Talk:Asexuality/GA2

GA Reassessment

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Although this is an important page with interesting and vital information, it is by no means a good wikipedia article, mainly because of its reliance on primary sources (university studies and opinion polls) and sometimes biased opinions.

A large proportion of the 'facts' claimed are based on research by Bogaert. - I followed a few citations from the main body and leading paragraph and found that of the 20 citations, at least 8 either directly or indirectly used Bogaert as a source. Bogaret's evidence from 1994 extrapolated asexuality based on an answer of no attraction to either sex when asked on sexual desire. While these positions are near, they are not synonymous and therefore his conclusions cannot be read as empirical evidence.

Another very large issue with this page and the evidence it is based upon is the fact that in surveys, rather than people with 'asexual' qualities and experiences being retrospectively labeled asexual, these participants are self proclaimed asexuals. I think that this has a bearing on how the surveys were answered. If i were to start a survey and first say 'yes i am an asexual', I would then (this is opinion) make sure that my answers were in keeping with what i believed asexuality to be. The survey i refer to is source [3] This study, in the intro, states its aim as to "provide exploratory data for future hypothesis-driven research". In its findings it also states: "further research is needed on the correlates of asexuality (it used a piece of 2004 Bogaret data in comparison to find this conclusion). This study is cited 13 times in the article, and considering that that is nearly 10% of all citations on this page, i think it must be taken into account that this pivotal and crucial piece of evidence says itself that it is only exploratory data, which used qualitative open question essays (which has lead to purportedly empirical evidence.

For me the section "Discrimination and legal protections" is really not great. Its portrayal of asexual struggles is not backed up by any empirical real world prejudice, just opinions and polls from people likely already interested in LGBT+ issues.

Of the 75 sources, under 20 appeared to be either secondary, reliable or even relevant; of the 146 citations, 50% (73) are from just 12 sources, which i analysed and found that 7 were written by or relied heavily on research by Bogaert. Meaning that 44 out of 146 citations (35%) are reliant on a single man's findings, which have been disputed (See source 31). I haven't got time to critique the rest of the article, but if you check out everything i've said, it quickly becomes clear that this article is not based on fact and is misleading - at best. Good, reliable, secondary sources are a must for any good article, and therefore the good article symbol must be removed and the evidence re-examined. Either better evidence must be found, or it must be accepted that as this is a relatively new field in social science, it will take more time before concrete, encyclopaedic worthy evidence is found.

(the 12 sources i researched were: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 15, 17, 22, 31, 32 (sources with 4 or more citations)) Callum radiator (talk) 13:42, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I have reverted you on your removal of the "good article" template. I realize that you might not understand this since your Wikipedia account has very few edits edits attached to it, but, at this stage, you do not have the power to remove the "good article" template. Looking at your account, I also very much doubt that you are a newbie, but I may concern myself with that at a later date.

Now to address your points, asexuality is not well-researched; the article is clear about that. As seen here, the article is based on WP:Tertiary and secondary sources when it can be. Otherwise, it is based on primary sources, which is fine, given the limited data out there about this topic. Even WP:MEDDATE, which applies to some aspects of this article, states, "These instructions are appropriate for actively researched areas with many primary sources and several reviews and may need to be relaxed in areas where little progress is being made or where few reviews are published." Bogaert is the leading researcher in this field; so it is obvious that a lot of material will be based on his findings, but there is also a lot of material in the article not based on his findings. Good articles can exist even for topics that are relatively new in the field of social science; being relatively new in the field of social science is not a valid reason to delist an article that is generally well-sourced and is based on the available literature for that topic. And, for the record, all sexual orientation identity material is based on self-identification; there is no biological test that identifies a person's sexual orientation. Surveys, polls and similar is how sexual orientation identity material is gathered.

This article has been subject to significant WP:Student editing since it was elevated to GA status, and, as the edit history of its talk page shows (for example, see here), I have encouraged the students to use secondary sources, not primary sources. In some cases where they have used primary sources instead of secondary sources, this can be easily remedied. WP:Good article reassessment is not article cleanup. You did not follow the WP:Good article reassessment protocol. For one, it states, "Where possible, editors should conduct an individual reassessment, while community reassessment should be used if delisting is likely to be controversial." Why would you think an individual reassessment would not be controversial in this case? WP:Good article reassessment also states, "The outcome of a reassessment should only depend on whether the article being reassessed meets the good article criteria or not. The goal should not be to delist the article, but to restore it back to its former good article quality, if possible."

WP:Good article reassessment also states, "Before attempting to have any article delisted through reassessment, take these steps:

Fix any simple problems yourself. Do not waste minutes explaining or justifying a problem that you could fix in seconds. GAR is not a forum to shame editors over easily fixed problems.

Tag serious problems that you cannot fix with appropriate template messages, if the templates will help other editors find the problems. Do not tag bomb the article.

Make sure that the problems you see in the article are covered by the actual good article criteria. Many problems, including the presence of dead URLs, inconsistently formatted citations, and compliance with the Manual of Style are not covered by the GA criteria and therefore not grounds for delisting.

Notify major contributors to the article and the relevant Wikiprojects. Remember, the aim is not to delist the article, but to fix it."

You did none of that...unless we are counting this small edit you made (and I did re-remove that). Your main issue is with the sourcing. If you can find better sourcing, then you are supposed to do it yourself. This reassessment should be closed. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:54, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

I apologise for not following proper protocol, i was rushed and honestly i find a lot of the methods on wikipedia infinitely confusing. My main issue is with sourcing, but that means that my main issue is with the actual information too. I could not find better sources if i wanted to, because the information is only available from these few sources who's scientific information i dispute. It feels as though you haven't read my assessment and have just ignored my issues. On another point, for a page to be a good article, it needs be neutral in point of view. I disagree that this article is neutral and scientifically based, particularly in the discrimination section. I looked at the original article and it is distinctly different from the article as it stands now. It is not the same article, it has different information, and different sources. This page should be reassessed anyway on the basis that it is too different from the page which was originally listed as a good article. My source issue is much greater than you make it out to be, as the article relies on primary scientific data, and news companies reporting this primary data - these do not make for reliable secondary sources. wikipedia defines a primary source as "the original publication of a scientist's new data, results and theories". The discrimination section is based on one single poll. I do not need to find better sources, i honestly think a lot of the information must be removed as it is based on (as i said above) too few studies- some of which self admit to only being exploratory. Without proper hypothesis driven research, many of the main points are simply not valid as each point is generally backed up by one or two 'sources' which once i looked into them, lead back to one of three studies. I'm aware that i may not be making myself clear, and i may come off as a madman. I apologise. I want this article to be good. I think that this article needs to have a community reassessment due to the facts that: -it is almost a different article from the one that was given its good article status some years ago. -Its inclusion of certain information (discrimination) shows a clear bias -Some of the information cannot be purported as fact because there is simply not enough evidence. Again, i am not an internet wizz-kid so i apologise for my methods. please take this criticism seriously Callum radiator (talk) 14:21, 3 January 2017 (UTC)

I read your assessment, which is why I explained why I disagree with it. Your assessment is mainly based on the fact that you dispute the validity of asexuality/whatever science there may be behind asexuality because the sources are based on self-identified asexuals. Like I've noted to you above, "all sexual orientation identity material is based on self-identification; there is no biological test that identifies a person's sexual orientation. Surveys, polls and similar is how sexual orientation identity material is gathered." I've read enough people disputing asexuality on the article talk page in the talk page's earlier days. The fact that asexuality is disputed is made very clear in the Asexuality article (including in the lead of the article), but the fact that it is disputed does not mean that we are not supposed to report on what these sources state. Wikipedia goes by WP:Notability and WP:Verifiability first and foremost, and there are enough primary, tertiary and secondary sources reporting on the asexual identity and on categorizing it as a sexual orientation. These days, it is not unusual for asexuality to be thought of as the fourth sexual orientation, alongside heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. This article does not state the existence of asexuality as a definitive fact; it is very clear that asexuality is not yet widely accepted as a sexual orientation. It's also clear about it being accepted enough that researchers debate it. See the WP:Neutral policy; actually read it. Being neutral on Wikipedia does not mean what being neutral means in common discourse. And either way, this article presents both sides when it comes to the existence of asexuality. Wikipedia does not state that we cannot use primary sources. It cautions against us relying too heavily on primary sources. In the case of asexuality, there are enough tertiary and secondary sources reporting on the primary research. I can easily find such sources on Google Books. There is certainly primary-sourced material in this article that I can source to tertiary or secondary sources; so the issue of using primary sources in some of the instances is easily fixed. In other instances, we can use primary sources until tertiary or secondary sources are available for the material, as long as we don't violate the WP:Synthesis policy or the WP:Editorializing guideline. The Discrimination and legal protections section is not supported by one source. If there are sources that challenge what is stated in that section, then we are supposed to present them if they are WP:Reliable and are not too WP:Fringe. If there are no such sources, then I do not see what you think should be done about what is stated in that section. Either way, the argument that this small section needs improvement is not a valid reason to delist this article. Your complaints about the article are not covered by the good article criteria, that is my point. Going by what WP:Good article reassessment states, it does not seem that you truly want to improve this article. It seems that you simply want to delist it because you dispute the validity of asexuality since we can't prove that asexual people exist other than by their claims and/or some researchers claims that they exist. That's not the way that delisting an article is supposed to work. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 12:13, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

As for how this article looked in 2011 when I brought it to WP:GA status, a lot of it has remained the same with some alterations. Anyway, today, I will replace some of the primary-sourced material with tertiary or secondary sources since we should generally be using the latter type of sources. In other cases, I might simply place a tertiary or secondary source beside the primary source. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 12:30, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

With this edit, I added some tertiary or secondary sources in place of primary sources or in conjunction with existing primary sources, including this 2016 Introducing the New Sexuality Studies Routledge source that explains how a person might be identified as asexual by researchers. It's not simply a matter of a person identifying as asexual; well, not for a lot of cases anyway. The edit also shows that I removed some material. Most of the stuff in the article is indeed covered in the literature by tertiary or secondary sources; I'll see about replacing other primary sources, or adding tertiary or secondary sources alongside existing primary sources, at a later date. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:24, 4 January 2017 (UTC)