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Interaction of PRESERVE and BURDEN
If you're interested in the intersection of WP:PRESERVE and WP:BURDEN, then you may want to look at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Preserving a burden. The end result may be a clarification in this policy to explicitly state that the editor who preserves material that has been WP:CHALLENGEd and is unsourced may be required to promptly cite sources (i.e., if you are reverting the removal of unsourced encyclopedic material, PRESERVE does not authorize you to shirk the BURDEN of sourcing it). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 1 May 2016 (UTC)
S Marshall and Alanscottwalker, since you have expressed views similar to mine in that discussion on the interaction between these two policies and how editors interpret them as conflicting, any opinions on the above or on the current wording in the WP:Preserve policy? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
I have made a WP:PGBOLD effort to clarify this by adding this text to WP:CANTFIX:
If you are restoring unsourced information that was removed because of concerns that the material might be original research or unverifiable in any published reliable source, then you are required to provide one reliable source to support the information when you restore it.
You can see how it fits with the other content in that paragraph. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:58, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
For some cases, restoring the information right then and sourcing the content afterward is best for the article. I'd rather not enable reckless blankers any more than we have with wording in the WP:Burden policy. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:57, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
I don't think it's impossible to come to an agreement here. I broadly agree with WAID's intention. I would like to qualify it with "reasonable" or some similar phrasing. Generally, people restoring material that's removed under BURDEN should provide an inline citation to a reliable source when they do. The only point we're disagreeing on is whether this should be a one-size-fits-all, Thou Shalt, type of thing, or whether there should be scope for exceptions when dealing with bad faith editors, griefers, and/or perfectly good faith editors who're just being incompetent or stupid.—S MarshallT/C 07:40, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Who decides whether a challenge (tag or removal) is "reasonable"? The challenger? The one who first added the unsourced info? Someone else? By hedging the BURDEN requirement you simply invite Wikilawyering... encouraging editors to engage in unnecessary arguments over whether the challenge was reasonable or not. WAID's change resolves the conflict between Burden and Preserve. We want good info preserved... however, in order to preserve, you need to fix the problem and provide a source. Blueboar (talk) 10:27, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Talk page consensus would decide what's reasonable, as it always does. The key symmetry on Wikipedia --- in fact the only reason Wikipedia can ever work! --- is because poorly thought out or unreasonable edits can be reverted as easily as they're made. I would be opposed to anything that breaks this symmetry.—S MarshallT/C 16:38, 20 May 2016 (UTC)
Technically, BURDEN doesn't require a verification CHALLENGE to be "reasonable". It only requires the challenge to happen. If you want to ignore a challenge on grounds of unreasonableness, then you have to invoke WP:IAR (which any editor may do under suitable circumstances). As with all such cross-policy references, it's better to accurately describe the other policy. That principle alone militates against adding any "reasonable" language. If we want to restrict BURDEN to "reasonable" challenges, then we need to get BURDEN itself changed, not the mere link to BURDEN here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
WP:Preserve is not just about providing a source. It lists different ways to preserve content. And if restoring unsourced content to the article during a revert is what is best for the article (meaning better than the article not having that content), as I've seen many times over, I do not feel that the WP:Burden policy should get in the way of that. I do not see how "WAID's change resolves the conflict between Burden and Preserve." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:03, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
I wonder whether we could sidestep the "reasonable" problem by omitting any reference to "when you restore it". What do youtwo think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
I fwiw I think the bold change you offered above was very good. Jytdog (talk) 03:09, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Not a big fan of removing "when you restore it" because then it doesn't resolve the conflict between BURDEN and PRESERVE. I'd prefer a qualifier, I think. It's not unreasonable to say that edits should be reasonable. :)—S MarshallT/C 05:07, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
S Marshall, WP:Burden states, "Any material lacking a reliable source directly supporting it may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." The above proposal sates, "If you are restoring unsourced information that was removed because of concerns that the material might be original research or unverifiable in any published reliable source, then you must provide an inline citation to a reliable source to support the information when you restore it." From what I see, WP:Burden casts a wider net because it states "any material." The proposal is more reasonable (no pun intended) than WP:Burden's wording because it focuses on "original research or unverifiable in any published reliable source." Really, we should be changing WP:Burden to be more in line with such wording, especially if we add the wording to this policy. Either way, I agree with you that a qualifier should be included since cases like the careless editing noted in the "Preserving a burden" case is unacceptable. But I would go one step further with the wording exactly because of your point about "whether this should be a one-size-fits-all, Thou Shalt, type of thing, or whether there should be scope for exceptions when dealing with bad faith editors, griefers, and/or perfectly good faith editors who're just being incompetent or stupid." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:49, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Also, I don't see how the addition fits in the "Problems that may justify removal" section. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:53, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Well. I've always quite liked BURDEN. It's simple to use in practice and it's an effective knife for cutting through bullshit. I've also always quite liked PRESERVE, and I've never minded that there was a tension between the two; it's part of the Zen of Wikipedia, and if you put them together the S Marshall way, they mean that (1) finding sources is everyone's job, (2) you can remove idiocy where you find it and you can make that stick, and (3) you can revert idiots who remove good content and make that stick. The big red flag to watch for is if some genius changes BURDEN from "should not be restored" to "must not be restored", because that's when you lose (3).My personal feeling is that BURDEN really applies with full force in the most controversial areas of the encyclopaedia, India-Pakistani wars and Irish independence and pseudoscience and such, which appear a lot at AN/I, which are frequented by editors who have community- or Arbcom-mandated behavioural restrictions on them, and which therefore need extreme rigour in sourcing. I also feel that PRESERVE really applies with full force on old articles with long-established, stable content that have had a lot of eyes on them over the years, and were composed before we reached our current sourcing standards. Of course, I don't think it's a good idea to say that in the policies. Leave editors wiggle-room.I was interested to read the tangle between KWW and The Rambling Man on WT:V. I feel compassion for KWW because I can absolutely understand that TRM gets people's backs up, but TRM was right, and Arbcom rightly backed him. The conclusion from that episode is yes, Arbcom on behalf of the Wikipedia community agree that yes, you can restore unsourced content removed under WP:BURDEN, and yes, you can do so without sourcing it at the time.But this doesn't make WAID wrong. Even though you appeared in both the examples she gave on WT:V, she's not doing this in order to create a stick to beat Flyer22 with. She's trying to clarify the policy so that in sourcing disputes, the heavy artillery is on the side of the skeptics, and I think that's a good thing to do. I just want a little room for editorial judgment through which you can fit TRM's reverts, and your reverts on Child grooming which WAID concedes were objectively correct.—S MarshallT/C 06:54, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
Just a word on talk page consensus. It doesn't work where there are only 2 editors involved. Or where like some fringe articles on my watch list, I'm the only regular editor and the article is occasionally visted by SPAs, IPs or probable socks. Doug Wellertalk 10:59, 23 May 2016 (UTC)
So true, Doug Weller.
S Marshall, sorry for the late reply; I took some time to think over what you stated. Many people already read "should not be restored" as "must not be restored." You've seen how overzealous editors are with the WP:Burden policy. It has been misused a lot. But then again, so have other Wikipedia policies. As for WhatamIdoing's intentions, given our up-and-down history with each other (mostly of the "I know better than you" variety), I'd rather not definitively conclude one way or the other on that matter. But I certainly see where you are coming from. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:08, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
I think that your interest in specifying "reasonable" edits is principled in its way, but it's poor policy writing. BURDEN contains no such limitation, so we'd be misrepresenting it here, which is simply unacceptable. Also, it won't work in actual practice. As User:Blueboar already said, the net result will only be people saying that BURDEN doesn't apply to me because, unlike all the times when BURDEN applies, when I reverted you, it was because your edits weren't "reasonable". (Of course, if I remove your unsourced content, then my edits are always reasonable, so the converse is never true.)
If you believe that you've got a good case to make for IAR, then you should make that case directly (and if it's a good case, then you should ping me, so that I have the opportunity to join the conversation and agree with you). But you shouldn't be yelling on the talk page about how you shouldn't have to supply a single source for the material that you restored. A talk page mess about "your edits are unreasonable, so BURDEN doesn't apply to me" is not an improvement over a talk page mess about "your edits removed factually accurate information, so BURDEN doesn't apply to me". My goal is to stop the talk page messes, not just change a couple of keywords in them. IMO the way to stop those messes is to make it clear that BURDEN really does apply to you, even if it seems a bit unreasonable (or inconvenient, which I suspect is the more typical case), and even if BURDEN makes it more work to PRESERVE content in the article (as contrasted with, e.g., preserving it on the talk page). Faced with such a situation, I want editors to know that their policy-based options are to supply a source (BURDEN), to move the material to the talk page (PRESERVE), or to make a case for IAR – but not to say that PRESERVE allows them to ignore BURDEN and restore unsourced, CHALLENGEd material back into the article without also supplying a source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 08:27, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
As made clear in the discussion you started at the WP:Burden talk page, those messes will continue because of irresponsible editors who remove content that should be there and/or replace accurate content with inaccurate content. Sorry, I can't agree with enabling such piss poor behavior. But feel free to continue ignoring me in this discussion. I will continue to ignore rules that enable piss poor behavior. And I will certainly continue to fuss about that behavior when it happens. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:40, 30 May 2016 (UTC)
Note "should" instead of "are required to" (BURDEN does not say "are required to" or "must", it says "should"), and the "normally" hedge.—S MarshallT/C 12:45, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
Actually this probably wants a footnote next to "normally" which specifies some of the things that wouldn't be "normally". Off the top of my head I would include editors with a COI, editors with a history of using BURDEN vexatiously or to target the contributions of a particular person, editors who are under Arbcom- or community-mandated behavioural restrictions, and vandals as people who could be reverted under PRESERVE without supplying a source.My concern is the counterpart to yours: to make editors accountable for their removals under BURDEN. Someone who often removes inappropriate content under BURDEN is an asset to the encyclopaedia and deserves the community's respect, but someone who often removes appropriate content under BURDEN shows a need for support and direction, followed by disciplinary measures if necessary. I would like to make changes that would have had a chilling effect on a certain irresponsible edit to Child grooming.—S MarshallT/C 13:01, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
The thing to remember is this: a "removal" under BURDEN is usually temporary. The quickest and easiest way to preserve information temporarily removed per BURDEN is to simply return it with a citation to a reliable source. Doing this not only preserves the information... It preserves it in an improved state. Blueboar (talk) 14:30, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
That would be true if all articles were watchlisted by active editors with plenty of spare time to deal with Randy in Boise. Since they aren't, I think it's often false.—S MarshallT/C 14:54, 29 May 2016 (UTC)
That works for me. If we need to change it later, we can talk about it then. (Any necessary footnotes that reduce the applicability of BURDEN should be proposed at the actual BURDEN policy.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:54, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
I object to the change in that it misstates BURDEN. In short, I'm okay with "normally" but "should" does not work in this context; it must be "must." I fully agree with S Marshall that should ordinarily means that something is not required, but in the context of BURDEN which starts with an absolute "Attribute all quotatios is taking it out of context and causing it to mean something it does not mean in BURDEN. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:38, 2 June 2016 (UTC)
Do you think we could compromise on language that avoids the must/should thing? For example, could we say "you need to" cite your sources? WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:07, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't think that compromise language is needed... it's already in the policy. Let me explain why I think PRESERVE and BURDEN are not actually in conflict. The key is to read WP:DON'T PRESERVE, the section of this policy that follows PRESERVE. It states:
"Several of our core policies discuss situations when it might be more appropriate to remove information from an article rather than preserve it. Wikipedia:Verifiability discusses handling unsourced and contentious material; Wikipedia:No original research discusses the need to remove original research.."
This section establishes several situations when we shouldn't preserve information. One of them is when there is an issue with WP:V ... In other words, this policy explicitly defers to WP:V... and since BURDEN is part of WP:V, PRESERVE defers to BURDEN.
Now... BURDEN is clear: It is up to the challenger to determine whether unsourced information should be allowed to stand, or whether it should be tagged or removed. Others might disagree with that determination, but the decision is that of the challenger. Now... BURDEN goes on to state that once information has been challenged and removed for lack of citation, it is possible to restore it (ie preserve it) - However, providing a source is a pre-condition for that restoration. Furthermore, it is up to those who wish to restore to provide that required source. There is no ambiguity in that. WP:V favors the challenger in such situations... thus WP:DON'T PRESERVEalso favors the challenger.
Where WP:V does have some ambiguity is with what happens after that... in explaining what happens when the restorer (ie the editor trying to preserve the information) provides a source, but the challenger is not satisfied with that source. This is where PRESERVE comes into play. Now the burden (as opposed to "BURDEN") shifts to the challenger, who must to go to the talk page and explain why the source is not good enough. Thus, once a source has been provided, WP:V favors the restorer (ie those trying to preserve the information). The information should be maintained (ie preserved) until there is a consensus that the source is (in fact) flawed. Blueboar (talk) 13:32, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
This idea that PRESERVE comes into play after BURDEN has been invoked is exactly the wrong way around. PRESERVE comes first. It says "Preserve appropriate content", in other words, if material would belong in a finished encyclopaedia then removing it is a violation of the editing policy. Focus on that for a second. Removing appropriate content from the encyclopaedia is, and has always been, a breach of the editing policy. There is no exception for BURDEN. If it's appropriate for the encyclopaedia, then it should not be removed. Simples.If the content is inappropriate, then that's when BURDEN comes into play. Inappropriate content can and should be removed. BURDEN defines how to deal with content that an editor reasonably believes is inappropriate. The recent discussions on WT:V were largely about cases where an editor mistakenly invoked WP:BURDEN on appropriate content, so there were genuine breaches of the editing policy taking place.—S MarshallT/C 16:34, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
That's dead wrong and the policy already says as much: "Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they should be retained if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean No point of view), Verifiability and No original research." If. BURDEN is part of Verifiability. Even if the material would belong in the "finished" article it should be retained only if it satisfies BURDEN. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 20:36, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
TransporteMan is correct... Remember that WP:PRESERVE does not exist in a vacuum... It is balanced by the section that follows it: WP:DON'T PRESERVE. Blueboar (talk) 21:17, 3 June 2016 (UTC)
The notion that "Even if the material would belong in the 'finished' article it should be retained only if it satisfies BURDEN." is not how Wikipedia generally works. This is clear by just looking around Wikipedia and seeing WP:Citation needed tags. Our responsible editors add those tags because they recognize that the content is likely important to the article, or because they know that the content is important to the article. Why the editor doesn't source the content instead of adding the "citation needed" tag could be due to any number of reasons, but at least the editor is preserving appropriate content. We commonly keep unsourced content in our articles because that content improves the article. Removing content that belongs in an article simply because the content is unsourced has proven detrimental and disruptive times over. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:18, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Listen to Flyer22 because this is the key point. The starting point for both Flyer22 and me is that only verifiable material belongs in the encyclopaedia. If it isn't verifiable, then it can't possibly be "appropriate content" within the meaning of WP:PRESERVE. Can it?If TransporterMan and Blueboar will agree with that, then we can see that the only conflict between PRESERVE and BURDEN arises when we have verifiable material that isn't actually verified at the moment. It follows that this discussion is only about editors who foolishly or recklessly remove appropriate content that they could verify themselves if they took the trouble to hunt for sources themselves.—S MarshallT/C 09:28, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps I have the wrong impression (and if so I apologize), but given your comments so far, I do have the impression that your actual starting point is closer to: "Any and all verifiable material belongs in the encyclopaedia"... and would I disagree with that - since Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion.
But for now, I am willing to narrow the discussion to "only" cases where editors "foolishly and recklessly" remove "appropriate" content. Let me start by asking: Who gets to determine whether the removal is "foolish and reckless" and whether the content is "appropriate" or not? (I suspect we will disagree on this). Blueboar (talk) 17:08, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
If you'll check my contribution history you'll see my most recent content edits consisted of proposing, discussing and carrying out removals of reliably-sourced material for being UNDUE. I do hope you'll re-evaluate your low opinion of me. But yes, I do think there's a place somewhere in the encyclopaedia for most reliably-sourced content, and that if there's verifiable material in the article then talk page consensus should be sought before removing it. As for "who gets to determine"... in accordance with normal conduct, if both editors insist on their position, then you have to go to dispute resolution and get third parties involved. I know "judgment" is a problematic concept on Wikipedia, because this is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, including (plenty of) people with very poor judgment who aren't natural encyclopaedia editors. And it's accepted that people who have poor judgment don't know they have it. When two editors both think they have it, you get a situation like KWW -v- The Rambling Man, where third parties need to step in and restore order. But note the eventual outcome of that once the flames had died down: the verifiable material was restored and the removing editor was desysopped. That was Arbcom's decision, made after careful consideration and in accordance with the consensus. And it was the right call. People who insist on removing verifiable content without a talk page consensus in favour of the removal can be, have been, and rightly should be subject to disciplinary measures if they persist.—S MarshallT/C 17:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm afraid that I won't concede the "foolish or reckless" notion. If material is unsourced, it can be removed, period, regardless of whether or not the material is appropriate. (More precisely because such a removal is a challenge to the material and we don't set any standards here or at V for why unsourced material can be challenged because the burden is on the editor adding the material to provide a source. We suggest at V that it ought to be because the removing editor is "concerned" — not "believes" but is "concerned" — that the material may not be verifiable.) Once that challenge/removal is made, the material no longer satisfies V and the exception here in the Editing policy kicks in, regardless of of the importance, appropriateness, or other quality of the material. A bunch of "shoulds" — best practices — apply to both processes, but they're not mandatory. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:49, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
No, appropriate material cannot be removed, because the editing policy has always said Preserve appropriate content. BURDEN applies to inappropriate material, which would include something that an editor reasonably believes is unverifiable.—S MarshallT/C 20:05, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
Taking that out of context and reading it in such an absolute manner means that sourcing is never required for appropriate material, which would utterly destroy the reliability of the encyclopedia by preventing ordinary readers from verifying what is asserted here. It has to be read in context with the following sentence which makes V predominant. — TransporterMan (TALK) 20:56, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
It certainly doesn't mean sourcing is never required. Per WP:V, sourcing is needed for anything that's challenged or likely to be challenged, and if someone's considering removing the material then yes, it certainly does need sourcing.The edit which started this discussion was one in which an editor recklessly, or negligently, removed easily-sourceable content. They misused WP:BURDEN. What they should have done was check the sources before they make content edits in the mainspace. You don't have to check the sources if you're vandal-fighting or category-maintaining or typo-fixing or doing MOS stuff, but if it's a content edit, then you shouldn't touch the mainspace without reading the damn sources. It's totally irresponsible not to do that.When this editor found the unsourced but easily-sourceable paragraph, what they should have done was source it themselves, not waste competent editor time edit-warring to remove easily verifiable content based on a sense of entitlement from BURDEN.—S MarshallT/C 21:20, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
There's no absolute requirement for everything in Wikipedia to be sourced. 2+2=4.[citation needed] <-- would be silly. I removed an 8 year old unreferenced tag from the article on Oboe d'amore just earlier today.[1] Why? Because I assume that such a musical instrument exists, and that in general, it looks like it's been edited over the past decade by people who know what they are talking about. WP:Assume Good Faith and WP:Preserve to some extent go hand in hand. -- Kendrick7talk 21:24, 4 June 2016 (UTC)
RE: "Per WP:V, sourcing is needed for anything that's challenged or likely to be challenged, and if someone's considering removing the material then yes, it certainly does need sourcing." Yup... WP:V makes no exemption for "easily-sourceable content." It does not even contain an exception for challenges that you think are "reckless or neglegent". If someone is considering removing "easily-sourceable content" then "yes, it certainly does need sourcing". The question is: who is responsible for providing that sourcing. BURDEN answers that question clearly... those who want to return the material are responsible for sourcing it (not the person who issued the challenge and removed it). You or I may think the challenger is an idiot (or even an asshole) for challenging the content in the first place, but... if we want to return the material, its up to us to source it. I always find it ironic when people complain that complying with BURDEN "is a waste of everyone's time"... what wastes time is complaining about it. Complaining about BURDEN always takes far more time than simply slapping in a citation. Blueboar (talk) 13:18, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
This again? I've answered this several times already.1) Who do you think is watchlisting all these articles? Who is going to provide these citations that you say someone should provide on demand? Why can't it be the person who finds the problem in the first place? They are the only person who we know is watching.2) Why should it be okay to make content edits without checking the sources? Why is it good for the encyclopaedia to make people feel entitled to remove content without reading the sources first? Why are you defending these edits that make the article read less like the sources do?3) Why do you feel that BURDEN outweighs the editing policy? Where is the consensus for that?I would certainly agree that discussing BURDEN is always time-consuming, but I think that's because of the editors who quite mistakenly feel it should take priority over everything else.—S MarshallT/C 13:44, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
If someone is complaining about a challenge and having to comply with BURDEN... Then the challenger obviously isn't the only one watching the article. And if the challenger is the only person who iswatching the article, then the removal will be uncontested and thus isn't a problem. As for why WP:V "outweighs" WP:EP... WP:V is a core policy, and EP isn't. More importantly, WP:EP explicitly defers to WP:V (see WP:DON'T PRESERVE)... In other words, EP itself says V should be given more weight than PRESERVE. Blueboar (talk) 14:19, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
I disagree with this in every way. If someone removes good content from an article then that is a problem even if nobody notices at the time. The fact that nobody has seen them harm the encyclopaedia does not mean that they haven't harmed it.WP:V is a core content policy. WP:EP is the editing behavioural policy, roughly equivalent in force to WP:CON and WP:BRD, in that it describes how editors should behave when they're editing in the mainspace. They should not remove appropriate content. Still less should they edit-war to keep it out. BURDEN itself says it should not be the default way of dealing with content that may not be verifiable. It lists other things editors should consider doing, such as tagging if they're not sure. In other words, BURDEN explicitly defers to WP:EP.Removing content is what you should do if you think the content is unverifiable after you've taken reasonable steps to check. You should not do it recklessly, negligently or on some kind of whim.—S MarshallT/C 14:56, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
And so we keep returning to the question... Was the removal "reckless, negligent, or done on a whim"? And who gets to decide that question. Obviously the challenger does not think so (or they would not remove). And WP:V leaves the decision to the challenger. Blueboar (talk) 17:17, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
If the removed content could easily be verifed, by reference to the first page of a simple google search, then clearly yes: the removal must have been reckless or negligent. Wouldn't you agree?—S MarshallT/C 19:16, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Nope... Because the challenger might be of the opinion that none of those Google hits is reliable. (There is a lot of incorrect crap that gets repeated on the Internet after all). Blueboar (talk) 21:03, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Then the challenger should be competent enough to know what a WP:Reliable source is and check the sources. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:31, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
I deal with conflicted editors or advocates all the time who make the kind of arguments you are making, S Marshall. This place would become even more of a slagheap contentwise and even more of a Mad Max world if editors can insist on their own authority that material that has been challenged must remain, unsourced. Vandalism is vandalism but outside that there is a longstanding and very deep consensus that unsourced material can be challenged/removed and the person restoring it needs to bring a source.
In my view you and Flyer consider are BLUDGEONing the hell out of this Talk page and the other one. You obviously feel strongly about this and you should launch an RfC and let the community rip it to shreds. But enough of this. Jytdog (talk) 20:15, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
Why would I go to RfC? It's not me who's trying to change (sorry, excuse me, "clarify") this policy. I agreed to a compromise, but then TransporterMan reverted, so we're back at the version I preferred all along. And Arbcom have already ruled that an editor can be sanctioned for removing verifiable content. If you really think I'm an advocate or I have a conflict of interest, then there are appropriate places where you can make that allegation and I believe I'd rather welcome the opportunity to answer that. Knock yourself out. But yes, I obviously do feel strongly about this. What Wikipedia really needs is a competence noticeboard that deals with people who make content edits without checking the sources first.—S MarshallT/C 21:44, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
You have been told "no" about ten zillion times. See WP:BLUDGEON. really. read it. Jytdog (talk) 22:00, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't think you've read the discussion you're intervening in. It consists of four editors (WhatamIdoing, Blueboar, TransporterMan, and now you) on one side and three (me, Flyer22 and Kendrick7) on the other. Flyer22, Kendrick7 and I are resisting changes to the longstanding and well-established wording of this policy. You are contending that my position is editors can insist on their own authority that material that has been challenged must remain, unsourced. What I'm actually saying bears very little resemblance to what you say I'm saying. This is not the first time you've misrepresented me, Jytdog, but once again I'll choose to ascribe that to inattention rather than malice. In future, perhaps you could read, understand, think, and then post?—S MarshallT/C 07:36, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
You are saying that content can be restored without providing a source on the basis of a claimby the restoring editor that some putative source exists - the only basis for that claim is the (non-existent) authority of the restoring editor. Which is a recipe for disaster and runs against everything we do here. This is why BURDEN says you must bring a source if you are restoring - you can't do it on your own authority that it is verifiable. It seems that you haven't through the basis on which someone would be restoring content without bringing a source. Jytdog (talk) 08:05, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
To be fair to SM... that's not what he is saying. He is talking about the difference between information being verifiable and it being cited. Information can be verifiable without being cited. Something like "Paris is the Capital of France" is so easily (and obviously) verifiable, that it is extremely unlikely that anyone will ever challenge it. It can be freely added to articles without a citation. On this, I think we all agree (I certainly do).
Where we seem to disagree is what to do when the unlikely does happen... When someone comes along and actually challenges such easily verifiable statements. They will correct me if I am wrong here, but my understanding of SM's position (and that of Flyer and Kendrick) is that they think the challenge should be deemed disruptive, and thus should be exempt from BURDEN. I tend to agree with the first part (such challenges are often disruptive)... but I disagree on the second part (making the challenge exempt from BURDEN)
My take is that it does not matter whether the removal was disruptive or not... because arguing about it will cause even more disruption. Combating disruption with more is never the right thing to do. Blueboar (talk) 14:28, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
This S Marshall who Jytdog keeps arguing with sounds like a very ignorant person. I'm glad I'm not like him.Blueboar, I did say I think removing easily-sourced content was disruptive. That was in the context of a specific edit, where an editor removed a paragraph from child grooming about the motives of a child sexual predator, and Flyer22 quite correctly reverted him. That particular edit wasn't just wrong and knuckleheaded: it was a potential child protection issue. Vulnerable children do turn to Wikipedia for information and they tend to trust it more than they should. The information was also easily verifiable using any reliable source on the subject, from any social work textbook published in the last thirty years to the very first reliable source that shows up on a google search, and if the editor had made any effort at all to understand the topic they were editing, they'd have seen it. So it was very extreme, and blatantly reckless. If I'd been the first person to see it I would have considered treating it as vandalism, but Flyer22 happened to be the person and she took it seriously. Policy shouldn't be written for that kind of situation. Hard cases make bad law.In less extreme cases, I wouldn't generally characterise a single content removal as disruptive. To be disruptive the content removals would need to be repeated often enough to make a pattern, and the pattern would need to be of POV advocacy (we've all met the kind of editor who'll remove unsourced content that's critical of Israel but leave it in when it criticises the PLO), or target a particular editor who's in good standing (griefing), or else be so egregious and make so much work for competent editors that they're a net negative for the encyclopaedia.Blueboar, what's your view on the Kww -v- The Rambling Man case? Because I think that's a useful example of how the wider community views disruptive content removal.—S MarshallT/C 17:40, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Don't really care about it one way or the other. I am a firm believer in saying that one single arbcom case should never determine Policy. Arbcom is focused on specific situations... Policy, on the other hand, focuses on generalities not specifics. An arbcom ruling may mean that we should make a one-time exception to an otherwise sound policy, not a change to the policy itself. Now... If there were a bunch of arbcom rulings, all saying the same thing... Then we can make generalizations that we can incorporate into policy. The idea that the BURDEN to source challenged material rests with those who return the info (and not with those who issue the challenge) has an extremely strong consensus. One single arbcom case is not enough to overturn that consensus. Blueboar (talk) 22:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Blueboar, no, I wasn't making an "exempt from BURDEN" argument. I was clear about this in the aforementioned extensive discussion at the WP:Burden talk page. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 08:11, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
OK, let me just ask you then. If the basis for the claim of "verifiability" is not provided by actually bringing a source when content is restored, then what is the basis for the claim? Jytdog (talk) 17:47, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
If it gets as far as a "claim"----if verifiability is reasonably in doubt----then I have no problem at all with people using BURDEN. The bar for BURDEN needs to be set very low. If someone can honestly say, "I've made a perfunctory effort to check this bit and I can't see that it's verifiable" then they should be free to remove the content. I'm not talking about those cases. I'm talking about the people who edit the mainspace without checking the sources at all.—S MarshallT/C 18:41, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Well that is where it got, on the content that everybody is all worked up about. That is not "The capital of France is Paris" content - it is a whole description of a set of behaviors, any element of which could be wrong. And please don't bring the "urgency" argument. There is WP:NODEADLINE here except for actual BLP issues. I can't tell you how many editors I have had scream at me that THIS CONTENT IS ABSOLUTELY URGENT AND MUST STAY HERE. So many bad things happen in Wikipedia over false urgencies. You all have spent a shitload of time, for example, over this issue driven by false urgency, when it could be have been solved in a snap with a reference (making WP better in the process) and all the time arguing here could have been spent, oh... editing an article about a disease or improving the content about child molesters. And enshrining this in policy is just going to lead to many, many, many more arguments where editors are locked into battles based (ahem) on their personal authority, with one yelling "IT"S VERIFIABLE" and the other one "NO ITS NOT" and oceans of more time wasted. It is just horrible policy. Jytdog (talk) 19:01, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
I do understand what you mean, Jytdog. Despite all the things you've learned dealing with COI editors and POV pushers on articles about GMOs or within the scope of WikiProject Medicine, somehow this "just horrible policy" has been around since 18 October 2001. Oh, sure, it's evolved. From "whatever you do, preserve information" we've reached "preserve appropriate content". But the basic idea is still the same. If you cut content that's appropriate, then you're breaching one of Wikipedia's oldest and strongest policies. If you want to edit Wikipedia, then you do need to accept responsibility for your edits, and that's one of the things you're responsible for. I hope that doesn't make you too unhappy.—S MarshallT/C 20:21, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
I've explained what's wrong with what you are saying. If content is challenged it needs to be sourced, and you cannot just re-instate it on your own authority. As I wrote elsewhere, ~maybe~ Flyer could have won an argument at ANI on the specific content/behavior dispute that kicked all this off, had it come to that, given her characterization of the person on the other side. Maybe. But it is not something that should become policy-ified. I won't be responding further. Jytdog (talk) 20:37, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
KWW vs Rambling Man was about edit warring over removing unsourced material, not about removing unsourced material itself. Removing it is fine, edit warring over it is not. As I said at V talk:
And as I've pointed out, the KWW ArbCom case was about edit warring over BURDEN, not removal of the material per se. Here's the exact findings:
Wikipedia:Edit warring#Exceptions notes "The following actions are not counted as reverts for the purposes of the three-revert rule: [...] Removal of libelous, biased, unsourced, or poorly sourced contentious material that violates the policy on biographies of living persons (BLP). What counts as exempt under BLP can be controversial. Consider reporting to the BLP noticeboard instead of relying on this exemption."
(Emphasis added.) Just like there's no absolute EW exception for BLP violations, there's no edit warring exception — absolute or partial — for enforcing BURDEN, but that doesn't mean that such removals are prohibited in any circumstance, it just means that you can't EW over them. The proper remedy is to report the unsourced restorer to ANI or to seek page protection. — TransporterMan (TALK) 21:24, 21 May 2016 (UTC)
If you think that case is about something else, quote the text you're relying upon from ArbCom's findings. I don't think that you can find it. — TransporterMan (TALK) 20:55, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I think that's right. Effectively, Arbcom are finding that if you remove uncited but uncontroversial material under BURDEN, and I revert you, then you're not allowed to edit-war with me about it. But you're allowed to take me to that bottomless fountain of wisdom that we call AN/I and try to get me sanctioned.—S MarshallT/C 21:04, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, what I took from it was that if I'd immediately blocked TRM instead of giving him a chance to stop being disruptive, I probably would have been upheld.—Kww(talk) 21:34, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
And, on a less snarky side, every time I take the time to doublecheck a completely unsourced article in the "List of Awards and Nominations ..." series, I find inaccuracies. That's enough research to challenge completely unsourced awards tables under any reasonable reading of PRESERVE and BURDEN: the burden is not on the doubting party to demonstrate that the information is inaccurate.—Kww(talk) 21:50, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
You obviously know the details a lot better than I do, but as I understand it, you were finding one or two individual inaccuracies and removing whole sections?—S MarshallT/C 22:49, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
No: after spot-checking many dozens of articles and finding that none of them were accurate, I would occasionally remove all unsourced claims from examples of such articles, taking care to do it slowly enough over a wide enough range of topics that it would present no unreasonable obstacle to people that cared about the material, and inserted filters that blocked edits that added tables of awards without adding citations. I added the filter only after the Arbcom enforcement notice board had come to the consensus that such an edit constituted a BLP violation when the subject was alive (by far, these are the vast majority of the "Awards and Nominations" articles, as the fans of dead people tend not to be as prolific). The primary reason that I think it is essential that the people that want to insert the material source it (and not send other editors on research expeditions) is that the ultimate goal is to train the contributors to source it when it is originally inserted. That training problem is what your approach fails to address. With this class of article, we aren't talking "sky is blue" or "people normally have five fingers" kinds of claims: we are talking about very specific claims being made about fairly obscure things, and, due to the size and contents of such articles, frequently hundreds and sometimes thousands of such claims in an individual article. Your approach winds up with the editors that try to take care of the problem being overwhelmed by the sheer mass of editors that insert these unsourced claims in the first place. My approach (removing them slowly, and installing filters to prevent unsourced tables from being inserted or reinserted into these articles) was on its way towards actually fixing the problem.—Kww(talk) 00:51, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, it's editors being overwhelmed that I think is the problem. As the number of active editors declines, and the number of articles continues to increase, we have to make it possible for a shrinking contingent of competent editors to manage larger and larger watchlists. Managing vandalism is relatively simple, because it can simply be reverted. BURDEN is different because of its inherent asymmetry. BURDEN is at heart a way of making someone else do work. The workload asymmetry is at its worst if some genius complicates things for you by using BURDEN on several separate bits of content in one edit and then insisting that the sourcing has to precede the restoration; if you're dealing with one of those people, then your best bet is probably to print out the pre-BURDENised article so you can go through it line-by-line.This is obviously attractive to griefers and POV-pushers but Wikipedia has ways of dealing with them. The other problem is editors who recklessly or negligently remove material they haven't bothered to check, and we've seen some examples of this lately. My position is that nobody should be making content edits in mainspace without checking the sources because we have fewer and fewer editors and we need each one to manage larger and larger watchlists. If you remove good content without checking the sources, it's possible that nobody is watching and nobody will correct you. PRESERVE is the policy that makes you, the person who removes content, accountable for your removals: it gives you a basic duty not to screw up the encyclopaedia by removing content that belongs. I would be opposed to any change to our editing policy that removes this feature of PRESERVE.—S MarshallT/C 21:48, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
Well I guess this is where the philosophical issues reach their crux. I hear what you are saying (I do) but the tangible quick check that an editor who has added content even understands or cares about what we are up to here, is that they actually provided a citation. With this being the encyclopedia that anyone can edit and with the encyclopedia constantly growing (regardless of the number of named accounts), unsourced garbage ranging from good-faith-maybe-kinda-true to vandalism-for-kicks to raw-advocacy-for-commercial-or-emotional-or-ideological-gain is added to Wikipedia every day, and it is hard to keep up with, and often goes unchallenged for long periods of time. No citation is a redflag that somebody added garbage to Wikipedia and nobody noticed. Your stance doesn't acknowledge that reality. Would you please acknowledge that? Jytdog (talk) 22:26, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
BURDEN is not a way of making someone else do work: it's a way of pointing out that someone else inserted material and expected someone else to do the actual work of verifying the data and tracing it ot a reliable source. Unsourced assertions are not valuable content.—Kww(talk) 01:09, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
The statement that "[u]nsourced assertions are not valuable content" is one of the most inaccurate comments I've ever read. And the WP:Preserve policy wholeheartedly disagrees with it. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:06, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
You want to demonstrate that an assertion has value? Provide a source.—Kww(talk) 17:51, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
I will happily acknowledge that a lot of un-cited content is garbage that should be removed. If WP:PRESERVE said "You must retain all claims no matter how dubious or stupid", then it would be a problem. But WP:PRESERVE says Preserve appropriate content. It doesn't stop you removing garbage. It does make you responsible for ensuring you don't remove good content.—S MarshallT/C 17:08, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Yay. Thanks. So one person's pig's ear is another person's purse. That is the conflict that BURDEN resolves. There is no other way to resolve that in Wikipedia other than for the restoring editor to bring a source. Your way leaves two people screaming at each other, each based only on their own authority. That is my definition of hell. I do agree that if somebody seems to have a pattern of overly aggressive removals that is something to deal with under the behavioral part of WP:DR - talk to them, then try to get further input elsewhere (say a relevant WikiProject, and if all else fails, there is ANI. Jytdog (talk) 17:32, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict)There have always been several ways for Wikipedians to resolve problems. Let's say you remove content that I think should be restored. I could supply the source you demand. Or I could revert you, and take the matter to the talk page, or AN/I, or Arbcom. Kww will be able to tell you that these venues do not necessarily support the editor who removes content. Because the Wikipedia community does not believe that BURDEN is the One True Way that prevails over PRESERVE. That kind of absolutism is a weird and horrible abrogation of the need for editorial judgment. We could resolve most of this by starting a competence noticeboard, you know.—S MarshallT/C 18:07, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
(od)To rephrase the options SM just gave us... When responding to a WP:Challenge you have a choice: You can a) decrease any disruption caused by the challenge - by simply returning the material with a source... Or b) increase the amount of disruption by wasting everyone's time contesting the removal, and taking the matter to AN/I and Arbcom, etc. I'm still going to support the second first option... Every time. Blueboar (talk) 21:03, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
User:Blueboar I believe you meant first....and SMarshall the community won't accept the drama over one such removal. Like I said if someone has a pattern of doing that, that is arguably a behavior issue under the notion you have been advocating that could legitimately be handled through standard behavior DR (this is part of why I have said Flyer could potentially have had a good argument had her issue reached ANI - I believe she was claiming a pattern by the person she was edit warring with and she has a history of prevailing in such cases) Jytdog (talk) 23:40, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Kww said, "You want to demonstrate that an assertion has value? Provide a source." I say, "Check for that value yourself." After all, that's what the WP:Preserve policy tells you to do. And WP:Burden states, "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. [...] If you think the material is verifiable, you are encouraged to provide an inline citation yourself before considering whether to remove or tag it." We generally do not tolerate blanking entire articles simply because those articles are unsourced. As has been made clear countless times, content is verifiable even without a source. If all of the content in the Cancer article was unsourced, that would not make that content any less valuable. And any editor who would remove all or most of that content simply because it's unsourced should not be editing our articles.
As for the case I was involved in, I'm not sure about a pattern...yet, but my goal was more so to inform the editor of what he should have done. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:54, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
One more thing: I realize that Wikipedia takes its medical and WP:BLP articles far more seriously than a lot of other content it includes, and rightfully so. And I know that if someone adds a bunch of unsourced medical information, it is something to consider removing because many readers look to Wikipedia for medical information and the content could be wrong. In cases like those, I think it's best to move the content to the talk page in anticipation of it being sourced and re-added. Removal of content needs to be tempered with competence and good sense. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:35, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
Why is making several hundred unsourced assertions about a living person on a talk page acceptable? Why do you think any editor that would have contributed the contents of the cancer article without having bothered to provide a single source for it deserves any consideration?—Kww(talk) 01:15, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
As for your cancer argument, it makes no sense to me since you are claiming that unsourced material is automatically invaluable and/or that an editor who adds unsourced material is invaluable, despite the fact that the contrary has been shown time and time again. For example, we get scholars who don't know how to use Wikipedia adding valuable content to Wikipedia. Yes, a number of scholars, who might cite their sources elsewhere, don't know how to cite sources here. WP:Citing sources is not just for those who have never cited sources for their content. And if a scholar, or anyone, adds valuable content that significantly improves a Wikipedia article, that content should be retained. Needless to state, I won't be subscribing to your extreme view of WP:Verifiability. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:18, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Perfection
In the spirit of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, is there anything that we can agree on?
For example, can we agree on "If you are restoring unsourced material that was WP:CHALLENGEd, then the WP:BURDEN to provide an inline citation for that material is on you"? Does anyone disagree with the facts in this sentence? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:33, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
i am good with that. Jytdog (talk) 22:12, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
By this stage maybe it is best to just say Yes or No to this specific proposal and give a very brief reason, eh? Jytdog (talk) 12:11, 11 June 2016 (UTC)}}
What does that have to do with this policy? WP:Restore doesn't even link to this page. -- Kendrick7talk 07:31, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
Kendrick7, WP:RESTORE isn't the only type of "restoring" that happens on wiki. This statement refers to the kind of restoration that is indicated in the linked policy, i.e., "The burden to demonstrate verifiability lies with the editor who adds or restores material". To put it in the context of this page: if the method you choose for PRESERVEing appropriate but CHALLENGEd and unsourced material is to restore that material to the article space, then you need to provide an inline citation to a reliable source, just liked WP:V demands. (If you choose some other method, e.g., moving it to the talk page, then no such citation is required.)
Here is the problem that I want to solve:
Bob: To the best of my understanding, this unsourced material is unverifiable and original research. I'm removing it.
Alice: I'm an expert, and I say that this material is easily verifiable. I'm reverting you and restoring it without a source.
Bob: Hey! I CHALLENGEd that material! I think at least some of that is wrong! If you revert my removal, then you have to provide a source because you restored it, and BURDEN says "the editor who restores material" has to provide a source!
Alice: No, I don't have to provide a source, because PRESERVE says I can restore anything I think is appropriate! You go find a source. It's easy, and I'm too busy!
Bob: No, you go find the source! WP:V says so!
Alice: No, you go find the source! PRESERVE says so!
Bob: No, my policy's bigger than your policy! You go find the source!
Alice: No way! My policy wins! You go find the source!
I want these conversations to stop. I think that having this page mention that BURDEN still applies, whenever you choose the PRESERVEation method of "restoring" challenged and unsourced material to the mainspace, would stop these conversations. (I'm open to other wording, including adding a sentence that says, "So if you're not providing that inline citation today, then try one of the other ways to PRESERVE it, y'hear now?") I want material preserved, but I do not want any more confusion about whether PRESERVE amounts to an exemption from BURDEN's sourcing requirements for the individual editor who chooses to restore material to the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:29, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
If Bob's read the sources then Alice is in the wrong. If Bob's making content edits without checking the sources then Alice is, undoubtedly, right.—S MarshallT/C 07:39, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
But the only way to prove that is for Alice to pony up the source. That's the problem, and the reason that Alice's behaviour is wholly inexcusable. If she has the damn source and refuses to provide it, she's being intentionally disruptive. If she hasn't got the source and that's the reason she isn't providing it, she's intentionally violating WP:V. In any battle of of "who's the worse evil", Alice loses, hands down. In an exchange like this, blocking Alice until she provides the source is a very reasonable response, if only for the very pragmatic reason that we can't require Bob to prove a negative. It's easy to force Alice to back up her assertion that "it's easy".—Kww(talk) 14:35, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Wikipedia can't actually demonstrate whether either Alice or Bob has read or knows anything, so we can't realistically enforce any requirement along the lines of "if Bob's read the sources". Also, I disagree that Alice is "right": after all, we don't know that Alice has read the sources, either, and Wikipedia has some important history of self-proclaimed experts turning out to be fakes. What if Alice is wrong? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
OK, and the second time Bob pulls this stunt? The fourth time? The twentieth time? At what point do we decide this person isn't researching his challenges, he's just wasting competent editor time, and block him? The answer can't be "never".—S MarshallT/C 21:07, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Why can't the answer be "never"? Blueboar (talk) 21:22, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Because I would resist and revert any attempt to nullify PRESERVE, or make it purely advisory, in this way unless it had followed a sitewide RfC.—S MarshallT/C 21:36, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Per this policy, we recommend, without putting too fine a point on it, that the first thing Bob should be doing is adding the {{fact}} tag and waiting around a few months, or perhaps even years, before removing anything. That would give Alice plenty of time to cough up a source. Others policies only kick in after that fails to happen. -- Kendrick7talk 15:21, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
We only require that he consider doing so, not that he actually do it. On the other hand, BURDEN requires a specific, verifiable action: placing an inline citation next to any and all material that has been challenged.—Kww(talk) 15:45, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Kendrick is also assuming that the material in question isn't contentious matter about BLPs. I agree that PRESERVE only requires that Bob consider tagging the material. But I point out that in one of these cases that has been discussed extensively here, the unsourced material had, in fact, been fact-tagged for months, and the restoring editor restored it without a source, including restoring the months-old fact tag. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:26, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
I have made no such BLP assumption; WP:CANTFIX covers this. If there was some editor acting in bad faith, slap them with a WP:TROUT; there's no need to upend policy on account of one editor. Clearly y'all are arguing about incorrect wording in WP:BURDEN, so take your arguments there. -- Kendrick7talk 16:51, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
If that was clear, we wouldn't be arguing: the incorrect wording seems to be in PRESERVE, which some people think entitles them to restore challenged information without satisfying WP:BURDEN first.—Kww(talk) 19:44, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
I do not believe that this is a bad-faith problem. I think that editors who are sincerely trying to do what's best for the article (perhaps with the least amount of work to themselves at this particular moment, but we're all busy, right?) have read both of these policies and concluded that their actions are fully justified and that the other editor is unquestionably violating one of the policies. The recent disputes aren't the first time this has happened. We need to clarify, on this page, whether it's okay to PRESERVE UNSOURCED material that has been CHALLENGEd in good faith, through the specific method of (a) restoring the article and (b) not providing an inline citation to support the challenged material. Kendrick7 and Kww, I'm very interested in knowing whether you believe there are any errors in the proposed sentence above. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 10 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes, I object to it: it would imply that it's permissible to restore first, cite later. Even that Arbcom decision that I'm so famous for wouldn't go that far: the motion that tried to claim that doing so in a BLP wasn't a BLP violation failed to pass.—Kww(talk) 01:23, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Also, the Bob and Alice example that WhatamIdoing provided above is clearly supposed to be a reflection of the Child grooming incident. And it's a completely inaccurate reflection for reasons I and others made very clear. Yes, I "restored [the material] without a source, including restoring the months-old fact tag." I then tweaked the material, and took the matter to the talk page to address the reckless removal; I was clear that I would be sourcing the content. Later, I did just that. There was no withholding the source; so, in this case, Alice was not "refus[ing] to provide it." I reiterate that WP:Burden states, "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step." There is no deadline, and there shouldn't be one. There is no reason that the editor could not have checked up on the material he was removing, or updated the citation needed tag, after I informed him (after reverting him) that the content he was removing is easily verifiable. It's not like he had to take my word for it. He could have done a simple Google search and looked to the reliable sources. Instead, he chose to be stubborn. If someone removes easily verifiable content from an article, and especially simply because, to them, it looks like WP:Original research, you better believe that I am going to address the editor about that reckless removal. That edit was incompetence, pure and simple, and we shouldn't be tolerating it. It doesn't take an expert to know that. Any, by the way, despite the fact that I am well known for my knowledge on child sexual abuse topics (and other sexual/psychological topics), never did I state on Wikipedia that I am an expert. I do not talk about my profession(s) on Wikipedia. I let my edits speak for themselves, and, given the level of respect I've gotten over the years for my knowledge on such topics (including from experts like User:James Cantor), they clearly do speak for themselves. The Essjay comparisons are better left elsewhere.
And since the WP:Preserve policy indicates that editors should be doing a check on the material they are removing before they remove it, I disagree that we "can't realistically enforce any requirement along the lines of 'if Bob's read the sources'." Editors should not be allowed to remove and any everything they want based on faulty reasoning. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:12, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
In other words, you took the time to do everything but satisfy WP:BURDEN, did so repeatedly, and then wonder why others think you did it solely to make a point.—Kww(talk) 12:03, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
In other words, you still don't understand how Wikipedia article editing is supposed to work and should stay far away from our articles. On top of that, you don't understand "repeatedly" or WP:POINT either. Never the matter, you are the only editor claiming that I acted in a WP:POINT manner anyway. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:29, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Weak support: I'm okay with the proposed change, but I don't think it's absolutely necessary because I don't believe that the policies are actually ambiguous. KWW is right and Flyer22 Reborn is mostly wrong. I'd like to say "absolutely wrong" but when he says "should be doing a check" he could be referring to best, but non-mandatory, practices. The best practice is to (a) look for and add a source and only remove the material if you can't find one on a quick check or (b) fact-tag it and wait (not months or years, but a month or so at most) and then remove the material, but simply removing the material while stating that you have a concern that it is unverifiable is acceptable. Preserving the material on the article talk page is also an optional best practice. We "should be" ordinarily following best practices, but in this case we can do something else. There's no such thing, period, as a "reckless" removal of a single instance of unsourced material if you have a concern that it may be unverifiable. Doing it as a routine, repeated activity and, maybe, doing it over a large body of material in a single article are different stories, for reasons I have repeatedly explained at V. — TransporterMan (TALK) 21:07, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
Well stated. Blueboar (talk) 22:39, 11 June 2016 (UTC)
KWW is commonly wrong on WP:Burden issues; this has been proven times over. And there was no "mostly wrong" or even "absolutely wrong" when it comes to my having restored appropriate content to the Child grooming article, addressed the reckless removal on the talk page, and sourced the material. Simply removing material while stating that you have a concern is not acceptable when your concern is baseless. The editor in question had no valid concern that the material was unverifiable or original research. If an editor thinks that material is unverifiable or original research, that editor should be checking up on that. We commonly do not tolerate editors going to articles and removing huge chunks of material based on guesses about the content or on incorrect application of our rules, no matter if the content is unsourced. As S Marshall, myself and others have stated more than once of the Child grooming case and similar cases, such behavior, if a pattern, has been reprimanded or sanctioned. And if it's a one-time thing, the editor needs to learn what he or she did wrong, not thumb their nose at WP:Preserve and the fact that the article could have lost important content all because he or she didn't do a simple Google search. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:02, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
And another thing: WP:Preserve is a policy. We need to stop treating it like a guideline. If we are going to take this "non-mandatory" approach to this policy, which is detrimental, given the important content that could be lost, then downgrade it to a guideline. Otherwise, treat it like the policy that it is. WP:Policies and guidelines states, "Although Wikipedia does not employ hard-and-fast rules, Wikipedia policy and guideline pages describe its principles and best-agreed practices. Policies explain and describe standards that all users should normally follow, while guidelines are meant to outline best practices for following those standards in specific contexts. Policies and guidelines should always be applied using reason and common sense."
And I'm a she, by the way. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:21, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Not quite... WP:PRESERVE is not a policy... it is part of a policy. I know that sounds like a nit-pick, but it is important... because there are other parts of the policy that say things that give PRESERVE context. For example: the first section of the policy states:
Please boldly add content summarizing accepted knowledge to Wikipedia, either by creating new articles or adding to existing articles, and exercise particular caution when considering removing sourced content. However, it is Wikipedia policy that information in Wikipedia should be verifiable and must not be original research. You are invited to show that content is verifiable by referencing reliable sources. Unsourced content may be challenged and removed, because on Wikipedia a lack of content is better than misleading or false content—Wikipedia's reputation as an encyclopedia depends on the content in articles being verifiable and reliable. To avoid such challenges, the best practice is to provide an "inline citation" at the time the content is added
Note the part I have highlighted in BOLD. Ths is a repetition of what is stated at WP:V. Unsourced information may be challenged and removed. The interaction between PRESERVE and BURDEN is further explained by the section of the policy that follows PRESERVE - WP:DON'T PRESERVE, which states:
Several of our core policies discuss situations when it might be more appropriate to remove information from an article rather than preserve it. Wikipedia:Verifiability discusses handling unsourced and contentious material
Once again, note the part I have highlighted. This same policy that contains PRESERVE again supports WP:V. And WP:V contains WP:BURDEN. BURDEN is also part of a policy... and happens to be the only policy statement that says what has to happen once material has been removed. Blueboar (talk) 11:35, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Blueboar, yes, it is extremely nitpicky to state that WP:Preserve is a part of policy instead of is a policy, and it's a faulty way of looking things as well. It's hardly any different than stating WP:Burden is not policy but rather a part of policy. The vast majority of our rules are sections on a page. If the section is a part of a guideline page, it's a guideline. If the section is a part of a policy, it's a policy. Wikipedia has never worked in any other way. As for your interpretation of the WP:Burden and WP:Preserve rules, we've indeed already been over this, as S Marshall addressed below. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
You've already been given the counterarguments to that. Was there anything about them that you didn't feel you understood?—S MarshallT/C 18:31, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
SM - If I have been given counter-arguments, I can't find them (not saying you didn't give them... just that I don't see them). Since the discussion is quite long... would you mind either pointing me to where these counter-arguments are... or (better yet) repeat them here. thanks. Blueboar (talk) 18:43, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
They are:-(1) WP:PRESERVE far pre-dates BURDEN, and it also pre-dates WP:V. The basic instruction to preserve information dates back to this page's first revision from 18 October 2001. There have been a number of attempts to diminish it over the years, or to make BURDEN stand above it. These edits have never been allowed to stick, and the recent Arbcom case only serves to confirm that consensus is not on your side in this.(2) PRESERVE describes what an editor should do before removing information. It says "Preserve appropriate content". Therefore, before removing anything under WP:BURDEN, an editor has a basic duty to check whether the content they are removing is appropriate.(Note) Per policy, only verifiable content is appropriate for Wikipedia. Any editor can remove unverifiable content at will under WP:BURDEN. WP:PRESERVE is no obstacle to this at all.(3) The only conflict between BURDEN and PRESERVE comes when an editor removes verifiable content under BURDEN. This means we're dealing with someone who makes mainspace edits without knowing the sources and without checking the sources. It can only mean this kind of person: Randy in Boise.(4) If the content is verifiable, removing it under BURDEN harms the encyclopaedia. This harm can be rectified if someone who knows the sources and can cite them is watching. If not, then the harm will remain, and it's acknowledged by others on your side of the argument (if not by you) that not every article is watched.BURDEN is not a trump card that excuses you from checking the sources before you edit the mainspace. One or two removals of good content under BURDEN should probably lead to nothing more serious a talk page discussion about the importance of PRESERVE, but repeatedly doing it, or edit-warring to keep verifiable content out of the encyclopaedia, is a policy violation that should lead to sanctions.—S MarshallT/C 23:10, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Thank you for taking the time to recap all that. While it does not change my opinion, reading it here does help me to understand why you have the opinion you have. I think we will just have to "agree to disagree". Our interpretations of how the two policies work together are just too far apart. Blueboar (talk) 00:24, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Polite question for S Marshall: do you agree that the goal is to not only have all information not only be verifiable, but verified in the form of citations being actually present?—Kww(talk) 02:57, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
"All information"? If this means that every sentence in Wikipedia should have an inline citation, then no, I don't even think that's realistic. If it means that every article should contain some citations then I would say eventually yes; but I could spend the rest of my life adding citations to articles about individual species of beetle or places called Where the Hick, Nebraska (pop. 93), and still leave plenty of unsourced articles in Wikipedia. More achievably, I'd like to try to get to at least one citation per paragraph in BLPs (but of course, the proposed edit to PRESERVE would massively hinder this).—S MarshallT/C 17:01, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Our goals are dramatically different. I don't care much about "citation per sentence" vs. "citation per paragraph" vs. "citation per article", but firmly believe that every thing presented as fact in Wikipedia should have a citation supporting the statement in the same article.—Kww(talk) 17:29, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Flyer, please stop making this about your interaction on the child protection content. Jytdog (talk) 18:28, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Give us a different example to discuss, then.—S MarshallT/C 18:31, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Jytdog, when WhatamIdoing stops making it about that, directly or indirectly, I will. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:39, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
We don't drive policy based on single, very tenuous examples. Jytdog (talk) 20:24, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Oh, I agree that we shouldn't edit this policy as a result of this discussion. The example you describe as "very tenuous" was in fact the one that inspired WAID to propose any changes in the first place.—S MarshallT/C 23:10, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm having trouble figuring out why it is productive to continue this discussion, either here or at V. Neither "side" is proposing any changes to either policy (except for those proposed by WhatamIdoing which are not - no insult to her intended - getting much response and have no consensus one way or the other) and both sides believe that they have the correct interpretation of the current policies, which they believe to be unambiguous in their support for their interpretation. All we're doing, on both sides is repeating ourselves endlessly without any sign, except on very minor points (if that) of convincing the other side that they're wrong. One will prove to be right and the other wrong in practice. So be it. I've been replying only so that newcomers to either talk page will not be left with the impression that the other side have achieved acknowledgment of correctness by acquiescence or silence. Unless someone wants to propose something to explicitly clarify that the policies conform to their interpretation this is a waste of everyone's time. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:50, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
Agreed, I am not responding here anymore and I suggest that other people just stop as well. This is beyond BLUDGEON. Jytdog (talk) 20:24, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
This is doubtless excellent advice, which I'm not taking, on the grounds that doing nothing is guaranteed to not solve my problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
User:Kww, can you tell me what it is about this sentence:
"If you are restoring unsourced material that was WP:CHALLENGEd, then the WP:BURDEN to provide an inline citation for that material is on you"
that implies anything at all about whether "it's permissible to restore first, cite later"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:44, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Not Kww... But I would like to offer my take on "restore first, cite later": It is certainly permissible to request it. (example: "I can easily provide a source for this... But it is exam week here at my University, and I am swamped. Are you willing to let me restore now, on the promise that I will cite it as soon as I have time"). This sort of request acknowledges the challenge, and works to lessen any tensions. If I were the challenger, I would normally grant such a polite request (on the theory that we should assume good faith... at least until proven otherwise). Blueboar (talk) 01:37, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Much happier if you tweaked it to
"If you are restoring unsourced material that was WP:CHALLENGEd, then the WP:BURDEN to simultaneously provide an inline citation for that material is on you"
Any legitimate concerns about invalid challenges can always be addressed by getting a consensus that the challenge was invalid prior to restoration.—Kww(talk) 02:30, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Kww, insisting upon "simultaneously" (as opposed to, e.g., back-to-back edits separated by a few minutes, or even within the hour) means either that we are creating a new rule here (which is unwise; all of BURDEN's rules and regulations should be contained in BURDEN itself) or that we would be knowingly misrepresenting the lack of any such specification in BURDEN here (which falls in the general category of "telling lies").
I've got nothing against having a separate conversation at WT:V about whether BURDEN should specify "simultaneously", and, if an explicit time limit were to be adopted, I would have nothing against reflecting that time limit here. However, I firmly believe that we shouldn't add that new specification here, when it is not present in the original. The point here is to alert PRESERVEing editors that BURDEN exists and is relevant to their noble preservation efforts; the point is not to make up for any perceived failings in BURDEN.
Given that, I wonder whether you think adding the proposed sentence would be better than the current situation, whcih make no reference to BURDEN's existence in PRESERVE itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:07, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
But it's not a new rule: WP:V states that any information that has been challenged requires an inline citation, not a tag, general reference, or any of the various kinds of verification that are normally acceptable. That's not actually a part of BURDEN at all: just plain-vanilla WP:V. WP:V states the acceptable condition (challenged material not there or challenged material plus inline citation there), BURDEN states who has to do it.—Kww(talk) 04:46, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
It actually would be a new rule, because nothing in WP:V specifies that the citation must be supplied in exactly the same edit ("simultaneously"). The inline citation has to be there, but WP:V doesn't (currently) care whether you take one edit or ten edits to get it there. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:31, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
WAID, That is an extremely Wikilawyerish analysis of the policy. WP:V may not spell it out.... but I think there is a clear implication that the source should be provided at the same time that material is restored. Otherwise, it looks like the restorer is simply edit warring, and not accepting the burden.
At minimum, the restorer should leave some sort of acknowledgement of the challenge, and an indication that the burden to provide a source has been accepted (such as an edit summary saying "will provide source shortly"). Blueboar (talk) 11:03, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't think "wikilawyering" is an appropriate description. It simply goes against any plain reading of "All quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." There's some wiggle room and eventuality arguments around "likely to be challenged", but not around "has been challenged". At the time the edit is made restoring it, the material has been challenged and must include an inline citation.—Kww(talk) 14:00, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
If you want "simultaneously provide an inline citation" added to this policy page, then I suggest you first go try and get it incorporated into the WP:Burden page, since it sets no deadline whatsoever and is clear that "whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:46, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
In most cases, content removed under WP:BURDEN shouldn't be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source. There should be some wiggle room for when dealing with the kind of editor who'll remove all the unsourced sentences that are unfavourable to their (nationality/religion/political party/favourite conspiracy theory/preferred brand of snake oil, delete as appropriate) but leave all the favourable ones alone. There should also be some wiggle room with the kind of editor who'll remove 38 sentences in the same edit and insist that you cite them individually before they can be restored, because when dealing with large challenges it's much more practical and efficient to restore and then source. Even in those cases I think you should source promptly ---- if it's going to take more than a few hours then the restoring editor should drop an explanatory note on the talk page.—S MarshallT/C 17:10, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I've never understood that "efficiency" argument: no one forces anyone to hit the "save" button before all the sources are provided. That's what the preview buffer is for.—Kww(talk) 17:29, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I'd imagine you're familiar with it, though? I can't be the first person to have said this to you.—S MarshallT/C 17:41, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Repetition doesn't improve its accuracy: if the goal is to completely restore the information without intentionally violating policy, the preview buffer works. Hitting the "save" button violates policy without improving efficiency.—Kww(talk) 20:03, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
Can I remind everyone that we had a RFC on the immediacy issue only last July (Proposal 2)? I agree with Blueboar that immediacy is required by the current policy, but I weakly opposed making it explicit for reasons I stated there. - TransporterMan (TALK) 18:13, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
There was one idea that came out of that RFC that I think is worth pursuing... Creating a "citation pending" tag.
As I understand the idea... this tag would be added by those who wish to preserve (i.e. Return) the challenged material... By adding it, they are acknowledging that they have accepted the burden to provide a source, but request a reasonable amount of time to supply it. Would something like that be acceptable? Blueboar (talk) 21:30, 13 June 2016 (UTC)
I think that would resolve a lot of the problems when it comes to the interaction between these two policies. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 02:36, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
The question will, of course, be begged: what constitutes a "reasonable amount of time"? In a vacuum I would suggest a week, which means the tag probably needs a datestamp. I would also suggest that placing such a tag and then failing to provide a source should be considered disruptive behavior, and ideally that appropriate user warning templates be developed. DonIago (talk) 03:10, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Why is it ever reasonable to override a challenge and restore the material if you don't already have a source? After all, you took the challenge seriously and actually verified the material before restoring the material, right? You didn't just override the challenge based on things like personal opinion?—Kww(talk) 03:29, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
I agree with Kww and oppose a citation-pending template. "Citation pending" implies that there definitely is a reliable source but that someone just needs to do something clerkish — look up the date or page number or other details of the citation, or the like — to add it. It, thus, vouches for the verifiability of the material in exactly the way that Wikipedia is built around not doing, saying in effect "It's correct because we say so." We might as well create a "No citation, correct because we say so" tag. Frankly, after thinking this through more, if I could go back and change my !vote in the RFC to supporting the footnote making simultaneous citing explicitly mandatory ("explicitly" because it's already mandatory). — TransporterMan (TALK) 11:43, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
As this discussion and a number of past discussions similar to it show, many editors do not agree that simultaneous citing is mandatory. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:19, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
Adding a "citation pending" tag would not "overturn" the challenge... I see it as an explicit acceptance and acknowledgement of it. My concept would be that template would only be used in situations where there is a source... and the restorer simply needs some "clerk" time to compile it. For example... The restorer knows that the challenged information can be verified by a print book, and knows his local library has a copy of this book... I think it reasonable to give him/her a day or two to go to the library, get the book and compile the information in order to format a proper citation (publisher, page number, etc). The "citation pending" tag would not be a be a "get out of citation free" card. It would be a very temporary placeholder for the citation. Restrictions on using the tag, the time limits applied to it, and what happens if the citation is not supplied within that time limit can be spelled out in the instructions on the tag's template page. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
And that's why I think the tag would work. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:19, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
But why the rush to restore it before the editor has managed to actually verify it? You are supporting the idea of restoring challenged information based on a potentially incorrect memory of what the editor has seen in the past, rather than waiting for proper verification. Why rush to do things incorrectly? The problem this citation solves is oxmoronic: the disruptive removal of information that is widely known and easily verifiable, yet no one can come up with a reliable source that supports it.—Kww(talk) 14:31, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I don't believe that a {{citation pending}} tag will solve any problems. If you'd accept a tag for material that you CHALLENGEd, then you'd accept an edit summary or a note on the talk page, too.
I can think of some good reasons to add a citation in a separate edit, including:
to differentiate between what you're doing what what someone else previously wrote, so that it's clear what you changed when you improved the text (especially appropriate for text that was removed many edits ago, which makes diffs difficult).
because your internet connection is flaky, and you need to save frequently. Loss of session errors aren't unusual, and not everyone has a high-speed internet connection and modern computer that recovers gracefully from them.
because you want to add the citation via the mw:citoid service, but UNDO puts you in the wikitext editor, and you can't remember how to switch without saving in between (or you're worried that something might break if you switch).
because you're on a Mobile device that handles multiple windows badly, or you're on the app and worry that if you move to a web browser, the app will discard your edits, and you have to go save the page so you can go copy the URL that you need.
As you can see, there are some purely practical reasons why some editors might occasionally want to use multiple edits (one after another, not separated by days or weeks) to restore and add citations (and fix any text that doesn't match the citation well enough), even when you "already have a source". I agree that most editors, in most circumstances, won't encounter these issues, but some of them will, and, in these situations, their practical solution of saving once and citing a few minutes later seems very reasonable to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:46, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
You're contemplating a clarification of BURDEN, so I would tend to think the discussion belongs on WT:V rather than here. I think it's a worthwhile clarification but PRESERVE should not be affected.—S MarshallT/C 16:36, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I was contemplating something entirely new... Which would have an impact on both policies. Blueboar (talk) 18:31, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Back to square one
Let's approach this from a different direction ... Currently the policy describes quite a few options one should consider doing before he/she challenges and removes information. The policy, however, says nothing about how to preserve information when someone else has considered and rejected all those options.
So... I have to ask... What is best practice to follow when someone else thinks something should not be preserved... But you disagree, and think it should be preserved? Obviously, engaging in an edit war over it is not best practice... But what is? Blueboar (talk) 20:10, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Assess the edit in context to determine how to react:-1) Check the justification given, and clarify with the removing editor if necessary. It would be appropriate to remove verifiable content if, for example, it was a known copyvio and the removing editor didn't have time to rewrite. If there's any ambiguity, ensure that we're actually dealing with BURDEN.2) Could this be interpreted as a good faith edit? If it could be a good faith edit, assume it is; but in my experience removing verifiable content is quite often part of a pattern of suspect behaviour, so check before reacting. Look for red flags such as whether the editor has, or appears to have, a COI or history of advancing a position, and if so whether this edit appears to advance that position. Or whether the editor is behaving vexatiously or in a retaliatory manner following a conflict with another editor active on the page. If this appears not a good faith edit, revert and proceed directly to an appropriate venue such as COIN.3) If it is, or must be assumed to be, a good faith edit, then the first time source and then restore, or if necessary, restore and then source. Then begin a polite conversation with the editor educating them about the reasons for PRESERVE.4) If the behaviour is repeated, and particularly if the editor is removing substantial amounts of verifiable content and costing large quantities of competent editor time, refer to the drama boards to get them reined in.—S MarshallT/C 21:06, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
Best practice? Remember that actually being verified is the goal, and that being verifiable is best demonstrated by being verified. Once one has actually verified the removed content and correctly formatted a citation that relies on a WP:RS, restore the material complete with the citation. The only time when S. Marshall's suggestions above apply is if the material actually had a citation and that citation appears to be to a reliable source: it's inapplicable to unsourced and uncited material.—Kww(talk) 23:47, 14 June 2016 (UTC)
I don't believe that there is one single "best" practice. I think there are several practices that are potentially appropriate:
Restore and source – simplest, quickest, solves most problems instantly, and plays well in dispute resolution.
Fix and source – sometimes the seemingly POINTy or POV-pushing edit identifies a real problem.
Start a discussion to find consensus before trying to restore it – sometimes you need more information about what the perceived problem is.
On S Marshall's comments, I think it's partly the wrong approach. Editors shouldn't worry about whether the CHALLENGE is due to COI or POV pushing (which, after all, are sometimes subjective and frequently mistaken labels). If you restore it with a good source, and it's left alone, then the two of you have jointly improved the article. If you restore it with a good source, and it's not left alone, then you'll discover the further behavioral problems without any extra effort on your part. Since step #1 at any dispute resolution board is likely to be a request that you demonstrate that the material is truly verifiable, then you'll have to do this anyway, so you might as well do it now. And why should an editor be limited to removing unsourced and probably wrong information only "the first time"? What are you going to do if I come back next week and say "these strange statistics are unsourced and probably not verifiable, either"? Take me to the drama boards so that you can get hit by a BOOMERANG? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
"The first time" is because I think removing verifiable material from Wikipedia articles is weird. I mean, stipulating for a moment that the policies even allow it (and for the avoidance of doubt, my position has always been that the policies positively require you to preserve appropriate content) ---- what kind of editor has nothing better to do with their volunteering time than find an article they don't know about, and without bothering to research it, remove some plausible but unsourced content under BURDEN? I have some difficulty assuming good faith about an editor who does this. You, WAID, would not behave in this way. Blueboar would not behave in this way. It's an odd, bizarre thing to do. You'd check whether you're dealing with a partisan or a crusader. If at first glance it seems like you're not, then okay, source the content and tell them they shouldn't be making mainspace edits on any topic they don't know about without checking the sources and doing a bit of research. But if their response is do it again? At this point, they've gone from "a bit odd" to "pretty freaking suspicious", haven't they? Have you ever done anything like this? Would you ever do anything like this?—S MarshallT/C 19:55, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
On articles and topics where the frequent contributors show no apparent interest in providing sources? Certainly I have, because my goal is to get the people that build articles to add sources: I have no particular interest in following bad editors around and correcting their contributions, I want them to contribute correctly in the first place.—Kww(talk) 22:40, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
Of course I remove plausible-but-unsourced information from articles: BLP and COPYVIO demand that editors do this, and SPLITs really can't be done any other way. ;-) I even remove plausible-and-sourced information on occasion, e.g., when it is UNDUE or redundant. But as you specify removing the content "under BURDEN" rather than because of the myriad other reasons, I want to back up to your assumption: "what kind of editor has nothing better to do with their volunteering time than find an article they don't know about, and without bothering to research it, remove some plausible but unsourced content"? That's a negative assumption about editors acting out of ignorance, and a strange assumption that what seems plausible to me will seem plausible to everyone. So how about we ask instead, "What kind of editor finds an article that he does believe that he knows something about, and removes unsourced information that does not seem plausible to him?" For example, to use the recent dispute about anatomical homology, the unsourced material that was removed was partly wrong, and the editor who removed it provided a reliable source that he believed supported his changes. It happens that his (sourced) version was completely wrong, but I think that all reasonable editors would agree that he believed that he knew something verifiable about the subject and that he was sincerely trying to correct what he believed was a factual error – complete with the research step that you seem to assume the blanking editors aren't doing. And if you're specifically thinking of the Child grooming case, then I remind you that the unsourced material in question said, "Child grooming is an activity done to gain...the trust of those responsible for the child's well-being", which did not survive to the current version because it proved to not be verifiable, even though it sounded plausible to people who weren't paying close attention to exactly what the text said (e.g., me). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:45, 15 June 2016 (UTC)
The unsourced material that was removed in the Human penis case was NOT partly wrong; we've been over this, in a discussion where I provided a number of reliable sources making it explicitly clear that the penis and clitoris are homologous. No reliable sources state or indicate "partly homologous." So you would do well to stop stating that it is "partly wrong" to call the penis and clitoris homologous. Any time you incorrectly point to that case, I will be there to correctly point to it. And as for the Child grooming case, stating that "these are just some of the methods a child groomer might use to gain a child's trust and affection to allow them to do what they want" is verifiable; it's supported by sources I added. I removed the "just some of the methods" material because it was redundant and poor wording. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 00:10, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
The version at Human penis that you reverted to: "The penis is homologous to the clitoris. The version that proved to be verifiable: "Most of the penis develops from the same tissue in the embryo as does the clitoris in females; the skin around the penis and the urethra come from the same embryonic tissue from which develops the labia minora in females." One of these things is not like the other. (For the non-anatomy people, "homologous to" means "develops from the same tissue in the embryo as".) Given that these two versions contain different facts, I think it's reasonable to say that the first version is not entirely correct. As for the Child grooming case, I gave you an exact, direct quotation in the previous comment. It did not say that it was providing some examples of things that could sometimes happen; it said that child grooming actually "is" (i.e., "exactly equals") gaining the trust of parents. I'm very glad that you corrected that subtle misstatement when you re-wrote it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Lets wash and repeat, shall we? The wording "The penis is homologous to the clitoris." also proved to be verifiable. And this is shown times over with sources I pointed to and provided. As for your statement of "For the non-anatomy people, 'homologous to' means 'develops from the same tissue in the embryo as', like I told Jytdog: The clitoris and penis develop from the genital tubercle and are very much the same organ, except manifested in different ways due to sexual differentiation. This is why they are called homologous rather than "mostly homologous." And, of course, I noted that the labia minora is an aspect of the clitoris; it is not completely distinct from it. Besides the fact that there are an abundance of sources simply stating that "the clitoris and penis are homologous," including those that do so without any need of stating that "the shaft is homologous to the labia minora," sources are not always consistent in how they address the genital tubercle and urogenital folds matter with regard to the development of the clitoris and penis. This is likely because the urogenital folds aid the formation of the urethral groove on the ventral portion of the genital tubercle. Some sources simply state that the genital tubercle forms the glans clitoris and glans penis, while other sources state the genital tubercle elongates and forms the shaft and glans of the penis, and that the genital tubercle forms the glans and shaft of the clitoris. In other words, sources do not only state that the genital tubercle only forms the glans of both organs. Nor do they usually state that genital tubercle only forms the glans of both organs. I told Jytdog to refer to sources for what I mean.
I then reiterated to Jytdog: I wanted to note that sources do not always only state that the genital tubercle forms the glans clitoris and glans penis; some sources extend the description by stating that the genital tubercle elongates and forms the shaft and glans of the penis, and that the genital tubercle forms the glans and shaft of the clitoris. They sometimes note the shaft aspect, which means that the genital tubercle is not solely attributed to development of the glans of both organs. Sources call these two organs homologous, plain and simple. Due to how homology (biology) is defined with regard to sexual differentiation, and due to accuracy, your "most of the penis develops from the same tissue in the embryo as does the clitoris in females" wording is more accurate than your "most of the penis is homologous to the clitoris" wording. So I can go along with that. I'm not looking to change the text you have there now.
So, no, WhatamIdoing, I don't think it's reasonable for you to go around stating that there is a problem with calling the clitoris and penis homologous without a qualifier like "mostly homologous."
As for the Child grooming case, your semantics argument is invalid. The text I removed stated: "These are just some of the methods a child groomer might use to gain a child's trust and affection to allow them to do what they want." That is clearly letting the reader know that these are examples. It stated "These are just some of the methods," before noting hugging and kissing, and stating "To the groomer, this is a way to get close." Further down, the wording uses "might." So I don't know what subtle misstatement you are referring to. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:13, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Looking at this, I see that you are focusing on the following: "Child grooming is an activity done to gain the child's trust as well as the trust of those responsible for the child's well-being." Well, that is what child grooming is. Examples are meant to come after such a line. The only reason I did not restore that line a second time is because it would have been redundant to the sourced material I added. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:29, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
On a side note: I've never come across any reliable source stating, or coming close to stating, "Most of the penis develops from the same tissue in the embryo as does the clitoris in females." And by that, I mean I never see a "most" qualifier. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 04:57, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
Well, Kww just told us he does just rock up to articles he knows nothing about and remove chunks of text without knowing whether they're accurate. I'm amazed. Sounds incredibly high-handed and arrogant to me. I think finding sources is everyone's job. Self-appointed managers who hand out assignments for other people to bring article sourcing up to their personal standards? People who think it's their job to decide what other people should do? Nope: that attitude's unacceptable and it needs purging from the encyclopaedia. BURDEN is for removing content that you reasonably believe to be inappropriate, i.e., before you press that big red button, you should either know, or have checked. Editing the mainspace without checking the sources to make sure your edit improves the encyclopaedia is thoroughly irresponsible, and it's one of the reasons why I keep saying we need a competence noticeboard. Allowing editors to use BURDEN indiscriminately, giving no weight to PRESERVE, is like handing out axes to blind men.Jytdog doesn't want us to make this about the child grooming case, but since you mention that edit specifically ---- child grooming is verifiably about trust and removing that paragraph was not good editorial judgment. I don't think it's appropriate for you to hold it up as a triumph for BURDEN. If the editor was behaving responsibly or showing good editorial judgment, he would have restricted his challenge to that part of the subject paragraph which isn't always true. (It usually is true.)I did mention in my "best practice" bit about copyvios, and I did specifically say it's right to check that the edit really does involve BURDEN if there's ambiguity. I've removed UNDUE content myself on more than one occasion...—S MarshallT/C 00:11, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I need to accept that you're not going to give up. We should probably just draft an RfC here. ;-)—S MarshallT/C 00:23, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Well, you've certainly demonstrated that you don't actually read what people say before responding. I've always been upfront that I think it is legitimate to remove material simply because it is unsourced, regardless of whether I believe it is possible to source it. At what point did I discuss editing articles that I "knew nothing about"?—Kww(talk) 02:22, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Sure, you've said you think that. Policy says otherwise. Policy says you should preserve appropriate content; and in the context of removing content from the mainspace, that means it's your job to check the sources first. If you're not willing to research the subject, read the sources, check what they say and add inline citations where appropriate, then you simply shouldn't be editing the article.—S MarshallT/C 16:26, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
No, policy says it was the responsibility of the person that added the material to ensure it was verifiable. When confronted with never-ending piles of unsourced additions, it isn't my responsiblity to wade through the heaps and verify each one individually: that burden falls on the people that add the material in the first place. Have fun: go check a few completely unsourced articles in the "List of awards and achievements ..." group for accuracy. I'm willing to bet you'll find that most you examine aren't completely verifiable. You want to shift the burden onto other editors and have them prove that each and every item in an unsourced article isn't verifiable, which is exactly what BURDEN says isn't the case.—Kww(talk) 17:09, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Yes: if you want to edit Wikipedia then adding sources to articles absolutely is your responsibility. The last thing we need is "editors" who think it isn't their job to source content.—S MarshallT/C 18:03, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Please provide a link to a policy that stipulates that. DonIago (talk) 18:07, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Verifiability and the editing policy combine to say this. Verifiability says that everything challenged or likely to be challenged has to have a source, and things that do not have sources can be removed. The editing policy says preserve appropriate content. Policy does not say, but I think everyone here would agree, that only verifiable content is appropriate for Wikipedia. Therefore the behaviour expected of editors coming across unsourced content is that they should assess whether it's appropriate, remove it if it isn't, and source it if it is.—S MarshallT/C 18:24, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
All editors are not equally suited to the task of sourcing all content they will encounter. When I see stable content that I believe may be appropriate, but which is unsourced, I tag it as a way of notifying editors who are better suited to the task of sourcing the particular content that sourcing should be provided. If months later no editor has stepped forward to provide a source, I then consider it reasonable to assume that the content is not in fact appropriate and I will either delete it or relocate it to the article's Talk page. DonIago (talk) 19:08, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Don, please don't remove content unless you know, or have checked, that that's an appropriate thing to do. It's irresponsible to edit the mainspace without checking the sources.—S MarshallT/C 19:47, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
It is at least as irresponsible to add content of dubious verifiability without providing a source. DonIago (talk) 19:59, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
I never said (nor would a look through my edit history support, especially considering the efforts of User:Chartbot), that I am above adding citations. I will also say that specific sales claims and awards come under the umbrella of "likely to be challenged".—Kww(talk) 19:21, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
Then you two should consider posting in support of the blanking editor in this AN/I. This is the kind of behaviour we're discussing.—S MarshallT/C 20:52, 16 June 2016 (UTC)
I'm going to assume it was not your intention to suggest that the removal of unsourced and tagged long-term statements/paragraphs/sections is analogous to the blanking of entire articles. DonIago (talk) 05:03, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
I understood that this very long conversation was about removing content from Wikipedia because it wasn't sourced to your satisfaction. The entire discussion was triggered by Spacecowboy420's edits.—S MarshallT/C 07:39, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
I suggest that we Stop and Refocus... because this sub-thread of the conversation isn't supposed to be about removing content... this sub-thread is supposed to be about how best to preserve content that has already been removed (justifiably or not). This is an important distinction. Blueboar (talk) 13:27, 17 June 2016 (UTC)
Does your question, in somewhat more blunt language, amount to "Imagine that some editor has believes unsourced material to be unverifiable, officially CHALLENGEd it, and removed it from the article. In your opinion, is 'say that the other editor shouldn't have removed it' the best practice?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Not exactly... I intended my question to be a bit broader. We currently have a statement outlining best practice for what a challenger should do before removing. What I think we need to add is a statement outlining best practice for what those responding to a challenge should do after removal. Looking at both my own practice, and that of others, I think the range of responses include:
Quietly return the information with a source, and make no further comment.
Return the information with a source, and then comment that the removal was in some way improper.
Revert the removal (re-adding the information without a source) with no further comment.
Argue that the removal is in some way improper, but not revert the removal.
Argue that the removal was in some way improper, and revert the removal (re-adding the information without a source).
(If I have missed a practice that you have seen, please add it.)
My question is: Which of these responses is best practice? and why do you think it best? Blueboar (talk) 12:25, 25 June 2016 (UTC)
Assuming that the material is both verifiable and otherwise desirable for the article, IMO the best practice is "return with a source". I would choose #2, but I don't think that complaining about the propriety of the removal is usually worth the time. Just WP:Let the Wookie win (which you will have to write someday). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 26 June 2016 (UTC)
The premise is here that X has challenged unsourced material by removing it from an article and Y is responding to that challenge/removal. The premise assumes that the material was, in fact, unsourced (e.g. that the remover didn't miss a source a couple of sentences later that covered all the sentences in front of it). There is no best practice, policy requires the material not to be restored without a source which Y believes in good faith to be reliable. There are no grounds under either PRESERVE or V to argue that the removal is in some way improper which would justify restoring the material without a reliable source. (Even if Y believes that X is acting improperly, e.g. by removing unsourced material as a routine or practice across multiple articles in pursuit of a POV, that is not a reason or ground to restore the material, but only to file a report at ANI because that is a conduct matter while PRESERVE and V are content matters.) We don't need to create best practices to establish processes for lodging meaningless objections. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 03:51, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
I think that the most recent discussions at the WP:Burden talk page and at this one indicate that an application of "best practices" is a valid concern. Nowhere does WP:Burden state that any removal of unsourced content is a good thing. If an editor is removing good content or very appropriate content under WP:Burden and without actual concern for the article's improvement (for example, failing to check if the material is important to the article and/or that it can be easily sourced), that is a content matter that WP:Burden should be concerned with. And from what I see, WP:Preserve is already concerned with it. Objecting to asinine removals is not meaningless. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 05:02, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Editors can be concerned about improving the article without taking the specific step of checking to see whether the unsourced material could be easily sourced, and material that is "important to the article" is – well, there's a lot of potential for problems there, especially with contentious BLPs ("but the allegation that he's gay is 'important to the article'!") and serious POV pushing ("but saying that vaccines are poisonous is 'important to the article'!"). IMO, removing material that is unsourced and which appears (to the best of your knowledge) to be unverifiable is automatically showing a concern for improving the article.
TransporterMan, I wonder whether the best practice might sometimes include more than merely restoring the material with a source. For example, perhaps the best practice is (sometimes) sourcing, restoring, and starting a discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:03, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
Removing easily verifiable content based solely on guesses should not be acceptable removal based on "what is the best of your knowledge." The "best of your knowledge" would be doing a simple Google search (or other search) on the matter, per WP:Preserve, and then removing the content if the Google search (or other search) does not show the content to be verifiable. Removing easily verifiable content that belongs in the article is not showing a concern for improving the article, unless it's content that needs discussion on the talk page for WP:Undue weight concerns or other concerns. We've already been over the "preserve everything" argument, and no one is saying that we should preserve everything. Neither does the WP:Preserve policy; it states, "As long as any facts or ideas would belong in an encyclopedia, they should be retained in Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:46, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm always open to discussing changes needed to address situations which I've not thought of, but I can't think of any in this this particular situation. Your example suggests that there ought to be discussion following restoration of sourced material. If you, as an editor, believe in good faith that your sources are reliable, why would you want to start a discussion on it? There are thousands of restorations of unsourced information with sources every day. Do we need an attempted discussion in all of them? You might want to if you're not certain about the reliability of your sources or if there is some other reason why the material might be questionable even if properly sourced (e.g. problems with undue weight), but I see no reason to start a discussion about adequately-sourced material. If there are other situations where some best practice — or even policy — might be appropriate, I don't know what they are, but I'm certainly willing to consider them. Do you have some ideas or examples? Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:33, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I think you're probably right. There might be times when a discussion is helpful (e.g., helping a newbie learn how to improve an article, finding out more about the other editor's concerns, explaining why you restored only part of it, etc.), but I can't think of any reason for a discussion that's truly specific to this issue (i.e., you'd probably want to help the newbie or get more information, etc., even if there wasn't any BURDEN-triggering removal). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
You lot are on the wrong talk page. If we're talking about what happens after content is removed, then that's WP:BURDEN and you need to be on WT:V. The editing policy defines what should happen before you remove content.—S MarshallT/C 16:53, 27 June 2016 (UTC)
Why shouldn't this policy address what happens after material is removed? After all, returning removed information is an edit. Not discussing best practice for returning information omits an important part of the editing process. Blueboar (talk) 00:51, 30 June 2016 (UTC)
We're talking about what happens after unsourced content is removed here because some editors (please note the plural) believe that there is an actual contradiction between PRESERVE and BURDEN. BURDEN is already clear about what you should do afterwards, but PRESERVE might be clearer on that point. It appears that clarifying this question will result in changes to this page, so it's probably best to have the discussion here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:01, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
There were a couple of key changes involving this contention on 27th June. AN/I's view of Spacecowboy420's edits needs to be taken into account, and that close obviously leads to edits to BURDEN rather than to PRESERVE. Clearly, editors feel BURDEN has limits and it's possible to overreach them, but no limits are defined at the moment. Also, Jytdog will no longer be participating in this discussion (or any other). It's my view that the editors, plural, concerned need to establish consensus on whether to edit PRESERVE before we have a discussion about how to edit it.—S MarshallT/C 14:24, 2 July 2016 (UTC)
What I saw happen at ANI was what almost always happens on that subject at ANI: A bunch of folks show up to criticize the unsourced-content-removing-editors' removals, a few show up to demonstrate that the removals are supported by policy, but no consensus forms to actually sanction the editor. Sanctions can result if it appears that the editor is pursuing a content-related POV (or there or other conduct factors unrelated to the removals per se as almost happened in this case), but if they're genuinely and more-or-less randomly removing unsourced content merely because it's unsourced, then nothing happens though a number of people don't like it. What cannot be taken from this or prior cases is that the criticism voiced there states the opinion of the community that such removals are inappropriate when no action was taken on that criticism. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 17:46, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm still hopeful that, after a few discussions have been concluded, that Jytdog will be able to join us again. Fences and windows, would you please comment on whether your closing statement at ANI suggests anything at all about the WP:BURDEN on editors who choose to restore unsourced and WP:CHALLENGEd material to an article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm sure it has some bearing, though we don't operate by an equivalent of case law here. Some removals of unsourced content can be disruptive when done without care or discussion, but it is of course difficult to specify when in abstract. A note that BURDEN does not give carte blanche to remove unsourced content en masse might be helpful. Fences&Windows 08:17, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Thanks for weighing in, Fences and windows. My and others' concern is that a number of editors use WP:Burden to recklessly remove material and disregard WP:Preserve. As shown at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive927#User:Spacecowboy420 going around blanking articles (the thread you closed), the community clearly does not tolerate such reckless removals. S Marshall is correct about that. I've stated the same thing times over while debating all of this. Something needs to be done about how recklessly WP:Burden is used, but I don't think that recklessness will be remedied by altering this policy page, which is already commonly ignored. A slight alteration to WP:Burden is what is needed. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 16:46, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Also, regarding that ANI case, I somewhat disagree with TransporterMan's view of it; I don't see any support for that editor's removals. Additionally, I see two administrators (NeilN and Drmies) make it clear that a block would have happened had such removals continued and if the editor had not weighed in to explain (or maybe even if he had). So I think the community was very clear that the blanking (whether the whole article or huge chunks) was problematic. Even the close by Fences and windows made that clear. And, like Drmies stated, he (Drmies) trims a lot, but the "trimming" in this case was overzealous. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 17:09, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I do trim a lot. My total balance of contributions in terms of bytes is probably negative. I find myself occupying a space between Kww and S Marshall. I believe it is the burden of the editor adding (or reinstating) information to provide sourcing. I also believe that "delete: unsourced" is by itself typically not enough of a reason. "Unsourced, irrelevant" or "unsourced, tendentious" or "unsourced, not neutral"--those are valid reasons. In this particular case I believe that explanations were missing, and that would have led to a block since I (and it's not just me--NeilN has plenty of common sense, and we agreed) believe that such edits are disruptive; it's nothing more than blanking. Drmies (talk) 17:25, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Drmies, in one of the Spacecowboy incidents that prompted these discussions, the edit summary was "seems like a lot of original research". It was the (citation-free) reversion of his edit that mentioned the word unsourced: "Revert per WP:Preserve, and per what WP:Burden states about preserving. Blanking is not the solution. And "unsourced" is not what is meant by the WP:Original research policy". WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
We've already been over this, as seen at Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 64#Preserving a burden and above. I welcome Drmies to review that case, where the editor removed easily verifiable content based on an asinine assumption. As I've stated more than once now, if we encouraged editors to remove content based solely on assumption, we'd have far more disruptive editing than we currently have at this site. We encourage some assumption-based removals, as in the case of a number of WP:BLP issues, WP:Non-English issues, or when we take the effort to check up on a matter and cannot verify it. But we do not encourage editors to go around removing content willy-nilly just because, for example, they suppose that it's WP:OR or inaccurate. If we think it's WP:OR or inaccurate, we should be checking up on that. From that edit by the aforementioned editor, and his replies on the article talk page, it was clear to me that he felt that removing/blanking material solely because it's unsourced was fine and dandy. And like I predicted, his line of thinking snowballed into disruptive editing across a number of articles, and he was rightly reprimanded for it. And I reiterate that WP:OR states (at the top, with a reference), "By 'exists', the community means that the reliable source must have been published and still exist—somewhere in the world, in any language, whether or not it is reachable online—even if no source is currently named in the article. Articles that currently name zero references of any type may be fully compliant with this policy—so long as there is a reasonable expectation that every bit of material is supported by a published, reliable source." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:58, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
But Drmies and NeilN, would a block have been forthcoming in the situation I'm about to describe: An editor removes unsourced material on occasion without any apparent attempt to provide sources for it, but far less often than anything which can be considered routine, regular, or systematic. No one notices at the time, but eventually someone objects to the lastest removal and takes the editor to ANI and shows, let's say, 5-6 other removals over a couple of years period. They're warned about the practice by someone, but continue to do so occasionally and are brought back to ANI. No POV is apparent and large amounts of material are not removed. Let me point out that BURDEN would say that such removals are acceptable and through the years several extended discussions and RFCs on the V talk page have preserved the right to do just that. There's always been a largely unwritten exception for the editor who makes a routine practice — you might call it a "hobby" — of removing unsourced material, especially if it shows a POV, and perhaps also for even single removals of large amounts of unsourced material. There is a sizable and vocal body of editors who believe that it should not be that way, that unsourced material should never be removed simply because it is unsourced, but the consensus which has always come up at V has been that such removals are acceptable, if not necessarily the best practice. Could it be that y'all are mistaken? Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 18:43, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Of course I can be mistaken, though I am not sure that S Marshall can. Your case opens up with "on occasion", which already implies there isn't much disruption to speak of. Without speaking out on the merits of whether one needs a reason to remove unsourced information (I believe one needs a reason, and I believe information needs sources), frequent removal of information can be seen as disruption because it's frequent. Think of all the editors who have been dragged to ANI for nominating multiple articles in a short amount of time: that's disruptive because the burden on the people trying to save those articles becomes undue.Look, I think one problem here is that--and as a mediator you should know this--many things simply cannot be easily solved by an appeal to policy, or by the writing of more and more policy. How does some pattern of behavior work out in practice? When does a minor inconvenience for some become a nuisance for many? Think about the limits we put on automated editing, for instance; we don't remove brackets from wikilinked years because we think there should be a decision process involved, and automation means automation, and there is no time to protest, to judge, to tweak, to start talk page discussion, etc. SpaceCowboy was rapped on the fingers because it was not "on occasion". Drmies (talk) 18:52, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
@TransporterMan: There's a hell a lot of text to read that leads up to your question so I'm going to take it at face value. No, no block would be forthcoming in the instance you describe. I would only block for removing unsourced material if the editor was amply warned and the community decided future removals were disruptive or the removals were clearly done for revenge. --NeilNtalk to me 18:54, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Drmies, I agree. Indeed I've proffered this reason to back up sanctioning the routine and regular remover: While BURDEN permits removal of unsourced material merely because it is unsourced, there are clear best practices (a) looking for a source and adding it or (b) marking it citation needed and waiting a reasonable, unstingy period of time or (c) raising the issue on the article talk page and/or (d) some combination of those. In individual instances, the "acceptable" practice is okay, but the "hobbiest" routine remover is consistently and consciously (once warned) failing to follow best practices and is clearly NOTHERE (under the "Long-term agenda inconsistent with building an encyclopedia" and "Having a long-term or 'extreme' history that suggests a marked lack of value for the project's actual aims and methods" elements). It's the consistent and routine failure to follow best practices that is the sanctionable behavior. (Which is, ahem, firmly based in policy.) Sanctions for the single or occasional removal of a large amount of material from a single article is harder to justify. NeilN, indeed, there's a hell of a lot. It's one of the reasons that I cringe every time we have to fight this battle. Best regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 19:12, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
I also tend to agree with Drmies and NeilN. POINTY and disruptive behavior is unacceptable.
Let's tie this back to Blueboar's question: Imagine that an editor removes WP:UNSOURCED material and says that he believes (rightly or wrongly) that the removed material is not verifiable. This editor has not been warned about a pattern of blanking material (and does not seem to be engaged in one). However, you happen to be a subject-matter expert, and the material is obviously correct and verifiable in your opinion.
Now what? Is it okay for you to restore the material without sources? Do you truly need to add sources just because some WP:RANDY challenged the material? What's the best practice for you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:32, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
Since S Marshall and I have been over this, more than several times, I will just note the following: No one ever stated that sources for the unsourced content should not be added. This matter has repeatedly been about how fast the content should be sourced, whether the unsourced content should be restored in the interim, and whether removing easily verifiable, vital content based on an incorrect assumption...without taking the time to check that the assumption is valid...can be disruptive. In the aforementioned case that started all of this debating because WhatamIdoing felt it needed all this debating, it was not even a matter of me being a "subject-matter expert," and it certainly wasn't a matter of my opinion about the literature (other than it being easily verifiable). It was a matter an editor removing easily verifiable content, with an invalid rationale. If an editor has taken the time to ensure that their rationale is solid, okay then. I can understand an editor removing material because it seems like original research after the editor has done a simple check on it. This check can include a reading of the sources and/or a web search. But what we don't need are editors going to our articles and removing material solely because they suppose that it's original research. I was stating a fact: The content was easily verifiable, and the literature is clear that the content in question is important for that topic. So in this case, best practice to me is that you should be making sure that the material you are removing is original research or possible original research before you remove it as such; it is negligent not to do so. And, as others know, yes, I think it's fine to restore the unsourced material...if you intend to source it. How fast the sourcing happens depends, and WP:Burden notes that. In the now famous case, I intended to source the material, and I did. We can all debate whether or not I should have taken the matter to the talk page to complain, but I felt that this type of editing by the editor (which actually started before that case) would lead to problems. And as the aforementioned WP:ANI case shows, it did. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:58, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
User:Blueboar's question, at the start of this section, is "What is best practice to follow when someone else thinks something should not be preserved... But you disagree, and think it should be preserved?" I am interested in what other people think about this question. I suspect that, by now, everyone knows that you personally feel justified in restoring unsourced material if you disagree with the other editor's assessment of the material's verifiability. However, I'm interested in what other editors believe is the best practice, not what you believe was a good choice in one particular situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:50, 5 July 2016 (UTC)
I think everyone knows that you personally feel justified in misrepresenting my viewpoints, even when they are stated plain as day in black on the same talk page. If it's not about me, then stop making it about me. You will find few editors who agree with you that I acted wrongly in the two aforementioned examples you like to use to make your arguments in this case. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:00, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
So where are we all at with this as of July
Can all sides please sum up where this discussion stands as of 3 July 2016? I keep losing the thread. There seems to be a lot of esoteric "angels dancing on a pinhead" talk going on, perhaps influenced by short term decisions by admins on faraway notice boards, which I think, given the long term nature of policy, we should just pause and take a breath about.
For my part, I believe we have fairly clear content add, preserve, and removal policies. We also have WP:3RR and WP:BRD policies to give a cool down period whenever there is a difference of opinion about restoring contentious information. Last I checked, our policies have been balancing themselves out in keeping with the spirit of WP:5P, for the most part.
Mind you, I'm well aware that there will always be editors out there WP:Wikilawyering; this have never not been the case. Edited to add: Wikilawyering is perfectly healthy behavior for an editor* to begin to engage in; arguing about policy shows they at least care about policy. The real problem is when they are obstinate about their interpretation of policy.
So given all that, cliff notes please. :) -- Kendrick7talk 02:48, 3 July 2016 (UTC) *I would say "new" editor, but someone could easily make 1000+ edits before butting their head against our policies
Here's my summary:
BURDEN still does not contain the word disruptive (although it contains a footnote that about Wikipedia:Verifiability challenges that says approximately the same thing in other words).
PRESERVE still does not mention that BURDEN not only exists, but also applies to editors who are trying to preserve WP:UNSOURCED content by "restoring" it to the article.
Some editors are worried that BURDEN will force them choose between providing sources (extra work) or preserving good content (the point of Wikipedia).
Some other editors are worried that, if PRESERVE is ever interpreted as a get-out-of-citing-free policy, then their simplest, quickest, and most efficient method of removing unsourced and bad material will be hobbled, which could be a disaster for FRINGE and COI-related edits. (To explain: Right now, if you add some unsourced garbage about how acupuncture cures death, then they can revert it and declare that they've WP:CHALLENGEd its verifiability. In most cases, that's the end of it, because the other editor won't be able to find [or figure out how to cite] a reliable source. But if the other editor can revert and say "PRESERVE!", then our anti-woo editors will have to spend a lot more time talking about NPOV and dealing with dispute resolution, which is far more time-consuming and difficult.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
My concern is that we have editors that don't understand that the goal is to eventually source all material, and don't accept the concept that mature editors adding unsourced material is, in and of itself, a problem. There simply is no circumstance in which an editor that knows how to cite should be adding material to an article without verifying that it is either already covered by the sources in the article or adding a source that supports it. Editors that do so are working against the goal of having a credible and reliable reference work. If we interpret preserve in a way that prohibits removal of unsourced material simply for being unsourced, we will continue to move further and further from our goal, as we will have no method to discourage irresponsible editors.—Kww(talk) 15:30, 4 July 2016 (UTC)
The {{fact}} tag also provides a "cool down" period. I've personally added unsourced content before while including that inline template in the reasonable hope that another editor will come along with a source at some future date.
How about we add language to WP:CANTFIX akin to: if after a reasonable amount of time has passed without any editor providing a reference after it has been tagged, then that information may be removed and copied to the talk page for discussion, at which point anyone re-adding the information to the article should provide a reliable source before restoring it, unless talk page consensus otherwise agrees it's OK.
Just spit-balling. I've tried to add language about when tags should be considered to be "expired" before to this policy, but got shut down pretty quick. -- Kendrick7talk 02:18, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Could we just forbid the use of tags instead? All evidence indicates that they accomplish nothing. Fix it, remove it, or leave it alone seem to be the only realistic options.—Kww(talk) 13:30, 6 July 2016 (UTC)
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that it is unlikely that we will be able to reach a consensus on the question of best practice for returning WP:CHALLENGEd (removed) information ... because too many of us can not get past the question of whether the material should have been removed in the first place. Blueboar (talk) 14:57, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
Personally I think the question of whether the material should have been removed should be considered immaterial. No pun intended. If the information was unsourced then any editor wishing to see it restored can provide a source..and if they can't provide a source, the information likely shouldn't be retained in any case. Arguing about the appropriateness of the removal wastes the time and energy of everyone involved in the dispute. Now, if the removal was part of a pattern of editing, or if you really, really think it's worth discussing, discuss it with the editor civilly and be prepared to suggest options they might want to consider...but in my experience, most editors who are bothered by the removal of unsourced material do not approach this aspect in a productive manner. DonIago (talk) 16:08, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
I think you're right. There are exceptions, and it's not absolute, but I think you're right about the overall pattern. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:47, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
In my experience, most experienced editors who are bothered by the removal of unsourced material DO approach this aspect in a productive manner. At Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive927#User:Spacecowboy420 going around blanking articles, I see a number of experienced editors bothered by the removal of unsourced material. And all of those editors (including me) have removed unsourced material before. So it's not a matter of simply being bothered by the removal of unsourced material; it's about how the unsourced material is removed. Blueboar is correct that "too many of us can not get past the question of whether the material should have been removed in the first place." Clearly, our community commonly does not tolerate removing unsourced material solely because it's unsourced. Our decent editors use WP:Common sense and retain unsourced information that is likely to benefit the article. And while citation tags can remain for several years (and I personally do not use them because I'd rather source the content myself), all it takes is the right person to come along and source the material. And I've seen the right person come along a number of times. What is the "right person"? It's anyone with enough knowledge and/or motivation to source the content. While the ultimate goal is to have our articles be verifiable, they must be built first. And we all know that our articles are not consistently built by citations being added at the same time, or soon after, the content is added. Often, someone adds good content (or poor content) and then another comes along and sources it; that is how Wikipedia has thrived for years as a collaborative project. That is how it has retained its longevity -- people actually being willing to add to Wikipedia and others wanting to read the additions. And from what I've seen, the vast majority of our newbies do not source their content; if they stick with editing Wikipedia, they might grow into editors that source their content, but they usually do not initially source it. And if they add good unsourced content, I absolutely feel that it should be retained. I wouldn't want the burden of sourcing it, but it's better for Wikipedia that I or someone else source than to lose that content. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:26, 7 July 2016 (UTC)
You have the cart before the horse, and it is "experienced editors" that believe as you do that prevent Wikipedia from being a credible reference source. No responsible experienced editor ahould ever add material without verifying it and ensuring that it was either covered by existing citations or providing a new citation at the same time. We tolerate the addition of uncited material solely to allow newcomers to contribute. "Experienced editors" that refuse to grow up and take cover in policies and practices designed to shield newcomers should go find a personal blog or something to contribute to. They damage the project, and to find them filibustering here is disgusting.—Kww(talk) 12:59, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Well, that might be a little absolutist. There are times when reasonable people disagree over what truly requires a citation, for example. After all, what's sky-is-blue obvious to a person familiar with the subject area may seem extraordinary to someone else. There are also edits that technically "add material" but which we rarely expect citations for, such as when editors add images or WP:Build the web to a related article.
But in general, you are probably correct that most editors want almost everything to be cited. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:35, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Kww, nowhere did I state or imply that it's mostly our experienced editors that add unsourced content. I did, by contrast, state, "the vast majority of our newbies do not source their content; if they stick with editing Wikipedia, they might grow into editors that source their content, but they usually do not initially source it." I've also been clear that our experienced editors might validly restore unsourced content, like I did in the now famous case noted on this talk page, and that they should be prepared to source the restoration. Either way, I think it's been made very clear that you and I will not be agreeing on WP:Burden issues, not mostly or fully anyway. I do not agree with your extreme approach to sourcing, and that extreme approach, whether taken on by you or others, damages the project. Good unsourced material in our articles does not damage the project, and there is not a lick of evidence showing that it does. There is much evidence showing that removing easily verifiable, important content damages our articles, however. When I hear or see people (including the media) criticize Wikipedia, it is usually about the content being wrong or that "anybody can edit it," not about it being unsourced. The average person trusts Wikipedia and does not think about whether the content they are reading is sourced; I claim that on experience. Even many of those who distrust Wikipedia still come to it for information, but it's more often these people who will want sources for what they are reading. And I am all for sourcing, but not at the expense of losing good content. Like I stated, "I wouldn't want the burden of sourcing it, but it's better for Wikipedia that I or someone else source than to lose that content." Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 18:39, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Burden and real burden
There are a few articles I watch where I revert any unsourced addition which doesn't look right, e.g. dramatic/literary tropes like everyman and deus ex machina, which are plagued with people putting in examples that show they don't really understand the idea. If someone didn't watch these articles, they would rapidly turn into repositories of misinformation, and I don't have the time to research every dubious insertion. I'm not a literature/drama major, so I make occasional mistakes; but I expect people who do know those fields to be able to cite things because educated people know how to do that. If someone put in an uncited example which might be OK, then I might cite it myself or tag it depending on whether I had the time to do the research, and if it were tagged and nobody fixed it within a reasonable timeframe, I'd likely delete it anyway.
In other areas I'm more forgiving, but when it comes down to it "good unsourced content" is an oxymoron. It's only good if one knows it to be true, and one really only knows it to be true if one finds an authoritative source for it. Our tolerance for deviations from this has to have limits, and in a lot of areas those have to be quite low. BLP policy requires absolute intolerance, for instance, and in various fringe subjects I am going to revert uncited fringe-promoting material right off. These are areas where defending WP from misinformation has come to dominate editing, and it's increasingly an issue, at least for the likes of me, a moderately active editor. I've had to abandon a lot of articles I created because I don't have the time to review changes and make sure they're reasonable, never mind researching them all. People who put in unsourced material and never come back to cite it are making work for other people— at least, it's work that should be done and often enough never is. Even people who put in sourced material are, in an ideal world, creating such work, since citations really ought to be checked.
I guess that my feeling is, having worked through this, that WP:PRESERVE is increasingly outliving its relevance as a guideline. Keeping misinformation out of the huge body of existing material is becoming too much work to expect of those monitoring articles. Mangoe (talk) 18:29, 8 July 2016 (UTC)
Scuse me typing this on a smartphone which is really hard--I'm on way back from a trip to Orkney Islands so hope to upload new pix of archaeological sites shortly. I want to draw a dividing line between new content, written under today's sourcing rules and immediately challenged, on the one hand and old longstanding content challenged by someone not previously active in the topic area on the other. Very different situations imo. Mangoe's actions do not seem unreasonable to me, but Spacecowboy420's do and I think this might be the difference.—S MarshallT/C 21:02, 9 July 2016 (UTC)
We actually could come closer to agreement on that one. I recognise the infeasibility of immediately removing all unsourced content from Wikipedia, but I can't endorse any policy that doesn't recognise that all such material needs to be eventually deleted or sourced. My immediate concern is that we can't let the problem continue to grow, and I think it's quite reasonable to endorse relatively hair-trigger deletion of recent additions and a slower, more deliberate approach with older material.—Kww(talk) 14:25, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Time since information added to articleFor the sake of my blood pressure I'll pretend you said "all unsourced content that's challenged or likely to be challenged" rather than "all unsourced content".—S MarshallT/C 16:30, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
There's very little unsourced information that is unlikely to ever be challenged. I grant that it exists, but so little information is in the range of "people normally have two arms" that it can't be a driver of policy. I'd actually rather get more concrete with it, to clarify that all specific figures (dates, populations, weights, sales, percentages, etc.), and actions (granting of degrees, granting of awards, invasions, surrenders, bombings, etc.) require sources. As for your chart, add a curve that shows that within a short period of adding a "citation needed" tag BURDEN greatly outweighs PRESERVE, and we could come into alignment.—Kww(talk) 19:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
For God's sake don't encourage editors to add more{{cn}} tags to articles for other people to fix! If you can cite it, you should cite it. If you can't cite it and nobody else could, you should remove it. If you can't cite it but another person could, then you're not competent to edit in that area of the encyclopaedia and you should stop trying. None of these situations should lead to any more maintenance tags. It'll take decades of work for our shrinking volunteer base to fix the ones that are already there.—S MarshallT/C 22:22, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Your argument that we shouldn't use tags is implying that all tags are cases in which the editor didn't really care, and will never work on it. I don't agree. Unscintillating (talk) 22:57, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
If you're going to work on it yourself, then great. It's appropriate to indicate to readers when content is unfinished. In fact you'll see several of my content edits today included adding tags that I later removed, or fully intend to remove, later. But that's not what Kww is talking about: he's talking about challenging other people to source content.—S MarshallT/C 23:25, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Actually, I abhor tags, and I doubt I've used a dozen in my entire editing career. I especially abhor cn tags that have been sitting on an article for months that not a single editor interested in the article's contents has bothered to provide a source for. If such a tag has been sitting there for a substantial period of time, the suggestion to PRESERVE the material has expired.—Kww(talk) 01:11, 11 July 2016 (UTC)
"If you can't cite it and nobody else could..." – but how would you know if anyone else can, if you don't ask? When you find unsourced information, all you actually know if that nobody already did source it. You don't know whether anyone can source it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
Good points, Mangoe. I agree with a lot of what you stated, and I used to be more so against any notion that I should pick up the slack for lazy editors; see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 61#The "provide an inline citation yourself" wording should be changed back to the original wording, where I was upset by the notion that I had to source anyone else's material. But, over time, I've really considered that a lot of our newbies don't know how to cite; among these newbies are educated people as well, including those who are scholars. While scholars commonly cite their work or the work of others, not all them know how to use Wikipedia to cite when they get here. So WP:Citing sources is not just for laypeople. You stated, "[Unsourced content is] only good if one knows it to be true, and one really only knows it to be true if one finds an authoritative source for it.", but that doesn't apply to WP:Sky is blue cases. Well, I suppose you could argue that there should at least be one authoritative source confirming that the sky is blue. But we don't have to use authoritative sources for most things. The sources simply need to be good, and usually only for things that are likely to be challenged. The "likely to be challenged" aspect applies to our WP:BLPs as well; see Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons/Archive 36#Rephrase "Remove unsourced or poorly sourced contentious material" subheading, where a number of editors agreed that unsourced content about a living person does not automatically mean that it needs to be removed. My concern is editors who are not willing to balance like you do. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:06, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Also, when readers come to our site, they commonly don't know if what they are reading is true; that's why they are here -- to educate themselves on a matter. Same goes for any form of research (whether reading a news article, a textbook or otherwise). That the content is unsourced doesn't necessarily mean that it's any less good. Like I noted above, we commonly write good content first, then source it; that's how most Wikipedia articles have been built. The source is like the finishing touch. I would prefer that the content be sourced, but a valuable piece of information is valuable regardless of that finishing touch. If readers come here and get the right information, I appreciate that...whether the information is sourced or not. And I'm sure they do too. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:20, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Exactly why it is absolutely mandatory that people that make assertions provide citations when they make the assertion: to allow readers to check their veracity. "Add first, source later" is unacceptable behaviour for an experienced editor.—Kww(talk) 19:36, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
It's not "absolutely mandatory that people that make assertions provide citations when they make the assertion," which is exactly why WP:Burden states, "Whether and how quickly material should be initially removed for not having an inline citation to a reliable source depends on the material and the overall state of the article. In some cases, editors may object if you remove material without giving them time to provide references; consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step." Your assertion that "add first, source later" is unacceptable behavior for an experienced editor does not hold up to actual practice. If, for example, I wanted to add something (good content, of course) to an article, and did so, sourcing it minutes later, I could, and no one (except you) would bat a lash. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:43, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
I'm well aware that you think that everyone that objects to your editing is an aberration. It's amusing to me that you can be in the midst of a protracted argument with multiple editors and not even entertain the possibility that it is you, yourself, that are in the wrong.—Kww(talk) 19:55, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
Not what I stated or implied, anywhere on this talk page. But if you were really well aware of things, or self-aware for that matter, you would realize that the community at large does not edit the way you do and are better off for it. You view these things to an extreme and I don't see anyone agreeing with your extreme view, in full anyway. Mischaracterizing my viewpoint won't change that. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 19:59, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
And make no mistake about it, I do still remove unsourced material, especially when I know that sourcing it or trying to source it is hopeless. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 20:59, 10 July 2016 (UTC)
I think the image is wrong. Perhaps more precisely, mostly I think the image is irrelevant. What matters most is your best estimate of whether the material is likely to be appropriate (e.g., verifiable + neutral + encyclopedic, etc.). Probable nonsense, unencyclopedic material, etc., that's been on a page for years should not be preserved. It should be killed now, or even sooner if ever possible. Age doesn't change the smell of bad content: Old bad content should be removed with exactly the same speed and exactly the same process as new bad content. If you'd remove something unsourced that was added yesterday, then you should remove that material no matter when it was added. (And if you truly believe that you would destroy the encyclopedia that way, then you should probably change how quickly you remove new content, rather than how quickly you remove old content.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:15, 21 August 2016 (UTC)
What image are you talking about? Or were you giving an example? As for "Old bad content should be removed with exactly the same speed and exactly the same process as new bad content.", I don't see that anyone in this discussion was arguing that bad content should be preserved. Editors have been consistently clear that we are not stating that all content should be preserved. Once again, the WP:Preserve policy doesn't even state that all content should be preserved. As for "If you'd remove something unsourced that was added yesterday, then you should remove that material no matter when it was added.", it's common that material that has been in an article for months or years has remained there because it's obviously verifiable but no one has gotten around to sourcing it or they feel that it shouldn't be sourced. Newly added unsourced material has always drawn more scrutiny, especially from WP:Patrollers. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:20, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
Editing information goes wrong
What happens when someone edit the information and that editing is not correct then happens does that information remains like that or Wikipedia correct that issue Funnyapple200 (talk) 09:37, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
If someone notices the error, then it is corrected. Blueboar (talk) 10:37, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
So I created this shortcut because I think it best captures the general spirit of this policy which is that improvement is preferred over plain removal.
However, User:TransporterMandeleted my addition of the shortcut to this page, saying "Don't need another shortcut for this (and PRESERVE is widely and commonly used); seek consensus on talk page)".
This is why I'm making a talk page entry here: I agree that a new shortcut for this isn't needed per se and this probably won't become a more used shortcut than the currently most used, however I still think it's useful for being more explanatory and on-point. Also 4 shortcuts isn't that many.
Maybe some other editors can give their opinion on this?
This is a bit late... but I do have a concern about the proposed shortcut. It perpetuates the common misconception that the only way to improve an article is by adding stuff to it... neglecting the fact that it is also possible to improve an article by removing stuff from it. So... if we are going to have a shortcut that says IMPROVE DON'T REMOVE... then we would need to balance it with a companion shortcut that says IMPROVE BY REMOVING. Blueboar (talk) 12:11, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
This policy complying with servers?
I have edited Wikipedia for almost a dozen years, including by using IPs in 2005. Recently, I read the policy as a whole. Nevertheless, I thought about how the servers can hold up data of all encyclopedia articles written here. I went to "WP:servers", which redirects to meta:Wikimedia servers, tagged as outdated. It contains information about which servers are used to preserve data of everything, including history logs. I know that "Wikipedia is a work in progress: perfection is not required." Question: how effective is this policy if servers may have technical difficulties, i.e. something goes technically wrong with the servers? --George Ho (talk) 08:41, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I am not sure I understand the question... could you give an example? Blueboar (talk) 13:01, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Sorry for being less clear, so I'll provide examples. From what I read at Meta-wiki, there will be some testing on April 19 for 20 to 30 minutes, resulting in delays of editing anything. Also, though Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, what if a server dies down or is dying down, affecting the data? --George Ho (talk) 15:35, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I still don't understand ... You obviously see a connection between what happens to the servers and what is said on this policy page, but I don't know what that connection is. Blueboar (talk) 16:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
Difficulty of editing Wikipedia
Sorry for the mess earlier about the servers and all that, so I struck the above section out and then moved on to the different topic instead. The subject is how easy or difficult editing is. I have edited Wikipedia for almost a dozen years, including by using IPs in 2005. I thought I understand the spirit of the policy, but I wonder how easy or hard editing is. In fact, I have used a lot of referencing templates for better reading, and I have used HTML coding for easier reading and access. Also, I have created and edited articles. Recently, I read this NPR article and then wonder how easy or difficult editing is, especially for newbies, mobile and tablet users, and ordinary people. I tried using mobile phones to edit Wikipedia, but I found it difficult. Also, there is this year's movement strategy, goaling to reach 2030. Yet I read some criticisms about the difficulty of editing Wikipedia. There are many questions to come up with, but I can think the following:
Is Wikipedia more desktop-oriented?
How can Wikipedia strive in a mobile age while editing in portable electronics is still difficult and less convenient?
How is editing Wikipedia easy for newbies currently? Ordinary persons?
Can editing be easier in the future?
Many more questions, but I can think just above four (or five). --George Ho (talk) 16:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
What does this have to do with policy? --NeilNtalk to me 16:56, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
I'll rephrase to connect: how effective is this policy if editing Wikipedia becomes more difficult, especially in mobile phones? George Ho (talk) 20:57, 11 April 2017 (UTC); edited. 21:03, 11 April 2017 (UTC)
"Talking and editing" section
I started two discussions above that were deemed irrelevant to this policy. This time, I hope I am discussing this policy correctly. One of its subsections, "discuss", says this: "Prevent edit warring by discussing such edits first on the article's talk page." However, some article talk pages have been empty for long time. Also, if discussing a non-free image, sometimes using an article talk page is less effective. Instead, I use a user talk page and FFD; sometimes, DRV. Well, discussing free images in article talk pages works usually; not the same for non-free images. Speaking of "usually", I want to add "usually" like this: "Prevent edit warring by discussing such edits first on usually the article's talk page." It's just a teeny-tiny edit, but I want to be sure whether it's okay. Thoughts? --George Ho (talk) 11:53, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Or "discussing such edits, preferably on the article's talk page." Other talk pages are equally valid if they get the same exposure, or more valid if they get more exposure. It might be a good idea to link to the discussion from the article's talk page for archival purposes. Bright☀ 13:07, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
"preferably" might do as well. May I add it right away then? --George Ho (talk) 14:06, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Perhaps wait a week, as customary for minor changes in policy pages. Bright☀ 15:15, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
Added "preferably" as suggested. --George Ho (talk) 13:06, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
George Ho, I disagree with this edit (followup edit here). I disagree because such edits should be discussed on the article talk page, not elsewhere. Or the article talk page should at least have a link to the matter being discussed elsewhere. I am aware that such a matter is sometimes discussed elsewhere. But that "elsewhere" is usually on an editor's talk page, which deprives watchers of the article and passerby editors/readers from seeing the issue. I ask that you self-revert that change to this policy page. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 14:38, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Reverted. About non-free images, should they be discussed in article talk pages besides FFD? Why have user talk pages been used to discuss individual NFC? George Ho (talk) 14:44, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Thank you. Do you have an alternate proposed wording we could add? Maybe we should add an additional comment about the article talk page aspect. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:05, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
What about mentioning user talk pages and discussion processes, like FFD and RFD? Talk pages of redirect pages are rarely used because... redirect pages themselves are rarely visited. Our best bet is RFD, which... has occasionally regulars there. George Ho (talk) 15:28, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
What wording do you propose? Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 15:41, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
Actually, I must be careful with "instructional creep". I can propose this:
Article talk pages may vary, depending on volume of discussions. Even when an article talk page is empty, issues should still be raised at article talk pages. While content issues have been raised at user talk pages, user talk pages are neither encouraged nor discouraged. However, maintaining individual user talk pages may vary by editors' editing preferences per Wikipedia:User pages, so raising such issues there would not be recommended.
However, after my failed proposal at WT:NFC, and after seeing "instructional creep" arguments, I would no longer encourage adding more rules, but you're welcome to propose anything. I recently resisted proposing more rules also because proposed projects have been made at Meta-wiki, where I've explored. --George Ho (talk) 15:59, 27 May 2017 (UTC)
I was suggesting something be added in place of or after "Be cautious about making a major change to an article. Prevent edit warring by discussing such edits first, preferably on the article's talk page." Your proposed text is not bad, but I'm not sure why the "maintaining individual user talk pages" aspect would need to be mentioned. I'll think over some wording with regard to noting the fact that article talk pages may be inactive and that commenting on a user's talk page can deprive watchers of the article and passerby editors/readers from seeing the issue. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:56, 30 May 2017 (UTC)
Not everything that's sub-optimal has to be eliminated by enforcement. Sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. If you spot someone discussing articles on user talk pages, you can start another discussion on the proper talk page and politely invite the other editors there, for example "I have started a discussion about this topic on its article's talk page and would like to invite you to take part of the discussion there", or ping them the same way you pinged me! It worked like magic! Bright☀ 08:55, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
That said, I do agree with you in principle and I do think your edit is an improvement to Wikipedia policy. Bright☀ 08:56, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
Would it be reasonable to say something along the lines of "Editors are encouraged to discuss content issues at the appropriate Talk page. While discussions may occur elsewhere (for instance, user talk pages), other editors may feel that edits made based on such discussions, due to the narrow audience, lack consensus"? Just throwing it out there as a possible "workaround". DonIago (talk) 14:02, 11 August 2017 (UTC)
Editing of policies and guidelines
It says in the project page that "the change may be implemented if no objection is made", but what is the minimum period of time that should be waited before determining that no objection is made? Such information should be added to the policy. Thinker78 (talk) 04:10, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
There really cannot be a set time because some policies are more closely watched than others. If it's a policy (or guideline) with a lot of frequent editing on either the policy or the talk page then 48-72 hours ought to be plenty; if it's a rarely-edited policy then a week or even more. But realize this: Just because no one has objected to your proposal prior to you making the resulting edit — however long you've waited — doesn't give you any right whatsoever to claim that your edit has to remain in the policy. When no one objects, that's consensus by silence which is the weakest form of consensus and so long as someone objects or reverts within a reasonable period of time — again an elastic period depending on the same factors — then you're still going to need to get positive consensus in order for your edit to stick. That's true with edits to articles and even more true with edits to policies and guidelines. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 20:00, 25 October 2017 (UTC)
If the change is substantive, I usually give it considerably longer (a week or more, sometimes until the thread archives) even if it's very well watchlisted, e.g. WP:MOS. You'd be surprised how often people with something to say don't catch it early, and it's way less hassle to hear everyone out than think you have consensus only to have someone throw a fit and do a belated BRD weeks after the fact. — SMcCandlish☏¢ >ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ< 16:46, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
WP:PERFECTION ironically could use a copyedit. The subsection title doesn’t make much sense, and there’s a missing space in the final sentence, is what I noticed. 67.14.236.50 (talk) 06:40, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
How is a subheading beneficial in a short, two-paragraph section? It was only added about a month ago. Can we remove it? —67.14.236.50 (talk) 16:37, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
Not done: The subsection title is about perfection in BLP articles, and important qualification to the section's main point. I do not see any missing or extraneous spaces. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib) 22:16, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
@Eggishorn:I do not see any missing or extraneous spaces. Did you check the revision from around the time I posted the request? It was edited since. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:31, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Edit requests are made for the current status of the page. If another editor already fixed the problem then it's not a problem anymore. Stating that the problem isn't apparent isn't a critique of the requester. Eggishorn(talk)(contrib) 00:39, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
@Eggishorn: The status of the page at the time of your response was not its status at the time of the request. Seems User:DRAGON BOOSTER acted on the request without comment. —67.14.236.50 (talk) 00:46, 2 January 2018 (UTC)
Notification of RFC on proposed amendment to Article Rescue Squadron guidelines
Not done: The subsection title is about perfection in BLP articles, and important qualification to the section's main point. I do not see any missing or extraneous spaces. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 22:16, 1 January 2018 (UTC)
