User:Thine Antique Pen/Adoption/Garamond Lethe

Hi Garamond Lethe, welcome to my adoption program. You will find you first lesson below.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing.

User:Jimbo Wales

The Five Pillars

One of the most important essays in Wikipedia is WP:FIVEPILLARS which is designed to eloquently sum up what we're here for.

• Pillar one defines Wikipedia as an encyclopedia. It suggests some things that we are not. Thoughts about what we are not are covered in the deletion lesson.
• Pillar two talks about neutrality, a concept that this lesson will be concentrating on.
• Pillar three talks about free content. The Copyright lesson will go into this in more detail.
• Pillar four talks about civility. Wikipedia is a collaborative working environment and nothing would ever get done if it wasn't. I'll go into civility more during the dispute resolution module.
• Pillar five explains that Wikipedia does not have firm rules. This is a difficult concept and will be covered in the Policy and consensus lesson.

Once you get your head around these five pillars, you will be a Wikipedian and a good one at that. All 5 are covered in my adoption school, though at different lengths. Be aware that I don't know everything and I would doubt anyone who said they did.

How articles should be written

The articles in Wikipedia are designed to represent the sum of human knowledge. Each article should be written from a neutral point of view – personal opinions such as right and wrong should never appear, nor should an editors experience. Neutrality also means giving due weight to the different points of view. If the broad scientific community has one set of opinions – then the minority opinion should not be shown. An example is in medicine – if there was an article on say treatment of a broken leg, a neutral article would not include anything on homeopathy.

To ensure that the information in an article is correct, Wikipedia has adopted a policy of verifiability. Anything written in Wikipedia should be available to confirm by looking at the associated reliable source. Wikipedia should not include anything not verifiable by seeing it is published elsewhere; in other words, it should not contain anything original.

Reliable sources

So what is a source? Wikipedia uses the word source for three interchangeable ideas – a piece of work, the work's creator or the work's publisher. In general, you would expect a reliable source to be published materials with a reliable publication process, authors who are regarded as authoritative in relation to the subject, or both. This doesn't mean that a source that is reliable on one topic is reliable on every topic, it must be regarded as authoritative in that topic – so whilst "Airfix monthly" may be a good source on the first model aeroplane, I would not expect it to be authoritative on their full size equivalent.

A source that is self-published is in general considered unreliable, unless it is published by a recognized expert in the field. This is a very rare exception – so self publishing is generally considered a no-no. This means that anything in a forum or a blog and even most websites are considered unreliable by default. One interesting sidepoint is on self-published sources talking about themselves. Obviously, a source talking about itself is going to be authoritative, but be careful that the source is not too self-serving – the article really should not be totally based on a direct source like that.

Mainstream news sources are generally considered reliable... but any single article should be assessed on a case by case basis. Some news organizations have been known to check their information on Wikipedia – so be careful not to get into a cyclic sourcing issue!

There's a lot more about what makes a source reliable here.

Questions?

Any questions or would you like to try the test?

I would like to attempt the test. GaramondLethe 05:26, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

Five Pillars

This test is going to be based on questions. One word "Yes" or "No" answers are unacceptable. I want to see some evidence of a thought process. There's no time limit - answer in your own words and we'll talk about your answers.

1) Q - You have just discovered from a friend that the new Ford Escort is only going to be available in blue. Can you add this to the Ford Escort article and why?

A -

As WP:NOT states: "there is an important distinction between what can be done, and what should be done." Yes, I can add this information to the article (assuming it isn't protected). I can also vandalise the article or remove well-sourced information, as can any other editor. But there are several reasons I should not. First, my source is not verifiable. Second, adding this fact in isolation likely gives it undue weight. And finally, wikipedia is not to be used for indiscriminate facts.

Well, the friend is not a reliable source. However, if Ford Motor Company put the fact that the car will only be able in blue on their website, you could add it, as they are the ones making the car. However, third-party sources would be needed for this fact.

Point taken on WP:RS vs. WP:V. I don't think that a third-party source is necessary, though, as per WP:SELFSOURCE. 20:12, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

2) Q - A mainstream newspaper has published a cartoon which you see is clearly racist as part of an article. Can you include this as an example of racism on the newspaper's article? What about on the racism article?

A -

Two questions have to be answered. First, while the racism may be obvious it is still an interpretation, and for that a reliable source is necessary ("Articles should provide an overview of the common interpretations of a creative work, preferably with citations to notable individuals holding that interpretation." per WP:SUBJECTIVE). High-quality citations are particularly import for controversial claims, especially those that are "out of character" for the entity being described (as per WP:REDFLAG).

If the citation burden is met there is still a question of weight. For example, if the interpretation of racism is made in a lightly-cited scholarly article, adding the claim and cite to the wikipedia entry on the newspaper would likely fail due to WP:UNDUE (although the case would be easier to make for the wikipedia entry on the cartoonist). On the other hand, if the New York Times has an article on the controversial cartoons, that's probably sufficient noteriety to warrant inclusion.

A similar analysis would have to be performed for the wikipedia entry on Racism, but there is a much higher bar to be met: out of the universe of racist incidents, why does this particular cartoon merit inclusion as an example? It's certainly possible to meet this bar. In particular, the coverage received by several newspapers publishing unflattering cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad might be worthy of inclusion.

Wikipedia is not censored. You could add it into the article on racism to show an example of a racist cartoon. But, there should be multiple, verifiable sources stating that this is a racist image.

Ah, ok. If the question was meant to point out WP:NOTCENSORED, then yes, of course. Interesting that this didn't even occur to me as an issue. GaramondLethe 20:15, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

3) Q - You find an article that shows that people in the state of Ohio eat more butternut squashes than anywhere in the world and ranks each of the United States by squashes per head. Interestingly you find another article that ranks baldness in the United States and they are almost identical! Can you include this information anywhere on Wikipedia? Perhaps the baldness article or the butternut squash article?

A-

This information cannot be included unless a cite can be found to support it as per WP:OR. This policy can lead to interesting conundrums. For example, the sentence "Rabbits did not live in the Precambrian era" is clearly against policy. Experts may universally consider this sentence to be both true and obvious, but unless an expert has taken the trouble to publish a statement to that effect then we as editors cannot synthesize that statement from what we know about rabbits and what we know about the Precambrian era.

For more realistic examples this can lead to problems with WP:UNDUE. For example, in Parable of the sunfish I had a statement to the effect that use of the parable in scientific publications was relatively uncommon (indeed, I had been able to find only a handful of examples). In part because it is uncommon, no expert has thought to make a published note as to its uncommonality. As I'm drawing the conclusion based on my research I'm not able to make as statement to its commonality either. And so by including the examples without commentary in the article I may be misleading readers to think the parable is relatively well known.

This is not to suggest that WP:OR be changed; it's just an interesting unintended side effect.

Well, I'll clarify something. If you have two separate reports, one on baldness and one on butternut squashes, you should not use it in the article. If you have a single report (say, from a reliable journal), you could include it in either of the articles as they have been compared between each other.

Yes, I think I convered that less concisely in the first sentence of my response before wandering off on a tangent. Agreed. GaramondLethe 20:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

4) Q - Would you consider BBC news a reliable source on The Troubles? Would you consider BBC news to be a reliable source on its rival, ITV?

A -

Absent other information I would consider the Beeb to be a reliable source for both.

The Beeb has a presumption to reliability as an entity because it is a publisher that employs fact-checking, publishes corrections, etc. (as per WP:NEWSORG). Individual articles or classes of articles may be found to be unreliable, but that finding itself will require extensive citing to reliable sources: that's not a determination that we as editors can make based on common knowledge.

As a practical matter, trying to classify a particular story as unreliable isn't often worth the effort. Problematic sources are usually much easier to exclude using WP:UNDUE. For example, an editor was making good-faith additions to abiogenesis by citing the Journal of Cosmology. The JoC meets the criteria for being a reliable source: it's a peer-reviewed (but little-known) academic journal. Trying to remove the edits based on establishing the unreliability of the source was simply not going to be possible. Instead, I argued that the views presented in the papers cited were WP:FRINGE and their inclusion would give them undue weight. This was not an easy argument to make (and involved me performing lots of citation counts), but it was far more tractable than arguing from reliability.

To sum up: reliability is necessary but not sufficient.

5) Q - Would you consider Ben and Jerry's official Facebook page a reliable source?

A-

As per my answer to question #8, facebook, blogs, and other questionable sources can be used as citations to the states of mind of their authors, although reliables sources are preferred. As such, the Ben and Jerry's official facebook page can be used to cite how Ben and Jerry's corporate view of the world, but not to facts outside of that view.

6) Q - A "forum official" from the Daily Telegraph community forums comments on Daily Telegraph's stance on world hunger. Would this be a reliable source?

A-

If the forum official was identified as an employee of the Daily Telegraph who was asking in his or her official capacity, and if the exchange was archived in such a manner that it could be verified, and if the claim based on this exchange was uncontroversial enough.... yes. I could see a sentence such as "The Daily Telegraph first announced their change in position on their chat forum. Jim "Bob" Dobbs, the head of corporate communcations who often spends time moderating the forum, stated that a press release would be forthcoming....".

7) Q - Would you have any problem with http://www.amazon.co.uk/ or an "iTunes" link being used in a music related article?

A -

There is nothing problematic with links to these domain names as such. Policy issues come in based on how the links are being used.

Most of the time answering this question for individual links will come down to whether the benefit to the reader outweighs the concern of self-promotion. To give a specific example, Leck mich im Arsch contains an external link to iTunes. I don't find this to be controversial: Mozart isn't making any money off of this, and it's unlikely that the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields is using Wikipedia to drive up their mp3 sales. However, there is not an iTunes link in the Leck mich im Arsch (Insane Clown Posse single) article: that's well over the line into using Wikipedia to promote that band.

This issue also arises in citing Google Books. If I cite a book and provide a link to google books for the purposes of allowing other to verify the cite easily and provide a launching point into that topic, that's uncontroversial. If I provide a citation to my book, that's probably over the line (and may run into WP:COI issues). If I'm providing the link to my book in the article on my book, that's definitely over the line.

The issue is even murkier when it comes to academic literature. If I'm citing an academic paper, most of the time any link I can provide to that paper will be to a publisher's site where they would like to to buy a copy. However, I can tell you as an author of academic works that I'm not seeing any of that money, so the self-promotion issues for linking to my own work aren't going to be as clear.

Overall, if the promotion is incidental and the link is helpful to the reader then I think it's appropriate, but I haven't been able to track down much in the way of policy that backs up this conclusion.

8) Q - Would you have any issue with using the About Us page on Xerox as a source for the history section of the Xerox article.

A -

As such a page would be considered promotional it would fall into the category of "questionable sources" and as such "[q]uestionable sources should only be used as sources of material on themselves, especially in articles about themselves" (WP:QS). As this is the case here, WP:SELFPUB applies. The material may be cited so long as the following condition are met:

1. [T]he material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim;
2. it does not involve claims about third parties;
3. it does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to its authenticity;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

All that being said, an editor working on the Xerox article has a wealth of quality first- and third-party reliable sources to draw upon (in particular I'm thinking of the classic "Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer" which really deserves its own article.... that's on my to-do list now). In a GA or FA candidate I would expect those sources to be prefered over the company's About page unless there was something on that page that could not be sourced anywhere else (and if that's the case I'd question whether or not it needed to be in the article in the first place).

9) Q - Everybody knows that the sky is blue right? An editor doesn't agree - he says it is bronze, do you need a source?

A -

As the statement is likely to be challenged, most circumstances will require that statement to have a source.

As per WP:WHYCITE, descriptions that are "verifiable directly from the image itself" need not be cited.

a) If the statement is not made in the context of an article then no source is required. However, the statement on an article talk page should conform to WP:TALK ("Article talk pages should not be used by editors as platforms for their personal views on a subject.") and, if on a user page, contravene the user page prohibition of "[w]ritings, information, discussions, and activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals" (per WP:USERPAGE).

b) As per WP:WHYCITE, no citation is required if the "bronze sky" describes an image included in the article (although this may be considered a WP:PEACOCK term).

c) A specific citation might not be needed when mentioning the source's statement that the sky is bronze. For example, a summary of this passage:

He stood quite still, hands on rail [sic], listening. It was a human noise. It seemed to come from the vacant bronze-colored sky above his head.

might be made with no more specific citation than the book itself, for example, from a hypothetical article:

Stribling describes the sky using several different colors thoughout the book, including red, pink, purple, bronze, green and teal.

Note that as per WP:SOURCE, if any of these colors are challenged (or likely to be challenged) then a specific citation must be provided.

d) If the above was quoted directly then, also per WP:SOURCE, a citation must be provided regardless of the likelihood of a challenge to the factual content.

e) The more intereseting question is whether a citation would be needed for the sky being blue. Opinions differ.

• Other answers are OK. Would you like the next lesson? Thine Antique Pen (talk) 23:15, 8 December 2012 (UTC)