Wikipedia:Help desk/Archives/2025 February 6

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February 6

Interviews as sources

As we know, interviews are problematic. Wikipedia:Interviews is a page devoted to them; but it's merely an essay, thus lacking the heft of a guideline, let alone a policy. Interviews bring up the matter of independence -- but Wikipedia:Independent sources too is a mere essay. I thought I remembered some more authoritative page (probably a guideline) that dealt with interviews and their (mis)uses; but now that I look for it, I can't find it. Is there anything?

And if no there is not, any tips for efficaciously countering You're citing something that announces itself as "not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines", one that has "not been thoroughly vetted by the community". So really it's just your opinion against mine? -- Hoary (talk) 00:09, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Hoary: Wikipedia:Independent sources is an explanatory essay, which means it links to a policy or guideline. WP:NPOV may be the most relevant policy here? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:42, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

WP:NPV has no instance of the string "interview". Further, it wants "as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic". Well, the view that some celeb takes of himself, as published in an interview in The Guardian or similar, surely is a significant view as published by a reliable source. Moreover, WP:NPV barely mentions the independence of sources; and for this, it links to WP:Independent sources. Now, as it happens English is my first language and I can, if I wish, read this essay with ease. But I don't wish. As I skimread it, I see a photo of a cup of coffee (or Bovril or who knows what) with the caption "It doesn't matter if you love it or hate it. If you aren't selling it, you're probably an independent source about it." This strikes me as so obviously wrongheaded that my minor appetite for reading the page quite withers away. I can hardly expect a new user to read something so long. -- Hoary (talk) 01:47, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Like all sources, it depends on what it's used for. Interviews are primary sources for the subjects being interviewed, so their use should comply with WP:PRIMARY. They're neither secondary nor independent to the subject, so they don't indicate notability as described by WP:GNG. Regarding essays, Wikipedia:Quote your own essay is a good read. They're shorthands so we don't have to type out the same 3,000 word argument every time it comes up. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:43, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Alien, WP:PRIMARY is an (important) ingredient of WP:No original research. This only mentions interviews in its footnotes. Essays are indeed handy for citing. I just wish that their creators put more effort into the shorthand aspect. Of course, if I find guidelines inadequate (insufficiently informative, or verbose), I'm free to make or (much more wisely) suggest changes to them. I plead laziness. But a sanity check: Usedn't there to be some reasonable, concise, helpful prescription/proscription/advice about interviews in one or more of the guidelines? -- Hoary (talk) 01:58, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

Hoary, I think it is a bit of a mistake to describe any given essay as "merely an essay". Not all essays are equal. As the standard essay header says, Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.. So, the issue as I see it is not so much whether the use of interviews is described only in an essay, but rather whether or not that essay and related essays represent widespread norms. If the essay is cited by thousands of editors going back decades with negligible pushback, we can conclude that it represents a widespread norm.

When it comes to interviews, I believe that most editors agree that most interviews published by reliable sources are reliable for WP:ABOUTSELF content, even if interviews are often considered potentially questionable. Unless the article subject has a reputation as a liar, who would quibble with "My father was a machinist and my mother taught a kindergarten class"? But "My father was North Dakota's greatest poet" would require toning down for neutrality and additional sources. The standard is that the material is neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim.

In my experience, the real bone of contention is whether or not interviews contribute to notability. Since the WP:GNG memorably says A topic is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list when it has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, then it is clear that an understanding of independence is essential. You are correct that Wikipedia:Independent sources is "merely" an essay, but it is a special kind of essay that has a header saying that This is an explanatory essay about the policies and guidelines and the guideline in question links to that essay in its very first sentence. One can only assume that this particular widely read essay represents "widespread norms" since that header and that link have persisted for so long. Here is where I believe that editorial judgment enters into the equation. Let's say that multiple respected major magazines and newspapers going back many years have published completely different interviews of a person with detailed introductory sections providing original biographical reporting about the person and their unique contributions before getting to the Q and A section, and there was no hint of press agent involvement. Even if grudgingly, I think that most editors would see those interviews as indicators of notability. On the other hand, if a trade magazine called Widget World runs a story about 2025 widget breakthroughs and quotes Joe Jones, the chief engineer of North American Widgets as saying "We have perfected the fourth generation widget", then that brief interview is not evidence that Joe Jones is notable (or that their widget model is a breakthrough). Between those two extremes, there is a continuum, and good editorial judgment is the ability to conclude that a good source is good enough and that a mediocre source should be disregarded. Cullen328 (talk) 09:53, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

An excellent summary, Cullen328: I disagree with none of it and, had I been thinking as clearly when I wrote my questions as you must have been when writing the above, I could have refined their wording. What prompted my questions was my AfC review of Draft:Steffi Klenz, whose biography is, it appears, sourced to ... Steffi Klenz. ("Appears" because, after noticing that this was an interview, I didn't bother to read it.) It occurred to me that were my comment to earn me the oft-heard riposte "The most authoritative source for a subject's biography is that subject", I'd have to point to en:WP policy [small "p"!] on the use of interviews. User-generated content gets its own, palatably short section within WP:RS, a content guideline. I'd thought that interviews got a similarly compact comment somewhere, but perhaps I just imagined that. -- Hoary (talk) 06:41, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

toolforge:linkcount might be something of an efficacious counter. "Not thoroughly vetted" may be the case, but half a million links (in the case of WP:IS) surely indicates some broad support. Folly Mox (talk) 15:40, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

This is a very solid description of the main points. That is also a very solid Afc review. Best I've seen. The problem with modern interviews where most of the problems stems from, is that they tend to be paid-for PR that transitory, promotional, brand-driven and short-termist Q and A sessions that don't have much intellectual depth and they are only there to drive an agenda. Compare that with years ago; I read a biography, I think it was on Peter Falk in the 90's. He gave tons of interviews on Colombo. And he was already massively famous, everywhere he went on the planet. Those interviews are absolute gold and if you had make a ref, then they would be ideal. He was already world famous. The Wikipedia:Interviews essay is pretty good from a policy viewpoint, tying it into the relavent policy points but it doesn't give the core reasons, which is essentially the spirit aspect the thing. I suggest if its a BLP, push back at every turn. Folks, the reader, want quality. They don't want to be manipulated by some person paying to hold a Q and A in Vogue that starts as "Meet Juliana..., they are opening a water park. How cool is that". Go for quality every time. The article will be more salient, last longer and be more intellectually valuable over the long term, if the quality is there. scope_creep^Talk 20:32, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Ayd with line break

Hi, is there an easy way with {{Ayd}} to make the year and day figure separated with a comma appear under each other in the table cell? Cause when I try to set the separation parameter to ,<br> it doesn't work... . I would like it to look like this, using the template if possible:

2 years, 9 days

— Antoni12345 (talk) 16:13, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Antoni12345: That's using content to affect layout, and might be contrary to MOS:NOBR. Bazza 7 (talk) 16:42, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Antoni12345, With that {{Ayd}} template, you simply can't display that. You have to done that manually as you did here as example.––kemel49^{(connect)(contri)} 16:50, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Antoni12345: I have a vague memory that I once did something similar (forcing the latitudes and longitudes displayed by the {{coord}} template to appear on separate lines in table cells) by playing around with the width of that column of the table until I forced the desired appearance. You might try that. Deor (talk) 15:08, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

After investigation: You can see the edit I made as the first change in this diff. (Another editor had asked me to make the table display the coordinates in that way.) Deor (talk) 15:26, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

Yes, thanks! I've actually mannaged to do this that way. — Antoni12345 (talk) 18:58, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

English as underlying language of the underpinings of Wikipedia?

If I have done a search on the English Language Wikipedia and then I change the URL by hand from en.wikipedia.org to it.wikipedia.org, it will give me the same search on the Italian Language Wikipedia. If I do a search on the Italian Language Wikipedia and change the URL by hand from it.wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org , it doesn't work. I've tried that with English to many other language Wikipedia, all of the changes only work in one direction *from* English and don't work from any other language to any language. Is this expected?Naraht (talk) 19:34, 6 February 2025 (UTC)

@Naraht: This happens because the English names of special pages work at all languages, but local names only work locally. A search at the Italian Wikipedia gives a url like https://it.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?go=Go&search=roma+italia&title=Speciale%3ARicerca&ns0=1. Here title=Speciale%3ARicerca says to use the special page it:Speciale:Ricerca which is the Italian version of Special:Search. If you manually change it.wikipedia.org to en.wikipedia.org then you get the url https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?go=Go&search=roma+italia&title=Speciale%3ARicerca&ns0=1. This asks to do something at a non-existing English page called Speciale:Ricerca. It isn't even a special page because in English it's only called "Special" without "e". It's treated like an article name but it wouldn't help to remove "e" because there is no special page called Special:Ricerca at the English Wikipedia. I think it's nice that the names of special pages are translated while English names also work everywhere. It would be chaotic if every translation of all special page names had to work at every language. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:06, 6 February 2025 (UTC)