I made an edit on wikipedia, pretty minor, just changing from where a couple “had a son” to “adopted a son.” I supplied a citation to a (paywalled) newspaper article attesting to as much. Five hours later, it was reverted saying “Needs a checkable reference.” OK, fair enough–so how do I make my reference “checkable,” as that is not the same thing as “clickable,” and many wiki cites are not readily available online. (It’s FQ, but too trivial for FQ.)
The person who reverted you on the basis that your source is not “checkable” is mistaken about Wikipedia policy. See WP:PAYWALL, which says
Do not reject reliable sources just because they are difficult or costly to access. Some reliable sources are not easily accessible. For example, an online source may require payment or otherwise be hidden behind a paywall, and a print-only source may be available only through libraries.
In other words, a paywalled source is perfectly acceptable. A more easily accessible source would be preferable, but if one cannot be found the paywalled source is fine.
The amount of policing differs based on the article and topic. If you’re lucky, a quick discussion on the talk page with the reverter should clear it up. Be nice and you’ll usually get the same in return.
If you’re not lucky, that page might be monitored by some power hungry wannabe (or worse, actual) admin control freak who will fight you on every tiny edit. In that case, it’s up to you whether you want to engage in an edit war or escalate the dispute or just walk away. Often times it’s just not worth it. Like anywhere else, Wikipedia has its share of idiots.
Generally speaking, the rules are subjective, often contradictory or overlapping, and selectively enforced. The editors and admins can get cliquey and not very newcomer friendly, especially on pages they care about or topics that are controversial. There’s also a lot of bad bot traffic and low quality student edits or whatever that they have to try to prevent, so it’s not an easy job either.
Most of the time it’s just a discussion on the talk page. If that doesn’t work, it’s usually not worth it.
In your specific case, it might be worth seeing if you can find some non pay-walled secondary sources and add those too.
OK, thanks. I’ll see if the reverter (and, oh, yeah, this is a big time contributor) has any additional input on the why, and if I get stonewalled, I’ll just add the info to the Talk page.
Oops, didn’t post this in time. But yeah, cite [[WP:PAYWALL]]. When dealing with prolific editors, using the lingo helps.
Besides, most news paywalls are not hard to work around, and a good editor should know how to do it for checking citations.
Wikipedia even gives frequent editors free access to many paywalled resources:
Thanks, all. It’s probably a dead issue. My reversion to his reversion lasted a whole half hour this time with the note " Needs a checkable reference without a subscription." Which seems to be at odds with their guidelines, so I’ll wait a few days and try it again with the “Subscription” tag. If he smacks that back down I’ll just add it to the talk page.
There are people whose make it their full-time hobby to lurk on Wikipedia and revert helpful edits that in their opinion fail to meet some particularly dumb interpretation of some obscure rule that they half-remember. It’s their pastime.
Putting the actual edit itself on the talk page, instead of discussing it there, might trigger a similar revert war on the edit page (which has its own history and etiquette and rules too). It’s a whole lot of hassle.
You should not keep reverting each other’s reverts (because this will land you in what Wikipedia calls a revert/edit war, and he will definitely have more experience with gaming that system than you would). More than likely, it would end up with your edit reverted and your account blocked and you just being pissed — all for something good you were trying to do, because the other idiot doesn’t care about that as much as power tripping.
If you’re not sure how to handle this, ask a higher-up for help: Wikipedia:Dispute resolution - Wikipedia
or Wikipedia:Help desk - Wikipedia
So that a third party can help mediate this so you’re not just trading punches.
Otherwise, just give up… it’s kinda shitty there nowadays. I used to be a very frequent editor in the first decade or two, but over the years it got a lot worse with these trollish assholes and it’s just not worth it anymore. Everyone just goes to AI nowadays anyway.
At this point you should definitely open a discussion on the article’s talk page rather than adding it the article a third time. Mention [[WP:PAYWALL]] in the discussion and ask for a policy-based reason why they are reverting your edit. It’s possible they have some legitimate rationale; for example if your edit gave only the paywalled URL without the actual name, date and page number of the newspaper article, it would be difficult for someone to track down the article even if they had access to a library holding the newspaper. That could be resolved by just providing more info in the citation. Or conversely they could just be unaware of the paywall policy, and pointing them to it will resolve it without changes on your part. If you’re not satisfied with their explanation on the talk page, then you can proceed with dispute resolution.