Wikipedia:Opinions are like arseholes

There is an old adage: opinions are like arseholes - everybody has one, and they all stink. This is superficially in tension with WP:RSOPINION and other guidance, but the tension is illusory.

In the days before the internet, opinion columns in newspapers were a hallmark of significant opinion. The great H. L. Mencken was a prominent writer of op-eds, coiner of memorable phrases and poster boy for the word "acerbic". An opinion column in a major print newspaper was a sign that you were at least minimally informed, and presumably worth listening to.

Fast forward to the 21st Century. Publication is basically free. Anyone can set up a website and make it look like a respectable source of information. There is an entire industry devoted to "walled gardens" of opinion, built up by circular reference, in the attempt to turn opinion into fact. Thus we have the received wisdom that tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the poor, which became an article of faith for conservatives even though it has never worked in any economy in the world, and often has the effect of bankrupting the government. But it is asserted with great confidence by an endless wall of dark money funded think-tanks.

Russell's original, "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt", is usually paraphrased thus: "The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are certain of themselves, while wiser people are full of doubts."

- not entirely Bertrand Russell

The timeless truth of this is immediately evident when discussing an issue like the COVID vaccine, where science makes measured statements with error bars and carefully stated levels of confidence, while antivaxers appear on each other's podcasts ranting about Bill Gates, microchips, autism and other delusional nonsense. Q: What do you call someone who thinks there are microchips in vaccines? A: Congressman.. That's what happens when you draw material from primary opinion sources without passing it through the fact-checking mechanism of reliable secondary sources. Or consider the New York Post's front page story about the government buying copies of Kamala Harris' book to give to immigrant kids. Secondary sources skewered it almost immediately. Of course that means Wikipedia has to move at the pace of fact-checkers not the pace of breaking news on Twitter. Perhaps there's some part of encyclopaedia that's unclear here.

Here is a rule of thumb to apply on Wikipedia:


 * $SOURCE offered $OPINION on $THING &lt;ref&gt;$SOURCE offering $OPINION on $THING&lt;/ref&gt; is a terrible idea.

You may feel that Noam Chomsky is the sage of our times and when he writes on something we should presumptively include his opinion. That exact argument is applied by others to Sean Hannity. You may feel that the views of Tucker Carlson are self-evidently valid for inclusion. Others think the same about Michael Moore. In a world with close to zero bar to publication, where print is replaced by websites with infinite capacity, where opinion is often deliberately elevated above fact, Wikipedia's sourcing trifecta comes to the rescue.


 * Reliable. Independent. Secondary.

This is not a "pick one" exercise. Sources should meet all three. And if Noam Chomsky (or Sean Hannity) comes up with some pearl of wisdom that is widely reported in secondary sources, then it's ripe for inclusion, but if no reliable secondary sources report it, then neither should we - because it would give undue weight to a potential outlier.