A rigid consensus on inclusion criteria for this list has not been reached. It is preferred to propose new items on the talk page first.
Any proposed new entries to the article must at least fulfill the following:
The common misconception's main topic has an article of its own.
The item is reliably sourced, both with respect to the factual contents of the item and the fact that it is a common misconception.
The common misconception is mentioned in its topic article with sources.
The common misconception is current, as opposed to ancient or obsolete.
If you have an item to add that does not fulfill these criteria but you still think should be included, please suggest it on the talk page with your rationale for inclusion.
This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (color, defense, traveled) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
List of common misconceptions is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination was archived. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.
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While the title is clarified in the initial paragraph stating that "Each entry on this list of common misconceptions is worded as a correction", the title itself is misleading because of this wording. Instead of a list of misconceptions, as it stands it is a list of factual statements.
The misconceptions being implied leads less detailed readers to believe that this is a list of false facts, rather than a correction to said false facts, and they might leave this list believing that all of these corrections are false.
Leading each correction with a brief sentence saying what the initial misconception was, so as not to spread further misconceptions (while staying true to the title name by making it indeed a list of misconceptions [and their corrections]), would be more accurate. BoxedBunny.bb (talk) 05:10, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not to mention that searching for a misconception to verify if it is true will pretty much never lead you to this list, which is meant to counteract said misconceptions. The target audience will never be reached. Thus adding a sentence or two to connect the misconception to the correction would be a better use of this list. BoxedBunny.bb (talk) 05:16, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the title is confusing. To me this looks to be the usual trade-off between precision and concision in Wikipedia:Article titles, but I have no better title.
This is something I've always thought as well. It would make more logical sense to me if each entry began with something like a that-clause, this being the misconception (but clearly not a statement that we are making). For example (this isn't a real one):
Hey, how come none of the edits we make to this article ever appear in the revision history section anymore? Also I really think that Bugs Bunny picture I keep adding should be kept there. Why not? Jamgorham (talk) 00:51, 11 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This page is a combination of three sub-pages which are transcluded to make this page. The revision history is at each sub-page, e.g. [1]
Well if you won't let me keep the picture of Bugs on that article could I at least put back the part where his carrot crunching habit was modeled after Clark Gable? Cause I think that was actually a pretty crucial fact. Jamgorham (talk) 03:58, 15 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This was mentioned in the discussion of adding the rabbits/carrots entry a little over a year ago. But it was omitted due to nobody finding any reliable source establishing it. If someone comes up with a cite we can include the Clark Gable assertion.
I reverted this recently added entry due to lack of souring. On further investigation, this looks like a good candidate for inclusion. Here's a draft, with sourcing. Comments appreciated.
^Priest, Robert J. (2001). "Missionary Positions: Christian, Modernist, and Postmodernist". Current Anthropology. 42 (1): 29–68. doi:10.1086/318433. PMID14992209. S2CID224796898.
The IFL Science source should probably be removed: Elise Andrew's article says "With regard to [IFL Science], Andrew has come under criticism for plagiarism, unlicensed use of intellectual property, reporting false and misleading information, and rarely issuing corrections."
The OED entry currently gives the earliest use as 1948, so that information appears outdated.
The closest I see in the Straight Dope article to verifying the misconception as "common" is describing it as a "legend". I have a longstanding opposition to this verifying a misconception as common. At the very least, if we understand it to verify this, it should be applied consistently and everything in list of urban legends should be considered verified as common misconceptions.
I don't currently have access to the Priest document. At the least, the abstract verifies that it was a common misconception among modernist and postmodernist scholars as of the 1990s. Per WP:DATED, the modified entry could read: "as of the 1990s, it was a common misconception among modernist and postmodernist scholars that..."
The Priest article is here or here. Take a look. It says:
No authority documents a single situation in which missionaries taught such an ethic and natives used such an expression. Yet our society has accepted the “truth” of the missionary position. In contrast to most urban legends, this legend has managed to certify itself through the accredited reality-defining institutions of society and to instantiate its truth as part of the English language.
The Priest article also says "The Oxford English Dictionary included it in 1976 but gave a date of 1969 as the first usage it was able to document." I don't have access to the OED, so if they've updated this we can use that figure - it doesn't affect the narrative.
According to popular lore, the missionary sex position got its name because long ago Christian missionaries taught that the male-dominant position was the proper way to have sex. But some scholars believe this to be an urban legend.
It's a common myth that the position gets its name from missionaries giving sex tips to the people they were ministering to. In reality, the term cropped up in the 1950s and was probably just the cause of a mistranslation of historical documents.
Given the quote provided, the Priest article appears sufficient for verifying it is a common misconception beyond academics. Used in conjunction with the more contemporary Cosmopolitan article, WP:DATED shouldn't need to be applied. I think we can omit the OED's dating if it's simply repeating what we write before. Else the entry is good to go. You shouldn't need access to OED, the 1948 date appears on the free to access fact sheet. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 02:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion below was started on the Science and Technology sub-article, I'm moving it here since it affects this "main" article and the three sub-articles.
I have changed the headings (despite the warning). I believe this solves it both here and on the "main page". Feel free to revert if I'm missing something. Dajasj (talk) 09:48, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The List of Common Misconceptions article was recently split into three separate articles due to size constraints with each sub-article transcluded into the main article. The lack of level-2 headings in the sub-articles is because the sub-articles are transcluded with the level-2 headings provided by the main article.
Thanks for the pointer to MOS:GOODHEAD; more info is available at MOS:OVERSECTION. I was unfamiliar with this material, and you are correct that it is an issue. Since it is an issue for all three sub-articles and affects the main article, we should move this discussion to that talk page - whatever we do with this sub-article we should also do with the other two for consistency. I'm not sure what the best approach is, so I'd like to hear from some of the other editors and I'm not sure everyone follows this talk page. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:06, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The ideal way to do it would be to use "standard" level-2 headings in the sub-articles and push everything down a level when transcluding. But I don't know how to accomplish that. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 15:37, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for moving the discussion here. Could you elaborate what is looking weird, so I can help find a solution?
More rigorous options could be to move the transcluded pages to the Template namespace, where headings are no requirement. Another, perhaps already discussed and rejected when it was split off, is to make this a disambig page and only keep the transcluded pages. The latter not only fixes the heading issue, but also fits better with the requirement that there should be references where the information is shown. Dajasj (talk) 17:04, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It just seems odd to have a heading labeled "List" for what is clearly a list. None of the other List of... articles that I'm familiar with have the list under a heading called "List".
Moving the transcluded pages to the Template namespace would seem to resolve the issue, but I'm not very familiar with that structure so I'd need to defer to someone who does. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I agree that it is a bit odd. We could also name it "Common misconceptions", but that is also obviously in the titel. However it fixes the problem and differentiates from References and Sources anyway. It is pragrmatic, but not perfect.
Well, now that I understand the problem that is being addressed I'm not so opposed to your solution. I don't know how urgent the headings issue is, but if you think it needs to be addressed quickly I won't object to adding the "List" level 2 heading to the sub articles pending discussion and consensus here. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 22:36, 16 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is there any objection to moving the sub-articles to template namespace? Seems like a good solution to the heading issue, and comports with the consensus on the recent split discussion. Mr. Swordfish (talk) 00:14, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Diplomatic missions do not necessarily enjoy full extraterritorial status and are generally not sovereign territory of the represented state. The sending state can give embassies sovereign status but this only happens with a minority of countries. Although they receive special privileges (such as immunity from most local laws) by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations the premises of an embassy remain under the jurisdiction of the host state.[1]
References
^"Laws and Rules Regarding Extraterritoriality". integrity-legal.com. Archived from the original on 2021-04-14. There is a common misconception that Embassies and Consulates have extraterritoriality. As anecdotal evidence of this misconception, people will often say things like, 'the US Embassy sits upon United States soil.' For the most part, this is not the case as extraterritoriality is not conferred upon an Embassy or Consulate, but in some situations extraterritoriality may be created by Treaty.
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