Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

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[edit] Unsourced on talk pages

I don't understand this revert - surely it's the wording as it stands that would (if read in a particularly literal way) ban all unsourced material on talk pages. The aim of my change was indeed to make it clearer that it's only potentially defamatory unsourced material that's not allowed on talk pages, this being the obvious intended meaning of the sentence (but it should be worded in such a way that it's clear that the conditional "if" clause applies to the whole sentence, including the bit about talk pages).--Kotniski (talk) 17:23, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

Talk pages are for discussion! Why would you want to ban when someone says "I have heard about person X that..." or "I have heard about person X that ... but don't know whether it is true or not." There is a difference when it comes to defamatory statements, which would fall under vandalism and do get reverted. No reason for adding this. Nageh (talk) 17:46, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
Or the same about organizations. North8000 (talk) 18:17, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
The point of that sentence is that BLP-problematic material shouldn't be moved from the article to the talk page—which is why it said that. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:55, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes (or at least it attempted to say that; I tried to make it clearer that that was what it was saying). The point is that, with most problematic material that's removed from articles, it's sometimes a good idea to move it to the talk page to allow the removal and possible reinsertion to be discussed. However, unsourced defamatory material is different in two ways - (a) it shouldn't be allowed to remain on the article even temporarily; (b) it shouldn't be moved to the talk page either (the talk page is still a public forum and defamation is equally wrong there). So can someone come up with a neat way of saying all that in just one sentence? The problem with the current sentence, "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, and do not move it to the talk page", is that it's not clear on casual reading that the second part of the sentence is included within the scope of the conditional; i.e. some people will naturally read this as saying that "do not move it to the talk page" applies to all "unsourced or poorly sourced material". We have to get used (I think this is another general problem with these policy pages) to ensuring that what we write makes sense even to people who don't know in advance what it's trying to say.--Kotniski (talk) 08:02, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

If you don't like my previous effort (or perhaps you do, now it's been explained), how about "In the case of unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, do not leave it in the article (and do not move it to the talk page either)." --Kotniski (talk) 08:08, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Hm, I do not see why the current text needs rewording. If a statement is not potentially defamatory it may be left in the article according to the current wording, so why wouldn't you be allowed to move it to the talk page for discussion? Nageh (talk) 08:45, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
No reason at all, of course; but the current sentence (if read in a particular, quite reasonable, way) implies that there is some reason. In other words, someone reading that sentence on its own might reasonably conclude that moving unsourced material (defamatory or otherwise) to the talk page is something we don't do, full stop, which is certainly not what we actually mean.--Kotniski (talk) 08:58, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
In fact, further down the policy, I see exactly the same point made in these words: Unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material about living persons should be removed immediately and not tagged or moved to the talk page. This seems an entirely problem-free and neater way of saying it - can we use exactly that phrasing in the Burden of Evidence section too?--Kotniski (talk) 09:03, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations must be removed immediately, and not be tagged or moved to the talk page either. Adds mention of organizations and avoids the ambiguity of the word "should". Nageh (talk) 09:50, 6 March 2011 (UTC)
Sounds good; any objections? And should we add mention of "organizations" the second time the sentence appears, as well? (That's in the WP:V#Tagging a sentence, section, or article section.) Actually, is this concern for the reputations of organizations actually engrained in our practice? And if so, is it only extant organizations (like it's only living persons)? I see there's a passage at WP:BLP#Legal persons and groups which is more equivocal on the issue than we are here.--Kotniski (talk) 11:23, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I have a very strong objection to this. As was said above, talk pages are for discussion, and this proposed change will make it more difficult to use them responsibly for that purpose. Talk pages are not "publications" in the sense our articles are, they're discussions, and as long as no one is being libeled, we absolutely have to have the right to talk freely about a subject. For example, your changes would preclude posts like,
  • "I recall seeing a report some time ago that politician A" or "political party B" had been accused by "political party C" of "favoring the reinstatement of military conscription". ( Or fill in the blank with some very unpopular policy or action. ) I haven't been able to find that report, or other similar ones. Can anyone help me find sources that speak to this, to either prove or disprove it?"
Anything added to a talk page in bad faith, or that's just malicious gossip already gets removed from talk pages pretty quickly, and that's as it should be. But trying to put a gag on the free, good-faith exchange of ideas and information due to BLP concerns ( and especially trying to extend BLP protections to corporations or organizations or political parties ) is just a huge overreaction, in my opinion.
What next, are people going to try to prohibit discussion of controversial or poorly sourced allegations at AN/I, too? I'm aware of at least one major discussion that took place there, concerning a billionaire that a news organization alleged had committed incest with his adult daughter. That discussion couldn't have taken place under this new proposal because the allegations came almost exclusively from a single news organization. ( Some of that admittedly very unpleasant discussion took place on the target article's talk page, too, and it was perfectly proper, imo, for that to occur there. )
If you read on in the linked section, you'll see, btw, that I argued very strongly against having an article about the person at all, but it was a discussion we absolutely needed to have. Editorial process is not the same thing as editorial presentation, and while we owe it to our subjects, whether people or organizations, to responsibly exercise good judgment in what we present, we should not try to put a muzzle on our fellow editors as they work with one another in the editorial process. At some point you just need to stop trying to act as policeman-before-the-fact, and trust to the aggregate responsibility and judgment of the people who created and are creating this encyclopedia.  – OhioStandard (talk) 13:47, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
I think we must be at cross-purposes here. I'm not proposing that the policy be changed, just clarified. The sentence as it stands currently already says that [unsourced defamatory] material must not be moved to the talk page. It seems that you don't like that idea - but I don't see how that leads you to oppose the change of wording, which is supposed just to clarify that the prohibition applies to defamatory material and not all unsourced material. If you want to argue for the removal or loosening of this prohibition, then go ahead, but I don't see how the proposed rewording can be accused of introducing any such prohibition. Or are you just talking about the question of whether to include "or organizations"? (On that last point, I'm far from sure myself.)--Kotniski (talk) 14:37, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
You're right that I didn't read carefully enough; sorry for that. You're also right in your speculation that most of my negative reaction has to do with Nageh's wish to add "organizations"; I sort of took that and ran with it. I realize that the previously-existing version of the policy included organizations, in contravention of the policy you ( Kotniski ) cited, viz. WP:BLP#Legal persons and groups. I don't think this verifiability issue on talk pages rightly applies to organizations or corporations at all.
To think of just the first example that comes to mind, I've seen editors in the never-ending battle over Israel/Palestine issues here insist that an allegation of one side against the other is improperly sourced because the reports come only from "Palestinian/Arab sources" or only "Israeli/Jewish sources", as the case may be. Whether such an allegation is rightly allowable in an article is certainly debatable, but to exclude discussion of an allegation that's so sourced from talk pages? That would be a really bad idea, imo.
I actually think we'd do better to distinguish much more clearly between individuals and organizations, and to take our cue re organizations from the WP:BLP#Legal persons and groups policy cited by Kotniski, above. Or perhaps we should just not mention organizations at all, and let the balance of the policy address any issues that come up with respect to them, to organizations?  – OhioStandard (talk) 16:53, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Hey, what about this, that puts the "If" up front?
  • It has always been good practice to make reasonable efforts to find sources yourself that support such material, and cite them. If unsourced or poorly-sourced material that damages the reputation of a living person occurs in an article, however, it should be removed from the article, to comply with our policy on biographies of living persons, rather than being tagged or being moved to the talk page.
Any better? But don't let's leave off discussion re organizations either, okay?  – OhioStandard (talk) 17:12, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
About the phrasing, I ever so slightly prefer Nageh's, but not enough to argue long about it. But about the "organizations", yes, on reflection it's probably better to leave it out, or perhaps put in brackets "(and sometimes organizations, as discussed at...)" with a link to that section of the BLP policy. And do the same at the other place in this policy where the same exhortation appears. --Kotniski (talk) 17:34, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
@OhioStandard: It was not my wish to add organizations; I was merely trying to match what the currently policy is saying.
In fact, I am far from certain that prohibiting statements that might possibly damage the reputation of either individuals or organizations on talk pages is a good idea at all. The reason is that there may be always someone who comes up saying that some unsourced statement might be damaging. Maybe this is an improvement: "Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed immediately and not be tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either."
Nageh (talk) 18:15, 7 March 2011 (UTC)
Looks fine to me - though "and not be tagged" is probably redundant, and we probably should add a link to WP:BLP somewhere and somehow.--Kotniski (talk) 10:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for the clarification, Nageh; sorry I misunderstood your motive. I agree with you that there will always be editors who'll try to use policy to prohibit any negative information from appearing either in articles or on talk pages: Editors who will say, "That might damage the reputation of ..." my favorite politician, or whoever. That's why I proposed "material that damages the reputation", as being a somewhat higher hurdle to clear than "that might damage the reputation".
I doubt there are many editors who would be quicker to remove inappropriately-sourced material that injures someone's reputation than I would, but I also don't want to provide ammunition for the editors who try to use BLP and other policies (like this one) as support to remove negative information when the candid basis of their objection is simply WP:IDONTLIKEIT. I'm sorry to say that we do have more than a few editors who will do that, exactly, whenever they possibly can, re their favorite public figures.
I suspect we probably all want pretty much the same things (1) No unsourced or poorly-sourced statements in any article that could damage a living person's reputation, (2) Considerable freedom to discuss content and possible content as part of the editorial process on talk pages, while likewise being as responsible as possible re BLP concerns, and, perhaps more controversially (?), (3) To avoid gratuitously extending BLP policy to cover organizations. Can we get more input from other editors on this, too, please?  – OhioStandard (talk) 16:07, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
I basically agree with the sentiments being expressed. And I agree with the three goals Ohio just listed (although, personally I do think we currently give a bit too much allowance to defamatory statements against organizations, and I would like to see that curtailed somewhat ... yet, I fully understand the other side of the coin. A line needs to be drawn, but it is very difficult to decide where to draw the line). Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 8 March 2011 (UTC)
It may also help to consider the context within a defamatory statement might arise on discussion pages. For instance does it arises in a ongoing discussion potentially heated or was it just was it just drop on otherwise inactive discussion page by somebody passing by. In the former case I'd rather wait for the discussion to settle and archive the complete discussion afterwards, but in the latter case I wouldn't mind if the next editors simply removed it, when he considered it to be pointless slander.--Kmhkmh (talk) 17:29, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

So as to resolving this, is the wording "Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed immediately, and not tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either." OK with everyone? )(This is in the "burden of evidence" section, in place of "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, and do not move it to the talk page.")--Kotniski (talk) 12:57, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

It's better the way it is, and consistent with BLP, which is important: "Do not leave unsourced or poorly sourced material in an article if it might damage the reputation of living persons or organizations, and do not move it to the talk page." SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 13:00, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I'm not seeing anything to that effect at WP:BLP - in fact BLP is explicitly very restrained in giving protection to organizations.--Kotniski (talk) 13:16, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
This is restrained too, but it mentions them. As you saw from the comments above, your proposal didn't gain consensus. It's okay to try to engage people again, to try to persuade them again, but I wish you'd stop simply ignoring objections. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 13:22, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Which objections am I ignoring? This is not my proposal, but Nageh's (modulo a very minor tweak of wording), and as far as I can see everyone was perfectly happy with it, and indeed considered it a clear improvement. Once we've got agreement on something, it seems silly not to implement it. But if there are actual objections, then please make them - that's why I re-opened the discussion. Perhaps we can work in some mention of organizations if you think it's important? But the current wording puts organizations on a level with persons, which BLP explicitly doesn't (and which this very policy, when it raises the matter further down, fails to do).--Kotniski (talk) 14:34, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that organizations should be included in the talk-page ban. If someone writes, "The CIA sold cocaine to Americans to get money to buy weapons for foreign dictators", then we ought to be able to put that on the talk page with an explanation about the need for a decent source. I'm not sure how else you would handle it. "Some organization, which I'm not allowed to name, was accused in the article of doing something nefarious, so we need a source, which none of you will supply, because none of you know what I'm talking about, unless you want to crawl through the article history"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 15 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, that seems to be the unanimous view so far (it also seems to accord with BLP and with the other instance of this instruction in this policy). Is anyone actually saying we should mention organizations here?--Kotniski (talk) 11:08, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes? No? Can we do this change now?--Kotniski (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
The discussion is too long to find the exact text of the proposed change. The original change is not acceptable because, among other reasons, while discussing the quality of sources on the talk page, one would not be able to make any negative comments about the quality of a source if the author is alive or the publisher is still in business (unless the negative comment is taken from a published review in a reliable source). Jc3s5h (talk) 10:58, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) That's perhaps a good point, but I don't see what it has to do with this change. The change being proposed is from

to:

The effect is to remove the mention of organizations, and avoid the ambiguous grammatical construction ("X if Y, and Z"). Objections? --Kotniski (talk) 11:24, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

I would not object to (change underlined):
  • "Unsourced or poorly sourced material , in an article, that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed immediately, and not tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either."
I realize the Verifiability policy only applies to article space, but policy statements are often taken out of context so I would like to re-emphasize it doesn't apply to talk pages. Jc3s5h (talk) 11:49, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
That's fine by me.--Kotniski (talk) 12:17, 17 March 2011 (UTC)
Though perhaps it would read better if it said "Unsourced or poorly sourced material that might damage the reputation of living persons must be removed from articles immediately, and not tagged. Unsourced and potentially defamatory statements should not be moved to the talk page either." (Note also the link to BLP.) Acceptable?--Kotniski (talk) 12:55, 19 March 2011 (UTC)
Seems not, so I'm going to put this in.--Kotniski (talk) 09:13, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Still this is being reverted with no explanation - well, it's being claimed that it would be implying that it's OK to defame organizations, but consensus above (and the BLP policy) imply clearly that we don't consider defamation of organizations to be an issue - at least, not on a par with defamation of living persons. Also where this same advice appears in this policy further down, organizations are not mentioned - so it's quite bizarre to insist on giving different advice here. Slim (or anyone else who objects to this change), please can you join in the discussion and say what you actually think we should be saying and why, instead of unilaterally reverting a change that everyone else seems to support? --Kotniski (talk) 07:11, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

There were objections in this section, so it's not true that "everyone else" supports it. It isn't reasonable to keep asking people to repeat their posts, then making the edit anyway if they don't.
First, it makes no sense to change the active to passive voice, and add more words that have no function. And removing "organizations" is best done via an RfC for fresh eyes. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 01:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
But everyone so far agrees that we should remove "organizations" - are you now saying it should be kept in? If so, why? And why here and not in the other place? We don't need an RfC over a fairly minor matter if there are no dissenting arguments. (And which words do you think have no function? I don't care whether we use active or passive voice, but can you propose a wording using the active voice that avoids the "X if Y, and Z" ambiguity?)--Kotniski (talk) 11:14, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

No further response, so I've tried again with "Special considerations apply to unsourced or poorly sourced material that contravenes our policy on biographies of living persons – please remove such material immediately, and do not move defamatory material to the talk page either. This uses the active voice, avoids the ambiguous conditional, and defers to BLP on what material is actually involved (so we don't have to say here to what extent it includes organizations).--Kotniski (talk) 12:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Please don't keep removing this. It's not only defamatory material that's the problem, and "organizations" was added three years ago [1] after discussion, so you'll need a stronger consensus to remove it. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 09:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Much nonsense has been lying around these pages for years - that doesn't make it true. I don't think we can have a stronger consensus than we've got here. It's ridiculous that you keep undoing a change that everyone else agrees with and even you don't seem to be arguing against. Can you not see why this is perceived as pure page-owning behaviour?--Kotniski (talk) 09:59, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Whether it's nonsense in the view of some people, it has consensus if it's been in the policy for years. And I recall it was added after discussions in multiple places over a long period, with people often turning up to complain that organizations weren't being handled fairly. There's no consensus at all in this thread to remove it—please read it from the top to see the objections—so why not open an RfC to bring in fresh eyes?
My own view is that we should simply add a sentence linking to the BLP policy on groups so people can go there to read that more nuanced section. Nothing we do here can change the BLP policy anyway, so this is a bit of a pointless discussion. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Well exactly, which is why I put in place a wording that explicitly deferred to BLP. What you've done instead is to give people an Easter-egg link to that section of BLP, while still retaining the phrasing that misrepresents what BLP has to say on the matter. And you've restored the misleading conditional phrasing that was my original objection to this sentence. (And "it has consensus if it's been in the policy for years" is a patently nonsensical statement - we can see above that it doesn't have consensus, and moreover it contradicts BLP which has also been policy for years - indeed, it also contradicts another section of this policy - so your thesis can't possibly be true.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:24, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I've been looking for the discussion in 2008 where it was decided to add organizations, but I can't find it. I can remember it, but it may have taken place beforehand or on multiple pages. It was Philip Baird Shearer who added it, so perhaps you could ask him if he remembers where to find the discussion. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:25, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
All right, Philip Baird Shearer, do you remember where to find the discussion? (Though I find all this rather irrelevant, and a waste of time discussing - we both agree that BLP is the policy on this, and BLP makes it clear that organizations are not covered to the same extent as living persons, so we should just defer to BLP and be done with it.)--Kotniski (talk) 07:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Part of the problem here is that you have no institutional memory. The policies evolved as they did in response to people repeatedly asking for the same things on multiple pages over time. If you remove the results of that several-years-long process, we'll be back to rinse and repeat. That's why we have to take a conservative approach to changing the core policies, and seek wide consensus when we want to do it. Evolution, not revolution. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 08:12, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
If policies say different things, and there's consensus as to which one has it right, then we bring the contradictory ones into line. There's no "revolution" taking place there, it's just a normal part of the evolutionary process. We've wasted enough time discussing this minor matter; if you're claiming that organizations really do deserve the same protection as living persons, then please make your case (that really would be a revolution, since it would turn BLP upside-down); if not (and clearly no-one else is) then let's defer to BLP and be done with it.--Kotniski (talk) 08:20, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't know what's going on here, but a lot of your edits aren't improvements—sometimes all you're doing is adding extra words that say the same thing—yet you keep restoring them multiple times over objections. It's like pissing on a lamp post just because someone asked you not to, to be honest. I'm not talking about the organizations thing, but generally. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 08:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't know what you're talking about now. If you have some specific objection to something, please say what it is (in the appropriate thread) and we can look at the pros and cons.--Kotniski (talk) 08:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I believe you do know. The way you've been approaching this for the last few weeks feels like pointless male aggression—aggression for the sake of it, just because someone is opposing you. If I'm wrong about that, I apologize, but I hope you'll consider it in case there's some truth in it. All I can tell you is that it feels very unpleasant, and not at all constructive. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 08:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I really have absolutely no idea what inspires these accusations. I've been working cooperatively with others to try to improve these pages a bit; just as you usually do very well and effectively on other pages. --Kotniski (talk) 08:39, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
With all due respect SV I also find your tendency to insinuations like this a little remarkable. For better or worse, your posts on this talk page and your impact on the policy page itself are by far the most striking. I see no evidence for bad faith just because people are trying to improve Wikipedia. Look at all the discussion on this talk page by Kotniski, which appears to leave no room for hidden agendas. I realize you see yourself as protecting an important part of Wikipedia, but I think normally on a wiki the aim is to find a way to work with all others who have clear rationales aimed at constant improvement. You appear to think that this does not apply to policy pages, and that anyone who thinks otherwise must be bad or just wrong?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
SlimVirgin, To be productive you should comply with Kotniski's request, "If you have some specific objection to something, please say what it is (in the appropriate thread) and we can look at the pros and cons." Also, if you have some personal criticism of a specific editor, you should make it on that editor's talk page since making it on a policy talk page is disruptive. 75.47.156.100 (talk) 12:16, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I've opened a section at WP:ANI#WT:V. 75.47.156.100 (talk) 12:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Jargon in the first sentence. How about some standard English instead?

Over the years Wikipedia, like any culture, has acumulated its share of jargon. Some of it is natural, and some is unnecessary and legalistically obstructive to understanding. Nowhere is this problem demonstrated than the first sentence in the WP:V policy, where two standard English words are used in a way that is nonstandard, and which tends to invite wiki-wars among people who assume unconsciously that the words they have heard over and over, are meant in their normal senses. Here is the first sentence of WP:V:

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

This statement is quite deceptive, for it is full of jargon. In failing to define its terms completely and immediately, it sets up an odd dichotomy between "verfiability" (as we usually understand the word) and "truth." (as we usually understand the word). Iin the real world, where verifiable simply means provably-true, and provable is a loaded word, such a dichotomy exists between that which is true and provably true. In the real world, standards of provability are not those acceptable to Wikipedia, but that doesn't mean Wikipedia isn't trying. "Verifiability" is defined by Wikipedia in this opening sentence as consisting of two distinct parts: [1] Whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been "published" [at that point the "material" could be a flat-out mistake, lunatic idea, or a deliberate lie], and [2] That the publication occurs in a "reliable source." A "reliable source" is (in turn) defined lower down within the same policy, in the WP:V section on sources WP:SOURCES: "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

Now, "fact-checking" has to do with checking facts, which in turn are defined (see any dictionary) as statements that are TRUE. Likewise "reputation for accuracy" means "reputation for being true or close to true." Fact and accuracy are synonyms for truth and "truth-hood." (opposite of falsehood). Calling the idea of "truth" by another name (as well as putting synonyms like "fact" and "accuracy" farther down the policy page) unnecessarily obscures a simple meaning, and a simple goal. Wikipedia's goal is indeed truth. However, the very idea of that it is not, causes Wikipedia editors to go around cudgeling each other with the idea that "verifiablity," trumps "truth," as though they were using these words in their normal meanings, instead of their special "wiki-meanings."

So now, we require an exegesis. Let us find out what the first sentence of WP:V means in standard English, by getting rid of all jargon and wiki-meanings. We will unpack and rewrite the first sentence of WP:V in standard English, using the policy's own definitions for the wiki-words, as necessary. Ready? First, we replace "reliable" by "published, with reputation for fact-checking and accuracy," and then, we replace "fact-checking and accuracy" with "truth-checking and truthfullness." Here's what we get:

The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true.

That fixes puncutation and gets rid of the wiki-words and wiki-meanings in the last part. We are now in a position to get rid of the wiki-meanings in the first part, so that now ALL of the words are used in their normal standard English definitions:

The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true.

At this point, we have de-obscured the text, and with it, some of the problems. Wikipedia's own policies are actually all about "truth"- TRUTH is what reliability and fact-checking are about. When the policy says it is about verifiability and NOT truth, this is an obscurantist, for neither word is being used here as in standard English. In standard English, "verifiability" can mean many things, including what the reader can prove it to him or herself by checking by his/her own math, or by going to see for him or herself. Verification also has many possible meanings in the sciences and law, and standards differ from one discipline to another. The statement doesn't actually mean that Wikipedia is about "verifiability" as we all understand the word— it's about a particular documentary version of reality used by Wikipedia, which is narrower, not perfectly well-defined, and very much media-driven. For example, I might be a celebrity with a mole on my right hand. If the New York Times states it is on my left hand, then Wikipedia's use of the word "verifiability" departs from the standards of the English language. For here, Wikipedia doesn't mean the word in any way that has contact with either reality, or standard English usage. In such cases, I can't prove a thing to anybody who reads otherwise in their newspaper.

Likewise, when the WP:V policy states that the standard of Wikipedia inclusion is NOT "truth," it also does not use the term as it is usually understood. In this case, Wikipedia IS actually interested in truth as we normally understand the word "truth" when we speak of public truth, demonstrable truth, scientific truth, legal truth, or even journalistic truth. It simply isn't about personal truth or any other type of truth one could NOT use in a legal or science debate. It's not about your truth and my truth, unless some other "reputable" person or source has published it, and one can cite it, as in a debate or courtroom. Worse, the question of "reputation" of a publisher, is in the eyes of the beholder.

What this policy actually means to say, is that the threshold for Wikipedia inclusion is NOT what its writers think is true, but rather what some OTHER published writers, who have a "reputation" for telling truth, think is true, and have gotten somebody else to "publish" (whatever "publish" means these days). That seems to be a more narrow statement, but at least it is closer to what Wikipedia's policy actually means to say.

Alas, the problem of how a Wikipedia writer, independent of his or her own sense of "truthiness," is to identify these published truth-telling authors, and their truthy works and truthy reputations, is the rub. Some published writers are wrong, some ignorant, some are shills, and others are less than sane. This is the source of many an edit war, as an editor's personal idea of what is true, will naturally have heavy effects on their judgement of the truthfulness of available published sources. Must one include the writings of the confused, the ill-informed, the hacks and the crazies? But at least we're a bit closer to the root of the epistemological problem. First, one must lay out the policy in plain standard English.

(The above was written after a recent encounter with a few other editors of an article who had no idea what WP:V means, but it wasn't their fault. It was the WP:V policy's fault). SBHarris 01:23, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

For those interested in the mad scribblings of the editors who do not understand WP:V, the discussion in question is on Talk:Max Gerson. - SummerPhD (talk) 01:52, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
And there, you will find a mighty lame argument, in which one editor (not me) removes material about an alternative clinic's views on a conspiracy to poison its guru, under the guise that they are not "verifiable" (though they come from a film made by the woman who runs the program, the daughter of the guru, and this statement was sourced and cited). And then you will find the editor above, adding back material from literature from the very same quacks, on the idea that quacks indeed are a reliable source about what quacks think about their own quackery. Neither of these editors are me. However, everybody on that TALK page seems to be convinced that they know WP policy in this area, and have quoted WP:V to me several times, now, as though I needed some teaching. Okay. Yes, it prompted me to come here to find out if everybody who thinks they understand this policy, really understands this policy. What did I miss, please? I put my essay up above, regarding the first line of it. Now it's your turn, Wikipedians. Impress me. SBHarris 06:36, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I agree that this policy (and its cousins) are very poorly written in places, and from a logical point of view very poorly constructed. It's as if the people writing them didn't really want them to be understood. But try to improve them in the normal wiki way, and you come up against a kind of religious cult which practically worships the current wording of these pages as scripture, and will ensure that even the most reasoned changes (even those resulting from lengthy talk page discussion) get blindly reverted without rational explanation. Hence these most important parts of Wikipedia's documentation, which ought to be among the most clearly written, in fact end up among the most confusing (since the normal healthy processes by which we improve pages are not allowed to operate here).--Kotniski (talk) 10:07, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
We don't require third party sources for verifiability; we prefer them, and we need some of them for notability, but for verifiability, information may be taken from primary sources as well, with some caveats (not contentious, not unduly self-serving, ...). The rest of your changes don't really make the meaning of the nutshell any clearer, in my opinion, e.g. "published-source truthfulness" is much harder to decipher than "verifiability". We may of course improve the current text, but your proposal is a step in the wrong direction. Something like

The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true.

may be better, perhaps. Fram (talk) 10:28, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

If we're talking about this sentence, then: (a) not "the threshold" (there are various reasons we might or might not decide to include some statement in some article; this is just one of them); (b) not "that it has been published by" but "that it is supported by" or words to that effect; (c) not "not truth" or anything like that - we don't want sourced information that we know to be false. I would start something like this: "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles." --Kotniski (talk) 10:43, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Current SBH "un-packed" SBH "no jargon" Fram Kotniski
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true. The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth: that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by reliable third-party sources with a reputation for truth-checking and truthfulness, and NOT whether the editors think the material is true. The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is published-source truthfulness, not the editor's idea of truth: that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by reliable third-party sources who have a reputation for truth-checking and truth-telling, and NOT whether Wikipedia's editors merely personally think that the material is true. The threshold for inclusion of material in Wikipedia is that it has been published by reliable sources, not that it is the truth that is, whether Wikipedia's readers can check that material in Wikipedia has been published by sources where fact-checking and accuracy is generally expected, and not whether Wikipedia's editors personally think that the material is true. It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. This policy describes what kind of sources are considered reliable for which purposes, and how they can be used to support the inclusion of information in Wikipedia articles.

I've placed the three versions under discussion above for easier comparison. My own first comment about SBHarris' proposals is that I believe the aim of using normal English is a good one, and I agree that this policy is not always well understood, but (a) trying to avoid all internal jargon ("un packing") makes sentences longer, which obviously does not mean easier to understand. (b) the attempt at reducing jargon also does not really work for me. Is "published-source truthfulness" normal English? I do not think so. Fact is that Wikipedia has developed some new concepts which are useful for discussion about Wikipedia and hard to discuss without using terms for those concepts. This is the type of situation in which neologisms and jargons are sometimes justified. (And wikilinking does make our jargon a little easier to learn.) That does not mean we should not be constantly careful of jargon, and constantly looking for policy areas where people are misunderstanding things often.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:49, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think SBH's proposals achieve the stated aim (they look even more jargony than the original, and are not fully accurate in all situations). Can you add Fram's proposal - which is better (though still not as good as mine, of course ;) ) - to the table?--Kotniski (talk) 10:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, one thing I do not like about your proposal is that you remove one of the most "normal English" bits about "not whether [individual] editors think it is true". BTW, the word individual should logically be there because a consensus of editors is good enough also. I'll add Fram.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:04, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
How about simply removing the 'not truth' from the current version but leaving in everything else to produce
"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability; that is, whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true."
This expresses it well enough for me whilst upping verifiability and not confusing people by having not immediately preceding truth. Dmcq (talk) 11:09, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
It's an improvement, but still has the problems mentioned (and some others): this isn't the threshold (there are other factors too); it's not essential that all readers are able in practice to check something (so those words are a bit misleading); the material itself needn't have been published (in the way that many people will understand that phrase); and frankly, if editors don't think something's true, it shouldn't be going in. I would be happier if we stuck with Andrew's suggestion of saying individual editors.--Kotniski (talk) 11:29, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
And let's remember this isn't the whole policy, just the first sentence - it's not essential that we say everything here, just that we introduce the subject, say what the page is going to be about, and avoid saying anything contentious or misleading. (Which is what I've tried to do with my version - the contentious bit of course is what counts as "reliable", so I say straight away that this issue is going to be dealt with in detail.) --Kotniski (talk) 11:34, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps "published-source truthfulness" isn't very good, and "publication in a reliable source" is better. I just don't like the word "verifiability," as it means something different to Wikipedians than it does to everybody else, and it's especially bad to use a privately-defined term, up front in a policy. Define it specially much later, if you MUST use it. The resistance to using other words is that we'd have to rename this policy page- but so what?

Somebody has noted that not everything in WP really must be proven (by cite) to have been published in a reliable source, so long as the editors all agree with the material, and there is no contention. So it's theoretically provable-by-cite (if you could find a cite for an obvious thing). But trying to cram that whole concept into "wiki-verifiability" is also a bad idea. Better to just qualify the idea of "needed publication" right at the beginning. Jimmy Wales is wrong that obvious facts are easy to find cites for. Example: you can't find me any published source that says Charles Dickens' novel The Pickwick Papers was originally written by Dickens in English. However, we all believe it since it's obvious to any thinking adult who knows anything about Dickens, and you could add it to an article without a {{citation needed}}. Wikipedia takes "judicial notice" of certain non-controversial facts. SBHarris 19:00, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

But that kind of fact is verifiable (in the normal English sense of the word) just by looking at the original text of the novel and observing that it's written in English. I don't think the WP use of the term "verifiability" really differs all that much from the normal English use of the term - especially if we write "from reliable sources" after it, as I propose. I see several problems with the first sentence of this policy (as enumerated above), and would be happy to hear anyone's response to those, but I don't honestly think that a jargonny use of "verifiability" is one of them.--Kotniski (talk) 07:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, to me it seems that your concern with the logic of the word "threshold" could also be addressed by saying that maybe verifiability should not be equated quite so simply to being able to be verified in the one way specific way of looking up published sources. If you do not make this over-simple equation of V and RS then cases like the one SBHarris mentions are resolved. For example a consensus that something is commonly known is a kind of verification which does not involve citing reliable publications, and then you can logically say that verification, in this broader sense, is the threshold. Maybe my comment helps explain how others are seeing the problem you point to. This is for example the reason I find the wording about it not just being an editor's personal opinion so important.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes but then you end up with a sentence that says nothing, except that the standard for inclusion in Wikipedia articles is something that we have decided to call "verifiability".--Kotniski (talk) 09:06, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Actually there are loads of sources saying Dickens wrote the Pickwick Papers. The only exclusions are for absolutely obvious common sense things like the sky is blue and straightforward conversions and suchlike as in WP:CALC, and every day some POV pusher tries to drive a horse and cart through even those. I find a lot more difficulty with finding reliable sources for things like how wooden floors should normally be treated, there's loads of how to sites but precious little in the way of reliable sources even though cleaning floors is one of the largest occupations in the world. I still wouldn't want to change those requirements though. Dmcq (talk) 09:45, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Dmcq, I think you are misunderstanding the example of SBHarris, which was indeed interesting in my opinion. He was talking about sourcing which language Dickens wrote it in. I am sure many of us have had someone tag something like this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Exactly. And I picked The Pickwick Papers for a reason, as the origial written manuscript is lost, so you can't "look it up." By induction it's obvious that Dickins wrote it in English the way he did his other works, but at the same time it's SO obvious that nobody really bothers to say it in print. Thus, I cannot find a cite for it (can any of you?).

Another different kind of problem occurs when a popular concept in (say) science is wrong, but so widely believed that even lower division college texts are more likely to have the wrong thing than graduate level texts and journal articles, which have the correct thing. One example I once fought through is the notion that mass can be "converted" to energy, so that the mass dissappears entirely, and leaves just the energy (this is true for matter, but is not true for mass-- they aren't the same). So "verification" in this case requires Wikipedia editors not only to know their physics, but to be able to sort out the graduate level texts and texts by relativity experts, from all the other physics texts- a thankless task.

When it comes to definitions, it's even worse. In the article on weight (for example) editor consensus has forced me to live with an article that defines weight in a way that differs from the ISO definition, just because most college undergrad physics texts define it another way that isn't as good (by the opening definition, orbiting space station astronauts aren't weightless, they are only "apparently weightless"!). And so on. The judgement of sources is not a job that can be fobbed off, but WP attempts to do it all the time. We are interested only in sources mostly likely to be TRUE, but that in turn cannot be determined without knowing yourself how truth is arrived at, in that area. That's a tricky and knowledge-area dependent process. SBHarris 21:04, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

So how about we combine my first sentence above with something about it not being about editors' opinion, e.g. "It is a core principle of Wikipedia that information added to it must be verifiable from reliable sources. What matters is not editors' personal opinions as to whether something is true, but whether it can be supported through the proper use of sources. But I still feel a need to say straight away, either in the same paragraph or just after it, that the concepts of "reliable" and "proper use" (or whatever words we end up choosing to express those ideas) are not trivial or (necessarily) intuitive, and indeed the main purpose of the policy we're introducing is to explain what we at Wikipedia consider to be reliable sources and proper use of sources in various situations. (Oh, and I don't find it at all obvious that the sky is blue.)--Kotniski (talk) 10:51, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

You seem to me to be going along with almost equating WP:V and WP:RS. What is the difference between these two policies?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, to me IRS is just one aspect of V in more detail. V says "everything should be supportable by reliable sources", while IRS adds some more detail about what we mean by "reliable", leaving V to address mainly the question of what we mean by "supportable". (Wikilawyers will also point out that IRS is a guideline rather than a policy, whatever they may think the difference signifies.)

Are you proposing that we acknowledge any other kind of verifiability which isn't based on sources? It seems generally accepted that we can't ask people to verify something by, say, doing an experiment or even following the steps in a non-trivial logical deduction. --Kotniski (talk) 11:35, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I think the key aspect of WP:V is already slightly different from WP:RS. The most important thing is to make sure information can be confirmed not just to be some individual or group's non-notable opinion. So one way to understand why we are not meant to demand proof of widely known things is to say that we should not ask people to verify what is already known to be verifiable. This would make no sense if WP:V just meant the same as WP:RS?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:43, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not entirely sure I understand you - are you saying that there's some other kind of verifiability that we accept, other than the possibility of verifying based on reliable sources? Can you give examples? (I know that not everything has to be verified explicitly from RS; that's why we say verifiability rather than verification.)--Kotniski (talk) 13:18, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Right, the -able makes the word different, and means we do not really have to verify everything. So this makes common knowledge things verifiable, but possibly not able to be sourced from a reliable source, as per the example of Dickens having written in English.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:56, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

The WP:V policy page actually has an RS section which is pretty good, in part because it is vague. It says:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should directly support the material presented in an article and should be appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.

That ends up leaving the standards in each field up to the experts in that field. The only problem for Wikipedia is that it takes some expertise to know who the experts are. The idea of "wiki-verifiability" is "you could in theory go look it up and verify that it's true" but the question then is "where do you go to look it up to be most confident?" The rest of the RS section in WP:V attempts to say more on this question, and says some questionable things. What is a "mainsteam newspaper"? Does that mean obituaries in the New York Times are reliable? And how do you tell that you have a "respected publishing house"? I pulled at random from my large shelf of quack health books and found Fit for Life, which was published by Warner Books, owned by Time Warner. It'a hilarious bunch of food combining nonsense, but it sold well (3 million copies already in 1985, which is when my edition was printed in paperback). So is it "reliable"? Reliable for what purpose?

The article WP:RS (now WP:IRS) attempts to expand on this theme, and succeeds in some areas and fails in others. If you want to know how complex this can be, look at WP:RSMED, which looks at the problem just in medical material. This is one of WP's better guidelines (no, I didn't write any of it; I do agree with most of it). However, there is no corresponding RS section for the physical sciences.

When it comes to journalism, the section in WP:IRS mentions churnalism (please read this), and that alone should either make you nod grimly or your hair stand on end, depending on your prior view of newspapers. But knowing that, NOW what do you do? You're stuck. There's really no way you can see what's going on behind the scenes at a newspaper, the way you can a science journal. Peer-reviewed journals or book publishers like Springer require many credentials from editors, and have many cycles of fact-checking that go on between author and outside degreed editors, before they publish. A newspaper journalist by contrast often will not read the entire article over the phone to the person it's about, or who supplied its expert-information, before print. And so on. Verifiability needs reliable sources, and WP:IRS can't walk people through all the problems with finding them, if they have no knowledge themselves. SBHarris 22:24, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I don't see any need to change this policy: most people can, and do, figure out what we mean. If people are really concerned about the phrase being widely misunderstood, then they might consider writing an essay to provide a jargon-free explanation of it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
Actually most people do NOT have any idea what the policy means, and there is endless arguing about it. You could indeed write a jargon-free essay about it. And then replace the policy with the jargon-free essay! Two problems solved in one blow. Of course, you're still stuck with the IRS problem, but at least all you now have is one problem. SBHarris 00:35, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, it seems a bit strange to propose that the way to deal with a potentially misunderstood passage is to write an essay explaining it elsewhere; the thing to do is to rephrase it so as not to admit of the misunderstanding in the first place (or at least, reduce the likelihood of it). We can do that; that's what we would do on any other page; why not do it here? Just say as far as possible, in ordinary language free of euphemism and hyperbole, what this policy is about. --Kotniski (talk) 11:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Copy-edits

I did some rephrasing to the Lead, particularly including a reference to reliable sources and what that means, in the first two paragraphs. Maybe it is a bit clearer? I agree that a sentence explaining the common misunderstanding and what it means could also be useful.

Some other things I'd like to see in the lead:

Actually I think we do sometimes dispute the truth of a claim without necessarily throwing the entire source out as unreliable - even reliable sources make errors, and we don't have to parrot them where we have good reason to suppose they've got it wrong. But generally, yes, it would be more useful if the lead contained more practical information.

Another absurd thing is that when we propose merging WP:V with WP:NOR on the grounds that they're the same thing, people claim "oh no, not the same thing at all" - but now you have, in the second paragraph here, this policy being summarized in terms of original research - effectively defining original research to be exactly the same thing as what this policy forbids! Can you all make up your minds - if original research is a separate subject, then let's not say that this policy is about it - and if it's not a separate subject, then let's simplify and merge the two pages into one. --Kotniski (talk) 11:30, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I've tried with this sequence of edits to remove some of the most obvious and hopefully uncontroversial problems with the lead (as explained in the edit summaries and in the above posts) - I hope (perhaps too optimistically) they won't be reverted blindly, but (if at all) then for good reasons that will be presented to us.--Kotniski (talk) 11:49, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Maybe Kotniski's work at on end of the boldness spectrum will help pull the evolution situation here more towards the middle ground from the other extreme which it is at now which is Wp:ownership through application of a double standard......an incredibly high bar set for any changes that are not made by an owner. North8000 (talk) 12:12, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, I haven't had time to look closely at your changes, but I do think that a description of what OR and NPOV in the lead is important as long as the policies are separate. There's way too much interpretation and application of them in isolation. People forget that V means no Syn and V doesn't mean automatically to include unless Weight and Fringe are met, and NPOV doesn't mean you can include OR opinions which haven't been published and OR doesn't meant individuals are or are not RS for claims, and V always depends on the claim being made, in the context it is being made, which is also about NPOV presentation.... these things all intertwine. Not to even mention Copyright and BLP. Maybe the policies should be physically separate or maybe not. But they must be explained in a way that lets readers see how they are not isolated. Maybe each core policy should have an explicit section on: what this means in practice; what this means for OR; what this means for NPOV (respectively).
You also mentioned that there are times we do challenge the accuracy of a claim (such as in an obvious journalistic error?). If so, I don't see anything in policy that gives literal license to do such a thing, aside from IAR and editorial discretion, and maybe Weight (if it's clearly disputed by other sources and not worth including by itself). Do you think this should be couched more directly? Ocaasi c 14:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Perhaps not, at least, not as a priority in the lead; but I think it's a good reason not to place so much emphasis on the "we don't care about truth" meme, as I think we do care. And I wasn't objecting to mentioning OR and NPOV in the lead - what I objected to was telling people "in order to avoid original research" and then effectively summarizing this policy - that makes no sense at all (unless we agree that this policy is just a fork of NOR, in which case they should certainly be merged). If we can achieve a sensible logical division between the three policies (which we certainly do not have at the moment - the whole thing's a jumbled mess) then certainly we should be summarizing the relevant points of the other two in this one - but surely after we've explained the key points of this one?

I also notice that the old nutshell has been restored - can anyone explained why? I personally find nutshells a redundant and fairly silly gimmick - the policy should be summarized in the lead, not in a special box - but if we're going to have one, it should surely summarize the policy in as much generality as possible, not just pick one sentence from it.--Kotniski (talk) 15:24, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Actually I can perhaps see a glimmer of sense in this nutshell, since I suppose this is the most important practical everyday consequence of the policy; but even so, it seems misleading to present it as the summary, and it just causes unnecessary clutter at the top when exactly the same thing is repeated two paragraphs down. Also we seem to have reverted to saying "readers can check whether material has been published..." - I find this misleading in two ways (as said before): firstly because it's not absolutely essential that the sources we use be practically available for all readers to check (I suppose they should be in theory, but this makes it sound like everything should be a click away on the Web); and secondly because the material we create has not been published before - it only needs to be based on published sources (we know what we mean, but the uninitiated reader will be left guessing).--Kotniski (talk) 16:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] The threshold

Threshold. The word "threshold" implies movement and the beginning of a process. The valuation term "most important" suggests neither movement nor process. I have added the previous wording as a note because the word "threshold" is essential in the editing disputes which I have encountered -- see here; and such disputes are likely to continue to arise in articles about something to do with East Asia. --Tenmei (talk) 21:56, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I agree that "most important condition for inclusion" was not a good change. The writing isn't as good; it's three words instead of one; and it doesn't conjure up the imagery that "threshold" does. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Please allow me to emphasize the arguable utility of this word, the prospective usefulness of a "threshold" concept which was restored here. --Tenmei (talk) 23:22, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
My problem is not so much with the word "threshold", it's with the word "The". This could imply that the "verifiability" condition is a sufficient one (rather than a necessary one) for inclusion, which is certainly not the case. I don't like "most important condition" either, but I was trying not to change the wording too much. I would prefer, :as I said before, to phrase it simply and unambiguously: "All information must be verifiable from reliable sources..." If you insist on "threshold", then it should be qualified in some way, like "the first threshold", to show that there are other factors besides this. --Kotniski (talk) 11:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Not sure if this helps, but anyway. Obviously this point of logic is the same discussion that has been going on for some time, and I have recently started trying to understand your concern, and why others don't agree. I think that others are saying that in a sense they agree with your logic, and that this is only one threshold, the threshold concerning "material". That your logic is not obviously wrong suggests to me that this point should not be considered a closed case. But perhaps more importantly in a practical way they are scared to try to define that it is only for "material" because it would seem to weaken the policy somehow? So to some extent the resolution would seem to require a satisfactory wording being that says something like "Concerning X (e.g. "material"), the threshold for...." ??--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't think we are on the same wavelength... "material" is a very vague word that I would sooner replace with "information" or "statements" or something, but that's another topic; what I'm saying here is that material (or information or whatever) doesn't automatically have the right to be included just because it meets the condition of verifiability. That's the first condition it must meet (at least, once we've managed to word the condition correctly), but then there are other conditions - it must be relevant, notable, not undue weight, etc. There's no reason to assume readers will interpret "threshold" as meaning necessary condition; they're just as likely to read it as meaning sufficient, or necessary and sufficient.--Kotniski (talk) 11:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I understand your point that way. I think your logic is correct. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition, and a threshold only with respect to one type of issue. I am just trying to work out how to explain it to others.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Here is an idea. If I look at the opposed opinions, others do not see the word "threshold" as a logical breakpoint in a simple way, but the beginning of a process. Or maybe another way to word it is that they see it as the necessary and sufficient condition for words to be good enough for potential inclusion. Obviously people love the word threshold and they also want to avoid a big logical construction like "necessary but not sufficient condition for inclusion" or "necessary and sufficient conclusion for potential use given other conditions are met" so I am wondering if this observation about how people seem to be reading it can lead to a small tweak that covers all valid concerns. For example:

A threshold for potential 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.

Does this make any sense to others?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Certainly an improvement. --Kotniski (talk) 12:05, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Hello, any further comments? Is this change acceptable? Why not?--Kotniski (talk) 10:29, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Readers can check...

...readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source...: I think this should be changed to something like "material in Wikipedia can be supported by reliable, published sources", for reasons I've already given - readers' actual ability to check is not as fundamental a requirement as this makes it seem to be; and the material in Wikipedia need not (indeed usually should not) itself have been published before - what we mean is that it ought to be based on, supported by, published sources. Does anyone disagree, or was this revert collateral damage?--Kotniski (talk) 11:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Any comments? Objections?--Kotniski (talk) 10:30, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
It sounds correct to me.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:10, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Sorry - which version sounds correct?--Kotniski (talk) 13:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
If you switch from "readers can" to "wikipedia material can", you alter the meaning completely. The latter essentially says sourcing is optional which is a no-go.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure what you mean - the context of these words is that of a requirement, so it's being required that material be able to be sourced. Sourcing is "optional" in the sense that not everything has to be explicitly sourced; but the proposed wording still makes it clear that sourceability is not optional.--Kotniski (talk) 13:24, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
for the WP material (contrary to readers) it is not a question of "can" but "must"/"should".--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:43, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Actually i just look at your quote here in solation not where it actually appeared in the policy. If it is meant to refer to the introduction line, it is ok in that context.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
The only issue I have with "material in Wikipedia can be supported by reliable, published sources" does not emphasize that the source must already be published; articles that have been submitted but not printed yet, movies that are not yet in theaters, etc. are not acceptable. Perhaps ""material in Wikipedia can be supported by reliable, previously published sources" (new word underlined). Jc3s5h (talk) 13:18, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Nutshell

Do we in fact want a nutshell? Do we want the current one? As I said above, though I can now sort of see why this one was chosen, it still seems to be misleading (by implying that this sentence sums up the whole policy, when what it actually does is state the most important practical consequence of it), and to provide clutter by simply repeating what's stated in the second paragraph of the lead.--Kotniski (talk) 11:32, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

The main aim of policy writing must surely be informative, and that means informative to people who are clicking around on the internet and do not all have perfect attention spans. I think that nutshells help a lot in this task?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:38, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Can't our attentionally challenged readers just as easily read the first paragraph or two of the policy (which should sum up the content) rather than having it duplicated in a nutshell? We don't put nutshells on our articles, after all. (What it would look like: Italy is a country with lots of art where they eat pasta; Adolf Hitler was a German who did some pretty bad things; etc.) But more to the point, does this particular nutshell serve any useful purpose?--Kotniski (talk) 11:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I am sure some of them can. :) The nutshell is even shorter.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

"Threshold" in a nutshell? This is a practical issue, not an abstract one. IMO, this thread wanders too far afield from lessons learned the hard way and the school of hard knocks. Yes, we can all acknowledge and agree that parsing distinctions between "necessary" and "sufficient" are valid concerns, but the "rubber meets the road" at a far more gritty level:

When "fact" (supported by WP:V + WP:RS) is defined as indistinguishable from "factoid" (supported by nothing), what next? This becomes an irreducible question, a shared "threshold knowledge" inquiry.

The words "threshold" and "verifiability, not truth" are married; and these words offer perhaps the only arguably constructive step forward. Have you not seen this for yourselves? --Tenmei (talk) 00:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Can you re-state your point please? I do not see how it contrasts with any other position. Or is it just an observation?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, sorry Tenmei, I don't see what point (if any) you're actually making about the wording of the policy.--Kotniski (talk) 12:07, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Policy shortcuts:
WP:THRESHOLD
WP:V
WP:NOT TRUTH
WP:Verifiability, not truth
Yes, I have a point; and yes, my point is amplified by a counter-intuitive observation. I oppose any re-wording of which does not include these words:
(a) "threshold" and
(b) "verifiability, not truth".

This is a practical issue which affects day-to-day editing "where the rubber meets the road". This is a recurring problem and it is likely to get worse in the near future. The pointed clarity of words on this page will only become more important as our project continues to grow.

In the alternative, I support any arguable effort to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V as long as these few words are unaffected by editing changes.

At Wikipedia:Nutshell#Verifiability, our policy can be summarized succinctly: The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Maybe the simple act of repeating the same thing over and over again is always necessary and never sufficient? --Tenmei (talk) 21:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

So you're saying the nutshell (i.e. the bit in the box that says "this page in a nutshell") should actually be the same as the first sentence of the policy? That seems to me slightly more logical (though just as redundant) - however as pointed out above, the actual wording of the statement is not quite right - firstly it's not "the threshold" (it's not the one and only condition), and secondly that in actual fact we do care about the truth of statements and don't mindlessly copy apparent errors from sources (as "not truth" implies).--Kotniski (talk) 09:48, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski -- Redundant? Yes, absolutely. Your editing experience is different than mine; but that in no way diminishes the fact that redundant repetition for pedagogical emphasis is needed in contexts I encounter. You seem unwilling to take in this point, but some things are significant regardless of belief.

As for your second point, no. Do not try to "spin" my words to contrive a straw man. Again, no matter how many different ways I re-write using different words, you seem unwilling to take in this point, but some things are both valid and significant despite your belief or disbelief. The WP:V threshold focuses irreducible attention on the pivotal distinction between fact (which supported by WP:V + WP:RS) and "factoid" (which is associated with zero cited support). Your "re-framing" addresses follow-up issues.

Perhaps this can be explained by our edit histories. Although my 50,000+ edits are more than yours, I see that the range of unique pages you have edited is a little more than twice mine. I do not want to impede anyone's attempt to enhance the effectiveness of WP:V; but four words only must remain unaffected by changes: "threshold" + "verifiability, not truth". --Tenmei (talk) 13:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with this "spin" and "straw man" stuff - but you presumably agree that "verifiability" (as defined in this policy) is not the only condition for inclusion in WP? And that we don't want to reproduce statements from reliable sources if we know those statements to be untrue?--Kotniski (talk) 13:57, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Paraphrase in challenged

See previous Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability/Archive_44#paraphrase

With the edit made by Kotniski and given that the text was introduced into the section by SV and SV said on this talk page "I wasn't keen on its inclusion, but at least it's not in the lead, and it's not being added to a sentence in a way that would make the sentence false. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)" and now that we have a mention of copyright in the lead, I am removing the phrase completely as is it an imprecise summation of the legal copyright requirements and the guidance given in guidelines such as WP:PLAGARISM. -- PBS (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

SV I am confused. Above you said that you were not keen on the inclusion of the sentence that you have now reinstated in its own section. If you were not keen on it why have you reinstated it? Also did you read the comments in Archive 44#paraphrase? If for example I copy text from another Wikipedia page the wording that you have placed into this policy that states "do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material" means that such a copy would need to be placed in quotes. I am sure this is not what is the intent of this sentence. I suggest that the section is removed as this is better covered in the copyright policy and related policies and guidelines. At the very least the section should be removed temporarily until we can agree on a form of words that do not contradict the copyright polices and guidelines. -- PBS (talk) 11:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Certainly seems that this section has a lot of problems and isn't really serving any purpose by being here. But can I at least ask people not to keep reinserting the ridiculous assertion that when you paraphrase, you have to use intext attribution - given that every statement in Wikipedia is supposed to be a paraphrase of a statement made by a source, this would imply that every sentence requires intext attribution (i.e. not just a cite, but a "John says..." in the text itself), which is clearly absurd.--Kotniski (talk) 12:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think there is an element of a bigger problem with WP itself here, and concerning how to make its core aims fit with taking copyright and plagiarism seriously. But putting that aside:-
  • WP policy does not demand every sentence to be footnoted. Sentences which state obvious things, or piece together things in an obvious way, are possible. Furthermore you can put a citation on a whole paragraph.
  • Paraphrasing is following a text very closely, almost like quoting, except tweaking the words. According to all norms of plagiarism and copyright outside WP, which WP nevertheless tries to take seriously, just tweaking words and taking away the quotes does not mean you've avoided plagiarism and/or copyright infringement.
  • (Here is the messy bit.) In practice, much material in WP is neither of the two above categories. For example material might be influenced by someone's reading over a lifetime, and it might be quite difficult to work out the best way of sourcing it because it does not come from one source. (Which does not mean it can not be verified.) WP could not exist without this type of material, but WP policy pages are written as if this were not true. Perhaps the only way to explain it is to say that such material is assumed to be either verifiable or else obvious/common knowledge, until challenged. The way WP traditionally handles this is to say that if someone questions something, then reality suddenly changes, and we need to find a way of sourcing it, even if we find a source completely different from what the original editor read. (That has of course developed into a situation where the easiest way to push a POV is now definitely to question sources selectively and strategically.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:34, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
This goes off topic a bit; the original problem with your edit is that you're saying that whenever we paraphrase (not just paraphrase closely), we need to use intext attribution (not a footnote cite, but a "John says..." type phrase in the text). So if I have a source (say the NYT) that says "Smith's death occurred in 1981", I'm not allowed to paraphrase it and say "Smith died in 1981" (giving the cite in a footnote), but would have to say "According to the NYT, Smith died in 1981" (implying that we have some doubt about it), which is just not what we do.--Kotniski (talk) 12:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think what I and others are thinking is that "parphrasing" is a word mostly used when the paraphrasing is close. Perhaps therefore others might accept the mere tweak of adding the word closely?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:49, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, to bring it into line with the previous sentence... that would be OK. (Though I suspect what we really mean is quoting or closely paraphrasing passages of some significant length - with a short sentence like "Smith died in 1981" even copying it word for word is hardly going to constitute a breach of copyright or ethics.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes isolated words or small groups of words are not normally covered.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:10, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

(And encouraging people to "internalize" the sources, whatever that means - incorporate them into your own belief system? presumably not, it just means understand, but we already say understand - also looks pretty silly.)--Kotniski (talk) 12:14, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

  • I think "internalise" might need a footnote. It's shorthand for something quite convoluted to explain, and I'm worried that Kotniski might not be the only editor who fails to grok it.

    Basically, "internalise" is what you do when you're genuinely acquiring knowledge. For example: Two different editors are writing articles on an obscure topic. Editor A has a degree in the subject. Her major reference work for learning was Book B. Editor A has learned what Book B says. Later she summarizes its contents for Wikipedia. Meanwhile, Editor R writes an article on a slightly different topic that's also covered by Book B, but Editor R has not actually learned it. He simply goes through Book B trimming it and paraphrasing in order to avoid any obvious copyright infringement.

    Editor A is not infringing copyright. But Editor R is infringing copyright, even though he's using exactly the same source as Editor A. The difference is that Editor A has "internalised" the knowledge and then expressed it in her own words, whereas Editor R's edits went from the book to the article without passing through his brain in any meaningful sense.

    If you can think of a better word than "internalise" for the process, then that would be great!—S Marshall T/C 01:03, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

It might not have been easy to spot, but I have included a proposal in a post within your active voice sub-section below. I believe, in other words, that the normal English term is to "familiarize oneself".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
If I understand correctly, there have been various requests to concentrate discussion on the copyright section to here? (If not then please move this post to the right place.) Anyway, in this spirit I place a copy here of my proposal for the wording which I have mentioned elsewhere:

I also believe that the recent situation where copyright was handled as one among several other policies which need to be kept in mind, was the logically most correct one.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Can anyone cite a law or legal commentary where this concept of "internalizing" is shown to be relevant to avoiding breach of copyright? I rather suspect not, but I'm willing to be enlightened.--Kotniski (talk) 12:12, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

No, because no one is claiming such a link. I think the reason people like the word is because it helps give a mental image of what they consider a good safe method of editing in a balanced way. Perhaps more importantly, this then helps you imagine bad ways of editing. This is my interpretation of the intention. I do not think people see as part of any legal concept. I am not sure I agree that a policy page needs to try to define such a method, but it is there now, and I don't see an enormous problem with that. (OTOH, the draft proposal you are responding to does not include the word. Can you comment on it?)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Seems to be going in the right direction, though "familiarize yourself with them" (while better than "internalize" in that people might actually understand it) still seems redundant. And I don't believe that using intext attribution is an automatic get-out clause (just like using "allegedly" won't get you off libel) - I'm sure it all depends on the quantity of text involved, and someone who actually knows the law ought to be informing this discussion.--Kotniski (talk) 12:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
You're right; attribution does not substitute for permission, whether you're using direct quotes or closely paraphrasing. Per US Gov circular on Fair Use: "Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission." All of the fair use factors are considered in determining if infringement has occurred, and amount & substantiality of the content is one of those. That said, attribution is an important factor in plagiarism. In terms of copyright, where people encourage quotations or close paraphrase, I think it always wise to note that we are limited to brief excerpts. Maybe "When paraphrasing closely or quoting, which must be kept brief, use in-text attribution"? --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:08, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Thanks (you're just the sort of person I had in mind ;) ). It seems to be that copyright and plagiarism are often confused (WP:Plagiarism seems to confirm that they're not the same thing), and that we're actually confusing them here, the way we've been wording the sentences in this policy. Perhaps we should make it clear that there are two issues we need to be mindful of, and briefly summarize how to avoid both one and the other?--Kotniski (talk) 13:54, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
OK, but these remarks seem to be suggesting we add more to the policy as it currently exists while I was only aiming to work in practical steps, i.e. to make the current text say what it intends, but more clearly. Perhaps after such steps are taken more substantive questions can also be discussed more clearly? In any case, it seems to me that questions of detail about how to cite must be handled with wikilinks, for the simple reason that you can not put everything in one sentence. I think that is often the source of problems in this writing process. Anyway though, here is an attempt to tweak in order to cover these concerns:

*Proposed (2): Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. For example, use in-text attribution when quoting copyrighted sources or closely paraphrasing them. And do not paraphrase too closely or reproduce direct quotes which are too extensive. Please read the sources, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words, saying where you got it.

Some may prefer the proposal above, because arguably this is starting to try to explain something from another policy. Comments please.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:01, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Proposal #425 - Just add: Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism
Leave further explanations to the linked pages. Blueboar (talk) 14:22, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
That works for me, fwiw. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:22, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Best suggestion we've had so far. (I still think it's possible to add a short explanatory sentence, but until someone successfully comes up with one, let's leave it to the dedicated policies to do the explaining.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:09, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
So what are we agreeing upon? One of the these I think:-
  • Current plus additional of Blueboar. This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then summarize what they say in your own words. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution.
  • Same as above with language tweaks. This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Please read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.
  • Minimalist. This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism.
I am thinking Kotniski prefers the last?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:41, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Just to clarify, my suggestion was to use the minimalist approach. I see no need to explain copyright and plagiarism in this policy... especially when we can simply point editors to other policy/guideline pages that explain the issues in detail. Blueboar (talk) 17:58, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Much better to go with minimalist. I suggest moving it up into the lead -- as mention of copyright is already there -- and not placing it in the body of this policy.

Phrases such as "When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution." Is not correct because it does not have the necessary exceptions to cover things like internal copies from other Wikipedia pages, etc. -- PBS (talk) 18:23, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

If Moonriddengirl is happy with a proposal concerning copyright, then you can take it as read that I'm also happy with it. Experience has taught me that she knows what she's talking about.  :) For the avoidance of doubt this means that I don't object to her proposed trim.—S Marshall T/C 19:08, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I'm also happy with it (as I say, not because the minimalist approach is necessarily the best possible, but because no-one has yet come up with any other wording that sheds more light than darkness on the issue).--Kotniski (talk) 10:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeing objections to implementing this, yet it is being claimed in edit summaries that there are some. Can we have them please? Or if there aren't any, let's do this and move on.--Kotniski (talk) 07:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

This is becoming absurd, K. People object. You continue reverting as though they haven't. Then you return here to say there are no objections.
Once again, we have to make clear to people that in-text attribution is needed for quotations and close-paraphrasing, in case they inadvertently plagiarize, as has happened. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
You seem to misread the situation - you reverted, not me; you claimed there were objections when there weren't (not me that there weren't when there were). But thanks for providing the objection at least now - however you didn't need to revert the whole thing - indeed, since your concern is plagiarism, it seems a bit strange that you remove the link to plagiarism, and restore the discredited wording that mixes up plagiarism with copyright.--Kotniski (talk) 08:11, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
SV text on Wikiedpia is copyrighted. If text is copied from one page on Wikipedia to another it has to be acknowledged by the mechanisms laid out in Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia in-text attribution is not required. The same applies if instead of copying the text of another Wikipedia page is closely paraphrased. There are other similar exceptions to the rule that you have reinstated, this is why a simple sentence proposed by Blueboar agreed by everyone else in this section was implemented by me today. You had been notified of this conversation see blow ("SV please see #Paraphrase in challenged and reply there"), but had not added an opinion to this section. (1) Why should we not implement the BB sentence until there is agreement on a more expansive version. (2) How do you propose that the sentences that you wish to keep can be altered to meet the objections that have been raised to them? -- PBS (talk) 08:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
You want to write this policy with reference to public-domain texts, which perhaps you use a lot, or copying from one WP article to another. But these are special cases. This policy is aimed at content contributors adding material based on external sources, which is most of what Wikipedians do. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 08:43, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Still there are multiple specific problems with the sentences that you've restored (not just the nonsense about "internalizing", but also the misleading implication - though slighly improved when the link to WP:Plagiarism is included - that adding intext citations is a way of avoiding copyvios). Can you write this sentence in a way that says accurately what it's trying to say, and clearly enough that it becomes more useful than just the links to WP:Copyright and Plagiarism? Until someone can do that, I don't think we have a better alternative than the minimalist approach we all agreed on yesterday.--Kotniski (talk) 08:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I can't see what's wrong with what's there. When quoting and closely paraphrasing use in-text attribution. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Where is the problem with it? Yes, I know that copyright and plagiarism are complicated, but people can look at those pages for more detailed information. This policy is for regular content contributors, who aren't copying large tracts of text, aren't adding PD material, aren't copying from other WP articles, but who nevertheless need advice about when in-text attribution is needed. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 09:07, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I do not understand this approach of trying to define what the most common types of editing are, and then trying to write policy pages so that they are only clear for people making those types of edits (as also in the below discussion where you insist on treating Harvard references as irrelevant, because not the "majority"). Why not just make sure we choose words which cover as many cases as possible?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
This is not just an issue of internal copying but also with all sorts of copyleft and US federal sources as well as public domain. Further as you may remember from previous conversations on this issue there is also questions about whether in-line attribution is a style issue rather than a verification issue and whether very close paraphrasing of sources should be discouraged in favour of quotes. But lets not look at the style issue until after we have agreed on wording that covers all the classes of copyrighted types used as reliable sources in articles.
SV one can not write policy in such a way that one policy contradicts another. If we do that we cause no end of problems for editors on article talk pages. At the moment you are suggesting that this policy by omission contradicts copyright policy and the plagiarism guideline, while the minimalist approach suggested by Blueboar complements the copyright policy and the plagiarism guideline. -- PBS (talk) 09:13, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Which policy is contradicted by "use in-text attribution when quoting and closely paraphrasing"? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 05:47, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
Whichever policy requires editors not to be so stupid as to mindlessly repeat "According to the text I copied and/or from {another Wikipedia article|a US federal website|one of thousands of public domain sources}..." into tens of thousands of articles, if not hundreds of thousands of articles.
Editors do not, and do not need to, provide in-text attribution for absolutely every single quotation or paraphrase. It's more complicated than that. We should not provide an overly simplistic absolute rule for a complex issue. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:13, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
And which policy is that? We can't write a core content policy for the small number of editors who still copy and paste public domain texts. But if you want, we can add "see X for exceptions" (whichever policy or guideline X is). SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 06:49, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

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Public domain text is not the issue as it is not under copyright. As for the exceptions BB's text ("Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism.") does that. -- PBS (talk) 07:25, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

Philip, can you tell me, please, which policy is contradicted by "use in-text attribution when quoting and closely paraphrasing"? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:32, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
It contradicts actual accepted practice, which is far more serious than contradicting another policy - but if we want to get lawyerish, I think it contradicts NPOV, which says "Avoid presenting uncontested assertions as mere opinion. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion." So excessive in-text attribution is problematic from a policy point of view, as it can lead to false implications of doubt.--Kotniski (talk) 09:55, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] random break

For one thing, the side issue about copyright and plagiarism now takes up more than half the text in a subsection which is actually supposed to be about a different and very essential issue for this policy. Perhaps someone with the knowledge and skills can write a separate section on copyright/plagiarism, perhaps down towards the end of the page, then this section could link to that one. (It has to be admitted that WP:COPY and WP:Plagiarism are themselves far from clear expositions of their subject matter, so it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to summarize them here; but we shouldn't do so in a way that gets in the way of communicating this policy's subject matter, or in a way that risks misleading editors, even if only a minority of them.)--Kotniski (talk) 09:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it does now look odd. I think the logical place for such a separate section was the place where it was recently removed from? But I think there is a fair level of support for the idea that even then it mainly just needs to give clear links to other appropriate policy or guideline pages?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Could we satisfy both sides by placing the "internalize" sentence that Kotniski hates so much in a footnote rather than in the main body of the policy? I'd also be happy with a clarification of "internalize" in the footnote.—S Marshall T/C 11:04, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Well, I have no big problem with internalize, but if this word keeps getting in the way of discussion I have proposed several times that it can be swapped with "familiarize yourself with". Seems justifiable because indeed no one can argue that internalize is clear and standard English. On the other hand, it is true that logically this whole sentence is misplaced within a sub-section entitled "Anything challenged or likely to be challenged".--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:16, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
(ec, replying to SM) That's not the only issue (and it's only the "and internalize them" bit that I hate; the rest of the sentence I just mildly dislike ;) ). As regards Andrew's comment, since the place it was recently removed from was the "reliable sources and other principles" part, and that part has now been moved to the end of the policy, putting it there would be quite compatible with my suggestion to put it near the end. But more to the point, someone has to write it - and since these are serious issues, that someone has to have that rare quality of actually knowing what they're talking about.--Kotniski (talk) 11:21, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
As long as there's a clear mention of copyright in the lead, personally I can stomach moving the section under discussion to the end.

As for "knowing what they're talking about"--well, I'm not a copyright lawyer and I don't know anything about US law, which is about as relevant to me as the law of Timbuktoo, but equally, I'm semi-professionally interested in copyright and frankly, it isn't rocket science.

Copyright's in the expression of an idea. If you learn something, know it, and then explain it to someone else in your own words then you're not violating copyright. You're not even violating the copyright of the textbooks you learned it from, because the knowledge you're imparting is yours. It's the expression that counts.

If you don't know something, but you explain it anyway by copy/pasting it from a textbook, then you've violated copyright. This counts even if you change the order of the clauses, or use alternative phrasing, or other disguising methods, because in this event your expression of the idea is "derivative" (legal term) of someone else's.

This means that the optimal way to avoid breaching copyright is to learn your subject matter properly and thoroughly, and then explain it in your own words.

I find that Andrew Lancaster's suggestion of "Familiarise yourself with" doesn't quite encapsulate what I was trying to express with that sentence because it doesn't seem as strong to me as words like "learn" or "internalise". It seems like watering down what's actually a clear distinction: imparting your own knowledge in your own words -vs- imparting someone else's knowledge in phrasing that, if you don't personally have the knowledge you're sharing, must necessarily be derivative of theirs.

Make sense? And does anyone have a better wording suggestion?—S Marshall T/C 12:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Better than what? Do you have a concrete proposal? But I'm sure it's not necessary to learn (or "internalize") something in order to be able to express it without breach of copyright. I don't even need to understand it, come to that. All that matters is that I change it "enough", or use "not too much" of it all at once. And that's how Wikipedia works, a lot of the time - in fact people are encouraged to add specific facts that they can back up with specific statements in a source, rather than read up on a subject and then reproduce the resulting knowledge from their heads (which is almost certain to involve a certain degree of original research, since the brain will have organized the knowledge in new ways). I'm not saying it's a bad thing for people to write from their own knowledge, but we shouldn't imply it's the only way of doing things (and avoidance of copyright is not the main benefit).--Kotniski (talk) 13:48, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
S Marshall I see two problems with your response which need to be separated:-
  • word choice. I kind of like the word too, but let's admit that "internalize" is not a word most people have a clear definition of in their mind. It will conjure up different pictures for different people. That seems a bad thing for such a policy wording regarding a point touching on legal issues. It does not seem worth defending too hard?
  • what is the aim? I think this is the bigger issue. What you describe is kind of how I also understood what the aim must be of these sentences: you are trying to define one possible "best practice". But (a) it is not a best practice which has been defined as far as I can see based on any detailed analyses of copyright law or plagiarism norms, (it just seems to be an idea about hot to try to avoid copyright problems most of the time, maybe) and (b) nor is it really the only way to work on Wikipedia, which is what it currently seems to be claiming to be.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I am still having difficulty seeing how all these issues fit within the scope of WP:V. I agree that copyright and plagiarism are important issues... but discussing them on this page (ie in the WP:V policy) seems like instruction creep. Blueboar (talk) 14:23, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I think it's because we're telling people on this page "follow the sources, follow the sources", so it's appropriate to add the caveat that they can sometimes get into trouble by "following the sources". (But I agree it's not essential to spell out any of the details here.) --Kotniski (talk) 14:31, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
um.... I don't think this policy keeps telling people to "follow the sources". WP:V tells people "If you want to say something, you must cite it". "Follow the sources" is more within the scope of WP:NOR. Blueboar (talk) 15:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I think Kotniski is correct. OR and V overlap and taken together they tell us one big thing, which is, to put it another way, to avoid being original. (I think this is what Kotniski means by following the sources.) And my feeling is that there is a movement which is going to make sure they get more and more simple and extreme about this. To avoid being original is the first commandment, and if an editor can not understand anything else then at least an editor needs to understand that they are here to summarize stuff from published sources. Obviously this continuous push, does have to raise concerns about the fact that already WP does not really handle the subjects of copyright and plagiarism in any very clear and correct way. (Not making these things the highest priority is perhaps defensible in itself, but that is another question. WP says copyright is "serious" policy.) --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material.

How about if we use this wording for the time being? It has the advantages of brevity, simplicity and consistency with other policies.—S Marshall T/C 16:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

It would imply we can't make direct use of public domain or fair use material at all, even if we attribute it.--Kotniski (talk) 16:44, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I think this is an example of the problem WP is riddled with, which is that it seems to have developed a traditional and internal definitions plagiarism and copyright which do not correspond with reality. Neither plagiarism nor copyright can always be avoided by "internalizing" and using "your own words". That would only be advice to someone trying not to get caught! What's more, using the exact words of a source is often perfectly OK in terms of copyright and plagiarism, as long as it is attributed and used in the correct way. Such things need to be explained better, and wrong information needs to start being removed from WP policy pages where it is leading to the development of wrong ideas.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 16:46, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Current lede Proposed lede
This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.

Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three. Articles must also comply with the copyright policy.

 This policy applies to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about living people. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living people must be removed immediately.

Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material.

Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's core content policies, along with No original research and Neutral point of view. These policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in articles. They should not be interpreted in isolation from one another, and editors should familiarize themselves with the key points of all three.
Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - current Anything challenged or likely to be challenged - proposed
All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. (Be mindful of copyright and plagiarism. Read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, then summarize what they say in your own words. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution.) All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate. Be mindful of copyright. When paraphrasing closely or quoting, use in-text attribution.
Moved to footnote
Read the sources, understand them, then summarise what they say in your own words.

Notice the omission of the contentious "internalise" phrase for the moment. ("Understand" and "familiarise yourself with" is redundant.)

How's this?—S Marshall T/C 16:54, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I still don't think it addresses all the issues. Good to move the "read the sources..." sentence to a footnote, but it would now be redundant altogether (the only essential point of the sentence, "in your own words", is now covered elsewhere). But we are again mixing up plagiarism and copyright, making copyright an Easter-egg link in one place, failing to say that to some extent we can use the same words as sources do.--Kotniski (talk) 17:27, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Plagiarism and copyright are actually two different things.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
While they're distinct, I think it makes sense to mention them together on this page.—S Marshall T/C 23:14, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I agree - but explicitly, not by hiding one of them under an Easter-egg link so as to make it look like you're talking about one when you're actually talking about the other.--Kotniski (talk) 09:59, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Public domain

Note: this was a subsection of the previous thread; changing it so it doesn't come in the edit window every time

On a related point, this policy appears to require both inline citation and in-text attribution whenever public domain sentences are incorporated into an article, which is definitely not consistent with community practice. I think that the section might benefit from a somewhat less refined writing style:

Do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material. Do not paraphrase copyrighted material too closely. If you use a direct quotation from copyrighted material, in-text attribution is required.

If this requirement actually applied to public domain sources, then we would need to repeatedly add the phrase "According to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica..." to some 14,000 articles—and that's just for the one source.

On a related point, I'm not sure that we're hitting the right note with our strong statement on in-text attribution. In-text attribution is not always appropriate. Consider the case of a single negative-sounding word, e.g., "controversial". You might put it in quotations to indicate to the reader that it's not your editorial judgment (or to appease editors who would like to whitewash a situation). But if it appears in multiple sources, you don't want to say, "According to Alice and Bob and Chris and David and Emily, Frank's artwork is 'controversial'." It's a direct quotation, and you shouldn't have to resort directly to IAR to leave off the silly string of sources that use the word—and you definitely shouldn't name only one, because that leaves the reader with the inaccurate impression that only Alice says the artwork is controversial.

I think that the solution here is to say that direct quotations should normally be supplied with an in-text attribution.

As for "close paraphrasing" requiring in-text attribution: if it's "too close paraphrasing", you oughtn't be doing it at all, and if it's "permitted paraphrasing", I don't think that in-text attribution is normally appropriate. Consider this:

Is this a paraphrase? Certainly. Is it close enough to violate the copyright? No. (There are only so many ways to present this simple fact, after all.) Do you really want to require that editors start that sentence with "According to Medline Plus..."? No. Does the community, in fact, actually provide in-text attribution for paraphrases like this? No.

But that's what the policy currently says we must do: It makes no distinction between paraphrasing that violates a copyright and paraphrasing that is completely legal. According to the policy, both must be treated identically in terms of in-text attribution. I think this needs to be fixed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:30, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, definitely. I think this is (partly?) what PBS was getting at when he suggested removing that section altogether. It really has no need to be here - this isn't the copyright policy. Can SlimVirgin (or anyone else who sees a need to retain this section in this policy) reply to Philip's point, which got rather obscured by subsequent postings (my fault), about there being no need to retain this badly worded section here now we mention copyright in the lead?--Kotniski (talk) 17:42, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think Wikipedia's policy pages, when they discuss avoiding copyright issues, generally aim to give advice which will avoid all issues, rather than seeking to give definitive and authoritative legal advice?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:45, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Concerning the original point of this thread, I think WhatamIdoing has a point. The flow of our present wording seems to say first that all citations must be inline, and then later talks about a requirement for in-text citations. I think this must surely be a simple error that has crept into the wording, apparently coming from the usual problem of trying to fit too much into one sentence. In this case I believe the one needing tweaking is this one in the lead:

In practice you do not need to attribute everything; only quotations and material challenged or likely to be challenged must be attributed, through an inline citation which directly supports the material in question.[1] For how to write citations, see Citing sources.

Obviously inline citations are the normal way to cite, and someone has wanted to imply this in a rushed way by putting it in the sentence just quoted. But as the next sentence already says, there is actually a whole page, WP:CITE which describes the different ways of citing in different situations. (The same logical error occurs in WP:CITE's opening line, which is based on this policy page.
My idea of an inline citation is any citation which is present in running text near the statement supported, or a mark of some kind, such as a superscript number, in running text which indicates where the citation may be found. So I consider in-text citations to be a subset of inline citations. Jc3s5h (talk) 13:49, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Ah! OK. I thought others were using the terms differently. What do others say?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
I also believe that an in-text attribution is an (incomplete) form of inline citation (incomplete because it usually says "According to Alice Jones in her book The Sun is Really Big" rather than giving a full bibliographic citation). The problem here is that we are demanding both, even for public domain text, even for perfectly legal non-quotations of boring, non-distinctive statements of basic facts, which the community simply does not do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
The minimalist proposal above would fix it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:37, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
In-text attribution is simply "John Smith said that ...". But we never have that alone; it must always be followed by an inline citation, to tell us where John Smith said it (which book or article). The point of in-text attribution is that it sometimes matters in the text who said what; when quoting, for example. It's very important to make clear to editors that it's needed when closely paraphrasing, because there have been cases of editors being accused of plagiarism for failing to do that. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 08:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
That does in fact make sense to me. WhatamIdoing, when you say Alice Jones, you must surely somewhere (either nearby and perhaps using a harvtxt template or footnote or whatever) also explain who Alice Jones is? Maybe what you saying is that this is not necessary when you already put ALL bibiographic information in the running text. I guess that is so, but generally we do not do that do we?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:11, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
The idea of in-text attribution and inline citation can get confused when thinking about using Harvard refs (parenthetical references) instead of footnotes, because there your citation (or a short version of it) is embedded inside the sentence. For example, "Smith 2011 (p. 1) said" or Smith (2011, p. 1) said"—or something like that—with a full citation listed in the References section.
But most editors don't use Harvard refs, so we're thinking here about the majority who use footnotes. They have to be warned that a citation in a footnote isn't always enough, because if you copy, or almost copy, someone's words, you must credit them clearly in the text itself so you're not accused of plagiarism. And plagiarism aside, you sometimes want to do it for NPOV reasons, to signal who is the owner, as it were, of the view you're expressing. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 09:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
OK. Just on a side point: Harvard references are very useful in some types of article, and they work in a similar way to footnotes. I see no big reason to treat them as a second class or non preferred type of in-line reference?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:47, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
No one's suggesting they be treated as second class, but the fact is they're not used much on WP anymore. We have to write the advice about in-text attribution with the majority of editors in mind. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 07:50, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Only the majority? That's my concern. There is no reason to only write for the majority in this case, and also not concerning most issues. Such an approach will inevitably lead to artificial homogenization and rule creep when it is not needed. Anyway, Harvard citations might be less common than footnotes, also in articles I work on, but they are not really uncommon in my opinion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:18, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
 Two points:

  1. "Alice Jones said that..." is not enough: It should be followed by a full bibliographic citation. (The material is not [generally] technically "uncited" in such a case—you could probably figure out what the source was, if you worked at it—but it is definitely not correctly cited.)
  2. "Alice Jones said that..." is sometimes too much: It should normally be omitted entirely when whatever Alice Jones said is the same as what all the other reliable sources say. If all astronomers say that the Sun is really big, then we shouldn't present that claim as if Alice Jones were the only person who held that position. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] When a reliable source is required

I also think that we should discuss putting the two sections ("Anything challenged or likely to be challenged" and "Burden of evidence") back into one, as small sections have a tendency towards bloat. -- PBS (talk) 14:17, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with combining the two sections (and also reducing the number of advertised shortcuts for this and other sections, down to the normal maximum of two).--Kotniski (talk) 15:31, 24 March 2011 (UTC)
Small sections might have a tendency to bloat, but is that happening here? I guess the more important question is whether the two sub-sections are substantially about one point or not.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 09:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The whole page is about one point; we don't need a new subsection heading every sentence or two.--Kotniski (talk) 11:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
These are two points: (a) what needs a source; (b) whose responsibility is that. The two headers are good, because it means people see the key points when scanning. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think I agree with SV on this. It is basically a formatting judgement about how things will be picked up by the eye, and which things are most important to be picked up by the eye - a bit like the nutshells question.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Let's use the active voice

Please can we rephrase this policy into the active? I'm thinking of using imperatives, e.g.:-

Current: This policy is strictly applied to all material in the mainspace—articles, lists, sections of articles, and captions—without exception, and in particular to material about living persons. Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed, and unsourced contentious material about living persons must be removed immediately.

Proposed: Apply this policy strictly to all articles, lists and captions without exception, and particularly to material about living people. Consider removing anything that requires but lacks a source. Please remove unsourced contentious material about living people immediately.

Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.

Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.

Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.

Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.

... and so on. I don't see a need to change the meanings, just to use simpler and less stilted constructions.—S Marshall T/C 23:05, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I find this style an improvement.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I do not completely, as the imperative differs from conditional forms used in the text and alters the meaning. In particular an imperative to remove all unsourced material is a imho no go. We do not want editors to remove (obviously) correct material because it currently lacks a source or even "just" an inline citation. We want editors to remove challenged material without sources (but even there might be a further lee way) and be in particular strict in the BLP case. The last thing we need is (frankly speaking bone headed) editors combing through articles and arbitrarily removing anything without an inline citation.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:22, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Good point, which should be addressed.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:35, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I've inserted replaced "You may remove" with "Consider removing" to address this concern. Any others?—S Marshall T/C 11:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Your copyright sentence: "or paraphrase too closely" maybe now hangs a bit loose and has perhaps come too look a bit more strong and clear than it is? Would it not be easier to say "do not copy text or paraphrase too closely from copyrighted sources, except when directly quoting the material." Surely this was the original intention? "do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely" is a very stretched out sentence trying to do a lot of jobs at once isn't it?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:55, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
But if you're paraphrasing, by definition you're not directly quoting? In fact this is yet another place where the writing has got a bit confused, effectively saying "don't quote directly except when quoting directly" - what we mean is something more complex: don't copy or too closely paraphrase too much text, and if you're copying or closely paraphrasing quite a lot of text, say that you're doing so. Where someone (presumably it's somewhere in the copyright policy and the mass of related pages) needs to tell us what we mean by "too closely", "too much" and "quite a lot". Trying to oversimplify these issues means we end up talking rubbish.--Kotniski (talk) 13:04, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess the confusion you are pointing to is one I did not notice: "directly quote" can mean a straightforward clear and open quote, with citation, or it can mean "use the same words", implying the citation might not be mentioned. I guess this can be avoided.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Current: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, in-text attribution is required. Editors are encouraged to read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in the editor's own words.

Proposed: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources except when directly quoting the material, or paraphrase too closely; when paraphrasing or using direct quotes, use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, internalize them, then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.

Andrew Lancaster attempt: Be mindful of copyright: do not copy text from copyrighted sources or paraphrase too closely unless you use in-text attribution. Please read the sources, understand them, familiarize yourself with them, and then give a balanced summary of what the sources say, in your own words.

Current: This policy requires that all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation. The source should be cited clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.

Proposed: Attribute all quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged to a reliable published source using an inline citation. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.

Andrew Lancaster attempt: Name a reliable source for all quotations or paraphrases, and for any material challenged or likely to be challenged. Cite the source clearly and precisely, with page numbers where appropriate.

The aim of the above wording proposals is not to change the meaning at all.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:20, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

As far as the copyright bit is concerned, I think the whole passage is so problematic as it stands, that the best solution is that made by PBS, in the above thread, to simply delete the section. It's off topic for this policy, and unnecessary now we have a reference to copyright in the lead. (Though if someone could write a similar section but which made sense and was accurate, it wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to include it here.)--Kotniski (talk) 15:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Have therefore continued discussion above at the discussion which I think is the one you mean.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:47, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] over-simplification concerning secondary/primary

I have reverted an edit by Slim Virgin, defended by OrangeMarlin in second edit, which, although the edit was just described as "tightening some writing" actually changed the wording so that mention of the useability of primary sources was removed, and the preference for secondary sources has been made absolute. Some comments:

Done.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:39, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I only removed repetition, Andrew. The advice on primary sources is in NOR, not here, and the sentence I edited linked to that section in NOR. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 16:56, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I humbly disagree.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't know what there is to disagree with. It's a matter of fact that the primary source section is in NOR. And the section I edited says that. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 21:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I disagree that you only removed repetition. I do of course agree there is a link.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
One of the problems this policy has had over the years is some editors believing everything has to be said several times. If you say "base articles largely on secondary sources," you're saying "but not always." You don't then have to add "but not always," or add "usually" to largely. It suffices to add a link to the primary source section of NOR. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
What I am clearly saying, and obviously others agree with me, is that the change made did not just remove repetition, but changed the meaning as it would be read by someone coming to this policy page for clarity.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Primary sources are not often the preferred type of source, but there are (a few) cases in which they might be preferred.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Depends what type of article you are working on. Any subject which requires a lot of citation of what some notable person or organization said can have issues with any too strict version of this rule.
  • I have seen someone who considered themselves to be defending the rules, and was not aggressively trying to push a point, tag a direct quotation of Thomas Hobbes, which was in a listing of opinions of key philosophers on a particular point, because Thomas Hobbes is not a recent secondary source on what Thomas Hobbes said. For those who've never confronted this type of thing, this is not a case where you can follow the over-zealous interpretation and go get a handy uncontroversial secondary source just to avoid a disagreement, because secondary sources for philosophy are often much less clear and much more controversial, than the primary sources. And after all you are talking about what someone said, so why would you do this?
  • A similar problem arises when we are writing about fast moving subjects where secondary sources, if they exist, are likely to be wrong, and to give a very distorted picture if they are the main focus. An example would be the articles we have about Y DNA haplogroups, that are the subject of relatively bland peer-reviewed studies, but not much secondary material which is ever up to date. Indeed, some of the "secondary material" is highly speculative and controversial, not only out of date, and so if WP would force these articles to rely mainly on the very small number of books containing synthesized overviews, we would knowingly be spreading fringe material which is not in agreement with mainstream publications on the subject.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't disagree with using primary sources in the case you've outlined, I disagree with your use of "often" as it might be read as the (most) common case, whereas the outlined cases imho are a small percentage of the overall citations.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I have done no statistical study on how many articles involve the two issues I just mentioned (needing to say what someone said, needing to put in up-to-date material), or similar ones, but I would think it is a very high percentage. If you watch RSN you will frequently see disputing parties arrive who have gotten into trouble because of the idea being spread that such cases are rare exceptions. Observing that this is relatively frequent gives me some confidence that it is not just something in the articles I write. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Well the point is, that WP compiles the established knowledge and primary sources (alone) are not a good indication for that. In the science domain there is usually nothing wrong with relying on primary sources after they have been vetted and somewhat agreed upon within the scientific community but to asses that you normally need secondary sources. Also the bulk of our articles is not about (very) recent developments in science or fast changing issues and for that bulk the preferred sources (aside from quotes) are usually secondary or even tertiary.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I think, as I said, that the two types of examples I named are very common, and that for this reason treating them as uncommon leads to misunderstandings. You can go out and check if they are really common if you are just questioning my observation. But you seem be saying between the lines that even if this is true it would be a bad thing by definition. That does not seem correct to me at all, but perhaps it explains how we are seeing it differently: Perhaps it needs to be pointed out that it would be problematic if articles were made up only of primary sources, but that is not the subject under discussion.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:19, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Agreed they are common not unusual situations. I see secondary or tertiary sources basing their terse conclusions on poorly explained and possibly flawed primary sources enforced while perfectly sound detailed primary sources expressing opposing findings are summarily and uncritically removed. A more absolutist stand on this policy will lead to more conflict with WP:NPOV and the often overlooked WP:EDIT which is itself a policy on the same level as WP:VERIFY. Wikipedia is a stronger source than conventional sources precisely because it is not as restricted and is more nimble. Chaining it to the dictates of preferred institutions and having it hang on their words is an effective way to make Wikipedia irrelevant. One can believe Wikipedia is a better source than others because of the multiplicity of views it is willing to consider or that it is inferior because it cannot validate them all as effectively as other sources. There is only so much compromise one can apply to this dichotomy. I believe the former and think that Wikipedia may actually be drifting too far in the direction of regulation. I would actually move to reverse wording that says primary sources are unwelcome. There are situations where a clear primary source is to be preferred over a vague secondary source or where that vague secondary source can only be challenged by examining the primary sources. Such determinations should be made case-to-case on a talk page not by reference to possibly poorly applicable policy. I strongly oppose this instruction creep and anyone who values Wikipedia as a vibrant source of information and not some ossified mouthpiece for preferred authority figures should too. I would also note changes like the one contemplated tend to favor self-appointed truth guardians with a penchant for removal over those who may actually be trying to build content; opposing for that alone is a good reason. Lambanog (talk) 12:48, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I'd echo those sentiments in their entirety.--Kotniski (talk) 12:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree, in doubt whether (primary, secondary or tertiary) is appropriate depends on the (entirely) on the particular context. It also helps to keep in mind why we have such a policy (and some emphasis on secondary sources) in the first place, it is meant to keep fringe and private theory spam out (they usually rely on primary and not reputable sources). It is not meant to be formalistically applied to regular articles, which were essentially fine to begin with.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:46, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────┘
Another reason to not rule out, or seem to rule out, primary sources is that the definition of "primary" and "secondary" is rather loose and varies from field to field, so an inexperienced editor might forgo the use of a fine source because in the editor's mind it is a primary source. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

No one has suggested ruling out, or seeming to rule out, primary sources. Andrew has simply misunderstood an edit. Our advice on primary sources is in WP:PSTS in the NOR policy, not here. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 16:58, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Which incidentally, for those who haven't been following the discussion over there, is entirely the wrong place for it. PSTS turns out (on logical reflection) not to have much to do with OR at all, and it's surely time to move that section to either this policy or to WP:IRS, or a combination of the two, where it would be in context. --Kotniski (talk) 17:21, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
SV if the argument for your edit is that it was good in intention but there is just the small problem that an experienced editor could misunderstand it as being a change in policy then that is still not a strong argument.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The policy that deals with primary sources is NOR, and no one has changed it. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:07, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Our discussion is continuing above, within this same thread, and my explanation of what I meant is there.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
It seems to me that PSTS belongs in NOR because the most egregious case of primary source abuse is SYNTH of primaries to contradict secondaries.
And, if you'll excuse the soapbox, it's good for people mucking about with such sections to carefully remember that secondary does not mean third-party, and primary does not mean first-party. We had a real problem a while ago with people saying "secondary sources" when they meant WP:Third-party sources. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
But SYNTH of secondaries is just as bad as SYNTH of primaries. It may be your experience that people do it more often with primaries (my experience is the reverse, but perhaps yours is wider), but still - the distinction between primaries and secondaries is irrelevant to understanding SYNTH. It's like writing an explanation of "thou shalt not kill" and going into detail about distinguishing different kinds of murder weapon, just because killers use some kinds of weapon more often than others. Meanwhile the distinction between primary and secondary sources is very relevant to other things - largely the same things as the (fuzzy) distinction between "reliable" and "unreliable" sources is relevant to. Hence PSTS belongs together with that information - here at V and/or at IRS.--Kotniski (talk) 10:08, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] recent edits

I'd like to remind everybody that this is a central policy, so please get an editorial consensus on the talk page before you edit.--Kmhkmh (talk) 10:24, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

And I'd like to remind everybody that this is a wiki, where we fix problems (and by God does this page have problems) by editing them.--Kotniski (talk) 11:16, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Core policies are handled different from articles &other stuff, where you might fix perceived errors directly. Btw it says more or less so directly on the top of this page.--Kmhkmh (talk) 11:27, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
What someone may have written here is not necessarily true - but the point is that we shouldn't change the "meaning" of the policy (unless it's obviously wrong, given our knowledge of WP's actual norms) - however the way we present and explain it is pefectly accessible to improvement. It's probably the fact that some people think these policies need to be treated in some special way that, paradoxically, has led to their actually being in a far worse state than they ought to be - the normal processes of improvement and counter-improvement have not been allowed to operate, meaning that clearly wrong or misleading statements are allowed to remain on the page unchanged purely by virtue of their being old.--Kotniski (talk) 11:41, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The problem is what you've written might not be necessarily true either and "bad" state of some policies is exactly the result of it constantly being quickly edited and reverted leading to a garbled and inconsistent state.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:28, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
That's true - but it's true of articles and all other pages as well, and the solution is not to allow the errors to be fossilized in, but to keep working - intelligently and cooperatively - on eliminating them, while watching out that we don't introduce new ones.--Kotniski (talk) 17:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
No, it is not true in the sense that degree is quite different. Policy pages are a special case and contrary to articles (which are mainly source driven) policy pages are (only) driven by views/opinions of the community. Being bold and fixing an factual error in article is rather different from being bold and changing policy pages without consent. For factual corrections and sourced based extension in articles you usually can assume that they represent the consensus anyway (outside highly contested articles), whereas for policy pages you can't do that. There is a reason why this policy's talk page has this consensus template on the top and normal articles' talk pages do not not. You personally might feel, that there is not much of a difference to articles in general, but the community clearly does and you should kindly consider that.--Kmhkmh (talk) 18:12, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
We probably don't disagree about much - I agree that changes of substance of policy should not be made ad hoc; it's only the presentational things (how we express the substance) that are most efficiently fixed by normal wiki editing. --Kotniski (talk) 12:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Kotniski, many people have asked you over the last few weeks to stop being BOLD here and on NOR, because they're core content policies, so please do stop. The editors who rely on them don't hang around these talk pages, so we need clear consensus (including beyond these pages) for substantive changes. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:01, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
"Many people" seems to mean you, over and over again (while several people have suggested that you might like to start acting less as if you personally own these pages). There really is no reason for these pages to be treated any differently from any others in terms of boldness - as long as we're just making improvements in presentation, not changing the substance. (Which is all that's been happening - of course I agree that if we actually want to change the substance of the policy, we need to be sure we have the community's agreement.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
You know it's not just me. Lots of editors have been asking that the frequent changes stop. Editors rely on these words to resolve content disputes, as has been pointed out to you probably 50 times in the last few weeks on various policy talk pages. You seem to be arguing that you know best, and that it's okay for people to rely on words one week that no longer exist the next, then get used to the new words for a few days before you decide to remove them again. With respect, it's just not reasonable. We may as well not bother having policies if they're going to be so ephemeral. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 17:57, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
If people are relying on the exact wording of policies to resolve disputes, then they badly need a wake-up call. As we've seen in recent discussions, these policies are chock full of misworded or potentially misleading statements - the quality is not even close to being good enough for them to be used as authoritative. But if people are indeed basing decisions on exact wordings, then that makes it even more essential that the mistakes we know about be ironed out quickly.--Kotniski (talk) 12:35, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
This is an odd request to be coming from historically the single most prolific maker of changes and additions to the text of this "policy," which is yourself. [2] You have made 3 times more changes to WP:V than the next editor, Crum375 (you're #1), and you and Crum375 have made more changes than the next 10 prolific editors combined. What you and Crum have done goes far beyond restoration of vandalism (I can expand on that, if you want). It's exactly the same story over at WP:RS (now IRS) where you and Jossi have controlled the article. [3] To boil it down, policies don't appear on WP, having written themselves, or as a consensus script contributed evenly by hundreds or even dozens of people. What happens is this: they get written by a very small core of admins, who then suppress other viewpoints. And the old firebrands and revolutionaries become the new conservatives, at some point, as we see. You might consider stepping back and letting some other folks have a shot. I know it feels like your own carefully-crafted work is being demolished by know-nothings, but that's the ESSENTIAL and perhaps the primal Wikipedia experience, after all.SBHarris 19:13, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
You're a few years out of date. I've made very few edits to IRS recently, and most of my edits here are to stop the policy being changed against or without consensus, or the writing deteriorating. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 19:22, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
Which translates to having the policy change from the way you like it; in as much as you, more than any simple person on WP, are responsible for its content (and the same at WP:RS). Yes, you may have to watch your own writing "deteriorate" as seen from your eyes: welcome to Wikipedia. It's hard to even answer the assertion that this state is the product of "consensus", since the word has been tortured so much at Wikipedia. It's about as much "consensus" as what happens in any non-democratic country. There's not a regime of any Arabic-speaking country in 2010 that didn't claim to rule by "consensus" (but nevermind that voting thing). SBHarris 19:43, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
It is clear enough that SV is the main person arguing against all proposals right now, not in the past.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:59, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
SV, I think you're guilty as the next guy/girl of using this page as a whiteboard. One day you "gave the copyright paragraph its own section", then the next you decided it was "better where it was before". Sheesh. Location (talk) 22:06, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
I moved it because someone else suggested it, but you're right, I should have left it alone. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:09, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I liked having it in its own section. Location (talk) 22:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 :) My thinking is that it's very short for its own section. And there's a logic to having it in the other section, where it explains when you need to supply a source, but then adds to watch out for copyright. It seems to flow well. What's your thinking about the benefits of it being a stand-alone section? SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 22:15, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The stand-alone section is something I proposed on February 16th. I think the stand-alone section stresses the importance of WP:COPY and it's no shorter than the current "Reliable sources and notability" section. Location (talk) 22:23, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
SV please see #Paraphrase in challenged and reply there. -- PBS (talk) 22:29, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
The removed sub-section made logical sense being there, and was not the shortest one amongst the others still there. That change to this page would be something worth discussing concerning copyright is not so surprising as it has been a subject which changed in priority for WP overall over the years.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 08:37, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the subsection is not so much that it existed, but that it was full of mistakes. What we have now is a sentence or two about copyright coming out of nowhere in a section that isn't about that at all; but at least what it says isn't manifestly wrong. If we want a separate section on copyright/plagiarism (which seems a perfectly good idea), then someone with genuine knowledge of the subject (and the ability to summarize clearly without loss of accuracy) needs to write it. --Kotniski (talk) 12:24, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

OK. Discussion about the wording is still going on above. Let's try to identify mistakes and see if we can fix them.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 12:46, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

[edit] Organization, Headers

While we're on this, some basic re-ordering might be helpful. For one, we refer to reliable sources in relation to 'other principles' before the section where we define reliable sources. So current section 1 should come after 2 and 3, if not at the very end. Also, WP:MOSHEAD suggests we not repeat phrases like 'reliable sources and...' if it's implied by the parent header/title.

Current outline
Suggested

The changes are: 1) section 1 is moved to after section 6. Section 1 headers are shortened to not repeat "reliable sources". Ocaasi c 15:02, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Seems to be an improvement. Though in talking about the structure, we ought to finally address the question of how information is to be divided between this page and WP:NOR - it's an illogical jumble at the moment. If we want two pages (maybe we don't - I'd be for merging them), we have to get it clear in our minds what their basic division of scope is to be, then we can get the structure of each one right, and hopefully eliminate duplication and contradiction. --Kotniski (talk) 17:06, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Ok, I'll move it. Putting the relations to other policies is confusing, although it keeps the core policies central, is really confusing for new readers and basically a sign of poor policy design (not a shocker). I can't really touch the NOR issue, but I've had the notion that on some userpage we should jam all three core content policies and then see what it looks like if you take out all of the overlap. At least 20% of the policies is sheer repetition, if not more. Anyway, easier to do major changes once the organization and text are spruced up, even though it's a bit time-consuming. Ocaasi c 20:26, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
Just a suggestion, if anyone is thinking of major policy change, including a merger, open up a user page, as Ocaasi suggests, not just another subpage. That was the mistake we made with ATT, we opened it up for general editing too soon. If you keep it on a user page, you can invite a very small number of people that you know are good writers, then slowly increase the number of invitations before going live with a proposal -- a process that should take several months. SlimVirgin TALK|CONTRIBS 00:16, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Let me know if anyone decides to do this - I'd like to help with the redrafting. Or better yet, why don't we just decide on a place now and get to work on it. I'm happy to start the process, unless someone else wants to host it in their user space. --Ludwigs2 02:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Well first we should decide whether we want one page or two. When I raised it recently there seemed to be voices in support of retaining two separate pages (V and OR) - but if we're going to have two pages, we should try and find a common position on what the division of material between them should be. Can someone who supports having two pages perhaps suggest such a division?--Kotniski (talk) 10:08, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
NOR should be about not putting one's own unpublished ideas and information into Wikipedia, and V should be about supporting material with sources. 75.47.129.31 (talk) 12:53, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
The way I look at the two polices... NOR is focused on what we say... V is focused on what the sources say. Blueboar (talk) 13:29, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
V is about the claim being made being published in a reliable source; OR is a claim not explicitly published in a reliable source. One immediate relates to the other. They are almost the same thing, just different facets of one principle. Or a close corollary. Or a mirror image. They overlap significantly. The main difference is WP:SYN, which could just be added to V. It's simple; if it's not explicitly stated, and you have to combine parts or sources to advance a point, it's not verifiable, because it's not in the parts or the sources. I think Kotniski is onto something with combining these two. NPOV is a pillar, one of the trifecta, it's very detailed and substantial in itself; V and NOR are not that distinct. They are obviously both important, but it's a question of whether they can be gainfully merged. Ocaasi c 13:36, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, Kotniski's comments are certainly worth considering. I think Blueboar is not far off describing the difference, which is not enormous. By Blueboar's logic, V is "under" NOR. (NOR is about what we say, as per Blueboar, and what it says means that sources are important, which, according to Blueboar's formulation, is what V is about.)--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 17:05, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
As I understand it the original (first-blush) ideal here was that wikipedia was supposed to be a 'serious' encyclopedia, which meant that it had to avoid the kinds of random thought-streams and opinion-mongering that people are naturally prone to when left to their own devices. Thus, anything that someone wants to enter into the encyclopedia as a 'point of information' should be traceable back to well-established knowledge that can be found outside of wikipedia (and/or the heads of its editors). NOR and V are just different sides of this coin - NOR is aimed at editors who tend to confabulate from sources (making an argument of their own by building off of unrelated claims in the literature), while V is aimed at editors who tend to shoot from the hip in wildly unconsidered ways (making an argument of their own by... well, blathering, mostly). I could make an argument for two policies or one policy - I tend to lean towards one policy page because (a) I like the simplicity of it, and (b) it prevents weird forms of policy drift (for instance, in the current case the two policies are edited by different editors, meaning that the policies start to contradict each other at points where these editors don't see eye to eye). --Ludwigs2 18:12, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) Since no two editors, even if they support the split, ever seem to have the same view on what the split should be, it does certainly seem as though we have two policies which (whatever their original motivation may have been) have crept onto each other's territory so much that they have ended up largely as duplicates (with really only the SYN section being exclusive to WP:NOR). The potential two sides of the coin that I see are the aspirations and the practice - the actual content policy, the ideal we aim for (everything should be supportable by sources) on the one hand; and the practices we have for attempting to achieve that ideal (the informal "challenge - provide a source, or delete" procedure and its variants) on the other hand. But still, I wouldn't see a need for splitting those two things between two pages (I just think we should be more clear of the distinction when structuring our page(s)).--Kotniski (talk) 07:42, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Let's not forget that one reason for splitting up any pages is simply keeping presentation neat and avoiding long articles. This does not remove the implied need to make sure that two pages should not largely overlap each other of course. So logically, I guess the question arises as to whether the two sections were always intended to overlap as much as they do or has this situation somehow come into being by "creep". I can imagine that for an identifiable faction on Wikipedia who want logical simplicity and more complete rules on everything, and who do not like such concept as "common knowledge" and WP:IAR, it is always going to be logical and simple to imply that Verifiability simply means using reliable sources. Implying such simplified rules seems to be a major drive on WP sometimes. You frequently see discussions reach a point where someone gets close to saying that our policies demand every part of every sentence deserves a footnote, and then someone will say that even though our policies might look like they imply this, it is not the intention. Which makes you wonder why we allow so much use of the writing style whereby what we write always seems to be aimed at implying something different than it intends. Certainly these "loopholes" in the wording are the cause of problems. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:44, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
"complete rules on everything" are no-go for such a diverse and voluntary project like WP. If WP gives up on a measured approach and some form of common sense, it is a sure way to drive authors away and we will largely end up being a bureacracy/administration without production, i.e. the project will pretty much dead.--Kmhkmh (talk) 13:17, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
In case it was not clear, I agree. I am thinking there is a tendency to write policy so that it is more and more logically simple in theory but less and less corresponding to practice. Describing RS and V policies as basically the same thing, like we have now, seems to be something that has evolved over time.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Look, the following points are what need to be covered:
  • Verification: Any 'points of information' added to wikipedia have to be traceable back to positions offered in sources. (this is necessary but not sufficient for including that information)
  • Original research: Any 'points of information' that are verifiable should be limited to the sense and context in which they are used in sources. This includes the following:
    • Extrapolation: Extrapolating from ideas presented in a source to present ideas that are out of the scope and context of the source.
    • Synthesis: Combining ideas from different sources to present ideas that are out of the scope and context of any of the given sources.
    • Quote mining: Using quotes from a source in a way that is inconsistent with the scope, context, or intent of the source, to present ideas that are out of the scope and context of the source.
  • Reliability: Sources used for verification should be of reasonable quality in order to prevent dubious or suspect information from being added to the encyclopedia. This is context dependent:
    • Secondary sources are preferred, as objective overviews; primary sources are allowable for descriptions of particular points of view; tertiary sources are allowable for statements about general knowledge.
    • Blogs, web forums, and other easily editable are not usually reliable since the information they contain may change whimsically and usually reflects the momentary opinions of individuals.
    • Self-published sources may be reliable for descriptions of particular points of view, but should not be considered reliable sources of mainstream perspectives.
    • Newspapers and magazines should usually be considered reliable, so long as they have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.
    • Scholarly sources (either peer-reviewed articles or books from reputable scholarly publishers) should be considered authoritative on issue in their particular field, though care should be taken: many scholarly sources are primary sources, and scholarly sources are not authoritative outside their particular area of scholarship.
  • Accessibility: Sources should be easily accessible, so that anyone can verify them. Sources that are not easily accessible, as a general rule, will either represent minor positions that likely fail UNDUE or will be primary sources that have not yet entered into mainstream thought:
    • Non-English sources should be avoided unless translations are easily available
    • Journal articles that are sufficiently new or obscure to require university-level access are most likely primary research which should be used with caution
    • Web search results are useful for finding sources, but should not be considered sources in and of themselves unless each and every entry in the result has been independently verified (this is because search results are keyword searches that produce results which may or may not be apropos to the topic in question)
This covers 95% of the material in wp:V, wp:NOR and wp:RS, and (IMO) could be easily handled within one page. --Ludwigs2 17:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
  • I'm afraid I don't think that's what V, NOR and RS actually say. "Points of information" don't have to be traced back to sources unless they're challenged or likely to be challenged. Sources don't have to be easily accessible so that anyone can verify them, they just have to be reliable; being behind a paywall, or only available from a university library, doesn't make them unreliable. Non-English sources don't have to have translations easily available, they just have to be reliable. The fact that a source is in French or German doesn't make it unreliable.—S Marshall T/C 19:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Ludwigs I think if you want to work on a large scale like then SV (I believe it was) is probably right that this requires you to set up a user page, because this needs more room? I think this talk page here is for marginal improvements to the existing article. Concerning what you've written. Anyway, here are a few remarks, but overall I see a lot of rule creep danger. I suggest you should not make this merge proposal a way to slip in some hidden policy changes without real discussion because people will notice it and that will simply kill the whole proposal. These remarks are about points where you are clearly moving away from current consensus and policy:-
  • My first point would be that concerning "points of information" (a) good on you for trying to find a word better than material and (b) you need to make clear that the policy is only about non-obvious information. Indeed maybe "non obvious information" is better than "points of information".
  • The term non-obvious is also logically necessary in understanding what you have above under "idea" in the bullets named "Extrapolation" and "Synthesis".
  • For reasons discussed recently I advise against over-simplifying the preference for secondary sources. They are not always preferred only most often. I do not believe you'll get consensus for creating a rule we do not need against primary sources, which are very often best.
  • I think you are trying to change the Accessibility section quite a bit away from any likely consensus we are going to have, as shown the last time this came up for RfC.
It would be easy to keep going, but as I say, I think this is not the right forum?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
@S. Marshall & Andrew: don't miss the forest for the trees, please. I could argue with you both that this is what the policies actually do say, or at least that this is what they should say to be consistent with their intent, but my only purpose here is to show that these are the basic topics that need to be covered, and the can all be covered in a simple and straightforward fashion on a single page. I'm all for opening up a user page, but I'm waiting for some kind of focus or consensus on the issue here. --Ludwigs2 19:40, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Yes, I might also contest some of the detail, but as to the general idea I fully agree with Ludwigs - all this material would fit neatly and logically onto one page. With it split (often fairly randomly) between several pages, we end up with massive duplication, and contradictions inevitably creep in (as we've been seeing in many of the detailed discussion above).--Kotniski (talk) 10:13, 29 March 2011 (UTC)
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