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Office of Cuba Broadcasting of the United States Government

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

There is a consensus to deprecate any platforms operated by the Office of Cuba Broadcasting of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, including but not limited to Radio y Television Martí (RyTM) and its website, martinoticias.com. Although deprecation is an extreme remedy, most editors in the discussion agreed with Chetsford analysis of reliable sources that have criticized RyTM for its poor editorial controls that fall below professional standards of journalism, presenting opinion as fact, reporting on unsubstantiated information, and promoting propaganda, including anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. The arguments in favor of applying additional considerations or labelling RyTM generally unreliable did not respond to the source anaysis. I will draft something for RSPS and post it there. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:23, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

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Are the platforms of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting of the United States Federal Government's U.S. Agency for Global Media (including Radio y Television Marti, RyTM's website Martínoticias.com, and any publicly undisclosed entities):

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

Note: A previous RfC dealt with the U.S. Agency for Global Media (AGM) of which Radio y Television Marti is one of its DBA names. Half of the participating editors, as of this date stamp and excluding nom, have requested individual DBA names of USAGM be addressed as separate RfCs and indicated their belief that the original RfC is malformed by not doing so. Chetsford (talk) 00:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Office of Cuba Broadcasting)

• 4 While it's possible to find individual instances of WP:USEBYOTHERS, implicit in that is the idea that refusal of use by others (when stated) acts as a rejoinder. Moreover, common sense would dictate that robust content analysis on an outlet's unreliability or propensity to publish falsehoods should be given more weight in source evaluation than a drive-by "according to X" mention in a different RS. In this case:

• A 1992 report by the GAO found that OCB's inhouse "critic and his predecessor have repeatedly expressed concern about editorializing" while two outside consultants found its "programs lacked balance and did not comply with standards". [1]
• A decade later, nothing had improved. That year, the GAO found that, from 2004-2007, Radio y Television Marti had a "perpetually poor standard of journalism", editorialized "the presentation of individual views as news", incorporated "offensive and incendiary language" in its reporting, and reported on "unsubstantiated" rumors. [2]
• In a 2006 headline, the New York Times described RyTM as "U.S. propaganda". [3]
• In 2018, Mother Jones chronicled the aggressive and questionable tone of Radio y Television Marti's reporting, including its news reports that deounced George Soros is a "multimillionaire Jew" and the "architect of the financial collapse of 2008". [4]
• In 2019, journalism professors at USC and journalists from Telemundo concluded Radio y Television Marti was "riddled with bad journalism" and "propaganda". [5]
• A 2019 article in Tufts Universitys Fletcher Forum of World Affairs classified RyTM as part of a medley of U.S. Government "influence operations". [6]
• As recently as 2021, USAGM's own staff -- including staff from RyTM -- stated that management meddled with editorial independence by taking "actions that did not align with USAGM’s firewall principles". [7]

Chetsford (talk) 00:37, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

• 2 or 3 Don’t see any need to deprecate, but also not sure where this source would be used for given it’s a US outlet aimed at Cuba staffed by Cuban exiles. Clearly biased, if used, should be used with caution. Toa Nidhiki05 05:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 2 both pre and post 2017 There are some (concerning, but not catastrophic) issues and clear bias, but relatively insignificant issues with quality and clear bias does not make a source unreliable per se. Therefore caution should be applied, particularly when using it for controversial issues. FortunateSons (talk) 12:53, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4. It's a propaganda outlet broadcasting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, among other things. Cortador (talk) 14:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4 per the sources presented by Chetsford. While biased sources can sometimes be used, sources that publish false or misleading information cannot; and sources that have a systematic bias that pushes them to intentionally publish false things are one of the cases that deprecation exists for. Bad journalism alone would just be unreliability, but systematic bad journalism in the service of a particular perspective is not something we ought to use as a source anywhere, because it is clear that the problems are not simple incompetence but the result deliberate intent. The OCB has done things like creating fake social media accounts to spread propaganda, or pay journalists under the table to press a particular point of view. We wouldn't accept a source like this from any other government; when a source is outright being used as an example of government-run propaganda in most academic studies discussing it, we're past the point where there's anything salvageable to it. --Aquillion (talk) 16:28, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4 per Aquillion and Chetsford. Anything notable enough to include in an article would have much better sources. NightHeron (talk) 16:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4 This is a source explicitly designed to deceive and disseminate propaganda. Simonm223 (talk) 17:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 3 per u:Chetsford's arguments. Alaexis_¿question? 19:43, 26 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4 An explicit state-sponsored propaganda outfit with no desire or ability to check facts.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
• 4 The difference between 3 and 4 for me is whether a source is merely failing to verify facts, or if it's outright attempting to deceive. Many sources have no fact-checking process, but because they're not attempting to deceive they can at least be counted on for very basic things like what their own opinions are or certain kinds of direct quotes. Propaganda outlets like the OCB don't even meet that bar: since they're trying to lie to the reader, the appropriate thing to do when they say something is to think it's less likely to be true than it was before. Loki (talk) 22:40, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Office of Cuba Broadcasting)

What sites are covered by this RfC? Template:Link summary might be useful here to understand the extent of usage on Wikipedia. - Amigao (talk) 21:46, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

This RfC covers the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) and any platforms it operates.
As of the date-stamp, OCB is known to operate two platforms: Radio y Television Marti (broadcast) and martinoticias.com (online). There is functionally no difference between RyTM and martinoticias.com (i.e. CNN and cnn.com; Fox News and foxnews.com, etc.).
Because this RfC covers OCB and any platforms it operates, it would also include platforms the existence of which is not today publicly known. In other words, if — next year — it was discovered OCB was covertly publishing a bimonthly magazine called ¡Ahora o Nunca!, that magazine would be covered by the RfC unless it were disentangled through a separate RfC. (The construction of the RfC in this way is necessary due to other USAGM brands having been previously discovered disseminating lies about the identity of their controlling mind, relationship to one another, or even the very fact of their existence. See, for example: [8]).) Chetsford (talk) 22:35, 27 March 2024 (UTC)

• martinoticias.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

So around 56 links in the mainspace as of the time stamp. - Amigao (talk) 13:50, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

While RS evaluation doesn't necessarily preclude OR, I'll try to avoid it as it's not necessary in this case due to the vast array of evidence that already exists, however, I do note instances of martinoticias.com being used to source articles on baseball players stating that they "defected from" Cuba while all other RS (that aren't, themselves, sourcing martinoticias.com) are using a much more moderate "immigrated from" instead. This seems to validate what the sources suggest is RyTM's editorial objective of reporting whatever wild and unrestrained assertions it feels useful to undermining the vanguard role of the PCC, even if those assertions are completely untethered from reality. Chetsford (talk) 18:09, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Dedham Times

I'd like to continue a discussion (previously here) about the reliability of The Dedham Times, a local newspaper in Massachusetts, US. While the paper's website gives no information about staff, this obituary indicates the paper is now run by two brothers: Scott Heald as "managing editor" and James Heald as "publisher" (which I interpret as a non-editorial role). Many stories do not have a reporter listed; those that do list Scott Heald as the reporter. If the managing editor is also the primary reporter, there is no editorial oversight, and thus I think this should be treated as a self-published source. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 07:30, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Reliable That obituary indicates that there have been at least three different owners of the newspaper, which has been continuously published for over 30 years. Yes, the obit indicates that two of them are from the Heald family, but that's not uncommon among newspapers. The Taylor family owned and published The Boston Globe for 126 years; the current owner installed his wife as the managing director. The Sulzbergers have been publishing the New York Times for 128. I don't think any one would argue that they are not reliable simply due to family ties.

Additionally, the citation in question in this article has an author whose last name is not Heald. In another article, the Dedham Times is cited with two other authors. This article has four more authors. This one has another. I could go on, but I think you get the point. --Slugger O'Toole (talk) 22:53, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• Is there some sort of reputation for errors of fact or distortionist publishing that either the Dedham Times or the Healds have? This being the apparent newspaper of record for a city, and it evidently having a newspaper staff beyond Scott Heald, I'm not really seeing enough to bring me into agreement with the OP's case for unreliability or self-publication. I'll add that newspapers don't always list an author for articles, resulting in articles being credited to the paper itself. Having no byline wouldn't make this New York Times article, just as an example, self-published either, I think. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:14, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Seems reliable to me per Slugger O'Toole. It's a local newspaper but it seems fine. PARAKANYAA (talk) 06:31, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

• Echoing what's already been stated above - it's a local paper of record with nothing indicating unreliability thus far. I wouldn't quite put it on the level of more established sources, but it seems solid for local news concerning its region. The Kip 17:01, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Can I use this as a Reliable source? [Westminster Institute]

This publication, on page 6, says, "For the jihadist, spreading Islam and having someone obstruct you in that process is an attack on Islam. Therefore you are already in a defensive posture and nobody has used a gun on the other side. War is thus triggered simply because the other does not want to be a Muslim". Can I paraphrase that sentence and use that publication as a reliable source in the lead of the Kafir article? Will it need attribution, that is, should any sentence I add using that as a source begin with, "According to...... "?-Haani40 (talk) 12:07, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Dr Sebastian Gorka will provide jfc 100.36.106.199 (talk) 12:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Published by the Westminster Institute, a nn crank right-wing outfit. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 12:30, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Online, it says, "Westminster Institute is a think tank dedicated to individual liberty, highlighting the threats from extremists and radical ideologies. Located in McLean, ..."-Haani40 (talk) 12:39, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Online is not useful, who says that? Slatersteven (talk) 12:45, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I am planning to paraphrase it like this,

While spreading Islam, if anybody obstructs the jihadist, it is considered as an attack on Islam. You are, as a result, already in a defensive stance and the opposing side has not even used a gun. War is therefore started just because someone else chooses not to follow Islam.

-Haani40 (talk) 12:34, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

We do not parrot the opinions of political commentators with links to the alt-right as if they are fact. AndyTheGrump (talk) 12:40, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

So, Can I write, "According to the Westminster Institute, while spreading Islam, if anybody obstructs the jihadist, it is considered as an attack on Islam. You are, as a result, already in a defensive stance and the opposing side has not even used a gun. War is therefore started just because someone else chooses not to follow Islam."-Haani40 (talk) 12:42, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

They are an RS for what they say, but this might well be a wp:undue issue. Slatersteven (talk) 12:46, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Where do you want to use this, and in what context? The Westminster Institute is not a notable body or authority, so their opinion on anything is really irrelevant. Canterbury Tail talk 12:46, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

As I said, thus really maybe more of an undue than RS question. Slatersteven (talk) 12:52, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

Why not both? There are 0 indications of reliability here, it’s the ravings of an ideologue “published” by fellow ideologues. It can both be obviously in violation of DUE and of RS. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I will not add it if it is undue but can I add it to the Divisions of the world in Islam article with the title. "Views of Westminster Institute" (like I said, I will not add it if it is undue)?-Haani40 (talk) 13:00, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

So I guess you guys believe that it shouldn't be used?-Haani40 (talk) 13:02, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

This seems to be the case, yes. Slatersteven (talk) 13:04, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

I also agree with not citing this source in the Kafir article. By way of aside, the proposed prose seems like too close of a paraphrasing. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:01, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The publisher looks very fringe to me, and highly unlikely to have ever been cited as a reliable source by other reliable sources. I'd say find better sources. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:47, 22 April 2024 (UTC)

@Haani40, the author is not exactly an expert, so I would try to find a different source for this. Gorka relies on The Quranic Concept of Power by S. K. Malik to make this assertion, so you could use that book and attribute the claim. Alaexis_¿question? 06:41, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure The Quranic Concept of Power would be considered a reliable source in this context either; S. K. Malik was known as a soldier and military officer, not a religious studies scholar, historian/sociologist/anthropologist of Islam, or Muslim theologian. It at least seems to not be the most authoritative reliable source possible. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 07:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, he's a practitioner rather than a scholar, but if his book is cited by scholars it might still be a good source. Alaexis_¿question? 07:18, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The question is a bit of a moot point now that the editor has been sockblocked. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:25, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Lot of socks trying to make Islam look bad on Wikipedia lately, eh? Simonm223 (talk) 13:34, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

The hostility that various sectors of the project bear toward religion in general and Islam in particular is unfortunate. Perhaps this is a reminder for the community to be vigorous about the quality of sources used to document Islam and Muslim people/events/groups/etc. Islamophobic publications and "countercult" organizations can give themselves official-sounding names like "Westminster Institute". Islamophobic tropes can appear in journalism, even in journalism considered 'mainsteam'. It's better to prioritize high-quality academic sources: books, articles, chapters, etc. written by scholars, especially those with PhD training, such as in history, religious studies, literary criticism, anthropology, etc. and especially when published in peer-reviewed journals or academic presses. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 22:31, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Reliable sources amongst Aussie regional and industry news sites

A good Wednesday to you all.

I'm looking to use articles found on the following news sites. They're not listed amongst the dreaded deprecated or anything. Are they okay to use?

1. https://www.nationaltribune.com.au/topics/australian/ 2. https://www.theleader.com.au/ 3. https://themusicnetwork.com/

MatthewDalhousie (talk) 02:15, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Hmm. Going by the about pages, the St George and Sutherland Shire Leader seems to be a fairly normal WP:NEWSORG and The Music Network a specialist magazine. Both of them would enjoy the same standard treatment, reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact (though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors) [...] reporting from less-established outlets is generally considered less reliable unless otherwise discussed (which I suppose they haven't been). The National Tribune though, it is unclear to me if they have any editorial review process. On the other hand, most of the articles seem to be cited to a press release (out of the ones I looked at), so you may as well cite the press release assuming it's appropriate to use WP:PRIMARY sources for whatever you're doing. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Can you be more specific to uses please? Simonm223 (talk) 11:52, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Thinking of one or two BLPs in the music/arts/charity scene, so just want to see if there's enough reliable source material around. MatthewDalhousie (talk) 00:53, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this source reliable? --> Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Lyme Disease

Hi! I am interested in adding a section to the Lyme disease article on neuropsychiatric symptoms. One of the sources I was thinking on using was an overview. I am not sure if this source abides by wikipedias source rules. If someone could check it out and let me know if it is okay to include along other meta-analyses, that would be super helpful! Here is the link: https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/6/3/104 Miafclark (talk) 15:11, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

I don't know about Healthcare specifically, MDPI journals are usually a bit hit-and-miss but it's not like we've banned it or anything. As long as it doesn't seem too WP:EXCEPTIONAL it should be fine. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:36, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't see an issue with this source. Looks fine to use and if you think it needs attribution, that would work too. Ramos1990 (talk) 03:00, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Use of SPS at Integral theory

I'm concerned about use of a self-published website called "Integral World" which is the work of Frank Visser. While he has published works, I don't think he rises to the level of subject matter expert as required by the exception which would allow the use of his website as a source. Also, Wilber, who is being criticized by Visser, is still living, which makes the use of the SME exception even more dubious. Skyerise (talk) 09:44, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Visser's site is about Wilber's work, not the person. Visser's site is the central hub of discussions regarding Wilber's work, as also noticed by published authors like Mark Hofman. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk! 11:20, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this is an SPS, but his book Ken Wilber: Thought as Passion was published by a reputable academic press, and the book appears to be on this subject, so he might just pass as an SME. It would be much better to reference the actual published book rather than the website. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 11:39, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Iazzzi: thearabianpost.com/ipanewspack.com

Came across this edit and decided to look a bit closer. All of @Iazzzi's edits seem to be additions of citations to these two websites which share an ownership. thearabianpost.com is particularly cited quite extensively on Wikipedia but does not seem to rise much above the level of content farms. Iazzzi's account seems to exclusively used to add spam and I think both addresses should be blocked as spam. Avgeekamfot (talk) 10:33, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Beyond the advertisement-heavy content-farm appearance of the website itself, a little bit of digging reveals two concerning bits:

• One; this appears to be their parent, and they bill themselves as a marketing/content creation firm rather than a news firm. That's a bit suspicious.
• Two; most of their articles lack authors, while the following warning appears at the end of some:

The content powered by our AI models is produced through sophisticated algorithms, and while we strive for accuracy, it may occasionally contain a few minor issues. We appreciate your understanding that AI-generated content is an evolving technology, and we encourage users to provide feedback if any discrepancies are identified. As this feature is currently in beta testing, your insights play a crucial role in enhancing the overall quality and reliability of our service. We thank you for your collaboration and understanding as we work towards delivering an increasingly refined and accurate user experience

Assuming this indicates said articles are AI-generated, then yeah, they've got no place on Wikipedia. The Kip 18:29, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Verifyable handwritten letters from historical figures

I have transcribed a collection of letters written by family members as well as famous people to and from family members. These deal with construction of the CNW railroad across Iowa between 1860 and 1875. I have donated the originals to the CNW historical society and they have published an article from them. I have been told by 'teahouse' that they are not allowed but my 'common sense' tells me that letters written at the time of events are more reliable than books written about events years later. MarkWHowe (talk) 14:45, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

You should read our guidance on the use of primary sources. In particular:

Primary sources are often difficult to use appropriately. Although they can be both reliable and useful in certain situations, they must be used with caution in order to avoid original research. Although specific facts may be taken from primary sources, secondary sources that present the same material are preferred. Large blocks of material based purely on primary sources should be avoided. All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, rather than original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.

Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:34, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the Teahouse discussion that you started, what you were told there is that primary sources are not sufficient on their own to justify the existence of a Wikipedia article. This is correct: Wikipedia's aim as an encyclopedia is to summarise existing knowledge found in secondary sources, so if no secondary sources have written about a topic then it probably isn't suitable for a Wikipedia article. You say in the Teahouse discussion "previous historians have missed details and made wrong assumptions that need correcting": this is not what Wikipedia is for. If you want to correct a misconception which has not previously been addressed by reliable sources, you would be better off publishing an article in the CNW historical society's journal which might then be cited by Wikipedia. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:40, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Did you note that an article has indeed been published in the CNWHS journal? That is also in contention re citeability. MarkWHowe (talk) 15:49, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

We now have two journal articles which can be cited. I will probably cite them, since one is available in pdf format, and see what happens. Does that make sense? MarkWHowe (talk) 15:17, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Very helpful, thank you. MarkWHowe (talk) 15:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

I have been told by 'teahouse' that they are not allowed but my 'common sense' tells me that letters written at the time of events are more reliable than books written about events years later.

My dearest, Brunhilde

The demon machine is coming. I fear we may have to move to the deepest forest of Ohio to be free of the Iron Horse's reign of terror and modernity. Enclosed you will find a three dollar, which should be enough to provide for our 7 children and your sister while arrange for transport next month.

Your Husband

James Reliable

1806

This 1806 letter clearly proves that demons exists and often possess machines. It also proves that Ohio's forest have protective abilities/demon deterrents. 3$ was also enough to feed 9 people for a month in 1806.

OR, maybe James Reliable was a single railroad worker who hated his job and spent his free time high on opium wroting letters to his fictional family while high as a kite?

That's why secondary sources are needed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:03, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Yes! Common sense! MarkWHowe (talk) 03:14, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

Alternatively, the Antebellum culture of folk occultism and diabolism produced for James Reliable the phenomenological experience of interpreting trains as apocalyptic harbingers. Reliable also seems to have tapped into a concurrent stream of Christian theology that emphasized the "Book of Nature" (or natural world) as a sacred space on par with the Bible's sanctity, playing into a cultural/theological trope of nature versus industry (albeit a bit earlier than I might expect). What's common sense to us in 2024 might not have been as common in 1806.

That's to say, I hope that helps demonstrate how this same (hypothetical) primary source can be interpreted in different ways when subject to different analytical perspectives. While it's entirely possible some Wikipedians have the necessary academic training as, say, historians or religious studies scholars necessary to weigh the evidence and arrive at a conclusion that fits the consensus of the field, such qualifications aren't universal. Rather than get bogged down in debates about what a primary source does or doesn't mean, or why it is or isn't significant, on Wikipedia we leave that work to secondary sources. Wikipedia's aim is to learn from and summarize the interpretations and research of journalists, historians, etc. rather than advance primary research of our own. This is a different purpose and praxis than is done in conventional academia. A historian writing a monograph or journal article naturally would, even while learning from secondary sources, consider engaging directly with primary sources ideal and necessary for the core of their work. And as you hint at, proximity to the events is sometimes used as an easy heuristic for dependability—a story passed around decades later is harder to trust than a diary entry written the day it happened. However, all that is part of the historian's enterprise. Wikipedia's task is quite different.

That you donated these letters and transcriptions to the Chicago & North Western Historical Society is awesome, and that they provided grounding for a journal article is even cooler! And journal articles can, in general, be cited on Wikipedia (just be sure to follow all our guidelines and policies while doing so). But there being journal articles about part of a letter collection doesn't necessarily make every letter fair game to cite to fill out an article—that becomes original research. This isn't to say original research in other venues is bad; of course it isn't, since that's what academic history depends on. It's just that over time, the Wikipedia community developed a consensus that that isn't what the Wikipedia project is for. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:13, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Hear, hear! Headbomb (alt) (talk) 14:02, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Grounding for TWO journal articles is even more cool, altho' being the same author detracts slightly I suppose. I never knew about the first one until someone here found it. That's the beauty of a community and why I am so anxious to get something published.

I have seen transcripts of letters used in Wikip as citations a number of times. I'm wondering if it is stipulation to the fact that the writer wrote those words, not that they are necessarily true. Or that the letterhead establishes a fact. Or a date and a signature. How about a scanned copy of a printed document. Or any document for that matter.

Which brings up the matter of adding documents/photos; when I try to upload a jpg it says it can't. I'm missing a protocol. MarkWHowe (talk) 20:39, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Concerning politico report on the nyt

Biden officials "described reporters who refused to correct minor errors or mischaracterizations in stories". https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219 (t · c) buidhe 16:18, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

The broader article describes a long-running spat between the Biden administration and the NYT, with the administration in particular not having much love for the Times. Without any details about what those "minor errors or mischaracterisations" are that the officials believe are there I would not see it as any real cause for concern. BilledMammal (talk) 16:26, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Although I have some reservations about the NYT, I have a lot more reservations about politicos. Selfstudier (talk) 16:31, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

Agreeing with the others, I also think that it’s generally harmless FortunateSons (talk) 10:37, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

While I wouldn't necessarily say the matter is urgent, I'm not so sure I'd call the Times's penchant for distorting "both-sides-ing" harmless either. I'm not very inclined toward this presidential administration's aggrieved sentiments. I'm more attuned to the adjacent observation that the Times tends to downplay the activities of crypto-fascist factions of American politics in a quixotic pursuit of an artificial 'balance'. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 23:02, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

• As I always say for things like this... individual incidents themselves don't matter directly; what matters is whether it affected the source's overall reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. In this case it seems unlikely. --Aquillion (talk) 23:19, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

  Agree with you and Selfstudier. No source is perfect but the Times has a good reputation and this particular issue is almost comically minor and explicitly called “petty” in the source. Dronebogus (talk) 03:17, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

• US Presidential administrations bickering with the press over minor issues and characterizations is par for the course... Its happened in every modern administration and likely will continue to happen until either the office or the free press cease to exist. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:05, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

  Then it’ll just be the President of California trying to censor the press, while we debate it over in Switzerland. Dronebogus (talk) 13:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

insidethegames.biz (2nd review)

I am starting a second RFC on insidethegames.biz (used   in about 6,670 articles), because the change in ownership last year has resulted in the website being more soft towards Umar Kremlev and more critical of the IOC (according to https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1144966/umar-kremlev-has-won-economic-prices). As an uninvolved editor in the subject of the Olympics and Paralympics, how should we classify this source? Also let me know how to improve this RfC: this is the first time I made such a request. --Minoa (talk) 17:33, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Reliability of this book

Please evaluate the reliability of this book Dictionary of Wars. as the author is a specialist in infectious diseases, is assistant clinical professor of medicine at Yale University [9] not any scholar of history. Jonharojjashi (talk) 10:20, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

The Dictionary of Wars appears to be a reliable tertiary source as it is published by Taylor & Francis, a reputable publisher. A review here described it as "a work of formidable scholarship" but finds some faults. The author being a retired professor of medicine does not make the book unreliable and he acknowledges in the preface that several other people helped write the book. However WP:RS says Wikipedia articles should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources and WP:TERTIARY says that Within any given tertiary source, some entries may be more reliable than others. TSventon (talk) 11:01, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Thanks Jonharojjashi (talk) 11:24, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

The 2nd revised edition would also be a lot more reliable than the first edition. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:11, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Jonharojjashi Having read the Librarything link more carefully Dr. Mary-Louise Scully is "a specialist in infectious diseases ... assistant clinical professor of medicine at Yale University", while George Childs Kohn "has written and edited numerous reference works". The connection seem to be that Scully wrote a foreword to Kohn's Encyclopedia of Plague and Pestilence. TSventon (talk) 18:15, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Is North Data reliable?

I would like to know if the information on North Data is reliable enough to be added to the list and as sources. Sönke Joppien (talk) 11:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Can’t speak to reliability (although, like all sources, it would depend on the context of how and when you want to cite it). I can say that we wouldn’t add it to the RSP list. RSP is for sources that have repeatedly been discussed on this board (the “P” in RSP stands for “Perennial”), and North Data has not. Blueboar (talk) 11:57, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure if it’s unreliable or merely not a source for this context, but it just summarises available information (either by hand or automatically, I’m not sure on that); as far as I know, there does not seem to be added value. What do you intend to use them for? FortunateSons (talk) 16:18, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

It would depend on what content you wish to support with it, reliability requires context. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:11, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

HalloweenDailyNews

A source has been called into question on the Michael Myers (Halloween) page. The source home is "HalloweenDailyNews.com". The website in question itself does not appear particularly reliable, but they seem to get direct interviews with horror celebrities. The question is about interviews they conducted and whether they can be used as sources because the overall website does not look reputable. The source being used in the article is is this interview. It has been my understanding for a long time, that direct, one-on-one interviews can be used as sources even if the website itself would not have passed the reliability scrutiny for original content it produces.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 13:30, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I definitely want to be aware of this rule too. I've always felt that was against WP:SPS. I feel like that as its discussing David Gordon Green motivations for the actor from the actor's point of view, we might want a better source here. Horror as a genre is one of the most studied film genres of the 21st century, so I feel like there is going to be some better quality source than this site. Andrzejbanas (talk) 18:24, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Italian lawyer on Azov Neo-Nazi

There is an article in CALCIO: Ultrà ucraini, dalla tregua al Battaglione Azov - East Journal saying "Yet, it's with the contribution of Sect 82 - an ultranationalist far-right group of Metalist football fans, also accused of Nazi sympathies - that by the end of February 2014, the entity that would later give rise to the Azov Battalion is formed."
The author is "He has been a lawyer since 2009. Passionate about sport with a particular interest in its social implications, he has combined his professional activity with an in-depth study of issues and events, sporting and otherwise, in the Eastern European area, also collaborating with the Radio Flash broadcaster and with the Fan's Magazine."
The East Journal website is registered on private with hidden credentials. The "East Journal" has no office no phone number.
The source is used to support "parts of the Azov Brigade had its roots in a group of ultras of FC Metalist Kharkiv named "Sect 82" (1982 is the year of the founding of the group),[29] which had neo-Nazi leanings according to Eastjournal's Paolo Reineri.[34]" sentence in Azov Brigade article. There are numerous academic sources in the article and none mentions this. Yet editors insist the source is reliable [10] : Talk:Azov Brigade#c-RadioactiveBoulevardier-20240311145700-Manyareasexpert-20240311092600
Should we update Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources with EastJournal? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 21:36, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Eastjournal is officially registered as a media outlet (East Journal è una testata registrata presso il Tribunale di Torino) and you can find their editorial team here. It's used a few times on English wikipedia and quite extensively on the Italian one. Here the NYT quotes their chief editor and describes it as an "online newspaper focused on Central and Eastern Europe." I see no reasons whatsoever to doubt its reliability. Alaexis_¿question? 12:35, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

The perennial sources list is only for sources that have been discussed many times, and I can't find any prior discussions on Eastjournal.
As to its reliability I can't see a reason to think it unreliable outright. It's a slightly unusual setup[11] but seems appropriately staffed and there's editorial oversite.[12] It's use by other sources such as NYT (as Alexis noted above) is also in its favour. The specific claim of a connection to football hooligans can be found in articles by Oko.press,[13] Independent,[14], and The Guardian.[15] -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:45, 27 April 2024 (UTC)

> The specific claim of a connection to football hooligans can be found in articles by Oko.press,[118] Independent,[119], and The Guardian.[120]
Any of these talking about "neo-Nazi leanings"? ManyAreasExpert (talk) 17:38, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

So I went and checked a second time in case I was hallucinating, but yes all three speak specifically about such issues. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:48, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

None of your sources is talking about "Sect 82 which had neo-Nazi leanings".
Oko.press doesn't mention Sect 82 at all.
Independent only says known as Sect 82, who went on help lead the Patriot of Ukraine and Social National Assembly far-right groups.
Guardian only says "Metalist Kharkiv’s Sect 82 ultras became the Azov militia – initially with far-right loyalties – in armed combat against the Russian-backed uprising". ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:55, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Whether it's spelt Sect or Sekt it's still the same group, as to the rest of your want to use far right nationalist instead of Nazi specifically go ahead but it is in the East Journal source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:36, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

@Alaexis : [16] : note how two sources of dubious reliability does not relieve us from the need to attribute the dubious and exceptional claim not found in reliable reportings. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 11:18, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

These sources are not dubious and the claim is not exceptional, here CNN mentions the "neo-Nazi leanings" [17] as well. Alaexis_¿question? 11:27, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

We discuss specific claim regarding Sect 82 here and CNN article has no mention of it. And there is a difference between claims made by a journalist or a lawyer and claims which are reliable per WP:RS. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 11:38, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

OKO.press is considered a generally reliable source per the recent RFC found here, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 432#RFC: OKO.press. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:48, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

See? That's how you argument Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 432#c-Rosguill-20240306215700-Survey_(OKO.press) that the source may be reliable. By providing other reliable sources referring to it. Which is not the case for EastJournal.

Thus, we even attribute conclusions by academic researchers in a corresponding field, published by academic publishers. The reader deserves to know it's a journalist labeling Sect 82 as such (providing no analysis no sources no confirmation for such, btw.). ManyAreasExpert (talk) 12:06, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

As is stated earlier I did find other reliable works using East Journal for citation purposes, and my reply was in regard to you saying "two dubious sources" about this edit[18] when one of those sources was OKO.press. There are times WP:INTEXT attribution should be used and there are times it shouldn't but that's an issue of NPOV and not RS, so it should be had on the articles talk page. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:51, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

I did find other reliable works using East Journal for citation purposes
NYT article only includes opinion of Matteo Zola, and NYT says no more than his occupation as "the editor of East Journal", and not using the website itself: “Orban is the king of opportunists,” said Matteo Zola, a journalist and the editor of East Journal, an online newspaper focused on Central and Eastern Europe. “Hungary wants to show itself as the center around which one can imagine building a dialogue between Moscow and Europe or the West. And the pope’s trip legitimizes this role.” Pope Returns to Hungary, to Delight of Viktor Orban - The New York Times (nytimes.com) .

Even this doesn't make Zola an authority on Orban. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 15:02, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

Ok. I dont see why you're quoting a comment from me about sourced other than NYT and then discussing NYT. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:14, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

As is stated earlier I did find other reliable works using East Journal for citation purposes - I was assuming you are talking about NYT. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 19:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Sorry my earlier comment was obviously unclear, I meant I have found it being used as a citation in other works by reliable publishers. For instance Springer,[19][20] and Routledge.[21][22][23] -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:04, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Noted. It's still wrong to assume that a lawyer, published on anonymously-owned website, has reliability in nationalism questions comparable to nationalism scholars, published in academic sources. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 08:04, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Itoght be that it's not the same quality of source as an academic work, but that wouldn't make it unreliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:12, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Is intellectualtakeout.org a reliable source?

At issue is this edit, in which a user has restored a statement that is referencing this source. It appears to me that the source is an opinion piece on intellectualtakeout.org and does not qualify as a reliable source. Can anyone else weigh in, please? Fred Zepelin (talk) 21:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Regardless of the reliability of the source (which looks questionable), it doesn't even remotely support the text it is supposedly being cited for. It is nothing but spin being put on a video clip. Nobody but Miltimore, the author of the piece, states that 'Bridges was detained by students'. Bridges doesn't say that. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:01, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you AndyTheGrump (talk). I agree. I don't want to edit-war with the user that made that change, but would welcome anyone else from this board working on that article. Fred Zepelin (talk) 22:03, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Video evidence exists of Bridges being detained at 11:30 in The Complete Evergreen Story (13) documenary by Benjamin Boyce. It is available for free on youtube. Bridges refuses to admit that because it would undermine his decision making skills as an administrator. Smefs (talk) 22:26, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Have you ever actually read Wikipedia:Reliable sources? AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:53, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

No. On the first page I see “Why Karl Marx Desperately Needed Jordan Peterson’s Advice” “What ‘RoboCop’ and the Bible Teach About Rights” (both by Miltimore) and “Did COVID-19 Usher in a Global Government?” There’s also articles about how we need to bring back cursive and what is probably climate change denial. Typical (and slightly atypical) rightwing crackpot stuff. Dronebogus (talk) 00:08, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

The “Feeding Minds, Pursuing Truth” tagline already doesn’t inspire confidence, but yeah, echoing what @Dronebogus stated - it doesn’t seem much better than Infowars or any other alt-right garbage. You’re correct in removing it. The Kip 02:56, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source?

Link: (1)
If this is a reliable source, can I use it to refer to a king as “the great”? Based Kashmiri (talk) 14:04, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

NO as it seems SPS. Slatersteven (talk) 14:06, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Ok, thank you!! Based Kashmiri (talk) 14:46, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

In fact, that material is sourced to "Wikipedia Contributors," so it would fall afoul of WP:REFLOOP. CapitalSasha ~ talk 14:08, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

That is correct. Simonm223 (talk) 23:48, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Reliability of WION

Following both previous discussions at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 315#Is WION a reliable source? and Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 335#WION News, should WION News can be considered as unreliable? 103.230.81.135 (talk) 03:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Comment I would kindly ask you to add the voting options used for RfC on this noticeboard. FortunateSons (talk) 20:16, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

What is the reliability of WION, also known as World is One News?

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

Unlike Daily Mail, which is considered unreliable and depreciated. WION is an Indian news channel owned by Essel Group, which also owns Zee Media. The site contains extensive India-related articles, celebrity facts, and others does not itself as a generally reliable source.

wionews.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 --85.94.24.29 (talk) 21:54, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Option 3. I watched a lot of WION before, and I stopped watching it as it is geared towards the ruling BJP party. Ahri.boy (talk) 22:08, 10 April 2024 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics. — Newslinger talk 06:32, 25 April 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 per Ahri.boy. This outlet has some credibility and purpose back in the day. Now it is just a mouthpiece of BJP. Ratnahastin (talk)
• Option 3. Past discussions on WION in the notice-board expose it as a political propaganda mouth-piece of BJP party. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 20:04, 1 May 2024 (UTC)

  have they gone down hill recently or is it just that everything looks reasonable compared to Republic TV? Irtapil (talk) 03:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 Used to be a fan of their talk shows, but over the years they have leaned towards political propaganda spreading. IMO, Non-political coverage (of non-contentious topics) can be considered reliable, however. X (talk) 07:40, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 or "neutral" if that is an option? I wouldn't call them generally reliable, but I wouldn't specifically label them as "unreliable" either because they're possibly above average compared to some Indian TV News (e.g. much less pro Modi bias than "Republic"). The additional consideration is that they're particularly unreliable on China. Irtapil (talk) 19:10, 3 May 2024 (UTC) revised Irtapil (talk) 03:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
• Comment: I don't know enough about this to give an option, but I did find this study( State nationalism or popular nationalism? Analysing media coverage of TikTok ban on mainstream Indian TV news channels), which notes the editorial position of WION news did not appear different from that of Republic TV, which is currently deprecated, and the nature of the coverage was to justify the strategy adopted by the Indian government, rather than providing impartial information to the people. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 01:34, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Help with this list if any is reliable on Malawian articles

I currently came up with this list here due its frequent use on Malawian sources but then not sure if any is as it says it is. Note that the list has links to the sites. The sites have been widely used on Wikipedia to support different Malawian biographies, incidents, events and such. I would love to hear if any on the list is considered reliable or unreliable. Thanks.--Tumbuka Arch (talk) 03:12, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Opinion piece by historian Satish Chandra

Guru Tegh Bahadur's martyrdom [24] by Satish Chandra is currently used to support some historiographic analysis in the Tegh Bahadur article, including the fact that a certain Ghulam Hussain Khan portrayed the guru rather negatively. User:Alvin1783 wants to remove it from the article (see the discussion at [25]), saying that both Chandra and Ghulam Hussain are unreliable and/or incorrect. My impression is that Chandra is a recognized historian, but the source is admittedly an opinion piece. Ghulam Hussain himself is not cited, but his account is quoted and analyzed in the opinion piece and thus in the article. More input would be appreciated, as this discussion has already exhausted the patience of one other editor. Perception312 (talk) 22:16, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Probably the best course of action would be to find a scholarly sources describing Ghulam Hussain's account and its potential problems, but I considering that Satish Chandra is an expert, I think that this source can be considered reliable. Note that something can be reliable but not WP:DUE, I have no opinion on the latter. Alaexis_¿question? 07:01, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this a reliable source?

I wanto add this, "If a female claims that a man forced her into adultery, that is, "rape" without providing witnesses or physical evidence, then she is subjected to the hadd (punishment) of slander which is eighty lashes if the slanderer is free (as opposed to a slave)." to the, Rape in Islamic law article. Question is if it is a reliable source for that sentence in that article?- Khaanate (talk) 17:25, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

That is a primary source, Islamic law is not a fact, it is an ambiguous topic which has many interpretations. If we take, for example, the concept of the hijab and modesty, vastly different understandings of what this might constitute exist. You can not source a statement in wiki voice to that website, though it is valid for its own opinion, if attributed, where that might be WP:DUE (and I have doubts over whether it is).

A much better option would be to find a source which is published in a reputable academic journal and discusses objectively the various interpretations of different scholars and sheikhs on this question. You can then add these views to the article, attributed to the people who hold them, without wikipedia stating that a single "true" Islamic law exists.Boynamedsue (talk) 19:45, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Guidestar.org/Candid.org

The site provides information on non-profit organizations. I'm specifically wondering if a non-profit's info about leadership roles are reliable. I'm working with some editors who are edit-warring on United States Student Association. One editor has just added a name to the "Principle Officer" role in the infobox in the article, and is citing Guidestar. I don't know enough about Guidestar to determine if the information there is definitive enough to cite. Joyous! Noise! 20:55, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

I think Guidestar usually depends on 990 forms and/or the org supplying the info and the 990 form for financial Year 2021 lists "Eddie Acosta" as Principal Officer (and also gives his title as 'Chair') https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237211922/202243339349300019/full

I note Guidestar does not list a year on its info (and it has "Edwin Acosta") and including a reference and a year would be wise. According to ProPublica's non-profit explorer, Acosta has been Chair or Co-Chair since 2017 (with the other Co-Chair being Tiffany Loftin) (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237211922 [ProPublica also has the advantage of linking to the relevant 990]). Erp (talk) 03:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Many thanks! Joyous! Noise! 03:41, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I also note ProPublica is a listed reliable source and does not require a login. Erp (talk) 03:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

News sources in general

This seems to come up again and again… someone questions the reliability of a news outlet based on headlines or opinion/op-ed content, and we need to (again) explain that both are already considered unreliable - regardless of the outlet. Do we need to revisit/rewrite the section on the reliability of news outlets to clarify this? Or is it simply that people are not actually reading the policy? Blueboar (talk) 13:12, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

The reliability is not binary yes/no and is also not assessed in a vacuum, but in relation to other sources available. For example, BBC "is considered generally reliable" WP:RSPBBC when no better sources presented, but academic works are of higher reliability if available. ManyAreasExpert (talk) 13:18, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

That’s not what I am asking about. I am asking whether we need to better clarify HOW to assess the reliability of news outlets. Blueboar (talk) 13:27, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:NEWSORG plus WP:CONTEXTMATTERS seems fine. I think there is an implicit belief in circulation along the lines of "this newspaper published someone's bad opinion, therefore the newspaper must be bad because a good newspaper wouldn't allow such a bad opinion to be published." I've got some sympathy for that belief in truly egregious cases, but I don't think we've seen recent examples of a mainstream newsorg publishing opinions so beyond the pale that the entire publication must be brought into question. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 14:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I think you're interpreting policy too black-and-white: while neither headlines nor opinion pieces are reliable for facts in articles, if a source's reliability is in question here the fact that that source does or doesn't fact check headlines and opinion pieces is evidence for its reliability in general. An organization that allows opinion writers to make up total fiction is likely to be less reliable than one that doesn't. Loki (talk) 14:00, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I disagree somewhat… opinion pieces should always be used with in-text attribution, and their reliability should be based on the reputation of the author for fact checking and accuracy, not the outlet. As for headlines - they are written to grab the eye, not to convey accurate information. They are never reliable. Blueboar (talk) 14:26, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Fwiw, WP:HEADLINES exists. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 15:35, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

We're all aware of WP:HEADLINES; all I'm saying is that while it's expected that headlines won't be reliable for facts, in discussions at WP:RSN an organization fact-checking headlines is a strong indication of reliability overall, and conversely allowing complete fiction in headlines is an indication of unreliability overall. Loki (talk) 18:32, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Disagree… yes, an unreliable source will often have inaccurate headlines to match their inaccurate reporting… but it does not work in reverse. we can not say that reliable sources will have accurate headlines. Lots of very reliable news sources have crap headlines. Nor can we say that an accurate headline (if such exists) indicates that an accurate story is attached. Headlines are not intended to convey reliable information, they are intended to catch the eye and get the reader to read the story. Blueboar (talk) 18:55, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

In theory the entire story is intended to get readers to read it, and headlines can serve as a useful warning sign when an organization is particularly susceptible to that pressure. Loki (talk) 20:51, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

This right here. The editorial oversight should only be considered to cover the article content, the headlines are what marketing monkeys come up with to sell papers. Its why a source being clickbait-y in how they present their articles doesn't make the source unreliable, we judge the real content of the article. — Masem (t) 00:34, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

I've noticed that sometimes people on this website seem to demand exhaustive explanations of unbelievably basic concepts. I don't know if anything can really be done about this kind of deliberate stupidity: maybe we need to create a litany of policies with names like

• Wikipedia:If something is false that means it isn't true
• Wikipedia:If B is a necessary consequence of A then not-B entails not-A
• Wikipedia:One plus one is two
• Wikipedia:One plus two is three

and so on and so on. It seems like basic common sense that a newspaper article saying "[...] and morons like Joe Smith claim that [...]" is a statement of the author/editor's opinion, and it does not somehow magically become an objective fact by virtue of the newspaper being prestigious. But I have seen people claim this. Meanwhile, I have also heard people claim that such statements are proof that the newspaper is unreliable, because look at this objective claim they're making about Smith being a moron, and there's no way to prove this true or false. I don't know if there is any way to fix this, besides to explain patiently that every website in the world is not Wikipedia, and every single word in every single newspaper article in the history of mankind does not reflect a considered editorial opinion on behalf of the publication. jp×g🗯️ 00:10, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a reasonable point. Perhaps we should create WP:NOJURISDICTION, pointing out that wikipedia's rules on content do not apply to reliable sources?Boynamedsue (talk) 06:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:NEWSORGINDIA

I'd to see the discussions that occurred when implementing WP:NEWSORGINDIA. I attempted to find it but couldn't locate any. @CNMall41:—Saqib (talk I contribs) 12:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

@Newslinger, any idea? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 13:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

It was add in August 2023 here by @UtherSRG and appears to be based on WP:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 411#Three sources from Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aryen Suresh Kute. S0091 (talk) 19:03, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

That is correct. Community discussion affirmed it. - UtherSRG (talk) 20:03, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

It was recently discussed at the WikiProject Film Indian cinema task force here and implemented at WP:ICTFSOURCES. I would have to search RSN but believe it was discussed around company Wikipedia pages and those trying to game the system. --CNMall41 (talk) 17:37, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41, What do you mean by company Wikipedia pages? The issue at hand is that on several Pakistani-related AfDs, some editors are simply dismissing WP:NEWSORGINDIA, just because this guideline doesn't mentions any Pakistani sources or Pakistan itself. So I was thinking it might be beneficial to consider updating NEWSORGINDIA to explicitly include Pakistan. It seems like some folks are hesitant to apply common sense in these situations. —Saqib (talk I contribs) 17:48, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

I am very familiar with the issue at hand. In fact, I keep getting pinged into it (please stop). You asked about a discussion at RSN and I am trying to point out where you may find it. So again, I believe it may have been part of discussions with company related pages but I do not recall exactly when it took place. --CNMall41 (talk) 17:53, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Just because it's written specifically about India doesn't mean the general principle doesn't apply elsewhere. It's been discussed in regard to Nigerian sources, and I'm sure there are similar issue with some sources regardless of the country of origin. It's also true that they are not necessarily unreliable for everything, a source that states 'is the most fantastic, charitable, awe inspiring, handsome, weathly, actor of his generation or any others' could still be reliable for the less contentious 'is an actor'. It's more that such sources use language that isn't encyclopedic and hang on details that are likely to minor to add to the article. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:49, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Pakistani Sources

Hey, please guide if sources from the following sites be considered WP: Reliable Sources;

1. People Magazine, Used in Fatima Feng
2. The odd one Magazine, Used in Fatima Feng
3. We News, Used in Tumhare Husn Ke Naam
4. FHM Pakistan, Used in Tumhare Husn Ke Naam
5. Parrot Analytics, Used in Tumhare Husn Ke Naam

Looping in Saqib. Sameeerrr (talk) 17:38, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Sameeerrr, IMO, no. Clearly unreliable. —Saqib (talk I contribs) 17:40, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

What may be pertinent is a link to the deletion discussion on film related sources from the Pakistani film project. Do you still have that list?--CNMall41 (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41, This one? Wikipedia:WikiProject Pakistan/Pakistani sources —Saqib (talk I contribs) 17:52, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes. The discussion here. Do you still have a list of the references listed there? --CNMall41 (talk) 17:55, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41, I don't keep junk. —Saqib (talk I contribs) 18:29, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Okay. Sorry for asking. --CNMall41 (talk) 18:57, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

CNMall41, No need to sorry, pal. Can you ask for its undeletion and move it in my NS. —Saqib (talk I contribs) 18:59, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Saqib, you would need to do so yourself if you want it. Please do not ping me here. I have given my comments so don't want to be dragged back into it. --CNMall41 (talk) 19:04, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:NEWSORGINDIA applies to at least some of these. The People Magazine reference stands out as a WP:FAKEREF to me as it is a Wordpress blog (note the site icon) that stole the People Magazine logo and pawned it off as if it's associated with the main People (magazine). Anyone who claims that NEWSORGINDIA only applies to specific publications within India need to look no further than this. --CNMall41 (talk) 17:45, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed, it's a WordPress based. What about other sites? Sameeerrr (talk) 18:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Sameeerrr, Use WP:COMMONSENSE. They're all CLEARLY WP:SPAM sources, just internet business sites masquerading as magazines or news outlets. In reality, they have nothing to do with journalism. —Saqib (talk I contribs) 18:31, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

See this article about peoplemagazine.com.pk, fhmpakistan.com and FHM Pakistan Pulblications. Like CNMall states above, they are WP:FAKEREF, with peoplemagazine.com.pk faking as if it is affiliated with People Magazine (but note the logo is not the same as the real People; it's a poor rip-off) and fhmpakistan.com faking as if it is affiliated with now defunct FHM. For the others, The odd one Magazine is a blog and Parrot Analytics is a commercial site offering their products and services (Contact us now to deploy demand-driven marketing, the only empirical earned media measure of your marketing spend.) We News might be reliable a secondary source if it is written by a journalist but this is press release with a role by-line of Web Desk so is a primary source. S0091 (talk) 16:42, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Got it, Thank you for the response! Sameeerrr (talk) 16:45, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Britannica and Rafida

Can the Encyclopedia Britannica be considered a reliable source on Rafida, rejection by Shia Muslims of the first three caliphs? One of the editors in a dispute at DRN contests the reliability of the Britannica, because they take issue with the statement: To the majority of the Shīʿites, who do not condemn Muḥammad’s immediate successors and only assert ʿAlī’s right to the caliphate over Muʿāwiyah (the first Umayyad caliph)...

Robert McClenon (talk) 23:52, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

In case anyone is familiar with the topic, here is my issue with the above statement and why I think this particular Britannica article is not a reliable source for our article about the term Rafida. What follows is quoted from the dispute:

The above claim is factually incorrect. The (overwhelming) majority of Shias do in fact condemn the first three successors of Muhammad (caliphs). In their view, these caliphs usurped this political position (caliphate) from Muhammad's designated successor, Ali ibn Abi Talib. For them, the first three caliphs thus left the faith. (For convenience, I've cited here only from our article's current sources.) If this Britannica article is wrong about this basic fact, what other errors could it contain? Why insist on citing a Britannica article authored by "The Editors of the Encyclopaedia Britannica" when there are several excellent academic research and reference articles on the topic? (There are exceptions like this Britannica article authored by two well-known Islamicists, which is indeed cited in our article about Ali.) Albertatiran (talk) 07:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

That statement isnt wrong. While majority of Shias adopt the view that Ali was the rightful successor, they do not go as far as to condemn the first three Caliphs. Most of them stop at their claim that they were wrong in not giving the allegiance to Ali, while a minority of them condemn them as open transgressors and apostates.

"Among the members of the Medinan community, the leadership of these two close companions of the Prophet went essentially uncontested—save for an initial but temporary refusal on the part of 'Ali and a number of his close companions and family members to give the bay'ah to Abu Bakr. ... While the conflict between Abu Bakr and 'Ali over succession to the Prophet had some repercussions throughout the Medinan and Meccan communities, it still remained, essentially, a disagreement among brothers. ... In fact, a number of events at the Battle of Siffin seem to confirm that the two caliphs were generally held in high esteem by most members of Ali's camp. ... Even in Shi'ite sources, one finds instances in which 'Ali contrasts the virtuous leadership of Abu Bakr and 'Umar."

Moreover, Zaydi shias and contemporary Ismaili shias have favourable view of Abu Bakr and 'Umar. Stance of majority of the contemporary Twelver Shia clerics is either the espousal of ambiguous positions or to not openly condemn them. Only a minority of hardline Twelver clerics advocate for the open condemnation of Abu Bakr and 'Umar. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 09:44, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@Shadowwarrior8: It's indeed not clear when the Shia majority (that is, Twelvers and Isma'ilis) adopted this tenet of their faith (that most early companions, including the first three caliphs, had gone stray). Dakake, as you noted, suggests that early Shias did not hold this view. What remains an indisputable fact, however, is that the Shia majority has for long condemned the first three caliphs, among with most of the companions of the Islamic prophet. See my first post above.

@Robert McClenon: Perhaps we should ask other editors (with interest in Islam) for feedback. This is such a basic fact that the situation leaves no question in my mind that Shadowwarrior8 is not sincere in his arguments. Albertatiran (talk) 06:29, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I would consider Britannica a low quality source whos reliability is no better than Wikipedia. Surely there are better sources that can be found if this claim is widely regarded as true? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:29, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

It appears on the perennial source list, see WP:BRITANNICA. It's a tertiary source when secondary sources are preferred. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:31, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I would note that the Britannica entry[26] is old. According to it's 'Article history' it was copied into the online version in 1998. I can only assume it was copied from an even earlier physical version. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the specific issue of Rafida, but in general Encyclopædia Britannica is a prestigious high quality general encyclopedia. Having said that even such high quality sources can make mistakes (rarely). The question is whether there is overwhelming evidence against it on this specific issue. Vegan416 (talk) 04:48, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

While Britannica's certainly been trusted and used a lot throughout its history, this characterization is a bit much. Plenty of more glaring issues with Britannica's quality have existed at points throughout its history, and its prestige definitely diminished considerably around the 60s and hasn't fully rebounded before the paradigm shift first of Encarta, then Wikipedia. Remsense诉 04:56, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• Encyclopedia Britannica is WP:TERTIARY. It's certainly reliable, but it's also often not as in-depth as the best available secondary sources. If editors disagree over some aspect of what it says, I'd look for more detailed secondary sources and use those. If no other source mentions this then there are also potential WP:DUE issues. The statement presented here is... I'm not sure exceptional is the right word, but it's treated as extremely broad, sweeping, and fundamental, which means it should be trivial to source it to multiple high-quality secondary sources. If none of those are available then that might indicate something is wrong or at least that we're giving a passing characterization in Britannica undue weight. (And if nobody has bothered to search for other sources - which I suspect is the case from glancing at talk - then stop that. I can understand the urge to go "no, Britannica is obviously reliable" but if something can be trivially settled by spending a few seconds searching then it's best to do that and not waste time; and if it turns out it can't be trivially settled then perhaps we should be more cautious about citing sweeping statements about the fundamental tenets of major sects of major religions to a single passing line in a single source.) Also, glancing at the talk page and dispute more carefully, it looks like a big part of the dispute isn't just the line itself but how to characterize it. It does seem to me that ...Shīʿites, who do not condemn Muḥammad’s immediate successors... is extremely weird and potentially POV wording. Isn't the entire original dispute between Shia and Sunni Islam to be whether Mohammad appointed a successor? This wording is like an article about Christianity and Judaism saying ...Christians, who do not condemn the Messiah..., or like an article on Protestents and Catholics reading ...Catholics, who do not condemn the successors to Saint Peter... in that it's inherently written from a Shia perspective and implicitly casts the Sunni perspective in a negative light; in that respect it really is WP:EXCEPTIONAL. Either way, I would get people on talk to be more specific about their issues with this line and to try and find more sources for alternative wordings. --Aquillion (talk) 00:17, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

It should be noted that the phrasing "... majority of the Shīʿites, who do not condemn Muḥammad’s immediate successors..." isnt factually wrong per se. The key word here is "condemn", which is different from "criticize".

Criticizing is a broad term that encompasses a range of evaluations, which may or may not include moral implications. There are several forms of criticism, such as constructive criticism, self-criticism, etc. Condemnation is a very severe form of criticism that involves public denouncement and moral implications, and in many cases, legal implications as well.

Majority of Twelever Shias criticize the first three caliphs, but they have different approaches on how they do it. Most of the twelver clerics in Iraq, Lebanon, Azerbaijan and Pakistan dissociate themselves from Abu Bakr and Omar by ignoring them and forbid their followers from openly criticizing them. Some of the Twelvers adopt ambiguous stances regarding their personalities, while criticizing their actions. A minority of hardline Twelver clerics condemn the first three caliphs, often by inciting their followers to engage in certain forms of public denounciations, such as communal cursing rituals. The majority of Twelvers don't outright condemn the first three caliphs; however, they may choose to criticize their actions or the circumstances of their rule.

Zaydi shias hold Abu Bakr and Umar in high regard. Contemporary Ismaili Shia also have a favorable view of the first three caliphs, and their current religious leadership recognizes the legitimacy of the caliphates of Abu Bakr and Umar.

So in summary, it is a fact that majority of Shias do not outright condemn the first three caliphs. Academically speaking, many Shia hold nuanced stances towards the early caliphs. Respect for Abu Bakr and Umar, is a completely valid position within Shi'ism, contemporarily as well as historically. You may read my previous comment in this discussion for more insights. Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 05:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

The line has two obvious implications that go against WP:NPOV. First, by talking about Muhammad's successors without qualification in the article voice, it implies that Muḥammad had unambiguous immediate successors that everyone agrees on, which is obviously not the case - that's what I mean by it being written from a Shīʿite perspective. And, secondly, it implies that other people do condemn these clearly-defined successors, which is a non-neutral way to describe the fact that many people do not accept them as successors at all. Obviously these implications are WP:EXCEPTIONAL and would require more than a one-line aside from an encyclopedia to put in the article voice. --Aquillion (talk) 21:58, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

• I should add, for clarity, that the person objecting to this text only questioned Britannica's reliability once in an edit-summary and here, where they said, more specifically, Regarding Britannica, an article authored by "Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica" is not a reliable source, especially when there are a dozen top-tier sources about the topic, including the Encyclopedia of Islam. At any rate, nothing was removed. That sentence was just replaced with similar (but far more reliable) claims from much better sources., here. I don't agree with their broad dismissal of an article there just because of its attribution to editors (although it might be worth digging into - what does that attribution mean? Here is what Britannica says), but the second part of their comment, where they say they're using multiple better sources, is much more important. --Aquillion (talk) 00:30, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Discord

This recent addition at Sam Reich:

Citing a private Discord chat room, the service for which I cannot determine whether it has any mechanism for validating the identifies of users. My knee-jerk reaction is to say 'no way', but I'm surprised to see this hasn't been previously discussed (I assumed there'd be a WP:RSP#Discord), and there's some possibility it might fall unxder WP:SELFPUB (considering I'm unfamiliar with this social network). Anybody know more and better than I? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 20:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

(Copied from Wikipedia talk:Discord#shortcut?:) My immediate reaction is that citing Discord would be absurd, but thinking about it, I can't see any meaningful difference between it and other social media platforms that we allow under WP:SOCIALMEDIA. Discord chat rooms are, unless configured otherwise, public and as such constitute (self-) published information. You have to set up an account and accept their Terms of Service to see the information, but that is also true of Facebook, JSTOR, your local university library, and many other perfectly acceptable sources. Difficulty of access is not something that disqualifies something as a source either; again see Facebook, JSTOR, your local university library... Discord can't possibly be a good source—if you can only source something to there, is it really WP:DUE?—but technically it is permissable under the existing guidelines at WP:SOCIALMEDIA. – Joe (talk) 08:59, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

So a Discord chat room being private and inaccessible doesn't run afoul of WP:SOURCEACCESS? How does one verify the claims made? Secondly, do the chat rooms have a account verification mechanism for the participants, such that what an article attributes to alleged person "X" is actually and verifiably person "X"? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 15:03, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

A private chatroom would be unusable because it wouldn't qualify as WP:PUBLISHED. --Aquillion (talk) 19:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

No, I'm talking only about public rooms. And as I said in the original discussion on Wikipedia talk:Discord, lack of account verification is not unique to Discord, it applies to the vast majority of accounts on all social media platforms. – Joe (talk) 08:34, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

• Private discords are generally unusable for several reasons. First of all, they don't qualify as WP:PUBLISHED for WP:V purposes; since they are private, they are not available to the public. Second, it can be incredibly difficult to verify that someone on a Discord is actually who they say they are; they lack any form of account verification. While WP:ABOUTSELF allows us to cite people on other social media platforms for trivial biographical details about themselves, that's only possible because such accounts are usually verified or well-known, and because they are publicly available, satisfying our definition of "published." Even if a chatroom is open to the public, and even if the citation provided enough information for people to find it (a necessary component), the issue of eliminating any reasonable doubt as to the identity of the person in question would remain. --Aquillion (talk) 19:49, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

  This are all good reasons to avoid citing social media, but I'm struggling to see how they apply to Discord more than say, Facebook or X. Those sources are also only "publicly available" if you have an account. And the operators only verify the accounts of a tiny fraction of users. – Joe (talk) 08:37, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

  Generally twitter is, as I understand it, available to everybody who has an account. The same is not true of a discord server, which is available only to a certain subset of users, at the whim of whomever runs it. So if I post something on Twitter anyone who bothers to sign up for an account can read it; if I have a private discord server then only people who specifically apply to me for permission can see it, and only if I decide they meet my criteria, which can be whatever I want them to be. (Facebook uses both models depending on a user's settings; I would consider a public Facebook page, which is more akin to Twitter, to be more acceptable than a private one, more akin to discord) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:48, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

  Yes I think we are only talking about public Discord servers here. An analogy might be that while tweets on Twitter are okay sources, direct messages are not. – Joe (talk) 11:54, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

  Well, first of all, they said it's a private discord (aka invitation-only.) That's obviously unusable for WP:PUBLISHED reasons. But second, Facebook and Twitter provide at least some degree of verification (although Twitter has been pulling ridiculous nonsense with it since Musk took over, they do still label a few accounts that way.) It's only a tiny fraction, but that tiny fraction (plus those who are unambiguously verified by high-quality, reliable secondary sources) are the only ones we can use. Obviously a Facebook or Twitter account that hasn't been verified in any way cannot be cited, that's basic WP:ABOUTSELF. Discord is different; it has no verification and is not structured in a way that makes it easy to see and verify who someone is, nor, in most cases, is there any meaningful secondary coverage that could verify an account. --Aquillion (talk) 23:28, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

I would imagine it hasn't been discussed because it's such a gobsmackingly awful idea nobody has even conceived of the idea of citing it -- it's a random vendor-locked closed source IM application where messages can (and do) randomly go poof for no reason, with no public record of the messages or even of the fact that they were deleted. There is no way to provide archived copies of them. It's literally against the Discord terms of service to keep local records of your own messages! Of course it is not acceptable to cite it. jp×g🗯️ 05:15, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

Discord is a social media site. Citing a private Discord channel or server is about as bad as I can imagine, but I don't agree with blanket banning it. Many companies use it as a mechanism for public communication now, in the way that certain countries or groups use Telegram as a method for disseminating information.

I don't believe we should make an WP:RSP entry for Discord because it's going to be very dependent on the context of its usage. As an example, statements made by an organization in its official Discord server would fall under WP:ABOUTSELF while statements in a DM are about as unverifiable as it can get. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:47, 21 April 2024 (UTC)

One thing I think we can take from this discussion, which might be obvious but isn't actually spelled out anywhere, is that WP:SOCIALMEDIA only applies to public posts etc. on social media platforms. I've made a minor edit to hopefully clarify that. It might be worth a follow-up discussion of how many barriers a platform can throw up (i.e. accept our ToS, register an account, download our vendor-locked software) before we stop considering it public/published. – Joe (talk) 12:00, 23 April 2024 (UTC)

I would consider Discord posts unreliable sources in anything but exceptional circumstances, to the point where I can't quite think of a counterexample. Joe Roe seems to have it well. I'm phrasing my view this way so that no one uses "But Discord!" as an excuse to exclude, say, a quote from Discord that is later published in a reliable source that we reasonably expect to have had good fact-checking. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

• Deprecate. I second what JPxG said. I would argue Discord is never an acceptable source, without any possible exception. First, it has to be said that Discord is not a social media platform. At least, not in the way we usually think of that term. It's far more analagous to Skype, Zoom, or even your phone's text messaging feature than it is to Twitter or Facebook. Having a registered account isn't enough to access "public" content. A "public server" is still far less "public" than public content on other platforms, and the only difference between a direct message and a "server" on Discord is that a "server" is a group chat. There is also a maximum number of users who can be in a server, and a maximum number of servers a user can be in. Think of all the issues with citing Reddit (which also has an RS/P entry and is rightly deprecated), and then multiply the severity of those issues by at least five. You must currently be a member of a server (with permissions granted to view relevant material - not all material in a "public" server is public even to its members), and there's nothing stopping server administrators from making particular text channels hidden, hiding them from certain users (either from individuals or entire groups of users), or making the entire server private at any moment without warning. And unlike Tweets, news articles, and even Reddit posts, there is no way to verifiably archive contents of a Discord server.

Whether you cite an invite link, a link to the message, or the contents of the message, all three of these are far more volatile than equivalents on proper social media websites. Invite links expire or are deleted and replaced frequently, the text channel a message is in can be hidden or have permissions reconfigured, messages can be effortlessly edited or deleted not just by the poster but by anyone with permissions, etc. Once a message is deleted, it's gone forever and not even the company has any verifiable records of it, which is why it's effectively impossible to report illegal content to Discord. If secondary, reliable sources publish an article that sources information from Discord, cite that secondary source, but don't try to cite Discord. Everything about the nature of this platform makes it a verifiability nightmare. It's not just how hard it can be to access content, or how volatile that content is, it's those two factors combined that make this such a uniquely bad source even compared to other deprecated sources.

There's one more cause for concern that hasn't been brought up yet. By Discord's nature, nothing is truly public, which creates privacy concerns when using it as a source. It is, after all, linking to somebody's instant messages. The original post of this discussion showed someone editing an article to state that the subject is queer because they said so on Discord, that's definitely not acceptable, especially not on a biography of a living person. Citing a Reddit AMA is questionable enough (how can you know the user claiming to be the article's subject is who they say they are when there's not a proper verification system?), but a Discord AMA is worse for this reason. We do not know how public or how private the subject thought their messages were. If there's no other sources confirming the subject being queer, citing a Discord message, no matter what server it's in, is effectively outing them.

It's fine to cite discord.com as a primary source of information about the company on their official website. But never, ever a server. There is no circumstance under which it would ever make any sense to cite Discord, not even an edge case. Thankfully, attempts at citing Discord seem to be pretty rare, because no one in their right mind would even think of citing it. But if it starts to become a problem and enough people attempt to cite message links or invite links as sources, those two types of urls need to be in the spam blacklist. I fully endorse a blanket ban.

Apologies for writing a whole essay here, I'm pretty bad at being concise and I had a lot of thoughts on this one.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 00:47, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes... Using Discord is closer to using an email or a letter than it is to using a Twitter/X or Facebook post. There would have to be some intermediate sourcing going on, the way we'd trust a private letter if it were properly published in an archive maintained by professional historians or a private email that was published as part of a book or magazine article. The reliability comes from those authors and fact-checkers, not from Discord. I think my thoughts are coming up as "Do not use directly" and "But it does not poison." Darkfrog24 (talk) 14:49, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

No it's not. If I send someone an email or a letter, the whole world can't read it. If I post something in a public Discord channel, they can. – Joe (talk) 15:15, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Google is a public website, but {{cite web|url=https://google.com/search?q=jpxg+theranos+scandal}} is not an acceptable Wikipedia citation for JPxG reportedly advised Holmes to continue defrauding Theranos investors, which he described as "going epic mode girlboss style" and "unfathomably lulzy and based".^[23] The reason for this is not that it isn't public, but that which results come up from a Google search are unpredictable, and depend on a multitude of factors that are essentially random and frequently change without warning. jp×g🗯️ 00:47, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

In what way is it "not a social media platform"? You make an account, you join groups, you post things in those groups, anybody else in them can read it – that's social media. The similarity to private chat services is just in the interface, but that's immaterial to its status as a source. Some groups are public, some aren't. Here's a link to the Wikipedia server – you can click it, sign in or make an account, and start reading the full archives in your browser right now. No approval is needed. You could lose access later, but the owners of Twitter accounts, Facebook groups, subreddits, can also remove, make their content private, or block specific people from seeing it whenever they like.

Otherwise, I think you make a lot of excellent points, but the apply equally to all social media platforms. Social media is a unreliable source that should be avoided if at all possible, we already have a consensus on that, but Discord is not meaningfully different to the others. – Joe (talk) 15:27, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

I see where you're coming from and I think we agree more than we disagree. You put it better than I could with "Social media is a unreliable source that should be avoided if at all possible, we already have a consensus on that". I'll try my best to articulate why I feel Discord is a bad source even compared to other bad sources.

But first, let's get the not-so-important stuff out of the way. Since I said ("Discord is not a social media platform. At least, not in the way we usually think of that term.") and you asked ("In what way is it 'not a social media platform'?"), I guess there's no avoiding a quick tangent about silly semantics to answer that question.

I'm pre-emptively collapsing it because, as you said, it's immaterial to its status as a source and therefore not really that important. Only typed this out because we both brought it up.

Unimportant side tangent: Is Discord is "social media?"

It really depends on how you define it, which there's more than one correct way to do. The short version of what I'm arguing is that, while the simplest definition is the broadest one (any time communication happens on the internet is social media), there's also a narrower and harder to nail down definition that more accurately describes what people usually associate with that term. If you define it broadly as any digital platform where communication occurs, then yes, Discord is a social media platform, just like Skype, AOL Instant Messenger, and Microsoft Teams are all examples of social media platforms. Interestingly, all three of those examples are mentioned in the "social media" article, but the term "social media" never appears on any of their respective Wikipedia articles. That fact alone illustrates how debatable their status as social media is. Discord is also not described as social media in the prose of its article, only briefly in the infobox (the term is only used in prose to compare it to social media, not to describe it as social media). Compare that to Facebook and Twitter which are described in prose as social media dozens of times throughout their articles. So why is it that no one would disagree Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, TikTok, and even LinkedIn are all social media, but it's weirder when that term is applied to Skype, Zoom, AIM, Microsoft Teams, and Slack? Surely there's something more to what makes something "social media" that can explain why. In a majority of the platforms that everyone would agree are social media, there's some very noticeable overlapping features: every post published to the platform is itself a new standalone web page on the platform users have feeds to help them discover new content on the platform social interaction is gamified using "likes" or similar systems to quantify how good something posted is users have their own profiles which are standalone web pages under which the users' posts appear posts from other users can be reposted to appear on your profile users can subscribe to or follow other users' accounts to add their user-generated content to their feed. Because of those common characteristics, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and even YouTube and Reddit, all have more in common with each other than they do with Discord; they are the quintessential "social media" platforms that come to mind when one hears that term. Skype, Zoom, AIM, Teams, Slack, and Discord are all simply instant messaging / group chat platforms. In terms of functionality, Discord is nearly identical to Slack, while it marketed itself as an alternative to Skype. That is why Discord is "not [social media] in the way we usually think of that term."

Now onto things that are more relevant to its quality as a source:

"You could lose access later, but the owners of Twitter accounts, Facebook groups, subreddits, can also remove, make their content private, or block specific people from seeing it whenever they like."

An important difference is that a post on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit can be archived. As mentioned above, a quintessential feature of social media is that every post published to the platform is in and of itself a new webpage on the platform. A Discord message is not a standalone webpage. Sure, you can right click it and generate a link to it, but all that link does is scroll up your chat window to find it. It isn't a webpage, it cannot be archived. This is why Discord makes for a far more volatile source than the others.

Here's a link to the Wikipedia server – you can click it, sign in or make an account, and start reading the full archives in your browser right now.

Out of curiosity, would it change anything if authenticating your Wikimedia account was mandatory instead of voluntary? Would this categorically make it no longer a public server? Or, if there was a message you wanted to cite, but it was in a hypothetical channel that can only be viewed by extended-confirmed users, even though the rest of the server is "public", would that be categorically different? Now consider that this sort of thing is very commonplace on Discord.

Even within a "public server," you can never know how much content may actually be inaccessible to new or even established members. Any "public server" with a good number of users has at least some text channels that can only be unlocked by meeting certain arbitrary criteria. Publicity doesn't exist on a server-by-server basis, it's more like a message-by-message basis. No such thing as a "public server." The lines between "public" and "private" on Discord are undoubtedly more blurred than on any of the other platforms we've named in this discussion. That is a meaningful difference.

TL;DR: privacy and volatility make Discord a far worse option than Twitter or other social media sites, even putting aside ease of access concerns. At least there are circumstances where citing a Tweet makes perfect sense. There are exactly zero situations where citing Discord does.

 Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

• I can't see any reason to disallow Discord that would not equally apply to Musk-era Twitter. —Kusma (talk) 15:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
  • At least Musk-era Twitter still has meaningful verification for political or governmental figures (for now).  Vanilla  Wizard 💙 19:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

  Like, separate from all the reasons that Vanilla Wizard posted above? jp×g🗯️ 00:48, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

• I think Discord has taken a role more similar to a web forum or social media in some circumstances, and discussions like this are a good example of why that's a bad thing. But I think the purely practical concerns (restricted access, lack of archiving tools) are enough for me to say that it currently is not an acceptable source for use on Wikipedia. AlexandraAVX (talk) 11:37, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

  If there's ever a tool with similar reliability to the Internet Archive for archiving Discord conversations or some other means of preserving them then I don't think it would be less reliable than any other social media where we do allow their use for WP:ABOUTSELF statements and similar. So I would probably be against full deprecation if this becomes the subject of an RFC in the future. AlexandraAVX (talk) 11:43, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Sources used in Tamil genocide

I am trying to establish if both primary and secondary sources can be used in the Tamil genocide. Sources used have been listed here in Talk:Tamil_genocide#Audit_of_quoted_sources. Kalanishashika (talk) 12:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Reopening the status of VOA as a perennial source

In light of the recent deprecation of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting of the United States Government that it's far past time we stop treating these obvious propaganda vehicles as if they were RSes. Frankly the purpose of VOA and of the now deprecated source are the same - to spread negative news against socialist states that the United States opposes. That VOA has had enough caution to avoid blaring out open antisemitism hardly makes it any better. Frankly all of these US government propaganda outlets should be deprecated and not just the Cuba one. Simonm223 (talk) 17:08, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

There are plenty of state-owned media outlets we allow on this site that are eminently reliable - like the BBC, for example. What matters isn't who or what owns an outlet, but if they follow journalistic guidelines. From the research I've done, it seems like VOA is a pretty well-respected news outlet with a reputation for editorial independence. Do you have evidence to the contrary. If there's nothing new, I see no reason to change from the current advisory. Toa Nidhiki05 17:58, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

Seconding this - @Simonm223, if you want its reliability revisited, you'll have to provide definitive evidence of poor-quality and/or unreliable reporting (which was provided for the OCB). Simply declaring a source to be propaganda does not inherently make it so, and plenty of state-owned or state-funded media outlets (BBC, Deutsche Welle, NPR, France 24, Al Jazeera, and so on) are considered reliable both by Wikipedia and the wider world. The Kip 18:23, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

A similar suggestion was closed as SNOW rather recently, with the suggestion being a specific targeted approach to Cuba.

Opening this now without a major change would likely be a pointless unless you can show an overwhelming development over the last few weeks, which I doubt. FortunateSons (talk) 19:56, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

The Office of Cuba Broadcasting was deprecated because of poor editorial controls that fall below professional standards of journalism, presenting opinion as fact, reporting on unsubstantiated information, and promoting propaganda, including anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Is there evidence that VoA has similar issues? BilledMammal (talk) 06:30, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I avoid VOA on anything relating to politics which the USA takes a side in, given it is specifically designed to be a propaganda outfit and gets its funding for that reason. It is not the BBC world service. But an RfC would require evidence of systematic false reporting, as was found in the Cuba service, in order to deprecate.Boynamedsue (talk) 05:27, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

How systematic are we talking, do you think? Surely even a semi-frequent pattern of errors concerning a particular topic isn't good enough unless we have some external validation of false reporting going on at the outlet. Remsense诉 05:37, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Same as anything else, uncorrected errors are useful as is expert comment.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:26, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I think VOA is reliable. I perused through some of their mainpage articles about controversial topics (such as [27][28][29][30]) and they seem fine. It is certainly not the way Xinhua and Russia Today are. Curbon7 (talk) 06:50, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Of course they're not the same type of outlet as Xinhua or RT. No one would argue that without their tongue poking a hole through their cheek. Let's continue examining the character of American propaganda on its own merits—I use that term neutrally. Propaganda can be true!

I have started to poke around though. Here's one that made both my eyebrows raise, about the recent spat surrounding TikTok:[31]

“

In a comment to CNN on March 13, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said:

"In recent years, though the U.S. has never found any evidence of TikTok posing a threat to the U.S.’ national security, it has never stopped going after TikTok.”

That is false.

There is abundant evidence directly refuting the denials by ByteDance and the Chinese government of TikTok’s ability to influence U.S. public opinion and prompt Americans to act.

For example, ByteDance recently tried stopping the U.S. bill by directing millions of American TikTok users to call their Congressional representatives’ offices and protest the potential ban. So many Americans did so that the calls overwhelmed the lawmakers’ communication lines, CyberNews reported.

“TikTok’s gross stunt proved our point,” said Ashley Hinson, a Republican representing the state of Iowa, during the March 13 debate. “What if on Election Day TikTok sent out an alert saying our elections were canceled?”

”

Goodness gracious. I don't want to get into pundritry here, but this is mighty thin gruel, especially for what is presented as a fact-check instead of an op-ed. The article goes on, and later cites what I can characterize as some bot accounts spun up by a state-funded hacker cell on TikTok, which I think is the only material evidence in this fact-checking report. It's frankly nothing, I'm sorry. Like I said, I just started but one of the first fact-checking pieces I clicked on left me deeply worried. Remsense诉 08:36, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I don’t trust state sources on controversial issues that are obviously COIs, but that seems like common sense. But I don’t support deprecating them because they’re state-owned, obviously, because that would mean the BBC is suddenly completely unreliable. Dronebogus (talk) 14:31, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

We're not deprecating a source because it's state owned, we're deprecating it because it is unreliable. Remsense诉 14:33, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Are we? There's nothing technically inaccurate or indicative of unreliability in the extended quotation you provided. Beyond that you don't deprecate because a source is unreliable, that category is called "generally unreliable" Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:03, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm with you on each point of course, I was speaking generally.

To make this point more concrete: do you think it would potentially be due when writing on the relevant subjects to cite what I linked above, attributed or not, as an example of TikTok being a national security threat (their words!) to the US? Remsense诉 22:50, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Both generally and specifically I would attribute fact checks. TikTok is a national security threat, but that is also a truism. You could also say that TikTok is a national security threat to China (which unlike the US actually does ban it). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:02, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Ah, so I would use {{Cite truism}} for that first one, right? Remsense诉 23:04, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

No I would keep the citation but attribute. Wang Wenbin's comment is objectively false, there is plenty of evidence of a threat... What more reasonable people point to when defending TikTok is that none of the threats are proven, not that there isn't evidence for them. We can't forget the context, this is a fact check of an official statement by the PRC's foreign ministry... Its only relevant in the context of that official and their comment. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:06, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

Citing a corporation asking users to contact their representatives as evidence of the corporation being a threat to national security threat is lying, full stop. There's a difference between acknowledging context and casting unqualified aspersions. Is there an actual difference you can articulate between "threats are unproven" and "threats do not exist"? Threats, as potential future outcomes, are substantiated only by the evidence cited. Claims of a threat that do not cite substantial evidence should be treated as what they are, which is unconvincing. If the VOA does this often enough, that would make them unreliable.Remsense诉 23:37, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

(EC) What is the lie? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:46, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

That a corporation asking users to contact their representatives is evidence of a threat to national security. No adequate argument or connection to other evidence was attempted. Remsense诉 23:49, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

In the article its presented as evidence of their "ability to influence U.S. public opinion and prompt Americans to act." which it appears to be. They present a different series of evidence for that national security point specifically later in the article. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:52, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

And the conflation of that with a threat to national security is lying. Nothing cited in the article bridges this gap. Remsense诉 23:57, 4 May 2024 (UTC)

How so? Given the context they present later in the article the "ability to influence U.S. public opinion and prompt Americans to act." is clearly a national security threat. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:02, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Assuming you mean the disinformation botnets, I suppose I'd have to start citing outside the US foreign policy nexus to characterize that as something other than a threat. Ultimately this is an opinion piece and not a fact check, and I wouldn't cite it for anything other than the views of the American government. Remsense诉 00:09, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Fact checks are in general a form of opinion content, albeit normally expert opinion (especially when it comes to something inherently speculative/subjective like we have here), which is why I said that they should in general be attributed. This is not citable as the opinion of the US government, VoA isn't some sort of spokesperson despite the name. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:11, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

What would have to be demonstrated for this characterization to hold water in your mind? Analogous to the way that People's Daily is a PRC mouthpiece. I know you've explicitly noted it, but the name is Voice of America, and their mission is to promote America in their work, though almost certainly with more editorial freedom than Xinhua or RT. It's been set up such that they don't need to be told what to say necessarily, but that doesn't mean they don't express the opinions of the US government pretty rigidly. Remsense诉 04:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

In general the US government doesn't hold rigid opinions, that one of the differences between a multiparty system and a single party system. Even within the US government there are often large differences of opinion, its pretty rare that anything gets set in too rigidly... The OCB which we were just talking about for example has often found itself at odds with US government policy and opinion largely because of its own rather absurd rigidity and resistance to change. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 04:40, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I agree with that. No state actually has a coherent opinion or motivation about anything, it's just that China's system sublimates those tensions, democratic centralism yadda yadda. Remsense诉 04:43, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

China has been ruled by the same political party since 1949. The US has been ruled by the same political party since 2021. After objecting so strongly to a "lie" before are you really going to try to characterize some of the most brutal political repression on the planet as sublimation (divert or modify into a culturally higher or socially more acceptable activity)? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 05:05, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I was using the term as I understand it to mean, with neutral connotations. The point was that I agreed with you, in any case. To clarify my general position, I appreciate HEB's deliberation and I have not proven anything yet, and do not presently think VOA should be deprecated as unreliable based on anything discussed so far. If I happen to find anything else of note, I'll share it with the class.Remsense诉 05:40, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I thought I'd provide some data points from RS descriptions of Voice of America not always having full editorial independence.

1. A 1982 article in Law and Contemporary Problems giving an overview of the VOA:

   • Voice of America (VOA) is the "official" spokesman of the United States government in the arena of international shortwave radio.

   • Moreover, not all of the Voice's employees are journalists by trade: about twenty-five important jobs are filled by career members of the foreign service.

   • Most American presidents have promised editorial freedom for the VOA, but none have been able to refrain from exerting pressure on its newswriters to tone down material that might damage or embarrass the administration.

2. A 2017 opinion article in the Columbia Journalism Review by a former overseas bureau chief of VOA who had worked there for 35 years:

   • To hold VOA and its parent agency out as journalistic paragons of virtue, as some major media have done, and assert they are no different from non-government media, ignores basic facts.

   • That structure alone makes clear that VOA and other government-funded media are most certainly not 'news companies,'

   • The impression often given in media reports is that programming by VOA and other government-funded media is not influenced, directed, or shaped by foreign policy objectives of any administration. This is just absurd.

   • Among other things, the revered firewall certainly didn’t stop officials from standing up the Extremism Watch Desk.

3. A 2021 article in Mail & Guardian:

   • Voice of America (VOA) has been accused of whitewashing atrocities and airing propaganda in favour of the Ethiopian government during the course of the civil war being waged in that country’s northern Tigray region.

   • Journalists who requested anonymity said the division heads are able to slant the editorial coverage in this manner knowing that, with families to raise and the lack of Ethiopian language newsroom opportunities elsewhere, few journalists are likely to openly protest despite growing discontent.

4. A 2021 article in The Guardian:

   • A coalition of Voice of America journalists has called for the director of the organization and his deputy to resign, alleging in a letter they retaliated against a veteran reporter for questioning Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

All news organizations make occasional mistakes, have inherent reliability issues (e.g. those detailed at WP:NEWSORG and WP:RSBREAKING), and may have some bias (which does not necessarily mean unreliabile), but there are certainly more considerations for VOA than the well-established news organizations that we generally hold to be the most reliable. I haven't seen anything to suggest that it is at the level of deprecation, but using the description of at least WP:MREL is reasonable. — MarkH₂₁^talk 07:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Regarding the first point in 1982, VoA has gone through restructuring and is now independent of any U.S. intelligence, which would arguably make quite a difference.

VoA (and all media) is ostensibly subject to the same standards as U.S. Agency for Global Media has been, and consensus has repeatedly been re-affirmed as generally reliable, thus VoA seems to rank among the “well-established news organizations that we generally hold to be the most reliable.”

As you said, all news organizations are imperfect, but I don’t believe that VoA should require greater scrutiny than it (and other reliable sources) gets now. AnandaBliss (talk) 19:06, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

All news organizations are imperfect, but the circumstances of VOA's imperfections seem worthy of additional scrutiny. Remsense诉 19:17, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I mean this sincerely, what does the additional scrutiny look like? I'm still not seeing a trend of VoA being repeatedly out of "range" with other sources in the "generally reliable" category. As an aside, I think the nature of VoA means that it is very commonly under higher scrutiny by individual editors, and there's a pattern of people challenging instances of VoA citations because it's VoA. AnandaBliss (talk) 19:38, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. We're doing the scrutiny right now by having this discussion. Remsense诉 19:42, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

Are we? This discussion doesn't actually seem to be productive and it wasn't opened in a constructive manner (there is no question being asked, its a series of non-neutral statements)... Simonm223 appears to be ranting, not making a constructive request for input on source reliability. They should have posted this on their personal blog, not at RSN. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:10, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

No.1 is very out of date, and not germane to use as a source now.

No.2 (which predates our previous consensus on this source) is very interesting, but the extract here does not convey the substance of the article, which warns of the potential for political oversight under a Trump administration but does not suggest anything like general unreliability. No.4 relates to the same Trump period, and shows that most VOA journalists have good ethics and integrity but that the director allowed the network to be played for propaganda purposes on two occasions. If this reflects a pattern, we could think about additional considerations for reporting related to the Trump administration.

No.3 is evidence of bias and selectivity in relation to a specific geopolitical region, and gives us reason to always triangulate with other media sources (the article praises Reuters, Deutsche Welle, CNN, the BBC and Bellingcat) when geopolitical bias might be a consideration.

In short, there is no new data here that suggests a significant change to our consensus. At most, we could infer a switch to yellow flag status with some additional considerations (triangulation when US allies' interests are at stake; seek better sources for coverage of Trump) made explicit. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:10, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose re-opening question of status per my comment above. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:11, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  Agreed, no reason to re-open has been shown. FortunateSons (talk) 14:18, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  Fine by me also. Almost always possible to replace it with a better source if it's irksome.

  Remsense诉 14:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

• Oppose re-opening question of status per Bobfrombrockley. - GretLomborg (talk) 14:30, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• Oppose re-opening per above discussion and RfCs at WP:RSPVOA. AnandaBliss (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2024 (UTC)
• The last RFC is from 2021, any user should feel free to open a new RFC on the topic, and there is no reason to hold a vote on if an RFC should be opened. If somebody wants to open one they should do that, and then we can see where consensus is. nableezy - 19:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  Thanks for the clarification. I wasn’t going to start a vote but once I saw one going I figured it must be standard procedure. AnandaBliss (talk) 21:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

  Isn’t this already an RfC? That means there was no one and nothing that could have stopped this discussion, so I feel that the original poster did “feel free.” It seems that the consensus has not changed much over the last several discussions in the last several years. AnandaBliss (talk) 18:28, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

  WP:RFC are listed and advertised, so anyone interested can add their comments, and are usually closed with a statement stating the consensus. This is just a discussion. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:31, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Amendment of Mondoweiss closure

The closure of the recent RfC on Mondoweiss has been amended. Please see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss for the amended closure and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#RfC closure review request at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 433#Closing (archived) RfC: Mondoweiss for the closure review. voorts (talk/contributions) 21:59, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Speakingtree.in & LifePositive

Hi, I am posting here to solicit feedback & input on the reliability of two sources used in the Kalki Bhagwan wiki article. There is a discussion that was initially generated on the article's talk page; however, there wasn't a clean consensus on the reliability of these 2 sources.

The first source under question is an article from speakingtree.in [source link 1]. The second source under question is an article from Life Positive magazine [source link 2].

My thoughts are that both sources are unreliable because:

1] Source link 1 explicitly says that it is a "blog written by Seetharam Basani." According to WP:BLPSPS, self published blogs should be avoided for biographies of living persons.

2] Source link 2 is written almost as a journal/ diary entry and appears to be an opinion piece. According to WP:BLPSPS and WP:NOTOPINION, this would not be considered reliable.

3] WP:NOTPROMO: Both sources also appear promotional in nature.

I'd like to solicit thoughts from the community here on the reliability of these 2 sources.

Thanks! Whitestar12 (talk) 15:43, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

I would agree that speakingtrea source appears to be self-published, as the site doesn't appear to have any editorial control over what is published in the blogs. Lifepostive appears to self-help magazine, not something that appears to have a "reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (WP:SOURCE). WP:BLP also states "Be very firm about the use of high-quality sources", these sources don't seem to meet that bar. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:59, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for your input! Whitestar12 (talk) 01:35, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Blavity

There has been some contention recently on the PinkPantheress article over whether her birth date is April 18 or 19. The source used for April 18 is this [32] article from Blavity. However, I'm concerned about the site's use on BLP articles due to their use of UGC.

• December 2017: "Roughly 60 percent of the articles and videos on the site are submitted by readers, then edited by Blavity’s staff."[33]

• October 2020: "Around 40 percent of the site’s content is user-generated"[34]

• December 2023: "A significant portion of the content we showcase on our social platforms is user-generated."[35]

The source used for April 19 is this tweet [36].

I think her birth date should not be included in the article until a more reliable source can be found.

मल्ल (talk) 03:51, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Pinkpantheress re-tweeted this[37] from MTV the day before, so I suspect the tweet from the 19th was saying she had the "best bday ever" (e.g. the day before).
The article at Blavity is by Hayley Hynes[38] who appears to be member of staff. So I don't think WP:UGC is a concern for this article, but it could still be for other articles. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:41, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

That clears it up, thanks! मल्ल (talk) 13:45, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Svenska Fans (svenskafans.com)

While working as a New Pages Reviewer and checking out the AFC queue I've noticed a lot of newly created Swedish football biographies use svenskafans.com as a source. As far as I can tell from my interpretation of their About page and this post asking for new writers writers are unpaid volunteers, while some articles like this one from the Hampus Skoglund article seem to be written by employed staff, without any obvious differentiation. Since the site is being used in a lot of new biographies I wanted to get some input on how we should treat it as a source. AlexandraAVX (talk) 17:25, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

@AlexandraAVX:, from what I can see it seems to be an accurate site but the self-published nature could be a problem. I would say it’s okay to use but try to find an alternative source or at least one to back it up if possible. Others may say different but that’s my take on it. REDMAN 2019 (talk) 13:20, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It's a bit unclear if it could be counted as self-published, they do have a team of paid editors including a head editor which are obviously not self-published, but I can't find any good explanation of their setup. If they do have an editorial process for their volunteer writers then I don't think it's significantly different from a regular newspaper source. AlexandraAVX (talk) 13:49, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Citing a YouTube channel

I noticed on the Point Horror article, the list was incomplete. Now, there is a YouTuber i watch that goes by “Libary Macarbe” who has a Near complete collection. He has been colllecting The book for over 20 years, so i’d say he’s a professional. Here’s the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsumVwZwFVY Blackmamba31248 (talk) 02:38, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

That's a no from me. "Probably knows his stuff" and "reliable source" are not the same in my book, but others' opinions may differ. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 02:42, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I'd have to suggest that if we need to resort to YouTube channels by amateur collectors for sourcing, we probably shouldn't have a list like that in the first place. The Point Horror series as a whole seems to have attracted some (mostly negative) coverage in WP:RS, but I don't see how that would justify trying to document every single publication. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:19, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

"Libary Macarbe" would need to be an expert in the field who had previously been published by other reliable sources, see WP:SPS. Otherwise self published videos on YouTube aren't reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:58, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

What do you mean by that? Blackmamba31248 (talk) 16:01, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

In other words, if they are an expert, then other reliable sources will have cited them for their expertise. And if not... Selfstudier (talk) 16:06, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Problem is, with topics as miniscule as this, there really is no such thing as a “certifed Expert” Blackmamba31248 (talk) 02:42, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Blackmamba31248, that is a feature not a bug. If reliable sources do not discuss something, then that "something" does not belong on Wikipedia. That general principle is the source of Wikipedia's credibility. Cullen328 (talk) 03:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

No. YouTube is generally not acceptable as a source and some rando’s channel definitely isn’t. Dronebogus (talk) 15:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

the Straits Times

the Straits Times is generally reliable when reporting about non-Singapoure sources. I don't have any evidence of them not being WP:NPOV regarding non-Singapore articles. Considering how Al Jazeera of Qatar is state-owned and Qatar doesn't have better Human Rights record than Singapore, as per Freedom House, and considering how the Straits Times generally has not had much of a controversial incident, I feel it justifies being generally reliable, simply because there is no concrete evidence supporting otherwise. Josethewikier (talk) 04:00, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The Straits Times appear on the Perennial sources list, where it's consider generally reliable other than for Singapore politics. Are you trying to contest that part about Singapore politics? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:46, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

No, I'm contesting how it should be in green (generally reliable) rather than yellow (neither generally reliable not generally unreliable). Josethewikier (talk) 20:39, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Isn't this an issue for the RSP talk page rather than this noticeboard, if there's no challenge to the consensus just to how it's represented on the list? BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:58, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I do apologize to have added this in the incorrect spot. Josethewikier (talk) 15:01, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The colour for the Strait Times comes from the close of this RFC. The issue of Al Jazeera and Qatar has been brought up previously, but no consensus has been found on it. Ultimately the matter is bureaucratic, the difference between General Reliable and Additional Consideration Apply is very limited. In the case of the Strait Times it's only in regard to Singapore politics and any editor objecting to the Strait Times just "because it's yellow!" should be ignored. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Well, I'm not proposing such a change, merely wondering why it is what it is (not being considered generally reliable). I'm not sure I'm able to prove the unreliability of the straits times anyway, because I haven't heard of any major incidents for their bias. If the consensus is that the above source is considered "neither generally reliable nor generally unreliable" by the eyes of most editors, I shall respect that and not challenge any changes. Josethewikier (talk) 15:05, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes the reason it's that way is because of the weight of editors comments in the RFC I've linked. Consensus can change but I would suggest reading the RFC first if you want to change it.
To try and be clear the Strait Times is consider generally reliable, it's only in regard to Singaporean politics that there is any question of it's reliability. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

holocaust invention in modern arab news papers

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

hello, I was recently noticed vandalism in wikipedia, some editor keep referring to Warsaw ghetto uprising as intifada altho he has been told by multiple editor this is wrong, and altho he has been reverted twice by 2 different editors he keeps reinstating that content without consensus has been reached.

according to WP:APLECP

5) All articles and edits in the topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland are subject to a "reliable source consensus-required restriction."

and in a bit more details: All articles and edits in the topic area of Polish history during World War II (1933-1945) and the history of Jews in Poland are subject to a "reliable source consensus-required" contentious topic restriction. When a source that is not an article in a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, an academically focused book by a reputable publisher, and/or an article published by a reputable institution is removed from an article, no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question or consensus about the reliability of the source in a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard.

my 2 questions:

1. dosethis source, meet the criteria of valid source? if yes,I kindly requested to please elaborate what makes it reliable source.

2.if it is in fact not a valid source per the policy, what can I do so that the policy is enforced and the unreliable source and will be removed until consensus is reached?

thank you. 109.64.78.25 (talk) 06:39, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Context would probably help.

Can you confirm that this question relates to the Intifada article and the Deutsche Welle article's repeated use of the word intifada in Arabic for uprising? For interest, that article for the 80th anniversary of the uprising may be a recycled/rewritten version of this DW article in English from the 70th anniversary. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:25, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The DW article is using the Arabic word for uprising. It would be wrong to call the Warsaw ghetto uprising as an Intifada as that word has taken a specific meaning in English beyond its simple translation from Arabic. The Intifada article already points this out somewhat but it could be made clearer that the Arabic sources, if translated, are just saying "uprising/rising". The DW article title translated is "On the 80th anniversary of the Uprising" and the Al Jazeera article to support the Easter Rising translates to "The Irish commemorate the Easter Rising". Neither source is making a comparison between the English usage of Intifada and these events. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I've slightly edited the Intifada article where it used these sources to make the point clearer. Is that better? BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:08, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

It looks an improvement to me. Like many loan words it's important not to mistake the original meaning for how it's used in English (garlic aioli anyone?). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

yes, confirming this is the Article without consensus whether its a reliable source I which I believe should be removed and that the policy regarding reliability of the source should applied to.

"no editor may reinstate the source without first obtaining consensus on the talk page of the article in question or consensus about the reliability of the source in a discussion at the Reliable Sources Noticeboard"

'

it is seams to me like its is an historical revisionisms that border at making this article WP:SOAPBOX.

in Yad Vashem they are referring to the uprising with the word "تمرد" which in English it something like "Tamrod".

https://www.yadvashem.org/ar/holocaust/about/third-stage-the-final-solution/warsaw-ghetto-fate.html

example of usage in context:

in arabic:"أصبح تمرّد غيتو وارسو رمزا لمقاومة اليهود للنازيين."

the arabic in english letters: 'asbah tmrrd ghitu warsu ramzan limuqawamat alyahud lilnaaziiyna.

in english it says "The Warsaw Ghetto Rebellion became a symbol of Jewish resistance to the Nazis."

it is a manifestation of a trend that have have started in last decade by a minority of Arabic publishers with political intention to refer to historic events that were not called intifadas when they occurred intifadas.

the first media reference of this trend or "rebranding" of historical events I could find was in an article in VOX wrote by Natasha Lennard, where she interview Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern history at Columbia University who have said:

"I urge that we think of intifadaas an uprising — a rising-up of an oppressed people, like what the Irish did, and the Indians, and the South Africans did against apartheid." Intifada is not, as the historian noted, some "peculiar violent ritual" reserved for Palestinians — it simply means "uprising," which is what oppressed Palestinians have no option but to do save for continuing to live under the yoke of 47 years of occupation."

here is a quote from fathomjournal to support my argument on whether this info should be removed.

"the historian Deborah Lipstadt – author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory and successful defendant in the libel suit brought against her and Penguin Books by the Holocaust denier David Irving – has used the term ‘soft-core denial’ to highlight the damage done by Holocaust inversion. The false equivalencing of Israel and the Nazis, she says, ‘elevates by a factor of a zillion any wrongdoings Israel might have done, and lessens by a factor of a zillion what the Germans did.’ And as Anthony Julius points out, the Zionist=Nazi trope not only says to the world that the ‘Zionists are to the Palestinians what Nazis were to the Jews’, but also that ‘the “Zionists” and Nazis share the same Fascist ideology’ and that ‘the “Zionists” were complicit with the Nazis in the Holocaust.’"

"By inverting reality and morality, and by recklessly spreading accusations of bad faith, Holocaust Inversion prevents us identifying the changing nature of contemporary antisemitism and is an obstacle to marshalling active resistance to it."

https://fathomjournal.org/holocaust-inversion-and-contemporary-antisemitism/ 109.64.78.25 (talk) 16:57, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

ClutchPoints as an WP:RS

The very recent discussion at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_436#ClutchPoints does not seem to have resulted in a determination of reliability. During the ongoing discussion at Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Scoot_Henderson, ClutchPoints was deemed a clickbait to be ignored by User:Morbidthoughts. Is it an RS or not? Should it be on WP:RSP?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:45, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Context of the discussion is whether sources are appropriate for WP:WEIGHT. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:22, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I am still trying to understand if it is a RS.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:07, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

In my personal experience - ClutchPoints isn't outright unreliable, but they're certainly a bit clickbait-y, and almost all of what they report can be found in more reputable sources. I'd shy away from using them for most items. The Kip 19:47, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:19, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Are these WP:RS ?

Can anyone verify the reliability of these sources?

• [39]
• [40]
• [41]
• [42]
• [43]

As I doubt the publishers as they don't seem genuine (excluding the first source). Based Kashmiri (talk) 03:17, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

None of these sources are unreliable. It will purely depend on the concerning information when assessing the credibility of these sources. Ratnahastin (talk) 09:29, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Got it. I'll surely look forward to it until someone gives more info for these sources, thanks. Pinging @ActivelyDisinterested. Based Kashmiri (talk) 18:50, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Is there a reason to ping me? I don't know that I have much to say about these sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:39, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Oxford Islamic Studies Online

I plan to nominate Pakistan for featured status in the near future, so please reply from that perspective as well. I'm not questioning the reliability of the source; I trust its credibility. However, I perceive it as online material primarily designed for teaching Islamic Studies to students. I'm unsure if it's appropriate to use it as a source in an article. Additionally, I'm interested in understanding its position on the scholarly spectrum. Would this source be regarded as scholarly, comparable to a book authored by a scholar, or would it be deemed inferior in quality compared to such books?

It's currently being utilized as follows in the Pakistan article:

Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a respected Deobandi alim (scholar) who held the position of Shaykh al-Islam in Pakistan in 1949, and Maulana Mawdudi of Jamaat-i-Islami played key roles in advocating for an Islamic constitution. Mawdudi insisted that the Constituent Assembly declare the "supreme sovereignty of God" and the supremacy of the shariah in Pakistan.

Would the following be deemed more scholarly, even though it may not align with the content as accurately as the Oxford reference?

Maulana Shabbir Ahmad Usmani, a respected Deobandi alim (scholar) who held the position of Shaykh al-Islam in Pakistan in 1949, and Maulana Mawdudi of Jamaat-i-Islami played key roles in advocating for an Islamic constitution. Mawdudi insisted that the Constituent Assembly declare the "supreme sovereignty of God" and the supremacy of the shariah in Pakistan.

References

Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 20:54, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Both of your texts appear identical. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 04:14, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

OIS is a RS. Ramos1990 (talk) 05:27, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

@Vice regent The sources differ, and I'm seeking an evaluation of the quality of each to determine which one is more scholarly. Sheriff | ☎ 911 | 10:29, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Both sources are reliable. It is not a question of one source over another. Both can be cited with due weight and WP:ATTRIBUTE may be used if needed. Ramos1990 (talk) 06:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Go with number 2. nableezy - 13:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

BookTrib.com

During New Page Review I came across a page citing an unfamiliar source called BookTrib.com. It appears to be a paid platform for book marketing, with reviews and interviews coming as the result of payments (see here: https://booktrib.com/promote-your-book/). A few dozen pages cite BookTrib.com: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?go=Go&search=booktrib&title=Special:Search&ns0=1&searchToken=c4spsirjr7eoiq42m9gstwuel; https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?go=Go&search=%22book+trib%22&title=Special%3ASearch&ns0=1. I wanted to get this Noticeboard's take on whether there's any use case on the encyclopedia for this source; as paid placement it obviously can't go toward notability. Dclemens1971 (talk) 17:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

They're pretty blatant about it, no it's clearly not a reliable source but a shill website. Not even reliable or notable for reviews since they're being paid by the authors for the review. Canterbury Tail talk 16:08, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Hindawi journals and paper mills

In May 2023 Hindawi announced they'd "closed four journals, which have been heavily compromised by paper mills. The four journals are Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine, Journal of Healthcare Engineering, Journal of Environmental and Public Health, and Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience."[44] We have about 102 citations to those four.[45]

Yesterday The Register's report on Wiley closing 19 more Hindawi journals said "Over the past two years, a Wiley spokesperson told The Register, the publisher has retracted more than 11,300 papers from its Hindawi portfolio."[46]

Is any sort of action required on Wikipedia, such as noting closures in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources or checking whether any cited papers have been withdrawn? NebY (talk) 17:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

This is a broad problem at Hindawi, they don't have the staff they would need to have in order to do proper editorial due diligence so the compliance aspects are almost all post-publication (essentially playing whack-a-mole after the fact). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:46, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Hachette Livre

I am facilitating a Talk:Jinn#Pre-RfC discussion. @Louis P. Boog wish to use "Islam & Muslims: A Guide to Diverse Experience in a Modern World" by Mark Sedgwick.

Published by: Hachette Livre. (Title page informs that the book was first published by Intercultural Press a Nicholas Brealey Publishing Company.)

Author brief @ Google books: ".. Mark (Mark Sedgwick) studied history at Oxford University, did a PhD on Sufism at the University of Bergen in Norway, and taught for 20 years at the American University in Cairo. He now teaches at Aarhus University in Denmark, where he is Coordinator of the Arab and Islamic Studies Unit. .."

Sourced and proposed text
Proposed text is presently shown @ User:Louis P. Boog/sandbox/Jinn sandbox 4-20-2024 In contemporary Islam, only a "small minority" believe that jinn in the Quran should be interpreted allegorically rather than literally. May be paraphrased as: In present-day Islam, only a "small number" believes that jinn in the Quran should be understood symbolically instead of literally.

@ Talk:Jinn#Pre-RfC following concern is raised by @VenusFeuerFalle saying

".. Taking a greater look at the source I furthermore doubt that this (Hachette Livre | Hachette Livre is the world’s third-largest trade publisher | Hachette.com) is a reliable publisher. .."

Should this source be considered reliable enough for the given purpose? Bookku (talk) 09:38, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Worldcat and Stanford University library which owns a copy also report Intercultural Press, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, for the 2006 publication. Hachette bought Brealey in 2015. So the question is the reliability of Intercultural Press, the author, and the book. A second check at Stanford University Library shows they own 60 or so titles put out by Intercultural Press and Harvard University owns about 80 titles from the same press. According to Open Library, Intercultural Press published around 213 books during the time it existed (some of these might be multiple editions of the same title). I would say Intercultural Press is reliable given that two major universities own a sizable percentage of their output. Both libraries also own multiple books by the author and the author has a respected academic posting in the subject area (professor Aarhus University, https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/mjrs%40cas.au.dk). I couldn't find much in the way of academic reviews of the book though I might not have access or looking in the wrong places. I would say the book is reliable though I would change the reference to refer to the original publisher. Erp (talk) 14:19, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

A review in Contemporary Islam, a journal published by the academic press Springer provides a positive appraisal of Islam & Muslims and ends by recommending it as a book that makes the how-do-you-do [...] genre appealing, its benefits enduring. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 21:39, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Are these books reliable

• Kuba, Adolf; Spremo, Milan (1989). Atlas našich automobilů 3: 1929–1936 (1 ed.). NADAS. ISBN 80-7030-049-3.
• Eliška Junková Foundation: Silná čtyřka. pp. 69–70. ISSN 1211-9555.
• Eliška Junková Foundation: Hurvínek a Express. pp. 69–70. ISSN 1211-9555.
• Kožíšek, Petr (2018). 1000 mil československých (1 ed.). National Technical Museum. ISBN 978-80-7037-308-8.

I translated this article from Czech and I am wondering are these books reliable. Cos ^{(X + Z)} 19:21, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The middle two are from the magazine "Automobil revue" which looks reliable, but I can't find any online archive of the magazine to check the details.
I can find little to nothing on the two books, I've asked the Czech project for help. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:39, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

thethings.com

The website thethings.com was being used to support information about living people (see diff here). This appears to be a gossip site to me, they don't cite sources for any of their content, and the related articles (which can be viewed in the web archive source above) give this site a very churnalistic feel. I can't possibly see this site as being acceptable for WP:BLP info. I would like to open this up to what others have to say, however. As for now, I have removed the info from the article since it is only supported by what appears to be an unreliable gossip source. JeffSpaceman (talk) 21:56, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

It's owned by Valnet, which has seen some previous discussion here, and is also listed by WikiProject Video games (WP:VALNET). I would agree it is probably better to avoid it for BLPs. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate the feedback. I have gone and removed it from multiple articles, many of which are BLPs. I'll definitely keep my eye out for citations to any Valnet sites, particularly on BLP articles. JeffSpaceman (talk) 11:57, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree it looks like a poor source for BLPs. And a lot of the content would be discouraged under WP:BLPGOSSIP Tristario (talk) 13:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Is this Ph.D. by Magdel de Roux a reliable source for Lemba people

She is a professor in Biblical and Ancient Studies, University of South Africa which sounds good. I was happy with the PhD until I noticed that she wrote that " The bene Israel of western India (who probably came to Judaism via Islam".[47] I see nothing in Bene Israel backing that claim. The source appears to be this book publlished by Sangam Publications.[48], I can't find any qualifications for the author who seems to live in Bombay. That made me wonder.

Than I discovered that she uses Robert Gayre heavily, at least 35 times. There is no way that Gayre is a reliable source. She also uses a lot of private communications and in one case someone's personal notes, and a number of conference papers. I haven't had the time or energy to look at all of her sources. Doug Weller talk 11:40, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

arent phds like technically usuallly Wikipedia:PRIMARYSOURCE?

im actually curious about this too, ive used research from papers in some articles too User:Sawerchessread (talk) 16:53, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:SCHOLARSHIP is relevant, PhDs can be reliable but that doesn't mean that all PhDs are reliable. As to whether this one is I think your analysis is enough to caste doubt on it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:20, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I actually had concerns about this source a few months back for other reasons. There is a paragraph linking the Lemba specifically to Yemen, sourced to her dissertation, that seemed very speculative. In the end I decided I probably didn't know enough about the Lemba myself to signal this as red flag, and saw she had been published on the topic elsewhere. Her dissertation is very much on the cusp of theology and anthropology, its conclusions seem somewhat unusual but the methodology for factual stuff looked alright.

If she is citing Gayre uncritically though, we probably need to pull it. Quite outside his fringe theoretical position he just made things up. If an article cites Gayre, we would expect half the article to be explaining the limitations of his data and why they thought it could be useful. Boynamedsue (talk) 06:18, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

I"ve looked at other publications by her, all rely heavily on Gayre. Doug Weller talk 08:09, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

It's not RS. She cites Gayre with regards to his theories on Great Zimbabwe, which start from the premise that Africans were not capable of building stone structures, so someone else must have. She may have cited him in good faith, but anything heavily based on his work shows a lack of scholarly judgment and contamination from the ideas of a racialist and fantasist.Boynamedsue (talk) 08:32, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Using Spiked Online regarding genocide of First Nations

On this dif a daily mail article was replaced as the source with the supposedly better spiked online article. The article in question is pretty much straightforward genocide denialism so I'm a bit concerned about it being treated reliably. Simonm223 (talk) 12:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Meh… It may not be the best source possible, but it is a step in the right direction. Spiked is at least more reliable than the Daily Mail. That said, if something even more reliable can be found, feel free to upgrade yet again. Blueboar (talk) 12:47, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, "more reliable than the Daily Mail" is damning with faint praise. However, it's only sourcing the sentence that "no graves were discovered as of (date)". If that is the case, there must be an actual reliable source saying it, and if there isn't we should be leaving it out anyway. Indeed, I'm searching for a better one and all I see so far is the New York Post, which is (surprise surprise) totally unreliable as well. Black Kite (talk) 12:51, 17 May 2024 (UTC)..

Mysterious are the ways of Google. Maybe you are on the wrong continent. Try the New York Times, CBC, APTN, Vancouver Sun, Globe and Mail or Washington Post. Just about any source from the middle of the article is reliable, actually, or should be. I sourced it, but a lot seems to have happened to it since. Some of them won't be familiar to you because they are local. Castanet is reliable and so are the Chilliwack and Hope newspapers. I asked for these articles to be protected at the time because people kept added scare quotes and cites to bogus US blogs like the Dorchester Review. Elinruby (talk) 18:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Are you in the right place, this discussion is not about all sources, it is about this Spiked article for some broad statement. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Part of the issue here is that, on many of the sites which we know there are, in fact, graves there's no interest in excavating them because they are interred remains. For instance it's part of the historical record that there were gravestones at Marieval and they were bulldozed by a priest during a conflict with the local First Nation. So, no, there's no need to excavate there to prove there are bodies. The main question is how many. They've actually had significant problems with denialists coming around with shovels to try and "prove" that there's no bodies. Because of articles like that one in Spiked. Simonm223 (talk) 13:24, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Call me blind, but I’m having trouble seeing the ‘straightforward genocide denialism’. Riposte97 (talk) 12:49, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest reviewing this resource which goes into some detail how the handling of the issue by some sectors of the media was driven by genocide denialism. Simonm223 (talk) 13:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

there has been persistent spamming of articles on residential schools based on hateful pundits insisting that people are making this up. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of graves have been discovered. The sole basis for claiming otherwise is that people are reluctant to dig up their relatives just to prove a genocide that nobody reputable denies. I tried to get the article on the Kamloops school protected at one point and was told that the volume wasn't high enough. Elinruby (talk) 13:29, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

It is insufficient to claim that a source is unreliable because it makes a point you disagree with. This page is for discussions of the reliability of sources, not for continuing a content dispute. Riposte97 (talk) 13:54, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Oh no I have more general concerns with Spiked than this specific instance of genocide denial. It's an anti-vax rag, engages in conspiracy theories per George Monbiot, and it has Koch Brothers funding backing it. But, with that said, "engaged in genocide denial according to a definition provided by University of Manitoba's Center for Human Rights Research" is a pretty good starting point for "non-reliable" on this issue - quite more so than "a wikipedian didn't like their opinion". Simonm223 (talk) 14:32, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any RS which back your claim that Spiked has engaged in ‘genocide denial’? Riposte97 (talk) 14:37, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Already provided the definition I'm using via the University of Manitoba resource. And it applies to Spiked here. Simonm223 (talk) 14:44, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:No original research. Riposte97 (talk) 05:52, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

WP:OR includes an overt exception for talk page discussions that evaluate sources: This policy does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources. Hydrangeans (she/her | talk | edits) 05:59, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I’m aware of that, but this thread is essentially a content dispute, not a real discussion about Spiked. We are being invited to apply a definition in an academic article to analysis of another article, to determine whether an how the patter’s claims should appear in the article Canadian Indian residential school gravesites. Sorry to be flippant before. That is why I believe this is essentially OR. Riposte97 (talk) 10:21, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

The article text says:

As of September 2023, excavations of purported gravesites have not found any bodies.

The source says:

This is just the latest in a series of excavations of alleged burial sites at one-time residential schools. They have been undertaken at the former Mohawk school in Brantford, the former Shubenacadie Indian Residential School in Nova Scotia, the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton and the Kuper Island Residential School in British Columbia. And they have all failed to unearth a single unmarked grave.

Do we doubt this? Are there sources stating that those excavations did find some unmarked graves? What is the reason for thinking the source might be unreliable on this matter? The link to the University of Manitoba report doesn't mention Spiked. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 16:00, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Spiked is an opinion magazine so should never be used as a source for facts. If the article was by a subject matter expert, maybe that be in exceptional case for using it, but this author is a columnist with no expertise on the topic. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

It is a ridiculous source for this. Surely, there is actual sourcing if an official dig occurred. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:20, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Most of the investigations used ground penetrating radar. There were dozens of investigations and there are hundreds of gold-standard RS sources, local, national and international. Elinruby (talk) 18:26, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

That's not responsive to an analysis of this source for this statement. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:36, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I would not use Spiked as a source for Wikipedia, because it is a polemical magazine, not a news publication. Usually, when it makes statements of fact, the facts are those reported by other publications. The Spiked article in question contains links to stories in other publications about the failure to discover mass graves. If those publications are considered reliable, they should be used as sources. Sweet6970 (talk) 17:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Looking at the article body, it seems that excavations in three sites have been completed with no graves found. This is relevant enough to be summarized in the lead, and shouldn't really require adding any new sources presuming the existing sources used are reliable.--Staberinde (talk) 18:24, 17 May 2024 (UT

I worked on this article at the time -- I recognize the sourcing format and remember some of the wording. And have now checked the statistics. Somebody tacked on a lead that does not represent the body or the sources. And also the section full of of scare quotes you mention above. What you say about that section is true but I am just now looking at it, and "did not find any graves" is actually "yet" and "with the resources that were available" in the one source I have looked at so far. And of course nobody has updated the middle, and there are blatant POV problems like "Native American" and a refusal to use the actual odfficial indigenous names. That's what I have seen in the short time I have been looking.Elinruby (talk) 18:36, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Once again, this statement has absolutely nothing to do with the reliability of Spiked. Riposte97 (talk) 05:50, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Sooo let me make sure I understand this. You are saying it is OR to compare a denialist online tabloid with for example the report of a forensic anthropologist (as analyzed by some secondary source such as the CBC) and decide thay of the two maybe there the secondary reporting of the forensic anthropologists finds is more reliable for determining whether there are or are not human remains in a specific piece of dirt? Because it sure sounds to me like that is what you are saying . That's what your source seems to be saying, that it is, in fact, a vast conspiracy of forensic anthropologists and indigenous tribal nations to somehow something because that is obviously the case? Because Pierre Trudeau or something?

For the record it is a settled matter in Canada as to whether children were abused in these schools, and that some of them died. We had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission and almost ten years ago it determined that this did happen, that it was deliberate and that it was genocide.This is a list of specific children whose deaths it was able to document with absolute certainty. Yes, it is a primary document. Here it is as explained in part by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, a stellar RS, as to 25 specific schools in Alberta: 'A war on Aboriginal children': Alberta's 25 residential schools. Do the tribal nations know exactly where all of the bodies are buried, no. That is why they are looking. I realize that there are large parts of the world where nobody has ever heard of this. It is nonetheless extremely well documented and extravagantly covered in RS that these children died and thousands of others disappeared. The Canadian government held hearings about this for three years. I just do not understand in what way it can make sense to someone that an entire country would hallucinate a genocide and pay reparations so it could somehow ... my mind boggles. I am going to go update the article some more. Notably Riposte doesn't seem to mind that a bit. He just wants the statement that there are no bodies in the lead, sourced to Spike, and he wants that bad enough to revert it back in.

Incidentally... I should start by saying that I have not investigated responsibility nor am I making statements about it, but there was definitely been source integrity issues in the article, specifically with respect to the ontogogy of these bodies, which I flagged in a couple of edit summaries. Here is one of them [49] and here is another documenting a similar problem [50] and here is Riposte reverting back in his championed forensic expert, Spike [51]] and I will stop there because this is not ANI, where Riposte is "concerned" I might wind up per the tag-teaming on my talk page. LOL. Elinruby (talk) 12:17, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I’m going to leave aside some of the colourful insinuations above. Respectfully, @Elinruby, I’m going to suggest you read the source again more carefully. Firstly, it is called Spiked, not ‘Spike’. Secondly, there is nothing in the Spiked article which is factually inconsistent with the sources you have cited (although I note you appear to have posted the wrong CBC link). I don’t think anything above justifies impugning Spiked. That said, I will search tomorrow for other sources for the current dispute, which will be more productively litigated on the article talk page. Riposte97 (talk) 13:23, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

I wouldn't trust much from Spiked, particularly anything controversial or exceptional. They're effectively an opinion site masquerading as news. If they cite a source for a claim, then I'd consider if that source is reliable instead. Woodroar (talk) 15:12, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• Spiked is the successor publication to Living Marxism which was shut down over its denial of the Bosnian genocide, and was also under fire for denial of the Rwandan genocide, as well as engaging in whataboutism on environmental issues. After it shut down its editor and most of its staff started Spiked. Its legacy of genocide denial is clearly intact given this article's clear genocide denial POV; it should not be used as a source for any information about anything described as a genocide, which Canada's residential schools have been.

Besides its inappropriate POV, its statement that "no bodies were found" refers to five specific residential schools where excavations/exhumations did not reveal bodies, but conveniently omits the one residential school where a child's remains were found (per [52]). The Spiked piece was published a full eight months after APTN's article; I wonder why they would have omitted it, if not just to push their "no mass murder" narrative? Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:48, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• It's obviously an WP:EXCEPTIONAL claim either way (since it purports to completely overturn all other coverage on the subject) which would require a higher-quality source than this. And the fact that it is being pushed into the lead is absurd; I'd say it would be WP:UNDUE for the body, but devoting an entire paragraph of the lead to an opinion by a non-expert writing in Spiked doesn't make any sense. This is a subject that has received massive coverage; if what they say is true then it should be trivial to cite to better sources. It also seems to directly contradict this source, already in the article. --Aquillion (talk) 16:58, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

I think that the citation wasn't entirely accurate. The article mentions four specific alleged burial sites and says that they have all failed to unearth a single unmarked grave. On the other hand the article reads As of September 2023, excavations of purported gravesites have not found any bodies. I have no idea why they chose to omit the Qu’Appelle find but there's no contradiction here, and thus no reason to doubt the reliability. The Spiked article also says Yet so far, no evidence has been found to support the claims of a ‘genocide’. This is clearly an opinion which should be attributed, if it's found to be DUE, which I doubt. Alaexis_¿question? 16:39, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• In the end, regardless of the inaccuracy of this particular article (and it does appear to be cherry-picking-facts inaccurate), if you're citing a contentious issues purely to Spiked, you might want to go and find a good source instead. Black Kite (talk) 17:42, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

• Spiked is a WP:FRINGE conspiracy trash rag that also does frequent genocide denial as noted by others above. It's unreliable for pretty much anything and I consider it little different than the Daily Mail in the first place. Silverseren^C 18:10, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
• This is an (bad) opinion magazine and so not RS for factual claims unless written by a recognised subject expert. Its writers are very rarely subject experts. Not reliable for this claim.Boynamedsue (talk) 05:53, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussions on the article talk page seem to be heading towards either replacing the Spiked source entirely, or attributing it.

However, I feel obliged to put on the record for posterity, that although allegations have been made of BIAS, no editor has shown any evidence, I don’t believe, that Spiked is not an RS. Riposte97 (talk) 10:07, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Quite to the contrary, Spiked's storied history of genocide denialism was presented already. this is in addition to a demonstration of how academic sources treat the specific line of argument the Spiked article in question makes as a form of genocide denial. WP:IDHT doesn't change that. Simonm223 (talk) 17:22, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

No, discussions on the talk page are heading towards replacing the source entirely full stop. You are the only editor arguing for anything other than this. Even if Spiked didn't have its own particular reliability issues, it's entirely an outlet for opinion, so even if it had never lied it would be inappropriate as a source for facts, especially on a contentious topic.

Moreover, you have been presented with plenty of evidence that it has its own particular reliability issues, and more are readily available.[53][54][55] BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:17, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

• Spiked isn't worth the paper it's written on in general, let alone on the issue of genocide; after all, as Ivanvector points out, Spiked is quite literally Living Marxism with a fresh coat of paint, and LM was so unreliable on the issue of genocide that it was shuttered under the weight of massive legal fees over the libel case. Unless you can find a source better than Spiked, then the statement doesn't belong in the article, attirbuted or not; after all, we don't go to the article about the Rwandan genocide and cite Greentext Anon's grandpa. Sceptre (talk) 17:25, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

Declassified UK

It is extremely biased. Far left, anti israel, anti britain, anti military. The MoD has blacklisted it as they do not consider it a reliable source of news. https://www.declassifieduk.org/raf-bombing-yemen-as-british-as-afternoon-tea/ https://www.declassifieduk.org/uk-military-support-for-israels-genocide-was-pre-planned/ https://www.declassifieduk.org/beheaded-babies-how-uk-media-reported-israels-fake-news-as-fact/ here they state the British military has 145 overseas bases yet is including defence attaches at british overseas consulates as a "base" same with small numbers of RAF pilots being in pakistan to teach students is apparently a "overseas military base" it's fake news. https://www.declassifieduk.org/revealed-the-uk-militarys-overseas-base-network-involves-145-sites-in-42-countries/ DrWatlingWarfare (talk) 21:04, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Bias is not unreliability and I don’t think it’s “far left”. The issue here is a lack of accuracy and this is a typically misleading post from this outlet. I agree it’s not a reliable source. It’s a conspiracy theory site. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:31, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Why do say it is a conspiracy theory site? Selfstudier (talk) 12:19, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Maybe that term was excessive. This is a less well-established news outlet (per WP:NEWSORG) so would need evidence of a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy to consider it usable. I can find no example of use by other RSs, apart from this mention of an interview with Jeremy Corbyn. It has some serious advisors and board members and reputable funders, but one red flag is that one of its advisors is Lowkey, who is a purveyor of antisemitism and conspiracy theories for MintPress and PressTV.[56][57][58][59]

• Some of its worst reporting is by John McEvoy, who went to Declassified from TheCanary. For example, one of McEvoy's most widely circulated reports claims that "Some 41 of Labour’s 197 sitting MPs have accepted money from the Israel lobby", but the overwhelming majority of this comes from a single donor, Trevor Chinn, a lifelong Labour supporter who also funds anti-occupation groups such as the New Israel Fund and Yachad, so calling him "the Israel lobby" is disinformation, adding two and two to make five, which is their standard modus operandi.
• This Medium post by an academic anthropologist specialising in Latin America describes how its reports are used by authoritarian states: The conspiracy theory of the “lithium coup” was invented by outside observers who sought to justify the “coup” narrative in favor of Morales. It was first created in 2019, from the American news site Common Dreams, then in 2020 with reactions to a sarcastic tweet from Telsa’s Elon Musk, and now in 2021 with a report from Great Britain from the website of low-prestige Declassified UK. Each new conspiratorial explanation of a supposed “lithium coup” is incoherent with respect to the previous one, but what is consistent is total ignorance about local lithium politics in the Salar de Uyuni. The Declassified UK report by Matt Kennard, which does not mention the contract signed by Evo Morales with the German company ACI Systems to exploit lithium deposits of Uyuni for 70 years, nor the protests and demands of the local Civic Committee of Potosí about said agreement, maintains that the British embassy participated in the “coup” citing some initiatives of Britain concerning Bolivian lithium, but they do not mention that the initiatives actually began in 2015, during the government of Evo Morales. While the Declassified UK report is founded on ignorance and speculation, its political uses are evident. Misión Verdad, a news agency of the Venezuelan government, took the time to translate and disseminate the report in the region. In January 2021, another conspiratorial report by Declassified UK [by Kennard and McEvoy] was used by the government of Nicolás Maduro to censor journalists in the country as alleged agents of imperialism. The Armed Forces directly threatened journalists through Twitter, in a country condemned by the United Nations for the use of torture and forced disappearances against opponents.
• Its reports are heavily used by generally unreliable and deprecated sites such as GlobalResearch,[60] Sputnik,[61] MintPress,[62][63] The Cradle,[64] RT.[65][66] Grayzone.[67] (That last example was noted in a GMF report as being circulated by the Kremlin's disinfo network.[68])
• In turn, it cites deprecated and unreliable sources. E.g. it praises the Grayzone's Palestine reporting.[69] In fact, it shares writers with such sources. Matt Kennard has written for Grayzone.[70] Jonathan Cook writes for MintPress, Grayzone and Declassified for example.[71][72] Kit Klarenberg appears to write for it as well as Grayzone.[73][74]

These issues might not put it in the "generally unreliable" category, but should make it clear that this is not the sort of source we should be using without extreme caution. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:02, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

McEvoy is an independent journalist that writes for them. He also wrote Who funds Labour Friends of Israel – and why won’t it say? so sure, he has a thing for LFI and the lobby, but can just attribute him.

Are any of their reports, regardless of who is using them, actually incorrect or wrong? A lot of what you are writing there is more innuendo than hard evidence. It's a bit rich citing an opinion piece from an unreliable source (Medium) to back up your opinion. Selfstudier (talk) 12:34, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

On review, as I say "conspiracy theory" might be excessive and no I don't see examples of factual incorrectness as such, but I'm seeing examples of misleading reporting, as that "lobby" piece shows. Their approach is basically joining the dots between unconnected facts in order to give the appearance of a bigger picture, or adding two and two together make five.

Re Medium: obviously I wouldn't cite it in a mainspace article, but to be clear it's not an unreliable source; it's a self-published source (in this case by a subject matter expert). BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:37, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Someone still yet to obtain their doctorate isn't a subject-matter expert. If and when they do get it, obtain an academic position, get published in some serious journals, they'll be an expert in anthropology, not British foreign policy. Cambial — foliar❧ 16:39, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Fair point still a PhD student. Has some peer reviewed articles, eg https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=devin+beaulieu+bolivia&oq=devin+beaulieu#d=gs_qabs&t=1715889721225&u=%23p%3DWg6qg49pQY4J Subjext matter is not anthropology but extactivism in Bolivia, the topic of MvEvoy’s article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:04, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Not a subject matter expert, has not published anything other than a couple of co-authored reviews. If the medium article was published, then it would carry some weight. But it isn't, so it carries zero weight. Use by others cannot be counted against a source. This is weak stuff.--Boynamedsue (talk) 23:30, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

On review, as I say "conspiracy theory" might be excessive and no I don't see examples of factual incorrectness as such, but I'm seeing examples of misleading reporting, as that "lobby" piece shows.

Their approach is basically joining the dots between unconnected facts in order to give the appearance of a bigger picture, or adding two and two together make five.

Re Medium: obviously I wouldn't cite it in a mainspace article, but to be clear it's not an unreliable source; it's a self-published source (in this case by a subject matter expert). BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:53, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

OK, just because they have produced an article or two that could be construed as anti Israel, does not render the source bad for everything, long as that's clear. Selfstudier (talk) 10:14, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

obviously I agree with that. As I and others keep on repeating, bias is not unreliability. This source is focused on the UK state not on Israel. My only Israel-related point was an inaccurate description of an anti-occupation British Jewish long-term Labour-supporting businessman as "the Israel lobby" which made the article deeply misleading. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree with Selfstudier. These look like attempts to discredit a source through "guilt" by association. That's not a serious or credible way to evaluate a source. None of it is evidence of incorrect reporting. The source has no control over what other websites or news organisations give secondary reporting on their content. Similarly, that a journalist also does freelance work for other outlets does not "contaminate" Declassified's reporting. Unreliability of a source means it cannot always be relied upon to impartially and correctly report facts, not that everything printed by them is lies and that those associated must also be guilty.

As to the silly notion of "conspiracy", the Centre for Investigative Journalism invited their lead reporter, Matt Kennard, to speak at a conference on conspiracy theories and journalism. Hardly likely if they or other investigative journalists consider Kennard a conspiracist himself. They describe Kennard as an investigative journalist and Declassfied as a news outlet covering British national security issues.

Use by others is relevant, of course, and the widespread citation of Declassified UK in academic literature indicates it is taken seriously and used by numerous scholars. Cambial — foliar❧ 13:33, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Some of those academic sources give some credibility to Declassified UK, although it's important to look at the context in which it's cited. this source cites it for this sentence "While there are some campaigners who have raised concerns about the UK developing ‘killer robots’ unrestrained". Then says that seems "alarmist hyperbole given that the UK has shown clear disinclination to develop truly autonomous weaponry (at least, anytime soon)".

I'm still concerned by the lack of its reporting being referenced by more established reliable sources. I'm not sure if I find some passing citations in a limited number of academic sources that convincing. You could also find that for many unreliable sources. Tristario (talk) 14:16, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Not sure how you're characterising a citation as "passing". That would make all academic citations "passing". Journals such as Media, War & Conflict, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, The International History Review, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, and academic publishers such as Routledge and the University of Birmingham are established reliable sources. Cambial — foliar❧ 14:22, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Simply being cited for something fairly inconsequential or for a passing mention of something in an academic paper often isn't strong indicator of reliability. If it's actually discussed in the paper or if it's cited in a way that implies more credibility then I'd consider that to be more noteworthy. Tristario (talk) 14:57, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Tristario. CIJ endorsement and some or the cits add weight but some of them are weak. The first I clicked clicked on at random is a report of some private think tank that has more Wikipedia entries in its bibliography, and doesn’t actually cite Declassified in the text, even though it lists them in the references. BobFromBrockley (talk) 20:12, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The above Medium blog post by a non-expert holds no weight. I really don't see evidence of factual reporting errors and they seem to be cited by numerous academic/media sources. While some of their contributors write for other unreliable outlets (e.g., Grayzone, etc.), that doesn't mean this source is unreliable too (although, certain authors may be regarded as unreliable). I can see how this source can be regarded as biased in certain topic areas. A minor cause of concern is that they state they "do not collaborate with the UK’s ‘mainstream’ media, but challenge their narrative "[75]. I'm typically not a fan of these 'alternative outlets' but Declassified UK seems robust in their reporting. So, I would recommend some extra eyes on DUEWEIGHT be applied when attempting to cite them in WP. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 00:17, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

What reliable media sources cite them? They are cited often by poor quality and questionable media outlets (including deprecated ones like Al Mayadeen and Mintpress News), but the only citation in a generally reliable (but biased) media outlet I've found so far is this one. Tristario (talk) 01:54, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Y'know I think you're right. Human Rights Watch cites them once [76], but I guess they're more of an advocacy group. They still have a fair number of cites in academic books/journals. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 06:10, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

@BobFromBrockley From what I can understand from its wikipedia page, "Declassified UK" is a UK-based journalist organization that is focused on criticizing British foreign policy. Its reports are cited in some academic sources.

Do you have references of it espousing fake news reports or conspiracy theories? Shadowwarrior8 (talk) 20:51, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

It's a reliable source with a credible board and run by an experienced historian and an ex-FT reporter. OP is misleading: can't see any indication the cause of the brief but now withdrawn refusal to communicate by the MOD was that they did not consider it a reliable source. That claim has no apparent basis. Cambial — foliar❧ 08:43, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Curtis is a historian in that he has written popular history books published by trade publishers, but for clarity he is not an academic historian. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:06, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

Being left wing / criticising the military ≠ unreliable. Of course the UK Ministry of Defence isn't a fan of theirs—the main focus of their journalism is exposing them—but why should that affect what we do? – Joe (talk) 11:34, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

I have not seen anything wrong with its reporting. Its reports are generally quite detailed and include verifying links. The GCHQ did blacklist the site in 2020 because GCHQ was embarrassed by Declassified's reporting on the GCHQ's programme in British schools. The MoD temporarily blacklisted the site, possibly in reponse to "its reporting on Britain’s role in training senior spies from some of the world’s most repressive dictatorships on a UK military course". The blacklisting resulted in the Council of Europe issuing a Level 2 "media freedom alert" and Ben Wallace ordering an independent review into Declassified’s blacklisting. Neither blacklisting was due to inaccurate reporting. It would be nice if some of the more established outlets did some investigative journalism that prompted these types of responses. Burrobert (talk) 12:25, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

• I'm not familiar with this source, but the articles linked seem fine. Is there any reliable evidence of uncorrected false information being published here?Boynamedsue (talk) 12:38, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
• Source looks reliable Its "about us" is quite clear about its editorial and journalistic staff, advisory board looks strong. Is there a documented history of false reporting without corrections? Simonm223 (talk) 14:50, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
• Generally reliable from what I can see, and no case has been made why that wouldn't be the case. Cortador (talk) 21:16, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
• Never heard of this source in my life but it looks fine. Its editorial board is filled with many respected journalists and some academics. I did a quick search and found no obvious instances of misinformation/major factual errors.Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 00:33, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
• It's a strongly biased source but I see no clear evidence of factual inaccuracy.
  • The "145 base sites" article goes into some detail about exactly what makes up that number, so it's not obviously wrong of them to define a "base site" that way.
  • Sharing writers with an unreliable source doesn't imply they are unreliable.
  • Being associated with someone bad doesn't imply their published articles are unreliable.
  • Being cited by someone bad doesn't imply their published articles are unreliable.
  • Even praising someone bad doesn't imply their published articles are unreliable.
  • Medium isn't a reliable source for determining source reliability.
  • As a general point, we as editors must distinguish clearly between the facts in a source, and the overall impression that a source gives. Biased sources by their nature will tend to give a skewed perspective of the world. Biased sources will leave the reader with a certain impression. They can do all of this using only completely factual statements! Imagine a biased source dedicated to vilifying a politician by publishing details of 27 bad things he did while never mentioning the 874 good things he did - a misleading impression built out of facts. But we don't build Wikipedia articles out of impressions, we build them out of factual statements. We have to see past whatever impression the source gives us and focus solely on mining the source for facts. Biased sources also tend to sprinkle in opinions amongst the facts. This is sometimes a job for editorial judgement and talk page consensus as to which elements are opinions and which are facts. We also mustn't use a biased source to assign undue weight to a perspective. But it is absolutely possible that a biased source (even a very strongly biased source) can be a source of usable factual material. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 13:51, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

• Biased but reliable. Declassified UK wikipedia entry has no info about any major scandals. Apparently, they got Ministry of Defense to apologize when they were antagonistic towards the journalists in 2021? Sidenote, the wikipedia article cites a lot from the newssite itself. Matt Kennard (journalist), who is a cofounder, seems to have a lot of journalism experience as per his wikipedia page.

User:Sawerchessread (talk) 00:48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

References

Is greyscape.com a reliable source?

At issue is this edit, in which an editor is using greyscape.com as the source for the information. I have looked high and low for a reliable source for this addition, and I see none. One would think that if one designer was a student of another notable designer, that information would be available in a published book, journal, or some other reliable source. greyscape.com appears to be a website run by a single entity with no editorial oversight, and on the home page, the webmaster describes the origins of the site as "Originally launched in 2016 as a passion project an Instagram account". I'd like to hear if anyone would consider this website a reliable secondary source. Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:16, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

There's an article in JSTOR that verifies the same information, Bredendieck, Hin (1962). "The Legacy of the Bauhaus". Art Journal. 22 (1): 15–21. doi:10.2307/774604. ISSN 0004-3249. JSTOR 774604. I, myself, was a student of the course in the German Bauhaus under Albers and Moholy. and it seems uncontroversial enough. Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:39, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Anyway , there does appear to be a PDF copy of that article floating around as well but the sites I've found for it were a bit sus so I won't actually link it. Should be available a ProQuest as well though, both through the Wikipedia Library bundle (WP:TWL). Alpha3031 (t • c) 03:45, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, I've made the required changes to the Hin Bredendieck page-- added both sources. Smefs (talk) 13:10, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

@Alpha3031: Thanks for finding a reliable secondary source. A valuable contribution. Appreciated. Fred Zepelin (talk) 18:38, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

SB Nation

Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_410#SB_Nation-staffed_sports_editorial_blogs and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_285#Is_it_appropriate_to_use_SBNation_as_a_reference? don't really make it clear whether SB Nation is or isn't an RS. So I am not sure if either of these is an RS. [77] [78]-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:31, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The thrust of those discussions was "it depends", a bright-line answer wasn't possible. It depends on what you want to use it for. Mackensen (talk) 13:14, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Scoot_Henderson, I am trying to determine whether content should be in the article and if so, which sources to use.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 01:23, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

SB Nation hosts blogs written by volunteers with minimum oversite by the editors of SB Nation, who will be editors for many different blogs at the same time. Some articles may be more reliable than others based on the author, as some authors have more reputable than others, but in general I don't think it should be a 'high quality' source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:58, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

• • User:ActivelyDisinterested, So that is your general rule. What about the two specific blogs of interest: [79] [80]?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:09, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

    The first is authored by 'Timmay' the second by Dave Deckard (who at least appears to have some recognition). SB Nation is an umbrella group for lots of fan group blogs. Do they add much weight to a discussion about an otherwise little noted statistics, probably not. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:21, 19 May 2024 (UTC)

    Is there independent acknowledgement of Deckard's reliablility? —Bagumba (talk) 17:14, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

    I wouldn't go that far, but he isn't an anonymous account such as 'Timmay'. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:16, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

    Thanks for clarifying. —Bagumba (talk) 19:24, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

At best, it is WP:RSOPINION by an expert. It's only reliable for the expression of his opinion. Morbidthoughts (talk) 21:36, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

I'd say SBNation fan blogs are GUNREL unless the author is an established expert as noted in multiple academic sources, the same way we treat any other SPS. JoelleJay (talk) 22:22, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

BOL News

Is this from BOL Network's BOL News reliable for use at Kaylee Hottle? It has biographical details not covered in US-based reliable sources (including date of birth). Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 22:58, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Denniss, you said here that it is "strange". What makes it strange? All we should determine if it is a reliable source for use. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 23:47, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Lots of scandals/reliability issues on the wiki page. Doubtful they have valid data of the US teen actress. --Denniss (talk) 00:11, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

Date of birth should be included if they have been 'widely published', see WP:DOB. If this is the only source with the date that's even close to reliable I would suggest leaving it out. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:37, 21 May 2024 (UTC)