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The policy section of the village pump is used to discuss proposed policies and guidelines and changes to existing policies and guidelines.
If you want to propose something new that is not a policy or guideline, use the proposals section.
If you have a question about how to apply an existing policy or guideline, try the one of the many Wikipedia:Noticeboards.

Please see this FAQ page for a list of frequent proposals and the responses to them.


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Proposal to modify MOS:IDENTITY

I am making the proposal that MOS:IDENTITY, bullet #2 should be changed to:

  • "Any person whose gender might be questioned should be referred to by the gendered nouns, pronouns, and possessive adjectives that reflect that person's gender at the time of notability as reflected within the prevalence of mainstream reliable sources. Identity changes thereafter should be dealt with chronologically but should always follow the conventions used with prevalence in mainstream sources."

I believe that this change will help prevent recurring debate issues. The present guideline is a failure because it creates a situation that sets Wikipedia apart from mainstream sources and groups us with advocacy sources. An example is our article Alexis Reich....you know who calls this person that? LGBT publications and Wikipedia. Mainstream sources still call him Mark Karr. I have listed a few in this discussion as examples. If someone brings a new ref to the article, the ref will be calling him Karr which is inconsistent with our article.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 13:16, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that your suggested rule also creates a situation that sets Wikipedia apart from mainstream sources. Try applying your rule to Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Bach, and A Clockwork Orange (film). Now try to find any 21st-century source that does not call her "Wendy." --Guy Macon (talk) 14:28, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Considering both the Alexis Reich and Wendy Carlos articles, perhaps the answer is that there is no single absolute rule that can be applied. Sometimes it will be appropriate to use the post transition name throughout the article, sometimes (for example where someones notability is almost completely associated with the pre-transition period (like Karr/Reich) or when someone has separate unrelated claims for notability pre-and post transition) it will not. Of course however we deal with MOS:IDENTITY, we have to strive to produce clear and readable prose - the Alexis Reich article, with its batterys of (then male) and (at this point still a male) is not good writing.Nigel Ish (talk) 18:06, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Guy, if all the 21st century sources use "Wendy", then we would, too, under this rule. Carlos started transitioning before Switched-on Bach was released. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please read the proposed rule again. It specifically says "at the time of notability." Here is the name used at the time of notability. Wikipedia (correctly, in my opinion) not only uses a name that was not the name used at the time of notability, we also (correctly, in my opinion) use an image of the album cover art that shows a name that was not the name used at the time of notability. It is a historical fact that Switched-On Bach and Switched-On Bach II were not released under that name.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] The proposed rule is an attempt at a "one size fits all" policy that does not work properly in some cases. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:32, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is it your theory that Carlos was only notable for a brief period of time? Or is it your theory that the legal name of a person who is transitioning—in 1967, when Carlos was living full-time as a woman and when getting a legal gender change was not a trivial or quick process—is the be-all and end-all of his or her gender? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:00, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's historical revisionism. Wendy Carlos had a choice as to what name to put on the cover of Switched-On Bach. She chose not to put "Wendy" on the cover. She was able to make other changes -- she objected to the look on Bach's face and a patch cord plugged in to the wrong place and was able to get those changes made. The last release to be credited to her old name was "By Request" (1975). The first as Wendy was "Switched-On Brandenburgs" (1979), after she revealed her new name and status to the public for the first time in an interview in the May 1979 issue of Playboy magazine. You cannot show a shred of evidence that she was publicly known as Wendy at the time of notability (1969) -- which is why the "at the time of notability" rule is a bad rule. Wendy first became notable in 1969, when Switched-On Bach entered Billboard's pop Top 40 charts and won three Grammy Awards -- all of which were awarded using her former name. To claim that she was known as Wendy at the time of notability (1969) is a total fabrication. I do not understand why you are clinging to the flawed "at the time of notability" rule, but please stick to historical facts when arguing your case. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:17, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For those who may be wondering why there are, as far as I can tell no 21st century references that use any name other than Wendy Carlos, why I agree with that decision, and why nobody else applies a "name at the time of notability" rule even when describing her 1969 work that was released under another name, in my opinion it is a simple matter of respect. See http://www.wendycarlos.com/pruri.html and http://www.wendycarlos.com/faqs.html (skip down to the question "Why do some of the old LP's have a different name on them?") for Wendy's position. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The rule does not say "stage name, legal name, or pen name at the time of notability", even if we pretend that Carlos was only notable on the exact day that the album was released (which I don't agree to) rather than for the decades afterwards when the sources were paying attention. The proposed rule is "gender at the time of notability". We have sources that say Carlos was living as a woman—remember, gender at the time of notability—at that point in time. Therefore the article would use "Wendy" and "she", not "Walter" and "he". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:19, 25 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It's a difficult question, and it's not easy to handle name changes whatever the reason. My preference is to use the current status in the biographical articles (as every other source will) and use the name that literally appears on the credits or cover for artistic works (for artistic and historical accuracy) - regardless of the reason for name change (personal choice, sex change, marriage, etc). As a comparison, our article on Huckleberry Finn says the book is by Mark Twain and does not mention Samuel Clemens in the lede. I have no objections to the wording that is currently on "Switched on Bach" [8], where both the current name and previous name are used; that would correspond to "Huckleberry Finn is a novel by Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain". However, just as it would be inappropriate to leave out all mention of Mark Twain in the article on Huckleberry Finn, it would be inappropriate to leave out all mention of Walter Carlos on Switched on Bach (because that name appears on the cover) or all mention of Larry Wachowski on The Matrix (because that name was listed on the credits, movie posters, etc.). I think that almost all readers will be aware that the name that appears on an artistic work is only a label, and the person's actual name may differ. — Carl (CBM · talk) 11:30, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]


I don't support the proposed change, although some good points have been raised here. First, I don't believe "at the time of notability" is well-defined. Many individuals have careers that span transition, and the proposal would force us to pick one or the other on a relatively arbitrary basis. I'd prefer to pick one or another on a less arbitrary basis. Were that the only issue, though, and for me it's not, at least we could come to some sort of change for people whose notability is entirely pre-transition, etc.
In addition, in the specific case where (a) we're discussing a living person *and* (b) there's good evidence through reliable sources of the person's transition and post-transition pronoun/name usage, I oppose the proposed change more strongly. While much fuss can be made about the precision of one usage vs. another, in my view, both factors are quite minor in balance, in that I do not believe either choice will be particularly more or less confusing to the reader, some confusion is inevitable. On the other hand, some of the choices we could make here have the potential to cause unnecessary discomfort to a living person (see gender dysphoria, and also recognize that many transgendered people consider the use of pre-transition pronouns pejorative) As a result, I believe that there is some weight towards current policy per WP:BLP.
I admit to a good deal of sympathy for the idea of carving out an exception that covers Alexis Reich, but could it be that perhaps Reich is someone that I'm having trouble having any sort of a neutral point of view about, what with the child pornography, the false confessions of murder, and so on? I'd suggest that Alexis Reich is an distressingly loaded example to use in isolation for rewriting a general rule. Surely test cases such as Dee Palmer or Laura Jane Grace, who (so far at least) have largely achieved fame pre-transition, provide a more neutral ground to lay a basic groundwork? Better yet, the long list Guy Macon provided? --j⚛e deckertalk 21:03, 27 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
To go on one other name above, the Renée Richards article reads incredibly awkwardly in spots. For instance, writing about how "she captained her tennis team at Horace Mann" strikes me as being misleading, as at that time it was split into separate schools for boys and girls and it would make it seem as if Raskind had captained the female tennis team when in fact it was the male team. Even if it were to be rewritten as "She captained the male tennis team at Horace Mann", no one can seriously convince me that sounds like good prose at all. I'm not sure if the proposed change above is the best solution (I'm still considering it), but it's these sorts of butchered attempts at working around the problem that current policy doesn't do anything about (if anything, it seems to encourage them) and really need addressing. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 21:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose change. No one actually changes gender/sex. They only discover what their gender really was the whole time. Say we have an article about a country music singer named Natlee Roman. All her life she thought she was born in Memphis, and all the sources refer to her as being born in Memphis. But then she digs through her attic and finds her birth certificate and oops! She was really born in Nashville and just raised in Memphis. We should use the recent sources, even if there are fewer of them, because they have clearly proven the older sources wrong. (The older sources would still be valid for information other than Roman's birthplace.) That's what gender transition is. Chaz Bono didn't become a man; he realized that he had been mistaken in thinking that he'd ever been a woman or girl.
Even if one doesn't believe that, then it is still valid that referring to someone by his or her preferred gender is polite. So long as the article acknowledges when the change in identification took place, it will not be misleading. The example that Mincho gives above could be addressed by saying "she captained the boys' tennis team at Horace Mann."
Exceptions can and should be made for those who have faked or are suspected of faking gender transition. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:52, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Not a good analogy. Your fictitious singer's find would be meaningless to Wikipedia unless she made an announcement that got it published in secondary reliable sources. As a primary source, the birth certificate wouldn't work. You have actually just bolstered my stance. With comments like "We should use the recent sources,..." and "So long as the article acknowledges when the change in identification took place, it will not be misleading.". That is what I've been saying. Recent sources call him Mark Karr and do nothing more than footnote his post-notable identity.
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 13:05, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The other thing (which the Renee Richards case illustrates quite well) is that the whole gender/sex thing is way out into an ontological nightmare land which we can never, ever map out, and which really any thoughtful examination of the problem agrees that we can never properly map out. The flat statement that "[t]hey only discover what their gender really was the whole time" is endlessly contestable and contested; once one steps away from the biological reality of people with uncomplicated chromosome counts, the arguments about the reality of sexual identity go on and on and on. If Richard Raskind had never "discovered" his "true" gender, say he had been killed in a car accident early enough in life, we could have a section on his school days without all the currently misleading pronouns which would accurately depict him as a male student at a male school and that he played on the male tennis team as a young man. I find it hard to justify the current version which makes him look like a young woman on a coed or female team. Even without categories we are having a lot of trouble dealing with what is "true"; categorization, being so absolute, just makes the problem that much worse. Mangoe (talk) 14:20, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Articles for creation

Pages at Articles for creation are often added to Wikipedia content categories. They should not be added until they become an actual article in article namespace. I would like to have them prevented from being added to save a lot of work in cleaning up polluted categories. While we are at it they should have the __NOINDEX__ magic word added automatically. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:44, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, both are good ideas. David1217 What I've done 17:33, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
{{AFC submission/pending}} already pushes NOINDEX into the submissions. --Nouniquenames (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that regular content categories should not be live in AfC drafts, but do remember that the AFC categories are needed for the AfC process to work correctly. And it can be helpful to consider categorization while workign on a draft, perhaps a separate "Categories" section contain links to relvant cats which could be quickly transformed when/if a draft goes live. DES (talk) 17:03, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Good idea DES, but too much overhead I think. There has been talk forever in AfC about general categories for AfC only. Until that happens and for now it would probably be best to delete any categories we find in AfC until they go live. I never realized this was a problem, but I can see now the pollution it would cause. --  :- ) Don 20:54, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The script normally should delink the categories after cleaning up the submission (happens with every review, marking as "being reviewed", adding a comment, etc. (all except accepting)). I plan to push a very big update next week of WP:AFCH and thus fixing many known bugs, depending on my spare time in my new job and if I have some access to the net. Related to the noindex: A big common problem is that many WP:MIRRORs do removing the noindex part of these pages and thus getting displayed by Google & Co. I'm still on vacation, so leave tb's at my talk. mabdul (public) 21:11, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
So human editors, please do not remove the categories, instead comment them out or turn them to links with an extra :. When the page becomes an article the categories are useful. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:49, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Categories have several purposes, one of which is to encourage collaborative editing. Not allowing categories at AFC is one of the reasons why I personally don't encourage people to use AFC. Now that unpatrolled new articles are marked as no-index we should start the merger of the AFC and newpage patrol processes, so that article development is done in mainspace where it belongs. We could always make it a user option to ignore or list separately unpatrolled articles when looking at categories. ϢereSpielChequers 10:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of what gets submitted to WP:AFC is unsourced or blatant self-promotion, with the ability to resubmit a rejected article misused routinely. Maybe a fifth of what's there actually will see the light of day as a viable article. I can't see wanting to move this entire mess to mainspace (although, realistically, anyone can register one or one hundred accounts and post a new page to mainspace with all of these same issues one second later). Current procedure with categories is to allow [[category: on unreviewed AfC submissions, but to change it to [[:category: the moment a reviewer declines a submission. (The AFC helper script does this automagically.) This seems to work reasonably well, in that we're not hiding unreviewed submissions (removing them from the categories increases the chance that someone else will start a different fork of the same topic as they have no way to know a potentially-valid draft is already in the week-long AfC backlog) but at the same time not having WP:ADV and WP:COI WP:SPAM created directly in mainspace as often as would occur if AfC weren't the designated decoy for these posters. K7L (talk) 16:14, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One of the purposes of AfC is to avoid the biteyness of speedy deleting the articles of new editors who don't yet understand our policies, particularly under the A# criterion. While many articles never make it out of AfC space, it at least gives the article creator a chance to work with the community to improve problems, rather then having it summarily deleted. Sending everyone straight to article space would eliminate that purpose. Also, IP editors may submit to AfC but cannot create in article space. Monty845 16:25, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What is "vandalism" on Wikipedia?

I brought this up in the "talk" section of an article about a political figure, and a mod directed me here.

Why do we call malicious rewriting of a (usually political) article "vandalism?" We are literally handing the authors cans of spray paint and pointing them to the boxcars sitting quietly on a siding.

We don't vet our contributors. Yes, it's our claim to fame, our silver bullet, but it's also the bullet that hits us in the ass every time the subject comes up.

I am constantly berated and belittled on sites left and right because I sometimes quote WP. One site, where I'm a moderator, will literally kick me off if I quote WP. Unless/until some sort of contributor vetting takes place, Wikipedia is doomed to the lower depths of information media. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tbone0106 (talk • contribs) 20:43, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Vandalism should have the answers. Basically, any edit that disrupts the site is vandalism. The freedom that grants the ability to cause vandalism also grants not only freedom to undo that vandalism (which is what happens), but improve articles further (meaning that freedom gives a net gain). The people who dismiss this site for being "full of vandals and crackpots" know jack-shit about this site. We require sources for new additions (especially for articles about living persons), pages can be locked to prevent anonymous or even all edits, and accounts can be blocked.
That said, I never cited Wikipedia in academic papers because the site is a constantly changing tertiary source, and only appropriate for general reference. As a general reference, though, we're generally more accurate and more in-depth than the Encyclopedia Brittanica on the subjects they also cover, and we cover a lot more than they do. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:10, 29 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
"Any edit that disrupts the site is vandalism" — not necessarily, Ian. Vandalism is defined on its policy page as "any addition, removal, or change of content in a deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of Wikipedia." Further, the examples listed include: "adding irrelevant obscenities and crude humor to a page, illegitimately blanking pages, and inserting obvious nonsense into a page." Disruptive editing is a much broader category, encompassing a wide variety of behaviours including but not limited to: vandalism, edit warring, rudeness, personal attacks, subverting Wikipedia's policies, POV-pushing, posting copyrighted material not covered by fair use, adding libellous material to BLPs, wheel warring, and so on. Vandalism (and by extention, trolling) is delineated by the intent of the edits, whereas disruptive editing in the broadest sense may not be. Kurtis (talk) 00:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Vandalism is solely restricted to edits which are deliberately bad faith. That is, edits which are intended to make a Wikipedia article worse. Edits where the person who io trying to article better, given their own personal definition of "better", are never vandalism. A person can be very disruptive, and be actually making an article worse, but as long as their intent is to make an article better, it isn't vandalism. It may be some of the worst sourced, most obnoxiously partisan, POV-warrior bullshit you've ever seen, but if the person adding it believes it, then it isn't vandalism. You should never accuse a person of vandalism if their goal is to improve an article. --Jayron32 14:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Edits that are not intended to improve Wikipedia fall into vandalism, example {{spam}} is used and may proceeded to a block for vandalism, where the editors intent is not to harm Wikipedia but is to further their own goals. JeepdaySock (AKA, Jeepday) 10:34, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd disagree. Spam is spam, vandalism is vandalism. The key difference is intent. Lots of edits people make to Wikipedia have the effect of making an article worse. The vast majority of these are not done with the intent of making an article of lower quality. Even spam is intended, by the writer, to be of good quality, in the sense that the authors intent is to write good spam. Now, this may be antithetical to the ethos of Wikipedia, we may have every right to remove it or delete it, we also may need to take the step to block someone who commits them, but none of that makes it strictly vandalism. --Jayron32 04:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would generally reserve "vandalism" to describe edits that insert obvious nonsense or irrelevance, or which delete material in a plainly nonsensical manner. Or to turn it around, it is edits for which there can be no plausible content reason, where it's impossible to believe that the editor had any constructive purpose, even a malign content purpose. I personally wouldn't call the kind of changes in the particular article that prompted this (most of which got BLP-oversighted) "vandalism". I also wonder why we're worrying that much over the precise distinction between people goofing around and people inserting false content with malice aforethought. Mangoe (talk) 20:32, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that the bigger concern is that people call the edits of their opponents in edit wars "vandalism" because they don't agree with them. That is clearly not correct. --Jayron32 17:03, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I would generally interpret that use of "vandalism" as a personal attack rather than an honest evaluation. Mangoe (talk) 17:29, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Regardless, it still happens like all the time. I guarantee that right this second, someone is typing an edit summary that calls someone's edit "vandalism" merely because they disagree with it, and not because it is actually, you know, vandalism. --Jayron32 20:12, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Reframing the policy for having access to AWB

The current requirement for getting access to WP:AWB is 500 mainspace edits. It should be lowered or should include revert edits too.Harsh (talk) 17:24, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

AWB is a very powerful tool. I think the current requirements are just fine. David1217 What I've done 17:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. But I also think that it isn't so complex that it requires 500 mainspace edits. Harsh (talk) 18:11, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't used AWB, but from what I've seen, it's pretty complicated. By the time someone has 500 main space edits, they should have a pretty good feel for how Wikipedia works. David1217 What I've done 18:20, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • For active contributors to Wikipedia, 500 mainspace edits is nothing. Reversions generally also take place in the mainspace, but I'm not sure if they would count toward the 500 edit threshold because they do not have any relevance to content contributions. I think it's a reasonable minimum to set before considering requests to grant people AWB, which is (as David1217 states above) sort of a powerful tool. Kurtis (talk) 18:24, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Editors with less than 500 edits still can get access but they haver to state a good reason for that. -- Magioladitis (talk) 18:31, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • My understanding of the approval process is that you need either 500 mainspace edits OR a good reason for requesting access. Looking at the request page, I see that editors who can explain their reason for wanting AWB access are being granted it even if below 500, so I'm not sure what needs to be changed. Why should those who have less then 500 edits AND can't explain why they want access be given access? Monty845 18:58, 30 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If you personally are in the process of applying for a right and running into difficulty, trying to change the requirements in order so that you can get the right is... well... not what I'd consider the ethical or proper thing to do. It also means that people will only consider your ulterior motive and not your actual arguments when responding to the proposal, as I am demonstrating right here. That in mind, I believe that we should both close this debate and deny your AWB request. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:55, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

How so? The usual concern with WP:COI is that someone in a conflict of interest will try to hide that COI or will directly edit mainspace pages on topics in which they hold a stake. I see neither here. K7L (talk) 16:26, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
No, Sven's observation is valid, in that it's inappropriate to submit an application in accordance with a protocol, while simultaneously requesting a change in the relevant policy to lower the standards for entry. See moving the goalposts. Mephistophelian (talk) 07:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC).[reply]


I opine that atleast automated edits excluding revert edits should be included in the threshold limit of 500. Harsh (talk) 18:13, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Consensus no longer marked as a policy

Wikipedia:Consensus (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) has been edited so that it is no longer marked as a policy. It was previously marked as a policy. This is an automated notice of the change (more information). -- VeblenBot (talk) 02:00, 31 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

What if a company states the opposite of a RS about it?

How much do we respect a company's right to decide that their products are xy and not xyz? For one instance- a Chevrolet Camaro is stated in our article that it is a Pony car, however the Camaro team at GM has told automotive news outlets that they dont wish for the latest Camaro to be called a pony car because they want it to compete more with Nissan 370Z and BMW 3series instead of the Mustang. Do we give any consideration to their classification? Similarly Personal computer and Apple Macintosh both declare an Apple computer to be a PC, but historically (and still in commercials) a PC is an "IBM Clone" and excludes Apple and Commedore. At what point do we say "Yes, technically by definition of what a PC is, an Apple is a PC, but because of history and corporate marketing, they are not". All soda's are called "Coke" down South ("What kind of coke do you want?", "I'll take a Dr. Pepper"), especially in Georgia, but we don't label Pepsi as a coke.97.88.87.68 (talk) 19:23, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Summarize and cite the sources for both sides, putting reliable sources first. Car companies do this all the time. They try to get out of obvious de facto standard labels for marketing purposes. —Cupco 19:29, 4 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would write it this way "Though Chevrolet would prefer to not use the term, (insert reference to company policy here) many reviewers categorize the Camaro as a "pony car". (insert more sources here). When sources disagree, cite them both and explain how they disagree. --Jayron32 04:21, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
However, it is still a bad idea to use a primary source. For example, the car company may say one thing officially, and not mind one bit that other people say the exact opposite, and reliable secondary sources could actually mention this, even if the car company itself doesn't *officially* say it. Primary sources might be good for something that requires zero interpretation, like "The car is officially called the Volkswagen Type 1", but almost anything can easily be subject to interpretation, even without realizing it. -- Avanu (talk) 05:01, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That's just primary source paranoia, and entirely wrong. If it's worth mentioning at all, the article should say something along the lines of "Company's official position is X,[1] although various other sources state Y.[2]" You're more likely to run into WP:OR here when trying to interpret or analyze the "secondary" sources to support the claim of the opposite. Anomie⚔ 16:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen many instances of a primary source being misused because someone presumed to know what it said. Hardly 'entirely wrong'. Of course, this happens with secondary sources as well, but our guidelines tell us to stick close to the interpretation of secondary sources. -- Avanu (talk) 16:48, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You are permitted to WP:USEPRIMARY sources. The important point is not to go beyond what the primary source says. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:06, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The important point is to not go beyond what the source says, no matter if it is "primary", "secondary", "tertiary", "centenary", or whatever. I've yet to find an instance on Wikipedia where the "primary"/"secondary" distinction really matters, as opposed to it being a heuristic for (or a misnamed shorthand for) a different distinction. Anomie⚔ 19:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Suppose a primary source says: "100 murders occured in 2011 in Pleasanttown", and another primary source says "50 murders occured in 2010 in Pleasanttown." Now suppose a Wikipedia writer says "Pleasanttown experienced a 100% increase in its murder rate over the last year." This is original research. You are drawing a conclusion from two separate primary sources. You *MUST* be very careful with the use of primary sources. It is incredibly easy to fall into a trap of using them to draw conclusion that seem very true, but are possibly wrong, or even actually wrong. -- Avanu (talk) 03:04, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Except your beef there has nothing to do with the primacy of the sources. If you replace every instance of the word "primary" in your post with either "secondary" or "tertiary", the synthetic statement would still be original research. Someguy1221 (talk) 03:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly. I also note that, if the sources are reasonably comparable (i.e. clearly the same measurement methodology), it's not original synthesis. It's just basic math. Anomie⚔ 22:27, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Alarming policy on Sources that should be addressed.

Hi, I was just over at Wikipedia: Citing Sources and I noticed something rather disturbing. Under "Preventing and Repairing Dead Links" The fifth item lists this.

"Remove hopelessly lost web-only sources: If the source material does not exist offline, and if there is no archived version of the webpage (be sure to wait ~24 months), and if you are unable to find another copy of the material, then the dead citation should be removed and the material it supports should be regarded as unverifiable. If it is material that is specifically required by policy to have an inline citation, then please consider tagging it with [citation needed]. It may be helpful to future editors if you move the citation to the talk page with an explanation." This is rather disturbing as sooner or later all links will go bad, and we can't always count on the Internet Wayback Machine, to be there. Essentially if that site goes down this policy is saying that all dead link citations would have to be removed, which would be a disaster for this project. I propose we change this policy to better protect the future of Wikipedia.

I propose we amend the policy to state that if links are hopelessly dead that they can remain, after all if all copies of a book were lost that wouldn't necessarily mean that all the info in it is then useless.

I don't know I just really feel this policy could be problematic for the future.

--Deathawk (talk) 07:27, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Funny, I've been worried about the same thing ever since I started here. My only thought was that the Wiki archive the web sources to protect content, similar to the commons. But, I have no idea of what might be involved as far as resources or legally. Or, let the Wiki evolve with the Internet. --  :- ) Don 08:19, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably, any change should adequately address the issue of plagiarism as well as verifiability. --Boson (talk) 08:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Is it even a plagerism issue? If you cite something in MLA, Chicago what-have-you, it's valid. It shouldn't matter how easy or hard it is to retrieve the source the point is you got it once and you told people where and when. --Deathawk (talk) 09:07, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Plagiarism is an editor level issue, and also a medium term one, as in the long run all the things that are in copyright will enter the public domain. I'd be rather more worried as to whether the information is true and fair. If the dead link was added by an editor whose other work was plagiarism/hoax free then we should assume goodfaith. If their other contemporary work included plagiarism or worse then it would be safest to treat the deadlink as the same. If it was done by an account that did little or nothing else on the project then presumably the risk is the same as similar one off edits by IPs and accounts that only made a handful of edits, but whose work survived as long. Once we've dealt with any where there is a significant risk then it seems to me to be perverse to remove such deadlinks. ϢereSpielChequers 10:00, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As I see it, citation serves (or may serve) two purposes:
  • it allows verification of the statement made
  • it provides attribution, thus crediting the original author.
If the current wording says to remove a citation that is no longer suitable for verification purposes (without simultaneously removing the text that it was meant to verify), it is also (in most cases) telling you to remove the attribution, possibly resulting in plagiarism. In my view, WP:PLAGIARISM would only permit the removal of a citation where it is not required for attribution. Not having access to the original may make it even more difficult to decide that attribution is unnecessary. So the current wording would appear (to me) to violate WP:PLAGIARISM. I am not talking about copyright. --Boson (talk) 12:06, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There are cases where it is justified to remove a citation: where it is used to justify (subtle) vandalism. I have seen many cases like this -- often pointing to irrelevant or random sources which have nothing to do with the subject at hand, never mind the statement to be supported. When I come across these, I replace them with a "Citation Needed." In one case (that I know of, the editor in question provided a citation that was behind a paywall. I took the the trouble and expense to pay for the information ($12 just for the one piece cited) but it contained no reference whatsoever relating to the statements in the article -- or even to the article itself. pietopper (talk) 13:04, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If one can locate the material and find it has nothing to do with the statement it was purported to support, then of course it can be removed. Then the remaining statement can be dealt with: leave it if it is obvious, mark it with {{citation needed}} for a while then delete it, find a suitable source, or just delete it. But if you can't find the source, the the only way to avoid plagiarism is to remove the statement and write a new statement based on new sources. Jc3s5h (talk) 16:38, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. All that is clear and makes sense. What is not clear, is what *successful* recourse there is against editors who deliberately and (presumably) maliciously create citations that lead nowhere, are totally irrelevant and just waste everybody's time -- besides damaging the credibility and usefulness of WP pietopper (talk) 17:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This is necessary to comply with our main sourcing policies, which require that the source not only have (allegedly) existed at the time it was added, but also that it be accessible (somehow) now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the critical part here is web-only meaning the source doesn't exist in printed form or recorded as audio or video anywhere. Most of our reliable sources today will have a non-web original (print, audio, video). Of course there are reliable sources that are web-only and a simple soultion would be for some type of archive (library/university/etc.) to print and store them somewhere. Though, this isn't very realistic and would get more and more difficult in the future. We should be doing something to prepare for this issue if we want to maintain our reliability, 64.40.54.133 (talk) 22:43, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
That may be true for some subjects such as Aincient Rome or Mozart but for other things it's quite the oppisite. For instance, I would consider myself on the Video Game beat and IGN and Gamasutra are the two big go to sources on that front-both are online only. In fact in this day and age when print media is dying, it seems that quite a few subjects only appear online. --Deathawk (talk) 03:51, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
From a statistical point of view, let's assume that 70% of the current references are from the web. Every year no matter what, a certain percentage of those are going to disappear without being replaced. Therefore, in order to maintain the existing content, the percentage of web references will have to decrease and off-web references increase or the articles will gradually erode away. --  :- ) Don 00:24, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think it should absolutely stay in the policy. We should never be in the position of telling our readers, "Trust us on this." If we can't point our readers to a verifiable source, then we're not a serious reference work. That said, archives exist for exactly this reason. Haven't some editors looked into having a bot crawl every link on Wikipedia and manually archiving them? Did anything ever come of that? Someguy1221 (talk) 03:59, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Link rot has some bots listed which do exactly that kind of work, though some of them have gone dormant. --Jayron32 04:23, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • This didn't used to be the policy, it used to be policy to leave the material in the article with the source because it may eventually re-surface. We had the opinion that our readers would evaluate how much to trust information sourced to a dead link. I do wonder, however, about the feasibility of a hard-copy archive of all cited web-pages. What sort of funding would be required, would it be a worthwhile university project? Hiding T 11:04, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IMO that policy should not exist. Most old web pages can be accessed via wayback etc.. This is not to say that a dead link necessarily counts as sourcing or sufficient sourcing, but that can be decided elsewhere. North8000 (talk) 11:33, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I should make it clear that I have no problem with replacing dead links with newer ones that state the same thing (as long as the info is updated accordingly.) The thing is many things in a web-connected world will only appear once and never again. Again this is not a problem for subjects such as history, however for subjects like video games and even some current events it could be next to impossible to find new sources for such info. --Deathawk (talk) 00:32, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

In which case they are effectively unverifiable. Such ephemera is not much different than saying I think heard someone say once "...". OTOH, I hesitate to remove indications of where details came from for purposes of attribution, but unverifiable is unverifiable and should be removed if challenged and no other reliable sources can be found. older ≠ wiser 02:08, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The problem with this attitude is that the information was there. It would be like citing an unpublished paper that unfortunately was subsequently destroyed. I get the point you are sort of saying here that it isn't verifiable, but at the same time it is a valid point mentioned above that perhaps some way of archiving these pages that are used for bona fide sources could happen as well. Certainly archive.org provides a valuable source for such link (assuming that the ROBOTS.txt file of the original website permits such archiving). At the very least some sort of effort should happen to at least try and see if perhaps the link has moved to another URL or can be found in some sort of network archive. Simply stating "oops, can't access the page any more.... time to delete the link" is something I think is flat out wrong. That is just as bad as a common vandal and indeed I view it as a form of vandalism on this wiki. At the very least, links and content removed in this way certainly could be transferred to the talk page in hopes that some future editor might be able to find the content in another URL and restore that content again. There are other options which could be applied when this situation happens. --Robert Horning (talk) 02:42, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have a couple of random thoughts on this topic.
  • I tend to take the middle road regarding dead links: The proper thing to do when one finds a dead link is to, before removing it, make a good faith effort to locate the source. Presumably, when it existed it verified the information. However, if no good-faith search turns up a replacement source, then the information is no longer verifiable. It doesn't matter that for a 6 month period five years ago it was verifiable, if it won't ever be again until the heat death of the universe. So yes, we should make every possible effort to replace the link, but recognizing that it can't be replaced is also sometimes necessary.
  • That being said, if some supposedly important piece of information is only referencable to a single web source on the Internet which is so ephemeral that it disappears after a few years then never comes back again, and which has no print source, or other online source, at all, then perhaps that little factoid didn't belong in the first place. WP:UNDUE makes it clear that we shouldn't be including points-of-view that are so minor that even mentioning them throws the article off; including information that only exists in one such ephemeral place seems to meet that definition in spades. It would be like referencing something to a newsletter or zine that only had 100 copies and then existed nowhere else. If the source was that ephemeral, maybe it wasn't that reliable in the first place, and if the "fact" was only availible at that one source, maybe it wasn't that relevent of a "fact" to begin with. --Jayron32 03:09, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think if we look at all the arguments so far it seems that there are valid reasons on both sides on what action should be taken if a site were to go down. The problematic thing is that, right now we have a policy right now that point blank tells people to delete a source if it's not able to be found. Can we all agree that this wording should be changed so that it isn't so black and white? --Deathawk (talk) 04:59, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Changing the policy to permit this sort of thing would be pointless, as such material would still violate the verifiability policy. And I mostly agree with Jayron's second point on this, I think I even put something to that effect on my userpage years ago. If some fact is so insignificant that no mention of it can be found in any existing reliable source, it probably doesn't belong on Wikipedia. Someguy1221 (talk) 07:06, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that some folks are conflating two completely different questions:

  1. Whether or not a dead link reference can count as meeting the verifiability requirement
  2. Whether or not to delete dead link references

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:18, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I wish it were not the case, but in a few instances where I tracked down the original material, I found the link never supported the claims made for it in the first place. As a result, I tend to think discretion requires that "really most sincerely dead" links ought to be removed. If the information was only to be found in that one place in the first place, we ought not assume the claim to be well-supported. Important stuff should be noted by at least one other source, no? Collect (talk) 15:32, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I think that is valid, but I also would like to be sure that users make a good faith effort to track down a second source. I would be whole-heartedly opposed to any user who removed, without making any effort to check, any dead links and the statements they support en masse. That sort of stuff happens all the time: A user uses a policy to overreach, and starts uncritically making a whole lot of rapid changes, and ends up pointing to a policy like this saying "I can do this because it says I can, nanny nanny boo boo" or whatever. Yes, I agree that truly dead links which were really the sole existing reference for a "fact" need to be removed, along with what they support, and that many of those "facts" probably didn't belong in the first place, if they were only linked to a single ephemeral source. I said as much above. However, it is important for anyone who removes such a "fact" to first establish that to be the case. If it is trivially easy to replace a dead link with a good reference, that should be done preferentially to just removing it. --Jayron32 15:39, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Coming at it from the other end, though, it is possible that other sources don't widely cover facts because they are already covered in Wikipedia. It is also possible that people source the fact from Wikipedia, and when the link dies we source from them, thus creating a circle which loses the original source. I think it is of some importance that we have some record of these sources beyond having to search through the archives. I think perhaps it is worth tweaking the policy to stress that the citation be placed on the talk page as standard practice, rather than helpfully hinting that to be a good idea. Hiding T 16:28, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Webcite

It occurs to me to mention webcite, which I assume we all know and use, but on the off chance we don't I'll put it on the radar. I don;t know if it would be possible to build a bot which could read a reference, extract the url and submit and then extract the archival page and add it to the reference, but it is rather more simple for humans. It would be a worthy goal if everyone in this conversation ran through their watchlist and performed this useful task, wouldn't it? Hiding T 12:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Going back to an idea I posited a while back it might be a worthy effort of the Foundation (Wiki, not Asimov) to create it's own archive similar to the commons. This could be done independently or maybe in association with a company like Google. At this time we are depending on newspapers, magazines, etc. to maintain a perpetual archive so that we may maintain a perpetual Wiki, A Library of Alexandria... The Library at Wikipedia. --  :- ) Don 15:21, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The policy is fine as is, as noted, if it cannot be resourced it is not terribly likely to be necessary to the encyclopedia anyway; although OTH I have seen numerous cases where dead links and the content they supported was removed without any effort at locating a new source, which is very poor practice. I have restored content with new sourcing which has taken me a trivial amount of effort to locate. Regarding archives, we have the entire history of every article. Our server bill is high enough as it is; we run on charity, and increasing our servers by whatever factor is necessary to replicate data which is already available on current servers seems like a very poor ROI to me. One puppy's opinion. KillerChihuahua?!? 15:44, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I may be wrong but I think Dcshank is talking about a hard-copy archive, something that has struck me as well. It would be an endeavour worthy of support. Hiding T 16:24, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dead tree? I'm not sure I follow you. KillerChihuahua?!? 16:26, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly don't understand your question. Let me try again and see if we get there! My idea, which I am presupposing is the same as Dcshank's, is of some worthy institution which makes hard copies of all websites cited on Wikipedia and archives them, some University funded by some large corporation, perhaps. There has to be some value in that to the institution. The value to Wikipedia, of course, would be immense, no more worry of dead links! Hiding T 16:32, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I also said, "I have no idea of what might be involved as far as resources or legally." I know it will not be free, but I don't think we should kill trees for it. I think hard drives have a lesser carbon footprint. They just ain't as cheap --  :- ) Don 18:28, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I can say that a bot can do this - we had a case in the video game project where a reliable source was going dark and taking its site with it in like 5 days. We got a bot operator to look for all links to that site, webcite them and add in the archiveurl + date, well before the site was shuttered. --MASEM (t) 16:43, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Masem! That's very useful to know. Do we know who the bot operator was, or if it is possible to do this on a wider scale? Hiding T 16:50, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
HEre was our bot request : Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/AnomieBOT 60 (Which was approved of course). A large scale is likely not a problem technically, but I believe the issue has been addressed numerous times (like, for example, after an article has passed FA) and I think there starts to be a copyright problem here in that automatic cacheing of papers on website could be a potential issue, but I can't find those discussions. --MASEM (t) 16:58, 7 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Era

I have seen a page (I can't recall which one, but it was probably a link from Brahmagupta where we have a strange mix of BC and BCE, namely 283 BCE. This must be wrong. How do I decide whether to change it to 283 BC or 283 BCE? -- SGBailey (talk) 11:40, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Look at the history to see what was the first clearly established practice at that article. Check the talk page and any archives for discussion. If there was no consensus to change from the initial practice, that should stand. This kind of change can be and has been be disruptive, so discuss your findings first before you standardize on one or the other.LeadSongDog come howl! 13:23, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]
[[283 BC]]E looks to me like a failed attempt to apply link suffix combining, where [[bar]]s is equivalent to [[bar|bars]] giving "bars". For English, this only works for lowercase letters in the suffix (except maybe between June and August 2008). So IMO, [[283 BC]]E should be probably just be replaced with [[283 BCE]] or [[283 BC|283 BCE]] (depending on whether you abhor linking to redirects).
BTW, if the article was History of elementary algebra, that style appears to have been first added in this edit, as an AWB cleanup making the error described above in 2007. Does anyone know if AWB will still do this? Anomie⚔ 16:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

iABC PR and Wikipedia article is out

It's out: [9] Various gratuitous wording changes from the original. The changes didn't make it hopelessly wrong at a glance, though that won't stop loophole-seekers. The rest is worth reading too. Thanks to all for help - David Gerard (talk) 07:34, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

BLP: Misuse of primary sources

I have initiated an RfC at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons#Misuse of primary sources, comment there welcome. -- PBS (talk) 09:22, 6 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

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