Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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Tasnim News Agency - revisiting its reliability

• tasnimnews.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Is it worth revisiting the reliability of the Tasnim News Agency of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in light of the recent article referenced in the latest WP:SIGNPOST about a related state-backed propaganda and disinformation operation? Amigao (talk) 22:20, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't seem that Tasnim is listed at WP:RSP, so I'm not sure what any prior consensus would've properly been. Additionally, it's worth noting that article is an opinion piece, rather than an RS accusing it of a disinfo operation.

That said, considering its extensive ties to the IRGC, I would be extremely wary of using it for anything but the stated positions of the IRGC, similar to how we've treated Russian and Chinese state-backed media. Their promotion of COVID conspiracy theories makes me think WP:GUNREL is a solid option, if not deprecation similar to WP:PRESSTV. The Kip 22:45, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

Worth a formal RfC then? It looks like there has been some past discussion of Tasnim (1, 2, 3, 4) but no RfC. Amigao (talk) 17:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Wouldn’t be a bad idea, considering the Signpost context. The Kip 19:13, 10 February 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Tasnim News Agency

What is the reliability of Tasnim News Agency?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Tasnim News Agency of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was referenced in a recent WP:SIGNPOST issue in relation a recent Townhall.com opinion piece concerning systematic "disinformation and state propaganda" efforts on Wikipedia. Past discussion of Tasnim (1, 2, 3, 4). - Amigao (talk) 19:12, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

• tasnimnews.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Survey

• Option 4: per nomination and arguments given by the user "The Kip" in the section above the RfC. "Tasnim News Agency" has been described by various sources as an "IRGC-controlled" outlet that disseminates "state propaganda and conspiracy theories" on behalf of Iranian political fronts affiliated with the IRGC. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 13:22, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3/4 per nom and arguments above. State mouthpiece that has published disinformation. Possible reliable source for Iranian gov statements and similar so preference for GUNREL over deprecate, but as more official press agencies exist for those hard to see any loss in deprecation. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:59, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 -- it's a state disinformation and propaganda outlet, that is occasionally valuable as a self-published primary source about the Iranian government's own actions but typically even then there's a better source. Per the WP:PRESSTV consensus, this should probably be deprecated. It's basically the exact same scenario. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 03:52, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 per the consensus from WP:PRESSTV, this isn’t far off from being the same source. The Kip 09:12, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 as said above, this is a medium for spreading IRI propaganda. JM (talk) 03:20, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. There are clear instances of misinformation, see the example below about the Medici being Jewish and founding the worldwide usury system ([[1]]). This source is used a lot and while some uses might be okay (Ilam_province#cite_ref-76), a lot of them have to do with various controversial topics (for example Gun politics in the United States) and it's quite likely that their agenda and biases would affect their reporting. Alaexis_¿question? 09:00, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

This outlet has been mentioned only briefly in the article. Could you maybe add some details about the Covid disinformation that was added to Wikipedia using Tasnim, and provide other examples, if you have them? Alaexis_¿question? 12:51, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Here's one about Tasnim's Covid disinformation mixed with antisemitic tropes. - Amigao (talk) 23:15, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

@Amigao: The Anti-Defamation League is an advocacy organization. Although, I do understand this RfC which was closed and given the "green-light" at WP:RSP, from my reading of the responses, most editors appropriately said it should be attributed, especially with regard to issues regarding claiming a person or entity is antisemitic. A blog whose title includes "Iran Regime Makes Jews its Bogeyman" and first section is titled "Accusing Jews of Sorcery" does not ring of objective reporting.

Regardless of just how reliable that opinion of what the Iran Regime is doing and their assessment of the Tasnim new articles mentioned in it (which are certainly worth looking at to see if the assessment they are as bad as the article says they are), the question Alaexis asked above, which I also have is: "Could you maybe add some details about the Covid disinformation that was added to Wikipedia using Tasnim?" [emphasis added.] Wikipedia is not mentioned in the article at all from my search of the term. I would like to see if any of those outrageous claims lasted for more than a few minutes before being deleted. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I somehow missed the response, thanks to @Amigao.

@David Tornheim, as to relying on ADL, we can sidestep their report and look at the original articles. This one, assuming that Google translate is correct, claims that the Medici were Jewish and devised the current worldwide usury system. Alaexis_¿question? 08:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis: I agree that article in Arabic is serious work of conspiracy. I tried--without success--to find the same article in English (or anything similarly outlandish) at tasnimnew.com/en, with this search or Tasnim News archive search. I reviewed numerous English articles from the site, and I found nothing so outrageous. That one seems to be an outlier. Have you looked at a covid search of the site?

These are some of the articles I came across: [2], [3], [4], this one focuses only on everything negative they could come up with to say about the (U.S.-made) Pfizer vaccine--contrasting sharply with U.S. reporting that tended to focus only on the benefits, [5], [6], [7], [8]. It didn’t seem to be any more or less scientific, objective, or a-political than U.S. mainstream media [9], [10], BBC [11] or an article like this from Iran International. Compare the articles you see in all these mainstream media with those you find on Google scholar: [12], [13], [14]. --David Tornheim (talk) 11:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Can I suggest moving this RfC to the same section as the initial live discussion above, as it seems silly to split the conversation? BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:06, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Done. The Kip 06:13, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:32, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

The RfC mentions an opinion piece on the Townhall website which referenced Tasnim. I did not find the TownHall article very persuasive. It only mentions Tasnim once, where it says it was used to add "false information about the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran". However, the Townhall article does not say what false information was added and does not provide a link to the claimed addition so that the claim can be verified. The article is poor in other ways. It makes a number of claims, including about Wikipedia editors and admins, without providing a way of verifying the claims. Two of the writer's claims can be checked by looking at the Wikipedia articles to which he refers. The writer says "in the Wikipedia article on the "Barakat Foundation," details about its connection to the powerful Iranian institution known as the Execution of Imam Khomeini's Order were deleted". The Execution of Imam Khomeini's Order is mentioned eight times on the Barakat Foundation page. The writer also says "in the Wikipedia article on the "Mahsa Amini protests," a Guardian article was used to falsely claim that demonstrators chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel," when the article actually reported on pro-government rallies as a response to the protests". Afaict, we have used The Guardian article correctly in the Mahsa Amini protests article, including its claim that pro-government protesters shouted “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”. Burrobert (talk) 13:46, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

ScienceDirect Topics (AI-generated pages)

Over 1000 articles are currently citing some ScienceDirect Topics page. These are machine-generated summaries of the articles published in a certain topic by Elsevier. They cannot be reliable sources because they obscure the real source and context of any given statement, potentially turning into its opposite for lack of understanding. After finding a useful statement on such a page, editors should find a suitable original source (possibly one of the academic papers listed in the page itself), confirm that it supports the claim, and use that as reference.

I suggest adding ScienceDirect Topics to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources as banned source, to better inform editors. Elsevier is strongly promoting its "AI" offering, and even though this is probably just some pretty standard machine learning (arguably less dangerous than general machine generation based on LLM), we'll probably see increased usage here as collateral damage. Nemo 08:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

Topics is already listed at RSP. I had no idea so many pages use it though. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 12:27, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

RfC: ScienceDirect topics

Should an edit filter be implemented to warn editors trying to add ScienceDirect topics pages to articles? Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:20, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Responses (ScienceDirect)

• Yes As discussed at Wikipedia:Edit_filter/Requested#ScienceDirect_topics, an implementation of an edit filter requires a discussion at RSN. As previous discussed several times on this noticeboard (see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_270#Elsevier_topics:_reliability_of_machine-generated_sources, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_417#Elsevier_topics_again, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_422#Machine-generated_text_at_ScienceDirect_used_as_source) these are not verifiable references as the cited content on the page changes over time. We have over 1,000 references to these pages which indicates that its usage is a problem. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:20, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. Last night I started attempting to replace some of these links and was immediately discouraged by both the overwhelming number of them and by how many were very recently added. It is definitely not clear to most people that SD Topics would have any problems at all, to the extent that I suspect almost no one casually using it would even consider the possibility it is GUNREL. I certainly didn't realize until I saw this thread yesterday that it was AI, despite repeatedly trying to use it to find background literature for my dissertation (and this explains why I occasionally encountered wrong shit in its summaries, and why I was never able to figure out how to cite what I thought were actual review articles...).

JoelleJay (talk) 00:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Yes. They are truthy bits of out-of-context information and most people adding them will not know they are unreliable. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 09:05, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes per above. --Leyo 18:25, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes per above. In my own uses of "AI" (LLM) tools to try go generate summaries, abstracts, timelines, and other "this should be easy" digests of source material, the results have been uniformly awful, with virtually every single sentence having to be corrected in one way or another (from errors of omission to errors of focus/emphasis/nuance, to frequent outright factual errors, including "hallucinations" both of claims in particular sources and of entire sources). Maybe someday we'll be able to trust such tools to properly summarize material, but that some day is not today. Never forget that what LLMs do is try to provide an answer that will look like what should be a correct/expected result. It is not a fact-checking process of any kind, but a form of simulation. That we're able to get anything useful out of it at all (e.g. it can be used to generate simplex examples of correct, though often inelegant, Javascript or Python functions to do various things, as well as regular expressions as long as they are not very complex or do not have complex test cases to match) verges on astounding.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:19, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes, as we're setting editors up for failure by not warning them. Would these be useful ELs, though? Mach61 (talk) 15:19, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes. On topics for WP:MED, ScienceDirect is a commonly-applied, unsatisfying source typically providing limited search results from lower-quality journals. It is frequently selected by novice editors, requiring followup editing for source accuracy in the article. More experienced medical editors would have no difficulty finding better sources by searching PubMed with the appropriate search terms. Note for the cleanup if replacing 1000+ ScienceDirect sources is the outcome: a bot can be developed to remove them (consult user GreenC), leaving a tag, but laborious manual checking of the sourced statement and editing by a volunteer are needed to refill with a good source. Zefr (talk) 19:42, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes. Similar to everyone else, I have never seen it be a reliable source for research purposes, so it should be discouraged for novice editors.Ldm1954 (talk) 00:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
• Yes: I was unaware that those topic pages are machine generated summaries, so an edit filter would be helpful. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 03:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
• Sure if machine generated content. These can be problematic, but I use the sources Science Direct cites instead since as those are not AI generated and are instead published material by researchers. Ramos1990 (talk) 05:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC)
• Yes. It's just misleading. Editors should cite the articles directly. Cortador (talk) 12:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Group of AI Generated "News" sites

I stumbled across this a few months (December) ago and totally forgot to post about it here.

I found a group of websites with news/blog posts that are pretty clearly AI generated, and use AI generated images on them. I don't think I've fully fleshed out the full list of sites, but this is what I have found so far (They all link to each others in various ways):

• Isp.page
• Ts2.ai
• Satproviders.com
• Isp.today
• elblog.pl
• ts2.space

Some of these do seem to be used as references in various Wikipedia articles.

Of special note is ts2.space. Back in December when I was first investigating this (This was the original site that led me down this rabbit hole), they had a blog section filled with similar articles (and linking to the above sites). I don't seem to be the only one to notice this, as the TS2 Talk Page has someone complaining about the AI Articles on it. Interestingly, the edit history of the TS2 page has some hints as to what happened, suggesting that someone bought them out and is "transforming" the companies (See this edit and this edit).

I'm pretty new to editing Wikipedia in general, so I'm not sure what the best next steps would be. Cmdrraimus (talk) 05:01, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

As this is a form of news aggregation, no, we should use the sources they use, and not them Slatersteven (talk) 15:58, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Where did you see sources? Some articles ([15], [16], [17], [18]) are generated from YouTube videos, do you consider the videos sources?

However, some other articles from this network do not mention any sources, or the source is not linked properly ([19], [20], [21], [22]). Bendegúz Ács (talk) 22:18, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Slater, we should use their sources. Regarding AI content in general, use is generally considered incompatible with Wikipedias policies (for good reasons). FortunateSons (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

I have checked them, and most of them indeed seem to be entirely AI-generated, often based on YouTube videos. I also found two more websites that post AI-generated articles from this network, cremasb.com and worldreportnow.com.

I support blacklisting the ones that host the AI-generated articles themselves or directly redirect (cremasb.com, worldreportnow.com, elblog.pl, ts2.ai, satproviders.com, isp.today), which I believe is the appropriate protocol for spammy websites that may confuse Wikipedia editors. I did not find evidence of AI-generated content on ts2.space, ts2.tech and isp.page. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 22:31, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Regarding TS2.space, they definitely had AI articles before on their blog, which appears to have been scrubbed clean now. That was actually the first site that led me to discover all the other sites. If you look at the site in on the internet archive, you can see examples of it. And some of these now non-existent articles are used as references here and there on Wikipedia.

Regarding isp.page, I included that one because some of their articles state that they were originally posted on the other links that use AI generated material (ISP.today and satProviders off the top of my head). Given the fact that they seem to link to multiple members, and the homepage has a icon for isp.today, I suspect that they are related.

Additionally, I've been using the Link Search , and some of these are being randomly added to articles that have no relevance. An example being Eco_Femme, which just has a link to the isp.today homepage as a citation 22.

What should my next steps be on dealing with these sources? Cmdrraimus (talk) 03:07, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I recommend posting them in MediaWiki talk: Spam-blacklist#Proposed additions. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 22:52, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I'll go post about it over there. Before I do, how did you find those additional pages posting the articles? Just a google search, or something else. I'm wondering if I should take a little more effort to try to flesh out this group of sites. Cmdrraimus (talk) 22:05, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I just followed some random links on the original websites you posted. I don't think it's worth investing more time in this for now. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 17:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'll post what you and I have found so far to MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#Proposed additions. Thanks Cmdrraimus (talk) 03:30, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

 In progress. I'm in the process of removing citations of these self-published and/or AI-generated sites from article space. — Newslinger talk 23:00, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Trend of AI-generated websites

• Here lies the internet, murdered by generative AI: Corruption everywhere. Good essay. -- GreenC 23:00, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

  Great article, spam on the internet has been growing immensely due to generative AI.

  This analysis ([23]) is also worth reading on the topic.

  I think the main issue is not the use of generative AI itself for content generation, but the lack of editorial oversight and quality control. Journalists and other content creators have to learn how to use generative AI responsibly, so that it is not done at the expense of quality.

  With that said, sites with a complete lack of editorial oversight, or even of human presence, like the ones identified here, are nothing but pure spam and thus should be banned from Wikipedia.

  Bendegúz Ács (talk) 00:45, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  And things are going to get harder. I'm curious though about what happens when they start feeding back into themselves and we get an AI equivalent to Citogenesis. The feedback loop might eventually make it easier to identify AI generated stuff. Cmdrraimus (talk) 22:09, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  If it makes you feel better—we've been at that point since at least 2018, in my mind. It's not particularly difficult to identify lexical slop being endlessly rearranged, whether by man or machine. Remsense诉 22:11, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  Oh yeah. I just think its going to get worse in the next year or two before things get better. Cmdrraimus (talk) 22:18, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  There is already some research about that phenomenon, and it is called "model collapse". Wikipedia has no content about it yet, but there are some sources ([24], [25], [26]). Maybe a mention about it could be added somewhere like Large language model or Generative artificial intelligence. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 18:42, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Old-time Music (oldtimemusic.com)

Old-time Music (oldtimemusic.com) is an AI-generated website that is currently used in 134 articles  .

Their "Who We Are" page (archived) lists authors with questionable profile pictures. For example, a few reverse image searches on Bing and Google Images show that:

• "Joseph L. Hollen" has a profile picture taken from the iHeartRadio page of an artist named William Joseph.
• "Corey Hoffman" has a profile picture taken from the LinkedIn page of a Roku employee named Paul Thompson, Jr. (To avoid LinkedIn's account login requirement, see: image info, page info)
• "Jennifer Bell" has a profile picture with near-identical facial features as "Reva Choudhary" (archive) of another AI-generated website called TechRushi (techrushi.com).
• "Warren Barrett" has a profile picture with identical facial features as "Matthew Hook", whose name is attached to a testimonial on the AI-generated website of a supposed "hormone center" called HRTMedical (hrtmedical.net), which does not disclose its address or phone number.

The website includes 417,700 articles on "song meanings" written in the same FAQ style.

I propose a mass removal of all uses of oldtimemusic.com from Wikipedia, and anyone is welcome to help. There is a WikiProject Spam entry at WP:RSPAM § oldtimemusic.com and a COIBot report is pending. — Newslinger talk 03:45, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I support removing them, and I think we have reached a consensus about it in the previous post. Do you have any sources that could be considered for replacement, especially in terms of song interpretations? Or is it better to just completely remove the content too? Bendegúz Ács (talk) 08:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it would depend, but perhaps the default should just be a {{cn}} tag. Remsense诉 08:56, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the previous discussion, which I missed. I also support adding oldtimemusic.com to the spam blacklist. Since AI-generated content frequently draws from other web sources, I expect the site's song descriptions to heavily incorporate user-generated content from song annotation sites such as Genius and SongMeanings, which cannot be cited on Wikipedia. Music publications (see WP:RSMUSIC) might occasionally cover the song meanings of popular songs, but the number of songs covered will certainly be much lower than 417,700. I would completely remove claims that only cite oldtimemusic.com unless a reliable replacement source is readily available, which might not be the case for most of these citations. — Newslinger talk 09:25, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Added to spam blacklist. — Newslinger talk 09:32, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Great, I have cleaned up the pages now, the remaining hits seem legitimate, from before an AI-content generator took over the URL. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 15:49, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

The New York Times

The Intercept, itself a WP:RSP, has written an article today exposing the NYT's deplorable fabricated article entitled 'Screams Without Words', written on 28 December 2023. This article went on to be the basis for many other stories in supposedly reputable media, and was largely used as a justification for the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinian population in Gaza in the weeks that followed. The blood of thousands of Palestinians is on the hands of the NYT for publicising such disgusting fabrications.

Such a flagrant lack of journalistic integrity, not only to hire two non-journalists to begin writing for them in October and November 2023 (Anat Schwartz and Adam Sella, coincidentally nephews by marriage), but for at least one of those people (Schwartz) to be an anti-Palestinian extremist, having liked Tweets calling for Gaza to be turned into a "slaughterhouse", is reprehensible. This afront to journalism is surely enough to have the New York Times permanently removed as a reputable source, at very least for coverage of the Gaza genocide. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 05:40, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure a permanent decision is in the purview of this noticeboard or the general community, but on reading the Intercept article, I do find myself concerned. There's been the bizarre coverage of trans medical care for the past couple years, now there's this un-journalistic badgering of family members of victims and stretching unverified claims without evidence into front-page spreads. I'm not sure at this point what the right step is, but I don't think it'll be right to consider the New York Times, and certainly at least the article the Intercept is reporting on, WP:GREL for content pertaining to the state of Israel's actions in Gaza. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 06:08, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

In a conflict full of disinformation and high emotions on both sides, I would rather wait how this story unfolds. As of now, the original story stays on the NYT website. Note even The Intercept grudingly admits there may have been sexual violence during the terrorist attack, but veils it into some weird phrasing indirectly blaming "several hundred civilians" in a "second wave". Pavlor (talk) 06:17, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

For clarity, the full context is The question has never been whether individual acts of sexual assault may have occurred on October 7. Rape is not uncommon in war, and there were also several hundred civilians who poured into Israel from Gaza that day in a “second wave,” contributing to and participating in the mayhem and violence. The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” — a claim stated in the headline that Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war.

The Intercept's critique of (and my concern about) the New York Times is not about whether or not any sexual assault happened, but about whether the Times presented sufficient evidence to support its claim stated in the headline Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war, i. e. an organization systematically and deliberately deploying sexual assault. I wouldn't call this a "grudging" admission or "veil[ed]" language; the Intercept is honing in on precisely where the evidence apparently warrants ambiguity but the Times chose to say it as clear fact. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 06:26, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I take all bombastic revelations like in The Intercept or in the original NYT story with a grain of salt. NYT may remove the article and publish an apology, or stand by its content. Other RSs will probably add their own findings to this story. Then we may judge. Pavlor (talk) 06:33, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Strongly disagree the NYT has a decades-long history of (imperfect but) excellent reporting, is considered “the newspaper” by many and is broadly (directly or indirectly) cited by a great amount of significant RS.

Its coverage of the war against between Israel and Hamas has definitely been imperfect, but so has Al-Jazeera's, the BBC's, and a long list of other sources considered RS. A topic-based depreciation would be inappropriate even if every claim you made was accurate, the best it would prove is that one specific article is insufficient to show that sexual violence in conflict was planned instead of incidental.

Regarding the article itself - I don’t love it either, but as far as errors in journalism go, I wouldn’t consider it any worse than the hospital story that the vast amount of RS fell for - at least it’s conjecture instead of such a harmful translation error. I agree with my fellow editor above, we just have to wait for the benefit of posterity to figure this out, and I would encourage citation with attribution for controversial claims coming from RS newspaper regardless of the so-called ‘side’ they are on. FortunateSons (talk) 08:10, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Looking back this morning I agree that calling for the NYT to be permanently removed was a little hasty, to say the least. However, my issue is not so much with what was contained within the article (though the hounding of Gal Abdush's family is abhorrent journalistic malpractice). My issue is more with the hiring of Schwartz and Sella, given the timing of their first articles, given the nature of these articles and given the following investigation into Schwartz' conduct on social media.

If the NYT are essentially hiring friends of friends as journalists; people with no, or incredibly limited and amateur, prior journalistic experience, to write on such a contentious and delicate topic, I think they are setting a very dangerous precedent, especially given their reputation as "the newspaper" for so many.

With relation to the article specifically, I accept that during such a chaotic time, and with so little access to the given area for foreign journalists, there will inevitably be mistakes or mis-reported stories. However, The Intercept's article on what Schwartz wrote is accusing her of far worse. In essence, they are saying that she was so desperate for a story that she failed to do her due diligence as a journalist - which is understandable given the fact that she is not one.

Again, given that the NYT is so widely reputed as a very good source, her fabricated and sensationalised accusations were used in part as justification for Israel's response to the attack by Hamas on 7 October. To skew public opinion on such an important matter is criminal, and I've no doubt that a large number of people justified the slaughter of thousands of children because of Schwartz' words.

I do believe that, given the deplorably callous actions by the NYT in the coverage of this topic, we should not use the NYT as a reputable source for any further reports on the Gaza genocide. At very least, articles written by either Gettleman, Schwartz or Sella should be blacklisted. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 12:54, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I appreciate that you moderated your position.

I think this issue should be split into 3: journalistic conduct, story content, and hiring.

1. conduct: if what the intercept (which I would consider less reliable that the NYT, but reliable unless proven otherwise) alleges is true and complete, that is a set of actions that would disgust any journalist I have had the pleasure (and occasionally displeasure) of meeting/talking to. That being said, for the purposes of Wikipedia, I wouldn’t consider that that be significant; it is first and foremost a human issue, but not one of reliability.

I think it’s important to add that “skewing public opinion” is not really a good point here. If the content is untrue, that’s enough not to use this specific article, and if it isn’t and you consider the changing of public opinion to be sufficient, then we would have to depreciate all pro-Palestinian sources based on a (just to be clear, highly tenuous) claim that support for Palestinians may assist one or more terror organisations in their goals.

2. Content is something we cannot know at this time. Some of what the intercept writes is plausible, some less so, but unless you are a member of the NYT staff, none of us are going to be able to verify some or all of that. We just have to wait for more reporting (from both ‘sides’) and see how this plays out. Trust me, this is as annoying to me as it is to you, but our shared impatience is unfortunately not an adequate reason for taking quick and decisive action. In the same way, we shouldn’t depreciate the NYT on an entire topic based merely on the fact that one potentially inaccurate story may be used as what you describe as a genocide, a claim (just for the benefit of uninvolved readers) considered to be likely inaccurate by many including some legal scholars, governments and some judges at the ICJ (Germany, Israel, Uganda (?), but I could be wrong, so take this with a grain of salt).

That being said, anyone justifying the intentional, direct and legally and militarily unjustified targeting of children on either side of this conflict is an unpleasant person to say the least (and to stay within policy).

3. Hiring. Oh, hiring. While definitely a complicated issue, it is pretty normal to have nepo hires. While not great, if that was the deciding factor (experience in adjacent media and a relevant professional field, assigned to work with more experienced colleagues) we really would have to depreciate half of MSM or more, something I am opposed to for a long list of obvious reasons.

• Therefore, this article definitely needs attribution (and should be removed if a retraction occurs, which it hasn’t, afaik). Issuing a ban for the NYT on this topic as a whole or 'blacklisting' the (significantly more experienced) journalists is a widely excessive measure in my opinion and should not be undertaken. Regarding her, I would definitely recommend additional caution for future articles, but as caution is already encouraged for I/P, doing anything beyond that is unnecessary.

FortunateSons (talk) 13:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

The Intercept article says The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” — a claim stated in the headline that Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war. but I couldn’t see in the original NYT article that they do actually make this “deliberately” claim? Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 08:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

While there are some reasonable concerns about the NYT over some matters here (and over gender-related matters as someone noted earlier), we should not be leaning it on whether the headline was accurate, because headlines tend to be at best not precise. We don't accept headlines as reliable sources even when they're in a generally reliable source because (per WP:HEADLINES), we acknowledge that they have neither the goals nor the vetting of the articles. As such, we cannot judge the reliability of a source based on the accuracy of its headlines. (This is not intended to derail any concerns over content of the article itself.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 12:51, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

While I do understand Nat Gertler's rationale above, I think that if you title an article "‘Screams Without Words’: How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7", you are quite clearly making the assertion that Hamas deliberately committed acts of sexual violence as a weapon of war. Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 12:57, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

There is a legitimate concern here in relation to the particular events and I don't think the NYT should just get a free pass source wise for those events. Although they are apologizing in a roundabout sort of a way, which is a good thing in principle, but still. Selfstudier (talk) 13:23, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I had been holding back on whether to believe these stories about October 7 and now this just makes the whole business even foggier. I just did not see militants on what was essentialy a suicide mission taking the time or even having the capacity to do rape, it is more the sort of thing that happens when they feel safe. Looking at this and Sexual and gender-based violence in the 7 October attack on Israel just makes everything more opaque but I can see the New York Times first part about "the woman in black dress" was badly founded and they should have known it. Other bits may hve a better basis but how am I supposed to judge when a reliable source like the New York Times does that? I have noticed other sources biasing by going in for questionable stories instead of just leaving out stories they don't like which I'm used to. I'm not going to say the New York Times is unreliable yet, especially as they're all getting worse and yet I need some stakes in the ground, but it is extremely annoying. NadVolum (talk) 13:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

While there are clearly some issues with how NYT managed the investigation of such an important topic, which is concerning, I don't think we should introduce any significant change in how we use NYT in general or indeed its other reporting on this topic. The most I would say is that we might want to avoid citing this particular investigation, or checking how it's been used if we do cite it. I also think that, given the what a long-standing RS the NYT is, we shouldn't rush into a decision. No doubt other RSs will scrutinise this (see e.g. CNN) and we can review in light of that. Finally, I felt the Intercept undermined its case by citing deeply unreliable sources such as Grayzone. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:47, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

All co-signed. Zanahary (talk) 03:50, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The Intercept article says The central issue is whether the New York Times presented solid evidence to support its claim that there were newly reported details “establishing that the attacks against women were not isolated events but part of a broader pattern of gender-based violence on Oct. 7” — a claim stated in the headline that Hamas deliberately deployed sexual violence as a weapon of war.

Therefore, the burden you have to show if you want to say the New York Times fabricated this article, is that there wasn't a pattern of gender-based violence on October 7th.

Journalists are expected to gather their own information from disparate sources. They don't have to use inline citations like we do because it's expected that secondary sources are experts at determining what information is accurate. We judge a source's skill at gathering information based on whether their output is correct.

Despite the claims otherwise here, systemic sexual assault was committed against Israeli civilians on October 7th. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not so sure. What we may be seeing is something else which is also awful which is a form of necroviolence. NadVolum (talk) 18:48, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

@Chess Despite the claims otherwise here, systemic sexual assault was committed against Israeli civilians on October 7th.

Would genuinely be curious to know what you base this on? Davidlofgren1996 (talk) 23:46, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

The BBC, NBC news, AP news, and The Washington Post agree there was mass sexual violence on October 7th. You say The blood of thousands of Palestinians is on the hands of the NYT for publicising such disgusting fabrications but the blood of Palestinians might as well be on the entire western media by that definition. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:02, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

mass sexual violence Which source is that in? Selfstudier (talk) 19:21, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

And mind the slippage of systematic sexual assault versus mass sexual violence, possibly systematic and possibly not. Dreadful violence took place, that sources agree upon; what is under question is what the structure of that violence was. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 19:59, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Reminds me of the coverage by numerous sources during the prelude to the Iraq war, Basically the media fell for the WMD crap. As a result, the public cheered the bombing of Iraq called “shock and awe”. In 2004, the NYT published a lengthy article highly critical of itself for putting too much faith in claims by government sources.[27] I've noticed over the last month, NYT and CNN coverage has changed substantially. The NYT is printing regular stories about the mass killings of Palestinians. The overall tune is changing. Like so many things, I think we need to wait for the dust to settle. But clearly the NYT article mentioned by the OP should not be used as a source. O3000, Ret. (talk) O3000, Ret. (talk) 21:11, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

What got me about that was the way they said he must be doing this that or the other to hide these weapons, and as each proved false people just said he must be even more evil and devious than we though rather that it is getting to look less likely he had these weapons. NadVolum (talk) 21:40, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

The Nixonian New York Times Stonewalls on a Discredited Article About Hamas and Rape from The Nation and New York Times Launches Leak Investigation Over Report on Its Israel-Gaza Coverage from Vanity Fair, couple more to go with the CNN source mentioned above.Selfstudier (talk) 18:58, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

The article in question is not a good enough reason to have the NYT wholly (or even partially, as per the Israel–Hamas war) deprecated. The leaked flap over its imminent promotion via podcast - which led to its cancellation on that platform - speaks volumes. Still, I would not wait for the NYT to officially retract the discredited article, which has been shown to be nothing more than a thinly-disguised piece of wartime propaganda. Therefore it should not be used as a direct reference, but only mentioned in passing whilst referencing sources such as those mentioned above. Havradim leaf a message 19:46, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Still reliable. The test for a generally reliable source is not "never fucks up ever". It's just disappointing to see that the lessons learned from the Nayirah testimony seem to have been forgotten. Daveosaurus (talk) 00:35, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Chipping in just to note that The Intercept is not, in fact, a blindly reliable source; the RSP specifically notes that it is a biased source, and this bias needs to be taken into account when using it. Toa Nidhiki05 20:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

That’s a good contribution, thank you! If we read the AfDs, they are less than stellar to say the least. FortunateSons (talk) 20:33, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

All sources are biased, including the NYT. Selfstudier (talk) 21:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

True, but some more than others, and this is definitely some. FortunateSons (talk) 22:42, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Generic statements about reliability are beside the point. It has been shown that the NYTs, while using stringent criteria for selecting journalists who come from a pro-Palestinian background, flagrantly suspended this overrsight in publishing unverified claims by a genocidal propagandist for Israel with no professional credentials as a journalist, allowing itself to be a venue for extremist interpretations that, given its prestige, fed the flames of what we all know is an informational war game based on incenditary assertions. I've been reading for 20 years reliable reports of the sexual humiliation of Palestinians detained by Israel, while duly observing these are treated as marginalia, if ever noticed, by the NYTs. It did not apologize when exposed, but reportedly engaged in a witchhunt to find the source of leaks.It undermined its own credibility here, already in question for making much of the 36 Israeli children murdered on Oct.7, while glozing over the point that 13,000 Gaza children have been killed in Israel's onslaught, with a further 17,000 left orphaned, without any kin in their once extended families alive to care for them. Nishidani (talk) 07:21, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Investigating leaks is standard practice for most companies, and so is some degree of bias. However, as many of the claims are now considered plausible by the UN while the Guardian claim is backed by UNRWA specifically, you can’t argue for the latter and then disparage the former.

Additionally, while wrong, nepotism is just normal in journalism and not a sign of unreliability. FortunateSons (talk) 08:28, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Reliable. While the Schwartz piece turned out unreliable, like unreliable was NYT's reporting on WMD in Iraq, this does not mean all or most of NYT reporting is unreliable. Even the best academic journals retract articles from time to time, which however doesn't make them automatically unreliable. We have a guideline for that: Whether a specific news story is reliable for a fact or statement should be examined on a case-by-case basis. This is what's happening – editors seem to refrain from relying on Schwartz's garbage. — kashmīrī ^TALK 11:13, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree that the solution would be to follow context, and evaluate according to "the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports". Blanket bans bad. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:03, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

• One incident isn't going to make a source unreliable (certainly not a source with the history and reputation of the NYT.) That said, it might be worth eventually following up on this and seeing if things like this lead to it acquiring a reputation for bias in specific contexts, which might eventually deserve a note on its RSP entry. Being wrong every so often is not a reliability issue. Being biased repeatedly in the same direction, especially if there's indications of institutional pressure within the org, isn't a reliability issue, though it might be worth noting. Being wrong repeatedly in the same direction, with an indication that there is institutional pressure sufficient to not just cause biases but to distort reporting to the point where it is actually inaccurate - that is to say, institutional pressure to actively ignore the truth, or to publish with reckless disregard for it - is a reliability issue (this was, I think, what ultimately got Fox downgraded)... but I don't think that we're there yet with an institution otherwise as venerable as the NYT. --Aquillion (talk) 03:40, 10 March 2024 (UTC)
• Remembering those weapons of mass destruction that were never found that NYT signal boosted the messaging on. TarnishedPath^talk 12:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Vaush, opinion sources

The following sources are considered unreliable, but I don't think we should consider a source unreliable just because we don't like the platform. There is not a single "reliable source" that writes about this issue, because it is getting silenced by the media.

We should consider the sources on an individual basis. Please, don't reject them just because. Please, take your time to read through them. Most of them also have their own references and sources.

Sources:

1. Vaush on rationalwiki.org
2. article on thepostmillennial.com
3. Vaush Opens Porn Folder On Stream (knowyourmeme.com)
4. clips from his streams, posted on YouTube
5. thread on r/VaushV subreddit
6. article on eviemagazine.com
7. article on nationalcybersecurity.com
8. article on xkilllakillfan69x.wordpress.com

I still have some faith in society. I still believe there are people that don't want this issue to be silenced and forced under the rug. Matthias197 (talk) 01:45, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

The fact that the matter is severe and deals with a living person is reason for us to be extra scrupulous about sourcing. I don't recognize every source here, but a few of them are immediately and clearly not sources that we would ever consider acceptable for this sort of material -- an open wiki, a self-published blog, a subreddit.... they all fly in the face of our rules on sourcing material about living persons from self-published sources. I'm not sure who is supposed to be silencing this, but it is in the nature of Wikipedia to follow reliable sources, not to lead them based on unreliable ones. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:05, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

To clarify my statement: the topic is severe. The matter appears to be just an unpopular opinion, and assumptions that people wish to assert based on that. Thinking something could be legal is not the same as condoning something, much less engaging in it. (A friend and I once planned to take the "yes" side on a "should the Nazis have been allowed to stage a march in Skokie, Illinois" debate, but any attempt to cast us a pro-Nazi rather than taking the ACLU side of free speech would've been confronted with the fact that we were both folks that the Nazis would've gleefully killed.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:08, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Obviously not. And do you really think there's some worldwide media conspiracy to cover for this youtuber? Sheesh. VQuakr (talk) 02:09, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

This would be a clear violation of BLP, you need to wait for an RS. FortunateSons (talk) 08:19, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

If you think we can source a child pornography accusation to anything less than a gold-plated RS, you may need to review WP:BLP - David Gerard (talk) 12:16, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

It is an interesting conundrum sometimes. A person's existence and basic activities are covered in enough reliable sources to justify an article, but then some social media outrage-of-the-moment fails to gain coverage by that same media, as it is just not as important as the fans and foes think it is. So to the outside non-Wikipedian, it looks like we're "censoring," when of course nothing of the sort is happening. Matthias197, consider the possibility that this just doesn't matter.

I'd also like to take the liberty of toning town the section title, as putting a person's name and "CP" side-by-side is a bit overboard. Zaathras (talk) 13:47, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

(coming from Talk:Vaush) Posting this here in case anyone comes across Evie Magazine (eviemagazine.com) in the future and wanted to check the archives. I went back today to their homepage and saw an article titled "What Is A Woman?" (archive), by the same author of the one linked above, which proudly misgenders a trans man and uses the phrase "gender ideology" unironically. The further it goes the less sane it becomes. Wholly not reliable if they cannot accept the widespread scientific consensus of gender & sex. SWinxy (talk) 19:46, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

The articles do indeed get weirder the deeper you go. Some light reading on the publication: [28], [29]. We should not be using this in any way. Sam Kuru (talk) 00:11, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Rolling Stone and Vice are two left leaning publications which really are rooted in pop culture, similar to what Evie seems to be as a right leaning women’s publication. Simply pointing to the fact that those two don’t like Evie specifically for its political leaning is irrelevant. The basis of a valid source is NOT if it appeals to a certain side or not. Making arguments like this goes again WP:NPV Friedbyrd (talk) 16:35, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

lol, Evie publishes COVID conspiracy theories and election conspiracy theories. That's the sort of thing that tends to lead to deprecation. It's extremely clear that Evie is an unreliable source at the very least - David Gerard (talk) 15:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

"Evie publishes COVID conspiracy theories and election conspiracy theories"

Looking into it, the posted Vice article links to another Vice article which is complaining about various Evie opinion pieces which I went to. They have articles about Covid, but I couldnt find any "Covid conspiracy theories." The ones referenced in the Vice article were ones about the mortality rate of children from covid and the safety of getting the vaccine as a pregnant woman, but both of these were based on information from the CDC and the New England Journal of Medicine.

As I pointed out, both Rolling Stone and Vice are two left leaning pop culture focused publications whos main gripe with Evie is that it is a right leaning pop culture publication, of course they arent going to like them and they are hardly authoritative sources themselves. Simply saying that you or a writer at the Rolling Stone dont like them is NOT a valid argument not to use them as a source. Wikipedia is not a partisan site. However, I would certainly say that we shouldnt use Evie as a source for issues like Covid of course, but when it comes to culture issues, in this case, their article on the internet streamer Vaush promoting child pornography and his disgusting history with that stuff, its very reliable. The article itself includes video clips of Vaush saying these things directly so theres really no excuse to not include this.

Friedbyrd (talk) 16:27, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

If you seriously think Evie is a sufficient source to make child pornography accusations in Wikipedia, then I must strongly urge you not to attempt to edit BLPs on Wikipedia on competence grounds - David Gerard (talk) 20:06, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Is this supposed to be some sort of counter argument? Because you arent even making a point. Again, the Evie article includes video footage of Vaush outright saying these disgusting things so its not an accusation, its literally his own words and this is a question of how to include that information in the article. I think its also important to remember that Vaush is a fringe e-celebrity, so this means that no serious publication like CBS or NBC is going to cover this stuff, only more lower level pop-culture publications will and pointing out that these lean right politically is not at all a reason not to use them as a source.

Friedbyrd (talk) 22:20, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it would be beneficial if you familiarised yourself with Wikipedias policies before further engaging this discussion. FortunateSons (talk) 23:09, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I am familiar which is why I pointing out that there is no real reason not to include Evies article as a source. I would suggest others take this advice themselves and read through the BLP guidelines. Feel free to point out specifically what policy you think Im misinterpreting and why though because comments like this are not at all productive.

Friedbyrd (talk) 23:21, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:BLP is pretty detailed about the high requirements for sources, let’s start there. FortunateSons (talk) 07:12, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, we all know what BLP is. What specific part of that policy do you feel would be violated by including information about his own words regarding CP?

Friedbyrd (talk) 12:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

“Wikipedia must get the article right. Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources.” Evie is disputed as an RS at best, and clearly not a high-quality source.

“Biographies of living persons ("BLPs") must be written conservatively and with regard for the subject's privacy. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a tabloid: it is not Wikipedia's job to be sensationalist, or to be the primary vehicle for the spread of titillating claims about people's lives; the possibility of harm to living subjects must always be considered when exercising editorial judgment.” Therefore, even if there was RS coverage, inclusion in the article would not be guaranteed

”The material should not be added to an article when the only sources are tabloid journalism. When material is both verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in more reliable sources.” FortunateSons (talk) 13:47, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

The article on Vaush already uses “not high quality” level sources such as Daily Beast and his own YouTube videos as sources, so the argument that this is the issue is blatantly false. And per BLPSELFPUB this is allowed concerning subjects publishing their own viewpoint. It is beyond debate and is an objective fact that Vaush has said some pretty disgusting things concerning child pornography, things like the Evie article simply add additional context to this. Like I already pointed out, Vaush is a fringe internet celebrity so legit publications are not going to care enough about him to cover his views on CP. This is evident by the Vaush article relaying heavily on publications like Daily Beast and Kotaku.

The main contention mentioned is that Post Millennial and Evie are right leaning, which isn’t a valid excuse not to use them.

Friedbyrd (talk) 15:35, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Sources that are "not high quality" including self-published sources can sometimes be used in a BLP, mostly for routine details like events the subject attends, when a person was born, where they live, and other things like that which nobody would reasonably challenge. Contentious or controversial claims, positive or negative, must be sourced to only high quality sources. I can't think of any claim more controversial than support for child pornography. The highest quality sources are required for that, and it is non-negotiable. If there are other poor/marginal sources used to support contentious claims in the Vaush article, they should be removed too.

I agree that Vaush is a "fringe internet celebrity" that doesn't have much coverage in those types of sources. When we have a choice between complete coverage of a living person based on questionable sources or incomplete coverage with good sources, then we must choose the incomplete coverage. I know how bad it can feel when we have information we can't share on Wikipedia, but that's the balance that we've struck in the interest of protecting real living people from harm. Maintaining that balance is a constant process but it is very important. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:01, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Given that the subject himself has made several videos clearly and publicly expressing his viewpoint, and is by definition the only authority on his viewpoint, how can we not treat his own statements as reliably sourced? We're not talking about leaked private conversations, this is his own expressed position. 120.29.2.50 (talk) 04:49, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Not for something like this FortunateSons (talk) 07:06, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

“Not for something like this” what guideline is this based on? You’re allowed to use sources like YouTube when it comes to a person making claims certain claims about themselves like their personal life or their own personal viewpoints. The wiki articles currently already does this.

Friedbyrd (talk) 09:16, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:SELFSOURCE we would have to fully include his narrative and only his narrative, which would provide minimal value and is not in accordance with policy FortunateSons (talk) 10:37, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Ok, well including his view that child pornography should be legal as a fact of its own would at least be consistent with the rest of the article.

Friedbyrd (talk) 20:42, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I have no love for many of the things that Vaush believes in (which I believe is quite clear based on my own editing history), but his stated belief is that child slavery and child pornography should be illegal, which he has repeatedly clarified and which really isn’t controversial .

There are other views on can credibly criticise Vaush which he has not clarified or denounced (but which aren’t supported by RS either), but at this point, I would recommend you Wikipedia:Drop the stick and back slowly away from the horse carcass (pun intended). FortunateSons (talk) 22:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what "widespread scientific consensus of gender & sex" are you referring to, because there is no consensus. Conservatives insist that gender and gender are the same thing. Only liberals think otherwise. Matthias197 (talk) 00:15, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Fascinating. Everyone has to be a 'conservative' or a 'liberal', and has to conform in every way to this, over every topic. No room for anyone to be anything in between, or to be undecided. Talk about enforcing roles on those who'd rather decide for themselves what opinions they'd like to hold... AndyTheGrump (talk) 00:25, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

I posted this in the other talk thread on the Vaush page, but again, you not liking a certain article from this publication is hardly a real justification not to use it as a source.

Friedbyrd (talk) 16:32, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

These are all horrific violations of BLP and not remotely reliable as sources, absolutely not. The Kip 02:11, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Source 1 and Source 3 are unreliable by default as they are open wikis. Source 4 (the subject's own YouTube channel) may be usable in some contexts, but including it without any secondary sources is probably undue weight. Partofthemachine (talk) 07:02, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose per RS and BLP. TarnishedPath^talk 10:40, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

oko press Poland- propaganda can be reliable source?

oko press is cited in Wikipedia but it described themselves as propaganda tool created by mainstream Agora media to create impression that it is independent. oko press own communication announced it https://oko.press/stoi-oko-press-szczera-bolu-informacja-o-naszych-finansach if some tool is created only in order to fight other ideas it is propaganda. Can be propaganda a reliable source? i request to ecxlude oko press from list of reliable sources for Wikipedia. Jarek19800 (talk) 22:05, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

RFC discussion started below this. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

RFC: OKO.press

What is the reliability of OKO.press?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Previous RSN Discussion: February 2021 (Considered generally reliable) & October 2021 (Considered generally reliable)

For some background, OKO.press is mentioned or cited on 129 articles across English Wikipedia. After a talk page discussion on Visegrád 24, it was mentioned that the source may not be reliable. Given this source is cited in CTOPS articles (including Disinformation in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, LGBTQ articles, and Israel-Hamas war articles), an RFC is needed to reassess reliability. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Survey (OKO.press)

• Undecided so far. I will do some research and make a determination !vote soon. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 — The source seems to be reliable in their reporting. I have not found inaccurate reporting in their articles. This may appear to be a little bit of an Al Jazeera, where if it is state-sponsored, the reliability of their reporting of facts does not seem to be impeded. As mentioned below this !vote by Kip, the original nominator/idea starter of this RfC, Jarek19800, was that OKO.press was propaganda based on this article, which I have to admit, I am unable to actually translate past a “please subscribe” style addition they have. As the idea of this was Jarek19800s, could you provide an article indicating OKO.press either reported something factually wrong or a secondary non OKO.press source saying it is propaganda? Unless that occurs, I must stick with option 1. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:00, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

P.S. The RfC was started by me due to duel-CTOPS nature involved with where the possible issue about this source originated from and I will note, COI is a very high possibility here, which was brought up at AN, leading to the perm EC protection on the page. Basically, RFC was a technicality since this has been at RSN before and is CTOPS related. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:00, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Re: Al Jazeera; as far as I can tell Agora, who partly funds OKO, is independent rather than state-controlled. The Kip 23:08, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 The claim above of the piece admitting they’re “anti-PiS propaganda” seems to be… off-base, to say the least. Admittedly I’m reading a Google machine-translated version, but from what I gather, the linked piece says they were founded independently with some funding from Agora due to well-documented concerns about the PiS’ increasing control of Polish state media. Biased? Perhaps a little, but on the whole they seem to be doing valid research/reporting, and I’m not exactly sold by some of the original nominator (Jarek, not WEW) arguments regarding it being “blatant propaganda.” France24 and Politico’s endorsement of their reporting + the Index on Censorship award work even further in their favor. As per usual, attribute for opinion pieces, but facts-wise they seem a-okay. The Kip 06:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for your remarks. I will try to be as short as possible which can influence some clarity. Let's follow your logic: main media company in Poland Agora creates a platform Oko press in order to fight PIS. After eight years (current) there is a new govt anti PIS and 95% of media market is completely in hands of anti PIS media including Agora. If following your logic Oko press would be reliable source they shall go against this media monopoly now,shall not they? in fact they continue to fight PIS. More generally can be a media monopoly reliable by definition? Moreover head of Oko press Pacewicz is former Agora executive so let's forget about independent funding of Oko press.Personally I prefer to judge reliability of media by its origin and definition(for example it is obvious for all that any mainstream media in russia now is not reliable source) than on base of one or two false informations but I will check what I can do also in this direction. By the way how I can prove that some information was false when there is a media monopoly in the country and the false info is local from media which covers only local issues ? Jarek19800 (talk) 22:24, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

You say: "for example it is obvious for all that any mainstream media in russia now is not reliable source". That idea did not get much traction on RSNB recently. But even if this is the case, Poland is a very different country. My very best wishes (talk) 04:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Your argument essentially boils down to “they’re propaganda because they disagree with PiS and are popular,” which is entirely personal opinion, and your claim of a “media monopoly” is both wholly uncited and outright false in the first place. Sorry that I and others disagree. The Kip 05:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1, same as Gazeta Wyborcza. It seems to be a legitimate investigative journalism site. There are no indications they promote any falsehoods or unreliable. My very best wishes (talk) 20:53, 4 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - Google Scholar search results are quite encouraging regarding the publication's quality Other peer-reviewed publications cite it, so there's also a WP:USEBYOTHERS case to be made. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. OKO.press § Awards mentions that OKO.press has received a number of awards, including the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards in 2020. As Rosguill mentioned, this detailed analysis, published by the Krakowska Akademia im. Andrzeja Frycza Modrzewskiego, elaborates on the "12 principles" methodology that OKO.press uses to perform fact-checking and rates it positively: "The article presents the fact-checking logic of a Polish press title published online since 2016, OKO.press, which in the authors’ view is an excellent example of reliable journalism practiced to the benefit of the public." — Newslinger talk 01:18, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

General discussion (OKO.press)

• I would not describe prior discussions about this source as having a consensus for reliability. the February 2021 discussion was not formally closed and did not have a clear consensus. The same can be said of the October 2021 RfC not identified above, which had a numerical majority for general reliability but saw a lot of sockpuppet disruption and didn't have much in the way of real discussion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:40, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Whoops! I did not realize a 2nd discussion occurred. Would you be ok if I add that in the discussion? Also just to note, the prior discussion I linked earlier was considered in a different discussion (I don’t remember which of the 129 articles it was on), to be reliable under a 7-2 vote premise. That assessment was not my own doing, but more like a copy/paste of the assessment in that discussion…whatever article talk page it was on. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 23:02, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, go ahead. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:53, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• This move to RfC seems a bit abrupt. The discussion in the thread above didn't even get off the ground. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 23:55, 3 March 2024 (UTC)
• Having an explicit political agenda doesn't make them unreliable (per WP:BIASED). Are there examples of them publishing falsehoods? Alaexis_¿question? 21:10, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

  There doesn't seem to be; to be quite blunt, this issue seems to have been raised entirely on the argument that being founded as a counterweight to PiS-biased media and partly funded by a liberal-leaning news organization makes them "propaganda," which is an extremely flimsy basis for such a claim. The Kip 22:30, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

  In 2018 polish Ministry of Justice published a statement accusing Oko.press of making false claims about financing public campaign by that ministry. [30] I couldn't find any articles investigating it further, though. Saletri (talk) 21:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  let's focus on fake news spreaded by oko press. this one confirms that they are propaganda tool used to take part in political war without any link to reality. all articles will be in Polish unfortunately and from media which are not a mainstream (media monopol in Poland) but fact checking is more accurate here https://www.tysol.pl/a73905-ekspert-do-oko-press-jestescie-propagandystami-lukaszenki-i-putina-bede-was-rozliczal-z-fake-news Jarek19800 (talk) 22:46, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  Considering the PiS government was notorious for attempted media crackdowns, I’m not sure if I’d trust their word when accusing an independent outlet of making false claims. Governments are rarely reliable sources for criticism about themselves. The Kip 05:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  I ask you the Kip to be deleted from this discussion on the reason that you started to chase me on Wikipedia with a manner to delete my factual revisions of the articles. By chance you make it by hiding the facts concerning Soviet murderers which I hope has connection with defending left- wing media portal. of course we can try to say that only by coincidence you deleted my change on Mikhail Kalinin few days ago but such idea has is stupid so you have no reliability to discuss media reliability. Jarek19800 (talk) 21:21, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  You asserted on the article that he held sole responsibility for the massacre, when the source provided simply listed him as a co-signatory. Feel free to re-add with a source confirming the former claim, but on Wikipedia we don't engage in original research. Nice personal attack, by the way. The Kip 21:55, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  It is not opening the discussion on topic of if relevant was my add to article. it is about you chased my add ons to articles on wikipedia on base of this thread here. it is of course just coincidence in both you defend left-wing elements. anyway in my opinion it is not ethic and wikipedial to transport your personel feelings from one article to another one only on base of author. In my opinion you should not continue to comment this thread to keep Wikipedia neutral as much as possible. Jarek19800 (talk) 23:30, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

  Again;

  • Yes, I checked your edit history as I was slightly suspicious of your behavior given your assertions about OKO. This led to me finding your WP:OR regarding Kalinin. I’ve addressed it at the talk page, if you have a source backing your claim feel free to add it but the source you utilized doesn’t.
  • More PAs/violations of AGF won’t help your case here. If you truly feel I’m in the wrong, take it to WP:ANI and see what they think. Even without my “violations of neutrality,” the consensus thus far seems to heartily disagree with your assertions of “propaganda.”

  The Kip 00:03, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

  "Having explicit political agenda doesn't make them (media) unreliable" true but on one condition: if there is no media monopoly in country or if opposite political media are not judged as unreliable. it means that political agenda in media is allowed only if media market is really and in reality free which is not a case in most countries including currently Poland. Jarek19800 (talk) 22:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  Hi everyone, I'm following the discussion and just wanted to add my 2 cents on the issue: OKO.press seems to be one of the media sitting on the fence when it comes to reliability. I read some of their articles (translated, though), but I cannot say that I have sufficient knowledge on the Polish media landscape to make a definitive call here. Why I am writing this comment is to say that reliability is not a black-or-white type question, as some articles may have a more political lean than others, reliability can depend on the contributor writing the specific piece, and finally, reliability changes over time.

  However, just to be on the cautious side, I suggest that we shouldn't use them as a sole or predominant source supporting the reliability of other sources, such as Visegrad 24 (because this is how the whole conversation began). Milentie Pokojni (talk) 08:55, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Hi I agree . it will put us forward until I will have time to present more comprehensive analisys of the total lack of reliability of oko press and open new thread. In meantime I found pretty reliable summary of current situation with media in Poland

  https://deadline.com/2024/03/poland-tvp-donald-tusk-recovering-1235844739/

  it is not perfect because forgets that for example in tv market we used to have 3 mainstream media Polsat- owned by Polish oligarch who was secret collaborator of communist secret police,TVN- owned by US left- wing owner and Public TV which was invaded and taken over in night by current left- wing govt security forces. by accident all 3 tv's are fiercely pro-government and have ca.95% of tv market. Conservative part of population which is not less than 30% has 5%. if this is media monopoly or not judge yourself Jarek19800 (talk) 21:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Anyone CU watching this conversation? This discussion being found by three accounts, none newly created but with a total of only 30 edits between them, strains credulity. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 14:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I also propose to summarize and finish this conversation with verdict: Generally unreliable. I found a final proof supporting such verdict on their official page in english https://oko.press/about-us they say that they will in same way question and control any govt. in Poland current or future. It is proved drastic lie as you will not find even one article made by them with criticism on current govt.after 3 month of its activity but you will find in same time dozens on current opposition. it is manipulative, propaganda media so Generally unreliable is adequate verdict. Jarek19800 (talk) 23:24, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

exxact citation is "We are a civic tool to control the government. The current one and every one after it." Jarek19800 (talk) 23:26, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Once again, bias does not automatically equal unreliability, and besides that,

I also propose to summarize and finish this conversation with verdict: Generally unreliable.

One editor cannot unilaterally label a source unreliable, especially when three other editors besides myself have come to the same conclusion that it is reliable. If you still fail to understand that, there may be other issues at play here. The Kip 02:26, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment for Jarek19800: A slight add-on to what The Kip noted. Wikipedia is based on a consensus between editors. You may want to check out that part of Wikipedia policy. Everything on Wikipedia is build by a community consensus between editors. No matter what happens, a discussion here won't end the world. A key thing here is Wikipedia is not about winning, but rather building and making a consensus, not based on the number of "votes" (commonly known as !votes), but rather based on the merits of their discussion.

This does not apply to this situation directly, but I wanted to point out the main theme of Wikipedia is Verifiability, not "truth". Everything on Wikipedia has to be verifiable by a secondary source. If you believe or know something to be true, but don't have a secondary source for it, it means nothing on Wikipedia. Again, not directly related to this situation, but a while ago, there was a confirmed instance of that ideology (based on community consensus) and I wrote up a short essay on it {Verifiability, not truth in action}. In that instance, a primary source confirmed new information after secondary sources had published the then-outdated information. After a long discussion occurred, it was found that Wikipedia needs to abide by the secondary sources and technically published a factually inaccurate table that was verifiable. I don't know if that was helpful or not, but hopefully it was. The Weather Event Writer (Talk Page) 03:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I fully understand the concept of verifiability. if I say about truth I exactly have this meaning. mu beliefs are not important at all. I exactly gave min 2 undisputable examples that oko press itself directly writes" I am a liar, i was established to manipulate with fake news" It is a fact. no-one questioned that my links are unreal. It should give immediate effect of giving such verdict ( to get consensus). if my links are not true as experienced editors you should easily prove it. if verification is real than you should agree on consensus even if it is against your feelings. it is the logic you were kind to present which i fully agree. Jarek19800 (talk) 00:16, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

@WeatherWriter:, I feel as though WP:CIR may be taking effect here. The Kip 01:36, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

In discussion I found that you seem to put a big importance to examples of fake news as a proof of unreliability of the source. I was reluctant to this idea because I was afraid it will be hard to find facts given by mainstream media. Oko press is rather niche media in Poland and due to media monopoly mentioned by me earlier ,it rather favorized by other media platforms. Fortunately I quickly found some sound proofs as below. Good to notice that mainstream media like rmf,wp, rp.pl,money.pl confirmed lack of reliability of oko press. In min.one case court confirmed it. There is also interesting info on special treatment of negative comments by oko press (www.donald.pl)

https://www.tysol.pl/a74121-polacy-przepedzaja-kurdow-przez-rzeke-a-na-zdjeciu-litewski-slup-graniczny-fejk-dziennikarza-oko-press#.YYT_XnMK4hw.twitter

https://www.rp.pl/polityka/art1316381-godek-wygralam-w-trybie-wyborczym-z-oko-press

https://www.lasy.gov.pl/pl/informacje/aktualnosci/pellet-z-lasow-panstwowych

https://wykop.pl/link/5605383/obnazamy-fakenewsa-klamczuszki-z-oko-press

https://www.rmf24.pl/fakty/polska/news-oko-press-klamstwo-i-manipulacja,nId,7122926#crp_state=1

https://kresy.pl/wydarzenia/misiewicz-chcial-pozbawic-gen-skrzypczaka-stopnia-mon-dementuje-to-fejk/

https://www.gov.pl/web/udsc/oswiadczenie-ws-artykulu-portalu-okopress

https://www.donald.pl/artykuly/VZQaxXC6/to-tylko-teoria-zarzuca-okopress-lamanie-etyki-dziennikarskiej-i-kasowanie-komentarzy-pod-artykulem

https://wiadomosci.wp.pl/tylko-w-wp-trzy-falszywe-historie-wiceministra-patryk-jaki-odpiera-zarzuty-oko-press-skandal-absurd-kuriozum-6086449113904257a

https://www.money.pl/gospodarka/wiadomosci/artykul/sebastian-lukaszewicz-oko-press,152,0,2245272.html

https://www.press.pl/tresc/60211,oko_press-przeprosilo-konrada-wojciechowskiego_-_fakt_-prosi-o-wyjasnienia Jarek19800 (talk) 20:45, 12 March 2024 (UTC) Jarek19800 (talk) 20:48, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

References

+972 magazine

At Weaponization of antisemitism, the opening sentence of the lead is:

The weaponization of antisemitism, also described as the instrumentalization of antisemitism, is the making of false charges of antisemitism for political purposes.

Is + 972Mag reliable in support of the sentence (cite 4)? The most recent substantive discussion of 972Mag was in 2015 here. Selfstudier (talk) 13:49, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

If this was an RfC, 972 would be a 2 (probably). They have a significant left-wing bias and can be rather ‚anti-Israel‘, so I would recommend all the grains of salt and clearly attribute opinions, specifically on Judaism, Israel (and Israeli orgs) and Antisemitism.

That being said, they do decent reporting, including investigative, and do provide value, so many uses are acceptable. FortunateSons (talk) 14:05, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Regarding this specific use case, I would probably refrain from using them, as they have some rather niche/fringe views, particularly in regards to the IHRA definition. FortunateSons (talk) 14:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

The source is not being used in reference to IHRA and the cited quote does not mention IHRA either. Selfstudier (talk) 14:12, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion has gone far off topic, focus on the source itself. The Kip 05:29, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Yes, but a disagreement with the most main-stream definition of antisemitism is less than ideal when discussing if antisemitism is weaponised; in addition, there are actual cases where IHRA and other definitions are genuinely being weaponised, but I’m not confident that 972 could recognise them due to their own highly polarised views. FortunateSons (talk) 14:18, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The IHRA is a political body, not an academic one. Calling its definition the most main-stream definition of antisemitism absent peer-reviewed backing is misleading. Our article on its Working definition of antisemitism only uses the word "mainstream" in the following context: mainstream academic and legal opinion was overwhelmingly critical of the IHRA definition. The source attached to that claim isn't ideal, but the overall content of the Criticism section is well-backed by peer-reviewed publications and is rather damning with respect to the IHRA definition. If anything, criticism of the IHRA definition is a sign of aligning with the dominant position in academic RS, not a sign of a marginal view. signed, Rosguill talk 14:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC) IHRA is broadly adopted by around 30 countries and is (at least partially) used by major organisations and companies. While there are competing definitions, IHRA is what is most commonly used in practice (to the best of my knowledge). Additionally, that article has a wide range of issues, but that is a problem for another day. FortunateSons (talk) 14:56, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Political decisions by political bodies are not scholarship and not what we base our articles on. nableezy - 15:01, 5 March 2024 (UTC) No, but political decisions are a strong indication for being „the most main-stream definition of antisemitism“, no? FortunateSons (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2024 (UTC) No, it's not. Political bodies frequently make statements because they think that the message will win them votes, not because they think it's true or best. As an example, some years ago, one of the politically minded health groups put out a definition of Cancer survivor that included friends and family members. Why? It's popular with family members to say "When Grandma had cancer, we all had cancer together", and they wanted support from the voters whose loved ones had cancer. It wasn't because they thought that the cancer was spread across a whole family's worth of bodies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Here is an RS claiming it to be the most wide-spread: https://m.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-728773 FortunateSons (talk) 15:00, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The Jerusalem Post, a paper with a consistent partisan slant, is a considerably lower quality source than scholarship, especially for something that is not news. And it is reporting on its adoption by political bodies, not what scholarship has to say about it. nableezy - 15:02, 5 March 2024 (UTC) I disagree on your assessment of JP, but that’s also simply not the question at hand. FortunateSons (talk) 15:40, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The question at hand is if 972 is reliable for this material, and despite you not liking their views they are. nableezy - 15:53, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The messages you are responding to are about a specific, only tangentially related claim about which definition is most main stream, which is IHRA. FortunateSons (talk) 16:01, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Again, mainstream here does not mean adopted by political bodies, when academic sources are largely critical of something it is not "most mainstream". You can keep trying to make it so that your preferred views are the ones on which everything is judged, but that isnt how it works. nableezy - 16:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Cambridge Dictionary disagrees with you here; while I believe that some of the other definitions definitely have merit, IHRA is simply the most broadly adopted one. FortunateSons (talk) 16:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The political bodies that have adopted that definition absolutely are not "most people", and there is no evidence that most people have accepted the IHRA definition. nableezy - 16:09, 5 March 2024 (UTC) So which definition do you think has broader or comparable acceptance? FortunateSons (talk) 16:10, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Let's stay on topic @FortunateSons, @Nableezy. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 16:32, 5 March 2024 (UTC) If I had intended to say academic consensus, I would have gone with that, but I haven’t (for good reason, as there is no consensus for any version.) FortunateSons (talk) 16:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Good thing this is an educational project. Where we care more about an academic viewpoint over a political one. Im going to stop on this completely pointless tangent youve taken us on, toodles. nableezy - 16:10, 5 March 2024 (UTC) That's true, but I wouldn't use the word mainstream to describe academic consensus. The mainstream belief is that ghosts exist. The academic consensus is that they don't. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:52, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Here is a second (more left-wing) source, which refers to IHRA as „A leading definition of antisemitism“ (in the headline and critically). FortunateSons (talk) 16:23, 5 March 2024 (UTC) WP:HEADLINES and "a leading" is not "the most mainstream". This isnt Talk:Working definition of antisemitism. nableezy - 16:28, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Nobody is forcing you to engage with my response to another users comment. I’m just giving them the opportunity to engage with their criticism of my point, and responding to them and not you to allow you to stop on this completely pointless tangent youve taken us on, toodles. FortunateSons (talk) 16:30, 5 March 2024 (UTC) This does appear to be a diversion from the topic at hand, so enough already. Selfstudier (talk) 16:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Solid source, attribution at most. nableezy - 14:20, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• A good source, a fair amount of WP:USEBYOTHERS without qualification in peer-reviewed literature: Journal of Genocide Research, California Western International Law Journal, Harvard Law Review (this was just the first page of Scholar results for "972 mag" -972mag.org, and ignoring a few MA theses that also popped up). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 14:26, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  Use by others is a good way to measure reliability. Seeing these citations in peer-reviewed academic periodicals, I'm optimistic about this magazine's reliability. At this time, I support a WP:GREL assessment. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 18:31, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• No. 972's anti-Israel slant means it should be avoided in statements of fact regarding Israel, Palestine, Judaism, and antisemitism. Better sources should be used. Zanahary (talk) 19:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Personal beef. BobFromBrockley (talk) 03:58, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
That is precisely the opposite of what our policies say, and even if it were true that this Israeli publication that predominately publishes the work of Jewish Israeli journalists were "anti-Israel", you dont get to say that only Zionist sources are allowed here. nableezy - 19:59, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Nableezy, I never said that. Dial back please. Zanahary (talk) 20:01, 5 March 2024 (UTC) You said that because of a supposed anti-Israel slant it should not be used in these topics. That is, again, precisely the opposite of what our policies say, and even if it were true that this Israeli publication that predominately publishes the work of Jewish Israeli journalists were "anti-Israel". And, again, you dont get to demand that only "pro-Israel" sources be used. NPOV does not mean censoring viewpoints one does not like, and reliability has nothing to do with bias. Even if the completely unsupported notion that this source is biased was true. nableezy - 20:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC) You dont get to demand that only "pro-Israel" sources be used I never said this. Zanahary (talk) 20:07, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Yes, you just said the obverse, that supposed "anti-Israel" sources may not be used. nableezy - 20:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC) I'll let the remaining misunderstanding sit, since it looks like you're done accusing me of "demanding" that "only Zionist sources are allowed here". To any editors reading this thread who would like some clarity on my view: I think +972 has an anti-Israel bias, and an opinion editorial published by the magazine should not be used as a source to define a concept pertaining to antisemitism. Notable views expressed in said source can be included in the article, if attributed. Zanahary (talk) 20:19, 5 March 2024 (UTC) This is not an "opinion editorial", it is by Mairav Zonszein, somebody who has written at Just Security, Jewish Currents, The Nation, Haaretz, New York Review of Books, Time, and I can keep going. 972 is a professional news and analysis site run by professional journalists and editors, and no it does not have "an anti-Israel bias", an assertion made with 0 supporting evidence. nableezy - 20:41, 5 March 2024 (UTC) The piece's authorship has no bearing on whether or not it is an op-ed. You should go hassle FortunateSons for asserting exactly what I said without links to back his view up. Or you could AGF, explain your view, and ask for substantiation of views that aren't yours. I'm out of patience for your weird, unprovoked aggression, though. Zanahary (talk) 20:48, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Responding to bogus assertions made without evidence and showing they are bogus and lack evidence is not weird, unprovoked aggression, and claiming bias has anything to do with reliability shows a failure to understand WP:RS at its most basic level. nableezy - 21:28, 5 March 2024 (UTC) You didn’t show anything to be bogus. You pointed out that I hadn’t backed up my evaluation of the source. A source’s bias does pertain to how it ought to be used. But if you so strongly disagree, you’re sure of your interpretation of my comments, and you have competence concerns, go ahead and raise them. Zanahary (talk) 21:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC) Let's stay on topic @Zanahary, @Nableezy. - IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:44, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

• I will grant to nableezy that even if saying that a periodical being critical of the state of Israel means it should be avoided in statements of fact regarding Israel, Palestine, Judaism, and antisemitism isn't the exact same as saying only Zionist sources are allowed, it's very close to saying that. If editors avoid sources that criticize the state of Israel, doesn't that end up with the remaining 'usable' sources being those which are not critical of the state of Israel—those which either implicitly are uncritical of or which explicitly favor elements of Zionism. P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 21:09, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  Clarified above: "I think +972 has an anti-Israel bias, and an opinion editorial published by the magazine should not be used as a source to define a concept pertaining to antisemitism. Notable views expressed in said source can be included in the article, if attributed."

  I also didn't say "sources that criticize the state of Israel"—that's every good source—I said that +972 has an anti-Israel bias. Zanahary (talk) 21:13, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  @Zanahary - Could you please briefly and concisely explain why you've stated that 972 has an anti-Israel slant or bias that affects its reliability? IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 22:47, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  The site's short "About" section says that it specifically "spotlights the people and communities working to oppose occupation and apartheid", which are charges pertinent to Israel and shows that it is openly a source with an agenda to criticize particular aspects of Israel's policies (as opposed to thorough coverage of the Israel-Palestine region, with no stated aim to "spotlight" any one opposition cause). In 2021, the outlet published an editorial criticizing the labeling of Hamas as a terrorist group. I don't even think 972 would deny that they have a bias, considering their stated advocacy aims in their mission statement. Thus, I think that statements of fact in this article should be sourced to better outlets (and also, not to opinion pieces like this one in question). Zanahary (talk) 22:56, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  These supposed biases you've pointed out here (is "opposing occupation and apartheid" anti-Israel bias?) have no bearing whatsoever on the factual reliability of the publication. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 23:03, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  As I've stated several times, my comment pertains to the use of a 972 opinion piece as a source for a statement of facts/the definition of a term or concept. I've explained my position on that matter clearly. Zanahary (talk) 23:08, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

  It sounds to me like you have conflated "Israel itself" with "a set of policies", as if anyone opposing the current policies is automatically opposing the country itself. However, perhaps they see their view as so pro-Israel that they want their country to be free of apartheid and occupation.

  Imagine someone saying that a source is "opposing racism" and that means they have "an anti-American bias", because there is so much racism in America's history and societal structure. Another person would say "Of course they oppose racism. Americans believe that All men are created equal. Opposing racism is a pro-American position." WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:07, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  I don’t think that analogy applies here. It’s more like if an outlet that only writes about Israel and Palestine said that they’re committed to opposing a culture of martyrdom and religious repression of women’s rights. It’s not ambiguous which of the two nations they make it their mission to criticize. Zanahary (talk) 00:25, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  WhatamIdoing's comment demonstrates that "opposing occupation and apartheid" can be labelled as either anti-Israel or pro-Israel depending on who is doing the labelling. It's not a useful way to talk about sources in the context of reliability. Sean.hoyland (talk) 07:48, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  And I think it would be clear that an opinion piece published by that outlet would not be an appropriate source to define and establish a phenomenon of bad-faith rhetorical charges of Islamophobia or racism or anything similar. Zanahary (talk) 00:27, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  There is nothing in the piece to indicate it is opinion. nableezy - 00:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Anyone curious to see if this is an opinion piece or a piece of news should go ahead and read it. Zanahary (talk) 01:36, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  It's analysis (not opinion) by a resident editor, so higher than news. Iskandar323 (talk) 07:49, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• The first sentence of the article gives the meaning of the title phrase as a way of defining the article topic. The question of source bias would matter if there was any other definition of "weaponization of antisemitism" out there, in which case we would need to present the alternatives or change the title. But there isn't. Even if the consensus was that this phenomenon doesn't exist, it wouldn't make a difference as we have plenty of articles on non-existent phenomena. Here we have an article on the topic that usefully provides the definition. Some of the article consists of opinion about the phenomenon, and we can consider whether those opinions should be attributed if they are cited in the article body. But for the definition itself, which is all that the lead sentence requires, it is a perfectly fine source. Zero^talk 03:11, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
• Bias of the magazine aside, while the piece reads a bit like an op-ed I don’t see why it’s unusable as a source here. Would probably shy away from its reporting on the conflict, though. The Kip 05:32, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
• 972 is mostly opinions and carries the voices of the Israeli extreme left. It is a very small website, with little editorial oversight, and doesn't have a favourable reputation. Occasionally it hosts experts who belong to the same extreme left groups who post worthy content that is quoted by others, but other than that it is mostly garbage. Researcher (Hebrew: חוקרת) (talk) 08:04, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  "Mostly garbage"? Really?

  Also can I ask how you came upon this discussion?

  - IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 08:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Actually it is not small and has a large editorial board of experienced journalists. It has a bad reputation among the extreme right, but so do most reliable sources. Zero^talk 08:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  A range of sources are actually needed for balance, so if you're saying that it represents a portion of Israeli society that is otherwise marginalised, that's a great thing and a point in its favour. Not sure what "extreme left" means, but I assume it isn't militant communist. If we are talking Israeli politics, and we just mean to the extreme left of the extreme right, well then that just gets you back to the center, so presumably they're just ordinary chaps that oppose occupation, apartheid, genocide etc., i.e. normal positions that anyone from anywhere on the political spectrum in most countries would get behind. Iskandar323 (talk) 14:43, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• Wikipedia's article +972 Magazine in the section on Reception has "The same year, Israel's right-wing NGO Monitor accused +972 of being antisemitic for applying the apartheid analogy regarding Israel's treatment of Palestinians", which I think is a pretty straightforward example of what weaponizing antisemitism as described in the magazine's article is about! The author is well respected journalist and can be considered an expert in the field. I can see no problem with use for the definition though other parts of the article would need attribution. NadVolum (talk) 11:54, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  For interest, that was added by an NGO Monitor employee here, and given that 21% of the edits to that page are by dishonest people that are now blocked for abuse of multiple accounts, ban evasion etc. the article may not exactly be a high quality source. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:17, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  I wasn't agreeing with NGO Monitor! Perhaps they have also been at Self-hating Jew which seems to be used quite often against Jews who criticize an action of the Israeli gvernment - but that isn't mentioned in the lead. NadVolum (talk) 13:51, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• The reliability is not the problem here. I'm 100% sure that no one's words have been misrepresented in the article. The relevant policy is WP:NPOV: whether this particular view is sufficiently widespread to be mentioned in the first sentence of the article. Alaexis_¿question? 14:47, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  It's not clear that the views in source even factor into the page at this point. The source is simply used as one of four for a very generic, straightforward and common sense definition. Iskandar323 (talk) 15:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  The implicit POV is that this is a notable phenomenon. Zanahary (talk) 17:33, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Bring it to the NPOV noticeboard, this is RSN. Selfstudier (talk) 17:53, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  The source's POV is pertinent to their reliability for specific subject areas. Zanahary (talk) 17:55, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Really not how NPOV works. Iskandar323 (talk) 19:18, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  Can’t argue with that! Zanahary (talk) 19:20, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

  After that is done, it can join the referral to NOR noticeboard here, which also went nowhere. Selfstudier (talk) 17:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

• They're a solid outlet, and they've become surprisingly well-established when it comes to WP:UBO. I've seen them cited by French newspapers of record like Le Monde (mainstream) and Liberation (centre-left). And in The Guardian (which also publishes some of their reporters). Same with WaPo and NPR in the US. There was good praise in usually-conservative magazine Tablet here, which covers all the key points we'd care about, from the previous professional journalistic experience of their contributors, to the quality of their journalism: the magazine’s reported pieces—roughly half of its content—adhere to sound journalistic practices of news gathering and unbiased reporting (for the opinion pieces, go ahead and attribute them, as per usual). That TabletMag piece also includes an anecdote of +972 delivering an in-depth investigation that contradicted a report by a mainstream outlet, and +972's reporting then getting endorsed by the rest of Israeli media. But I'm just scratching the surface here. Become familiar with them and you'll see they provide a lot of substantive high-quality original reporting. Solidly GUNREL generally-reliable territory. DFlhb (talk) 21:15, 9 March 2024 (UTC) edited 11:39, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

  You've said GUNREL but presumably meant GREL. IOHANNVSVERVS (talk) 21:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

  Right - tired. DFlhb (talk) 11:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

• It's a very solid source in general imho, generally reliable. This particular use may be problematic and in fact the lead and article in question might be problematic, for NPOV/OR reasons. Essentially, in this instance it's an opinion piece in a reliable source being used as a primary source for the existence of an opinion, in an article about an opinion, which suggests to me the article is never going to be a good article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:03, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think if the article were rewritten to emphasize the best source of Waxman et al rather than a scan of opinion pieces for a common charge, it would be much improved. Zanahary (talk) 12:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  What has that to do with the topic here? Selfstudier (talk) 12:28, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  This particular use may be problematic and in fact the lead and article in question might be problematic, for NPOV/OR reasons.

  responding to this. Zanahary (talk) 15:03, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  Both at the wrong board, then. Selfstudier (talk) 15:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Good source, serious reporting and referenced in many other works by Reliable Sources (as enumerated above).  Mr.choppers | ✎  21:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

References

Books by Norman Finklestein

Norman Finklestein is a political scientist and activist. He writes on the Holocaust and the Israeli-Arab conflict. He has written a few books on the latter, and I wanted to know if they were reliable for verifying general statements in related articles due to their contentious and controversial nature.
Thanks, — Davest3r08 >:) ^(talk) 23:34, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

• Caution While originally an academic, he has not held any academic position for decades (as far as I know) and he is indeed controversial. That doesn't mean he can't be right on fact, but probably wiser to have other sources to back it up. I wouldn't rely only on him, especially not for any contentious claim. Jeppiz (talk) 23:40, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

  While I would agree that relying on him alone could be problematic, and I am in disagreement with a number of his views, the claim that he has not held any academic position for decades is incorrect even according to our own article on him. He left DePaul in 2007, and also taught in Turkey in 2014-15, I assume as a visiting lecturer. Cheers. Ostalgia (talk) 06:43, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

It's hard to give a more specific answer without more specific information. He has written a number of works, and the fitness for citation may depend on which and in what context. For instance, some of his books were published with academic presses,, and university-press published books are usually the gold standards of reliability (though we continue to use a neutral tone in our writing and don't necessarily adopt the tone of the author, who in this case is known for a bold tone). That said, book reviews can provide additional information and may provide reasons for additional considerations, though be careful to comb thoroughly. A sample size of just one or two reviews (either negative or positive) may not capture the broad reception of books that have stirred as much attention as some of Finklestein's.

Being a published subject matter expert in general does lead us as Wikipedians to think other sources written by such an author are reliable, but at the same time, there is probably some wisdom in caution. The subject you are interested in citing his corpus for is designated a contentious topic, and Finkelstein has been considered a contentious man. In general, where academic scholarship is available, we'd do well to favor such over other sources, even ones written by academics (blog posts, to give a random example). P-Makoto (she/her) (talk) 03:32, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I’m not sure why you think we should favor one side of a debate - talking about his older books here. Doug Weller talk 19:12, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Biased perhaps but a perfectly respectable source, books such as Image and Reality of the Israel–Palestine Conflict and Beyond Chutzpah are top drawer sources. That Israel and its supporters do not approve of him is immaterial. If some view is particularly contentious, it should be rather straightforward to back those up with secondary sources and if not then, attribute. Selfstudier (talk) 11:21, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Caution/questionable reliability/GUNREL when it comes to facts: he has been credibly accused of questionable/misleading citations by Morris and others, has a high degree of bias bordering on fringe views (regarding Hezbollah, Hebdo, the Holocaust, and others) and has been highly controversial as a person. Some of his older works are of decent quality and can be used very selectively, but I would avoid citing him on anything in regards to law or the military due to a repeated failure to understand the subject appropriately, seen well in his coverage of the flotilla incident. FortunateSons (talk) 14:40, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Highly reliable source, his works are published by respected academic presses, such as University of California Press, and in peer-reviewed journals. His latest work, Gaza: An Inquest in to its Martyrdom, is from University of California Press. People not liking Finkelstein's positions is not relevant to this, he is absolutely a subject matter expert on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his academic works are WP:SCHOLARSHIP. The above comment is astounding in its attempt to dismiss one of the most cited scholars on the topic of Gaza because is is supposedly a "highly controversial person". Top tier source, and totally fine for usage here. If some source disagrees with him and it is of equal reliability then attribute the different views. nableezy - 20:05, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Extreme caution - I'd avoid using him for anything beyond actual opinion; he's a wildly controversial resource, hasn't held a serious job in academia since the mid-2000s, and has genuinely fringe views on a variety of topics, including Holocaust denial and discredited anti-Semite David Irving and support for the October 7 attacks. There's very little reason to use him when far superior and less inflammatory sources, without fringe baggage, are widely available. Toa Nidhiki05 14:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

That is a straightforward BLP violation and if you do not substantiate the wildly inappropriate claim that the son of Holocaust survivors has denied it in any way I’ll be asking for a BLP and PIA ban in short order. nableezy - 15:13, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

His stance that Holocaust denial should be taught in schools by Holocaust deniers is absolutely, unequivocally fringe. That's what I'm referring to - well, that and supporting the "scholarship" of David Irving, which is pretty uniformly regarded to be discredited. That your first thought was to threaten a noticeboard report is really unfortunate. Toa Nidhiki05 15:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh for Christ's sake. Like Chomsky, Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, whose whole life and scholarship reflects the impact of their witness, has no fear of fools, denialists. Their maniacal obsessions with apparently incongruent details in the Holocaust literature occasionally stimulates close re-examination of things by now taken for granted - not the holocaust in all of its overwhelming realities, but details in the narrative. Great scholars don't tremble and run. They chase down anomalies even among crank literature because their self-assurance about the general narrative will never be troubled by tidbits of discrepancy. That is not fringe. That is the pursuit of meticulousness, even when analysing motherlodes of bullshit (which is what Finkelstein in his analytical works on the endless misreportage of events in the I/P conflict, does professionally. Had you read that article carefully, you would have noted that its reasoning, far from being fringe, draws on the liberal tolerance of dissent, all the better to challenge it, espoused by John Stuart Mill. Nishidani (talk) 16:14, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

This question should not be posed. Finkelstein is an outstanding historian of the I/P conflict, and like everyone else writing academically about it, he has a decided point of view. The refusal to allow him tenure against the consensus of his colleagues, under external pressure, in no way disqualifies him as an historian or political scientist. The University of California published, after a decade of ostracism, his work, Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom, and his earlier works were unconditionally supported by the founding father of Holocaust studies, Raul Hilberg. His citation index by peers shows the depth of the impact of his work Nishidani (talk) 16:07, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

His view is you don't win a debate by shutting down the opposition, you win by proving it wrong. That isnt fringe, and it has nothing to do with his academically published works. nableezy - 04:27, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

It is absolutely fringe to suggest holocaust deniers should have any role in the education system whatsoever, let alone that holocaust denial should be taught in schools. And that's not the only thing he's fringe on - since being fired in the 2000s (he hasn't actually had a job in academia since - as of 2016, he had been unemployed for ten years, and he's not been employed since), his work and viewpoints have become increasingly problematic. This includes, as I listed above, the strong defense of David Irving (an unrepentant Holocaust denier whose works have been generally regarded as discredited), the advocacy for teaching holocaust denial in schools, a staunch defense of antisemitic tropes (specifically, justifying claims that the Jews "think they are better than other people", "talk about the Holocaust too much", and are "tapped into the networks of power and privilege") and more recently, the denial of any sexual violence during the October 7 attacks (which he also applauded and compared to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). In other words: whatever credibility he had during his early academic career, it's been nearly two decades since he had a job in academia, and it really shows. Toa Nidhiki05 13:02, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Can't see anything there about his academically published works, see section title. Selfstudier (talk) 13:46, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

He hasn't been in academia in nearly 20 years at this point. Toa Nidhiki05 14:00, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

That isn’t true and his last book, again published by University of California Press, is from 2021. nableezy - 14:12, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

From the sourceI linked: "He hasn’t held a steady academic job since DePaul University denied him tenure under political pressure in 2007. Now, after years of sporadic work and low pay as an adjunct, Finkelstein is suddenly spending ten hours a day fielding emails from people clamoring for his insights." That's from December 2023. So I suppose he has been in academia, insofar as being an adjunct professor qualifies. I think broadly, my point still stands though - there's a clear divide between Finklestein's work before and after his leave from academia. Toa Nidhiki05 14:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

He was at Sakarya University Middle East Institute 2014–15. And he still is considered an expert source by the well regarded academic presses that publish his work, as recently as a book from the University of California Press in 2021. A scholar who is writing in the area of his expertise in works published by well regarded university presses is WP:SCHOLARSHIP, and no amount of whining about views you dont like changes that. nableezy - 14:36, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@Toa Nidhiki05: You should strike the part where you say his views include Holocaust denial. That's a BLP violation because it's not true. He's the son of Holocaust survivors, he doesn't deny that the Holocaust happened. Levivich (talk) 13:54, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I did not say his views include Holocaust denial. I said he has fringe views on Holocaust denial, specifically that he supports teaching it in schools, and has publicly defended David Irving, a notorious Holocaust denier whose work has been discredited. I can clarify that specifically, but I have not accused him of being a Holocaust denier, and my wording was fairly careful, I think. Toa Nidhiki05 14:00, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Ok I appreciate the clarification, thanks. FWIW, the way it was phrased, I read it as you saying that "Holocaust denial" was one of the fringe views on a variety of subjects that he held, not that he held fringe views about Holocaust denial, but I understand what you mean. I'm not sure his views are actually fringe (as opposed to a significant minority viewpoint), but I agree that's not a blpvio. Levivich (talk) 21:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Reliable. He's a major political scientist, his book The Holocaust Industry has 900 Google Scholar cites [31], he has written other works that are also widely cited and well-reviewed, he is a bona fide scholar in the field. Being "controversial" does not make someone unreliable, and pretty much all high-profile scholars are controversial, like Benny Morris, Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky, Elie Wiesel, and James Flynn come to mind. That doesn't mean we say things in Wikivoice just because Finkelstein wrote them, but Finkelstein's works are definitely WP:RS. Levivich (talk) 18:00, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

These 900 citations confirm that The Holocaust Industry was culturally important, but not that he is seen as serious from a scholarly point of view. I looked at one of t he first page hits at random (Byfield on conspiracy theories) and the reference to Finkelstein was about his work being used to legitimate antisemitism. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

900 citations doesn't mean it's the mainstream view, but it DOES mean that it's taken seriously. If it wasn't taken seriously, it wouldn't have been cited so many times! Even if all 900 citations are debunking Finkelstein (and of course they're not), it would still show he was taken seriously, seriously enough to be thoroughly debunked. Benny Morris is a direct parallel: widely cited, very often to be criticized, but still widely cited. Levivich (talk) 04:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

• Extreme caution: Extremely controversial and increasingly fringe. His early work is definitely noteworthy in relevant debates, but his views should always be attributed and his work in the last decade or two would rarely be noteworthy. For recent positions, use secondary sources to ascertain noteworthiness before using. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:14, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  In what world is this not a serious academic work that is noteworthy? That, from 2021, has 59 google scholar citations. Image and Reality, from 2003, has 470 scholar citations. How does a scholar with these many scholarly works cited this often in other scholarly works add up to "secondary sources to ascertain noteworthiness before using"? He is the secondary source, and he is an expert one, and treated as an expert by both the well regarded academic presses that publish his work and by the scholars that cite it. All of the objections here are on the basis of not liking his views, and that is not, and has never been, an acceptable criteria for reliability. An academic expert writing in a book published by a well regarded university press is a reliable source by definition, and no amount of baseless personal opinion on [e]xtremely controversial and increasingly fringe trumps that. If somebody wants to challenge a scholar writing in peer reviewed journals and books published by the University of California Press they can try that, but they are arguing in direct opposition to what WP:RS says. Which is rather surprising from you tbh. nableezy - 04:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Bob. Finkelstein gets its in the neck from the left and the right. The left hate his polemic against Wokism and the BDS movement, the right, or rather, people who skimread only with eyes for possible political fallout for Israel, can't come up with any serious evidence outlining some putative failure on Finkelstein's part to observe the strictest criteria for closely documenting from the historical record. It all boils down to "instrumentalisation". Finkelstein, also as the son of Holocaust survivors, one of whom got a mere pittance from Jewish institutions lucratively sueing banks, argues that Holocaust discourse is 'instrumentalized'. Enzo Traverso and others ply the worry bead that Finkelstein's results might be "instrumentalized" by antisemites. So one gets the absurd situation that if one analyses the way the Holocaust discourse is being "instrumentalised" you get attacked for providing possible grounds for antisemites to "instrumentalize" your results. So it is no longer the merits or otherwise of a 'forensic' scholarly study of a phenomenon that receive attention, but the politics of the way that critical knowledge may be manipulated and abused. Of the handful of names who count in evaluating his book on The Holocaust Industry what sticks out are the assessments by the former doyen of the discipline,Raul Hilberg (Hilberg was a Republican-voting political conservative whose methodological and empirical integrity was underlined by the fact that he defended the views of an ex-Maoist like Finkelstein, whose scholarship was judged of a high order and whose 'controversial' results he deemed 'conservative') and by Moshe Zuckermann, against their informed authority we then get a list of take-'em-or-leav'em newspaper opinionists like Jonathan Friedman, and some empty dismissive obiter dicta hearsay about Hans Mommsen. In the wiki list, the only serious scholar who challenges Finkelstein's work in terms of imputed flaws, is Peter Novick. Good, finally an evaluation that is not just shouting, but scholarly. Finkelstein duly replied, point by point. That is how serious scholarship works, beyond the breezy screedy argie-bargie of casual newspaper-type reviews which our page on the book selects, to give the impression he is 'controversial'. I don't get the impression here that many commenting editors are familiar with the field, let alone Finkelstein's work, as opposed with what can be googled up searching for polemical negativism about the man and his scholarship. He is a loner, deprived of an income for having written uncomfortable books on a topic where vast financial resources will guarantee one's career and professional security if one cautiously steps tippity-toe round the minefield of discourse on Israel , the Holocaust, where the only trump card invariably played is to accuse anyone diffident about the homely narrativization of the politics of an ethnic state and its 'normalcy' is 'antisemitism'. That is what your extreme caution really refers to in my view, extreme caution about allowing the factual record produced, for example, by Finkelstein in his recent Inquest into the Tragedy of Gaza', to get an airing. Very few reviews could elicit any notable distortion in his analysis of the facts laid out there. Nishidani (talk) 07:45, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

• Serious scholarship, a bit too strident for the taste of many but passes RS. Attribute opinions as always. Zero^talk 12:23, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Reliable. Not just reliable, but he is among the best sources you can get on Israel/Palestine. His scholarship is based on detailed, painstaking research that few can match. BTW, I don't think he is attacking Wokeism, but rather the (obvious) sloppy reasoning that its activists sometimes use. --NSH001 (talk)
• Caution/Questionably reliable -- per FortunateSons and frankly per his own article's criticism section of him. At a bare minimum it would require attribution and probably should be avoided on contentious topics. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 19:46, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

That makes no sense. He is an acknowledged scholarly authority on, precisely, a 'contentious topic' .Nishidani (talk) 17:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

People don’t like his views so they pretend that’s a basis for challenging his reliability. It isn’t and never has been. nableezy - 17:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

That's a very unfair characterization of people objecting to his use as a reliable source. How does that productively contribute to this discussion? Toa Nidhiki05 18:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it's a fair characterization when there are editors voting that Finkelstein is not reliable, not based on evidence of his unreliability, but on evidence that he holds controversial views. Has he ever made a factual claim that was debunked? Has his work ever had to be retracted? Is his work widely cited by other scholars? Etc., etc. The fact that he says, e.g., Israel is a Jewish supremacist state, or that there is a Holocaust industry exploiting the Holocaust, makes him controversial but not unreliable. Levivich (talk) 18:14, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Well obviously he's said things that are untrue - like, for example, that no people were raped on October 7, and that no children were taken hostage, or that David Irving - a notorious Holocaust denier and discredited academic - was an excellent historian. But these don't directly relate to his academic career, I'll admit. Here's a counter: has his work in the last two decades out of academia been deemed widely cited and reliable? Even he admitted in the interview I've posted several times that nobody cared about his 2019 book, which sold a few hundred copies. I don't have an issue with his early career, insomuch as his very public, non-academic descent into some very dark places in the last two decades. Simply put: there are dozens of credible historians who don't have the specific bias problems or extreme viewpoints Finklestein does, and would be far better served as reputable sources in his place. There may be circumstances where Finklestein's opinion is noteworthy, but that's as an opinion, not an objective source of fact. I think that's a fairly nuanced take. Toa Nidhiki05 18:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I’ve posted the citations to his 2021 work published by University of California Press already. nableezy - 18:31, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And I'll say it again: if Finkelstein is unreliable because of the controversial views he holds, then Benny Morris must also be unreliable because of the controversial views he holds (like, "they should have finished the ethnic cleansing"). But of course that's not how WP:RS works. Levivich (talk) 18:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a discussion about Norman Finkelstein, not other people. I wouldn't be inclined to think anyone who supports ethnic cleansing should be regarded as a reliable source. Toa Nidhiki05 18:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

(replying to both here) In both cases, you're judging a source's reliability based on the opinions the author holds. The idea that we shouldn't use a source because we disagree with the author's opinion is totally wrong, that's nothing but censorship. Finkelstein's comments about Oct. 7 have absolutely zero relevance to whether his works prior to then, e.g. 2000's The Holocaust Industry, are reliable or not.

"deemed widely cited and reliable" is such a nonsense phrase, Toa. You know damn well that nobody "deems" works to be "widely cited and reliable" ... well, except Wikipedia.

But yes, his works have been widely cited. I already linked to Holocaust Industry's 950 citations. His 2018 book Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom has 59 Google scholar cites, not exactly overwhelming, but certainly enough to call it "widely cited" (in this field), and it's been favorably reviewed (see cites in the Wikipedia article).

More impressive is his 2005 book Beyond Chutzpah, which has 358 Google Scholar cites.

So, yeah, still a scholar, still widely cited, and his controversial opinions are not a reason to call him unreliable in the Wikipedia sense. Levivich (talk) 18:34, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Relative to academic historians in the field, 59 citations doesn't actually seem like a lot. Your other example is from his academic time, which I'm not contesting. Aren't there other historians who have actually been in academia in the last two decades, without a track record of genuinely inflammatory remarks (again, the David Irving thing - I've not seen a response to this, at all, but defending his status as a historian is a very, very big red flag. He's widely and uniformly regarded not just as a Holocaust denier, but a fraud). I would say the same thing about a historian from the Israeli side with a similar record, too - there is no shortage of academic work on this matter. Toa Nidhiki05 18:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Which books not reliable, according to you? Selfstudier (talk) 18:45, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I would consider his post-academic body of work one that should be used with extreme caution. I believe I've said this multiple times now. Toa Nidhiki05 18:48, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

So not this one? 2012: Knowing Too Much: Why the American Jewish Romance with Israel is Coming to an End, OR Books, New York (2012) ISBN 978-1-935928-77-5 which seems right on the money, at least going by the title.

Just to be clear, you assert that all of his published material since 2007? is unreliable? Selfstudier (talk) 18:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

His 2018 Gaza book getting 59 cites is not a lot but it's not nothing, either. For comparison, Ilan Pappe's 2017 book about Gaza has 91 cites. Levivich (talk) 06:54, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Tablet (magazine) and article by Wharton statistician

What is the reliability of the aforementioned source? I find nothing in RSN, unless I'm not looking in the right place. I see nothing in Perennial Sources. The context is the possible inclusion of a mention of this article by this statistician in relevant articles on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

So I imagine there are two issues: Tablet's reliability and the author's. Coretheapple (talk) 00:47, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I think it's probably better to be specific about the content that would be supported by information in this article. Specificity seems to help at this noticeboard. One obvious reason for specificity is because the conflict has been going on for over 5 months now (since 7 October 2023) and the scope of the analysis covers a 2 week window "From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023". Helpfully, there are also the Associated Press and John Hopkins investigations over more or less the same window. Sean.hoyland (talk) 03:16, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Not sure it's a reliability question, unless you believe that Tablet misrepresented his findings.

I think the relevant policy here is WP:DUE. The weight that this analysis should be given in our articles should depend on how much weight this analysis is given by RS.

The AP article mostly examines the procedures and doesn't perform statistical analysis. The Lancet article performs a statistical comparison of MoH and UNRWA data and finds "no evidence of inflated rates." The same DUE policy applies to those sources. Alaexis_¿question? 10:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd like to add that the concerns about the cherrypicked initial data are indeed worrying. I stand by my response above - that we need to follow RS which will evaluate this study - but personally I trust the article a bit less now. Hopefully it'll be clarified one way or another. Alaexis_¿question? 22:19, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the article and the author I would say it's a reasonable minority view. The source has the editorial oversight we expect from a reliable media site and the author certainly appears to have expert credentials. If this is the only source suggesting the MOH numbers may be misleading I would suggest giving it very little weight. However if other sources also claim the numbers are incorrect then I would be less inclined to leave this out. As a sticky RS question, yes, this looks to be reliable but that doesn't answer the question of weight. Springee (talk) 11:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Several editors have said the report is fringe. The idea that Hamas might want to exaggerate the Gaza death toll in a war they started hardly seems fringe. [32][33][34]. Treating the article as representing a minority view seems appropriate but out right dismissal as "fringe" is not appropriate in this case. Springee (talk) 11:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

The claims that follow his analysis are

• The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated.
• If Israel estimates [are] even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low.
• this is a remarkable and successful effort to prevent unnecessary loss of life while fighting an implacable enemy that protects itself with civilians.

Sean.hoyland (talk) 12:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Bibi is once again going around questioning the figures and claiming that 13,000 militants (no evidence for this, US says 6,000) are included in the figures (but they could as well be under the rubble and US says they are more likely an undercount). Selfstudier (talk) 12:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

It's bizarre. It's literally impossible for that number to be included in the ministry count unless one is counting women and/or children as well. The US state department called an undercount likely. (If not already obvious.) Iskandar323 (talk) 13:05, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

The context is actually the talk page discussion here here where the intent appears to be to cast doubt on what nearly all reliable sources are saying. Lancet is a scholarly source and peer reviewed info, unlike the other, which is not peer reviewed and in a somewhat dubious and certainly biased source. Also what info is going to be cited, is there any reason why such a minority view of one should be cited at all? Selfstudier (talk) 11:07, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

We aren't censoring minority views. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 11:13, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

If they are undue and/or fringe, we are. Selfstudier (talk) 11:22, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That was a commentary on your "minority view" argument. Regarding "If they are undue and/or fringe", it's not proven. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 11:25, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That nearly all reliable sources disagree is a good indication that it is undue. See this discussion right here on this noticeboard (others elsewhere as well). Selfstudier (talk) 11:47, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

What is undue? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 11:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Per the above linked convo and what I have already said, Recent article provides statistical analysis that calls into question the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry death tallies. Selfstudier (talk) 11:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

It's unclear what do you mean by "undue" and why should Tabletmag article be censored based on that. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

What is it you want to add to the article based on this source? Selfstudier (talk) 12:12, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't feel like I'm gonna edit, but the article should not be censored because of some wrong argument. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:19, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

The professor produced a fringe study in 2011 debunking the hockey stick graph in climate change A statistical analysis of multiple temperature proxies: Are reconstructions of surface temperatures over the last 1000 years reliable?. And in 2020 argued I’m a statistician. Closing camp because of corona is a huge mistake, I can't say the argument there was bad just iffy. As well as Abraham Wyner - Penn should unequivocally adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, including all the bits in its examples about criticizing Israel being antisemitic. NadVolum (talk) 12:06, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

A fringe? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Yep fringe. See [35]'Guided by Mark DeLaquil, one of Simberg’s attorneys, Wyner suggested that Mann and his hockey stick co-authors could have “cherry pick[ed]” data and used misleading statistical techniques to produce their desired outcome. “My opinion is that methods were manipulated” to understate uncertainty in Mann’s results, Wyner said. I think his 'Occasionally drawing smiles and laughs with self-deprecating jokes, Wyner described scientists’ process of selecting data and choosing which statistical techniques to employ as a “walk through a valley of forked paths,” suggesting to the jury that researchers could, if they chose, select a path that would yield the results they were seeking' might describe himself as far as the article being discussed here is concerned as it is so bad. NadVolum (talk) 12:34, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Even from this journalist article it would be very far fetching to brand Wyner's work, cited by many, as "fringe". ManyAreasExpert (talk) 13:08, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

[36] gives the issue with the paper and some discussions and a rejoiner. My real reason for branding as fringe is that even with the various discussions in the journal which pointed out all sorts of problems with what they did he still had the gall to stand up in court and defend some climate change denier bloggers against Mann and said he had cherry-picked datas to support the hockey stick graph. NadVolum (talk) 13:27, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Which article? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 13:41, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• Fringe, highly unreliable. One of my professional hobbies is debunking of statistical BS. I'll only consider the first claim: that the number of daily deaths doesn't vary as widely as one would expect. His first bar chart shows a visually straight line (a standard trick, since plotting the individual days makes it look much more irregular and it strongly fails a statistical test for uniformity; I'll leave that aside as it isn't the main point.) Wyner says his data comes from OCHA and gives this table. Note how it is only for a short period. There was a truce immediately afterwards, which justifies the ending date, but the starting date of Oct 27 seems arbitrary, and my experience is that arbitrary choices in the data are the first place to look when fishing for problems.
  Turn to OCHA's actual data to see that the "total killed" numbers for the three previous days were much larger. To be explicit, including the three previous days would have changed the variance of the sample from 1785 to 25065, a factor of 14! Look after the truce to see even greater variation. Wyner not only fails to mention that the data as a whole shows a different picture, but misleadingly writes "there should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less", when such days are indeed present. In summary, this claim of Wyner was manufactured by cherry-picking a fraction of the data. Zero^talk 13:32, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

ADDED: If you'd like to see what I meant about the trick of displaying cumulative data rather than the daily counts, see this post of Lior Pachter. Zero^talk 12:22, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• Ah, so in fact exactly the same trick used to manipulate climate data to produce charts over short periods that seem to contradict the longer trend. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:55, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  I suppose that the reason he started with October 26 (so that the first daily difference is October 27 vs October 26) because this is when the ground operation started.

  Still, it's certainly concerning that he doesn't explain why he decided to analyse this period and why he hasn't looked at post-truce casualty trends. Alaexis_¿question? 22:23, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but given that he relies so much on the numbers of women and children killed and inferences based on those, it is a bit puzzling that the window starts on Oct. 26 rather than Oct. 20. It suggests that his sampling strategy was not based on data availability, even though more data should strengthen his case if he is on the right track. It's all a bit odd. But perhaps we are missing the point. Perhaps the purpose of the article is not to figure something out, but to provide some comfort to readers so that they don't have to think about all those dead people. That might explain why it's in the Tablet rather than a more technical publication. Anyway, that's enough pointless speculation from me for now. Sean.hoyland (talk) 02:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• Zero nails it, and the Lancet is considerably more reliable than the Tablet, so it would have considerably more weight to it. nableezy - 13:36, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That's really bad, far worse than I thought! Perhaps the range was chosen by 'Salo Aizenberg who helped check and correct these numbers'! NadVolum (talk) 13:43, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• It's not obvious why they picked the "From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023" window for analysis. Their statement "From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Ministry released daily casualty figures that include both a total number and a specific number of women and children." is not wrong, but their source, the ochaopt daily reports with the ministry's numbers, started including the number of women and children killed from 20 Oct 2023 [37][38][39][40][41][42]. Either way, no editors should be trying to support or undermine the MoH figures because that would be inconsistent with the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct. Sean.hoyland (talk) 13:51, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

If I saw a source that genuinely did undermine them then I'd certainly look around for a reliable source for it! I don't see how it would undermine any code of conduct. But this was just straight propaganda. NadVolum (talk) 13:59, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• I meant this. section 3.3 – Content vandalism and abuse of the projects of the Wikimedia Foundation Universal Code of Conduct, specifically the part that prohibits "Systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view". In other words, willfully biased editing is not okay. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:05, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

You asked earlier I think it's probably better to be specific about the content that would be supported by information in this article. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner.

As is evident from the comments here, as this is essentially a continuation of the Talk page discussion, there are editors in the Talk page of Israel-Hamas war who want zero content from that article and zero content from Tablet. So it doesn't matter what "content" is involved. Editors want no content from the article. Coretheapple (talk) 14:00, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Its cherry picked data, and the cherry picking has distorted the results so spectacularly I cant imagine a reason why somebody would pretend like it belongs. No, none of this should be included in an encyclopedia article, as it is both completely bogus and contradicted by considerably more reliable sources. But that is being based on the content, so please dont pretend like that it is about editors want zero content from Tablet. Though Tablet also isnt the best source either. nableezy - 14:04, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• Tablet is used extensively. It is presumably fine in many circumstances. I see 2917 links to Tablet, almost all in mainspace. Sean.hoyland (talk) 14:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  "Others noted that AJS [Association for Jewish Studies] is simply keeping pace with evolving opinions of Tablet, and of its approach to presenting even anti-democratic and hyper-nationalist views as simply one side of an argument." https://jewishcurrents.org/ajs_tablet Selfstudier (talk) 14:22, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, but if you look through the titles of all the links used in Wikipedia there's some interesting stuff. An interview with Wallace Shawn. Who doesn't love Wallace Shawn? Articles about Ben Katchor, a unique genius, (I have everything he has ever drawn/written). Anyway, the set of articles is so diverse that general statements about the source are probably not very useful in practice. Sean.hoyland (talk) 15:46, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree, there's lots of stuff Tablet would be a fine source for. This less so. nableezy - 15:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree the context matters and in the current context, I am sceptical about the value of this source. Selfstudier (talk) 15:57, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• NadVolum above provides reasonable evidence to doubt this statistician's reliability given past work on climate change in particular, while Zero above provides compelling evidence that the study's conclusion is cherry-picked. starship.paint (RUN) 15:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  NadVolum above provides reasonable evidence to doubt this statistician's reliability given past work on climate change in particular
  — User:Starship.paint 15:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  No, they just claimed "fringe", turned out to be unproven. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 15:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

In 2011 it was well established. It was just about okay to say the evidence for the hockey stick was not good, people doing analysis and having it shot down doesn't automatically make them fringe. However he then went on to defend two climate change denial bloggers in a court case and alleged that Michael Manns statistics were cherry picked, see the National Enquirer case in Michael E. Mann#Defamation lawsuits. That definitely places hime on the climate change denial side. NadVolum (talk) 16:09, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

It's okay for researchers and their works to be correct or incorrect, or to be accepted now and be rejected later. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 16:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Agree. It is not our job to act as "experts" and determine if Wharton professors have their heads screwed on right. There seems to be an urgent, almost frantic desire to exclude this expert's view from the article. I am glad to see that Tablet itself is accepted as an RS source. Now let's make a quantum leap and realize that a Wharton professor who dares to differ with the Hamas casualty counts is not some kind of insane jughead who is unworthy of being quoted. Coretheapple (talk) 16:20, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

He's differing with the large number of sources that have said the counts are reliable. His view here is extreme minority and bordering on fringe, and his methods here are cherry picking to distort the data. nableezy - 16:22, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Says who? Who calls him fringe? You? Other Wikipedia editors? What source says he is fringe? What source says he is some kind of whack job? Coretheapple (talk) 16:24, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Sources dont need to call an extreme minority view an extreme minority view for it to be an extreme minority view. I dont believe I called him a whack job, so we can drop that strawman any time now. But he is presenting a view that other sources have debunked, and he is doing it with cherry picked data, ignoring data that blows his thesis up. As Zero wrote, he misleadingly writes "there should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less", when such days are indeed present. nableezy - 16:27, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Who says he used cherry-picked data? Some user named Zero? He is your source? Where did he publish that critique? Coretheapple (talk) 16:34, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

You and other editors have pointed out that Tablet is a reliable source that is frequently used as a source on Wikipedia. But this guy, who you don't like, should not be used, he is to be shunned, treated like a conspiracy theorist, why? Because of whom? Says who? Other than you, that is? Coretheapple (talk) 16:26, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Seriously, you are arguing for the inclusion of material that is provably bullshit, and you are doing it without even attempting to refute that it is bullshit. nableezy - 16:28, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I see. So a group of Wikipedia editors believe that a Wharton professor, published in a publication that they concede is used copiously in Wikipedia, should not be used because in their opinion he is "provably bullshit." Who is doing the proving? Who has criticized his work as "bullshit"? You say he differs from stuff in other publications like Lancet. Have the authors of those articles criticized him? Coretheapple (talk) 16:33, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Have you read any of the responses here? Ill re-post the proving it bullshit part for you:

the first claim: that the number of daily deaths doesn't vary as widely as one would expect. His first bar chart shows a visually straight line (a standard trick, since plotting the individual days makes it look much more irregular and it strongly fails a statistical test for uniformity; I'll leave that aside as it isn't the main point.) Wyner says his data comes from OCHA and gives this table. Note how it is only for a short period. There was a truce immediately afterwards, which justifies the ending date, but the starting date of Oct 27 seems arbitrary, and my experience is that arbitrary choices in the data are the first place to look when fishing for problems

Turn to OCHA's actual data to see that the "total killed" numbers for the three previous days were much larger. To be explicit, including the three previous days would have changed the variance of the sample from 1785 to 25065, a factor of 14! Look after the truce to see even greater variation. Wyner not only fails to mention that the data as a whole shows a different picture, but misleadingly writes "there should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less", when such days are indeed present. In summary, this claim of Wyner was manufactured by cherry-picking a fraction of the data.

Now you dont even attempt to respond to the fact that what he says does not exist does in fact exist, or the fact that by selecting these specific dates he gives a distorted view of the complete dataset. You just keep saying Wharton. Whatever, you asked a question and its been answered, you want to keep arguing go right ahead. nableezy - 16:36, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I am not interested in original research by Wikipedia editors. Coretheapple (talk) 16:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for demonstrating your inability to respond to math. nableezy - 16:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Hold on. Am I mistaken? What reliable source published that? Coretheapple (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

The numbers are from OCHA, simple calculations are not OR. Showing a source is wrong on a talk page or noticeboard is also not OR. nableezy - 16:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

User talk:Nableezy#March 2024 - personal attacks ManyAreasExpert (talk) 16:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

lol nableezy - 16:43, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Because a pointed opinion piece in a non-scholarly publication masquerading as statistical analysis is not just any ordinary opinion or material. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:32, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That you keep repeating phrases like ”Hamas casualty counts" (to refer to the Lancet-affirmed Gaza Health Ministry figures) does not really support the case that this discussion is truly about balance or encyclopedic value. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:28, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I found another source How Hamas Manipulates Gaza Fatality Numbers: Examining the Male Undercount and Other Problems | The Washington Institute analysing GHM numbers. Haven't had a good look at it yet. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 16:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Should probably look up WINEP before bringing an avowedly pro-Israel lobby organization as a source. nableezy - 16:32, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

At least WINEP is an outside source.The sources I'm seeing cited to exclude this Wharton prof's work are a group of Wikipedia editors. Coretheapple (talk) 16:36, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

A lobby with ties to the Israeli government is not an "outside source". You can keep up this charade but the source you want to use is cherrypicked bullshit that is directly contradicted by considerably more reliable sources. nableezy - 16:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

You keep saying that the Wharton professor is "contradicted." Who found his work to be faulty? Again, please don't respond by saying "Editor X,. Y and Z have analyzed his work, and doggone it, they find it is no good." I am looking for reliable sources, not the original research of Wikipedia editors. Coretheapple (talk) 16:44, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Since you refuse to read responses elsewhere, I guess Ill repeat it here. The Lancet, the WHO, various humanitarian agencies have all agreed the MOH numbers are accurate. nableezy - 16:45, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

And their refutation of the Tablet article is where? Coretheapple (talk) 16:50, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

It is a refutation of the claim that the numbers are inaccurate. I think you know that, but whatever. nableezy - 16:53, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

... and another Death tolls from Hamas-run health ministry are not trustworthy, former Reuters chief warns (telegraph.co.uk) - Mr Baker, who also reported from the Palestinian territories in 2006, said reports referring to “Palestinian officials” were “misleading”, because of Hamas’s grip over the health ministry.
“There was a time when the figures from the ministry could be relied upon. The doctors and administrators knew what they were doing.”
But following Hamas’s take-over, media organisations should be sure to refer to the health ministry as controlled by the terrorist group every time they mention its figures, he said.
European officials have also questioned the reliability of the figures published by the Hamas-controlled ministry.
One source told the Telegraph: “The numbers from Hamas cannot be trusted, although even one killed or injured child or innocent person is one too many.
“In the end it is not really about exact numbers but about the fact that undeniably innocent people are dying or being injured.” ManyAreasExpert (talk) 16:36, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Y'all should make up your minds, are they overcounting or undercounting? And why is no one talking about all the bodies under the rubble? Selfstudier (talk) 16:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That is very old and has been discussed at length on the talk page. Israel has agreed the counts are roughly accurate, the US has since said they are likely an undercount. And a ton of sources have contradicted that claim by a former Reuters bureau chief. nableezy - 16:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

This is to counter your "extreme minority" argument. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 16:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That doesnt do that at all. The Lancet, the WHO, various humanitarian agencies have all agreed the MOH numbers are accurate. This has gone way past RSNs purpose though, if there is a dispute on weight that should be held at NPOVN or the article talk page. We previously had an RFC on how to attribute these numbers, if somebody wants to challenge that they are welcome to open a new RFC. nableezy - 16:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

What they have not done is contradicted the article in question. It is a differing viewpoint, and all I see here are editors who are extremely anxious for it not to be used in the article. Yes, they have performed original research. According to them, they are experts in the field. Hell, they know more about stats than this Wharton professor published in a reliable source. I can't believe I have to say it, but no, we do not use Wikipedia editors as reliable sources of such weight and eminence that they can simply wave off sources they don't want to be used by branding them as "fringe" and "bullshit." Coretheapple (talk) 16:48, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

They have explicitly said that the numbers are accurate. OR is about article content, not about determining what sources are misrepresenting the underlying data. Which you, again, completely ignore. Yes, we most certainly can perform basic calculations to see that what you are pushing to include is a lie. He wrote there should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less, but there are indeed such days. The source you are pushing to use here is cherrypicking data to present a distorted summary of the dataset. I cannot believe I have to say it, but intentionally pushing in material that is provably false is not how an encyclopedia editor acts. nableezy - 16:52, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

That's right. I am not interested in "statistical analysis" by anonymous Wikipedia editors. Coretheapple (talk) 17:00, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

You think it is "statistical analysis" to look at the OCHA data and see what this person said does not exist does indeed exist? Ok, thats cool for you I guess, but nobody else has to stick their heads in the sand as well. nableezy - 17:07, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Like to raise an RfC to get other people on this noticeboard to agree with you then because I am definitely convinced by the evidence that the article is bullshit. And by the way as well as bodies under the rubble people writing about men missing should ask the Israelis exactly how many bodies of men they have taken back to Israel to stick in freezers or their cemeteries of numbers. We simply don't know how that affects the tallies of men killed. NadVolum (talk) 17:08, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Read WP:COUNTSORT – editors doing basic counting, which is all that is apparently required here to show that this article is bunk, is not "statistical analysis", or original research, or anything like that. It is what it is – just basic counting. And the follow through is just observing a naked contradiction. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:17, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

If the Tablet article is as terrible as is being claimed here with such fervor, then I imagine there must be quite a body of criticism out there to cite. If there isn't, please stop repetitively quoting yourselves. Coretheapple (talk) 17:20, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

There is quite a body of contrary evidence out there. Although I still don't know what anyone is trying to cite this source for (a requirement, btw, for posting here) nor can I see anything anyone would want to cite this source for, either. Selfstudier (talk) 17:39, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• As numerous people have explained to you, the author is a WP:FRINGE figure in the field of statistics, and the methodology he is applying here is specifically the same fringe methodology he applied elsewhere. "You have to provide something to debunk this specific thing a fringe figure has said!" is a common argument in fringe topics and isn't any more convincing here than it is anywhere else - fringe figures often repeat the same junk science over and over and rarely get an individual rebuttal every time. This is the principle behind WP:PARITY, after all. So if you want to include it, you ought to be trying to demonstrate secondary WP:RS coverage of it yourself - if your argument is that anything published in Tablet is automatically reliable and due, regardless of context, I'd have to disagree. Statistics is a rigorous scientific field and claims made in that context require WP:BESTSOURCES; a cultural magazine isn't a good source for claims about statistical inferences (as can be seen from the fact that they credulously published this nonsense by a fringe figure.) Beyond that the general principle of WP:EXCEPTIONAL applies - when you have exceptional claims that only appear in a single low-quality source, the conclusion isn't "nobody has debunked this, so it should be included", the conclusion is "given how shocking this is, the fact that it doesn't have higher-quality coverage means it's likely bunk and we can't include it." Given how shocking and WP:EXCEPTIONAL his claims are, if they are accurate, he'll probably get them published in a peer-reviewed journal sometime soon, and they'll get proper coverage from higher-quality secondary sources that can analyze the context and tell us if he's actually got something right this time; once that higher-quality or secondary coverage appears we could always revisit the question. But this source alone isn't enough to use for anything. --Aquillion (talk) 18:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks. Much appreciated. If I ever encounter an article by Michael E. Mann I'll keep that in mind. The article in question is by Abraham Wyner,Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Coretheapple (talk) 18:38, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• Oh you deleted "Michael E. Mann." [43]. How nice. Maybe you should have crossed it out. Anyway, I'm glad we cleared up that point. The article is not by Michael Mann but your opinion is the same. Gotcha. Coretheapple (talk) 18:42, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  It's generally considered perfectly fine to edit your comment including deleting stuff without strikthrough provided not much time has passed and no one had replied. Both of these applied here, and indeed the total time of under 4 minutes [44] is likely on the low side for edits. It's unfortunate you happened to see the earlier version in the 4 minutes between initial posting and correction, but ultimately if you are hit with edit conflicts you need to either deal with them, or accept your comment might be outdated. And it makes sense that there was zero need for Aquillion to modify anything about their opinion since I think we can be sure they weren't meaning to refer to Michael E. Mann who is not a fringe figure. I don't know how that happened, but I guess either a brain fade when typing out the name, or maybe they initially referred to Abraham Wyner failed attempt to dispute Michael E. Mann's worked but then removed this and made a mistake when editing. If I say 'The history of the UK is full of terrible things. Look at their extreme institutionalisation of slavery to the extent that their constitution had a provision to count slaves as three-fifths of a person and ending it resulted in civil war. Look at how even after ending slavery they continued to treat people unequally based mostly on skin colour, including denying the vote and provisioning different facilities which were supposedly separate but equal, but were far from equal. Look at how they often meddle in other countries for their own benefit with great cost to these other countries' then later change that to the US, I don't need to reassess what I wrote since I was always thinking of the US as shown by most of what I said, the fact that the last part could also apply to the UK not withstanding. Nil Einne (talk) 13:49, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Well I'd be very careful about doing anything like that in an article. But yes there is no reason for us to act stupid in a talk page. NadVolum (talk) 17:24, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Upon further review I'm going to be neutral on the climate change issue, so I have struck part of the comment above. starship.paint (RUN) 09:21, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• All else aside, it's clearly an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim about statistical inference which isn't suitable to be cited to a single non-academic study by a fringe figure, published in a magazine with no background on the topic whatsoever. Not usable for anything and shouldn't be cited anywhere. --Aquillion (talk) 18:31, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Director of Undergraduate Program in Statistics and Data Science at Wharton and he's a "fringe figure"? [45] Someone better tell Wharton. Coretheapple (talk) 19:51, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

  Why should they care? He hasn't made a major thing of it (if you disregard the $100,000 he got for that court case) and it is practically a requirement for Republicans. Besides he is tenured. NadVolum (talk) 20:14, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• It is possible for someone to hold fringe views and still be a professor, especially if they're not actually teaching their fringe views in class. But either way, I feel like your question has been answered exhaustively by many people - that piece is simply not usable. As I said above, its claims are WP:EXCEPTIONAL and the piece itself is a WP:PRIMARY source for them; despite the shocking nature of his statistical claims, the author has so far declined to present them to peer-review or to otherwise publish them at a source actually qualified to evaluate them. If there's validity to them, and they're as significant as you seem to believe they are, they should eventually get substantial secondary coverage elsewhere, so you can just wait until that appears. But right now, one piece of junk data science inexplicably published in a culture magazine obviously isn't enough for something so shocking. Even if it were academically published, which is is not, WP:RS warns us to be cautious about single studies like this, which are often not borne out later on. --Aquillion (talk) 21:06, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

• I agree with others here that the claim made in this article appears to be WP:FRINGE (in the sense that its claims are not widely supported by reliable sources). I hardly think a single story in a magazine passes WP:EXCEPTIONAL that would warrant inclusion of a claim like this. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:34, 11 March 2024 (UTC)
• Very reliable and mainstream. Tablet is a reputable magazine, Abraham Wyner is tenured at an Ivy League university and his works are cited by thousands of others. An expert commenting on his own field, unlike editors here. Researcher (Hebrew: חוקרת) (talk) 07:11, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

How do you know what the qualifications of other editors are? Anyway one can apply the duck test to the article, have a look for what Zero says above after 'Fringe, highly unreliable'. This noticboard is allowed to use some common sense in its assessments, in fact that's about its main purpose. NadVolum (talk) 09:30, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

It looks like Wyner's 2011 hockey stick take-down attempt also encountered trouble on contact with scrutiny and practical data issues. Iskandar323 (talk) 12:31, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Tablet is definitely not mainstream either. nableezy - 10:59, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

And we have WSJ article discussing and referring to Wyner's article: What’s Behind the Propaganda War Against Israel - WSJ . ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:52, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

An opinion on the opinion. Iskandar323 (talk) 13:08, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Opinion piece with a clear position. Calls it "intriguing" :) Got that right. Selfstudier (talk) 13:21, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

If there's one thing I don't trust about the WSJ, it is using their opinion articles for facts. starship.paint (RUN) 09:21, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Using Decider / Decider.com for interviews and reviews

I know Decider is owned by the New York Post, which is unreliable. The website also seems tabloid-y. However, I'm planning to use these two sources for my article: an interview and a review. Both are authored by established journalists (the about pages for the authors on Decider sucks, but with a quick Google search you can see their portfolio). I just want to make sure before using these sources that they are okay. Spinixster (chat!) 01:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

I've started a request for comment at #RfC: Entertainment coverage of the New York Post (and Decider) to find an answer to this question. — Newslinger talk 21:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Telegraph reliable for Israel-Palestine conflict?

I have been getting a lot of questionable articles from the Telegraph recommended in my MSN news feed. Stuff like this: [46] and [47] and [48] and [49]. There was even one that can be taken as a personal attack against Muslims [50]. Obviously some are opinion but it is filed in "news". Full list of Israel articles from Telegraph for reference: [51]

Since the Israel-Palestine conflict (and surrounding protests) is a contentious topic, I want to know if it is possible that Telegraph.co.uk is not reliable for this particular conflict area as of recent. If not, how an RfC could be built to properly assess the reliability for ARBPIA. Awesome Aasim 23:02, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

"no go areas" is pure conspiracy nut rubbish, yes. Is anyone objecting to these clearly opinion articles being removed as opinion and not news? - David Gerard (talk) 23:14, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

It is an RS, with a reasonably well known bias, but that would not be enough to change its overall reliability rating. Selfstudier (talk) 23:25, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

A brief look at the articles that aren’t clearly labeled opinion suggests there is no issue here; they are reporting on comments made by prominent politicians, not making the comments themselves.

What issue do you see? What aspect do you think is unreliable? BilledMammal (talk) 23:27, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

It's generally reliable like WP:RSP says. It says there it is biased for politics - it is right wing and they copy some strange American ideas, but I agree with the assessment there. NadVolum (talk) 23:35, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

"They hurt someones feelings" is not a valid reason to challenge the reliability of a source. Zaathras (talk) 23:55, 11 March 2024 (UTC)

Not sure that is relevant in this case. There isn't anything in the post about feelings. There is a potential reference to a value system in which an attack against a religious group in a source would be considered troubling. Sean.hoyland (talk) 04:50, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Obviously, but the issue once again is there isn't this good distinction between news and opinion. This is something I have seen at a similar level on Fox News, MSNBC, etc.

Like what is this and this with respect to this slogan? I think I am failing to see how non-neutral sources can be high quality sources on a WP:CT. Awesome Aasim 13:17, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

There is no such thing as a neutral source on a political issue. All sources have biases as they are written by people who have political viewpoints. If we exclude sources based on the fact they are biased, we would be left with very little. --Boynamedsue (talk) 06:54, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Two of those articles are comments i.e. option pieces. They are not suitable as sources unless you want to source the writer's personal views. Cortador (talk) 12:49, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Established RS with right-wing bias. The "comment" articles should be treated as opinion pieces not usable as sources for facts. The news articles reporting the views of politicians etc are reliable as sources and the fact that a mainstream RS is reporting the views of the politicians etc is a good indicator they might be due. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:31, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

The Simcox "no-go areas" thing has been widely reported in other British media. While the phrase itself is clearly sourced to conspiracy theory nonsense, a charitable interpretation is that he is saying that some Jewish people feel scared to go near the protest marches. This is probably true, despite the presence of a large Jewish block on the demos. In any case, the article linked is accurately reporting Simcox's stated opinion and so doesn't really affect our assessment of the Telegraph's reliability.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:26, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

This is not a reliability issue. There is no doubt that Simcox did say it. The question is whether we should report it, so WP:DUE is the relevant policy. Since Simcox is not some random guy but the government's counter-extremism commissioner, his opinion is probably noteworthy. Alaexis_¿question? 09:30, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

• Generally Unreliable, another one of Murdoch's Australian tabloid's which should be avoided and definitely not be used for BLPs or other contentious topics (climate change, gensex, etc.). See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive_426#Reliability of the Herald Sun where I collated some past discussion on one of Sydney's Daily Telegraph's sister newspapers. While the Daily Telegraphy is not quite as bad as Melbourne's Sun Herald it's not far off. TarnishedPath^talk 10:47, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
  • This section is about the UK Daily Telegraph, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/ , which has been green-rated up to now for news - not the Australian Daily Telegraph - David Gerard (talk) 19:52, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

    My apologies, when I opened up the link to The Telegraph I must have been reading to fast. TarnishedPath^talk 23:07, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Is donsmaps.com a reliable source for Las Caldas cave?

Source[52]. I'm also concerned that the 3rd source, [53] goes to 3 papers none of them with that name. Doug Weller talk 16:44, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Unreliable. The homepage of Don's Maps states: "I live in New South Wales, Australia, and I am a retired high school mathematics/science teacher. The Donsmaps site is totally independent of any other influence. I work on it for my own pleasure, and finance it myself." It's a neat site, but it is self-published by a non-expert and not usable for factual claims in the Las Caldas cave article. — Newslinger talk 09:55, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The Athletic

The Athletic (theathletic.com  ) is a sports website that has been cited nearly 6,000 times on Wikipedia, but I have yet to see it in the perennial sources list. Opening this discussion to seek consensus on the reliability of The Athletic; I hold that it is generally reliable, but consideration should be made for opinion pieces, which is why I have taken this source to RSN.

A note that The Athletic, though it is owned by The New York Times Company and replaced The New York Times's sports department last year, is not held to the same editorial standards as the Times. The Athletic's editorial guidelines can be found here. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 17:54, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

RFC: The Athletic

What is the reliability of The Athletic?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:22, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• Option 1. However, it has the caveat that its articles are often mixtures of opinion and fact, and care needs to be taken to distinguish between the two.Boynamedsue (talk) 19:40, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Owned by The New York Times, is consistently cited by other reliable sources in their own reports. See [54], [55] and [56]. Esolo5002 (talk) 20:41, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Thoroughly reliable in its news coverage, and its writers distinguish between fact and opinion. Mackensen (talk) 21:08, 12 March 2024 (UTC)
• It's reliable but just to be clear, it won't be entering the RSP list if that's what you were implying/expecting, due to failure of WP:RSPCRITERIA. I don't see any evidence that this source has been perennially challenged, and being widely-used is not in and of itself sufficient grounds for list inclusion. Left guide (talk) 23:38, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

According to the criteria you linked, an uninterrupted RFC is sufficient. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 04:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

That seems like an interpretation of the criteria in a way that it was never meant to serve, and a misuse of the purpose of the RSP list. Where has the reliability of the source been legitimately challenged or questioned before? If everyone already agrees it's reliable and there has never been a reason to challenge it, we don't need an RSP entry to affirm that. Being omitted from the list doesn't make it any less reliable. We don't just add entries to the RSP list willy-nilly like this; it's already long enough as it is, and this sets a bad precedent. Please also see the explanations at WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 318#ESPN and WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 319#ESPN ( www.espn.com ), which refers to a similar type of source (widely-used sports journalism outlet that virtually everyone already agrees is reliable) for why this isn't RSP-worthy. Left guide (talk) 05:31, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. The Athletic is what Sports Illustrated used to be. – Muboshgu (talk) 01:42, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per all above. One of the better sports-journalism sites out there. The Kip 07:12, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. The Athletic is quite good, and has the sort of detailed sports reporting that is increasingly rarer. It is written with the tone and style of a magazine, so it can have some flavor and opinion to its writing, but I trust that Wikipedians will know when to not treat hyperbole, metaphor, or other forms of figurative language as if they were intended to be read literally, and won't treat statements of opinion as fact. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:24, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, highly regarded sports journalism. It's not at all clear there's any serious dispute to address here - David Gerard (talk) 19:52, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Reject RfC as unnecessary Mach61 21:46, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Comment This should probably have been rejected as no reason was given as to why it should be unreliable. But anyway, Option 1; well-regarded online news source with some excellent journalists. Black Kite (talk) 21:50, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Is an adult industry site reliable for reporting on legal cases in their industry?

Looking for a possible carve out for the legal news section of Fleshbot.com to see if it can be used for the Emily Willis article mainly, but also if it can be used elsewhere.
I had added that the case against one of the parties in a pending defamation suit was seemingly dropped due to a public apology issued by one of the parties in a tweet which was later removed, per the article cited.
It was removed at Special:Diff/1213055620 with the summary of →‎Defamation lawsuit: This is a contentious issue. Fleshbot should not be used here. Further, better to describe why there is a lawsuit rather than quoting legalese (the other portion regarding legalese was directed at a previous edit by a different user)
The original lawsuit was covered by Xbiz, which is considered a RS. However, they never updated the outcome of the lawsuit, and it seems the only source showing the published apology from one of the parties is a screenshot of said tweet on a Fleshbot article, which was removed and not archived elsewhere. Going by WP:NOTGOSSIP, I feel like this is something readers to her article would have a reasonable interest in learning the outcome of, because it is unfortunately one of the things she has received coverage for. The only prior discussion regarding the site in question was here, but it seemed more geared towards interviews and not using them because they have a financial interest in selling dvds. It was noted in that discussion that if that was overlooked, they could be used for basic non contentious claims. I believe WP:CONTEXTFACTS would factor in to if this could be used or not in this instance, since I see nothing that can be gained from a third party reporting on a public apology or a deleted tweet in a lawsuit for which they were not involved in.
If we are considering allowing the legal section in as a whole, or judging the reliability on a case by case basis, the relevant link to the archives is here

Awshort (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC) Awshort (talk) 18:37, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

My first question would be whether the records of the Los Angeles Superior Court reflect such a change in the suit. BD2412 T 18:58, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I checked court records, and the case was not dropped, but is continuing against both defendants. Nor do I read the Fleshbot article to say that the case was dropped. I’m going to note here that the case is Banuelos v. Correro, No. 21STCV37675, mainly so I won’t have to look it up again if there are further questions. Obviously, these court documents cannot be used in a BLP article. John M Baker (talk) 22:59, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Inaturalist.org

I noticed this source and that it is cites Wikipedia (WP:CIRCULAR) as well as letting anyone upload to the site, after searching the it I can see it's used over 2,000 times on Wikipedia. Previous discussions are here: [57] [58]. The latter is only about photos.

Use of the source varies [59] but in the first result of Suriname it's used in a way that seems like original research to claim it has high biodiversity. On Odisha it's used to identify species inhabiting the area as well as the notability/recognition of this.

I don't consider it a reliable source and fail to see how it could meet reliability given the circular content but I'm not sure on what to do given the site is used so much. Traumnovelle (talk) 19:33, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not an iNaturalist expert, but the impression I get is that it's quite highly regarded (essentially the Wikipedia of botany, birdwatching, etc). I don't think it cites Wikipedia for the actual observations; it seems to me like what it cites is, e.g., the explanatory text it has in the sidebar. jp×g🗯️ 06:34, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The particular example of Suriname (which is replicated in Biodiversity of Suriname) is a weird choice to establish that claim, since there are better sources that outright state the same thing ([60], [61])without having to infer it by all the different observations. I believe iNaturalist is a pretty good source for corroborating that something exists in a location but citations like these aren't necessarily unreliable but a little hard to follow/draw conclusions from. Reconrabbit 15:10, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I am very familiar with iNaturalist. It's fun and useful for personal or off-Wiki research purposes, but completely unreliable for the vast majority of factual claims made in an encyclopedia. The observations themselves are primary sources, even if verified by community experts, which can easily be used to mislead or perform original research or improper synthesis. As a user-generated database, its location-specific species checklists or search results such as [62] and [63] should not be used as at all as references per WP:USERG. The taxon descriptions are pulled from various sources, including Wikipedia, which raises WP:CIRCULAR issues. While sometimes new discoveries (e.g. new species and range extensions) are initially made on iNaturalist, these are unreliable or undue at best until reliably published in a journal or other credible source (Wikipedia should never be the first place publishing breaking news or novel information, regardless of how 'true' it is). Similarly, it's much better to cite a reliable source for a statement like "X National Park is known for these prominent species" or "Species Y occurs in X National Park", as opposed to mining observations to highlight arbitrary primary occurrences which gives a myopic view based on the known biases of iNaturalist users (e.g. flowers and birds get much more photographed than worms and spiders by the general user). Certain iNaturalist pages may have use as an External link (with respect to WP:EL), and indeed, iNaturalist taxon pages are linked in many instances of {{Taxonbar}} as well as External link sections, but this should be considered on an indvidual basis, and External links are not held to the same standards as reliable sources. --Animalparty! (talk) 17:48, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Your Basin and Donna Glamour

Would you consider https://www.yourbasin.com/ and/or https://www.donnaglamour.it/ as reliable sources? DrKilleMoff (talk) 20:18, 12 March 2024 (UTC)

Funding Universe - should it be depreciated

Hi. I have been recently finding Funding Universe as a ref on quite a few corporate pages. I don't think it is that accurate. Take Walkers Crisps for example, on Funding Universe it says Frito-Lay purchased the business, however articles in business magazine UPI and the New York Times from the time definitely reported PepsiCo Inc directly purchasing the business, not its subsidiary. Davidstewartharvey (talk) 11:02, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

There was actually an RfC on Funding Universe in 2019; see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 257 § Rfc: Fundinguniverse.com. The "Walkers Snack Foods Ltd. History" entry says, "PepsiCo, Inc. acquired Walkers Crisps and Smith Foods from BSN (later Danone) for $1.35 billion (£900 million)", so this page (which is actually a republication of International Directory of Company Histories) seems accurate. — Newslinger talk 15:19, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Where do the RfC options come from? Who decided these were the official four? They're bad

Every time there's an RfC on here, the person opening it presents four options, which are invariably these:

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

This seems extremely sub-optimal to me. First of all, they're all stupid: the first one is "always good" and the others are "always bad". We can quibble over definitions, but the fact of the matter is that one of these is literally shaded green and the rest are shaded yellow or red or black. There are countless talk page discussions and noticeboard threads about people removing sources for the reason of them being one of the bad colors, and some even do it with scripts, all the better for not having to bother with evaluating them individually.

Most importantly, there's no option that preserves the original status of the source: we are forced to either declare it good or declare it bad. There's no option given for "editors are expected to use their heads and evaluate whether source is reliable when they are citing it", which is bizarre, because this is the default for every source in existence. We don't operate on a whitelist basis! We expect editors who write content to be capable of looking into a publisher and seeing whether it is credible. This is how the sourcing guidelines work: unless somebody opens a RfC at the reliable sources noticeboard, apparently, then it's assigned a color and you aren't allowed to do this.

Some might argue that this is the same as "Option 2", but this is clearly not true; in innumerable discussions where people suggest "Option 2"ing a website, they are suggesting to "downgrade" it from Option 1. Everyone has seen discussions on talk pages where somebody says that a source is yellow and we should try to use a green one instead.

Why are these the four options? Can't we just have an Option 5: follow Wikipedia sourcing guidelines? jp×g🗯️ 17:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I think the main problem is with this interpretation: "the others are "always bad"". To me, it is clear that Option 2 is not "always bad", and it is more informative than "follow Wikipedia sourcing guidelines", since it tells you that there has been a discussion about this particular source, so you are not completely left to your own devices when it comes to figuring out reliability (see WP:MREL).

With that said, I have also been noticing that at least some editors claim sources that are not always good are always bad by default. But I would argue that this is mostly their fault, not the system's. So overall, I would prioritize helping editors who are willing to make an effort to understand why it's marked marginally reliable, rather than prioritizing preventing invalid arguments from those who are not willing. Bendegúz Ács (talk) 19:14, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The thing is, most of the time, people don't get into disputes over anodyne things that could be sourced to any WP:MREL source - they get into disputes over stuff that's controversial, WP:EXCEPTIONAL, often WP:BLP-sensitive, and so on. Those tend to be things that require higher-quality sourcing, which means that if someone wants to use a MREL source for them they often need to at least give an explanation. MREL sources are used all over Wikipedia without objections; but the specific things that come up in disputes tend to overlap with the situations where they are less than ideal. --Aquillion (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Possibly, but it could also be because those particular WP:MREL sources are always about a controversial topic. The concrete example I've experienced is medical journals that focus on controversial medical areas, such as functional foods. In these cases, I think pretty much all uses of the sources could attract controversy, but that still doesn't mean they are always unreliable, or even that their usage requires special handling, apart from the general applicable guidelines (such as WP:MEDRS for my example). Bendegúz Ács (talk) 20:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The four options seem fine to me. If editors are taking an overly reductive approach to interpreting the categories, that’s a behaviour we should discourage. A generally reliable/unreliable source could be unreliable/reliable in a specific context. Another thing we sometimes see is editors trying to bless an opinion as a fact because it is stated in a green source, notably when trying to apply WP:LABELs to subjects. “My green source called him a poopyhead so we need to call him a poopyhead in the first sentence!” Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:36, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• We're always supposed to follow sourcing guidelines, so option 5 amounts to "do nothing." And people do sometimes take that position, but it's mostly only reasonable to take when a source hasn't been discussed much (often RFCs here are objected to as premature.) I'd say that if we were going to have a fifth option, it'd probably just be "premature" for that reason, ie. there's no evidence there's actual disputes over the source that an RFC is needed to resolve. Once significant numbers of disputes start coming up, though, I don't think "just follow the guidelines" is useful, because that by definition means that editors can't agree on what the guidelines mean in that case. --Aquillion (talk) 19:41, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Remove Option 1. We should either yellow-list ("caution"), red-list ("don't use in an article"), or black-list ("don't even link to it anywhere") a source, or else do nothing. "Too bad to use" is OK to say, but "generally reliable" is something we should not be declaring about any source. All sources make mistakes, and if we want to rank sources we should do so categorically (like WP:TIERS) not individually. Levivich (talk) 21:15, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

"Generally reliable" should account for the fact that all sources make occasional mistakes. We're not saying "totally reliable". Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 21:31, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Even with these four options, there can be made fair exceptions to them, though that would require consensus on the talk page. A source that we list as always good means we should start with that presumption, but if a given article from it is very inconsistent with other sources, then we can say that particular instance is not good. We also can say a source is good in one area but bad in another, or establish periods where it may be good, or establish certain authors may only be good from a source, etc. It's really not four options, but four options with many a la carte variations. — Masem (t) 22:03, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Isn't it generally reliable, as in "usually"? --Licks-rocks (talk) 23:05, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Option 2 generally means that the sources have good reliability and are usable. It does not mean they are unreliable at all or that they should not be used. Even "generally reliable" sources have additional considerations depending on the context of their usage. Ramos1990 (talk) 01:20, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a problem. "Generally" does not mean "always", and "additional considerations apply" obviously doesn't mean "always bad". BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Indeed. It seems OP misunderstood what those options actually stand for. Only option 4 is an "always bad" option, and it doesn't apply to all that many sources. Cortador (talk) 10:32, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

It is completely untrue that an "Option 2"ed source is equivalent in standing to a source which has no RfC consensus; what I am saying is that we should not have a process which regardless of its outcome is guaranteed to change our official standing on a source.

I am quite aware of "what the options actually stand for". What I'm saying (and indeed, what I wrote two paragraphs to explain in detail in the original post) is that a source being "yellow" -- in actual practice -- means in almost every instance that people will argue for it to be removed when it is used. Typically, in the English language, when something is "downgraded" this means that it has been lowered, or made worse. There are widely-used and officially-recommended scripts that highlight sources according to their color in the RSP table, in which yellow is explicitly denoted as inferior to green (to say nothing of the universally used green-yellow-red color scale).

There should not be a process where, no matter what people say or what their opinions are or what the policy is, anybody who opens a proceeding permanently changes the status of a source across the project; there should be a status quo option in the RfC. jp×g🗯️ 22:16, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

While status quo on a source is not always going to be option 2, from the POV of an individual editor it will always fit into one of the options, and so I don't think a "status quo" option makes sense. The whole point of having an RFC is that people disagree about the reliability of the source.

For some sources, status quo is fine: if the New York Times weren't on WP:RSP it would still obviously be a green-level source. But the fact that a source is being brought up for an RFC proves that there is some disagreement about it, so in practice a status quo option in RFCs here would be the same as a no consensus close. There's no other process where we explicitly let people advocate for no consensus and IMO for good reason. Loki (talk) 22:25, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

This seems untrue? AllMusic, for example, is listed at yellow, and I would wager it's one of the most cited of any source on Wikipedia. Mach61 00:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd say it varies widely depending on the source and the article it's used for. A yellow-at-RSP will generally be removed on that grounds from a contentious topic article, whereas something like AllMusic might still be widely used with attribution in articles about songs. Salon.com is another example of a widely-used yellow-at-RSP, and I think it's because it's used in pop culture and entertainment articles, but it'll usually get removed from contentious topic articles. (Disclosure: I remove yellow-at-RSP sources from contentious topic articles.) Levivich (talk) 05:04, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• The original post makes some very good points. When I was a new editor, I wanted such a list. Then as a more experienced editor, I immediately had serious concerns about the categorical judgment about the quality of a publication. Even the best publications like the NYT have items posted of different reliability based on the expertise of the writer(s) and their political or ideological biases. An article originally published in the NYT, could find its way to the AP and to Fox News. That article republished by Fox News does not make it unreliable. I doubt most new (or younger) editors understand this.

Now I have mixed feelings, because when I want to add material to an article, the list helps me figure out which sources are more likely to pass muster. Going through the reliable sources archives to see what people had said about the source in the past is a lot of work and often not that helpful.

Where I strongly agree with JPxG is about these points:

(1) I am quite troubled by scripts that go around deleting sources from articles.

(2) I am even more troubled by blacklists where it is impossible to use a source at all, ever. I do not believe WP:RS has ever justified that, until it showed up in 2020.

(3) I agree with JPxG's description of how if you use a source that does not have the "green light", editors are likely to do exactly what JPxG said: They will try to use it as "proof" that your source is not great, that the content is WP:UNDUE, you should find something better, and any number of ways to try to undermine the use of that source in that article--simply because it didn't have the "green light". Even if they are wrong and *should* instead follow the RS guidelines, it can create an undue burden on the editor trying to say, "No. It's not that simple"--especially if multiple editors misunderstand the limits of the perennial source assessments.

Last, one big problem with the list is that it reinforces the U.S. State Department propaganda that is distributed and echoed throughout U.S. media and media of NATO and other allies. The U.S. and Western media has long been vulnerable to State Department propaganda--as described by Noam Chomsky's propaganda model--yet, the U.S. media seems to only notice the propaganda problem in other countries' reporting, as if it couldn't possibly happen here in "the land of the free" with the 1st Amendment protections. One need only look at coverage of the lead up to 2003 war in Iraq as evidence of media's echoing of Bush's propaganda in favor of the war[64][65] and the countless images of mushroom clouds suggesting that Iraq was on the verge of launching ICBMs at the U.S.

If the U.S. State Department identifies a source as a "foreign agent" or propaganda, the U.S. media--including "green-lighted" NYT and Guardian--parrots that position. Then Wikipedia editors can point to the NYT's claim that the foreign publication is unreliable propaganda, and Wikipedia will blacklist it. These are exactly the kind of sources that would have been critical of the Iraq war and are likely to be censored here by the blacklists. --David Tornheim (talk) 23:53, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS)

Are Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies (FARMS) publications (e.g., Mormon Studies Review, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies) reliable sources for statements in Wikivoice? Are their publications in WP:PARITY with publications by academic publishers (like Routledge, T&F, etc.)?

FARMS publications are currently used in, e.g. Mormonism, Book of Mormon, origin of the Book of Mormon, among others, either for statements in Wikivoice or in parity with other sources (in the sense of, "some say X, others say Y," with a FARMS publication being the Y).

I could not find FARMS discussed directly in the archives, but there were prior related discussions that mentioned its publications last month and in 2018. I have previously asked about religious-affiliated publishers in 2022, and the consensus in that discussion (my reading) is that a publisher is not unreliable merely because it has a religious affiliation. This question, though, is asking about a specific publisher and not about religious publishers or apologetics publishers in general.

My opinion: FARMS is Mormon apologetics, and to quote the Wikipedia article about them, "While allowing some degree of academic freedom to its scholars, FARMS was committed to the conclusion that LDS scriptures are authentic, historical texts written by prophets of God." For this reason, I think its publications should not be used for statements in Wikivoice, and should not be in WP:PARITY with traditional mainstream academic publications (like those published by Routledge, T&F, etc.).

I've advertised this on the talk pages of the three articles linked above, at WT:LDS, and at an ongoing related discussion at WP:FTN. Thanks in advance for your thoughts, Levivich (talk) 17:43, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Routledge publishes anybody and everybody — I might as well be inclined to say yes (i.e. it is good to have university presses as yardstick). In any case, Mormon Studies Review is currently published by the University of Illinois Press — with no connection to FARMS — and is far from a Mormon-apolegetic journal; at the same time, it undeniably used to be one even a decade ago but had many gems of articles. In contrast, Journal of Book of Mormon Studies is probably guttable; there was a huge fracas when UoIP semi-acquired it and from the looks of it, had (has?) a terrible reputation. TrangaBellam (talk) 17:59, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

The University of Illinois Press maintains a connection with the Maxwell Institute which FARMS was absorbed into in 2013. I don't believe that the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies was "semi-acquired" by UoIP, it appears to be "published on behalf of" the Maxwell Institute which is a commercial relationship (that would mean that the Maxwell Institute is paying the UoIP to publish it and UoIP is adding no academic or professional endorsement to the content). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:09, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I am pretty certain that Mormon Studies Review — as of today — has no link with FARMS/Maxwell Institute; can you provide evidence to the contrary? As to JBMS, I am unsure; all I recall is that many were up in arms against whatever agreement UoIP was entering into (with FARMS/Maxwell) for this journal. TrangaBellam (talk) 18:32, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

Funding for publishing JBMS appears to come from the Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies which is a constituent body of the Maxwell Institute [66]. If UoIP has a link then whatever UoIP publishes does as well. I'm not saying its a major one, but its not no link or no connection. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:44, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

• Note that for much of the period in question FARMS is just part of the Maxwell Institute (which doesn't appear to be any more reliable it must be said). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:13, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• In general I would say unreliable, but as TrangaBellam has pointed out there are exceptions, for example I would say that Mormon Studies Review post 2020 or so is a pretty mainstream reliable source but by then any connection to FARMS/Maxwell is tangential. The Journal of Book of Mormon Studies is not a reliable source either when self published or when published on Maxwell's behalf by another press. I share TangaBellam's desire to get in a cheap shot at Routledge but in general I would say no, they are not on parity with publications by academic publishers. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:49, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Generally unreliable and undue. Recent editions of MSR are excluded. TrangaBellam (talk) 19:57, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
• Unreliable: FARMS, like FAIR and BYU's Maxwell Institute, is an LDS apologetics mill, and is unreliable for neutral, scholarly articles, and has a strong conflict of interest (WP:COI). It's staffed and funded by people (if not the church itself) extremely defensive of an institution (the LDS Church) with a long history of suppressing factual publications about its history (e.g. September Six). It's not interested in true scholarship so much as trying to make a controversial organization look good. I wish this were not the case but here we are. Pastelitodepapa (talk) 01:21, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• Unreliable: I think it is ok to use for a specific viewpoint within the LDS church, but absolutely not for archeological information or in Wikivoice. I wanted to point out that WP:LDS/RS includes a list of sources related to the Latter Day Saint movement. Whatever the outcome of this discussion, it should be added to this list. Epachamo (talk) 18:35, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for mentioning LDS/RS. I see Journal of the Book of Mormon Studies is listed as green, as a UIP publication, no mention of FARMS. That should probably be updated with the result of this discussion as well. Levivich (talk) 21:30, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

CounterPunch and MondoWeiss as BLP reliable sources

Discussion on that topic here to which RSN-versed editors might want to contribute. BobFromBrockley (talk) 04:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

zvukibukvy.ru

Can anyone figure out who publishes this site. Kelly The Angel (talk · contribs) added it and I replaced it, but I am not fully happy with the replacement as well. (The author only gives her first name so it seems blogish.) zvukibukvy.ru has no ads, but the contact page allows sending messages to the "editors". So how do they pay these editors? Richard-of-Earth (talk) 06:50, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

[67], [68]

Hello @Richard-of-Earth. How do you feel about these links being used as sources? Kelly The Angel (Talk to me) 07:04, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Howdy @Kelly The Angel:. The first, reverso.net, is AI-generated that obscures the true source. The second, academic.ru, seems usable as it cites it sources. I found this and have added it to the article. That should cover it. I still am interested in who is behind zvukibukvy.ru. Richard-of-Earth (talk) 07:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It's unclear, there is zero information about the owners on the website. There are many published dictionaries of Russian slang, and academic.ru helpfully references them, so I'd prefer to use that source. Alaexis_¿question? 22:44, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

March 14

Can anyone verify if this [69] source is reliable? And may I use it for citing? A user has recently removed the citations for using this source by saying that "the author is not even a historian" [70][71] although according to the back of the cover of the book, at "About the author" section, it states that he's a historian. Jonharojjashi (talk) 11:11, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't find evidence that Venkatesh Rangan is or isn't a historian. That said, the book is published via Notion Press, an Indian self-publishing company, which calls the credibility of the book into question. Cortador (talk) 11:18, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Well the book is published by Subbu Publications [72], and can anyone (who has more expertise in verifying Indian books) give his conclusions here? That is whether I can use it for citing in Wikipedia pages? Jonharojjashi (talk) 12:24, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'd trust any "myth-busting book" unless it's widely cited by reputable historians. Seems like a WP:REDFLAG if the publisher needs to say it.... Woodroar (talk) 14:42, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

A publisher publishing [73] isn’t a reliable source. Doug Weller talk 19:33, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I am still perplexed because here in the first paragraph it mentions : [74]

Venkatesh is a senior finance professional working in Mumbai with a deep and passionate interest in Indian history. Over the years, he has researched the original 18th-century records, such as bakhars, daftars, kaifiyats, hakikats, thailis, tarikhs, residency correspondences and foreign diplomatic dispatches. With an academic and professional experience spanning multiple continents, he believes in understanding Indian historical events in a global context. With a reading list drawn from regional and world non-fiction literature, he is enthusiastic about exploring hidden connections between the past and the present.

And here : [75]

About the Author
Venkatesh Rangan is an author and historian who has written acclaimed non-fiction works such as "The First Republic" and "Age of Pi and Prose" previously. He has also participated in several national and international academic seminars, conferences and literary festivals on Indian history.

Also here : [76]

About the author (2022)
Venkatesh is a historical non-fiction writer who has written books and research papers and presented his ideas at several government and private academic institutions. His first book, The First Republic, was well received by a wide spectrum of readers and won acclaim from several celebrated public intellectuals. For the current work, Venkatesh has researched several rare historical Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts and inscriptions. He has also studied Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Persian texts for the same.

Does that still makes his historical books, historical researches and credibility unreliable? Jonharojjashi (talk) 13:42, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

All of those author bios were provided by the author or publisher. Self-publishers like Notion Press often use a bio provided by the author or write something favorable and flattering. In either case, we can't use it. To prove the author's credentials, we need to see what reliable, secondary/independent sources say about Venkatesh Rangan. Unfortunately, I looked and couldn't find much at all—which suggests that he isn't a source we should cite on Wikipedia. Woodroar (talk) 13:53, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Not sure why I wasn't pinged (or even asked to elaborate before posting this here), considering I am the said user who removed it. Venkatesh is a senior finance professional, not even a historian. What he is doing is essentially a hobby, he has no credentials. This is like me writing a book and others citing it. HistoryofIran (talk) 18:29, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

I am still perplexed because in that paragraph itself it mentions : [77]

Over the years, he has researched the original 18th-century records, such as bakhars, daftars, kaifiyats, hakikats, thailis, tarikhs, residency correspondences and foreign diplomatic dispatches. With an academic and professional experience spanning multiple continents, he believes in understanding Indian historical events in a global context. With a reading list drawn from regional and world non-fiction literature, he is enthusiastic about exploring hidden connections between the past and the present.

And here : [78]

About the Author
Venkatesh Rangan is an author and historian who has written acclaimed non-fiction works such as "The First Republic" and "Age of Pi and Prose" previously. He has also participated in several national and international academic seminars, conferences and literary festivals on Indian history.

Also here : [79]

Venkatesh is a historical non-fiction writer who has written books and research papers and presented his ideas at several government and private academic institutions. His first book, The First Republic, was well received by a wide spectrum of readers and won acclaim from several celebrated public intellectuals. For the current work, Venkatesh has researched several rare historical Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts and inscriptions. He has also studied Tibetan, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic and Persian texts for the same.

Does that still makes his historical books, historical researches and credibility unreliable? Jonharojjashi (talk) 13:55, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jonharojjashi, please stop posting the same or similar messages. This is your third time posting what is effectively the same comment. Woodroar (talk) 14:00, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Sorry, I was unaware of a rule as such, and I don't remember posting the same or similar reply 3 times. Jonharojjashi (talk) 14:19, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Venkatesh could read all the books in the world, still does not change that he is not WP:RS per the comments that have been presented to you. HistoryofIran (talk) 23:38, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Joseph Edelman

I'm currently trying to improve the page for Joseph Edelman and another editor reverted my edit saying it is not eligible for use on Wikipedia. This is a university website placing information on charity about all contributors, not just one person. I'm looking to verify if this source can be used or shall I search for more eligible source here? The text I want to add:

In 2015, Edelman donated $470,000 to UC San Diego for the Advancing College Mental Health (ACMH) pilot program, aimed at supporting undergraduates pursuing mental health professions.

. Llama Tierna (talk) 21:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

What I am noting is that the recipient of a large donation is blatantly not a third-party source, and thus does not show inclusion is due. (The editor who inserted that has also been inserting other claims of donation to the page based on a WP:PRIMARY source, the Edelman Foundation's tax filings.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 21:13, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm not even sure the page belongs in Wikipedia. I have a suspicion that its purpose is to promote supposed good works by this person, and make sure the world knows about them. Uporządnicki (talk) 21:26, 14 March 2024 (UTC)

@AzseicsoK, I improved the page per suggestion of the Wikipedia founder @Jimmy Wales following our conversation on his talk page. He suggested to expand the page, so let's invite him here as well. If the page is not notable and should be deleted, anyone is welcome to nominate it for deletion and reach the consensus among the editors. By the way, we are discussing a particular source on this Noticeboard, so why don't you take the issue of deletion somewhere else? I'm looking for help related to a particular source here. Llama Tierna (talk) 20:38, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Nat Gertler has stated a clear objection; do you understand the objection. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 11:12, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Sonic

@The Kip @David Tornheim Good evening I hope I am not disturbing you Mr. David and Mrs/Mr. Kip but I wanted to ask you something please, I would like to be able to fix something in Sonic X wiki regarding the plot of the seasons and episodes obviously my reliable source is the anime itself with the original version, however there is a problem how can I put a source which in this case is a streaming site (precisely [80]https://archive.org/details/sonic-x-complete-series-discotek-media-japanese-language-collection-bluray-rips-mp4-english-subs/Season%2B3%2B(Subtitled)/3-26%2BWhere%2BPlanets%2Bare%2BBorn%2B(Subtitled).mp4 )? Is it possible to put him as a reference? Or can I at least put in parentheses the scene, the character who says the speech at tot minute until tot minute? Because I wouldn't know how to do to prove that I'm not making things up and I checked the site of [81]http://web.archive.org/web/20130617034121/http://www.teamartail.com/sonicx/51/ but but it only has the screenshots not scripts or text or anything else how could it be solved in this case for the source? Is it possible to do as I said before? Please I need some help 😔 Best regards Crystal890 (talk) Crystal890 (talk) 00:28, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

With all due respect, I’m probably not the correct person to ask about this. The Kip 00:31, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• Crystal890 You usually don't need a source for a plot summary, but if other editors disagree on what you put in the plot, you will have to strive for WP:consensus at the talk page. Please see WP:MoS/Writing_about_fiction#Plot_summaries_of_individual_works, which says, "Because works of fiction are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source." There are some exceptions such as interpreting the work. If it has not been released yet, I don't know what the rule for that is.--David Tornheim (talk) 00:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Allkpop

What is the reliability of Allkpop for K-pop-related articles?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

Allkpop is the English-language K-pop and celebrity gossip site and fan blog owned by 6Theory Media, which also owns Tokyohive. The site contains extensive Korean culture-related news coverage and rumours that are aimed at non-Korean audiences, this does not itself as a generally reliable source and also claims to be cited by major news organizations. They also made occasional interviews and special reports, which counts as first-hand journalism. It also licensed to stream MAMA Awards. I consider the site itself was generally unreliable for K-pop articles.

allkpop.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com sjh (talk) 04:51, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

You should provide more context but here's all the previous discussions that are about allkpop: [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87]

It's also listed under WP:WikiProject_Korea/Reliable_sources#UR as being unreliable although that's just a Wikiproject. Traumnovelle (talk) 04:58, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

@Traumnovelle: Some articles like this are poor for using as a source. Although this site publishes rumours and conjecture in addition to accurately reported facts, however, some information on this site may or may not be true and Allkpop makes no warranty as to the validity of the claims. sjh (talk) 07:41, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

If the site itself doesn't consider itself reliable I fail to see how it can be considered reliable for Wikipedia. Traumnovelle (talk) 09:17, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

“Makes no warranty as to validity” is just a standard legalese disclaimer; websites of many RS have similar disclaimers. Judge reliability based on substance. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 11:08, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

Hi SarahJH07, I've removed "RfC:" from the section heading to prevent confusion since this discussion was not set up as a formal request for comment, which would solicit input from editors through the feedback request service. If you would like to make this discussion a request for comment, please apply the {{rfc}} template to this discussion according to the instructions at WP:RFCST and add "RfC:" back to the section heading. Thanks. — Newslinger talk 21:58, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The Shortcut: reliable source?

The author would be Matt Swider, who created this site on November 8, 2021. He has 25 years of experience being a renowned technology journalist, is the former US Editor-in-Chief of TechRadar and is among the top tech reporters in the US on Twitter. He has his journalism degree from Penn State University and launched Gaming Target while also contributing to publications Ars Technica, G4TV, GamePro, PlayStation: The Official Magazine and even some local US newspapers. https://www.theshortcut.com/about

I want to highlight, that my intention is to add this source to the article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Baby_Inc%2E to add the relevant addition of targeted harassment by Sweet Baby Inc. employees to a specific user and the ban of this employee by this action on twitter as the source of the controversy, not any form of opinion by the article itself. The sole purpose of the source "The Shortcut" would be simply as a secondary source (WP:PSTS) to explain the facts.

It is in this function a material cited to produce a more neutral perspective on the whole controversy, because other reliable articles try to state bias opinions of the authors about the ideology of members of this group as facts about the origin of this whole controversy. To solve this Problem:(WP:ACHIEVE NPOV) Biased information can usually be balanced with material cited to other sources to produce a more neutral perspective.

To allow a neutral perspective, it is necessary to highlight the whole context of the source of the controversy. The controversy happen over the things Sweet baby employees have done on Twitter prior to it. Without this information the whole topic can only be based on bias opinions. The text of Wikipedia articles should assert facts, but not assert opinions as fact. It is a fact, what a certain individual wrote on twitter and how twitter reacted to this comment. It is not a fact, what an author want to see as the political or social source for the support of a group afterward. This can be mentioned in a neutral manner after a statement of the fact, that it was not the actual source of the controversy.

i want to highlight, that this is my first post on this board. This post was created after a talk about this source with the user Rhain on his talk-page and after his suggestion to post this to this board. --2003:DF:A715:5000:C8E3:2AB:2B62:BBDA (talk) 11:44, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

It seems quite doubtful this is an RS we could use on Sweet Baby Inc. The about page makes it clear their focus is on 'pass on that time-and-money-saving information to people in their inboxes, like any good journalist would want to do'. Their are some mention of reviews, but it's not the main focus and even for reviews they say 'Brevity – no one wants to read a 10,000-word review. Often, people just want to ask: “Is this good? Should I buy something else?”' While they do mention 'independent journalism', whatever the credentials of their writers and editorial team, there's barely any mention of any focus of the site on the sort of more basic journalism needed to cover anything remotely contentious so I think there's strong reasons to doubt they do a good job at it. The site may or may not be okay for opinions on reviewed products, and for info on stocks levels etc. Nil Einne (talk) 12:36, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I'd add while perhaps they're not a pure WP:SPS like most Substacks are since they have an editorial team, I'm not totally convinced it's the sort of editorial oversight we'd expect, especially when it comes to anything involving living persons. I mean their 'senior editor' seems to be the writer of an awful lot of articles covering contentious stuff [88] making it very unclear who's the one who actually reviews these sort of things. Nil Einne (talk) 12:45, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I just want to highlight, that the opinions of the site and their editorial actions is not part of my question about RS, i am aware, that The Shortcut opinions are probably not RS, but i want to stress, that this source could be used as a secondary source (WP:PSTS) for specific and vital parts of the controversy to achieve NPOV. WP:BLPSPS is probably the case for the article opinion, but not in the specific small content, that would be used as a source, because the article is the source of material about a living person, that was original written and published by the person themself (WP:BLPSELFPUB). The Shortcut would only be the secondary source of this self-published, primary source to avoid WP:TWITTER-EL

--2003:DF:A715:5000:21F2:F985:6D74:3A9E (talk) 23:56, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

To make it a bit easier to understand. I could misunderstand something. But to quote WP:PSTS:

WP:SECONDARY

Policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources. Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.

The Reliability is necessary to insert an analytic, evaluative, interpretive or synthetic claim of the secondary source.

WP:PRIMARY

A primary source may be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge.

I just want to use the primary source in the secondary source without inserting strictly any form of analytic, evaluative, interpretive or synthetic claim by the secondary source to remain in the primary policy. 2003:DF:A715:5000:21F2:F985:6D74:3A9E (talk) 00:09, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The Shortcut currently appear to have two articles directly about Sweet Baby Inc. They are; Sweet Baby Inc. detected: What actually happened and why should you care?, and Sweet Baby Inc.'s Wikipedia page is missing key facts – here's the unbiased context. There is also one other article that mentions Sweet Baby Inc in passing. All three were written by the same author, Adam Vjestica, formerly a writer turned hardware editor for TechRadar, and current senior editor at The Shortcut.

I would be sceptical of ruling this source reliable, solely for the purpose of laundering screenshots that purport to be tweets made by staff employed by Sweet Baby Inc. Even if it were reliable, there would be a question of whether this actually constitutes due or undue weight that would need to be assessed at the article's talk page. They are asserting certain things as factual that no reliable source that I've read about the recent events have asserted, while also downplaying the intense level of harassment and doxing attempts made against the company and its staff. However some of it does match with what some unreliable culture war focused sources, like Bounding into Comics, FandomWire, and That Park Place have said. The first article by The Shortcut on the Sweet Baby Inc situation does come across as more than a bit like victim blaming, and their second one about our article on the company takes umbrage with our content, despite it being verifiable to actually reliable sources.

In terms of use by others, I've not been able to turn up anything substantial from a quick search, aside from one brief mention in an article by The Verge about Twitter restricting the reach of links to Substack. Nor have I been able to find any RS writing about the site in general. It's possible I'm using the wrong search terms though, given the publication's choice in name it's difficult to filter them from background noise about shortcuts in games, or use of shortcuts on computers. Sideswipe9th (talk) 00:58, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

That second article's claims that some of our article is incorrect—despite it being very clearly sourced to reliable sources—is certainly not helping its case. I would also hope that a news article claiming to have "the unbiased context" would do better than to present an out-of-context quote from the company's CEO about convincing employers to listen to one's ideas (as if that somehow proves the company is "forcing diversity"), or the completely unrelated quote from an "ex-employee" (former intern) whose comments have no relevance to the company whatsoever. The article also focuses on the accusations by "gamers" but does little to give any context from the other side (besides "journalists staunchly defend their version of events" and "this is something that Sweet Baby Inc. has denied"). Reliable sources are allowed to be biased but to claim you're not—while, in my opinion, proving otherwise—is not a good start. – Rhain ☔ (he/him) 02:00, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Heh, I'm actually kinda sceptical of the research The Shortcut claims to have done. They said According to The Shortcut’s research, there was also no encouragement given to “avoid the games” that Sweet Baby Inc. had been involved in., which is odd considering the still live Steam curator group has sixteen reviews in it, all of which are "Not Recommended" because the involvement of Sweet Baby Inc in each game's development process. Now it's true that the curator's about description does say that it's a tracker for games involved with the company, but the researchers at The Shortcut clearly couldn't have looked too deep into the group as they clearly missed the reviews. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I just want to highlight, that the opinions of the site and their editorial actions is not part of my question about RS, i am aware, that The Shortcut opinions are probably not RS.

I once again state, that i honestly don't care about the opinions of editors of the Sweet baby Inc article on wikipedia or the opinion of The Shortcut to somehow push a claim, that one of these opinions about this controversy would be RS etc. This is not a topic to make critics about the articles of The Shortcut, explicit articles released after the opening of this topic.

In the same sense it is highly not NPOV to call tweets, made by a staff employed by Sweet Baby Inc only "purport" for this topic, while the actual RS used on the Sweet Baby Inc. here on Wikipedia article used the same account tweets and even some of the same tweets in their articles and even Wikipedia is using this right now to state facts in this article.

To claim at the same time, that these tweets would be WP:DUE is inconsistent as well, because it would make a large area of this topic in the Sweet baby Inc page about these tweets again on Wikipedia similar undue weight and it would have to be removed, thereby making the whole controversy missing a huge part of its origin.

it should be highlighted, that the review system of Steam doesn't give any other option of wording for a review, except recommendations and that a recommendation is not a call for avoiding a game, it is the typical word used on Steam for any review. Maybe a lack of understanding about Steam gives you there a unjustified sceptical view.

--2003:DF:A715:5000:21F2:F985:6D74:3A9E (talk) 03:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is not a topic to make critics about the articles of The Shortcut, explicit articles released after the opening of this topic. In this discussion, per your request, we are assessing the reliability of The Shortcut. This is absolutely the place for us to be critical about their content, whether or not it is factually correct, and whether or not they have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. That is what this noticeboard does.

Now if you're asserting that The Shortcut is not a reliable source, then we don't really have anything more to discuss here. If it's not reliable, there's no way we would use it in any article, let alone one that's currently at the focal point of a controversy. Sideswipe9th (talk) 04:08, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And my request was 3 times already to differ between primary facts in a single article and the opinions of the site and their editorial actions as this is not part of my question about RS, i am aware, that The Shortcut opinions are probably not RS, but i want to stress, that this source could be used for a primary source(WP:PSTS) for specific and vital parts of the controversy to achieve NPOV in a vocal point of a controversy.

I even explained this heavily with quotes by Wikipedia:

But to quote WP:PSTS:

WP:SECONDARY

Policy: Wikipedia articles usually rely on material from reliable secondary sources. Articles may make an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim only if it has been published by a reliable secondary source.

The Reliability is necessary to insert an analytic, evaluative, interpretive or synthetic claim of the secondary source.

WP:PRIMARY

A primary source may be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge.

I just want to use the primary source in the secondary source without inserting strictly any form of analytic, evaluative, interpretive or synthetic claim by the secondary source to remain in the primary policy.

It is oblivious, that someone, who is trying to judge the same Tweets once as a fact and than as unreliable and as "purport" and than even tries to argue about WP:DUE ignores simply huge parts of this argument, that

a) these tweets are partly backed by already RS sources to be self-published primary source. A specific tweet may be useful as a self-published, primary source. WP:TWITTER-EL

b) ELNO#10 makes it necessary to give a different reliable source for the primary source, that the tweet in itself.

c) it is possible to use The Shortcut as a source for a primary source by simply following WP:Secondary Policy, to not make in the article an analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claim with The Shortcut, because it is not for itself a reliable secondary source. It still can be a reliable source of a primary source.

--2003:DF:A715:5000:21F2:F985:6D74:3A9E (talk) 05:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

to achieve NPOV NPOV does not mean WP:FALSEBALANCE. There is no need to compromise on sourcing standards to try to reach a balanced article. More generally, it seems it is indeed your hope to use the Shortcut to 'launder' the primary sources / tweets themselves (as Sideswipe9th mentions above), so you can then insert them into the article. This as a source for a primary source concept you have come up with is novel, but it is not supported by Wikipedia's policies in letter or in spirit. You're not going to find some loophole that lets you get tweets into the article no matter how much WP:WIKILAWYERING takes place, particularly not when you are conceding that The Shortcut is not a reliable source. MrOllie (talk) 12:44, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

thx for linking these 2 links, as i am new to this format of writing, i will lay down my case and excuse my Lawyering, if it took place. But i will hint, that certain elements of this controversy is clearly a matter of WP:UNDUE or WP:FALSEBALANCE and despreatly need to be fixed.

For example: The curator group received increased attention in February when a Sweet Baby employee asked others to report it for failing Steam's code of conduct. in the article in question was for no reason altered from the actual RS quoted for it.

"They asked their followers to report it and its creator due to it failing Steam’s code of conduct," 93.237.171.157 (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Since you are new here, I'll mention that WP:REGISTER has some advantages. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:02, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

that the review system of Steam doesn't give any other option of wording for a review, except recommendations and that a recommendation is not a call for avoiding a game Not only is a "not recommended" tag a clear recommendation to avoid the game, back at the end of February before the social media stuff happened the logo for the Sweet Baby Inc detected curator was the Sweet Baby Inc company logo with the red no symbol superimposed onto it. The curator list itself contains only games that Sweet Baby Inc have been involved with in some way, with verification taken from the company's website, newsletter, game credits, or in the case of one game a blog post by the game's primary developers saying they had brought in Sweet Baby Inc for narrative consultation. The curator list was very clearly intended to tell its followers to avoid games that this company had some sort of involvement in. Sideswipe9th (talk) 17:41, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is a typical example for the reason, why Editors, who repeatedly or seriously fail to adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, any expected standards of behaviour, or any normal editorial process may be blocked or restricted by an administrator. One of these actions would be to demand, that you are in a similar discussion on the talk page on this article, that uses WP:PROVEIT for your argument, but ignore this policy in this case.

Once again you ignore the simple facts, that Steam calls any negative review a recommendation. The negative recommendation to a game in public is not a public statement to avoid it, even if this is claimed by others/you.

In the recommendation description is simply a link to the prove of involvement of the company in a game. This is not a statement to avoid the game.

The curator list was very clearly intend to list the games Sweet Baby Inc was involved in without even giving any reasoning for the dislike. The about page clearly state the actual purpose of the list to be a tracker for games involved with Sweet Baby Inc. 93.237.171.157 (talk) 18:09, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

and RS actual stated, that the curator list doesn't give a reasoning for the negative recommendation beyond a proof of their involvment. --93.237.171.157 (talk) 18:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

93.237, this would be so much easier if you just said exactly which source(s) you want to cite and what statement(s) you want to cite it/them for. Woodroar (talk) 18:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:ASPERSIONS - If you're going to accuse someone of blockable offenses, provide diffs. and reasoning.

Saying a game being tagged as "not recommended" by a steam curator means the curator isn't telling you to not buy the game is a terrible hill to pick to die on and hurts any arguments for inclusion on the source.

It is, in my opinion, an argument made in bad faith by the author that hurts the credibility of the article. Given people followed the group to know which games not to buy, I would go as far as to say the entire statement is irrelevant.

That being said, there may very well be statements inside that it can be sourced for which we needed the door to open on in a secondary source, which this is.

Maybe something in there is worth attributing to him, or is worth sourcing to the article as something that indisputably happened. I don't know what, but that's why we have the discussion process. I won't make a sweeping statement like "the entire thing has no value,"

It would be nice if you proposed some sentences or additions from the source, because right now, I don't think it's appropriate for every statement contained within. DarmaniLink (talk) 23:13, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think even SBI's biggest detractors would claim the group isn't about telling people what games to avoid, that's what "not recommended" means. Harryhenry1 (talk) 02:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I think this source is reliable when it comes to factual basis of the material. Other sources previously used in the article don't really affect reliability of this one for one simple reason - these sources, for the most part, don't even mention information used here, and when they do mention it, some part of information gets omitted. I don't think that information provided here contradicts any major points in previously used sources, please do correct me if I'm wrong - with citations. Cheers --Moon darker (talk) 06:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

My main issue is "to what extent is it reliable." We would probably have to use it with a caveat that any statement which would need to be attributed, so anything which doesn't reference a tweet or otherwise summarize primary source material should likely not be included. Which, I'm fine with. DarmaniLink (talk) 10:35, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

The Jakarta Post

Is the Jakarta Post generally reliable for Indonesia-related articles?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

https://thejakartapost.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com sjh (talk) 13:54, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Is there an actual editorial dispute on Wikipedia over its reliability? - David Gerard (talk) 16:26, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

No. sjh (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Based on the WP-article, my default assumption is "Probably as good as any (Indonesian) newspaper, context matters." Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:06, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

La Teja (Costa Rican newspaper)

I was planning to write an article where one of the main sources would be from lateja.cr. I see that it is used sometimes as a resource for Costa Rican subjects. Can anyone more experienced than me in what constitutes as an RS weigh in? Lettler^{hello • contribs} 15:02, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

La Teja is a national newspaper and seems to be part of other useful sources [89]. What are you planning on using this source for? Ramos1990 (talk) 03:02, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I was planning to write about a sort of micronation that was formed in the 90s. The source is this: [90] @Ramos1990 Lettler^{hello • contribs} 03:16, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

naval-encyclopedia.com

This source appears to be a self published site - about page here, and as an editor is insisting in removal of any reliable sources tags (i.e. [91], I've brought the source here to review whether or not it is a reliable source.Nigel Ish (talk) 16:16, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree that it's not reliable and I don't see this as a close call. It's self-published and the owner makes no claim to be an expert (WP:SPS). Some articles (like the linked one) have good references, but many don't, and some point back at Wikipedia, creating a potential WP:CIRC problem. If an article on an unreliable self-published site uses good sources, then cite those sources. Mackensen (talk) 16:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

Yup, clearly doesn't meet WP:RS. 17:24, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

I think your assessment is on-point, its not a reliable source. Note sister sites tanks-encyclopedia.com, truck-encyclopedia.com, and plane-encyclopedia.com. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:38, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

WikiProject specific reliable sources

Dear RSN experts:

In part 382 of the current wikisaga that started earlier this week, I have been considering this page of reliable sources curated by a WikiProject. I am a little worried that this is forming something like WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, but I'm also sensitive to the fact that this more general page may be overloaded and so separating discussions to WikiProjects may be appropriate. Here, it seems a lot of the consensus formed among what I judge to be to small a cadre of editors, but maybe that can be fixed with RfCs and the like. Or, maybe this could be incorporated wholesale (if you all agree) into WP:RSPS. Or maybe we send it to deletion? I don't know, I'm just hoping to get some guidance for those who may know about this sort of thing better than I, because WikiProject-specific guidelines like this are a new one for me. Whaddya think?

jps (talk) 23:35, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

• I don't see a problem with the page you are referring to [92]. It of interest to that particular WikiProject. Edits by its members still need to conform to Wikipedia editing policies and guidelines. I think there are bigger fish to fry, such as the state of a number of LDS articles. Personally, I don't see the need to worry about this. Also, I think WikiProject guidelines are not so uncommon. Check out WikiProject Books guidance for writing non-fiction book articles here. There is general guidance for WikiProject Book members here. There is guidance for members at WikiProject Physics here. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:17, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

During recent extensive discussions with a few LDS project members, I think the page you are referring to was mentioned once. I don't see this being used to preempt Wikipedia site-wide policies and guidelines. No one is pointing to this page as some kind of authority. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:24, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

One more example: WikiProject Medicine also has guidance for members/editors: here. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:31, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Actually, I was pointed to it a few times by more than one person as though it represented authoritative consensus. My concern is not with "guidance". My concern is strictly about there being an entirely separate page of sources with claims that the reliability had been determined, but it seems the discussion did not happen here. jps (talk) 00:42, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Another example is WP:KO/RS, mentioned in a section above. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 13:25, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

A WikiProject source list like that only represents "consensus" among a niche group of editors who are interested and involved enough in a certain topic to join said WikiProject. In this particular case, it is quite possible (even likely) that most of the editors who built that list and participated in the pertinent WikiProject discussions are personally members of that religious movement, which would create a systemic bias. So take it with a grain of salt, and feel free to raise any sources here that have an assessment you question or disagree with, to gain broader community input. Left guide (talk) 01:33, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Should we reassess all those sources? Like, I'm not sure about any of them. The Association for Mormon Letters being listed as "reliable" is pretty concerning given the current arbcom case and discussions about that specific organization being embroiled in a COI scandal at AN/I. jps (talk) 13:17, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Summoned from jps's post on the wikiproject. Seven of the sources listed there have links to archived discussions at this noticeboard, so I doubt those represent a local consensus, and rehashing here might not be the best use of time. I see that the obviously problematic sources (apologetic, self-published, and primary sources with questionable accuracy) are marked red. Sources that may not be completely independent are marked yellow with "additional considerations" like "should only be used to demonstrate an official viewpoint of the LDS Church". Those notes seem reasonable to me. The green ones mostly look reasonable too. Deseret News is apparently the most controversial and has been discussed here 4 times. The notes in the description say, "The Deseret News is considered generally reliable, however, it is owned by a subsidiary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and there is no consensus on whether the Deseret News is independent of the LDS Church, so it should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. The publication's statements on topics regarding the LDS Church should be attributed.". Based on the "description" notes alone, I might switch Journal of Book of Mormon Studies to yellow ("additional considerations") due to the additional considerations listed there. It might be a good idea to discuss Association for Mormon Letters because of the Arbcom case, but it would be unfortunate if that discussion became a drama outlet for pent up frustration with wiki-politics or whatever. ~Awilley (talk) 15:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

In theory, providing a list of subject-specific RSes is one of the most helpful things a WikiProject can do. In theory. Levivich (talk) 15:54, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

• In general I find WikiProject subject-specific source lists to be helpful, they come with some downsides but those downsides are I think largely reflective of the downsides of WikiProjects in general (NPOV, OWN, fan club, etc) rather than limited to these lists. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:33, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Cool. Perhaps we should link back from WP:RSPS then so that people know about these other lists? WP:KO/RS is way more extensive than even the one I brought. jps (talk) 18:28, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

There's a partial list at WP:RSP § Topic-specific pages, which can certainly be expanded, and the category Category:WikiProject lists of reliable sources. These topic-specific lists are useful for indexing source discussions for sources that do not meet WP:RSPCRITERIA and source discussions that take place outside of this noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 20:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Reviews from unreliable sources

In the process of cleaning up references to trash-tier sources that have been found generally unreliable in a broad general RFC, I've been removing reviews of material that are published in such GUNREL sources - on the basis that unreliable sources are prima facie WP:UNDUE, and generally don't meet the bar of being required in order to present an WP:NPOV of the topic.

Some have objected to this on my talk page - though they (repeatedly) didn't want to bring the sourcing discussion to WP:RSN for discussion. So I am.

The question for a given case is: Would it be a violation of NPOV not to include particular opinion statements sourced from a non-RS? Would the particular statements meet the high bar for author-sourced opinions per WP:RSOPINION to be WP:DUE? I didn't find many that IMO would reach that bar, but of course that's a matter for per-article discussion.

In almost all cases there are plenty of reviews in solid RSes, that clearly meet RSOPINION because they are in an RS - and where there aren't, it's arguable we shouldn't need to go to non-RSes for coverage. Non-RS reviews don't count for notability, for example.

Some posited that being a solid RS wouldn't be required for a review source. I must admit I don't buy this one.

A previous discussion of reviews in deprecated sources wasn't keen to make a carveout for them. The main issue was that the source was not reliable, so was unlikely to be an RSOPINION - that RSOPINION requires an RS. There's more chance for a merely GUNREL source meeting the RSOPINION bar - but it's prima facie unreliable so not DUE.

Something presented as RSOPINION in a GUNREL source requires that the author's opinion itself is notable. This gets fraught when a reviewer is slightly notable and has written in RSes previously or after, but the example at hand is in a GUNREL source.

The general opinion of RSN on notable persons' opinions that they've chosen to present in an unreliable source and not a reliable one has not been positive, any more than them presenting a blog post would automatically count as an RS or an expert SPS for RSOPINION. Individual cases may pass. (There's a Max Hastings cite from the deprecated Daily Mail on St Paul's Survives that's so far been kept on the basis of tremendous expertise, for example.)

Review statements on BLPs should be considered as a separate matter. If it's not from a solid RS, it cannot be used to make any statement about a living person. That sounds extremely broad because WP:BLP is broad. This is set out very clearly in RSOPINION as well. We will generally have quite sufficient reviews from solid RSes, thus providing an RSOPINION that complies with WP:BLP.

Broadly speaking: do we have the policy justification for a carve-out of RS sourcing rules for review opinions from GUNREL sources?

It would indeed be a carveout in cases where there had been a reliability RFC, meaning the carveout would require another RFC, I'd think - David Gerard (talk) 18:32, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Generally unreliable isn't a policy designation, it's a guideline. The question is if the source is reliable for the specific use. This really should be answered on a case by case basis and blanket/blind removals should be discouraged. Springee (talk) 18:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This presumes blanket/blind removals, which you haven't shown is happening here. What particular edits would you defend? - David Gerard (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

You asked a generalized question. I gave a generalized reply. Springee (talk) 00:14, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Some reviews are there for a reason, no matter which source it came from and you removing them makes it less encyclopedic and literally takes away to what critics say about any films that has those sources. BattleshipMan (talk) 19:43, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This doesn't in any way address the policy issues or sourcing policies detailed above. Do you have a response to the points raised? The case where this would require an RFC-level carveout from an existing RFC needs addressing, for example - David Gerard (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Generally unreliable sources are presumed to be unreliable and should normally not be used unless there is specific consensus that an article (or group of articles) published by these sources is reliable or otherwise usable. WP:RSOPINION lowers the reliability of opinion pieces published in generally reliable sources; it does not elevate the reliability of opinion pieces published in generally unreliable sources and cannot be used as a method to enable generally unreliable sources to circumvent sourcing requirements. Opinion pieces from sources identified as unreliable are subject to WP:ABOUTSELF just like any other articles published in sources identified as unreliable, and the use of WP:ABOUTSELF is further restricted by WP:DUE.

Per WP:ONUS, "The responsibility for achieving consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content", and per WP:BURDEN, "Any material lacking an inline citation to a reliable source that directly supports the material may be removed and should not be restored without an inline citation to a reliable source." — Newslinger talk 20:21, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

In the earlier discussion that David Gerard pointed to, which (using Gerard-like words) wasn't keen to give David Gerard a licence to destroy what many other editors had put in, my comment was: Closers of the Daily Mail RfC stated that there was no intention to exclude opinions. See also the November 2019 thread Opinions in the Daily Mail and the February 2020 thread Daily Mail TV reviews. And David Gerard's mention of "policy" is misleading -- WP:NPOV would only be relevant if the source was in fact not reliable in the situation we're talking about, WP:RSP is essay class, RfC on WP:RSN is about misinterpreting a guideline, the actual real "policy" is WP:NOTCENSORED, if we followed it we would be requiring David Gerard to self-revert all the unjustified changes and apologize to the editors whose work he reverted without the courtesy to notify them. Here's a recent example: in the BLP of Philip Klein, AuthorAuthor had in 2020 added a cite to Washington Free Beacon, David Gerard in 2024 reverted -- and by destroying the statement made it seem that an accusation against Philip Klein had not been refuted. (An IP fixed it around the time that Philip Klein noticed the situation.) (Last I checked there was no RfC that conclusively supported the claim that Free Beacon was GU anyway.) Yet another objection: the topic heading here "Reviews from unreliable sources" is a WP:TALKHEADPOV violation, it's still allowed to think that a review in X is a reliable source for what a reviewer on X thinks. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 21:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

WP:NOTCENSORED is not a valid justification for violating the WP:V policy or a valid method for overriding WP:RS. Listings on WP:RSP, including WP:FREEBEACON, are sourced from discussions on this noticeboard and represent community consensus (a policy). If you take issue with the entry for the Washington Free Beacon (RSP entry), you are welcome to start a new discussion or request for comment about the reliability of that source on this noticeboard, or start a discussion at WT:RSP to suggest a revision to that entry. — Newslinger talk 21:17, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

And David Gerard is welcome to start a new RFC on the reliability of the New York Post. But alas, here we are with this discursive and disruptive nonsense. Οἶδα (talk) 21:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

There's clearly ongoing disagreement about the reliability of the New York Post's entertainment coverage, so I've gone ahead and started the RfC at #RfC: Entertainment coverage of the New York Post (including Decider and Page Six). — Newslinger talk 21:40, 16 March 2024 (UTC) Updated RfC link — Newslinger talk 09:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Overreach to remove all of these citations. As per WP:NYPOST NYP is problematic on NY politics and NYPD in particular; these are movie opinions. I don't edit movie pages and I do not read New York Post <shudder>, but Kyle Smith (critic) is a perfectly reputable critic and these mass deletion campaigns are hurting Wikipedia. Wikipedia should remain WP:NOTCENSORED. GUNREL has carve-outs precisely for situations such as this. When did Wikipedia go from being an attempt at building an encyclopedia to an effort at dismantling an encyclopedia?  Mr.choppers | ✎  21:20, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

The New York Post has been found to be generally unreliable for factual reporting vis-à-vis stories like the Hunter Biden laptop controversy. But now David Gerard is waging an inane crusade to remove basic review criticism. Because apparently an established film critic's opinions on The Lorax soundtrack is not trustworthy and must be removed. Because apparently we are concerned about the factual basis of these subjective evaluations. Or that they are somehow given undue weight. And every single instance should be sought out and summarily removed. And we must believe this is an important task that is worth any of our time and improves the encylopedia. David "raised a lot points" here I guess to confuse people into concern. The RFC was clear enough. We do not need a carveout. Οἶδα (talk) 21:21, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Entertainment coverage of the New York Post (including Decider and Page Six)

What is the reliability of entertainment coverage, including reviews, from the New York Post (nypost.com  ) and its sub-publications Decider (decider.com  ) and Page Six (pagesix.com  )?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Deprecate

— Newslinger talk 21:46, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Added Page Six to RfC question per Endwise's suggestion in the discussion section. In your response, please clearly specify the publication and/or sub-publications that your evaluation refers to, and the types of coverage (e.g. film reviews, celebrity news) that you are evaluating. — Newslinger talk 03:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Entertainment coverage of the New York Post)

• Option 3 or Option 4. There is no need to make a carveout for the New York Post. The Post's entertainment coverage is part of it being a gossip tabloid at absolute best. This is not a paper of quality or renown. Given that so much of its entertainment coverage is about living persons, and the previous RFC noted the Post's fondness for fabrication, allowing any such carveout is likely to be a WP:BLP danger. There's a consistent flow of fresh BLP-violating trash from the Post, especially from Page Six but also from the rest of the paper/site. I would suggest the safest thing is to deprecate its entertainment coverage entirely. At the least, we must note that the New York Post must not be used for any statement concerning living persons - David Gerard (talk) 22:27, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
• I don't know enough to speak on the Post, but for Decider, I'd say option 2. Some of their articles are clickbaity gossip and tend to over-dramatize stories (for instance, this), but those tend to fall under WP:TABLOID. On the other hand, they have some longer-form articles/interviews (example 1, example 2) and reviews (example) that seem perfectly fine and where I have no reason to suspect their reliability. Given that the least reliable articles seem to come from sources that shouldn't be used in any case, I see no reason to extend the "generally unreliable" moniker to all Decider articles. RunningTiger123 (talk) 00:09, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. I've found the NY Post entertainment coverage to be mostly gossipy and i'd avoid it... In fact really all i would use the Post for is sports coverage, which is mostly ok as they employ some good sports writers.. everything else there I would avoid. Spanneraol (talk) 00:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Question - what does "entertainment" mean in this RFC? Celebrity gossip or film reviews?  Mr.choppers | ✎  01:28, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  Yeah... +1. For example this article from NYPost is a pretty standard concert review (not unlike other such reviews they post), and I'd have no issues with someone using it on Pixies (band). The celeb gossip crap posted on NYPost, Decider, and Pagesix.com is a different beast however and something I'd probably argue is generally unreliable. Endwise (talk) 01:37, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  I assumed we were talking about entertainment news reporting rather than reviews. Spanneraol (talk) 02:33, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  This RfC examines all entertainment coverage (including the entire scope of Decider) from these publications, which encompasses both film reviews and celebrity news. If you consider one of these publications to be more reliable for some topics than others, please say so. Please be detailed and specific in your responses, so the RfC closer can carefully evaluate the responses and give a comprehensive closing statement. — Newslinger talk 03:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2, weakly – The Post is tabloid-y but entertainment as a whole has elements of tabloid-y content. For instance, if I was working on an article about internet slang such as Looksmaxxing, I wouldn't have much of an issue using The Post for some cultural reception info. Also concurring with Endwise, I wouldn't have an issue with it for music or a film review. Celeb gossip shouldn't really be used from any tabloid anyway? I don't know much to speak on the other ones. TLA^tlak 03:40, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 on Decider and Page Six. I can't find many (or any significant) examples of RS referencing its reporting based on a cursory Google News search for terms like "Decider reported" or "according to Decider", etc. That said, I also can't find any instances of its reporting being specifically identified as inaccurate or unreliable. Given that, I think Option 3 is the best bet. Chetsford (talk) 03:53, 17 March 2024 (UTC); edited

03:56, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2. I understand why the New York Post can be problematic, but film/music/television/etc reviews are fine. I guess we have to explicitly allow that carve out so overzealous editors don't go around removing them. Jessintime (talk) 04:21, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. Frankly I don't see the reason why reviews from well known film critics (like the Kyle Smith (critic) listed above) or interviews that asks the right questions cannot be used as a primary source just because they are posted onto an unreliable platform. S5A-0043^Talk 11:26, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Entertainment coverage of the New York Post)

The New York Post has been discussed nine times on this noticeboard, including a 2020 RfC which concluded that the source was "Generally unreliable for factual reporting especially with regard to politics, particularly NYC politics with 2 qualifications: a/that it was more reliable in the period before it changed ownership in 1976, and that it is particularly unreliable for coverage involving the NYC police". Discussion at #Reviews from unreliable sources indicates that there is an ongoing disagreement over the reliability of the New York Post's entertainment reviews, and the currently unanswered question at #Using Decider / Decider.com for interviews and reviews indicates that the reliability of Decider (a publication of the New York Post) is an open question. — Newslinger talk 21:42, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Film, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Music. — Newslinger talk 22:03, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Radio. — Newslinger talk 22:09, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

NYP I don't read and so have no opinion. I sometimes read Decider's "stream it or skip it" and haven't gotten any feeling their reviews are noticeably inferior to most other entertainment venues... What would be the justification for changing Decider's entertainment coverage to "generally unreliable" or "deprecated"? I am asking because this discussion needs to clearly summarize any reasons put forward to blacklist this site (and "please read several miles of previous discussion, it's all up there" doesn't cut it). CapnZapp (talk) 23:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I'm not aware of any proposal to blacklist Decider. Since Decider is operated by the New York Post, which was found to be generally unreliable for factual reporting in the 2020 RfC, one of the goals of the current RfC is to determine whether Decider should be considered likewise or otherwise. — Newslinger talk 23:36, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I think this should also cover pagesix.com, a celebrity gossip site ran by NYPost which does entertainment reviews as well. Endwise (talk) 01:22, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Checking the page, it seems like the only (if not primary writer) right now is Nicholas Hautman, and per his about page, He joined the New York Post in 2021 after nearly six years at Us Weekly, where he started his career. He graduated from Hofstra University on Long Island in 2016 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. Spinixster (chat!) 01:33, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I think that is a reasonable suggestion, since Page Six is already listed as a sub-publication of the New York Post at WP:PAGESIX. I've added Page Six to the RfC. Thanks. — Newslinger talk 03:29, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

 Do not pre-empt any conclusions Please don't act as if your preference has already achieved consensus, User:David Gerard, as you did here. Your edit summary NYP is generally unreliable, prima facie WP:UNDUE is inaccurate. The current (pre-discussion) consensus is that NYP is generally unreliable "for factual reporting especially with regard to politics", not that it is generally unreliable in every aspect. CapnZapp (talk) 23:11, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

"generally" means "generally", not "not generally" - David Gerard (talk) 10:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM)

The U.S. Agency for Global Media is a U.S. government agency that runs the U.S. external service (Voice of America) and the surrogate services (RFE/RL, Radio y Television Marti, Alhurra), etc. Prior to 2017, these broadcasters were collectively controlled by the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a semi-independent board. After 2017, the board was abolished and they all now answer to a unitary appointee of the President of the United States (serving as his/her pleasure) and are 100-percent funded by the U.S. Government.
As a reminder:

• An external service reports on the sponsor nation from the sponsor nation's perspective (e.g. the BBC World Service uses British presenters to broadcast information about the UK to other nations).
• A surrogate service reports on a target nation using presenters from the target nation and is designed to act as a "surrogate" for the perceived absence of certain perspective in the target nation's own media (e.g. Russia's RT uses British and American presenters to broadcast information to the UK and USA largely about the UK and USA).

Questions:

1. Is the U.S. external service (Voice of America) RS pre-2017?
2. Is the U.S. external service (Voice of America) RS post-2017?
3. Are the U.S. surrogate services RS pre-2017?
4. Are the U.S. surrogate services RS post-2017?

Chetsford (talk) 03:11, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• For what it's worth I think all four are non-RS but I'm interested in feedback from the community.
  Issues with the functional independence of Alhurra has been lightly touched on in our article on the subject, and we could probably have an entire article just about it. And most of these controversies are pre-2017. Until 1971, RFE/RL was secretly controlled by the CIA [93] - this only stopped after an expose revealed that fact. The ITU and others (e.g. [94], [95]) have said the broadcasts of Radio y Television Marti are designed more to foment subversion in Cuba than disseminate news, and even the U.S.' own audit agency (the GAO) has said it engages in "propaganda". There's a parade of individual examples of serious issues associated with its reporting that are too numerous to mention (e.g. [96]). The U.S. State Department famously ordered VOA to spike an interview with Mullah Omar [97], etc. etc. Chetsford (talk) 03:20, 17 March 2024 (UTC)
• @Chetsford: Since Radio Free Asia (RSP entry) and Voice of America (RSP entry) have both had their reliability examined in previous requests for comment in March 2021 and in September 2021, respectively, would you like to make this discussion an RfC? — Newslinger talk 03:38, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

• I'm concerned that may be premature at this point and am mostly trying to get an informal sense as to whether it might be appropriate to treat all of the USAGM brands (either pre or post-2017) as a single evaluative unit for a future RfC. But maybe I'm unnecessarily elongating the process. What do you think? Chetsford (talk) 03:41, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

  I think your approach is reasonable and I like how your framing of the questions forces editors to consider aspects of these broadcasters that may be overlooked with a broader "Is X reliable?" question. Personally, I believe these four questions would make an excellent RfC statement (though I'd rephrase them to replace "RS" with something clearer), with the remainder of the text in your 03:11, 17 March 2024 edit positioned underneath. Editors who want to offer separate evaluations for each broadcaster can do so in their responses and the RfC closer should be able to summarize the consensus for each broadcaster separately.

  If the only thing holding you back from launching the RfC is uncertainty on the phrasing, I'd wait for a couple more comments to confirm that the phrasing is appropriate, then I'd move straight to the RfC. The 2021 Voice of America RfC had high participation, so a new RfC would be needed to overturn its results. — Newslinger talk 05:05, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, Newslinger - that makes total sense. My reticence in treating each of these one-by-one is that they're essentially just different logos on a single organization (not unlike Taco Bell and KFC being two different menus of Yum Brands versus two different companies) with a single controlling mind and editorial staff who seamlessly float between the various brands; ergo I find it hard to believe we might say "X is reliable, while Y is unreliable". In any case, I'll plan to follow your advice and reformat this as an RfC after a few more comments. Chetsford (talk) 05:16, 17 March 2024 (UTC)