Talk:Cherry picking/Archives/2013

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Is there something about harvesting cherries that differs from harvesting of other fruits? I.e. when picking cherries for harvesting is there more selection going on then when harvesting apples or pears?

Isn't this a term in basketball as well? --67.160.140.198 02:05, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe it is used in sports generally, at least in Canada. I entered a new section for it but I'm pretty sure there is another expression for the same tactic. If anyone knows, please add it in. Martin-C 21:36, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Section "Acceptability" has a US bias and does not represent world view. Additionally subsections "In revision control" and "In Australian taxation" are not really referring to the fallacy of Cherry Picking. Mayanksinghal1 (talk) 21:58, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

Section "Weighing information" removed

I removed the following section from the article:

For a more involved example, if one wish to find the average height of every male in the United States, and one were to use a sampling of average heights of males by state, and by age. If one were to average the heights of a selected group of males for instance from an elementary school and the persons argument was that on average males were less that 5 feet tall, and that was the only sampling given, this would represent Cherry Picking in that the sampling of the elementary school children would represent the persons theory that all males were under 5 feet.

This is really poorly written and describes rather some kind of very biased statistical sampling. Maybe if it was along the lines of "Assume you want to prove the theory that every male in the United States is less than five feet tall and then you pick your sample group from some elementary schools and blah, blah, blah", then it would provide an example for cherry picking. However, I think such a trivial example is not really needed -- it is already clear from the general description of what cherry picking is. Maybe some real world examples would be appropriate. (ezander) 81.14.182.36 09:54, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I removed the link to the Creationism article from the "See Also" section. I can understand why someone put it in there, and appreciate the sense of humor, but this isn't that sort of forum. BTW, this is my first edit ever. Highmind89 15:47, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Cherry picking is one of the favorite weapons in the arsenal of a typical Bible thumper, and needs to be mentioned somewhere in this article, in an unbiased, encyclopedic way, of course. Pulseczar (talk) 19:45, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

This Article is not Encyclopedic

This is essentially a long dictionary entry about the word "cherry picking", rather than any one thing. Cherry picking in sports is a different concept from cherry picking in research. A single article that covers both is not a good encyclopedia article. I suggest splitting it into multiple articles and then considering each one separately for deletion. Mark Foskey 15:44, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Or merging back into this one... Richard001 (talk) 00:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Religion subsection

The recently added "Religion" subsection (as seen in this previous revision) essentially implied that most religious denominations are fallacious since they cherry-pick their commandments from scriptures. That is, at the very best, original research - and in this case based on a false dichotomy (the argument assumes the "Thou shall not kill" commandment has necessarily the same status as the cited Deutoronomy verse). Since the subsection does not seem to have much potential to go further than straightforward definition/application of the concept (or at least I'm unable to envision the necessary improvements) I chose to be bold and delete it.Duplode (talk) 05:10, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with the implications of the symmetry used in describing the position of theists and that of atheists. What I see as a problem here is that the statement "irreligious people will use the Cherry picking fallacy to select various quotes from a religion's holy book to promote an anti-religious agenda" is, for the most part, false. Usually it is the aim of atheists to show that a religious text is not self-consistent, or that the beliefs of theists do not follow logically from their holy texts. This is not cherry-picking. If a group of people is making a claim, then it is sufficient to find an example of where such a claim is incorrect in order to disprove the claim. That is not fallacious. If person A claims that every word in the Bible is true, and person B finds two conflicting statements in the Bible. These statements, and ONLY these statements, are required to show that the original claim was false. Whereas if person A picked one or two statements from the Bible that are KNOWN to be true, while ignoring any potentially conflicting passages, this indeed WOULD be cherry picking. Ballzac314 25 April 2012. —Preceding undated comment added 06:14, 25 April 2012 (UTC).

Review of the section named "Retail"?

This section contains several dubious claims and, in some cases, downright untrue claims. For example it's assumed that the salesperson actually has a choice between serving one customer or serving both customers. Obviously this is not always the case. Also, the claim that choosing to focus on the sale, with the greater potential for profit, is regarded as poor salesmanship is obviously not true. Some customers undoubtedly frown upon that tactic. But from within the salesbusiness, the tactic, in itself, is generally uncontroversial and even seen as the only logical choice. It is true though that if you have a situation, where two or more salespersons has to share a finite number of customers, then it's generally expected that you show "team spirit" and take a share of the less attractive sales. But that just isn't what the article says. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.89.60.53 (talk) 12:37, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course, depending on the environment, such a choice may or may not exist. That's a fair point. Nothing in the subsection, however, is neither downright nor obviously untrue. Everything stated is valid and plausible. Any retail outfit wants its employees to maximize each and every sales opportunity no matter what the customer appears to be shopping for. Simply clerking the big-ticket customers and snubbing the customers who don't appear to be shopping for anything expensive is nearly always frowned on by management and fellow salesmen (unless they're guilty of such behavior themselves!). In any case, feel free to improve the subsection if you have a better scenario. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.118.4.1 (talk) 13:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Disambiguation needed?

This article seems to refers to quite different things, all in one article, which can be counter productive in terms of making the information easily accessible. I suggest making a disambiguation page and separating the article to more articles referenced on said page.--francesco3 (talk) 12:21, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Well, I boldly deleted content unrelated to the actual fallacy, and the unsourced "Religion" section. In the process I deleted some citations. In case anyone finds them useful elsewhere, here they are:

• Meier, J. D. (November 21, 2007). Team Development with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server: Patterns and Practices. Microsoft Press. p. 216. ISBN 978-0-7356-2571-6. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Wingerd, Laura (November 18, 2005). Practical Perforce. O'Reilly Media, Inc. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-596-10185-5.
• Loeliger, Jon (May 15, 2009). "Using git cherry-pick". Version Control with Git. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 978-0-596-52012-0.

Keφr (talk) 07:51, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree that some of the examples refer to quite different things, nevertheless, they all refer to "cherry picking" per se. Splitting could be an option, but some articles would be very short then. Another solution could be to address the fact that there are different meanings in the intro.

Anyway, this does not mean, that contents should be deleted now, that is before a consensus on a possible split has been reached (because this way contents will get lost and other people's valueable contributions trashed). Therefore, I reverted the bold deletion of three sub-sections. The weak "religion" section was already tagged for improvement. Improvement does not mean deletion (unless it would turn out to be plain false). --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:03, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Except this article's title is "Cherry picking (fallacy)". It is already unambiguous that it should discuss the logical fallacy. There is already a disambiguation page at "Cherry picking" which can list the other meanings. If you can create a sensibly sourced entry, go ahead. You could also go to Wiktionary to list the other meanings. Also, it was unnecessary to restore the content on the current revision of the page; you could go to page history and link to the previous page revision, because you seem to agree that this content does not belong in this article. So thank you very much for your concern. Keφr (talk) 18:23, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

No, this is not how it works. If I partially agree with you that there is a problem or not does not matter. Reverting your deletion was absolutely necessary as a "first aid" measure to restore the original contents, because there was no consensus to delete it in the first place, and keeping the stuff deleted for longer would have harmed the project even more as there is always a risk that other people's contributions get lost before a solution to the actual problem is found. You do not solve issues with articles simply by deleting stuff (unless it is plain rubbish), but by trying to find and address the actual underlaying problem and also by trying to imagine the other editors' intentions for why they added something in the first place. All you do by deleting other people's contributions is telling them that you don't value their input and that you ignore their best intentions. If this happens more than once in a while, it leads to dysfunctions in the community or people leaving (or not joining) the project (meanwhile a very serious and large scale problem in the community) - and Wikipedia was built by people who actually shared their knowledge and spent much time and energy to write and improve articles. While a corrective element is necessary and welcome to help bring articles into the best possible shape, simply deleting stuff instead of improving on it just harms.

The edit summary now documents that your deletion was misplaced, and that your edit summary was incomplete if not misleading. You could have avoided this by bringing your thoughts and ideas how to improve the article to the attention of the other editors on the talk page first, not afterwards. Having reestablished the prior state we have limited the harm done by your edit mostly to wasted time and energy (still no good) and now have time to find a solution which addresses the actual problem and benefits the project.

In your comment above you have already isolated part of the actually underlaying problem yourself. The problem was not with the contents, it is in the title of the article. If we'd rename the article to avoid the "(fallacy)" bit and slighty reword the intro, the problem would be mostly solved without deleting anything. Perhaps the reason why people added stuff to this article which would better be found in other articles is a missing hatnote to the disambiguation page. And perhaps we need one or two more articles in the form "cherry picking (xyz)" for the stuff in question. Then we could move (not delete!) stuff into these articles to give this article a sharper focus again. Either way, what we found is more an organizational than a content issue.

If you are keen to actually contribute to the project, consider what might be necessary here in the best spirit of the project and, for example, start to flesh out these three sections until they have reached enough mass to form separate articles. What you will find out is that adding quality stuff is much more difficult and time-consuming (and sometimes boring, but necessary) than to just tag or delete stuff which looks a bit raw and odd at first, but by doing so you will also learn to better value the other editors' contributions. I'm confident such experience would help you make more constructive edits to the project. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 20:17, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

And I thought WP:BOLD is something to be followed here. The more you know...

What if I do not believe that these topics should have separate articles? What if I think that this article's title is perfectly acceptable and it should discuss only what it says it discusses, that is the logical fallacy of suppressing inconvenient evidence? What if I do not believe that Wikipedia should list every possible meaning of the phrase "cherry picking"?

I do not think I should be the one who creates the other articles. Right now I think this should not happen at all. But maybe someone finds the sources I listed above useful in creating an article that someday could possibly become WP:FEATURED. So I left them here.

WP:EFFORT is an argument to avoid. Good intentions matter, but results matter even more. That is why I want to get rid of low-quality content. I do not want to create an impression that it is acceptable, because this attracts even more bad content. Besides, what I deleted was not lost forever. It was still available to anyone who wanted to use it; all it takes is to go to page history and select the old revision. You can even get the raw markup by clicking "edit" while viewing it. But I deleted it, because it was not appropriate for being included in this page, whose subject is what it is now. I believe it should not show up every time someone tries to look up the logical fallacy.

Lastly, your use of a hatnote goes against WP:NAMB. Please, don't edit in such a rush. Chill out. Good bye and good luck. Keφr (talk) 10:06, 23 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree this article's focus ought to be the fallacy (including when it is not considered a "fallacy"). Perhaps an "Other uses" to cherry-picking would help. --JimWae (talk) 18:40, 24 July 2012 (UTC)

Proposal for hatnote linking to Wikipedia namespace

I added a hatnote linking to Wikipedia:Cherrypicking and, in good faith, it was deleted per a guideline read broadly. I think that's overbroad. Examples of linking in hatnotes from the article namespace to the Wikipedia namespace include formal verification, citation, source, Reliable Sources, autobiography, style guide, image, good faith, and incivility. I also found a few instances where a term redirects from the article namespace to the Wikipedia namespace, such as Wikilawyering; that works where there is no article, whereas when there is an article linking works. The hatnotes are visually and textually distinct from the body and the lead. These are useful because most users, especially new editors, probably don't understand namespaces and wouldn't find details of how to edit without links from the article namespace. I propose to restore the hatnote. I'll wait a week for any response. Nick Levinson (talk) 19:23, 30 June 2013 (UTC) (Deleted an example that was for a dab page: 19:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC))

Well, one of the purposes of that guideline (and others like WP:No disclaimers in articles) is that whoever wants to merely read Wikipedia should not be distracted from its content by Wikipedia's internal processes, politics and jargon. It is a way of maintaining neutrality, in some sense. And you will probably find that cross-namespace redirects tend to be nominated for deletion at WP:RFD. The practice seems to prefer minimising such cases to the most important policies. And WP:Cherrypicking is just an essay, which has a quite modest number of incoming links from User_talk and Wikipedia_talk namespaces, so I would not say it qualifies.

On the other extreme, should beans have a hatnote pointing to WP:BEANS? Should point link to WP:POINT? Spider-Man refer to WP:SPIDERMAN? And so on. Keφr 19:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

And personally, I would also get rid of at least some of the hatnotes in the other examples you gave. Keφr 19:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

You raise a good point about choosing which destinations are important enough for this type of linking. WP:BEANS is easily forgettable as specific to Wikipedia (it's relevant to life but whether it's important to remember as being Wikipedia-specific advice is questionable, in my experience). The guideline WP:POINT seems to get cited more often and by that shortcut or WP:POINTy and thus might well warrant a link from point. Disambiguation pages, including point, seem to be less problematic for the concern you raise. Wikilawyering as a cross-namespace redirect was nominated years ago for deletion and kept on the basis of there being no consensus, according to the history page. Redirects now get R templates and quite a few of those templates are set up for cross-namespace redirects; if the default nowadays is to delete most of those redirects, only one category would be needed. There was a discussion in 2004 that seems to agree with your view; since it was so very long ago, I just asked again (it's a more general question, so it couldn't be centralized to here). If they don't like the links either, feel free to delete them, but I suggest waiting about a week for response. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps a variant of the template, which displays the hatnote for Wikipedia members, but not for guests (IPs), would be handy here. Members probably won't be distracted by such notes, as they are familiar with WP projects, processes, and policies. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:47, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

IP editors do a lot of the editing (although far less than usernamed editors do), so I'm not sure the displays should be different.

An editor's suggestion is to use the {{Selfref}} template and, depending on how discussion goes, I might do that. That template's doc has an example on point (for a disambiguator), which was implemented.

Nick Levinson (talk) 15:25, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I think including a hatnote is a poor idea, and excessively inward facing. Of the 11,000 people who visited this article last month, how many people do you think wanted to end up at Wikipedia:Coatrack#Fact picking? Judging from the traffic to WP:Coatrack and WP:Cherry, not a lot. The figures for WP:Cherrypicking indicate the same. Someone familiar enough with Wikipedia to know or at least expect us to have a page dealing with the selective (mis)use of sources is likely to know that it will be in the WP: space rather than the article space. What is being proposed is to add an unnecessary detracting from the encyclopaedia. The link would save a very small number of people from having to use the search function twice, while putting another line of text between readers and the actual article for thousands of people. That doesn't strike me as a particularly good thing to be doing. Nev1 (talk) 18:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I think there are some places where cross-namespace hatnotes are desirable, e.g., the one on the Markup dab page. But I think they should be very rare, and I think WP:CHERRY is nowhere near that threshold. —BarrelProof (talk) 19:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)