Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Freedom of press

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view · edit Frequently asked questions Questions Where should I ask whether this source supports this statement in an article? At Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. Don't forget to tell the editors the full name of the source and the exact sentence it is supposed to support. Do sources have to be free, online and/or conveniently available to me? No. Sources can be expensive, print-only, or available only in certain places. A source does not stop being reliable simply because you personally aren't able to obtain a copy. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/cost. If you need help verifying that a source supports the material in the article, ask for help at Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange or a relevant WikiProject. Do sources have to be in English? No. Sources can be written in any language. However, if equally good sources in English exist, they will be more useful to our readers. If you need help verifying that a non-English source supports the material in the article, ask for help at Wikipedia:Translators available. I personally know that this information is true. Isn't that good enough to include it? No. Wikipedia includes only what is verifiable, not what someone believes is true. It must be possible to provide a bibliographic citation to a published reliable source that says this. Your personal knowledge or belief is not enough. I personally know that this information is false. Isn't that good enough to remove it? Your personal belief or knowledge that the information is false is not sufficient for removal of verifiable and well-sourced material. Is personal communication from an expert a reliable source? No. It is not good enough for you to talk to an expert in person or by telephone, or to have a written letter, e-mail message, or text message from a source. Reliable sources must be published. Are there sources that are "always reliable" or sources that are "always unreliable"? No. The reliability of a source is entirely dependent on the context of the situation, and the statement it is being used to support. Some sources are generally better than others, but reliability is always contextual. What if the source is biased? Sources are allowed to be biased or non-neutral; sometimes these are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a controversial subject. However, the resulting Wikipedia articles must maintain a neutral point of view. Does every single sentence need to be followed by an inline citation? No. Only four broad categories of material need to be supported by inline citations. Editors need not supply citations for perfectly obvious material. However, it must be possible to provide a bibliographic citation to a published reliable source for all material. 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. Are reliable sources required to name the author? No. Many reliable sources, such as government and corporate websites, do not name their authors or say only that it was written by staff writers. Although many high-quality sources do name the author, this is not a requirement. Are reliable sources required to provide a list of references? No. Wikipedia editors should list any required sources in a references or notes section. However, the sources you are using to write the Wikipedia article do not need to provide a bibliography. Most reliable sources, such as newspaper and magazine articles, do not provide a bibliography. Does anyone read the sources? Readers do not use the reference list extensively. This research indicates that readers click somewhere in the list of references approximately three times out of every 1,000 page views.

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The WP:ONUS sentence says:

"The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content."

Does this apply to material purely outside the mainspace? For example, does ONUS apply to a page like Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment (about which I'm aware of no disputes) or to an essay like Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle, or to a help page like Help:Table?

(NB that I'm asking specifically about ONUS, not about Wikipedia:Consensus, so logically valid answers include answers like "ONUS itself doesn't, but CONS does, so the distinction is technical rather than practical".)

Because I think ONUS is purely about the mainspace, I've been thinking about changing the wording to reflect that, e.g., "The responsibility for achieving consensus to include something in an article is on those seeking to include disputed content." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, everywhere when you represent that 'this is consensus', the onus on you. If I write a good sentence for an article or consensus essay, the onus was on me to write a sentence that now represents the consensus of the topic/essay/group page (until it doesn't, and then I (or someone else) have to work to reestablish the consensus for it or let it go.). -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:03, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, but that's ordinary dictionary-definition onus, not WP:ONUS, which is a part of verifiability. If I decided to change the color of Template:Vandalism information, that has no connection to Wikipedia:Verifiability or WP:ONUS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:14, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think your reasoning is dancing on a pinhead, as they say. Alanscottwalker (talk) 23:17, 21 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't these just extensions of WP:CONCENSUS? If you wanted to modify policy or guidance, and were reverted, it would be expected that consensus building would have to take place. Edit warring you change wouldn't be acceptable, so BRD is good advice even outside of article space, and ultimately if their wasn't consensus for your changes they would not be implemented. If you were unwilling to try and convince others of the change, then the change wouldn't be implemented, so in effect ONUS applies. The exact wording of either may not fit, but the general expectation of editors behaviour follows from more basic policy. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:02, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, consensus applies.

But ONUS (=remove anything disputed) isn't how disputes are usually handled outside the mainspace. BRD is good advice (though rarely relevant; Wikipedia:What editors mean when they say you have to follow BRD isn't actually BRD). But imagine the scenario in which the desired edit is to remove something:

• Alice: Ugh, that restriction in this guideline seems like a bad idea. Remove!
• Bob: Hey, don't just go changing the guideline. We need that rule!
• Alice: Nice try, but this restriction in the guideline is now "disputed content", and ONUS says "The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content." If you want this old rule in the guideline, then ONUS says you have to achieve consensus to include it.

There's no consensus for Alice's removal, and yet ONUS says Alice's edit should be kept, and Bob is responsible for building consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This would again come done to what exactly the rule was. If someone inserted a rule into an obscure guidance page, and it went unnoticed for an extended time, removing it until it has consensus could make sense. On the other hand if someone tried to remove something from a central policy page that obviously has support, then retaining it during consensus building would be appropriate.
It's the same tension that exists in article content, whether something should be retained or excluded during consensus building has no single answer but should be dependent on the situation. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:01, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

In these situations, I think that we should use ordinary consensus rules (e.g., common sense) instead of the one-size-fits-most ONUS rule outside the mainspace. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:00, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd agree, all I'm saying is the concept is the same. There could be situations were an editor should find consensus for inclusion, even if the bold ONUS doesn't apply. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:41, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced this is solving any real problem. A made-up, theoretical discussion does not warrant it. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:23, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think ONUS definitely does not apply outside of mainspace, but I don't think it's worth tweaking the wording. Hopefully we can reserve all our ONUS-tweak-energy for addressing the perennial ONUS v. NOCON issue. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 20:43, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

One place where ONUS does NOT apply is Userspace. Yes, there are limits to what one can have on user pages, but those limits are spelled out in policies and have been set by consensus.

Beyond those limitations, the USER can decide what is included in the space (or not) - the user is free to add or to remove material as they wish. Blueboar (talk) 00:32, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Admittedly WP:ONUS looks out of place in a policy that's generally about mainspace but WP:ONUS responsibility should be even greater when we're talking about (say) bold changes to a PAG. I oppose changing the wording unless to clarify that it applies to PAGs too. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:18, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

ONUS would only apply to "bold additions", not to "bold removals" or "bold changes". WP:PGBOLD says "Bold editors of policy and guideline pages are strongly encouraged to follow WP:1RR or WP:0RR standards", which is more stringent. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:28, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Long ago there was another sentence "If your changes are removed, please make no further changes until the issue has been appropriately discussed on the talk page." Discarded by M~enwiki. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:19, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:Onus had a good purpose and intention to be put in but ended up problematic. An arbitrary finger on the scale towards exclusion, including of long-standing material, and sometimes conflicts with wp:consensus. Which is why I'm totally happy with the technical answer which is that as a part of wp:ver, it applies only to mainspace. Which leaves wp:Consensus as the main guidance for the OP case, which is good guidance and a good thing. WP:BRD is about a particular scenario which can occur within the guidance of wp:consensus, combined with a blessing/encouragement for being bold once in that scenerio/sequence. North8000 (talk) 19:14, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Not just once: See Wikipedia:BOLD, revert, discuss cycle#Bold (again).) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:48, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I meant it in a narrow way....the applicability of the "Be bold" blessing/encouragement for that particular bold edit. I.E. it blesses "B" for that edit but not BRB. North8000 (talk) 20:56, 23 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This seems obvious to me but other opinions would be welcomed. See WP:RSN#Is German Legal commentary a secondary source?. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:32, 22 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Change the: “ Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram and Facebook.”

To this: “ Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Reddit, Instagram, and Facebook.”

Difference is adding a comma between Instagram and Facebook. 216.9.110.11 (talk) 23:09, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: Serial commas are not obligatory. See also MOS:SERIAL. Remsense 🌈 论 23:12, 5 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! The user Mathglot directed me towards this page via Teahouse: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Teahouse#No_clear_credited_director_for_a_music_video
I'll just copy and paste my post from there.
I'm giving Cup of Joe (band) a GA review and trying to help its nominator improve the article. However, I'm running into a huge obstacle. One of the tables mentions that VJ Catacutan is the director for the music video of "Alas Dose," a song by this band. They use a Facebook post as a source: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=709897339512302
The footnote for this goes: "The music video for "Alas Dose", there is no description provided regarding the director. However, a Facebook post by Cup of Joe on October 30, 2019, indicates that the video was directed by VJ Catacutan (also appeared as an actor in the video), as noted in the post's caption." Social media posts published by the subject are an acceptable source when there's literally nothing else, right? The problem is that the post itself says: "Video by VJ Catacutan."
This is on a teaser for the song that features the cover art and a brief snippet of the song. So this is not clearly indicating that the music video was directed by the VJ guy. "Video by VJ Catacutan" could mean: 1) he edited the teaser. Or, 2) he edited the music video. (Or both.) But it's not precisely stating that he directed the music video.
What would you suggest in this instance? Can the director row be left blank for that MV? Thanks so much. Bloomagiliw (talk) 22:19, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that director can be left blank. It's always okay to omit information about BLPs if you're not certain that the information is correct. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 9 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A discussion came up over how a page split was done for a page that was extremely large with a large number of citations over at VPP, which resulted in having one master page that transcluded content without transcluding sourcess. See Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Is_using_selective_transclusion_to_remove_citations_ever_an_acceptable_way_to_reduce_page_size_or_overcome_template_maximums. There seems to be general agreement that]].

Not to get into the specifics of that debate, but it raised the issue that it seems to be common knowledge that we expect pages to be standalone in terms of sourcing; offloading sources, particularly on material that can be challenged, to a separate page and not include them on a summary section of the main page seems to be wrong. However, we don't have any actual policy that points to this. WP:WHYCITE, a guideline, makes a statement towards this, but its not as strong as the impression many editors had in that discussion that it was established policy that it is never appropriate to move/hide refs in a summarized or transcluded section from a sub-page or related topic. Instead this appears to be consensus of long-standing demostration of expections.

The question raised there is it then appropriate that we should include a affirmative statement on this in WP:V? How to word it and wehre to include would need to be workshoppd, but this is considered a quick poll to determine if this is needed (is it hiding elsewhere). Masem (t) 01:30, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We say at WP:UGC that wikilinks aren't reliable sources - perhaps that could be expanded? Nikkimaria (talk) 01:49, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think we do already have such a policy, though I have no objection to making it more explicit. The requirement flows from a plain reading of Additionally, four types of information must be accompanied by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material... That sentence already has one explanatory footnote (expanding on the meaning of "directly supports"). Adding another explanatory footnote expanding on "accompanied by an inline citation" would be the most natural place for this clarification. Just a brief statement setting out that "accompanied by an inline citation" requires that the footnote appear on the same page as the cited material and material that is transcluded must retain its inline citations.--Trystan (talk) 01:50, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We could perhaps add a couple of words to that line: accompanied by an inline citation in the article to a reliable source. Or we could just write a new sentence.

(Just a tangent, in case it helps anyone: The "directly supports" language is about whether the cited source says what the Wikipedia article claims it does. It's not about whether the little blue clicky number is touching the sentence in the article. It doesn't say anything about the location of the ref tags.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:34, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The rule that Wikipedia is not a reliable source has always been interpreted against those who think they don't need to add a source for something when there is a source for it in a wikilinked article. Rules can always be clarified, but I believe this situation is already covered by policy. Zero^talk 09:33, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think these bold changes to the policy require discussion.

Changing "accompanied by an inline citation" to "have an inline citation" weakens the statement. Given that this issue just came up, and in the immediately above section I referred to the "accompanied by" wording as being operative, that wording shouldn't have been removed without discussion or consensus. While more specific wording was added later on specifying it must "appear on the rendered mainspace page", "accompanied by" is still a stronger statement about the need for proximity between the content and the citation. (This wording was at some time previously "must include an inline citation", which was similarly clear about the need for the citation and the material to be proximate.)

Changing "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" to "Material without an inline citation may be removed" changes the meaning in a way that is overbroad.--Trystan (talk) 13:30, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have reverted it. This was prompted by an ongoing discussion at WP:VPP that is about one specific page and hasn't even reached consensus. Zero^talk 14:20, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that changing "must be accompanied by an inline citation" to "must have an inline citation" weakens it. I do agree about the second change, and and think "may be removed" should be changed to "should be removed": if these kinds of content "must" have inline citations substantiating them, then "may" is too weak. FactOrOpinion (talk) 14:24, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

FOO, I doubt that you actually believe that.

The thing about "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" → "Material without an inline citation may be removed" is that it's kind of technically true, but it's eliding the process.

The process is not:

• All material is required to have an inline citation. Therefore, if there is an uncited sentence, even if that sentence merely says that 2+2=4, you {should|must|are allowed to} remove it.

If we really adopted that as a rule, then the entire lead of Wikipedia:Today's featured article, which is Trinity (nuclear test), plus the infobox and almost all of the photos, could be removed as uncited. Or even "must" be, if FOO doesn't change her mind. ;-)

The actual process is:

• Some kinds of material are required to have an inline citation.
• Editors can issue a WP:CHALLENGE over any material without an inline citation.
• One of the kinds of material that is required to have an inline citation is any material that has been CHALLENGEd.
• And if someone does issue a CHALLENGE, then the uncited material is allowed to be removed, because now it's required to have an inline citation (which may or may not have been true before).

However – and this is more important for the logical basis of the policy, rather than for the actions in the article – that material is allowed to be removed because it is uncited and challenged material, not solely because it is uncited. Since one way to issue a CHALLENGE is to remove the uncited material (e.g., with an edit summary that says you think it's wrong), this can all happen in a single edit, but it's not just "no citation, therefore remove". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:57, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that some material doesn't need an inline citation. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting what "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" applies to.

I'm reading the following as a single unit:

All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable. Additionally, four types of information must be accompanied by an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material:

• direct quotations,
• material whose verifiability has been challenged,
• material whose verifiability is likely to be challenged, and
• contentious material about living and recently deceased persons.

Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed. Please immediately remove contentious material about living people (or existing groups) that is unsourced or poorly sourced.

Seems to me that if those four kinds of material "must be accompanied by an inline citation", then if they lack said citation, the material must be removed (or must have a citation added by whoever notices that it's uncited). If "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" is not intended to be read in the context of the bulleted list immediately above it (i.e., if "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one..." is meant to include a wider variety of material than the bulleted list), then I suggest that it be moved, perhaps placing right after after "All material in Wikipedia mainspace, including everything in articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable." FactOrOpinion (talk) 19:48, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they must be accompanied by an inline citation, but no, removal is not the only available (or even preferred) remedy.

Consider: It must have an inline citation – and you could add one. It must have an inline citation – and one might already exist in the article (true for many CHALLENGES to uncited statements in the lead). It must have an inline citation – but Wikipedia:There is no deadline for adding that inline citation.

"Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" is intended to be read in the context of the bulleted list immediately above it.

What's not intended is for "Any material that needs an inline citation but does not have one may be removed" to be recast as "Any material that does not have an inline citation may be removed". And that's what happened here: It went from a two-criteria statement:

1. "Needs an inline citation"
2. "Does not have an inline citation"

to a one-criterion statement:

1. "Material without an inline citation"

This is kinda sorta true, but it's also wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OK. I already said that an alternative is finding/adding a citation. And I was assuming that this didn't apply to content in the lead (as long as it's supported in the body), or on the main page (where content shouldn't appear without having been checked that it's supported in the primary article). Assuming that I've correctly understood what you said, I suspect that there's a better way to word this text, but that's not something I want to spend time on right now. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:52, 16 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The change from "accompanied by an inline citation" to "have an inline citation" dramatically changes the meaning and can't possibly be accepted without an informed consensus. It came about because, in that other discussion, some people were arguing that it is fine if the inline citation appears on a different page. This is strongly contrary to the intention of the policy. There are countless pieces of challengeable information that appear on more than one page, and only requiring that they need to be sourced on one of those pages would create a disastrous mess. Zero^talk 07:27, 17 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]