User talk:The Four Deuces/Archives/2016/June

Left-wing Politics
"Remove chart as original research" please explain this!Araz (talk) 17:32, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
 * I explained on the article talk page. TFD (talk) 19:25, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Secondary
In your last comment (which I appreciate, separately from my nitpicking here), I think you meant to say "independent" rather than "secondary". WP:Secondary does not mean independent. News reports that merely report facts, especially eyewitness news ("This journalist went to the meeting last night at the town hall and saw the Mayor sneeze") are primary sources regardless of their age. See this simple explanation: The primary source "always comes into existence first. It is information directly from the source... Secondary information comments on primary information. It is a critical analysis... something primary has been changed in some way ... added to."

If there's no commentary, analysis, or intellectual transformation of another source, then the source is primary source. Or, to put it more simply, it's wrong to say that everything in this morning's newspaper is a secondary source. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:03, 23 June 2016 (UTC)


 * That is an unusual example. In that case the reporter's claim of what s/he saw would be a primary source, while the article would be a secondary source that the reporter actually claimed to have seen it.  Normally though a reporter relies on what s/he sees, what observers say they saw, recordings, and transcripts (all primary sources) and write "the mayor sneezed."  Generally we do not know what primary sources they relied on.  We expect that as professionals they will weight the evidence and determine the facts.  In a recent case, a reporter claimed that chairs were thrown by Sanders' supporters at the Nevada State Democratic Convention.  The reporter had attended part of the convention but was away during the alleged chair-throwing and relied on accounts of people who had attended.  Yet the story does not distinguish between what the reporter observed and what he heard second-hand.  The expectation is that he would be able to use judgment in determining the accuracy of what he heard.  Similarly, when a reporter says that someone won a general election, s/he has not actually counted the votes, but bases his or her statement on what the individual constituency electoral officials have said and possibly also exit polls and projections by statisticians based on their analysis of voting patterns.  The only real parallel to your example is court reporters, who provide a transcript of what they heard in court.  TFD (talk) 18:29, 23 June 2016 (UTC)
 * No, generally, news articles are primary sources, regardless of how it's written.
 * That's why the source I gave you lists, under "Examples of primary information:" the item "A current news report that is reporting the facts (not analysis or evaluation) of an event." Note that "A current news report that is reporting the facts (not analysis or evaluation) of an event" includes not only "I saw the chair-throwing with my own eyeballs" but also "I interviewed someone who saw the chair-throwing with his own eyeballs".
 * I encourage you to look at the sources on this question. You will have a very hard time finding any that claim standard news stories (reporting facts without analysis) are secondary.  (You should have a very easy time finding sources that say they're independent, but that's a separate consideration.)  WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:45, 23 June 2016 (UTC)