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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Jezhotwells (talk | contribs) at 18:20, 12 April 2009 (→‎Foreign language sources: correct brackets). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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If the information is obvious and no one doubts it, does it need a reference to a published source?

Having a constant argument between editors at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Daybreak_(Battlestar_Galactica)#Robot_references right now. So I have some questions.

  • If you see a robot with the Sony name on it, and you can find pictures of the exact same robot on their site and thus find the official name of it, can you mention what type of robot it is in the article?
  • If you wrote in an episode summary that a character drove off in a certain type of car, would you need a reference from a published reviewer telling you that was the type of car they drove off in, or could you write down its name?
  • If there is absolutely no reasonable doubt that something is what it is said to be, no one disputing that fact at all, does it need a reference? How does everyone feel about changing the wording in the Verifiability article to reflect this, to avoid future never ending debates? The article was locked to prevent editing and the talk page is constant going, as some consider the literal interpretation of the rule, over what many of us consider common sense.

Dream Focus 10:17, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Someone who has somewhat extended sysop rights here once said: "Many pictures do not require a reliable source for the simple reason that they are self-evidently what they purport to be. A zebra is a zebra." Skäpperöd (talk) 14:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I am constantly amazed at what people will edit war over... No, it does not need referencing... but does mentioning the company or model really add anything to the article? Blueboar (talk) 15:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. It shows that it is in the modern time in the real world, and how far along we are to repeating the mistakes of the past, making robots even more humanoid. So, is it alright to edit the article page? How long should I wait for everyone to post their opinions? Or can I edit it now, adding in that sentence? Dream Focus 18:07, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You misunderstand my comment... I agree that mentioning that a modern day humanoid looking robot is seen in a window adds something to the article... but does mentioning this robot by make and model add anything? To use the car analogy mentioned above... to say "John then got into a car and drove off into the sunset" is fine. To say "John then got into a Nisan Altima and drove off into the sunset" does not really add anything to the article that was not just as well conveyed by the non-product specific word "car" ... and specifying what kind of car boarders on using Wikipedia for product placement. Blueboar (talk) 12:55, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Blueboar's point that while this can be determined to be the case but unless it's critical to the understanding of the article, there's no need to mention it. (For example, without even looking at the Battlestar Galactica thing, I know what part of the episode they are talking about, and there's absolutely no need to include specific references to what was shown that cannot be summarized by a link to, say, robotics or the like.
The other aspect is that there's a thin line that's not appropriate to include here between what's obvious to all and what's obvious to some. A scene in a work may be a shot-by-shot homage to another work, and an editor familiar with both may believe it to be obvious. However, this obviousness may not necessarily to the average reader or another editor, and thus without a source to establish that (a third-party RS that says that's the case, or comments from the creator themselves) the connection should not be mentioned; if it's critical to understanding the work, then likely the sourcing issue can be met. --MASEM (t) 13:06, 5 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citing one article within another

There was a line in Friends which got reverted with reasoning that a Wikipedia article is not a reliable source. After a subsequent discussion (User talk:Cornucopia#Friends reverts, User talk:Jay#Re: Friends reverts), I added a summary at Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Primary.2C secondary.2C and tertiary sources which I based on WP:PSTS, where I added a clause for Wikipedia based on Wikipedia:Verifiability#Wikipedia and sources that mirror or source information from Wikipedia, which I modified to refer WP:SPS.

Now what I'm not convinced about is if article A makes a statement by backing it up with a reliable source, why can't article B cite article A for that statement? While Wikipedia as a whole is not a reliable source, all articles within Wikipedia follow the same rules, so why can't one article trust another? There is so much of reusability within Wikipedia, this can be extended to reliable source citations as well. Jay (talk) 10:10, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citing another Wikipedia article implicitly asserts that we are depending on the Wikipedia article itself as a source of information, rather than just the reliable sources cited in it (see Wikipedia:CITE#SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT). This gives a false impression that we deem our own articles as reliable sources in and of themselves, which they aren't. If a point needs to be repeated, the relevant citation(s) can be copied. Allowing direct citation to Wikipedia creates a maintenance nightmare. The article could be rewritten, split, merged, or changed in any number of ways that remove or relocate the cited information, and no one is going to want to manually check backlinks for dependencies, especially for frequently linked articles. Even if oldid permalinks were used, those become broken if an article is deleted. Moreover, oldid links are difficult to track because they don't show up in Special:WhatLinksHere. I'd say that it's far less work in the long run, and far better practice, to copy the references as needed. — TKD::{talk} 10:50, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
But only if you actually look up the original reference. If all you've looked at is the WP article, that's what you should cite, per Wikipedia:CITE#Cite_the_place_where_you_found_the_material. But to have an hoset, poor quality reference than a dishonest representation of the quality of the reference.Ccrrccrr (talk) 11:17, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Of course; sorry for omitting that. It was my intent that the original source should be verified first. If it were inaccessible, I would avoid adding the information elsewhere on the basis of the Wikipedia article alone. I've seen enough cases where information in an article has been changed or updated without the corresponding reference replaced. — TKD::{talk} 11:36, 6 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Self published is confusing

If all the information in the articles comes from the novel, manga, move, or television series itself, and nowhere else is it mentioned, does that meet the requirement of the verifiability policy? Is it alright for List of weapons in Star Trek to reference the episodes they appeared in? What about list of weapons/spells/equipment/whatever in other series? If the only reference is what page and in what issue they were published in, does that count as valid? Is there a set rule for things, or does it depend on how popular the series is? If the series is already notable and has its own article, can it have a list of things in it, or does that violate the verifiability rule? Dream Focus 16:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Are the novels, manga, movies, etc reliable sources for plot information? Yes, of course, so long as no personal interpretation is added. That isn't related to self-published. They are the primary sources, i.e. from the subject itself. Does it, however, count for notability. No. The other part of the question isn't related to verifiability, I'd say, but WP:NOT and other guidelines/policies. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 17:10, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, alright. Self publishing is something you published yourself, not from a publishing company. Doesn't count if the manga is written by the people who own their own publishing company I suppose. I was thinking of something else. The two words didn't combine to one name in my mind for some reason. Self published, not information about one's self, which has been published in self. Alright, never mind that.
  • New question then. I was told that the verifiability rule means you need third party references, which makes no sense at all. I would think that was covered over in the nobility guideline/suggestion, which of course can be ignored by consensus(determined by whoever is around at the time to give their opinion). Thus the reason why popular series have the exactly same types of things that unpopular/undefended series do not, it a double-standard. We really should have a set standard, made into policy, about EXACTLY what is allowed, and what is not, without exceptions, to make it fair. Dream Focus 17:34, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It makes no sense that some articles have to do it, and others do not. A double standard is a problem. Dream Focus 17:47, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
What kind of articles don't need independent sources? SlimVirgin talk|contribs 17:50, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Episodes of popular series don't always need any media reference to survive, but only if enough fans are around to defend them. No reason not to include them all, but we need a set standard.
  2. List of characters, villains, henchmen, weapons, equipment, etc. No reference necessary outside the series, even things that only appeared once in one episode, or were just briefly mentioned, if the series is popular enough. Look at the bottom of Doctor_who, and see the links to all the pages it has. A list of ships found in Star Wars or Star Trek will survive, but a list of ships found in a less popular series, shall not. And it doesn't matter if they were mentioned only in one television series or a single movie, or a single book. Some people want to delete every list out there, while others want to preserve them all, and it all comes down to consensus formed by how many people are around to protest one way or the other.
  • As for your previous question "Hi Dream Focus, why does requiring independent sources make no sense, in your view?" I'd like to point out that some bestselling novels don't get any third party mentions at all, while things that don't sell nearly as well, and have far fewer fans, do get reviewed, and thus get an article. Newspapers and magazines review certain types of things, more often than others. No matter how successful a manga is, you aren't likely to find it reviewed in any newspapers or magazines. On the AFD the past year or so, I've seen many manga series have their articles deleted, simply because of the bias system. Dream Focus 18:07, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A few of us tried to merge WP:NOR and WP:V into a new policy, WP:ATT, a couple of years ago. One plan there was to introduce an exception for popular culture, where different kinds of sources could be used, for the reasons you outline. The proposal didn't succeed, so we're left with a situation where this policy doesn't describe what goes on, as it ought to. The result is inconsistency. Some editors get away with it in some areas. Others are called to task and have their articles deleted, citing this policy.
But while I agree with your point, I do wonder which best-selling novels you're thinking of that don't get any independent reviews. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 18:46, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragons_of_Summer_Flame This one had no sources, but we elected to keep it anyway in consensus. wp:Common sense outweighs the nobility guidelines, as long as there are enough reasonable people around to use it. Dream Focus 19:16, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Amazon lists a review of it, just as one example. SlimVirgin talk|contribs 19:19, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Let's see...has that article been AfDed? No, then you can't argue it was "kept" by consensus or has been claimed as notable despite having no references. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 19:22, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
And of course, the delitionist sees a chance to delete something else, so nominates it. It was prodded for deletion before, not sent to the AFD. My mistake. I believe common sense will prevail, and it'll be kept, however it depends on who goes over to form the consensus. The notability guidelines should be used as a suggestion/example of how things can be done, not an excuse to delete anything you can. Dream Focus 19:32, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
"Best selling" novels without significant third-party coverage get deleted the same as anything else. Notable manga does have plenty of third-party coverage, including reviews. You've already been told, repeatedly, that that argument that it is not is blatantly false as is shown BY the articles on those series. That is why manga is covered under WP:BK. Alas, I thought this was a legitimate question, but it now appears to be yet another forum shopping attempt to get around established consensus and try to enforce ILIKEIT over notability standards. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 18:12, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No they don't. We saved a recent Dragonlance novel, and I've seen Goosebumps articles saved, that had no reviews anywhere at all. And there was no established consensus for any of the policies, since only a very small percentage of people who use the wikipedia ever had any say in it at all. It comes down to people enforcing what they want, by camping out at various policy and guideline policies, and arguing nonstop the same illogical nonsense, because you don't like something, and want an excuse to get rid of it. And I am not forum shopping, I am answering a legitimate question. I came here to find out if you absolutely need a third party reference outside the series to pass the verifiability policy, since there was a debate over that in an current AFD. Dream Focus 18:17, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Short answer, for what you seem to be wanting, is yes, a third party reference outside of the series is necessary to verify anything beyond pure plot summary (including the existence/release/publication of the work). -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 18:26, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy Dream Focus, sorry to butt in everybody. DF, I fully understand your frustration. I would posit, however, that this not a problem of different sourcing standards but, rather, that some fictional works have a more vocal fan-base involved in editing Wikipedia. Try deleting unreferenced cultural references from a The Simpsons or Family Guy article and see how long it stays excised. Our coverage of fictional topics also suffers from systemic bias through a sort of prism of obscurantist modernity. That is, while we cover the most inane modern media in excruciating detail, we devote very little space to earlier works. We have articles for every single The Simpsons episode, the entire 20 year run while Amos 'n' Andy or Captain Video and His Video Rangers get short shrift. Our coverage of topics is directly related to the number of people willing to work on that topic and with a collaborative process that is unlikely to change. Cheers. L0b0t (talk) 18:37, 7 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Refusal for inline citations.

What is the appropriate Wikipedia page to discuss verifiability and citation issues regarding inline citations? I have made a request for specific inline citations to Classification of Japanese, which contains a general list of references with no indication which parts of the article where generated from which references or which pages. A editor reverted the request with reasons given at Talk:Classification of Japanese#Inline citations. I would appreciate suggestions or a review from others. If there is a more appropriate forum, please let me know. Regards, 124.214.131.55 (talk) 02:27, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Help amending this policy

I need to include an addendum to the Verifiability policy, but am not sure how to integrate and word it.

Per an administrator-determined consensus at Talk:33 (Battlestar Galactica), "trivial" unverified information falls outside the scope of the burden of evidence section. Specifically, the information having been tagged, challenged, and finally removed many times, it is an administrator's determination that consensus has determined that as it is of a "trivial nature" it doesn't fall under the purview of this policy and may remain in the article untagged and unverified. Since policy is derived from consensus, that discussion leads me to needing to update this one.

I'm unsure whether this addendum should be integrated into the preexisting prose, or if a separate section is warranted. Should the nature of "trivial" be specifically quantified by this policy, or should "triviality" be determined by administrators on a case-by-case basis (as in the exemplar)? Should the nutshell address the unnecessity of verifying trivial information? Should trivial information that doesn't need to be verified be tagged in some fashion so as to show future editors that X information has been determined by an administrator to be "trivial" and that it falls under this special provision? Currently WP:TRIVIAL redirects to Wikipedia:Trivia sections; could it be usurped so that administrators could have a shorthand to point newbies to this new provision?

I've never directly edited a policy page before with such changes/additions to implement and would really appreciate input and assistance in my efforts here so as not to botch the whole thing. If any elabouration or clarification is needed, either refer to the aforementioned talk page for a more in-depth discussion as to this new consensus, or feel free to ask me here! Thank you! — pd_THOR | =/\= | 21:54, 11 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not disrupt wikipedia to make a point. If you want, go start an RfC over including '101' as a production code, don't go changing WP:V over a trivial scifi tv series, consider their actions an invocation of WP:IAR and move on. Sincerely, Unomi (talk) 00:26, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I'm discussing changing this Verifiability policy because apparently it's consensus that this policy need not be applied universally as written. Since an administrator has determined consensus to be in contravention of this policy (which should normally be followed by all editors), this policy needs adjustment to reflect consensus; as the Consensus policy says, "Policies and guidelines document communal consensus rather than creating it." I'm not trying to make a point; something has to apply across the board with regard to verifiability, an aspect one of our five pillars, and if community consensus has been determined to be different that what we're espousing it is, we should change what we're claiming.

For what it's worth, including specifically unverifiable information isn't an improvement to the English Wikipedia, and as such falls outside the purview of the Ignore all rules policy. In fact, it sounds more like vandalism; and since it has to either be one or the other (a change in Consensus as opposed to Vandalism), I assume administrator intervention makes it the former. Please assume good faith here; I just want a wholly factual, verifiable, and accurate article to be the end result, as determined by the policies herein. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 00:47, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate and applaud your desire for clarity and coherence, as you point out yourself it is not an improvement to allow unverifiable information so why change the policies to encourage it? What constitutes trivial? My advice regarding opening an RfC was sincere. I do not have the stomach to get involved with your discussion on '33' but clearly something is amiss if you believe it is not verified and they do. Another question might be to what degree the production code is significant, especially if it is unverifiable. A workaround might be 'according to blah blah' in which case it is at least attributed to the website they mention. An admin is just an editor with some tools, they are not generally considered an oracle or, necessarily, arbiter of consensus outside of situations where they are needed to close discussions, such as AfD etc. Do not count the discussion as over and don't expect the outcome to be an amendment of WP:V. If you feel you are in the right there are many options for dispute resolution open to you. Unomi (talk) 01:07, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the desire to stick to policy, but I would think that many people will view this as a "Since I lost the game, I'll change the rules" type of direction. Why not just accept that too much instruction creep is not always a good thing? — Ched :  ?  01:14, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It's not so much that I want the rules changed, but that I've been told the rules are XYZ, just not yet documented. I firmly appreciate and implement the current Verifiability policy to the best of my ability. But the administrator involved actually made plain that Consensus = XYZ; since Consensus = the Rules, the Rules (policies and guidelines) should be changed to reflect such.

My rub is that either (a) I'm way outside the bounds of the rules as they stand, and therefore the rules need to reflect the actual bounds so I and other editors know what they are, or (b) I'm right in my implementation of the rules, and have been edit warring with an administrator in the wrong. Ultimately, the former seems more likely, and here I am. — pd_THOR | =/\= | 01:29, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand where you're coming from, and I applaud your efforts to be accurate in what you do. I usually try to go with the flow of the people I'm working with on articles. If I'm editing in a section like movies, and a fair number of folks that are regular editors to those articles prefer XYZ, then I'll try to do XYZ. Then if I see that over in a BLP, that folks don't use XYZ, but rather adhere to ABC, then I'll try to go with ABC on those articles. Wikipedia is a global community, and we can't have a written "rule" for every single contingency. An example would be that in the US, what we consider "football" .. is completely different from what people in the UK consider "football". Sometimes you just need to accept a group consensus to avoid confusion and disruption. It's fine, and even preferred that you ask about conventions you're not sure of; but, once they've been explained - to continue to belabor a point, and say "but bla, bla, bla says this" is only going to have the affect of editors viewing your editing habits as disruptive. Now I'm not telling you what you should do, or how you should do it - but I will say that once an editor has gotten a reputation for being disruptive, it's a difficult task to remove that albatross. Sometimes it's good to just step back from the computer, and ask yourself - how important is this individual item in the whole grand scheme of things? Is it important that I push an issue like episode numbers to the point that other people don't want to work with me? You may have a valid point, and you may even be able to wiki-lawyer your way into forcing changes - but is it worth the trouble in the long run to you? Personally, I'm content to accept that episode 105 means Season 1, Episode 5 when I see it in an article. I don't have a need to have it proved to me. As you may have noticed, I tried to provide a link that showed the correlation between the number and the actual episode. I noticed that you went to RS/N and requested some sort of "can I remove this reference" question. One editor suggested that it wasn't a reliable source; and while I may agree with that if I were using that reference to attempt to establish WP:N for a BLP, I can accept some leeway for minor things. When you removed the reference, I didn't say a word, I just left the article as quietly as I came - I'd rather edit in areas that achieve the most bang for my buck so to speak. Again, i can't tell you what you should do here - that choice is yours. I'm just suggesting that there are some things that can be accepted in order to keep friction to minimal levels. I wish you the best of luck in what ever direction you chose to go ;) — Ched :  ?  02:40, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
pd_THOR, I certainly see your point and understand your frustration. I can only presume the other editors are not intending to take the article to GA or FA level, as such unreferenced (or invalidly referenced) production codes would have to be stripped anyway (as has been seen in other episode lists and articles - you can't just proclaim a production code). And while, some may say its "obvious" the truth is, many episodes do NOT use that kind of production code, and without a real source no one can claim it is the real one. Case in point List of The Real Ghostbusters episodes, which has the actual, real production codes as published by the producers. The "guessing" 105 is the code is purely WP:OR, and goes against WP:V, no matter who is saying otherwise. The problem is not that consensus disagrees with the policy, but is simply choosing to ignore it (i.e invoking IAR) because they think it looks better for whatever reason. So I disagree with the need to change this policy, but I do think you are right, though Ched, unfortunately does make a valid point. People tend to rather just attack the editor than accept something that might seem so basic, so to save editorial reputation, it may be better to let it drop for now. -- Collectonian (talk · contribs) 02:58, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Foreign language sources

I recently quick failed a GA nomination for Follo Line for two reasons; WP:CRYSTAL and the fact that 10 out of eleven cited references were in Norwegian - with no English translation provided. My reasoning was that I could not verify the references. To me this would appear to be valid. The nominator disputes the neccessity for providing such translation and has gone to WP:GAR as is perfectly proper.

My question is how can one verify the reliability of such sources and whether or not they support statements in an article. This is especially so in the case of a languge for which no reliable online translation resources are freely available. I would suggest that the current guideline at Wikipedia:Verifiability#Non-English_sources is somewhat unclear in that it omits any mentions of cases where the cited material is not presented in the article as either a footnote or in-line. Jezhotwells (talk) 14:36, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there is precedent for this specific case, but here is how I would approach it.
When all references for an article are in Norwegian, then very likely quite a few Norwegians are interested in it. If there aren't enough Norwegian speakers around at the article, it would make sense to leave a note at WT:WikiProject Norway (and perhaps also at WT:WikiProject Sweden and WT:WikiProject Denmark, since the languages are mutually comprehensible). If this seems to be too much effort, then you should leave handling the nomination to someone else.
I think failing a nomination only because you can't read the language of the sources is normally not acceptable, just like it wouldn't normally be acceptable to fail a nomination because all its references are printed books that you can't easily obtain. Verifiability means verifiability in principle, not instant verifiability for every reader of the article. There are obvious exceptions; such as when an implausible negative claim about Obama is sourced to a book in the Maltese language. But this doesn't seem to come close to any of these red flags. --Hans Adler (talk) 15:03, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment. I shall leave the article at WP:GAR as I don't feel I could conduct an honest Good Article review when I can not satisfactorily tick the boxes for verifiability of sources or even establish if they are reliable. The other reason for failure was WP:CRYSTAL as the subject is apparently not slated to begin construction until 2013. Jezhotwells (talk) 18:20, 12 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
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