User talk:Jimbo Wales

Another good article to read

I was reading the Science NYTimes section yesterday and came across a short essay, The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/science/the-widening-world-of-hand-picked-truths.html) that made me think a lot about several long-lasting disputes on the project that concern science vs. beliefs based in a person or group's experience and the "truth" they see. Here is one of the ending paragraphs:

• "Altruism and compassion toward the feelings of others represent the best of human impulses. And it is good to continually challenge rigid categories and entrenched beliefs. But that comes at a sacrifice when the subjective is elevated over the assumption that lurking out there is some kind of real world."
  

I think articles like this are helpful in understanding these are not just content battles on Wikipedia but larger cultural shifts in accepting subjective reality over mainstream objective arguments. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:54, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Holy crap Liz...you summed that up pretty freaking well! Mahalo!--Mark Miller (talk) 05:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

It is an excellent read, but in my chosen role as an encyclopedist, I will stick with "the assumption that lurking out there is some kind of real world", and will continue to rely on mainstream science as the best tool to understand the things within its realm. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:12, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

The article was well-written but for me thoroughly depressing, suggesting that an extremely large proportion of people as a whole are detached from reality; this will probably always be the case. Wikipedia will no doubt continue to be widely criticised for presenting scientific fact as scientific fact. Rubbish computer 17:07, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a tool against these types of thing - by which I primarily mean pseudoscience, and those attacking the science as oppressive, because it doesn't play into their desired narrative. It makes it much harder for people to support these various conspiracy theories, when the hard evidence is only a click away. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 04:54, 29 August 2015 (UTC).

With my background in engineering, I tend to prefer the real world also. Just because I believe that I won't get hit by a bus if step in front of it, does not mean I won't. Not exactly the definition of objectivism but some people have to get hit by the bus to see the truth, (and sometimes not even then). Nyth63 16:37, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, I think the dilemma is interesting because it is really a battle between empiricisms, contrasting the "lived knowledge" or experience of individuals vs. the empiricism of scientific experiments. It's part of an ongoing public skepticism towards mainstream forms of authority and knowledge that has its origins in the 1960s if not before.

I remember I was part of a team in the 1980s that was preparing individuals for media interviews they might be called on to do and one overriding guideline that was impressed upon the individuals was to talk from their personal experience. Personal experience is, of course, quite limited but aside from psychological treatment, is typically not challenged or invalidated by others. Meaning, one person can generally not tell another person that they didn't feel what they believe they felt, that they didn't understand what they believe they understood. Most people make sense of information that comes to them via the news, TV, classes, conversations, etc. by how it fits into their understanding and life experience.

In the process of Western societies empowering individuals to question traditional forms of authority, it has had the byproduct of some people elevating their experience as being their "truth" which other information is measured against. People become experts on their own lives. I assume this will be an ongoing dynamic on Wikipedia for the foreseeable future as it's impossible to reverse cultural or societal changes, they just go through further modification and that's over a long period of time. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 22:31, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting stuff. This has strong connections to the "different ways of knowing" so prevalent among believers in quackery, pseudoscience and sundry other bullshit. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Who's bored?

Here's a biographical article in dire need of improvement with copious available sourcing out there: William Lawrence Scott. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

This brings up a question I have had for a while: Is it a valid use of an article's talk page to post links to sources until such time that the information gets added to the article and properly referenced? Nyth63 19:23, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Don't see the problem with posting sources on talk. The talk pages are for helping to improve the article. Valenciano (talk) 19:28, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

OK. I have actually been doing this on some of my userspace drafts for a while and currently have one article-space page with some. Carrite, perhaps if you could create a section on the talk page there named something like Additional sources, hopefully someone could pick it up for you. Nyth63 21:55, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Handling bad information in "reliable" sources

Would you allow me to pick your brain on an issue that has arisen with the War in Donbass article? Recently, a site called bs-life.ru (which has been claimed to be a "respected" news site based in Moscow) removed a section from a piece that suggested over 2,000 Russian soldiers had died fighting in Ukraine, a figure that wildly contrasts with much more modest estimates from Western experts. This was reported on by some Ukrainian outlets as the Russian government censoring an accidental leak of their long-denied involvement in that war and this was repeated in a Forbes contributor piece, prompting it to spread to numerous "reliable sources" such as The International Business Times and The Independent. Subsequently it was added as fact to the Wikipedia article on the ongoing conflict. Though it has since been modified to put it at the top of a range, Wikipedia still lends credence to the figure by including it in the article's infobox.

I feel it is crucial that here on Wikipedia we take care in how we handle this kind of information, especially as it concerns an ongoing conflict. One problem is the original source, bs-life.ru, is highly dubious. An Associated Press correspondent in Moscow dismissed the site as fake as did Bloomberg contributor Leonid Bershidsky, who previously ran several major business news outlets in Russia. None of the "reliable sources" reporting this claim have been able to independently verify the original claims made on the site, in part because the site is not providing its alleged sources. It appears the site's design is using a readily available site template unaltered and the site does not list any contact information, staff, or address, but instead has a contact form that has been answered by a single person via e-mail claiming to be a representative of the site. No outlet appears to have found any more details about the operators of the site, including any details about the "representative" of the site. StopFake.org, a site devoted to exposing false reporting on the conflict in Ukraine and typically biased against Russia, has done a detailed work-up declaring the site a fraud and stating the information is fake.

Despite all the above being pointed out in an ongoing discussion on the article's talk page, established editors have insisted that because the casualty figures have been reported by reliable sources they can only be removed if other reliable sources cast the same doubts on these figures. They have also declared criticism of the reliability of this information on the talk page as engaging in "original research" and thus prohibited. For me the reliability of the sources reporting it does not negate the questionable nature of the original source given that its claims have not been independently verified and thus I believe the figures should be removed. Is it your opinion that these other editors are correct and, despite the original source's dubious reliability, the mere fact that reliable sources have repeated the figures means they should be given credence in a prominent part of the article on an ongoing conflict until other reliable sources rebut the claims?--The Devil's Advocate _{tlk. cntrb.} 21:00, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

This is a potential problem in many cases. We witnessed a similar problem (albeit on a much more inconsequential article) in connection to the Ashley Madison hack. Just because the New York time repeats information from an unreliable source, does not make the original information any more reliable. Numerous editors spent much time banging their heads against the brick wall of RELIABLE SOURCE. Nyth63 21:41, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

I think we have to report what the reliable sources say. If you think the Independent is a reliable source, we have to trust that they had enough confidence in the numbers to print them. Now if V.V. Putin says that Russian casualties in Ukraine are zero, because there are no Russian troops in Ukraine, I don't think we should take Putin as a reliable source, but if reliable sources want to report those numbers, then we could use them. Or if there are other reliable sources with different estimates and we think these are the mainstream estimates then we should print those estimate. But having an editor simply say, "I don't like those estimates, we have to remove them." is just nonsense.

One passge that struck me in the Independent was

"This webpage will presumably be claimed to have been forged," suggests Nixey, who is an expert on the conflict, "as has been the case with dog tags, passports, satellite imagery, prisoners confessing and other evidence seen. They argue it is Western propaganda."

Sound like a fairly good prediction to me. Smallbones_(smalltalk) 05:02, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

@Smallbones: There is no obligation that we "have to" include or report what a reliable source says. We should double check, triangulate on what is verifiable, and possibly disregard what an RS says in favor of accuracy. We recently had a situation at the Murders of Alison Parker and Adam Ward page where the venerable Washington Post reported that the father of the gunman, "at one point was a dean at San Francisco State University," according to a neighbor of the shooter.[1] A Google search indicated this was not true. Instead what I found was that Vester Flanagan Sr. was with the director of operations at the City College of San Francisco, and not a dean at SFSU. That erroneous info was left out of the WP entry. A reliable source is necessary but not sufficient - the RS is just one part of a critical set of conditions that need to be met before facts are included in an article. -- Fuzheado | Talk 05:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Worth remembering is that no source is 100% reliable, and that the reliability of every assertion we add to the encyclopedia needs to be assessed in context, using our restrained and informed editorial judgment. I have cited articles in the New York Times hundreds of times, but would never cite one of their articles written by Jayson Blair or anything about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction written by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Judith Miller. Journalism in 2015 is rife with problems that obligate us to be cautious and conservative. Not "conservative" politically but in the old fashioned sense of being very, very careful about the reliability of sources we use about contentious claims. No one contests the sad news that Oliver Sacks has died but there are far more controversial assertions that require the highest quality sourcing. Newspapers commonly considered "reliable" all too often, these days, regurgitate "click bait" content from far less reliable sources. That reposting, as opposed to independent reporting, does not transfer reliability to a dubious source. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with everyone who is advocating for what I would call "editorial judgment" - holistically taking into account all available sources of information and making a reasoned judgment. I do not agree with the view that we simply write down what is in reliable sources, removing all judgment or opinion from the process - that's a naive and simplistic approach which would lead to us slavishly repeating errors. I sometimes think we still have a bit of a hangover from the days when "verifiability, not truth" was an oft-repeated mantra.

Now, it has to be said that encouraging thoughtful editorial judgment does not endorse us simply making up whatever we like, or excluding reliable sources just based on not liking what they say. Often there will be cases where editors can constructively disagree about what to do about conflicting reliable sources. Fuzheado's example is a good one, mainly because it's not filled with emotional peril. I would say that in that case, the proper resolution could be either to leave the information out completely (as he says we did) or to put in the correct information (from the primary source) despite it conflicting with the Washington Post. In that latter case, perhaps a footnote could note the discrepancy for future editors to ponder in case this bit of information does become more important someday.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:50, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I think in this particular instance there is some confusion over the correct status of the sources being discussed. The OP, TDA, is claiming that the site bs-life.ru has a reputation for being unreliable - that claim in itself requires some proof, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that to indeed be the case. His argument is that because the site is unreliable it cannot be considered to be an RS, and we must therefore treat anything it reports with an appropriate amount of skepticism, even if normally reliable secondary sources such as Forbes magazine repeated the story, and normally reliable tertiary sources such as The Independent repeated and reported on the original Forbes piece, as well as adding their own secondary source reporting of the actual primary source material on the bs-life.ru site.

However, to my way of thinking, the bs-life.ru site isn't the primary source in this sourcing chain. The putting up and taking down of the so-called "censored story" that had been "accidentally leaked" is simply an event that is being reported, just like a serious auto accident might be reported by a local newspaper. The primary sources of this story are the Ukrainian media outlets that claimed to have cached the posting and tearing down of this "censored piece" and which then made the decision to report this event to the rest of the world as a case of Russian censorship trying to cover up its involvement in the Dombass war. In which case, the reliability of the bs-life.ru site is as irrelevant here as the reliability of the Ford Fiesta involved in the auto accident reported by the local newspaper. Surely what matters in this instance is the reliability of the Ukrainian outlets that created the story being reported down the line by the secondary and tertiary sources. Because these outlets were not just passively reporting on the event as first hand eye-witnesses, they were also editorializing the event into something it possibly wasn't (i.e., a botched case of Russian leakage and subsequent censorship).

In fact, in the case of this particular story, the past unreliability of the bs-life.ru web site possibly adds to the credibility of this story rather than detracts from it as TDA claims. Because its past unreliability plays right into the hands of the Ukrainian outlets that are the true sources of this particular story. IMO, the credibility of the casualty numbers that have been included in the Wikipedia article is dependent more on the reliability of the Ukrainian outlets than it is on the bs-life.ru web site in this instance. At no point has TDA considered the true origins of this story and how reliable the true primary sources are that sit at the top of the primary-secondary-tertiary source chain. Is it possible that the primary sources were motivated in some way to doctor the cached images (including the casualty numbers) they reproduced in reporting this event for a political aim of their own? In other words, do they have a possible COI regarding this story and how they reported it? The answer, since they are Ukrainian, is unfortunately yes. I'm not claiming they did; like everyone else I have no idea what went on since I wasn't there, so I am completely reliant on my sources. Thus I, like every other reader and potential Wikipedia editor, need to apply healthy skepticism to ALL of the sources involved in this story and not just tacitly assume that some or all of them are correct, particularly the primary ones.

Mention has been made, in the earlier comments above, how respected western newspapers such as the New York Times sometimes "regurgitate 'click bait' content from far less reliable sources" thus raising doubts regarding the trustworthiness of the secondary and tertiary sources involved in reporting this story, and TDA commenced his OP by questioning the reliability of the bs-life.ru web site. Yet he doesn't question the potential COI of any of the Ukrainian outlet sources for this story; he also appears to tacitly accept without question the analysis of events as reported by the Ukrainian blog site StopFake.org which also clearly has a vested interest in putting an anti-Russian spin on this story; and he lumps the normally very reliable British newspaper The Independent alongside the normally very flaky IBT when he questions the reliability of both of these media sources by ironically referring to them as "reliable sources" in quotes. All of these actions are questionable IMO if TDA wishes to approach the information content of this story from an NPOV perspective. The first step to achieving NPOV is not to have preconceived ideas about the reliability of your sources (e.g., western and Ukrainian sources OK, but Russian sources dubious) especially in a war situation where propaganda and counter-propaganda is likely to be used by both sides. Identifying conflicts of interest regarding the trustworthiness of sources and properly identifying the true source of a story are also both essential to pursuing an NPOV approach. And all of this before you have even written a word. — not really here discuss 12:24, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Short of Wikimedia creating peer reviewed journals on political topics like this so that we can use really reliable sources, little can be done. Wikipedia does have good policies that can filter out some fraction of garbage, but if the sources are too contaminated we'll suffer from the garbage in ---> garbage out effect. Count Iblis (talk) 15:12, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

A few years have passed...

A few years have passed.... Count Iblis (talk) 15:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)