Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Reliability

Reliability of self published books

One of the emerging vectors that is beginning to compromise quality and reliability in Wikipedia is the alarming growth in self publishing. The number of vanity presses that assist authors in producing a "reasonable looking book" has been growing. In fact, the oldest of them all, Vantage Press is getting left in the dust now, as a new and aggressive breed of internet based vanity press has emerged. Books by these types of publishers are appearing within references in Wikipedia with alarming regularity.

After a discussion on WP:RSN, we have now started Wikipedia:List of self-publishing companies and List of self-publishing companies to inform Wikipedia editors of these publishers.These types of references need to be avoided before they are used in 10,000 more Wikipages. In many cases, the contents of these books are derived from Wikipedia itself, making a mockery of WP:CIRCULAR.

I suggest that we somehow promote the existence of these lists so that:

• People know they exists and hence avoid these publishers, given that they often show up on Google books, and just get used

• People can look for the uses of these sources in the thousands of (or even more?) articles in which they are used, and somehow remedy the situation

Help in promoting these lists and encouraging editors to avoid these books will be appreciated. History2007 (talk) 20:16, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

• I support this most strongly. My work on here is fixing bad pages and patrolling for POV, and all bad pages have two things in common: primary and self-published sources. The former is used to support OR and SYNTH, which is relatively easy to get taken out with a few good editors backing me up, the latter of which is used to give OR and SYNTH a veneer of legitimacy by writing it somewhere else first (or just printing a certain revision of a Wikipedia page), and is harder to expurgate. I came across an article the other day, Aerial Toll-houses, a heterodox doctrine taught by some (Seraphim Rose) in Eastern Orthodoxy, which may be the worst article I've ever seen on Wikipedia: what's the problem? WP:SPS. Also particularly bad are all of the theology articles that quote Scriptures directly to "prove a point" by private interpretation, which is inherently SYNTH. St John Chrysostom ^Δόξα_{τω ^Θεώ} 21:48, 25 April 2012 (UTC)
• I too wholeheartedly support this. I know of a couple editors who know the vanity publishers very well (DGG and Orange Mike), so recruiting their help in compiling such a list would probably be a good idea as well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:55, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

If you could talk the other two editors you mentioned into taking a look at the list that would be great. History2007 (talk) 05:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• I support wholeheartedly as well.--YHoshua (talk) 23:03, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

I posted on the village pump and someone suggested that we should add a link from the policy pages to the lists. I think that would certainly be a permanent way of making people aware of the existence of these lists. I have posted here and here so people can become aware of these lists. History2007 (talk) 05:49, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support I'm surprised a list like this doesn't already exist! IRWolfie- (talk) 08:56, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

What is even more surprising is if you reverse search the links to see which pages use them, and will see that they are all over Wikipedia like weeds. History2007 (talk) 14:42, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

• I support this most strongly too. Good references are one of the jewels of Wikipedia; bad ones compromise the whole endeavour. A note: sometimes a self-published source can make an important contribution to the overall picture as I hope the memoirs of Len Fox did when I added his book to the Bibliography section of Nasturtiums (E. Phillips Fox). Relevant memoirs can form part of the historiography but even in such cases, it is important to note that the book is self-published. Is such a note about the publisher being routinely added to other articles? Whiteghost.ink (talk) 03:13, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

• There are two parts to that. One, SPS isn't intended to apply to autobiographies published through reliable presses (c.f. Zoya Phan's, which was published by Simon and Schuster). Outside of that, things like Len Fox's memoirs are very helpful for talking about the subject or something notable they did, but I too think it should be made more obvious they're self-published. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:01, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

By the way, what do you think of "ancient sources" Blade, as discussed below, say 4th century material. History2007 (talk) 19:09, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Always a tough one. I think they need notes on who translated them, for sure, but I think with sources that old a note giving their age should suffice. Most people will pretty much know it wasn't vetted the same way modern books are, especially autobiographies and contemporary accounts. Of course we'll want to have modern scholars' opinions on those texts as well, but I don't think it presents the same problem as modern vanity presses. When it comes to ancient attempts at recounting history, like the Shiji or Fulcher of Chartres, as long as it's marked that their authors lived in the 2nd-1st century BC and the 11th-12th century AD respectively and supplemented with modern scholarship those should be fine. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 19:24, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Yes, and in many cases, Wikisource has ancient texts as well. I have been impressed by Wikisource, it has turned out to be a really rich repository of ancient texts in many areas. I wonder how we can inform people of that. History2007 (talk) 20:04, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

I like you already. There is Wikipedia:WikiProject Wikisource. There are two points I would like to make regarding ancient texts, Wikisource and this reliability project.

1. Wikisource has text pages with scans (e.g. s:On the Vital Principle), and text pages without scans (e.g. s:The Republic), and only the former should be considered reliable. There are many instances where a text on Wikisource is a dump from somewhere else on the internet, and then modifications are made by anons and nobody ever checked to see whether the change was appropriate. When scans are readility available online, the Wikisource community quickly verifies edits are good by checking the scans.
2. Wikipedia should not do 'wiki' translations in the Wikipedia page. Wikisource does translations - some say it shouldnt, but it is far more suited to the task. On Wikipedia pages, the vast majority of the edits are about the text. On Wikisource, the edits are primarily alterations to the translated text, which makes prior investigating translation decisions an easy task. For example, try to follow the translation changes of Brazilian National Anthem vs s:Hino Nacional do Brasil.
   Also, Wikipedia pages are GFLD/CC-BY-SA, with no thought given to copyright status of copied works, whereas Wikisource translations are on separate pages with copyright tags at the bottom, and they are often placed into the public domain. e.g. s:Balade to Rosemounde. For an small item like a poem, the Wikisource contributors feel that because the original is public domain, the translation should be widely re-usable, without legally enforced attribution. Good reusers will continue to give credit.

John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:44, 28 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks John for bringing up the Wikisource issues. I will later suggest a cooperation of some type with them. Sorry for the delay in responding... just too many things to do. Cheers. History2007 (talk) 20:56, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

• I support this entirely. Factseducado (talk) 22:42, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

• Suggestion. Bots. Any reference that ads a self published book will be flagged. --Harizotoh9 (talk) 04:56, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Eventually yes. But as a start I will just do a quick program to generate a report, before we modify articles. As below, what I need however is a better list of the ISBN codes for the self-publishers. That is the stumbling block at the moment. There are various lists on the web, it is the question of finding and organizing them. They can also be inferred from books, but that can take time. But there are only a few publishers here, so it is not a huge task. History2007 (talk) 08:18, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Are you aware of Wikipedia:Republishers? Nageh (talk) 19:37, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I just became aware of it. I think it is a form of wiki-mirror and I would support that merge. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 19:51, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Well, no! That list includes republishers of Wikipedia content, in book form, just as your list does contain. So it should be merged into Wikipedia:List of self-publishing companies. Nageh (talk) 19:54, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

I was referring to the merge flag there. Anyway, voting is taking place there. History2007 (talk) 19:57, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Republishers

In Wikipedia_talk:Republishers#books_used_as_sources it was rightly pointed out that the republishers are now growing within wikipages like weeds.... History2007 (talk) 11:02, 19 May 2012 (UTC)

Report on the use of self-publishers

I have now finished the first prototype of the Self-published source usage report. The program itself was straightforward given the API, but cross-referencing for the project report format took some time. It took several hours to execute the program to generate this report, and I will post a larger version some time this week.

My guess is that it will take several days of execution time every month to run the eventual program that I hope to complete by the end of the year. That version will use its own list of ISBNs that will be looked up on Worldcat.

Suggestions/ideas will be appreciated, and I will also seek input from a few Wikiprojects. History2007 (talk) 05:53, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I'm responding to the post left at WT:MILHIST (though some extra context on what you guys have been up to would have been good!). The military history articles you've found that have references to self-published sources seem to all be of quite low quality. The self-published sources should go, but it's hardly surprising that bad quality articles have bad references ;) Nick-D (talk) 06:33, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

By the way, you just gave me the idea that this may also work the other way around. One method for detecting low quality articles and generating a list of them may be to check if they have low quality references, plus a number of other conditions. So these ideas are interesting. History2007 (talk) 15:46, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is right. In a future version, we should also categorize the report by article rating/importance, to see how self-published items are used in high importance articles. But it was surprising to me that wikiproject biography generated so many results. But we will have to wait a few days to get the full version of report with more publishers. Authorhouse dominated here, and I will try to run the others this week. History2007 (talk) 07:01, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

At least one of the hits in the Lincoln article (BiblioBazaar) came from a reprint of Sherman's memoirs. There are bound to be better editions out there, and just getting rid of those sorts of things should reduce the number of hits in biography. Although honestly it doesn't surprise me that they'd generate so many hits. Self-publishing tends to attract memoir writers. Intothatdarkness (talk) 14:16, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes it does, and that's going to be an ongoing issue, since an author writing about their own life is one of the exceptions where self-published work is acceptable as a source. I wonder if there is some way the report could weed those out? For example, if the name of the author is the same as the name of the article? Just a thought for improvement -- the first pass is a great start. --RL0919 (talk) 15:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, that is quite possible and not that hard, once an ISBN system is in place. The issue will again be execution time, but given that it will be a monthly report, I could set a computer to run it for a week if needed. These are good suggestions and as a list of these appears, I will work on a design to encompass as many of them as possible in a second version. History2007 (talk) 15:41, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

I mentioned Sherman's memoirs for another reason, too: many of these publishers take items that are out of print (and possibly out of copyright) and republish them. You then have to make the distinction between that and an actual self-published memoir (not sure if a bot can do that or not...I don't know much about them). Older history stuff is especially vulnerable to that practice, but I'm sure it hits other areas, too. Intothatdarkness (talk) 17:29, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it can be done, but not that easily. One needs to get the title, look it up on Worldcat to see if there were earlier editions, etc. and if so, skip it. These are actually good suggestions, but given my unfortunate time constraint of having only 24 hours in a day, and fixing various articles, these will be 2013 items probably. There was also a good suggestion on the talk page of the report, so the suggestion list is growing, and I will get to them as I can. I am trying to do the Wiki-republishers next, however, because they are an issue too. History2007 (talk) 17:35, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Business project done. Fifelfoo (talk) 07:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Great. I saw this one now. That was fast. Thank you. History2007 (talk) 07:34, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

By the way, I must offer my apologies to all you guys here. I have now been liberated from Wikipedia and will not be spending a great deal of time on this project. Please do accept my apologies. Thanks. History2007 (talk) 20:50, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

This project vs RSN

How is this project different from what RSN does? --K.e.coffman (talk) 04:47, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

This project aims to improve the reliability of articles by adding citations to reliable sources where they are needed and removing content sourced solely to questionable sources. Maintenance categories, including Category:Articles lacking sources and Category:Articles lacking reliable references, are overseen by this project, just as Category:All articles with topics of unclear notability is attended to by WikiProject Notability.

In contrast, the reliable sources noticeboard solicits editor feedback on the reliability of sources, but doesn't coordinate actual changes to articles. I'm in the process of merging Wikipedia:WikiProject Fact and Reference Check into this page, which also handles the {{Verify source}} and {{Unreliable source?}} tags. ​— Newslinger talk 05:20, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

PSA: Unreferenced articles about to jump

Folks watching this page may be interested in this conversation, which led to a bot trial for an unreferenced article bot. It will likely do a single run soon, tagging non-stubs if they're lacking references or lacking footnotes. So expect each of those categories to increase in size by 100,000 or so. Don't panic. Lots to do! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion at the above-linked BRFA has led to a village pump discussion gauging consensus for the bot to run. Folks who watch this page may be interested in participating. Cheers! Ajpolino (talk) 18:40, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

This would be extremely useful, and it looks like other editors agree. — Newslinger talk 23:02, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC of potential interest

An RfC is underway that interested "watchers of this page" wound enhance by participating, I hope that many will! The discussion is located at Wikipedia talk:Twinkle#RfC regarding "Ambox generated" maintenance tags that recommend the inclusion of additional sources. Thank you.--John Cline (talk) 07:01, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:CRAPWATCH

I'd appreciate some support here (concerning the publication of User:Headbomb/Crapwatch) if you think this is a good initiative. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:13, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

​It's a well-written article on an ambitious project that helps editors track down questionable sources. Thanks for sharing. — Newslinger talk 01:33, 29 March 2019 (UTC)

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Improving citations and reliability at Mayo Clinic

Hello! I'm Audrey. On behalf of my employer, Mayo Clinic, I offered citations to help correct several sourcing issues at Mayo Clinic to improve article reliability. Might editors here care to review? The full request is at Talk:Mayo_Clinic#Improving_citations.

Thanks! Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk) 15:59, 11 April 2019 (UTC)