Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard/Archive 16

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Bart's Comet and Astronomy

The Simpson's episode Bart's Comet has several real astronomy references. For example, the numbers that Skinner and Bart read out at the telescope are real astronomical coordinates. Does looking up the coordinates on a star chart and describing their locations on the sky in the article count as original research? If so, can I get around this by referencing a star chart?TomLuTon (talk) 14:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

When does a calculation become OR?

At Shepherds Flat Wind Farm we have the situation where a figure of 228 MW, and now 230 MW, has been calculated as the average power output of a wind farm not yet built. See Talk page for discussion. When does a calculation become OR? Johnfos (talk) 19:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:CRYSTAL? --LegitimateAndEvenCompelling (talk) 19:37, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The general rule of thumb would be that as soon as another editor raises reasonable questions about the legitimacy of results from such a calculation, the calculation doesn't qualify as "routine" and the article should defer to actual cited/referenced figures rather than new figures derived by an editor. Only routine calculations are ok under the policy. Professor marginalia (talk) 20:42, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

The only question is about the overprecision of the unit conversion. The source says, "2 billion kilowatt-hours per year".[1] Converting kilowatt-hours to kilowatt-years simply requires dividing by the number of hours per year:

2\times 10^{9}\ \mathrm {\frac {kW\!\cdot \!h}{yr}} ={\frac {2\times 10^{6}}{24\times 365.25}}\ \mathrm {\frac {MW\!\cdot \!yr}{yr}} =228\ \mathrm {MW} .

Where is there room for reasonable dispute about the legitimacy of the calculation? This is just arithmetic, no different from converting 'approximately 5 miles' to '8.0 km'.

—WWoods (talk) 18:48, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Calculations should be presented to reflect the degree of precision available. "Approximately 5 miles" should translate to "approximately 8 km", not to "8.0 km", which might be misleading. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I am not sure if this relates to the example above... but another complicaton to consider is that a calculation may be routine in terms of one topic, but not at all reoutine in terms of another topic. If you are the first person to use a calculation in the context of a given topic, then doing so is Original Research. Blueboar (talk) 16:19, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. Isn't it more usual to cite the peak output of a power station rather than its estimate average over a year? It's something we should be careful about, anyway. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:31, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

What a coincidence, I'd just put the following formula converting units of gas to Kilowatt hours into an Excel spradsheet.

units*correction_factor*Calorific_value/KWh_conversion_factor

which includes two fudge factors depending on the gas and temperature plus an actual constant, and the gas company's glossary didn't describe one of them at all. I didn't think the above is too bad if the source figure is given and it is converting to more familiar units and the accuracy of the result is properly qualified - approximately 2.3 is as much as should be said. I don't think peak power has much relevance to a wind farm but I do wonder how its variance should be treated in things like this. Dmcq (talk) 19:09, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Search results rather than paper?

We've got a question at WP:ELN#ELNO_.239 that's not properly an External links question, but since it's already in its second or third location, I hate to move it again. Could a couple of you please go over there to comment?

The issue is whether a link to search results from a (respectable, independent) database is a good (secondary?) source for supporting a statement that a given academic journal published a handful of (important?) papers. The aspect involving NOR is whether these papers should be called out in the journal's article at all, since nobody seems to have written anything like "Journal X is famous for publishing these papers". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:36, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Girl Talk albums

This came to my attention at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#All Day (album) full of original research. All Day (album)‎ has a "track listing" that is admitted OR. The listing is constructed from a set of lengthy pieces of music containing a number of songs and has been created by some WP editors. It also appears that Secret Diary, Unstoppable (Girl Talk album), Night Ripper and Feed the Animals have the same problem.

I removed the OR from All Day but is has been reinstated with the rational of WP:IAR and "there is no harm". More eyes on the explain why WP is not a place for original research would be great --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 14:33, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

It isn't like there are being pulled from the sky. The artist released a list of songs sampled and a number of sites have provided timings. Google brings up a number of them.--Terrillja _talk 14:41, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

OK, in which case it should be possible to source! So far I have not been able to manage it --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 14:43, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

[2] [3] [4] As I said, it's not like these are being pulled from the sky. For obvious reasons, you aren't going to find something like the NY times posting all the samples, but [people with probably too much free time] are going through and have done it. Those took 3 minutes to find. The last seems to have used wikipedia to start the matching and then verified it, but whosampled is probably the best right now. I'm sure the music genome project could probably get most of them if their databases were used as well.--Terrillja _talk 14:52, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I might support some of that. the All Day source, which is the only one I have so far searched for is just a list of samples and not the timings - which is the OR bit. For the other albums - the sources are not great but I'm a believer in being sensible about such things, that said others might not be so open about it. As it is All Day is still OR sourced. Whosampled is a source for the tack listing, but there are no timings --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 14:58, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Not ending timings, but starting ones: http://www.whosampled.com/sample/view/68920/Girl%20Talk-Down%20for%20the%20Count_The%20Temptations-Get%20Ready/ http://mashupbreakdown.com/ also has a graphical representation of the samples and is based on whosampled.--Terrillja _talk 15:07, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Cool, well I for one am happy with that (it's a bit "in your face" on Whosampled so I missed those times, sorry). Although I would point out we have no source for All Day. Plus we need to be careful on the other examples to stick to data Whosampled uses and avoid "filling in the blanks". Pre-warning; other editors may dispute these as a RS though. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 15:12, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Whosampled like IMDb is community generated. Hence, not a reliable source.Q ^{T C} 19:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I've been mulling on this. And on reflection Wikipedia is not even really the place for this information - that is what sites such as Whosampled exist for. So, actually I re-support removing these and providing Whosampled (and similar) lists as external links. Regardless of what sourcing has been provided OR is going on in the articles, and that is not appropriate --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 11:27, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Read my response on WP:AN.--Terrillja _talk 14:10, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I have done. It boils down to WP:HARMLESS, which is not really well stacked up against WP:OR and WP:IAR which, again, is not really workable. --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 14:13, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It's about common sense and what is best for the reader. More info that is sourced to a number of sites, whether they are 100% reliable or not gives the reader a better understanding of how this album was created. Having an article which says it was an album by Girl Talk and nothing else doesn't improve the encyclopedia in any what whatsoever. It does a disservice to the reader. The entire point of what makes the album a mashup is understanding the combinations of songs. Without that, the reader has no clue what the hell is being mashed up.--Terrillja _talk 14:21, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not a legitimate wikipedia argument. That same argument could be used to include contact information for businesses, price lists for products, or 1000 links to different sites about any given topic. Our purpose isn't to give the readers everything they might possibly want--it's to give them every piece of encyclopedic information about the topics that meet our notability standards. We take the stand that all challengable info needs to be verified by reliable sources, and when there are no reliable sources, we just don't include the info. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:36, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

IAR is a policy. So my argument to include is based on policy. Keep in mind the fifth pillar.--Terrillja _talk 00:14, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

IAR is not about outright ignoring rules; it is about pointing out that the spirit of the rule is vastly more important than the letter of them. It is also not a license to pick and choose when to follow policy. And the 5P is some text dealing with our core principles and vision - but is not in itself policy. The core policies NPOV, V and OR are key and the spirit of them should be upheld for the benefit of the wiki. You call IAR because this is a harmless bending of the NOR policy, I call IAR to cut and remove the content as it undermines the wiki. See the issue :) --Errant [tmorton166] ^(chat!) 09:35, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

RFC started. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs) 14:22, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Synthesis on Family Research Council

Family Research Council has been a hotbed of contentious editing ever since the SPLC designated it a "hate group" last month. While the article has a number of POV issues, I believe there is a blatant violation of WP:SYNTH first introduced here: FRC President Tony Perkins dismissed the hate group designation as the result of a political attack by a "liberal organization" and "the left's smear campaign of conservatives",^[1] but reiterated that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles^[2] despite scientific evidence to the contrary.^[3]

I take no issue with the first clause in the compound sentence, but the second clause, ([Perkins] reiterated that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles despite scientific evidence to the contrary.) is a synthesis of two cited primary sources: the MSNBC interview of Perkins and an APA study on sexual orientation. Without a reliable, secondary source, this statement cannot be taken as anything other than synthesis. At least one editor and one administrator apparently disagree with me. I'd appreciate additional feedback from this board. Uncle Dick (talk) 01:11, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

You're correct. It takes the form of combining two sources to make a point which is controversial in the context. I don't mean to take sides with the FRC here. I just see that it is a blatant synthesis of two sources to make a point. There should be sources which make this synthesis for us. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 07:46, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Becritical that joining two sources to make an original point runs afoul of NOR. But the solution does not require deleting the whole sentence. It looks like the second clause was added here.[5] Deleting that material would be sufficient to fix the material. Will Beback talk 09:41, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

How about my suggestion - does this seem to be too SYNTHy? EdChem (talk) 09:51, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

That doesn't say anything about the FRC and looks very definitely like synthesis to me and should not be in the article. Why this burning need to stick something like that in? It's obvious thery're eejits anyway and that bit is in a section about criticisms of them. Dmcq (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

An interesting development, now they're arguing they have to stick in a document refuting a view by FRC even though it has no connection with FRC because doing so is required by WP:NPOV! I've asked them to raise their new point on WP:NPOVN. Dmcq (talk) 18:10, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

I dunno - I think we owe readers accurate information. We shouldn't leave them with a false impression simply because no source has specifically refuted that particular iteration of the falsehood. I respect WP:NOR, but the ultimate goal is not slavish adherence to policy, but rather accurate and informative content. MastCell ^Talk 18:36, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It really seems to me that merely eliminating the paragraphing there would be sufficient, since the next sentence would be a nice refutation. It would go on "In its Winter 2010 Intelligence Report, the Southern Poverty Law Center designated the FRC as a hate group,[27][5] saying that the organization "pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia." But if that's not enough, we could perhaps at that point go on to give the scientific data, because the source has brought up the issue of the falsity of the accusations. Since that little part of the article is now discussing the general falsity of the accusations, we should be able to use the scientific data, since at that particular point it is directly relevant to the subject and we have a source which links the two. Of course, we don't have a source saying that the reason the SPLC said that was because of the scientific data. EdChem's text is very nice if we can use it. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 20:19, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Hey, the source here links its statement "Sprigg have pushed false accusations linking gay men to pedophilia" to this page. They directly link the words "false accusations," and I'm betting without looking we hit the jackpot here :D .....Yes, we did. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 20:26, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Sorry I've raised the issue of NPOV at WP:NPOVN#NPOV being used to justify OR at Family Research Council, perhaps that would be better as they are using NPOV now to justify the insertion. Maybe I was wrong to do that, it does become messy when the grounds are changed. Perhaps better to use the NPOVN notice board now. Dmcq (talk) 20:26, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes that last link about 18 groups sounds like the jackpot okay, I'll copy it over to the talk page of the article. Dmcq (talk) 20:29, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Cold Start (military doctrine)

The article is really in bad condition. "Cold Start" due to the latest wikileaks is all over in the news. So I think is relevant but the majority of it was written by an unregistered user: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cold_Start_%28military_doctrine%29&action=historysubmit&diff=335282532&oldid=319488768 I removed some totally irrelevant content, but I'm not familiar with the subject.--Dia^ (talk) 14:49, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems to have been plagiarized from various sources such as [6] and [7], thus removed. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 02:41, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

List of alumni of Wesley College, Melbourne

This is a walled garden maintained by an alumn, who insists on listing hundreds of people without articles whom I suspect of being non-notable. Can I get some help here? --Orange Mike | Talk 01:55, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Made a start, taking out those without articles. BE——Critical_{__Talk} 02:50, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

five feminism books as secondary or primary

Some sources have been challenged as primary and not secondary. I think the following books are secondary, not primary. I'm not planning to use any of them in a study of its author personally, its scholarly method, its literary style, or the book itself apart from its content. Rather, I plan to use them for their content. Please tell me whether you consider any of them primary rather than secondary.

Gyn/Ecology, by Mary Daly, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Notes section, from p. [425] to p. 467, which has 733 endnotes, and the book also has a small number of footnotes. Its publisher is Beacon Press. The book, a study of ethics, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. She was tenured at Boston College and held two or three doctorates and is well known as a feminist theologian and as the author of several books in the field.
- - Citation: Daly, Mary, Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism (Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, pbk. [1st printing? printing of [19]90?] 1978 & 1990 (prob. all content except New Intergalactic Introduction 1978 & prob. New Intergalactic Introduction 1990) (ISBN 0-8070-1413-3)) (New Intergalactic Introduction is separate from Introduction: The Metapatriarchal Journey of Exorcism and Ecstasy).
Women and Madness, by Phyllis Chesler, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section; covering from the earliest times to 1970, the bibliography is from p. [371] to p. 374; I counted 53 sources for the earlier period. The book being a revision in 2005 of the 1972 edition, the earlier sources are relevant to the earlier edition. However, as I'm quoting the 2005 edition (because it's available), the later bibliographic sources have some relevance; later sources are listed on pp. 374–389 and I estimate over 240 sources are listed for the later period. The book has a Notes section, from p. [353] to p. 370, which has 188 endnotes. The 2005 edition's publisher is Palgrave Macmillan, partly a division of St. Martin's Press. The book, a study on psychology, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. According to the 2005 edition, cover IV, she is a professor emerita of psychology and women's studies. She is well known as a feminist author; she wrote several books in the field and this one is probably her best known.
- - Citation: Chesler, Phyllis, Women and Madness (N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, rev'd & updated ed., 1st ed. [1st printing?], pbk., Nov., 2005 (ISBN 1-4039-6897-7)) (original ed. prob. published 1972, per id., p. [ix] ("1972 Acknowledgments"); "[i]n 1970, ... I first began writing Women and Madness", per id., p. 34, & 1972 date confirmed at WorldCat, as accessed Sep. 21, 2010).
Scapegoat, by Andrea Dworkin, cites primary and secondary sources. It has a Bibliography section, from p. 372 to p. 419; I estimate the bibliography lists over 1,600 sources. It has a Notes section, from p. 339 to p. 371, which has 1,454 endnotes. Its publisher is The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster. The book, a comparative political study, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. She is well known as a feminist theoretician and as the author of approximately ten books.
- - Citation: Dworkin, Andrea, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women's Liberation (N.Y.: Free Press, [1st printing?] 2000 (Preface dated Jun., 1999, per id., p. xi) (ISBN 0-684-83612-2)).
Mothers and Amazons, by Helen Diner, is a book of history. She was not alive during most of the times on which she wrote, so she didn't participate in most of its events. According to the book, "[u]nfortunately, it was not possible to include exhaustive notes or a bibliography. The book and its price would have been expanded intolerably by an enumeration of all source materials, magazine articles, papyruses, and pamphlets from the diverse disciplines necessary to bring about this feminine history of culture. Nor did it prove possible to make room for the bibliography through an abbreviation of the text, for the contents are already condensed. But in the most important passages, quotations and sources have been included.", id., p. xiii (Author's Preface). The author, "for the 'mothers' part", credited Johann Jakob Bachofen and Robert Briffault, id., p. xiii & n. 2 (Author's Preface), and "for the 'Amazons' part" she credited "Ephoros, Pherecydes, Isocrates, Hellanicus, Cleidemus, Eusebius, Dionysius Scythobrachion, Herodotus, Diodorus, Plutarch, Pliny, Strabo, Pompeius Trogus, and many nameless gentlemen still older .... [N]ew sources are unnecessary ....", id., pp. xiv–xv (Author's Preface). According to Joseph Campbell, "[t]he authoress, a Viennese lady of society ..., convincingly displays ... an impressive learning", id., p. vi (Campbell, Joseph, Introduction (N.Y.: Aug., 1965)). The book's publisher in 1965 was Julian Press (N.Y.). The book was "[o]riginally published in German", id., dust jkt., rear flap (The Author); I don't have the German edition and am not fluent in that language. The book is at least one level removed from personal experience.
- - Citation: Diner, Helen, ed. & trans. John Philip Lundin, Mothers and Amazons: The First Feminine History of Culture (N.Y.: Julian Press, 1965) ("the German edition of her work ... appeared in the early 1930s" under the author's pseudonym Sir Galahad, per id., p. vi (Campbell, Joseph, Introduction (N.Y.: Aug., 1965)) (author "Viennese society woman ... authored several books under the pseudonym Sir Galahad", id., dust jacket, rear flap (The Author)) (this work trans. from German, per id., dust jacket, rear flap (The Author))).
Daring to Be Bad, by Alice Echols, which was only tentatively challenged as to secondariness, cites primary and secondary sources. It's based on interviews of "forty-two people", id., p. 391 (Appx. D: A Note on the Oral Interviews), and is an outgrowth of a dissertation, ibid. It has a Notes section, from p. [297] (substantively from p. 299) to p. 366, which has 1,344 endnotes. Its publisher is the University of Minnesota Press. The book, a history, is generally at least one level removed from personal experience. Its author was then a visiting assistant professor of history at the University of Arizona at Tucson.
- - Citation: Echols, Alice, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America 1967–1975 (Minneapolis, Minn.: Univ. of Minnesota Press (American Culture ser.), 1989 (ISBN 0-8166-1787-2)).

You may not have the books handy, so you may need to judge them contingently, and that's fine. I've borrowed them from libraries and will be returning them soon, so, if you want to know more, please ask soon, while I still have them. It can take months to get them again.

None of them are in the noticeboard archives, when searched by short title, author name by given name first, or author name by family name first.

Does anyone consider any of the books primary when used for their content? None of the other issues raised are being presented here, as they're being addressed in other ways.

Thank you very much. Nick Levinson (talk) 04:00, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not sure by what you mean by "use them for their content". Sources can be either primary or secondary depending on the context. Here's an example. The BBC would be a good source for an article on a military attack. But in an article about accusations of bias against the BBC, the same BBC report would be a primary source. This is an important distinction to make in regard to feminism, which is a political viewpoint. If you want to distinguish between different approaches in different currents of feminism, there is an academic literature on that, and that literature is what you should use. You can also provide bibliographic details of the landmark works in those currents, although they are primary sources. Itsmejudith (talk) 11:57, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin are both radical feminists, some of whose views may well be considered WP:FRINGE, but that's arguable. They are certainly polemoical writers whose views shouls always be attributed to them, not presented as fact. Of course this all depends on how you intend to use the sources. You are not clear about that. Paul B (talk) 16:26, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I've scanned the disputed content as it appeared in the article and the manner in which the references were used was problematic. They were used in the article as direct examples of various forms and figures in feminist socio/political "superiority" advocacy rather than as sources for a secondary, scholarly analysis of it. So in that sense, the section as drafted was mostly a synthesis of the p.o.v.'s of feminist "superiority" advocates--and the legitimacy of the synthesis was challenged. In other words, the labeling the work of writers like Joreen, Mary Daly, etc., as actually even promoting a system of superiority for women was challenged. To do this properly you need secondary sources analyzing Joreen, Mary Daly, et al. For example, if there are scholars such as Riane Eisler or Helen Diner writing about the size, influence, and other characteristics of "feminist superiority" advocacy, it is their analysis of its advocates that should be relied upon rather than extensive quotations and analysis from texts by Joreen, Mary Daly etc. Those texts were largely used as primary sources. Professor marginalia (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to keep this focused on whether the five books are primary or secondary, mainly whether any are primary. I'm addressing the other points elsewhere.

WP:PSTS doesn't say that all sources on feminism or politics are primary and only nonfeminist or nonpolitical sources can be secondary. Almost every academic book (maybe every academic book) has inherent views, such as that either evolution or creationism is a valid theory. It would be a problem to require that all sources on feminism must be by nonfeminists, just as we should not require that all sources on any topic be by people with little background in it. As I understand WP:PSTS, political feminist books can qualify as secondary. I'm asking about whether these books above, whether feminist or not, are secondary.

Sources being secondary or primary according to the context of their use in Wikipedia was just included in a recent amendment to WP:PSTS. I'm not using the sources for Wikipedia articles about their authors, literary styles, or scholarly methods or the books as physical products, but for their content.

All are fully attributed.

The new draft has not been challenged on any ground, to my knowledge. If a challenge to the draft has appeared elsewhere, please point to it, because I need to read it.

Joreen's work is treated as primary, so it isn't relevant here. The same is true of several other sources not discussed here. Primary sources can be used, just with more care; for example, they can be quoted. And other secondary sources are included, such as Linda Zerilli's statement of matriarchies as an object of second-wave feminism. If these sources above are secondary, the resulting article could be more readable without being considered synthesis. That's why I'd like to know if anyone considers any of these five in particular to be primary and, if so, on what grounds.

I still have the books handy before I have to return them and, if anyone has questions about what's in them, I can provide more information. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) (Corrected (deleting redundant passage) and clarified: 00:04, 28 November 2010 (UTC))

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your comment just above, but it sounds like the core issue here is being missed, which is that in terms of way the PSTS policy applies on wikipedia, sources are referred to as primary, secondary or tertiary based in large part on how they are to be used. Any source can be a primary or a secondary--it depends on the nature of the claims the editor is making and attributing to the source. I've participated and/or weighed in on numerous WP:OR disputes and proposed changes to the policy as far back as 2007--this is how the policy was meant to apply for at least that long, even though various revisions have been proposed along the way to more clearly explain it. It isn't the nature of the source itself, but the manner in which it is used that the policy is concerned with. So I don't want to get too technical here, but for example take the sentence, "Scholars, such as Riane Eisler and Helen Diner (Bertha Diener), reported evidence of historical, protohistorical, or prehistorical matriarchies." Along those lines you want something like, "Scholars such as X and Y identify feminists such as Joreen and Mary Daly as major influences recommending alternative power structures granting superiority to women." You want third party scholars X and Y who describe the major theoreticians and activists, their positions and their influence and scope. Professor marginalia (talk) 00:54, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

WP:PSTS has been classifying a source as primary or secondary according to its content, not according to how it is used, until in the last few weeks when I added a use-based test to the policy page after discussion. I had added it earlier but it was deleted as lacking consensus (but it's in now). Since you've been applying a use-based test for years, perhaps it used to be in WP:PSTS and disappeared before I saw it, but, if so, presumably that disappearance reflected a consensus, too. If it is somewhere in WP other than WP:PSTS, I hope someone cites its location, since I want to read it. And if it is elsewhere it should be copied to the more-visible location.

Secondary sources include more than scholarly restatements; they include newspapers, thus the Guardian's interview of Andrea Dworkin in which the interviewer went into depth on her concept of Womenland, expanding on her book, counts as secondary. But her book itself was challenged in WP as primary, and, as far as I can see in WP:PSTS, it's secondary and not primary. Linda Zerilli's is also secondary and, while she doesn't quote the same sources I did, she makes a more overarching statement about the second wave of feminism and matriarchy.

My concern is that the standard apparently being applied is a test of the conclusion: the conclusion found is turning the book into a primary source. If so, that's a misapplication of WP:PSTS, and problematic besides, because it justifies an endless chain—source A is not reportable until B says so, but B is declared primary because it says so and that means we need to find C, but C is declared primary because it says so and that means we need to find D, and ultimately nothing is good enough to stop passing the buck.

A scholar may arrive at a conclusion by several intellectually legitimate routes, and it is not necessary that they arrive by starting with another source who already had a similar conclusion, or the world would have made much slower progress than it has. I don't think Andrea Dworkin came to her position by finding another who had, but did it by analyzing and evaluating other sources and developing her own conclusions, which is no different than someone studying physiology and climatology and concluding that wearing a coat outdoors in the Arctic is a good idea even if they don't find anyone else who wrote that. Thus, I think that Jill Johnston's book and Joreen's essay are primary but Andrea Dworkin's and Mary Daly's books are secondary, not because the latter quote the former but because the latter analyze, evaluate, cite, and depend on a variety of primary and secondary sources while the former are more personally involved or don't cite sources.

Your proposed sentence would be appropriate as to Joreen's work, which is treated as primary because of its composition, but to require it for Mary Daly's, whose work is evaluative of other sources, would justify that endless chain of citations. That's why I asked if Mary Daly's Gyn/Ecology) is considered primary. To classify it, the book's conclusions are largely irrelevant.

And, Helen Diner's work on matriarchies, which is secondary, is cited by Jill Johnston, whose book is primary, and Linda Zerilli's secondary source does much the same for the feminists of circa the 1970s. So it appears that there's already enough material by any WP analysis to support a superiority section in an article.

And there seems no objection to citing, say, Mary Wollstonecraft and Betty Friedan for other fulcrums of feminism, even though they originated the key parts of what they said, in that they didn't refer to other feminists who preceded them with similar declarations. We don't wait for a scholar who says Betty Friedan says such-and-such; we find Betty's books and quote, paraphrase, or summarize them directly, and should, largely because of the impact of one of her books. And Mary Daly probably had stronger academic credentials than Betty Friedan did. Other scholars may have valuable insights to add to the discourse, in which case they can be important additions to WP, but they aren't required before we can report the sources who thought up interesting conclusions and did so not from personal involvement alone but from reliance on primary and secondary sources making their resulting work secondary.

The challenges to the five above seem to be challenges to their conclusions, not to their content from which their conclusions arose. That's why I'm asking about these five and why any of them should be considered primary, if there's a reason other than their conclusions. Nick Levinson (talk) 10:14, 28 November 2010 (UTC) (Corrected a spurious paragraph break: 10:36, 28 November 2010 (UTC))

They should all be considered primary in writing an overview of ideas about matriarchy, female superiority etc. The "new draft" you linked to is essay-like and original synthesis. An example of a suitable source to write about feminist ideas would be Sarah Gamble, The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Post-Feminism. Itsmejudith (talk) 16:51, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree, treat them as primary. However, they are excellent examples of where primary sources (when properly attributed) can be highly appropriate for use in articles. It is fine to discuss what these sources say... just don't use them to support something they don't actually say. Blueboar (talk) 18:00, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Also, be extremely careful not to cherry-pick points. The subject of Chesler's book, for example, is, as the title says, Women and Madness. That should be made clear if points subsidiary to her main focus are discussed. Itsmejudith (talk) 19:18, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the advice.

Is there anything the sources don't actually say that's in the draft? There's nothing like that, to my knowledge.

Parts could possibly be considered synthesis if all the sources are primary, but it's not synthesis if some are secondary, because editors can summarize and paraphrase. That's why whether they're primary or secondary matters, and for that the books' conclusions shouldn't matter, but essentially whether the authors are writing about their personal experience or drawing on other sources.

None of it is original (I assume you meant like OR), since I grounded it in the sources.

Can you give an example of how I wrote essay-style? Since the section is mostly quotes, maybe I'm missing something that gives that impression, and I'd like to know. I did try to organize the section for better readability, but I didn't substitute for sourcing or try to persuade readers one way or the other (other than to show that the superiority fulcrum exists).

I didn't cherry-pick—I looked for contradictions of what I quoted from any of the authors, and there weren't any—but also I didn't summarize any entire book, which would be appropriate for an article about the book, rather than a subject the book covers along with others, and in a feminism article would have been coatracking. Phyllis Chesler was not arguing that women diagnosed as mentally ill or delusional were likelier to identify with Amazonian power; rather, she was writing that it is generally women who are qualified to do what she was discussing. I cited the title of her book, but didn't summarize her other issues. It is not an antifeminist book, which would have contradicted her quoted content. As far as I can see under Wikipedia's standards, Women and Madness is secondary.

I'm guessing you meant The Routledge Critical Dictionary of Feminism and Postfeminism (not Companion). It's by the editor you named, and a library has it circulating. Dictionaries are generally tertiary and not preferred, but if it has good content, I can add it to other sources.

I'm concerned that we're using sources' conclusions to determine primariness, rather than relying on authors' processes, e.g., research and reasoning. That still needs addressing, for consistency across WP.

Nick Levinson (talk) 02:49, 29 November 2010 (UTC) (Corrected two words ("they're" to "some are" and "Reference" to "Companion"): 03:01, 29 November 2010 (UTC))

The Routledge book is tertiary. It's an interesting sketch and slant, but the articles and the alphabetical entries largely summarize secondary and primary sources by other authors. It is a restatement. While the editor Sarah Gamble's credentials are given, none of the contributors' credentials are stated. No footnotes or endnotes were found. Where essays and entries cite books, page numbers are not cited. The Select Bibliography lists only 68 works by 62 authors/editors. While WP can use tertiary sources, secondary sources are preferred. Thank you, though, for suggesting it. I went though all of it to try to supplement secondary sources, although I didn't find anything worthy of use.

Citation: Gamble, Sarah, ed., The Routledge Critical Dictionary of Feminism and Postfeminism (N.Y.: Routledge (Routledge Critical Dict. ser.), pbk. 2000 (ISBN 0-415-92518-5) (original 1999) © 1999) (ed. sr. lecturer Eng. studies, Univ. of Sunderland, U.K., per id., cover IV).

Thanks again. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Your opinion please...

My understanding of wikipolicy is that primary documents must be used with care, but they are not prohibited.

It is my understanding that summarizing a primary document is not automatically a lapse from our policy on original research.

This edit removed a passage from an article on an Afghanistan political group. As I wrote on the talk page, I think the meaning of the testimony I paraphrased was clear enough that it did not require any original research to draft that paraphrase.

I'd be grateful for others' opinions, was my paaraphrase really a lapse from OR? Geo Swan (talk) 03:48, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

Here is another instance where the contributor who excised the passage above has excised a passage that carefully summarized a primary source, claiming that summary was original research. Geo Swan (talk) 02:29, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Both of those were removed appropriately, in my opinion. You were introducing significant information about living persons into articles using those sources, whereas primary sources should be used cautiously in a complementary fashion. In addition, the type of source you used is unacceptable under our biographies of living persons policy. ("Do not use trial transcripts and other court records, or other public documents, to support assertions about a living person.") As a "BLP" violation, it should be removed from the article. Vassyana (talk) 06:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

KZZQ

The whole section of the December incident on KZZQ is original research. I could not find any other sources other than message boards and Facebook that say that the event happened, and is relevant or real to begin with. Many others say the event was a stunt, but regardless, there are very few reliable sources for that part. Perhaps just a small message concerning a format flip would suffice, but the section smells of OR. --milonica (talk) 18:46, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

There were BLP concerns in the section. I removed some contentious information that was unsourced. There are no sources in the article for any of it. If the only sources are message boards and facebook, the information does not belong because those are not reliable sources. ~~ GB fan ~~ 19:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

As an editor on Wikipedia since 2006, that is what I thought as well. Most of the information is from their own page, (not a 3rd party) and Facebook. None of the local papers in Salt Lake City covered the incident and it wasn't reported elsewhere either (TV etc.). I think the whole section needs to go. I am interested as to what others think, but as it stands, in my eyes, its blatant OR. --milonica (talk) 19:20, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome

Can we have some eyes on this please? The metrodome collapsed this morning and there is a good deal of awful quality editing, especially a lot of OR, occurring on the article. Thanks. Magog the Ogre (talk) 16:27, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems like the edits are happening at a reasonable pace and being handled without issue over the past day or so. Is there any particular problem to bear in mind or do you just prefer to keep a few eyes on it? Vassyana (talk) 05:26, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Eyes; it's all good now though. Magog the Ogre (talk) 15:14, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Counting Google Hits to determine "Most Used Word"

There was a prior discussion somewhat related to this (link: [8]).

The situation is this: Currently, there is a dispute going on in regards to the title of an article. The article's title is currently under consideration for a change, based on that it breaks the rules of WP:NPOV. However, the people supporting the current title use the claim that it adjusts to WP:TITLE because the word is the "most used word" or most common word in the language. They use as a source for this claim the number of hits in Google search comparing both title candidates. Based on the google hit results (in which the current title gets more "hits") they claim the current title is the "most used" and therefore adjusts to WP:TITLE despite it breaks WP:NPOV.

Hopefully the above situation didn't confuse you, but that's just one part of the bigger problem. Back to the point, I challenge this claim by the users as original research, because:

Based on the past discussion in regards to "Google hits", it is not a "reliable" source.
"Google is particularly not useful for determining the popularity of terms since Google goes to great efforts to find suitable results rather than just a list of all pages mentioning a term" [9].
Based on the number of hits, they are coming to the conclusion that it is the "most used" term.

I would like to know if you agree that using google hits to determine popularity ("most used") is original research. If not, could you please explain why? If yes, also please provide your input as it might help solve the situation.Best regards.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 02:23, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not original research, but it's also not a good way to determine an article title's name. In fact, WP:Article naming says this explicitly. What we want to determine, generally, is which name is more often used in sources of encyclopedic quality; that is, highly reliable news sources, academic journals, other encyclopedias, university textbooks, and scholarly books printed by reliable publishers. Thus, Google Scholar and Google News (with carefully crafted searches) do provide somewhat decent results. The Article naming policy itself discusses how we have to balance out WP:NPOV with other issues (like the need to have only one name, the need for the name in English, etc.). Now, this doesn't always solve the problem (for historical examples, look at the archives for Liancourt Rocks or Sea of Japan, for a current problem, look at Senkaku Islands) for a variety of reasons, but it's the best we can do. Finally, though, note that the policy does say that, since articles do need to have a single title, and it is better for the article title to be stable, that if there is really no other way, google hits can be used as evidence. Is there a specific article or title that you can point us to so that we can give a more specific opinion? Qwyrxian (talk) 03:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

This may or may not be an original research problem. Regardless, using Google results is almost always a terrible idea for many reasons. Can you point us to the dispute in question? Vassyana (talk) 05:28, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. The main purpose for this question comes for the Bicycle Kick article in Spanish. I read both of the WP's title policies (Spanish and English), and they're the same (I think the Spanish WP simply copy-pasted the English WP); and the original research policies are also the same in both Wikipedia projects. I preffer to come here since I feel more comfortable writing/reading in English. The dispute is in regards to whether the term "chilena" should remain as the title or if the more neutral term "tijera" should be used. They haven't used Google Scholar or Google News, they simply used the regular Google search engine.

We have both provided reliable sources for both terms, but they are now using the "most used" as their argument, and used the Google hits as the basis for their claim. However, I noticed that several articles in the Google search repeated themselves or were copies of other articles (including Wikipedia), and so I challenged the reliability of the search engine as a source. The way I saw it, they were using non-reliable evidence to create their personal conclusion (original research).

Based on your answers, I see that you also agree that using Google results is a terrible option (almost like a "last card" option). Yet, I'm still not sure if they are breaking original research or if their use of regular Google hits is valid or not. Nonetheless, I do appreciate the examples of the Senkaku and Liancourt. I hope this helps out in finding a solution to the problem. Best regards, and thanks again.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 06:54, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Please note that even though the wording of a policy may be the same between two language versions of Wikipedia, that does not mean the policy is interpreted in the same way. We can only tell you how we interpret the policy here on the English version of Wikipedia.

Now, to the issue of Google searches... Rather than being a "last card" option to determine whether one usage is more common than another, a count of Google hits should be seen as being a preliminary indication. If one usage gets significantly more hits on Google than another, then it is probably safe to assume that it is the more common of the two... However, there may be other indications that counter that assumption. So... while a count of Google search hits is a factor to consider when determining commonality... but it is by no means the only factor. Determining the most common name or usage for something really comes down to consensus... and determining consensus is always a somewhat messy process. Blueboar (talk) 15:03, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I understand what you state, but it still makes little sense as to how Wikipedia can rely on unreliable material. Consensus is the key, for sure, but using Google hits as "evidence" for an argument seems to be completely beside the point. How accurate can the assumption of the search results be if a term such as "chilena" has several other meanings ("Chilena" means not only a bicycle kick, but also a woman that comes from Chile). Additionally, I ran a Yahoo! search, and (contrary to the Google search) the term "Tijera" (I search for "Tijera futbol") ended up getting the most hits while "Chilena" got far less. I did a similar search in Ask.com, and both terms got 20 pages of results. Next, I ran another search in AltaVista, and once again "Tijera" got more hits than "chilena". Essentially, the point is, isn't all of this "search engine hits" matter simply unreliable? Different search engines provide different results, and in the end it all amounts to plain original research. I mean, can I assume that Benito Mussolini (with 1,050,000 hits on Google) is a less popular name than Adolf Hitler (with 6,720,000); and should I be able to present that assumption to Wikipedia? I know that this last question is silly, but that's just how I see the Google hits matter. Best regards.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 16:11, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Ah... The fact that a word may have multiple meanings certainly does impact the results... and must be accounted for when setting up the Google search. It means we need to narrow the search parameters so only get appropriate hits. For example, searching "Chilena + Bicycle" (or the appropriate Spanish equivalents) instead of just "Chilena". (Your Mussolini vs Hitler example is off base, since these are not two terms for the same thing.) Blueboar (talk) 19:04, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Blueboar. They tried doing something along those lines by using (site:es.fifa.com "de chilena"). "Chilena" got 76 hits ([10]), and the word "de" was used in order to prevent confusion with the denonym of people from Chile. However, when I ran a similar search for Tijera, I got 76 hits as well ([11]). In this case, what should be done now? This matter is really confusing me.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 01:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It may be that the two terms are relatively equal in usage... in which case you need to find other ways to reach a consensus as to which is the "best" title. Basically, the only advice we can give you is to go back to the Spanish Wikipedia and discuss the matter. I assume that they have something that is the equivalent of our RfC / request for page move system... use it to get multiple editors involved in the discussion (especially some editors who have not already stated an opinion)... present your thoughts and concerns as best you can, but don't insist on any given outcome. If the Spanish Wikipedia is like this one, Consensus is the ultimate determiner. We have to accept that sometimes consensus goes against what we think is right. There are several articles here on the English Wikipedia that I think have the "wrong" title... but I accept that my view is in the minority. Blueboar (talk) 02:05, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Words of wisdom Blueboar ("We have to accept that sometimes consensus goes against what we think is right"). I will definately keep them in mind, and thank you for the kind help.--MarshalN20 | ^Talk 02:48, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:OR/Synthesis at Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard)

The article Jewish control of the media was changed to Jewish control of the media (Antisemitic canard) and without any prior discussion. This happened after I pointed out that WP:RS use myth and conspiracy theory much more frequently than canard. I also pointed that WP:RS definitions show canard means lie and myth/conspiracy theory are not necessarily a lie, but misintepretation, misconception, or whatever, as even the WP:RS sometimes make clear. (FYI. I have opined that Accusation of Jewish control of media probably would be most NPOV title allowing all accusations to be described properly, without giving impression the article was about Jewish control of the media.)

WP:OR's first paragraph clearly applies, i.e.: The term "original research" refers to material—such as facts, allegations, ideas, and stories—not already published by reliable sources. It also refers to any analysis or synthesis of published material to advance a position not advanced by the sources. But despite requests, none has come up with WP:RS that say canard/lie equals myth/conspiracy theory.

Worse, this WP:OR/Synthesis has major BLP implications since it is supporting the article's current modus operandi of labeling propagators of canards (i.e., liars and fabricators) people who WP:RS do not describe as such. I've just been waiting for article title to be settled before do so. Maybe I should not wait.

Please feel free to add comments to this WP:Original Research reminder section. Thanks for your help. CarolMooreDC (talk) 21:08, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

I realize this is a topic where angels fear to tread, but it would be nice to get an NPOV opinion or two. ;-) In short, can editors just claim words with less negative meanings are just as bad as words with highly negative meanings, even despite WP:RS, cause it fits their POV? Thanks. (Of course, the solution is to just make sure every one of the unending examples identifies what the WP:RS said it was and then at least the BLP issue will be quasi-resolved.) CarolMooreDC (talk) 12:32, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

See Talk:Jewish_control_of_the_media_(Antisemitic_canard)#Results_of_survey to note that that generally people didn't particularly like this title, just had problems with old one, so the topic is still under discussion elsewheres. CarolMooreDC (talk) 04:27, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think you are getting replies because this is not really an NOR issue. I think 'myth' is better than 'canard', but both are as much or as little OR as each other. Paul B (talk) 10:22, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The title is less NOR issue but the constant use of canard in the article itself, instead of description used by various sources is (as well as POV). But I'm dealing with that with Not Verified tags and then will change to whatever phrase the source uses. Plus most antagonistic editor left, and remaining ones are more likely to go along with policy, if you repeat it enough :-) CarolMooreDC (talk) 20:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Text source_integrity issue

Re Lead sentence: Jewish control of the media is an antisemitic myth or canard alleging that Jews utilize control of mass media to promote Jewish interests. It is often regarded as a conspiracy theory and linked to the antisemitic myth of Jewish control of global politics and financial systems.[1][2][3][4]
On this articles talk page I have a whole section criticizing the first sentence on Text-source_integrity grounds, quoting that policy: When using inline citations, it is important to maintain text-source integrity. The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to check that the material is sourced; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed. The distance between material and its source is a matter of editorial judgment, but adding text without placing its source clearly can lead to allegations of original research, violations of the sourcing policy, and even plagiarism.
But twice they reverted my attempts to put references in following word or concept where they belong, instead sticking them all at the end, giving the false impression that all the sources have this exact view point when in fact each may have only portions of it, and in the references three of the four sources only define a word used. This seems to me to be editors trying to promote their own synthesized view without proper sourcing. I don't know if I'm nitpicking at this point or it's worth another chance to get it right and be reverted. Is it worth even putting the original research tag on? I guess the solution is to just rewrite the sentence/definition to include more concepts (as they've tried to do without proper sourcing), but do it according to those and other WP:RS sources with properly placed cites and then if they revert it to a more WP:OR version really throw a fit. Soon. Thoughts? CarolMooreDC (talk) 14:31, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Using a recent 2009 study is OR?

A recent 2009 study was deleted from Chiropractic#Treatment techniques. See Talk:Chiropractic#New Section: Causes of Adverse Effects from Chiropractic Techniques for the discussion.

This specific proposal is to restore the text. "A 2009 study to assess the prevalence of musculoskeletal injuries sustained by chiropractic students receiving and/or administering manipulation while attending a chiropractic college found the prevalence of injuries sustained was 31%, 44% of which was exacerbations of preexisting injuries. Injuries from receiving manipulation were most prevalent in the neck/shoulder at 65%, while hand/wrist injuries were most common when administering manipulations at 45%. Diversified, Gonstead, and upper cervical manipulations methods were considered to be the most related to injuries.^[4]"[12]

An editor claims it is bordering on OR to use this decent study. The text is sourced in accodance with V policy. There are no other sources avaliable like this one. The source is too new for a review of the study. QuackGuru (talk) 04:16, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

This primary issue with the study is WP:MEDRS and WP:WEIGHT not WP:OR. Please a) try to accurately characterize the claims of people who disagree with you; and b) notify them of these discussions either personally or on the article talk page, as you have been asked before. Ocaasi (talk) 15:49, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem isn't WP:OR, and so this doesn't belong on this noticeboard. The problem is with weight and medrs and consensus. ~~Please don't mischaracterize other editor's positions, that is tendentious editing~~[Edit:another editor did in fact say it bordered on OR].DigitalC (talk) 02:04, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Possible original synthesis in Virginia Tech Massacre

Editor Gekritzl is trying to add content to the lead that states that Seung-Hui Cho's mother sought an exorcism for him prior to the massacre. He has done so in the following revisions: [13],[14],[15],[16] and [17].

His sources are: an AP report about Cho's mom seeking help from the church and statements from the ministers, a Washington Post article about a Korean girl who may have died during an exorcism, a The Seattle Times article about the same case of the dead Korean teenage girl, and a Washington Post report about mental illness in immigrants. None of this sources specifically state that Cho's mother or the ministers were looking for an exorcism for Cho. The AP source (which is the principal one to justify the content) states that his mother looked for "help" in "several congregations", that a minister said that he thought Cho need "spiritual power" to help him, and that it was a "demonic power that was afflicting him". The Washington Post article repeats almost verbatim the statements of the AP source, and also states that "Exorcisms have a long history in Korean theology". The Seattle Post article is irrelevant to the subject of the article because it doesn't mention anything about Cho or the Virginia Tech Massacre; the article is about the death of a Korean teenage girl during a religious ritual similar to exorcism. The fourth source, the Washington Post report, is about the difficulties that immigrants, specially Koreans, find in procuring mental health attention and the alternatives they use instead. The report does mention Cho as a case of the problematic it discusses, and also repeats the assertions previously mentioned in the AP source. In another section of the same report, it is stated that "a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said that some [Korean] clergy may prescribe exorcism". Those are the facts and the statements that the given sources provide. As clear as it may be that the minister sought by Cho's mother may have been considering an exorcism, it is the synthesis of the sources (specifically the AP note and the Washington Post sources) that is used to infer that. Cho's mother looked for help from ministers who where very likely to prescribe an exorcism. Yes, that can be inferred from the sources and may not be away from the truth, but unfortunately it constitutes original research.

I'm writing in this noticeboard because the editor has been explained about this situation in his talk page, but still insists on adding the original research. Also, another editors have expressed concerns both about it being well sourced and also about it being original research. So I'm opening this thread to seek the opinion of a broader audience an to let everyone concentrate their arguments in a single point, hoping to reach consensus. Thank you all and please leave your opinions, as they will be much appreciated.--Legion fi (talk) 06:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

It would have been more appropriate to discuss this matter in the article's Talk page before bringing it here.

The AP article alone ("the members and pastor at One Mind Church in Woodbridge were going to help get rid of what the pastor called a 'demonic power.'") is sufficient to include material along those lines. I don't think it's a stretch to label that an exorcism but I can understand someone objecting to that label since it's not specifically mentioned in the AP article and some people may believe it to be specific to the ritual performed by the Catholic church which is not the case here.

I agree that the sources that don't specifically address Cho shouldn't be included. Including them almost certainly is a result of synthesis. ElKevbo (talk) 11:58, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Not a real strong opinion either way, except for not including terms that aren't in the sources (Exorcism). Arkon (talk) 13:21, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Off-topic sources should not be used. Stick close to the sources. Those are both always good principles. Additional caution should be used when discussing living persons. Vassyana (talk) 06:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Please see the task page for this, users have been adding more refs and opinions. Geĸrίtzl (talk) 21:59, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Using the bulk of those sources is original research. They do not discuss the topic at hand. Adding more sources is just creating a bigger case of original synthesis. At best, you can report that Sam Harris (author) claims that Cho's mother took him church to church seeking out an exorcism. Making broader assertions and including unrelated sources is certainly original research. Also, unless a large number of other experts and prominent authors agree with Dr. Harris, it should be a single sentence passing mention in the body of the article and left out of the lede. Harris is certainly a prominent figure and commentary on such a situation is well within his public profile. However, anything more than the single sentence attributed view would be excessive weight based on the body of reliable sources. Vassyana (talk) 04:21, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I am sorry but this conclusion is 100% wrong. As another WP editor pointed out: From the WP page on "No Original Research" -- Despite the need to attribute content to reliable sources, you must not plagiarize them. Articles should be written in your own words while substantially retaining the meaning of the source material. Seeking spiritual help to rid Cho of "demons" is the very definition of exorcism, and WP No OR encourages "your own words." The following sources disagree with you: WP:No OR, Webster's (definition of Exorcism) and the Catholic Enyclopedia (definition of Exorcism). Is using your own words "Original Research"? That's what this conclusion seems to say. Regardless of whether Dr. Harris said it or not, WEBTER'S and CE say it: attempting to get rid of demons is exorcism. Using synonyms is NOT OR. Geĸrίtzl (talk) 21:28, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

The discussion has deviated a little. Now we are talking about synonyms, reliability of sources and undue weight. The discussion was a about the synthesis of sources to advance a point. I think that Gekritzl didn't want to push the synthesis, but the addition of unrelated and vague sources seemed so. Also ElKevbo has stated that he also agrees that unrelated material shouldn't be used. Right now, I think the discussion is more appropriate at the article's talk page, where editors ElKevbo, Gekritzl and MithrasPriest have followed the discussion. Vassyana, I really thank you for your opinions and guidance, as they have served to reveal other issues and to move us away from the original synthesis, so please come by the talk page to comment further. Thank you all --Legion fi (talk) 10:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Rihanna's What My Name

Some editors at What's My Name? (Rihanna song) are determined to cite this blog article as a source in tagging the song as part of the Ska genre. The only mention of the word ska comes in the phrase "ska-infused beats". As I have pointed out in the talk page, this is not the same thing as saying "ska song". It is just one solitary element of the song that the blogger is describing as infused with ska. Not the entire song. The blogger does not even say that the entire beat is ska otherwise the word "infused" would have been used in the phrase, let alone the entire song. To conflate "ska-infused beats" as "ska song" would be, in my view, original research. Likewise, the same group of editors are determined to cite this article as a source in tagging the song as part of the Electronica genre. The article does not even use the word electronica. Instead, it simply says that the song as an "electronic edge" (notice the absence of the "a" at the end of electronic). There are many music that uses or feature an electronic edge without falling into the electronica genre - industrial music, for instance. Or really, just about any modern pop music using synthesizers. To conflate "electronic edge" with "electronica song" is, again in my view, original research. I'm a fan of Rihanna myself but I think this is clearly a case of overzealous fans trying to credit the song as more genre-encompassing than it is. Considering how popular this #1 hit is, you would expect that there would be a lot more sources out there explicitly and directly describing the song as Ska or Electronica if it is so - without any need for any editor to misinterpret one thing for another thing. I would appreciate it if someone could help out. Thanks. --175.144.72.233 (talk) 08:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually the user above has failed to notice that the genres have been changed to R&B, Electronic, and Ska based on the following sources:

R&B, Electronic - "Nick Levine of Digital Spy said It's also a pretty tasty slice of Stargate-produced midtempo electro-R&B" Digital Spy.
Ska - "Sara D Anderson of AOL Radio Blog said Over strobing, ska-infused beats" AOL Radio Blog.
Electronic - "David Griffiths of 4Music said the track still has an electronic edge" 4Music.

The suggestion that there is WP:OR going on its ridiculous. Its clearly defined that the song is predominantly R&B and Electronic (supported by Digital Spy and 4Music) and then has a beat which is mixed (a.k.a infused/soaked in/poured with) Ska (supported by AOL Radio Blog). The assertion that any of these sources are improper or inappropriate is ridiculous. Our IP friend appears to be suggesting that AOL RADIO is not notable or reliable. Furthermore the IP's use of comments such as "There are many music that uses or feature an electronic edge without falling into the electronica genre - industrial music, for instance. Or really, just about any modern pop music using synthesizers." purely constitute WP:OR as it is completely opinion-based and does nothing to discredit what are already reliable sources. The comment "Considering how popular this #1 hit is, you would expect that there would be a lot more sources out there explicitly and directly describing the song as Ska or Electronica if it is s" is also pure original research. And it is not WP:Good faith to call other editors overzealous fans. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 18:33, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

It is also not good faith to call other editors tendentious either or "refusing to get the point", especially since that other editor - myself - had only made a single post to the talk page beforehand. Nor is it good faith to say that I have failed to notice something when my entire post above would indicate, on the contrary, that I have noticed it. In fact, it would appear that you are the one who is "refusing to get the point" as you seem determined to ignore everything that I have written in favor of repeating your own points over and over again. If you were to actually read what I have written above and in the talk page of the article, you would realise that I have indeed noticed that the genre tagging is based on those sources and that I am in fact disputing your usage of those very sources. I don't think you quite understand what original research means. My comments on this or other talk page do not require a source. Your additions on an article do. Right now, your sources are weak. I'm not the first editor to notice this. Other editors have commented on this issue before me. You could avoid all this drama if you could just find some other source that unequivocally, explicitly and directly describes Rihanna's song as Ska & Electronica. But you can't. Instead, you have to stretch and twist the meaning of words to fit what you want. Therein lies the problem. --175.144.72.233 (talk) 18:50, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

To suggest I'm twisting words is again ridiculous and of bad faith. It is tendentious to remove sources from the article and then make unsupported comments on the talk page without showing evidence for your point of view. Lets correct a few things first of all I accepted that the song should not be classified as Electronica as this is a distortion of the sources. However the source does call it electro which is definitively electronic music - calling it electropop would be WP:OR as it is unsourced. Me saying that one of the song's genres is Ska because it has ska-infused beats is not original research. The issue therein lies with the definition of infused. If you look at The Oxford Dictionary it even says the definitions of infuse as: "to fill, to pervade (be present and apparent throughout), to soak". Thus Ska-infused beats means ska-filled beats, ska-pervaded beats or ska-soaked beats. Either way the three definitions show that one element of the song - its beats - are of ska in nature. And thus it is not WP:OR to call the song Ska. Arguing that the charts of a song determine its genre are also incorrected. That is why "Poker Face" by lady Gaga charted on some R&B charts around the world even though its quite clearly not an R&B song no review/source mentions R&B. Billboard doesn't have charts for every genre. There is no Ska or Ragga chart for example. This argument is getting quite ridiculous. You're now arguing tooth and nail that the song isn't Ska even though it clearly says that the song's beats filled/soaked/pervaded in ska. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 19:39, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Commodity Fetishism

Not an edit, but discussion, here. It starts out as a debate about content, but by the last few exchanges I now think this is about an editor who wishes to use WP to "publish" his own views, which as I understand it are an argument against, or correction, of two notable marxists, Louis Althusser and perry Anderson. Note: I do not think these guys' interpretations of Marxism are "the truth;" they are views of Marx and his ideas. But there is another editor who seems to think they are wrong and that he (the other editor) knows the truth and will use this article to spread it. I have tried explaining my concerns to him but ineffectively and would appreciate fresh eyes (and voices). Slrubenstein | Talk 10:23, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Non-lethal weapons

Here an editor is claiming that Less-lethal and non-lethal weapons are different things. Marcus Qwertyus 03:56, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that. Could you please be more specific as to what you see as the problem in that conversation? --Nuujinn (talk) 18:51, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I was purposely trying to make a neutral statement in compliance with WP:Canvass. The problem is that Timeshifter thinks that since many non-lethal weapons kill, less-lethal weapons must be something different. Marcus Qwertyus 19:22, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Seems to me that many of the sources presented in that argument are primary sources. I would take a look at the best secondary sources and see how the terms are used there. If the delta between those secondary sources and the primary source is wide, a section coverage usage of the terms might be appropriate, especially if 1-2 of the secondary source mentions that usage varies. But we are not supposed to rely on primary sources, and the frame of the article should be built of secondary sources. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject World's Oldest People

I find this assertion by an expert about the way to treat WP:RS and WP:V issues startling. I'd appreciate the views of people who've dealt with experts on WP more than I have. I'll alert the editor who makes the assertion to this thread. David in DC (talk) 19:53, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

COMMENT: There are actually two related problems. The specific one of them has to do with WP:RECENTISM, but it’s not sufficiently addressed by simply tagging articles. The problems are far worse than WP:RECENTISM suggests, because they are tied up with the fact that WP:V relies on newspapers far more than it should. Each venue of knowledge that WP covers, from the sciences to history to philosophy to aesthetics to current events, has its own standards of “reliability.” And all of the work that goes into deciding “reliability” for each of these domains takes time, which is why circumventing them by putting stuff in WP referenced to newspapers, or even by sourcing WP from “primary sources” can be a bad thing. It’s almost always a bad thing when you source from newspapers for anything other than current events, and it’s usually a bad thing when you source from primary peer-reviewed sources, unless you know what you’re doing (more on that later).

Example: we recently suffered through a spate of stories about “Arsenic eating bacteria”-- example: [18]. These were due partly to journalistic incompetence (arsenic-eating bacteria are not novel, and have been known and verified for years). The novel claim was bacteria using arsenic in their DNA and nucleotides. This was a scientific claim, but one from the primary literature which had not been verified yet, and had not yet made it to good secondary sources. So meantime WP had to struggle with it. It didn’t go well.

The only way to deal with such problems is to be much firmer in the use of news sources for non-current-events items. That would require a policy rewrite on WP:RS, which now merely notes that newspapers are not the best source for non-current events. But fails utterly to say what you do if all that is available (as above) for sourcing, is a primary source AND a news source that misquotes it. Which happens ALL the time.

The more general problem is epistemological. I note above that each field of knowledge has its own standards, and WP policy should allow each field to USE its own standards to evaluate the “reliability” (which means the likeliness of truth) for a potential “fact.” All that goes down the drain if we overuse newspapers. As for expertise, it takes an expert to tease truth out of primary sources, which is why WP prefers to quote from secondary sources (peer-reviewed academic reviews and texts). I generally think that this is a good idea, but WP:V doesn’t work until it really pushes this idea HARD. It is not the case that Wikipedia is about “verifiability, not truth.” Wikipedia IS about truth. “Likely true” is what RS means. The stuff in WP:V is only about getting your cites in, but having a cite doesn’t help if the cite isn’t to a reliable source, which means a sources that is likely a truthful one, per the standards in the field. In fact, if the cite is to something OTHER source (like the New York Times when it comes to arsenic bacteria), it can actually hurt the truth. WP:RS needs to be written to expressly say that it trumps WP:V. A verifiable source is worth nothing (in fact less than nothing) if it isn’t true. But a true statement is still valuable on WP, even if its source isn’t presently cited and referenced. In fact, most of Wikipedia consists of such statements, usually written by experts who know the secondary sources, and are donating their time to summarize their contents. Uncontroversial statements of fact that are uncited and aren’t BLP, can stay. And that is WHY they can stay. S B H arris 23:08, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not clear what your dispute is about, but it doesn't sound to me like this is the right forum for your discussion which is for advice related to the "no original research" policy. You might try WP:RSN? Professor marginalia (talk) 00:09, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I didn't choose to put this here. You'll have to ask User:David in DC for his reasoning. I think the problem ultimately comes down to the idea that the world's experts on verifying human longevity don't publish in journals that are "academic" enough for the people on WP. Who would rather instead cite newspapers and The Guinness Book of World Records for what is essentially a matter of science and history. Thus, they accuse the people doing research on human longevity reports as doing "original research" when they publish in Rejuvination Research and update WP articles, and ignore Guinness (which may or may not have any data) and also ignore newspaper articles if they seem to be too credulous about claims of people being >115 years old. S B H arris 00:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

It's here for the reasons SBH states. He advocates using original research to source human longevity articles. Rejuvenation Research is a red herring. No one disputes that it is a proper secondary source, which can be used to source facts on WP. The problem is not citation to Rejuvenation Research. The problem is citation to the Gerontology Research Group's yahoogroup, which maintains a list of raw longevity data, and to another list of raw data posted here. And, even more so, the problem is this assertion which SHB rehearses and expands on above, that WP:RS and WP:V are not the proper framework for judging reliability and verifiability on topics other than current events. For non-current-events topics, SHB straightforwardly advocates trusting experts to know what raw data to cite from. That approach, of necessity, violates WP:NOR and WP:SYN. David in DC (talk) 03:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:V is one of our pillars, because it's the most basic element of making sure we have real information, rather than speculation or a hoax. WP:RS further refines WP:V, helping to specify what verifiable sources are considered appropriate to cite. It's not that RS "trumps" V, but that it provides more specific rules we use to narrow down appropriate citations.

It really sounds like this is more of an issue of WP:PRIMARY than something that needs to modify WP:V. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 15:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, RS explicitly defers to V: "In the event of a contradiction between this page and our policies regarding sourcing and attribution, the policy takes priority..." Until a few seconds ago, WP:V asserted priority over every single one of our (several hundred) guidelines, even if they had nothing at all to do with sourcing. (I hope we can all agree that was more than just a little bit silly.)

There was an RFC recently that revealed some division in the community, with some editors opposed, more saying it was normally fine, and others determined to propagate this hierarchical approach to other pages (apparently based on a belief that policy pages are always perfect reflections of the community's actual views).

My impression is that the editors who feel particularly determined to maintain the hierarchy believe that any other situation will make it more difficult for them to include minority POVs in articles (since certain types of small minority views are generally ignored by the high-quality mainstream sources). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Here [19] is a taste of the controversy on WP around sources on ages of people, from GRG, Rejuvenation Research, and The Guinness Book of World Records. Note that the thread ends without any real consensus. Part of the problem is that WP:V (specifically the part of WP:V that deals with RS, at WP:SOURCES), and WP:RS/IRS don’t really agree with each other. WP:V has a very general view on RS, which is actually pretty good (though the only thing that makes it “WP:V” is that it sits in the WP:V article!) It basically says that a “reliable source” is a source that experts in the field would deem reliable, and THAT depends on the field, and the context. Here is what it says:

Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. Sources should directly support the material as it is presented in an article, and should be appropriate to the claims made. The appropriateness of any source depends on the context. In general, the best sources have a professional structure in place for checking or analyzing facts, legal issues, evidence, and arguments; as a rule of thumb, the greater the degree of scrutiny given to these issues, the more reliable the source.
Where available, academic and peer-reviewed publications are usually the most reliable sources, such as in history, medicine, and science. But they are not the only reliable sources in such areas. Material from reliable non-academic sources may also be used, particularly if it appears in respected mainstream publications. Other reliable sources include university-level textbooks, books published by respected publishing houses, magazines, journals, and mainstream newspapers. Electronic media may also be used, subject to the same criteria.

I’ve really got no problem with the above. However, it does NOT SAY many of the tortured things that exist at WP:RS/IRS, such as trying to denigrate primary and teriary sources, and elevate news sources:

Mainstream news sources are generally considered to be reliable.

The above is a sentence from WP:RS/IRS that should not be allowed to stand without internal qualifiers. Even qualifiers that come later, are inadequate to fix the falseness of this statement. Mainstream news sources are not considered to be reliable by hardly anybody, and that includes other mainstream news sources. If The Washington Post prints it, does The New York Times believe it? And vice versa? Not necessarily. Often, no. Nor should they. News stories are a first draft of history even when they purport to be about current events, and at best are written under pressure and with minimal confirmation (sometimes one “independent” confirmation, and often none). If fact-checking at newspapers was as careful as they pretend, there would be none of the sorts of errors that they publish as “errata” a few days later. Many of which are pitiful, even in the NYT.

News stories should be viewed skeptically, as anybody who has ever been the target of a news article can attest. For example, recent articles about WikiLeaks make it clear that the journalists in question are not very clear on the difference between a wiki, Wikipedia, Wikia, WikiLeaks, The Wikimedia Foundation, and so on. So they write stuff that is full of mistakes. When it comes to itself, Wikipedia enjoys the luxury of simply disregarding such stories, on the basis that it is the expert on its own history, not the papers. But consider the import of that attitude. Suppose we all behaved that way? How would WP work?

Example: the “mainstream” news confusion is fixed up on WP’s article on WikiLeaks, partly by reference to an article in The Signpost [20]. But The Signpost is basically a blog about Wikipedia, since so far as I can see, WMF takes no responsibility for editing it, and not even for publishing it: “The Signpost is an independent publication which is not affiliated with the Wikimedia Foundation.” Thus, I think The Signpost in not an “RS” in matters except concerning The Signpost (I’ve asked them for clarification on their TALK page). HOWEVER, I suspect that I went about removing all citations to The Signpost for matters other than Signpost policy, I would be reverted for being contentious and for lacking common sense.

We come now to “common sense.” The Signpost is edited by WP insiders, and is likely to be reliable about arcane minutia related to the history of WP, and WP policy. Certainly more-so than any “mainstream media” when THEY write about Wikis. Right? Common sense (as outlined generally in policy in WP:SOURCES) suggests that The Signpost would be fine for these purposes. However, strictly speaking, it’s against much of the guidelines outlined at WP:RS/IRS to use it so. Thus, my point. The guidelines at WP:RS/IRS are violated all the time. And so they should be.

All this is exactly paralleled with the problems in mainstream papers about supercentenarian ages, as opposed to reports in blogs that follow gerontology, reports from the GRG, and so on. Common sense would suggest that that latter are more reliable, because they’re enthusiasts of the subject, and this is a main interest of theirs. Just as with The Signpost and WP issues. So, who are you going to trust? It basically comes down to that. The broad policy on RS, as found in WP:V (WP:SOURCES) has it right. The commentary guidelines on it in WP:RS/IRS often strays from the path of common sense. The fact that the broadest and best statement of RS occurs in a section of the WP:V policy page, and most of the problems with RS thinking occur on the guideline WP:RS page (!), only makes all this harder.

I still think that “common sense RS” (as found in the V page summary) should trump V questions, since there’s no point in having verified cites to articles that err. Is it better to have no cite, or one to a dedicated blog, than a cite to mainstream news article that has it wrong? WP editors made their choice with The Signpost when it came to WikiLeaks. The most important thing is that the statements in Wikipedia be TRUE. Verification by using sources that experts consider reliable, are merely our method of fighting it out, when we disagree about the truth. They can’t be a primary goal, because WP:V isn’t actually the primary way that Wikipedia maintains true articles. Being watched by the eyes of informed people and experts, is how Wikipedia maintains true articles, to the extent that it does. It’s a shame this point isn’t better understood. Yes, you have to know what "raw data" or sources to cite from. There's no escaping that. S B H arris 03:07, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

There's also no escaping a vocal minority of editors who are absolutely determined to endorse any and all newspapers as ideal sources for every single purpose. Purely as a practical matter, you'll have more success reasoning with a brick wall than trying to convince enough people to get that endorsement qualified.

And, to be fair, for the subjects some editors write about, it might be reasonable. If I want to know what's happening with recent political events, the newspaper is a good source. But if we're talking physics, or history, or linguistics, or any of a number of other technical and semi-technical areas whose experts and scholars have repeatedly published complaints about how bad the news media is—well, personally I like to use the best source available to me, rather than any old source that might pass the minimum standards. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I can sympathize, as I have often challenged editors at List of unusual deaths. "Reliable" newspapers are often happy to print third or fourth hand crap that originated from a dubious story in a local paper somewhere in another language. I'm not sure that this is a problem in the hierarchy (or lack thereof) in our guidance. Beating on the subtelties of the rules is generally counterproductive. Maybe the essay WP:Editorial discretion might be helpful for you? Gigs (talk) 04:57, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The relevant page is WP:SCIRS, a controversial policy proposal similar to WP:MEDRS but for all Science related articles. In this case, it would have helped by keeping the news articles at bay while relying on more qualified secondary reports in scientific literature. However, we have not been able to thread the needle well so that the policy can accommodate situations where the newspapers tell a more true or more complete or more important story about what's going on. In other words, it's a known issue but not an easy one. As for V, V always depends on reliable sources, and reliable sources always depend on context. There is plenty of room to make an argument based on editorial discretion that in a particular situation newspapers are not quite getting it right. It won't be an easy argument either, but there's at least some room to make it. Ocaasi (talk) 15:39, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm all for changing the policies, if that's what the consensus becomes. On the policy talk pages. For now, I'm just looking for a reality check from people who know more about dealing with experts and original research about whether editing in the way these two experts advocate is compatible with policy, as it stands today.David in DC (talk) 17:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I've been involved in this discussion. Just to add my tuppence here, I don't think anyone is advocating relying completely on newspapers. What this is really about is whether we can use work-in-progress sheets from the Gerontology Research Group. This was already discussed at RSN and the advice was not. It was also said that Rejuvenation Research had "fringey aspects". We may need some more opinions about RR, but perhaps on RSN not here. The subtext is "if we don't get our information about long-lived people from newspapers, then we need to get it from the Gerontology Research Group". Perhaps, though, we don't have to get the information from anywhere, i.e. we don't have to cover every single case of claimed long life if there aren't enough reliable sources. Itsmejudith (talk) 18:09, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm also involved and lurking but had nothing to contribute because this discussion does not seem to be focused. Because I share both of the following styles, I think I can say David has a slightly indirect style and SB has a slightly wordy style, and these are both making it hard to find what might be real issues. SB might take up the unrelated epistemological questions, which are in fact very interesting, at WT:V. I think that David's question as stated is less likely to yield results here than elsewhere, because I don't see this board concluding with a consensus about any editors' advocacies until those POVs are actually carried out in specific article (or workgroup) edits. IMHO the solution is for these editors to interact with the developing consensus at WP:WOP by bold edits to that page, which they largely haven't done; I generally agree with IMJ above, and I believe this is also agreement with the WP:WOP procedural proposals. However, I don't want to ice-water this thread with my thoughts; it is probable that others will see in it some useful topic to continue discussion on. JJB 18:24, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:SOAPboxing. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 00:01, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I would make the argument that the Reliable Sources guideline should be changed to remove American Corporate News Media altogether. Maybe the New York Times or the Washington Post has enough of an ethical standard despite some rather glaring errors of late, but the broadcast news channels regularly post stories which are unverified in the extreme. Fox News in particular is a flat out propaganda arm of the Republican party and lies (and I mean FLAT OUT lies) on a regular basis, but by the basis of RS is somehow maintained as an honest broker of information. It isn't, and the fact that the article reflects this by requiring 'peer reviewed data' is just ridiculous. If ensuring that Fox News can be called what it is means calling out the other networks as biased and utterly inaccurate (which, by the way they are) then so be it. It would make Wikipedia better on the whole for it. Tacitus2010 (talk) 16:55, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to correct a reference above...the Gerontology Research Group does not have a Yahoogroup,it has a mail list run through the UCLA server.Robert Young has a Yahoogroup.I am on the GRG list and not on Robert's "World's Oldest People" Yahoogroup,which I consider an unnecessary duplication of a separate email list of my own.--Louis E./le@put.com/12.144.5.2 (talk) 03:17, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Widescale original research

Megistias (talk · contribs), a user who was involved in many Albanian-Greek disputes had created many maps before leaving wikipedia. His main focus was on southern Albania and the region of Macedonia(see Macedonia naming dispute and Northern Epirus) and in most of his maps he made many mistakes in order to prove the Greekness of the regions. These maps have to be corrected so a good map creator is needed to make the changes. Many of the maps also contradict each other.

Maps of Illyria[21][22][23]. In those maps Megistias moved the Bylliones from southern to central Albania, replacing their position with the wording Greeks, while various Illyrian tribes are displayed as Venetic. The source maps for his own versions are supposedly those of Wilkes, to which you can compare Megistias ones [24](p.6). The Ancient Macedonians are also displayed as ancient Greeks in some maps.[25]
[26] although even the source map isn't correct the caption Megistias is his own synthesis. Claiming that before somehow there were no Albanians in modern Albania except for extreme northern locations is a fringe theory because Albanians were involved in a revolt in Durrës in 1078, while the Principality of Arbër existed since the 1190s.
Kingdom of Epirus[27] in this map he has included all of southern and part of central Albania to the Kingdom of Epirus, while the Pyrrhic War is anachronistically described as Greece vs. Italy. Of course the Kingdom of Epirus was located south of Orikum [28]
[29] Another map including territory of the Illyrian Bylliones, the Ancient Macedonians etc.
[30][31] two more maps with intentional mistakes portraying the Illyrians as having migrated from central Europe to the Balkans in 1000BC. Of course the Illyrians were in the Balkans [32] since the late 3rd millennium BC, while another fringe theory in those maps is an alleged migration of Slavic populations to Jutland at that time.--— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 11:56, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I have raised a query at commons:Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard#Large_number_of_biased_images_by_Megistias about allegations like this. It obviously will need some discussion somewhere on whether it is true and if so how many images are affected and then probably they should all be deleted but I don't know the precise process needed. Dmcq (talk) 22:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

In general the above maps are fine considering the Illyrian Greek borders. However, we should take into account that ancient tribes can't have precise borders especially if we take about a 10 centuries long cultural 'border'. If a specific map places the border one pixel up or down that's not a big deal. By the way Wilkes clearly says that the border was in the mouth of Vjose [[33]][[34]], (like this map [[35]]).Alexikoua (talk) 23:00, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The mouth of Vjose is correctly represented on Wilkes's maps but not Megistias who has included Vjosë, the Bylliones, Byllis etc in what he called ancient Greece. I've already notified some Balkan experts like TodorB and Cplakidas, so hopefully they'll fix the maps. Btw Slavs migrating to Jutland in BC years is nowhere near fine.--23:13, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't thing so, actually this [[36]] is very clear where the mouth of vjose is and it is based on a commonly used svg map. If we take a better look on Megistias map he placed the border some kms south of Vjose's mouth. Guess if we need to correct this map we need to push the border a little north.Alexikoua (talk) 23:23, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

@Please don't make or deductions since we do have source maps.--— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 23:40, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The allegation of "widescale original research" (sic) is a gross exaggeration at best, tendentious WP:IDONTLIKEIT at worst. What is OR are ZjarriRrethues' claims about the maps. True, some of the maps in question may contain some minor inaccuracies here or there that need to be adjusted, but on the whole they are quite sound. They are sourced to top-notch sources and are very useful. Regarding the maps of Illyria, the southern boundary may need to be extended just a little bit to the south, but that is really minor and can be easily done. Also keep in mind that there weren't clearly defined "borders" in antiquity. Regarding this map [37], it is a faithful replica of a reliable source. This seems to me just a case of tendentious WP:IDONTLIKEIT by the OP, as it seems that he doesn't like the map because it just doesn't show the Albanians as being sufficiently "ancient". The source (Nicholas Hammond) is reliable and the map is an accurate copy, there is no case here. Regarding the Kingdom of Epirus, there might be again the slightest of corrections necessary, but again keep in mind that Zjarri's claim is based on just a single source (this user has a habit of cherry picking sources to his liking and pretending others don't exist). Regarding the map of Archaic Greece, [38], the boundary of classical Epirus is spot on, as can be seen here. If anything, the map shows the boundary of Epirus to begin a little south of the Aous river, i.e. he extends the Illyrian border to far to the south, the opposite of what Zjarri is claiming. Albanian nationalists will claim the entire Ionian coast down to the Ambracian Gulf as "Illyrian" and will rail against any map that doesn't show this. Zjarri's claim is moreover nothing more than a bunch of unsourced OR. There is nothing wrong with the migration maps either. Note how ZjarriRrethues claims "of course the Illyrians were in the Balkans since the 3rd millenium BC", a typical Protochronist POV (again based on a cherry-picked source). I should also mention that ZjarriRrethues appears to have a vendetta against Megistias, for example, note here how he incessantly gloats that Megistias was the subject of an AE report . This is nothing more than a cynical attempt to smear Megistias and undermine his credibility, since the AE report had absolutely nothing to do with the map [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]. Yes, Megistias hasn't edited wikipedia in a while following an AE report, but that report had absolutely nothing to do with the maps, despite Zjarri's insinuations. Also note that Zjarri is banned from interacting with me, precisely because of similar such hounding and making false statements. Athenean (talk) 23:31, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Lets just compare the maps with the sources and leave out the various personal attacks please. Dmcq (talk) 01:11, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)The source map for the first 3 maps of Megistias is found on p.6 of Wilkes's work [44]. He has moved the Bylliones from southwestern(Vlorë area) to central Albania and the Enchelei from the area around Lake Ohrid [45] in a much norther location [46], while the Manti also living around the lake aren't even present in his maps, instead their area is also included as Greek area.--— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 23:21, 25 December 2010 (UTC)

I am planing on making some changes in those maps. You can help me by giving me more sources. I am using Stipcevic and Wilkes for now. —Anna Comnena (talk) 16:09, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Since the accusations against Megistias appear really problematic, I will sum up the sources to make things easier:

Source	Map	Difference
a geographical term which the Greeks applied to a territory neighbouring their own, covers more or less the area of northern and central Albania down to the mouth of the Aous* (Campridge Ancient History) Appian's description of the Illyrian territories records a southern boundary with Chaonia and Thesprotia, where ancient Epirus began south of the river Aous (Wilkes) ""Chaonian (the northernmost Greek tribe in Epirus) power thus ran from the northern end of the Gulf of Aulon (adjacent to Apollonia) to the southern end of the plain by Konispolis." (Hammond)	*the border is south of Vjose's/Aous mouth [[47]] [[48]] [[49]] a couple of pixels north of Vjose/Aous' mouth	*Almost none (perhaps we should put the border few pixels north or south)
[[50]]	[[51]]	None

I really don't understand why all this mobilization to readjust the maps and off course the title 'large-scale or' doesn't apply here. I have also to add that several other users produced similar maps that confirm Megistias' maps, like this one [File:Ancient Tribes.png].Alexikoua (talk) 21:02, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

That's exactly what Wilkes's maps, whom you're quoting, depict. The Bylliones in Megistias maps aren't depicted a couple of pixels north of Vjosë but somewhere in Lushnjë. Instead of making or deductions about Albania's geography, be precise and accept Wilkes's maps(whom you're quoting). Btw that map you added is Hammond's map about...the middle ages movements, which have nothing to do with the territory of the ancient Illyrians. --— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 21:14, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

The fact is very simple Megistias' maps are quoting Wilkes&Hammond (mouths of Vjose) and this [[52]] shows clear that the border is south of it. It would be no deal to readjust this tiny detail but it appears more like pixel hunting to me.Alexikoua (talk) 21:27, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Instead of quoting Megistias's maps and making or deductions about where Vjosë is use Wilkes's map(the only source map about the Illyrians) as it is:[53].--— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 21:52, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

Megistias' map is based on a commonly used svg map (this isn't made by Megistias) and Megistias placed the border south of Aoos' mouth. In case you believe that Aous isn't placed in the right place there is also this [[54]]. I'm sorry we have not a real or deduction in this case.Alexikoua (talk) 14:27, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

(unindent)Please don't make or deductions, Wilkes's map exists and your own quote of says south of the river Aous. The borders of the Illyrian territory are were the Wilkes's map places them not where your or deductions place them. Btw please don't bring other irrelevant maps like the medieval movements one.--— ZjarriRrethues — ^talk 15:33, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

Accusation of OR

I come here to ask about this accusation of original research where SG says, "What you are writing amounts to original research,". I asked her to explain this where she wrote it but she has not. I truly with to know if I am engaging in OR or not. I believe I am not and only report exactly what the primary source states without any analysis or commentary. As an example

Mechanisms_of_schizophrenia#EEG Holinder et al Reversed temporal region asymmetries of P300 topography in left- and right-handed schizophrenic subjects

"EEGs have demonstrated abnormalities in the schizophrenic brain, including nerve conduction in the temporal lobe depending on handedness of the patient." "LH and RH schizophrenics, however, showed lateralized asymmetries in temporal scalp regions: left < right P300 voltage asymmetry in RH schizophrenics and left > right P300 voltage asymmetry in LH schizophrenics. These data suggest that the schizophrenic pathology of P300 neural generators is lateralized according to handedness and provide the first evidence that LH and RH schizophrenics can be dissociated based on left-right voltage asymmetries in P300 topography."

I believe that what I wrote included no OR, no analysis and no commentary and only reported exactly what this peer-reviewed, published medical article wrote. If I am wrong then please help explain to me how and why. If I am not wrong and this is an invalid accusation by SG then I ask for her to rescind it and refrain in the future. Basket of Puppies 19:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Leaving aside the whole primary / secondary thing, I would quibble over your use of "depending on"... the article is talking of a correlation, but "depending on" to me implies that handedness is causing the nerve conduction differences, rather than the association that is being reported. However, I think SG's comments are going to relate to the primary / secondary thing. EdChem (talk) 19:27, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

First, BoP, forum shopping and spreading this dispute across three different forums isn't helpful (see your inquiry at RS:N in addition to no support for your edits at Talk:Schizophrenia).

Second, see your edit warring to insert your particular views, based on outdated primary sources, here:

in addition to:

16:27 December 27

Third, see responses to that edit warring here and in the next section.

Fourth, you aren't helping your case by insulting fellow editors (several of whom happen to be qualified professionals in this area), removing talk page discussions with edit summaries of LOL; [55] [56] [57] [58] and failing to engage other editors on article talk. [59]

The first step in WP:DR is to discuss with fellow editors, none of whom agree with you, rather than dragging the dispute all over Wiki. This is looking more and more like tendentious behavior to insert a particular POV, and personalizing of a content dispute[60] after you improperly initiated a FAR when there was no support whatsoever for your edits. I recommend that you stop shopping forums to include your text, and start engaging other editors on talk; the work you need to do if you want to insert this text has already been spelled out several times in several places. Finding secondary sources to support your proposed text will be a better use of everyone's time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Aside from the primary or secondary debate (which is happening elsewhere, at the appropriate noticeboard) can you explain the "depending on" concern? Don't think I completely understand. Basket of Puppies 19:45, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you would read WP:V and WP:MEDRS to understand how OR and the use of primary sources are related. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:48, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

{EC}The issues of reliability and original research are separate. I don't see this as forum shopping, but an honest attempt by an editor to bring this particular issue (OR) to the appropriate noticeboard. Further, I don't see what alleged edit-warring or personal attacks have to do with the issue of OR, nor is this the appropriate forum for such discussions. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 19:53, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps you'd like everyone involved to follow BoP around to (now) four different forums, on an issue that is all related to two outdated primary sources he wants to insert? I don't intend to anymore. Engaging on article and user talk is the first step in DR, and he has refused to do that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:57, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

SG, can you please cease with the accusations of, well, everything. You accused me of OR. I asked you how and where and you never replied. I asked an admin what to do and he said for me to come here and ask. I simply wish to know if I am truly engaging in OR or not. Again, please stop with the accusations. They are unhelpful and this most certainly is the wrong place for it. Ok? Basket of Puppies 20:00, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Your contribs show no indication of you asking an admin, confirming my earlier hunch that a good bit of this dispute is developing off-Wiki; since I don't engage in off-Wiki communication about on-WIki disputes, and don't intend to follow four different discussions, unwatching now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:02, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:IRC. I like to use it to have real-time chat with my fellow wikipedia editors. So, are you withdrawing your OR accusation? Basket of Puppies 20:07, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

{EC}Well, if BoP is citing primary sources, then it's not OR. If you believe there's an actionable issue with an editor's conduct, you know where ANI is. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

For the record, I recommended that he take this to the OR noticeboard. He asked me, on IRC, why (his recent edits) counted as OR; I told him that I didn't see why prima facie, but that I didn't particularly care to become further involved, and that he should take it to the OR noticeboard for clarification. So it's not forum-shopping on his part. And I still don't see why it would count as OR given that he's taking it from peer-reviewed articles that were published in reputable journals. DS (talk) 20:10, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

See WP:V and WP:MEDRS, one sample only: "Primary sources should not be cited in support of a conclusion that is not clearly made by the authors or by reliable secondary sources, as defined above (see Wikipedia:No original research)." SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:16, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

SG, it says "conclusion that is not clearly made by the authors or by reliable secondary sources". I *never* add my own synthesis, as the example above clearly demonstrates. Why are you ignoring the policy/guideline? Basket of Puppies 20:21, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

(After multiple ecs) I will add that 1) the admin who advised you off-Wiki to post here failed to ask you a critical DR question: have you engaged the editors who disagree with you on talk? The answer is no; if you wanted further feedback about the OR question from me, you should have asked for it. You seem to be getting off-Wiki admin support, and since I don't engage in same, I won't. I don't remove talk page queries with edit summaries of "LOL". And second, your statements here, about "return[ing here only to show friends at school just how poor this article is" lead me to wonder if you are furthering this dispute only to bolster off-Wiki perceptions? ArbCom has plenty to say about using Wiki to further off-Wiki disputes. @Quest For Knowledge, yes, I know where to find the ANI circus, populated by the same folks who congregate on IRC. For now, BoP, try to use talk pages and confine your posts to less than four fourms; I will not be following this additional discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

1)DS has been informed as to every step of this dispute. We chat a lot. 2) I absolutely did ask you about your accusation. Now, SG, please respond to the OR accusation, or withdraw it. Ok? Basket of Puppies 20:24, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, there appear to be WP:OR problems, specifically WP:PSTS, combined with WP:NPOV problems. Primary sources should be used with care, and are best when used to provide additional, important details not provided in secondary sources. It's unclear where this is being discussed, as BoP suggests (19:45, 28 December 2010). It also appears that BoF is improperly using this noticeboard by focusing on the accusation by SandyGeorgia, rather than on whether or not WP:OR applies, and if so how. --Ronz (talk) 20:45, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree this is a pretty clear cut case of OR (as defined by the guidelines WP:NOR and WP:MEDRS). The issue is BoP is using a primary source from 1992 to support a claim about temporal asymmetry. If this experimental finding is true, it will have been written about and confirmed by later secondary sources, and those sources should be used to cite the claim. This is easily verified by using the "Cited by" (or similar) search function of whatever database you're using. In this specific example, the paper has been cited 30 times since its publication in 1992, but I can't see any that qualify as a reliable review per WP:MEDRS (but I haven't looked that closely, I'll leave that to BoP.) Sasata (talk) 21:02, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
- 1)There is no OR as I faithfully reported only that the source said, with no analysis or commentary. If there is either then please point out exactly where it is. I don't think it unreasonable to be told what specifically is wrong. 2) I have now found and supplied a secondary source. This issue is mute. Basket of Puppies 21:12, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
  - Good; this would have saved multiple editors many days of time and effort. In the future, please engage on talk rather than edit warring and forum shopping. However, there are still problems with your sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:14, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
It is OR. I don't have access to the full paper, just the quoted excerpt and the abstract doi:10.1016/0168-5597(92)90042-A. Experimental research can only demonstrate something about the patients studied, not the population in general. Therefore, we have a paper that demonstrates "lateralized asymmetries" in presumably half of the 36 subjects (because there were normal controls), so about 18 people. Whether these "lateralized asymmetries" are "abnormalities", I'm not qualified to say, but I suppose they could be perfectly normal variation. If the source doesn't explain this distinction, then you need another source that does. To say these occur "in the schizophrenic brain" is a generalisation that you are not allowed to make. The source uses the words "this suggests", for speculation is all the source can honestly do. To jump from speculation based on an experiment to accepted knowledge you need a secondary source. Nothing else will do. I'm also not qualified to say whether "the schizophrenic pathology of P300 neural generators" is equivalent to "the schizophrenic brain" or perhaps a rare pathology not representative of most "schizophrenic brain[s]". Have a look at WP:PSTS where it says "A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements that any educated person, with access to the source but without specialist knowledge, will be able to verify are supported by the source". See the problems? EdChem is also correct on the problematic wording wrt handedness. Lastly, this is a small experiment from 18 years ago. There are, of course, huge WP:WEIGHT problems with basing our text on an small 18-year old experiment: if no reliable secondary sources are discussing these findings today, then it almost certainly not relevant here. There is no reason why an article on a major and well documented illness such as this should find any need to cite primary research papers. I suggest both BoP and DS spend their Christmas holidays reading our policy and guideline pages. Colin°^Talk 21:26, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
- This is descriptive, informative, non-accusatory and I can see the issue. It appears that a rewording will perfectly fix the problem. Also, please note that I've now included a secondary source to confirm Holinger's P300 paper. Basket of Puppies 21:29, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

Possible synth / OR violation

At Talk:Aspartame_controversy#Removal_of_failed_verification_tag, there is a deadlocked discussion regarding this source^: 15–16 with further information here^: 8. Resident editors seem to believe that "Reviews have also found that populations that are believed to be especially high consumers of aspartame such as children and diabetics are below the ADI for safe consumption, and this is suggested to be true even under very conservative worst-case scenario calculations of consumption", specific text under contention bolded, is a valid paraphrasing of the sources. The talk page discussion has some detail on the arguments in play. u n☯mi 18:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The relevant quotes from the review are

"High intake scenarios performed by Arcella et al. (2004), Illback et al. (2003), the Norwegian Scientific Committee for Food Safety (VKM) Report (2007), and van Rooij-van den Bos et al. (2004) suggested that chronic intakes will not reach the ADI."

and

"The SCF concluded in 2002 that high-level consumers, both adults and children, were unlikely to exceed the ADI of 40 mg/kg bw per day for aspartame. Consumption by subgroups such as diabetics who are likely to be high consumers of foods containing aspartame were also well below the ADI. The data on aspartame exposure since 2001 confirm the SCF conclusions of 2002 and the National Experts conclude that there are no indications that a population group could exceed the ADI for aspartame."

Note that the 2nd .pdf linked above is not a source being used in the article and that there is another review (Magnuson 2007 citation here) that is being used as a source for the above quote as well. Yobol (talk) 18:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Could you quote the full paragraph from Magnuson which you are basing your preferred text on? u n☯mi 19:14, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Certainly:

"Overall, the studies have very similar conclusions. Although the intake of aspartame has increased in recent years, the change is not dramatic, remaining well below the ADI, and worst-case scenario predictions suggest that chronic intakes will not reach the ADI."

Yobol (talk) 19:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I think this centers around a reluctance to accept that the word chronic is meant to "average out" findings from very conservative worst-case scenario calculations of consumption - which find that, in worst case scenarios - diabetic children could reach 114%, as submitted by Illback and clarified in the 2nd pdf with:

"One study taking the worst possible case for diabetics shows potential for the subgroup of diabetic children to exceed the ADI, but the authors state that this was for a small number and not by a high percentage (114% of ADI) and conclude that based on toxicological and pharmacokinetic data there is a safety margin even for high consuming diabetics".

I take exception to the wording which states that "Reviews have also found that populations that are believed to be especially high consumers of aspartame such as children and diabetics are below the ADI for safe consumption, and this is suggested to be true even under very conservative worst-case scenario calculations of consumption" because this is unsupported and directly contradicted by statements from the authors. There are apparent subtleties in play here which may not be perceived by yobol. u n☯mi 19:33, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It is not contradicted by the authors. Both reviews have already taken the Illback study into account when they came up with their conclusions. Reviewers are allowed to come to conclusions different from than any one study if they find the evidence in totality taking other studies into account justifies it. You are focused on one study's results and losing sight of the conclusions of the reviews which already took that one study into account. Yobol (talk) 19:39, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The conclusions of the reviewers are couched in language which is crafted with more care than your paraphrasing, I can see that this may not be obvious to you, however. Do you understand the difference between "expectations of real world consumption" vs "worst case scenario calculations"? u n☯mi 19:45, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Sigh Not going to go another round here on this noticeboard. Will wait for outside input. Yobol (talk) 20:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

General question regarding the use of 'some', 'several', 'multiple' etc

Hi, Per WP:WEASEL I have tried tagging an article that is replete with these words with {{quantify}} and {{which?}} but being met with some resistance against the tagging. I asked the resident editors to either in-text attribute the vague wording to a source or give actual numbers, as they gave indication that they knew the number, the ordinal 3 was given in one case. Am I correct that we should avoid using vague wording when employing wikipedias voice or? u n☯mi 18:19, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

For context, this is regarding the tagging that I removed here and which was discussed on the article talk page here and which consensus seemed to be against the tagging. It seems unusual to insist on tagging the word "multiple" when if the reader wanted to know the specific number, they could just as easily count the number of citiations of the reviews that are cited in-line at the end of the sentences. Yobol (talk) 18:37, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

The first instance has 2 journal published reviews given as sources(Magnuson and Butchko). The second has 3 journal published reviews given (Magnuson, Butchko and Renwick). The last instance has 1 journal published review cited (Magnuson). I don't understand the reluctance to give these as ordinals. u n☯mi 19:23, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually the first instance has only two published reviews, but note that the following sentence notes the number of governmental agencies that is noted in that sentence is over 100. Other instances have numbers that vary between 3 or 4 reviews, depending on the sentence. I don't understance the insistence on using ordinals. Yobol (talk) 19:28, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Please see WP:WEASEL for clarification on our policies regarding vague wording. The reason is that it is not exactly clear if sources are being used correctly and it is difficult to find out if the language regarding sources is muddled in the way that it is now. u n☯mi 19:41, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how WP:WEASEL can apply when the reviews, which are multiple in number, are listed neatly at the end of the sentence for anyone to count. Yobol (talk) 19:44, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

You don't appreciate why WP:WEASEL is exactly made to differentiate between "multiple" and "2"? Since you mention it, could you point me to a sentence that cites 4 reviews? u n☯mi 19:54, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe there is compromise wording here that from a language standpoint is more accurate. Instead of saying Multiple reviews ... when in fact you know of and cite 3 reviews, one should write At least 3 reviews .... "Multiple" is vague while "3" may be precise but may actually be wrong as there could be more than 3, with reviews that exist but are not cited. By replacing "Multiple" with "at least X" removes the vagueness but doesn't lock into precision that may not be precise in reality. --Mike Cline (talk) 19:57, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Nod, that would be perfectly acceptable to me. u n☯mi 19:59, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

I guess that's as good a compromise as any.Yobol (talk) 20:26, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

It was, but now you are simply writing 'reviews', the problem with that is that it is intellectually lazy, I understand that you wish to ensure a certain representation on the article, but please do so via diligent research rather than facile and superficial edits that remove information. u n☯mi 04:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I saw no reason to enumerate the number reviews at all after thinking about it. Neither "multiple", "at least x" or others seemed very encyclopedic, and leaving out any mention of numbers leaves it up to the reader to see the cites. As to "laziness" and "diligence", I basically wrote that section of the article, and spent much time searching multiple journal databases to find and read the reviews that are cited. As you haven't found it fit enough to look up even one citation from Magnuson yourself (see below), I find your derisive comments laughable, and you should probably keep them to yourself in the future. Yobol (talk) 13:04, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Murder of Meredith Kercher

Resolved

– The relevant material has been removed from the article.--FormerIP (talk) 17:01, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

This source [61] is an Italian freesheet from Giovinazzo, the hometown of one of the defendants in the Meredith Kercher case.

It contains this text (on page 9) discussing the arrival time of the police at the scene of the crime:

Il loro reale arrivo viene ripreso dalla videocamera alle ore 12,48, momento in cui si accingono a varcare a piedi il cancello del casolare. Per quale motivo due differenti versioni di orario? Semplice: agli agenti della Postale, e non solo a loro, viene riferito che l'orologio delle telecamere registra un errato orario: andrebbe 10 minuti avanti. Solo durante il processo in corso la difesa di Raffaele riesce a dimostrare inequivocabilmente che quell'orologio registra, si, un orario sbagliato, ma di piu di 10 minuti indietro e non avanti, quindi gli orari predetti vanno corretti, aggiungendo almeno 10 minuti e non sottraendo 10 minuti: la Polizia Postale arriva effettivamente sul posto non prima delle ore 12,58.

In English:

Their actual arrival is captured by the camera at 12.48 pm, just as they walk past the gate to the house. Why two different versions of the time? Simple: it was reported to the officials of the Postal Service, and not only to them, that the CCTV clock recorded the wrong time: it was ten minutes fast. Only during the ongoing trial can Raffaele's defence prove unequivocally that the clock did indeed record a wrong time, but that it was slow, not fast, and thus the time should be corrected by adding at least 10 minutes and not by subtracting 10 minutes: in fact, the Postal Police arrived on the scene no earlier than 12.58 pm.

This seems to be potentially usable in support of various statements, but the mention of 12:58 appears to be speculation on the part of the publication. The source does not say that this is established fact or that it reflects the opinion of the defendant, defence lawyers or anyone else.

However, a number of editors believe it could be used to support one of the following:

"evidence from a security camera showed that the police arrived at 12:58 pm, just as Sollecito said they did."
"The defence also presented evidence from a security camera and cell phone records indicating the police arrived at 12:58, after the call to 112."

Do either of these interpretations of the source appear plausible? --FormerIP (talk) 21:22, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

To me it seems that the paper is making one or two claims: 1. That the paper believes that the evidence indicates that the police arrived at 12:58; and/or 2. The paper is stating that the defense intended to prove that the evidence indicates that the police arrived at 12:58. To me, it seems that the paper is making both claims, but I am reading the translation.LedRush (talk) 00:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Neither of those interpretations would support either of the sentences you have supported, though. The source does not say anything about what the defence presented, what Sollectio said, anything about phone records. It does day what evidence from a security camera showed, but it gives a different time for this. --FormerIP (talk) 01:34, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes they do. Explicitly. You continue to deliberately distort my positions. Perhaps you should just stick to the discussion at hand and try to do so in a civil manner.LedRush (talk) 15:16, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The next two lines of the source explains that the arrival of the Carabinieri was also captured by the camera and cross checked with telephone records:

Ecco svelato l'arcano grazie a controlli incroco sull arrivo del Carabinieri, anche esso ripreso dalle telecamere. Sono proprio le telefonate dei Carabinieri (confermate dai tabulati) ed il loro arrivo la dimostrazione dell ulteriore "svista" della Procura e della sincerita di Raffaele.

Google translation to English:

The secret is revealed through cross-check on arrival of the Carabinieri, it also recorded by the cameras. It is precisely the call of the Carabinieri (confirmed by printouts) and the arrival of further demonstration "oversight " of the prosecution and the sincerity of Raffaele.

As it says "telephone" instead of "cell phone", the text should be changed to:

"The defence also presented evidence from a security camera and telephone records indicating the police arrived at 12:58, after the call to 112."

--Footwarrior (talk) 02:05, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Why do think it is appropriate to argue over the contents of a source that you are only able to read via Google translate? --FormerIP (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Attacking the person who pointed out your earlier claim was in error isn't appropriate for a Wikipedia discussion. --Footwarrior (talk) 16:17, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Is this the only source making this claim? Also, is there anything about a rebuttal by the prosecution for this? From my reading, I think any addition needs to stay closer to the source, but it's gotta be careful. From just one source, I'd be extremely leery about adding much more than the police say they arrived at time X but the defense claimed that the actually arrived later. I've got both UNDUE and NPOV concerns about this addition. Ravensfire (talk) 03:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

So far this is the only newspaper account we have found describing this presentation by the defense. There are other reports that this evidence was presented, but they don't meet the WP:RS guidelines. The slideshow used by the defense is also available here: [62] There may be more reports in the Italian press, but searching is complicated by the language issue. (The english language reporters didn't cover most of the defense case in this trial). Two quotes from page 15 of the Judges report on the trial indicate that the defense prevailed on this issue. "These then are the preceding facts and the reason for the presence at the house at 7 Via della Pergola shortly before 1:00 pm on November 2, 2009 of the Postal Police team consisting of Inspector Michele Battistelli and Assistant Fabio Marzi." A bit later on that same page "he arrived with Assistant Marzi at a little after 12:30 pm, or so it seemed to the two policemen." indicates the court didn't accept the policeman's timing. --Footwarrior (talk) 04:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

...which is a bunch of OR. --FormerIP (talk) 13:22, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It's like OR, but it's the opposite. It's citing sources. I don't know whether the sources are RSs, and I would try and make his selected language more precise, but flippant comments which ignore the thrusts of people's arguments don't further these discussions.LedRush (talk) 15:18, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

It's like good editing, but the opposite. It's called making opinions and judgements not made the source. If the source doesn't say it, it's OR. Flippant comments that ignore that don't further these discussions. Ravensfire (talk) 15:47, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

In this case we have a secondary source backing up the article text and supporting information from two primary sources. So why is this an OR issue? --Footwarrior (talk) 16:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The Times reported as follows: Mr Sollecito claims that he had already telephoned the Carabinieri, but the prosecution says that he only did so after the postal police turned up.[63] That sounds more balanced to me. Bluewave (talk) 12:33, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I also don't think we can take the judge's words "shortly before 1:00pm" as necessarily meaning 12:58. Arguably, 12:48 is also shortly before 1pm. Also, I'm not sure that "a little after 12:30 pm, or so it seemed to the two policemen" necessarily means that he didn't accept the policemen's timing. This was an English translation of the judge's words and I think it would take someone who really understood the nuances of the original Italian to say exactly what the judge meant. Bluewave (talk) 13:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The Times article was written 6 months before the defense presented it's evidence that the police arrived after the defendant called the Italian emergency number. To keep a NPOV, we need to include the defense case as well as that presented by the prosecution. As for translation concerns, I quoted from the translation of the Massei report done by native Italian speakers at perugiamurderfile.org. --Footwarrior (talk) 16:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely is not a very reliable source

You could better use this one: Penale (A page for criminal sentences)

Now I must say several things:

According to British press: Amanda, Sollecito and Rudy Guede are all guilty.
There is the detail that Rudy Guede actually made a partial confession saying by e-mail to a friend that He was a "vampire". His behavior was not that of an innocent person, he took a train and went abroad.
Also this people tried to find an expiatory goat.... a certain Lumumba.
This people were playing with drugs, big knifes and role-plays as Vampires, etc. It's very easy to cut a throat (only half an inch and even less and provoke a deadly gas embolia or an hemorragy).
In Italy robbery is almost not punished if committed without weapons and violence. Common criminals now perfectly that they must never resort to violence when doing a minor robbery or theft.
The behavior of Amanda was "strange" and "erratic" sometimes looked very determined, but in other moments she behave as a child, doing pirouettes and circense plays in the interrogatory rooms.
We can perfectly understand what your newspapers wrote... about Italy doing retaliation against America for (I don't remember for what!).
Finally A.Knox. was sentenced because the perfect logical mechanism of the crime, the clumsy temptatives to mask it as a robbery (broken window glasses were actually outside the home !) and the clear and cold intention to put the blame to a person (Lumumba) who had a credible alibi.
Yet there were several pieces in the puzzle that were lacking or not clear. In Italy if You confess, You get a rapid trial and a lesser sentence... A. Knox and R.Sollecito did not confess, there was a blatant intention of them to deviate the searches and find and escape goat (Lumumba).
They were not sentenced for a matter of minutes. They had hours at their disposition.
So they remain in jail. There is not death sentence in Italy. --REDTURTLE 00:11, 2 January 2011 (UTC)— Preceding unsigned comment added by Giancarlo Rossi (talk • contribs)

I agree with Giancarlo. This source looks to me all but reliable. Cheers, Alex2006 (talk) 14:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

The question at hand is does the source support the text of the article regarding the defense presentation about the time the Postal Police arrived. Not that it supports your theories of the crime.. --Footwarrior (talk) 16:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

This is the No Original Research noticeboard. The source gives the defense side of a criminal case The statement in the Wikipedia article says the defense used evidence from a security camera and telephone records to show that Sollecito called 112 before the arrival of the Postal Police, not after as claimed by the prosecution. Is that indeed what the source says? --Footwarrior (talk) 17:10, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Extinction Interval

Question to address NOR issue: Physical Geologic Driver viewable at Morbas . Please reference the chart...

The time differences CALC between ICS periods produce a commutative set having a summation of 417Ma. The commutative set has an alternating +/-3.5Ma time interval at the Oligene, O-S and P-Tr dates. This is a mathematical expression of the (Kepler) Conic Ellipse apsis.

Do we have a mathematical expression from an associated single datum base that qualifies under wiki CALC rules? Human interpolation is excluded from number base association, and cannot be OR ?

Morbas (talk) 17:31, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

If nobody has noted something before in a reliable source then it is original research. CALC is just for restating things in other terms. Dmcq (talk) 18:59, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

IMHO: "restating things in other terms"? Such that object A has the same age as object B, and C and D... Is the issue really that one's interpretation of data qualifies WIKI:OR objections

Morbas (talk) 17:43, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is a "routine calculation" per WP:CALC, Morbas. You say yourself on the talkpage that you have made "presumptions" in order to do the calculation. Even if these are sound and well-sourced, it would still mean that the calculation is, in principle, contestable, which I would say makes it OR. --FormerIP (talk) 19:55, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I may have made assumptions, but the resulting proof (WIP) would be entirely logical/mathematical end to end. If this does not contradict uncontested assumptions how can there be an WIKI:OR Justification IFF those points have valid references. Further, where there is qualified contradictions there are also CALC produced contradictions which is a obverse argument with WIKI:OR argument(s).Morbas (talk) 16:13, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Completely logical proofs are considered WP:Original research unless they are published. CALC does not allow them. Dmcq (talk) 17:42, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it appears so. And I though logic was paramount to personnal opinionMorbas (talk) 19:08, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Brig Niagara

I've been working polishing/expanding USS Niagara (1813) for some time and have come across a pretty big block on making the article comprehensive. One of qualites of the ship is that its been "rebuilt" four times and is often the subject of controversy (see its talk page) relating to its essentially being a contemporary equivalent of the Ship of Theseus. However, there are no verifible sources that mention the Niagara as a Ship of Theseus. Would it be original research to conclude that it is indeed a Ship of Theseus based solely on the fact that little of ship's original material remain (that being the definition of a Ship of Theseus)? If it is, is there a way to still mention its ambiguity that doesn't became original research? (by not including it before, I succeeeded in pissing an IP off who was thinking that the people who own/operate the ship [no way affiliated, by the way] were complicit in writing the article) Niagara ^{Don't give up the ship} 04:33, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Anthem (novella)

I noticed wikilinks on two of the character names which link to specific interpretations of those words:

<NOWIKI> He works with [[Internationalism (politics)|International]] 4-8818 and [[Trade union|Union]] 5-3992. </NOWIKI>

Wouldn't such interpretations of these words be considered original research? I have not read the book but couldn't the author have been referring to some other concept of the words?

I am not trying to disparage the specific editor that did this -- I do not even know who it is, I have not looked at the edit history -- as I am sure it was a good faith effort to lend context. But isn't there a danger that allowing interpreted context via wikilinked word associations is a backdoor to violate WP:NOR ? Low Sea (talk) 04:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Short answer is unfortunately yes. Editors with a POV axe to grind often use this technique to steer perceptions of the uninformed. Identify it in article talk and fix it when you find it. But as also noted above, adding wikilinks is a common article improvement activity; if a wikilink doesn't appear to be appropriate it's far more likely it was one simply done at face value. PЄTЄRS J VЄСRUМВА ►TALK 15:56, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Jeopardy! theme music

IP user 174.28.41.201 has been contributing original research to Jeopardy! theme music, which currently has passages that are OR outlined at the talk page Talk:Jeopardy! theme music#Original research. RJaguar3 | u | t 07:31, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Are the career details of the superior officers of cpt. Owen Honors a BLP vio and covered by WP:SYNTH?

In the videos section of the Owen Honors article a user keeps inserting career details of Honors's superior officers without a single reliable source making the connection as to the importance of that information. I reverted twice per WP:BLP and WP:SYNTH. The latest reversion is here. Please advise. Thank you. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 18:59, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't see the basic data as problematic (i.e. who was in charge, what happened to them). The current positions and the "not widely available" stuff is out of line, and, BTW, not well sourced to begin with. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 19:09, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Stephan. But even as you say who was in charge, what happened to them I think that we have to have a reliable source which takes that position. We cannot decide on our own what the important parameters are. That would be a BLP vio and WP:SYNTH. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 19:20, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we need to be extremely careful here... given the nature of what makes Captain Honors notable (the scandal) we get into BLP vio territory as soon as we mention people other than Captain Honors in this article. We need extremely solid sources to mention them at all. Blueboar (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Blueboar. I agree completely. And my edit removing this stuff was even insinuated to be vandalism. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 20:34, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

If this "scandal" goes beyond the dismissal of Honors it would likely be because of the knowledge and lack of response by superiors. A recent article in Navy Times does raise that question. If we were to cover that angle fully it might raise the issue of whether the article is about Honors or about the video scandal. I agree that whatever we do we should use the best possible sources. A good rule of thumb for avoiding some types of OR is that the sources should mention the subject of the article. If a source says "here are the officers who were above Honors" then that'd be appropriate to include. Will Beback talk 22:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree. I think the NYT article you mentioned does that. However the NYT article also mentions some additional career details of the superior officers, i.e. where they are now or something of this type. Do we include that too? I think it would fall under WP:UNDUE, BLP to include additional career details at this stage. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 23:05, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

That's a different matter. Undue weight issues are never cut-and-dry. If the subject's notability stems from the scandal then the details of the scandal are relevant. Some decisions like this are easier to make a few months or years later, after things are settled. Will Beback talk 23:38, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that we need time and historical perspective to evaluate the addition of these details. Your proposed time scale is also right, IMO. Thanks. Dr.K. ^{λogosπraxis} 23:53, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Ebionites

Please see the most recent comments at Talk:Ebionites#Recent removal of recently added template regarding recent changes to the article which may violate WP:PEACOCK, and allegedly, possibly other policies and guidelines as well. I also believe that there is some significant disagreement on the talk page of the article about how strongly enforced policies and guidelines should be on this content. Any input regarding how often guidelines can and should be ignored would also be welcome. Thank you. John Carter (talk) 23:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Mega Drive/Genesis sales

There has been a long-running debate over the sales figures for the Mega Drive, affecting that article as well as History of video game consoles (fourth generation), Console wars, and List of best-selling game consoles. On one side of the debate, we have a number of sources (many reliable, some not) addressing the question:

Game Tunnel: 30,750,000[64]
IGN: 29 million units[65]
GamePro: 29 million units worldwide[66]
Wired: 29 million units workdwide[67]
CNET News: almost 30 million[68]
Ars Technica: 30 million units worldwide in its various forms[69]
VGChartz: 30.75 million[70] (not considered reliable)
VGChartz: yearly figures totaling 30.9 million[71] (not considered reliable; note the possibility of cumulative round-off error)
Sega-16.com: almost 30 million[72] (probably not considered reliable)
An outlier is Retro Gamer, giving 30-35 million[73]

On the other side of the debate, we have:

Figures originating in a blog post [74] which add up disparate sources to reach a total of 40 million:
- 20 million for the US, from a New York Times business article.[75]
- 15 million for 'not North America' by subtracting 14 million "North American sales" from 29 million "world sales", from a tertiary source[76] that probably gets the latter from Linux Format Issue 51 (March 2004) (unverified) and the former from the EGM 1999 Video Game Buyer's Guide (verified).[77]
- 2 million attributed to TecToy, from a Brazilian blog site.[78] (probably not reliable, discussion started at WT:VG/RS#Brazilian fan/blogsite?)
- 2 million attributed to Majesco, from the same Brazilian blog site.
- 1 million for the Sega Nomad, a compatible handheld, from GamePro.[79]
An assertion that all of the sources for 29–30 million "must" have gotten their figures from a German magazine article from 1994, scan available at [80].
A screenshot of an Excel spreadsheet referencing press releases that, if they could be verified, might be helpful.[81]

Much past discussion is available at Talk:Mega Drive/Archive 10 and Talk:Mega Drive/Archive 12#Total Mega Drive Sales. I've personally put off pursuing this, but I'm starting to feel its time this gets settled as it keeps coming up. So I ask for input from people familiar with WP:OR whether the 40 million figure is "allowed" by WP:CALC or whether the sources are too disparate, and if it is allowed whether the many reliable sources should be given equal weight or completely ignored in favor of this calculation. Thanks. Anomie ⚔ 16:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Without looking at the talk page archives, and just from what you have given above, there aren't enough reliable sources to make a calculation, certainly not one to 40 million. You do have reliable sources for 29 million, so go with that, although it is probably out of date. The 20 million for the US is reliably sourced too. Itsmejudith (talk) 17:06, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think there are consistent disputes regarding counting (these types of disputes show up for record sales as well) and while it may not strictly adhere to WP Policy, it's generally allowed assuming that reliable sources are used and the counting is extremely straightforward. There are many reliable sources for a total of "approximately 30 million" and I would even be content with an addition stating that "some sources incate as many as 35 million units were sold" if it could be fit into the article well. I support that second phrase because one source explicitly states it and by counting a few RSs you can verify it (I have ignored the 5 million from non-RSs).LedRush (talk) 17:27, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

One source says "(Total North American sales in its lifetime: 14 million. Total world sales: 29 million.)" It list references for everything it says. Seems quite credible, although obviously the sales figures used are dated to the time the sources were published. New York Times says 20 million, not 14 million, were sold in North America. So you can update that number to something more accurate. Tracking down the actual original sources, and using them directly, makes more sense. I'll start looking through that now. But if a reliable source has a bigger number, then obviously there is no problems adding that updated number. Dream Focus 17:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Google translation of http://www.team-aaa.com/news-15016-0-1-flashback_la_megadrive.html shows another source for Majesco sales, places it at 2.5 million units. The source for 2 million was published before then, and perhaps not as up to date. A Google news archive search for "Majesco" "Sega" and "Genesis" shows results [82]. I ran some through Google translator to find the one above, which seems credible. Anyone have any other sources for information about the sales of this? Dream Focus 17:30, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
- Note that "14 million" was published after the "20 million" (1999 versus 1998), so it's not a simple case of updating an earlier figure with a later. Anomie ⚔ 17:42, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Note, this isn't the place to discuss this. It is NOT original research to add numbers from different reliable sources, as I mentioned in our original discussion [[83]] See WP:CALC for the policy in question. This discussion should be on the reliable sources page, or the video game discussion page perhaps, but not here. Dream Focus 17:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)
- Sure it is. WP:CALC is for things like converting miles to kilometers or adding up numbers that are from the same source. It is not for adding up numbers cherry-picked from across the Internet to advance some particular POV. Anomie ⚔ 18:30, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I think you are misreading the policy. It states that the following is permissable: "adding numbers ... provided editors agree that the arithmetic and its application correctly reflect the sources." It clearly contemplates there be more than one source, and it clearly contemplates adding numbers between them. However, you do raise a good point. Have these numbers been "cherry picked" and therefore, are they somehow not been reliable? Do you have sources that indicate that the breakdown of sales of certain products in certain regious is incorrect in the above sources?LedRush (talk) 18:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I question the decision to choose the highest number that can be found for each region (that's the "cherry-picking"), the reliability of some of the sources, the advisability of unquestioningly including sales of compatible devices and sales by third-party licensees after Sega gave up on the console (which strikes me as artificial inflation of the total), and the decision to completely ignore the many reliable sources that give a straightforward figure without the need for adding anything up when most if not all of these regional numbers are not mentioned in more than one source. I would be glad to accept a compromise wording that accurately reflected the situation, including a clear delineation that Majesco and Tectoy sales are third-party licensees and (if it is mentioned at all) the fact that their "20 million US" from 1998 is contradicted by "14 million US" from 1999, but every past attempt along those lines has been reverted. Something like this, maybe: "Sega has not released sales figures for the Mega Drive. Mainstream publications report total worldwide sales of 29–30 million.^[refs] Sales in the United States of between 14^[ref] and 20 million^[ref] have been reported. These numbers may or may not include some or all sales by third parties licensed by Sega (e.g. Tectoy in Brazil, or Majesco in the US after Sega's first-party discontinuation of the console) or sales of compatible devices such as the Sega Nomad~~; fans assuming best-case figures have claimed totals as high as 40 million~~.^[ref]" Anomie ⚔ 19:24, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

While I would have a quibble or two with your wording, it seems the general approach is good. To me, this post seems like an edit dispute cloaked as an original research issue. Even if all the various counted sources were 100% reliable and easily calculated, we'd not lose all the sources that say approximately 30 million units were sold. With that in mind, some kind of compromise seems inevitable to me. However, in my mind, such compromise should be worked out in the talk page of the article.LedRush (talk) 19:43, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Do we have to be exact? What about giving the figures in terms of a range (something like: "Sales have been estimated to be as low as $X <cite to RS with lowest number>) and as high as $Y <cite to RS with highest number>.") These can be changed as new estimates come in. Blueboar (talk) 19:57, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

To me, it looks like the majority of RSs have decided on around 30 million (many a little less, some a little more). This could be inertia and it could be because reliable counting has never been implemented. However, if you include 3rd party devices, the number could increase. Furthermore, it seems that in some markets (particularly in S. America), the Genesis continued to sell well after people stopped counting in other regions. So, you have a claim that as many as 40 million were sold. Your formulation isn't perfect because it gives equal weight to the widely accepted (though perhaps underestimated) number and the highest available number, which is cobbled together in ways that stretch RS and OR policies. I would prefer a formulation similar to Anomie's: The Genesis sold approx. 30 million, though some sources claim as many as 35 million units were sold [ref] and, if third party compatible products are included, perhaps as many as [40][number to be downsized based on number of RSs to back up computation] million units.[list of ref]LedRush (talk) 20:50, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The Sega Genesis article already states, "Sega has never officially released a total sales quote. Some sources have claimed Sega sold 29 Million units worldwide, noting that 14 Million were sold in North America.[6] However, other sources state this total was already reached by 1994,[7] and there are updated sales numbers for North America totaling 20 Million,[8] presenting a disparity in the sales numbers. Additionally, Tec Toy has sold 2 million units of their own Mega Drives (as of August 31, 2005)[9] Majesco has sold 2 Million units of their Mega Drives,[9] and Sega has sold 1 Million units of their Sega Nomad.[10]

It is unknown how many Mega Drives, Firecores, Gencores, Retrogens, or GenMobiles have been sold by ATGames."

Now, these numbers are not in fact cherry picked. As pointed out in the other discussion about the Majesco/Tec Toy source, one source says Majesco sold 2.5 million. I can also tally Business Wire sources together for North America (not just US) that will come to 21.5 million Pre Majesco sales. It's not cherry picking the highest number to go with NYT's 20 million, that's simply the most reliable source IMHO. It's also fair to include numbers for OFFICIALLY LICENSED systems, and while I do believe this can include the new Mega Drive/Genesis consoles that came out last year, it certainly includes the Masjesco and Tec Toy consoles sold at the time.

Here is what a cherry picked breakdown would look like.

North America - 25 million
1989 - 1994: "nearly 18 million"
1995: "more than 2 million"
1996: "1.1 million"
1997: "400,000" (these numbers totalling 21.5 million are feasibly inline with the New York Times' "20 million in the US alone" because they state "North America," and not "US Alone."
Majesco (1998-1999): 2.5 million
Sega Nomad 1 million
+
Tec Toy - 2 million
+
Rest of the worlds first party numbers - 15 million
= 42 million

Hm, 42 million. Welcome to cherry picking.

What I recommend is breaking it down like this.

State 40 or 42 million with a content note (depending on if we now cherry pick the highest numbers which we have ignored)
Content note then states:
First Party: 35 (or 36.5) million
3rd Party: 4 (or 4.5) million
Sega Nomad: 1 million

The 29 million and 14 million numbers both clearly come from Man!ac Magazine's May 1995 issue. Other users uploaded and confirmed the scan. [84]--SexyKick 21:10, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I note your "nearly 18 million" through the end of 1994 is in direct conflict with your Man!ac Magazine's 14 million through the end of 1994. If the 18 million is inflated, that would make the later numbers from that same source similarly suspect. I also don't buy the assumption that every English-language source's numbers come from an obscure German-language magazine, and the rest I addressed above and won't bother to repeat. Anomie ⚔ 23:00, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

The problem I have with the existing wording in the Mega Drive article is that it doesn't point out that the 20 million may not be so updated (as EGM has 14 million a year later), implies that none of the Tectoy 2 million is included in the 29 million (we don't know either way), and doesn't make a clear difference between first-party sales and ongoing sales of third-party derivatives and knock-offs. Anomie ⚔ 23:26, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

As I said I find the NYT's source to be the more reliable. My point was just that no cherry picking is happening. Also that there is nothing "artificial" from counting Majesco, Tec Toy, and the handheld Genesis (which is not a "compatible" system, such as GameGear, it actually bears the Genesis logo on the hardware itself, and adds no new capabilities like GameGear, which is why editor consensus on the Genesis talk page continued to include Nomad numbers) when they all come from the same time period where 16-bit systems are on sale. I agree there would be some artificial number inflation from counting the new AtGames systems, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't count them when the numbers come out either, they still technically count as officially licensed hardware.

It doesn't matter whether you "buy" it or not, it's very clear that's the earliest source of those numbers. It must be where EGM gets the 14 million, and it must be the last study that was ever done in all territories. 20 million is the most up to date reliable number. They all fit with the 35 million, and the NYT's number clearly comes from before Majesco's possible influence, so there's no ambiguity there. I guess the main matter is settled here, we are allowed to total up numbers from reliable sources without it being original research. I'm glad that part is settled.

I'm annoyed about the TecToy source however, since it's the only one I know of, it's been used here on Wikipedia with no problems for a very long time, and I think the only reason you suddenly have a problem with it is because you're a SNES fan. I love the SNES too you know. I find all "total" sales numbers presented so far to be clear "first party only" sales, meaning no TecToy/Majesco (Mega Drives are still sold by TecToy too btw, meaning more than 2 million have been sold by now.) However, this still lets us write down 38-40 million assuming you just CBA to agree. Remember the original blog source which started all of this, which just counts up sources hits 39.70 million, I just think it's too much of a coincidence that everyone's independent research of regional numbers hits near the 40 million mark, whether it's 39.70, 40.5, 42, or Wikipedia's current (and IMHO most accurate, since it's using more reliable sources) 40 million.--SexyKick 23:48, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Please note my bolding to be for TL;DR purposes, I'm not annoyed or yelling. : ) --SexyKick 23:49, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Firstly I'd like to note that the initial post is not only based around very out of date info (nobody has been using the excel spreadsheet for ages now, being that most of the original sources its speaks of have been found), but is extremely misleading, the present sales figures for the US are based around many, many newspaper and magazine articles from the time, most of which clearly state that they have gotten their information from either Sega themselves, or from well regarded 3rd party sales trackers of the time such as Robertson Stephenson and CO, and GFK. None of the sources which the initial post holds in such regard, such as even IGN and Gamepro state where their figures even come from.

I think this was explained fairly well in the aforementioned page but there's a little more I can add in regards to US sales in particular.

Here's a timeline of sources

1. In May of 1994 the US total stood at a rounded 13 million - Businessweek

2. At the end of 1994 the US total stood at a rounded 14 million - Man!ac Magazine (attributed to GFK, Robertson Stephens and Co, Computer Trade Weekly, and Sega

3. At the beginning of 1995 the US total stood at a rounded 15 million - Newsday

4. Over (unfortunately it doesn't give a precise figure) 2 million were sold in the US during 1995 in total - Business Wire

5. 1.1 million were sold during 1996 in total - Business Wire

There are two sources for 20 million US sales up to March 1998 (not including Majesco because they took over from that point onwards) - The New York Times and Electronic Times

All of these sources back each other up fairly well and jar with the vague EGM "over 14 million" total figure for US sales.

Europe's sales also have a source for 8 million, the source being CVG magazine, which attributes the figure to Sega of Europe themselves.

Also, it was never mentioned that recent sources all got their figures from "a German magazine", what was said was that it was possible that sales totals were collated by 3rd party trackers and released to the public at the end of 1994, figures of which both Man!ac, and the recent websites could've been working from. Personally I don't "buy" that the more recently popularised figures for US and Worldwide sales both perfectly (29 + 14) matching those given in a magazine from 1994 could be easily attributed to coincidence.

I think the way the Content Note stands at the moment is as good as its going to get, Anomie's re-phrased version gives undue weight in my opinion, for instance, there is no reason to omit the section saying "though other sources state these figures were already reached by 1994" the Man!ac source is just as reliable as the general "14 million" figure sources, much moreso in fact being that it attributes its information properly. There is also no doubt that the 20 million figure does not include Majesco, because Majesco took over sales after the publication date of the New York Times article (this has even been sourced already) Jesus.arnold (talk) 04:30, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm still of the opinion that this is all a horrible excercise in synthesis and we should be using the various *citable totals* of around 30 million. I don't see a problem with the other sources and figures being mentioned in the content note as they are now, just as long as they continue to be presented as claims rather than fact. Miremare 00:06, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

That's because you're bias. One of the reasons we had to bring it here in fact, since you refused to believe that simple arithmetic wasn't synthesis. Synthesis is doing something to advance a new position, such as "Sega Genesis outsold Super Nintendo." There's no synthesis. The nice editors here have resolved this poultry dilemma for us, thankfully.--SexyKick 00:36, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

SexyKick, please don't keep accusing people of disagreeing with you because they're "a SNES fan" or "biased", it's ridiculous. And from this very policy: "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources" That is what you are trying to do by adding all these disparate sources - NONE of them support the TOTAL you are giving. How do you explain why we don't have a reliable source that supports your total? What we do have are several reliable sources that contradict the "position" you are trying to "advance".

And the sources you're using - where have they sourced their numbers? One of them mentions its numbers came from Sega Europe, and that's great. But where did that paragon of video games journalism the NY Times get its figures? Notice the article itself sources everything it says to either Sega, Shoichiro Irimajiri, or Moody's Investors Service... until it gets to the bit where it claims "some 20 million sold in the early 1990s", where it goes strangely quiet on sources. And remember that this claim is nothing but a single-sentence aside, in an article about something else. And SOME twenty million? What does that mean? And what defines the "early 1990s"? 1990-93? 20 million in three years? Unlikely. It's vague journalism like that being used as gospel that is one example of why this whole thing is simply not viable. We have quite a few reliable sources for approximate total worldwide sales, there is absolutely no need to make up our own. Miremare 02:25, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

This is what proves you're bias. You ignore the simple arithmetic rule, and you're looking at the NYT's as if they're not a reliable source, excuse me? And don't even mention the other sources that state 20.3 million or even up to 21.5 million for North America (instead of "US only" as the 14 million and 20 million nummbers both state) right? We just have to find reliable sources and quote info in them, we don't have to find where reliable sources get their information. We have to find where non reliable sources get their information instead, to see if they then become reliable sources.--SexyKick 11:28, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

No, you're confusing a reliable source with an infallible one, and there's no such thing as that. Take a look at WP:NEWSORG. There is no rule that allows us to pool a bunch of numbers that we have no way of knowing are correct, to come up with an answer that no reliable sources agree with. There are however, rules that specifically disallow this, as has been pointed out many times. I'll ask you again, how do you explain why we don't have a reliable source that supports your total? Miremare 15:33, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Miremare, is it your contention that the sources used to come up with the total aren't reliable, or that the adding together of multiple reliable sources isn't allowed. If the former, this is the wrong board for the discussion. If the latter, the position has been clearly refuted above. It is not original research to add numbers from different reliable sources: see WP:CALC for the policy in question. If you have a different point, could you make it more simply for me? I am not fluent in the history of this dispute.LedRush (talk) 16:14, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The sources used are reliable enough to state "x claims y million sales", the problem is adding them together because we don't know that the numbers are true. Different sources claim different figures. The crux of the matter is that nobody but Sega knows how many consoles they sold and they haven't told us, therefore we have absolutely no way of knowing that the number we're arriving at is true. Regarding routune calculation, if we had a reliable source saying "side A lost a thousand soldiers in War X" and another saying "side B lost two thousand soldiers in War X" we could apply routine calculation to state that there were three thousand killed, not least because such figures would be much researched and the subject covered in a scholarly way. But what we are dealing with are an abundance of sources that state different things, mostly in passing, none of whom say where they got their numbers from. This doesn't even approach routine calculation. But I think we agree that this is the wrong place to discuss this, as it seems to be getting little input from anyone who wasn't involved in the original discussion. WT:VG would be better. Miremare 17:07, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

We've resolved it. I'm updating the article accordingly soon.--SexyKick 00:41, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

We have? Then perhaps you'd like to answer the question that you've twice ignored: How do you explain why we don't have a reliable source that supports your total, while we do have several that contradict it? Miremare 01:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Fine, pretend we haven't resolved the issue, I'm updating the article. It was ruled to not be original research. Live with it. Content note explains all. See content note.--SexyKick 11:26, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I'm not the one pretending, and your continuing refusal/inability to answer the question only highlights this. Please answer it. Miremare 16:12, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's been explained. Regardless, we have some sources that say one number and other sources which indicate that that number may not be accurate. This could be because of the date of the original information, different information collection methods, and different fact checking standards. But the fact remains that counting numbers in different sources is not per se original research. However, we need to use reliable sources and we can't cherry pick numbers either. I don't believe that we will ever get a final number, which is why I support inclusion of some range of numbers followed by a content note or an explanation.LedRush (talk) 16:30, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

With all due respect, I am not generally in the habit of repeatedly re-asking a question that has been answered. I am still waiting for the answer. And I have never said that adding numbers from different sources is per se OR. I have made it quite clear several times that that is not my position. But you're right that totals that are supported by reliable sources is what the article needs, and we've got plenty of sources for 29 million and 30 million. Miremare 17:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I answered your question in my last post. Maybe you don't like the answer. Maybe you don't understand the answer. Maybe you disagree with the underlying assumptions of the answer. I don't know. But someone else has answered a couple times, and I just answered it before your snarky response. Could you perhaps rephrase your question or (better yet) address our responses? Or even better still, since this is a content dispute, could you discuss it on the Mega Drive talk page or the Video Game project page?LedRush (talk) 18:05, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If it was a snarky response it was because of your apparent unwillingness to read my posts before replying to them, while implying that my argument is "adding numbers is wrong". I have asked a straight question, several times, to which I have not received an answer. I'm not asking about the sources being used to arrive at this new sales figure, I am asking why there are no reliable sources that support this new figure. This is pretty basic stuff. Miremare 19:43, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Anger and snark. Awesome. We've discussed the answer to your question a lot above, but here is a quote from my most recent response: "Regardless, we have some sources that say one number and other sources which indicate that that number may not be accurate. This could be because of the date of the original information, different information collection methods, and different fact checking standards."LedRush (talk) 20:01, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

LedRush, I can't work out whether you're being intentionally difficult, or you genuinely don't understand the question. I'll try again: What sources support the new total? Again, I am not talking about the individual figures put together to arrive at the total, but the total itself. Where are the sources that directly support this number? Miremare 20:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I am trying very, very hard to AGF, but it is difficult. You asked "How do you explain why we don't have a reliable source that supports your total, while we do have several that contradict it?" Though we've discussed this thoroughly above, and I've given you a summary statement, you still don't seem to acknowedgle the answer. I can do nothing more than repeat my earlier statements: Perhaps we don't have a single reliable source for the higher total, while there are several for the lower ones beacuse "the dates of the original information, different information collection methods, and different fact checking standards." There are a ton of other reasons, but those should suffice.LedRush (talk) 20:45, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

"Perhaps we don't have a single reliable source for the higher total". That's the answer I was looking for, thank you. We don't have a single source for the new total we've come up with, yet we have plenty for 29-30 million. We all know it's not the place of an encyclopedia to venture its own opinions or research, but to report on those of others, and a figure of 40 million is uncitable because it is against the widely-held views of the video games/technology media. IGN, GamePro, Wired, CNET, Ars Technica, Retro Gamer... are we to believe that all these reliable, reputable sources are wrong, and our little bit of synthesis (50% of the total of which is entirely based on a single vague unsourced throwaway comment in an unrelated article from a journalist and publication who don't specialise in video games) is somehow right and outweighs them all? It amazes me that this is still even being discussed after all this time. Miremare 22:24, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

If you wanted that specific answer to the questions, you should have written it down for me so that you could later take it out of context. Of course, your question had been answered long ago, like your other questions were. And, of course, you don't recognize your repeated mistake or your rude and unhelpful comments regarding it. And, of course, you ignore the substance of the discussion to make your soundbyte answer. Finally, of course you don't understand why this is still being discussed. You ignore other people's opinions as you attack them for your own mistakes. I, on the other hand, understand why there is disagreement on this. I understand your position. It makes sense. However, I think the other opinion makes more sense for the many, many reasons above.LedRush (talk) 23:20, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The context is irrelevant, there either are sources for the total, or there aren't. You can repeatedly insist that my objections have been "answered long ago" all you like, but I'm afraid that doesn't make it so. I mean, I'd love to see you actually refute any of what I said above, with logical reasoning backed up by policy, rather than hiding behind the same unsubstantiated "already answered, many many reasons above, etc." lines that you and SexyKick seem so fond of. And you then go on to accuse me of ignoring other people's opinions! No, what I have done is attempt to thoroughly justify what I say in opposition to the opinions that have been put forward. That's not ignoring people's opinions, it's disagreeing with them and explaining why. And what did I get for it? Accusations of bias, strawman arguments, patronizing variations on "this has already been settled", and no attempt to actually explain how or counter what I say. And please, I haven't attacked anyone and I have no idea what "mistakes" you're referring to. The bottom line is that opinions are all you have in favour of claiming 40m sales, you cannot back it up in policy. Miremare 02:26, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Except LedRush is new to the whole thing, and going solely off of cut and dry policy. NYT's states 20 million. NYT's is a reliable source. Very simple. We can total other sources to hit 21.5 million for North America. "Some 20 million" is certainly being on the side of cautious since it's understating the continents total for its own countries total. Being snarky and angry isn't the way to communicate your point. If you don't think the above extremely detailed information isn't enough for you, I certainly don't think we can provide extra information. There's no reason to get upset at Man!acs numbers being updated by the NYT's...I mean, why be upset? What's the big deal?--SexyKick 02:49, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The big deal is that you are ignoring abundant reliable sources in favour of an uncitable figure you've arrived at yourself. As I said before, while the NY Times is a reliable source, that does not mean that everything it says is true. See the context of the number, the fact that no other sources agree, and the other reasons I gave two posts back. Since the majority of reliable sources support a worldwide total of just 9-10m more, describing 20 million for NA alone as "on the side of caution" is patently absurd. Finally, if we're talking about "updated" sources, every one of the Gametunnel (2005), IGN (2009), GamePro (2008), Wired (2007), CNET (2009), Ars Technica (2008), and Retro Gamer (2006) sources are far more recent than the NY Times (1998), so why don't you consider these to be "updates"? Miremare 16:30, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

How sad that only one outside person really got involved, and the same old ~~redacted~~ have seized upon the slightest hint of support to completely ignore all reliable sources in favor of their inflated number. Anomie ⚔ 03:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Anomie, using updated sales numbers and the numbers used of 3rd parties (partnered with Sega to either bring the console to foreign lands, or to extend the life of the console to meet the life of the SNES) used during the time of the system is not an inflated number. Moreover it's dishonest to use a number proven incorrect on multiple occasions, even if for the simple fact US: 20 million + EU: 8 million = 28 out of 29 million...and we know the console sold extremely well in Other Asia, Australia, and sold at least 3.58 million in Japan. It's simple refuting of evidence that I would hope an intelligent person such as yourself would accept with open arms.--SexyKick 04:14, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Well, what do you have to say to those things Anomie? What of the sources of year by year Genesis sales that add up to 20.3 million? Why do you have to stand by a number proven to be outdated?? Why don't you accept this information with open arms (please answer this question first)--SexyKick 06:52, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There is evidence that the 29 million number may be outdated, although there is no justification for completely ignoring the fact that all reliable sources continue to report that number (maybe they know something we don't). And there is no evidence for any particular higher number, as there is no evidence that the 29 million does or does not include Tectoy sales between 1989 and 1994, there is no evidence that the "20 million US" does not include existing Genesis 2 inventory sold to Majesco, there is no evidence that the "some 20 million" US quoted in the NYT is not "18 million rounded up by Sega PR in their press release", and I still find it misleading to uncritically include sales of the Tectoy Genesis, the Majesco Genesis, and as many of the compatible machines as you can find. But it's clear you don't care about any of that and just want to push the highest number you can get away with. Anomie ⚔ 16:17, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

There is certainly no evidence about TecToy's sales, as I have said before in this thread...apart from them being a 3rd party company and still selling Mega Drive's to this day (3rd parties are rarely if ever included in tallying sales.) As far as Sega selling consoles to Majesco, "First 150,000 will be original model" is what the reference says about Majesco's Genesis 2 inventory. 150,000 isn't anywhere near substantial or significant, and there is big evidence that the 20 million US is not "18 million rounded up by Sega PR in their press release" because of the tallied up year to year sales that reach 20.3 million. If we use Sega's 18 million rounded up to replace up to 1995, then we wind up with 21.5 million. This is very good evidence to go with NYT's numbers. Not to mention NYT's is a rock solid source and stands as a guaranteed update on its own, it's nice that we have two tallies that reach above and beyond 20 million.

It's clear none of that matters to you, and you want to keep the numbers a magazine in 1995 presented. It's not misleading to include Majesco's sales, the Super NES was still being sold in competition with the Genesis 3, it's dishonest to not simply update the first party numbers to Wikipedia's original 35 million. Everyone knows you're the main Super NES guy, I can only assume the reason you don't want these other numbers included is because it has something to do with that, but I can't figure out what, since these numbers still leave it at 49.10 million to 40 million. This isn't some fanboy update to 55 million with no source, like we've both reverted so many times.--SexyKick 19:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Don't forget I did some work on the Mega Drive article a while back too, I just don't know as much about it. I also don't know why Sega's console seems to attract more POV-violating edits than other consoles; maybe it's related to the reason List of best-selling game consoles seems to get more POV edits boosting Xbox than its competitors. Anomie ⚔ 20:32, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

We can all see the evidence is here though, and from reliable sources no less. I think writing out 38-40 million with a content note saying which sales are first, and 3rd party, and an explanation of the possible overlap in TecToy sales is the most fair and neutral choice. Again, 42 million is the highest number we can "get away with" and is proof there is no cherry picking going on - all the numbers are from reliable sources, so we have to make a judgment call, and if Arnold and I were trying to go with the highest number available, we'd just go with those and say forget the NYT's. Likewise, you don't see me jumping up and down with excitement at the more than likely wrong 2.5 million for Majesco, (I've never heard anything but 2 million) or trying to include even the 20.3 million number (though mostly it's because it's hard to add 8 sources for more tallying of numbers, whereas we have a source saying 20 million from the most reliable newspaper ever.)--SexyKick 20:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Can I suggest, yet again, that we bring this to the talk page, or at least to the video game project page? This conversation simply doesn't belong here. Also, I made what I thought was a good compromise edit...tomorrow I will reprint on the talk page to get the ball rolling on specific wording so we're not bogged down with theoretical positions, procedural issues, and people being rude.LedRush (talk) 05:30, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I've opened a new discussion on WT:VG. Going back the Mega Drive talk page isn't going to get us anywhere, and hopefully it will be a lot more visible there than here. Miremare 22:24, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Is this OR?

My source is Jackson, William (1990). The Rock of the Gibraltarians. A History of Gibraltar (2nd ed.). Grendon, Northamptonshire, UK: Gibraltar Books. pp. 100-101. ISBN 0-948466-14-6.

The full quote I reference in the cite is:

“

Although Article V promised freedom or religion and full civil rights to all Spaniards who wished to stay in Hapsburg Gibraltar, few decided to run the risk of remaining in the town. Fortresses changed hands quite frequently in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The English hold on Gibraltar might be only temporary. When the fortunes of war changed, the Spanish citizens would be able to re-occupy their property and rebuild their lives. English atrocities at Cádiz and elsewhere and the behaviour of the English sailors in the first days after the surrender suggested that if they stayed they might not live to see that day. Hesse's and Rooke's senior officers did their utmost to impose discipline, but the inhabitants worst fears were confirmed: women were insulted and outraged; Roman Catholic churches and institutions were taken over as stores and for other military purposes (except for the Cathedral of Saint Mary the Crowned that was protected successfully by its staunch vicar, Juan Romero, his curate, and his bell-ringer); and the whole town suffered at the hands of the ship's crew and marines who came ashore. Many body reprisals were taken by inhabitants before they left, bodies of murdered Englishmen and Dutchmen being thrown down wells and cesspits. By the time discipline was fully restored, few of the inhabitants wished or dared to remain.

”

The sentence I proposed is a precis from several sources for the overview article and says:

“

Attempts to win over the population to the Imperial cause were frustrated by the disorder[11] that followed. The effects of this, combined with the expectation of a Spanish counter attack[12] led most of the townspeople to leave.

”

I am using this to cite two factors in the decision to leave. One being the events during the take over, the second being the expectation of a counter attack to retake the town. It is being alleged that this is WP:OR with the argument the wording is not the same as the cite.

Second opinions please. Wee Curry Monster talk 21:49, 12 January 2011 (UTC)

Youtube videos as source

Is it original research to cite videos of Eastern Orthodox baptisms, published on Youtube, as showing that those baptisms do not always involve total submersion of the child or adult being baptized? Is this different from citing books or articles that describe such baptisms? See the citations and a discussion on them. Esoglou (talk) 08:37, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I believe that Youtube videos are generally not considered reliable sources, but sometimes are if the video is unambiguously from a reliable source (such as a news agency) and does not violate copyright. I looked at one, the baptism of sofia and my thinking is that home videos of baptisms would not fall into that category, so I would suggest such videos are not reliable for this purpose. Such videos, even if reliable, would be primary sources, and I would also suggest that by using them to draw conclusions about baptisms in general would be considered OR. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:26, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Though I was taking the video not for "drawing conclusions about baptisms in general", but only for concluding that some Eastern-Orthodox baptisms do not involve total submersions, I presume that you know best. Thanks. Esoglou (talk) 12:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

I sure you are correct about the services, for what it is worth, esp. considering how much variation in religious services there are even within a single sect. Can you find a better source? Also, others may have different opinions. --Nuujinn (talk) 15:37, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

My idea was simply that "seeing is believing" and that the sample videos were the clearest demonstration possible that, while total submersion is also practised (a Moldovan priest has actually been charged with manslaughter for drowning a baby when baptizing it and videos of total submersion are also available), there is variation in regular Eastern Orthodox practice. However, I have given also two citations from undeniably reliable printed sources that state explicitly that immersion (as distinct total submersion) plus pouring is used in the Eastern Orthodox Church. I must add that to my surpise an opposing editor has claimed that I was "misrepresenting sources": see the end of this section. Esoglou (talk) 16:19, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

It's better to avoid the seeing is believing entirely and just use illustrations as simply that - illustrations of things described and cited in the text. The problem is they are both primary sources and their provenance is often a bit iffy. What Wikipedia wants is reliable sources and it prefers secondary sources. Drawing a conclusion solely from a video is original research in all but the most obvious cases or where the video was explicitly made for the purpose - and where it was made for a purpose someone would have said so separately anyway. Dmcq (talk) 16:40, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

"They are both ..." I'm sorry, I don't understand. I have already cast aside the idea of using the (more than two) videos. Are you referring to the two books I mentioned? I don't think so. They are not primary sources and their provenance is far from iffy. And in spite of the claim by another editor, each of them quite explicitly says that the mode of baptism that I described is used in the Eastern Church. I suppose that the puzzling phrase "they are both ..." was just a slip of the keyboard. Esoglou (talk) 17:26, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

There are two reasons there. Dmcq (talk) 18:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Apologies for my failure to understand that it was a "both ... and ..." clause. Esoglou (talk) 18:35, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Atheism entry and the inclusion of demographics on other groups

Over at Atheism, one finds the following demographics in the lead.

Between 64% and 65% of Japanese are atheists, agnostics, or do not believe in a god.[9] In Europe, the estimated percentage of atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers in a personal god ranges as low as single digits in Poland, Romania, Cyprus, and some other countries,[10] and up to 85% in Sweden, 80% in Denmark, 72% in Norway, and 60% in Finland.[9]

As you can see these stats cover a much larger group of "non-believers" than strictly atheists. I have tried arguing at the talk page that we should not be including demographics that heap all of these groups together, because that would be like saying that "55% of the worlds population identifies with Christianity, Judaism and Islam", on the Judaism page. We already have separate entries on agnosticism, irreligion, etc. On the talk page I have suggested ~~substituting that text for~~ replacing that text with:

Rates of atheism are higher in Western nations, like the United States (4%), Italy (7%), Spain (11%), Great Britain (17%), Germany (20%), and France (32%).[1]

These stats come from a poll that has specific data for "atheism" as distinguished from "agnosticism". The reason why I'm asking about this here is because editors on the talk page argue that the most inclusive definitions of "atheist" might actually include the groups that the first source (Zuckerman) groups together, yet clearly distinguishes as "atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers". I believe doing so is original research. We can only add statistics to the page when the sources are reliable and have identified them as specifically "atheist". General stats on non-believers or the irrelgious should go into other broader entries like irreligion. Any advice would be helpful.Griswaldo (talk) 13:56, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Important correction: You have not suggested to substitute other text for the text in your second bullet. You have suggested to substitute the text in your second bullet for other text. Hans Adler 17:32, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. I reread my suggestion on the talk page and I'm not sure how you get here from there. However, I've added a clarification in case it is still unclear. I am suggesting, for the record, to switch the current figures in the lead (first bullet) with the ones in the second bullet above I see my mistake now. Thanks Hans.Griswaldo (talk) 17:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Its not original research to use these statistics (they are published after all) ... but I agree that it would be misleading to use them without making it very clear that they refer to more than just Atheists. I think this is more a WP:NPOV issue than a WP:OR issue. Blueboar (talk) 15:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes I wasn't exactly sure what board was best for this question. My main objection is also that there are statistics that are much more precise available. Thanks.Griswaldo (talk) 15:57, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The distinction between atheists, agnostics and people who do not believe in gods is mostly philosophical hair-splitting. This was my first Google hit for "define:atheism". Note the second definition, which can be rephrased as "atheism, agnosticism, or not believing in a god". It appears to me that the first group is for people who don't believe in gods and are somewhat evangelistic about that, the second for people who do not believe in gods but haven't completely made up their mind, and the third is for people who don't believe in gods and reject or do not understand the hair-splitting. In other words: "atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers" is how a statistician defines atheists in order not to lose any due to terminological issues.

Articles tend to be dominated by the most extreme or most typical cases. But they are still also about the more general cases. E.g. the majority of the German population is nominally Christian, goes to church once a year (on Christmas), if that, plus on a few special occasions such as funeral services, has only very vague ideas of who that Jesus person was and what his relation to his mother and his two fathers is supposed to be, or why it is all supposed to matter. This is why German churches are being closed nowadays, or merged. Except at Christmas and maybe Easter they are empty. Yet we count all these people as Christians.

I don't think there is even the slightest problem with counting someone as atheist in the wider sense who, presented a huge choice including "atheist", "agnostic" and "do not believe in a god", ticks the second or third box rather than the first. One could similarly offer choices such as "Christian", "non-practising Christian" and "believe in God and Jesus". Hans Adler 17:53, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I disagree... there is a huge difference between an Atheist (who does not believe in the existence of any gods), an Agnostic (who questions the existence of gods), a Non-believer (who may well believe in gods, but not "as defined" by a particular religion or sect) and a non-participant (who believes, but does not attend). Blueboar (talk) 18:06, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't think those differences will necessarily be apparent to people filling out questionnaires, though, who will probably not know which of the various options is most applicable to them. So I don't think that a statistic about how many atheists there are in a given place actually tells us very much. So I would say that too much prominence is given to any statistic on the subject by putting it in the lead. And also, it would be misleading to base whatever is included in the article on the assumption that people have correctly grouped themselves according to the definitions of atheist, agnostic etc that are reflected in Wikipedia articles. (ETA: readin back up, I'm more-or-less repeating what Hans said). --FormerIP (talk) 18:14, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

(ec)Hans, the reason why Zuckerman groups all three together has to do with the lack of methodological consistency between the sources he's summarizing - and I feel his pain there. If he were to draw a hard line, as I suggest we do here, he would have had less material at his disposal. However, more recent studies have begun to draw these lines, because many of the people who use the terms we are discussing to self-identify make these distinctions as well. In fact, I would argue, they have made the distinctions for a long time now. Social Scientific surveys on religious identification, at least in the United States, have suffered in the past from a lack of nuance when it comes to those who are unaffiliated. If you didn't identify with a religious group you were just a "none". But it turns out that "nones" are pretty diverse group, ranging from hard core atheists to new agers. So I feel for Zuckerman because the data he has at his disposal is not consistent and often resorts to broad categories without nuance, but I just don't think we have to do that ourselves.Griswaldo (talk) 18:18, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"However, more recent studies have begun to draw these lines..." does seem to signal original research. --FormerIP (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't follow? If you believe my statement is original research I'll be happy to supply examples.Griswaldo (talk) 18:42, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

And to be clear, the broad categories I speak of are not "atheism" as a broad category, but other related terms like "secular", or "nonbelievers", etc.Griswaldo (talk) 18:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Here's an good example of what I mean. In their 2006 study Hunsberger and Altemeyer (Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers, Prometheus) differentiate between "atheists" and "agnostics" in their results. In the introduction they refer to some demographic stats from the ISSP II study (1999) reporting a figure of only 3% atheists in the United States. Only those answering "1" to the relevant question were considered "atheists". Question: Please indicate which statement below comes closest to expressing what you believe about God. Answers: 1. I don’t believe in God 2. I don’t know whether there is a God and I don’t believe there is any way to find out 3. I don’t believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a Higher Power of some kind 4. I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at others 5. While I have doubts, I feel that I do believe in God 6. I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it 8. Can’t choose, don’t know 9. No answer. Similarly the ARIS (2001) asked people to rate their agreement with the statement, "God exists" on a scale: 1. Disagree strongly, 2. Disagree Somewhat, 3. Agree Somewhat, 4. Agree Strongly. The ISSP is more nuanced, but I think you get the idea here. Social Scientists are now actually trying to tease apart disbelief and lack of affiliation in ways they did not do before.Griswaldo (talk) 19:12, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a problematic relationship here between "atheism" as an analytical category and "atheism" as a term of self-identification. Those who self-identify as "atheists" tend to adopt the broadest definition of the term analytically. It follows, to them, that others who espouse a certain set of basic beliefs are also atheists. However, those very people who are claimed by the atheists, but do not themselves self-identify as such, often adopt a stricter definition of the term, which is exactly how they justify not being atheists. The definitions Hans linked to are indicative of this analytical disagreement (1.Atheist definition - A lack of theistic beliefs vs. 2. Non-atheist definition - The belief that there are no gods) . To the non-atheist disbelievers the distinction is important in other words, and that is why, when they can, they use more exacting language to describe themselves. The idea that they don't know any better is not supported by empirical research. Qualitative research shows that people who have made the choice to consider themselves agnostics, for instance, have usually thought about the matter enough to conceive of a difference. "Atheist" means something to them that they do not identify with. I think we ought to be conscientious of these distinctions on Wikipedia.Griswaldo (talk) 18:37, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not entirely clear what you're proposing, Griswaldo, but the reason I say "original research" is that you seem to be saying that there may be other sources out there that could be used to interpret the source containing the data in order to make it suitable for inclusion. That seems like a textbook case of OR to me. That would be fine for making an argument for exclusion (there would be no OR issue), but not for inclusion. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. --FormerIP (talk) 19:02, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm actually saying just the opposite. Figures concerning "Atheists, agnostics and nonbelievers" are being reported in the entry, and part of the rationale is that the most inclusive definitions of "atheism", which are not the definitions adopted by the source, would include all of those groups. My suggestion was to use a different source altogether, which had reported specifically on atheism. I don't wish to reinterpret Zuckerman or his sources. Here's a good comparison. Consider that Zuckerman were writing an essay on the Abrahamic faiths and using data from all three here, two there, another two here, one there. We'll that's what he's done but instead he's grouped together all nonbelievers with some stats just about atheists here, about atheists and agnostics there, etc. Now what Wikipedia editors are doing is taking his review of research on non-belief and using figures from it that are not specifically about atheism in the entry on atheism. It is like taking demographic stats that lump together Judaism, Christianity and Islam and making supposedly meaningful claims about the demographics of Judaism in the entry on Judaism. Is that clearer?Griswaldo (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

The discussion at Talk:Atheism up to this point has largely between Griswaldo and me. Something that I think I should point out is that there has never been any disagreement that the page should say "the estimated percentage of atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers" and so forth, so there is no issue of taking information from these sources and misrepresenting it as simply "the percentage of atheists". We have always been very clear about identifying the data the same ways that the sources themselves identify it. There is also, I think, agreement with Griswaldo having very helpfully found some newer sources that are more specific to atheism per se. The issue, rather, is about deleting what would end up being quite a bit of the page (including more than just the sentence from the lead quoted above), on the grounds that the page is about atheism, and therefore must not include any information that is not strictly and unambiguously about atheism and nothing else. Up to now, the page (which is a Featured Article, by the way) has always included information that includes so-called "weak atheism", which extends over a broad and imprecisely defined range of beliefs and nonbeliefs, but always being clear about what data are specifically about atheists, defined narrowly, and what data extend to a mixture of atheists and whatever else. So long as we don't mislabel the latter, and we don't, I don't think it's de facto mislabeling to include the information on the page, and there, I think, is where the disagreement lies. Perhaps like FormerIP, I am concerned that it may actually be OR to say, for example, that Zuckerman described the data as "the estimated percentage of atheists, agnostics and other nonbelievers", so therefore this is not information about atheists at all, and must be deleted. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

"Weak atheism" is not an analytical category utilized by social scientists, it is a category constructed by philosophers. To claim that groups of people labelled by social scientists in their studies as something other than "atheists", are actually "atheists" for the purpose of out entry, because they fit the definition of "weak atheism" is WP:OR in my book. That argument, is indeed what made me chose this page to pose my question on. I have to admit that I am willing to take a less hard-line on the topic if an adequate explanatory narrative goes into the entry. In other words, I think with enough of a preface we can include the more general information in the demographics section of the entry. What I continue to disagree with, however, is presenting these non-exact figures in the lead.Griswaldo (talk) 19:45, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

This goes to Atheism#Definitions and distinctions. And I think there is no objection to "adequate explanatory narrative" at all. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

File:Roman_Empire_125.png

Removal of Dacian group is based on User:EraNavigator original research on linguistics. Marking Costoboci and Carpi as non-Dacian (the articles were changed by the same author and disputed), and on top of it adding Dacian language to the Slavic group are all disputed and far from main stream research. Read what happen here. Look at the Changes to Empire 125 map section of the talk, which was since removed, I assume in good faith. See also this newer version of the file as well, which was moved to png format, losing the history of changes about the same time (November 19-20, 2010). Please also check the corresponding commons versions. This talk is also very relevant. And another broader point is this: Due to the hard work of the author, this map is used by a LOT of pages, and significant changes to it should involve more discussions and scrutiny from now on. It can no longer be updated with radical changes without impacting other articles. Otherwise it becomes some sort of Trojan horse, pushing incorrect information to many articles in one shot. So the reason I bring all this up is not the Dacia related articles, but the fact that a LOT of articles are using it are affected bu such radical changes.--Codrin.B (talk) 02:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Just an opinion, Codrin, but I think you will need to give a much clearer explanation of the issues involved in determining whether Costoboci and Carpi are Dacian or not in order to get uninvolved editors to comment.

On a side-note, it's a great map, although I think the location of Deva may be very slightly out. --FormerIP (talk) 03:00, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Even if Carpi and Costoboci stay as uncertain, marking Daci as Slavs and removing their distinct status is at least original research if not more. It is also inconsistent with all other articles about Dacians, their languages and the Indo-European languages. --Codrin.B (talk) 18:29, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, but I think users who will be able to judge whether your opinion is right or wrong without having further information to go off will be few and far between. Something fairly concise saying "this is orginal research because...", perhaps with some wikilinks, is needed here I think.--FormerIP (talk) 18:35, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

The best I can bring is what the "research" author of the changes, says, in his own words: "Add UNCERTAIN category to list of PROBABLE BARBARIAN LINGUISTIC GROUPS and remove DACIAN" and "Make the DACI Balto-Slavic (speculative, I know)". It can be read here, section Changes to Empire 125 map. The same talk page has a lot of a other instances of original research. Look at the second section named Roman Empire 125 for the phrase My view that Dacian is related to the Baltic languages is based on the comparison of Dacian plant names. Other incredibly original ideas Therefore, modern Romanian is not descended from Dacian at all. This is consistent with my view that Romanian is Illyro-Latin. Interesting innovative idea, but not for Wikipedia. See also the new proposed language tree. All this original research results in a lot of invasive changes to many key articles, many changes were already done. All these sections of the talk, were removed, but I assume in good faith.--Codrin.B (talk) 18:48, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

And don't get me wrong, the guy is putting some hard work in linguistics here, which I appreciate, but I think he should write his own books not Wikipedia articles. We could add references to his books later.--Codrin.B (talk) 18:52, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Okay, this definitely looks like original research. The map should not be advancing the novel theories of a WP editor. --FormerIP (talk) 19:18, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

So what are the next steps? --Codrin.B (talk) 06:25, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

If it's just the colouring of that "Dacians" string, just go to the original SVG map and edit it. It can be done in any plaintext editor, or in a program like Inkscape. Fut.Perf. ☼ 07:12, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Well there is also the distinct Dacian grouping, as you saw in the previous version, which makes sense since the mainstream and historical sources, and the Romans, classified them as distinct. Then Bastarnae are also of uncertain origin as well as other tribes. There is more work and I don't want to get into any edit wars. I had enough conflict for the next 5 years.--Codrin.B (talk) 18:51, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Besides, the guys abandoned the SVG version and went to a PNG version, File:Roman_Empire_125.png, which continued to evolve. Change that one too? Remove one? --Codrin.B (talk) 18:53, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I think this case is now obvious. On the talk page of this map none of the materials presented as sources for Dacian as a Balto-Slavic language contained this claim (two of the references were just copied from a site, without even checking what those sources say). Andrei Nacu, the author of this map, said it's fun to push his own theories against opposition and he doesn't want to concede, because " it will take some time to find some other pioneering theories to fight for". This came after a temporary compromise which Andrei reverted (Jan 14), not motivated by sources, but by a personal conflict with CodrinB.

Thus this map is "advancing the novel theories of a WP editor". Daizus (talk) 05:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Even if I said that, and even if I enjoy debating against you and Codrin (to whom I have no conflict, I just made fun of his protochronistic beliefs) I brought some references in support of classifying Dacian as probably belonging to the Balto-Slavic linguistic group. I told you to discuss about novel theories and OR with scholars like Ivan Duridanov, Harvey Mayer or E. Hamp and other people sharing their views. I am not doing any OR on my map!

Andrei (talk) 11:46, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

You keep asserting that if some scholar writes of Baltic-Dacian connection (or about Baltic and Illyrian, or Baltic and Albanian), that means Dacian is a Balto-Slavic group. Non sequitur. Fact is none of the aforementioned scholars claimed Dacian is a Balto-Slavic language (to be sure, Mayer, a very controversial linguist, holds there is no Balto-Slavic group! - I don't think his papers are reliable sources anyway) - that's only your and EraNavigator's theory.

Your added those false references (as pointed above, you didn't even read some of them) after you reverted the map and I said this should go to AN/I. Your conflict with CodrinB is well documented, for example, at some point you even complained to EraNavigator that "maybe they are just paid by some organization to support theories going against the new vawe in Romanian historiography" and there are many similar remarks by you and EraNavigator about the editors or even scholars opposing your theories. Daizus (talk) 14:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

This sounds more like a NPOV issue than a WP:OR issue. Original maps are allowed, but they should illustrate what reliable sources say. If the sources disagree, then the map should indicate that there is disagreement in some way. Or, as an alternative, the article can present several maps, each illustrating the different viewpoints, and captioned appropriately (as in "Map of Dacia showing linguistic groups as proposed by Prof. X"... and "Map of Dacia showing linguistic groups as proposed by Dr. Y") Blueboar (talk) 17:43, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

So far there is no reliable source cited for some of the illustrations on this map (the one I focused on is that of Dacians being a Balto-Slavic population). "Map showing linguistic groups as proposed by Prof. X" (or "Dr. Y") must be supported with citations from Prof. X and Dr. Y saying that directly and explicitly . Otherwise it is original research. Daizus (talk) 17:54, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Update: Andrei Nacu complained the criticism of his map is "vandalism and harassment"(!) and attempted to remove all the objections from map's talk page. Daizus (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

^ Cite error: The named reference WaPo hate was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#40423304
^ "Sexual orientation, homosexuality, and bisexuality". American Psychological Association. Retrieved 2010-11-30.
^ Ndetan, H. T.; Rupert, R. L.; Bae, S.; Singh, K. P. (2009). "Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Injuries Sustained by Students While Attending a Chiropractic College". Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. 32 (2): 140–148. doi:10.1016/j.jmpt.2008.12.012. PMID 19243726.

[WaPo_hate-1] Cite error: The named reference WaPo hate was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

[2] ttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/#40423304

[3] "Sexual orientation, homosexuality, and bisexuality". American Psychological Association. Retrieved 2010-11-30.

[4] Ndetan, H. T.; Rupert, R. L.; Bae, S.; Singh, K. P. (2009). "Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Injuries Sustained by Students While Attending a Chiropractic College". Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. 32 (2): 140–148. doi:10.1016/j.jmpt.2008.12.012. PMID 19243726.

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