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RfC: Business Insider news reporting

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Having been awarded a Pullitzer for their work, editors decided to discuss whether the quality of Business Insider had improved recently, specifically in the "news" section, which has been considered unclear since the last RfC. While some discussion focused on clickbait headlines, which are already not reliable, participants also brought forward sources that served to show whether BI could be considered generally reliable or not.

Those who supported option 2 noted that, despite a recent change in ownership, which lead to a change in editorial staff, the quality of the articles published by them did not improve significantly, with reports being published by other reliable sources noting as much. A counterargument presented by editors who would see BI's reliability improved on Wikipedia is that many of those issues are old, before the change in editorial staff, and not as common as they used to be. Not only that, BI is known for issuing corrections, a sign of a reliable source.

One point raised by those in favor of option 1 was that some sites that analyze the reliability and bias of news outlets give BI a very high rating. This was countered by the fact that these sites either have a shaky methodology, or give high ratings to other outlets that we consider to not be generally reliable and, as such, can't be used here to help decide the reliability of BI.

While my reading of the discussion is that Business Insider has improved the quality of their news coverage in the past few years, part of the community is not quite okay with having them be in the same level as other generally reliable sources. As of right now, no consensus has been developed and the status quo of WP:BI stands. (non-admin closure) Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 23:42, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Insider won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting and Commentary for its reporting on the story of an woman's escape from an internment camp (see: Uyghur genocide); the story was filed under its news section. Currently, WP:RSP describes Insider — with the exception of its culture section, which is considered RS — as being unclear in terms of reliability (option 2).

Is Insider's news (section) coverage, at least since December 2021 (when the Pulitzer winning story published), considered generally reliable for factual reporting?

  • Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
  • Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
  • Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
  • Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

-- TheSandDoctor Talk 00:09, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Survey (BI)

  • Bad RfC and procedural close. WP:RFCNEUTRAL commands that the prompt should be neutrally worded, but this prompt expresses a specific call-to-action (Based on this Pulitzer development, I believe that we should reconsider its news coverage's classification). If you believe that the reporting should be reconsidered, then that should only appear in a comment or !vote, not in the RfC prompt. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 00:12, 2 July 2022 (UTC) (struck as moot 00:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC))
    @Mhawk10: Good catch. I didn't intend that. I have moved it to the discussion section. Does that address the concern? TheSandDoctor Talk 00:14, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
    @TheSandDoctor: Yes, that addresses my concern. As such, I've struck my !vote above as moot. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 00:16, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
    @Mhawk10: I am glad that I was able to address that and correct it soon enough. Thank you for raising that and for striking now that it is resolved. TheSandDoctor Talk 00:17, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2: Additional considerations apply. That Pulitzer-winning piece is an excellent piece and drives home a woman's story about the abuses she endured in such a direct and powerful way that can only be conveyed in that illustrated medium. And by driving home the sheer scope of the inhumanity in that region through the one woman's lens there is little doubt that Insider deserves that prize. But there just far too many issues with Insider for me to consider it generally reliable for news over its entire lifetime.
    1. Reading through the previous RfC, almost nobody there considered Insider to be WP:GREL at that time. There may have been substantial improvements in the editorial control and fact-checking processes at BI in the intermittent two years (perhaps that culminated with the sort of detailed reporting necessary for a Pulitzer), but winning a Pulitzer in 2022 isn't good evidence that BI was reliable in 2013 (or really early in its history, when it was basically a collection of self-published blogs).
    2. The issues present at the time the source was evaluated in 2020 are still real issues that were present through much of the source's history (and may still be present today). Their editorial staffing decisions before acquisition by Axel Springer were... questionable. Prior to its acquisition by Axel Springer, the publication lacked editorial independence from advertisers, accepted (disclosed) quid-pro-quo payments from sources and article subjects, and repeatedly published false stories without doing basic fact-checking. And, while editorial staff kinda sorta purged themselves in 2016 shortly after they got acquired by Axel Springer, the mass exodus of staff didn't actually lead to swiftly improved editorial quality.
    3. I don't mind Axel Springer as an owner; it does publish Bild, but it also publishes Die Welt and Politico (although the acquisition of Politico is recent). Media companies often hold a variety of different publications, the quality of which can vary significantly (for example, News Corporation concurrently owned The Times of London, The Wall Street Journal, Fox News, News of the World, and The Sun). But the longstanding issues with the reliability of the website didn't go away overnight; in 2016 an analysis in Columbia Journalism Review called it the poster child for churnalism and that it often published clickbait that turned out to be false. The non-disparagement clauses in its contracts are... not great for journalistic accountability.
In short, even though Business Insider was acquired by Axel Springer in 2015, and there very well may have been an improvement in its more recent quality of coverage, I really can't point to 2016 as the date where journalistic practices improved; I'm not really able to set a firm date where I can say that these chronic issues with Business Insider came to a halt. Feel free to propose one and make an argument for it, but I'm just not sure I can support a time-based split on reliability without a good reason. The only reason I'm WP:MREL here as opposed to WP:GUNREL is (1) a Pulitzer means something and (2) I expect it to be fine for ordinary sorts of business reporting. But I can't in good faith look past all of the publication's issues and say it's been WP:GREL since it started. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:14, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
For what it's worth, I don't think that being run by a convicted felon is per se disqualifying (the New Jersey Globe is run by David Wildstein but is well-regarded even by its competitors and by people who are not sympathetic to Wildstein). But that the guy was chosen to lead a business publication after being more or less legally barred from the securities industry by the SEC for alleged fraud, combined with the publication's lack of editorial independence from advertisers, is a bit of a red flag regarding pre-Axel Springer BI. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 01:27, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
@Mhawk10: The question was "Is Insider's news (section) coverage, at least since December 2021 (when the Pulitzer winning story published), considered generally reliable for factual reporting" (emphasis added). This is also about the section, not the the publication as a whole. This would seemingly address all of the points that you raised? The question wasn't really about whether it was reliable for all of its history, but the Pulitzer is a very good sign that its recent (news) coverage has probably vastly improved and is more reliable, no? Publications can change over time (see WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS). TheSandDoctor Talk 01:36, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
@TheSandDoctor: I need to read more carefully before writing. That being said, there is still recognition that Business Insider is nowhere near the same journalistic league as Politico, and the continued use of traffic quotas leads to stories being a bit more clickbaity than news-y. Pulitzer or not, I'm not really confident that BI has flushed this stuff out yet, and I don't think that one excellent piece is enough to make the whole operation WP:GREL in light of its longstanding problems that seem to still to have been recognized as recently as this year. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 02:11, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
@Mhawk10: The problem is that the term "clickbait" is extremely subjective and arguably can be found at the NYT or elsewhere easily. Have you run into serious clickbait or (verifiably) false stories in their news section coverage in recent history? The concerns I have seen in past RfCs don't involve this section, were corrected as you'd expect from a site with editorial control, or are often years old (publications can change over time, see WP:ROLLINGSTONEPOLITICS); we have also proven previously with other publications (and even Insider) that sections can be individually assessed.
As an interesting aside, I just realized and double-checked (CTRL + F searched through the winners of years) and Politico and Insider are now tied in Pulitzer wins at once a piece. TheSandDoctor Talk 03:35, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
I was just reviewing the last RfC and wanted to add that Pyrrho the Skipper addressed this well previously, as did Bilorv's supplement. "We should stay neutral regarding the issue of "clickbait", as it's subjective and not all that helpful in determining fact-checking standards. The New York Times publishes headlines that could be considered clickbait. And I see that coming up frequently as a bit of an emotional, knee-jerk reason to discredit this publication." and the supplement (by Bilorv) "I'd add to this that headlines are not reliable, the body of articles is what we're talking about, so if "clickbait" is just in the headline then it doesn't matter much (though it would be strange to encounter, say, a publication with exceptional fact checking in its articles but lies in its headlines)." (emphasis in original) TheSandDoctor Talk 03:46, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
If my only objection were that the headlines are inaccurate and sensationalist, (which BI statistically engages in quite often, I would agree that this is no issue in light of WP:HEADLINE. But the long-standing concern here is not merely that the headlines are at times akin to those published by content farms—it is the churnalism that this news organization’s editorial structure actively has encouraged both before and after acquisition by Axel Springer. That the reputation of the firm remained that way—even in January 2022—cannot be reduced to merely its decision to frequently use sensationalist headlines. It reflects something much more substantial about the quality of its article content, which is ultimately what we care about when evaluating this publication’s reliability for news. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 19:45, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
Clickbait reflects a practice of "dramatization" that seems contrary to reliability. Of course, it's only one criteria in the catalog that we use — which is why it has little importance for an outlet like the New York Times but can have a lot of weight for i-promise-this-is-reliable.net. JBchrch talk 17:21, 5 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2, as per excellent summary by MHawk10. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:06, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1 No numerical vote yet per withinNo point being a jerk, even though I was a jerk before it got all commercialized.: The previous RfC has a great list of BI's failings and questionable practices by Chetsford. However, a few issues with the list: one is the acknowledged difference between pre-2016 practices and now. Another is the bottom CJR review mentions BI only in a paragraph referencing the CNN article directly beneath it. Minor nitpicks on a list of serious shortcomings, sure. There is also an important mitigating factor in these shortcomings: that BI publishes on its stories corrections, retractions, and financial COIs (which is why CJR is making a point about ethics in the latter). I am generally skeptical of "bias/reliability check" sites for news outlets, for both methodology and first principles, but they generally give BI a high rating (The Factual's review details some of the objections raised). And of course headlines should always be disregarded in these analyses for too many reasons. I will likely not vote for any option until the wording on the rating system is changed, but BI should be considered generally acceptable, with each article subject to editor scrutiny (just almost any other source should be). SamuelRiv (talk) 16:24, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
    @SamuelRiv: Just to clarify, that was the second previous RfC. The actual "previous" one before this was this one where the culture section/coverage was found to be RS. What did you mean by "working on the rating system is changed"? We stop saying "generally reliable"? If so, that appears to be the standard question set asked and the two (reliable/acceptable) would appear rather interchangeable in meaning? Not trying to pick a fight or anything, just clarifying for others which the latest RfC was and wanting to (personally) better understand your comment. TheSandDoctor Talk 03:41, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
    Regarding the actual previous RfC then, I guess my understanding of journalism is far more limited than I imagined because I had no idea what was going on there. I don't remember the last time I've read a "culture" story and I didn't recognize who half the people in those linked articles were. Apparently the kids all want to watch "my tube" now? I don't see why they can't just watch their own. Regarding the color rating system, I posted a comment on RSP about contradictory criteria and seeming misuse of the term "opinion". And of course the green check mark is portrayed by some users as if the veracity of a source is now intrinsic with the fabric of the universe. So I'm not really comfortable with the system as it stands. "Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting" would accurately summarize my opinion of BI from what I've assessed here, however. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:28, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - There is some good content on the site, but it still has a lot of attention-grabbing headlines on less well-researched stories or mixed reporting/pov content. There are many more reliable sources for widely covered news and analysis, so case-by-case scrutiny for Insider is not too much of a burden. SPECIFICO talk 16:36, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Options 2 or 3 - Best not to fully trust any news media. GoodDay (talk) 17:05, 3 July 2022 (UTC)
    I think this is where the phrase "generally reliable" comes in; all outlets make mistakes, what matters is whether they correct them and the frequency of issues. If I understand correctly, by the logic in your comment, we'd deem every RS source to not be RS and call everything unreliable. TheSandDoctor Talk 02:55, 4 July 2022 (UTC)
If it's corporate backed? You're darn right not to trust it. GoodDay (talk) 02:14, 6 July 2022 (UTC)
@FlantasyFlan: @SamuelRiv: Just a (unfortunately way too long) side note, but I strongly disagree with the links to the so-called The Factual. Other editors would probably disagree, but I find it to be atrocious. It considers itself to be a blog and states its "objective" method here. Note that it cites Media Bias Fact Check and Allsides, which there's consensus are marginally reliable or generally unreliable. Per here, The Washington Post is considered Moderate-Left based on data from AllSides and Media Bias Fact Check — the two non-partisan websites that we use to assess the political orientation of news outlets. And judging from what I see, the algorithm is horrible. Looking at the ratings, Business Insider is rated more highly than Associated Press and the NY Times, two of (at least IMO) newspapers of record or credible agencies. By the way, it could be argued that AP and The Economist have a left-centre bias, but Jacobin, which is probably progressive left, is rated higher. Further, the Washington Examiner is somehow considered to ber one of the best refs. See its controversies in the past, and WP's summary. However, The Factual somehow considers Our selection reveals a rich, layered media ecosystem. There are numerous general news sources that deliver high-quality daily news (Reuters, Washington Examiner, Business Insider), I find it to be almost absurd that the Washington Examiner is considered to be a better ref to use than AP or The Economist, and is apparently the same with ABC and Reuters. The inconsistencies are enough for me to say that its ratings should be taken with a grain of salt at best, and despite an abouts us page (see here), there's no clear editorial policies. Also, its algorithm apparently discount the rating for lack of authors seen in some media such as The Economist and Reuters, per this line: Some sites don’t have authors at all (e.g., Reuters or the Economist) or the algorithm is unable to pull that information due to the formatting (e.g., South China Morning Post). The articles still may be informative but because The Factual could not validate some elements the articles with rate lower. By the way, its grammar is confusing, the use of "with" doesn't seem to be the most clear grammar, and especially considering that this is their methodology page, it should definitely be made clearer. Of course, a lot of SCMP articles have authors, but they discount the ratings because of formatting (?). Overall, I don't disagree with the current consensus (Option 1/2), but do disagree with several editors relying on The Factual. Many thanks for your help, apologies this is too long and unclearly worded, I would suggest reading Mhawk10's analysis again as it's considerably better than mine! VickKiang (talk) 23:07, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Washington Examiner is not reliable. It should not be considered reliable. Andrevan@ 23:16, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
I think I probably agree with you, but The Factual apparently considers it high-quality per my comments above, so I think its methodology is questionable. VickKiang (talk) 23:31, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree, I'm not sure about Insider though. But I'd support an RFC to downgrade Washington Examiner. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] Andrevan@ 23:35, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
Some refs are convincing to show the ref's poor, but Ad Fontes and MBFC are generally unreliable, and shouldn't be used to form an RfC (on the Noticeboard, when editing, it suggests Do not base your RfC solely on Media Bias/Fact Check (RSP entry), as it is not a reliable source. Allsides has some debate. I don't think launching an RfC based on three generally unreliable/marignally reliable refs are the best, but I'm sure there are better examples (credible fact checkers, newspapers) criticising the Examiner. Many thanks! VickKiang (talk) 23:40, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
@VickKiang: I don't disagree with a word you said, and I wish there was a rating site that didn't suck (at least for reliability; bias is nonsense I've never seen a decent methodology to rate bias outside selective academic studies). It might not be possible. And honestly, maybe I just used The Factual over MBFC and Ad Fontes (which I ended up using later on) because 1) it has a write-up on this particular outlet, and 2) it said what I somewhat expected it to say and didn't do anything that (in my immediate impression) was completely stupid up-front. And that's a terrible basis for me to then implicitly endorse a such site (by linking it without qualification). Mea culpa, won't repeat, and thanks for calling me out. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:06, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1, I think BI has shown it is an established media company and on the level with their Pulitzer win. Andrevan@ 00:31, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 3 per my reasoning in last year's discussion. Option 3 is "generally unreliable for factual reporting" which is consistent with it receiving a Pulitzer Prize while, simultaneously, publishing a revolving door of errors and falsehoods almost too numerous to mention, along with giving advertisers "limited editorial control," its continuing use of clickbait headlines, etc., etc. "Generally unreliable" doesn't mean "always unreliable" and the Pulitzer Prize story is an example of why Option 4 may not be appropriate. Insider's checkered recent history serves as a counter example of why 1 and 2 are not appropriate. Chetsford (talk) 02:07, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
    Since you were the main one giving evidence in the last discussion, let me explain why I don't find your examples very convincing:
    1. The COVID article: the headline here was sensationalized, but all the actual information in the story was accurate, and we don't judge on headlines per WP:HEADLINE.
    2. Lumping all the CJR articles together: they're in a pretty bloggy style, and they mostly don't describe behavior that's out of the ordinary for a newsorg. So for example, here's Vox doing sponsored content; the piece about fake news tricking it also listed a whole bunch of obviously legit newsorgs that were also similarly tricked, including USA Today and the LA Times.
    3. Can't fact check the false story about Apple because I don't have access to your source.
    4. I can fact check the false story about Snowden, and BI was by no means the only newsorg to publish that. The Intercept story pretty clearly lays out that even such credible sources as the Wall Street Journal were fooled. BI also published a very clear correction at the top of their story after it became clear it was false, which seems exactly like what we'd want a WP:NEWSORG to do.
    5. The Daily Beast article about non-disparagment clauses says outright that many orgs we have green at RSP also require employees to sign those.
    6. What's a ban from securities trading have to do with journalism?
    7. "Capricious story assignments"? Why does that affect their credibility? We're not judging whether it's a good place to work for.
    8. Yes, it uses clickbait headlines. WP:HEADLINE.
    The TL;DR here is that Business Insider engages in a bunch of practices that are common in the industry, and that they have been fooled before (but corrected themselves when they did). This doesn't sound like a disqualification from being a WP:NEWSORG, this sounds exactly like what we'd expect from a WP:NEWSORG. Loki (talk) 02:48, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
TL;DR - "but whatabout ..." Chetsford (talk) 02:55, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
  • we don't judge on headlines per WP:HEADLINE WP:HEADLINE is about the reliability of headlines. It doesn't prevent us from using headlines as an element to judge the general reliability of a media.
  • The Daily Beast article about non-disparagment clauses says outright that many orgs we have green at RSP also require employees to sign those. What I'm reading is "Some media companies shy away from asking all employees to sign non-disparagement agreements because they believe it clashes with the mission to shine light on misbehavior. Others, including Mic, Vice, and HuffPost, have asked departing employees who have been laid off to sign them in exchange for severance pay.". Vice is yellow, HuffPost is yellow for politics and green for other stuff, and Mic (media company) isn't listed there.
  • 6. What's a ban from securities trading have to do with journalism? You can read the New Yorker article, entitled "Business Outsider: Can a disgraced Wall Street analyst earn trust as a journalist?".
  • 7. "Capricious story assignments"? Why does that affect their credibility? If you read the CNN article, you'll see that it reports journalists being pressured to deliver cheap scoops and generate traffic. The question of how this affects reliability is left as an exercise to the reader. JBchrch talk 08:57, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
    1. You *could* use anything to judge the general reliability of a source, I guess, but that doesn't mean that argument is policy-based.
    2. Conde Nast, publisher of the New Yorker, makes its employees sign non-disparagement agreements. The New Yorker is green at RSP, and in fact you yourself used it as your source for the next point.
    3. Yes, I have read it. But what's it have to do with Business Insider's reliability? Does a ban from securities trading affect its editorial review process or willingness to issue corrections?
    4. But there's no direct evidence in the article that it *does* affect reliability, though. You're operating purely on an insinuation. Loki (talk) 14:47, 26 July 2022 (UTC)
    1. What is the policy that controls the general reliability of sources?
    2. "in cases that involve harassment, discrimination or retaliation". Not saying it's good, but it's very different from a "non-disparagement clause requiring employees to refrain from ever criticizing the company during or after their employment at Insider".
    4. Reliability is not some concept operating in a bubble and RSN is not a criminal court. We are actively looking for serious sources which we can consider as reliable for the purposes of writing an encyclopedia. Delivering cheap scoops that drive traffic is incompatible with that mission. JBchrch talk 13:20, 31 July 2022 (UTC)
Saying "the arguments you use to claim this source fails this standard would mean basically no source meets it, so your interpretation of policy can't be correct" is not whataboutism. Loki (talk) 14:30, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (BI)

I agree that after a major commendation it's worth reviewing that particular section of an outlet, or that editor or journalist; and in general any publication on RSP should be subject to periodic review. Of course with a century of history, it's a trivial to find some hideous Pulitzer wins (and general perennial grumblings). The more relevant point is that one shiny piece of investigation/photojournalism/commentary/review/(22 categories) is, in an otherwise low-quality outlet, probably more indicative of a promising journalist/editor than anything else. There's a somewhat well-known exchange, as part of Al Franken's political comedy, of Bill O'Reilly trying to enhance his journalistic prestige by citing the fact that Access Hollywood, which he once anchored, had won a Polk Award, which of course he had nothing to do with. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Next Shark

Is Next Shark consider reliable media in field of entertainment and business? Link: https://nextshark.com/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arorapriyansh333 (talk • contribs) 08:42, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

I don't think so. It's a blog. Andre🚐 20:25, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

Andre🚐 ok thanks..

Is The New Republic's Soapbox section a reliable source?

I've seen it called opinion but[[8]] says "As part of the redesign, TNR launched four new editorial verticals that each feature a specialized focus and in-depth reporting: The Soapbox, on politics; Apocalypse Soon, on climate change; Sold Short, on inequality; and Critical Mass, on culture." TNR itself calls it " our politics vertical."[9] They also have "Apocalypse Soon, our vertical dedicated to climate change, science, and the environment." See this on "Sold Short"[10] which clearly says "Anything you don’t want? Anything best described as an op-ed." Doug Weller talk 19:28, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

"TNR launched four new editorial verticals" editorial pieces are opinion pieces. Did you know that The New Republic is an editorial magazine? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:30, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
TNR is generally reliable, and the "Soapbox" section strikes me as an opinion/editorial section, not a news/factual section, but should still be usable for WP:RSOPINION and other situations where reliable op-ed is usable. "There is consensus that The New Republic is generally reliable. Most editors consider The New Republic biased or opinionated. Opinions in the magazine should be attributed. " Andre🚐 19:43, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Just a note that when I look at the linked discussions at perrenial it seems to have been repeatedly noted that everything in The New Republic falls under WP:RSOPINION. So generally reliable for opinion, but they don't publish anything else. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:51, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
You want us to ignore RSNP in favour of your interpretation of discussions? Doug Weller talk 19:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
An RSNP entry is written by an editor based (in the best case) on their interpretation of discussions. It's not like there was an RfC on the precise wording. SamuelRiv (talk) 20:38, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
I'm not ignoring RSNP, I'm providing context for the summary at RSNP. It is generally reliable, but for opinion because thats the only kind of article they publish. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:50, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
They intermix reporting and opinion, hence why attribution is so important. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 19:58, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

RFC: Evaluation of self-published sources

Is it appropriate to use self-published sources which can be reliably evaluated and evaluate as reliable?

This has particularly come up regarding in relation to an edit dispute on Benford's law, regarding the below paragraph:

Benford's law has also been misapplied to claim election fraud. When applying the law to Joe Biden's election returns for Chicago, Milwaukee, and other localities in the 2020 United States presidential election, the distribution of the first digit did not follow Benford's law. The misapplication was a result of looking at data that was tightly bound in range, which violates the assumption inherent in Benford's law that the range of the data be large. According to Mebane, "It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds."[1][2] Similarly, application of Benford's law to the last pairs of digits in the same data shows an expected distribution for Joe Biden, but a massive spike for lower values for Donald Trump, which also seems to suggest fraud; however, Donald Trump received fewer than 60 votes in a significant portion of districts, skewing the results of such analysis by adding a standard normal distribution in this range, rather than indicating fraud.[3]

References

  1. ^ "Fact check: Deviation from Benford's Law does not prove election fraud". Reuters. November 10, 2020.
  2. ^ Dacey, James (November 19, 2020). "Benford's law and the 2020 US presidential election: nothing out of the ordinary". Physics World.
  3. ^ Why do Biden's votes not follow Benford's Law?

The latter part of this paragraph references a YouTube video by Stand-up Maths. This channel's videos provide in-depth exploration of various mathematics topics, including rigorous analysis and explanation of methodology. Data cited from other sources is clearly cited, and often links are provided for further information from other experts, including published experts.

In other words: the self-published source has a reputation for being high-quality, independent, accurate, and fact-checked; and relies on authoritative and frequently peer-reviewed sources for support of their claims. In this case, the information in question regards analysis of publicly-available data, which means it can also be independently reviewed itself; and it doesn't make any extraordinary claims. The claim made and supported in the source is that not only does Bedford's law produce a false indication of fraud committed by Biden, but applied to the same data by a different method it also raises an indication of fraud by Trump which similarly fails to pass rigorous examination. In other words: depending on how you look at the same data, two manner of applying Bedford's law can produce an indicator of fraud by either Biden or Trump, and both of these indicators are erroneous for different reasons.

As per User_talk:Bluefoxicy#August_2022, User:EvergreenFir claims Youtube is automatically a bad source. The way I read WP:SELFPUB, evaluation of the source in context and by its own merits suggests it passes reliability and is fit for use in this situation. Notably, I have found no other source that has taken the analysis as far as last-pair-of-digits application of Bedford's law, and the ability to manipulate data by applying the same analysis tool in different manners is interesting and encyclopedic (it demonstrates that use of Bedford's law is not a binary concept, but rather one that can be generalized to a number of methodological approaches).

There are other such self-published sources on YouTube, such as Veritassium (more math) or Alex Yard & Knuckles (music theory), who demonstrate expert knowledge in their field and give rigorous analysis of their subject matter in their various videos. That this is increasingly an outlet for individuals with specialized knowledge to produce what amounts to entertainment content with an intellectual theme suggests a large amount of reliable self-published sources are appearing and likely to continue to appear. Certainly an individual source requires its own careful analysis—as I've said, the particular video in question itself provides a rigorous analysis and uses publicly-available data, rather than just being published by someone generally recognized as reliable—but it seems distinctly strange to me to determine that no mater how a source evaluates, a YouTube video by a highly-knowledgeable self-published source which has demonstrated reliability and passes a fair examination on its merits is still "a YouTube video" and not reliable.

This is going to affect other articles and it is apparently unclear what WP:SELFPUB means in these cases. Can we get some clarification here? John Moser (talk) 22:25, 7 August 2022 (UTC)

"This channel's videos provide in-depth exploration of various mathematics topics, including rigorous analysis and explanation of methodology. Data cited from other sources is clearly cited, and often links are provided for further information from other experts, including published experts. In other words: the self-published source has a reputation for being high-quality, independent, accurate, and fact-checked; and relies on authoritative and frequently peer-reviewed sources for support of their claims." Thats not putting it in other words thats saying a completely different thing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:35, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
  • YouTube isn't the source here (or the publisher either), it's the uploader. If the uploader is readily identifiable as a subject matter expert (Guess you will have to prove that Stand-up Maths is Matt Parker as part of that) and the usual rules are met (copyright, blp, OR ), then why not? Selfstudier (talk) 22:46, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
SPS suggests the author should be a subject matter expert. Matt Parker is not a professional mathematician but is a bestselling author of a pop math book with a reputable publisher, and I think by the references on his page and what I've seen he's a reputable popularizer/educator of math. Since he's not here saying that such-and-such conjecture should be taken seriously, but applying this known math concept to the real world (which is what his book is essentially all about), I'd say he meets the superficial standards of SPS. Whether his comments are ever worth putting in an article is for editors to decide. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:49, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Last point I'm not disputing. Whether the context of a particular article in a scientific journal is worth putting in an article is on a case-by-case basis as with anything else. I'm only concerned with "this doesn't belong here because it's SPS/YouTube/whatever" kinds of disputes.
I also brought up the point about things being said being verifiable (i.e. passing some sort of reasoning based on other information, such as being consistent with other things said by experts, or with an individual editor's own expert knowledge…if you're applying textbook theory pretty directly, we can check the textbook, basically) and optimally providing some rigor in their own analysis because unreliable sources can also gain a following, e.g. Alex Jones, and I believe that evidence that someone is wrong or has a pattern of being wrong (or outrights lying) overrules them presenting as a SME, while a self-published source should be reasonably judged as reliable on some kind of merit other than "they have a following and nobody's called them out yet." Not trying to open Wikipedia up to frivolous "seems legit" sources here, just dissatisfied with frivolous "not legit because lul" arguments. John Moser (talk) 23:50, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
I don't see how my evaluation had anything to do with "he has a following". The reason you'd cite a SPS is presumably because they're the only one applying a particular concept to a particular event in a particular way that's relevant -- if there were 10 experts publishing the same thing there'd be no issue. You're editing an article on Benford's Law so presumably you can verify that what he's saying about its applicability is correct, apart from the specifics of the dataset itself (which is presumably available somewhere). If you want an editor to independently verify his analysis then WP:WikiProject Mathematics is probably the place. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:13, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
In case it's not clear from my original post, I'm saying Parker is a reliable SPS for established mathematics applied to real-world events (if that mathematics is indeed applicable to real-world events, as Benford's Law of course is.) Again, whether it (or any mention of the election) belongs in the article is for you to discuss on the article Talk page. SamuelRiv (talk) 03:20, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
  • If this is about stolen election conspiracy theories that aren't being pushed by professional mathematicians, it seems likely that you don't need sources by professional mathematicians to debunk them, by WP:PARITY: Inclusion and exclusion of content related to fringe theories and criticism of fringe theories may be done by means of a rough parity of sources....In an article on a fringe topic, if a notable fringe theory is primarily described by amateurs and self-published texts, verifiable and reliable criticism of the fringe theory need not be published in a peer reviewed journal. For example, the Moon landing conspiracy theories article may include material from reliable websites, movies, television specials, and books that are not peer reviewed. By parity of sources, critiques of that material can likewise be gleaned from reliable websites and books that are not peer reviewed. As stated elsewhere in the WP:FRINGE guideline, not mentioning the fringe theory to begin with is also an option. Geogene (talk) 00:16, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
Self-published sources says: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." My understanding of expert is someone who has a a body of writing about the topic in academic sources. If we decide that journalists are experts, then it will affect the accuracy of articles. People who popularize subjects take their information from reliable sources and translate it into English. Some even use Wikipedia articles as sources. What is the problem with using those sources directly?
The other issue here is that in the example, the source is used for its opinions, viz., whether there was electoral fraud. Perhaps different experts would come to different conclusions, not about whether or not fraud occurred, but whether Benford's law is a good way to make that determination or whether it had been used correctly. A peer reviewed article making Parker's claim would be peer-reviewed, so that experts could weigh in on that before publication and after publication we could see what response experts had, for example did they ignore it, endorse it or trash it.
TFD (talk) 01:27, 8 August 2022 (UTC)
No journal worth its druthers would bother publishing a paper on such a ludicrous idea that it can be debunked by a YouTube video. A popmath explainer of simple mathematics is just as much a qualified expert (and you don't need to be particularly mathematically educated to see Parker's argument is simply correct in an almost WP:COMMONSENSE way). jps (talk) 03:11, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

In their reply above, TFD cited the SPS link which brought a question to my mind. SPS says an expert is one, "...whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications.". That seems very academic focused and appropriate in areas where publications are a common metric of expertise. What about areas where academic work is less common and a person's resume vs the CV shows their expertise? Using light aircraft and automobile racing as examples, would we treat as expert opinion the self published comments of Burt Rutan on the design of a light airplane, Rick Mears on performance driving or Ralph Firman on design and sales of jr formula cars? My feeling is they should be considered experts but I'm not sure if they would be in context of the SPS rules. Springee (talk) 04:08, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

  • Just a quick note… the requirement is for the expert to have independently published works … not necessarily academic works.
For example, David McCullough’s independently published biographies of John Addams and Harry Truman qualify him as an amateur expert on the lives of these US presidents… so we can accept any SPS statements about those presidents by McCullough. Blueboar (talk) 14:42, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

LibraryThing for the existence and credits on a book

Hi. In the Anthony Godby Johnson article, the final sentence of the lede section reads, "A second, lesser-known book was published under Johnson's name in 1994, a collaboration with Maya Angelou entitled Love Letters to Hawaii from Aboard the A-Train."

Bear in mind that investigations into Johnson's first book suggested that he may have never existed, and been the literary creation of Vicki Johnson, who purported to be Johnson's adoptive mother.

Is LibraryThing a good source for the passage mentioning that book? This is that site's About page, and this is the page detailing its staff. It doesn't mention Maya Angelou, but I can remove mention of her from the passage. Nightscream (talk) 14:15, 6 August 2022 (UTC)

No. LibraryThing is user-generated and should be considered unreliable for statements of fact: even if a book of that name by an author of than name exists, it might be different person entirely with the same name. Note that this list of acquisitions merely notes that a book of that name and author was received by the University of Hawaii, not that it was by the same author as A Rock and a Hard Place. And is there any known connection between Hawaii and Johnson? See WP:PRIMARY: we might infer that a book by an author of that name exists, but we cannot imply that it is by the same author unless reliable sources do so. Assuming someone managed to find and read a copy of the book itself, it might be used sparingly, but probably shouldn't due to the controversy over the author (it could well be another hoax). Even if the book really was written by Johnson (or Vicki Johnson), if no other reliable sources mention the book, then the book probably doesn't warrant mention, especially not in the lead: that gives disproportionate emphasis to minor aspects, a violation of WP:NPOV. --Animalparty! (talk) 01:06, 7 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you so much for your response, and the level of detail in your explanation. It is genuinely appreciated it. Nightscream (talk) 04:52, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Is BeachSearcher a reliable source for content about beaches?

I think https://beachsearcher.com is a reliable source for content about beaches because this is a primary online portal dedicated to finding beaches worldwide. They seem to use Google Maps to add beaches and update information about beaches. Moreover, they claim to manually check the beaches for names and descriptions and work with locals to get reliable information. Kentavr009 (talk) 11:48, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

I do not see any "about" page or any other information about staff, sources, etc. A lot of the featured listings are for resort or hotel beaches, which raises the question of how those beaches were selected for being featured. - Donald Albury 14:56, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
Looks dubious, per WP:RS: websites... that are promotional in nature. What exactly is it proposed the website be cited for? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:04, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

Book of Achievers.

Is this a reliable source? — VORTEX3427 (Talk!) 10:27, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

  • No. It seems that the information on it is produced by the subjects of the individual articles, sometimes for pay [11], and there is no sign of fact-checking. One might very cautiously use it for basic facts like date of birth if that information is not available elsewhere, but it wouldn't establish notability of a subject and an academic or journalistic publication would be far better if possible. Furius (talk) 13:54, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • No. I had a look at the pages linked by About Us and FAQs at the bottom of the page and it just does not give me enough information to have any kind of confidence. In particular the bit in the FAQ about write in and tell us why you are an achiever makes it sound very iffy to me. NadVolum (talk) 13:57, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Based on the About and FAQ it has the essential structure of a Who's Who (without apparently the business model?). We had a discussion about Marquis Who's Who recently, basically the definitive one for reference libraries, and it was rather tight but the essential dispute came down to their lax/ambiguous practice of verifying the submitted information. In this case, they do not claim there is any attempt to verify submitted information at all. They also do not hint at how they get information about those who are nominated by third parties -- obviously they can't call them all because there's a lot who are long dead without clear relatives. It also appears "Achievers" get to update their own information, and it is not clear whether those updates are subject to approval. They do not cite sources (such as in the case of bios of dead people), but they do encourage users at the end to email if there are mistakes (not unlike History.com, which was also recently brought up as sometimes reliable). I'd agree that it's generally not usable. However, like History.com, you may find that some articles (like those of dead historic people) might strongly indicate facts or quotes that are easy to verify or search for elsewhere, and thus it can still be a potential research tool. SamuelRiv (talk) 23:12, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

dailypakistan.com.pk (Urdu-language ref)

The date of birth for Khan has been disputed for over a decade. Various WP:SPA editors, some claiming to be working for Khan have attempted to change it without providing reliable sources.

As far as I can figure out using auto-translation, the reference looks ok, though I'm not seeing the author. Is the author not indicated?

https://dailypakistan.com.pk is used over 800 times in English Wikipedia, and I see no previous WP:RSN discussions about it.

https://en.dailypakistan.com.pk/about-us appears to describe a legitimate news publisher. Hipal (talk) 17:45, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

If you want to know where specifically a journalist got a fact like that (whether it was from a public source or whether they went through a verification process like the New York Times purportedly does with every tiny fact), then my recommendation is to email/call the publication itself (or the journalist) and ask them. Seriously
Regarding the newspaper itself, they seem fine. Just watch out that it can be a little difficult to tell from the banner whether you're reading from their news or feature desk (both of which have a "Web desk" byline), or whether from their opinion or blog (which use linked author name bylines). SamuelRiv (talk) 23:55, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Is an EIDR entry a reliable source?

I didn't see this on here before, so I thought I'd add a post about it. I was thinking of adding a link to Draft:Hailey's On It!, like this one, as a source, and possibly using the site as a source on other pages. Thoughts? Historyday01 (talk) 02:50, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

World Religions and Spirituality Project and CESNUR-affiliated author

Is this a reliable source? This has come up at Template:Did you know nominations/Ossian D'Ambrosio as a significant portion of the article relies on this source, which is flagged as unreliable by the User:Headbomb/unreliable script. WRSP has a very small discussion previously at RSN but I couldn't find any real consensus for it one way or the other. Questionable site design aside, their about page does make it seem like their could be credibility there, but I think it seems to be the kind of source where the specific authors of each "article" are what determines its reliability, which is where CESNUR comes in.

CESNUR has been previously discussed here (for example 2008, 2019, 2019 (2)) and the consensus seems to be that CESNUR is not a reliable source for such matters. I bring up CESNUR specifically because the author of the source in question is Stefania Palmisano who serves on the CESNUR board of directors (the other author, Martina Vanzo, is a grad student so I'm kind of leaning on Palmisano's position as an associate professor as giving weight to any potential reliability). Does her serving on the board of an (apparently problematic) advocacy group create an issue for the reliability of her work in the field that CESNUR advocates for?

The DYK nom and I appear to disagree on the reliability of the source (their response is here). Given that so much of the article relies on this source I wanted to bring it up here before moving forward. Thank you. - Aoidh (talk) 02:10, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

First, the journal is clearly an academic RS, and editors can decide if a given article is due relative to other scholarship. As far as the organization in general, the previous evaluations are somewhat odd. For starters, the RSP entry is a non sequitur in the first sentence and should not link WP:COI which has zero relevance to an outside source (gee, ya think an advocacy/think tank/whatever will have a conflict of interest, or whatever you want to call it??? A professional COI in that context would be if a think tank were evaluating say a government institution while one of the members of the think tank doing the evaluation was also affiliated with the institution -- it's situational and irrelevant to a general RSP evaluation.) And no, a mainstream academic who serves on the board of an advocacy group that you might think is cuckoo does not automatically make the mainstream publications by said mainstream academic a non-RS -- that is simply stupid. Otherwise wave goodbye to Pauling, Penrose, etc. etc. As far as WRSP goes it appears their original leadership is now more humble, though each of their major project and regional pages has Ph.D.s listed as curators (but no dates, so I'm not sure how old it is, which is troubling). The profiles have bylines and dates however, and the interviews seem inconsistent. It all seems pretty objective though -- the profiles seem to be what you'd use as a source, and they're just lists of events with basically no analysis (and, as I said, a byline and date), so what's the issue? And if cesnur.net is now only the journal and not the advocacy org, RSP should be updated to green since the journal's been in place with a lower rating notice for pre-journal CESNUR per previous discussion that I'm not reading everything through (though red seems like a weak argument, and almost all the counter-CESNUR sites are deadlinks and are by non-academic cult deprogrammers/activists). SamuelRiv (talk) 05:37, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

RadioFreeEurope/RFL

I see Radio Free Asia has gotten the thumbs up, so I would assume RFE/RFL is also in the green. But I assume some might have objections in terms of funding, etc., as with RFA. But I don't see a qualitative difference between RFA and RFE/RFL, so they should therefore be equally reliable. What is the consensus? Euor (talk) 02:37, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Well our article on Alhurra is no help and needs to be updated because it gives no indication of its state in nearly a decade, but it indicates that the first news director resigned because he felt USAGM was pushing to promote U.S. foreign policy on top of news. That can take many forms aside from simply bias (which wouldn't necessarily affect reliability). It would seem that RFE/RL should be assumed to be fine if it's correctly funded and managed, but that would require a positive outside assessment since 2014 (the last major shift in policy according to our article). Alhurra should be taken with caution until we get several recent third-party assessments. SamuelRiv (talk) 05:52, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Are HITC and Happy Mag reliable sources?

Are HITC and Happy Mag reliable for factual claims? Do you use them in your articles? — VORTEX3427 (Talk!) 14:22, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

newscentralasia.net

Looking for comment on this source. It's used to source some pretty big claims in Balochistan Liberation Army - that the BLA was originally a Soviet-backed disruption operation that was resurrected by the Americans when they went into Afghanistan as part of a plot to make export of central asian energy resources to the USA feasible etc. I can find other sources for Soviet involvement, though none that I'd call iron-clad reliable and lots of them are fairly reticent about the claim. I'm thinking I should just remove most of the 20thc history from the article but would value others' thoughts please. GoldenRing (talk) 17:50, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

  • I see your point. The administrative centre is in Pakistan and it is published in Russian and English! It looks like some state sponsored news source, but which state? It says it has an editorial presence in Turkmenistan. Why does it not publish in Turkmen or Urdu as well?, and the prices are given in US dollars! I think it could probably be used for something with a political slant but what one? NadVolum (talk) 14:19, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • The NCA story is very complex with a lot of side citations to different reporters that are difficult to track down (I think I found the New Yorker piece they mentioned), but it seems reasonable and it is not making an extraordinary claim:

    But — and it is a BUT with capital letters –when we say Americans or Russians, we have reasons to suspect that the American and Russian involvement in Balochistan is sanctioned, at least in part, by Pentagon (if not White House) and Kremlin. We would also like to acknowledge that the picture we have gathered is far from complete and except for the explanatory comments of two former KGB officials, we have no way of connecting the dots in any meaningful sequence. For the sake of honesty, this story should better remain abrupt and incomplete.

    Don't blame a source for the fact that whoever wrote the WP article doesn't know how to write properly. (Also @NadVolum they have an Urdu section, and with dual-English-Russian publishing they can reach wide swaths of central Asia (though they'll piss off a lot of people in the process), so I don't know what nonsense you're on about.) SamuelRiv (talk) 23:44, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
That's peculiar, when I looked their Urdu section had nothing in it. Now it has a mixture of Turkmen, Urdu and English! And just checking now again - and it is all Urdu! I guess they must have had some problem which they're t6rying to fix. NadVolum (talk) 17:25, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This discussion addresses the reliability of books published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP). Most of the voices in this discussion split into two camps: the one that opposes blanket removal and asks to consider each source on a case-by-case basis, and the one that lobbies for its total removal.

The evidence submitted by the participants is inconclusive. A mirror of the Beall's list mentions CSP as "potentially predatory". There are the Norwegian and Finnish ratings of scholarly outlets: the former mentions the publication as having peer review (this is disputed here, as this review says no editorial board is there at all), but in any case both give only "acceptable" grades and the Norwegian one briefly downgraded CSP to "predatory". This guide from the University of Central Missouri mentions a letter from CSP as being a typical example of an invitation to a predatory conference. Finally, there is this crispy-new paper (see also this summary from an official in the Polish Ministry of Education), which is fairly positive of CSP and says that it "has accumulated scholarly legitimacy", though notes this publishing house is "print-on-demand" and describes behaviour typical of a questionable outlet quality-wise. The Blogspot article was also mentioned, though its authoritativeness was questioned.

The previous discussions, not counting the one in Archive 221, which was not a discussion, attracted relatively few opinions compared to this one, though on average they tended rather negative. In this discussion, the general consensus of editors was that this publisher is not by itself a high-quality one - its books range from receiving critical acclaim to being panned. As mentioned, this is a print-on-demand publisher, even if aimed at scholars. There is consensus that it is should be treated as a self-published source or worse (which by default is generally unreliable, as RSP criteria suggest), but no consensus whether to go lower than the SPS level. Therefore, CSP should generally be treated as self-published.

By my count, the "case-by-case" camp had a just a little more numerical support; however, these people presented evidence of several books that received positive scholarly feedback, and this is a persuasive argument that was not effectively rebutted. Therefore, where the policy does not explicitly prohibit usage of questionable sources (see WP:BLP), CSP should not be removed on sight. However, as is the case for all sources in general, all editors who have doubts about a CSP source can obviously put "better source needed" tags, boldly proceed with removal (within reason) and engage in discussions if there is any disagreement. The onus in this case is on the one seeking inclusion/retention. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 20:09, 8 August 2022 (UTC)


Uanfala (talk · contribs) insists on restoring content sourced to Cambridge Scholars Publishing, because according to them, they aren't predatory and that removing bad sources is 'disruptive'.

I contend that CSP is a vanity press by every meaningful definition of the term. Anyone can publish with them, at no charge, and they do not meaningfully review the submissions. See also previous discussions on CSP and CSP sources

So I would like consensus on whether or not the community considers Cambridge Scholars Publishing to be a reliable publisher. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Cambridge Scholars Publishing)

  • I'm pretty sure it's well established by consensus here and reliable sources that it is in fact predatory. PRAXIDICAE🌈 18:12, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Very obviously unreliable That's not to say we can't ever cite them, but short of a review praising certain works, we shouldn't be citing them. Especially when other sources are already present supporting the material in question. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:14, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • unequivocally useless and unreliable per this discussion and the dozens of others. PRAXIDICAE🌈 18:15, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I wish Headbomb had started this discussion before using AWB to remove several hundred references and then proceeding to edit-war with several people who have reverted him. Now, CSP are not a predatory publisher, that's not their model (as anyone would immediately notice if they bothered to read anything written about them). Are they a publisher of reliable sources on par with established academic presses like CUP or OUP? Of course they're not. But that doesn't necessarily mean that everything there is rubbish. We should approach them the same way we approach similar publishers, like Lincom: generally discourage their use without prohibiting it, never use them for anything contentious, and for non-contentious statements, evaluate on a case-by-case basis. But blanket removal is disruptive, especially when the articles citing them will often instead use less reliable sources, like newspapers, academia.edu drafts, or actual vanity presses. – Uanfala (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
"Are they a publisher of reliable sources? Of course they're not." That pretty much says it all, doesn't it?
And there is no disruption, I've removed and reviewed about 300 citations to CSP, which is obviously a predatory/vanity publisher (which loads of prior discussions all agreeing in the same direction). In all cases, the material was supported by other citations, and CSP is not needed and can be summarily removed. We should not be citing unreliable sources, and your restoration of them, knowing full well they are unreliable, is textbook WP:POINTY behaviour. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:46, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
I don't think it's been pointy to revert two bold semi-automated edits that were justified by the plainly wrong assertion that CSP was predatory. And to repeat and clarify what I wrote on the Kashmiri language talk page, you're proceeding from an incorrect presumption about how references normally relate to article text. If an article paragraph has two refs at its end, this doesn't necessarily mean that either one of those two refs would be enough to support the entirety of that paragraph. More often than not, parts of the text would be supported by one ref, and parts of it by the other. – Uanfala (talk) 19:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
I agree with the sentiments expressed above, particularly as no consensus has been reached here about the publisher. That is the sort of action that should occur after this discussion, not before or during it. As such, I reported it to ANI at WP:ANI#Problematic mass removal of sources by Headbomb.4meter4 (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
I would tend to agree with Uanfala here. There seems to be a lot of MIXED viewpoints on this publisher. They have books that are hits and misses.
Quoting above: "We should approach them the same way we approach similar publishers, like Lincom: generally discourage their use without prohibiting it, never use them for anything contentious, and for non-contentious statements, evaluate on a case-by-case basis. But blanket removal is disruptive, especially when the articles citing them will often instead use less reliable sources, like newspapers, academia.edu drafts, or actual vanity presses.".
Wise words. Just my 2 cents. Artemaeus Creed (talk) 00:17, 28 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment from an outside perspective, I think both sides have a point here. It seems consensus shows that this publisher is unreliable, but, as Uanfala has pointed out, the citations should be reviewed on a case-by-case basis rather than removed en mass by automation. If a particular source was written by a subject matter expert (which seems to occur occasionally at this publisher), it could still be used. If sources are removed, the relevant content should be examined and new sources found (if possible) or the content should be removed. Simply removing hundreds of sources and leaving someone else to clean up the mess is one way to do things, but in my opinion not the most responsible way. Toadspike (talk) 20:24, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    There is already a reliable citation for the entirety of this content. That's why it was removed. There remains over 3000 citations to this garbage publisher across Wikipedia. This was not a blanket removal, but a targeted one. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:44, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    What was the criteria for your targeting of these cases? Ford MF (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    a) It's CSP, which is prima facie unreliable b) Other sources support the content, which makes removal warranted without replacing it with a {{cn}} tag or similar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:48, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    You said "this was not a blanket removal but a targeted one" which I took to mean you had employed some discretion. What does "targeted" in this sentence refer to? Ford MF (talk) 23:33, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Got it, since you're doing your due diligence you can continue as you were. I apologize for not looking into this too thoroughly yesterday. Toadspike (talk) 07:47, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    It seems consensus shows that this publisher is unreliable fwiw ... I really don't think it does? Where is this consensus demonstrated? Ford MF (talk) 23:34, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Now that I have had time to read all the links provided above by Headbomb and Praxidicae, it seems that I was a little hasty in jumping to conclusions and giving the benefit of the doubt. None of the discussions linked show any sort of consensus against using CSP, quite a few are not even evaluations of the reliability or quality of CSP, and one is literally a question which received no responses. Not only does this convince me that CSP is not unreliable per se, but it also convinces me that the language used by the aforementioned editors was rather misleading in stating that anything was "well established by consensus". Toadspike (talk) 16:24, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment. I would like consensus on whether or not the community considers I don't have a real horse in this race, but -- as mentioned above -- this seems like a question one should ask before using AWB to mass remove hundreds of citations attributed to this press. Initiating what is essentially a policy decision on your own and then retroactively seeking support for it when people push back does not to me feel like an excessively good faith action. As for what to do with CSP, it seems like WP:CONTEXTMATTERS in this case. I became aware of this issue when I saw Headbomb remove a citation from Apaturia (Greek mythology). In context, the reference there was one of three works (one published by a more reputable academic publisher, Palgrave) citing a particular statement, all of which generally in reference to a primary source (Pausanias). The work in this context was a corroborating citation, in a work published by an ancient history Ph.D., and its removal in this instance does not truly cause harm, but also seems an overly aggressive exercise of policy where no policy actually exists. If this had been the only citation in the article, for whatever reason, I think this specific article would be poorer without it. If we want to have a blanket reliability policy against all works published by CSP, that seems extreme to me given the circumstances, but I think is also a reasonable decision for the community to make. I don't think it's reasonable to unilaterally implement a de facto policy that CSP references are banned unless some editor wants to make their case (see OP's talk page) to the single editor who decided this ought to be policy. Ford MF (talk) 20:30, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    If you read the above linked discussions, there is clear consensus that it's unreliable and given the fact that it is established fact that it is predatory, policy dictates that it is in fact unreliable. PRAXIDICAE🌈 20:47, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    iiuc this discussion is the measurement of consensus for WP:RSDEPRECATED, so I'm not sure how you can say this has already been decided. Ford MF (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Because it has been discussed endlessly here as linked above and the outcome is always the same. There is no point in having these discussions if we're going to rehash them every time someone wants to whine about it's non-use. PRAXIDICAE🌈 21:31, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    If it had already been decided, I would expect this to be present on WP:DEPRECATED, and it is not. Ford MF (talk) 22:53, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    ...many sources which are deprecated don't appear there but it doesn't change the fact that for example, Fandom can't be used to source anything that isn't about Fandom isn't on there - but it is never allowed because it is defacto unreliable. This isn't rocket science. PRAXIDICAE🌈 22:58, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    If there is no canonical source of truth for a policy I would submit that no policy in fact exists. If you're asking me to believe a final decision has been made about a thing, show me that evidence. This isn't rocket science. Looking at the conversations above, most of them contain only fairly glancing reference to the publisher we're discussing here, and the only direct one is six years old. And since the it seems like some relevant things have changed (addition of credited editorial boards, publishers rating in Norwegian Scientific Index upgraded). As I said elsewhere, I don't have any particular stake in this publisher's fate within the Wikipedia project, however I don't think I've seen a single genuine argument advanced here as to why exactly this particular journal ought to be wholesale denylisted from the project. Just a lot of people repeating "vanity press / bad editorial" like a mantra, without any explanation for how these standards are judged. Ford MF (talk) 23:09, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    You are just being repetitive and missing the point. We have standards that are based in policy surrounding reliability and that does not require an RFC every time a subject is brought up. Of course, you're welcome to make the argument that everything is reliable unless proven otherwise, but you'd be wrong and quickly reverted anywhere you would add such sources. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Which standards are you referring to that CSP violates? Ford MF (talk) 23:36, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Unreliable, should be prohibited "Are they a publisher of reliable sources? Of course they're not." Chris Troutman (talk) 21:10, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Vanispamcruft. Unreliable predatory publisher. Kudos to Headbomb for taking on the unpleasant task of removing references to that predatory garbage. --Randykitty (talk) 21:25, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Unreliable- predatory junk publisher that calls itself Cambridge Scholars so that people will think it's affiliated with Cambridge University. Deceit and trickery, and I would expect very little of anything "published" by them. Reyk YO! 21:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    I won't disagree that the term "Cambridge" today carries an immediate air of prestige. But there's a lot of places named Cambridge (many founded by people who never cared about the university -- what would the Greeks think?), and any startup company will try to appropriate local prestige. Regardless, from its reported history, they seem to have at least some justification for the name, so there's no reason to call it "deceit". SamuelRiv (talk) 17:40, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment. Probably worth pointing out that CSP books are found in a lot of good academic libraries. Harvard Library, for example, has almost 1,900 titles [12] (most of these are print books, not e-books), while the library of Cambridge University itself – hardly to be accused of falling for trickery and not recognising its own publisher – has over 5,000 [13] (a third of which are physical copies). Of course, being available in academic libraries doesn't guarantee reliability, but the numbers above indicate we're not seeing merely the examples of sporadic flotsam and jetsam that big libraries like to keep. Those arguing that the publisher is obviously unreliable, or that it is spamvanwhatever, should really provide evidence for those assertions. – Uanfala (talk) 22:22, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    If you want to make a case for the reliability for this or that book published by them, go ahead. But the default position for a vanity publisher with poor editorial oversight should be against inclusion. Reyk YO! 22:27, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    As someone new to the discourse on this particular publisher, I see a lot of assertions that they *are* "a vanity publisher with poor editorial oversight", and relatively little to back that up, other than a seeming implicit conviction that this is self-evident. Ford MF (talk) 22:55, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    So...a publisher that solicits non-qualified "academics" for publication and then charges them for publication is what, exactly? Also please feel free to identify their editorial board. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:05, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    https://cambridgescholars[.]com/pages/meet-our-editorial-advisors. Ford MF (talk) 23:10, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Also, where is the source for your assertion that its portfolio consists of unqualified writers? And why is academics in quotation marks? Ford MF (talk) 23:11, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Have you read any of the sources linked in the article about CSP? It's pretty adequately covered there. PRAXIDICAE🌈 23:12, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Praxidicae, if there is any source about the claim that CSP charge authors for publication, then please provide it. I don't see that in any of the sources I've checked. – Uanfala (talk) 23:26, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    I have! As far as I can tell there are only two references in the entire article that support the "predatory" label. One is the beallslist.net reference, and the other is the guy who runs Flaky Academic Journals dot blogspot dot com. The Flaky Academic Journals guy ... I mean, okay. Some guy with a blogspot made one post about this five years ago, but more recent posts from bloggers of seeming equal standing seem to represent an opinion contrary to this. The beallslist thing is interesting to me! But 1) it looks like the list itself is not without detractors, and CSP was anonymously added to it as an addendum after the original list was abandoned by Jeffrey Beall, *and* even if Jeffrey Beall did think CSP sucked, there is no evidence he thought those titles should not be carried as part of a reputable academic collection. And in fact, as demonstrated above, very reputable and notable academic librarians *do* believe that a non-trivial number of CSP publications belong in their collection. Ford MF (talk) 23:30, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Again, if you want to make a case for the reliability of some individual book, go ahead. It is, however, not possible to say, "It's in CSP therefore it is reliable". The default position should be that it is questionable at best. Reyk YO! 23:47, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Can you explain why this is the default position? So far I do not see you making any argument or listing any criteria for this assessment. You've made a claim that the press is "predatory" and "vanity", and implicitly that that means citations from these works should be unilaterally deleted from the project, and imho the onus is not on others to mount a counter-argument to this when the claimant(s) have not in fact mounted any argument at all, only simply repeated the original claims as if they were already established as true. Ford MF (talk) 23:50, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    Because CSP is a vanity press and utter garbage. See all previous discussions, Beall's list, flaky journals, etc. And on Wikipedia, when we encounter a garbage source, the default is to exclude it, unless it can be shown to not be garbage. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:58, 8 July 2022 (UTC)
    I agree. If someone reads through all those previous discussions and still comes to the conclusion that CSP is reliable then nothing will ever convince them otherwise. Fortunately, WP:CONSENSUS is policy. Reyk YO! 00:06, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Making decisions by consensus is policy. Asserting that your position is the consensus one without some independent demonstration of this is not a policy as far as I'm aware. The closer [ie the decider of consensus] is not to be a judge of the issue, but rather of the argument. WP:DISCARD There are by my count three people on this thread advancing the position "CSP is a predatory vanity press" (with the implication that citations for works from this press should by default be disallowed) but I do not see one single argument made in support of that position, only insistence that the position is prima facie true, or insistence that the position has already reached consensus in this or that other place, like the princess continually being in another castle. And there are two editors who seem to disagree with this position and/or believe that he burden of proof is on the people making the claim, and that has not been satisfied. This does not look like consensus to me. Other folks may feel otherwise. Ford MF (talk) 00:17, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    It's clear that you're determined that CSP should be treated as a priori reliable, the same way that Cambridge University Press, or Springer, or Addison-Wesley are respected academic publishers. My position is that the deliberately misleading name raises questions about their academic integrity, that actual academics in a good position to judge have verifiably described them as sketchy, that there are numerous documented instances of poor quality control, and that they are not up-front with authors about how little quality control they do. All these concerns have been brought up in the previous discussions linked to by Headbomb. Why are you so eager to dismiss them? The current status quo here on Wikipedia is that CSP is not super trustworthy, IMO correctly, and if you think they are suddenly legit then you need to make that case. Reyk YO! 00:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    • My position is that the deliberately misleading name ... I disagree that the publisher's name is admissible as evidence of the publisher's quality one way or the other. The website claims the company was founded, in Cambridge, by lecturers from Cambridge U -- literally, Cambridge Scholars -- and I haven't seen anyone disprove or even question this, just a lot of people assuming, as you seem to be doing here, that the name has nefarious intent.
    • actual academics in a good position to judge have verifiably described them as sketchy There seem to be other academics, in equivalently good position, who do not agree with this assessment.
    • Numerous documented instances of poor quality control Definitely agree it looks like they've published a couple of crappy books over the years.
    • They are not up-front with authors about how little quality control they do. I do not see the source of this claim in the discussions above?
    • The current status quo here on Wikipedia is that CSP is not super trustworthy again, there is a repeated insistence that this consensus already exists and has been decided previously, when I do not feel like any of the referenced conversations demonstrate this at all.
    Ford MF (talk) 01:03, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I also feel like you are proposing an entirely false binary here in which there exist no scholarly presses between Lulu[.]com and Springer Verlag, and every press must be one or the other. I am not trying to argue that this press deserves a position among Springer, AW, CUP, etc etc. As a former academic-book-biz guy in a past life, I think it's safe to say they'd be pretty far down on my list when it came time to place orders. I *do* however disagree that the correct response in the project to an obviously not A-list publisher is for citations to be default deleted on sight. Ford MF (talk) 01:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    There exists presses in between. CSP is, however, on the Lulu side of things, not on the CUP/Springer side of things. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:10, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I take your response to mean you are applying no independent criteria of your own or the project's, and are using those of Beall's list and the flaky journals guy as proxies here. That's reasonable! You can't do direct due diligence on everything personally. But I think I have clearly described why neither of these sources seem like open and shut cases to me (reasonable people seem to disagree about Beall's list, CSP wasn't even on it until anonymous inclusion fairly recently, the Flaky blog guy article is pretty old), especially when measured against the countervailing opinions here (other, more positive blogs; reputable academic libraries holding sizeable amounts of CSP in circulation; reputable review organizations like Norwegian Scientific Index changing their rating of the press). So you keep repeating "vanity press" and "garbage" without making reference to any criteria the could be reviewed or falsified, and, well, I don't think it's surprising that other people might not find this a persuasive argument? (Or an argument at all?) Ford MF (talk) 00:07, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Have you read any of the previous discussions? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Do you have any arguments to make other than to tell me that in some vague and nonspecific place, someone else makes an argument to justify your claims? Ford MF (talk) 00:41, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    The discussions are linked above. There is nothing vague or unspecific about them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I other words, the sources used to make the claim that it's a predatory publisher and therefore by default unreliable are themselves unreliable sources. No blogspot is anything but a SPS, and needs to be the work of a significant figure to be deemed reliable and this one does not, while the other list is user-generated, so also fails RS. In short, if anything should be removed from article space, it's those. oknazevad (talk) 15:48, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Publishers are one component of evaluating a reliable source. Look at the author, editors, etc. What kind of claim is being made? Is it controversial? Generally opposed to any mass removal based just on publisher without an evaluation of the actual source in context, and generally opposed to proposals to consider a book publisher unreliable without a systematic evaluation of the kind/quality of content they publish. A predatory publisher (and there is a wide spectrum of "predatory") is a red flag, but isn't itself completely disqualifying. Some predatory publishers are the equivalent of just being self-published (and not less than self-published), but there are many flavors/degrees. Meh. Default to standard editing practices like BRD and ONUS. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 00:40, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    • No, with real predatory publishers, and real vanity publishers, whatever "real" is here, it should be the other way around: discredited until a particular article/book by a particular scholar can be deemed acceptable. So, I'll accept this Mellen book on Beowulf for a variety of reasons that I could explain. But in general, a publisher that produces this should not be taken seriously--until proven otherwise. Drmies (talk) 02:16, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
      • Sure, when challenged, the onus is always on those who want to include a source to argue that it's reliable for that particular use (and otherwise justify inclusion), but we need a clear consensus about unreliability to remove just based on the publisher -- unreliability, not just predatory. The latter just means it's on a spectrum between WP:SPS and rigorous review/oversight, with the "real" ones at or near the former, but that whatever "real" is here is a toughy, and it seems too often the spectrum is collapsed to a binary. These conversations often look like we're talking about publishers known for false/misleading information, not ones that simply tend towards the WP:SPS side of the spectrum. CSP may be well on that SPS side, but that doesn't mean it's "discredited"; it means it's self-published. Self-published sources aren't discredited; based on the author, for example, there are plenty of times when we use them. They're just not sufficiently reliable for most purposes. Maybe we're getting into semantics with that distinction, though. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:22, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • I looked at all the linked discussions, and I have some thoughts about CSP (none of them are very good), but I fail to see that any of the discussions came to a clear consensus that CSP is an unreliable vanity press. And without that, we're kind of putting the cart before the horse. First we need clarity here. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 00:55, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    CSP is a vanity press. Their model is to have authors write whatever they want, conduct no review, offer no little-to-no editing services, and then charges universities and random suckers for those books. They've repeatedly published fringe nonsense, (example, example), or straight up copies of Wikipedia content example). They are listed by the two main freely available sources on predatory nonsense, Beall's list (now maintained by someone who isn't Beall), and Flaky Journals. Their books are widely condemned in review, which specifically call out the practices of CSP (e.g. "the absence of an editorial board has clearly failed to guide the author in the preparation of his publication". Library Guides specifically call out CSP as a publisher to avoid [14]. Or entire book chapters, from ISBN 9783838211992. If CSP isn't a vanity press and a garbage tier publisher, no one is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    The Flaky Journals blog [15], though critical of CSP, does not characterise them as predatory. Your last link (the bit form the Scopus diaries) is also worth reading: it's explicit that vanity or predatory publishers are a lower tier than CSP, and it characterises CSP's drawback in not conferring a great deal of academic prestige.
    Their books are widely condemned in review? Well, I've had a look. Here's quotes from the reviews I checked (all except 4 (3 were excluded because of genre (popular science, memoirs), and 1 because it was as dry overview without a quotable conclusion):
    1. Di Rocco, Concezio (2019-11-01). "R. Shane Tubbs, J. Iwanaga, M. Loukas, R. J. Oskouian (Eds): Clinical anatomy of the ligaments of the craniocervical junction". Child's Nervous System. 35 (11): 2241. doi:10.1007/s00381-019-04261-6. ISSN 1433-0350. S2CID 201170849. "the book is a precious contribution to the understanding of all aspects of the craniocervical junction which should not only be part of the armamentarium of the neurosurgeon involved in clinical practice but also of the students and neurosurgeons in training"
    2. Carey, Peter (2021). "Manual of Bone Marrow Examination by Anwarul Islam (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020; ISBN 978-1-5275-5890-8)". British Journal of Haematology. 193 (5): 1016. doi:10.1111/bjh.17400. ISSN 1365-2141. S2CID 236420372. "an excellent teaching resource for every haematology department"
    3. Kapparis, Konstantinos (2019). "Isaeus' On the Estate of Pyrrhus (Oration 3). Edited by Rosalia Hatzilambrou. (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Pp. 283. $119.95.)". Historian. 81 (4): 727–729. doi:10.1111/hisn.13286. ISSN 1540-6563. S2CID 214471601. "an outstanding accomplishment containing reliable, informative, and thorough accounts of textual, linguistic, and stylistic matters, as well as the legal issues, the background, the protagonists, and the build-up of the case"
    4. Farrell Moran, Seán (2016). "The Impact of World War One on Limerick. By Tadhg Moloney. (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. Pp. xii, 209. $75.99.)". Historian. 78 (1): 166–167. doi:10.1111/hisn.12142. ISSN 1540-6563. S2CID 218497802. "Although the author has done much homework, his thesis, as suggestive as it is, remains underdeveloped"
    5. Spicher, Michael (2019). "AAGAARD-MOGENSEN, LARS and JAN FORSEY, eds. On Taste: Aesthetic Exchanges. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019, 150 pp., 4 b&w illus., £58.99 cloth". The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 77 (3): 349–351. doi:10.1111/jaac.12655. ISSN 1540-6245. S2CID 201566618. "Overall, [the book] offers insightful discussions about taste to help bring it back onto the fore. I would recommend anyone interested in aesthetics to read this collection as an entry point into recent thought about taste"
    6. McClain, Aleksandra (2016). "From West to East: Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology by Scott D. Stull, ed. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 275 pp". American Anthropologist. 118 (2): 457–458. doi:10.1111/aman.12571. ISSN 1548-1433. "Several papers, including the editor's own, offer strong, original scholarship [...] but a few are disappointingly underdeveloped in comparison", "while problems with individual papers mar the consistent academic quality of the volume, I nevertheless commend Stull on having the ambition to plan the conference and produce this book"
    7. Liu, Yi; Afzaal, Muhammad (2022). "100 Years of conference interpreting: A legacy. Edited by Kilian G. Seeber, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Newcastle upon Tyne, 2021, Price: £64.99, 242 pp. ISBN: 1-5275-6719-2". International Journal of Applied Linguistics. 32 (2): 349–352. doi:10.1111/ijal.12406. ISSN 1473-4192. S2CID 244890170. "this volume provides a novel and convincing reference in the field of conference interpreting, and is therefore a valuable read for interpreting students, trainers, researchers and other stakeholders"
    8. Wallis, Patrick (2021). "Andrea Caracausi, Matthew Davies, and Luca Mocarelli, eds., Between regulation and freedom: work and manufactures in European cities 14th–18th centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. Pp. xiii+146. ISBN 1-5275-0638-X Hbk. £58.99)". The Economic History Review. 74 (1): 299–300. doi:10.1111/ehr.13059. ISSN 1468-0289. S2CID 234070948. "the volume collectively makes a valuable contribution to our appreciation of the complexity and heterogeneity of economic regulation"
    Of these 8 reviews, 6 are entirely positive, and 2 offer criticisms. – Uanfala (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Reviews are going to give a biased sample of CSP's output, because only the books that people found interesting enough to review will have any. XOR'easter (talk) 02:55, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
    Of course, as with any other reivews. But what's the relevance of that here? If someone wants to do a big analysis and look at the proportion of reviewed CSP books vs. the total published and then compare that with the same ratio for benchmark publishers, sure: that will be useful. But in the context of this discussion – where the baseline question is whether CSP books are unadulterated crap that should be automatically removed from articles – I think it was useful to point out that there were plenty of reviews of those books in the best journals and that most of those reviews were positive. – Uanfala (talk) 12:50, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose a blanket removal, but recommend a "use with caution" guideline per WP:MREL. Some of the authors published by CSP are respectable academics in their fields with other publications from reliable publishers written by them. As such, WP:SPS's guideline seems like a good fit here. "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." Further, some of the books have been reviewed in reliable secondary sources. So, I think each source needs to be scrutinized individually for reliability with particular attention given to the book's author and their background. Removing content on mass without taking the time to examine each source and its author is not the responsible way to handle this issue, and seems WP:POINTY.4meter4 (talk) 02:46, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal, recommend "use with caution". Various publication level rankings (Norwegian, Finnish) list the venue as an acceptable quality scientific publication venue, albeit with an imperfect history. This alone gives me much pause about a blanket ban. Above descriptions about the publishers being predatory also seems confusing, given that the venue does not appear to charge Article Publishing Charges based on their FAQ. As per the above descriptions re: the Beall's List entry (anonymous, added after Beall's involvement), I'm not terribly convinced by that argument either. Given further that WP:SPS allows for the use of pretty much anything from an established subject matter expert, a blanket removal seems unwarranted. That said, the spotty history clearly warrants a case-by-case review of any sources used. -Ljleppan (talk) 04:17, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Comment In addition to what I wrote above, I'll note that this RFC fails WP:RFCNEUTRAL rather spectacularly. Ljleppan (talk) 04:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Cambridge Scholars Press is not someone I'd consider an acceptable academic publisher - so what that means is that I would try to avoid citing anything published by them, as I have no confidence that their peer review process has been sufficiently robust to detect material which has errors, is not accurate or which is fraudulent in nature (as evidenced by some of the material they have published, including material plagiarised from Wikipedia). I would also not use the company as a publishing house for my own work, because I cannot trust what other works may appear alongside our own, and obviously if I consider it to be problematic, people would question anything I publish there.
    Books published by CSP primarily, from what I can see, are typically submitted via the CSP route for two reasons, firstly they're submitted there to satisfy funding requirements (as is the case with books and articles published via Wiley, Elsevier and others, of course) but they have a strong reputation in academic circles as a publisher of last resort - if you can't get a book into a more prestigious publishing house or journal series, then CSP will take it and it'll technically tick off a deliverable so you don't lose funding or have someone chasing you to return part of a grant. Secondly, almost all of us are vain and want to publish - for many fields, that involves doing an experiment or undertaking a project, generating data, processing that data and generating results, which are then discussed. That's the broad outline for a journal article. There are many fields where research doesn't work like that and a book is the logical outcome, particularly where your research is one contiguous body of work during a PhD or for a number of years post-doctorate, unfortunately for a number of people with such contiguous projects, their work will generally be of interest to a small number of people and publishing via an accepted academic publisher (Wiley or others) will not be possible (that isn't a comment on the value or importance of the work, just a reflection on what the large publishing houses will accept because it makes them money). I say this as it explains the peer review issues - if you can't get a conventional publisher interested in your book because of audience limitation issues, it's going to be very difficult to find reviewers who are capable of a proper peer review of your material, which risks absolute drivel making it onto the market. It's also worth noting, the presence of CSP material in university libraries is no indicator of their reliability - most university libraries will purchase material at the behest of students - I drop a request into our library every year or so for a new book either I would like to read, or which I think will benefit our students. I note a comment about CSP and the University of Cambridge Library - it's worth a reminder that the University of Cambridge Library is a deposit library and can receive at no cost any books published in the UK that it wishes - it does not necessarily mean the University of Cambridge Library or students from Cambridge have asked for/purchased CSP books.
    I'd therefore have to agree with the "use with caution" suggestion - there will be a number of authors with CSP who have been forced to publish there by circumstance, and there will be little wrong with their work, but similarly, there's a lot of authors who will make use of CSP's tendency to accept anything with no real oversight, which would obviously preclude its use going unchecked. Nick (talk) 09:11, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Never use. Reliable sources have a reputation for fact checking, accuracy, etc.; this publisher has a reputation as shite. No source from it can give confidence that WP:V is being satisfied. Anything worthy of inclusion will be covered in decent sources; use then instead. If not, the material will not be the kind of “accepted knowledge” Wikipedia must reflect. Alexbrn (talk) 09:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal, support replacing with better sources. I looked at a few random articles with references to CSP and I didn't see any problems requiring a purge. Tagging with {{bettersourceneeded}} would be a good idea. Alaexis¿question? 11:35, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Drive by tagging while keeping the sources in never works, it will just stay there forever, just ask @David Gerard:. Hemiauchenia (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
In my opinion it's not a positive example. Alaexis¿question? 17:13, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Never use If there are clearly reliable sources supporting the text you are trying to source, use that. If there aren't any other than a CSP source you shouldn't be adding the text. One book from a dubious publisher isn't enough.
  • Comment. I did what several folks insisted on and read the previous discussions. None of them established a consensus that CSP is unreliable; most of them weren't even really about CSP. Let's put a pin in that claim--CSP may be unreliable, but this is the first discussion where that question is squarely presented and proceeding as though that's already the case is not accurate. Mackensen (talk) 15:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • CSP can be a reliable source as demonstrated by reviews from the academic community, eg:
    "In sum, From West to East provides a compact, but very readable overview of approaches to medieval archaeology practised in North America." Kerr, Sarah (January 2016). "From West to East. Current Approaches to Medieval Archaeology". Medieval Archaeology. 60 (1): 185. doi:10.1080/00766097.2016.1147856. S2CID 164034768.
    "the volume is a worthwhile read and valuable resource that paves the way to refine the studies on this, without doubt, an exceedingly promising multidisciplinary topic." Basik, Sergei (19 October 2020). "Naming, identity and tourism: edited by Luisa Caiazzo, Richard Coates and Maoz Azaryahu, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020, 233 pp., ₤ 61.99 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-5275-4286-0". Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. 20 (5): 540–542. doi:10.1080/15022250.2020.1853603. S2CID 228084528.
    "Overall, this is an interesting take on a fairly well-covered topic. It brings to light some hitherto neglected sources and provides some useful insights" Doney, Jonathan (4 March 2022). "For God and country: Butler's 1944 Education Act, by Elizabeth 'Libi' Sundermann: Elizabeth 'Libi' Sundermann, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015, xii + 151 pp., £41.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-44-388383-2". History of Education. 51 (2): 304–306. doi:10.1080/0046760X.2020.1825834. S2CID 226352364.,
    "the book serves as a door opener to the ceramic traditions of Europe and opens up further reading due to interesting articles as well as rich reference lists" Eigeland, Lotte; Solheim, Steinar (10 September 2010). "Dragos Gheorghiu (ed.): Early Farmers, Late Foragers, and Ceramic Traditions: On the Beginning of Pottery in the Near East and Europe". Norwegian Archaeological Review. 43 (1): 86–89. doi:10.1080/00293651003798846. S2CID 162493819.
Richard Nevell (talk) 16:24, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Yes, it can be reliable. Much like vixra or the Daily Mail can be reliable. However, when we don't have these positives reviews, CSP books are not reliable. That's no different than any other vanity presses out there. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Do we have a reliable source that describes CSP as a vanity press? Richard Nevell (talk) 17:02, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
See book chapters, from ISBN 9783838211992. They don't explicitly list CSP as a vanity press, but press much say you should only publish with them if you're comfortable publishing in a vanity press. Alternatively, this library guide, which goes further and labels them predatory. Again, the model of CSP is to publish pretty much anything they can with little regards to what it is they publish. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:39, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
Headbomb, the chapter you've linked has two things to say about CSP: 1) that publishing there isn't going to earn you the respect of fellow academics, and 2) that vanity presses have lower academic prestige than the likes of CSP. I really don't know how that text made you conclude that CSP are described there as a vanity press, when in fact the opposite is the case. The library guide you link only quotes an email sent by CSP as an example of a "predatory conference letter" without giving further commentary. That's a bit odd to begin with (the email is clearly soliciting book proposals, not advertising conferences), but the characterisation as predatory is incorrect. Yes, CSP have been criticised for their unselective solicitation emails (a practice in common with actual predatory publishers), but they themselves are not predatory (because they don't charge authors), that much I thought had already been established in this discussion. – Uanfala (talk) 00:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
Predatory encompasses a spectrum of terrible practices. Spamming emails is one of them, because they're preying on the young and foolish to submit their work for free, so Cambridge can exploit these people and make money off their back. They're a print-on-demand vanity press. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:49, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
In that case I would recommend not pushing beyond the bounds of what reliable sources say. On the subject of whether CSP is predatory this article in Science as Culture is an interesting read. My own view is that the situation is not as black and white as you are presenting it. Richard Nevell (talk) 20:12, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
It's a damning picture of CSP. High-volume with little-to no review output to maximize profits, spamming campaigns (but it's nice, personalized spam!), specifically reaching out to people who wouldn't be able to publish fringe viewpoints anywhere else. These all the characteristics of a well-organized vanity press. It's only better than Lambert because CSP is better organized and better at PR. Note that the article specifically is less concerned "... judging the quality of the monographs Lambert and CSP were publishing than in their negotiation of existing credibility economies, with the elite university presses at their apex". Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:58, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
In one instance an academic listed on a CSP editorial board replied to insist that she did not know she was listed as an editor. Whoops. XOR'easter (talk) 01:18, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
In my experience they're not even that careful with their personalised spam. I once received an unsolicited email from them in which they got both my first name and employer wrong, quite the howler as my email address at the time was firstname.j.lastname@institute.com, asking me to contribute something quite outside my area. They're sloppy, period. I have tried over the years to defend this encyclopedia from those who want to turn it into viXra with a side of TVTropes, but I think I'm done. I have other things I want to be doing and it no longer seems worth the effort, especially seeing a few editors who really ought to know better defending this manipulative garbage. If that's how it's going to be then I'm outta here. Reyk YO! 01:55, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
Oh they're not. It's a spam operation after all. I'm just going by what the source said. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:39, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
@Reyk: I think most editors here harbor similar feelings towards CSP and their likes as you do. At least speaking for myself, I have no inclination whatsoever to defend CSP or their unethical practices. I just don't think immorality is inherited, so to speak: it's not because some scholars who-knows-for-what-reason have published there that their work should automatically be discarded and ignored. More importantly for Wikipedia, that work may be of very high quality, and there are certainly some cases where it would constitute a major loss not to cite it. We need to look to reliability as such first, not morality. I just hope that even if you don't agree, you don't let this drive you away. We are by and large on the same side here. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:57, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Question: why not treat as self-published? I've occasionally come over this publisher when following citations and bibliographies in high-quality sources, and my impression is that competent scholars do sometimes publish there. For example, this is mainly authored by top scholars, this is also good quality, and this contains contributions by absolute top scholars like G. E. R. Lloyd, as well as lesser stars like Helen King or Mario Vegetti, who are still scholars of the highest rank. This is not like a news source where authors are anonymous: apart from the publisher, there is also the scholar and their academic reputation to take into account. It's also probably not a coincidence that I just named three edited volumes: these by definition have editorial oversight. Use with caution, certainly, but outright banning seems like a bad idea. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:38, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Add as this seems to be a separate issue: also oppose blanket or semi-automated removal, per the arguments of Visviva and No such user below. It's tempting to just remove everything published by a company whose practices are unethical, but when one is not engaging with the content the reference is supposed to verify, it's far too easy to break text-source integrity, and it's too difficult to fully anticipate other negative consequences which may not outweigh the advantage gained by removing an unethical publisher. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 11:57, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
    No one is proposing outright banning. Like with any other vanity press, when a CSP book is accompanied by a positive review, it can be used as a reliable SPS source. Absent of those, CSP books are inadequate as sources. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:45, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    Yes, a positive review would be a very good indication that a SPS or equivalent is reliable. But why require it? In my experience, the status of the scholar in their field is a far more important indicator for reliability than the reputation of the publisher. On the other hand, not every high-quality volume gets reviewed. For example, of the three books I mentioned above, I found (very) positive reviews for the first two ([16] for [17] and [18] for [19]), but for the third one –arguably the one with the best scholars– I did not find a review. Should we treat a book chapter by someone like G. E. R. Lloyd (please have a look at where he usually publishes) as unreliable because it has a bad publisher and there happens to be no review? I at least think we shouldn't. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 00:05, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
    Because vanity presses are crap and are by definition not reliable (which is different than being guaranted to be wrong). It's the same if a 'good' scholar publishes in predatory journal. They've dodged the reviewing process, and they don't get a free pass. See WP:VANPRED#Use in the real world vs use on Wikipedia. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
    I find it by no means credible that the three volumes I cited above were dodging peer-review. As edited volumes, they also enjoyed at least some form of editorial oversight. This is simply not vanity publishing: all of the scholars involved could easily have published elsewhere, and have in fact done so often (again, see here). The positive reviews also indicate that. This all rather shows that CSP cannot be treated as predatory without a case-by-case evaluation. Speaking of evaluation, the essay you're citing is using self-published primary sources to prove a point that editors can't evaluate any self-published sources without engaging in original research... But here on this noticeboard we are going to evaluate (secondary) sources, and as many have pointed out above, the publisher is only one factor in the equation. As someone also said above, we should avoid putting the cart before the horse. Let's first see whether CPS is a vanity press, shall we? ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 01:42, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal. I don't see CSB as being in anyway different from self-published sources, which may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. The discussion has proven that CSB occasionally publishes works that qualify as reliable sources either because written by well-reputed academics or because accepted as valuable scientific contributions by the academic community; there's no reason for removing them for the sole reason that they were published by CSB. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 21:48, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal - I'm not convinced that this publisher is as some have claimed in blanket statements relative to predatory, unreliable, etc. It would be wonderful if all publishers had experts in every field of academia comprising their editorial boards, and while we strive for RS, it's rather ironic that WP itself is considered an unreliable source - in part, because of perceived systemic biases. CSB states on their about page: We are proud of our reputation for author satisfaction. The publishing process should be a rewarding experience. There is no cost to our authors/editors to publish. We offer complimentary copies, a substantial author discount, and a generous royalty scheme. Atsme 💬 📧 15:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal The sources given above seem to be quite clear in showing that CSP does publish valuable academic books (even if it's despite themselves, rather than because of themselves). And the repeated attempts above to claim them as a vanity publisher and then, when that statement is refuted by actual sources directly saying they're not as bad as that, the original people making the vanity claim then not responding or addressing those sources makes said original claimants look like they're purposefully trying to avoid engaging with the subject and are on the verge of lying. Clearly, this is not a vanity publisher, it is not a predatory publisher, it's open publishing blatantly just makes it fall under self-published sources and any books from it should be treated as such around the importance of the author. SilverserenC 17:08, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose removal to echo User:Alaexis above. I agree that {{better source needed}} should be added instead of removal with |reason= "Cambridge Scholars is considered unreliable per WP:RSN" or something similar. To address the counterarguments: regardless of whether the page editors address the tag in a timely manner or not, it's there for the reader to see if they are verifying content. Even though it appears that Headbomb is only removing Cambridge Scholars material in multi-sourced contexts, that is still problematic if the remainirial is not checked that it is still verified in the remaining source, and there is no tag like {{please verify that I didn't remove something important because I'm too busy to do it myself}} Sorry to editorialize but that does reflect my interpretation sometimes.) I don't get the edit-warring either -- One thing this page teaches is that the reliability of sources needs to be interpreted in context, so if the editors who have been maintaining a page for months disagree with your agnostic source removal, maybe they have a reason, and picking a fight over an article you haven't read maybe isn't the most constructive use of everyone's time. Of course that is an entirely separate issue from whether Cambridge Scholars should have different considerations as far as reliability, but apparently we're trying to have both conversations at once here. SamuelRiv (talk) 18:13, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Treat as self-published. Which in most cases should mean removal as unreliable, but we can use it if we can determine that the author is an established subject-matter expert. Why an established subject-matter expert would be using such a publisher, rather than just directly self-publishing if self-publishing is what they want, is another question, but not one we need to answer here. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:45, 10 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Treat as self-published and go ahead with blanket removal, restoring on a case-by-case basis when an argument can be made to do so. {{better source needed}} tags hang around and don't get resolved until somebody pushes. XOR'easter (talk) 00:25, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
    Other relevant past discussions: a failed Featured Article nomination where CSP was called a quite dodgy publisher that is just this side of self-publishing; a deletion debate where the closer wrote that they ave an extremely poor reputation for fact checking and editorial oversight and are on some versions of Beall's List so this source is marginal at best. In this discussion, which also ended in a delete, the possibility was raised that they've made some sort of bulk e-book deal for academic libraries which ends up boosting their WorldCat holdings numbers. XOR'easter (talk) 01:09, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal, but "use with caution" sounds about right, based on the edifying discussions above. Regarding removals, with respect to the edits that led to this RFC, I think it's worth noting that even when multiple citations appear after a statement, it can't be assumed that all of them support all of the statement. There are all sorts of common scenarios where this isn't the case -- classic citation overkill where it may turn out that none of the sources cited fully support the statement, or where only one of them turns out to; a compound sentence where the sources each support different parts of the sentence; a source added by a well-intentioned editor to support their edit but without removing the previous source that no longer supports the sentence; etc. (None of those are best practices, but they happen all the time.) Ultimately questions like "is this citation load-bearing? can it be relied on in this particular context for this particular statement? even if it is reliable and load-bearing, can we replace it with something better?" can only be addressed by engaging in depth with the sources and subject matter of that specific article. There are no rule-based shortcuts. -- Visviva (talk) 02:27, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Treat as self-published. I came here following a brief edit-war with Headbomb on Othonoi. [20] is probably a typical case: there's a citation to a Greek-language journal accompanied by a citation to an English-language book published in CSP by the same authors, conveniently available on GBooks and easy to verify. Blanket removal of CSP books written by scholarly authors is disruptive, and publisher is only one factor to consider the source's reliability. No such user (talk) 10:43, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose automated removal, treat as self-published although I'm a bit late in "voting", due to the number of concerns raised by other editors, it is clear to me that any automated removal does not consitute due diligence. Even removing CSP sources where another source is provided seems unneccessary - variations on "it's garbage", with little to back up such strong language, are not enough to justify any contentious action on Wikipedia. CSP is not unreliable per se, arguments for which have been expounded at length above. Additionally, due to the changing (and possibly improving) situation with regard to editorial practices, deprecation or any blanket statement of unreliability requires stronger and more recent evidence than has been provided. Toadspike (talk) 16:38, 12 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Support blanket removal vanity press, etc yes, but if we can't find better sources than that's a basic problem that means the text probably shouldn't be there anyway. This means removal would require searching for a better source. Doug Weller talk 08:32, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Support removal and prohibit it, unequivocally useless and unreliable Totally agree with above users that it is vanity press. Have seen multiple promotional junk about Indian cults from this publisher on Wikipedia.--Venkat TL (talk) 13:50, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Support blanket removal and general unreliability. CSP is a vanity press, which is a type of self-published source. AKK700 01:12, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Blanket mass removal was inappropriate. It is clearly not a vanity press, and doesn't even fall within the criteria for a predatory press, since it doesn't charge authors. On the other hand, it appears to be willing to publish almost anything, with minimal editorial oversight. So it should not be regarded as an academic publisher. Its books should be treated on a case-by-case basis on the same criteria as a WP:SPS, based on the specific proposed use and context. Banks Irk (talk) 16:46, 27 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Judge on case-by-case basis. I cannot find any evidence that this is either a vanity press or a predatory press. It is not a vanity press because submitted manuscripts are subject to an acceptance review. It is not a predatory press because authors are not charged to publish and receive royalties on sales. The most that seems true is that this publisher provides less editorial support than the big academic presses provide. This means that the reliability of each book should be judged according to the expertise of the author. The reliability of books published by mainstream academic presses also rests mostly on the author; it is a wiki-myth that academic publishers "fact check" the books they publish. Zerotalk 09:55, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
    Comment. I think that the last point made by User:Zero0000 is very important and it's something I've been thinking about since the beginning of the discussion. Books are different from journal articles. The reliability of journal articles mainly depends on the outlet: quoting from "The New York Times" is not like quoting from "The Daily Beast" which is not like quoting from "The Sun"; when we quote, we always mention the journal and often we omit the author of the article; discussing about the reliability of the source-publisher at RS/N is vital. The same doesn't apply to books. Yes, Cambridge University Press is more prestigious than Ashgate which is (way) more prestigious than Cambridge Scholars Publishing. But no serious researcher would ever judge the quality of a book from the quality of the publisher - it would be like judging a gift from the package. The reasons why a book gets to be published by Cambridge University Press, Ashgate or Cambridge Scholars Publishing are various and not exclusively related to the quality of the book. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 11:21, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
    In the case of a journal article, the reviewers get much more time to study the article relative to its length, compared to a book. But even then the reliability depends mostly on the author, depending on the subject. Reviewers of a chemistry article don't repeat the experiment to see if they get the same result, nor do reviewers of a history article visit the dusty archive which the author haunted for several months. However, they check what they can check from their desk and they recommend accept or reject according to their best judgement based on experience. Reviewers of a book are generally only given time to scan the book to look for obvious problems and overall quality (I've been there), so the author is even more responsible in that case. Zerotalk 12:05, 1 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Judge on case-by-case basis. User:Gitz6666's comment above is of critical importance. Also, like User:Zero0000 says, "it is a wiki-myth that academic publishers "fact check" the books they publish." This is why prestigious imprints retire books after publishing: it is because it is the readership that often comes up with the discoveries of plagiarism, fabulism, etc. In any event, User:Fordmadoxfraud's comments are on point: a couple of people are making prima facie declarations of "vanity press," etc., and no consensus or proof has been presented. And the "third party" sources for such claims is what, a blog? This whole RFC is quite absurd. In any event, as shown above, the books it publishes are frequently reviewed by respected journals and included in respected libraries. Finally, it can't possibly be a predatory press because it does not charge authors and because it pays royalties. XavierItzm (talk) 12:03, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Oppose blanket removal, judge on a case-by-case basis. Per @Fordmadoxfraud, there are no reliable sources that would confirm CSP as a predatory publisher (except Beall's list, badly outdated). Their website states unequivocally that they do not charge for publishing and actually pay the authors a percentage of sales. While I'm unable to evaluate this, I largely fail to see the predatory element of their business model.
In my view – echoing many others above – they are a low-quality, third-tier, yet still an academic publisher who strive to produce content written by academics. Sure, renowned experts won't likely publish their works through CPS, but this doesn't mean that whatever they've published should be thrown out of Wikipedia automatically. A case-by-case judgment would be best here IMO. — kashmīrī TALK 14:44, 3 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Case-by-case like a self-published source. From what I've seen in looking into this, they may not have the most rigorous editorial, and their solicitation for submissions methods are spammy, but there's no justification for a blanket removal. It depends on the authors themselves more than the publisher. oknazevad (talk) 17:23, 4 August 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Self-help books on psychology and human behavior

Are self-help books and other publications which identify themselves as being intended for self-help, reliable sources specifically for describing forms and types of a human behavior, such as what is currently done in manipulation (psychology)? Specifically, can these sources be used to identify forms and types of human behavior when no more reliable source is available?

This question also applies to other articles in Category:Psychological manipulation, such as gaslighting and emotional blackmail. It applies more broadly to aticles in Category:Human behavior.

These are a few cited books, with authors having varying amounts of qualifications and the books having varying scientific support/acceptance - illustrating how it can be especially difficult to determine reliability of the individual sources without a higher-level discussion: [1][2][3][4][5][6] Here are two cited sources on the manipulation and gaslighting which are not books, but identify as self-help material: [21][22]

There is tangential extensive discussion here and here. This question came up as part of an ongoing dispute resolution proccess on DRN. My main concern is that WP:MEDRS is not met by many self-help books on this topic, and the application of MEDRS to psychology articles is difficult and inconsistent. I hope that this will clear up some of that inconsistency.

References

  1. ^ Simon, George K (1996). In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People. ISBN 978-1-935166-30-6. (reference for the entire section)
  2. ^ (Wiki article on the book here) Stern, Robin (2018). The Gaslight Effect: How to Spot and Survive the Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life. ISBN 978-0-76792782-6. OCLC 1228896082.
  3. ^ Braiker, Harriet B. (2004). Who's Pulling Your Strings ? How to Break The Cycle of Manipulation. ISBN 978-0-07-144672-3.
  4. ^ L., McMillan, Dina (2008). But he says he loves me : how to avoid being trapped in a manipulative relationship. Orion. ISBN 978-1-74175-196-3. OCLC 861309120.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ Kantor, Martin (2006). The Psychopathology of Everyday Life: How Antisocial Personality Disorder Affects All of Us. ISBN 978-0-275-98798-5.
  6. ^ Baibak, P; Hare, R. D Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (2007).

Darcyisverycute (talk) 14:58, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

  • I do not think that these kinds of sources are reliable, but we have scores of not hundreds of articles and listicles masquerading as articles based extensively on pop-psychology and self-help books, articles, advocacy group websites and blogs. Until there is consensus that MEDRS should be enforced in the psychology genre, I doubt this massive problem will be fixed. Banks Irk (talk) 16:36, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
  • WP:MEDRS applies to issues in clinical psychiatry, pharmacochemistry, and the like while WP:SCIRS should be considered for anything in experimental psychology, theories, or interdisciplinary applications. WP:PSEUDOSCIENCE and WP:NONSENSE apply, while WP:COMMONSENSE notably does not since a major part of the field of psychology is proving or disproving "common sense" notions. It would be nice if a perhaps WikiProject Psychology started a PSYCHRS essay to explain the differences in the standards of proof and scope of application of expertise between say clinical and experimental psychiatry versus clinical and experimental psychology, what it means when a respected doctor/researcher writes a lay book (that's covered in MEDRS actually so should not be an issue), the applications of psychology to the softer sciences, and the point at which psychology historically transitioned into the realm of mainstream medicine and science. In the meantime, follow the general guidelines for med/sci as closely as possible: reviews, metaanalyses, and professional standards are what you should stick closest to as worth reporting, and don't pull raw data out of studies that's not in the conclusions or in the reviews. Pop sci is an RS for what pop sci is saying. SamuelRiv (talk) 19:10, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Are Babylon Bee and Not the Bee reliable sources

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
The OP has themselves answered the first part of the question - a satirical website will obviously be unreliable for Wikipedia purposes, and there was no disagreement, and even some sort of disbelief, that this actually needed a RSN discussion. There is precisely one mention of Not the Bee as a source anywhere on Wikipedia (two for the Babylon Bee), all about the website and the people behind it. Therefore, several editors have noted that there is no need to discuss a source no one appears to be using anyway (yet), let alone to the extent that raises problems for our articles. The OP listed one discussion that mentioned the source in passing, but that's clearly not enough to say there is some dispute needing resolution. WP:RSPCRITERIA says that two discussions or an RfC are generally enough, but given that there appears to be no issue with the potential misuse of the Babylon Bee anywhere on Wikipedia, there is no need to list it on RSP. Therefore, I close this discussion so that the editors can concentrate on more pressing issues. (non-admin closure) Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:05, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

I think it goes without saying that Babylon Bee is unreliable since it is a satirical site, and would like to formalize it here so that it can be added to WP:RSPSS. However, it may be the case that Babylon Bee should not be listed because it is obviously satirical. Despite this, satirical sites like Babylon Bee may be misinterpretted to be real news (see this discussion about whether The Onion should be listed as generally unreliable, which it currently is).

Additionally, I believe it should be discussed whether Not the Bee is a reliable source. This is definitely something that would be taken at face value by many, as it is presented to be real (yet humerous) content. Not the Bee seems to quite rarely distort the truth to the extent of outright presenting false information about whether or not non-systemic, direct occurrences have taken place. However, they often write articles from a biased, many times harmful, point of view such as here, sometimes presenting philosophical/religious arguments/points such as here and here. They also occassionally dishonestly frame issues such as here, albeit this particular kind of framing seems to be rare.

  • Option 1 Neither Babylon Bee nor Not the Bee should be listed on WP:RSPSS as generally unreliable
  • Option 2 Only Babylon Bee should be listed as generally unreliable
  • Option 3 Only Not the Bee should be listed as generally unreliable
  • Option 4 Both Babylon Bee and Not the Bee should be listed as generally unreliable
  • Option 5 Not the Bee should be listed as generally reliable

TheGEICOgecko (talk) 00:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it needs to be added or run as a proper RFC - I doubt it's very controversial, that Babylon Bee is a satirical site much like the Onion. Since the Onion is listed, I suppose you could list the Babylon Bee as well. "Not the Bee" doesn't appear to be a source at all really, it's just an aggregator, like a reblog site, so not reliable. Andre🚐 00:49, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Go ahead and deprecate both. They both publish some amount of content presenting satirical takes as straightforward news. Moreover, Not the Bee reposts anonymously authored pieces apparently without meaningful editorial oversight, and without differentiating what might be either opinion or satire from real news. The bottom line is that whatever actual news might be reported there would always be better reported and cited in other sources. BD2412 T 00:51, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    @BD2412: Then should The Onion also be deprecated? Currently, it is only listed as "generally unreliable." TheGEICOgecko (talk) 01:05, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    • I think, actually, The Onion at least does recognized non-satirical movie reviews. Obviously it should be deprecated as a source for real news, if it isn't already. It (and the Bee) might be useful to show examples of events being parodied, but not as a source for information about the events themselves. BD2412 T 01:13, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
      The AV Club you mean. I think it came up or is listed in a past thread or on the board. Andre🚐 01:25, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I don't think we need to formalize that satire sites aren't reliable, thats just common sense. notthebee.com/ also appears to be largely a joke site although its hard to figure out whether its just highly unreliable or whether its jokes and given that theres repeat writers named "Harambe" and "Jesse James" with matching avatars I'm leaning towards its all a joke but either way its a hard no. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:54, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    They do consider themselves to be legit to an extent. Obviously they don't take themselves as seriously as the average news organization, but they do have the belief that Not the Bee is simply uncovering truths that sounds so stupid it sounds fake, or something along those lines to a lesser degree. And I assume many others believe Not the Bee to a similar extent. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 01:29, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    I'm having a heck of a hard time finding any sources which talk about them as different from The Babylon Bee other than their own press releases. What are you seeing? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:39, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Their podcasts. I can't cite it cause I don't remember which ones, but I consume news and comedy from both sides of the spectrum, so I've seen them comment on it a couple times. To be fair, I have never seen Not the Bee make clearly unironic comments on themselves, but Babylon Bee have commented on Not the Bee on their podcasts. Additionally, there wouldn't be a point in Babylon Bee expanding to Not the Bee if they didn't take Not the Bee seriously to an extent. Also, the content Not the Bee publishes just seems like the kind of stuff that would be taken seriously by a sizeable percentage of people, as most of it seems to be some American conservative perspectivies, told in a humerous, sarcastic manner. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 03:20, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Couldn't Not the Bee merely indicate a disclaimer of responsibility for anonymous content? BD2412 T 03:27, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Oh, also, found this excert from the Babylon Bee Wikipedia page: "Seth Dillon has described it as 'a humor-based entertainment site that offers commentary on stories that are so outrageous they should be satire, but somehow aren't'" TheGEICOgecko (talk) 03:34, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • I propose an addition to the MOS that editors must not spit on the floor. I don't have a specific example of an editor spitting on the floor that I can link to, but I'm sure we can all agree that spitting on the floor is disgusting and should be deprecated! 00:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Satire sites are not reliable (except as primary sources for quotation purposes… and quotation would inappropriate except in very limited situations). That said - I oppose adding it to WP:RSP. RSP is not supposed to be a general list of “good” and “bad” sources… it is a compiling of sources that have been PERENNIALLY discussed… (discussed repeatedly at RSN, with the same results over and over again). The two sites under discussion here are not PERENNIAL. Blueboar (talk) 01:51, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Are people actually citing it? If not, then who cares? And if so, when challenged are they maintaining it is still reliable? If not, then who cares? nableezy - 01:56, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Is this a satirical RfC? I'm going to use XKCD as a RS to answer that question[23]. Seems this question didn't need to be answered. Springee (talk) 02:07, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    • Somewhere out there someone is reading a piece from The Bee (or The Onion, for that matter), taking it seriously, and preparing to cite it in Wikipedia. BD2412 T 02:36, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
      Heavens to Murgatroyd, what ever shall we do? If they publish that citation here we'll be powerless, powerless to stop it! Won't someone please think of the children! SamuelRiv (talk) 03:38, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
      • This being a mature effort to build an encyclopedia, we should document which sources are known to be appropriate and not appropriate to use. 23:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
        Being mature editors, we don’t need to have every inappropriate source documented. We only add them to RSP if they become a “Perennial” issue. Blueboar (talk) 23:40, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
        @Blueboar: I agree that we don't need to, but the issue was raised so we may as well. BD2412 T 01:52, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
        @Blueboar: Based on WP:RSPCRITERIA, the requirements seem to be: Either two significant past discussions OR a Reliable sources Noticeboard discussion. So correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that both sources should be added solely because this discussion exists.
        If that is not the case, I went ahead and searched all talk pages for discussions, and found six discussions (three for each source) about the reliability of the sources, but zero Babylon Bee discussions and one Not the Bee discussion was significant (if you're interested in viewing the discussions, there's an array of links below this reply, only the first Not the Bee link is significant, at least from what I can tell). TheGEICOgecko (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
      That's nothing. I've seen someone cite a literal fiction novel for a claim about a company (that wasn't even related to the novel). —Jéské Couriano v^_^v a little blue Bori 04:03, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Even if Babylon Bee shouldn't be listed, there are certainly many people that believe Not the Bee is a legit site that "mainstream news media" would not cover unbiasedly. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 03:48, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Certainly many! Uncountably many! So many that it's simply not feasible to list one, let alone all! (I'm giving you the opportunity to prove us wrong, by the way. I've done the search, but maybe I made a mistake.) SamuelRiv (talk) 21:26, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    From the Babylon Bee wikipedia page about the Babylon Bee CEO, "Seth Dillon has described it as 'a humor-based entertainment site that offers commentary on stories that are so outrageous they should be satire, but somehow aren't'". Also, doesn't Not the Bee just post the kinds of points American conservatives believe? Not the Bee, albeit in a sarcastic tone, unironically portrays talking points that is common in conservative media. To say people won't take them seriously to some extent is kind of like saying no one takes Tucker Carlsen seriously. Regardless of how wack it might be, it clearly will happen.
    Also, not that I can cite it since I don't remember exactly which one, but I've listened to Babylon Bee's podcasts (I consume news/comedy from both sides of the spectrum), and have heard them unironically comment on how Not the Bee supposedly exposes the absurdity of the left. If Babylon Bee takes it seriously to an extent, chances are Not the Bee does too, and it's most likely the case that many consumers do too. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 22:15, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Based on the most accurate numbers I could get in less than 45 seconds of effort, your assertion that with a current citation rate of (I'm still letting you do this search for yourself) 0.00 out of at minimum 5.3 million, the use of Bee and/or !Bee as sources is clearly problematic? SamuelRiv (talk) 22:28, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    Oh, I have no idea how to search that, even with the link you provided. And also, shouldn't it be listed if it happens a number of times, as opposed to common enough to happen a noticeable frequency of times? I'm under the assumption that The Onion will have the same issues as Babylon Bee. If this is not the case, then it isn't. If it is the same, then Babylon Bee should get the same treatment as The Onion. Perhaps that would mean Not the Bee shouldn't be listed because it is more trivial, but it seems reasonable to list Babylon Bee. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 23:08, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
    An example of how to do this search is "insource:babylonbee.com", or use whatever other site you worry might be used in citations. Sorry, I didn't realize you didn't know how to look -- I was pretty convinced you were trolling us. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:20, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    Ok, so as of right now, yeah it seems Babylon Bee isn't currently being used inappropriately, but I don't see that as relevant. Isn't the point to prevent people from doing it to begin with, rather than to establish that the currently used ones are wrong? Babylon Bee is likely to be incorrectly used periodically. That's a different thing from saying it's likely it is currently being incorrectly used. Unless there's a way to also search previous usages of the site as a source, there's no way of us knowing how frequently it is used. Since it's a satire site, and usage will probably be deleted soon after it's added much more often than other sources. I kinda assumed it wasn't being misused at this current moment, my point is that it will be periodically. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 01:45, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    Now with that said, I don't have any knowledge of it actually being a perennial issue. Looking at the discussions about The Onion, it doesn't appear they brought more than one example. And yeah, there's currently one example of a misused Babylon Bee source on the Ethan Nicolle article. If you're suggesting we do not add Babylon Bee, I'd say we should also remove The Onion, unless there's some distinct difference. However, the way I see it is that the mere fact that there's any misused Babylon Bee sources point to the likelihood that it is occassionally inappropriately added, and probably quickly removed after. Though, it might also be the case that it's considered a reliable source in this particular non-political case about a previous staff member, and the only reason it would be inappropriate is because their name is no longer on the link provided. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 01:56, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    I agree with removing anything from RSP that isn't actually Perennial. The burden is on you however to demonstrate that there has been, continues to be, or will be a problem that needs a remedy. Look at your audience -- most of the people here evaluate the credibility of claims as a hobby. The force of words alone won't convince anyone that a Phantom Menace is worth paying attention to (And for the 100th time, that film was terrible when it came out -- I'm not going to rewatch it and suddenly call it a misunderstood masterpiece in the context of Abrams!). You could, say, write a simple program to use a wiki search tool like WikiBlame on a representative random sample of pages over the past few years and see if your assertion about these sources being commonly cited and then reverted is true. SamuelRiv (talk) 02:11, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    @Nableezy: @SamuelRiv: I figure probably the best way to determine whether this is a reoccurring issue is searching Talk pages. I have done so and found the following:
    Babylon Bee: 1, 2, 3
    Not the Bee: 1, 2, 3
    Also, the criteria for a source to be included is WP:RSPCRITERIA. This is a discussion on the Reliable sources Noticeboard, and so the sources should be included on the list, if I'm not misinterpretting it. However, if we're going off of the other qualification, neither Babylon Bee nor Not the Bee passes for the "past signficiant discussions" thing, as there is no significant Babylon Bee discussions, and only the first linked Not the Bee discussion is significant. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 03:27, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    If any other editors are thinking about engaging in this conversation, doing this search themselves, or checking those links TheGEICOgecko just posted, don't. They're all garbage and I wasted far more time double-checking them than what is justified from the minuscule amusement this thread gave me. It was funny for a while, but the joke is dead. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:37, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    I would appreciate it if you don't automatically assume this is a satire thread. If what I'm saying makes little sense, the fact of the matter is that there's a good portion of people here that also think at least one of them should be added, if there is an issue with the logic presented, describe the issue instead of mocking it. Also, you did not respond to what I said about WP:RSPCRITERIA with how it says both should be added solely because there was a discusssion on the Reliable sources Noticeboard (as it says, there should either be significant discussions OR a Reliable sources Noticeboard discussion). So either both of the sources should be added, or neither.
    Also, not sure why you took so long to verify the six links I gave. Shouldn't the only point in checking the links be checking it for substance and for the number of people commenting on whether the sources should be included? To do further verification seems unnecessary, considering how black-and-white it generally will be when discussing sites like these. Just Ctrl + F it, and skim the comments below it, it took me a less than 30 minutes to check ~30 pages. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 15:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    You confuse a necessary condition with a sufficient one. That you did not properly vet your own links confirms my assessment of the amount of time other editors should spend on this thread. SamuelRiv (talk) 15:44, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    I included non-significant links because I did not want to exclude information I might be wrong about excluded: this is my first time being aware of these requirements, as the only other time I have introduced a source to the list, this criteria did not need to be discussed in the same way it does for these Bee sources. Also, I feel if you're going to list criteria and use "or", it should be sufficient conditions: I admit not the best assumption that that was implied, but it should be clarified whether the conditions are necessary or sufficient. But yeah, particularly considering the context of it being "perennial sources", it makes much more sense that the conditions are necessary rather than sufficient. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 07:34, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
    Its a waste of time if it isnt something that is regularly brought up ad argued about. Nobody checks RSP before citing a source. You can use it to explain to somebody why a source is not reliable and that we already have a consensus for that, but for some source that clearly is not reliable you can just as soon explain hey I see you used this site, its actually a satire news site so we shouldnt be citing it. Thats it, the end, you dont need to have an RSN thread much less an RSP entry for that. If people are constantly pushing back on that, sure. But until then, waste of time and energy. nableezy - 02:15, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2 The Babylon Bee should be listed as generally unreliable with text mirroring the WP:RSP entry for The Onion: "The Babylon Bee is a satirical news website, and should not be used as a source for facts." We can discuss Not the Bee if it turns into an actual issue or something. - GretLomborg (talk) 21:06, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 6 Keep Babylon Bee at generally unreliable and list Not the Bee as No Consensus, as it is not currently an issue. Curbon7 (talk) 02:34, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    The purpose of listing something as No consensus is for when there is no consensus on the reliability. However, the discussion is whether it should be listed. I think we can all agree it is generally unreliable, the only question is whether it should be listed as generally unreliable (or deprecated) or not listed at all. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 03:32, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2 Treat it the same as the Onion. Adoring nanny (talk) 12:07, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Close and carry on. Please don't open these discussion on a source merely because it exists. If someone can't recognize satire then that's a them problem and not an us problem. We are not in the business of evaluating sources unrelated to real world examples of article work.
    This is supposed to be a process that saves time and achieves a broader consensus because particular sources are repeatedly the subject of debate on article talk pages. It is not supposed to be a forum for general discussion about sources for its own sake. GMGtalk 15:57, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 1 Despite being the one to start the discussion, I have come to the conclusion that neither should be added to the list. WP:RSPCRITERIA states "two or more significant discussions about the source's reliability in the past, or an uninterrupted request for comment on the source's reliability that took place on the reliable sources noticeboard." I have only found one barely significant Not the Bee discussion here. With the context of these criteria being for perennial sources, I believe these criteria to most likely be disjunctional necessary qualifications, rather than sufficient qualifications: "perennial sources" and "some rando bringing it up on this discussion board out of the blue" don't exactly go hand-in-hand. If these requirements are actually sufficient conditions, then these sources should be added, but I highly doubt this, and believe neither of them should be added.
Also note, The Onion likely shouldn't be considered similarly to The Babylon Bee. Doing a search, there's 100-200 talk pages that include The Onion links, as opposed to under 10 for either Babylon Bee or Not the Bee. Not to say I checked any of these The Onion discussions to any extent, but it's safe to assume there is perennial discussion (aka at least 2-3 significant discussions) about The Onion. TheGEICOgecko (talk) 07:43, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • Both are obviously not reliable sources, but I don't think it's necessary to list sources on RSP when nobody is attempting to use them. --Aquillion (talk) 18:46, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • You know, I expected this thread to close quickly in a WP:SNOWBALL, speedy something or at the very least, a clear and easy close, but it actually seems that there is no consensus that it should be added to RSP or if so, what or how it should be added. Andre🚐 23:22, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
  • See, this is the general problem; RSP was really designed to handle sites that are likely to be controversial and generate repeat, frequent debate. It is NOT SUPPOSED TO BE a general list of "approved" and "denied" sources. Comedy and satire sites are not even sources. It's fiction. We don't list "Star Wars" as an unreliable source on interstellar travel because, no shit, it's a fictional source. So no, we don't list them, but not because they are reliable; because no one should be trying to use them. If people are using them, remove them immediately, and be done with it. A source doesn't need to be on this list and "deprecated" in order to remove it without comment. You do not need permission to make Wikipedia better, and if some idiot is using a satire/comedy website as a source of information, you don't need permission to remove it as soon as you see it. --Jayron32 12:27, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Except (or course) for those very rare occurrences where it is being cited as a primary source for a quote (or something similar). Context always matters. Blueboar (talk) 12:44, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
Well, of course. My point was that RSP is not for posting really obvious stuff, like comedic news satire. You don't need anyone's permission to remove bullshit. --Jayron32 13:30, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
While I tend to agree, and I hope everyone takes that truth to heart, the OP does seem to be legitimately posing the question, and interestingly enough there is a bit of a discussion here, including that The Onion is listed at RSP. I wasn't expecting the discussion to get into anything significant, but it seems that it did. Andre🚐 18:01, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Website

Is this website reliable? Two of these websites have also received awards.

MxM, MediaNews4U, Bestmediainfo.com and Exchange4media are all media and marketing news websites, most of which just reproduce press releases, paid pieces and churnalism without much care for disclosures. I would add Afaqs (afaqs.com HTTPS links HTTP links), Adgully (adgully.com HTTPS links HTTP links) Times Group's Brand Equity (brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com HTTPS links HTTP links) in the list as well. They can at best be used as non-independent primary sources. Exchange4media (exchange4media.com HTTPS links HTTP links) is somewhat of an exception though, it has produced critical and investigative journalism from time to time (e.g [29]) but they are still prone to the issues mentioned so judge their articles on a case by case basis.
Regarding awards, there's a plethora of inconsequential (sometimes even paid for) awards so it will really depend on what award a certain organisation has received. If you are looking for reliable sources on media business related topics then VCCircle, MediaNama and Newslaundry are reputable ones and have proper disclosures; although the first one is a bit prone to churnalism as well.
Odialive looks like a local portal without much recognition, their about page doesn't give an indication of any editorial policy so I'd be very wary of using anything from it. It might just be another random website on the internet and not a reliable source. Tayi Arajakate Talk 06:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank You PravinGanechari (talk) 13:29, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Cuepoint Medium publication reliability

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
This discussion was started one month ago, and discussions ended around one week ago. Despite the low number of participants (only five, including myself), there is unanimous consensus for Option 2, in that additional considerations should apply for Cuepoint Medium, with editors considering that reliability depends on the qualification of the author. Another more active editor could tweak the closing statement and add it to WP:RSP as marginally reliable. VickKiang (talk) 07:35, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

There has been some disagreement over whether the Medium music publication Cuepoint, which is edited by Jonathan Shecter, directly owned by (the platform) Medium itself, and routinely featured a column by longtime music journalist Robert Christgau, is considered a reliable source. This was most recently raised at Wikipedia:Featured and good topic candidates/1989 (Taylor Swift album)/addition1. This publication does not have an entry at WP:RSMUSIC nor RSP. The publication appears to have gone dormant in 2016 but is routinely used in Taylor Swift related articles.

Is Cuepoint a reliable source for music industry coverage?

  • Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
  • Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
  • Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
  • Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

TheSandDoctor Talk 17:29, 9 July 2022 (UTC)

Survey (Cuepoint)

  • Optoin 2. Reasoning below. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 18:31, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2: usability depends on the writer (and the fact/opinion being cited). The column by Christgau is definitely a reliable source. For other authors, take a look at their other writing background (e.g. on MuckRack). If they're even just a little-known reviewer who has written for sources that would be reliable for the information you're trying to cite, I'd take it as reliable. That Shecter edits Cuepoint counts for something. — Bilorv (talk) 11:23, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2, mostly per previous respondents that it depends on the reviewer's qualifications. Medium is generally unreliable, per RSP, As a self-published source, it is considered generally unreliable and should be avoided unless the author is a subject-matter expert or the blog is used for uncontroversial self-descriptions. I don't see clear editorial policies here, but I think (I don't know much about the music industry, so sorry) the well-known journalist Robert Christgau is a very famous subject-matter expert and is probably reliable (Option 1). Others who apeeared in credible journalist outlets or other RS are IMO generally reliable (but I think better refs could be found, still, it's passable). Looking at the prose quality, there are long, detailed articles, but also short, maybe superficial articles, and they could rely a lot on Twitter and other social media posts. Contrasting with this, niche reviewers and contributors that hasn't written much in other RS would probably be considered generally unreliable (Option 3) IMO. VickKiang (talk) 06:36, 20 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2. There is no consensus on the reliability of Cuepoint. AKK700 01:07, 24 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Option 2. Seems to be the better point that fit this example. --Apoxyomenus (talk) 06:21, 26 July 2022 (UTC)

Discussion (Cuepoint)

  • I believe Cuepoint can be used sparsely. Robert Christgau is a very regarded music journalist, so basically, anything he says goes. So if they have an article written by someone that has a journalism degree and/or has written for other publications it will be fine to use. However, if none of these conditions are met the article is better not used, as Medium is deemed as an unreliable source and Cupoint belongs to it. However, some pieces are written by musicians, such as Mark Ronson, which seem fine, at first glance, to use as he discusses his personal experience with George Michael, but it shouldn't be used to give a certain song(s) a review. It should be used like Sound on Sound is used and other magazines alike. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 18:30, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    @MarioSoulTruthFan: Thank you for your explanation. Just to clarify, "Medium is deemed as an unreliable source" because it can be used to publish your own blog (etc). The difference here though is that this publication on medium had reputable editorial control and appears to fall outside of the WP:MEDIUM RSP entry's coverage area. It is "self-published" in the same (philosophical) way that The New York Times or Rolling Stone are -- it simply isn't the same thing as the Medium entry's coverage. TheSandDoctor Talk 18:41, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I forgot to add this in but it is a key point that just dawned on me. An analogy here is how WordPress is considered unreliable but sites running WordPress can be (i.e. Variety, Global News, and Time). WordPress -- or Medium in this case -- is just the platform. TheSandDoctor Talk 18:59, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I see. But is also deemed as unreliable as it is a mirror source, so it copies from other sources and publishes those articles as if they were their originals. Nevertheless, the other conditions are still the same. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 19:20, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    @MarioSoulTruthFan: I am confused. What is considered a mirror source? Where did you see that/get that from? I don’t see that listed at the RSP entries for either WordPress or Medium? TheSandDoctor (mobile) (talk) 21:19, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
    I'm saying it is a mirror website, it copies articles from other websites. MarioSoulTruthFan (talk) 21:25, 9 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Like all sources...WP:CONTEXTMATTERS - and they do have some expert authors writing material, but keep the following in mind: their website: We’re an open platform where over 100 million readers come to find insightful and dynamic thinking. Here, expert and undiscovered voices alike dive into the heart of any topic and bring new ideas to the surface. Our purpose is to spread these ideas and deepen understanding of the world. They are as much a RS as is WP. Atsme 💬 📧 03:48, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Highly recommended: User:Headbomb/unreliable and User:SuperHamster/CiteUnseen.js. You may not have to come here as often. Atsme 💬 📧 03:52, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
    @Atsme: Again, these are two different things as I've already explained. This is for the Cuepoint publication that happens to be on the website Medium (see my above comments) but has reputable editorial control etc. as already described; this is not for the entirety of Medium and is a very specific question/scope. This essentially makes the website page you linked to moot/not relevant. I am also aware of Headbomb's script and use it, but I came here with this RfC because others had raised a point worth considering and isn't covered by Headbomb's script per se; this was also filed for the benefit of resolving a dispute that was ongoing (to which I was not an involved party). It doesn't really matter to me which way this goes, I just don't like seeing things misunderstood in the backstory and question being asked (that I thought was extremely straightforward) and work to get us all on the same page. TheSandDoctor Talk 05:31, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
  • Understood, but please consider the following: To contribute, please email your Medium “draft link” or published piece to our EIC: shecky@cuepointmusic.com. Shecky is also the Director of Programming for the Wynn in Las Vegas. Cuepoint EIC is not his dedicated position in life. Look at the long list of contributors on their about page, and compare their writers and format to say...Mojo, Rolling Stone, or Sports Illustrated for example. Frankly, the difference between Cuepoint and the overall Medium site is minimal. A group of Wikipedia editors, a few with some expert credentials or experience in a particular market niche could create a standalone website for their area of interest in much the same way using WP articles to launch it, solicit the contributions of WP editors at the expert level. Would that make it an unquestionable RS? Do you consider the way Cuepoint operates to equal the editorial control of the NYTimes, Time Magazine, a scholarly review, an academic paper or book published by an expert on a particular topic? What is an expert? I think the position I stated above covers my position well because I tend to be more of a skeptic. Oh, and I apologize for not being more clear as to my intentions for including those scripts as they were meant to be for the benefit of anyone who may not be aware of them. Atsme 💬 📧 13:54, 11 July 2022 (UTC)
    Thank you for clarifying your position and re the scripts comment. I don't dispute your viewpoint, but will just note that a publication asking for pitches isn't that unusual; The Verge does it, as does even The New York Times (both listed as generally reliable at RSP). TheSandDoctor Talk 02:43, 14 July 2022 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium as a source to allege criminal activity

i was sent here by Praxidicae (talk · contribs) because they disagree with my removal of an allegation of criminal activity sourced to Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. from the site's TOU page: WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES OR REPRESENTATIONS ABOUT THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE SITE’S CONTENT (sic). serious claims require serious evidence, and the claim of cyberterrorism seems unsupported by any reliable sources. furthermore, reviewing the discussion at Talk:Bodu_Bala_Sena#Terrorist_organization, it seems TRAC scrapes wikipedia itself. despite no policy specifically proscribing such scraper sites, there are plenty of wikipedia namespace discussions where scraper sites are described as unacceptable sources. hopefully some clarity can come from this discussion. .usarnamechoice (talk) 23:45, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

  1. Here are several other wiki articles which use the Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium (TRAC) as a RS: List of militia organizations in the United States, Ansar Al-Furqan, S14 (Ukrainian group), Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Joint Task Force 2, Ansarullah Bangla Team, Sistan and Baluchestan insurgency, Sinai insurgency, Fidai Mahaz, AlHayat Media Center, Secret Army Organization, Tigray People's Liberation Front. So it appears we have a consensus among many editors who have used it for a variety of different purposes that this source is reliable.
  2. That sort of legalese on their website is pretty standard and doesn't really change much about how we uses sources on Wikipedia.
  3. The editorial group which runs TRAC (Beacham Publishing [30]) is a well-regarded publishing house which puts out such works as The Official WWF Guide to Endangered Species of North America [31] and Beachams Guide to International Endangered Species [32].
  4. From their about page [33] it appears TRAC has an editorial board, is created and edited by topic experts, and accepts corrections. All of these make it clear that TRAC is indeed a reliable source. I would say open source and having copied content from wikipedia means many of its articles are unreliable. Those which have other sources would be useful, but should cite those other sources. (edited 22:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC))
— Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:32, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
A source being widely used on Wikipedia is never an indication of reliability. There are loads of sources that are cited hundreds of thousands of times that are unreliable, but simply fly under the radar. Hemiauchenia (talk) 14:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
fair point. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 15:10, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
They have copied content from Wikipedia. That rules it out entirely imo. That editors have mistakenly used a poor source repeatedly means that our articles need fixing, not that there is nothing wrong with that usage. nableezy - 14:36, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Where do they copy content from Wikipedia? I'm not doubting you, tbh, I just haven't seen it I see it now. Seems an issue of being open source, so I see the problem. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 14:57, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Agreed... Editors lacking competence is not a reason to rule a source reliable when we ourself are competent. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:47, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Confusingly, there's another terrorist research group named TRAC that seems to focus on South America (and OP's TRAC conspicuously does not). There also seem to be several publishers named Beacham (including one for children's lit) so it's hard to get good info on the parent corp. The Mackenzie Institute has a partner publication with TRAC. On brief glance several major university libraries have seen it fit to subscribe to TRAC's publications. Initial reviews seemed positive, but Schmid was quite critical of the quality control. A complete, recent review is at Kraft 2019 if you can access it: she notes while Schmid's review above may not be appropriate in the context of an OSINT database, TRAC hosts mostly primary material, and she evaluates its original analysis as appropriately written "complete primers, or detailed reference entries, for complex topics". Beyond that the remainder of Kraft's review is on LIS stuff and not on the relevance of content to academic terrorism research (she gives it 3+3/8 stars out of 4 in this context). A Google Scholar search suggests TRAC is indeed not used for research. There are of course other databases, and KRAFT notes free databases GTD and RDWTI, while Schmid suggests JTIC would be more professionally curated (but not OSINT).
Given all this, I'd say TRAC's analysis is an RS if you want OSINT (and you should properly note other articles that are primary) (to all above, an RS doesn't have to be the best RS), but note there may be better RS out there that importantly would be freely accessible to the average reader. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:19, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Universities subscribe to it because its a valuable tool to use for original research. We don't do that here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:22, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
That contradicts everything I said in my comment apart from the fact that some universities subscribe to it. It is also a non sequitur with respect to how RS are evaluated. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:36, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
"Given all this, I'd say TRAC's analysis is an RS" also appears to contradict everything else in your comment. I'm not sure how you get "reliable" out of that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:44, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Primary sources can be reliable when no other source exists, they are just heavily heavily not preferred. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 22:12, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
a primary source for an allegation of terrorism would be a copy of the indictment. wikipedia is a tertiary source, so a wikipedia scraper site would be a post-tertiary source or a quarternary source. .usarnamechoice (talk) 23:50, 9 August 2022 (UTC)
Yes, but an article written on TRAC which is not a scrape of wikipedia, but has its own sources, would be valuable for finding primary sources. SamuelRiv is saying "when you want OSINT" this would be a good primary source. For wikipedia's purposes, such "open source" information would typically never be considered a RS.
No need to beat this dead horse, everybody. — Shibbolethink (♔ ♕) 13:42, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
I'm not going to judge the research standards of another field. If OSINT is in general considered viable in academia then the editors on individual articles can judge whether an RS OSINT source is appropriate in context. If you look at even slightly technical articles in any other field it's the same process, regardless of what an editor's opinion on this board is. SamuelRiv (talk) 14:48, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
  • idk what the above means, perhaps i shouldve been more clear. the wikipedia article for gnaa lists the group as a cyberterrorist organization, and cites only TRACs entry on the group. if cyberterrorism is a form of terrorism then cyberterrorism is a crime, and wikipedia and trac are the only two repeating this. there is nothing else that i can find describing what they did that makes them cyberterrorists, i searched the news and legal archives and can not find anything besides wp and trac. Praxidicae is allegedly looking for more sources but refuses to participate here, telling me to 'get consensus from rsn' (is that even done here?), and 'dont ping me'. so the above is an interesting discussion but it doesnt help resolve the issue. some of the above discussion does cite policy/other pages, but most of them dont which makes it hard for me to figure whether consensus can be reached. should i file an rfc for this? .usarnamechoice (talk) 21:54, 10 August 2022 (UTC)
    The endorsing reviews refer specifically to their article space (conveniently under "/article/"). If a source page/article anywhere mirrors Wikipedia content it obviously cannot be used. It does not necessarily disqualify the entire site. Hence the review above. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:10, 11 August 2022 (UTC)
    Unless youre able to determine which of the articles came from Wikipedia, which came from some other random unreliable source, and which come from a source we would consider reliable, then yes it does disqualify the entire site. If I know one apple is poisonous, Im not sticking my head in to bob for a good one. I agree a website can host both good and bad sources. But you need a way to differentiate between them, and I do not see that here. nableezy - 02:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Wording tweak suggestion on WP:DAILYMAIL on WP:RSP

Not in how it works at all, but in wording. See WT:RSP discussion - David Gerard (talk) 22:03, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Citing videos shared on social media

I'm curious as to whether WP:FACEBOOK and WP:SNS applies to videos of news reports or other reliable sources being shared on Facebook or other social media accounts. The particular example I thinking of is this one, which is a shared video of a news report. Perhaps since sharing a link isn't technically the same a reposting or re-uploading the video, there's nothing to be worried about from a WP:COPYLINK standpoint (I've asked about that at WP:ELN#Shared Facebook videos) and the social media post could be treated as a WP:CONVENIENCE link? At the same time, it's a Facebook posted being cited which means there may be interpretations or opinions posted about the video's content which are problematic per WP:RS and WP:NOR. I've started a discussion about this at Talk:New South Wales Police Force strip search scandal#Shared SBS video for reference and would be interested in opinions from others. -- Marchjuly (talk) 22:31, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Can you find it on the SBS website instead? I think you are speaking of this report. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 00:19, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
The major thing I would be concerned about is the ability of a social media account to alter the footage from the original. A LOT depends on the specific account holder. A reliable news outlet sharing/reposting footage from another reliable outlet would probably be fine… but I would not trust some random Joe doing so. Blueboar (talk) 00:35, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
Thank you Szmenderowiecki and Blueboar for your input. The person who added the citation has responded on the article's talk page that they've been unable to find a link to the original video. They also seem to have acceptd that the link shouldn't be re-added again; so perhaps this is resolved for now. The SBS link that Szmenderowiecki provided above seems related to the same story, but doesn't seem to contain a link to the same video. Regardless, that might have to do since the the opinion at WP:ELN seems to be we shouldn't be linking to shared video links because doing so may be a possible violation of COPYLINK. As for the concerns Blueboar raised about altering the original footage, I'm not sure that's the issue in this case since the Facebook account in question appears to be the official account of Australian senator David Shoebridge; however, anything is possible I guess and public figures do sometime have others managing their online presence. My concern about linking to these types of posts had more to do with WP:ABOUTSELF, WP:SYN and WP:OR because when a post like this is linked to there almost always seem to be some interpretation being provided either as the main comment by the poster or as the forum-like comments made by others. It's such interpretations and editorializing that seem to be a problem since none of the persons involved would like be considered a reliable source in most cases other than perhaps when they are commenting directly about themselves. -- Marchjuly (talk) 21:54, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
In an era where the barrier to entry for realistic deceptive media editing is getting continually lowered, Blueboar's cautiousness is warranted. The notion that it's a the Facebook account of a reputable person (reputable in this case being usefully defined by, say, having everything to lose by being deliberately maliciously deceptive) does not matter if the reputable person cannot or does not source the video to its owner, because any reasonable observer's first instinct would be that the Facebook (or other social media) account sharing a video/photo is not the original creator or clipper of the original source but is almost certainly re-sharing it from someone else who re-shared it etc. etc. (I named it 15 years ago (and no-one else did or does) the "Tumblr/Pinterest media attribution catastrophe"). Now, sometimes it may come full circle and something that's been shared a million times gets re-verified with an old transcript or cruddy-quality tape to be legit even if the original organization is quiet or dead, or the organization does not assert that a cruddy youtube clip of their show that then independently gets some media coverage is not authentic. In dire cases (isolated and/or obscure media coverage areas typically) an editor might just make a pitch in the Talk page for a reasonable presumption that a piece of media has not been prohibitively affected in its redistribution around the internet and is authentic on the weight of evidence.
Your interpretation of how to instead interpret these citations for SYN/OR policy violations is absolutely on-point, at least from the way you describe it. The operative example in question doesn't seem to be a case of that at this point, since what is attempted to be supported by the video is largely supported by reference ":4" (please fix your ref names to be semantic, not numerical, in the article source, for the sake of future editors, when you have the time). It would be OR/SYNTH to take from a vid or media anything that wasn't directly observable, so what is clearly implied in the position of the citation you removed is that it modifies "a positive indication from a drug detection dog" (that requires another source saying that happened (which I'm sure they do, it's not contoversial, just sayin' that's what is required), or the cop saying that happened, or a RS trained in how drug detection dogs work saying that that was a positive indication), and it also modifies "strip and squat" which is in quotation marks, so somebody in the video has to actually say the words "strip and squat" in that exact order (preferably with a timestamp if it's a video longer than 2 minutes or so). If both of these conditions are not met, the citation should be placed in a different location (assuming it were it a usable citation in the first place). SamuelRiv (talk) 23:27, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source?

They speak Meena language."Meena". -- Karsan Chanda (talk) 03:31, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

It's very hard to tell. The gmail email address is a redflag. But it's a scholar that seems to work in another language (Hindi?) and that makes it hard to find much about him. Apparently he works at the Central University of Rajasthan, but it's very hard to confirm if he's an established expert, or just a random scholar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 03:48, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
Academia.edu is a self-published source. It's not inherently reliable as there's no editorial oversight, so should be used in accordance with the guidance on using self-published sources. Most importantly, is the author an established subject-matter expert? Jr8825 • Talk 15:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
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