Wikipedia talk:Verifiability
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
On 21 October 2008, Wikipedia:Verifiability was linked from Slashdot, a high-traffic website. All prior and subsequent edits to the article are noted in its revision history. |
|---|
 |
The project page associated with this talk page is an official policy on Wikipedia. Policies have wide acceptance among editors and are considered a standard for all users to follow. Before editing this page, please make sure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss on the talk page. Always remember to keep cool when editing. Changes to this page do not immediately change policy anyway, so don't panic. |
 |
This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot II. Any sections older than 10 days are automatically archived. An archive index is available here. |
Contents |
[edit] "Warning" signs on bio. pages and nomination for deletion
Have added a large number of {{Unreferenced|date=August 2008}} and {{BLPsources|date=August 2008}} to a large groupe of players in the swedish top league, aka Allsvenskan, i myself is a major fan of Halmstads BK, also a team in Allsvenskan, and have made major contributions to that teams and players articles, i am trying to improve all articles regarding to Swedish top fotball, Allsvenskan and Superettan mainly, and was hopping that some user and IP numbers would help if i added this tags, this however havent happend and i feel that i know to little about some players to writte theire bios on my own. I also added this signs to the articles since i dont feel like they reach the demands on Wikipedia regarding bios. So now i wonder how long i should wait before i put up a bio. page for deletion or if there is something else i should do instead? --> Halmstad, Talk to me 21:17, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Blogs associated with published periodicals other than newspapers
Footnote 5 says:
- "Blogs" in this context refers to personal and group blogs. Some newspapers host interactive columns that they call blogs, and these may be acceptable as sources so long as the writers are professionals and the blog is subject to the newspaper's full editorial control. Where a news organization publishes the opinions of a professional but claims no responsibility for the opinions, the writer of the cited piece should be attributed (e.g., "Jane Smith has suggested...").
I assume his is applicable to blogs associated with other published periodicals, e.g., magazines, correct? For example, Information Week, a reliable source, publishes a number of blogs by its writers. TJRC (talk) 19:26, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
- Correct. Blog collumns hosted on the website of any media outlet (newspaper, magazine, TV network, etc) should be treated exactly as if they were in the printed/aired version of the media outlet. Generally this means that they would be considered "opinion" pieces... reliable if attributed as being the opinion of the collumnist. Blueboar (talk) 20:07, 22 December 2008 (UTC)
-
- Actually, Blueboar, the hosting address is not enough. Take for example this blog (Spanish language) by the head of Scientology in Spain, hosted in the "la comunidad" section of the website of the El País newspaper. I thought at first the facts reported there were good to cite with all the considerable authority of El País, until after some digging around I realised that anyone can open a blog account on the elpais.com website ([1]). The la comunidad section of the website is basically a feature comparable to blogger. We have to verify in each case who the author is, and whether they are a staff member of the paper or not. Jayen466 13:51, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] "challenged or likely to be challenged"
The words "challenged or likely to be challenged" are in bold in this policy, and yet there appears to be no guidance on what actually constitutes a good-faith challenge. While it is understandable that the burden of evidence lies on the editor adding or restoring content when it is challenged, a common but mistaken interpretation of this policy is that there is absolutely no burden on removing content. This policy is often used to justify removal of content that no one really disputes for the sole reason of it being unsourced, or to justify the mass removal of large swaths of content just because it is unsourced, or the person removing it doesn't like the sources being used. But if this was the way this policy was intended to be used, the bolded words would be unnecessary; it would be equivalent for it to simply say "All material must be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation." It is a huge waste of editors' time to force them to find sources for things which are undisputed common knowledge; or to force them to continually "prove" to the remover that the sources justify the content, when the person removing the content doesn't want to bother making any effort to find and look at the actual sources. It is my opinion that this policy, or at least a guideline, needs to clarify that material cannot be challenged for the sole reason that is is unsourced, or by an unsubstantiated opinion that the source is not reliable or relevant; it should be required that the person removing content needs to demonstrate a good-faith belief that the information is false, unverifiable (not just unverified), or harmful. And that once a source is cited in good faith, the burden should then fall upon those challenging the content to actually try to find and look at the source themselves, and to provide a good-faith explanation of why they think the source doesn't exist or is unlocatable or is unreliable or doesn't say what it is claimed that it says. Any thoughts? DHowell (talk) 06:16, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
- Essentially this is an aspect of the never ending inclusionist vs. exclusionist debate. Another way of phrasing this aspect is Verifiability vs. Verification. I think the wording of the policy is a nice compromise between these two positions... To add information it simply must be verifiable (meaning that it can be verified... not necessarily in a given Wikipedia article, but somewhere.) However, if you do not provide actual Verification (ie a citation) that information can be removed. In other words... The threshold for inclusion is Verifiability; the threshold for removal is Verification.
- Remember, just because you think a statement is obvious or is common knowlege, that does not mean everyone else will agree. My feeling is that if someone has bothered to delete material because it is unsourced, that constitutes a good-faith challenge. Sure, there may be more polite ways to handle the situation than summarily removing the material from the get go, but summary removal can be justified under WP:BOLD. And ultimately, a simple edit summary of "Unsourced" is enough to make challenging unsourced information legitimate. To return the material you must either cite a source (which should be easy to do if the material is obvious or common knowledge), or convince the challenging editor that a source is not needed.
- If, on the other hand, someone summarily removes material that is sourced, that is a different matter. Remember that the challenge may have been made in good-faith (a typical example of good-faith removal of sourced information is when an entire paragraph or section can be cited to one source... the citation may be stuck on at the end, and the challenger may not realize that it applies to the entire paragraph or section.) In any case, if the material is sourced, you have a legitimate reason to contest and revert the removal (noting in the edit summary that the removed material was sourced, and requesting further discussion on the talk page). Blueboar (talk) 19:04, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
- DHowell, is it safe to assume that you're in a current dispute? Would you like to tell us what article(s) are involved? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:52, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
-
-
- A challenge is a challenge. If an idea is not verified and it is challenged it should be removed. The burden in removing content is a burden of the content not being verified and the challenger being dubious or concerned. No more is really needed. The idea is to err on the side of not spreading false information. If someone is challenging things to make a point or to be disruptive then that is something to be handled through behavioural policies. Chillum 23:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for your responses. This isn't really tied to any specific dispute, it is more of a general feeling based on observations of various disputes, especially calls to delete articles on the basis on them being "unsourced", even when sources have been shown to exist. Something that bothers me is the excessive removal of content without a proportionate amount of actually looking for and using sources to improve content. It far easier to remove something than to look for a source and verify it; and thus perhaps for every 10 editors removing content, there might be one actually looking for sources (yes, that's just a wild-ass guess based on personal perceptions), and at that rate a lot of valuable content will be simply lost to attrition. One of the problems is there is nothing in policies or guidelines to help us distinguish between real good-faith challenges and "challenging things to make a point or to be disruptive"; it seems to take something to level of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Episodes and characters 2 for any sanctions to even occur, while mass removal of content less egregious, and yet still disruptive and pointy I believe may be happening on a regular basis. But since any removal of content can theoretically be justified by WP:BURDEN, this makes such disruptiveness and pointiness difficult to determine and defend against. One has only so much time to spend looking for sources. DHowell (talk) 08:22, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
- A challenge is a challenge. If an idea is not verified and it is challenged it should be removed. The burden in removing content is a burden of the content not being verified and the challenger being dubious or concerned. No more is really needed. The idea is to err on the side of not spreading false information. If someone is challenging things to make a point or to be disruptive then that is something to be handled through behavioural policies. Chillum 23:01, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
- In most cases, AfD will not delete an article simply for lack of sources, especially if people can demonstrate that sources do in fact exist. However, it is then up to those who want to keep the article to fix the problem... ie to actually add the sources. If no one cares enough about an article to actually fix the problem and provide sources, after an AfD has noted the problem... the topic is probably not notable enough. Blueboar (talk) 16:53, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
- Blueboar I would respectfully but strongly beg to differ with your characterization of people "[not caring] enough ...[to]... provide sources". For several months I worked on trying to provide sources for two articles (Joseph Murphy (author) and Church of Divine Science). To suggest that my failure to provide sources is because I didn't "care enough" is erroneous at best and insulting at worst. Such an attitude is based on a faulty assumption that any needed reliable sources are easily accessible online. Take for example the following text from the currently {OR} tagged WP article on Murphy:
-
"Dr. Murphy was Minister-Director of the Church of Divine Science in Los Angeles for 28 years, where his lectures were attended by over a thousand people almost every Sunday."
-
- Certainly a claim of such large attendance requires a valid cite. I know from personal presence at some of these lectures that this is a true statement BUT my personal observation is original research and not verifiable to future Wikipedians, so I went looking for a WP:RS. The problem in my case is that because Dr. Murphy was popular but not controversial (controversy is what sells publications) little was written about him and I came to realize that the most potential RS available were from various Los Angeles area newspaper archives from between 30-50 years ago. These archives are not online (some of the newspapers are defunct) and the material by its nature was never going to be headline stuff so the physical search would naturally be very time consuming. I simply do not have the physical or financial ability to spend endless hours in archives located 100+ miles from my home and work. I also requested help from other Wikipedians via WP:REX who have access to such resources but to date only one person with limited resources has discovered anything. Thank you droptone! Unfortunately neither of these sources is adequate. Common sense tells us that citations must exist and that this author is certainly worthy of an encyclopedic entry but in this case WP:RS and WP:N policies demand citing resources that few people have time or money to access. Low Sea (talk) 22:21, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- Blueboar I would respectfully but strongly beg to differ with your characterization of people "[not caring] enough ...[to]... provide sources". For several months I worked on trying to provide sources for two articles (Joseph Murphy (author) and Church of Divine Science). To suggest that my failure to provide sources is because I didn't "care enough" is erroneous at best and insulting at worst. Such an attitude is based on a faulty assumption that any needed reliable sources are easily accessible online. Take for example the following text from the currently {OR} tagged WP article on Murphy:
-
- I understand sympathize with what you are saying Low Sea ... but this is not what I was talking about when I made my "no one cares" comment. I was referring purely to situations where an article has been nominated for AfD, kept due several editors stating that sources exist, and then no one bothering to actually add the sources they said existed during the AfD. I take that as an indication that no one really cares. In cases such as your's, where there is a good faith effort to locate sources, I have no problem. Blueboar (talk) 23:24, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with Blueboar's comments on the good faith removal of unsourced material and 'no one really cares', a trap (if that's the right word and it probably isn't) I almost fell into when I posted a source for a current AfD and failed to add it to the article (but did when I realised what I'd done). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 07:41, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
- The thing is, "no one really cares" and "no one's working on it" are not valid reasons to delete an article. When someone cites a source to support information, then they should be deemed to have met the burden required of this policy, no matter where they have put that citation (whether it is in an edit summary, a talk page, an AfD, or the article itself). Anything beyond that (i.e. putting in the inline citation) is an editing issue, and our editing policy says we should strive to preserve information, and our deletion guideline says in bold "when in doubt, don't delete". The idea that editors should go around removing and deleting information willy-nilly just because it is unsourced, with out a good and explicit reason to challenge it, is not in conformance with those policies, even if it seems to be supported by this policy. My point is that if that idea were to be supported by this policy, the bold words would be redundant and unnecessary. Most editors do not spend all of their time on Wikipedia and many may not know how to properly cite sources in articles; so just because an article is not perfectly up to standards does not mean no one cares or no one wants to work on it. Personally, there are far, far more articles that I would like to work on than I have the time to work on, so to assume no one cares because they aren't putting forth the effort that you think they should is just wrong. If I cite a source in an AfD, and don't put it in the article, perhaps that's all I had the time to do; it is wrong to then delete the article because I supposedly didn't care enough to add the source to the article. Wikipedia works by many editors making incremental changes to articles (with a few making substanital changes); deleting perfectly verifiable articles on the assumption that no one cares hinders this process greatly. If I don't have the time to make an incremental change, I'm certainly not going to have the time to write the article from scratch; and this has zero to do with whether I care about the article's existence. Just because it is easier to delete than to add the source to the article does not mean it is the right thing to do. WP:BEFORE puts a burden on a deletion nominator to look for sources as well, but for some reason this burden appears not to be taken as seriously as the one mentioned in this policy. DHowell (talk) 05:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
- There's a reasonable middle ground possible. Rather than deleting we could just comment out until a usable cite is found.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
- LeadSongDog, you could also move the text to the article's talk page.
- DHowell (and others), you appear to have confused deleting a single fact -- perhaps a sentence or a single word -- with deleting entire articles. WP:V says that if you think a statement is inaccurate, and it's unsourced, then you should delete the statement. This has nothing to do with whether the entire article is appropriate for the encyclopedia. We won't delete George W. Bush just because a single word is unsourced and probably wrong. We should delete the inaccurate word. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
- There's a reasonable middle ground possible. Rather than deleting we could just comment out until a usable cite is found.LeadSongDog (talk) 06:14, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
- The thing is, "no one really cares" and "no one's working on it" are not valid reasons to delete an article. When someone cites a source to support information, then they should be deemed to have met the burden required of this policy, no matter where they have put that citation (whether it is in an edit summary, a talk page, an AfD, or the article itself). Anything beyond that (i.e. putting in the inline citation) is an editing issue, and our editing policy says we should strive to preserve information, and our deletion guideline says in bold "when in doubt, don't delete". The idea that editors should go around removing and deleting information willy-nilly just because it is unsourced, with out a good and explicit reason to challenge it, is not in conformance with those policies, even if it seems to be supported by this policy. My point is that if that idea were to be supported by this policy, the bold words would be redundant and unnecessary. Most editors do not spend all of their time on Wikipedia and many may not know how to properly cite sources in articles; so just because an article is not perfectly up to standards does not mean no one cares or no one wants to work on it. Personally, there are far, far more articles that I would like to work on than I have the time to work on, so to assume no one cares because they aren't putting forth the effort that you think they should is just wrong. If I cite a source in an AfD, and don't put it in the article, perhaps that's all I had the time to do; it is wrong to then delete the article because I supposedly didn't care enough to add the source to the article. Wikipedia works by many editors making incremental changes to articles (with a few making substanital changes); deleting perfectly verifiable articles on the assumption that no one cares hinders this process greatly. If I don't have the time to make an incremental change, I'm certainly not going to have the time to write the article from scratch; and this has zero to do with whether I care about the article's existence. Just because it is easier to delete than to add the source to the article does not mean it is the right thing to do. WP:BEFORE puts a burden on a deletion nominator to look for sources as well, but for some reason this burden appears not to be taken as seriously as the one mentioned in this policy. DHowell (talk) 05:30, 7 January 2009 (UTC)
- I agree with Blueboar's comments on the good faith removal of unsourced material and 'no one really cares', a trap (if that's the right word and it probably isn't) I almost fell into when I posted a source for a current AfD and failed to add it to the article (but did when I realised what I'd done). —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dougweller (talk • contribs) 07:41, 4 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] Straw poll on 'trial' implementation of FlaggedRevisions
The discussion on the implementation of a 'trial' configuration of FlaggedRevisions on en.wiki has now reached the 'straw poll' stage. All editors are invited to read the proposal and discussion and to participate in the straw poll. Happy‑melon 18:08, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
[edit] RFC at WP:NOR-notice
A concern was raised that the clause, "a primary source may be used only to make descriptive claims, the accuracy of which is verifiable by any reasonable, educated person without specialist knowledge" conflicts with WP:NPOV by placing a higher duty of care with primary sourced claims than secondary or tertiary sourced claims. An RFC has been initiated to stimulate wider input on the issue. Professor marginalia (talk) 06:31, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
