Talk:List of fallacies

ONUS/BURDEN

Given our policies such as Wikipedia:Verifiability, Paradoctor I'm fairly sure it's up to the people seeking to include something to prove that a source exists for something, and not the other way around. Alpha3031 (t • c) 23:45, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

This is a list, and list entry content is derived from the listed articles. Entries here only need to correctly summarize their article. If that article contains unsupported claims, edit the article, and the entry will follow suit. 🤷 Paradoctor (talk) 23:55, 5 November 2025 (UTC)

Again Paradoctor, I'm fairly sure being a list does not exempt an article from WP:MINREF. Alpha3031 (t • c) 00:01, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

In a few days, this matter will be settled. Brewing tea for now. Paradoctor (talk) 00:12, 6 November 2025 (UTC)

Goomba Fallacy

The goomba fallacy is fairly well-known and applicable on the modern Internet. Surely it ought to be included here? MatildaLyonne (talk) 15:43, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

We do have goomba fallacy.

For a list entry, we need a couple of WP:reliable sources defining and discussing the term, at a minimum. Paradoctor (talk) 15:56, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

You'll have to do better than some English teacher's blog. I'm content with tagging for now, but we need more than that. Paradoctor (talk) 16:09, 1 June 2026 (UTC)

I can't seem to find anything that doesn't call back to Know Your Meme.

I think this is a just a memefication of a fallacy of division or hasty generalization.

Squatch347 (talk) 14:24, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

WP:URBANDICTIONARY, WP:KNOWYOURMEME

We need sources reliable for fallacies, not unreliable sources for memes.

well-known: You might want to read WP:BFDI. Paradoctor (talk) 16:33, 2 June 2026 (UTC)

Reorganizing page appropriately without formal and informal fallacies as categorizations

This article's division between "formal" and "informal" fallacies presents it as a stable taxonomic fact when the literature treats this as an open and largely unresolved dispute. In fact its arguable we are presenting a no longer applicable or accurate historical artifact as a current explanation. Gerald Massey's "asymmetry thesis" argues there is no systematic theory of invalidity for natural-language arguments comparable to what formal logic offers for validity. Another way of putting this is that the idea of "informal fallacy" was never properly defined or grounded in a principled criteria, rather it was a catch all for whatever couldn't be captured by formal axiomatic systems in the late nineteenth century. Responses (including Govier, Johnson, Finocchiaro) contest Massey but don't do so in anyway that meaningfully justifies the formal bipartite solution but rather with a complex multi-part with overlapping areas premise.

I suggest that this page needs to be reorganized and the use of the terms 'formal fallacy' and 'informal fallacy' should be used explicitly and only to describe the inherited pedagogical convention (useful for narrating how the field organized itself and evolved from Aristotle through to the present day).

Substantive content (what each fallacy actually is, why it misleads) around something less contested, such as the relevance/ambiguity/presumption clusters some theorists use instead. Dogmatic Quibbler (talk) 17:51, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

the literature treats this as an open and largely unresolved dispute That claim needs load-bearing sourcing, from secondary sources. Also, it needs to be part of fallacy.

Given your claim, classification along these lines is contentious, and therefore cannot be decided by editors. Luckily, we don't have to. On a case-by-case basis, we look at what the sources say, and place the fallacies accordingly. Paradoctor (talk) 20:52, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

Using the over arching categories of formal and informal IS a choice. Surely if there is any contention over these being valid definitions as neutral editors we shouldn't structure our articles based on what is recognized as essentially an archaic organization method based upon the limited knowledge available at the time? Dogmatic Quibbler (talk) 22:59, 18 September 2026 (UTC)

an archaic organization method Same answer as before. We report what the reliable sources say about a fallacy, not what we think they should say. Paradoctor (talk) 04:55, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

french language

seems to me that the french-language page "Paralogisme" ought to be linked to this one (it even has the same formal/informal distinction) and vice versa. i would add this in myself but i dont know how to do it. ~2026-51816-96 (talk) 15:22, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

Paralogisme is French for "paralogism", a redirect to fallacy. Per WP:RLOTE, a redirect for the French term should not exist on Wikipedia. Paradoctor (talk) 18:44, 26 September 2026 (UTC)

thanks for your reply (even though I don't quite grasp the technicalities involved) ~2026-52033-38 (talk) 13:51, 28 September 2026 (UTC)

WP:RLOTE: redirects in languages other than English that point to articles not directly related to that language or a culture associated with that language (affinity) should generally not be kept Paradoctor (talk) 16:09, 28 September 2026 (UTC)