There is a potentially meaningful discussion going on at the "Identifying reliable sources" talk page. Like I said, "potentially." It comes back to the perennial question of whether the News 'n' Entertainment Media are universally applicable as sources for a putative encyclopedia. Specifically, the issue is whether "opinion pieces" are to be considered primary sources, but as User:Wilfione opines, "I sometimes wonder whether the distinction primary/ secondary/ tertiary is not in itself something a bit fuzzy." As well he might -- much of what is presented as straight news coverage is actually veiled "opinion pieces." Will Beback, who is always concerned about what impact such policy discussions may have on the POV pushers, expresses his concern that "no clear distinction between opinion (primary) and analysis (secondary or tertiary)." I believe he means "in the policy discussion", because in practice, we all know that it's "analysis" if it is congenial to the POV you are pushing. Or, in the words of User:kmhkmh, "It is indeed an often misleading approach that invites for wikilawyering."

There is no fuzzy difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary.

Primary source is the originator of the claim - i.e. an opinion piece, a research paper, etc. Secondary sources are reviews of a secondary source. If the secondary source is the topic then it becomes a primary source. A tertiary source is merely a summary of secondary sources. If it is the topic then it becomes a primary source.

Opinion pieces and, say, a professional book review are two very different things. One is some random guy giving an opinion, and the other is (supposedly) a trained academic giving an objective review. However, any subjective comments should not be described as objective.

News sources are not credible because they often have retractions that can take up to a week, and if we take them immediately then it is possible to have missed any corrections. Book published works or magazine published works have more editorial analysis and have a higher threshold of being correct. News sources suck for reasons beyond the primary/secondary source reasons.

You're of course completely correct about that, but misunderstandings are epidemic. Have a look at the article being discussed here: http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=34901

Often Wikipedia editors use fuzzy logic - not in the sense of multivalued inputs and branching algorithms, but in the way a slice of bread gets 'fuzzy' if you leave it out too long.

News sources are even more not credible when they don't have the retractions.

This is all bullshit. Wikipedia's own policy pages say, bluntly, that Wikipedia articles are tertiary
sources, by definition.....and yet I've seen hundreds of Wikipedia articles that used other Wikipedia
articles as citations, as if they were primary.

It's rife in the fanboy areas, such as science fiction, anime and manga, etc.

That's because no one cares about those topics, or ones like obscure Indian villages and universities. They're quite funny to read--when you can actually understand them.

Speaking about primary sources, and to digress only slightly: I wonder why WP "editors" of military-political / modern history topics are currently exhibiting so much tardiness about using any of the thousands of primary sources now available as a result of the commendable Wikileaks phenomenon.

Meanwhile, regardless of whether a reliable source is primary, secondary of tertiary, if the rightwing cabals don't like the content of any particular edit, they will find a million ways of using WP rules to "justify" by "consensus" the suppression, censorship or vandalising of that edit. I know.

The same is true of the leftwing cabals.

And, of course, the wingnut cabals.

I have no firsthand knowledge of any "leftwing" cabals, but I'm very interested to know more in the interests of neutrality. Kindly supply some usernames of these alleged "leftwing" cabal members and the specific topics they relate to. My own firsthand knowledge as a victim of rightwing cabals is well documented in the numerous NPOV disputes I was involved in at Arbcom and at RFCs etc. Some of the more prominent rightwing cabal member usernames that consistently cropped up are: Edward321; Habip; Nick-D (sometimes referred to as Dick-D); Timotheus Canens; and US defense analyst georgewillherbert, among others.

Any moment now I'm expecting Kelly Martin to tell me that Slimvirgin and/or the EEML never existed. I respectfully suggest that, unless he can provide convincing evidence as to the existence of leftwing cabals, he should STFU.

Even if/when retractions are published they rarely if ever receive the some prominence as the original item. An inaccurate item on the frontpage is likely to be retracted around page 25 or thereabouts, making it easy for the retraction to be overlooked by readers.

What about the middle of the road cabals?

The most insidious 'cabal' of all is the ever-unthinking Wikipedia Forever cabal, which removes or reduces anything that has proven difficult, for the sake of building up the FA Heap for The Project and attaining those exciting little MMORP symbols for themselves - no-matter where it leaves the article in terms of bias.

I'm waiting for the first Wikipedia murder, which I'm certain will come from a disagreement over trading barnstars.

Well said. I agree wholeheartedly. The simpleton middle-of-the-road cabal hates complexity. Their way of dealing with complexity is simply to revert complex content and get rid of the editor who introduced it.

The only "cabals" are leftwing cabals. Wikipedia has always been very left wing - look at the LGBT, global warming, etc. They are adamantly guarded by groups of individuals. Any "right wing" people have been quickly banned.

To be honest, your entries all seem like trolling with your flat out denial of what is there. We have things like Conservapedia because of how disgruntled Conservatives were because they were unable to deal with the cabals.



Hell, just looking through the forums, you will see stuff criticizing groups that promote pederasty, promote bestiality, attack scientists who signed a document critiquing Darwin, etc. Every major issue skewed drastically to the left in a way that most people who would consider themselves "liberal" get queasy at. Remember Benjiboi? He had his group of ultra liberal people and the moderate/somewhat left LGBT people were disgusted with him.

This is silly. It has never been a question of "left wing" vs. "right wing." It is a question of orthodoxy. That's what Chip Berlet (Cberlet (T-C-L-K-R-D) ) was all about. There are permissible, establishment-sanctioned forms of right-wingery and left-wingery, and then there are the impermissible varieties which are vigilantly rooted of Wikipedia, and/or denounced, misrepresented and maligned (see, for example, Producerism (T-H-L-K-D).)

And you even edited your post. Are you sure about all of what you said there, Ottava?

How classic: we have a rabid leftie denying the existence of leftwing cabals, and a rabid rightie denying the existence of rightwing cabals. The rabid leftie also identifies SlimVirgin (an assiduous animal-rights activist, generally considered a left-wing alignment) as a "right wing cabalist".

Hersch is right: it's not about left and right, but about extremism, orthodoxy, and the Wikipedia House Point of View.

My stated terms of reference were with specific regard to military-political and modern history topics, which as far as I'm concerned are firmly under the control of rightwing cabals. I'm neither interested in nor familiar with the the separate and IMO relatively arcane issues you raise, even if what you say is true. There are loonies on both the left and the right, as also in some areas of overlap between the two.

Libertarians are not right wing. They are anarchists. No one who believes in legalizing pot, free immigration, etc., is "conservative".



Thekohser:

"And you even edited your post. Are you sure about all of what you said there, Ottava?"

I added in a bit about opinion pieces.



Communicat:

"My stated terms of reference were with specific regard to military-political and modern history topics, which as far as I'm concerned are firmly under the control of rightwing cabals. "

LMAO. What? Ahahaha. Roger Davies, Kirill, etc., are all leading the mil hist project and the "military cabal" and are solidly lefty. As are most of the editors like Ed17 who edit in those areas. Just because they write about military doesn't mean they aren't lefty. Our coverage of things like the Iraq War and such things are not pro-Conservative in anyway. Hell, look at the material related to the prison incident.

There's always the even more obscure tarpit of the annex, of course.

Mod's note: since it looked like the off-topic brawl was mainly about AGW or AGC or whatever the climate change du jour is, I moved it here.

Fair enough, if a bit circular.

What if it's a guest opinion piece in The Economist by say the head of the World Bank? Is that just some random guy giving an opinion?



I'm sure that there's an explicit policy that Wikipedia articles are not RS and can't be cited; if there isn't, there obviously should be, even by Wikilogic.


Careful there - if it weren't for Godwin's Law I'd name a well-known right-wing animal-rights supporter.

What crap. Davies and Kirill are certainly not "solidly left" nor are they "leading" the milhist project. They are theoretically supposed to be "project co-ordinators" but in reality they are conspicuously absent from project activities, and this is/has for some time been a source of greivance at the project. Davies, who is also an arbitrator, is notable also for recusing himself from Arbcom proceedings concerning the goings-on at milhist project, which as everyone knows is the most conflict-ridden project at WP. As for that snot-nosed kid Kirill, he's too busy sucking up to his fellow arbitrators in the hope of having a few more barnstars bestowed upon him.

There's an interesting take on the question of orthodoxy at http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2011/08...a-is-the-enemy/ where the (conservative) author speaks of "institutional bias in favor of the right-left red-blue narrative that has, up until now, dominated American politics, and in which so much of the news industry is heavily invested. This narrative doesn’t allow for any significant deviations ... all must submit to its tyranny, in spite of its archaic and increasingly obstructionist character." IMO this applies not just to the news industry but also and especially to the WP industry (and also apparently to some intellectually challenged commentators here).

You silly, silly sod. Before your confusion rubs off on others: Slimvirgin was almost certainly not an individual but rather a cabal hiding behind Linda Mack's identity. To quote the definitive work on the Slimvirgin episode:

She was "an administrator with inhuman capacity for work. Over the past year, she edited nearly 35,000 articles (about 100 every day, without holidays and weekends). The same SlimVirgin also holds a record of continuous editorial work lasting 26 hours, with the longest break in editing not exceeding 40 minutes. These statistics from Wikipedia's editing records suggests either a supernatural ability, or more likely that SlimVirgin is a convenient smoke screen for an entire team of specialists editing Wikipedia articles on behalf of intelligence services."

See http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/russmag.html

Speaking of primary sources: what accounts for the ongoing and very conspicuous absence of Wikipleaks reliably sourced material at military history topics? Thousands of primary sources now available as a result of the commendable Wikileaks phenomenon, but you won't find one Wikileaks reference at the military history project.

I suggest this bias through omission is essentially because that project continues to be degraded easily by intellectual frauds and by a radical rightwing cabal that forms a power elite whose task it is to censor politically charged topics, insert disinformation and remove "embarrasing" information and/or views that diverge significantly from the conservative mainstream narrative. Anyone who goes against the entrenched structures of this ruling elite will, at best, have to undergo extreme frustration and unpleasantness or, at worst, find themselves banned and blacklisted. At the same time, astute NPOV editors who dislike the obvious, radical, rightwing bias seem to lack the integrity of showing any spirited resistance to the actions and omissions of the ruling elite. Which evidences a combination of coercion and consent. Pathetic.

Perhaps. I think my point was to say that primary means original, secondary means review, and tertiary means summary of reviews. So it is more of the action than anything else.



The head of the World Bank can give opinion. They can also give informed testimony. Normally, when such experts write an editorial piece, we say who they are and quote them. If you look at literature pages that I write about, you will see summary of critical analysis and then a section for subjective responses with quotes - the quotes are from opinion scattered throughout criticism that are subjective statements. We should do that any time someone is giving an opinion or what cannot be seen as mere expert analysis (i.e. description of feelings, response, etc, that are subjective and not a discussion of facts).

If the World Bank head said that they are worried about the economy, that should be quoted as opinion, whereas they are saying that in the third quarter such rates are going in such direction, then that could be cited as fact. Does that make sense?



Communicat



Then I have to say you don't know what you are talking about on either count. I was heavily involved in GAN and FAC review of Milhist articles and their presence was well felt as with the pressure they put on things. That is especially true when their editing competitions are happening.



Okay, now I'm confident that we are being trolled.

Kelly Martin is a man?

Thank you. Now I know why those articles are such a shambles. I wouldn't brag about it if I was you.

It is important to point out a circularity here, however. The Wikipedia House POV™ is established by powerful partisans on any given topic. They write what they want into an article, and if pressed find someone who said it somewhere, and anoint that somewhere as a Reliable Source. Often they ally with one another to then enforce a POV outside of their own domain. Thus is the Wikipedia House POV established.

So, from Slim, we get the Leaderless Resistance (T-H-L-K-D) sourcing such things as the ELF News, a blog called "Exit Stage Right" (labelled ESR by Slim), "PublicGood.org" and "FirstMonday.org". In the article on the Animal Liberation Front (T-H-L-K-D), we have facts sourced to Ingrid Newkirk (T-H-L-K-D), the head of PETA (T-H-L-K-D), and that article cites a gag blog called Kotaku.com, as well as David Shankbone writing in Wikinews!

Moving to Jayjg (T-C-L-K-R-D) , he is happy to cite things to CAMERA, but argues against the Electronic Intifada, while his pro-Palestinian opponents (like Nableezy (T-C-L-K-R-D) argue the opposite. His acolyte, IronDuke (T-C-L-K-R-D) , is happy to cite historical facts about the lynching of Leo Frank (T-H-L-K-D) to a defunct website "LeoFrankLycnhers.com", and to a film review on The Jewish Daily Forward.

People use citations to the most partisan of opinion pieces, to the most outlandish of tabloids, and to the most dubious of websites, but if they are defended by an experienced Wiki-power-broker, the likelihood is that they will stay.

Lil, in terms of scholarly effort, you know damn well that most of Wikipedia isn't even that good.

What can I say? Sometimes you have to sugar coat the pill.

Unconvincing. If we decided that every person who'd ever worked on a project for 26 hours straight with no more than 40 minutes rest, was actually a cabal of people, we'd have to make that deduction about everybody who's graduated college or worked at a profession. And add all farmers and self-employed people who make their own living, too. Certainly I'd done that before age 21, and many, many, many times since. Probably including a few times for free, on some project on the web (what the hell-- if you have never been passionate enough about some avocation to ever work on it for 26 hours straight, then I'm sorry for you).

Another dimension of this controversy is unfolding here, at the RS board, where they are arguing over whether to ban the Daily Mail as a source because the DM published egregiously phony crap. The problem is, if they set the publishing of EPC as a standard for invalidating the source generally, then they must rule out most newspapers in order to be consistent. It's quite a conundrum.

If that is true, shouldn't they ban the New York Times for having multiple frauds write stories for them (and even winning Pulitzers for those fake stories)?


By the way, the Mail only posted up the wrong article, and it is common for papers to prep multiple possibilities on such matters. Remember Dewey winning? That isn't publishing "fake stories", that is an editorial mistake which do have retractions and the rest.

You might as well ban all books published by say HarperCollins because some stuff they publish is rubbish.


I thought that in Ottava land all winners of Pulitzers were infallible sources.

That is a little silly. I never said all Pulitzer prize winners were the same nor infallible. I pointed out that a source used, Walter Jackson Bate, won a Pulitzer for the biography that was used - a rare feat for an academic work about a poet from 200 years ago. There aren't many works in literary criticism that receive the Pulitzer. Mind you, Walter Jackson Bate won two - one for his bio on John Keats and one for his bio on Samuel Johnson.

They SHOULD rule out most newspapers. It is only due to the "newspaper worship" of SlimVirgin that WP:RS looks like what it does today. And she, of course, is several fries short of a Happy Meal.

If they set the publishing of EPC as a standard for invalidating the source generally, then they must rule much of themselves out.

Doh. They already DO rule themselves out, except as a source for their own policies. Also other encyclopedias (as tertiary sources) are more or less ruled non-reliable or undesirable sources. This is not a bad policy when it comes to WP, since it IS an unreliable source. However, the Britannica is far more reliable than most newspapers. Which makes WP's WP:IRS guidelines, as regards primary vs. tertiary published sources, really stupid.

Well, some wasn't THAT original. Yes, for obvious reasons considering the demographics of their writers, WMF didn't trust it to have any idea of truth or even how to detect it. So they did the next best thing: they substituted "authority" for "epistemological competence."

It took quite a while for them to figure out how to define "authority" and finally they decided that it amounted to "non-self-published published material." This wasn't a very good proxy, but it was the best they could do, and now they've stuck to it.

It has obvious problems: when it comes to e-publishing, it hardly matters if you publish it yourself or "someone else" (yuck, yuck) does it FOR you. Without the money problems of publishing, the care of editing goes out the window.

The other problem is that even in venues where publishing still costs money (paper journalism), editorial care is a slave to monied interests in many ways, from time-pressure to sponsor and subscriber pressure, and this can get so bad that a private blog on the net can be far more truthful than the Weekly World News.

Perhaps the main original sin is that everybody forgot during the setting of WP souring policy back in 2005 that there's no good way to separate the independently-published sources that are truthful, from those that are as true as Tass and Mein Kampf. Ah, we let WP's editors figure that out, do we? I thought we'd agreed they are idiots? Hmmm.

Wait, I have it! We let OTHER published sources tell us what the reliable published sources are! Hence the primary and secondary thing.

Gee, it's kind of a recursive conundrum, ain't it? It's all kids and no teacher, and chaos ensues.

Ambiguation from Left vs Right:



Re Roe's contribution above

Nonsense. Show me that rule. You can't.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:RS#...ertiary_sources

This policy on tertiarys was changed in the fall of 2008. Encyclopedias other than WP are now allowed only as sources for for "broad overview" info, but discouraged for specific stuff. Interestingly, for a long time after WP:IRS began to speak of primary, secondary and tertiary sources, with secondary sources preferred, the lede/lead continued to encourage WP to use only tertiary sources! Finally in 2009 somebody noticed the disparity between the WP:IRS lede and the rest of the article, and fixed it.

Now there's an exemplary piece of bewildering WP mumbo-jumbo that I'd earlier missed.

BTW, re "Encyclopedias other than WP": among the somewhat more coherent WP rules is one that disallows specific WP articles to be cited as sources in separate WP articles. Go figure.