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WP:QUESTIONABLE misleading

It appears that WP:QUESTIONABLE is misleading in its current form in that, when compared to WP:NOTRELIABLE, part of the policy which the lede of this guideline makes clear controls, it:

  • Omits mention of apparent conflicts of interests when it says, "Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight." whereas the policy adds apparent conflicts of interest to the end of that list. (And "apparent" is very important: real conflicts of interest aren't necessary to make a source questionable.)
  • Says, "Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties... The proper uses of a questionable source are very limited." (emphasis added) whereas the policy says much more dispositively, "Questionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves.... They are not suitable sources for contentious claims about others. (Emphasis added.)

I get it that this guideline isn't intended to just be a regurgitation of the policy, but the current phrasings are actively misleading. I propose rewriting the section to read:

Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight, or which have a conflict of interest. Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or which rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. Questionable sources are generally unsuitable for citing contentious claims about third parties, which includes claims against institutions, persons living or dead, as well as more ill-defined entities. The proper uses of a questionable source are very limited to use as sources of information about themselves, see [[Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources#Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves|below]].

(Link nowikied for draft purposes.) Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 14:55, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

Can you share a link to any dispute where this matters? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#chemicalindustryarchives.org, though that's not a particularly difficult case. At the bottom line, however, the Policy policy says that we have an obligation to make sure that policies and guidelines say what they really mean, so it shouldn't really be needed to show that this is causing problems. It has the potential of causing disruption and incorrect results, so it ought to be fixed. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 03:11, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
Some observations:
  • The omission of "...or have an apparent conflict of interest" in WP:QUESTIONABLE might have been thought as compensated by adding "..., that are promotional in nature," in the following sentence.
  • While policy states what questionable sources should be used for, guideline states what questionable sources should not be used for. "Third party" phrase/set mentioned in the guideline is the opposite of the specific "set" mentioned in the policy. Logos (talk) 21:23, 13 May 2015 (UTC)
No strong opinions about the rest, but I wouldn't delete the or between the "those with a poor reputation for checking the facts, or with no editorial oversight". For example, some British tabloids (or even National Enquirer) have editorial oversight, but since they do not have reputation for fact-checking (quite the opposite) they qualify as questionable sources. Wouldn't want that to change. Abecedare (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

Notability

This diff removed a statement about notability (that if there were no independent sources about something, then Wikipedia should not have an article about it). Is that okay with everyone? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:20, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

It is obviously okay with me, and I think my rationale speaks for itself. --Izno (talk) 18:47, 11 May 2015 (UTC)
Agree with the edit. The thing seemed tacked on - making things more prolix (going on to discuss something else). Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:33, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I think we should include the sentence in the guideline, but it was a non-sequitur in that specific section. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Are we aware that it's the related catchphrase in Wikipedia:Verifiability#Notability. Logos (talk) 13:38, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
And at WP:N. The other problem I have with the sentence is indeed its duplication. Do we need to have the exact same (or nearly so) phrase in 3 different guidelines, only one of which is actually on notability? I suspect it's a holdover from when this guideline was titled WP:Reliable sources, but now that the scope is somewhat different, I don't think it bears mentioning in this guideline. People are pointed to WP:N often enough that a page scoped to identifying reliable sources has no business saying what WP:N already says (and with all the nuance that WP:N brings to itself). --Izno (talk) 15:36, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
@Logos: Amusingly, see the comment in the top source: "EDITORS, PLEASE NOTE: BEFORE ADDING MATERIAL TO THIS PAGE, PLEASE CHECK THAT IT IS NOT ALREADY INCLUDED IN Wikipedia:Verifiability OR Wikipedia:No original research, WHICH ARE THE POLICY PAGES ON SOURCES. REPETITION IS POINTLESS, AND INCONSISTENCY IS WORSE THAN POINTLESS. MANY THANKS." So, uh... --Izno (talk) 15:40, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Its placement in the lead is better but still unsatisfactory per reply to Logos. --Izno (talk) 15:36, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
WP:N is not a policy, but WP:V is; that is it has more power than WP:N per WP:PG. What I mean is, guidelines can borrow some key points from policies. Repetition of bulk of the material can be pointless, but excluding some key points/sentences may lead to inconsistencies and confusions. This issue might have been discussed in the past already. Logos (talk) 16:04, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
I don't have a firm opinion on its inclusion either way.
Logos, let me recommend WP:PGE to you. On a question of whether the English Wikipedia should have an article about something, WP:N is more powerful than WP:V, because it's more specific. WP:V is repeating (as of just a couple of years ago) what's been in WP:N almost since the guideline was written. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:22, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

I don't agree. It appears that your understanding of "power" is different than mine. However, there is an explicit "hierarchy of power" specifically mentioned here. That is, all users; should normally follow policies, and should attempt to follow guidelines (though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply). Essays are the weakest because "they are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors for which widespread consensus has not been established and they do not speak for the entire community and may be created and written without approval". As long as these definitions stand there, do you think that your WP:PGE can be superior to WP:PG or any other policy? Definitely not: WP:POLCON. Besides, I see that you have been heavily editing both WP:PG and WP:PGE, and it was your edit which placed the link of an essay into a policy as a reference/guidance [1]. Had you sought any or wider consensus for that change? I don't think so. I recommend you to remove that "see also" link to WP:PGE in WP:POLICIES, because there are outright contradictions and possible conflicts in WP:PGE. For example, your WP:PGE says that "all policies need to be applied with common sense" which directly contradicts with clear definition of policies in WP:POLICIES. Even the very first two sentences of WP:PGE are all wrong: (The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays on Wikipedia is obscure. There is no bright line between what the community chooses to call a "policy" or a "guideline" or an "essay"). Due to the clearcut hierarchy of power in WP:POLICIES, "mainstream view" (i.e. the majority of the editors) will not care about what WP:PGE or any other essay grumbles about. As an example, as you will see here, although half of the arbitrators disagree about the verdict, it is pretty clear from their comments that all of their grasps of essay are in-line with WP:POLICIES. There might have been some/many more cases in arbitration or other venues of wikipedia. Similar to the bias against fringe as put forth by DGG in their comment above, there will always be a strong bias against essays in wikipedia. Logos (talk) 01:31, 13 May 2015 (UTC)

I'd recommend that you look into the history of that {{supplement}} (it's in the policy's talk page archives), and also that you spend some time contemplating WP:UCS and WP:IAR. It's not "my" essay in any sense. If you interpret POLICY as having a "clearcut hierarchy of power, then that only means I did a worse job of writing POLICY than I'd hoped. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:56, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
It's kind of a loophole that, you're referring to other essays to advance your point. All {{supplement}}, WP:UCS and WP:IAR are essays; which means they are far down in the "hierarchy of power". I've searched the archives of WP:PG already; there seems no discussion or consensus seeking for the addition of "see also" link to WP:PGE in WP:POLICIES.
Contrary to your claim, these links tell me that WP:PGE is "your" essay, and you have some kind of obsession for publicizing it: [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13]
People reading your above statement might think that all of the policies had been devised/created/designed by you; could you state the policies which you have contributed to heavily. Logos (talk) 20:38, 17 May 2015 (UTC)
Funny, but when I personally go to WP:IAR, I find that there's a {{policy}} tag at the top of that page. That page has been considered an official policy since 2004. Maybe you should read it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:57, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Answering your question: It’s probably faster to state what areas of advice I usually avoid: copyright and most other legal stuff; admins and arbs; and bots and other technical issues. My favorite policies are the core content policies: WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV (off and on), as well as POLICIES itself. You will also find me at IRS, MEDRS, EL, MEDMOS, several image-related and MOS pages, and the guide for WikiProjects. The guidelines I spend the most time at usually related directly to one of the core content policies.
I am not the single most prolific editor of policies and guidelines in Wikipedia's entire history, but I would probably be on a top-ten list. On the specific question of POLICY itself, approximately two-thirds of the current content was originally written by me, including almost all of NOTPART and PGLIFE (whose early development you can track if you look through Wikipedia:Policy/Procedure's history). So, basically, yes: if you misunderstand our policy on policies, then you can safely blame me for your confusion, because it is either something I wrote or something I should have fixed already. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:56, 18 May 2015 (UTC)
Look @WhatamIdoing: if your contributions to all those policies have been similar to the ones in WP:PG, then all of those should be checked carefully. I am sorry, for not checking WP:IAR beforehand, and for adding to the others right away. I guess you see the kind of impression you left upon me.
I'm afraid that impression will not change a bit until you can find clever responses to the other more important issues that I raised above, and which you didn't answer by now. You said WP:PGE was not yours, but the links above asserts the opposite. You implied that there was some sort of consensus/discussion for the addition of "see also" link to WP:PGE in WP:POLICIES, but the archives say otherwise. If you prefer to bend the truth in such simple matters, how can you expect the people to value your contributions in policies and/or guidelines. My advice regarding your "see also" link to your WP:PGE stands. Logos (talk) 21:51, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
PGE was created as a result of a discussion at WT:POLICY. Note that "created" and "linked to" are not the same things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:05, 19 May 2015 (UTC)
I would be more than happy to see the link to that discussion. Logos (talk) 18:12, 21 May 2015 (UTC)

The Western Pacific Railroad Presidents

Today I discovered your listing of Railroad Presidents and I noticed that there are several missing from the Western Pacific Railway and Railroad. The information contained herein is from the March 1983 issue of Mileposts, the railroad's house organ. The 12 presidents are follows: 

1. Walter J. Bartnett  March 3, 1903 - June 23, 1905
2. Edward T. Jeffery   June 23,1905 - November 6, 1913
3. Benjamin F. Bush    November 6, 1913 - March 4, 1915   (listed already)
4. Charles M. Levey    July 14, 1916 - March 30, 1927
5. Harry M. Adams      March 30, 1927 - December 31, 1931
6. Charles Elsey       January 1, 1932 - December 31, 1948
7. Harry A. Mitchell   January 1, 1949 - July 1, 1949
8. Frederic B. Whitman July 1, 1949 - June 30, 1965
9. Myron M. Christy    June 30, 1965 - November 30, 1970

10. Alfred E. Perlman December 1, 1970 - December 31, 1972 (already Listed) 11. Robert G. "Mike" Flannery January 1, 1973 - June 9, 1982 12. Robert C. Marquis June 9, 1982 - January 11, 198322:26, 26 May 2015 (UTC)50.53.134.131 (talk)

Janaury 11, 1983 was the day the Western Pacific became part of the Union Pacific and ceased to exist fro then on.

Information icon Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top.
The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills. New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). I've added this list to Western Pacific Railroad, and you should feel free to improve upon what I've done or to add it to other appropriate articles or lists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

i have a question

does this rules valid to all the languages on wikipedia or just in english? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.253.140.96 (talk) 12:02, 29 May 2015 (UTC)

Policies, guidelines, and other administrative documents at English Wikipedia pertain only to this Wikipedia, not other-language Wikipedias unless they have expressly adopted them at their sites. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 14:41, 29 May 2015 (UTC)
That being said, the policies and content standards on the English Wikipedia are generally more well developed than on other projects. This probably owes to the fact that the English site is the oldest and has a high rate of participation. So while it's up to members of each community to reach a consensus on such matters, the guidelines on this site are a useful starting point.TheBlueCanoe 23:23, 31 May 2015 (UTC)

Court records

This isn't the right place to ask questions about how to apply Wikipedia policy and guidelines; this page is for discussion of how to change or improve this rule. For questions of that sort use the reliable sources noticeboard or, in this case, the biographies of living persons noticeboard. — TransporterMan (TALK) 17:09, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

This is a question about the usability of court records. Wikipedia has pages for me, [[14]] and Edward Wegman [[15]]. I have never edited either of these pages and have zero intent to do so, but I am interested in getting clarification, as the generally well-intentioned Wikipedia rules sometimes seem to forbid rock-solid real-world factual evidence.

My blog post Ed Wegman, Yasmin Said, Milt Johns Sue John Mashey For $2 Million is itself obviously not RS, but it attaches copies of online court records of lawsuits related to events described in both Wikipedia pages above.

Those are the files named 1-1.pdf - 20.pdf. pp.15-18 of the detaled PDF (not RS of course) summarize the chronology, but also explain how to find the online records via PACER.

Of course, claims in court files easily may not be correct (and indeed, some of them are not), but [[16]] is even stronger: "Exercise extreme caution in using primary sources. Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person."

That seems to mandate that even the following sentence would absolutely be disallowed. Is that true?

"Edward Wegman filed a $1M lawsuit against John Mashey 0n 03/10/14 in Fairfax Circuit Court in Virginia and his Wegman Report coauthor Yasmin Said filed another there 06/12/15. Both were removed to Federal Court 04/15/15, and on 04/30/15 they submitted voluntary dismissals of the combined case." JohnMashey (talk) 20:28, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Is a master's thesis a reliable source?

I'm doing research for a red-linked article on a historical manuscript, on which there seems to be quite a bit of information, and I came across a thesis presented for a master's degree on a university website. I suspect that it is, but I might be incorrect, so I'd like some other opinions. (I can provide a link to the paper if needed.) --Biblioworm 02:45, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

This old discussion may provide some pointers on this oft-discussed topic at RSN. If that's not sufficient, I'd suggest asking at that noticeboard with details of the reference and the material you hope to cite it for. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 02:59, 3 June 2015 (UTC)
@Abecedare: Well, I thought there would be quite a bit of information on this subject (since the thesis was quite substantive), but the issue seems very controversial, so I just won't use the paper; I don't want to get myself involved in the mess that issue seems to be... --Biblioworm 03:55, 3 June 2015 (UTC)

How reliable are inteviews/autobiographies and such?

I think such sources are more primary than secondary, and a bit questionable. They are certainly acceptable, but within limits. Should we discuss them in a separate section? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 06:22, 2 June 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps, but before you want to reinvent the wheel here you should be aware that this has been discussed many times over at RSN and you might want to investigate what the ongoing consensus on interviews, etc., is over there before trying to formulate a rule here. What I seem to recall is that with interviews that they must be published in a reliable source, so as to insure that they are accurately and fairly reproduced, and then ought to be treated as primary sources. It would seem to me that something very close to that ought to apply to autobiographies, but there may be stuff on that already at RSN as well. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:19, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
Also the evaluation (as with every source) will depend upon the author, era, publisher, reviews, and what exact claim it is being cited for. Vast difference between using Didion's book as a source for her reaction to her husband and daughter's death, and using James Frey's book for describing his youth. Better to discuss specific instances at WP:RSN than try to formulate universal guidelines. Abecedare (talk) 18:11, 2 June 2015 (UTC)
For interviews, you might want to look at WP:PRIMARYNEWS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 09:32, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

Is Investopedia a reliable source for investment topics?

This isn't the right place to ask questions about how to apply Wikipedia policy and guidelines; this page is for discussion of how to change or improve this rule. For questions of that sort use the reliable sources noticeboard or, in this case, the biographies of living persons noticeboard. — TransporterMan (TALK) 19:09, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

— Thanks.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 11 June 2015

{{edit semi-protected|Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources}} I would like to add Comedian John Carfi to list of comedians -John is also an actor which will show up if you put his name in your search -a reliable source is shown on the Ricki Lake show . 

If you go to John's website you can see all of his credits.

www.johncarfi.com If you google John Carfi you can see the proof of his credits -he has been in the business over 33 years.here is a video at a well known comedy club on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K__5DexheU Johncarfi (talk) 12:10, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

@Johncarfi: Hi John. First, this is the talk page of Wikipedia policy on identifying reliable sources, and so it is for discussing that policy. This thread of yours belongs at the talk page of the article you are here about, talk:List of comedians (which article is not semi-protected), or maybe at your talk page. In any event, we only include entries on lists like these where the person to be added has an article. The article you posted (apparently on yourself) was a copyright violation and so has been deleted (if you own the text, we still couldn't use it unless it was released into the public domain or under a compatible free copyright license). Until such time as we have a proper article, the title does not belong at that page. Assuming it is you, please be aware of our conflict of interest guidelines, and that Wikipedia is not a means of promotion of an kind.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:30, 11 June 2015 (UTC)
  • Disagree with the suggestion to take this to talk:List of comedians, or to User talk:Johncarfi. List of comedians does not have a "bluelinks only" policy (which would be against policy), "bluelinks only" is for categories. List of comedians does have a "check against reliable sources" policy, like any other list or page, for which reason there's a "lacks references" tag up on top of the page, since 2011.
WP:RSN would be the place to take this (more likely to assess the sources as suggested by johncarfi for the suggested content than the user talk page).
Yet here we are... a quick glance at the suggested sources:
  • Ricki Lake (TV series)#Topicality mentions Carfi at the end of the first paragraph, the source given for that information however does not mention Carfi (so that source unuseable, and the Wikipedia article of course also unuseable to establish notability). Searching for "Carfi" + "Ricki Lake" seems to yield performance programming, blogs, and whatnot, but not actually the kind of reliable sources that would most likely be accepted in a notability logic (example: [17])
  • http://www.johncarfi.com/ – not part of a notability logic (self-published source)
  • youtube: not a reliable source, not unuseable to establish notability.
Johncarfi could help by providing precise links to mainstream newspaper articles (not advertisements) mentioning him, or books devoting attention to him, or whatever that establishes he's significantly more than an actor/comedian expertly doing his job (see Wikipedia:Notability (people) if I'm not clear in explaining this). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:38, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

RFC: Question on correct/preferred sourcing reg. the instance of A Prize Awarded to Person X

Replicating here the RFC posted on WP:BLPNOTICE.

Will be an info source (publication, website) run by the Awarding Entity, announcing the instance in question, considered a "primary source" in relation to Person X' biography?

Exhibit A: Sir Winston Churchill's Nobel Prize. In Winston Churchill article the used reference is http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/nomination/nomination.php?action=show&showid=3319, i.e. info on nobelprize.org.

Exhibit B: Paul Krugman, living person. Again nobelprize.org is used.

The present question: For Minna Sundberg article in a clause on her NCS Reuben's Award for 2015, can http://www.reuben.org/2015/05/reuben-awards-winners-2015/ i.e. info on the Award's site, be considered as a "primary source" for Minna Sundberg's bio? The alternative is to cite the media reports. Thanks! DBWikis (talk) 13:05, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Please move your question to WP:RSN - this is not the right place for it, see framed recommendations on top of this page.
At a first glance that is not the most problematic use of primary sources on that page. Although it is easy enough to supplement it with this source, already used on the page.
It are the blog-like websites giving comments on the artist's work that are more problematic: they are "primary" sources for their evaluations, and fail WP:SELFPUB – also they fail to contribute to establishing the notability of the person (as in Wikipedia:Notability (people)). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:57, 16 June 2015 (UTC)
DBWikis, you might have already gotten the answer you needed, but nobelprize.org is self-published, primary, non-independent—and absolutely authoritative for the list of people that organization has awarded a prize to. You may use such a source to support a claim that someone (living or dead) received that prize. (You may also use properly published, independent, secondary sources, such as a good biography of the person.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:10, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Twitter on certain articles

Recently I deleted a good amount of information from Tyus Jones and Jahlil Okafor, claiming that Twitter was an unreliable source. User:TonyTheTiger reverted me and said it can be used in certain situations. Who is correct? Most of the information sourced to Twitter on both articles was rather fluffy anyway. I would revert but I don't want to start a revert war. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 01:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Assuming that it was a verified account from the subject and the tweets are not talking about a third party tweets could be reliable due to WP:TWITTER. Other things to consider though would be if there are stronger sources covering the facts in question because, obviously, if there are stronger sources they should replace the tweet. Also, if the tweet is the only source covering a particular fact there could be a case to remove per WP:WEIGHT but it is hard to know for sure without knowing what the tweets in question are. In this case it would make sense to show what the tweets are since it is not as simple as all tweets are reliable or unreliable.--64.229.165.154 (talk) 02:38, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
Please move your question to WP:RSN - this is not the right place for it, see framed recommendations on top of this page. --Francis Schonken (talk) 02:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)
If and when there is a discussion at RSN, ping me. I am not watching this page. I concur that this is not the place for this discussion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:04, 30 June 2015 (UTC)

Are video sites such as YouTube considered reliable sources?

If not, I'd like a section in this article describing why one can't use youtube. Thanks. 88.90.245.52 (talk) 02:35, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Youtube itself is a user generated source (covered by Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources#Self-published_sources_.28online_and_paper.29). There's also potential copyright violation issues for material that would qualify as reliable, like a documentary. Ian.thomson (talk) 02:40, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
And from there, it depends on the details, so you're better off posting a link to the exact YouTube video that you'd like to use, and the name of the article, at WP:RSN, so that someone can help you figure out the specific situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:11, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
As always, context is king. For most situations, one simply should not use YouTube as a source for anything, for the reasons mentioned above, among others. That said, if you needed to support the statement that YouTube is a Google company then it might be perfectly acceptable to dig into YouTube's about pages and find that reference, although a book or even a news report might be a more authoritative source. Likewise, if you needed to support a statement that a particular person had announced his or her intention to run for a particular office during a particular election cycle by posting a video announcement to YouTube, it would certainly be appropriate to use a YouTube link to the announcement to help support that assertion. That said, the situations where YouTube or any other video sharing site are authoritative as sources are extremely limited, and generally there are better sources that can and should be used instead. Additional information can be found in the WP:Twitter essay. Etamni (talk) 09:15, 1 July 2015 (UTC)
Assuming your question is about sources hosted at YouTube, and not YouTube itself as the source (the way your question is couched, the opposite is implied, but I suspect you meant what I am assuming), then sure, depending on what it is. First, as noted, there are huge numbers of copyright violations there, which can't be linked to. There's also truly vast amounts of YouTube content that is not reliable, user generated video. But if that's not the case (in disagreement with some of the above) there are also vast quantities of reliable sources that can be found at YouTube and linked to their hosting there. As an example, BBC News has an official channel with many videos, as does, well, almost any news source you can think of that has a TV broadcast arm. But remember that for this example, YouTube is not the source, BBC News is. The reasons I mentioned that it has an "official channel", is because you will also find that random user Kitten748 has a penchant for uploading BBC news videos. If it's not the organization's official channel, it's presumptively a copyright violation. So long as the context does not make us question whether the BBC News report is genuine, it would be evaluated as a reliable source just like any other, and it's irrelevant to that consideration where that video is hosted.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 10:59, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the others. See Wikipedia:External links/Perennial websites#YouTube and WP:YouTube. Where it's the official YouTube channel with regard to the material or the official YouTube channel being used, for example, to source information about an Internet celebrity, such as Chris Crocker or Jenna Marbles, using the YouTube source is usually fine. Flyer22 (talk) 07:34, 21 July 2015‎ (UTC)

Columns

This RFC about the use of columns as sources may be of interest to editors here. Columns are opinion content, but they are typically written by professional journalists that work for the publication. I have a disclosed conflict of interest on that page. CorporateM (Talk) 21:17, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the current event templates

It should be mentioned on WP:RSBREAKING that the current event templates are "not intended to be used to mark an article that merely has recent news articles about the topic; if it were, hundreds of thousands of articles would have this template, with no informational consequence." These points have been discussed and debated extensively on Template talk:Current, Wikipedia talk:Current event templates and elsewhere well before WP:RSBREAKING was added in December 2014.[18] And I see no mention of this specific issue addressed on the original discussion at Wikipedia talk:Identifying reliable sources/Archive 45#Breaking news. So the original consensus on Template talk:Current should still prevail. Thanks. Zzyzx11 (talk) 11:51, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

I don't see any value in adding this here. When and how to use a template is normally documented in the template's /doc page, not in sourcing guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Proceedings, Festschriften, industry journals, and masters theses

Three related issues, and suggestion of what to do about them:

  1. We do not have anything at all about citations to conference proceedings. Present practice is to cite these exactly like journals, and I see no evidence that they're being treated as less reliable, but they probably should be, on par with PhD dissertations, or perhaps even masters theses (depending on the prestige and exclusivity of the conference and the panel reviewing papers to be presented), since while they're subject to some degree of peer review (enough to be accepted, and enough, in reaction, to be criticized in later publications if they turn out controversial), it's usually less than would be required for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
  2. How should we treat non-academic, industry/trade journals? Most major (even most minor) industries have multiple trade-insider publications, and their content is usually written by subject-matter experts, but they're not subject to the peer-review rigors of academic journals. My feeling is that these should be treated with the same care as other primary-or-mostly-primary sources, but like academic journal papers are liable to be high-quality sources when they aren't presenting anything controversial. Where they contain material more in the form of journalistic reporting on their field, they should be treated as news sources as long as they're acting independent of the topic (i.e., not just regurgitating press releases, giving all-favorable product reviews, or otherwise acting like house organs).
  3. For a Festschrift/Gedenkschrift/liber amicorum, I think we should treat them (as paper or online publications) exactly the same as journals when subjected to the same sort of peer-review and publication process, but as primary or mostly-primary sources on par with doctoral dissertations otherwise, as in many cases the peer-review process is less rigorous, and/or they may not be published by a university faculty. A specific case has come up in already-written encyclopedia content, at Vlfberht, where an online Gedenkschrift source has been cited. The paper was written by a published expert, on a site devoted to papers by professional archaeologists in honor of one of their regional mentors who died recently. A Gedenkschrift like this is essentially a virtual conference. This is thus about as much peer review as a masters thesis at least, perhaps as much as a doctoral or journal paper; while we don't know the exact criteria, it is written and published by people with academic reputations to maintain, in a narrow field (Scandinavian archaeology), where errors or controversial claims would be noted by colleagues. The specific work in question is straightforward, mostly a matter of gathering raw data about the inscriptions on Viking swords, and drawing statistically-based inferences from it. I've flagged this material in the WP article as (presently written) being improperly cited to a primary source. It's thus probably subject to removal if not re-sourced some other way (I've only found one journal paper that can source some of it, so some material would still be lost). It seems preferable to me to attribute the work carefully, and state in WP's voice that it's a hypothesis by this specific researcher, not to state the claims in the article as if they're known facts. That should be sufficient. The hypothesis presented is noteworthy and relevant, and appears to have influenced a 2012 PBS Nova documentary on the topic, though they did not cite it by name. [I can't find any other source for the information, anywhere, so it seems highly probable.]
  4. How do we feel about carefully attributed (or directly quoted) use of a masters thesis, e.g. "[Researcher_name], in a 2011 [University_name] masters thesis, drew parallels between the results found by [Peer_reviewed_paper_1] and [Peer_reviewed_paper_2]"? (I.e., secondary work, not the presentation of new data, which would be primary sourcing.) I'm especially thinking not of hard sciences (e.g. claims to have mastered cold fusion :-), but rather of non-controversial work in obscure topics in the social sciences, like archaeological, anthropological, linguistic, and mythographic details about which there is very little peer-reviewed material yet, and very little funding for further research (some subjects in these fields get examined once only in journals). Whether good encyclopedia writing or not, common WP practice right now seems to be to simply say "[Peer_reviewed_paper_1] concluded [X], and [similarly|dissimilarly], [Peer_reviewed_paper_2] concluded [Y]", letting the reader connect the dots. It seems better to cite someone else connecting those dots, even if indicating clearly that the synthesis is only from a completed thesis. This would frankly seem far better sourcing that much of what it done in pop-culture topics, where we cite random journalist connecting the dots between two other random journalists' work, without any peer review of any kind other than whether an editor thinks it's due-diligence enough to publish and will interest their newspaper/magazine readers. We regularly quote/attribute primary sources "with caution". Simple attribution in cases like what I have in mind would seem to be sufficient caution, for material that is not controversial, either in making extraordinary claims or contradicting prevailing scholarly views. As a concrete example, I've found a thesis, Prehal, Brenda (2011). "Freyja's Cats: Perspectives on Recent Viking Age Finds in !egjandadalur North Iceland" (PDF). New York University. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help) Among quite an array of material, there's a section suggesting continuity/verisimilitude of use, reported separately in previous peer-reviewed publications, of various Northern and Western European words for "cat" as vulgarities, simultaneously in reference to female genitals and to imply male cowardice. I haven't found a peer-reviewed paper that makes the same connection, which is only barely synthetic/analytic (namely that "puss" and its equivalents have a triple use with a long, multi-language history). I actually need the same paper for another pretty obvious, non-controversial synthesis of prior work, this time about cat demographics in historical Scandinavia (about which very, very little has been published in journals, even in the Scandinavian languages; one of the only two papers I can find on this is a doctoral dissertation, with only one journal paper on the subject).

Conclusion: It's important that we include something about academic (and tech, and other industry) conference proceedings and how to approach them as sources, because of the frequency with which they publish material we want to cite. My take: they are primary or mostly primary (unless just summarizing the state of current research, in which case they're tertiary), and should be used with caution, attributed as such presentation, and replaced with secondary, or at least peer-reviewed primary sources in journals, when possible. Tech and consumer conference presentations of new products, technologies, methods, and draft standards should be treated as strictly primary sources. But when inclusion criteria in academic conferences are very stringent, presentations can be treated the same as journals if publicly available in [e-]paper or recorded form. I think what I wrote above about industry journals can easily be directly adapted into guideline wording about them. Finally, the statement that "Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence" is a bit overbroad. As long as they present nothing controversial, such a paper should be treated like any other primary or semi-primary source, if it"s completed, approved, and published/archived by an accredited university, in publicly available form, or is in the online equivalent of a Gedenkschrift/Festschrift or other scholarly compendium, and it isn't making controversial or extraordinary claims. This would of course not extend to undergraduate papers, unfinished theses/dissertations, and other pure-primary sources that are not from reputable publishers.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:49, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  • @SMcCandlish: Reliability is related to notability, so for 1 and 2, make sure the proceedings and magazine have their own article under, respectively, Category:Conference proceedings and Category:Magazines. Also, I've noted in conference proceedings that there are different levels of quality control applied in the article selection process, from an accept/reject decision to a fuller peer review. I also sourced how their indexing in bibliographic databases differs from that of journals (e.g., often no impact factors). Fgnievinski (talk) 05:59, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Reliability is tied to reputability of publisher among other factors, including reputation of the authors, and of the reviewers (if any), the target audience, the breadth and depth of the work, the nature of the claims made and their relation to currently-accepted thinking on the topic, and much more. Some of this relates to notability, but does not equate to it. Disreputable publishers can be notable, and reputable ones can surely fall short of notability, since that requires significant coverage in multiple, reliable, independent secondary sources, and not many articles in off-WP publications are written about publishing companies themselves, meanwhile even coverage of universities does not often cover their publishing operations. The notability of an institution as a campus people go to does not automatically make it notable, or reputable, as a publisher; notability of any kind is never transferable. Whether something already has an article on WP doesn't equate to notability either, especially for something like conference proceedings, since we have hardly any articles on any of them at this point (less than 10!). Nothing in WP:V or WP:RS suggests that a source's publisher must have a WP article before we can use that source on WP. The fact that we have a huge category full of articles on mainstream magazines makes really clear how little that relates to reputability; WP:RS categorically considers most magazines to be lower-quality sources by their very nature (though there are exceptions of course, since some publish, e.g., serious investigative journalism, not just mixed secondary-tertiary summary fare.

      Anyway, yes, I myself made the point that quality control differs; that's the essential issue. It even differs for mainstream academic journals, though not as widely. I'm suggesting we account for this, in the guideline, because current WP de facto practice is to cite conference proceedings precisely like journals, other than the template is different. I have yet to find a single case of conference proceedings being challenged on reliability grounds. Admittedly I haven't been searching for it, but in almost 10 years of editing (over 10, counting early anon editing), I should have seen it by now. We have a reliability blind spot here. The impact factors note is interesting (I hadn't noticed that before), but we do precious little with impact factors to begin with, unless one heck of a dispute breaks out. WP relies mostly on secondary sources, but other than literature reviews, most material in academic journals is primary, or a mixture of primary and secondary, that we must "use with caution", because it is presenting novel claims for others to test and develop, and does not yet represent the mainstream, accepted view or even necessarily a noteworthy minority one. Much of it, especially in the hard sciences, is just experimental "noise". The second point of my original post (aside from the blind spot) is the "inverse" blind spot, of treating certain primary sources published as theses by universities as if verboten, when they're really just published primary sources like any others. They're not as useful as fully peer-reviewed ones, but in cases like I've outlined, the idea that they must have had a notable impact is probably too stringent, if we at least directly attribute them, and make it clear what kind of publication they are, in the article text, not just cite them as if authoritative. For some topic like the early history of domestic cats in Scandinavia (one of the above examples), it may well be that there will never be any further research. At bare minimum it should be enough that something in a peer reviewed journal has cited the thesis in question. I think the language we have about graduate theses was written with big, hard-science fields in mind, where new ideas are usually wrong and are very difficult to test. In many of the softer disciplines this isn't really the case, and much of the work in question is rote reporting of data with minimal synthesis. The "caution" needed is lower, and we can probably account for that in the guideline without much effort.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:23, 3 July 2015 (UTC)

  • *Groan* This is a huge number of words that ought to just say 'case-by-case basis'. This stuff is so variable from one academic field to another than trying to write general guidelines is hopeless. And anyone who doesn't have a reasonable sense of the landscape in the field they're trying to write about shouldn't be writing about it anyway. How "we" "feel" about individual academic communities' publication norms is irrelevant. Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:32, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I don't think the attitude is necessary, thanks. I never said anything about how we feel "about individual academic communities' publication norms"; you're just making up weird stuff and putting it my mouth. I'm talking about how we decide, internally, to approach particular types of sources in, e.g. anthropology and linguistics (I have one of those degree things in those fields, so you can keep your assumptions to yourself about what I know about their publication norms). I'm fairly confident I can write serviceable guideline text to cover all of this, despite the pessimism. I've written substantial portions of quite a few of our guidelines. I also decline to apologize for writing clearly, and with sufficient detail to cover what needed to be covered to forestall various (though clearly not all) distracting objections that miss the point, and for tying these matters to actual, specific examples (which is almost always required for proposals to go anywhere). Even if we conclude on "case-by-case basis", we don't presently indicate anything to suggest some of these categories of publication be treated on a case by case basis. For some we say nothing (leaving them in limbo, and with conf. proceedings, leading to over-citing), while with others we're being over-inclusive (not distinguishing industry "journals" from peer-reviewed academic ones, which has implications for our tech industry coverage in particular), and for another category we're a bit too exclusive. I'll just draft something I guess, in absence of any constructive suggestions.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  08:23, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Regarding your point #2, could you post a link to an example of the type of journal to which you refer? As things stand, I'd agree that academic journals would be more reliable than trade journals, but even US Weekly is reliable enough. RS is a pass/fail criterion. We only need to establish a hierarchy when sources contradict each other.
As for masters' theses, if they've been reviewed, then why not? Though I concur that "case-by-case basis" is relevant here.
As for establishing rules/guidance/call-it-what-you-like for conferences and to a lesser extent rules for theses, I could support adding specifics to WP:IRS if the Wikieditors are having problems that adding such rules could solve. Are people citing conferences using a confusing mishmash of jury-rigged formats? Are people deleting conference-sourced material because they assume conferences are not RS? Any other problem? These questions are not rhetorical. Darkfrog24 (talk) 21:34, 3 July 2015 (UTC)
How they're formatted isn't relevant; that's a WP:CITE matter, not a WP:V/WP:RS matter. Yes, the problem is that editors will delete citations of conference proceedings or masters theses, or tag them with dispute tags, or remove the entire passage, even when they are used appropriately and cautiously as primary sources, and will do so not because of any controversy about the material but because they believe they're not permissible sources (or that someone should have to argue with them for ten days on the talk page to make a case that there should be an "exception"). This guideline effectively encourages them to do so with regard to theses, and less directly does so (by omitting mention of them at all) with regard to proceedings.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:51, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Off-the-cuff replies:

  1. Conference proceedings are firmly discouraged, but not banned, at Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Other sources. They tend not to have any meaningful editorial oversight, fact-checking, or peer-review. They also tend to have WP:DUE problems, since a lot of things that are presented never get mentioned again.
  2. We should treat non-academic, industry/trade journals exactly like we treat other forms of non-academic media, e.g., political newsweeklies. InformationWeek == Newsweek for reliability purposes. Neither of them are stellar, but both of them are okay for supporting non-extraordinary claims.
  3. We should treat a Festschrift exactly like we would treat any other compilation of academic writings, which means ignoring why it was written and focusing on the editorial process.
  4. If a master's thesis is actually WP:Published, and it appears to meet or exceed the same standards that we would apply to any other source, then you can cite it. If it is not published, then do not cite it. If it is self-published, then follow those rules. If it is published by a publisher with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, then treat it like any other source that is published by a publisher with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The fact that the publication was written in exchange for getting an academic degree rather than in exchange for money is really unimportant.

Conclusion: Classification as primary, secondary, and tertiary is largely irrelevant, since it usually changes what a source is reliable for, rather than whether it is reliable for anything at all. We don't need WP:CREEPy rules for every separate type of publications. I recommend focusing on the general principles: fact-checking, accuracy, and editorial control are important. Context always matters. A source can be reliable for a given statement without being the best possible source for that statement (and you aren't required to use only the best possible source). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the cogent response. The DUE problem of conference proceedings is precisely the same as that of most news reportage on happenings that do not generate long-term attention in the media: They're both ephemeral, even one-off, but published, and do not benefit from the synthesis and analysis that happens in ongoing re-coverage. The only other salient difference between them is the proceedings material is probably primary, while the news article is more likely to be secondary (depending on its exact nature; was it investigative journalism, or a column/editorial?) Agreed on trade journals, for the most part, but as I noted above, they can act sometime quite promotionally, and this matters for WP:N purposes as well as WP:NPOV ones. Agreed on Festscriften. Theses: Well, yes, it would have to be published, of course. I'm not talking about "Jane Smith gave me a copy of her thesis." Mostly they're published, after some level of peer review (usually within the university) in annual volumes by the university under which they were written, if not done as part of some project that generates something published in a journal. (From my experience with some US universities handling of them; I have no idea what is done in Europe or whatever, nor whether different US institutions do it differently, or don't bother, or what). As far as I can tell, you basically have to use the individual university's library system to find them, and then request one through interlibrary loan or see if they'll send you hardcopy for a fee. From my perspective this qualifies as "publication", since the publication can in fact be obtained, even if it's not "type this into Google" or "buy it on Amazon". There's one I want to use, but it'll end up coming from Scandinavia, and I haven't figured out how to get ahold of it yet. Been a long time since I was at a university, and I don't have access to the full resources of a uni. library, so this is more difficult to pursue than it might be otherwise. I get your point about classification as primary, etc., but what it would be reliable for isn't at issue (in this case, it'd be basically be a table of data and basic interpretation of it, and attributed to the author, not cited as unattributed fact). The data is essentially impossible to obtain without duplicating the research, which was digging up prepublished data, not research in the sense of doing experiments. The concern was that WP:RS is generally taken to imply that a these simply cannot be cited, and this appears to be incorrect to me.
Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)#Other sources should not be extended from medicine to other fields of study, as its statements are certainly untrue of the computer-science literature. We should really discern between peer-reviewed and non-peer-reviewed conference proceedings. Fgnievinski (talk) 22:36, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree that different fields have different standards. Also, "conference proceedings" encompasses a lot of sources. There is an obvious gap, for example, between "Here's the poster that I put up at the conference" and "Here is the peer-reviewed article about the conference, published in a respectable academic journal". WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:11, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
I'm with Fgnievinski on that. I mean "conference proceedings" in the formal sense. I'm not talking about posters, or about coverage of a conference in other publications, or a programme. I'm talking about the publication of the conference, the hardcopy of the material presented at it. Were the papers that were presented peer reviewed in detail? Reviewed to an extent by an acceptance committee on the basis of research quality? Just "reviewed" on the basis of whether they seemed like interesting presentations? There's a big difference between presentation a medical professional conference, TED, and a sci-fi or comic convention, in decreasing order of usefulness as a source about independent facts [con highlights can actually be a good source for things like actors' and writers' own statements about their work; that's not what I'm on about here].  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:51, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

When to fact tag vs. just delete

FYI
 – Pointer to relevant discussion elsewhere.

This topic has had a lot of churn on various pages lately, so I thought people here might be interested in this discussion: Template talk:Citation needed#When to remove unsourced info vs. when to add this tag?.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:40, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Biased or opinionated sources

Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective.

I have a problem with the unqualified declaration made in the second sentence. I believe it should read, "However, reliable sources do not always have to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. (addition in italics)" My fear is that Randy in Boise will read that simplistic sentence and conclude, "Hey, I can just quote what somebody says as fact, because I got it from an RS!" (I have already encountered such a "Randy".)

I appreciate that "no RS is perfectly unbiased", but this is a special case where we must hold our sources accountable to some of the same standards to which we hold ourselves; at least we have to exercise discretion. The guideline must make clear that opinionated sources are only properly used in the context described: i.e., a topic has been recognized to be controversial, and the source is only to be used (ideally with in-line attribution) to verify the existence of the opinion (subject, of course, to WP:WEIGHT), never the alleged truth of the opinion. There is no way we can build a NPOV encyclopedia if we don't expect the sources for the facts we represent to have both a similar NPOV, and a healthy respect for fact checking; else we are building our house on sand. JustinTime55 (talk) 17:12, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

If you do not already, you need to realize that this Identifying reliable sources guideline is really a somewhat simplified interpretation or guide to policy, not the source which creates the policy. The actual policies involved here are (at least) Wikipedia:Verifiability#Neutrality and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Bias in sources. If you'll look at those, I think you'll find that policy allows — indeed, requires — non-neutral or biased sources to be used more broadly that you suggest in your second paragraph, above, for purposes of "fairly representing all majority and significant-minority viewpoints." Per the Verifiability policy, establishing that a source is a RS is a threshold for inclusion of the material in the source, not a guarantee of inclusion, and Neutral point of view and other policies such as BLP and NOT determine or help to determine what should and should not be included, decided ultimately by consensus (in which context you might want to take a look at WP:CONSENSUS#No consensus). Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:08, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • The key to understanding NPOV is this: it applies to Wikipeida, not to our sources. We (Wikipedia's editors) must be neutral in our writing... Our sources don't have to be neutral in their writing. Sources can state opinions on the topics they are writing about (in fact, we rely on them to do so). Sources can challenge, dismiss or ignore viewpoints that they disagree with. We (Wikipedia's editors) can not. We must report all significant views... even if we disagree with those views, or think they are wrong. Blueboar (talk) 22:20, 15 July 2015 (UTC)
  • I think that the fundamental problem with this question is that it conflates "neutral" with "accurate". The key characteristic of a reliable source is its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. They should also have other indications of reliability (see WP:NOTGOODSOURCE for a handy list). If WP:RANDY can actually find a source that has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, professional editors, etc., then yes, even Randy is allowed to use it (usually) to present something as a fact. "Bias" isn't on the list: an academic journal may be strongly "pro" on the question of whether humans affect Earth's climate without becoming unreliable.
    On your example, a book about how astronauts' wives worried and had to play the devoted, patriotic wife in public probably does not have a reputation for accuracy about how NASA made politically significant decisions. A book can be reliable for one thing and unreliable for other things. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 20 July 2015 (UTC)
  • This exactly: 'The key to understanding NPOV is this: it applies to Wikipedia, not to our sources.'  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  00:14, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Well, as with most bromides it only goes so far - it takes skill and wide reading of sources (generally in the tertiary voice) to recognize what neutral presentation is - you certainly won't learn it by following the partisan source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 00:25, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
Actually, you can learn neutrality by reading partisan sources... you just have to read lots of them, and (as a group) they have to express a wide range' - and ' of partisan viewpoints. Blueboar (talk) 14:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Most unlikely, and not actually well recommended for the anyone can do it encyclopedia. (see, Tertiary Sources section). Original misplaced emphasis, and lack of context is the bane of being neutral and of presenting the unoriginal - so the partisan source which is all about persuading one to place-emphasis-here and buy into a partisan context (or pretext) in ways that may in a solid tertiary presentation be unacceptable, are poor models - we actually have to exclude and not emphasize, that which should not be emphasized, and appropriately contextualize that which must be contextualized. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 19:21, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Need to fix confused wording

WP doesn't actually care about "a reliable publication process"; that means a process that reliably produces a publication. We need to reword this to make some kind of sense that is the same kind of sense to anyone who reads it. I would strongly suggest we work the word "reputable" in, with regard to the publisher as an entity, and distinguish this from the editorial process.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  23:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps I am misunderstanding... but I think we do care about whether the publication process is reliable (certainly we don't want to cite a source that has an unreliable publication process)... but your point about "reptutable" is well taken. Perhaps we care about both? Blueboar (talk) 13:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
WP doesn't care as a policy matter about the reliability of publishing output processes in the production sense (e.g. if Elsevier or the Wall Street Journal or whoever, due to severe budget cuts, start putting out publications behind schedule, or on crappy paper, that's not of any concern to WP, as long as the quality of the material doesn't weaken. My point was that we're consistently using "reputable" everywhere else to refer to the publisher, and there's been noteworthy confusion in the past with people mixing up reliable source and "reliable" publisher. I think what this passage is trying, so vaguely, to say is something to the effect of "a [something] editorial process at a reputable publisher", or however we'd work that into the sentence, and whatever quality that [something] is ("trustworthy", "respected"?). I'm rather sure we shouldn't use "reliable" there. The problem with doing so is that it produces a circular, meaningless pseudo-definition, "a reliable source is one from a reliable editorial process", when the whole point of the exercise is to nail down what we mean by "reliable", by defining it in other terms relating to the reputation of the author(s)', the quality of the editorial process, the publisher's reputation, and the currency of the material. It just doesn't do anything useful to say a reliable source has a reliable author, a reliable publisher, with a reliable editorial process, putting out material that is reliably not obsolete. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:46, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia very much cares about a "reliable publication process", meaning "a process than produces a reliable publication". It is also not circular, because we do provide other definitions.
If you're finding it confusing (or perhaps only irritating), then the current text: Reliable sources may be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. could be re-written to say something like this: Reliable sources may be published a publisher whose editorial process has led to a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, by authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:52, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Unpublished/SPS/UGC sources and Template:Cite arXiv

Moved to Help talk:Citation Style 1 § Merging Template:ArXiv

If what is published at arXiv are preprints and there's no review process but "moderation" to categorize them correctly, that would seem to make them low-quality, primary sources, maybe too low for science/medicine citations at least (maybe okay in the humanities, as directly attributed primary sources used with caution for non-controversial claims and only when necessary. They would seem to have the reliability level of, e.g., a thesis/dissertation, maybe less.

An argument can be made that they're self-published sources, since arXiv is acting as a self-publishing house for academics (in WP:RS terms, if not in intent; I gather their intent is more like that of WikiSource and Project Gutenberg and Archive.org, but narrowly tailored).

Another argument can be made that it's WP:UGC; people all over the world uploading what they've written to a website (with an administrative user class) where it is categorized for public, free consumption ... that's a description of a Wiki.

Exception made for material that is actually published in a journal by the time we need to cite it; the arXiv URL might be the only one we have, if the journal is behind a paywall.

(I asked this initially at Template:arXiv and got nothing in response but a trolling comment, so asking it here might be more productive.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  10:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

And I'll give you the same answer here as on Template talk:Cite arxiv. We'd want to cite something on the arxiv for the same reason why we might want to cite anything. To establish a claim, a fact, support a thing, or whatever. This is no different than using {{cite web}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 14:28, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
[plonk]  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  20:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
You could say that for any source, no matter how bad. Are you arguing that articles on arXiv meets the criteria "Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."? Because I don't think they do. If they are actually preprints that will be reliably published, then we just have to wait until that happens. The process of reliably publishing them might even produce significant changes. If they aren't going to be published, they're just a paper on a website. Doug Weller (talk) 18:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Indeed. And like anything, they can be cited just as any other webpage on the internet can be cited, subject to our usual restrictions on WP:RS/WP:V. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Arxiv is a simply a repository for pre-prints and does not by itself accord any reliability-points to a publication. As far as I can see, there are only two scenarios underwhich we could cite arxiv prints, :
  1. When the paper has been peer reviewed and published by a reputable journal and the arxiv print is essentially a convenience link
  2. As a self-published source, when the author, subject, secondary citations to the work, claim it is being cited for, etc justify such use under WP:SPS
Btw, WP:RSN may be a better venue for such discussion if there is dispute over providing an arxiv link in particular instances. Abecedare (talk) 18:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
The arxiv also has many postprints as well as preprints, btw. Altough as far as I understand SMcCandlish's questions, they just can't fathom why anyone would cite something from the arxiv at all. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
@Abecedare: I agree with your two scenarios, and #2 is unlikely to arise much, if ever, given the nature of the material. It's a general concern, not an article-by-article one to me. The entire function of the site is self-publication of preprints in a "document-wiki" manner. I think it's a reasonable question whether something needs to be done with/about this template. The fact that some of what is posted there eventually becomes reliably published (but probably often not in exactly the same form) may not be sufficient if the template is likely to be used to try to cite essentially self-published material, which is pretty much guaranteed with this thing.

We don't need a citation template of this sort. Scenario #1 is already covered by the |arXiv= parameter of {{Cite web}}. This method is "idiot-proof", because the |journal= parameter contains the name of the actual journal it was reputably published in; it can't be used (except in an obviously detectible way, e.g. |journal=arXiv) to improperly cite unpublished [in the WP:V definition of "published"] research. Meanwhile, #2 can be done with {{cite web|title=Nutritional Analysis of Cat Hair|first=A. U.|last=Thor|site=arXiv.org|publisher=self-published|...}}, if it's ever needed. Unless the site itself recategorizes papers after they have been published, and this difference is detectible in the URL so tools can distinguish between published and unpublished and do something (warning? cleanup category?) with citations to unpublished papers, I think this template should be TfDed. It's two legitimate functions are redundant with existing templates, and its potential for abuse is high.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  21:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Here's a scenario under #2 (and there are many more of those scenario where one would cite the arxiv). Grigori Perelman published his Poincaré conjecture in three papers published on the arxiv. arXiv:math.DG/0211159, arXiv:math.DG/0303109 and arXiv:math.DG/0307245. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:25, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Already addressed under "Meanwhile, #2 can be done with ... if it's ever needed."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
As for scenario 1, the solution would be to use {{cite journal}}, not {{cite arxiv}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 21:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
That's exactly what I said. If even you agree that the only purpose for {{cite arXiv}} is citing the unpublished version of something, then we don't need a separate template for that. {{Cite web}} exists for a reason.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Headbomb here: although appearing on arXiv is not sufficient by itself to turn something into a reliable source, there are nevertheless many reliable sources that appear on arXiv that we would want to cite (scenario #2), and the catchall {{cite web}} doesn't do a good job of it. I would add that there are many instances of both {{cite arxiv}} and {{cite web}} where the reference in question has been properly been published in a journal or a book as well as having an arxiv or web version (indeed I have frequently seen {{cite web}} with a url pointing to the official publication page for a journal paper or to a Google books entry), and these should generally be converted to {{cite journal}} or {{cite book}} with |arxiv= or |url= or |contribution-url= when they are discovered. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Please re-examine the argument. You're stating why someone could cite something at arXiv, when the question is why would we do it with this special template instead of the existing ones. Even Headbomb agrees (see above) that {{Cite journal}} is the one to use for citation of something at arXiv that has been reputably published. If the only use-case for {{cite arXiv}} is citing unpublished research, we have {{Cite web}} for that. The {{Cite arXiv}} template is redundant in either scenario, and provides as easily-abused avenue for source misuse. Due to rampant misinterpretation WP:CITEVAR as a license to WP:OWN every detail of citation formatting, it's extremely unlikely that checking uses of {{Cite arXiv}} on a case-by-case and replacing them with the equivalent, long-standing, general templates to indicate "this has been checked out and is a valid use of an arXiv citation" (using the appropriate replacement template for whichever of the two scenario types the use qualifies as), would not be met with revertwarring. There is thus no clear avenue for patrolling abuse of this template, which serves no purpose anyway. The obvious solution is to deprecate it, convert all of its in situ uses, and then TfD it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
Please re-read my comment. As I thought I clearly stated, there are some citations that should go directly to arXiv rather than to journals (they are reliable, even though arXiv is their only publication) and {{cite arxiv}} formats them better than the generic {{cite web}}. None of your hyperbolic attempts at justifying the removal of this template would be any different for {{cite web}}; both templates can be abused, but that's not a good reason to remove them. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:14, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
As I've pointed out I think 3 times, we already have a template for precisely the situation you identify: {{cite journal|title=Title_of_paper|journal=The_Real_Journal|arxiv=arXiv_ID_to_generate_the_arXiv_URL|...}}. This even has the benefit of following WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT more closely; you can provide the URL to the official published version (if such a URL is available) while also providing a convenience link to the arXiv copy, which also help guard against linkrot. It's not like |arXiv= wasn't added to the extant templates for a reason. The good reason to remove {{Cite arxiv}} is that there is no use case for it that is not already covered by extant templates (among other reasons, already covered). The {{arXiv}} typo: {{cite arXiv}} template doesn't do anything special. It's just another identifier-specific template, which were all deprecated as a class, not because of exactly how they were coded, as you go on about above, but because they're redundant and their purpose was merged into the main citation templates. Same story.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
A further rationale, for at least deprecating this, is prior deprecation of all identifier-based (DOI, JSTOR, PMID, etc.) templates. See Template:Citation Style 1: "Identifier-based templates. ... All of these are deprecated." I'm sure I can dig up the actual deprecation discussion if someone thinks that's necessary. We're already handling arXiv identifiers in Template:Cite journal, making the arXiv template redundant, as well as use of a citation template approach that's already been consensus-rejected.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  22:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
That's a completely unrelated issue. {{cite arxiv}} is part of the cite series of templates, something to use within an article to provide a citation. Despite the name, {{cite doi}} is not. Instead, it is a way to tell a bot to set up the real citation elsewhere (usually using {{cite journal}}) and transclude it. That has multiple problems, among them making it difficult to detect vandalism (because the separate citation page is unlikely to be watchlisted) and making the citations hard to edit (especially when the |noedit= option has been used). Additionally, because {{cite doi}} is only used for citations that have dois, which in practice means journal articles, it's redundant with {{cite journal}}. The same goes for the other ones you list. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
You're kinda making my point for me without realizing it: "Because {{Cite arXiv}} is only used for citations that have arXiv eprint IDs, which is already supported by both {{Cite journal}} and {{Cite web}}, it's redundant with them."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
So basically, you object to {{cite arxiv}}'s existence because you could use a different template to cite the same page? That's as valid a rationale as to delete {{cite encyclopedia}} because you could use {{cite book}}, {{cite web}}, or {{cite work}}. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:33, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
It's standard operating procedure to merge-and-delete redundant templates; that's around half of what WP:TFD does (the other half being a mixture of subst-and-deleting extremely-low-use templates, deleting occasional totally inappropriate templates, and a few non-deletion/non-merge discussions). The ones you name, like {{Cite web}}, etc., do particular special formatting and variances of that formatting for particular source types. This one does not (it does do one special linking thing that it shouldn't, which we'll get to). There is no difference at all between these two:
  • {{cite arXiv |last=Sparling |first=George A. J. |eprint=gr-qc/0610068v1 |title=Spacetime is spinorial |date=2006 }} – Sparling, George A. J. (2006). "Spacetime is spinorial; new dimensions are timelike". arXiv:gr-qc/0610068v1.
  • {{cite web |last=Sparling |first=George A. J. |arxiv=gr-qc/0610068v1 |title=Spacetime is spinorial |date=2006 }} – Sparling, George A. J. (2006). "Spacetime is spinorial; new dimensions are timelike". arXiv:gr-qc/0610068v1. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |url= (help)
And you can't even do this, when the piece is finally published:
  • {{cite arXiv |last=Sparling |first=George A. J. |eprint=gr-qc/0610068v1 |title=Spacetime is spinorial |date=July 2006 |journal=Nature Physics |volume=XIX |issue=2}} – Sparling, George A. J. (July 2006). "Spacetime is spinorial". arXiv:gr-qc/0610068v1. {{cite arXiv}}: Unknown parameter |issue= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |journal= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |volume= ignored (help)
because this template doesn't support |journal=, etc. But you can do the following, just leaving |journal=, etc., blank (or omitting them):
  • {{cite journal |last=Sparling |first=George A. J. |eprint=gr-qc/0610068v1 |title=Spacetime is spinorial |date=2006 |journal= |volume= |issue=}} – Sparling, George A. J. (2006). "Spacetime is spinorial". arXiv:gr-qc/0610068v1. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
which insta-upgrades to the following when you add the journal info after publication:
  • {{cite journal |last=Sparling |first=George A. J. |eprint=gr-qc/0610068v1 |title=Spacetime is spinorial |date=July 2015 |journal=Nature Physics |volume=XIX |issue=2}} – Sparling, George A. J. (July 2015). "Spacetime is spinorial". Nature Physics. XIX (2). arXiv:gr-qc/0610068v1.
(plus other parameters that could be added, like |doi=, that {{Cite arXiv}} can't handle).
So, this is even more redundant than I thought: There is never any need to even resort to {{Cite web}} in any case at all. And it's worse than redundant, because you can't add any new information to it, only totally replace the template. It's just pointless.

The one and only thing unusual that this template does is create links to arXiv "class" categories, optionally, with the |class= parameter. But these do not help the reader find the source, they're just linkspam that fails WP:EL, and they're hardly ever used anyway, not being among the default, recommended parameters. If there were an odd case where this link was actually important, it can be done with |at= in {{Cite journal}}.

Conclusion: I still do not see any reason this shouldn't be TFD'd, just WP:AADD arguments. I'm looking for reasons to keep it. I thought "Surely, |class= does something important?" Nope.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  04:52, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The reason {{cite arxiv}} doesn't support |journal= is that it shouldn't. If you're citing the journal article, you use {{cite journal}}. If you're citing the arxiv, you use {{cite arxiv}}, much like you wouldn't ask {{cite book}} to support |journal=. This is a clearly different case than the {{cite doi}} (and {{cite pmid}}/{{cite jstor}}) you keep comparing them to. I don't know what's so damned hard to understand about this. Send it to TFD if you hate it so much, and enjoy seen it being snow kept. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 04:59, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm not demonstrating any understanding difficulties here. Please do not assume bad faith "hate" motivations on my part; it's uncivil (has have been several other of your posts on two editions of this discussion, starting with the very first one), and seems to indicate that it's you who are not understanding the conversation (a point I made in my response to your first post, too): I clearly specified what the multiple rationales against this template are, and they have nothing to do with feelings or emotions. I've not taken it to TfD yet because I'm doing due diligence to see whether there are genuine use cases for this, that outweigh WP:RS / WP:V concerns like thwarting of the patrolling of source misuse. Citation templates have been merged without resorting to TfD, anyway. I don't see any WP:SNOWBALL here, just a lot of heated, repeated excuses from a handful of supporters of the template, whose invisible and unexpected toes I seem to have stepped on in some way, but whose objections are easy to counter.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
And yes |class= does something important. It indicates the classification of the paper, and is how arxiv papers should be cited generally. E.g. LHCb collaboration (2015). "Observation of...". arXiv:1507.03414 [hep-ex]. tells you this paper is from the High-Energy Physics Experiments repository. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 05:12, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
That's the closest I've seen to a rationale yet, extracted by dentistry. But the entire template could be replaced with a call to {{cite web}} that puts the same repository class link in |at=. This would have the benefit of auto-accepting later additions of |doi=, |journal=, etc., after something has been published (as long as the parameters were passed, of course).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  05:45, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Putting |journal= or |doi= on a {{cite web}} citation rather than fixing it to be {{cite journal}} as it should be is ignorant and wrong and if that's the best argument you can come up with for turning other kinds of citations into {{cite web}} then I think we should just close this thread, because it's not going anywhere useful. If you want a one-template-fits-all-citations template, use CS2 and {{citation}} instead of CS1 and the cite template family. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:44, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
Not a coherent argument (even aside from the tone and the handwaving away from the actual point, which is the real reason the discussion has been mired). {{cite web}} supports |journal=, so using that parameter is permissible. These template names are a shorthand, just mnemonics, and all those templates are simply wrappers for what's done with the CS1 meta-templating module and its submodules. There is no policy requiring that a particular template with a certain name be used to format a reference because of how you want to classify the publication. They're just tools to get the job done. It's standard operating procedure to merge them when what they do is redundant. I'm fine if the discussion here stops, though, since the case for merging these is clear, and this is no longer an WP:RS question.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  02:04, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

The above discussion just makes me glad that I don't use citation templates in the first place... I manually type my citations the "old fashioned" way, using the "<ref>citation information</ref>" format. Then I don't have to worry about parameters, null fields, or any of that sort of stuff. Just saying. Blueboar (talk) 11:19, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I see the draw, but unless you are tightly managing an article, the citations will end up in radically divergent formatting if the templates aren't used. That's the only reason I bother with them. It's annoying to have one citation begin "Onie-Maus, Ann (2005). "Paper 1". Journal ...", and the next "Ann Onie-Maus, PAPER 2, Journal, 2005 ...". Hopefully in 5 or 10 years (or better yet, next week, ha ha), we'll just have some expert-system bot cleaning them up automatically.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  12:14, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
Even if you use citation templates, that's going to happen over time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:00, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
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