User:Geo Swan/opinions/When RS coverage is tongue in cheek

When RS coverage is tongue in cheek

For a long time the wikipedia has had an essay, often misinterpreted, at WP:HOAX. The advice of that essay is that contributors should not create, or add to, wikipedia articles that are, themselves, hoaxes. However, I have seen many comments in AFD discussions, where participants arguing for deletion assumed tahat WP:HOAX barred covering topics which could be considered hoaxes. Hoaxes that have sufficient coverage to measure up to GNG are not barred from being covered in standalone articles here.

I have seen similar claims, in AFD discussions, written by contributors who feel we should not cover topics that are jokes, should not cover topics where RS reporting is "tongue in cheek". er I am not aware of any wikidocuments that address this particular issue. NORAD and Santa is written about a topic that I think could be considered a joke. For decades, every Christmas Eve, reporters give reports that give the surface appearance of reliability, that NORAD's radars are tracking Santa Claus's sleigh. I think every adult, every teenager, and a lot of the more mature children, recognize that these reports are all "tongue in cheek".

Personally, if there were even one RS written by a Scrooge-like spoilsport, who wrote about NORAD and Santa, which explicitly said the other reporting was all tongue in cheek, those reporting should have pride of place.

WP:Verify calls for "verifiability, not truth". But, in recent years, I have seen an increasingly large number of contributors advocating not covering a topic in an inaccurate way, or rather in a way they regard as inaccurate. I see what they advocate as a lapse from WP:Verify, and WP:No original research.

I have worked on controversial topics, where I found my own personal opinion was at odds with what ever RS said. I had to recognize that, like every other wikipedia contributor, I was not a reliable source. I decided that, when covering topics where my own personal opinion was at odds with what RS wrote, I had to either do my best to have my contributions neutrally reflect the RS opinion -- or I had to stop working on those articles.

And so, in my opinion, when it comes to covering topics that (1) measure up to GNG; yet (2) where every RS treats the topic in a tongue in cheek manner, we should neutrally cover the topic going no further than what RS says. We should not indulge in WP:SYNTH to bring our coverage of those topics up to our personal opinion of accuracy.

Similarly, in my opinion, we should not excise coverage of topics that RS only cover in a tongue in cheek manner.