Wikipedia:No original research/Noticeboard#Hijinks at Challenger Deep

In the Defense of Sihang Warehouse article, one editor Wahreit has been asserting in the infobox that Westerners reported the Japanese military suffered "heavy losses"{{cite news |date= November 2, 1937|title=The Shanghai Fighting: Stand of the "Do or Die Battalion"|location= Perth|publisher= The West Australian}}{{cite news |date=October 30, 1937|title= Fighting to the Last|location=Hobart|publisher=The Mercury}} by citing two somewhat obscure newspapers as a source for this. I feel like this itself falls under Original Research, as drawing such a conclusion from a mere two Western newspaper articles published far from the conflict (rather than for example, a Western military observer or journalist in China) would constitute synthesis and a not a particularly good one.

As such, I removed the heavy losses from the infobox owing to the lack of consensus and added the following passage to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Defense_of_Sihang_Warehouse&oldid=1282361995#Casualties_and_Aftermath "Casualties and Aftermath"] section.

"While the Shanghai-based North China Herald makes no mention of significant Japanese losses{{cite news |date=November 1, 1937 |title=Artillery Ousts Brave Battalion - 100 Bodies Found |url=https://archive.org/details/north-china-herald-1937.11.03/page/178 |publisher=North China Herald |issue=1937.11.03}}{{cite news |date=October 31, 1937 |title=Fierce Fight for Bank Godown |url=https://archive.org/details/north-china-herald-1937.11.03/page/188 |publisher=North China Herald |issue=1937.11.03}}, some overseas Western sources and postwar accounts of the battle report that the Japanese attackers suffered heavy casualties assaulting the Sihang Warehouse."

This was then followed by various Western sources asserting they suffered heavy casualties originally added by the other editor.

To my surprise, my edits have been undone by Wahreit who gave the reason "restored article to a verifiable version before editorializing edits; independent research and synthesis of sources to support conclusions not explicitly supported by the material is forbidden by WP:NOORIGINALRESEARCH".

Does noting that western newspapers in the city do not mention heavy losses count as original research? I'm really hoping for a third opinion that can help direct the article in a better direction.

Thank you,

-Adachi1939

{{reflist-talk}}

If I can identify what painting is used in album art, is that original research to mention it? Specifically, there's an album that uses a panel of Stefan Lochner's Martyrdom of the Apostles, that of Bartholomew. A secondary source does tentatively identify the painting as being of Bartholomew - he says "I think Bartholomew". More of the painting is used in the internal liner notes, as well as Last Judgement. However, the album liner notes don't credit the painting. For reference, scans of the album art can be seen here: [https://www.discogs.com/release/6884044-Vomitorial-Corpulence-Skin-Stripper/image/SW1hZ2U6MTgyNzk3MTk=] Is it original research to identify the painting by name when I can visually confirm that they are the same? I suspect so but wanted to run it by some others for their opinions.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 12:41, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

:My personal thoughts are that WP:SKYBLUE might apply here. Stepping into the realm of the philosophical for a moment, what's the difference between reading text and looking at images? In both cases, you're taking in visual information and processing that into into concepts in your mind.

:To put forth a comparison, if a famous book had the following passage on the cover:

:

:I doubt we would need a source to state it "...has a quote from Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech on the cover." ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 16:17, 4 April 2025 (UTC)

::Okay, that's helpful. This was exactly the kind of reasoning I was wondering about.--3family6 (Talk to me|See what I have done) 13:58, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

:::I don't think anyone has complained that the caption 'A single brick' is original research in the article Brick. Bricks are quite complicated things, but we appear to be allowed to recognize them. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:09, 5 April 2025 (UTC)

:I feel like it's OR but also just IAR, it's silly to pretend. ꧁Zanahary꧂ 22:48, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Not OR. The source is: album cover. The source is: painting. That album cover and painting look the same is not a synthesis, it is a simple straightforward observation that anyone, with access to the sources and without specialist knowledge can make. The name of a painting is also not specialist knowledge, anyone can find the name of a painting. (Someone might raise some other issue or there might be a disagreement ('you have the wrong painting' or 'they do not look the same') but none of that relies on OR, and you will have to settle those under other policies, editing methods, or dispute resolution). Now, if you want to publish here, without a public RS, 'why' that painting was chosen for the album, that would be OR. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:42, 13 April 2025 (UTC)

:A bit of devil's advocacy here: what would you say to someone arguing that it's WP:SYNTH, because you're using two sources (the album cover and the painting) to draw a conclusion that isn't explicitly stated in either?

:For myself, I would respond that the painting is explicitly used as the album cover, which nullifies that claim, in line with my reasoning about viewing text being fundamentally the same process as reading words, above. But I'm curious if you would have a different response. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 13:42, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

:Would agree with straightforward observation here, or everything's an OR pitfall Nisingh.8 (talk) 09:25, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Suppose in the finals of some major event, Team A beats Team B 6-0. Is it OR to write "this is the largest victory in the last 50 years", if the source is our articles on the previous finals (one would have to manually click through all of them and check that there's been no larger margin of victory)? Banedon (talk) 01:09, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

:I would argue yes, not so much by outright comparison of stats which could fall under routine calcs, but the absence of recognition of this stat by any reliable source (if that were the case). More to the fact that that statement seems like puffery and thus should not be made in wikivoice. Masem (t) 02:55, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

::I would agree with Masem… while it is the sort of Original Research we might allow per routine calculation), it’s a bit UNDUE… not the sort of statistic that is worth mentioning in our article unless other sources having noted it first. Blueboar (talk) 20:37, 18 April 2025 (UTC)

:::[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Women%27s_World_Chess_Championship_2025&diff=prev&oldid=1286489767 This edit's] a bit awkward then, since the source does mention it's a record, but also says "according to ... [a tweet]", making it hard to source. Not a big deal if it's not included, though. Banedon (talk) 07:57, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

::::Would also think it would be a continuous MOS:DATED pitfall, and statement would liable to be fact-check repeatedly unless the wording is very specific to attribute the victory to specific team/event/year Nisingh.8 (talk) 09:22, 30 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi all, at Talk:Harald_Malmgren#Later_career, I am trying to figure out if there is a way to describe Harald Malmgren's later career. I have proposed a sentence that uses newspaper articles from a wide year span to say that he worked as a consultant across that time span. I know that ideally we would have a source saying that he "has worked as a consultant for the past 30 years" or something, but in the absence of that, I am curious whether it is too-OR-y to make this statement, when we do have a range of newspaper articles describing him as having that job in that year. Any thoughts? Cheers, Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 09:27, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:I took a look at the talk page discussion and I agree with {{u|Toadspike}}. Just take out the specified time period and say {{tq|...continued to work as a consultant...}}. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:19, 28 April 2025 (UTC)

:This would fall under WP:PRIMARY, where you can only "make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge". Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

Would someone mind taking a look at :Disability flag, in particular the section :Disability flag#Design and meaning. The entire section is unsourced and mostly interpretations on the colors of the flag and their resepctive meanings. Perhaps the first sentence is OK as and a listing of the colors are OK as is (though they probably needed to be sourced), but the content about what the flag as a whole and the individual colors symbolize reads like :WP:OR written in Wikipedia's voice that probably needs to be given a closer look. I did find [https://www.umassp.edu/inclusive-by-design/who-before-how/disability-pride#:~:text=green%20is%20for%20sensory%20disabilities,and%20red%20represents%20physical%20disabilities. this], [https://iod.unh.edu/blog/2023/07/ada-disability-pride this] and [https://www.weinberg.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/history-disability-pride-flag this] about the flag, but those sites seem to attribute their interpretations of the flag back to its creator Ann Magill; this, they might not really be secondary sources per se even though they're websites of major US universities. -- Marchjuly (talk) 09:45, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

:I took a crack at fixing it. It needs to be reorganized a bit to fix the flow and rm repetition between the sections "Design and meaning" and "Influence of "Disability Pride"" (which also contains some off topic stuff), but I've removed the OR you pointed out. Couldn't find a good source for the hexadecimal codes.

:The sources aren't the highest quality, but they are usable for non-extraordinary claims and they're definitely better than an unreferenced section. CambrianCrab (talk) please ping me in replies! 00:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

An edit to Hospental Castle has added what I believe is original research, with only primary sourcing used to cite an "in popular culture" section referencing the castle's presence in the online competition show Jet Lag: The Game. I am looking for further input at the talk page (Talk:Hospental Castle), as a WP:3O agreed that it should be added with the reasoning that "there is video evidence of them using the castle", which I consider insufficient to justify that this is not an instance of OR. Thank you for any input provided.-- Cerebral726 (talk) 17:17, 6 May 2025 (UTC)

This is partly in response to the discussion here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sunnyside,_Queens#c-Newsjunkie-20250504041500-References, and partly for future reference or use in other contexts.

Is it original research to use a image, clip or link to a full episode of a TV series (possibly with Time Codes) as a verified source that the production filmed in a certain location if it is recognizable from a landmark, street names etc even if it is never identified by name? For example, in the case of this clip from an official TV social media account https://www.facebook.com/reel/627859486695542, Wikipedia has an image identifying the location in question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRT_Flushing_Line#/media/File:Qns_blvd_39st_jeh.JPG Wouldn't that fall under Common Knowledge "Plain sight observations that can be made from public Property?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Common_knowledge and using the production as a primary source?

What about in another instance if a page from a fan site does a similar thing comparing imagery from TV show to recognizable buildings via Google Maps/other images? https://www.fuenffreundefanpage.at/de_n-drehort.htm (page is in German but is just comparing screenshots from a TV series with real life location images available online/through Google Maps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Famous_Five_(1995_TV_series)newsjunkie (talk) 14:43, 22 May 2025 (UTC)

More eyes needed at an RfC at Wikiproject Scientology about to how to characterise the writings of L. Ron Hubbard on "Dianetics". Cambial — foliar❧ 13:42, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

Most of the articles in this category (that I checked) say that the character is "narcissistic," not that they "have been diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder." Narcissism isn't the same thing as narcissistic personality disorder. Obviously it matters a lot less for fictional characters but we shouldn't be putting people in psychiatric diagnosis categories unless the article mentions a diagnosis. Am I wrong? Just looking for a sanity check before I empty out this category. Prezbo (talk) 21:22, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

:: So many things wrong here, including the fact that if we should have a category like this, it should say "Fictional characters with narcissistic personality disorder" not "...narcissist personality disorder" as it currently has it. Every article that got stuck in that category that doesn't have substantive (or any) information in the article itself about the fictional character having NPD doesn't belong in this category. Beyond that, you could argue about whether the author/creator of the fictional character gets to be the person who designates that character as having NPD or whether it could be book reviewers. I looked at three articles in this category and none of them referenced NPD in the body of the article. So empty away and maybe also kill the category, or at least get someone to change it to the right spelling. Novellasyes (talk) 22:10, 13 May 2025 (UTC)

::Agreed thats just awkward... Given that we're dealing with fiction theres going to be a lot of grey area when it comes to diagnosis (how does that work in a story set before modern medical science for example? or deep in the future?)... If there is a category here I feel like it would be "Fictional narcissists" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:15, 14 May 2025 (UTC)

Most sources are written by Johnny Harris himself (his YouTube videos, Vox articles, two NyTimes articles, and LinkedIn page). Some are pretty flimsy, such as a link to an "alumni celebration" article by Brigham Young University, an LDS-sponsored school. The article seems in a pretty poor state. Ybllaw (talk) 13:56, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

: OR violations are not the same thing as poor/bad sources. Can you say why specifically you think there might be an OR or SYNTH violation on Johnny Harris (journalist)? Maybe the best thing for you to do at this point is to open up a section on Talk:Johnny Harris (journalist) and call it "Questionable sources" or something like that, and then pick out a few instances from the article that you think are poor/bad sources, say why you think that, and argue for removing any content based on them. Novellasyes (talk) 14:29, 17 May 2025 (UTC)

::I made a section over at Talk:Johnny Harris (journalist)#Poor sources.

::The article relies on Johnny Harris' own videos for entire sections, such as the "Personal life" and "Early life and education" sections. Isn't that original research? Writing not backed up by any independent source? Ybllaw (talk) 13:36, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

:::That falls under WP:ABOUTSELF. Schazjmd (talk) 16:24, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

• Simple uncontroversial biographical details fall under WP:ABOUTSELF, although it might be worth adding more sources to avoid a situation where the article is {{tq|based primarily on such sources}}. Anything {{tq|unduly self-serving}} or which involves {{tq|claims about third parties}} in particular would need another source. --Aquillion (talk) 18:51, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

The text by Edward Roger John Owen and Şevket Pamuk (There is one by both authors and another just by Şevket Pamuk.). One quote is "Total casualties among Muslim Turks and Kurds during this decade, military and otherwise, are estimated at close to 2 million." The other quote is "Total casualties, military and civilian, of Muslims during this decade are estimated at close to 2 million."

This text does not specify that the population decline was caused only by Christians (If the text is left without clarification the statement asserts they were caused by Christians alone since the topic is Christian persecution of muslims in Persecution of Muslims during the Ottoman contraction which none of the other editors can prove either.) so I added a mention of ottoman repression of Kurds as included in the figure since that was a cause of both death and emigration of Kurds from Anatolia at the time. This was objected to by another editor and we started discussing it in the Talk page.

We agreed to bring it to a Third-Party who suggested an alternative which did not mention the issue of Kurds or anything specific whilst acknowledging that the text does not specify it was Christians and is a general statement about how many fewer muslims there were in 1922 than in 1912. We agreed on "However this estimate includes all causes of population decline." To be clear this sentence is the area of contention.

The Third Party agrees it is not original research but the other editors do not. The quotes do not mention a perpetrator, cause or reason and states "Total casualties...". My contention is that the text me and the third party agreed on is not original research since it is not specifying who did something, the cause or the reason and is very general which is in line with the text as I mentioned.

This issue has been extensively discussed including with a Third-Party: Recent changes. John Not Real Name (talk) 19:30, 18 May 2025 (UTC)

:Yes that's OR. For one, it is pretty common for these types of estimates to exclude the estimated number of deaths due to natural causes and your preferred wording assumes the authors did not. Additionally, the authors state "Total casualties" not "total deaths", which indicates they are describing those who died because of the event, not the larger pool of those who died during the event. That said, even if they stated "Total deaths" it would still be OR to include that language. PositivelyUncertain (talk) 15:16, 21 May 2025 (UTC)

::I think you have misunderstood slightly. For starters the text is a population decline estimate, total casualties refers to dead and emigrated, that is general since there is no mention of why the decline occurred (There is mention for the other estimates.). Here is the full text:

::"To discuss the long-term consequences of the war in the Ottoman case, we need a wider focus than on these four years alone. From 1912 the Ottoman Empire and its principal successor state of Turkey were engaged in a series of wars that continued for a decade. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 were followed by the World War and then the War of Independence from 1920 to 1922. Demographic changes were one important and long-lasting legacy of this decade. The population of the areas that were later included in Turkey was close to 17 million in 1913. Total casualties among Muslim Turks and Kurds during this decade, military and otherwise, are estimated at close to 2 million. Moreover, the Armenian population of Anatolia declined from close to 1.5 million to less than 100,000 as a result of the deportation of most Armenians to the Syrian desert by the Young Turk government in 1915. Many Armenians as well as Muslims were massacred during this process, even more died of hunger and disease, and the rest of the Armenians fled Anatolia. Finally, in the largest agreement of population exchange signed between two governments, approximately 1.2 million Greeks left Anatolia, and in return approximately half a million Muslims arrived from Greece and the Balkans after 1923. These figures include the large numbers of Greeks who left western Anatolia after the defeat of the Greek occupation army in 1922. As a result of these massive changes, the population of Turkey stood at around 13 million at the end of 1924; of the decrease of about 20 per cent on a decade previously more than half had died and the rest had fled or emigrated."-The Ottoman economy in World War I (2005) By Şevket Pamuk, page 131-132

::My focus is actually on whether the text includes ottoman deportation of Kurds which definitely happened in the time and place in question. John Not Real Name (talk) 12:44, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

:::{{tq|For starters the text is a population decline estimate}}

:::I understand that but, because we're talking about casualties, we are talking about a subset of death statistic, not general population decline. But then I got to...

:::{{tq|total casualties refers to dead and emigrated}}

:::In no way does "casualties" refer to emigration. Full stop. I would suggest you find sources about the Ottoman deportation of Kurds because, as it stands, this source/passage does nothing of the sort. At this point I wouldn't even the disputed text is OR but factually incorrect. PositivelyUncertain (talk) 18:09, 23 May 2025 (UTC)

::::Pardon? We are referring to what? If it were deaths then he would write death. That makes no sense whatsoever. Okay. I have no idea what you are on about now. Included in that text is the statement that "As a result of these massive changes, the population of Turkey stood at around 13 million at the end of 1924; of the decrease of about 20 per cent on a decade previously more than half had died and the rest had fled or emigrated."-The Ottoman economy in World War I (2005) By Şevket Pamuk, page 132 This clearly means that there are only two options, either dead or emigration (If you mean fled then fine. I have no problem using that language.). It does not refer specifically to anything. That is my point. It includes all causes of population decline by that very fact. I have checked multiple sources on the question and the consensus is that around half of the 700,000 deported Kurds died. Even if it was only 100,000 dead that is something worth mentioning. This is aside from the context of the article being Christian persecution. Population decline estimates rest on dead or emigration. If you are wounded you are still counted for example. If you are not in the area you are not counted and the same for if your body is there but not your soul (Dead.). John Not Real Name (talk) 12:29, 24 May 2025 (UTC)

The original entry is inconclusive as it does not state the fact that Aleksander Kwasniewski, former president of Poland educated at Gdansk University his real surname was Stoltsman, spelling may differ, is of jewish background.

Wilkipidia needs to look at the entry book at the university of Gdansk to update the profile about the former president to distance itself from disinformation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 148.252.147.6 (talk) 16:04, 26 May 2025 (UTC)