeeper 17:08, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps needless to say, there have been many arguments across the wiki about the reliability of this particular news organization (Fox). On this guideline page, there has been a trend towards providing guidelines assessments of comparative reliability, e.g. w.r.t. academic and scientific sources, which has to a growing extent become part of the guideline language (and I think it still remains to be seen how stable and useful that language will be in the long term). Here, though, w.r.t. news organizations we run into the long-standing guideline language that essentially says "mainstream news organizations" are presumptively RSs, at least as opposed to self-published sources, blogs and the like. Bottom line, I'm afraid, is that the local consensus process determines pretty-much on a case-by-cased basis whether a source "has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" per WP:SOURCES. Wherever Fox News material is involved the topics are almost invariably controversial and commonly subject to edit warring and talk page arguments which often include the question whether Fox is a reliable source. What commonly happens is that editors seeking to include material from Fox cite it as a "mainstream news organization" and therefore a reliable source, an argument that's hard to refute due to Fox's immense size and influence. I doubt the countless arguments in countless articles over whether Fox has such a reputation can be settled from this guideline page. The most common outcome I've seen in controversial articles is to simply note in the body text of an article something to the effect that "Fox News reports that [fill in the particular assertion here]".

I'm sorry to say I find it hard to imagine that there'd be consensus for changing the presumption that mainstream news organizations are, prima facie at least, to be regarded as reliable sources. I would, though, think it appropriate to offer an explicit reminder in WP:IRS#News organizations that large or "mainstream" media sources must meet the same policy provision as all sources must, which is that a source must have "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". ... Kenosis (talk) 17:17, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, you're describing a process that basically works. Pretty much no source is ever completely unbiased on everything, but it evens out nearly always.- Wolfkeeper 17:39, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
Wolfkeeper, except we don't present all points of view: for example, we routinely exclude and de-emphasize sources which aren't considered reliable sources, and for good reason.
I think it would be an interesting exercise to figure out the origin of the prima facie expectation that all output from notable news media is a reliable source. Is this really a rational conclusion? I think the abundance of evidence may suggest otherwise.
It's important to distinguish between a front page expose or a headline story and website filler material. Not only are the former cases more likely to be reliable, but they are also more likely to get fixed than the latter. Yet we treat it all the same. I think this is probably unwise: the trend appears to be to 'fill' online publications with the news organization's idea of "blog grade" material, sometimes explicitly labeled as blogs and sometimes not. Is every single thing with the Fox brand equivalently the output of a "mainstream news organization", even obscure editorials tucked into the corner of their site? I don't think so. Finding a way to distinguish their least reliable products might remove the pressure to outright exclude less reliable publications.
I'm especially concerned with the "source washing" that can come with low-quality journalism. We don't usually tolerate some outrageous claim dropped sourceless into an article (Some people say...), but a crap tabloid can make up something whole-cloth and assert "Sources state X", and we'll glibly repeat it— and in that process we've lost much of the benefit of sourcing: that at least someone has taken a degree of responsibility for the claim and that readers can evaluate the source's credibility. A court wouldn't admit anonymous hearsay, perhaps we shouldn't either? --Gmaxwell (talk) 20:57, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
That's kind of what I'm getting at below- just because a source is purported to be "reliable" doesn't necessarily make it so on all subjects. As far as I'm concerned, "Reliable source" doesn't mean "blindly include its view in all articles", because there are some sources that are very reliable for one area, but not for others. Sometimes, editors have to use their heads to determine whether a "reliable source" is reliable in that particular instance. The Blade of the Northern Lights (talk) 22:15, 15 May 2010 (UTC)


What with this fox news story being copied all over the place, and "unarmed"(according to BBC and CNN) red-shirts firing mortars and grenade launchers in Bangkok, I'd say that this was a pretty bad week for journalism. --Kim Bruning (talk) 02:21, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

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