Section "Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves" has reddit as an acceptable source for subjects providing information about themselves. Unlike Facebook or Instagram, Reddit user accounts are unverified, so how do we know who a reddit user is claiming to be? Jay 💬 06:09, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I imagine one has to be a bit more careful. It seems unproblematic to me that an individual could state what their username is elsewhere, where they are otherwise verified. Remsense诉 06:20, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that facebook accounts are always verified. Alaexis_¿question? 06:34, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Facebook has verified badges for celebs and notable people, and from 2023 anyone can purchase them (similar to Twitter). The verification/documentation process would still be the same. Jay 💬 08:50, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the subject linked to their Reddit account from a verified account on another platform, then it should be ok. It's an extra step, but uses of such sources should be double checked for authenticity. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:33, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume this is referring to verified AMAs or something similar. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:44, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Reddit was added without discussion I can find in January 2016. Special:Diff/699080407 .I did find an archive where User:Masem seems tohave thought it shouldn't be used.[1] but no real discussion. Doug Weller talk 10:12, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's only a list of examples (such as), social sites that don't appear in the list are still acceptable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:55, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What makes Reddit acceptable? Doug Weller talk 14:27, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If it's used for an ABOUTSELF statement or from a subject matter expert who has previously been published in other reliables sources (SPS), and only if the poster can be reliably verified. The point is not whether Reddit is acceptable, but that it is no different from any other self published source. There would be limits, BLPSPS obviously, statements may need to be attributed, and DUE/BALASP also apply (but that last one is not a verification issues). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:19, 31 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Voorts above. This line feels an awful lot like it was added in reaction to the increasing popularity of Reddit AmAs at r/IAmA, which have attracted media attention in their own right. Those do have (effectively) verified accounts participating, as the subreddit's moderators verify things behind the scenes and participants have to publicly post photographic proof. (Also, just imagine the verifiable media and legal firestorm if they got it wrong. I'm not aware of a single such case.) All that said, with some work editors could probably find confirmation on other verified social media accounts, e.g. Bill Gates. Ed  17:28, 6 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, the AMAs make sense. Jay 💬 08:54, 21 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can understand allowing paywalled sources, since it's possible for others to check and verify that information. Same thing with offline books. While I don't go into libraries, others do and often check these books, and that's enough for me. Also somewhat applies to the "rare museum sources" that the page mentions.

But isn't the whole point of print-only news stories that they're only published once and never again? How can that be verifiable? I know many people have copies of these, but these people will at some point quit Wikipedia, and when that happens, the source will essentially become Lost media. And it becomes even more complicated if the source was carried over from a page translation.

I don't want them to be banned or anything like that, but I'm curious on why there aren't any restrictions or guidelines on using them.

Needless to say, my comment does not apply to archived newspapers such as the ones on Newspapers.com. I'm talking about ones like this Bonus Person (talk) 01:53, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Newspapers.com and other sources like that exist because copies persisted for decades, long enough to be digitized. Some GLAMs collect newspapers in some non-web format, such as microform or microfiche (or the print itself); for that matter, so do some news publishers. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:59, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, the New York Public Library (for example) has an entire section devoted to periodicals and newspapers. Blueboar (talk) 21:58, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The entire run of my hometown's defunct paper is sitting on microfilm in our town's historical society, and the main newspaper for the county is sitting on microfilm in several libraries here in the county. The local university is digitizing those microfilms, but even if they weren't, the paper is still verifiable by visiting a library with the microfilms. I believe the Library of Michigan also contains microfilms for all of the major papers in the state, so someone wouldn't even have to travel to my remote corner of the country to access the issues not yet digitized.

In sum, I don't see a problem with citing archived newspapers, since they're just that, archived. They may be even be more available than the rare sources we also allow because they're archived in multiple locations, as per my anecdote above. Imzadi 1979 → 23:47, 14 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Libraries hold newspapers too. The British Library has every issue of every newspaper printed in the British Isles since 1840, for example, and provides digital copies online. Support your local library, Wikipedia couldn't exist without it! – Joe (talk) 10:58, 16 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If the newspaper isn't defunct, then you can usually go to the building and ask to see the old newspapers. A copy of every single newspaper usually ends up bound into a large book and stored in the "morgue", for the newspaper's own reference purposes. In pre-digital days, these were traditionally used by the staff (e.g., to remind themselves which restaurants ran ads for this holiday last year, or what the editorial said about the mayor during the previous election), but they are generally open to the public. In the US, the morgue for a defunct newspaper tends to end up either at the local library or sometimes the local historical society. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That may no longer be true everywhere. A few years ago when I checked with the local daily, I was told they no longer kept old issues for more than a year. Previous copies had been microfilmed and sent to the library district. The district in turn sends microfilm rolls that are more than a few years old to the local historical museum, which keeps them in an unstaffed archives/library building. Access requires staff being available to go over to the unstaffed building to let you in and sit there while you search the microfilm (Disclaimer: I used to work at the library and volunteer at the museum, but do neither now). I did find old issues (1970s) of the paper online, but I don't remember where. Donald Albury 20:01, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our policies presume a dichotomy/ binary flow chart.....if it's accessible with great effort, hours, $$ and difficulty it counts (in this respect) the same as something that anybody can verify on line in seconds. The reality is is that there are degrees of verifiability. I'm not advocating for any structural changes for that except to acknowledge that in discussions that this be recognized. Verifiability which requires great effort and investment to verify is weaker than something that can be easily verified. North8000 (talk) 20:33, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

They also assume that someone falsifying verifications will eventually be caught, that if one was able to access it another will be able to check it and that editors who repeatedly falsify verifications will be permanently banned. Yes arguably its an easy system to abuse once or twice, but the more times someone falsified obscure verifications the greater the chance their whole house of cards would come down. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:44, 18 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There's a time element to consider there too. We use a lot of ephemeral internet sources that are highly available now but frequently disappear. This means that in practice we are dangerously reliant on a single archive for the verifiability of huge swathes of coverage. A traditional, physical archive is less easy to access now but far less likely to simply disappear overnight, and if anything liable to become more accessible over time (as librarians and archivists continue to work on indexing and digitisation projects etc.) – Joe (talk) 04:07, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'll also note that the importance of a newspaper citation tends to vary with its accessibility. Some podunk place has an article on a now-celebrity's performance in Academic decathlon or their high school musical from 20+ years ago? Not the most earth shattering bit of trivia to be sourced, nor generally the most controversial or damaging if falsified. Jclemens (talk) 04:47, 19 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Our policies are also explicit (not presumptive) that they value editorial judgement on evaluating sources. If all you have to verify an article is print RS that are difficult to re-verify, that's great, grumble-grumble-but-nobodys-gonna-verify-for-years (so even if the article was originally written in pristine quality, there will be citation drift within months). If you can verify content with a comparably good online source, online excerpt of the print source, or whatever, then you can append those citations inline in parallel with the print source; if you find online-accessible sources that are even better (such as new reviews/retrospectives years later), so much the better.

And of course since an old newspaper is a wp:primary source, you'll almost certainly be looking to cite it within the context of a secondary source that makes reference to that article or coverage. You'd keep the primary citation (from which you may still be drawing a direct quotation or something), but you have the secondary citation that gives the main structure to that section that is easily verifiable (a primary historical source should probably not be the only thing supporting the structure of an entire section in an article -- but I'd be interested to see what article you're working on so this is no longer an abstraction). SamuelRiv (talk) 14:00, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeking enlightenment about how WP:V applies to image captions. WP:V says (first sentence of the second paragraph) All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable. That seems straight-forward, but I often get pushback when I complain about image captions which don't cite their sources. This came up recently during a DYK discussion of Perugia's limia, where I questioned how we knew one fish was male and the other female, as stated in the caption. But to try and make this discussion a bit more neutral, let's use an example from my own work, File:White-tailed Deer, Pelham Bay Park, Bronx, New York 01.jpg

Imagine I had called the image ":File:An animal I saw in Pelham Bay Park. And then somebody used it in an article saying, "White-tailed deer have been photographed in Pelham Bay Park; the example in the photo can be identified by the reddish-brown coat and the characteristic white underside of its tail", they would rightly be told this was WP:OR and asked to supply a WP:RS. Yet if I just put in the image caption "White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus virginianus)" with no source, nobody would question it.

The "can be identified ..." text I used above is from White-tailed deer# Description, where it is indeed cited to a RS. In my case, I had uploaded the photo to iNaturalist, where two other users agreed on the identification, but is that really a WP:RS? I don't know who those people are; they could be legitimate experts, or they could just be two randos who wandered by iNaturalist and made themselves accounts.

So where does this leave us as far as requiring RS for image captions? RoySmith (talk) 14:34, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The way I've best been able to grapple with this is by diagramming the claims made by an image in context (i.e. in tandem with the caption) with the intent of fully covering all claims made, if not listing each claim individually.

For your first example, depending rather crucially on the image quality and other particulars, I might be able to derive a list of "claims", each of the form the animal photographed is Odocoileus virginianus, as demonstrated by [X] visual characteristic that can each theoretically be verified in some zoologists' journal.

I've no idea whether that's incredibly obvious, incredibly useless, or incredibly unsound, but it's the best way I've arrived at so far to think about verifying images. Remsense ‥ 论 14:55, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IMO they sort of fall "in between" regarding wp:ver. If something looks really wrong with it and challenged with that basis given, it will need to be sourced, removed or modified. If not, not. North8000 (talk) 15:02, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I am the one who argued that we do not need RS to verify the sex of the fish when they present obvious sexual characteristics; and indeed we cannot possibly have such sources for most of our photographs because they come from volunteers rather than peer-reviewed publications. Take for example the captions of the lead photos at the article Lion: we have no RS confirming their sexes. We do not even have reliable sources confirming that they are lions. Does WP:IMAGEOR cover this? It gets worse with people. Do we need a reliable source verifying that it is indeed Meghan Markle in the Meghan Markle lead photo? Or Cristina Saralegui's photo? I do not see how insisting on this could help Wikipedia; on the contrary, it would be a major shot in the foot. Surtsicna (talk) 15:23, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is the pretty much the platonic ideal of where to leverage that verifiable is not always (and cannot always be) verified. Remsense ‥ 论 15:31, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I just saw an example the other day. Someone 'corrected' the caption on an image from "water moccasin" to "brown water snake". I tried looking at other images of the two snakes, and, especially because of the less than ideal quality of various images, I couldn't see the difference. In many cases we are dependent on the good faith of the uploaders as to what images actually represent. Other than readers calling out errors, I'm not sure what we can do about 'wrong' captions. Donald Albury 17:50, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Images cannot be held to the same sourcing bar as article text. While we can adapt information from a reliable source to provide article text, we often cannot take an image and caption from those sources in the same way. CMD (talk) 06:23, 28 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the key point is that images need to look like the thing, but they don't actually have to be the thing. Images are illustrations. They are not evidence that the thing exists. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:59, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote Australia section in ZEB with government site as citation. MrOllie's answer was to check WP:V. I'm not sure which part should be fixed.

Australia

National trajectory

In Australia, the Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings and its Addendum were agreed by all Commonwealth, state and territory energy ministers in 2019.

The Trajectory is a national plan that aims to achieve zero energy and carbon-ready commercial and residential buildings in Australia. It is a key initiative to address Australia’s 40% energy productivity improvement target by 2030 under the National Energy Productivity Plan. On 7 July 2023, the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council agreed to update the Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings by the end of 2024.

The updates to the Trajectory will:

• support the delivery of a low energy, net zero emissions residential and commercial building sector by 2050
• consider the success of the existing program
• help develop the policy pathway for the building sector to achieve net zero by 2050.

Purplewhalethunder (talk) 07:12, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You may find reading WP:Referencing for beginners helpful, it helped me when I started editing.

Also embedded links are generally discouraged, see WP:CS:EMBED. So instead of something like:

On 7 July 2023, the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council agreed to update the Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings by the end of 2024.

Instead use:

On 7 July 2023, the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council agreed to update the Trajectory for Low Energy Buildings by the end of 2024.

References should be as specific as possible, so other editors can easily verify that the information is correct. So the reference is for the 7 June update, rather than the general page for the Energy and Climate Change Ministerial Council. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:32, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! You are so kind. Purplewhalethunder (talk) 06:22, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Purplewhalethunder's most recent attempt didn't include external links and did include citations. There is no verifiability issue here. While there were problems with the previous edits, this one looks like an improvement to me. Yes, it relies on primary sources, but the old version is the one that included commercial sites as sources. @Purplewhalethunder: Wikipedia has a preference for the high quality independent sourcing. So, for example, a newspaper, magazine, journal, or book which talks about those certifications rather than the website of the certification itself. IMO MrOllie should self-rv the most recent edit, as it's overall an improvement that could be fixed up from there (the section heading, for example, which shouldn't include the title of the article). Finally, this isn't a good page to ask for help with content. I'd recommend visiting the WP:TEAHOUSE for that. — Rhododendrites \\ 12:02, 29 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I will keep this in mind. Purplewhalethunder (talk) 06:51, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have added this information to the FAQ:

Are sources required in all articles?

Adding sources is the best practice, but prior efforts to officially require at least one source have been rejected by the community. See, e.g., discussions in January 2024 and March 2024.

My main goal is to have a place to store links to these discussions. I don't really want to put it in Wikipedia:Perennial proposals, because I hope that the answer will someday change (i.e., officially. It's already the actual practice by NPP and AFC). I have accordingly tried to write this so that it encourages the addition of sources but also admits that we have so far been unable to get this adopted as an official requirement. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:01, 7 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We describe the use of {{cn}} but not {{Image reference needed}}. Should we include that? We do have quite a variety of maps and infographics. NebY (talk) 20:25, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I hope the community will recognize the enormous problem on WP (and on publications sourcing from Commons) of unsourced charts, maps, and diagrams, (as well as inadequately sourced photos), and that taking the first step of simply asking for sources will not break WP as we know it. In my last attempts at raising the issue I was quickly shouted down.

Making a recommendation here might help. I would support adding {{image reference needed}} and variants as a recommended tag on V (along with contacting the image author directly). SamuelRiv (talk) 20:44, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know this existed. I can see the need for tightening up sourcing for images. If an image is consistent with cited content in the article, how much documentation should we require for the image? If an image is described as an "artist's concept", what would we want supporting the accuracy of the depiction? I am sure there are other questions we can ask. Donald Albury 21:37, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Two examples of how much a creator can put in an image (and in these cases, maybe quite rightly - I'm not suggesting they include falsehoods):

File:Europe 180ad roman trade map.png maps which commodities were carried from where to where in the Roman Empire c. 180 AD. It also has a table of the Roman Empire's annual costs. It doesn't matter much whether the bends in the routes are correctly placed, but how is it verifiable that those are the main commodities; that they were moved from X to Y; and that those were the annual costs? It's used at Roman commerce but not supported by it.

File:Constitution of Rome.jpg has capsule descriptions of Roman institutions and elected officials, and diagrams some interrelationships. The illustrations are decorative; it's the text that matters and that would be subject to normal editing and refinement, in accord with WP:V, except that it's been turned into a jpg. NebY (talk) 22:49, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

If those two images are doing their job of illustrating the article, then their contents ought to already be in the text of the article (in some form, not word for word). WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's beautifully straightforward and I'll feed it back to the discussion that first set me to looking around for policy. Thank you. I fear it may be a rather high bar for our many historical maps, that one included. NebY (talk) 18:08, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

So... I'm a bit nervous about this. There are times when this is warranted (though an ordinary fact-tag on the caption should frequently have the same effect, so this isn't always necessary). Here are three stories:

• Once upon a time, I ran across a POV pusher of the virus-denialist type on wiki. It seems that it's a bit more challenging to convince people of your belief that the virus doesn't exist, when there's an actual photo of the virus right there in the Wikipedia article. So he tried to get the photo removed. One of his ideas was to say that the photo wasn't a reliable source. The thing is, one enveloped virus looks much like another. They all basically look like blobs, and while it's a technical triumph to get the photo, if you made a blurry, low-resolution, black-and-white photo of a little blob of used chewing gum, it'd look about the same. But: the purpose of an image is to "illustrate", not to "prove", and that micrograph does a fine job of illustrating that it's a boring enveloped virus instead of a glorious structure like a bacteriophage. In that sense, it doesn't actually matter whether it's the purported virus. What actually matters is that it looks like the purported virus. This dispute is the basis for one of the examples in Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images#Pertinence and encyclopedic nature.
• Another day, there was a real-world dispute about whether a politically disfavored person's African farm was actually in use, or if the ruling party could declare it abandoned, legally seize it, and give it to one of their cronies. Someone (presumably connected somehow to the event) uploaded an image to Commons, showing a very large cow, with a building in the background (the farm house?). Editors decided to omit the image, because they thought that even if it was "true" (i.e., someone really did take a photo of a cow at that farm) it might be "false" in another way (e.g., maybe that cow was trucked over there for the purpose of taking the photo, and then trucked right back home again). If there hadn't been a dispute over the farm, they probably would have accepted it, and if memory serves, they did believe that the photo was taken of a live cow, actually standing in the purported location. (In this part of Africa, "there's a cow there, so it's a working farm" is culturally reasonable. In other places, they'd have shown some sheep, or someone driving a tractor.)
• More recently, I sent a batch of images for deletion at Commons. We determined that they were unmarked AI-generated "portraits" of 19th-century politicians. (Commons might accept some AI-generated images, because supporting images for articles such as Artificial intelligence art is within their scope, but having them unmarked means they're potential hoaxes.) We deleted them.

The first story shows the danger of rejecting images just because someone wants citations, especially for low-risk things. We actually don't want people to demand that a photo allegedly of a cupcake, that looks like a cupcake, get certified as being a cupcake before we can put it in Cupcake. The second shows that even if you have citations, you may not want the photo, because it might imply things that aren't appropriate for the article to be implying. The third shows the problem of not having reliable sources.

I don't think there is a single answer that works in all cases. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:00, 9 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• If it's not the virus, but it looks like the virus (because it has the same type of capsid, say), then that is a fine kind of photograph to put in an article that has no other photos (because capsids are very relevant to a virus). But what kind of virus is it? Where does the photo come from? (And e.g. if there's no provenance and if we can't ask the uploader, how do we verify copyright?) If the virus is a different virus, the caption and photo description should say what virus it is! This is not a question of what content is or is not appopriate for an article, but a question of WP:V!
• A Wikipedian's uploaded photo of a cow on a farm is supposed to be used to lend support to a political claim one way or another in an article? That's blatant WP:OR, regards the content of the article, and is not necessarily a question about the verifiability of the image.

Nobody said anything there being about a single answer (nobody anywhere ever honestly suggests there being a single answer, outside religion -- that statement felt anticonstructive). We just want people to apply WP:V to images. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:35, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What exactly does it mean "to apply WP:V to images"? Some POV pushers will interpret that in the most maximalist way possible. Other editors will call you tendentious if you insist that a proper reliable source be produced for simple, obvious illustrations, like "This is a cupcake", even if they're familiar with things like Is It Cake?

Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 40#RfC: Do images need to be verifiable? may be interesting if you don't remember it from back in the day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:53, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

From what I remember of journalism class, a photograph for which you cannot assert the veracity -- that is, that what is inside it is what it is, in a genuine portrayal of the subject of the article -- becomes an "illustration". (That is, you can use it, but you call it an 'photoillustration' instead of a 'photograph' in your caption.) Typical classroom examples would be moving objects in a news scene foreground to better frame a shot, or in your example linked, a syringe of one thing in one place that's instead implied or claimed to represent another. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:16, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That is reasonable, and on wiki, it's the standard practice for drawings of dinosaurs.

But sometimes you need a caption that says, e.g., "Intramuscular injections are injected at a 90° angle", in which case what matters is that it looks like it's approximately 90°, and not whether it's "real".

You don't want an outright dishonest caption ("This dinosaur was definitely this exact shade of green"), but you also don't want to add a bunch of irrelevant disclaimers ("The point is to illustrate the concept of a 90° angle, for people who don't remember much about geometry. We do not guarantee that this image is real, or that the person whose skin is shown is actually receiving an injection at the time, or that there's a needle on the hidden end, or that the liquid in the syringe is a medication instead of water, or that any of the clear liquid is being injected. No cute animals were harmed in the making of this illustration, unless it turns out to be AI-generated, in which case there's a possibility that the computing power contributed planet-warming emissions equivalent, possibly causing a tiny increase in heat-related stress for all living beings"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:53, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

("The point is to illustrate the concept of a 90° angle, for people who don't remember much about geometry. We do not guarantee that this image is real, or that the person whose skin is shown is actually receiving an injection at the time, or that there's a needle on the hidden end, or that the liquid in the syringe is a medication instead of water, or that any of the clear liquid is being injected. No cute animals were harmed in the making of this illustration, unless it turns out to be AI-generated, in which case there's a possibility that the computing power contributed planet-warming emissions equivalent, possibly causing a tiny increase in heat-related stress for all living beings").
Thanks for the laugh! Schazjmd (talk) 20:55, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies for such a slow response. Thank you for the detailed examples and the links. Clearly there's much to think about and lots of history here (so glad I didn't just boldly edit WP:V) and I don't have the relevant experience to really engage with it (or time RN). Mildly, I am surprised we seem to be stuck in a situation where editors can't come to WP:V to find policy or guidance on image verifiability, or even links to such. If hard cases do make bad law, is this a situation where the risk of hard cases is blocking the making of good guidelines? NebY (talk) 18:22, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Aright, let's get this out of the abstract. Some notable failures of a variety of image types:

• c:File:Battle_of_aine_jalut.png: I forget where the issue was first brought to my attention, but about the only thing this drawing has in common with the Battle of Ain Jalut is that we can confirm there were humans there. (Contacting the uploader/author gave me no response, which is typical for these types of images on Commons; without even info basic info like how it was drawn, or what source material was used to draw it, if the author is even the author as they claim, there's no way to check where another version would be to check against copyright.)
• File Talk:Arabic_Dialects.svg: the discussion is extensive on every reason a map can fail, and why it was continued to be pushed despite knowing it was junk.
• c:File_talk:Map_of_Archaic_Greece_(English).jpg is an example of a map that fortunately gives a verifiable source (kudos to the author), and thus the work and reasoning can be checked, but is factually inaccurate and misleading. It is still used on WP articles.
• Turkish vocabulary pie chart (edit request): how could a pie chart be wrong, when it's just numbers, in print?

Academics have been known to uncritically republish Commons images, even in print books. For images without provenance given anywhere, this critically increases the risk of wp:citogenesis. There was also an incident recently (within 2 years), (which I can't find, reported on VP iirc), where an academic book reprinted a (somewhat inaccurate and inadequately sourced) map from Commons with zero attribution. These are not trivial issues. Images are essential to quality articles, and readers take images seriously. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:53, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

There are two types of images…

1. Images that are used to illustrate information that is stated in the article text.
2. Images that are used to present information in an article.

In the first situation, the important thing is that information in the article is reliably sourced. Consensus can determine whether the illustration accurately depicts that verifiable information, and is captioned appropriately.

In the second situation, the caption needs to include a citation to a reliable source, to establish that the information being presented in the image is verifiable. Blueboar (talk) 18:41, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For example, if you have text in the article that says "14% of Turkish words are of foreign origin", then that pie chart is probably fine. But if you don't, then it's possible that you fix the image by changing the caption to say something like "According to the Turkish Language Association, 14% of words in modern Turkish are of foreign origin".

And then maybe you add another pie chart, saying something like "According to Global Language Experts Association, 14% of words in modern Turkish come from foreign languages, 27% come from Ancient Turkish, and the rest come from Proto Turkic" – all depending on the facts at hand, and what points need to be made in the article.

Also, thank you for mentioning the "battle" drawing; I've sent it to CSD as a probable copyvio. If you will go to c:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets-gadget-section-Maintenance and scroll down a little, you should find an item called "Google Images & Tineye", which can be useful for discovering that the supposedly "own work" images uploaded recently have been kicking around the internet for a decade. See c:Help:Image searching. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think people are talking past each other if the word "caption" is being used to describe different things: there's the caption on the Commons page, which is confusingly a separate field from the image description field, but it nonetheless appears on the image preview when clicked from an article; then there's the caption text on the wp article page in the box below the downscaled image where it is displayed. (There is also the image alt text, but that's generally too brief to be problematic, and nobody is discussing it.) The latter in-article caption is relatively frequently edited and sourced somewhere to conform to the article text. The caption and image description on Commons (or else the WP File upload) is rarely if ever updated or checked over for accuracy, even if the main article text is significantly rewritten. (This also ignores that there are usually several articles across several wikis using any given halfway-decent illustration.)

In the pie chart example, you fix the image by changing the caption is absolutely wrong, for example even if the numbers are accurate, if the image was made using a different source from that in the article. So if the Commons caption doesn't match the article caption source (even if facts match), then that takes away from the credibility of the article (again, people see the Commons caption when they click to zoom in on the image, which is relatively common behavior). If the pie chart has extra information not in the source you cite in the article, then that's misattribution. (I get that a pie chart is easy for anyone to remake, but maps, scatterplots, and diagrams are a lot more difficult -- that's why you get situations like the dialects map, that people continued to use despite a consensus that it was misleading at best.)

For the "Battle", it's been deleted now, so I can't re-search, but of course a reverse image search was the very search thing I did however many years ago that was. Not sure where you found it now, if authorship was definitive, but anyway the first thing I did after searching was message the uploader and remove it from articles. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:09, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Btw, maybe I should go over the main points you made in the 2010 RfC you linked:

The first is whether we're willing to trust image uploaders -- yes! The problem we're trying to convey is when uploaders don't give adequate provenance (what where and when) -- just say what the image you upload is when you upload it and I'll take your word for it! -- and when editors use unverifiable uploads uncritically. Your quote about published academic sources is a strawman -- nobody is asking the uploaders for RS to show that your virus example fits the description of that species. Just tell us when where and of what they took the photo. (Of course, for maps, graphs, diagrams (these are by some standards considered primarily conveyers of fact, rather than creative expression), and historical svg reproductions like flags (derivative works), you need to give a specific source to verify the actual information.) But just give the information -- browsing Commons and WP articles, many such uploads have bare descriptions.

Interesting you suggest using WP:IUP (and that policy be descriptive over prescriptive). First, IUP is great in principle -- IUP#RI has what I'm asking for in photos for required information, and on diagrams it says it is required to include verification of the source(s) of the original data when uploading. (Of course, it uses as an example the featured image File:Conventional_18-wheeler_truck_diagram.svg, which in no version gives the source of the original data -- literally any Michelin manual in any auto shop would do, but that's beside the point.) So we have a policy that is not being followed even in its own examples; it's ineffective in practice because it only allows enforcement on wikipedia uploads, while most images we use (including the aforementioned truck diagram) are uploaded to and called from Commons, which has no such policies and for many reasons has no intent on implementing such. It also is a policy for enforcement at the image pages, whereas the eyes for verifiability in practice happens at the articles. Checking the WP deletion log for the File namespace, I see nothing.

We really do care about what the images look like, not whether they're "real". If we know (or suspect is very likely with good reason and no claim to the contrary) that an image is of A, but we present it to the reader uncritically in an article about B as if it were B, then we are deceiving the reader. I don't know how else to put it, but in an encyclopedia meant to educate with verifiable factual information, this act is simply a lie. You may think this is some theoretical journalism or academia thing, but it's just what it is, and people get into serious trouble for knowingly doing exactly what you've suggested is ok. SamuelRiv (talk) 01:08, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We need to be cautious here. What's done with images is often the same thing that we do with text.....summarize copyrighted material where the material itself can't practically be put in Wikipedia. IMO something that reserves action for the most problematic cases would be best. Where there is a specific challenge that the statement made in the caption or by image are false, misleading or baseless. North8000 (talk) 18:19, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

In light of the dispute at Talk:Microsoft Windows#Request for comment on reliability of a self-published work as a source of info about themselves, I think it should be added to the policy, explicitly, that any self-published source can be used as a source of information for any statement that ascribe the information to the publisher, and that conditions 1-3 at Wikipedia:Reliable sources#Self-published and questionable sources as sources on themselves need not be met for the ascribed information. (e.g. "According to X, whatever is claimed on X's official website") This is essentially a special case of self-published sources of information about themselves, as it is about the views expressed by themselves, and nothing more. This will prevent confusion and similar disputes. Sovmeeya (talk) 19:15, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with this proposal as it violates WP:WEIGHT and opens the door to pushing into articles any claim made by a company about its competitors. Schazjmd (talk) 19:28, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's confusion with that. They should not be able to make claims about third parties, especially when those comments are obviously self serving. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:09, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose ActivelyDisinterested, that is exactly what the proposal means. The OP does not say that statements cannot be self-serving or concern other entities, and in fact, explicitly says that conditions 1 (not unduly self-serving or exceptional claims) and 2 (not involving claims about third parties) of WP:SELFSOURCE do not have to be followed as long as we ascribe the claim to the to the source. And losing condition 3 (not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject) opens us up to even more problematic claims. Meters (talk) 09:17, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And I find this whole proposal to be very premature. The OP raised an RFC about specific content on Microsoft Windows, and is attempting to implement a general solution here to get their way (and more) even before the RFC has closed on the specific article issue raised. Note that as yet there has been no support for the OP's position in the RFC. Meters (talk) 09:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I read the discussion at Microsoft Windows that's way I said they shouldn't be able to do that. I also completely agree that trying to change policy to win a content dispute is a bad idea. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:49, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Let me tell you about myself, starting with what I think about you, is not ABOUTSELF. It fails at least one of either 2. It does not involve claims about third parties; or 3. It does not involve claims about events not directly related to the source;. Unadulterated sophistry. - Rotary Engine 09:58, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The policy permits my proposal as it is now. The purpose of the proposal is merely to say explicitly that this use of a self-published source is permitted. To prevent confusion.

It's not true that the such use necessarily violates WP:WEIGHT. Schazjmd's arguments has nothing to do with the questions of Verifiability and Source Reliability, and does not belong here. They are fine example of exactly why my proposal is necessary.

When we ascribe something to X, the source is used for the statement as a WHOLE - including the "According to X," part, so it's obviously a reliable statement that complies with the policy AS IT IS NOW. I understand your concerns, such statement might not be appropriate for some OTHER reason, but this should be judged on a case by case basis. One thing for sure, though - a self-published source for such statement will ALWAYS BE RELIABLE.

The purpose of Wikipedia:Verifiability is to assure "people using the encyclopedia can check that the information comes from a reliable source." Nothing more. You can't get any more reliable for someone's expressed views than their official website.

The matter has been previously discussed at the Teahouse, where I presented the question and two editors agreed with me.

I've withdrawn the RfC at Talk:Microsoft Windows#Request for comment on reliability of a self-published work as a source of info about themselves, and we'll continue discussing the matter here. Sovmeeya (talk) 19:15, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Sovmeeya, the part you're ignoring is that WP:ABOUTSELF means "about themselves". It does not mean what they say about any other entity other than themselves. When Digital Confidence says something about any other company, it's no longer about themselves. Schazjmd (talk) 19:21, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not ignoring that. Any statement that begins with "According to X," is a 100% statement about X, not about any third parties, regardless of how this statement continues. It's entirely "about themselves". It's not certain that their expressed views are correct, but it's certainly certain that these are their expressed views.

It might be X that makes a statement about a third party, but the WHOLE statement only mentions it second hand, without endorsing it, and in compliance with Wikipedia sourcing policies. Sovmeeya (talk) 19:31, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is them stating their opinion about a third party. Adding attribution does not change that. Schazjmd (talk) 19:34, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Adding attribution does not change that, but it does make the statement verifiable and the source reliable. (for the statement as a WHOLE) Verifiability and Source Reliability is what this policy is all about. Sovmeeya (talk) 19:44, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It does not make the source reliable. WP:ABOUTSELF only permits statements about themselves, not what they say about anyone else. Digital Confidence's self-published content about Digital Confidence is about them; anything Digital Confidence self-publishes about any other entity is not about Digital Confidence. Schazjmd (talk) 19:53, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The policy as it's written now is confusing. That's why I've made this proposal.

Forget about the policy for a second, and tell me this:

If it has been established that a certain website is the official website of X, and there is no reasonable doubt to its authenticity, (it doesn't appears to have been hacked). In that website, it's said something.

Consider this statement: "According to X, something".

1. Can you verify that X has expressed something? (by checking if something is said on the website)
2. Do you have any doubt for the truthfulness of the statement that "X has expressed something", if you find that something is indeed said in the website?

If the answer to the first question is yes, and to the second is no, then the statement is verifiable and the source is reliable. Sovmeeya (talk) 20:26, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No that is not the case, which is why there is additional guidance about self-published sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:54, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The context you gave at the Teahouse and the content you wanted to add with the RFC don't match. At the Teahouse you asked about According to Digital Confidence, the built-in metadata stripper is flawed (although I would argue form limited being more neutral), which the source might be reliable for but could still be undue. While at the RFC was for According to Digital Confidence, the Remove Properties and Personal Information feature has a very limited support of file formats and metadata elements, and has a misleading user interface. These are not the same. Context is critical and how much you can rely on a self published source is important.

Simply adding "According to" to the beginning of a sentence isn't some kind of magic that allows any content to be added from a self-published source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:52, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion at the Teahouse was limited to the question of Source Reliability of a self-published source about itself, as it should be here. I kept it short to save space. Adding the other details about the nature of the criticism makes no difference to the question of Source Reliability of a self-published source about itself.

And yes, adding "According to" to the beginning of a statement does make it a COMPLETELY different statement - one that is about the publisher, and is permitted by THIS policy. Sovmeeya (talk) 18:56, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No it's doesn't, as everyone replying to this thread has made clear. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:46, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder whether we're confusing WP:SPS with WP:ABOUTSELF. SPS does not have any restrictions like "claims about third parties".

In the instant case, we have:

• A market-dominating software system, and
• A possibly non-notable critic of some detail in one product.

When the critic says "I think a sub-sub-feature of this product is flawed in this very specific way", it might be SPS but it is not ABOUTSELF.

The question isn't whether someone can verify that the critic published that criticism; the only question of any importance is why anybody should care, for which see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view and Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:09, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The other critical question if it's self published would the points laid out in WP:SPS. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:28, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, and to be clear, those points are:

• "produced by an established subject-matter expert"
• "whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications" (bold in the original)

The points that sound like "not unduly self-serving" are in ABOUTSELF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The claim here is that adding "According to" to the beginning of the sentence makes it an ABOUTSELF statement. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:44, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can see why someone might come to that conclusion, but that's not what we intend ABOUTSELF to cover. ABOUTSELF is for "Chris Celebrity said he got married today". ABOUTSELF is not for "Alice Expert said something about someone else". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:07, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose Current policy already allows it under certain circumstances/conditions. There's no need to go beyond that with wording that would be used as categorically greenlighting it, overriding the current policy restrictions. North8000 (talk) 21:15, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the contention that when we write: “According to person X, ‘Y an idiot’” (cite X’s website) we are making a statement about X’s opinion, and not a statement about Y. It is verifiable that X has stated this opinion.

However… Verifiability is NOT THE ONLY ISSUE here. We have to ask whether mentioning X’s opinion is appropriate or not. THAT is a function of DUE WEIGHT. It might be DUE to mention it in the article about X, but be UNDUE to mention in the article about Y.

(extreme example: Hitler’s views on Jews are verifiably sourced to Mein Kamph, but there will be a very very limited range of articles where his views would be appropriate to mention - even with attribution. Essentially, they would be DUE to mention in the article about Hitler himself, and definitely NOT in an article on Judaism).

To relate this to the debate under discussion: the question isn’t really about verifiability (whether we can reliably verify that Digital Confidence has an opinion), but how much WEIGHT to give that opinion. Blueboar (talk) 22:41, 16 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I've been saying early on at Talk:Microsoft Windows. Another editor there didn't agree with me. He and most editors in this discussion, so far, think that the proposed statement violates Wikipedia:Verifiability. Evidently, the policy as it is written now is confusing! That's why I'm asking to EXPLICITLY make it crystal clear in the policy that such use of a self-published source NEVER violates Wikipedia:Verifiability. (although it might be inappropriate for other reasons) When we'll do that, we could move on to the question of DUE WEIGHT at Talk:Microsoft Windows. This will also prevent confusion, unnecessary disputes, and waste of time in the future, for similar statements. Sovmeeya (talk) 18:40, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thing is, this actually isn’t a question that comes up all that often, and amending policy to “clarify” how it should be applied in rare situations almost always causes unforeseen headaches.

So we are reluctant to amend policy without seeing a proposal for specific wording - and then giving a lot of thought as to how that proposed wording might be misused by Wikilawyers to cause even more debates than the status quo language causes.

Sometimes it is actually easier to occasionally have to explain “no, that’s not what this passage of policy means” than it is to amend the passage itself. Blueboar (talk) 19:03, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The wording right now is a little ambiguous, but it works in most situations. As I have said during the RFC discussion, there are multiple considerations, including how elaborate a claim is and the scope of the article. Senorangel (talk) 02:58, 18 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]