[Foundation-l] Oral Citations Sourcing

Splitting this off, Achal, I hope that's OK :) There's a discussion on at the reliable sources notice board, for instance, Thanks for the pointer there; I'll try and place some comments in there later. It is certainly an interesting discussion. But here are some initial thoughts (please bear in mind I have only scanned that discussion, and whilst I have had an ongoing interest in the oral citations project I never dug into in too much depth). Also remember this is based on my interpretation of our policies, so others may well differ! The best way I can address this is to lay out my thoughts on our sourcing policy. Material on Wikipedia can be divided into "fact" and "opinion". The latter of these is, perhaps confusingly, the simplest to address; because opinion, viewpoints and perception can quite easily be collated and summarised. The only real difficulty exists in figuring out which opinions are noteworthy to record. The problem is facts; as I am sure everyone can appreciate, facts are very easy to get wrong (maliciously or not). This is especially a problem in History where events can be pieced together via all manner of sources. Even WW2 history can differ dramatically depending on the accounts you read - some overuse oral citation (humans are fallible) and others misuse official records (which can range from faked through to inaccurate). The problem with primary sourcing of the oral form is that it comes directly from an individual - with all of their perceptions and biases. To make an extreme example out of this; imagine taking an oral citation from Hitler, and a Jew in a concentration camp. Such citations would, I imagine, give radically different viewpoints of the Holocaust. Obviously other accounts, by third parties, show us which account is accurate - but if we had only those two viewpoints I hope it is obvious how difficult separating fact and fiction could be (ignoring that any rational person would see the obvious). So that brings us to the ideas behind sourcing; which is that we should consider not only the material but author and publisher. This is important because if the author of the source is partisan to the material then you have to consider they may be biased to their viewpoint. As less extreme example might be two citations from a Republican and a Democrat. Both say "My Party is the Best because our policies are..." - you can't use either source to say one party is better, because they are partisan. But you could use it to relate their parties policies; and as partisans they are well positioned to relate those policies! If the author is a third party, of course, that lends weight to their material. The publisher is the stumbling block in this case; because it is a non-expert [sic] researcher uploading material to Commons. What could mitigate this is a detailed description of the methodology used to collect the citations, which would allow editors to review it for problems. One final thing to consider is that WP:V talks about controversial or challenged material. Whilst that might be a risk policy on the face (it would be easy to present something non-controversial but also not true as fact) it's critical to letting us actually write article (otherwise we would be stifled in citations :)). For example; I've sourced material to personal sites before with minimal problems - sometimes it is questioned and what I usually say is "If you can show someone saying the opposite, or make a sensible argument against, then lets remove it". (FWIW, and this is an aside, I think is relaxed form to building articles is a Good Thing, and we should do it more often - worrying about being wrong is stifling). So now I've picked it apart here is my thinking; Oral citations on Commons could be excellent sources in the right context. Sure if the material is disputed or otherwise problematic then it is better to look for a source that has peer review. But for simplistic, factual things then I think it is rock solid. One example that comes to mind (and I don't know if the Oral citations covers this sort of thing) is this: I was recently on holiday in New Zealand. They have excellent museums there, fanatically maintained (which is amazing compared to most countries...). One nice feature is that a lot of the Mauri history exhibits have audio from those of Mauri ancestory describing some cultural fact or other. Things like recipes. Something like that is an excellent oral citation; the author is authoritative (being Mauri) and the content uncontroversial. Boiled down, I think that oral citations have a distinct place as a source - and we should encourage people to consider them as sources when writing. But they are not something you could, for example, base an entire article around. We should also explore ways to make them more "reliable", and more usable. For example making them obviously available to experts in the field they cover. It *is* important to get secondary coverage of a topic, because we are tertiary source. This is the core idea of our primary source policy; if we utilise primary material and research something to the extent that we are the main authoritative source that becomes *hugely* problematic! And further, how these policies might apply to the idea of social media, as Corporate archives I would deal with in the same way as any primary source; use it to cite facts, bear in mind the author/publisher. WP:SPS talks about being wary of unduly self-serving material, and I think that is an excellent way of putting the approach to corporate archives. In terms of social media, this is tricky. Because social media is vastly more accessible than other mediums - particularly to hacks. Wordpress blogs are trivial to make, for example, and you can sound authoritative or convincing on a subject to a layman with only medium effort. I'd treat these with more caution. Phew, that was dumped out in a stream of conciousness way - so it might be a bit "buggy". But that's what I figure :) Tom (Just as a note; I consider "publisher" quite broadly - i.e. the person who hosts or maintains the material)