This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Verifiability. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
The wording of the social media doesn't make much sense in that it begins by saying, "In addition to the limitations listed above" as if a new limitation is about to be introduced. But it's not adding a new limitation, it's just restating limitation #4 that there should be no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity. I'm not sure how to reword it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:44, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I decided to be bold and fix the problem.[1] Ultimately, what we're trying to say in this section is that social networking sites are subject to the limitations of SPS. So I greatly simplified the text to say that. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 21:54, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Personally I'd prefer not to have this section, which was recently added, because it does suggest we're saying something new or different, but we're not. "[T]here should be no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity" says it all already. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS22:06, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't see why not - we quite often link to essays. (Though I don't know why everyone seems to think "the sky is blue" is a non-contentious statement - to me it seems to be true no more than about a quarter of the time.)--Kotniski (talk) 19:14, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps "generally accepted and taught as true." To be quite honest, anything can be made contentious depending on the person. "The Earth is round?" No, we have the flat Earth theory. That's not even touching the big mess that is "Barack Obama is the President of the United States of America", what with all the different opinions about him; phrasing it as "Barack Obama is serving as the President of the United States of America" would quite probably violate Wikipedia:NPOV.
Over the years thousands of Wikipedians have spent time to come up with thoughtful answers to the questions you try to answer in this essay (and they have often taken the time to make them into personal essays - one of many examples). I don't mean to denigrate your efforts, but it seems wrong to highlight this particular personal interpretation (which as you note yourself is contentious) by linking it on one of the most prominent and fundamental policy pages on Wikipedia. For these reasons, I have reverted the addition. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:06, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the revert for the reason given, and also because the essay is mistaken. It asserts that verifiability refers to the potential of being sourced. This is false. "Verifiability" is defined in the policy's first sentence as "whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source". This means that content is verifiable when a reader is able to verify it by looking up the source to which the accompanying footnote refers. If there is no footnote, the reader is unable to verify the information given in the article in this manner, which makes the information unverifiable. That's why this policy, which defines verifiability, says that challenged material "must be attributed, through an inline citation that directly supports the material" and not "... must be supported by a source that exists somewhere". Sandstein 22:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Just a side comment: In addition to the part of a sentence from policy that Sandstein quoted, please don't forget the important first part of it, "In practice you do not need to attribute everything". In other words, material that isn't supported by an RS may still have the potential for being supported, or may simply be so obvious that it doesn't need to have an RS. However, potential alone isn't sufficient for keeping material if it is challenged. I think this is what Sandstein meant. Also note the following sentence from the lead of WP:NOR, "This means that all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed."
The condition of not being acccompanied by a citation should not discourage an editor from putting material into Wikipedia that he knows has the potential for being supported by an RS, or that is unlikely to be challenged. The degree of acceptance of unsourced material varies from article to article. Math articles might be more accepting because, e.g. some unsourced steps in a proof may be obvious to the editors who control the article. Whereas articles that are politically contentious and control of the article is not by one side or the other, will be less accepting; although if the article is controlled by one side, then the other side's edits will be less accepted with or without a citation. 75.47.143.36 (talk) 14:42, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Using the first sentence to protect material from being deleted
Can the first sentence of this policy be used to restore reliably sourced material that was deleted only because an editor concludes from his own analysis of other reliable sources (OR) that the reliable source for the material is wrong?
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
The first sentence just specifies one of the conditions for inclusion, it has no "must include" wording.
Conversely, for the situation, as you worded it, the other editor could not claim that policy supports their removal of your material. North8000 (talk) 18:43, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Consensus, as usual, is the resolution of the conflict. It is perfectly OK for an editor to challenge and BOLDly remove material he honestly believes to be inaccurate (even sourced material) ... However, it is also perfectly OK for another editor to REVERT that edit and return it, assuming he honestly believes the material to be accurate. At that point, both editors should stop and DISCUSS the problem on the talk page (calling in neutral editors if needed), and gain a consensus as to whether the material should be retained or removed.
Of course, if the material is sourced, it is highly likely that Boldly removing it will be reverted... so an even better solution is to skip the BOLD edit and the REVERT... and go right to DISCUSS. In either case the key for everyone involved is to act by consensus rather than on your own. That's how Wikipedia works. Blueboar (talk) 00:52, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
After all the debate, the first phrase in the sentence is still very bad and very misleading and almost universally misunderstood to mean something else. "Verifiability" still refers to "likely truthful sources" and the phrase "NOT truth" still refers to the editors' personal idea of truth, not what's in the likely truthful sources (which, after all, is indeed likely to be true). But the phrase is still widely understood to mean that WP has no care about truth. Want to see an example from just today? See the last two comments here: [2].
Actually, the comments you point us to seem to understand the policy quite well. Sources frequently disagree as to what the "Truth" is... and we have to take a neutral stance in such situations. Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
If you think you're taking a neutral stance when you decide which sources are reliable (thus likely to contain truth), you're fooling yourself. Policy will never be so complicated as to determine this FOR you, and if it ever is, somebody on WP will still need to write the policy. There's no escaping this problem. So long as care about source quality, you care about truth, and thus cannot be neutral in that way. SBHarris20:52, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
{Ec}I'm not sure I understand the problem. The excerpt which Sbharris quotes is about the ability to check whether the source says something or not. The reason why we don't care about the Truth is because people can argue endlessly over what's true. But checking to see if a source says something is a much easier debate to settle. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
It is indeed, and that is why I've suggested in the past, that the WP:V policy ONLY address the sourcibility of material, not the source-reliability itself (which problem is properly the domain of WP:IRS). However, I have not been successful at this, and the opening statement of THIS policy gets into RS questions immediately (you are wrong, as the quote DOES say "reliable"). Worse still, WP:V (including the source-reliability part of it, which starts with the first words of it) is policy, whereas WP:IRS is merely a guideline. That's a problem. SBHarris21:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, we could remove the stuff about reliability from this policy and promote WP:IRS from a guideline to a policy, but why? I'm not sure what problem you're trying to address. Not to mention the huge amount of effort that will be required to gain concensus for such a change. A Quest For Knowledge (talk)
I'm trying to address the problem that this policy is misunderstood, and poorly stated, as above. I've been as succinct as I can be, and I'm getting nowhere. You say above that the policy doesn't mention reliability, when it plainly does. Clearly, then, its dismissal of "truth" doesn't mean dismissal of reliability, which has to do with truth. You yourself read the policy, and read it wrong, leaving out a word. Well, that happens to a lot of people. Do you not see this as a problem? I want a policy written so that people who read it can understand it. Is that not a clear statement of purpose?
If it is impossible to gain consensus to write an unclear policy so that it IS clear, then Wikipedia is broken. I have surmised this, but am not going to come to a firm conclusion until I've tried to fix it, using very small words.SBHarris00:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Sb, I don't mean this as a personal attack, but as an honest question... given that multiple editors are telling you essentially the same thing ... have you considered the possibility that perhaps you are the one who is misunderstanding the policy? The rest of us seem to have no problem with it. Blueboar (talk) 00:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Um, you seem to be speaking on hehalf of a very large group of editors who have nowhere deputized you as their spokesman. Please note that since then (see below), a number of these people have managed to speak for themselves, and don't agree with you any more than I do.SBHarris20:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
We're in an alternate universe here. Where "reliable" doesn't mean reliable. Let's see, does all of the wp:ver/wp:nor stuff have a purpose? Could that be to try to make Wikipedia content accurate? But then the policy opens by disparaging accuracy. First by using the word "truth" instead of accuracy (because, "truth" has other meanings, making it an easier to disparage word than accuracy) and then the lead disparages the concept of accuracy. North8000 (talk) 00:52, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
You know, I really understand the confusion here; it's a sad state of affairs. We have some editors with the (perfectly valid) concern that things which are not 'true' are being promoted as true. We have other editors with the (perfectly valid) concern that articles about unverified things are being misrepresented because the first groups is using inappropriate standards of truth for representing them. So for example: UFOs are not 'true' in the objective sense (at least, there's absolutely no evidence to indicate the presence of alien spaceships on this planet), but there is a lot of noteworthy babble about alien spaceships that ought to be documented properly in an encyclopedia (UFOs are a big interesting topic, despite the fact that they are not 'true'). So sourcing has become the battleground - people in the first group bang on the 'reliability' drum in order to exclude noteworthy babble and pad articles with 'objective' (i.e. reasonably skeptical) truth; people in the second group rely on 'verifiability is not truth' to add the noteworthy babble back in (because in all fairness the noteworthy babble is a lot more informative on topics like this than reasonable sources). The whole thing becomes dreadfully polarized.
In a perfect world, of course, the two groups would work together to produce a balanced, informative article. Now, everyone who thinks wikipedia is a perfect world, please add your signature below, so that you may be thoroughly stigmatized and ridiculed.
The upshot of this (at least within my wandering mind) is that we do not actually write articles based on sources. we write articles, and sources are a reality-check on us, so that our ignorance and opinionatedness doesn't get out of hand and skew the topic. Verifiability just means that we can demonstrate that what we are writing is a prevalent opinion in the real world and not our own imagining. Reliability just distinguishes between sources we can trust to be reasonable on a given topic and source that we have to take with a grain of salt. None of this should be approached in a legalistic, literalistic fashion, but should be used to encourage a generous application of common sense, and anyone who puts in too much time arguing about this from a legalistic, literalistic standpoint simply needs to be thoroughly wp:trouted, or possibly bludgeoned with cooked ramen noodles, until they cry 'uncle'.
The problem stems from the fact that there are two valid things that people want to make the sentence "verifiability, not truth" to express, and the second has led to a simplistic reading of policy that is sometimes not appropriate:
A
It is not enough for something to be true to be included in the encyclopedia. It must also be "verifiable" in the technical sense of having been reported in a "reliable" source.
B
In the vast majority of cases, when something is "verifiable" in the technical sense of having been reported in a "reliable" source, it is true. Editors who claim, without evidence in "reliable" sources that it is not true anyway are often fringers and arguing with them about the truth is discouraged as a waste of time.
C
We automatically report everything that has been reported in a "reliable" source as true. The only way to prevent this is by finding an equally or more "reliable" source contradicting it, so that we have a formal reason to suppress or balance the claim.
The first is the original meaning of the phrase. The second is a historically grown secondary meaning. The third is a simplistic version of C which a substantial minority of editors subscribe to. Since B is a consensus interpretation and B and C agree in their results in the vast majority of contentious cases, it is natural for the fundamentalists who subscribe to C to believe that C is also a consensus interpretation of policy.
But C is not a consensus interpretation as it can lead to problematic results. Some examples:
Sometimes only fringers write about a topic, and some of those writings are uncritically reported by "reliable" sources. A says nothing about this case. B says nothing about the case. C says that the fringers win automatically once the New York Times has uncritically picked up a fringe claim and no other RS has contradicted it. This case is never a problem in practice, presumably because the editors who subscribe to C do so as a way of strengthening the B aspect and are not interested in promoting fringe.
Sometimes a true fact has been reported but is simply not worth mentioning in an encyclopedia. My standard (possibly hypothetical, though probably real) example is Obama's shoe size. B does not speak about this case, but C does, and does so incorrectly. This becomes a problem in practice when editors are divided on whether it makes sense to include information and the editors supporting inclusion try to win on technical grounds by appealing to C.
Very occasionally there is an overwhelming consensus among editors that something is certainly and unambiguously wrong, even though it was claimed in RS and not contradicted in other RS. An important example was when The Register reported about Wikipedia-internal affairs and got everything totally wrong, as our server logs proved beyond any doubt. See WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy. A and B do not tell us anything about this situation. There are three main approaches in this case. The first two are reasonable. The third is not and can cause legal trouble. Unfortunately it has been supported in practice by very experienced editors who believe in C:
Follow our formal process and do not write about the incorrect report at all, regretting that we can't set it right.
Present the incorrect report as true or maybe, as a compromise, attribute it.
This problem keeps coming up. I brought it up recently with respect to a specific subscriber to C, but the discussion was closed for unrelated reasons before there was a clear consensus. HansAdler07:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Hans, the problem with what you wrote is the reliance it has on 'truth'. It seems to me your point A is flawed. Whether or not something is actually true is irrelevant to it's inclusion in the encyclopedia; we should consider the extent to which something is accepted as true as a weighting factor, but we as editors are not qualified or entitled to judge its truthiness. This of course impacts on your point B: verifiability does not confirm 'truth', it confirms 'acceptance as truth', and there is a world or difference between those two phrases.
You're right about the problem with point C - people who look at this in a fundamentalist way conflate verifiability with truth and end up misusing policy in some silly, silly ways. But the confusion is deeper and more convoluted than you make it, I think. For an example, let me pick a book off my bookshelf (I've grabbed "Freud and Beyond", by Mitchell and Black, 1995 - an academic book from a minor publishing house), and choose a quote at random (e.g. first two lines of chapter 5):"Human beings, in Freud's account, are born at odds with their environment. They are wired the way Freud and his contemporaries understood animals to be, oriented towards pursuing simple pleasures with ruthless abandon." Now, here's what we can say about this quote, without stretching:
it is clearly verifiable in the simplistic sense (someone said it, and that can be easily checked by looking at the book).
It is clearly a reliable source in some sense of that term (Mitchell is faculty at NYU, and the publisher - basic books - is fairly well established, at least for textbooks)
However, this only scratches the surface of the source, and leaves a number of important questions at loose ends:
What were the authors writing about, and is this quote an important or incidental part of their argument?
Should this quote be considered true of psychoanalysis in general, or just an opinion of a small cohort of psychoanalysts?
Should this quote be considered true in the real world, or just true of psychoanalysis as a limited perspective?
The first point gets at whether we are simply verifying the quote or whether we are verifying the source (i.e. what was literally said vs. what the authors were trying to convey in the bigger picture). The second and third points get at the scope of verification (whether we are verifying this as a truth about the world, or a truth about psychoanalysis, or a truth about a small subgroup of psychoanalysts). Which level and scope we are trying to verify will be contingent on the article in question: i.e. we will come to different conclusions on an article about the human mind vs. an article about psychoanalysis vs. an article about the theories of Stephen A. Mitchell. It's all very contingent and contextual, and requires thought and common sense to apply; there is no way to construct a fast and ready rule to cover all situations. The fact of the matter is, we don't know what the 'truth-value' of psychoanalysis is in the greater world, and we don't know what the 'truth-value' of this source in the world of psychoanalysis is; how can we make broad, reified assessments of how 'reliable' this source is in such a condition? That's why I keep saying we should stop trying to evaluate the truth-value of topics at all and restrict ourselves to describing the topics as best we can in our best understanding of a reasonable context. It's the only way we're going to not make ourselves crazy. --Ludwigs209:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm very impressed by this analysis; but I'm not sure how it translates into a position on what the first sentence of the policy should say. Are you defending the current wording, or would you suggest an improvement? (Same question to Hans and others.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't mind the current wording so long as there is a clear consensus that to the extent that truth exists, an encyclopedia tries to approximate it. Policy must not be interpreted so as to do something that is diametrically opposed. HansAdler13:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Ludwigs2, I am really not interested here in any deep matters where we have to get philosophical about the meaning of "truth". In the Sam Blacketer case it was all very simple. The Register claimed that ex-Arbitrator Sam Blacketer (they called him by his real name) had vandalised an article on a political opponent in the heat of an election campaign. Our server logs proved that he had actually removed vandalism. (Replacing a photo in which David Cameron looked as if he had a halo by an approved one.) The topic wasn't interesting enough for the quality press to investigate on their own, but interesting enough for part of the international press to pick up without investigating. The general public has the right to expect that Wikipedia does not write things about Wikipedia that Wikipedia knows to be false. Yet a number of editors argued seriously that we have to do precisely that, because what counts is verifiability NOT truth. Just read the deletion discussion.
The press was just guilty of carelessness. But we, since we knew it was false yet repeated the claims without relativisation (it took many days of heated discussion to get this stuff deleted) were guilty of libel in the legal sense of the word. (Presumably. Not sure who was actually guilty of it. I certainly wasn't because I was fighting to prevent it. I have asked Newyorkbrad to comment here; he may or may not have an opinion on this specific detail.) HansAdler13:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I think I've touched upon this before somewhere else but this should have easily been dealt with if it was possible to refer to WP:IAR without the baggage currently associated with it. Lambanog (talk) 13:24, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Who are you telling this? After this comment of mine it took 6 more days for the article to get deleted, and during that time the same editors who were arguing against deletion were also arguing against putting anything in the article that would have mitigated the effect, based on the argument that it was improper to use our knowledge of our own internal processes, and links to our servers, as sources for a BLP article. This should have been a no-brainer, but it wasn't. I want to make sure that next time this happens it is a no-brainer. HansAdler13:58, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
The "Verifiability not Truth" statement does not say (or mean) that if something is Verifiable, Wikipedia must include it (even if it is not True).
The statement does say (and means) the opposite... if something is not verifiable, Wikipedia should not include it (even if it is True).
Of course it clarifies things. It's what I called A above. The problem is that about half of the community if not more is in love with B, which does not follow from A, and the distinction between B and C is not sufficiently clear in practice. HansAdler13:50, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I've been asked to comment here. My views approximate those of Hans Adler. We appropriately require that information be verified by one or more reliable sources before it is included (and that a citation to the source be included, at least when a fact is questioned or disputed). This is a necessary condition for including a statement in a Wikipedia article.
But the fact that a piece of information is included in a source, even one that is normally considered highly reliable, is not a sufficient condition for including the information. An additional condition is that the editor inserting the information, or a consensus of editors if a dispute arises, believes that the information is actually accurate.
Much of the time, this additional condition can be disregarded, because by definition, reliable sources are accurate much more often than they are inaccurate. (If they were not, they would not be reliable sources!) But even the most reliable source will contain errors—whether the error rate for many would be higher or lower than the error rate on Wikipedia itself is an interesting question—and "reliable sources" must not be mistaken for "infallible sources." Sometimes there will be an error. When it is an obvious or a known error, we would be irresponsible in propagating it. (I am not dealing here with the exceptional case of reporting on the error itself, described as such.)
Perhaps one way of putting it is that verifiability of a plausible fact in a reliable source creates a presumption of truthfulness that allows the fact to be included in Wikipedia. But the presumption can be rebutted by other evidence that the fact is really false. This will most usually be a showing that other reliable sources are reporting contradictory information, but it can't be limited to that.
A statement such as "whether or not something is actually true is irrelevant to its inclusion on Wikipedia" does not, in my view, capture either what our editing policies are or what they should be. I can understand why such a comment would be made—we have too many people who believe that content should include what they think is true, no matter how many sources or how strong a consensus points in a different direction. That is not acceptable and it is not something I am endorsing here, at all. But the other extreme of simply abjuring any interest in getting the facts accurate is also unacceptable, and if taken literally (I don't think it was likely meant as such, at least in its extreme form), would be an exceptionally irresponsible attitude for one of the world's most visited websites. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:37, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I think (or hope) that everyone here agrees with what you say Brad. What I think we disagree on is whether the statement "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." accurately (and/or adequately) sums up this concept.
My personal take is that it does sum the concept up accurately (so I oppose removal or changing it)... but it may not be adequate (ie, it may need expansion to clarify.) Blueboar (talk) 20:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
The phrase "threshold for inclusion" means that verifiability is a necessary condition. It's sometimes a sufficient condition too. That depends on context, editorial judgment, common sense, how NPOV is being interpreted, and how many sources are competing for inclusion. What this policy describes is the necessary condition, no more. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
How often does this problem actually occur? I'm hard-pressed to remember an occasion where an editor knowingly insisted on inserting factually inaccurate information on the grounds that it was verifiable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
The ethnic composition of Latin America is the case that comes to mind. Various Latin American countries use definitions of "white" and "black" that defy common usage, and various editors have fought to their indefinite blocks "correcting" the census reports. There's no doubt that the censuses are false, but they wind up in every country's articles anyway. No one seems happy saying "we know this country cooks the books, therefore we won't report any census information for it".—Kww(talk) 20:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Jimbo Wales allowed his own incorrect birth date to remain in his article for a while, just as hair-shirt, since reliable sources had printed it wrong. Then, I think he changed his mind and took off the shirt. Does that count?
I think it rarely happens that editors insert (without qualifiers of any kind) information that they personally think is unfactual. Usually you find them saying something like "A believes B (cite), but others do not.(cite)" That's fair. Often you can tell in an article which belief the article-writers are skeptical of. That doesn't bother me on WP (any more than in an academic course) so long as the cards are on the table.
I think what the opening statement of WP:V means to say, is that the threshhold of inclusion in WP is either the writer's belief that the statement is correct (when it is not controversial) OR that belief PLUS a citation to a reliable source, when it IS controversial or non-obvious. A lot of WP consists of non-controversial statements of fact that aren't cited because they don't need to be, so there are obviously different threshholds of includablity. A rewrite of this is needed. SBHarris20:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
lol - well, while I largely agree with everyone here, I still believe there are some broad confusions because of the range of things thisx text is supposed to cover. just to list things out the kinds of issues where I've seen it used, we have:
Editors inserting material they know is counter-factual (rare, and usually handled by vandalism and BLP policies)
Editors inserting material from sources which have obviously made an error (as in Hans' 'Sam Blacketer' example).
Editors inserting material from sources which have likely lied (as in Kww's 'Ethnic Composition' example).
Editors inserting material from sources which have made valid statements about something that is itself likely untrue (a frequent occurrence on fringe articles).
Editors inserting material where the editors misunderstand or misuse the source (e.g. quote-mining, which happens to some extent or another on any contentious page).
Have I missed any? Writing a single opening line that covers all of these adequately without stepping on the toes of any of them is and artistic challenge... --Ludwigs221:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Sb, when a non-controversial fact is added without citation, that simply means the fact is not verified (in the article)... it does not mean the fact is not verifiable. The initial threshold for inclusion is that the fact be verifiable. As a second step, we then go on to say that it must actually be verified (in the article, by adding a citation) if challenged or likely to be challenged. Blueboar (talk) 21:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Ludwigs, yes you missed one... Editor inserting controversial material from sources that disagree with the sources some other editors have read. All too often, both sides will argue that their sources are reliable and stating the Truth, while the other side's sources are unreliable, incorrect, misrepresenting the facts, lying etc. Blueboar (talk) 21:28, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
The fact that this policy is written in a way to downplay arriving at accuracy, and the related things that in dominoes such into (basically source criteria that somethings has little relation to reliability on the task at hand) comes up extensively. It becomes fodder for wiki-lawyering warfare (and avoiding accurate coverage) wherever there is a an article where there is a RW clash. The current rules and policies are a failure on all of those. North8000 (talk) 21:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
Given that there will be strong opposition to any major change to the language of the policy (some of it valid and some of it of the knee-jerk variety), can you suggest a way forward? Blueboar (talk) 21:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm trying to work on more organized supporting analysis and ideas, (I could give you a link but it's still to ragged / unfinished to get spotlit)....but in vague terms:
The opening statement should be changed to keep everything about verifiability without throwing in the swipe which disses accuracy. Such was discussed/consensused a few months ago but reverted by one of the owners of wp:ver when put in, saying it was not discussed enough. So then when it was floated for a longer time on the talk page (as I recall) that owner split it in half via manual archiving and then manually archived the remainder of the discussion (both before the bot did them), so now it is gone.
Add two source strength metrics (objectivity and knowledge regarding the fact the cited it) to the two existing ones (the editing layer ["RS"] and primary/secondary/tertiary aspect), define the "strength of the source for the cite" as the combination of these. And say that the strength of the source/cite must be commensurate with the situation. Challenged/questioned statements need stronger sourcing, and vica versa.
I'm with you 100%. I think that it may not be clear that my ideas are also with you 100%. Step one is to get rid of the word "truth" because 1/2 of the time "truth" means somebody's belief rather than objective accuracy (for those cases where such exists). North8000 (talk) 22:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
We're all a bunch of anonymous editors, right? This means that we can't use authority to determine what is true or not. That's why we have to go by verifiability as the inclusion standard. I've participated in some controversial topic areas in Wikipedia, apart from it often being a miserable experience, one thing I've noticed is that editors will argue over the credibility of the sources. In one case, I experienced several editors arguing, much to the annoyance of the regulars at the reliable sources noticeboard, that the New York Times couldn't be used as a source in a "science" article. In my opinion, therefore, I think the statement at the top of this thread could be made even stronger by adding something like, "Wikipedia editors, because of anonymity, cannot decide matters of truth by authority, and therefore must use verifiability as the baseline standard for inclusion" or something like that. Cla68 (talk) 22:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)
If the NYT is at odds with peer-reviewed secondary sources specialising in a given area, then it should either not be included or included in a subjective way "NYT reports that...." so it is not as simple as that, which is why we are humans judging and not computers systematically entering all referenced data. Casliber (talk·contribs) 00:03, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
The sun being above the horizon is a necessary condition for direct sunlight; but it is not a sufficient condition, because something else may be casting a shadow (copied from Necessary and sufficient condition).
PS: I guess I should add my voice to those who are unhappy with the wording of the first sentence - the implied general meaning for me seems to be that there are two divergent endpoints "verified/verifiable material" and some core "truth" (a la Kuhn maybe?). Whereas I imagine this much more as verifiability as a means to an end to get to some consensually-understood truth. It's the "not truth" which is the problem in implied meaning.
I guess I'd much rather something like "Verifiability is the route taken to transform unverified (mainspace) content into reliably-referenced and checked (encyclopedic) content" With a caveat "One may be surprised that one's understanding may diverge from a presupposed understanding as one uncovers and reviews source material"
I like your second sentence. I'm not embarrassed to admit that in editing I've sometimes found that what I thought to be true was not exactly the same as what was in the sources. Cla68 (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I also like that second sentence....actually beyond like. It is a statement of how the 90% of Wikipedia works works. Although I would tweak it slightly, During the 90%, the editors, in consensus, decide on it based on the integration of 500 sources that their understanding came from. And then they take what they decided and source it and put it in. During the other 10% (basically the contentious failure articles) the wiki-lawyering blocks this process when it does not have their preferred result, noting that the process that makes 90% of Wikipedia work is a violaiton of the rules, if taken literally and in a vacuum. North8000 (talk) 01:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
That the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth, is a very simple idea. It means verifiability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for inclusion. An invitation to the party is a necessary condition for inclusion, but if you turn up drunk and threaten to strangle the hostess, the invitation alone will not ensure your admittance, i.e. an invitation is not a sufficient condition. I think it's important not to make this idea more complicated that it has to be.
In many of our articles, verifiability is a sufficient condition too, just as an invitation to the party is going to get you inside 99 percent of the time. This policy can't substitute for the editorial judgment required on the page to decide whether a source is also authoritative enough, appropriate enough, and so on. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I am sorry, I just had to read your post a couple of times and I still am unclear about the point yuo're making, and hence I think the way it is laid out is obfuscating rather than clarifying the issue. Slimvirgin do you agree or disagree that the way it is presented now tends to artificially diverge truth and verifiability and imply that verifiability is an end rather than a means to an end? Casliber (talk·contribs) 01:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not completely sure what you mean, Cas, about a means to an end. When I cite John Rawls as a source for the concept of justice-as-fairness, there is no issue of "truth". The question is only whether Rawls is an appropriate source. When I cite U.S. government sources on Bradley Manning, the question is whether the U.S. govt is an appropriate source, because who on earth knows what "the truth" is.
When you write an undergraduate essay or MA thesis, the aim is not to reveal "the truth," but to offer an overview of the appropriate literature, and that's what WP articles seek to do. We cite sources who are notable, or authoritative, or honest, or well-known, or widely read, or carefully checked, or important, or appropriate, or respected—and we use the word "reliable" as a shortcut for that amalgam of attributes. Being able to "verify" our material against one of those sources (i.e. check that one of those sources published what we want to publish) is the threshold for inclusion, the necessary condition for inclusion—the invitation to the party. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS02:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Cas, another way of looking at this: to mix up truth and verifiability is to make a category mistake. Looking at an issue in your area, imagine someone asked you to write an essay on the difference between the concepts of mental illness, personality disorder, and neurological damage. You'd explain the differences between the categories, you'd explain the history of how they developed, you'd explain the legal and philosophical differences, the different approaches between disciplines, according to sources who work in appropriate fields. Then imagine you had someone shouting as you were writing, "Yes, but what is the truth? Which of these ideas is true? Which of them is correct?" It would be meaningless.
None of us can know whether 5.9 or 6.1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, or whether it was four or 10 million. We can't know, we can never know, we have no realistic way of finding out. So we have a bunch of names of scholars we trust—people in mainstream institutions, where it's hard to get a job—who say they've read the original documents, and we repeat what they say. That's for the most part what scholarship is; it's knowing who the trusted sources are. Yes, at some point, an approximation to "truth" is the aim—a convergence of trusted narratives—but that's a complex philosophical idea within historiography, and there's no way we can get involved in discussing it in a Wikipedia policy. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS02:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
@SV - I'll try not to intersperse but answer bits and pieces. When I write I am mindful of the subject as a whole, so that impacts on how I look at further bits of information and how they integrate with the whole. Luckily for the most part, the quality of the sources speak for themselves, so integrating as a whole is not a problem. But (for instance) where a source contrasts with other material will heighten the need for qualifying that source. For instance, in medicine, we'd often state a Review Article as fact "treatment X is effective for disease Y" BUT we might have to qualify that in a number of circumstances - e.g. a large high quality and highly publicised meta-analysis (technically a primary source, but maybe picked up by newspapers, gov'ts etc - hence we might review article to say "Medical consensus has been that treatment X is effective for disease Y (ref here), however a new meta-analysis....." - so to answer, no, I could see a case where the presence or absence of other high quality material may impact on how we ref US gov't sources on Manning. Regarding "the truth", ultimately, yeah there is an unknowable truth we can never know (e.g. a ruler cannot measure exactly 30.000000000000000 cm), but it doesn't mean we don't try to give an accurate picture of the subject as possible. Note that this needn't be a preconceived idea on the part of the editor but develops as one reads and processes sources. (i.e. inaccurate =/= wrong, which seems to be a distinction that needs making here. For instance, re difference between the concepts of mental illness, personality disorder, and neurological damage - yes all are different paradigms and none repreresents "The Truth", but it is up to me to be able to explain the strengths and weaknesses of each paradigm (complex but not insurmountable). Casliber (talk·contribs) 04:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Did you notice that the word threshold does not occur in the title of this section? That's not because it misrepresents the problem, but because most of the time when someone mentions "verifiability, not truth" the word is not used at all. And quite a few editors will deny that the "threshold" language means anything like you and I think it means. To me that's an indication that the snappy language stands in the way of understanding. I don't care how we fix this, so long as we fix it.
Editorial judgement is another problem, and a related one. A lot of editors have no judgement at all and try to substitute wikilawyering for it. WP:Editorial judgement is a redlink. I am afraid it wouldn't even help as a guideline. It would have to be a policy so that wikilawyers cannot continue to claim that exercising editorial judgement is against policy without risking a block. There is this absurd idea that Wikipedia is not written by (more or less) intelligent people who read and understand the sources, but that some kind of automatic writing is going on that turns policy pages + reliable sources into an encyclopedia, with humans playing a role analogous to that of electrons in a computer. HansAdler01:49, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Agree. I don't think that anybody is challenging the verifiability content of the beginning of the policy. The question is, why the heck does the lead of a core policy have to add wording that insults the idea of striving for accuracy? First by substituting the ambiguous, straw-man-ishly multi-meaning word "truth" for accuracy, and then, in a phrase that we know always gets quoted out of context as the (mistakenly) mission statement of Wikipedia: "not truth" = "not accuracy" North8000 (talk) 02:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
We still seem not to have resolved the problem(s) we had when we discussed this a few weeks ago - we "know" that "the threshold" is supposed (in this case, at least) to mean a necessary rather than a sufficient condition; but (a) how do we expect readers to guess that this is how we mean it? and why force them to make such a guess when we could easily reword the sentence to resolve that ambiguity; and (b) by writing in big bold letters not truth we imply that truth is not a relevant consideration, thus leading to the absurdities of people wanting to knowingly repeat libel and so on, as in the case described above (and in other less dramatic situations, where the falsehood isn't a libel, but is still not wanted in our encyclopedia). Can we really not improve the wording of this sentence so as to make it clearer what we mean by it and what our motivation really is?--Kotniski (talk) 09:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
(ec)A bit of history... When we added the Verifiability not Truth clause, we were trying to combat a persistent problem: POV pushing editors adding unverifiable material based on the argument that it was "true". The current language settled that persistent problem that very well. We determined that such material should not be included, and created a statement that says so clearly and bluntly. We want to keep that clear statement.
What we are discussing now is a different issue... what to do about editors adding untrue (inaccurate) material based on the argument that it is verifiable. This is a much thornier issue. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
For whatever reason, this statement, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." is problematic and needs to be rewritten:
Yes, there are multiple problems with it, as noted in previous discussions - it's only acceptable if you happen to know what it's trying to say, and it is intended (obviously) to be read and understood by people who don't know beforehand what it's trying to say.--Kotniski (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
The only reason for keeping this misleading sentence would be if there were no good alternatives. However, it is very easy to think of alternative formulations that do an even better job of making clear that we're after the truth as can be distilled from reliable sources, here on Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability requirements can be strongly stated without double-dissing the concept of accuracy. The first diss is using the straw-man problematic word "truth" instead of "accuracy" and second by inserting the "not" statement in the lead sentence. North8000 (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC) (moved from below Unscintillating's comment) The lead states with emphasis that what we want is "not truth", and so that is what we are getting. (Unscintillating said it well) Time for a change! North8000 (talk) 00:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Weak support as I am not sure that rewriting it is the only way of solving the problem. Actually we have two problems: (1) Editors who really and honestly believe that we should make Wikipedia say something that we know is not true. Just because reliable sources agree it is true and we want to be consistent. (2) Editors who pretend to be of type (1) when it fits their agenda. It saves them from agreeing with a consensus that they cannot plausibly disagree with. Both problems are relatively rare but should be addressed. I don't care whether this is done by changing the text or by adding a clear explanation that (1) is not the intended meaning. Maybe neither is needed, but just a strong consensus in this discussion, to which we can then point whenever the matter comes up again. HansAdler16:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Support. "Verifiability" to this point hasn't even been defined in terms of whether a reliable source has actually been cited, or whether a reliable source could easily be found and cited ("Abraham Lincoln was an important figure in the American Civil War."). Moreover, the world "truth" in the phrase not truth has been perverted: it apparently refers to NOT an editor's idea of truth if it cannot (even in theory) be supported by a reliable source. Which is an extremely odd use of the word "truth," and a very bad way to use it. The concept invoked is something like "a personal controversial version of truth in the WP editors' mind, that could not be supported with a reliable source." THAT is what WP deprecates, but calling that thing "truth" is an abomination, and an insult to truth. WP does seek truth (what good is an encyclopedia that does not?) It just doesn't seek "personal truth." Editors are asked to keep that to themselves.SBHarris18:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Suggest shortening to "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source," dropping the words "not whether editors think it is true", because I've seen them misused to dismiss demonstrably well-founded concerns about source accuracy. See #Proposal 2, below. --JN46616:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Support - The problem isn't with truth being in Wikipedia, everyone wants that. The problem is with what some editors think is true, which may in fact be FALSE. The phrase "verifiability, not truth" is misleading. Remove the "not truth" part. The phrase "not whether editors think it is true" at the end of the sentence is correct and right on the mark. Also, "The threshold" is ambiguous and may mean it's enough to just to be verifiable in order to be included in Wikipedia, which is definitely not correct and everyone here agrees that verifiability alone is not enough to be included in Wikipedia. There's NPOV, etc. This can be fixed by changing "The threshold" to "A requirement" or "A minimum requirement". Please see Proposal 4 below. 75.47.143.156 (talk) 14:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
. It's neccesary to mention that debates for inclusion don't depend on whether something is true or not. Truth is highly subjective, and endlessly arguable. Verifiabilty can be easily checked. If we imply that truth is a matter of consideration in our decision making process, we will encourage original research, endless arguments, and walls of text. We'll never reach consensus on anything. LK (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the statement itself is problematic, and I don't think it should be removed or changed... However, I think the explanation of it may be incomplete. As written, it correctly excludes unverifiable information, even if it is "true". What it is missing is a follow up statement on what to do about clearly untrue (or inaccurate) information that happens to be verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
There's nothing wrong with the current wording, and changing it will open the floodgates to every crank who thinks they know the TRUTH™. Even now we are inundated with them, but this wording at least helps mitigate the worst of it. Jayjg (talk)22:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
The idea that "verifiability, not truth" is the threshold for inclusion is widely used and well-understood on Wikipedia. Some people here are saying there have been attempts to insert material known to be false because of it, but I've personally never seen an example of that in over six years of regular editing; and if such examples do exist, they are rare. For the most part, the idea makes clear to editors that what we do on Wikipedia is supply a survey of the relevant literature, regardless of our personal views. That's not just a means to an end (where what we're really doing is aiming for "truth"), as others have argued. Offering a good summary of the appropriate literature is an end-in-itself. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Wording is fine. Like I've said before, Wikipedia's policies don't currently allow individual editors to assert personal authority over what is true or not. We're only allowed to declare something as true if it says so in a reliable, verifiable source. Therefore, verifiability trumps whatever we personally feel to be true. Cla68 (talk) 02:08, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
It's fine, and we understand what it means. (Those who don't can be pointed at Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth.) And if you need to see the problems with demanding that articles present "the Truth™", then I recommend that you spend a while hanging out at articles about mental illness, where people occasionally name "personal experience" as a "citation" for claims about (for example) the laws for involuntary commitment in their home countries. There's an ongoing dispute in articles related to saturated fat about whether the mainstream view (eating a lot of saturated fat is bad for the heart) has been completely wrong for decades. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
The statement is fine because "the truth" can only be proven via verifiable reliable sources. Anyone can go and claim that something is not "true" and remove it from an article even if it's well sourced, that's why wikipedia is not about truth. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
As has been said above, surely better than I can say it, the present wording is fine. As "truth" so often depends on the viewpoint of the speaker, we have to use the standard of whether or not something can be verified from a "reliable source", and "threshold" is a succinct way of saying that verifiability is a condition that must be met for inclusion in Wikipedia, but doesn't guarantee inclusion. -- Donald Albury09:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Discussion
As above, my beef is that it creates an artificial dichotomy of truth and verifiability as distinct endpoints (which they are), but what needs to be emphasised is verifiability is a means to an end. Casliber (talk·contribs) 12:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Some people above seem to be under the impression that "verifiability" (or "whether a source says something") is an objective matter. It isn't, of course - determining whether a source is "reliable" in a given instance is no less a subjective process than determining whether a given statement is "true" (in fact it quite often comes down to the same thing - we conclude that a source is unreliable if the statements it's making appear not to be true). And pushers of fringe theories can exploit verifiability too - by insisting that the sources that support their viewpoints are just as reliable as those that oppose them (or even making WP reproduce claims from fringe sources as the truth, just because no-one happens to have found a mainstream source that specifically contradicts the claims in question).--Kotniski (talk) 14:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Couldn't "threshold" just as likely imply the end of a process? Passing a literal threshold means you've entered the house - you're home, dry, and can finally relax in front of the snooker. (And of course something doesn't become a "fact" by virtue of being supported by "reliable sources", or a "factoid" by not being so supported - I don't really know what you're trying to say with that.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Poll Results: After a week, it seems clear that the poll on this proposal is coming down to "no consensus", with roughly equal support and oppose views expressed. This usually means we default to "Keep as is". Do we need to continue, or shall we accept that the proposal is not going to be adopted? Blueboar (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I'd be happy if people could see that they've lost when they plainly have... but I know that my own optimism and faith in my fellow editors sometimes prevents me from seeing such things myself when I'm on the other side. Consequently, I think we can reasonably expect another week of time-wasting arguments here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Proposal
Here is the previous proposal. Maybe just a baby step compared to the possibilities here, but I think that it also addresses / avoids most of the issues which the opposed folks have:
replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.
That's an improvement, but it still retains most of the problems - by using the definite article with "threshold" it implies there's a single necessary and sufficient condition; it overemphasizes readers' ability to check; and the material itself doesn't have to have been published (and indeed probably shouldn't have been) but only to be supportable by what's been published.--Kotniski (talk) 17:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Agree, and there was a detailed discussion of the "threshold" word at the time. "a requirement" would be more accurate. The above was just a "baby step" in the right direction. And the "baby step" aspect making it easier to make the change. North8000 (talk) 19:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Geez, WP seems totally besotted and enamoured with this word "threshold." As though getting rid of it was like somebody was going to carry your bride across the doorway FOR you and then close the door. Get over it! You guys who like the word that much, should get a room with it. ;) SBHarris20:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
People do like the word "threshold"... and they like the phrasing "Verifiability, not Truth". I realize that a few of you think the wording is problematic, but the simple fact is... every time someone has tried to change this sentence, it meets with strong opposition from those who very much want to keep it. I think you would face less opposition (and possibly even gain a consensus) if we retained the sentence, and concentrated on explaining it more clearly. Blueboar (talk) 20:20, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
"People like..." shouldn't be the way our pages get written. It should be "People are able to argue convincingly for..." At the moment the argument seems to be that we should retain the misleading phrasing because we don't know of enough actual situations where it has caused problems (of course, any number of such situations we can describe will never be "enough"), and because some people find it useful as a weapon in disputes (whereas if they're right, there are plenty of other policy statements they could use equally well, if they really aren't capable of formulating their own arguments).--Kotniski (talk) 10:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Why not use another phrase which is more self-explanatory and cut out the middle man? Most of the people who want to retain the phrase, want to retain it for the wrong reasons: they want to beat some other editor over the head by saying "we don't care about truth on WP". Getting rid of it will fix that immediately. SBHarris20:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
To be perfectly pedantic, the proper word here is 'criteria', e.g. "Verifiability in a primary criteria for the inclusion of material on wikipedia...". I'm just sayin'... --Ludwigs222:12, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, typo: I'd originally written 'one of the primary criteria', but forgot to change the word when I rewrote the phrase. --Ludwigs205:23, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Rather than "truth", I guess what we are aiming for is a comprehensive informative article on subject X. (I was about to add 'accurate' but have to think about how...) Casliber (talk·contribs) 21:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Responding to Blueboar, I think that the paragraphs which follow the first one already do explain what wp:ver is actually about. So we just have the problematic first sentence which appears to say / is interpreted to say "accuracy is not a goal of Wikipedia". North8000 (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
You miss my point... I know from experience that there is no way in hell that you will gain a consensus to change the first sentence. There are simply too many people who disagree with your basic premise... people who don't think that the first sentence is problematic, and people who (correctly) think that sentence is vital to fighting POV editors and Fringe theoroy fans... people who want to keep it exactly as it is. It just ain't gonna fly.[citation needed] On the other hand, we might be able to resolve the situations you are concerned with, and gain a consensus, if we keep the opening sentence as is... and concentrate on clarifying the explanation that follows the sentence, so that we avoid the potential for misinterpretation. Focus on changing what you can change, and accept that there are things you can't. Blueboar (talk) 21:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I think you're on the right track. We should follow up "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth" with a statement that "This must not be taken as license to knowingly insert false information that has appeared in an otherwise reliable source" or similar. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
↑↑↑↑↑ As far as I'm concerned this is the perfect solution. It keeps the original, snappy version, should fix the problem and is unlikely to have any bad side-effects. HansAdler06:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Can someone give examples of people using this policy to insert false material knowingly? More than one example, please, to show that it's a real problem. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS06:26, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand the fear that "false information might be knowingly inserted in Wikipedia" under the current policy. When I've found contradictory information in sources while editing a history article, me and other editors usually work out through discussion on the talk page which information to use. Sometimes we end up presenting two or more sources, such as "so-and-so says one submarine was present, but so-and-so states that two were actually there" or something like that. Then, if necessary, further information on discrepancies in the sources are placed in the footnotes. The reader is then free to check the sources on their own and make up their own mind as to which is true. What's wrong with this system of doing things? Cla68 (talk) 07:54, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Nothing; but there are cases where the dubious sourced information is not actually contradicted by any other source. For example, we had the issue at the Chopin article a while back where one biographer had written (in half a sentence) that Chopin had "changed his citizenship". No other source was found for this claim; a bit of original research showed it to be quite unlikely; however, there was no source that said "Chopin did not change his citizenship" or anything to that effect (why would there be?), so someone still insisted on writing this assertion (probably untrue) into the article. --Kotniski (talk) 09:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I've seen several cases where people wrote false statements in articles that they thought were correct, and that was then based on their false understanding of certain sources. In some cases the editor would base his argument for inclusion on the fact that the source is reliable and we shouldn't argue who is right or wrong. The problems were resolved, but only after convincing the editors in question that the truth obviously does matter and to find out what it is, we really need to discuss the theory in detail on the talk page and forget about what the Wiki-rules say. Count Iblis (talk) 14:27, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I have seen similar cases. But I think they are relatively rare. Far more common are situations where (without any misinterpretation involved) two sources actually do say different things (or even out right contradict each other). Both sides get into an argument over which source is "True" and which is "False". We do want to make it clear that when reliable sources disagree as to what the truth actually is, we don't argue over which is right and which is wrong... instead we present both sides of the argument and attribute who says what. Blueboar (talk) 15:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
I think it sometimes is a problem with quotations. Reliable source A says, "X said Y". Reference to X's actual publication shows that X didn't actually quite say Y. However, if Y is a statement likely to elicit a strong emotional response in the reader, POV editors will insist that "X said Y" be included in the article, because it was reported in a reliable source. It's for this reason that we have WP:RS#Quotations, of course. Here is an example; not a perfect example, but it falls into the general ballpark. --JN46615:32, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Request for examples
I think someone needs to produce diffs of editors adding false but well-sourced material, then diffs showing them arguing that it has to stay even if known to be false, or where the source clearly made a mistake. Otherwise there's no evidence that this happens. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:04, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
SV: there are at least two such cases on Talk:Pseudoscience (one of which was a triggering factor for the current ArbCom case).
The use of the first line of an abstract of a psychology paper on cognitive distortions to make overly-broad factual claims about pseudoscience as a whole (when in fact the actual paper does no deal with pseudoscience in any analytical way, but only examines the possible cognitive distortions that might lead people to use medical quackery). diffs are too numerous in this case - easier if you just read the first few paragraphs of this section, this section, and this section.
The reinsertion of this material, despite the fact that the 'ten pseudoscientific beliefs' being mentioned come from a footnote in an NSF exemplifying a point in a section on public science education, and is not otherwise mentioned in the document. Note that Enric's edit summary refers to something that was not removed, and makes no mention of the problem of misusing of a footnote in this way. Enric has not yet responded to my talk page section, but there was an extensive dispute over this same passage on the ghost article (involving brangifer, hans adler, and me) in which the quote was presented as a definitive statement of the NSF's beliefs. I'll go hunt for those diffs - maybe a bit later this evening.
In both these cases (and in others I could dig up if needed) there is what I can only describe as a scientific version of biblical literalism, in which editors seek out incautious quotes tucked away in odd corners of scientific articles - things that the authors clearly said, but which can hardly be treated as analytical or interpreted as part of the article's intent - and present them as strong authoritative statements to construct some overly-strong criticism/praise of a topic. They then argue extensively that the quote is verifiable and from a reliable source and so cannot be excluded. It doesn't seem to matter how much one argues that the sources are being misrepresented and the quotes taken out of context, because the discussion always comes back to "it passes V and RS, therefore it stays in"; QG has even gone so far as to suggest that talking about an article's intent or the context of a quote is original research. There's no doubt in my mind that the people who do this recognize that the source itself does not mean to say what they are using it to say, and that the statements as they are used are not true - there's no other way to make sense of that kind of literalistic, policy-thumping reading. And yet they continue to argue for it. --Ludwigs203:13, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, Ludwigs, I've not looked at your examples yet (I will read them later), but just scanning your post, this just sounds like bad editing, and people ignoring the "threshold for inclusion" part of the key sentence. All the policies are misinterpreted or ignored by editors engaged in poor editing; it would be impossible to write them in a way that would avoid this. What we look for when deciding whether policy needs to be changed is a pattern of reasonable editors being inadvertently misled by poor policy wording—or new editors who are clearly trying to do good work being similarly misled. But I don't see that with V. On the contrary, it's one of the policies that is clearly understood, at least in my experience of watching it being used. I'll post more once I've looked at your links in detail. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:43, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I understand what you're saying, and I even want to agree with you. I guess I just personally feel that policy should both encourage good editing and forestall bad editing (e.g. it should be proof against both accidental misleadingness and willful misinterpretation. But read over the examples a bit and tell me what you think. --Ludwigs206:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Hi Ludwigs, I took a closer look, and it's just poor editing. This edit, for example, is a misuse of a source. There's nothing about the way the policy is worded that would cause or prevent that kind of editing. We have to assume a certain familiarity with using sources, and with being able to summarize them accurately, and see when they're being used inappropriately. I agree with you 100 percent that that ability is often lacking, but there's nothing this policy can do about that, unfortunately. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS08:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
SV: I agree with your points - it's bad editing, it's misuse of a source, and I've said that numerous times on the talk page. The problem is that this policy is constantly invoked as the rationale for this edit (and ones similar to it) in the "it's verifiable and cannot be excluded" vein. That is a misuse of policy, not poor editing - to repeat an analogy I used elsewhere, it's like someone who's run over a bunch of school children but defends himself by saying that the law allows him to drive at 25 mph in school zones. No judge would allow that interpretation of the law to stand, but we don't have judges on wikipedia. Either we need to create a lower court system where misuses of policy like this can be adjudicated (isn't that a scary thought!) or we need to craft something into policy which precludes this kind of misuse. Otherwise we'll continue to have exactly what we have: a system in which 'policy relativism' (a state where every idiosyncratic interpretation of policy is treated as equal to all others) can be used to obstruct beneficial changes or promote even the most ridiculous edits. --Ludwigs218:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
It is generally fairly clearly understood, but that's despite, not because of, the way it's written. (Well it's not all badly written - it gets better as it progresses, and of course we have its fork WP:NOR saying the same things, sometimes more clearly, so most people get the message in the end.) But as the examples given here have shown, there are many editors around - not necessarily bad-faithed, but accepting in good faith the policy that they see written - who think that accuracy doesn't matter as long as we're parroting what some source has said. Of course we don't know exactly which wording in which policy (if any) has given rise to each such misunderstanding, but we should be trying to word all our policies so as to avoid the possibility of such misinterpretation.--Kotniski (talk) 08:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Here is an editor who is convinced that the article on weight should start with the definition that is in the "majority" of general college physics texts. He has absolutely no source for that idea, but pulls it out of the air wearing his editor-hat. However, he believes that my belief to the contrary is a personal "conclusion," but presumably that his, is not. His "realible-source" is a physics teacher who made a brief survey of college physics texts, and decided they mostly say something that contradicts the ISO defintion of weight. The educator himself doesn't like the physics texts and he does like the ISO definition, and his purpose is to improve physics teaching, not to define weight for the world or Wikipedia. However, the editor thinks that we need to go with the most common textbook definition, since there are more of these than any other number of sources he can find, having been counted for him, in the article, by the educator. So, ironically he is using a definition that THAT writer did not like. It's a very weird argument. And yes, poor editing on WP. But all based on this editor's idea that NPOV should be based on the largest numbers, and nevermind arguments about quality, since those are not ours to make, as editors. A typical WP mess. As usual, this editor thinks he is being neutral, and he is sticking to his guns. Of course, he isn't neutral-- he's pushing his own POV that general college physics texts are the be-all and end-all for physics definitions. [4]SBHarris03:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
SV, I had the situation where a small town US newspaper reported on a UK court case and the described what issues the case was (allegedly) about and the parties (allegedly) involved. The court judgement explicitly states it was not about those issues. The case description from the US newspaper remains in the article and use of the judges text in the court judgement reached no consensus on WP:RS/Noticeboard, with the claim using it would be OR. [5]. The statement, a false allegation against a live company not even a party in the case, remains in the article, and the judges opinion from the actual judgement has been removed. --Insider201283 (talk) 01:09, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
If you need to untangle a nasty sentence, first find the subject. I believe that subject of the first sentence in WP:V is “material”. The words that now start the sentence are used in an unnatural way, only later defined by analogy in a subordinate clause. Such writing could be improved.
Here’s what happens when you start with the subject of the sentence. You get something like:
Material added to Wikipedia must pass a standard of verifiability. Non-controversial statements of fact that are already widely held to be true may be included in Wikipedia with no citation. If there is an argument or challenge to such material, a citation should be added. However, technical or controversial facts must be immediately accompanied by a citation so that readers can check that the material has already been published by a reliable source. Factual statements that are supported by good references therefore take priority over.the editor’s personal beliefs.
What this says is “trust, but verify” (shades of Reagan). I’m going to get objection that this perhaps puts more trust in editors than is the academic standard for students writing a term paper. Yes indeed, it does; thanks for noticing. If we’re ever going to have Wikipedia also written and edited by academics and professionals, we need to do just that-- otherwise, any outreach program to professionals is a sham. However, not to worry: Wikipedia already informally works in that way. The policy here is thus less prescriptive than descriptive. And if you disagree, I invite you to the math, chemistry, physics, and medical sections. We’ll keep the light on for you. SBHarris02:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
OK Slim, the narrow category that you defined for an example "adding false but well-sourced material, then ..them arguing that it has to stay even if known to be false, or where the source clearly made a mistake" covers a rare "perfect" scenario of the zillions of types of scenarios where the current wording causes or contributes to problems. You seem to be arguing or implying that the validity of questioning the wording depends on finding bulletproof examples that fall into the specialized case which you defined. North8000 (talk) 11:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
This wording means that advocates of fringe theories can argue that it's already widely held to be true that Obama was born in Kenya and that 9/11 was an inside job - as they already do. The only difference is that now they'll have a policy which backs them up. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
That's one of my points. An attempt to strive for accuracy is disparaged. And since wp:RS does not require reliability on the topic (just an editor layer), the fringe is sourcable per wp:ver, and this policy entrenches the fringe. North8000 (talk) 14:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
North, one of the arguments for change above was: "For too long, this wording has been used to justify the deliberate inclusion of information known to be incorrect." I've requested examples because I've never seen that happen. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS17:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Examples are important. People often arrive at policies saying they have to be changed because of x, y, and z, but when you ask for examples of those things they can't produce any. As I said earlier, when deciding whether to change long-standing wording that people rely on, we need to see that the policy is causing a pattern of misunderstandings among reasonable editors, or that new editors are being led astray by it. I can't see that either of these things is happening, and no one has produced evidence that it is. I'm an active editor myself. If were happening I'd have seen it at some point, but I see the very opposite. I see this policy working, and resolving disputes.
It isn't reasonable to blame the policy for editors using sources badly, or for not using common sense. No policy can teach editors how to summarize accurately, or how to tell when a source is high-quality and appropriate, or the importance of not lifting material out of context, or when in-text attribution matters. These are things people learn over many years at school and college. Some editors do learn those skills at Wikipedia, and you can see them get better at research over the years, though it's also true that some don't. Then, on top of skill issues, you have editors pushing points of view, rather than sticking to good source use. Dealing with these things is very frustrating, but it's not the fault of any of the words in this policy. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS17:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
How about just losing the last part of the sentence, ", not whether editors think it is true"? That would leave us with the following:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.
That gets rid of the element that can be interpreted to mean "It doesn't matter whether it is true or not". --JN46615:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Certainly the above is a big improvement over what we have. I'm partial to my own version, but this has the virtue being shorter, for those who like that. Perhaps it could be kept in mind for NUTSHELL use. Or, it could be used as the very FIRST sentence, with a second paragraph amplifying it, in pyramid Reuters style:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.
Material added to Wikipedia must pass the verifiability standard, unless it is obvious to all. Non-controversial statements of fact may be inserted with no citation. If there is an argument or challenge to such material, a citation should be added. However, technical or controversial facts must be immediately accompanied by a citation so that readers can check that the material has already been published by a reliable source. Factual statements that are supported by good references therefore take priority over the editor’s personal beliefs.
I'm sorry, but this still seems like a solution in search of a problem. I'm at a loss to come up with a single situation I've encountered where an editor knowingly insisted on inserting false information on the grounds it was verifiable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
That's not necessarily how it happens. The editor inserting the material may be quite agnostic about its truthfulness, and take the content on faith. However, if other editors then point out that the material is mistaken, as in the Sam Blacketer case, editors start arguing that it doesn't matter. See for example the comments citing WP:V at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sam_Blacketer_controversy. --JN46616:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
It can happen more perniciously, even in the sciences. See the long, tedious and mostly unnecessary discussion on the TALK page for the article on weight. The definition of weight with most support from college texts (i.e., the largest number of verifiable cites) is the poorest one physically, and is not used in general relativity or by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It speaks of weight as caused by a "force of gravity" so that (by this definition) you still have full weight in a falling elevator or nearly full weight in an orbiting space shuttle, but don't feel it and can't measure it. The better definition ala Einstein just says gravity never causes a direct force anyway, so you never feel it anywhere as such, and thus you really ARE weightless in orbit, not just "apparently" weightless. However, the article editors managed a count of references (ironically from teaching-articles which argue that texts don't do a good job of defining weight!) and pushed this 17th century "gravity force" idea through, as the most "verifiable" definition. In my own mind, this is a subject for a pedagogical section right after the LEDE, but think the LEDE should have the best modern physics definition, not the most common definition like some dictionary. That view was mostly quashed, though it did finally get second-billing (in the science sections of WP, progress in theory does count a little). However, this WP:V policy, poorly applied, is the reason WP's article on weight begins as it does, with a common but bad (even wrong) definition. According to the definition the article starts with, you don't actually have more weight in a centrifuge (you are crushed by "apparent weight"; ignore your weight scale reading). It's also at odds with the information in weightlessness and g-force. One crappy definition leads to problems spreading like crabgrass and we even have an article on apparent weight that is being fought over. I blame the wording of WP:V. If most sources get something wrong, but the best and most authoritative ones get it right, it should be straightforward to note that, and begin with the best, not the most popular. However, it sometimes isn't easy. SBHarris17:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Are you saying that collegiate level text books are presenting "false" information? I find that hard to believe. They may simplify the topic, but I don't think they are likely to give an untruth. I would say this is another case where presenting the disagreement and attributing who says what is called for: (with language along the lines of: "Most college level text books define weight as X <cite text book>, however the ISO defines it as Y <cite ISO>") Blueboar (talk) 18:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
College texts present false information all the time in the interest of simplifying a subject, or sometimes because an author doesn’t understand it all that well himself (or is sloppy, or hasn’t thought it through, or whatever). If you want to read about the wars regarding the definition of weight, in which some college texts simply make statements that are the totally wrong (like “weight” is the sum of the pulls of all objects in the universe on an object), see [6]. It’s embarassing. For a more high-browed look at a related problem in physics texts, you might be interested in Oas’ analysis of college texts’ use of the concept of “relativistic mass”—an idea which, when used incorrectly as it usually is, actually conflicts with special relativity and must later be “unlearned” for certain problems [7]. The author notes interestingly that all attempts to get the concept out of college general physics texts have failed over the years (about half still have it, half don’t), but that it is slowly declining in relativity texts, so that war is being won. That itself is an example of how difficult such a NPOV analysis can be—which set of references does one use?
You’re probably encountered untrue statements about science yourself in texts. A familiar one (though usually at the high school not college level) is the idea that electrons “orbit” the atom, a bit like planets orbiting the Sun. But for hydrogen and helium and the inner electrons of all atoms, there’s no truth in that at all, even as a metaphor (the “s” electrons, even if they had no wave-nature, don’t even have orbital angular momentum). Other familiar myths in college texts are the idea that mass can be converted to energy (wrong — mass is conserved, it is matter that can be converted to energy, while mass stays constant). In chemistry we have a generation of texts (even some biochem texts) claiming that the “high energy bonds” in ATP release energy when broken (actually, no chemical bond does that, or it wouldn’t be a bond). This misconception enforced by the idea-advertising trick of Fritz Albert Lipmann, who first suggested that ATP is the energy currency of cells, and took to drawing these bonds as little squiggles ~ , which made them look like little springs waiting to be released. Generations of students since 1941 have thought of them that way. I could go on, but you get the picture. SBHarris22:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
@SV - I've seen numerous tertiary sources make well-intentioned but wrong statements in biology and medicine. I have also seem much jostling at various battleground pages (Climate Change and I-P pages come to mind) where both sides believe they are portraying a more accurate picture (and quite different to each other). Many of these edits would technically fall within sourcing guidelines. Casliber (talk·contribs) 04:19, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the examples for "false" statements above one needs to a bit more careful. While some cases they are indeed simply false information, other are just simplified preliminary descriptions or models, that still have their value in a restricted context and in particular in popular descriptions.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Going back to the proposal (Proposal 2), I think this change actually makes it worse, as it retains the words "not truth" while removing the one attempt we do make to explain what we are trying to convey by "not truth" in this context. And of course it still retains the other faults: implying there's just one (necessary and presumably sufficient) threshold; over-emphasizing readers' ability to check (with no explanation what we have in mind with that), and saying that material must have been published rather than just be supportable by what has been published.--Kotniski (talk) 18:55, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Disagree. The last part is needed. Otherwise there's no criterion for what "truth" means in this context. If anything should be jettisoned, it should be the first instance of "truth" in the sentence. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 19:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Proposal 3
Something like (it wouldn't have to be this exact wording): "Statements in Wikipedia must be verifiable by reference to published reliable sources. Articles should not make statements just because editors believe them to be true - they need to be directly supportable by sources. This principle is often summed up in the phrase "verifiability, not truth"." That way you keep your mantra, without the policy's opening sentence having to be misleading in multiple ways.--Kotniski (talk) 19:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
As is, the first sentence discourages editors from removing reliably sourced material using OR. The present direction of this discussion is removing that aspect. Note that WP:NOR doesn't prevent editors from using OR to remove reliably sourced material when they disagree with the reliable source. From this discussion, it looks like Wikipedia is going downhill. Remember, if you shit in your living room, you have to live with it. 75.47.153.17 (talk) 09:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't see how the present sentence "discourages editors from removing..." unless it's being interpreted to mean "if something's reliably sourced, then it must be included", which is one of the things we certainly don't want to say (since it isn't the case, however much of a useful "argument" it might be in some disputes). --Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Without the part "not whether editors think it is true", it's not as clear what is meant by the phrase "verifiability, not truth", and reliably sourced material might be deleted if, for example, an editor claims that the material is false based on that editor's own personal experience. Note that WP:NOR does not prevent material from being deleted through OR, it only prevents material from being added through OR.
To respond to your remark about interpretation, the phrase "threshold for inclusion..." does mean "if something's reliably sourced, then it must be included". "Threshold" means the same as "sufficient condition". So the first sentence is incorrect because being reliably sourced is not the threshold for inclusion. The material also has to satisfy WP:NPOV, for example it can't violate WP:UNDUE. So the threshold should be verifiability and not causing a change in the article from NPOV. [I struck this out because the ambiguity of "threshold" is a problem, as mentioned in my next message below.] 75.47.143.13 (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
After I wrote the above, I looked at more of the previous comments and I found one of SlimVirgin's comments useful which interpreted "threshold" as meaning a necessary condition, and I found one of Kotniski's that noted the possibility of more than one interpretation of "threshold". So I would agree that "threshold" may be interpreted by different readers as having different meanings. Specifically, the reader may interpret "threshold" as meaning either "sufficient condition", "necessary condition", or "necessary and sufficient condition" and thus the word "threshold" may be a problem in the present opening sentence.
I think that the proposal should include the idea that editors should not delete reliably sourced material just because they think it is wrong, and that the deleting editor should have the burden of showing that the deletion is worthwhile. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 16:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I like the proposal. It's one of several good ones put forth here which would improve the current situation. But it's sad to keep that badly written "verifiability, not truth". North8000 (talk) 11:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Proposal 4
A requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
In the above proposal, "The threshold" has been changed to "A requirement" to remove the ambiguity of whether threshold means necessary condition, sufficient condition or necessary and sufficient condition. "A requirement" unambiguously means necessary condition, which is correct. The part "not truth" was removed from the beginning since it is not needed because the thought is more accurately presented at the end of the sentence with the remaining phrase, "not whether editors think it is true." 75.47.143.13 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Much improved. Still doesn't address obvious information that needs no cite. But perhaps that can be held to the next sentence. SBHarris20:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I still think the current language is better, it clearly and strongly states that we do not include unverifiable information and material, even if it may be true. This is the core concept behind this policy, and the mantra "Verifiability, not Truth" is still the best way to get the idea across when faced with POV and Fringe pushers.
I realize that the current language does not address the other side of the coin... what to do about information that is verifiable but isn't true... and I agree that this needs to be addressed... but we need to address it without removing the strong statement on the first side of the coin. Please, stop suggesting alternatives that remove the "Verifiability, not truth" phrasing... It just isn't going to fly and you will continue to face strong opposition to such alternatives. Shift to fixing the problem in some other way. Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Of course I differ....for previously stated reasons, I think that that phrase should be be changed. But, for the point of the moment, I don't feel that it is correct to tell people to stop making any proposals that would change that phrase. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
Thnx North, What we have here is a case of territoriality, and that's the main reason why these policy pages have been turning into garbage and good editors have decided not to waste their time on them. Such territorial fools. Their domain has mostly become a dung heap, especially WP:NOR. Adios. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)
I won't speak for others, but for me territoriality does not come into the equation. I honestly think that the first sentence is important, and needed to combat POV and Fringe pushing, and so think that it should remain. However, because I also agree that there is a problem with people pushing the verifiable but untrue, I would like to see the explanation amended, while not changing the important initial sentence. I just don't think we should get rid of one of the most useful lines in the policy. Blueboar (talk) 00:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Well, we both place a high priority on combating POV and fringe pushing. I just think that there oughta be a way to word this to accomplish that without disparaging the idea of striving for accuracy. North8000 (talk) 02:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Blueboar, This proposal is not getting rid of the first line. Please don't misrepresent this proposal. There are only two small changes in the first line that don't change policy but significantly improve its presentation by removing ambiguity and wrong impressions. The simple improvements are the removals (indicated by strikeout) and additions (indicated by underline) in the following:
"The thresholdA requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
As mentioned previously by other editors, the present form of the sentence has the problem of being interpreted as Wikipedia not caring about what the truth is. The problem comes from the first part of the sentence, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". The correct message to present is at the end of the sentence which says that the important consideration for material is verifiability, "not whether editors think it is true". Can't you see the difference between "truth" and what "editors think is true"? Why keep something at the beginning that is misleading and hope that it is cured by the phrase at the end of the sentence? The cure is to remove the malignancy, which is the phrase "not truth" at the beginning.
The other problem is the ambiguity of the word "threshold". This also has a simple fix: change "The threshold" to "A requirement", as I explained previously in more detail. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 14:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Response to SlimVirgin's comment below - Here's the definition of requirement,[8]
And regarding your comment that "We've already had a poll about this", show me the link and give the most relevant excerpt here. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 18:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Oh, and one other thing. I don't have any illusions that this change will get in. You are against it, and that's all it takes here. You are able to call in all the support you need. I expect your regulars and others to show up if enough consensus starts to form in support of this proposal or earlier. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 18:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. To say that "A requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability," is false. It's not just "a requirement"; it's the threshold, a necessary condition. We've already had a poll about this. It's not really on to hold poll after poll until people get tired of commenting. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS17:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Support As an improvement, if for no other reason that it gets rid of what has properly been characterized as the malignant suggestion in the present policy that WP doesn't care about what actually is the truth. Some of the comments above make it clear that there is a school that feels this is, and should be, exactly the case: that a mere accurate summary of the literature is not only a worthy goal in and of itself, but a sufficient one also. Perhaps Jimbo Wales really didn't mean to say that WP is providing "the sum of all human knowledge." He really meant to say "WP is providing a digest of everything published by anybody with a reputation for reliability, even if it's wrong." But either he was misquoted, or else the first thing sounded cooler for the press. SBHarris16:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Oppose per SV and Blueboar, and this does appear to be almost an end-run around previous polls, including the main one above. Jayjg (talk)22:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
(I'm proposing radical reform of this policy, there is also an issue with verifiability being defined as "attributable to a reliable source")
Texts that are not verifiable to a sufficiently high degree cannot be included in Wikipedia. Verifiability, strictly speaking, means the ability of readers to verify the veracity of the text from first principles. Since this is almost never the case in practice, we also allow indirect verifiability of texts that include a number of citations to sources, where one assumes that the attributed parts of the text to the cited sources are correct. Here a requirement is that the sources are considered to be reliable sources and that assuming the correctness of the parts attributed to sources is not unreasonable.
The initial threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
I think the simple addition of the word "initial" before "threshold" could resolve our concerns... it implies that there areother thresholds that must be met, but makes it clear that verifiability is the first. Truth/lack of truth (or, more accurately... "accuracy") can be considered one of these other thresholds, but it comes into the discussion after the information or material has passed the initial threshold of verifiability. Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 12:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I think "truth" should be replaced by "alleged truth" or "personal opinion" or something else that indicates that it is an opinion that one has about the truth, and not the truth itself. If you know something to be the truth, then you can only know that because you can verify it to be the truth (and that verification would necessarily go beyond the minimum threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia; just because a reliable source says something doesn't make it the truth, so if you know it to be the truth, there must necessarily be more to it than that). Only in cases where that verification involves your personal involvement in the topic, becomes it non-verifiable to others (e.g. a demonstrator in Syria cannot edit articles here based only on his/her own recollection of events there). But such very exceptional cases where "not truth" would be justified are not the main focus here. Count Iblis (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Oppose - Does not address Casliber's discussion comment here, where that editor is agreeing with the comment above it. "initial threshold" is still ambiguous and doesn't distinguish between an initial sufficient condition and an initial necessary condition, which was Casliber's point (and originally Kotniski's). The other Casliber/Kotniski point was regarding the problem with "not truth". See Proposal 4 which cures these problems. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 15:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I am not sure I understand how the words "initial threshold" are ambiguous... the two words have a fairly standard meaning. Blueboar (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that "threshold" can mean to a reader "necessary condition", "sufficient condition" or "necessary and sufficient". This was mentioned by me previously in the discussion that you and I had in the section on Proposal 4. The ambiguity of "threshold" was also mentioned by Kotniski and agreed to by Casliber in the link that Tenmei gave here (before Tenmei just struck out his comment, leaving a bare vote), and which I also used in my first message here. I personally had the experience of interpreting "threshold" in that sentence to mean sufficient condition, and I commented that it should have been necessary condition. I later recognized that it was intended to mean necessary condition and I struck out my comment and continued the discussion appropriately. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 16:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
???? Is the question the explicit one (of whether to add the one word) or the implicit one (of dropping all other proposals)? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Not quite... "The threshold" implies that verifiability is the only threshold... "The initial threshold" implies that there are other thresholds, but verifiability it is the first we have to cross (examples of other thresholds for inclusion include: whether the material would give Undue weight to a fringe viewpoint, whether the material is OR, etc.) Blueboar (talk) 18:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
I wonder if it's just a question of trying to make this policy say too much. What we're concerned with here is making sure editors know their beliefs are not the issue; it's the beliefs of reliable sources that count. But we have other policies that guide how to use sources: NOR discusses primary/secondary and SYN; NPOV discusses UNDUE, which is about judging the authority of source material. I think maybe the disagreements here are caused by people wanting this page, in effect, to cover those issues too. But we do make clear that the three content policies must be understood together. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS16:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
Oppose Still contains the toxic "not truth" construction. If we take out those words we still make the point that we go by reliable sources and not the opinions of editors; i.e., "The initial threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 19:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
The entire point of my proposal was to solve the concerns people had in a way that retained the "Verifiability, not truth" construction (which apparently about half of us think is vital and the other half thinks is toxic)... sigh, it looks like we are going to go no where... any proposal anyone makes is going to come down to "no concensus"... because any proposal that contains those words will be opposed by half of us, and any proposal that omits them will be opposed by the other half. Blueboar (talk) 22:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
Not sure it's 50/50, but I think everyone wants to be cautious about changes in the lead of a core policy, and (rightly so) sets a pretty high bar of near-perfection for any changes made. North8000 (talk) 15:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)
IMHO it IS broken (or, least, it causes more problems than a better written version would). But this particular proposal is essentially one to maintain the status quo by supplanting any proposals that include actual change, so I think that you and the proposer agree. North8000 (talk) 22:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means that it is not sufficient for information to be true; editors must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition which must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, notability of the subject, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so.
I'm not sure why this is so hard. Everyone seems to have the same criticisms. How about this, or aspects of it. Ocaasic05:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
This is really good. A much better and less problematic statement. Plus addresses the parts here that are relevant to interaction with other policies. North8000 (talk) 08:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I like it, as well. And if it looks too long an you need a pithy "start-off nutshell," just put a paragraph break between the first two sentences of the above, and the rest. The next paragraph simply amplifies what else besides WP:V is needed, both alongside and in addition. In fact, it sort of reminds me of a synopsis of WP:N. Heh. But anyway, this is progress. SBHarris21:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I like it too. The writing is succinct enough that I don't think it need be "nutshelled" as well. I'd maybe make a line break after "...considerations come into play." if you want to make it less like a wall of text. Casliber (talk·contribs) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't object... but given how many talk page discussions have quoted it over the years, I would prefer to keep the current opening line ("The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth"), and then have the language in this proposal as an explanation of that line. Blueboar (talk) 01:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
See I hate that opening line as it (probably unwittingly) implies that truth and verifiability are almost mutually exclusive. Casliber (talk·contribs) 04:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
We don't "check that a reputable source says it is true", for example it is verifiable that the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948 stated "Dewey Defeats Truman".Unscintillating (talk) 23:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Truth vs. Verifiability
To the question of why verifiability is more valuable than truth, consider the subjectivity with which many use the word truth compared to that of "verifiability". At times, they may go hand in hand, but it is largely the opinion of the majority, as demonstrated by reliable resources, that may determine truth. One expert — I do not really like the word "expert" because in my mind it denotes some egotistical label people call themselves in order to land a bigger paycheck; we are all experts ina our own field of knowledge in some way, but I digress — one expert, say a mathematician or an evolutionist, may believe that "X is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", whilst twenty other expert mathematicians may instead declare "Y is the truth" where A and B are mutually exclusive items. Our job in Wikipedia is to report, simply, the facts, that is the truth in that "many people say X is true, but one reliable source also proclaim Y to be true." The former, of course, having more experts supporting, would have more sources in hand with which to demonstrate the "truth" of X. So, the majority opinion of several reliable, independent sources may determine the truth of something, and this is where we apply the verifiability policy, but we must also state the facts of what they say in a truthful manner as well, and not slant opinion one way or another or give undue weight. In a way, Wikipedia determines the truth of what is in an article by appealing to the majority opinion; but, at the same time, has to state the truth in a truthful manner, i.e. in a Neutral Point of View.
Our policy is not to determine whether or not X is true or X can be true or X is justifiably true but whether or not people believe in X. Wikipedia does in fact support the truth, WP:NPOV and all, but not in any demonstrably verifiable way. The only difference is that verifiability is held to a higher standard because it is simply less ambiguous. To say initially that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." is in itself not true, just as saying something as definite as "the sky is blue" does not have to be checked by reliable sources. Therefore, the relatively small modification removing "not truth" should be of little concern, and perhaps clarify the misconception that Wikipedia is built around lies. "...whether editors think it is true" adequately covers POV-pushing and fringe theory cases and shows how subjective some truth is; just repeating it in the sentence makes it redundant. We can forget about whether or not verifiability is a threshold or a requirement (unless it can be demonstrated in a reliable source); just that the "not truth" part is simply not true. (This long rambling post brought to you by :| TelCoNaSpVe :|23:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC))
Probably from the Legal definition of the word (ie how it is defined as it relates to the Law)... according to Dictionary.com, the Legal definition of the word "threshold" is:
A point of beginning : a minimum requirement for further action; specifically : a determination (as of fact or the existence of a reasonable doubt) upon which something else (as further consideration or a right of action) hinges. (taken from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law).
Thnx for your excerpt from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. That was the kind of answer that I was looking for.
FYI, here's an excerpt from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary,[9]
"a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not"
This looks like a necessary and sufficient condition. Necessary because of "below which it is not"; and sufficient because of "above which something is true". 75.47.149.12 (talk) 13:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
The definition that Blueboar found is very precise and appropriate, and, if applied, enhances that phrase in the policy. The more widespread definitions are more ambiguous and problematic for the clarity of the policy. But either way, interpreting "sufficient" into it is rare, and such is certainly not the case for Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 13:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
One of the definitions of "threshold" includes conditions both for "above which" and a second condition "below which". This is by definition a form of "ambiguity", i.e., "more than one meaning". This alternate universe of "below which" is used to refuse to discuss the [WP:Due weight] of material, especially material that is "not true". Since the first sentence of WP:V is the highest of policies, the argument that "Wikipedia includes material that is verifiable, even if it is 'not true'", holds weight. The word "requirement" does not have the dual meanings that "threshold" has. A change to "requirement" would not fix all of the "we don't need to discuss it, it is verifiable" argument, but would provide a part of the fix. Unscintillating (talk) 15:20, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
Or, people can accept that we are using the word as defined above, and stop trying to wikilawyer it to death. Blueboar (talk) 20:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
So we have for (1) "I say that 'threshold' is not ambiguous", and (2) "I say that I am an authority", (3) "Therefore what I say is true". The article states that an argument from authority is a "fallacy of defective induction, and goes on to say, "This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of a claim is not related to the authority of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false)." Unscintillating (talk) 23:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
If necessary, we can stop this particular bit of wikilawyering by providing the definition in a footnote. It might even be useful to people whose English literacy is limited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Whatamidoing, Regarding limited English literacy, what do you think about the following definition of threshold from the Merriam-Webster dictionary?[10]
"a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not"
Also regarding limited English literacy, I misunderstood the meaning of threshold that was intended by editors here before I read their comments. You might also find similar misunderstandings of these editors' intended meaning by writers of scientific papers, if you google with the keywords: threshold sufficient condition. Also, you can google: threshold sufficient. 75.47.149.106 (talk) 15:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that the MW definition is irrelevant (that is, that there are multiple True™ definitions of the word in question, that MW definition that you quote here is not the one that we're using). Irrelevant definitions should not be included.
In particular, we're using this word in its necessary-but-not-sufficient sense, and "above which something is true or will take place" is the "sufficient" sense. In application, this irrelevant definition means that if you can verify it, then that material definitely belongs in Wikipedia—to which the community says "Not!" (or at least WP:NOT).
The legal definition quoted by Blueboar is the relevant one. If we're going to bother defining this word, then we should give readers the definition that actually communicates the specific meaning that we intend here, not one of the irrelevant definitions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the definition of threshold that Blueboar provided above, it may contain what is needed to replace threshold with something clearer. How about replacing "threshold" with that definition's phrase "a minimum requirement" so that readers wouldn't have to know about a law dictionary's definition of threshold which few people are aware of. With this simple change of one word, the first sentence would be,
"A minimum requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
Wouldn't it stop all this discussion about what "threshold" means? Since "minimum requirement" is unambiguous, while threshold is (clearly, given the conflicting dictionary definitions) ambiguous, why not just go with the clear unambiguous phrasing and be done with it? --Kotniski (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Another way to stop the discussion would be to accept that there's no consensus to change the first sentence, and to respect that, rather than continuing to post month after month as though that consensus didn't exist. "Threshold" is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one. People who edit a lot know this, and the only way to gain a practical understanding of how the policies are applied, and how they interact, is to use them. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS17:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Obvious fallacies - "no consensus to change" does not imply "consensus exists not to change"... And "people who edit a lot know this" is irrelevant, since this page is written explicitly for people who don't know this yet (why would we be writing a page telling people what they already know?) Anyway, at least we now have the admission that this sentence is deliberately ambiguous - as I often suspect when reading WP policy/guideline pages, their purpose is to conceal information rather than share it. Sad, and harmful to the project, but very hard to change against the iron will of the priestly caste who would keep it that way.--Kotniski (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
No one can gain a working knowledge of how to use the policies by reading them alone. And leaving room for editorial judgment isn't "concealing information" (what would it be concealing?). It's acknowledging that context and judgment matter, and that we can't legislate for every situation, and shouldn't want to. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS18:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
This isn't about "leaving room for editorial judgment", it's just about deliberately choosing a form of words that can be interpreted in two or three different ways, when we could write explicitly what we mean (which would also leave room for editorial judgement) in such a way that anyone coming to this page will know what we mean. (And it's that latter possibility which often seems to be the Wikipedia policy writer's worst fear).--Kotniski (talk) 18:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
(Oh, and "is often a necessary and sufficient condition...but may only be a necessary one" means nothing more than "is a necessary condition". Like any necessary condition, it becomes sufficient in a situation where all other necessary conditions are satisfied.)--Kotniski (talk) 19:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
SlimVirgin wrote,""Threshold" is deliberately ambiguous" HA HA HA HA !!!! So that's why all the garbage on these policy pages. They're controlled by an editor who is being deliberately unclear!!!! 75.47.141.192 (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Reiterating a slightly modified version of Kotniski's comment, that there is no clear consensus for a particular change does not mean that there is a consensus to not change. The current wording of this policy causes a LOT of damage in Wikipedia, and this first sentence (which emphasizes "NOT TRUTH") is one of the main culprits. The fact that most people of both the "status quo" and "change it" viewpoints understand that changes must be careful and well written makes it more complex. North8000 (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
But others disagree, North, as they said above. Lots of editors believe it prevents damage to Wikipedia, and despite several requests no one has offered an example of the policy causing damage. I've seen examples of poor editing, but nothing caused by the wording of the policy.
You would need strong consensus to change it—including consensus beyond this page, given how long-standing it is, and how much people rely on it—and there is no such consensus, so continuing to post as though there is, isn't constructive. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS21:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I believe that this phrase prevents damage to Wikipedia. I don't believe that I have ever seen an editor at a real article who couldn't figure this out. In actual disputes at real articles, this phrase has been a convenient way to explain articles weren't the right place to relate personal experiences. Every single complaint I remember seeing about this phrase has appeared on a policy talk page, and a substantial proportion of the complainants here were people whom I've suspected of deliberate obtuseness or POV pushing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I'm not convinced that license to deceive the reader by including deliberate falsehoods "prevents damage to Wikipedia," but maybe that's just me. Other people seem to think such license is a good thing. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
See WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy. At least one high-profile admin in that discussion argued that our article about the controversy should say what the press parrotted from a source that we knew was plain wrong because our serves proved the opposite. Because according to this admin the fact that we know without any chance for reasonable doubt that the reports were totally wrong simply didn't matter. In his own words: "Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but WP:V's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues." Of course, "assume to know" was a euphemism and "unverifiable" referred to the Wikipedia-internal sense of the word under the most formalistic reading. HansAdler22:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Looks like the thread of this discussion is being taken off the topic of this section which is "threshold" which SlimVirgin admits to deliberately keeping ambiguous. Do you want it to be deliberately kept ambiguous? 75.47.141.192 (talk) 22:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
I prefer unambiguous language, but I don't object to the ambiguous language so long as we have something where we can point those who are taking it too literally. I am not sure that the discussions already on this page are enough, although they might be. But maybe we should do an RfC on this question: When our own, Wikipedia-internal processes establish beyond any doubt that something is not true, do we have the right to present it as true just because there are formally reliable sources which claim it and no sources which deny it? HansAdler22:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
How is that different from saying that we can do our own original research to prove that otherwise reliable secondary sources are wrong? If there is a source which says there are five houses on Pine Street, and I go and count six, do we substitute my proof for the source's assertion? Will Bebacktalk23:22, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
We don't have, as anonymous editors, the authority to establish truth on our own as far as Wikipedia is concerned. We have to use what's in the sources. Cla68 (talk) 23:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. When we have good reasons to believe that a source is incorrect about a straightforward factual assertion there are many options available. The simplest in some cases would be just to leave the faulty assertion out of the article if it's not important. Another is to attribute it and make sure that their assertion is being accurately described. Another is to add other views, where available. A fifth option if objective primary sources contain contradictory material is to to link to that, though not to draw any conclusions on our own. What we can't do is to come out and say, "Source X is wrong because the Wikipedia servers show something different". Will Bebacktalk23:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
The areas where the current wording does damage are much more complex than the example which you infer, which is where a wp:rs has factually wrong material. At the core of it is that it disparages the idea of striving for accuracy, or of accuracy as a goal. The latter is followed on the 90% of important Wikipedia articles that work, and is not allowed at the table in the 10% of important where the current policies are a miserable failure. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Good point. The idea that we shit on truth and are only interested in "verifiability" leads to a mental model of Wikipedia as nothing more than a huge game of Nomic. HansAdler00:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
"We don't have, as anonymous editors, the authority to establish truth on our own as far as Wikipedia is concerned." This is a more strict reading of policy than necessary. (I am not sure that Jimbo would agree, for example, and at many articles it's simply not what happens. There is no problem when our articles are better than all the "reliable sources".) But at least it's reasonable. "We have to use what's in the sources." This is where it gets wrong. We don't have to use them. When the sources say something that we know to be false, we may not be able to say the opposite. But no policy prevents us from shutting up. Editorial decisions do not require reliable sources, we merely tend to use them in contentious cases where editors cannot agree about the truth. HansAdler00:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Will Beback, I agree with you and I personally ran into the problem of an editor's false analysis of sources overruled a highly reliable source's analysis of the same sources (researchers at the House of Commons Library reporting on UK forces in Libya). The ambiguity of "threshold" in the first sentence of WP:V prevented me from following up on an application of that policy. Also, I found from the discussions here that it wasn't meant to prevent editors from overruling reliable sources. They seem more concerned with the possiblity that editors will use the sentence to keep in sourced material that they think is wrong, rather than the possibility that editors will use false OR to keep out material from highly reliable sources. I believe both of these adverse situations can be taken care of with a proper unambiguous policy and the first step is to change the ambiguous word "threshold" to the correct and unambiguous "A minimum requirement". 75.47.141.192 (talk) 00:17, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Hans, as anonymous editors, how are we supposed to believe another editor who says they "know" something is false? There is no way to verify their knowledge within Wikipedia's current structure. Cla68 (talk) 00:19, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Answering Cla68's question, to see how to do it you need only look at the the way that the majority of Wikipedia that works, works. (even though everyone pretends that it is otherwise) A group of editors who knows the topic ("knows = they each are carrying the integration of 100' s of sources in their heads) writes the material from expertise, with sourcability and some guidance by sources in mind, working towards the common goal of accuracy THEN they cite it. Then in the minority of articles where the rules are a 100% utter failure (basically, all of the contentious articles) everybody just uses wp:ver and wp:nor to game in as much material on their side of the issue as possible, and to knock out as much of the other side's material as is possible. The policies are used to tar and feather anybody who says that it should strive for accuracy. North8000 (talk) 03:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the folks who say the wp:ver prevents damage to Wikipedia. That does not refute the assertion that it also DOES damage to Wikipedia, and that further evolution of the wording would reduce the latter. Starting with wording that appears to disparage the goal of striving for accuracy. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:29, 26 April 2011 (UTC)
Only if you think that The Truth™ is the same as the facts.
This phrasing is part of our protection from people using Wikipedia to promote their religions, their recollections, and their personal beliefs. What else can you say to someone who says, "I'm psychic and I talked to Eleanor Roosevelt last night. She says that she really was a lesbian and secretly married her girlfriend after FDR's death, so we need to put that into the article, because it's true!"
If you're certain that something verifiable is wrong (that is, it is a matter of fact rather than opinion, and the source got it wrong), then you can use WP:Editorial discretion to omit such sources and statements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Yes, of course - which is (one of several reasons) why it's wrong to say "the threshold". Something's being "verifiable" (in Wikipedia's sense - why on earth do we keep giving normal English words new meanings? but that's another issue) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for inclusion. Hence "threshold" (which is ambiguous as to which type of condition we're talking about) is a very poor choice of word; and "the" (before threshold) is straightforwardly wrong, since whatever type of condition you think we're talking about, verifiability is not the only such condition. This really isn't difficult or controversial - just a simple matter of rewording a poorly written sentence that, as it stands, expresses a falsehood.--Kotniski (talk) 06:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
A crucial part of the lead is that the three core content policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that's acceptable. No one should be interpreting V without taking into account NOR and NPOV: "They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three." And no one should be applying any of the policies without common sense. This means we don't add material to articles like robots just because something has been published somewhere, even when it's clearly in error. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS16:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
(ec) Re: "You're new around here, I take it?" Hah!... not sure if you were being serious, but if so, guess again... Slim Virgin is one of our more senior editors. She has been involved in writing this policy since its earliest days (in fact, she was the original author for most of it). Asserting that no one should apply our policies without common sense is not the same as saying that people do use common sense. I know for a fact that SV is very aware that far too many editors don't apply common sense when reading policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blueboar (talk • contribs) 17:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Boris, I think the 'should be' makes things clear. The fact that we all evolved from monkeys does not mean that we should idealize swinging from chandeliers and throwing feces at each other. Lots of people have trouble with common sense, and that seems to go trebly on Wikipedia, but this does not imply that they shouldn't be asked to use common sense, yah? --Ludwigs217:30, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Topping our key policies with mantras like "verifiability, not truth" does seem rather a good way to create the impression to people that common sense is not welcome around here. Anyway, I don't see why the fact that common sense is to be applied is any excuse for deliberately wording the policy more confusingly than we might. And the fact that there are three core policies (actually only two, since NOR is a fork of this one) is (again) a reason not to say "the threshold" as if this were the only one. --Kotniski (talk) 18:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski... You would have a point if the mantra was simply "Verifiability, not Truth"... but that is not the entire mantra. The entire mantra is: "The threshold for inclusion is Verifiability, not Truth".
This Mantra does not ignore truth, it places verifiability before truth. The mantra says that before we even start to discuss issues like Truth, we must first have Verifiability. Verifiability is the threshold (the line that must be crossed, the door that must be stepped through, the first condition for inclusion). The Mantra says: Pass Verifiability first and foremost... THEN we can talk about other issues (such as Truth, neutral presentation, synthesis, etc., etc., etc.) Blueboar (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
(sigh...) I feel the need for a moment of sardonic humor. Maybe we should change our mantra to "All truths must be verified!": that way we allow everyone to promote their own truth while still insisting that they find sources to back them up. Think of it as the Madisonian solution... --Ludwigs219:21, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
The problem is that if the wp rules are taken literally, and in abstraction, (which is how most rules are taken in the RW, and how a warrior has the option to use them in wp) the rules do often CONFLICT with common sense. And many have not noticed that the the mother of all examples (it is huge because this is heavily incorporated by reference into all of the core content policies) is where truly reliable sources (reliable on the statement/topic that cited them) OFTEN do not qualify as wp:"reliable sources", and sources that are very unreliable (unreliable on the statement/topic that cited them) often qualify as wp:"reliable sources". This even forms the basis for the execution of the phrase that we have been discussing. North8000 (talk) 21:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Can you give us some examples of sources that you think are reliable but don't pass WP:RS, and of sources you think are non-reliable that do pass WP:RS? Blueboar (talk) 21:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
Happy to. I'll give these as generalities, but I think that you would agree that these are all common in real life.
RS that is not reliable on the topic at hand
10 different prominent people make the statement that Obama was born on the planet Pluto. Reputable newspapers cover that they make those statements. In the article section regarding Obama's Pluto birth place controversey, someone puts in the 10 statements. Each is statement is reliably sourced per wp criteria.
A reputable newspaper carries what is essentially an editorial by a badly biased person who says that the Tea Party movement advocates total war. The WP article lists what they said as being information about the TPM. The source of the statement is unreliable, but the sourcing meets RS criteria.
Actual reliable source (on the topic) that fails wp:rs
The XYZ organization lists their official policies on their official web site. One of these says "our official policy regarding aaaa is bbbb". In an article someone writes "the official policy of the xyz organization regarding aaaa is bbbb" and cites their web site. That web site does not meet RS criteria.
A 5 year old unchallenged technical paper on physics written by Steven Hawking (with no editor layer after him) is a reliable source on the material it contains but fails wp:rs criteria.
North, Both of your examples of "Not reliable but passes wp:rs" are cases where we need to look deeper and see exactly how the sources are being used. We need to look at whether we are using them to support a statement of attributed opinion ("according to X, Obama was born on Pluto"), or to support a blunt statement of fact ("Obama was born on Pluto"). In both of your examples, sources are unlikely to be wp:rs for blunt fact, but they probably are wp:rs for an attributed statement of opinion. (And, having determined that the sources are reliable for opinion, we then need to ask whether mentioning the opinion would violate WP:UNDUE or not).
As to your examples of Reliable but fails wp:rs... in what way to these sources fail wp:rs? The first one might have some WP:SPS restrictions, but it seems you are using it within those restrictions... based on your description it seems fine to me. I don't understand how the Hawking paper would fail wp:rs (Unless Hawking never published it) Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
In a hurry at the moment, so please excuse me if I only respond to to half of your post at a time. What you are talking is common sense, which is not in wp:ver, and which conflicts with parts of wp:ver. Second, you made a false presumption that the inserter made a statement such as one of those two that you posited. Such is not the case in my example. The inserter simply wanted the presence (and impact of the presence) of a large amount of "Obama was born on Pluto" statements present. Such has a POV impact WITHOUT making any source-challengable statement such as the two that you posited, and so the questions that you posed can't be asked. The material is just there, and is from a wp:RS. This type of a situation is VERY common; and is probably the most common way to wikilawyer wp:ver to pov an article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
What parts of vp:ver conflicts with what I said?
POV is an issue ... but it isn't a verifiability issue (that's why we have a separate policy on it). Trying to challenge all these references to people who think Obama was born on Pluto under wp:V is the wrong approach. They should probably be challenged under WP:UNDUE. And if the consensus is that its not UNDUE to mention them, then the solution to the POV impact is to rewrite the article a bit and consolidate the references into one short ballanced paragraph... eg: "Many prominent people believe that Obama was born on Pluto. The most notable are Micky Mouse, Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.<cite><cite><cite> Other prominent people think this belief is ridiculous, especially Albert Einstein, Shirley Temple and Jesus.<cite><cite><cite>" This means you can argue that you are trying to compromise... you "keep the information", but are presenting it in a neutral way. It seems to me that you are trying to solve a problem that falls under WP:NPOV by editing WP:V... that's the wrong approach. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
I think that we're getting to the point where responses would need a book instead of a post. :-) On the 2nd half of your post, there you go again trying to use good practices and common sense! Your removal of the voluminous "born on Pluto" material would get reverted by the POV warrior. The pov warrior's edit summary would say "please stop removing reliably sourced material". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Where upon I would respond with, "No... nothing was removed... the material is still there, and still sourced to the same sources". Blueboar (talk) 18:02, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Here's an example. The LA Times, a major national newspaper and as such an impeccably reliable source by the lights of Wikipedia policy, recently reported on a project to analyze some climate data here. They report that "most of the work" is being done by a certain "Richard Rohde" who "recently earned a doctorate in statistics." As it happens, this Richard Rohde is in fact Robert Rohde, who recently earned a doctorate in physics (not statistics). According to WP:V we have to report that poor Robert Richard doesn't know his own name or what he got his degree in, because hey, that's what the reliable secondary source says, and our interest here is verifiability, not truth.The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 04:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
That's a good example, but how do you know that the person being refered to is Robert Rohde with a PhD in physics, and that they are not refering to another person named Richard Rohde with a PhD in statistics? The answer is likely that you read about it in some other reliable source (this includes Rohde's own website, which is a reliable source about himself). That makes it verifiable. If instead, you know that it's Robert Rohde with a PhD in physics because you live next door to the guy, that's original research, and we shouldn't take your word for it. LK (talk) 05:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Lawrencekhoo is right: it all comes back to sources. Even the most reliable sources can make errors. But that doesn't mean we can abandon their use and instead write what we know to be true. Will Bebacktalk05:35, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Will, implying that THE alternative is "abandon their use......" is sort of a red herring argument; I don't think that anybody would seriously propose that. What I would propose is to improve the definition of wp:RS so that it correlates better to actual reliability on the statement(s) that cited it. An improvement here would have HUGE positive effects. North8000 (talk) 11:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
Its not a red herring at all. It goes to the heart of WP:NOR (one of those other core policies that we need to familiarize ourselves with). If the only source to discuss who compiled the climate data is the LA Times, and they say it was Richard the statistician, then our options are limited if we know the source is wrong: All we do is discuss the problem (on the talk page) and explain why we think the source is wrong. Perhaps we can reach a consensus that the LA Times was wrong in this case, and that we should omit the information, or that we should rephrase the information and attribute it ("according to the LA Times, the data was compiled by Richard"). But we can not correct the article to say it was compiled by Robert the physisist based on our own personal knowledge.
However, if we do have other sources, sources that say that the climate data was written by Robert, then we have a very good argument in favor of treating the LA Times as unreliable on this one fact, and correcting the article (citing one of the other sources). Blueboar (talk) 13:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
The question was to provide an example of a source that is unreliable (in this context) which WP considers to be a RS. And that was in response to my assertion that reliable sources often fail wp:rs, and un-relaible(on the topic) sources often pass wp:rs. Now we are unintentionally creating a posited straw man argument from the example (that somebody is proposing that we abandon use of RS's and go on personal opinion instead). The actual question of this (new) thread is whether or not wp:rs criteria should be refined. North8000 (talk) 13:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
This discussion is generating more argument than I have time to read... I still don't understand why people find it necessary to cling to this potentially misleading "The threshold" wording when "A requirement" is what we mean. What's the downside of this simple change? (Or why we say "verifiability, not truth" when we mean "verifiability". We could equally well say "verifiability, not elephants", or more pertinently "verifiability, not personal conviction". We have nothing against truth as such - in fact it's our goal - this policy is just describing our adopted methods of approximating truth, which exclude certain methods that some might wish to use.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Agree Verifiability means verifiability, not "not" accuracy, elephants, truth, or the millions of other things that it does not mean. North8000 (talk) 17:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, I think we can take this to be the version for April 1, 2012: "Verifiability means verifiability, not "not" accuracy, elephants, no elephants, truth, not truth, nor the millions of other things that it does not mean". Count Iblis (talk) 19:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
'Requirement' is the wrong word, worse even than 'threshold'. 'Criterion' is the correct word, but no one seems to like it. Maybe we should try on 'benchmark' for size, what do you think?--Ludwigs220:53, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I often thought that making the valid substitution of the word "accuracy" for "truth" would give this phrase a much needed poison pill so that it could get fixed. :-) North8000 (talk) 21:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Hello again. The main part of this section started with the question, "Where did editors here, get the idea that the word "threshold" refers to a necessary condition?" Prior to this question, there seemed to be a consensus that "threshold" in the first sentence of this policy was intended to mean "necessary condition". Then later, SlimVirgin dropped a bombshell when that editor wrote, " 'Threshold' is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one."[11]
So what do the editors here now believe? In the first sentence of this policy, do editors here believe that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous, as SlimVirgin wrote, and can mean two things: 1) a necessary condition or 2) a necessary and sufficient condition? Please note that if it has the number 2 meaning, then verifiability is all that is needed for inclusion in Wikipedia. 75.47.156.30 (talk) 23:06, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
I would say it is half way between your two definitions... so I'll go with option 3) Verifiability is necessary, and often (but not always) sufficient for inclusion. We have to remember that WP:Verifiability is only one of several content policies. Material must pass ALL of them to be included. To give a few examples, something may be verifiable, yet be excluded because it gives Undue Weight to a tiny minority viewpoint... It might be verifiable, but excluded because it is presented as part of an original synthesis. It may be verifiable and yet excluded because of a WP:BLP restriction. However, if the material is not verifiable, we don't even need to discuss the other policies... because the other policies start with verifiability. Blueboar (talk) 02:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
That is not a bad way to put it... although inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same coin... and those other polices also talk a bit about how to include (example: NPOV discusses how it is sometimes acceptable to phrase the material as being an opinion vs phrasing it as being a fact). Blueboar (talk) 16:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Actually that's not right: all of these are exclusionary principles. Editors include material they believe is relevant to the topic, but that material has to pass certain criteria if it's going to be retained in the article: the added material has to be justifiable as a common, significant, and non-prejudicial understanding of the topic in the real world, otherwise it will be re-weighted or removed. Policies work together to make sure that added material can be justified in that way. --Ludwigs218:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
The phrase "Criteria for inclusion" is logically ambiguous. One meaning means exclusion, (a restriction on inclusion) which is what all Wikipedia content criteria are. ("if you fail this you are out", with no comment on what happens if it passes it). The other meaning ("if you pass this, you are in, end of story")does not exist in Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 18:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
I do think the focus of WP:V is more on inclusion than on exclusion (and I think rightly so)... while the other policies focus more on exclusion than inclusion. Blueboar (talk) 18:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that's correct. As I see it, when someone decides they are going to edit in some material on an article they simply do so - It's assumed (per wp:AGF) that they will be trying to make good additions, and policy is there primarily to keep poor material from establishing itself where they fail. Yes, V looks like an inclusionary principle, but what one is really doing when one verifies some material is saying "This material cannot be excluded on the grounds that I made it up"; it might still be excluded on other grounds, but not on this ground. part of this is a language problem: the active principle here is actually not verification but refutation (i.e. the focus is on identifying material that does not belong on the encyclopedia and removing it), and so talking about verification confuses things a bit - that's why 'criterion for inclusion' sounds odd. What we really have in policy (IMO) is a set of criteria that material being added must pass or risk removal, not criteria that it must meet to merit inclusion. --Ludwigs220:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
We should be careful not to add anything to the policy that editors could use to reject reliable sources, because everything depends on context. What the policy currently implies is that if you arrive at an article with a good source, there has to be a strong editorial reason to keep your material out. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
A purpose of WP:V is to prevent spending time discussing material that "might be true" but is unsourced. What I think this quote means is that experienced editors are using the same policy to prevent WP:Due weight discussion of sourced material that "might be not true". Unscintillating (talk) 02:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
Edit that originally put "threshold" into first sentence
In the history of WP:V, I looked up the edit that originally put "threshold" into the first sentence.[12] And here is the edit summary of that edit of SlimVirgin,
"criterion -> threshold: meaning verifiability is a necessary but not sufficient condition, which should deal with concerns on talk"
So back then, when SlimVirgin put "threshold" into the first sentence of this policy, that editor wrote that "threshold" is a necessary but not sufficient condition,[13] whereas now SlimVirgin wrote that " 'Threshold' is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one."[14]
The problem is not slim's edit comment or intent, but that the policy doesn't explain them. Why not explain this--having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one in clear, lay language? Ocaasic16:17, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Just noting for the record that the "threshold for inclusion" language was not mine originally; it was created by another editor on a subpage. And it has been in the policy since 2005, not 2006. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS23:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes. The real problem is that we're all used to talking about "necessary but not sufficient" conditions, whereas here we have "verifiability" which is really meant as always sufficient for things that pass WP:N, but NOT always necessary (example, for things that pass WP:N but are not controversial). So it is actually WP:N which is the first "threshold" that material must pass for inclusion in WP. Then for noncontroversial things, that's enough since these bits are "verifiable in theory," even if not in deed (right at the time of inclusion). For more controversial, or less well-known things, for which the editor-community has not taken "judicial notice as being factual" (like the Declaration of Independence being signed in 1776), then a citation to an RS is required also, at the time of inclusion. If there's a question LATER, a [citation needed] can always be added. SBHarris23:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
Um... First, WP:N is for inclusion of entire topics not individual facts or statements... WP:V is for individual facts and statements. Second, verifiability is always necessary... it isn't always necessary to actually include verification, but you have to be able to verify. Blueboar (talk) 01:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
There are many words that would accurately and unambiguously state it, and "threshold" isn't one of them. North8000 (talk) 11:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
This is not entirely on-topic, but by accident I have just run across one of the most absurd repeated invocations of "verifiability not truth" as a mantra that I have seen so far. See Talk:Larry Sanger/Archive 3 and search for "not truth" to get to the relevant sections. HansAdler11:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
The only person I can see posting about it there is QuackGuru, and his editing is very problematic. It doesn't help to pull out examples of bad editing and blame the policies. We could link to thousands of examples of editors misusing the concept of neutrality to push nonsense into articles, but that doesn't mean we abandon it. The concept of "verifiability, not truth" serves us well every day. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS19:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I guess my point was that the slogan's undeniable snappiness has disadvantages, and one of them is what simple-minded editors tend to make out of it. I guess I am just much more often exposed to this kind of silliness than you are. HansAdler20:21, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Here's a more common case. The way that most of the part of Wikipedia that works is actually written is that people who KNOW the topic (KNOWLEDGE = information developed from hundreds of sources) work together to write the material. Specific sources and sourcability guide this collaboration but it does not arise from them. THEN they source the result, by picking the correct sources from amongst all of the wrong, biased, off-on-a-tangent or dumb ones. But in contentious articles, (where the policies are a dismal failure) anybody who does not like the result can say the the above process is against wp:policies, and that the above goal is to be dismissed, because wp:ver prominently and specifically disparages the idea of seeking accuracy. North8000 (talk) 20:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
But I've worked a lot on contentious articles. I've made around 115,00 edits, 48,000 of them to articles, including highly contentious ones. I've seen "verifiability, not truth" work time and again, and produce good results and settled results. Any of us could pull out examples of policies and guidelines being misused. But people need to demonstrate a pattern of misuse or misunderstanding among good editors, or new editors, to show that the policy isn't working. There's just no point in continuing to cherry pick the occasional bad edit to blame it on a policy, with no evidence that it's the policy's fault. If you have thousands of cars successfully negotiating a busy motorway for years, you don't re-route it because the occasional drunk driver goes sailing off onto the verge. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS21:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't think your experience is at all representative. I have seen you rewrite the lead of homeopathy for NPOV. It was absolutely amazing – not what you did, but the lack of hysterical reactions to what you did. The sceptical and pseudosceptical editors clearly didn't dare to treat you the same way that they would have treated almost everybody else. Had I done the same, it would simply have been reverted. Had Ludwigs2 (not active at that article, but let's suppose he was) done the same, he would ver likely have been blocked in connection with that. HansAdler00:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
I think where there are disputes in which the policies are basically being ignored (if that's what was happening; I have no memory of it), the wording of the policy isn't going to help. Imagine how much worse things would be if the policy introduced the idea of "truth." It's enforcement that's the problem, or lack thereof. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
By that analogy, 95% of the roads in Wikipedia work pretty well, and 5% are disaster areas. We can fix the 5% without messing up the 95%. North8000 (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
BTW Most of the 5% are contentious articles where there is a long term real-world conflict between the participants. Do you REALLY think that Wikipedia has been successful on those? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I think "verifiability, not truth" succeeds when people stick to it. Where the disputes mirror real-world conflict you often find the policy is not being adhered to—people add their views, then try to find sources to support them, rather than reading the source material, then simply reflecting those views. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS21:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest that if the editors have conflicts in real life, that will be reflected in discussions here, and subtle wording changes in this policy won't affect that at all....--Nuujinn (talk)21:17, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I didn't mean personal conflicts, I meant that they represent groups that are opponents of each other, such as in politics. North8000 (talk) 21:23, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Even then, subtle changes in the policy won't change their behavior. Wikilawyering POV warriors are going to try to twist policy to support their position no matter what we write. That said, I think the "threshold" statement has helped limit this to some extent. I think things would be a lot worse without it. Blueboar (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
I do think it could be clearer, though, Blueboar. Don't you? Policies are best phrased in words that cause less arguments about their meaning.—S MarshallT/C22:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Actually, no... I don't think this statement could be all that much clearer. I see a bit of argument among the ten or so of us here on this talk page, and perhaps in a few isolated incidents beyond this page... but I don't see all that much argument about it in real articles... certainly no real pattern of confusion about it. I just don't see a need to change it, and I have serious concerns that changing it would do more harm than good. Blueboar (talk) 23:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
Personally, I don't see that one word in the top 5 list of things that most need changing. But the fact that we can't even get one obviously ambiguous word changed to one of the many available ones that are unambiguous, and where nobody has made an arguement for the word "threshold" other than "that's what we're used to" shows that the current dynmamics here have a significant problem. North8000 (talk) 23:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
You should've seen the struggle we went through to get copyright mentioned in the lede. :) Yes, the dynamics on WT:V are a significant problem, because the page is watchlisted by so many people who like the current phrasing. Substantive change is extremely hard to bring about.—S MarshallT/C23:26, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
People don't want to change that sentence, as has been explained by multiple people in many different ways. The problematic dynamic is that a small number of editors have been trying to ignore that consensus for months to the point where the page has becoming unusable. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
So, I guess the minority viewpoint (10 of 21) in the above poll counts as that consensus (that others are violating) because the two owners here voted that way? North8000 (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
The poll above disputes your contention that it is only a small number of editors. Slightly more than half of the respondents (11-10) are dissatisfied with the sentence as it is.
You have mentioned that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous.[16] When you have used the sentence in debates on article talk pages, have you disclosed to the other editors that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous, or have you just chosen the interpretation that suited your purposes without disclosing the ambiguity? If you had disclosed the ambiguity, then the other editors could have used the other interpretation to oppose you, and the policy would have been useless to you.
I personally ran into a problem with the sentence when I tried to use it in a debate on an article talk page, and that’s what motivated me to get involved in this discussion. I thought that having a good reliable source met the “threshold” and was sufficient for inclusion in Wikipedia, which was one of your interpretations of “threshold”. Unfortunately there is your other interpretation that “threshold” only means a necessary condition and is not sufficient for inclusion. From discussions here, I believe that the sentence was really intended to mean what you indicated when you first put the word “threshold” into policy, i.e. that it refers to a necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion in Wikipedia.[17] If I had known that, I wouldn’t have tried to use the sentence in the article talk page debate. Instead, I was misled by a deliberately ambiguous policy. Proposal 4 would remove the ambiguity and have the intended meaning for the sentence. 75.47.129.242 (talk) 11:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Bob, could you sign in, please? You're the fourth highest poster to the NOR talk page (1,002 edits between Dec 2008 and Jan 2011). You've engaged in a lot of personal attacks as Bob K31416, and starting polls. I recall that you once wanted to start a poll about whether to have a poll. Yet now you're posting logged out on WT:NOR and here, with over 40 different IPs so far, implying that you're a new editor. It's a violation of WP:SOCK. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS19:38, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
And Wikipedia policies are deliberately ambiguous because making them too specific and rigorous will break them. As is too obvious from this discussion, the more anyone tries to tighten up the wording of a policy, the more push back there is. I was heavily involved in a number of such discussions years ago. I firmly belief that any changes to policies and the wording to policies should be made very slowly. As it happens, I'm satisfied with the specific wording about the "threshhold", and think it serves the purpose well. I've been avoiding these discussions for a while now, but that does not mean that I think they are broken, or even that they need to be tweaked. Unfortunately, I think that most editors who are happy with the policies just don't bother to come in here, so I don't think we can draw the conclusion that 20 editors here represent the community as a whole. We must exercise our collective editorial judgement about what is reliable and what should be included and how to word it. Playing around with the wording of policies will rarely make that process easier, and will often merely increase the opportunities for wikilawyering. -- Donald Albury12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
To me, you seem to be saying that Wikipedia policies ought to be vague and ambiguous, that editors who aren't active on policy talk pages are all happy with the policies, and that making the policies specific and relevant will pander to the wikilawyers rather than those who want to edit articles productively. Is that right?—S MarshallT/C12:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Responding to Donald, the "silent majority" can be claimed by anyone. North8000 (talk) 13:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
@ S Marshall: The way I see it, policy on this level is a bit like a constitution, and has to strike he same balances a national constitution needs to strike:
It has to be general enough that thoughtful, well-intentioned people can apply its principles to new situations as they arise (because things are always changing)
It has to be clear and consistent enough about principles that misinterpretation or intentional misapplication is difficult to manage effectively
It has to be flexible enough to fit a broad range of situations
It has to be stable enough that it can be applied consistently in a broad range of situations
Excessive specificity inevitably causes headaches down the line (think about the three-fifths clause in the US constitution). vagueness and inconsistency cause different kinds of headaches, because they create a place where interpretations can go a bit wild. inflexibility always produces injustices of one sort or another; instability just leads to confusion and conflict... the proper approach to documents like this, if you want to get thoughtful about it, is the hermaneutics approach, where policy is continuously re-evaluated against itself (and new ideas must be evaluated against the entirety of policy before they can be adopted), but that's a bit much for most people. maintaining a careful, abstract generality is a reasonable substitute for that. --Ludwigs2 16:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)--Ludwigs216:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Many good thoughts there. In the analogy, the US Constitution is sort of the framework (6 pages) for developing the rules rather than being the rules themselves (which is probably more like 6,000,000 pages) Also, legal documents are made to be interpreted literally and precisely, albeit only to the extent that they are such. In Wikipedia, in the big picture it is not so.....they sort of all have "input" to what happens along with consensus, and they are not written precisely. Also there is not that "framework vs. details" hierarchy. Instead we have about 30 pages of core rules, and about 1,000 pages of rules which anyone can can invoke. North8000 (talk) 16:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
The point is that a substantive change in meaning requires strong consensus, especially for something that's been in the policy since 2005 and that lots of people rely on. Donald is right that the majority of editors who are content with V don't read this talk page, and he's also right about the dangers of increasing specificity. The policy can't be taken in a new direction by a handful of editors to this talk page. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS20:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Thinking afterwards on it, I should have said "flexible" rather than "ambiguous". My concern is, though, what helps to improve Wikipedia? Flexibility to deal with issues as they arise is vital. Precise language has an important role in a legal system. However, Wikipedia is not a legal system. As for the "silent majority", if an important change is well publicized, hundreds of editors will participate, but most of the time most of us are too busy with other things to spend a lot of time on policy talk pages. (I have to admit I've been relying on experienced editors who _are_ willing to spend the time here to defend the policies.) You cannot establish a consensus for substantive change in a policy based a score of editors participating. -- Donald Albury21:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
I really can't agree with the idea of anybody claiming that the "silent majority" is on their side, or a double standard where (only) what the other side wants always needs the huge and overwhelming consensus. On the flip side, change for the sake of change is not good, and so some hysteresis is needed. I don't consider that one word (threshold) to be in the top 5 of things that need changing, but nor do I agree with the process I see at work here to stomp out ideas for evolution of the policy, or to implying that those who promote them are mis-behaving. North8000 (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
*I'm not suggesting "taking the policy in a new direction", SV. I'm suggesting that we clarify the word "threshold", which is so, ahem, "flexible" as to be hard for some editors to understand. I've noticed that there are editors active on this page who're quite happy to accept a talk-page consensus for a change they like (such as adding the word "threshold"), but want to insist on a full RFC for a change they dislike (such as clarifying the word "threshold" or substituting it with an alternative).
That won't wash, I'm afraid. If we can change "criterion" to "threshold" on the basis of a talk page consensus, then we can change "threshold" to some alternative word that expresses the same meaning more clearly, on the basis of a talk page consensus. Everyone with me so far?—S MarshallT/C21:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Even though its not in my top 5, I'm with you. The process here needs a tweak. North8000 (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
S Marshall, as you know, no one has recently added the word "threshold"; it has been there for six years. It doesn't help to misrepresent what's being said, and to ignore the voices opposed to changing it. The problem is that you don't seem to realize how these changes you propose could have significant knock-on effects. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
(added later) I think that S Marshall was being indirect. They were pointing to promoting a double standard...putting it in based just on a basic talk page consensus, and saying that taking it out should require a huge wide-ranging consensus.North8000 (talk) 17:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
I really don't think it was me who was misrepresenting anything. My position was in favour of a change to the word "threshold", and this was described, above, as "taking the policy in a new direction". I feel that it is others who misrepresent, others who seek to ignore the voice of change, and others who don't realise the effects of the status quo. In fact, I feel your whole statement applies to you and not to me.—S MarshallT/C08:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
You wrote: "I've noticed that there are editors active on this page who're quite happy to accept a talk-page consensus for a change they like (such as adding the word "threshold") ..." But that did not happen. The word "threshold" has been there since 2005. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS00:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Please note that I have made no claims about a "silent majority" or what it might support. I also did not intend to say anything disparaging about those who spend a lot of time on policy talk pages (and specifically stated that I have depended on such editors to defend policies so I didn't have to spend time doing so). I do feel, however, that changes to policy need a clear consensus, which certainly has not manifested itself here, and that 20 or so editors are not a representative sample of the wider community on policy issues. -- Donald Albury09:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
The term threshold appears to have come in somewhere around this August 2005 edit. Then, it was well down in the body of the project page, and it took a while to work its way up to its present prominence. I don't know when I first encountered the initial paragraph in more or less its present form, but I do remember that it struck me as being brilliant.
I have seen numerous occasions, though, of editors having a difficult time getting their minds around the concept. I think that part of the problem may be that the policy page doesn't explain the "not truth" aspect of this very completely. That is understandable, given that this is the policy on "verifiability" (not the policy on "not truth"), but a bit of clarification about "not truth" might be helpful.
How about adding a footnote — something to the effect, "Strong belief in the truthfulness of an assertion is not sufficient to justify its inclusion in a Wikipedia article. All assertions must be verifiable, and all direct quotes or assertions likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. In cases where reliable sources disagree, due weight considerations apply." (someone can likely improve the wording there). Such a clarifying footnote might be Ref'd at the end of the lead paragraph. Wtmitchell(talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
It was never "criterion" that I recall, at least not for any length of time. The "threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth" was added in 2005. Before that it was discussed on various subpages, and since then has been upheld many times, and is widely used. There would have to be strong and wide consensus to change it. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS04:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
No problem with a "change for the better"... if there is a clear consensus that the change actually is for the better. I don't see any indication of that consensus. Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Please could someone provide links to this "strong and wide consensus" in favour of the word "threshold".—S MarshallT/C21:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
Just refreshing Slim's memory --- see this edit, restoring criterion language removed here after being restored here from removal here, etc. I haven't grubbed around much back there, but it seems clear that criterion language was used in place of threshold language for a while back then. Personally, I'd be happy with either, if the initial paragraph retained verifiability, not truth and presented that message with punch.
It occurs to me, though, that e.g. "One criterion" might be better than "The criterion". If that is used, it seems to me that the "not truth" part of the message, though important, would need to move to a second paragraph; perhaps something like:
Verifiability—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source—is an essential criterion for inclusion in Wikipedia.
Truth is only an inclusion criterion insofar as it is verifiable that a reliable source has asserted the truthfulness of the material. The question of whether Wikipedia editors believe the material to be true or false does not enter into Wikipedia inclusion criteria—belief that the material is true does not justify inclusion; belief that the material is false does not justify exclusion.
Someone can surely improve on that, perhaps working the truth part smoothly back into the lead paragraph. Wtmitchell(talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)
I think wikipedia should clarify what "verifiability" means - instead of "whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source" I think it should be defined as "whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been supported and published' by a reliable source."
This may sound like a minor point, but let me elaborate...
According to WP policy, articles are considered reliable if they are published by agencies "with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." But this is kind of circular logic... A report should be considered a reliable source not simply because it is published by an agency with a robust fact-checking policy, but because that agency vouches for its reliability. When an agency, as part of its policy of fact-checking and reliability, specifically alerts the reader that its article is unreliable, can this still be considered "verifiable" ?
Not all articles published by mainstream sources are equal. News agencies go out of their way to inform readers whether or not their information is reliable, or verified. This is especially relevant with the recent rise of social media, and the increasing dependence of mainstream news sources on reports from twitter and youtube. Many articles increasingly include such disclaimers as :
"Al Jazeera cannot independently verify these reports"
There should be a policy in place to deal with articles, or conjectures, published by news agencies that do not meet that agencies standard of verifiability. For example, what is the responsible way to use these excerpts from reliable sources in wikipedia articles:
The Syrian government is continuing its weeks-long crackdown on anti-government demonstrations, arresting opponents and deploying troops in protest hubs. Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said security forces were carrying out house-to-house raids targeting demonstration organisers and participants.
He said Monday's raids were focused in the central city of Homs, the coastal city of Baniyas, some suburbs of the capital, Damascus, and villages around the southern flashpoint city of Deraa.
Another activist said gunfire was heard in the town of Moadamiya, just west of the capital, Damascus, as troops carried out arrests.
Al Jazeera is unable to independently verify reports of arrests and gunfire because of restrictions on reporting in Syria.
A row of what appears to be bodies of people were shown on state TV today, which it was claimed were the victims of the bombing. The Libyan government claimed Colonel Gaddafi and his wife were in the house at the time, but escaped unharmed.
Regardless of the agency's choice of words, both excerpts are claims that are not verified by the source and explicitly not vouched for.
The reliability and verifiability of sources depends on Wikipedia's trust of news agencies policies of fact-checking, reliability, and accuracy. Thus wikipedia should follow/trust the conclusion of news sources abut the reliability of their own articles and statements. If an agency alerts readers that a certain article or conjecture is not reliable, or does not meet its standards of verifiability, I don't think it should meet Wikipedia's standards of "verifiability" despite its publication by a reliable source.
EMbargo145 (talk) 08:22, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
What you are discussing is often resolved by proper phrasing and attribution... When it comes to reliability and verifiability of media reports, a lot depends on exactly how we phrase the information we take from the media source. For example, because Al Jezeera admits that it could not verify the reports of arrests and gunfire in Syra, we should not state unequivocally that "security forces were carrying out house-to-house raids in Syria and targeting demonstration organisers and participants" ... instead we should attribute: "Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told Al Jezeera that security forces were carrying out house-to-house raids targeting demonstration organisers and participants."
To put it another way... because of their disclaimer, Al Jezeera isn't a reliable source for an unqualified statement that gunfire and arrests occurred in Syria... but Al Jezeera is a reliable source for is the attributed statement that Mr. Abdul-Rahman said that gunfire and arrests occurred.
We can treat the Daily Mail report on Libya similarly... the report is not a reliable source for a statement that the bodies were victims of the bombing, but it is reliable for a statement that the Libyan government claimed they were. Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
I think it's important to realize that just because information is parroted by mainstream media, doesn't give it any more weight. E.g. the article (Norwegian, sorry) at http://www.dagbladet.no/2011/05/12/tema/velvere/helse/klikk/16507619/ refers to a source, claiming it connects various symptoms with amalgam fillings. Checking the source, it says very clearly that there is no such connection. (At least they provided the link to the source!) Personally, I think primary sources should be given more weight. Ketil (talk) 07:09, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Discussion on first sentence in policy - let's sort this out
The complexity of mixing everything into one discussion is really not sorting this out. How 'bout this process:
Step 1 Hammer out the proposed change that has the widest acceptance. Scope = the first sentence, or whatever it would possibly change to. If this is complex, get it down to a final two (not >=3) and vote between them.
Step 2 Cast a wide net and have people weigh in on on whether or not to make the the proposed change.
I propose the following, or evolving from it: (leaving the ambiguous word in for now):
replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability."
Now add a footnote with the old text, because there are some policies and/or guidelines that refer to the old text:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.<ref>For continuity, the previous version of this sentence read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is '''verifiability, not truth'''—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been [[WP:SOURCES|published by a reliable source]], not whether editors think it is true."</ref>
I think before we discuss which proposed change has the widest acceptance, we need to agree on whether any change to the first sentence is needed or desired. Blueboar (talk) 02:19, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
I disagree. "Change to what?" is an important part of that question. Plus, it is the norm for a potential change to be consideration of a proposal, not deciding to change with no specific proposal. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:26, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
OK... I get what you are saying... but my point is that not changing the current language is an option here. I don't want the discussion to be limited to just a choice between the proposed changes, I want the discussion to include the option to keep the current language. Blueboar (talk) 03:00, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
I've made a post to the wikien-l list at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2011-May/108949.html outlining how I think the present wording of the first sentence is apt to do us (and the people we write about) a disservice (based on the BLP case discussed on Jimbo's talk). The present wording encourages lazy thinking, and an editorial policy of passing the buck ("they wrote it, so I needn't think about whether it's true, I just need to repeat it, and anyone who deletes it is bad"). Given the way Wikipedia increases the visibility of any sourced material included in an article, it's irresponsible. The valid point in "verifiability, not truth" -- preventing the publication of original research in Wikipedia -- can be made without denigrating truth, or telling editors that they need not bother to think about whether what Wikipedia broadcasts to the world and hundreds of mirror sites is likely to be true or not. --JN46616:04, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
From the first section, when a reliable source is required:
All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source [...]
Then, on self-published media:
self-published media [...] are largely not acceptable as sources
Is it better to omit citations for trivial/non-contentious facts, than to rely on a self-published source? Ketil (talk) 08:12, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
That's a bit like "have you stopped beating your wife?" :) It's better to provide a reliable source, if it's the kind of thing that needs a source (i.e. if it's challenged or likely to be challenged). SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS08:16, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Eh, I'm not sure I follow your wife-beating analogy. I have a fairly non-controversial, fairly easily checkable fact, that is corroborated by a "dubious" source. Should I include the reference or not? Alternatively, should I just remove this fact? I notice that WP:V insists that all material must be attributable to a reliable source. This is way too strong, IMO, and means, among other things, that we should immediately delete WP:V. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ketil (talk • contribs) 13:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Ketil, to answer your question properly, it would help to know the specifics and the context... What article are we discussing? What is the fact? What are the sources? Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
If it is perhaps not quite that trivial, then the source needs to be strong enough to support the claim. It is permitted to be stronger than that, but it is not required to be stronger than that. A self-published source is probably fine for many unimportant, non-contentious claims; IMO if a citation is actually required, then a weak source is better than no source.
However, an inline citation may not be required. Even non-trivial claims do not necessarily need to be provided with inline citations. If—using your best judgment, and considering your own experiences on Wikipedia—you think it unlikely that anyone will actually challenge the material, then you are not required to provide an inline citation for it. The policy does not follow a standard of "hypothetically, someone could spam a fact tag after every single sentence in the entire encyclopedia" standard. We care about what is likely to happen, not what is barely possible.
People worry about weak sources, because we tend to be a bit cynical and assume bad faith. So when we see a just-barely-good-enough source appear in an article, we start wondering whether it's WP:REFSPAM. If you actually need an inline citation and it's easy to add a better source, then why not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:33, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
This arose as a consequence of my trying to fix up Ryzom. Since I've played the game, I added a bunch of stuff on the game setting and mechanics. People complained about the lack of references, which would warrant deletion of specific material and/or whole page, and on one occasion, a slew of my edits were reverted. Now, there are reliable sources from 2004, and "dubious" sources (reviews by freelance journalists) that are current. The game was quite different in 2004, so I'd rather not use those, there is nothing incorrect about the current reviews, but due to the nature of the publisher, others feel those should be removed.
This causes a bind: I can have a page that is largely incorrect, but well sourced, or it can be correct, but with either "dubious" or no references. What is preferred?
My opinion is that I don't need to put references for stuff like this, it is easily checkable by downloading and playing the game, and is similar to plot synopses -but it's not quite "sky is blue" material. Further, I'd like WP to contain correct information. But there is clearly some disagreement on where to draw the line. Ketil (talk) 07:04, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
In doubt this might be a case for WP:IAR. It should clear that we want the correct information in WP rather than false but sourced information. However in practice this becomes tricky as soon as it is not that obvious what's "correct" and there is no editorial consent on it. If that is the case (no obvious truth and no editorial consent on it), we have to fall back on the reliable sources even if they might be wrong, this is essentially the infamous "not truth, but verifiability"-scenario. For your concrete case that means if editors agree that the older but more "reputable" sources are (obviously) outdated/false I'd go with the newer "dubious" ones or use the game itself as reference. I might be also helpful to explain the special circumstances and reasons for disregarding older sources on the discussion page of the article.--Kmhkmh (talk) 07:32, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Regarding the general "better unsourced than self published" the answer is imho a qualified "no". In general it is preferable if other editors can recognize where some information originated from (transparency!), however this cann be used as an argument to circumvent our sourcing guidelines, i. e. editors cannot simply write whatever they want based on and with (arbitrary) self published sources. It should be clear that content that cannot be sourced by reliable sources (in the long run) has no place in WP and editors who do not have reliable sources for their content should consider not including that content in the article in the first place.
However in practice the scenario occurs, that somebody writes an article or content of something he knows to be true, but he doesn't have a formally reliable source at hand. Say some student writes a first article on some elementary math theorem (yet missing on WP), based on what he found on his teacher's website. This isn't something we should encourage, but it simply happens, i.e. we need to deal with it. Now usually we cannot treat the teacher's website (unless he happens to be a distinguished expert as well) as a reliable source (who knows in theory he could be a crackpot), hence for other editors the article is to be treated as unsourced. However it is still helpful to have (temporarily) the reference to that teacher's website, because other editors may use it to check that the teacher is indeed not a crackpot and to look for possible references on that site (that were (easily) not available to the student but might be to them). Now to avoid that such "temporary references" get mixed up with reliable (longterm) references, they should be placed under external links or on the dicussion page. This way the article does not create the false superficial perception of being already properly sourced, but it is still transparent for other editors to see from which source the article's content was generated. As soon as the article gets properly sourced with reliable sources, those "temporary references" maybe removed from external links or the discussion page.--Kmhkmh (talk) 08:00, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Edits
S Marshall, could I ask that you stop removing the passive voice, and generally changing the language? The policy is being changed with all these tiny edits, then people arrive here with queries or confusion that can be traced back to some of the changes. For example, it's important to say "this policy requires X" in the lead, to distinguish it from the previous sentence. And it's important to say "must" when asking that unsourced material be removed from BLPs. It's important to make clear that the three policies must be interpreted together, which someone tried to remove then dilute. All these individual sentences that you feel don't matter alone, do matter when read together. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS15:07, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
There would be far less confusion arising from these policies if those who have made them their own didn't resist every tiny attempt at clarifying them and making them say what they actually mean - and in particular, try to justify the absurd maintenance of two separate policies (this and OR) that have no discernible difference in scope, and between which information is distributed in random and completely illogical fashion. I've given up any hope of improving the clarity of these pages, given the apparent religious commitment of a blocking minority of regulars to ensuring that no-one will ever succeed in doing so, but... well, but. What's the use.--Kotniski (talk) 15:39, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
But they're not being clarified, that's the problem. Sentences that hang together are being tweaked, so they no longer hang together. Then people see that, and tweak some more to try to fix them. Death by a thousand edits.
And as I've said many times, if you want to suggest joining V and NOR, make a proposal, but there's no point in continuing to post about it here, because we can't do it without wiki-wide consensus. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS16:16, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Plain English is better than obscure English, and simple constructions are better than complex ones. You offer no evidence that people have queries or confusion that can be traced back to any of my changes. It's clearly not important to say "this policy requires that" when using an imperative sentence in a policy. It's clearly not important to say "must" when using an imperative sentence in a policy. And there is a consensus in favour of my changes, which is at archive #47, point #4. I have restored them accordingly, and I ask once again that you stop trying to own this policy page, SV.—S MarshallT/C16:30, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
You can see the confusion on this page, and you must stop changing it over objections, then accusing someone else of OWN.
There was confusion about "V, not truth" being a sufficient condition, not helped by someone removing that the three policies work in harmony. Someone believed yesterday that V requires only verifiability, because someone removed that it's NOR that requires that, and that this policy requires something else—which you've just removed again. People are editing the policy who aren't familiar with it, and who seem not to have read the three content policies to see how they hang together. It isn't helpful. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS17:30, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
It looks to me just like a grammar/prose cleanup that has no other changes or impacts. North8000 (talk) 17:49, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
It looks like that because it's what it is. The confusion on this page is because we're not being permitted to clarify the confusing language, such as "threshold"; there's no evidence that my edits are causing anyone who actually reads the policy any confusion at all. (I see SV's assertion that someone was confused by my edit, and I await a link to the actual discussion with some interest.) The text of WP:V isn't some holy sacrosanct thing that it's an offence to edit. It's a horrible, badly-written mess that needs a good prune and some editing discipline. I'm pleased to say that I have a consensus-based mandate to remove some of the most egregious sloppiness, and I fully intend to use it.—S MarshallT/C22:41, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
As I've already explained, you'll find the consensus in favour of my edits at WT:V, archive #47, section #4. "Sloppiness" is to use the more wordy constructions, such as the passive or the hortative, when simpler and clearer alternatives are available, such as the active or the imperative. In other words, it's rarely a good idea to say "Editors must do X", when you can just say "Please do X":- the latter phrasing is simpler, shorter, and more respectful.
Over and above the preceding paragraph, there are several other aspects of the policy's writing that I feel are sloppy, but at the moment I'm just trying to recover back to the stable, consensus-based version that I'd previously inserted.—S MarshallT/C23:12, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
There's no consensus in that discussion, and it's a complete myth that there's anything wrong with the passive voice. Good writers use it all the time. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:29, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Please stop edit-warring on policy pages. That is not okay. I have restored the last stable version, which I inserted after due discussion and to which nobody except you has objected.—S MarshallT/C08:52, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm not in favor of ownership via a double standard, where only the other side's ideas need a overwhelming consensus in a huge process to go in. Time to change things here, and these low key and clearly better prosed changes are a good place to start. North8000 (talk) 16:53, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm in favor of keeping the passive voice, it's much clearer and more direct - which a policy needs to be. Dreadstar☥01:25, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Proposal for lead paragraph
A proposal for the lead paragraph:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Any material in Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable source; it is not enough for an editor to assert that it is true.
instead of
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
This would mitigate the impression that we just don't care whether something verifiably published is true or not. Thoughts? --JN46622:30, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
You may be headed in a fruitful direction... but I have a problem with the language: "Any material in Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable source"... I could see literal readers arguing that this means we can not summarize the material we find in sources, and must do nothing more than quote. We know that isn't what is meant, but it can be read that way (and if it can, someone will). Blueboar (talk) 22:39, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
This occurred to me to. How about "Any facts or opinions included in Wikipedia ..." (Note that the present wording isn't much better in this regard.) --JN46622:48, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Can I ask that we take a break from this? We had an RfC this month, [18] and there was no consensus for change. And that was just on this page. I'm pretty sure the wider we asked for comment, the stronger the consensus would be in favour of the current sentence.
The RfC was just been archived by the bot, and now there's another suggestion, one that would significantly shift the burden. I know it looks like just a tweak of wording, but it shifts it to a good source only being a necessary condition for inclusion, whereas the point of the current sentence is to allow flexibility, so that a good source may also be a sufficient condition, depending on context.
I must have typed the above 20 times in the last few weeks. :) I don't feel it's right to keep raising the same issue as though no one has objected, because people get fed up and stop wanting to post here, then the ones who persisted get their way. Core content policy shouldn't be changed that way, at least not in any substantive way. Jayen, that's not directed at you, because I know you've not been one of the people hammering on about this. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS23:00, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
The RfC was exactly 50:50. This is a relatively minor change, which keeps the key wording of "verifiability, not truth". It's the present wording of "not whether editors think it is true" that really sticks in my craw. We don't want to put stuff in the 'pedia that we know to be untrue, that is contradicted by authoritative sources, or that is just salacious and hurtful gossip more likely to be made up than true. What is proposed here is not a big change, Slim, and it does not make any pronouncement either way on whether one good source is a sufficient condition or not. The present wording is often used as an argument that one nominally reliable source is enough to keep something in an article forever, but that was not the original intention of this paragraph, or this policy -- that issue is something that should be and is regulated by WP:NPOV. So I am sorry if you are tired of the discussions, but please look at it anyway. --JN46623:15, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
Jayen, I don't understand what sticks in your craw about the current language. How does "...not whether editors think it is true" allow editors to "put stuff in the 'pedia that we know to be untrue, that is contradicted by authoritative sources, or that is just salacious and hurtful gossip more likely to be made up than true."
The current language was created to deal with the perennial problem of editors adding unsourced claims on the grounds that "the claim is true" (ie they believe the claim to be true). Our policy is that this is "NOT ALLOWED". I would strongly oppose any attempt to weaken this statement (and I think most others would agree).
However, the language remains silent when it comes to dealing with sourced claims that someone thinks are untrue. To my mind this is a completely different issue... one that is much harder to deal with. I don't think amending the needed statement about not adding on the basis of truth is the way to address the issue of untruth. I can agree that some sort of statement covering when and where to remove on the basis of untruth might be needed, but not if it changes our statement on adding on the basis of "truth". Blueboar (talk) 00:05, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I sense it's time for a meta poll about whether we should hold more polls. :)
I agree with Blueboar that these are separate issues: (a) don't add something just because you think it's true; what matters is whether you have a good source; and (b) how to handle something that's well-sourced but may be a mistake, i.e. unarguably false. Personally I see the latter as closer to an UNDUE issue. We could try to craft something for another section of V, but it would have to be written extremely carefully, because truth morphs into POV. It's rare for something to be well-sourced and to be completely false, in the sense that everyone would agree that it was false. And is it everyone who is the judge of what's true, or people with specialist knowledge, or who? It's tricky territory.
The change would lead to disputes not being resolved by the production of a good source. In reality, most disputes can be resolved that way, and the point of the core policies is to resolve disputes, not to offer suggestions. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
To me, (b), i.e. "how to handle something that's well-sourced but may be a mistake, i.e. unarguably false", is a BLP or NPOV issue, not a WP:V issue. It should not be addressed in WP:V at all. But the present wording is often taken to address that case, because editors misunderstand "not whether editors think it is true" as referring to case (b). The proposed wording makes that misunderstanding impossible. Longer explanation below. --JN46601:38, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
But this takes us back to the discussion that was on this page recently. I don't think editors do understand it that way. The only examples I can think of in six years of editing are Sam Blacketer and William Connolley, both with material written about them that was based on the sources' misreading of diffs. We can't craft policy around two mistakes. And I really don't recall having seen it otherwise. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:43, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I do recall seeing it elsewhere. These cases are the tip of the iceberg. Just think; if admins like Sandstein, Jennavecia and SoWhy, who've worked here every day for years, come away with this wrong impression, what's the likelihood that more casual editors will avoid falling into the same trap? The formulation "not whether editors think it is true" offers no advantage over "it is not enough for an editor to assert that it is true". The latter is what we mean; the former is ambiguous and is misunderstood by many to refer to your case (b). Or do you actually want to address (b) with this formulation? --JN46602:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Okay. Let me try to explain. It's because "verifiability, not truth" and "it doesn't matter whether you think it's true" is used as an argument to keep material that is otherwise indefensible. Now don't get me wrong, "it doesn't matter whether you think it's true" may very well be the right thing to say when an editor claims all mainstream science is wrong. But you don't need WP:V for that. WP:NPOV is there to deal with that. Using this snippet of WP:V to make this argument is using this policy to do a job it wasn't designed to do. This policy was designed to make clear to newbies that you cannot add unsourced, unverifiable material to Wikipedia: "verifiability is a necessary but not sufficient condition" for inclusion. But since then, in the understanding of many established editors, it has become something completely different, because they interpret the "not whether editors think it is true" in a different way: that we must not delete verifiable material – even if we know it is wrong, it is contradicted by authoritative sources, or we consider it the product of irresponsible journalism.
To demonstrate this, please look at these comments from the Sam Blacketer AfD, bearing in mind that we all knew and could verify for ourselves that the press had made a thorough mess of the facts.
"The article is sourced to multiple reliable sources (whether they got their facts right is not our concern, remember WP:V: Verifiability, not truth)"
"Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but WP:V's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues"
"even I know the "verifiability not truth" language. Do you really not know this?" (in response to someone saying, "We must get the article right".)
""Reliable" sources whose accounts are wrong on almost every point. I know ... verifiability, not truth ... That is all very well as long as the article is about someone else"; response: "Either WP:V matters, or it doesn't. Either it applies, or it doesn't. As you yourself pointed out, it's what's verifiable that matters." (Implied: whether we think or know it's untrue does not matter.)
"while I am normally one to push the Verifiability, not truth thing, when BLP is involved, it's no good. Internal sources and other information available to us on the project contradict the conclusions drawn in the sources. It's irresponsible of us to report on what sources are claiming when we know it's false"
"It seems to be about declaring sources unreliable ("wrong") because we, or some of us, know. WP:V explicitly states that the criterion for inclusion is "not whether we think it is true""
These were comments by respected, well-known editors and admins – Sandstein, SoWhy, Jennavecia, Unitanode and others – who all took WP:V to mean that "truth does not matter; even if it's wrong, we must keep it". (Some disagreed with that, but they all believed that's what "verifiability not truth" meant.)
This mindset is particularly pernicious in cases of poor-quality journalism, like the Daily Mail case that's just been discussed on Jimbo's talk page. Because a false allegation was verifiably published in one paper, it stayed in a BLP for more than a year, despite all the warning signs having been there in the original Daily Mail article (no named source, weasel wording "it has been reported", "is said to", "a friend said", etc.). The editor who took it out was warned, and established Wikipedians put the claim back in time and again – a false claim that apparently nearly ruined an innocent man's life and marriage.
WP:V was never designed to mean that truth does not matter, and that editorial judgment in dealing with tabloid claims is a policy violation: it was supposed to mean "You believing it is true it is not enough for us to let you write it into an article. You must have a reliable source other than your personal knowledge or belief." The above proposal restores the original purpose of this policy, and it remains just as sharp vis-a-vis the problem that we both care about: "the perennial problem of editors adding unsourced claims on the grounds that "the claim is true" (ie they believe the claim to be true)." The proposed wording still makes clear that "this is NOT ALLOWED", by stating "it is not enough for an editor to assert that it is true." --JN46601:38, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Jay, a suggestion: rather than trying to change the lead here, why not write an essay about this? I suggest this because I think you'll find writing it (and covering all bases) will be harder than it sounds. Then, using that essay—if it works—we can try to summarize its key points in a proposal for a new section in this policy, if it could be written carefully enough so that it wouldn't contradict other policies and the rest of this one. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:48, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
You'll have to convince me of the necessity to do so. I think The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Any facts or opinions included in Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable source; it is not enough for an editor to assert that something is true. covers all the bases that we want and need to cover here. What do you feel is missing? --JN46601:57, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
The proposal doesn't go far enough, but it's a baby step in the right direction. We should go with it. The above arguments about the problems with the current version don't even get into the most pervasive problems where this more subtly contributes to the problems. On common one is to say that a statement generally acknowledged to be false should be kept because it is published in a wp: "reliable" source. I'm engaged in one of those right now. Accuracy is not a point of contention or debate, it is simply claimed to be irrelevant. As as result it is taking hours of time to get a patently false statement even qualified, much less removed. The badly constructed wording of parts of wp:ver/wp:nor, particularly the opening sentence contributes to these problems. North8000 (talk) 02:18, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
To be honest, I don't see any substantive difference at all between the current wording and the proposed revision. The revision simply uses slightly different words, in a slightly different grammatical construction. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:30, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
The difference is that the present formulation outlaws both assertions of correctness by editors, and assertions of outright falsehood or irresponsible tabloid journalism ("whether you think it's true does not matter; it's been published in a reliable source, so therefore it stays"). The proposed formulation outlaws assertions of correctness, i.e. prevents the addition of unsourced material, but it does not outlaw the removal of sourced material based on merit and editor consensus.
We have to be clear here what our policies are for: The purpose of WP:V policy is to prevent the addition of unsourced material. Whether deletion of reliably sourced material is appropriate or not is a case for WP:BLP, WP:NPOV, WP:DUE, and WP:COATRACK, not WP:V. --JN46602:41, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
If I understand correctly, the current version allows the addition of material that is verifiable but for which the editor may not have a source in mind. The proposed version requires that every addition has to have a an actual published source before it's added. Will Bebacktalk05:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, assume you're a relatively new editor contesting the validity of a source; either because it's in obvious error, or because it's too poorly researched to support the assertion made in the article. For example, assume a reliable source reports something like, "Anonymous Twitter user X has said living person Y likes whipping gay prostitutes. The tweet has gone viral." This presently forms the basis for a "Sexuality" section in Y's BLP ("The New York Times reported in 2010 that according to a viral Twitter post, Y likes whipping gay prostitutes"). You propose removing the material, but another editor replies, "Look, mate, it's reliably sourced and verifiable. Whether editors like you think it's true or not doesn't come into it. I don't think it's true myself, but what can we do? Verifiability, not truth." To back up their point, they quote "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." at you. They're making out that your wanting to remove the "Sexuality" section in Y's BLP makes you a WP:V policy violator.
Now assume the policy bit they're quoting at you is "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Any material in Wikipedia must already have been published by a reliable source; it is not enough for an editor to assert that it is true." They can't argue now that your editorial judgment that a viral tweet says nothing of any encyclopedic relevance at all about Y's sexuality is a policy violation, because that phrase, "not whether editors think it is true" is no longer there to support that argument. You're still not home and dry perhaps, but if you know your WP:DUE and WP:BLP, you can fight your corner without being quite so convincingly being accused of being a policy violator, or even ending up believing yourself that you just tried to subvert an important Wikipedia policy. --JN46605:28, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means that it is not sufficient for information to be true; editors must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition which must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, notability of the subject, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so.
I made the change in the copy below, all should feel free to make more changes in that copy. North8000 (talk) 12:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, it's fixable. Change "editors must be able" to "readers must be able". Otherwise citations wouldn't belong in articlespace. Change "a necessary condition which must be met before other considerations come into play" to "necessary, but not sufficient, for inclusion" just to keep it simpler. Change "other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, notability of the subject, and editorial discretion are also considered" to "other characteristics are also considered" to avoid the misplaced laundry list. LeadSongDogcome howl!14:01, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
made the editor->reader change below. I don't think "characteristics" is the right word there. Left it to others to make any other changes.
Support. Fully agree with the message communicated by this proposal. It's exactly what WP:V should say, in a nutshell. --JN46614:15, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Support. Yes. And again, to avoid wall-of-text, a paragraph break is needed, and perhaps the point that we're talking verifiability not verification, in the sense of "citation is easy to find if not given." That is, we don't need a citation that the Sun is larger than the Earth. We do need a citation that Ganymede is larger than Mercury and Titan. Thus: SBHarris17:39, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verifiable in a published, reliable source. This means that it is not sufficient for information to be true; editors must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. If a citation for the material is not immediately given, the material must be of such a universally-accepted nature that a citation would be easy to find.
Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, notability of the subject, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so.
Poll: Misleading opening statement
For whatever reason, this statement, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." is problematic and needs to be rewritten:
Yes, there are multiple problems with it, as noted in previous discussions - it's only acceptable if you happen to know what it's trying to say, and it is intended (obviously) to be read and understood by people who don't know beforehand what it's trying to say.--Kotniski (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
The only reason for keeping this misleading sentence would be if there were no good alternatives. However, it is very easy to think of alternative formulations that do an even better job of making clear that we're after the truth as can be distilled from reliable sources, here on Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability requirements can be strongly stated without double-dissing the concept of accuracy. The first diss is using the straw-man problematic word "truth" instead of "accuracy" and second by inserting the "not" statement in the lead sentence. North8000 (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC) (moved from below Unscintillating's comment) The lead states with emphasis that what we want is "not truth", and so that is what we are getting. (Unscintillating said it well) Time for a change! North8000 (talk) 00:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
Weak support as I am not sure that rewriting it is the only way of solving the problem. Actually we have two problems: (1) Editors who really and honestly believe that we should make Wikipedia say something that we know is not true. Just because reliable sources agree it is true and we want to be consistent. (2) Editors who pretend to be of type (1) when it fits their agenda. It saves them from agreeing with a consensus that they cannot plausibly disagree with. Both problems are relatively rare but should be addressed. I don't care whether this is done by changing the text or by adding a clear explanation that (1) is not the intended meaning. Maybe neither is needed, but just a strong consensus in this discussion, to which we can then point whenever the matter comes up again. HansAdler16:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Support. "Verifiability" to this point hasn't even been defined in terms of whether a reliable source has actually been cited, or whether a reliable source could easily be found and cited ("Abraham Lincoln was an important figure in the American Civil War."). Moreover, the world "truth" in the phrase not truth has been perverted: it apparently refers to NOT an editor's idea of truth if it cannot (even in theory) be supported by a reliable source. Which is an extremely odd use of the word "truth," and a very bad way to use it. The concept invoked is something like "a personal controversial version of truth in the WP editors' mind, that could not be supported with a reliable source." THAT is what WP deprecates, but calling that thing "truth" is an abomination, and an insult to truth. WP does seek truth (what good is an encyclopedia that does not?) It just doesn't seek "personal truth." Editors are asked to keep that to themselves.SBHarris18:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Suggest shortening to "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source," dropping the words "not whether editors think it is true", because I've seen them misused to dismiss demonstrably well-founded concerns about source accuracy. See #Proposal 2, below. --JN46616:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Support - The problem isn't with truth being in Wikipedia, everyone wants that. The problem is with what some editors think is true, which may in fact be FALSE. The phrase "verifiability, not truth" is misleading. Remove the "not truth" part. The phrase "not whether editors think it is true" at the end of the sentence is correct and right on the mark. Also, "The threshold" is ambiguous and may mean it's enough to just to be verifiable in order to be included in Wikipedia, which is definitely not correct and everyone here agrees that verifiability alone is not enough to be included in Wikipedia. There's NPOV, etc. This can be fixed by changing "The threshold" to "A requirement" or "A minimum requirement". Please see Proposal 4 below. 75.47.143.156 (talk) 14:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
. It's neccesary to mention that debates for inclusion don't depend on whether something is true or not. Truth is highly subjective, and endlessly arguable. Verifiabilty can be easily checked. If we imply that truth is a matter of consideration in our decision making process, we will encourage original research, endless arguments, and walls of text. We'll never reach consensus on anything. LK (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
I don't think the statement itself is problematic, and I don't think it should be removed or changed... However, I think the explanation of it may be incomplete. As written, it correctly excludes unverifiable information, even if it is "true". What it is missing is a follow up statement on what to do about clearly untrue (or inaccurate) information that happens to be verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
There's nothing wrong with the current wording, and changing it will open the floodgates to every crank who thinks they know the TRUTH™. Even now we are inundated with them, but this wording at least helps mitigate the worst of it. Jayjg (talk)22:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
The idea that "verifiability, not truth" is the threshold for inclusion is widely used and well-understood on Wikipedia. Some people here are saying there have been attempts to insert material known to be false because of it, but I've personally never seen an example of that in over six years of regular editing; and if such examples do exist, they are rare. For the most part, the idea makes clear to editors that what we do on Wikipedia is supply a survey of the relevant literature, regardless of our personal views. That's not just a means to an end (where what we're really doing is aiming for "truth"), as others have argued. Offering a good summary of the appropriate literature is an end-in-itself. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
Wording is fine. Like I've said before, Wikipedia's policies don't currently allow individual editors to assert personal authority over what is true or not. We're only allowed to declare something as true if it says so in a reliable, verifiable source. Therefore, verifiability trumps whatever we personally feel to be true. Cla68 (talk) 02:08, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
It's fine, and we understand what it means. (Those who don't can be pointed at Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth.) And if you need to see the problems with demanding that articles present "the Truth™", then I recommend that you spend a while hanging out at articles about mental illness, where people occasionally name "personal experience" as a "citation" for claims about (for example) the laws for involuntary commitment in their home countries. There's an ongoing dispute in articles related to saturated fat about whether the mainstream view (eating a lot of saturated fat is bad for the heart) has been completely wrong for decades. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
The statement is fine because "the truth" can only be proven via verifiable reliable sources. Anyone can go and claim that something is not "true" and remove it from an article even if it's well sourced, that's why wikipedia is not about truth. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
As has been said above, surely better than I can say it, the present wording is fine. As "truth" so often depends on the viewpoint of the speaker, we have to use the standard of whether or not something can be verified from a "reliable source", and "threshold" is a succinct way of saying that verifiability is a condition that must be met for inclusion in Wikipedia, but doesn't guarantee inclusion. -- Donald Albury09:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
Discussion
As above, my beef is that it creates an artificial dichotomy of truth and verifiability as distinct endpoints (which they are), but what needs to be emphasised is verifiability is a means to an end. Casliber (talk·contribs) 12:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Some people above seem to be under the impression that "verifiability" (or "whether a source says something") is an objective matter. It isn't, of course - determining whether a source is "reliable" in a given instance is no less a subjective process than determining whether a given statement is "true" (in fact it quite often comes down to the same thing - we conclude that a source is unreliable if the statements it's making appear not to be true). And pushers of fringe theories can exploit verifiability too - by insisting that the sources that support their viewpoints are just as reliable as those that oppose them (or even making WP reproduce claims from fringe sources as the truth, just because no-one happens to have found a mainstream source that specifically contradicts the claims in question).--Kotniski (talk) 14:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Couldn't "threshold" just as likely imply the end of a process? Passing a literal threshold means you've entered the house - you're home, dry, and can finally relax in front of the snooker. (And of course something doesn't become a "fact" by virtue of being supported by "reliable sources", or a "factoid" by not being so supported - I don't really know what you're trying to say with that.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
Poll Results: After a week, it seems clear that the poll on this proposal is coming down to "no consensus", with roughly equal support and oppose views expressed. This usually means we default to "Keep as is". Do we need to continue, or shall we accept that the proposal is not going to be adopted? Blueboar (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
I'd be happy if people could see that they've lost when they plainly have... but I know that my own optimism and faith in my fellow editors sometimes prevents me from seeing such things myself when I'm on the other side. Consequently, I think we can reasonably expect another week of time-wasting arguments here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 29 April 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. As previous proposals have been retrieved from the archives and restored to the page, I'm restoring this poll too. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS
Current tussle over active vs. passive wording
The current borderline-edit war is essentially one of active vs. passive wording in various places in the early paragraphs. I know that there are probably other issues involved underneath this, and also that a previous consensus towards active has been referenced. I myself said that it was minor baby step and a good place to start dealing with the ownership problems that this policy has. But in the end it should come down to which is better, and a civilized way to decide it. Which do you think is better? North8000 (talk) 14:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
I couldn't say it more clearly than that. Nevertheless, I would add that clarity seems to me the sine qua non for a policy statement. One of the difficulties with any policy is that there may be varying interpretations of it. Use of the passive voice and the conditional tense allows for myriad interpretations. This is great for those into hermeneutics, but it is hell for those trying to work collaboratively with other editors to determine the best wording for an article. In helping newcomers or in trying to resolve disputes I have found clear policy to be a great benefit. Sunray (talk) 15:20, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Myriad interpretations are not necessarily bad, and sometimes policy statements are deliberately vague. For example, when there is a consensus as to broad principal, but no consensus on finer interpretation. The wording may reflect a compromise position... supporting the broad principal but intentionally giving flexibility in finer interpretations. Blueboar (talk) 15:34, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, agreed. As long as there is a very clear "policy statement" that users can base those more nuanced interpretations on. So I think that it needs to be a combination of clear principle and then more general guidance (much of which could also be set out in guidelines). Sunray (talk) 15:49, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Policies must be clear, and brief, if there's to be any chance at all that people will read them. Where two warring factions of editors have compromised on vague and waffly wording in a policy, it's our job to clarify the offending text or excise it completely. (Also, the pedant in me wants to remind you that "principal" doesn't mean the same thing as "principle".)—S MarshallT/C15:55, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Passive
Once I clear the underlying ownership problem out of my brain, I'm afraid that I have to be a turncoat. IMHO passive sounds less bossy. North8000 (talk) 14:24, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Passive. It has an objective tone and is more authoritative, which is essential for Policy - especially core policies like this one and WP:BLP, where we need to make it clear that unsourced contentious material absolutely has to be removed. Dreadstar☥21:17, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Passive. Agree with Dreadstar, passive sound more objective and authoritative. Also, changing "unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed" to "Please remove unsourced contentious material about living persons" - this isn't a request, it's a requirement. Jayjg (talk)01:56, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Passive. The passive voice has the advantage of sounding less bossy and more authoritative, because it addresses itself to readers in general, and doesn't appear to be scolding anyone in particular. It's a myth that there's anything wrong with the passive voice; it's correct to use it where the subject matter is being addressed or emphasized, rather than the audience, which is precisely the case with policies (see here, for example). We're not concerned here with agency—with "who" does X—rather, X simply has to be done in the situations the policy describes; what matters is the situations. That's particularly important for the issues that address BLP.
S Marshall was also changing sentences such as: "This policy requires that all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed ...". "This policy" is the grammatical subject of the sentence, because the sentence is about "this policy"—to distinguish it from the previous sentence, which is about the NOR policy's requirement that everything be attributable. So his edit to that sentence (where he removed "this policy requires") changed the meaning, not only the grammar. All in all, the current mix of passive and active is clearer. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS06:42, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Undecided
I agree with North's comment that passive sounds less "bossy". On the other hand, this is a core policy... "Bossy" may be appropriate in some instances. I am currently undecided on which is better (and probably will end up being inconsistent... preferring passive for one sentence and active for another). If there are "other issues" underneath the choice, I would appreciate someone laying them out (as those might help me to determine which should be used). Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Proposals for lead paragraph
There are so many good ideas that these discussions do go anywhere. Let's list them all together, vett them down to two, work on and choose between the two. Then that one is the proposed change.....cast a wider net for comments, and decide whether or not to do it. North8000 (talk) 11:12, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
List of proposals
Feel free to edit anything here, but no discussion in this section please
#43 Replace the first sentence of the lead paragraph with: All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means it is not enough for information to be true; readers must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it.
#8000 replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability."
#3 replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.1
...
Notes
1.^ For continuity, the previous version of this text read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
The footnote would go in the notes section at the end of the policy and remain longer term.
Discussion on proposals
I suggest removing "notability of the subject". That's not relevant to edits or to verifiability. Notability is what we use to decide whether a subject should have its own standalone article, it's not for individual facts or sources.—S MarshallT/C21:57, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree. Of course, anyone can edit it, but that makes two of us and I'm taking it out. North8000 (talk) 22:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
This proposal looks unopposed. If that remains so, we should drop it in. Going, going, ... --JN46621:11, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Agree that notability doesn't apply, but it does mention weight and could helpfully mention "significance to the subject" which is of course a WP:WEIGHT issue. Not essential as the policies work together, just sayin'. . . . dave souza, talk21:33, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, more importantly, why no replacement for "all quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material"? Suggest the following . . dave souza, talk21:46, 16 May 2011 (UTC) –
Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, and must not substitute original research for a source. All quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed in the form of an inline citation that directly supports the material.
The proposed wording above only replaces the lead paragraph, so the "All quotations ..." sentence is still there. Unless there is a salient objection to the proposal, I'll shortly drop it in, to replace "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." --JN46600:10, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Debate over "Truth" - Principals or Language?
Before we discuss proposals, I want to find out if this is a debate over broad principals, or just a debate over narrow language.
Well, if we disagree on broad principals, then we have more a fundamental issue to discuss. There is no way we can agree on language if we disagree on the principals that language is trying to explain. Blueboar (talk) 15:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm having a bit of a problem with the statemets. Am I supposed to assume that 'think' means that the person has no reliable source and 'know' means the person has a reliable source? Or can it apply to unreliable sources or just because the person is an expert in the area? I must admit I'm much happier with statements which talk about things that can be seen and we possibly can see an unreliable source but we can see inside the heads of experts, though possibly we can follow some reasoning that wouldn't be admissable under common sense or CALC. Dmcq (talk) 09:15, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
This is why I included the word "purely" ... so we are talking about situations where someone wants to add/remove a statement that they honestly believe to be true/untrue, but can not (or will not) point to any source to support the addition/removal. Situations where the ONLY reason given for the addition/removal is "this is true/untrue". Blueboar (talk) 13:21, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Please indicate whether you agree or disagree with the following statements (feel free to add additional statements):
1) All material in Wikipedia must be verifiable (but not necessarily verified)
The above statement is a good policy statement. Some of the statements below are not properly worded as policy, imo. Policy, by convention, usually uses "shall" or "must" to indicate an obligation to do something. "Should," which is the conditional, is more appropriate to guidelines. Sunray (talk) 02:51, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Agree everything must be verifiable, but sometimes things are verifiable but not in the sense that they are directly stated by sources, for instance it might be commonsense or a straightforward calculation that restates miles in kilometers or a notable list might include something where no source says it is notable in that respect or a summary of some paragraphs might put things together in a straightforward way without doing a synthesis to advance a new point, examples or illustrations also are given a bit of leeway if they don't advance anything new, there's all sorts if things. Dmcq (talk) 09:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
As per comment of Sunray I believe the verb "must" makes this question non-optimal. It approaches being a straw man. The sentence describes what must be the aim of editors, not what every edit must achieve.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
2) Editors should not add unsourced material, purely on the grounds that they think it is true.
The common situation here is addition of material where several editors agree that it is true and nobody claims it be be false. North8000 (talk) 15:13, 13 May 2011
Since this means I don't agree that it is categorically agreeable as written, I switched from "decline to answer" to "disagree" North8000 (talk) 12:54, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
The phrase "they think it is true" is being used in some specific meaning, which doesn't necessarily cover all reasonable situations where this would occur. I guess North8000 would agree here. The reason why I put my signature in the "disagree" box is because I can give very reasonable counterexamples. I also think that in the hard sciences, you do edit primarily based on "Truth", verifiability from citations to the literature comes next. So, the threshold for inclusion for such topics really is "truth", in the sense that the editors must have a consensus that a proposed edit is correct. Also, if someone comes up with a source for a statement which doesn't sound plausible, it will not make it into the article if talk page arguments lead to the conclusion that it cannot be correct.
The reason why this then doesn't lead to OR, is because the editors do stick to the NOR rule; the truth of a statement does belong to the realm of accepted scientific knowledge. Editors use their scientific knowledge (which is based on sources, but these may be textbooks) to make sure that no nonsense can make it into articles. But this may require doing some "research" and "synthesis" of known knowledge that can be found in textbooks in ways that are routine in the field. Count Iblis (talk) 15:17, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Weakly disagree, there are cases when I've added stuff that I reckon I'll get round to sourcing later. Generally uncontroversial stuff. I figure this is more conducive to encyclopedia improvement than the stuff not being there in the first place. Not prudent for difficult topic areas though. Casliber (talk·contribs) 15:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
In which case... I am not sure you are adding it purely because you think it is true... it sounds like you are adding it because you think it is verifiable (and will get around to actually verifying it later). Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
There is another case: Material does not have to be sourced if it is generally accepted to be true. As WP:VER currently puts it: "In practice you do not need to attribute everything." When is a reliable source required? "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source." I don't have to find a source for the statement "the city of Vancouver, BC is at the mouth of the Fraser River." Sunray (talk) 02:00, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree this question is a straw man, and hence less useful than it should be. The question should have been whether editors should not add material purely on the grounds they think it is verifiable? I believe that defines the more subtle point of realistic disagreement better.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
3) Editors should not remove sourced material purely on the grounds that they think it is untrue
. If an otherwise reliable source publishes something that we know is wrong, we're under no obligation to repeat the mistake here. I should point out that I'm referring to situations where there is no content dispute. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
comment
Decline to answer. Wording includes a straw man version of the topic that it is discussing.North8000 (talk) 14:26, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
If there is a consensus that material is not correct, then I don't see why it would remain in the article. Proper sourcing is one argument why the material would be correct. But in this case, the editors would have taken that into account and still decided that the material is not correct, or there are sufficient questions about the correctness of the material to merit removal. Count Iblis (talk) 15:22, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
The word "think" is problematic. I have removed source material if I have found higher quality soruce material contradicting it. It also helps if I understand something about how the refs came about. So is this "thinking" or "knowing" or what? Casliber (talk·contribs) 15:36, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I would say your actions are more along the lines of statement #4... you are challenging the material because you have a contradicting source that you think is more reliable, not purely because you think it is untrue. Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm talking about material covered in a RS which is patently false, and which nobody is claiming is true, an no found RS addresses the false claim. Happens all of the time. North8000 (talk) 16:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Per Casliber. Also, if a paper quotes an anonymous source making an outrageous or salacious claim, editors may be called upon to remove the claim per WP:BLPGOSSIP policy. In this case, it is not even necessary for the editor to think that the claim is untrue, it is enough for an editor to think that the claim's truth is questionable, even though it's verifiably published. Example. Likewise, if editor consensus is that a source is in clear error, and it is not a matter of significant points of view disagreeing, then editors should remove the material. --JN46617:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Again, in this case you are removing because the source is based on anonymous claims, and not purely because you think it untrue. Blueboar (talk) 17:50, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I understand perfectly what you mean; but an editor who has an investment in having embarrassing material in a BLP (because the subject is a climate change denier, Scientologist, gay basher or what have you) will tell you that it is "purely because you think it is untrue." --JN46618:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
BLPs should still be subject to explicit requirements for explicit verification of derogatory or potentially defamatory content. Most articles are not BLPs. LeadSongDogcome howl!18:40, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree with North8000 that the wording contains a straw man version of the topic it is discussing. I would add that if I am a subject matter expert, I may well challenge a source that I know to be a minority or discredited opinion in a particular field. (Of course, this depends on how the source is used). Sunray (talk) 02:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
OK, I can see your point (and have included a re-worded question below)... it wasn't intended as a straw man, it was simply poorly worded. (calling it a straw man assumes I am trying to make an argument in favor or against the statement... I posted these statements not to argue them, but simply to find out whether we agree/disagree, and what we agree/disagree about.) Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I would once again think that this question would have been more useful if the word truth was replaced by the word verifiable. I am sometimes accused of being inclusionist, but I do remove un-sourced material when I am confident it is not verifiable, and I think this is common practice.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
4) Editors are allowed to challenge sourced material they think is untrue (explaining why they think so) and may remove if there is a consensus to do so
This statement contains an important distinction. To me, a challenge requires presenting some sort of rational or evidence to support it. Effectively it says: "this is untrue because of x,y and z"... it moves the discussion beyond a simple belief in the truth/untruth of the material. Blueboar (talk) 14:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Precisely, yes. For redundant emphasis, I would highlight the verb in Blueboar's comment:
"... moves the discussion beyond a simple belief ..."
Sure you can... the difference is the distinction between removing "purely" on belief of untruth (a subjective decision) and removing based on rational or evidence of "truth/untruth" (an objective decision). #3 is a unilateral act done without discussion, #4 is a consensus act done after discussion. Blueboar (talk) 17:19, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Once again, people should challenge material because on the basis of whether they believe it can be verified, not true. I believe it is commonly accepted practice to accept that material in Wikipedia which you think is not true, can remain, if it can be verified.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
This proposal seems to allow a consensus to override NPOV. Even inaccurate statements can be significant points of view. The idea that a group of editors could decide to remove well-sourced, neutral, relevant material just because they believe it's wrong (without any evidence) could be disastrous, and lead to more one-sided articles and content disputes. Will Bebacktalk12:15, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Truth™ isn't especially important here, but it's not hard to find a (bad or misinterpreted) source that actually says "1+1=3" or "Congress is not permitted to make any laws"; the fact that a source not only exists, but also has been named in the article, should not prevent us from correcting errors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
additional statements
OK... a few more statements, which may help us to clarify previous opinions:
5) Editors should not add unverifiable material simply because they think it true
I unrefactored (the edit was to cross out "simply because they think it is true")... at least ask before you change what someone else wrote.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Blueboar (talk • contribs) 23:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
= invincible against attack based on thousands of words of policies and guidelines.
As I said in my comments on #2, do not need to be sourced because they are generally accepted principles or facts. I don't need to source the statement "the earth revolves around the Sun." Sunray (talk) 02:18, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
What about a statement like "God exists"? Humanity may disagree on the nature of God, but most of humanity agrees that God exists in some form... so that statement is generally accepted as being both factual and true. However, the statement about the earth is verifiable while the statement about God can not be. Blueboar (talk) 11:40, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I woud suggest that any statement that is a generally accepted principal or fact would be trivial to source, and if such is challenged/removed, the best course is to cite a reference for same. --Nuujinn (talk)19:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
The statement that "God exists" is easily verifiable. It is not unquestioned, and it is not provable (in a scientific/phsyical knowledge sense), but it is very easy to provide a list of sources that directly say that God exists (and also to find a list of sources that directly say that God does not exist.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
6) Editors may remove unverifiable material purely because they think it is untrue.
Any unverifiable material may be removed... because it is unverifiable (the issue of truth is actually irrelevant here). Blueboar (talk) 16:10, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
Again, oppose the unrefactored wording because it implies the rationale for removing unverifiable material matters. If it is unverifiable, it can and should be removed.LeadSongDogcome howl!17:12, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Again I think the wording is bad. We should not remove material because we think it is untrue. We would remove it if we think BOTH that it is unverifiable and untrue, of course.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
The way I read the statement, this treats material that is both unverifiable and untrue. An editor could challenge the removal, but I think they would have to provide a reference supporting the restoral of the information. --Nuujinn (talk)19:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
7) Editors may remove verifiable material purely because they think it is untrue
Broadly agree; it's often an NPOV issue. However, in the Philip Mould case, this thinking is precisely what led to a false claim, which caused real-life damage, being reinserted in the BLP again and again by established editors, while the newbie who tried to take it out got warning after warning. It just is not black and white: you have to look at the source, and assess its reliability. Does it quote an anonymous source? Does it look like it was properly researched, or simply copied from somewhere? --JN46617:31, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I suppose, but BLPs are held to a higher standard of inclusion than other articles. That's why we have a separate policy for them.
Yes, but it's complicated. If the source clearly screwed up (and you "know" this because all the other sources disagree with it), or if the source is tiny minority/fringe view, you should normally remove it—but you should cite DUE as your reason, not V or NOR. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Goes too far... It could be used to disallow verifiable statements of opinion that contradict official records etc. and minority (but not fringe) viewpoints Blueboar (talk) 23:56, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
I sort of agree, but the question is written with the verb "may", and not as an absolute "must". I believe "may rarely" would be more acceptable. The problem with the way it has been worded and answered now is that it now looks like you and Sunray are saying that we can never remove verifiable material even if it is uncontroversially considered to be wrong and in conflict with all the best sources by a large consensus of good faith editors. For example we would never be allowed to delete a weak source which is, let's say, full of spelling mistakes and saying nothing that other quoted sources already say?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:04, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Important clarification needed As written this can have two completely different meanings:
1 The editors are not forbidden from making such an edit
2 That such a removal carries weight / can stick due to having such a basis.
OK, I can already tell that we do have some fairly fundamental disagreements on the principles that underlie the first sentence (Principals? I suck at spelling, which is one reason I work on talk pages rather than edit articles... anyway...) If we can not reach a consensus on these, I don't think there is any point in discussing language changes.
The key disagreement seems to be this: under what circumstances should unverifiable material be added, and under what circumstances should verifiable material be removed.
Note... I think we all agree that there are some statements are so easily and obviously verifiable that we do not need to actually provide a source ("Paris is the capital of France" being the typical example). We could if required, but we don't have to do so (unless challenged?). I make a distinction between unverifiable and unsourced. Blueboar (talk) 04:03, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Basically agree, didn't chip in earlier as it looks very complicated and voting is evil. In my humble opinion, unverifiable info should never be added, but inline verification may not be essential unless the material is challenged or likely to be challenged. To take the typical example, there will be some circumstances where we don't need a source that "Paris is the capital of France" but it's verifiable if needed. In other circumstances a source is needed: taking a current dispute, if a source showed that Lia Looveer had visited Paris in April (none do that I've seen) it would still be original research or synthesis to put in the article that "in Springtime Looveer visited Paris, the capital of France" unless the source discussing Looveer specifically made the point that Paris is the capital of France. Without such a source, there's no evident significance of the info to the topic. So, depends on circumstances, but the principle is that everything must be verifiable, and if disputed must be verified by citation. The practice involves a reasonable balance. . . dave souza, talk05:40, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
An example of where "Verifiability not Truth" works
Take a look at our article on King Edward II of England. At the start of the article it gives his date of death as: 1327(?). The question mark is there because there is disagreement as to when (and how) he died. The consensus of the mainstream is that he died (possibly murdered) at Berkeley Castle in 1327. However, there is a minority view that he did not die in 1327, but survived and lived in Italy until 1341. There are primary sources that support both views, but there is disagreement over which sources and interpretations are considered reliable.
Many supporters of the mainstream (1327) view firmly and honestly believe that the minority view is revisionist hogwash, and that the sources supporting dates after 1327 are either deliberate forgeries, or are merely repeating rumor... they believe that a death date of 1327 is "true". Many supporters of the minority view firmly and honestly think that the sources claiming that Edward II lived until 1341 are valid, and that mainstream view ignores this evidence... they believe that a death date of 1341 is "true".
If we allow "truth" to determine inclusion, we can not resolve this dilemma. We could easily end up with supporters of each side edit warring over the date... constantly changing the date of death given in the article back and forth based on their certainty that one date is "true" and the other date is 'untrue".
However, because we don't allow "truth" to determine inclusion, we end up with a stable article. We acknowledge that both views are verifiable, and may be included. However, following WP:UNDUE, we give precedence to the mainstream view ... listing the majority 1327 in the lede (and not listing the 1341 date)... but with a question mark added to indicate that there is a minority view, which is discussed later in the article.
If you require that truth be established beyond a resonable doubt (given all the reliable sources that exist), then that could also work. Neither of the dates can be stated as a fact, because there is reasonable doubt about both dates. You can believe quite strongly that 1327 is the correct date because the case of 1341 is weak, but it is not ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt.
Then, using truth on a meta level, you can focus on the content of sources. Obviously what a source says is easily established beyond a reasonable doubt, so there is no problem here. Then you can look at criticisms of both POVs in reliable sources. Eventually, you would end up with the same result. Count Iblis (talk) 15:33, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Count Iblis. Taking this a bit further, the particular example is one where the definition of the answer is agreed upon, (the number in the "year" part of the calendar when his body ceased to function, unlike matters of opinion where this is not the case e.g. "is Obama a good or bad president?") although the answer itself is not known for sure and so the answer is not agreed on. North8000 (talk) 15:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps I am misunderstanding, but it sounds like you are arguing that we should change the policy to WP:Reasonable doubt, and abandon the concept of "Verifiability" entirely... which to my mind would be far to drastic a change. Blueboar (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Not sure which post you are speaking about. I have only one theme here......that editors should strive for accuracy, and the policies should stop undermining that effort. And I am attacking the red herring often used to undermine that: "everything is just a matter of opinion" because sometimes there IS such a thing as objective accuracy, and those times are identifiable. North8000 (talk) 16:51, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Nobody is proposing giving up the verifiability requirement. This is just about removing badly written sidebar policy wording that undermines the idea of striving for accuracy. North8000 (talk) 22:20, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
The thing is though, Blueboar, this type of problem has nothing to do with verifiability, and we shouldn't press verifiability into service to do this job as well. This is a classic NPOV problem: there is a significant minority opinion that has to be represented. Verifiability is only about either view being actually a published view. --JN46607:28, 16 May 2011 (UTC)
I disagree, the "not truth" quailification is central to WP:Verfiability. I think that those who argue to remove "truth" from the lead miss the point, that 'truth' is most widely assumed by lay-peoples to be the requirement for inclusion in an encyclopedia. Nothing else is automatically assumed by non-Wikipedeans to be the requirement for inclusion. And so, we need something in the lead to inform them that we do things differently here. It's not enough to argue and convince the other editors of the truth of a matter (and it's not even relevant); to include something, verifiable reliable sources must be provided. This is the idea that WP:Verfiability most needs to convey. LK (talk) 09:36, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Don't the editors here see the difference between "truth" and "what editors think is the truth"? Discussions at Wikipedia articles can only determine "what editors think is the truth", which is not necessarily the truth. The phrase "verifiability, not truth" is terribly misleading. The correct idea to convey is "verifiability, not what editors think is true". 75.47.156.78 (talk) 12:21, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
Jayen, I agree that this is (in part) a NPOV issue... "truth" is one of those areas where WP:V and WP:NPOV intersect. Whether something is "true" or not is a matter of POV. And those who think we should add/remove based purely on truth are violating NPOV. In some ways, the opening line is saying "the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not your personal POV as to whether something is true"... but simply saying "truth" gets to the point more directly. Blueboar (talk) 13:05, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I think Blueboar is correct. I do agree that the concept of truth and the concept of accuracy lie behind our concept of verifiability, but we need a way to distinguish these concepts or theories from the ways that we actually put these targets into practical effect in the least controversial and most consensus forming way - and that is what verifiability is about. Anything which is stated to be true is stated to be true, but that is not enough to be in Wikipedia. In Wikipedia we want it to be something that can be shown to be stated to be true by notable sources and/or mainstream experts, basically in order to avoid that Wikipedia becomes a place where almost anything can be posted.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:50, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
It does get there more directly, and I found the formulation very useful to me 5 years ago, because I really needed to think about it, but I've since seen that it does so at a cost, as pointed out previously (the Sam Blacketer discussion, and the use of the phrase to defend poor sources as though it really didn't matter what we write about people as long as someone else has written something like that before). We can make the same point just as effectively without incurring that cost, e.g. per Ocaasi's proposal 43 above. --JN46600:07, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, there are different scenarios. In the Sam Blacketer case, the community decided to delete the article rather than have it state patent untruths. In the Mould case, the allegations should not have been added to the BLP at all. In the case of the Guardian's "fun" piece, "Listed Scientologists", which appeared cribbed from Wikipedia, the consensus view was in the end that it was an unreliable source. In other cases, such as notable conspiracy theories, or where an opinion as to a matter of fact is notable, views can be attributed ("So-and-so believes that X secretly runs the world", or "So-and-so believes Obama was [not] born in the United States"), and the controversy described neutrally. I still view the primary purpose of WP:V though as ensuring that any statements that might be challenged are verifiable, or are deleted. WP:V defines what we need to exclude; WP:NPOV defines what we need to include. By the way, can you live with proposal 43? It hasn't attracted opposition, and I'm planning to implement it if none is forthcoming. It would no longer include the "not truth" wording. --JN46601:00, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, since you're not one of the owners, you need a RFC with lots of respondents and overwhelming consensus to make any change. :-) But seriously, I'm ready to go with 43 or 8000 today, but I had proposed a lengthier process....picking the favored proposal, and then casting a wider net to decide whether or not to implement it....so that we don't keep going in circles. North8000 (talk) 01:17, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
7:0 with one abstention is consensus on most talk pages, even policy ones. I don't particularly want to go in circles either, though. --JN46601:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
2:0 is a consensus too, but it's not sufficient for significant changes to core policies. However Prop 43 doesn't seem like a significant change. Will Bebacktalk02:08, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't object to the language in proposal 43... but I think the current language is better and so would support proposal 44 (Keep as is). Blueboar (talk) 01:27, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I totally do not understand why 43 has been revived, for example, one of the sentences is, "This means that it is not sufficient for information to be true; editors must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true." I had expected that my response to 43 would kill 43 forever:
We don't "check that a reputable source says it is true", for example it is verifiable that the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948 stated "Dewey Defeats Truman".Unscintillating (talk) 23:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)"
We can print verifiable material that may or may not be true if such material merits attention. If verifiable material is known to be or even likely to be untrue, this should reduce or greatly reduce the WP:Due weight we give the material, and this may require discussion, including a discussion of whether to use Wikipedia's voice or report the material with inline attribution. For example, we would never report, "Dewey defeated Truman in the 1948 U.S. presidential election.>reference<", we would say, "The Chicago Tribune reported in a headline on November 3, 1948 that Dewey defeated Truman." Unscintillating (talk) 02:43, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Exactly! Because you know it not to be true - what I mean with 43 is to be taken with some common sense. Obviously we aren't full time fact checkers but there is some onus on us as intelligent human beings to take some sources with a grain of salt. Saying we don't do that is wrong, as you've illustrated with your example above Casliber (talk·contribs) 04:31, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I disagree... we should not remove/rephrase "Dewey defeated Truman in 1938" because we "knew" it to be untrue... we should remove/rephrase it because multiple reliable sources have noted (ie it is verifiable) that the Chicago Tribune rushed to print that night and made a mistake. ie, we can substantiate that this specific headline and report from the Trib is unreliable for a statement of fact about who won the 1948 election. It isn't a matter of belief in "truth", it is a matter of demonstrable error and reliability. Blueboar (talk) 13:32, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Cas, you recently posted a straw poll to ask whether change to the opening sentence was needed. There was no consensus for change, and that's not counting the people who commented against elsewhere on the page, but didn't add their names to the oppose list. It isn't fair to ignore that, then to keep on making proposals, then to resurrect only the one you like once the straw poll has been archived. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS07:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
@SV Fact is that proposals seem to get buried on this talk page in reams of discussion and meta-discussion, so no I don't feel abashed resurrecting proposals I think are sound when I feel that is what has happened. Fact is also that there are only a handful of people taking part in a discussion so that any "consensus" posted here to date is highly relative. Casliber (talk·contribs) 12:05, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps it would be better if the people who want the policy pages to have more respect for "the truth", to accept that this change is not going to happen gradually from the current versions, and that it is then better to draft a complete rewrite of all relevant policy pages on the Wiki-project about the policy pages. I think that the core of the problem is that this verifiability page does not acknowledge that there is a gap between mere verifiability and what it calls "the threshold for inclusion". The latter should i.m.o. be what can be reasonably true given the content of sources, according to a consensus of editors (or, put differently, what is not ruled out beyond a reasonable doubt, given what all sources say). Count Iblis (talk) 15:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
What to do; there was no consensus for staying with the present version either. It was a perfect 50:50 split -- 11 said the sentence should be changed, 11 said it should stay. Proposal 43 was posted well after that RfC. It has attracted significant support, and no opposes. We can't ignore that either. --JN46623:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Not to be difficult here... but to say it has attracted significant support is over stating the situation. I do agree that we don't have a consensus on much of anything right now (and I think it is still worth trying to achieve one) and I agree that the closest we have come to a consensus is proposal 43. However, I will also note that language that has been in a policy for a long time (as is the case here) is presumed to have the consensus of the wider community (ie people who may not have even known that this discussion was taking place and who were thus not involved in this discussion). This is why we have a "ties default to long standing language" stance when there is no consensus over changes. We need a demonstrable consensus supporting change in to over turn the presumed consensus to keep. Blueboar (talk) 23:29, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I guess you're right. Perhaps we should post a link to centralized discussion, and/or another RfC. For reference, the wording of the current proposal is, I believe, All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means it is not enough for information to be true; readers must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so. --JN46623:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I want to explore intent here... when we say "The threshold for inclusion is Verifiability, not Truth", I think what we really intend is: "Verifiability is the initial/primary threshold for inclusion/exclusion in Wikipedia. Truth/Untruth, on its own and without verifiability, is not a threshold for inclusion/exclusion." (Note: I am not suggesting this as proposed language, but to clarify intent.) Blueboar (talk) 15:40, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree, but don't like "threshold" so much, I would use "requirement" instead (or similar variant. But I know that use of threshold has been debated at length. --Nuujinn (talk)20:02, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Being clear on what we mean would be of benefit, as we don't want to give the impression that any part of the policy is an apophasis. Cla68 (talk) 22:55, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
That is sort of where I am coming from here. If we can reach a consensus on intent... then we may be able to resolve our disagreements over language. But first, we need to agree on intent. Blueboar (talk) 23:01, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Both the approach and description of intent sound good. "Threshold" is ambiguous, but for the purpose of a talk page description of intent, we know. North8000 (talk) 23:41, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Verifiability is a requirement for inclusion but there is no requirement to include verifiable material. Verifiable material includes material that may be untrue and includes material that may be true. Material that may be true but that is not verifiable is not suitable for inclusion or further discussion. Unscintillating (talk) 23:58, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, there are lots of reasons not to include verifiable material... but "this is untrue" (without evidence to support that assertion) is not a valid reason for not including verifiable material. Blueboar (talk) 01:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
The parenthetical material in the previous comment is a straw man, since no one is talking about assertions of untruth without evidence, and the translation of the previous comment becomes, "Verifiability is a substitute for truth on Wikipedia". The discussion of accuracy doesn't end just because the material is verifiable. The point is that it is reasonable for editors to evaluate verifiable material that may be inaccurate as part of a due weight discussion. Dewey Defeats Truman is an example in which WP:RS sources document the inaccuracy of the verifiable material. Furthermore, the inaccurate statement has sufficient ["prominence"] to be worth mentioning. But it is hardly the case that all verifiable inaccurate material has WP:RS sources to identify the inaccuracy. In 1930 Palm Island Tragedy reliable sources give another spelling for "Prior". By various means we believe that "Prior" has more prominence than "Pryor", and we only mention the "Pryor" spelling as a footnote. But we have no WP:RS to say that the "Pryor" spelling is "wrong". Unscintillating (talk) 01:18, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
mathematical definition
Does the WK guideline on verifiability apply to mathematical definitions and descriptions?
The opening sentence in Determinant, given without citation, is completely different from the definitions, consistent with each other, that are given in every one of the about ten encyclopedic works that deal entirely with mathematics or which have extensive coverage of mathematical topics in the public libraries and the main and departmental libraries of a major university close to my home that I have consulted, in the first 20 links from a Google search on "Determinant" except WK, in online textbooks that are current, in online course material, and throughout the literature of natural sciences.
The protagonists of the present opening sentence in the WK article claim it gives deeper insight than the traditional approach (started in the late 18th century). Is there need for a reference (with an accurate quotation) to an accessible work that DEFINES or introduces determinants informally in this way? The fact that a property can be DERIVED from a definition does not make the property a definition.
Also, does NPOV apply to mathematical definitions? A Google search on Determinant now suggests that the rest of the world and WK are out of step with each other as regards its definition. Is the mission of WK to put the world right, in the view of some WK editors, without verification that they their authority transcends that of the mathematicians and scientists who are part of the world that is out of step with WK in this respect?
The opening sentence of Determinant ("In algebra, the determinant is a characteristic number associated with a square matrix.") is clearly not a definition in the mathematical sense of the word. It just tries to give the reader a good idea of what it is about. This is part of our efforts to make our articles comprehensible to random readers. Sometimes we overdo it, but usually we get complaints that we are not doing enough in this direction. I think WT:WPM is a better location for this discussion. HansAdler13:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
What is the standard text book definition? I think the key here is whether our opening sentence is significantly different from most standard published works... if it is, there may be a case for saying our opening sentence is essentially Original research. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
The contrast between the comments just posted by Editors whose self-descriptions are as mathematician and historian, respectively, are significant. I think that aspects of WK issues that can be understood by non-specialists SHOULD be discussed outside the specialist project. I will prepare a response to Blueboar's comment that will contain LITERAL QUOTATIONS from enough encyclopedic sources for someone who not only knows no mathematics but does not even speak English will see a commonality that is disjoint from the opening sentence in the Determinant lede. Two immediate questions about Hans Adler's comment. (1) Even if the opening sentence of a lede is not a definition, does it require verifiability by a citation in the lede or associated with a repetition or paraphrase in the body of the article? (2) (this is something a non-mathematician can check) What proportion of random readers will realize that the word "volume" in the opening paragraph is used here in the technical sense that includes areas and abstractions in multi-dimensional space, but that the word pair "characteristic number", which looks technical, and might lead a reader to search for a definition, get completely put off by encountering cohomology theory, without realizing that the word pair is being used in a non-technical sense (but with what interpretation of "characteristic")? Michael P. Barnett (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
I think the real problem here is that Wikipedia does not cover math and many other scientific topics like most encyclopedias do. Many articles are written to explain things to non-specialists and then you have to present material that can be found in textbooks to lay persons. But that requires adapting that material, because such textbooks are typically written for university students. You then can have many statements that are understandable, but non-verifiable to lay persons. The alternative would be to have a verifiable text that they cannot understand. Count Iblis (talk) 16:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
1. Does the preceding comment exempt WK articles on science and mathematics from the need for verifiability? Does it imply that intelligibility to a non-expert precludes verifiability? If so, a clear statement of this waiver and its reason in the guidelines would have warned me off WK (and would save other potential authors who think otherwise from getting involved)
2. Every major bookstore and library houses sections on "popular" books on science and mathematics, that are written for non-specialists and balance clarity and unnecessary technicality with accuracy. Their content can be verified easily with texts written for specialists. I would be extremely suspicious of "popular" books that could not.
3. In particular, articles on all topics in the Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) are written for non-specialists. The opening of the EB article on determinants mentions numbers, multiplication and addition but does not mention any ideas that are more advanced. The opening of the WK article requires awareness of multidimensional space and measure theory, linking to a separate article that goes beyond the mathematical content of math-for-scientist texts with which I am familiar. Does this accord with principle of intelligibility to non-specialist, and support the rationalization of non-verifiability in this instance? Michael P. Barnett (talk) 19:26, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
My answer appears unwikipedian if taken at the granular policy level but not at the big picture level. Are you saying that the opening sentence is FALSE, or, if not, is this just primarily wikilawyering in some kind of a tussle ? IMHO Hans's take is probably correct. This is just a sentence to get the reader started which does not purport to be a rigorous definition. My advice: If, being honest with yourself, you do not contest the accuracy of that sentence, then drop the tussle and move on. If you sincerely think that the opening statement is incorrect, then demand a cite which supports it. North8000 (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
The opening sentence (at present) is "In algebra, the determinant is a characteristic number associated with a square matrix." I consider the description of a determinant as a "characteristic number" in (language that is used in) algebra to be incorrect, because "characteristic number" has a technical meaning that does not apply. I think ANY editor can express a concern of this nature and, for the case in hand, request a citation to an accessible source that contains this description.
My credentials or lack thereof with regard to the teaching of mathematical literacy, and whether I am correct or incorrect are irrelevant in the WK context. Either there is a WK guideline on verifiability that applies or there is not. In contributing to WK over the past few months I have been at the receiving end of wiki-lawyering that at times I considered counter productive and thought I would never engage in.
I am not engaged in a tussle which I am trying to win. I am trying to determine if it is possible, by reasoned argument or, as a last resort by wiki-lawyering, to bring the WK article into step with the rest of the world. My expectation is that this is impossible. But the more extensive and varied the resistance, the more food this will provide for thought.
I am trying to be responsive to an article in the Guardian Weekly a fortnight ago, that stated the WK Foundation is concerned that so few academics contribute, in particular within their own field of expertize. I have asked for a citation, and my request has been ignored. I have asked for citations regarding a sentence in the article on measure theory that determinants links to, which states that an accepted term is a misnomer, without giving references to who uses the accepted term and who said it is a misnomer. I have turned to the verifiability talk page to find out how to get the citations, or if this is impossible. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 23:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
The way the lead is written is often the result of compromize between editors and the result is often not so good. If I had written the determinant article,I would have given a similar presentation as in my old lecture notes. I.e. a determinant is an anti-symmetric multilinear function of vectors such that .... Then you say that the determinant of a matrix is the previously defined determinant function applied to the column vectors considered as vectors. Count Iblis (talk) 23:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)
A few thoughts ... The sentence in question is part of the opening paragraph, or lede... and standard practice in Wikipedia is to not cite material in the lede ... this is because we are supposed to expanded upon what we say in the lede in subsequent sections of the article, and we would provide the citation to support the material at that point.
In a general encyclopedia, an article on a specialized topic or term should state an accurate but simplified "definition" in the lede, using language that the average reader will understand. This is so the average non-specialist reader (in this case an intelligent non-mathematician) to be able to look at the article and say "Ah... so that is what the term means." At the same time we want the average specialist (in this case a mathematician) to look at the article and say: "Yes, the definition they give in the lede is essentially correct (if simplistic)... ah, I see we go into more detail and provide sources later. Well done".
So, the questions we need to look at now are... 1) is the definition given in the lede of the Determinant article essentially correct ... and is that "good enough for the lede" definition expanded on later in the article (and properly cited at that point)? If so, I think it can stand. If not, then we need to fix the article. Blueboar (talk) 00:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your comments. I agree with them. I am responding as a courtesy, without hope of getting the problem remedied. Whether the opening paragraph of Determinants comprises a definition, implicit in your comment, or an explanation, implicit in other comments above, is immaterial to the questions of (1) is it wrong, (2) does understanding it require mathematical knowledge outside the experience of a reader who does not have at least undergraduate mathematical training, in contrast to the explanation at the start of the Encyclopedia Britannica article which is expressed in terms of addition, multiplication and numbers. I think the answers to both are YES. Throwing the verifibiality to the body of the article does not work, because the nuance of what I consider the most serious error in the lede is not repeated in the body. Deferring changes that I think needed in the lede until the article has been revised does not help because rewriting can be protracted indefinitely. I think that the absence of a mechanism for requesting verifiability of a lede is very dangerous. I do not know if there are channels within WK for pursuing this concern. If there are none, that too is dangerous. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 00:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Many thanks. I enjoyed reading the entire Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lead section). It deals directly with the immediate question which you answered and with my other concerns about the present lead. Also, I am reassured that I have not acted out of turn in going to this Talk page, and that the system is enabling progress. I will follow up on the Determinants Talk page of the article asap. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 12:57, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
Actually there is somewhat of an exception, meaning as long as the lead is just summarizing the (sourced) material of the article's main body, additional cites are usually not required since the verifiability of the material is already insured. That means contrary to the article's main body the lead is in indeed an exception (not to verifiability but (redundant) citations). However there are few (specific) exceptions, where (redundant) citations are needed in the lead nevertheless (such as direct quotes) and of course any content not being a real summary of the article's body and/or not being sourced in the article's main body would need to be sourced in the lead.--Kmhkmh (talk) 19:07, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
1. Now I have two opinions -- that the lede DOES require verification and that it does not. How do I get authoritative resolution?
There's no exception for leads in V, which is policy ("This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception ..."), and also none in LEADCITE, which is the relevant guideline. It's true that, where no one is challenging the lead because it's written in very general terms, editors sometimes choose not to add citations so as not to clutter it with footnotes. But if someone challenges it, a citation is needed. Ditto if it's something editors can anticipate will be challenged.
Having the citations only in the body of the article often isn't helpful, because readers tend to focus on the lead. It's also usually faster to add citations than to argue leads are an exception. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:42, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
That doesn't we need to promote non sensical demands or that authors need to bother with them. Clearly people should not demand (redundant) citations for what already sourced in the article's body. Yes many people might only read the lead of an article, but that's their problem and it means they won't read the citations anyhow. As far as providing verifiability is concerned, that usually already achieved when the article's body is sourced.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:55, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't think you can say that's their problem, K. If we believe readers tend to do this, we have to accommodate it. I think the problem stems from a misunderstanding of what a WP lead is. It's not an article abstract, as with academic papers. And it's not a lede, as in journalism. It's an introduction, defined by WP:LEAD, and nowhere does it say that it doesn't require citations if they're reasonably requested (so long as they're not of the "Paris is the capital of France" variety). Saying the cites are in the body of the text is no reason not to have them in the lead, i.e. on first reference. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS04:20, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
First reference doesn't work, since the real and more detailed information in the article's body will need a citation anyway, i.e. we get redundant citations. And the point here was, requesting a cite for something that is clearly sourced in the article's main body is usually not a reasonable request, but imho bureaucratic nonsense. We don't have to treat our authors and readers as idiots. While a lead in WP is not exactly the same as a lead in journalism or an abstract of a paper, it is essentially the same - in fact just "wikified" version. The goal of this guideline is assuring verifiability and if something is clearly sourced in the article's main body that goal is already achieved - period. Now if there is a strong disagreement whether some line is indeed an accurate summary of the (sourced) article's body, then an additional citation might be required or for very long article where the lead kinda is it's own short article there might be a need for citations too as well as for direct quotes. However those are more exceptional cases not really applying to the average article's lead where such citations are usually not needed.--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:51, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
In this case the demand for a citation is like that for a statement of the form "London is the capital and largest city of the United Kingdom". According to some that's false, because they use a very restrictive definition of "city" under which London is not a city at all, and each of the several parts of London that are cities is not the largest in the UK. In such a case it's not constructive at all to run to a noticeboard and complain about original research instead of trying to fix the lead or starting a discussion on the article's talk page. This is what happened here, and I am astonished that the discussion is still going on. Yes, using the words "characteristic number" in a non-technical sense in the lead is not a good idea. Yes, it should be changed. But no, this is not the right place to initiate the discussion about this problem, and starting from the angle, "The editors responsible for that article are doing something stupid" is not helpful at all. HansAdler06:58, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Well such discussions apparently reveal (somewhat hidden) disagreements regarding the understanding of this and related policies & guidelines. That's what's driving the discussion rather than the original question that started the thread.--Kmhkmh (talk) 23:51, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Break
I think that if you read what Blueboar,Kmhkmh and SlimVirgin said regarding regarding cites in the lead, you have a good answer regarding that. North8000 (talk) 02:37, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
WP has a math portal and mathematics project, the talk page of which is the appropriate place to raise questions regarding a math related subjects and to get expert advice.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:48, 9 May 2011 (UTC)
@Michael P. Barnett: I'm not quite sure what you are getting at, but a couple of points here:
The authoritative resolution ultimately always comes from (parts of) the community. In daily WP life that means first and foremost the various established policies and guidelines and after that the various special subject projects and portals, which in this case in the mathematics projects. Sidelining/circumventing such a projects with a lot of qualified editors is almost always a bad idea. For conflict resolutions there mediators, 3rd opinions and if all fails in the most obnoxious cases the ArbCom.
If the summary or accuracy of the lead is reasonably contested, then citations will be required. But this does not refer to contesting for contesting's sake.
It is important to keep the big picture in mind here. WP relies on voluntary work, so it is important to provide a comfortable atmosphere for authors. Overly bureacratic procedures are not suited for that and requiring, i.e. mandating (redundant) sourcing is not really helping here, in doubt they hamper our productivity rather than fostering it. Think of the lead as an abstract of an academic publication, where you usually don't cite either.
Many math topics offer various (essentially) correct ways to describe them, which one of them is picked for an article, i.e. which nuance might be the best, is a matter of taste of the involved authors and usually not question of sourcing/verfiability.
Expert editors often have slightly differing opinions about the optimal treatment of some math subject. However what matter to (most) readers is simply that the description is correct and good enough, they might care very little for the particular nuances by individual experts.
Extensive arguments over the optimal handling of some math subject, which already has a correct article turn often bitter and lead to frustration of all involved. In any case they are energy not well spend, as we have a large number of math and science articles that need real help and where improvements are urgently wanted and uncontroversial. That is articles which don't need help on nuances, but which still contain incorrect statements, errors, unreadable sections and where even the article's body is largely without sources. The energy of authors is spent much better on those articles rather than on nuances.
Edit conflict....only responding to Michael. :Michael, If I could give my attempted 30,000 view, including in a Wikipedia context. (if I am mistaken, my apologies) You feel that the lead sentence is not optimal. At the appropriate place, (the article talk page) you started a very civil and intelligent discussion on the matter, and someone responded in a like manner. They did not even directly disagree with you and, appeared open to further evolution and changes. Then the conversation just ended in it's infancy. No drama,no impasse, no dispute, it just ended. I noticed that you have never attempted to edit the article except to place the cleanup template. I think that you are mistakenly thinking that somebody "stopped you" there, or that the only way you can change the article is to convince somebody else to change it, and now you have to pursue these other venues to discuss it. I also noticed that you are a newer editor, and that Wikipedia has an article on you and it looks like your works could be a source cited by Wikipedia articles as readily as you could be an editor. Wikipedia is the place to be bold. And the main way that you change an article is by EDITING it. If your edit might be controversial, you can talk about it first. Or just try making the edit. You might get reverted, starting wp:brd. That too is a part of the rough-and-tumble fun and adventure here. Jump into the pool and start editing! North8000 (talk) 10:40, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Having just read this discussion a few notes:
Michael P. Barnett has written above, and SlimVirgin has responded in the same way, as if WP:V means everything in WP needs citations, but in fact WP:V only says that things need to be verifi-able, not verified. Just saying that a wording has no citation is not normally an acceptable reason for saying it fails WP:V. You should actually have a reason to think there is a problem. (For example, if you have no other way of judging it, this could be simply because no one answers a call for verification, though of course making accusations of WP:V failure when you have no reason apart from lacking knowledge yourself should be something people do only with caution.)
So keeping that in mind, in this case the only problem seems to be that to make a simple wording about a mathematical concept, you need to understand the complicated wordings one finds in textbooks also. So to me this seems to be about the common subject of what level of knowledge may be considered common knowledge. I think that there is an extreme position sometimes taken which would make most of WP supposedly in conflict with policy. I think eventually WP policy will need to define common knowledge in a more clear way. I believe it has to end up including undergraduate level knowledge which is commonly known, but not common knowledge to everyone, for example knowledge of mathematics, or knowledge of foreign languages.
I hope this makes sense. Basically I am agreeing, I think, with North8000 and Hans Adler, but I felt some side issues might require comment.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:40, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
NOR says that everything needs to be verifiable. V says that quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source, no matter where it is in the article. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS07:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
The issue here is applying common sense. Verifiability does not mean (easily) verifiable by anybody at anytime. Verification often needs some domain knowledge and in this context the iffy question is verifiably by who? or rather likely to be challenged by who?. There is no easy answer to that and the answer is context dependent. WP articles cover a vaste range of subject with different abstraction levels and you cannot really define some average reader knowledge applying for all of them. The best you can do is having a notion of the primary readership for a particular article and judge what is likely to be challenged by them.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:37, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, also note that this "domain knowledge" is often presented later on in the article, as part of explaining the concept to lay people. It is then difficult to have verifiablity for lay persons on statements who onlyhave read the lede. So, one should allow for introductory statements to be verifiable "a posteriori". Count Iblis (talk) 14:54, 11 May 2011 (UTC)
"V says that quotations and anything challenged or likely to be challenged needs a source, no matter where it is in the article"... but no policy or guideline demands that citations must be repeated every single time a fact is (except for (1) direct quotations and (2) contentious matter about living people). If you have a reason to write "an elephant is a mammal" six times on the same page, I do not think that any reasonable editor will demand that you supply the same citation each of those six times—or that it necessarily be supplied the first time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2011 (UTC)
It's not required that it be supplied on first reference, but that's the usual thing, to introduce a full name or title on first reference, or source, or whatever. Then use ref name after that, if needed. I can't really see why anyone wouldn't want to add a source to a lead if the material needs one. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS01:37, 13 May 2011 (UTC)
SV, yes sort of, but if your take your logic to extremes, (and people do it unfortunately), you are saying that our policies support behavior that comes down to edit warring and POV pushing, (for example if someone keeps adding tags to every sentence they disagree with, in a subject they have strong feelings about, without actually being able to give a rational reason for doubt). And of course this is a real problem on Wikipedia, not just a theoretical possibility. This is the old problem of the person who says, "yes this sentence has reason to be doubted, because I am a person and I just tagged it, so someone doubts it". The distinction between needing verification and needing to be verifiable is therefore important and something the community must insist on. The "anything likely to be challenged" caveat is much more controversial in the community, and much more difficult to get the balance right. But one thing which is clear is that there is no community consensus for allowing that caveat to be used in an extreme and automatic way, which is what you imply above when you imply that the difference between verifiable and verified/sourced can be ignored. It can not and should not be ignored. Tagging things as suspect without being able to explain why is not good normally.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:16, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree and a formalistic, somehwat mindless literal application is indeed a problem and I've seen some really dumb taggings. However the policy has to walk a fine lone, because it can be "abused" from to sides, one is misguided quality editors or even people without good faith (they exist after all) mindlessly challenging lines and the other one is people trying to circumvent our sourcing guidelines by simply declaring their content as "unlikely to be challenged". I don't see how any policy formulation can really fix that, such cases have to be dealt with on a case by case scenario. Personally I always read "likely to be challenged" as "likely to be reasonably challenged", i.e. people should be able to give some for of acceptable reasoning, why they doubt some content and why they think an inline citation is required. Simply finding a without a direct inline citation to it is certainly not an acceptable reason. If I come across such tags without any recognizable justification, I simply remove them without hesitation. --Kmhkmh (talk) 13:06, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
Back to my example above, of saying that an elephant is a mammal six times on the same page:
I agree that the usual thing to do is to supply the citation on the first mention—except when that first mention is in the lead, or when it is a trivial fact in an otherwise complex, multi-fact sentence (i.e., that the reader will believe any citation is about the rest of the facts rather than the mammalian nature, and supplying the citation there might mask the absence of citation for the sentence's main point, or might appear to be WP:Citation overkill), or when it is a mere passing mention and will be dealt with at great length on a subsequent statement.
I disagree that the usual thing to do is to supply six footnotes (one per sentence containing the words "elephant" and "mammal"), no matter how these are formatted. I believe instead that the usual thing to do is to assume that our readers are smart enough to find citations placed at some obvious point (which is usually the first mention outside of the lead), rather than needing them repeated after every single sentence that happens to contain some variation on the words "elephant" and "mammal", particularly if these six sentences happen to be in the same section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I still wonder why people don't like to cite on first reference, i.e. in the lead. With "an elephant is a mammal," it doesn't matter, but with "an elephant has been found not to be a mammal after all," it would matter a great deal. Why would there be a problem with supplying a citation for that in the lead, perhaps with the footnotes at the end of the paragraph so they're not too intrusive? SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS11:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
One reason is simply that "first cite" can create a lot of redundant citations. That's Because the information in the lead is summarized and less detailed, hence you cannot cite a source just in the lead but you will be forced to cite the same source for the more detailed version as well (otherwise the article's body is not properly sourced).
From my personal perspective it is a question of common sense as long as the lead provides an obviously correct summary of the article, I simply see no need for requiring citations in the lead as verifiability is already ensured in the article's body.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Redundant citations can be combined into one footnote... format the first instance of the citation with: "<ref name=NAME>[website] or book publication info</ref>" then format subsequent instances of the citation with just "<ref name=NAME>" ... this formatting will link multiple citations to the same footnote, avoiding redundancy. Blueboar (talk) 12:31, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Also, you can use citation bundling to add multiple sources within one set of ref tags, so footnotes can go at the end of the paragraph instead of at the end of each sentence. And this bundle can be given a name (ref name=), so you can repeat it the next time the same material is mentioned. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS12:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
The issue is that readers tend to glance at the lead for most of their information, so it has to be a succinct and stand-alone overview of the topic (not an abstract in the academic sense). To be stand-alone, it has to be self-contained in terms of its references. This is so readers don't have to hunt for the references elsewhere; they use WP as a reference/tertiary work, so we have to make it easy for them, and not force them to go deeper into the article to find what they're looking for. Once the refs are in the lead, all you have to do after that is "ref name=" to cite the same points elsewhere. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS12:17, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
From my perspective that's mostly a non issue because that's simply nonsensical behaviour of readers, which is not our business. If a reader actually wants to check the sources he knows that he can find them in the article's body, so no we don't have to make it "easier" for him (similarly like we don't have to provide online references for making it "easier" either). Plus if a reader cannot be bothered by checking the article's body chances are he is not going to look up any citations anyhow even if they are placed in the lead. The scenario that the lead needs to function as a self contained standalone article (rather than an abstract) seems only reasonable to be if we are talking extremely long articles (> 10 pages or so) with an extremely long raching article size on its own (say a lead of almost one page).
Note that this is not an arguments against citation in the lead, it is an argument against requiring editors to provides citations in the lead where they are not really needed to ensure verifiability. For the most part Policies & guidelines should restrict themselves to things we absolutely need to require to wrote sufficient encyclopedic articles.
Anyhow I don't want reiterate past discussions (this was discussed before). You asked for reasons why some editors see it at that way and I gave you some, whether you (should) share them or not is a separate question.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:51, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Lots of readers only read the leads; I do that myself all the time. When I approach an article as a reader, I read the lead, glance at the headers, glance at the images and captions, then the notes/references/FR sections. I don't know how the average reader would know where to look in the body of an article for the sources for something in the lead.
I wish someone would develop a tool to check which parts of articles our readers click on, and how long they linger on pages. I think we might be shocked at how little of each article is actually read. :) Just about the only time I read an article thoroughly is when I'm reviewing it for FAC. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS12:50, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
There is nothing wrong with reading only the lead (or any arbitrarily section of the article you are interested in) or just browsing it, but there is something wrong with expecting sources/verfication without be willing to read the related section's in the article's body. The goal of this guideline to ensure a reasonable verifibiality of the article's content, the goal of this guideline is not to provide the easiest verifiability under any conceivable circumstances. If the reader is looking for verification but unwilling to look in the article's body for it, then this is his problem not that of our editors.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:02, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
A few thoughts here... there is a difference between "must", "should" and "may". I don't think anyone is arguing that material in the lede must be cited. I hope we all agree that material in the lede may be cited... so what we are really discussing are those situations where material in the lede should be cited. This is, to some extent a matter of consensus and editorial judgment. However, I would say that if something in the lede is causing a lot of discussion and disagreement on the talk page, it probably should be cited in the lede. Blueboar (talk) 13:22, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I think that the bottom line is that the lead should summarize the article, and it is not the norm to cite the lead nor ask for it to be cited. But neither should be precluded. The particular situation that started this is an anomaly to the extent that it is not a useful example. (Basically an editor that is so new, polite, cautious and proper that they didn't see the open arms of the other editors there) But requiring perfect cites (with every wp:ver i dotted and t crossed) is a common and effective wikilawyer pov warrior way to knock out material that you don't like, in the lead or elsewhere. North8000 (talk) 13:26, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Definition of "verifiability", definition of "truth", definition of "think" in "I think this is true, etc.
I think this needs to be hammered out in detail before the questions probing opinion on the issues related to "not truth" in the sections above can be answered. I think that the typical situation where "verifiability" gets into conflict with "truth", is different on politics pages compared to science pages and that the difference is then actually tthat "truth" means something different in these different cases.
On politics pages, "truth" is often an opinion that can be widely held but is then not published in reliable sources, and what is verifiable is often also open for criticism on rational grounds (then "truth" is used in an different, more objective sense). If that criticism is not published in eliable sources, it cannot be allowed in Wikipedia articles. So, you can't criticise Obama's health care law, by arguing on the talk page why it is wrong, even if that argument looks to be logically sound. It should be obvious that editing Wikipedia articles would degenerate into fighting political battles if you were to allow such arguments that are then not based on reliable sources.
In case of science aticles, "truth" has a completely different meaning, at least when non-crackpot editors are editing. Such articles are editited from a POV, namely that of the objective truth, which usually is established to an extraordinary high degree fo certainty. Other POVs usually either don't exist, or they are typically crackpot POVs published in unreliable sources.
While what the truth is can be distilled from sources, that can require a chain of logical deductions from the fundamentals. While that is routine, this would violate a strict interpretation of the Synth rule on Wikipedia. However, the chain of logical deductons would still be regarded as a valid "verification" of a statement in the scientific field, even though no direct sources for the statement exists. Scientists would not consider that to be "original research".
What happens sometimes, is that a lay person quotes from a textbook and interprets this wrongly. I have experienced this quite often here on Wikipedia on basic science pages (it happened a lot more frequent on climate chance related pages, but that was obviously driven by politics). The only way the regular editors could argue was to appeal to the truth, explaining things from fundamentals.
I think that you have tackled several big topics at once there. One is that much of Wikipedia (basically everything except direct quotes) does and needs to violate a absolute, literal interpretation of wp:synth. So the part of Wikipedia that works is founded on breaking that rule rather that trying to write it better. The other is the choice and meaning of the word "truth". (at least in the US), by common usage, it is an ambiguous term. One common usage means accurate, where accuracy exists by some objective or near-universally accepted standards. Other common-use meanings include opinions, an assertion of a viewpoint implying that the opposite view is false, minority-held belief sets etc. The work "accuracy" leaves far less wiggle room for these corruptions and should be substituted here for the word "truth". Further, substitution of a word "truth" (which has all of these other meanings) instead of the less-problematic word "accuracy" is basically subtly assigning a pejorative term to the quest to accuracy. North8000 (talk) 12:03, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I think Count Iblis raises a valid and important point. People need to be aware that these policy & guidelines need to be somewhat vague and cannot solve/settle various more detailed scenarions. There is no one shoe that fits all, so the application of a policy or guideline has to vary from area to area somewhat. In other words we need to formulate it to describe a genereal idea, but not as water tight formulation settling all individual cases in all areas of WP, such an approach is not going to work.--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:15, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm wondering if we can deal with that vagueness by saying that the threshold for including a statement in Wikipedia is that statement being correct beyond a reasonable doubt, given the information in all reliable sources. Count Iblis (talk) 15:14, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
From my perspective that's fine. In my mind I always add the word "reasonably" to all those formulations in the policies regarding sourcing, verfiability and original research, because in some cases an all too literal application becomes nonsensical.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:47, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
Great idea. That's how the part of Wikipedia that works works anyway. The answer will be sourcable and verifiable to the practical extent that is common in Wikipedia. So it is in agreement with the main tenets of wp:ver anyway. Probably needs the qualifier this is for where the "question" is a matter of fact rather than a matter of opinion. North8000 (talk) 16:56, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
The problem is, editors often disagree as to whether something is fact. That's what the the Verifiability, not truth mantra is about. You might think something is a fact, I might think it is not a fact. "Reasonable doubt" does not work, because we can't define what "reasonable" means. If you are firmly convinced that "my view is true", you are going to doubt any information that disagrees with your POV, and think those doubts are reasonable. If someone disagrees with your view, you are going to think that there doubts are unreasonable. Blueboar (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree that you can't simply have "reasonable doubt" without any further clarifications on how to apply that standard. It is actually quite similar to jury instructions given by a judge; these instructions are very important. One clearly has to use verifiablility as the current policy page details to define a concept of resonable doubt, based on the content of reliable sources. In practice, editing most of Wikipdia's articles under a suitably defined "reasonable doubt" concept would be exactly the same as under the current policies. But there would be some differences in case of the hard sciences, but that would not change the current editing practices there.
Example: I have observed the International Space Station (ISS) when it is in the Earth's shadow. Currently, there are no reliable sources that explicitely say that this is possible. This is something that I've discussed on the Ref. desk here, and on some other blogs, but I've not made an attempt to get this included in the ISS page yet. However, I have good arguments to prove that the ISS is in fact visible when it is not sunlit, both based on observations and on theoretical calculations. That should be easy to verify by the editors of the ISS page.
So, I could presumably easily get the editors there to accept that this is true beyond a reasonable doubt, because they can see it for themselves with binoculars whenever the opportunity arises and they can easily calculate that onboard lights of the ISS are enough to make it bright enough to spot with binoculars.
Then, what would likely happen if I were to do this, is that the article would make statements about this, but then there would be a citation to a website that also makes this claim. To outsiders, it then looks as if the current policies are working. But, in reality, what has happened is that we've used a de-facto "reasonable doubt" standard for verification and covered that up by giving the citation to that website. The cited website was not the crucial source of information used for verification. Instead, it was all the information I and others have about physics, the ISS, binoculars, astronomy etc. etc. that verified the fact. Count Iblis (talk) 17:34, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
And here we have the intersection between WP:V and WP:NOR... you can not mention your observation of the ISS because without a published source mentioning it would violate our WP:No original research policy. Again, the truth of your observation is not enough to include it. Blueboar (talk) 18:07, 17 May 2011 (UTC)
I agree that citatations will then be provided, but the way that would then hapen goes against the spirit of the current policy. I.e. the editors would be satisfied that the statement is true because it is actually verifable for them directly, but then they would fish for a citation that supports the claim.
In fact someting along these lines actually did happen on the ISS age. From a source, one can distill that the brightness of the IS should be magnitude -6. However, in practice the brighness is never -6, it is more like -3.7 when it is overhead. When spmeone edited the figure of -6 for brightness in the article (before that, the article made no stament about this), I decided to sit back and see when and how people would correct this figure. It took some time, but eventually someone raised this point on the talk page. It was quite promptly resolved, but this was all motivated by "the truth" that is present in the whole body of knowledge people have about this subject. The -3.7 fgure is not that easily verifiable.
What you can find from the literature is that in practice the IS will be less bright than -6. But that then played no role in the change from -6 to -3.7, it was simply that someone knows the truth and that truth is can be based on a good argument and he/she is able to present that argument in a convincing way on the talk page. Count Iblis (talk) 14:54, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
I understand what you are saying... having a concern about the truth/untruth of a statement in Wikipedia is certainly a valid reason to raise a question about that statement (on the talk page)... but assertions of truth/untruth on their own are not a valid reason to remove the statement. Blueboar (talk) 12:48, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
"Reasonable doubt" is a poor standard. Almost everyone who doubts something believes his or her doubt to be reasonable. People with schizophrenia doubt that they have a psychotic disorder. People with multiple chemical sensitivity doubt that the dominant, mainstream medical view has any validity at all. Theists doubt that the universe could have come into existence by chance, and atheists doubt that it could have happened any other way. The point behind "verifiability, not truth" is to tell people that their personal "reasonable doubts" are much, much, much less important than what the sources say. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:04, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Ok., but I'm invoking reasonable doubt in a collective sense, i.e. editors can discuss and agree on issues based on what all the sources say that some statement is correct beyond a reasonable doubt. As Blueboar says above, the problem with invoking "truth" is when these are mere assertions. Count Iblis (talk) 03:11, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
It looks like OR, but it isn't. You have to realize that there are quite lot of "silent editors" who watch that page and watch discussions, but who are not actively discussing things. Obviously, if a disccussion there would cross some red lines of one or more such "silent editors", they would then step in. You can count me as one of these editors. I agreed with the -3-8 revision, because I know that it is correct (and that is based on verifiable facts, albeit rather complicated to explain in detail, a single citation won't do here).
Then about the contradictions with the other articles, if you read carefully, the other articles talk about the theoretical maximum magnitude, while the ISS page gives the maximum brightness it will reach during passes when it is overhead. The whole point of that discussion on the ISS page was meant to make claer that the two things ae not the same.
So, this is an example where indeed the truth does matter, and that is typical of how science pages are edited, i.e truth comes first and direct verifiablility is of secondary concern. But do note that "truth" here is itself something that is firmly based on verifiable scientific knowledge, it has nothing whatsoever to do with "opinion". Not doing so would make the article look stupid to readers. In this case one can note that magnitude -6 would make it quite a lot brighter at night time and rather easily visible during broad daylight conditions, while in reality it is difficult to see during daytime, similar to spotting Venus at Noon. So, it would be rather strange for the Wiki article to suggest that the ISS is that bright. Count Iblis (talk) 23:31, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
RfC draft
Per above, I would like us to file an RfC asking for community input on proposal 43. The RfC will be posted to centralised discussion as well. Before we do so, let's figure out the wording. Here is a draft:
It is proposed to replace the first paragraph of WP:V
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
with the following new wording:
All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means it is not enough for information to be true; readers must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion—a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so.
Should we add a brief summary of previous discussions, and the respective reasoning for the current and proposed wordings? --JN46615:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
"source quality, BLP concerns" are two further considerations that I suggest could be added to the "other considerations" sentence, replacing "availability of better sources".
"must be able to be verified" is a little clumsy; we could say "must be verifiable". (But unless everyone immediately thinks these are great ideas, I am happy to leave the wording as above.) --JN46615:38, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
I have a problem with "Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so." Suppose I find a paper published in a scholarly journal showing a variation of an electronic circuit, which is not currently mentioned in the relevant Wikipedia article. So I build the circuit, and find the circuit does not work. I also find and correct the mistake and am thoroughly convinced the published paper is in error. So I just do nothing, and do not edit the article. I have violated the policy because I did nothing on the basis of original research. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:20, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't understand your question. If you are saying that you should be allowed to edit it based on your research, then you are challenging the one of the pillars of Wikipedia, not just the proposed wording. If you are saying that "doing nothing" violates the policy, then I don't understand. North8000 (talk) 16:45, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
A further problem with the wording is that if I were to mention on the talk page that I built the circuit and it didn't work, and ask if anyone could find a source showing it doesn't work, we could never write about the circuit, even if a source is produced, because we "considered" original research. There is a difference between "considering" original research and relying on it when the edit is finally made. Jc3s5h (talk) 17:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Just a procedural request... if we do have an RfC on this, we should also drop a note at the Village Pump (and anywhere else you can think of). This is significant enough of a change that we need to let a lot of people know we are discussing it... and so we can claim a wide consensus when done (however it turns out). Blueboar (talk) 16:36, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
Hello JN466, I think that your "lets figure out the wording" is an important step. As a minimum, I think it should be thoroughly considered here, and then this particular proposal should be considered finalized. Otherwise we will end up going in circles.
I would like to propose adding "accuracy" to the list of other factors to consider. But I won't be upset if we can't put that in there. North8000 (talk) 16:56, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
As said earlier and as strongly as I knew how, I think this is a non-starter. (1) It ignores a long history of discussion in which there was no consensus to change "the threshold" to "a threshold". (2) It contains the obvious fallacy that only verifiable material that is true can be included in the encyclopedia. (3) It has no provision to retain the deprecated "not truth" as a reference. Unscintillating (talk) 01:58, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Right now it's just to hammer out the leading proposal. After that the question is whether or not to make a change. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:19, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
We already have a policy that discusses false information, WP:Editing policy states, "...on Wikipedia a lack of information is better than misleading or false information—Wikipedia's reputation as a trusted encyclopedia depends on the information in articles being verifiable and reliable." There is already a starting point that achieved talk page consensus. A technical problem with the previous consensus was that we must deprecate and not completely remove "verifiability, not truth". Unscintillating (talk) 01:04, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
At this point it's just hammering out the change to be proposed. We have two possibilities on the list above. One idea would be to add a third which reflects what you are saying. 23:11, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
from: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.
to: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.1
. . .
Notes
1.^ For continuity, the previous version of this text read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
Comment: The "Notes" section already exists, see WP:V#Notes.
A viable proposal too. It says all we need to say, and all this was ever meant to say. Not sure the footnote is needed, but we might keep it for a few weeks as an interim measure. --JN46616:28, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Unscintillating, could you clarify, under your proposal, where the footnote would go, and whether it would be intended as short term vs. long term? Thanks North8000 (talk) 18:05, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_44#Further_discussion_on_proposed_wording_change_in_lead where, IMO, a consensus quickly developed to deprecate and not remove "verifiability, not truth". Besides other reasons, a technical reason for this is that the Google search on ["verifiability not truth" site:wiki.riteme.site] returns 564 pages that quote the phrase. Wikipedia:No original research, for example, is a policy that quotes the phrase. Concerning a timeframe for removal, I'd say that we wouldn't want to consider removing the footnote before all policy and guidelines that reference the phrase have been updated, and there is no timeline for this to happen. Unscintillating (talk) 20:27, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Hello Unscintillating. I wasn't questioning it, I just think that should clearly describe the proposal. So the answer to my second question is "longer term" (I'm putting that in) But were would the footnote go? Beneath the paragraph? After the overall policy? etc. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:06, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
I would suggest formatting the text for the footnote in small text (or some other format) to distinguish it from the substance of the change... including it as is seems to confuse people and makes it harder to understand that the proposal is essentially just a change to the language in the second sentence.
North, The foot note (if included) would appear at the end of the policy, along with the other footnotes. Blueboar (talk) 21:31, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
So we have three proposals in the list above. If anybody want to add any more (including modified version of the three) please do. North8000 (talk) 23:26, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
I'll add a proposal: we leave things as they are. The existing version has served us very well, and will continue to. There is a good consensus about its interpretation, as developed by the practices that have grown up around it: primarily that it is interpreted in the light of WP:RS, but interpreted as a principal, not as specific requirements. Adding any more specificity weakens it. It emphasises particular aspects: in the version just above, that the sources be published. What published meant may have been clear 10 years ago, but is a little less clear now: in the original sense, we would now have to regard everything available on the web as "published". Similarly, verifiability and truyt are not interpreted as opposites: they mean rather than the ultimate truth of something is not the standard, and we report the sources as they are, without attempting to determine accuracy or even consistency. The concept of reliable source is also changing: many of us would regard the website of a person or organization a reliable source for everything uncontroversial, but this was not the case 5 years ago. DGG ( talk ) 00:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
You're welcome to do that, and there are others who share your opinion. I like Unscintillating's boxed version above as I think it also hits the nail on the head with the stating of "assertions of truth" rather than the "not truth" as previous. Here our views differ as I feel the current version is succinct to the point of misrepresentation...Casliber (talk·contribs) 01:06, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
If folks are accepting the process that I am promoting/ trying to help along, the next stages are:
Folks add any they want to the list, including modifications to the existing proposals. (I'll grab it back and put it below; ....it just got archived) This is the last chance to modify/propose any ideas, so go for it
Narrow it to two.
Pick one of the two that will go to the RFC
RFC (casting a wide net) for a simple yes/no on the change.
Sounds lengthy, but weeks on this is better than years going in circles.
Responding to DGG, under this process, "no change" (unlike all of the other proposals) is given special status and is assured a place as one of two choices on the final decision, the RFC. Also, that (the RFC) is the stage where the widest net is cast. North8000 (talk) 11:04, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
List of proposals
(retrieved ....the bot just archived it) Please feel free to add any. At this point, if you want to modify one, propose the modified one as an additional proposal. North8000 (talk) 11:10, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Proposal #43 Replace the first sentence of the lead paragraph with: All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means it is not enough for information to be true; readers must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it.
Proposal #8000 replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with: "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability."
Proposal #3 replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.1
...
Notes
1.^ For continuity, the previous version of this text read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
The footnote would go in the notes section at the end of the policy and remain longer term.
Discussion
Notification of discussion at WP:NOR regarding use of self-published images
Just wanted to notify people here of a discussion I've started here, regarding the criteria (WP:OI) for determining when it is/isn't appropriate to use free, self-published images (i.e. free images that are not published in reliable sources) in articles. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 05:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
What to do about editors who pointedly delete verifiable but unsourced content?
Wikipedia has a lot of articles which are not fully sourced. What are we supposed to do with editors who pointedly delete verifiable (but refuse to find sources themselves) but unsourced content? I've been on Wikipedia for almost 2 years now, and this seems to be re-occurring problem. You stumble upon an article where you have an editor demanding sources be added to the article, but refusing to do it themselves. In the particular case I'm dealing with right now, we have an editor demanding that other editors (but not themselves) adds cites to the article. I offered the following compromise:
"How about we split the article into sections, and have an editor volunteer to add one cite a day to their assigned section until the entire article is sourced? I'll volunteer for the Arts and entertainment. Who else wants to volunteer?"[20]
Work to get the policy changed so the tagger/deleter person must at least briefly state a concern beyond just saying "unsourced". That would reduce the issue. But if they then say "I don't feel that this is so" then IMHO the rules should kick in....but the norm would be to start by tagging it. North8000 (talk) 13:34, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Another option is to accept that some people are assholes... and that getting upset when they do asshole-ish things isn't really worth it. We can't force someone to look for sources themselves, we can only encourage them to do so. Yes, it is frustrating to be the only person willing to look for sources... but engaging in battle with assholes is even more frustrating. So don't engage. The least stressful way to deal with situations like this is to simply mutter "God, what a jerk this guy is!", and then quietly continue to find sources and return the deleted information. Blueboar (talk) 14:05, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, but we can keep them from deleting obviously correct (but not yet sourced) content. The best solution is certainly to simply provide the sources, but you can also reinsert the deleted information and tagging it with template that sourcing is still needed.
I agree with Blueboar that engaging "assholes" is somewhat fruitless and usually just increases your own frustration. In rare very extreme cases where a permanent misbehaviour of some editor is clearly detrimental to the project, you might get an admin talk to him and potentially get him blocked. But in reality that is not very likely, since such "assholes", unless they really dumb as well, know how to use "plausible deniability" and "Wikilawyering". That is they will stay in the grey zone, where most sensible people will perceive as assholes but it is just not enough to formally declare them as such and hence to get them blocked. Also it should be kept in mind that some of those types waiting to be engaged or looking for fight to begin with (WP as usenet or web fori replacement), so it is often best not to provide them an opportunity and/or an audience, but to wait for them to get bored and move along.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
To y'all. Resistance is futile! We are invincible. Everything you do violates policies somehow...we have the policies on our side. Your only hope is to stop creating and contributing. TheParasite (talk) 16:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I am not sure that the editor(s) in question is/are acting in bad faith or otherwise doing anything that legitimately falls under WP:POINT. List of misquotations is a potentially almost infinite list, similar to List of popular misconceptions. When dealing with editors who are wedded to such interesting but ultimately unencyclopedic lists, it can become necessary to take a formal, letter-of-the-law approach. I can certainly understand why someone is not interested in helping to source such a rambling list that goes all the way from frequently heard misquotations with no discernible relation to anything the supposed author ever said to quotations that are accurate except for a single word that has been replaced by a synonym taken from something else related to the quotation's author.
A few editors might want to think about whether the language they used in their posts above was appropriate. HansAdler16:50, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
BTW I was not commenting on the particular case, keeping in mind that this is the general policy page rather than ANI etc. North8000 (talk) 16:55, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Both PRESERVE and the content that used to be separated into HANDLE ought to be mentioned here.
For the nominal question (what to do with pointy destroyers of obviously verifiable content), the answer appears to be a long conversation at WP:RFC/U. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:47, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
I believe a specific {{citation needed}} should be put on each paragraph that is disputed rather than just saying a general tag at the top means everything can be deleted. Mathematical coincidences had a similar problem where everybody and their dog stuck in what they thought were coincidences without sticking in a citation. The problem was that the coincidences might be true but they weren't cited. A {{citation needed}} was stuck onto every separate result without a citation and google used to fix a number in a straightforward fashion. After a month the ones that still didn't have a citation or some indication of notability were deleted. It is just wrong to delete the individual statements without notice on the article page and it is wrong to not even do a basic straightforward search when there is no reason to suppose something is wrong or that it can't be cited. Dmcq (talk) 20:25, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
There's not likely to be a rigid and rigorous definition of what could or should be deleted. Even so, random and unmotivated deletions could be considered disruption and hence are conduct issues. Try dispute resolution, ending up at RFC/U or AN/I. Sergeant Cribb (talk) 21:12, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
The instructions at WP:RFC/U say I need at least 2 editors who attempted to discuss this issue on the editor's talk page. I left a message on their talk page[22] but I'm only one editor. No one is actively working on that article. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:17, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, so that means that you have to find someone else who is willing to 'attempt to resolve the dispute'. You might be able to do that by asking for a third opinion at the article.
The reason this rule exists is that when the second person comes 'round to complain about the same thing, the 'opponent' often discovers that this really is the community's approach, not just a quirk of one editor. Thus disputes are resolved completely and quickly, which is always the best outcome. You wouldn't want to spend several weeks in an RFC/U if a short conversation with a third party could save you that hassle. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:35, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Ideally, people should help to look for sources before deleting material, unless there are serious issues with it (e.g. BLP). But I suppose that depends how much of it there is, and how hard it would be to find sources. Asking for a third opinion is a good idea. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:28, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Is there any precedent on the issue of reliable sources, say the New York Times, publishing articles making statements attributed to "unnamed U.S. Officials" and the like? I know that our reflex is to say "Well, just report in the article that the source was unnamed" and wash our hands of it, but I feel like we have a higher ethical and encyclopedic obligation to look at the source itself and determine how reliable it is. The NYT is itself recognized and respected, but some editorial judgment may be necessary in individual cases.
Some causes for concern about these sources follow. An "unnamed official" could be anyone, with or without access to the information they're supposed to be providing, who could be releasing it for many reasons aside from the information actually being true and accurate. The 'mere' fact that the fact that the official refuses to let the reporter use her name in the article ought to give us pause, as well; this itself makes the claims inherently unverifiable.
Compare unnamed sources to citing peer-reviewed scientific studies and articles. These are the gold standard of verifiable sources because (1) anyone can read the citation to verify the basic claims in the article (A said that B), (2) anyone can verify how the information was obtained and the judgments were determined, and (3) everyone knows that the statements were peer-reviewed and published in at strict atmosphere of doubt and analytical criticism.
My argument is that the fact that (2) and (3) are not only missing, but pointedly and deliberately omitted in these cases ought to be a reason for us to frown on claims attributed to unnamed sources. I'm not yet recommending any actual policy changes, and I'll certainly say that a blanket ban is a bad idea, but maybe some cautioning statements or encouragement toward preferring attributable sources is in order. --Anentiresleeve (talk) 19:26, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
It depends on the context. If it is an important claim and the newspaper has a good reputation, there will usually be some pretty good fact checking going on. They know who the information comes from, and they have a lot of other sources they can ask to assess credibility. Gossippy material on the fashion or society pages is a different matter, though. HansAdler19:48, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
If you are just talking wp:rs taken literally, this meets it. Regarding actual reliability, you need to consider the circumstances of the source, the situation, and the particular statement that it is being used as a cite for. Is the statement extraordinary or controversial? Also, an analysis of the statement itself is also relevant, which RW reliable sources will generally calibrate to how solid the info is. For example, whether they just say that the source said it, or whether they say it as being fact, based on their sources. North8000 (talk) 21:23, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
You are permitted to use WP:Editorial discretion to leave out dubious and unimportant details. Whenever dealing with newspapers, I'd suggest that you also consider WP:Recentism.
But the fact is that the reputation of this publisher is sufficient to make that a reliable source for whatever the article says. Reliability requires a reliable 'source', which means that you need to have a reliable author or a reliable publisher or a reliable document. That's "or", not "and", and NB that 'fact claimed in the publication is attributed to a reliable person' isn't anywhere on the list. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
We can't try to guess the reliability of a confidential source the New York Times is using. We simply use the best and most appropriate sources we can find (i.e. books, journals, newspapers), and summarize what they say. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS23:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
Right, exactly - you've hit it. We can't guess the reliability. So why do we assume it has the highest reliability, and treat it the same way as sources where we know, as certainly as we can know anything, the information is reliable? Why default to the highest level of confidence possible, as if we had information we don't? For example, suppose an anonymous source cited by the NYT says something potentially defamatory, or makes accusations of criminal activity based on secret evidence, against a living person. Don't we have a very good reason to give pause here when it comes to citing that? --Anentiresleeve (talk) 17:48, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Our source is the New York Times; our source is not their source. So what we do is try to judge whether we're using a trustworthy source—that is, whether we trust the New York Times. We can't extend that into who has the trust of the New York Times. You're right that when our source is not a good one—e.g. a tabloid—that we should pause if they're using an anonymous source. But that simply means we don't fully trust the news organization, and probably shouldn't be using them as a source in the first place. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS18:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
I think you're asking this: Why do we accept as equally reliable an article in the Washington Post that interviews Barack Obama, and an article in the Washington Post that interviews Deep Throat? The answer is that we trust the Washington Post, which is our source, so we simply repeat what the Washington Post has said in articles where it would be appropriate to do so.
But if we had an article in the National Enquirer interviewing Barack Obama and one interviewing an anonymous source, we might use the former as a source—assuming we could trust that they really had spoken to Barack Obama—but we would not use the latter, because the publication is not as trustworthy as the Washington Post.
Perhaps it would help to point out the part of the policy that says: "The word "source" in Wikipedia has three meanings: the piece of work itself (a document, article, paper, or book), the creator of the work (for example, the writer), and the publisher of the work (for example, The New York Times). All three can affect reliability. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS19:02, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for restating - this makes it easier to figure out where we are miscommunicating. I think some of the crosstalk is over the issue of whether the policy gives us an answer about what we should do in this situation. I agree with you that the policy does give us an answer, and that that precedent works more or less well enough. What I'm suggesting is that we alter practice and ultimately amend the policy to reflect a more sophisticated understanding of verifiability. That's not to say that the current policy is wrong, but rather, hopefully, to make the tool a slightly sharper instrument in a category of nuanced, borderline cases. Referring to policy has the comforting effect of relieving us of doing critical thinking where it might be necessary, but (as you can tell from the loaded way I put it) I think we ought to do some philosophizing about this, and exactly why it's not better for us (from the standpoint of best content) to prefer citations that name their sources. Does that help? --Anentiresleeve (talk) 20:51, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that makes sense. The problem is that the policy has to apply to a very wide range of editors, much wider than any other form of publication. We have editors with post-doctoral degrees and editors who didn't graduate from high school, and everything in between. And even people with higher degrees in one area may not be good in another. So the policy can't ask for anything sophisticated. It can only ever be a blunt instrument designed to resolve disputes, leaving a lot to be decided by editorial judgment at the article itself. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS21:16, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Candidates for RFC pared down to two - please vote
There were no added or modified proposals, so it's time to pare it down to two. IF OK with everyone, this was easy to do because the one I deleted was mine (#8000) and because it had been incorporated into #3. So here are the two remaining candidates. Need just two possibilities at each remaining stage to keep weird things from happening when there are 3 or more. Please vote for one. This is NOT NOT to make the change, it's just for which one would go into the RFC where the alternative will be "no change".
Proposal #43 Replace the first sentence of the lead paragraph with:
All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means it is not enough for information to be true; readers must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition that must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it.
Proposal #3 replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.1
...
Notes
1.^ For continuity, the previous version of this text read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
The footnote would go in the notes section at the end of the policy and remain longer term.
Votes for #43 to go into the RFC
Support, but what happened to ... 'so long as they don't engage in original research when doing so'? Also, that long paragraph could be split or part of it moved to a note. Ocaasic17:06, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
No change: Keep the existing first sentence, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
WhatamIdoing... Think of this as being a Presidential election... The current language is the incumbent president... and is the uncontested choice for re-nomination by the "No-Change Party" ... what we are currently doing is holding the "Change Party" Primary ... which will decide who will run against the incumbent on Election Day (the RFC). Blueboar (talk) 16:23, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm going to be off the grid for a week after tomorrow. If after a few days, someone wants to note the leading proposal and open and RFC? I think someone was ready to do that a week ago anyway before I slowed it down. :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 03:04, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Re-writing BURDEN
Here's the current text:
Burden of evidence
The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it. How quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. It has always been good practice to make reasonable efforts to find supporting sources yourself and cite them. Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living people; see here for how the BLP policy applies to groups.
This advice has always required editors to use their best judgment, and I don't think that we can get away from that. However, we seem to have a handful of major complaints going on—I've seen complete bans mooted at ANI for two high-volume delete-everything-without-a-citation editors in the last few days—and I think that we need to re-write this to provide more explicit guidance about the necessary common sense.
Here's what I think the points ought to be:
If your material is challenged, you don't get to demand that the challenging editor find the sources for you. The burden is on the person who wants to keep the material.
The fact that no inline citation is currently listed in the article is not (on its own) a sufficient excuse for deleting material.
If the person adding the material believed that the material was notWP:Likely to be challenged, not a direct quotation, and not contentious matter about a living person, then the adding editor was not required to supply an inline citation when the material was originally added. (A link to WP:MINREF might be appropriate here.)
Deleting plausible material without giving others time to name its sources is often considered pointy, disruptive, destructive, and a violation of the editing policy (specifically, WP:PRESERVE). Preserving and improving verifiable, neutral, encyclopedic material is not an "optional mercy"; it is required by the editing policy.
WP:There is no deadline for providing citations of non-contentious material. For typical material, most people wait at least one month after tagging uncited material before proposing its removal.
If no citation is named (and the material is not a direct quotation or contentious matter about a living person), then:
Source probably exists: If you are reasonably confident that the material could be supported by a reliable source, then you may supply a source yourself, or you may tag the material as needing an inline citation, but you should not remove material that you believe is verifiable merely because it has not already been supplied with an inline citation.
You just don't know: If you are uncertain whether a reliable source has published the material, then you should normally tag the material or discuss it on the talk page.
Source probably doesn't exist: If you are reasonably confident that no reliable source has ever published the material, then you should normally remove the material. (That is, "no source currently named + no realistic hope of a source" is a sufficient reason to delete material, whereas "no source currently named" is not. I don't think it's necessary to add here that material can be removed for other reasons, e.g., undue emphasis, being off-topic, or not being encyclopedic.)
Special BLP warning (IMO in a separate paragraph, to give it greater prominence).
I think this fairly represents the community's usual practice, and I believe that the greater level of explicitness would tend to promote collaborative editing and reduce some of these disputes. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Instruction creep... the vast majority of editors already operate in good faith in ways that are similar to this, and spelling it out will not stop the few who don't. The best way to deal with unsourced material depends on the situation at each individual article, and each individual editor. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
What's on my mind is editors who do this to dozens of articles at a time, and honestly believe that the existing text authorizes their destructiveness. Isolated instances (e.g., individual articles) are much easier to deal with. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
The issue here is that the exact wording of WP:BURDEN is a free gift to tendentious editors. It's possible to use WP:BURDEN to target one particular editor, or a small group of editors, or one particular subject, in a tendentious and destructive way, so of course there are pointy people who do it. I don't think the answer is to rewrite WP:BURDEN because no matter what you write in that space, bad faith editors will find a way to abuse it. You might be better advised to suggest linking from WP:BURDEN to a behavioural guideline.—S MarshallT/C00:14, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, since we have policies to deal with bad faith and tendentious editors, and to be honest, dealing with such editors with those policies makes more sense to me. --Nuujinn (talk)00:42, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Writing policy for people who intend to abuse it is one thing - it's something else when good faith editors are being mistaken for bad faith editors because they believed what the policy told them. --Anentiresleeve (talk) 18:08, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
It might be WP:CREEPy, but does anyone think that I've actually got it wrong here? Are there any errors? Any critical corner cases I haven't covered?
Perhaps the thing to do is to put it into an essay or guideline. I've been mulling a guideline on tagging articles for a long time anyway, and this could fit in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:48, 27 May 2011 (UTC)
From my point of view, it's not about right or wrong, but rather about what is needed and what is broken and what is actually fine. I don't mean to offend anyone, but lately this talk page has been soaking up great deal of resources and time discussing policies which, at least to me, do not seem broken. Various editors refer to tendentious/bad faith/argumentative editors, but I do not think anything we do here in terms of tweaking BURDEN will alleviate those problems, since those problems are do to problematic editors in general. If there are good examples of destructive behavior of editors or groups of editors targeting dozens of articles, I would love to see see some diffs so we can talk about the specific problems you are trying to address. In the abstract, I just don't see a problem with the policy. --Nuujinn (talk)12:51, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
Well, perhaps, but changing the wording here would stop one problem: The problem of an editor deleting enormous swathes of clearly verifiABLE material (that doesn't happen to be followed by an inline citation in the current version of an article) and then saying, effectively, that such destructiveness is 100% approved by the community, because this policy says he "may remove" any sentence in any article that isn't followed by an inline citation.
Now you might say that only immature people, or perhaps people with an autism-spectrum disorder, would ever do such a thing, but I've seen several such instances recently. We have a lot of editors who believe that any person adding material, no matter if it's as non-contentious as the color of the sky, is immediately required to add an inline citation. I've seen editors reverting good-faith additions of verifiable-but-uncited material solely on the bureaucratic ground that the first editor didn't supply a citation in the same edit.
Spending some resources on tweaking this might keep these disputes from soaking up a lot of time in dispute resolution. Small changes may be adequate, e.g., "If you believe the material is unverifiable, you may remove it...", as opposed to the current phrase, which is being badly misinterpreted as "You should remove any sentence not currently associated with an inline citation." WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
In my opinion, any good-faith editor should be able to challenge any uncited material for any reason. I see it as necessary to protect the quality of the encyclopdia. If editors become obnoxious about it, there are other policies and procedures to deal with that. I'm worried that watering down WP:BURDEN will allow other tendentious editors to defend unsourceable crap with endless quibbling. Since that kind of tendentious editing is harder to spot and harder to deal with than a mad deletion spree, we should take steps to prevent it. ReykYO!23:31, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
It appears to be a little bit on the frivolous side, I agree. But I don't see anything wrong with it. The material is easily sourceable and now has an inline citation, so as a result the article is better than it was. And the fact that you had to go back four years to find an example of a ridiculous challenge seems to prove that it's not a major problem. ReykYO!23:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. In regard to "...an editor deleting enormous swathes of clearly verifiABLE material...", I haven't seen that myself, perhaps WhatamIdoing can provide some diffs of that happening in such a way that the proposed changes would have made dealing with same easier? My experience has been otherwise. And in regard to the essay WP:BLUE, I suggest perusal of the counter essay WP:NOTBLUE. Neither is policy, regardless, but the juxtaposition is useful. I'm afraid my position on these issues is pretty straightforward--if anyone challenges a statement that is not sourced, it can be removed unless a source is provided. There should be no rushing about this, we have no deadline, but the only way to demonstrate conclusively that a statement is verifiable is to provide a source verifying the statement. If someone challenges a statement that is unsourced, and you think it should remain, provide a source. On a side note, in regard to the question of what is the "normal" number of fingers, I would suggest that "typical" is a better word, as normal is POV. But that's just my opinion. --Nuujinn (talk)01:20, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Sure, I can give you recent examples, although I'm concerned the discussion will get sidetracked by them, since any concrete example can always be written off as "just that one editor" rather than a pattern. Try this series of deletions, which removed a quarter of a low-quality but verifiABLE article. Notice how happy the editor wasn't when sources (trivially available) were added. At the risk of focusing too much on one user, you might like to take a look at the discussions archived from his talk page. It won't take you long to find a dozen complaints about tag bombing articles and deletion of verifiable material. You'll also find repeated assertions that even when he personally knows the material is verifiable, he believes that he should simply remove uncited material.
My point, though, isn't about this one editor (despite the multiple blocks per year, regular complaints at noticeboards, etc.), but that we're systematically creating this problem by not being clear about what we actually want people to do. When the material is verifiABLE, we want editors to improve the content and to add sources, not to destroy it. (When it's not verifiable, we want them to kill it.) We always want editors to WP:PRESERVE verifiable (and otherwise appropriate) information.
PRESERVE is a policy absolutely equal in status to BURDEN. It would be helpful to the community if these policies did not appear (in the minds of some editors) to directly contradict each other, so that they can pick and choose which policy they want to follow, regardless of common sense or the negative effects on the encyclopedia. It's not helpful to us, and it's not fair to them, to come back later and say, "Well, you were following the letter of the law at BURDEN, so now we're going to ban you for breaking PRESERVE while doing what you thought—in good, if stubborn, faith—to be what the policy required." We need to be clearer at BURDEN about how we want problems solved. Clarity now is preferable to playing gotcha when the community loses patience with the destructiveness. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm dreadfully sorry. I can see that the editor you bring up does seem to be embroiled in a number of issues, but that is true for many editors, unfortunately. That article seems troubled by POV to me--even if sources are readily available it has clearly been written based on individual editors knowledge or beliefs. The term "western culture" is vague, and I do not regard Miss Manners as a reliable source for what customs are practiced in most western cultures, whatever that means. It also seems to be a case of WP:BIAS. If it were me, I would have looked for or asked for better sources, such as sociological or anthropological sources by authors in a position to know what actual practices are, rather than relying on someone who tells people how they should act in "polite society". The last wedding reception I went to was held in a strip mall church and bore no resemblance to what is described in the article, so I sense there is greater variability in customs even within the USA than the article suggests.
But all of that aside What troubles me is that it appears that neither of you brought up the issue at the article's [talk page]. How is this an example of someone using BURDEN as it stands to assert that they '... "may remove" any sentence in any article that isn't followed by an inline citation' or 'reverting good-faith additions of verifiable-but-uncited material solely on the bureaucratic ground that the first editor didn't supply a citation in the same edit.'? If you don't refer to BURDEN in a discussion about whether a deletion or addition is appropriate, how is changing the wording of BURDEN supposed to help? --Nuujinn (talk)11:18, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
The discussion in this instance happened at the editor's talk page, and there frankly wasn't much to discuss: He deleted unsourced, untagged, clearly verifiABLE material; I told him that tagging it or looking for sources was a more appropriate, more WP:Editing policy-compliant response, and he was very upset—perhaps about being told for the hundredth time that he was cherry-picking his favorite sentence out of this policy, or perhaps because I was able to quickly add a source. If you read his user talk page, you'll know that both BURDEN and PRESERVE were directly and repeatedly discussed in complaints about his rigid and destructive behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that WAID's proposed idea for clarification is a good way to go. This is a very important practical issue that shouldn't be dismissed in a few glib sentences. Perhaps the details belong more at WP:Editing policy than on this page, though - it's not so much part of "content policy" in the sense of what we aspire for our content to be, rather a procedural issue about how we expect editors to behave.--Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Whether material is "likely to be challenged", "contentious" or "plausible" is subjective, and is open to circular reasoning--that is, anything can be challenged. Ditto for WP:MINREF, since everything outside of extremely widely-known and completely unambiguous knowledge like "Christmas is on December 25" should be supported by an inline cite. Where a BLP grew up, for example, may not be controversial or implausiable; does that mean that that info should not be verifiable for readers who come across it?
Almost everything should be sourced with an inline, otherwise, you're giving carte blanche for newbies, one-time editors and whoever else to dump material into an article, without any regard for it. It's not fair for more committed editors who come across it to be charged with cleaning up after others; having each person responsible for sourcing material that they add or otherwise favor is fair and reasonable. Nightscream (talk) 22:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Strengthening the sentence that links to PRESERVE, so that complying with the editing policy can't be passed off as a mere "optional mercy", might be useful.
Nightscream, your "cleaning up after others" is my "collaborative editing". "Cleaning up after others" is what built Wikipedia. If you want to work in a place where only "more committed editors" are permitted, and one-time editors are strongly discouraged, then you might like to look into Citizendium. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, very much agreed. This is why (or maybe not why, but I'll say it anyway) I suggested dealing with this topic in detail (BURDEN and PRESERVE together) on the WP:editing policy page, and just summarizing it here. This page (a "core content policy", though as I keep saying, there's no need for this and NOR to be separate) should describe what makes content acceptable; the other page should describe how editors are encouraged to behave in working for the (sometimes conflicting) aims of maximizing the amount of acceptable content and minimizing the amount of unacceptable.--Kotniski (talk) 10:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Sourcing/Verifiability
Should information in the Infobox be sourced if it merely repeats material in the article body in which a source appears? Should it be like the Lead in that editors should balance the desire to avoid redundant citations with the desire to aid readers in locating sources for material if it is controversial and likely to be challenged? I tried asking this at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Infoboxes, but got no response. Nightscream (talk) 21:51, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Material that is repeated multiple times in an article does not require an inline citation for every single mention. If you have occasion to mention the fact that an elephant is a mammal in six different places, you would do well to provide a citation at some reasonable point, but you need not follow each and every occurence of the word mammal with another copy of the citation. We assume that our readers are smart enough to read the whole article and find the citation.
This is what you definitely don't want:
Elephants are large[they're large] land[they're land based] mammals[they're mammals]... Elephants' teeth[they have teeth] are very different[different teeth] from those of most other mammals[they're mammals]. Unlike most mammals[they're still mammals], which grow baby teeth and then replace them with a permanent set of adult teeth[normal mammalian dental pattern], elephants have cycles of tooth rotation throughout their entire lives.[elephant dental pattern]
Nightscream, if it's an issue that's contentious, or an issue you think your readers would like to see the source for, it's best to cite it each time. This is easy to do with "ref name=". Personally, I add citations to infoboxes only when I can see the issue has been questioned, or if it's an article where just about everything is questioned. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS22:52, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
Agreed; though I also quite often feel there's too much contentious information in infoboxes - people try to squeeze everything into it, just because the infobox happens to have a parameter for something; whereas some information becomes misleading when presented as a bare fact, and is best left out when there's something contentious about it.--Kotniski (talk) 10:14, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Do not use articles from Wikipedia or from websites that mirror its content as sources, because this would amount to self-reference.
While this makes good sense, I sometimes find myself in a situation where I at some point in article A want to give an ultra brief summary of something that is stated in full and properly sourced in article B, which is also linked at the relevant point in A. (Sometimes B is referenced as a "Main article", but that is not always appropriate.) Sometimes, other editors come by and flag the summary in article A for missing sources, which makes little sense to me, as any reader can follow the link from A to get the full story in B. Am I right? Am I wrong - i.e., must the sources be cited i A as well as in B (or alternatively, the summary be left out in A)? Is there another policy somewhere relevant to this situation - or a good way of handling it? Could there be a link to such a policy from WP:CIRCULAR to clarify this point?--Nø (talk) 12:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I like to think that when something is not particularly contentious and is sourced in (what readers would reasonably assume to be) the main article on the topic, there's no need to keep sourcing it again in other articles that provide the same information. But not everyone agrees; some people apparently can't take any piece of text seriously if it doesn't have a little [94], [95], [96]... next to every second word.--Kotniski (talk) 14:00, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is that when someone thinks statement X is not contentious, they are necessarily limited to their own experience and point of view. Another problem is that WP is dynamic, so no one can anticipate when a given article might be deleted, changed, moved, renamed, merged etc, and we're not an inherently reliable source since we do not have centralized editorial control mechanism. It is perfectly fine to refer to the other article, but statements should not be sourced to WP articles. --Nuujinn (talk)20:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Yes, there is a huge difference between linking to another article and using that article as a source for information. When summarizing information that is more complete in another article, we definitely want to link... but we still need to do basic due diligence in providing sources for our summary. That shouldn't be too difficult... the more complete article should have all the sources we need for our summary. Blueboar (talk) 22:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
It's usually just a matter of copying a few citations out of the text that you're summarizing, which isn't too complicated. Since there's always a chance that the other article will get deleted/screwed up/massively re-written, it's useful to duplicate the most important sources in the article that is receiving your {{Main}} summary. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
WP:V Policy need to be discussed here not elsewhere
Any consensus regading this guideline needs to reached here. What FAC editors might consider appropriate for FAs is not criteria for this policy, which is designed as a policy for all articles not just FAs.--Kmhkmh (talk) 01:39, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Could you state the debate more fully, so that people who haven't been following the debate so far may discuss it appropriately here? Fifelfoo (talk) 02:27, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Well that was my main reason for the revert. Whatever the discussion at FA might as far as this policy< is concerned it needs to be discussed here.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The issue is that we must add in-text attribution (e.g. "according to John Smith") when quoting or closely paraphrasing. This is common sense, it's normal writing, it's standard practice. For some reason, some editors here—Philip Baird Shearer, Kotniski—don't want the policy to say this. They removed it in March, and substituted a diluted version saying in-text attribution was optional. When I restored it on May 29, NuclearWarfare and Kotniski reverted; here are the versions.
But of course it isn't optional in these circumstances. To use someone's words without saying who wrote them is plagiarism. Ignoring that, it's also bad writing. I'm puzzled as to why anyone would object to this. It's depressing to have to keep arguing about it. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS02:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Plagarism is the presenting of another's unique or innovative opinions or hypothesis as one's own, it actually has nothing to do with "closely paraphrasing". I think that is why some are opposing of this strong wording because the strong wording is mistaken on what plagarism actually is. If SlimVirgin says "the Earth is round" I too can say "the Earth is round", even if Slim writes it in a book and publishes it, thereby copyright the sentences, I can write that to my hearts content. And length is not a matter either. Plagarism is not about words in a certain order or sentences, it is about abstract ideas. If Slim writes a book about a president who goes and kills his VP and uses his blood in a Masonic ritual to raise chluthu from hell to defeat the Chinese in WWIII, I can not write a similar book using completely different words, and it is not a copyright issue, it is a plagarism issue. Copyright issues are ones involving actually lifted text word for word.Camelbinky (talk) 02:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
No. Plagiarism is copying what I wrote and pretending that you wrote it. Or in the wikipedia context, copying what the author of a 1911 Britannica article wrote and pretending that you wrote it. It's morally indefensible. MalleusFatuorum03:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Agree completely with Malleus Fatuorum. Lifting text from a PD or copyright free work, verbatim or through "close paraphrase," without specific attribution of the manner of expressing the idea to the originator is plagiarism. It is a morally indefensible practice. However, there is one portion of plagiarism which also applies: lifting someone else's concept, and presenting it as your own, is also plagiarism. This does not apply to Wikipedia, as we do not present our own conceptions (that would be original research). Fifelfoo (talk) 03:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
(ec x 2)Perhaps the first place to start is to define the difference between plagiarism and copyvio. From an academic point-of-view, plagiarism is to copy verbatim, to cheat. Copyvio seems to be a legal term - to violate copyright. Plagiarism is very much about words in an certain order. If SlimVirgin should think of a particularly poetic way to convey "the Earth is round" she owns the words she uses. To recreate them would be to plagiarise from her and to violate her copyright. Moreover, if ideas are presented in a specific order, using specific language, and those ideas are paraphrased, if the order is recreated, or any of the language used in the paraphrase, that would be a violation of copyright. The way around this is to attribute to the person who created the order and thought of the words, by in-text attribution. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:06, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The section heading has a reason, which can be understood by looking at the policy's version history.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I read this article today about a teacher addressing the 2011 Congress of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She says her students work better when they know their work will appear on Wikipedia, because "despite its faults, [Wikipedia] does promote solid values for its writers, including precise citations, accurate research, editing and revision." Editing Wikipedia is therefore seen as part of acquiring a useful set of transferable skills.
I felt a small surge of pride when I read that, something I don't often experience when editing WP these days. We're not only here to present material to readers; we're here to learn skills from each other too, and from the writing process.
So why are there editors on this page who want to keep these skills hidden, who don't want to be part of the teaching and learning process? We're constantly forced to defend practices on this talk page that are perfectly standard in professional writing, and that young people will have to learn if they want to be writers of any kind, inside or outside academia. But this policy is supposed to pretend that these practices are optional, which—if people follow the advice—will lead to poor writing at best, and plagiarism at worst. That makes no sense. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:03, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Kmh, if you read the article, it says: "A student writing an essay for their teacher may be tempted to plagiarize or leave facts unchecked. A new study shows that if you ask that same student to write something that will be posted on Wikipedia, he or she suddenly becomes determined to make the work as accurate as possible, and may actually do better research." But here we are stopping the sourcing policy from explaining how they can avoid plagiarism. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS04:15, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
We have a guideline on plagiarism to do that job (and we can link them there). Also the plagiarism topic as such is much more controversial than verfiability. There's a reason why one is core policy while the other is "merely" a guideline.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
@SlimVirgin: Because it is not correct per se but depends on the context. Moreover it has nothing to do with verifiability. The inline citation for some content ensures verifibiality, whereas the intext attribution is question of the writing style. Whether it is bad writing (or good writing) not to use an intext attribution, depends entirely on the context or rather the intention of the author. If I quote somebody or want to point out which person has stated a particular content (being closely paraphrased in the article) then I would use an intext atrribution indeed. However if I closely paraphrase some facts from a source, where the author of that source is of no particular interest for the article, then I would not use an intext attribution.
Some examples:
More precisely, if a function f(x) is continuous on the closed interval [a, b] and differentiable on the open interval (a, b), then there exists a point c in (a, b) such that
Eric Weisstein states, that if a function f(x) is continuous on the closed interval [a, b] and differentiable on the open interval (a, b), then there exists a point c in (a, b) such that
You're commenting from within a bubble, with completely the wrong idea. There are many, many, articles on wikipedia that have been copied word for word from PD sources without attribution, and that's not right. MalleusFatuorum03:10, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I don't quite see what this has with "copying from PD sources without attribution". Nor do I I suggest such a thing, I was talking about when an intext attribution is needed and when not.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
There are clearly many things you don't quite see, so let me spell it out for you. Copying what someone else has written and passing it off as your own prose is theft. MalleusFatuorum03:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
(to Kmhkmh) The reason PD text has been mentioned is that was the reason a couple of editors removed the in-text attribution requirement from the policy in March. They argued it would prevent them from adding PD text to articles, or copying words from one WP article to another. But yes, you're right, it's a red herring. You're arguing something different—that in-text is never needed because an inline citation is enough. As Malleus says below, this is like arguing it's okay to steal something so long as you say in a footnote where you stole it from. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
(ec to Kmhkmh) It's plagiarism if you have copied someone else's words (unless the sentence structure is so common there's no point in changing it. e.g. "Paris is in France"). What do you think plagiarism in writing is, if not copying someone else's words? SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:13, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
I wasn't talking about plagiarism but about the difference between intext atrribution and inline ciatation/footnotes. But as far as plagiarism is concerned, plagiarism is not defined having or not having an intext attribution, but having no attribution. Note that an inline citation/footnote does provide an attribution as well, it is just not intext.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The reason teachers are using Wikipedia as a teaching tool (as SlimVirgin mentioned above) is that students believe as long as something is cited, intext or however, it's not plagiarism. Even if the text is copied verbatim. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:29, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Both of your historical examples are loose paraphrase of the source, you significantly alter the meaning of "wanted the job" to "prepared for war", you also contextualise it differently, and the paraphrased element is "a [military] uniform …, signalling [that he was prepared for war]." Three words, with major different clauses removed and added is not close paraphrase over a single sentence. Fifelfoo (talk) 03:18, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
A close paraphrase is copyvio in that the author's word order and specific vocabulary is recreated without attribution. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:24, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
yes but intext atrribution is not the only form of attribution, which is precisely the point here. Imho people are confusing the requirement for attribution (to vaoid copyvio or plagiarism) with a (non existing) requirement for an intext attribution.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Professional and other kinds of serious writers don't copy other people's words, then add a link in a footnote to that person's text, as though that gets them off the hook. If you believe writers do this, please provide an example. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS03:35, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
SlimVirgin is right. This is depressing because, from what I can tell, there is real confusion about what constitutes plagiarism. Until editors can wrap their heads around that concept, the rest will fail. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:37, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Why is this so hard for so many here to understand? If I copy the words you've written and then pretend or give the impression that they're my own then I'm a dishonest twat. MalleusFatuorum03:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
American high school students believe that as long as something is cited it's not plagiarized. They come to college with that belief and are sometimes quickly disabused. We live in a cut and paste world. The current culture is "oh it's fine - I cited it." That's why it's so hard. This, btw, is the reason teachers are bringing students to Wikipedia, and Google changed result ranking algrorithms to include original content. Truthkeeper88 (talk) 03:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
So as long as you say where you stole it from then everything's cool even though you don't actually admit that you stole it, by attributing it? Things have to change. MalleusFatuorum03:47, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Exactly! So let's not commit copyvios rather than allegedly "fixing" them by (intext) attribution. However the PD content, you were talking about further up, can't really be stolen in the first place.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
It's sometimes appropriate to quote or closely paraphrase—so long as we don't use too much of a text, but that's a separate issue. The point is that, when we do quote and closely paraphrase, we have to name the source in the text to signal clearly that these are not our words. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS04:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
As I was writing above. If you are quoting somebody or it is of interest to the reader, who stated a particular content, then you use intext attribution. However if you are not quoting somebody and you have a very few "closely paraphrased" lines about some facts (staying short of copyvio), where the author is of no interest for the reader you might not use intext attribution, but just attribution with a footnote to insure verifiability in particular. Similarly if we use PD content (such as Britannica) we use a general disclaimer and/or footnote rather than intext attributions. In other words we use different ways to indicate, whether some content might not be completely due our own words and it depends on the context which one is the best to use.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:43, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
But you reverted to a version of the policy that says even when quoting in-text attribution might not be needed. [23] So the next time a Wikipedian gets into trouble over this because the policy is unclear, I hope you'll be there to bale him out.
Can you show me an example of a professional writer that you've seen do this—copy or closely paraphrase other people's words without in-text attribution? I've been requesting this for months, just one example. The only examples I know of are writers who got caught plagiarizing, and who ended up being sacked. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS05:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
It is a common technique in (good) journalistic articles, where journalists often rewrite/extend/combine content of which their publisher owns the legal rights. In such cases those additional contributors are usually mentioned in a disclaimer (or a footnote if you will) at the end of the article. If you haven't come across that yourself, you can find it described in Media Law and ethicS (point 3). As far as encyclopedic publishing is concerned, I'd assume that various publishers in doubt combine various sources they own the copyright for rather freely. After all content reuse is one reason for acquiring copyrights.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:40, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Kmhkmh, FAC opinions are indeed "your problem", because policy is not decided only by the three or four editors who regularly hang out at the WP:V page. Jayjg (talk)05:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
You got that half right. WP policy is indeed not decided by a few editors only, but even more so it is definitely not decided by those hanging out at FAC. The appropriate place to discuss this policy is here (or some other project page for dicussing core policies) and not the FAC project and that was precisely why I reverted your edit.--Kmhkmh (talk) 05:08, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
The problem we've had on this page, particularly with this issue, is that we end up recommending the worst kind of writing, rather than the best. That's not to say that we want to recommend impossibly high standards, but adding "Smith argued that ..." is hardly a mountain to climb. We have a responsibility to editors—particularly new ones—to recommend best practice, rather than shoddiness. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS05:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
How about someone propose what wording to add on this to the policy and we'll have a straight-up vote on it? Cla68 (talk) 05:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Proposed wording re in-text attribution
I'm not wedded to particular words, but I'd like to make clear in-text attribution is needed when quoting and closely paraphrasing, not optional. And to make sure it's under the "Anything challenged or likely to be challenged" section, not buried at the end of the policy under copyright. So I propose something like this, which would make that section look like this:
"When quoting or closely paraphrasing a source's words, add in-text attribution—as well as an inline citation—unless the source of the material is already clear from the context."
Support. I haven't always followed this myself, but I don't have a problem with making it a rule. Cla68 (talk) 06:55, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. This would mean those articles based on the PD version of Encyclopaedia Britannica would have to have inline citations to whatever statements from the original remained rather than a general attribution at the end. We'd have to do the same when copying a section from one part of Wikipedia to another even rather than just depending on a decent edit comment. Dmcq (talk) 08:05, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
That gets several issues mixed up. This policy is about how to source articles Wikipedians have written. It isn't concerned with creating articles by copying PD texts (which would really be best left to Wikisource) or copying material from one WP article to another (a licensing issue). And anyway, following your argument, the requirement in this policy for inline citations would already affect those things. You're presumably not asking that we remove the need for inline citations, so there's no reason to ask that we not require in-text attribution when it's needed. SlimVirginTALK|CONTRIBS08:17, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Support. Dmcq has a point: We still have a number of articles with a template saying that part of the article is based on Britannica 1911, and even a tiny number of articles based in the same way on other public domain sources. Such articles generally started with a version that was copied, and then got edited to some extent. But this is a rare special case that can easily be addressed by a footnote saying that using such a template is also OK until we have a proper article of our own. HansAdler08:45, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. The issue that DMCq mentions for the Britannica, holds not only for the Britannica case but for any text donation we might receive and other PD sources. That is the whole article or large parts of it are originally written by some external source (being used legally) and then get modified/extended/augmented by WP authors later on. It also applies to text cooperation and exchange projects that WP has, such as the one with Planetmath. More importantly from my perspective WP:V is a core policy for defining our mandatory requirements to ensure verifiability and as such imho it has no business of stating style requirements.--Kmhkmh (talk) 09:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
That wording is better than what was there before, since it at least makes one exception ("clear from the context" presumably includes the case an overall template saying that the whole article is largely taken from a particular PD source), but if we're voting already I would still oppose - it doesn't distinguish the common case of short paraphrasing of simple sentences, doesn't say how "close" is "close", and most importantly is quite off-topic for this policy and that section of it. This complex subject should be dealt with in detail at the relevant page (WP:Plagiarism), and people should be referred neatly from here to there, as they are at the moment.--Kotniski (talk) 10:23, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
(Please note the current wording of the section to which it is proposed that the above sentence be added. "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate." And that's all. Adding the above sentence would mean that almost 50% of the wording of one of Wikipedia's crispest and corest policy sections would be taken up by an issue which is only incidental to this policy, and has virtually nothing to do with that particular section. If something like this needs to be mentioned, and it needs to be made prominent, get it over with by putting it in the lead alongside the reference to copyright.--Kotniski (talk) 10:30, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Support - it's good practice in writing and we are supposed to be writing an encyclopedia. If you use someone else's exact (or close to exact) words, its important to make it very clear (through in text attribution) that the wording is not yours. This doesn't prevent the use of PD sources, just means you treat them like any other source that isn't PD, you must not copy their wording and pass it off as someone else's. Ealdgyth - Talk13:53, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Talking about good practices in writing, it's hardly good practice to take a section which is supposed to be about one thing ("Anything challenged or likely to be challenged") and then go off on a stream of consciousness and start writing about something else entirely. Do none of you self-professed experts on writing have any idea about scope and structure? --Kotniski (talk) 14:12, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski has a point... I think it would be helpful to have a policy statement on plagiarism and attribution ... but I am not at all sure that WP:Verifiability is the right place to put it (and if so, is this the right section to mention it). I think it is important to keep a relatively narrow focus in our core policies... and not wander off into wider/related concepts. WP:V needs to stay focused on the necessity for "Verifiability". Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Exactly WP:V is for verifiability issues and not for plagiarism issues. Furthermore intext attribution versus other forms of attribution is a style question and not even a question of plagiarism (which would be attribution versus no attrubution). WP:V is a core policy about (manadatory) requirements to ensure verifiability, it's neither guideline for plagiarism issues nor a style guide for "good writing".--Kmhkmh (talk) 14:37, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Oppose Does not describe actual community practice. We can literally name tens of thousands of examples of the community failing to do this. I believe that Wikipedia would be substantially harmed by adding a hundred thousand instances of the phrase "According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica...". We also occasionally use direct quotations of single words, like "controversial" to indicate that the word comes from reliable sources rather than from Wikipedians. "____ is 'controversial', according to Alice Expert" is highly misleading when Alice Expert's statement could legitimately be attributed to a solid majority of sources. We always need attribution; we do not always need in-text attribution. Also, although I expect this comment to result in a good deal of 'asking the other parent' (trying to add this requirement to as many other pages as necessary, until is successfully added to some underwatched guideline), I think that this particular policy would the wrong place to enshrine any such requirement. Even a direct quotation is still verifiABLE without knowing putting "Alice Expert said..." in the reader's face. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:52, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Support. This critical part of policy should not be removed or watered down simply to make it easier for editors to avoid clearly indicating a source that has been copied verbatim. And I can provide tens of thousands of examples of articles violating every other part of WP:V (or the other core content policies), but that doesn't mean we dismiss the whole policy as "does not describe actual community practice". Jayjg (talk)03:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
It is not about dismissing a core policy, because many articles might not adhere to it, but it is about dismissing a style requirement that has no place in a core policy for verifibaility to begin with.--Kmhkmh (talk) 03:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
I believe he was referring to WhatamIdoing's statement "Does not describe actual community practice. We can literally name tens of thousands of examples of the community failing to do this." ... That said, I agree that this is a stylistic preference that has no place at all in WP:V. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 22:38, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Oppose. Yes, but a quote within quote marks, followed by a footnote to the source of the quote, does not 'require' further attribution. It may be given, but should not be mandatory--the quote marks alert the reader to the enature of the content, and the footnote takes the reader to its source. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.255.0.102 (talk) 02:20, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Comment Several things here. First, it's unhelpful to overdramatise. Contrary to Malleus, plagiarism is not theft. Plagiarism is a matter of good practice and academic courtesy, punishable by complaint, disapproval and ostracism. Theft is a felony punishable by criminal sanctions. Second, it's important to distinguish between plagiarism and copyright violation. For example, incorporating material from the 1911 Britannica is not a copyright violation, but it may be plagiarism.
I have no idea at all why it was like pulling teeth to get a mention of copyright in this policy, but adding text to deal with plagiarism seems to be a shoo-in. It's as if Wikipedians believe academic courtesy is more important than legal duty, and I sometimes despair of the inconsistency.
Personally, I agree that Wikipedians should avoid plagiarism and that policy should say so. I do not agree that it's necessary to mention plagiarism in this policy, which is about the principle that things should be verifiable, and is far too long already. My position is that the phrase about in-text attribution belongs in Wikipedia:Editing policy, or any reasonable alternative policy that deals with how to edit, rather than here.—S MarshallT/C09:07, 31 May 2011 (UTC)
Comment. Since my revert caused much more a stir than I expected and some might be have offended by the section title, I changed the title to less polemic one and feel the need list a few different points that got mixed up above and might lead to bad policy writing:
The scope of this (core) policy versus the scope of other policies/guidelines/essays. This is in particular problematic if instead of just pointing to other guidelines, this policy explicitly restates part of their content here and hence effectively elavating guideline content to a core policy level. This scope of this guideline is to describe our requirements to ensure verifiability, it has no business in formulating style requirements.
Confusing or mixing plagiarism and copyright violation.
Confusing or mixing no intext attribution with no attribution.
Confusing or mixing mandatory minimal requirements for articles in general (basically adherence to core policies) with criteria considered appropriate for good or fearured articles.
Confusing or mixing the lack of a style requirement in a core policies with encouraging bad writing.
Confusing or mixing problems of academia or education with those of WP. WP primary goal is to provide correct encyclopedic knowledge for free ("compile the world knowledge") and this policy deals te verifiabilty requiremrents needed to assure that goal. But it is not WP's goal to teach students proper writing skills/styles or attribution techniques.
Slightly different notions of when something is considered closely paraphrased and when such a close paraphrasing constitutes plagiarism (or even a copyvio).
Oppose. Unnecessary clutter for a reader to wade through, and contrary to use in tens of thousands of articles here. Also, our informal usage here has been to only provide this kind of inline attribution when the source or topic is extremely contentious. Also oppose per Kmhmh's bullet points, above. – OhioStandard (talk)21:36, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Oppose -- In some cases, it will make sense to require attribution. In others, it will unnecessarily clutter articles with redundant information. The only times that I see it being useful to add in-text citation for a paraphrased/quoted factual assertion is when knowing who made a statement somehow improves readers' understanding of the idea expressed -- that is, cases where the reader would have to jump down to look at a citation in order to understand the statement. If the 1911 Encylopedia Britannica says Cervus canadensis possess a remarkable set of large, snazzy-looking antlers and we closely paraphrase this as Elk have "large, snazzy-looking antlers"(citation), I think "(citation)" is totally sufficient, and that rewriting it as According to the 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, elk have "large, snazzy-looking antlers"(citation) simply clutters the article, reducing its utility, with no real benefit. If there is a citation, we know exactly who the idea came from (the author in the citation), and I have yet to hear a good reason for repeating the information (all I've heard is "That's theft!" or "That's bad writing!", both of which are absurd). Because there are a wide range of situations where in-text attribution is totally useless, I don't think that a policy rigidly requiring it in all cases is a good idea. I do however think that it would be a good idea to include some guidelines on when it is and is not necessary, perhaps in the MoS and/or other writing style guidelines. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 22:13, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
--Ludwigs2 21:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)
--Ludwigs2 19:21, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
