Trichome

thcscience_admin
Browse history interactively
← Previous editNext edit →
Content deleted Content added
VisualWikitext
JoePhin (talk | contribs)
Extended confirmed users
1,746 edits
drrraaaaa
Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contribs)
135 edits
Line 335: Line 335:
{{page break|label=}}
{{page break|label=}}
:If there are any items that you think are being inappropriately excluded from the page for some reason, please feel free to bring them up. I'm not sure if you're aware, but about 6/8 of the examples you brought up in your 'Defining misconception' subsection were already included on this page after being revisited sometime between 2011 and now. I already said it, but all these 'problems' you're bringing up are not problems at all. I'm afraid you're the third most tremendous WikiLawyer I've ever run into, User Rollinginhisgrave. Well, eh, come to think of it, maybe you're only the fourth, close contest though. [[User:JoePhin|<span style="color: green">Joe</span>]] ([[User talk:JoePhin|talk]]) 11:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
:If there are any items that you think are being inappropriately excluded from the page for some reason, please feel free to bring them up. I'm not sure if you're aware, but about 6/8 of the examples you brought up in your 'Defining misconception' subsection were already included on this page after being revisited sometime between 2011 and now. I already said it, but all these 'problems' you're bringing up are not problems at all. I'm afraid you're the third most tremendous WikiLawyer I've ever run into, User Rollinginhisgrave. Well, eh, come to think of it, maybe you're only the fourth, close contest though. [[User:JoePhin|<span style="color: green">Joe</span>]] ([[User talk:JoePhin|talk]]) 11:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)
::My reading of selection criteria is it is a criteria of things to be included in the article, which obviously involves stating or implying what not to include. An example: criteria 4, as an inclusion criteria stating only current misconceptions can come in the page, excludes ancient/obsolete misconceptions. This is all I mean by exclusion. Applied to this case: the question is what the X is in "list of common misconceptions among X." This is controversial, and is not implied. In determining what X means, and including entries to the page which are held by X, we are necessarily excluding entries that are held by groups other than X. You can paint this is an inclusion criteria (if you focus on the inclusion of beliefs held by X), or an exclusion criteria (if you focus on the exclusion of beliefs held by groups other than X). It is two sides of the same coin, and it is all regulated by [[WP:LSC]]. In practice, we have an inclusion criteria that misconceptions must be held by the world, countries and some small groups, as opposed to those held by scientists and some small groups (let's call this '''criteria 5'''). You can see this in play if we tried to include the misconception on the page [[Ammonium acetate]] despite the fact that criteria 1-4 are met. That this is the inclusion criteria, determined by OR, is the issue. This is a normal and reasonable reading of selection criteria. Now that I have framed it as an inclusion criteria, and not an exclusion criteria, do you believe that [[WP:LSC]] is applicable?
::If you understand that by specifying inclusion, you are necessarily implying exclusion (again, criteria 4 is literally this) reading the phrase "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed" (I am claiming criteria 5 is subjective right now) actually highlights the need for selection to be based on RS, which is the argument I am making.
::I hope you can consider that this is not Wikilawyering and is instead a reasonable read of the policy, and reflects how it is applied to this very page. It is also not a conflation of inclusion and exclusion. [[User:Rollinginhisgrave|Rollinginhisgrave]] ([[User talk:Rollinginhisgrave|talk]]) 12:57, 27 October 2022 (UTC)


== A love letter to you, my fellow editors ==
== A love letter to you, my fellow editors ==

Revision as of 12:57, 27 October 2022

Former FLCList of common misconceptions is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
October 29, 2006Articles for deletionNo consensus
March 24, 2009Articles for deletionKept
February 8, 2011Articles for deletionNo consensus
April 25, 2011Featured list candidateNot promoted
September 26, 2018Articles for deletionKept
Current status: Former featured list candidate


Widespread Myths You Probably Thought Were Facts

Here's good article on MSN that editors of this article can use as a source for this article: Widespread Myths You Probably Thought Were Facts A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 02:23, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The Steamboat Willie Misconception

It is a common misconception that Steamboat Willie was the first cartoon with sound but the real first cartoon with sound was 'My Old Kentucky Home' by Fleischer Studios. https://www.fleischerallstars.com/my-old-kentucky-home.html that is a source I could find backing me up. On the wikipedia page for the song My Old Kentucky Home https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Old_Kentucky_Home the cartoon is mentioned under 'Appearances in media' but without a citation. I believe we should add that 'My old Kentucky home' was first and came out 2 years before Steamboat Willie. Bunty's Great Grandson (talk) 05:27, 5 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I think this fails inclusion criterion #2:
2. The item is reliably sourced, both with respect to the factual contents of the item and the fact that it is a common misconception.
I'm not convinced that this is a common misconception. While the Steamboat Willie article does state that Steamboat Willie wasn't the first cartoon with sound, it doesn't give a source for this misconception.
Edderiofer (talk) 07:51, 10 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Neither topic article treats this as a common misconception, and I'm not seeing anything in the cited sources to support that it is a common misconception. Perhaps it is, but we need better sourcing and according to the inclusion criteria the entry does not meet the requirements. I've removed the entry (while traveling, so I was not logged in while making that edit.) Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:29, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There also seems to be a misconception that it was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, while it was actually Plane Crazy. Even if Plane Crazy was just a screen test instead of an official episode, it was released before Steamboat Willie. - Munmula (talk · contribs) 16:00, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I do agree that it's a common misconception, and I seriously considered putting it on the main page. However I couldn't find enough credible sources that discussed it, so I never did. Mount Patagonia (talk) 05:54, 14 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Disney could not find a distributor for Plane Crazy, so Steamboat Willie was the first Mickey Mouse film to actually be distributed to movie theatres. And by the way, the earlier Fleischer sound films were using the Phonofilm process, which had problems with the fidelity of the sound. Dimadick (talk) 07:44, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

gross income

"An increase in gross income will never reduce one's post-tax earnings (net income) due to putting one in a higher tax bracket."

This is false in Argentina, for example if you are in the G category of monotributo, you can earn up to $3,416,526.83 yearly, and pay $9,216.76 per month in taxes, and if you're in the H category, you can earn up to $4,229,985.60 and pay $16,114.67 monthly, this means that if you earned $3,416,526, you would end up with a yearly net income of $3,305,924.88, and if you earned $3,416,527 you would end up with $3,223,150.96, a $82,773.92 difference.

https://www.afip.gob.ar/monotributo/categorias.asp

The difference becomes even more evident when one reaches monotributo's max earnings allowed, and has to start paying as a responsable inscripto. Uwsi (talk) 17:39, 11 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Popeye & spinach entry

The item says "...Popeye the Sailor Man's strength gain from consuming cans of spinach is usually attributed to the iron content of spinach..." but I can't find support for that in either the topic article or the referenced cites.

Plenty of reliably sourced material about how spinach has less iron than commonly believed, but nothing that I have seen about how many people mistakenly believe spinach gives Popeye strength due to its iron content. (I'll leave aside for now the question of whether this article is the proper venue for erroneous beliefs about fictional characters.) I've added a citation needed tag for now, but we should either fix this soon or delete the entry. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:45, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I introduced the entry and am okay with its complete removal. Doesn't seem common to me; I noticed it in investigating the iron content of spinach. Supposedly, Popeye's creator never claimed it was the iron content, so if anything, it seems to be an extension of the spinach-iron misconception. Anderjef (talk) 01:06, 13 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I passionately read Popeye comic book stories in my childhood, and I still enjoy watching the Popeye animated films. I have never heard of any association with iron content. The stories treat spinach as a performance-enhancing substance, which grants Popeye temporary superpowers. Not all that different than Hourman (Rex Tyler), a superhero who gains hour-long power boosts from ingesting an experimental drug of his own creation. Dimadick (talk) 14:14, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Food and Cooking

The item says "Botanically, but often not in everyday language, the following are fruits: allspice, beans, capsicum (bell and chili pepper), maize (corn), cucumber, eggplant, nuts, okra, pea, pumpkin, rice, squash, tomato, wheat, and zucchini.[31][32][33] Likewise, rhubarb and carrots, while sometimes culinarily or legally treated as fruits, are botanically vegetables.[34]" but botanically there is no such thing as a vegetable. Any number of websites will confirm this. Sumithar (talk) 13:40, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I see. A combination of reading too much about the fruits and confusing myself. I have modified it for now to finish "botanically are not so." Anderjef (talk) 15:45, 15 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would argue for excluding the entry entirely due to the words being used in different contexts, academic vs general. This partly mirrors the exclusion of borscht due to the way English uses the word differently than it is "authentically" used, and the dark ages entry is similarly controversial due to academic historians taking issue with the way the time period is discussed in popular culture. When people say a pumpkin isn't fruit they aren't talking about the academic usage, and there will be plenty of ways academics use words differently than the layperson, but that doesn't mean they all constitute common misconceptions. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 08:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. This is simply an example of a disagreement between common language usage and scientific (botanical) classifications. Agree that technically strawberries are not fruit while tomatoes and eggplant are, but I don't think calling things by their common name meets the criteria of a misconception. "Tomatoes are poisonous" is a misconception (an archaic one so not includable here) while "Tomatoes are vegetables" isn't. There are lots of examples like this and I don't think we should include them: King Crabs are not crabs, Cuttlefish are not fish (but humans are from a cladistic standpoint), Catfish are not cats, Seahorses are not horses, Fox squirrels are not foxes, etc. I've removed the entry. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 13:01, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. --Macrakis (talk) 14:03, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. The belief that tomatoes (and all these other things) are not fruits represents a genuine incorrect belief that there is something fundamental about tomatoes that makes them different from, say, grapefruits, when in fact, they are both fruits. Incidentally, the misconception isn't that "tomatoes are vegetables," the misconception is that "tomatoes aren't fruits." It could be said that the broader misconception is that 'fruits aren't vegetables,' 'vegetable' is just a word that means plants, plant matter, or edible parts of a plant, and fruits are always one of those three (sometimes not edible to humans, but edible to something). The fact that carrots (which are roots) are sometimes considered fruits is equally egregious. This is an extremely common misconception, particularly, a misunderstanding of science.
Are we going to delete all our scientific misconceptions (the dark side of the moon isn't dark, crystal healing doesn't work, vaccines don't cause autism, etc.) because, while all those things may technically be true, if you screw your head around backwards and look at it from the commonly wrong perspective some notable percentage of the general public holds, it turns out the common misconception is no misconception at all! The dark side of the moon is dark (if you use the wrong definition of the word dark), crystal healing does work (if you count the placebo effect, and also 'wHo KnOwS, ThErE's No PrOoF aNd EvIdEnCe ThAt It UnEqUiViCoAlLy DoEsN't WoRk!'), and vaccines do cause autism, if you listen to what Andrew Wakefield has to say on the subject, and really, aren't ALL perspectives on scientific issues equally valid? No. All perspectives on matters of scientific fact are not equally valid, and Wikipedia should privilege actual science over unscientific nonsense. The fact that the argument "don't worry, this is just a simple case where science disagrees with what people commonly believe, that doesn't make it a common misconception" is being used in an unironic way here boggles my mind. That's the very essence of a common misconception.
If we have any RS saying that people actually believe cuttlefish are fish, then we should include it as a misconception. If no RS say that, and we have no reason to think people actually believe cuttlefish belong to a taxonomic group they don't belong to, then bringing it up as an example is a red herring. We do have RS saying that people commonly and wrongly believe tomatoes are not fruits. This meets every criteria for inclusion in this page, and I strongly support its inclusion. Joe (talk) 15:27, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We're not talking about science as a popularity contest; your analogy isn't valid. We're talking about words that have more than one definition. I do agree that "are botanically vegetables" isn't a good phrase. VQuakr (talk) 15:42, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
More relevant discussions are whether bananas trees are actually trees (entry removed) and ice age referring to previous periods of ice ages vs period with glacial ice on Earth (entry removed). Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 17:48, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The assertion here was that it is common for those who would say "tomato is not fruit" to either not recognize botanical usage can differ from other usages or that botanically a tomato is indeed a fruit. As such, under this clarification, perhaps the provided list(s) could do with refinement. Otherwise, I could see grounds for removing the entry based on insufficient commonness (commonness for which no source was provided), but not due to language's flexibility (as was caveat-ed with the phrase "but often not in everyday language"—consider how the sentence reads with that phrase removed). Anderjef (talk) 11:43, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Definitions can be wrong. The once-common belief that whales are not mammals is an example of that. Happily, these days people commonly accept that whales are mammals, but if we were making Wikipedia back in the 1700's, "Whales are mammals" would be a perfectly good correction to a common misconception for this list. So too with "tomatoes are fruits." The fact that the common man has an incorrect definition in his head doesn't mean it isn't a misconception, that's exactly what a common misconception is. Joe (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think an unscientific definition is necessarily wrong, it's just... unscientific. If people know (or at least know of the existence of) the scientific definition AND believe something doesn't meet that definition when in fact it does (or vice versa), that could be a misconception. If people simply have a different definition in their heads, and believe that the thing doesn't meet this definition when it indeed doesn't (but it does meet the corresponding scientific definition) (or vice versa), then that doesn't seem like much of a misconception to me, just a difference in the use of language between scientists and non-scientists. Or just between contexts where people are speaking scientifically and where they know they are not. W. P. Uzer (talk) 19:34, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If the classification of 'fruits' as fruits was arbitrary, I'd agree. Someone mentioned misconceptions about 'what is a tree,' and since trees have evolved dozens of different times throughout Earth's history, the 'trees' are not a biologically real taxonomic group, and therefore the boundaries of what is and is not a tree can be somewhat fuzzy. The same is not true for fruits. The belief that there is something fundamentally different about tomatoes that makes them different from bananas and oranges is wrong. It's no different than if lots of people believed whales weren't mammals, or pandas weren't bears, or humans weren't animals, etc., etc. It is a misconception, and it is common, what more do we need? Joe (talk) 22:34, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoePhin: no, that's not how words work. I get that you wish English were a prescriptivist language without polysemes, but it isn't. We use context clues to determine which usage applies; the chef that doesn't consider cucumber a fruit isn't "wrong" [1]. VQuakr (talk) 22:51, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It's nothing to do with words, nothing at all. If one believes that tomatoes are fundamentally unlike oranges, apricots, and lemons, one is wrong in that belief (just as one would be wrong to think that oranges are fundamentally unlike apricots, tomatoes, and lemons, etc.)
It doesn't even matter what words one uses to express this view, it remains wrong no matter the medium. Joe (talk) 23:02, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. Just because they are all fruits in the botanical sense doesn't mean they are in the culinary sense. Which are you selecting if a recipe calls for a fruit compote? Your definition of fundamental is arbitrary. VQuakr (talk) 23:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoePhin: got a source for the "once-common belief that whales are not mammals" claim? People used to use the word "fish" to refer to all sea creatures, a broader usage than the scientific or common usage today, but that wasn't because they were ignorant of what a mammal was. It was because the definition of the word changed over time. That's language evolving, it doesn't mean that the previous usage was "wrong". VQuakr (talk) 21:01, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Linnaeus' classification of whales as mammals was not uncontentious at the time, and only after a number of famous dissections had been performed did the scientific community broadly accept whales as mammals, sometime in the latter half of the 1700's. Needless to say, public knowledge of the fact that whales suckle their babies as humans and other mammals do did not instantaneously spread throughout the global population after the scientific community came to broadly accept it. Happily, the idea that whales aren't mammals is no longer common, and so, not being a current misconception, we don't need to include it on this page.
That said, however, the fact that whales are more closely related to humans and other mammals than to, say, birds, may still be a common misconception to this day. In fact, it's quite possible that we should include an entry to the effect that "Different organisms on Earth all derive from a single universal common ancestor, and consequently all living things are related to one another. Different 'kinds' of animals and plants were not specially created, as is attested in several religious traditions." (or something similar). Just glancing at the creationism page, it seems like there's strong evidence that it's a very common misconception. Joe (talk) 22:24, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Criticism of "Common Misconception"

Efforts to delete this page have been driven by the page's alleged triviality and lack of clear inclusion criteria. In response to the latter, assessing whether something is a common misconception has been left up to whether a reliable source describes it as such, and whether the inclusion criteria is met to add extra barriers to entry. We have put this in place as many Wikipedia editors have different understandings of what is common, and what is a misconception, making it hard to form a consensus, but also because it's not up to Wikipedia editors to decide what is common and a misconception per basic WP:OR. There is a problem with both.

RS calling something a common misconception

There are two major problems with this as the standard. One is that a RS calling something a common misconception doesn't automatically qualify it as one. Searching "common misconception" in Google Scholar generates thousands of peer reviewed results with titles like "A common misconception about the Eyring equation" and "Addressing a Common Misconception: Ammonium Acetate as Neutral pH “Buffer” for Native Electrospray Mass Spectrometry". While adding them to their topic pages would qualify them for the criteria, we don't add them because the "common" group the misconceptions are held by is probably not universal, but rather within a population (mathematician/chemists). If the explicit criteria were updated to reflect this it would run into the problem of a definition of common (a belief held by a general population) trumping the phrase's inclusion in reliable sources. Even if this definition were added, it would incite further debate with what a general population is: the world? Countries? States? Ethnicities? Professions? If we want to introduce size as a qualifier, some professions will have more participants than countries have populations, and invites the question of where to draw the line. These questions all necessarily arise from disallowing something which has a RS calling it a common misconception.

The second problem with RS calling something a common misconception is that many sources don't explicitly say "common misconception". Many (most) say things like "popularly believed" or "although incorrect, it is commonly believed". While we may think these are equivalent to common misconception, to make such a determination we need to have a definition of common and misconception which we are evaluating this meaning against. This can get dicy quickly: some editors think urban legends are distinct from misconceptions, and I personally would say a key component of the meaning of common is that it is referring to a portion of a population rather than a mass of people, meaning saying "many people incorrectly believe" is not equivalent to "common misconception". To even have these discussions, and make any evaluation of phrasing being equivalent to "common misconception" involves invoking a definition of commmon and misconception not found in RS, but instead in a mass of precedent accumulated over 27 talk page archives and our own intuitions and original research.

This is not found in other pages. Imagine if there was a consensus of RS calling something a terrorist incident and the editors, by using their own personal, intuitive sense of what constitutes a terrorist incident was, decided to exclude it from the page list of terrorist incidents.

Defining Common

If we tried to make explicit our definition of common, as is necessarily required of the article to evaluate RS and phrases they use being equivalent to "common misconception", we run into many more problems. One historical proposed approach has been to have evidence for misconceptions being common, using opinion polling, however, where you draw the line is up to editors and still presupposes different questions common raises. I.e. if a poll has 10% of Italians confirming they believe in a misconception, is this common? 30%? 90%? Even at 100%, in terms of the globe, this is <1% belief and from such a frame of reference not common at all. Even though we don't do this mathematical line drawing, we do it conceptually in determining what groups can hold a misconception for it to be common.

Defining Misconception

While there have been more conceptual challenges to the page due to the difficulty of defining common, more problems have amounted from what constitutes a misconception. This has happened in both directions: sources describing common beliefs as false can be enough to merit entry, while some sources explicitly referred to beliefs as misconceptions have been repeatedly discounted. Beliefs have been argued not to be misconceptions if they're abstractions of complex ideas, if they're a misnomer, if they're a hoax, if they're pseudoscience, scientific meaning has changed over time, prejudice, when the facts are controversial (particularly when they're manufactured controversies), when someone has been lied to by someone they trust, where scientists have a technical definition for a term different from what is common, or dogma. There are many more and it's been up to editors discretion over time what qualifies as these. Key questions include whether the falsehood being propogated honestly or for gain can disqualify, and whether being presented with the correction being not able to change someone's mind can disqualify. Neither have a consensus, entries being decided either way.

Where to next

The inability to purely use RSs for the page due to such a process presupposing a definition of common and misconception while also being unable to define common and misconception have plagued this page and baked in OR and a lack of a clear inclusion criteria required for WP:LISTCRIT. A clear inclusion criteria will not, and cannot eventuate. Is this a reasonable assessment? If so, should the page be brought to AfD? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 18:31, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above text wall is a good example of Wikilawyering, particularly,
"Applying a portion of a policy or guideline to achieve an objective other than compliance with that policy or guideline or its objectives. Particularly when doing so in a way that is stricter, more categorical or more literal than the norm."
A lot of these 'objections,' presented as if they apply to this page in particular, are actually just general issues with Wikipedia. How do we determine what material to include in Wikipedia and what material to exclude? The answer is simple: editors determine, through consensus, what reliably sourced material is WP:Notable, and what material is not. Ultimately, the consensus of the editors is the only method used to determine whether material warrants inclusion for literally all material on Wikipedia.
Taking issue with the fact that editors must determine the notability of reliably sourced information through consensus is an objection to Wikipedia itself, not this page in particular.
Please see WP:NOTOR for an explanation of what OR is not. Being a core aspect of Wikipedia, the process of building a consensus to determine what editors find noteworthy enough for inclusion is definitely a wonderful example of something that is WP:NOTOR. I've seen appeals to OR misused a lot in my time, but suggesting that WP:N itself is WP:OR might just take the cake.
Our current inclusion criteria are more than sufficient. If a common misconception is notable enough to be mentioned on its home page, then it is almost certainly notable enough to be mentioned here. Simple as pie.
Where to next?
If someone just doesn't like this page for some reason, I suggest that such a person should no longer bother with it and go elsewhere. I will be only too happy to oppose any attempts to vandalize or mass-blank portions of this page that have been painstakingly constructed and lovingly maintained over the years, as I'm sure will the dozens of editors familiar with this delightful little subsection of the project who've worked so hard to make it what it is today. Joe (talk) 20:15, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Notability is not the issue. I have read through the talk page archives (I've briefly summarised most here) and AfDs and the reason our standard for inclusion is reliable sources describing things as common misconceptions is because there is a consensus that editors determining what is common is OR. We just cannot be the ones determining notability on this page. A quote from AfD3: "As with all Wikipedia articles, we defer to reliable sources. If reliable sources say that something is a "common misconception" (or some reasonable synonym thereof), then we include it. If not, we don't." What we have found, as I have noted (in too many words sorry), is that even with this, editors do necessarily engage in defining common and misconception in ways that overrule RS. I'm sorry if I went too far with the synonym criticism.
I'm not going to WP:POINT, but I doubt you believe if I added the misconception about the Eyring equation to its topic article then to this one that it would meet our "more than sufficient" inclusion criteria? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:19, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Good lord what a wall of text. Exercise brevity. Verifiability has never guaranteed inclusion anywhere on WP. The system, as in all articles, is that the editor(s) promoting inclusion of verifiable content must establish consensus for its inclusion. VQuakr (talk) 21:36, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That is fine, but goes against the consensus reached that editors determining what is common is unacceptable. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:54, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn't. VQuakr (talk) 21:58, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Would you mind explaining how? I am not being (deliberately) obtuse. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:06, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
It never crossed my mind that you were. Items need to be verifiably common misconceptions to have a chance for inclusion, per WP:V and WP:NOR. Excluding verifiable items from the article for any of a variety of reasons (including but not limited to "not common enough") is normal editorial discretion that is subject to consensus. VQuakr (talk) 22:16, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the first part as true, but from my reading of the discussion at the time the criteria was put in place the normal editorial discretion you note was given up. If you could read over the part of the AfD I got the quote from a listed above could you tell me if I'm misreading? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 22:22, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are you seriously extracting a random quote from an 11 year old AfD that was closed as "a trainwreck" and attaching significance to it? Or are we talking about a different quote? VQuakr (talk) 22:58, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Suggesting that there is, or ever was, a 'consensus' that the editors on this page are not allowed to use standard editorial discretion and consensus-building to determine what does and doesn't warrant inclusion on this page (unlike literally every other page on Wikipedia) is not only wrong, it's super-wrong. One might even call it a misconception.
It is not OR for editors to use their discretion and common sense when determining what material taken from RS constitutes a common misconception, not any more than it is OR for editors to use their discretion and common sense when determining what material taken from RS constitutes a fatal bear attack in North America when deciding what to include in and exclude from the List of fatal bear attacks in North America page.
If I read an article about a fatal dog attack in Australia, and I used my editorial discretion to decide not to include it in the List of fatal bear attacks in North America page, I have not done OR because "the RS didn't SAY the dogs weren't also bears, and the RS didn't SAY that Australia isn't in North America, and if you bring up other sources suggesting that dogs aren't bears and Australia isn't in North America, that's just WP:SYNTH!" My face-value interpretation that dogs are not bears, and that Australia is not in North America, though quite likely nowhere stated within the RS itself, is not OR. Same thing if the RS talk about a fatal bear attack in North Carolina, but the RS doesn't explicitly state that North Carolina is in North America.
Simple interpretation of RS is not OR.
The exact same editorial discretion applies when determining what material to include on this page, or literally any other page. Joe (talk) 23:40, 18 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
VQuakr I'm saying this quote isn't random, it's representative. You can lay it out to imply the position is ridiculous, but it seems very unridiculous to look at the context the criteria were created in when evaluating them.
JoePhin This simple interpretation of RS isn't what's at issue here. It is different from an RS calling something fatal and editors deciding to remove it because they have their own definition of fatal, when their previous inability to define fatal has got the page almost deleted. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:00, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
If an editor adds material to the List of fatal bear attacks in North America because a RS states that "a bear killed two people in Ontario," without using the word 'fatal' to describe the attack, that is no problem at all, that is categorical WP:NOTOR, and that is exactly the same type of editorial discretion that regularly and properly occurs on literally all Wikipedia pages. No one but you, User Rollinginhisgrave, is concerned that editors sometimes need to interpret RS. We do it on this page and we do it on every single Wikipedia page. You are the only one who thinks that the extremely normal Wikipedia process of common sense interpretation of RS, or simple editorial discretion, is somehow an issue. This is becoming silly. Joe (talk) 05:05, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rollinginhisgrave: you selected the quote and asked my opinion; I provided it. I've been quoting policy and guidelines, not deep meta trivia. No, I really don't care even a little bit what the context was a decade plus ago or whether this page barely survived deletion back then. Our policies and practices have matured since then and the 2018 AfD resulted in a quite clear consensus to keep. VQuakr (talk) 05:20, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
JoePhin; You are right that I went too far with my criticism of usage of synonyms. A source saying something is a popular misconception can be reasonably read as the same as common misconception. However, saying "many people repeat this urban legend" or the equivalent doesn't involve such a simple reading. If I could ask you something, if 50% of Americans believe something, meaning 2% of the world population believes something, is that common? How would making and enforcing such a determination not be OR?
VQuakr; the 2018 AfD doesn't really touch on the OR issues, but thanks for your patience in dealing with my discussion of the page's history, I'll try to stay away from it. Could you answer the same question posed to JoePhin since I think it's important? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rollinginhisgrave (talk • contribs) 07:01, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
We've actually previously established a consensus that regionally common misconceptions are perfectly acceptable for this page. Joe (talk) 17:22, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with JoePhin here. Though it's much easier to look at a specific proposed item than to try to establish precepts using hypotheticals. VQuakr (talk) 18:52, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Reading through the wall of text above, I had to go back to the beginning to see what actual action is being proposed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the actual particular question on the table appears to be: "...should the page be brought to AfD?"

My answer is no, for all the same reasons given in all the other failed attempts at AfD. But nobody needs my permission, or even our (that is, the editors of this page and readers of the talk page) opinion. Fell free to take it to AfD. Nobody's stopping you. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 19:51, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Creating an AfD with no chance of the discussion resulting in deletion is disruptive. I wouldn't want Rollinginhisgrave to take this to an AfD resulting in speedy keep, get dinged for it, and then feel like he'd been entrapped. VQuakr (talk) 20:25, 19 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Joe, VQuakr; I'm not asking if there's a consensus. I'm asking if looking at it and saying, just because in the scale of the world it's not common, we think it's common isn't OR (without reference to RS). WP:LSC with "Avoid original or arbitrary criteria that would synthesize a list that is not plainly verifiable in reliable sources" makes it clear we can't create an original criteria for what is common or not as this is OR. Joe, you keep linking WP:NOTOR, but that policy specifically advises against evaluating the accuracy of sources, which is functionally what we're doing when looking at a RS saying something is common and deciding it's not common based off our own definitions, whether these definitions are an editor's personal one or whether it's a page consensus.
Swordfish; I'm not just going to take it to AfD if it's only me, I might get an RfC if I don't understand people's interpretation of how I think the page violates OR, although I'm trying to make sure I'm not misunderstanding. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 11:46, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rollinginhisgrave: honestly we're bordering on WP:STICK territory at this point. If you still don't understand why this isn't OR I'm now sure how else we could explain it to you. No one has said we don't use RS. VQuakr (talk) 18:43, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You can't ask 'how is it not OR if we are determining if something is common' "without reference to RS". The use of RS stating that something is a common misconception (or some synonymous phrase) is what makes the inclusion of material on this page WP:NOTOR.
The fact that we exclude some material for which there are RS that may literally use the words "common misconception" is also NOTOR. In 99% of cases, it's not an issue of us determining the 'reliability' of sources, although I note, it is the proper purview of Wikipedia editors to determine which sources are reliable and which are not. However, in the vast majority of cases, the exclusion of material which is literally stated in RS to be "a common misconception" is not because we find the sources to be unreliable; some RS may literally say the words "common misconception" to describe something, but not mean it literally.
Please see this example from WP:NOTOR to illustrate what I mean, taken from the Accurately contextualizing quotations section:
It is not original research to contextualize a possibly misleading quotation, provided this is done accurately and neutrally. A real-world example: A news article contains a passage specifically and only about polydactyl cats, not cats generally. Referring to the work of recent genetic researchers on American polydactyl cats, molecular biologist Danial Ibrahim is partially quoted: "From this, they hypothesized that all American cats must have a common ancestor, a founder cat who was polydactyl and then spread the trait across the U.S." The piece then continued its commentary on the polydactyl cat research.[2] A Wikipedia article may quote Ibrahim (a secondary source interpreting a primary-source journal paper) as concurring that the research "hypothesized that all American [polydactyl] cats must have a common ancestor". In fact, it would be a misuse of the source material to fail to clarify the quotation, much less to try to use it to suggest that all American cats, normal and polydactyl alike, share a common ancestor.
Taking into consideration the context surrounding any reliably sourced statement is always important. Note how, in the above quote, Ibrahim literally said that all American cats have a common polydactyl ancestor, but he did not literally mean it. There are instances where, in context, it makes sense to call something a "common misconception" among some tiny subgroup. For example, I might accurately say that "it is a common misconception among some stubborn paleontologists that whales directly descend from mesonychids," and in the context of a discussion about stubborn paleontologists, I might shorten that statement to "it is a common misconception that whales directly descend from mesonychids." In such a case, I would not be saying that it is literally a common misconception, despite my words. If one were to take my quote out of the larger context of a discussion about things stubborn paleontologits believe, that would be an example of quote mining.
Understanding the context in which statements are made, and interpreting them with that context, is an important duty of a Wikipedia editor. Again, this does not just apply to this page, but to literally any Wikipedia page. Taking material from RS out of context and using it in a way that it was not intended to be used (as with the polydactyl cat example), is something that we need to avoid on all Wikipedia articles. The fact that we exclude some material, even though it is reliably sourced, for this reason is right and proper. Joe (talk) 18:46, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
VQakr; I was making a narrow point, I recognise fully that RS is used. When saying "without reference to RS", I mean that in a hypothetical where 50% of Americans believe something and it is referred to as a common misconception, the reason we are including it is not as there is a page consensus that regional misconceptions can be included, it is because a RS has called it a "common misconception." If the consensus formed the other way, and a reliable source calling something common in America can't go on the page because editors understand it as not common in the world as a whole, such a determination would clearly be challenged as beyond the editor's purview as they're just using their own definition of common and enforcing it on the page.
Joe; thanks for taking the time to write this out.
I explain what I meant by "without reference to RS" to VQuakr above.
This isn't an issue of taking quotes out of context. There are two questions in the American example: should the example be included on the page, and should it be worded as "it is a common misconception that..." No one would argue with you on the second point that saying "it is a common misconception that..." would be inaccurately contextualising quotations, and as a result, we preface entries when held by groups with what group it is held by (i.e. "it is a common misconception in America that..."). The first question however is unrelated to the second, as it asks are misconceptions held by Americans common enough to be included on a page "list of common misconceptions." It questions what it means to be common, and we, with reference to our own understanding of what it means to be common, are drawing the lines. This is the OR in question. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A note on woodshrikes

There is no hard-and-fast cutoff point at which something becomes common, and that is just fine. If one looks up the word common in the dictionary, one won't find that it says "something that occurs in more than 50% of cases" or even "something that occurs in more than 10% of cases" or anything like that. Something common 'occurs often, is found often, or is done often' (Google dictionary). What does it mean for something to occur 'often'? What percentage of occurrences must something occur in before it is occurring often? To try to answer this question is to embroil oneself in a Sorites paradox. The edges of what is 'common' or 'often' are fuzzy, not defined in significant figures.
How often, when birding, will one see a common woodshrike? If one counted up all the times one saw a bird, and all the times one saw a common woodshrike, and divided the latter by the former, one would have a percentage. If someone else went birding and did the same thing, they would have a different percentage. If one went to a different part of the country where common woodshrikes were more or less common, one would get a different number. If one went to a place in the world where common woodshrikes didn't occur at all, one would find that the number was 0%. If one counted up all the woodshrikes in the world, and divided that number by all the birds in the world, one would get a number, and it would probably be a pretty small number, and it wouldn't be the same number one would get if one counted up all the common gulls in the world and divided that by all the birds in the world, and the global percentage occurrence of common woodshrikes and common gulls might be significantly different from each other. All of this is fine, but in no way does it mean that common woodshrikes are not common, or that we can not call common woodshrikes common, or that we cannot have a page about common woodshrikes because "How are we defining what is and isn't common? What's the percentage cutoff? Are common woodshrikes really common?" It doesn't matter. Asking the question 'at what point does something become common' isn't even sensible (again, see Sorites).
Ultimately, it is not the job of Wikipedia editors to take a census of all common woodshrikes, or all instances of a common misconception, to determine if they occur at some arbitrary frequency. Our job is to look at what the reliable sources say, and report it in an encyclopedic fashion. With some rare exceptions, it is likely impossible to know exactly how common any common thing is, unless you really put in the work and count. The author of a reliable source used for a Wikipedia article does not need to have counted all the black haired men in the world in order to report that "black haired men are fairly common." So too with all other things, not even just common things. If a reliable source reports that "Platinum group elements (PGEs)... are extremely rare in the Earth's crust." we do not need to confirm it ourselves, we do not need to know what standard the RS was using, as long as we're reporting what the RS says in the same context the RS was saying it, that's all we need as Wikipedia editors.
As mentioned above, we can exclude material RS call 'common' in some situations, depending on context. We may also exclude material taken from sources where something reported as 'common' is obviously not common using a simple English understanding of the word 'common,' per WP:BLUE (e.g., if a source reported that 'it is a common misconception that humans have twenty-nine fingers, humans actually have ten fingers', we could comfortably determine that the source was not reliable through the use of common sense - this is very rare). In cases where something's 'commonness' is on the edge of what might be considered common, as will inevitably occur from time to time with concepts with fuzzy boundaries like 'what is common' or 'what is tall' or 'what is a pile' or 'what is a chair' etc., etc., the various editors may discuss it, and come to a consensus on whether it warrants inclusion or not. This is quite rare, I'd estimate that more than 95% of material added to this page is so unambiguous that it never gets discussed. In cases where something is ambiguous, we tend to err on the side of caution. All of that is fine, and also, all of that occurs on the vast majority of other Wikipedia pages.
I appreciate that you're trying to be very complete and very rigorous in your thinking, but it's not necessary, or possible, to rigorously define fuzzy categories. When you really dig down, outside the realm of pure mathematics, it turns out that all concepts are fuzzy at a high enough magnification. That does not mean we're only allowed to have Wikipedia articles about math. The fact that there is not a rigorous definition of the word 'chair' does not mean that we, as Wikipedia editors, can not use editorial discretion and common sense to accurately include and exclude information taken from reliable sources on the Chair page. Joe (talk) 23:30, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rollinginhisgrave: this cycle of hypotheticals is worse than useless. Unless you've a practical concern here you are wasting electrons. VQuakr (talk) 23:43, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Joe; could you give me an example of another list article that you feel I would apply the same criticism to of editors applying OR?
VQuakr; I've given the example of an entry based off "A common misconception about the Eyring equation". You can pretty much sub this into the discussion if you want. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:28, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Rollinginhisgrave: fails criterion 3. If it didn't, there still is no OR in choosing not to include it per WP:VNOT. I can't imagine what could still be confusing to you about this, but do you have any remaining questions? VQuakr (talk) 00:46, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@VQuakr: It depends on the reason given for excluding via VNOT. If the reason is editors don't think it's common, that's OR per previous args. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 00:54, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
No. It. Isn't. The context of the sources matter. If this isn't clear to you by now, then we are in WP:CIR territory. VQuakr (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
When you say the context of the sources, you are referring to sources addressing a smaller group than other sources? Or something else? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could I, give you, an example of a list article, that I, feel you, would think might involve editors engaging in OR? I hope this doesn't come across as unkind, User Rollinginhisgrave, I don't mean to sound mean, but at this point, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you thought every single page on Wikipedia, including all the list articles, were suffering from OR. I don't think you have a very firm grasp on what constitutes OR. If we have RS that state something is a common misconception, including that would not be OR. If we have RS that state something is a common misconception, and we don't include it for any of a number of normal procedural reasons, that, too, is not OR. Joe (talk) 02:03, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Could you just give me an example of one you think I might take issue with? For instance, I don't think List of terrorist incidents suffers these issues. If there's an RS that states something is a common misconception, including it wouldn't be OR. If you don't include an item because you don't personally believe it's common when a reliable source says it is, that's not a normal procedural reason and is OR. Etc etc, we've been over this. I'd love to see a page that you think does this definitional work outside of RS. If you could link one it would be a great help. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:23, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously, are you trolling? The talk archives of that page are full of discussions about what should or shouldn't be included. Whether you would take issue with any of the decisions there is (of course) something only you could ever hope to answer. VQuakr (talk) 03:00, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There is maybe one discussion about what should be included in the three years since the current list criteria came in which relies on a consensus of reliable sources and in no way have you seen editors since trying to exclude entries that meet the criteria because they have their own definition of terrorism. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Are there any particular misconceptions that you think should be included on this page, but which are currently not? User Rollinginhisgrave, perhaps you're not aware, but this is a dynamic list. The page does not purport to be complete, and you can add anything you think is missing. As long as it meets the inclusion criteria, it is unlikely to be challenged, and even if it is challenged and we have to have a discussion about it and reach a consensus to include/disinclude it, well, that's just how it goes on every Wikipedia page. You won't find a Wikipedia page where other editors can't challenge the material you add. Nevertheless, there's nothing stopping you from giving it a shot and adding material to the page, nothing at all. If you feel the page is incomplete, that's not at all wrong, this page is incomplete (and always will be), and you can help by expanding it. Joe (talk) 03:55, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I really would like it if you could link me a list article that you think I would find falls into the same issues as this one where editors are excluding what a RS identifies as meeting a definition due to editors own definitions. I don't mean to harp on about this, but I am skeptical of your claim that this is standard wiki procedure, and if it is, it should be very easy to find. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:13, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User Rollinginhisgrave, I already gave you an example. List of fatal bear attacks in North America. What do you consider to be the southernmost extent of North America? Does a fatal bear attack right on the border of that furthest extent count? Is Mesoamerica part of North America, and do fatal bear attacks in Mesoamerica count? Is Greenland part of North America, and do fatal bear attacks in Greenland count? Does a fatal bear attack that takes place on polar sea ice, technically off the shore of North America, count as being a fatal bear attack in North America? If we previously decided that fatal bear attacks on sea ice do count, and the question comes up of whether to include a polar ice attack that's technically closer to Russia, but also fairly close to Alaska, and the person attacked walked from Alaska, what do we do? We have a discussion about it, and we decide what to include and what not to include in order to present our readers with the best encyclopedic experience. All of these questions, and more, are examples of edge-case situations where editors might need to use editorial discretion to decide what to include and what to exclude, and they might have entirely reasonable discussions about all these edge-cases, and they might come to a consensus that they won't be including Greenland bear attacks and that those can go in a different page, and that decision or any other like it is simply not OR.
If you think that deciding which way to go on any of those questions would be OR, then you do not know what OR is and you should be very careful before you go around making imputations of OR, because you're likely to offend someone with false accusations of OR. Likewise, when we editors have reasonable discussions about what material taken from RS to present on this page, we are not engaging in OR. I assure you, even if you're not aware, arguments and discussions about what exactly constitutes "X" and what should and shouldn't be included on "The Page of X" are extremely common all over Wikipedia, and in no way constitute original research. Does this make sense to you? Joe (talk) 16:25, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I really appreciate you writing this out. I think there's a key difference here: there is a discussion in RS of what constitutes North America, and whether the places you list are in North America. When we argue whether these places are in North America, we have our discussion (or could) with reference to such RS. There is no such discussion in RS of what it means for something to be common (there couldn't be). List of fatal bear attacks has two components, whether it's fatal, and whether it's in North America. Both these questions have been discussed in RS, and if a source calling something a fatal bear attack in North America wanted to be contested (even if unlikely), we would be able to contest it with reference to other RS's positions on the questions. We can't do that with the phrase common (or misconception). As such, I don't actually think editors contesting any edge-cases you discuss would be OR. I hope this clarifies my understanding of OR, and that your understanding of it and my position on the page's breach of it aren't accurate. I would love to hear your thoughts. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 05:43, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Please see the above discussion on woodshrikes for a practical example of how we use and understand words like common on Wikipedia. The short version is: we use reliable sources to determine what is and is not a common misconception, and we use our common sense and our understanding of plain English to determine which reliable sources are germane. This is not original research, and it is the same process that is used all over Wikipedia for all subjects and all RS.
But anyway, what's this nonsense about "We can't do that ['that' being comparing and contrasting RS on a subject] with the phrase common (or misconception)"? I can understand, to some extent, being confused about how we deal with a term like common, a concept in the English language the edges of which are quite fuzzy. It's actually not a problem at all: fuzzy boundaries or no, we can include any and all encyclopedic material on Wikipedia as long as we have the RS for it - but I can understand your confusion about that for the word common. I can't understand how you would think that about the word misconception. 'Misconception' is nearly a pure logic concept, infinitely more well-defined than something with comparatively insanely fuzzy boundaries like North America. A misconception is a sincere belief in a false thing. The belief that "humans generally have 29 fingers" is a misconception. It's not a common misconception, indeed, no one in the real world may actually believe that humans generally have 29 fingers, but that doesn't stop it from being a misconception that no one holds. What is and isn't a misconception is eminently in the domain of what can be determined (and argued about) using RS. Take a look at the recently discussed spinach entry, where we compared and contrasted several RS discussing the role oxalates play in inhibiting iron absorption. If you look through the archives, you will see that we regularly have such discussions. Joe (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoePhin: I've read back through your discussion of woodshrikes and as far as I understand it, your discussion hinges on a misunderstanding of WP:BLUE. WP:BLUE doesn't say you don't have to source things if they're obvious, it says you don't have to source things if they've obvious and such material is in RS. There's no such RS that says something common to a small group isn't "common". This is obvious from the fourth sentence from WP:V: "Even if you are sure something is true, it must be verifiable before you can add it." It is also clear that our understanding of plain English isn't excluding things by "common sense", since anyone can, and has, made the observation that something believed by 0.3% of the world's population wouldn't generally be considered common.
I think the case for the article's issues around 'common' are easier to understand, I'll stick to discussing them, but needless to say, a misconception is not merely "a sincere belief in a false thing." In my original post I laid out multiple different ways that simple definition has been challenged, even when RS explicitly calls it a misconception. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:50, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This has nothing to do with WP:BLUE. WP:BLUE applies in cases where something is so obvious or simple that it doesn't require a citation. For example, I don't require a citation that 2 + 2 = 4, or that flamingos are pink, or that the sky is blue, etc. The fact that common gulls are common is not WP:BLUE, e.g., it's not something that should be obvious to everyone. We can use WP:BLUE on this page for certain ancillary statements, but for the purposes of demonstrating that something is a common misconception, we never use WP:BLUE, precisely because if everyone knew it, it wouldn't be a common misconception. I'm not sure how you managed to so badly misunderstand this.
If we did not have RS calling common gulls "common gulls", it would be wrong for us to label them as such. But we do have RS stating the common name of Larus canus, as well as RS describing the parts of the world where common gulls are most common. So it is with common misconceptions. If RS describe a misconception as common, we may include it here (again, this is literally the opposite of WP:BLUE, which is a special case where we do not use RS. I'm still not sure how you thought that had anything to do with WP:BLUE when the conclusion of that section of my writing is "Our job is to look at what the reliable sources say, and report it in an encyclopedic fashion.")
I'm afraid you're not reading what other editors post very carefully, which is probably why this discussion seems so pointless to users like VQuakr and Mr Swordfish. I can tell you've got a lot of strong feelings on this subject, User Rollinginhisgrave, which is why I'd like to have you regularly editing the page. But you don't seem to understand the basic principles on which Wikipedia operates, and I'm concerned that you won't be able to edit constructively if you don't know how Wikipedia's policies are generally understood and enforced.
For example, if you believe that a certain class of misconceptions have been improperly excluded from this page, the decision not to include that material is not OR per WP:VNOT, particularly:
Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion
While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted or presented instead in a different article. The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content.
If you are concerned that a certain class of common misconceptions are not being given their due weight on this page, that would be an issue of WP:NPOV, particularly WP:DUE. If you think that there are common misconceptions that should be included in this article, but which are not currently included, you are quite free to include them and give them their due weight. I encourage it, in fact. Most of your examples of problems are from discussions that took place around 2012. If you feel like revisiting whether some of those misconceptions should or should not be included by bringing them up on the talk page, please feel free to do that, also.
Stop misusing WP:Policies. Read them through carefully before you bring them up. You're not going to convince anyone of anything if you don't understand what WP:OR is. Not everything you dislike is OR. Joe (talk) 19:55, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoePhin: I would like to apologise for the WP:BLUE allegation. Some words tripped me up. In your example of 29 fingers being a common misconception, the "common" frame of reference was obviously intended to imply a population like America. In saying it's obviously not common, you're referring to it obviously not being common to America. This isn't BLUE. When people say something is obviously not common on this page usually, (i.e. it's a common misconception among doctors that xyz), they are saying something being common among a subgroup isn't common among what they understand common as (the world, America, ethnic group etc). I read your comment as the latter when it was the former and applied it to WP:BLUE. I am sorry.
I'll step it back before discussing NPOV. When we say something is common, we are implying it is common to something. Something cannot just be a "common" belief, it must be "common among" a group. We don't specify the group we are saying things are common among, nor is it implied. If it was implied we wouldn't have challenges to the article around "is it common if something is rare in the world." Yet we are trying to imply there is a group common is being defined in relation to. There just isn't. If you grammatically break it down, this is a article called "list of common misconceptions among X". The second meaning that you could take from the title is that the article is a list of misconceptions common to any group. There is a consensus it is not that. It is a different meaning to the article, just as two articles called "list of wet politicians" would be different if wet was defined in one as a soft conservative and in the other as covered in water. If it was implied that it was common to any group, we wouldn't be disqualifying whole groups (i.e. academics) on the grounds of beliefs held by them not being common enough to constitute a common belief (to X group).
I cannot think of a single list article that has variable x in the name for editors to vibe out. List of fatal bear attacks in Northern America certainly doesn't fit it. Imagine you broke down the title when assessing if a new entry should come in. Is it a misconception? Is it common among group X? Asking if various groups which constitute group X are under or overrepresented is meaningless without a definition of X, and yet this is what is imply the issue is under your NPOV comments. Yes, verifiability does not guarantee inclusion, but the issue is you can't verify anything without understanding whether it meets the title's definition, which has an undefined variable in it. It's like having an article "list of most". Most what? What is the X? If editors reach a consensus on what X is, implied in a very meaningful and existential sense by the word most, this is not verifiable, and is confusing, meaningless OR.
I'm sorry if this seems hot, and I am especially sorry if it is too hot that you feel attacked. I really don't mean to attack you, I genuinely like you and appreciate you for taking the time to undergo this conversation. I would caution as well this isn't WP:IDON'TLIKEIT. I've followed and edited this page for 6 years now. For the first five I believed it encyclopedic, and I still think it's really interesting. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 16:01, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if we use the broadest possible interpretation of the word common, then literally nothing that uniquely occurs on Earth is common. If I went through and randomly sampled cubic meters of here and there and everywhere all throughout the universe for a million years, taking one sample every second, I would discover that the broader universe is composed of 0.0000000% common woodshrikes, and in a cosmic sense, common woodshrikes are actually extremely uncommon, since they only occur on Earth and nowhere else. That doesn't mean we should try to get the common woodshrike page deleted, because the title is misleading, or try to get the page name changed to "the actually extremely uncommon woodsrike"
For the purposes of this page, and for the purposes of the common woodshrike page, and for the purpose of every page that isn't dealing with issues of cosmology, we are not using the broadest possible interpretation of the word common, we are using the plain English interpretation of the word common for the English Wikipedia. And in plain English, common woodshrikes are allowed to be called common, as are many misconceptions. If we have RS stating that something is a common misconception, and the RS is using the word common in the same context that the word would be used by anyone using plain English to describe things that occur in day-to-day human life, (as in "a toaster is a common household appliance" or "black haired women are common" or "you'll commonly see prairie dogs when walking down this trail," etc.) if the RS is using the word common in that sense, then it's perfectly applicable to this page, and generally acceptable for inclusion here. That's not a problem, it's a feature. If we limited ourselves to discussing only phenomena that occur on a truly cosmically common scale, then we wouldn't be able to discuss anything on this page, and that would make the page worse, not better. When people read a page about common misconceptions, they aren't looking for misconceptions that are common throughout all of space and in all possible contexts.
Also, please don't worry, I don't feel the least bit attacked. I'm enjoying our conversation, even though we disagree. :P Joe (talk) 00:19, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
On plain readings; Common is being defined in relation to X. Editors have interpreted X as different, contradictory things according to their plain English readings. There isn't a plain English reading of what common implies, that is the problem. The sense you say it's acceptable for sources to use "common" in to get included in the page includes the definitions of X that editors have identified as contradictory; your plain read isn't shared by many editors. It's crazy to have a list where an entry requirement is implied, but editors can't agree on what it is being implied from their plain English readings.
I think the woodshrike example has run its course as an analogy to this discussion, as it's not a list and we're discussing list inclusion criteria, and as I don't think you believe Wikipedia editors could reach a consensus on what context woodshrikes would need to be common within to be common independent of RS, and from this decide to challenge the "common" label in the article text. I tried to get a better analogy for you with an implied undefined variable, looking for lists of famous X, but they're all redirects. Could you find a different one? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 07:25, 25 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
May I ask why you don't object to the use of the word common in, say, the common gull page, or the common cold page, when 'common' gulls and 'common' colds are objectively uncommon in a universal sense?
Also, when you say, "I don't think you believe Wikipedia editors could reach a consensus on what context woodshrikes would need to be common within to be common independent of RS" - I think I largely agree. That's why we use RS, and why we don't ever decide that something is common enough to be included without RS. Note how I emphasize the words "is common enough to be included" there, as opposed to "isn't common enough to be included". We might, in fact, decide that though an RS states something is a common misconception, that we won't include it for any of a number of procedural reasons. (Again, see WP:VNOT, "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted...")
That said, I'm generally in favor of adding caveats to the entries on this page, in cases where the RS specify that the misconception is common in a specific context, usually a national one. For example, if a misconception were particularly common in Mexico, and the RS explicated that, then I'd be all in favor of adding a little "such-and-such is a common misconception in Mexico" proviso to the entry. Joe (talk) 05:08, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fine with common in those pages since editors are purely using RS to make such claims of commonality. The issue I have is when editors have to make assertions of whether the common cold is common without such reference.
I really appreciate this distinction you're drawing here, identifying OR in inclusion when done without reference to RS, while not identifying OR in exclusion done without reference to RS. From how I understand this, you, citing the WP:VNOT quote, believe if a consensus is reached then exclusion can be justified. However, I think it's you would agree that this doesnt imply a free for all, allowing any consensuses on any issues and that such justifications could not be breaking key Wikipedia policies. WP:LSC explicitly warns against creating an original selection criteria, linking to WP:OR. The question then becomes whether excluding an entry is being done via OR as I am alleging. I think it is clear that it is, since it is creating an exclusion criteria based on an original, contested interpretation of what the X in "list of common misconceptions among X" is, and that this is being done without reference to RS stating what is common.
I think your support for caveats among nations is understandable, but I wonder what would be your thoughts on caveats based on articles such as 11 Common Shabbat Myths and Misconceptions if done by a more RS. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 08:22, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, it has become clear to me what the problem here is.
User Rollinginhisgrave, you have badly, badly, conflated the concepts of 'inclusion' and 'exclusion.' Please read the Selection criteria section of the WP:SAL page and pay particular attention to the use of the words 'inclusion' and 'exclusion.' You may notice, that exclusion is not mentioned anywhere.
It is important that some Wikipedia lists have a set of inclusion criteria, so that not just anything can be included. As I'm sure you're aware, this page has a (rather stringent) set of inclusion criteria that anyone who tries to edit the page will see in a drop-down menu.
If you are concerned that this page does not have well-defined inclusion criteria, don't be, we do.
If you are concerned, instead, about exclusion criteria, then that has nothing to do with WP:LSC, and also, we don't have exclusion criteria. As you are now aware, "While information must be verifiable for inclusion in an article, not all verifiable information must be included. Consensus may determine that certain information does not improve an article. Such information should be omitted" per WP:VNOT. Any consensus to exclude any material is technically acceptable on this page. In practice however, as mentioned above at length, in +95% of cases, the only reasons we exclude material that otherwise meets the inclusion criteria is 1) because we interpret statements to have a meaningful context that indicates the literal words 'common misconception' are not being used in a plain English sense per WP:NOTOR's Accurately contextualizing quotations section, or 2) because the RS disagree on what is and isn't a misconception, and we try to avoid material that might reasonably be disputed. Neither of these is OR, nor would any other consensus to exclude something on this page, even with and despite RS to the effect that it is a common misconception, per WP:ONUS
Please see also, from WP:LSC, "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed (for example, lists of unusual things or terrorist incidents), it is especially important that inclusion be based on reliable sources given with inline citations for each item." We only include items on this list for which there are RS stating that the item is a common misconception, or some synonym.
There are all kinds of procedural reasons why we might exclude this or that or the other thing, but the only reason we include anything is because it meets the page's inclusion criteria (e.g. it has RS stating that it is a common misconception, it is featured on another page, the misconception is current and not outdated).
When the editors on this page come to a consensus not to include a particular item, we are not, as you say "creating an exclusion criteria". Not all verifiable content must be included, per WP:ONUS

If there are any items that you think are being inappropriately excluded from the page for some reason, please feel free to bring them up. I'm not sure if you're aware, but about 6/8 of the examples you brought up in your 'Defining misconception' subsection were already included on this page after being revisited sometime between 2011 and now. I already said it, but all these 'problems' you're bringing up are not problems at all. I'm afraid you're the third most tremendous WikiLawyer I've ever run into, User Rollinginhisgrave. Well, eh, come to think of it, maybe you're only the fourth, close contest though. Joe (talk) 11:29, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
My reading of selection criteria is it is a criteria of things to be included in the article, which obviously involves stating or implying what not to include. An example: criteria 4, as an inclusion criteria stating only current misconceptions can come in the page, excludes ancient/obsolete misconceptions. This is all I mean by exclusion. Applied to this case: the question is what the X is in "list of common misconceptions among X." This is controversial, and is not implied. In determining what X means, and including entries to the page which are held by X, we are necessarily excluding entries that are held by groups other than X. You can paint this is an inclusion criteria (if you focus on the inclusion of beliefs held by X), or an exclusion criteria (if you focus on the exclusion of beliefs held by groups other than X). It is two sides of the same coin, and it is all regulated by WP:LSC. In practice, we have an inclusion criteria that misconceptions must be held by the world, countries and some small groups, as opposed to those held by scientists and some small groups (let's call this criteria 5). You can see this in play if we tried to include the misconception on the page Ammonium acetate despite the fact that criteria 1-4 are met. That this is the inclusion criteria, determined by OR, is the issue. This is a normal and reasonable reading of selection criteria. Now that I have framed it as an inclusion criteria, and not an exclusion criteria, do you believe that WP:LSC is applicable?
If you understand that by specifying inclusion, you are necessarily implying exclusion (again, criteria 4 is literally this) reading the phrase "In cases where the membership criteria are subjective or likely to be disputed" (I am claiming criteria 5 is subjective right now) actually highlights the need for selection to be based on RS, which is the argument I am making.
I hope you can consider that this is not Wikilawyering and is instead a reasonable read of the policy, and reflects how it is applied to this very page. It is also not a conflation of inclusion and exclusion. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 12:57, 27 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

A love letter to you, my fellow editors

I salute you all.

I'd just like to take a moment to thank all of you who spend your time adding to, trimming, pruning, fixing, tweaking, and generally maintaining this page, and of course, the rarely-seen page watchers who only occasionally swoop down to revert vandalism but otherwise just lurk. We editors don't always see eye to eye, but it is precisely the push-and-pull of all our efforts that synthesize together to make this wonderful page as nice as it is.

I truly love you all for everything you've contributed. I love this page, too, it's such a fine little offshoot of the larger Wikipedia project. This page is one of the more complete repositories of interesting and useful information on the web relating to misinformation, and if the value the average reader gets out of it is one-tenth the value I got out of it when I first came across it, then it might be one of the most valuable pages on the whole internet. That's just my opinion, of course. Thanks for all your hard work, and please know that I appreciate you dearly.

Yours, Joe (talk) 20:35, 18 October 2022 (UTC) :3[reply]

Spinach entry

Many people think that spinach is a good source of iron. And that appears to be true, at least for cooked spinach which provides 20% of the recommended daily intake of iron. What is the misconception here? Raw spinach contains oxalates, which block absorption of iron in the intestines, but it's not at all clear that all or even most of the iron ingested is not absorbed. Meanwhile, cooked spinach appears to be a good source of iron. We need to either improve this entry or remove it. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 17:26, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

As far as I can tell after a glance at the RS and the Spinach page, the misconception is that eating raw spinach, as many do, is a good way to obtain bio-active iron in one's diet, since high oxalate foods exert a negative effect on iron absorption. We should reword the entry to make it more clear to a casual reader that raw spinach is the crux of the misconception. Oh, also, we're missing one RS from the spinach page, I'll add it now. Joe (talk) 18:00, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The first paragraph of [3] says Popeye helped popularize the misconception (of how good a source of iron spinach is) based on a misplaced decimal point, which then made its way into WWII propaganda. Spinach's calcium content doesn't strike me as a misconception.
Reviewing some nutritional research, while the inhibitory effects of oxalates on calcium and calcium on iron seem well defined, the iron-oxalates link (per [4] section 4.3) I didn't find numbers for (even though some research papers I saw make passing references to the inhibitory effect of oxalates on iron absorption). Anderjef (talk) 20:12, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the relevant text from cite #4:
It is a widespread perception among nutritionists/dieticians that oxalic acid is a strong inhibitor of iron absorption. It is stated (without evidence) in dietary publications and cookbooks...
Calcium oxalate appears to depress iron absorption in some circumstances — the addition of 1 g calcium oxalate to a cabbage meal was associated with a 39% depression in iron absorption...
The influence of oxalic acid/oxalate on iron absorption may depend on the chemical state of the oxalate in the food. Spinach is rich in oxalic acid/oxalate but also rich in calcium; if the oxalate exists in the form of calcium oxalate, then it should not be able to bind ferric iron in the food and therefore have a minor influence on iron absorption.
This is what we're basing our verdict of "miscomception" on? Cookbooks claim it "without evidence". It may depress absorption by less than 50% (if the 39% figuere is applicable to spinach, then spinach is still a good source of iron, raw or not.) It should have "...a minor influence on iron absorption". We either need to find much more solid evidence of this or we need to remove the entry. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 21:53, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding reference #4, the un-evidenced claim that oxalic acid is a strong inhibitor of iron absorption also appears in research papers (including one of the existing references), cabbage is a low-oxalate food hence "there was no relationship between the oxalate content and iron absorption when vegetables that contained large amounts of oxalate were examined; iron absorption was poor from spinach..." (yeah, this nutrition stuff is messy), it is only postulated that oxalates' effect on iron absorption depends on the oxalate's chemical state, and in the paragraph at the end of the section they go on to cite a source (93) which says the results in question "did not reach statistical significance (P>0.16)" (n≤16).
So, I'm not sure what to make of it all. Perhaps the jury is not out yet? Hence we remove the entry (even though, for whatever reason, Spinach decided to leave it up)? Reference #3's story makes a lot of sense to me as to why I might have had inflated views of spinach's iron content. Anderjef (talk) 23:37, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Anderjef, I think you might be thinking about a different (and unless I'm mistaken, recently removed) entry. Also, I see no reason to remove this entry, it seems fine to me. Also also, Mr Swordfish, did you mean to spell misconception "miscomception"? If that was purposeful, it made me giggle, and if it wasn't, well, it still made me giggle. :3 Joe (talk) 23:33, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@JoePhin You're referring to the Popeye entry? I thought that one was about whether in his universe, Popeye's strength came from spinach's iron or vitamin A. Here, from my understanding, people misattributed a misconception to a pop figure. Anderjef (talk) 23:40, 20 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I've now read through one of the cited sources "Spinach in Blunderland" by Michael Mielewczik & Janine Moll from 2016. Definitely worth a read at https://univerlag.uni-goettingen.de/bitstream/handle/3/eissn-2512-5923_annals21/Annals21.pdf (scroll to page 61) The main takeaways:

  1. Our source #3 by Terence J. Hamblin is problematic: "...Hamblin had given no original references for his claims related to spinach, iron and Popeye. The criminologist Mike Sutton took up the idea, tried to follow the chain of evidence, and concluded that Hamblin might have made up the story of the decimal error. Hamblin himself could not remember the source of his claims 29 years later..."
  2. The myth that spinach is particularly high in iron content goes back farther than is commonly recognized, dating at least to the 1850s. "The legend that spinach is rich in iron has therefore emerged at a much earlier point in time than it is commonly assumed today."
  3. The idea that the myth stemmed from a "decimal error" may itself be an urban legend.
  4. It's complicated. "It soon became clear that the ironic story of how spinach became rich in iron and how it was debunked is one of burlesque character and provides more potential twists than Rubik’s cube."

So, where does that leave us? The wording of the current entry appears to be simply false; while the iron content of spinach has been overstated, saying that it is a "poor source" of iron strikes me as equally erroneous in the opposite direction.

Web MD (https://www.webmd.com/diet/iron-rich-foods) lists spinach among "other sources of iron" along with peanuts, raisins, broccolli, and pasta. It doesn't make the cut for "good sources" with foods like lima beans, sesame seeds, wheat germ having about three times the iron content as spinach. It also distinguishes between heme iron, which is found in meats and is more easily absorbed than non-heme iron which is found in spinach and other begatable.

This site (https://www.healwithfood.org/articles/spinach-iron-content.php) seems to present a balanced view of the matter: "Today, we know that the claim that raw or cooked spinach contains extremely high levels of iron is simply a persistent myth, based on old and erroneous data... That, however, does not mean that spinach is a poor source of iron. In fact, a comparison of the iron content of common vegetables reveals that raw spinach contains a fairly good amount of dietary iron."

The role of oxalates in hindering iron absorption seems to be a matter of dispute, so I'd recommend simply steering clear of that in our entry.

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 14:44, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In light of the above, I'd suggest the following revision of the spinach entry:

Spinach is not a particularly good source of dietary iron. While it does contain more iron than many vegetables such as asparagus, Swiss chard, kale, or arugula, it contains only about one-third to one-fifth of the iron as lima beans, chickpeas, apricots, or wheat germ. Additionally, the non-heme iron found in spinach and other vegetables is not as readily absorbed as the heme iron found in meats and fish.[1][2][3]

Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:01, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, there appears to be some real conflicting research on whether oxalates depress ferrous iron absorption[5] or don't[6][7]
Given this discrepancy, we should mention that there is some disagreement as to whether oxalates inhibit iron uptake on the spinach page, and as Mr Swordfish suggests, we should not mention it at all here on the common misconceptions page (I don't wish to present anything that has a reasonable chance of actually being true as a misconception). I'm all in favor of making Mr Swordfish's proposed changes.
I can't make any comment on the decimal point stuff, I haven't had the time to really look into the sources yet, I might come back with something to say about it later. Joe (talk) 16:43, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Mr. Swordfish for putting time into researching it. I agree with your conclusions including that oxalates' role is still too contested but that spinach is neither a fantastic nor abysmal source of iron. I support your revised entry, though I question the utility of adding the final sentence about heme, considering I also read that red meats have other molecular compounds (not found in such vegetables) which increase iron absorption and that taking iron and calcium at the same time inhibits the uptake of the iron.
Also, thanks Joe for your help in this. Anderjef (talk) 20:38, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
:-) Joe (talk) 20:51, 21 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Habits

[8] We underestimate the impact of habit on behavior, as opposed to, say, moods. Benjamin (talk) 10:16, 22 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

deceitful

[9] People incorrectly believe that rich people and people on parole are more likely to be deceitful. Benjamin (talk) 17:18, 24 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

  1. ^ https://www.webmd.com/diet/iron-rich-foods
  2. ^ https://www.healwithfood.org/articles/spinach-iron-content.php
  3. ^ Mielewczik, M.; Moll, J. (2016). "Spinach in Blunderland: How the myth that spinach is rich in iron became an urban academic legend". Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology. 21: 61–142. doi:10.17875/gup2018-1125.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_common_misconceptions&curid=322764&diff=1118520167&oldid=1118509977

Leave a Reply