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Healthline: deprecate or blacklist?

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.

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A May 2023 RSN discussion about Healthline raises the question about whether Healthline should be deprecated as generally unreliable or blacklisted as fabrication and spam on many of its health-related article pages.

Healthline: [1]

Healthline is frequently used by novice editors to source medical, nutrition, and lifestyle content. Its name implies health expertise, and its author(s) or editors are identified as having "medically reviewed" articles, despite most having no medical expertise (BS or MS degrees in non-medical fields). Healthline commonly cites individual primary studies to extrapolate to an anti-disease effect or "health benefit", a term used in many of its articles on foods, phytochemicals, and supplements.

Previous RSN discussion: Feb 2022 goji berries

Examples of spam health misinformation are Healthline articles on coffee antioxidants ("Many of coffee’s positive health effects may be due to its impressive content of powerful antioxidants"), anti-disease effects of black tea, "proven health benefits" of ashwagandha, and "proven health benefits" of blueberries, among dozens of others. Search "antioxidant" on Healthline and browse any retrieved article for the extent of misinformation (where only vitamins A-C-E apply as antioxidants for the human diet).

Diffs on goji - this talk discussion on goji nutrition and health benefits; continued further here.

Numerous others under my history, here.

It may be justified to blacklist Healthline as a perpetual source of fabrication and spam. Similar to reputations in scientific publishing generally, blatant misinformation destroys confidence permanently in the rest of the source.

Seeing an edit containing a Healthline source is WP:REDFLAG for revising or reverting the edit. There are no circumstances where a Healthline source could not be MEDRS-sourced.

Healthline should be blacklisted. Zefr (talk) 19:26, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

What's the evidence that Healthline is actually spam ("the use of messaging systems to send multiple unsolicited messages (spam) to large numbers of recipients for the purpose of commercial advertising, for the purpose of non-commercial proselytizing, for any prohibited purpose (especially the fraudulent purpose of phishing), or simply repeatedly sending the same message to the same user", according to our article on the same subject), or even WP:REFSPAM ("a form of search engine optimization or promotion that typically involves the repeated insertion of a particular citation or reference in multiple articles by a single contributor. Often these are added not to verify article content, but rather to populate numerous articles with a particular citation")?

It sounds like the only thing happening here is that editors use a source that they believe is reliable, but that better informed editors disagree with them, not to mention the few especially strict MEDRS supporters such as yourself. That doesn't actually make it spam. It's a health news website. It shouldn't be used for any purpose that we wouldn't use a newspaper article for, but I've seen no evidence of it being eligible for inclusion in the MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. You could ask admins like Kuru or Ohnoitsjamie, but we don't normally add things just to keep people from complying with WP:SAYWHEREYOUREADIT.

P.S. Of course blueberries have "proven health benefits". One might wish for a Wikipedia editor to write something staid and obvious like "Blueberries, like basically all fruits and vegetables, contain Vitamin C, which is essential to human health" rather than something breathless about blueberries being uniquely near-magical, but it's still true that they have "proven health benefits", especially for anyone who doesn't fancy a case of scurvy. (Mmm, blueberry season is just starting here...). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I always go to the medical topics I know best to check the source. For Tourette syndrome (FA Tourette syndrome), the following healthline statements are utterly wrong (not just subtly wrong) -- samples only:

• It is a syndrome that involves recurrent involuntary tics, which are repeated, involuntary physical movements and vocal outbursts. Vocal tics need not be outbursts at all; gulping is an example of a vocal tic. This information furthers a stereotype about TS.
• The symptoms include uncontrollable tics and spontaneous vocal outbursts. Ditto, plus see Tourette syndrome for how wrong the "uncontrollable" is.
• People diagnosed with Tourette syndrome often have both a motor tic and a vocal tic. No, they must have both for a TS diagnosis.
• Symptoms are generally most severe during your early teen years. Concocted from I don't know where ...

Stopped there. Moving on to Lewy bodies (FA dementia with Lewy bodies):

• Dementia with Lewy bodies, also known as Lewy body dementia, is caused by protein deposits in nerve cells. 1. Lewy body dementia and dementia with lewy bodies are not the same thing. 2. The cause of DLB is unknown.

So, again stopped there. Adding this to Zefr's examples, yes, this site is rubbish and should be blacklisted. We shouldn't have to run around removing potential rubbish added by unsuspecting or new editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:06, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

While I agree that it's not spam per se, there is a precedent for blacklisting poor sources that are frequently misued as references, NaturalNews being the first example to come to mind. Now NaturalNews is in a category of its own in terms of being complete rubbish. Healthline's own article suggests that there is mixed opinion as to it being a "good" source. I'm OK with blacklisting a link on the grounds of it being a frequently misused poor source, but on the conditions that (1) we have a strong consensus that it has no use in Wikipedia as a references and (2) the existing 500+ links are cleaned up prior to blacklisting. Neither of those conditions are currently met as far as I can see. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 22:23, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the Natural News discussion (not an RfC) resulted in adding to the spam blacklist. And Beetstra changed the spam-blacklist guideline to add "some sites which are persistently abused for shock effects, and some sites which have been added after independent consensus" after I had objected about adding ancient-origins.net. A more recent example is that my request to remove Breitbart from the spam blacklist (since spamming if it ever existed was stopped) was archived. Thus there are indeed precedents, and I regard them all as bad. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:19, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

John's right about it being a big jump from nothing to deprecation or blacklisting, but another option is an AbuseFilter that says something like "Healthline.com is generally not a reliable source for medical information".

Another option would be to have a bot post individual messages ("I see you added <badsite> to [[Possibly medical article]]. This is generally considered a poor source for health-related content. Could you please replace it with a better source?") WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:47, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

it seems like overkill to jump immediately to deprecation or blacklisting. Why not start by clarifying on RSP that it is unreliable? I think we now have the necessary discussions and consensus for that. John M Baker (talk) 23:22, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure if it technically qualifies until this RFC closes, but I've boldly added it as GUNREL for now. If anyone wants to amend or remove, feel free. As for an edit filter... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I'm not really sure. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:48, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, get rid of it.

Their articles are written almost entirely by random freelance writers with zero qualifications, and then "medically reviewed" by "medical advisors" who are very frequently quacks:

• This reiki [2] was written by a yoga teacher and "medically reviewed" by "doctor" with a PhD in psychology from for-profit online Walden University (their psych PhD program is unaccredited!). Her bio asserts she's a holistic nurse, professor (at Walden), reiki master, clinical hypnotherapist, and expert in "complementary and alternative therapies, autoimmune disease, stress and coping, and obstetrics". She was also the advisor for this pro-homeopathy article and this throat chakra article that starts out "Chakras play a role in the flow of energy in your body. Running from the base of your spine to the top of your head, the seven main chakras each correspond to specific nerve bundles and organs in your body."
• This pro-chiropractic article reviewed by a DPT (with degree from for-profit University of St Augustine) who has no publications and whose professional qualifications list is so weak he included CPR certification. The article cites case studies, Frontiers junk, and weak reviews in weak journals.
• This credulous piece on homeopathic arnica spends a lot of text uncritically summarizing its health claims and mechanism while minimizing the fact that there's no evidence it works ("however, more research is needed"). It was written by a dietitian and personal trainer and underwent expert review by another dietitian.
• What Are the 7 Chakras and How Can You Unblock Them?, written by someone with a master's in counseling and medically reviewed by a yoga instructor. JoelleJay (talk) 23:57, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

Based on your post, I went back to look at the Tourette syndrome healthline author, and what I found is really weird. She appears to be a legit neurologist, but that doesn't mean she knows anything about TS. But as an indication that there are deeper problems at healthline.com, here she wrote a mostly accurate article for healthgrades.com. At about the same time (2022). If she's capable of writing (generally) acceptable content about TS, what went wrong at healthline? Are they just paid to rubberstamp rubbish without really checking, or what the heck? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:12, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The TS healthline author is actually a nurse practitioner; the article was just "reviewed" by a legit neurologist. JoelleJay (talk) 06:16, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I was just coming to correct that, and you beat me to it ... correct ... I was referring to the reviewer. In other words, she didn't even review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:02, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes I would agree Healthline should be deprecated, or at least considered generally unreliable. I think I've probably been duped by the "medically reviewed articles" bit in the past, I bet I've added it somewhere I shouldn't have as a result, thinking it was high quality as an RS. But these examples and the general evidence above has convinced me we should not consider it reliable, as what they consider "medical expert" is clearly not what Wikipedia considers expertise. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 15:25, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

• I think Healthline suffers from a problem with many health websites that see their audience wanting health-enhancing advice and not just health-fixing advice (compare with NHS). So they overstate the benefits and are overly credulous in much the same way as newspapers tend to be. Outside of that area, are they terrible? I know Sandy has VERY high standards for the topics she is concerned about, and many sources (including authors of reviews in professional journals) don't meet them. I had a look at their article on tuberous sclerosis and it is IMO absolutely fine. I had a look at epilepsy and didn't finish reading it but what I read seemed absolutely fine too. The language and style of the articles is heavily dumbed down. This has advantages (the general reader, wanting to add some sourced info on a disease, can at least understand the source) compared to what MEDRS might recommend (an -- often paywalled -- review using jargon and aimed at other neurologists). But when you start with dumbed-down source, it is difficult to raise the language level back up to more formal writing. But then that's not much different to the NHS website, and I wouldn't want to blacklist that.

Perhaps the best thing is to warn about its use for "wellness" topics. For general medical issues, it probably is ok, not ideal but not terrible. If someone wrote about "First aid for seizures" and cited Healthline, I don't think Wikipedia would be improved by an editor removing the source, removing the content or tagging the content as unreliably sourced. It would be fine, and a whole lot better than most people know about how to do first aid for seizures.

Btw, I get that blueberries are over sold as a superfood. But it isn't like someone is selling something harmful or just water or placebos. The claim above that they have "have meagre nutrient content" just just bunk. Of course fruit is mostly water, but these berries are packed with more of certain nutrients than other common berries and fruit that people eat as snacks or sides. We certainly want people/readers to eat them as part of a fruit & veg rich diet. Telling people their nutrient content is "meagre" is just as false as claiming they are "super" and more dangerous because the risk then is people think eat fruit-flavoured sweets or chocolate bars for their snack instead, telling themselves that blueberries are no better.

Another complaint. A "dietician" is a proper medical professional. Zefr's comment might make one think a GP or a cardiologist or a neurologist, being "properly medically qualified", might be better placed to talk about health effects of food. A dietician is absolutely the qualification one would want, and anyone who's dealt with a hospital dietician will know how professional and knowlegable they are. But like with anything, especially perhaps in the US, qualifications and learning can be put aside if one gets paid to write gushing articles about super foods. But I've been burnt by so called doctors writing on Wikipedia way beyond their area of expertise, to the point where what they write is nonsense and unintellible and they clearly don't understand the source text at all. So a "medical qualification" isn't a guarantee that someone is competent to write about all areas of medical knowledge. A cardiologist who once took a few lectures on epilepsy medications, aged nineteen and thirty years ago, is not imo an expert on epilepsy.

Lastly, wrt Healthline "cites individual primary studies". The rule against citing primary studies is a Wikipedia quirk because our editors are not assumed to have medical knowledge themselves. Applying that rule to other publications is wrong. The Lancet review that we might prefer to be used as a source also "cites individual primary studies", it just, hopefully, isn't so credulous and gushing. -- Colin°^Talk 09:44, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Colin - addressing the nutrient content of blueberries, 1) compare the analysis of our blueberry article where the Daily Values (for a 100 gram amount) only of vitamin C, vitamin K, and manganese are at moderate levels vs. a more nutrient-rich plant food like spinach. The blueberry nutrient contents are meager.

2) Then read again the sensationalism of unproven anti-disease benefits for blueberries in the Healthline article, "medically reviewed" by a dietitian (not a medical expert). One needs no better example of fabrication and misinformation than this for deprecating/blacklisting Healthline, and there are dozens of Healthline articles with similarly deceitful anti-disease claims.

3) Note also that anti-disease effects of the Healthline article derive from primary research and leaps of interpretation from preliminary unconfirmed findings to a headline on disease prevention. That is WP:SYNTH.

4) on your comment, "For general medical issues, it probably is ok": find one WP medical article or statement where a Healthline source exists now, and where a better MEDRS source isn't readily available. This is where WP:MEDASSESS and WP:MEDORG sources are needed; reviewing them proves that Healthline has no place in any of these guidelines. Zefr (talk) 14:37, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I hear you, Colin, but by allowing hosting of these marginal and sensationalized and inaccurate sources, we allow them to continue to exist (and in this case, they are doing nothing but paying professionals to rubberstamp rubbish). Wikipedia is big enough and important enough that we can be the factor that keeps them in business. If the student editors don't find these sources, they'll have to move on to real sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:33, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Agreed, readers would have no idea that we only consider Healthline "good enough" to cite for basic non-wellness things; what they would glean from a Healthline source being used in a medical article is that Healthline is an acceptable website for all medical information.

I also maintain there is a huge difference between a "medical professional" and a "medical expert", and another gulf between "expert" and "expert in the relevant field". A member of the American Society for Nutrition is what I would expect for the expert adviser on a medical nutrition article, not someone with a bachelor's in nutrition + internship (all that's required for an RD) or a master's. And I definitely would not want a dietitian who went anywhere near the Integrative and Functional Medicine scam. The blueberry article makes some egregious extrapolations from primary studies--like claiming a 4-week blueberry/apple juice regimen led to a 20% reduction in oxidative DNA damage when actually the study tested single-strand breaks induced by H2O2 tx in ex vivo lymphocytes collected after avoiding all antioxidant foods for 5 days and then again after the diet regimen (there was no separate control group), and the study itself states within the whole study population effects were modest and strongly biased by large inter-individual differences. Despite this, we did find a significant protection against H2O2-induced oxidative DNA damage. However, we also observed a significant increase in BPDE-DNA adducts induced ex vivo upon intervention.

Likewise, someone with a PsyD/PhD in psych is not qualified to be reviewing articles on TS written by a freelance writer, health reporter, and author with zero credentials. Predictably, there are several issues with the TS Healthline article, including the claim that There’s no known cure for TS, but most people can expect to have a normal lifespan. There is not enough longitudinal data to assert that "most" TSC patients will have a normal lifespan (certainly not without medical treatment! This source states Furthermore, although TSC patients are known to experience higher mortality than the general population, there are few reports on the death rate, standardized mortality ratio (SMR), and estimated life expectancy), and the article operates under the assumption that the patient is a child and will receive all necessary early interventions (as if universal healthcare is available everywhere). The writing suffers from the lack of sophistication expected of people with no training in biology, delivering such clumsy and ambiguous lines as Scientists have identified two genes called TSC1 and TSC2. These genes can cause TS, but having only one of these can result in the disease. Is this trying to say that a mutation in only one of the genes is needed for disease, or is it alluding to the fact that only one mutant allele of either gene is needed (autosomal dominant)?

There is legitimately no reason for Healthline to be used as a source anywhere when there are far better non-scammy sources available for every imaginable use-case. JoelleJay (talk) 23:13, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Zefr compares blueberries with spinach and cites USDA raw data. The reason we don't allow editors to conduct original research is that they come up with misleading falsehoods based on their interpretation of primary sources, like "meagre" for the nutrient content of a healthy berry or do wrongheaded things like comparing a berry you eat as a snack with a leaf you typically eat in a cooked meal (compare instead with raspberry, strawberry or grapes if you want to consider an alternative). You cherry pick three nutrients out of dozens and compare 100g of each, when one might typically eat different weights of such things. If a source you wanted to attack did that, you'd use those mistakes against them. Later you accuse them of WP:SYNTH. Em, SYNTH is a Wikipedia only thing. Nobody outside of Wikipedia can ever commit that crime. They are allowed to do it. They might not be any good at it, but we let our sources do it, and if we didn't nobody would ever be able to draw conclusions.

You ask "find one WP medical article or statement where a Healthline source exists now, and where a better MEDRS source isn't readily available". That isn't how "reliable sources" or WP:V or even WP:MEDRS works. We have no rule anywhere on Wikipedia that editors can only ever use the best sources. Your opinion of "readily available" likely differs from most people and most potential editors. You might know to to use PubMed to find recent reviews that are freely available and to recognise decent journals from the predatory and dubious. Do you think many people using Pubmed to search for blueberry nutrition are going to pick the good stuff? Most people use Google, and that's what "readily available" means to them. And even assuming they find a good medical source, it may use jargon. Often it might just contain low-level information (like those USDA tables) that we absolutely can't just glance at and write things like "meagre" in our own words. In other words, those "MEDRS" sources are hard to find, hard to use and very easy to misuse. A source that tells it at a level our readers understand can have advantages for many editors wishing to write but as I said above, there can be problems with sources that lack depth.

Wrt picking holes in the TS article. These are minor flaws. Anyone here want me to review one of their Wikipedia articles and I can guarantee to find similar and write a whole paragraph about the flaws in one sentence. Again, that's not how we judge sources. For the record, I agree the two quoted sentences about the genes are wrong. It should say "A fault in one of these two genes can cause TS". (Essentially, you need both of these genes to be working to avoid TSC).

Wrt lifespan, its complex. The sentence you quote is essentially ok, and widely repeated in the literature (The NHS says the same thing). It used to be thought everyone with TSC was badly affected and all had learning disability, epilepsy and skin manifestations. But that was only picking up people in hospital or institutions. Population studies show more have it and don't know until they have a child who gets it worse. The whole question of what percentage of people with TSC (in a population) have X, Y or Z symptoms is difficult to ascertain if you only really get studied if you present in hospital. So the extreme variability of the condition makes it hard to write one sentence about lifespan. This paper attempts to estimate and comes up with a lifespan from birth of 70 years. I don't know their statistical methods enough to know if they attempt to include people with TSC who didn't end up as TSC patients in their hospital. I don't know how they work that out for people dying age 70 then (2019) who would have been born in 1949 and faced a remarkably different medical outlook (no MRI, limited brain surgery capability, few epilepsy drugs, life in an institution). My mind boggles really about how you might work out how long someone diagnosed age 1, say, with TSC might live? You'd have to, for a start, assume there no more medical advances, which based on recent advances, seems both unlikely and unfairly pessimistic. They compare this to the US average of 79 using this source and it was indeed correct in 2019 but has fallen since to 76. This UK source shows how going back even to the 1980s shows a big drop, particularly for men. But what is "normal". You could put your statistical pedant's hat on, or you could say well I guess it means I will likely grow old. And, em, 70 is old.

But would a MEDRS sourced claim "The lifespan for people born with TSC in the US in 2019 is 70 years" be any more educationally helpful or better than what Healthline say in their whole section. Our reader thinks, "Wow, my child with TSC is going to live to be 70. That's not bad." But that's just not true though. If their heart tumour is too big, they'll die shortly after birth. They may develop a blockage in their brain ventricle that requires a shunt, and then that gets infected and they die. In early teenage they may get a tumour growing in the brain that needs removed and they die on the table. In their twenties, they might get sudden death in epilepsy. In their thirties, their blood-rich tumour on their kidney might suddenly burst and they bleed to death on the way to hospital. If female, in middle age they may well get LAM and may die horribly or get a lung transplant, with all the risks of that. Or they may be lucky and rich enough to get one of the newer $$$$ TSC-specific drugs like everolimus. And even if medically physically healthy, they are prone to neurological and psychological issues, with all the risks to health and self harm that involves. I'm actually struggling right now to think of another condition that comes with more "ways you might die, but might not".

Yes, Healthline is aimed at a US/Western audience who are encouraged to get the best healthcare and with that they might live a long life. The Healthline article has a section "What Is the Long-Term Outlook for People with Tuberous Sclerosis?" and does say "Because symptoms vary so greatly in each person, so does long-term outlook" but you didn't quote that bit, because it doesn't help the case against them. It doesn't differ, fundamentally, from the "Outlook" section in the NHS page.

So, apart from missing "A fault in one of " when they mention the genes, what's the problem. You claim the "The writing suffers from the lack of sophistication expected of people with no training in biology". Well, for a start it is aimed at a general audience. Please read some of the NHS pages and you'll find extremely unsophisticated writing, and deliberately so. But do you really think "training in biology" comes with a "writing medical/scientific articles for a lay audience" module? I've reviewed and read enough Wikipedia articles written by doctors to know that is no guarantee of quality writing (or even, seeming to understand what they are writing about, and not getting basic stuff like prevalence and incidence confused). Look, any one of us can rant and pick faults, and their Wellness material is definitely to be avoided, but I think in terms of Wikipedia's requirements for sources, for standard medical content, I'm not seeing a general problem that is sufficient for a blacklist. -- Colin°^Talk 09:44, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I would appreciate it if you would address more specifically whichever editors you're calling "you" since I did not say many of the things you claim "I" (or any one person) said.

Drawing clinical generalizations from single studies is discouraged for all tertiary health information providers, not just wikipedia. Healthline purports to be a tertiary source, not a secondary review article or medical journalism outlet (but medical reporters guidelines also strongly emphasize citing secondary evidence-based reviews over primary case control studies), so it should be held to higher standards in how it justifies an intervention. Wikipedia editors who do not know how to find and recognize high-quality readily-available biomedical sources should not be editing biomedical information in the first place, but when they do then having a filter to flag bad sources of info prevents us from unintentionally endorsing those sources.

Wrt picking holes in the TS article. These are minor flaws. Anyone here want me to review one of their Wikipedia articles and I can guarantee to find similar and write a whole paragraph about the flaws in one sentence. Again, that's not how we judge sources. For the record, I agree the two quoted sentences about the genes are wrong. It should say "A fault in one of these two genes can cause TS". (Essentially, you need both of these genes to be working to avoid TSC).

Stating in the first paragraph of a tertiary health information source aimed at laypeople that "people with TSC can expect to have a normal lifespan" is bad. The NHS source is orders of magnitude better because it faithfully reflects the heterogeneity in lifespan and morbidity and presents a realistic picture of potential treatment burden all in the same section:

The outlook for people with tuberous sclerosis can vary considerably.
Some people have few symptoms and the condition has little effect on their life, while others – particularly those with a faulty TSC2 gene or obvious problems from an early age – can have severe and potentially life-threatening problems that require lifelong care.
Many people will have a normal lifespan, although a number of life-threatening complications can develop. These include a loss of kidney function, a serious lung infection called bronchopneumonia and a severe type of epileptic seizure called status epilepticus.
People with tuberous sclerosis may also have an increased risk of developing certain types of cancer, such as kidney cancer, but this is rare.

This is in contrast to the outlook section on HL which is the last section. And the study that found a lifespan of 70 wouldn't be a MEDRS source anyway as it's primary (and focused on LAM), so how a hypothetical editor would use it on wikipedia is irrelevant. (Oh, and please do review my contributions to stable theory ;)).

If the extent of the problems with Healthline was just the tendency to dumb down material on disease overview articles to the point of ambiguity I wouldn't advocate for its deprecation. Of course I don't believe training in biology corresponds to effective lay medical writing; what I do believe is that a source that claims to provide "medically reviewed" medical information should be held to a higher standard than "psychologist/nurse with zero research background/expertise in anything relevant to the topic reviewing the output of an unqualified freelance health writer". The big issue is wikipedia implicitly endorsing the site as a whole by citing it for mundane statements that could easily be sourced from higher-quality MEDRS by any competent editor. Even if it has some accurate unobjectionable content, HL still contains thousands of articles directly platforming, promoting, or at least failing to criticize CAM nonsense (like natural treatments for Lyme disease, this What are the bet homeopathic treatments for tinnitus? article with the summary Homeopathy for tinnitus is not considered the first line of treatment, and research is mixed on its effectiveness (no, research is NOT "mixed"), or this mind-bogglingly uncritical and falsely-balanced article that presents debates over the safety and efficacy of administering diluted rabid dog saliva to a child (or as its blindingly disinformative search result summary states A homeopathic physician in Canada used saliva from a dog with rabies to treat a boy who was having behavioral problems after contracting rabies himself) as merely a difference in opinion among experts (quoting homeopaths (of course referred to as doctors) and a virologist as if they're on equal footing)). If a news site was spouting this type of shit it would be blacklisted immediately, we should not have a lower standard for MEDRS. JoelleJay (talk) 19:55, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

I thought it was fairly obvious who I was talking to about blueberries and who about TSC. But sorry if it was confusing. You say "Healthline purports to be a tertiary source". Does it? I can't see that term anywhere on the site or on our Wikipedia article about them. WhatamIdoing can probably comment better on this matter, but in my understanding the PST source categorisation is down to what exactly the writer is doing in those sentences we might cite and not in what JoelleJay or any editor thinks they are. Our examples of what each of these three source categories tend to include are just examples and a given source may be primary for some things and secondary for others. That HealthLine is taking primary research science papers and writing about them when extolling the virtues of blueberries, say, makes them a secondary source for that particular set of facts (dubious or otherwise) and there's nothing you and I can do to say "No, you can't do that, because I say you are a tertiary source".

The "Hierarchy of Evidence" that the guidelines you link don't correspond with Wikipedia's WP:SYNTH or WP:OR or guidelines about generally avoiding primary sources. That there is a hierarchy of evidence quality should of course be considered by any health writer, but their concern is not PST but the accumulation of weight of evidence in a statistically valid way using a scientific method of analysis.

At the top of the pyramid are "Systematic reviews and meta-analyses". These only cover, I don't know, a small percent of medical knowledge. Essentially, does it work, what harm does it do, and maybe when should I use it or avoid it. A meta-analysis might tell you that everolimus shrinks kidney tumours in TSC but won't tell you what percentage of people with TSC get them, why they get them, what they look like on a path slide or ultrasound or MRI scan, what the guidelines are for monitoring them, what the surgical approach is for handling a bleed... A systematic review won't tell you, other than as an aside perhaps, about the two genes involved and how TSC2 is contiguous with PKD1 so some people have faults affecting both. For that kind of information, we need literature reviews, fact sheets, advanced textbooks, etc. And those aren't mentioned in your journalism guidance because they aren't sources of news for a journalist to write about.

In medical writing outside of Wikipedia, there are no banned sources. Nobody wagging WP:SYNTH at you. There is indeed a hierarchy of evidence just as I suppose journalists have their views on whether they are being told political porky pies or reliable facts by their sources. But the point is whether someone is any good at it. The difference between the BMJ's news features covering the latest research findings and HealthLine's news features covering the latest research findings is down to how good their are, their degree of professionalism, and whether and how their readers respond to that quality or lack. They might both cite the same studies/sources. -- Colin°^Talk 09:20, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

So far, what I've learned from this discussion is that our articles on foods are missing information about serving sizes. A typical serving of blueberries weighs about three times as much as a typical serving of spinach. The 100-gram standardization lets you quickly compare berries against berries, but not berries against leafy greens. One serving of spinach has approximately the same amount of protein and many vitamins (but more fiber, some vitamins, and most minerals, except for Zinc and Phosphorus) as one serving of blueberries. For a healthy person (e.g., not on Coumarin, no iron-deficiency anemia), the real-world effect of eating some blueberries and eating some spinach is not very different. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:53, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I just noticed someone had replaced a Healthline source with a ClevelandClinic source. So I followed that and found them pushing a story What You Should Know About Sugar Alcohols. That article cited several research studies of quite varying quality and size. For example "But a recent study shows that one sugar alcohol, erythritol, may be much worse for your health than anyone realized. It found that erythritol is closely associated with an increased risk for “major adverse cardiovascular events,” including heart attack and stroke." I can't read the whole paper, but just the abstract made me nervous. The Science Media Centre tears it apart. Another Are Spray Tans Safe at the bottom cites this study. Guess where that study sits at the hierarchy of evidence pyramid? I assume some medical editors think that source is fine as it is a big non profit health organisation, rather than just some money making website.

Wrt the Tuberous Sclerosis claim about "most people can expect to have a normal lifespan" your arguments now seem to boil down to a complaint that the section that fully covers the "outlook", mentioning that the disease "vary so greatly in each person, so does long-term outlook", is the "last section" as though putting "outlook" last in the order of sections is a crime worthy of blacklist. And you complain about the one sentence summary of that section being in the lead section (or as you put it "first paragraph of" -- it isn't the first paragraph, but actually the sixth, the very end of the lead). I'm not quite sure how the practice of summarising the body in the lead is also a crime worthy of blacklist.

The point of the 70-year-lifespan source wasn't that I thought a wikipedian should directly cite it, just that there is some evidence that 70-years might be an average. I'll leave citing a secondary source for that fact as an exercise for the reader, not important to our argument. I'm merely saying that we could describe the lifespan of TS in many ways and doing so in one short sentence is unlikely to give a full picture, and could be criticised. But then that's why it pays to read down to the end of the article.

Heathline sure has a lot of problems. But I think editors commenting here need to be very careful that their complaints stack up (e.g. there really wasn't anything wrong with the "normal lifespan" claim, and that's repeated by reliable sources) or that they are being used fairly (e.g. Cleveland Clinic is doing exactly the same thing as Healthline and while it likely isn't as credulous about the latest wellness rubbish, it makes exactly the same journalistic mistakes when citing weak studies and making bold claims). The Cleveland Clinic doesn't even name the "medical professional" who wrote/reviewed the work, so you can't go google them to trash their credentials. -- Colin°^Talk 13:36, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

The Cleveland Clinic is well-known as a pseudoscience apologetic and shouldn't be cited for these claims either. JoelleJay (talk) 17:59, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

well-known as a pseudoscience apologetic, as evidenced by the fact that they fired the guy? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:46, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

With all due respect, I do think JJ is right about that particular point (otherwise not wading into this entire back and forth). I think there's quite a few HQRSes whicsh support The Cleveland Clinic is well-known as a pseudoscience apologetic.

E.g. scholarly and otherwise HQRS mentions that Cleveland Clinic has a long history of promoting pseudoscienceMoreover, contrary to what is implied in the SIO's response, reiki and homeopathy are far from irrelevant to the practice of integrative oncology. Reiki, in particular, is offered to cancer patients in many academic medical centres (for example, the Cleveland Clinic)...

• The Cleveland Clinic, ranked the 2nd best hospital in the United States by U.S. News and World Report in 2017,40 runs multiple CAM centres, including the Wellness Institute, Centre for Integrative Medicine, Centre for Personalized Healthcare, Centre for Functional Medicine, and a Chinese herbal therapy clinic.41 Some of its CAM centres have received significant criticism over the years for having leaders that hold non-evidence-based beliefs that can cause harm to patients.
• Nevertheless, Reiki treatment, training, and education are now available at many esteemed hospitals in the United States, including Memorial Sloan Kettering, Cleveland Clinic, New York Presbyterian, the Yale Cancer Center, the Mayo Clinic, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Sources

CC is not alone in this, of course. But the overall trend for well-regarded academic medical centers to promote pseudoscience is precisely why we don't prefer such lay-facing sources in WP:MEDRS, as both you and Colin are definitely aware! — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:19, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The comment above that banning a source prevents us from unintentionally endorsing those sources makes me think the community might have a difference in fundamental values – a different concept of the point behind citing sources.

Given the way that citation metrics are used in career advancement decisions, I understand that some academics are trying to cite only papers that they think are "deserving" (e.g., you cite the paper that already cited the hoax, instead of the hoax paper itself, to avoid boosting the citation impact for the hoax), and in some fields, to promote what's sometimes called citation equity by choosing papers, when you have a choice between reasonably equal options, that aren't from people who are already well up the existing structures of power and privilege (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Writing/Events/April&May23#Citation equity & justice and https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/ask-dr-editor/diversity-in-citation-practices-auditing-your-list-of-references-contributes-to-better-science/ for a little more on this). This has some tangible academic benefits (e.g., if you're writing about fertility, why wouldn't you mention the existence of single mothers, or poor people, or gay people, or teenagers, or child marriage, or religious minorities, or racial minorities, or immigrants, or prisoners, or all the other subgroups? Could it be that you didn't think about that subgroup because that's not part of your own personal background? Maybe if you took an hour to deliberate look for, e.g., what the women of color in your field are writing, you might discover something that would enhance your own work) but also has some non-academic effects (e.g., the authors of the paper you cite might have a slightly higher chance of getting tenure).

In this sense, I think there may be, among scholars, a sense that to cite a paper is, at some level, to endorse it.

On wiki, though, I think that we have traditionally cited sources just because they're convenient. Citing any plausible source (assuming it says the same thing that you put in the article) proves that your contribution is not original research, because even if the source is wrong or unsuitable, you didn't make it up yourself. Our significant bias towards open access sources is driven by practical forces: those are the sources that most editors can actually read. Citing a source isn't endorsing the source; it's just completing a relatively unimportant item on a basic checklist and moving on. After all, "smoking cigarettes raises your risk of lung cancer" is 100% true and WP:Glossary#verifiable regardless of whether the sentence is followed by a good source, a bad source, or no source at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

What does any of this have to do with the reliability of Healthline.

Wikipedia deprecates use of publications that routinely provide false or misleading material, even if not every article they put out suffers those issues. HL has a clear history of promoting harmful medical quackery, which is about as bad as you can get source-wise, and offers zero unique coverage that would warrant a whitelist since its articles are written by unqualified freelancers whose subjective interpretations we definitely DON'T want. JoelleJay (talk) 22:55, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

We may not want it to use it, but I object to claiming that Wikipedia is "endorsing" any source that we cite. We use sources, but we don't endorse them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:23, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. We aren't endorsing a source by using it. We also are not defaming a source in a legal sense by calling it "unreliable for our purposes". We, as a community, are making no claims wrt whether such sources are useful for other purposes outside of Wikipedia.

I think, in a colloquial sense, one could say that a pass at RSN is the community "endorsing" the source's general use in Wikipedia. But not an endorsement in any other meaning of the word. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:22, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I support a blacklist of Healthline. Healthline (which as a Red Ventures company has sister sites Medical News Today, PsychCentral, and Healthgrades) is not reliable. First, many of their articles will reference articles from PubMed Central with the annotation "Highly respected database from the National Institutes of Health". This is misleading because a listing in PubMed or PubMed Central does not indicate that a paper is reliable.

Second, many articles are low quality and "teach the controversy" about pseudoscientific topics. For example, Healthline has a "medically reviewed article "What Is Qi Deficiency, and How Is It Treated?" about a condition that does not exist. There are other articles legitimizing the pseudoscientific concept of Qi like this one "5 Acupressure Points for Gas and Bloating"

Third, Healthline has commercial ties to a number of dubious companies, and refers people to buy their products, sometimes contrary to mainstream medical recommendations. See this one: The 10 Best Vitamin B Complex Supplements, A Dietitian's Picks or their prominent supplement section. Worse, they have run sponsored content like this one: 5 Reasons To Love Integrative Therapeutics or this Here’s How This Next-Generation Probiotic Strain Can Transform Your Gut. There are also commercial links to some dubious at-home testing companies like Everlywell. Some tests, even if technically valid, should not be run without a doctor recommendation and high pre-test probability.

Fourth, many articles seem to have been created for SEO and social media sharing purposes rather than for any legitimate purpose. See examples by searching the site for the word banana.

ScienceFlyer (talk) 17:23, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

More on Red Ventures and its priorities: Healthline was purchased by Red Ventures in 2019. To the extent that Healthline may have been reliable prior to the change of management, it is clearly not reliable now. Red Ventures also owns Bankrate, The Points Guy, CNET, Medical News Today, PsychCentral, Lonely Planet, and Healthgrades. After Red Ventures purchased CNET, it was reported that CNET was creating AI-generated content and content that was favorable toward advertisers and affiliates. In a 2021 NY Times article, a former Red Ventures employee said the company is “all about profit maximization.” Further:

The company [Red Ventures] found itself in the publishing business almost by accident, and is now leading a shift in that industry toward what is sometimes called “intent-based media” — a term for specialist sites that attract people who are already looking to spend money in a particular area (travel, tech, health) and guide them to their purchases, while taking a cut.

It’s a step away from the traditional advertising business toward directly selling you stuff. Red Ventures, for instance, plans to steer readers of Healthline to doctors or drugs found on another site it recently acquired, HealthGrades, which rates and refers doctors. Red Ventures will take a healthy commission on each referral.
— New York Times, 2021

ScienceFlyer (talk) 22:31, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Compelling information that speaks to how we evaluate reliability. CNET is already red-listed at WP:RSP; it sounds like we should be looking at all of Red Ventures rather than just Healthline. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:26, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support blacklist. Healthline have been cranking out articles and videos supportive of cholesterol denialism and also publishing dangerous misinformation that saturated fat consumption is not a risk factor for heart disease. They have also published articles supporting alleged benefits of coconut oil which are based on weak evidence [3], the ketogenic diet [4], [5] etc. Not a reliable source for medical claims about health. Psychologist Guy (talk) 21:51, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

• Support deprecation and blacklist. Another Red Ventures-acquired content mill. Like CNET and so many other Red Ventures properties, chances are quite a lot of this is actually being created by AI now. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:43, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
• Support deprecation and blacklist The risk from allowing this source that I see is that it easily hoodwinks unknowing people into trusting its "medical review" and believing it's a reliable source, when it clearly isn't. (t · c) buidhe 00:47, 5 June 2023 (UTC)
• Comment. During the discussion, I noticed User:Zefr, who proposed the blacklist, had replaced a HealthLine source with one from ClevelandClinic. When I accused the latter source of some of the editing approach that voters here had criticised HealthLine for, User:JoelleJay appeared to suggest that one should be binned too for being " well-known as a pseudoscience apologetic". Maybe we should ban the Lancet as well for being a well known promoter of fraudulent MMR research. I think the statement above "Wikipedia editors who do not know how to find and recognize high-quality readily-available biomedical sources should not be editing biomedical information in the first place" indicates what's going on here. Elitism. Well Wikipedia is the encyclopaedia anyone can edit. What we've got here is a willy waving game by experienced Wikipedians with access to the finest sources who would rather that the great unwashed weren't allowed to edit here and pollute their articles with citations to publications they wouldn't be seen dead reading. I mean, HealthLine and Cleveland are clearly aimed at the general reader, not "experts like us". Finding flaws in others writing is an easy game and but this forum isn't here to boost our egos that we are better than that lot over there. They're the competition and so it seems we mustn't be seen to endorse them.

If folk want a medical encyclopaedia where only experts are allowed to edit, try MDWiki. I don't think Wikipedia should just give editors a bigger hammer with which to hit other (new) editors who haven't reached their level of expertise in policy and enjoy their privileged access to sources. This is not what Wikipedia is about. It is here for anyone to edit, and we live with that. -- Colin°^Talk 11:27, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is the right analogy. Lancet and Cleveland Clinic are top-notch at what they do (or at least in other areas of what they do), and make occasional mistakes (as does the NEJM from my typical Jankovic example). Lancet corrected their mistake (the NEJM didn't, but I digress). They aren't reliant on Wikipedia or search engine optimization to push their visibility or reputation or to gain links or clients.

These sources like Red Ventures publications gain traction via links on Wikipedia.

Regarding your concerns of elitism, I don't have journal access unless I travel an hour one-way. These days, there is so much open access publishing, and so many books available at archive.org or via google book excerpts, that I'm not convinced that there is as big of a problem in finding good sources as there was ten years or so ago. Yes, several times a year, I have to ask people if they can email me a journal source, but that's usually because I'm trying to take existing content to a higher level of sourcing (as opposed to the average student or new or casual editor). If a new or casual or student editor is doing a major rewrite or content addition to sources like healthline, the sooner their efforts can be reoriented, the better for all; they learn better sourcing sooner, we don't have to clean up later. I realize (and am frequently reminded that) I'm not a "typical" editor, but then those that are apparently considered "typical" don't seem to stick around for the long haul anyway (eg, Special:Contributions/Sm999). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:51, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

I stand by my statement that editors who lack the competence to edit medical articles shouldn't be editing medical articles. Part of that competence is understanding MEDRS. With sooo many open access sources, plus the likes of scihub, we don't have any reason to permit poor-quality sources just because they might be the ones hypothetical new editors will use. There is a gigantic difference between "knowing how to use and find MEDRS" and "being a topic expert", so don't act like expecting the former is elitism.

Regarding Cleveland Clinic, several of its centers peddle alt med propaganda.[6][7] JoelleJay (talk) 21:13, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

You are not going to find a medical journal or website dealing with nutrition that is entirely devoid of fringe science or pseudoscience. At some time or another journals make mistakes and publish nonsense, it is all down to quantity (in this case how often they do it). The British Medical Journal has a good tract record but have published a minority of papers supportive of acupuncture and have an editor who promotes vaccine misinformation. This does not mean the journal is unreliable. Cleveland Clinic may have published an article supportive of functional medicine but this doesn't invalidate the website or the good work they do, just like The BMJ is not invalid because they published some stupid papers on acupuncture. 99% of the time they are not doing this. Healthline is different because they are promoting fringe science, pseudoscience and nonsense about nutrition pretty much all of the time, similar to Frontiers Media. I don't think we should compare Healthline to the Lancet, BMJ or Cleveland Clinic. Psychologist Guy (talk) 01:49, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

I didn't compare HL to any journals. I'm just saying the Cleveland Clinic panders to alt med junk with its functional medicine centers and therefore is not a good source for anything touching on the fringe stuff it offers. JoelleJay (talk) 17:53, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Sandy, the accusation of elitism was specifically at JoelleJay who quite explicitly stated that until editors reach their standard they should not edit at all. That isn't how Wikipedia works. Look, I get it that Healthline is awful for wellness stuff. But I also get that someone adds to our article what the symptoms excess sweating are or whether a drug is legal in the US or some other non-wellness fact, and currently they are having their edits removed or their source removed (making the claim unsourced) with a notice about "Healthline SPAM" which is a bad-faith accusation. When this proposal passes, as it seems to be, presumably they'll be unable to press the Save button or something like that. So, totally unable to edit Wikipedia with a non-contentious fact.

Did this edit improve Wikipedia? The article was unsourced entirely. The citation to Healthline was added six years ago by an editor who is a general practitioner and it appears a highly experienced Wikipedian (on multiple projects). We now again have an article that is entirely unsourced. I clicked on the source that was removed. It has a fantastic 3D diagram of the muscle in the neck that you can rotate about. Are their pages (they appear to have many) on the "Human Body" unreliable. I suspect not. Are their pages on general human body processes and diseases and disorders unreliable. I reckon generally they are not. But we are now going to prevent new editors from improving Wikipedia until they've achieved expert MEDRS status.

When I started on Wikipedia, I was translating a patient information leaflet that was in French into English (with Google Translate) and adding information about a drug that wasn't available anywhere in English. I made lots of mistakes about sourcing. It took me a while to realise you needed to read the whole paper and which kind of paper we wanted. I don't think I'm alone in having that kind of editing path. But the attitude of some here is to attack the newbies for not being perfect. In the fight against wellness nonsense and alternative crap, we end up making this the encyclopaedia only experienced exiting editors can edit, and the encyclopaedia with entirely unsourced random stuff. WP:MED went bad when it forgot to allow people to be imperfect. When having a list (as Zefr has linked to above) with which to go around removing good faith contributions and accusing others of adding "SPAM" to Wikipedia. Remove the wellness shit because it is shit, not because you are concerned with SEO.

Wrt open access, those editors with easy access to paid journals continue to have a huge advantage. But elitism is not just about access. It is about drawing up the ladder once you've made it. About denying a new editor base a chance to get on board. WP:MED went really bad in that regard, praising editors who spent all day bashing newbies. I don't want that mentality to return. Sure, we have a battle against misinformation and promotions of nonsense, but we also have a project that simply does not have enough editors to write and maintain what we have built. -- 09:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC) Colin°^Talk 09:52, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Look, I get it that Healthline is awful for wellness stuff. But I also get that someone adds to our article what the symptoms excess sweating are or whether a drug is legal in the US or some other non-wellness fact, and currently they are having their edits removed or their source removed (making the claim unsourced) with a notice about "Healthline SPAM" which is a bad-faith accusation.
@Colin, it seems to me this is a good argument for classifying Healthline as "Option 2" or "Option 3", but not blacklisting it. Particularly "additional considerations" option 2. Since it could still be useful for uncontroversial health claims outside of the wellness sphere. And, most of all, that it's use as a MEDRS has a lot more to do with the credentials and reputation of the author rather than HealthLine. Fair? — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:24, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Pretty much all articles on HL are written by freelancers with no expertise in medicine or science at all, let alone the specific subject. Each article is supposedly "medically reviewed", but the HL network of "experts" includes acupuncturists; people with degrees from Bastyr, Walden, Saba, Capella, etc; personal trainers; NPs; physician assistants; RDs; RNs; "holistic nurses"; social workers; yoga teachers; and plenty of people with real doctorates who nevertheless also promote quackery. JoelleJay (talk) 02:19, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Restricting usage of an, at best, low-quality lay-source is not gatekeeping wikipedia editing, come on. No one has to be a MEDRS expert to find alternative sources for the very basic information someone would be using HL to cite. The "spam blacklist" explicitly encompasses links that were never spammed (some sites which have been added after independent consensus), so a notice saying

Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist or Wikimedia's global blacklist. [...] Blacklisting indicates past problems with the link, so any requests should clearly demonstrate how inclusion would benefit Wikipedia. The following link has triggered a protection filter: healthline.com

is not a "bad-faith accusation" of anything, it's a non-judgmental request to replace the offending link with a better source. JoelleJay (talk) 00:49, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Em, the bad faith accusation was fairly clearly pointed at Zefr, who proposed this, based on their edit summaries that accuse editors of adding SPAM links. And the "gatekeeping" was about your explicit statement: "Wikipedia editors who do not know how to find and recognize high-quality readily-available biomedical sources should not be editing biomedical information in the first place". If the green text you have above is a correct reproduction of what potential editors will see, have you actually tried clicking on the link about blacklist. It links to Wikipedia:Spam blacklist. For real? They are told Healthline, one of the biggest health sites on the web, is SPAM? Not that it is "low quality" or "peddles wellness nonsense" but that the link they tried to add was SPAM. Is this really what you are proposing? And the second link is to some regexp list that only a nerdy programmer would love. That editor is going to think Wikipedia is nuts. How on earth are they going to get from receiving that message to linking to a better (but still readable) source? They aren't. They've just been told they tried to break the rules, by adding a spam link, and were blocked from doing so.

Wrt Shibollethink comment leading to JoelleJay's attacks on the authors, Well JoelleJay is talking rubbish when we step outside the wellness articles we all agree on. The muscle source was written this chap who seems far more qualified to talk about muscles than well any of us. And the Cleveland Clinic and Drugs.com and NHS and many other lay-friendly websites we aren't blacklisting don't mention their authors at all. What annoys me the most about this discussion is attack-shit about the authors or rubbish about these sources not being allowed to cite primary research and so on. This is nonsense argumentation, like saying anything just to attack something you hate. We can be better than that. There are articles on that site written by people qualified to do so and qualified to cite the research literature. We should separate the wellness rubbish from the other stuff. -- Colin°^Talk 07:50, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

"Fairly clearly addressed to Zefr"...in your response to MY comment, which you start by addressing Sandy...

And I stand by my statement that some bare minimum competence should be expected of editors editing biomedical articles. It is not difficult to find lay material on the basic concepts a non-med-savvy editor would be adding.

The text I quoted is not all the blacklist filter says. It gives way more instructions and information than that, and it doesn't "accuse" the editor of trying to break rules. And obviously I've visited the spam blacklist page, that's the origin of the green text stating that some blocked links are not spam but instead were blacklisted by consensus.

I don't see where the author is listed for the anterior tibiotalar ligament; the byline just says "medically reviewed by the Healthline Medical Network" and "by the Healthline Editorial Team". That doesn't mean it was written or reviewed by any particular person. And it's not only limited to "wellness". JoelleJay (talk) 20:07, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

What gets me is that intelligent folk here are complaining about a site that, in parts, spreads mistruths and exaggerations and such, and in order to attack it, they spread mistruths (the blueberry "meager nutrient content" nonsense) and claim, I don't know, that articles on brain function are being written by herbalists. Two wrongs don't make a right. You focus on the wellness stuff to ridicule them but have failed to land any serious blows on them wrt tuberous sclerosis or neck muscles. And all Zefr has done is demonstrate he doesn't know how to compare the nutritional value of blueberries and spinach. I'm just getting "Boris Johnson vs the EU" vibes, where really any old crap is written to attack something you hate, and it doesn't seem to matter that the crap isn't true or isn't really a proper criticism. Like the idea they can't cite the primary research literature.

I see this sort of thing over the years at MEDRS when folk want to raise the bar really high to win a particular argument they are in (usually against alternative medicine), forgetting that all the other sources they used on another article didn't meet that bar. You know, most of western medical practice is not supported by meta analyses of randomised controlled trials, ... the evidence is missing or lacking. But if you are in a fight, suddenly anything the other guy claims must be supported by meta analyses of randomised controlled trials. The same thing here. Suddenly, it seems, nobody can write an article on the brain unless they are a not only a neurologist or brain surgeon but have published many research papers on that specific issue with the brain. That's not the rule we apply to other sources we accept. For example, you attack their TS article for being reviewed by "a psychologist/nurse with zero research background/expertise in anything relevant to the topic reviewing the output of an unqualified freelance health writer". According to Healthline it was reviewed by "-- ----, PhD, PsyD board-certified as both a geriatric and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner and is also a licensed psychologist." JoelleJay, perhaps you aren't aware that tuberous sclerosis is a very multi-disciplinary condition, and I'd expect someone with his qualifications to know something about it just as a neurologist or nephrologist or geneticist or so on. It is the most common single-gene cause of ASD and often comes with numerous behavioural issues. One specialist isn't going to know the whole thing. A geneticist wouldn't have made that mistake about genes but then they'd perhaps have screwed up when writing about autistic spectrum. Since when did we demand that the authors of our sources actually published research directly on the topic, as you just did. That's a bar so high it makes me boggle? Have you read any Cochrane reports? Because many that I have read are written by people who may well know how to do a meta analysis, but are not even in that field of medicine, never mind published any research on it. And yet we consider Cochrane reports as one of the best sources.

The discussion here has yet to established that outside of wellness and nutritional claims, and health-news stories, the body of material at Healthline on the human body, and human diseases, is so seriously lacking in reliability that it needs put on a spam blacklist. I would be happy to see it barred in some form for the former stuff. For the latter, no, you really need to do a lot better than that, like finding me an article that shows they don't know their arse from their elbow. -- Colin°^Talk 08:35, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

An article being certified as "medically reviewed" is a stronger claim than mere authorship, especially when the article itself is written by someone with zero credentials. We should expect expertise in the relevant domain for such a claim. And again, it's not limited to "wellness" topics. This article on the "vaccine debate" uncritically gives the views of antivax loons more space than those of what it calls "vaccine proponents", presenting it as if there are reasoned arguments on both sides.

I also have no idea what you're referring to re: HL pieces on neck muscles (or muscles in general). The only article you linked was a non-bylined one on a completely different tissue. JoelleJay (talk) 19:34, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Depracate and blacklist per this article: [8]. This article does nothing but push pseudoscientific nonsense. In my opinion, Healthline does not maintain a lot of rigor. NW1223<Howl at me•My hunts> 04:19, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

• We're getting into TL;DR territory here, so I just started querying various topics that could be problematic, following the indications at the top. First test: crystals. Crystals for Sleep says there's no scientific evidence, but spends most of the article interviewing a "modern alchemist" as though they're an expert. Crystals for Manifestation. [...]. Next test: Reiki. How to use Reiki Principles to Boost Well-Being doesn't address the [lack of] science. Next test: GMOs. GMO Apples, Potatoes Hitting Store Shelves appears to serve the primary purpose of casting doubt on the safety of GMO foods. This one isn't too problematic, but does spend a lot of time talking about things that it then says aren't backed up by research (e.g. The main concerns around GMOs involve allergies, cancer, and environmental issues — all of which may affect the consumer. While current research suggests few risks, more long-term research is needed sure makes it sound like there are substantiated concerns). None of this is particularly promising, even if it's not as bad as the worst offenders in this space (Natural News, etc.). The thing is, it's already a site that focuses on biomedical content which fails WP:MEDRS, so the only reason to deprecate/blacklist is if (a) there aren't other uses for it (I haven't seen any), and (b) it's frequently added (that sounds like the case). Support deprecation, no strong opinion about blacklisting. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:50, 9 June 2023 (UTC)
• Depracate for sure and likely need blacklist. Pretty plain as day based on the evidence presented here it's more than just not reliable and pushing fringe ideas quite broadly. It's not clear why so much text has been deidcated to such a WP:SNOW case either. Not really much more that needs to be said that hasn't been said already. KoA (talk) 04:54, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
• Deprecate Colins argument that "it publishes good content some of the time, therefore it should't be deprecated" misses the point of why sources are deprecated in the first place. The Daily Mail certaily publishes good content some of the time, but this is heavily outweighed by its other coverage. The same is true here. Red Ventures is a company whos business model is essentially to create voluminous content farms for SEO, rather than to produce carefully written advice by actual medical experts. The stuff brought up by other contributors is shocking, and doesn't appear to be confined to wellness. This source should really not be used for any reason. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:26, 16 June 2023 (UTC)
• Deprecate and blacklist: In my time reviewing RfC:Reliability of La Patilla beside this section and making some comparisons, it is apparent that Healthline does not exist to provide accurate information and instead may promote dubious medical information in a method that targets readers searching topics, expanding upon topics that may or may not be scientifically valid. Reviewing WP:MEDASSESS, Healthline content can be described as "expert opinion" at best, though with its questionable review process and the use of advertisements, etc., this raises even more concerns. Given the prominence and potential of Healthline being used on the project, a blacklisting is appropriate to prevent not only the placement of unreliable information, but to also deter future discussions which will continue to arise when users attempt to cite Healthline.--WMrapids (talk) 05:24, 28 June 2023 (UTC)
• Deprecate and blacklist per copious evidence above. That some articles may be unproblematic is entirely beside the point and is if anything a point in favor of expungement - the problem is that they are not practically always accurate and that many inexperienced editors need help to avoid such bad sources that masquerade as reliable. To prevent accidental misuse we need deprecation and blacklisting. Crossroads ^-talk- 19:06, 5 July 2023 (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.

Removing healthline.com

A note: there are 867 article-space references to Healthline as I write this. If editors can help clear these down, that would be very helpful - David Gerard (talk) 20:26, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

David Gerard - GreenC has a usurping bot that was used last month to nuke a blacklisted source, but it requires an admin to add a spam blacklist to healthline.com to block auto-refills. cc: OhNoitsJamie. Zefr (talk) 21:55, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The RfC is to deprecate, which is sort of like conventional weapons vs nuclear weapons (my tool). -- GreenC 22:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

yeah, I added healthline.com to the spam blacklist myself. I'm reluctant to automatically nuke it - I removed 17 by hand and several required human replacements in my editorial judgement. There's one we're now trying to find the original source that healthline used, the claim is fine actually! But it's medical questionable info, so ... - David Gerard (talk) 22:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

David Gerard - the problem with parsing whether healthline references are fine, such as in Food marketing, is that the right margin of the healthline source is populated with their own links to articles with extensive misinformation. As I understand GreenC's nuking bot, it removes the reference entirely, possibly leaving a statement unsourced (if refill is blocked), which is a better outcome than enabling healthline to advertise from a retained citation. Zefr (talk) 23:01, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:DEPRECATE and WP:BLACKLIST (nuking) are separate processes. The consensus is "to blacklist Healthline as a hazard to readers. References to Healthline should be removed from Wikipedia." We should apply GreenC's bot to remove healthline completely and prevent refilling. Zefr (talk) 22:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

oh absolutely, I'm not saying to leave a single usage in! (Maybe self-descriptions at absolute most.) I'm saying that human review is best - I did 17 today, anyone here is skilled enough to do 5 or 10 in a day easily enough. Though maybe a bot rampage is appropriate? Maybe - David Gerard (talk) 23:13, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

There is last month's experience with now-blacklisted hugedomainsdotcom where Folly Mox had a view of the post facto result. What is better for the clean up? Manual removal of the blacklisted source from some 800 articles (tedious, editors will lose interest; my ongoing activity) or deal with sentences having no source (much preferred, imo)? It would be useful if a bot could insert the [citation needed] tag where the healthline source gets removed, since that is what we're trying to achieve by replacing it with a MEDRS source. Zefr (talk) 00:08, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Note: discussion moved to WP:URLREQ#Blacklist_healthlinedotcom where further actions were completed. -- GreenC 14:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

For history articles

Is this source reliaabel for history and caste articles? Llorenbishnu (talk) 04:50, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

The author, Biplab Dasgupta, was an economist, activist, and politician and taught economics at the University of Calcutta. The publisher, Anthem Press, is a publishing partner of Cambridge University Press.[9] The book has at least one positive review in an academic journal.[10] So prima facie it is fine. But keep in mind that according to the review the author uses the viewpoint of Historical materialism which is not exactly a neutral approach. And of course castes are a sensitive topic and I cannot comment on whether the book can be used for that subject matter. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 07:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

G/O Media to start using AI

This is currently being discussed at WT:VG/S, and I thought I'd post it here since it affects sources covered by WP:RSP (such as The A.V. Club, Gizmodo, and Jezebel): G/O Media sites are going to start publishing articles written by AI. G/O is describing it as simply a "test" but given the precedent set by Red Ventures at CNET, I'd say we might need to start treating these sites with caution. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 16:59, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Anything written by AI wouldn't be considered reliable. If G/O don't make clear what articles are written by AI, then anything after the date they start using AI should be handled with care. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:55, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Have any of the G/O Media properties been evaluated for reliability since the acquisition? The editorial decline at some (Deadspin for example) was severe. Mackensen (talk) 15:47, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Mackensen, as far as I can tell based on WP:RSP, the only post-acquisition discussion has been a short 2021 discussion where Gizmodo was brought up. Kotaku, which isn't listed at RSP but is locally considered reliable at WP:VG/S, has been discussed a few times post-acquisition amongst WP:VG but there hasn't been a consensus whether it should be downgraded. JOEBRO⁶⁴ 17:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Here's an example of an AI-generated article at Gizmodo/io9, complete with some inaccuracies. Per io9's deputy editor, the article was published with very little notice and outside their editorial structure. At least the author is listed as "Gizmodo Bot" so it's easy enough to identify. Woodroar (talk) 00:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

yeah, the editorial staff are pissed - David Gerard (talk) 11:08, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Defector has a survey of AI bot articles across G/O Media. They are all of unusable quality, of course, because they were created to lure in views for ads that nobody cares about either. As someone on Bluesky just put it, "the internet is just a glorified crypto mining rig" - David Gerard (talk) 14:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Given the precedent with Cnet, we should mark anything on G/O sites from July 2023 onwards as Generally Unreliable. EDIT: Same deal for Insider and Men’s Journal. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 19:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC: TikTok and Instagram

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Hi peeps, not sure how this works to be quite honest, but as self-published sources, I wanted to nominate TikTok and Instagram to be generally unreliable (with the usual expert/uncontroversial caveats). Surprised these haven't been red-ed on the source board yet, to be honest. If they are deemed oddly different from other social media networks and this discussion has happened already, feel free to let me know or close it (WP:SNOW). Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 20:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

• Currently there are 581 cites to tiktok and, uh, 19,719 citations to instagram. At a glance at least some of them are possibly WP:ABOUTSELF but the massive number for the latter is probably worth looking at more closely and suggests it might be worth putting it in RSP. I'm not sure an actual RFC is needed because it's glaringly obvious that both are WP:USERGENERATED and not usable as sources; the main question is how to word it specifically. --Aquillion (talk) 20:58, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• We don't need an RfC about this. It's no different from any other WP:SOCIALMEDIA/WP:RSSELF. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:44, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
• Speedy close pointless RFC. Per Rhododendrites. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:03, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  I think that Mattdaviesfsic's point is that neither is explicitly described at WP:RS/P (although a number of other social networking sites are), and the directions on that page are to discuss it here, on this page. That said, we do have WP:INSTAGRAM. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:34, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

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chordify.net

Is chordify.net a reliable source? I'm not convinced that it is compatible with WP:COPYVIOEL. See "Does this not infringe copyright?". Looks like it's used as a source in 30 articles. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:45, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the copyright aspect. But the whole thing looks unreliable to me. The site uses machine learning to extract chords from music recordings. That's a bit like using a large language model to produce book summaries. We would not use that and I think we should not use this. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems as though they do have a corrections mechanism, though I too am sceptical of whether we should consider an algorithmically produced database of this sort reliable Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Random person no 362478479; if this were an RS, the entries would be vetted beforehand, not just potentially subject to correction after the fact. --JBL (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

reliability of citing Maddow for archival clips used thereby

The Rachel Maddow Show is "an American liberal news and opinion television program". In a 2016 episode of this show, undated excerpted clips of the NBC Nightly News were included, and are transcribed in the Maddow show notes, but the details about the original broadcast aren't provided. Now, I don't want to cite the Maddow host, their opinions, nor analysis, but can we assume that Maddow is sufficiently reliable to cite, when we're only making use of the unquestionably-reliable clips used within? Is Maddow reliable enough to cite under the assumption that these clips they used weren't fabricated and transcribed out of thin air? — Fourthords | =Λ= | 14:22, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Can you provide any specifics so this isn't so hypothetical, like the show notes and clips in question? But in any case, I don't think clips should be sourced to some 3rd party work that happened to use them, especially if that 3rd party work is a partisan opinion show. I also think that citing TV news programs in general should be discouraged. Any notable event would be covered elsewhere in a more easily-verified text format. GretLomborg (talk) 05:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm eschewing specifics to avoid accusations of canvassing. What I have, though, is the official MSNBC transcript of a Maddow episode, which itself includes the transcript of an NBC Nightly episode. I don't really care about the Maddow framing (because it isn't relevant or used for our article) except to assume the NBC Nightly clips aren't whole-cloth fabrications on MSNBC's part; I think we can safely make that assumption given WP:RSP, but I wanted confirmation here. — Fourthords | =Λ= | 19:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with GretLomborg that if you want input as it pertains to a particular situation, you should give the full details of the situation (in particular, a link to the relevant discussion etc.). The way to avoid canvassing is by keeping your request factual and to-the-point. --JBL (talk) 20:04, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Reliability of Military Watch Magazine

Resource is used in numerous articles about military equipment, but it has no features of reliability: as I can see, there is no information about a site owner and authors, it is cited mostly by Russian news organizations, and at least in some articles there are false claims. For example: "It was previously only confirmed that the radar station, which provides command and control for each Patriot unit, was destroyed" — there was no such confirmation, yet text implies that it's a well known fact. Siradan (talk) 11:58, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't have any clear editorial practices, isn't used or quoted by other reliable sources, and is seems to be run by an amateur. Given all that, and it's adherence to Russian governmental talking points, I wouldn't suggest using it for anything contentious. As that covers just about everything that it publishes it probably shouldn't be used at all. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 13:01, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Embargo?

I have been checking the sources of the article Extraterrestrial life, to check if they are valid, if they actually say what the article says they say, and if we didn't left good material from them out of the article. In the "Extrasolar planets" I found this one, and there is a disclaimer that says "EMBARGO NOTICE. All information provided on this page and its links is embargoed until Wed 25-Jan, 18:00 GMT".

What the heck is that supposed to mean? Is it related to reliability? Cambalachero (talk) 18:14, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

It means that the information is made available for journalists with the caveat that they have to promise not to publish any of it before the date given. The idea is to give journalists time to prepare something while keeping the information confidential for some time. There can be a number of reasons for doing this. See News embargo. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Chicago YIMBY

I have recently created the article for 900 West Randolph. I am trying to determine if I can use YIMBY as a source. I have found many articles such as this and this that are informative. Are they reliable sources?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 16:02, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

YIMBI is a social/political movement. Additionally I found no editorial information just this completely inadequate about page. It may be fine for simple factual information, but nothing else. I found almost nothing on the author of those two articles. There is an empty homepage and a list of articles on muckrack. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 16:40, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a blog (attached to some forums, perhaps some paid services) -- I would certainly not use it for anything contentious. --JBL (talk) 21:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

It looks like a blog. Might be a niche real estate business intelligence website, but I'm not really able to find any sort of WP:USEBYOTHERS. It's run by New York Yimby, LLC, which also runs New York YIMBY, which seems a bit better established, but has a clause in its Terms of Use saying we make no representations or warranties as to the YIMBY content’s accuracy, correctness or reliability, which worries me a bit if we're using it for sourcing facts. The Chicago website's ToU contains the same language, which makes me tend towards not treating this as a WP:RS. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 23:02, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree, YIMBY is NOT an RS. Andre🚐 00:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

The ToU thing is a red herring, it's just standard legalese: see this comment from Alaexis above, for example. --JBL (talk) 01:00, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Internet magazines: 'The War Zone' and 'The Drive'

I am trying to determine if these sources can be used as independent coverage on Wikipedia. "The War Zone" appears to be a section of "The Drive." Here are self-published descriptions for both publications. You will have scroll down to read about "The War Zone". This user published source notes that "The War Zone" also covers "...UFO encounters reported by military and commercial airline pilots" (see the subsection entitled "Coverage"). Here is one such story [11].

I am thinking these are not useful for independent coverage on Wikipedia. And, I am here because I would like input from the community about using these publications as sources. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 00:53, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I will also note, there does not appear to be acceptable secondary sources that covers either of these publications. It seems more of a fan site. Indeed, the user generated source above is on fandom.com [12]. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:01, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Nina Oyama's B'day

Request to assess reliability of my sources on a fair case-by-case basis. On Nina Oyama article, it claims that she is either 29 or 30, or born in 1993 or 1994. Whoever wrote that, is apparently guessing and why I decided to help out and research what is her actual birthday. I know Nina Oyama is an established comedian, frequently shown on TV screens for years and with a fair share of fans. And that she has a public Facebook page where she acknowledge that 18th August is her birthday. [13] Her one long time twitter account also thanks her fans every 18th August for wishing her a happy birthday. [14] [15] And why I am inclined to believe 18th of August checks out as her Birthday. So is Nina Oyama herself unreliable for stating even her own birthday? Like what reason could she have to go lie about the date of her birthday? The Rotten Tomatoes also writes her birthdate to be Aug 18, 1993. [[16]] And doubt Rotten tomatoes, a somewhat Professional authority in TV actresses that co-ordinates with professional talent agencies[[17]], make mistakes like these. So when reviewing the sources like how her social media page confirms her birthdate written in Rotten Tomatoes, is Rotten Tomatoes and Nina's Twitter and Facebook account for fans, truly unreliable sources for something so basic like her birthday? Or are certain editors, just being overly bureaucratic, when they know from what I wrote above, that she is of course born on Aug 18, 1993 and there's no agenda or conspiracy here to lie about things like these. GUPTAkanthan (talk) 12:15, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:BLPPRIVACY is the relevant policy here. Neither of those social media accounts are verified, and neither explicitly state "today is my birthday". That second tweet was sent on August 17th, not the 18th. It's also possible to thank friends several days after a birthday, maybe even a week or two if you're forgetful—or had a particularly "fun" time. Our entry for Rotten Tomatoes at WP:RSP doesn't mention actor/biography pages. Their own FAQ says that their actor information might be wrong; it also mentions "data import errors", suggesting that their information is imported and not fact-checked. Woodroar (talk) 13:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

That's just false. Both tweets were sent on 18th August. And how co-incidental is it that every 18th August, her fans wish her a happy birthday on her social media page on that particular date. And last year, she explicitly tweets a post on 18th August saying, But today (my bday) they got me coffee too! From my fav American restaurant![18]. And yes, Rotten Tomatoes does say that sometimes they can get it wrong but they also write, We work hard to make sure all of our movie and actor information is correct and it's not like they don't have editorial oversight. And these famous actresses are managed by real professional management agencies, who would surely contact Rotten Tomatoes and IMBD if they accidentally get the details wrong.GUPTAkanthan (talk) 13:27, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I just clicked that second twitter link, and it showed up at coming at 9:06 PM on the 17th. I believe Twitter shows the local time for the viewer rather than the sender, and I'm on Los Angeles time, so 9:06 in the evening in Los Angeles is 2 in the afternoon the next day in Sydney. That's likely where the confusion is happening here. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 13:50, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, the times/dates I see are 7:21 AM · Aug 18, 2020, 11:06 PM · Aug 17, 2021, and 8:04 PM · Aug 17, 2022. If Twitter doesn't show the local time a tweet was sent, there's not much we can do with it. Of course, none of this matters because the account isn't verified. Woodroar (talk) 13:52, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

"Verification" under the new Twitter regime doesn't mean much. The real question is whether it was verified under the old regime, which going to the Tweet now won't show you. However, the archive link for it indicates it was not verified. (And in general, the more we have to do detective work to determine a birthdate, the more we're getting into WP:BLPPRIVACY matters.) Nat Gertler (talk) 14:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@NatGertler and Woodroar: I will abide to group "consensus" of course but a Gray area rule shouldn't prevent me from doing what's obviously correct, and so could use your consensus. And I have good reason enough to believe those are her accounts which explicitly confirms 18th August as her b'day.[19]. Nina is a celeb whose livelihood is heavily based on advertising herself to the public. [20] She constantly posts her upcoming comedy acts [21] and professionally relies on the internet and social media for her fans to know her. I highly doubt a catfish can successfully maintain a social media account of a public celebrity for so many years as that would be very difficult to pull off without Nina and her fans to not notice. And I did some detective work and found Zero duplicate social media accounts and you surely can't expect public figures like her to not have Facebook or Twitter. Furthermore there's a famous established Channel 10 TV show called "Have You Been Paying Attention?" Company has its own Facebook page and it's been verified. One of its latest posts [22] mentions Nina Oyama and it links to same Facebook account, which history shows its been active for many years since 2011 and posts regularly. I doubt a professional TV show who is actually working with Nina, to not be aware of her proper Facebook link. Given all this, I know it's obviously her but ask here for consensus.GUPTAkanthan (talk) 20:38, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

At the most recent discussions on Rotten Tomatoes, from April/May of this year and the current thread, the consensus is that RT should not be used for BLP claims. Woodroar (talk) 21:52, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

@Woodroar: It's not so much that I care personally a lot for Nina. As I really don't. But if you are going to reply after many days and undo my work which wasn't that easy for me to do. You could at least address my reply that I wrote in full. I already explained to you that I have proved it is more likely than not to be her birthday WITHOUT relying on rotten tomatoes. I showed that there are verified Facebook accounts of major TV show who links to Nina's Facebook account directly. I believe that if major TV channels link directly to their employee's Facebook account. [23] [24] And that Facebook account has been around for a decade, is constantly showing promotions of Nina's latest comedy shows and there are no conflicting/second Facebook account. It's obviously her. And reading the wikipedia rules. There's one that says if a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it. WP:IGNORE I have more than proven it's extremely likely to be her within good faith reason, and unless you have very good reason to prove any reasonable doubt, I would appreciate if you minimally read and discuss my reply above in full before reverting my edits again. Cheers! GUPTAkanthan (talk) 00:35, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

As Nat Gertler mentioned above, we shouldn't don't do detective work to tease out claims from sources or to weigh the likelihood that an unverified account belongs to someone. That's why No Original Research and Verifiability are policies. And this is especially true of content about living persons, where our policy is strict and clear that no information is better than poorly-sourced information. I don't buy the IGNORE argument, either. A date of birth isn't some critical detail that unequivocally improves the encyclopedia—especially when our privacy policy gives plenty of reasons why we shouldn't include it.

As an aside, if we were to allow detective work, the Facebook post that explicitly confirms 18th August as her b'day shows as "August 17, 2021 at 11:15 PM" to me. Is that another time zone issue? Maybe? It doesn't say which time zone she's in, though. Yet more reasons NOR is a thing. Woodroar (talk) 01:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, thanks for taking the time to bring that thread to my attention. I just read it just now and even though I strongly disagree and think I am right about the DOB. I see I have not much choice but to respect that consensus. Thanks again. GUPTAkanthan (talk) 01:52, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for accepting page consensus. You might continue to look for more reliable sources over time. Hers is not the only article where the birthdate is not yet published in RS. Since birthdate is often a question used in identity verification, it's sometimes unwise to post a birthdate unless it's clearly available from reliable sources. In my social media, I choose to utilize a fictitious birthday to minimize availability to bad actors. Friends who don't know any better wish me a happy bday, and I thank them. BusterD (talk) 14:30, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Rotten Tomatoes being cited for WP:BLP

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I hope I'm doing this right as I don't have any experience doing WP:RfC, but I often come across RT being used a source for an actor's DOB and I revert them since they seem like a rather poor source when it comes to WP:DOB as they have the incorrect one for other actors and there are some actors that have age disputes on Wikipedia, the DOBs that RT have are most certain incorrect because other info for those actors such as what year they graduated high school or college are on their pages(with legit cited sources) and those years don't match up to the DOB RT has listed. I asked this a few months ago and pretty much all of the editors that replied agreed that since RT is not a journalism site and that it's main purpose is film criticism, it shouldn't be used as a source for WP:DOB.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_403#Rotten_Tomatoes_reliabilty Kcj5062 (talk) 21:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kcj5062: I have removed the RFC tag from this discussion since the question you asked is not really contentious enough IMO to require that level of debate. The answer you received during the previous discussion that RT is not a good source for biographical information such as date of birth appears correct. Why do you think it needs to be re-addressed? Abecedare (talk) 22:18, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Abecedare Well somebody in the last discussion suggested a RfC since they're still people using RT as a ref for bio info and some will actual argue that it's a valid source. Kcj5062 (talk) 22:28, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Gråbergs Gråa Sång: who had suggested an RFC at that previous discussion. If they, or any other board regular, believes that an RFC is needed, I would request them to start one afresh (instead of simply reverting my RFC tag removal) since they would know how to frame it neutrally etc. Cheers. Abecedare (talk) 22:39, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

If it is unreliable for DOB and other biographical information – and I share that impression – then maybe that should be added to the Rotten Tomatoes entry in the list of perennial sources. Since the site is listed as generally reliable people may assume that that applies to all content. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 23:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

@Random person no 362478479 That's what I was thinking. On the perennial sources it says it's a good source film and tv info. But nothing about bio info. Kcj5062 (talk) 23:25, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I would appreciate having that added to the Rotten Tomatoes entry in the list of perennial sources, also (with a shortcut, if possile). I would like to be able to include a link to the perennial sources content, as I do when I remove citations to IMDb. Eddie Blick (talk) 01:28, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

• In order not to leave this discussion hanging, I'll start an RFC at this board in 12-24hr with the question, "Can Rotten Tomatoes be used a source for biographical information, such as date of birth, for film and television personnel?" Please let me know if their are any objections or suggested modifications. Pinging @Kcj5062, Random person no 362478479, and Teblick:. Abecedare (talk) 02:05, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

  Thank you, @Abecedare. That sounds good. Eddie Blick (talk) 02:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

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New York Post business/realestate coverage

[25]https://nypost.com/business/ [26]https://nypost.com/real-estate/

The New York Post is labeled "generally unreliable" by the wiki community. I want to make an exception for their business, tech and real estate sections - both are pretty good in terms of fact reporting and fact-checking.

Some of columnists and writers have wiki pages: Steve Cuozzo, Douglas Harriman Kennedy, Piers Morgan etc.

all of them accurately represent the facts and, unlike politics and entertainment, quote company representatives or cite reputable sources.

Is there anything else I need to demonstrate to show it's reliable for business/tech/realestate? DrDavidLivesey (talk) 02:26, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

You'd have to show convincingly that it wasn't an unreliable gossip rag given to fabrication and known for making up quotes. It's not credible to claim there are no RSes for business, tech or real estate in New York, or that anything that was in the NY Post and in zero RSs was worth putting in the encyclopedia - David Gerard (talk) 10:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's fair. Were there cases when they published falsehoods in the business and real estate sections and did not correct them? Do other RS reference their business/real estate pieces, and if yes, how? We certainly could exempt these topics from the "Generally unreliable" status. Alaexis_¿question? 11:22, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

We could, but if you want a carveout you'd probably need more of an argument than to say "I don't think it's fair" to the result of an RFC - David Gerard (talk) 17:54, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Definitely. I don't think I've ever read their business pieces so I have no opinion on this yet. Alaexis_¿question? 06:43, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

• Remember that “Generally unreliable” is NOT the same as always unreliable. Any source can be deemed reliable for specifics, even if unreliable for most things (just as a “generally reliable” source can be deemed unreliable for something specific). Yes, it will be an uphill slog to convince editors that a generally unreliable source is actually reliable in this specific instance, but I have seen it done. There are no absolutes. Exceptions can be made. Blueboar (talk) 12:02, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

  While I agree that should be the intent here it rarely is and often anything red is removed without consideration for quality. I do think it would be worth looking at the original examples used to conclude unreliable and then see if any related to the area in question. If not I would suggest moving the source to yellow overall with red in the specific areas. Springee (talk) 12:48, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

  I mean, if something is removed, then it is, almost by definition, controversial. Editors might reasonably disagree on what should be considered controversial, and if you think that someone is stretching things in that regard you can always poke them and pursue dispute-resolution if necessary, but I think that it's reasonable that the default when there's a dispute involving a red source is "all right, you need to find a better source than this now." Certainly whenever I find myself in a situation like that the first thing I do is see if I can find better sources. Ultimately our goal is WP:BESTSOURCES, which means that in situations where red sources can be replaced without losing anything, they ought to be; and in places where they can be removed without losing anything, they ought to be. --Aquillion (talk) 09:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

• See also the May 2023 thread Possible exception to Wikipedia:NYPOST for the transit and real estate newsdesks. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 12:50, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
• Not seeing the need, we can already use opinion pieces/columns under the current restriction. Basically everything Steve Cuozzo, Douglas Harriman Kennedy, and Piers Morgan have written for the NYP can be used per WP:NEWSORG its just going to be for opinion not fact. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 02:11, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Not really. WP:RSOPINION still requires the op-ed to be in an RS. If a notable person writes something in a GUNREL source, that's going to be equivalent to a SPS or similar, and they'd need to be a noted expert or something for it to be relevant - David Gerard (talk) 09:59, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
    • RSOPINION says no such thing, perhaps the abbreviation has misled you? Opinion pieces are always the equivalent of SPS, no matter where they're published. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:39, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
  • Yes, but I think this request is about more than opinion. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:30, 12 July 2023 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. You haven't actually made any argument for why its coverage of real estate would be better than the rest of its coverage; and in general I'm strenuously opposed to carve-outs, which complicate RSP in a way that makes it less useful and which could easily lead us down a path where people propose arbitrary subsets of every unreliable source and say "well, you can't show that this specific topic area is unreliable." A WP:GUNREL source has fundamental issues with its reputation for fact-checking and accuracy that will virtually always make it a poor choice to use as a source; if you want to propose a general exception to its GUNREL status, you need to present strong, convincing evidence from independent coverage and the like showing that its coverage of that topic area is different. Their columnists having wiki pages obviously means nothing; we could in theory cite their opinions, but I would truthfully prefer to wait until those opinions are covered somewhere other than the Post. WP:RSOPINION still requires publication in an WP:RS. Neither do I accept your argument that those sections are pretty good in terms of fact reporting and fact-checking or that their columnists accurately represent the facts - what makes you think the Post is any more reliable here than it is anywhere else? These are talking heads with no relevant expertise in the area you want to cite them in; their job is largely to produce entertainment, not news. I wouldn't cite directly them for anything except the most trivial WP:ABOUTSELF stuff, and wouldn't even include their opinions unless covered by a reputable independent secondary source. WP:RSOPINION still requires coverage in an RS; it's for things like labeled opinion pieces in otherwise reliable sources or for the opinions of experts and other people whose opinion is manifestly significant, not as a blank check to include the opinion of every talking head or hired gun on every topic ever. High-quality sources for the New York real estate market are available in abundance; the idea that we would need to rely on opinion columnists writing in a tabloid is absurd. --Aquillion (talk) 09:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Is Mindat.org reliable?

When I'm searching up small municipalities or villages, I often come across Mindat.org. I am wary as to using it as a source as I'm not sure how reliable it is, but often for little-known places there's not many other options, so I'm curious to see what the community thinks about it. Here's some examples: [27][28][29]. Cheers! ‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 22:21, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

"Mindat.org is a dynamic database, with new information, localities and photographs continuously being added, verified, and updated by thousands of members across the world. User participation is critical to maintaining the integrity and scope of the database – all input is encouraged!"[30] This makes it WP:USERGENERATED and so not reliable. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 22:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Is Rationalwiki Psuedoscience

Is Rationalwiki Psuedoscience 2407:7000:9F88:9300:C065:D050:550C:F91D (talk) 04:14, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

No. But it's also a wiki, so not a reliable source regardless. Silverseren^C 04:16, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

All wikis are user generated content and so aren't considered reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:37, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Just check out the contributions by the /64, this is not a person engaged in constructive contributions. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 00:49, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Just making sure

Journal of Parapsychology and Rhine Research Center seem like total quackery to me. Is it a fringe journal/organization? Ca ^{talk to me!} 12:46, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

The subject matter combined with the fact that it is a private institution which is not affiliated with a university raise a red flag. I looked at the editorial board of the journal. What stands out immediately is that the publisher and editor have no PhD (only MS). The three associate editors (not counting the statistical associate editor) do, but like the publisher and the editor two work at the Rhine Research Center. The editorial board on the other hand looks fine at first glance. However, I googled a handful of the names and found two things that raised my eyebrows. First, the probably most high-profile name on the list is Robert Rosenthal (psychologist). He is listed as "Robert Rosenthal, Harvard University, USA". But he retired from Harvard in 1999 and has been a professor at the University of California since 2008. So why is the journal listing him with a position he hasn't held in 24 years? Does this mean we can't trust the list? The second name that irritates me is Jeffrey J. Kripal at Rice. Here the issue is that he is a professor for "Philosophy and Religious Thought". Don't get me wrong I would want philosophers on the board of a journal like this. But philosophers with expertise in philosophy of science, not religious thought. A few others that I googled (Mark Leary, Duke University; de:Stefan_Schmidt_(Psychologe), Universitätsklinikum Freiburg; Jacob Jolij, University of Groningen) seem to be prima facie qualified people. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 15:58, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I just looked a little closer at Jeffrey J. Kripal because he was mentioned elsewhere and found out that despite being professor for "Philosophy and Religious Thought" he is not a philosopher. He is a historian of religion and works not in the philosophy department, but the department of religious studies. Here are some quotes from the introduction to his book Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal: "Another way of saying this is that I study how human beings come to realize that they are gods in disguise. Or superhumans." "[...] the paranormal here understood as a dramatic physical manifestation of the meaning and force of consciousness itself." "real-life paranormal experiences". He seems to be exactly the kind of person I would not want on the board of a journal like this. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 16:23, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Here is some coverage about the Rhine Research Center [31], [32], [33]. Not sure about how good this one is, but it does mention New York Times coverage of the Rhine center besides this article providing coverage: [34], and here is the search in Google News [35]. Well, at least this gives people more background on this organization. And yes, its mission and research are probably obvious quackery. But if it has coverage in secondary reliable sources then that would suffice for a standalone article. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:40, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Here is an NYT obituary on J.B. Rhine, the founder of the Rhine Research Center [36]. Hopefully it can be accessed because it is in the NYT archives, the death having occurred in 1980. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:48, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I am guessing that this center and J.B. Rhine became so well known that between the 1930s and 1970s there is some pushback from scholars, scientists and skeptics that is available in print. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 01:56, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Here is a short Encyclopedia Britannica entry on J.B. Rhine [37]. Searching for Rhine Research Center in Britannica - the result seems to land on this page. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 02:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Here is a ProQuest link for the NYT obituary cited above [38]. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 11:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the Rhine Research Center is most likely notable while the journal could probably be merged into the RRC article. But I assume the original question was not about notability, but about reliability. And both the Rhine Research Center and the journal seem completely unreliable for anything other than opinions (I found a number of "news" articles where someone from the RRC is quoted as an "expert", in the better ones alongside a skeptic/scientist). -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:09, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Some book sources were recently added to the journal article. See the "Further reading" section. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 04:11, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

'World Economics' as a source of economic data on Afghanistan

World Economics has been used in prior versions of the Economy of Afghanistan to produce the following statement:

With a population of nearly 41 million people, Afghanistan's GDP (PPP) stands at around $118.68 billion with an GDP Nominal of $120.01 billion (2023), and the GDP (PPP) per capita is about $2,844.71 while the GDP per capita Nominal is about 2,874.93.

Can this source be reliably used to produce this statement? I am currently in a dispute with another editor regarding the verifiability of this information. LeoHoffman (talk) 08:24, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

It seems to be a private company. I found no editorial information. They write "Radical and significant changes taking place in the world economy are obscured by poor GDP data. We provide clear guidance on what is good usable data and what is likely to mislead. We augment official (usable) data with regular quarterly surveys enabling greater data integrity." So apparently they use a mixture of external data and their own data. Some of external data sources can be accessed on the right hand side under "Public source & related data". The latest data for GDP (PPP) listed there is from 2021 provided by the World Bank with an estimate of $60.8 billion. Also noteworthy is that on their data quality rating the data for Afghanistan is rated "Extremely poor quality". All this makes me skeptical. But maybe we have someone who is familiar with the platform and can say more about it. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 10:22, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Is it possible to 'un-deprecate' a deprecated source?

Is it possible to 'un-deprecate' a deprecated source? If yes, how it may be done? Nivent2007 (talk) 14:09, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

See WP:CONSENSUS for more on how a new consensus can override an existing one. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Of coruse, but you would need to bring it here, and make a good case. Slatersteven (talk) 14:17, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Nivent2007 (talk) 14:26, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Hassan Haddad, Journal of Palestine Studies

This source: Hassan S. Haddad (1974). "The Biblical Bases of Zionist Colonialism". Journal of Palestine Studies. University of California Press, Institute for Palestine Studies. 3 (4): 98-99) https://doi.org/10.2307/2535451 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2535451 is used as a source in the articles Zionism and Zionism, race and genetics, and has been questioned in terms of reliability (among other issues) on the talk pages of both. Might be good to get extra views from un-involved editors. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:12, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

For clarity, the source is used once, at Zionism, race and genetics#Politics to support the following sentence:

"The application of the Biblical concepts of Jews as the chosen people and the Promised Land in Zionism requires the belief that modern Jews are the primary descendants of the Israelites, and as such, inheritors of the Land of Israel bequeathed by God." Selfstudier (talk) 15:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The article is changing rapidly but yes that's currently the only use, but backed up with an extremely long footnote quoting the text at length, with a more controversial and polemical passage expressing his very distinctive argument. I'm agnostic about its reliability, but see the objections posed by Tombah on the talk page. The more extensive discussion, though, is at Talk:Zionism#Question. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Fine. But what is 'suspect' here? Hassan was a distinguished American scholar of Syrian origin. Yes, an Arab, but with a chair at the University of Chicago. Really. There is no other 'anomaly'. Is any article on Zionism off-limits to scholars of Arab background with an international reputation? Nishidani (talk) 15:59, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, he's reliable for this claim. An academic who is widely published on the question of zionism, writing from an Arab perspective. Obviously the same rules about attribution apply here as always. --Boynamedsue (talk) 16:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

So you would suggest adding something like "According to Hassan Haddad" at the start of the sentence above? BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:44, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on the topic, so I wouldn't know how controversial the statement is. Looking at the statement, attribution might well be merited. In practical terms, if people are strongly disagreeing on reliably sourced text, attribution is the "let's get on with our lives" solution. --Boynamedsue (talk) 11:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

• I'll just repeat what I wrote elsewhere: Haddad was professor of history and chair of social sciences at Saint Xavier University, where he was "known as a great man supporting a gentle spirit" and has Peace scholarship named after him that recalls him as "an internationally recognized scholar in Middle Eastern studies, whose passion was to foster understanding and peaceful relations among cultures". I see no obvious reason to impugn him. Iskandar323 (talk) 18:40, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Creative Spirits website

Creative Spirits is a website that appears as the top Google result for most topics relating to Indigenous Australians. It's used on about 23 Wikipedia articles 156 Wikipedia articles such as this one: Australian Aboriginal identity.

This was previously discussed in January, Archive 292#Should this one be added as RS?, where the consensus was that it wasn't considered generally unreliable and that it was perhaps generally reliable. I've brought this back up because of a recent publication that mentions Creative Spirits.

The Indigenous Archives Collective has released the Indigenous Referencing Guidance for Indigenous Knowledges, a resource created as a "referencing guidance for undergraduate students, and liaison librarians supporting these students, when citing Indigenous knowledges in academic writing in a Victorian context." In the document (p.9) they specifically list Creative Spirits as a resource that was not appropriate to use when researching or writing about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, history, and culture.

Creative Spirits is cited in documents from many Australian organisations (per a quick look at Google). Some websites such as Croakey have previously listed Creative Spirits as unreliable, writing it "is a site that contains much misinformation and racist myths."

People such as Dr Amy Thunig have taken to Twitter to voice their opposition to Creative Spirits. Also Dr Kirsten Thorpe from Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education & Research, Prof Sandy O'Sullivan, and Indigenous X.

I'm hoping to gain some consensus around whether Creative Spirits is reliable/unreliable, and if it is found to be unreliable I think it should be considered for inclusion to the Perennial sources list to help guide people in the future. Jimmyjrg (talk) 04:42, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

This is a single-person side project of a web developer.[39][40] Definitely not RS. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 04:56, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I think people have gravitated to this source because it makes life easy for editors by oversimplifying and lumping everything together as 'Aboriginal' without any acknowledgment of the different nations, lands, peoples, and cultures. For example, searches on the site for 'Gadigal', 'Wurundjeri', 'Noongar' does not produce any pages specific to these peoples or cultures. This oversimplification, the lack of a First Nations voice in the production of the information, the use of problematic language and perspectives all make it an unreliable source. Brigid vW (talk) 05:23, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

• Unreliable I am quoting from Creative... "Please note: At the moment I am unable to answer most emails as I'm managing other priorities in my life. I run Creative Spirits by myself in my spare time, and I'm looking forward to being able to help you better in the future. For now, please accept my apologies if I cannot respond. Thank you."

Not much to discuss here. This site should not be used for any verification support. Lourdes 06:15, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Great point! A self-published source. Brigid vW (talk) 06:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I made an error. It's actually referenced 156 times on Wikipedia. Jimmyjrg (talk) 06:35, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

• Tricky one, not a clear cut case either way. Yes, it is a self-published source, but a quick Google shows decent use by others, including in academic and governmental contexts. Notably, the National Library of Australia, in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, has selected the website for archival since 2011. Also, looking at the Indigenous Referencing Guidance mentioned in the nomination, many of the reasons the document gives for deprecating Creative Spirits do not relate to its "reputation for fact-checking or accuracy", which is what we care about when evaluating sources.

For example, the document complains Creative Spirits is not produced by Indigenous authors, does not "centre Indigenous ways of being, doing and knowing" and sometimes does not use current terminology. But none of these complaints tell us much about whether the source gets its facts right. The document says "many Indigenous scholars have openly expressed concerns about the site and asked for their content to be removed", but doesn't say anything about what these concerns were, or even whether they were related to reliability.

Overall, Creative Spirits may not be suitable for BLPs or contentious issues, and higher-quality sources ought to be used where available, but the arguments against its use seem vague. Under ordinary circumstances it seems acceptable. Probably a bit niche for RSP either way. – Teratix ₵ 02:10, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Libraries don't just archive reliable sources. The Library of Congress was archiving Twitter (not sure if they still do), but that wasn't because it was reliable, but because it represented the zeitgeist. Jahaza (talk) 03:35, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I agree that library archival doesn't guarantee reliability. I'm more trying to show that the situation is not as simple as the source just being a "a single-person side project of a web developer". – Teratix ₵ 04:00, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I did not mean "single-person side project of a web developer" as any kind of statement about the quality. My point was that single-person project means there is no form of editorial oversight or independent fact-checking; research, writing, fact-checking, publishing are all done by the same person. And the fact that the author is a web developer by day does in no way mean he cannot be an expert. But it means that the following clause of WP:SPS does not apply: "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." So without any opinion about the quality of the content I just don't see the source meeting Wikipedia's criteria. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 16:38, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Regarding Forbes, does the "generally unreliable" rating also apply to "Senior Contributors"?

Currently, WP:FORBES says that only articles labeled "Forbes Staff" are deemed automatically reliable, while everyone else is deemed non-reliable in most cases. Does this apply even to "Senior Contributors" like Paul Tassi? How different are Senior Contributors compared to regular ones and staff anyway? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 11:57, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

• Forbes' Contributors Program is basically just a group blog, though it does have editors. The Contributors are not employees. Initially they were unpaid, but later were paid by the click. Forbes also has a Council program, in which the council members pay Forbes to published the their content, so that content is basically paid-for advertising. Banks Irk (talk) 12:54, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks, but what differentiates "Senior Contributors" from just the regular Contributors? In addition, on a case-by-case basis, can certain Contributors like Tassi be exempted from the "not reliable" rating, or does that still apply regardless? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 13:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  As far as I can tell, "senior" just means they've been a contributor longer and they tend to publish more articles. Maybe it's a status thing for people who care about that. The first senior contributor who showed up for me in a Google search, Jack Kelly, isn't employed by Forbes and doesn't have his content published in the print edition (that I could find).

  WP:FORBESCON authors can be exempted on a case-by-case basis if they're subject matter experts, but it would be up to you to prove that. Then they'd just be a WP:SPS expert and limited by that policy; for example, no claims about living persons. Woodroar (talk) 13:52, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

  I agree with Woodroar. If someone proposes to cite a Forbes "Contributor", "Senior Contributor" or "Council Member" article as a source, they would have to show that the author is a subject-matter expert previously published in a reliable source publication other than Forbes.com's website. Being published in Forbes Magazine would qualify for that, but not the website alone. Banks Irk (talk) 15:45, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

• It's very hard to find anything on what the "senior" designation means, which does not inspire confidence. The best I could dig up is this glassdoor review by someone claiming to be a "senior contributor" specifically saying that there was zero editorial oversight, implying that it's just a meaningless title. Obviously that's just a random comment, but in the total absence of any other explanation from Forbes or anything else explaining what the title means, I'm inclined to take it at face value and say that we should treat them the same as other contributors. --Aquillion (talk) 10:04, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Source for the article "criticism of Islam"

Is a highest quality source always required for the article 'criticism of Islam'?(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Islam) And what does 'highest quality' mean in this context? Is it not possible to include sources that consist of the sayings or writings of individuals who are accused by an editor of being non-expert Christians, atheists, ex-Muslims, and so on, who have nothing nice to say about Islam? For example William Heard Kilpatrick (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Heard_Kilpatrick) Greengrass7 (talk) 17:33, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest that you need to find modern sources on criticisms of Islam and see what they say. Not every criticism of Islam is likely to be noteworthy enough to include in the article according to WP:DUE. I suspect the guy you mention, from a quick perusal of his WP page, is not going to make the cut.--Boynamedsue (talk) 17:54, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

See WP:SCHOLARSHIP for what highest quality means in this context, given the amount that has been published on the topic. Inclusion at Criticism of Islam is likely to be more a question of WP:DUE than a mere WP:V or WP:RS issue. So, for example, the views of William Heard Kilpatrick should be included iff modern scholarly literature on critiques of Islam devotes significant space to them. Abecedare (talk) 18:08, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Is AfterEllen a reliable source for BLP reporting?

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.

---

AfterEllen was last discussed in July 2020. The reliability of this site has come into question due to three related discussions at Talk:Dana Rivers, Talk:Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, and Talk:Camp Trans, with a focus on a November 2022 article on Rivers.

Is AfterEllen a reliable source for BLP reporting? Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

I would argue no, they are not reliable, particularly for trans and non-binary BLP reporting due to their strong bias. As noted in the last discussion, the site underwent a severe editorial change in 2016, after firing all of their staff, pivoting towards a focus on anti-trans content. As a result the publication was condemned by a coalition of editors from other mainstream lesbian publications ([41]) and was a focal point of a piece by NBC News in January 2019. In one academic paper the site's editorial shift towards trans exclusionary content has been described as an oppressive and dangerous theoretical stance that disparages and denigrates some of the most marginalized members of the LGBT community: trans women.

Currently, according to their about us page, they have only a single editor and contributing writer. It's unclear whether the remainder of the contributors to the site are freelancers, or bloggers who have been given a platform. There is no editorial, fact checking, or corrections policy published anywhere on their site. Their terms of service states that the site does not warrant that the content is accurate, reliable or correct or that any defects or errors will be corrected.

While the site does have an opinion section, the opinion articles are also unidentifiably mixed in with their news section. While some opinion articles are clearly marked as such in the article header ([42]), there are many opinion articles that are not and are otherwise indistinguishable from their news or celeb reporting without manually checking the opinion section ([43], [44], [45]).

The publication is also known for pushing and amplifying harmful myths through its reporting and opinion articles like the cotton ceiling ([46], [47]), that being trans is an ideology ([48], [49], [50], [51]), and that LGBT teachers are grooming children ([52])

When taken in combination; the heavy anti-trans bias, lack of fact checking, editorial, and corrections policies, and the difficulty in separating opinion articles from factual reporting makes AfterEllen an unreliable source. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:52, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Is the cotton ceiling a myth per se? There seem to be sources on the topic. Crossroads ^-talk- 19:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Biased sources aren't inherently unusable; in this case the apparent lack of fact-checking (indeed, as you point out, the notice that they don't warrant that the content is accurate or that it will be corrected if it turns out to be inaccurate) seems like the bigger issue which makes clear it's not a RS. It's depressing how many sources have fired all their staff and dispensed with fact-checking and around the same time as taking on a strong bias. The uses above also run into a ton of other issues, like whether a very marginal and very biased source would actually provide any wp:weight if the fact-checking issues magically disappeared, but the latter seems like the straw that makes it unusable. Do we have any articles that cite pre-2016 pieces? If so, we should also look into what the editorial status of the site was before the firings and change. -sche (talk) 05:40, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

It is unfortunate that they haven't made their fact checking or corrections policy available on their site, it doesn't prove that they don't exist. Relying on legalese from the ToS misses the mark completely - the NYT also say that it "DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE. THERE MAY BE DELAYS, OMISSIONS, INTERRUPTIONS, AND INACCURACIES IN THE CONTENT OR OTHER MATERIAL MADE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE SERVICES" in their ToS.

So are there any examples of them getting facts wrong and not correcting them? Alaexis_¿question? 07:32, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

If AfterEllen have corrected or updated any articles after the 2016 editorial change, they have done so silently as I've not been able to find evidence of any articles that contain any sort of correction notice from a few searches.

As for just getting facts wrong with or without correction, this is difficult to quantify because the site's opinion articles are otherwise unidentifiably mixed in with their factual reporting. For example this article pushes the harmful myth that trans men are erasing butch lesbians, and is categorised as factual reporting despite from the text clearly being the opinion of the article's author. Do we want to count factual inconsistencies in marked and unmarked opinion articles against the publication? Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:43, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure that this counts as getting facts wrong, rather than having different opinions about a phenomenon. Anyway, the article is clearly an opinion by a non-expert and I can't imagine it ever being used on Wikipedia. Alaexis_¿question? 07:18, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Do we have any articles that cite pre-2016 pieces? If so, we should also look into what the editorial status of the site was before the firings and change. Out published an article in February 2019 with some details on how AfterEllen moved from being a mainstream lesbian focused publication in the early 2000s to the relative fringe publication that it is today. While it names key articles that corresponded to the publication's shift towards transphobia, it doesn't cite or name any specific pre-2016 articles.

In fact it is difficult to cite all manner of articles, especially for those published pre-2016, because as the Out article states, the archives and the work of some contributors [disappeared] overnight and some contributors witnessed their bylines simply changed to "staff" with no reasoning offered. A former contributor to AE speculated that it was a punitive thing when you tangle with AfterEllen's Twitter or publicly take issue with their current editorial direction.

The research paper (I can provide by email if needed, it's not in WP:LIB and I received a copy through WP:REREQ) that I cited above also documents some of the site's history. While it mentions a couple of articles that were published prior to 2016, the one article (no archive available) that it links to in the bibliography, by Julia Serano, is no longer available. Likewise the one penned by Jack Halberstam in 2015 was also removed.

Byline erasure was mentioned in the 2020 discussion on this source, see Hemiauchenia's comment at 23:33, 2 July 2020, but not discussed in any real depth. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:30, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• The consensus in the July 2020 RfC about AfterEllen was: "There is general agreement that AfterEllen is reliable, but that it should be used with context." The key word here is context.
  This RfC was opened because there was an edit (by a non-experienced editor) to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival article that added Dana Rivers as an activist at Camp Trans. It was poorly worded and the three sources provided were an article by Dana Rivers published in 2000, the tabloid Toronto Sun, and the New York Post. However, since Camp Trans is included in the lead and in the "Exclusion controversy" section (where other trans activists are included), I saw no reason why Dana Rivers' involvement in Camp Trans could not be added to the article.
  In my response at Talk:Michigan Womyn's Music Festival#Dana Rivers, I provided several sources that mention Dana Rivers' association with the Camp Trans protests at Michfest. Among them is an article by AfterEllen that says: "Rivers had also been active in “Camp Trans,” a campaign against Michfest, a female-only festival in Michigan that Reed and Wright attended frequently." – AJ (November 28, 2022). "Trans Activist, Dana Rivers, Found Guilty of Murdering Lesbian Couple and Their Son". AfterEllen.
  User:Sideswipe9th dismissed all the sources as not being acceptable and said about AfterEllen that it "is not a reliable source for BLPs, and its anti-trans bias also needs to be accounted for." To which I responded: "As for your comment that AfterEllen has an "anti-trans bias" ... so what? PinkNews is pro-trans and I haven't seen you reject PN as a "reliable source" because of its pro-trans bias. Besides which, per WP:BIASED: "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective....Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context."" This is the reason behind why this RfC has been opened.
  As a lesbian-centric website, AfterEllen is a knowledgeable source about the lesbian community, lesbian culture, and lesbian history. In the past it published articles about MichFest. In 2018, it published an interview with Lisa Vogel, the co-founder of MichFest. Therefore, if it involves MichFest, AfterEllen can be used as a source.
  Dana Rivers' involvement with Camp Trans has been documented by several sources, including Rivers. There is no reason why the AfterEllen article cannot be used as a source in this matter. (I also provided this source: mantilla, karla; Vogel, Lisa (October 2000). "festival: Michigan: transgender controversy… …and right-wing attacks "americans for truth" claims MWMF endangers children" (PDF). Off Our Backs. 30 (9): 8–9. ISSN 0030-0071. –(via JSTOR), which published the following: "More than 60 gender activists from these groups [Camp Trans Planning Committee, Boston and Chicago chapters of Lesbian Avengers] plus members of Transsexual Menace, supportive attendees and renowned activist Dana Rivers gathered across the road from the Festival this year to do outreach and education on what they viewed as a discriminatory policy being unfairly applied....").
  The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival article is not the Dana Rivers biography article — and the AfterEllen source was not going to be used in the Rivers BLP.
  Let's not kid ourselves here, this RfC is just an attempt to censor AfterEllen and stop it from being used as a source in Wikipedia, even in lesbian-related subjects. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 12:38, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• PinkNews is pro-trans and I haven't seen you reject PN as a "reliable source" because of its pro-trans bias. Since I noticed you brought this source up several times, I thought I'd respond to this (though I can't speak for Sideswipe9th - as I mentioned, my view is that the problem isn't simply that AfterEllen has a particular bias but that, post-2016, it is only known for that bias; it doesn't seem to have any meaningful coverage or usage in any other context.) Of course, if you want an in-depth discussion of PinkNews you can start another discussion for it, but even just at a glance there seem to be 300+ citations to it on Google Scholar, demonstrating strong WP:USEBYOTHERS; high-quality academic sources treat it as reliable source of information about LGBT issues. In comparison, AfterEllen has almost no coverage or citations post-2016 (when the site's new owners replaced literally all its employees, effectively turning it into a new publication with no relation to its previous self); virtually all coverage after that point is either discussing its pre-2016 incarnation or just discusses the way it was suddenly changed. Trying to equate AfterEllen to PinkNews is WP:FALSEBALANCE. --Aquillion (talk) 11:59, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

"Trying to equate AfterEllen to PinkNews is WP:FALSEBALANCE." No, it is not. Because PinkNews is slanted in favor of pro-trans and it is used by some editors as a source in LGBT-related articles. It is blatantly hypocritical to take a stand against sources that are anti-TRA, yet favor sources that are pro-TRA. You are indulging selective reasoning.
If you want proof of PinkNews' partisanship all you have to do is search "Dana Rivers" in its website, and except for a 2016 article ("Woman arrested over violent triple murder of lesbian couple and adopted son") you will not find anything about River's 2022 trial and conviction. The self-proclaimed "world's largest and most influential LGBTQ+ media brand" which declares it "exist[s] to inform", suppressed coverage of the trial and conviction of a prominent trans activist who murdered two lesbians and their son. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 10:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

At the minute I see opinions which are disagreed with, not really any evidence of factual errors. The argument that all RS clearly label and separate opinion and fact, therefore as this publication doesn't it is not RS is entirely without merit. Loads of sources mix the two, and we just say "this bit is factual, this bit is opinion, it needs attributing if the opinion's inclusion is due".Boynamedsue (talk) 21:29, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• I should note that the July 2020 discussion was never a formal RfC (see [53]), and the close was a non-admin one, so there isn't the same weight behind it as if it had been an actual RfC close. One of the people supporting its reliability, Gleeanon409, was later determined to be a sock of the LTA Benjiboi, so their opinion should be discounted. My opinion that AfterEllen post 2016 is a such a minor outlet that there is little reason to cite remains the same as the 2020 discussion. It's barely more than a glorified group blog at this point looking at the authorship credits for recent posts. We wouldn't cite other minor gender critical outlets like Reduxx for the same reason. (though AfterEllen is a lot less bad than Reduxx). Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:53, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  I was going to make a follow-up to my somewhat-vague comment above, to more clearly say things you've now said better than I could've, so I'll comment here instead of next to my earlier comment: what Hemiauchenia says above (and what Silver seren says below) is my read too: after the 2016 firing of staff, deletion or reattribution of old articles, and mixing of opinion in with other 'reporting', the site has declined so much in quality and stature and increased so much in bias that (from a V / RS perspective) I wouldn't trust it as a source for a statement in a Wikipedia article unless other RS were backing up the same statement ... and in that case it'd make more sense to just cite the other RS (because even from a WEIGHT perspective I don't know what things "marginal biased source" would attribute much weight to).
  If any of our articles cite pre-2016 pieces and we have archived versions of those which survived the site's deletions of them I would evaluate the reliability of them separately, since it was different back when it used to be, as Pyxis says, a decent source for lesbian news. I would even be careful about using the post-2016 site for the ABOUTSELF purposes Silver seren mentions, since we can see that after the change the site not only fired old staff but e.g. reattributed their work, so I wouldn't necessarily rely on its post-2016 statements about the pre-2016 site. (Post-2016 ABOUTSELF statements about post-2016 site should be fine.) -sche (talk) 03:14, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

• No, it is well-established that failing to separate opinion and fact is enough to render a source unreliable. From WP:QUESTIONABLE: Such sources include websites and publications expressing views that are widely acknowledged as extremist, that are promotional in nature, or that rely heavily on rumors and personal opinions. When a source labels its opinions clearly, we can wall them off and use the non-opinion parts; but if opinions are a heavy aspect of everything it publishes, without a clear separation, then the entire source has to be walled off - at a bare minimum that puts it below the level that we could ever consider citing for WP:BLP-sensitive statements. Also, of course - WP:RS is something that ultimately must be positively shown; that is to say, if you think a source is reliable you have to show that it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, which I don't think is evident in coverage here. We focus on inaccuracies in situations where a source might otherwise meet that bar but had glaring problems; but there's no need for it here, because nobody has really presented an argument for how the source could be a WP:RS aside from "well it's biased and that doesn't disqualify it, right?", a misapprehension which often happen in situations like these where a source's only coverage comes from the fact that they've published a bunch of inflammatory stuff and where the only reason it's here at all is because it has a strident opinion that some editors really like and other editors really dislike. Looking past that, if you want to - at the very least, use the source for WP:BLP-sensitive statements, but really, to a lesser degree, if you want to use it for anything but opinion at all - then you need to show strong WP:USEBYOTHERS or other evidence of a good reputation, evidence of a decent editorial policy, reasons to believe they perform fact-checking, and so on. And also convincingly argue that the majority of its coverage does not rely on opinion, I suppose. (Preferably, for all of this, from after the 2016 turnover because coverage makes it clear that management was completely replaced at that point.) These are not obscure points of policy. --Aquillion (talk) 23:48, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• A lack of editorial and fact checking policies is usually a red flag for sources. Add in the mixing in of opinion articles and general "contributor" articles makes it seem highly likely that the site has lost it reliability post-buyout. While we can discuss the extent of reliability on the site prior to the buyout, it seems quite clear that it's become more or less a tabloid since. And I agree with Hemiauchenia above that even outside of that, it is such a minor web-based site that it shouldn't be used in any of our articles outside of the one on itself. Silverseren^C 01:44, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
• The July 2020 closure carries some weight, and I don't see that the outlet has changed significantly since then. I don't see a need to treat it as blanket unreliable, but rather it depends on context and what it's being used for. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:59, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

It is obviously not reliable for BLP reporting - this is clear-cut enough to be remove-on-sight. If anyone has restored it in contravention of WP:BLPRESTORE, I'd suggest taking them to WP:AE immediately. It's a blog with no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy and no editorial policy. While being a WP:BIASED source does not necessarily render a source unusable, being biased doesn't make a source usable, too; the only coverage of the blog elsewhere is to discuss its bias. Sourcing heavily focuses on its 2016 acquisition as wrecking what credibility it had (something previous discussions seem to have overlooked) - see eg. the paper Sideswipe linked above, or [54]. Likewise, the arguments made in defense of it in this and previous discussions seem to be focused more on its bias than on actually trying to find decent WP:USEBYOTHERS, or discussing its editorial policy, or explaining how it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, all of which would be obvious first steps before we could use a source to eg. imply that a living person is guilty of a crime. Either way, any experienced editor would know at a glance that this is not a source that can be used for BLP-sensitive statements - the threshold we'd need to use a blog for statements like this is well above anything presented here. I would more generally say it's not an WP:RS for anything - there's just nothing to suggest that it would be; it seems to be a blog primarily notable for changing hands several times and, post-2016 acquisition, suddenly experiencing a drastic change of direction and publishing a bunch of inflammatory stuff, none of which really suggests that it has the reputation for fact-checking and accuracy WP:RS requires - but the idea that anyone could seriously argue that it's reliable for BLP reporting (which was not the focus of previous discussions, most of which had the same tiny handful of editors contributing to them anyway) is unfathomable and I suspect not one that WP:AE would look kindly on. --Aquillion (talk) 23:25, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

"but the idea that anyone could seriously argue that it's reliable for BLP reporting (which was not the focus of previous discussions, most of which had the same tiny handful of editors contributing to them anyway) is unfathomable and I suspect not one that WP:AE would look kindly on." Um ... who has said that AfterEllen was to be used in a BLP? The AE article was suggested as a source in the MICHIGAN WOMYN'S MUSIC FESTIVAL article. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:55, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Look at Talk:Dana Rivers; it was suggested there as well. But its use in Michigan Womyn's Music Festival was also focused on connecting Dana Rivers the topic. And Rivers, of course, does fall under BLP. BLP applies to mentions of living people in other articles, not just in their own articles, so you need a high-quality source to make that connection, which all else aside this clearly is not. One only has to look at the article in question to recognize that the connection being made here is ultimately about BLP-sensitive details regarding Rivers; obviously we cannot rely on a lurid blogpost from a blog with no discernible reputation beyond becoming an axe-grinding culture-war venue post-2016 for something like "MASS-MURDERER PARTICIPATES IN PROTESTS" or the like. I don't think it should be used in as a source at all, for anything - the problem isn't just that it's an axe-grinding culture-war venue, the problem is that that is all it is known for, not for fact-checking or accuracy - but at the very least it obviously cannot be used to say anything about living people. --Aquillion (talk) 11:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, it's like this: I'm only interested in Michfest, and didn't know until you pointed it out that the AE article had also been suggested in the Dana Rivers BLP talk page. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 09:03, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

• Yes, the mixing of fact and opinion with no boundaries means that a site is inherently unreliable. But even when something is clearly news, is it reliable? Well, no, as you can see from this story which tries to claim that Nicola Sturgeon's resignation as Scottish First Minister was something to do with a controversy about a transgender rapist. In reality, it was absolutely irrelevant to it. I note that someone's inserted the note about the controversy into Sturgeon's article, together with a nice bit of editorialising about pronouns ... what a surprise. Black Kite (talk) 11:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

"this] story which tries to claim that Nicola Sturgeon's resignation as Scottish First Minister was something to do with a controversy about a transgender rapist." Responding to this is simply irresistible:

– Nicola Sturgeon Resigns As Scottish Leader After Trans Rapist Scandal, The European Conservative (February 15, 2023).

– Estranged wife of trans rapist Isla Bryson 'delighted' Nicola Sturgeon has quit after gender reform plans, LBC (15 February 2023).

– Nicola Sturgeon facing calls to quit as poll shows voter fury over trans rapist scandal, Express (February 13, 2023).

– Nicola Sturgeon urged to resign after refusing to say if double rapist is a man or a woman, Express (February 2, 2023).

– Nicola Sturgeon brought down by trans row as SNP prepares to rip up her gender Bill, The Telegraph (15 February 2023).

– Adam Zivo: Scotland's woke government self-immolates over trans rights: Nicola Sturgeon badly miscalculated over controversy surrounding rapist born as a male being placed in a women's prison, National Post (February 15, 2023).

– Nicola Sturgeon facing demands to resign as 40 PER CENT of Scots want her gone over trans row, GB News (12 February 2023).

– The trans rights row sparking a crisis for Nicola Sturgeon’s leadership, The Sydney Morning Herald (February 12, 2023).

– Nicola Sturgeon faces fortnight of criticism over trans prisons policy: Critics claim her career is ‘over,’ while trans Scots worry about sensationalised coverage after trans rapist put in women’s prison, The Guardian (11 February 2023).

– Confusion from Nicola Sturgeon over trans prison row, ITVX (31 January 2023).

"she ended up promoting a policy of allowing trans people to change their legal sex by self-declaration alone – a policy that, when rolled out in the prison’s service, led to a double rapist being placed in a women’s prison....Most of the Scottish media have, like the BBC, been observing informal self-censorship on the trans issue."
– Nicola Sturgeon: a cautionary tale, Spiked (22 February 2023).

"After that, a new row erupted over a trans woman who was to be put in a women's prison -- even though she had raped two women before she transitioned."
– Scotland: Why did Nicola Sturgeon resign and who will replace her?, Euronews (17 February 2023).

"It was Nicola’s failure to be able to say a rapist was a man that turned it in the end. If you can’t say that, why should anyone trust anything that comes out of your mouth? She made the mistake of ignoring women, and listening to lobbying groups that held to one view."
– Women’s rights activists celebrate Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation, The Times (February 16, 2023).

"Back in 2021, the fissures over Sturgeon’s embrace of transgender issues as the next great civil-rights cause were already apparent. She has always dismissed feminist concerns that predatory men who are not really trans will cynically exploit relaxed gender-recognition rules to gain access to women’s spaces....Bryson had also just been convicted of rape, the quintessential male crime against women’s bodily autonomy. How could the Scottish government believe that such a person belonged in a female jail?."
– What Happens When Politicians Brush Off Hard Questions About Gender, The Atlantic (February 15, 2023).

There are more sources that also connect the same dots — AfterEllen was not the only one, nor the exception. Its article about Sturgeon's resignation was similar to what was reported in numerous British media sources. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 05:29, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

• Well, you've wasted your time there, since it became very clear later on that the trans rights row was completely irrelevant to her resignation. Of course all the right-wing sources leapt on it at the time ... and were wrong. Incidentally, for your future reference, many of your links are from unreliable sources (Express, GB News, Spiked etc.) Black Kite (talk) 11:49, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't adding sources to an article, was I? And everyone knows that shooting the messenger is a sport in Wikipedia. AfterEllen's Sturgeon article was published on February 17, 2023. Whatever became "clear later on" happened later on — after the article by AE and those I listed with similar reports were published. However, as the proverb says: where there's smoke, there's fire. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 11:16, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

That's some high-quality gibberish, that is. --JBL (talk) 00:06, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

• I fail to see what distinguishes the post-'16 site from any other random "news" blog with inadequate editorial standards. Like any such blog, it might be usable on a case-by-case basis for very non-controversial claims, but should generally be avoided and is absolutely unacceptable for any contentious claim about a living person. Note that there's a pretty healthy ecosystem of LGBTQ-oriented journalism, from prestige sources like The Advocate to lots of blogs like what AfterEllen once was: broad-scope and, while not top-tier, passing our minimum expectations for editorial standards. I doubt there are many claims that can be sourced only to post-'16 AfterEllen, and if there are, that in itself is a reason to be suspicious of the claim. -- 'zin^{[is short for Tamzin]} (she|they|xe) 21:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)
• Just to note, I've requested a closure of this discussion, as it seems to have died down and I think one would be helpful going forward. Sideswipe9th (talk) 21:56, 16 July 2023 (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.

InfoUkes

Not seeing this in the index here. Its web page says it's been online since 1997, and I have seen it quite a bit in our articles about Ukraine. At the moment I have noticed it at Ostarbeiter, where it appears to be hosting a reprint of a journal article. There's no ongoing dispute about this btw; I was just wikignoming in an article I was thinking of linking to. It looks like a blog, but possibly a reliable one. People seemed to be leaving it alone in the Ukrainian war articles, but there was plenty else to argue about there. Interested in opinions, no special rush. Elinruby (talk) 05:48, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

"Use of any information obtained via InfoUkes is at your own risk. InfoUkes specifically denies any responsibility for the accuracy or quality of information obtained through its services." on their disclaimer page doesn't sound promising. APK whisper in my ear 06:23, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Mnmm missed that, thanks. Pretty much settles that.Elinruby (talk) 07:00, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't mean anything except that they don't want to get sued. "NYT does not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any advice, opinion, statement, or other information displayed, uploaded, or distributed through the Services by any user, information provider or any other person or entity." -- the New York Times Terms of Service. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 14:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC: Is FossForce.com a reliable source for Free and open-source software (FOSS) articles?

Is FossForce.com a reliable source for Free and open-source software (FOSS) articles?

1. Generally reliable
2. Additional considerations apply
3. Generally unreliable

With these edits at Libreboot, PhotographyEdits removed cited info, claiming FossForce.com (and others) is not a WP:RS: one, two, and 2021 article purge and proposal to merge

Prevous RSN discussions: None found.

Talk discussions : one found in 2019; thin consensus, including me, was not reliable. Newslinger called it a "group blogs with no reputations".

An author "Christine Hall" is cited on a few editor talk pages, but I don't think it is the same Christine Hall.

About a dozen articles cite FossForce.com.

Three cites that have been removed from Libreboot over time include:

• September 2016
• January 2017
• April 2017

• Option 2: Additional considerations apply: While the articles are mostly by one author/editor, I contrast FossForce.com with somewhat similar (at a glance) liliputing.com, which was deemed generally unreliable blog, self-published source in this RSN discussion and RfC. FossForce, to me, covers FOSS topics with more insight than just re-publicizing a single press release or vendor post, and discusses the info in some detail. FossForce also covers FOSS topics - not just new products up for sale - over time, as shown by the three cites above. While the FossForce website does show advertisements, it again contrasts with Liliputing by NOT being affiliate-spam directly connected to PR announcements about products being written about. Therefore, I feel this otherwise marginal source should be allowed, particularly for FOSS articles with few generally reliable sources.

The present intention is to use the 2017 cites to support statements about the History of Libreboot without the personal WP:BLP info. They have been used differently at Libreboot previously. -- Yae4 (talk) 18:14, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

• Option #1 (invited by the bot) My actual answer is that I generally reject all such over-generalizations.....it should be about the objectivity and objectivity of the particular piece/authot/source with respect to the text which cited it. But if forced to make a generalization, that source looks to be good. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 20:37, 13 June 2023 (UTC)
• Summoned by the notification at WT:COMPUTING. Yae4, I again respectfully disagree with going straight from a one-on-one content dispute to an RSN RfC, without discussion on the article's talk page (WP:RFCBEFORE). At Libreboot, PhotographyEdits removed text cited to two sources, and you reverted it, agreeing they're not WP:GENREL, but arguing they should stay because they weren't discussed at RSN and are widely used at Wikipedia (FossForce is cited in 13 articles), and asking PhotographyEdits to point to a consensus discussion before removing.

But Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. No one needs a consensus discussion, or an RSN RfC, to remove citations that they deem unreliable from an article. If you disagree with a removal, that should first be discussed on the article's talk page; if that doesn't solve it, you can start a non-RfC discussion here to ask for input on whether the source is good enough for the claim. RSN RfCs are for repeated disputes across several talk pages, or sources in widespread use, not to resolve mundant content disputes. BTW, I searched, and FossForce is only used in five articles (ItsFoss, the second source, is used in 2 articles).

When a specific statement is challenged, the WP:ONUS is on you to gain consensus on the article's talk page to keep it. Skipping directly to an RfC here implies inclusion is all-or-nothing, where an outcome other than "generally unreliable" would mean the claim stays in the article. This is undesirable from a process standpoint. Best, DFlhb (talk) 23:58, 13 June 2023 (UTC) updated 02:32, 14 June 2023

@DFlhb:

> (FossForce is cited in 13 articles)

> I searched, and FossForce is only used in five articles

I agree with 13, based on my Wiki-search linked above. I disagree with 5, but what's a factor of 2 to 3 difference?

I considered discussing this and doing an RfC at Talk:Libreboot. IMO, having it here makes it more likely to get uninvolved opinions, from editors with broader perspective, makes it easier to find later, and may carry more weight later. I think the small proportion of FOSS-related articles to all Wikipedia articles needs to be considered, relative to "widely used". There are also related issues at Libreboot, particularly how to handle the "fork", what sources are primary or secondary, etc., and I'm hoping some editors with broader perspective may notice and have suggestions. Thanks for your comments. -- Yae4 (talk) 02:15, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

13 indeed; I fixed the first mention (see my edit summary), forgot to fix the second mention. DFlhb (talk) 02:32, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

At VeraCrypt, A cite to Fossforce is used to support the claim "VeraCrypt is considered to be free and open source by [...] DuckDuckGo's Open Source Technology Improvement Fund".[55]

OSTIF does consider Veracrypt to be open source[56] and DuckDuckGo did make a $25,000 contribution to the OSTIF with the funds earmarked for the VeraCrypt project,[57] but it appears that the "DuckDuckGo's" claim is an error that is not in the FossForce source. Could someone please change the claim to "VeraCrypt is considered to be free and open source by [...] The Open Source Technology Improvement Fund" and change the cite from Fossforce to OSTIF? OSTIF Cite:[58] I don't edit articles for reasons I won't get into here. Guy Macon (talk) 23:00, 14 June 2023 (UTC)

Guy_Macon, I'd consider making the change for you if someone hasn't already, if you give a more direct opinion on the question at hand. Thanks. PS. Now and then I look at your User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer, and find it useful. Sadly, User:Guy_Macon/Yes._We_are_biased. looks good on the surface, but is it really accurate? (rhetorical). Cheers. -- Yae4 (talk) 22:21, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

Option 1. In my opinion, Fossforce is a reliable source on the topis of free and open source software, an area where there are few good sources. I am also concerned about the possibility that this RfC was not posted because of a genuine question about Fossforce's reliability, but rather to win a content dispute that should have been worked out on the article talk page. I would encourage those who are involved in the dispute to ignore the result of this RfC and work it out through consensus and if necessary through a focused RfC on the talk page comparing the preferred content of both sides.

Regarding WP:YWAB, the purpose is not "accuracy". Any "we are biased against" / "we are biased towards" list is by nature subjecticve opinion. The purpose of the page is explained at User talk:Guy Macon/Yes. We are biased.#The purpose of this essay, and it is quite effective for that purpose. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:05, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

NYPOST on Vladislav Doronin

1. Source: https://nypost.com/2023/01/26/ex-fbi-official-charles-mcgonigal-worked-for-more-than-one-russian-billionaire/
2. Article: Vladislav Doronin
3. Content: See Special:Diff/1166042450

I seem to be having a disagreement with User:DrDavidLivesey on whether NYPOST can be used on a BLP. Can others way in? --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 15:32, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

tl;dr we shouldn't use Generally Unreliable sources with a history of fabrication on Wikipedia. In the specific case, I see plenty of non-NYPOST RSes in there, why not use those? - David Gerard (talk) 15:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

yeah, that talk page argument for using a GU source given to fabrication for contentious claims on a BLP seems to be not understanding WP:BLP. Worse than that, it seems to be claims about a third party, not even the article subject - David Gerard (talk) 15:57, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

If NYPost is generally unreliable it shouldn't be used, if an exception is being made based on the author being a subject matter expert then WP:SPS applies and it can't be used for a BLP. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:37, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks all! This seems like a clear cut case of "no, don't use NYPOST" but the other user kept insisting and reinserting this material, which is also just not really related to the subject of the BLP, and therefore UNDUE.

Noticeboard works as intended! --- C&C (Coffeeandcrumbs) 20:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Use of The American Conservative for opinion at A Letter to Liberals

My reading is that The American Conservative can be used for opinion, if there is in text attribution. Another editor does not agree and we are in disagreement at Talk:A Letter to Liberals. I would welcome more input there. CT55555(talk) 13:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You are correct, WP:NOTCENSORED. Sometimes RSN-related RfC closers, e.g. for Daily Mail and Breitbart, have said so explicitly. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Actually, I think I'm only partly correct. Just realized it was used for opinion (we agree that is OK) but also fact (no consensus on that, probably can't use). Would welcome your opinion on that too. And to keep things in the one place, can I request people comment on the talk page of the article please? CT55555(talk) 13:41, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure the distinction between the fact and opinion is important here. If you're talking about this edit, then it's not a question of reliability (we're 100% sure that the AC praised RFK's book) but rather a question of due weight - is the opinion of Chad Nagle important enough to be included. I don't know the answer, it might be if you discuss the reception of the book and include both positive and negative opinions. Alaexis_¿question? 14:40, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The real issue when including WP:RSOPINION stuff isn't usually WP:RS, it's WP:DUE. I do wish we had a useful essay about when to include or exclude opinion content. My opinion is that a heavily politicized opinion source simply expressing bald support for something in line with its existing views is generally not worth including unless there's secondary coverage, since it's a dog-bites-man sort of thing; every single article on something that falls into a dispute between two political parties doesn't really benefit from a list of opinions along the lines of "source on team X said X was great! Source on Team Y said X was terrible and that Y is better!" Good WP:RSOPINION comes from experts or from sources whose opinion is intrinsically relevant to the topic at hand, not from talking heads or hired guns who basically exist to always say the same thing whenever an opportunity arises for them to say it. --Aquillion (talk) 15:41, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

As you say it is reliable for their opinion, not for the idea its true or relevant. Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

We already have WP:IMPARTIAL, which explictly instructs us not to quote directly from participants engaged in a heated dispute; instead, summarize and present the arguments in an impartial tone. This applies to heated political disputes just as much as it does to heated personal disputes. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 17:23, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I have been reading a lot and the Due Weight policy also is relevant because most of the content of the book is in the category of Wikipedia:Fringe theories. The article from The American Conservative uses a lot of Doublespeak looking phrases. "Giving "equal validity" can create a false balance."

Also if it matters, Chad Nagle might not be staff for The American Conservative. The author page [59] for him says it is a blog over the articles from 2021. Saikyoryu (talk) 23:18, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

None of this matters. The Current Affairs article, which you enthusiastically use, is titled "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a Lying Crank" - but this non-encyclopedic language expressing a viewpoint isn't reason to exclude it.

You need to distinguish using a source for facts, where Wikipedia:Fringe theories would apply, and using a source for its opinion. Sources can have all sorts of baseless opinions, but we don't include/exclude them on that basis - the metric is are the sources notable enough.

But as I noted in the article talk page itself, this entire discussion is moot, since the article in question is not actually a book review of A Letter to Liberals, and doesn't discuss the book t all, so I removed it. Red Slapper (talk) 23:35, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Hirak (Algeria)

• Ahmad, Talmiz (2020). "The Enduring "Arab Spring": Change and Resistance". Indian Foreign Affairs Journal. 15 (2): 91–107. ISSN 0973-3248. The "Second Wave" of Arab Spring Uprisings - In Algeria, popular agitations, referred to as "Hirak", began in February 2019 to protest the announcement of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika that he would be seeking a fifth term in office.
• Roessler, Martin; Zwerschke, Patrick; Old, Jonathan (September 7, 2021). "Democracy and the Transnational Dimensions of Low-Level Conflict and State Repression". International Studies Quarterly. 65 (3). Oxford University Press: 753–767. doi:10.1093/isq/sqab038. Finally, following the relatively successful democratic transition in Tunisia over the coming years, Algeria and Sudan have recently experienced pro-democratic protests in the wake of a "second Arab Spring" ( Georgy and Amara 2019 ; Rahal 2019 ; Turak 2019 )
• Brooke, Steven; Hassan, Mazen (July 2022). "Does Learning About Protest Abroad Inform Individuals' Attitudes About Protest at Home? Experimental Evidence from Egypt". Government and Opposition. 57 (3). Cambridge University Press: 428–445. doi:10.1017/gov.2021.16. As renewed protests broke out in Algeria and Sudan in 2019, some commentators mused that a 'second Arab Spring was brewing' (England 2019)
• Onivehu, Adams Ogirima (15 April 2021). "Causes, consequences and control of student protests" (PDF). Sociální pedagogika / Social Education. 9 (1): 8–21. doi:10.7441/soced.2021.09.01.01. Protest is a global phenomenon. Therefore, the past decade is saturated with instances of protests across the world, such as Occupy Wall Street, the Spanish Indignados, the first Arab Spring uprising of 2010 in Tunisia and Egypt, and the second Arab Spring in Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria in the period of 2018-2020.
• Ubelejit Nte, Timothy (March 21, 2021). "The Algerian Crisis of 2019 and the Second Arab Spring Uprising: A Comparative Analysis". International Journal of Public Administration and Management Research. 6 (2). doi:10.36758/ijpamr/v6n2.2021/02. ISSN 2350-2231. The broad objective of the study is to evaluate the Algerian Crisis of 2019 in the light of the Second Arab Spring Uprising (SASU).
• Sly, Liz (January 24, 2021). "How hope is vanishing 10 years after the Arab Spring". The Washington Post. Demonstrations that toppled the longstanding presidents of Algeria and Sudan in 2019 and subsequent protest movements in Iraq and Lebanon have been hailed as a second Arab Spring, a reminder that the momentum that drove the revolts of a decade ago has not gone away.
• Saunders, Doug (April 11, 2019). "Even as a second Arab Spring blooms in Sudan and Libya, the West's myth of strongman stability refuses to die". The Globe and Mail. ProQuest 2382446785. Even though Sudan's triumph follows Algeria's equally jubilant mass uprising, which forced dictator Abdelaziz Bouteflika to step down on April 1 after two decades in office, the phrase "Arab Spring 2.0" is uttered only sarcastically - to point out the inevitable tragedies and setbacks that will follow these overthrows, not to encourage a wider shift to popular rule in a region that badly needs it.
• Frantzman, Seth J. (April 11, 2019). "Sudan crisis impacts whole Middle East". The Jerusalem Post. A second Arab Spring appears to be happening in the Middle East as Abdelaziz Bouteflika was pushed out as president of Algeria, and Omar Bashir was reportedly forced to step down in Sudan on Thursday.

Are these sources reliable to state in the aricle Hirak (Algeria), that it was part of the Second Arab Spring? The declaration that Hirak (Algeria) was part of the Second Arab Spring has been disputed by M.Bitton, and removed from the infobox twice as a result of the dispute. Their reasoning for removing Second Arab Spring from the infobox: That's an opinion. As explained before, this has nothing to do with any other country, movement, colour or season that some in need of a cheap story tend to relate to one another. Looking for outside editor's opinions on the reliability of the sources above. Thanks Isaidnoway (talk) 01:22, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• The Arab Spring period was between 2010-2012, and it ended at that time, not 10 or 9 years after. It also did not occur in other countries as it did in Tunisia and Egypt. Additionally, the second Arab Spring is not even mentioned in local newspapers or websites in Algeria. How can we adopt this appellation using only foreign references without referring to local sources? In the media, most often in the West, when a term is used, other media outlets simply copy and paste it. Hirak has nothing to do with the Arab Spring; it is completely different. There was no violence, and it did not happen every day - only on Fridays, in a peaceful manner. The president retired from the occupation, which is the opposite of what happened during the Arab Spring, where the president continued to resist and it ended in civil wars. Regards Riad Salih (talk) 11:19, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• 1) I stand by that. Furthermore, in the discussion, I specifically said the purpose of the Infobox is to summarize (and not supplant) key facts that appear in the article. 2) The so-called "Second Arab Spring" is nothing but an expression used by some commentators to lump totally unrelated events together. Stating in the concerned article that the protests were part of some imaginary ethnic based movement is simply not acceptable in an encyclopedia. 3) I won't comment on whether the above sources are good enough for the badly written Second Arab Spring article (which doesn't explain that this is just an expression), but the used scare quotes and expressions such as "uttered only sarcastically" and "some commentators mused" are there for a reason. M.Bitton (talk) 12:08, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

At one source listed above is an opinion piece, but there's also journal articles. Labelling the term as just "an opinion" is thus not appropriate. There's also no requirement for sources to be from the country an article is about. However, if a the term isn't used locally, it should be noted. Cortador (talk) 13:20, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cortador: Which journal article are you referring to? M.Bitton (talk) 13:24, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

See the list of sources above. Several of them are journal articles, not just opinion pieces. Cortador (talk) 13:26, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Of course they are opinion pieces, after all, none of them is describing it as a fact. The only source that is about the subject (and not just a mention in passing) makes it quite clear by stating "The crisis lasted for six weeks and was reminiscent of the Arab Spring Uprising of 2011 hence the Second Arab Spring Uprising." This source makes another outrageous claim about the Algerian civil war (which speaks volumes about its reliability). M.Bitton (talk) 13:29, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Indian Foreign Affairs, International Studies Quarterly, Sociální Pedagogika, and Government and Opposition are peer-reviewed academic journals. If you think these are just "opinion pieces", you show a lack of understand what distinguishes peer-reviewed journal articles and opinion pieces, and should quite frankly not comment on the matter. Cortador (talk) 13:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Please, don't make claims about me or my knowledge of how Wikipedia works. The opinion of an Indian diplomat is just that, an opinion, and the so-called "Arab spring" is nothing more than an expression used by some (in need to something to say) to lump together unrelated events. Anyway, I suggest you read what I said about the Infobox. M.Bitton (talk) 13:48, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You have failed to demonstrate said knowledge, and have not delivered any arguments for the exclusion of the sources above other than your dislike of them. If you think that the Arab Spring events are "unrelated", you are doing original research. Wikipedia is not a platform for original research, it is one for whatever reliable sources state. Cortador (talk) 13:53, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I've had enough of this nonsense. You obviously have nothing of value to add to this discussion, let alone the subject. Please, do me a big favour and don't reply to my comments again. M.Bitton (talk) 13:56, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

If you edit Wikipedia, you have to accept that your actions and behaviour will be challenged by other editors. That's how this site works. Cortador (talk) 14:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cortador

The term "Arab Spring" has been widely used in local press and articles at that time, not just as an opinion but also as a press release. In contrast, the term "Hirak" is used worldwide in this case and not Second Arab Spring.

Therefore, attributing the events to the "Second Arab Spring" is a limited opinion held by some editors and does not necessarily qualify as an encyclopedic element. Riad Salih (talk) 15:14, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

"Hirak vs. Second Arab Spring" as you use it is a false dichotomy. One is a local event, the other regional, and the former can be part of the latter.

Isaidnoway has provided several several sources, including academic sources, that use the term. Just stating "But it's just an opinion" doesn't change that, as I noted above. Cortador (talk) 15:21, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that is not the case. If the Hirak movement was indeed a second Arab Spring, it would have been referred to as such by the local media, which is not the case. Additionally, there is a lack of academic sources that mention the Hirak movement as a second Arab Spring. Riad Salih (talk) 15:31, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia has no requirement for a term to be used locally, nor does it have a requirement for every topic of be backed up by academic sources specifically. Cortador (talk) 16:43, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cortador and who said that Wikipedia has this requirement? Riad Salih (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

You did. Or why did you bring those points up otherwise? Cortador (talk) 19:01, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

No one is disputing that it was locally defined as the Hirak movement (that's why the article is titled that way), just like no one is disputing the uprising in Sudan being locally defined as the Sudanese Revolution; the point is, which the sources make clear, is that these uprisings in both Algeria and Sudan are also being considered to be part of a second Arab Spring. Look at the original Arab Spring, Egypt's uprising was locally defined as the Egyptian Revolution, in Tunisia, it was locally defined as the Tunisian Revolution, but they were also considered to be part of the Arab Spring. Same logic applies here with Algeria and Sudan being considered part of the Second Arab Spring. Isaidnoway (talk) 22:45, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

The big difference here is that while there was an "Arab spring" that is properly covered in RS, the so-called "second Arab spring" (scare quotes intended and used in the sources alongside "uttered only sarcastically" and "some commentators mused") is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of some commentators. M.Bitton (talk) 22:57, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:NPOV requires that we include all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic. When available, academic and peer-reviewed publications...are usually the most reliable sources. The uprising in Algeria being part of the Second Arab Spring is a significant view that has been published by academic and peer-reviewed publications. Collectively, the uprisings in that region are considered to be part of a broader movement, which is referred to as the Second Arab Spring. That is what is reflected by the multitude of reliable sources, so that is what we report. Our own interpretation of the events in that region are not allowed per WP:OR. Isaidnoway (talk) 01:31, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

At a minimum they support the claim that the Hirak movement is considered part of the Second Arab Spring by some commentators. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:16, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

RfC: Should RTÉ (Raidió Teilifís Éireann) be considered to be a generally reliable source?

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.

---

RTÉ is Ireland's public broadcaster. It features general news, and I'm not aware that it has faced any heavy criticism regarding its reliability. RTÉ has been around since 1960, and is thus a long-established outlet. Media Bias/Fact Check considers it to be reliable, but as is noted right here, Media Bias/Fact Check itself is not a reliable source. Thoughts on RTÉ's reliability are welcome. Cortador (talk) 09:28, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Is there any disputed use of this source? In general, yes, this source is reliable, but there may be topics, where better source would be required (eg. medical claims). Pavlor (talk) 10:13, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I've used RTÉ a couple of times. There aren't specific disputes regarding RTÉ that I'm aware of. However, I also couldn't find any discussion regarding its reliability here or via the new page patrol source guide so I decided to open the discussion here because I thought I would be good to have clearity regarding this source. Cortador (talk) 11:35, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I never seen any reason not to consider RTE to be reliable. Canterbury Tail talk 13:29, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, RTÉ is known as a typical, editorially independent public broadcaster and therefore in the top tier of journalistic RS. This year's scandal about undisclosed bonuses for a presenter doesn't reflect on RTÉ's editorial judgement (and is also pretty minor, in the global context of recent scandals at unquestionably RS outlets). Newimpartial (talk) 13:38, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm guessing there's no previous discussion on RTE because noone has ever questioned their reliability, and I can't see any reason why anyone should. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 19:25, 19 July 2023 (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.

Memoirs as sources (Indian castes/names)

Talwar (surname), second paragraph, uses memoirs as sources for the location of people called Talwar, which can be a caste name but also a generic last name. I have just tweaked it to read "some" Talwars ... but I am a bit dubious about using memoirs for this at all, and particularly so if they relate to childhood memories. We could do some heavy inline attribution (there are multiple sources used there, for related points), we could accept it as it is, or we could bin the paragraph. Thoughts? - Sitush (talk) 08:41, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Without comment on memoirs in general since they are such a fuzzy and wide-ranging category, I agree with you that in this particular case, childhood recollections and family histories recounted by Vinod Mehta and Reena Nanda are being extrapolated too much to make community-level claims. In the current version, the first sentence of the second para, Before 1947, when India was partitioned, some Talwars were located in modern-day Pakistan. is a "duh"-level claim (is there a single Indian, and particularly Punjabi, community for which this wasn't true?!), while the remaining two are wild generalizations based on an example of one (Vinod Mehta's maternal great-grandfather; reminds me of the Sheep in Scotland joke). If any of this is to be retained, per WP:RS and WP:DUE we would better (sociological) sources. Abecedare (talk) 15:17, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Would they not be wp:primary sources? Slatersteven (talk) 15:21, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

As Slatersteven said, memoirs would count as primary sources. WP:ABOUTSELF applies. Edward-Woodrow :) _[talk] 18:43, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks to all. I have removed the relevant bit from the article. - Sitush (talk) 16:39, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

More Perfect

Hi, I'm commenting to see what others think about the reliability of More Perfect Union (particularly within labor). I'm looking for input from others who are well versed in labor issues. LoomCreek (talk) 00:10, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

It looks no more nor less reliable than any other newsmedia source. I don't think Wikipedia should use newsmedia sources at all but so long as Wikipedia uses NYT I see no reason why this one should be excluded. At least it's honest about its biases. That's more than most of these news outlets do. Simonm223 (talk) 12:29, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

(Summoned by bot) @LoomCreek: You'll probably have more luck asking "is More Perfect Union reliable for [some kind of claim] in [one or a category of articles]". It's hard to offer a judgment on the whole without specific examples. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 12:58, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

More Perfect Union appears to be a joint venture between a 501(c)(4) political organization, and a 501(c)(3) that it controls. It is led by a political operative and a former NowThis/HuffPo person, which isn't exactly the sort of sterling editorial credentials that one would expect for a reliable news group. I'm unsure of whether it has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, but it seems more like an advocacy org than a newsorg based off what I can find. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 15:37, 22 June 2023 (UTC)

@LoomCreek based on what @Red-tailed hawk, @Rhododendrites, and @Simonm223 have said I would exercise caution when it comes to using it as an actual citation. Cheers! ‍ ‍ Relativity ‍ ‍ 22:13, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Concur. Simonm223 (talk) 02:22, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The City (website) TheCity.NYC

The City (website) which has online news on thecity.nyc is a non-profit outlet that stared in 2018/2019 ish. I am wondering how it fares as for factual accuracy; as well as due weight consideration for including contents based off of citing this source. I am starting to see it being used in some articles. Graywalls (talk) 10:07, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Looks like a solid WP:NEWSORG to me. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 10:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Media Bias / Fact Check rates it high on factual reporting and on credibility.[60] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 10:30, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Looks to be generally reliable as a typical news organisation. It's open about its organist organisation, funding and staff (who appear to be professionals with prior experience). There's an editorial/ethical policy and a method for requesting corrections. There's some, if not much, use by other reliable sources, and I can't find any negative reporting on their reporting/journalism (although this could be hampered as searchinh for "The City" bring u a lot of unrelated results). Unless there is anything I'm missing they look fine. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 14:19, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Organist? 100.36.106.199 (talk) 01:49, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Ha! Thanks for spotting that, now corrected. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:42, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh that makes more sense. Though I do like the idea that the reliability of a news organization is determined in part by the quality of the musicians it employs. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 22:57, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Could have been worse -- could have been orgasms or something. EEng 02:23, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm all for transparency in news organizations, but I think that would take it a step too far.^[Humor] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 16:49, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

It is probably reliable, but not particularly useful. The articles are factual examples of investigative journalism, but the news site is mainly interested in the political and economic life of New York City. Its scope does not extend beyond local events. Dimadick (talk) 09:37, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

A reliable source relying on Twitter speculation

I help to maintain List of biggest box-office bombs. Inclusion is based on financial losses above a preset threshold; since official audits are usually unavailable, the losses are generally determined by industry analysis i.e. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, reported studio write-downs etc. There have been recent attempts to add The Flash to the list based on this Yahoo article. While I appreciate that Yahoo is generally considered "reliable", the figures it presents in the article come from Twitter post, where the tweet speculates that the film "could" lose over $200 million.

There are two problems here. The first is that the speculated loss is very vague—"could lose over $200 million" isn't very exact, even by the standards of the Wikipedia list. The other is that the account operator (Luiz Fernando) does not appear to be acknowledged as any kind of authoritative expert. He seems to be just some random guy who has racked up a substantial following. The Yahoo article seems to be a bit of a fluff piece to me. The film is still playing, and while there are plenty of other articles out there calling it a bomb they all stop short of pinning a number on the losses.

I would appreciate some further opinions on whether the Yahoo article can be considered reliable in this context for this purpose. Thanks. Betty Logan (talk) 18:17, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

That article is based on way more than a tweet from a rando. There's substantially more analysis based on standard sources given, which all overule the original tweet. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:55, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I generally feel that yahoo shouldn't be cited, it's only republishing articles. In this case SuperHeroHype.com. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:51, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, I did not notice that. Betty Logan (talk) 23:28, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

IIRC there are small number of Yahoo News articles which seems to be actually from Yahoo News or at least there was a single one a few years ago. While not an RSN issue, I'm not sure if it makes sense to add something to that list until maybe 3 months or more after the release date. Nil Einne (talk) 16:58, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

The Sword Interviews Unblocked - Request

• thesword.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
• Link requested to be whitelisted: https://www.thesword.com/wakefield-poole-interview-part-2-on-his-masterpiece-bijou-and-his-30-years-of-celibacy.html

I am requesting that this interview on thesword.com – WAKEFIELD POOLE INTERVIEW PART 2: ON HIS MASTERPIECE, ‘BIJOU,’ AND HIS 30 YEARS OF CELIBACY – be unblocked so that I can use it on Wakefield Poole's Wikipedia page.

• thesword.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
• Link requested to be whitelisted: https://www.thesword.com/talking-with-legendary-night-at-the-adonis-editor-bob-alvarez.html

As well, I'm requesting that this interview on thesword.com - TALKING WITH LEGENDARY ‘NIGHT AT THE ADONIS’ EDITOR BOB ALVAREZ - be unblocked so that I can use it on the Hand In Hand Films Wikipedia page. Digitalkidd (talk) 08:18, 23 July 2023 (UTC)digitalkidd

@Digitalkidd, I think WT:WHITELIST is the place to ask for this. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:50, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Is an IRS Form 990, together with a piece on Ministry Watch, enough to be considered a reliable source?

At issue is this section in the Operation Underground Railroad article. The piece details the organization's finances. I added the actual Form 990 that the piece relies on for its information as an additional source, and to make it easier for readers to see the sourcing. Is this enough? Fred Zepelin (talk) 00:35, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

The form is a primary source and not usable. I found no editorial information on Ministry Watch. But it seems to be taken seriously by reliable sources.[61] The article links to sources. So I lean towards accepting it as a source. -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 01:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Agree with -- Random person no 362478479 (talk that the Ministry Watch article is reliable and can be used. I would also point out that the form, while a primary source, is used in conjunction with the secondary source to provide readers with both sources, and there is nothing in Wikipedia policy that bans the use of primary sources outright. When used with a secondary source to support Wikipedia text, it's perfectly fine, according to WP:PST. Fred Zepelin (talk) 20:11, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

That's not what WP:PST says. It says (combining points 1 & 2 of WP:PST), that primary sources can only be interpreted by reliable secondary sources, but an opinion piece is not such a reliable secondary source - opinion pieces are not reliable sources for facts. Red Slapper (talk) 21:52, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the 990 is a primary source. The Ministry Watch piece in question is clearly labeled OPINION, so I don't think it can be used as is, in wikipedia's voice to state facts. At best, we can say that "According to Ministry Watch...." Red Slapper (talk) 01:24, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

This looks to be an issue of WP:DUE rather than reliability. As an opinion peice it should be attributed, and if it's something only mentioned in primary documents and an opinion peice should it be included at all? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 08:15, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Material only extracted from primary sources runs into serious WP:SYNTH problems, especially when it comes to the kind of use we're trying to press it into here. I would say this is not a proper source for this kind of information. --Jayron32 16:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

• The Ministry Watch piece is labeled as opinion; it can't be used for unattributed statements of fact. And the 990 is of course a primary source. While there are of course some legitimate uses for primary sources, in this case, disregarding Ministry Watch means that the entire section would be cited solely to a primary source. Additionally, doing that always raises WP:OR / WP:DUE issues - why are we pulling out this organizone specific set of numbers from a primary source and focusing attention on it? If it is being used to eg. imply something about the ation in question then that's potential WP:OR. I'd say it should be excluded unless a proper non-opinion secondary source can be found. The underlying implication of this paragraph seems to be "this organization is such-and-such a degree of big and successful" or "this organization is pulling in more money than it needs", and that's something that really needs a secondary source even if we're not overtly stating it and are just implying it. Alternatively, we could attribute Ministry Watch's entire opinion (in the criticism section, not as fact) but then we'd have to answer the question of if it's WP:DUE. --Aquillion (talk) 14:17, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not entirely convinced that the fact that it is an opinion piece means we can't use a statement of fact that is included. If we don't want to use the opinion piece it can be replaced with the entry in the Ministry Watch's database[62] and/or entries in similar charity watch organizations. Whether or not it is WP:DUE is of course another matter. That would indeed depend on whether reliable sources comment on it any way, i.e. "they are biggest", "they don't spend their money properly", etc. There seems to be some discussion of OUR's finances apart from the Ministry Watch opinion piece.[63][64][65] -- Random person no 362478479 (talk) 18:02, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

  I've followed your suggestion, dropped the primary source (IRS form) and took the latest figures from Ministry Watch's database. I omitted the polemical editorial comments from the opinion piece - hopefully this will work s a compromise. Red Slapper (talk) 18:54, 23 July 2023 (UTC)