Wikipedia talk:Burden of evidence

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Good essay. _(1 == 2)^Until 22:45, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

The burdon of proof should also be on the deletionist, since they are the ones causing all this trouble.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.107.181.206 (talk) 23:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikiality much?

As the creation of false wikialities is probably the most accurate criticism of our consensus process, I hope this essay isn't advocating in it's favor. You should at least mention WP:YESPOV, and perhaps WP:SOAP. But for secondarily sourced (i.e. non-soapbox) material, the onus should be on editors who don't believe certain content is relevant to the subject of an article, as it's usually plain on its face, and even in such a case, there's always an article somewhere else where the content can be used, in my experience. I agree with unsigned above: it's usually the deletionists who fail to heed the WP:YESPOV guidelines who are the troublemakers. -- Kendrick7^talk 21:22, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've gone ahead and written WP:NOONUS to elaborate on the above. Shall we exchange links? -- Kendrick7^talk 23:02, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Why a guideline?

This essay has been marked as a guideline - I won't immediately invoke it against itself by removing the guideline notice, but can someone point to a discussion where consensus has been achieved to mark it as such?--Kotniski (talk) 19:27, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

This seems a bit of an instruction creep to me, there is nothing here that screams out as being objectionable but I can't see why we need yet another guideline to cover something that already seems rather well covered in the core policies of WP:V and WP:NPOV. Davewild (talk) 20:02, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

That's my view too. We already have far too many policies and guidelines for a mortal editor to master; we shouldn't be creating new ones without very good reason.--Kotniski (talk) 20:40, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

This work was initially posted by JzG and immediately marked as a guideline, with no discussion or consensus evident here. He apparently based that claim on unspecified ArbCom findings. At a minimum there should be discussion here to see if the community agrees with his interpretation that this represents actual practice, rather than one view of where the burden lies, when it comes to the right of an editor to remove referenced text from an article. Also a link to the ArbCom finding which supports this as a guideline would be helpful. In the meantime, it should at most be labelled as a "proposed guideline." The promotion to guideline was a bit too WP:BOLD. Edison2 (talk) 18:14, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Surely we have WP:BURDEN already? Why do we need this as a guideline? What does this page bring us? Essay plz. Deamon138 (talk) 18:57, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I've changed it back as part of Bold, revert, discuss cycle, and the discussion above, which looks like full agreement that this was prematurely/wrongly made an essay. Deamon138 (talk) 19:00, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I don't see any consensus for this among the community. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 19:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It's just WP:BRD. I'll fish out the arbcom finding (which is harder now it doesn't turn up in Google, it might have been courtesy blanked). It's scarcely controversial, though - anything else would be a charter for the kind of editor who sticks something controversial in and then insists it stays until the world, his wife and his dog has weighed in to say it should come out again. Guy (Help!) 21:12, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Well the content of this isn't controversial in that sense no, but we pretty much have everything on here covered at WP:BURDEN. What does this proposed guideline bring us that WP:BURDEN doesn't? Deamon138 (talk) 22:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, WP:BURDEN says "Any material lacking a reliable source may be removed," and this essay seems to leave out the "lacking a reliable source" bit. So it does seem different. I worry that this will lead to editors wanting to remove nearly every sentence of an article, since the borderline proposed here is no longer "reliably sourced", but "has consensus". You'd be surprised how many people can be found to say something like... yeah, it's sourced by the New York Times, and the United Nations, and the European Union, but all those agencies are biased, so it should go, unless you convince a majority of editors on this article. It seems to be saying that consensus is more important than verifiability. --GRuban (talk) 20:57, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

It appears that this guideline would allow any editor to virtually destroy any article he didnlt like by removing referenced fact after referenced fact because most referenced facts do not have a demonstrated consensus that they should be included in the article. And it is supported by an ArbCom decision that no one at present can point too. Seems mighty strange, overall, and hardly deserving of "guideline" status. Edison2 (talk) 04:40, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose promotion to guideline Raising the issue on the talk-page first is much the better practice. Most of the first-step removals of content I see on my watchlist (other than rvts of clear vandalism) are by vandals, testers, or others not editors in good standing. The draft guideline has no requirement for the remover to state their reasons. Johnbod (talk) 12:11, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose This proposal contradicts the existing WP:PRESERVE policy, which reminds editors that Whatever you do, endeavor to preserve information. WP:BRD is fundamentally about changes to existing information, not a bizarre mandate to stonewall against certain information in our articles on a capricious whim. I don't think we should even have an essay which contradicts Wikipedia's age old policy on preserving content, let alone elevate this strange understanding of process to a contradictory guideline. -- Kendrick7^talk 17:10, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose. Information is important; that's why we're here. I don't see this as anything other than a quick get-around so that the POV/BLP-pushers can get their information removed easier without discussion or consensus; the lack of mentions of the presence of reliable sources making information immune to wanton removal without any good reason scares me a lot, so I really don't like the idea of having this as anything else other than an essay sitting quietly in the project namespace. Celarnor ^{Talk to me} 23:38, 3 September 2008 (UTC)