Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard

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This page is for requesting input on possible original research. Ask for advice here regarding material that might be original research or original synthesis. Include links to the relevant article(s). Make an attempt to familiarize yourself with the no original research policy before reporting issues here. You can also post here if you are unsure whether the content is considered original research. Sections older than 28 days archived by MiszaBot II. (For help, see Wikipedia:Purge) If you mention specific editors, please notify them. You may use {{subst:NORN-notice}} to do so.
Additional notes: "Original research" includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. Such content is prohibited on Wikipedia. For volunteers wishing to mark a discussion resolved, use {{Resolved|Your reason here ~~~~}} at the top of the section.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Costa_Rican

Not much citing, all original research.

lists in articles

There was a recent addition to Mill Run Playhouse which was a list of people who performed at this theater. The list looks legitimite but it's not sourced and the heading "notable performers" open things up to debate. I don't want to just delete the list, but it bugs me. Are lists in article subject to the same criteria as the rest of the article?

BTW, I had this same problem with Allstate Arena. I posted a similar question on that page's talk, but I no one responded, and the list is now endless.

Fuddle (talk) 16:52, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes, anything included in an article is subject to the same source rules as anything else. However, not all unsourced information is contentious either. It's common knowledge that actors do plays, stadiums host concerts, etc. If there's a particular claim that's not verified, try going with WP:FIXTHEPROBLEM before just removing it. -- Despayre  ^{tête-à-tête} 19:00, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I've columned the list which makes things a lot neater. Fuddle (talk) 20:13, 30 May 2012 (UTC)

Identifying animals in photos

I have taken a high-resolution photo of what I believe is an Arizona gray squirrel, and I am considering donating it to the project. However, it is OR for me to determine what species of squirrel the photo depicts, and since the photo is my own there are no reliable sources that are able to back up my claim. Wikipedia:NOR#Original_images states that "original images created by a Wikipedian are not considered original research, so long as they do not illustrate or introduce unpublished ideas or arguments, the core reason behind the NOR policy. Image captions are subject to this policy no less than statements in the body of the article." So... can I claim that my photo depicts a particular species or not? Obviously, this happens all the time as a matter of practice but is it correct? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 17:38, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with your stance, but I thought I was the only one who felt this way! It seems to happen a lot with photos of wildlife. Presenting a photo is fine, but associating that with a label that you chose (ie. the species) has a whiff of OR. I've seen a couple of similar questions over photos of dog breeds. It's less of a problem with, say, landscapes or photos of manmade objects.

It's difficult to think of a workaround which absolutely avoids the taint of OR, unless your photo is very similar to some other image (possibly nonfree) which has been properly identified by some source. As a compromise, I'd be happy to take things like this to the relevant wikiproject, where editors with subject-matter expertise could agree/disagree with the identification...

In general, en.wikipedia seems to make a big distinction between editors and sources - you can rarely be both, and in a few other corner cases where this happens, we tie ourselves in knots. Pretending that a photographer is only a source and not an editor would be a whole new can of worms... bobrayner (talk) 10:10, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

The image policy is a bit relaxed when it comes to illustrations, they do not have to come from a reliable source if just used as illustration rather than to say something new - but they should be reasonably faithful to the subject of the article. So yes I'd ask at a relevant wikiproject or the science reference desk before labelling it as a particular animal and even then I'd just say believed to be in the commons description if not absolutely certain even if the Wikipedia article doesn't. Dmcq (talk) 11:08, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Battle of Ayta ash-Shab

There is a large chunk of text in Battle of Ayta ash-Shab that doesn't belong to the article. All of the sources don't talk and don't mention at all this specific battle but rather on the results of the whole war.So its WP:UNDUE.Also this texts serves as WP:COATRACK to cast doubt in IDF number and present like the IDF numbers of killed Hezbollah member a bloated such argument may belong to the 2006 Lebanon War or to the Casualties of the 2006 Lebanon_War but definitively not to specific article about the war.Here the text that in question [1]--Shrike (talk) 10:20, 6 June 2012 (UTC)

Shrike (talk) has repeatedly deleted well-sourced material from my contributions, claiming I am violating WP:OR. At first I couldn’t understand his reasoning at all, partly due to Shrike’s apparent lack of command of the English language. Now after this [[2]] I think I finally understand what he means. Shrike is of course welcome to protest if I’m – again – misinterpreting him.

Our disagreement concerns this formulation from WP:OR:

Wikipedia articles must not contain original research. The term "original research" (OR) is used on Wikipedia to refer to material—such as facts, allegations, and ideas—for which no reliable, published sources exist.[1] This includes any analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position not advanced by the sources. To demonstrate that you are not adding OR, you must be able to cite reliable, published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article, and directly support the material being presented.

My interpretation of this paragraph is that you are not allowed to advance ideas that are not covered in reliable sources or to combine two different sources creating a new idea that neither source propose. Nothing else.

Shrike’s interpretation is that you are not allowed to introduce, however well-sourced, any material into an article that is not directly related to that article’s topic. So his argument is really about irrelevance and not about original research. The problem is amplified by the fact that Shrike uses an extremely narrow definition of the topic of the article, namely the title of the article. An article about, say, the battle of Stalingrad, must not, according to Shrike, not contain any material about WWII in general or about other battles during this war, unless it contains specific information about the battle of Stalingrad itself.

In the example referred to above Shrike deleted an entire paragraph from an article about the bunker system in south Lebanon that Hezbollah used for firing rockets at Israel during the 2006 war. Those bunkers were nick-named “Nature Reserves” by Israeli soldiers, hence the article’s name. The reason Shrike gave for his deletion was “Nature reserve are not mentioned at all.Its not clear if the HRW report talk about those installation or some other bunkers.”

Because the cited Human Rights Watch report did not use the Israeli term "nature reserves" for this bunker system the quote was violating WP:OR (according to Shrike) and therefore had to be deleted. If the article had been named “Hezbollah Bunker systems” I guess Shrike would have allowed the quote. See Talk:Hezbollah Nature Reserves for details.

Shrike’s complaints about by my editing of Battle of Ayta ash-Shab follow a similar line. The argument concerns the number of Hezbollah fatalities in this battle. We don’t have any official Hezbollah or Israel Defense Forces estimates. We have several sources (from Western, Lebanese and Israeli press) that the number of fatalities was around a dozen or less. We have a Lebanese source that present a list of the names of 11 Hezbollah fighters who died in the battle. Then we have William Arkin, "Divining Victory”, which no doubt is a reliable source - I was the one who introduced this item to the Wikipedia article. He writes:

The IDF says that between 41–70 rockets were fired from Aiyt a-Shab and its surrounding. Overall, the IDF lost seven soldiers in Aiyt a-Shab battles, and suffered 60 injuries, battling Hezbollah on the ground. It claimed to have killed 40 Hezbollah fighters.

This quote is problematic in several respects. On the one hand it is the closest we get to an official Israeli version of the events and is therefore relevant. That is why I choose to refer to it in the first place. On the other hand it is unsourced and Arkin generally supports his claims by footnoted sources. Not so in this case. What is even more problematic is that none of the factual claims in this paragraph can be supported by other sources. According to Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth 300 – not 41-70 – rockets were fired from the area of Ayta ash-Sha’b (see article for link). The fact that Arkin also published a photo of a damaged 10-story buildings described as “Damage in Aiyt a-Shab” (p. 87) does not increase his credibility. There were no 10-story buildings in Ayta as-Sha’b. According to official Israeli sources 28 IDF soldiers died in the battle of Ayta ash-Sha’b – not 7 (see article sources). Even if we exclude the five who died in the outskirts of the town on the July 12 and the ten who fell in the nearby village of Dibil, we still have 13 Israeli soldiers who died inside the town of Ayta. The claim that only 7 IDF soldiers died in the battle cannot be supported irrespectively how you look at it. It is totally false. The claim that the IDF estimated the number of Hezbollah fatalities to 40 cannot be supported by any other source (as far as I has been able to determine). It was therefore decided by discussion in the talk page that this source should not be used at the same level as the other claims. My personal opinion is that equating Arkin’s claim with that of every other source is a contravention of WP:UNDUE.

Shrike’s complaint concerns another point. He claims that we are not allowed to introduce well-sourced material unless that is covered by the title of the article. The offending paragraph that Shrike wants to delete is the following:

The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth estimated that around ten local fighters were killed, in addition to an unspecified number fighters from outside the town.[19] According to the Yedioth Achronoth "Encyclopedia" of the Second Lebanon War, Lebanese sources put the number of Hezbollah fatalities during the war to 300 while Israeli sources claim that 700 were killed. This difference was, according to Yedioth Achronoth, mainly explained by the distinction made by the Lebanese between "combatant" and "civilian" members of Hezbollah.[59]

The first sentence was deleted by Shrike without any justification what so ever. The rest of the deletion was justified by it being irrelevant to the topic of the article. Shrike claims it to be irrelevant and therefore contravening WP:OR According to my interpretation of the Wikipedia rules that is not the case. I also claim that the quotation from Yedioth is relevant. The quotation shows that Israel maintained a different definition of Hezbollah fatalities that included civilian non-combatant members of Hezbollah. So even if Arkin’s claim is deemed credible it doesn’t prove that the mainstream media’s statistics is wrong. In any case this information is just as relevant to the topic of the article as as is Arkin’s claim.

My hope by this my intervention is that Shrike will finally be told that his interpretation of [[WP:OR] ] is wrong.

Jokkmokks-Goran (talk) 21:15, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I believe Shrike's interpretation is the correct one. It doesn't have to mention the exact title, it just has to cover the topic, but the stuff above just doesn't mention anything specific about the battle that I can see. However we should not say that the ones sides version of events is true if there is some doubt, we should say something like 'according to Israeli sources' about stuff only reported by them for instance. As to reliable sources we might infer something about the reliability and due weight to be attached to them. However a reliable source does not stop being a reliable source just because something in it is uncited. Dmcq (talk) 14:29, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Anti-Pakistan sentiment

There is an RfC for the article Anti-Pakistan sentiment which appears to be covering a question of original research (can events be included in the article if no sources mention "anti-Pakistan" motivations?). Experts in the OR policy may wish to help out . Please provide any comments there, not here. --Noleander (talk) 15:24, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Haj Mirza Sayyed Ali Aqa Qadhi Tabatabai Tabrezi or Allamah Qazi

Hi. Could I please get some input at the above article. It was created a few days ago and was in a poor state. I removed a chunk of unencyclopaedic content that was unsourced/sourced to blogspot, but the author has continuously re-inserted it and ignored all communication attempts. I don't want to carry on reverting lest I fall foul of WP:3RR. Could someone help out please? I've also raised this at the WikiProject Islam talk page. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:18, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I moved the article because the name didn't meet with our naming conventions. I created a redirect, so you can still find it. If the editor carries on putting this material in, then the article may need temporary protection. Have another go at engaging the editor in discussion. I imagine that we ought to have an article on every ayatollah, but sourcing is always likely to be difficult. WikiProject Islam is a good place for that general discussion. There is still material in there that needs to be reduced, e.g. peacock terms. I'll have a quick go at doing that. Itsmejudith (talk) 08:39, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I agree with you that it's important to have an article about the subject, but it's the unsourced puffery that's the problem. I've gutted the article and I believe in its current state it's acceptable, but no doubt the author will have reverted within the hour. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 08:46, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

I did a little bit more. Let's see what the other editor does. Itsmejudith (talk) 09:05, 9 June 2012 (UTC)

Source of Periyar River

Hi. Can someone clarify on whether WP:OR is being used in the following example. The Periyar is one of the rivers flowing through the state of Kerala in India. The Mullaperiyar dam is built along the upper course of the river, about 60-65 km from the source. There are a couple of references (1,2) which state that the catchment area of the Mullaperiyar dam lies entirely in Kerala. Would it constitute WP:OR to conclude from the above that the source of the Periyar lies in Kerala? - Ashinpt (talk) 14:05, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

Reductio ad Hitlerum

• Feminazi (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

There is a dispute at Feminazi regarding whether the term is an example of reductio ad Hitlerum, and whether this should be stated in the article. Currently, no source provided in the article makes this claim explicitly. Proponents of inclusion say that it is "obvious" and "simple", while opponents claim that its inclusion would violate the policy on original research. I would appreciate it if editors familiar with the policy would provide their valuable insight.--Joshua Issac (talk) 19:47, 11 June 2012 (UTC)