Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources

AI-written citations?

I was adding an event to an article (Special:Diff/1220193358) when I noticed that the article I was reading as a source, and planning to cite, was tagged as being written by AI on the news company's website. I've looked around a bit, skimmed Wikipedia: Using neural network language models on Wikipedia, WP:LLM, WP:AI, WP:RS and this Wikimedia post, but couldn't find anything directly addressing whether it's ok to cite articles written by AI. Closest I could find is here on WP:RS tentatively saying "ML generation in itself does not necessarily disqualify a source that is properly checked by the person using it" and here on WP:LLM, which clearly states "LLMs do not follow Wikipedia's policies on verifiability and reliable sourcing.", but in a slightly different context, so I'm getting mixed signals. I also asked Copilot and GPT3.5, which both said AI-written citations neither explicitly banned nor permitted, with varying levels of vaguery.

For my specific example, I submitted it but put "(AI)" after the name, but I wanted to raise this more broadly because I'm not sure what to do. My proposal is what I did, use them but tag them as AI in the link, but I'm curious to hear other suggestions.

I've put this on the talk pages in Wikipedia:Using neural network language models on Wikipedia and Wikipedia:Reliable sources. SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 11:36, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

For me it comes down to a case by case basis. If AI is being used as part of the process, but ultimately the article is from a real person and editor then it's probably fine. The issue comes from articles completely written by AI with little or no oversight.
The site has an AI disclaimer[1] where they say they only use AI in the first way, not the latter. So on that point I would think it should be ok. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:02, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@SqueakSquawk4, do you absolutely need that source? If you can find a better one, then I suggest using the better one instead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:03, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

A) I kinda do, it's the only citation I found with everything in the same place. If I took it out I'd have to put in 2 or 3 seperate citations to not leave something uncited.

B) I was going trying to ask more generally, with the one I found as just an example rather than really the focus of what I was asking.

C) @ActivelyDisinterested Thanks, didn't spot that. SqueakSquawk4 (talk) 12:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• AI = NO Considering the 'hallucination" issue that LLMs have, and, in fact, considering how they are constructed at a base logic level, I would categorically treat any "AI" source as intrinsically non-reliable. If a news agency is found to be using "AI" constructed articles on a regular basis then that source should be deprecated. Simonm223 (talk) 12:42, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  Simon, I think black-and-white rules are easy to understand, but hallucination is only an issue when it appears. AI sometimes generates false claims. If it's writing something you know to be true and non-hallucinated (e.g., because you've read the same claim in other sources, or because it's the kind of general, non-controversial knowledge that the Wikipedia:No original research says doesn't require a citation, like "The capital of France is Paris"), then that problem is irrelevant.

  @SqueakSquawk4, editors might accept this source, especially in light of what AD says. However, if the content is important to you, you might consider using the three other sources instead of (or in addition to) this one, to make it harder for someone to remove it on simplistic "all AI is wrong and bad" grounds.

  As a tangent, we've never defined reliable sources. Unlike an article, which would doubtless begin with a sentence like "A reliable source is...", this guideline begins with "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published sources". I suggest that the actual definition, in practice, is "A reliable source is a published source that experienced Wikipedia editors accept as supporting the material it is cited for". Some editors strongly oppose AI-generated sources, and we can usually expect that some editors won't take time to understand the nuances behind using AI as a convenience vs using AI unsupervised to generate content wholesale.[*] Therefore, I'm uncertain whether it would considered reliable if it were ever seriously disputed.

  [*] This is happening in the real world, with a student accused of plagiarism without any evidence except Turnitin thinking it was AI-generated,[2] so it'll happen on wiki, too. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:10, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

  I read on some AI-test tool I tried a caveat, something like "don't use this to punish students." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:22, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

This may be a crazy thought, but...

Can we assemble a master list of all sources used throughout all articles in the encyclopedia? With ~7,000,000 articles, some with no references or one reference, but others with hundreds of references, I would guess that there are about 50,000,000 references in Wikipedia. I would further guess that some of those (particularly databases) are heavily used, and could be normalized to a greater degree in some way (e.g., via templates). BD2412 T 17:53, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia:Articles with the most references lists the most referenced ~875 articles/lists, with a total of ~543,000 references for that outlier group. BD2412 T 17:59, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Curious… what do you mean by “normalized”? Blueboar (talk) 17:59, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean that if the same source is used as a citation in hundreds of articles, the citation should present the same across those hundreds of articles (and could even be reduced to a template, kind of like the IMDb name template often used in external links). BD2412 T 18:16, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe not exactly the same, as the same source might be cited with a different page number, or a different excerpted quote. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:17, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

One editors normalisation is another editors CITEVAR. I could see lots of discontent if references are normalised across articles with different established referencing styles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:11, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

My foremost interest is in gathering the data, which we do not have at all. It may well be that there are links appearing as bare URLs in some articles (which is never preferrable) and nicely formatted in citations in others, or that there are sources where things like the date of the source or the spelling of the author's name are different across different articles, indicating that at least one of them is erroneous. BD2412 T 20:46, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

You could get one of the dumps, parse the XML to extract the <text> element for each article, and then apply further parsing to get:

• all <ref> elements
• anything that uses a recognised {{cite...}} template
• anything that looks like a URL.

I expect there will be some niche citation styles that may not fit into the above, and some false positives like URLs mentioned in the infobox of an article about a website.

It's probably a perl oneliner... if you start sufficiently far to the left. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:33, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

That's Greek to me. BD2412 T 23:15, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like something m:WikiCite might have been interested in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:41, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll mention WP:JCW here, thought it's not quite what the OP asked. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:05, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

I think that @Ocaasi made a list of the most popular domain names. See Wikipedia:Vaccine safety/Reports. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

I see. I gather that this list is for sources used in vaccination-related articles. Perhaps the exercise can be scaled up. BD2412 T 16:42, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

• This idea makes me very nervous… I worry that as soon as we compile a “list of sources” it will turn into “THE list of (approved) sources”. I understand that this isn’t the intent here, but we have seen something similar happen with RSP. That page was first intended as nothing more than a quick reference aid (of sources that are frequently discussed). However, it has evolved into something else - a lot of editors think it is where you go to “vet” sources, and that it is a list of approved (and, more importantly, disapproved) sources.

Data collection is all fine and dandy, but it can be misused in ways not originally intended. Blueboar (talk) 17:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree that "a list" has a risk of turning it into "the list of approved sources". It will also result in WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS claims (if it's okay to cite Twitter in tens of thousands of other articles, then why not this one?) and in inappropriate removals (since it's not okay to cite this in article A, so I will dedicate my life to removing it from all articles everywhere!).

But I think there are things we could do to reduce this. One is to have a comprehensive list (all sources, not just the most popular). Of course we would want to have a description at the top that explains that it's just a list of everything, not a list of good or approved sources. Another is to give it a title that makes it sound more boring and technical. Something like Wikipedia:Citation formatting/Data dump? Or Wikipedia:Citation templates/Mismatched formatting? Alternatively, its visibility could be reduced by storing it off wiki (e.g., at Wikipedia:Wikimedia Cloud Services, where it could be automatically regenerated on a set schedule). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:30, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

• Well, whatever the risks, I would say, it is better to know what "we" are doing than not (and that is even so, as it seems the "risk" is someone will say, it is used all over Wikipedia, so needs no evaluation here, (eg., it is somewhat curious that any news source is used for vaccinations, but at least we can now look and see how and whatnot.) Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:04, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Two possible additions

Under Scholarship, the bullet point Reliable scholarship should consider that books on academic subjects are often reviewed in journals covering the appropriate academic discipline. These can often highlight the value of any particular book. Since some academic publishers seem to be less reliable on the quality of their output than they once were, this is a useful verification of the content of a book (versus a properly peer-reviewed paper).

In rare instances, a review may be so damning that we would probably all see the book in question as not being a suitable source. (See [3] for an example of such a review). Other reviews actually turn out to add to the content of an academic book by giving a second supporting opinion on some content. (See [4] for an example – search for "observations that may not be widely-understood and accepted, but are nevertheless accurate" to see this in action. This example also shows how a review might highlight the strengths and weaknesses of a work, so further helping the editor in how to use a source.)

Therefore I suggest the "Reliable scholarship" paragraph should have added:

• Books are often reviewed in academic journals that cover their subject – these reviews may help an editor understand the strengths and weaknesses of the work in question.

The second suggestion is more concise. The last sentence of Citation counts should be expanded to say

• The number of citations may be misleading if an author cites themselves often, or if a work is frequently cited by those who disagree with or disprove it.

Generally, to disagree with the work of others, you have to cite them. This obviously increases the citation count, especially if a lot of other authors publish in disagreement. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 15:14, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Hiding conflict of interest? You've been unilaterally removing Schaffer from Wikipedia for a very very long time based on that single review, in your ongoing WP:TENDENTIOUS edits against a very specific topic that you decided you do not like. - OBSIDIAN†SOUL 02:39, 21 June 2024 (UTC)

ThoughtIdRetired on 15 June 2024 added "Some books on academic subjects are reviewed in peer-reviewed journals, so giving additional information on the reliability of their contents." Obsidian Soul on 21 June 2024 reverted. ThoughtIdRetired on 29 June 2024 re-inserted. I believe that re-inserting reverted PAG insertions, without getting consensus, should generally be opposed. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:08, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

My own interpretation this, but the edit by Obsidian Soul (OS) was part of a rather unpleasant dispute which has resulted in them, for the present, retiring from Wikipedia. I have encountered ample support for the example raised (Shaffer) not being an RS, for instance[5], together with at least one instance of thanks when I removed Shaffer as a reference (with a full explanation and links to the review in the edit summary) on some articles not of interest to OS.

The more important point on the sentence added is that reviews in academic journals can highlight the strengths of a potential source. This can be particularly useful. This really uses the concept mentioned in WP:HISTRS (or more precisely, WP:HSC. The real example of usefulness is the second example I give, where not only the book but the review itself could be used as a source for the comparative merits of square rig and fore and aft rig in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

Do you think that the added sentence is bad advice in any way? If so, please explain your thinking. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 15:53, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that this is limited to academic publishers or to reviews in academic journals. It's no different than any other source. You have found a source, and you want to know whether it's any good. How can you do this?

'Source' means three things on wiki: author, publisher, and document. Consider the author. Consider the publisher. Consider the document. How do you do that last step? If it's a book, look for book reviews. If it's a peer-reviewed paper, look for citations and commentary/letters about it. If it's in a non-scholarly periodical, look for the kinds of sources we would use to write about their reputation and scope. And so forth. This is just ordinary "introduction to evaluating your source" work. It is not special to the academic press. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Thanks User:WhatamIdoing. For the specific example of Shaffer, see[6] On the point raised here, whether the added sentence should or should not be included, do you think it is helpful? For an editor who, perhaps, is not trained in assessing sources, it may not occur to them that academic books are reviewed in academic journals. As above, the concept comes from WP:HISTRS, but, in my view, the advice of checking for reviews in academic journals deserves greater prominence. It is certainly a practice I try and follow. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 07:35, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't think that most editors explicitly research the sources they're using. At least twice in the last year, I have accidentally cited a Wikipedia mirror (some company makes a business of printing books of Wikipedia articles and selling them), which I'd never have done if I researched the book. All I was looking at was the source's contents, not its provenance. I had a reasonable belief that the Wikipedia article was already correct.

I think that review work primarily happens when a source has been contested on a talk page or at RSN. That's when it's useful to know how to determine a source's (or in my case, a publisher's) reputation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:08, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Wow, I didn't realise that I was that unusual. I often check for academic reviews of books before using them as a source. That may be because I live a long way from a decent library, so it is often cheaper to buy a book rather than travel to a library – but I wish to avoid spending money on something that is not worth having. (Strange that the same argument would apply to the cost of travelling to a library to use the same source, but it does not have the same emotional impact.) I find some reviews enormously useful as they can add to the content of the reviewed book. I also keep an eye on book reviews in academic journals to see if any cover subjects of potential interest – often finding things that you would otherwise never discover. Incidentally, I sometimes check the sources in sources, which brought to light an academic paper that took information and the sources from a Wikipedia article (uncredited) where the sources should have been flagged as "failed verification". (The basic fact was wrong.) Another example of circularity, like the Wikipedia mirror case. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 22:50, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I think it depends on what kind of editing you're doing. If you're deeply invested in an article, it's worth finding the best sources you can, and it would be disappointing indeed to put a lot of time, effort, or money in a source that you ultimately had to discard. But if you're just trying to get rid of a {{fact}} for an uncontroversial claim, then (almost) any old source will do.

BTW, I hope you have been mining Wikipedia:The Wikipedia Library. I put some time into looking around in it a couple of months ago, and there are literally so many (tens of thousands!) of university press and similar books available for free that I was having trouble figuring out which ones to use. Look under Brill, Perlego, Wiley for starters. Several other publishers are in their systems, so it's not just the ones with their own imprint. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Audit Bureau of Circulations, UK

In a nutshell, the Audit Bureau of Circulations is some sort of gold standard for auditing media in the United Kingdom, so I do not feel like I need to discuss its reliability at WP:RSN. However, I thought that, in this page and possibly elsewhere, there would be a complete database of reports and certificates for historical publications. I know the Informationsgemeinschaft zur Feststellung der Verbreitung von Werbeträgern has a website that keeps records of such with pages like this for example. With the British Audit Bureau of Circulations, I am not sure where to look. That is a shame, because it makes finding a newspaper's or magazine's dominance in the British media market difficult. The numbers are perhaps not the most important aspect of the publications by a long shot, but occasionally, they do get noted. Does ABC in fact keep such records, and if so, where does one look, or does one have to be a registered member to view them? FreeMediaKid$ 14:51, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

@FreeMediaKid!, are you looking for something like this line:

May 2024 – Daily Mail  – 688,783 – Avg Circulation Per Issue

except for now-defunct magazines? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes, something like that. FreeMediaKid$ 17:31, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Historical magazines from what I have seen were usually good about posting the numbers, but occasionally the only way to find out about them during a certain time period was to look elsewhere. I have seen one such magazine that stopped publishing the numbers in its imprint early on, yet I was able to uncover one of them in Benn's Media Directory. FreeMediaKid$ 17:53, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if they have them, but they probably have a sales/contact address, which could tell you. There's even a small chance that if you explain that it's for Wikipedia, they could give you a free trial account so you can look up the numbers you want. On our end, as long as the material is available to anyone/the general public (WP:PUBLISHED) who is willing and able to pay for it (WP:PAYWALL), then it's a valid source, even if it's not a popular source or a free one. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Conference papers

It's not stated explicitly here, but I would just like to check whether conference papers published by academically respectable conferences count as reliable sources. It seems to me that the answer must be yes based on the WP:RS criteria, because they are both published (sometimes in book form), and have been through a peer review process in order to be added to that publication. What constitutes an academically respectable conference is of course debatable, but I would define this as being a conference organized by, and substantially attended by, researchers from mainstream academic institutions with a record of having papers published elsewhere. This would not include predatory conferences, or conferences organized by crank organizations.

I'd be interested in hearing opinions from others on this. — The Anome (talk) 07:40, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#Symposium on Applications and the Internet Workshops (SAINT).

In general, (legitimate) conference proceedings are bottom tier references. They're often used to present in-progress work, very few are peer-reviewed (most are moderated) because the point of the conference is to get present the state of current research and get feedback on it. I heard that in computer science, conferences are often preferred to journals because it's very much of an applied field. Whereas for most sciences, the opposite is true.

Fake/sponsored conferences are not even worth considering. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 08:02, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Agreed about fake/sponsored conferences. Computer science is exactly the field I have in mind, where conference papers do indeed seem to be preferred to journal publication. — The Anome (talk) 08:15, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

reliable source--yes. and I agree they are not as good as journal articles. Rjensen (talk) 08:25, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

OK. Let me make the narrower claim that in computer science, published conference papers from academically respectable conferences are WP:RS, but published papers are to be preferred where possible. Otherwise, we risk not being able to write anything about significant fields of computer science, for lack of citable material. Does this sound reasonable? — The Anome (talk) 09:04, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Clearly there are good conference papers and bad conference papers. Deciding on their quality is comparable to deciding whether a book is an RS. If the paper is published in book form, who published it? Are there favourable reviews in appropriate academic journals? Citations (checking that they are not disagreeing with the content). What else have authors published and how well recieved was that? I can point to some that are definitive (e.g. Jones, Evan Thomas; Stone, Richard G (eds.). The world of the Newport medieval ship: trade, politics and shipping in the mid-fifteenth century. Cardiff: University of Wales press. ISBN 978-1-78683-263-4.) and others that are more at the forefront of thinking (e.g. The global origins and development of seafaring. Cambridge, UK : Oakville, CT: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of Cambridge ; 2010. ISBN 978-1-902937-52-6., with a review such as [7] presenting a reasonable summary of its strengths and weaknesses – strengths including mapping out what we do and don't know, which is of great value to a wikipedia editor in the subject.) Some conference papers present more than one paper on a topic presenting differing views, so the typical google books limited view could easily mislead an editor into misunderstanding the academic consensus. So an editor needs a bit of subject knowledge and some common sense – just like any other reference decision. ThoughtIdRetired _TIR 12:01, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks; I'll take it from there, in the narrow field of computer science, by considering conference papers as conditional RS, with the added requirement for judging papers by their merits, rather than just dredging at random; however, it's usually pretty obvious what the seminal papers are in a field, — The Anome (talk) 16:45, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

A late chimein. I am not a computer scientist (CS), but I have been on tenure and promotion committees where CS faculty have been reviewed. The point was always made by both the Dean & the CS Chair about the importance of conference papers in that field. Apparently sometimes the acceptance rate is low, I seem to remember 10%. Hence in this specific case I believe conditional RS is appropriate. Ldm1954 (talk) 19:21, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Bias and Reliability

I would like to start a conversation to clarify how and when political/cultural Bias affects the reliability of sources (and particularly, news sources). I think there is consensus that it can… but we are less clear about the details… how, when and where source bias does impact on reliability. Blueboar (talk) 12:07, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Bias in news sources often is about the things that you don't say. I read an example of this the other day: During WWII, the BBC tended not to report good news as coming from the actions of "the Americans" or "the Soviets". Instead, the visible actors were the UK (e.g., "the RAF") and "our allies". They also didn't report bad news, or minimized it. So they're biased, but I'm not sure that this requires a lot of clarification. This is hardly surprising during a war, and it's not that difficult to work around (assuming it's a current event, because of course we prefer scholarly books for WWII instead of news outlets).

It's a similar thing in the modern era. For international conflicts, we expect national news to give us a pro-national slant on the events of the day. Even for 'culture war' stuff, we expect this; the only difference is that the borders aren't geographical. I expect that right-wing anti-LGBT news sources run many more articles about 'those dangerous others' than LGBT+ media outlets. This is due to bias on both sides. It doesn't really make either side unreliable for the facts they actually do report. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:59, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

RfC on the language on tertiary sources

There exists an opinion in WP:Identifying and using tertiary sources which to me makes a lot of sense. However, it is an opinion and there is no corresponding statement in the policy, WP:PSTS, which states that: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." Except in special cases I would consider tertiary sources as below primary, albeit balance is needed. Sometimes tertiary sources are too simple and hence misleading, the lie to children phenomenon. I think the language should be changed to be clearer.

I propose adding to the end of the policy statement at WP:Tertiary the sentence.

Secondary sources are always preferred over tertiary ones.

Ldm1954 (talk) 05:07, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

This proposal, to me, would codify the preference towards secondary sources. I can support this. SWinxy (talk) 18:38, 29 June 2024 (UTC)

Support, tertiary sources are often merely indexes or summaries of a secondary source, and in many cases may not even source or link back to the original. Secondary sources should always be used when available, and this would help reinforce that. SmittenGalaxy (talk) 07:33, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Absolute statements like "secondary sources are always preferred over tertiary ones" will have exceptions, so are not usually suitable for policies. In this case, it wouldn't even be good enough for a guideline. For one thing, there is no clear line between a secondary source and a tertiary source. Most sources we think of as secondary cite at least a few other secondary sources, so technically they're tertiary. Also, some tertiary sources are excellent and some secondary sources are not so great. But Ldm1954 asserts this never happens.

As for preferring primary sources over tertiary sources, if I were evaluating a paper written by a professional or high-level student, in a field where I had access to the relevant sources, I'd agree. But in Wikipedia the editor choosing sources often has no expertise in the field, and the reader often does not have access to the sources. I don't think there should be a preference for primary sources over tertiary sources in the Wikipedia environment. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:19, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

I think LDM1954's proposal if WP:PSTS was more like what "Primary Sources at Yale" says: "Secondary sources typically reference or summarize primary sources and other secondary sources. Examples of secondary sources include scholarly works, textbooks, journal articles, histories, and biographies." But our WP:PSTS makes no mention of secondary sources citing other secondary sources, and classifies lower-division university textbooks as tertiary sources.

Another problem is that when a scholar or serious student is writing a paper to be read by others who are competent in the field, there is no need to cite well known information. But there are lot of editors who's primary activity at Wikipedia seems to be slapping {{Citation needed}} all over the place. Finding secondary sources to support these well-known facts would be a needless burden. Jc3s5h (talk) 14:40, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose I agree with everything Jc3s5h said about absolute statements making for bad policy and the boundary between secondary and tertiary being fuzzy. I'll only add that, wikipedia often covers the same topic at different levels of detail in different articles, and different kinds of sources may accordingly be appropriate. For example, hypothetically:
  • A tertiary source, say a standard university textbook, may be be the best source to use to add a sentence about a 15th c treaty in the respective countries' articles
  • A few secondary sources, say scholarly articles, may be ideal to add a para about the same treaty in articles about the concerned period in the countries' history
  • The treaty itself, a primary source, may be quoted (with care!) in the wikipedia article about the treat

The appropriate sourcing depends upon the context and it would be misguided IMO to convert the general advice to use published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources into secondary sources are always preferred over tertiary ones. Abecedare (talk) 15:17, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

Both Abecedare & Jc3s5h make good points. I am not trying to say that tertiary should never be used, which is why I used preferred. The background to my suggestion is an editor who quotes (very) tertiary sources such as Oxford Dictionary of Physics to counter other editors (plural) using graduate level books as sources, secondary texts which have their own Wiki pages. The claim is that the tertiary sources are within Wiki policy so equally valid, which currently they are. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:45, 30 June 2024 (UTC)

@Ldm1954, it appears that this question is premised upon a misunderstanding. Tertiary sources are not "equally valid" "within Wiki policy". Specifically, see WP:PSTS (that's the primary source of policy around the primary/secondary/tertiary thing), which begins this way:

"Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources." WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I completely agree with you about them not being "equally valid". However, an editor says that since there is no such specific statement in any Policy, the use of tertiary sources rather than primary or secondary is fine. Below is the current wording which has, IMO, wiggle room.

Policy: Reliable tertiary sources can help provide broad summaries of topics that involve many primary and secondary sources and may help evaluate due weight, especially when primary or secondary sources contradict each other. Some tertiary sources are more reliable than others. Within any given tertiary source, some entries may be more reliable than others. Wikipedia articles may not be used as tertiary sources in other Wikipedia articles, but are sometimes used as primary sources in articles about Wikipedia itself (see Category:Wikipedia and Category:WikiProject Wikipedia articles).

If there is wiggle room an editor will (one has) exploit it. Ldm1954 (talk) 17:22, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

There should be wiggle room, because sometimes a given tertiary source is more reliable than a given secondary source.

If this is about Nonmetal, it sounds like you all might be talking at cross purposes. I can find an excellent source that says Cancer is a disease. I can find an equally gold-plated academic source that says Cancer is a character in a Greek myth. We don't have to prove that one source is 'wrong' to figure out which subject we want to put at a given title. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

The context is much wider than that. Going fully public, the context involves statements/edits by Sandbh in talk pages of Nonmetal, Nonmetallic material, Talk:Metal#Disputed cite: Nonmetallic materials do not have electrons available at the Fermi level, WT:WikiProject_Physics#What is a nonmetal (in physics)?. and the currently open RfC at WT:WikiProject_Physics#rfc_0092AD6. The main 4 people who have an opposite view are Ldm1954 (me), Johnjbarton, Double sharp, Headbomb, although there are several others who also have opposed the view of Sandbh at WT:WikiProject Physics, and YBG has perhaps decided to move on. There has been little to no movement by Sandbh towards a concensus, and he rejected an early attempt by YBG.

One specific pair of statements in WT:WikiProject_Physics#What is a nonmetal (in physics)? is what made me raise the issue here

:Please note, The Oxford Dictionary of Physics is a tertiary source and as such should be avoided or used with great care, see this essay (with thanks to @HansVonStuttgart for pointing out the information.) Ldm1954 (talk) 09:47, 26 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

:: @Ldm1954: That essay is neither Wikipedia policy nor guidance. For WP policy, there is WP:PSTS, which states that: "Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. --- Sandbh (talk) 12:53, 26 June 2024 (UTC) Ldm1954 (talk) 18:32, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Tertiary sources do not have to be avoided or used with great care. Also, the community does not have a clear understanding of what counts as a tertiary source, so even if we did, it wouldn't necessarily help you. Someone would claim that the Oxford Encyclopedia, despite the name, isn't really tertiary, and that the other sources really are.

The specific dispute really ought to be resolved before trying to change the policies and guidelines, because otherwise we have a significant risk of preventable drama about Wikipedia:Gaming the system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:08, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

N.B., the disagreement is not really Cancer as a disease versus a character. It is whether "blue" is everything light/dark/navy or only color code #0000FF. Ldm1954 (talk) 23:07, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Using my analogy, we struggle with discussions about whether "cancer" is everything (carcinoma/sarcoma/lymphoma) or only malignant carcinomas. What you need is to have a discussion that says "We need a global article, and we need some specific/sub articles, and then let's sort out which one gets which name". What we usually get is "Noooooo, the one with this name is about this subject, so we have to totally change the contents of this page to put 'sub topic 1' on it right now, and put all this stupid general-subject global article content over at [Other page] right now!!!!11!!". Someone reading through some of these could be forgiven for thinking that none of us knew how to use Special:MovePage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:13, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

I agree with you. We have 4+ votes for a 'general article', and 1 for 'sub topic 1'. The $64,000 question is when/how/if to just WP:BEBOLD, move and have an edit war. (Edit skirmishes already). Ldm1954 (talk) 23:39, 1 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. I can easily imagine situations where a tertiary source is a better than a secondary one. This proposal says 2ary sources are not just preferred but always preferred. This means that any use of 3ary sources could be challenged because a 2ary source says something slightly different. The existing policy is appropriately nuanced IMO and should not be tinkered with. If @Ldm1954 wishes to resolve his dispute with @Sandbh by appealing to WP:PSTS, better to make the case using the existing policy rather than seeking to adjust the policy to match the desired outcome. Changing a policy to resolve a single dispute seems unwise indeed. YBG (talk) 02:10, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. This proposal does not correspond to actual reliability. Some tertiary sources are written by serious experts while some secondary sources are not. The secondary-tertiary reliability distinction is simply not uniform enough to give an absolute rule. Cases have to be considered on their individual merits. Zero^talk 05:24, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose. Consistent with the well-considered commentaries of Jc3s5h; Abecedare; WhatamIdoing; YBG; and Zero, I oppose the proposed policy change for several reasons:

• No immediate nor longer term necessity — There's no burning house nor high risk fire zone that necessitates a policy change.
• Variable reliability — Tertiary sources can sometimes be more reliable than secondary sources.
• Ambiguous boundaries — The distinctions between secondary and tertiary sources are often not clear-cut.
• Citation practices— Most secondary sources cite other secondary sources, which could categorize them as tertiary.
• Contextual appropriateness — Wikipedia often covers topics at various levels of detail across different articles, requiring different types of sources as appropriate.
• Contextual sourcing — The appropriateness of a source depends on the specific context and purpose within the article.
• Reliability concerns — The proposal does not accurately reflect the nuances of source reliability.

In light of these points, the existing policy, which allows for nuanced use of sources, remains the most appropriate approach. — Sandbh (talk) 06:06, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

I am going to withdraw the proposal. I remain convinced that WP:Identifying and using tertiary sources matters, and lie to children is real and important. To me a source such as Oxford Dictionary of Physics should not be considered as even close to equal to graduate texts such as Ashcroft and Mermin, which was my original intent. While it relates to an ongoing WP:1AM disput, I proposed it for it's own merits. However the consensus opposes. Ldm1954 (talk) 09:02, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

@Ldm1954, as the editor who started the RFC, if you'd like to, you are allowed to remove the RFC tag from the top. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:53, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Sideshow comments

I note that in the discussion, Ldm1954 imputes or refers to out-of-context actions I am supposed to have taken, or out-of-context actions I have taken. I regard such content as irrelevant to this discussion and its inclusion as WP:INCIVIL. Thanks to YBG for your comment:

"If @Ldm1954 wishes to resolve his dispute with @Sandbh by appealing to WP:PSTS, better to make the case using the existing policy rather than seeking to adjust the policy to match the desired outcome. Changing a policy to resolve a single dispute seems unwise indeed."

Wise words indeed. — Sandbh (talk) 06:24, 2 July 2024 (UTC)

Masters dissertations and theses

"Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence." Why is this? Why are MS theses considered unreliable? Volcanoguy 21:10, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

Also, how can MS dissertations and theses be shown to have had significant scholarly influence? Volcanoguy 21:12, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

What if an MS is used in a reliable source? Volcanoguy 21:33, 28 June 2024 (UTC)

There is a recent discussion at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Allowing_Master's_theses_when_not_used_to_dispute_more_reliable_sources that outlines some of the problems with (some) theses. Nikkimaria (talk) 05:06, 30 June 2024 (UTC)