User talk:Yogidoo88

Welcome![edit]

Hello, Yogidoo88, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

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I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to ask me on my talk page or place {{Help me}} on this page and someone will drop by to help. Again, welcome! HiLo48 (talk) 23:06, 27 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Others' userpages[edit]

Hi, Yogidoo88. Please don't edit other people's userpages, as you did here. See here for the appropriate guideline; as it says there, one should avoid substantially editing another's user and user talk pages, except when it is likely edits are expected and/or will be helpful. Your edit was not helpful; if you have an issue with another user, you should discuss it with them, or on an appropriate noticeboard, rather than leaving snarky messages on their user page. Thanks, Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 00:24, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The advice left would have likely been very helpful to people who are misled by that user as I had been. He has shown a habit of misguiding others regarding wikipedia policy and my advice will help people to not take it at face-value. If you could put it back, that would be great! Cheers. Yogidoo88 (talk) 00:28, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If you're interested, I'd be happy to discuss here how you think I'm misleading editors, or discuss interpretations of WP:PRIMARY. I'm also happy to forgive and forget and move on. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 00:46, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you claimed primary sources were insufficient when they are - when a reader can easily gain the same information in the entry from the primary source. You know this already.

And while we're at it, I don't see how a study put out by an MIT undergraduate using open-source machine learning is any less valid for consideration than:

i) a misleading journalist, leaving selected titbits for their target audience, who also has their hands-tied by their food, shelter and reputation maintainer.

ii) an old potatoe, using rusty biological wires, indulging themselves in endless paragraphs of ramblings usually based on what effectively boils down to hearsay, imagination and what creativity is left.

Which are littered all over wikipedia as sources worthy of consideration. What is the difference between the reputation of an author or the publisher and the student and their educator in putting out work that has the potential to be inaccurate or misleading? Are today's expectations of all journalists and authors that are accepted on wikipedia that much more stringent than undergraduates at prestigious universities?

If it is a policy that undergraduate papers cannot be used as primary sources, that should be mentioned in wikipedia policy, to be subject to actual debate. As of now, I don't see such a policy.Yogidoo88 (talk) 01:27, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I understand what you mean and you make some fine points about the details of the primary source policy. When it comes to primary sources being used in this way, for me, WP:EXCEPTIONAL applies. Primary sources are discouraged often because they can be misused. In this case, you were using a primary source to make an "exceptional" claim, that the NYT is politically biased towards a certain group. To me, that type of statement should be well-sourced by secondary coverage. As for the undergraduate thing, I agree that should disqualify the source. Research at that level should have peer-review involved, and be published in an appropriate journal. That's how I see it, but you clearly disagree, and that's okay. That's why we work to build consensus with other editors. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 01:31, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You say that WP:EXCEPTIONAL applies because I am making an "exceptional" claim. However:

WP:EXCEPTIONAL states:

Surprising or apparently important claims not covered by multiple mainstream sources;

There are two previously existing and reputable studies quoted in the same section of the article that make what is effectively the same claim as the undergraduate paper - who just uses machine learning to come to that same conclusion of bias.

Therefore it is not exceptional, as per the guideline you've linked.

On the topic of undergrad at MIT vs rando journalist/old phogey who got a publisher to sell his book.... there is little difference in the actual credibility. Ideally a paper would be peer-reviewed and published in a journal, but I don't see why it should be essential. Plenty of peer-reviewed papers that get published turn out to be rubbish also.

You could argue there is an expectation that a study has gone through that process when it is used a source, and I would agree. But it shouldn't be essential. Perhaps some sort of caveat in the introduction of the paper. Yogidoo88 (talk) 01:41, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)I think you should take a closer look at the policy on reliable sources--specifically, the section on scholarly articles. There are a few things to note here: first of all,the first bullet says that when relying on primary sources, extreme caution is advised. The third bullet discusses dissertations as a reliabe source: Completed dissertations or theses written as part of the requirements for a doctorate, and which are publicly available (most via interlibrary loan or from Proquest), can be used but care should be exercised. It goes on to say that Masters dissertations and theses are considered reliable only if they can be shown to have had significant scholarly influence. The minimum standard of scholarly work is to be at a graduate level, and even then, only a completed doctoral dissertation is normally considered reliable, and only if used with care. Undergraduate work is well below this standard. Finally, the final bullet says that Preprints, such as those available on repositories like arXiv, medRxiv or bioRxiv, are not reliable sources. The article you're citing is a preprint (it says so in the header of the paper itself), and is thus not a reliable source. Pyro The Skipper is correct here; this paper is not acceptable for use as a reliable source. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 01:35, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The section on Pre-prints says they are generally discouraged. It doesn't say that they cannot be used.

In this case the author is not making an exceptional claim. They are adding to claims of other papers already in the article.

The author provides links to the code used to replicate the study as open-source.

The interest comes from the machine learning used to process the information, which makes it particularly interesting to determine bias.

I'm not going to die on this hill. But adding the source with an explanation that is an undergraduate pre-print paper should be permissible, especially when you consider all the other rubbish that usually gets sourced.

For bio-medical articles, I would be much more hesitant. But in the case of determining bias, it's an interesting addition, worthy of a mention - with a suitable introduction. Yogidoo88 (talk) 01:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]