Wikipedia talk:No original research/Archive 49

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Wikipedia is BUILT on Synthesis ("OR") in non-Controversial areas, and needs to acknowledge it to better move forward

If you look and any expert, scholarly writing in a non-controversial area (a book, 1/2 of all Wikipedia articles) you will note that the mere act of writing with expertise is "synthesis" of thousands of learnings over decades. Then the work ( and especially agrueable statements) are bolstered by references. This is essentially how most of the successful Wikipedia article are written. If you read the the "No OR" policy closely, you see that it doesn't officially prohibit these, because they are in non-controversial areas. But, to casual readers, the Wikipedia policy seems to "ban" this and thus ban about 1/2 of it's useful content. And so such would tend to discourage (or slow down) the development of good content. Or allow hecklers to prevent the addition of good content. Particularly in the areas where knowledge on a topic is primarily syntheses (e.g. describing the overall forest vs. the trees)

The policy is particularly useful, needed and effective in areas where "OR" really is (per the common use of the term) Original Research. This is where there disagreement about matters of fact, where such has not yet been learned/decided. Such as is present in leading edge science, pseudo-science and junk-science.

But, a look through Wikipedia articles will show that the Wikipedia system has been an utter failure on controversial topic other than the above type. Those articles are all unstable messes which have informative factoids but where the article is uninformative at the macro level. They are continual battlegrounds of people using the more granular / simple Wikipedian standards (gaming the system) to have the article support their POV. Any real perspective is kept out because such is "synthesis"

A part of the solution will be for Wikipedia to get it's collective head out of the sand and acknowledge that synthesis exists in and is important in Wikipedia.

And for controversial topics, Wikipedia needs to make up "rules for synthesis" rather than pretend it doesn't exist or isn't needed.

Well, there my 2 cents. :-)

North8000 (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:NOR only prohibits synthesis to advance a position, or create new information. If you just combine what reliable sources already say, without creating or implying a new viewpoint or position, it's not only allowed, but encouraged. As the policy says: "Carefully summarizing or rephrasing a source without changing its meaning or implication does not violate this policy: this is good editing." Crum375 (talk) 14:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

But what I'm talking about on non-controversial articles is direct writing from expertise which which was slowly gained over decades. One example is the "Dorothy Molter" articel.....very famous and notable person, but where sources are few. The article had little content. I have pretty extensive knowledge - a synthesis of a dozen meeting/visits, a "gist" that was developed from maybe a hundred this I've heard or read over 46 years, plus dozens of direct observations of items which are content in the article. I clearly remember reading about her in a National Geographic book (not magazine) decades ago which I can not now find. And so I added content to the article in areas that I was absolutely certain of, based only a expertise, not references. Did I violate the rule? And if so, does the rule need changing, or should I delete the material that I added?

A second example is the "Machine Vision" article. As one of the acknowledged authorities (and often read author and guest "professor" at universities on the topic) in that field, I can tell you that that entire field IS very much a synthesis. "Big picture" knowledge is rare and needed, but is always a synthesis....there are no recognized references for "big picture" knowledge. The listed references are good, but for specialized areas within this field. On this article I only added a few tweaks in areas where it was clearly obsolete. No expert can contribute top level knowledge without violating Wikipedia rules. As a result, it looks as if nobody is really contributing, despite this being a huge and fast moving field. (looks like all of those edits are basically putting in and taking out advertising.)

North8000 (talk) 16:34, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually, consciousness requires synthesis. The Wikipedia policy is good enough and useful in its way, but can be over-interpreted to a point where no editing at all is permitted.

Calamitybrook (talk) 19:15, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

It is precisely this "over-interpretation" that needs to be eliminated by having an honest policy on OR. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Re North's example of Dorothy Molter... Yes, your edits do constitue Original research. Wikipedia is not the place to publish personal observations from meetings, visits, etc. The key is that Wikipedia should not be the first place of publication for any information. Now, if you were to write up your observations and publish them in some way... then we could discuss them.

Re the Machine Vision article... I doubt that "North8000" is an acknowledged authority in any field. The person who posts to Wikipedia under that username might or might not be... we have no way of knowing. The key here is Verifiability. We can verify that a published source says something. We can not verify that an editor is the author of that source or knows what he/she is talking about when they go beyond the sources. Blueboar (talk) 19:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Actually I am,(in Machine Vision) but I did not bring that up to talk about contributions, I brought it up only to bolster my statement that in that particular field, (actually industrial automation in general) any higher level knowledge is inherently synthesis. North8000 (talk) 22:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with North. Stating that wikipedia shouldn't have any OR is silly: most articles already violate the strict no-OR rule, and this policy article is inconsistent on the matter. It needs to be made consistent and honest. --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:20, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

We also say that all editors should be civil and non-disruptive, yet this gets violated all over too. So should we just do away with policies? No, we define our goals and rules, do our best, and deal with violations as they appear. Giving up is not an option. Crum375 (talk) 21:32, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Invalid comparison. Removing all OR is not an ideal, as has been pointed out already here by North, and on numerous occasions in the past by almost all editors (including yourself w.r.t. WP:IAR, IIRC). Your statement is an example of what I mean by "not being honest" about our practices and our goals. --Michael C. Price ^talk 22:01, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

"Not being honest" implies I am lying, which violates WP:AGF, and WP:CIVIL, among others. I have written quite a few articles here, and helped out on many others, and have never knowingly introduced OR. To the best of my knowledge, there is no OR in any of these either. If there are articles with problems, they need to be fixed, not used to drag everything else down to them. Crum375 (talk) 22:08, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

You may recall the discussion about WP:ESCA which led onto WP:IAR. The conclusion was that we routinely IAR when it suits us (i.e. for non-controversial changes). IOW we do insert unsourced OR when convenient. Pretending that we don't is stupid and time-wasting. --Michael C. Price ^talk 22:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

So now you are implying I am stupid. You may well be right, but I am not aware of any "conclusion" that we routinely add OR to articles. I am also not aware of any OR in my own contributions, or any of these. If you know otherwise, please let me know. Crum375 (talk) 22:28, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Crum373, IMHO I think that Michael was just bluntly discussing the topic and did not make those statements about you personally that you are reading into it. North8000 (talk) 23:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Yes, my comments relate to the policy not to the contributers. --Michael C. Price ^talk 07:47, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

And if you prefer to follow actual examples, follow these. Crum375 (talk) 21:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

My first suggestion would be to stop categorically defining synthesis as OR. Original Research should be defined more along the lines of the common meaning of that term, and it should continue to be excluded. This would essentially bring the OR policy in line with reality, and keep it in place, as it is needed and useful.

My second suggestion would be to essentially say non-OR synthesis content is OK (only) if nobody disputes it. And even then it should have references wherever possible. And, if it is disputed, then it should follow "synthesis rules / procedures" which Wikipedia should develop.

Lastly, since Wikipedia articles (or sections of articles) on controversial topics are all a mess, it should either stop having those in Wikipedia, or else rework it's standards to start making those successful. Adding some specifics to other widely ignored ethereal policies (e.g. undue weight, scope/content limitations of "criticism of" articles, NPOV at the macro (vs. micro) level) But regarding non-OR synthesis, it should have rules / processes for developing a consensus on synthesis before it can be put in when it is disputed. Non-OR synthesis is an important part of useful articles. IMHO Wikipedia should acknowledge that synthesis is not necessarily OR, and regulate synthesis instead of pretending that it isn't needed or doesn't exist. North8000 (talk) 23:04, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

But we do allow synthesis, as long it's not to "advance a position". That means we may combine several sources in a single summary, and use our own words to do so. We not only allow this, but encourage it. What we don't allow is to "advance a position", which means you may not create an implication for something new, which is not attributable to a reliable source. Crum375 (talk) 23:09, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

What you say is true if you look at the sentence near the beginning of the policy. But then the rest of the policy does not have that "as long it's not to advance a position" qualifier. But even setting that aside, the rest of the policy also puts another condition on allowable synthesis in that it must be synthesized from quoted sources. But I think that the proof of the pudding is that it a standard practice for experienced editors to categorically say that if a statement isn't supported by references, Wikipedia says it's "OR" and shouldn't be written in Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 23:31, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

We don't require "quoted sources". Perhaps you mean "cited"? The "synthesis" section is specifically focused on synthesis used to "advance a position", per its title. And it's true, we can't make statements not supported by reliable sources, but we may (and normally should) summarize those sources using our own words. Crum375 (talk) 23:41, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I did mean "cited" as you suggest. But in the end you stated the policy which prompted me write here. North8000 (talk) 23:53, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree with North's statement "My second suggestion would be to essentially say non-OR synthesis content is OK (only) if nobody disputes it." I think this needs to be explicit. And by "nobody disputes it" we mean no one disputes the factual accuracy. It often arises that a pedantic editor will remove material, and insist it stays out, even when all agree that it is factually correct and non-controversial. Unfortunately, the way this (inconsistent) policy is written at the moment, both sides can cherry pick the parts they want to suppport either side, which leads to endless time-wasting disputes and articles go nowhere. --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I think that there are three cases:

1. Coverage where the factual information is not known yet including assertions that information is factual. (e.g. areas of scientific research, or theories that ghosts exist). I think that the OR policy was well designed for these.

2. Coverage of matters of fact where there are no real disputes regarding what the "facts" are. Here, good articles exist only by violating the OR policy. (Pick any good, non-controversial article. 90% of the statements in it do not arise from the cites.) And thus the policy as written impairs the development of these articles.

3. Coverage that is about or involves a controversial area. (but not per #1) Usually in these the Wikipedia content is just a battleground in some larger scale war that is going on elsewhere. In these one or the other combatant (or both) is working at gaming the Wikipedia system (including clever / selective use of Wikipedia rules) to put forth coverage which would sway readers towards their viewpoint. These articles / sections are basically all failures in Wikipedia. If Wikipedia keeps these types of articles / coverage at all, lots of rule changes will be needed beyond synthesis. But the fact remains that synthesis would also be needed in these articles, so "rules for developing synthesis" in contentious situations would need to be created.

North8000 (talk) 13:27, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

If you think we need to make a change in WP:OR policy, pick a specific mature and well-written article, ideally one of these, and demonstrate with specific examples how that article can be improved with a revised version of the policy. Anything else is hand-waving. Crum375 (talk) 13:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

What is wrong with picking an article on a non-obscure topic that really sucks and demonstrating how changing the policies would help? As far as I understand, the major headache is not what works OK. Mukadderat (talk) 03:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

To North8000: the problem with synthesis is that, unlike mathematics, in social sciences, politics, etc. a significant part in decision-making is the author's expertise to draw a particular conclusion as a generalization of known facts, i.e., the deduction. One prominent and very common example of innocently looking synthesis which is hawked upon in controversial articles is the phrases like "most experts agree that...". They are routinely replaced with "Some experts say that ....". It may seem nitpicking and POV-pushing, but is at the soul of this WP:NOR policy: you have to cite an expert who says "most experts". And even with a bullet-proof citation an opponent has a right to say that this expert is from a biased camp and in fact another expert says that most experts say something opposite. And I think there is no way you can write a policy which will help resolving such cases by a simple "if-then-else" rule. Only interaction of all policies, starting from the topmost one: "wikipedia is encyclopedia", will help to painfully reach a consensus.

Therefore if you feel that the current policy lacks something, this may be just the reflection of the trivial fact that the whole life lacks clean-cut rules, and generic complaining that "life sucks because" or "policy sucks because" are unhelpful.

Conclusion: if you have a specific suffesion how to improve the policy, bring it on. We shall discuss it in its merits. Otherwise it is, as Crum375 put it, just hand-waving. Mukadderat (talk) 03:43, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Re item #3 in North8000 troika. I was lazy to look up how long have you been editing wikipedia, but on my memory there are quite a few good and featured articles which have long been as a helpless battleground. It took a really long effort and work of many interested editors to make them right or look right. Wikipedia is unique in how it works. It is still a great experiment in new ways of content creating. I understand and appreciate your desire to improve its works. You have to look thru policy page histories to see how they incrediblly improved over years. But it is only possible by discussing concrete proposals. Do you have in mind any particular rules how do distinguish "2+3=5"-type synthesis from "all men are pigs"-type synthesis? You may start from a list of cases/examples of go/no-go syntheses. And we shall see what is "policy-able". Mukadderat (talk) 03:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

To Mukadderat: I have a suggestion to deal with the earlier example of OR where absolutely no sources are available, but the subject is clearly public and important. In these cases I think it should be mentioned that adequate sources are not available but this is a good faith attempt to disseminate knowledge. I see no reason not to leave something like this up unless someone refutes it or changes it with sourced data. Could it be incorrect? Yes, just like every other page on WP could be. Bare in mind that the point of the OR rule is WP is not your blog, not to prevent factual (if unverified) information from being recorded in the absence of the possibility of citing a proper source. If there were a way to create a standard of accuracy across WP then this sort of thing could would lower that standard and be unacceptable but in this case the policy would simply provide undisputed knowledge with caveat in good faith, and with variability on par with much of the other data published here. We are often reminded that WP is an encyclopedia, not a blog. Please allow me to remind you all that an encyclopedia is primarily concerned with the dissemination of knowledge. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.68.160.115 (talk) 10:24, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

To those who suggested that a next step would be to propose specific changes, good idea and I agree. I'll do that, it will take a little time. (Actually I think that 70.68....got a good start on one piece of it.) But the process of first bringing and discussing it in general is a natural, polite, and probably even de facto required first step before that, and so I would not agree with disparaging it as "hand waving" North8000 (talk) 11:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Lastly, to clarify, I did not say that all articles which have been a battleground are a mess. I essentially said that nearly all articles or article sections which are on battleground topics, not of type #1 are a mess. And so I agree with what you said on that, but submit that it does not refute what I said. North8000 (talk) 11:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I have an example article for you to check out on this. It is an extremely high quality and useful article, but 100% of it is uncited synthesis arrived at by discussions and consensus. So everything in the article violates the "OR" rule, yet it is a very good article. The title of the article is "Wikipedia:No original research" ....check it out.  :-) North8000 (talk) 16:17, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Um... "Wikipedia:No orignial research" is not an article... it is a policy page. There is a difference. We do not have the same rules for non-article space (talk pages, policy pages, user pages, etc.) as we do in article space (ie the articles themselves). Blueboar (talk) 18:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course I was being a bit whimsical saying that the rules break the rules,.....but the point still being that this good content was created by 100% synthesis. North8000 (talk) 19:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course there can be "good content" created by 100% OR. But it's not Encyclopedic content, not when the creators are anonymous Wikipedians. The key rule for this site is that we don't make up stuff, regardless of how good we think we are. Everything in article space must be attributable to a reliable source. Crum375 (talk) 22:33, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

And to repeat, since you seem to be ignoring the point, synthesis is permissible and even encouraged, as long as it's not "to advance a position", e.g. implying something which the cited sources don't. Crum375 (talk) 22:36, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Random break 1

Example: look at the problems with inserting "futurist" into Great filter - and everybody admits it is factually correct. I've currently resorted to invoking WP:IAR, which I shouldn't have to. Gawd knows how long before it gets reverted out for the nth time.--Michael C. Price ^talk 22:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, there are no reliable sources that call Robin Hanson a futurist. There are, however, sources that call him a social scientist, economist, and a professor of economics. In fact, out of ~300 sources on Robin Hanson, only three refer to him as a "futurist", two of which are personal blogs, and one that is an advertisement for a discussion on Cato Unbound a Cato Institute online forum. Other than Cato and two personal blogs, I'm not seeing any published sources that call Hanson a futurist. We go with what the reliable sources say, not what Michael C. Price says. I have repeatedly asked you to provide a good source that calls Hanson a "futurist". You cannot do this, therefore per WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:BLP, I have removed it yet again. Please do not keep adding it unless you can support it with a source, such as those found here. Those sources are all very clear in referring to Hanson as an economist and/or professor of economist. Hanson also refers to himself in interviews and other personal writings as a social scientist. None of these sources call him a "futurist". It should also be said that Michael isn't telling the full story. He originally removed the designation "social scientist" from the article because he "felt" it would be a better description, as another editor objected to calling Hanson a social scientist. When asked for a reliable source, Michael could not produce one. However, Hanson is on record calling himself a social scientist and he received a Ph.D. in social science from Caltech. Furthermore, the article in question (and Hanson's opinion on the subject) deals with two values from the Drake Equation directly related to social science. So, Michael removed a sourced claim about Hanson and added his personal opinion in its place. That is not acceptable. When confronted with WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:BLP, Michael claims to be WP:IAR. Viriditas (talk) 23:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Note that the claim that RH is a futurist is not denied. --Michael C. Price ^talk 01:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

OK... I deny that he is a futurist. Now prove me wrong. Blueboar (talk) 01:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Simple: he says all economists are futurists. He is an economist, therefore.... --Michael C. Price ^talk 02:27, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

So if he says that all economists are human, his title should be "human"? Crum375 (talk) 03:01, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Hanson does not say "all economists are futurists". That's a deliberate distortion of something I said to Michael about one of Hanson's interviews. Michael previously made this false statement and I corrected him, and here he is making it again. Hanson never said "all economists are futurists". Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

What you said was "Hanson also seems to make the argument (as far as I can tell) that all economists are futurists." --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:14, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, Hanson did not say "all economists are futurists". What I said was, in an interview Hanson gave with Carlisle Johnson[1], Hanson describes his work as a social scientist who uses the study of economics for long-range forecasting. He seems to make the argument that all economists are futurists. That's my interpretation of his comments. Unfortunately, we can't use personal interpretations or explanations of primary sources (my reading of a video interview) in articles; We need reliable secondary sources. Viriditas (talk) 12:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

First as a preface, respectfully, Crum375 there is a logical flaw in your last sentence. Your in essence saying that a claim that a person is human equates to a claim that their "title" should be "human" has no basis and thus your assertion of flawed logic is flawed. Whew!  :-) Now, to Blueboar, for the purposes of this beginning of a "proposed policy", if in the context of that actual article (vs. you just saying that to make a point on this totally different topic) you were to contest his statement that Hanson is a futurist, then the proposed new policy allowing factually uncontested cite-less statements from acquired knowledge (syntheses) would no longer apply. North8000 (talk) 03:50, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I was just making a point... but it was a point on topic... everything in Wikipedia needs to be verifiable to a reliable source... even synthetic statements. If a source does not say it, neither can we. WP:BURDEN applies to synthetic statements no less than to individual facts. Every uncited statement is challengable by someone simply saying "I doubt it... prove it". Which is exactly what WP:OR tells us to do. Blueboar (talk) 04:15, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Blueboar, you've just restated policy, you haven't made an argumment. Please tell me why we should delete non-controversial, relevant but unsourced facts. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:00, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, please see List of futurologists. Hanson isn't listed there because we don't have reliable sources that refer to him as a futurist. If you have good sources that say otherwise, then please produce them. Otherwise, we can't call Hanson a "futurist". It is also interesting to note that Dr. Hanson does not refer to himself as a futurist anywhere, neither on his massive blog or in any of his publications or interviews. Is there a reason, Michael, you keep adding the word "futurist" in reference to Hanson in an article about the Great Filter? Do you have access to any reliable source about the Great Filter that refers to Hanson as a futurist? No, you do not and the Great Filter is hypothesized to exist in either our past or our future. So, why do you keep adding it to the article? What source(s) are you using to support it? From reading the secondary literature, I get the sense that Hanson does not like being referred to as a futurist, although, that is only my interpretation. I see that he is primarily referred to as an economist and a professor of economics, and he refers to himself as a social scientist. Is there a reason you are using a term for Hanson that he does not use for himself and cannot be found in any reliable sources on the subject? Viriditas (talk) 09:29, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It took me ten seconds to find this. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:39, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

From the official facebook site: "Intellectual Pornography is a blog that features articles on random and fascinating subjects ranging from high speed robotics to squid iridescence to time travel to the use of genetically engineered flowers to battle pollution to Yike Bikes to...well, you get the idea."[2] Michael does this blog meet Wikipedia standards for RS and BLP's? Viriditas (talk) 09:48, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, the policy is that anything challenged or likely to be challenged needs a reliable source, and if it's a living person, the source has to be high-quality. This is now a widely accepted policy, because it keeps us safe, legally and morally, in a number of ways. It shouldn't be taken too far—if someone asks for a source showing that Paris is the capital of France, we know that person's being disruptive. But where a claim is reasonably challenged, it's much faster to find a good source than to argue about it, and if you can't find one, you should let that tell you something.

It's happened to me more than once, that I've added something in good faith that I thought was obvious, was asked for a source, thought to myself, "For heaven's sake, what a waste of time," but then discovered that I couldn't find a source that supported the point I was trying to make—usually because I had slightly misunderstood what the sources had said, or had assumed something was common knowledge when in fact it wasn't quite correct. It's therefore important for us too, as writers, that we check what we're saying. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 09:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I was hoping Michael would get to the argument in favor of his position, but since he isn't, I'll do it for him. Hanson is considered a research associate of the Future of Humanity Institute.[3] However, the group considers itself a "multidisciplinary research institute" and you can read more about their mission here. The thing is, Hanson does not appear to refer to himself as a futurist, nor do the secondary sources. This is in stark contrast to many futurists who are referred to as such. I'm not saying that Hanson can't be considered a futurist, I'm saying that we can't really source it, and that as far as I can tell, Hanson does not like to be referred to in that way, as he calls himself a social scientist and an economist. Viriditas (talk) 10:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, the Paris claim would be disruptive. Viriditas, you're the one being disruptive. I note that you're now requiring that Hanson himself must call himself a futurist. BTW the "multidisciplinary" argument is just too stupid for words - but typical of the time-wasting caused by poorly worded policy. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Verifying and sourcing content is not disruptive; It is how we write articles. This became an issue because I found a poorly sourced article named Great Filter which I then tried to expand and source. In the process, I found that you were adding material that I could not verify. How can I verify that Hanson is described as a futurist, by either himself or reliable sources? I should point out that this is not the only instance of Michael adding unverified information to the article. The talk page covers the rest. For some reason that I do not understand, Michael feels that he does not have to use sources to write articles. Viriditas (talk) 10:34, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It is not a question of "Verifying and sourcing content" it is a question of deleting material that Viriditas knows to be correct instead of leaving or just tagging, such a removing Hanson's "prediction markets" from the list of futurologists for the latest example.

Anyway Viriditas has nicely illustrated my claim that overly pedantic editors, combined with poorly worded policy, are damaging Wikipedia. We can address the latter issue by adopting North's suggestion.--Michael C. Price ^talk 10:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

RS do not call Hanson a "futurist". Why then, do you get to refer to a BLP by a name that neither the BLP nor the RS use? Why is your opinion more important than RS or the biographical subject? We don't write articles based on personal opinions. Michael, you know very well that the material was tagged as unsourced for days on end,[4] and that you refused to provide a source and the tag was removed by you multiple times.[5] It is a bit ironic that you are asking me to tag unsourced claims about a BLP when you were the one who removed the tag. Viriditas (talk) 10:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

It was the consensus there, which you refused to accept. --Michael C. Price ^talk 11:10, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no such consensus there or anywhere else. We write articles based on sources, and the sources do not call Hanson a "futurist". Viriditas (talk) 11:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

The consensus has just reverted you. :-) --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

There is no consensus on this issue. Two editors adding unsourced statements about BLP's isn't allowed. Viriditas (talk) 12:47, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Random break 2

• Example 1: Here is an article in the New York Times (2007) regarding Bostrom and the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford. Bostrom is referred to as a philosopher and Hanson as an economist. Neither of the people Michael C. Price calls "futurists" are referred to as such. The writer is John Tierney. This is representative of the majority of sources referring to Hanson. Viriditas (talk) 10:44, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Proves nothing. Ditto my previous response. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Example 2: According to Hanson, there are at least 242 press or media articles that have mentioned him.[6] How many reliable sources have called Hanson a futurist? As far as I can tell, none. Should we then use the term, or should we call him an economist/professor of economics like the RS? Why does Michael C. Price get to decide what we call Hanson rather than what the sources call him? Does Hanson refer to himself as a futurist? If RS do not call Hanson a futurist, and Hanson does not call himself a futurist, why does Michael C. Price get to call Hanson a futurist? Viriditas (talk) 10:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

FYI ditto my previous responses.--Michael C. Price ^talk 11:07, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

RS refer to Hanson as an economist and professor of economics, not as a futurist. Hanson refers to himself as a social scientist, an economist, and a professor, not as a futurist. What does that tell you? Should we describe Hanson using RS or the personal opinion of Michael C. Price? Viriditas (talk) 11:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is clear that the statement "Hanson is a futurist" is contested, and that the contest is about the truth of that statement. And so the new "uncontested" proposal that most of this section is about doesn't apply. Although it makes a good example for this "OR" discussion, I don't think that this is the place to host the "is or isn't a futurist" debate, and so I would respectfully request that you not carry on that actual debate here.

Since eventually, references supporting both sides of debate will doubtlessly be found, and assuming that the "futurist" classification debate is an area of actual contention (vs. being a primarily a personality/squabble thing which would probably pass) ) then, under current Wikipedian standards, that section of the article will be doomed to eternal instability and uninformativeness, as all Wikipedia articles on battleground areas are. The answer will inevitably be a complex synthesis and Wikipedia does not have the tools to guide the combatants to the required synthesis in this area.

To Viriditas & MichaelCPrice, for the purposes of this discussion, I would ask, is the "futurist" classification the actual core your disagreement, or is it merely a manifestation or skirmish of a different or broader disagreement (whether it be a larger controversy or a personality thing)? North8000 (talk) 12:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

At the time I raised the example, as per Crum's request, "futurist" was not factually contested. Things seem (?) to have changed for unknown reasons, so perhaps we should drop the example, although I note that this is a typical problem created by badly formulated OR policy.--Michael C. Price ^talk 12:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, please stop making false claims. I gave a diff above[7] showing that a fact tag had been added to the claim of "futurist" since 28 January, which you quickly reverted.[8] You did not "raise the example" here until 2 February.[9] Please try to focus on making accurate statements based on diffs rather than outright falsehoods that are clearly contradicted by the evidence. Your addition of "futurist" has been contested since the time you added it on 28 January. Claiming that it was not factually contested until 2 February is completely false. Viriditas (talk) 12:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Okay, so now you claim not to understand what "factually contested" means. I assume everybody else understands. --Michael C. Price ^talk 12:59, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Do reliable sources call Hanson a futurist? Does Hanson call himself a futurist? You and LouScheffer removed the term "social scientist" from the article. Yet, that is what Hanson studied and that's the term he uses to describe his work. In its place, you added the term "futurist", a word that isn't used by RS and a term that Hanson doesn't use to describe himself. Looking at the RS, we see most call Hanson an economist or a professor. So, why have you added the word "futurist"? Viriditas (talk) 13:08, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Relevance. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Relevance is always determined by the sources. Looking at the reliable sources on Robin Hanson, none found it relevant enough to describe him as a "futurist", not even someone like John Tierney who was writing about the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford and referred to Hanson as an economist. You do not get to determine what is relevant and what is not. That's why we have RS. Viriditas (talk) 08:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I see. So now you claim that not only is futurism irrelevant to the great filter, but that we can't use any editorial judgement on that matter? Just like we can't summarise either? --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:24, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Editorial judgment is very important. For example, how do you know which source is reliable? Evaluating sources definitely comes into play. How can you tell if an article is authoritative or credible, or if a publisher is reliable? Editors must evaluate sources and use their best judgment. But you also need to rely on those sources for content decisions, and it helps to compare. Have you done that? You have not, because there are very few sources on the topic of the Great Filter, so few in fact, that editors have proposed merging this article into Fermi paradox. However, since those discussions have taken place, new secondary sources have been published mentioning the topic. Do any of them refer to Hanson as a futurist? No, but one calls him a social scientist and another calls him an economist. Viriditas (talk) 09:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Which is irrelevant to the great filter, whereas his position at Oxford is relevant. --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:01, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

How do you know this? Which source are you using to come to this determination? What is the connection between Oxford and the Great Filter? Viriditas (talk) 10:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

WP:V already says that a source is only needed for any material "challenged or likely to be challenged." "Challenged" is, for all intents and purposes, the same as "contested". So if something is not made up, is uncontested and likely to remain so, we don't need to supply a source, although, by definition, we could easily do so (and should, at least on the talk page) if asked. Crum375 (talk) 12:56, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Crum375, your first sentence was an important statement, but it used a word ("needed") that is ambiguous in relaiton to our discussion. On the face of it it sounds like an agreement with what I have been arguing for (allowing citeless synthesis in areas that are not factually contested) except that a statement can't be made unless cites are available to support it. The change I made to the "Dorothy Molter" article is an example. An earlier editor mistakenly said that they moved her cabin from location #1 to location #3 (a museum). A mistake, but they did a lot of valuable work getting the article started. Maybe they put in 20 things that they were 90% sure of, and 19 were right and this one was wrong. And, so, if they followed WP:NOR rules, they never would have put any of the 20 in. I personally saw and visited the cabin at location #1, then at location #2 and then at location #3. I corrected the article based on this knowledge, and what I wrote has not been contested. Although 10,000 people probably saw and know the same thing that I did, there is no known reference which supports what I wrote. So me writing the "Location #1 to Location #2 to Location #3" statement is correct and useful and uncontested, but was a violation of WP:NOR policy. And so the policy would discourage people from making such useful additions.North8000 (talk) 15:28, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

All of the arguments on Talk:Great Filter are based on defending the idea that is acceptable to describe, interpret, and explain primary sources. I have consistently argued that we cannot do that, and whenever possible, we require secondary sources for our content. For example, along with Micahel C. Price, User:LouScheffer has been adding the word "futurist" to the article. Here is his argument. As you can see, this argument goes against the original research policy. This is what Michael is defending. Reliable sources describe Hanson as a social scientist, economist, and professor of economics. LouScheffer is arguing that the term "social scientist" is derogatory and that "futurist" is more of a positive term. This is ridiculous because social science is what Hanson studied at CalTech and social scientist is the term he uses to describe himself. And the RS do not call him a futurist. Viriditas (talk) 13:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Primary sources are allowed provided a non-specialist, educated reader would agree. This, of course, has been pointed out before. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The primary sources call him a social scientist and an economist, not a futurist. Viriditas (talk) 10:02, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

They say he's a research associate at Oxford. Yes or no? --Michael C. Price ^talk 10:06, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

None of the sources concerning the Great Filter say this. Do you have sources connecting the Great Filter work with his work at Oxford? Do any of them refer to his work as a futurist? I've looked at the sources about the Great Filter, and they refer to him as a social scientist, an economist, and a professor of economics. Viriditas (talk) 10:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that, per WP:NOR and WP:V, a person's profession (or any other fact about him or his life) should reflect what reliable sources have said, not what we as Wikipedians think. Crum375 (talk) 13:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

And it is WP:NOR that we are discussing here. --Michael C. Price ^talk 13:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

So a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute can't be called a futurist? That's crazy, like saying a car driver can't be called a motorist. Only on wikipedia.--Michael C. Price ^talk 18:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, on Wikipedia we don't make up stuff. We call people what the preponderance of reliable sources call them. This is what WP:V and WP:NOR are all about. Crum375 (talk) 19:31, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

So are you saying that we can't call a motor-car driver a motorist? What happened to rephrasing and explanations? --Michael C. Price ^talk 07:59, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

We've been over this on the article talk page. Please look up the definitoin of paraphrasing. We do not paraphrase "economist" or "professor of economics" as "futurist". Surely you can see your error here. Viriditas (talk) 08:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

That is frankly verging on dishonest. Summarisng and rephrasing is specifically allowed and we are talking about summarizing his role at Oxford, as Lou has explained. --Michael C. Price ^talk 08:51, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

How have you summarized his role at Oxford and what does it have to do with the article on the Great Filter? Do you have sources linking the two? No, you don't. Anyway, here's what the Oxford site says:

Robin Hanson is an Associate Professor of Economics at George Mason University, and a Research Associate at the Future of Humanity Institute. After receiving his Ph.D. in social science from the California Institute of Technology in 1997, Robin was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation health policy scholar at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1984, Robin received a masters in physics and a masters in the Philosophy of Science from the University of Chicago, and afterward spent nine years researching Artificial Intelligence, Bayesian statistics, and hypertext publishing, independently, and at Lockheed, NASA.[10]

Michael, what is the sourced connection between the article on the Great Filter, the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, and your "summary and rephrasing" of the above? I don't see one. "Summarizing and rephrasing" refers to paraphrasing. You have not done that here at all. Viriditas (talk) 08:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Stop clogging up the talk page here. Your rhetorical questions are answered on the article's talk page. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:14, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Sources. They are required for all article content. That's the only question that matters, and you haven't answered it. Michael, can you find a single featured article that makes a claim about a BLP that isn't supported by a plethora of secondary sources? Viriditas (talk) 09:17, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The sources question has been answered, you just weren't listening. --Michael C. Price ^talk 09:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you are correct. The sources question has been answered. And, you don't have any. Viriditas (talk) 09:21, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, the issue here couldn't be simpler. What do reliable sources call him? That's all we care about. We had a sitation once in an area I edit a lot, animal rights. A well-known person wrote a book about animal rights, strongly advocating it so far as anyone could tell, using for the most part the language of animal rights, sharing all their concerns, mincing no words. His name was added to the animal rights template as an advocate. But he wrote to ask that it be removed, and sure enough, when I looked around, no reliable source had clearly identified him with animal rights. And he clearly didn't self-identify. Sometimes, no matter how obviously correct something appears to be (not including "Paris is the capital of France"-type examples), it just isn't, or others simply disagree. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 13:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Slim, answer this: would you use the same logic to forbid describing a motor-car driver as a motorist? I've asked this a number of times and no one answers. BTW the issue is not wholely about sourcing, it is about summarising the sources. --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:04, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

No, because that involves a synonym. Your futurist example doesn't. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:11, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Why does it have to be synonym? Summarising is not just about using synonyms.--Michael C. Price ^talk 14:16, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't have to be a synonym, but the less obvious the extrapolation, the more likely someone will challenge it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:20, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

True, but it means that the issue here is one of degree, not of kind. There is no absolute prohibition with using the label "futurist" in a summary of someone who works at the Future of Humanity Institute. It comes down to whether we think this is a reasonable summary. Is that correct? --Michael C. Price ^talk 14:33, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

It comes down to whether anyone has challenged you, or is likely to. See our sourcing policy. If challenged, you need to produce a source. Personally, I would not call someone a "futurist" if other sources were simply saying economist, or whatever they say about him, because it introduces an unnecessary complication. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 15:09, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the complication lies in not mentioning his futurist credentials. Otherwise readers will think, "What, a sociologist / economist dreamt up the Great Filter - must be rubbish!" Mentioning his futurist bent as well makes sense - we're simply supplying context. --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This is the reason Michael and Lou keep adding "futurist" and removing "social scientist", and they have said as such on the talk page. I believe that Michael is a physicist and Lou is an engineer/computer scientist. Their derogatory view of the social sciences alludes to C. P. Snow's controversial 1959 lecture on The Two Cultures. Science historian Steven J. Dick has written about this problem. I realize that both Michael and Lou grew up during the time when this kind of polarization was encouraged, but I don't think it is as true as it once was. I also don't see how adding "futurist" to the article without sources is a solution to the opinion Michael and Lou bring to the table. Robin Hanson is one of the few social scientists addressing the social science-related values of the Drake Equation, and his credentials in this area are highly relevant and important to the topic. Michael and Lou's opinion here is way off the mark and represents an older paradigm that has fallen out of favor. Hanson has a solid background in physics, but his specialty is social science. Most people would applaud Hanson for this, not denigate him. Complex problems like the Drake equation and the Great filter require a multidisciplinary approach. Hanson is proud of his credentials and he writes: "I'm a social scientist with a high estimate of the power of social science (especially economics and sociobiology) to trace the outlines of a wide variety of social behavior. I even use social science to estimate our distant descendants’ future, and the astronomical signatures that aliens might leave." So, Hanson does not call himself a futurist, but a social scientist, the very term that Michael and Lou despise. Viriditas (talk) 02:45, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Michael, I think you're wrong about this example, but the underlying point you're raising is a valid one. People do sometimes take SYN too far. I was recently challenged over an FA I wrote because the source said something like, "This image has the iconic power of a battle flag," and I wrote, "According to one commentator, the image has acquired the power of a battle flag." I was told my use of "acquired" was a SYN violation, because the source hadn't said it. But I don't know what to do about that. SYN is an important and long-standing part of the policy, and I hesitate to try to weaken it because some people take it too far. Some people take all our policies too far. I should add that I'm speaking in general. I do think you're mistaken in your futurist example. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I admit I'm struggling to see the SYN in "acquired". Although the removal of it doesn't seem to awful. --Michael C. Price ^talk 16:29, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Random break 3

I think this question is based on a fundamental error: That wikt:syntheses is the same as WP:SYNTHesis. WP:SYNTHesis is always prohibited; wikt:synthesis is not. Don't rely on the plain-English definitions of the word; the shortcut is not the policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:37, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

That's true. We do allow synthesis, but not "synthesis to advance a position." The shortcut WP:SYN refers to the latter, not the former. Crum375 (talk) 20:11, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

But, to force and clarify the issue, what about factually uncontested statements that are not derived from or supported by references? For a specific example, see my 15:28, 3 February 2010 entry above. Would WP:NOR policy bar the described edit? I think so, which I submit illustrates that it would be good to modify the policy. North8000 (talk) 02:32, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Can't find such an entry, but in general, if your addition to an article is such that it can be challenged, and you have no verifiable and reliable source to support it, it might belong on your personal blog but not on this site. Crum375 (talk) 03:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I found this edit, where you describe some information you posted from your personal experience into an article. This is strictly unacceptable, per WP:V and WP:NOR. Wikipedia articles essentially summarize published verifiable and reliable sources. WP is not a forum for people to share their personal experiences or expertise. Crum375 (talk) 03:52, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

This linked example (amounting to "I personally saw this cabin in this location") wouldn't be WP:SYNTH, but it does violate other parts of several policies, notably WP:V. It may seem incredible to you, but if the information has never been properly published, then Wikipedia does not want it: Wikipedia is not a complete exposition of all possible details. If you want this information to be available to people, then you need to get it published in some other place -- your own website, if you're a recognized authority, although I'd be surprised if the museum/group that seems to care for the structure doesn't mention it somewhere in their published materials -- before Wikipedia will accept it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Using the term "personal experiences" (with it's connotations) is sort of going off on a tangent. The real crux of the example is that I have unpublished expertise on the narrow topic of the cabin's locations, and put in uncontested, uncited facts based on that expertise. If one of the world's leading experts on gorillas (who hasn't published themselves) wrote some uncontested uncited top quality material in a Wikipedia article, they would be violating Wikipedia rules. If a 10 year old who only knows what they learned from a B grade Googled reference 5 minutes ago writes and cites it, they are OK. So, which needs fixing, the expert or the rules? IMHO anyone with vsion vs. mypoia would say that the rules need changing. Fortunately, lots of people break the rule, which makes Wikipedia articles so good on non-controversial topics. North8000 (talk) 14:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

The answer to your question depends entirely on whether you want Wikipedia to be an encyclopedia. It is not possible to simultaneously be a primary source ("I personally saw") and a tertiary source ("Multiple published accounts agree"). Wikipedia has a goal of being an encyclopedia, which is a tertiary source. To maintain its character as an encyclopedia, it must resist the pressure to include primary/previously unpublished material. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to disagree with you on your claim that "tertiary source" is a defining characteristic of enclyclopedias, and your claim that the two source types can't co-exist. But on to the core of what I'm saying which is that uncontested citeless, content written from general knowledge is pervasive in all encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, and suggest that the NOR policy be modified to acknowledge that. North8000 (talk) 10:59, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

This policy doesn't say that everything must be attributed, only that it must be attributable. So you don't have to add a source for every piece of common knowledge, but you have to know that you could find one if asked. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 17:28, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. You should propose it as a policy modification. Until then what what I'm reading is: "To demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented." North8000 (talk) 02:59, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

North, it's already there. NOR also says: "Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by a reliable source." In other words: don't make up stuff, have a reliable source readily available for anything you write, and supply a source for anything which is likely to be challenged, or when it is challenged (i.e. upon request by another editor). Crum375 (talk) 03:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think the "in other words" is a symptom of the problem that North is objecting to. You wouldn't have to "explain" policy if it was clear. The text you quote implies that the citations must be in the text, whereas North's point is that this isn't the case for uncontested material. -Michael C. Price ^talk 04:26, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

No. Only material which is quoted, challenged or likely to be challenged requires cited sources. All other material should have a handy source (because we are not allowed to make stuff up), but it does not require the source to be cited, unless someone asks for it. That's what the policy says, and that's what North said he agreed with. Crum375 (talk) 04:32, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

But that's not what the policy says, and I don't think North's agreed with it. --Michael C. Price ^talk 04:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

The policy says "Wikipedia does not publish original thought: all material in Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable, published source" = Don't make stuff up, have a source handy for everything you write. It also says: "Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by a reliable source." = You don't need to cite a source for common knowledge or obvious stuff, unless the material is challenged or likely to be challenged. And North just above agreed with this, and said, "Sounds like a good idea." Crum375 (talk) 04:43, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

North's agreed with your interpretation of what policy means, but that doesn't square with the 2nd passage you quoted.--Michael C. Price ^talk 04:56, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

He agreed with these words exactly: "This policy doesn't say that everything must be attributed, only that it must be attributable. So you don't have to add a source for every piece of common knowledge, but you have to know that you could find one if asked." This is what the policy says, and this is my interpretation. Which passage does he not agree with? Crum375 (talk) 05:05, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

{outdent) The 1st passage makes a distinction between "attributed" vs "attributable". The 2nd makes no distinction between "supported" vs "supportable". --Michael C. Price ^talk 05:11, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry, but I am not following. The first passage says everything we write must be attributable to a reliable source. That means we need to have a source handy, or as SV said, you have to know you can find one when you need it. The second passage says only material which is challenged or likely to be challenged requires a cited source, i.e. must be attributed. All other material remains attributable, but not necessarily attributed. This is the essence of WP:NOR and WP:V. Which part do you have a problem with? Crum375 (talk) 05:23, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

You're right. Although I agree with North that we should spell out explicitly that uncontested material does not require cites.--Michael C. Price ^talk 05:33, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I've clarified the attribution issue in the lead. I think you're right that the lead wasn't clear. There's a historical reason for that, which hopefully no longer applies. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 10:34, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that that will help in one of the key areas. There some other open areas covered by the above discussion but maybe that's for another day and a new thread narrowed by this change. North8000 (talk) 22:14, 7 February 2010 (UTC)

Unsourced claims in self-made image captions

WP:OI currently states: "Editors are ... encouraged to upload their own images" and "Image captions are subject to this policy no less than statements in the body of the article". A couple of days ago, I noticed a caption for a user-made image in Fossil which included the type (Baltic amber) and age of the depicted object (40-60 million years old) without any sourcing for those claims, so I removed those items from the caption, pending a reliable source. This led to a talk page thread, still ongoing, but I feel the issue is of broader significance, applying to all self-made images on WP, so I am bringing it here. As I noted in a post on that thread, I believe that if an image is "self-verifiable" (e.g. photo of a celebrity, a bird species, a public garden, a mountain, or a building), the caption can state the name of the object of the picture, plus the place and date the photo was taken. Any reader can then compare the image to others, or even visit the site (if applicable), and verify the claim, with any discrepancies raised and addressed on the talk page. But if the caption includes a claim which requires scientific analysis, or is otherwise not self-evident in the image itself (e.g. "this rock is 60 million years old"), a reliable source is needed. Other editors there disagree, and one states that "... to demand sources is a bit absurd. Sometimes, in the absence of specific reasons to doubt, you just need to trust your fellow contributors." Thoughts? Crum375 (talk) 14:44, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm with you on this one Crum. But isn't this an issue of WP:V rather than WP:NOR? Yaris678 (talk) 16:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

It's actually both, but I can't find any mention of WP:OI on WP:V. Crum375 (talk) 16:34, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm... I must confess I didn't realise your quotes were from the policy on original images. My apologies. The line on captions seems slightly out of place in WP:OI, since it is about captions and not original images. Ideally, a better place would be found for this statement than in WP:NOR. I can't think what that place would be so I'm not going to propose moving it.

However, I do think it should say "Image captions are subject to Wikipedia policies and guidelines no less than statements in the body of the article." All policies should apply to image captions. This includes WP:V, which is the policy of interest in this case.

Yaris678 (talk) 18:31, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Most images have an associated caption, and the problem is that some editors feel that we have opened the door to original research via WP:OI, and therefore they can add material in captions sourced to "trust me". Regarding venue, I would think that as long as WP:OI is inside of WP:OR, the discussion should remain here. Crum375 (talk) 19:32, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I'm not trying to argue we should move this argument. That was more aimed towards pointing out a problem I saw in the current wording. i.e. All policies apply - not just WP:NOR.

On the subject you're actually trying to discuss. I agree with you. What do you think should be done about it? Expand the wording in WP:OI? Or is this just a case of people not knowing the rules exist, rather than not understanding them?

Yaris678 (talk) 19:59, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

well, interesting. I do think you need to distinguish along the 'advancing a position' criteria. if baltic amber is generally considered to be 40-60 million years old, then I don't think we need any particular affirmation that the particular piece of baltic amber photographed is of that age - the photo is intended as an exemplar, not as a fact in itself. if, however, the caption is making a novel claim about BA in general, then it is OR and ought to be removed. or am I missing the gist of the dispute? --Ludwigs2 20:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

The point is that we have no reliable source telling us that the amber depicted in the picture is Baltic. If we did, we could then infer that the sample is of that age, but without it, we are just relying on some Wikipedian telling us these things, with no proof. Crum375 (talk) 20:14, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

In other words wp should only use images of specimens that have been published in peer reviewed journals? --Kevmin (talk) 20:25, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Peer review is not a requirement for reliable sourcing, only a nice-to-have option. Crum375 (talk) 20:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

WP:V doesn't require the level of sourcing you're suggesting, even if it were text in the article rather than an image. WP:V actually requires inline citations for: (1) direct quotations, and (2) claims that reasonable readers might think are false ("challenged or likely to be challenged", with an assumption of good faith).

Do you actually have any reasonable concern that the image may have been misidentified (e.g., that it's probably not Baltic, or whatever the issue is)? If you do, then you might contact the uploader to get things straightened out (even experts make mistakes on occasion), but if you don't have a rational basis for challenging the accuracy of the statement, then you shouldn't do so. Demanding a source for something simply because you can smacks of bad faith, especially when you honestly believe that it's correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

As you correctly quote, WP:V says that any material which is "challenged" requires a reliable source. So if I as an editor say, "I don't know if this amber is Baltic or not, and I'd like a reliable source telling me that it is", that constitutes a challenge. Therefore, a source is required. Same for any other claim made in a caption, or anywhere else in article space. And if a Wikipedian tells me that "yes, trust me, it's Baltic", even if I personally believe him, his email still wouldn't be a reliable source for WP's purposes. Crum375 (talk) 23:03, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Of course, one can take a photo of melt plastic and claim it is Baltic amber. But the thing with illustrations is if it looks like Baltic amber, it is OK for illustration purposes, i.e., to show people how Baltic amber looks like, and I am with WP:AGF here. <to be continued...> Mukadderat (talk) 04:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

I must say I wouldn't have made that edit. Most amber jewellery, at least in Europe, is indeed Baltic, and I note the photographer/uploader has a ?Polish/Slavic name. If the amber had been claimed to come from Texas, or be 2 million years old, that would need citing. Extending your logic, we would require referencing that all photographer-uploaded images were taken where they said they were, which we clearly don't. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Releated RFC

There is a RFC which is in the scope of this policy here. Users may want to have a look Gnevin (talk) 21:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

Religious Documents: Primary Sources?

Is the Bible a primary source? As a work documenting history, is it a primary source? My reading of Primary Source suggests that no, it is a secondary source. Am I right? (20040302 (talk) 11:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC))

The Bible is a primary source for our purposes on Wikipedia. It's difficult to think of any situation in which we would try to use it as a secondary source. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

How does the Bible fit into the definition given on the article?

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, a work of art, a political decision, and so on. An account of a traffic accident written by a witness is a primary source of information about the accident; similarly, a scientific paper is a primary source about the experiments performed by the authors. Historical documents such as diaries are primary sources

For instance the Gospels were written down decades after the events they describe, NOT by people who were directly involved. Even traditional Christian scholarship dates them as being no earlier than 15 years after the events they describe. So - how are we to read the gospels as being primary sources? Indeed, Matthew and Luke are supposedly based strong on Mark (or Mark andQ), so how are they primary sources? (20040302 (talk) 15:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC))

This a perennial problem: the WP definition of "primary" as effectively "first-hand" is in many contexts such as this very different from the normal academic usage of "primary", meaning essentially "not run through modern scholarly or even journalistic processses". In my experience most WP pundits prefer to shut their eyes to this and use the normal definition, so calling for example most ancient and medieval histories or indeed sources of any kind "primary", even if written hundreds of years after the events described. Johnbod (talk) 15:18, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

The specific issue "were the writers of the Bible actual witnesses to what they wrote about" is a general problem in history. We could ask the same thing about accounts by ancient Greek historians, or accounts by ancient Chinese historians: were the historians actually present for the events they discuss?

For our purposes on Wikipedia, the distinction between primary and secondary sources only affects the way in which we attribute claims made by the sources. For primary sources, the recommended attribution is tighter ("According to the Gospel of John, ..."). Beyond that, there is not much difference to us whether a source is primary or secondary. In the sense that we would not use the Bible or an ancient Chinese history book as if it is a representation of modern scholarly opinion (and only this sense), historical documents count as primary sources for us.

Yes, this is an abuse of the distinction between primary and secondary sources as it is usually made; but the terminology is too entrenched to change at this point. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:39, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Carl, thanks for this. However, I am still not fully satisfied. Let me jump into a different culture - look at eg Candrakirti - who is known as a great and important Buddhist philosopher. He wrote several texts which amount to what could be loosely called peer-review regarding the critique against Buddhapalita made by Bhavaviveka. Buddhapalita's text was an academic commentary on Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā. Many of these scholars were academics at Nalanda University (which was around from the 5th Century through to the 13th Century), and a vast amount of the academic literature generated there (in translation) forms what is called the Tengyur . On what basis would we claim that these texts are any less scholarly (reliable) than our modern counterparts, and how on earth can they not be considered secondary or tertiary sources? These are texts for which we have definite authors, from a definite university, discussing and commenting on the views of other academics at that university.

So - which of these are primary sources? Likewise, what constitutes peer review? Medical peer review is substantially distinct from the peer review of other faculties. Does peer review have to follow the Western(ized) academic tradition?! When is something too old to be a secondary source? Likewise, the Tibetans have an entire academic/scholastic history dating back to the 11th century and still active. So it's modern - but does that mean that Tsongkhapa's works (which were peer-reviewed at the time by his contempories) are primary sources or secondary sources? Up until the invention of the movable type printing press, there was more literature in Tibetan than any other language, primarily due to it's huge monastic universities. How can we say that Tsongkhapa is not a reliable source? (I am totally in favour of using cites/says - but for everyone of course).

The problem of primary sources vs. secondary sources is not just how we write about them - but whether or not we can consider them to be reliable sources. Now you may not be aware, but (modern/western) Indologists are often very ignorant of existent sources, so often Western scholarship has made serious errors in analysis - there are modern scholars (Napper, Huntington) who have written about this. But this isn't about writing an article, it's about policy.

Back to the Bible -there are academics who use the Bible as a reliable source for examining middle east culture. It's an artefact - and as an artefact, I can see how one could call it primary. But regarding the life of Jesus, how can it be anything other than secondary? I still don't get this.

Going back to Western academic sources as being somehow 'reliable'. Even within the medical tradition there are plenty of works on phrenology, or on eugenics and racial distinctions. These are secondary and tertiary sources of now-discounted sciences. But they cannot be considered reliable sources by any stretch of the imagination. What we can say is just who wrote them, and where and when. Just like we can with the Nalanda scholars.

Why is this relevant? A regular editor on Buddhism talks about 'scholars' referring solely to modern, Western scholars, and also that any source that is not moder/western is primary and therefore unreliable. I do not and cannot find that distinction without feeling distinctly racist. The problem of balance is most adequately demonstrated when some Western academic idiot says something about Buddhism having read a pamphlet, and in some eyes it becomes more reliable than a thousand years and ten thousand volumes of Tibetan academic literature. Got to be something wrong there. (20040302 (talk) 16:15, 11 February 2010 (UTC))

I see your issue with Buddhism, but wouldn't the same issue appear with e.g. Saint Augustine? Certainly his works represent advanced scholarly analysis for his time, and they are still cited by religious scholars, but in a Wikipedia article we would not want to source something to Augustine without directly saying "According to Augustine, ....".

The deeper issue you are getting at is that the entire "primary/secondary" distinction is orthogonal to the "reliable/unreliable" distinction that needs to be made when evaluating sources for a particular claim. I think that the original intent of talking about "primary sources" was to restrict the use of things such as unpublished diaries and political pamphlets as sources. But because the term "primary source" got used, people started thinking that all primary sources should restricted in the same way. This leads to all sorts of absurd results. Particularly because the definition of "primary source" itself varies so much from one field to another. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:29, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• The Bible would seem to be mostly a primary source, but since it has many authors and written at different time periods, this will not always be the case. -Stillwaterising (talk) 16:44, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This is a long-standing wikipedia muddle, if you ask me. As I understand it, the distinction that people really want to make is between sources that are arguing for a viewpoint that hasn't (yet) gained scholarly currency, and sources that are talking about a viewpoint that is generally accepted by the appropriate scholarly circles. The whole 'primary/secondary' thing was a misguided effort to co-opt some academic jargon that doesn't really make sense outside of given particular disciplines; i.e. it makes sense for psychologists to talk about the writings of Freud as a primary source in psychology; it makes no sense to talk about the writings of Freud as a primary source in some abstract context. I mean, I understand why this happened - primary sources often argue for novel ideas, therefore (through the application of one common logical fallacy) novel ideas can supposedly be forestalled by worrying about primary sources - but that doesn't make it any more sensible.

If we ignore the whole 'primary/secondary' thing then most of these issues disappear - obviously, the bible has gained scholarly currency for discussions about Abrahamic religions, and for some discussions about ancient history; obviously, the bible has not gained scholarly currency for discussions of the natural sciences. it's probably about time to scrap the whole idea and rebuild it from scratch. --Ludwigs2 17:17, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

@CBM. Indeed. Someone recently argued at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Philippines–Romania relations (2nd nomination)‎‎ that newspapers and gov't web sites cannot be used to source such a topic, because that's WP:OR from primary sources. LoL. Pcap ping 17:24, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not surprised. Most of our articles on current events are written from primary sources (in particular, from newspaper stories). When I point this out, I am often told that contemporary mainstream newspaper stories are supposed to count as secondary sources on Wikipedia. In the worst cases, "primary source" is just a synonym for "source I don't like". I agree with Ludwig's analysis of the situation. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Newspaper stories can be secondary sources too. In academia, a primary source is anything that is authoritative in the sense that it has not been filtered through the eyes and minds of scholars or journalists other than the author. But authoritativeness has nothing to do with reliability/unreliabililty. A primary source may be the most authoritative source of a grave mistake, or of complete gibberish. It is only the secondary sources that can make sense of whether a primary source is reliable or unreliable. In Wikipedia, we need both authoritativeness and reliability, which is why both primary and secondary sources have a place here. COGDEN 17:50, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm very interested in these views. You are all so eloquent at expressing my thoughts. Regarding Primary/Secondary etc I believe that Ludwig hits the nail on the head very well.

However, moving onto reliable sources (maybe I should open a new section on that page!) Ludwig, when you say [...]arguing for a viewpoint that hasn't (yet) gained scholarly currency[...], this opens up my issue about which specific scholarly currency is WP limited to, and on what grounds? Currently some faculties in universities (Oxford, Cambridge, North Carolina) recognise Geshes as being scholars within their own right - with as much scholarly legitimacy as any other scholar. The Geshe tradition goes back over ten centuries, and includes plenty of renowned scholars (such as Tsongkhapa as I mentioned above). It still seems ludicrous to suggest his works are unreliable - just as it is ludicrous to suggest that they are primary sources, when the most of them are written in a highly academic style, with full citations and references and bibliographies. I don't claim any special position regarding this - it's just a domain I know more about. (20040302 (talk) 17:57, 11 February 2010 (UTC))

Determining whether religious texts are Primary or Secondary often depends on the context of what article we are using it in... the Christian Bible should be considered a reliable Primary source in the context of an article on Christian beliefs. It should be considered an unreliable Secondary source in the context of an article on history of Judea in the first century AD. Blueboar (talk) 18:04, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

Addendum Okay so my understanding so far is that primary source for wikipedia is a gloss for original material - albeit original as an idea, thought, or record. Whereas a reliable source is one that is or has been generally accepted by some academic body or another (or by the media - though i've no idea why the media is considered authoritative or reliable!) and has been published. Is that right? So when Tsongkhapa is commenting on a group of Indian scholars, his commentary is a secondary source (possibly tertiary) in this sense, and as his writing has been accepted published by an academic body (Ganden Monastic University) then it's also reliable. Correct? ((20040302 (talk) 18:05, 11 February 2010 (UTC))

well (again in my view) the main value of a source is that it verifies a perspective - 'reliability' is kind of a code-word for the question of whether anyone significant (other than the source itself) accepts what the source is saying. So, for instance, if you are talking about the teachings of geshes, then obviously the geshes themselves reliably present their own perspective - the source is used simply to verify that what wikipedia says geshes say is actually what geshes say. If you're talking about buddhism more generally, however, then you have a separate issue about whether other people accept, use, or know about the teachings of geshes: the actual writings of geshes are still reliable presentations of their own perspective, but may not be reliable statements about buddhism in general. If there are Oxford faculty who accept geshes as scholarly sources, that means that that the works of geshes have somewhat broad acceptance (outside of the particular circle of a buddhist sect, at least) which means that those sources can be taken as reliable for discussions of buddhism more generally. How far you can take that is a question of NPOV: how accepted are these views? how widespread? who opposes them, and who do they oppose? there's no blanket rule for resolving the issue at that point. --Ludwigs2 19:37, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

• Different uses: Several policies use this terminology, and they have different needs and therefore different definitions (in practice). For example: WP:Notability cares about secondary sources, because things without secondary sources don't get articles. WP:Neutral point of view cares about secondary sources as a means of settling WP:DUE disputes. This page cares about people inappropriately using fringe-y primary sources to debunk widely accepted points of view, particularly as described by WP:SYNTH ("Jane says that strawberries are the most heathful food, John says that AIDS is the world's biggest health problems, so eating strawberries cures AIDS!").
  It's really not surprising that editors who work primarily in this or that area of Wikipedia would be more familiar with the particular details of their own experiences, rather than having a balanced picture of the whole. The same source can certainly be "secondary" according to the folks at AfD/WP:N, and "primary" according to the folks at WP:NORN.
  Additionally, all sources are primary sources for something: The famous 11th edition of Encyclopedia Brittanica is a tertiary source for the names of England's monarchs -- but it's a primary source for its publication date and the names of its own editors. Just as with all questions of reliable sourcing, you have to consider how you are using the source, not just what it "is". WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:48, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

What a brilliant and interesting discussion. So "Primary" and "Secondary" defined by also by "the question" or use-o-the-moment rathen than being an inherent attribute of the source.

The context of this discussion is their use in the Wikipedia rules, each of which consists of a brief definition, and a brief operative clause which is pretty light. After all these rules must apply to millions of different types of article. Plus, one must know that whatever is written will get used as a weapon on contentious articles, including by people gaming the system Plus that an overgeneralization of the rules gets applied rather than the actual rules. The overgeneriztion is that Primary = doesn't belong in Wikipedia, and Secondary = Does.

And what about when the source is the subject and the answer. I recently gave up trying to help on a POV mess article. The argument was analogous to this: Lets say that the question is: What is the First Amendment to the US Constitution? I in essence wrote the amendment in the article and cited the constitution as a source. This directly refuted what was previously in there which was an editor's opinion of what it said. (obviously a second different problem) But the editors basically kicked out my text and reference because it is a "primary source" (This is an oversimplified analogy, not the actual article) North8000 (talk) 23:53, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

North, what you are talking about is whether it is possible to appropriately quote from a primary source. The answer is yes... but extreme caution is called for. The key is that you need to examine the context of both how and why you are quoting... it has to be quoted in a purely descriptive context, and not in the context of making some sort of synthesis, argument, interpretation, or conclusion (which would require a secondary source). The problem is that it is extremely difficult to quote things and not end up making some sort of synthesis, argument, interpretation or conclusion... it can even be done inadvertantly, when that was not the intent. Yes, it is certainly possible to quote primary sources appropriately, without OR... but far too often it is done inappropriately. Blueboar (talk) 00:51, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I think that that confirms my position in that past dispute. But I'm afraid that I didn't make my points very clear:

- This particular standard is written in a somewhat ethereal manner, and, like other Wikipedia policies so written, it tends to get widely mis-interpreted, mis-enforced or not enforced.

- Posing a special case of a primary source which might be a bit of a logical paradox. In this case, the primary source is also the object of the coverage, and the sentence written in the article that cites it is a statement regarding what the primary source says. In this special case, the primary source is by definition definitive. This isn't as rare as it sounds. Anytime you want so say what an organization's or government's rule, law, policy etc. is, it's official document covering that rule, law, policy is such a case. 03:07, 12 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs)

I do understand what you are saying... the problem is that nine times out of ten, the reason someone is quoting or citing an organization's rule, law, policy etc is to make some sort of point (ie to support some sort of argument, interpretation or conclusion). That usage is OR.

That is the key... usage. It isn't OR to use a primary source. However it is very easy for a primary source to be misused in ways that constitute OR... We would confuse less people if we focused more on use/misuse rather than on the primariness/secondariness of the source. Blueboar (talk) 15:58, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that you're right. I think that primary/secondary is just one of the attributes/gauges of the source and is probably overemphasized at the expense of others. Also that the context of the usage is not only very important, but also can affect the attributes of the source.North8000 (talk) 19:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

It might be overemphasized; it's certainly misunderstood. And it's not always easy: A person sits in the back of a court and sees what happens. He writes down what he sees and publishes it. Is it a primary source for what happened in the courtroom? All historians would say yes, on the "eyewitness" standard -- but if "he" is a professional journalist, and the publication is an established newspaper, then notability discussions at Wikipedia will usually accept it as being, or being indistinguishable from for that purpose, a secondary source.

This is not the only term that is easily misunderstood. For a while, either WP:V or WP:RS (I forget which) provided a Wiktionary link to wikt:third-party because I was tired of explaining the difference between "third-party" and "independent" and "secondary" on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to reword

This issue comes up with sufficient frequency that I think it's time we reworded the entire section. I'm going to make the following draft proposal:

Scholars often make distinctions between primary, secondary and tertiary sources within their given disciplines. Wikipedia itself is a tertiary source which often has to balance ideas from multiple disciplines, so the primary, secondary and tertiary labels can not be applied in any simple, systematic way; sources may be considered primary by one discipline but secondary or tertiary by another. However, the principles behind the distinction are useful for the purposes of verification and balancing.

Primary sources

Within a given discipline, primary sources are those which report first-hand observations or advance novel ideas for the consideration of scholarly peers. For example, eyewitness accounts of historical events, research designed to promote a new scientific theory, or judicial or legislative documents are considered primary sources in their respective fields. The writings of holocaust survivors are considered primary sources in the field of history, the theories of Freud are considered primary sources in the field of psychodynamic psychology, ant the US Constitution is a primary source in the field of politics. On Wikipedia, such sources are useful for describing the various perspectives that lie behind any given debate in the world of scholarship, or for presenting a novel idea correctly where an article requires such a description. Using primary sources to create or advance an opinion on Wikipedia is improper synthesis and should be avoided.

Secondary sources

Within a given discipline, secondary sources discuss, use, compare, analyze, or otherwise address the material presented in primary sources, generally without advancing novel ideas in their own right. For example, scientific literature reviews, journalistic articles discussing political or social ideas presented in books or other journalism, or books that use historical eyewitness accounts to discuss historical events more broadly would all be considered secondary sources in their respective fields. On Wikipedia, such sources are useful for NPOV balancing, since they show the prominence and degree of acceptance of a given idea within a given discipline. Caution should be exercised when such sources are used across different fields. For example, there are numerous sources in clinical psychology that use Freud's theory in ostensibly productive and valuable ways, and numerous sources in academic psychology that critique and refute Freud's theories - we cannot make general conclusions about the acceptance of Freud's theories, but only note the differing viewpoints. In particular, opinion pieces, punditry, and other forms of non-scholarly critique designed to make a point should be considered as primary sources rather than secondary sources.

Tertiary sources

Within a given discipline, such sources present non-controversial summaries of material presented in primary and secondary sources. Some are discipline-specific, such as textbooks, primers, and data analyses; others are intended to be more universal, such as encyclopedias, compendia, almanacs, and dictionaries. On wikipedia, such sources are useful for presenting lists, factual data, dates and places, or other concrete, non-contentious information. Such sources are not vetted with the thoroughness of secondary sources or written with the care of primary sources, and should not be used to support or verify any contentious position.

In general, sources on wikipedia are intended to verify that an idea has been presented on Wikipedia in a way consonant with its use in the scholarly world. Distinctions between primary, secondary, and tertiary material should only be used to guide discussions towards proper balance.

Comments, suggestions, revisions? --Ludwigs2 20:27, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

It's problematic, Ludwig. First, most of our articles aren't scholarly. Secondly, disciplines don't differ all that much as to what counts as primary. The business about describing various perspective that lie behind etc. is very problematic. Not sure I understand the Freud/productive issue: why wouldn't it be productive? And so on, lots of other issues.

Which issue exactly are you trying to clarify? SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 20:32, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Is it the bible? Yes, it's a primary source. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 20:34, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

The authors of dictionaries and almanacs are not careful, compared to the authors of primary and secondary sources? Maybe the dictionaries and almanacs you read, but I wouldn't say that about the ones I read. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:17, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, Jc, I don't understand your point. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 00:19, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 wrote "[tertiary] sources are not vetted with the thoroughness of secondary sources or written with the care of primary sources, and should not be used to support or verify any contentious position." The proposal includes dictionaries and almanacs as tertiary sources. I don't accept the blanket claim that these are less thorough or not written as carefully as primary and secondary sources. I don't accept the claim they are not fit to cite for contentious issues. This is particularly important if the contention is not among authors of various high quality sources, but among Wikipedia editors, some of whom would use the proposed language to argue that a single article in Sky and Telescope from 1928, with no further support, should override the current edition of the ''Astronomical Almanac'' Jc3s5h (talk) 00:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I agree. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is a tertiary source. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 01:35, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

The bottom line is seeking accuracy and objectivity, plus attributes that would tend to identify or vett sources as such. I don't think that the primary/secondary/tertiary classification has a very high correlation with such, and thus is overly prominent in Wikipedia policies. North8000 (talk) 04:34, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

This area is very complex to try to deal with, and I don't think that Ludwig's proposal is the final answer as-is, but I think that some revision is needed North8000 (talk) 00:12, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Well, my main point here is that the whole PST thing is an idea that works within particular fields, but doesn't translate well to the more general kinds of discussions used in tertiary sources. You can't really talk about primary and secondary sources without referring to a particular domain of knowledge. my sense is that PST is largely misused on wikipedia as a means of promoting or denying material (kind of a 'my source is bigger than your source' thing), and obscures the more important point that sources are just there to verify, and I was trying to find a way to pull conversations away from dizzying debates about what kind of source a source is, back to what purpose does a source fulfill in a wikipedia article.

the above is a hack I wrote in about 15 minutes, so forgive it (and me) if it's not completely coherent. --Ludwigs2 05:54, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I think you're trying to tackle too much, basically:

One: Defining the three source types

Two: Rewriting the whole policy regarding use of sources

Three: Providing explanations

While I would applaud more holistic plans for articles / policies as a remedy for them being too "piecemeal", I think that the above is too big to tackle at one swoop. At the same time, it may not be broad enough, as it still overly focuses the whole Wikipeda "references" rules on the Primary/Secondary/ Tertiary aspect. Also it appears a bit too "academic" in the complexity of how it reads and the types of articles (academic) that it is focused on. But IMHO the most important thing is that you are tackling an area that needs work. May I suggest starting with just working on definitions of the three types? North8000 (talk) 12:44, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I think we make a mistake in structuring the section based on source type... It is this structure that leads to the confusion. Editors read this, and immediately think in terms of which source type a given source is... and not in terms of whether it is being used appropriately or not in the context of a given article. Instead of structuring the section by source type, we should structure it based on different forms of usage (statement of fact vs. statement of opinion, descriptive statement vs. interpretive/argumentative statement, conclusionary comment vs. non-conclusionary comment, etc.) A restructuing along these lines would better tie the issues of using different source types into the specific concept of "No original research". Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that you hit the nail right on the head. I think that the two big topics are usage (as you describe) and the quality/reliability of the source with respect to the topic of the usage. And one of the MANY attributes of the latter is primary/secondary/tertiary. North8000 (talk) 14:41, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

How about this as a references structure?

(By North8000)

The "strength" of an act of referencing is determined by a combination of these items:

(and write an explanation for each of these and guidelines for assessing each of these)

• The degree that it directly and fully supports the WP editor's statement which invokes it (the opposite of OR)
• The degree that what the reference says in that context is representative of what the available references say (i.e. not cherry picking an unrepresentative reference)
• The Primary/Secondary/Tertiary attribute of the reference
• The authoritativeness of the reference
• Whether or not it is given in-line with the specific statement
• The number of references given to support the statement, in which case the above questions apply to each of them

The required "strength" of the act of referencing varies with the nature of the situation regarding that statement

(write guidelines for judging each of these)

1. If absolutely uncontested, the required strength is "low" (including "none" if unquestioned)
2. If contested, but NOT in an heated or acrimonious area, the standard is "medium"
3. If contested, and in a heated or acrimonious area, the standard is "high"

North8000 (talk) 12:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Closing

When there is a huge dispute, the standard would say that phase one of the debate is to debate the assessment of each of the above topics. Sounds like a lot of work, but not compared to these eternal 4 year battles that I see everywhere.

I think that something like this could go a long way towards solving a lot of problems. Including the eternal instability and POV mess that all of the controversial articles are in.

North8000 (talk) 16:23, 15 February 2010 (UTC) North8000 (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi North, I really like your idea. Would you like to contribute to the essay Wikipedia:Verifying different types of statement?

Although the essay was created by me, it is actually based on text by User:Collect. The idea is similar to yours and it would be great to take the best from each. I like your concept of splitting it into the strength of verification and the strength requirement for types of statement.

N.B. I think your text is better written than what is there at the moment so feel free to hack away as much of it as you like and stick in your own words.

Yaris678 (talk) 13:23, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your compliment and invitation. And I read your article and see that you have been thinking about some of the core structure / logical issues at the root of many of the discussions. When one floats through Wikipedia, this is the area where a policy is most often questioned (doubted) by even folks who strongly support the overall Wikipedia standards.

On a structural note, my proposal is only an outline / structure (stuff in each of those areas would need to be either written or brought over from the current policies). And it is quite far reaching, covering both measures of references, acts of referencing, and requirements for referencing. If there were support for taking this a step farther, I think something would have to be "incubated" somewhere off-line (or in your essay?) rather than being done piecemeal on the main policy. What are your thoughts relative to this? North8000 (talk) 14:16, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Excellent. I think the essay is the correct place to incubate the idea, as you put it. After all, essays are supposed to be the opinions of a number of editors, rather than guidelines and policies, which require a large degree of consensus. Incubating it here means other people can see our work in progress and contribute too. Yaris678 (talk) 15:03, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Cool! So I'll tidy up my outline and paste it in today or tomorrow. North8000 (talk) 15:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

I did it. As noted there, please feel free to revert or move to discussion section if I misunderstood the invitation. North8000 (talk) 16:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

But does not the OR policy restrict Wikipedia content to that found only in traditional publications?

In general, I agree with the OR policy. However, I'm concerned that in some cases, where people have first-hand knowledge that irrefutably contradicts information in traditional publications, such first-hand knowledge will not be available in Wikipedia. Many amateur researchers will never be "published" in the traditional sense, but this does not in itself invalidate their observations. Examples include astronomy and observations of captive animals. Is there a mechanism, (perhaps on the Discussion tab in an article?) where a Wikipedia editor can include first-hand observations, particularly if such observations can be substantiated with images? $tephen T. Crye (talk) 17:10, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

I think the whole concept of Wikipedia, as expressed in WP:V and WP:NOR, is that if you do research and come up with interesting results, you first need to get them published in a reliable publication, and only then can we link to them. Otherwise, every school kid will link to his latest science project on his website, and Wikipedia will stop being an encyclopedia, i.e. a tertiary source. Crum375 (talk) 17:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a publisher of original information. Steve, it sounds like you have accurately grasped the limitations of an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

But does a Wikipedia have the same limitations? Should it? --Kim Bruning (talk) 22:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC) Before you think you know the answer, take a moment to consider what our oldest policies say about this? How about newer policies?

Yes, it does and should have the same limitations. Wikipedia may be "the encyclopedia that any one can edit"... but it is still an encyclopedia. Blueboar (talk) 16:14, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

My understanding of actual practice on wikipedia (spoken without judgment either way on the matter) is that mild forms of OR are pretty much the norm. Everyone comes to the wiki with their own pre-given perspectives and understandings, few editors are professional scholars, many content issues are decided by debate (or less savory processes) rather than sourcing... the result is that many if not most pages on wikipedia are properly or improperly sourced opinions about the given topic. I'm withholding judgment on that because (historically speaking) encyclopedias used to be more assertive on those grounds - The first encyclopedias were not so much interested in presenting factual information as in presenting scholarly opinions about subjects for lay consumption (it was the later shift in marketing focus towards children and education that caused encyclopedias to give up scholarly opinion in favor of factual description). As I see it, this is tolerable - opinions that are well-founded meet few objections regardless of sourcing, while opinions that are off the deep end run into a wall of opposition. it fails mostly where you get over-sourcing, believe it or not. when obsessive editors start to use sources in a rabidly moribund fashion to push their preferred point of view into the foreground on articles, balance goes right out the window. --Ludwigs2 16:52, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

It may well be true that "Everyone comes to the wiki with their own pre-given perspectives and understandings", but are these "original"? Usually they are just the reverse, and so could easily be sourced, even if they are not. Of course they are also often prejudiced, outdated, rejected by most experts and so on, and may eventually be replaced by better sourced or balanced material. But true originality is much rarer here, fortunately. Johnbod (talk) 15:26, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

"Is there a mechanism, (perhaps on the Discussion tab in an article?) where a Wikipedia editor can include first-hand observations". The talk page? Such personal observations have no place at all in articles, as they are not verifiable. If we allow personal observation and research, Wikipedia is unverifiable. I saw Bigfoot in my garden today. No, really, I did. Shall I put it in the article? How about I include a picture to 'prove' it? Fences&Windows 23:29, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

So if Stephen Hawking came on here to edit something his work would be removed as "Original research"? That in my opinion is downright stupid. As one of those annoying people who writes to authors and publishers about errors in their books I've never been published, but my corrections have. So if I was to quote one of them, would that be original research? In fact who decides which publications are reliable in the first place? These days all you have to do to get yourself into print is to go to one of the internet limited run publishers and give them a load of money.

Isn't it time WP recognised that some people are experts in some subjects? I would never try to pass myself off as a historian or a scientist, on the other hand I've had a lifetime of playing music I know a whole lot more about the subject than some guy who's just writing one more article for some magazine. (Sorry 'bout the sig. I thought I was auto-logged on. Deke42)--213.208.117.47 (talk) 02:32, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

In the big picture I agree with you 100%, including that a change is certainly needed. Although it was useful to emphasize that important and correct point, I also think that your Hawking example is non-typical in 2 ways. You picked a person that is instantly known to be an authority in that area, and also implied that it would be clear that Hawking did the editing. But the question is, how would Wikipedia incorporate that consideration into modification of it's standards?

I submit that a standard developed under my proposed ("how about this ....?) outline below would handle this, including making "primary/secondary/tertiary" a factor that has weight but not absolute sway. Under that standard, if he, identified as himself, made a statement in an area of "already widely accepted science" it would probably unfold as an "absolutely uncontested" situation. If it were in an area that is not "already widely accepted science" it would slip down one category into "contested, but NOT in an heated or acrimonious area". North8000 (talk) 12:20, 19 February 2010 (UTC) North8000 (talk) 12:31, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

If one has first hand knowledge and they are a significant authority on the subject then that knowledge should be published and they should know how to find it. If their knowledge is contrary to what the reliable sources on the subject say then it is not appropriate for Wikipedia to be correcting these sources with original research. It is not the place of an encyclopedia to advance or correct knowledge, but rather to document what has already been established. Chillum ^{(Need help? Ask me)} 15:30, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

How about my now-archived example in this section. I made an uncontested correction about a building location in the "Dorothy Molter" article, and my knowledge on that trivial fact was based on first hand observation.(and, incidentally, the original editor who got that article started, 95% correct, with that one error, also did Wikipedia a big service.) I am certainly not "published" on my knowledge of that building location. So, WP:OR standards would have paralyzed the original editor from having written the article and me from correcting that one point. I submit that a standard under my "how about this..." outline below would have taken care of that.North8000 (talk) 12:43, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Adding a fact about "Dorothy Molter", for which you have no source, but which you reckon will be in some reliable source somewhere, is an issue for WP:V, not WP:NOR. Original research comes in when you add something that is not currently available in any reliable source. The original research may be an unpublished analysis or interpretation of reliable sources, it may be some kind of unpublished experiment. Yaris678 (talk) 15:25, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that the two policies, as currently worded, have substantial overlap. My example was non-typical, but chosen and useful for it's simplicity. But in the eyes of Wikipedia rules writing from knowledge/expertise is considered to be "synthesis" = a bad thing. But the fact is that probably 50% of what is written in Wikipedia is such, in uncontested areas. Another example is the Machine Vision article. An area where I have expertise. In this case I just reinforced what another expert said, but let me hypothesize about the original writing. The question what is the main working definition of "Machine Vision". Based on having read over 1,000 (mostly low grade, the best available) articles on the topic, and having over 2,000 conversations with people over 12 years on the topic, he learned that 90% of all of them said "A" and 10% said "B". he also learned that there is no definitive source or "bible" on that question. And so, based on the 90% vs. 10%, he has learned "A". But he has not written / published on that particular question. (the experts on this question aren't in universities, and aren't writing books, they are getting paid $300 an hour to practice it.) So he wrote "A" in the article. A very useful and correct contribution,of the type that 50% of Wikipedia is built on, but he is basically stating a "synthesis" which violates W:NOR and WP:V as written. And while he could spend $300 worth of time tracking down and citing one of the "B" grade articles and citing it in Wikipedia, he probably won't, and also it would be not germane because what he has written is the unpublished result of his work, his SYNTHESIS (= in this case, KNOWLEDGE). IMHO that should be OK if uncontested, i.e. that the rules should be re-written North8000 (talk) 12:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Definitions are tricky. However, in the example you give it would be correct to use the definition used by 90% of articles. This is an application of WP:NPOV, specifically WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. Ideally, the person who adds the definition would cite a paper that gives that definition. However, this is not necessary if it is unlikely to be challenged, as per WP:V. There is a tendency amongst some editors to treat WP:NOR as the be all and end all. They apply it to things where WP:V or WP:NPOV are more appropriate. I think it is a damaging tendency as it marginalises these important policies. I get the impression that you have been the victim of at least one such editor but, next time it happens, I urge you to tell them to use the right policy. Yaris678 (talk) 13:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I've only really been victimized once in Wikipedia, and it was a much more complex situation. But it did lead me to notice and become more interested in Wikipedia governance topics. North8000 (talk) 15:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Thinking about it. If it is only a 90:10 split, as opposed to 99:1, the minority definition should still get a mention, even if the majority definition is assumed for much of the article. Again, this is an application of WP:NPOV. Sometimes it is worth having a “Definitions” section where the different definitions of the term are given. This prevents the lead from becoming clogged up. Yaris678 (talk) 14:06, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

North, WP:SYNT is when you take two or more sources and put them together to reach (or clearly imply) a conclusion that is not stated in the sources. In your examples this is not happening. It is important to remember that not all sythesis violates WP:SYNT. Nor is what you are talking about a strait OR problem, because you are not analyzing anything, interpreting anything or concluding anything. What you are talking about is simply adding unsourced information... which would be a WP:V violation. Whether it is a violation that needs to be corrected or addressed depends on whether anyone challenges it. Blueboar (talk) 14:18, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The thought occurs to me that a lot of this discussion, both here and elsewhere, revolves around what kind of encyclopedia Wikipedia is. Some think it should be a 'proper' encyclopedia, but open to vox pop to edit, others think that it should celbrate its differences and make use of its advantages over the opposition. I can't see the schism ever being completely healed, but I do think North8000's suggestions below may go some way towards building a bridge across it. Deke42 (talk) 02:28, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I've been thinking about the section heading off and on: "But does not the OR policy restrict Wikipedia content to that found only in traditional publications?" [emphasis added]

The answer to the question that was actually asked is: No.

It seems to me, though, that a different question should have been asked: "Is Wikipedia's content restricted to that found in some kind of publication?" That question can be answered "Yes!" without hesitation. The restriction belongs to WP:Verifiability, but it is certainly a clear, direct, intentional, and widely supported restriction. Information from non-traditional publications is often acceptable, but non-published information is never accepted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

As written, I think you are in essence saying that it is widely supported to categorically restrict content to that which can be found (verified) in some type of publication. And presumably that an editor should never put it in there unless/until they know of a publication to verify it. (vs. it being forced into a "verify or remove" situation only AFTER/IF the accuracy/correctness is questioned.) IMHO this is both widely questioned and, in fact, 50% of Wikipedia, and the start of nearly every article is founded on "violations" of that rule. But of course, the concept of Wikipedia generally being heavily guided by verifiability restrictions IS widely supported.

When I write policies / agreements / by-laws etc. I find that reasonable, objective-on-the-topic intelligent people intuitively have a process where they know what is right / should be. And, if you can take what such people "think/do" and put it on paper, you have have good plan. In some cases, the answer is a series of smaller scale categorical rules, but I think that this case is only partially so. In some cases, (and I think that this one is partially so) it is a weighted decisionmaking process (inherently how the human mind, being a neural net usually operates so well). But still in a framework, which is what I attempted to outline below. We moved it to noodle on into the essay referenced by Yaris.

I've also seen that any widely violated policy / law is ALWAYS trouble. North8000 (talk) 12:25, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hi North, It might help if you have another look at WP:V. It says "This policy requires that a reliable source in the form of an inline citation be supplied for any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations, or the material may be removed." Yaris678 (talk) 13:15, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello Yaris. Yes, but until a few weeks ago, the lead paragraph in WP:NOR flatly conflicted with that. And WhatAmIDoing's writing above also conflicts with that, I would be willing to bet that WhatAmIDoing is in the top 1% of editors regarding knowledge of the policies as written. 14:02, 1 March 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs)

1. What is this conflict that was there and has now been removed?
2. Does matter at all, if it has been removed?

Yaris678 (talk) 00:01, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello Yaris. First and foremost, although it may appear to be a debate, it is a privilege and a pleasure to discuss these matters with you.

To answer your first question, (going from memory and paraphrasing) the previous conflict was that the lead in the policy said that that everything needed to be attributED vs what it now says which is attributeABLE. The fact that a lead of one of the 3 main pillars for millions of articles had that until a few weeks ago means that the main policies should be considered to be something to be evolved to being even better. And that THAT is the Wikipedian way, rather that simply defense of the policies exactly as written.

And to answer your second question, at the granular level, a conflict that has been removed doesn't matter. But at the strategic level, in the eternal quest to make Wikipedia even better (the type of quest that has made it what it is today) I think that Wikipedia could benefit if it's policies were not so fragmented/granular, overlapping, unrealistic/conflicting with the actual case, and able to provide a more solid/usable framework in their more ethereal / high principled areas. Without making this too long, I think that such would help in a lot of areas where Wikipedia has problems. And one (of several) of the problems is that the Wikipedia policies are being ms-used to coerce/manipulate articles to become unWikipedian. North8000 (talk) 01:20, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

North,

I agree that attributable is more inline with WP:V than attributed.

I also agree that if we can see similar improvements to make elsewhere we should make them and that some people have tried to apply some policies in areas where they are not appropriate. I don’t think discussing it here is necessarily doing any good – the important thing is to keep our eyes open.

As a tangential point, I notice that the phrase "reliable, published sources" in the nutshell linked to WP:V. I’m pretty sure it should be the word "attributable" that links and so have changed it.

Yaris678 (talk) 09:04, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Policy purview

Is it worth looking in more detail at the purview of the "big three" content policies. I drew myself some Venn diagrams and the result was quite interesting. I think that if you try to categorise types of editing by whether or not they violate policies you only have three types of editing "good editing" violates no policies, "biased use of sources" violates NPOV but satisfies V and NOR. Everything else is just "really bad editing". For example, it is impossible to think of some editing that violates V but not NOR. Some people are tempted to go one step further and say that if it violates NOR it is bad, if not it is good. Nice and simple. However, if we look at individual issues that people come across when editing, the opposite is the case. For example, "undue weight" is purely a matter for NPOV. "Stated positions in an argument" is in the overlap of NPOV and V. "Analysis of an argument" is in the overlap of NPOV and NOR. Yaris678 (talk) 16:26, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

I think that it should be reviewed. But I think that you should venn diagram them by policy subject matter rather than by types of editing / editing violations. For example,cites/verifiablility/references and requirements for them is covered in several places. I think that the outline I proposed below would cover a lot of ground. North8000 (talk) 16:52, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

In cased it wasn't obvious from my above post: I think looking at it in terms of issues is much more helpful than looking at it in terms of categorising editing. Not sure what to say about references. Reliable sources are important to all the "big three". The reliability of sources is addressed by WP:RS. Yaris678 (talk) 19:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Original images with scientific claims

WP:OI currently states: "Original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the NOR policy. Image captions are subject to this policy no less than statements in the body of the article." (emphasis added)

I started a thread here a while ago about self-made images uploaded by Wikipedians into scientific articles, with related captions claiming various scientific attributes or properties of the image subject(s). I feel that the WP:OI exclusion is for "self validating" content, and if any non-obvious claims are made about the image in the caption, they must be reliably sourced. In the latest case-in-point, there is an editor who took a photo using his home microscope of samples he obtained from a supermarket's "smelly trailers", and says they demonstrate "different bacteria morphologies". He is now trying to get his image and caption included in the WP:FA Bacteria article, and feels that requests for a reliable source for the caption claims are "ridiculous" and that "by that logic, we can't post an original photograph of anything." I feel image captions with non-obvious scientific claims should have a reliable source. Comments? Crum375 (talk) 14:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that images should never be used to "prove a point", but simply to illustrate points made in the main text of the article (and thus properly referenced and cited). If the article talks about "different bacteria morphologies" in a specific context, it is appropriate to include a user-created image that everyone agrees depicts what is beign discussed in the text. And the caption should be neutally worded in a way that ties the image directly to the text. If the image is being used to support a specific view point, the caption should tie the image to that viewpoint. Some commons sense is called for. If editors agree that an image does clearly illustrate the text, then use it. If there is reasonable doubt as to whether an image clearly illustrates the text, then a different image should be used.

So the question for your situation is... does the photograph in question clearly illustrate what is talked about in the article? Blueboar (talk) 17:31, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

The caption in question is "A photomicrograph showing several different bacterial morphologies." which is very neutrally phrased. The OR policy has always permitted images such as this. There might be other reasons not to use the image: maybe the quality is bad, maybe there are enough images already in the article, etc. But "original research" is not an issue in this case: editors are not only permitted but encouraged to create new, free images to illustrate articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 21:08, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

OK, how do we know these are all bacteria? What if some are archaea, which also stain both positive and negative,[11] and show the diverse bacteria-like morphologies? Is there a way Mr. Clapham will be able to distinguish them and be sure? Crum375 (talk) 21:42, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

That's up to the editors of the article to discuss. However, we have never required that original images come with sources to back them up. Your argument would also seem to imply that we cannot use an original photograph of a living person unless we have independent verification that the person in the photograph is the person claimed to be in the photograph. In reality, we assume there are enough editors that someone will be able to tell when a photograph is not of the person that is claims to be. Similarly, we assume there are enough editors at the Bacteria article to evaluate an image about that topic. If there are serious reasons to doubt the image, they should be discussed on the talk page. However, the mere fact that an image was created by a Wikipedia editor is not on its own a serious reason to think it is incorrect. In general, we want editors to go out and create free images to illustrate our articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 00:37, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

CBM, I am not in any way suggesting we discourage editors from uploading images. On the contrary, we encourage it, since we are always short of good PD images. The problem I have is with the captions which accompany them. The policy currently says that "image captions are subject to this policy no less than statements in the body of the article." But in reality, image uploaders get a large dose of AGF which allows them to add text material to the caption which describes the image subject. If it's a snapshot of a celebrity, or a photo of a famous building, it's easy for us to do a sanity check, but if it's a scientific subject, and the caption describes technical attributes of the photographed object, we often have no easy way of verifying because the image is not "self validating." The point is that we say we require reliable sources for claims in the caption, but people tend to extend the OR leeway for images to the captions, so the end result of the image/caption combination is often OR. You say the editors of the page should be able to decide this, but if they are not very strict (which is often the case), we end up with unsourced original research in image captions. Crum375 (talk) 01:35, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I would suggest asking on the talk page of the article if the editors there feel the image is suitable for inclusion. You could also ask on a relevant WikiProject talk page. In this case, the caption is not describing "technical attributes", it just says that the image is of bacteria. The most recent removal of the image, however, does bring up actual content issues rather than nebulous "original research" issues [12]. We are actually very good at that sort of technical review on science articles. — Carl (CBM · talk) 01:44, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Actually I am more concerned about the policy wording than an individual article. I only brought this latest case as example. What I'd like to see is a stronger reminder that although we encourage uploading images, the captions, especially if the images are not "self validating", must be reliably sourced if challenged or likely to be challenged. Getting back to the specific example, how can we be sure "the image is of bacteria"? Can we be sure some of the depicted objects are not archaea? Crum375 (talk) 02:17, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Here's an image I uploaded to commons: File:Ricci flow.png. How can you tell it's an image of Ricci flow? This is not limited to math and science; here's a boring image of a waterfall I took on a trail in South Carolina: File:JocasseeWaterfall.jpg. How can you tell I didn't take that picture anywhere else within a 100 mile radius? We have always accepted images such as these, even though neither one is "self validating". We rely on article editors to judge whether the images should be included. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I think both your examples are self validating and verifiable to some extent. In the first one, you specify your software and parameters, so in theory anyone can reproduce it, or a reasonable approximation. That's the equivalent of "verifiable", in that an enterprising reader can go to a library to find a book, or get some software and reproduce an image. In the second image, you show a very distinctive waterfall, and you specify where it is. Again, our enterprising Missourian reader can hike to that spot, and verify for himself. The problem I have is with an image, for example, of "samples scraped from some smelly trucks as seen on my microscope, showing bacteria." Our guy has no way of validating that. Same for my previous example, where an editor uploaded an image of what appeared to be amber, which he claimed was Baltic amber, therefore dating the bugs trapped it to 20 Ma. Again, no way for Missouri man to verify. This is my point: we need to clarify that self-made images must be verifiable (or reproducible), in a reasonable way. Crum375 (talk) 03:16, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The amber image is problematic with that caption, obviously, but not if the caption just said "this is some amber". For the bacteria, it looks similar to me: anyone could culture some bacteria and take a photo of them through a microscope. I don't think the article caption is claiming anything special apart from the fact that the picture shows bacteria. But the people who edit the article regularly will know more about it than I do, so I would defer to their judgment whether the image should be included or not. I just don't think it's an issue with the OR policy: my image of Ricci flow seems just as easy or hard to reproduce as a photo of bacteria through a microscope, and vice versa. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:25, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the bacteria photo, again, why can't it be archaea? how would we know for sure? how is it verifiable by a reader? And assuming I go to the talk page and some Wikipedian tells me, "trust me, there are no archaea in that photo", why should I trust him? Is a wikipedia editor a reliable source? If so, why bother with sources? So we get back to the core issues: captions must be sourced unless the image is clearly self validating or verifiable. Crum375 (talk) 03:31, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The same is true for my waterfall photo, though: maybe it's actually on some other trail, and I was confused when I took it. The editors of the article will be in the best position to gauge whether the procedure described by the bacteria image's creator is appropriate to make an image of bacteria. It may be that such images are likely to show archaea; it may be that such images pretty much always just show bacteria. In any case, the source here is the image itself. The editors on the talk page can decide whether they feel this is a reliable source or not, and whether or not it should be included, just as they can decide this for every other source.

If we were to make some mass-prohibition on these, I'm sure that people would quickly begin to claim that the prohibition covers my waterfall photo, my Ricci flow image, and pretty much every other original illustration that isn't a photograph of a famous person. We need to give editors flexibility to include original, free-content images that enhance our articles, just as they have the flexibility to reject original images that are not appropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:55, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

Carl, I am not calling for "mass prohibition". I am only saying the current wording needs some tweaking, to clarify that image captions must be verifiable or otherwise reliably sourced. In the case of your waterfall image, yes, you could have been confused and cited the wrong location. But this is still "verifiable", in that any user could hike over there and check. This is no different from a mistaken citation to the wrong library book, or the wrong page. The point is that although we encourage self-made images, we don't allow unsourced claims about their content which are not verifiable. Crum375 (talk) 13:32, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

I don't have a solution in terms of a policy change, but I think the best practice when available images in reliable sources are either of low quality or protected by copyright is to create an image that is different enough from the published images to avoid copyright infringement, but similar enough that editors who obtain the copyrighted image will be able to see the editor-created image is equivalent. The published image should be cited as a source, in the same way that published text that has been paraphrased in the article should be cited. Jc3s5h (talk) 00:52, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the image was removed from bacteria by GrahamColm for better reasons than just calling it "OR" ([13]) -- namely that it was of poor quality and not a clear illustration of anything at all. That doesn't give one a general sense of how to approach these situations, policy-wise, but since this was more a "crap image" issue than an "OR" issue, perhaps it's better not to try to shape the OR policy on the basis of this example.--Father Goose (talk) 05:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

The bacteria image was just an example. There was the Baltic amber image before that, and I see it as a general pattern. I don't think we should focus on any specific example but look instead at the general issue of editors uploading self-made scientific images with unsourced and unverifiable captions. Crum375 (talk) 05:36, 21 February 2010 (UTC)

To some degree we have to rely on good faith and consensus. Blueboar (talk) 02:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

So if an editor tells me, "I, an anonymous Wikipedian, have determined that this amber is Baltic and therefore it is 20 million years old", I have to accept it on "faith"? How is that different from original research? And if (say) a bunch of his friends come in to support him, their "consensus" would trump my sourcing challenge? Crum375 (talk) 02:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

No... but if they say "I went to the museum, and took this photo of what the museum says is 20 million year old amber", you should assume good faith that the editor actually did this and that the museum does say the amber is 20 million years old. Even then, it does not mean we have to accept the photo... That's where the consensus part comes in. Blueboar (talk) 03:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Yes, if they take a photo in a museum, and specify the date, location, exhibit name and what the plaque said, I would certainly extend AGF. It would also be "verifiable", in the sense that any reader could go to that museum and see the exhibit and plaque, just like they can go to some special library to view a rare book. My problem is with captions on photos of home-made scientific objects which are not verifiable or otherwise clearly identifiable, with non-obvious scientific claims about the contents. Crum375 (talk) 04:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

The problem trying to lock this issue down further than we do is that a lot depends on the specific photo, the specific caption, and the article it is appearling in. We need to find a balance that gives editors some leeway when it comes to illustrating their articles... while at the same time does not give them permission to abuse the privilage.

Let's take another example... If you look at the article Sword you will see an image of a sword with the caption: "Swiss longsword, 15th or 16th century". Now, I don't actually know whether the specific sword shown in the picture actually dates to the 15th or 16th century... it could be a good modern reproduction (in fact, for all I know, it could be plastic). However, I don't think that matters. As an illustration to show readers what 15th or 16th century Swiss longswords look like, I think this image is perfectly acceptable. The sword in the photo has all the charactaristics of a 15th or 16th century Swiss longsword.

Now, let's take another article (and go into hypothetical)... suppose the article on Christopher Columbus mentioned that he wore a longsword on the day he landed in America. So someone includes the same photo with the same caption. I would question it on the grounds of relevancy, asking how the article on Columbus is improved by including an image of the type of sword that he wore. Yes, it illustrates something mentioned in the text (which hopefully is cited), and thus not OR... but is that particluar bit of information worth illustrating.

Now, suppose the caption said: "15th century Swiss longsword, as worn by Christopher Columbus when he landed in America"... This caption better ties the image to the article topic... but I would definitely challenge it. That caption comes very close to improperly impling that the specific sword shown in the photo belonged to Columbus. We are now venturing into OR territory.

Same photo... but the context and the caption changes its acceptability. Blueboar (talk) 15:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you fully that we do want to encourage image uploading, but at the same time we must prevent wrong or misleading information in their captions, so a careful balance is needed. With plain text, it's easy: we ask for reliable verifiable sources whenever a claim is non-trivial or non-obvious, and if there is no such source, the claim must go. In the case of unsourced editor-uploaded images, the only way to accept non-obvious non-trivial claims is if the image/caption combination is self-verifying in some way. I would have no problem with your sword example, if there could be a link to another (possibly copyrighted) image showing that 15th century swords looked like that, and explanation where the uploader found that sword if it's a photo (a museum, or some collection). The point is that we need to have a mechanism to weed out spurious claims in captions about depicted objects, esp. technical scientific ones, for which the image itself is not obvious or self-validating. Otherwise, we open the flood gates to OR. Crum375 (talk) 16:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

We do have a mechanism... it's called consensus. If someone has a problem with an image, or its caption, they can raise the issue on the article talk page... everyone involved in the article discusses the issue and determines what the best solution to the problem is. The solution might be to remove the image... it might be to re-caption the image... it might be to leave things as they are. Blueboar (talk) 17:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Someone designed Cycloid pendulum.png on the right

recently, I told him what was wrong which is a lot and he's okay with that but it worries me a bit that the image is hanging around. I guess this is the sort of thing you're thinking of as well. Dmcq (talk) 17:45, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

And I ran into this image the other day, on a FAC, no less.

AFAICT, the information in it is all wrong, contradicting reliable sources, but I guess it looks "pretty", so people use it. The uploader/creator claims it's a "diagram that I made myself. Based upon knowledge I have gained in my education as an engineer." This is one more example of people feeling that with images they have a free license to do original research, since we are much less strict about sourcing when images are involved. And yes, consensus is good, in theory. But if you come as an outsider to a page with "resident" editors who are not eager to part with their pretty images, then unless you are very dedicated and bring in a bunch of outsiders or post on various boards, you'd be more likely to just leave quietly and do something else. So having a nice policy shortcut you can lean on, like WP:TECHCAPTS which links to, hypothetically, "All non-obvious technical image captions must be either self-validating or self-verifiable, or otherwise reliably sourced", would be extremely useful. Crum375 (talk) 20:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Linking to our article on Original research

I see we have been having a minor edit war over whether to link to the article "[[Original research]]" or not. I would say not. Wikipeida policies often use terms in ways that are subtly different than the way they are used outside of wikipeida. It is important that the reader focus on understanding how we are useing the term, and not on how others use the term. This means that we want them to read our policy, and not the article on how the term is used elsewhere. A another example of this is the term "Primary Source" ... which (as has been pointed out multiple times) is defined slightly differently by different accademic disciplines. While I think Wikipedia definines the term in a way that is closest to how the term is defined and used in the Humanities... our definition is not exact match to any of them. If there is a problem with editors understanding how we are defining and using a term in a policy or guideline, we should clarify the definition on the policy page... not link to an article about the term (which should be about how the term is used outside of Wikipedia). Blueboar (talk) 17:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

Our original research article is pretty marginal regardless. I wouldn't go so far as to delete it, but it's a low-quality stub. As for linking to articles from policy pages, it depends on the article; some provide info that is a useful supplement to the policy page, some don't.--Father Goose (talk) 20:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)

I have just changed WP:PSTSPROP so that it links to the relevant encyclopedia articles from "See also" rather than the main text. Yaris678 (talk) 21:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Does selection of sources violate original synthesis?

Maybe you can help us with something. I appologize if this topic is answered somewhere in your archives.

The editors of Tea Party protests are trying to construct an article about the protests themselves. (We already have an article on the Tea Party movement for ongoing issues, etc.) We also have two "List" articles (List of Tea Party protests, 2009 and List of Tea Party protests, 2010). These two articles list hundreds of reliable references, relating to hundreds of different "Tea Party" protests. And the lists are growing every week.

Our question is: how do we select a representative subset of these protests without violating WP:SYN? Is the simple selection of one event over another event original synthesis? If this is the case, do we then commit ourselves (theoretically) to writing up every one of the hundreds (and eventually thousands) of protests? (WP:PROMINENCE does not seem to apply; we have hundreds of individual protests representing essentially the same viewpoint, all with presumably reliable sources.)

Or is this simply part of the summarization process that we all agree is the purview of Wikipedia editors? If it is, how do we prevent edit wars (or endless discussion) when one editor says the protest is significant and another says it isn't? Should we run each candidate protest through the consensus process? Or do we just say, well the article is in flux and probably will be for the next five or ten years?

See here for our discussions so far. Whatever you decide, probably should be on the project page, unless it's detailed elsewhere. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 18:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

The mere act of selecting sources is not synthesis. The policy most pertinent to the issue is WP:NPOV. Yaris678 (talk) 14:10, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Yaris. WP:SYN refers to phrasing and writing, not source selection, which is covered by WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE. Crum375 (talk) 16:06, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Of course, if you notice a POV selection of sources you should probably check the phrasing and writing... POV sourcing often accompanies a WP:SYN violation. Blueboar (talk) 16:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. And POV editors can also use selection from within a given source, to cherry-pick pieces which support (or seem to support, out of context) their view. Crum375 (talk) 16:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure you've solved our problem. How should we select a few, representative references from hundreds of reliable, neutral-POV, equally-weighted sources? I would feel a lot better if WP:SYN was under WP:NPOV rather than here. Should it be moved? --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 02:02, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Not at all. You seem to be confused. SYN is not about the selection of sources, it is juxtaposing items from different sources to advance a novel position which is not in any single source. What you are talking about is the highlighting of some sources and downplaying or ignoring others; this is simply an NPOV or UNDUE violation, and nothing to do with SYN. You ask how to select a few representative sources from hundreds available? Try to list on the talk page the major and minor views about a topic, with a couple typical references for each. Then once all editors agree that the list is representative, pick the best sources for each, and you are done. An easy way to decide about the relative prominence is to find a "top level" secondary or tertiary source which describes all relevant views about the topic, and use it as guideline about their prominence. If no single top level source can be found, combine a couple of them. Bottom line: use common sense and gain talk page consensus. Crum375 (talk) 04:14, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, Crum375. I think it's clear to me now. Of course, we don't have many major and minor views in the two "List" articles; the references are mostly (90%?) straight news stories about an individual protest. And there are very few secondary sources, not written by a news reporter about a specific event. I'm going to start by attributing all the references to their publisher. Then we'll have at least a hint as to which are the more reliable. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 17:54, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me clarify that a news reporter writing a story about a specific event would still be a "secondary source" unless the reporter was directly involved in it. Still, this may not be the "top level" source I referred to above, to help us gauge the relative prominence of different views about a topic — for that purpose it would normally be better to get a more general article, surveying the entire field. But sometimes it's possible even for a "from the scene" story to include an overview or background section, which can provide a useful top level view. Crum375 (talk) 01:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

This is a side-issue. Crum, I think that a news reporter who reports on what he or she has seen and/or heard directly (like a protest) is a primary source, just like any other witness. The story may also be a secondary source, if it intermixes the "hard news" with history, context, analysis and so forth.

There used to be a division in newspapers (circa 1970 and before?), which divided their content into: hard, first-person news, rehash news (where a reporter would give context by referring to other material in the same newspaper possibly reported by someone else, usually anything below the first 'graph or two), analysis (essentially all rehash) and editorial (opinion). Of course, those divisions no longer apply to Modern Journalism. --RoyGoldsmith (talk) 15:31, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I generally agree with you. If the reporter is reporting what eyewitnesses and police officials have said, it would be secondary, but if the reporter is giving direct testimony or evaluation of what transpired, based on his own eyes, then he is sufficiently involved in the event to become a primary source. The key parameter differentiating primary and secondary sources is distance from the topic of interest, and if the writer is involved in the work or event being described, the report would be primary. But even within primary reports, there can be background or summary sections which review the general topic from a broader perspective (for example a review of the related history), and those could potentially be used as secondary sources. Crum375 (talk) 15:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we are once again getting distracted by trying to define primary/secondary. Even if we wish to define some news reports as "primary sources", using them is not a violation of NOR. Blueboar (talk) 17:12, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the issue is actually wideness of perspective. If someone writes about their own experience of an event, that gives you a narrow perspective. If a journalist writes a story about an event based on the testimony of a single person it is little different. If a journalist writes a story on a single event based on multiple testimonies, that is pretty good for that event but it doesn't tell us much about the bigger picture. If a journalist writes a story about multiple events then it might be better, for an article such as Tea Party protests - it is still pretty dependent on which events were attended by the people the journalist spoke to, but the journalist would probably gravitate towards the more important cases. If a writer writes a report on the subject as a whole, considering all the events and highlighting the important ones, then this is really good. Although, it is still, arguably, dependent on the writer’s idea of important and whether or not they have a particular slant they want to put on it.

What type of source you need depends on what you are trying to say. This is mostly, still, a matter of WP:NPOV and particularly WP:UNDUE. WP:NOR only comes in if you want to present some kind of analysis or interpretation of the events that isn’t stated in any of the sources.

Yaris678 (talk) 20:53, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

What really matters is the authoritativeness, correctness and objectivity of the information, and any metadata/ attributes which can identify it it as such. The whole idea of "Primary vs. Secondary vs. Tertiary" being a strong indicator or measure of this is faulty. Y'all are debating the fine points of a policy that is fundamentally flawed. DougT1235 (talk) 04:12, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Argumentum ex silentio and WP policy

I have posted a policy discussion section/query regarding Argumentum ex silentio over on WP:NPOV talk. I am mentioning it here because certain aspects of the argument involve WP:NOR, especially as justifications for disallowing AES. You may be interested. (20040302 (talk) 12:43, 2 March 2010 (UTC))

As far as I can tell, argumentum ex silentio is a form of WP:SYN. Since I've been over this again and again with Peter and he is not willing to change his mind on this, I would ask that members of this noticeboard participate in the above linked discussion and help end it. Thank you. Viriditas (talk) 01:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

I was about to post a notice here inviting comments, but I see it's already been done. Peter jackson (talk) 10:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

An argumentum ex silentio can often be a form of WP:SYN... but it is not always a form of WP:SYN. It depends on context. Blueboar (talk) 13:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

I think this is much more a WP:OR issue than WP:NPOV, so I do not understand why this discussion is taking place over there. Angryapathy (talk) 18:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Text vs. other media

Please join a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Text vs. other media. Maurreen (talk) 16:05, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

Copy edit

I tried to tidy some writing and was reverted by SmokyJoe who said I had made it "erroneous". Perhaps he could say more.

Current version

My copy edit

Reliably published tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources. Some tertiary sources may be more reliable than others, and within any given tertiary source, some articles may be more reliable than others. Wikipedia articles may not be used as tertiary sources in other Wikipedia articles, but are sometimes used as primary sources in articles about Wikipedia itself.

High-quality tertiary sources can be helpful in providing broad summaries of topics. Wikipedia may not be used as a tertiary source, but is sometimes used as a primary source in articles about Wikipedia itself.

SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• My problem has to do with "second hand accounts" and "undergraduate-level textbooks are regarded as tertiary sources". The first is nonsense. The second is not always true, and was worded better already. The text you quoted above is not the problem. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:51, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Okay, that was my copy edit, so if you don't object to it, I'll restore it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

OK. I'll go away for a while. Simultaneous editing is too hard. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:56, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

A note about editing this policy

This is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies. It needs to be stable, and it needs to make sense—both in itself and in terms of its relationship with other policies. When an experienced editor who's adding content is challenged, and he comes here to support his position, he has to know that the policy says roughly what it said when he last checked it. If editors can't rely on it, it may as well not be here.

The problem I've been seeing recently that it has been edited by a few accounts with almost no experience of editing articles, and some of those edits have been allowed to stand for a while. What this does is introduce internal errors and inconsistencies, as well as inconsistencies between this page and the other policies and guidelines. I'd therefore urge editors not to change the policy unless you're 100 percent sure of what you're doing. If you're not, please start a discussion on talk before making or restoring any changes. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:04, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

• Do you disagree with my edit of 8 March 2010. Yes, I was sure. The existing text is misleading people. Crum improved the change 3 hours later. It is not at all clear to me whether you oppose my edit, oppose my right to edit, or were not focused at all on that one edit. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The problem is that an inexperienced editor will tweak a good sentence, and will inadvertently change the meaning. This goes unnoticed. Another inexperienced editor comes along, sees the bad sentence, and tries to fix it, but makes it worse. A third editor comes along, possibly an experienced one, and notices only the bad writing; he fixes the writing but doesn't notice the policy is now saying something misleading—and because the writing is now good, the error is less noticeable. And so on until we have a mess. It's no one's fault.

What's needed is for every edit (even minor copy edits) to be made with a full knowledge of what the policy is trying to say, and how it fits with what other policies are saying too. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:40, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Neologism synthesis from "phrase hits"

I wonder if we need stronger wording regarding synthesis by "phrase matching" of a neologism. I keep seeing articles survive AfD because they are titled a string of words that occurs in reliable sources, often in passing. These passing occurrences of the words are then cobbled together to write an article on the synthesized "concept". Examples are articles like Post disco, which primarily rely on sources mentioning the title of the article (or something like it) in a very offhand way. Many musical genre articles are using this kind of "phrase synthesis". Take an existing genre and stick post- on it as a prefix, and you'll find enough hits to cobble together what looks like notability (and many of these post-genre articles actually do exist). Another example is a currently running AfD that I recently posted which I will not link to in order to avoid canvassing.

I think our guidelines fail here because notability assumes that the subject actually exists in a meaningful sense, and if it doesn't, there won't be coverage. But when it comes to concepts, subjects themselves can be synthesized. WP:NEO says that sources should be about the word rather than merely using the word, but that's the closest we have to a useful guideline on this issue. As part of the MOS and not a policy or guideline, it seems that the advice in WP:NEO is not taken very seriously at deletion discussions. Gigs (talk) 21:03, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you, but you're asking for a much bigger thing than you realize. you want issues like this to be decided by due consideration and reasoned discussion, but the AfD system is only designed to support a loose form of voting, and often gets swamped by tendentious editors trying to back up their original SYN with more protracted forms on syn. I don't know how to fix that, I'm just pointing out the problem. --Ludwigs2 21:30, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree it is a tough nut. It cross cuts notability, OR, proper use of sources, and our definition of consensus that lets one or two editors foul an AfD to no consensus on very weak policy grounds. Surely we can come up with something though, right? Gigs (talk) 00:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree completely... not sure if this is the best policy to discuss it in (it is related to NOR, but only tangentially)... but we do need to discuss neologistic phrases somewhere. Blueboar (talk) 01:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm thinking that the notability angle might be the better place for it. If we made it more clear that sources merely using a phrase does not constitute "coverage" of that phrase then we could probably dodge the issues of original research that are often part of such articles. Gigs (talk) 19:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Agree... discuss it at WT:NOTE and I will support. Blueboar (talk) 19:19, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Nonsense statements

• Secondary sources are second-hand accounts,

Is a nonsense statement. It is neither true, not based on the reference offered. A secondary source is a first hand account of the author of that source in saying something about something else. Suggesting that "second hand accounts" are by definition "secondary source" is wrong. "Second hand accounts" sounds more like unreliable repetition. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It was correct as written. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

OK, maybe it can be read correctly, when read in full, but our audience is prone to stopping early, leaving an erroneous message. It is not useful to start up with "are second-hand accounts", as this is not a defining statement, and is problematic. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:54, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It is a defining statement. Primary sources are generally firsthand accounts, or close to them. Secondary sources are generally secondhand ones. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:55, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Secondary sources are generally secondhand ones where we are talking about the facts from the primary source. But this is not the point of using secondary sources. Also, second hand accounts are not necessarily secondary sources. When Albert says that Barry said that Charles hurt himself, Albert's second hand testimony is not a "secondary source". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm not quite following what you're saying. A secondary source is a secondhand account. Easy example: I witness a traffic accident and I send you an email about it. That's a primary source. You take my email and you write an article about the accident for The New York Times. That article's a secondary source of information about the accident, because you weren't there. How to decide whether something's primary or secondary can get more complicated than that, but the above is the jist of it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:08, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If I write a story about the accident, it's a secondary source, whether it is based on the facts from your email, or on the facts from my own earlier notes. It is secondary because I have added something to the facts. A secondary source is a secondary source due to the transformation of the primary source content into something beyond the primary source content. It is not a secondary source merely due to being second hand.

If I took your email and retold it in my own words, pretending that I was the eye witness, I have not created a secondary source; I have only created an unreliable copy of a primary source.

Alternatively, if you don't want to take my word, go to the text of the reference to the sentence in question. I think it clearly is closer to my copy edit than to what what you reverted to. Do you disagree? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

SJ, that text about secondary sources has been there for a long time. It is correct. I think you need to leave it be and gain more experience of editing so you see how the policies work in practice. That will help you to see how these definitions translate in actual editing situations.

And yes, if you took my email, any article you wrote based on it would be a secondary source. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

In the wider, non-wikipedian world, you are definitely wrong. You seem to hold the not uncommon, but mistaken view that any source that is not primary must be secondary. Now, you could (1) well defend the statement in wikipedia policy as something that describes what many longstanding wikipedians think. Or are you (2) interested in the real world usage of "secondary source"? Or are you interested in how the referenced statement is not a reflection of its reference? Or are you (3) interested in how it is detrimental to the encylopedia that many editors think that it is a good thing to build content on the basis of a reporter's non-transformative rendition of the facts. "It has been there for a long time" is not evidence of correctness. Instead, it is evidence of lack of review. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps it would help if you explain where your knowledge of sourcing comes from. If you have a PhD in history, for example, and you're telling me we've misunderstood what a secondary source is, that's something I'm going to take very seriously.

As for your example above, if Albert says Barry said Charles hurt himself, why should I not regard Albert's testimony as a secondary source, in your view? SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

SmokeyJoe, the Wikipedia usage of "primary source" and "secondary source" is completely different than in many real-life fields. For example, newspaper articles that report on an event just after it occurs would typically be considered primary sources (e.g. [14]) but here they are considered secondary sources. This is because we have declared by fiat that our articles are written using secondary sources, and thus we change the definition of "secondary source" to make this true. A huge amount of discussion has taken place about the PSTS section of this policy, and it's unlikely that any improvement is going to occur. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Carl, you've taken that link out of context. It is specifically talking about the past. We also regard newspapers as primary sources in that context. This has been explained to you many times, but you're engaged in IDIDN'THEARTHAT. Again, Carl, if you have a PhD in history or similar, and are speaking from a position of authority, please let us know. At some point we need to trust people who have actually studied this issue. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 03:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, I have explained this to you several times as well, but you continue to ignore it (throwing rocks with glass walls...)

Articles about events yesterday are indeed articles about the past; there is no special exception that says that articles about the Vietnam war written in the 1960s are primary, but articles about the Iraq war written in 2010 are secondary simply by virtue of being more recent. I am not inventing a new definition of "secondary source" here; I am simply pointing out the way the term is usually used. Wikipedia uses it in a different way, which has the effect of simply redefining the sources that are favored here as "secondary" and redefining sources that are disfavored "primary". — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Several editors with Humanities degrees, including postgraduate degrees and degrees in history, have explained to you that what you're saying is wrong, including people who otherwise disagree with each other. You have never been able to produce a source supporting your definition. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 04:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You should read the link I included above: [15]; I have shown you similar sources before. I have looked at many sources during the course of our discussions and I have a good sense for the nuances in them about classifying primary and secondary sources. It's perfectly standard, although not universal, to classify news reporting that is published during the time period of an event as a primary source about that event. We don't follow that here, however.

Now, it isn't true that "Several editors with Humanities degrees" have explained anything to me, at least not while pointing out to me that they have humanities degrees. The only person I recall explaining your side of the story about secondary sources to me is you, and frankly I believe you are quite biased regarding several of the content policies.

On the other hand, no editor with a humanities degree could read the sentence "... this includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position." with a straight face. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:17, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

(ec)I was a scientist who has moved into one of the soft humanities. I do not have a PhD in history, nor am I a historian, but have had a long interest in both history and historiography. I don't want to talk about myself, but tell you this because it gives me a very clear perspective on how imprecisely the humanities defined their terms. I learned the meaning of "secondary source" from others and from using it studying history. I'll now ask you to believe that in my opinion the best reference for "secondary source" is the Wikipedia article Secondary source, including its references. What I have trouble with is with how many people fail to see the inconsistency between the lead of that article and the section in this policy.

To quote from Secondary source. "a secondary source ... relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere". If Albert's testimony doesn't relate or discuss, if it merely repeats, then it is not a secondary source. If Albert's testimony is a verbatim copy of of Barry's testimony, then it may as well be a photocopy of the same piece of paper. To the extent that Albert's testimony differs from Barry's in terms of the details of Charles' injuries, the differences are probably well described as unreliable. I am talking about Chinese whispers here. If I may digress to my preferred angle (#3 above), encouraging the building of content on the recording of the results of Chinese whispers is bad thing. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

And once again, we get into a debate about how to define Primary vs. Secondary (interesting that we never argue about Tertiary)... Slim, there is obviously something wrong with our definition because this keeps coming up. It isn't just clueless newbies. I don't know exactly what is wrong, but the simple fact that this section keeps getting questioned tells me we have a problem. Blueboar (talk) 04:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You were one of the people correcting Carl before, BB. It's always the same people and they congregate here because they don't understand it. I see the definitions being used well on WP every day. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 05:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Slim, before accusing people of "congregating here" you should look at how often you edit the NOR policy yourself. I understand both the policy and the actual references on primary and secondary sources perfectly well; saying that they are at times in conflict is not a sign of misunderstanding anything or of not hearing explanations.

The deeper issue with PSTS (and I think Blueboar has agreed about this in the past, although he is free to correct me) is that it has little to do with "original research". If material is accurately sourced, not going beyond what is in the sources provided in any way, then it is not original research, even if it might violate WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, and generally be a bad idea. This holds regardless whether the source is primary, secondary, etc. — Carl (CBM · talk) 05:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Hoping to make one small step forward. Looking at the following:

'''[[Secondary sources]]''' are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them.<ref>[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/primarysources.html University of California, Berkeley library] defines "secondary source" as "a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event".</ref>

There is self-inconsistency in this. The reference does not say "Secondary sources are second-hand accounts", but that they are "generally", "one step removed". This logically means that that there can be secondary sources that are not one step removed. Also, it does not say "second-hand accounts are secondary sources" which is what some people walk away with having got to the end of the sixth word.

But I am not here just to be pedantic. That part of the policy encourages the building of content based on "second-hand accounts" and this is a bad thing. Often, the second hand account is a newspaper report, and it is devoid of commentary, analysis, or any other transformation of the facts. Such a source is not a source for scholarly reading. It is just a compilation of primary source material. It is not good foundation for an encyclopedia article. Reporters report almost indiscriminately, depending on other news of the day, and where the reported happened to be.

The other failing of policy in this is the use of "reliable". "Reliability" is not a quality of secondary sources. Primary sources are reliable or unreliable. The facts they report are accurate or not. Secondary source material is not right or wrong. Secondary source material is the author's opinion (perhaps their analysis is wrong, but here we get into usage). The adjective for a good quality secondary source is "reputable". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:53, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

SJ, you've made 251 edits to articles in four years of editing. With the best will in the world, it isn't advisable to make substantive edits to a core content policy without experience of how the policies function in practice. Something that might make no sense to you at present might suddenly start to make sense after a year of solid article editing. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 05:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

This response is addressed to SmokeyJoe. To be fair, the use of newspapers is much less common in a<script type="text/javascript" src="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Omegatron/monobook.js/addlink.js&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></script>reas of wikipedia where there are scholarly sources available. For example, I work mostly in mathematics, and we almost exclusively use textbooks and journal articles. The same is true in the natural sciences. For articles in these areas, there is usually no difficulty separating reputable sources from nonreputable ones, and there is rarely any reason to use a newspaper article as a source.

The unique challenge that Wikipedia has is trying to write sourced articles about current events for which scholarly resources are extremely limited, such as current events and people in the news. The compromise that was made is to allow the use of newspapers as the fundamental sources for these articles. This compromise is necessary, in my opinion, because there simply aren't other sources available. The downside is that these articles too often devolve into a series of staccato sentences, each sourced to a different newspaper article or website.

In any case, the fact that many articles are written from newspapers is here to stay. The NOR policy handles this situation by defining these sources as "secondary" so that we can say that all articles should be written using secondary sources. This does lead to the unfortunate result that "secondary sources" in NOR are not the same as what many people would call "secondary sources" in their professional work. However, once you realize that this is what's happening, and the motivation behind it, it's not indefensible, even though it is unfortunate and confusing to new editors. — Carl (CBM · talk) 06:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Your understanding of primary sources is just wrong, Carl, and given that your focus is on mathematics, you might consider showing just the minimum of respect to people who have studied sourcing formally. If I were to start contradicting you about mathematics—and kept on doing it year after year after year, so that whenever you posted X, I'd pop up out of nowhere to post not-X, even though I had no training in mathematics and could produce no sources in support of my position—you might wonder what I was up to. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 06:23, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I'll try bold: HERE IS A SOURCE THAT SUPPORTS MY POSITION: [16]. I have spent some time looking at sources like this as part of these discussions, and I actually do look at the sources that other people give me, so I have a pretty reasonable sense of what is in the references about primary and secondary sources. In particular, I am aware that both "newspaper articles are primary" and "newspaper articles are secondary" can be found in reputable sources. So there is no need to try to change my mind about that.

Also, I am not "popping out of nowhere"; I have this page on my watchlist and have had it for some time. I keep responding to SmokeyJoe, and you keep deciding that you want to argue with what I say. That's your prerogative, but there's no requirement that I need to agree with you in order to explain the NOR policy to other people. Perhaps you should simply let me discuss with Smokey and find something more productive to do than argue with me. It's not as if I am editing the policy page; I'm simply explaining to a new user the motivations behind it – motivations that you have emphasized are important for anyone who wants to edit the NOR page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 06:35, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

For the umpteenth time, Carl, that source does not support your position. It is only discussing sources from the past, and we agree with it. This has been explained to you many times by many editors, so please stop making us say the same thing over and over. Perhaps you could write to that source and ask for clarification about how they would classify a newspaper article by an uninvolved journalist about an event that happened yesterday. You might believe it if it comes from an uninvolved academic. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 07:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It may be that you don't understand my position. My position is that there are plenty of references that classify newspaper articles produced contemporaneously with an event as primary sources about the event. The source I provided certainly supports that. There is no magical distinction in th source there between events that happened yesterday and events that happened 20 years ago: they are both historical events from the point of view of someone doing historical research.

Here are two more refs, as long as you are claiming they don't exist:

• Berkeley: "Primary sources were either created during the time period being studied or were created at a later date by a participant in the events being studied (as in the case of memoirs). "
• Western Carolina U: "Newspaper articles can be either a primary or a secondary source. For example, when a newspaper article initially reports on an event, the newspaper serves as a primary source. When a newspaper article reflects back on an event, it is a secondary source."
• James Cook University "A newspaper article is a primary source if it reports events, but a secondary source if it analyses and comments on those events."
• Harvard public library "A magazine or newspaper article published during the time of the topic would also be a primary source. For example if the topic is about the space shuttle Challenger explosion a newspaper article from January 29, 1986 would be a primary source."

Of course there are also sources that any newspaper articles are secondary sources in general, but it's unconvincing when you tell me that the things I am reading in actual references don't exist.

I think the real difference in our positions about this is that you are claiming that there is some distinction between "recent history" and "non-recent history", but that distinction will not stand up upon closer inspection. In any case, that distinction is not really related to the NOR article on Wikipedia; from our point of view, writing an article on an event from last month is not really different than writing an article on a news event from 1960.

However, like I said, it may be easier if you simply avoid responding to posts that were not aimed at you in the first place. If, as you claim, you are tired to telling me things, then simply stop telling them to me. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

arb break

SV, why do you want to discuss the person, not the issue? I am not here editing policy, but contributing to a talk page discussion on a focused issue. I am discussing something that I understand very well. But if you want to talk about people, I think this discussion and this graphic suggest that this page is being WP:OWNed by someone. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Carl, I understand all that, and I am not here to try to prevent the use of newspapers. I understand that none of this is relevant to obviously scholarly subjects. In scholarly areas, we don’t refer to policy on how to write content. It is relevant to dubious subjects only covered twice by a local newspaper. It is relevant to many articles that appear at AfD where newcomers are misled by the sometimes acceptance of online news reports as the basis of an article.

Correcting the illogic of this policy need not change any practice. We can easily be explicit that the appearance of a story in two regional newspapers demonstrates notability.

I’m glad you recognise the confusion to new editors. This is an issue of accessibility of the project to newcomers. SV seems to suggest that I cannot understand this core policy without a solid year of mainspace editing. I think that is not good. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:31, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say that. I said it's difficult to change it without editing experience and knowledge of how it works with the other policies. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 06:38, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

It's difficult to change if you are going to keep it soft protected and then talk about my edit history when I try to talk about the suggested change. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Re SmokeyJoe: OK, great. I wanted to point out the first stuff first. I have to admit I am very pessimistic about the possibility of really clarifying the content policies, because there is a lot of institutional inertia behind them. But I can explain why they are written the way they are, at least.

Do you think it would be clearer if the policy said something like "the classification of sources as primary or secondary here is specific to wikipedia, and may differ from those an editor is familiar with"? For some reason, many of our policies re-use existing terms in idiosyncratic ways. — Carl (CBM · talk) 06:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think we need to avoid, or minimise, wikipedia-specific terms. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

<outdent..edit conflict etcetera>I reject the idea that re-examining the def's of secondary/primary sources is worth the effort for the following 2 reasons: 1) been there, done that, even if this one isn't perfect, more perfect options aren't demonstrably any better, and 2) I do not see that this "confusion" lies at the heart of most NOR disputes.

I believe novel interpretation, synthesis and undue weight conflicts rebound to the "secondary source" question - nobody cares otherwise if a source is "primary" or "secondary". It is not an infrequent problem that wikipedia editors are here pushing to establish a "definitive" take on a given issue. And ignoring the broadstream/mainstream views to get to the quote/unquote "truth" of things, blowing past the secondary source material, is a frequently used end-run around disputes over "which are the most reliable sources" for a particular claim given in articles here on wikipedia or "which sources are biased and which are reliable". WP has made up its mind--it is a free encyclopedia, not a pioneering champion of "DIY truths". No amount of tinkering with the primary/secondary source question will smooth these wrinkles...because they're not really a significant wellspring of dispute. Primary/secondary source "confusions" are NPOV and RS disputes, disguised. Professor marginalia (talk) 07:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

1) We've been here before? Yes, we have. There's been little progress. Wikipedia:Primary, secondary and tertiary sources was a serious attempt to more forward, but today, SlimVirgin is attempting to shut it down and revert here to old text.

2)This confusion does not lie at the heart of WP:NOR disputes, because the heart of the issue was sectioned off to WP:N.

Professor marginalia makes a number of statements about how solving this policy redefinition issue won't change much. He's possibly right, but having self-inconsistent policy certainly doesn't help. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:05, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

IMO the one thing that is wrong with the primary/secondary/tertiary source distinction is that we are making it at all. Let's take a newspaper report about a notable scientist dying in a traffic accident, for example. If the accident happened last week, we must use such sources. However, if the notable scientist was Pierre Curie it's a lot better to use one of his biographies. Either both newspaper reports are primary sources, or both are secondary sources, or we have a weird definition that makes a secondary source mutate into a primary one in the course of 100 years.

I recognise that the distinction is an attempt to make explicit some of the criteria that a competent editor uses implicitly when comparing the value of different sources, so that editors can communicate more clearly and consensus can be found faster. I don't think it is making a good job of it: It is too complicated and too many are using it as a rhetorical weapon rather than an analytical tool.

To continue the Pierre Curie example, while making it more hypothetical: Suppose all biographies agree that he was killed by a horse-drawn carriage, but L'Aurore and La Gazette reported it was an 'omnibus'. The (real or perceived) discrepancy has led to a battle between two entrenched factions. One side insists that newspaper articles are secondary sources, assume that the nature of a source can't change, and insist that since the newspapers have much more detail than the biographies (tertiary sources?) they are the better sources. The other side insists that old newspaper articles are primary sources and therefore we must build our article on the biographies, which are secondary sources. There is never a definite answer, and the discussion continues to revolve around this technicality rather than asking questions such as whether 'omnibuses' in Paris in 1906 were horse-drawn carriages and which version is more useful and more accurate for a modern audience.

In this hypothetical conflict everybody learns one thing: Nobody really knows what a primary or secondary source is. You just pick which sources you want to use, and then you argue that they are secondary and any contradicting sources are primary or tertiary. I believe this is how it happens in POV battlefields, and it's not a surprise because as I have explained this is what most editors learn in the less contentious areas, where no Wikipedia rules expert is around who could explain how to apply the rules in a specific case so that they make sense. (And often even if such an editor is around, they will focus on resolving the conflict rather than teaching a general lesson.)

Perhaps all this primary/secondary/tertiary stuff has fulfilled its purpose now by making us all aware of certain aspects that need considering, and should simply be scrapped now in favour of something radically simple such as picking the sources that are most likely to be right for the specific application. I really think it would reduce the wikilawyering. Hans Adler 07:50, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

PS: I was talking about the general Wikipedia audience. Of course the editors of an article decide what is the most efficient way to communicate about the relative quality of sources, and at certain humanities articles the primary/secondary/tertiary distinction may be an important part of that because everybody is familiar with it from work/study. But not at Pokémon, Beer, Evolution, Leeds, Hankel singular value or Chicago Tribune Silver Football. Hans Adler 07:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Taking your example of Pierre Curie, it is not better to use his biographies or contemporaneous newspaper articles. It's better to use secondarily sourced materials published by historians exercising disciplined distance, whose veracity is most widely accepted. WP doesn't do research...it prepares a free encyclopedic definition which is derived by published researchers. Professor marginalia (talk) 08:10, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I am a little dismayed by the number of credentialism-oriented remarks in this section. I'd have thought that the most experienced editors would have a long enough memory to not make that mistake again. We don't care who the editor is, what real-world claims he makes about his identity, or how much he (or she) has done (under this username): we care whether a given change makes this page more perfectly represent the community's current view.

And, yes: This is a hard section to get right. It's hard because the scholarly definition of 'secondary source' changes when you move from history to science to popular culture; it's hard because Wikipedia's definition does not entirely match any of these real-world definitions; it's hard because we have to address such a wide range of skill levels and education among our editors; it's hard because the community uses 'primary' and 'secondary' as code words for 'bad' and 'good' in ways that have nothing to do with their actual status as primary or secondary in the relevant discipline; it's hard because the community isn't entirely consistent about what it wants.

But I do not think that whether or not a person has a PhD in history, or a zillion mainspace edits, or any other set of credentials determines whether or not a change accurately describes the community's views. Every change should be evaluated on the merits of the change, not the assertions of the editor's identity or standing in the community. I hope that there will be far less commenting on editors's credentials or perceived ownership problems, and far more focus on content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:02, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't see why Wikipedia should be the only place in the world where credentials don't matter. I don't want to be told about sourcing by someone who's never studied it and doesn't understand it, just as I don't want to be told about mathematics by someone with a degree in history, or lectured on how to use sources on WP by someone who's made 251 edits to articles over four years. Someone with no experience of adding content can't know what the community's views are on the content policies, or how the policies work in practice. Similarly, no one would want me to try to teach them how to write computer code, or create a template, or close a deletion debate, because these are things I've never studied and have no experience of. No one insults me by pointing that out. It's just a fact.

I can tell you that there would be very strong wiki-wide opposition to weakening any aspect of the policy to encourage the use of primary sources, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because a lot of Wikipedians don't know how to use them, and misuse of primary sources is one of the more common kinds of OR. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 09:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Oh, and you mentioned Essjay. One of the very early signs that he didn't have the degrees he said he did was that he didn't know what a secondary source was—no one could get through a PhD in the Humanities without knowing that. Anyone who believed him really wasn't reading what he wrote (in fact it was so obvious that to this day I believe Essjay intended it as a joke, not as a real deception). SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 10:01, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

If you want to make some claim about credentials, you need to make it explicitly. However, as I said above, I would find it surprising that that someone with an advanced humanities degree would be able to stomach the claim "This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. " which defines all our writing as original research, because all writing advances a position. This is the second sentence of NOR right now. I have always thought it is interesting the this policy is so clearly not written from an academic perspective. I have always taken things like the sentence I quoted as evidence that there are not humanities experts applying their professional knowledge to this policy. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:24, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You ought to read the sentence you're quoting—all of it, instead of just one part of it. I wonder how many years you'll keep this going, Carl. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 13:27, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The quote is an entire sentence from the policy: "This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position." The fact that this defines all writing as original research makes me smile each time I read it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:30, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I know the quote is an entire sentence. I can see it. But you're not reading it properly. Anyway, Carl, for years, if I've said black, you've said white, and you must always have the last word so I'll leave it to you now. I think one day I'm going to have to arrange a little breaching experiment, and suddenly start agreeing with you, then watch your head explode as you try to backtrack. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 13:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I like having the last word. Does that mean you will stop trying to correct me simply because you disagree with me?

The clause "any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position" is perfectly clear. Because all writing advances a position, if Wikipedia articles count as unpublished (as I am sure the policy intends), this clause says they are original research. Anyone familiar with literary analysis, and any professional historian, would notice this immediately. You said Essjay's misunderstanding of secondary sources made it clear he was not an academic historian; the existence of that sentence in the NOR policy has always made similar things clear to me about policy editors in general, although not about any editors in particular, because I never looked up who wrote the sentence originally. However, because the policy does not even get basic things like that right, it makes sense that it might also not use terms like "secondary source" in the way they would be used by academics. — Carl (CBM · talk) 13:41, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I can't resist. Your analysis of that sentence is so wrong-headed I don't know where to begin, but I will say this: most of this policy was written by people with post-graduate degrees in the Humanities, including PhDs. The writing is not the way it ought to be because others arrive to tweak it around and then it becomes impossible to change. But the ideas are solid and they work. This policy together with V and NPOV can solve just about any editing dispute—no matter how complex—when applied correctly, and that's what matters. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 13:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the problem is that while SlimVirgin correctly sees that the policy can be read and applied correctly, she doesn't see how easy it is for it to be misunderstood. I think it has been forgotten who is the intended audience for the policy. It certainly shouldn't be written for the peers of the writers, but for the newcomers. Advice for the writer: It is not good enough that the text is correct and understandable. It must be nearly impossible to misunderstand or misinterpret. SlimVirgin, I think you are not taking on board the feedback that the text is too easily misunderstood and misinterpreted. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:55, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's the issue. Policies like this need to be written with a level of clarity that allows even complete newbies and determined POV pushers to figure out that their desires don't conform with the policy. We need a page that serves our primary purpose (=educating editors that don't know the answer already). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I think the problem is that you are reading NOR using Wikipedia-words instead of real-world-words. In real world words, whenever I write an article I am synthesizing material from the sources to create a new document, and that document will always advance some position (because all writing advances a position). Anyone taking history 101 would learn these things; they're just a fact of life independent of any Wikipedia policy. However, when people read the NOR policy here, its plain language says that synthesizing written material to advance a position is classified as "original research".

This is just another example where the policy wants to say something, but doesn't achieve it. People who know how to substitute Wikipedia-meanings for the words of the policy can make sense of it, but for people who try to read the plain language without viewing it as a form of coded speech often find it confusing of self-contradictory. Therefore, the main task in explaining policy to new editors is teaching them how to recode the words in the policy into their Wikipedia-meanings.

Regarding credentials, like I said, you can either claim to have them them or not, as you like, but vague claims of "post-graduate degree in humanities" are never going to be convincing. Particularly when there are such basic errors in the policy text; like I said, any professional academic historian would instantly recognize the problem with the sentence I pointed out. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Read the sentence you're analyzing! Articles may not contain unpublished facts, arguments etc, or and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. Any such material must have been published before. You've made 355 posts to this page since 2006, almost all of them revolving around the same two misunderstandings, and no matter how often they've been explained to you by multiple editors, you just keep repeating them. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The article itself is an unpublished synthesis of material that serves to advance a position. (On the other hand, if the article is "published", then the synthesis in it is also published...) The entire article – every word of it – is synthesis that advances a position. This is because all writing is that way.

The NOR policy relies on Wikipedia-meanings to make sense. What the policy actually wants to say is that the arguments made by the article need to agree sufficiently, in the eyes of the editors of the article, with the arguments made by the sources of the article. But even when these are in perfect agreement, the article will still consist of unpublished synthesis of its sources. So the things I am pointing are not "misconceptions", they are rather idiosyncracies in the way that this policy is written that keep it out of line with the actual meanings of the words it uses.

Your personal attacks are somewhat tiring: I could equally well claim that no matter how many times things are explained to you, SlimVirgin, you ignore them and the sources provided to back them up :). Claims like that accomplish nothing. Personally, I understand the policies and their motivations quite well, and I am very experienced with how sourcing actually works on Wikipedia. Discussing how to get the policy to say what it means while using terminology in a way that is recognizable to new readers is in no way inappropriate. — Carl (CBM · talk) 14:39, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The aim is to write articles that don't advance positions that haven't been advanced by others. And WP articles are not unpublished. All the things you're raising, and have been raising since 2006, are Editing 101. That's not a personal attack. I just don't see the point. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 14:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you are reading "unpublished material" to mean "previously unpublished" material, but that isn't what the NOR policy actually says. If the contents of our articles are "published" then our articles do not contain unpublished material; that's just a tautology. However, even if you replace "unpublished" with "previously unpublished" (which is what NOR is trying to say), it's still true that the content of our articles is "previously unpublished material that advances a position", unless the articles are copyvios. That is: (1) the material in our articles is previously unpublished and (2) the material in our articles advances a position. Which of those two do you disagree with? — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Of course I agree that "The aim is to write articles that don't advance positions that haven't been advanced by others." My point is just that that is not what the second sentence of the NOR policy says. It says our articles cannot advance a position at all, which is impossible. I would be happy to see "The aim is to write articles that don't advance positions that haven't been advanced by others. " inserted into the NOR policy, since it is much more clear. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:47, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

But that's exactly what that sentence says. I think I'm going to start collecting all the times you've argued black is white, and supported any editor, even if they registered five minutes ago, so long as they disagreed with me. :) In the course of looking around, I found the last time several people explained the "newspapers can change from secondary to primary depending on the distance from the event" issue: see here. Blueboar explained it particularly clearly in the last post in this section, and you didn't respond, so I'd hoped that was that. How wrong I was! :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 16:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The sentence in NOR does not say, "The aim is to write articles that don't advance positions that haven't been advanced by others." It says, "any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position." On the one hand, our articles are published, so they cannot include unpublished material by definition. However, if we read it as "any previously unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position." then every article violates this, because every piece of written text serves to advance a position. This is not a difficult thing to understand, so my impression is that you simply are not reading the NOR language in its plain sense. Are you actually disagreeing that every piece of writing advances a position? That would be a bizarre argument for anyone familiar with historical or literary analysis. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:12, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

You just keep repeating yourself as though nothing has been explained. You don't incorporate the explanations, and say, "yes, but," or "ah, but I disagree because ..." You just post almost word for word what you've been posting for years. : ) You surely know that the sentence means no previously unpublished analysis/synthesis, but as I've said elsewhere we can't fix the writing because of editors like you. Perhaps you don't mean to be having that kind of effect but it's what's happening, at least from my perspective. I know that you will object to any rewrite, and so all I dare do is tinker around trying to stop the writing from deteriorating any further. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 16:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I am not a new editor looking for an "explanation". I understand the actual policy very well, and I understand what is written on the policy page, and I am simply pointing out they do not agree. You have not explained in any way your disagreement with "every piece of writing advances a position". It is that issue that I am talking about here; the "previously published" is a more minor thing that you could certainly fix with no objection from me. I am not asking you "what does the sentence mean" – I am telling you that the sentence does not say what we want it to mean. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:43, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Also, regarding the PSTS section, I have been actively agreeing with proposed rewrites for years, as have other editors here. The new separate page for PSTS seems like a reasonable move – and I was uninvolved with that. Rewriting the first paragraph to say what it is supposed to mean would be a great improvement in the policy page. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I fail to understand your point, CBM. The current wording agrees exactly with actual policy, and the sentence says exactly what we want it to mean. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:48, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Let me say the point again: because every piece of written text advances a position, and the sentence in NOR says that any article that advances a position is original research, the sentence in NOR says that every article is original research. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:00, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that you've said that, but what does it mean? If someone writes in an article "Billy Crystal was born in Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan", what "point" does it "advance"? Jayjg ^(talk) 22:37, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

The issue I am getting at is the same as the idea behind the hackneyed phrase "all writing is argument". There is no writing that does not advance a position. Thus every wikipedia article advances both the direct claims it makes and more subtle claims about which things are worth looking at, how they should be framed, and how those things should be communicated. This is all standard material for a freshman-level composition class. I brought this up because of the claim that this policy has been carefully vetted by humanities PhDs; if it had been, they would be sufficiently familiar with literary analysis to recognize this issue instantly. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:57, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your sharing your personal philosophy, Carl, but I'm more interested in the sentences in this policy. If someone writes in an article "Billy Crystal was born in Doctor's Hospital in Manhattan", what "point" does it "advance"? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:05, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

arb break 2

SV, I do not see why a statistic of this user account is relevant to answering a challenge to an inconsistency in the text of this policy.

The inconsistency can be stated thus: The WP:PSTS definition of “Secondary source” is inconsistent with the mainspace article it boldly links, and the formal references to sentences two and three.

I am not lecturing you on how to use sources. You seem to use them fine. The problem is with the text you reverted to as part of a large revert, which you only attempt to justify by bald assertion, and “has been there for a long time”.

The community's views are on the content policies, and how the policies work (and don’t work) in practice are as plain as day to see. Why you bring this up, I don’t know. No one here is trying to weaken policy.

SV, you don’t know me, you don’t know my credentials (if any), and you don’t know what I know. So why don’t you forget about who’s saying it, and look again at that easily misread implication in the text that “second-hand accounts are secondary sources”. Surely it can be written more clearly. Failing all else, why not quote the reference explicitly? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:45, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Clutching at straws here trying to understand SV's hard reaction... I have no connection, past or present, with User:Essjay. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:49, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I didn't say you had anything to do with Essjay; please stop putting words in my mouth. What I'm saying is that either (a) you really do only have 250 edits to articles in four years, in which case you can't know how to write or apply the content policies, or (b) you're a sockpuppet/alternative account, and it's a violation of SOCK to edit policies with a second account. Either way this is time-consuming and unhelpful. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 10:58, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I dare say I have a strong track record in working towards the application of content and other policies at MFD, AFD and DRV. Rarely do I find myself standing alone. I see the test cases often, the arguments, and the bitten and confused newcomers. I'm telling you that of all the things on this policy page, the wording associated with mis-re-defining of "secondary source" is a cause of needless problems and could be easily fixed.

I assure you that I have have never violated the spirit or the words of WP:SOCK.

I reject the notion that attempting to improve the comprehensibility of core policy is a waste of time. I have no doubt that you understand what you think it says, but I don't think you understand how others read it differently to you. Normally, you do very well in writing policy, and I agree with you that style and flow of important documentation is not helped by many small edits, but here there is a small but definite problem. Also, looking at the discussion, and this archives and subpages of this page, I do not feel that I am alone. You seem to resent having a piece of your creation criticised. I understand that, and am sorry, but a second hand account does not make a secondary source. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:36, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

My recollection is that I didn't write that section originally, though I could be wrong because it was so long ago. But okay, I've said my piece, so I'll leave it to others now. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 11:44, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

SV says: "...there would be very strong wiki-wide opposition to weakening any aspect of the policy to encourage the use of primary sources, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because a lot of Wikipedians don't know how to use them, and misuse of primary sources is one of the more common kinds of OR." (Italics mine)

That is the problem in a nutshell... There isn't anything wrong with using primary sources... but there is something wrong with misusing them. We don't really address that issue in the policy. We spend so much time and effort explaining to the reader how to determine whether a source is primary, that we never get around to explaining to the reader how to determine whether a misuse is occuring. Blueboar (talk) 13:13, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

We can't do that for the same reason that we can't make the writing in the policy clearer: the people who tend to congregate around this page object to everything. So the current state is the best one that's possible in this climate. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 13:20, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

What is that supposed to mean, Slim? You’re objecting to changing the policy because we can’t change it because people keep objecting to changes. Eh?

In terms of dealing with primary, secondary and tertiary sources, I think this is much better handled by the proposed guideline WP:Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. It doesn't actually contradict anything that is said in WP:NOR but it has a different emphasis, which I think solves a lot of the problems we are talking about.

And hey, if it doesn’t make things clearer then at least next time the big argument about it will be on its talk page, rather than clogging up WT:NOR!  :-)

Yaris678 (talk) 14:57, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The proposed guideline was yet another attempt to loosen up the NOR policy, in this case to allow people to make liberal use of primary sources. One of its main objectives was to actually mandate the use of primary sources in certain cases. It is a failed guideline, and for good reason. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:48, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

Obviously, I disagree with you there. If by liberal you mean "unconstrained by rules" then you are clearly wrong. WP:PSTSPROP points readers to the rules which are of particular importance when using primary sources - WP:NOR, WP:N etc.

Primary sources are not mandated for anything. It does say that if you quote a primary source then it is preferable to cite the primary source - this is just to prevent us repeating any errors made in quoting it elsewhere and allow readers to find the quote in its original context. I assume that you agree that quoting something out of context can be a problem. Having that particular advice is not the "main objective" of WP:PSTSPROP. If it has a "main objective" it is to bring together the different policies and guidelines that relate to primary, secondary and tertiary sources.

Yaris678 (talk) 08:36, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Just to clarify, since I have apparently not been entirely clear enough to convince people that I mean this: I really do mean that I do not care what the editors' credentials are. If you take a net-connected laptop to your local zoo, and a Cebus capucinus mashes the keyboard and randomly happens to improve this page, then I'm not going to oppose the improvement simply because the monkey is incapable of reading English. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, I do care when inexperienced editors try to change policy, because they invariably don't understand it well, and make a hash of it. Jayjg ^(talk) 01:48, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

I care (very much) about hash-making, but I do not agree that inexperienced editors invariably fail to understand the policy or invariably make a hash of it. (I believe that it's likely, but not the invariable outcome.)

Similarly, I've seen highly experienced editors make a hash out of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. An edit count is not a good determinant of whether a person is a good policy writer. You can deeply understand the policy without being capable of communicating your understanding to people that don't already know the answer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:42, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

It's not an issue of edit count, but of experience with content. The content policies must serve the needs of content contributors, and you can't know what those needs are unless you're one of them. Editors come here to show that their edits are policy compliant, or that other edits aren't. They need to know that the words and phrases they need are here. An editor with no experience of contributing content can't know what those words and phrases are. So what might appear to be a reasonable copy edit could be disastrous in terms of the function of the policy. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 23:54, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

We're not mind readers. We often can't know what someone else does or does not know.

I care little about whether a source is primary or fourthary. :) But I do care that discussions should be centered on the issues and not the people involved. Maurreen (talk) 00:21, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

If someone arrives to change the policy and has made only 250 edits to articles over four years, we do know that either (a) that person is not a content contributor or (b) is a sock/alternative account, and policy editing with second accounts isn't allowed. So either way it's unhelpful and time-consuming. That's demonstratively true—look at how many words have been spent on this, and do any of you still remember the proposed edits? It's fine for those who don't care who is doing what, but others do. I do care because I don't want to see key words and phrases removed, and the names of the editors helps me to judge whether the policy is being reformulated by someone who knows their stuff. That's all I want to say about it. This really isn't a fruitful discussion. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 00:27, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

While the context / metadata of who the editor is of some relevance, I think that being dismissive of a contribution or implying a sock account for only having 250 edits possibly takes that too far. The amount of time a person spends on Wikipedia is not necessarily a measure of (or even correlated with) the quality of a contribution. Respectfully. North8000 (talk) 02:08, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

SlimVirgin, the proposed edit was this one: [17]. To date, no one has expressed opposition. There has been implied support. You reverted as part of a wholesale revert (largely justifiable), but have not addressed the substance of the edit in question. Perhaps you may do so now?

The suggested edit to Secondary sources are second-hand accounts...

Current version	Suggest text
* Secondary sources are second-hand accounts, at least one step removed from an event. They rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them.	* Secondary sources write about the content of primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them, and are generally at least one step removed from the event or work.

<ref>[http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/primarysources.html University of California, Berkeley library] defines "secondary source" as "a work that interprets or analyzes an historical event or phenomenon. It is generally at least one step removed from the event".</ref>

The suggested text better matches the reference. The suggested text, unlike the current text, does not leave a casual half-reader with the impression that any second-hand account is a "secondary source", and if there is a downside to this change, I don't see it. The motivation of this change is to remove the inconsistency in definitions here and at the mainspace article and the cited reference, and more importantly, to help dead off the recurring problem of new editors being confused about what a secondary source is. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:25, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I explained above why I objected to the proposed change. The current version is clearer. And it's not clear that "sources who write about the content of other sources" is entirely meaningful. A newspaper article doesn't write about anything, for example. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:54, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

On clarity: In attempting greater clarity, error is introduced. It is a simple fact that there is no clear definition of "secondary source", is it not?

"sources who write about the content of other sources" was a paraphrase of "a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere", and I agree it reads awkwardly. Would you be happier with: "Secondary sources rely for their material on primary sources, often making analytic or evaluative claims about them, and are generally at least one step removed from the event or work."? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:08, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

newspaper articles are primary/secondary

Above someone said: "both "newspaper articles are primary" and "newspaper articles are secondary" can be found in reputable sources." Can someone point me reputable sources that say either of these things? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:47, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

• I found this, but I'm not sure it is impressively reputable.
• [18] These discussions have been going on for a long time without much development. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:35, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

This book names obituaries and 'histories written at the time' as examples of primary sources. Both of those are specific types of articles that we'd expect to find in a modern newspaper. (Have you read Primary source?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:06, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, but I don't get your point. Yes, I have read, am familiar with, and am in full agreement with Primary source. My take on "newspaper articles are primary" and "newspaper articles are secondary" is that both are wrong, as in too simplistic, and are misleading to the casual reader. Newspapers contain a mix of primary and secondary source material. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:30, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

I have two points:

• Sources exist that make both claims ('newspapers are primary' and 'newspapers are secondary').
• The dividing line between the two is far, far mushier than most of this conversation indicates. It is possible for the same sentence to be both a primary and a secondary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Point 1. Now you have also made the claim. I am wanting to look into that claim, mostly because I doubt that any reputable source has actually said it, in consideration, in context. You listed two sources. Neither seems to make any such explicit claim.

Point 2. That is certainly my understanding and experience. That is why I balk at statements like "Xs are Y sources". There is ambiguity, and usage is critical. Any definition that doesn't make reference to usage must be misleading. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:45, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Did you actually read the source? Specifically, page 366, which says "For example, an obituary can be both a primary and a secondary source." (Most obituaries are published in newspapers, after all.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:19, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I guess this is a useful example on how easy miscommunication is. I don't dispute that an article might be a primary source, or that it might be a secondary source, or both. I dispute the correctness of the sentence "newspaper articles are primary sources" not because I think it is never true, but because the sentence can be read as meaning "All newspaper articles are always primary sources". Newspaper articles are not primary/secondary by virtue of being in a newspaper, unless you do think that second hand source means secondary secondary, in which case I think you are confusing "secondary" with "independent". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:52, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Second sentence

Maybe the long discussion above can have some positive effect. Can we change

This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position.

to

This includes previously unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any previously unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a new position.

This would bring the literal meaning more in line with the intended one. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:00, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I don't see what problem adding 'previously' is intended to solve. Previous to what? That only creates ambiguity in a very clear sentence. Crum375 (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

The issue is that, since material in a Wikipedia article is published in that article, it's actually impossible for articles to contain unpublished arguments. It's parallel to making a law forbidding people to be inside unoccupied buildings without permission. This is one of two embarrassing gaffes in the existing sentence. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:11, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

To simply add the word "previously" would introduce an ambiguity. We'd need to rewrite the sentence to introduce the change. People do understand it the way it's currently written, Carl, i.e. "previously" is understood. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 19:18, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Just as most people would understand the rule forbidding going into an "unoccupied building without permission". Sometimes, more is less. Crum375 (talk) 19:22, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree with SV and Crum here... the "previously" is assumed. Blueboar (talk) 19:28, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Re Crum: A law forbidding being inside an unoccupied building would be laughable, though. That's the situation we have here. We don't write policies so that people can say, "I already know what that means". We write them so that people who don't already know can learn about them.

The second sentence is just particularly embarrassing because it defines all our writing to be original research (the "new" issue) unless we treat Wikipedia articles as unpublished (the "previously" issue). This is not a question, and I am not asking for an explanation: this is a simple fact about the actual words in the second sentence.

Now it doesn't help to respond, "that's not what the sentence means", because this presupposes that readers already know what the sentence means. I am not asking what the sentence means, and I know what it is trying to say. But new readers don't. For that reason, we need to be careful that if editors simply read the policy language with its plain meaning, they get the right results. That isn't true at the moment, and the second sentence is just a particularly embarrassing example of this. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:29, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Re SlimVirgin: I don't see that adding "previously" adds ambiguity; it removes the ambiguity about whether Wikipedia articles count as "published". What ambiguity is added, compared to the lack of ambiguity that makes the current sentence false on its face? — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:29, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

We don't explain what we mean i.e. previous to what? It just introduces another issue that has to be understood without being spelled out i.e. before publication in Wikipedia. We may as well stick with the hidden assumption we have at the moment. Or else rewrite the sentence entirely, but that will bring other issues with it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 19:33, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Go for it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:34, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate the intent of this change, but I'm a little concerned that it will be seriously misunderstood as a requirement that every fact must have been published (at least) twice (once in the source you're citing, and once in some previous source) before it can be included. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

Carl, I found it difficult to tweak that sentence alone, so I've rewritten the lead a little. This might also accommodate WhatamIdoing's concern about the need to be clear to new editors. Let me know what you think.

Current lead

Proposed lead

Wikipedia does not publish original research or original thought. This includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. All material added to articles on Wikipedia must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed in the text. This means that Wikipedia is not the place to publish your own opinions, experiences, arguments, or conclusions. Citing sources and avoiding original research are inextricably linked. To demonstrate that you are not presenting original research, you must be able to cite reliable sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the information as it is presented. The sourcing policy, Verifiability, says that citations must be added for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations. "No original research" is one of three core content policies, along with Neutral point of view and Verifiability. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should therefore familiarize themselves with all three.

Wikipedia does not publish original research. The term "original research" refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories—not already published by reliable sources. It also refers to any analysis or synthesis by Wikipedians of published material, where the analysis or synthesis advances a position not advanced by any of the sources. What this means is that all material added to Wikipedia articles must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed. The sourcing policy, Verifiability, says a source must be provided for all quotations, and for anything challenged or likely to be challenged—but a source must exist even for material that is never challenged. "Paris is the capital of France" needs no source because no one is likely to object to it, but we know that sources for that sentence exist. If no source exists for something you want to add to Wikipedia, it is what we call original research. To demonstrate that you are not adding original research, you must be able to cite reliable published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and that directly support the material as presented. "No original research" is one of three core content policies, along with Neutral point of view and Verifiability, that jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. Because these policies work in harmony, they should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three.

SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:05, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

That looks very good to me. The first paragraph is wonderful. My only suggestion is to replace "but we know that sources for that" in the second paragraph with "but also because we know that sources for that" or "and also because ...". — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:00, 13 March 2010 (UTC)

Very good re-write. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:19, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

That would turn it into a slightly different point.

My suggestion is: "'Paris is the capital of France' needs no source because no one is likely to object to it, but we know that sources for that sentence exist."

Your suggestion is: "'Paris is the capital of France' needs no source because no one is likely to object to it, but also because we know that sources for that sentence exist."

The first says it's okay without a source, and it doesn't violate NOR because we know that sources exist for it. The second says it's okay without a source because we know that sources exist for it. But we often know that sources exist for something and yet we still need to see them. The point here is that it's okay without a source for a different reason, namely that no one is likely to object. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:21, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The point of the NOR policy is that what we call "original research" comes down to claims that are not already published. So claims that really are already published elsewhere are not "original research" for us regardless whether sources are explicitly cited. Indeed, according to the second paragraph of the policy as it stand, what matters is "you must be able to cite reliable sources" (my bold). We might say that we don't know whether some particular claim has been published before, and so we need to see sources to tell whether the claim is original research. But if we already know that the claim is published elsewhere, then we know we are able to cite sources for it, so it is not original research here. So one reason we know that the claim about Paris is not original research is that we know we can cite sources for it. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:34, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes, my only point is that the reason "Paris is the capital of France" doesn't need a source is not that we know sources exist for it. We know sources exist for lots of things that we insist on sources for. That we know there's a source may be a necessary condition of not asking for one, but it's not a sufficient condition. The reason we don't ask for a source (per V) is that we know no one will reasonably object to the sentence. The first version of the sentence I proposed avoids all these issues. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:52, 14 March 2010 (UTC)