Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

Verifiability, NOT truth????

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.

After all the debate, the first phrase in the sentence is still very bad and very misleading and almost universally misunderstood to mean something else. "Verifiability" still refers to "likely truthful sources" and the phrase "NOT truth" still refers to the editors' personal idea of truth, not what's in the likely truthful sources (which, after all, is indeed likely to be true). But the phrase is still widely understood to mean that WP has no care about truth. Want to see an example from just today? See the last two comments here: [1].

Could we fix this, please? SBHarris 20:20, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the comments you point us to seem to understand the policy quite well. Sources frequently disagree as to what the "Truth" is... and we have to take a neutral stance in such situations. Blueboar (talk) 20:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

If you think you're taking a neutral stance when you decide which sources are reliable (thus likely to contain truth), you're fooling yourself. Policy will never be so complicated as to determine this FOR you, and if it ever is, somebody on WP will still need to write the policy. There's no escaping this problem. So long as care about source quality, you care about truth, and thus cannot be neutral in that way. SBHarris 20:52, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

{Ec}I'm not sure I understand the problem. The excerpt which Sbharris quotes is about the ability to check whether the source says something or not. The reason why we don't care about the Truth is because people can argue endlessly over what's true. But checking to see if a source says something is a much easier debate to settle. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

It is indeed, and that is why I've suggested in the past, that the WP:V policy ONLY address the sourcibility of material, not the source-reliability itself (which problem is properly the domain of WP:IRS). However, I have not been successful at this, and the opening statement of THIS policy gets into RS questions immediately (you are wrong, as the quote DOES say "reliable"). Worse still, WP:V (including the source-reliability part of it, which starts with the first words of it) is policy, whereas WP:IRS is merely a guideline. That's a problem. SBHarris 21:11, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, we could remove the stuff about reliability from this policy and promote WP:IRS from a guideline to a policy, but why? I'm not sure what problem you're trying to address. Not to mention the huge amount of effort that will be required to gain concensus for such a change. A Quest For Knowledge (talk)

I'm trying to address the problem that this policy is misunderstood, and poorly stated, as above. I've been as succinct as I can be, and I'm getting nowhere. You say above that the policy doesn't mention reliability, when it plainly does. Clearly, then, its dismissal of "truth" doesn't mean dismissal of reliability, which has to do with truth. You yourself read the policy, and read it wrong, leaving out a word. Well, that happens to a lot of people. Do you not see this as a problem? I want a policy written so that people who read it can understand it. Is that not a clear statement of purpose?

If it is impossible to gain consensus to write an unclear policy so that it IS clear, then Wikipedia is broken. I have surmised this, but am not going to come to a firm conclusion until I've tried to fix it, using very small words.SBHarris 00:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Sb, I don't mean this as a personal attack, but as an honest question... given that multiple editors are telling you essentially the same thing ... have you considered the possibility that perhaps you are the one who is misunderstanding the policy? The rest of us seem to have no problem with it. Blueboar (talk) 00:54, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Um, you seem to be speaking on hehalf of a very large group of editors who have nowhere deputized you as their spokesman. Please note that since then (see below), a number of these people have managed to speak for themselves, and don't agree with you any more than I do.SBHarris 20:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

We're in an alternate universe here. Where "reliable" doesn't mean reliable. Let's see, does all of the wp:ver/wp:nor stuff have a purpose? Could that be to try to make Wikipedia content accurate? But then the policy opens by disparaging accuracy. First by using the word "truth" instead of accuracy (because, "truth" has other meanings, making it an easier to disparage word than accuracy) and then the lead disparages the concept of accuracy. North8000 (talk) 00:52, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

You know, I really understand the confusion here; it's a sad state of affairs. We have some editors with the (perfectly valid) concern that things which are not 'true' are being promoted as true. We have other editors with the (perfectly valid) concern that articles about unverified things are being misrepresented because the first groups is using inappropriate standards of truth for representing them. So for example: UFOs are not 'true' in the objective sense (at least, there's absolutely no evidence to indicate the presence of alien spaceships on this planet), but there is a lot of noteworthy babble about alien spaceships that ought to be documented properly in an encyclopedia (UFOs are a big interesting topic, despite the fact that they are not 'true'). So sourcing has become the battleground - people in the first group bang on the 'reliability' drum in order to exclude noteworthy babble and pad articles with 'objective' (i.e. reasonably skeptical) truth; people in the second group rely on 'verifiability is not truth' to add the noteworthy babble back in (because in all fairness the noteworthy babble is a lot more informative on topics like this than reasonable sources). The whole thing becomes dreadfully polarized.

In a perfect world, of course, the two groups would work together to produce a balanced, informative article. Now, everyone who thinks wikipedia is a perfect world, please add your signature below, so that you may be thoroughly stigmatized and ridiculed.

The upshot of this (at least within my wandering mind) is that we do not actually write articles based on sources. we write articles, and sources are a reality-check on us, so that our ignorance and opinionatedness doesn't get out of hand and skew the topic. Verifiability just means that we can demonstrate that what we are writing is a prevalent opinion in the real world and not our own imagining. Reliability just distinguishes between sources we can trust to be reasonable on a given topic and source that we have to take with a grain of salt. None of this should be approached in a legalistic, literalistic fashion, but should be used to encourage a generous application of common sense, and anyone who puts in too much time arguing about this from a legalistic, literalistic standpoint simply needs to be thoroughly wp:trouted, or possibly bludgeoned with cooked ramen noodles, until they cry 'uncle'.

The rant is ended; go in peace. --Ludwigs2 05:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem stems from the fact that there are two valid things that people want to make the sentence "verifiability, not truth" to express, and the second has led to a simplistic reading of policy that is sometimes not appropriate:

A

It is not enough for something to be true to be included in the encyclopedia. It must also be "verifiable" in the technical sense of having been reported in a "reliable" source.

B

In the vast majority of cases, when something is "verifiable" in the technical sense of having been reported in a "reliable" source, it is true. Editors who claim, without evidence in "reliable" sources that it is not true anyway are often fringers and arguing with them about the truth is discouraged as a waste of time.

C

We automatically report everything that has been reported in a "reliable" source as true. The only way to prevent this is by finding an equally or more "reliable" source contradicting it, so that we have a formal reason to suppress or balance the claim.

The first is the original meaning of the phrase. The second is a historically grown secondary meaning. The third is a simplistic version of C which a substantial minority of editors subscribe to. Since B is a consensus interpretation and B and C agree in their results in the vast majority of contentious cases, it is natural for the fundamentalists who subscribe to C to believe that C is also a consensus interpretation of policy. But C is not a consensus interpretation as it can lead to problematic results. Some examples:

1. Sometimes only fringers write about a topic, and some of those writings are uncritically reported by "reliable" sources. A says nothing about this case. B says nothing about the case. C says that the fringers win automatically once the New York Times has uncritically picked up a fringe claim and no other RS has contradicted it. This case is never a problem in practice, presumably because the editors who subscribe to C do so as a way of strengthening the B aspect and are not interested in promoting fringe.
2. Sometimes a true fact has been reported but is simply not worth mentioning in an encyclopedia. My standard (possibly hypothetical, though probably real) example is Obama's shoe size. B does not speak about this case, but C does, and does so incorrectly. This becomes a problem in practice when editors are divided on whether it makes sense to include information and the editors supporting inclusion try to win on technical grounds by appealing to C.
3. Very occasionally there is an overwhelming consensus among editors that something is certainly and unambiguously wrong, even though it was claimed in RS and not contradicted in other RS. An important example was when The Register reported about Wikipedia-internal affairs and got everything totally wrong, as our server logs proved beyond any doubt. See WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy.
   A and B do not tell us anything about this situation. There are three main approaches in this case. The first two are reasonable. The third is not and can cause legal trouble. Unfortunately it has been supported in practice by very experienced editors who believe in C:
   • Ignore WP:V and write what we agree is the truth.
   • Follow our formal process and do not write about the incorrect report at all, regretting that we can't set it right.
   • Present the incorrect report as true or maybe, as a compromise, attribute it.

This problem keeps coming up. I brought it up recently with respect to a specific subscriber to C, but the discussion was closed for unrelated reasons before there was a clear consensus. Hans Adler 07:40, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Hans, the problem with what you wrote is the reliance it has on 'truth'. It seems to me your point A is flawed. Whether or not something is actually true is irrelevant to it's inclusion in the encyclopedia; we should consider the extent to which something is accepted as true as a weighting factor, but we as editors are not qualified or entitled to judge its truthiness. This of course impacts on your point B: verifiability does not confirm 'truth', it confirms 'acceptance as truth', and there is a world or difference between those two phrases.

You're right about the problem with point C - people who look at this in a fundamentalist way conflate verifiability with truth and end up misusing policy in some silly, silly ways. But the confusion is deeper and more convoluted than you make it, I think. For an example, let me pick a book off my bookshelf (I've grabbed "Freud and Beyond", by Mitchell and Black, 1995 - an academic book from a minor publishing house), and choose a quote at random (e.g. first two lines of chapter 5):"Human beings, in Freud's account, are born at odds with their environment. They are wired the way Freud and his contemporaries understood animals to be, oriented towards pursuing simple pleasures with ruthless abandon." Now, here's what we can say about this quote, without stretching:

• it is clearly verifiable in the simplistic sense (someone said it, and that can be easily checked by looking at the book).
• It is clearly a reliable source in some sense of that term (Mitchell is faculty at NYU, and the publisher - basic books - is fairly well established, at least for textbooks)

However, this only scratches the surface of the source, and leaves a number of important questions at loose ends:

• What were the authors writing about, and is this quote an important or incidental part of their argument?
• Should this quote be considered true of psychoanalysis in general, or just an opinion of a small cohort of psychoanalysts?
• Should this quote be considered true in the real world, or just true of psychoanalysis as a limited perspective?

The first point gets at whether we are simply verifying the quote or whether we are verifying the source (i.e. what was literally said vs. what the authors were trying to convey in the bigger picture). The second and third points get at the scope of verification (whether we are verifying this as a truth about the world, or a truth about psychoanalysis, or a truth about a small subgroup of psychoanalysts). Which level and scope we are trying to verify will be contingent on the article in question: i.e. we will come to different conclusions on an article about the human mind vs. an article about psychoanalysis vs. an article about the theories of Stephen A. Mitchell. It's all very contingent and contextual, and requires thought and common sense to apply; there is no way to construct a fast and ready rule to cover all situations. The fact of the matter is, we don't know what the 'truth-value' of psychoanalysis is in the greater world, and we don't know what the 'truth-value' of this source in the world of psychoanalysis is; how can we make broad, reified assessments of how 'reliable' this source is in such a condition? That's why I keep saying we should stop trying to evaluate the truth-value of topics at all and restrict ourselves to describing the topics as best we can in our best understanding of a reasonable context. It's the only way we're going to not make ourselves crazy. --Ludwigs2 09:35, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm very impressed by this analysis; but I'm not sure how it translates into a position on what the first sentence of the policy should say. Are you defending the current wording, or would you suggest an improvement? (Same question to Hans and others.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:13, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't mind the current wording so long as there is a clear consensus that to the extent that truth exists, an encyclopedia tries to approximate it. Policy must not be interpreted so as to do something that is diametrically opposed. Hans Adler 13:15, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2, I am really not interested here in any deep matters where we have to get philosophical about the meaning of "truth". In the Sam Blacketer case it was all very simple. The Register claimed that ex-Arbitrator Sam Blacketer (they called him by his real name) had vandalised an article on a political opponent in the heat of an election campaign. Our server logs proved that he had actually removed vandalism. (Replacing a photo in which David Cameron looked as if he had a halo by an approved one.) The topic wasn't interesting enough for the quality press to investigate on their own, but interesting enough for part of the international press to pick up without investigating. The general public has the right to expect that Wikipedia does not write things about Wikipedia that Wikipedia knows to be false. Yet a number of editors argued seriously that we have to do precisely that, because what counts is verifiability NOT truth. Just read the deletion discussion.

The press was just guilty of carelessness. But we, since we knew it was false yet repeated the claims without relativisation (it took many days of heated discussion to get this stuff deleted) were guilty of libel in the legal sense of the word. (Presumably. Not sure who was actually guilty of it. I certainly wasn't because I was fighting to prevent it. I have asked Newyorkbrad to comment here; he may or may not have an opinion on this specific detail.) Hans Adler 13:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I think I've touched upon this before somewhere else but this should have easily been dealt with if it was possible to refer to WP:IAR without the baggage currently associated with it. Lambanog (talk) 13:24, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Who are you telling this? After this comment of mine it took 6 more days for the article to get deleted, and during that time the same editors who were arguing against deletion were also arguing against putting anything in the article that would have mitigated the effect, based on the argument that it was improper to use our knowledge of our own internal processes, and links to our servers, as sources for a BLP article. This should have been a no-brainer, but it wasn't. I want to make sure that next time this happens it is a no-brainer. Hans Adler 13:58, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The "Verifiability not Truth" statement does not say (or mean) that if something is Verifiable, Wikipedia must include it (even if it is not True).

The statement does say (and means) the opposite... if something is not verifiable, Wikipedia should not include it (even if it is True).

Does this distinction clarify things? Blueboar (talk) 13:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course it clarifies things. It's what I called A above. The problem is that about half of the community if not more is in love with B, which does not follow from A, and the distinction between B and C is not sufficiently clear in practice. Hans Adler 13:50, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I've been asked to comment here. My views approximate those of Hans Adler. We appropriately require that information be verified by one or more reliable sources before it is included (and that a citation to the source be included, at least when a fact is questioned or disputed). This is a necessary condition for including a statement in a Wikipedia article.
But the fact that a piece of information is included in a source, even one that is normally considered highly reliable, is not a sufficient condition for including the information. An additional condition is that the editor inserting the information, or a consensus of editors if a dispute arises, believes that the information is actually accurate.
Much of the time, this additional condition can be disregarded, because by definition, reliable sources are accurate much more often than they are inaccurate. (If they were not, they would not be reliable sources!) But even the most reliable source will contain errors—whether the error rate for many would be higher or lower than the error rate on Wikipedia itself is an interesting question—and "reliable sources" must not be mistaken for "infallible sources." Sometimes there will be an error. When it is an obvious or a known error, we would be irresponsible in propagating it. (I am not dealing here with the exceptional case of reporting on the error itself, described as such.)
Perhaps one way of putting it is that verifiability of a plausible fact in a reliable source creates a presumption of truthfulness that allows the fact to be included in Wikipedia. But the presumption can be rebutted by other evidence that the fact is really false. This will most usually be a showing that other reliable sources are reporting contradictory information, but it can't be limited to that.
A statement such as "whether or not something is actually true is irrelevant to its inclusion on Wikipedia" does not, in my view, capture either what our editing policies are or what they should be. I can understand why such a comment would be made—we have too many people who believe that content should include what they think is true, no matter how many sources or how strong a consensus points in a different direction. That is not acceptable and it is not something I am endorsing here, at all. But the other extreme of simply abjuring any interest in getting the facts accurate is also unacceptable, and if taken literally (I don't think it was likely meant as such, at least in its extreme form), would be an exceptionally irresponsible attitude for one of the world's most visited websites. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:37, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I think (or hope) that everyone here agrees with what you say Brad. What I think we disagree on is whether the statement "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." accurately (and/or adequately) sums up this concept.

My personal take is that it does sum the concept up accurately (so I oppose removal or changing it)... but it may not be adequate (ie, it may need expansion to clarify.) Blueboar (talk) 20:14, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "threshold for inclusion" means that verifiability is a necessary condition. It's sometimes a sufficient condition too. That depends on context, editorial judgment, common sense, how NPOV is being interpreted, and how many sources are competing for inclusion. What this policy describes is the necessary condition, no more. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

How often does this problem actually occur? I'm hard-pressed to remember an occasion where an editor knowingly insisted on inserting factually inaccurate information on the grounds that it was verifiable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:20, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The ethnic composition of Latin America is the case that comes to mind. Various Latin American countries use definitions of "white" and "black" that defy common usage, and various editors have fought to their indefinite blocks "correcting" the census reports. There's no doubt that the censuses are false, but they wind up in every country's articles anyway. No one seems happy saying "we know this country cooks the books, therefore we won't report any census information for it".—Kww(talk) 20:36, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Jimbo Wales allowed his own incorrect birth date to remain in his article for a while, just as hair-shirt, since reliable sources had printed it wrong. Then, I think he changed his mind and took off the shirt. Does that count?

I think it rarely happens that editors insert (without qualifiers of any kind) information that they personally think is unfactual. Usually you find them saying something like "A believes B (cite), but others do not.(cite)" That's fair. Often you can tell in an article which belief the article-writers are skeptical of. That doesn't bother me on WP (any more than in an academic course) so long as the cards are on the table.

I think what the opening statement of WP:V means to say, is that the threshhold of inclusion in WP is either the writer's belief that the statement is correct (when it is not controversial) OR that belief PLUS a citation to a reliable source, when it IS controversial or non-obvious. A lot of WP consists of non-controversial statements of fact that aren't cited because they don't need to be, so there are obviously different threshholds of includablity. A rewrite of this is needed. SBHarris 20:44, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

lol - well, while I largely agree with everyone here, I still believe there are some broad confusions because of the range of things thisx text is supposed to cover. just to list things out the kinds of issues where I've seen it used, we have:

• Editors inserting material they know is counter-factual (rare, and usually handled by vandalism and BLP policies)
• Editors inserting material from sources which have obviously made an error (as in Hans' 'Sam Blacketer' example).
• Editors inserting material from sources which have likely lied (as in Kww's 'Ethnic Composition' example).
• Editors inserting material from sources which have made valid statements about something that is itself likely untrue (a frequent occurrence on fringe articles).
• Editors inserting material where the editors misunderstand or misuse the source (e.g. quote-mining, which happens to some extent or another on any contentious page).

Have I missed any? Writing a single opening line that covers all of these adequately without stepping on the toes of any of them is and artistic challenge... --Ludwigs2 21:19, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Sb, when a non-controversial fact is added without citation, that simply means the fact is not verified (in the article)... it does not mean the fact is not verifiable. The initial threshold for inclusion is that the fact be verifiable. As a second step, we then go on to say that it must actually be verified (in the article, by adding a citation) if challenged or likely to be challenged. Blueboar (talk) 21:21, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs, yes you missed one... Editor inserting controversial material from sources that disagree with the sources some other editors have read. All too often, both sides will argue that their sources are reliable and stating the Truth, while the other side's sources are unreliable, incorrect, misrepresenting the facts, lying etc. Blueboar (talk) 21:28, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

The fact that this policy is written in a way to downplay arriving at accuracy, and the related things that in dominoes such into (basically source criteria that somethings has little relation to reliability on the task at hand) comes up extensively. It becomes fodder for wiki-lawyering warfare (and avoiding accurate coverage) wherever there is a an article where there is a RW clash. The current rules and policies are a failure on all of those. North8000 (talk) 21:30, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Given that there will be strong opposition to any major change to the language of the policy (some of it valid and some of it of the knee-jerk variety), can you suggest a way forward? Blueboar (talk) 21:41, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm trying to work on more organized supporting analysis and ideas, (I could give you a link but it's still to ragged / unfinished to get spotlit)....but in vague terms:

• The opening statement should be changed to keep everything about verifiability without throwing in the swipe which disses accuracy. Such was discussed/consensused a few months ago but reverted by one of the owners of wp:ver when put in, saying it was not discussed enough. So then when it was floated for a longer time on the talk page (as I recall) that owner split it in half via manual archiving and then manually archived the remainder of the discussion (both before the bot did them), so now it is gone.
• Add two source strength metrics (objectivity and knowledge regarding the fact the cited it) to the two existing ones (the editing layer ["RS"] and primary/secondary/tertiary aspect), define the "strength of the source for the cite" as the combination of these. And say that the strength of the source/cite must be commensurate with the situation. Challenged/questioned statements need stronger sourcing, and vica versa.

There's two of them....got a couple more....thanks for asking. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I edit a lot of articles on or related to fringe theories and I'm skeptical. The last thing I want is to give ammo to those promoting fringe theories to claim that reliable sources are wrong and we should follow The Truth. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:29, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm with you 100%. I think that it may not be clear that my ideas are also with you 100%. Step one is to get rid of the word "truth" because 1/2 of the time "truth" means somebody's belief rather than objective accuracy (for those cases where such exists). North8000 (talk) 22:47, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

We're all a bunch of anonymous editors, right? This means that we can't use authority to determine what is true or not. That's why we have to go by verifiability as the inclusion standard. I've participated in some controversial topic areas in Wikipedia, apart from it often being a miserable experience, one thing I've noticed is that editors will argue over the credibility of the sources. In one case, I experienced several editors arguing, much to the annoyance of the regulars at the reliable sources noticeboard, that the New York Times couldn't be used as a source in a "science" article. In my opinion, therefore, I think the statement at the top of this thread could be made even stronger by adding something like, "Wikipedia editors, because of anonymity, cannot decide matters of truth by authority, and therefore must use verifiability as the baseline standard for inclusion" or something like that. Cla68 (talk) 22:55, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

If the NYT is at odds with peer-reviewed secondary sources specialising in a given area, then it should either not be included or included in a subjective way "NYT reports that...." so it is not as simple as that, which is why we are humans judging and not computers systematically entering all referenced data. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:03, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

The sun being above the horizon is a necessary condition for direct sunlight; but it is not a sufficient condition, because something else may be casting a shadow (copied from Necessary and sufficient condition).

PS: I guess I should add my voice to those who are unhappy with the wording of the first sentence - the implied general meaning for me seems to be that there are two divergent endpoints "verified/verifiable material" and some core "truth" (a la Kuhn maybe?). Whereas I imagine this much more as verifiability as a means to an end to get to some consensually-understood truth. It's the "not truth" which is the problem in implied meaning.

I guess I'd much rather something like "Verifiability is the route taken to transform unverified (mainspace) content into reliably-referenced and checked (encyclopedic) content" With a caveat "One may be surprised that one's understanding may diverge from a presupposed understanding as one uncovers and reviews source material"

(We can then get all gushy and 70s-like and delight in the embracing of knowledge at this point...hehehe) Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I like your second sentence. I'm not embarrassed to admit that in editing I've sometimes found that what I thought to be true was not exactly the same as what was in the sources. Cla68 (talk) 00:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I also like that second sentence....actually beyond like. It is a statement of how the 90% of Wikipedia works works. Although I would tweak it slightly, During the 90%, the editors, in consensus, decide on it based on the integration of 500 sources that their understanding came from. And then they take what they decided and source it and put it in. During the other 10% (basically the contentious failure articles) the wiki-lawyering blocks this process when it does not have their preferred result, noting that the process that makes 90% of Wikipedia work is a violaiton of the rules, if taken literally and in a vacuum. North8000 (talk) 01:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

That the threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth, is a very simple idea. It means verifiability is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for inclusion. An invitation to the party is a necessary condition for inclusion, but if you turn up drunk and threaten to strangle the hostess, the invitation alone will not ensure your admittance, i.e. an invitation is not a sufficient condition. I think it's important not to make this idea more complicated that it has to be.

In many of our articles, verifiability is a sufficient condition too, just as an invitation to the party is going to get you inside 99 percent of the time. This policy can't substitute for the editorial judgment required on the page to decide whether a source is also authoritative enough, appropriate enough, and so on. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:04, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry, I just had to read your post a couple of times and I still am unclear about the point yuo're making, and hence I think the way it is laid out is obfuscating rather than clarifying the issue. Slimvirgin do you agree or disagree that the way it is presented now tends to artificially diverge truth and verifiability and imply that verifiability is an end rather than a means to an end? Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure what you mean, Cas, about a means to an end. When I cite John Rawls as a source for the concept of justice-as-fairness, there is no issue of "truth". The question is only whether Rawls is an appropriate source. When I cite U.S. government sources on Bradley Manning, the question is whether the U.S. govt is an appropriate source, because who on earth knows what "the truth" is.

When you write an undergraduate essay or MA thesis, the aim is not to reveal "the truth," but to offer an overview of the appropriate literature, and that's what WP articles seek to do. We cite sources who are notable, or authoritative, or honest, or well-known, or widely read, or carefully checked, or important, or appropriate, or respected—and we use the word "reliable" as a shortcut for that amalgam of attributes. Being able to "verify" our material against one of those sources (i.e. check that one of those sources published what we want to publish) is the threshold for inclusion, the necessary condition for inclusion—the invitation to the party. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:22, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Cas, another way of looking at this: to mix up truth and verifiability is to make a category mistake. Looking at an issue in your area, imagine someone asked you to write an essay on the difference between the concepts of mental illness, personality disorder, and neurological damage. You'd explain the differences between the categories, you'd explain the history of how they developed, you'd explain the legal and philosophical differences, the different approaches between disciplines, according to sources who work in appropriate fields. Then imagine you had someone shouting as you were writing, "Yes, but what is the truth? Which of these ideas is true? Which of them is correct?" It would be meaningless.

None of us can know whether 5.9 or 6.1 million Jews died in the Holocaust, or whether it was four or 10 million. We can't know, we can never know, we have no realistic way of finding out. So we have a bunch of names of scholars we trust—people in mainstream institutions, where it's hard to get a job—who say they've read the original documents, and we repeat what they say. That's for the most part what scholarship is; it's knowing who the trusted sources are. Yes, at some point, an approximation to "truth" is the aim—a convergence of trusted narratives—but that's a complex philosophical idea within historiography, and there's no way we can get involved in discussing it in a Wikipedia policy. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 02:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

@SV - I'll try not to intersperse but answer bits and pieces. When I write I am mindful of the subject as a whole, so that impacts on how I look at further bits of information and how they integrate with the whole. Luckily for the most part, the quality of the sources speak for themselves, so integrating as a whole is not a problem. But (for instance) where a source contrasts with other material will heighten the need for qualifying that source. For instance, in medicine, we'd often state a Review Article as fact "treatment X is effective for disease Y" BUT we might have to qualify that in a number of circumstances - e.g. a large high quality and highly publicised meta-analysis (technically a primary source, but maybe picked up by newspapers, gov'ts etc - hence we might review article to say "Medical consensus has been that treatment X is effective for disease Y (ref here), however a new meta-analysis....." - so to answer, no, I could see a case where the presence or absence of other high quality material may impact on how we ref US gov't sources on Manning. Regarding "the truth", ultimately, yeah there is an unknowable truth we can never know (e.g. a ruler cannot measure exactly 30.000000000000000 cm), but it doesn't mean we don't try to give an accurate picture of the subject as possible. Note that this needn't be a preconceived idea on the part of the editor but develops as one reads and processes sources. (i.e. inaccurate =/= wrong, which seems to be a distinction that needs making here. For instance, re difference between the concepts of mental illness, personality disorder, and neurological damage - yes all are different paradigms and none repreresents "The Truth", but it is up to me to be able to explain the strengths and weaknesses of each paradigm (complex but not insurmountable). Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Did you notice that the word threshold does not occur in the title of this section? That's not because it misrepresents the problem, but because most of the time when someone mentions "verifiability, not truth" the word is not used at all. And quite a few editors will deny that the "threshold" language means anything like you and I think it means. To me that's an indication that the snappy language stands in the way of understanding. I don't care how we fix this, so long as we fix it.

Editorial judgement is another problem, and a related one. A lot of editors have no judgement at all and try to substitute wikilawyering for it. WP:Editorial judgement is a redlink. I am afraid it wouldn't even help as a guideline. It would have to be a policy so that wikilawyers cannot continue to claim that exercising editorial judgement is against policy without risking a block. There is this absurd idea that Wikipedia is not written by (more or less) intelligent people who read and understand the sources, but that some kind of automatic writing is going on that turns policy pages + reliable sources into an encyclopedia, with humans playing a role analogous to that of electrons in a computer. Hans Adler 01:49, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree. I don't think that anybody is challenging the verifiability content of the beginning of the policy. The question is, why the heck does the lead of a core policy have to add wording that insults the idea of striving for accuracy? First by substituting the ambiguous, straw-man-ishly multi-meaning word "truth" for accuracy, and then, in a phrase that we know always gets quoted out of context as the (mistakenly) mission statement of Wikipedia: "not truth" = "not accuracy" North8000 (talk) 02:00, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

We still seem not to have resolved the problem(s) we had when we discussed this a few weeks ago - we "know" that "the threshold" is supposed (in this case, at least) to mean a necessary rather than a sufficient condition; but (a) how do we expect readers to guess that this is how we mean it? and why force them to make such a guess when we could easily reword the sentence to resolve that ambiguity; and (b) by writing in big bold letters not truth we imply that truth is not a relevant consideration, thus leading to the absurdities of people wanting to knowingly repeat libel and so on, as in the case described above (and in other less dramatic situations, where the falsehood isn't a libel, but is still not wanted in our encyclopedia). Can we really not improve the wording of this sentence so as to make it clearer what we mean by it and what our motivation really is?--Kotniski (talk) 09:37, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec)A bit of history... When we added the Verifiability not Truth clause, we were trying to combat a persistent problem: POV pushing editors adding unverifiable material based on the argument that it was "true". The current language settled that persistent problem that very well. We determined that such material should not be included, and created a statement that says so clearly and bluntly. We want to keep that clear statement.

What we are discussing now is a different issue... what to do about editors adding untrue (inaccurate) material based on the argument that it is verifiable. This is a much thornier issue. Blueboar (talk) 13:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree, ok, let's have a poll and get some numbers: Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Poll: Misleading opening statement

• For whatever reason, this statement, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." is problematic and needs to be rewritten:

Support

1. . Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
2. For too long, this wording has been used to justify the deliberate inclusion of information known to be incorrect. It needs rethinking. User:Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 14:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
3. Yes, there are multiple problems with it, as noted in previous discussions - it's only acceptable if you happen to know what it's trying to say, and it is intended (obviously) to be read and understood by people who don't know beforehand what it's trying to say.--Kotniski (talk) 14:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
4. The only reason for keeping this misleading sentence would be if there were no good alternatives. However, it is very easy to think of alternative formulations that do an even better job of making clear that we're after the truth as can be distilled from reliable sources, here on Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 14:50, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
5. Verifiability requirements can be strongly stated without double-dissing the concept of accuracy. The first diss is using the straw-man problematic word "truth" instead of "accuracy" and second by inserting the "not" statement in the lead sentence. North8000 (talk) 15:06, 18 April 2011 (UTC) (moved from below Unscintillating's comment) The lead states with emphasis that what we want is "not truth", and so that is what we are getting. (Unscintillating said it well) Time for a change! North8000 (talk) 00:28, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
6. Weak support as I am not sure that rewriting it is the only way of solving the problem. Actually we have two problems: (1) Editors who really and honestly believe that we should make Wikipedia say something that we know is not true. Just because reliable sources agree it is true and we want to be consistent. (2) Editors who pretend to be of type (1) when it fits their agenda. It saves them from agreeing with a consensus that they cannot plausibly disagree with.
   Both problems are relatively rare but should be addressed. I don't care whether this is done by changing the text or by adding a clear explanation that (1) is not the intended meaning. Maybe neither is needed, but just a strong consensus in this discussion, to which we can then point whenever the matter comes up again. Hans Adler 16:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
7. Support. "Verifiability" to this point hasn't even been defined in terms of whether a reliable source has actually been cited, or whether a reliable source could easily be found and cited ("Abraham Lincoln was an important figure in the American Civil War."). Moreover, the world "truth" in the phrase not truth has been perverted: it apparently refers to NOT an editor's idea of truth if it cannot (even in theory) be supported by a reliable source. Which is an extremely odd use of the word "truth," and a very bad way to use it. The concept invoked is something like "a personal controversial version of truth in the WP editors' mind, that could not be supported with a reliable source." THAT is what WP deprecates, but calling that thing "truth" is an abomination, and an insult to truth. WP does seek truth (what good is an encyclopedia that does not?) It just doesn't seek "personal truth." Editors are asked to keep that to themselves.SBHarris 18:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Suggest shortening to "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source," dropping the words "not whether editors think it is true", because I've seen them misused to dismiss demonstrably well-founded concerns about source accuracy. See #Proposal 2, below. --JN466 16:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
9. The lead states with emphasis that what we want is "not truth".  This is what we are getting in the encyclopedia, "not truth".  Unscintillating (talk) 00:01, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
10. Support - The problem isn't with truth being in Wikipedia, everyone wants that. The problem is with what some editors think is true, which may in fact be FALSE. The phrase "verifiability, not truth" is misleading. Remove the "not truth" part. The phrase "not whether editors think it is true" at the end of the sentence is correct and right on the mark. Also, "The threshold" is ambiguous and may mean it's enough to just to be verifiable in order to be included in Wikipedia, which is definitely not correct and everyone here agrees that verifiability alone is not enough to be included in Wikipedia. There's NPOV, etc. This can be fixed by changing "The threshold" to "A requirement" or "A minimum requirement". Please see Proposal 4 below. 75.47.143.156 (talk) 14:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
11. Support—Truth is too subjective anyways, and has been used by the fringers to their benefit. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

1. . It's neccesary to mention that debates for inclusion don't depend on whether something is true or not. Truth is highly subjective, and endlessly arguable. Verifiabilty can be easily checked. If we imply that truth is a matter of consideration in our decision making process, we will encourage original research, endless arguments, and walls of text. We'll never reach consensus on anything. LK (talk) 13:09, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
2. I fear that changing this wording opens the door to unwarranted promotion of fringe theories which is still a major problem here at Wikipedia. In fact, the latest Quarterly Newsletter of the Association for Skeptical Enquiry[2] discusses the problem and actually recommends people stay away from Wikipedia because of the difficulty in dealing with fringe theories. Let's face it. There's a good reason why we don't care about The Truth©: people can argue endlessly over what's true but checking to see if a source says something is a much easier debate to settle. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
3. I don't think the statement itself is problematic, and I don't think it should be removed or changed... However, I think the explanation of it may be incomplete. As written, it correctly excludes unverifiable information, even if it is "true". What it is missing is a follow up statement on what to do about clearly untrue (or inaccurate) information that happens to be verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 13:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
4. Nothing's broken as far as I can see. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:07, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
5. I expect to need the words "threshold" + "verifiability, not truth" in the foreseeable future. My evolving intensity of preference is informed by lessons learned the hard way. --Tenmei (talk) 17:36, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
6. There's nothing wrong with the current wording, and changing it will open the floodgates to every crank who thinks they know the TRUTH™. Even now we are inundated with them, but this wording at least helps mitigate the worst of it. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:54, 18 April 2011 (UTC)
7. The idea that "verifiability, not truth" is the threshold for inclusion is widely used and well-understood on Wikipedia. Some people here are saying there have been attempts to insert material known to be false because of it, but I've personally never seen an example of that in over six years of regular editing; and if such examples do exist, they are rare. For the most part, the idea makes clear to editors that what we do on Wikipedia is supply a survey of the relevant literature, regardless of our personal views. That's not just a means to an end (where what we're really doing is aiming for "truth"), as others have argued. Offering a good summary of the appropriate literature is an end-in-itself. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:24, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
8. Wording is fine. Like I've said before, Wikipedia's policies don't currently allow individual editors to assert personal authority over what is true or not. We're only allowed to declare something as true if it says so in a reliable, verifiable source. Therefore, verifiability trumps whatever we personally feel to be true. Cla68 (talk) 02:08, 19 April 2011 (UTC)
9. It's fine, and we understand what it means. (Those who don't can be pointed at Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth.) And if you need to see the problems with demanding that articles present "the Truth™", then I recommend that you spend a while hanging out at articles about mental illness, where people occasionally name "personal experience" as a "citation" for claims about (for example) the laws for involuntary commitment in their home countries. There's an ongoing dispute in articles related to saturated fat about whether the mainstream view (eating a lot of saturated fat is bad for the heart) has been completely wrong for decades. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 25 April 2011 (UTC)
10. The statement is fine because "the truth" can only be proven via verifiable reliable sources. Anyone can go and claim that something is not "true" and remove it from an article even if it's well sourced, that's why wikipedia is not about truth. --Enric Naval (talk) 13:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
11. As has been said above, surely better than I can say it, the present wording is fine. As "truth" so often depends on the viewpoint of the speaker, we have to use the standard of whether or not something can be verified from a "reliable source", and "threshold" is a succinct way of saying that verifiability is a condition that must be met for inclusion in Wikipedia, but doesn't guarantee inclusion. -- Donald Albury 09:34, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

• As above, my beef is that it creates an artificial dichotomy of truth and verifiability as distinct endpoints (which they are), but what needs to be emphasised is verifiability is a means to an end. Casliber (talk · contribs) 12:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Amplifying Casliber's opinion, please consider these factors. --Tenmei (talk) 17:56, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

• WP:V "frames" each of our edits by providing generally practical, flexible templates which were crafted to help me and others find ways (a) to escape conflict and (b) to move towards areas of identified agreement.
• WP:V communicates in a way that logic alone cannot, especially when people are talking past each other at cross purposes and when a mismatch develops like a "chicken talking to a duck" (鸡同鸭讲 or 雞同鴨講) or when a white horse is not a horse (白馬非馬).
• WP:V is most needed because " ... the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already".

• Some people above seem to be under the impression that "verifiability" (or "whether a source says something") is an objective matter. It isn't, of course - determining whether a source is "reliable" in a given instance is no less a subjective process than determining whether a given statement is "true" (in fact it quite often comes down to the same thing - we conclude that a source is unreliable if the statements it's making appear not to be true). And pushers of fringe theories can exploit verifiability too - by insisting that the sources that support their viewpoints are just as reliable as those that oppose them (or even making WP reproduce claims from fringe sources as the truth, just because no-one happens to have found a mainstream source that specifically contradicts the claims in question).--Kotniski (talk) 14:46, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: Responding to the above and answering Kotniski's question here: Yes, we can not improve the wording of a significant sentence by deleting the key words "threshold" + "verifiability, not truth". The word "threshold" implies movement and the beginning of a process. This conceptual "threshold" emphasizes the pivotal distinction between (a) a fact which supported by WP:V + WP:RS and (b) a mere factoid which is associated with zero cited confirming support. Adopting Kotniski's words from an archived thread: yes, "in actual fact we do care about the truth of statements and don't mindlessly copy apparent errors from sources"; but this concern only addresses one of a series of plausible follow-up questions. This survey is about averting consequences which attend throwing out the baby with the bath water. --Tenmei (talk) 17:03, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Couldn't "threshold" just as likely imply the end of a process? Passing a literal threshold means you've entered the house - you're home, dry, and can finally relax in front of the snooker. (And of course something doesn't become a "fact" by virtue of being supported by "reliable sources", or a "factoid" by not being so supported - I don't really know what you're trying to say with that.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:48, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Q.E.D. -- compare what Blueboar wrote here. --Tenmei (talk) 19:08, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

• What about "Verifiability: The only practical way to approximate the objective truth"? Count Iblis (talk) 14:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

• Poll Results: After a week, it seems clear that the poll on this proposal is coming down to "no consensus", with roughly equal support and oppose views expressed. This usually means we default to "Keep as is". Do we need to continue, or shall we accept that the proposal is not going to be adopted? Blueboar (talk) 14:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)
  • I'd be happy if people could see that they've lost when they plainly have... but I know that my own optimism and faith in my fellow editors sometimes prevents me from seeing such things myself when I'm on the other side. Consequently, I think we can reasonably expect another week of time-wasting arguments here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal

Here is the previous proposal. Maybe just a baby step compared to the possibilities here, but I think that it also addresses / avoids most of the issues which the opposed folks have:

replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 17:42, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

That's an improvement, but it still retains most of the problems - by using the definite article with "threshold" it implies there's a single necessary and sufficient condition; it overemphasizes readers' ability to check; and the material itself doesn't have to have been published (and indeed probably shouldn't have been) but only to be supportable by what's been published.--Kotniski (talk) 17:52, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree, and there was a detailed discussion of the "threshold" word at the time. "a requirement" would be more accurate. The above was just a "baby step" in the right direction. And the "baby step" aspect making it easier to make the change. North8000 (talk) 19:21, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Geez, WP seems totally besotted and enamoured with this word "threshold." As though getting rid of it was like somebody was going to carry your bride across the doorway FOR you and then close the door. Get over it! You guys who like the word that much, should get a room with it. ;) SBHarris 20:05, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

People do like the word "threshold"... and they like the phrasing "Verifiability, not Truth". I realize that a few of you think the wording is problematic, but the simple fact is... every time someone has tried to change this sentence, it meets with strong opposition from those who very much want to keep it. I think you would face less opposition (and possibly even gain a consensus) if we retained the sentence, and concentrated on explaining it more clearly. Blueboar (talk) 20:20, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

"People like..." shouldn't be the way our pages get written. It should be "People are able to argue convincingly for..." At the moment the argument seems to be that we should retain the misleading phrasing because we don't know of enough actual situations where it has caused problems (of course, any number of such situations we can describe will never be "enough"), and because some people find it useful as a weapon in disputes (whereas if they're right, there are plenty of other policy statements they could use equally well, if they really aren't capable of formulating their own arguments).--Kotniski (talk) 10:02, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Why not use another phrase which is more self-explanatory and cut out the middle man? Most of the people who want to retain the phrase, want to retain it for the wrong reasons: they want to beat some other editor over the head by saying "we don't care about truth on WP". Getting rid of it will fix that immediately. SBHarris 20:28, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

To be perfectly pedantic, the proper word here is 'criteria', e.g. "Verifiability in a primary criteria for the inclusion of material on wikipedia...". I'm just sayin'... --Ludwigs2 22:12, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

To be even more perfectly pedantic, the proper word is criterion, singular. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 22:23, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, typo: I'd originally written 'one of the primary criteria', but forgot to change the word when I rewrote the phrase. --Ludwigs2 05:23, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Rather than "truth", I guess what we are aiming for is a comprehensive informative article on subject X. (I was about to add 'accurate' but have to think about how...) Casliber (talk · contribs) 21:14, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Blueboar, I think that the paragraphs which follow the first one already do explain what wp:ver is actually about. So we just have the problematic first sentence which appears to say / is interpreted to say "accuracy is not a goal of Wikipedia". North8000 (talk) 21:40, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

You miss my point... I know from experience that there is no way in hell that you will gain a consensus to change the first sentence. There are simply too many people who disagree with your basic premise... people who don't think that the first sentence is problematic, and people who (correctly) think that sentence is vital to fighting POV editors and Fringe theoroy fans... people who want to keep it exactly as it is. It just ain't gonna fly. On the other hand, we might be able to resolve the situations you are concerned with, and gain a consensus, if we keep the opening sentence as is... and concentrate on clarifying the explanation that follows the sentence, so that we avoid the potential for misinterpretation. Focus on changing what you can change, and accept that there are things you can't. Blueboar (talk) 21:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

I think you're on the right track. We should follow up "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth" with a statement that "This must not be taken as license to knowingly insert false information that has appeared in an otherwise reliable source" or similar. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 22:27, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

↑↑↑↑↑ As far as I'm concerned this is the perfect solution. It keeps the original, snappy version, should fix the problem and is unlikely to have any bad side-effects. Hans Adler 06:21, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Can someone give examples of people using this policy to insert false material knowingly? More than one example, please, to show that it's a real problem. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 06:26, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand the fear that "false information might be knowingly inserted in Wikipedia" under the current policy. When I've found contradictory information in sources while editing a history article, me and other editors usually work out through discussion on the talk page which information to use. Sometimes we end up presenting two or more sources, such as "so-and-so says one submarine was present, but so-and-so states that two were actually there" or something like that. Then, if necessary, further information on discrepancies in the sources are placed in the footnotes. The reader is then free to check the sources on their own and make up their own mind as to which is true. What's wrong with this system of doing things? Cla68 (talk) 07:54, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Nothing; but there are cases where the dubious sourced information is not actually contradicted by any other source. For example, we had the issue at the Chopin article a while back where one biographer had written (in half a sentence) that Chopin had "changed his citizenship". No other source was found for this claim; a bit of original research showed it to be quite unlikely; however, there was no source that said "Chopin did not change his citizenship" or anything to that effect (why would there be?), so someone still insisted on writing this assertion (probably untrue) into the article. --Kotniski (talk) 09:53, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I've seen several cases where people wrote false statements in articles that they thought were correct, and that was then based on their false understanding of certain sources. In some cases the editor would base his argument for inclusion on the fact that the source is reliable and we shouldn't argue who is right or wrong. The problems were resolved, but only after convincing the editors in question that the truth obviously does matter and to find out what it is, we really need to discuss the theory in detail on the talk page and forget about what the Wiki-rules say. Count Iblis (talk) 14:27, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I have seen similar cases. But I think they are relatively rare. Far more common are situations where (without any misinterpretation involved) two sources actually do say different things (or even out right contradict each other). Both sides get into an argument over which source is "True" and which is "False". We do want to make it clear that when reliable sources disagree as to what the truth actually is, we don't argue over which is right and which is wrong... instead we present both sides of the argument and attribute who says what. Blueboar (talk) 15:10, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it sometimes is a problem with quotations. Reliable source A says, "X said Y". Reference to X's actual publication shows that X didn't actually quite say Y. However, if Y is a statement likely to elicit a strong emotional response in the reader, POV editors will insist that "X said Y" be included in the article, because it was reported in a reliable source. It's for this reason that we have WP:RS#Quotations, of course. Here is an example; not a perfect example, but it falls into the general ballpark. --JN466 15:32, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Request for examples

I think someone needs to produce diffs of editors adding false but well-sourced material, then diffs showing them arguing that it has to stay even if known to be false, or where the source clearly made a mistake. Otherwise there's no evidence that this happens. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:04, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

SV: there are at least two such cases on Talk:Pseudoscience (one of which was a triggering factor for the current ArbCom case).

1. The use of the first line of an abstract of a psychology paper on cognitive distortions to make overly-broad factual claims about pseudoscience as a whole (when in fact the actual paper does no deal with pseudoscience in any analytical way, but only examines the possible cognitive distortions that might lead people to use medical quackery). diffs are too numerous in this case - easier if you just read the first few paragraphs of this section, this section, and this section.
2. The reinsertion of this material, despite the fact that the 'ten pseudoscientific beliefs' being mentioned come from a footnote in an NSF exemplifying a point in a section on public science education, and is not otherwise mentioned in the document. Note that Enric's edit summary refers to something that was not removed, and makes no mention of the problem of misusing of a footnote in this way. Enric has not yet responded to my talk page section, but there was an extensive dispute over this same passage on the ghost article (involving brangifer, hans adler, and me) in which the quote was presented as a definitive statement of the NSF's beliefs. I'll go hunt for those diffs - maybe a bit later this evening.

In both these cases (and in others I could dig up if needed) there is what I can only describe as a scientific version of biblical literalism, in which editors seek out incautious quotes tucked away in odd corners of scientific articles - things that the authors clearly said, but which can hardly be treated as analytical or interpreted as part of the article's intent - and present them as strong authoritative statements to construct some overly-strong criticism/praise of a topic. They then argue extensively that the quote is verifiable and from a reliable source and so cannot be excluded. It doesn't seem to matter how much one argues that the sources are being misrepresented and the quotes taken out of context, because the discussion always comes back to "it passes V and RS, therefore it stays in"; QG has even gone so far as to suggest that talking about an article's intent or the context of a quote is original research. There's no doubt in my mind that the people who do this recognize that the source itself does not mean to say what they are using it to say, and that the statements as they are used are not true - there's no other way to make sense of that kind of literalistic, policy-thumping reading. And yet they continue to argue for it. --Ludwigs2 03:13, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, Ludwigs, I've not looked at your examples yet (I will read them later), but just scanning your post, this just sounds like bad editing, and people ignoring the "threshold for inclusion" part of the key sentence. All the policies are misinterpreted or ignored by editors engaged in poor editing; it would be impossible to write them in a way that would avoid this. What we look for when deciding whether policy needs to be changed is a pattern of reasonable editors being inadvertently misled by poor policy wording—or new editors who are clearly trying to do good work being similarly misled. But I don't see that with V. On the contrary, it's one of the policies that is clearly understood, at least in my experience of watching it being used. I'll post more once I've looked at your links in detail. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 03:43, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I understand what you're saying, and I even want to agree with you. I guess I just personally feel that policy should both encourage good editing and forestall bad editing (e.g. it should be proof against both accidental misleadingness and willful misinterpretation. But read over the examples a bit and tell me what you think. --Ludwigs2 06:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Hi Ludwigs, I took a closer look, and it's just poor editing. This edit, for example, is a misuse of a source. There's nothing about the way the policy is worded that would cause or prevent that kind of editing. We have to assume a certain familiarity with using sources, and with being able to summarize them accurately, and see when they're being used inappropriately. I agree with you 100 percent that that ability is often lacking, but there's nothing this policy can do about that, unfortunately. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 08:40, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

SV: I agree with your points - it's bad editing, it's misuse of a source, and I've said that numerous times on the talk page. The problem is that this policy is constantly invoked as the rationale for this edit (and ones similar to it) in the "it's verifiable and cannot be excluded" vein. That is a misuse of policy, not poor editing - to repeat an analogy I used elsewhere, it's like someone who's run over a bunch of school children but defends himself by saying that the law allows him to drive at 25 mph in school zones. No judge would allow that interpretation of the law to stand, but we don't have judges on wikipedia. Either we need to create a lower court system where misuses of policy like this can be adjudicated (isn't that a scary thought!) or we need to craft something into policy which precludes this kind of misuse. Otherwise we'll continue to have exactly what we have: a system in which 'policy relativism' (a state where every idiosyncratic interpretation of policy is treated as equal to all others) can be used to obstruct beneficial changes or promote even the most ridiculous edits. --Ludwigs2 18:08, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

It is generally fairly clearly understood, but that's despite, not because of, the way it's written. (Well it's not all badly written - it gets better as it progresses, and of course we have its fork WP:NOR saying the same things, sometimes more clearly, so most people get the message in the end.) But as the examples given here have shown, there are many editors around - not necessarily bad-faithed, but accepting in good faith the policy that they see written - who think that accuracy doesn't matter as long as we're parroting what some source has said. Of course we don't know exactly which wording in which policy (if any) has given rise to each such misunderstanding, but we should be trying to word all our policies so as to avoid the possibility of such misinterpretation.--Kotniski (talk) 08:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is an editor who is convinced that the article on weight should start with the definition that is in the "majority" of general college physics texts. He has absolutely no source for that idea, but pulls it out of the air wearing his editor-hat. However, he believes that my belief to the contrary is a personal "conclusion," but presumably that his, is not. His "realible-source" is a physics teacher who made a brief survey of college physics texts, and decided they mostly say something that contradicts the ISO defintion of weight. The educator himself doesn't like the physics texts and he does like the ISO definition, and his purpose is to improve physics teaching, not to define weight for the world or Wikipedia. However, the editor thinks that we need to go with the most common textbook definition, since there are more of these than any other number of sources he can find, having been counted for him, in the article, by the educator. So, ironically he is using a definition that THAT writer did not like. It's a very weird argument. And yes, poor editing on WP. But all based on this editor's idea that NPOV should be based on the largest numbers, and nevermind arguments about quality, since those are not ours to make, as editors. A typical WP mess. As usual, this editor thinks he is being neutral, and he is sticking to his guns. Of course, he isn't neutral-- he's pushing his own POV that general college physics texts are the be-all and end-all for physics definitions. [3] SBHarris 03:57, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

SV, I had the situation where a small town US newspaper reported on a UK court case and the described what issues the case was (allegedly) about and the parties (allegedly) involved. The court judgement explicitly states it was not about those issues. The case description from the US newspaper remains in the article and use of the judges text in the court judgement reached no consensus on WP:RS/Noticeboard, with the claim using it would be OR. [4]. The statement, a false allegation against a live company not even a party in the case, remains in the article, and the judges opinion from the actual judgement has been removed. --Insider201283 (talk) 01:09, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

If you need to untangle a nasty sentence, first find the subject. I believe that subject of the first sentence in WP:V is “material”. The words that now start the sentence are used in an unnatural way, only later defined by analogy in a subordinate clause. Such writing could be improved.

Here’s what happens when you start with the subject of the sentence. You get something like:

Material added to Wikipedia must pass a standard of verifiability. Non-controversial statements of fact that are already widely held to be true may be included in Wikipedia with no citation. If there is an argument or challenge to such material, a citation should be added. However, technical or controversial facts must be immediately accompanied by a citation so that readers can check that the material has already been published by a reliable source. Factual statements that are supported by good references therefore take priority over.the editor’s personal beliefs.

What this says is “trust, but verify” (shades of Reagan). I’m going to get objection that this perhaps puts more trust in editors than is the academic standard for students writing a term paper. Yes indeed, it does; thanks for noticing. If we’re ever going to have Wikipedia also written and edited by academics and professionals, we need to do just that-- otherwise, any outreach program to professionals is a sham. However, not to worry: Wikipedia already informally works in that way. The policy here is thus less prescriptive than descriptive. And if you disagree, I invite you to the math, chemistry, physics, and medical sections. We’ll keep the light on for you. SBHarris 02:34, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

OK Slim, the narrow category that you defined for an example "adding false but well-sourced material, then ..them arguing that it has to stay even if known to be false, or where the source clearly made a mistake" covers a rare "perfect" scenario of the zillions of types of scenarios where the current wording causes or contributes to problems. You seem to be arguing or implying that the validity of questioning the wording depends on finding bulletproof examples that fall into the specialized case which you defined. North8000 (talk) 11:33, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

This wording means that advocates of fringe theories can argue that it's already widely held to be true that Obama was born in Kenya and that 9/11 was an inside job - as they already do. The only difference is that now they'll have a policy which backs them up. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 12:47, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

That's one of my points. An attempt to strive for accuracy is disparaged. And since wp:RS does not require reliability on the topic (just an editor layer), the fringe is sourcable per wp:ver, and this policy entrenches the fringe. North8000 (talk) 14:19, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

North, one of the arguments for change above was: "For too long, this wording has been used to justify the deliberate inclusion of information known to be incorrect." I've requested examples because I've never seen that happen. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The request for examples is a smokescreen. Policy should not endorse things that are undesirable, regardless of whether certain of us as individuals have personally witnessed them. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 14:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Examples are important. People often arrive at policies saying they have to be changed because of x, y, and z, but when you ask for examples of those things they can't produce any. As I said earlier, when deciding whether to change long-standing wording that people rely on, we need to see that the policy is causing a pattern of misunderstandings among reasonable editors, or that new editors are being led astray by it. I can't see that either of these things is happening, and no one has produced evidence that it is. I'm an active editor myself. If were happening I'd have seen it at some point, but I see the very opposite. I see this policy working, and resolving disputes.

It isn't reasonable to blame the policy for editors using sources badly, or for not using common sense. No policy can teach editors how to summarize accurately, or how to tell when a source is high-quality and appropriate, or the importance of not lifting material out of context, or when in-text attribution matters. These are things people learn over many years at school and college. Some editors do learn those skills at Wikipedia, and you can see them get better at research over the years, though it's also true that some don't. Then, on top of skill issues, you have editors pushing points of view, rather than sticking to good source use. Dealing with these things is very frustrating, but it's not the fault of any of the words in this policy. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:12, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Here is a previous request by SlimVirgin for an example: request examples.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:14, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 2

How about just losing the last part of the sentence, ", not whether editors think it is true"? That would leave us with the following:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.

That gets rid of the element that can be interpreted to mean "It doesn't matter whether it is true or not". --JN466 15:13, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Certainly the above is a big improvement over what we have. I'm partial to my own version, but this has the virtue being shorter, for those who like that. Perhaps it could be kept in mind for NUTSHELL use. Or, it could be used as the very FIRST sentence, with a second paragraph amplifying it, in pyramid Reuters style:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source.

Material added to Wikipedia must pass the verifiability standard, unless it is obvious to all. Non-controversial statements of fact may be inserted with no citation. If there is an argument or challenge to such material, a citation should be added. However, technical or controversial facts must be immediately accompanied by a citation so that readers can check that the material has already been published by a reliable source. Factual statements that are supported by good references therefore take priority over the editor’s personal beliefs.

SBHarris 15:57, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but this still seems like a solution in search of a problem. I'm at a loss to come up with a single situation I've encountered where an editor knowingly insisted on inserting false information on the grounds it was verifiable. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 15:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

That's not necessarily how it happens. The editor inserting the material may be quite agnostic about its truthfulness, and take the content on faith. However, if other editors then point out that the material is mistaken, as in the Sam Blacketer case, editors start arguing that it doesn't matter. See for example the comments citing WP:V at Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Sam_Blacketer_controversy. --JN466 16:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

It can happen more perniciously, even in the sciences. See the long, tedious and mostly unnecessary discussion on the TALK page for the article on weight. The definition of weight with most support from college texts (i.e., the largest number of verifiable cites) is the poorest one physically, and is not used in general relativity or by the International Standards Organization (ISO). It speaks of weight as caused by a "force of gravity" so that (by this definition) you still have full weight in a falling elevator or nearly full weight in an orbiting space shuttle, but don't feel it and can't measure it. The better definition ala Einstein just says gravity never causes a direct force anyway, so you never feel it anywhere as such, and thus you really ARE weightless in orbit, not just "apparently" weightless. However, the article editors managed a count of references (ironically from teaching-articles which argue that texts don't do a good job of defining weight!) and pushed this 17th century "gravity force" idea through, as the most "verifiable" definition. In my own mind, this is a subject for a pedagogical section right after the LEDE, but think the LEDE should have the best modern physics definition, not the most common definition like some dictionary. That view was mostly quashed, though it did finally get second-billing (in the science sections of WP, progress in theory does count a little). However, this WP:V policy, poorly applied, is the reason WP's article on weight begins as it does, with a common but bad (even wrong) definition. According to the definition the article starts with, you don't actually have more weight in a centrifuge (you are crushed by "apparent weight"; ignore your weight scale reading). It's also at odds with the information in weightlessness and g-force. One crappy definition leads to problems spreading like crabgrass and we even have an article on apparent weight that is being fought over. I blame the wording of WP:V. If most sources get something wrong, but the best and most authoritative ones get it right, it should be straightforward to note that, and begin with the best, not the most popular. However, it sometimes isn't easy. SBHarris 17:20, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that collegiate level text books are presenting "false" information? I find that hard to believe. They may simplify the topic, but I don't think they are likely to give an untruth. I would say this is another case where presenting the disagreement and attributing who says what is called for: (with language along the lines of: "Most college level text books define weight as X <cite text book>, however the ISO defines it as Y <cite ISO>") Blueboar (talk) 18:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

College texts present false information all the time in the interest of simplifying a subject, or sometimes because an author doesn’t understand it all that well himself (or is sloppy, or hasn’t thought it through, or whatever). If you want to read about the wars regarding the definition of weight, in which some college texts simply make statements that are the totally wrong (like “weight” is the sum of the pulls of all objects in the universe on an object), see [5]. It’s embarassing. For a more high-browed look at a related problem in physics texts, you might be interested in Oas’ analysis of college texts’ use of the concept of “relativistic mass”—an idea which, when used incorrectly as it usually is, actually conflicts with special relativity and must later be “unlearned” for certain problems [6]. The author notes interestingly that all attempts to get the concept out of college general physics texts have failed over the years (about half still have it, half don’t), but that it is slowly declining in relativity texts, so that war is being won. That itself is an example of how difficult such a NPOV analysis can be—which set of references does one use?

You’re probably encountered untrue statements about science yourself in texts. A familiar one (though usually at the high school not college level) is the idea that electrons “orbit” the atom, a bit like planets orbiting the Sun. But for hydrogen and helium and the inner electrons of all atoms, there’s no truth in that at all, even as a metaphor (the “s” electrons, even if they had no wave-nature, don’t even have orbital angular momentum). Other familiar myths in college texts are the idea that mass can be converted to energy (wrong — mass is conserved, it is matter that can be converted to energy, while mass stays constant). In chemistry we have a generation of texts (even some biochem texts) claiming that the “high energy bonds” in ATP release energy when broken (actually, no chemical bond does that, or it wouldn’t be a bond). This misconception enforced by the idea-advertising trick of Fritz Albert Lipmann, who first suggested that ATP is the energy currency of cells, and took to drawing these bonds as little squiggles ~ , which made them look like little springs waiting to be released. Generations of students since 1941 have thought of them that way. I could go on, but you get the picture. SBHarris 22:15, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

@SV - I've seen numerous tertiary sources make well-intentioned but wrong statements in biology and medicine. I have also seem much jostling at various battleground pages (Climate Change and I-P pages come to mind) where both sides believe they are portraying a more accurate picture (and quite different to each other). Many of these edits would technically fall within sourcing guidelines. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:19, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the examples for "false" statements above one needs to a bit more careful. While some cases they are indeed simply false information, other are just simplified preliminary descriptions or models, that still have their value in a restricted context and in particular in popular descriptions.--Kmhkmh (talk) 04:52, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Going back to the proposal (Proposal 2), I think this change actually makes it worse, as it retains the words "not truth" while removing the one attempt we do make to explain what we are trying to convey by "not truth" in this context. And of course it still retains the other faults: implying there's just one (necessary and presumably sufficient) threshold; over-emphasizing readers' ability to check (with no explanation what we have in mind with that), and saying that material must have been published rather than just be supportable by what has been published.--Kotniski (talk) 18:55, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. As long as we retain "not truth," thereby endorsing the deliberate inclusion of falsehood, tweaking the rest makes no difference. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 16:59, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Disagree. The last part is needed. Otherwise there's no criterion for what "truth" means in this context. If anything should be jettisoned, it should be the first instance of "truth" in the sentence. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 19:25, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 3

Something like (it wouldn't have to be this exact wording): "Statements in Wikipedia must be verifiable by reference to published reliable sources. Articles should not make statements just because editors believe them to be true - they need to be directly supportable by sources. This principle is often summed up in the phrase "verifiability, not truth"." That way you keep your mantra, without the policy's opening sentence having to be misleading in multiple ways.--Kotniski (talk) 19:09, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

As is, the first sentence discourages editors from removing reliably sourced material using OR. The present direction of this discussion is removing that aspect. Note that WP:NOR doesn't prevent editors from using OR to remove reliably sourced material when they disagree with the reliable source. From this discussion, it looks like Wikipedia is going downhill. Remember, if you shit in your living room, you have to live with it. 75.47.153.17 (talk) 09:51, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't see how the present sentence "discourages editors from removing..." unless it's being interpreted to mean "if something's reliably sourced, then it must be included", which is one of the things we certainly don't want to say (since it isn't the case, however much of a useful "argument" it might be in some disputes). --Kotniski (talk) 10:42, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Without the part "not whether editors think it is true", it's not as clear what is meant by the phrase "verifiability, not truth", and reliably sourced material might be deleted if, for example, an editor claims that the material is false based on that editor's own personal experience. Note that WP:NOR does not prevent material from being deleted through OR, it only prevents material from being added through OR.

To respond to your remark about interpretation, the phrase "threshold for inclusion..." does mean "if something's reliably sourced, then it must be included". "Threshold" means the same as "sufficient condition". So the first sentence is incorrect because being reliably sourced is not the threshold for inclusion. The material also has to satisfy WP:NPOV, for example it can't violate WP:UNDUE. So the threshold should be verifiability and not causing a change in the article from NPOV. [I struck this out because the ambiguity of "threshold" is a problem, as mentioned in my next message below.] 75.47.143.13 (talk) 13:01, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

After I wrote the above, I looked at more of the previous comments and I found one of SlimVirgin's comments useful which interpreted "threshold" as meaning a necessary condition, and I found one of Kotniski's that noted the possibility of more than one interpretation of "threshold". So I would agree that "threshold" may be interpreted by different readers as having different meanings. Specifically, the reader may interpret "threshold" as meaning either "sufficient condition", "necessary condition", or "necessary and sufficient condition" and thus the word "threshold" may be a problem in the present opening sentence.

I think that the proposal should include the idea that editors should not delete reliably sourced material just because they think it is wrong, and that the deleting editor should have the burden of showing that the deletion is worthwhile. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 16:38, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I like the proposal. It's one of several good ones put forth here which would improve the current situation. But it's sad to keep that badly written "verifiability, not truth". North8000 (talk) 11:09, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 4

A requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.

In the above proposal, "The threshold" has been changed to "A requirement" to remove the ambiguity of whether threshold means necessary condition, sufficient condition or necessary and sufficient condition. "A requirement" unambiguously means necessary condition, which is correct. The part "not truth" was removed from the beginning since it is not needed because the thought is more accurately presented at the end of the sentence with the remaining phrase, "not whether editors think it is true." 75.47.143.13 (talk) 19:55, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Much improved. Still doesn't address obvious information that needs no cite. But perhaps that can be held to the next sentence. SBHarris 20:03, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Your point regarding obvious information is addressed in the second paragraph of the current policy page. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 20:16, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I still think the current language is better, it clearly and strongly states that we do not include unverifiable information and material, even if it may be true. This is the core concept behind this policy, and the mantra "Verifiability, not Truth" is still the best way to get the idea across when faced with POV and Fringe pushers.

I realize that the current language does not address the other side of the coin... what to do about information that is verifiable but isn't true... and I agree that this needs to be addressed... but we need to address it without removing the strong statement on the first side of the coin. Please, stop suggesting alternatives that remove the "Verifiability, not truth" phrasing... It just isn't going to fly and you will continue to face strong opposition to such alternatives. Shift to fixing the problem in some other way. Blueboar (talk) 20:40, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Of course I differ....for previously stated reasons, I think that that phrase should be be changed. But, for the point of the moment, I don't feel that it is correct to tell people to stop making any proposals that would change that phrase. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:49, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

Thnx North, What we have here is a case of territoriality, and that's the main reason why these policy pages have been turning into garbage and good editors have decided not to waste their time on them. Such territorial fools. Their domain has mostly become a dung heap, especially WP:NOR. Adios. 75.47.143.13 (talk) 22:44, 20 April 2011 (UTC)

I won't speak for others, but for me territoriality does not come into the equation. I honestly think that the first sentence is important, and needed to combat POV and Fringe pushing, and so think that it should remain. However, because I also agree that there is a problem with people pushing the verifiable but untrue, I would like to see the explanation amended, while not changing the important initial sentence. I just don't think we should get rid of one of the most useful lines in the policy. Blueboar (talk) 00:09, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, we both place a high priority on combating POV and fringe pushing. I just think that there oughta be a way to word this to accomplish that without disparaging the idea of striving for accuracy. North8000 (talk) 02:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Blueboar, This proposal is not getting rid of the first line. Please don't misrepresent this proposal. There are only two small changes in the first line that don't change policy but significantly improve its presentation by removing ambiguity and wrong impressions. The simple improvements are the removals (indicated by strikeout) and additions (indicated by underline) in the following:

"The threshold A requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

As mentioned previously by other editors, the present form of the sentence has the problem of being interpreted as Wikipedia not caring about what the truth is. The problem comes from the first part of the sentence, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth". The correct message to present is at the end of the sentence which says that the important consideration for material is verifiability, "not whether editors think it is true". Can't you see the difference between "truth" and what "editors think is true"? Why keep something at the beginning that is misleading and hope that it is cured by the phrase at the end of the sentence? The cure is to remove the malignancy, which is the phrase "not truth" at the beginning.

The other problem is the ambiguity of the word "threshold". This also has a simple fix: change "The threshold" to "A requirement", as I explained previously in more detail. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 14:15, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Response to SlimVirgin's comment below - Here's the definition of requirement,[7]

re·quire·ment (r-kwrmnt) n.

1. Something that is required; a necessity.

2. Something obligatory; a prerequisite.

This is a word that works well and its use in the sentence does not make it false. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 17:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

And regarding your comment that "We've already had a poll about this", show me the link and give the most relevant excerpt here. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 18:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Oh, and one other thing. I don't have any illusions that this change will get in. You are against it, and that's all it takes here. You are able to call in all the support you need. I expect your regulars and others to show up if enough consensus starts to form in support of this proposal or earlier. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 18:32, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

And you know somethin', I'll just let nature take its course on this one. I've spent enough time here. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 19:25, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• • Perhaps adding a qualifier would help: "The most fundamental requirement ..." --JN466 23:11, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Poll Proposal 4

(Please use the above section for threaded discussion.)

• Support - corrects problems with "threshold" and "not truth" with simple fixes. See my messages above 20:16, 20 April and 14:15, 21 April. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 14:35, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Not perfect, but not so pernicious as the current wording. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 15:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. To say that "A requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability," is false. It's not just "a requirement"; it's the threshold, a necessary condition. We've already had a poll about this. It's not really on to hold poll after poll until people get tired of commenting. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I've started a thread in the above section to discuss SlimVirgin's comment. Please make further comments there. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 17:44, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support As an improvement, if for no other reason that it gets rid of what has properly been characterized as the malignant suggestion in the present policy that WP doesn't care about what actually is the truth. Some of the comments above make it clear that there is a school that feels this is, and should be, exactly the case: that a mere accurate summary of the literature is not only a worthy goal in and of itself, but a sufficient one also. Perhaps Jimbo Wales really didn't mean to say that WP is providing "the sum of all human knowledge." He really meant to say "WP is providing a digest of everything published by anybody with a reputation for reliability, even if it's wrong." But either he was misquoted, or else the first thing sounded cooler for the press. SBHarris 16:03, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose - per my previous comments Blueboar (talk) 18:48, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per SV and Blueboar, and this does appear to be almost an end-run around previous polls, including the main one above. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:02, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
• Support verifiability is the key - threshold = requirement. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:30, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose per SV and Blueboar. Cla68 (talk) 00:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose It's not broke, don't fix it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
• Support Per Casliber and Boris. It isn't perfect, but make verifiability the end point. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:50, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose IMHO, it ain't broke. -- Donald Albury 09:37, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 5

(I'm proposing radical reform of this policy, there is also an issue with verifiability being defined as "attributable to a reliable source")

Texts that are not verifiable to a sufficiently high degree cannot be included in Wikipedia. Verifiability, strictly speaking, means the ability of readers to verify the veracity of the text from first principles. Since this is almost never the case in practice, we also allow indirect verifiability of texts that include a number of citations to sources, where one assumes that the attributed parts of the text to the cited sources are correct. Here a requirement is that the sources are considered to be reliable sources and that assuming the correctness of the parts attributed to sources is not unreasonable.

Count Iblis (talk) 02:59, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Poll

Support

1. Count Iblis (talk) 22:44, 3 May 2011 (UTC).

Oppose

1. Sorry, I think it can be stated alot more simply. It is a step in the right direction though. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)
2. I don't see how that improves anything. -- Donald Albury 09:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 42

Proposal with a minimal change:

• The initial threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true.

I think the simple addition of the word "initial" before "threshold" could resolve our concerns... it implies that there are other thresholds that must be met, but makes it clear that verifiability is the first. Truth/lack of truth (or, more accurately... "accuracy") can be considered one of these other thresholds, but it comes into the discussion after the information or material has passed the initial threshold of verifiability. Thoughts? Blueboar (talk) 12:28, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I think "truth" should be replaced by "alleged truth" or "personal opinion" or something else that indicates that it is an opinion that one has about the truth, and not the truth itself. If you know something to be the truth, then you can only know that because you can verify it to be the truth (and that verification would necessarily go beyond the minimum threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia; just because a reliable source says something doesn't make it the truth, so if you know it to be the truth, there must necessarily be more to it than that). Only in cases where that verification involves your personal involvement in the topic, becomes it non-verifiable to others (e.g. a demonstrator in Syria cannot edit articles here based only on his/her own recollection of events there). But such very exceptional cases where "not truth" would be justified are not the main focus here. Count Iblis (talk) 15:14, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Support in context of Casliber's discussion comment here --Tenmei (talk) 15:00, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - Does not address Casliber's discussion comment here, where that editor is agreeing with the comment above it. "initial threshold" is still ambiguous and doesn't distinguish between an initial sufficient condition and an initial necessary condition, which was Casliber's point (and originally Kotniski's). The other Casliber/Kotniski point was regarding the problem with "not truth". See Proposal 4 which cures these problems. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 15:10, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand how the words "initial threshold" are ambiguous... the two words have a fairly standard meaning. Blueboar (talk) 15:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that "threshold" can mean to a reader "necessary condition", "sufficient condition" or "necessary and sufficient". This was mentioned by me previously in the discussion that you and I had in the section on Proposal 4. The ambiguity of "threshold" was also mentioned by Kotniski and agreed to by Casliber in the link that Tenmei gave here (before Tenmei just struck out his comment, leaving a bare vote), and which I also used in my first message here. I personally had the experience of interpreting "threshold" in that sentence to mean sufficient condition, and I commented that it should have been necessary condition. I later recognized that it was intended to mean necessary condition and I struck out my comment and continued the discussion appropriately. 75.47.133.9 (talk) 16:42, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• ???? Is the question the explicit one (of whether to add the one word) or the implicit one (of dropping all other proposals)? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I intended it to be both. Blueboar (talk) 18:50, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Initial threshold" is just another way of saying "threshold". SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:26, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Not quite... "The threshold" implies that verifiability is the only threshold... "The initial threshold" implies that there are other thresholds, but verifiability it is the first we have to cross (examples of other thresholds for inclusion include: whether the material would give Undue weight to a fringe viewpoint, whether the material is OR, etc.) Blueboar (talk) 18:57, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

I wonder if it's just a question of trying to make this policy say too much. What we're concerned with here is making sure editors know their beliefs are not the issue; it's the beliefs of reliable sources that count. But we have other policies that guide how to use sources: NOR discusses primary/secondary and SYN; NPOV discusses UNDUE, which is about judging the authority of source material. I think maybe the disagreements here are caused by people wanting this page, in effect, to cover those issues too. But we do make clear that the three content policies must be understood together. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:15, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I still don't see a need to change this. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:23, 21 April 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Still contains the toxic "not truth" construction. If we take out those words we still make the point that we go by reliable sources and not the opinions of editors; i.e., "The initial threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 19:27, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

The entire point of my proposal was to solve the concerns people had in a way that retained the "Verifiability, not truth" construction (which apparently about half of us think is vital and the other half thinks is toxic)... sigh, it looks like we are going to go no where... any proposal anyone makes is going to come down to "no concensus"... because any proposal that contains those words will be opposed by half of us, and any proposal that omits them will be opposed by the other half. Blueboar (talk) 22:13, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Not sure it's 50/50, but I think everyone wants to be cautious about changes in the lead of a core policy, and (rightly so) sets a pretty high bar of near-perfection for any changes made. North8000 (talk) 15:05, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. We are still trying to fix something that isn't broken by using less-clear or less-effective wording. Jayjg ^(talk) 22:04, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

  IMHO it IS broken (or, least, it causes more problems than a better written version would). But this particular proposal is essentially one to maintain the status quo by supplanting any proposals that include actual change, so I think that you and the proposer agree. North8000 (talk) 22:18, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Still has the misleading "not truth" bit in it. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose. Yep. Which has been my own complain from the top of this (now long) page. SBHarris 21:58, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose It's not broke, don't fix it. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 22:19, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Barely different from the current one.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:52, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposal 43

• All material included in Wikipedia must be able to be verified in a published, reliable source. This means that it is not sufficient for information to be true; editors must be able to check that a reputable source says it is true. Verifiability is a threshold for inclusion--a necessary condition which must be met before other considerations come into play. This policy does not mean that any edit which is verifiable must be included; other considerations such as length, relevance, weight, point of view, availability of better sources, notability of the subject, and editorial discretion are also considered when determining if information should be added. Editors should consider all aspects of a source before using it, so long as they do not engage in original research when doing so.

I'm not sure why this is so hard. Everyone seems to have the same criticisms. How about this, or aspects of it. Ocaasi ^c 05:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

In WP:Verifiability, not truth, sure. Here, it seems like unnecessary instruction bloat to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:40, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

This is really good. A much better and less problematic statement. Plus addresses the parts here that are relevant to interaction with other policies. North8000 (talk) 08:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I like it, as well. And if it looks too long an you need a pithy "start-off nutshell," just put a paragraph break between the first two sentences of the above, and the rest. The next paragraph simply amplifies what else besides WP:V is needed, both alongside and in addition. In fact, it sort of reminds me of a synopsis of WP:N. Heh. But anyway, this is progress. SBHarris 21:57, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I like it too. The writing is succinct enough that I don't think it need be "nutshelled" as well. I'd maybe make a line break after "...considerations come into play." if you want to make it less like a wall of text. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah. Slightly wordy, but I love it. Not bad Ocaasi. Not bad at all. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 00:54, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't object... but given how many talk page discussions have quoted it over the years, I would prefer to keep the current opening line ("The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth"), and then have the language in this proposal as an explanation of that line. Blueboar (talk) 01:55, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

See I hate that opening line as it (probably unwittingly) implies that truth and verifiability are almost mutually exclusive. Casliber (talk · contribs) 04:14, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

We don't "check that a reputable source says it is true", for example it is verifiable that the Chicago Tribune on November 3, 1948 stated "Dewey Defeats Truman".Unscintillating (talk) 23:53, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Truth vs. Verifiability

To the question of why verifiability is more valuable than truth, consider the subjectivity with which many use the word truth compared to that of "verifiability". At times, they may go hand in hand, but it is largely the opinion of the majority, as demonstrated by reliable resources, that may determine truth. One expert — I do not really like the word "expert" because in my mind it denotes some egotistical label people call themselves in order to land a bigger paycheck; we are all experts ina our own field of knowledge in some way, but I digress — one expert, say a mathematician or an evolutionist, may believe that "X is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth", whilst twenty other expert mathematicians may instead declare "Y is the truth" where A and B are mutually exclusive items. Our job in Wikipedia is to report, simply, the facts, that is the truth in that "many people say X is true, but one reliable source also proclaim Y to be true." The former, of course, having more experts supporting, would have more sources in hand with which to demonstrate the "truth" of X. So, the majority opinion of several reliable, independent sources may determine the truth of something, and this is where we apply the verifiability policy, but we must also state the facts of what they say in a truthful manner as well, and not slant opinion one way or another or give undue weight. In a way, Wikipedia determines the truth of what is in an article by appealing to the majority opinion; but, at the same time, has to state the truth in a truthful manner, i.e. in a Neutral Point of View.

Our policy is not to determine whether or not X is true or X can be true or X is justifiably true but whether or not people believe in X. Wikipedia does in fact support the truth, WP:NPOV and all, but not in any demonstrably verifiable way. The only difference is that verifiability is held to a higher standard because it is simply less ambiguous. To say initially that "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true." is in itself not true, just as saying something as definite as "the sky is blue" does not have to be checked by reliable sources. Therefore, the relatively small modification removing "not truth" should be of little concern, and perhaps clarify the misconception that Wikipedia is built around lies. "...whether editors think it is true" adequately covers POV-pushing and fringe theory cases and shows how subjective some truth is; just repeating it in the sentence makes it redundant. We can forget about whether or not verifiability is a threshold or a requirement (unless it can be demonstrated in a reliable source); just that the "not truth" part is simply not true. (This long rambling post brought to you by :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 23:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC))

threshold

Where did editors here, get the idea that the word "threshold" refers to a necessary condition? 75.47.149.12 (talk) 05:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Probably from the Legal definition of the word (ie how it is defined as it relates to the Law)... according to Dictionary.com, the Legal definition of the word "threshold" is:

• A point of beginning : a minimum requirement for further action; specifically : a determination (as of fact or the existence of a reasonable doubt) upon which something else (as further consideration or a right of action) hinges. (taken from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law).

That does sound an awful lot like "necessary condition" to me. Then again, I am not a lawyer. Blueboar (talk) 12:49, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Thnx for your excerpt from the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law. That was the kind of answer that I was looking for.

FYI, here's an excerpt from Merriam-Webster's Dictionary,[8]

"a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not"

This looks like a necessary and sufficient condition. Necessary because of "below which it is not"; and sufficient because of "above which something is true". 75.47.149.12 (talk) 13:29, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The definition that Blueboar found is very precise and appropriate, and, if applied, enhances that phrase in the policy. The more widespread definitions are more ambiguous and problematic for the clarity of the policy. But either way, interpreting "sufficient" into it is rare, and such is certainly not the case for Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 13:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

One of the definitions of "threshold" includes conditions both for "above which" and a second condition "below which".  This is by definition a form of "ambiguity", i.e., "more than one meaning".  This alternate universe of "below which" is used to refuse to discuss the [WP:Due weight] of material, especially material that is "not true".  Since the first sentence of WP:V is the highest of policies, the argument that "Wikipedia includes material that is verifiable, even if it is 'not true'", holds weight.  The word "requirement" does not have the dual meanings that "threshold" has.  A change to "requirement" would not fix all of the "we don't need to discuss it, it is verifiable" argument, but would provide a part of the fix.  Unscintillating (talk) 15:20, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Or, people can accept that we are using the word as defined above, and stop trying to wikilawyer it to death. Blueboar (talk) 20:59, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Gee, what a novel idea that is... --Ludwigs2 21:16, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah... even I have trouble with that one from time to time... the problem is that wikilawyering is so much damn fun

Argument from authority states,

The most general structure of this argument is:

1. Source A says that p is true.
2. Source A is authoritative.
3. Therefore, p is true.

So we have for (1) "I say that 'threshold' is not ambiguous", and (2) "I say that I am an authority", (3) "Therefore what I say is true".  The article states that an argument from authority is a "fallacy of defective induction, and goes on to say, "This is a fallacy because the truth or falsity of a claim is not related to the authority of the claimant, and because the premises can be true, and the conclusion false (an authoritative claim can turn out to be false)."  Unscintillating (talk) 23:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

If necessary, we can stop this particular bit of wikilawyering by providing the definition in a footnote. It might even be useful to people whose English literacy is limited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Opposition to the force of reason is by definition unreasonable.  Unscintillating (talk) 04:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Whatamidoing, Regarding limited English literacy, what do you think about the following definition of threshold from the Merriam-Webster dictionary?[9]

"a level, point, or value above which something is true or will take place and below which it is not or will not"

Also regarding limited English literacy, I misunderstood the meaning of threshold that was intended by editors here before I read their comments. You might also find similar misunderstandings of these editors' intended meaning by writers of scientific papers, if you google with the keywords: threshold sufficient condition. Also, you can google: threshold sufficient. 75.47.149.106 (talk) 15:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that the MW definition is irrelevant (that is, that there are multiple True™ definitions of the word in question, that MW definition that you quote here is not the one that we're using). Irrelevant definitions should not be included.

In particular, we're using this word in its necessary-but-not-sufficient sense, and "above which something is true or will take place" is the "sufficient" sense. In application, this irrelevant definition means that if you can verify it, then that material definitely belongs in Wikipedia—to which the community says "Not!" (or at least WP:NOT).

The legal definition quoted by Blueboar is the relevant one. If we're going to bother defining this word, then we should give readers the definition that actually communicates the specific meaning that we intend here, not one of the irrelevant definitions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

A threshold is the line of stone or wood on the ground at the entrance to a building. All other meanings are analogies. Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 16:39, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the definition of threshold that Blueboar provided above, it may contain what is needed to replace threshold with something clearer. How about replacing "threshold" with that definition's phrase "a minimum requirement" so that readers wouldn't have to know about a law dictionary's definition of threshold which few people are aware of. With this simple change of one word, the first sentence would be,

"A minimum requirement for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

75.47.149.106 (talk) 15:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I simply don't see the need. Blueboar (talk) 17:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Wouldn't it stop all this discussion about what "threshold" means? Since "minimum requirement" is unambiguous, while threshold is (clearly, given the conflicting dictionary definitions) ambiguous, why not just go with the clear unambiguous phrasing and be done with it? --Kotniski (talk) 17:44, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Another way to stop the discussion would be to accept that there's no consensus to change the first sentence, and to respect that, rather than continuing to post month after month as though that consensus didn't exist. "Threshold" is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one. People who edit a lot know this, and the only way to gain a practical understanding of how the policies are applied, and how they interact, is to use them. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 17:59, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Obvious fallacies - "no consensus to change" does not imply "consensus exists not to change"... And "people who edit a lot know this" is irrelevant, since this page is written explicitly for people who don't know this yet (why would we be writing a page telling people what they already know?) Anyway, at least we now have the admission that this sentence is deliberately ambiguous - as I often suspect when reading WP policy/guideline pages, their purpose is to conceal information rather than share it. Sad, and harmful to the project, but very hard to change against the iron will of the priestly caste who would keep it that way.--Kotniski (talk) 18:13, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

No one can gain a working knowledge of how to use the policies by reading them alone. And leaving room for editorial judgment isn't "concealing information" (what would it be concealing?). It's acknowledging that context and judgment matter, and that we can't legislate for every situation, and shouldn't want to. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 18:18, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

This isn't about "leaving room for editorial judgment", it's just about deliberately choosing a form of words that can be interpreted in two or three different ways, when we could write explicitly what we mean (which would also leave room for editorial judgement) in such a way that anyone coming to this page will know what we mean. (And it's that latter possibility which often seems to be the Wikipedia policy writer's worst fear).--Kotniski (talk) 18:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

(Oh, and "is often a necessary and sufficient condition...but may only be a necessary one" means nothing more than "is a necessary condition". Like any necessary condition, it becomes sufficient in a situation where all other necessary conditions are satisfied.)--Kotniski (talk) 19:25, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

SlimVirgin wrote,""Threshold" is deliberately ambiguous" HA HA HA HA !!!! So that's why all the garbage on these policy pages. They're controlled by an editor who is being deliberately unclear!!!! 75.47.141.192 (talk) 20:32, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Reiterating a slightly modified version of Kotniski's comment, that there is no clear consensus for a particular change does not mean that there is a consensus to not change. The current wording of this policy causes a LOT of damage in Wikipedia, and this first sentence (which emphasizes "NOT TRUTH") is one of the main culprits. The fact that most people of both the "status quo" and "change it" viewpoints understand that changes must be careful and well written makes it more complex. North8000 (talk) 21:02, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

But others disagree, North, as they said above. Lots of editors believe it prevents damage to Wikipedia, and despite several requests no one has offered an example of the policy causing damage. I've seen examples of poor editing, but nothing caused by the wording of the policy.

You would need strong consensus to change it—including consensus beyond this page, given how long-standing it is, and how much people rely on it—and there is no such consensus, so continuing to post as though there is, isn't constructive. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:20, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe that this phrase prevents damage to Wikipedia. I don't believe that I have ever seen an editor at a real article who couldn't figure this out. In actual disputes at real articles, this phrase has been a convenient way to explain articles weren't the right place to relate personal experiences. Every single complaint I remember seeing about this phrase has appeared on a policy talk page, and a substantial proportion of the complainants here were people whom I've suspected of deliberate obtuseness or POV pushing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:47, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that license to deceive the reader by including deliberate falsehoods "prevents damage to Wikipedia," but maybe that's just me. Other people seem to think such license is a good thing. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 21:52, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

See WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy. At least one high-profile admin in that discussion argued that our article about the controversy should say what the press parrotted from a source that we knew was plain wrong because our serves proved the opposite. Because according to this admin the fact that we know without any chance for reasonable doubt that the reports were totally wrong simply didn't matter. In his own words: "Yes, the coverage may be wrong, but WP:V's instruction to aim for "verifiability, not truth" does not contain an exception for issues about which we assume to know the (sadly unverifiable) truth, such as Wikipedia-related issues." Of course, "assume to know" was a euphemism and "unverifiable" referred to the Wikipedia-internal sense of the word under the most formalistic reading. Hans Adler 22:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like the thread of this discussion is being taken off the topic of this section which is "threshold" which SlimVirgin admits to deliberately keeping ambiguous. Do you want it to be deliberately kept ambiguous? 75.47.141.192 (talk) 22:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

I prefer unambiguous language, but I don't object to the ambiguous language so long as we have something where we can point those who are taking it too literally. I am not sure that the discussions already on this page are enough, although they might be. But maybe we should do an RfC on this question: When our own, Wikipedia-internal processes establish beyond any doubt that something is not true, do we have the right to present it as true just because there are formally reliable sources which claim it and no sources which deny it? Hans Adler 22:34, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes. Cla68 (talk) 22:46, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

How is that different from saying that we can do our own original research to prove that otherwise reliable secondary sources are wrong? If there is a source which says there are five houses on Pine Street, and I go and count six, do we substitute my proof for the source's assertion?   Will Beback  talk  23:22, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

We don't have, as anonymous editors, the authority to establish truth on our own as far as Wikipedia is concerned. We have to use what's in the sources. Cla68 (talk) 23:27, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed. When we have good reasons to believe that a source is incorrect about a straightforward factual assertion there are many options available. The simplest in some cases would be just to leave the faulty assertion out of the article if it's not important. Another is to attribute it and make sure that their assertion is being accurately described. Another is to add other views, where available. A fifth option if objective primary sources contain contradictory material is to to link to that, though not to draw any conclusions on our own. What we can't do is to come out and say, "Source X is wrong because the Wikipedia servers show something different".   Will Beback  talk  23:35, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

The areas where the current wording does damage are much more complex than the example which you infer, which is where a wp:rs has factually wrong material. At the core of it is that it disparages the idea of striving for accuracy, or of accuracy as a goal. The latter is followed on the 90% of important Wikipedia articles that work, and is not allowed at the table in the 10% of important where the current policies are a miserable failure. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Good point. The idea that we shit on truth and are only interested in "verifiability" leads to a mental model of Wikipedia as nothing more than a huge game of Nomic. Hans Adler 00:11, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Nomic (which I had not heard of before; thanks) does seem a incisively accurate portrayal of Wikipedia. Trouble is, a lot of people think that's a good thing. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 00:20, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

"We don't have, as anonymous editors, the authority to establish truth on our own as far as Wikipedia is concerned." This is a more strict reading of policy than necessary. (I am not sure that Jimbo would agree, for example, and at many articles it's simply not what happens. There is no problem when our articles are better than all the "reliable sources".) But at least it's reasonable. "We have to use what's in the sources." This is where it gets wrong. We don't have to use them. When the sources say something that we know to be false, we may not be able to say the opposite. But no policy prevents us from shutting up. Editorial decisions do not require reliable sources, we merely tend to use them in contentious cases where editors cannot agree about the truth. Hans Adler 00:08, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Will Beback, I agree with you and I personally ran into the problem of an editor's false analysis of sources overruled a highly reliable source's analysis of the same sources (researchers at the House of Commons Library reporting on UK forces in Libya). The ambiguity of "threshold" in the first sentence of WP:V prevented me from following up on an application of that policy. Also, I found from the discussions here that it wasn't meant to prevent editors from overruling reliable sources. They seem more concerned with the possiblity that editors will use the sentence to keep in sourced material that they think is wrong, rather than the possibility that editors will use false OR to keep out material from highly reliable sources. I believe both of these adverse situations can be taken care of with a proper unambiguous policy and the first step is to change the ambiguous word "threshold" to the correct and unambiguous "A minimum requirement". 75.47.141.192 (talk) 00:17, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Hans, as anonymous editors, how are we supposed to believe another editor who says they "know" something is false? There is no way to verify their knowledge within Wikipedia's current structure. Cla68 (talk) 00:19, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

However we know it, such knowledge is required in Wikipedia both in identifying reliable sources and acceptable external links, as well as in WP:UCS.  It is also required in WP:Due weight discussions, where editors decide how much weight to give to verifiable material known to be not true.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:27, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Answering Cla68's question, to see how to do it you need only look at the the way that the majority of Wikipedia that works, works. (even though everyone pretends that it is otherwise) A group of editors who knows the topic ("knows = they each are carrying the integration of 100' s of sources in their heads) writes the material from expertise, with sourcability and some guidance by sources in mind, working towards the common goal of accuracy THEN they cite it. Then in the minority of articles where the rules are a 100% utter failure (basically, all of the contentious articles) everybody just uses wp:ver and wp:nor to game in as much material on their side of the issue as possible, and to knock out as much of the other side's material as is possible. The policies are used to tar and feather anybody who says that it should strive for accuracy. North8000 (talk) 03:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree with the folks who say the wp:ver prevents damage to Wikipedia. That does not refute the assertion that it also DOES damage to Wikipedia, and that further evolution of the wording would reduce the latter. Starting with wording that appears to disparage the goal of striving for accuracy. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 23:29, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Only if you think that The Truth™ is the same as the facts.

This phrasing is part of our protection from people using Wikipedia to promote their religions, their recollections, and their personal beliefs. What else can you say to someone who says, "I'm psychic and I talked to Eleanor Roosevelt last night. She says that she really was a lesbian and secretly married her girlfriend after FDR's death, so we need to put that into the article, because it's true!"

If you're certain that something verifiable is wrong (that is, it is a matter of fact rather than opinion, and the source got it wrong), then you can use WP:Editorial discretion to omit such sources and statements. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, of course - which is (one of several reasons) why it's wrong to say "the threshold". Something's being "verifiable" (in Wikipedia's sense - why on earth do we keep giving normal English words new meanings? but that's another issue) is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for inclusion. Hence "threshold" (which is ambiguous as to which type of condition we're talking about) is a very poor choice of word; and "the" (before threshold) is straightforwardly wrong, since whatever type of condition you think we're talking about, verifiability is not the only such condition. This really isn't difficult or controversial - just a simple matter of rewording a poorly written sentence that, as it stands, expresses a falsehood.--Kotniski (talk) 06:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

A crucial part of the lead is that the three core content policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that's acceptable. No one should be interpreting V without taking into account NOR and NPOV: "They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three." And no one should be applying any of the policies without common sense. This means we don't add material to articles like robots just because something has been published somewhere, even when it's clearly in error. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

no one should be applying any of the policies without common sense. You're new around here, I take it? The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 17:07, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I refuse to relinquish hope. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:51, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Re: "You're new around here, I take it?" Hah!... not sure if you were being serious, but if so, guess again... Slim Virgin is one of our more senior editors. She has been involved in writing this policy since its earliest days (in fact, she was the original author for most of it). Asserting that no one should apply our policies without common sense is not the same as saying that people do use common sense. I know for a fact that SV is very aware that far too many editors don't apply common sense when reading policy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blueboar (talk • contribs) 17:37, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Boris, I think the 'should be' makes things clear. The fact that we all evolved from monkeys does not mean that we should idealize swinging from chandeliers and throwing feces at each other. Lots of people have trouble with common sense, and that seems to go trebly on Wikipedia, but this does not imply that they shouldn't be asked to use common sense, yah? --Ludwigs2 17:30, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Topping our key policies with mantras like "verifiability, not truth" does seem rather a good way to create the impression to people that common sense is not welcome around here. Anyway, I don't see why the fact that common sense is to be applied is any excuse for deliberately wording the policy more confusingly than we might. And the fact that there are three core policies (actually only two, since NOR is a fork of this one) is (again) a reason not to say "the threshold" as if this were the only one. --Kotniski (talk) 18:18, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski... You would have a point if the mantra was simply "Verifiability, not Truth"... but that is not the entire mantra. The entire mantra is: "The threshold for inclusion is Verifiability, not Truth".

This Mantra does not ignore truth, it places verifiability before truth. The mantra says that before we even start to discuss issues like Truth, we must first have Verifiability. Verifiability is the threshold (the line that must be crossed, the door that must be stepped through, the first condition for inclusion). The Mantra says: Pass Verifiability first and foremost... THEN we can talk about other issues (such as Truth, neutral presentation, synthesis, etc., etc., etc.) Blueboar (talk) 18:34, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

(sigh...) I feel the need for a moment of sardonic humor. Maybe we should change our mantra to "All truths must be verified!": that way we allow everyone to promote their own truth while still insisting that they find sources to back them up. Think of it as the Madisonian solution... --Ludwigs2 19:21, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that if the wp rules are taken literally, and in abstraction, (which is how most rules are taken in the RW, and how a warrior has the option to use them in wp) the rules do often CONFLICT with common sense. And many have not noticed that the the mother of all examples (it is huge because this is heavily incorporated by reference into all of the core content policies) is where truly reliable sources (reliable on the statement/topic that cited them) OFTEN do not qualify as wp:"reliable sources", and sources that are very unreliable (unreliable on the statement/topic that cited them) often qualify as wp:"reliable sources". This even forms the basis for the execution of the phrase that we have been discussing. North8000 (talk) 21:41, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Can you give us some examples of sources that you think are reliable but don't pass WP:RS, and of sources you think are non-reliable that do pass WP:RS? Blueboar (talk) 21:53, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Happy to. I'll give these as generalities, but I think that you would agree that these are all common in real life.

RS that is not reliable on the topic at hand

10 different prominent people make the statement that Obama was born on the planet Pluto. Reputable newspapers cover that they make those statements. In the article section regarding Obama's Pluto birth place controversey, someone puts in the 10 statements. Each is statement is reliably sourced per wp criteria.

A reputable newspaper carries what is essentially an editorial by a badly biased person who says that the Tea Party movement advocates total war. The WP article lists what they said as being information about the TPM. The source of the statement is unreliable, but the sourcing meets RS criteria.

Actual reliable source (on the topic) that fails wp:rs

The XYZ organization lists their official policies on their official web site. One of these says "our official policy regarding aaaa is bbbb". In an article someone writes "the official policy of the xyz organization regarding aaaa is bbbb" and cites their web site. That web site does not meet RS criteria.

A 5 year old unchallenged technical paper on physics written by Steven Hawking (with no editor layer after him) is a reliable source on the material it contains but fails wp:rs criteria.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 02:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

North, Both of your examples of "Not reliable but passes wp:rs" are cases where we need to look deeper and see exactly how the sources are being used. We need to look at whether we are using them to support a statement of attributed opinion ("according to X, Obama was born on Pluto"), or to support a blunt statement of fact ("Obama was born on Pluto"). In both of your examples, sources are unlikely to be wp:rs for blunt fact, but they probably are wp:rs for an attributed statement of opinion. (And, having determined that the sources are reliable for opinion, we then need to ask whether mentioning the opinion would violate WP:UNDUE or not).

As to your examples of Reliable but fails wp:rs... in what way to these sources fail wp:rs? The first one might have some WP:SPS restrictions, but it seems you are using it within those restrictions... based on your description it seems fine to me. I don't understand how the Hawking paper would fail wp:rs (Unless Hawking never published it) Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

In a hurry at the moment, so please excuse me if I only respond to to half of your post at a time. What you are talking is common sense, which is not in wp:ver, and which conflicts with parts of wp:ver. Second, you made a false presumption that the inserter made a statement such as one of those two that you posited. Such is not the case in my example. The inserter simply wanted the presence (and impact of the presence) of a large amount of "Obama was born on Pluto" statements present. Such has a POV impact WITHOUT making any source-challengable statement such as the two that you posited, and so the questions that you posed can't be asked. The material is just there, and is from a wp:RS. This type of a situation is VERY common; and is probably the most common way to wikilawyer wp:ver to pov an article. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:14, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

What parts of vp:ver conflicts with what I said?

POV is an issue ... but it isn't a verifiability issue (that's why we have a separate policy on it). Trying to challenge all these references to people who think Obama was born on Pluto under wp:V is the wrong approach. They should probably be challenged under WP:UNDUE. And if the consensus is that its not UNDUE to mention them, then the solution to the POV impact is to rewrite the article a bit and consolidate the references into one short ballanced paragraph... eg: "Many prominent people believe that Obama was born on Pluto. The most notable are Micky Mouse, Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.<cite><cite><cite> Other prominent people think this belief is ridiculous, especially Albert Einstein, Shirley Temple and Jesus.<cite><cite><cite>" This means you can argue that you are trying to compromise... you "keep the information", but are presenting it in a neutral way. It seems to me that you are trying to solve a problem that falls under WP:NPOV by editing WP:V... that's the wrong approach. Blueboar (talk) 15:02, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that we're getting to the point where responses would need a book instead of a post. :-) On the 2nd half of your post, there you go again trying to use good practices and common sense! Your removal of the voluminous "born on Pluto" material would get reverted by the POV warrior. The pov warrior's edit summary would say "please stop removing reliably sourced material". Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 22:40, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Where upon I would respond with, "No... nothing was removed... the material is still there, and still sourced to the same sources". Blueboar (talk) 18:02, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's an example. The LA Times, a major national newspaper and as such an impeccably reliable source by the lights of Wikipedia policy, recently reported on a project to analyze some climate data here. They report that "most of the work" is being done by a certain "Richard Rohde" who "recently earned a doctorate in statistics." As it happens, this Richard Rohde is in fact Robert Rohde, who recently earned a doctorate in physics (not statistics). According to WP:V we have to report that poor Robert Richard doesn't know his own name or what he got his degree in, because hey, that's what the reliable secondary source says, and our interest here is verifiability, not truth. The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 04:34, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

That's a good example, but how do you know that the person being refered to is Robert Rohde with a PhD in physics, and that they are not refering to another person named Richard Rohde with a PhD in statistics? The answer is likely that you read about it in some other reliable source (this includes Rohde's own website, which is a reliable source about himself). That makes it verifiable. If instead, you know that it's Robert Rohde with a PhD in physics because you live next door to the guy, that's original research, and we shouldn't take your word for it. LK (talk) 05:07, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Lawrencekhoo is right: it all comes back to sources. Even the most reliable sources can make errors. But that doesn't mean we can abandon their use and instead write what we know to be true.   Will Beback  talk  05:35, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Will, implying that THE alternative is "abandon their use......" is sort of a red herring argument; I don't think that anybody would seriously propose that. What I would propose is to improve the definition of wp:RS so that it correlates better to actual reliability on the statement(s) that cited it. An improvement here would have HUGE positive effects. North8000 (talk) 11:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Its not a red herring at all. It goes to the heart of WP:NOR (one of those other core policies that we need to familiarize ourselves with). If the only source to discuss who compiled the climate data is the LA Times, and they say it was Richard the statistician, then our options are limited if we know the source is wrong: All we do is discuss the problem (on the talk page) and explain why we think the source is wrong. Perhaps we can reach a consensus that the LA Times was wrong in this case, and that we should omit the information, or that we should rephrase the information and attribute it ("according to the LA Times, the data was compiled by Richard"). But we can not correct the article to say it was compiled by Robert the physisist based on our own personal knowledge.

However, if we do have other sources, sources that say that the climate data was written by Robert, then we have a very good argument in favor of treating the LA Times as unreliable on this one fact, and correcting the article (citing one of the other sources). Blueboar (talk) 13:31, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

The question was to provide an example of a source that is unreliable (in this context) which WP considers to be a RS. And that was in response to my assertion that reliable sources often fail wp:rs, and un-relaible(on the topic) sources often pass wp:rs. Now we are unintentionally creating a posited straw man argument from the example (that somebody is proposing that we abandon use of RS's and go on personal opinion instead). The actual question of this (new) thread is whether or not wp:rs criteria should be refined. North8000 (talk) 13:45, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

This discussion is generating more argument than I have time to read... I still don't understand why people find it necessary to cling to this potentially misleading "The threshold" wording when "A requirement" is what we mean. What's the downside of this simple change? (Or why we say "verifiability, not truth" when we mean "verifiability". We could equally well say "verifiability, not elephants", or more pertinently "verifiability, not personal conviction". We have nothing against truth as such - in fact it's our goal - this policy is just describing our adopted methods of approximating truth, which exclude certain methods that some might wish to use.)--Kotniski (talk) 16:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Agree Verifiability means verifiability, not "not" accuracy, elephants, truth, or the millions of other things that it does not mean. North8000 (talk) 17:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I think we can take this to be the version for April 1, 2012: "Verifiability means verifiability, not "not" accuracy, elephants, no elephants, truth, not truth, nor the millions of other things that it does not mean". Count Iblis (talk) 19:57, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

'Requirement' is the wrong word, worse even than 'threshold'. 'Criterion' is the correct word, but no one seems to like it. Maybe we should try on 'benchmark' for size, what do you think?--Ludwigs2 20:53, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I often thought that making the valid substitution of the word "accuracy" for "truth" would give this phrase a much needed poison pill so that it could get fixed.  :-) North8000 (talk) 21:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, you are entitled to your opinion. Just don't hold your breath or expect others to agree with you. Blueboar (talk) 21:50, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

(e/c) I actually wrote up something like that last january - you can read it here in the archives. I'm not sure why nothing came of that - seems it just fizzled. --Ludwigs2 21:52, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

That one looks good too. North8000 (talk) 21:56, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

"threshold" ambiguous here or not?

Hello again. The main part of this section started with the question, "Where did editors here, get the idea that the word "threshold" refers to a necessary condition?" Prior to this question, there seemed to be a consensus that "threshold" in the first sentence of this policy was intended to mean "necessary condition". Then later, SlimVirgin dropped a bombshell when that editor wrote, " 'Threshold' is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one."[10]

So what do the editors here now believe? In the first sentence of this policy, do editors here believe that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous, as SlimVirgin wrote, and can mean two things: 1) a necessary condition or 2) a necessary and sufficient condition? Please note that if it has the number 2 meaning, then verifiability is all that is needed for inclusion in Wikipedia. 75.47.156.30 (talk) 23:06, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I would say it is half way between your two definitions... so I'll go with option 3) Verifiability is necessary, and often (but not always) sufficient for inclusion. We have to remember that WP:Verifiability is only one of several content policies. Material must pass ALL of them to be included. To give a few examples, something may be verifiable, yet be excluded because it gives Undue Weight to a tiny minority viewpoint... It might be verifiable, but excluded because it is presented as part of an original synthesis. It may be verifiable and yet excluded because of a WP:BLP restriction. However, if the material is not verifiable, we don't even need to discuss the other policies... because the other policies start with verifiability. Blueboar (talk) 02:34, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

WP:V is the necessity for inclusion, the other content policies (named were WP:UNDUE, WP:SYNT and WP:BLP) are for exclusion.  Unscintillating (talk) 15:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

That is not a bad way to put it... although inclusion and exclusion are two sides of the same coin... and those other polices also talk a bit about how to include (example: NPOV discusses how it is sometimes acceptable to phrase the material as being an opinion vs phrasing it as being a fact). Blueboar (talk) 16:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually that's not right: all of these are exclusionary principles. Editors include material they believe is relevant to the topic, but that material has to pass certain criteria if it's going to be retained in the article: the added material has to be justifiable as a common, significant, and non-prejudicial understanding of the topic in the real world, otherwise it will be re-weighted or removed. Policies work together to make sure that added material can be justified in that way. --Ludwigs2 18:02, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The phrase "Criteria for inclusion" is logically ambiguous. One meaning means exclusion, (a restriction on inclusion) which is what all Wikipedia content criteria are. ("if you fail this you are out", with no comment on what happens if it passes it). The other meaning ("if you pass this, you are in, end of story")does not exist in Wikipedia. North8000 (talk) 18:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I do think the focus of WP:V is more on inclusion than on exclusion (and I think rightly so)... while the other policies focus more on exclusion than inclusion. Blueboar (talk) 18:46, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that's correct. As I see it, when someone decides they are going to edit in some material on an article they simply do so - It's assumed (per wp:AGF) that they will be trying to make good additions, and policy is there primarily to keep poor material from establishing itself where they fail. Yes, V looks like an inclusionary principle, but what one is really doing when one verifies some material is saying "This material cannot be excluded on the grounds that I made it up"; it might still be excluded on other grounds, but not on this ground. part of this is a language problem: the active principle here is actually not verification but refutation (i.e. the focus is on identifying material that does not belong on the encyclopedia and removing it), and so talking about verification confuses things a bit - that's why 'criterion for inclusion' sounds odd. What we really have in policy (IMO) is a set of criteria that material being added must pass or risk removal, not criteria that it must meet to merit inclusion. --Ludwigs2 20:35, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Here is what SV wrote in December

We should be careful not to add anything to the policy that editors could use to reject reliable sources, because everything depends on context. What the policy currently implies is that if you arrive at an article with a good source, there has to be a strong editorial reason to keep your material out. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 06:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

A purpose of WP:V is to prevent spending time discussing material that "might be true" but is unsourced.  What I think this quote means is that experienced editors are using the same policy to prevent WP:Due weight discussion of sourced material that "might be not true".  Unscintillating (talk) 02:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit that originally put "threshold" into first sentence

In the history of WP:V, I looked up the edit that originally put "threshold" into the first sentence.[11] And here is the edit summary of that edit of SlimVirgin,

"criterion -> threshold: meaning verifiability is a necessary but not sufficient condition, which should deal with concerns on talk"

So back then, when SlimVirgin put "threshold" into the first sentence of this policy, that editor wrote that "threshold" is a necessary but not sufficient condition,[12] whereas now SlimVirgin wrote that " 'Threshold' is deliberately ambiguous; it means that having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one."[13]

SlimVirgin and supporters are trying too hard to keep one of that editor's mistakes in WP:V. See Proposal 4 for a correction of the ambiguous "threshold". 75.47.145.133 (talk) 14:13, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any conflict between her two statements. Blueboar (talk) 14:56, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

The problem is not slim's edit comment or intent, but that the policy doesn't explain them. Why not explain this--having good sources is often a necessary and sufficient condition, but depending on context and editorial judgment may only be a necessary one in clear, lay language? Ocaasi ^c 16:17, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Just noting for the record that the "threshold for inclusion" language was not mine originally; it was created by another editor on a subpage. And it has been in the policy since 2005, not 2006. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 23:15, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Also, it seems the anon (75.47.xxx.xxx) is Bob K31416 (talk · contribs), who used to post a lot to V and NOR. [14] Bob, it would help if you could sign in so that people can see where you're coming from. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 01:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes. The real problem is that we're all used to talking about "necessary but not sufficient" conditions, whereas here we have "verifiability" which is really meant as always sufficient for things that pass WP:N, but NOT always necessary (example, for things that pass WP:N but are not controversial). So it is actually WP:N which is the first "threshold" that material must pass for inclusion in WP. Then for noncontroversial things, that's enough since these bits are "verifiable in theory," even if not in deed (right at the time of inclusion). For more controversial, or less well-known things, for which the editor-community has not taken "judicial notice as being factual" (like the Declaration of Independence being signed in 1776), then a citation to an RS is required also, at the time of inclusion. If there's a question LATER, a can always be added. SBHarris 23:04, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Um... First, WP:N is for inclusion of entire topics not individual facts or statements... WP:V is for individual facts and statements. Second, verifiability is always necessary... it isn't always necessary to actually include verification, but you have to be able to verify. Blueboar (talk) 01:18, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

There are many words that would accurately and unambiguously state it, and "threshold" isn't one of them. North8000 (talk) 11:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

This is not entirely on-topic, but by accident I have just run across one of the most absurd repeated invocations of "verifiability not truth" as a mantra that I have seen so far. See Talk:Larry Sanger/Archive 3 and search for "not truth" to get to the relevant sections. Hans Adler 11:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

The only person I can see posting about it there is QuackGuru, and his editing is very problematic. It doesn't help to pull out examples of bad editing and blame the policies. We could link to thousands of examples of editors misusing the concept of neutrality to push nonsense into articles, but that doesn't mean we abandon it. The concept of "verifiability, not truth" serves us well every day. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:04, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I guess my point was that the slogan's undeniable snappiness has disadvantages, and one of them is what simple-minded editors tend to make out of it. I guess I am just much more often exposed to this kind of silliness than you are. Hans Adler 20:21, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Here's a more common case. The way that most of the part of Wikipedia that works is actually written is that people who KNOW the topic (KNOWLEDGE = information developed from hundreds of sources) work together to write the material. Specific sources and sourcability guide this collaboration but it does not arise from them. THEN they source the result, by picking the correct sources from amongst all of the wrong, biased, off-on-a-tangent or dumb ones. But in contentious articles, (where the policies are a dismal failure) anybody who does not like the result can say the the above process is against wp:policies, and that the above goal is to be dismissed, because wp:ver prominently and specifically disparages the idea of seeking accuracy. North8000 (talk) 20:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

BTW Here's a useful method to take a whack at any thought North8000 (talk) 20:47, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

But I've worked a lot on contentious articles. I've made around 115,00 edits, 48,000 of them to articles, including highly contentious ones. I've seen "verifiability, not truth" work time and again, and produce good results and settled results. Any of us could pull out examples of policies and guidelines being misused. But people need to demonstrate a pattern of misuse or misunderstanding among good editors, or new editors, to show that the policy isn't working. There's just no point in continuing to cherry pick the occasional bad edit to blame it on a policy, with no evidence that it's the policy's fault. If you have thousands of cars successfully negotiating a busy motorway for years, you don't re-route it because the occasional drunk driver goes sailing off onto the verge. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:01, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I don't think your experience is at all representative. I have seen you rewrite the lead of homeopathy for NPOV. It was absolutely amazing – not what you did, but the lack of hysterical reactions to what you did. The sceptical and pseudosceptical editors clearly didn't dare to treat you the same way that they would have treated almost everybody else. Had I done the same, it would simply have been reverted. Had Ludwigs2 (not active at that article, but let's suppose he was) done the same, he would ver likely have been blocked in connection with that. Hans Adler 00:26, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I think where there are disputes in which the policies are basically being ignored (if that's what was happening; I have no memory of it), the wording of the policy isn't going to help. Imagine how much worse things would be if the policy introduced the idea of "truth." It's enforcement that's the problem, or lack thereof. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:37, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

By that analogy, 95% of the roads in Wikipedia work pretty well, and 5% are disaster areas. We can fix the 5% without messing up the 95%. North8000 (talk) 21:08, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

That's what's being disputed. All the attempts I've seen so far to change the wording would have sown doubt. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

BTW Most of the 5% are contentious articles where there is a long term real-world conflict between the participants. Do you REALLY think that Wikipedia has been successful on those? Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:12, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I think "verifiability, not truth" succeeds when people stick to it. Where the disputes mirror real-world conflict you often find the policy is not being adhered to—people add their views, then try to find sources to support them, rather than reading the source material, then simply reflecting those views. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:34, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that if the editors have conflicts in real life, that will be reflected in discussions here, and subtle wording changes in this policy won't affect that at all....--Nuujinn (talk) 21:17, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I didn't mean personal conflicts, I meant that they represent groups that are opponents of each other, such as in politics. North8000 (talk) 21:23, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Even then, subtle changes in the policy won't change their behavior. Wikilawyering POV warriors are going to try to twist policy to support their position no matter what we write. That said, I think the "threshold" statement has helped limit this to some extent. I think things would be a lot worse without it. Blueboar (talk) 21:40, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

• I do think it could be clearer, though, Blueboar. Don't you? Policies are best phrased in words that cause less arguments about their meaning.—S Marshall T/C 22:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually, no... I don't think this statement could be all that much clearer. I see a bit of argument among the ten or so of us here on this talk page, and perhaps in a few isolated incidents beyond this page... but I don't see all that much argument about it in real articles... certainly no real pattern of confusion about it. I just don't see a need to change it, and I have serious concerns that changing it would do more harm than good. Blueboar (talk) 23:09, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Personally, I don't see that one word in the top 5 list of things that most need changing. But the fact that we can't even get one obviously ambiguous word changed to one of the many available ones that are unambiguous, and where nobody has made an arguement for the word "threshold" other than "that's what we're used to" shows that the current dynmamics here have a significant problem. North8000 (talk) 23:19, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

You should've seen the struggle we went through to get copyright mentioned in the lede.  :) Yes, the dynamics on WT:V are a significant problem, because the page is watchlisted by so many people who like the current phrasing. Substantive change is extremely hard to bring about.—S Marshall T/C 23:26, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

People don't want to change that sentence, as has been explained by multiple people in many different ways. The problematic dynamic is that a small number of editors have been trying to ignore that consensus for months to the point where the page has becoming unusable. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

So, I guess the minority viewpoint (10 of 21) in the above poll counts as that consensus (that others are violating) because the two owners here voted that way? North8000 (talk) 11:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The poll above disputes your contention that it is only a small number of editors. Slightly more than half of the respondents (11-10) are dissatisfied with the sentence as it is.

You have mentioned that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous.[15] When you have used the sentence in debates on article talk pages, have you disclosed to the other editors that "threshold" is deliberately ambiguous, or have you just chosen the interpretation that suited your purposes without disclosing the ambiguity? If you had disclosed the ambiguity, then the other editors could have used the other interpretation to oppose you, and the policy would have been useless to you.

I personally ran into a problem with the sentence when I tried to use it in a debate on an article talk page, and that’s what motivated me to get involved in this discussion. I thought that having a good reliable source met the “threshold” and was sufficient for inclusion in Wikipedia, which was one of your interpretations of “threshold”. Unfortunately there is your other interpretation that “threshold” only means a necessary condition and is not sufficient for inclusion. From discussions here, I believe that the sentence was really intended to mean what you indicated when you first put the word “threshold” into policy, i.e. that it refers to a necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion in Wikipedia.[16] If I had known that, I wouldn’t have tried to use the sentence in the article talk page debate. Instead, I was misled by a deliberately ambiguous policy. Proposal 4 would remove the ambiguity and have the intended meaning for the sentence. 75.47.129.242 (talk) 11:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Bob, could you sign in, please? You're the fourth highest poster to the NOR talk page (1,002 edits between Dec 2008 and Jan 2011). You've engaged in a lot of personal attacks as Bob K31416, and starting polls. I recall that you once wanted to start a poll about whether to have a poll. Yet now you're posting logged out on WT:NOR and here, with over 40 different IPs so far, implying that you're a new editor. It's a violation of WP:SOCK. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 19:38, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

And Wikipedia policies are deliberately ambiguous because making them too specific and rigorous will break them. As is too obvious from this discussion, the more anyone tries to tighten up the wording of a policy, the more push back there is. I was heavily involved in a number of such discussions years ago. I firmly belief that any changes to policies and the wording to policies should be made very slowly. As it happens, I'm satisfied with the specific wording about the "threshhold", and think it serves the purpose well. I've been avoiding these discussions for a while now, but that does not mean that I think they are broken, or even that they need to be tweaked. Unfortunately, I think that most editors who are happy with the policies just don't bother to come in here, so I don't think we can draw the conclusion that 20 editors here represent the community as a whole. We must exercise our collective editorial judgement about what is reliable and what should be included and how to word it. Playing around with the wording of policies will rarely make that process easier, and will often merely increase the opportunities for wikilawyering. -- Donald Albury 12:15, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

• To me, you seem to be saying that Wikipedia policies ought to be vague and ambiguous, that editors who aren't active on policy talk pages are all happy with the policies, and that making the policies specific and relevant will pander to the wikilawyers rather than those who want to edit articles productively. Is that right?—S Marshall T/C 12:28, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Donald, the "silent majority" can be claimed by anyone. North8000 (talk) 13:09, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

@ S Marshall: The way I see it, policy on this level is a bit like a constitution, and has to strike he same balances a national constitution needs to strike:

• It has to be general enough that thoughtful, well-intentioned people can apply its principles to new situations as they arise (because things are always changing)
• It has to be clear and consistent enough about principles that misinterpretation or intentional misapplication is difficult to manage effectively
• It has to be flexible enough to fit a broad range of situations
• It has to be stable enough that it can be applied consistently in a broad range of situations

Excessive specificity inevitably causes headaches down the line (think about the three-fifths clause in the US constitution). vagueness and inconsistency cause different kinds of headaches, because they create a place where interpretations can go a bit wild. inflexibility always produces injustices of one sort or another; instability just leads to confusion and conflict... the proper approach to documents like this, if you want to get thoughtful about it, is the hermaneutics approach, where policy is continuously re-evaluated against itself (and new ideas must be evaluated against the entirety of policy before they can be adopted), but that's a bit much for most people. maintaining a careful, abstract generality is a reasonable substitute for that. --Ludwigs2 16:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)--Ludwigs2 16:16, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Many good thoughts there. In the analogy, the US Constitution is sort of the framework (6 pages) for developing the rules rather than being the rules themselves (which is probably more like 6,000,000 pages) Also, legal documents are made to be interpreted literally and precisely, albeit only to the extent that they are such. In Wikipedia, in the big picture it is not so.....they sort of all have "input" to what happens along with consensus, and they are not written precisely. Also there is not that "framework vs. details" hierarchy. Instead we have about 30 pages of core rules, and about 1,000 pages of rules which anyone can can invoke. North8000 (talk) 16:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

The point is that a substantive change in meaning requires strong consensus, especially for something that's been in the policy since 2005 and that lots of people rely on. Donald is right that the majority of editors who are content with V don't read this talk page, and he's also right about the dangers of increasing specificity. The policy can't be taken in a new direction by a handful of editors to this talk page. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Thinking afterwards on it, I should have said "flexible" rather than "ambiguous". My concern is, though, what helps to improve Wikipedia? Flexibility to deal with issues as they arise is vital. Precise language has an important role in a legal system. However, Wikipedia is not a legal system. As for the "silent majority", if an important change is well publicized, hundreds of editors will participate, but most of the time most of us are too busy with other things to spend a lot of time on policy talk pages. (I have to admit I've been relying on experienced editors who _are_ willing to spend the time here to defend the policies.) You cannot establish a consensus for substantive change in a policy based a score of editors participating. -- Donald Albury 21:03, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I really can't agree with the idea of anybody claiming that the "silent majority" is on their side, or a double standard where (only) what the other side wants always needs the huge and overwhelming consensus. On the flip side, change for the sake of change is not good, and so some hysteresis is needed. I don't consider that one word (threshold) to be in the top 5 of things that need changing, but nor do I agree with the process I see at work here to stomp out ideas for evolution of the policy, or to implying that those who promote them are mis-behaving. North8000 (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

*I'm not suggesting "taking the policy in a new direction", SV. I'm suggesting that we clarify the word "threshold", which is so, ahem, "flexible" as to be hard for some editors to understand. I've noticed that there are editors active on this page who're quite happy to accept a talk-page consensus for a change they like (such as adding the word "threshold"), but want to insist on a full RFC for a change they dislike (such as clarifying the word "threshold" or substituting it with an alternative).

That won't wash, I'm afraid. If we can change "criterion" to "threshold" on the basis of a talk page consensus, then we can change "threshold" to some alternative word that expresses the same meaning more clearly, on the basis of a talk page consensus. Everyone with me so far?—S Marshall T/C 21:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Even though its not in my top 5, I'm with you. The process here needs a tweak. North8000 (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

S Marshall, as you know, no one has recently added the word "threshold"; it has been there for six years. It doesn't help to misrepresent what's being said, and to ignore the voices opposed to changing it. The problem is that you don't seem to realize how these changes you propose could have significant knock-on effects. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:27, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

(added later) I think that S Marshall was being indirect. They were pointing to promoting a double standard...putting it in based just on a basic talk page consensus, and saying that taking it out should require a huge wide-ranging consensus.North8000 (talk) 17:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• I really don't think it was me who was misrepresenting anything. My position was in favour of a change to the word "threshold", and this was described, above, as "taking the policy in a new direction". I feel that it is others who misrepresent, others who seek to ignore the voice of change, and others who don't realise the effects of the status quo. In fact, I feel your whole statement applies to you and not to me.—S Marshall T/C 08:16, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

You wrote: "I've noticed that there are editors active on this page who're quite happy to accept a talk-page consensus for a change they like (such as adding the word "threshold") ..." But that did not happen. The word "threshold" has been there since 2005. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:13, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Please note that I have made no claims about a "silent majority" or what it might support. I also did not intend to say anything disparaging about those who spend a lot of time on policy talk pages (and specifically stated that I have depended on such editors to defend policies so I didn't have to spend time doing so). I do feel, however, that changes to policy need a clear consensus, which certainly has not manifested itself here, and that 20 or so editors are not a representative sample of the wider community on policy issues. -- Donald Albury 09:57, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

The term threshold appears to have come in somewhere around this August 2005 edit. Then, it was well down in the body of the project page, and it took a while to work its way up to its present prominence. I don't know when I first encountered the initial paragraph in more or less its present form, but I do remember that it struck me as being brilliant.

I have seen numerous occasions, though, of editors having a difficult time getting their minds around the concept. I think that part of the problem may be that the policy page doesn't explain the "not truth" aspect of this very completely. That is understandable, given that this is the policy on "verifiability" (not the policy on "not truth"), but a bit of clarification about "not truth" might be helpful.

How about adding a footnote — something to the effect, "Strong belief in the truthfulness of an assertion is not sufficient to justify its inclusion in a Wikipedia article. All assertions must be verifiable, and all direct quotes or assertions likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. In cases where reliable sources disagree, due weight considerations apply." (someone can likely improve the wording there). Such a clarifying footnote might be Ref'd at the end of the lead paragraph. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 12:41, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: I know it's been at least three or so years since the last change from "criterion" to "threshold" but WP:CCC? :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 04:33, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

It was never "criterion" that I recall, at least not for any length of time. The "threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth" was added in 2005. Before that it was discussed on various subpages, and since then has been upheld many times, and is widely used. There would have to be strong and wide consensus to change it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 04:50, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, maybe it's time for a change for the better. :| TelCoNaSpVe :| 04:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem with a "change for the better"... if there is a clear consensus that the change actually is for the better. I don't see any indication of that consensus. Blueboar (talk) 14:03, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

• Please could someone provide links to this "strong and wide consensus" in favour of the word "threshold".—S Marshall T/C 21:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Just refreshing Slim's memory --- see this edit, restoring criterion language removed here after being restored here from removal here, etc. I haven't grubbed around much back there, but it seems clear that criterion language was used in place of threshold language for a while back then. Personally, I'd be happy with either, if the initial paragraph retained verifiability, not truth and presented that message with punch.

It occurs to me, though, that e.g. "One criterion" might be better than "The criterion". If that is used, it seems to me that the "not truth" part of the message, though important, would need to move to a second paragraph; perhaps something like:

Verifiability—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source—is an essential criterion for inclusion in Wikipedia. Truth is only an inclusion criterion insofar as it is verifiable that a reliable source has asserted the truthfulness of the material. The question of whether Wikipedia editors believe the material to be true or false does not enter into Wikipedia inclusion criteria—belief that the material is true does not justify inclusion; belief that the material is false does not justify exclusion.

Someone can surely improve on that, perhaps working the truth part smoothly back into the lead paragraph. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:09, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:THRESHOLD

The threshold page redirects to this page. I think that the threshold page should contain a discussion about the threshold issue giving guidelines for editors. Verifiability should be mentioned, but there may be other factors to consider besides verifiability. Count Iblis (talk) 00:32, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Suggest you draft something in your user space, to show people what you have in mind. Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Or you could start an essay at WP:The threshold for inclusion. (Myself, I'd be inclined to expand WP:Verifiability, not truth, and perhaps move the page to the whole sentence.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll write up something when I get the time to do that :). Count Iblis (talk) 16:20, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Discussion on first sentence in policy - let's sort this out

The complexity of mixing everything into one discussion is really not sorting this out. How 'bout this process:

Step 1 Hammer out the proposed change that has the widest acceptance. Scope = the first sentence, or whatever it would possibly change to. If this is complex, get it down to a final two (not >=3) and vote between them.

Step 2 Cast a wide net and have people weigh in on on whether or not to make the the proposed change.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 10:22, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I think Proposal_43 is the best wording I've seen so far. I'll go with that one. Casliber (talk · contribs) 13:00, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I propose the following, or evolving from it: (leaving the ambiguous word in for now):

replace the entire first (one sentence) paragraph with:

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability."

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:35, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Now add a footnote with the old text, because there are some policies and/or guidelines that refer to the old text.

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. No other consideration, such as assertions of truth, is a substitute for verifiability.<ref>For continuity, the previous version of this sentence read, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is '''verifiability, not truth'''—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been [[WP:SOURCES|published by a reliable source]], not whether editors think it is true.</ref>

Unscintillating (talk) 01:46, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

mathematical definition

Does the WK guideline on verifiability apply to mathematical definitions and descriptions?

The opening sentence in Determinant, given without citation, is completely different from the definitions, consistent with each other, that are given in every one of the about ten encyclopedic works that deal entirely with mathematics or which have extensive coverage of mathematical topics in the public libraries and the main and departmental libraries of a major university close to my home that I have consulted, in the first 20 links from a Google search on "Determinant" except WK, in online textbooks that are current, in online course material, and throughout the literature of natural sciences.

The protagonists of the present opening sentence in the WK article claim it gives deeper insight than the traditional approach (started in the late 18th century). Is there need for a reference (with an accurate quotation) to an accessible work that DEFINES or introduces determinants informally in this way? The fact that a property can be DERIVED from a definition does not make the property a definition.

Also, does NPOV apply to mathematical definitions? A Google search on Determinant now suggests that the rest of the world and WK are out of step with each other as regards its definition. Is the mission of WK to put the world right, in the view of some WK editors, without verification that they their authority transcends that of the mathematicians and scientists who are part of the world that is out of step with WK in this respect?

Michael P. Barnett (talk) 13:11, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The opening sentence of Determinant ("In algebra, the determinant is a characteristic number associated with a square matrix.") is clearly not a definition in the mathematical sense of the word. It just tries to give the reader a good idea of what it is about. This is part of our efforts to make our articles comprehensible to random readers. Sometimes we overdo it, but usually we get complaints that we are not doing enough in this direction. I think WT:WPM is a better location for this discussion. Hans Adler 13:21, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

What is the standard text book definition? I think the key here is whether our opening sentence is significantly different from most standard published works... if it is, there may be a case for saying our opening sentence is essentially Original research. Blueboar (talk) 13:28, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The contrast between the comments just posted by Editors whose self-descriptions are as mathematician and historian, respectively, are significant. I think that aspects of WK issues that can be understood by non-specialists SHOULD be discussed outside the specialist project. I will prepare a response to Blueboar's comment that will contain LITERAL QUOTATIONS from enough encyclopedic sources for someone who not only knows no mathematics but does not even speak English will see a commonality that is disjoint from the opening sentence in the Determinant lede. Two immediate questions about Hans Adler's comment. (1) Even if the opening sentence of a lede is not a definition, does it require verifiability by a citation in the lede or associated with a repetition or paraphrase in the body of the article? (2) (this is something a non-mathematician can check) What proportion of random readers will realize that the word "volume" in the opening paragraph is used here in the technical sense that includes areas and abstractions in multi-dimensional space, but that the word pair "characteristic number", which looks technical, and might lead a reader to search for a definition, get completely put off by encountering cohomology theory, without realizing that the word pair is being used in a non-technical sense (but with what interpretation of "characteristic")? Michael P. Barnett (talk) 13:46, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

I think the real problem here is that Wikipedia does not cover math and many other scientific topics like most encyclopedias do. Many articles are written to explain things to non-specialists and then you have to present material that can be found in textbooks to lay persons. But that requires adapting that material, because such textbooks are typically written for university students. You then can have many statements that are understandable, but non-verifiable to lay persons. The alternative would be to have a verifiable text that they cannot understand. Count Iblis (talk) 16:19, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

1. Does the preceding comment exempt WK articles on science and mathematics from the need for verifiability? Does it imply that intelligibility to a non-expert precludes verifiability? If so, a clear statement of this waiver and its reason in the guidelines would have warned me off WK (and would save other potential authors who think otherwise from getting involved)

2. Every major bookstore and library houses sections on "popular" books on science and mathematics, that are written for non-specialists and balance clarity and unnecessary technicality with accuracy. Their content can be verified easily with texts written for specialists. I would be extremely suspicious of "popular" books that could not.

3. In particular, articles on all topics in the Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) are written for non-specialists. The opening of the EB article on determinants mentions numbers, multiplication and addition but does not mention any ideas that are more advanced. The opening of the WK article requires awareness of multidimensional space and measure theory, linking to a separate article that goes beyond the mathematical content of math-for-scientist texts with which I am familiar. Does this accord with principle of intelligibility to non-specialist, and support the rationalization of non-verifiability in this instance? Michael P. Barnett (talk) 19:26, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

My answer appears unwikipedian if taken at the granular policy level but not at the big picture level. Are you saying that the opening sentence is FALSE, or, if not, is this just primarily wikilawyering in some kind of a tussle ? IMHO Hans's take is probably correct. This is just a sentence to get the reader started which does not purport to be a rigorous definition. My advice: If, being honest with yourself, you do not contest the accuracy of that sentence, then drop the tussle and move on. If you sincerely think that the opening statement is incorrect, then demand a cite which supports it. North8000 (talk) 20:57, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

The opening sentence (at present) is "In algebra, the determinant is a characteristic number associated with a square matrix." I consider the description of a determinant as a "characteristic number" in (language that is used in) algebra to be incorrect, because "characteristic number" has a technical meaning that does not apply. I think ANY editor can express a concern of this nature and, for the case in hand, request a citation to an accessible source that contains this description.

My credentials or lack thereof with regard to the teaching of mathematical literacy, and whether I am correct or incorrect are irrelevant in the WK context. Either there is a WK guideline on verifiability that applies or there is not. In contributing to WK over the past few months I have been at the receiving end of wiki-lawyering that at times I considered counter productive and thought I would never engage in.

I am not engaged in a tussle which I am trying to win. I am trying to determine if it is possible, by reasoned argument or, as a last resort by wiki-lawyering, to bring the WK article into step with the rest of the world. My expectation is that this is impossible. But the more extensive and varied the resistance, the more food this will provide for thought.

I am trying to be responsive to an article in the Guardian Weekly a fortnight ago, that stated the WK Foundation is concerned that so few academics contribute, in particular within their own field of expertize. I have asked for a citation, and my request has been ignored. I have asked for citations regarding a sentence in the article on measure theory that determinants links to, which states that an accepted term is a misnomer, without giving references to who uses the accepted term and who said it is a misnomer. I have turned to the verifiability talk page to find out how to get the citations, or if this is impossible. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 23:36, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that explanation. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:18, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

The way the lead is written is often the result of compromize between editors and the result is often not so good. If I had written the determinant article,I would have given a similar presentation as in my old lecture notes. I.e. a determinant is an anti-symmetric multilinear function of vectors such that .... Then you say that the determinant of a matrix is the previously defined determinant function applied to the column vectors considered as vectors. Count Iblis (talk) 23:58, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

A few thoughts ... The sentence in question is part of the opening paragraph, or lede... and standard practice in Wikipedia is to not cite material in the lede ... this is because we are supposed to expanded upon what we say in the lede in subsequent sections of the article, and we would provide the citation to support the material at that point.

In a general encyclopedia, an article on a specialized topic or term should state an accurate but simplified "definition" in the lede, using language that the average reader will understand. This is so the average non-specialist reader (in this case an intelligent non-mathematician) to be able to look at the article and say "Ah... so that is what the term means." At the same time we want the average specialist (in this case a mathematician) to look at the article and say: "Yes, the definition they give in the lede is essentially correct (if simplistic)... ah, I see we go into more detail and provide sources later. Well done".

So, the questions we need to look at now are... 1) is the definition given in the lede of the Determinant article essentially correct ... and is that "good enough for the lede" definition expanded on later in the article (and properly cited at that point)? If so, I think it can stand. If not, then we need to fix the article. Blueboar (talk) 00:23, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I agree with them. I am responding as a courtesy, without hope of getting the problem remedied. Whether the opening paragraph of Determinants comprises a definition, implicit in your comment, or an explanation, implicit in other comments above, is immaterial to the questions of (1) is it wrong, (2) does understanding it require mathematical knowledge outside the experience of a reader who does not have at least undergraduate mathematical training, in contrast to the explanation at the start of the Encyclopedia Britannica article which is expressed in terms of addition, multiplication and numbers. I think the answers to both are YES. Throwing the verifibiality to the body of the article does not work, because the nuance of what I consider the most serious error in the lede is not repeated in the body. Deferring changes that I think needed in the lede until the article has been revised does not help because rewriting can be protracted indefinitely. I think that the absence of a mechanism for requesting verifiability of a lede is very dangerous. I do not know if there are channels within WK for pursuing this concern. If there are none, that too is dangerous. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 00:42, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Michael, the lead requires citations too, especially if someone requests them. That is, there's no exception for leads. See WP:LEADCITE for more details. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 00:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)