Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Archive 32

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Google Snippets Ensuring sufficient contextual information is available

In a recent discussion I initiated at WP:RSN, there appears to be a consensus forming that use of Google Snippets is an unreliable method of sourcing an edit as a sole means of research. This is because it is expected that editors will have access to the source, have read it and understand the context upon which the edit they proposed is based. Google snippets is inherently unreliable in that context is missing.

Would others consider the need to have access to the full source to be something of value to add to the guideline? Wee Curry Monster talk 12:27, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

The source is always the actual reference rather than the google snippet providing a severely restrained copy. However we cannot mandate or control how a reader is reading a particular source and what his personal access is, i.e. whether he reads it on google books or some digitization, in a library or in a personal copy. Common sense suggests anyhow that for you to use a source properly you need to be able to access more than 2 lines from it. However by no means does that implicate that you necessarily need to access to the whole book, but access to to the relevant chapters or pages is often sufficient. Let's say I edit the article about the Roman emperor Caligula and use as a source for my content a book with biographies of roman emperors, then for most purposes access to the chaper about caligula will be sufficient. So while an authors usually needs access beyond a google snippet or a few quoted lines to have some context information needed for correct understanding, this does not translate automatically into a need of access to the whole source (as in the complete journal or the complete book).--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:46, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

I think you have misunderstood, when the accuracy of the cite was challenged it transpired the editor in question had done no research whatsoever apart from using google snippets to source a contentious edit. I am not suggesting the complete source needs to be available but rather obviously sufficient to give the edit the relevant context. In this case, common sense that you could see no more than 2 lines and so it could never be a reliable source was lacking.

Rather obviously my intention was not readily apparent, for which I bear the blame for not making my suggestion more succinct. May I change my suggestion that there is a need to have sufficient context information for a correct understanding. Wee Curry Monster talk 15:45, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

When the accuracy of a citation or the summary of an editor are questioned, the citations/sources need to be checked (not matter whether it is google snippet or not). We completely agree that sufficient context is required, but I'm not clear what you do you actually want the guideline to say. From my perspective requiring sufficient context is so obvious that there isn't even a need state that explicitly (it's like using correct grammar or spelling properly).

Or do you want to block google snippets from being used in references ? But that is more of format issue and people will simply switsch to giving the exact citation (as they should have done anyway). Whether they actually read only the Google Snippet or more is something you can't tell and have no control over, so you can't really police or enforce it. --Kmhkmh (talk) 08:20, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

No I certainly don't want to block google snippets being used in references. They can be very useful for illustrating a source online. Sufficient context may seem very obvious to both you and I but in the case I referred to, sadly it was not. When the accuracy was challenged it became apparent that the editor didn't have the source and was relying solely on snippets. I would agree with you, I thought it was as obvious as breathing. Wee Curry Monster talk 09:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

My take on this is that it is a matter of editorial judgment, and the quality of editorial judgment varies from editor to editor and from case to case. The case exampled in the WP:RSN#Google_Snippets discussion could have occurred in a library by looking up something half-remembered in the index of a book, going to an indexed page, reading a snippet off the page confirming the half-remembrance, re-shelving the book without reading surrounding context, and citing that book as a source. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:34, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT indicates that we should note the website that hosts something we read on line... this impacts reliability. Some hosting websites are reliable (presenting an accurate "true copy" of the original text), but others are not. Google snippets is not a reliable host site... as it presents the snipped material out of context. Blueboar (talk) 02:59, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I'd say Google snippets are fine, so long as there's no obvious missing context that could change the edit. Using it for basic facts such as nationality, date of birth is fine. But I wouldn't want to see a guideline rule it out entirely, because it should be left to editorial judgment. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 03:16, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Presumably the editor has read enough of the source to ensure the snippet is relevant. That, however, must be taken in good faith. Note that often a page or two is necessary for that (I have seen numerous cases where all relevant information regarding to the specific issue in a source was contained in a page, or a simple para). That said, I have seen cases where editors have cited sentences out of context. The world is not perfect - the solution is to verify when in doubt, and fix when the source is cited improperly. I should also add that direct page links to Google Books are very useful, and should be encouraged. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 03:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with others that it is hard to write any general rule for all cases. Snippets vary a lot, so it is hard to say what is inherent in them. They need to be handled case by case and in reality this is not normally going to be an area where common sense is going to lead to very different conclusions.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:12, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

In answer to User:Piotrus, the case I am involved in the editor had not read anything from the source to ensure the snippet was relevant. They relied solely on the snippet, this was their sole research tool. I agree that snippets are a useful tool to illustrate an edit, provided you actually have the source. On their own, in general, you do not have sufficient context to regard them as a reliable source. Google preview is different.

As a general rule, I would utterly agree that direct page links to Google Books are very useful, I have a policy of doing so myself. I think perhaps I have probably erred in not explaining myself that well. It was not really google snippets that was the issue, rather having sufficient context from the source. I've modified the title in that respect.

I'm wary of drawing too much inference from one incident, so if there is a consensus that the requirement for sufficient context is adequately covered in guidelines I would withdraw the suggestion. Wee Curry Monster talk 09:50, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

As per others, and the RS/N discussion, there is no hard and fast rule about snippets; sometimes they may provide enough context, sometimes they may not. Jayjg ^(talk) 03:20, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

online retailers, proposed addition

I'd like feedback on the following addition under Self-published and questionable sources

Online retailers
References to websites which only offer a book, album or other product for sale do little to establish notability. These retailers provide little if any oversight in the products they offer for sale. Book, music, movie and other product sales sites like Amazon and iTunes may confirm that something exists but this doesn't tell us how it or the individual or organization that created it may be notable. When referencing a review, use the original source of that review, rather than a link to an online retailer. Also, listing where to buy items associated with an article could be seen as spam whether in an external links or references section.

--RadioFan (talk) 14:24, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems like this would be more appropriately added to WP:Notability than to RS. A website selling a product might be a perfectly fine, reliable source of information about the product (e.g., product specifications). Such sources are really only useless for determinations of notability. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's another "online retailer as RS?" situation that came up. One of the biggest online sellers of Tradtional Chinese medicines (snake oil, human placenta, sulfide of mercury, arsenic, etc.) says what their procducts is believed to treat. Is this RS for a sentence about beliefs of TCM? They are a somewhat secondary source for TCM beliefs, but they also have a profit incentive for promtion. PPdd (talk) 19:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

This really isn't as difficult as you're making it out to be. If a website sells widgets, and says that these widgets are used for ____, then you can report that these widgets are used for ____. It doesn't matter what type of widget you're dealing with: You can trust the software-selling website that says this software is used for ____ just as much as you can trust the power-tools-selling website that says a power tool is used for ____, exactly as must as you can trust a herbal-concoction-selling website that says a given herbal concoction is used for ____.

None of these are ideal sources for this information, and none of them prove that it actually works, but they're all sufficiently reliable sources for the relatively weak statement that the product is "used for ____". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There is no such thing as an entirely reliable source

All sources are unreliable to varying degrees. The use of the term "reliable source" actually encourages a naive credulity with regard to some types of source. It would be better if wikipedia could find alternative terminology. Mowsbury (talk) 17:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

There is not such thing as absolutes in anything. Everything is colored by point of view. Wikipedia is guided by concensus for this reason and reliable sources are no different, they are judged by consensus, not absolutes. You are correct that this project more describes "that which is not known to be unreliable" but to be positive and in the name of brevity, it's titled Reliable Sources. In the end, the top of this project identifies it as a guideline, not law, not fact, not an absolute, but a guideline. I think that's sufficient.--RadioFan (talk) 18:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

You are both absolutely right! PPdd (talk) 19:19, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Yup... in fact, we already address the point Mowsbury raises in several sections of the guideline... for example, the second paragraph of the guideline states: "The reliability of a source depends on context. Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context." Blueboar (talk) 20:33, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but then there is nothing really wrong with the original comment. It is just that there is no easy solution, and reality does not require one.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:08, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

The phrase as used on Wikipedia is a term of art and it should not be confused with the meaning of the term in common usage. Dlabtot (talk) 00:23, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Foreign language sources

A problem has arisen in an article. How does one tell if a Chinese language source is reliable? First, there is a problem of an "English language encyclopedia" user reading it, or reading things about it which may only exist in Chinese script. Second, there is a problem that most such sources are published by the communist government, or censored by it, and the government has an economic stake in everything, so it is effectively always "self published" or "self edited". PPdd (talk) 17:09, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

If it is written in Chinese, French, German or even Esperanto that should not matter. If the cited source is in a foreign language it is good practise to add a quotation, translated into English; something I often have to do with Spanish language sources. Other than that there is nothing in policy to suggest that simply because it is in a foreign language it is any way unreliable - the language is immaterial.

Secondly, no it is not a WP:SPS. If you suspect it is censored then that is a matter for editorial judgement and discussion on the talk page not a pretext for excluding its use. Wee Curry Monster talk 17:16, 4 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Reliability here depends very much on context and I don't think blanket judgements are useful. If the People's Daily reports that the Minister for Agriculture has just visited Mongolia, it would be reasonable to accept it as a reliable source for that statement. On the events of June 1989, probably not, and that has nothing to do with the language; the English-language edition would be just as unreliable as the Chinese. --GenericBob (talk) 02:53, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Editors can get a copy and translation under WP:V to verify the content came from the source, but how are we to evaluate reliability of the source itself. Even copying and translating a whole book under WP:V would not help. This is a major general problem with foriegn language sources. As far as I have seen, reliability has never been challenged, especially as to Chinese language sources, which are for all practical purposes, either put out by, or censored by the communist government, a big stain on their reliability. PPdd (talk) 19:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

I can't see that reliability is not challegended. If I come across content that looks rather questionable based on a source I suspect to be unreliable as well, I do of course challenge it. But the language doesn't really matter he, rather what I know of the reputation od autghor and publisher of that source. For instance if some article on an ancient chinese history topic makes a claim that appears questionable to me and is based on some chinese sources i can't read. Now if I see the source is written by some proper academic of the concerned (like history or archeology prof) in an academic journal, then I might not challenge it. However if it is just based on some chinese website, a daily newspaper or some non academic book publication, then you can bet that I'm going to challenge it.

Similarly I'm more likely to challenge questionable content sourced by official media of a tolitarian state than mainstream media of a democratic state. In this context it might be also worthwhile to note that Taiwan publishes in Chinese as well and at least more recent Taiwanese publications (since the late 90s) do not have the censorship issue. --Kmhkmh (talk) 20:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

P.S. But in any case if you are not sure yourself as with any other topic, get the attention of a fellow wikipedian with required domain knowledge to have a look (see posting by Six words). Most fields (in particular all major countries/languages) have their ow portals and/pr projects in WP, where you can ask for help or an assessment.--Kmhkmh (talk) 20:26, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually it's pretty easy, you go to WP:CHINA and post there, asking the participants for their opinion. They can tell you whether a book is published by a good publisher, an article is published in a reliable journal or newspaper, or it isn't. --Six words (talk) 20:16, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Six. PPdd (talk) 20:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

And you frankly ought to be doing the same thing for English-language sources, since the idea that any person would know the reputation even of just all the English-language academic journals in any major field is laughable. I've heard estimates that more than 10,000 medical journals are being published these days, and a huge fraction of them are in English. There's no way that any human could actually keep track of which ones are reputable and which are dressed-up soapboxes. You've got to check up on your sources, not just say "Oh, English source that disparages alternative medicine, so Y Good source" or "Oh, not English, so N Bad source". Reputable academic publishers produce valuable sources, no matter what language they're published in. Lousy sources are lousy sources, even if they're published in English and support your personal beliefs on the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Good point, WAID. Is there a place I can post the question regarding English language sources? PPdd (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Usually, the most effective places to ask such questions are at large WikiProjects and at WP:RSN. You should learn to check up on such things yourself, at least within the range of sources that you use regularly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Another good place might be To get help determining if a foreign language source is reliable, the RS board for the wiki of the language of the questioned source may have useful information. This, plus Six words' suggestion, might be good proposal to put in this policy for others to read. PPdd (talk) 00:43, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I like where you are going on this, but not the execution. You assume that all other versions of wikipedia have RS boards like we do (many don't). Also, the other versions of Wikipedia may have different rules as to what they consider reliable and unreliable. We should keep this in house as much as possible... so I would suggest amending your language to: To get help with questions relating to foreign language sources (including help in determining whether the source is reliable), contact the members of the relevant WikiProjects (eg: for questions relating to sources in Chinese, contact Wikipedia:WikiProject China) (Preceding unsigned comment by Blueboar the ogre)

Proposed addition -

To get help with questions relating to foreign language sources (including help in determining whether the source is reliable), consider contacting the members of the relevant WikiProjects (eg: for questions relating to sources in Chinese, contact Wikipedia:WikiProject China), or contacting someone at the wiki for that language (e.g., if a source occurs in an article, consider posting at that article's talk page in the wiki for that language).

Is there a wiki for some languages that is independent of the English language wiki projects? PPdd (talk) 02:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

@PPdd: Not sure what you mean there, aside from belonging to the same overall project and sharing the basic principles are all the non english WPs independent of us. They all have their own administrators and their own set of guidelines, they do not depend on us for anything.If you look at it from article per capita perspective many of them are even way ahead of us (see [1])--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:50, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

@Kmhkmh: Since Blueboar's language only included en wiki projects, not the other language wikis, I thought there may be some kind of automatic tie in between the other languge wikis and en wiki projects that I was unaware of. PPdd (talk) 02:00, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Here's a hypothetical case: Let's say I want to use the National Inquirer of Tibet as a source. Nobody here knows anything about it, so I find a editor who speaks Tibetan and ask him or her to go to the Tibetan Wikipedia to ask there about its reliability. He gets some kind of response there (let's say affirmative), which he passes along to me. I then have a third-hand report that it's a reliable source and therefore usable for any assertion it might contain. Is that the idea behind this proposal? Is that how we'd judge an English-language source?   Will Beback  talk  03:02, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's how I judge unfamiliar English-language sources.

When people ask me whether ____ Journal of Academic Impressiveness is any good, and I can't find hints about the answer myself, I usually head over to DGG's talk page and dump the question on him. He usually (and very kindly) responds when he has time, and I pass the information back. Alternatively, I have asked for help from people in a relevant academic field. It's a rare professor who doesn't know the reputation of a journal they've published in. That's just as third-hand as your example; the language wrinkle doesn't really add anything to the mix. (Additionally, it's frequently the case that if you find someone here who speaks the language, he or she can give you an estimate offhand, without having to trek over to the other-language Wikipedia.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

The third pary at foreign language wiki can give reasons why it is reliable. Its up to us to weigh them. That is a good point you make, and it should be claified not to just take their word for it, but to only get evidence to be weighed as to its strength and validity. There is always going to be an infinite regress in establishing reliablity, however; no matter where evidence comes from, it can be the next to be questioned. All we can do is gather evidence, and get direction where we may find some regarding publications in languages we do not speak. PPdd (talk) 06:18, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have to strongly object to overtly pointing our readers to the non-english versions of Wikipedia. The other versions of Wikipedia have reliability standards that are different from ours (not necessarily worse or better... just different). This will lead to endless arguments along the lines of: "but the guys at the Chinese/German/French/etc. version of Wikipedia say this source is reliable".

I completely agree with including some sort of statement saying that editors faced with non-english sources should seek advice from third parties who a) know the topic in question and b) understand the language ... I just object to overtly pointing our readers and editors to any location beyond en.Wikipedia. (I don't mind if they ask off site... but we should not actually tell them to ask off site). Blueboar (talk) 14:07, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Gaming portals -- need advice

I've been trying to help a bit at RSN, and gaming portals tend to come up. See most recently.[2] A topic such as gaming doesn't typically have types of sources that we value — scholarly articles, books, mainstream media, etc. So websites are often used as sources. In giving feedback, I look at the website to try to get a sense for whether there's some sort of editorial oversight. But there's no way of really knowing. I seem to remember that there's a gaming project that deals with this. Can someone point me to that, or any other relevant guide that one might use in giving feedback when these issues arise? Thanks. TimidGuy (talk) 12:37, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I think there are no easy answer and this needs to judged on case by case based what exact content is sourced, how reputable/known that gaming site is, etc. For general advice/orientation/assessment of sources for video games there are Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games and Portal:Video games.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:42, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Excellent. Thanks much. TimidGuy (talk) 16:08, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 75.47.137.71, 11 March 2011

{{edit semi-protected}} Requested edit. (adds wikilinks for primary, secondary and tertiary sources)

75.47.137.71 (talk) 00:36, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

 Done — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 16:03, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

NEWSORG, and the Daily Star

Anyone who knows British tabloids at all knows the reputation of the Daily Star: basically, it doesn't have one. While there have been cases of the newspaper systematically fabricating stories, a an ex-reporter admitted fabricating stories after resigning and claimed the practice was not only known about, it was approved of by the editors. However, NEWSORG implies reliability in the case of the Star, as it is mainstream (higher circulation than the Guardian, at least) and it does have "news". Should the guideline be clarified that this is not an automatic pass? Sceptre ^(talk) 18:02, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

A news organization's reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (or lack thereof) certainly does trump its status as a 'mainstream' organization. I agree that the guideline should be more explicit on this point. Dlabtot (talk) 21:42, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

There is also the case when a newspaper might be reliable for one kind of news, unreliable for another. The science coverage of the Daily Mail would come into that category. I have just seen it treating astrology alongside astronomy "Supermoon", and retailing a story about someone claimed to be older than Jeanne Calment, claiming that the case came "too late" to be investigated by longevity investigators. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:58, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Newspapers of record and reliable sources

I'm looking for some input over at the Newspaper of record article. User:Corbridge is insisting on deleting the New York Times from the list of examples of newspapers of record (the entry is sourced with the Encyclopedia Britannica article on the NYT), on the basis that "It is an opinion supported by an unreliable source. Please provide a reliable source. Another Encylop EB is not a RS". Any thoughts? It's news to me that Encyclopedia Britannica is not a reliable source, but I don't want to edit war with this user. Thanks. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 21:13, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts look a lot like the solution is to {{Mergeto|Newspaper}} and lose the list in the process. There are hundreds of newspapers of record just in the United States, and may be thousands around the world. It's silly to have a list of about a dozen (and to not mention the US once). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:26, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

While I think that approach has its merits (it's been discussed in the past on the talk page) (I'm not sure that there are 100s of newspapers recognized as newspapers of record in the U.S., though), my experience with this article suggests that a list would be recreated fairly soon, or examples would be inserted into the text. --Skeezix1000 (talk) 22:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

To give just one example, every county in the State of Iowa is required by law to declare at least one newspaper to be its newspaper of record. The choice is usually the local newspaper with the largest local circulation, but some places have more than one, and sometimes the city's choice is different from the county's. There are 99 counties in Iowa. You can see Iowa's list here if you click on 'advanced search'—and that's just one state out of 50. "Hundreds" may well be an understatement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:17, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but if you look at the article, there are two types of newspapers of record. You are talking about the first type, and there is no list/chart for that - presumably for exactly the reasons you have identified. The issue pertains to the second type.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 16:09, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

• There is a short list of newspapers in that section.
• I've never seen a reliable source that draws the distinction that the article does. It might be True™, but I'm not sure that it is verifiable, or that the one type is somehow less a newspaper of record than the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:54, 13 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, there are some examples in brackets of publicly-owned entities that use the name "Gazette", but I am not sure that goes to your initial point (the hundreds of newspapers in Iowa), nor is the text purporting to be a comprehensive list of that type of entity. As for the different types, I don't think anyone has said (nor does the article say) that one type is less a newspaper of record than the other. As for the difference, the distinction between the two types is pretty obvious on its face. Mind you, as you say, it still needs to meet WP:V. You are absolutely correct that the discussion (re. the second type in particular) is unsourced, and should be tagged. A year or two ago, when I went through the article adding sources, I pulled a few journal articles on newspapers of record (mainly the second type), but never got off my lazy ass to go through them to pull information and sources for the articles. There is some interesting stuff about how the term was originally applied to the New York Times, and then came to mean something completely different in journalism-speak. I will dig up that stuff and try and fix the problem you've identified.--Skeezix1000 (talk) 18:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Filmography

Cote was recently in the film Grown Ups (starring Adam Sandler). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.111.137.227 (talk) 13:21, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Are internet blogs masquerading as news sources really reliable sources

Are internet blogs that pretend to be new sources (Newsbusters, Huffington Post, Pajamas Media, Media Matters, Infowars, FAIR, Accuracy in Media, etc) really reliable sources?

Senior Trend (talk) 05:22, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Sure, for some stuff, and not for others. As with every question, it depends on what you want to say in the article. These websites, for example, are unquestionably reliable for the fact that they exist, or that they published a given sentence on a given date, or things like that. They're truly lousy sources for the fine points of Einstein's special theory of relativity, or the inner workings of an advanced mathematical proof. And for all the stuff in between those two extremes, you'd have to actually take your question to WP:RSN and pair it with a specific statement that you want to put in an article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

They are certainly reliable for attributed statements of opinion ("According to the Huffington Post...") Blueboar (talk) 14:11, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

If i'm not mistaken the enumeration above is mixing rather different things. Accuracy in Media and Media Matters are media watchdogs rather than actual news "blogs", Huffington Post is a rather well known news aggregator that however employs some editors and writers as well, I'm not so sure how well thy fit with the rest of the site.

In general it rather meaningless whether somethig is a blog or website (those are format description), but it matters who/which organization/authors with what reputations run that site or blog. Sometimes the term website or blog is used synomously for arbitrary private website or blog, which of course cannot be considered as reliable sources at all. However online representation of reputable major news publishers are also websites strictly speaking and some of them employ a blog format too, but that doesn't mean their reliability is on the level of an arbitrary private website or blog.

So to assess the reliability the reputation of the author/publisher matters not the format. In addition the things apply that have been mentioned above, i.e. considering the sort of information that gets sourced and its context.--Kmhkmh (talk) 15:29, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

It's not that easy to say that about the Huffington Post. Drudge Report, WorldNetDaily, Canada Free Press, Daily Kos etc. are also well known news aggregators, yet their self published sources fail WP:RS. Considering them RS comparable to that of NYT, WSJ, etc. is a bit much considering they only exist virtually.

Senior Trend (talk) 22:38, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Senior Trend, it sounds like you didn't understand the responses you received. All of these websites are reliable sources—for some limited purposes—and all of your 'good' examples are not reliable sources—for other specific situations. For example:

The top headline at Huffington Post right now says, "Libya: Pro-Gaddafi Forces Launch New Counteroffensive As Rebels Advance Toward Tripoli". If you are writing in the article Huffington Post, and you want to include a statement that says, "Huffington Post once had a headline that said, 'Libya: Pro-Gaddafi Forces Launch New Counteroffensive As Rebels Advance Toward Tripoli'", then that website is definitely reliable for that statement.

If, instead, you are working on Special theory of relativity, and you want to include a statement that says, "According to the Huffington Post, Einstein said that special relativity explains why extraterrestrial creatures have green skin", then that webpage is not reliable for that statement.

You cannot determine reliability without knowing what statement you're trying to support with the source. Reliability can only be determined in context. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

That is an AP Story. It is not the news aggregating part that I have issues with, it is with the opinions and self-published articles from online blogs that I have issues with. Senior Trend (talk) 06:19, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

First you need to distinguish between opinion and news and report/describe them as such (no matter in which publication). Now if you report on some opinions then again it depends on the reputability of the author/publication not whether it is online or offline or what format is used. An editorial comment maybe judged the reputability of its author and publisher (as far as formal aspects go), those 2 however having nothing to do with a specific format (portal, website, blog). Btw the Huffington Post or similar sites are not self publishes sources. A self published sourced would be some private blog on wordpress. Note various media outlets offer something similar to self published stuff in form of letters or comments from readers which are often without direct editorial control. Those need to be treated seperate lyof course, i.e. a NYT article is not the same as an arbitrary posting in a reader's forum of the NYT.--Kmhkmh (talk) 06:55, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

We had an extensive discussion about this two months ago. Generally speaking, left-wing partisans want to treat left-wing sources such as HuffPo, MoveOn.org, Daily Kos and Media Matters as "reliable," and right-wing sources such as Newsmax, Newsbusters, World Net Daily and Daily Caller as "unreliable," while right-wing partisans want the reverse. I believe that the lot of them should be excluded in their entirety, with the sole exception of the limited purpose described by WhatamIdoing (HuffPo is a reliable source for the Wikipedia article Huffington Post, for example). Unfortunately, we weren't able to achieve consensus for anything.

If it's an AP News story that's been aggregated by HuffPo, then it's available elsewhere and probably from the AP website, so we should link the AP website. Original material from such partisan sources should not be used, period. Phoenix and Winslow (talk) 20:14, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

The (US)-left-wing issue is entirely misleading, people should focus on the reputation of those sources/authors no matter their political leaning. Also this left-right issue is not specific to blogs but to any media in general (print newspapers, TV, popular literature). I.e. look ar their reputation for reliability in their general reporting and the assessment of that by 3 parties, more importantly take a critical look at the particular article you want to use as a source as even reputable publishers have badly researched or overly opinionated inaccurate articles sometimes. The biggest problem here imho is bad faith (pov pushing) by authors, rather good faith use of such blogs.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:56, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

That's what I was trying to get to. I do not think any of these sources should be used Senior Trend (talk) 06:47, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Book cover endorsements

I've removed a slew of endorsements from Chris Robinson (animation scholar), quoting praise -- at length -- by other authors. They appear to be dust jacket blurbs. My own view is that a journalistic review from an WP:RS lavishing praise is independent and worth citing, while endorsements from fellow authors, as one typically finds on book covers, or inside front pages, are not. I've tried to find a guideline that addresses book blurbs of this kind -- is there one? Thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:43, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

We have not made a separate guideline about it... but the issue of whether dust jacket endorsements are reliable has been discussed on this page in the past. As I remember, the consensus was that such material is essentially advertising, and the blurbs are not considered reliable. Blueboar (talk) 17:11, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Well, now, to be precise, book jacket copy is perfectly reliable... if the question is something close to "What are the contents of the book jacket copy?"

The non-review aspects (e.g., a paragraph summarizing the contents of the book) are probably also be reliable for certain limited factual statements (e.g., this novel traces the life of a woman named Scarlett O'Hara, the author is a proponent of sleeping on an inclined surface, etc.).

As you can see, it really depends on the context, but it's likely to be deemed a source that is too weak to support most of the statements that someone might like to make. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:07, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I think it is a case-by-case thing and is about WP:SPS (is the content unduly self-serving) and WP:NPOV (to what extent might it be making the article unbalanced).

We can't have a blanket ban on book-jacket endorsements, because if a book on theoretical physics has been described by Stephen Hawking as "the best book I have ever read", then this should clearly be in the article, even if the only source is a book-jacket.

I would suggest that a quote from a highly reputable source (be it an individual or a publication) is not unduly self-serving, although a quote from the author's close literary associate may be.

It should be remembered that, where the jacket just reproduces a quote that has already been published in a reliable source (eg a professional review), RS has already been achieved.--FormerIP (talk) 01:38, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

We should track down the review and cite that, not the blurb on the dust jacket. Blueboar (talk) 01:51, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Ideally, but in principle I think it passes RS. If the book is 80 years old, it might be hard to track down the original source. There may sometimes also be cases where it is suspected that the quote may be a partial representation, it which case more caution would be needed. Also, the question was about endorsements rather than reviews. The fictional endorsement by Stephen Hawking above may only ever have been published on the book-jacket. --FormerIP (talk) 02:01, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree, if we are going to mention what a third party says about a book, we need to track down the original source where they say it. We can not take what is written on the book itself at face value. It is not unheard of for unscrupulous publishers to take comments out of context or even to fabricate endorsements. Blueboar (talk) 02:14, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it is usual for endorsements to be fabricated. It may happen, but much much less frequently than things are fabricated in newspapers, and we consider them reliable. Whether endorsements are noteworthy is another matter, but clearly they sometimes will be. I will grant that very very often they will not be. As far as reviews go, that's a side issue, but clearly we need to be sensible about judging how reliable the source is in terms of whether a quote may have been taken out of context. Often, though, there will be no reason to suppose this is the case. "This is a fantastic book in every respect - LA Times" would be reliable in every respect. --FormerIP (talk) 02:57, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

No, it is a question of verifiability. How does one verify that the LA Times actually did say "This is a fantastic book in ever respect"? The only way is to look at the LA Times itself... not the book jacket. Blueboar (talk) 03:25, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Whatever it's a question of, it's not one of verifiability. There's no doubt that a book jacket, in general terms, passes V/RS. If the LA times is quoted on a book jacket, then the quote is verified. That doesn't mean it should necessarily be reproduced on WP, of course, but we have other criteria for determining that. --FormerIP (talk) 03:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

How do I, the reader, know that the LA Times actually said what the book cover claims it said? Blueboar (talk) 15:24, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Blueboar, dustcovers are not valid sources, if something has been published in a reliable source, cite that source. Every schoolchild knows: "Don't judge a book by it's cover". That this is even a subject for discussion is a sad commentary on Wikipedia. Dlabtot (talk) 06:50, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

No, book covers are used as reliable sources all the time. The question asked is more specific than that. --FormerIP (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2011 (UTC)

Obviously we should use the contents of books as sources rather than their covers. This conversation is absurd. As is the argument that we should do something that is obviously wrong because it is done 'all the time'. Dlabtot (talk) 02:52, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Blueboar, you are assuming that third-party dust-jacket copy is always a quotation from an independently published source. This is not true. The book's advertising materials may be the sole publication for some comments. Such comments by third parties should be treated like they were in a foreword, as they may have been solicited by the publisher in exactly the same way.

I believe that caution is warranted, and that such blurbs ought to be handled as if they were advertising material, but the fact that such things were said is actually verifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree however in practical terms there is no much difference between you and blueboar. Meaning if at all possible you should cite (and check) the original newspaper. If in exceptional cases for some reason that cannot be done, you might cite the book cover as an emergency fix, but clearly indicated that the bookcover was your source and not the original newspaper.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:03, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Ancestry.com

Is this a reliable source and if so, would it stand up to an FAC? - Neutralhomer • Talk • Coor. Online Amb'dor • 17:37, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

It is "reliable" for saying what people have claimed about their own ancestors, but not about the material itself. It links to census and other databases, which are primary sources. It is, however, a reliable source for procedures used by genealogists. Collect (talk) 11:05, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

It also has scanned and indexed books, so it is quite a diverse website which is hard to generalize about and the context is even more important than you suggest. BTW this exact question comes up routinely on WP:RSN which is perhaps the better forum for such a question. However, to say it again, context is important in order to give any opinion on this - what is being sourced etc.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

My take: Ancestry.com is an excellent resource for finding sources, but should not be used as a source itself. Blueboar (talk) 13:26, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that sounds right. Maybe another way to put it is that there are sources within this source, and it is those sources that need to be considered. Some are user contributed and basically useless for us. Some are published reference books.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:28, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Montrose Hagin birth date is wrong she was born Annie Hagin on June 12 1917

{{edit semi-protected}} Montrose Hagin birth date is wrong she was born June 12 1917 Can also supply a picture for her page.

98.151.152.132 (talk) 21:08, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Not done: please provide reliable sources that support the change you want to be made. Then submit another edit request on the Montrose Hagins talk page instead of here. Thanks, — Bility (talk) 23:41, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

General IRS problem, abstracted from a discusion on the IRS/N board

The following discussion is about a specific IRS problem on the IRS noticeboard that contains a lot of general IRS discussion. It is in danger of being lost when/if the specific problem is fixed, leaving no change in the guideline, or even discussion on the WP:IRS TALK page. So here is a (small) part of the discussion, abstracting out much of the (irrelevant) specifics that led to it:

CHALLENGE:

Unhappy with WP:V, you've tried to change it and, at various points have pleaded to have it (essentially) ignored. Failing that, you're here on the reliable sources noticeboard challenging the reliability of the New York Times to verify a piece of data that everyone seems to agree with (official sources, those disputing the official sources, etc.). Someone brings up WP:WAX, so now you're challenging that. What policies, guidelines and/or essays do you generally agree with, other than WP:IAR? - SummerPhD (talk) 17:39, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Incidentally, I see you've sourced your claim about the NYT making errors to, gulp, the NYT. Presumably you either have them fessing up to screwing up on the Gerson obit or, better yet, have a reliable source for them making mistakes in the Cronkite obit... The only person disputing his cause of death is... well... I don't think even you, as you have said he died of pneumonia. Still, you're arguing that the NYT is not a reliable source for this simple piece of info that everyone seems to agree on. Why? - SummerPhD (talk) 17:44, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

We are really clued up on epistemology, nice of you to point that out. Ask me a question about epistemology. Some of us teach epistemology. Great to find someone interested in it. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

An obituary in The New York Times would generally meet the requirements of WP:RS. A paid death notice in the same publication may be used for non-controversial material.Jayjg ^(talk) 01:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

ANSWER:

Jayjg, did you read the above? If the NYT does not fact check parts of obituaries or death notices like cause-of-death (which they do not) but instead rely on family who has this private information to supply to the paper, then why does republication in the NYT confer ANY extra reliability on such information? That is a triumph of surface-value over substance, but it's no progress epistemologically (comment, user:Itsmejudith?). In fact, this actually detracts from whatever information-value the material has, since it tends to HIDE the original source, just as is happening in this case. See churnalism. It's one thing for WP:IRS to mention "churnalism"- apparently it's something else for WP to actually incorporate the consequences of it, into policy or even guideline (which it has not). The family tells the NYT that the guy died of pneumonia, and this is considered by WP to be RS because the NYT prints it, but when the family later decides the cause was arsenic leading to pneumonia, the editors at WP refuse to accept this, ostensibly because it comes from the family. We don't know what the NYT would have printed if the family had initially claimed death-by-arsenic, or by Martian ray-gun. My guess is that they'd have refused to print anything on the cause of death, if it was too odd-sounding. But again, that fact adds no information, if what they DID print was noncontroversial. We already know that the NYT is likely to print non-controversial causes of death, but probably wouldn't print something outrageous or even odd (death by Humboldt Squid attack in a death notice), since they can't fact-check either one. So the fact that that they print "pneumonia" adds no level of likeliness that it actually was pneumonia as an ultimate (rather than only proximate) cause, since we already know the paper has an "unusual claim" filter at this level in death notices (which is not the same as fact-checking system-- it's just a skeptic-filter).

To SummerPhD: I merely gave an example of the NYT "fessing up" to their own errors (which they didn't catch;somebody else did) as a shortcut to get around argument that maybe they actually didn't make that many errors. Perhaps you think that an error by the NYT counts only if they admit it, or that if I can't find them admitting it, it doesn't count? If so, that is wrong. There are plenty of errors the NYT makes they never "fess up" to. For example, Judith Miller's NYT "exclusive" stories on Iraq's WMDs (which helped the drumbeat toward that war) were based in no small part, but without attribution, on Ahmed Chalabi's claims, a fact that the NYT (as noted) didn't include at the time, and has never appologized for, as an "error" (any more than the US government has). In this gaff, Chalabi's claims took on the NYT's reputation, and in doing so, made the government sound like their own WMD claims had been independently verified, by being taken up as a story (without attribution to Chalabi) by a liberal newspaper. BUT, you must read about this gaff in OTHER media, who (of course) lose nothing in making the NYT look like the rumor-spreading fools that they were in this case [3]. Like the game of "telephone," but one where each player gets more and more reputation as the chain elongates, it's a mess. Example: Curveball (informant)'s claims eventually taking on the reputation for accuracy of Colin Powell, who hadn't fact-checked them, any more than anybody ELSE had.

Consider Dan Rather and CBS's defense of the authenticity of the Killian documents, which they say their experts checked. It's a separate question from the problems of churnalism per se, of whether any given news medium (or government agency, for that matter) has a "reputation for acuracy" better than it deserves. If so, who is to say, and how would one know? From some other source? And what about THEIR reputation? Without application of science, this is ALL just a game of "he-said, she-said" more or less as happens in any nasty-divorce-trial, but without any primary evidence admitted anywhere. user:Itsmejudith, can you tell us about the epistemology of he-said/she-said? It's the method WP uses for much of its material. Do you see a problem with that? In examples above (Curveball) jounalists and government have ignored even legal rules of evidence, and admitted not only hearsay, but hearsay about hearsay! And when this goes to press, it all is transformed to WP:RELIABLE and WP:VERIFIABLE. Come on.

Oh, yes, and in answer to SummerPhD asking which WP policies I do agree with, see the end of section at [4]. I think WP:MEDRS is the best standard that exists at WP:IRS, which otherwise flails around a lot. Even as journalism is decaying, and journalism even admits that it is decaying, WP at the same time has enthroned journalism as a major source of reliable truth. That is bad. SBHarris 16:59, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

SBH, I think that your point about supposedly reliable sources is absolutely uncontroversial. However, what can we do about the fact that all reliable sources are actually imperfect and sometimes wrong? Logically this means we can never use any sources? Or WP would have to become a research organization itself. Instead, surely the standard procedure here is that we focus on reputation for fact checking rather than trying to judge the fact checking (or truth) independently ourselves. Nearly every Wikipedian has of course drawn the line somewhere when there is clear consensus and evidence of an article or book being a bad apple from a normally reliable source, but is there any clear evidence that this particular case is one of them?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Andrew Lancaster, your questions are interesting, but where is the place to discuss them? If I complain about epistemology on the TALK page of an article, I get sent to RS/N (as happened here). If the problem is removed, we still end up with policy issues, which perhaps should be discussed at TALK page for WP:IRS. Which I can do, although those people get tired of arguing policy without specific examples in front of them. [But here the generalities are reposted anyway]

The short answer to your question is that things are all mucked up on IRS. They can't even decide if a newspaper report (front page NYT) ala Judith Miller's "reports" about Saddam's WMD's in 2002, are primary or secondary sources. One problem is that people like Miller don't give their OWN sources (in this case, it was an unreliable one) so why should we trust them? It's not as though Miller is likely to have checked out her sources with other journalists, let alone other newspapers-- that's not the way that world works. In science, however, it actually DOES work that way.

We can also see on WP:IRS that WP has no understanding of your average primary science experimental paper, published in a peer-reviewed journal, for it labels such things "primary sources." Anyone who actually has written one of these things knows that it contains many levels of information, starting with a "why we did this" section, continuing with two sections that on WP would be labeled WP:OR, and then a WP:SYNTH part where the authors interpret their findings, do a mini-review of the literature (ordinarily a secondary-source thing) and attempt to put their findings into perspective by contasting them with others, and often ending with a paragraph or two, of what in journalism would be called "Op-Ed". However, all this is is seen by multiple other (anonymous) reviewers before it gets to print, and the primary authors have a chance to correct it, also. It is NOT like a diary, published later by somebody (a classic historical primary source). Also, there is no way to compare it with anything a newspaper does. Do you see my problem? WP:RSMED (which again I didn't write, but like) does an admirable job of starting to get the epistemology of reading a scientific paper down to some kind of algorithm (it still takes quite a lot of sophisitication). However, nothing is available on WP for other fields, and certainly nothing that attempts to compare reliability in one field with another, something that happens ALL THE TIME in writing encyclopedia articles.

The answer to what to do about this for me as an editor, has been (in the past) to use my own judgement. What else can one do? However, there's no good way to settle arguments. I don't really think the problem has a good answer. But it would be good if we got the difficulties out into the open, and ADMITTED that it doesn't have a good answer. And that right now, all such problems are being handled by violating the letter of WP:SYNTH, and by argumentum ad baculum at the point of administrative-block tools, again without admitting this. There's a reason why the first steps of Alcoholics Anonymous involve admiting you have a problem, and you can't fix it. WP hasn't even gotten to Step 1 of the 12 Steps, after working a decade on it. The reason being that WP departed from the expert-review vision it initially started with when it was invented by Sanger, and then attempted to bureaucratize the dysfunctional result after that, in order to try to make the reliability problems disappear under a load of increasingly difficult to understand and jargonish policy guidelines. See my comments on the TALK page of WP:V. [5] [6] And of course, dissenters are suppressed or (eventually) leave, or are banned. I'm just waiting my own turn, though I've edited here since late 2005.SBHarris 21:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

SBH, this is indeed the right place to discuss sourcing in general. Can you briefly identify a change you would like to make to the guideline, or an issue you would like to discuss. Itsmejudith (talk) 23:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Okay, there are lots of things, but here's one from the IRS page, which is echoed in WP:V: "Mainstream news sources are generally considered to be reliable. However, even the most reputable news outlets occasionally contain errors..."

The truth is that the most stories generated by "reputable news outlets" GENERALLY contain errors. If might be true that are "are generally considered reliable" but this general consideration is in error, for they shouldn't be. For example, here's a 2007 study in which 2,615 hard factual errors were found in a random sample of 1,220 stories clipped from major metropolitan papers, reporting on locally-generated events. These were stories on page 1, or in the metro, business, and the lifestyle sections. The study culled sports stories, opinion pieces, columns, and reviews and it didn't look at network news stories. Obviously many stories had more than one error and fewer than half had none. The errors were found by doing fact-checking surveys of primary news sources named in the articles, who had first-hand knowledge of the event being reported (things like age, title, spelling of names, and so on). All stuff that could have been done before publication, if the newspaper had cared, or had a policy of doing it. 69% of the stories sent for error review to the primary sources actually were reviewed and returned, so this doesn't represent much of a bias toward getting reports only from erroneous stories. Finally, the most shocking fact discovered is that only 2% of these errors were ever retracted by the papers, with the maximum rate being 5%. [7] The other 98% stand forever, as fodder for Wikipedia, under present guidelines.

The results here correspond with my own experience of news articles, in which I have never seen an article about some event of which I had first-hand knowledge, printed without some gross error. Many of these could have been fixed had journalists sent their copy to their primary sources for fact-review prior to publication, but I have found by bitter experience that not only will most journalists refuse to send their sources such copy prior to print (the most you get is they MIGHT condescend to read you a bit, over the phone). This is as a point of pride, but they often will not do it due to direct newspaper policy, for a host of legalistic reasons. Actually, I don't CARE what their reasons are, or if they can be fixed. The point is that this happens, and they cannot, or will not, fix it.

I am amazed that WP, which relies on thousands of eyes to review facts for any well-read article, would regard as more reliable, a news story that has been fact-checked by maybe one set of other eyes (not counting copy-editing), and that set is some other editor who cannot possibly be as knowlegeable about the story, as the story's subject and others who have first-hand knowledge about the event. Publication in a newspaper does not increase factual reliability; I don't really know why anybody thinks so. SBHarris 02:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Which is why we say so emphatically that we are seeking verifiability, not truth. Sources can be and are often in error, however, we still have to base our articles on sources. Do you have any change to the guideline you would like to propose? Dlabtot (talk) 02:48, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Your answer simply bolsters my argument about the widespread misunderstanding of the meaning of WP:V[8]. This whole mess of a policy is a multiheaded hydra. If I argue at WP:V, they send me to WP:IRS, then WP:RSN. And now that I'm here at WT:IRS, I get people who have totally missed the point of WP:V. Arggghhh! SBHarris 04:08, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

What do you think we should say about newspapers as sources, then? I do have some sympathy. If you just look at articles on Israel-Palestine issues, editors tend to use newspapers a lot because they are readily accessible. They dismiss academic works because they perceive virtually every academic to have a bias one way or the other. It has been heavily argued by some editors that there are no reliable historians of post 1945 Israel/Palestine at all. It has for a long time been accepted that current events are mainly written up from newspapers, but personally I think that as soon as the first historical articles appear they should take precedence and articles should be rewritten to incorporate the academic research. This is a hard point to get across sometimes but it is supported in WP:V and WP:IRS even as they currently stand. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Will Rogers' statement that "All I know is what I read in the papers" was meant as humor. What I just said about the issue on WP:V (which is having trouble sorting out the IRS issues) is:

Newspapers are a "first draft of history" and are as full of errror as you'd expect from the way they are produced. They can be used as cites for what people and media thought at the time an event was happening, and for sources of the facts of historical events during the (hopefully short) period in which there has been no review, but later should be replaced by better sources as they come out. The short-time use should to limited on WP, since WP is WP:NOTNEWS (even though it tries to be-- in our shinking world WP is influenced by recentism, which is error-ridden).

In some historical cases, where no other sources are ever located but the news accounts (this happens a lot in the 19th century), we have to use what we have, as a semi-reliable source is better than no information at all. Historians must deal all the time with what to do with century-old news stories that come out a day after the event, but sometimes are not fully checked with their primary sources and witnesses (a story about something a journalists personally saw is not the same as a story about something a journalist reports on a deadline secondhand); and how to compare these with coroner or trial transcripts of what people say about the same event weeks or months later, vs. what people remember years later.

In any case, all these are WP:IRS issues, and probably shouldn't even be mentioned in WP:V. WP:V might speak to the usability of blogs, but only because they are evanescent. In these days of self-publication and small and smaller publishing houses (sometimes only 3 people only work for small imprint) the only reason to deprecate blogs is that you can't be sure they won't change, not because they are "self-published." Most organizations have publications these days, and they're all self-published. "Self-published" is hard to define, and in any case, the WP:V faults for it that we mention doesn't apply to print, nor to things reliably archived and available. Those things only have RS problems due to bias and relative lack of review by others, not V problems. Any by the way, the evanscense problems apply to many on-line sources that are reviewed, but due to become (i.e., will probably be) deadlinked on WP when somebody stops hosting them. But that usually doesn't cause them to run afoul of WP:V even BEFORE they disappear, as appears to be the case for "self-published works." Yet, evanescence is given as the reason for attacking the "self-publications", sometimes as a last ditch effort after their reliablity has withstood all attacks (I was just involved in one IRS argument about this type, about the GRG which keeps gerontological records). SBHarris 16:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Maneater

http://move.themaneater.com/ I would like to know if this qualifies as an RS. It could be vital to solving a genre war. Thanks! DCcomicslover (talk) 19:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)DCcomicslover

According to the site's "about us" page, it the on-line version of a student newspaper. As such it would have limited reliability. To know more, we would have to know the specific information it was being used to support. Blueboar (talk) 20:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

http://move.themaneater.com/stories/2009/9/11/skillets-back-and-pissed/ The writer calls skillet a nu-metal band. We are looking for RS for genres. Oh and thank you for doing this so quickly. DCcomicslover (talk) 20:27, 29 March 2011 (UTC)DCcomicslover

OK... classifying a band within a specific music genre is almost always a controversial issue on Wikipedia. Should we rely on this website to do so? I would say no. It isn't really a matter of reliability... but one of undue weight. Genre classification is often a matter of opinion (with different sources stating different opinions as to the proper classification), and I don't think the opinion of a student news reporter carries much weight. Especially if there is another source that classifies the band in some other way. Blueboar (talk) 20:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Not as a main genre but subgenres. We need to come to a conclusion on what subgenres to put. And I already have another source saying that they are metal. Written by a pro. I wouldn't use a student paper for MAIN genre. DCcomicslover (talk) 20:45, 29 March 2011 (UTC)DCcomicslover

Again, genre/sub-genre classification of bands is usually a matter of opinion. Even the recognized industry experts disagree as to how the various genres and sub-genres are defined. Definitively placing bands in neat pigeon holes by genre is often next to impossible, and as you get to sub-genres the problems get worse. My advice... don't try. If you can get more than one reliable source to agree that the "main" genre for this band is "Metal", you are ahead of the game... be happy with that classification. You probably will not be able to define a sub-genre. Blueboar (talk) 13:51, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Regardless, Thats what they're doing. You do make a good point though. I might bring this up. So you wouldn't say reliable source for subgenre? DCcomicslover (talk) 15:15, 30 March 2011 (UTC)DCcomicslover

I don't think the source should be used... but I don't base my exclusion on reliability. I don't think this is a reliability issue. I think Genre classifications should be phrased as being an opinion, and for a statement of opinion, you can not get more reliable than the source where the opinion was stated ... however, not every person's opinion is worth mentioning in an article (per WP:UNDUE). I don't think the opinion of some college kid is really worth mentioning. Blueboar (talk) 00:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

So its a weight issue. Gotcha. So perhaps I could use this as a secondary source? And yeah the thing is that We had a bunch of people changing the genres so an admin locked the page and referred it to some of us. Actually we kinda took the matter ourselves to reliably source the genres. DCcomicslover (talk) 15:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)DCcomicslover

You realize Wikipedia is an unreliable source, right?

It seems that according to the "reliable sources" guidelines, Wikipedia itself is not a reliable source. It's barely more than a web forum where people can edit each others' work, not just respond to it. 1) The work itself is not a reliable source. 2) The authors are not (guaranteed) experts, therefore not reliable. 3) The publication itself is just a website not a reliable publisher with a staff of experts and professional fact-checkers.

I say this not to troll, but rather to point out that the guidelines are both ironic and outdated. Ironic, because, this publication has shown itself to be at least as reliable as many professional encyclopedias, almanacs, etc, yet has been at the forefront of upending the traditional system of knowledge gathering and dissemination. Outdated, because, the world has moved beyond merely the sources described as reliable. I understand the goal and sympathize, but it's outdated. Let me give an example.

I've been following an online series on the history of gianduia at dallasfood.org. The stuff is impeccably researched and footnoted. Technically it's a blog, one person's publication without peer or editorial review in any traditional sense. I added a footnote to the site in the Gianduja (chocolate) page for the proper/common Italian spelling of the word (which is actually "gianduia" not "gianduja"). I emailed the guy and encouraged him to update some of the historical information in Wikipedia that I was noticing was out of date/wrong as I was reading his articles and trying to get more context online. So he did. He made a change to the Waldensians page and footnoted it with a link to his site. Now, obviously there's no subterfuge here. There's no SEO advantage to linking to his site since Wikipedia does NO FOLLOWS. And the guy doesn't have ads on his site, either. And again, anyone who looks through the articles can see how impeccably researched it is. I don't know how he got his hands on all those Italian documents, but apparently he did. And he has photos/scans of some of them proving it. Yet, his changes were removed and now he tells me he's unlikely to add anything to Wikipedia again. Wikipedia's loss for sure.

Is he an expert in the field? I don't think so. He appears to be an obsessive hobbyist who is so interested in the issue that he's reading tons of academic sources and original sources. But he's obviously a hell of a lot more reliable than the other sources that are being used on the subject matters he's dealing with. He seems to have thoroughly debunked several common claims that appear to have been inserted into history by companies' marketing, primarily. And yet, he's not a reliable source and someone removed his footnotes and claims.

It's ludicrous and extremely ironic. I worked in the editorial department of newspapers for over a decade and I know how questionable a lot of the information that comes from them is, especially before there were digital recorders and the internet. Very few journalists have ever done the kind of research this guy is doing and yet the Dallas Morning News is a reliable source and this guy isn't. It's ass backwards and doesn't make sense for Wikipedia given the nature of its own articles and oversight.

There should be more emphasis placed on whether online content used as a source shows signs of going through the process of making itself reliable. The number one item in that regard, imo, is not a fallacious appeal to authority, such as is the basis for much traditional/mainstream media, but the evidence in the online articles themselves, such as footnoting, data, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.201.141.251 (talk) 07:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

One reason why in practice WP articles are sometimes or often more reliable as various newspapers, is exactly due to the fact that we do block such internal self confirmation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:39, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

I have to agree - the definition of reliable source is completely text based. As an example I cited a YouTube video of a senior member of the UK parliamentary system giving a speech on the importance of flags to national unity as a reference to that person expressing those views at the event. The citation was deleted because, apparently, a video of someone saying something isn't a reliable source that proves that they actually said it! Of course it would be fine in something as mundane and unimportant as a court of law... but Wikipedia editors must be held to higher standards than mere cast-iron, bone-fide legal proof.

Sources are not necessarily text based, but text is just the most practical, easiest to access medium. You can site video or audio files but for them the same quality criteria as for text sources still applies. Meaning you may cite a video or audio piece by a reputable author/publisher, but you may not cite any arbitrary youtube video just as you may not cite any arbitrary website or blog either.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

With today's modern media, less and less actuality is being reported verbatim in text. Why bother transcribing what a person said if you have a video of them saying it? On the internet when does a website become authoritative? Should it be based on Google Page Rank - "no source is reliable unless the page it comes from has a Page Rank of at least 7"? I must admit, as an "expert" in a field, I am becoming more and more disenchanted with Wikipedia. I can advise my government, and even my head of state, but heaven forbid that I should be taken seriously on Wikipedia when I discuss the same subject.

The other problem is that not all information is verifiable by third parties - if Winston Churchill was still alive and contributed to some article on WWII, say the bombing of Dresden, and explained what his thinking was at the time, how could he possibly reference it? Even if he kept a diary and referred to that surely it would be a self-published source! The same problem applies to any facts that are known to an editor through virtue of him/her being at an event and witnessing it, or by having taken evidence from a witness or survivor of an event - all this human knowledge is apparently worthless. GrahamPadruig (talk) 10:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

If Winston Churchill were alive today, there would be no mechanism to verify that a user using the name "Winston Churchill" was the same person who was prime minister of the UK during World War II, and thus no way to judge if his or her contributions were reliable. However, Mr. Churchill would have no problem finding a well-known publisher to print his revised memoirs, and that publication could be cited. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:29, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) I think these are just common misunderstandings. Please consider and see if this answers the concerns:-

• Saying Wikipedia should [NOT (edit)] be used as a source in Wikipedia does not mean we call ourselves UNreliable. It means that if two Wikipedians disagree about whether something is verifiable, and one of them only has his information from Wikipedia itself, then that second person is un-convincing because in effect his sourcing is circular.
• The problem with YouTube is not to do with different media but to do with what kind of publication it is. If I make a website which claims to be quotations of Winston Churchill this is not a reliable publication, just something I made. It is exactly the same with videos. (And please remember YouTube is full of videos that have been cleverly played with, so it is more like text than you might think in the sense that a video can be edited, like text can.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Just a side note that the Policy refers to Wikipedia as a tertiary source. It mainly cannot be cited because that is circular.

When I brought this up I was told that the from of media does not mean unreliability. So, for example, a C-SPAN video would presumably be reliable for what a member of Congress said, but perhaps not a you-tube video. Same for a university lecture as proof that the lecturer holds a certain opinion (but not to the validity of the opinion).Mzk1 (talk) 18:26, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Projected jobs, contributions to economy

Not sure where this question goes.

One statistic that I have managed to keep out of place articles is the projection of how many jobs a particular business indirectly creates (for anyone new to economics, this is NOT how many the business employs or intends to employ) and how much "domestic product" in cash, it generates in the community (again, indirectly, not their payroll nor accounting). Normally, if you add these up for everybody, they way outstrip the local domestic product and the number of adults in the area. Great for chamber of commerce pitches. Seems lousy for reporting in "fact" articles. This doesn't sound reliable to me. Student7 (talk) 12:52, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like something that WikiProject Economics might want to consider. I tend to agree with you, and we should exercise caution. When such figures are cited, it is often in a self-serving way. Perhaps sometimes the estimated number of jobs to be created is a prominent feature of reporting on a project, in which case we should be able to say that "X (independent body) estimated that Y jobs would be created (independent reliable source). Itsmejudith (talk) 15:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Also note that any claims made by looking into a crystal ball are genrally problematic. And extrapolations are notorously weak. Collect (talk) 23:21, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Advocacy sources

The issue of advocacy groups keeps cropping up at RSN (and WP:V and WP:NPOV), so I think we may need to spell it out... What do people think about adding the following (or something like it):

• Sources and statements published by advocacy groups are often not considered reliable for statements of fact, but they are considered reliable for attributed statements as to the views of the advocacy group itself. To determine whether (or not) to mention the views of a particular advocacy group in a particular article, see: WP:Undue weight.

I am thinking that this could go in the "Some types of sources" section, or in WP:SPS. Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 17:46, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Suggested rewording

• Sources and statements published by advocacy groups are considered primary sources. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation.

On second thought, though, I'm wondering what an "advocacy group" is. Is e.g., the Catholic Church an "advocacy group"? Is e.g. the Catholic Encyclopedia an advocacy group publication? (its WP article says "The encyclopedia was designed to serve the Roman Catholic Church, excluding information which has no relation to the Church and explaining matters from the point of view of the official Catholic doctrine, as it stood during the pontificate of Pius X") Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:45, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Not only is that incorrect—advocacy groups are perfectly capable of producing secondary or even tertiary sources; perhaps you have confused "secondary" with "independent", in which case I recommend reading WP:Party and person—but I also think that what you propose doesn't solve the problem that (I think) is on Blueboar's mind.

My bet is that Blueboar primarily wants to discourage the use of sources by "Nuts R Us" when the nutters are contradicting widely agreed-upon facts.

Imagine that the "Nuts R Us" website says that drinking milk causes male pattern baldness—or cancer, or abortion, or global warming, or drug addiction, or whatever controversial subject this particular group of nutters goes on about. This should not be used to "prove" that milk causes men to go bald, although it could be used to "prove" that Nuts R Us said that milk causes men to go bald.

If their website says "drinking milk causes male pattern baldness", then putting exactly that claim into the Wikipedia article is not "interpretation". Such a claim shouldn't be included at all, as a violation of WP:DUE and common sense. If the claim is included, it should be attributed WP:INTEXT to Nuts R Us, not presented as an unadorned fact. In short, such a source should be handled as a self-published source (which, in the case of an organization's website, it certainly is anyway), not as a primary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. To give another example: We recently had a discussion at RSN as to whether material published by Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International was reliable or not. HRW and AI are clearly notable advocacy groups. Their opinion on Human Rights issues is important and often should be included in relevant articles. However, their reliability as to facts is often questionable (or at least questioned). Thus, when we include what they say, we should do so with attribution and phrase it as being opinion not accepted fact. On the other hand, UNDUE says that we don't have to even mention the opinion of non-notable Fringe advocacy groups (Nuts R US). Blueboar (talk) 15:43, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

News releases as self published sources

The policy isn't explicit on this, but this uses what appears to be a fairly dubious source. Are press releases, especially this very web 2.0 type of press release, a reliable source? The claim isn't particularly unlikely, especially since if you read the announcement it's a fairly token boycott. SDY (talk) 02:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it's a perfectly reliable, self-published source speaking about itself. Citing the university's press release is really no different from citing the university's website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:11, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It's fine, and actually the policy does cover this. Probably better if you can find the release on the universities own website though. --Insider201283 (talk) 05:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

The "Identifying reliable sources" guideline uses the term "self-published" to mean sources published by one person or a small group. A press release issued by the part of a university that normally issues press releases is not self-published as that term is used in "Identifying reliable sources". Jc3s5h (talk) 12:16, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Wikipedia sometimes uses an idiotic definition of self-published, in which the size of the organization, rather than the identities of the author and the publisher, is the primary factor. However, that definition isn't actually written down anywhere; people are just supposed to magically know that "self-published" is usually wikijargon for "smallish entity that is not a traditional-looking print newspaper" and occasionally wikijargon for "source I dislike" (and you can't disprove my claim, because the English Wikipedia doesn't define "self-published"), and rarely wikijargon for "amateur content" (e.g., letters to the editor, which we [IMO correctly] treat exactly like blog posts, even though they aren't really self-published according to any sensible definition).

I tried to fix that a while ago, but two people were absolutely determined that if you can infer the existence of a corporate lawyer, then the business is completely incapable of self-publishing its own advertising materials, and that using a typical dictionary definition like wikt:self-publishing would somehow turn all newspapers into self-published sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:22, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Thing is, it's not clear it's the university that's making the claim given the apparent nature of the site (I assume it's just input info and we'll call it a press release), which makes it akin to citing a blog. SDY (talk) 14:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It looks like the Press Release was actually done by the student senate and posted on Facebook [9]. The FB page appears to be an official site of the student senate and then released through "free press release". I'm not sure on how "official" student senates and their relationships to universities are considered, but that's probably what needs to be established. Right now from perspective it's a weak case to keep the source. --Insider201283 (talk) 22:09, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Some questions about recent additions to newspaper reliability

Being known as a mainstream news source does not automatically make said source reliable. Several news sources have reputations for—and have sometimes admitted to—either incomplete or biased coverage, a failure to do due research, and, in egregious cases, complete falsification of some stories. Even for reputable sources, there are various articles which may not be reliable. Having corroborating sources increases the chance the information is reliable, but beware of the practice of "churnalism", especially in print media. Prioritise sourcing to news agencies above other news sources.

I have two issues with the above:

1. Regarding the last sentence, I think it is a questionable that news agencies (AP, Reuters, and many are worse) are more reliable. They have a particular drawback in that they traditionally do not take public feedback. (Although is this now different in the internet age? Do they read comments?)

Back in the days of shortwave radio when we would send in QSL reports to radio stations, it was well known that the BBC would not reply to them. And this from an organisation that for decades had a reputation of being the most "reliable" and "unbiased" of news sources! Old_Wombat (talk) 09:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

2. Regarding "[s]everal news sources have reputations for—and have sometimes admitted to—either incomplete or biased coverage, a failure to do due research, and, in egregious cases, complete falsification of some stories.", this sounds like a good description of the New York Times. (What? You thought I would say Fox News?) Yet we have to accept the NYT as reliable for a newspaper, simply because it is respected by the other newspapers and even determines what - in the U.S. - is a news story (see Bernard Goldberg, Bias for a personal account of the latter). So while in my personal opinion the paper is complete garbage, I would be the last to claim it is not a legitimate Wikipedia source (taken with some grains of salt, and with certain exceptions), and more usable as such than any other American newspaper. In other words, what is a mainstream publication is not necessarily related to its actual quality, so I think this statement is not useful and should be deleted.Mzk1 (talk) 21:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree and have removed the paragraph for further discussion. This paragraph could be used to exclude just about every news organization out there. Blueboar (talk) 00:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

About "public feedback": The wire services take 'public feedback' in two different ways. The first is that anyone can send comments to them. This has always been true (mailing addresses have long been published, and also available from your local newspaper), but it's on their websites now. If your comment is about a particular story, it's usually passed along to the reporter or a relevant editor.

The second is that they take feedback through any paper that reprints their stories. They are approximately as responsive to this feedback as your local newspaper is to feedback from advertisers and subscribers, because they can't stay in business if their paying customers drop them.

However, while they do take public feedback (and issue corrections, but the source of corrections is almost always "the subject" of the article rather than "the public"), they do not publish this feedback—a point that I consider irrelevant. Publishing comments from readers does not help a reporter get the facts straight. Having a fact-checker calling the sources after the reporter has drafted the story does. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:50, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

One has to be a bit careful here, though they might be occure more often in (various) newspapers descriptions like "failure of due research" or "misleading descriptions/errors" and the "admission to have published errors" do apply to all publication including most prestigious science/academic publications (remember cold fusion in Nature). In other words if one resorts to absolutes (having admitted errors or lack of due research exclude a source from usage), one ends up not being to use any reasonable source.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:19, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

The addition, as I put it, contained the phrase "has a reputation"; in essence, the NYT (and, on less political/partisan stories, Fox) would pass at it's reputable for getting things right and makes the infrequent cock-up, whereas the Daily Star, which has a reputation for absolutely shoddy coverage of everything, and at least one ex-columnist who admitted to repeatedly writing false stories to fill column inches, would fail (incidentally, said columnist was the underlying reason why I added the part, with agreement from RS/N and this talk, in the first place). How about this for a replacement?:

Being known as a mainstream news source does not automatically make said source reliable. Several news sources have reputations for either incomplete or biased coverage which affects the integrity of the story, a failure to do due research, and, in egregious cases, complete falsification of some stories. Even for otherwise reputable sources, there are areas of coverage where a publication may not be reliable for the aforementioned reasons. Having corroborating sources increases the chance the information is reliable, but beware of the practice of "churnalism", especially in print media. Check each source before using it.

The spirit of the rule would allow most sources to stay, but would disallow the use of the Daily Express on, say, stories relating to the European Union or Labour-controlled metropolitan councils. Sceptre ^(talk) 06:51, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

It seems good, unless it contradicts the policy. Unfortunately, it will be used to invalidate any non-politically-correct news source. There is another issue with multiple sources, and that is the tendency of newspapers to pull things off of lexis-nexis without checking, as long as they confirm to their presuppositions (for example, the discredited Super Bowl battered-wife syndrome). (Again, this latter observation may be outdated.)Mzk1 (talk) 20:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

It's a meme that appeared in the massive RS/N discussion about FNC that not using a source's political coverage is political censorship; it's not (for the record, I advocated a "allow but with restraint" viewpoint in that discussion). The British press have a terrible record on writing about the EU (seriously, half of the European Council's press releases tend to be debunking stories), and wouldn't be reliable if it weren't for a part of this policy saying that mainstream news sources. Even proper news sources, on both the Left and Right, often fall into this trap; the Guardian recently published a news story about how a research group being denied a grant unless they did work studying the Big Society, which was immediately debunked. Perhaps we need to split bias into a point of its own...

On the second point, that's exactly why there's a warning against churnalism, which is a mostly British term for stories that seem to be the same across sources, and are often little more than adverts.

All I meant to say there was that while "churnalism" appears to refer to stories pushed on the media, the media is often capable of generating its own stories, that are carried unquestioned from source to source, as long as they fit the "narrative". Again, thank you.Mzk1 (talk) 21:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Slight changes made in red, which I'll stick to for any changes as a response to this discussion. Sceptre ^(talk) 05:37, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Would it be out of place to say that I am touched and gratified by the reponse to my comment? I half expected to be pilloried for my comment; there have been at least a couple of attempts here to make the left-wing persepctive the only acceptable one.

While I believe my original comments were caused by the differences between U.S. and U.K. newspapers, I see now that I had perhaps misunderstood the term "mainstream" newspapers. If one divided American newspapers into three broad categories:

(1) Major newspapers, such as the New York Times, WSJ, Baltimore Sun, etc. Almost all of these have their point of reference somewhere in the Democratic Party.
(2) Secondary newspapers, such as the New York and Chicago Daily News. These may have greater circulation than the major ones, and tend to concentrate on local issues.
(3) Gossip sheets such as the Weekly World News, the National Enquirer, etc.

My understanding of "mainstream" was that the first category was almost always to be accepted without question, the second generally, and the third almost never. Do I understand now that both categories (1) and (2) should be considered mainstream?

Regarding wire services, my understanding was that network TV news and wire services were known for ignoring complaints from the general public. (Complaints from their customers, the newspapers and local stations, are limited by jounalistic groupthink.) Perhaps this has changed, but examples from AP and Reuters make me resistant to consider them more reliable that their clients.Mzk1 (talk) 18:50, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I suspect that if you talked to editors at the wire services, they would say that the public is known for ignoring facts that they happen to dislike and for faulting wire services for failing to promote their favorite fairy tales. In this instance "ignoring complaints" should be understood as "failing to do what I tell them"—exactly like an exasperated parent might say "You aren't listening to me" when he or she actually means "You aren't obeying me". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:15, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, but this feeds into journalistic groupthink, leading to such comments (as I have seen here, IIRC) as "the truth has a liberal bias". This sort of thinking is precisely what makes them less reliable.Mzk1 (talk) 20:25, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

No: Facts are not determined by popular vote. Argumentum ad populum is a logical fallacy. If "the people" believe that the Moon is made of green cheese, then the people are 100% wrong. Getting the media to "listen to the general public" and start promoting this lie would not change the fact that the Moon is made out of minerals.

I've heard at least as many people complain that journalists are a bunch of rightwing nuts as I have that they are a bunch of bleeding-heart liberals. Those comments usually tell me nothing about "the media" (as if all media outlets had the same viewpoint!) and quite a lot about the speaker. Specifically, if "the media" seems obviously liberal to you, then it is highly likely that your views are distinctly right of center compared to that media market (and vice versa). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, facts may not be determinable by popular opinion, but one is more likely to get at the truth by considering a variety of viewpoints. It has been documented over and over that journalists are not representative of the general public in any meaningful fashion, and this tends to skew their thinking, particularly on what they are likely to challenge or not likely to (for example, the Super Bowl wife-beating myth I mentioned, where an honest error by a journalist spread all over the place). Often they don't even know people who think any differently.

And yes, I would say certain parts of the media in the U.S. (the broadcast networks, the major papers, CNN and AP) have more-or-less the same viewpoint. How you describe that viewpoint depends on your own views, yes, but it is somewhere inside the Democratic party. Without paying attention to outside feedback, this tends to form a self-reinforcing internal feedback loop, leading to distortion of the facts - or as Wikipedia would put it, The Truth (TM). In the old days, Dan Rather would not have had to leave.

One nice thing about Wikipedia is that it is self-correcting in this manner.Mzk1 (talk) 18:52, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Do sources need to be reasonably available?

In the Terai article about a region of Nepal, someone cited

It happens to be in connection with a very mundane, probably non-controversial statement. Nevertheless the source is probably unavailable to 99.999% of Wikipedians. It was published in Kathmandu, not available online as far as I can tell. Google Books does list it, but provides none of its contents. So is this a valid reference per WP policies? LADave (talk) 20:52, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is, unless some red flag comes up. Of course more accessible sources tend to be better, all else being equal. But this sounds as if it's an excellent source for the purpose ("The Terai is the most productive region in Nepal with the majority of the country's industries. Agriculture is the basis of the economy.") If nobody doubts those claims there is simply no problem. Hans Adler 23:12, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

The New York Public Library has a copy of this book. I suspect that other major libraries will also have a copy. If someone needs to confirm what it says, it is "reasonably available". Blueboar (talk) 00:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like I picked a poor example. Now I see that major university libraries scattered around the U.S. have this title. Actually I could hop a bus to UCLA and check this source. Yet as a WikiVolunteer I confess I might let questionable statements ride, unless the stakes were really high. If I were a professional editor I might feel obligated to go that extra mile regardless of the stakes, but as an amateur I might start wondering if I shouldn't take a WikiBreak instead! LADave (talk)

I wonder if we should start a FAQ at the top of this page, to include (at minimum) links to WP:Published and WP:Reliable sources/cost. This is a fairly common question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:36, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

These are very good resources. Not easily found independently however, so by all means link them in this article. LADave (talk) 05:43, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Question about the reliability of non-RSes after they are cited by RSes

I'm curious if there is any policy that covers secondary sources that have not yet been determined through consensus at WP to be reliable, but that have been cited by definite reliable sources. More specifically, I'm interested in whether an individual article from an uncertain source becomes reliable if it is cited by a reliable source. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide. -Thibbs (talk) 20:33, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I'd be most interested in a generalized answer and/or one that is specifically WP-policy-based, but for those who would like to address the specific question underlying my general question, please see this post. Thanks again, -Thibbs (talk) 20:37, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

No it doesn't, as a the citation alone says nothing about the reliability. To gibe a very crude example: The reliable source Y cited the (non reliable) source X and comments on it: "X is utter bullshit". So obviously the fact that Y cites X says nothing about the reliability of X.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:37, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

As is often the case, we can not make a blanket policy on this... because the answer will be different depending on the specific situation. As Kmhkmh says, we need to know what the reliable source cited the potentially unreliable source for. Blueboar (talk) 15:10, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I understand. The scenario I'd be curious about is if reliable source Y says something like this:
"The largest snowfall ever recorded was in Townville, Countria, on April 23, 1909. This much is clear from non-reliable-source X."
If X was a news gazette and Y listed a specific article from X as a source for its claim then would that make the article from X reliable even though X is generally non-reliable? In other words, in a WP article, could I then write something like this:
"The largest snowfall was in Townville, Countria.<ref>Y</ref> Snow depth was recorded to be 4 metres.<ref>X</ref>"
If I understand properly then the first sentence would be fine but the second would not. Is that right? -Thibbs (talk) 21:57, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, if a source is frequently cited by reliable sources, that is evidence that the source has a reputation for accuracy and fact-checking. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 00:57, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, several questions...

1) Did you actually read X (if not you should not cite it, see WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT)

2) If you did read X, why is it considered not reliable? (by the way most news gazettes would be considered reliable) Blueboar (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

1) I did read X and it seems to be reasonable.

2) X isn't actually considered unreliable it's just never been determined by consensus to be specifically reliable. It's not actually a gazette, however. It's a website that I'd be interested in using as a secondary source.

I linked the specific question underlying these hypotheticals above. I'd welcome any comments in that thread. But I know this page isn't intended for reliability determinations of specific sources, so if this issue is really specific to the situation and it can't be generalized then I could also seek help at WP:RSN. Thanks for the help so far. -Thibbs (talk) 00:53, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

OK I've posed a question about the specific source I'm curious about now. The question can be found here. Thanks again. -Thibbs (talk) 20:25, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Shortcut

Thoughts? Ocaasi ^c 15:19, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Two thoughts:

1. Why do we have almost exactly the same text in both WP:V and WP:RS? Isn't that a recipe for disaster (text divergence)?
2. Highly similar shortcuts to different pages are confusing. For example, I can never remember whether to link to WP:CITESELF or WP:SELFCITE. I have to check the link every time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

We have the same text in V, RS, and OR, because policy bloat is contagious and the strains are all antibiotic resistant. (Or did I mix up bacterial and viral infections again?). You might chime in at WP:V where Kotniski among others have been pushing for a consolidation/reorganization or V and OR at least, if not RS as well. I've actually put a draft in my userspace at User_talk:Ocaasi/POL, which actually contains all three core policies in an ongoing merge attempt. Not much done to it yet, but it's a good indication of how much overlap there is. I guess about 20-30% of the core three are pure duplication.

It sounds like CITESELF and SELFCITE should be merged/disamibuated. That's definitely too close for comfort. I'll look to see which one is more dominant and propose it at RfD.

I asked about SPSSELF on the talk page because it's not created yet but I thought might be good to have. SPS is often cited to mean 'no SPS ever' when in practice they are great or at least acceptable as sources for the claims they themselves make. Do you think WP:SPSSELF is sufficiently disambiguated and useful to have a shortcut? Ocaasi ^c 06:15, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, update. WP:V has a section on this with shortcuts. 5 of them: WP:ABOUTSELF, WP:SELFPUB, WP:TWITTER, and WP:SOCIALMEDIA. Maybe that settles the need for a link here. Ocaasi ^c 06:31, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

"COURAGEOUS DISSENT" book about WWII rescuer son Hiram Bingham IV

In 2009 grandson Robert Kim Bingham, Sr. published a book about WWII rescuer Hiram Bingham IV, son of Hiram Bingham III, titled COURAGEOUS DISSENT: How Harry Bingham Defied His Government to Save Lives. Source: http://pages.cthome.net/WWIIHERO/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.138.29.231 (talk) 12:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Wrong page - see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Vsmith (talk) 12:38, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Another notable allumni to add

Dominick W. Giannino, who graduated in 2003, is an animal trainer who has performed around the country with big cats on circuses and zoological parks. He has also worked handling elephants for Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. If you google search Cole Brothers Circus and WLOX, there will be a page with two videos on the show, one is specifically about him. Also google search his name and Cole Brothers Circus and more information can be found —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.113.110.247 (talk) 14:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Alumni of what? I assume you meant to post this at a specific page (presumably an article about an Educational intstitution)? Blueboar (talk) 15:03, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Issue with the "Biographies of living persons" policy.

"Editors must take particular care when writing biographical material about living persons." - no argument there.

"Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material immediately if it is about a living person."

Ahh, now there I see a problem. Borrowing from information theory, would it not be better to include it and flag it as "contentious"? This gives the reader TWO pieces of information (one, what was said; and two, that it is contentious); rather than not have anything at all, which gives the reader no information whatsoever: after all, you can't tell from a blank page what ISN'T written on it! What is "fair" and what is "unfair" becomes even more complicated if the person in question is himself frequently contentious, like say a Michael Moore. Old_Wombat (talk) 09:17, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

It is hard to make any general rule other than "err on the side of caution" though. What we are trying to avoid is for example a situation where individuals use Wikipedia to slander. Allowing individuals to do so as long as they tag their remarks as controversial would obviously allow for some pretty bad types of material wouldn't it? On the other hand we also do generally also try to avoid filtering information in such a way that Wikipedia ends up being used to make people look better than they are also!--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:47, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Hierarchy ?

Is anyone aware if such a thing as hierarchy of source quality exists? Ie, if certain topics are contentious, is there any guideline advocating for the preferential use of "expert" or "in-depth" literature rather than what might be considered as "generalist " ? Slovenski Volk (talk) 09:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes that is the way most Wikipedians try to work. For example peer reviewed literature is normally best, publishers and authors with good reputations are better than ones with bad reputations, and secondary (review) type articles are generally going to be better than articles arguing one particular point. All these things are discussed on policy and guideline pages. But it is not always possible or meaningful to try to define an exact hierarchy, and sometimes people do invoke this concept for the wrong reason. It is always important not to try to argue a case based on technicalities. Do you have any concrete example for consideration?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:44, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Why can't your suggested hierarchy be published in the overview with all the caveats? Sounds quite credible. Once the dust settles here on this question, why not use this material? I don't think I've seen it written down before. Something you have to deduce today. Student7 (talk) 13:58, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Source hierarchies are often discipline dependent. See WP:MEDRS for a field specific example. Fifelfoo (talk) 14:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Questioning reliability

We have an agreement to use a reference in an article. I still question this reference, which will be used anyhow because we don't have anything "better" right now.

It is located at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42555888/ns/us_news-life. The author has won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism. In the wake of Fukushima, and opposing nuclear power, he has taken American power plants, drawn circles around them and counted the number of people there. And published it implying an "at risk population" (we don't quite have the nomenclature down in our separate discussion). We are assuming that the circles are drawn in accordance with recognized threat guidelines.

That doesn't mean the people counted there are, though. Tough for a non-census weenie to count census-designated places that partially lay outside, partially inside those "circles." My take on this is that the author is a fine recognized investigative journalist. But this is circle-drawing and head-counting, well outside his range of expertise.

If he, instead, had interviewed a census guy or statistics guy and got the same charts from them, that would be quite another matter and within his range of expertise. Figuring out which set of charts told the correct story.

But he is, IMO, committing WP:OR, just like a Wikipedia editor might, in "drawing circles" to support his WP:POV. I would appreciate neutral opinion. Thanks. Student7 (talk) 13:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Sources are allowed to conduct original research. Original research is prohibited only when the Wikipedian is doing the research.

If sources weren't allowed to conduct original research, then we'd need to remove every single statement supported by a primary source, most information from non-WP:Independent sources, and a good deal of our information about hard science from peer-reviewed academic journals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Even when it is not in his generally recognized field of competence?

To defuse this question somewhat, what about Linus Pauling and Vitamin C? While his pronouncements have received sufficient publicity to merit their own article, what would happen today if (say) Nobel-prize winning physicist Stephen Hawking were to support Vitamin B3 as a cure for something? And he was the only one (no contradiction from anyone). Would this be usable in this encyclopedia? And why? Because he is "secondary?" That seems a bit specious IMO. Student7 (talk) 13:48, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

That is a question of WP:Undue weight. A public statement by Hawking, where he outlines his view of Vitamin B3 would certainly be reliable for a statement as to what Hawking's views on Vitamin B3 are ... but inclusion of his views depends on more than just reliability... it can also depend on context. We need to remember that reliability is not the be-all-and-end-all of inclusion in Wikipedia. It might be appropriate to mention Hawking's views on Vitamin B3 in the bio article about Hawking. It would probably not be appropriate to mention Hawking's views in the article about Vitamin B3, even though we can reliably source what his views on that subject are. Blueboar (talk) 15:28, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If you are looking at the only (or first) source in the world that makes (or has ever made) a claim, then the source is primary, by definition. The newspaper story about the population counts around the nuclear reactors is a primary source. It might even be accurate: you don't know what sort of fact-checking and unnamed consultations were done in the background.

I realize that Wikipedia is one of the worst places to learn about this, but the fact is that investigative newspaper articles and eyewitness accounts are always primary sources. They may be independent sources, but they are still primary sources. We routinely mislabel newspaper stories as secondary sources (largely to finesse notability discussions), but they aren't. The source you have described above is a reliable, independent, primary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

If the journalist conducted the counts, then it is primary. If he is reporting on (published) counts made by others, it would be secondary. In either case, I would say the story is a reliable source. Blueboar (talk) 15:56, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

From Student7's description, this is the first publication of the population counts.

The point I'd like to emphasize is the "(published)" qualification: if the journalist interviewed some renowned expert, or even a dozen of them, and obtained previously unpublished, expert-generated numbers, then that's still a primary source. WP:Secondary does not mean independent. The numbers from such a situation would be reliable, independent, and primary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm.. a primary sources are accounts written by people who are directly involved in something, offering an insider's view; a reliable secondary source has people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing. A reliable secondary source relies on primary sources for material, and often makes analytic or evaluative claims about that material. In the example, an author who has won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism, publishing through a media organization generally accepted as a reliable secondary source, took a map of American power plants, drew circles around them, counted the number of people there, and published the map implying an "at risk population". Is the author's view an insider's account, or is it analysis which is subject to the fact-checking, analysis, and scrutinization by the editorial people at the reliable secondary source? When I've asked similar questions in the past, the answer was often (roughly) that if the piece appeared on the editorial page it was the author's opinion and should be treated as a primary source; if it appeared as a news item it should be treated as the product of a reliable secondary source which had been vetted by the source's reliable editorial processes. This has been the case in some situations — including one particular Pulitzer Prize winning piece which, if read for content, was clearly a statement of the author's opinions or personal beliefs but, since the piece appeared as a news item, was treated as the product of a reliable secondary source. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:52, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Basically, no.

If you are standing on the sidewalk and see a car wreck, and write down what you saw, then you are a primary source, even though you were not involved in the wreck and are completely independent of it. "Primary" and "secondary" are about the source's relationship to other sources. "Independence" is about the author's relationship to the subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

From WP:PRIMARY, WP:SECONDARY:

• "Primary sources are very close to an event, often accounts written by people who are directly involved, offering an insider's view of an event, a period of history, ..."
• "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely on primary sources for their material, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them."

From WP:RS

• "In general, the more people engaged in checking facts, analyzing legal issues, and scrutinizing the writing, the more reliable the publication."

I paraphrased that a bit above, but I don't think that my paraphrasing distorted it to the point that "Basically, no" applies.Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for having been blunt. The policy page at WP:PSTS is trying to present a simple summary that can be applied to everything from a tweet to a centuries-old book; it is not really possible for it to cover complicated corner cases, like a journalist drawing both circles and conclusions on a census map.

The third quotation (from RS) is completely irrelevant—to determining whether a source is primary or secondary. Fact-checking does not turn a primary source into a secondary source. Importantly, fact-checking does turn a published source into a reliable one—just not a secondary one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:10, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I kind of agree with Wtmichell. But I agree with what you just said, except for the "no" part!  :)

In the above made-up example, if I interview Hawking, and publish the results, doesn't that qualify as "secondary?" Student7 (talk) 18:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, an interview would be a primary source (it would be the initial publication of what was said). If someone took your interview, and commented upon it, that would be secondary. Blueboar (talk) 19:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to 'revise and extend my remarks' to add this:

It doesn't matter if the eyewitness to the car wreck is a certified expert or a professional journalist at a reputable newspaper. It doesn't matter if the resulting news article was vetted by twelve lawyers, two ethics panels, a dozen fact-checkers, and a board of highly experienced news editors, supported by a stack of 8x10 glossies with circles and arrows and paragraphs typed on the back, and then issued on a wire service. The first publication of an eyewitness report is always a primary source (for what the eyewitness saw).

Some editors wrongly label such news reports as "secondary sources" (e.g., to gain an advantage in a notability dispute), but they are actually primary sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:10, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Well there is an issue here though, namely that a formal distinction between primary, secondary or tertiary becomes more important than the actual quality & reliability of the source. In other words I'd prefer a primary source being "vetted by twelve lawyers, two ethics panels, a dozen fact-checkers, and a board of highly experienced news editors" over some unreviewed, unvetted, unreputable secondary source without fact checking.

Also I'm not sure whether it makes sense to consider the first publication of an eye witness report as a primary source, but later publications of eye witness reports potentially as secondary sources. The distinction should not be between first and later but between a pure/raw eyewitness report and a commented edition.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:03, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we too often use "secondary" as a synonym for "good", and "primary" as a synonym for "bad". Some primary sources are stellar, absolutely authoritative sources, and many secondary sources are fairly lousy.

A repetition of the eyewitness report is not automatically a secondary source. However—and this is relevant to the example given—the first publication is automatically, always, and unavoidably a primary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 1 May 2011 (UTC)