Wikipedia:Verifiability/Onus

Shortcut

The shortcut predates the onus sentence, and has over the years pointed at different sections, especially WP:BURDEN (=the person adding has to source it) and WP:VNOT (=it's not enough to source it).

In 2005, the claim The burden of evidence lies with the editor who has made the edit was in a section called When adding information.

In December 2010, the "WP:ONUS" tag has been added to the page. The policy shortcuts BOP, BURDEN, ONUS, PROVEIT, and UNSOURCED all led to the Burden of evidence section. Days later, the latinism "Affirmati Non Neganti Incumbit Probatio" (the burden is on he who affirms, not he who denies) was added. The expression survived a few hours, as it did not explain much, and perhaps also because it did not fully cohere with "The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material".

At the end of 2012, the same claim was in a section called Burden of evidence, but without the ONUS shortcut. No occurence of "onus" on the page.

The shortcut can be seen in a May 2014 version. It was in a subsection called Build consensus in the Other issues section. WP:BRD was also referenced. In September 2014, days after what we call the onus sentence is introduced, the shortcut is introduced in the Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion section.

Sentence

The onus sentence, The onus is on those seeking to include disputed content, to achieve consensus for its inclusion, can be traced to an edit by JzG in August 2014; the edit summary is "Anything else is a POV-pusher's charter". The sentence has been added to the section Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion. It took 12 minutes for an editor to dispute it; that editor over-corrected immediately after, under the assumption that "any change challenged needs consensus".

The specific edit was not discussed on the talk page at the time, however, it was discussed at JzG's user page. The word onus to describe the need for the person adding material has been used on the talk page since 2003 (there are other early examples), and the page history at the time shows that it was noticed and affirmed.