Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Archive 36

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Reliability of Videotape

It is difficult to fake video of saying something. It can be done, but doing it at all well requires a lot of work, and even carefully-faked video will generally contain inconsistencies that others can notice. For this reason, I think videotape should have a presumption of reliability. — Preceding unsigned comment added by William Jockusch (talk • contribs) 18:59, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

I doubt that you will get a consensus of people to join your belief. -- The Red Pen of Doom 19:07, 23 March 2012 (UTC)

Well, what is the contrary argument? 98.222.48.17 (talk) 13:13, 25 March 2012 (UTC)

It's real easy to fake video of someone saying something. It can be done, by a professional vide editor, and doing it requires just a little bit of work. A carefully-faked video will generally contain inconsistencies that only others experts can detect in a lab. OrenBochman (talk) 06:37, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

I didn't know that. But I still think that video should be more reliable than text, because you are saying that:

(1) It takes a professional video editor, or someone with similar knowledge.

(2) Another professional can still detect the faking. So if the topic is important enough to fake the video, presumably it is also important enough for someone else to investigate.

Additionally, not all video is of someone saying something. For what about video of a political rally? You have a crowd of people chanting slogans, holding up signs, etc. Or what about a video of a ten-minute speech? I'm no expert, but I have to imagine that would be harder to fake than a brief video, and the fakery would be easier to detect.. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.222.48.17 (talk) 18:17, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

You don't need to even 'fake' video to make it unreliable. Just look at the video of George Zimmerman in the police station after he shot Trayvon Martin. Initially, ABC reported that it didn't appear he was injured at all, then later they had a better copy and also enhanced it and said, oops, it looks like he DOES have injuries now. And that's just because it was poor quality. Lack of 3D perspective, particular camera angles, and so on, can lead people to see perceive things on a video recording that is not faithful to reality. Video is a reasonable source, but it is going to generally be a PRIMARY source, not a secondary source, so that knocks it out as being something to consider first anyway. -- Avanu (talk) 03:06, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Press releases published by high quality WP:RS

Self-published sources section reads: Take care when using such sources: if the information in question is really worth reporting, someone else will probably have done so

I have run into this issue lately and see it's been discussed at WP:RSN in the past. There seems to be agreement that if a high quality source like a well known magazine (including trade magazines expert on a subject), newspaper or wire service publishes a press release from a business or organization, this gives the self-published source's facts or opinions a higher reliablity. If we agree on this, should the text be changed to recognize that fact so people don't have to go to WP:RSN every time the issue comes up? CarolMooreDC 15:28, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

After a number of discussions elsewhere, I answer my own question. No. Too many variables. Best to leave on case by case basis. CarolMooreDC 21:13, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm just seeing this now, and I agree with your assessment. They are not reliable. You can however treat them as a primary source and cite them with in-text attribution with all the usual qualifications listed as WP:SPS. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:20, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Definitely. I guess the debate might be when someone objects to one using the link to Reuters or MarketWatch instead of a link from the group's website (assuming the press release is there as well, which it may not always be; plus why look if you have those other sources?) But I personally don't think that should be a problem. CarolMooreDC 23:39, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Need uninvolved editors to examine my analysis of a source

At Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#ZScarpia_and_WLRoss, there's an issue over the proper use of a source. According to my own analysis, the use of this source fails criteria #2 of WP:SPS but no one else is agreeing with me. Can some uninvolved editors examine this source and let me know what they think? A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 03:31, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

For the FAQ

I think we may want to expand the FAQ to include two more points:

Are reliable sources required to provide a list of references?

No. Most reliable sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles, do not. Wikipedia editors should name their sources when required, but our sources do not need to provide a bibliography.

Are reliable sources required to name the author?

No. Many reliable sources, such as government and corporate websites, do not name their authors. Although many high-quality sources do name the author, this is not a requirement.

or words to that effect. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 24 March 2012 (UTC)

A fair amount of newspapers don't put authors as well, usually in the case where a number of people worked on the article or not putting an author is a general practice for all articles by that newspaper. In those cases, I usually just put Staff writer, wikilinked as such, in the author spot in the reference template. In terms of what you're specifically asking, I support the addition of these two clarifications to the FAQ. Silverseren^C 03:26, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

the wording of the first answer is a bit confusing. OrenBochman (talk) 06:33, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that feedback. Would something like this work better?

Are reliable sources required to provide a list of references?

No. Wikipedia editors should list any required sources in a references or notes section. However, the sources you are using to write the Wikipedia article do not need to provide a bibliography. Most reliable sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles, do not provide a bibliography.

Or can you think of a better way to put it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 26 March 2012 (UTC)

It is no longer confusing - well done. OrenBochman (talk) 17:31, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I'll go add these two (using the revised version for the one). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

I also added a link to Staff writer while I was at it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Another

I ran across another FAQ candidate today:

Do reliable sources need to be notable?

No. Notability on the English Wikipedia means whether or not a subject qualifies for a separate, stand-alone article. We do not require editors to use only sources that have articles written about them. Instead, sources must be reliable, and the contents must be given due weight in the article.

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

It is unlikely that any source will be notable. This question is a bit misleading. Please remember that evaluation of a "source" as defined in Wikipedia consists of looking at the Publisher, the Author, and the item itself. These three things taken together constitute a source, and a lack of credibility of any of the three may lead to a source being deemed unreliable. -- Avanu (talk) 03:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

We have how many hundreds of articles on newspapers? On magazines? On academic journals? On books?

There are tens of thousands of already-existing Wikipedia articles for reliable sources. I believe that this confusion arises from the indisputable fact that so many sources can be bluelinked.

(I disagree with your claim that the work, the author, and the publisher must be credible for a source to be acceptable. We don't reject newspaper articles written by stringers or books written by bona fide experts who chose dubious publishers. Under most circumstances, only one of those three needs to be credible.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Where does Wikipedia stand on Promotional and/or non-neutral Sources?

There's been a bit of argument on the wind power article about various things, with several people, (myself included), feeling the article is overly promotional, and several people saying the article is balanced.

A specific issue is that 90% or more of the references in the lead are to sources which are quite promotional of Wind power. Most are to either the World Wind Energy Association (WWEA) http://www.wwindea.org/ or the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) http://www.gwec.net/.

• According to the Mission Statement http://www.wwindea.org/home/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=23&Itemid=29 of the WWEA: WWEA works for the promotion and worldwide deployment of wind energy technology.
• On the page of the GWEC web site to join the organization, we read: GWEC is a trade association working to create a better political environment for wind energy. We work on legislative, regulatory affairs, financial systems and public relations in more than 40 countires.

I'm wondering if there are any specific guidelines on sources like this. Drkirkby (talk) 13:08, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I think it worth visiting WP:Neutral point of view. Halfway down the page is the following:

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from this post from September 2003 on the WikiEN-l mailing list:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

In my view wind power is somewhere between the "significant minority" point of view and the "majority" point of view. If you quote sources from the various wind power associations, you should draw reader's attention to the source of the material and you should also be aware of and be prepared to accept contrary viewpoints. A few questions are me playing Devil's advocate.

• How long must the windmill run to recoup the energy used in manufacturing it? How does this compare with hydro power and with fossil-fuel power?
• How can you store energy produced by a wind power? Unlike nuclear power, wind power does not produce a constant base load and unlike hydro power or fossil-fuel power, it cannot be turned on and off.
• What are the problems associated with extreme cold when there is very little wind (such as was experienced in Western Europe two months ago)?

Answers to these questions given by the wind-power associates are always dubious - they have a vested interes, but if as a reader I know their source, I will treat them differently to the way I would treat them if they came from a source that has no [financial] interest in pushing wind power. Martinvl (talk) 13:34, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Also see WP:Conflict of interest. CarolMooreDC 15:45, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

I proposed an addition to this guideline last month to address this, since the question comes up frequently. In general, such biased/partisan/activist sources are (1) reliable for some purposes [e.g., always reliable for a claim that they hold a given opinion] and (2) need to be used with WP:INTEXT attribution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Ask

Can someone please find out if this website is a reliable source for Wikipedia. Oz ^talk 21:13, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

Questions like this should be asked at WP:RSN, as the /FAQ above recommends. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:26, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Newspapers

Care needs to be taken with newspapers. The editor should be sure that in fact that newspaper professionals did report & edit the story firsthand. Example; A newspaper reports that "Mr Smith said that event XYZ happened." That verifies that Smith said it, but does not say the newspaper itself verified XYZ. Newspapers in 2012 usually are careful and say "we have not verified XYZ" but in the old days they often did not. In this example the newspaper story is not a RS when it comes to event XYZ. Rjensen (talk) 12:52, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Each case should be taken on its merits. It is over the top to require that the report was written first-hand - many newspaper stories are bought from news vendors such as Reuters, Bloomberg etc. Moreover, the journalist might have combined their sources with the sources from news vendors.Martinvl (talk) 13:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

reports from Reuters etc have to be specifically attributed to Reuters etc. (too often it's attributed to the local paper that reprinted the story--the local paper is not a RS) Rjensen (talk) 13:20, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

What is mandatory is that the Wikipedia editor cite the source that he/she read. Judgement should determine whether any attribution within the source be repeated in the citation. There is absolutely no requirement that the Wikipedia editor track down a sub-source mentioned in the source and cite the sub-source instead of the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 15:38, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Quote: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.".
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 16:00, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

If a newspaper reporter finds info that is the reliable source and that source must be identified. You can verify that source ABC said XYZ but if ABC by itself is not a Reliable source then it's no good for Wikipedia. How did ABC know about it when it did not have a reporter anywhere nearby? Rjensen (talk) 18:59, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

If it's known to be a reliable source then it is irrelevant if they don't mention specifically where they got the information from. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Also... things change over time, and it's usually valuable to see that contemporary reports have differed from follow up reporting. It's also not our place to be secondary editors for publications.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 20:10, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

This would have the undesirable effective of excluding any newspaper report that is a secondary source. IRWolfie- (talk) 19:08, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

The question is reliability. How reliable was the Ft Wayne Gazette in 1890 when it said, "we read from other [unnamed] papers that XYZ"?? Not very reliable, I'm afraid. We just had a taste of the problem (March 29) when many media reported -- falsely--that the governor of South Carolina was about to be indicted. Turns out they all relied on an obscure tweet from an unreliable source that went viral in a couple minutes. see NY Times report What it comes to is editors have to have some evidence about reliability if report a statement as reliable. Rjensen (talk) 21:51, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

There are plenty of otherwise reliable newspapers who have had to publish retractions a number of times. Half the time they don't even bother to retract anything. They're newspapers... they're going to be wrong occasionally. It's not our place to make those sorts of judgements, as Wikipedia editors cannot be relied on to have the expertise or experience to make those judgements. You or I may personally have the ability to do so, but there's no way to prove that sort of knowledge so it's best left alone.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:01, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

every time you edit you have to decide if a source is a RS or not--it can't be escaped. The original point was this: a media story is reliable if and only if the story was covered by a journalist. A letter to the editor or an ad does not meet that criteria. The question is handling reprinted stories, and I suggest the Wiki editor has to figure out if a journalist did the original reporting. Material issued by others (like press releases and ads) fall into the "self published" category -- like 99% of what's on Facebook. Rjensen (talk) 22:14, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

Ok... I agree with just about all of that, generally (I don't know about "every time", but I don't think that is a central issue here). I agree with respect to letters to the editor and advertisements which appear in publications (magazines do that too), but I would point out that editorial opinion is a reliable source for contemporaneous views on a subject. To me, all of this is more about writing style rather than anything which is policy related. sort of, at least.
— V = IR (Talk • Contribs) 22:26, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

I think a more appropriate way to state this is "A paid advertisement is not a newspaper article." I doubt that Rjensen will find much opposition to this rather basic statement. WP:MEDRS addresses the problem of letters to the editor directly, in response to a serious problem with a few POV pushers trying to pass off such letters as being the equivalent of peer-reviewed journal articles. I'm not sure that the problem is significant enough to need to spell it out here, but if you all think it is, then we can add a few sentences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

agreed. what perhaps we all agree is that when a journalist covers a story & it appears in a newspaper that is a RS ---many other things appear in newspapers as well and are not RS.Rjensen (talk) 19:31, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

No, it doesn't work that way. The editorial is written by professional journalists, and it may or may not be reliable for the same uses that we put regular articles to. Dave Barry is a famous professional journalist, but you wouldn't treat his humor column the same as a regular newspaper article. Some newspaper articles are written by people whom I wouldn't describe as journalists of any sort (especially in very small publications), but they look just like a regular newspaper article, are paid for the article, and the result is just as reliable as a newspaper article written by a full-time professional journalist. (Are you a "journalist" if you only write a single article in your entire life?) We need to look at all the facts and circumstances. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

A part of the confusion I see in the above is terminology ambiguity, using "reliable source" to refer to two completely different things. WP:RS means meeting certain Wikipedia criteria, whereas real world RS usually means that they are a reliable source of correct information regarding the statement at hand. Sources meeting WP:RS criteria are often wrong or unreliable, and highly real-world-reliable sources (on the matter at hand) often don't meet wp:RS criteria. North8000 (talk) 11:22, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

North, could you give us an example of a "real-world-reliable" source that does not meet WP:RS criteria? Blueboar (talk) 11:39, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

OK, for the statement "various suppliers sell SS Titanic coffee mugs" and, as a reference, point to a web portal page that lists 50 places to buy SS Titanic coffee mugs. North8000 (talk) 11:53, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

BTW, most of the time common sense will prevail and it will be recognized that the source is reliable with respect to establishing that particular sky-is-blue statement. But if there is a wikilawyer working the article on behalf of the "Anti-Coffee Mug Society", they can and will delete the statement saying "not a wp:rs". North8000 (talk) 12:01, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Um... I would argue that the website of a coffee mug manufacturer, advertizing SS Titanic coffee mugs for sale, is a reliable (albeit primary) source for that statement. I would certainly say it passes wp:rs if the issue were raised at WP:RSN. Of course, this is one of those "reliability depends on context" situations. The same source probably would not be reliable for most other statements. Blueboar (talk) 21:07, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, RS:noticeboard tends to judge actual reliability with respect to the item which cited it. This often requires ignoring wp:RS criteria. North8000 (talk) 21:26, 13 April 2012 (UTC)

Which wp:RS criteria do you think is/are being ignored? Blueboar (talk) 14:46, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

One area where many editors fall down is when a politician makes a statement to "sex something up" but in the small print adds a caveat to cover himself. A normally reliable newspaper, that likes the "sexing up" publishes the story and hints at the caveat. A Wikipedia editor who is not au fait with the whole story then quotes the politician's sexed-up comments without the caveat as though they were true. Martinvl (talk) 17:32, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Responding to Blueboar's question, the one that the wikilawyer POV warrior would most likely use to knock out material would be "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." from wp:ver. Many sources that are very reliable for the material which cited them do not meet this criteria. North8000 (talk) 19:33, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

Our goal here is to frame a suitable guideline for using newspapers as RS. We already specify columnists; we should add letters, ads, speeches and editorials. We can specify, perhaps, "a story covered by a newspaper or magazine reporter can usually be considered a RS. The editor should include the name or affiliation of the reporter (such as Reuters, Associate Press, etc.)" Rjensen (talk) 20:30, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I do not see why newpaper articles are given more primacy than primary source scientific reports. In science writing, citing primary sources is discouraged (though not forbidden) because people see what they want to see. I think that in history, single witness testimony and single-reporter journalism fills this same role (at best). It might serve in the short interval when no better reports are available, but after a time given for verification and the work of historians to sift many reports, news reports from single journalists should be replaced as fast as possible in favor of synthetic published history. For example, All the President's Men by Woodward and Bernstein (a book) gives a far clearer and more accurate picture of Watergate than do (say) the original Washington Post news "investigative reports" by Woodward and Bernstein. That is because by 1974 there was a lot more info-- from the Watergate Hearings, the tapes, etc. By now we wouldn't quote the original Washington Post 1973 material as RS except for historical data about who thought what, at the time, in 1973. SBHarris 23:59, 14 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Sbharris that when a good book is available it is preferable to a newspaper report. That happens for very famous events like Watergate, but not for most events. Reporter are NOT a primary source -- they are secondary sources--that is, trained observers who tell what the main actors were doing. They tell us what a candidate said in a speech and how the audience reacted, for example. At Watergate reporters were not at the original break-in; they were at the Senate hearings and court trials and tell us what witnesses and Senators said. (In the scientist analogy, the scientist is making things happen in his lab.) Rjensen (talk) 11:06, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Actuallly it is scientists who are the trained observers, telling us what happened in their experiments. Why then are their reports not considered secondary? Journalists sometimes have training and sometimes not-- do you think Bob Woodward had a degree in journalism? LOL. And journlists don't always report on observations, often they simply repeat hearsay in what people told them, and when they do-- sometimes they don't tell us WHO told them, as in the case of Deep Throat (who turned out to a good source) or Judith Miller's screwups in the NYT about WMDs before Iraq 2003, gotten as hearsay on deep back ground from Ahmed Chalabi, who turned out to be a very BAD source. [1]. That got her fired, but this doesn't happen enough. The chain of evidence for what you read in investigative journalism, is generally broken. So why should you trust it more than a primary science paper?

Let me tell you why newspaper reports are used so much on WP: it's easy. After a time they are available on-line, whereas historical books are simply not. Google books is not what it used to be, and so WP editors turn to e-newspapers. It's as simple as that, and as seductive, and as damning. SBHarris 19:35, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, if we ever wanted to change the situation so that wp:rs starts meaning actually reliable, we're going to have to throw away the broad brush. And realize the two main metrics and that they are context sensitive. Knowledge and objectivity, and both with respect to the item which cited it. And say that the strength (per those criteria) must be commensurate with the situation at hand. A source with weaker metrics would be sufficient for an uncontested "sky is blue" statement. Much stronger metrics would be required as a cite for a controversial and questionable statement. North8000 (talk) 20:12, 16 April 2012 (UTC)

Rjensen, you seem here to confuse "secondary" with more important concepts, like "independence". You might like to read WP:Secondary does not mean independent and WP:NOTGOODSOURCE. What makes a source secondary is the way that it deals with the information: it interprets or analyzes information that was first reported elsewhere. "Eyewitness" news reporting is always a primary source. It may also be the best possible source (depending on what you're trying to support in the article), but it's always a primary source. Primary is not an indication that the source is unreliable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:43, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

That's not the way historians handle evidence--reporters are rarely treated as primary sources (although sometimes the reporter does play a role along with the main actors--eg Couric's 2008 interview with VP nominee Sarah Palin)). When a reporter write, "President Obama said ABC and Governor Romney later said XYZ," it is Obama and Romney who are the actors and their words are primary sources. I think you're confusing the TV appearance where Obama says ABC--that indeed is a primary source because it reproduces Obama's words. I never suggested that "primary" sources are unreliable. The Wiki rule is that a Wiki editor's interpretation of the meaning of a primary source is dubious. Reporters select what the primary actor is saying and reports what the reporter considers important. Rjensen (talk) 01:38, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Newspaper reports on historical topics are quite clearly a primary source. They lack an adequate system of internal analysis and contextualisation to make them readily readable as the record of the past. Reliance on newspapers for historical articles is effectively original research; as wikipedia editors are conducting themselves as historians by claiming to be able to derive a record of the past from untrustworthy texts. User:The ed17's articles on battleships show how to write using newspapers in relation to a historical article of such minor importance that the topic isn't over saturated with scholarly secondary sources—by relying on secondary sources, and using primary sources such as newspapers for backfill where the secondary sources have already established the broad structure, weight, importance etc within the article. (I've notified The ed17 that I commended them here.) Fifelfoo (talk) 01:55, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Fifel, that's much appreciated. I think you're referring to my newspaper citations in South American dreadnought race. The interesting thing about newspapers is that they can reveal the thought or mood of a certain topic in a certain time period. In this case, I've used newspaper citations as an indicator of the general hysteria surrounding a Brazilian order for two dreadnoughts, or to show the rumors surrounding the various ships (ie at least two publications stated that the Greeks were going to buy one dreadnought off Chile, but obviously that never happened, so I've noted the rumors in the article to bolster the general fact that many people thought these ships would be sold). So, I guess my generalized main point is that they are invaluable resources, especially if you have time to go through the many newspaper archives (both dead tree and online), but you have to be careful how you use them. They are secondary sources in that they are professional accounts of an event – even though they are written without the benefit of hindsight – but not everything they say will turn out to be true later. My advice is to write a full article to give yourself the general picture, then add in the newspapers. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 02:22, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Whether we decide newpapers are primary or secondary, it's clear that we give them too much credence on WP. What makes things so bad is when WP in effect constructs WP:RS so that it essentially makes reporters ipso facto "reliable sources" in their analysis of the primary material that they turn into a news report, so long as it gets published in the right newspaper. However, reporters are NOT particularly reliable in many situations. No more than the average Wikipedia editor, and sometimes a good deal less if they're writing about a technical subject on which the WP editor has personal expertise. So that's what makes the WP system, where easily-publically-findable cited attribution (what we call "verifiability") counts even more than the knowledge or good judgement necessary to sift truth from falsehood. If it weren't for WP:IAR, WP would consist mostly of the journalist's poorly-fact-checked views of reality. It's bad enough now. People making this policy complain that we have no way of checking our own editors' credentials, but we have no way of checking the credentials of the average person writing the AP story, either. And if we do, we don't have their sources. So, rumors and lies like Curveball's blatherings get turned into official U.S. testimony before U.N. hearings and then onto the front page of WP:RS newspapers and finally you've bootstrapped nonsense with no good source into Wiki-reliability (and into a major war, too-- Wikipedia isn't the only one fooled by these chains of reliability-creap).

But, by contrast, here's how science works: When a bunch of Italian physicists reported that their neutrinos were traveling faster than light, nobody really in physics really believed it. Neutrinos are known to have mass. Even when the experiment was repeated with different beams, nobody believed it. The newspapers reported it breathlessly. Science magazines had pictures of upside-down Einsteins. WP had a "balanced" article based mostly (not entirely) on news accounts, even though we were looking at reports that were like reports that astronauts didn't really land on the moon, but faked it. A few editors dug in their heels and kept this stuff from getting into every article that had anything to do with light or the speed of light. And (you guessed it), it all finally turned out to be due to equipment failure, including a loose fiberoptic cable. Two physicist-managers at the project were fired. See Faster-than-light neutrino anomaly and particularly its early versions and TALK page. Those who knew some physics and about neutrinos from SN1987A and their arrival time with respect to light, demanded extraordinary evidence for this extraordinary claim, as North8000 suggests above. But in order to do this on any article, the WP editor has to know enough to do it. Too many subjects in WP don't get treated with the WP editorial skepticism they deserve. SBHarris 02:18, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

One possible "big picture" solution is at Wikipedia:Strategic issues with core policies#WP:ver and wp:nor need additional source metrics, and a way to apply them Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:30, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

Self publishers

Leaving a message on this page was suggested on Wikipedia_talk:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Self_publishing_list. Comments and help will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 21:56, 23 April 2012 (UTC)

That discussion is rather long, so let me give the short version: After several discussions at the Reliable sources noticeboard involving self-published sources, we've created:

• List of self-publishing companies in article space for notable self-publishing houses
• WP:List of self-publishing companies in Wikipedia space for notable and non-notable self-publishing houses

Editors are welcomed to help expand and improve both of these. Thanks. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 01:01, 24 April 2012 (UTC)

Why does it use the word "mainstream" when any reliable source is acceptable?

In a current AFD, someone read the following section to mean you could ignore reliable sources that are not mainstream.

Mainstream news reporting is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact, though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors.

If something is determined to be a reliable source, then it is accepted. Always has been. To claim that "mainstream" sources are more reliable, causes problems. There are magazines dedicated to just one specific thing for instance. Scientific journals aren't mainstream. Is there any reason to state otherwise? Any objection towards me removing it? Dream Focus 07:38, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Your edit remove the underlined text from News organizations:

News sources often contain both reporting content and editorial content. Mainstream news reporting is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact, though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors. Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces are reliable for attributed statements as to the opinion of the author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact.

That change needs to be reverted. The old text is saying there are two kinds of content in news sources (reports and editorials). The removed text used to say that reports were reliable providing the source was mainstream. Now, the text makes no assertion about content—it just says editorials can be used for attributed opinions. Since there are lots of junk sites claiming to be news sources, of course only "mainstream" sources are in fact reliable for fact.

Guidelines should not be adjusted to suit a particular use/misuse on an AfD. Johnuniq (talk) 08:54, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Junk sites are not reliable sources, so its not a problem. All places considered reliable sources are of equal value, not just the mainstream ones. Dream Focus 09:48, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

I disagree that all reliable sources are of equal value. Some sources are considered more reliable than others. Blueboar (talk) 12:02, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, nowadays, for news reporting, "mainstream" media is more likely to mean a particular bias if its on political issues. North8000 (talk) 12:14, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Yup... many news sources slip biased editorial commentary into their news reporting... but having a bias on political issues does not make the source unreliable for basic news facts. Both Fox News and CNN are unashamedly biased (in different directions) and are notorious for blending editorial commentary into their news reports... but both are reliable when they report the basic facts... For example: that an earthquake occured on a given day, and registered 3.0 on the Richter scale... or that Obama urged congress to pass a particular law during his State of the Union address. It is often difficult to separate "reporting" from "editorializing"... but once we do so, we then know how to phrase what we say in our articles - we know whether we should present it as a statement of unattributed fact or as a statement of attributed opinion. Blueboar (talk) 12:38, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Just a "nit" with "established." If a few or number of experienced, highly regarded editors and writers get 50 million to start a brand new online news site, it may not be established but it may be highly reliable. Would "established and/or mainstream" be better. Or maybe " meet a high editorial standard"?? CarolMooreDC 12:43, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Would "Major news outlet" be better?... purpose of this section is two-fold:

1) to make it clear to editors that (even though they may be biased in their editorializing, and even though they make the occasional error in their reporting) the big, well known, major media outlets are in fact considered generally reliable (and yes, this includes that news outlet, the one you hate due to its political bias). This has been a perennial issue at RSN, and is a point that needs to be made.

2) to note that the nature of the source content determines how we write about it in Wikipedia... we need to distinguish news reporting from news analysis/editorializing... we may phrase material we get from news reporting in the language of "fact" ("An earthquake registering 3.0 on the Richter Scale occurred in Moose Flop, Manitoba on April 3rd, 2011 <cite New York Times report>"). However, we should phrase material we get from news analysis/editorials in the language of "attributed opinion" ("According to Fox News financial reporter Neil Cavuto, the earthquake was responsible for the collapse of the Canadian dollar <nowiki><cite Fox News program>"</nowiki>). Blueboar (talk) 14:00, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

To add context to this discussion this suggestion was made regarding a disucssion at this Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Welcome to Wakaba-Soh where one user was citing WP:NEWSORG as a deletion rational because the sources used were not mainstream.--174.93.169.157 (talk) 18:09, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Restricting it to "major news outlets" means "your independent, local newspaper is not a reliable source".

Dream, I believe that the primary point being made here is that tabloids and the gutter press aren't being included in this statement. "Mainstream" also effectively excludes publications that say they are "newspapers" or "magazines" but actually are propagandistic newsletters, e.g., any "magazine" published by the National Rifle Association or the National Organization for Women.

And we really do need to directly address the issue of biased/partisan sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:27, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Example

What in WP:IRS tells me whether Tiddlywinks Quarterly is/isn't a reliable guide as to how to spell the surname of a Lithuanian tiddlywinks champions? In ictu oculi (talk) 03:53, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Who publishes Tiddlywinks Quarterly? Springer? History2007 (talk) 05:18, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

English Tiddlywinks Association, the real name of the magazine is Winking World In ictu oculi (talk)

Sorry my friend, that one is way over my head.... maybe you can ask here.... History2007 (talk) 15:34, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

How many pages are you going to ask this on? The diacritics dispute over tennis players' names needs to be resolved at WP:AT, not at RS, WP:V, BLP, or any of the other parents you've been asking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:30, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposed link to the Wikipedia list of self publishers

There are now two lists: List of self-publishing companies and WP:List of self-publishing companies that help users identify self-published books. On the village pump it was suggested that links be added to those lists from the relevant policy/guideline pages. I am therefore proposing a link to those lists from the self-publishing section here. If there is no opposition, could someone else add that link please? Thanks. History2007 (talk) 05:36, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I've added them to WP:USINGSPS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:32, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I did not even know that page existed. But I think most people will look here, anyway, so could you add them here as well. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:44, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Factual inaccuracy

In this edit I had to remove a statement that is being discussed at length on WP:V and was added here. I have seen no consensus for it, so I do not think it is wise to add it with no discussion. Given that discussions are taking place at WP:V on that, it might be best to discuss it there in any case. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

I think this kind of thing is not bad:

== Source Conflict and Clear-cut inaccuracy == Verifiable sources in of themselves can present certain POVs and there are times when they will conflict with each other. Such conflicts do not automatically mean that one or more sources are "inaccurate" and are best handled via WP:NPOV, WP:WEIGHT, and WP:FRINGE. However there are rare occasions via criteria very similar to WP:DUCK where an otherwise Verifiable source can be proven through other reliable sources to contain factually inaccurate information. This can range from things like the famous Dewey defeats Truman headline to typos that create historical impossibilities such B52s (first flight in 1952) existing during General MacArthur's occupation of Japan (1945-1951) as presented in the book American Shogun. In such cases simple belief that verifiable information is inaccurate is not enough to justify its removal. Evidence in the form of reliable sources that proves beyond a reasonable doubt, through Clear and convincing evidence, or via Preponderance of the evidence that the information being sited is factually wrong must be presented. This is so discussion regarding source reliability and due weight, rather simply deciding on the personal views of Wikipedia editors can occur and a consensus reached. Keep in mind that rewriting how the material is presented is often a better choice than removing it entirely. If consensus is that reliable sources exist which show that another apparently-reliable source is demonstrably factually incorrect, the factually incorrect material should be removed.  === Footnotes ===

Bearing in mind that a lot of editors interpret things very literally, and need really clear policies in order to overcome the problem that Please take a chair actually means "Please sit down" and not "take one of the chairs away", we do need to be abundantly clear about this. What is "common sense" to x-percentage of our editors may not be "common sense" to y-percentage.

In order not to split the discussion over two pages, though, editors watching this page should ideally be contributing to the discussions here, bearing in mind that consensus-making discussions can always be a bit hard to interpret! There's that whole thing about balancing weight of numbers / argument, and looking at a very big picture. We need to try to work together for the best result, and not get ourselves into a polarised situation, or read things into people's viewpoints which aren't actually there. No assumption of "hidden agendas", for example ;P Pesky (talk) 02:26, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

So look, lots of people are discussing it there. let us see what happens there, and then just mimic that overall situation. History2007 (talk) 02:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Yup, sure. This, of course, also applies. Obviously! Pesky (talk) 02:55, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I think the important point is possibly "Evidence of inaccuracy may be used to argue to the unreliability of the source in the context." Pesky (talk) 03:34, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, Wikipedia:Inaccuracy seems to be but a recent essay by a small number of editor and has not been subjected to community discussion. It seems to be just the opinion of a rather small number editors and hence has no bearing on issues as such, given its recency and lack of community discussion. Indeed, at first reading the tone of it seems to point the other way from WP:Truth. In fact I would suggest merging WP:Truth and WP:Accuracy given that their overlap may well be unclear to many readers. History2007 (talk) 08:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I agree that we should not include the sentence in question ("If reliable sources exist which show that another apparently-reliable source is demonstrably factually incorrect, the factually incorrect material should be removed") until the larger discussion relating to the same issue is resolved at WP:V.

If we do eventually include it, I would suggest one change... "...the factually incorrect material should either be removed or presented as an attributed statement of the author's opinion, per WP:NPOV". Blueboar (talk) 13:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. It is nice to see that we are beginning to agree to get ideas from the community at large at let them figure it out based on a wider discussion. History2007 (talk) 13:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Is Yancuic.com WP:RS?

Is http://www.yancuic.com WP:RS? Chrisrus (talk) 21:15, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Could not connect to it, but please ask on WP:RSN. History2007 (talk) 21:20, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

No, Yancuic.com is a Mexican bulletin board that members can post anything to. Rjensen (talk) 00:23, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Question

i keep getting messages on how it is wrong to change any details what do i do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Beggsie221 (talk • contribs) 22:45, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Follow the links in the messages to learn what reliable sources are and how to cite them. Alternately, you could contact any of the editors leaving the messages and request their help in making your edits. Tiderolls 22:49, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

YouTube as a source

I have been the primary editor of Justine Ezarik for some time and have consistently tried to eliminate use of YouTube as a source. This includes, citing its pageview statistics as a source for popularity. I have recently been involved in a pair of popular viral videos (Kony 2012 and Cat Daddy) and am now wondering if it is Kosher to cite YouTube for number of pageviews and upload date.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 06:35, 4 May 2012 (UTC)

I would say not so, but please ask at: WP:RSN. History2007 (talk) 21:10, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I will move the discussion there.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 22:01, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

P.S. no longer watching here.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 22:02, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Mr. Mom

Have you ever wondered what would make a man want to be a stay at home man whether Dad or dead beat? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.126.49.28 (talk) 18:07, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Nope... never wondered at all... There are many reasons why a man might want to stay at home... because he wants to raise his children, because he is secure enough financially that he has no need to work, because he prefers the homemaker role, etc. etc. Most (if not all) of these reasons are the same reasons why a woman might want to stay at home. Blueboar (talk) 18:38, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Essay unworthy of mention

The essay Wikipedia:Identifying and using self-published sources is unworthy of being mentioned in this guideline. Some reasons include:

• It indicates the size of the publisher does not matter, but for purposes of Wikipedia policies and guidelines it has always been understood that self-published sources are those where whether to publish at all, and the content of the publication, is decided by one person, or a handful of people. When a sizable organization (for example, the United States Census Bureau) is the publisher, it isn't self-published.
• It contains incorrect examples of self-published works. For example, patents are not self-published because the government agency responsible for granting patents decides whether or not to grant a patent, not the inventor. Jc3s5h (talk) 03:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with that revert. In general, these "essay items" can just be written by 2 or 3 people, and once linked, if the title looks impressive users may believe them to be of value, given that very few people check the number of author history, etc. This has to be better controlled else will result in chaos. History2007 (talk) 04:16, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I don't necessarily agree with the notion that only one person or a handful of people can be a self-publisher, but to treat the Census Bureau as a self-publisher would require massive policy and guideline changes. A pointer to an essay that offers only one definition for self-publishing, which is deeply incompatible with policies and guidelines, only creates chaos. Jc3s5h (talk) 04:22, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

This is pretty much like every 2-3 drivers writing their own traffic rules... That can not happen if the roads are to remain safe. History2007 (talk) 04:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Size of the publisher doesn't matter. Some of VDM's imprints are vanity presses. The key element of self-publication is a lack of an accepted editorial process that determines factual and opinion content prior to publication. Newspapers which are edited have this process. Newspapers which are not edited do not have this process. Institutional publishers (Census Bureaus) do have such an editorial process. Other institutional publishers, such as Patent Offices which do not edit the contents of patents do not have an editorial process. "Size" is a non-starter regarding reliability. Fifelfoo (talk) 04:32, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

But in many cases, if a publishers has only printed 3-7 books ever, then is it a reliable source? And if the books are all of the same author? ... History2007 (talk) 04:38, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Again, this isn't a matter of size. Numerous scholarly imprints (think of School of XY at University Foo, a common conference publisher) are reliable despite publishing irregularly, sporadically, and minimally. If a publisher solely publishes works by one author, and if those works aren't subject to positive review by their expert community (historians, grognards, music critics, pokémon fans, etc.) then the press is suspicious because of its publishing mode—not its size. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:36, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Size of the publisher in terms like total number of employees, including the janitors and payroll department, does not matter (except if the total number of employees is 2, it's probably self-published). But size, in terms of the total number of people involved in deciding if something gets published, and if so, what modifications are required, does matter. The publications that have good editorial processes have a fair number of people involved in those processes.

But that's rather beside the point. The essay reads as if the process is as simple as "if the publishers name is A and the author's name is A then it's self-published." Jc3s5h (talk) 04:43, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

This is a much better reason to reject the usefulness of the essay. Fifelfoo (talk) 05:36, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, except that it's not a good reason to reject the usefulness of the page, because that is actually all that wikt:self-publishing means, as any trip to any dictionary will prove.

Jc3s5h's two objections at the top are both wrong. Fifelfoo seems to have dealt with the "size matters" objection; I will direct him to Wikipedia:RSEX#Are_patents_reliable_sources? to learn more about the patent publication process. Alternatively, he could reflect on the meaning of the "Request for voluntary publication", which costs US $130 at the moment. The patent office has zero control over whether a patent application is published, when it is published, or what its contents are. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I had not even read that essay in any detail, I just glanced at it again now. It says:

• Who is the author or creator of the work? Who is the publisher of the work?
• If the answers to these questions are the same, then the work is self-published. If they are different, then the work is not self-published.

So if I form a company to publish my book, according to this it is no longer self published because publisher is not equal to author as an entity. And if I form a company and set my cousin as the director? And if I give my cousin 10% of the company shares as a gift so he will take orders over the phone? These are all self-published cases. And people do that all the time and publish with no editorial review. History2007 (talk) 06:31, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

May I suggest that the place to discuss problems with and changes to this essay is on the essay's talk page? Since the essay in question is not located in someone's user space, anyone may edit it... this includes you. So...If you disagree with something an essay says, discuss the issue at the essay's talk page and propose changes. If you meet with resistance, and your proposed changes are rejected, consider writing a "contrary opinion" essay of your own. Remember, essays are opinion pieces... not "the rules". Blueboar (talk) 11:33, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that the discussion should be on the essay page and not here. But then I think you know my position that although essays are "officially of no value", in my view they can be detrimental when new users confuse them with guidelines, when linked to a section, etc. So let this be the end of the discussion of this essay for me. History2007 (talk) 12:40, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

If someone wants to improve the essay, that's fine, but it isn't suitable to be mentioned in it's present form.

I don't know enough about how the term "self-published" is used when evaluating the reliability of works in discussions outside Wikipedia to say the definition that if the the author and publisher are the same entity then it's self-published is a viable definition. But if such a definition were adopted, then WP:IRS would have to be rewritten to say that self-published sources are sometimes reliable secondary sources and there is no need to require that the author have published works in the field through an independent publisher. Under the new definition, we would have to allow self-published sources with a good editorial process to be allowed in biographies of living persons. That's just the beginning of the policy and guideline changes that would be needed.

As for patents being self-published, the essay Wikipedia:RSEX#Are_patents_reliable_sources? points out reasons to question whether patents are reliable sources, but it's assertion that patents are self-published is not true. First, patent examiners can and do totally reject patents. Second, patent examiners routinely reject some of the claims within a patent. So although the patent office review is in no way comparable to the peer review of good scholarly journals, it is enough to prevent patents from being self-published. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:53, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Um... no, patent examiners do not reject the claims made in a patent application. What they are checking is whether the product would violate an existing patent. I could invent a gizmo, claim that it supplies unlimited energy and perpetual motion... and as long as my gizmo does not violate an existing patent, I will be granted a patent. The patent office does not care if my invention actually works or not.

More to the point... the patent office does not edit or change the supporting documentation that is submitted with an application. That supporting documentation is definitely self-published. And it is the supporting documentation that is usually what people want to cite in Wikipedia. About the only things that aren't self-published in the patent process are the patent number and the date that the patent was issued. Blueboar (talk) 13:51, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I think Jc3s5h has confused the issuance of a patent with the publication of the patent application. Issuance—granting the legally protected limited monopoly for the inventor's idea—is controlled by the patent offices. Publication—putting it up on their website so that other people can read it—is controlled entirely by the inventor/author. The author of the patent specification and claims can have that published at any point in time, including before review, during review, after review, after issuance, or after rejection. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:42, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I could be wrong but my understanding of the difference between regular publishing and self-publishing is on who gets to decide whether a work is published. So, let's say that I'm an author and I write a book about widgets. I submit my book to Random House. Random House can decide whether or not they want to publish it. It's their decision, not mine. On the other hand, if I take the same book and hire a printing-press or a self-publishing company to print it, then it was my decision to print it. Similarly, if I'm a journalist and I write an article for the New York Times, NYT has editorial control. They can edit it, request changes or decline to publish it altogether. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:19, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, you have it mostly right. But there are 3 issues really: money, effort and reputation. Random House, Prentice Hall etc. will not bother with books that will sell few copies. They only hire experienced in-house managers/editors and the staff time is a key constraint. The "real" publishers pay money upfront as advances and good royalties, and if the book flops their marketing costs (can be significant) will be lost. So they will carefully evaluate the book and the author and will send it out for review to "experts in the field". And these publishers are very careful about their own reputation and seek high quality manuscripts, often rejecting 80% of what they receive. The vanity presses, on the other hand require a heartbeat and a manuscript. That is all. But they charge the author and if you look at Vantage Press also at times rip off the authors. There are huge differences in the eventual manuscript quality. History2007 (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

A Quest For Knowledge's description is fine when the author is distinct from the publisher. But when the author and the publisher are the same, and consist of a substantial group of people with a credible process for editorial control, such as the 911 Commission, A Quest For Knowledge's description is insufficient to figure out if the work is self-published. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:45, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes... the 911 Commission's report is self-published. I think there is a misconception that "self-published" means "bad"... that is not the case. There are limitations on using self-published sources, but they can be used. Blueboar (talk) 13:56, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Exactly. There is no greater expert on the US population (to give one example) than the US Census Bureau. It may be technically self-published, but "self-published" is not a synonym for "bad source". Sometimes the self-published source is the best possible source. To give another example of that, if you want to support a statement that Famous Fred said "Blah blah blah" on his personal blog, then the best possible source for that claim is the actual self-published blog posting that contains those words. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:48, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Whatever the merit of WhatamIdoing's definition, it is not the definition that the policies and guidelines are based on. If an editor follows the link to the essay and uses it in conjunction with Wikipedia policies and guidelines, the editor will at the very least be silently chilled from using perfectly acceptable sources, and might even go around removing citations to the 911 Commission report in articles like "Ayman al-Zawahiri" because, according to WP:IRS, "self-published sources should never be used as third-party sources about living persons, even if the author is a well-known professional researcher or writer; see WP:BLP#Reliable sources." Jc3s5h (talk) 14:59, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

IMO, the most important point in WP:RS is that a reliable source is one with reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. The 9/11 Commission Report has such a reputation. Whether it was self-published or not is irrelevent if a source has such a reputation. There was an attempt a year or so ago to actually spell this out but it didn't go anywhere. This is why articles should be written with a little common sense in mind. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:26, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Some (not most) definitions have a "traditional publisher" escape clause. I think it's usually meant to cover small-town newspapers (whose owner, publisher, and editor may be the same human), but it could reasonably be applied to recognized governments, since all governments publish an enormous number of reports and such. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

Two points from above:

• History2007 worries that if he forms a business to publish his book, that this makes his book no longer self-published. This is not true. "Published by History2007" and "published by History2007, who is hiding behind a business name" are the same thing. Identifying these fake businesses is a challenge, but one that I think we can and should address in that essay. (It's on my list, especially the two key tip-offs for identifying this situation for books: a publisher in possession of a single block of 10 ISBNs, and a publisher whose books all have the same author.)
• Jc3s5h says, "WP:IRS would have to be rewritten to say that self-published sources are sometimes reliable secondary sources..." Nothing would have to be re-written. Self-published sources are already defined in WP:V as being reliable sources (sometimes), and whether they are self-published or not has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are primary, secondary, or tertiary. "Secondary source" is not a synonym for "good source". WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:56, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

As BlueBoar said, I do not think this page is the place to discuss that essay. So I will not. I will just point out that the link you provided above NOTGOODSOURCE was yet to another essay and I almost assumed it was a guideline. These will be confusing for many users. This type of linking needs a Wiki term: WP:Invitation to confusion. Does someone want to write an essay on that so it can be linked? Enough said. History2007 (talk) 17:49, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

What you're looking for is at Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines#Adherence, which tells you not to mistake shortcuts for policies. You should probably also read WP:PGE while you're at it. Wikipedia is not a statutory system. The label at the top of the page does not determine its value. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

I should repeat a point I made in Talk:Multi-level_marketing/Archive_2#Careful_with_some_of_these_soucres--really huge publishers can have what amounts to vanity press divisions.

Three Rivers Press/Crown Publishing Group (Part of Random House) has put out books like Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution; Stop Aging, Start Living; Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War"; How the South Could Have Won the Civil War; Angels in My Hair; Linda Goodman's Sun Signs; and The Science of God raising questions as to just how much oversight in that particular division there is.

Similarly just because the Mysteries of the Unknown and Enchanted World series came out of Time-Life doesn't mean that either of those two series were quality material or even knew what they were talking about.

Furthermore, I would hope that no sane editor is going to claim that something out of Wiley's living division (Dummies, Pillsbury, etc) is of the same quality something out of as its academic division (Wiley-Blackwell).

The point is that a publisher on its own should be an strong indicator of meeting RS but not a free pass ala 'it's reliable because it's published by x'.--BruceGrubb (talk) 17:50, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

That's true, but whenever any material within Wikipedia is referenced within this guideline, it should either be compatible with the definition of self-published used in this and related guidelines, or the discrepancy should be clearly explained. This is because self-published material cannot be used in some circumstances, no matter how good it is (unless editors want to ignore all rules. For example, it can't be used in a biography of a living person, unless the living person wrote it. Except on articles about themselves, self-published sources must be "produced by an established expert on the topic of the article whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." That requirement is very narrow and hard to apply to corporate authors. So if the publisher and the author are distinct persons, or if there is a corporate author that has a real editorial quality-control process, the work should not be considered self-published for purposes of this and related guidelines. No links should be present that will confuse readers about what is meant within this guideline by "self-published". Jc3s5h (talk) 19:32, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I think you don't understand how Vanity presses work. In the vanity press model the author pays the publisher to print their book (Silverman, Franklin H.; Dan Poynter (2004) Self-Publishing Textbooks and Instructional Materials ISBN 978-0972816434 pg2-3). Since in any business the goal is to keep the customer (in this case author) reasonably happy you have a de facto rubber stamp publishers making at best corrections to spelling and grammar. In short, no real practical difference in wikipedia's eye between self-published and vanity published.--BruceGrubb (talk) 21:10, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I'm using "publisher" in the sense of a genuine publisher who takes responsibility for producing works that are worth reading. I think of a vanity presses as printer, not a publisher. And I think of the online equivalent of a vanity press as an internet service provider or web hosting company, not a publisher. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:15, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Worth reading? By Sturgeon's Law 90 percent of what is out there is crap and therefore NOT worth reading. Three Rivers Press quality is so all over the map that anything coming out of that division needs to go through a case by case evaluation.

Bruce, I think you've introduced a red herring. Three Rivers Press is not a vanity press. Their authors (which include Dave Barry and Barack Obama) do not pay Three Rivers to publish their books. As a large paperback imprint, they doubtless produce a good deal of drivel, but the quality of the work is not what makes a publisher a vanity press. "Self-published" is not a fancy way to spell "bad source". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. I was trying not to type a response to that item, but you said it well, saved me the effort. History2007 (talk) 22:15, 9 May 2012 (UTC)

I didn't say Three Rivers Press was a vanity press per say but given what comesout of that division I certainly won't rubber stamp it as reliable division. As I said in Talk:Multi-level_marketing/Archive_2#Careful_with_some_of_these_soucres Random House is all over the freaking map in terms of meeting WP:RS guidelines.

I mean 5/5/2000: ice, the ultimate disaster by Richard W. Noone (U. N. Owen move over you have a contender) is not what I would call quality reading even in the self publish world and don't get me started on the books promoting Homeopathy as valid medicine (The veterinarians' guide to natural remedies for cats, The veterinarians' guide to natural remedies for dogs, The Journey Through Cancer, and several others). I mean eating certain foods will turn off genes?! Enzyme production I can understand but genes themselves?--BruceGrubb (talk) 23:57, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

You're right; you only said that it "amounts to" a self-publishing vanity press, which is also not true. Properly published garbage is a fact of life. We don't slap inaccurate labels on it just because it's garbage. We have perfectly good words for describing junk science sources. There is no need to confuse the issue by introducing an irrelevant complaint about garbage published by traditional commercial publishers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

Actually "amounts to" is true as far as WP:V goes because it states "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." If the publishing arm you are dealing with does not have that reputation for fact-checking and accuracy then the only other thing to go on is the "work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications" criteria ie the criteria of WP:SPS.

Go back to Wiley vs Random House while keeping History2007's comment "these publishers are very careful about their own reputation" and realize that the reputation here is vastly different. Wiley has a reputation with regards to high quality academic and science books that they even apply to part of their lifestyle division. But just what is Random House's reputation? Given they have a fiction publishing arm it can't be with regards to "fact-checking and accuracy" (the very antithesis of fiction) so it is with regard to how readable the works are and how well they will sell. This is isn't an apple and orange comparison here--more on the level of an apple and bowling ball.

"Ghosts. Flying Saucers. Creationism. Homeopathy. The Loch Ness monster. Remote viewing. Psychics. Dowsing. Acupuncture. Bigfoot. Yes, we all know it's bullshit, but boy howdy. do these things draw in the readers." (Write More Good: An Absolutely Phony Guide Three Rivers Press ISBN: 0307719588 pg 155)

As for the "And these publishers are very careful about their own reputation and seek high quality manuscripts, often rejecting 80% of what they receive" part one of the best anecdotal evidence of how well that works is with Bram's Wizard of Oz which was rejected by EVERY publisher he sent it to.

As pointed out in the Self-publishing article (and referenced to Publishers Weekly (04 April 2010)) a staggering 76 percent of books were self-published and the standard publishing houses were cutting back in the amount they were publishing.--BruceGrubb (talk) 06:29, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

I think I am going to stop looking on here for a few days. The depth of logic in these comments is getting to be too overwhelming..... History2007 (talk) 17:32, 11 May 2012 (UTC)

When primary sources are preferred over secondary sources

I often see editors state that secondary sources are preferred over primary sources. Surely it depends on what statement is being verified? For example:

• The RSPCA is an animal welfare charity.[2] (Primary source)
• NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory is based in Pasadena, California.[3] (Primary source)
• In a 1963 speech, JFK said "Ich bin ein Berliner"[4] (Primary source)
• The Royal Society was founded in 1660.[5] (Primary source)

In all these example, it seems to me that a primary source is preferred (although a printed published source is better than a website page), as you can't necessarily rely on the interpretation of someone else. --Iantresman (talk) 11:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Statements that people and organizations make about themselves may be wrong - many obviously criminals claim to be innocent. Transcripts wherever obtained are primary sources, so a recording may be a better source than the reporting of a speech in a secondary source. TFD (talk) 11:34, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The third and fourth examples listed are perfect examples of

a) Original research, and

b) Sourcing historical content to an inappropriate source

One reason why primary sources are generally reviled in the area of history, is that WEIGHTing should be based on the analytical work of scholars, not on encyclopaedists digging around in articles. Fifelfoo (talk) 11:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Can you give an example based on any of my statements? I understand secondary sources are preferred especially where analysis and opinion are provided, but I don't don't think this applies to the relatively "simple facts" I stated? --Iantresman (talk) 12:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Simple statements of fact are no problem. Opinions about the person or organization, labeled as opinions, are also no problem. Even if someone feels that it is a lie <g>. Official transcripts are fully as valid as a recording for showing precise wording, cited as such. And as always, reporting in a reliable secondary source is always allowed - even if the secondary source is "wrong." Wikipedia cares about being able to verify that a reliable source made a claim, not whether the reliable source was "right" or "wrong." BTW, the JFK speech would not best use the Youtube video - as sufficient reliable secondary sources are easily found. Collect (talk) 12:01, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that "Simple statements of fact are no problem", and even attributed statement of (incorrect!) fact, eg. "Becher proposed the phlogiston theory" (a theory that is wrong, but he did propose it). But I don't understand why the 3rd/4th statements are original research, which I thought applied to my own made-up facts? --Iantresman (talk) 12:16, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Saying "Secondary sources are preferred" does NOT mean "Primary sources are never allowed". We do allow primary sources (although with limitations... see WP:PSTS) ... and yes, there are situations where a primary source can be the most reliable source possible.

As for Original research... OR is not really about an editor "making up facts", but about an editor analyzing the facts for himself, interpreting the facts for himself, or reaching his own conclusions based on the facts. Blueboar (talk) 13:12, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Since "there are situations where a primary source can be the most reliable source possible", can we generalize when primary sources are preferred? --Iantresman (talk) 15:12, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

It would be pretty tricky to generalize that and will open many Pandora' boxes in my view. When we think we have covered the 10 obvious examples, there will be 50 more that will show up. History2007 (talk) 15:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Perhaps, but we state that secondary sources are preferred, and that primary sources are "useful in certain situation" without giving any examples. Of course every specific use is on its own merit. Quotes have been mentioned as an example, and I think that attributed statements fall into this category too. I think it would be useful to have some guidelines. --Iantresman (talk) 15:20, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I would note that the third case above is one of the specific exceptions where primary sources are preferred (that is, quotations). The issue for that one, however, is that YouTube is actually not a primary source for the clip, nor is it a preferable secondary source, because the custody of the material is questionable. If one were to source this directly to newsreel/TV footage, we would prefer an archival repository or the original network site.

I would also point out that the Royal Society isn't truly a primary source for the statement about its founding date; the documents of that founding themselves are the primary source, and the Society is providing the analysis of those documents. The issue in that case steps into reliability: we generally prefer that these sorts of claims come from outside, presumably disinterested parties. Mangoe (talk) 14:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree with Mangoe's analysis. History2007 (talk) 14:17, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Accepted. --Iantresman (talk) 15:14, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I disagree with Fifelfoo's assertion of OR. Here's the actual definition from the policy: "The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist."

Consider the founding date:

• Does that source say that the date is 1660? Yes.
• Is that source published? Yes.
• Is that source (at least minimally) reliable for this fact? Yes.
• Given the definition above, is it possible for the answers to all three of those questions to be "yes" and for us to have a NOR violation? No. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:47, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

e/c Your example is correct, of course. But I see Fifelfoo's point as valid. In cases beyond simple date checking etc. there are many many cases where primary historical sources such as Origen or Eusebius are interpreted by users in a large variety of ways. I have seen far too many of these cases to be comfortable to opening the door any more to them. So I would agree with Fifelfoo's point in general, although I do see your date example as valid. History2007 (talk) 15:54, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The examples were respective. WEIGHTing as important a particular utterance of a dead american based off his utterances is OR. Relying on a Scientific Body's promotional website for history of science is inappropriate sourcing. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

The last one is an interesting example. I don't disagree with WhatamIdoing's assertion that it's not OR, but this is because even though 1660 is a long time ago, mankind was in the habit of keeping records even then, and ergo its reasonable to presume the Royal Society can trace back its roots. If there were a case of a much older society that claims they were in existence since, say, 500 AD, I would be a lot more cautious about using primary sources because likely "published" sources at that time didn't exist. --MASEM (t) 15:52, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes. Yet dates are the least of my worry. I have seen so many many useless debates based on primary sources that I understand the sentiment in Fifelfoo's assertion. Primary sources can cause long useless debates. History2007 (talk) 15:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Fifelfoo often wants the best possible source, which is overall an excellent thing for the English Wikipedia. The sourcing policies and guidelines, on the other hand, can only require that a source meet the rock-bottom minimum standard.

I didn't want to muddy the above by addressing this point at the same time, but here it is now: If any published, (minimally) reliable source, anywhere in the world, even if no Wikipedian is aware of that source, contains the material in question, then it cannot be a NOR violation.

NOR requires only that a published, reliable source exist. There's a footnote after that word that I didn't bother to copy, but if any acceptable source claims that JFK said he was a jelly doughnut, then it doesn't matter whether this source is reliable and published and says that. It is not actually possible for a claim to be a NOR violation if any published, reliable source supports it. The most we could really say is that an unreliable and/or unpublished source does not demonstrate that the claim is not a NOR violation. There's a certain element of "proving a negative" in the NOR policy.

I realize this is a fine point, and I don't think it would be helpful to try explaining this to inexperienced users (say, at RSN), but that's what NOR says, and that is what we actually intend for NOR to say: if any reliable source has ever been published with this material, then it's not a NOR violation. It can be a WP:V or RS violation, but not NOR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

If no Wiki editor knows about source XYZ, then it is never used as a source or reference by a Wiki editor. The editor who makes statement ABC either knows about XYZ and should cite it, or he made the statement up and it's OR. We assume hat absent a source it's OR. Rjensen (talk) 16:42, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Nope. Go read the policy. It explicitly says that uncited material can fully comply with NOR.

An example should make it clear: I know how many fingers are on the typical human hand. I do not know of any particular source that states this. Writing "The human hand normally has four fingers and one thumb" is not a NOR violation. Sources exist, even though I'm personally not aware of which sources.

And this applies to even knowledge that is not sky-is-blue obvious. I know the name of the man who founded the town I live in. I have no idea what source supports this; it's just something I heard and happened to remember. But it's not a NOR violation, because I know that if I went to the library and poked around a bit in the 917s or so for a while, I'd be able to find a source to support it. It is not NOR because a reliable source has been published with this material, even though I have no idea what that source is. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:57, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Inappropriate weighting in history articles is a massive problem. Of particular importance is users cherry-picking quotes from primary sources to support positions not present in the scholarly literature. As Karl Marx once said in translation, "Mummy, I need potty," but it isn't of encyclopaedic relevance any more than "the emancipation of the working class is the task of the working class itself," unless we find a suitable scholar, professional or analytical commentator who supports one being of historical note, and the other being irrelevant. It is as much OR to present novel interpretations of historical importance, as it is for users who attempt to initially publish novel theories of physics on wikipedia.

Primary sources, due to this field specific problem in history are best used when their use is specifically supported by secondary sources. Then it is fine to quote them, and cite both the primary and cite and attribute the opinion of the secondary. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Getting the WEIGHT wrong is not (ever) a WP:NOR violation. It's strictly an NPOV problem. You might call that "bad original research" in the real world, but including verifiable, but wildly unimportant, material is never a violation of the English Wikipedia's NOR policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:57, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

WP:WEIGHT can be a problem as most of the time the base we editors can do is a sampling of the material and go based on that what views are mainstream, minor, and fridge. If the data is in error then the results are going to be in error ie ([GIGO]). One bias that can't be avoided is that we are the English Wikipedia and so sources not in English are under underrepresented and this can mess up Weight. Another problem that shows up in history articles is contemporary vs modern sources.--BruceGrubb (talk) 15:20, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Preferred Primary sources

I'd like to suggest some guideline examples of where primary sources may be preferred (which does not exclude secondary sources). Would these be suitable?

1. Quotes
2. Paraphrased quotes (although there may be disagreement to how it is phrased)
3. Physical quantities. eg. One of the many minor planets such as (59003) 1998 SL43 where its physical existence is cited to the "JPL Small-Body Database Browser"
4. Simple statements of fact, eg. Harry Potter wears round eyeglasses
5. Attributed statements: Benjamin Franklin's kite experimented took place in 1752.[6]

--Iantresman (talk) 17:18, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I would see item 2 "paraphrased quotes" as an absolute no-no. It will be an invitation to inaccuracy. The other items such lists are obvious and I don't know why anything is needed to make them preferable. Some others (not item 2) are variants of quotes in effect. The issue of what is "simple" will then be vague, etc. I would suggest no change. History2007 (talk) 17:37, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I think that #2 is okay so long as there's no WP:CHALLENGE to the accuracy.

Plot summaries are another. In fact, it's so widely accepted that we don't even bothering citing works of fiction.

Translations might be another category.

I don't know about simple statements of fact, for History's reasons.

Your "attributed statements" sounds like a "simple statement of fact" to me. But attributed statements of opinion might form a useful category. On the other hand, is it really preferable? Let me give you an example: The Man Who Would Be Queen (abandon hope, all ye who enter there; it's a dysfunctional article) contains a laundry list of critics (and little better than a laundry list of supporters). Nearly all of them can be sourced to PMID 18431641, but it lists the original book reviews, op-eds, etc. Which is preferable? I don't know. (I'm confident that any effort to use the journal article rather than the original sources would start a long and pointlessly nasty dispute.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I think plot summaries are a good example. But given that this is about "preferred", would a plot summary of Hamlet by a wiki-editor be preferred to one in a book by Oxford Univ Press, let us say? History2007 (talk) 18:23, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Paraphrasing the Oxford summary may move into plagiarism territory though. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:39, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

Unless the Oxford summary is not referenced plagiarism would not be a problem. Besides, let's be real here; most people are familiar enough with the plot of Hamlet that using something like Oxford would be akin to using an atom bomb to kill a fly. Sure it would but is it is major overkill per WP:OBVIOUS and WP:PRIMARY with reasoning explained in Wikipedia:These_are_not_original_research#Works_of_fiction. Now interpretation' of the work would require a reliable source.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:24, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Quotes without analysis pointing to the importance of the quote is dreck. This holds for pop culture as much as it does for fields subject to scholarly analysis. Without a scholar pointing out the specific influence of a corner of Joyce's sexuality on Joyce or Nora or his work, there's no point to noting at James Joyce, "You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you…" (To Nora, 1909-12-08). In fact, we do it wrong on Joyce, relying upon his letters for his religious interior without noting the scholar who draws attention to that particular letter. (James Joyce at "My mind rejects the whole present social order…" (To Nora, 1904-08-29, Faber selected letters)) Without a music reviewer appreciating the function and purpose of milkshakes in male attraction or musical appreciation, why is quoting the chorus relevant to Milkshake (song). In fact, when quoting Kelis, our article relies upon Patel, Joseph (2003-10-07). "Kelis Turning Heads Again With Her Tasty 'Milkshake'". MTV News. for its WEIGHTed interest in this line of the chorus. Milkshake (song) does it better than James Joyce—and Milkshake doesn't bring all the scholars to the yard. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:50, 15 May 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, but for the sake of common decency, could you please try to use cleaner language please? There is no need for artistic diversions when discussing policy. Thank you. History2007 (talk) 00:36, 16 May 2012 (UTC)

I have to agree with you here, History2007. I may be verbose at times but even I can't make head or tails of what Fifelfoo is saying. I certainly can't see how it relates to WP:PRIMARY. Certainly quotes from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin would be the definitive word on what Benjamin Franklin believed 1771 to 1790. The same would be true of the Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant regarding the personal views and personal events of Ulysses S. Grant.--BruceGrubb (talk) 14:24, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Both of the items you cite would require interpretation as to their meaning. Such interpretation would be original research. We do not use primary sources that lead to conducting original research, as we are an encyclopaedia, not a publisher of original biographical research. Fifelfoo (talk) 23:49, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Something like "When I had left camp that morning I had not expected so soon the result that was then taking place, and consequently was in rough garb. I was without a sword, as I usually was when on horseback on the field, and wore a soldier’s blouse for a coat, with the shoulder straps of my rank to indicate to the army who I was." requires interpretation as to its meaning regarding what Grant wore at the surrender of Lee at Appomattox Court House?!

WP:PRIMARY clearly states "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source."

The view you are giving us would make primary sources for all practical purposes unusable and we know they CAN be used abet in a limited manner.--BruceGrubb (talk) 01:17, 20 May 2012 (UTC)

Linkedin

Do we regard linkedin as a reliable source? Having looked through the guidelines this area seems slightly unclear. Have I missed the sentence, or is their an established rule? Many thanks. Uvghifds (talk) 09:13, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I don't think there is a solid rule yet. But I would not trust it beyond famous people, because the links may have been automatically generated by a computer, and not double checked. History2007 (talk) 09:20, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I am not familiar with linkedin. Is there a way to provide a URL in Wikipedia that will lead to the correct information? Jc3s5h (talk) 12:50, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

LinkedIn is the page. History2007 (talk) 12:53, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It really depends on what you are trying to use LinkedIn for... it will be reliable for some things and not for others. See: WP:Self-published sources. While there are situations where it would be appropriate to cite a LinkedIn page... those situations are very limited. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

The area of articles I specifically edit relates to the media and especially the BBC. There are many middle ranking correspondents and presenters who are noteworthy enough for a wiki page and have a linkedin profile which gives their CV. That really is the specific circumstances I am questioning for, but of course, it applies across a wider section of articles too. Uvghifds (talk) 16:14, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It may help asking in the WP:BLP context as well. History2007 (talk) 16:21, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

It will be just as reliable as the same person's Facebook, Myspace, etc., page would be. It should not be used as an ==External link== because seeing the page requires registration. WP:ELPEREN may be marginally useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, we do have a policy about this. See WP:SOCIALMEDIA. As Blueboar correctly notes, the situations where you would cite a LinkedIn page are very limited. Also, there are 5 conditions on whether they can be used. I'll quote from policy:

Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities, without the requirement in the case of self-published sources that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is not unduly self-serving and exceptional in nature;
2. it does not involve claims about third parties;
3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 17:11, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

I would guess the first condition may well be the problem for linkedin. It is written as an online advertisment of your own qualifications and experience.Uvghifds (talk) 18:28, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, it depends on how you define "unduly" and what you want to cite. I don't think that listing what university somebody attended isn't unduly self-serving. I don't think that saying, "So-and-so graduated from Northern Illinois University in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science" would be unduly self-serving. On the hand saying, "So-and-so is an expert in .NET development." would be unduly self-serving. Of course, if something is really worth including in a Wikipedia article, most likely secondary sources would have covered it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 18:42, 18 May 2012 (UTC)

How long should things remain on the board for discussion?

I raised the question if Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Is_Why_We_Fight_series_reliable_source_for_views_of_US_1942-1945.3F and one of the editors involved archived it after only three hours and rearchived it under the guise of "Personal attacks" after I pointed out that there was something wonky with archiving it that soon.

I have to ask are there any guidelines on the minimum time that questions have to be available for comment and if so what are they?--BruceGrubb (talk) 07:56, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Noticeboard items need to remain active until they are resolved (or abandoned). It is typical to let a bot archive them, but once an item is actually resolved to the satisfaction of all parties, it can be removed immediately without doing any harm.

Having said that, you have such a negative track record in disputes, with so many instances of misunderstanding other people, that I strongly recommend that you personally never do this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:19, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Sources for Political Material

Sources of material about politics, or politically charged topics like recent history, can usually be challenged as less than objective or tainted with opinion. There's no way around that, no matter how good the reputation of the publisher or author. For example, the article on Kabul sources material describing the Soviet invasion to a certain Library of Congress historian. Use of the term "invasion" to describe the Soviet action is not uncontroversial, and often reflects western anti-Soviet rhetoric. An author associated with the US government can't be expected to always refrain from using such rhetoric.

While I don't know whether the author actually used the word "invasion" or not, the effect in either case is to legitimize the presentation of contentious material as uncontentious. Surely this must happen all the time with politically-charged topics on wikipedia. There doesn't seem to be anything preventing an article containing reliably-sourced statements that flatly contradict each other.

What process is there for determining a source of political information is reliable? Can there even be a "reliable" source for that?

Also, wikipedia's own spell checker doesn't know the word wikipedia, what's up with that? 24.20.200.14 (talk) 07:33, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

In areas covered by scholarship, such as political history, we rely on the preponderance of scholarly opinion. Where multiple scholarly opinions exist, we rely upon all of them (differentiating and distinguishing their interpretations). Fifelfoo (talk) 08:29, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Agreed, and to note also that we take a world-wide view, so the range of opinions should be the range across the world, even if we are limited by the availability of sources in English. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:38, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

• Sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, etc. We need to address this directly in the guideline.
• We achieve neutrality by following what most of the best sources do.
• If a given view is unusual or extraordinary, then we use WP:INTEXT attribution to describe it, e.g., "According to Alice Expert, the movement of Soviet troops into a non-Soviet country in the face of armed resistance from the internationally recognized government counts as a military invasion. According to the Soviet leadership, the troops were just taking a holiday trip." WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:29, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Reliable sources search?

I remember once using a Google-powered search engine designed to only give results from reliable sources. Unfortunately at some point either I lost the link or it stopped working (or both). Does this still exist? – Arms & Hearts (talk) 18:28, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Maybe Google scholar? And Citeseer is good too. History2007 (talk) 18:31, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

You may be thinking of the one I maintain: Reliable Sources Search Engine. There's also another one for video games maintained by someone else: Reliable Sources for Video Games. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:16, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Yep, pretty sure that first one's it. Thanks! – Arms & Hearts (talk) 21:45, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

"Reliable Sources" kills Wikipedia

By founding all its structure upon what is called "reliable sources", Wikipedia may be condemning herself to be the opposite of what once she dreamt (instead of being the sum of all knowledge, it may become the sum of all ignorance).

IMHO, some chosen "reliable sources" are not reliable at all, while the definition of "reliable sources" makes impossible to several truly reliable sources to be considered.

As it is not possible to determinate what source is reliable by definition, the whole concept fails at its roots. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.117.235.117 (talk • contribs)

Given that your premises are faulty, your conclusions are also faulty. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:11, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

It is true that Wikipedia is merely a summary of generally accepted knowledge. It is neither cutting edge nor creative. The best work of our time is not here, nor is plain ignorance. User:Fred Bauder Talk 02:01, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Logan Perron true life port Allen la riot on the bayou Theriot family

Country boy swag here I trust no one I trust rob dyrdek he has helped me with his shows but also need more help with life don't kno evrything ik I need to learn on my own hospitals jail and medicine and therapy dot work for me HELP ME street bike tommy is a cool dude jus. Been judged too much like me need help — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.147.120.32 (talk) 08:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Bias

The question of biased sources has come up a lot recently (perhaps due to the US elections?), and I believe we are all agreed that addressing that frequently asked question is appropriate for this guideline.

Since no one's had any particular suggestions so far, I have WP:PGBOLDly attempted to address it with the addition of three sentences under the ==Questionable sources== heading:

Wikipedia articles are required to comply with the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy, but reliable sources are not. Having a bias or tendency to support one side of an issue does not automatically make a source either unreliable or questionable. For example, The Daily Telegraph has a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party, but this does not make Britain's largest daily newspaper an unreliable source.

I'm sure that it would benefit from some good copyediting, but I hope that this seems reasonably clear to all of you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:38, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, that addition may well open the door to way out publications. I fear the day someone starts using fringe items and refers to the above and I have to debate them for 3 days... History2007 (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

So what do you propose that will both stop the endless questions about whether a mainstream daily newspaper with a political slant is unreliable because it is biased and not have the potential for tiny-fringe abuse (or, more realistically, not have more potential for abuse than average)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

I do not have an immediate proposal, except for fearing the above version. More discussion will be needed to see how the Telegraph's "small tilt" may be accommodated but the large tilt of extreme publications be excluded. If you are to add it, we have a burden issue for a more watertight wording. The risk of endless debates based on this is just too high. Please suggest how "bias" may be moderated so extremist/fringe sources do not walk in along with the Telegraph. Unless that happens, the door can not be opened to them. History2007 (talk) 22:42, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Determining how the problem of biased sources is addressed requires experience with the culture and nature of the sources involved. There is no simple answer. At times, for example, when acting as the mouthpiece of the United States government or considering the business practices of Carlos Slim, The New York Times is clearly unreliable; at times sources that are universally recognized as biased such at The Nation, Democracy Now! or Fox News contain factual information that is unrelated to their political purpose. There is no substitute for good judgment. User:Fred Bauder Talk 22:46, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, there may be no simple answer in all situations, but however biased the NY Times may be at times (and I do not read it, so I do not really know) it is not a KKK-type publication, as far as I know. So I do not think the door can be opened to those extremist type sources unless there are better safeguards. History2007 (talk) 22:52, 31 May 2012 (UTC)

The issue of news organizations is already covered at the section titled, surprisingly, News organizations. The salient issue is the difference between "factual (reporting) content and analytical (editorial) content". For statements of fact, the determinate of reliability for facts is whether a source is a "well established news outlet". For matters of opinion, the material needs to be attributed as opinion and inclusion is probably going to be determined primarily as a matter of weight. Whether or not this needs to be further clarified, the proposed language doesn't seem to add anything to clarify the overall topic. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:17, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem is not with material labeled opinion, it is with news that is grossly distorted to serve the political agenda of the publication. Skillful presentations of this nature are nearly impossible to detect at the time, usually a time of crisis. User:Fred Bauder Talk 00:50, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

There is truth therein, specially about time sensitive material - there is an industry for creating spin in fact. The problem is when this large brush is used to broadly paint other far out sources as acceptable. History2007 (talk) 00:54, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Sending them to RS/N on a case by case basis is a better solution than adding FAQ material that oversimplifies the issue. Fifelfoo (talk) 00:34, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with that. And I also agree with the essentials of the comment by North Shoreman. History2007 (talk) 00:46, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

The problem is not just with news reporting and not just for material on politics. What do you do with scholarly articles written by an scientist that takes sides on a question? The DSM-5 will come out before long, and we know that there will be a long series of papers published praising and criticizing it for either agreeing or disagreeing with the authors. Are these peer-reviewed papers "unreliable" because they are "biased"? Certainly not. Some of them, in fact, will be the best possible sources for us.

The same problem of "bias" has been raised about books, magazine articles, interviews with experts, websites, and so on.

This is one of the most common questions on this page. "Oh, just send them off to RSN" isn't adequate. People expect to find a basic answer in this guideline. We need to address this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

There is no basic answer. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

There certainly is a basic answer: Our reliable sources are not required to comply with our NPOV policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:20, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

That is the subject of the discussion, in fact. I would see that blanket statement as far too over reaching, and would tend to agree with Fifelfoo. History2007 (talk) 13:30, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

WHAT: This part of the "problem" is already addressed by the section on Scholarship. No reasonable reading of that section suggests that scholarly articles could be considered unreliable simply because they take a position pro or con on a specific issue. Weight comes into play when scholarly articles reach different conclusions, but this is not an issue of bias. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 02:04, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

1. Scholarship does not address the question of biased or opinionated sources at all. It does mention unreliable journals and "mainstream academic discourse", but not the fact that RSes are not required to be NPOV.

It also, I see, contains most of the persistent good-faith errors that have come up at WT:MEDRS in the last year, like the idea that a student's thesis or dissertation is regarded as a good source (which might be true in history, but not in the hard sciences) or the idea that garbage journals aren't usually indexed (Medical Hypotheses, anyone?). WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:29, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. Scholars do often take positions. Just look at the multiple approaches taken to computer architecture by different scholars. These scholars are not biased, they just have different perspectives and publish as part of the process of "scientific progress". That is not bias. History2007 (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Scholarly articles, particularly in the humanities, can be biased. Failure to adequately evaluate bias can result in violation of neutral point of view, see The 'Undue Weight' of Truth on Wikipedia in Chronicle of Higher Education. Such violations, driven by ideologically driven editors, have been characteristic of articles on contested subjects throughout the history of Wikipedia; a running sore that continues to embarrass us. Often as in the case of Haymarket affair (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) little or nothing can be done to remedy the situation. User:Fred Bauder Talk 13:39, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

That could also be said of the sciences and engineering, e.g. in the early days of the Intel vs Motorola chip designs and now on various approaches to grid vs cloud computing, etc. And various people attach the biased label to various papers... History2007 (talk) 13:48, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

The issue is whether or not it is up to wikipedia editors to resolve disputes within an academic field. Our policy on original research makes it clear that we only note the disputes and report the different sides of an issue to the same extent that the sides are represented in the academic debate. The Haymarket article is an excellent example. A new interpretation of some aspects of the event has been published by a reputable author, but to this point his work has generated little academic support or criticism. Until the rest of the academic community weighs in, the article should report the new ideas only as a minority opinion. When academic consensus changes, then wikipedia should report the change. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 14:14, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Let's try this a different way. There are three proposed sentences:

1. Wikipedia articles are required to comply with the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy, but reliable sources are not.
2. Having a bias or tendency to support one side of an issue does not automatically make a source either unreliable or questionable.
3. For example, The Daily Telegraph has a reputation for supporting the Conservative Party, but this does not make Britain's largest daily newspaper an unreliable source.}}

Does anyone actually believe that any of these sentences are factually wrong? So far, the only comments directly about the text are that History2007 "fears" that someone will use them to wikilawyer about WP:FRINGEy subjects. WhatamIdoing (talk) 13:29, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The overall issue you raise is addressed at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/FAQ"

It is a frequent misunderstanding of the NPOV policy, often expressed by newbies, visitors, and outside critics, that articles must not contain any form of bias, hence their efforts to remove statements they perceive as biased. The NPOV policy does forbid the inclusion of editorial bias, but does not forbid properly sourced bias. Without the inclusion and documentation of bias in the real world, many of our articles would fail to document the sum total of human knowledge, and would be rather "blah" reading, devoid of much meaningful and interesting content.

This should be authoritative enough to cite if the issue comes up. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 18:38, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry but that FAQ is neither a guideline nor a policy. It has not been vetted by the community at large. History2007 (talk) 19:42, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

That was really my point when I said "authoritative enough". The FAQ has 104 watchers which suggests a fairly large consensus. It is at least as significant as, for example, the Reliable sources/Noticeboard which normally has very few participants on any single question. It is of course less significant than a guideline or a policy -- this is the way it should be for the reason that you have brought forth. WHAT has not, IMO, made the case that his changes solve any particular problem that requires vetting by the community at large. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 20:20, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

There is actual research that watching Fox News results in decreased knowledge regarding current events. Other strongly biased media have the same effect. This is a matter of degree; knowledge about media, including academic media, is required to make sound judgments. User:Fred Bauder Talk 15:25, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

One problem with such studies is that they assume there are "right" answers - which, for some odd reason, are opposed to the opinions of many Fox viewers. A study which posited that CNN opinions were wrong would find precisely the same results about CNN viewers. Collect (talk) 15:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Not a question of right/wrong but impact on Wikipedia content once they are followed. I think I explained my point above as I expressed my objections. History2007 (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The key to dealing with biased (or potentially biased) sources is to account for the fact that the bias (or potential bias) exists. One of the best ways to acknowledge bias is to pay attention to how we present the information we obtained from the biased (or potentially biased) source. A source that might be of questionable reliability when used to support a statement that is phrased as unattributed fact, can become completely reliable when used to support a similar statement that is phrased as an attributed opinion. It's amazing how adding a simple "According to <source>..." can completely change whether "<source>" is being used appropriately or not. As we keep saying... No source is 100% always reliable, nor is any source 100% always unreliable. Reliability depends on context. Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

One may use degrees of attribution: according to, according to the tabloid The Sun, according to the government controlled, etc. User:Fred Bauder Talk 15:25, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

One may also find that other editors dispute the categorization of sources in that manner. Collect (talk) 15:44, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Collect here... when attributing, it is usually better to simply let the reputation of the paper speak for itself... without adding editorial commentary or categorization. Blueboar (talk) 16:00, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Paranormal#Adequate_framing. User:Fred Bauder Talk 16:55, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Paranormal#Editorial_judgment_regarding_reliability. Regarding which, keep in mind that principles in Wikipedia arbitration decisions do not make policy but summarize it. User:Fred Bauder Talk 16:58, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

The cumulative effects of propaganda and misinformation play a role. This is nicely illustrated by the case of Mikhail Gorbachev who when he introduced democracy in Soviet Union was surprised to find that a number of things he had learned in school, from reliable academic authorities, were not true; for example, he appears to have been unaware that the Lithuania had been incorporated into the Soviet Union by military conquest and that the Lithuanians had not forgotten. Likewise someone who gets their information from Howard Zinn or Glen Beck may be more misinformed than knowledgeable. User:Fred Bauder Talk 17:15, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

About 1/2 of the sources used in WIkipedia are biased. The problem is the myopic standard ("WP:RS required and RS = XXX") which ignores differences in the expertise and objectivity level of sources with respect to that with cited it. As if a layer of editorial review is the only metric and a suitable substitute for these qualities. Something like like Wikipedia:Strategic issues with core policies#WP:ver and wp:nor need additional source metrics, and a way to apply them would help. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:23, 3 June 2012 (UTC)

This is the problem: People rationally expect to find the issue of biased sources (e.g., a newspaper with a political bias, a scientist with a pet theory) addressed in some general way at WP:RS, and it's not.

Are there any proposals here that will solve the stated problem, or are we just stuck with two editors not wanting to write down the unwritten rules that everyone on this page already knows and follows? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:23, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I am sorry, but the discussion above suggests that there is no uniformity in the perception of what the suggested problem may be, the adequacy of existing WP:NPOV statements, or any suggested approach. History2007 (talk) 04:09, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

There is a famous baseball joke. The first umpire boasts, "I calls 'em like I see 'em." The second one retorts, "I calls 'em like they are." The third umpire trumps them all, "They ain't nothin till I calls 'em." Wikipedia follows the third umpire (RS). "Bias" is meaningless. The consensus of the RS is everything. So people who say "this source is biased" are off base--they are expressing their own personal POV and instead should be waiting for that third umpire. Rjensen (talk) 04:40, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

"The consensus of the RS is everything."??? That's not the way I read it. The way I read it is

1. "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint." (WP:DUE -- nothing about consensus of sources there. Emphasis added to point up the impact of item 2 below.)
2. Whether or not a source is reliable on a particular topic or (at a finer granularity) whether it is reliable in making any particular assertion, is a judgement call made by consensus of interested Wikipedia editors.

Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 07:34, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

With one caveat, consensus can never override policy. And, in the case of some editors, what is being talked about is a handful of people, or even one person, with a political or commercial agenda. User:Fred Bauder Talk 09:22, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Re: "consensus can never override policy": of cource, since Policy reflects (and is changed by) consensus, we can also say: "Policy can never override consensus".

Also, in certain very rare circumstances, Consensus can "override" policy - or at least intentionally ignore it (see WP:Ignore all rules).

hmmm... On second thought, since we actually have a Policy that allows us to ignore Policy (when there is a clear consensus to do so), we are not actually "overriding" Policy when we do so. (a bit paradoxical, I know... but welcome to the wonderful world of Wikipolicy) Blueboar (talk) 14:56, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Rjensen, that's one of my favorite jokes. But it's not really a question of deciding whether a source is biased. Let's assume that we have 100% agreement from a large number of editors that a source is biased—say, it supports a particular political viewpoint. Someone wants to cite that source to support a simple statement, like "Joe Bloggs is running for mayor in 2012, on a platform in favor of lower taxes and repairing potholes".

The question is, does the source's bias make the source unreliable?

I say it doesn't. The NPOV FAQ says that it doesn't. And I added text saying that ("Having a bias or tendency to support one side of an issue does not automatically make a source either unreliable or questionable."), but it seems to be opposed by two editors, who seem to think (like many editors) that reliable sources can't be biased. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 22 June 2012 (UTC)