A volunteer editor seeking to contribute content to the page might use information found on the West Virginia Department of Transportation’s website as a reference source. However, policy sticklers are likely to deny this usage because DOT is a primary source for highways (directly involved in the subject matter). According to the site’s policies, Wikipedia should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources, such as newspapers.
Angry road editors like Ben are up in arms, claiming that this hard-line interpretation of the guideline does not reflect the realities of the situation. With local newspapers going out of business left and right, there are rarely any other sources to draw from for these kinds of articles. Why not allow Wikipedians to cite from DOT, which is responsible for publishing highway routes?
Then again, it’s worth remembering that most of the time Wikipedia has good reasons for the prohibition against primary sources, especially with government entities. A state’s DOT content might generally be reliable—but allowing Wikipedians to cite from other primary sources, such as China’s Central Propaganda Department, is not a risk worth taking. The question is whether there is some way to recognize an exemption, granting that some types of primary sources may be reliable while still protecting the integrity of the rule.
But then if primary sources for Chinese government are unreliable why are the secondary sources from Chinese local newa agency acceptable? In that case even the secondary sources would be unreliable, where to draw the line?
Those secondary sources often aren’t reliable as well. It depends on the source and its history of accuracy in reporting. There’s plenty of newspapers that have been determined to not be a reliable source, including any tabloids.
The article is a bit wrong and I’ve submitted a correction.
Wikipedia has bandwidth and doesn’t want to duplicate what’s already on https://www.wikidata.org/ (which has a much generous notability guideline: “It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references”). Notability is sort of a compromise on what will be maintained as an article to not have these you need to maintain just explode.
The part about forbidding primary sources isn’t true; they aren’t forbidden unless the claim is “exceptional”(what’s exceptional is decided by whoever looks at the article), which doesn’t include most of the facts cited. What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.
What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.
Which is absolutely absurd. Counting secondary sources and deciding if something is “Notable” from that is completely arbitrary. Furthermore, there’s legitimate reason for secondary sources not to exist on the topic; and the Notability guidelines of the local WikiProject on Roads, which probably contained the people leaving, should have been taken under advisement as notable roads don’t always have secondary sourcing due to lack of local newspapers or publications.
Specifically a highway may be notable because it never appears in the news… often because it rarely if ever sees auto accidents. A source is a source, and I think attacking primary sources and excluding them is problematic if the source in question never was causing issues with NPOV.
Now if someone can prove that a website from the DOT is actually doing some weird POV pushing or is legitimately not behaving like a neutral source; then sure, challenge that citation for that article and get it struck.
But it’s otherwise a waste of time to pretend that roads and highways aren’t notable and not of encyclopedic interest for good reason.
I feel like any realistic criteria for usefulness would place a real-life road over obscure comic book characters, which are pretty extensively documented in Wikipedia.
This character appeared in five comic book issues around winter 1939-1940.
I’m not saying that they don’t deserve a Wikipedia article. But I have a hard time believing that there is more need for information about a character that appeared in a few comic book issues eighty years back than a road that people are actually making use of today.
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But then if primary sources for Chinese government are unreliable why are the secondary sources from Chinese local newa agency acceptable? In that case even the secondary sources would be unreliable, where to draw the line?
Yes. It’s hard for me to understand, too. Maybe China did have rather free news organizations in the past.
In Hongkong. We all know what happened to that place.
Those secondary sources often aren’t reliable as well. It depends on the source and its history of accuracy in reporting. There’s plenty of newspapers that have been determined to not be a reliable source, including any tabloids.
The article is a bit wrong and I’ve submitted a correction.
Wikipedia has bandwidth and doesn’t want to duplicate what’s already on https://www.wikidata.org/ (which has a much generous notability guideline: “It refers to an instance of a clearly identifiable conceptual or material entity that can be described using serious and publicly available references”). Notability is sort of a compromise on what will be maintained as an article to not have these you need to maintain just explode.
The part about forbidding primary sources isn’t true; they aren’t forbidden unless the claim is “exceptional”(what’s exceptional is decided by whoever looks at the article), which doesn’t include most of the facts cited. What’s true is that primary sources don’t count towards notability, so if an article mostly just uses primary sources it’s likely to get deleted.
Which is absolutely absurd. Counting secondary sources and deciding if something is “Notable” from that is completely arbitrary. Furthermore, there’s legitimate reason for secondary sources not to exist on the topic; and the Notability guidelines of the local WikiProject on Roads, which probably contained the people leaving, should have been taken under advisement as notable roads don’t always have secondary sourcing due to lack of local newspapers or publications.
Specifically a highway may be notable because it never appears in the news… often because it rarely if ever sees auto accidents. A source is a source, and I think attacking primary sources and excluding them is problematic if the source in question never was causing issues with NPOV.
Now if someone can prove that a website from the DOT is actually doing some weird POV pushing or is legitimately not behaving like a neutral source; then sure, challenge that citation for that article and get it struck.
But it’s otherwise a waste of time to pretend that roads and highways aren’t notable and not of encyclopedic interest for good reason.
Why should encyclopedias include every single road in the USA?
I feel like any realistic criteria for usefulness would place a real-life road over obscure comic book characters, which are pretty extensively documented in Wikipedia.
googles for a random example
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magician_from_Mars
This character appeared in five comic book issues around winter 1939-1940.
I’m not saying that they don’t deserve a Wikipedia article. But I have a hard time believing that there is more need for information about a character that appeared in a few comic book issues eighty years back than a road that people are actually making use of today.
I mean, there are at most 500 pages on Golden Age Superheroes yet over 1000 on New York roads alone.