Talk:International Rice Research Institute

Declaring conflict of interest

I have been editting the IRRI wikipedia entry to help provide some references and more information about the organization. I am the Public Relations Manager of IRRI so I have a clear conflict of interest that I want to declare. My edits are all tagged to me so readers can see what changes I have made and dispute or change anything that is unreferenced or looks like propaganda. I will endeavour to keep a neutral point of view in making furture edits, but will welcome input from other editors to keep things so. Sophie Clayton (talk) 04:32, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

I added two photos to this page yesterday as previous photo showed someone in deep water rice which is not an area of research at IRRI, so I don't think it is accurate to use on this page. Can someone please check that the use of these photos is OK. The other photo includes one of the International Rice Genebank that is located at IRRI. Sophie Clayton (talk) 04:52, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Under the impact section an editor may like to consider adding a note related to the report commissioned by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation to evaluate the impact of its investment with IRRI's Irrigated Rice Research Consortium. External reference that could be used is http://www.sdc-foodsecurity.ch/en/Home/News_in_A_RD/News_Detail?itemID=10991 Sophie Clayton (talk) 04:52, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

COI Issues

In 2010 Sophie Clayton declared a COI on this Talk page - she is the PR Manager for IRRI, and the COI is obvious. Until the last few weeks, this has not appeared to be an issue, but it has become apparant that Editors have found this conflict to be too great. On the Golden Rice page, following some discussion, Sophie's remaining edits have been removed. (Note that Sophie has been active in the process of cleaning up some 'questionable' editing on various pages, and this involvement is to be applauded imho.) The Golden Rice changes prompted me to think about this page, and how it should be dealt with. If Sophie is too conflicted to edit the Golden Rice page, then this one, and some others, need serious scrutiny. Any thoughts? It has also been suggested that this discussion, framed slightly wider, could be usefully had on the WT:AG talk page. Roxy the dog (talk) 09:34, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

re "this one, and some others, need serious scrutiny" - I completely agree with that sentiment.

I think the right thing to do on this page is just to immediately strip out all material that uses irri.org as its source (which appears to be most of the page). We can then try to start rebuilding the page using slightly more reliable sources.

The second option here, which I think might be reasonable would be to Wikipedia:DYNAMITE the page. NickCT (talk) 12:19, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Could you fellows be more specific about your objections to this page? I do not see any reason for the wholesale changes that you propose. The article seems to be fair, at least to me. If there is an objection to too much sourcing from IRRI itself, a good solution is to add material from other sources. Lou Sander (talk) 13:40, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@Lou Sander - re "too much sourcing from IRRI itself" - Virtually all the sourcing is from IRRI. A slew of policies look dubiously on this type of thing.

That said, if you want to go through and find some RS to backup what's currently in the article, I think that would be a great solution. My guess, however, is that if/when you try to do that, you will find that much of this stuff fails WP:V. NickCT (talk) 15:25, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't have very many "policies", while there are many behavioral guidelines, etc. I'm pretty sure that "too much sourcing from one place" isn't against any policy, but I'd be happy to be corrected. IMHO "too much sourcing" isn't a very good reason to take down or decimate an otherwise useful article. Lou Sander (talk) 15:33, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@Lou Sander - We're using the IRRI almost exclusively for information about the IRRI. Do you really need me to point to the policy which identifies that as bad practice? NickCT (talk) 15:36, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is what I would like. Lou Sander (talk) 15:41, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@Lou Sander - Ok. Well off the top of my head.

WP:SOURCES - "Base articles on reliable, third-party, published sources"

WP:YESPOV - "critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources"

WP:ABOUTSELF - Disparages the use of self-published sources except in certian circumstances.

But seriously, isn't it self-evident that we shouldn't look to Company X's webpage as the main source of information for company X. That should be self-evident to anyone with the least appreciation for things like fact-checking and POV. NickCT (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I have a slight concern that you are implying that I don't have the least appreciation for things like fact-checking and POV. IMHO I am the opposite of that. Lou Sander (talk) 16:48, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@Lou Sander - I'm implying that I have difficultly understanding how someone with appreciation for things like fact-checking and POV wouldn't see that there are some major issues with articles like this one that chiefly use self-published material for information about a subject/entity. Do you feel the policies I've cited are relevant? NickCT (talk) 17:26, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

What I "feel" isn't very important, IMHO. Feelings are notoriously unreliable as bases for intellectual discussions. OTOH, what I "think" is more pertinent. I thank you for thoughtfully pointing out the policies involved. You did hurt my "feelings" a bit with your choice of words, but I'm already over it.

Yes, Sophie has a COI, and yes, almost all of the sources are from IRRI itself, and yes, those are things to be avoided if possible. But nobody has said anything negative about the content of the article, and some are proposing to strip out all the IRRI material, or to dynamite the article. They say that then "we" can reconstruct it. I don't see any indication that they, themselves, will be involved in the "we". And, again, I don't see anything wrong with the article itself. I think it's a pretty good article on an important but fairly obscure topic. The "facts" in it seem really to be factual, and there seems to be a basically neutral point of view. Lou Sander (talk) 19:17, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@Lou Sander - Ok. Well I think we're close to consensus here.

I don't disagree with your assertion "The "facts" in it seem really to be factual". Frankly, the content may be perfectly factual. The view point may be perfectly neutral. I'm not arguing it's not. What I'm arguing is that as it stands now, I think it's reasonable to have serious concerns about the venerability of a large portion of this article. I think you understand those concerns, at least in some part.

As you're probably aware WP:V is sorta a "cornerstone" policy of Wikipedia. When I see an article drift away from WP:V in any serious way (as I think it has here), my first reaction is to "burn with fire".

Didn't mean to hurt anyones' "feelings", but, with all due respect, you didn't enter this conversation acknowledging the apparent WP:COI issue, which you now seem to. It sorta looked liked you were trying to be difficult.

Anyways, perhaps the way to move forward here is if I just go through tagging all the sentences I feel have verifability concerns. You can then go through and either verify or delete them. How does that sound? NickCT (talk) 21:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Start with one, and I can think about it. I don't have much time to research facts that are acknowledged to be correct, but that are questioned because they came from a substantial organization's own web site or other publication. For example, the best source for a list of organization X's current research programs, or the number of its locations, or its telephone number, etc. is usually organization X itself. Many times, secondary sources don't bother researching and repeating that stuff. It is kind of non-controversial boilerplate. One can grow old trying to find it in secondary sources.

It is a different matter if claims are made, for example, about the results of organization X's research. That is the kind of stuff that is covered in journals, etc., and it is entirely rational to demand secondary sources. Lou Sander (talk) 23:08, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

• Anyway, to move forward, are there high quality neutral, secondary sources about this organisation that we can work from? IRWolfie- (talk) 21:51, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

@IRWolfie- - Asking the important and pertinent questions, huh? Instead of doing that, can't we just argue about WP policy a bit more? No? Ok.... well..... I do see a few reasonable sources. NickCT (talk) 22:30, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Is it appropriate for me to provide other sources for editors to consider, by noting additional info in talk where I think it might help? Or step away? Sophie Clayton (talk) 06:18, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not steeped in wiki lore, but it seems to me that it is entirely appropriate that you, Sophie, provide other sources, that you discuss them and engage in any discussion on Talk Pages. Roxy the dog (talk) 10:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

@Roxy the dog&Sophie Clayton - re " entirely appropriate that you, Sophie, provide other sources" - That's right. Entirely appropriate. The only thing I would add Sophie is that you should try to look a really high quality sources. For instance, if you offered us a reference from the Journal Nature, we would probably immediately accept that and use it verbatim. This is because the journal Nature is a highly respected source. References to things like PR web or Trade Arabia are going to be less desirable, b/c those are less highly respected sources. NickCT (talk) 13:02, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I would say that PRweb is not just "less desirable"; I would actually struggle to come up with a reason to use it as a citation here. There are exceedingly few situations where it might qualify as a reliable source to be used for this article. I would avoid it entirely. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 01:54, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Archive

I've archived all the old stuff from 2006-2012. There's a little bit of overlap with the current discussions, but all of it is pretty old. I kept Sophie's 2010 COI declaration on this page, and included a copy in the Archive. Lou Sander (talk) 01:45, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Redirection

I modified the redirection from IRRI to send to this page rather than some minor Game of Thrones character. I hope that everyone agrees that this is the more relevant meaning of IRRI. Marcrr (talk) 14:45, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Golden Rice GMO Controversy

There is at least a moderate amount of serious controversy over the genetically modified Golden Rice that was developed by IRRI, and there are many reliable references pertaining to that controversy. The article currently only has one sentence about it, referring to some vandalism done by anti-GMO activists. IMHO there should be much more about this controversy in the article. Maybe it deserves a short section of its own. Unless somebody has a strong objection, I propose to write it up and put it into the article. Lou Sander (talk) 23:50, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

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