Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard

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This page is for requesting input on possible original research. Ask for advice here regarding material that might be original research or original synthesis. Include links to the relevant article(s). Make an attempt to familiarize yourself with the no original research policy before reporting issues here. You can also post here if you are unsure whether the content is considered original research. Sections older than 28 days archived by MiszaBot II. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, please notify them. You may use {{subst:NORN-notice}} to do so.
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Prostitution statistics by country

The article Prostitution statistics by country seems like a mess of OR. It's inconsistent in what metrics are used, population percentages aren't consistently calculated from the same year as the data, and it compares these separate measurements for some countries against each other. Could use a look from editors familiar with statistics type content. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:45, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the chart as currently constructed is an OR mess. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Titius-Bode Law

Titius–Bode law contains a lot of discussion on the provenance of one of the cited sources (a 1913 article by Mary Adela Blagg), and devotes a portion of the article to suggest, citing only the Blagg source itself, that the article in the ADS and journal archives is a forgery. It seems to use the information contained in the source, but not in a way the source directly supports. Of course, there's always the possibility that it really is a forgery, though if that's the case I'd personally prefer that statement to come from a source that isn't the 'forgery' itself. Regardless, I'm not familiar enough with the subject to know what parts of the discussion of the Blagg paper or the article subject itself should be removed, so I'm wary of messing with the article too much (some parts of the article appear to genuinely discuss the content of the source as intended, but I'm not sure where that starts and ends in the article structure - the forgery suggestions seem mixed in pretty deeply to me). — Preceding unsigned comment added by InkTide (talk • contribs) 20:09, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I just reverted to the 2024-07-18 page revision, which seems to be clean. Also left a note on the talk page. Arcorann (talk) 23:22, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

"without any clear relationship"

The source (Braune 2019) is cited in the following sentence:

However, since the 1990s, the term "Cultural Marxism" has largely referred to the Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory, a conspiracy theory popular among the far right without any clear relationship to Marxist cultural analysis. [emphasis added]

We are currently divided on whether the bolded part constitutes a synthy use of the source. Could editors please take a look and report either here or, preferably, on the Marxist Cultural Analysis talk page, where we have an ongoing discussion? 87.116.182.140 (talk) 08:16, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Tale_of_the_Doomed_Prince

Most everything written here is original research. The citations are not to experts in ancient Egyptian literature making the claims, but to wholly new claims. It seems that the material dates all the way back to 2008 with the article's inception. A rewrite and better sources is sorely needed, as well as the removal of just a "list" of motifs, the likes of which do not appear in other well-written articles on literature. Chris Weimer (talk) 09:40, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

SYNTH: Baalbek

Is this sentence in Baalbek SYNTH?

"Baalbek is a stronghold of the militant organization Hezbollah, and its tourism sector has encountered challenges due to conflicts in Lebanon, particularly the 1975–1990 civil war, the ongoing Syrian civil war since 2011, and the Israel–Hezbollah conflict (2023–present)."

Three people think it's not. Two people (including me) think it is. Arguments are in here: Talk:Baalbek#Requesting_explanation_for_revert. FunLater (talk) 22:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

A similar issue previously came up at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 453#Are these reliable sources for Baalbek -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:17, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

If I understand this issue correctly, no one disputes these three items: (1) Baalbek is a Hezbollah stronghold; (2) the tourism industry has had struggles and challenges; (3) RS attribute the tourism industry's struggles and challenges to military conflicts that have occurred. The dispute is over whether in the absence of an RS that explicitly ties the fact that Baalbek is a Hezbollah stronghold to the military conflicts that are one source of problems for the tourism industry, it is SYNTH to tie the Hezbollah-strongholdiness of Baalbek to the tourism problems. If I got all that right, I agree that it is SYNTH. Novellasyes (talk) 13:32, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

It sounds like the sentence just needs to be split in two. Add a full stop after the part saying it has been a Hezbollah strong hold, that could use some additional details anyway as the sources for that go back decades and aren't just related to current events. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:58, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Kamala Harris's tenure as Attorney General of California

Before there’s any chapter, the first paragraphs in the article show no reference. Hadjnix 07:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

The lead of an article are meant to summarise the rest of the content, so it's not necessary to have to references in the lead. Instead those details should have references found in the main body of the article, which the lead is then summarising.

Leads sometimes have references, usually if a particular detail is controversial, but that's not the norm. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:42, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Absentee ballot postage and voter suppression

The question is, if a source takes the position that having to pay postage when returning a ballot is a constructive poll tax, is this a sufficient basis for claiming that this is a form of voter suppression?

To be clear, there is no claim that every form of voter suppression is illegal, just that there is no "line to draw" as to what constitutes voter suppression and that anything which has a tendency to discourage voting, by definition, constitutes voter suppression to a greater or lesser degree.

Here's the pertinent part of the original discussion from Talk:Voter suppression in the United States#Reconsidering the gist of this article:

I understand from what you are saying here that you do not believe that it is WP:OR to decide that the meaning of the term "voter suppression" is self-evident and does not require further definition. I do believe that it is WP:OR but of course I could be wrong.

The specific ask is presumably that there must be a source which explicitly states that having to put postage on the return envelope may discourage some people from voting (i.e. that this would in fact constitute voter suppression), while my contention would be that this is implicit, particularly when there is no assertion of any countervailing benefit, e.g. in terms of reducing voter fraud. Fabrickator (talk) 15:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

• The term “Original Research”, as used on Wikipedia, refers to statements, arguments or conclusions not directly stated in any external source (but instead originating on Wikipedia). So, the question here is very simple: is the conclusion that postage constitutes voter suppression found in a source? If so, then it is not OR … if not, then it is OR. Blueboar (talk) 18:17, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
• Flat-out OR. EEng 19:00, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Blueboar and EEng: What about a source stating that the postage requirement imposes a "burden on the right to vote"? Does that also fail to support the claim of "voter suppression"? Fabrickator (talk) 20:44, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  To be clear, I think ballot envelopes should be postage-prepaid, because who the hell has stamps around the house anymore? But it's not for us to make the jump from "burden" to "suppression". I think you'll find the examples at WP:SYNTH on point. EEng 21:16, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

  If the source says “burden” we should say “burden”.

  Indeed, I would say that “burden” is actually a stronger word, since rain on Election Day can “suppress” the vote. Blueboar (talk) 13:16, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Oil paint - most prestigious form of painting?

Oil paint contained an assertion that "For several centuries the oil painting has been perhaps the most prestigious form in Western art[...]". To better comply with WP:NPOV, I changed it to "For several centuries, the oil painting was considered the most prestigious form in Western art[...]"; however, I could not find a source for a claim like this anywhere in the article and I am unsure if there are sources to back up the idea that this was the consensus in the past. Any help sorting out this dilemma would be appreciated. Thanks, Tarhalindur (talk) 22:57, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't see how your edit brought any improvement, especially removing the "perhaps". I don't think either statement has NPOV issues - market prices alone would bear this out. Johnbod (talk) 04:12, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Do WP:RS say, when going through the history of art, that oil painting was the most prestigious, etc.? Maybe. But that doesn't seem like a very interesting thing to say so I wonder if art historians actually bothered saying that. They might have been more inclined to observe that oil was the preferred medium for many renowned artists throughout history or that many iconic works in the western tradition were done in oil. For example this long history of oil doesn't mention the prestigiousness of oil but mentions what are to me more interesting summaries of why it mattered. Novellasyes (talk) 14:57, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and removed that pretty egregious OR; I've also gone through and removed a handful of other OR or peacocky terms in the article. It'll still need a bit of improvement but it's (in my eyes) a bit better for now. CoconutOctopus talk 11:11, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Centre-right politics

An editor continues removing content from the lead at Centre-right politics because they believe that the sources are fake and written by leftwingers. Can we get some more input here? Talk:Centre-right politics#Wording of the lead Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:31, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Note that if the Sfn sources don't match anything in the references list, it's because the editor is deleting those too. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:01, 16 November 2024 (UTC)