Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 20:08, 9 February 2014

Welcome to the no original research noticeboard
This page is for requesting input on possible original research. Ask for advice here regarding material that might be original research or original synthesis. Include links to the relevant article(s). Make an attempt to familiarize yourself with the no original research policy before reporting issues here. You can also post here if you are unsure whether the content is considered original research. Sections older than 28 days archived by MiszaBot II. Click here to purge this page (For help, see Misplaced Pages:Purge) Shortcuts WP:NORN WP:NOR/N WP:ORN WP:OR/N If you mention specific editors, please notify them. You may use {{subst:NORN-notice}} to do so.
Additional notes: "Original research" includes unpublished facts, arguments, speculation, and ideas; and any unpublished analysis or synthesis of published material that serves to advance a position. Such content is prohibited on Misplaced Pages. For volunteers wishing to mark a discussion resolved, use {{Resolved|Your reason here ~~~~}} at the top of the section.
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Myspace

http://en.wikipedia.org/Myspace#New_Myspace the very last portion of this section contains a lot of original research and dubious sources for its citations.

treehouse attachment bolt

I have noticed that a few of the facts on the treehouse attachment bolt page, located at http://en.wikipedia.org/Treehouse_attachment_bolt, seem to contain some origional research. Specifically those that are linked to the 2nd reference. Both can be found at the end of the paragraphs in the history section.

99.41.173.202 - almost all edits refer to editor's own book of interpretations (not facts)

It appears that almost every edit made by user 99.41.173.202 (https://en.wikipedia.org/Special:Contributions/99.41.173.202) are references to (or excerpts or summaries from) his own self-published book, which contains his own interpretations of poems. (Either this user is referring to his own book, or the user is interested only in adding citations and summaries from that one book.) In spirit, if not in the letter, these edits seem to be in violation of multiple policies; instead of original research, the editor cites his own interpretations (not facts) from his own book, which comes to the same thing. Could an administrator possibly look into this? Thank you.

Further detail: this user reverted an edit in which I removed a citation to his self-published book. I don't want to start an edit war, so I hope an admin might decide on what to do next. - Macspaunday (talk) 15:24, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I think that this should probably be dealt with at WP:ANI, rather than here. From what I can gather, the author, Kenneth B. Newell, has some academic credibility, including a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, but the work itself seems not to have been the subject of any significant reviews, and the publisher, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, seems to be fairly non-selective in what it publishes. Accordingly, it certainly looks like undue promotion of the work, and it is difficult to believe that the IP doesn't have a conflict of interest. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:14, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I left a block warning for the IP and invited him to reply here, but he has not edited for five days. Let me know if this editor resumes his activity without waiting to get consensus for his changes. EdJohnston (talk) 17:43, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you both. Since you've already taken some action, should I post something at WP:ANI or leave it alone? (And I'll come back here if he resumes editing.) - Macspaunday (talk) 18:08, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, this is more of a WP:COI issue than a WP:NOR issue. The material is supported by previously published sources (no opinion on whether they are reliable published sources or not), and if any other editor had made the edits and cited those sources, we wouldn't deem it Original research. The information would not have originated with the editor who added it. What makes this an iffy case is that the editor who added the information is also the author of the source. WP:NOR does not really address this. I would certainly say that there is a greater likelihood of (perhaps unintended) OR in such a situation, but that does not necessarily mean the edits are automatically OR. It really depends on what the author/editor tries to say in our article, and how he/she says it. A lot depends on how closely he/she sticks to the cited published source. Blueboar (talk) 18:53, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

It is probable that this is a case of COI editing, but making charges of COI is usually tedious. It is simpler to view it as a case of promotional editing. Repeatedly adding material from a fixed source, so consistently that the goal appears to be promotion of the source, is blockable unless the editor will wait for consensus. EdJohnston (talk) 19:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Is it also relevant that all the added paragraphs are literary interpretations that merely reflect one person's point of view? There's no place in an encyclopedia for random interpretations introduced by individual editors as if they were posting their papers in Freshman English. It's certainly appropriate to include an encyclopedic report on existing interpretations, but WP surely is not a site in which anyone can post their personal interpretations of literary works. - Macspaunday (talk) 23:15, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Not just anyone, no... but a published PhD? That's a bit different. That's not just a "random interpretation" by some nobody. There is at least a possibility that this guy qualifies as an expert. There are multiple policies and guidelines that might apply here (WP:UNDUE, WP:RS, WP:SELFPUBLISHED, etc.)... the question is whether they do or do not. Whenever we find someone citing their own works, we have to ask... if someone else had made the exact same edits, citing the same sources, would we consider the edits and citations problematic? (if so, why?... if not, why not?)... and then deal with them in that light. Blueboar (talk) 23:58, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

If you look at the edits, I think you'll see that they would be problematic no matter who made them; they are interpretations of poems (in some cases, the only interpretations on the page) made by a single author. As far as I can tell, no one - and I mean no one - has cited this user's work (published by a vanity press - a press that you pay to distribute your work, not peer-reviewed) anywhere else, so the only citations for it are his own on WP. He even identifies them in his edit notes as "interpretations." Basically, he's using WP as a place to publish what he thinks about some poems. - Macspaunday (talk) 02:31, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Wiki-PR_editing_of_Wikipedia

Hi all, I would welcome editors looking at a sentence in the article Wiki-PR_editing_of_Wikipedia that I believe is based on original research.

The sentence in question is the following:

The use of a company to manage the content of Misplaced Pages violates several Misplaced Pages rules, including the rule against asserting ownership of a page.

This was originally sourced to a secondary source, Owens, which says something rather different:

Misplaced Pages has had a long, uneasy relationship with paid contributors. Many purists believe that a Misplaced Pages page’s subject, or anyone paid by that subject, has no business editing that page because his objectivity is compromised.

Editors objected to my replacing the present wording with a sentence quoting the cited secondary source. Herostratus then changed the sourcing to various primary sources, namely:

1. Misplaced Pages:Ownership of articles
   • Quote: All Misplaced Pages content is edited collaboratively. No one... has the right to act as though he or she is the owner of a particular article.
2. Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not
   • Quote: ontent hosted in Misplaced Pages is not for... Advertising, marketing or public relations.
3. Misplaced Pages:Spam
   • Quote: Articles considered advertisements include those that are... public relations pieces designed to promote a company or individual.
4. Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest
   • Quote: Do not edit Misplaced Pages in your own interests or in the interests of your external relationships.

The problem I see with this wording and primary sourcing is that Misplaced Pages has paid editors in good standing who work transparently to "manage" their clients' Misplaced Pages articles for them, in a way that is compliant with policy and does not violate WP:OWN. These paid editors act as talk page advocates for their clients, in a way that even Jimmy Wales welcomes. Jimmy Wales is for example quoted in Owens' article as saying,

“I am opposed to people who are paid advocates being allowed to edit in article space at all, and extremely supportive of paid advocates being given other helpful paths to assist in our work usefully and ethically."

To me, the present article wording is apt to create the impression that this sort of arrangement is forbidden. In addition, one of the primary sources cited, WP:COI, contains the following passage explicitly saying that paying someone to write an article about you in Misplaced Pages can be benign and unobjectionable:

The act of accepting money or rewards for editing Misplaced Pages is not always problematic. There may be benign examples of editors being paid – for example, a university asking you to write up its warts-and-all history. Another benign example is the reward board, a place where editors can post financial and other incentives: it is a transparent process, the goal of which is usually to raise articles to featured- or good-article status (but be wary of editors asking you to make edits that challenge your sense of neutrality). If you intend to participate in this kind of paid editing, transparency and neutrality are key. Editing in a way that biases the coverage of Misplaced Pages or that violates our core policies is not acceptable.

Isn't the WP:COI quote in the sourcing rather selective, to an extent that it amounts to a Wikipedian's interpretation of a primary source? And not only that, but an interpretation that directly contradicts statements in the secondary source (Owens), and parts of the primary source itself? This is exactly what WP:PSTS forbids.

As far as I am aware there is no policy anywhere on the English Misplaced Pages that says that a company cannot pay someone to manage their Misplaced Pages entry for them, at least in the sense of getting a paid advocate who is more familiar with Misplaced Pages policies and guidelines to fight their battles here for them, rather than having one of their own employees wading into a dispute here.

I'm not sure how best to solve this. Discussions on the talk page have stalled. However, I feel certain that present status is not in line with WP:OR, and would welcome editors' comments on that aspect.

Disclosure: I am not a paid editor, never have been, never will be. I believe if paid editing is done in Misplaced Pages, it should be done transparently, with full disclosure, using registered paid-editor accounts that are flagged in edit histories, and with articles, too, flagged for readers if they contain such edits (as tens of thousands of Misplaced Pages articles currently do, without disclosure and transparency). --Andreas JN466 12:45, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

FWIW I don't think the sentence was ever ref'd to Owen. It was just an unsourced statement, the Owen ref was for following or preceding sentences (don't recall which); this sort of thing is often unclear with refs. The sentence is "The use of a company to manage the content of Misplaced Pages violates several Misplaced Pages rules, including the rule against asserting ownership of a page. It doesn't use the phrase "paid" anywhere, so some of the original poster's points are somewhat tangential. (Anyway "paid editor/editing" is deprecated because technically it doesn't exclude GLAM participants, professors working in their field, and so on; the preferred phrasing is something like "paid advocacy editor/editing" or "commercial editor/editing", I think.)

The meaning of the passage hinges on what is meant my "manage" I guess. The first two meanings for "manage" in Wiktionary are "To direct or be in charge of" and "To handle or control (a situation, job)" and this is the common meaning and clearly what's meant. WP:OWN forbids this. "Company" also has several meanings. "An entity that provides services as a commercial venture" or "A corporation" or "Any business" are the common meanings and what is meant here.

OK WP:OWN, but it says "violates several Misplaced Pages rules", so need another. It is true that "a company managing the content" does not violate any other rules AFAIK under, and only under, the following two scenarios:

1. The company is engaged to manage some pages unrelated to the interests of the engaging party. For instance the company is engaged to manage pages on first-century Roman poets, with no prescription regarding how they will be managed, purely as a gift to humanity.
2. The company is engaged to manage some particular page(s) but doesn't do it.

and any other situation is by definition a violation of WP:COI at least. If one wishes to engage in semantic hair-splitting then "use of a company to manage the content of Misplaced Pages" could be taken to include either of these two situations, just as ""The use of a company to manage the content of Misplaced Pages violates several Misplaced Pages rules" could be taken to mean "The use of a unit of firefighters to train Misplaced Pages articles in the manège violates several Misplaced Pages rules". All this is ridiculous semantic prollygastering of course, which is not usually helpful IMO.

I gather that original poster wishes very much that "The use of a company to manage the content of Misplaced Pages violates several Misplaced Pages rules" was not true. He makes a cogent case that having such rules would be very foolish, and who knows maybe he's right. It's only human to make the leap from "if statement X was true, that would a very unsatisfactory state of affairs" to "statement X is not true" and I understand that. But it is true. Since it's true and we have excellent refs showing that its true and its germane to the article we can say it and should.

I apologize for not engaging further on the article talk page. Personal real-life stuff is impinging on me right now, sorry. It's a contentious issue. I've made my case and of personal necessity I'll disengage; I'm confident that fair-minded editors will come to the best solution here. Herostratus (talk) 18:43, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

You're right, this hinges on what we mean by "manage". A plausible meaning – to me, the most plausible meaning – is that a company employs someone to "handle" everything connected with their Misplaced Pages article for them. This in itself does not violate WP:OWN at all, especially if the paid editor restricts himself or herself to talk page advocacy, raising matters at noticeboards, and so forth. Even if the paid editor edits the article, this in itself is not a violation of WP:OWN. We have thousands of company articles that have been edited either by a company employee, or by someone acting on behalf of the company, without there having been a complaint that WP:OWN has been violated. It all depends on the individual editor's actions, and how they respond to disputes that arise in collaborative editing. Hiring someone in itself does not violate WP:OWN, as Jimmy Wales' statement quoted above ("I am extremely supportive of paid advocates being given other helpful paths to assist in our work usefully and ethically") makes abundantly clear. Andreas JN466 21:02, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Spinal manipulation and chiropractic

In general, can studies of spinal manipulation be used to make statements on Misplaced Pages about Chiropractic, even if they do not mention chiropractic? A particular instance of this question is: can PMID 24412033 be cited in the Chiropractic article's "Effectiveness" section? Alexbrn 09:46, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

This was previously explained in the previous RfCs the sources are directly related to the topic at hand and directly supported by the material being presented.

See Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 27#Request for Comment.2C Possible OR violation at Chiropractic Effectiveness.

See Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 27#Futility of .22effectiveness.22 discussions.

See Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 27#Request for Comment: Excluding treatment reviews.

See Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 27#Outside view by WhatamIdoing.

See Talk:Chiropractic/Archive 27#Outside view by TimVickers.

The current discussion is at Talk:Chiropractic#A 2013 systematic review and meta-analysis. QuackGuru (talk) 19:28, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

See WP:CCC. As WP:NOR is a foundational policy, questions of synthesis are of pressing concern and there should be a low bar to revisiting discussions where they clearly relate to a significant concern by reasonable, uninvolved people that the content may violate the policy. Guy (Help!) 19:33, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Those original discussions did not even seem to be conclusive. Alexbrn 19:39, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Your question was previously addressed on the talk page and prior RfCs addressed the concerns. QuackGuru (talk) 20:08, 9 February 2014 (UTC)

Original research and misuse of sources in articles about the number of Buddhists

Articles such as Buddhism by country or List of religious populations have been constructed through misuse of sources and original research (for example combining statistics of different religions), in order to enormously inflate the number of Buddhists in the world.

For example, in the article Buddhism by country statistics of Buddhism have been mixed with those of other religions of East Asia (Chinese folk religion, Taoism, Shinto, Dao Mau), that have more followers than Buddhism in the respective countries, claiming that they are "related" to Buddhism, when this is utterly false. In the case of China and Vietnam, where Buddhism is followed by little more than 10% of the population (see religion in China, religion in Vietnam), mixing this statistics with that of indigenous religions, the article says that these countries are 50% to 80% Buddhist. In the case of Taiwan, Korea, Japan and Mongolia, where according to censuses or surveys the Buddhists are, respectively, 35%, 22%, around 30% and 53%, the article says that they are over 90%, 50%, 90% and 90% respectively. The authors of this type of edits also use unreliable sources (tourist and travel websites, for example). The same hyper-inflated fake numbers (over 1 billion Buddhists in the world) have been cited also in the main article, Buddhism (which even reports 1.6 billion Buddhists!).--79.50.85.69 (talk) 12:43, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

In other cases, List of religious populations#Buddhists, the same author uses reliable survey statistics (those reorting lower numbers) claiming that thair count is only of "practicing Buddhists", while uses the hyper inflated numbers claiming that they represent both practicing and non-practicing Buddhists. East Asian Buddhism has been created using the same type of unreliable sources mentioned above to sustain the high statistics, claiming that East Asians practice "mixed religions" ultimately resulting in this "East Asian Buddhism". Also, many charts have been created by the same authors: I have inserted some of them here on the left.--79.54.76.129 (talk) 14:47, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

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