Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

Long-term sourcing/removal policy

I find a contradiction between different aspects of policy, and between policy and the real world:

WP:PRESERVE says not to remove material unless it's more than merely unsourced. WP:V says "Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed... You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it. How quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references."

Have any of you read this or similar article?

Wikipedia has many, many articles filled with unsourced material, which are almost certain to never be sourced. The community needs to decide what's more important: having a lot of unreliable content, or letting people remove unsourced material which has been appropriately tagged for a (long) period of time.

I'm of the opinion that if material has been tagged as unsourced for a long time (say a year) it should be removed, and that the Encyclopedia is too large to require the editor who removes material to try to source it (per WP:BURDEN). But I was recently informed that such removal is a major issue for some people. Can you help with this, and can we clarify policy on it so I and others like me will know where Wikipedia as a whole stands? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 23:59, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we would deal with such issues on a case by case manner. We're all volunteers so dictating actions can be problematic. Can you point us to the problematic discussion? We may be able to make some concrete suggestions. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:03, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I'm a bit embarrassed really... see, I had been just editing according to the principle above: if it was tagged for a year or more, I removed it. I did that on a whole bunch of articles, and was reverted maybe once last time I looked. But when someone thought I was an admin I said I wished I was, and later they said they wouldn't vote for me because I'd been deleting that text. See my edit history. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, this isn't really the forum for this kind of discussion, but I don't see much wrong with deleting unsourced material, esp. if an article or section has been tagged for a year or more. But I would say that if you balance the deletions with efforts to find sources and improve articles, too, that's better for the project in the long run. I wouldn't worry about becoming an admin, just focus on being a good editor. Just my two cents, worth less every day. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:26, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks (; You're right it would be better to source things given time. I'd really like to know if policy can be made clear on this, so is there another place I should post this? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:40, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, that part of the policy means only that we should ask for sources, ideally help to find them ourselves, and wait a decent period before removing unsourced material (not counting BLP and other pressing issues). But I would say a week or few days, definitely not a year. That's assuming it's something that really needs a source. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 07:43, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi SV, OMG, the opinions are really all over the place on this issue. Any suggestions for how to go about consensus building for policy change? But I'm not sure what you mean by "really needs a source." For example, does a history section on an article about a high school need a source? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 13:42, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

A lot depends on what you mean by "need a source". all information in Wikipedia must be verifiable... but not all information needs to be actually verified ... in other words, a source has to exist, but the article does not necessarily need to contain a citation to that source. That depends on the specifics of what is said in the article and whether the material is "challenged or likely to be challenged".

In other words... we allow removal of unsourced information, but we don't require it. Whether to remove or not depends on the specifics of the article, and the nature of the information in question. Blueboar (talk) 15:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

If you have a bunch of facts stated, and those facts are not common knowledge that any reader will have, doesn't it require a citation? I know you don't have to cite that the sky is blue. I see a problem with the following text: "To show that it is not original research, all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source," because without a citation, how do you know it's "attributable?" I have been interpreting that to mean "To show that it is not original research, all material added to articles which is not common knowledge must be attributed to a reliable, published source or it may eventually be removed." B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 17:01, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I think it's largely a matter of personal judgement, to be applied in good faith and a good dose of common sense. Vast quantities of very useful (and perfectly sourceable) information has been sitting around uncited in Wikipedia for a very long time - by removing that type of information, you'd be making the encyclopedia worse, not better. But if it's not cited because it's wrong (or even if it is cited and it's wrong, which is also very possible) then by removing it you're doing a service. The more you know of the matter, and the more you've made the effort to look for sources yourself, the more capable you're likely to be of judging whether it's case A or case B (though often anyone with common sense will have a pretty good idea).--Kotniski (talk) 17:14, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Okay, that's good common sense. I went and looked at one of the articles whose unsourced text I removed. What I see there is that the information is outdated, might have been original research or copyvio to begin with (see the very first edit), and includes so many facts that full sourcing would be a pain. On the other hand, it's fairly detailed information. It might be of use to someone... if it's accurate. I also notice that if it wasn't original research to begin with, it would have been extremely easy to cite (as in one cite per section). What do you guys think of it?

Kotniski, what about the good-faith argument that non-subject-matter-experts need to be able to determine the reliability of Wikipedia material, and that the lack of such citation is a basic problem that needs to be dealt with, so that WP can become a reliable encyclopedia, and not just another site? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 18:47, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Just an aside regarding your example article Salmon High School: The source of the verifiability problems was lack of notability and I added a template. Bob K31416 (talk) 19:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

OMG, well in that case there are just hundreds and hundreds [1]. I've always had a problem with NOTABILITY, in that it sets the standard way too low: so low that a subject that meets the criteria doesn't have enough sources for a well-rounded article. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 20:29, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, OMG. I wonder how many of the high schools in that list are not notable. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 21:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry Kotniski, but "even if it is cited and it's wrong" is exactly what wp:NOTTRUTH is about. Unless we have reliable sources to show that the cited one is wrong, simple removal is purest wp:OR. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:06, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't think he was questioning NOTTRUTH, just saying that text has to be in accord with citations. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 19:19, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I had in mind the case where a citation was given but didn't support the text; but there are many other reasons for removing text besides that one: not relevant; undue weight; source not sufficiently reliable - and yes, source got it wrong (though in the last case it might be necessary to contrive some other reason, if confronted with some wikilawyering goon who thinks we have to include information in Wikipedia even if we know it's wrong).--Kotniski (talk) 10:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Most frequently, one need contrive not "some other reason", but "a better source". The way we know that (for example) "most women die from breast cancer" is wrong is because we can easily provide dozens of high-quality sources that say only 5% of women die from breast cancer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:29, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

And as a further response to Kotniski, those of us who hang around and edit a lot of different articles are the ones responsible for the overall health of the information on WP. We can't be responsible for citing information that might or might not be reliable. That's the responsibility of the person who added the text. Why is it that we wouldn't remove information after at time simply because it hasn't passed the basic criteria for inclusion, which I would say is proof that it is not original research? In other words, it seems to me that it's an impossible task to try and source the contributions of others, because of the volume of text to be sourced and the fact that there are fewer and fewer editors. Isn't that why we have WP:BURDEN? Perhaps we need to slightly strengthen BURDEN:

"You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it. How quickly this should happen depends on the material and the overall state of the article. Editors might object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references. It has always been good practice to try to find and cite supporting sources yourself, but it is better to remove text which is uncited than to let it remain indefinitely." B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 21:09, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think it's reasonable to expect an editor to go searching for sources for someone else's text - I commend anyone who does. The other options mentioned above are good: 1) tag unsourced material (if questionable); 2) wait a reasonable amount of time (1 year?) for the original editor to provide a source; 3) revise (if possible) or remove the tagged text. Sometimes, because the text was interesting even though unsourced, I've moved it to the talk page with an explanatory note. I strongly disapprove of any removal of properly sourced text, even if it's "wrong". WCCasey (talk) 21:38, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

One thing to remember is that WIkipedia in the past was not as strict about sourcing as it is now, and in-line citations were even unusual. Many good articles written in those years do not meet today's sourcing standards. Gutting such articles on that basis is not to the general benefit of Wikipedia. The correct approach is to fix them, bring them to the attention of some project, tag them, or leave them alone for someone else to do one of those things. Zero^talk 09:45, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, some of the above comments about "responsibility" rather miss the point. This is a cooperative project where we're all trying to make the "encyclopedia" better. You can in practice do pretty much anything you like around here until someone objects, but I think humanity would be grateful if people's edits were directed towards improving that encyclopedia, not enforcing some half-baked rules. The fact that no citation has been given for something for a very long time is not in itself conclusive evidence that it is not good (i.e. potentially sourceable) information. It's quite destructive to the encyclopedia just to remove information at random due to the lack of citations - you ought also to have some reason to expect, based on your own knowledge, research, common sense or something, that it really is wrong or unsourceable. Particularly since once information's gone, it's gone - whereas if it's left (say with a citation-needed tag) it remains visible to other editors who might know what ought to be done with it.--Kotniski (talk) 10:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I essetially agree with Zero0000 and Kotniski. There is no point in deleting unsourced content just because it is unsourced alone, as this is not is spirit of an collaborative project and it leads to a waste of good content and work of others. If you come across content that it is unsourced but looks ok otherwise, you should simply tag it. But if there are is an additional reason such as the content looks fishy, content contradicts your context knowledge, you have reason to distrust the author, the content is controversial, etc. then should delete it, but only then.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:46, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we are all saying the same thing... Sometimes it is best to remove unsourced information, and sometimes it isn't. We each draw the line between when we remove and when we retain in slightly different places. That's OK too... The line between Removal vs Retention really is a matter of editorial judgment, based on the specific situation in a specific article. I don't think we can (or should) try to draw that line as a matter of policy. Blueboar (talk) 12:12, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

That's fine with me and I agree that doesn't need to be codified in the policy. However the policy should make clear that formalistic (mindless) removal of unsourced content is not wanted nor any crusades in that manner.--Kmhkmh (talk) 12:32, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I think we make it clear enough. And remember, going through a bunch of articles and assessing whether to remove material that has sat unsourced for a long time is not necessarily "mindless"... or a "crusade". I go into "clean up" mode from time to time... going to random articles and seeing if there are problems. As long as each individual removal/retention decision is made on a case by case basis (remaining open to the idea that sometimes it is best to leave the material in the article with the tag, and asking whether it would be better to remove or retain this specific material in this specific article), doing such "clean up" sweeps isn't wrong. Blueboar (talk) 12:51, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I was talking about going through articles and systematically removing any unsourced content on the sole reason that it is unsourced and not about any systematic (fesired) cleanup. The discussion here is relatively clear, but it also shows that we have editors misreading the policy in the sense that is described above.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, as I have observed before, this policy (and many others) seem to be written so as to be almost deliberately unclear. (And SOFIXIT doesn't apply, since there's a group of editors here who have no intention of allowing anyone to FIXIT.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:23, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

And yet how is the policy as you-all describe it to be reconciled with the oft-spoken-of goal of being reliable? What I'm getting from the above could be summarized as "remove only what you have reason to doubt." In such a system, it's guaranteed that vast amounts of original research of dubious reliability will remain (and could be vandalized by anyone smart enough to insert false info in a convincing way, thus raising BLP issues). It seems to me like WP is basically conflicted between the need to retain useful information and the need for reliability. But I'm not really convinced that removing only overtly suspicious material is an adequate compromise (and sourcing it one's self isn't practical).

I also think that there is a possible technical solution: have a  Removed template or marker of some sort. Then one of two things happens: 1) When an editor tries to edit the page, they are presented with a message saying that large amounts of text were removed for [reason], and they might want to review that before editing, or 2) The template simply says that text has been removed for [reason] and gives a link to the page prior to when the template first appeared.

When I get time I think I'll canvass around a little bit. This is a long-term kind of thing, and brought to a head, for me, because of statistics which say our editorship is at best probably not going to expand. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 14:55, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

If people ask themselves whether the material is likely to face a reasonable challenge, it's usually clear whether something needs a source, and how long to wait for it. The problem with trying to generalize is that everything will depend on the particular case. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 15:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, but that way of doing things overall means that WP has vast amounts of unreliable information. So it's a choice: do you prune the branches which have fruit on them to make the tree strong, or leave the fruit and have a tree that is less sturdy overall. WP is set up on the principle that information is guilty until proven innocent, but doesn't seem to follow through on that. It places the burden on the person who wants to remove text, and what I'm saying is: that might have been a bearable burden in the past, but it's not any more. To improve, WP needs to prune as well as refine and expand. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 16:36, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Most of the time, as a reader, I'd rather see something than nothing, so long as it's not harmful or very silly. As editors we might cringe, but as readers we might be grateful for it. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 16:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Well as far as the pruning analogy goes, "mindless" pruning is not yielding a healthier tree or a better harvest, it just kills the tree.--Kmhkmh (talk) 16:49, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you need to set the bar at "information we doubt"... I may not have any reason to doubt the unsourced information, and still remove it... if I think the information constitutes Original Research. Of course that isn't "mindless" either. Blueboar (talk) 20:11, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

well you can formulate it in a positive manner, one should not delete unsourced content one assumes to be correct.--Kmhkmh (talk) 21:37, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Isn't "assuming information to be correct" exactly what we're not supposed to be doing? And how can anyone know what is original research minus a source? You can't tell from the level of detail. Why do we have to have a positive opinion that something is OR, why not just insufficient reason to think it isn't? And given that each editor is informed of our sourcing policy, can't we pretty much assume that anything which is blatantly lacking in sources is OR? As far as SlimVirgin saying she likes something rather than nothing, of course that's true, but is it encyclopedic? Isn't all this "benefit of the doubt" stuff actually, when it comes right down to it, basing Wikipedia content on what we like or agree with? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 23:56, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

You write as if policy requires everything to be sourced, but that is not and has never been the policy. It only requires sources for content "challenged or likely to be challenged" (emphasis in the original). So, no, you don't have policy support for assuming anything unsourced is OR. Zero^talk 00:22, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Common knowledge doesn't need to be sourced, and I'm only talking about removal of material which has been challenged by way of a request for sources. Material which is not common knowledge does need to be sourced: "a source must exist even for material that is never challenged." Posted a question/request on Jimbo's talk page [2]. It seems like people here are putting the burden on the person who wants to remove text, whereas the overall gist of policy is that it's the person wanting to include text who has the burden to prove that it should remain. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:33, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

It says "must exist", not "must be given". I believe that is deliberate, otherwise it obsoletes the first part of the sentence. My main concern is that the hard work of editors who wrote articles years ago when there was no culture of sourcing everything should be accorded some respect. The culture has changed now, but we should update those articles in preference to gutting them. Only material unlikely to survive a sourcing attempt should be automatically deleted. Zero^talk 00:42, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes that's a valid concern, however, I'm not aware that the culture has changed for at least 5 years, and I'm not talking about older material- my example was started in 2008 [3]. This is from an essay, but I think its statement is worth quoting here: "Responses must be forthcoming: Editors who wish to respond to the challenge [such as a tag] should do so in a timely manner. If no response is forthcoming, the challenger may tag or remove the statement in question... the challenger should await a timely response prior to removing material.[4]" And WP:OR says "The only way you can show your edit is not original research is to cite a reliable published source that contains the same material." [5] Again, I'm only talking about material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 01:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Another break

I have noticed that you are now stating that you are "only talking about material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time"; however, your proposal is still that "You may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it." Which view do you really take, because there is a big difference. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

There is also something to be said regarding the reliability as a motivation for "direct sourcing". There is big danger here confuse one tool (direct sourcing/footnotes) with the goal (reliability). Having a lot of of footnotes doesn't make an article more reliable per se. For that we would need reliable editors to check/confirm the sources themselves, i.e. actually reading the the sources rather than just checking whether a source is given. And top of that we need a revision control (flagged versions) to manage which article versions have been proof read.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I sometimes wonder if it would help to expand this policy and indicate its relationship to PRESERVE with a statement like:

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:41, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

It's a good suggestion. We would also have to change all the templates, and other parts of policy which say "unsourced text may be removed." And also WP:BURDEN etc. WP should not be saying two things at once. Some editors think that policy is actually saying only one thing, but the discussion at Jimbo's page, where Jimbo and others agreed with me that unsourced text should eventually be removed shows that there is genuine difference of opinion on this. This difference shows in the slightly ambiguous policy, even though there is more support for removal than for perpetual preservance. So, I think it's a bad idea, but I support you trying to have it changed, as that might be a consensus-building and clarifying exercise. What I'm totally against is putting text like that in without making the other changes I mentioned. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 19:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Response to Ryan Vesey: sorry I didn't see your post above. My position is one should only remove material which has been tagged or otherwise challenged for a good long time, unless one knows it to be inappropriate. So, one may remove any material lacking a reliable source that directly supports it after it has been challenged for a long time. How long varies with the judgment of the editor: I was using a year, Jimbo would use 6 months. What changed was that I had to make clear that I wasn't advocating just removing material before it had been challenged. If you go over my edit history you'll see it in action. Kmhkmh, you're right sourcing is only a step in the right direction, and I would say it's a minimum requirement to keep text. But as you say, reliability requires checking/reading sources, and that supports my position: we can't expect anyone but the original author to thoroughly go over the sources. If the original author didn't even bother to name a source, we should be able to assume the text is original research or otherwise flawed enough to remove. We can't be obligated to read/view the sources ourselves (on say an article on a local high school or Barbie character), it's too much of a burden. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 01:32, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Well from my perspective this is simply not how WP (currently) works and probably not even how it should work in the future. Several points here:

• Why should we remove any correct material at all just because it is unsourced? From my perspective that is just a waste of resources.
• The notion that we can only expect the original author to go thoroughly over the sources (and maybe the correctness of the content as such) is imho exactly the opposite of reliability. It is exactly how we cannot work in an open system such as WP. The reliability of articles rests on being proofread by others (the community) over time.
• I can't really see why it would be too much of burden to check sources. Of course since all work here is voluntary nobody is obligated to do that. However I see no reason why we should have less expectation of those who voluntary perform quality control than of those who contribute content. In other words if somebody is seriously reviewing articles then yes we should expect them to check sources or at least corroborate the correctness of the content by alternative sources. If quality control doesn't do this (admittingly cumbersome) job then it essentially reduced to window dressing (spell checking, layout, "formal sourcing"). But frankly in my eyes that's no encyclopedic quality control at all, from the encyclopedic perspective the primary quality control needs to be the correctness of content and citations.
• As far as "if original author didn't even bother to name a source" is concerned I essentially agree but with a caveat. Yes, if an author is unwilling to provide sources, we should delete his contribution. However there's a time window here that matters. As this approach only works if you catch such an author in time (not too long after his contribution and when he is still active in WP). Because only then you can really determine whether he is unwilling to provide sources or not. But that doesn't really work if you catch him late and he is not active anymore, then there is no way of telling ,whether he was actually unwilling to provide sources or whether he was simply not aware of our guidelines. This applies in particular to our legacy material but also to new contribution which have been caught late. Most authors contribute before reading all our guidelines or they might not even read them all. In such cases we should simply judge the content, if it is correct and good material we keep it, tag it and source it over time and if it isn't then we delete it. And yes we can and should approach this rather conservatively, i.e. in doubt always delete it, but there is no reason for are "mindless" automatic deletion independent the correctness and quality of the content in question.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:36, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I hear you. Ideally, that is how we would deal with everything. So how would we balance those concerns against the goal of becoming a real encyclopedia which is reliable, while acknowledging that most of the the peripheral articles are never going to be improved from the state they're in now? Are they better than nothing? That's a judgment call and I don't think so. They often just aren't content that really belongs in an encyclopedia (but there's currently no way to get them deleted). They should ideally be reduced to redirects, as Ryan says in his essay. My whole thing is future-oriented: how to deal with content long-term when there are few new editors and the old ones aren't going to be sourcing the peripheral articles.

• "Why should we remove any correct material at all just because it is unsourced? From my perspective that is just a waste of resources." Because we value reliability over simply having content. If it's not common knowledge, we should either source it or remove it. If we don't have time to source it, remove it (but let future editors know where to find it: that's very important).
• "The notion that we can only expect the original author to go thoroughly over the sources (and maybe the correctness of the content as such) is imho exactly the opposite of reliability. It is exactly how we cannot work in an open system such as WP." But in articles like some local high school or a Barbie character, that's all we're going to get... we have to be real about our resources.
• "I can't really see why it would be too much of burden to check sources..." It's not on the more important articles.
• "However there's a time window here that matters..." Yes that's a problem. In the current state of the encyclopedia, though, we have to choose between unsourced text forever and deleting it. From now on, we should have a bot that automatically gives new users a heads-up on how to source and edit. Such a bot already exists and is used on other wikis. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 22:55, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Becritical, do you understand the difference between "may" and "should"? You may go out on the sidewalk and scream if your Internet connection fails, but you should not irritate your neighbors this way. Similarly, you may remove unsourced material, but you should not remove material that you know or believe to be accurate, sourceable, and appropriate.

Imagine, for example, that I edit Common cold to say that "Very few people die from the common cold each year". For whatever reason—perhaps I think it too obvious to bother, or perhaps I'm new and haven't figured out how to cite a source, or perhaps I've run out of time, or perhaps the source I have in mind is at my desk and I can't remember the title of the source—I do not follow that material with a citation.

Would Wikipedia actually be improved by removing this sentence? You may remove it, but should you? Does your rule about deleting apparently good, but currently unsourced, material really help you improve Wikipedia? Or does it only allow you to enforce your "right" to remove perfectly good information, regardless of the consequences for the overall project?

Does it really matter if that kind of sentence, whose accuracy should be obvious to anyone over the age of seven, remains unsourced for more than a year? For more than ten years? Forever?

I suspect that Jimbo would leave such a sentence in the article, just like he'd leave the unsourced sentence about how many fingers are normally found on the human hand (which, yes, was tagged as "citation needed" several years ago). Jimbo uses good judgment in articles. He does not mindlessly remove perfectly good information merely because some arbitrary date has passed.

There is no contradiction between these policies and my proposal. One tells you what you are permitted to do. The other tells you what you should do, if you want to be a good editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

As a general answer, most of the responses I've been getting don't take into account the basic factors that we're losing or not gaining editors; and that no one is ever going to improve most of these articles. No one has an answer for that, no one wants to address it.

"Does your rule about deleting apparently good, but currently unsourced, material really help you improve Wikipedia?" Oh, very much so: the only way to create a reliable encyclopedia is to prune out the cruft. I think this is a noble project, thus to me, "may" is "should." But it's interesting to me that you admit that I "may."

"whose accuracy should be obvious to anyone over the age of seven..." NO, absolutely not, it doesn't need a source and should be left in. I'm talking about stuff that's only obvious to an "expert" or someone familiar with the sources.

We're getting to the point in this discussion where it's too complex and I'm repeating stuff cause editors TLDR. The stuff I was taking out was about local affairs/conditions, and leaving it in means the encyclopedia is not just unsourced, it's out-dated. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 01:29, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

You seem to mainly look at the aspect of too many users contributing questionable (unsourced) content ("cutting the cruft", problematic content contributors). Whereas I'm mainly looking at the aspect of a bureaucratic (often mindless) quality control obsessed with formal aspects and window dressing rather than content or real content improvement ("removing correct content over formalistic arguments", problematic qualiy control). Both are real problems in WP and various methods to address them might be conflicting and the issue is to find an appropriate balance that works in practice.

Moreover I think we also have fundamentally different views and how WP works (and in which time frames), how and why it is used and how to achieve reliability or even what constitutes reliability. From my perspective your approach is simply not offering a (real) solution, it just deprives readers of correct but yet unsourced content. Which seen from my perspective is even a deterioration.

Where we agree however that we should attempt to catch (new) unsourced content contributions early and contact the authors immediately. A (smart) bots might be helpful here indeed. Any larger text contribution or new article without sources could trigger an automatic notification to the author.

--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Kmhkmh. WP:There is no deadline, not even for providing inline citations to apparently good information. Don't worry about the number of editors; now that so much vandalism fighting and other routine actions have been automated, we actually need fewer editors per article than we used to.

But what you're describing in your latest comment is not removing material solely because it has been unsourced for over a year, which is what my proposed addition addresses. You're talking now about removing unsourced content primarily because it is outdated or inappropriate to the article, which is a completely different issue.

When you are dealing with outdated or inappropriate information, WP:PRESERVE tells us to fix it if possible, and to remove it if not possible. People add stuff all the time that is impossible to fix: you should remove that, even if the unfixable stuff is provided with a source. If it seems like it probably could be fixed—just not by you—then you ought to leave it for someone who can fix it (or, if you're not sure, then move it to the talk page). If you can fix it, whether by asking your favorite web search engine if there are any easily located sources, then you should fix it yourself rather than removing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I would agree that your views were appropriate 5, or even 3 years ago. But as I say here, Wikipedia is no longer in that stage. At any rate, to support your views, you need to edit policy so that it is unequivocal, and editors like me can't come along and make a case for removing SOME (but not all) text which has been challenged for a long time, in the name of improving the general reliability of the encyclopedia. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 19:48, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

There are also other arguments, which are more general and which I don't bring up due to the need to back things up per policy. One is, as Jimbo I think pointed out, that the deletion process is broken because the bureaucratic process for getting non-notable articles deleted is too much to go through. As I said, Wikipedia is geared to fast expansion, but that era is over and we need to think about long-term maintenance, and whether we want to be reliable or out-dated and unreliable while preserving possibly useful content. There is also the problem of getting anyone to decide anything, for instance whether we can remove unsourced text or not. You two would say, basically, not for all intents and purposes given our manpower. The template writers and others have said yes, as do some parts of policy. This is obviously the result of a basic non-consensus among those who wrote the policies. BTW, there's a good list of reasons why we need to source, which is also a summary of why I think lack of sourcing is eventually enough reason to remove text [6]. Also as noted here, reliability of text is lower if not cited. I don't dispute that it's good practice to try to find and cite supporting sources, I just dispute that you have to and that this is a realistic goal for peripheral articles given the probable future of WP. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 22:09, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Nope: You have once again confused what you may do with what you must do. The editing policy tells you that good editors attempt find sources for (apparently good) material. The verifiability policy tells you that you are permitted to mindlessly destroy unsourced content. Unless the unsourced material represents contentious matter about living people, there are zero policies that require you to delete apparently good material.

And while we're on the point of what's permitted, your fellow editors are not only permitted to believe that anyone who mindlessly destroys good content solely because the content is not currently followed by an inline citation is a lazy, destructive editor, they are likely to do so.

The policies permit editors to use their judgment when they encounter unsourced material. The community hopes that your judgment is the good kind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:37, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Now it seems as if you are getting angry, but also not responding to what I really said. So, peace. We can stop this. I never said anything about destroying good content. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:29, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Interjection by another editor

This thread has become so hard to follow and there are many issues that need to be addressed so I am just going to do that in this section. First, there are some notability issues about high schools. While slightly disputed, it has been accepted that while all schools (elementary and middle schools) are not notable, all high schools are. To address some questions on removing unsourced information. I think this is a ridiculous idea. Information should not be removed for the sole reason that it is unsourced. Information should only be removed if there is a valid reason to challenge the information. If a citation needed tag has been added it has been challenged. The key assumption to take when viewing unsourced information is WP:AGF. Assume that all information that was added was added in good faith. Deleting this information hints at an assumption of bad faith. If there is reasonable belief that the information is false, or if it is an unverified statistic it can be deleted. It is also important to remember that the citation needed tag helps encourage editors to cite unverified information. Before removing the information, it is often useful to add the citation needed tag instead. Ryan Vesey Review me! 02:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I have commented on the notability of high schools at Talk:Salmon High School. Ryan Vesey Review me! 03:04, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I was fairly sure this was all covered by Wikipedia:Verifiability#Other_issues. Removing material without tagging first, leaving a reason=, or a talk page note should only be done under limited circumstances: obvious errors, such as "the Sun is a green gas giant"; vandalism; blp claims that may be libellous or otherwise defamatory; flammable material that might cause a volatile page to descend into chaos, "this country attacked first and committed genocides, the other country was simply defending itself when it invaded them back"; etc.

It seems that fewer and fewer people are reading MoS before starting on campaigns to "clean up Wiki" - I found one instance where an article was tagged with a citation needed and within two days the editor had removed both paragraphs, even though most of the material was fairly innocuous and easy to ref. A reasonable period of time is really related to the amount of editing the page receives - if the last edit was over a month ago and the last talk page post was three months ago, a reasonable period might well be six months. Page views need to be considered also, if such an article is getting 10 views a month it is less necessary to change it than if it is getting 1000 views a day. I also think that editors should try and source before even tagging with a cn, and least put a reason= into the template. Drive-by-tagging is becoming an issue and will only increase as Wiki approaches the point where less and less articles can be created and maintenance becomes the only way for new editors to measure their worth. In the old days it was possible to create a hundred articles in a month and do that for several months, nowadays new topics that are not already covered are much less frequent. Chaosdruid (talk) 04:55, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

it has been accepted that while all schools (elementary and middle schools) are not notable, all high schools are'. Perhaps it has been accepted, but that doesn't make it policy or a guideline--is there a policy or guideline supporting that notion. I think it is safe to say one can generally assume that most all high schools meet GNG, but if notability is challenged, sources would need to be produced to show that the school in question has some significant coverage in reliable sources. Failing that fails GNG, I think. --Nuujinn (talk) 10:47, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

That's true, but if someone challenges the info and no one is around to respond to it (for a myriad of reasons), that doesn't mean that that person can then redirect or try to delete the article without bothering to check for sources themselves. I personally feel that WP:BURDEN goes both ways. People should only be challenging something if they have proof that it is wrong, via a source, or can't find any sources for it after checking. If they're challenging something with no backing, then they should be thoroughly trouted. Silverseren^C 10:55, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Silverseren. Unsourced material is fair game for anyone to challenge - but it should still be up to someone to challenge it. They should have some iota of suspicion that the information is actually wrong, and not just take it out solely due to the lack of a recognizable inline citation.

This is also important because when people are free to take out unsourced information with no further examination, it's very likely that they're going to start taking out information with a citation in the next or previous paragraph... or the next or previous sentence... those old articles with a bibliography at the end are right out. The only way to ensure your information will stay in (at least for this one reason) will be to cite the end of every sentence, even if they're all from the same source. Wnt (talk) 14:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Notability is about article topics... Verifiability is about article content. While both are established by citing reliable sources, they are quite different concepts. Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Wnt, that's a very good objection. How do you differentiate between sourced and unsourced, when sources exist for some of the text (what I did was to remove entirely unsourced content)? I think that if there are sources given at the end of a section, it's usually incumbent on the person removing text to know that the source offered doesn't have the info. And I think that's a reasonably easy principle to put into policy. But, I don't think that one should have to have reason to believe information wrong before taking it out: that requires, for example, that before I took out any unsourced information on a local high school, I should basically live near or be a student there. Requiring that level of expertise isn't practical. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 20:40, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't say you need to have proof something is wrong; merely an "iota of suspicion". Maybe an unsourced section offers information you can't really picture having proof of, maybe it sounds like someone might have had a partisan perspective; maybe you found something else in the article that was wrong and now you're ticked; maybe the account that added it had a record of Wikitroubles; maybe you think it's wrong. But the point is, whatever reason you choose to challenge a fact, it is a reason. Siccing a bot on the task, or acting like a bot, goes beyond that, and that's a bad thing. Wnt (talk) 02:31, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

And why would anyone take out any information if they didn't think it was wrong? This gets more bizarre by the day. If there is a suspicion that the info is wrong, do aquick google search, no hits, mark it with a citation needed. Date it and give a reason-, come back in a fortnight or three weeks and if no-one has added anything, put a note on the talk page, find a frequent editor and inform them, come back in two weeks and move it to the talk page...really, removing things today just because there is not ref today is a bit extreme. Chaosdruid (talk) 21:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Re "And why would anyone take out any information if they didn't think it was wrong?" - I recall an experience where an editor did that because he said he was a "purist". Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 22:21, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That would be a nice way of doing things, but utterly impractical given the limited number of editors and the thousands of articles. We can't/won't be doing that, so we have to choose between a streamlined way of eliminating questioned/questionable information, and doing nothing. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 22:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, to me it sounds like either laziness or POV removal. Chaosdruid (talk) 23:02, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Sure it does. But engage the argument, and tell me this unreliable text is not going to be sitting there in 5 years, 10, 20... We have to decide between reliability and permanent unreliability. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 19:07, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Except that you're not talking about "unreliable text". You're talking about "uncited text". That's not the same. Text becomes unreliable only if no reliable source has ever published that information. It is not unreliable merely because no editor has (yet) bothered to type up the bibliographic citation for a published source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:58, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

To rely on something is all about the source: you can't rely on text when you don't know where it came from. What else would reliability be about? You would "rely" on anonymous editors? On one level reliability is about truth, but in an imperfect world reliability is all about the source used, and whether it is properly conveyed. But text is always unreliable if we don't know the source, because we can't rely upon it. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 05:45, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Sure I would. I'm perfectly willing to rely on the text written by some anonymous editor that says the human hand normally has four fingers and a thumb, even though that editor failed to provide an inline citation for that material.

On the other side, I'm entirely unwilling to rely on text that says homeopathy is an effective treatment for invasive cancer, no matter how many thousands of citations the editors supply. The presence of citations in the text is not what makes the material verifiable. What matters is the presence of citation in the real world. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Again as I just said above, you're not responding to what I actually said. The truly obvious doesn't need sourcing. The threshold for inclusion is verifiability, not truth: if there were RS cited per WEIGHT to say homeopathy works, that is what "reliability" means in WP. Further, there are millions of real-world "citations" vouching for the effectiveness of homeopathy, but one should rely on the RS for a better understanding of it. But let's drop this, if it's going to lead to bad feelings, else we might not work together well on other things in the future. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:35, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

"A lot of editorial guidelines… are impenetrable to new users." -- Jimbo Wales

"A lot of editorial guidelines… are impenetrable to new users." -- Jimbo Wales, (Aug 4, 2011) from the article Wikipedia Is Losing Contributors

Would anyone care to comment about how this quote relates to WP:Verifiability? Thank you. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 15:23, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Not? It's not an editorial guideline, but a fundamental policy, and the basics are pretty easy to grasp for most new users in my experience. Doesn't mean that it can't be improved of course. Fram (talk) 15:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Since Jimbo was speaking to the Associated Press, I think he used common language, rather than the specialized jargon of Wikipedia. So "editorial guidelines" meant policies and guidelines IMO. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 15:43, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Starting editing Wikipedia is jumping down the rabbit hole into whole new universe. An immense amount of this byzantine alternate universe needs learning. North8000 (talk) 15:48, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yep, rabbit hole. I can just picture the hooka-smoking caterpillar sitting on the giant mushroom saying to Alice, "verifiability, not truth!" Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 16:00, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

And I can hear our new theme song "White Rabbit"  :-) North8000 (talk) 17:00, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I mean, fundamental policy or not, it's quite badly written, if it's supposed to serve to explain anything. Like most Wikipedia policies, in fact. There are indeed things you need to learn when becoming a Wikipedian (and other things you might wish to learn as time goes on); but there's no reason why we should make it harder for people to learn those things by concealing the explanations under pseudo-legalistic constructions and unnecessary weird jargon.--Kotniski (talk) 19:25, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If the problem is having too many guidelines (said in plain language), then the way to fix it would be to reduce the number. Rather than using the same forking system we use for articles, we should aim to have long but few policies/guidelines, rather than many short ones. Many ones should be merged elsewhere or demoted to essays; but as a core concept this one should be one of the few that would grow Cambalachero (talk) 19:44, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To be honest, I wouldn't consider the core policies to be confusingly written, other than a few infamous phrases. Probably the worst problems with them for new comers are that, if taken literally, they are detached from the reality of how wikipedia actually works. That disparity also enables bullies and wikilawyers to easily beat up on newbies. One of the things that takes forever to learn is all of the compensating fuzziness (e.g. enforce and interpret by consensus) that has been put in place to make them work despite such issues. North8000 (talk) 19:49, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I take it more of a problem of today's "instant gratification" than the way the net was before the Endless September, where the mantra was "lurk and learn". WP's policies are easier to understand in practice than as written, and seeing how they are applied before making one's own edits go a long way. While we want to encourage editors to participate, we need to be clear that random nonsense is not the type of info we seek. --MASEM (t) 19:59, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Do we really want to encourage people to lurk before they start editing? If we do, we could give them advice on how to do that (which is far from obvious), but I fear that if people were actually to find out what went on around here, they might be put off for ever. Better to give them some brief and clear advice about what the idea is, and let them get stuck in - then hopefully by the time unpleasant things start happening to them, they might be too addicted to let it cause them to give up.--Kotniski (talk) 20:12, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

The idea of starting slowly is fine, but not trying to use that as a cop out in lieu of fixing that it is unnecessarily byzantine, confusing and hard-to-learn.North8000 (talk) 20:33, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not saying that we can ask people to lurk with an anonymous contribution system, only advise towards it. It's more the problem that the average internet user today wants instant gratification, which works against any system that has some type of formal procedure or the like. It is not something we can correct as long as we have formal processes in place - chaos vs order, effectively. --MASEM (t) 20:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Relevant and well-taken point. But it shouldn't take an immense amount of time as it currently does. And many of the causes of that problem are the causes of numerous other problems, so fixing them would be a win-win situation. For example, things that lead to "experts" commonly misstating policies to newbies, and the newbies then having to take a long time to learn that they were wrong? North8000 (talk) 20:58, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I do think that the sheer volume of policy is daunting and confusing, and sometimes very badly stated such as "Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia." Maybe one way of effectively rewriting policy in an easier-to-understand form would be to write a very simple general guide for new users. The thing is to make it simple enough. How about something like this?:

What is the basic logic behind Wikipedia policy?

Wikipedia strives to be reliable encyclopedia. This goal leads to all the other aspects of our content policy:

When writing an article, Wikipedia editors should:

• Find the best sources of information.

• Accurately represent those sources.

To accurately represent our sources, editors have to do two things:

• Refrain from adding any of their own thinking to articles, beyond that necessary to describe what the sources already say.

• Edit from a neutral point of view. This means that editors do not present the sources with any type of bias. A person who reads a Wikipedia article should come away with the same general impression as a person who read the original sources.

In order to prove both to readers and other editors that we have been doing our job, all information added to Wikipedia should state where it came from. If you do not tell readers and other editors where you got the information that you put in Wikipedia, it may eventually be removed unless it is common knowledge.

Thus the goal of being a reliable encyclopedia naturally leads us to embrace our policies on reliable sources (RS), no original research (NOR), and the neutral point of view (NPOV), and to cite our sources.

B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 21:17, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

That covers a lot of ground, (and scope beyond just wp:ver) so would need work, but good idea to start in one place, which includes what to DO, not just what not to do. North8000 (talk) 22:24, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

A new editor has a subject they want to get going on, and we just want to give the most basic info to help them do it right, along with point them to more info. Something like this would be the 5 min version of policy. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 22:53, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

What you've written there is pretty good and might well fit into the scheme of things somewhere, but we already have various simplified and introductory pages for beginners - that doesn't change the fact that we still have lots and lots and lots of other policy and guidance pages that those beginners are going to quickly come across (for example, by clicking the links in what you've written there, or on the WP:XYZ shortcuts that many editors use in disputes as a substitute for arguments) and be made to feel are important. All that stuff needs to be put in order and made into a reasonably clear and concise description of wiki-reality. @Masem: I don't know what you mean by "formal processes" (by and large we don't have formal processes, do we?), nor do I see how anonymous contribution would count as lurking (it would still be active contribution, just with the absence of various standard conveniences like watchlists).--Kotniski (talk) 05:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

@BeCritical - I really like that, up above.

I'm all for anything which makes our policies, guidelines, and etc. clearer to all. I'm darned sure that, if we really tried, we could actually cut down the length of a load of that stuff by removing repetitions and (sorry!) waffle from the pages, so that they don't appear as a TLDR wall of text. These guidelines / policies really shouldn't take that amount of verbosity to explain, and we also don't need to use college-level language to explain them. We can do it better than that. I think in many cases the concepts are simple - but they way we've explained them makes them look daunting. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

BeCritical, Good work. You might want to put that in an essay as collateral reading with respect to policies, for those wanting to learn about editing. Unfortunately, if it gets attention, it may get edited by the same consensus that led to the present policies that are impenetrable to new users. Catch 22. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 12:46, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Pesky's remark is consistent with Jimbo Wales' assessment of Wikipedia editorial guidelines in general: they're impenetrable to new users. Writing guidelines by consensus has failed to make them clear. I think that Wales needs to hire a professional technical writer, who has a reputation for clarity, to clean up the mess. Regards, Bob K31416 (talk) 11:28, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Those of us who think they need a rewrite might just go ahead and do it. It would have helped me if someone had explained the logical structure, rather than just present them as a bunch of rules. Wikiproject:Simple policy. Want to create it? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 15:16, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The trouble with "just going ahead and doing it" is that there are a lot of people who have come to regard the policies in their present form almost as a kind of immutable scripture, and will revert and block any significant attempts to improve them, out of a fear that we're somehow "changing the rules" by writing them in different words.--Kotniski (talk) 17:39, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Should have left in the fun stuff about the "shadow government in waiting." Took it out because you know how words can get misinterpreted around here or used wrong. I'm not talking about rewriting policy pages, but making a new, parallel complex of policy pages re-written to be simpler and to show the logic of the structure. They'd be designated as essays or whatever at first. The only thing that should draw flack from other editors would be if we linked them to current policy pages. Getting the new pages certified as policy would be way in the future. Probably someone has already done this, but I don't know where to look. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 18:00, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I have been seriously considering writing a parallel "here are the rules in simple format" user essay for quite some time now! I may just go ahead and work on it ... when I have some spare time and energy! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 09:36, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you familiar with Wikipedia:Five pillars and Wikipedia:Trifecta? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:05, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that it's a great idea but to make it really useful you need to figure out what things are really difficult for newer folks to learn and address those. North8000 (talk) 11:27, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, obviously "you have to cite your sources" is one that is hard to learn. NOTABILITY is another. MAINSTREAM is another horribly phrased part of policy. NOTTRUTH, obviously. Someone who works more with the contentious articles might have a list for us here? And BTW, is IAR ever relevant anymore? Even a couple or three years ago it might have been, but really.... when is it ever usable? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 23:06, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure the data supports that. That might be what bugs you about newbies, but I don't think that's what bugs the newbies.

Moonriddengirl (Mdennis) posted a link to comments from newbies at one of the Village Pumps a while ago. Most of the complaints indicated confusion with basic editing/formatting or unhappiness that the pages they tried to create were deleted within minutes, without an opportunity to explain or fix the problems. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

So when not protected by some rule like "all high schools are notable," they basically get bitten instead of cultivated. Sad. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 00:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

If they get that far. The link is here. The first three comments are "too much code", "i don\'t know how to edit the picture", and "I haven\'t been able to get on to create the page since I registered and now I don\'t know how to start again." It's not clear that any of those people got far enough to get bitten. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

If there is an interest, I'd be happy to try to list key things that newbies have a hard time learning. But here wou;ld be a few items:

• Bigger letters on "Don't bite the newcomers" The worst problems I've seen are royally beating up newbies when they make a mistake instead of helping them.
• Extra overview in key areas where wp is different than the real world. hat takes a while to really sink in. wp:notabilioty is not about rw:notability. Sourcing is everything. would be a few.
• The basic "how to" is missing / obscure / indirect in large amounts of our "instructive" pages.
• Clean up policy wording so that mis-quotes by the "experts" are less common. North8000 (talk) 16:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I put the essay out there under a different title: Wikipedia:The logic behind Wikipedia policy B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 18:57, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Verifiability as currently defined would eliminate large chunks of wikipedia

Applying the verifiability principle as it is written, which is strictly about being able to source a statement from a reliable source, would eliminate large portions of good articles in Wikipedia. For example take a random physics article, Stress (mechanics). The entire section Stress (mechanics)#Equilibrium equations and symmetry of the stress tensor does not cite a source, yet, it my mind the truth of the section is verifiable by checking the provided proof. Yet, it is not Wikipedia verifiable, because Wikipedia Verifiability is strictly about reliable sources. Dig around the science and math articles and many more examples will be found. I believe that the Wikipedia principle of verifiability as currently written is frequently ignored. For mathematical sections and many science articles, providing the proof in terms of first principles is far more verifiable for another mathematician or scientist than citing a journal article since verifying by the journal article requires looking up the journal article, and then the proof in the journal article needs to be checked, which adds a step to the process. The first non-stub version of the page [7] included the sentence "Therefore, include nothing that you cannot verify." and recommended citing sources as an easy way to do that. I think that the verifiability policy should support the very common pattern in mathematics pages of using a proof as sufficient verifiability. Jrincayc (talk) 22:46, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If the proof of the concept is being published first on Wikipedia, that is strictly against WP:OR. Instead, and more likely, I would suspect that you can eventually find textbooks and papers that have first (or at least, prior to WP) published these proofs. Remember, verifyability is about the ability to verify the information, so pointing to a journal or textbook is completely within lines. --MASEM (t) 22:54, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Does the section Stress (mechanics)#Equilibrium equations and symmetry of the stress tensor need to find a reliable source for satisfying verifiability, or is it sufficient as is? Jrincayc (talk) 23:11, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

If anyone challenges the material in that section for being unsourced, yes, one would need to find a reliable source for the statements therein. If the material is solely dependent on the proof provided by editors here, it's OR. --Nuujinn (talk) 23:29, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Mind you, in a situation like that, a general catchall reference (eg defined outside the numbered reflist) for standard textbooks, reference guides, or the like, would satisfy WP:V. Remember, we're a tertiary source - we want to be able to point readers to where they can learn more. --MASEM (t) 23:39, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good point--the information must be verifiable, but that bar can be met a number of ways. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

It should be also noted that straight forward "calculations"/derivations being obviously true for anybody with "reasonable domain knowledge" are not really WP:OR and are essentially covered by WP:CALC (though that's subject to debate).--Kmhkmh (talk) 00:43, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Though, and importantly, if the end line of a proof is a novel statement made purposely to support a topic, even if drawn from these core calculations, that treads dangerously on OR. --MASEM (t) 02:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes though "novel" is to be understood in a scholarly/scientific sense and not as in it has not been literally written in that way before.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

"If anyone challenges the material in that section for being unsourced" is not correct; "If anyone challenges the accuracy of the material in that section" is. Until and unless someone says that a particular unsourced tidbit is incorrect, it is OK to continue to exist as unsourced. It can be tagged, and should be improved, but it only need be removed if someone disputes its accuracy. Jclemens (talk) 00:54, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

For a while, but not indefinitely if we are to continue the project of making WP a reliable encyclopedia. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 01:03, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Reliability of (correct) statement does really change or improve by sourcing. The reliability you seem to have in mind is achieved by proof reading by domain experts (and/or reliable editors) and for we need flagged revisions. Sourcing arguably becomes even less important in that context.--Kmhkmh (talk) 02:54, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Jclemens, I sooooo wish that you were right, but you are wrong. They can challenge it saying absolutely nothing except that is unsourced. North8000 (talk) 01:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Around the loop again, we wouldn't be able to determine if it were accurate without a source.... --Nuujinn (talk) 01:23, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Again: verifyability is minimally satisfied by knowing a source exists. I borrow a math proof from my HS calc book and replicate it here for some reason, WP:V is not broken, just bad sourcing (which is fixable). --MASEM (t) 02:09, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

"Until and unless someone says that a particular unsourced tidbit is incorrect" - I would prefer "is suspect". It takes far less effort for a bad-faith editor to make up rubbish than it does for a good-faith editor to determine that it's untrue. If I know an editor has a history of making dodgy claims that don't hold up, I shouldn't feel obliged to check all their claims - even cursorily - before requiring a source for the ones that smell fishy. In an extreme case, if I assert that the Axiom of Choice is untrue... well, nobody can ever prove me incorrect, but I think they'd still be entitled to a "cite needed". --GenericBob (talk) 03:19, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree that "is suspect" is a better principle. Good faith editors often just do original research. It's often obvious that this has happened, but you can't point to anything specific. Or you may just be at a loss when you see a lot of text but no citations. At any rate, at some point the lack of citation itself becomes a reason to think that it's suspect. The only way to determine the reliability of the encyclopedia is to actually cite sources. In fact, a large part of reliability is knowing that something is reliable, and the only way to know is to see that it's sourced. So it's not true that "Reliability of (correct) statement does really change or improve by sourcing." Actually, it does, because it allows you to rely upon it. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 03:32, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, yes and no - the fact that it's sourced is in itself neither here not there - it certainly helps the reader to research it, and gives some assurance that it wasn't just a made-up statement added by a one-off vandal (although in some subject areas I would actually place less reliance on a sourced statement than an unsourced one, but that's another story) - but to be sure that the information is reliable, the reader would have to check (a) that it's really what the source says, (b) that that source really is reliable in that reader's world view, and (c) that there do not exist other "reliable" sources that contradict it. --Kotniski (talk) 06:08, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

That's true, it's not a guarantee. But much of the time such verification only takes a glance, especially on non-controversial subjects: "okay, it's a textbook and it sounds right" actually helps a lot. B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 13:21, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The last few comments are stating the intent of wp:ver, not its actual wording. And they deal only with the specific case (where there is an actual concern/question about the material) where the two work together. After years of thinking I've decided that the most high impact change-for the good in core policies would be adding the following two sentences which would bring the two together: "When challenging a statement for sourcing, indicate your concern with the material in addition to noting that it is unsourced. This is just to assure that there is a good faith concern; after that, any discussion about the concern has no effect on the requirement for sourcing." This would keep wp:ver at 100% full strength while eliminating the 100,000's (probably millions) of misuses of it. North8000 (talk) 10:15, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

We don't need to reference that "the sky is blue", and we have a guideline that forbids disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point. The article Cylinder (geometry) does not reference that the volume of a cylinder is πr²h, but that's trivial knowledge, as trivial and undisputable as the colour of the sky, so many attempt to remove it in referencing grounds would be swiftly undone Cambalachero (talk) 12:33, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

If I challenged you on the "Sky is blue" statement, the policy wp:ver would trump that guideline and force you to source it. My proposed change would force me to sound silly by saying "I question the sky is blue statement" to challenge it, which most of the time would prevent me from doing so. The more real world example of mis-use is to knock out material in a POV war. The clever warrior-wikilawyer knows that this not only invokes basic sourcing, it invokes the more difficult gauntlet of very high bullet-proof grade sourcing. North8000 (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

See WP:NOTBLUE. As an aside, I don't feel silly saying that the sky is not blue--today, it's grey. Each time this comes up, it strikes me that sourcing trivial knowledge is, well, trivial. I still just don't see a problem here. POV pushers are going to be disruptive, that's their nature. If I'm challenged on the assertion that Paris is the capital of France, it's trivial to source it and put an end to the discussion that way, rather than arguing about what's true and what's not, or what's common knowledge or what's not. When I taught intro to Lit, we did a segment on Magical Realism, in which a mostly realistic novel contains non-realistic elements. One interesting thing is that none of the students questioned the classification, but when we were discussion specifics, they disagreed with one another about which plot elements were realistic and which weren't. Common knowledge is not homogenous. But I agree it's good form to indicate why challenges a statement for sourcing, but I think we need to keep that as a suggestion, not a rule. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:04, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that adding that even as a suggestion would be a great move. Sincerely North8000 (talk) 17:02, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I gave it a shot. Likely be reverted. Such is life. ;) --Nuujinn (talk) 20:24, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you need to read WP:MINREF. This policy says only that it must be possible to find a published reliable source that contains the material. This policy does not require that unchallenged material be supported by an inline citation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't mind seeing words to that effect in that section. People are too quick to tag. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:53, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you think about tweaking the second paragraph along these lines?

"To show that it is not original research, it must be possible to attribute all material added to articles to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. In practice you do not need to attribute name your sources for everything. This policy requires that all quotations and anything that has already been challenged or seems likely to be challenged be attributed in the form of followed by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material."

(The strikeouts and underlining are not exact, but I think it gives the general feel.) Or would it be better to address that in BURDEN (or both)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I kind of like the attributable/attributed distinction, but that may just be a hang-up from having worked on that policy (ATT). SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 03:43, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I like it too; "attributable, not attributed" is a convenient slogan. But some days, the difference between the two words appears to exceed the reading comprehension skills of some users.

What are your thoughts on addressing this in the lead vs elsewhere? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Are you guys seriously considering lessening, rather than increasing, the sourcing requirements? I would suggest: "To show that it is not original research, it must be possible to attribute all material added to articles to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question. In practice you do not need to name your sources for common knowledge. However, all material which is not common knowledge, or which has been challenged or seems likely to be challenged, must be attributed in the form of an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material." That would eliminate the loophole which allows people to come write whatever they want, even if it's OR, just because they don't think the article is likely to come under challenge. Wikipedia has a problem with unreliability, not a problem with people who are sticklers for reliable sourcing. In controversial articles, you have to source every little thing. That's frustrating, but it works to make the articles more reliable and NPOV. Without a strong sourcing policy, many "obvious" statements such as "the sky is blue" (when it isn't always), cannot be challenged. The difficulties above with "common knowledge," only serve to illustrate that nearly everything needs to be sourced. Really, what we need is the following: "Although not every statement needs to be directly attributed to a source in the form of an inline citation, such attribution must be possible, and the sources of all statements in each article section must be given within that section." B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 01:15, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

No, we're seriously talking about making the policy say exactly what it says now. The policy as written right now does not require inline citations for anything unless (1) it has already been WP:CHALLENGED or (2) the editor, using his or her best judgment, believes the material is WP:LIKELY to be challenged.

A 100% unreferenced article can fully comply with this policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:44, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems like we've gone off track in this discussion. Jrincayc's initial comment was really just minimizing what we can use as a Reliable Source, which personally I feel is one of the most misunderstood guidelines on Wikipedia. So many people include or exclude sources that might or might not be reliable based on somewhat rigid or flexible standards (yes, I know), that it is really a wonder we get anything to be called or not be called 'Reliable'. -- Avanu (talk) 01:20, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Does it ring a bell with you that sometimes people don't realize that what is or is not an RS or acceptable source varies with the circumstance? I mean, like the subject of the article etc.? B^e——C_{ritical__Talk} 19:01, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Large scale edit warring and borderline vandalism on this talk page.

Cerejota, please self revert this controversial unilateral attempt to close four discussions and splash dead horse pictures all over the talk page. This is edit warring and bordering on vandalism. There was NO consensus to exclude this from this talk page. North8000 (talk) 19:28, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

There is consensus that all discussions regarding the "First Sentence" belong in the sub-talk page. It is you who is unwilling to accept this consensus. Enforcing consensus is not vandalism, it is protecting the project from disruptive editors who play deaf.--Cerejota (talk) 19:35, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I just went through it. I count TWO people who said move it, plus a third (me) who said have the main discussion there but explicitly NOT exclude it from this page. Where is this alleged consensus that you are speaking for this huge and extreme action? Please self-revert. North8000 (talk) 19:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

As I responded in your talkpage, strawpolls are not votes, they gauge consensus. There was no strong opposition compared to the broad participation in the sub-talk page, which spans years. As I said, this is being deaf and beating dead horses. The sub-pages exist, have existed for a long time, and recently been re-confirmed. Consensus can change, but it hasn't. --Cerejota (talk) 20:06, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, if TWO people counts as a consensus for such a huge thing as to shut down 4 discussions here and scatter dead horses all over this talk page, that would make for quite a mess here in the future. North8000 (talk) 20:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

• Who appointed you as the talk page police here, Cerejota? Your actions are obstructive, arrogant and unilateral.—S Marshall T/C 20:10, 29 August 2011 (UTC)
  • There, fixed. You may move the discussion to the subpage if you insist. You may not take it upon yourself to close the discussion. Capisce?—S Marshall T/C 20:17, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

And who appointed you Talk page police? I am not edit warring over this, but you are completely wrong, capito?--Cerejota (talk) 20:22, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Now that we're past the strong-arm stuff, I'm open to the idea of incubating this elsewhere for a few weeks if that's what folk's prefer, including freezing my proposal to implement Jimbo's suggestion. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:26, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

You keep saying this, North, but then you open another straw poll. You're now the third highest poster on this talk page, though you've only been posting here for a year—a post on this page every 11.24 hours for one year!—and most of them have been in the last few months on this single issue, despite multiple people pleading with you to stop. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 20:52, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think anybody asked me to stop (or move), or that thee has been much asking around here period. Lots of insulting, villainizing, name calling, throwing dead horses around, mocking of people who donate their time here trying to make things better, but no asking. (I'm not referring to you specifically.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by North8000 (talk • contribs)

No one has asked you to stop?? North, multiple editors have been begging you to stop for weeks. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:14, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't really care whether we hold discussions on the sub-page or here... but can we please choose one or the other and stick with it. Blueboar (talk) 20:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Thats pretty much the point. Some people just don't get the point of WP:Centralized discussion and want to re-invent the wheel.--Cerejota (talk) 20:43, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, how 'bout voluntarily moving it there for a while, but without forbidding it from here. I'll move the section I started over. If Blueboar or anybody else who posted there objects, I'll move it back. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Please move all discussions about the first sentence to Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/First sentence, as agreed. SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 21:12, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done, although with a raised eyebrow about the "as agreed" part of that. More accurately, it's been done and nobody's chosen to object.—S Marshall T/C 21:31, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I strongly object, and I don't feel you've given any time for a discussion on this, since just this morning the discussions were fine, and you had a few vandals pop by and mess things up. I don't think consensus is found in just a few minutes of asking. -- Avanu (talk) 21:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC) (restoring my comment after SlimVirgin removed it, presumably by accident)

I strongly object your strong objection There has been nearly a year of discussion since the last RFC, and the discussion "this morning" was among the anti-V Cabal. Also calling editors in good faith vandals, specially those who have done much more than you for the encyclopedia is beyond the pale. Next time you use language like that, you WILL be blocked and sanctions banning you form this topic WILL be sought. The consensus was not created this morning, and you know it. It is long standing. Besides, it is a common sense approach. Your objection is invalid, and you behavior and accusations appalling. Why don't you leave Wikipedia if it is so awful?--Cerejota (talk) 17:23, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Avanu, I don't agree with Cerejota's assessment or nastiness, but, with the strong-arm stuff set aside, I think we're all just "going with the flow" and working at the sub-page, but not necessarily ruling it out from this page. North8000 (talk) 17:39, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Cerejota, you aren't an authority figure here and you can't block anyone. This isn't the first time you've tried to throw your weight around on WT:V. Please desist.—S Marshall T/C 18:35, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You are not a neutral party, Avanu can accuse people editing in good faith of being vandals and you remain silent? That is highly suspect. We have as much authority as the next person, but such personal attacks do lead to blocking and sanctions - do not encourage unproductive behavior by saying that is not true. If you read carefully, I didn't say I will block or topic ban. But someone will. No doubt in my mind.--Cerejota (talk) 00:11, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

It's true that I'm not a neutral party, but that doesn't invalidate what I say. There are substantial differences between what Avanu said and what you said. Avanu was protesting, and he used a strong characterisation of other editors. What you did was to issue a direct order, and you backed it up by threats. That's really, really unhelpful here. It's particularly unhelpful when you've already taken it upon yourself to close and archive discussions that were in progress. You've used contemptuous imagery of dead horses and facepalms in the process, and you've used highly scornful language.

Below, you admit to coming at this like a bull in a china shop, and that's exactly what you have done ever since your rather recent arrival on this page. You need to stop, breathe deeply, accept that you aren't in charge, and engage other editors in discussion as if they were your equals. Okay?—S Marshall T/C 00:22, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I just want to clarify, when I said 'vandals', I was mainly going from what the title said and wasn't singling out regular editors, hence the phrase "pop by". My objection (and comment) was centered not on vandalism, but on people somewhat strong-arming the page rather than being a bit more patient. My apologies if these distinctions were not clear. -- Avanu (talk) 00:33, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Please inform Foundation

(This is a copy of the note I've left on the sub-talk pages too; Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message})

• Note/suggestion: I presume there are legal implications of having the "verifiability, not truth" version up there. Whenever this discussion moves forward or there is a consensus towards a changed/updated version of the "verifiability, not truth" pillar, the suggestion is to make sure the Foundation is informed in advance, especially Geoff or Michelle. Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 03:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

My impression of all the various discussions is that no one actually wants to change what the meaning or intent of the policy is, but simply express the same thing as what it says now in an improved manner. While I agree with you that notifying the Wikimedia Foundation is an excellent idea, I don't think anyone is actually pushing for a change that would truly "change" the way policy works. -- Avanu (talk) 03:58, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any legal implication of this. Feel free to contact them if you feel the need, but I think this is a completely unnecessary step. Fram (talk) 07:26, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

There is no problem because we are only trying to prevent the dangerous misunderstanding that Jimbo explains here. Hans Adler 07:56, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Moreover, what Jimbo is describing is nicely handled by our FRINGE provision. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:32, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

"My impression of all the various discussions is that no one actually wants to change what the meaning or intent of the policy is" – not so. At least a couple people very active in this discussion do want to change the meaning of policy. Specifically they want to remove "not truth" entirely, apparently to be able to exclude cited material on the basis that they consider it not true. Quale (talk) 04:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

There are cases in which we should removed cited material on the basis that it isn't true. Existing policy allows for this and encourages this but the "not truth" meme leads people to think that we should be simple transcribers, as opposed to editors. I propose that we change it to "and truth" to prevent that misunderstanding but in any event, separating the words is a good start.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:18, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for providing one example of someone who actually wants to change the meaning of the policy. It's not an improvement though, this fixation on wanting Wikipedia spreading the truth, it sounds way too much like some preacher. Who is going to decide what is or isn't true? This will only lead to more heat and less light. Fram (talk) 06:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

RfC: Tendentious editing of policy Wikipedia:Verifiability

Summary

There is a lot of contention around WP:V, and the policy has been placed under protection because of edit warring. Since this is a core policy, such behavior is to be dealt with seriously by the community. The goal of this RfC is to get the policy placed under community sanctions as described below. These sanctions would apply to all editors in this topic area. The goal is to protect a core policy from tendentious editing, and to provide an environment that leads to positive improvement of the policy.

This RfC is not intended to endorse the current version of the policy, and supporting this RfC cannot be considered as such, rather it addressed serious concerns with editor behavior in the talk pages and serious edit warring in the actual policy. It includes a general amnesty for involved editors, providing a clean slate from which better practices can emerge. Cerejota (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Sanction proposals

Scope

• The policy page Wikipedia:Verifiability, associated talk page, any associated sub-pages or sub-talkpages, and any formal arena (for example, RfCs in other pages) in which changes to the verifiability policy are discussed in a formal fashion that can result in the policy being modified - this scope is to be broadly construed and some discretion as to what constitutes the topic area is given to enforcers as to the application of the sanctions as long as it meets the broad definition
• An involved editor is considered anyone who has significantly edited within the scope in the year before these sanction comes into effect, it excludes those who have simply reverted obvious and unquestioned vandalism or other uncontroversial housekeeping tasks (such as fixing spelling mistakes) and doesn't include any participant in this RfC who wouldn't be otherwise involved - Any admin whose participation is limited to tool-use based on good faith reports for action is not considered involved, but admins whose participation is of the same nature as involved editors are considered involved admins
• These sanctions will be in force until a further RfC with similar participation and notification or ArbCom overturns it

Sanctions on editor behavior in policy space

• WP:V Policy is to be protected for a month after this RfC is over - any editing must follow an RfC process and request the consensus edit be performed by an admin under the page protection
• After protection, Wikipedia:Verifiability is placed under indefinite one revert rule (1RR), except in cases of obvious and unquestioned vandalism, in which uninvolved admin assistance is to be requested
• Any major changes to the policy, regardless of protection level, should be performed via RfC and wide community attention, not by localized discussion, edits other than minor housekeeping can be subjected to sanction enforcement by uninvolved admins

Sanctions on editor behavior on talk pages

• Due to persistent abuse of the straw polling method, straw polling is prohibited unless sanctioned by an uninvolved admin - a request for a sanctioned straw poll can be made and allowed under un-involved admin discretion
• Editors are encouraged to not repeat the same arguments in a tendentious manner, hoping for a different outcome - tendentious proposals can result in sanctions being applied by uninvolved admins
• All proposals for significant changes must be done with an RfC
• Any proposal that didn't reach consensus must wait at least six months before it can be proposed again, even if different editors propose it - Speedy Close of significantly similar proposals by different editors can be performed by uninvolved admins; this a bright line, if after six months it is felt that the proposal is disruptive or not useful it can be closed by uninvolved admins and the proposer sanctioned
• Repeated actions of any nature can be seen as disruptive and can result in sanctions being applied by uninvolved admins

Enforcement

• Any uninvolved admin can impose topic bans or blocks as seen fit to enforce these sanctions, generally starting at one week for topic bans and 24 hours for blocks, upon evaluation of a report at WP:ANI and/or an appropriate noticeboard set up for this purpose (as per the RfC closing admin's discretion) - they must evaluate evidence provided, and calls for enforcement without evidence are to be ignored, with some reasonable discretion as to what enforcement action to take based on the sanction log and the evidence
• A copy of these sanction would be kept at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Sanctions/ and this would be used to notify editors as needed
• A log of enforcement actions is to be kept at Wikipedia:Verifiability/Sanctions/Log/ - initially the log will be used to log notifications then the log will be updated with all notifications and enforcement actions as needed; notifications do not need to be performed by admins, but must be logged, and a notification template created for use in user talk pages as a new message.
• A warning template notifying of the sanctions is to be placed in the different talk pages in the topic area, broadly construed, to alert editors of the existence of the sanctions - this is not a substitute to formal notification

General amnesty

• Sanctions on behavior are considered to start immediately after the RfC is closed as consensus and upon formal notification of sanctions to users - a general amnesty for previous behavior is provided, and in case of enforcement requests behavior previous to the sanctions entering into effect is to be ignored
• This amnesty is for the behavior previous to the RfC being proposed, any possible issues that were being formally addressed or that happened during the RfC discussion period are to be handled in the normal fashion - this is to discourage unproductive behavior knowing that an amnesty is possible

Support

1. Support as proposer. --Cerejota (talk) 23:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
2. Support I checked out the top of the project page, and it read the following:

(Core content policies) have wide acceptance within the community, and are relied upon every day to make editorial decisions and resolve disputes. Stability is therefore paramount. For that reason, please do not change the meaning or focus of this policy without clear consensus.

Accusations of this proposal as wikilawyering is in itself an overreaction. This isn't just any article, it's a policy page. It's what we use to justify our claims as editors whether it's on WP:XFD, a merger discussion, or when talking about removing or adding content to an article. Looking over the past 500 edits of WP:V, almost 200 of them appear to be reversions or undoing of revisions due to vandalism or, more often according to the edit summaries, changes or additions without consensus. To claim that "dealing with the problems directly" has been effective in resolving issues of consensus with editing behaviors on the page is inconsistent with the fact that disagreements have been pervasive and will likely remain that way. It also seems viable that these disagreements may escalate and could ultimately drive editors away from the project. I agree with Cerjota's sentiments that non-trivial changes to WP:V in terms of its coverage, what constitutes an WP:RS, how the burden of evidence works, or other sections require more oversight per the above proposals. I, Jethrobot ^{drop me a line} (note: not a bot!) 02:12, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Oppose

• Oppose. An over-reaction. Rules and solutions are overly formulaic. The proposal confers far too much arbitrary authority to admins over ordinary editors. The spirit of the proposal is contrary to the concept of a "community run project". Good faith but disruptive editing should go to dispute resolution, not arbitrary saction by any individual. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:21, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Strongly Oppose in the most strenuous fashion. We don't need more Wikilawyering happening here, where in fact WP:IAR needs to be followed more often than not. This is an attempt to codify a rigid practice that I don't think needs to be applied on Wikipedia except possibly in the most exceptional cases, and even then it should be a case by case basis where experienced moderators are being brought into the discussion and/or ArbCom has decided to lay down some special rules for a particular article. There are far too many rules on Wikipedia as it is, and this set of rules simply destroys what should be a much more casual conversation on talk pages. If there is a problem, deal with those problems directly where the problems are at. Certainly any situation needing this rule is seriously lacking in WP:WikiLove. --Robert Horning (talk) 23:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose sanctions, unless and until we see the diffs.—S Marshall T/C 23:54, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose WP:TLDR, absent any examples, this feels like a H-Bomb to crack a nut. Mtking ^(edits) 02:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose, although I would support a 1-month ban of Cerejota from this policy to contain the disruption. Hans Adler 02:04, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The problems that led to the proposed sanctions are real; but the above proposal undoubtedly creates more problems than it hopes to solve. I think there needs to be less acrimony overall at Wikipedia, especially here, but the above isn't going to be workable. --Jayron32 03:26, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose  WP:TLDR  Yes, we know we are a dysfunctional talk page, is there a problem with that?  If you can produce a cat-herding license, this attitude will turn into instant respect, until then, we already have a bully editor and an owner thank you.  A moderator for WP:V/First sentence we could use, pictures of dead things are just one more attitude to deal with.  This is paradoxical how the effort to take a 4-week break in our discussion about the first sentence has created a vacuum that has editors arriving in numbers to take ownership.  Nothing personal here, btw.  Please come back in about six-eight weeks as we might have some work for you by then.  Sincerely, Unscintillating (talk) 03:30, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Now I wish *I'd* gone to cat-herding school, damn the missed opportunities. :( BTW, if this page is about Verifiability, Not Truth, where does that leave Schroedinger's cat? Can we herd cats that are in a quantum flux? -- Avanu (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose It is unfortunate that this RfC was started in the midst of a completely nonproblematic and productive discussion. --Jimbo Wales (talk) 05:19, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose As Hans points out this proposal itself might be considered disruptive, and the same could be said about many editing actions which appear to be aimed at blocking sensible discussion about the good faith and rational concerns of a large number of Wikipedians. There are real good faith disagreements being hammered out, and it would not be helpful at all to spend too much time on any meta discussion which would inevitably involve picking one side as good and the other side as sanctionable. Which side is which?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:08, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose This is problematic in a multitude of ways. Most of all it itself is the nastiest behavior that I've seen on this page. North8000 (talk) 10:26, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Too creepy. We have hundreds of policy pages and it is impractical for them to have long lists of local bylaws. If 1RR is a good idea for this page, say, then it's a good idea for every page. We should have general and uniform rules of behaviour, not local, idiosyncratic ones. Warden (talk) 12:28, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose... overkill. While I think it would help if everyone took a break from this endless discussion, I don't see a need for "enforcement" or "sanctions". Blueboar (talk) 12:42, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose I'm not aware of the context of this RFC. All I will say is that this proposal is too restrictive. Most editors can edit this page civilly. If a few editors become tendentious, deal with them individually. Shooterwalker (talk) 12:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - definite overkill! I agree we could all do with chilling a bit from time to time, and sharing a beer rather than a heated debate - but, really ... something like this is like nuking London to deal with the litter problem. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 00:55, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - Seems a bit too much. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 01:52, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose - until Cerejota actually provides an answer to my question about the sources of this problem, I have no basis for supporting these measures. -- Avanu (talk) 03:14, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

General Discussion of Proposed Sanctions

Replies to specific !votes

• @S Marshall, Please my response below to the diff issue.--Cerejota (talk) 00:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• It's not appropriate to call for sanctions when you haven't presented any evidence.—S Marshall T/C 07:23, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

• the proof is in the pudding--Cerejota (talk) 19:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Other comments

• Well, just when we got this page cooled down, someone throws the above ridiculous gasoline on it. North8000 (talk) 23:17, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict)I disagree with this assessment that "things have calmed down", and your comment is a prime example of why it is impossible to edit in this topic area without some sort of community-wide sanctions imposing a modicum of proportionality and common sense into the process. I hope your un-constructive dismissal for a request for wide community discussion and attention is not a common thread in this RfC, because this is core policy that requires the utmost respect and community involvement, regardless of where one stands in the debate.--Cerejota (talk) 23:26, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
    • IMO your behavior has been by far the most incendiary of ANYBODY's here, and the above continues that. North8000 (talk) 23:50, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
      • Facepalm--Cerejota (talk) 23:52, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
• There are no diffs, which makes it impossible to know what any of this is about for those of us who haven't followed the page's recent history (and maybe even for those who have). postdlf (talk) 23:22, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
  • The problem with including diffs here, is that it would give the appereance of trying to sanction some people rather than other people - which is also why I proposed amnesty. If others want to include diffs or independently investigate, I hope this is done. Quite frankly, I just got here after a few years, and found a distrustful, WP:OWNy, cabalistic environment, and I came in a bit of bull in a china shop, but reflection let me see this was because of an echo chamber effect due to the lack of community attention. Of course, feel free to bring up any specific behaviors in the last two years or so.--Cerejota (talk) 23:31, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
    • The point of an RFC is to get wider comment on a dispute or issue. So I saw your RFC notice on the Village pump and came here, and...what am I supposed to see? Without diffs, I have no idea what "tendentious editing" you might be talking about or by whom or whether any problems rise to the level that would justify the sanctions. postdlf (talk) 01:42, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
  • I agree - I don't know what the problem is beyond the vague assertions already stated. Even a few examples would be helpful. This is especially important given the broad scope and very high bar (RfC for any edits???) that is being proposed. ElKevbo (talk) 02:12, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• It seems to me that the sentiment behind this RfC is worth exploring, but the actual scope of the proposal is far too broad and non-specific to have a hope of succeeding. From my own perspective the guideline on verifiability is routinely distorted by editors and administrators alike to serve agenda (like deletionism or retentionism). As for the cliques or cabals mentioned by Cerejota, these are inevitable, but not necessarily always harmful. Most disconcerting in this discussion, however, is Postdlf's anti-intellectual, mechanistic insistence on diffs as a pre-requisite to addressing a potential problem; we are supposedly human beings capable of abstract thought, creative imagination, and forward-thinking planning, not robots capable only of making rulings according to fixed criteria. My personal observation has been that each single instance of distorting verifiability criteria, or of cabalistic behaviour, or of excessively mechanistic intervention is best addressed on its own merits. If Cerejota believes distortion of verifiability criteria in policy articles will invalidate common sense or rationality, then that is what editors and administrators are making of this encyclopaedia and nothing will stop it. At that point, though, many contributors who do not regard themselves as robots beholden to mechanistic rules rather than rationality will cease to give their time and effort. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 00:27, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Question - Would it be possible for you Cerejota, to explain what issues or decisions are contributing to the "contentious" atmosphere? You simply say that it is contentious, but don't mention any reason or cause, which seems to imply you just have problematic editors. What are the issues? What is it people are trying to fix or break or fine tune? I'm not convinced this is really "tendentious" (which is a word people only use in Wikipedia, and is really a term much more ripe for the types of debates I've seen here, but I digress.), as much as it is a herd of cats that just need a cat herder. -- Avanu (talk) 03:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)
• Suggestion. I was the person who requested the protection. Obviously, we don't need these sanctions, but I'd like to suggest that, once the protection is over, editors choose to voluntarily conduct themselves as though the sanctions were in effect. In other words, please don't jump at the opportunity to edit war over the wording of the page. Instead, discuss what you propose to change, and be patient with the fact that others may not agree with you. I kind of like the idea that non-trivial changes should only be made when there has been a proposal in talk that has achieved consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:52, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Continued general discussion

• Comment  What makes no sense here is that an outsider, Cerejota, has started this RfC less than 24 hours after we opened a new page at WP:V/First sentence and began polling there.  We are actually as productive today as I have ever known.  Is there anyway we can close this RfC and plan for it to come back in eight weeks?  It might help to know that this proposal or some alternative community involvement will return in eight weeks if no new consensus has emerged.

  As for the skills that are currently here on this page, the encyclopedia could use some philosophers at WT:V/First sentence and WP:V/First sentence right now working out the theory to explain the current divide between the change camp and the keep-it-at-a-no-consensus-status camp.  Pilate asked the question, what is truth, and Jesus did not answer.  Is there a place for accuracy and truth on Wikipedia?  Unscintillating (talk) 04:48, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

  I wouldn't call Cerejota an outsider at all. This user has been a major contributor to the disruption in the last days by closing several discussions simultaneously, putting satirical illustrations at the top that favoured Cerejota's POV, and then edit warring to keep the discussions closed and the images in. [8] Hans Adler 07:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

One feels all this is rather disruptive. We're prohibited from discussing the policy's opening statement on the policy's talk page; people even try to remove the flag that says that the sentence is being discussed on another talk page, which seems particularly paranoid - and yet we're now being asked to discuss some weird procedural proposal that has nothing to do with the content of the policy page. Why is it that those who would defend the present version of the page, and its opening sentence in particular, are so desperate to avoid discussion of that toipc? Could it be that even they now realize that their arguments manifestly fail to hold water, and the only way they can achieve the objective they've become emotionally attached to is to ensure that the opposing arguments - which do hold water - are effectively suppressed?--Kotniski (talk) 09:57, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Avoid discussion of the topic? Ye Gods! How many months has it been discussed with no consensus?

Some of us are simply tired of hearing the same arguments over and over again for months and months after strawpolls and rfcs galore have failed to reach consensus about how the page should be changed (and that is what is required--the argument that there's not consensus to leave "not truth" in is a strawman, as consensus has to be reached for a specific change, not just "we don't like it the way it is", and there's not even consensus for that). It has seemed to me for month now that continuing to push for a change despite the lack of consensus is clearly disruptive, and some number of editors have a bad case of ownership on the issue. Some of us are taking a break from the main discussion in recognition that we are not getting anywhere in the discussions and haven't for months. Some of us tried for compromise wording to address the concerns of others who wish to clarify the policy, but were rebuffed by those who are stuck on removing "not truth" and will not hear of anything else. Some of us simply disagree that there's a problem in the first place, and do not see a reason to change the opening sentence to a core policy statement. It's been discussed here and at the pump, endlessly. At what point do we put the issue aside, even for a brief period, in recognition that we're just not getting anywhere? Or is it the case that this page will be held hostage indefinitely by those who will not let go of a change they want, who are incapable of convincing others that the change is needed? --Nuujinn (talk) 10:21, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

The hostage-holding is being done by those who can't defend the way the page is written at the moment, and yet have decided they like it for some reason, and so block all efforts to reach a wording that is satisfactory, knowing that this means they get to keep their preferred wording, even though we all know by now that it is unsatisfactory in many ways. This isn't how consensus is supposed to work - we all have to make the effort to find a solution that addresses all the genuine concerns that have been raised. If no such solution has yet been found, we should keep trying until we do. Those who are tired of the topic can simply walk away and do something else.--Kotniski (talk) 11:13, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I propose that we archive all this meta-discussion and get rid of that subpage and just start discussing it here. The delaying tactics are frustrating.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:14, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Start discussing it? Most of us have been discussing this for months, through RfCs and so on. The people wanting to change it never reached a consensus for it (and never really agreed on what to change it to as well). They can't seem to accept this. The "delaying tactic" is not a delaying tactic, but an expression of the reality that when something has been discussed ad nauseam and you don't get the result you want, it may be time to take a break from it. WP:DEADHORSE and all that... Fram (talk) 11:31, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Fram, we're dealing with something about which there's genuinely no consensus. Some of us are trying to discuss, engage new editors in the discussion, and move forward. Others would be quite happy for the "no consensus" situation to continue forever, because while it persists, the policy reads as they want it to. Could we please stop pretending that a lack of consensus means the status quo is akin to Gibraltar? If editors new to the discussion agree with Kotniski, Jimbo and I (among many others), then there's a prospect of real change here.—S Marshall T/C 12:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Fram is correct. We have been discussing this for months now. We have had repeated RfCs, polls, and proposals. We have spent months trying to find consensus. Numerous compromises have been suggested and rejected by one side or the other in this debate. The endless debate is causing people to solidify their positions at the extremes, and we now have people (on both sides) who refuse to consider any alternative other than "keep it in" or "take it out". At some point we really do need to say "OK, that's enough for now - everyone take a break" ... if only to give people time to think about the valid points raised by the other side and back away from their hard line positions. Blueboar (talk) 12:24, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Do you have an alternative to "keep it in" or "take it out"? Write it in small type? In brackets? I tried debolding it at one point, but even that was reverted.--Kotniski (talk) 12:46, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes... "keep it, but add a second sentence to explain it". A few weeks ago, we actually came very close to a compromise consensus using this approach ... but for some reason the approach was abandoned. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

We have a second sentence (or rather, a second half of the same sentence) to explain it, don't we? --Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, check the archives, numerous changes have been suggested as compromises. Blueboar, North8000, and Tryptofish amoung others have pretty consistently sought to engage editors in discussions of possible compromises, but a small number of editors opposed the compromised suggested. I'm sorry that Jimbo Wales sees any of this as delaying tactics, but I would suggest anyone who has not read all of the archives going back for say, three months, please do so to get a feel for how the discussions have been going. The horse is dead, decayed, gone, with no trace left and there's now a lake where the field where the horse died was. A number of us have come to the conclusion that a break is needed, others disagree and keep rehashing the same arguments. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Interrupting the discussion was reasonable when the discussion was stalled. Now that there is a big influx of new editors with new ideas, the informal moratorium has become obsolete, and insisting on it is disruptive. Hans Adler 13:34, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

"The horse is dead" seems to be the substitute for an argument that we keep getting around here. One could equally well say that the horse of the defenders of the status quo is dead. With any number of dead horses lying around the place, we have to continue the search for one that's just taking a nap.--Kotniski (talk) 13:50, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I should say for any newcomers that for me, "not truth" is just one of several annoying problems that this policy has. The other main ones are its existence (as a separate page from WP:NOR, of which it has been made into a straightforward fork), its title (we are not concerned with verifiability any more than we are concerned with truth, really - it's about sourceability - and it's that mismastch that makes writing the first sentence so difficult), and its first word (it's not "The" (only) threshold, as has continuously been pointed out, but they won't let anyone change even that much).--Kotniski (talk) 13:59, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest trying to formulate drafts for new RFC now and table them in a few weeks for now. As I wrote here a few months ago, the issue was never the discussions, rather starting RFCs which then forces people who feel strongly about the issue to participate here. If we have an agreement on the date for posting RFCs, then the people who are tired of the discussions can safely stay away. Count Iblis (talk) 16:00, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate Nuujinn's comment. It's true that some (not all) of the editors who want the most sweeping changes have repeatedly stonewalled sincere attempts at compromise, either because compromise versions are not good enough for them, or because they actually enjoy talking this thing to death, and finding a solution would mean that they would have to look for an endless argument somewhere else. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec) First, I want to make it clear that Verifiability is NOT a fork of NOR; the verifiability policy is older than NOR and in fact NOR began as a fork from the Verifiability policy.

Secondly, there is a relationship between verifiability and sourcing, but they are not the same. The verifiability policy is a principle, that we must be able to verify that someone (in fact, enough of the right people to make it "significant") actually holds this view. In this sense, Verifiability is a corollary or fork of NPOV. Our policies on sources are not principles, they are criteria for what kinds of sources constitute sufficient evidence to satisfy the verifiability policy.

Third, I think anyone participating in this discussion ought to read the original statement concerning "truth." I have removed this from the old NPOV policy and have added it to this essay: Wikipedia:Truth. Smokey Joe (I think) has proposed that this essay be made a part of the Verifiability policy. I added another proposal, that it be added to WP:NOT. "Not truth" is I grant an odd phrase, but the original answer to the question "Well, if it is not about the truth, what is it about" was not "verifiability," it was "neutrality" - understanding why WP is not about "truth" is a predicate for understanding our NPOV policy. This is why we say that neutrality is not itself a view (because that might suggest that the neutral view is the true view), it is a principle that leads us to provide multiple points of view, when they are verifiable (i.e. one of us did not invent this view, it is actually a view that is "out there"). Slrubenstein | Talk 19:05, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

SLR, I believe what Kotniski was referring to was to say WP:V has become a fork of WP:NOR in effect, not out of a clear plan or intention. I do like you reflections on this history though.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:02, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

We are actually getting somewhere. Let's not stop this process now! The polls on ways forward are being conducted in as close to an exemplary manner as one could expect from decisions about changing stuff on major policy changes. There is clarity and a certain level of consensus appearing. We are beginning to have something resembling teamwork there. This is an amazing leap forwards - let's not stop moving now, just as things are perking up. :o) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 01:03, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

My point about forks is that, regardless of what the history may have been, the concepts of V and NOR have now been redefined so as to mean exactly the same thing (that everything we say must be properly sourceable), so there is no reason to maintain the two separate pages as forks of each other. Also I don't think that either of their titles is the right choice for the combined page ("no original research" is too narrow, and "verifiability" is the wrong word). Ideally, I think that what we've come to call "neutrality" should also be dealt with together with the V/NOR topic - these are very closely entangled principles which bascially say that our mission is to reflect what reliable sources say (for particular values of "reflect" and "reliable").--Kotniski (talk) 10:04, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Kotniski, I appreciate your point. But I think it is widely understood that NPOV, V and NOR are all parts of a comprehensive package, three core policies that complement and reenforce one another and are meant to. Personally, I think a single policy/page is a no-starter - AAA was an attempt to begin merging policies and it ended (for better or worse) in disaster.

What do people think of making "Wikipedia is not about truth" a part of WP:NOT? Slrubenstein | Talk 10:41, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I think it is pretty clear there would be no consensus for this. The problem is the same old one: in terms of normal English meanings, which is still something we should refer to, it sounds like we would be saying pretty much the same as saying "Wikipedia is unreliable", "Wikipedia is not accurate", "Wikipedia is full of wrong information and does not even aim to be otherwise", etc. That is in fact not what "initiates" to these exegeses understand by "not truth" in WP:V at all? Do we all agree that if possible, such essays should be comprehensible to a person who reads English well but has no experience with WP jargon?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:00, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

This is not a reason to change our principles. It is a reason to explain them clearly. Wikipedia is a wiki - that already makes it unlike real encyclopedias in a profound way. If someone wants to use Wikipedia they need to understand its basic principles (true for other encyclopedias too of course). I think one can make a pretty compelling argument that Encyclopedia Britannica is not the truth. The problem is not this claim, but the fact that so many people believe it is the truth. Wikipedia does an invaluable service to the world in saying it is not the truth. Slrubenstein | Talk 11:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

On explaining things clearly: yes, precisely, which is why we shouldn't (for example) split a single topic over two or three pages and pretend they are separate principles. We shouldn't have pages doing weird metaphysical things like "complementing" and "reinforcing" each other - we should just say, in one place, clearly and concisely, in ordinary English if at all possible, whatever it is we've got to say. As to this truth thing, I don't see why it's an issue. Other books and websites don't have a need to contain the disclaimer "what is written here might not be the truth" - readers are expected to know this. Of course we should emphasize on the appropriate pages that Wikipedia is written by anyone and therefore contains some complete nonsense - but that's a separate issue from that of core policy, which is about what we aspire to - and aspirationally, I don't think we are entirely indifferent to whether what we write is true or not.--Kotniski (talk) 11:31, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

(ec)I think no one is asking to change policy, and it is surprising that you would claim the opposite? The question is indeed about clear explanation? Your philosophical interests on this matter are, I am quite confident, somewhat separate from the question of what most people will read in our current attempt at clear explanation. I honestly do not think most people, initiates or newbies, read our WP:V as a philosophical position raising doubts about all claims to truth. 99% of all people are only going to read the sentence under discussion in one of two ways: Wikipedia does not aim at telling the truth at all, or, the more subtle and correct position according to most of us, Wikipedia editors should not rely on personal "unverifiable" opinions about truth. (Verfiable just means that something can be checked as being truth.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:33, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

PS. Just noticed Jimbo Wales with a similar formulation on his User page today: "Why people misunderstand it is a complex question, but I think the main point is that they do. To be fair to them, the phrase - taken as a standalone - is ambiguous. "X, not Y" may mean "The more important thing is X, not Y" or it may mean "The only thing that matters is X, and Y is not of any interest at all." To repeat SLR's words for comparison: "This is not a reason to change our principles. It is a reason to explain them clearly." So let's talk that way and let's not spend time on the straw man argument that this discussion is about people who want to change the policy and principles of WP.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that no one is claiming they would like to change the policy, but I think that removing "not truth" will, in fact, change the policy, so it does not strike me as a straw man argument. Also, given the number of inexperienced editors who argue for including information because it is true, rather than because it is verifiable in reliable sources, I believe the statement as it states serves a very useful purpose in that regard. I do welcome the efforts of others who wish to clarify wording explaining what we mean by it, but "verifiability, not truth" is, to my way of thinking, the simplest and clearest wording of policy on WP. And, I would suggest, we do not aim at telling the truth at all--we should aim rather at accurately reflecting what reliable sources say about what is true. Trying to tell the truth just gets us in a jumble, because in most areas we simply have no way to know what is the truth aside from referring to reliable sources. X, in this case, is more important than Y, and this is a philosophical issue. --Nuujinn (talk) 11:49, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate how useful "verifiability, no truth" can be when one or two editors are trying to deal quickly and efficiently with a new editor who wants to add unverifiable but supposedly true information. If all such cases had to be escalated until a consensus against inclusion is formed among a wider group, we would all have a lot more to do. But there are ways of serving the same purpose without the potential that it is misunderstood as "verifiability, regardless of falsity". Example: "If it's not verifiable, it can't go in." Hans Adler 12:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

• Can I direct your attention to a very in-depth discussion of this on WT:V/First?—S Marshall T/C 12:22, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Nuujinn, did you really mean to write that "Verifiability, not truth" is the "[...]clearest wording of policy on WP"? Surely all this discussion has shown that, while it might be simple, it certainly isn't anywhere near clear (indeed, the very fact that we need to follow it with an explanation that when we say it, we really mean something else, is evidence that it is intrinsically unclear). And removing a statement of what the policy is not can hardly change the policy - we could say "not apples", "not oranges", even "not verifiability" in fact (because it's not actually verifiability, it's sourceability) and we wouldn't be changing the meaning of the policy, because what matters is what the condition is, not what it isn't.--Kotniski (talk) 13:57, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Nuunjiin, your paragraph, when parsed, shows the problem very well. You are saying that we do not aim at truth simply, but at a certain type of truth, truth which can be verified as opposed to truth which can not. But verifiable truth is a type of truth. So to say we do not at at truth at all, is logically wrong. We aim at one type of truth and not an other ("personal opinions"). All this can be said in everyday English. The problem is the same one Jimbo mentioned today: "Not X" can be read two way, and the simplest and most obvious is "not X at all or in any way". This is definitely not how WP jargon tells us we should read it. So the policy is clearly being wrongly explained.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:12, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

"The threshold for winning a gold medal at the 100m sprint is average speed, not style". This doesn't mean that we don't want style at all or in any way: in many cases, the athlete with the smoothest, most appreciated style is also the fastest. But in the end, we cannot decide who has the best style ("de gustibus..."), but we can decide who is the fastest. Each analogy is imperfect, of course, but I don't see how "not style" can be misunderstood here, and similarly, I don't see how the current policy wording can be misunderstood. Fram (talk) 14:21, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Bad metaphor I think. Speed and style are different in kind, not two different sub-types of one thing. It is more like saying, that speed is NOT the aim of the 100m, because MAXIMUM speed is not the aim, only average speed. Does that make it clear? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:50, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I mean, you're not adding anything to that statement by saying "not style" - so why not remove the possibility of misunderstanding by leaving it out? Again, you could equally well say "not apples".--Kotniski (talk) 15:08, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

But many sports are decided partly or completely on style (from ski jumping to synchronous swimming), while none are decided by "apples". Similarly, many scientific works are defined by their search for the truth: these are primary and secondary sources. Tertiary sources, however, are not searching anything, they are compiling: the "not truth" makes an easy and clear distinction with other non-fiction sources, just like the "not style" makes an easy and clear (and relevant) distinction with other sports. Verifiability and truth are not subtypes of one thing any more or any less than speed and style are for deciding who wins a sports event. It is verifiable who were the parents, grandparents, and so on of many notable people, as their genealogies have been noted in primary sources and unearthed in secondary sources. However, 1 out of 10 persons supposedly has in reality a different biological father than his "registered" father. We are not able to list those "true" fathers, we only know who was the "official" father. It's verifiable, even if in a significant number of cases it isn't true. Fram (talk) 19:15, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I think I have already covered this below in the reply to Nuujinn and here.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I would also point out that judging the reliability of sources is just as much a subjective activity as judging what's true. I would suggest that the reason we are concerned with using reliable sources is exactly that we think that those sources are the ones whose statements are most likely to be true. So emphasizing "not truth" is as if to de-emphasize the reliability of sources.--Kotniski (talk) 14:05, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Did I mean "Verifiability, not truth" is the "[...]clearest wording of policy on WP"? Yes, that it my opinion, but I have a background in philosophy of language and literary theory. And I'm more afraid of the truth seekers in the fringe areas, the nationalists, the ethnic POV pushers than editors that misunderstand the intent of the policy. Truth and Verifiability are not sub-types of one another, and the only way I can see that we can know the truth in general is to verify a statement in reliable sources. People often do not really judge what's true, they believe in the truth, and it's easier to argue about what can be verified and what sources are more reliable than it is to argue about what's true and not true. Personally, I think it's better/easier/clearer to state that we are not about truth. Yes, we engage in subjective actions, but the policies must necessarily guide how we engage in those subjective actions, and I simply fail to see any advantage in striving for truth, when verifying and accurately representing what reliable sources say is how we'd do that, and the only other ways I can see to strive for truth would be to rely on personal knowledge or engage in OR, which we definitely do not want to do. And when we disagree about what sources are reliable, we shouldn't be doing that on the basis of which ones are more likely to be true, but whether those source have a reputation for checking the facts or are vetted by experts in the field--we are always in one way or another relying on the expertise of others. So, in short, I don't see the problem with reading not truth the "wrong" way, because mechanically, I do not think it makes a difference in how we do things here. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The logic. "Truth and Verifiability are not sub-types of one another". That is correct, but aiming at one is one indirect way of aiming at the other. And there are other indirect ways of aiming at the other. The same way, aiming at having the highest average speed is not the same as aiming at the highest maximum speed. Both might be considered as possible strategies to achieve a third thing: crossing the line first.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Exactly my point--to aim for truth as a practical matter, we have to go for verifiability anyway, and I think telling people to aim directly at verifiability and not at truth at all gets us to (the only practical definition of) truth we have faster by avoiding the "but I know it's true discussions" that crop up enough as it is. I like the notion of cut to the chase, and avoid those discussions.

Think about it this way, pretty much everyone here in these discussions agrees fairly well about how we mean "not truth", even if they do not like the phrase being used in the policy. So I don't think it's all that hard to explain, although I suppose we could do a better job of it. I can't recall having much trouble explaining it to new editors myself, so I'm still not seeing that there's much problem with it in practice. --Nuujinn (talk) 19:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

(not really important, but having the highest average speed = crossing the line first, no?) Fram (talk) 20:07, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Unless you swerve. Or start ahead of the gun ;) --Kotniski (talk) 07:15, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Nuunjinn. Your response shows a lot of common ground, which helps define where the remaining differences are. I am sure we all spend a lot of time explaining WP:V to newbies, and not so newbies. You say you can't recall having much trouble with it, but I definitely find many people have problems getting a practical understanding of it. Anyway, as Jimbo pointed out it is not just the newbies who stick around to talk about it we should worry about, but also the ones who leave, and also the readers who get the wrong impression.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:35, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I know that Jimbo said that, but seriously, how many readers ever read WP:V? Pages like WP:V, or actually every behind-the-scenes page, are intended for editors, and will only be read by editors and the occasional would-be editor. Readers really shouldn't be a factor into this discussion. Fram (talk) 06:58, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I dunno, this is advertised as a "key policy page" - I think many members of the general public, interested in what's behind Wikipeida, must land here on occasion, even if they have no intention of editing. Which is another reason, for me, why we should try to do a good and cogent job of expressing our key philosophy, and not be satisfied with a phrase that's been found to work reasonably well as a baseball bat.--Kotniski (talk) 07:10, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Simple interim solution to the first sentence problem

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

The deleted words at the very least don't add anything, do they? so we lose nothing by leaving them out. And it's surely reliable source that are the key words in all of this, so that seems to be where the bolding should be.--Kotniski (talk) 15:20, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I think "readers can check that" is needed in order to avoid saying that everything in Wikipedia needs a footnote. Citations are not needed for everything in practice but in principle it should be possible. Otherwise I think it would be an improvement, but it is close to proposals under discussion?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 15:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Andrew, I don't see how it implies that everything in Wikipedia needs a footnote. Since you are usually on the mark with your comments, there apparently was something in it that gave you that impression. Could you explain what it was? Here's the sentence with the lined out parts removed.

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is whether material has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."

--Bob K31416 (talk) 16:44, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Bob, well, I think I am right, but if this connects to another well-discussed issue of this sentence which is that it calls verifiability "the" threshold, implying "the only". I think having the verb "can" helps show that the point is that the reader can do it if he or she thinks it necessary. You are right that it is not logically needed. I am seeing something between the lines.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 06:31, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I think a synthesis of the above two is pretty close to the mark. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 15:59, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, "the threshold" is another problem with this sentence, but I don't think that can be solved just by leaving redundant words out, which was the aim of this (interim) proposal. I'm not too fussed about "readers can check", but I think it doesn't belong in this first sentence, as it might imply to some that it's important for sources to be readily available (online, even).--Kotniski (talk) 07:04, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

sub-page consensus diff

SlimVirgin or Unscintillating or any editor, can you place a diff here or in the sub-page notification box at the top of this page about where consensus was theoretically reached for putting all 'first sentence' discussion into a sub-page? -- Avanu (talk) 03:24, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I second that request. My eyes are glazing over trying to stay abreast of this topic on four different pages. Regards, Peter S Strempel | Talk 11:42, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think there was one, and certainly no consensus to exclude it from this page. But we mostly voluntarily took it there. Myself after the attempted nasty strong-arm tactics regarding that ended. So for the sake of centralized discussion, my request is: could y'all voluntarily keep it at the sub page? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 14:29, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

But as is shown by the above thread, discussion of other fundamental issues regarding this policy tends to lead back round to the issue of the first sentence anyway. Unless we're to have a dedicated subpage for all discussion of this policy (what would be the point of that?), I don't think it's going to be possible to keep that issue off this page except by force.--Kotniski (talk) 15:13, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how to answer that. I was just going with the flow. When people are nice I'm such a pushover. :-) North8000 (talk) 15:40, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I too disliked the idea of creating a sub-page. But there comes a time when you just have to say... "Oh well, what's done is done - it's too late to complain about it now"... and then get on with resolving the issues rather than focusing on how or where we resolve the issues. Whether it was created by consensus, or not... The sub-page now exists. More to the point, it actually seems to be helping us work towards compromise and consensus on the issues. That, in itself, is a good thing and worth continuing. I suggest that we stop worrying about whether the initial creation of the sub-page had consensus or not, and continue to work towards finding a compromise that everyone (or mostly everyone) can live with. Blueboar (talk) 13:56, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely certain you have consensus on a lot of these things now. The conversation is far too fragmented and its hard to say whether people are in agreement or if minor/major groups are in agreement. In a couple of these conversations, I've seen people in 100% agreement, which seems odd since there wasn't agreement before, but makes sense if a lot of people aren't following all the subpages and polls and so on. I think if there wasn't consensus before, then we need to move things back together and wait until there is consensus. I, for one, am having a deuce of a time trying to read all these polls and suggestions and conversations and then pull together a clear picture of who is in favor of what. What I am seeing is that a lot of people are willing to share common opinions, but in the end, unless it is approved HERE on this page, I don't see it as consensus for the policy page. -- Avanu (talk) 22:33, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

While the use of a subpage for focused discussion may be a good idea, I find that the cut-paste moving of established threads from WT:V to a focused subpage has been disruptive. I think we should agree here and now that this practice of refactoring between different talk pages should stop. Direct a new commenter to a focused page by all means, but any comment or question made at WT:V should stay at WT:V until archived into the regular archives. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:00, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

That I agree with entirely. As part of pointing to the subpage, we can request that the person posting a comment or question refactor his/her comments himself/herself... but we should not take it upon ourselves to move comments to another page without the poster's OK. Blueboar (talk) 12:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Agree, except with the writer's permission. North8000 (talk) 12:19, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Concur, to refactor others' comments without permission is generally unhelpful. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:07, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this sort of thing can be the right thing to do (I remember occasions at WT:MOSNUM when certain very specific topics - date linking, or whether to use "kibibytes" - flooded the talk page in an out-of-hand way), and it's not always realistic to ask everyone's permission before moving a thread to somewhere more appropriate; but I think in this case, where the topic in question was the very premise on which this whole policy is apparently based, it might not have been a great idea (though people say that some progress is being made on the subpage, so maybe it was OK after all). --Kotniski (talk) 16:57, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

wp:aboutself

Item 2 of WP:ABOUTSELF needs clarity. It doesnt specify exactly what involvement of the third party can and cannot be. Maybe "it does not involve claims about third parties" should be changed to something like: "it does not involve claims about third parties. But it can be about what the blogger's opinions are on something the blogger has done that involves third parties." Or just clarify what involvement exactly means?

Let me give you an example to clarify: In boobquake, Jennifer McCreight's blog is used as a source. But that source involves a third party (i.e. Kazem Sedighi). So (the way it's currently written), we cant use that source for that article.

Please revise that statement, and spare us the headaches of edit wars.--Nightryder84 (talk) 21:59, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Department of unintended consequences: I looked at that page and the associated BLP, and my reaction is that we don't need to make it easier for you to cite a blog, but we may well be looking at an AfD or two. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

AFD wont solve anything, only erase the symptom and postpone the issue. Ive already witnessed cases of edit wars because of this very problem (vagueness of "involvement" of third party). The way item 2 is currently written, one can justifiably go around erasing all blog sources on WP that mention the blogger's opinions about any "third party".--Nightryder84 (talk) 22:46, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, technically, you should only do that if you believe such a change would improve Wikipedia, and no one should do it if s/he has reason to believe that a proper reliable source could be produced. We care about whether sources exist, not just whether the sources have been typed into the article.

But that is actually the goal: we do not want blogs or other self-published sources used to talk about other people, even if the "talking about" is as benign as "Joe Film and I, Sally Celebrity, will be appearing in the upcoming movie, When Joe met Sally". We have two purposes here: One is to reduce libel, and the other is to reduce trivia. If something is so incredibly unimportant that not one proper reliable source has mentioned it, then we don't really need to include it either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:BRRD by Avanu regarding a section header

(Would an uninvolved editor please collapse this? I'm not sure what Unscintillating is so upset about, but there's probably a better forum than here for it. Thanks, Avanu (talk) 03:53, 4 September 2011 (UTC))

Avanu, the essay is called WP:BRD not WP:BRRD, do you understand?  Unscintillating (talk) 21:16, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

If this is about me reverting your latest attempt at refactoring the page, then you can save the lecture. The Talk page is here for editors to collaborate, not for you to re-order, re-factor, move, create sub-pages and the like. My edit summary to you was clear. While I believe you are editing with good intentions, it is tiresome to try and follow the web of your refactoring of things, so please just stop, OK? -- Avanu (talk) 21:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

What I get is that Avanu is incapable of discussing his/her role in WP:BRRD, and refuses to revert himself/herself.  Unscintillating (talk) 22:41, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't revert anything except you changing someone else's wording, if I'm mistaken and this is about something else, let me know. But you keep going through the page making fairly aggressive edits of other people's stuff, all I did was set it back. -- Avanu (talk) 22:58, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the word "restore" means something.  Avanu remains focused on escalating unrelated issues, and has no actual objections to any of the edit, including the part of the edit that was refactoring.  Since Kotniski's original refactoring had a reasonable point, there is nothing left here but to revert Avanu.  Unscintillating (talk) 23:37, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem has been that you've been so quick to move or refactor other's comments and reluctant to get consensus for it that I reverted you mostly on the principle of simply doing things right. I have nothing personal against you, but I'd like to see more cooperation in these things and less mass bravado. I think boldness is a useful and admirable trait in Wikipedia, but please try to make sure you have consensus also. -- Avanu (talk) 01:32, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

An open admission to a WP:POINT revert is not an example of "doing things right".  Unscintillating (talk) 02:05, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

It wasn't done to be pointy. You refactored someone else's edits, I reverted it because I figured you were just being pushy again. Again, as I said above, please correct me if I'm mistaken. But keep in mind, I wouldn't have thought this without your recent actions informing my decision. -- Avanu (talk) 02:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, but attacking newbies makes for a small fish fry.  Avanu should have found a way out when it became clear that Avanu had made a misguided revert of a constructive edit, as this section is not a platform for making accusations against any convenient target, for the purpose of self-aggrandizement.  Unscintillating (talk) 03:26, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no idea what your point is now. Are you the "newbie" or is someone else? I think you are making this entire thing into something it's not. You're the guy who has been refactoring a bunch of stuff, if your recent change *has* to happen, make the change I guess, but you're going to have to be more clear on whatever the point is here. -- Avanu (talk) 03:50, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

WP:TROUT (for both of you (and without even trying to figure out w/o diffs what the heck you're talking about.)) Crazynas ^t 01:54, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Here are the diffs, as requested:

• Unscintillating creates header

• Kotniski changes the title

• Unscintillating restores header, moves Kotniski header down two paragraphs

• Avanu reverts, uses discussion for escalation

Unscintillating (talk) 13:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

OK, so looking at that, you create a thing talking about postponing discussion, the next day, Kotniski changes the title because the thread has taken a different turn, then two days later, you decide to 'fix it' and move things around. So unless I was carefully following all these diffs, how am I supposed to know this is you 'fixing' versus you doing what you did the other day, when you ripped every 'first sentence' thread out of the main Talk page, moved the contents to several different pages and then 'stood guard' to make sure no one reverted all your changes, which should have had consensus, but didn't?

My impression of your edit was that you were just doing 'more of the same', and it gets old really fast. Normally I wouldn't have even worried about someone doing what you did, except in your specific case, you have a recent history of doing massive changes without consensus. My apologies for misinterpreting your action. I still fail to see how this is BRRD, since I only reverted once, but I'm guessing it's just frustration talking. Regardless, as I said in my initial reply, please try to get consensus if you're going to do a lot of massive changes. -- Avanu (talk) 17:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You thought you saw the opportunity to make a statement, and you made a revert.  Your ongoing attempts at escalation do not merit any response.  Unscintillating (talk) 20:40, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I didn't make a big issue of it. You did. I don't know what your point is, but I asked above to close this several comments ago. As long as you don't edit in an overly aggressive fashion, I'm sure things won't be a problem. If it becomes necessary, I'll do whatever is needed to keep any of us in line. -- Avanu (talk) 20:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Example which tests the rule

The article BrowserChoice.eu has the line In August 2010, Microsoft removed GreenBrowser and Sleipnir from the choices, replacing them with Lunascape and SRWare Iron. The original article dealt with a notable event with reliable sources. There was later a minor unannounced change which made the article no longer accurate in terms of describing the current position, so the article was changed. However there only seem to be three sources for documenting when the change took place: two blogs [9] and [10] from the new browsers on 25 and 26 August 2010, and Wikipedia itself where another issue meant we could date the change to the period 19-26 August 2010 as we had a screenshot of the position on the earlier date. None of these meet the test of reliable sources, but the statement is clearly verifiable.--Rumping (talk) 01:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I would think the website itself would be a reliable (primary) source for the browsers they list on the website. Blueboar (talk) 01:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

But it is not a reliable source for when the change was made. As for what the change was, that seems to be (in Wikipedia policy terms) original research, since only by knowing what it was and what it is can we deduce the change. There is no external source (reliable or not) stating which choices were removed even if it is obvious they are not there now.--Rumping (talk) 11:11, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, if past versions are stored at something like internetarchive.com, then we could say something like: "Prior to August 1010 BrowserChoice included GreenBrowser and Sleipnir <cite to July version of page using wayback>. In the current version these have been replaced by Lunascape and SRWare Iron <cite current version of page>"

Alternatively, we could just cut the line entirely. Focus the article on the browsers that are currently listed and don't bother to mention those that used to be listed and were removed (does the article really need to talk about the past?) Blueboar (talk) 13:06, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

SPS on local topics

Whilst generally agreeing with the text at WP:SPS, there are cases where a SPS may be the only one available. For instance, topics of very local interest, such as an individual building. Unless the building is of at least regional importance, then a major publisher is unlikely to publish a book. A local historian however, may research the history of the building and produce a booklet himself. If the booklet shows evidence of such research, then it should be considered reliable enough to use as a source. Therefore I propose that SPS be added to with an exception for these typse of sources. Mjroots (talk) 06:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I've been meaning to throw together a chart which describes the different sorts of sources we have. While there's a lot of folks who think in Boolean "reliable" vs. "not reliable", in fact every source is an amalgam of at least four traits: Reputation for accuracy, Independence, Primacy, and Depth--which could potentially give us 16 sorts of sources, which have varying contributions to both verifiability and notability. Jclemens (talk) 06:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You could also just call it editorial judgement and leave it at that ;). On a more serious note, although the other critera make sense to me, I'm confused about 'primacy' is that distinguishing primary, secondary and tertiary sources? Crazynas ^t 06:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I could, but I raised this as I've got a GA candidate where I can see that the reviewer might question the source as being a SPS. I'm satisfied myself that the source is reliable, based on what is stated in the source as to research carried out. There is also another SPS dating from 1766, which can be argued as being reliable due to the fact that many books of that time were published by their authors. Mjroots (talk) 09:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Right. While normally secondary sources are independent (and primary sources are not), there are such things as non-independent secondary sources--for example, DVD commentary. Then, we have independent primary sources, such as licensed sourcebooks, movie tie in novels, or games based on a fictional franchise. Jclemens (talk) 07:03, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

If an SPS is the only source to discuss the building (or other topic) then the problem is not WP:V. The problem is WP:Notability - an SPS is not enough to demonstrate that the building (or other topic) should be considered notable enough for its own article. Blueboar (talk) 13:19, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Notability is not a problem here, the building is Grade I listed, so is de facto notable. There are plenty of other sources, but the source I have in mind has been useful to flesh the article out with. Mjroots (talk) 13:25, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Then use the other sources to establish notability, and the SPS to do the "fleshing out". We don't ban the use of SPS ... we just limit their use. What you describe seems to be within the limits. Blueboar (talk) 13:31, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I was involved in another article (on a specialized area) where it was generally acknowledged that a SPS (a book) is not only very reliable, but also the best / highest quality source in the world. North8000 (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Blueboar, the article is linked in my post of 09:18. Take a look at it and see what you think. The SPSs are Ward, 2006 and Burr, 1766. Mjroots (talk) 14:47, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't see a problem. I don't know enough about the topic to comment on specifics, but it looks like the sources are being used appropriately to support minor, non-controversial facts. I also don't see anyone contesting or challenging the information or sources. So, unless someone does challenge them... I would say the article is fine. Blueboar (talk) 14:59, 4 September 2011 (UTC)