Wikipedia talk:NZGB Independent Sources

Unofficial sources preferred?

Does this supplement mean to imply that unofficial sources are preferred over official sources, rather than that the most commonly used name is preferred, taking into account both official and unofficial sources? Nurg (talk) 03:27, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:COMMONNAME tells us that "independent" sources are used to determine prevalence. This supplement is simply intended to help editors understand which sources are required to use the official geographic name under the NZGB Act 2008, and thus which sources are not independent. It does result in the implication that unofficial sources should be preferred over official sources, since all official sources are covered within the term "official documents", but that is simply a result of the intersection of this very broad law with Wikipedia policy. BilledMammal (talk) 03:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I question the implication that unofficial sources should be preferred over official sources.

One. We use independent sources in order to avoid bias. If the NZ government said that NZ was the least corrupt country in the world, and the Corruption Perceptions Index said NZ was the least corrupt country, equal with Denmark, we would prefer the Corruption Perceptions Index as a source, because the government might be biased and have an interest in portraying NZ as better than it is. When it comes to the name of a place, what kind of bias are we needing to guard against in government use of an official name? Why should government use not be counted as a use, along with use by other sources?

Two. Wikipedia:Naming conventions (geographic names)#Widely accepted name says "Disinterested, authoritative reference works are almost always reliable if they are current", and includes in the list of examples, "Many governments have an agency to standardize the use of place names, such as the United States Board on Geographic Names [...], the Geographical Names Board of Canada, etc." Surely this suggests that the NZGB is a "disinterested, authoritative" source, among other sources.

I know we should not give official names undue weight, but I'm questioning why they should be pushed down to the non-preferred level. Nurg (talk) 09:53, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

In response to one, what we try to do with WP:COMMONNAME is have the name of the article reflect what the subject is actually called. Non-independent sources are not useful for this, as rather than providing us with the name they would choose to use, we are provided with the name they are compelled to use, and so provide undue weight towards that viewpoint. To ensure that our outcome is not affected by this undue weight, the typical response is to remove these sources from consideration; this supplement is intended to help editors understand which sources these are.

In this case, the reason the government might want to introduce this bias is largely irrelevant to the fact that they do introduce this bias that we need to correct for.

In response to two, I believe the NZGB differs from many geographical boards in that it is not a disinterested party, instead being mandated with "promoting the use of te reo Māori" (section 19 of the Frameworks of the New Zealand Geographic Board Ngā Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa). With that said, the NZ Gazetteer is a primary source not a dependent source and thus isn't intended to be addressed in this supplement; if you feel this should be clarified we could add a line in "Government sources" doing so and directing editors to supplements intended to cover the use of primary sources such as WP:OFFICIALNAME?

Finally, I would like to clear up a small misconception in your final line; this supplement suggests pushing the status of "official documents" down to the level of non-preferred sources for the purpose of determining the common name so as to avoid giving undue weight to the "official name", rather than pushing down the "official name" itself. BilledMammal (talk) 11:20, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem is this supplement pushes down the status of so many documents that very few are going to be left to give us enough information to determine a common name with. News sites, fine, but some places are so small that the only time they get mentioned in the news is to report on their new NZGB name...

As a slightly-but-not-entirely tongue-in-cheek suggestion to cut the Gordian knot: Wikipedia is certainly a publication, and I for one would argue that it is scientific. Therefore as a scientific publication, to the extent that our articles are prepared in New Zealand they are legally required per the cited Act to use the official names.

And on the other hand if that seems ridiculous, then really it's just as ridiculous to assume that academics (famous for cherishing their academic freedom) submitting an article to an Elsevier journal are first feverishly checking NZGB -- let alone the peer reviewers and editors based overseas. Even Royal Society of NZ doesn't mention any such thing in their style guide [1]. If we must disprefer official government sources for determining a common name, fine, there are worse rules on Wikipedia I guess. But it's silly to act as if anyone other than govt officials has even heard of, let alone follows, the NZGB Act. Just because they're theoretically subject to the Act doesn't make them less independent in practice. --Zeborah (talk) 08:51, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

In cases where there aren't enough independent sources to determine a common name I don't think anyone will object to using the official name, so in my opinion that won't cause a problem.

I was also hesitant to assume that the act would functionally apply beyond government publications, so I did some research and found an article stating that the NZGB "liaises with offenders to remedy non-compliance", with the same article stating that "scientific publications" were one of the entities required to use the official place name. I would also note that what you linked isn't the style guide, but the publishing policy. Style guides differ for each journal under the Royal Society of NZ, and the two I have checked (New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics and Kōtuitui: New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online) state New Zealand place names should conform to official listings in the Gazetteer of NZ place names and include alternate and dual names wherever possible to avoid confusion.

I would also clarify that this supplement doesn't directly push down the status of these documents; WP:COMMONNAME does push down the status of documents that are not independent, and this supplement does help editors understand what those sources are, but on its own this supplement has no weight. BilledMammal (talk) 11:32, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

My mistake re the style guides. Although the guidance they provide doesn't seem to match with the Act so I'd still argue that they've created it independently. However if I had the energy and masochism to litigate an RfC it'd be to go right back and say there's absolutely no reason not to prefer official names unless in cases of human-rights-level controversies, and the desire of a government to promote the native language of its own country is no reason to... Well, anyway, I don't have either the energy or the masochism so I guess Wikipedia's going to keep on piling supplements on rules on precedents ad absurdum. --Zeborah (talk) 17:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I've also wondered about this - based on this extremely broad interpretation of the Act, I could definitely see a case being made that Wikipedia is also subject to the same parameters. For what it's worth, I do also agree with Zeborah that this seems ridiculous, but that it's in keeping with the broad interpretation that's being applied to other sources. Should and wherever possible are also very different to must and always, as is the cited reason of avoiding confusion instead of "in keeping with our requirements under the NZGB Act". I think the better approach would be to ignore the Act and treat the sources on their own merits - we've already seen that some scientific articles don't follow the official name, and material produced for tourists absolutely doesn't, so it seems weird to try and limit coverage of these areas. But, if we're going to, we should be consistent in keeping with our position and also use the official name per our apparent obligations under the Act to do so. Turnagra (talk) 18:24, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I've clarified scientific publication by adding a source. Encyclopaedia's are typically not considered such, and so those rules shouldn't apply to us, though if you are concerned you can start a broader discussion, and ask WMF to review the law and its applicability to Wikipedia.

In regards to interpreting the language, I would disagree with your interpretation*, but regardless of interpretation, at the moment we have a heavy weight of evidence telling us that it applies to scientific publications; we have the Act and the NZGB telling us that it does, we have the NZGB telling us that they actively enforce it, and we have journal style guides where authors are instructed to comply with the act. Given this weight of evidence, it would be inappropriate for us to assume that the law has no effect.

Finally, I would like to clear up two small misconceptions. First, the provided journal examples are all foreign, with one exception that was published two years before the dual name become official. Second, the NZGB considers the acts applicability to be narrower than "material produced for tourists", instead being "information for tourists".

*"Should" is defined as "used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency", emphasis mine, while the guide uses softer language in cases where compliance is voluntary, such as "is encouraged" and "can be".

BilledMammal (talk) 21:56, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if we can use that source as it's referring to one instance and not necessarily the interpretation of the NZGB. As far as the language interpretation is concerned, I've had a bit of experience in the past with NZ legislation and - while I know that anecdotal evidence isn't generally sufficient - I can safely say that "should... wherever possible" is pretty weak as far as legislative obligations go. In terms of your claim about them being foreign articles, all of the instances in the glacier RM that I checked mentioned field study of the glaciers, meaning that they were - at least in part - prepared in NZ and would fall under the requirements of the Act. I'm also not entirely sure what the difference between "material produced for tourists" and "information for tourists" is in our context, since any source we'd be looking at would likely fall under either category. Turnagra (talk) 08:55, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I would prefer a NZ government definition, but there is none in the Act, and I haven't been able to find one provided by them elsewhere. In the absence of such a definition, I feel it is reasonable to assume that they are using the general definition - and at least in this case there is an identified general definition, unlike "information for tourists" which remains uncomfortably vague. On that topic, I've updated the supplement to note the lack of current clarity.

I think we are reading that sentence slightly differently; if I remember my grammar lessons correctly, the "and" in this case acts as a conjunctive, meaning that conform to official listings in the Gazetteer of NZ place names and include alternate and dual names wherever possible to avoid confusion are separate propositions. In other words, the "wherever possible" doesn't apply to "conform to..."

I think you've also got a slightly too broad definition of "preparing"; preparing a document is typically limited to work directly on the document, and does not involve prior work such as field research, or even some work done during the process of preparing such as the work done by the reviewer. Fortunately, the law doesn't limit us in terms of sources quite as much as you might have initially believed. BilledMammal (talk) 10:34, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Levels of independence

@Turnagra: Continuing the discussion here, as it has gone beyond the scope of the other discussion:

In an ideal world, we would dismiss all sources that are less than fully independent, and for some requested moves where the topic is widely discussed, like Stewart Island, that is possible. However, when a topic is rarely discussed that becomes impossible; we would end up with no sources that we can use. Instead, we should work down the list, starting by accepting sources that have more independence - that are bound and influenced by the law but inconsistently - and stopping when we have a reasonable sample and the preference of sources in one direction or the other has become clear.

As an incomplete list, I would assess independence as follows, with those on the left having the least independence and those on the right having the most:

LINZ → Federal Government → Local Government → Scholarly articles in New Zealand journals → Scholarly articles in foreign journals authored by researchers in New Zealand

Effectively, it's their distance from oversight by LINZ - which, being the agency that decides what a location should be called and enforces the use of its choice, has no independence and should never be used. In theory this could result in us having no sources with which to determine the correct title for a topic, but in practice any location whose only source is LINZ will lack notability and thus won't have an article.

From there, a degree of independence starts to emerge due to the incomplete enforcement; Federal Government sources have a small amount of independence, local government sources have a greater degree, and so on till we reach Scholarly articles in foreign journals authored by researchers in New Zealand which while technically required by the law to use the official name are so far removed from LINZ and their ability to enforce the law that we can consider them almost entirely independent.

In general, I'm hoping you won't take issue with any of this; if in a specific RM we decide to accept, for example, all scholarly sources regardless of independence then so long as we apply this equally to both options then only result will be a greater number of sources to use and a slight bias towards your preferred name.

As a final note, sometimes it isn't necessary to consider the independence of sources; when the results are overwhelmingly against the official name it's clear that the bias imposed by the laws requiring the use of the official name have had minimal impact and so it is not worth spending the time required to determine which sources are and aren't independent. BilledMammal (talk) 01:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)