Wikipedia talk:Verifiability

Meaning?

English is not my mother tongue, so my question may be stupid. However, I would like to make sure if this paragraph is logically and grammaticaly correct:

The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings:

• The work itself (the article, book)
• The creator of the work (the writer, journalist)
• The publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press)

All three can affect reliability.

In this text, the subject is "meaning", and it says "meaning affects reliability". Does it means that reliability is affected by just a meaning of some term? To me, it is nonsense. I suggest to think about better wording. I have some ideas how to improve it, but I would like to have a feedback from you first. Do you agree that the text looks awkward?--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:16, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It reads fine to me as is, but I suppose we could change 'meanings' to 'definitions'. - MrOllie (talk) 16:09, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm having difficulty reading the text the way you appear to be reading it. Another way to word it is The word source when citing sources on Wikipedia can refer to the work itself, its creator, or its publisher, all of which can affect reliability. Schazjmd (talk) 16:10, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

If we omit auxiliary words, we get "a work ... affects reliability (of itself)".--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:30, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

That's fine. Reputable publishers and authors sometimes produce works that are less reliable by their nature - works of satire, for example. - MrOllie (talk) 16:40, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

That is NOT fine. The text that we are discussing is not some essay. That is a policy, which is supposed to explain how to determine reliability of sources. If it says: "Some sources may be reliable, others may be not reliable, and it is up to you to decide", that is not a policy.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:44, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

It is only a problem if viewed in isolation. The policy goes on to explain that peer-reviewed articles are superior, which is an example of this. The same author and publisher might produce both a letter to the editor and a peer-reviewed article. That one is more reliable than the other is a feature, not a bug. Also, policies are not algorithms to be applied mechanically. There is always going to be room for consensus decision making, so it will always be up to the involved editors to decide. - MrOllie (talk) 17:37, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, the policy is intuitively clear. And that is a problem: rules may be intuitively clear when they are written for people with similar background. That is not the case for Wikipedia. Some users are experts in real life, whereas others may be unfamiliar even with such a concept as peer-review. For example, I know some users who claim that peer-reviewed publications are "yellow journalism".

In that situation, we need clear and formal rules. Thus, when we provide a definition, it should be a real definition, preferably an intensional definition. For example: "In a context of the verifiability policy, the term "source" is defined as some work that has a concrete author(s) and that was reputably published by some publisher. A quality of the work and its relevance to the Wikipedia content, author's background and expertise, and publisher's reputation are the three factors that affect reliability of the source". That wording is far from perfect, but, in my opinion, it is much better than the current one.--Paul Siebert (talk) 18:10, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

• As the editor who originally added this text to the policy (although it has been slightly tweaked in the years since I originally added it)… the intent was NOT to define the term “source”. We were merely trying to alert editors to the fact that the term already has multiple definitions (definitions that pre-existed Wikipedia). The goal was merely to say that all three pre-existing definitions should be considered when assessing a source for reliability. Blueboar (talk) 18:51, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

  I cannot agree with that. From my experience, discussions between Wikipedians about sources (at RSN and elsewhere) take into account the work AND the author AND the publisher as three components of source, not three different meanings.

  In addition, the structure of V is supposed to be as follows:

  • You shalt provide a source
  • "Source" means (....). There are good sources and there are bad sources
  • Good sources are (...)
  • Bad sources are (...)

  As you can see, the current policy's structure follows this scheme pretty well (and only the description of the meaning of the word "source" is poor), so the deliberately vague claim that "different people may mean different things under "source"" is not helpful but harmful. Moreover, the actual understanding of the term "source" by experienced users is stricter (see above).--Paul Siebert (talk) 19:08, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

In addition, that text is against the policy's spirit. Thus, if I provide just a title of some work, or the author's name only, or a publisher only, that would not be considered as providing a source. Adequate sourcing always means to cite a work, author's name and a publisher, so these three components are inseparable. That is a standard practice in Wikipedia, and our users expect to see that in the policy (and I have a feeling all experienced users interpret this statement in that way).--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:50, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

Ah… but before we added the alert about all three needing to be part of the discussion, editors DIDN’T always consider all three.

As for your “flow”… it is way too simplistic. It does not account for the fact that a source may be “good” in one context and yet “bad” in another context… Reliability is not always a black and white, on/off thing. It is a muddy mishmash of factors that all need to be sifted through to determine whether a specific source reliably verifies a specific statement, and whether it is the best source for doing so. What we require are sources which reliably verify the statements that appear in our articles. Whether a specific source does so often depends on what specifically we write. Blueboar (talk) 22:23, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

A policy is not a philosophic essay on what the term "source" means in various circumstances. It is a set of rules that users are expected to observe. And, it seems there is an unspoken consensus among experienced editors that any source (as it is seen by the Wikipedia community) has three components (as defined above). Therefore, instead of philosophical handvawing, we have just to reflect that consensus in the policy.

My "flow" is not simplistic. It is simple (which is not the same). And it allows further detailisation, which can take into account many nuances, including those mentioned by you. Thus, it takes into account context, but it separates contextless aspects from those where context matters. For example, I doubt anybody can disagree that Oxford University Press is a highly reputable publisher, and that is contextless. Furthermore, everybody agree that Kip Thorn is a highly reputable expert, and his book Black Holes and Time Warps is a high quality book published by a reputable publisher, so all contextless criteria are met. However, in his book, Thorn mentions, among other things, some facts about the Great Purge and kollectivization in Stalin's USSR. Those facts in some aspects contradict to recent historical scholarship, probably because Thorn, being not an expert in Soviet history, took some outdated figures and old publications for his book. That means that that book meets all contextless criteria (a high quality work, authored by a top expert and published by a reputable publisher), but it is not a reliable source in this context. Since not all reliability criteria are not met, it cannot be considered a reliable source for that particular purpose.

Similarly, I can imagine a symmetrical (complementary) example: some blog post that contains more recent facts and figures about the same events, which may make it more reliable (in the context of Soviet history). However, if that source is just a blog post by not notable author, some important contextless criteria are not met, so that source must be considered unreliable, despite the fact that it is quite relevant to the topic and even may (potentially) contain a high quality information.

In summary, I don't see why my approach is incapable of taking into account all nuances mentioned by you.--Paul Siebert (talk) 23:41, 5 October 2021 (UTC)

A policy might not typically be a philosophic essay on what the term "source" means in various circumstances (although we do have some rather philosophical policies), but in this case, telling people that there are multiple meanings for that word is necessary before we can really get into what the rules are that the users are expected to observe about sources.

You have several times made a leap from "The word source has three meanings..." to a belief that these "three aspects must be taken into account to make a decision about reliability". This is not true. These three things can be taken into account to make a decision about reliability, but (a) that is not required, and (b) they are not the only three things that matter for that decision. For example, it is not uncommon to make a decision about reliability without even knowing who the creator of the work is. Other factors, such as whether the source (in "the work itself" meaning) is directly about the subject and whether academic peer review was involved, also matter. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:12, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Ok, I called Thorn "top expert", although it would be more correct to say "top expert in Physics". Actually, expertise may have two components, contextless and context related. The opinion of a Nobel prize winner on any subject is more notable than that of a layman (a contextless component), but an opinion of a Nobel Prize winner in Physics is such topics as history may be less notable than the opinion of a assistant professor in history. --Paul Siebert (talk) 00:06, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Paul, in terms of grammar, your first problem is that you have quoted two sentences. It looks like we forgot to add the terminal punctuation for the second.

I might expand it for you like this:

The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings:

• the work itself (the article, book),
• the creator of the work (the writer, journalist), and
• the publisher of the work (for example, Random House or Cambridge University Press).

All three can affect reliability. For example:

• If the work itself has been praised, that suggests that it is more likely to be a reliable source for factual claims (or whatever other typical uses a good Wikipedia editor would cite such a work for). On the other hand, if the work is a retracted article, then it is an unreliable source for almost all possible uses, no matter who wrote it or who published it.
• If the creator of the work is a respected journalist or a subject-matter expert, then the source is more likely to be reliable for factual claims the typical uses a good Wikipedia editor would cite it for. On the other hand, if the creator of the work is especially disreputable, then it is likely to be an unreliable source for factual claims and other typical uses, no matter how convincing the source sounds to you or how good the publisher is.
• If the publisher of the source is reputable, then the source is more likely to be reliable for factual claims the typical uses a good Wikipedia editor would cite it for. On the other hand, if the publisher of the source is disreputable, then it is likely (but not guaranteed) to be an unreliable source for factual claims and other typical uses, even if the article sounds convincing to you and the author has a decent repuation.

In other words, SOURCES tells you that the word "source" is ambiguous in English. It does not tell you what the word "reliable" means. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

BTW, if you want to know how to determine whether a given source (including: a particular publication, anything published by a particular author, and anything published by a specific publisher) is "reliable", then WP:NOTGOODSOURCE is my favorite summary.

NB that it's not giving you an actual definition of what a reliable source is. It's only giving you a list of the basic rules of thumb for deciding whether a source is WP:LIKELY to be accepted as a reliable source for factual claims and other statements that a good Wikipedia editor would support with such a source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:22, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, but that does not solve the problem. The policy is not a correct place to discuss what "source" mean. The policy is supposed to define source (similar to "verifiability", which has some specific meaning in Wikipedia).

That "source" has three different meanings is blatantly wrong: you cannot provide just, e.g. Oxford University Press as a source, you must provide something like John Smith, "On Plenipotentiaryness of Omnipresence" (1982) Journal of Sensationalism, v 12, p 1984, Cambridge University Press. --Paul Siebert (talk) 04:34, 6 October 2021 (UTC)

Ah… you are talking about the citation… in talk page conversation, if you ask me what my source is, I might well say “I read it in the Journal of Sensationalism.” Blueboar (talk) 17:25, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

Sure, but is the policy expected to tell us what words should we use during talk page conversations? AFAIK, only WP:BLP and WP:NFCC are applicable to talk pages.

Maybe, we should focus on the real purpose of WP:V? Paul Siebert (talk) 18:36, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

One of the purposes of this page is to educate new users, and part of that is explaining how words we have chosen to use in our local jargon match with the usages the rest of the world knows. MrOllie (talk) 19:03, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

It does not imply "general education". We need to inform new users about the requirement of this concrete policy, not about various colloquial meanings of some word.

However, if we write something like: "Whereas different people apply the term "source" to (...), this policy defines "a source" as (...).", that may be much more informative and useful for new users. Paul Siebert (talk) 22:19, 11 October 2021 (UTC)

If we were writing a code of laws, maybe, but that's not what we should be doing here. This policy isn't ever going to be some legalistic thing with formal requirements that are applied by a mechanistic process. Too many users (myself included) would oppose that. There's always going to be room for consensus decision making, so the policies will never be as prescriptive as it seems you would like them to be. MrOllie (talk) 01:13, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Actually, policies document already existing community consensus regarding what should be accepted and what should be rejected. And that is exactly what we are doing here, during that discussion.

In general, the spirit of WP:BURO is: "do not follow policy's letter, follow policy's spirit", and that is not what you say.

And, whereas to follow policy's spirit may be a good idea, that doe not mean we should stop improving policy's letter. Paul Siebert (talk) 16:40, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

FWIW, while I have a personally different idea how this should be done, I agree on the idea that while we still want WP:V and other policies to reflect practice, their language (eg being clear on the difference between a publication and a source) should be formalized within policy to make the discussions on sourcing/reliability/etc. easier for all editors to follow. A lot of the mess at RS/N as a board is that it conflates issues with a overall publication (eg the Daily Mail) and individual sources that may belie the reliability of the overall publication, and those latter discussions shouldn't be had at RS/N - that's a talk page issue for the specific topic. Part of that is this implicit confusion we've created on what a "source" means, which could be resolved without changing practice or policy by just being a bit more formal in definitions. --Masem (t) 16:51, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand you. How can we convince people to be more formal in definitions without changing practice or policy?

And, by the way, if we become more formal in definitions, that automatically means that our practice has changed.

Furthermore, leaving these considerations beyond the scope, another problem is still unresolved: the wording of the policy contradicts to normal logic: it says "meaning affect reliability". That discredits Wikipedia: how can readers trust Wikipedia if its editors cannot fix an obvious nonsense in their core content policy? Paul Siebert (talk) 18:42, 12 October 2021 (UTC)

Paul, it says “Author, Work and Publisher affect reliability”. This is accurate. Blueboar (talk) 16:25, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

No. It says "The word "source" when citing sources on Wikipedia has three related meanings: a), b), and c). All three affect reliability" "Three different meaning" - what does it mean? Let's take the word "element" as an example.

According to Merriam-Webster, this word has three essential meanings and additional meanings. It may mean "a chemical element", or just a "a constituent part of something", or even "weather conditions" (in a plural form). However, what is important, one cannot use the word "element" in different meanings simultaneously. When I say "they were killed by exposing to elements", I mean weather conditions, and ONLY that. I do not mean chemical elements. And when I say "compounds are the substances that are composed of several elements", I mean chemical elements, but not weather conditions.

Similarly, if the word "source" has different meanings, that means it may mean either a work, or an author, or a publisher, BUT NOT all three simultaneously. And the policy claims that if under "a source" I mean "a work", the reliability (of what, by the way? That is not specified either.) may be different than if I mean "an author". All of that is a blatant nonsense, how cannot you understand that? Paul Siebert (talk) 17:23, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

There's the way policy is "practiced" (how its implemented, etc.) and then there's the language of how we describe that practice. Changing how the practice should be done is the type of thing that requires a great degree of consensus, but changing how its described without changing the actual practice should be less strenuous (the wordsmithing and the like). Formalizing definitions should be a act that falls into the latter. --Masem (t) 16:10, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

The way this policy is practiced is as follows. The statement "according to Einstein..." is deemed unsourced until a reference is provided, and the reference cannot be just "Einstein". It should be something like "Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete? Physical reviews, 1935, 47, 777"

Similarly, the statement "According to the "Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?" article..." also needs a reference to be considered a sourced statement, and the proper reference should have the format as shown above.

Finally, you cannot say "According to APS...", because that statement is also unsourced until a correct reference (see above) is provided.

Therefore, the triad "Work - Author - Publisher" reflects a standard Wikipedia practice, and it is a shame that the policy (i) says something totally different, and (ii) says an obvious semantic nonsense. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

All I'm saying, which is in alignment with what you are proposing in part, is that we should be explicit on terms, and avoid the way "source" is used nebulous in multiple placed for different context related to "work", "author" and "publisher", and instead use those terms (or equivalent) where appropriate in context on the policy pages, making sure they are well-defined, such that we remove the ambiguity of what "source" means .--Masem (t) 17:39, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

It seems the new version proposed by me in the "Proposed changes (tentative)" sub-section meets these requirement. Do you have any specific comments on it? Is there anything that needs to be fixed/amended/removed? If not, I think it may be a good time to implement the proposed changes. Paul Siebert (talk) 18:14, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

"According to Einstein" is not unreferenced. The source is incompletely specified (to the point of being almost useless), but "According to Einstein" is technically an inline citation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Historical Sources

I've seen editors source historical 'facts' from tourism, sociology and linguistic papers. I'm against this because the authors aren't historians and the papers haven't been published in history journals and therefore haven't been peer reviewed by historians. The text on this page: "If available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources in topics such as history, medicine, and science." could offer them wiggle room since they could say that it's OK to include these papers because they are "academic and peer-reviewed". Perhaps we need a specific page describing where to find the best sources for history? Is there already one? Cheezypeaz (talk) 19:04, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

• Do you think these sources are unreliable, or just not the most reliable? Blueboar (talk) 19:12, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Blueboar An actual example I have seen is: A tourism paper published in a tourism journal exploring the posibilites of ethnic tourism in a country which gives a potted history of the country. The potted history was used as a source for a historic claim in the wikipedia article. The potted history part was wrong. I would class them as unreliable because even though articles like these were written by intelligent people they were masquerading as "academic and peer-reviewed" which they are not from a history standpoint. So worse than a tweet from an unknown user on Twitter. Cheezypeaz (talk) 21:07, 13 October 2021 (UTC)

Cheezypeaz, are you claiming that historiography provides "facts" while linguistics and other disciplines don't? Science, like physics and chemistry, provides facts that are not dependent on political ideology. History and how it is written very often changes according to the political ideology of the historian and the political sensitivities of the society it is written in. It is very important that we don't confuse the concept of "facts" with scholarly POVs, opinions and interpretations. I am not saying that history books and articles don't contain some "facts", only that views provided in history books aren't automatically to be considered "facts".--Berig (talk) 05:31, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I also find it a bit odd to throw sociology and linguistics in the same category as works written with a tourism-related purpose. Very often the different disciplines which study mankind are covering closely inter-twined topics, and so it is normal that debates arise about whether we should cite, let's say, a population genetics article in a WP article about an ethnic group. (Often these properly come down to discussions about what aspects of a topic that a source is best for. For example, geneticists are not good with historical detail as far as I have seen!) I do have concerns about how these often play out, but OTOH I'm not sure that such cases can easily be handled with a simple general rule. Concerning tourism-based sources, I think indeed that type of background is not likely to provide a strong source, but OTOH does that mean we need to treat all of them as unreliable? I think in a case like the one you describe the WP guidelines are already pretty clear?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:18, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Actually, the main point Cheezypeaz is making is as follows. We should always discriminate between reliable sources authored by experts in this concrete field and equally reliable sources authored by non-experts. I can continue the analogy with chemistry or physics to demonstrate that. The article authored by some expert in inorganic chemistry is less likely to be a high quality reliable source for some organic chemistry topic, especially if it just mentions some organic chemistry fact in passing.

Another example. Recently, we had a very long discussion at RSN about some peer-reviewed article that discussed a possibility of artificial origin of COVID-19 pandemic. That article was published in a very respectable Bioessays, and it was authored by experts in biology. According to our formal standards (and even taking into account additional standards described in MEDRS), that source is absolutely reliable. However, majority of users rejected that source, and among the reasons were (i) Bioessays does not focus on virology, and it has no experts in that field in its editorial board, and (ii) the authors are not experts in this concrete field.

Similarly, linguists, similar to the authors writing about tourism, are not experts in history, and, whereas they may reproduce some facts or opinia in their works, their expertise is hardly sufficient for providing independent and authoritative analysis, and, therefore, it may contain errors, omissions or distortions.

Currently, we are discussing a better wording of the policy, and I maintain that the author (their expertise and reputation) is an important criterion that affects reliability of a source in some concrete context. IMO, a situation with usage of non-history works as sources for history article is a good example of possible benefits from amendment of the policy's language. Paul Siebert (talk) 15:42, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert Yes to all you have said. Thank you. Cheezypeaz (talk) 16:35, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Things aren't always that clear-cut. When you write about topics at the borders of history, as I do, there are few clear lines between history, linguistics, literature, archaeology and religion studies. It can become interesting when a historian states something categorical and ideological about a linguistic (toponymic issue) and an archaeologist has a completely divergent opinion. If the policy is rewritten I hope it takes into account the fact that some topics are cross-disciplinary.--Berig (talk) 16:41, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, that is correct, and some facts from tourism, sociology and linguistic papers may shed an additional light on the history related subjects. However, that is acceptable if, and only if they add some information that does not contradict to what mainstream historians say (and mostly is specialised peer-reviewed publications). However, it sometimes happens that whole sections in some articles, or whole history articles are written from a perspective of some non-historical sources. What is worse, some articles are based on non-specialist writings, and some additional facts are cherry-picked from good quality history publications to create a false impression of a broad support of those views by scholarly community. If you want an example, I can provide a link to some concrete articles. Paul Siebert (talk) 17:40, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

I believe you.--Berig (talk) 18:00, 14 October 2021 (UTC)

Generally I agree with Berig that there are not always clear lines between history and other branches of the humanities. And thank you for the link to the Battle of Fýrisvellir article. TSventon (talk) 23:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

If I'm not mistaken, what User:Cheezypeaz is concerned about is the sources used in a particular article (Welsh Not) which s/he believes he has identified as problematic. S/he does not feel that an academic work about language teaching is a suitable source for a statement in an article about a historic tool for language teaching, and has lumped this in with other sources, such as tourist guides, which s/he rightly thinks are transient and superficial. I don't personally believe this is a relevant comparison. Deb (talk) 15:55, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Deb The linguistic example is a good one. It strongly implies that X occurred more than 150 years ago and therefore Y also occurred 150 years ago. Historians specialising in that area explicitly state that neither X nor Y occurred. Cheezypeaz (talk) 20:11, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Cheezypeaz Anyone who looks at Talk:Welsh Not will see that this is a complete misrepresentation of the situation. Deb (talk) 08:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I understand the frustration of @Cheezypeaz:. Non-academic publications (such as the ones mentioned) not only are full of biases, they also create a series of problems. Biases, sensationalism, nationalistic pov, naive explanations of complex issues. We can do better. As in the case of medicine, we should elevate the level of RS in other scientific fields as well. History is a scientific field and we should treat it as such. Would you take advice on covid vaccine from a tourist site? Would you teach mathematics to your kid using a medical site mentioning some equations? Or would you prefer an establish author on teaching maths? We should stick to experts. Cinadon36 10:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I looked up the definition of potted in this context, and it seems to be a statement that it is a brief summary, rather than a biased or otherwise problematic one.

Also, history is generally understood to be a Non-science, primarily because it is not "progressive" (i.e., each generation does not know more than the last. We might, in the 21st century, know more about the 1750 fire that nearly leveled Halifax than the people who lived in the 20th century, but we do not know more than the people who lived through it). And if you want a historical note, in the 19th century, the discipline of history was understood to be primarily a literary genre. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

We keep nibbling at the edges of a 2 part fundamental change needed. Neither is something totally new, both already receive minor toothless mentions in policies and guidelines, and they are already concepts that are sometimes followed, such as at RS noticeboard, and in normal editing except when wikilawyering takes over:

1. Recognize that there there is an important in-context measure of strength of sourcing. More specifically: The strength of a source is it's expertise and objectivity with respect to the item which cited it
2. Contested text requires stronger sourcing, uncontested text less so

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 13:53, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• A lot of this can be resolved by noting who says what - if linguists say X occurred and historians say X did not occur, we should not state either view as fact, but note the existence of the disagreement, and state that linguists say it occurred while historians say it didn’t. Blueboar (talk) 14:09, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  I am not sure that is in agreement with NPOV, which clearly says to avoid presenting facts as opinia.

  If a scholarly community achieved consensus about some fact, and some linguist says otherwise, implementation of your proposal may create a false balance. Paul Siebert (talk) 19:58, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  Yes, but when one scholarly community (e.g., linguists) generally agree that X is true and another scholarly community (e.g., historians) generally agree the opposite, then the facts Wikipedia can accurately report is that different fields have different views. We can't (usually) pick which field is right and which is wrong. This is not an unusual situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I fully agree. I myself am a proponent of uniformity of the quality of sources in each article. Thus, if some physics article is written based on such sources as PRL, Nature or Science publications, there should be a very serious reason for adding popular web site or youtube video as an additional source.

Similarly, if some history article is written based on peer-reviewed publications in American Historical Review, OUP publications, etc., some additional content that is supported by a publication in a local newspaper should be treated with a great suspect, unless a very serious arguments have been provided in support of it. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Paul Siebert's post seems consistent with an approach of finding some high quality sources about a topic, and then writing an article that is confined to the information in the sources. But another approach is to discern what readers are interested in reading about, and then finding the best available sources (without accepting any junk) that cover the topic of interest. There are many topics people are interested in that scholars fighting for tenure aren't interested in writing about. Jc3s5h (talk) 20:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

It seems you didn't understand me. I never claimed we should use only peer-reviewed or similar sources. If someone wants to write an article about some film, computer game or small town, it would be senseless to expect such an article to be based on scholarly publications. However, if some serious subject is extensively covered by top quality publications, and the article about it is written based on those sources, any attempt to add some new information using some kids magazine or youtube video should be seen as very suspicious. Paul Siebert (talk) 20:52, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

There are topics where some aspects are covered by peer-reviewed academic sources and other aspects are covered by sources addressed to a popular audience. For example, an article about an obscure old building might use popular local sources to establish the exact location and that the building played a role in important historical events, while using high quality academic sources to provide details about the historical events that occurred in or near the building.

Similarly, an article about Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020 video game) might use popular sources to describe how the game is played, or how well-received it has been, while using academic sources to provide information about aviation-related physics which the game simulates, or historical aircraft that are modeled in the game. Jc3s5h (talk) 21:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

In short and in general, go by: expertise and objectivity with respect to the item which cited it. North8000 (talk) 21:48, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

One problem with limiting an article's sources to a "uniform" standard is that it limits readers to a single type of source. I might want to write an article about a disease primarily from medical school textbooks or paywalled review articles, but that doesn't mean that I want readers in search of additional information to be unable to access every source that I cite. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:58, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

This page should mention intereviews

Preferably with a link to Wikipedia:Interviews. I think it should clarify if interviews are "questionable sources" or not, among others. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:45, 15 October 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2021 I WROTE THE DAMN BOOK.

In 1998 I published "The Quest for the Orbital Jet about the X-30 scramjet powered National Aero-Space Plane Program on which I was the PROJECT HISTORIAN. This is volume three of the USAF sponsored history of hypersaonics with the first two volumes written by the head of the USAF history office, Richard Hallion who ISN"T EVEN CITED HERE ONCE!! And he wrote the histories of scramjets and hypersonics. Don't know what you guys want here. LarrySchweikart2 (talk) 03:14, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: This page is for requesting changes to the page on Wikipedia's verifiability policy. If you want to discuss sources for the Scramjet article, please comment on that article's talk page. ClaudineChionh (talk – contribs) 03:49, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

Larry, you need to write as if you were just some random guy, and not an expert. Don’t add material based on your own knowledge (see WP:No original research). Cite published sources to support what you add, even if you wrote those sources. Blueboar (talk) 14:14, 30 October 2021 (UTC)

I can not acess my phone it has been frp locked

Sadly Someone stole myphone Removed my accounts. And reset them Under some other account. Because my creditials Do not work — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:F4A0:57A0:1849:6936:496D:E5A2 (talk) 11:53, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

If you are having trouble with your Wikipedia account, have a look at Resetting your password or Compromised accounts. ClaudineChionh (talk – contribs) 12:05, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 November 2021 Camp Kishauwau held a scouting summercamp program in 1980...I was there...sp your 1976 date is def wrong!

50.237.191.107 (talk) 05:55, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Verifiability. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. DonIago (talk) 05:58, 17 November 2021 (UTC)