Wikipedia talk:Neutral point of view/Archive 45

Judaism is a minority point of view

^^ Which should be obvious. I would, however, assume we're allowed to mention this POV on Wikipedia articles where it is relevant. Which, as such, seems like a fatal flaw in the tyranny-of-the-majority wording running around here lately. In b4 SlimVirgin! -- Kendrick7^talk 02:38, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Kendrick, this isn't like you... you seem to be trying to make a point here (and it is never good to edit policy just to make a point)... so I have to ask, where is this coming from? Is someone trying to remove discussion of a Jewish POV from an article? If so, which one (that does matter)? Judaism may have fewer adherents than some other religions... but I don't think you can really call the beliefs of several million people a "minority viewpoint". I suppose you could call it a relative minority... but that isn't what WP:UNDUE is talking about. Blueboar (talk) 02:53, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is an educational resource, not a religious portal, and, therefore, it is not supposed to reflect any religious viewpoint. From the Wikipedian viewpoint, Judaism, Christianity, Taoism, etc., are just the objects of analysis, not the sources of wisdom. We can speak about representing some religious viewpoint neither as majority nor minority views; instead of that, we can speak only about presenting majority views on some religion. Therefore, in a context of Judaism, the majority view is a non-Jewish secular views on Judaism.

Let me explain that using the following example. According to Wikipedia, the Universe emerged as a result of the Big Bang more than 14 billion years ago. According to Judaims, it was created by Elohim ("gods") few thousand years ago, however, the Judaist viewpoint does not belong to the article about the Universe as neither minority nor majority viewpoint, because it is not a secular viewpoint. It belongs to the article about Judaism. Similarly, the Christian views belong to the article about Christianity, etc. There is no prejudice against Jews in Wikipedia, we simply must remember that Wikipedia is a secular educational resource.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:29, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Actually, Wikipedia is not a "…secular educational resource." Articles are the building blocks of Wikipedia, and sources are the underpinnings of articles. Sources are relevant to articles, so each article has its own pertinent frame of reference. It may be secular, religious, or of any other quality as well. The particular article determines its frame of reference. Bus stop (talk) 04:10, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Paul, you are confused. It is not wikipedia's opinion that the universe emerged 14 billion years ago. That is the prevailing opinion in astrophysics. We do not present that as a truth; we present that as a matter of scholarship. the majority/minority point that you are trying to make here drastically confuses different levels of analysis.

When a reader comes to wikipedia to read about Judaism, s/he does not come here to read about a particular perspective on Judaism. The reader wants a decent overview of what Judaism is, from various perspectives, done in a way that is consistent with Jewish understandings of their own faith. Obviously Judaism becomes 'an object of analysis', but that does not mean that we treat it only from some strange secular perspective. We can easily describe what the faith is and says as a religion without either advancing it as Truth or reducing it to academic abstractions. --Ludwigs2 04:18, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I believe Paul means we only do that on articles that are about Judaism, or creation theories per his example, rather than at Big Bang or Universe. I think that's consistent with WP:FRINGE, and his broader point about not having a Jewish point of view seems consistent in practice with your assertion that we don't take any point of view but present all relevant POVs--simply because on a scientific article, about a scientific topic, the overwhelming weight of relevant sources do take a scientific view, so much so that they don't even need attribution. That's not the case, of course, in more socially focused or religious articles. Where it gets interesting is in the scholarship of religion, which needs to be more carefully balanced against religious scholarship--two very different but related approaches, both notable, to the same subject. Ocaasi ^c 04:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

This discussion hurts my head. We shouldn't have to distinguish between someone's fringe theory that the moon was created by the Soviets as a propaganda tool, versus Judaism. I'm sure there's some rational dividing line between the good and the bad. But I trust people's good common sense to know the difference, and apply the principle of due weight fairly. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:53, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree, but the current wording doesn't make that distinction. Instead it relies on the inverse of WP:DEMO. For example, we couldn't have an article that links to the Whig Party because -- for the majority of people living and breathing -- that's a minority POV. I'm happy to work towards a solution! -- Kendrick7^talk 07:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Um, I'm just pointing out that Judaism is clearly a minority POV, and given the recent wording of this policy, this minority view should be excluded from Wikipedia on all other articles besides the article on the religion itself. I don't make the rules! -- Kendrick7^talk 05:53, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Kendrick - not a good place to make a POINT. --Ludwigs2 06:03, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, so maybe I'm making a WP:POINT. Regardless, it's a valid point, and I find the idea that per this policy we're not allowed to mention Judaism in the History of religion article problematic. I massaged this policy into sanity six months ago, and then took a long wikibreak. And I come back to see the lunatics running the asylum? -- Kendrick7^talk 06:19, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

@Kendrick7, As per the section above..... They never left...... 69.99.188.7 (talk) 06:26, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Be nice, anon, and WP:AGF. There's an underlying idea here which isn't terrible, but the current wording is obviously erroneous. -- Kendrick7^talk 06:54, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

First, who said we're not allowed to mention Judaism in the History of religion article? Second, why don't you add a link to the version of the policy that you preferred, so that we can compare and contrast. --Ludwigs2 07:07, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I agree Ludwig: we should be able to mention and link to minority points of view. And I hope this policy can be fixed to reflect my Progressive point of view, -- Kendrick7^talk 07:40, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Kendrick7: I'm not so much interested in political stumping here. what specifically are the problems you are seeing or encountering? You seem to be annoyed by a non-existant problem, as best I can see, so you need to make the problem concrete. --Ludwigs2 15:28, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, so I went back to your last edits on this policy page, which were in December, expecting to find extensive changes there. Indeed! This leads me to the question: Is the following an accurate summary of your concerns?

1. Holocaust denial is not a good example of a minority position that should not get weight, so it should not be mentioned [1], but the fact that Judaism gets weight in the History of religion article is a relativisation of this policy, remarkable enough to be mentioned.[2]
2. The views of tiny minorities are automatically notable. They should be discussed in dedicated articles, where they should not be set in the context of the minority view. (The only exception to this principle is views that were once held by the majority and are now largely considered historical. Articles on such views should state the modern majority position.) [3] They should get See also links from mainstream articles.[4]

Is that it? I am not sure it's what I would describe as sanity. Can you see Britannica following similar principles, for example? Hans Adler 07:12, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Wow, that I removed an ad hitlorem argument from the project shows that I'm not editing in good faith? OK, where are the cameras? Funny gag come on out. -- Kendrick7^talk 07:32, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I said no such thing, but now that you have mentioned it: I did look at your history, found some interesting things there, and decided not to mention them because here we are just discussing this policy. I have merely described your edits to the policy. If we ignore any gag reflexes that may or may not be caused by the description, is there anything factually wrong, incomplete or otherwise misleading about it? Hans Adler 08:01, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Kendrick7 talked about the sanity which he brought into this policy 6 months ago but which was reverted out. For everybody's convenience, this is the smallest section of the page history that contains all edits by Kendrick7 that happened earlier than today and later than 12 months ago. (Don't worry, it's not long.) There were also previous edits in January/February 2010 and in November 2007. Apart from today's edits, this is a complete list of Kendrick7's activities on the policy page. I believe the last time he discussed something on this talk page was in November 2007 (see Archive 30, nothing very relevant). I am providing these links because it may help in finding out what his concerns are. Hans Adler 08:23, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Can we keep the personal comments out of this and someone explain clearly what the disagreement is? For what it's worth, I think the DUE/UNDUE section is (like many sections of these supposedly core policies) extremely badly phrased - possibly for the same reasons that Kendrick has in mind (though I'm not sure).--Kotniski (talk) 16:44, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I am still trying to figure out Kendrick's argument that this policy implies that Judaism should not be mentioned in the History of religion article. So what if Judaism is a relative minority?... The policy clearly does not say we should omit minority opinions ... what WP:UNDUE says is that we can omit the opinions of TINY minorities. The word tiny is important. There are several million jews... so Judaism is not a TINY minority. (of course, when you then look at the differences of opinion that exist within Judaism... there are some views that are held by a tiny minority of Jews. some of those might be omitted... but not the views of mainstream Judaism). Blueboar (talk) 18:21, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)@ Bus stop. No, it is. One of WP pillars is verifiability, and any religious writing are not reliable sources for anything but the religious dogmas they tell about. It is quite easy to demonstrate that: try to go to WP:RSN with the question if the Bible, or Talmud, or Bhagavadgita are reliable sources for anything but Christianity, Judaism, or Krishnaism. Therefore, everything in Wikipedia is represented from the secular point of view, and even the article about religion contain the rational analysis of their dogmas, their origin, etc, so the religious viewpoint does not prevail even in the articles about religions.

@ Ludwigs2. I am not. When I wrote "According to Wikipedia, the Universe emerged as a result of the Big Bang" I obviously didn't imply that Wikipedia had some specific viewpoint on that. Generally speaking, Wikipedia does not and cannot have any viewpoint different from what majority and significant minority of reliable sources have. Therefore, I obviously meant exactly what you have written: the prevailing opinion in astrophysics, who are the only reliable sources in this case.

And, let me reiterate the point you are missing: Judaism, as well as Christianity, and all other religions, can be neither minority nor majority viewpoint; it is a religion Wikipedia tells about, not the viewpoint it represents. To demonstrate that I am wrong, please, point at any Wikipedia good article written from the point of view of some religion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:26, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

@ Blueboar. I do not think the question if Judaism should be mentioned in the History of religion article or not is the subject of NPOV discussion. If reliable sources mention Judaism in a context of the history of world religions, it definitely should be mentioned. However, the real reason for doing that are (i) that Judaism is the only survived representative of ancient Eastern religion cults; (ii) that Judaism is a progenitor of two world religions, Christianity and Islam, (ii) that even after these two religions came to the historical scene Judaism continued to effect both of them, (iv) (the list can be continued). In other words, the question if Judaism per se is majority, minority or fringe views is totally incorrect and irrelevant to this discussion.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:34, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Like Shooterwalker, this discussion gives me a headache too. But if we are discussing whether we needed to add "However, in History of Religion, Judaism, despite being a minority view, bears mention" to the policy (as was repeatedly reverted), I really do not see any value in adding that specific example. Of course Judaism bears mention in that article, regardless of any NPOV issues. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:58, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

I think it's so hard to tell what the words in this section are saying, that's it's impossible to say whether we need to note the exception or not. I presume we all know, more or less, what this section is trying to say - there isn't any disagreement about what the policy "is", as far as I can tell - so maybe we can put our heads together and actually write what it is we mean?--Kotniski (talk) 13:56, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

We have nine separate editors essentially agreeing as to what the policy means. We all came to that agreement by reading what the policy currently says. Doesn't that indicate that the policy says what we mean? I am not opposed to discussing ways to say it even more clearly... but I think it is fairly clear as is. Blueboar (talk) 14:50, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

That's because you (and the other 8 editors) already know what it means, so you don't bother reading exactly what it says - or if you do, you interpret ambiguous statements by (subconsciously) giving them the meaning or context that you already know is the intended one.--Kotniski (talk) 15:01, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

possibly... but do we have any indication that anyone else out there doesn't understand what it means after they read what it says? Blueboar (talk) 16:54, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

OK, this discussion isn't very helpful without specifics. I'll come back to it when I've time to explain some of what I mean about the wording. (But I don't think those who want to improve the wording of these policies should keep being asked to provide evidence of people actually misunderstanding in practice - it should be enough to show that the words that are written don't mean what they are supposed to say - just as we correct wrong information in articles without needing to show that a reader has actually read it and thought it meant what it said.)--Kotniski (talk) 17:08, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, without specifics to show otherwise, how are we to accept your contention that the words don't say what they mean (and mean what they say) You seem to think this is the case, but I don't see it. Blueboar (talk) 21:19, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

alleged mathematical misnomer

Is the following statement in Measure (mathematics)#Generalizations, paragraph 4, lines 4 and 5, subject to NPOV guidelines and, in consequence, require citations to works that contain the different opinions: "The one that is homogeneous of degree 1 is a mysterious function called the 'mean width', a misnomer." I think this connotes the existence of two points of view, respectively, one that considers 'mean width' the appropriate name for a certain mathematical abstraction, and the counter-view that this is a misnomer. I think citations are needed to at least one source that uses the term, and to at least one source which states that this usage is a misnomer. If I am correct, what should be done? I posted "citations needed" several days ago. Michael P. Barnett (talk) 01:04, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

This is not the right place for your comment for two reasons (but I will give a long reply for possible future issues). First, this page is to discuss the policy (WP:Neutral point of view); it's easy to miss, but there is a box at the top of this talk page saying to use the NPOV Noticeboard for NPOV issues in an article (and that should be after a discussion on the article talk page fails—the noticeboard is for situations where conclusions from a local discussion appears to conflict with policy, and a wider community input is wanted). Second, it's pretty well impossible to have an NPOV problem in a math article because the topic does not lend itself to POV problems, and the established editors involved have a very good grasp of both mathematics and Wikipedia and would quickly fix any POV issues. The text quoted above is obviously non-encyclopedic and should be rewritten (but it's nothing to do with NPOV). Lots of problems like this can be found in the 3+ million articles, and the best approach is to fix it if possible, or leave a short note on the article talk page outlining the problem, in the hope that someone else will fix it. Please do not add a tag to the article except for egregious problems (tags are not helpful). In extreme cases (e.g. if another editor insists on restoring dubious text), put a short and neutral message on the relevant noticeboard, WT:WikiProject Mathematics, where many excellent editors will notice. Johnuniq (talk) 01:29, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your kind and detailed comments. I agree that mathematical definitions, theorems and proofs are not objects of POV, in general. But not always! For example the Bourbaki group's "point of view, while encyclopedic, was never intended as neutral. Quite the opposite". (2nd and 3rd sentences of section just linked to). Some more comments follow.

Extended content

There is more of the same later in the Bourbaki article, which is very readable and accurate. The title of Felix Klein's 1908 landmark book Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint connotes alternative viewpoints of particular mathematical topics. Articles about mathematics include the scope of mathematics as a whole and of many of its branches, how it should be taught and the mechanisms by which it is learned, how it should be written, its chronology and evolution, biographies of mathematicians, and its sociology and societal influence. All of these are subject to many different views. In particular, the style of presentation is addressed, not only with reference to the writing of WK articles, but in a much wider context. For example, in 1995, committees of the Mathematics and Chemistry sections of the National Academy of Sciences wrote a report, published by the National Research Council on "Mathematical Challenges from Theoretical/Computational Chemistry". Chapter 5 was titled "Cultural issues and barriers to interdisciplinary work". The need was stressed for mathematicians, who want to interact with the rest of the world, to overcome a tendency to present information in ways that fitted their aesthetics and priority of ideas, that put these into a context that was unnecessarily advanced. As a safeguard against this tendency, I think WK articles on topics that involve mathematics should be kept open to editors with expert knowledge of relevant material, who are not mathematicians, without the "mathematicians" acting as a very strong filter to the general editorship. Throwing the matter to personal authority seems alien to the avowed WK ethos. Who is an "excellent mathematician", and how this is assessed, is irrelevant. I will follow up the "misnomer" sentence as you suggested. But I thought I would take this opportunity to raise the matters discussed above here, in the hope that these are close enough to POV that they will not offend, and get me routed to appropriate environment if considered worthwile pursuing.

Michael P. Barnett (talk) 19:50, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I find it rude to interrupt your dialogue - a bit of an exaggeration on this forum - but what part did m galileo play in the theory of relativity which seems to have been ignored here? newton and einstein both reference his work in this context so i'm confused as to the ignorance of this wiki post. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Oscarfaragher (talk • contribs) 20:47, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Irony...

I find it extremely ironic that this article is decidedly not written from a NPOV. It even seems to patronize and belittle those who might have objections to the policy. I realize that obviously this is meant mostly as an instructional article, but there isn't really anywhere else on Wikipedia where the concept of NPOV which has a distinct meaning from neutrality (philosophy) can be explicated. Theshibboleth (talk) 00:34, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

It isn't ironic, because this page isn't an article... its a statement of policy. We don't consider policy and guideline pages to be "articles". Blueboar (talk) 00:59, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

That hardly negates the criticism... although I don't see anything on the policy page itself that "patronizes and belittles..."; that criciticsm would seem to apply more to the FAQ page, which is fairly awful in places.--Kotniski (talk) 07:16, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Lingering controversies

What if something remains controversial, even after the science is settled? Around 85% of Americans, for example, disagree with all (or part) of Evolution, and there's a poll of scientists (including those in fields other than biology) indicating that only 95% of them support it.

Can there at least be a sentence or two in the Evolution article like this?

• Nonetheless, many people disagree with the theory of evolution, on religious or other grounds.

If that is okay, then how about other controversies like Global warming? Is there an established, acceptable way to describe the reasons that various scientists and other people have given for disagreeing with the Anthropogenic Global Warming theory (AGW)? I'd like to know what the policy is, so that I don't waste people's time when I find an interesting quote - and someone like Vsmith immediately deletes it on the grounds that the author of the quote is too far removed from mainstream science, or something like that.

Let's also keep in mind that the ArbCom made a ruling that we can't delete well-referenced information simply because it promotes a POV.

The point of NPOV is that when anything is controversial, we as editors and contributors scrupulously avoid taking sides. We might say that 95% of scientists favor something (as in evolution), but we must not call evolution a "fact" (as evolution advocates do). Rather, we should explain why evolution advocates say that "evolution is a fact." (see 2nd paragraph of Evolution as theory and fact)

Likewise, for AGW there have been several polls indicating that 5% or more of scientists question the whole theory or some aspect of it. So, I ask you, is AGW controversial enough for us to cover it as a controversy and to avoid giving either side an air of legitimacy or "validity" (see Wikipedia:equal validity)?

If not, then what's the proper why to indicate "fringe views" held by 5% or more of scientists on AGW? --Uncle Ed (talk) 00:46, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

What poll? Oh wait, you're using the Conservapedia rules on verification, that is, say something see if it sticks. Real scientists, that is those in the natural sciences, accept evolution...I believe the real polls says 99.6% of them. But I wouldn't care one way or another, since science isn't a democracy. You are attempting to conflate political debate with scientific debate. Trying to bring Conservapedia policy to Wikipedia is not going to get far. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 01:45, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

...someone like Vsmith...: Ed, if you're accusing me of some improper action, please provide a link so others can view the horrendous act. Otherwise it's simply a personal attack. Vsmith (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Your answer is not to the point, makes a personal attack, and gets the only "fact" you mention dead wrong.

1. As for the real polls, you are quoting someone's WP:OR about 0.4% of biologists having gone on record as disagreeing with evolution: this is not a poll; and anyway, I was talking about 5% or more of scientists, as mentioned in Wikipedia's own article, Level_of_support_for_evolution#Scientific_support. Please try to be more careful.

No point in mentioning the other things; I'm hoping someone will actually answer my question instead of making personal remarks like calling me "ballsy".

(Aside to Vsmith: I didn't say what you did was improper. Don't accuse me of accusing you. THAT is clearly a personal attack.)

This is why I need a policy answer: because instead of discussing how we can make Wikipedia better, the talk page can quickly get sidetracked to personal issues. --Uncle Ed (talk) 02:32, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I answered with facts. You use polemics and rhetoric. Your personal attacks will always be ignored, because I know your ultimate goal. I would suggest your body of work on Conservapedia speaks for itself. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 02:36, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I forgot, you do enjoy quote mining. But once again, whether it's 95% or 99.6% (both sourced), if you understood anything about Wikipedia guidelines, we aren't here to give undue weight to fringe theories. Evolution is a scientific fact. It is supported by literally hundreds of thousands of pieces of peer-reviewed literature. Please, show us the peer-reviewed, reliable sources that support your evolution and global warming denialist point of view? Oh right, there isn't any. Isn't that sad? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 02:42, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

There is a section Evolution#Social and cultural responses which describes how some people have rejected evolution and points to articles like Objections to evolution. The global warming article has a tag at the top pointing to Global warming controversy and a big section on views on global warming. There is no policy problem that I can see. Dmcq (talk) 03:03, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

• Last I checked, Wikipedia did not pander to argumentum ad populum, but rather accepted expert opinion. The place for discussing the popular level of support for evolution is that article, not evolution, which should be on the science (and only contain views that have significant scientific acceptance). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:35, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

There's no such thing as objectivity

This section is taken out of context. Objectivity is not black and white, but rather in the median in which we write is given on the majority. I purpose that this section is re-written to be more inclusive of what is considered objective and what is not. SuperX9 (talk) 18:57, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Are you talking about the section on the FAQ page, which is linked to from here (under "Common objections...")? Can you be more specific about what you mean? I've tried rewriting this section (on the FAQ) in the past, but it's always been reverted back to the present version, which I consider rather smug and even dishonest (since it doesn't acknowledge that we are deliberately biased towards the views expressed by those sources which we have resolved to consider "reliable").--Kotniski (talk) 09:47, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

RFC notice

There is an ongoing RFC at Talk:Santorum (neologism)#Proposal to rename.2C redirect.2C and merge content that may be of interest to editors here. Dreadstar ☥ 18:08, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Looking for a guideline

Once in a while on a subject matter, a whole book is written by experts. Other times, just a paragraph about a subject may be written in an article that is not really about a subject. Obviously the book specializing towards the subject takes precedence most of the time. But I am trying to find the right wiki-guideline for this. There used to be one such as "Biologist writing on astro-physics is not as reliable as astro-physicist writing on Physics".. Although exceptions may always be found, this seems to be generally true. --Khodabandeh14 (talk) 01:25, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't say what you're looking for, but WP:DUE does speak about relative weight to be given to sources which are not in complete agreement. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 01:05, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Trying to WP:KISS people

[Copied over from the WP:V discussion page! Some responses over there]

We have a TLDR problem with the 'rules', and just starting an embryonic project to try to get the concept across in a sinlge-sentence 'The simplest explanation' thing. Please see this thread for background stuff.

The idea is to get (hopefully soon) a template-wossname for all the rules pages, so that anyone with a slightly less comprehensive vocabulary can understand stuff really easily. We have a problem where some of our stuff is written so collegiately that it's just hard for some people to get the point. So ..... could we possibly, pretty please, have the simplest explanation back at the top :o) ?

If some people are having trouble understanding the concept of our rules, we need to communicate better - at a level that's easy for anyone to understand, even if their vocabulary isn't as extensive as ours. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:44, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This seems to me to be a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If people are unable to read the guidelines as they are written, they are not going to be able to contribute writing of the quality required for an encyclopedia. People who lack reading comprehension skills are not the target audience for the policy pages. ~ Mesoderm (talk) 07:51, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

People who fall foul of the rules, either because they don't even know what they are, that the rules exist, etc., are our target-audience for the policy pages. In order to be able to understand what the policies actually mean, so that we can make sure they don't continue to fall foul of them, there has to be a dead-simple explanation which that target audience can understand. As we're for the main part likely to be talking about newbies, and often young newbies, it's therefore our responsibility to make sure that there's a jargon-free, readily-understandable 'simple concept' thing right near the top of the page. There's almost always a way of describing a concept so that a 12-year-old can at least understand what we mean by what we're saying; and if we write the entire page in language which is hard for them to understand, from start to finish, then we can hardly blame them for our failure to make it clear to them. It may be one's view that 12-year-olds shouldn't be trying to edit Wikipedia in the first place, or that 12-year-olds should come to us ready-equipped with an internal WikiJargon dictionary - but that's not what happens in real life. The target audience for policy pages is going to be precisely those people who don't yet know the rules or understand the jargon. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:19, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I tweaked the nutshell box so that anyone at all should be able to understand what we mean. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 11:43, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

This means, in simple terms, that anyone reading what you've written shouldn't be able to guess "whose side you're on"

I'm not sure that text really addresses the issue. In fact, it is potentially encouraging people to be sneaky in how they present biased material - and it doesn't quite capture to nuanced idea of the policy. A simpler version might be "This means you should not be taking sides with your writing" --Errant ^(chat!) 11:49, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Even that isn't very good... perhaps "Your writing must represent the view of the majority", but really the original nutshell captured it best. --Errant ^(chat!) 11:50, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I have reverted back to the previous version. The concept here may have some merit, but it needs a lot more discussion before it is implemented. Blueboar (talk) 12:08, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

I've explained in the original thread in the Village Pump that I come from a background of being a trained/qualified instructor (far, far too long .....), and though I'm of course aware that the "don't take sides" idiom certainly doesn't cover it all - of course it can't, in an easy one-liner - it comes under the umbrella of Lying_to_children - Wittgenstein's ladder. Sometimes, just to make sure that people can get their feet on the first rung, we do have to be overly simplistic in order to be able to move on. This is particularly important when dealing with youngsters and newbies (one can be a 'youngster' in terms of knowledge without necessarily being young in calendar age). After several decades of having instructed people of all ages and levels of experience, one thing that I do know I'm good at is getting the bare bones of a concept across quickly, clearly, and in a way that allows those bare bones to be fleshed out later. Sooo .... can we work on making sure that the 'just-bitten 12-year-old' can see something right near the beginning which is written in the kind of terms they've been familiar with for a long time? When we're teaching our own kids, we don't start them off on the history of the justice system - we start them off with "don't do that, that's not fair". Think "Really simple one liner - then build." I'll plonk a little parallel in here; when we're teaching someone to ride, we start off with "Go, stop, turn left, turn right. This is your left rein, this is your right rein. This is how you use them." Then we move on to the concept of the "inside rein" (the one that's closer to the inside of the circle you're riding), and the "outside rein". You can already get that bit. Only once we're sure they've got that bit, and are ready for it, do we start addressing the issues of the uses and abuses of the "indirect rein of opposition." Pesky (talk …stalk!) 20:25, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Just a quick quibble - Wikipedia isn't actually supposed to 'represent the view of the majority'. That, in itself, is "taking sides". Our job is to present the evidence, to show that there's a majority and a minority view, to explain why, and to ensure that if 7 out of 10 people believe version 1, then 70% of what we write should ideally be showing the reasons for that version. :o) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 20:48, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Just goes to show! I've just realised that even what I've said there isn't quite right! Tha 'majority view', when it comes from inadequately-informed sources, isn't always good-to-go, either! Amazingly, a recent survey (and I can't find the citation) showed that an amazing proportion of the adult public still believe that the sun goes around the earth .... lol! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 21:27, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

We're making some headway over at WP:V with the discussion on the nutshell re-wroding / additional wording - can we please do the same over here, to get something along the lines of "Don't take sides" into it? At the moment, I'm kinda tempted just to go back in and re-edit as this discussion seems to have died, but I'd like some input on exactly how to get that ultra-simplicity in there without it being immediately reverted! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 04:30, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that the nutshell statement is buried in the NPOV section "Impartial tone":

"Wikipedia describes disputes. Wikipedia does not engage in disputes."

Currently, there isn't even a shortcut for that policy. I think it's unappealing to those with the MPOV ;-)

Postpostmod (talk) 11:46, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

That statement also appears in bold at the start of the first section of the policy, so it isn't exactly "buried away". I'm not sure there's a good nutshell for this policy - the most misleading thing we could do is to make some trite statement that implies it's all very simple - it's not.--Kotniski (talk) 14:29, 23 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead right that it's not simple, but the very first 'step' must at least be made to appear kinda simple, like "Don't take sides" - just so there's something to use as a grab rail before wading into the deep end. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 05:51, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

How about something like: Don't take sides, just explain the sides fairly. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:50, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm, but if the disagreement is between reliable sources on one hand and unreliable sources on the other, then we do take sides.--Kotniski (talk) 10:46, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

I looked again at the article and saw the "engage...describe" statement, as you said. I think I missed it the first time, because of all the bullets and bold statements under it. Maybe it should be made into one of those bullet points - but that's no excuse: sorry for my error.

Regarding "reliable" and "unreliable" sources: I realize I'm questioning the unquestionable, but I think it's more like "trusted" sources than "trustworthy" (I'd say "relied-upon sources", but that's ugly.) There's a lot of PR (= hidden advertising) in supposedly reliable sources, so when they favor the wealthier or more powerful side of a dispute, it's worth taking them with a grain of salt.

Of course, a big problem in Wikipedia is in discouraging the cranks, and in that context it's easy to let the New York Times make the call, (or Fox News: I see there's a segment of editors who think that since Fox is so popular, that means it qualifies as a reliable source). (Please pardon my American examples, speaking of POV ;-). Wikipedia has one big advantage compared to other sources of information: Wikipedians are unpaid, we're not on a deadline, and a lot of us are anonymous so we don’t have to fear reprisals in real life. If we're motivated and have the skill, we could enjoy the luxury of being neutral. Theoretically, we should be able to resist the temptation to make hasty judgment calls about who’s "right" based on superficial research in "reliable" sources that happen to support our biases.

The trick is, in refraining from oversimplifying a substantive controversy so much that one side can succeed in putting across the idea that anyone, or any group, who disagrees with the majority must be a crank. Postpostmod (talk) 21:47, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Aha! I haven't got around to addressing the piss-easy overview of RS yet! That, yes, is darned tricky. Trying to explain why the Daily Telegraph might be OK, but the Daily Mail less so .... eeek!

Mind you, I'd still very much like to get the "Don't take sides, explain the sides, fairly" thing in our nutshell here. The undue-weight aspect comes under the nutshell word of "fairly"; we give each side it's fair coverage. Can we please make some headway with getting the nutshell into 'easy English'? (sorry, I know in advance that's going to come over wrongly!) It doesn't have to cover everything - just that first step on Wittgenstein's ladder. :o) (Re-writing the entriety of all the policy pages is gonna take ... errrrmmm .... a little longer .... Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:27, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Good point - eeek! covers it nicely. I plead guilty to unhelpful digression ;-). Regarding the nutshell, as I said, I like "Wikipedia describes disputes, it doesn't engage in disputes." It's a bit formal-sounding for our youngest editors, perhaps. The advantage of its formality is that it is more likely to be regarded as binding by the lengthily-educated editors who are most influential in determining which edits "stick" in articles of academic interest. I'm coping with medical biases - double-eek.

I like your "Don't take sides, explain the sides, fairly", for its simplicity and user-friendliness - I can see your educational background there, and applaud it. In fact, it's probably better than the "disputes" version, for getting everyone off our high horses and remembering we're talking to the public at large. More people need to weigh in, as to the target audiences of the guidelines and how to reach them all. By the way, love Wittgenstein's ladder, and its less dignified, sardonic title - I hadn't heard that one before, though the concept has occurred to me, in the course of editing. Postpostmod (talk) 14:49, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Would it be okay, then to edit the nutshell to read "Don't take sides, explain the sides, fairly" ? I think as a nutshell it really does cover the idea in the simplest terms, and the "fairly" does give an introduction to the idea of "due weight". Does anyone have any reasoned but strong objection to that change? (Always remembering that the rest of the page goes into all the necessary detail...) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 03:54, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

OK, so that got reverted without any extra talk here. Hmmm. What was wrong with that one? It explained the concept in simple terms! It would be nice to see some discussion before reversion, really .... Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:35, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, if we're going to have a nutshell, I'd be quite happy with that suggestion.--Kotniski (talk) 08:31, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

This was what I tried to implement, but got quickly reverted. I honestly do think that it makes it absolutely dead plain; can't see anything wrong with that one at all. I do have to wonder whether sometimes people are 'against change' - even if it's a change for the better in terms of universal understandability. Don't be afraid of change! I'm going to change it back to that one; if someone wants to revert it again, it would be nice to have a really well-reasoned argument here on talk as to why it's not as good as the original. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:06, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Hope it sticks. Best wishes, Postpostmod (talk) 14:00, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

So do I! Anything that's even a slight improvement on the number of readers it gets across to, has to be OK. If it's not actually worse, then it really should stay. I am, by the way, passionate about teaching clearly! (You may have guessed :o) ) Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

V:SOURCES vs. RS in DUE; policy vs. essay; slippery slopes

This discussion caused me to review DUE here, and I see that it relies on the RS guideline. I think that it should instead rely directly on V:SOURCES.

Looking for more mentions of RS here, I see that guideline invoked in Pseudoscience and related fringe theories and in the Good research subsection of DUE (that subsection reads more like something out of an essay than out of a policy).

I may be being too pedantic here, but I'm worried about slippery slopes. I think the discussion I mentioned is an example of treading along the verge of a slippery slope in this regard -- using the RS guideline to disqualify a source generally considered to be reliable as being too far afield from other sources in one particular instance to be given due weight -- excluding material because WP editors believe the material to be not true. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:32, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

In general, the goal in linking is to choose the link that is mostly likely to be immediately helpful to the person who clicks it. Sometimes that means linking to something that "merely" an essay or information page, like WP:BRD, WP:5P, or WP:TE. (RS, by the way, is an official guideline). WP:The difference between policies, guidelines, and essays is small and subtle, and the tag at the top of the page shouldn't be the primary determinant of what we link.

In the specific case, I don't have an opinion about whether a link to RS or SOURCES is likely to be more useful to the people who use this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

I understand that RS is an official guideline. I'm questioning whether it is appropriate for an official policy to link to an official guideline (or, for that matter, to an unofficial essay) in order to clarify something in the policy, as OR links to RS instead of linking to WP:SOURCES in V (this policy does the same thing). That has the content of guidelines determining what policies mean, it seems to me, and that seems backwards.

In the referenced discussion, a consensus seems to have built based on guidance in RS (guidance which I don't see in SOURCES) that the CIA Factbook is an unreliable source regarding the population of the Philippines and that, because of this unreliability, DUE in OR does not apply in that article to that item of info from the Factbook (deemed unreliable by consensus of WP editors there). I don't think that this in the referenced discussion is of earthshaking importance, but it looks like a potential slippery slope to me. I mentioned this here because it seems to run against the grain of the lead sentence of this policy.(oops. I was thinking of V when I wrote the bit I've stricken) Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:50, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Editors are supposed to follow both policies and guidelines. The difference is not fundamental, but rather a question of length. Policies are succint, whereas guidelines deal with details and provide examples. It is common for a policy page to link to appropriate guideline pages. LK (talk) 07:27, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

It appears that I am thinking about a more structured world than the WP world. In that more structure world, policies have force, and there is generally a mechanism in place to enforce them. Guidelines provide guidance on how policies impact real-world matters; if a guideline conflicts with or overreaches a policy, the guideline is incorrect. Essays are the opinions of the essay authors. Having the interpretation of what a policy means depend on what a guideline or an essay says conflicts with this structured world-view. I think WP is on a slippery slope here. I have the impression that the sands shifted underfoot while my attention was elsewhere. Oh well. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 03:44, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

To my understanding, Wikipedia's governing structure is not Policies >> Guidelines >> Essays. Rather it's {Policies & Guidelines} and WP:IAR, with the understanding that all Policies and Guidelines should be consistant with one another, and consistant with community wishes and practices. If there is any inconsistantcy between Policy, Guideline, or community practice, we're supposed to hash it out on the talk pages till it's all consistant again. LK (talk) 08:40, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Seems counterintuative. Anyhow, RS seems to not be 100.00 percent consistent with V:SOURCES, with the guideline going beyond what the policy sets forth. That has set up the situation seen in the discussion I linked to lead off this section where, as I see it, based on RS, editors combine material from multiple sources to reach a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources (flouting SYNTH), drawing conclusions based on that about the truth or falsity of information presented in a source otherwise considered reliable (flouting the lead sentence of V), then, based on the nonreliability judgement, concluding that DUE does not apply to the source deemed to be unreliable because of the judgement about truth/falsity based on synthesis of differing sources. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 11:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Good point. WP:NPOV is a pillar. Policies, guidelines, and essays that weaken a pillar, however unintentionally, are probably not what we want. Postpostmod (talk) 12:02, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I'm confused: where in WP:DUE does it link to the RS guideline? The link for "reliable sources" that I can see goes to WP:V anyway.--Kotniski (talk) 11:54, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

You appear to be right; I thought that I had seen that in there, but I cannot reconfirm it. I've apparently committed some sloppinesses here due to rushing through this because of pressure from other things I'm doing concurrently -- both inside and outside of WP. I think, though, that I've probably gotten some details wrong rather than having gone completely off the rails.

From the discussion which started me out on this, "No, WP:DUE does not apply here. [...], It's quite obvious that the U.S. Census bureau is using either old data information giving unreliable data or have at least some sort of statistical error. [...] No other reliable source I've found even come close to that figure." I don't want to focus on that particular application of Policy&Guidelines, however; what bothers me is that the application seems to flout so many policies, and that it seems to be justified by an interpretation of the guideline. I thought I had seen a more directly on-point snippet in RS but, looking again just now, what I see is "Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context." The careful weighing done in the exampled case included what looks to me like SYNTH, followed by judgement about truth or falsity based on that, followed by disqualification of RS status in a particular context based on that determination, followed by a judgement that DUE doesn't apply because of lack of RS support -- the disqualified source (the CIA Factbook) being one which is generally considered to be reliable -- no source is perfect, and this source might be less than perfect on this point (or might not) but, up until now, it had been my understanding that it was not the place of WP editors to make such a judgement about a particular assertion made by a source considered generally to be reliable (and, for that matter, reliable on the article topic except for one particular assertion doubted by WP editors).

Having just taken another look at RS, I noticed a snippet relevant to the discussion of the Policy -> Guideline vs. Policy&Guideline above -- RS: "In the event of a contradiction between this page and our policies regarding sourcing and attribution, the policy takes priority and editors should seek to resolve the discrepancy." Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:28, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

I believe that you can thank SlimVirgin for that hierarchical note, which applies only to the sourcing-related policies that contain that language. In general, LK's correct: WP:POLCON (the general policy on conflicts between advice pages) says that while you may defer to the policy as a temporary measure, the goal is to get all the pages synchronized (with the community's actual view, not with the current version of a page marked 'policy' at the top). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

It looks like you're right about Slim introducing it. It seems to have come from this November 2009 edit, though the wording has been changed a number of times since then (I don't know whether or not this was the first introduction of that point to RS). Anyhow, we are discussing RS here.

I don't always agree with Slim, but I do agree in re this point. As is probably clear from the above, I think that the page marked 'policy' at the top should succinctly reflect the community's actual view; that pages marked 'guideline' at the top should provide guidelines for putting policy into practice; that changes to the community's actual view should be reflected in changes made on the policy pages, and those changes should trickle down from there to the guidelines pages.

The root of what I see as a problem of flouting policies in the exampled discussion about a particular edit (and in similar situations I've seen elsewhere) seems to be the interpretation of the RS passage reading, "Each source must be carefully weighed to judge whether it is reliable for the statement being made and is the best such source for that context." — particularly the question of whether WP policies (SYNTH and V particularly) apply as restrictions on what "careful weighing" is allowable in order to make that judgement. That's a question for WT:RS, I think. Perhaps I'll raise it there. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:58, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

I've posed the question over there. See WT:RS#Must WP policies be observed when carefully weighing sources to determine their reliability?. Early responses appear to indicate that the answer boils down to "No". Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:34, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

It isn't as simple as "yes" or "no". I would say the question somewhat flawed... the answer depends on which policies and guidelines are we talking about, and the specifics of the situation. Some will apply in a given situation while others won't, and some will apply in situation X, but not in situation Y. Certainly discussions of WP policy (in the generic) often play a part in discussions of reliability, even if they are not the determining factor. Blueboar (talk) 17:42, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Revisiting the KISS

I notice that there has been some back-and-forth about the nutshell recently, and I think more talk here is necessary. Much of the discussion took place over a holiday weekend (in the US) when editors (at least me!) were not watching closely, and I am not convinced that we really have consensus for the version that is on the page at the moment I'm writing this comment. I tend to agree with LK that we really don't have consensus for the change. I appreciate that Pesky wants to make it user-friendly, but I'm unconvinced that the older version failed in that regard, and I certainly don't think that Sven's added sentence has been adequately vetted. After all, we are discussing here one of the most important policies on the project, and you can go to the bank with the proposition that users will look for ways to Wikilawyer their personal interpretations of the wording of the nutshell. We need very strong consensus for these kinds of changes, and I do not believe that we have them now. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:53, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

I (obviously!) think that the current version (me + Sven) is an improvement in terms of universal-understandability; when I saw Sven's addition, I thought "Brilliant! Such a short, clear way of getting that concept across, too." I really think that there's a great 'fear of change', and I can clearly understand why that would be. However, unless others think that the current version is worse than the previous, it should ideally stay. We're all working towards improvement, and little steps here and there are ok. I hadn't realised that it was a holiday weekend in the US (I'm a bit lot out of touch with holiday periods!) The absolute most important thing, in my view (as a teacher with decades of experience, and also experience in 'training the trainers'), is that everyone who reads the nutshell, no matter how clueless, now matter how restricted their education and vocabulary, should be be able to "get the concept". Our duty as teachers is simply to get the lesson across; if the reader doesn't understand the first step, then we have failed as communicators. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 06:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

And, just as obviously, that's why I commented here instead of reverting anything. I don't normally like to refer to anything I've done in real life, but I'll make an exception here. I, too, have decades of experience teaching, and one of the things I came to appreciate is that students are incredibly sensitive to being talked down to. Please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that anyone here is talking down intentionally. But it seems to me that the previous wording was very clear, while the new wording sounds like it's explaining the concepts to the slow-witted, without making anything any clearer than it was before. Childlike language does not equate to clarity. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:01, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

High-fives to a fellow teacher :o) I take your point, a good point and well-made. I do think, though, that it's OK for the nutshell bit, bearing in mind that the tone of the rest of the page is obviously at a "higher level". I'm not thinking so much of the slow-witted - just those editors who (for whatever reason) may only look at the first bit, or need the schoolyard-level intro before they can 'get' the rest. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 07:04, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Does this project page WP:NPOV follow WP:MOSBOLD guidelines or not?

There is a dispute as to whether this WP:NPOV page and the WP:NOTHOWTO page follow the guidelines in WP:MOSBOLD or if they are even required to follow WP:MOSBOLD (which I think they are) and can therefore be used as examples of WP:MOSBOLD applied in Wiki use. I content that WP:NPOV and WP:NOTHOWTO (along with other WIKI project page articles) are following the WP:MOSBOLD guidelines of bolding the first term/phrase of section items which are in list form and are being defined. (WP:MOSBOLD states definition lists can be bolded, and there are other exceptions to the guideline.) For examples, please see WP:NPOV section titled "Explanation of the neutral point of view" where bulletpointed listed terms/phrases are bolded and then further defined. Please go see many examples of bolded lists on WP:NOTHOWTOO such as: "Wikipedia is not a directory" section and "Wikipedia is not a manual, guidebook, textbook, or scientific journal" section. These terms/phrases are obviously being bolded to improve readability and improve easy visual scanning of the article, therefore, does not violate WP:MOSBOLD, either in spirit or letter of the guideline. I would like some thoughtful comments on the questions I have raised. --RedEyedCajun (talk) 00:10, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

First, the various MOS pages and sub-pages are not "rules" that must, in all situations, be followed (and thus enforced). They are guidelines that contain very good advice as to what we consider "best practice" to be. Second, the MOS pages apply to articles. Policy and guideline pages are not articles, so the MOS pages would not apply, even if they were firm "rules".

Note: this does not mean we can't follow the advice given by the MOS guidelines on policy pages (should we choose to do so)... it simply means we are not required to do so. Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2011 (UTC)

Okay I get that, but are the WP:MOSBOLD guidelines being followed on those particular guideline pages I noted (even though they are not required to follow the guideline)? --RedEyedCajun (talk) 10:57, 11 July 2011 (UTC)

Wordy vs. concise

I undid this addition:

"Moreover, ensuring that a viewpoint is presented with adequate relative weight should never mean being wordy instead of concise."

I don't think it expresses a point particularly clearly. It seems to conflate a general interest in brevity with the relativistic concerns of balancing views from different sources. Can you explain what you intended? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 17:55, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Sure. Suppose an article has two sections, one on a mainstream view, and the other on a small minority view. The two sections are equally long (same number of words). The solution is not to pad the mainstream section with a lot of wordy rephrasing. Doing so might superficially seem to ensure a more balanced article, but all it really does is make the article lousy. The better solution is trim facts from the minority section (perhaps creating a sub-article) and/or add facts to the mainstream section. Both sections should be concise.Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:42, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

I have two concerns about this. One, I'm not sure it belongs in NPOV as opposed to a related guideline or style essay. Two, I'm not sure it's always accurate. If there are two stub-sections, one about the mainstream view and the other about the fringe view, it might be necessary to expand the mainstream section to achieve proper weight. So, two questions: does it belong here? and is there a way to say this so it covers all cases? Ocaasi ^{t | c} 19:13, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

Valid concerns, thanks. I'll think on it. Maybe what I was suggesting is common sense that doesn't really need to be specifically spelled out.Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Res ipsa loquitur

Maybe I am thinking of something else but I thought I recalled a long time ago that this guideline included something about letting the facts speak for themselves. Regardless, I think it is valuable to include an explicit statement about this, perhaps in the Impartial tone section. It is frequently the case that editors include valid, referenced facts but present them in inappropriate places with a clear agenda in doing so. One example of this is presenting a controversy where only the opinions of one side are supported by the experts on the subject. Editors sometimes see this as justification for simply characterizing the controversy from the outset as one side that knows what it is talking about and one that doesn't (essentially a misinterpretation of the [[WP::UNDUE]] policy). Obviously in such cases it is simply better to present the two sets of opinions, present who are the primary supporters of each side, and then get into what the experts have to say. Perhaps another way to put that is not to conflate the facts in a way that presupposes a judgment. --192.88.165.35 (talk) 19:03, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

RfC for the explicit auditing of DYKs for compliance with NPOV policy

An RfC has been launched to measure community support for requiring the explicit checking of DYK nominations for compliance with basic WP policies—including NPOV policy—and to improve the management of the nominations page through the introduction of a time-limit after which a nomination that does not meet requirements is archived. Tony (talk) 04:09, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific point of view

It has recently been rewritten to make it more compatible with the current editing practices on Wikipedia. It now says that NPOV amounts to sticking to SPOV on science articles. Count Iblis (talk) 16:08, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

I can't quite see the point of the essay. If somebody says the water is purified by morphic resonance using quantum entanglement with the crystals it passes through who is to say that is not scientific? Plus of course there is quite often some disagreement even amongst scientists about science. Dmcq (talk) 18:06, 30 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not present such claims in a misleading way. So if, say, Sheldrake makes this claim and we write about that on his BLP page, it would not be ok. to also mention that this is considered to be pseudoscience, even if we wouldn't be able to directly cite dsome ref that precisely addresses such a statement.

Note that we have a BLP policy to protect BLP from attacks. Rebuttals of attacks on BLPs may not always be available, so we then restrict what you can write about the BLP by keeping verifiable smears out of the BLP. The same protective status should be give to science here on Wikipedia. Count Iblis (talk) 16:20, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

Primary source templates discussions

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, by the hair-splitting that resulted in a strange change to {{primary sources}}, which no longer asks for independent/third-party sources. I have asked that this recent change be reverted. Also, the original recommendation of that template has now been duplicated to the {{third-party}} template, another bewildering achievement of WP:BURO. I've asked that this one be deleted. Whatever tweaks in wording are needed on the original template can surely be done without this fork. FuFoFuEd (talk) 23:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

The discussion is at the template. Let's not scatter it. North8000 (talk) 01:53, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussions centered on deciding terms based on neutrality

These two discussions are both about how we decide what terms to use based on neutrality, in case anyone is interesting in reading, or contributing to, the discussions.

• Talk:Female genital mutilation#Terminology
• Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy#Requested Move

--Born2cycle (talk) 23:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Bad example: Attribution to "widespread views"

• Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as "widespread views", etc.

"Widespread views" is often WP:WEASEL and there are important caveats to its use. To avoid getting into that discussion here, I propose striking the entire clause beginning with "or". Thoughts? Brmull (talk) 23:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

• I'm not sure what to say. I agree that "widespread views" are a flimsier justification than are specific, cited sources. On the other hand, the intent of this paragraph is to discourage writing opinions in Wikipedia's voice, and I'd rather have something attributed to the widespread views of sources in general, than to Wikipedia. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:23, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

There are better alternatives. If I say, "It's a widespread view that there's water on Mars," it's unclear who we're talking about. It's uncertain whether 20% of people think that or 99.99%, though the connotation is it's the upper end of that range. Better to say, "Astronomers believe..." if it's all but a fringe, or "Astronomers disagree..." if there's a mainstream opinion that there's no water on Mars. Brmull (talk) 19:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

How about deleting the quote marks around "widespread views", so as to remove the implication that one should actually use those words, and providing a second example like the one you used here? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah that would work. Brmull (talk) 19:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

What do other editors think? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:43, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

(od) Frequently people use "this is the majority view" when all they mean is "this is the view I like." Or "that source is fringe" when they really mean "I do not like that source." Pretty much the same as a person in a bull session saying "according to my calculations" when one knows well the figure about to be cited is made up on the spot. Wikipedia has no way of preventing such "arguments from el toro" and I would suggest it is a major source of really badly written articles. Ascription of views to specific authors is almost always wisest, without trying to assert that the view of the other editor must be "fringe." If one finds a reliable source asseting "fringe" then that is far preferable to Wikipedia editors making the assertion. That said, I regard the BLP problem as being intertwined - too often people add defamatory or contentious material to a BLP with the belief that of something has been printed about someone, it is automatically reasonable to include it in BLP articles. To which the adage "paper never refused ink, and electronic paper is no more discriminating about what it allows to be written" still applies. Indeed, I suggest that such disputes account for more than half the BLP/N discussions. "If I were king of the forest" (note tht I am making no claims to royalty here <g>) I would insist all BLPs and related articles stick as much as possible to fact, and avoid all opinions, especially ones where one has "majority" and "fringe" views about a person or topic to be disputed. Revolutionary enough? Collect (talk) 19:55, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Were it not for the discussion in which we are both involved on another page, I might be interested in that suggestion, but I think that it deals with a different part of this policy than does the discussion in this thread. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:02, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It is, however, precisely on point as far as I can tell. The use of opinions and categorizing tham as "correct opinions" and "fringe opinions" is precisely one of the major problems on Wikipedia -- covering, as far as I can tell, a huge percentage of noticeboard discussions and almost every ArbCom case since Genesis. Cheers. Collect (talk) 20:45, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I have done work on the Cold fusion article. The notion that "most scientists don't believe those claims" effectively makes it next to impossible to put simple facts into the article when those facts happen to be supportive of cold fusion. Even if you take extra care that it is not POV, not OR, verifiable and sourced. You cannot add anything that propagates the supportive side, it will be deleted with WEIGHT. I noticed that the claim "most scientists don't believe those claims" is not based on any scientific survey, maybe it is a myth, the press is using it frequently as a final statement on some editorial piece. Those press releases are then used as "secondary source", but there is no primary source, it is just an opinion about an opinion. Unfortunately that notion validates any reason to prevent adding otherwise perfect contect to the article. --POVbrigand (talk) 11:59, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Are we no longer discussing the change in wording that Brmull and I were discussing at the top of this thread? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:27, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't seem like anyone cares. Time to be BOLD? Brmull (talk) 19:36, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

This being a core policy, I would have hoped for consensus first, but maybe that's asking too much? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:47, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the original idea to strike the entire clause beginning with "or" is better than deleting the quote marks around "widespread views". If it is really self evident in real life that it is a widespread view and nobody questions that it is in fact a widespread view, then 1) there is hardly a need to state it 2) "nobody" will object to it. In most other cases the use of "widespread view" is just stating an opinion (of an opinion). --POVbrigand (talk) 09:50, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, my reasoning was that it's still best to tell people not to write something in Wikipedia's voice when it can instead be attributed to, for example, "most astronomers". It seems to me that the example you raised above, about cold fusion, is altogether something different than a self evident fact where nobody would object to it. Even if you would prefer to delete the clause entirely, is it not the case that removing the literal quotes would at least be a step in the right direction? If giving an example about "most whatever" raises a problem with situations like cold fusion, we could perhaps just drop the quote marks, but not add another example. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:37, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I am currently not able to assess the effect for anything other than cold fusion. So take that step in the right direction, I am not objecting. --POVbrigand (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Hearing no other objections—done. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

BBC Trust on due weight

The findings of the BBC Trust - Review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC's coverage of science includes among its main points, summarised in its press release;

When considering 'due impartiality' under the new Editorial Guidelines, the BBC needs to continue to be careful when reporting on science to make a distinction between an opinion and a fact. When there is a consensus of opinion on scientific matters, providing an opposite view without consideration of "due weight" can lead to 'false balance', meaning that viewers might perceive an issue to be more controversial than it actually is. This does not mean that scientists cannot be questioned or challenged, but that their contributions must be properly scrutinised. Including an opposite view may well be appropriate, but the BBC must clearly communicate the degree of credibility that the view carries.

A Trustee's comment discusses how "in some instances the 'presentational style of coverage has continued to suggest that a real scientific disagreement was present long after a consensus had been reached'" and some areas involved. This bears an obvious resemblance to weight policy, and could be cited or reviewed for possible improvements to the wording of the policy. . .dave souza, talk 12:01, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this would help cover a weak spot in the policy. The current fallback clause (predominance in sources) is absolutely un-usuable in real life, and would often mis-fire if it was actually usable. North8000 (talk) 17:26, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Yes, indeed! What Dave quoted is a great improvement for news reporting (long overdue!) and a good pointer for Wikipedia too. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:39, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I could see putting that quotation verbatim with attribution in a quote box alongside UNDUE. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:41, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

I like that, that's good. Very clear, and all that. And I like Trypstofish's idea of putting it into a quote box, too. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:28, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

I think there has been enough time for any objections to have been raised, and hearing none, I'm going to go ahead and add it. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:20, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Using editorial judgments re Truth vs. Falsity as a basis for source exclusion

I don't know if I'm beating a WP:dead horse here, but I'm hoping that there's still some life in it. I'll mention again that, IMO, excluding a source-supported assertion from a source which is considered generally reliabile for the topic based on an editorial judgement of specific falsity of the assertion (and consequent unreliability of the source for that specific assertion) is at least as much of a bad thing™ as including a source-supported assertion based on an editorial judgement of specific truth of the assertion. See past discussion here. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:19, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

As a general principle, this makes little sense. If the newspaper says Mark Twain is dead, but Twain is on TV saying "Rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated," for WP editors to decide that the newspaper is unreliable would be a good thing. On the hand, if editors decide that the newspaper report is correct based on a preconceived notion that Twain is dead that would be a bad thing. Brmull (talk) 02:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Agree with Brmull. One exception / note, when there is a wp:npov balancing situation, (I.E. material specifically weighing in on opposite sides of a particular question/issue/topic) and there is no agreement on falsity, and it's RS'd, then the benefit of the doubt needs to go to inclusion. Then tose particular operative clauses of wp:npov kick in. North8000 (talk) 03:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Wtmitchell, it's important to think about exactly what you mean by "exclude". Only one zillionth of the billions of pages of true and false RS'd material is in Wikipedia. Are you calling the other 99.9999%, billions of pages "excluded" and saying they should all go in? Or if one individual selects something from that (true or false) that they can force it to be included, citing policy? North8000 (talk) 11:20, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm saying that consensus of editors of an article that a particular assertion is judged to be false should not justify considering the source of that assertion an unreliable source for support of that assertion, thus trumping WP:DUE. If the source is otherwise considered a RS for the article topic, DUE should operate and, if the assertion has topical due weight, the article should say something like "source X asserts Y", citing source X's assertion of Y, rather than silently excluding that information — saying nothing and citing nothing. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 13:25, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Boracay Bill, do you claim that it makes no difference the basis of the consensus that the source is wrong? Please consider two cases. For case A, 8 reliable sources say the highest wind speed ever recorded was 408 km/h, but one reliable source says it is 480 km/h. For case B, editors reject a claim that a wind speed of 300 km/h was recorded by a brand X anemometer because one of the editors put a brand X anemometer in a wind tunnel and it broke apart at 200 km/h, and all the other editors trust the editor who performed the experiment. Do you make any distinction between cases A & B? Do you make any distinction between source-based research and original research? Jc3s5h (talk) 13:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

And another case where there is no weighing in on opposite sides. This one is whimsical but an analog for many I've seen. Let's say an RS makes a mistake and says that Obama saw something with his own three eyes. There are probably no counterbalancing RS's saying that he does not have three eyes. Let's say I'm not a fan of his; I know that it's false but like seeing the "three eyes" thing in the article. Are the other editors allowed to discuss the possible falsity of the statement? And can they decide to leave that out? North8000 (talk) 14:13, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

A lot depends on who is saying that Obama has three eyes, and the context in which he said it. If the statement was made by a practitioner of some mystic eastern religion that believed that everyone has a "third" spiritual eye ... then the context of the statement falls into place. In this context, the idea that Obama has three eyes might well be considered a TRUE statement. Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

In my example (and those that it's an analog of) it's a a simple error. North8000 (talk) 14:41, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

OK... then given the video evidence that Obama has only two eyes, the idea that he might have three can be considered exceptional. Exceptional statements require exceptional sources. And in this case, the statement is so exceptional that we would need a very exceptional source to include it. Balanced against the plethora of reliable video sources, it becomes UNDUE to even mention that one print source that says he has three eyes (unless that one source is of very very high quality - and that is unlikely). Blueboar (talk) 14:46, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

But deriving that from video would be OR.  :-) :-) North8000 (talk) 14:54, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I suppose it might be OR... if we were thinking of explicitly stating "Obama has two eyes" in the article. However, there is nothing that says we can not discuss OR on talk pages (we simply are not allowed to include that OR in the article). We are talking about a talk page discussion focused on excluding an exceptional statement on UNDUE grounds. I think it is both allowable and appropriate to point to the video sources, and discuss the conclusions we can draw from them as part of a weight discussion. In other words, while policy says we can not include OR in an article, there is no policy that says we can not exclude information based on OR. Blueboar (talk) 15:14, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Important points, and agree 100%. (Albeit I was taking the "OR" ban to a joking extreme.) North8000 (talk) 15:45, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

Great... but note that we are no longer talking about excluding the information based on its truth or falsity... we are talking about excluding based on DUE/UNDUE considerations. We didn't need to discuss whether the statement was True or False. In fact, the truth/falsity of the statement was essentially irrelevant to our determination that mentioning the exceptional claim without an exceptional source would give it undue weight. Blueboar (talk) 01:49, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Since your statement did not exclude that as a second valid consideration, I'm still in agreement with your statement and say that it makes excellent points. But good luck trying to use the all-important-but-unusably-toothless wp:undue to resolve such a situation. North8000 (talk) 12:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

As a sidebar, in your example, when a phrase (e.g. what "quantity of eyes" means) overwhelmingly (like 99%+) has a particular meaning, it must be recognized that such a statement communicates according to that. North8000 (talk) 14:41, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree with most of what was said following the "A lot depends ..." comment by North8000. Re the three eyes strawman (an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position), it might be appropriate to quote source X (e.g., "X said, 'Obama saw [...] with his own three eyes'"), if X later retracted/corrected, it might be appropriate to mention this, if source Y asserted that X was in error about the three eyes, it might be appropriate to include that info, it might be appropriate just not to mention the three eyes thing (even if X is a generally reliable source for the topic) because of due weight considerations for that informational tidbit, it might be appropriate to relegate mention of the three eyes thing to an informational footnote; something else might be appropriate based on DUE considerations, but editorial opinion re truth vs. falsity of an assertion by a source considered generally reliable for the topic should not trump DUE.

Re North8000's cases A and B, IMO, both the 408 and 480 measurements from case A should be mentioned if they are reported by sources generally considered reliable for the topic and if the difference in the figures is significant in the article context (that is, DUE should not be trumped by editorial opinion re truth vs. falsity of an assertion by a source considered generally reliable for the topic). As far as case B goes, IMO, the results of a ham-handed attempt (or, even, unpublished results of carefully conducted scientific investigations) by a WP editor to experimentally determine truth vs. falsity should not be mentioned. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

We are writing an encyclopedia, not a compendium of everything reliable sources have ever written, regardless of whether it's true or not. For political issues and in some other, similar, cases, it is often hard or impossible to decide what is true and what isn't, e.g. because it genuinely depends on one's values. These are the cases that dominate Wikipedia's conflicts, and therefore our policies and guidelines are written primarily with these cases in mind. That does not imply that it is sensible or desirable to create artificial conflicts in the large majority of totally uncontentious articles by glorifying obvious errors in sources that can easily be handled by ignoring them. When a minority of sources (or in an esoteric topic one of the few available sources) makes a mistake, it is not the job of an encyclopedia to perpetuate it. Fundamentalists who create artificial conflicts by applying dispute resolution principles to articles where there was previously no conflict, and who try to enforce that Wikipedia says something which they don't even believe to be true, are much worse for the project than spammers, and it's time that we address this problem as firmly. Hans Adler 09:04, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

As the much-discussed initial sentence of WP:V says, "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true". Yes, it is often hard or impossible to decide what is true and what isn't; WP editors should not presume to make that judgement. It is presumptuous of a WP editor to judge a source generally considered a reliable source for the topic to be unreliable for a specific assertion because a WP editor editor considers the assertion to be untrue. It is even more presumptuous to use such a judgement to exclude clearly verifiable information along the lines of "source X asserts Y.". Such information might reasonably be excluded on the basis of concerns about undue weight for the article topic, but it is unreasonable to exclude it because a WP editor believes that source X was mistaken in asserting Y. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtmitchell (talk • contribs) 09:56, 10 August 2011

As you have now moved the goal post from "consensus of editors of an article that a particular assertion is judged to be false" [5] to "a WP editor", it would take some work to convince me that you are arguing in good faith. Hans Adler 11:57, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

"The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth—whether readers can check that material in Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, not whether editors think it is true" is a statement about what should be excluded, not what should be included. Otherwise it states that Wikipedia should include, in a manner compatible with copyright law, everything that appears in a reliable source, such as the contents of every phone book in the world, the results of every horse race that appears in any reliable newspaper, the results of every lottery drawing that appears on a state lottery website, and the list goes on forever. Such an interpretation is absurd on it's face. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:17, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

IMO trying to use wp:npov to resolve issues of clearly false information is a cop-out. First it is uninvokable where there is not a balancing situation. E.G., in my whimsical-but-analog-of-true-life "three eyes" example, only becomes operative if there is a debate going on regarding how many eyes he has, which would not occur. Finally, when the rubber meets the road, it becomes toothless. In real life in a battle situation there is no way to implement "prevalence in RS's".

Second, please note that my example is a common third type.

• Type 1 is where there are conflicting answers because there are conflicting values. (e.g. Is Obama is a good president?)

• Type 2 Where there are (at least ostensibly) differences of opinion over a matter of fact (e.g. "Is he a US citizen?")

• Type 3 is where nobody is arguing that the statement isn't false (E.G "Obama has three eyes") but the people who want it in there for effect can use the accepted chants mis-spawned from policy due to "not truth" to keep it in, and to exclude the topic of falseness from any conversation about removing it.

North8000 (talk) 12:26, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree that we are dealing with three different types here... In all three examples, we are dealing with an opinion (Source X's opinion that Obama is not a good president; Source Y's opinion that Obama is not a US Citizen; Source Z's opinion that he has three eyes). Whether to include mention of an opinion is always a function of assessing how much weight to give it. To do that we look primarily at two things... who holds the opinion (quality of source), and how many people hold the opinion (quantity of sources). We can ususally agree that an opinion that is held by lots and lots of high quality sources should given significant weight. And we can usually agree that an opinion that is held by one or two low quality source should be given no weight at all. Where people tend to disagree is when the quality and quantity of sources falls between the two extremes. If something is stated by only one moderately high quality source... or when something is stated by lots and lots of low quality sources. Unfortunately, there is no way to write clear policy to resolve disputes over these middle ground situations. That's because each situation is unique. So much depends on the exact blend of Quality and Quantity, the exact topic of the article in question. All we can do is point to the consensus process and say... figure this out on a case by case basis. Blueboar (talk) 14:02, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Now that I have a clearer understanding of Boracay Bill's view, I disagree with it and would oppose edits based on it or policy changes based on it. I also notice that the due weight principle and the general believe among editors that a particular statement in a reliable source is false (where the belief comes from source-based research) will usually lead to the same conclusion: that a particular claim should be omitted. Jc3s5h (talk) 09:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure the belief among editors is playing apart here. It's exclusion via due weight policy, not some judgement of truth. Otherwise the majority could exclude the minority because they deem it false, even if the minority is due weight. Due weight takes place in an historical context as well, so an error reporting like the third eye would never rise to the level of inclusion, unless it became a controversy. Then you're reporting on the controversy, not suggesting a fact of three eyes. We have to watch for the pitfalls of popular opinion claims of truth excluding the minority based on it's "false" assertion. That's what this policy is meant to balance. Same goes for the suggestion that sources reporting minority views become unreliable sources and thus should be excluded. Such methods should not be used to side step NPOV. Morphh ^(talk) 13:45, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

To re-clarify, ignoring here the third-eye straw man above, the exclusions which I question are exclusions not meeting WP:DUE criteria because a specific assertion by the cited supporting source is said not to be reliable, even though the source is deemed generally reliable for the topic — the judgement that the source is unreliable for the specific assertion at issue having been reached based on a judgement by WP editors that the assertion is false. See past discussion here, here, and this real-world article talk page discussion (search there for the snippet "No, WP:DUE does not apply here.").

DUE applies only to (quoting, emphasis mine): "significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources" — judging a supporting source to be unreliable for a specific assertion trumps DUE for that assertion. I don't have a problem with DUE applying only to reliable sources. I do have a problem with judging a source to be unreliable based upon editorial perception of untruth. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 22:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

OK, what would you consider to be an appropriate way for editors to determine that a generally reliable source is unreliable for a particular assertion? Jc3s5h (talk) 22:23, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I would suggest that the WP:IRS guideline be used as a guide for making judgements about source reliability. Using editorial judgments re Truth vs. Falsity as a basis for determining reliability invites application of editorial POV (if an editor believes an assertion to be false, the source of that assertion can be judged to be unreliable prima facie for that assertion). I suggest that a per-assertion granularity for determination of source reliability is too fine of a granularity. If source X opines Y, and that is contextually and topically significant, and source X is not considered unreliable for the topic, due weight considerations should not allow the suppression of the information that source X has opined Y for the reason that some WP editors believe Y to be untrue. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

As far as I can see, WP:IRS only describes what kind of sources are better for some categories of information than others, such as medical journals being better for medical claims than newspapers. You are demanding that obvious mistakes that occur in publications that are reliable and well-suited for a particular field be treated as reliable assertions. You are wrong. Jc3s5h (talk) 23:11, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I am not demanding that obvious mistakes that occur in publications that are reliable and well-suited for a particular field be treated as reliable assertions. If WP:IRS needs tweaking to clearly and specifically allow judgement of unreliability in the case of obvious mistakes, then tweak it (emphasis mine there re obvious mistakes, in recognition of Hans Adler's point above that it is often hard or impossible to decide what is true and what isn't).

In this previously exampled article talk page discussion (exampled not because I thought it important, but because I thought it made the issues clear, and reiterated in more detail here at the risk of trivializing this discussion), the argument for excluding the assertion was that the U.S. Census bureau is using either old data information giving unreliable data or have at least some sort of statistical error — to me, that's more of a leap of faith than recognition of an obvious mistake. The Factbook says here, that it relied on estimates from the US Bureau of the Census based on statistics from population censuses, vital statistics registration systems, or sample surveys pertaining to the recent past and on assumptions about future trends. I have trouble calling that an obvious mistake. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:35, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

If the Census example isn't important, then what example is important? I have trouble discussing this issue in the abstract without specific cases to support your argument, since editors have already cited specific examples (Mark Twain; Dewey v. Truman) where the policy change you suggested might make things worse. Brmull (talk) 00:54, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that in the population case you mention, the editors were engaging in legitimate source-based research, directly comparing plain factual claims from different sources to see if one of them was an outlier that should be disregarded. There was no original research, such as adjusting figures based on groups that claim to be under-counted. Of course, there will always be cases whether a source differs greatly enough from the consensus of other reliable sources to be regarded as a plain error, rather than a difference of opinion.

I also believe editors should be able to engage in source-based reasoning that is a bit more sophisticated than counting how many sources make one claim and how many make another claim. For example, source X, gives value A, and sources Y and Z copy the value, citing X. Later, source X issues errata giving value A' on it's web site, but sources Y and Z do not have web sites and have no known mechanism for issuing errata. An independent source, W, gives a value very close to V'. Editors would be justified in ignoring Y and Z, and reporting only the value A' with X as the source. Jc3s5h (talk) 01:04, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

And I believe, as must be obvious, that judgement of truth vs. falsity by WP editors based on their own POV is overly presumptuous. I believe, like you, that counting how many sources make one claim and how many make another claim is not a good method to judge truth vs. falsity. I believe, however, that WP editors should not be making judgments of truth vs. falsity at all, and should not be -- based on those judgments -- suppressing mention of views with which they disagree.

Regarding "obvious errors", I think that an obvious error is an assertion regarding which a reasonable person would conclude that the source making the assertion was saying something which that source did not knowingly intend to say (e.g., the "three eyes" straw man presented above, or -- continuing the Obama theme of "three eyes" there with a real-world example -- Obama's "57 states" remark discussed here and probably elsewhere -- not e.g., the real-world example I offered regarding the CIA Factbook assertion re the population of the Philippines). I believe that is inappropriate for a WP editor to make a judgement that an apparently knowing and intended assertion by a source considered generally reliable for a topic is unworthy of mention in Wikipedia because that editor disagrees with what that source asserted. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 04:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Editors have to make these sort of judgements all the time. I think the editor you were talking with on the Philippines talk page explained why the 101 million figure was dubious, and why he wanted to go with a different source. Editors have to make these sorts of judgements all the time, and to handcuff them with a one size fits all policy would be detrimental. Moreover given that consensus is going to be needed here, and I'm not seeing any support at all, I think this discussion is becoming academic. Brmull (talk) 07:21, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't say "have to" in the above, but that's obvious. I think I've made my views clear. IMO, policies shouldn't be seen as a set of handcuffs or as restrictions to be gotten around. WP:IAR is out there but, IMO, that should be used in rare exceptional cases rather than being business-as-usual. If I'm shouted down, though, I'm shouted down. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 08:22, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

From a scientific perspective, "truth" is elusive, but finding things "false" is routinely done. As some have said above: If there is a significant difference of opinion in reliable sources, we should report all. But if there are recognizable factual errors that cannot be explained by another perspective, we should not propagate this error. Consider e.g. a typo in a textbook declaring the speed of light to be roughly 300000 m/s (or, conversely, 3E8 km/s). In general, WP:V is a necessary, not a sufficient criterion for inclusion. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:02, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

It's not a matter of WP:IAR. There are rules: if two RS are in conflict then you're supposed to report both views. BUT it's commonly accepted that editors make judgements as to one source being authoritative relative to another on a specific point. A RS containing a direct quote is preferred over one that contains a paraphrase, for example. This is elementary source criticism. Brmull (talk) 09:16, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Wtmitchell, I have a hard time understanding you when you make statements like "I believe, however, that WP editors should not be making judgments of truth vs. falsity at all...." Perhaps you are thinking that "judgement" implies some special mode of thinking, believing, or reasoning, which excludes trivial decisions? As far as I'm concerned, every decision is a judgement. If a reliable publisher publisher issues errata and I decide to apply the errata before quoting the source, that is a judgement of falsity. If I'm listening to a news report and the news anchor says "Yemen, excuse me, I meant Syria" and I decide the reference to Yemen was wrong, that's a judgement of falsity. Jc3s5h (talk) 12:44, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I would call both those examples recognition of errors acknowledged by the source. Along the same lines, I would call a judgement that Obama mis-spoke in making his "57 states" comment mentioned above recognition of an unacknowledged but obvious error (AFAIK, he never acknowleged the error, but I could be wrong on that). I wouldn't call any of those cases a judgement of falsity by an editor on behalf of Wikipedia regarding an assertion made knowingly and intentionally by a source otherwise considered to be reliable for the topic. See above for more. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

In reality, such judgments (for exclusion of material) are a foundation for creation of the articles that work. And there is no policy/guideline which says that such is wrong, except in cases where these a wp:nopv balancing situation involved. BTW, there is a case of this which is even more prevalent than excluding false material. There are fields where just uncritically putting in stuff from sources results in a confused, uninformative mess, and it requires an editor with a true knowledge of the topic to select the material from the sources which is informative. Usually these are topics where the true knowledge exists only in the 30,000 ft. view, and there is a lack of quality sources that give that view, or where that part is a needle-in-a-haystack in the RS's work. These work because they are uncontentious. Once it gets contentious, this process breaks down. There are various widely accepted chants which are NOT policy which get chanted at the people trying to use that discretion to select/exclude material.

Again, the above is discussing only situations where there is not an wp:npov balancing situation in play; in that case, operative provisions of wp:npov kick in and then what I said above does not apply. North8000 (talk) 13:39, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

comment: In a situation where there are multiple verifiable sources for data, and one of the sources is an outlier to the other sources, it only seems reasonable to use figures from the non-outlier source. It's not clear how else one might resolve data which are not in agreement. I suppose one could make an appeal to the methodology used and prefer sources which are more rigorous to those which are incidental. aprock (talk) 19:33, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

IMO, WP:DUE should be used to address that, without being trumped by editorial opinion of falsity being considered sufficient to classify a source otherwise considered reliable for the topic as not being reliable for a particular assertion knowingly and intentionally uttered by that source but judged by a WP editor to be untrue. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 20:53, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

If one editor removes something which is clearly WP:UNDUE noting that it is "WP:UNTRUE", the most that needs to happen is for another editor to agree with removal and leave a pointer to WP:UNDUE on the talk page. aprock (talk) 21:00, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Responding directly to your point: WP:UNTRUE is an essay. The nutshell box at the top there says, in part, "Consider these views with discretion. Essays are not Wikipedia policies."

Responding more generally: Yes, that appears to be the way that it presently works -- perhaps without even a talk page comment. Editorial judgement that an assertion made knowingly and intentionally by a source otherwise considered reliable for the topic is a falsehood allows the source to be considered unreliable for that particular assertion and the assertion to be considered unworthy of mention in Wikipedia. IMO, editorial disagreement with a particular assertion uttered knowingly and intentionally by a source considered generally reliable for the topic should not be allowed to trump WP:DUE.

I know these comments are out of place, this being the NPOV talk page. But the most common examples are much simpler than that. Let's say I'm writing an article where I've read many RS's and know the topic, and am the only active editor. And so I pick up a 300 page RS book on the topic and say: "the material on pages 198, 207 and 222 is just what this article needs" and I use it. And say "The stuff on page 157 is off on a tangent, it would confuse readers, I won't use that" and make a point of not using it. And the fact on the bottom of page 157 not only looks implausible, it conflicts with all of the other sources say, so I specifically won't use that. So I have just used editorial discretion to "exclude" 297 pages, one page which I specifically decided was bad to use, and 296 pages which I just didn't select to use. This sounds too obvious to repeat, but a surprising number of the mis-guided accepted chants that I see in essence claim that what I just did was "improper" and "not our job". North8000 (talk) 21:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

That hypothetical is difficult to respond to. It looks to me as if the exampled decision re p.157 applied WP:DUE. Re excluding 297 pages, I'd need to look at the book and the article in question, and I'd be unlikely to read the 297 pages carefully just to consider this particular situation. Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:12, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I made that one up for simplification purposes, but surely you don't doubt that it is everyday. Otherwise, if editors did not leave out ("exclude") material, every article would have a length thousands of pages long, as long as the sum of all of its sources. North8000 (talk) 01:46, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

This is not relevant to the point of this talk page section, but I will say that I've seen a lot of apparent cherry-picking of source content -- apparently citing the bits which support an article assertion and ignoring other bits, with the ignored bits likely unread by the WP editor citing the source. I made one edit this morning which looks like it involves an example of this -- the edited bit previously quoted stats, citing a study which attributed those stats to an earlier study. The cited study's criticism of the earlier study went unmentioned, as did the specific questions the cited study posed (I focused on, "In particular, does the dual nationality status of the first generation continue to influence political connectedness in the second, third, and fourth generations, or do the effects disappear?"), and ignoring what looks to me like the key finding of the cited study that "... research suggests that while dual nationality likely disconnects immigrants from the American political system, the effect is largely restricted to the first generation." Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 23:12, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

There's nothing wrong with using a fact from a cite in a different, even opposing, context. But I would wonder why in the example you just gave why the key finding of that study was not included as an alternative view. It seems like that decision would require editor consensus. Brmull (talk) 00:04, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

The cite appears to have been added here, as part of a series of edits which added a section to the article. I'd guess that the editor adding the material didn't read the cited study much beyond the stats he used from it. This is offtopic for this discussion here. I've left a message on that editor's talk page mentioning this and asking that further discussion re this take place elsewhere than here (e.g., the article talk page). Wtmitchell (talk) (earlier Boracay Bill) 00:43, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Interpreting WP:UNDUE policy

Question: When does a view represented by a single reliable source merit inclusion? Always? Sometimes? Never?

Detail: At issue is whether or not the issue of due weight can universally be settled by a citing a single reliable source.

Background:In a discussion about sourcing and WP:UNDUE on Talk:Public broadcasting, Miradre (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and I (Aprock (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) are having trouble coming to an agreement on interpreting what constitutes undue weight. Part of the problem is that the policy seems to be somewhat inconsistent. Putting aside the specific sourcing issues at the article, having a clear interpretation of the policy would be useful in moving forward.

After I noted the policy language: "For example, discussion of isolated events, criticisms, or news reports about a subject may be verifiable and neutral, but still be disproportionate to their overall significance to the article topic"

Miradre noted the policy language: "Once it has been presented and discussed in reliable sources, it may be appropriately included."

The broader arc of WP:UNDUE seems clear to me; A view represented by a single source counts for less than an extremely small minority, and therefore should not be included as it is undue. Miradre is arguing that presentation of a view in a single reliable source is all that is required for inclusion. One might argue that "appropriately" is an important modifier here, but the language is imprecise enough that clarification is needed.

Input from outside editors invited. aprock (talk) 16:52, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

n.b.: this RfC is about clarifying WP:UNDUE policy, not WP:PRIMARY policy. aprock (talk) 22:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Note: Aprock has changed the RfC text from what was initially stated. I have certainly not stated the obvious straw man that any single source always merits inclusion. The initial issue instead concerned some specific academic sources as described below.Miradre (talk) 00:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Aprock argues that if one anonymous Wikipedia editor objects to an scholarly source then it is in effect not a reliable source anymore. He argues that one must in addition prove that the view is not an extreme minority view. He argues that no evidence needs to be presented that the scholarly source is actually contested or seen as controversial by anyone else. Just the objection itself by a Wikipedia editor is enough. That is, one anonymous opinion counts for more than the whole process of peer-review. Two disputed sources: [6][7].Miradre (talk) 17:07, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Clarification, I view the source as reliable. aprock (talk) 17:15, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Yet you want to exclude it despite having cited absolutely no evidence for that it is incorrect, contested, criticized, or a minority view of any kind. Miradre (talk) 17:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, the article in question appears to be a review, rather than a primary source. IMO, as a general rule, scholarly primary sources should not be included without discussion in a secondary source. Inclusion of secondary sources follows the usual BRD cycle. The person wanting to add contentious material must obtain consensus on the talk page. Brmull (talk) 20:31, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

@Brmull, that's not one of the sources in question. The sources in question are these two sources [8] and [9]. Regardless of the particular sources, clarification on how to interpret WP:UNDUE is really what is needed here. And depending the nature of the clarification, updating the policy page may be helpful. aprock (talk) 20:57, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

the typical format for scholarly articles is to start with a review of the literature, then move to new findings. The review of the literature tells what scholars consider important. [cite: "a scholarly article with all the formal conventions of the genre— literature review, endnotes, statistics, charts, tables, and formal prose" Carol Smallwood, Writing and publishing: the librarian's handbook (2010) p 8Rjensen (talk) 20:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Aprock misunderstands what a primary source is; the items he cites are both standard secondary sources (in this case articles in scholarly journals that review the scholarly literature). A primary source would be a compilation of data (like an exit poll) Rjensen (talk) 21:09, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

From WP:PRIMARY: scientific paper documenting a new experiment is a primary source. While this isn't explicit in the description of WP:PRIMARY, it's always been my understanding that novel research conclusions are primary sources. If there is some confusion on this point, it may be appropriate to have a related RfC. Regardless, the discussion here is about WP:UNDUE and how one interprets that policy. To the extent that the distinction between primary and secondary sourcing is of any use here is the degree to which it illuminates how widespread a particular view is. For the sources in question, there does not seem to be any argument that the views they describe are widespread. aprock (talk) 21:17, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

You have cited absolutely no evidence for that the scholarly articles incorrect, contested, criticized, or a minority view of any kind. An academic source carries greater weight than the unsourced opinions of an anonymous editor. Miradre (talk) 21:29, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Not on Wikipedia, it doesn't. Consensus is required to add contentious material. Brmull (talk) 21:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

The only evidence for that the material is contentious is Aprock's personal opinion. Miradre (talk) 21:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding the policy quote referenced by Miradre, the operative word is sourced material "may" be appropriately included. Indeed the most troublesome sentence in the entire NPOV policy is "do not remove sourced information from the encyclopedia solely on the grounds that it seems biased." People cite this endlessly, but the very next sentence says "try to rewrite". Remove "if it cannot be addressed by rewriting the passage." Some clarity on the policy might be helpful but I wouldn't know where to start. Brmull (talk) 21:41, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, anyone can remove anything they personally dislike, we will soon not have an encyclopedia, but an ongoing opinion poll regarding what Wikipedia editors like and not like on on each topic at a particular moment. Miradre (talk) 21:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Regarding primary sources it should be noted that they are not prohibited. Wikipedia's science articles cite an numerous primary sources. Disallowing them would require rewriting numerous articles and would require a great deal of discussion by the community before such a dramatic action. Miradre (talk) 22:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Unfortunately I don't see how this issue can be resolved, but yes, adding commentary on the Soviet Union's use of propaganda in order to discredit current public broadcasting is UNDUE, and inserting "argued" several times is POV writing. Political opinion pieces on why tax payer funding of public broadcasting is evil present a difficult policy challenge: is Public broadcasting the place to canvas political views from the left and right with cherry picked extracts from "reliable" sources? Re the RfC question: I don't think a general statement can be made about when it is reasonable to include a view from a single source, so each case needs arguing out—leaving Wikipedia vulnerable to WP:CPUSH. Johnuniq (talk) 23:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

With respect to the RfC, maybe I should state it better, but I think your feedback illustrates some of the issues here. It does not seem unreasonable to me that these things should be reasoned out on a case by case basis. This is of course contrary to the position that Miradre has taken based on the policy quote he highlighted. The implication of that quote is that mere publication in a reliable source is enough, and there is no case by case reasoning to be done. aprock (talk) 23:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

That is an incorrect position. I would certainly have considered if you had presented any evidence for that the given academic sources were contested or disputed by anyone. However, you presented no such evidence. It is you who have refused to discuss on a case per case basis.Miradre (talk) 23:59, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Recall, this is an issue of due, not contested or disputed. aprock (talk) 00:04, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Due is certainly concerned with contested and disputed. An academic view that is not contested and disputed is not an extreme minority view. Miradre (talk) 00:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm referring to the policy as written. There is no mention of contested or disputed in the policy. aprock (talk) 00:12, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

One example from WP:UNDUE: "Wikipedia should not present a dispute as if a view held by a small minority deserved as much attention overall as the majority view." If there is no dispute regarding it, then an academic view is not an extreme minority that should not be mentioned. Miradre (talk) 00:19, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

You are discussing policy regarding the presentation of a dispute. There is no dispute being presented here. aprock (talk) 00:32, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

If there is no dispute or opposing views, then these academic views are not an extreme minority and are thus not undue. Miradre (talk) 00:44, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This does not follow. I believe you are confusing "minority of academics who study the topic" with "minority". If a single researcher studies a topic, his view is a majority of researchers but discussing his research is likely undue. aprock (talk) 00:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course there is not a single researcher looking at this. Even if it was, a single researcher can certainly find extremely important results. Miradre (talk) 00:59, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This paper [10] was authored by a single researcher, and this [11] by two. aprock (talk) 01:09, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Before being published the paper went through a difficult process of peer-review. Many other people have found the view to be significant and interesting. On the other hand, you have presented no one who objects. Miradre (talk) 01:19, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Who are these many other people who have found the view to be significant and interesting? aprock (talk) 01:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The peer-reviewers, the editor of the journal, and so on. There are numerous people involved before an academic paper is allowed to be published. Miradre (talk) 01:54, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

So just to be clear, your position is that if a paper is published in a reliable peer reviewed journal, that peer review establishes the views of the paper as sufficiently due to include in wikipedia. Correct? aprock (talk) 02:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Not necessarily. For example, the view may be shown to be incorrect and not even historically interesting by later research. Miradre (talk) 02:15, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

What about in the absence of other evidence, such as being shown incorrect or interesting by later research? aprock (talk) 02:17, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Cannot think of more considerations right now although there may well be others. Miradre (talk) 02:26, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm talking about in the absence of other considerations. aprock (talk) 02:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

In that case I agree that an academic source is due. Just to note, here I am talking about academic research with no evidence given for that there are opposing views.Miradre (talk) 02:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your opinion Johnuniq. Just to clarify. We have agreed to exclude Soviet material since aprock found a relatively good source for that state and public broadcasting are different. The current issue is instead regarding acceptable sources for advantages and disadvantages of public broadcasting. I should note that aprock have selectively only deleted negative views and opinions while selectively leaving behind all positive ones. I have not challenged these sources since I think the pros and cons should be discussed. Since Wikipedia have pro and con discussions on many other topics I feel that this article can also have such a discussion. Miradre (talk) 23:53, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• Sometimes: Based on Johnuniq's feedback, I've slightly reworded the question to at least give some indication of the spectrum of possible responses. I'll start the ball rolling by noting that I think this should be handled on a case by case basis. aprock (talk) 23:48, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

• You changed it to a straw man. I have certainly not stated man that any single source always merits inclusion. For example, unreliable sources do not merit inclusion. Miradre (talk) 00:14, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I certainly did not mean to imply that unreliable sources were relevant here. I've clarified above. aprock (talk) 00:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

It is still a straw man. A view shown to be an extreme minority should obviously not be included as per policy. Miradre (talk) 00:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Just to clarify, you are misquoting policy. Here is the policy to which you refer: If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia. The source you are proposing to add is held by a vastly limited minority consisting of a single source. There is no indication from the source that this view is held outside the source. aprock (talk) 00:50, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

You presented no evidence for that the view is held by an extremely small minority except your own unsourced personal opinion.Miradre (talk) 00:56, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Point taken. And neither have you presented any evidence that the view is held outside of a vastly limited minority. This gets to the heart of the RfC. Does the burden of demonstrating due weight be on those who wish to insert content, or not? aprock (talk) 01:06, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Yet another straw man. The burden of evidence is of course on those making a claim. Including the claim that an academic view is an extreme minority view. Before being published a paper goes through a difficult process of peer-review. Many other people have found the view to be significant and interesting. On the other hand, you have presented no one at all who objects to these views.Miradre (talk) 01:21, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

There are two claims. You are claiming that the views represented are WP:DUE, and thus merit inclusion. I am claiming that they are WP:UNDUE and do not merit inclusion. In the absence of any evidence, the question is which view should default. aprock (talk) 01:41, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

An academic paper has gone through an extensive publishing process where many people besides the authors have weighed in, modified the text, and finally found the views noteworthy and significant. Against this we have your personal opinion as an anonymous Wikipedia editor. Miradre (talk) 01:50, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

We can look at this another way. Primary sources are not disallowed. Our sciences articles cites many primary sources. Disallowing them would require rewriting numerous articles and would require a great deal of discussion by the community before such a dramatic action. But aprock's interpretation of policy would in fact disallow all primary sources in Wikipedia. Whenever a primary source is used, then someone can claim without presenting any evidence whatsoever that the academic view is an extreme minority view and therefore delete the academic source. The same claim could be applied to for example many newspaper articles (that do not include an actual poll of current views or similar material). This is in effect would be an enormous change of Wikipedia policy. Miradre (talk) 01:12, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

There is nothing in my RfC, or in WP:UNDUE which refers to WP:PRIMARY sources. Likewise I have made no claim about WP:PRIMARY sources here in the discussion. This discussion is about the default weight that should be given a single source in the absence of any indication what the proper weight for that source should be. aprock (talk)

Your interpretation would in effect prohibit all primary sources and many newspaper articles and likely many other sources. Miradre (talk) 01:52, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be helpful for you Aprock to lay out the policy change you propose. I don't think Miradre is understanding you and the discussion is going in circles. Brmull (talk) 02:05, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem here, and the reason for the RfC, is that I'm not 100% clear on what the actual policy is. I'm not really vested in the policy being one way or the other. I have been editing under the assumption that mere publication in a reliable peer reviewed journal was not enough to satisfy WP:DUE, and that some indication that a view was notable outside that publication was required. If I am wrong about that, I would be happy to change my editing to conform to what the actual policy is. aprock (talk) 02:14, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This interpretation would in effect prohibit all primary sources and many newspapers articles and likely many other sources as well. Only surverys, polls, and similar sources would be acceptable. Miradre (talk) 02:20, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

If a view is shown to be notable by multiple sources, inclusion may be justified. If a view is described as notable by a single secondary source inclusion may be justified. If the view is discuss in dozens upon dozens of sources, inclusion seems almost certainly justified. If a view is only discussed in a single source, without any indication that it is notable outside that source, inclusion would not be justified. That said, I'm much more interested in knowing that the actual policy is, than in advocating what I think it should or should not be. aprock (talk) 02:29, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a very different policy. Many our science articles use many primary sources and would need to be extensively rewritten. The same with many articles citing newspaper articles and so on. Miradre (talk) 02:35, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a meta-comment, about the dispute rather than the substance: Both Aprock and Mirade are spending too much time bickering over this. Both of them need to slow down and let other editors comment. Both of them would do well to stop responding to the other person's comments within minutes. If you've opened this RFC to get comments, rather than to get another place to argue with each other, then you need to make this forum more accessible to other people by not posting.

My personal advice to Aprock is to give up now: You are going to lose this debate. Further discussion here is just a waste of everyone's time. Mirade is right: scholarly sources whose ideas have never been contested by any published reliable source are basically the definition of the majority viewpoint on Wikipedia. The community will never agree that you get to exclude a scholarly viewpoint merely because it contradicts your ideas. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I appreciate your advice, but I'll note that I'm not trying to win any debate, I'm trying to get the policy clarified. aprock (talk) 19:39, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

UNDUE is pretty straightforward, but applying it can be tricky. If a single good source says X and a wide range of sources say not-X, then giving X parity with not-X amounts to giving it undue weight. If the ratio is 10:1, then you need to devote several times as much space to not-X as to X. If it's 100:1, you might want to leave it out altogether. But this only works if the difference is fairly stark and you can build a consensus of involved editors. And, when it comes down to it, it requires a certain amount of OR. Ideally, you should go with what secondary sources say about the relative prominence of X and not-X, since it reduces the need for editors to evaluate and weigh the prominence of different sources. This is not an option when secondary sources are lacking. However, if secondary sources that address the minority viewpoint (X, in this case) are lacking, it calls into question whether X is really notable. Guettarda (talk) 20:19, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Just a note: I'm trying to clarify situations where there is a single source. Phrased in ratios, it would be 1:0 in terms of X v !X views. aprock (talk) 20:22, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

If the source is new, I'd say wait for secondary sources (since it's an academic source, see how others have cited it). If it isn't new, and hasn't been cited, it's probably not notable. Guettarda (talk) 20:30, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with Guettarda except in general I would not include a primary source without a secondary source that attests to its significance. I do not agree with WhatamIdoing. The burden of obtaining consensus should rest with the editor who wants to add controversial material, not with the one who wants to remove it. Of course people don't respect the rules and it sometimes comes down to mob rule where the editors with more reverts on their side (before reaching 3RR) win the argument. Brmull (talk) 22:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

• sometimes I think that the only realistic answer is "sometimes" because every situation is different. If the one primary source on a physics topic is Stephen Hawking and the numerous other sources are all self-published, that's different than if the one primary source is a single paper and the numerous smaller sources are physics journals. "Importance" of a viewpoint relies on a lot of things: the notability/credibility of the source, the degree to which the source is reported in secondary sources, the degree of direct relevance to the article topic. HominidMachinae (talk) 00:52, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:HG_J1_(ADN-Y).PNG

Wrong venue. Please move this question to WP:NPOVN. Please include any review articles which back up your claim. Thx. Brmull (talk) 23:36, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Claim of 60% of Sedan/ Ethiopia being J1 rather than E Haplogroup are not factual based on papers cited and are contradicted by others. I realize 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. However, image captions are subject to this policy no less than statements in the body of the article. "*etc..." is not a justification of many parts of this image, including referenced assumptions for Central Asia and the Caucasus outside of Dagestan. The Horn of Africa where the highest densities is shown for J1 depict a density of over 60% in Sudan and Ethiopia. E-M78 subclades The distribution of E-M78 subclades among Sudanese is shown in Table 2. Only two chromosomes fell under the paragroup E-M78*. E-V65 and E-V13 were completely absent in the samples analyzed, whereas the other subclades were relatively common. E-V12* accounts for 19.3% and is widely distributed among Sudanese. E-V32 (51.8%) is by far the most common subclades among Sudanese. It has the highest frequency among populations of western Sudan and Beja. E-V22 accounts for 27.2% and its highest frequency appears to be among Fulani, but it is also common in Nilo-Saharan speaking groups. http://ychrom.invint.net/upload/iblock/94d/Hassan%202008%20Y-Chromosome%20Variation%20Among%20Sudanese.pdf E-M35 is far in the majority for Etheopia while J1 is less than 13.5% - no where near 60% http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC384897/figure/FG1/ Tofanelli et al 2009 supplemental data states the data came from Semino et al, 2004 (http://hpgl.stanford.edu/publications/AJHG_2004_v74_p1023-1034.pdf and gives the location of the 184 of which 18 are J1 as southern Kazakhstan, or Lat.+42.1100006 Long.+70.2900009 - a single point. Semino et al did not do the original work and cites Underhill et al, 2001 and 2000: 1.Underhill PA, Passarino G, Lin AA, Shen P, Mirazon Lahr M, Foley RA, Oefner PJ, Cavalli-Sforza LL (2001) The phylogeography of Y chromosome binary haplotypes and the origins of modern human populations. Ann Hum Genet 65:43–62 http://www.human-evol.cam.ac.uk/Members/Lahr/pubs/AHG-65-01.pdf 2.Underhill PA, Shen P, Lin AA, Jin L, Passarino G, Yang WH,Kauffman E, Bonne-Tamir B, Bertranpetit J, Francalacci P,Ibrahim M, Jenkins T, Kidd JR, Mehdi SQ, Seielstad MT, Wells RS, Piazza A, Davis RW, Feldman MW, Cavalli-Sforza http://www2.smumn.edu/facpages/~poshea/uasal/DNAWWW/pdfs/Underhill2000.pdf The 1.Underhill directs us to 2.Underhill with the statement "Figure 2, which is based upon frequency data given in Underhill et al. 2000." Figure 2 relates to a total found, not the specific "Central Asia." 2.Underhill lists in the methods, The ascertainment set consisted of the following 53 samples with their subsequently determined haplogroup designations: Africa: 3 Central African Republic Biaka II, III (1); 2 Zaire Mbuti II, III; 2 Lissongo II, III; 2 Khoisan I, III; 1 Berta VI; 1 Surma I; 1 Mali Tuareg III; 1 Mali Bozo III; Europe: 1 Sardinian VI; 2 Italian VI IX; 1 German VI; 3 Basque VI, IX (2); Asia: 3 Japanese IV, V, VII; 2 Han Chinese VII, 1 Taiwan Atayal VII, 1 Taiwan Ami, VII, 2 Cambodian VI, VII; Pakistan: 2 Hunza VI, IX; 2 Pathan VI, VII; 1 Brahui VIII; 1 Baloochi VI; 3 Sindhi III, VI, VIII; Central Asia: 2 Arab IX; 1 Uzbek IX; 1 Kazak V; MidEast: 1 Druze VI; Pacific: 2 New Guinean V, VIII; 2 Bougainville Islanders VIII; 2 Australian VI, X: America: 1 Brazil Surui, 1 Brazil Karatina, 1 Columbian, 1 Mayan all X. We genotyped an additional 1,009 chromosomes, representing 21 geographic regions, by DHPLC for all markers other than those on the terminal branches of the phylogeny. We genotyped the latter only in individuals from the haplogroup to which those markers belonged. This hierarchic genotyping protocol was necessitated by the limited amounts of genomic DNA available for most samples.regions, by DHPLC for all markers other than those on the terminal branches of the phylogeny. There was no M267 used, mentioned, or, likely, available at that time, but Underhill lists on Table 1.for VII in Central Asia and Siberia, a total of 42, under SNP lines 49-71. That is:56[89,M172,67]=2; 57[89,M172,67,92]=1; 58[89,M172*]=12; 60[89,M172,12,102]=4,62[89,M172,68]=1,63[89,M172,47]=1; 65[89,52,69]=2; 68[89,52,69,82]=1; 70[89,52,69,84,39,138]=1; 71[89]=17 The majority of them are J2[M172]. Those who are not are under M89. The 17 with M89 alone can be J* without being J1. *There is no mention in the methods in any of the four listed of a retesting of these samples. Since F* is the parent of J*, it is possible, all of the 17 samples claimed to be J1 are J* rather than J1. *The issue of J1 in the Caucasus is even more evident as they have been mostly F* or G* without the subclade of J. I can go into further issues, but just one inaccuracy in the map statements and depiction should be enoughJohnLloydScharf (talk) 23:29, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Interpreting undue policy (2)

Currently there is an RfC at Talk:Distribution_of_wealth#rfc_C3D38F4, which also deals with the problem handling undue content. I am uninvolved in this discussion about using charts from a single primary source. Again, the issue of WP:UNDUE is central to the RfC. A clearer and more precise policy for what constitutes undue would certainly help in situations like this, either to clearly indicate that such a paper is undue, or that such a paper clearly may not be undue for specific reasons. aprock (talk) 15:28, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Wp:undue is very important, it needs a lot of work to make it more apply-able and implementable. North8000 (talk) 11:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

OR in the name of neutrality

I have seen a problem in articles where popular topics have drawn significant criticism. Editor's are tempted to add sourced facts that neutralize published criticism without providing sources that make the connection between those facts and the criticism. Editors think they are following OR guidelines by providing reliable sources to back up the facts but even when counter arguments are based on reliable sources it constitutes OR if we don't provide sources that make that counter argument with the specific intention of addressing the criticism. I think it would be helpful to address this in the guidelines, either here or in the OR page (or both). Jojalozzo 21:30, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the connection should be to the topic of the criticism, not to the criticism. And, while you are getting to the edges of one of the two gaping holes in wp:NPOV (nothing about relevancy as a metric for material), I think that starting a new standard of rs's having to state/support relevancy of the material (vs. the current standard of RS's supporting the material) IMHO is going too far. North8000 (talk) 21:50, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

An editor who supplies their own arguments to counter criticism is engaging in OR. Criticism is a meta-topic and requires sources that address that meta-topic, i.e. sources that are engaged in the discussion. An editor adding their own ideas to the meta-topic is OR whether they can source the facts they assert or not. Reliable sources already have to be on-topic. This is not changing that - it's just recognizing that criticism and controversy is a meta-topic and requires sources that address the meta-topic. Jojalozzo 23:01, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

NPOV and categorization of articles

The present version states This applies not only to article text, but to images, wikilinks, external links, categories, and all other material as well.. I was wondering if there's any specific articulation on how exactly NPOV policy is to be applied to these other formats, in particular external links and categories. I am asking because recently I've noticed a bit of an uptick in "POV pushing by category inclusion/exclusion" - in other words, instances where users try to disparage a subject by including their articles in "nasty" categories.

Do sources, or anything like that, have to be provided for an article to be included in a particular category, given that this may be controversial? What about in the case of BLPs? Volunteer Marek  12:59, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd remove a category saying something like "wording potentially incorrect/POVed & not supported by sources, please explain on talk". AFAIK we don't have a specific tag to indicate what type of material may be POVed/uncited in the article, so there is, to my knowledge, no template "the categories in this article may not be neutral." Perhaps we should have one? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me} 15:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like vandalism to me. Jojalozzo 16:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's not vandalism, since there could be a legitimate reason for disagreement here. And re:Piotrus, I was wondering though if there's any specific description of how NPOV applies to categories (and for that matter See Alsos etc), somewhere. A template like the one you suggest would follow from such a policy description. Volunteer Marek  16:54, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I've seen WP:LABEL cited in discussions about whether a category is appropriate, although it doesn't actually refer to categories. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:13, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, come to think of it, WP:BLPCAT is really what I think you are looking for. I'm not sure there's anything about categories unrelated to persons, although I can certainly imagine POV issues with respect to non-person categories. (Category:Pseudoscience comes immediately to mind.) --Tryptofish (talk) 18:17, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Dates

I'm curious about Wiki policy on dates--I've found a mix of both Christian-relative dating convention and standardized neutral dating convention. I've also encountered some people who deliberately go from page to page, changing all CE and BCE to AD and BC. Personally, I consider the former to be neutral and the latter non-neutral (although one can hardly be accused of deliberate bias when growing up with this style as the only option). In some instances, such as articles pertaining to Orthodox Judaism, the usage of Christian referential dating may well be offensive to other users who are likely to search for or edit these articles (as many, if not all, Orthodox Jews have a proscription against any references to Christianity, Jesus or even a cross). Other modern encyclopedias tend to stick with the non-Christian convention in their more recent editions. As such, NPOV position should be to prefer standard non-Christian date references. Let me put it in terms that anyone can understand--since, personally, I do not hold any beliefs that would make Jesus or Jesus Christ or some other named individual or deity from 2011 years ago "My Lord", I find the AD and BC designations inappropriate in all contexts other than those on the inner workings of Christian churches (with the exception of titles or quotations taken from other sources). This does not mean that I would accuse anyone who prefers Christian-relative dating convention a "bigot", but I would certainly prefer neutral nomenclature. On the other hand, in professional circles, someone who insists on such nomenclature may well be considered bigoted and unprofessional. Since some US conservatives actually consider the AD and BC labels integral to their ideology, repeated and pervasive changes of dating nomenclature may indicate persistent bias. Alex.deWitte (talk) 05:11, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I think the principal stylistic guidance is at WP:ERA. I, too, have noticed that this issue comes up a lot on religion-related pages, and I suppose I agree with you that there can be POV issues associated with the system selected on a given page. At the content level, it may be best to deal with the issue page-by-page, but I think that an editor going around and mass changing against consensus, as you described, could potentially be disruptive. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:22, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing to WP:ERA--that's the page that eluded me and sifting through all the style manuals is a daunting task when time is at a premium. The page-by-page scenario is a good ball-park strategy, but, eventually, even this approach will lead to conflicts. I wonder about the accuracy of the style article, however, as they accurately say that AD and CE are "traditional", but, in fact, they are traditional only in some kinds of sources (mostly European and Colonial sources, but many post-colonial sources have now turned away from that convention). I also believe that a more accurate description is the decline of or moving away from the AD/CE usage rather than "wider use" of CE/BCE. As I mentioned previously, in some fields--particularly those that deal with dates regularly--such as history, anthropology, archeology, etc.--the CE/BCE convention is standard, although some subfields (e.g., Biblical archeology--mostly in Christian-oriented journals) maintain the traditional labels. And the move has generally been deliberate, not merely due to "wider spread" of the neutral convention. In most cases, it won't matter--e.g., the Sack of [ostensibly Christian] Rome may well be tagged "410 AD" (or just "410" where it is not ambiguous) without raising anyone's ire. I would not make a change in such an article, unless there was a lot of editing to be done in it anyway and some of the errors included incorrect date tags, e.g. "A.D." or "BC 500" rather than "AD" and "500 BC". In general, I would like to see the WP:ERA revised, eventually, but that time has not come yet.

--Alex.deWitte (talk) 20:54, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Quick question

On Talk:Robert P. George, a number of editors are claiming that a given source should be discounted as having a conflict of interest because he is gay. Where is the best place to look in existing policy to once and for all dismiss this argument? Kansan (talk) 14:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

• BLPPRIMARY, RSN et al. In case the issue is about a book written by anybody (gay or not) containing personal opinion about another individual in whose BLP the book is being used, it cannot be used as per PRIMARY which quotes that "Do not base material purely on primary sources." If there's a reliable source that quotes this primary source book, then yes, this book source can be used to augment the primary source. And this is policy; for BLPs, much more. Wifione ^Message 15:10, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

A specific issue can be raised at WP:NPOVN. For example, ask whether a specific edit or specific text in article Robert P. George satisfies NPOV given that the source is questioned. Johnuniq (talk) 23:07, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

The source is WP:V: "Sources themselves do not need to maintain a neutral point of view; indeed many reliable sources are not neutral." But as Johnuniq said this is not the right forum for this question. If more discussion is necessar use WP:NPOVN. I'm not sure whether Wifione's comment is applicable to your question. Sullivan's book is not a primary source. Brmull (talk) 02:27, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Interpreting WP:UNDUE policy (3)

This is a reopening of a continuing discussion regarding how to interpret undue policy. Here are links to the previous discussions: [12], [13].

general question: When does a view represented by a single reliable source merit inclusion?

specific example: The particular question revolves around the use of this source: Immigration and the Economic Status of African-American Men. The source in question is novel research published in an academic journal. Does the existence of this research article demonstrate sufficient weight to merit discussion in Immigration to the United States?

My interpretation of WP:UNDUE hinges on the third item in the bulleted list: If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Wikipedia regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.. Other editors have made the argument that "UNDUE refers only to giving exaggerated emphasis on a minority viewpoint". As currently written, the policy is not very clear on this nuance, and I think the policy should be clarified in this regard so that this sort of confusion can be avoided in the future.

I invite opinions and comments on the specific issue, but more importantly, I would like feedback on how to work towards making the policy clearer. Thank you. aprock (talk) 20:59, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Aprock misread the rules which clearly favor publication in scholarly journals and presses. If a scholarly book has only one author--most do--then Aprock would reject it by his reading of the "rule". The rule is designed to minimize fringe theories that have not been accepted by scholars. Scholarly publishers have teams of editors, editorial boards and reviewers who inspect every submission closely. Their consensus in publishing an article or book is a demonstration that leading experts endorse publication as valuable (even though the reviewers might disagree with some of the findings). That is how scholarship works. The article in question was coauthored by famous professors holding endowed chairs at Harvard (George J. Borjas), U of Chicago and U of California and appeared in April 2010 in a leading British economics journal that has been published by the London School of Economics for 75+ years and is near the top in terms of citations by economists. (its editorial board represents 24 tenured professors at many universities including London, Columbia, Amsterdam, Penn, Liege, Barcelena, Copenhagen, and Stockholm.) No fringe there. The Primary Sources used by the article = US Census, 1960-2000. The Borjas article cites 21 other articles in major journals that have worked on this topic and mostly come to roughly similar results. Rjensen (talk) 21:26, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Correction, this discussion is not about a book, but rather novel research with a single publication. But responding to the general point, I think it is correct to say that a scholarly book which presents novel conclusions, and which has no secondary sources that establish the weight of that book, should in general not be used as a basis for adding content to wikipedia. Note that the policy being discussed here is WP:UNDUE, not WP:PSTS or WP:FRINGE. aprock (talk) 21:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Rjensen. I'm not clear in this particular instance why Aprock feels that the scholarly article in question represents an "extremely small (or vastly limited) minority" (?). I feel the "Undue" policy is fairly clear, overall -- and that it means we should not give undue emphasis to a minority viewpoint, but be fair in giving topics attention in proportion to their importance and consensus. But "undue" is one of those things which can be interpreted in different ways depending on what a user believes. The sense of "undue" is balance -- keeping things in perspective; is this what others think?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 21:43, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I guess it all comes down to the question of "how do you identify a minority viewpoint". Lacking any other criterion, I suggest that a solitary academic source without any secondary sourcing should generally be considered outside the mainstream. Research explores the frontiers of knowledge. It does not define mainstream upon publication. aprock (talk) 21:46, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm still trying to understand what you're trying to say here. Why do you think that the George J. Borjas study is a "solitary academic source"? To be published, it has to be approved by editors and colleagues, since it is a peer-reviewed journal; it is not a work done in isolation by with tacit approval of numerous others. It is not self-published on a vanity press (if it had been, then it might qualify as a solitary primary source). It is neither census data nor a press release: these are primary sources. Rather, it is a published study in a peer-reviewed journal. To argue that this particular article is "outside the mainstream" seems unfounded, based on the credentials of the academics who did the study and their associations, as well as the reputation of the journal they published in. And your claim that "research explores the frontiers of knowledge" -- well sometimes it does, but often times it re-looks (re-searches) what's been studied before, to look at it again, but from a new perspective, with new eyes. That's perfectly fine. What Wikipedia does not want is original research -- namely new findings and information that us Wikipedians bring to the table. But it is perfectly fine for us to quote published research done by parties such as academics, newspaper reporters, music critics and such -- these sources are once-removed from the primary data (interviews with subjects, computer tabulations, market research reports, other articles) and therefore are acceptable secondary sources. So I am having trouble figuring out what you mean, or if you're serious about raising the issues you raise.--Tomwsulcer (talk) 02:34, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Why do I think it is a solitary academic source? Because it is. I submit that newly published research cannot be mainstream, exactly because research occurs on the leading edge of knowledge. If and when other sources come along confirming, contextualizing, or correcting a source, we might have a better idea whether new research is mainstream. To suggest otherwise is a case of WP:CRYSTAL. aprock (talk) 02:50, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Once something is in a peer-reviewed journal and written by an acknowledged scholar in the field, it could be possible to include such a source, Aprock, you've already described as new/ novel/ leading.... I'd have to read the source to give a definitive response. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 02:56, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not parsing what you wrote above properly, could you rewrite it? Regardless, I'm not suggesting that you cannot include such sources. Rather, that without any secondary sourcing supporting that research, inclusion is generally undue. aprock (talk) 03:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

New research can merit inclusion when it's from an expert in the field and as soon as there are reviews (from other experts) to indicate whether the new research has intrigued scholars or if it has been dismissed as fringe. It's not a foolproof test when hindsight is later applied, but it's the best we can do. Better? PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 03:18, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

It appears that you are essentially agreeing with what I'm saying. The initial publication of a paper isn't enough to establish due weight, but rather we need secondary sourcing to gauge how mainstream the research is. Am I reading you right? aprock (talk) 03:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Scholarly journals intensively study the submitted paper to guarantee that it is mainstream--they call on editorial boards, staff editors and peer reviewers and compare the proposed paper to the literature in the field. It often takes months. That's what happened here. In nearly every case--certainly in this case--the study is not a lightning bolt from heaven. It builds on dozens of published studies using more advanced statistics and bigger data sets to measure impact more precisely. A look at google.books (use BORJAS NBER) will show that 2000+ books and articles reference his work. That's mainstream. Of course, Aprock has never said what the mainstream is and how this article deviates from it, which he must to fit the UNDUE rule. Rjensen (talk) 07:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

TRY?

Why does this clause say in the intro say "try:" " and editors should try to familiarize themselves with all three" They are "core." Try, therefore, is an inappropriate request. I move to strike "try." Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:32, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I say strike the whole clause - having told people they are "core", they will know what to do next, if they want to. Most editors can happily remain only vaguely aware, if at all, of what's written on these three pages, and will get on perfectly fine. We don't want to put people off editing by implying that they ought to read reams of Wikipedia introspection before they start.--Kotniski (talk) 17:46, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Those are good points, I think. Let me suggest another alternative: change the clause to "and editors are expected to comply with all three." --Tryptofish (talk) 20:54, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

I accept that change. Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:34, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Describing aesthetic opinions

This section of the policy refers to “prominent experts”; is there a definition for this term? For example, is Time magazine considered to be a “prominent expert” in the example given in WP:PEA? Uniplex (talk) 19:46, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

RFC Notice - proposed changes to WP:Verifiability

I draw your attention to the RFC at WT:Verifiability#RFC - Compromise proposal re first sentence proposing changes to WP:Verifiability. As this RfC relates to a core policy (one that is deeply inter-connected with WP:NPOV) it is hoped that we can receive comments from a wide spectrum of the community (and especially those who regularly work on this page). Please swing by, read the proposal and accompanying rational, and leave a comment. Blueboar (talk) 12:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

RfC on "verifiability, not truth"

There is an RfC here on whether to remove from the lead of Wikipedia:Verifiability that "the threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." The RfC is likely to close in a few days, so if you want to comment please do so soonish. Many thanks, SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 23:52, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this is the same RfC that is announced in the thread just above this one. The proposal is a lot more complex than just removing the line ... but you can read the proposal and the rational for it at the RfC... in any case, I echo SV's call for you to come and comment. We are coming up on 30 days, so it will close soon. Blueboar (talk) 02:34, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Slim's summary is not accurate. Of the portion which Slim claims that the proposal is removing from the lead, the actual proposal RETAINS all but two words of it in the lead, and moves the two words ("not truth") into the following section.North8000 (talk) 13:28, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

It's even more complex than that... the proposal does change the wording of the sentence SV is concerned about, but it seeks to retain the concept behind that sentence, and tries to explain that concept more clearly by expanding it to an entire section of the policy. Please just go to the RfC, read the proposal and the rational that accompanies it, and make your own decision. Blueboar (talk) 14:48, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Note: the link above in the first sentence should read that the RfC can be found at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#RFC - Compromise proposal re first sentence  Unscintillating (talk) 19:34, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Is "Societal views on X" NPOV, or just confusing?

I would like to check where and why the recommendation is given here that "Criticism of X" should be replaced with "Societal views on X" in the cause of NPOV (hoping that I'm not opening a very nasty can of worms here).

My question and concern came about in a debate on the talk page of "the article formerly known as criticism of intellectual property" ;-)

The article has been renamed following the guidelines set here into societal views on intellectual property. I can see why "criticism" (with the usual understanding of the word) is considered too negative to include in a title, but is "societal" actually better? What has "society" actually to do with "the issues at issue"?

I saw a very appropriate use of societal in the article societal attitudes towards abortion since here it is quite explicit that different societies' views on abortion are being compared. The "societies" in question being both continental/regional, national and religious.

But is it useful to frame every debate on a "contested concept" in terms of "society"? Going by the definitions and connotations connected to "society" in such articles as society, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft and imagined communities, it seems unclear to me why "societal" is considered fit as a general "stock title phrase" both in terms of NPOV and sheer helpfulness. Does it then actually bring more confusion than NPOV and thereby lose in coherence what it may have gained in NPOV?

Using societal seems to imply either the views/discussion of a topic within one particular society, or the views of different societies on the topic. But what then of cases such as intellectual property, where the debate(s) do(es) not conform to either of these scenarios? Are "we" then creating a false sense of coherence and unity in terms of the forum for and form of (a) debate(s) that seem(s) more to represent a widely dispersed set of individuals, groups, organisations etc.?

I do not have a ready replacement "descriptor" in hand to substitute for societal, but I would like to hear whether the choice of that particular word was the process of a wider debate, and what were the reasons for using it in the example.

Mojowiha (talk) 03:13, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

As an incomplete reply, I offer this link to an essay which gives a few suggestions for other words, such as "evaluation," "review," "critique," or "assessment". Jesanj (talk) 03:23, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"Relevant" redirect is not relevant

Why is WP:Relevant redirected to NPOV? I changed the redirect to REV. WCCasey (talk) 07:12, 19 November 2011 (UTC)

"This policy is non-negotiable and all editors and articles must follow it."

I do not fully understand how this requirement can be implemented in reality. What if some users decided not to follow this policy? Consider a situation when some group of users opposes to change of the content under a pretext that the content is properly sourced, and totally ignores the fact that the sources they use are the subject of serious criticism. What is the mechanism that would allow us to change such non-neutral content if any RfCs give ca 50:50 votes pro and contra (which is usually interpreted by uninvolved admins as "no consensus for change")?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:25, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:RSN and then if there is a still a serious problem ArbCom--Cailil ^talk 03:17, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am talking about reliable, but seriously contested sources, so RSN has no relation to that issue. You probably meant "WP:NPOVN", however, that is also not a panacaea: the NPOVN discussion may involve the same users (with minimal outside input). With regard to ArbCom, it is mostly a place where conduct disputes are supposed to be resolved. However, in this situation, there is no formal reasons for accusation in misbehaviour: the users may advocate the viewpoint that is supported by reliable sources, they participate in content dispute (and do that in polite manner), RfCs etc. The problem is that the policy says nothing about the threshold of inclusion of some viewpoint as the mainstream one, and about the sanctions for violation of this policy (similar to WP:3RR).--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:54, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

No Paul I meant WP:RSN. If the sources are "the subject of serious criticism" (they are therefore not the most reliable) then WP:RSN is the venue. What you are proposing is not a neutral point of view issue in fact - the best quality (ie most reliable) sources should used to write articles. And yes I meant ArbCom because if ppl are excluding material they dislike (and vice versa) then they are pov-pushing and if this pov-pushing is so complex or divise (and can't be resolve by WP:DR) then ArbCom is the other venue--Cailil ^talk 20:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure I agree with you. Sometimes, we have a situation when a source A is being widely cited by some authors and is being equally widely criticised (that is typical for history articles, etc). Obviously, if a source is a scholarly article or university book, it cannot be treated as unreliable (it has all formal trait of a reliable secondary source). However, taking into account the criticism, it does not express some universally accepted opinion. In other words, the RSN conclusion will be "yes it is reliable". However, the NPOVN conclusion should be "it cannot be used as a support for a statement of some fact, just for an assertion made by its authors".

Regarding ArbCom, do you mean that the situation when some users resist against removal of some statement that has been directly contested by some reliable source(s) is a reason to address directly to ArbCom?--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I think Paul that you're missing my point. If sources are seriously criticized (ie that they are so flawed as to be discreditted) then they aren't reliable - they're fringe and can't be given equal validity to the mainstream (but vice versa if the criticism is fringe it won't discredit the sources). If ppl are pushing for the inclusion of seriously contested material (ie fringe) as fact in a way that would fool 50% of good faith wikipedians reviewing the situation at RFC then the aforementioned ppl may be involved in a form of complex vandalism that usually isn't resolvable via the drive-by discussions at ANi and AN. It would require expert input and detailed analysis of sources vs edits. ArbCom is really the only venue for that level of resolution (and although they do nominally have the power to do this I've never seen it used).
Now, if you're asserting that there are sources which some scholars contest (or have corrected or departed from) that are being presented as fact by some editors then Template:Expert might help. Otherwise I would suggest that existing policy actually covers this under WP:WEIGHT & WP:YESPOV. Opinions, arguments and some analysis of data (if it is disputed) should be attributed not stated as fact--Cailil ^talk 02:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure I am missing your point. Not all fringe sources are unreliable. Sometimes, reliability is determined by purely formal criteria: thus, all books published by Harvard University Press or articles published by the Wall Street Journal fit our reliable sources criteria . However, I frequently encounter a situation when such sources become a subject of serious criticism from established scholars. This situation cannot be resolved per WP:V policy, and YESPOV can be implemented only if both parties are good faith users. However, I see no mechanism that would allow me to force a civil POV-pusher to follow NPOV in the absence of external input. Your explanation about ArbCom simply confirms my doubts.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:58, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

"YESPOV can be implemented only if both parties are good faith users" - that's why I mention ArbCom Paul. Wikipedia assumes good faith - we don't legislate for hypothetical bad behaviour, we stop it when we find it. WP isn't perfect & the community is well known for not being able to deal with such issues due to the consensus based approach to collaborative writing & due to the non-hierarchical position of sysops. In short this isn't an NPOV issue if you're talking about ppl acting in bad faith. No policy mechanism will help without "external input" in that situation & in my experience there's no magic bullet for POV vandals--Cailil ^talk 18:13, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I think, it is not a good idea to resort to arbitration is every case. As I already explained, the situation that I described below reproduces repeatedly in many articles. Therefore, although I don't believe that improvement of the policy is able to eliminate such excesses completely, however, it may make help good faith users to deal with POV-pushers. --Paul Siebert (talk) 18:43, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

And since you have "seriously contested" the existence of the article in question, and every reliable source therein, I fear your post here may be seen as a disingenous argument. NPOV says if you do not like a reliable source, you do not simply say it is not "mainstream" unless you provide reliable sources making that claim - it is not a matter of "proof by terated assertion" which counts. If you have sources actually saying that most of those who died under Communoist regimes died because they "opposed agrarian reform" (i.e. they deserved death) then it is up to you to provide such claims explicitly made by other reliable sources. It is not up to others to "prove" that the reliable sources used in the article are "mainstream" unless you provide reliable sources asserting otherwise. Note also that simply asserting that everyone cited is "fringe" is not how Wikipedia works. Cheers. Collect (talk) 04:18, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

You probably missed the point. I am discussing a very simple situation:

1. A group of users introduced some assertion, found in a reliable source, as a fact.
2. An evidences have been presented on the article's talk page that this assertion has been contested by several reliable sources; based on that, it has been requested that the statement to be changed to comply with neutrality policy.
3. Nevertheless, the above mentioned users refuse to agree on that merely because they believe the source they used is "mainstream". The attempts to resolve this situation are being blocked because of "the lack of consensus"..

In my opinion, there is a hole in our policy, because it provides no explanation on how this situation should be resolved.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I think policy can cover it. Certain editors have been allowed to slide on their mere declaration that a source is mainstream. I think a thorough examination of that fine point could solve a lot of problems. BigK HeX (talk) 08:28, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

What we write in an article depends on many factors, such as (1) How many reliable sources are there (2) Who are the reliable sources. That determines whether we can state a bold-faced fact eg. (a) the Moon is made of blue cheese, or whether we have to attribute the fact, eg. (b) some Mexican Indians believe that the Moon is made of cheese,[14] We may well have reliable source supporting two sides of an argument, eg. sources supporting phlogiston, and of course, those that do not. Policy should be flexible enough to (a) take these views into account (b) allow editors to assess sources, (c) allows editors to decide how sources are described and attributed. A single reliable source does not make decide the truth (and that's a fact) --Iantresman (talk) 09:04, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

In my opinion, it is the name of the policy "NPOV" that is the problem, as it is misunderstood my many people, and leads to much confusion with representing "points of view". In practice, we're asking editors to write articles without "spinning" the facts, ie without editorial bias. --Iantresman (talk) 09:15, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

More than a score of relaible sources take the position that "excess deaths" occurred. No mainstream source has been presented that they did not occur. Rather, we have an editor asserting that any editor by "contesting" a claim can have it removed from an article regardless of the sources used. One editor ecven stated [15], [16]

Our policy is quite clear: if some assertion has been seriously contested, it cannot be presented as a fact, and that is non-negotiable. No reference to consensus, or even to some admin's decision can overrule this requirement of our policy. The only argument that you can provide in support of your POV is the reliable mainstream sources that directly, explicitly and persuasively debunk the criticism of the BB (i.e. the sources provided by me). Your failure to do so will mean that you are acting in a violation of our basic content policy, and, since I have already explained your mistake to you, you are acting 'knowingly'

Claiming that I knowingly am violating his understanding of NPOV - which seems to be that if he says that a claim is false, that it mut be removed. He has not provided any real sources that deny the "excess deaths" but he did provide one source which basically said that people who oppose agrarian reform cause their own deaths. Alas - that does not seem to be a "mainstream" view by a few miles. What I have repeatedly suggested is that he find reliable sources for his claims (which include "excess lives" as one of his claims!

PS Frankly speaking, your statement: ""Contested assertions" does not refer to editors "contesting" claims" is somewhat insulting. I believe I provided a sufficient amount of reliable sources that directly contest your BB to be immune from such ridiculous claims. Do you really read and understand my posts?

Has only one problem - he has not actually provided such sources, only his assertions that the claims are "contentious" but zero mainstream sources denying the "excess deaths". Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

• The problem is not about denying the excess deaths (no one denies the obvious fact there were some), the problem is about the total number of the excess deaths and their relation to 'mass killings'.
• Here the evidence was presented that Werth and Margolin (the co-authors of the author who provided the contested "mainstream" figures), Stanley Hoffmann and Michael Ellman criticize the very aaproach of using the large total figures and manipulating with them. These are top mainstream authors highly relevant to the subject, and disregarding their point of view is against NPOV.
• A really disturbing thing is that some editors in the related discussion and now here as well try to equate excess deaths and mass killings, the two different things as anyone can see from this definition. Equating these two things is not only marginal, but simply erroneous and unscientific from the point of view of demographics and statistics. Considering the views based on this erroneous equation as "mainstream" is contrary to any logic and common sense. No wonder that even the co-authors of the author in question disagreed with the approach.

And now I must repeat Paul's question: what should we do if a group of users opposes to change of the content under a pretext that the content is properly sourced, and totally ignores the fact that the sources they use are the subject of serious criticism, thus engaging in non-neutral POV-pushing and supporting a highly controversial manipulation with statistical data? GreyHood ^Talk 14:50, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

The pretext as it is quaintly misascribed happens to be fundamental Wikipedia policy which is not negotiable. Over and over and around Robin Hood's barn this goes - and the fact of the policy is not what some aver it is ... we need competing POVs from reliable sources not just that some editors assert that they as editors "contest" the claims which are not controverted in the body of the article. We rely on what the reliable sources state, not on what any editor "knows" to be the "truth." Cheers - but I suspect (fear?) there will be another 20 or so laps around that famous barn. Collect (talk) 15:09, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

BTW, look at some of what Ellman says explicitly [17]

In accordance with a list of incurable conditions, approved by the head of the Gulag, people were to be freed if they suffered from ‘emaciation as a result of avitaminosis’ (this was a bureaucratic expression for starvation), ‘alimentary distrophy’ (this was another bureaucratic expression for starvation), leukaemia, malignant anaemia, decompressed tuberculosis of the lungs, open bacilliary tuberculosis of the lungs, acute amphysemna of the lungs etc. As Isupov sensibly notes, ‘In other words, the prisoners were released to die’.

On the basis of the demographic data for the 1930s it seems that there were about 10 million excess deaths in 1926–39.

The unexpected Ž finding about the high rate of releases automatically means that the total number of people in the system at one time or another was much higher, relative to the stock of prisoners at any one time, than previously thought. The newly available numbers on the  flow are truly enormous. Moreover, as Conquest sensibly noted, they are of a similar order of magnitude to older ‘high’ estimates of the total number sentenced in the Stalinist era.

Some backing for a claim that deaths are "overstated." And noting that his paper is on the Gulag deaths specifically, not on other reasons for deaths (such as the Holodomor). In fact he states that it a legitimate issue as to whether Stalin made specific decisions which greatly increased deaths in the Ukraine, and poses the difference between murder and manslaughter as the key issue. So Ellman absolutely does nothing to renounce Courtois as RS for estimate ranges at all. Thanks - one more RS for the estimates currently in the article, and an example of using a claim that he says something he does not say debunked. Cheers. Collect (talk) 15:32, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Just another example how you work with sources and how you ignore the citations and references provided by other editors. Ellman is against using the poorly defined totals, he suggests concentrating on sub-totals, as cited here. And you use his view on just one of the subtotals to support the totals. Wow. I though you are just ignoring the citations provided by your opponents, but now I'm not sure if you actually read them.

And you again ignore the fact that high estimates of excess deaths is not a proof for high estimates of mass killings. By the way a mainstream article in Russian, by Denisenko, 2008, published by the Moscow State University (pp. 106-142), discusses the Soviet demographics in the late 1920s and in the 1930s, and on pp. 115-116 contains an interesting table of estimates of demographic losses before opening of archives and after. The modern estimates for excess deaths were significantly downgraded after archives were opened, and these new estimates for the 1927-1938 (or 1927-36, 1927-41) period are in the range of 6,6-9 million, for all categories of excess deaths. It seems like Ellman and Cortois just used the outdated estimates for their totals or subtotals, not the new archival data. And there is an established scholarly consensus on some of those subtotals, like Gulag mortality, which is many times lower than 10 million.

Making a summary:

You continue to ignore the presented criticism to the approach of using ill-defined totals.

You try to present the evidence for excess deaths as if for mass killings (the article is called Mass killings under communist regimes, not Excess deaths under communist regimes, isn't it).

Your try to present the evidence for sub-totals as evidence for totals, which is OR and which is not taking into account the criticism mentioned above.

Your evidence for sub-totals is controversial and likely outdated.

Conclusion: failure of NPOV, manipulation with terminology, original research. GreyHood ^Talk 17:15, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I only quoted Ellman. That you "know" something he did not write is not actually a valid reason for inserting your opinioon nto any article at all. Cheers. Collect (talk) 17:33, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a link to a section of the talk page with a very prominent and easily findable quote from Ellman in two my posts here. I can post it right into this discussion, but seems like you will ignore it even in that case. And please, no need to bold something in every your comment, especially the short ones. GreyHood ^Talk 18:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Your continuous ignoring of the reliable sources presented in the link above, and trying to misrepresent situation as if just some editors, and not the scientific authors, criticize the position you support, is not really nice. Please either prove that these authors are not RS, or that their criticisms were rebutted or seriously criticized. Also, please, explain your position about equating excess deaths and mass killings and show how could it be mainstream. GreyHood ^Talk 15:24, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I am not sure that the discussion of some concrete article belongs to this talk page. It should be moved either to WP:NPOVN or to the article's talk page. My question was much more general: I have a feeling that there are many articles in Wikipedia that are the subject of interest of just few users. In this situation, a relative majority of the users may decide to ignore some sources and present some statement as facts (despite justified objections of others). Since such articles are not a subject to interest of broad WP community, going to appropriate noticeboards have almost zero effect. As a result, it is quite possible to create (and maintain) totally biased articles of that type. I see no tools in our neutrality policy that would allow good faith users to fix such a situation.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I seem to recall that you have certainly espoused your own POV on the article talk page a great deal. If there were any argument as to any editor seeking to dominate a talk page, I suggest that the results would be interesting. I would, moreover, comment to those reading here that they wuld find the oft-repeated AfDs of interest. Cheers. `Collect (talk)

That is not a question of domination: I see no problem in someone's domination, provided, but only provided, that such domination is based on what non-fringe reliable sources say. Therefore, your ad hominem argument is totally senseless. The mention of AfD is totally obscure for me: what did you want to say by that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 17:48, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert, I can certainly attest to the fact that there are plenty of articles, that have low traffic. NPOV can be a nightmare on these ... oddly, in my experience it has been libertarian and anti-communist themed Wiki articles. BigK HeX (talk) 19:45, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

This touches on the three gigantic gaping holes in this policy:

1. Wp:undue is perhaps one of the most important concepts in Wikipedia, yet it is completely toothless because the supposed method of resolving wp:undue arguments is, as a practical matter, absolutely unusable. I mean, have you EVER seen a non-landslide dispute in this area actually settled by determining preponderance in/of sources?
2. It is structured for a dispute on statements in the content of-question. Most POV wars are not of this nature. They are on topics where there is a real world conflict, and each side wants to put in material for effect, where there is no dispute on the statements in the inserted material. For example, if you don't like politician X, you will put in that his third cousin is a child molester. If you like Politician X, you will put in that his other third cousin runs a shelter for the homeless. Neither item is really about the subject of the article. The facts of each are not contested so wp:npov as currently written does not kick in except for the near impossible route of getting the irrelevant material removed as wp:undue.
3. Lack of any provision for taking directness-of-relevance into consideration when dealing with wp:undue situations. This would help both of the above.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:12, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Relevance is easily challenged on decently-trafficked pages. (One shouldn't confuse a lack of procedure for challenging material with one's past difficulty in mounting successful challenges.) BigK HeX (talk) 20:40, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree. There is no provision for degree of relevance in guidelines or policies for that challenge. Persons can claim that "some connection to" 100% satisfies that question. North8000 (talk) 10:15, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes. There IS a provision. Every step of dispute resolution is sufficient to deal with issues of relevance on article such as Tea Party Movement. You simply don't like the general consensus that did arise. BigK HeX (talk) 15:44, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

@North8000 Whereas I mostly agree with what you say, I am talking about much more concrete situation, which repeats in many articles:

1. Let's consider some article, devoted to, e.g., some revolutionary organisation "X", where just 4 users are active. Three of them (users A, B, C) support one POV, for instance, that "X" was a terrorist organisation. They found three books where authored by Adams, Birch and Cahalan, accordingly, and add the following text to the first sentence of the lede of the article: "X is a terrorist organisation that blah-blah-blah"
2. A user Z provides the source (Zimmerman) that explicitly criticise the viewpoint of Adams, and question the validity of the Birch's book as whole(Yamamoto), and question the statement that organisations like X can be considered as terrorists (Xavier). Based on that, the user Z proposes to remove the above mentioned statement from the lede and, instead of that, to add the following statement into the article's body: "According to several authors, X is a terrorist organisation, however, this views have been contested by others scholars. According to Xavier, X cannot be considered as terrorists."
3. Obviously, such a step would be in full accordance with our neutrality policy. However, the users A,B, and C reject this proposal, because the statements in the lede is properly sourced.
4. Any attempts to resolve this issue via NPOVN fail because of minimal external input (no other users except these four express interest in this subject). RfCs fail accordingly. Admins have no right to interfere into this dispute which, at the first glance, has all traits of a content dispute.
5. As a result, the article appears to be frozen in a totally biased state, because even addition of Zimmerman, Yamamoto and Xavier to the main article does not change the situation: the assertion of first three authors, placed into the opening lede's statement looks like a statement of the fact, whereas the opinions of Zimmerman, Yamamoto and Xavier, buried in the article's body, looks like a minority views of few authors. I know many examples of such situation in WP, and I am pretty sure my list is incomplete.--Paul Siebert (talk)

I wholeheartedly agree that POV problems can persist intractably in low-traffic articles. A special procedure may be needed for articles of that type. An effective solution might even need to go so far as to have certain articles designated as "low-traffic/high-conflict articles" for X number of months and put one of those Wiki-wide announcement links at the top of editors' browsers when an RfC is proposed for these articles. BigK HeX (talk) 22:01, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

In the given example (as in the real situation), WP:LEAD is relevant. The lead should be including any prominent controversies. Controversy means that several major views on the subject exist, and apparently they all should be presented. Significant information should not appear in the lead if it is not covered in the remainder of the article. If the body of the article lists several significant views on whether X is a terrorist group, than the lead should also list several views, otherwise the lead would contain information which is contested by the body. Even more obvious situation we have with MKuCR: the lead contains total figures which are not covered in the remainder of the article. Therefore these figures should be removed; if we insert them into the article, than criticism of those figures should go there as well, and since the point is controversial, it should go to the lede only by presenting all significant views on the problem there. GreyHood ^Talk 22:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Overall, in my experience, sometimes NPOV problems could be solved by applying different policies instead of NPOV or along with NPOV. GreyHood ^Talk 22:42, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Responding to Paul, you gave an example that covered several aspects / topics at once so it is hard to know which aspect you are referring to as the core issue. Position/prominence in the article? Method of covering the two POV's? That a plurality can prevent proper handling of the article?

Your #3 comes from a common (accidental or deliberate) misreading of wp:ver which is to say that scouring is per se a force for inclusion rather than a condition for inclusion. The current proposal under RFC at wp:ver helps a bit in this area. But if this case is really a matter of conflict between two non-fringe points of view, then wp:npov balancing would kick in in this case.

I believe that your main point may be that a plurality of one POV at a low traffic article can prevent proper handling. I think that you are certainly right there. And the plurality can be achieve by getting the editors with the opposite view throw up their hands in frustration and leave the article. My own belief is that improvements and policies and guidelines is the best way to help this situation. Especially making it harder to mis-quote and mis-use current policies and guidelines, make it harder to gain by wikilawyering alone, and to fill in some gapign holes. North8000 (talk) 10:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Which concrete improvements of the policy and guidelines should be made, in your opinion?--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Well I shot my mouth off too early and you called my bluff. I had been working on something regarding this at an essay but it's still a general regarding proposed fixes. But here goes anyway:

WP:NPOV core issue analysis and suggestions

(Per question a few lines up)North8000 (talk) 14:28, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia articles on contentious topics generally remain in a permanent state of conflict and instability. WP:npov is not currently sufficient to significantly resolve these. Certain fixes would require changes in other policies, especially source and sourcing criteria. But others can be helped by improvements in wp:npov:

Wp:npov needs text pointing out the most frequent forms of POV'ing

The most frequent forms of POV'ing slips "under the radar" of wp:npov, i.e. it gives little direction or guidance for those areas. Partial solution: Include something like the below in NPOV. Merely recognizing, understanding and spotlighting these other forms of pov'ing will help the situation.

A common assumption is that most POV questions on articles arise where there are conflicting viewpoints on a particular question, or point made in the article. This is mistaken; a minority of pov issues are of this type. Here are three more types, with an example of each:

• Selection of particular angles to cover. It matters not that the coverage of that particular angle is objective or balanced, the selection itself tilts the article.

  Example, if there is a move to cut government programs and taxes, choosing to objectively cover a case where someone would be hurt by a program cut tilts the article one way, choosing to objectively cover a case of a person hurt by high taxes tilts the article the other way. So it matters not that the coverage of the particular angle is balanced; the choice of the angle to cover creates the imbalance.

• Quantity of content The quantity of content on positive vs negative topics regarding an organization tilts the article one way or the other. Note that this is true even if the coverage of those chosen topics is unbiased.
• Insertion (association by mere presence in the same paragraph or article) of powerful material

  Example: "Priest John Smith said that he is a homosexual. Smith critics noted that the XYZ study concluded that allegations of homosexual child molestation by priests is 9 times more common than allegations of heterosexual child by priests."

  Even though the second sentence provides no info about or even any accusation of John Smith, the presence of child molestation information in the John Smith article implants the association in the mind of the reader. Currently the only defense against this a weak one under wp:nor, basically saying that the juxtaposition of the two items is synthesis, or the weaker on of trying to use the toothless wp:undue.

One of the two biggest holes in wp:npov

The biggest hole in wp:npov is that it basically only addresses cases where the material espouses opposing viewpoints on a particular topic. Material which is put in for effect but which does not espouse a viewpoint slips under the wp:npov radar. The only section that slightly addresses the latter is wp:undue, and, as written, it is ineffective in this area.

The other of the two biggest holes in wp:nopv

This that wp:undue is basically toothless in disputes because its main guideline for implementation (preponderance in sources) is really not practically usable. One solution would be to incorporate other metrics into the guideline. The objectivity and knowledgeably of the sources with respect to the topic should be added to the raw preponderance criteria. Also, include directness--of-relevance as a criteria to be taken into consideration.

Adding relevancy guidance would substantially increase Wp:npov's effectiveness

Wp:undue does not provide sufficient guidance to resolve contentious articles and generally fails on these. Adding relevancy into its guidance tools would help this situation. One place to start would be to say that when there is a dispute, one condition for inclusion of material is that it be directly ABOUT (not just be related to) the subject of the article.

Exploration of situations that would benefit from this

WP:npov seems best designed only for the classic POV case, where there is a statement which purports to be objective fact in dispute. But the far more common case is where POV warriors seek to leave an impression on the reader via the quantity and nature of content which leaves the desired impression. This may be:

• On the topic of the article, or
• Where the POV promoter inserts material into the article to further a POV on a different topic.

An example of the "on the topic" type would be if Rush Limbaugh announced that Barack Obama is the worst president in the last 100 years, and many newspapers reported (simply) that he made this announcement. And then an editor puts a section on this into the general Barack Obama article. Technically, the editor is not inserting/citing/having to argue the "worst president in 100 years" statement, they are just saying that Limbaugh said this. They just want the very real impact and impression of the presence of "worst president" type words in the article. A second example is that if John Smith, a person who is a second cousin of Obama is convicted of child molesting, and the conviction is covered by several newspapers in a matter-of-fact manner. And an editor places a section into the general Obama article regarding that topic. They make no other argument that needs defending, they just want the impact of child molestation related material in the Obama article and it's juxtaposition with Obama material. Most would say that these should not be in the article. And, if there were a large amount of such material in the article, most would (intuitively) say that such POV's the article. But policies and guidelines provide little guidance regarding this. The sourcing is not only on wp:solid ground, the coverage really can't be questioned, as it was matter-of-fact regarding these matters. Ditto for the "objectivity" of the text put into the article, it is simply matter of fact overage of Limbaugh's statement and the 2nd cousin's conviction.

Probably the policy/guideline most looked at for guidance on this would be wp:undue. But it is oriented towards covering opposing views on a particular statement. In these cases, the "statements" are just what was said in the speech, and the facts of the conviction. It gives guidance only on coverages of two sides of an issue. But there is no debated "issue" in this material, as it is a statement of facts regarding what Limbaugh said and of the conviction and of the relation of the child molester to Obama. Beyond that, wp:npov says what can be interpreted as "must include" for these statements.

Solution

For contentious inclusions, create a standard that the material must be directly about the subject of the article. Not just related to, but directly about. Under this analysis, the coverage of Limbaugh's speech is most directly about Limbaugh's speech, not Obama. And the child molesting material is most directly about John Smith, not Obama.

Wp:npov needs to include more guidance on section titles

Section titles tilt this inclusion of information in an article. They influence the article to include a greater amount of material defined by the title. Example: John Smith kicked a dog once, a long time ago, and also runs an animal shelter. In the John Smith article an editor creates a "Controversies" section. This tilts the article towards inclusion of a greater amount of negative material on John Smith. It might tend to give a section on the dog-kicking incident legitimacy for inclusion which it might not have otherwise had. And it could be used to prevent another editor from including the dog sheltering material to provide balance on the topic of Smith's treatment of animals. The removing editor can say that the dog sheltering material was removed because it is "not a controversy".

Solution

For contentious situations, section headings may be created only for material that could pass the wp:undue test for inclusion in the article without the section heading. Further, only material that can remain in the article without having it's suitability "propped up" by a section heading remains. Basically, this means that material must "stand on its own two feet" regarding justification, without such being "propped up" by the section title.

North8000 (talk) 11:59, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Discussion

Agree that the identified holes in the policy are serious issues. The proposed solution sounds good. It seems to be related to WP:SYNTHESIS policy. GreyHood ^Talk 19:09, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Whereas all what you write is correct (or almost correct), I think the most serious problem not in the policy but in the ways it is being implemented.
Firstly, the policy states that the principles it is based upon cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus. However, it is unclear for me how can it be implemented in actuality. Let's consider your first example. A group of users (A, B, C) added the words: "Smith critics noted that the XYZ study concluded that allegations of homosexual child molestation by priests is 9 times more common than allegations of heterosexual child by priests." after the sentence "Priest John Smith said that he is a homosexual." A user D objected against that citing the policy standard that the material must be directly about the subject of the article (let's assume for a moment that your proposal has been added to the policy). Of course, had the users A, B, and C been good faith users, they would accept this argument. However, if they decided to object (for instance, citing WP:V), the added text will stay, because there was no consensus for removal of properly sourced material. Obviously, the attempt to directly remove this text will fail due to 3RR, and an appeal to admins will (the most probably) lead just to an advise to start an RfC. However, what if no other users express interest to the article about Smith? The change will stay, because the result of RfC will be "no consensus for removal".
The events may develop differently. Some admin may interfere and revert the change. However, the users A, B, and C may object pretending that that is just a content dispute, and admins cannot use administrative tools to interfere into content disputes. As a result, the current policy clause "The principles upon which this policy is based cannot be superseded by other policies or guidelines, or by editors' consensus" appears to be toothless against civil POV pushers in low traffic articles.
I do not see how your above proposal resolves this issue.
I have other comments, but I suggest to finish with this one first.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the same contention can be made where there is, in fact, a relationship, however, because two words were not used together in a particular way and formally defined as such (even though widely used and there is no doubt regarding the two words and what they mean), then they do not apply and should be deleted; A, B, C contending the obvious, and D contending otherwise, and attacking A, B, and C of conducting editing in bad faith, and heaping on false charges of synthesis. In my experience there are as many actual civil POV pushers as there are accusers of editors as POV pushers who are themselves civil POV pushers (in addition to the first population of civil POV pushers).

As it can even be debated what constitutes a reputable source, there is no manner of policy which achieves elimination of POV pushing. As long as WP is the most widely returned source on internet search engines, it will be constantly assaulted by POV pushers. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 04:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

You are absolutely right, Peters. The only thing that I can add to that is that, since majority of WP users are good faith users, a situation when users A, B, and C are good faith users and a user D is not is more frequent. It can be resolved relatively easily, because three users as a rule, prevail over one in most disputes. By contrast, a situation when a group of civil POV pushers dominates over some small traffic article is less frequent. Unfortunately, I do not see the tools in current NPOV policy that allows us to resolve this situation. Ideally, it would be desirable if our policy contained some clauses that allowed to even a single user, who edits based on top quality secondary sources and in accordance with NPOV, to prevail over any number of POV pushers.--Paul Siebert (talk) 04:36, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The fundamental issue is that whether or not something is indeed so is immaterial, it is only what sources state that counts. As there are sources which will state just about anything, editors can easily find sources which espouse their viewpoint; at that point, what we have is reductio ad opinionem (there are no facts, only opinions), all opinions being equally valid as their factual basis is inadmissible per WP policy. WP:NPOV is then invoked to insert opinions which are not factual, since it's all just "opinion" in an area of contention, and all "opinions" deserve equal treatment according to WP:NPOV. If one editor contends A according to X and another contends B according to Y, WP:NPOV is a "balance" of the two regardless of factual circumstances of A and B. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK 04:49, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Your trumping also poses issues, as there is still plenty of room between what a source states and editorial representation. There are certainly cases where I believe it is better to resign ourselves to no quick solutions than attempt to policify ourselves into a premature resolution of an editorial conflict. PЄTЄRS J V ►TALK

You seem to mix editorial conflict with a conflict with civil POV pushers in a situation when they form a majority. Consider a following example:

1. Users A,B, and C added the statement: "Smith critics noted that the XYZ study concluded that allegations of homosexual child molestation by priests is 9 times more common than allegations of heterosexual child by priests.²" after the sentence "Priest John Smith said that he is a homosexual.¹"
2. User D argued that neither of cited sources (neither 1 nor 2) wrote anything about child molestation by Smith, so this addition fails WP:SYNTH: the text implies something (a connection between Smith and child molestation) that is not present in neither of two sources.
3. However, if A-C are POV-pushers, they may argue that both statements are properly cited, and the text correctly transmits what the sources say. I see no tools to remove this non-neutral synthesis without external output (which may not necessarily follow).--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:03, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that the two closest current tools for this situation are wp:undue (i.e. argue that the child molestation material is undue weight in that particular article) and wp:synth (i.e. argue that the juxtaposition implies a linkage, and that linkage is synthesis) and that the argument for both is ethereal enough in that situation that anyone could prevent either from being invoked. Hence comment that they are "toothless" in these situations and my suggestion to say that contested-insertion statements should be about (not just related to) the subject of the article in order to remain. And my second (vaguer) suggestion is to merely point out that putting material in for impression, even when the statements in the inserted material are not contested is a form of POV'ing. I think that even the smaller/vaguer step of merely noting/acknowledging this would tend to make some conversations go better. North8000 (talk) 15:24, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I strongly disagree that WP:UNDUE is "toothless". On articles with decent traffic, policy works just fine ... that includes Tea Party Movement. If a particular person's past arguments have been toothless, I don't think that is a reflection on policy.

There are article that can garner almost zero opinions outside of some core of a dozen editors. Current policy seems unable to deal with conflicts with these. But, that is a separate topic from WP:UNDUE being toothless. BigK HeX (talk) 15:41, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

@ North8000. As I already wrote, I fully agree with both your suggestions. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

@ BigK HeX. We do not speak about the articles with decent traffic. These problems are typical for contentious low traffic articles, where bare majority can create and maintain any biased content.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:47, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I see the problem as follows. For low traffic articles where some group of POV-pushers acting in concert is active, there is no ways to resolve neutrality issues: if the POV-pushers constitute a majority on the talk page, any decision meet formal WP:CONSENSUS criteria (I assume POV-pushers are civil); RfC, due to minimal or zero external input cannot resolve this situation; NPOVN is also ineffective, because usually the discussion there involves same users. And, more importantly, no administrative actions can be taken in this case, because immediately after starting the analysis of content for neutrality the admins become a party of the dispute. Therefore, the tools are needed that would allow admins to analyse arguments put forward during the the neutrality disputes without becoming a party of it.
A possible solution may be as follows. When some user expresses a concern about neutrality of some article's statement (for example, an undue weight has been given to some non-mainstream source) he is supposed to provide a reliable non-fringe secondary source that explicitly criticizes this particular source for errors, revisionism, or for the tendency to tendency to overreach and overstate his case. As soon as such a source has been provided, the article's statement should be deemed non-neutral, and needs to be changed accordingly. To prevent the change of the content, its advocates must present well sourced refutation of the source that criticize the content they defend. Failure to provide such a refutation automatically means that the disputed content must be modified.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:04, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

RE: "We do not speak about the articles with decent traffic.".

I can assure you that North8000's problems are not regarding articles with low traffic. If your agreement is strictly limited to low-traffic articles, then you probably should edit your posts to be explicit. People could get very easily confused on that point, if North8000 is being general and other editors are thinking of some completely other context for North8000's solutions. BigK HeX (talk) 16:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

My comment and suggestions are more about the structural dichotomy that exists. If, in the top level Obama article you want to write that "Obama is a bad president" (i.e. the statement of the insertion is disputed) then wp:npov in all of it's intended glory kicks in. If, in that top level article, you want to to put an uncontested but irrelevant fact in (Omama's third cousin is a convicted child molester) for negative effect, then npov is silent on the issue because the statement of the insertion is not contested. North8000 (talk) 17:48, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:SYNTH says: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Since information about Omama's third cousin implies some connection between Obama and child molestation (we assume that the source about Omama's third cousin does not contain such claims), such a statement fails the SYNTH test, and will be quickly removed. The problem may appear only when the Obama article is being edited by few users, and significant part of them share (and push) the same POV.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:01, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I think that it would take only a 1-2 people to stop that removal. The opening shots would probably be along the lines of "please stop removing sourced material", or "please stop your POV war of trying to censor everything negative related to Obama from the article, haven't you ever read wp:npov?". Or, "No conclusion was implied, this is just a statement of fact about what his third cousin did.". Or "if you have a RS that says that his third cousin is not a convicted child molester, please feel free to add it." Hence my thought that wp:synth is weak/difficult to make stick in a case like this. North8000 (talk) 18:20, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Re "please stop removing sourced material", I totally agree: such an argument is quite common during POV disputes. I think it is desirable to add special clauses to policy that explicitly prohibit references to WP:V during neutrality disputes. For example, to specify in the policy that the users that close NPOV-related RfCs must disregard all arguments citing WP:V in support of non-neutral texts.--Paul Siebert (talk) 21:07, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

RE: "I think that it would take only a 1-2 people to stop that removal."

Such problems are EASILY cleared up by the current dispute resolution mechanisms in articles that attract outside attention. Current policy is fine (WRT to non "low traffic" articles), IMO. At the very most, one or two RfC's ends the debate (though some editors may be loathe to accept the concluding consensus). BigK HeX (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

BigK, I disagree. Just about every article representing a real world conflict/clash is an abysmal failure. This is one area where Wikipedia doesn't work. They are messes consisting of the result of a whole lot of battles of trying to get in our keep out material that sounds good for one side or the other. And all are eternally unstable; the only exceptions (the only stable ones) have "stability" from one POV side dominating. North8000 (talk) 21:37, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

That seems to defy the facts. I am pretty sure the Obama article is the hottest US political topic on Wikipedia, and it reads just fine. Just because you don't like the results of the dispute resolutions at Tea Party Movement, that doesn't mean the article is anything resembling the "mess" you perennially post about. We certainly don't need any policy changes to address your issues with that article. BigK HeX (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

BigK, the TPM article is just one of the many many many places I learned from for the above, and I have been writing / working on the above since August 2010, predating all of your imagined reasons. And the only dispute resolution that occurred there I was very happy with. You are missing AGF by a mile with the erroneous things about me that you have been writing. Why not just engage in the discussion on a higher plane? North8000 (talk) 22:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't need to imagine any reasons. YOU have made clear your disdain of the consensus reached for Tea Party Movement in nearly every venue you post in here. And my point here is simple -- just because you failed to gain consensus on articles like Tea Party Movement, that doesn't mean that policy needs to be changed. There is a HUGE difference between dispute resolution not going one's way after dozens of outside opinions are posted versus dispute resolution not giving any opinions or guidance to follow. None of this has anything to do with WP:AGF either. BigK HeX (talk) 15:39, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

That is soooooo far off of the actual situation there that it seems that you are talking about a different article. The only such process that occurred there was about a year ago and I supported the results. And your response avoided the two main points of my post, which is of course, your purview/choice. North8000 (talk)

Paul Siebert, I agree. The one caveat is that I don't see a need to avoid citing the actual wp:ver (which says that verifiability is a condition for inclusion) just the imaginary wp:ver that says that verifiability is force for inclusion. North8000 (talk) 21:37, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, if you agree, let's think how can we improve the policy. And, I suggest to focus on the low traffic articles first.--Paul Siebert (talk) 02:09, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

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• Sorry Paul can you please spell out what you mean by 'objectivity' of a source wrt WP:DUE. Specifically I'm concerned that your argument is falling into the "common misunderstanding of NPOV" that sources should be neutral? Also while you're correct about the relevance of a source this is adequately addressed by WP:V and WP:NOR (remember that this policy has to be read with the others - ie it's not a one stop shop): relevance of references is an original research issue not a NPOV one. I would suggest further that your points wrt 'Insertion' & 'Selection of particular angles to cover' are covered by WP:OR. I also disagree about the section titles issue etc as this is already covered in the MOS.
  I think your point re the 'material for effect' is good - however I'd suggest that WP:PEACOCK/WP:WEASEL, WP:DUE and WP:GEVAL should have this covered (one can't just drop a sentence into Obama's BLP recording that "Limbaugh says that Obama is the worst president in 100 years" it's not weighty enough).
  As regards your low traffic example of pov pushers acting in concert it seems to me that what you are detailing is a lack of enforcement rather than a problem with policy--Cailil ^talk 03:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Dear Cailil, I never claimed the sources should be neutral. Neutrality is our internal criterion, and it is applied to the way the sources should be represented, not to the sources themselves. The sources may be reliable or not; reliable sources may be mainstream, significant minority or fringe. The term "neutrality" cannot be applied to none of them. That is why I never wrote about "common misunderstanding of NPOV" in this context. I wrote that the WP:V is being frequently cited during NPOV disputes, and the most common situation is when A argues that the statement X is not neutral, and B replies that the statement X is ok, because it is well sourced. Such arguments are not easy to refute in a situation when some NPOV-related RfC becomes flooded with numerous "keep as well sourced", and I do not understand how to fight against that: in my experience, RfC with numerous keeps (citing any policy) as a rule result in "keep", and non-neutral texts remain in the article. Of course, I mean the situation when we deal with a team of civil POV pushers, not ordinary users.
That is why we need some more or less formal tools that would allow admins to resolve such problems without becoming involved in content disputes. I think, the simplest way would be to separate RfCs on subcategoies: NOR-related, V-related and NPOV-related. Accordingly, during NPOV-related RfC the arguments: "keep as well sourced", or "keep as containing no original research" should be dismissed by closing admins. Accordingly, the during NPOV-related talk page discussion the posts citing WP:V as a main argument in favour of some text should be dismissed, and should not be taken into account neither by the discussion participants nor by admins (in a case of AE complaints). That would help to make out policy less toothless. --Paul Siebert (talk) 05:20, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Re "you are detailing is a lack of enforcement rather than a problem with policy" In a situation when some dispute has long history, it is simply impossible for an uninvolved admin to adequately analyse a situation without more or less deep involvement into the essence of the dispute. However, after doing that he cannot be considered uninvolved any more. As a result, the admins prefer to look at the formal side of the dispute: if they see that both sides respond politely, provide sources in support of their views, cite policy, the most obvious conclusion is that they deal with a normal content dispute. To realise that a user, or a group of users repeatedly cites WP:V in support of their POV-charged edits, one has to deeply analyse the course of the dispute, and the admins simply are not allowed to do that.
If you want concrete example, I can provide some.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:27, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

PS One more frequent argument from the POV-pushers is "we cannot judge about the sources, we just represent them fairly and accurately"....--Paul Siebert (talk) 06:54, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Good and central point. That statement in your quote covers both legit things and bogus things, which makes it a hydra to do battle with when it is said in a bogus context. With respect to conditions placed on inclusion of material, it is correct. With respect to saying that such is a force or magic bullet for inclusion, there you have the bogus meanings. North8000 (talk) 16:17, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

"I mean the situation when we deal with a team of civil POV pushers, not ordinary users" Precisely my point above Paul - as you say sysops cannot become involved in content and then maintain decorum with sanctions - we aren't allowed to take sides. However there are higher powers that can. Like I said in the other thread if you're talking about ppl acting in bad faith this cannot be solved by trying to use policy as a magic bullet. Because these ppl are in fact ignoring the rules that we already have.
As regards ignoring !votes sysops are supposed to do so but I take your point and have seen this at AFD when OR topics are saved by use of trivial mentions but that isn't an NPOV issue and IMHO those ppl weren't acting in bad faith - just an inclusionist philosophy.
To be clear I'm not disagreeing with you that WP has a problem with WP:CPUSH - I've seen it - I just don't think that a) this is a NPOV issue, or b) that core policy needs adjustment to deal with it. IMHO this is an enforcement issue CPUSHers are using wikipedia to make a point, to push an agenda, to "change the world", or safeguard "the Truth™", or "publish the cutting edge of science" (before it's been widely accepted), or to "right the great wrongs of history". We already forbid all of this but this is wikipedia not citizendium it's hard takle these ppl and we expressly hope that they will reform themselves and come round to a collaborative and consensus based style of editing - it might be idealistic but this is the encyclopedia that anyone can edit--Cailil ^talk 18:44, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

You write "Like I said in the other thread if you're talking about ppl acting in bad faith this cannot be solved by trying to use policy as a magic bullet." I cannot fully agree with that. Remember, we are talking about civil POV pushers. A distinctive feature of such POV-pushers is that they use a policy as a tool. If some clauses of the policy appear to be repeatedly used by them to create and maintain non-neutral content, then, obviously, this policy should be modified to deprive them of this opportunity. Concretely, if WP:V is being repeatedly used in NPOV-related disputes, it seems logical to clarify this policy to explicitly request admins to disregard all arguments that are based primarily on WP:V. That would make both admins' and users' life easier.

I propose no major adjustment of the core policy. However, the clause that prohibits the WP:V arguments during NPOV disputes (concretely: "the material is well sources and should stay") would be helpful.--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:01, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

There's the rub Paul - banning discussion of 1 core policy when discussing an issue ostensibly about another is a major change. The "three core policies jointly determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable". It's also something open to obvious abuse and frankly builds an assumption of bad faith into policy which is the opposite of what we do. When dealing with ppl acting in bad faith whether civilly or not changing core policy to 'combat' them is at the expense of its utility to the rest of the community. Sledgehammer's & nuts come to mind. Moving that Wikipedia:Advocacy become policy as part of Category:Wikipedia behavioral guidelines would make more sense IMHO--Cailil ^talk 14:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I think "bad faith" is too strong of a term for the very common practice of using policies & guidelines against their intent in order to further one's argument, especially when the current wording allows such to be easily done. This is something that everyday people (not just "bad faith") people do. The only ones who don't do it are the ones with the ability/experience to understand the intended uses, and a high-enough sense of purpose to follow that even when it works against their argument-of-the-moment. North8000 (talk) 14:54, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

And yet that is what Paul is talking about: civil povpushing, tagteaming to advance a pov & wikilawyering - these are all acts of bad faith. Using "policies & guidelines against their intent" is bad faith to its very core. And TBH North8000 I disagree on 2 substantial points of your argument a) that this policy is confusing and ambiguous, and b) that ordinary users are en mass involved in deliberate abuse of policy to push their points of view.
Ppl do often disagree about policy (this is an international project and ideas have different nuances across English speaking cultures not to mention to non-native speakers) but that's a world away from knowingly attemptig to circumvent the spirit of wider site policy through an abuse of "policies & guidelines against their intent in order to further one's argument" (ie wikilawyering)--Cailil ^talk 15:19, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

@ Cailil. Your " banning discussion of 1 core policy when discussing an issue ostensibly about another is a major change" is much stronger statement than my initial proposal was. My proposal was quite concrete: "during the discussion of the neutrality of certain statement, the arguments that this statement should stay because it is properly sources should not be taken into account." That does not rule out the arguments such as "The criticism of this viewpoint found in the source X cannot be taken seriously because the source is unreliable" (or similar arguments), because it is impossible to consider each policy separately from each other. In other words, I never proposed total ban, I just proposed to ban a certain type of arguments that very frequently appears during the NPOV discussions and RfCs, and resort to the WP:V-type argument to prevail in a dispute that is obviously about WP:NPOV. --Paul Siebert (talk) 15:50, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

section break 2

• Comment: I believe that NPOV is flawed because (a) it is ambiguous (b) is mistakenly applied equally to general articles and to article specifically about minority views (c) editors mistaken believe that a point of view automatically fails NPOV. Example: Undue weight tells us that in "articles specifically about a minority viewpoint [..] the majority view should be explained in sufficient detail". However, the section on Giving "equal validity" tells us "Wikipedia policy does not state or imply that every minority view or extraordinary claim needs to be presented along with commonly accepted mainstream scholarship". Of course the latter is correct, why would we include details of a mainstream/majority view in ALL articles presenting the minority view, when all we need do is mention and link to it? Finally: we can always state a point of view neutrally using the appropriate language. For example, "the Moon is made of chesse" fails NPOV simple because it is misleading of the generally accept view. However, "Some Mexican folk tales believe the Moon is made of chesse"[18] is a fact, and hence is NPOV, even though it could be interpreted a POV we may not agree with. It is the points of view that are negotiable, it is NPOV that isn't --Iantresman (talk) 17:00, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I tend to think structurally. I would consider "Some Mexican folk tales believe the Moon is made of cheese" to be a factual statement about the beliefs of those tales rather than a statement about the material of which the moon is made. Not that my comment has much relevance here. North8000 (talk) 18:03, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

There appears to be a serious problem with articles about social sciences where, unlike natural sciences, there is substantial disagreement about most topics in mainstream sources and there are substantial popular books and articles written in non-academic publications. Many editors come to these articles with pre-formed opinions and Google search for sources to back up their claims. I believe the solution may be to tighten up rs requirements, following WP:MEDRS. TFD (talk) 05:57, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I guess that could involve 2 policies. At wp:ver we're discussing an idea I've been noodling on for a long time of saying essentially "the more contested the statement, the stronger the sourcing required (and vica versa) , and adding two metrics (objectivity and knowlegability with respect to the statement being cited) to the wp:rs type metric. At wp:npov (which basically says the IF there is a substantial split of opinion, both sides must be covered) but (having only the unusable "preponderance in sources" mechanism) lacks a usable mechanism to determine whether the alternate view is fringe or not, and deciding what weight it should get in the article. This area could also benefit from those same proposed new source metrics.North8000 (talk) 15:09, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

BTW, this excellent topic is off from my original one. This involves conflicting views on the statements in the inserted material. My original post involved putting in irrelevant material for effect. (e.g. the "his third cousin is a child molester") Where there is no conflicting view on the facts of the insertion, the conflict is on the appropriateness of having it in the particular article, that it may be an "under-the-radar" POV'ing of the article. North8000 (talk) 15:14, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm coming to this discussion late. All articles need to focus on their topic, lest they become coatracks. But within a topic there is always going to be the potential for disagreements over scope. For example, in a biography how much should we say about parents, spouses and children? We commonly include brief descriptions as necessary, but it sounds like this proposal would forbid that. Other topics are much less clear, like Economy of Japan which could include all kinds of issues which factor into the economy. I don't see how the current policy is a problem in this regard.   Will Beback  talk  22:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)