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Increase burden to two citations in limited circumstances

I'd like to propose a change to section #Responsibility for providing citations (WP:BURDEN, WP:CHALLENGE) to increase the burden to requiring two reliable sources, under very limited conditions, notably for fictitious entries (a.ka., "copyright traps") and possibly for suspected hoaxes. This is both to preserve the verifiability of Wikipedia content, as well as to prevent Wikipedia from being used as a vector for distribution of fake information.

The problem that exists now is illustrated by the article Jardin botanique alpin "Daniella" about a supposed alpine garden in Limoges, France, and the current Afd about it. There is one reliable source for it (Racine, 2004) where it appears as a brief, index-style entry along with a phone number (which apparently resolves to the mayor's office) and an address (given elsewhere as lat/long, which appears to be a house in a residential area). This Afd is ongoing, and there is also activity by fr-wiki users living in Limoges attempting to track this down.

However the Afd may turn out, the point of interest to WP:Verifiability policy, is this remark (diff) by User:Uncle G at the Afd, which I'm copying here because it's indicative of the central point I'm trying to make:

"I suspect a copyright trap."

The following is an excerpt from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jardin botanique alpin "Daniella" by User:Uncle G:

As mentioned on the article talk page, the book checks out, and has the garden listed, address simply "87000 Limoges" however and the telephone number that of the mayor of Limoges. The 1 sentence in the book says that it was founded in 1983 and has ~1800 species. The 1990 International Directory of Botanical Gardens lists the only botanical garden in Limoges as the Jardin botanique de l'Evêché in the Place de la Cathédrale in 87100 Limoges, as does ISBN 9780898310412. Those two 1990s books would have had a 1983–2004 botanical garden with ~1800 species if it really existed. The French article post-dates both this one and the Spanish one. Are you enjoying that the Spanish article's picture is actually of somewhere in Austria? ☺ I suspect a copyright trap by Racine. Uncle G (talk) 01:01, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

In the eleven years since the article has existed at Wikipedia, dozens of web pages have included this supposed "alpine garden" in Limoges, and while I haven't investigated, I'm pretty sure they are all unreliable and all derive their information from our article, Jardin botanique alpin "Daniella". This is unfortunate, and even if deleted, those web sites may come back to haunt us as future WP:CITOGENESIS incidents.

In theory, per our current verifiability requirement WP:BURDEN, one reliable source is enough, therefore the garden "Daniella" meets the burden of verifiability and the Afd should fail. (For the purposes of this argument, please ignore the fact that the entry in Racine 2004 is very brief, and that the article may be deleted for a lack of Notability, rather than for a lack of verifiability.) My concern is that we should not allow the presence of a single reliable source to be sufficient sourcing for an entire article on Wikipedia, where there is a substantial possibility that it is a fictitious entry, or a hoax. A single reliable source is usually not an issue: the local high school graduation may be covered in the village newspaper, and nowhere else; not a surprise, and not a reason to exclude it. But one reliable source, and nothing else, in a case like the alpine garden is suspicious.

As for what constitutes "a substantial possibility", I wouldn't want to see additional "rules" about this, more just something that indicates an awareness of the existence of copyright traps and the like, and that under certain circumstances, more than one source may be needed. Maybe something like, "In rare cases, more than one reliable source may be required, when there is credible concern about the information being accurate, such as with possible fictitious entries. I don't think we need to spell out any criteria for what is or isn't a fictitious entry (probably an impossible task anyway) or what falls under this statement, and I think discussion and consensus would be sufficient. Putting it another way: do we want the presence of one reliable source in the absence of any others to be sufficient to block deletion in cases like this one? Mathglot (talk) 22:48, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

About per our current verifiability requirement WP:BURDEN, one reliable source is enough, therefore the garden "Daniella" meets the burden of verifiability and the Afd should fail: WP:V doesn't determine whether editors should have an article. What matters is in WP:N:
A topic is presumed to merit an article if:
  1. It meets either the general notability guideline (GNG) below, or the criteria outlined in a subject-specific notability guideline (SNG) listed in the box on the right; and
  2. It is not excluded under the What Wikipedia is not policy.
This is not a guarantee that a topic will necessarily be handled as a separate, stand-alone page. Editors may use their discretion to merge or group two or more related topics into a single article.
So: Does it meet one of the notability guidelines? (Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.) Is it excluded under WP:NOT? (Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.) Do editors, using their best judgement, believe that this would be better handled as part of a larger article? (Maybe they do, maybe they don't.)
If you think that two unrelated sources should be required, then the place to do that is in the notability guidelines, not in the what-requires-a-source-once-you've-already-created-the-article policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:28, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
Hard cases make bad law. I see no reason to change the existing policy here, as WP:HOAX is sufficient. --Jayron32 16:46, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
I would say this: While original research should never be the basis for adding content, it can in limited circumstances be a basis for removing content. Take the case of the Casio F-91W: During the time after the user had received a reply from Casio confirming the year of introduction as 1989 but before the publication of the News 3 article, I would argue that the correct thing to do would have been to not list any year at all. That is, we should not include any fact that we think is likely wrong, even if it is confirmed by reliable sources (regardless of how many). -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:47, 10 May 2022 (UTC)
Two citations per entry is the inclusion criteria at List of one-hit wonders in the United States, established with a strong consensus five years ago at the discussion Talk:List_of_2010s_one-hit_wonders_in_the_United_States#Inclusion_criteria. The two citations are not intended to prevent a hoax, but to prevent fringe opinions from creeping in. Basically, the requirement for two cites per entry is an enforcement of WP:WEIGHT in this case. Binksternet (talk) 04:53, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Self-published sources discussing themselves: What if they state a falsehood?

The existing policy "Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves" says: "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, usually in articles about themselves or their activities." Five exceptions are provided, including "the material is...an exceptional claim" or there is "reasonable doubt as to its authenticity." Currently, there's an active discussion on WP MOS Gender Identity which sprang from an active discussion on the Talk page for "Tucker Carlson". The situation is: A couple days ago, Carlson updated his blue-checked (verified) Twitter bio to contain six false statements about himself. Some are just simply, verifiably false, e.g., his Twitter bio claims he went to Harvard and won an Emmy, when he did not. Nonetheless, WP editors are suggesting adding one of the six claims, namely that his pronouns are "they/them", as WP MOS Gender Identity provides for using "the person's latest expressed gender self-identification". The obvious objection is: What if the person is known for his anti-transgender opinions, he's claiming to express a different gender as a joke, and he admits to the conservative site The Daily Wire that he was joking? What then? This is not only about MOS Gender Identity. More broadly, it's about the verifiability of self-published sources about one's own biographical information of any type. If you say you went to Harvard and won an Emmy and you very clearly did not -- because you think that's a joke, for whatever reason, regardless of whether the joke succeeds in being funny to your audience or otherwise achieving your objective for making that joke (like, I don't know, gaining entrance to a Harvard alumni event to extend the "joke," if hypothetically that were your plan) -- the issue isn't that it's an exceptional claim, it's that it is false, and it's not that it's inauthentic (in the sense that someone might have hacked your Twitter account and updated your bio without your knowledge or consent), but, again, it's that you, the authentic you, said something false. For most editors, hopefully, it's obvious that we should not transcribe falsehoods, but perhaps it is worth acknowledging in this guideline that sometimes people make false statements about themselves. Otherwise, we have Talk page battles about whether we should take everyone's statements about themselves at face value. - Tuckerlieberman (talk) 13:53, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

What do RS say about the issue? False information should not be included without RS commentary which explains that it is false and what the facts are about it. It is the RS which give it due weight for mention in the first place. Unreliable sources, such as Carlson and whatever venues he controls, do not have due weight for mention. Only RS have that "power". ABOUTSELF allows use for basic information that is not unduly self-serving, and such deceptive information serves some function that may be weird, but it's also self-serving in that it is apparently designed to create controversy and draw attention. Wikipedia does not wish to become party to such shenanigans, even though we will certainly document it if RS discuss it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:08, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
My understanding of the "Verifiability: Self-published sources" rule is that we can accept a person's assertions about their basic biographical details. Example: If you need to know where someone went to college, you consult a biographical paragraph that they wrote. If it's self-published or something they themselves said on TV, that's OK, because people are the experts on their own résumé. (Correct?) I personally agree that Carlson is an unreliable individual and his non-factual "graduate of Harvard College & Yale Law School" trolling is part of a self-serving act, but another editor might counter that this is my subjective judgment against Carlson. And what the "Verifiability: Self-published sources" rule appears to say is that, if Carlson says he graduated Harvard, we are cleared to add that "fact" to his WP page (i.e. that he did go to Harvard, not only that he said he went there), even though it is just very clearly false information. I wonder if it is unclear to editors that, if the self-published statement is false, that in itself is grounds to refrain from making changes to someone's page—regardless of whether we like him, or find his jokes funny, or what we believe his motivations are for making a false statement. Tuckerlieberman (talk) 15:33, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
To some extent you are correct. If the claim isn't extraordinary or self serving we can included per ABOUTSELF. So if it's known a person's parents are from France, claiming they grew up speaking French at home is likely not a claim that we would reasonably treat as suspect. If the claim were just that they can speak French we and we have a video of them speaking the language in an interview that would clearly not be an extraordinary claim. However, if they claim to speak 17 different languages we would likely assume that is an extraordinary claim and seek further proof before accepting it. So yes, in this case, if Carlson were a less known BLP someone could have taken those claims at face value. However, for a high profile BLP we have more eyes and more information to go on. We can question a self published claim that seems at odds with the rest of the person's statements/behaviors/etc. At some level we always have to use some level of judgement when deciding how to use/not use information from both RS and SPS. Springee (talk) 16:25, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
OK, thanks. What the editors actually wanted to add was Carlson's statement about his gender pronouns (which they argued we ought to take seriously) and that logic is being discussed on MOS Gender Identity. They didn't want to add his school (which no one really thought we had to take seriously, since it doesn't check out) so that is more of a hypothetical I brought up here, as another instance of self-misrepresentation. Likely, they knew not to add fake info about his school because he's high-profile, as you pointed out. Thanks again. Tuckerlieberman (talk) 18:04, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict)See point 4 here, WP:SELFSOURCE. Self published content about one's self is fine except in cases such as, "There is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity." Number 1 also could apply as this, in context, is an exceptional claim. Springee (talk) 14:12, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
Well, yes, this is what I was trying to bring up—
To me, "authenticity" (item 4) implies that the person themselves (and not a hacker or impersonator) made the statement. If I say, "I don't think Tucker Carlson's current Twitter bio sounds authentic," someone might say: "Do you mean his account was hacked?" And I say, "No, he probably wrote it himself, but—" and they say "Well, then, it's authentic." In that dialogue, what I meant to get at is that his statement isn't sincere and doesn't faithfully represent his beliefs.
Also, to me, "exceptional claim" (item 1) doesn't really cover this situation either. Saying that one graduated Harvard and Yale Law isn't an exceptional claim, as every year Harvard grants about 1,500 bachelor's degrees and Yale grants about 200 law degrees, so there are thousands of people walking around with these degrees. I mean, any college degree is a big personal accomplishment, but it doesn't go in Ripley's Believe It Or Not! (A couple of my immediate family members graduated from Harvard.) The only way in which that claim is "exceptional" is in the sense of: Well gosh, Tucker Carlson, I always thought you went to Trinity College? Rewriting history is certainly 'exceptional'!
So my observation is that his statement is authentic and unexceptional, in the sense that he really is Tucker Carlson making this statement and many people do go to Harvard. But my concern is that it is also false. What I'm looking for is a rule making it clear that we don't transcribe self-published content about oneself if it's false. If I look in Harvard yearbooks, Tucker Carlson won't be there. Tuckerlieberman (talk) 16:23, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
It is indeed unexceptional for Carlson to constantly make false statements, but RS trump self-published sources when it comes to due weight for inclusion. When the content is controversial or of doubtful accuracy, we are not required to include the person's own words. We can leave them out and wait for the judgment from RS.
Falsehoods should never be included apart from the context, commentary, and debunkings provided by the RS that created the initial due weight for inclusion. Presenting a bare falsehood without context makes Wikipedia a vehicle for falsehood, and that is so wrong. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:49, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
  • I think Springee meant that the They / Them part in particular is exceptional given Carlson's history. The other parts just contradict higher-quality sources and aren't covered by the MOS:GENDERID requirement to defer to self-identification, so we can ignore them like we would any lower-quality source that is contradicted by a higher-quality source. --Aquillion (talk) 17:30, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
    • Aquillion is correct. Given what we know about Carlson we can assume that a request to use They/Them is an exceptional claim and thus we need additional sourcing before acting on it. We are not obliged to include self published claims we reasonably suspect are false. Springee (talk) 18:15, 13 May 2022 (UTC)
There's several things to consider here.
  • First, if the sources contradict, we can just go with higher-quality sources. Unfortunately that can be a problem with certain narrow WP:ABOUTSELF statements because higher-quality sources might not discuss it at all, but for most of these there's a plain contradiction, so we should go with the higher-quality sources.
  • Second, Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Gender identity is a special case that gives more weight to their self-identification; that's why it came up in this case. It's also, unlike historical details, something that can in theory change, so there isn't the same stark contradiction we have for everything else.
  • Third, WP:EXCEPTIONAL still applies. The idea that Tucker Carlson, given his political views, would suddenly genuinely identify as they / them is clearly exceptional, so I think it's fair to require higher-quality sources than we normally would (ie. in this particular case, not WP:ABOUTSELF ones, whereas a source like that would be sufficient for a random public figure without a history of views that make it unlikely they would identify that way.) And the basic underlying logic of EXCEPTIONAL applies as well - Carlson is a high-profile media figure well-known for the views that would make this exceptional; if any sources took this remotely seriously it would have massive amounts of coverage, which is conspicuously absent.
  • Fourth, I would argue that a source's reputation for fact-checking and accuracy does matter when it comes to WP:ABOUTSELF - aboutself allows us to cite a source for statements about themselves but does not completely erase the other requirements of RS. Carlson has a history of making false and misleading statements, which affects our ability to use him as a source for statements even about himself.
Finally, even when the sources are unambiguous in saying something that seems obviously wrong, we do have some leeway to omit it or wait for better sources - regardless of the outcome of the arguments about WP:ONUS above, it is definitely true that verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, while part of the purpose of WP:RECENTISM is to avoid problems like this. Arguing to exclude something because it is dubious or plainly false is a weak argument in the sense that it more or less requires everyone agree there is a problem so severe it approaches WP:BLUE levels, but when the sources are flagrantly, unambiguously wrong we are not actually required to follow them over a cliff - we do have the option to just decline to include something, at least up to a certain point. --Aquillion (talk) 17:30, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Citing a book without page numbers

What is the proper way to cite a book whose pages are unnumbered? I want to cite this book in Pam Tillis, but none of the pages are numbered. Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 17:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

@TenPoundHammer: I've historically cited the chapter if I can't get a page number. You could also consider adding Template:Page needed and hoping someone comes along with the physical book. For the record, that book is available at Open Library (here) and "Every Home Should Have One" is on page 67. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 17:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
This seems to be more and more common due to the rising popularity of ebooks. Sometimes, you can find another version of the book that has page numbers (as FFF did above; and, indeed, I find that Google often has an ebook scan with no page numbers, whereas Archive.org will have a scan of a paper version, with the page numbers). Either way, I think citing to the chapter is good enough if no page number is available on the copy you're working from. If it's really something controversial, you can provide a quote in the cite to help the reader find the right page in the source, if needed. Levivich 16:26, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
WP:PAGENUM has the official advice, which amounts to "do your best". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Using Verifiability as an excuse for gratuitous removal of information

The Lock (water navigation) article has recently seen major removal of content (-56,000 characters), with this policy given as justification. To take a few examples, it has sections on pound locks and drop locks but no longer has the introductory paragraphs saying what they are. It mentions lock flights and staircase locks but no longer has sections saying what these are or describing how they work. Similarly with many other examples, making the article disjointed and hopelessly incomplete. This is not good practice for something which is not a controversial issue. 23:01, 21 June 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A00:23C6:148A:9B01:D0F:5BED:374E:CB89 (talk)

Intoning that our encyclopedia can have false information on non-controversial subjects? While I can understand your arrogance blinds you, just because you think something is true or important doesn't mean that it actually is. I would recommend you cite reliable sources to support content you would like to add, rather than complain that this policy is unfair. Chris Troutman (talk) 23:08, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
@Chris troutman: The comments below all suggest that your analysis of the content and recommended solution are 100% correct. But I wonder whether your characterization of the editor as acting with "arrogance" crosses the wp:CIVIL line. - Butwhatdoiknow (talk) 16:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
@Butwhatdoiknow: You are welcome to wonder if I, the master of being uncivil without cursing, violated policy; only a trip to ANI could answer that question affirmatively. As a Wikipedia editor I have always felt the work called for a dutiful observance of community norms and the published facts. It takes a type of humility unknown to partisans to write an encyclopedia based purely on what reliable sources say, rather than display the arrogance in mistaking strongly-held beliefs in truth for an objective reality as described in citations. We, as a community, created policies, guidelines, and essays to coordinate our work. I acknowledge that my rebuke rubs you the wrong way. I don't suffer fools. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:03, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I remind editors that we only require a citation for information that is likely to be challenged or actually is challenged. The removed information was so basic that it certainly surprises me that it was challenged.
Nevertheless, it has now been challenged. This is a situation where my advice is to “Let the Wookie Win”. You could spend hours and hours arguing about policy (and whether the removal is or is not “valid”)… or… you can spend a few minutes finding sources to support the information and simply add it all back with those citations. The latter is far less stressful. Blueboar (talk) 23:52, 21 June 2022 (UTC)
Not sure what's "so basic" about, say the following removed sentence:

For a long period since the 1970s it was British Waterways policy not to provide gate paddles in replacement top gates if two ground paddles existed.

Are you claiming that this is common knowledge which every reader should already know? As explained (somewhat humorously) in WP:NOTBLUE, such assumptions are rarely valid arguments for an exemption from verifiability. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:38, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I agree with the above that the ideal positive-sum solution is to provide citations. Looking at the page history, though, it's worth noting that the issue is not that the OP here was trying to add material, but that one user had taken upon themselves to remove 56k of longstanding, uncited but seemingly uncontroversial text from the article, exactly one month after adding {{cn}} tags, and without providing any reason (in either edit) why removal was so urgently needed. This appears to be based on a legalistic reading of WP:BURDEN, but ironically the remover did not follow BURDEN's instruction to (inter alia) "state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable." The OP seems to be entirely correct that this action left a mess of an article that is considerably more of a disservice to the reader than the removed material was. This scenario is awfully similar (though not identical) to one of the bullet points at WP:POINT, which makes me think we should reconsider any language that appears to support these sorts of disruptions. It also suggests to me that BURDEN's "encouragement" to "provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag" verifiable but uncited information is not reaching the people it needs to reach. -- Visviva (talk) 01:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I have always understood material that is challenged"to mean "material that is reasonably challenged". Any of our rules can be converted into nonsense by taking them over literally. The usually appropriate way to see if the challenge is reasonable in a situation like this is to ask the challenger "just what statement in the material do you think is incorrect, or needs further explanation?" In this particular instance, I think adding a general citation would be sufficient. DGG ( talk ) 01:19, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
No, policy does not require the editor who removes material to have concluded that it contains incorrect statements. And for good reason, because otherwise many hoaxes and misinformation edits would become essentially bulletproof.
Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:38, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
  • It's somewhat facetious to claim that this material has been removed while neglecting to mention that it was moved to the Talk page for the article and that the material had been previously tagged (contrary to Visviva's claim above, most of the tags I saw were dated March or April, so over a month ago). In any case, in the end I agree with Blueboar: the easiest option here is to provide sources. DonIago (talk) 03:32, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
    To clarify, from what I'm seeing, the relevant tags were added on March 26, and the tagged content was then removed on April 26; the removal was then reverted on June 1 and un-reverted on June 2. We can all agree that citations are good and often necessary, and I'm certainly not going run in and re-add a bunch of unsourced text, but I don't think this kind of removal is an improvement or (as relevant on this page) a particularly good application of WP:V; it amounts to making work for other editors. {{Citation needed}} shouldn't be a time bomb. -- Visviva (talk) 17:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
While opinions will doubtless vary on how long unsourced material should be allowed to remain in an article, if the original tags were applied in March and April, then while I think it could be argued that Nightscream moved a little quickly, I don't think it was especially egregious either. In that sense, CN tags are a sort of time bomb, in that unsourced material shouldn't remain in an article indefinitely. Material that nobody seems inclined to source should be removed (or more specifically, in this instance, relocated to the Talk page). Nobody should be surprised that material that's been tagged previously has been removed, because the tagging was a warning that someone at least had doubts about the verifiability of the material (at least if you AGF). DonIago (talk) 17:49, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I think that Nightscream (the target of 2A00:23C6's accusations above, who does not appear to have been notified yet about this discussion) did the right thing here. WP:BURDEN is pretty clear that the burden to provide references is on those who want to restore the material. Advance notice was given, and once sources have been found, the text can easily be restored from the talk page or revision history, so no work will have been lost. Regards, HaeB (talk) 05:38, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
The complaining editor has not provided any rationale as to why the removal was "gratuitous", or why the policy cited for it was an "excuse". Moreoever, choosing the heading title for this discussion, doesn't seem to be in then spirit of WP:AGF. Neither is the fact that the editor never bothered to reach out to me, or even to sign up for a username account, which Wikipedia requires for editors who intend to do more than one-off editing.
For my part, fact-tagging articles with large amounts of uncited text, and then moving it to the talk page after a month, has been my practice ever since I entered into discussions with other editors on this matter, as I recall, on Jimmy Wales' talk page. They advised it as a middle-ground compromise between wholesale removal and allowing large amounts of uncited material to remain in articles.
The standard of requring citations for information that is "likely to be challenged or actually is challenged" (in particular the first half of that idea is subjective and circular. How does one gauge whether information is "likely" to be challenged? What evidence or reasoning is being employed, and by who, to determine whether a given piece of information is "basic"? It's a completely useless standard.
I think there is a narrow range of material that should not require a secondary citation. The content or credits of a book/TV show/film/song that's been released, for example, doesn't need a secondary source solely for non-analytical descriptions of their content. And Jimmy Wales himself suggested three examples: "Christmas falls on December 25"; "Paris is a city in Europe"; "The sky blue." I agree with the first two. I disagree with the third. For one thing, what causes the color of the sky is a matter of science (specifically optics and atmospherics), and the sky isn't always blue at all times of day, and in all places. And when you go to the Wikipedia article on the sky, you'll see the the first passage that describes the reason for it being blue has four citations. I think this provides a good, rough rationale: Any knowledge that is of an even slightly technical nature, the kind of thing a middle schooler wouldn't know when asked at random, or whose origin would need to be cited in a term paper or school report, needs a citation.
Allowing large swaths of uncited information in articles clealry violates WP:V, WP:NOR, et all, invites others to add more of the same, and makes it impossible for people who consult Wikipedia to gauge the quality of that material. Nightscream (talk) 16:13, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
I agree on the importance of citations, but I don't quite understand where the 30-day deadline comes from. WP:BURDEN provides that "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article." What about the material and the overall state of the article led you to choose 30 days? A lot of articles have a 10-year layer of dust on them (looking at the history of this article, the last significant edit before yours seems to have been in 2018, and most of the article is considerably older), so it seems like 30 days might as well have been 30 minutes. (I would submit that the underlying problem here is that many of the editor communities that created these articles are effectively dead, which can only be solved by bringing new people in, which of course requires being more open to imperfect content and contributors, not less so.) I am also a bit hazy on what moving the material to the talk page accomplishes that a diff would not. -- Visviva (talk) 18:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
The cn template says "Please do not delete information that you believe is correct solely because no one has provided a citation within an arbitrary time limit. If there is some uncertainty about its accuracy, most editors are willing to wait at least a month to see whether a citation can be provided." probably came from there. Selfstudier (talk) 18:25, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
It is not clear that there was any significant uncertainty about its accuracy. The above explanation appears to be that the editor believes Wikipedia is improved by removing uncited material even if it is accurate. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

The material looks like something that I would have put a bunch of cn tags on.North8000 (talk) 17:43, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

The article does not seem to be edited very frequently. If somebody is going to stick citation needed in I think they should do a quick search to see if what is said is easy to verify and actually stick in a citation if so. And when deleting sufficient time should be left for someone to come along who would put in an effort fixing. Otherise we're talking about people putting in work but not doing everything correctly beink engaged as little pop up moles in a whack a mole game by people who won't put in any more effore than to see if there is a square with a reference number at the end of sentences. NadVolum (talk) 13:04, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
Yes, one can argue that it is uncollegial behavior, but the alternative is worse. Imagine that you have strong doubts about the material – in fact, you suspect it of being a complete fabrication – and the person who's adding it says "This article isn't edited very frequently. You should probably try to find the sources yourself instead of expecting those of us who want to add the information to do all that work." WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:03, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
That attitude, imho, when accompanied by a lack of concern about edit warring, can be corrosive. I've seen a similar scenario happen at an article. Afaicr, it was a newish editor who added uncited content, and gave me that line after I tagged it. After some time, I removed the uncited material, but they quickly reverted. Unwilling to engage in edit warring, I left the material in, and for all I know, it's still there. Good faith editors who uphold the principles of WP:Verifiability (whatever their interpretation of the nuances and minutiae of blue skies and waiting a month or not), collegiality, and who avoid edit warring, should not be at the mercy of editors who do not have such scruples. In the end, an assertion of no citation required for some factoid could, I suppose, (like everything else) be a matter of consensus, and I guess I'd support the right of someone who wanted to take it to the rail and insist that no citation was needed at the Albert Einstein article for "He had unkempt hair" to have it decided by Rfc, but as you and others have said above, isn't it easier just to cite it? As a practical matter, if challenged to provide a citation for something I don't think needs one, I have a quick look at who's asking, and unless they are clearly a vandal or provocateur, and it's not blue sky fact, I just cite it. An additional tiny superscript number in brackets rarely makes an article worse, and we should err on the side of citation. Arguing about it more than a tiny bit seems to edge into WP:NOTBURO territory to me. Mathglot (talk) 17:18, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
The answer to that is you did do a quick check on Google and couldn't find anything to substantiate what was said. If the person who stuck it in then says they can't be bothered to fix it a straight immediate removal is perfectly in order. NadVolum (talk) 19:07, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Articles that have few editors or eyes on them are dangerous (the incident that led to the creation of WP:BLP happened on one of them, after all, and severely damaged Wikipedia's reputation.) I think that if there's nobody watching the article willing to do something about CN tags in over a month, then it's reasonable to move on to removal. Of course, nothing stops someone from stepping in and restoring the text with sources at that point, but unsourced text that has few eyes watching it is, in the aggregate, a ticking time bomb. Defaulting to removal per WP:BURDEN is the only way we can avoid that problem. --Aquillion (talk) 22:37, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
  • The removed text was tagged for over a month without citations being added; that certainly counts as it being challenged. I mostly disagree with the argument that challenges must meet some subjective standard of reasonable-ness - any challenge made in good faith is sufficient. In extreme cases there may be bizarre or WP:POINT-y challenges that don't qualify, sure (such as informing an editor that you are challenging every edit they ever made on their talk page), but this is nowhere near that; some people might reasonably disagree over whether it needed sources or needed to be challenged, sure, but the whole point of WP:V's challenged or likely to be challenged wording is that all it takes is one person challenging it. --Aquillion (talk) 22:37, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Great

Edit warring over a tag, whatever next. The tag requires a discussion on the talk page, which one is it? Selfstudier (talk) 21:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

it would be helpful to provide some context... PRAXIDICAE🌈 21:56, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Diff Selfstudier (talk) 22:17, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Resolved. Selfstudier (talk) 23:03, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Evidence of reliability and fact checking goes way beyond just reputation

Personally, I'd feel far more comfort ascribing weight to content produced from an established journalistic blogger or video content creator who declared their workings and whose comments were turned on than that produced by some opinionated hack or celeb that somehow got their closed for comment writings into some established publication.

Articles and videos that are presented by individuals can certainly have vastly higher readerships and viewerships than those typically achieved within the memberships of various press gang contingents. Of course, the press will typically deride other contents or ascribe poor associations potentially because of their vested interests in maintaining their own positions.

The world is changing. Previously, the ability to produce the physical outputs of the press was limited to the hands of just a few players. We now live in a different world in which anyone can report and, hopefully, cite evidence. It's still a world where the press wants to hold onto their own reputations while damning everyone else. My hope is that Wikipedia may find ways to be more openminded. If independent journalists etc. have established good track records of providing good, fact checked materials that are openly available and have not been relevantly contested, why not? GregKaye 08:29, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

"Declaring your workings" is fashionable at the moment, but you're taking it on faith that the declarations are truthful. I remember hearing that Rush Limbaugh regularly asserted the existence of an internal fact-checking process that declared 98% or 99% of his on-air statements to be factual. This is a person who accused people of committing crimes for political purposes, denied the existence of climate change, and said that COVID-19 was just the common cold. He even said that tobacco's role in lung cancer was unimportant about five years before dying prematurely of lung cancer.[1] Do you trust his declarations about fact-checking? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:55, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
Checks blp policy...no. Selfstudier (talk) 17:43, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia's wp:ver and wp;NPOV source - related policies certainly need updating .....they are designed for the now-past Walter Cronkite era. We need to update to where the objectivity and expertise of a source with respect to the item which cited it is the metric of the strength of the sourcing, and also that the current "binary" wp:RS situation in policies (which only rates sources as 0% or 100%) is silly. North8000 (talk) 00:21, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think that the policies and guidelines have that binary approach. I do see (and lament) signs of that binary thinking in discussions, especially around RSP. The idea that Chinese state-controlled media is "unreliable" for, e.g., the titles of various government officials or the position of the Chinese government, is just silly.
That said, "objectivity" is not always the point of a reliable source. Reviews (e.g., films, books, music) aren't meant to be "objective". They are often most valuable when the expert strays from objectivity and declares that the subject was one of the most influential works of the decade. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:50, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Definition of a source

SOURCE says:

The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings:
All three can affect reliability.

I have been thinking since our last conversation on this about how to make it clearer. Here's my current thinking:

A source is the person, place, or thing that a Wikipedia editor took information from. Usually, when editors are talking about a source, they mean one or more of these four things:
  • The work itself (the article, book: "That book looks like a useful source for this article.")
  • The creator of the work (the writer, journalist: "What do we know about that source's reputation?")
  • The publication (for example, the newspaper, journal, magazine: "That source covers the arts.")
  • The publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press: "That source publishes reference works.")
All four can affect reliability.

This adds a straight definition of source (NB source – not reliable source) and examples of how editors might use the word. I also separated publisher from publication, which turns our three categories into four.

As an example of why I think four categories is more appropriate, consider the 2022 Pulitzer Prize winners in investigative journalism. The winning work was a series of five articles by three reporters.[2] So we might say:

I think this will make the what-we-mean-by-this-word explanation a bit clearer. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:35, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  • I think so, it's tiresome when one cites with attribution a reliable source1 from a reliable source2 and someone claims that you misrepresented source2 because of some other stuff in source2 that you didn't mention. Don't ask. Selfstudier (talk) 17:48, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
    Because when you are talking about a source by a source in a source from a source, then everyone knows exactly what you mean when you say "I think we need to look into that source a little more", right? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:54, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
    ) Selfstudier (talk) 09:26, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Someone will have to dig back through the archives, but I remember that we had some discussions on this back when the section was crafted… it might be helpful to look back at those discussions. If I remember correctly, we deliberately chose to use the word “meanings” (and intentionally AVOIDED using the word “definitions”) in that sentence. Ie we were not trying to DEFINE the term “source”, but instead clarifying that people often USE the term “source” in different contexts, each of which need to be thought about when discussing the general mishmash that is reliability. Blueboar (talk) 18:39, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree that these things aren't really the definition of a source, but rather an odd mix between explaining what people may mean when they say "the source" and trying to list attributes of a source that affect its reliability. And for the latter, this list is importantly incomplete and badly weighted. I think it is good in WAID's proposal to recognise that the "publication" is an important attribute and often used as a noun when we say "source" (e.g. The Guardian is a good source) but I think we should drop "publisher". Who the publisher is is actually a bit vague. The examples here seem to think it is the corporate entity that owns the publication. But often that is just an "imprint" of a bigger publishing house who in turn are owned by someone further up (a trust, a listed company, a Russian oligarch). If a newspaper runs a political live blog, the publisher is really the journalist posting entries. For other articles, we might view the editor as the one who made a decision to publish an article. The corporate entities may own so many titles that they don't really feature in our views of reliability. When has anyone said 'I sourced this from Penguin Random House"' or "Elsevier is a reliable source" or "That's unsupported by the source, Guardian Media Group".

I wonder if this policy is so focused on what makes a source reliable that it has missed the fact that of the three or four "sources" listed above, only one of them is fundamental to verifiability: the actual text of the article we cite. If our article text is not capable of being drawn from that source text, it simply isn't even a "source" and certainly isn't verifiable. I think the policy should start with that, that fundamentally the thing that actually used as a source for the wiki text is some article text (or speech or a diagram I guess). These other nouns (creator, publication, publisher) may often be used to when we talk about a source, but whenever we do so, we are being vague and importantly we are being indirect. We don't actually source our text to Katy Balls or to The Guardian or to Guardian Media Group. We source it to words on a page.

So maybe we need to say this, what a source really is, and then explain that sometimes people use indirect nouns when they talk vaguely about sources. Because I don't think there is anything particularly special about creator/publication/publisher as attributes of a source that determine "What counts as a reliable source" (the section heading). For example, it is far far more important that an article in The Guardian is straightforward news reporting of current affairs rather than opinion, blog, review, obituary, humour, etc. We know in medical publications the article type is absolutely critical (more so than the publication or author) and yet does not feature in the above "what counts as a reliable source". There are other attributes at Wikipedia:Reliable sources such as age. A new source may more reliably reflect current thinking than an old source.

I think trying to focus on the primary attributes of "what counts as a reliable source" by listing these nouns is a bad approach we should now retire. -- Colin°Talk 10:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

It is words on a page but no-one speaks about sources in that way, RSP is organized by publisher for example. I think it is helpful to describe simply what is a "source", not necessarily reliable and not necessarily for WP experts, agreed, but WP is not mostly experts and every little helps. Selfstudier (talk) 11:00, 31 May 2022 (UTC)
Well, WP:RSP is actually mostly organised by publication, not publisher. For example, it lists Scientific American who are a magazine published by Springer Nature who in turn are owned by Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. What's the publisher of a website like Science-Based Medicine? Is it themselves, their blog authors or the New England Skeptical Society that owns it? Who cares really, when we can treat it as a publication and discuss at that level. I guess books don't really have a "publication" since they are all one-offs, though they may be part of a series or an imprint that has a reputation. WP:V currently states "Random House" is what editors call a "source" and claims that being published by "Random House" affects reliability. Really? Has anyone ever called Random House a "source" and claimed they are or are not generally reliable? Surely that isn't a meaningful example.
You say "no-one speaks about sources in that way". Well they really do at article level, because if you read an article and its citation you get the source for the text, which really really is the words on the page what is cited. Nobody (beyond newbie level) puts just an author's name as the source, or just "the Bible" as a source, even mind "Cambridge University Press" as a source. So I say: Nobody actually cites sources that way. And at the level of discussing whether article text "fails verification" then the primary thing that matters is whether the words on the page support the article text. If someone says "Hold on a sec, the source doesn't support the text", they mean the words cited, not the person who authored it. Or if they amend the text "per source" they are doing so per the words on the page, not per Random House or because they happen to personally know what Katy Balls really meant. Perhaps that kind of discussion generally gets sorted out on article talk page rather than going to noticeboards and such, so perhaps it is easy to forget.
Whenever you go beyond the words on the page, to the author, publication and so on, you are being indirect and general. And I'd say that these nouns less useful to us as a grouping mechanism for generalities than to consider attributes. Sure who the author is and what the containing publication is are also attributes, but so is the type of article and so is the age of the article. I think WP:V's over-emphasis on publisher/publication it is harmful, actually, because at MEDRS and medical topics, we have to explain to people that yes the NEJM is a fantastic publication, and yes the paper is peer reviewed, but your study of 20 patients in 1995 is not a reliable source for saying Wonderpam cures baldness. It is the wrong type of article and it is very old. Do you really think the fact that something is published by Cambridge University Press rather than Penguin is more important than whether one is 30 years old and one is a year old. -- Colin°Talk 11:07, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Nobody (beyond newbie level) puts just an author's name as the source, is not true, every time we cite an expert opinion, the text of our article will cite the author as source, regardless of where it was published. This does not stop persons going on to say it was published by X and X is a crap publisher that does no fact checking, prints conspiracy theories etc etc. You see, no discussion of the actual text, just arguments about the author and the publisher, very common situation. Those MEDRS examples you mention are also typical of the discussions in other areas and again they are not about the actual words. The truth is that all of the elements whether they be WP:RS elements or V elements go into discussions (when they occur) about "a source". Finally your comment publication, not publisher kinda proves my point about how slippery this all is, so additions that clarify are welcome in my view. Selfstudier (talk) 11:20, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
Are you talking about in-text attribution? I'm not sure that's quite what WP:V is talking about when it means a source.
Here's the thing, the actual words on the page that we cite as our source cannot be judged reliable or unreliable, any more than a clock face showing 3:15 can be judged reliable. Judging reliability means examining qualities of something from which we draw our cited source information from. Something bigger or more general. In the WP:V text we are discussing, we've gone bigger by crawling up the publication hierarchy. But we can become more general in other directions too.
Those attributes of reliability might be being in a certain respected non-fiction book, in a quality newspaper, by a professional author with relevant qualifications, be an appropriate type of article, be recent. Some of those attributes happen to align with concrete nouns that people casually talk about when discussing "reliable sources" but I argue some of those important attributes have been neglected. In medicine we might say that our source is a literature review, or it is a meta-analysis, or that it is just an editorial or a case report. I might say "A case report is a terrible source for Wikipedia". But this "type of article" doesn't feature in the above bullets. I might say "Try to use a modern source" but age doesn't feature in the above bullets.
Verification is concerned with two things. Does the source cited literally support the article text. This is the basic requirement to even meet the definition of source. I agree that when everyone here discusses reliability we don't discuss the actual text (much) and we discuss all these other things. The problem with hierarchies, as these bullet points above demonstrate, is that they often restrict our ways of thinking. They are just one way of organising things, and I think that by doing it like above, we aren't focusing on the most useful qualities and over emphasising a rather unimportant one. But also, I think we are confusing the newbie editor if we really are trying to say this is the definition of a source. -- Colin°Talk 15:03, 2 June 2022 (UTC)
In re Do you really think the fact that something is published by Cambridge University Press rather than Penguin is more important than whether one is 30 years old and one is a year old?
I think the fact that something is published by the author, or published by the subject, or published by a predatory journal group is very important. The difference between CUP and Penguin could be trivial; the difference between a corporate press release and any large non-fiction publishing house is significant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

IMO, in practice talking about the publisher is usually in the context of confirming that it isn't self-published. And what's more relevant is the "next level up"; e.g. the magazine that it's in, not the ultimate owner of the magazine. Probably a distant second is when there is a respected known publisher who really does publisher-type work involved, such bolsters the source during any discussions. North8000 (talk) 11:43, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

The publisher is the key point if you're talking about predatory journals. Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia/Questionable1 is organized by publisher, e.g., Hindawi (publisher). WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:30, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
Focusing on "publisher", and more specifically, that the publisher itself is key to relability when considering aspects like self-publishing and promotional/predatory works, can help. At least it becomes easy when you identify the publisher as the entity that has editorial control and review of the work before it is made public, and reliability is a measure of that editorial control. Eg it is understanding the YouTube nor Twitter is the publisher of that content, merely a host while the uploaded is the publisher. Forbes contribs have minimal review before they are published to which we consider the contributor as the publisher. A predatory journal is not going to have the rigorous peer review like top tier journals so while they may be the publisher, their process of editorial oversight sucks to make them unreliable. Etc. Masem (t) 19:46, 20 June 2022 (UTC)

Plural

I think I've found a way to adapt the current/proposed text in a way that includes what is missing. I maintain that when the current text says "The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings" it is very misleading and WAID's proposal is only a little better "Usually, when editors are talking about a source, they mean one or more of these four things". Because there are five things we talk about, one of them is what we actually cite, and that isn't mentioned in either list. We cite a specific source text, with varying degrees of precision, and we expect the reader to be able to find words in the source text that supports the article text. We are not "citing" a person or a publication or a publisher and citing a whole book would be unhelpful. But we are talking about those things, mostly when we are considering reliability.

An additional problem with the current/proposed text is that it is all singular. And that's not often helpful for discussing reliability. Sure, we can find examples of these things that are individually considered unreliable. The Lancet MMR paper by Andrew Wakefield got withdrawn (eventually) and is itself widely notable as unreliable. Same goes for its lead author, Wakefield. And the Daily Mail is our go-to example of an unreliable publication. But it is often more helpful to talk in the plural and we do also consider them as a source in the plural. We may say "Primary research papers are not a reliable source of medical facts" or "Professional textbooks are reliable sources". We can say "Newspapers are not a good source for medical facts" without having to deal with a specific newspaper's own reputation.

How to talk about sources in the plural? Any ideas for revising the section? Here's a quick draft:

While a cited source is usually a specific block of text, when we talk about a reliable source we mean the person, place, or work that a Wikipedia editor took information from. Usually, when editors are talking about a reliable source or sources, they mean one or more of these four things:
  • The work itself (the article, book: "That book looks like a useful source for this article.") and works like it ("An obituary can be a useful biographical source", "A recent source is better than an old one")
  • The creator of the work (the writer, journalist: "What do we know about that source's reputation?") and people like them ("A medical researcher is a better source than a journalist for..").
  • The publication (for example, the newspaper, journal, magazine: "That source covers the arts.") and publications like them ("A newspaper is not a reliable source for medical facts").
  • The publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press: "That source publishes reference works.") and publishers like them ("An academic publisher is a good source of reference works").

I disagree with WAIDs claim that their text "a straight definition of source (NB source – not reliable source)" because it missed out the cited source, which is a very important use of the word source, and I think (correct me I'm wrong) those other meanings are mainly concerned with choosing reliable ones. We aren't defining reliable source either, but trying to define source when used in either circumstance. When I say "The source does not support the article text" I'm referring to the cited source text, not the book or author or publisher. When I say "The source is not reliable" I'm not referring to the cited source text itself, but the other things around that. -- Colin°Talk 10:59, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I agree with much of what Colin has said, but I wanted to raise considerations that go beyond WP:V (since editors are often juggling multiple policies and related definitions). For example when considering Notability, and also when establishing WP:BALANCE and WP:DUE, it is typically the publication meaning of "source" that is used as the unit of measurement in "counting RS" (though this doesn't apply to academic journals). Perhape we could keep these related aspects in mind for any proposed new text here? Newimpartial (talk) 12:05, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
Colin captures the original intent of this section of policy. We were not attempting to define the term “source”, but outlining the different ways in which the term is used in discussions, and cautioning editors to think about all of them when assessing reliability. Blueboar (talk) 13:49, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
I hear what you're saying, but presumably the section should at least offer scaffolding for the ways "source" is used within this policy. The top of the policy page includes the statement If reliable sources disagree, then maintain a neutral point of view and present what the various sources say, giving each side its due weight, with a link to DUE, so it wouldn't be off-topic to note that the publisher definition of "source" is typically used in discussions of BALANCE. Newimpartial (talk) 14:48, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
There are two parts to this, and one of them is to define "source". The other is to give a somewhat clearer/longer explanation of the ways that the word gets used.
  1. I propose adding an actual definition of source (NB: not "reliable source". Just plain old "source", including unreliable ones and ones whose reliability is not yet determined).
  2. I propose expanding the "how we use this in this policy" bit from three types to four types, because I think that will cover almost all of the uses of this word.
I think that we should have a definition of "source" in this policy (again: not "reliable source"). People reading this policy should be able to find a sentence that tells them that if they're writing something that they read on social media, then social media posts are their source, if they are writing something their grandparents said, then their grandparents are the source, etc. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
The expanded version I propose doesn't define a "reliable source" either, but it does clarify that we generally mean different things depending on whether we are citing it (in which case it is a concrete thing with actual words) or discussing the reliability of something that contains it or things that are similar to it and may even be an abstract thing like "newspapers" or "literature reviews".
If they are writing about something they read on social media and they actually cited it (a tweet, say) then their cited source is that sentence someone tweeted. Verifiability is very interested in that sentence (does it support the article text) but it is unimportant when we consider if it is a reliable source. If someone complains "that's an unreliable source" they might mention Twitter or the author of the tweet, but could also disparage all "social media posts", as you put it, as an unreliable source of information, which are plural and general, and that plurality and generalisation was missing from your original proposed version.
If they don't cite the source, then it is what we'd call "unsourced" even if there is a "source" within their head. The same goes for their grandparent's oral wisdom. I don't think your example then fits into "when editors are talking about a source" because we don't have extended conversations about intangible unknowable sources. The policy page is "Verifiability" and we are in the section "Reliable sources" and subsection "What counts as a reliable source". If we are concerned to educate our readers about any kind of sources, citable for the purpose of verification or only vaguely remembered, then source is a starting point for articles on the topic. -- Colin°Talk 17:46, 5 June 2022 (UTC)
My main concern about your proposal is the inclusion of the word reliable in the phrase "when we talk about a reliable source we mean the person, place, or work that a Wikipedia editor took information from". Consider:
  • "Source": Any person, place, or thing that a Wikipedia editor took information from
  • "Cited source": Any person, place, or thing that is cited in the article, even if it's not the one that a Wikipedia editor originally took the information from (e.g., a source cited by someone else to deal with a {{fact}} tag; a source that has failed verification)
  • "Reliable source": Any person, place, or thing that experienced editors accept as being appropriate for verifying the specific content in question.
The definition of (plain) source needs to encompass unreliable sources. What you wrote doesn't do that. If the problem isn't obvious to you, then try flipping that sentence: "the person, place, or work that a Wikipedia editor took information from is what we mean when we talk about a reliable source". It is not true that every person, place, or work that a Wikipedia editor took information from is a reliable source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
I really don't want to be defining "source" or "cited source" or "reliable source" as though they are dictionary definitions, and I don't think those definitions are helpful. I was trying to clarify what editors mean by "source" in the two key circumstances that matter to Verifiability: when we cite a source and when we discuss reliability of a source. I don't think it is useful to clump all the possible meanings together, because we really really do not cite publishing houses or people, and we really really do not discuss the reliability of page 51 of the January 2022 edition of the British Medical Journal.
I think you got "person, place, or thing" from Google's definition of a "source" and I think that's an unhelpfully general definition because "place" might be fine for where you get your groceries but is pretty irrelevant to Wikipedia's use of the word. And "thing" is way too unspecific. A dictionary has to include e.g. "mackerel is a good source of fish oil" but we don't. We use the word "work" so we might as well lead with that, rather than "thing".
How about "While a cited source is usually a specific block of text, when we talk about whether or not a source is reliable, we mean the work or works a Wikipedia editor took information from, or those involved in creating and publishing those works:"
That avoids your concern that we are trying to define reliable source and is a better lead description than the "person, place or thing" that Google gave us. I think we can drop the last sentence too, and just let this one lead into the bullet list. In a way, this sentence then is a transition from thinking about citing specific source text, to thinking about "What counts as a reliable source", which is the section heading. -- Colin°Talk 17:35, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
I didn't get this definition from Google; that's the typical definition of a noun, which my own Miss Snodgrass insisted that all her students learn.
Citing a place is not common, except for {{cite sign}}, but a geographical location really can be a source of information, e.g., "I walked over to this park last week and found a monument to the soldiers of the Great War, and now I'm writing "There is a war memorial in this park" in the Wikipedia article. It might not be a reliable source, but if this is how you acquired the information you put in the article, then it is your source.
The reason I prefer "person, place, or thing" is because it encompasses everything that could give information to a Wikipedia editor. "Work" feels narrower, as if it includes only artwork and documents. What if you're reading the label on an object, and you add "The Russell Hobbs iron is made in China" to a relevant Wikipedia article? Is that "a work"? It doesn't feel that way to me. What if the source of my information is personal experience? I can tell you that falling down hurts a lot more than it used to. Is my personal experience "a work"? If it's the basis for me adding information to an article, it would be "my source" (and an unreliable one banned by NOR), but it doesn't feel like it's "a work". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
I think you are trying to do something different to what this point in the policy page needs to do, and was (imperfectly) trying to do, which is describe what editors usually mean by "source" when they are having sourcing discussions. While we could extend "source" to include one's grandparent's oral wisdom, what your primary school teacher taught you, your local woodland or your own self discoveries about pain, these aren't what editors are usually talking about. The {{cite sign}} template describes it being used for a noticeboard providing information. I'd regard that as a "work" (it certainly is wrt copyright in the UK) and it really isn't a place, even it has a static location that could be part of the citation. The word "work" was already used multiple times in this section and used multiple times in your draft.
Wikipedia's verification policy requires a source to be a tangible thing that another editor can consult independently in order to verify the article text. I would say that was a core part of the restrictive meaning of "source" we use when citing and when discussing their reliability. So, while those other meanings of "source" are valid for where you may have got your ideas from, they aren't relevant to Wikipedia, to WP:V or to the section on what makes a reliable source.
I think there's a reason that copyright licences use the term "work". It means it was created by a human and is more than what existed before (in our case, it presents information to the consumer of that work). It is more than just a "thing" and certainly isn't a "place". Is there an alternative word? -- Colin°Talk 10:37, 7 June 2022 (UTC)
Even if we were writing this policy from scratch, I would recommend having a definition of source in it. If people believe that all sources are copyrightable works, then people will be misled as to the nature of the actual sources.
It is not a matter of whether we "could" extend the concept of a source to unreliable and non-traditional works; the fact is that we "already do". Using your examples, it would surprise me if, in these 6,908,468 articles, there were really nothing based on what someone's grandmother said about the food she cooked, what an editor's schoolteacher said about grammar or basic mathematics, a description of a place based on the Wikipedia editor walking over to the woodland and then writing here a description of its location or the presence of some type of plants, or identifying a particular experience as being painful based on the editor's personal experience (e.g., the unsourced content in Breakup about pain). WP:PRIMARYCARE gives an example of using a painting as a source. NOR gives an example of archaeological artifacts as being sources. Middens probably don't qualify as "works", but NOR says they are primary sources. Note, too, that the FAQ at the top of this page mentions unpublished personal communications as being a source.
I think the disconnect is here: "Wikipedia's verification policy requires a source to be a tangible thing". It doesn't. Wikipedia's verification policy requires a reliable source to be a tangible thing, but it doesn't require an unreliable source to be anything. Source = unreliable+reliable. The definition of source should not be wrongly limited to reliable ones. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 12 June 2022 (UTC)
I can't escape the problem that all the things you listed in the first paragraph are what editors here would call "unsourced". I'm quite sure there are lots of facts that come from these intangible origins but editors don't tend to regard them as sources worth discussing. It doesn't even make sense to consider whether they are reliable or not. When have we ever had a discussion about whether your grandmother was reliable, or the woods were a reliable source of facts about trees, or your heart was a reliable source about the pain of a breakup. I think for a section in WP:V that is describing what makes a source reliable, it doesn't help to get distracted by them.
I'm not really sold by the idea that editors need a general definition of source that so clearly majors on sources we don't discuss. I don't think the proposed text claims these are the only meanings, but they are the usual meanings that editors generally discuss.
I'm not at all claiming that sources need to be copyrightable. The word "works" has existed in this policy for a very long time, and I mentioned copyright licences merely to say that they also used the same term to describe something human created that has value. Your examples of paintings or archaeological artefacts being primary sources fits completely into "works" too, though we wouldn't tend to have a reliability discussion about those, more whether the facts claimed from such primary sources fouled OR. The proposed text says "usually" wrt both the citation ("usually a specific block of text") and the reliability discussion. Are you actually suggesting people cite paintings so often that "usually" is wrong? Or that I've been unaware of WP:UNRELIABLEGRANDMOTHERS where editors have for years been categorising which ancestors are reliable and unreliable?
Aside from your feelings that WP:V needs a general definition of source, which we haven't had to date, what really is wrong with the text I proposed and what is better about it? I think adding the plurals makes it much easier for us to point at policy when saying "this type of source is unreliable" rather than getting bogged down in specifics as the current text keeps doing. And I think it corrects the mistake in the current text that claims we cite people or publishers, because we really don't. Blueboar and Newimpartial appear to agree it is an improvement that better describes what editors are talking about. Perhaps there is room for your general source definition, if it has merit, in another part of the page? -- Colin°Talk 07:55, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
When have we ever had conversations about whether someone's grandmother is reliable? In practice, probably about 90% of the times we've discussed whether any document written by a woman over the age of 60. But if you meant "When have we discussed whether unpublished personal communications count"?, then I repeat that this has happened often enough that it ended up in the Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/FAQ years ago. My own preferred example begins "I saw Karp in the elevator, and he said...", and I can find five conversations in which I've mentioned that specific example with a quick search, so it does apparently come up.
I think that WP:V and WP:RS will eventually need a definition of reliable source. That requires having a definition for source. It is very difficult to reach an agreement about what counts as "a source that is reliable" if we cannot reach an agreement about what counts as "a source".
For the rest, I repeat: My main concern about your proposal is the inclusion of the word reliable in the phrase "when we talk about a reliable source we mean the person, place, or work that a Wikipedia editor took information from".
Consider the classic OR violation of posting unpublished information. I even cite it: <ref>Unpublished document from work</ref>.
Now I read your proposed statement: "when we talk about a reliable source we mean..." – well, we don't even need to read the whole sentence, because apparently we mean something of absolutely no relevance to what I did, because I cited an unreliable source, and this whole thing is only about reliable sources. All the following stuff about documents, authors, and publishers has just been defined as irrelevant, because it's an unreliable source and this sentence is only talking about reliable sources. This means you're going to tell me that I can't say this because we care about publishers (and there isn't one, which is essentially a fatal omission for a document), and I'm going to very sweetly reply "Dear Colin, your sentence says we mean to talk about publishers for reliable sources. You said this is an unreliable one, so we don't talk about the publisher", and then you are going to think about whether to cheer for the comet. Sticking the word reliable in there is an unnecessary gift to dramamongers and wikilawyers. If you re-write your opening sentence in there to not limit the type of sources whose work, author(s), or publisher(s) could be meant, then I'd be satisfied. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
I've already amended the proposal to meet this demand. See the text in green posted 6th June, that says "when we talk about whether or not a source is reliable". That covers both reliable and unreliable sources, and covers the situation where those meanings are appropriate (vs the restricted kind of sources we typically see cited in articles).
I'm not aware there is disagreement or confusion about what is a source, in the general meaning, but if an editor is confused or disagrees, then they could be referred to a dictionary or an encyclopaedia. I don't see why policy needs to define every day words to include more general examples than is useful for a discussion on verifiability.
Wrt your personal communication example, the FAQ is a little misleading, in that the issue with such a source (telephone or email or letter or face-to-face or whatever) is that it simply isn't acceptable as verifiable by a reader at all, and the reliability of it is by-they-by. As the page you link to (Wikipedia:Published) explains: "Sources that are not published (e.g., something someone said to you personally) or not accessible (e.g., the only remaining copy of the book is locked in a vault, with no one allowed to read it) are never acceptable as sources on Wikipedia." While it also says reliable sources must be published/accessible, that is not a definition of reliable, merely that those attributes are a bare minimum before we can even entertain a discussion of reliability. For example, in the WP:V lead "verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source", requires published/accessible for the "other people using the encylcopedia can check" bit.
The lead of WP:V already requires "content is determined by previously published information rather than the beliefs or experiences of editors" and we have a section on accessibility. I think it is fair at this point in the policy ("What counts as a reliable source") to consider those sources that "other people using the encyclopedia can check".
Editors generally use "unsourced" to mean text that either isn't cited at all, or that it doesn't appear to come from the cited source, or that the citation is not to a published accessible source. I don't think it helps us at this point in policy to effectively state that nothing is unsourced, because everything comes from somewhere, even one's own "beliefs or experiences". That's why it has been useful to clarify what editors mean by "source" in citation/reliability discussions, and not to just offer a general dictionary definition. -- Colin°Talk 12:36, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever seen an editor claim that a sentence is unsourced unless there is no little blue clicky number (or, previously, WP:PARENs) at the end of the sentence. People who cite inaccessible documents (I remember a case of documents available only to people belonging to a particular religion) are told that the source is unreliable or unacceptable, not that they didn't cite it.
I think the fastest path forward would be for you to make the change(s) you'd like to see. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:27, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
Uh huh, second that, enough abstract, let's get concrete:) Selfstudier (talk) 09:25, 20 June 2022 (UTC)
  • By focusing on “definition”, I think we are missing the important part of the statement: There are multiple aspects of a source that can affect whether we consider it reliable or not. All have to be considered. Sometimes one will outweigh the others (and that can be enough to tip the determination in one direction or the other), but they should all be considered. Blueboar (talk) 17:45, 6 June 2022 (UTC)
    There are so many factor to consider when thinking about reliability. This section doesn't cover them all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:12, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I see WhatamIdoing incorporated the plural examples, and expanded the bullet-list to four meanings. I've tried to reword the leading sentence(s) to address my concerns that nobody sensibly cites authors, entire publications or publishers in Wikipedia articles, but they do discuss them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Colin (talk • contribs) 12:05, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Colin, if I write something like "The World Health Organization recommends face masks in some situations", followed by a little blue clicky number that contains a bibliographic citation to a page on their website about their recommendations for personal protective equipment, is that "citing" or "discussing"? And is it citing/discussing the WHO, or their recommendation, or the page on their website? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:54, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

@Crossroads: I wonder if I could convince you to self-revert the removal of the wikilink to Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. That same essay is linked 1078 times in the Wikipedia name space, including WP:WHEN, WP:MINREF, and Wikipedia:Editing Policy. Particularly in light of it being linked in a core policy, it seems as though it is due for inclusion here also. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:57, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

I am very concerned that one of our core content policies is being edited in a way that changes its meaning without first getting community-wide consensus. This has to stop. Atsme 💬 📧 01:18, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
I am at a loss to understand the concern that led to the removal. The link changes nothing in the meaning of the policy. "Likely to be challenged" means "likely to be challenged", i.e. more likely than not, which is all that the linked essay says. "Has been challenged" is a separate bullet point, so verifiability applies to likely and unlikely challenges alike. The point is that preemptive citation is specifically expected if you anticipate that the material probably will be challenged. -- Visviva (talk) 02:18, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Based on what I've gleaned, the concern is the 50-50 number which some experienced editors, who have had material challenged, may view as an open door to argument, which is what Crossroads suggested in his edit summary. The issue goes away by simply citing the material when challenged. This TP discussion speaks volumes about the open door to argument concerns that can be easily avoided without the proposed changes and leniency toward citations and/or inclusion of references. I don't understand why simply adding a citation to challenged material is causing such a stir. Does any of the following sound familiar as possible reasons for refusing to cite challenged material: (a) the material is OR, (b) it was taken out of context, (c) Hanlon's razor, or (d) WP: JUSTFIXIT? Did I miss any? Atsme 💬 📧 15:27, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
In context though I believe this is a misunderstanding. As it states in the first sentence, the 50-50 guidance from WP:LIKELY falls away as soon as any editor makes a challenge, and it then becomes the responsibility of any editor restoring the unsourced text to provide a citation for it, because it has been challenged. That is further enshrined in the reformatting of the existing criteria at WP:BURDEN, which as can be seen prior to the reformat already said Attribute all quotations and any material whose verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable, published source. Emphasis from the original text. This essay is already linked in another policy; Wikipedia:Editing Policy, specifically in WP:EPTALK in the exact same context as we are discussing here.
As such I do not think this is an open door argument to allowing for unsourced text. This is merely explaining what is already editorial practice, and consistent with other policies. Sideswipe9th (talk) 18:55, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Once something has already been challenged, the likelihood of it ever being challenged is provably 100%. How could something be unlikely to be challenged, when it already has been?
It might make sense to invert the traditional order and say:
  • Contentious matter about BLPs requires inline citations – right now, no exceptions, this means you.
  • Anything that's already been challenged requires inline citations. WP:Let the Wookiee win and don't bother us with any excuses about why you shouldn't have to.
  • Anything that (according to your best guess) has at least a 50% chance of ever being challenged requires inline citations now. Don't wait for a 100%-actual-proven challenge; cite it when you add it. Every time you add anything, use your very best judgment to decide whether each individual fact/claim has a ≥50% chance of making another editor wonder whether a reliable source said that, ever. While not everything has to be cited at the time it's added, and the exact proportion will vary from subject to subject, overall, I personally believe that this clause means that most material in Wikipedia, including almost everything that's interesting, should be cited.
  • All direct quotations require inline citations, even if nobody ever CHALLENGEs them, because Wikipedia:Plagiarism.
The thing we need to communicate with "Likely to be challenged" is that it does not mean, e.g., a 99% chance of getting reverted today, or a 95% chance of someone adding a fact-tag this week, and it especially does not mean that you should wait until you have a 100%-actual-proven likelihood of a challenge. This does not sound to me like "leniency toward citations". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
Attempting to quantify "likely" is misguided. Really, in the long run, does not the odds of something being challenged eventually approach 100%? To put it another way, even if not challenged in the next few years, by 2100 someone will probably have challenged it.
Really, though, "likely" could be interpreted more loosely. Say, a 20% change of challenge could be considered 'likely enough' by a writer to cite the text.
It doesn't matter that this essay is linked elsewhere; that is not a reason to endorse its contentious claims here too. It amounts to defending the writing of unsourced text, which we need less of.
I'll note that two different editors gave me a "thanks" notification for that edit, neither of whom have commented here yet. Crossroads -talk- 01:32, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
The Thanks log is public; @Mathglot and @Levivich, do you have anything you'd like to add? (No problem if you don't, of course.)
The policy has said inline citations are required for content that is likely to be challenged. A one out of five chance of something happening is not "likely" to happen. It may be that "a writer" (i.e., any individual) would personally choose to also cite material that is not likely to be challenged, but the policy does not actually require that. This is a statement about what the policy requires, not ways in which individuals might choose to exceed the minimum requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:14, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
To quote Atsme above, "I am very concerned that one of our core content policies is being edited in a way that changes its meaning without first getting community-wide consensus. This has to stop." I'm concerned that this practice -- major changes to core policies -- is something I see at almost every core policy and it's a very small group of editors who do this. I don't really want to have to watchlist all of our core policies because I'm worried that someone might one day change their meaning, create new requirements or remove existing ones, link an essay that doesn't have global consensus, or just make it longer, because they're already too long. And I don't want to have to have 1,000 discussions about 1,000 proposed changes to 1,000 policies that I rely on all the time... I just want to know what our policies are without it being a daily discussion in my life. And I know that some people spend ten or fifteen years having daily discussions about Wikipedia policies, and that's fine if they want to... but they should check with everyone else before actually making changes, and they should only ask everyone else to weigh in maybe once or twice a year. Policies should be among the most stable pages, avoid major changes without consensus, consolidate proposals for changes, prioritize, make fewer of them, ask for less editor time. Levivich[block] 06:09, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
@Levivich, the policy has said that everything "likely to be challenged" needs to be cited. What do you understand that to mean? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
  • Sigh… this (and the related threads above) all comes down to three distinct, but overlapping concepts: 1) what you MUST do, 2) what you MAY do, and 3) what you SHOULD do.
First, let’s look at these concepts from the POV of someone adding material…
When you add new material to WP, you MUST be sure that the material is verifiable (ie that a reliable source directly supports it). You MAY omit a citation to that source. You SHOULD include a citation if YOU think it likely that someone will challenge the material. IF the material is never challenged, you are not required to do anything further.
HOWEVER - if you guessed wrong, and the uncited material IS challenged, You SHOULD save yourself a lot of time and angst and simply add a citation. You MAY try to convince the challenger to back down. You MUST cite it if the challenger won’t back down.
Now, let’s look at these concepts from the challenger’s perspective… (for the purposes of this discussion, please assume that the ONLY issue in the challenge relates to Verifiability - and NOT some other issue)
In order to challenge on WP:V grounds, you NEED TO understand the difference between uncited and unverifiable. You MUST believe that the material is unverifiable (Do NOT issue a WP:V challenge if you know that the material is, in fact, verifiable). You MAY simply remove any material that you believe is unverifiable. You SHOULD consider other forms of challenge (tagging, asking on the talk page, etc). You SHOULD do at least a cursory search for sources BEFORE you challenge. Blueboar (talk) 16:16, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
Finally… as to whether something is “likely to be challenged” … that is a judgement call. Different editors will have different opinions on how likely a challenge will be. From experience, I have learned that unlikely challenges occur all the time… they are, in fact, quite likely.
A LOT of these challenges are from people who DON’T understand the difference between uncited and unverified … And yes, that is annoying, but ultimately not not worth the effort to argue about - much easier to just “let the wookie win”- pop in a citation that isn’t necessary - and perhaps try to educate the challenger after the fact (when, having “won”, they might be in a more receptive frame of mind). Blueboar (talk) 16:16, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
To your MUST/MAY/SHOULD comment, I add that we also have an occasional problem on this page at WT:NOR with editors who are trying to produce The Right™ Outcome by writing the policy to say The Fake Rule, because they hope that if the rule is "wrong" then people will flout the written rule to the correct amount, and end up in the right place. This is the sort of thinking that results in cities putting up a sign that says "Speed Limit 25" when they're hoping that people will do "30" instead of what they're doing now, which is alternating between "40" and "stuck in traffic waiting for another wreck to be cleared".
On wiki, if, in whatever area I most frequently edit, I see people directly refusing to cite things that absolutely need citations (e.g., medical statistics), then I want the policy to say that citations are always required, required, required, and required absolutely everywhere unless you have a personal dispensation from Jimbo plus a majority vote from ArbCom, and probably we ought to enforce the addition of refs via software, so I'll never have to spend any more mental and emotional labor on this stupid problem. We can dream, right?
But if, in whatever area I most frequently edit, I see people spamming fact tags and blanking quite simple content (a popular form of using WP:V to suppress POVs you disagree with), or using WP:V as a way to threaten others into improving articles that honestly might not be the top priority right now, then you might want the policy to say that citations are wonderful everywhere but only required under more limited circumstances, such as when non-stupid editors have a really serious doubt about the material's accuracy, and would you please quit CHALLENGEing things like "The human hand has five digits" or "the terminology here [i.e., in this section of the Wikipedia article] is that used on the British canals", because frankly if you don't know that human hands have four fingers and a thumb, and that 4+1=5, or if you really think that someone can find a reliable source that says "Yup, this specific section of that Wikipedia article is using British terminology", you might actually need to be blocked on WP:CIR grounds so the rest of us can get on with improving Wikipedia already. (Yes, those are both real examples, though I suspect that the second was an error that he'd self-revert if he noticed what he did.)
In other words, these editors' goals aren't always about having the policy accurately describe real practice and real rules; it's about re-writing policy to stop the problems they personally encounter and their personal preferences, without taking into account the needs of people dealing with the opposite problem. To people on both sides, I'd say: In my experience, it takes two years for editors to discover that a policy has changed. Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions, and they definitely don't read the directions frequently. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
All true… and yet ultimately not what is important. The policy is actually quite simple:
  1. Everything must be verifiable (ie a reliable source must directly support it).
  2. We demonstrate verifiability by citing our sources.
  3. You don’t have to cite everything… but you will have to cite most things.
  4. When challenged, you must cite.
That’s it. All the rest is extra verbiage written in by wikilawers to interpret these simple rules in various scenarios. Blueboar (talk) 21:46, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
On behalf of the Association of Wikilawyers, Pettifoggers, and Other Useful Persons, I am asking you to please use the phrase clarifying the community's policies rather than "extra verbiage". WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Why do we even have a distinction between "uncited" and "unverifiable"? It doesn't exist in education or academia. If anyone told their teacher, professor, or peer reviewer, "you see, even though I didn't cite sources, it was okay because it is verifiable if you look for the sources yourself", they'd get laughed out of the room. And sources are much more necessary on Wikipedia because it's edited by WP:Randy from Boise.
Yet here and at WT:NOR, a few editors insist that this distinction is really important and try to make the policies emphasize even more that citations are sometimes not needed. Why? How does this improve the encyclopedia? How does this fight misinformation, let alone outright disinformation and hoaxes, of which there have been numerous cases on Wikipedia?
I submit that upwards of 99.99% of our content is "likely to be challenged" in the long run (say, in the next 200 years) were it unsourced. And for that last tiny bit, it's more sensible to just say "cite your sources" as a blanket rule rather than confuse people with trying to establish what is an exception and thus risk being too lax and allowing errors to slip through.
In other words, suppose that who of us had the status quo were reversed and that the text of WP:V said, Verifiability means that all claims made on Wikipedia must be cited to at least one reliable source. Why would we then change it and say, "actually, we should say that all claims must be citable to a reliable source, but they don't need to actually cite those sources"? Crossroads -talk- 01:18, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
Because we are not all deletionists, and some of us believe that article creation can move modestly ahead of the actual sourcing present in the article (for some non-BLP topics), so long as that sourcing is found when challenged. This is a question of how, practically, we want to write articles: do we insist that the load-bearing structure of references be put in first, or do we allow visible elements to be added without testing the structural elements, knowing that we may have to drop some pieces off or add additional support when challenged. You may think there is obvious, community-wide agreement on what modes of article creation are appropriate, but I suspect that there are more approaches to this within the community than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Newimpartial (talk) 01:27, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
(edit conflict) If the rule actually were that we required citations, then the rule would be that we require citations. I do not imagine that editors would, in this decade, change the rule from "must cite" to "must be possible to cite, but you don't actually have to do it".
But: that's not the rule we have (or have ever had). The rule that we actually have says that it must be possible to add a citation. Accurately and clearly describing the existing rule is the point of these discussions – rather like, in fact, the discussion that you and I have been having on another page about accurately and clearly describing the kind of humans who get pregnant. The difference between "uncited" and "impossible to verify" is at least as significant as the difference between pregnant women and pregnant people, and I have the impression that you have strong feelings about which words are "correct" there.
If you want us to have a rule that everything should be cited, or even that 90% of sentences in an article should be cited, then you should just propose that. You should, in fact, strongly insist upon this distinction between cited and verifiable, and once editors understood the distinction, you could then demand that the rule stop being verifiable and start being cited. But I don't think you'll get that adopted if you keep insisting that there is no difference between (un)cited and (un)verifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:32, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
This seems to amount to "because it's how we've always done it." The difference is already perfectly clear in the policy text. I know this because I remember as a new editor thinking "it's odd how they make it sound like citations are optional when it seems like everything is cited and they revert stuff that's unsourced." What we do not need is more and more elaboration about not citing sources, making it seem more acceptable. "Undue weight" as we say. And that also applies to linking to an essay telling people not to cite sources unless they think someone will challenge it.
I'd support any proposal to change it to 'citations are required'. Crossroads -talk- 01:48, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
I'd support "citations are required" and I bet the larger community would too and we should have an RfC. It would reduce arguments and improve reliability. Levivich[block] 07:17, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
@Crossroads, can you tell me which words in Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged are "telling people not to cite sources unless they think someone will challenge it" and that the policy-as-currently-written says should definitely be cited? Or is your objection just that the policy has said, for years and years, that editors don't have to cite material that is neither contentious matter about BLPs nor already CHALLENGEd nor likely to be challenged nor direct quotations, and you wish it said "Everything must be cited without exception"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
For whatever it's worth, I would locate the policy authority (and, more importantly, the purpose-based rationale) for not requiring that all content always be cited at Wikipedia:Editing policy. In particular, the first sentence: Wikipedia is the product of millions of editors' contributions, each one bringing something different to the table, whether it be: researching skills, technical expertise, writing prowess or tidbits of information, but most importantly a willingness to help. Writing well and citing well are different skills. To expect all edits and editors to exhibit both skills all the time is to starve the project of its most important nutrient: lots and lots of informed, good-faith, incremental edits. If one person knows that the mayor of Whoville lost the 2020 election and updates the article, they are providing important value to the article, whether they add or update the citation or not. The next person to come along may have no background knowledge of Whoville politics, but knows how to find and add an appropriate citation, and so the wiki process moves on. This is always how the wiki has functioned, to the extent it has functioned at all, and is the reason why Wikipedia left the perfection-first approaches in the dust. Of course, when those additional incremental improvements don't happen, we sometimes end up with what I am choosing to call citation mildew, which is IMO a lot worse than having no citations at all -- but that's a problem that can only be solved by having more editors making more edits. Trying to raise our standards for each edit because we already don't have enough editors is only going to make the problem worse. -- Visviva (talk) 02:48, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
  • It's a fair question (it also relates to the current AFD issue before ArbCom, in that a lot of that touches on what to do with uncited stubs and whether there is a requirement to try and find sources for them before prodding them or sending them to AFD.) Historically our sourcing requirements were significantly lower than they are now. Practically speaking, I believe the limited nature of the source requirement to things that are challenged or likely to be challenged is for four reasons. One is to encourage participation from new editors, who often won't know how to cite things they add; immediately getting their first edit reverted could drive them off, so we want to avoid doing that if they add something that is unexceptional and likely-citable but uncited. The second is because of the practical difficulty of implementing a blanket source requirement - would we monitor every edit? Have a bot to automatically revert the creation of unsourced paragraphs (or even sentences?) If people go through and do it manually then that is in practice the same as current policy; unsourced stuff remains until someone who thinks it needs a cite comes along and challenges it. The third reason is WP:EVENTUALISM - for things that are not WP:EXCEPTIONAL, not WP:BLP-sensitive, and so on, while we obviously want them to have a source eventually, there are at least some situations where having unsourced-but-likely-citable text is more useful than nothing, since it makes it easier for Wikipedia to expand over time via smaller edits. And finally, it's that way because our policies are normally written from a minimalist perspective - trying to dictate as little as possible, and leave as much leeway up to individual editors as they can, provided the core essential points needed to produce an encyclopedia are covered. The current version does that in the sense that it requires sources where sources are absolutely needed, and steadily pushes for more sources until everything that doesn't fall under WP:BLUE is cited. And - well, the fact that the encyclopedia reached its current well-sourced quality under that policy shows that it, mostly, works. The one thing I would note where it might be an improvement to change it is the creation of entirely unsourced or inadequately-sourced stubs, which is overwhelming WP:NPP. --Aquillion (talk) 22:26, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
  • I think that when discussing an RFC it's also worth talking about what this would mean in practice (in order to potentially break it down into smaller implementation details.) Experienced editors do not, as a general rule, add uncited text, outside of maybe stub creation, and that is the precise point where this is likely to be most controversial. Inexperienced editors do not know our policies anyway, so - how exactly would we implement a hard requirement? In practice the change wouldn't affect many actual disputes; once there is an individual dispute a source is required because it's challenged. You could in theory drag someone to ANI or the like if they repeatedly added unsourced content, but in practice any situation where that's a problem goes there anyway. Are we envisioning taking new-ish editors to ANI for adding entirely-uncontroversial, easily-sourced sentences without citations? --Aquillion (talk) 22:30, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
    Do experienced editors create unsourced stubs? I wouldn't, but maybe that's just me. I do see, and even occasionally approve of, editors adding some types of unsourced content to an article. The practical difference between a hatnote that says:
    Not to be confused with Apple or Orange (fruit).
    and a sentence that says "An appleorange is not the same as either Apple or Orange" is minimal, but theoretically you could CHALLENGE the latter and not the former. It's the same situation with the ==See also== section.
    In another example, sometimes a highly technical section needs an introductory sentence or two in plain English. I don't think editors are wrong to add "unsourced" new content that summarizes existing (and hopefully already sourced) content. In other cases, it's just a small explanation. If you can turn a sentence like "Oranges reproduce through nucellar embryony" that can be understood by normal humans by adding some text like "(a type of asexual reproduction in which a plant makes seeds that match its own genome)", then I'm not likely to quibble over whether your "new content" has its own citation.
    On the other hand, if you're adding other kinds of content, I'm likely to be less generous.
    As for the RFC: The only "proposal" that I think was much discussed in this section is that Crossroads should self-revert and re-add the link to Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged to this page. I honestly don't know if one link is worth an RFC. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:43, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
    No, I think experienced editors rarely add unsourced text in general. But I do think that we have swaths of unsourced text added by inexperienced editors that is basically uncontroversial, unexceptional, and (while not necessarily ideal) generally better than nothing. Our ultimate goal should be to fix that text up and cite it, but I think that as an interim plan retaining it until / unless someone challenges it is better than blanket removal. The stickler is that while probably the majority of uncited text is not-great-but-fine, there's a few specific things that are not just wrong but actively dangerous. But that's why we have policies like WP:BLP, WP:EXCEPTIONAL, WP:MEDRS, and so on that intensify our sourcing requirement in situations where getting it wrong could do immediate harm. --Aquillion (talk) 02:49, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I want to second Aquillion's point. We shouldn't try to remove a bunch of content that is verifiable but isn't currently cited. I know a number of the automotive technology articles are light on citations because most of the typical online automotive "RSs" wouldn't cover the topic. Plenty of blogs/forum posts/personal sites do have the correct information but they aren't RSs. That leaves us with specialty books or SAE papers as resources. Most of those aren't easy to access. However, removing the information in those cases is likely worse than not having a citation. As another example, the whole Associated_Electrics article. I'm sure much of this could be filled in with access to a stack of hobby magazines from 25+ years back. Again, the on line sources probably won't meet our RS guidelines. Springee (talk) 03:20, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I missed this part. Yeah, I disagree with the Do NOT issue a WP:V challenge if you know that the material is, in fact, verifiable bit. It's important that people be able to challenge any text for any reason (outside of blatantly bad-faith stuff like challenging every single thing an editor ever added without a clear basis for doing so.) A fact tag is a basic "this needs a source" indicator, and there are lots of reasons why something might need a source even if you know one probably exists somewhere. I also do think that there's this idea of article maturity - as an article matures, it ought to eventually get sources for everything that isn't WP:BLUE. So when there's just a few uncited statements left in the article it's reasonable to tag those as requiring a source on that basis alone (though the ultimate way we do that is via the WP:GA process. But a fact tag makes it more likely that eg. a random reader who happens to have access to a source will add it.) --Aquillion (talk) 02:49, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
    @Aquillion, WP:CHALLENGE says "When tagging or removing material for lacking an inline citation, please state your concern that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source, and the material therefore may not be verifiable."
    If you personally know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that the material is actually verifiable – if, for example, you read a fact in this morning's news, thought it would be appropriate for a Wikipedia article, went to that article, and found that someone else had already added it, but had not yet cited it – could you honestly and genuinely state that you are concerned that it may not be possible to find a published reliable source and that the material therefore might not be verifiable?
    Or would you feel like that would be a dishonest thing for you to say, given that you have, right there in front of you, a published reliable source that could be cited to support this material?
    And if you think it would be dishonest for you to follow CHALLENGE's rules, why would you CHALLENGE the material? (I'm assuming that, like most people, you believe that dishonesty is a generally bad thing.)
    I suggest to you that the best practice is to add a citation yourself, but an acceptable practice is to not issue a CHALLENGE, and instead only leave a non-CHALLENGE note that a citation would ideally be added. I grant that the difference between a proper CHALLENGE and a nice note about the joys of well-sourced articles might be subtle and even easily mistaken for a CHALLENGE, but IMO it would be much better aligned with the spirit and goals of the sourcing policies, and it certainly wouldn't have a nasty whiff of "I know this is verifiable but I'm so uncollegial that I'd rather destroy your contribution than spend an extra four seconds to copy and paste the URL that I still have open in another tab". And if you can't be bothered to improve it, or to encourage someone else to improve it, then maybe you should just leave that known-by-you-to-be-fully-verifiable information alone. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
No, your argument here is absolutely wrong. The section in WP:CHALLENGE you are talking about plainly means to state that concern if you have it; it is awkwardly-worded, but does not make such a concern (or expressing that concern) a requirement. We've been down this road with WP:BEFORE and it leads to madness. There is no requirement - none, not even the smallest amount, not even the tiniest smallest speck - to believe that a source is unciteable before you add a fact tag to it. I can add a fact tag even if I know, without absolute certainty, that a source exists. I can add a fact tag if I literally have the source sitting on my desk. I could add a fact tag with an edit summary saying "fact tag; I know a source exists because I have it physically sitting on my desk, but I don't have the time to input it properly, and don't want to spend the effort to move my eyes a few inches to the side to refresh my memory as to its title" and while that would be a weird thing to do I would be 100% in the right and my edit would be a valid challenge. There are no requirements whatsoever for challenging a statement outside of the basic requirement that the challenge not be made in overtly bad faith, in the sole sense that my ultimate goal must be to improve Wikipedia. This is an extremely basic and essential part of how we work with sources - we can allow unsourced statements to exist (which I think we do want to do, in uncontroversial situations, for the reasons I outlined above) only because challenging a statement is one of the most lightweight actions an editor can perform. There are no requirements and no way to do it "wrong" short of behavior that is blatant vandalism or in blatant violation of our conduct policies (eg. WP:HOUND; or WP:FAIT when something potentially controversial is done on a truly massive scale without prior discussion.) But for individual fact-taggings there is almost no way for it to be wrong. Requiring that an editor do some sort of search before adding a fact tag, or opening the door to trying to punish them for it somehow in any way, leads to the sort of nonsense that WP:BEFORE gave us and would risk turning WP:BURDEN on its head. I would agree in principle that it is better to find a source if you can before tagging, but editors have no obligation to do so even if they know with absolute certainty that a source exists, and even if the effort necessary to find and add it would be utterly minimal. --Aquillion (talk) 06:34, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Why do you think we call it "challenging" the material? Consider the difference between "I'm challenging this material" and "I'm fact-tagging this, because ideally there would be an inline citation here". WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:31, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
No, as I said at the end of the section above, I consider the addition of a fact tag to always constitute a challenge. The best way to deal with challenged text varies depending on a number of factors (how likely it is that a source exists; whether it is WP:EXCEPTIONAL or could cause harm; how important it is overall and how much would be lost of it were removed, etc.) But at the end of the day WP:BURDEN and the current wording of WP:V require that challenges be extremely 'lightweight' in order to function properly, and I'd be opposed to adding any restrictions, limitations, or requirements to it at all. We want editors focused on finding text that needs sources and adding sources to it, not on procedural red tape. --Aquillion (talk) 23:24, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
Just so you know, if I ever hear of someone removing information from an article, and declaring that they are invoking WP:CHALLENGE, while that editor has a reliable source that supports this information at hand, I'm going to think that editor is a POINTy-headed jerk who is probably NOTHERE to build an encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

@User:Blueboar while I agree with most of what you say in your "Sigh...." I take issue with "Do NOT issue a WP:V challenge if you know that the material is, in fact, verifiable".

A really common occurance in biographies of long dead people are the family section in the articles. That someone married X is well known and in a reliable secondary source. That the named eldest child inherited the title is also in the reliable source (eg the ODNB).

However the date of the marriage has been inserted into the cited sentence after it was written. So it looks like the reliable cited source supports it.

That date fact along with a gagle of none notable children were added at some time from a genealogical, self edited site by an account holder distently related to the subject of the biography. That they were added from there can be assertained by the cut and past nature of the bullet points. The problem here is that the information might be verifiable, or it might not have been published in a reliable source. I have no way of checking and I am not going to try to compile a list from primary sources as that would be very very time consuming and, even if practical, probably a SYN. Personally I would edit the section moving the date out of the sentence and stick a "citation needed" on it and also on all the children that do not have a cited reliable source to support their inclusion. If after a time usually 6 months or more I would delete all the information in the section adjacent to citation needed templates. -- PBS (talk) 12:41, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

@User:PBS In the situation you outline, it seems obvious that you don’t know whether the information is verifiable or not… so my statement “Do not issue a WP:V challenge if you know that the information is, in fact, verifiable” would not apply. Blueboar (talk) 13:43, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
As I do not have access to a database of all verifiable information, I do not know whether or not most data is verifiable. I can know when information is verifiable (from the small subset of all verifiable information to which I have access), but far more is an educated guess. For example I know that Germany has a good soccer team. If Germany lost a semi-final in a socccer world cup 0-1 and I came across an article with that score it would not surprise me. If I came across an article that stated they lost a semi-final 1-7 I would be surprised and ask for a citation. Both facts could probably be found in the same book, so it is not as if either is not verifiable it is just that my guess would be that the 1-7 score was highly unlikely. In this case reliable sources can be found quite easily with an internet search, but let us suppose it was not. Requesting verifiability also has something to do how surprised the requester is by the information (ie how likely in their judgment it is to be accurate), and not just how likely a German world cup soccer result is to appear in a sports almanac. — PBS (talk) 14:32, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
I still don’t understand your objection… it comes down to: do you (user:PBS) know the information is verifiable? You keep giving me situations where you don’t know for sure. Try to think of a situation where you personally DO know (100%) that the information is verifiable. Would you challenge it? Of course not. Blueboar (talk) 15:29, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Just because I know that all valid world cup soccer results are verifiable, it does not mean that incorrect ones are. As to what is likely to be incorrect? That comes down to each editors knowledge and judgement.
Unless it was the sky is blue sort of fact and I have access to a reliable source I would add a citation because I work on the assumption "not a lot of people know that", so most facts need citations. -- PBS (talk) 16:03, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
The overall point is that you would not necessarily challenge an uncited statement if you knew it was verifiable. You might add a citation to ensure other editors can easily verify, but you wouldn't become a challenger that tags or removes the content. Understanding the difference between uncited and unverifiable is the point of the "challenger's perspective" described by Blueboar. Your comments do not appear to indicate that you are objecting to this premise. --GoneIn60 (talk) 16:39, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it really does come down to each editor's knowledge and judgement. Otherwise, we're left with "PBS, what's your own name?" "Oh, I don't know everything, so you should assume I don't know anything, even my own name." That would be stupid, so we don't do that.
Now: does that mean that every editor knows the same things? No. I can give you a pretty solid description of the difference between how to handle a piece of bread at a formal dinner in Paris vs in Washington, DC, but just because I happen to know what's right (the French leave their bread, and all its crumbs, right on the table top, but they don't put butter on their bread at dinner, so the universal rule of never endangering the linens is still preserved) doesn't mean the next editor will know the same thing. So it would be bad and wrong for me to challenge a statement that I personally know is correct (and the US side of which I could source from the bookshelf facing me right now), and also good and right for the next editor – any editor who doesn't happen to have the same information – to challenge the same information.
The key distinction isn't what hypothetical "editors" should do. It's what you, personally and individually, should or shouldn't do. You – just you, personally and individually – should not pretend that information is possibly false and unverifiable when you – just you – happen to know perfectly well that this particular piece of information is correct and verifiable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, you can test your theory by adding birthdates on bios/BLPs that either don't have one, or that have an uncited DOB. ;-) Atsme 💬 📧 12:32, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
My comment is about whether you should remove information that you know is correct and verifiable, not whether you can add uncited information.
The equivalent for an uncited birthdays would sound like "I happen to know that Abe Lincoln's birthday is February 12th, but there's no little blue clicky number after the date in Abraham Lincoln. Would it be stupid and/or POINTy for me to remove accurate and verifiable information when I personally know that this date is accurate and verifiable?"
The answer is "yes" – for me. But if you didn't happen to know this, and you were genuinely (though incorrectly) concerned that the date was wrong, then it would be okay for you to CHALLENGE it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:27, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't eat bread. I put my butter directly on the tablecloth. Nobody's ever objected. SPECIFICO talk 13:52, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
/me makes mental note to only invite Specifico to picnics. ;-) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:28, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure if WP:V does of good job of explaining what Verifiability means. The lead states: "verifiability means other people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source"; it's unclear what "can check" means. And does the lead follow the body? It seems like the definition of verifiability is implied in places in the body but never explained.... Kolya Butternut (talk) 16:51, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
    "Someone can check" means "someone is able to compare the information in the article against information in a reliable source, and see whether the article says the same thing that a source says". "Can check" includes "can use a search engine to find a source", not merely "can read the cited source". Of course, it is easier to do the check if there is a cited source, and if that cited source happens to be freely available online, but this is not a requirement. "VerifiABLE" contrasts with "verifiED", which means "someone has already done the comparison against a specific reliable source and determined that the article says the same thing that the specific reliable source says". Most content in GAs and FAs is both verifiABLE and verifiED.
    Your sense that it's "unclear" is why I think it's important for experienced editors to say "uncited" instead of "unverifiable" (except when they actually mean that nobody is able to verify the information in any suitable source, which happens fairly often in certain subject areas). WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:35, 10 July 2022 (UTC)

It's not just just presence of a link in the article. Putting it as an in-link in a policy statement is an invoking of the linked item is a part of the policy statement. We should not have those for essays. Anything invoked by a policy statement needs to be a policy, with all of the consensus, vetting, carefulness and scrutiny that goes with that. Putting it in "for further reading" is less so. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 03:21, 15 July 2022 (UTC)

So... do you want to remove the links to Wikipedia:Reliable sources first? " Anything invoked by a policy statement needs to be a policy", and WP:RS is not a policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:55, 15 July 2022 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing: To answer, I need to parse this out. First, to clarify, my post was limited to when the link is a part of a policy statement not to just a link from a policy. WP:ver has both types. Second, you pointed out an unintended overreach in my statement. I should have worded it: "It's not just just presence of a link in the article. Putting it as an in-link in a policy statement is an invoking of the linked item is a part of the policy statement. We should not have those for essays. Anything invoked by a policy statement needs to be a policy or a prominent guideline, with all of the consensus, vetting, carefulness and scrutiny that goes with that. Putting it in "for further reading" is less so." Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:53, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
@North8000, look at the first link in the second paragraph. That's not a policy. That's not a guideline. Do you want to remove it?
The first link in BURDEN is not a policy and not a guideline. Do you want to remove it?
The first link in the penultimate paragraph of BURDEN is not a policy and not a guideline. Do you want to remove it?
The first and second links in SOURCES are not links to a policy and not links to a guideline. Do you want to remove them? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 July 2022

196.189.113.113 (talk) 16:03, 26 July 2022 (UTC) verification problem
 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Verifiability. If possible, please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. If you cannot edit the article's talk page, you can instead make your request at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection#Current requests for edits to a protected page. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:22, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
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