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RFC Jerusalem Post

The reliability of the Jerusalem Post is:

Option 1: Generally reliable

Option 2: Additional considerations

Option 3: Generally unreliable

Option 4: Deprecate

RFCBEFORE. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:35, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Jerusalem Post)

• Option 4: the Jerusalem Post's coverage is extremely biased and is unfortunately extensively used throughout Wikipedia articles, to cite a few examples on these biases:

• JP has been repeatedly propagating a false claim in its articles in recent months, calling the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, "Hezbollah-run," despite it not being affiliated with them and the fact that it is headed by an independent minister. [1] [2] [3].
• On 12 October 2023, JP published an article that it had confirmed seeing evidence for babies that had been burnt and decapitated during the Kfar Aza massacre that is still online with no retraction despite being debunked.
• JP propagated another false claim last year that a dead Palestinian child was a doll, which, although it retracted and apologized for, also puts into question its fact-checking processes. [4]
• In 2020, Reuters revealed that the Jerusalem Post allowed an online deepfake to write bylines smearing a Palestinian couple over their activism. [5] Makeandtoss (talk) 11:43, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Have we just not come out of a discussion about this? Slatersteven (talk) 13:59, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

That's what is being referred to as RFCBEFORE. Selfstudier (talk) 14:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

So do we need another so soon? We can't keep discussing this every month or so. Slatersteven (talk) 14:19, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 Like nearly every other source......Options 1, 3 & 4 represent faulty over-generalizations. North8000 (talk) 18:17, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Option #1Under the current Wikipedia context Option #1 is the best match. My original Option #2 choice is for after we reconfigure to recognize that every source is option #2. North8000 (talk) 21:29, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. Bias isn't unreliability. Nothing has been presented that shows any other RS that question the Jerusalem Post. Retractions are good actually. Andre🚐 19:09, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Andre; also per Slater, wasn't there just an RfC about this? Kcmastrpc (talk) 19:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 I would need stronger stuff than this to think otherwise. Cambalachero (talk) 19:54, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4, as they still have clearly false statements on Oct 7 "decapitation babies" still online, after they have been debunked for over a year, Huldra (talk) 22:37, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

  You previously advocated that the Electronic Intifada shouldn't be deprecated because it's similar to the Jerusalem Post,[6] but now that the analogy isn't beneficial you say the Jerusalem Post should be deprecated.

  Specifically, you said that for the Tehran Times or Jerusalem Post: some areas you can presume them to be correct, others not. What changed that made you think the Jerusalem Post should be banned in virtually all circumstances, instead of just an Option 2? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:36, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  but now that the analogy isn't beneficial you say the Jerusalem Post should be deprecated. If EI and JP are indeed comparable, the community consensus that EI is GUNREL should presumably apply to JP. I'm not aware of anything on EI as egregiously misleading and uncorrected as reports of decapitated babies, so I see no hypocrisy in Huldra's stance.

  However, I have used JP in my editing and made what I hope have been valuable contributions using it, so I would be more inclined to argue that both are Option 2 (or, to be consistent, that both are Option 3) and that particular details reported by either source might be more unreliable on a case-by-case basis. To me, stories like the beheaded babies are less a black mark on any particular source and moreso an indication that, particularly in instances where systemic bias is at play, we ought to think of even the most reliable sources differently, along the lines of @North8000's comment. Also a reminder that sources regarded as perennially unreliable like EI and The Grayzone can be a voice of reason in certain contexts where the mainstream media isn't doing its job. Unbandito (talk) 03:27, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  I don't believe they are comparable. EI has promoted the conspiracy theory that most civilians that died on October 7th were killed by Israel. [7] But the person I'm originally replying to would have a much stronger point if they explained how the standards applied to EI can also apply to the Jerusalem Post. Right now, I see a proposal to deprecate based on a single story. That's not a standard that has been applied to any other publication onwiki.

  With respect to your position, what type of additional considerations would you recommend to editors using the Jerusalem Post?

  I agree with both your and North8000's position that all sources need to be considered in context. But in the current Wikipedia climate, Option 2 means "marginally reliable" or "additional considerations". If the only considerations are the same as those that would be applied to a generally reliable source, then Option 1 is the correct choice. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:57, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  "EI has promoted the conspiracy theory that most civilians that died on October 7th were killed by Israel." If you read the article, you will find that there is no link to EI for that statement. This, because EI has never said that, Huldra (talk) 23:55, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

  Given the context of the beheaded babies story and the example you bring up, I would say that JP and EI should be treated with special caution when making extraordinary claims that cut in the same direction as their bias, as they’ve demonstrated a willingness to drop their journalistic standards in the extraordinary circumstances of the 7 October attacks.

  However, I do see a difference between these two missteps. Following the publication of that WaPo article, use of the Hannibal Directive on 7 October has been confirmed by Al Jazeera and Haaretz reporting, lending some credence to EI’s claims. I would not use EI to justify putting the claim that most of the Israelis killed were killed by friendly fire, but they are correct to say that significant aspects of the attack remain unexplained in the absence of an independent investigation, which Israel has prevented. The position that EI’s claims are a conspiracy theory is itself a partisan claim for which there is a shrinking body of evidence. JP’s claims of beheaded babies on the other hand have been thoroughly debunked and will almost certainly stay that way. If anything, JP’s error is more egregious. EI’s position may yet be proven true or debunked by future evidence. Unbandito (talk) 05:39, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  OK. While I don't agree with most of your comment, I agree that the Jerusalem Post should be treated with caution when making extraordinary claims in the direction of its bias. That's my understanding of WP:GREL and the source can still be added to RSP as generally reliable with such a note about what its biases are. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:25, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  I don’t necessarily disagree with that, though I wouldn’t rank JP as option 1 given the reasons others have provided here related to their unwillingness to issue corrections and their lying about verifying information they reported. I think JP should be regarded as one of many sources that we triangulate with others to reach the closest approximation of the truth. Consequently, I think any positive ranking of JP would warrant a re-evaluation of other partisan sources of the opposite persuasion (like EI) to ensure they are being assessed consistently. Unbandito (talk) 18:21, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  Huh? EI is GUNREL. EI is not the equal and opposite of JPost. Andre🚐 20:04, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  That’s a circular argument. The previous designation of EI is not itself evidence that the designation is accurate. I’m suggesting that the evidence brought forth here about JP should cause us to reassess EI. If JP is not considered GUNREL, EI probably shouldn’t be. I’m going to leave it at that to avoid going further off topic. Unbandito (talk) 21:53, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  I think your argument conflates bias with reliability. EI should and is not reliable for facts, and is also biased. JPost is generally reliable for facts, and also has a bias. Andre🚐 22:00, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  You're welcome to do so, if you believe whatever consensus is reached at this discussion is contradictory to the previous one. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 13:42, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

  If you push misinformation like "children weren't beheaded" (as various articles do now), there's no end to how deep you'll go. See Haaretz ("the evidence of extreme cruelty perpetrated by Hamas terrorists is unendurable even for people inured to death - including confirmation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s description of beheaded babies"), Sky News and The Media Line; and of course, there's the quite reliable Jerusalem Post itself, and frequently repeated confirmations by the US President. Here's first-hand testimony from Qanta Ahmed ("I Saw the Children Hamas Beheaded With My Own Eyes"). Deprecating sources for publishing accurate, reliable information while keeping sources that have pushed misinformation... Yeesh. --Yair rand (talk) 18:38, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  It is not accurate & I would request you not repeat misinformation. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 19:25, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  Likewise, I would ask that you (and ideally Wikipedia articles) not repeat misinformation. The difference is that, as reliable sources have made clear, I am not the one peddling falsities. --Yair rand (talk) 19:58, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  For those who want some truth on this issue: [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]. TLDR: no public evidence of the "40 beheaded babies" claim, or that Hamas beheaded any babies; coroners report that recovered headless corpses, including some of children, but they couldn't determine how those corpses lost their heads, e.g. because they were cut off with a knife, or because they were blown off in an RPG explosion. Lots of media sources all over the world got this wrong, but most of the most reliable ones just republished the claims without speaking to their veracity. Levivich (talk) 20:35, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  The Jerusalem Post did not claim there were "40 beheaded babies". Their actual claim about beheaded children (which Huldra is using as evidence that Jerusalem Post is unreliable) was, in fact, accurate. --Yair rand (talk) 20:47, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  No, that isnt true at all. JPost still says that there are verified photos of beheaded babies. There never was and there still is not. nableezy - 21:13, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  FTR, that's this JP article, btw, still up, no corrections issued AFAIK. "The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct." The five fact checkers I linked above -- PolitiFact, FactCheck, IPSO, Le Monde, and WaPo -- all say these claims are unverified or unfounded. Levivich (talk) 21:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  They did. Here, for example, they quote a UK former MP as saying "The forty beheaded babies has been downscaled to one dead baby", and then JPost follows that quote by writing, in JPost's own voice, "Testimonies from the survivors and recordings taken from Hamas have proven the atrocities that occurred during Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israeli territory." This is saying that the "40 beheaded babies" was "proven." Here, in an op-ed they ran, "But Israeli troops are not ... kidnapping babies or beheading them ...", which implies that Hamas are doing that. Levivich (talk) 21:15, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 - it's a cut below Times of Israel and Haaretz, several cuts above Arutz Sheva and i24 for example, and if it is the only source for some claim then asking for more or better sources is totally reasonable imo. But still a mostly reliable source and citeable as such. nableezy - 22:40, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
• I glanced over a couple of JP articles while doing research for #IDF claims Gaza reporters are terrorists; reporters and their employer say no and was not impressed by its quality; it seemed to be parroting the government position without qualification or critical thinking. But I dislike how results from discussions like this are often used to purge sources from articles in a manner similarly lacking critical thinking, so I'll refrain from voting. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 23:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Option 1. The fourth Jewish source at RSN in recent memory. I'll repeat that it's bizarre that when the previous RfC on an Israeli or Jewish source closes, a new one quickly begins. Hezbollah runs Lebanon and no other publication was previously tricked by a deepfake student. The decapitated babies story is false but was widely picked up by the Western media at the time. As OP said about an Arab source: All medias have biases, but that doesn't necessarily affect general reliability, unless it has been consistently false or misleading; Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:24, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Sources do not have religions so there is no such thing as a "Jewish source." This is a bizzare framing of events that shifts the focus away from the Jerusalem Post's misinformation.

Yes, as I previously mentioned, biases do not affect reliability; but as demonstrated above, the Jerusalem Post is both biased and unreliable. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:19, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

If editors are only banning sources aligned with one viewpoint, this can skew the POV of entire topic areas. This occurs at RSN because we examine sources in isolation. I'm framing the discussion in this way because only sources with a Jewish or Zionist or pro-Israel viewpoint are being declared unreliable in recent months and I believe that is negatively affecting the Israel and Palestine topic area.

Specifically, you haven't shown the Jerusalem Post is "consistently false". You've shown they were fooled by deepfake technology in 2020 when deepfakes were new. You've shown they reported on a decapitated babies story most Western media outlets also reported on. You've also shown they retract false stories. Finally, your biggest point is that they call the Lebanese Health Ministry "Hezbollah-run" when the government of Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, and many hospitals in Southern Lebanon are run by Hezbollah social services.[13]

In this topic area, where most media sources blamed Israel for bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital and then immediately had to retract, some level of mistakes are tolerable. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 15:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

The government of Lebanon is not controlled by Hezbollah, they are a part of a coalition government and members of that party hold the ministries of public works and labor. The public health ministry is headed by a member of the Future Movement, a Sunni party, not Hezbollah. Your claim about "only sources with a Jewish or Zionist or pro-Israel viewpoint are being declared unreliable in recent months" ignores a number of sources that have been deemed unreliable that are not any of those things, and the conflation of Jewish and Zionist if made by a non-Zionist would draw outrage for antisemitism. But Al Mayadeen was deprecated, Anadolu Agency GUNREL, CounterPunch GUNREL, The Cradle deprecated, The Electronic Intifada GUNREL, The Grayzone deprecated, Mondoweiss other considerations (you opened that arguing for deprecation), Press TV deprecated. The claim that "Jewish sources" are being targeted is absurd. If anything, your history in these discussions show that you consistently oppose sources that are not pro-Zionist, and repeatedly attempt to deflect in discussions about sources that are pro-Zionist by claiming it is an attack on "Jewish sources". It be great if that stopped. nableezy - 15:43, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

@Nableezy: You said yourself Hezbollah is part of the government. They also have an effective veto power in Lebanese politics and have more power than you acknowledge, including providing basic services in areas Israel is bombing. [14] The Jerusalem Post is being hyperbolically biased in a way that is impossible to cite on Wikipedia. We should apply the same standard we apply to all sources. If Mondoweiss is going to be Option 2, I can live with that so long as the standards are consistently applied.

Specifically, the standard for deprecation we've developed as Wikipedia editors that we should focus on how a source is used in articles. In the cases of Mondoweiss, I advocated for deprecation and was proven wrong because there wasn't the track record of demonstrable harm that deprecation would prevent, as well as a focus on opinion pieces. The most I could show was that it promoted October 7th denialism. The Jerusalem Post has not met that standard because "Hezbollah-run health ministry" is arguably true and isn't citable onwiki.

The reason why I mention the Jerusalem Post is both Jewish and Zionist is that it regularly covers Jewish issues outside of Israel in the diaspora section.

None of the double standard criticism applies to you. I largely agree with your reasoning that the Jerusalem Post is worse than the Times of Israel/Haaretz (those are the best Israeli newspapers). I disagree mainly because WP:MREL doesn't mean "mostly reliable source", it means marginally reliable. Without clear delineation of when it is reliable/unreliable, editors will try to mass-remove the Jerusalem Post from articles if they think it's being used in an inappropriate context (like BLPs for Mondoweiss). A WP:GREL outcome would not mean you're obligated to accept it for all statements of fact, but that it's "mostly reliable" as you've said.

What I'm pointing out is since April, we've had RfCs on the ADL+Jewish Chronicle+Jerusalem Post, and there are editors that take different positions on the Jerusalem Post in different discussions.

I would oppose the introduction of "Hezbollah-run health ministry" to articles especially given the precedent set at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Gaza Health Ministry qualifier—it's technically true but doesn't have much context. That being said, nobody has seriously proposed to use that qualifier and I don't see how biased language makes the Jerusalem Post unreliable. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:37, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

No, it is technically not true, it is not arguably true in any way. Hezbollah does not run the health ministry in Lebanon, full stop. I didnt vote to deprecate. I only objected to your repeated claims of targeting "Jewish sources" which is demonstrably untrue. And I think that diversion is both untrue and, to be honest, outrageous in that it implicitly claims a racist motivation in questioning any of these sources reliability. If somebody is attacking a source because it is a "Jewish source" that should be block worthy. But as far as I can tell nobody is, making the accusation itself what is block worthy. nableezy - 17:55, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It's possible to have unconscious bias and that is not a blockworthy offence. Arguing that there is systemic bias in our treatment of sources is not an accusation of deliberately racist motivations on the part of individual editors. It is effectively impossible to counter systemic bias if I am not allowed to acknowledge its existence.

What I originally said still stands: the pattern of examining sources in isolation at WP:RSN is causing systemic bias issues because we cannot determine if we are treating sources differently depending on their affiliation.

Examining sources by contextualizing them with other sources will more effectively evaluate the reliability of the Jerusalem Post by reducing the impact of bias.

In this case, I contrasted with Al-Jazeera and asked whether the Jerusalem Post has met the consistently false or misleading standard applied there. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:54, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

There is no such thing either; Haaretz is an Israeli Jewish-owned RS publication that is highly critical of Israel, even critical of the Jerusalem Post, so this argument does not hold to scrutiny. Being "pro-Israel" is not opposed to being critical of Israel; on the contrary, many pro-Israel sources are highly critical of Israel's policies because they care about Israel. As for the decapitated babies debunked claim, the difference is that unlike the Jerusalem Post, western media did not claim to see evidence for this in their reporting. As for the claim about ministry being Hezbollah-run, this is an extraordinary claim and a personal opinion that is not supported by any reliable source. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:33, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

And the Jerusalem Post is highly critical of Haaretz[15], a publication whose owner said Israel imposes apartheid, that Hamas is full of freedom fighters, and that Israel should be sanctioned to bring about a Palestinian state. Haaretz is not a replacement for the Jerusalem Post, which is the main right-wing newspaper in Israel. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:42, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Great, then clearly, conflicting editorial policies and opinions of newspapers have nothing to do with religion nor ethnicity, so we can move on from that argument. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:36, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 Seems like a reliable source and was recently RFC'd/discussed. No source is ever perfect and so all things considered, this is reasonable. Chess makes a good point that after a failed RFC against similar sources another pops up. Seems like agenda driven basis to depreciate such sources at any cost. Ramos1990 (talk) 06:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1/2 per Nableezy and North8000. All sources on this topic are problematic and should be used with caution and this is somewhere below the strongest sources but nowhere near the worst usable sources, so I would treat it similarly to Palestine Chronicle (maybe a little better given it does more of its own reporting). Re the specific charges, "Hezbollah-run" is not that big a deal; the babies story is problematic but we don't know the full truth; the doll story shows reason for caution but was corrected; the deepfake story is trivial (several publications were similarly taken in and JP removed it). We need to be consistent in our treatment of I/P sources, and exercise skepticism and triangulation with all of them. BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:02, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  I just want to say about "the doll story" that I think it shows more than just a reason to be cautious, as what they said about faulty sourcing for their reason for retracting does not stand up. The only source in the story was an unverified tweet claiming it was a doll. That to me shows a willingness to promote unverified material as propaganda. This was not the case of an actual source giving the JPost wrong information, this was them having such a low standard that some guy with 1100 twitter followers was treated as an authoritative source to make outlandish claims and present them as fact. Yes they took it down after it was widely mocked for putting out a false story, with proof of the lie having been offered by the photojournalist who had taken the photo. I simply do not trust them to have verified claims that other stronger sources have not, which is what pushes it in to option 2 territory for me. nableezy - 19:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 generally and 2 for AI/IP topic area there is a fair bit of nationalistic tub thumping/the idea that every single Palestinian is a terrorist for this source so the AI/IP stuff should be treated with some caution but otherwise I would give the benefit of the doubt.Selfstudier (talk) 10:08, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

  Do you have sources to back up the claim that the Jerusalem Post promoted the idea that every single Palestinian is a terrorist? This is unsubstantiated at the moment. And why would publishing an opinion along those lines make the Jerusalem Post less reliable?

  For context, the WP:GREL Al-Jazeera has published opinion pieces directly saying "All Zionist roads lead to genocide".[16] Should Al-Jazeera also be WP:MREL on Israel and Palestine?

  Al-Jazeera's opinion editors have described Zionism, the belief that Israel should exist, as an inherently genocidal ideology. This is similar to describing the Palestinian identity as inherently terroristic.

  From my understanding after I was shot down at the Mondoweiss RfC, extreme opinions aren't what makes a source unreliable. Mondoweiss being unable to separate advocacy from news is what contributed to its WP:MREL status. Likewise, Al-Jazeera is WP:GREL because it can separate advocacy pieces into an opinion section.

  My understanding is that the Jerusalem Post would have to consistently perform advocacy in its actual news for its WP:POV to negatively affect its reliability. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:24, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Don't see what AJ or Mondoweiss have to do with the JP. https://www.jpost.com/tags/palestinian-terrorism, horses mouth. Selfstudier (talk) 11:15, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Declaring Israeli sources unreliable on Israel or Palestine based on standards Arab sources aren't held to will bias the topic area.

  Tagging articles as "Palestinian terrorism" is just pointing out that some acts of terrorism are committed by terrorism. I'm also unsure how an article tag would be cited beyond calling specific act of terrorism Palestinian. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 14:26, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Declaring Israeli sources unreliable on Israel or Palestine based on standards Arab sources aren't held to will bias the topic area. Instead of repeating this as if that will somehow make the accusation more credible (it doesn't, its just annoying), make your case in an appropriate place (which isn't in this discussion).

  When Israel was doing its nearly 2 year long so called operation breakwater, and arresting Palestinians in the WB every night, JP would report it next day as "x Palestinian terrorists arrested" whether they were or were not terrorists. Selfstudier (talk) 15:01, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  You haven't provided any links to specific stories falsely claiming that a Palestinian is a terrorist. That was my original ask, and if you can't provide evidence there's no use pressing further.

  Likewise, if you're not going to refute the double standard, I don't see the point of repeating myself. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:26, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  You are repeating yourself. Selfstudier (talk) 21:28, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  I think it's worth discouraging reproduction of JP's stylistic bias, particularly the labelling of people as terrorists, as a special consideration on its reliability. Unbandito (talk) 05:42, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  I would support this. The term "terrorist" should be substantiated by other sources (as a general rule). Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:20, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 generally, 2 for AI/IP, same reasoning as SelfStudier honestly. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 15:13, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, per Chess. To respond to Makeandtoss, being Jewish is not solely about religion, it’s just one aspect of Jewish identity, and most Jews are secular and see their Jewishness as ethnicity/nationality/culture. I also agree that there has been a recent surge in attempts to discredit Jewish sources without real evidence, which is really troubling. HaOfa (talk) 15:42, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 I tend to evaluate depending on what the edit is, per WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, and think no evaluation without that can be really valid except Option 2 to say that you cannot skip the context of what article content is involved. I would lean strongly towards RS from the goodnesses of it being a well-established reputable outfit with local expertise and that they have made retractions and corrections when in error - and basically everyone makes an error sometime so the handling is important - and that WP has generally regarded it as a RS to use in prior RSN. I would tend to view it as RS with POV to use in the context of the current hot war, but then I think that *all* sources should be taken as POV in the context of the current hot war. (London Times, Sydney Morning Herald, The Globe and Mail ... *all* sources.) Sort of what SelfStudier said. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 15:54, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Andrevan and Chess. - GretLomborg (talk) 13:26, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - agree that all four are issues, but JPost is one of the oldest and largest Israeli newspapers, and we're lacking an argument for why this is qualitatively or quantitatively worse than incidents at any other major publication. The fake persona seems less severe than fake stories, which many reputable publications have had at some point - see e.g. Jayson Blair, Janet Cooke, Johann Hari. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:29, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, though I could maybe be convinced toward 2 if a stronger case is presented. The decapitated babies story was a massive whiff, but I haven’t seen a pattern of outright falsified reporting otherwise. JPost certainly has a right-wing/nationalist perspective, which makes me rather uncomfortable, but as established in WP policy, bias is (unfortunately, in my view) not unreliability. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:01, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

  Wholesale opposed to 3/4, however. In both this topic area and others, I’ve seen sources currently marked GREL/MREL get away with far worse than what the opener notes - unless a stronger case is made, deprecation is beyond extreme here. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:34, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

  Important to note that unlike other news sources that reported on the decapitated babies claim, the Jerusalem Post was unique in saying that it had verified the evidence itself, so this is a major red flag and a different story. Makeandtoss (talk) 22:57, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

  Again, while awful, one severely problematic piece does not amount to the pattern of lies and/or inaccuracies required for outright GUNREL/deprecation - if it did, most of the sources we use on this site would be in that grouping. The rest of the case you’ve made effectively boils down to bias and/or items they ultimately retracted. The Kip ^(contribs) 05:19, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2/3 for Israel-Palestine, Option 1 in general. - As others have noted the Jerusalem Post is clearly biased, but I don't think that necessarily means it's unreliable. Outside of the Israel-Palestine area it may well be generally reliable. The problem is that it veers away from mere bias into making incredibly inflammatory false claims that are widely shared and never corrected. The case of "Photos of babies being burnt, decapitated confirmed" stands out in particular. They achieved almost 16 million views with this tweet and never retracted it. The article continues to be cited, sometimes by people with far-reaching influence. Detailed investigations by Haaretz, LeMonde and others continue to show that the claims the Jerusalem Post made were false, but as I write this JP has yet to retract or correct the story.
  
  The other case was the claim about a Palestinian baby who was killed being a doll. An incredibly inflammatory claim, widespread reach, continuing to be repeated and adding to the Pallywood myth. The BBC and others showed this to be false. The JP did eventually retract the story, however the author of the piece Danielle Greyman-Kennard continues to work for them to this day as their "Breaking News Writer and Editor". The same is true of the "Photos..." piece, where the author continued to work for the JP for many months afterwards.
  
  This is what makes the Jerusalem Post's coverage of Israel-Palestine stand apart from reliable sources in this topic area. Yes, they may also be biased (i.e. the Times of Israel) but they did not publish outright disinformation as verified reporting to millions of readers, then subsequently refuse to retract or correct it, let alone take action against the responsible author, when proven false by RS. Even when they do issue a retraction, the author in question remains an editor in good standing.
  
  These are two especially high profile cases, but disinformation and outright falsehoods find their way into all of their output in this subject area. They wrote about Sinwar's wife having a 32,000 dollar Birkin bag - contrast this coverage with how Haaretz reported it, noting that many pointed out that the claim about the bag was in fact false (https://archive.ph/G3aAM)). This marks the difference between a reliable source in this topic area, and an unreliable tabloid outlet.
  
  So, again, option 2/3 for Israel-Palestine. Smallangryplanet (talk) 12:37, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  Re the claim about the bag was in fact false, you linked to Haaretz, but they themselves don't really say it was false; they're just quoting speculation from random Twitter users. JPost is similarly quoting speculation in the other direction, reflecting their opposite biases. Ynetnews covers both sides with some non-Twitter sources, though those pointing out Hermes' relationship-driven sales model seem to ignore the second-hand market. Anyway JPost doesn't exactly take a view on the matter themselves, except in the WP:HEADLINE which we wouldn't use. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 20:47, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

  @XDanielx JPost repeated the claim as fact in the headline and published POV as if it were fact in the article, it also published a piece the following day stating it as fact that she was "carrying a luxury Hermès Birkin handbag worth approximately $32,000". This is institutional for the JP, and it goes beyond mere bias that we see with other outlets. It's a systemic disregard for verifiable facts and accuracy in pursuit of political aims. They do this for everything in this topic area, from a handbag to "Photos of babies being burnt, decapitated confirmed" and "Al Jazeera posts blurred doll, claims it to be a dead Palestinian baby". As many have pointed out, even when shown to be platforming misinformation (with serious consequences!) they take no actions to prevent it and continue to employ and publish the people responsible. If the initial article about the handbag was similarly quoting speculation in the other direction, they almost immediately doubled down, so they appear to be perfectly willing to take speculation as verified fact. Smallangryplanet (talk) 09:35, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  I think you need to have third party sources discussing the JPosts issues rather than trying to build a case yourself. The reason I think the babies story is so egregious is the shoddy sourcing policy at play and it was brought up by other sources as amplifying propaganda. For example in an article on false claims in the war the BBC singles out JPost among media organizations for amplifying such a false claim. Everything else it talks about is social media, and when a newspaper is being compared to twitter for spreading false information, that is something to take note of. nableezy - 13:46, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

  The Forward has investigated and published why JPost is unreliable. It's pretty clear that it's a pay-to-publish model and has been since 2004. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 19:22, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  That source points out the Post denied the allegations. And adds that: Its disclosure for paid articles comes in a brief italicized line at the bottom of these posts: “This article was written in a cooperation with” and the advertiser’s name. So unless you see something with "sponsored content," it isn't, so your statement as a broad generalization about JPost is inaccurate per your own given source (which is reliable) Andre🚐 19:40, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  That source points out the Post denied the allegations. WP:MANDY
  
  

  The brief italicized line is not what I was referring, nor is it is enough for JPost to just do that and call it a day. There are examples in the article of how Haaretz and The Forward do sponsored content which clearly show JPost is relying on a dark pattern to fool the reader.
  
  

  I was referring to Elli Wohlgelernter, who is the night editor, saying he was uncomfortable with the fact that such sponsored content was not always labeled to differentiate it for readers from journalism free of influence by advertisers. He is saying there is sponsored content that is not marked as sponsored at all. Wohlgelernter is a journalist with 50+ years of experience and has worked with Haaretz, the Times of Israel, and numerous US-based outlets and I encourage you to reflect on what it means when someone like that makes such a claim unequivocally of the outlet they have insider knowledge about. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 20:23, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  That's an assumption not given in the voice of the Forward. They were concerned about sponsored content blending in, but it points out that all sponsored content is labeled as such, just might be hard to distinguish due to, everything else about these articles — the headlines, bylines, font and formatting — appears identical to articles on the website that are not advertisements, and nowhere does this disclaimer about “cooperation” refer to these sponsored posts as advertisements. These articles, many written by a reporter who also writes non-sponsored articles for the Post, are interspersed with normal news articles throughout its website. The former editor, Katz said: “In line with my journalistic values, ethics and principles all sponsored content was labeled as such during my tenure as editor in chief.” Andre🚐 20:52, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  There's no assumption given I'm quoting exactly what is written. The section you're referring to is called Content ‘in collaboration’ with advertisers that comes 2 sections later. More simply:

  1. The first section cites Wohlgelernter making a concrete claim that sponsored content is not always labelled.
  2. The 3rd section refers to diluted labelling for the subset of cases when sponsored content is labelled.

  Are you denying the first section where Wohlgelernter is making a concrete claim? CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 21:28, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  I was pointing out that the part you quoted was after what "Wohlgelernter said," not in the Forward's factual voice. That isn't clear from your message, but is attributed to him. So yes, he did concretely state that, but the Forward didn't say that, so the assumption is that he is correct specifically versus what the publisher and editor claimed and what the Forward's reporter confirmed. It would be easy to see how the practice was problematic to him and also is the practice described in the section, since Ashkenazi, the publisher, denied the statement made by Wohlgelernter. The assumption is that Wohlgelernter saw something beyond what the Forward confirmed. The Forward describes the practice which I quoted previously, and it's clear how that could also be what Wohlgelernter was describing, and he just exaggerated slightly or was inexact in his phrasing, or the journalist overstated what he said or meant when transcribing the interview or editing the story. This happens commonly with journalists. I remember speaking once to a journalist years ago who transformed my term "basement" into "attic." A minor difference to the meaning of the story and I never corrected it - journalist is no longer with that outlet either - but basement and attic are obviously opposites. Andre🚐 21:36, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  The Forward, or any reputable news outlet for that matter, will use their own voice where they can directly confirm facts. When they work with sources making a claim that is insider information and cannot be directly verified, they will not use their own voice and will instead clearly attribute the claim to the source (after having vetted their source per their editorial standards of course).
  
  

  In such cases, the reader must evaluate the claim being made by referencing against the biases and motivations of the source. In this case, the source is a journalist with half a century of experience and has a leadership position in JPost.
  
  

  I think the chances of Wohlgelernter exaggerating slightly or Wohlgelernter being inexact in his phrasing is vanishingly tiny. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 22:06, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 - especially about palestinians. I view the Daily Telegraph as having an even worse bias on the war and it is a 1. It really does need a check before accepting what it says as true rather than just passing it off as bias. NadVolum (talk) 12:56, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. The examples provided by u:Makeandtoss do not prove the lack of reliability. #3 and #4 have been retracted which is a positive sign. The characterisation as "Hezbollah-run" is a matter of judgement and degree, while Hezbollah doesn't have this portfolio it is a dominant force in Lebanese politics and the largest party in the ruling coalition. As to #2, a correction would probably be in order (infants were killed but not beheaded) but I don't think we should re-classify the source based on just this issue. Alaexis_¿question? 23:26, 2 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. No real concerns. Strong editorial policy, paper of record, good reputation. Researcher (Hebrew: חוקרת) (talk) 13:00, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Chess, Alaexis, and others. I'm not seeing a sustained pattern of factual errors or falsehoods that would justify a downgrade. Astaire (talk) 16:31, 3 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 for AI/IP and Option 3 in general. The examples highlighted by Makeandtoss as well as Smallangryplanet are damning evidence of the lack of editorial standards and a decision to unabashedly spread misinformation even when other reputable sources have published rebuttals and debunked false claims.
  
  I reject the assertion that JP should be rated as a 1 because some other source is also rated as a 1. Can the proponents who make this argument point out the policy that says this is acceptable? From WP:REPUTABLE: Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. JP has demonstrated that it has parted ways with fact-checking and accuracy.
  
  The Forward has published a detailed investigation into why JP's standards have plummeted. Summarizing:

1. The JP engages in pay-to-publish and has been doing so since 2004. The night editor, Wohlgelernter, has said that sponsored posts are not always marked as such and there's no way to tell what is independent reporting and what is a sponsored post.
2. The editor, Avi Mayer, resigned because the owner, Eli Azur, kept pressuring more sponsored content and practices that go against journalistic ethics.
3. What's even more horrifying is that Avi Mayer's background is of being a spokesperson for the IDF. He's an influencer for Israel and shares pro-Israel posts on social media. ... He retained a similar tone on social media while editor, using rhetoric unusual for the leader of a mainstream newspaper: “Good luck being unemployed,” he said to one university student who had blamed Israel for the Oct. 7 attack, while calling for another student to be fired. The demands of the JP's owners were so extreme that a pro-Israel military hawk with no background in journalism felt icky. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 19:11, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Regarding publishing paid content as news pieces, they say later in the article in their own voice that it's hard to distinguish between news articles, rather than there being no distinction at all. I'm not sure what to make of it - maybe these are two separate issues, or maybe they are more sure in one than the other.

   Btw they've appointed a new editor who is apparently an experienced journalist [17], hopefully this will improve the situation. Alaexis_¿question? 21:24, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Btw they've appointed a new editor ... hopefully this will improve the situation - Yes, I hope so too and look forward to a survey for updating their rating from 4 to 1 when we have evidence of that.
   
   

   they say later in the article in their own voice that it's hard to distinguish between news articles, rather than there being no distinction at all - @Andrevan had this misunderstanding as well, so I'm copying my comment from that thread here:

   1. The first section cites Wohlgelernter making a concrete claim that sponsored content is not always labelled.
   2. The 3rd section refers to diluted labelling for the subset of cases when sponsored content is labelled.
      
      

   Wohlgelernter is a journalist with 50+ years of experience and has worked with Haaretz, The Times of Israel, and various other US news organizations. I think we can safely accept that Wohlgelernter knows a thing or two about journalistic integrity and is not just a random commenter. You're right that the 3rd section is where The Forward is using their own voice, but that is simply because that part can be independently corroborated by them. Wohlgelernter's statement must be directly ascribed to him by The Forward since that's how reporting works.
   
   

   Are you suggesting we discount Wohlgelernter's testimony altogether? CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 21:46, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   I didn't misunderstand it, I would submit that you are somewhat misframing it. The 3rd section is what the Forward was able to confirm. The Forward doesn't corroborate the statement made by Wohlgelernter, so it is attributed to him, and not a flat fact. It could simply be a turn of phrase or an exaggeration of what he meant. Andre🚐 21:50, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   The claim that Wohlgelernter is exaggerating is extraordinary and I don't see evidence to support that. He's a highly experienced journalist who's in a leadership position at JPost and is speaking to an external news organization. I think it's safe to assume that he has received media training and knows how to talk to journalists without putting his foot in his mouth. :) It's also a safe bet that he's interested in journalistic integrity and wants to improve the JPost.
   
   

   Wohlgelernter's testimony as well as The Forward's section is evidence that JPost is firmly in the pay-to-publish side of the landscape. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 22:17, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Not at all. As the article explains, there are situations where there are labelled pay-to-publish sections. The Forward doesn't confirm any examples of pay-to-publish that wasn't labelled. Also, these are limited to the tenure of Meyer. Andre🚐 22:25, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Also, these are limited to the tenure of Meyer - How do you infer this? The article says clearly:

   Those tensions boiled over Wednesday when Avi Mayer left as editor of the Post. Mayer, whose background was in public relations, had been hired in April, and several of the current and former employees say he struggled to lead the newsroom. But they say mounting commercial pressure from Azur and Ashkenazi put Mayer in an impossible position.

   If anything, the situation is likely to be worse now. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 22:30, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Once again you're making assumptions that are not in evidence. The article only details concerns under Meyer. Katz specifies that he did not have this issue. Andre🚐 22:39, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Please back up your claim with evidence instead of just rephrasing it. CoolAndUniqueUsername (talk) 23:00, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   I already quoted the quote from Katz above. The article only details concerns under Mayer: Mayer, 39, was a controversial choice to lead the Post...criticized the quality of the Post’s journalism under Mayer... Mayer apologized.... Yaakov Katz, the editor before Mayer, frequently pushed back on management’s efforts to expand the amount of sponsored content in the Post and eliminate or obscure disclosures that they were advertisements. Andre🚐 23:05, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

   Your second point (and by extension your third point about Mayer "feeling icky") is not supported by the article, which says It is unclear what may have precipitated Mayer’s departure this week. There is no proof that he "resigned because" of anything. Astaire (talk) 00:40, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

   This is a WP:SPA, by the way. After reaching 500/30 the editor switched entirely to Israel-Palestine. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:55, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

   WP:AGF and don't WP:BITE; Not even their last 50 contributions are exclusively I-P. There's nothing inherently unusual about wanting to get involved in one of the most important current events topics of the day once you earn the right to do so. You should focus on the well researched and reasoned arguments they presented here. Unbandito (talk) 01:46, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

   I'm avoiding tagging with Template:spa because more context is needed, but yes, all 50 of CoolAndUniqueUsername's recent contribs are about Israel and/or Palestine. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 04:03, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

   Evidence free WP:ASPERSIONS, suggest they be struck. Selfstudier (talk) 10:47, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

   This is certainly false: [18] [19] [20] [21]. --JBL (talk) 21:11, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

   Code Pink is pretty focused on I/P. Their homepage is currently focused on a I/P driven Netflix boycott, and their list of issues places "justice for Palestine" first. The first page of their blog lists 9 articles, and 7 of them are in the Palestine category. The article is XC-protected because of its relation to the topic area. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 02:07, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

   @XDanielx Code Pink is an anti-war organization in general & with how Palestine has been in the public eye lately, they will inherently be writing more on the subject. The article also has several contentious topic warnings other then the Arab–Israeli conflict including post-1992 politics of the US, gender-related disputes, & Uyghurs/ Uyghur genocide.

   So, as @CoolAndUniqueUsername's edits on the page were unrelated to Israel or Palestine, the accusation remains false. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 03:49, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

   That's a stretch... editing Code Pink does seem related. Andre🚐 03:53, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

   I don't agree that it's a stretch, but for arguments sake let's say their edits to Code Pink were related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

   They haven't edited since the 4th, so you can see their latest 50 edits when the accusation was made. I don't think Criticism of Amazon's environmental impact or Haitian independence debt are at all related to the Arab–Israeli conflict.

   I hope we can now shelve this accusation as false & focus on the Jerusalem Post as the topic at hand. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 04:13, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 for Israel-Palestine I don't know about their coverage outside the conflict, but in their coverage of the war, they showed incompetance, publishing disinformation, most famously, those of baby decapitations. FunLater (talk) 22:15, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

  Reuters published almost the same information on photos shown to Blinken. This is Reuters from 10/12, and this is the JPost from 10/12. Also ABC and many other outlets. The debunked story of 40 decapitated babies from Kfar Aza is a completely different issue from the photos shown to Blinked with murdered babies. Researcher (Hebrew: חוקרת) (talk) 16:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

  That isnt anywhere close to the same. The Jerusalem Post said The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct. No part of that was true, they did not verify any photos of any decapitated babies because there were none. There were a total of 2 babies that were killed on October 7 (TOI, Haaretz for example, with Haaretz saying Ten-month-old Mila Cohen was murdered in the massacre, along with the baby still in the womb of her mother who died after her mother was shot on the way to hospital. The police have no evidence showing that other babies were killed.). The Jerusalem Post claimed (and still claims!) to have verified something that does not exist. Reuters did not. nableezy - 17:10, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 for the Israel-Palestine conflict, broadly defined. It's clear from the above discussion and from JP's history of credulously publishing false information regarding the genocide in Palestine that it is inappropriate for use on that specific topic - it may be perfectly reliable outside the context of that conflict. However, considering the increasngly global character of the conflict, I'd think twice before using JP for pretty much any matter of international relations. Simonm223 (talk) 13:51, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

  Why would you vote "broadly defined" if your issues are specific to the genocide? Is the Jerusalem Post wholly unreliable for domestic politics? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:53, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

  You should note that I was saying that, as the genocide has extended into a broadly international matter, that its coverage of foreign affairs was suspect - not domestic politics. Simonm223 (talk) 15:38, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

  Your vote is Option 3 for Israel-Palestine, broadly defined, which means a total ban of the source on anything related to Israel or Palestine. If you write "broadly defined" that includes domestic politics. If you want to amend your !vote to refer to the "Israel-Palestine conflict broadly defined" that'd be another issue. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 16:00, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

  I will make that change. Simonm223 (talk) 16:05, 5 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 with the exception of localized and mostly minor issues, there is no broad pattern of unreliability, and the JPost represents a significant center-right perspective in Israeli politics. The source is broadly respected and used by others, and despite being arguably worse than some other Israeli sources, I see no indication of anything other than general reliability in all topic areas. FortunateSons (talk) 21:02, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 for Israel/Palestine, Option 1 elsewhere. While it is mostly reliable, numerous errors made by the outlet in this war are of a more egregious nature (e.g. claiming to have seen footage of something that did not happen) and occur more frequently than other "involved" media outlets, which IMO merits some caution. -- Patar knight - ^chat/_{contributions} 16:54, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 for Israel-Palestine, otherwise a weak Option 1 - Besides incidents like calling a dead baby a doll & the 40 decapitated babies (of which there still remains an article saying they "can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct."). They are also willing to use the racist slur of "pallywood". Recently, they've also published an article citing a twitter account "OSINTdefender", known to spread false information. I don't think an organization like this should be considered much of a reliable source for contentious topics in general, but especially not for WP:PIA - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 01:39, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

  Re OSINTdefender, pretty much all investigative journalists look at footage from social media. Some might summarize the footage in prose, or re-publish it without attribution, but ultimately it's still coming from random social media users. The more reliable orgs will geolocate or otherwise verify that the footage represents what was claimed. Do you have any evidence that such diligence was not done by JPost? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 02:22, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

  They shared the description & videos directly from a misinformation account with no caveats. The work that would be necessary to independently verify the information would require them to either track down where the unreliable account got their info from or to find a reliable source to corroborate, both options negate the need for quoting an unreliable source.

  So no, there's no reason to believe they did their due-diligence here, otherwise they would've quoted a reliable source to begin with. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 03:26, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

  This is just how modern investigative journalism works. Take NBC's article about the same event for example, which is based on "footage circulating on social media". Everyone covering such conflicts is using social media footage, whether they clearly acknowledge it or not. There are varying levels of due diligence, but there's no evidence that due diligence was lacking in the JPost example. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 05:18, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

  Just to note that the article doesn’t cite osintdefender. It embeds a tweet from them, containing a video. This is a quite common practice now with several outlets, where opinionated or vivid tweets are embedded in otherwise reliable articles. We wouldn’t cite the tweet if we were citing the article, so it doesn’t strongly affect reliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:16, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Option 2/3, and IMO, not just for I-P but for everything. It seems since 2004, the JPost does not enjoy a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy:

• 2009: Kevin Jon Heller writes of a JPost editorial, "the editorial contains more basic factual errors than any editorial I have ever read" [22] and, later, "No Correction by the Jerusalem Post" [23]
• 2019: "Jerusalem Post article makes premature claim on 'first complete cure for cancer', overstates research significance" according to WP:IFCN fact checker [24]
• 2020 COVID article found "misleading" also by WP:IFCN fact checker [25]
• 2020: "Jerusalem Post took government money to publish anti-BDS special", +972 [26]
• 2023: the Forward article about pay-to-play discussed by others above [27]

And that's without getting into the 2023-2024 decapitated babies stuff (also discussed by others above). It reminds me of the New York Post, just not "on the level," and there plenty of much better Israeli journalism to draw upon. Levivich (talk) 04:42, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

2009 is pretty far back, and it's also about an WP:RSEDITORIAL which we wouldn't use except with attribution anyway.

The cancer thing was JPost quoting a third party. Their "Jerusalem Post article makes premature claim" headline was misleading, JPost themselves made no such claim.

The government funding thing could be a bias concern (not clearly/directly related to reliability), though since it's +972 it's hard to trust them to relay facts plainly without a spin.

The Forward piece misleads by burying the fact that sponsored content is labeled as such by JPost. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 04:17, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1, maybe 2, but oppose 3/4: Yes, it is biased but sources can be both reliable and biased. I do not see any pattern in their reporting that indicates they repeatedly publish false information. Some stories mentioned above are certainly concerning, but I do not see any indication this is a common occurrence. ARandomName123 (talk)^{Ping me!} 05:12, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. For everyday matters, JP is reliable enough, but JP has several faults that demand caution. One (shared by most Israeli outlets) is that they often publish IDF claims uncritically as fact, contrary to their journalistic duty to attribute and investigate. Another fault is that they sometimes publish op-eds labeled as news when they are clearly opinion. We don't usually label individual journalists as unreliable, but if we were going to do that I'd specify a clear "option 4" for a few of JP's writers. Zero^talk 06:13, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Not sure whether to laugh or cry? Maybe both. There has been a steady campaign to remove every source that is remotely pro-Israel as a reliable one. If Wikipedia's neutrality and independence was at the heart of this, than Al Jazeera would be removed as a RS given the many concerns with it.MaskedSinger (talk) 13:33, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 for I-P conflict, Option 1 for non-controversial matters. I was appalled at what appears to be Jerusalem Post falsely accusing an author of inciting genocide. For the I-P conflict, I would apply the following test:
  • is it being cited for non-exceptional, non-contentious content? If so, it can be cited without attribution.
  • is it being cited for WP:EXCEPTIONAL or contentious content? If so, it should not be used at all. If we must use it, then we should use it with attribution. An example of this could be: a WP:GREL source makes a serious accusation against an Israeli official, and the official's rebuttal has not been quoted in any RS, then it would be appropriate to say "The Jerusalem Post reported that X was not...".VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 23:49, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4. Biased sources can be reliable. Sources that spread disinformation cannot. This is the lowest possible bar of journalistic integrity - don't maliciously fabricate information. Combefere ★ Talk 02:58, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4 for anything related to Israel-Palestine, Option 2 in general. The supposed verification of photos regarding the beheaded babies and the refusal to retract that story is pretty clear-cut for deprecation. I'm also shocked that the editor in charge of the story about a Palestinian baby being a doll is still working for them, and the point raised about the editorial and institutional nature of JP in this already cited article is the final nail in the coffin for me. Raskolnikov.Rev (talk) 12:35, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 as no strong evidence presented of systematic unreliability. - Amigao (talk) 13:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 per nableezy and smallangryplanet. While in most situations they're a normal WP:NEWSORG, on the I/P conflict they are so biased that it starts to warp their factual reporting. Loki (talk) 20:35, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 As WP:BIASED as it might be, JP's reporting is no less reliable than other mainstream newspapers. They don't make up stories nor hide basic facts.מתיאל (talk) 21:05, 13 November 2024 (UTC)מתיאל
• Option 1. This is a well-established mainstream news organization that has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy dating back to 1932, before the establishment of the modern State of Israel. The evidence presented against this in this thread is less-than convincing and appears to be special pleading rather than a view of the organization as a whole, and incorrectly asserts that a "root for the home-team" bias necessarily impugns reliability (in contrast to our guidance at WP:BIASED). — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:46, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  I'm not sure why their age is important, especially as they've had several ownership changes since their inception. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 23:10, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 per User:Red-tailed hawk. Far more reliable than Al Jazeera, I might add. BePrepared1907 (talk) 17:09, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  A recent AJ RFC has been snow closed as reliable, that won't be happening here methinks. Selfstudier (talk) 17:32, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 as Amigao wrote, "no strong evidence presented of systematic unreliability" Alenoach (talk) 10:04, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 While politically skewed, not at all obviously unreliable in an actionable way. Roggenwolf (talk) 12:02, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 generally, Option 3 for Israel-Palestine, per Butterscotch Beluga and Levivich. Bitspectator ⛩️ 19:18, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  Question for others: is it too specific if I !vote Option 2/3 for just the Israel-Hamas war? Bitspectator ⛩️ 23:17, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

  I would say no, the I/P area is broad enough that one can make an argument about specific lack of reliability for certain parts of the conflict. In that case, it might be beneficial to make a clear argument about why you have made the distinction though. FortunateSons (talk) 09:16, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 Generally reliable. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:20, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 The key consideration is whether using this source would lead to increased inaccuracy in articles.In this case, it has not beem shown. No reasonable editor would add that the Lebanese ministry of health is controlled by Hezbollah, based on a passing mention by a reporter. Also, commentary published in even the most reliable sources are not themselves deemed reliable. The final consideration is that when news media publish false stories, as they have in the current conflict, you must show that a publication is an outlier. If all major reliable news media publish the same false story, then we cannot use this to single out a specific publication. TFD (talk) 19:49, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  Not all major media published the same false story, and JPost was the only one to claim to have verified something we know never existed. They also never retracted that false claim. nableezy - 17:56, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Chess and Andrevan. I can see some concerns around IP topics which most sources in that area of the world would have. In those areas we really should treat all sources like an option 2. The idea that this should be deprecated... that seems to be very motivated thinking. Springee (talk) 22:37, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 for the Israel-Palestine conflict per Simonm223 and others. M.Bitton (talk) 22:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1, and subscribe to what Chess wrote as well. Reading through the RFCBEFORE, I'm surprised this was even taken here. Obvious that bias should be taken into consideration when using the source, especially for contentious claims, but that's no different to say, Al-Jazeera. Samuelshraga (talk) 07:02, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 generally, Option 3 Israel-Palestine conflict I find the arguments presented by @Makeandtoss, @CoolAndUniqueUsername and @Levivich to be compelling. Were there only isolated incidents of misreporting and bias, which were promptly and appropriately addressed, I would align with the view that such bias does not necessarily render a source unreliable. However, in this instance, as highlighted in the article from Forward, there exists a pervasive institutional issue that leads to routine publishing by the Jerusalem Post that mirrors the practices of outlets such as the Daily Mail or The Sun. A review of their daily output over time substantiates this observation. From sensationalized headlines to content that cites random tweets as primary sources and derives conclusions from viral social media discourse, the Jerusalem Post exhibits patterns of misreporting that have not been rectified in the manner expected from a reliable news source. Lf8u2 (talk) 04:52, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Chess.4meter4 (talk) 05:03, 21 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 for issues around Israel/Palestine. It appears as if they are still attributing Annette de Graaf's footage of of Maccabi soccer fans violently attacking people and rampaging through Amsterdam (see second picture down) as Protesters running after Israeli soccer fans (see 7m 25s) (compare the yellow illuminations), this is from the same footage. Andromedean (talk) 18:37, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Owen Jones's YouTube channel is not a reliable source.[28][29] Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:11, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Chess Honest Reporting is not a reliable source & the Algemeiner article is an opinion piece. However, Owen Jone's video is of an interview with Annette de Graaf, the person who took the footage in question. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 20:19, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  I assumed this claim of Maccabi fans being victims rather than the aggressors in this video had been thoroughly debunked across the MSM. As far as I know all responsible media have (albeit reluctantly) accepted they got it badly wrong, and either changed the interpretation, or at least pulled it, but not the JPost it seems. Perhaps it could be used as a sort of bellwether for reliability on this topic?

  Here the Guardian at 3:10 confirm "This film taken near central station, was widely reported by numerous media organisations including the Guardian as Israeli fans getting attacked, when in fact it was Maccabi fans attacking Amsterdam citizens and starting a riot, as later claimed by the photographer who took the coverage." See also Fact check: Amsterdam video doesn't show attack on Israelis by Deutsche Welle and Viral Video falsely captioned as Muslims hunting Jews by France24. Andromedean (talk) 14:26, 23 November 2024 (UTC).

  So, did the Guardian take down their original reporting? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 22:13, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

The Algemeiner article is junk comment, from a very biased source. Having watched the video in question, it actually specifically relates the contents of a video package using footage from the 7th October which the Israeli government edited for screening to opinion-formers. Jones relates that he found the footage shocking and described watching it one of the worst experiences of his life. He then relates what appears and does not appear in the video and compares this to what other commentators have said about the video. The video was released at a time when the mass killing of babies lie was still widely believed and he pointed out that the package did not contain any evidence for this, but that Israel had stated it had not included any footage of the killing of children for moral reasons. As we now know that 37 children died in the attacks, from a total of 1000 victims, the evidence for deliberate mass killing of children still does not exist. I would say that article does more to undermine Algemeiner's reliability than Jones'--Boynamedsue (talk) 07:46, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 for Israel-Palestine, otherwise a weak Option 1 There is quite strong evidence here of false reporting amounting to propaganda. I would not want claims about Palestinians, sourced solely to the JP to appear in our pages. However, it will on occasions be useful for providing insights on the thinking and comments of members of the Israeli establishment on Palestinians and the conflict and so I wouldn't suggest a blanket ban.Boynamedsue (talk) 07:20, 24 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable, it has been well established going back a considerable perod of time that this sources is generally reliable. Furthermore, there does seem to be a concerted effort still to get some Israeli or Jewish related publications to be deprecated as of late, and that should further be handled and dealt with separately, but caution here on anything other than Option 1: Generally reliable, should be looked at with some suspicion right now. Iljhgtn (talk) 04:24, 29 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 with the general qualifier that all news sources, even ones endorsed as “generally reliable”, should be used judiciously. The arguments against seem to be in the main a little short on substance. While the arguments for are not overwhelmingly strong, they do seem to provide sufficient policy-based grounds. In general, JPost seems to practice reputable journalism, not necessarily with the same rarefied rigor as some other RS, but substantially up to standards. Exclusion from the pool of endorsed Israeli outlets would also significantly, and well beyond the current conflict that clearly motivated the opening of this discussion, distort and reduce diversity within the cross-section of perspectives displayed in the Israeli press, essentially moving the refracted Overton window to a significant degree across multiple political dimensions. And, y’know, after all it certainly isn’t a state-funded propaganda outlet like Al Jazeera, which as we all know is currently endorsed as generally reliable (despite, I may add, the likes of the BBC [[30]] and the Guardian [[31]] clearly characterizing them as a soft-power organ of the Qatari state, and their amusingly and tellingly distorted and sparse coverage of Qatar-related bribery scandals on both sides of the pond (search their website lol). Cheers, RadioactiveBoulevardier (talk) 13:09, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 for Israel-Palestine and Option 2 for general: Can’t trust sources which spreads fake news. GrabUp - Talk 20:14, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Jerusalem Post's subsidiary Walla's scandal

An important point in the RFC has been missed: Jerusalem Post apparently translates and publishes articles from its subsidiary website Walla, which was essentially exposed as a Netanyahu mouthpiece. The scandal broke out in Israel a few years ago when it was revealed that Walla's then owner had agreed to air positive coverage of the Israeli premier in exchange for regulatory benefits for his other company, which morphed into the corruption trial against Netanyahu who is expected to provide his testimony in the upcoming weeks. This connection was highlighted last year when a JP article faced backlash, and the then editor-in-chief Avi Mayer, an individual whose career involved working for several powerful lobbying groups such as AIPAC, stated that: "The article in question was produced by our Hebrew-language sister publication, Walla News, and was uploaded to our website using an automated translation mechanism." Walla's employees are witnesses to Netanyahu's corruption trial, one of whom told an Israeli court that: "Netanyahu had the greatest control over the Walla website, including what the headline would be, where it would be on the home page."

A quick look on Jerusalem Post's website shows that Walla's articles are still being extensively translated and published by the newspaper, including one just twelve hours ago: [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39]. So are we really going to consider a publication known to propagate articles from a mouthpiece for a politician, who is on trial in Israel for corruption and about to be on trial in the ICC for war crimes, a reliable source on Wikipedia, especially for the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area? Makeandtoss (talk) 13:54, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

There’s a couple of different issues here. Walla were accused of being a mouthpiece for Netanyahu under its previous ownership (Bezeq), 2012-20, not under JP’s ownership since 2020; (b) the scandalous recent article last November had nothing to do with the Netanyahu stuff, although speaks ill of JP if they have continued to publish automated translations from Walla without vetting them; (c) Avi Mayer’s 9 month tenure as editor in 2023 is a different issue again, which I think was discussed already in the survey above. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:34, 18 November 2024 (UTC) (in other words, if Walla was unreliable pre-2020 this has no bearing on JP’s reliability then or now. If Walla is consistently unreliable now, then it does have bearing on JP’s reliability now. If Avi Mayer is biased, that speaks to bias in 2023 (already widely agreed in this discussion) but isn’t relevant to reliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:36, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Well at least we can agree that Walla and Jerusalem Post are unreliable for 2012-2020. But still change of ownership for Walla in 2020 from Bezeq to JP or change of the editor-in-chief for JP in 2023 is not a fundamental change (JP retains its same gambling tycoon owner Eli Azur since 2004). Newspapers are institutions with deeply rooted attitudes and editorial policies and staff. JP and Walla both were still implicated in another scandal 2022-2024 of running a paid pro-Russian propaganda campaign written as part of their journalistic materials as was reported by this esteemed Israeli investigative publication: [40] Clearly, in recent memory, JP doesn’t have a record of being a reliable publication, but rather a track record in disinformation. Makeandtoss (talk) 22:24, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

No we don’t “agree that Walla and Jerusalem Post are unreliable for 2012-2020”. Walla was clearly unreliable for Israeli politics in that period, but that has no bearing on JP so irrelevant to the conversation here. As far as I can see, all the evidence presented here for JP unreliability relates to the Gaza/Lebanon war since October 2023. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:18, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

It has a bearing on JP's reliability because as demonstrated JP extensively uses Walla articles. As for the paid pro-Russian disinformation this dates to 2022-2024. In any case, the evidence presented shows how this institution has been void of journalistic standards for most of the past two decades. Makeandtoss (talk) 09:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The contention is that JP publishes and translates Walla articles - are they identified in JP as coming from the subsidiary? Simonm223 (talk) 13:16, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, as seen from the nine examples I referenced. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Then it's simple. Walla articles transcluded to JP should not be treated as reliable. It has no bearing, positive or negative, n JP articles that did not originate in Walla. Simonm223 (talk) 15:21, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

The fact that JP publishes Walla article is an indication of overall unreliability in my opinion; coupled with the other numerous evidence presented here of unreliable reporting; but of course, you have the right to your opinion. Makeandtoss (talk) 20:48, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

There's a double standard here with this and Al Jazeera and whatever else. If editorial influence is the charge, then all those who fall foul of this should lose their status as a Reliable Source irrespective of one's personal preferences. To apply it selectively is intellectually dishonest. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/oct/27/us-asks-qatar-to-turn-down-the-volume-of-al-jazeera-news-coverage MaskedSinger (talk) 14:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Article you cited does not say AJ complied and relates to Arabic not English AJ, so no there is no analogy here. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:32, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@MakeandtossYou're far better than arguing semantics.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-hamas-propaganda-war MaskedSinger (talk) 16:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there something in that link that is supposed to tell us something about the al-Jazeera, much less the Jerusalem Post? Is there a reason people are bringing up another source we have discussed extensively and have a recent consensus on? nableezy - 16:50, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Nableezy yes. very much so. MaskedSinger (talk) 17:40, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Which is? nableezy - 18:04, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@MaskedSinger Could you then specify what that is then? Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:04, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

@Butterscotch Beluga Yes of course. Thank you for asking. The fact that there is consensus doesn't make it factually correct. Let me give you an example.

Someone says "a lion has 4 legs. So if a zebra has 4 legs, it must be a lion". There is a RFC about this - there are lot of votes supporting the motion confirming that a zebra has four legs. There are sources saying a zebra has 4 legs and then there is consensus that this is actually the case - a zebra is a lion. Is a zebra now a lion because the RFC said so? In the Wikipedia universe, the answer is yes. But Wikipedia should reflect the world we live in accurately and independently regardless what various discussions decide. MaskedSinger (talk) 18:34, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Maybe I should specify, do you have a policy based reason for this tangent on Al Jazeera? Currently it seems you are trying to relitigate the Al Jazeera RFC, rather then focusing on the current RFC. Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 18:58, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I'm tempted to collapse this digression under WP:NOTFORUM. It is not relevant to the relationship between Jerusalem Post and Walla or how that relationship should be treated as affecting the reliability of Jerusalem Post. Simonm223 (talk) 19:31, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Makeandtoss (talk) 19:55, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Check Your Fact

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.

---

Check Your Fact (CYF) is a "for-profit subsidiary" of The Daily Caller, the latter being depcrecated source due to the 2019 RfC. This fact-checking website was briefly discussed last month, where there appears to be lack of consensus over it's reliability.

As requested by Animalparty, here is an example of CYF as a source being removed from an article based exclusively on the unreliability of WP:DAILYCALLER (see diff). This is where the issue lies: The RfC failed to question CYF; from searching through the discussion, no-one argued that it was unreliable. I otherwise only found one noticeboard discussion (post-RFC) referenced above that was inconclusive.

Currently the CYF url is categorised as deprecated based on WP:RSPUSES, as this was added by David Gerard in February 2024 (see diff) based on this discussion at RSP (rather than RSN notably). So is it correct that Check Your Fact is deprecated, because of the 2019 RfC? Ie was the RfC about The Daily Caller (the website), or the entity The Daily Caller, Inc. that owns Check Your Fact?

To me it looks like it was specifically about the website, hence there was no discussion over it's subsidiaries. Overall it seems like incorrect "book keeping" to include this url as deprecated when it wasn't discussed here, but maybe I'm mistaken or misunderstood something?

And finally the usual question: Should Check Your Fact be considered generally reliable source for use in articles?

What this discussion isn't, for those quick to jump to conclusions or misinterpret: 1. This isn't about changing an RSP listing, this is about the interpretation of the 2019 RfC. 2. This isn't about the article referenced as a diff, this only serves as an example. Thanks! CNC (talk) 13:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

As an update, based on deprecated sources archives, I discovered that CYF is in fact not deprecated, so will boldly remove from RSPUSES for now on that very basis. Whether it should be deprecated is another discussion. CNC (talk) 15:20, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

It's part of Daily Caller and as factual. Why would it get an exemption? - David Gerard (talk) 01:52, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I digree that this wasn't deprecated, it was created as just another URL for Daily Caller content and the source is deprecated not a particular URL it happens to be using. As a general principle going over the same ground because a bad sources find a new outlet would be a waste of time.

Remembering my comment from the last time this came up, at least at first this was no different than the Daily Caller. With it being run by the same staff and using more or less the same content. Over time it appears to have become a bit more separate from its parent organisation, and I could see an argument that it should be now have an exception from the deprecation of the Daily Caller.

As a separate comment 'fact checking' sites are poor sources in general, and I would suggest their use is always attributed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:48, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

should be deprecated if its part of daily caller Bluethricecreamman (talk) 14:43, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

I reversed the removal of the link from RSP - the Daily Caller is presently deprecated whatever URL its content is being served from. If you want to partially reverse this, you'll need an RFC showing consensus to do so (and it's not clear you have the momentum as yet) - David Gerard (talk) 14:58, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

No problem if that's how others see it also, I won't stand in the way of consensus if there are no issues. This discussion has certainly gone a different direction than the previous, but if that's the outcome then so be it. CNC (talk) 16:07, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

If you want to partially reverse this, you'll need an RFC showing consensus to do so would imply that the deprecation RfC treated The Daily Caller as a publisher rather than as a publication. But my reading of the discussion is that it treats it as a publication—one does not need an RfC to remove a sloppily inserted link from RSP. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 00:54, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Per WP:BRD, one does not. However given it's been almost 9 months since it's deprecation it's far to assume that WP:STATUSQUO now applies. As well as that BRD won't bring about any consensus here. CNC (talk) 13:51, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

I will repeat my argument from the prevous stale conversation, and assert that there is no good reason besides "I don't like the parent company" to deprecate Checkyourfact.com. Per WP:NEWSORG, Signals that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy are the publication of corrections and disclosures of conflicts of interest. Checkyourfact.com is a fact-checking source, attested to by the IFCN certification. Its Corrections policy is here. It clearly discloses its ownership (potential conflict of interest) on its About us page. Its Methodology is here. Its staff and editorial board is here. Check Your Fact was awarded a grant in June of this year from the Poynter Institute's IFCN. From casual googling it appears to regularly align with fact-checks by USA Today Politifact and Reuters, [41][42][43][44]. It is true that perhaps Checkyourfact might not fact check every claim Wikipedians might wish it to, but guess what, that same logic applies to Politifact, Reuters, Snopes, and every other fact-checking outlet that has ever existed (check your own biases!). There very well may be few cases where citing Checkyourfact is even warranted (especially if there are a dozen other fact-checking sites that Wikipedians don't hate saying the same thing), but nobody has submitted a lick of hard of evidence for why Checkyourfact should be considered unreliable or deprecated beyond "vibes" and guilt by association. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:21, 3 November 2024 (UTC)

If by guilt by association you mean acknowledging the existence of WP:SOURCEDEF and the fact that the publisher is a factor determining reliability, then sure, let's go with that. On the other hand, is there any actual point to this discussion (i.e., any disputed claim people actually want to use the source in question to support)? I really don't see the point in having a discussion for the sake of discussion (and faffing about RSP listings is essentially that without any actual usage). Like, I know nobody actually reads the instructions, but there's no reason to be so blatant about it. I would oppose the use of either this or the previous discussion (or any discussion not also about an actual issue)) to support any change anywhere, because people should take the effort to point out, with examples, the actual issue if they want substantive discussion over it instead of endless windmilling. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:32, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

"any disputed claim people actually want to use the source" It's being used in Conspiracy theories about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season and Jackson Hinkle at present, it's not needed at the latter but looks useful at the former. In the same light of not faffing around, either these references should be removed or CYF be re-considered as marginally reliable at least. Given the content in question, it can't be considered uncontroversial and therefore an unreliable source shouldn't there. CNC (talk) 16:46, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

We could either sloppily lop together with all operations of one firm with total ignorance to how this source is structured, or we could attempt to independently assess this source. And, upon looking a bit deeper into this source, it is a certified by the International Fact-Checking Network, which we consider to be generally reliable for the exact purpose of evaluating the reliability of fact-checking websites. The most recent assessment, conducted in March 2024, is quite detailed. I would encourage all of you to take a read through it; the random sample testing for criteria 5.3 - 5.5 do seem to provide a reasonable degree of independent assurance as to the quality of the organization's checks.

I strongly disagree with lumping this in the The Daily Caller's RSP entry, as the organizations seem to operate with some degree of independence and this was not actually discussed in the deprecation RfC. I agree with CNC that it seems like incorrect book keeping, and I do think there is persuasive evidence from how third parties have evaluated and use CYF that the source is actually WP:GREL.

— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 16:14, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

While I'm not convinced an RfC close would determine that the source is generally reliable, I also find it unlikely there would be consensus for it to be generally unreliable or deprecated either based on opposing viewpoints so far. Unless there are other comments in the coming days, I'll start an RfC below so we can re-determine the reliability of this source. I don't see any benefit of attempting BRD to remove the source from RSP at this point, ie reverting a bold edit from months ago that has become defacto status quo. There are clearly a few editors who support this edit, against a few of others that don't including myself. This now requires further input from the community. CNC (talk) 13:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

So be it, CommunityNotesContributor. I've started one below. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:31, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

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

RfC: Check Your Fact

Which of the following describes the reliability of Check Your Fact?

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

— Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Survey: Check Your Fact

• Option 1. Check Your Fact is a certified member of the International Fact-Checking Network (see WP:IFCN for more information) and has been a fact-checking partner of Facebook for quite a while now. The most recent assessment by the International Fact-Checking Network indicates that this is a fact-checking operation with eight dedicated staff. Per the review, which conducted independent sample testing of the fact checks produced by Check Your Fact, this is a fact-checker that uses the best available primary sources where available (to avoid games of telephone; see criteria 3.2), uses multiple sources of evidence where available (see criteria 3.3), makes public a clear structure for editorial control with three dedicated editors (see criteria 4.3-4.4), lists a public methodology (see criteria 4.5-5.1), provides relevant evidence to support or undermine claims when applicable (see criteria 5.3), applies its methodology consistently regardless of who is making the claim (see criteria 5.4), attempts to seek comment from individuals who made claims, when possible (see criteria 5.5), has a published corrections policy, and publishes corrections when applicable (see criteria 6.3), among other items. Funding for the project comes from Facebook (via its fact-checking contracts) and The Daily Caller (via advertising revenue and its general budget). Since at least 2019, Check Your Fact has been editorially independent of The Daily Caller's newsroom, though it is owned by The Daily Caller.
  Based on the independence of the newsroom for Check Your Fact, and the WP:IFCN's certification of the source as a fact-checker, I do think that this is a generally reliable fact checker. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2/3 While I am receptive to the relatively positive report at the International Fact-Checking network I have some concerns about the methodology. Particularly 1.5 ignores corporate ownership as a potential source of bias. 2.1 allows the fact-checking agency to self-select the facts it checked for review. 5.1 only states that a methodology exists but the link to the actual posted methodology [45] is absurdly vague. 6.2 points to a corrections page but articles to do with hot-button social issues such as abortion access / planned parenthood on the corrections page contain no information beyond that the article was taken down for not meeting editorial standards. So not exactly a correction so much as a redaction. 6.5 assumes that the parent company "has and adheres to an open and honest corrections policy" which I don't believe to be the case notwithstanding the certification of IFCN. Furthermore the IFCN rubrick does not sufficiently address the ways in which the selection decisions of what facts to check can necessarily impact the metanarrative of a fact-checking website. Because of this I find the IFCN certification not entirely persuasive. However it is persuasive enough that I wouldn't go straight to option 4. Simonm223 (talk) 19:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  With due respect, I would contrast 2.1 allows the fact-checking agency to self-select the facts it checked for review with the random sampling enforced in 1.4, 2.3, 2.4, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5. And while 2.1 (The applicant fact-checks using the same high standards of evidence and judgement for equivalent claims regardless of who made the claim) is a self-attestation, 5.4 requires a random sample to be tested to check the same thing (The applicant in its fact checks assesses the merits of the evidence found using the same high standards applied to evidence on equivalent claims, regardless of who made the claim). So the alleged flaw in criteria 2.1 (that there is no independent checking here) is illusory due to the testing in 5.4.

  If you don't like the methodology of the IFCN, that is one thing, but the resounding RSN consensus is that it is generally reliable for this exact purpose. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:04, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  I hear you but I think that irregularity is part of what makes the IFCN methodology questionable. That being said my big two concerns with the IFCN methodology, as I said below in the discussion area, are 5.1, 6.2 and 6.5. Simonm223 (talk) 20:07, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  What do you mean by that irregularity? Do you mean that the certification requires both self-attestation and independent assurance? Because that sort of thing is extremely standard in industry. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:12, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  I would be happier if there were no self-selection criteria and if the certifying body was fully controlling what is selected. But, again, this is not my main point of contention. Simonm223 (talk) 20:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 Although CYF started as little more than a new URL for the Daily Caller it now has a separate editorial staff and writers. However I don't think fact checking sites are good sources in general, better sources should be found with fact checkers only used sparingly and with care. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:50, 13 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 until such time as unreliable factual reporting is identified. The perennial sources list is intended for sources that we've repeatedly identified actual problems with, and despite their concerning ownership (classification as generally reliable doesn't preclude WP:WEIGHT) the discussion to classify them here feels preemptive. I think we should wait until someone spots an incorrect or heavily biased fact check being used in the encyclopedia, and at that point Check Your Fact could be brought to RSN. The main header of this very page states fairly clearly that "RFCs for deprecation, blacklisting, or other classification should not be opened unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed": this is preemptive and out-of-policy.
  For what it's worth on the source itself, I agree with ActivelyDisinterested regarding fact checking sites in general; however, I don't see a reason to consider them anything less than reliable. As a disclaimer, I am the editor who initially included Check Your Fact at Conspiracy theories about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, noted above by CommunityNotesContributor. This was the best source I could find for the claim, as the staff claim to have done due diligence trying to find evidence for the false rumor. Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 01:49, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Addendum: struck my criticism of the RfC after reading the previous discussions and realize this may actually be necessary. I still think it should be considered generally reliable, but with an RS:P notice addressing both the concepts of fact checking ("Since it often covers fringe material, parity of sources may be relevant." from WP:SNOPES, "Check Your Fact is often a tertiary source. Editors prefer reliable secondary sources over Check Your Fact when available." adapted from WP:BRITANNICA) as well as a note about its ownership ("It is a subsidiary of The Daily Caller, a deprecated source, and there is no consensus on whether/a consensus that it is independent of its parent." adapted from the Deseret News entry). Dan Leonard (talk • contribs) 02:17, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Premature/Unclear (which I guess would fall under option 2 by the definitions of the categories). I don't see the reason why we should have a whole ass RFC on a source that is used on Wikipedia all of two times, and for which both previous discussions were heavily focused on some vague abstract notion of reliability rather than any challenges to use in context, as is more typically appropriate for this noticeboard. I would oppose making any changes to RSP based on such abstract and meta discussions in general. As for the specifics, I don't think a single affiliation is sufficient to establish a reputation, and it seems to early to call the organisation well-established, so I cannot endorse a classification as generally reliable. For its use on the hurricane article specifically, the primary issue I see here is not reliability, but that neither source actually directly supports the text in question, which is also rather weaselly (some have claimed, really?). Being threatened with arrests or execution is not the same as actually being arrested or executed, as I'm sure nobody actually executed will dispute, so rumours of actual vs threatened action should ideally not be equated either. The best source in the world still shouldn't be used to support a claim it doesn't actually make. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:21, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Moved to #Discussion: Check Your Fact

• Option 1 Red-tailed hawk made a good case. Even attempting to self-impose such methodological strictures justifies assuming reliability for the time being. Roggenwolf (talk) 15:23, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Red-tailed hawk. Nemov (talk) 20:35, 19 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Red-tailed hawk and WP:IFCN, which says There is consensus that [IFCN] is generally reliable for determining the reliability of fact-checking organizations. No evidence of inaccurate reporting has been presented here. I've looked through the articles on the front page and they seem even-handed and well-researched. Most of them are focused on debunking false claims on social media, so editors should consider WP:DUE when deciding if the content is worth including. Astaire (talk) 20:37, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: This is a pretty standard fact-checker and should be treated similarly to other major fact-checkers. According to scholarly reports, it is "considered by the fact-checking community as highly reputable." [46]. Likewise, academic studies frequently utilize CYF in their research (see [47], [48], [49], etc.). Though, I will note it is quite strange--and rare--to see a fact-checker owned by an unreliable source. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 01:26, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. There appears to be a lack of tangible evidence that CYF has actually published any false or misleading statements, or otherwise failed to correct errors etc. While I'm sceptical that any publication under the control of TDC can be considered generally reliable here, I'm not seeing any evidence as to why CYF should be considered unreliable. Instead, there appears to be strong arguments as to why it is in fact generally reliable. I otherwise think the status quo should apply here; if IFCN believes it is reliable, then it is generally reliable, and either there needs to be very strong arguments as to why this is not the case, or otherwise the previous consensus needs to be overturned. CNC (talk) 21:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion: Check Your Fact

• Aside from my comments above in the survey section, I would note that I do take objection lumping this source in with The Daily Caller on RSP without prior RSN discussion; it is extraordinarily sloppy to do that when it's got an independent newsroom and it wasn't discussed prior. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:45, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  Likewise, I've attempted to address this at WP:CHECKYOURFACT until the RfC closes. Note this does not mean that CYF is no longer deprecated (it's still listed as such), only that there lacks consensus over categorisation. CNC (talk) 19:59, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  I'm a bit concerned that decisions about CYF should not just be derived from the IFCN page which has methodological faults. Particularly their treatment of the corrections policy of the parent company and the handling of corrections surrounding Planned Parenthood by CYF are concerning. However we have a lot of garbage sources that aren't deprecated. I don't think this is a good source of information. But it's probably not as bad as Daily Caller unfiltered. Simonm223 (talk) 20:03, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  The issue is that when CYF was first setup it was just the editor of the Daily Caller posting content very similar to what was on the Daily Caller. If they setup a new site tomorrow called the Caily Daller that simply duplicate the content of the Daily Caller, then it would be silly to say it required a new RFC because it was using a different url.

  Saying that the CYF now has a separate editorial staff and writers, it's just that hasn't always been the case. So there was nothing sloppy about initially including it in the DC RSP entry. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:43, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  Except that it was added to RSP in 2024, despite no discussion on it and despite prior public reporting that the newsroom had been independent... 5 years before that. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 22:48, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

  It would have been included in the Daily Caller RFC, that happened 5 and half years ago. As per my comment in the survey section, I think things have changed. But it had little separation at that point. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:03, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  "It would have been included in the Daily Caller RFC" It wasn't. CNC (talk) 16:35, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

  If a unreliable source starts publishing at a new URL that URL is still unreliable, the idea that a new RFC is required when that happens is just bureaucracy. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Moved from #RfC: Check Your Fact

• "I don't see the reason why we should have a whole ass RFC on a source that is used on Wikipedia all of two times" Because RfCs are for dispute resolution and there is a clear dispute over this source. Unless you can identify the consensus in the above discussion for us to save us all time and effort? It otherwise doesn't matter if it's only used twice, an RfC can even be for source usage in a single article if there is a dispute regarding it's usage. There is also no obligation to engage in this (even if it is a "request"); so if it seems like a waste of time for you, then might be worth considering not engaging to avoid time wasting. CNC (talk) 11:07, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  What would "save us all time and effort" is for people to read the part of the editnotice where it says the article it is used in, and the claim it supports and not create discussions where no real dispute in articlespace actually exists. Yes, technically there have been (multiple!) previous discussions on this source (one of them in this very section, even!), but starting discussions and RFCs that, intentionally or not, exclude the context surrounding the source gives the appearance of trying to bypass WP:RSCONTEXT, which is highly inappropriate and detrimental to evaluating the quality of a source in the places and situations it is likely to be used on Wikipedia. My objection on the RFC is thus on both procedural and substantive grounds. Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:28, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

  (Procedurally, this is premature because there is virtually no use, no dispute affecting actual article content, and neither of the two previous discussions are valid. It is unclear because I have no idea how people use it, other than that they don't actually appear to do so. Substantively I don't think it's appropriate to call a newsroom that's existed all of 5 years well-established as per NEWSORG, and unclear because I am not in the habit of taking a single source as gospel, no matter how good it is.) Alpha3031 (t • c) 08:38, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

RFC: Should grey literature from advocacy groups and other similar orgs always be considered WP:SPS and therefore subject to WP:BLPSPS?

Moved to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Grey Literature

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Should grey literature from advocacy groups and other similar orgs always be considered WP:SPS and therefore subject to WP:BLPSPS?

For use in science related articles, see Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (science) § White and grey literature.

Previous discussions as per Wikipedia:RFCBEFORE. [50][51]. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:00, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

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

Indie Vision Music

Indie Vision Music has been used as a reliable source for Christian music articles since at least 2013 (that's the furthest back I can trace its usage, and it's a revision by me when several editors including myself were overhauling WP:CM/S. We were double-checking each other's work, and discussed many of the sources, but we didn't feel the need to exhaustively discuss every source.)EDIT: see this talk discussion --3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 10:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC) At the time, Indie Vision Music had a Wikipedia article, which then was later deleted - something I supported, but in that discussion I mentioned that I deemed it reliable, just not notable. For a lot of Christian music, it is an invaluable source as often, especially in the indie and metal genres. There's scant coverage in more generalist publications outside of the CCM/Christian rock/Christian metal niche, so it's often one of 3 or 4 sources in which one can find accessible coverage. Graywalls asked me to bring this here because they are unsure of the reliability of the site. It certainly has a reputation for reliability, as it is referenced/utilized by reliable sources such as Cross Rhythms (this - 2015, this - 2018, and this - 2018 as examples; this from 2016 is about the record label operated by the media outlet, but it explicitly calls the site "well regarded"), The Phantom Tollbooth - 2005, Manteca Bulletin (here, 2010), Arrow Lords of Metal - 2022, referencing a 2013 interview article and HM (here in 2013, here in 2013, here in 2022). I've excluded reprints of press releases for these examples. Cross Rhythms and HM are among the most reputable and well-known sources for Christian music, the latter being the prime journalism outlet regarding Christian hard rock and metal music.

The site founder, Brandon Jones, and another writer, Lloyd Harp, both also write for HM as well (Jones since 2017 and Harp since at least 2009 2007) and thus have credentials outside IVM. There are multiple writers for the site besides those two individuals, which I believe satisfies the having a writing and editorial staff. The concern from Graywalls is, I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong) the professionalism of the team and if the site owner practices actual editorial oversight over his writers (to quote them, "If you and I were both auto enthusiasts who track race together and we buddy up with you being the writer and me being the editor, that's not sufficient to make our web zine as a WP:RS with editorial oversight "). Though there are multiple staff writers, especially over the past two decades, Brandon lists himself for contact and doesn't list the writers. So I can understand part of the concern. I will note that there is one writer who is also a member of several bands (they might also be a Wikipedia editor and thus at this juncture I won't name them so they're not outed - it was actually that COI that prompted Graywalls to bring up the issue of if IVM is reliable), and thus of course would be unreliable for coverage of those bands, same as Doug Van Pelt, the founder of HM, is unreliable for coverage of Lust Control (because he's a member of it), except for as statements from the band themselves. Given the above reputation, I don't personally see warrant for this suspicion. IVM functions the same as other online metal sources deemed RS, such as No Clean Singing (which is predominantly a team of three) and MetalSucks. The blog format is how most of these sites function now, including HM. Indeed, Brandon Jones mentions in his site bio that the site wasn't always a blog format and they adopted that structure for the site because that was what became practical in the mid-2000s. The site also operated/s a record label, but that I'm considering separate issue as that doesn't establish reliability. I'd also stress that any artist published via the Indie Vision Label would thus present a COI with IVM news/review coverage of that artist and should not be used other than for statements about the artist themselves.

The TL;DR - Indie Vision Music has been used on Wikipedia for over a decade, has multiple writers under a site owner, has been used by other, more mainstream sources as a source, even called by one of them "well regarded", and both the owner and another writer write for a magazine that is a prime source for the subject niche. However, another writer has a COI with some artists, the website operated/s a music label which could have some COI issues with specific artists, and an editor has questioned, due to the one COI issue and the blog structure of the site, whether actual editorial oversight is practiced.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 22:17, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

The real question comes to is the editorial process compared to that of the Time Magazine, or is it more along that of two well known and popular, but generally unusable Forbes Contributors and Huffington Post contributors sources?

Many of the writers in IVM articles are band members, rather than professionally trained journalists.

Things to be addressed here are:

What sort of things can it be relied on for factual accuracy?

Is it of any use at all for establishing notability and if so, for what?

3family6 said it's reliable because it's in the Christian Metal list, but they did acknowledge they are more or less the lone curator of that list, so that list should perhaps be seen similarly as a blog or a personal website. Graywalls (talk) 05:15, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

to clarify, currently I'm essentially the sole contributor, that was not the case 10 years ago when the list was created. And I last found the discussion, see below

• Ah- I found the talk page discussion where this source along with a lot of others were added. multiple editors were involved and approved that listing--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 10:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

This is what the site's staff page looked like when it was added to WP:CM/S. I'm pinging editors who were either involved in the discussion of adding the sources (which included IVM) or who have otherwise been - or are now active 11 years later - in WikiProject Christian music (and who are still active - sadly, a couple accounts got banned for socking unrelated to this issue): TenPoundHammer, Toa Nidhiki05, Royalbroil, TARDIS, The Cross Bearer. I'm also going to reach out to Brandon Jones about the editorial policy (without mentioning this discussion), and see what he says.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:45, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

@3family6:, The RS/N specializes in evaluating sources. I don't know why you've pinged five users you hand picked. It's kind of WP:CANVASSish in a recruiting kind of way especially when you hold one particular position on the matter on hand. Graywalls (talk) 16:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I already explained why I pinged these editors. Most of them were involved with curating the sources list, which included IVM. I don't know what their opinions on this issue are. It's not Canvassing.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 16:18, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

@3family6:, Going off a bit on a tangent, but it seems to me sockpuppetry seems rather prevalent among music focused editors. Sometimes, it's necessary to go back and discount inputs from sock form consensus. Graywalls (talk) 17:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

This is in a large part precisely WHY I tagged editors who were involved in that discussion.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:20, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Pinging Invisiboy42293, Booyahhayoob, and TrulyShruti as they are also currently active and are part of the Christian music WikiProject. I also will post a notice of this discussion there so other active editors I have missed might still be notified.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 16:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Selecting people enthusiastic, probably part of a somewhat cohesive group who share common views may foster more groupthink. Graywalls (talk) 16:55, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

People in the subject area are informed. Per WP:CANVASS "it is perfectly acceptable to notify other editors of ongoing discussions, provided that it be done with the intent to improve the quality of the discussion by broadening participation to more fully achieve consensus." It's ridiculous to say that people who are interested in the topic and edit it should be precluded from important discussions about what constitutes reliable sources regarding that subject. Especially given the import that the outcome has, one way or the other.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 17:33, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe it's like notifying hand picked known railfanning people from WikiProject Trains and asking whether certain railfanning websites are reliable and expert sources. You chose an area of your enthusiasm and you handpicked a set of people from (relatively niche) Wikiproject group, as opposed to general music. I'm not surprised the responses so far have been from people you have hand notified, and of predictable input. Graywalls (talk) 06:03, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I also posted in WikiProject Albums, I'll ping some editors from there in a day or two if they haven't responded. The niche is why I notified editors from that project, as they're familiar with the sources. I'll post a notice to the general music WikiProject as well.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:38, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

and I posted to Projects Journalism, and Magazines. Graywalls (talk) 17:24, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah, I was trying to think of relevant projects, especially since this hasn't gotten any eyes apart from the users I tagged.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 17:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I also notified WikiProject Albums.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 17:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Important clarification: The band member mentioned by me and Graywalls above no longer writes for the site (not naming them because they might be a Wikipedia editor and I don't want to out them).--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:17, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the caveats 3family6 provided here are broadly acceptable. Obviously a subject isn't reliable when discussing itself or connected topics, but HM and IVM broadly are excellent source - HM in particular, which is without a doubt an absolutely indispensable resource for Christian rock and metal. So I think, with those specific caveats, it's an acceptable resource. Toa Nidhiki05 18:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Responding to 3family6's ping: Truthfully I haven't been active on Christian music Wikipedia in quite some time (personal reasons plus my interests drifted elsewhere). That said, I am familiar with Indie Vision Music, both as an editor and just casually, and in my experience they're pretty solidly journalistic when it comes to Christian music. I don't know of any reason not to use them as a source in this field. Invisiboy42293 (talk) 01:51, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

• Pinging these editors from a related discussion to see what they think: Saqib, Axad12. The COI editing from User:Metalworker14 included this source (IVM), as well as HM. The latter has no association with the issue, whereas one former IVM author, who hasn't written for the site since 2017, since 2018 has a COI with some bands and their work was used by the paid editing for Metalworker14. Does this taint the entire source, or would the source be unreliable even if this specific issue hadn't occurred?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:51, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
• This looks like any other dime-a-dozen unreliable music site, self-published by amateurs with no apparent training or background in music criticism, no editorial policies, and only known by other niche or local outlets. I see no reason why we'd give their viewpoints any weight, either for reviews or for consideration of notability. I'll also note that I wasn't canvassed here. Woodroar (talk) 16:42, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Lloyd Harp has a decade of experience or so at HM it seems to have come on to IVM more recently. Regarding the other authors I don't know of previous work. Brandon Jones founded IVM and only more recently has joined HM.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 17:49, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

@3family6:, you've mentioned sharing of writers as an indicator of reliability, but I am not sure if that's true. Writers don't write whatever they want and they are expected to write certain things to the publication's standards.

Although it says to evaluate case-by-case, we're generally discouraged from using contributor articles on Forbes. Such freelance writer sharing isn't uncommon but doesn't turn the source into reliable category. One example article https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrolli/2019/10/17/metallica-scores-biggest-global-rock-event-cinema-release-with-sm/ their profile says I am a music and entertainment reporter who specializes in pop, hip-hop and heavy metal. I cover numerous festivals, interview local and national touring musicians, and examine how artists' personal brands and social media antics affect their art and their earnings. My work has appeared in Billboard, Paste, Consequence of Sound, Noisey and the Daily Dot but just because that person wrote it doesn't mean it can be treated as an equivalent of a Billboard or Daily Dot article.

Another source, such as HubPages and their now defunct sister projects like Delishably and ReelRundown did have editorial oversight and editorial policy but with specific purposes and they're rated based on AI evaluation, moderator reviews and "search traffic" over a long term. Those are MONETIZED articles and the purpose is to drive traffic so that hosting service can maximize ad revenue. The simple presence of editorial oversight doesn't make it reliable. So, what remains to be determined is the editorial process of IVM. Is it more like Forbes contributors, Hub Pages and like or comparable to Billboard, Consequence of Sound or National Geograpics? Graywalls (talk) 03:01, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Please read the context, Graywalls. I was responding to this statement self-published by amateurs with no apparent training or background in music criticism,. For one of the writers, this is not true, as he has an extensive background with a reputable magazine. You already brought up your point about Forbes contributors, you don't need to do so again.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 11:31, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

I was providing an actual piece written by someone with respectable experience so there's a specific example. It's not just a simply rephrased version of the same thing I said which appears to be what you may have been implying. Graywalls (talk) 11:38, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

That is a fair point, I appreciate that these are much more fleshed out example. But that's not the point of this particular part of the discussion. What was in discussion here is the professionalism of the writing staff, particularly prior experience. And it's a mixed bag. To your point, yes, just because they're a professional writer doesn't mean that they aren't essentially self-published in some cases. Still, the professionalism of the writers is a useful tool for determining reliability.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 16:20, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• My feeling is that the recent discussion at COIN (here [52]), which ultimately resulted in Metalworker14 being blocked as a primarily promo account, indicates the problems that can be encountered in small scenes (whether they be music scenes or other relatively small groups of enthusiasts).

  When a user who has a range of potential COIs starts to edit Wikipedia under a pseudonym, evidently the undisclosed nature of what they are doing will create issues. However, whether that necessarily casts a cloud over their work off-wiki is a different question.

  My feeling is that material created within small scenes is primarily for the benefit of fans - who are probably aware of the possibility of some form of COI existing (whether that be direct financial COI or individuals reviewing the work of their friends, etc.). Fans are, I'd suggest, untroubled by such issues and are grateful for the fact that dedicated coverage exists at all, created by individuals who are also enthusiasts. Whether the material is of a nature that an encyclopaedia ought to be depending on, however, I am inclined to doubt.

  Really we are probably in the realms of fanzines, i.e. where editors are likely grateful that material has been submitted at all and significant editorial oversight is potentially lacking. Axad12 (talk) 16:54, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

• I was asked to comment here rather than at the notice at RS/N, and this extensive discussion has suggested my priors on this issue are still the case: this is a standard mid-level independent source on a specialized musical topic, and 3family6's comments indicate that its writers have the level of musical expertise and training that any other music rag would have. They are not investigative journalists, but rather critics evaluating based on a background in an understanding of musical style and history - which is what you get from most staff who write for e.g. Pitchfork, Allmusic, Popmatters, or Dusted. I don't think the use of the source by one troublesome editor casts doubt on the source generally, and I'm inclined to buy the argument that the writers IVM carries that also write for HM has some weight (since HM is reliable). We'd want to exercise COI caution for any artist directly associated with Indie Vision's label or a musical release from a staff member, but that's not a cause for general concern about the source. Chubbles (talk) 16:10, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• I'm still waiting to hear back from the website/Brandon Jones about the policy, but, I was able to determine that they do issue corrections and edits: [53], [54], [55], [56]. So that's a good sign of editorial oversight and ensuring accuracy.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:37, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

• I meant to post this here, not the WP Music, but posted there by mistake. Looking at https://www.indievisionmusic.com/author/brandon-j/ it sure seems like a self published source. My personal take on it is that it can't be used to support notability. These small time bands are not competing against each other but rather supporting each other. The blogosphere of these band blogs is an echo chamber of like minded bands boosting and praising each other publicly to collectively raise themselves. It's like friends and family writing references for each other. If they offer correction notices, it's better than not doing that, but people do that even on Wikipedia pages with strike out. It's not a one man show, but still a blog. Editorial process that only consists of fixing grammar/spelling and suppressing contents of liability concerns prior to publishing isn't really much of editorial oversight. Graywalls (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

First, let me address the part about "like-minded bands": Indie Vision Music isn't a band, it's a website, and for awhile was also a record label. So far, it's been shown that one author was in some bands. Authors are allowed to also be musicians, there's nothing wrong with that. And that writer has not written for the site since 2017. "boosting and praising each other publicly to collectively raise themselves." - that's not correct, as the site will give out negative reviews (this one, for example). "Editorial process that only consists of fixing grammar/spelling and suppressing contents of liability concerns prior to publishing isn't really much of editorial oversight." What are you referring to here? Hypotheticals aren't useful. Please substantiate them. The correction examples I found and listed above are more than that. Does the review process involve more than that? Maybe yes, maybe no. You are speculating here that they don't actually fact-check. This could be a group blog, which, yes, is an example of a self-published source. Or, this could be a site with an editorial process. We know it has a reputation and is used by others. The question is about the editorial process, since that isn't public knowledge.

Now, as to Brandon Jones and self-published sources, Brandon Jones is the publisher but also writes for the site. Other writers for the site, it's not an issue - they're the writers, he's the publisher, so they aren't self-published. But, are articles by Brandon Jones self-published? I think I asked about cases where a publication owner and publisher writes material for that publication years ago, I think in reference to Doug Van Pelt of HM or John DiBiase of Jesus Freak Hideout. I couldn't find that discussion, and so I brought this to the WP:V talk page. As I asked there, Like, for example, if Ian Danzig writes an article for Exclaim! (which he owns and publishes), or HM's founder and publisher Doug Van Pelt or Jesus Freak Hideout's owner and publisher John DiBiase write articles for their respective websites, or A. G. Sulzberger writes a story for The New York Times, are those articles self-published sources only or are they considered reliable, independent published sources? And basically, it depends. There's actually two current, very active discussions on basically this and more broadly related questions about orgs where the publishing process is internal to the organization (as opposed to an external entity, for example, Blabbermouth.net being hosted by Roadrunner Records). And there doesn't seem to be a consensus. I think a lot of it depends on the editorial process. On that point, with Indie Vision Music, I think there's two distinct eras to that site on this issue. From 2006 to 2020, the site had a managing editor, Josh Murphy. That adds a layer of editorial process, both for the site and for Brandon Jones. But, conversely, how much is that editorial control independent when it comes to Brandon's writings, as Brandon will be the one publishing them? That still seems to be a pretty close relation. I don't know if there's an answer here. I think that having a managing editor does indicate an actual editorial process from 2006 to 2020 at least. I still haven't heard back yet what the policy is at present. I don't know if I will get a response (which I don't think proves things one way or the other, it just leaves that question unanswered). I'm wondering if perhaps Brandon's writings from 2017 onward (that year being the year he was hired by HM) are self-published material from a reliable expert in the field, whereas the other writers are not self-published.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 21:43, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

From what I've seen, RSN discussions tend to find that anything written by the site runner would be considered self-published. For example, see the WP:RSP entry for Quackwatch. The editor, Stephen Barrett, is an expert on quackery but because he basically runs the site, we often can't use his pieces per WP:BLPSPS. That's not a problem with other authors at the site, because their work would proceed through the normal editorial process (i.e., Barrett). Woodroar (talk) 13:53, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Okay, that's what I was thinking. Thank you.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 14:06, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Evaluating the presence/absence of editors is easy enough, but evaluating their effectiveness and reliability is the tricky one. They could just be a website with contributors and editors from various bands each given various titles. As another editor mentioned, we have to differentiate professional editors vs a group of volunteer band members with no formal training in journalism running a glorified blog. Graywalls (talk) 02:37, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

On that metric, then, Indie Vision Music is reliable. Volunteer professional staff is expressly allowed. The site publisher has been operating the site since 2000, and since 2017 is a professional writer for HM. A current writer has written for HM since 2009. The only band member I'm aware of is one, now former writer. And band members are allowed to also write music journalism, there's no wiki-guideline prohobiting this. So, how do we evaluate the effectiveness of the source? This is where WP:USEBYOTHERS comes into play - we can check if it has a good reputation. And, as I demonstrated above, the copy of IVM is referenced or republished by other established reliable sources, and a reliable source calls IVM "well-regarded".--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:20, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

@3family6:, As has contents from NYPOST or the DAILYMAIL, both of which are red in [{WP:RSP]]. So, I wouldn't rely much on USEBYOTHERS. Graywalls (talk) 14:57, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

If you disagree with WP:V, then hold an RfC at Village pump. This isn't the venue.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:01, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

You brought up one point, and I addressed that point. Graywalls (talk) 15:08, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I brought up that point because WP: USEBYOTHERS is one of the two primary means of determining of a source is reliable (the other being an editorial oversight process). If you disagree with USEBYOTHERS, then by all means bring that up at an RfC.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm disagreeing in your interpretation and application. Graywalls (talk) 16:11, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

How accepted and high-quality reliable sources use a given source provides evidence, positive or negative, for its reliability and reputation. The more widespread and consistent this use is, the stronger the evidence. For example, widespread citation without comment for facts is evidence of a source's reputation and reliability for similar facts, whereas widespread doubts about reliability weigh against it. If outside citation is the main indicator of reliability, particular care should be taken to adhere to other guidelines and policies, and to not unduly represent contentious or minority claims. The goal is to reflect established views of a topic as far as we can determine them. How is my usage contrary to that? I haven't relied solely on USEBYOTHERS. I've argued that this in tandem with editorial oversight is how reliability is determined.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 16:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Chubbles, what do you think in light of the question that Graywalls raises here and that I've tried to address. Do you think the site is still reliable, in light of this?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 21:46, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Of course I do, but I'm not the one you need to convince - he is. Chubbles (talk) 06:44, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I was wondering what your reasoning is here and why this is more than just a group blog.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 10:18, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

I think that Graywalls is setting an unnecessarily high bar and making unnecessary presumptions about the nature and motives of music criticism and journalism (here specifically, but also generally). Most music publications would fail under his definition of an independent source - which is precisely his point; I believe he is convinced that the vast majority of popular music coverage on the site isn't worthy of the site, and this is one step in that effort. I'm confident that, say, Pitchfork, Popmatters, Stereogum, or Brooklyn Vegan would also fail his criteria; they are also "group blogs" in exactly the same way he means. If the standard of a reliable source for popular music is the journalistic equivalent of The New York Times, we will have precious little music to write about on Wikipedia. Chubbles (talk) 05:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for that explanation--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:13, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Here but also generally, Chubbles and I rarely see eye-to-eye on things though but most of our disagreements are over the notability of record labels. I firmly believe they're companies and are not expressly exempt under music related SNG, therefore should be held to NCORP, but they believe record labels articles should be permitted to remain with unnecessarily low bar. Yes absolutely, journalistic equivalent of NYT is expected for record labels, like any other articles subject to NCORP. Graywalls (talk) 02:44, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

This is not about record labels. You are correct that NCORP applies, but that's not relevant here.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:20, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

3family6, you keep bringing up HM and USEBYOTHERS as if it's a slam dunk case, but I don't think it is. When niche sources share authors with and are cited by similar niche sources, that's not evidence that they're reliable—it simply means that they've created a walled garden. You compared HM to No Clean Singing and MetalSucks above, but No Clean Singing has more than 3x the number of Facebook followers, and MetalSucks has 25x as many. Before this discussion, I'd never heard of Indie Vision Music or HM, and I've been listening to metal for more than 3 decades. (Not to personalize this discussion too much, but after checking your User page, longer than you've been alive!) I'd even consider No Clean Singing to be pretty insignificant as far as sources go. It's also a niche source, but not as niche as "metal but ALSO Christian". Woodroar (talk) 16:35, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Those might be something that might belong to the same web ring in the pre-Facebook days. Graywalls (talk) 16:43, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

USEBYOTHERS isn't necessarily a slam dunk. My objection to Graywalls was because I had the impression of them blanket dismissing that usage rather than engaging in the examples given. Yes, DailyMail is used by others, but it also has a mixed reputation and demonstrated consistent issues with bias and inaccuracies. Such a poor reputation hasn't been demonstrated in the case of IVM - that an editor doing undisclosed paid editing also used a source that was deemed accepted prior to them joining Wikipedia doesn't disqualify a source.

Now, as to the sources used, HM was just one of several references - there's also the less niche CCM Magazine and Cross Rhythms, as well as the Manteca Bulletin, and a reference in [Arrow] Lords of Metal (might still be niche, but isn't the Christian metal niche). I find it a bit interesting that the heavy metal reviews/coverage is the majority of the examples I could find, as IVM is more of an indie music site than specifically metal.

Regarding HM, it probably was a lot more significant before I was born and when I was a very small child, when Stryper was still big and a mainstream act. The publication does regularly interview mainstream artists such as Alice Cooper and Trans Siberian Orchestra. Still, yes, Christian metal is niche, apart from the big 2000s metalcore wave, and Christian extreme metal is so niche and online-based (apart from in some Nordic countries) that a recent book noted the fact of its obscurity to scholars. That HM is for a more niche market doesn't make it less reliable, and a 2018 discussion at WikiProject albums agreed that it is reliable as well. My point with NCS (which discussion on this noticeboard concluded was unreliable - I have changed my mind and agreed with that assessment, based on the evidence) and MetalSucks or numerous other RS is that they are structured the same way. I haven't really seen an argument that demonstrates how IVM is unreliable other than it being a more niche source than those. I wouldn't be as liberal as Chubbles, perhaps, in assessing sources, but I don't see why unreliability is being presumed outside of the issue with how the source was used in COI ways on some select articles.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

This is a hypothetical example of where USEBYOTHERS justification would be inappropriate. The vlog referenced is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eFIaubn24E That video was a tip that to the story in a WP:RS source Bon Appetit https://www.bonappetit.com/story/best-vodka-taste-test. If we go along with 3family6's idea of application, we'd consider Meagan After Dark YouTube an acceptable source, because some of their content was used by Bob Appetit. I'd say citing IVM directly would be along the line of citing that MAD vlog directly. Graywalls (talk) 01:48, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Context is important. As the heading on this page says. This discussion should be in the context of particular claims / types of claims that it is supporting and whether it is suitable to support those claim/uses. North8000 (talk) 15:33, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I've realized that this would have helped. The uses of this source are primarily for music journalism - news reporting about bands, music reviews, and retrospectives/music history.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 15:53, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a start. But we should take a look at the structure of this conversation. Graywalls is seemingly arguing for blanket exclusion of this source. My thought is that is unlikely, and in any case, per the heading of this page, this would not be the place for it. The heading of this page says to include the specific article and text which it is supporting. Maybe a good start would be to give a specific example. North8000 (talk) 16:10, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I'll give some examples. Thank you.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 16:19, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

North8000, these are the ways I've either used it myself or have seen it used:

1. To verify band membership and releases by bands
2. Interviews
3. Album/song reviews and criticism, including supporting factual BLP claims (who is/was in the band or on the album, for example)
4. Music history (I'm currently working on an article in my sandbox that I've used it for this, such as this and this example.
5. Hypothetically, it could be used as a primary source for music released on its record label. I haven't encountered that usage on Wikipedia yet, but it might be out there.

With usage No. 1, what I think prompted all this, is Graywalls noticed that Metalworker14 (now banned for UPE) had included articles related to and including Symphony of Heaven, and some other articles, that were written by Mason Beard from Symphony of Heaven and some other bands. Beard was/is working for a promotional company as well. Thus in those cases, citing that author, and possibly IVM in general, is definitely COI, even though Beard hasn't written for IVM since 2017 and didn't join Symphony of Heaven until 2018.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

IMO #1 is fine if the veracity in the info isn't doubted. #2 isn't a use, it a type of source/source content. #3 looks good for uncontroversial factual claims. I don't know enough about the site to comment on #3 regarding reviews/criticism. #4 IMO looks good for uncontroversial factual history. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

#2 I should have been more specific. Use as a source of critical opinion and discussing and categorizing musical style of artists, and of making factual claims about artists and band members.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 20:41, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

1. Critical opinion of some non-professionally trained band member author from some random highly non-notable run of the mill vanity band is severely UNDUE for inclusion in any capacity at all. Graywalls (talk) 23:57, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

I could see, and might endorse, not using that specific author.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 00:07, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm still getting the impression that it's just one man webmaster, and contributors deal, so along the line of user submitted moderated blog who makes the host/don't host decision. It says at https://www.indievisionmusic.com/contactus/ they got rid of their PO box. Actually it doesn't even look like they even had a proper office. There's no indication it's more than a label name, a webmaster, and contributors and I see no indication of it being a proper publisher. Graywalls (talk) 16:25, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

The group blog/webmaster-contributors argument could be argued with many of the RS on WP:A/S - do you want to open a discussion about those?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:36, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Any consensus reached there is a local consensus and wouldn't override the broader consensus that would form here. Graywalls (talk) 18:56, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Some of those have had consensus from here. Again, do you want to open up a broader discussion about any websites which do not have an entity as the publisher separate from the site itself?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 19:04, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

There is, coincidentally, actually one such discussion open right now. Alpha3031 (t • c) 00:39, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh yes, I discovered that. I commented in a couple spots, regarding that question.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 00:49, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Graywalls, if you're interested, I asked over at the Grey Literature RfC about this issue of websites published by one or two individuals.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:32, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Indie Vision Music

Is Indie Vision Music - Contact/staff - Contact/staff from 2006-2020 a generally reliable source for music-related journalism?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:49, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Indie Vision Music has been used as a reliable source for Christian music articles since this 2013 talk discussion, At the time, Indie Vision Music had a Wikipedia article, which then was later deleted - something I supported, but in that discussion I mentioned that I deemed it reliable, just not notable. Graywalls is unsure of the reliability of the site. It is used by other RS, such as Cross Rhythms (this - 2015, this - 2018, and this - 2018 as examples; this from 2016 is about the record label operated by the media outlet, but it explicitly calls the site "well regarded"), The Phantom Tollbooth - 2005, Manteca Bulletin (here, 2010), Arrow Lords of Metal - 2022, referencing a 2013 interview article and HM (here in 2013, here in 2013, here in 2022). I've excluded reprints of press releases for these examples. Cross Rhythms and HM are among the most reputable and well-known sources for Christian music, the latter being the prime journalism outlet regarding Christian hard rock and metal music. The site founder, Brandon Jones, and another writer, Lloyd Harp, both also write for HM as well (Jones since 2017 and Harp since at least 2007) and thus have credentials outside IVM. There are multiple writers for the site besides those two individuals. It seems to function similar to other sites deemed RS, such as MetalSucks, Chronicles of Chaos, Metal Injection, Stylus Magazine, and other online-only publications.

The concern from other some editors is that the site operates similar to Forbes contributors and is thus unreliable. Though there are multiple staff writers, especially over the past two decades, Brandon lists himself for contact and doesn't list the writers. There also is a case where one former writer contributed some articles about bands that he was personally involved in or was a member of. Also in the above discussions, there's a concern that the website is very niche and so interested in promoting niches zines that secondary coverage independent from the artists is not a concern.

I'm seeing 5 options, which I've listed below:

• Option 1: Yes, generally reliable for use as a source of critical opinion and discussing and categorizing musical style of artists, and of making factual claims about artists and band members, as well as interviews. Any coverage of the site regarding artists from its own label, or from authors who are members of or otherwise closely affiliated with the artist they are discussing, are only reliable as primary sources as they otherwise have conflict of interest.
• Option 1b: Generally reliable as articulated above, except for any coverage from author Mason Beard.
• Option 2: Generally unreliable for any secondary coverage, reliable for interviews.
• Option 3: Reliable for critical opinion, discussion, and categorizing musical style, but not reliable for any statements of fact about living persons.
• Option 4: Only coverage by Brandon Jones from 2017 onward, or from Lloyd Harp, is reliable.

--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 18:50, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

• Invalid RfC but, while I'm here, Unreliable for everything. Indie Vision Music is an extremely niche self-published fanzine, with USEBYOTHERS limited to other extremely niche fanzines. The complaint that only 3 or 4 sources in a walled garden cover these subjects is evidence that these sources are in the extreme minority and UNDUE. Meanwhile, the "similar" RS sites mentioned above are orders of magnitude larger and are themselves widely cited by actually reputable sources outside their niche subject. Besides that, the given options for this RfC only appear to include the opinions of editors who were repeatedly canvassed to the above discussion, and largely ignore editors who weren't canvassed. Woodroar (talk) 19:23, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Almost everything you claim here is untrue. "Unreliable for everything" is an option. If your objection is that I excluded interviews, interviews are considered primary sources and thus the site can't be unreliable for that usage, per guidelines on primary sources. I also specifically mentioned yours and other editors concerns above about it being a niche source that that caters to fans and thus can't be regarded as being factually accurate or good for notability. And lastly, Lords of Metal is a Netherlands based general metal music website completely unrelated to the Christian scene as far as I've been able to tell over the years; Manteca Bulletin is a newspaper of record dating back to 1908, so definitely not a nice Christian music scene source; and Cross Rhythms is a long-standing UK-based publication that also was print-based, deals with the whole gamut of Christian music including artists like Natasha Bedingfield and classical musicians, and the site runners and editors are separate from the overarching company that publishes the site (if that was also a concern). If you think IVM is unreliable, that's fine, but you shouldn't need to then make false statements to justify that.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 19:58, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

A newspaper of record is many orders of magnitude larger than anything we're discussing here. The New York Times, The LA Times, The Washington Post, those are newspapers of record. These are much smaller, regional publications that are as good as fanzines in that they cover everything that is happening locally, typically in a positive, promotional fashion. That Manteca Bulletin article could easily be a template for any "Local Boy Band Makes Good" story. Interviews at these types of outlets are just as bad. They're like a talk show, asking softball questions, letting the subject promote whatever they want or get out their talking points. We're an encyclopedia. We shouldn't be relying on these kinds of sources. Woodroar (talk) 22:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The article lead described it as a newspaper of record, which is why I referred to it as such. However, the description section describes it as a community newspaper, which seems more accurate. However, they definitely are an RS, and even if it's a local paper, your "walled garden" claim of only niche sources referencing IVM is still demonstrably false.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 22:44, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Echoing Woodroar here. Graywalls (talk) 01:30, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Graywalls, you've brought up WP:FORBESCON, which I think is one of the most relevant hypotheticals you've posed. Presuming it is such a situation where the editorial oversight is minimal, Options 2, 3, and 4 are all consistent with that, dependent on what level of expertise we're presuming of the contributors. While Woodroar might not have heard of HM and Doug Van Pelt, the 110,000 print and over 2 million online subscribers to Christianity Today have had multiple opportunities over the years to have heard, and that's just one publication of many which have talked about or referenced HM. There's also academic coverage of that publication. I can provide examples if requested, but a quick Google search should confirm what I've stated here. Given that, why would you still lean to complete exclusion (Option 2) rather than Options 3 or 4?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:51, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• I did find this example from 2007 of a former writer for IVM (2005-2011) had started writing for the site when he was in high school. So the professionalism of the writers definitely seems to vary.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:30, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Al-Manar

What is the reliability of Al-Manar?

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

- Amigao (talk) 03:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Previous discussion, per WP:RFCBEFORE. The Kip ^(contribs) 03:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

LinkSearch results Sean.hoyland (talk) 10:30, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Al-Manar)

• Option 3, per comments from Amigao, Alaexis, and BobFromBrockley in the prior thread. It seems to be a comparable propaganda/disinfo outlet to Al Mayadeen, which we deprecated several months ago, but with a handful of instances (i.e. the soccer player info brought up by Chess, or WP:ABOUTSELF reasons) where it may be somewhat appropriate to use. The Kip ^(contribs) 03:16, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  If and only if this ends up option 2, which would be problematic in itself, the RSP entry should make a clear distinction between justified usage (ex. non-controversial events in Lebanese life and society) and problematic usage (ex. conflicts that Hezbollah is a direct party to (Arab-Israeli, Syrian civil war), etc). That should be the absolute baseline, considering newer precedents set with the Jewish Chronicle and other sources that have some valid uses but are systemically unreliable with regards to the conflict. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:52, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Many of the comments from Amigao, Alaexis, and BobFromBrockley in the prior thread have been rebutted as misrepresenting Al-Manar. I encourage users to click through the links and see for themselves.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Having clicked through the links, I continue to endorse my position and disagree with the rebuttals' rationale. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Would also like to emphasize the verbatim re-reporting of articles from RT and TASS, both GUNREL/deprecated sources, that's been pointed out below. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:30, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 per The Kip. ~ HAL333 05:12, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. I'd pick 3 for pretty much anything relating to conflicts in the Middle East or other contentious issues. But things happen in Lebanon other than war. Al-Manar's Arabic section has a decent amount of information on uncontroversial aspects of Lebanese society. I would like to see more evidence about how Al-Manar is used to support false claims onwiki before a full GUNREL !vote. Right now, GUNREL means blanket removal for a lot of people. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 05:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Option 4 - it's very blatant propaganda. The English content is also just quite sloppy and amateurish. Just glancing at a few front page articles,

• [57] the Hitler of our time, Benjamin Netanyahu
• [58] the Zionist invaders are incapable of facing men of God directly (in their own voice, not marked as opinion or anything)
• [59] Israeli police will question Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff over blackmailing of an Israeli occupation officer - implies wrongdoing (maybe unintentional from a bad translation?), never mentioning that this was ruled out by a police investigation
• Regularly accuses "Zionist media" of lies with no details, e.g. this vague accusation of a "fabricated report" by Maariv.

There's just a complete lack of professionalism; RT is better in many ways. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 06:01, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

[75] no comment (I don't want to violate BLP).

[76] nothing wrong with an opinion that is shared by hundreds of millions. Yes, in their own voice (it's not Wikipedia).

[77] the usual news reporting (nothing wrong with that either).

Regularly accuses "Zionist media" of lies So? it's not like the Zionists don't have a very long history of lying. M.Bitton (talk) 13:47, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Such statements of fact in their own voice demonstrate zero regard for journalistic objectivity.
• Reliable sources will not imply wrongdoing based on allegations (again it might be a sloppy translation, but either is bad), and will correct false accusations when someone is cleared by an investigation.
• "the Zionists" is not an entity; Maariv is an entity and a fairly reputable newspaper. But the point is that reliable sources will offer some kind of substantiation when making serious accusations. Here it's not even clear what exactly they're claiming is fabrication.

— xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 16:00, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

They don't need to be pretend to be objective when describing those who are exterminating their people (with the help of those who pretend to be neutral).

So called reliable sources such as the NYT, literally fabricated a story to help Israel. By you standard, we should deprecate NYT. M.Bitton (talk) 16:05, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

@XDanielx, The Times of Israel frequently calls Hamas members as "terrorists"[60], a subjective term, so I'm not sure why its unprofessional for Al-Manar to refer to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon as "Zionist invaders"? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:04, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

I was more getting at incapable of facing men of God directly. Professional news orgs will have at least some modicum of journalistic objectivity and would never write such things in their own voice. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 18:04, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 per Chess. Obviously should not be used anywhere near I/P, but may be marginally reliable for things in Lebanon outside of that. PARAKANYAA (talk) 08:45, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3. I believe they are generally unreliable, due to multiple examples of disinformation, misinformation, propaganda, antisemitism, and conspiracy theories. Comparable sources might be as The Cradle, al-Mayadeen and IRNA, all of which I believe are designated gunrel. Option 2 might be worth considering, if phrased stringently, as the source might be usable for some uncontroversial facts about e.g. Lebanese sport or the statements of Hezbollah and Hezbollah-aligned politicians, but presumably (a) those could be sourced from better places (Lebanon has some decent free press) and (b) might be permissable uses of an unreliable source anyway. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:29, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 per Chess. I don't see anything that would justify option 3 (if the word "generally" has changed meaning recently, then we need discuss the so called "reliable sources" that have been caught misrepresenting the events, or worse, fabricated stories, such as the NYT). M.Bitton (talk) 13:06, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Comment. I want to point out that, with the exception of Al-Jazeera, pretty much every source listed at WP:RSP from the Arab world and Muslim world is listed as GUNREL or MREL. We really need to check our WP:Systematic bias.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 18:03, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  I believe there is more to it than systematic bias. M.Bitton (talk) 18:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  The nature of RSPN means we're much more likely to discuss crap sources than good ones. And given many if not most governments in the Arab/Muslim world are not fond of freedom of the press, it should be no surprise that most entries here lean on the unreliable side. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:47, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Is that right? Mada Masr? Lebanon Daily Star? L'Orient-Le Jour? The New Arab/Al-Araby Al-Jadeed? The National (Abu Dhabi)? Asharq al-Awsat? BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:39, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  None of those are on RSP, which is what VR said. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:05, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  I think this is a point against systematic bias against A/M reliable sources. RSP is a bunch of planes with holes in them, some of which made it out to be considered reliable for another day. If A/M sources were being regularly, unfairly challenged, there would be more green entries. Safrolic (talk) 23:10, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  I disagree in that I think it says something that every time we have brought a non-Israeli middle eastern source to RSP it has been declared MREL or GUNREL, except Al Jazeera, which had an extremely large contingent of editors wanting to declare them GUNREL. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:08, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry I misread. My point is several Arab sources which are heavily used on Wikipedia have not been designated unreliable, undermining the argument for systematic bias. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:06, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  These all appear to be Western-aligned and/or liberal newspapers, some with serious financial COIs. I do agree that it's a bit imprecise to say Wikipedia's systemic bias is against Arab/Muslim sources as a whole, but the fact that many of the Arab/Muslim sources considered reliable are funded by and/or supportive of Western aligned MENA oil and real estate interests is illustrative of exactly the systemic bias problem that @Vice regent points out. The systematic downgrading of sources critical of Western and Western-aligned perspectives makes Wikipedia more biased and unreliable, and less legitimate to a non-Western audience. Even if the camp of pro-Western sources is broadly more reliable than Russian or Chinese or Iran-aligned sources, excluding the reporting and viewpoint of those sources extensively makes Wikipedia blind when pro-Western sources lie or make an error, which they often do because all media does. Unbandito (talk) 18:17, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 per above. Despite people throwing links in the section below it hard to find evidence of systematic disinformation in the past 20 years. Reporting that Putin said X (in quotes) doesn't constitute disinformation. Being biased against certain Lebanese politicians (most RS have a certain partisan bias) doesn't make it unreliable. VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 18:07, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 per BobFromBrockley pretty much word-for-word. That is, some form of option 2 could be viable if very stringent, but the list of topics for which this source is generally unreliable would probably be too long to be manageable.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:41, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Idk what number it would be, but I would only use it for something internal Lebanese and non-controversial or for attributed views to Hezbollah's media outlet. Either 2 or 3, whichever fits that statement best. nableezy - 23:37, 15 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 based on the comments from BobFromBrockley and Amigao. There appear to be many instances of sharing disinformation, including from clearly unreliable sources like RT. Plus the fact that it is banned in many countries. Alenoach (talk) 09:34, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  Al-Jazeera is also banned in many countries. Politicians shouldn't get to decide what is or is not reliable.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:06, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3 per Bobfromblockley Andre🚐 00:00, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4 I don't see how this is better than Al Mayadeen or RT. Bitspectator ⛩️ 01:05, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2, where the "additional considerations" include not presenting its assertions related to the conflict as factual in wikivoice. Zero^talk 04:45, 17 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2-3 based on Chess and others. Should not be used around I/P topic area. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:59, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 (4 for I/P and Jews only) based on the arguments presented, specifically regarding the spread of misinformation/disinformation and hateful conspiracy theories. I think some use as aboutself/for national politics per Chess and co may be a reasonable exception. Use in regards to Israel and Jews (very broadly construed) should be completely avoided. FortunateSons (talk) 10:53, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3, per above. --NAADAAN (talk) 20:18, 22 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 3 per BobFromBrockley. My very best wishes (talk) 16:35, 25 November 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 for non-controversial issues such as Lebanese football or basic, uncontested details about the news, as well as attributed statements from organizations that align with its bias such as Hezbollah or the IRGC. Option 2 for more controversial subjects, statements by organizations that tilt against its bias, or anything disputed by other sources. In my reading of the discussion section, editors have given evidence that Al-Manar is biased and at times prone to questionable editorial decisions, but I have not seen evidence of systemic unreliability, much less evidence of a detrimental impact of such unreliability on-wiki. Special considerations bordering on Option 3 should be given to any extraordinary claims, and republished content from other sources should be cited at the original source rather than at Al-Manar unless the original source is paywalled or otherwise inaccessible. Unbandito (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4, deprecate per M.bitton comments. Highly unreliable, beyond unreliable though as it is a deliberate and intentional arm of propaganda. That is the classic case of where deprecation is appropriate. Iljhgtn (talk) 02:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2: Per Chess. GrabUp - Talk 19:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion (Al-Manar)

• almanar.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
• Comment: Bias and inflamed rhetoric against Israel is NOT a valid reason for !voting options 3/4. Reporting that Israelis evacuated the Twin Towers on 9/11 IS a good reason for !voting options 3/4. I'll post some other examples of misinformation and unreliability here later, in addition to the ones in the discussion further up this page. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:32, 15 November 2024 (UTC) Here's an example:
  • Schafer, Bret (30 May 2024). "The Russian Propaganda Nesting Doll: How RT is Layered Into the Digital Information Environment". GMFUS. Retrieved 15 November 2024.: we discovered RT content on Al Manar TV, a site owned and operated by Hezbollah. Though not technically a state-backed media outlet, Al Manar is a mouthpiece for a major political and geopolitical player in the Middle East, and thus exists as a politically backed, if not state-backed, channel... We found eight occurrences of RT content reposed to Al Manar, but a manual review of content tagged with “Russia” or “Ukraine” on Al Manar’s website revealed that those articles are sourced primarily, if not exclusively, from RT, Sputnik News, and Tass, all of which are Russian state-controlled outlets. Oddly, many other articles were attributed to “Agencies”, though those too appeared to be sourced from Tass. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:32, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

    Are you suggesting we treat a claim from a US based source as a fact? M.Bitton (talk) 14:41, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

    It depends on what the content they reposted from RT was. Did Al-Manar quote the RT (or Sputnik) for uncontroversial sports news? Or for official statements of Putin? I don't see that as much of a problem.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:53, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

    The source says at least some of the content is about Ukraine, so I think that counts as controversial. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:35, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  That claim was made by Al-Manar some 20 years ago (shortly after 9/11). Do you have more recent examples of disinformation? VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:51, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

A UK-based source, also a partisan thinktank so pinch of salt, but a highly respected thinktank:

• "If You Can't Make It, Fake It: The Age of Invented News". Royal United Services Institute. 4 September 2012. Retrieved 15 November 2024.: Al-Alam and Al-Manar, two Arabic-language television channels owned by Iran and its regional allies, frequently lead with stories which have never happened. BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

A partisan source (in the middle of ongoing war) means propaganda (that they are welcome to feed to their kids). M.Bitton (talk) 14:52, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Can you offer any concrete evidence that the statement above by the Royal United Services Institute was factually inaccurate? - Amigao (talk) 19:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Skimming it, I don't see any concrete evidence in the article itself to support the claim. Do you? It appears the author is relying on the reader's implicit bias that "inventing news is the norm rather than the exception" in Arabic language media and guilt by association with Iran as evidence of the claim. I don't see any examples of debunked or falsified stories. Unbandito (talk) 23:56, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

RUSI's statement was a fair one. A more recent example would be Al-Manar's story stating that the Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine "officially tops efficacy and safety" standards without anything else backing it up. - Amigao (talk) 22:26, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

Al-Manar's story ... That's a factually incorrect claim! It's not their story, it's clearly attributed to Sputnik. M.Bitton (talk) 22:38, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

So they are re-publishing COVID-19 disinformation from an unreliable and deprecated source like WP:SPUTNIK. That does not exactly help the reliability of Al-Manar, at least for the purposes of an RfC. Also, here is a March 2022 Al-Manar article that spreads a version of the Ukraine bioweapons conspiracy theory with bat coronavirus thrown into the mix. - Amigao (talk) 04:59, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

First things first: you misrepresented a source.

Second, they can re-publish anything they want, and so long as they attribute it to the original source, it has zero (as in none whatsoever) effect on their reliability.

Third, you're doing it again: the above source is attributed to the chief spokesman for the The Russian Defense Ministry.

I have no idea why you're doing this, but it certainly doesn't look good (to be honest, it' quite worrying). M.Bitton (talk) 05:39, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Re-publishing known vaccine disinformation narratives from WP:DEPRECATED sources has quite a lot to do with a source's editorial judgment and overall reliability for the purposes of an RfC. - Amigao (talk) 05:57, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Misrepresenting the sources, like you keep doing, is what makes a source unreliable. M.Bitton (talk) 12:45, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

It's not necessarily unusual or a sign of poor editorial judgment for a source to cite a deprecated source. Just this morning, I read this article from the FT, which says: Separately his deputy, Brigadier General Ali Fadavi, told Al Mayadeen, a Lebanese television channel close to Iran, that a response would be “inevitable”. In more than 40 years, “we have not left any aggression without a response”, he said. Reliable sources often need to cover what biased or unreliable sources are saying in order to tell the full story. The fact that this guilt by association tactic of "citing an unreliable source = unreliable", which has been used on the RSN to knock sources down like dominoes, isn't even accepted as an actual journalistic standard shows that it's just silly politicking. Unbandito (talk) 14:19, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Citing a quote from deprecated source, as the FT example does, is quite different from directly re-publishing a deprecated source article verbatim, as Al-Manar frequently does. - Amigao (talk) 15:47, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

You're being extremely disingenuous. You misrepresented the sources (clearly to push a POV), so do yourself a big favour and give this a break. M.Bitton (talk) 15:57, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Here is an even more recent 2023 Al-Manar article that directly re-publishes the same WP:SPUTNIK piece. - Amigao (talk) 16:21, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

... and attributes it to them. I'm starting to question your motives. M.Bitton (talk) 16:26, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

Re-publishing unreliable sources that the community has long WP:DEPRECATED with attribution does not somehow make a source more reliable for the purposes of an RfC. - Amigao (talk) 00:12, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you honestly believe that the real world cares about some irrelevant WP RfC or the "community" (a handful of editors)? You seem to have forgotten one very important rule: we don't lead, we follow. M.Bitton (talk) 00:18, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Today Al-Manar has an article on Ukraine verbatim directly copied (with attribution at the bottom) from Tass, a red flag source for us. BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:38, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Good you can read Amigao’s mind to understand the motivation for his arguments here. But Amigao is correct that translating and reposting an article (as Jerusalem Post does of Walla, as noted in the discussion above, or as Al-Manar) is completely different than citing an article and attributing a claim to it. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:42, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

When someone keeps misrepresenting the sources (again and again), then I will rightly assume disingenuousness. 22:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC) M.Bitton (talk) 22:02, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

That's a fair point that quoting and republishing a source are two different things. However, I would still question why we should take republishing another source as an indication of one source's reliability. We wouldn't typically use republished content on Wikipedia, except perhaps in the case of a paywall on the original source, so it seems unnecessary to me to judge source reliability based on their republications. And we wouldn't make this judgment in the other direction, for example if Al-Manar republished a story from the AP, we wouldn't take that as an indication that they are reliable. If Al-Manar is merely a content aggregator then I suppose we shouldn't use it, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What evidence do we have of the reliability or unreliability of Al-Manar's original reporting? Unbandito (talk) 01:32, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Furthermore, here is a prime example of misrepresentation of sourcing by Al-Manar: Al-Manar claims this article was sourced from Reuters but the article was actually sourced from this one at WP:RT.COM, another deprecated source. - Amigao (talk) 00:57, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I appreciate your hard work in continuing to analyze the source and build a stronger critique of it. I can't find the Reuters article that Al-Manar claims to have sourced that content from (not to say it doesn't exist, I just can't find it) so that's concerning. However, the Al-Manar article has more material than the RT article, which means at least some of the material must come from a different source. I can't read Arabic outside of the use of translation tools so it's possible that I am missing some nuance here, but the overlapping aspects of the article such as Lukashenko's statement in an interview with Sky News Arabia are not identically phrased (except for the quote itself) as one might expect if the material were republished from RT. So while the Reuters article in question appears to be missing right now, I find the evidence that the article was in fact republished from RT to be insufficient. Even if it were, it's not clear that the information published by RT and allegedly republished by Al-Manar in this case is unreliable, and the material that might be republished is just a quote from a Sky News Arabia interview, so hardly a reflection on either of the sources' reliability. Unbandito (talk) 23:54, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Al-Manar's article does not have more text in the body than the WP:RT.COM article. They are the same, but Al-Manar claims that it sourced the content from Reuters, which is clearly not the case. Here is the Al-Manar version and the RT version via Internet Archive links for ease of comparison. (Interestingly, Al-Manar does not appear to source other articles from Reuters.) - Amigao (talk) 18:46, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

That's my bad, you're right that the articles are the same, except that the syntax of the line about the quote from the Sky News interview appears to be slightly altered. The "read more" box inside the RT article interfered with my efforts to translate and threw me off.

That being said, I don't see how this is evidence of systematic unreliability on the part of Al-Manar. If you could demonstrate a pattern of passing off the original reporting of unreliable sources as if they came from reliable sources like Reuters, I would find that more convincing. Unbandito (talk) 01:59, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Another common tactic Al-Manar uses to obfuscate its sourcing is to claim to source from unspecified "agencies" when, in fact, it is copying article text verbatim from Russian state media such as WP:TASS. For example:

• Al-Manar article - original TASS article
• Al-Manar article - original TASS article

Amigao (talk) 21:10, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

French-based Reporters Without Borders criticised its terrorist designation in 2004, but noted its antisemitism.

• "Dangerous precedent seen in decision to put Al-Manar on list of terror organisations". RSF. 20 December 2004. Retrieved 15 November 2024. "Some of the anti-Semitic statements broadcast on Al-Manar are inexcusable but putting this TV station in the same category as terrorist groups worries us and does not strike us as the best solution" BobFromBrockley (talk) 14:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

That doesn't make it unreliable. M.Bitton (talk) 15:01, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Once again, more than 20 years ago. Also see weaponization of antisemitism.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Are you accusing RWB of weaponising antisemitism? Why would they want to? BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:08, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

• EUvsDisinfo has cited Al-Manar at least 14 times (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14) for spreading disinformation. Some are re-publications of articles from deprecated sources such as WP:SPUTNIK and WP:RT.COM, and include claims such as conspiracy theories about the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine leading to Alzheimer's disease. - Amigao (talk) 15:48, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  A pro NATO source criticising Russia and anyone who doesn't consider NATO's word as the absolute truth. What a surprise. M.Bitton (talk) 15:59, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  I looked at some (not all) of the links. Every single one is simply reporting what Russian or Syrian officials said, and attributing it directly to them. It is the job of journalists to quote officials' statement no matter how unsavory they may be (and many of these statements are quoted in Western RS themselves).VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 17:58, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Vice regent: while this discussion is talking place, Bobfrombrockley is busy adding whatever garbage they can find to the "Al-Manar" article. M.Bitton (talk) 18:27, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  It is very offensive to call another editors’ edits “garbage”. I would be grateful if other people could look at these edits too. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:39, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  That's what you've been collecting and adding while the discussion is taking place. That's not something I would expect from an experienced editor, least of all when another discussion involving sources misrepresentation is also taking place on the article's talk page. M.Bitton (talk) 00:43, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  @M.Bitton I must reiterate: The Kip ^(contribs) 00:52, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  Here is an Al-Manar article (sourced from WP:SPUTNIK and WP:DAILYMAIL, another deprecated source) that speaks about the COVID-19 lab leak theory as if it is a fact without any balance or qualification. Source: EUvsDisinfo - Amigao (talk) 19:52, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Mintz, John (22 December 2004). "U.S. Bans Al-Manar, Says TV Network Backs Terror". Washington Post. Retrieved 15 November 2024.: French officials prohibited the network from broadcasting in France, citing what it called al-Manar's anti-Semitic content and appeals to violence. French officials cited al-Manar programs reporting that Jews spread AIDS around the world and that they seek children's blood to bake into Passover matzoh. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:00, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  In France, you can bash the Arabs and the Muslims all day long (under the protection of the so-called freedom of speech and bla bla bla), and believe me when I say that they do (they will even honour you for doing so), but the moment your criticize Israel, you get accused of being antisemitic. M.Bitton (talk) 16:22, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  "Jews spread AIDS around the world and that they seek children's blood to bake into Passover matzoh" is NOT a "criticism of Israel". BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:39, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  I'm referring to clear theme (when citing the opinions of their enemies who are known for their double standard). In France, you can say about the Arabs and the Muslims and that's fine given that Arab and Muslim bashing is literally a sport. M.Bitton (talk) 16:42, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Yes, the French state is deeply racist and Islamophobic. That doesn't make it "reliable" to accuse the Jews of the blood libel. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  the French state is deeply racist and Islamophobic so why are paying attention to what it says? M.Bitton (talk) 17:46, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  I am paying attention to what the French Jewish community said. There are other sources for this too in the Al-Manar article. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:40, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  You mean the CRIF? M.Bitton (talk) 00:50, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  @Bobfrombrockley can you find Al-Manar articles in the past 20 years that say Jews use blood in Passover? That's clearly antisemitic, but please actually find such articles.VR _{(Please ping on reply)} 18:08, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  It was a TV series made by a Syrian company, which they screened. So not as straightforward as if they were claiming that in their own content (as they did with Israelis having foreknowledge of 9/11) but it shows you their editorial standards are incompatible with a reliable status. BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:28, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  They screened a Syrian TV series that some pro-Israel sources don't like. What's that got to do with their reliability as a source? M.Bitton (talk) 00:05, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  again, it is not “pro-Israel” to say the blood libel and the protocols of the elders of Zion are not the content carried by a reliable source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:41, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  It's a Syrian TV series that they screened, it's their right to do so. What's that got to do with their reliability as a source? M.Bitton (talk) 00:46, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

  Sigh. Yes it’s their right to screen something based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, but nonetheless the Protocols were a forgery so doing so indicates unreliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:10, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  That's a baseless claim that nobody can substantiate. What does a TV series (produced in Syria) have to do with al-Manar's reliability? M.Bitton (talk) 01:17, 17 November 2024 (UTC)

  I’m confused. It’s widely agreed that the Protocols were a forgery. Numerous RSs say two different series screened on Al-Manar in the 2000s (one Syrian, one Egyptian) were based on the Protocols. So maybe this isn’t a dealbreaker in terms of reliability; it seems that they did subsequently apologise after France banned the station. But I think it’s obvious that it is a data point in the unreliability column. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:50, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

  Who cares about the protocol and whether it is a forgery or a fact? It's a flipping TV series.

  it is a data point in the unreliability column that's another baseless claim that nobody can substantiate.

  I repeat the question that you ignored: what does a TV series (produced in Syria to boot) have to do with al-Manar's reliability? M.Bitton (talk) 22:07, 18 November 2024 (UTC)

  Was this TV Syrian TV series a drama or presented as factual? If a channel has broadcast a syndicated drama which contains blood libel and the allegation around AIDS, I feel all of its output needs to be looked at carefully in terms of reliability. Propaganda of this nature is a strong indicator of extreme antisemitic conspiracist views which may also be present in its factual output, even though no unreliable claim has technically been made. However, if it has broadcast a syndicated program presenting this as factual information then it becomes immediately unreliable for our purposes. If we aren't using the Daily Fail, and we can in good faith argue about the Telegraph's reliability based on them publishing a true story that was somewhat litter-tray adjacent, then there's no way we should be using a source that parrots blood libel.--Boynamedsue (talk) 06:47, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  Very well put, and good question, which the sources are vague about. It appears to be a docudrama, but Al-Manar initially seemed to think it was factual: Al-Manar’s program director, Nasser Akhdar, stressed that the series was “purely historical” and that it was based on some 250 sources written by Jews. The program covers the history of the Jews and the Zionists between 1812 and 1948, he said, and underlines the Jewish emigration to Palestine, the Balfour Declaration, and the European policies regarding this issue during that period. “It offers a clear image of what the Zionists have committed in the social, political, and ideological fields,” Akhdar said. “It is a voice against all those who wish to hide the truth.” He said US complaints were an attempt to “misguide public opinion,” adding that this was part of the US strategy of hegemony over the media to “cancel other people’s opinions.”[61] It might be a point in Al-Manar's favour that they later removed the show from their archive and said they erred in showing it and that they never saw it before they broadcast it (although I am not sure that's been reported by anyone other than Counterpunch, an unreliable source). BobFromBrockley (talk) 10:10, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  this was part of the US strategy of hegemony over the media to “cancel other people’s opinions.” it certainly looks that way.

  When the US complained to Lebanon over the series, Lebanese officials refused to interfere and one of them said:

  "The United States has a strange conception of freedom of expression... What would they say if we tried to interfere with the way Fox News portrays Arabs, Muslims or Palestinians?"

  — Lebanese official

  M.Bitton (talk) 13:40, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  If a channel has broadcast a syndicated drama which contains blood libel and the allegation around AIDS, I feel all of its output needs to be looked at carefully in terms of reliability I see, so channels in the west can distort history and portray the Muslims and Arabs as terrorists in their dramas, while hiding behind the cherished freedom of speech, but the rest of the word has to abide by some fictitious standard that only the west has the key to. Fascinating. M.Bitton (talk) 13:30, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  We deem Western sources that repeat racist conspiracy theories unreliable too (Boynamedsue mentioned the Daily Mail; we also rate the Lebanese minister's example, Fox News, as an unreliable source). I think there's a difference, though, between perpetrating stereotypes that are deep in a culture (as the majority of Western AND non-Western sources do) and repeating actual conspiracy theories such as Jews deliberately spread AIDS or Jews kill Christian children to harvest their blood for ritual purposes. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:01, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  No, we certainly don't judge the reliability of western sources based on the TV series and movies that they screen. M.Bitton (talk) 15:06, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

  If an Arab drama series portrayed a group of Israelis, or even Jews, as nefarious villains sabotaging a society, I agree that would be a pretty perfect analogy to what Western media does to Arabs, and I wouldn't say it had any effect on how we should evaluate news output. However, if a Western channel broadcast a drama that said, say, Arab Muslims worship Baphomet and train children to suicide bomb Jews as they believe (and the following is a deliberately offensive example) their inherent, irrational and motiveless antisemitism is more important than the lives of their children, then we would have a more precise analogy to the question of blood libel.

I am a strong opponent of Israel's aggression against Palestine and Lebanon, and I am disgusted by the despicable attempts by various ghouls to suggest that any mention of the IDF and West Bank Settlers' mass murder of children is equivalent to blood libel. However, blood libel is an incredibly serious thing. It is not hard to find out that Jews absolutely do not mix blood with flour to make special biscuits, or that this belief has had terrible consequences in the past. Anybody not prepared to make that little bit of effort will have, in my view, question marks over their reliability..Boynamedsue (talk) 18:35, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

if a Western channel broadcast a drama that said... Have you ever noticed that the TV series "Homeland" (based on an Israeli television drama) that was being screened all over the place is actually Islamophobic and Arabophobic? That's just an example; in fact, Islamophobia and Arabophobia have become so common in the western media (especially, in the last two decades) that one doesn't even notice them, i.e., they've become the acceptable norm.

What we have here is a clear case of double standard, where freedom of expression seems to only be acceptable when it comes from the west. Franky, it beggars belief that a country such as the US (the "champion of free speech") would try to censor a TV series in another country. M.Bitton (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I've never seen Homeland, so I don't know whether its level of Islamophobia would be equivalent to blood libel. But it is made by Fox 21, whose sister news network we DON'T USE for politics or science.Boynamedsue (talk) 21:00, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't matter who made it, it was screened everywhere and it received many awards. Like I said, that was just an example amongst the many. This all comes down to one thing and one simple choice: one either supports freedom of expression or one doesn't. M.Bitton (talk) 21:26, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Oh, I'll make this crystal clear. I absolutely do not support freedom of expression. I have used physical violence in the past to prevent nazis from freely expressing their views, and would do so again. However, even if I believed in freedom of expression, freedom to express your views is not freedom to be accepted as a reliable source on wikipedia. Have a look at WP:RS for the criteria which apply.--Boynamedsue (talk) 21:35, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I will make this crystal clear: the reliability of a source doesn't depend on what TV series it screens (WP:RS doesn't say otherwise). M.Bitton (talk) 21:41, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

I think the current relevance of this sort of content comes through when you look at how they report Israeli "organ harvesting", mixing reliable and unreliable sources and misrepresenting both to shape a narrative echoing the Protocols, or how they describe settlers engaged in "Talmudic rituals" at al-Aqsa to describe something that isn't actually Talmudic but again fits an antisemitic narrative (in contrast, e.g., to Al-Jazeera who use quote marks when reporting this). BobFromBrockley (talk) 18:44, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• "LEBANON: Did Tunisia's tyrant buy off Hezbollah TV?". Los Angeles Times. 24 May 2011. Retrieved 15 November 2024. Hezbollah’s Al-Manar television was allegedly paid $100,000 to polish up the image of deposed Tunisian dictator Zine el Abidine ben Ali... The newspaper said Al-Manar, which used to receive $150,000 a year to support the Ben Ali regime, asked for an extra $50,000 annually if ACTE wished to raise the profile of the ruler, who now resides in Jeddah with his wife. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:38, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  allegedly no need to read further than this. M.Bitton (talk) 16:44, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

• Cochrane, Paul (7 March 2007). "Bombs and broadcasts: Al Manar's battle to stay on air". Arab Media & Society. Retrieved 15 November 2024.: France banned the channel following complaints by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France to the French Higher Audio Visual Council (CSA) that scenes in a 30 part Syrian-made series, Al-Shatat (The Diaspora), aired during Ramadan 2003, were anti-Semitic. The show, which claimed to depict the history of the Zionist movement, stoked widespread condemnation by portraying the killing of a Christian child by Jews to use the victim's blood to make matzoh bread. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:45, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  I already told you: unbelievable as it sounds, in France, you can bash the Arabs and the Muslims all day long and make up any story about them (under the protection of the so-called "freedom of speech"), but the moment you say anything that is related to Israel, then your freedom of speech ceases to exist. M.Bitton (talk) 16:52, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Are you saying the show, Al-Shatat, did not portray Jews as child-killers, and that the French Jews are making this up? Because otherwise French racism and free speech ideas are not relevant to determining this Lebanese source's reliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:45, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Do you expect me to explain to you what "freedom of expression" is? They are free to show whatever they want. Arabs and Muslims are often portrayed as terrorists (when they're not portrayed as something worse) in the western media, and their history often falsified, yet, you don't see them crying and whinging about it. M.Bitton (talk) 17:48, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  @M.Bitton your tone throughout this discussion is verging heavily on WP:NOTFORUM/WP:BATTLEGROUND, I heavily encourage you to slow down a bit. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:54, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  @The Kip: Your targetted comment is verging on aspersions. M.Bitton (talk) 20:03, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

  Aside: our article on this series, Ash-Shatat, has been nominated for deletion, in case editors are interested in that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

• There's always heat in discussions of contentious topics, but even given that this sections is starting to go off topic. Discussions should be about the source in relation to policies and guidelines, how the source is described by other reliable sources, or matters relating to the handling of the RFC. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:24, 19 November 2024 (UTC)

Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973

On Phoenix Program we read "Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented." There was a talk page discussion over this and I feel one editor is WP:STONEWALLING and not being elaborate on why he seeks to keep this source. The citation is in wikivoice and attributed to Mark Woodruff in his book Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, 1961-1973. However, on page 64 of his book, he writes that "This American contribution to the Phung Hoang Program was officially born on December 20, 1967, under the operation name, "Phoenix," so that wikivoice citation in the article of him is obviously inaccurate. Also, the title ("Unheralded Victory: The Defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army") alone of the indicates the source is biased as it tries to claim that the U.S. actually won the Vietnam War were it not for political opposition to the war (see: Vietnam stab-in-the-back myth).

According to Woodruff's publisher, he "enlisted in the Marine Corps in July 1967, serving in Vietnam with Foxtrot Company, 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment from December 1967 to December 1968. After leaving the Marine Corps, he received his B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Pepperdine University in California. He is now a lieutenant commander in the Royal Australian Navy and a psychologist with the Vietnam Veterans Counseling Service in Perth, Australia." So he's a Vietnam veteran who later worked as a psychologist. It seems like his only notability on the topic is that he's a WP:PRIMARY source, being a Vietnam vet, and it doesn't appear that he has any credentials in writing about history.

Corroborating that Woodruff is an unreliable source, actual historians have been critical of Woodruff. For example, James H. Willbanks wrote that Woodruff's book "Seeks to provide a revisionist military history of the war and to demonstrate in his opinion that the war was won militarily before the United States unilaterally withdrew from the conflict. The author does not sufficiently address why the United States became involved in Southeast Asia in the first place." While, historian Christopher Levesque wrote in his doctoral dissertation that Woodruff made erroneous claims (p. 25) and "ignores the individual experiences of the majority of the soldiers who voluntarily spoke to reporters, participated in ad hoc war crimes hearings, or contacted their congressmen" (p. 26). In sum, I think it's quite obvious that Woodruff is clearly an unreliable source and should not be cited on Wikipedia, especially not in wikivoice but I would like to formalize this by establishing a consensus. Skornezy (talk) 06:35, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

It's clear this source shouldn't be cited. Remsense ‥ 论 06:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Putting aside the bad faith accusations of me WP:STONEWALLING and the general non-neutral wording of this request. I'll address the salient issues. Woodruff is the author of 2 books about the Vietnam War, the fact that he doesn't have a degree in military history or claim to be a military historian is no more relevant than for any other author of a military book. Rather we need to look at the quality of the source itself and what reviews it has received. Willbanks says it "Seeks to provide a revisionist military history of the war and to demonstrate in his opinion that the war was won militarily before the United States unilaterally withdrew from the conflict." that is absolutely true and reflects a commonly heard view that the US won the war militarily but lost politically. The critique that "The author does not sufficiently address why the United States became involved in Southeast Asia in the first place" is fair but irrelevant, the focus Woodruff chose for the book is the military defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army, not why the US became involved in Indochina, a huge topic addressed in numerous other books. Christopher J. Levesque has a Doctorate in History, but does not appear to be a published author and works as a university librarian, so is he a "historian"? Levesque's criticism of Woodruff's book centers around war crimes (the topic of Levesque's dissertation: NOT JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS: AVOIDING AND REPORTING ATROCITIES DURING THE VIETNAM WAR). Woodruff argues that US atrocities were not widespread in Vietnam, Levesque argues otherwise quoting sources like Nick Turse. This is a topic where a wide range of views exist. There were only a few proven massacres committed by the US, but plenty of accusations of other US massacres and war crimes. So Levesque's criticism of the book simply reflects that debate and is not sufficient to undermine the reliability of the entire book. FWIW the book has 4.5 stars from 52 reviews on Amazon. Perhaps historian @Ed Moise has a view? Mztourist (talk) 07:59, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Again, why is the fact that a book exists a testament of its reliability? Remsense ‥ 论 08:05, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

"Again"? When have I ever made that assertion? Mztourist (talk) 08:07, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense is right, both here and his inputs on the Phoenix Program talk page. Mztourist has not adequately explained why Woodruff should be considered a reliable source, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Just because Woodruff authored two books doesn't make him notable, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information, especially for people without zero relevant credentials like Woodruff. That actual historians consider his book "revisionist military history" (WP:FRINGE) that makes erroneous claims and ignores testimony that conflicts with his arguments confirms that he's not a reliable source. Levesque is a PhD and an adjunct instructor of history at Pensacola State College and the University of Charleston, yes, he's a historian, has been published in reliable sources on topics related to the U.S. military, and is infinitely more qualified to write on this topic than Woodruff. The fact that you have to resort to Amazon reviews of all things to try to assert that Woodruff is reliable, when he clearly isn't, just proves that you're grasping for straws (for the record, there are books that promote the Flat Earth conspiracy theory with 4.8 stars on Amazon). This shouldn't even have to be explained to you, you've been editing this website for nearly 15 years. You should have the WP:COMPETENCE to know when sources are reliable and unreliable. Skornezy (talk) 09:00, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Your argument seems to be that someone is a reliable source for historical claims by virtue of having written a history book, so I cannot come to any other conclusion. Remsense ‥ 论 09:03, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Your interpretation of my argument is incorrect. Meanwhile you haven't provided any cogent argument to support your assertion that "It's clear this source shouldn't be cited." Mztourist (talk) 09:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

You can buy 5 star Amazon reviews. You can also buy 1 star Amazon reviews to send to the competition. Polygnotus (talk) 09:16, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Exactly. Amazon reviews are not reliable sources and should never be used to assess sources. Skornezy (talk) 09:21, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Which is why I said "FWIW". You should have the WP:COMPETENCE to understand that. Mztourist (talk) 09:25, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Skornezy addressing your comments above about Woodruff, I have never claimed that he is notable. You say that he has "zero relevant credentials". Have you ever heard of Mark Bowden? He doesn't have a degree in history, nor claim to be a historian. So does that make Black Hawk Down (book) and his book about the Battle of Huế not reliable? That is your (and Remsense's) argument. Levesque hasn't written any books, he has 9 publications to his credit (4 book reviews and 5 articles) of which 3 book reviews and 2 articles relate to military issues, so hardly a heavyweight military historian. Meanwhile Willbanks describing his book as "revisionist military history" is not the same as it being WP:FRINGE as you assert. Mztourist (talk) 09:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

"I have never claimed that he is notable."

All the reason to not cite him.

"Have you ever heard of Mark Bowden?"

Bowden is a journalist, Woodruff is a random soldier that engages in erroneous claims and revisionism.

"Levesque hasn't written any books, he has 9 publications to his credit (4 book reviews and 5 articles) of which 3 book reviews and 2 articles relate to military issues, so hardly a heavyweight military historian."

So? He is still infinitely more qualified for his views on Vietnam than Woodruff.

"Meanwhile Willbanks describing his book as "revisionist military history" is not the same as it being WP:FRINGE as you assert."

Being revisionist means being in opposition to the consensus historiography. Coupled with the fact that Woodruff has zero qualifications, has been criticized by people with actual credentials, yes, he's WP:FRINGE and unreliable. Skornezy (talk) 10:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure how the "FWIW" qualifier makes any difference since Amazon reviews are completely unreliable. Skornezy (talk) 10:10, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Polygnotus Can I get your input on whether you think Woodruff is a reliable source? Skornezy (talk) 10:11, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Meh, I am not very bright. Polygnotus (talk) 10:37, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I put one sentence in about Amazon reviews and look at how much of your "rebuttal" focussed on that. An author doesn't need to be personally notable for their book to be reliable! Yes you just keep making the same assertions that Woodruff is an unqualified nobody. Revisionist is not the same as Fringe, you need to learn the difference. Meanwhile the foreword was written by General James L. Jones. Dale Dye wrote "Mark Woodruff's book is an inspired - and long overdue - re-examination..." Joseph L. Galloway wrote "Mark Woodruff's Unheralded Victory is a refreshing look at America's experience in Vietnam." Mztourist (talk) 10:14, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Three other figures with no relevant credentials as historians! Galloway comes the closest as a professional journalist, but it's pretty clear to me that Woodruff's work is not taken seriously by professional historians. Remsense ‥ 论 10:19, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Woodruff is not a notable author on Vietnam as he has zero qualifications; we don't just include the writings of random non-experts because WP:DUE. You're ignoring that and WP:STONEWALLING as you always do.

"Revisionist is not the same as Fringe, you need to learn the difference."

It has been explained to you many times why he is: the theories he promotes; his selective use of testimony; and the erroneous claims he makes.

"Meanwhile the foreword was written by General James L. Jones. Dale Dye wrote "Mark Woodruff's book is an inspired - and long overdue - re-examination..." Joseph L. Galloway wrote "Mark Woodruff's Unheralded Victory is a refreshing look at America's experience in Vietnam."

As Remsense has pointed out, none of those people have relevant credentials as historians. Jones is a U.S. military general who most recently served as President Obama's National Security Advisor; Dye is a military officer who advises Hollywood; and Galloway was a war correspondent during the Vietnam War. Skornezy (talk) 10:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

What it's worth is nothing at all. Remsense ‥ 论 10:19, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

So a 4 star Marine general, a Vietnam veteran and widely known expert on military matters (Dye) and the author of We Were Soldiers Once… and Young are each worthless compared to the views of the author of 3 book reviews and 2 articles related to military issues? Right. Mztourist (talk) 10:38, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Obviously, yes. I'm glad we're starting to understand each other. Remsense ‥ 论 10:40, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Obviously no. Meanwhile Skornezy I suggest you actually read WP:INDISCRIMINATE, because it doesn't say what you clearly think it says. Mztourist (talk) 10:43, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

My bad. The actual policy is WP:DUE. I corrected my mistake. Skornezy (talk) 10:49, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

But you were so certain of it...Mztourist (talk) 12:42, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

And I can say you're being certain about of a lot of incorrect things. Your quibbling is silly. Skornezy (talk) 12:50, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Also its not appropriate to correct your comment after someone has responded to it, you should have struck out WP:INDISCRIMINATE and replaced it with WP:DUE. But it obviously wasn't a simple mistake, you clearly thought that it said something different. Adopting DUE it is appropriate to keep Woodruff.Mztourist (talk) 12:54, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

"But it obviously wasn't a simple mistake, you clearly thought that it said something different."

You're not a mind reader.

You said it repeatedly, may I remind you of WP:COMPETENCE which you love throwing at me. Mztourist (talk) 13:07, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I incorrectly cited it one time when I meant to cite WP:DUE. My other citation of WP:INDISCRIMINATE is completely correct; we shouldn't include Woodruff just because he has written 2 books on the topic.

Why are you quibbling? Skornezy (talk) 13:36, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

"Adopting DUE it is appropriate to keep Woodruff."

No, it isn't. Not for the historical assertions he makes. Skornezy (talk) 12:57, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes it is it just has to say "according to Mark Woodruff" Mztourist (talk) 13:07, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

No, because we say "according to" even for established academics when it comes to certain analyses, which Mark Woodruff is certainly not. Woodruff is unreliable for facts on Vietnam, attributed or not. We can use him for his attributed opinions, not for the facts he states. Skornezy (talk) 13:22, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

No, because he's not a reliable source for claims of historical fact. An attributed statement of fact is not magically laundered into mere opinion. The standard for subject experts we would attribute specific claims to is greater, not less, because we have to be really sure we care about what they think to be the case. Remsense ‥ 论 13:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

As detailed below, it can be used for attributed opinion, so a statement that "according to Mark Woodruff" or "Mark Woodruff opines that..." Mztourist (talk) 15:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Woodruff's book is reliable for Woodruff's opinions, not Woodruff's historical assertions. The citation of Woodruff on Phoenix Program to state "Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented" is not reliable, even if we add attribution because this is Woodruff making a historical assertion, not merely stating his opinion. Skornezy (talk) 15:44, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

No, you've ploughed ahead with the same fallacy I just outlined. Here are three examples.

1. Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented. This is a statement of fact. It is either true, or it is not.
2. Mark Woodruff opines that Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented. This, however, is nonsense. That's not his opinion, or any higher analysis on Woodruff's part.
3. According to Mark Woodruff, Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented. This is once more unambiguously a statement of fact, we're just attributing it to a particular source. They would need to be a particularly reliable source for this to make sense to do in context.

How is it reasonable to conclude someone isn't a reliable source for historical claims, but think citing their "opinion" that does nothing but draw factual conclusions about history is solving the problem? Remsense ‥ 论 15:47, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense Skornezy originally posted at 06:35 and you said at 06:39 that "It's clear this source shouldn't be cited". What research did you undertake in those 4 minutes that informed that view? Mztourist (talk) 12:42, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I consulted the Delphi oracle. Quit flailing, it's unbecoming. Remsense ‥ 论 12:47, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Flailing? You clearly just read the original post and agreed with it, nothing else. Mztourist (talk) 13:02, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Was I supposed to agree with you instead? They wrote it rather clearly so it was easy to parse, verify, and sign off on, imagine that. Remsense ‥ 论 13:23, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Imagine doing some independent research. How can you claim to have verified it inside 4 minutes? Mztourist (talk) 15:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm going to drop my previous snark and try to state plainly that there was no need to, as the the facts presented were sufficient for me to make up my mind. As you haven't disputed their veracity and have only made counterarguments I find categorically uncompelling, it seems my judgment was alright. Remsense ‥ 论 15:37, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

You made up your mind in 4 minutes with no research; you were never going to be open to counterarguments. Other users here haven't adopted the same absolutist position that as Woodruff isn't a historian the book has no merit. Mztourist (talk) 15:48, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Everyone else that has stated an opinion has concurred that you clearly can't use this book to cite statements of fact. Remsense ‥ 论 15:53, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Don't cite this book for facts. Mottezen (talk) 04:24, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

maybe chill out a bit and wait for outsiders (not me) to form an opinion. Polygnotus (talk) 10:45, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. This back and forth is going nowhere. Skornezy (talk) 10:53, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

• Some thoughts in no particular order, as unpicking the thread is a chore.
  The views of historians in matters of history are more useful than those of military veterans. This is in part because the views of military veterans will be primary sources and historians are trained in interpreting such sources (secondary sources are preferred).
  A work having been criticised by experts does count against it's reliability. Amazon reviews do not add to a sources reliability in anyway. That Woodruff has been previously published in the area does add to the work reliability, but it's one factor among many.
  That something is a commonly held view is only important if it's a commonly held view by experts in the specific area (historians in this case). That an opposing view is held by others might be worth discussion in the appropriate article (Vietnam War#War crimes for instance), if it is attested in other reliable sources, but it might not be due inclusion in every article. Minority views should be included, but only if they do not give undue weight (but that's NPOV not reliability).
  The work is reliable for the attributed opinion of Woodruff but I don't believe it should be used to state contentious facts in wikivoice, especially if those facts are in opposition to other scholarly works. Inclusion of Woodruff's opinion are a matter of NPOV and should be discussed on the articles talk page. Just because something can be verified doesn't mean it should be included, rather verifiability is required of included content. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:32, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  OK thanks. So from my understanding, Woodruff's book is unreliable for contentious historical assertions, but it is reliable to document what his opinions are. Is that correct? That makes sense to me and it's sort of what I've been trying to articulate on the talk page, but the talk page hasn't gone anywhere which is why I've taken it here. I can't edit that page for now, but it seems to me that the wikivoice citation of Woodruff should 100% be removed. Skornezy (talk) 12:34, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Pinging @ActivelyDisinterested Skornezy (talk) 12:49, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Thank you for your input ActivelyDisinterested. I have now consulted my copy of the book, it has 291 pages of body text, 29 pages of endnotes and an 8 page bibliography. Mztourist (talk) 12:58, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  And what has that got to do with anything? It could have a zillion pages, 400 pages of endnotes, 40 bibliography pages, and it wouldn't change anything. Numbers in no way effect the reliability of a source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:19, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

  Skornezy That would be my take on it, whether his opinion should be included is a NPOV matter, see WP:DUE, WP:FRINGE, WP:BALASP, etc. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:21, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

A key question on the suitability of a revisionist work is whether its arguments are accepted by subsequent works. My initial impression is that the scholarly community hasn't taken much notice of it. The Journal of Military History didn't review it; it did list it (with dozens of other works) in its "Books received" section in its April 2000 issue. The editor included this note: "Attempts to debunk myths created by propaganda about American involvement in Vietnam by analyzing American military successes." The book is 25 years old now. If the scholarly consensus hasn't moved toward it since then, it's probably not usable for anything other than attributed opinion. Mackensen (talk) 13:17, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

Thank you. Can you please advise exactly how "Osborne served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented." should be rewritten as an attributed opinion of Woodruff's as Skornezy and Remsense are unlikely to agree anything that I write. Mztourist (talk) 15:39, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

You can't, because that's not an opinion and cannot be laundered into one. It is still an unambiguous statement of fact. It is not my opinion that the Louvre is a museum in Paris. Remsense ‥ 论 15:51, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

@Remsense That wikivoice citation of Woodruff isn't even accurate because on page 64 of his book Woodruff writes that "American contribution to the Phung Hoang Program was officially born on December 20, 1967, under the operation name, "Phoenix," which is completely in line with Osborn's Vietnam military service. According to historian Alfred W. McCoy, in page 98 of his book Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation: To discredit such damaging testimony, the U.S. Army Intelligence Command conducted a thorough investigation of Osborn’s charges. The results were released in a declassified summary by William Colby during his 1973 confirmation hearings for the post of CIA director. Although the Army’s classified report nitpicked many of his secondary details, it did not challenge Osborn’s overall sense of Phoenix’s systematic brutality—an assessment confirmed by both eye-witness accounts and official studies.

Similarly, historian Jeremy Kuzmarov wrote on page 257 in a book called Decolonization and Conflict: Colonial Comparisons and Legacies edited by fellow academics Gareth Curless and Martin Thomas: during testimony to the U.S. Congress, "CIA director William Colby conceded that much of what Osborn said was likely to be true," despite "attempts by conservatives to discredit Osborn’s character." McCoy also quotes Colby (who headed Phoenix) as saying "various of the things that Mr. Osborn alleges might have happened". (p. 99)

Both of these PhD historians directly conflict with Woodruff; if Woodruff really said that "Osborne [sic] served with the United States Marine Corps in I Corps in 1967–1968 before the Phoenix Program was implemented," then how was this missed by these PhD historians, by CIA director Colby, and by the U.S. Army investigation that was seeking to discredit Osborn? This is just further confirmation that Woodruff is an unreliable source for historical assertions! Skornezy (talk) 16:13, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

References

Remsense and Skornezy you have already made your views on Woodruff abundantly clear. The question was for Mackensen, not you. Mztourist (talk) 07:11, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Why do you think this is a statement of opinion? Woodruff doesn't say it's his opinion, he states it as fact! You would be putting words in his mouth, you realize. I don't think you should jump to any other topic requiring the time of others to reply before you answer this question directly and explain what you think the distinction could actually be.Remsense ‥ 论 07:23, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure I really want to touch on the reliability of the book, but reading the paragraph as it stands currently, I have to question why a statement about that would belong on an article that, as far as I can tell, is not about Osborn. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:56, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Because Osborn makes some shocking and graphic claims about war crimes that are included on Phoenix Program, but his credibility has been questioned. regards Mztourist (talk) 08:08, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

OK, well I don't think very loudly implying that someone's credibility is questionable is something we should be engaging in on what is nominally supposed to be an encyclopedia article instead of, I don't know, maybe the talk page or something. If it's explicitly stated in a reliable source, then maybe there's a case to include it in the article, but implying it seems like an attempt to get around the policy on original research, whether or not that's actually the case. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:00, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Woodruff basically says that Osborn lied about abuses he says he witnessed as part of the Phoenix Program when he testified to Congress, pretty much accusing him of perjury. I think the section is undue because there were others who testified to these abuses as well, not just Osborn. Skornezy (talk) 08:16, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

It really sounds like we should just be citing secondary sources that do the picking of the primary sources for us then. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:09, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

That's really what this RSN is about. Is Woodruff a reliable source for when Osborn served in Vietnam and so what Osborn claimed to have seen. We have other RS that question Osborn's credibility. Mztourist (talk) 10:05, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

The RSN is on whether Woodruff, a non-expert, arguably WP:PRIMARY source who has been criticized for revisionism, making erroneous claims, and ignoring conflicting testimony is a reliable source by Wikipedia standards or not. Skornezy (talk) 10:27, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Whether we have a reliable source for time of service is not something I would consider relevant unless a source also explicitly uses that to make some secondary claim related to, specifically, the Phoenix Program, and said other source is reliable for that secondary claim. What would be even better, and what I would probably encourage if acceptable to people who actually want to edit the article, is to refocus on secondary sources that provide a synthesis of multiple primary sources rather than focusing on quotes from one or two specific people. Which are the best sources out of those secondary sources?

If that question cannot be determined, I feel that would be a better use of this board's time. Alpha3031 (t • c) 12:02, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm unfamiliar with the topic area, so let me ask a brief ground-clearing question. As I read the article, K. Barton Osborne claims to have witnessed torture under the auspices of the Phoenix Program. Is the purpose of the citation to Woodruff to undercut Osborne by placing his service in South Vietnam prior to the implementation of the Phoenix Program? Mackensen (talk) 11:33, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Pretty much; he's basically accusing Osborn of lying. But elsewhere Woodruff says "American contribution to the Phung Hoang Program was officially born on December 20, 1967, under the operation name, 'Phoenix'" which is perfectly in line with Osborn's military service so I'm not even sure if Woodruff is even being cited correctly in the section. Skornezy (talk) 11:38, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

Mackensen that is correct and Woodruff is not the only source that questions Orborne's credibility. Mztourist (talk) 04:07, 25 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there a better source than Woodruff that does so? The citations above that mention William Colby's testimony would seem to render Woodruff's criticism a moot point. Mackensen (talk) 18:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I am unable to locate the transcript of William Colby's response to Osborn's claims. The only source for that is itself POV. Mztourist (talk) 07:28, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Number of fatalities at Kfar Aza massacre

Copied from my post on the article talkpage: I'm looking at articles discussing fatalities that have come out in the last few months,and they appear to be wildly inconsistent in the number of residents killed. Ynet is saying 79 [62] Kibbutz Kfar Aza, which 79 of its members were murdered on October 7 in the Hamas atrocities, and 18 were abducted to Gaza (August 2024) ToI is saying 62 [63] It’s similarly quiet in nearby Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where 62 people were killed and 19 taken hostage on October 7 from a community of 1,000 residents. (October 2024), ITV is saying 46 for civillians [64] The civilian death toll was later put at 46. The youngest, 14 years old. (October 2024), the Jewish Chronicle is saying 64: [65] 64 of Kfar Aza's 950 residents were killed and 19 were taken hostage. I'm struggling to see why the numbers should be so inconsistent a year or nearly a year on from the massacre. Any insight about which number is correct would be appreciated. (Not looking to call the reliability of any of these sources in question in general, mistakes happen, I know the modern JC is unreliable for Israel-Palestine and I am only including for completeness). Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:21, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Is there possibly a difference between civilians and military personnel here that the sources aren't picking up? There may have been Israeli units who suffered casualties in the area on the day of the attacks. The JC and ITV were published on the same day and are probably looking at the same original source, but one of them transposed the digits. It would seem more likely ITV is wrong, but we can't be sure, and it is the more reliable source. The only option is to report the disparity in figures with attribution, except JC which is unreliable for this area.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps there is also a distinction between people in and from Kfar Aza? In doubt, I would agree with Boynamedsue and just attribute the information, with WP:When sources are wrong if one of the numbers emerges as being more accurate. FortunateSons (talk) 08:31, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Looking just at sources published in 2024 after enough time had passed since the invasion, I only see 79 in the ynetnews article, whereas all other sources say that there were 64 casualties (in addition to the ToI, ynet in July 2024, mako in August 2024). Alaexis_¿question? 21:51, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Yasuke book

This book uses original source materials and has been academically peer reviewed yet the editors on the Yasuke page refuse to be open to any possibility that is not inline with the ideology of Thomas Lockley. The writer of this book is a professor and a linguist and is someone who is qualified to read old documents. However the editors of the page feel he is not qualified because he is not a historian per se compared to Lockley (who is not a historian or even a phd is somehow considered more reliable). Shouldnt there at least be a controversy section? There are numerous Japanese professors saying the same thing as Naude.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/Alaric-Naude/dp/1763781100/ref=pd_aw_sbs_m_sccl_2/357-2938769-1374961?pd_rd_w=RI340&content-id=amzn1.sym.7b667807-cb84-4171-911f-9a33cabc439d&pf_rd_p=7b667807-cb84-4171-911f-9a33cabc439d&pf_rd_r=T5YSSBPQR35ENZ5PBXN7&pd_rd_wg=0KN19&pd_rd_r=e91bb593-697c-4ec5-ac86-d8e0a1ce13b8&pd_rd_i=1763781100&psc=1 211.36.136.165 (talk) 11:08, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

HAve not discussed this 15 times already? What has changed since the last discussion?Slatersteven (talk) 11:11, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Although it could be clearer I think the OP is discussing The Real Yasuke: History beyond the samurai myth by Alaric Naude, a self-published work by a professor of linguistics at the University of Suwon in Korea ++(published by United Scholars Academic Press. This isn't clear in the Amazon listing, but is mentioned on the Yasuke talk page and confirmed elsewhere). It's a critique of Lockley's work. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:42, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Ahh, I see. Well as he is not a historian, and it is an SPS I can see why it might have been objected to. Slatersteven (talk) 11:45, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I was hoping to modify my comment before you replied, but you beat me by a couple of seconds.

The Amazon listing makes it appear self-published, but elsewhere lists it as published by United Scholars Academic Press (who I've not heard of). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:51, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

So there still maybe some valid doubt. Slatersteven (talk) 11:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

It needs someone with more knowledge of scholarly vanity presses.

Certainly the fact the author isn't a historian, or published in the field previously, doesn't add confidence. Interpretation of primary historical documents is a minefield best left to those trained in it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:59, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Headbomb have you heard of United Scholars Academic Press? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:24, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

No, but with a name like that, it'd very likely to be run of the mill garbage. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:29, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Its peer reviewed by academics now which is more that can be said of Lockleys books. 211.36.136.165 (talk) 11:53, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Just because a press claims to be peer reviewed doesn't mean a scholar operating outside his field of expertise is due inclusion in a contentious article. WP:FRINGE is mute about peer review. Simonm223 (talk) 12:46, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm skeptical of this press. It publishes only this book and one other [66] but its website says that the book is currently "under evaluation" despite the book looking on amazon like it's already available for purchase. This looks like a vanity press. Furthermore there's no information about the peer review committee on the publisher website. Furthermore the press is pay to play [67]. I would say that the editors at Yasuke were quite right to be skeptical of this source. Simonm223 (talk) 12:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Actually I was possibly wrong about the review committee [68] might have the relevant information. Simonm223 (talk) 12:56, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Naude definitely is giving off WP:FRINGE vibes though. [69] Simonm223 (talk) 13:03, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

There's also this [70] Simonm223 (talk) 13:04, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

In 2017 he was naming hypotheses after himself. [71] Simonm223 (talk) 13:11, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

perhaps looking at his historical and linguistics work would be better.

https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereArtiView.kci?sereArticleSearchBean.artiId=ART003076982

https://www.jiesuwon.com/_files/ugd/bf7a51_c52dee7526044151a4790b0d643431ef.pdf

https://scholar.google.co.kr/citations?view_op=view_citation&hl=en&user=k9yxjMIAAAAJ&citation_for_view=k9yxjMIAAAAJ:LkGwnXOMwfcC 211.36.136.165 (talk) 13:15, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Im not sure that is applicable in this case. Religion and this are two different things 211.36.136.165 (talk) 13:05, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

This author has spent most of his career writing outside his area of specialty about gender and race - generally far-right opinions on the same - he's had no significant academic review of any of his books and is not an historian. This is a WP:FRINGE scholar. Simonm223 (talk) 13:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

He does appear to hold to some very fringe ideas. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:36, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I'll note that Lockely's background isn't history, but he is now professionally one. Linguistics can overlap with history, as well. Maybe someone from WikiProject Books could inform this discussion regarding the niche publisher. I looked over the website and it doesn't immediately seem predatory.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 12:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree. The fees charged are normal for academic field and it lists involved academics. The Japanese version has been really popular in Japan. In Japan this book has been well recieved and we are very picky with history.

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/gp/aw/d/1763781119/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=&sr= 211.36.136.165 (talk) 12:23, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Are there any reviews of the work in Japanese academic journals? I couldn't find any in English. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:30, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

It just came out so I think there arent any reviews in English yet only Japanese. It takes a little time. 211.36.136.165 (talk) 12:51, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Reviews in Japanese would be fine. The issue is finding ones from academic journals, regardless of language. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I searched Google Scholar for reviews of his work. There was none. And he's not widely cited. Simonm223 (talk) 13:19, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

His work is cited in a book by Columbia University Press. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/fook20700-004/html 211.36.136.165 (talk) 13:23, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Sorry there were none except for the review of his "gays are heretics" book that I linked previously. I didn't say he had zero citation - I said he's not widely cited. Simonm223 (talk) 13:26, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Citations to his works in the field of history would be more useful. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:35, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Not looking good. This work is linguistic but has an historical component. Zero citations. [72] Simonm223 (talk) 14:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

There is no academic field in which it is normal for authors to pay publishers to publish their *books*. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 13:13, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

its not a publication fee its a review fee which is very normal in Asia.If you read there is no publication fee. 211.36.136.165 (talk) 13:16, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

"The USD 300 evaluation fee covers the official review process only. Additional fees may apply for typesetting, editing, and cover design services." -- i.e., fees for the actual work of publishing. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:58, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree with the above concerns that this guy is fringe.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 13:24, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

could someone read the book then? Because there is nothing fringe in the book 211.36.136.165 (talk) 13:25, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

That is OR. Slatersteven (talk) 13:27, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

@211.36.136.165 do you have any personal contact with the author in question? Simonm223 (talk) 13:30, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

This question has been taken to the IP's talk page, any question of COI should continue there. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

And no answer, which to my mind is an answer. Slatersteven (talk) 09:17, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

This does raise an interesting question which may need a separate question, is the publisher (in effect) a vanity press? Slatersteven (talk) 13:27, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

That's the unanswered question. They charge a "peer review" fee, but I couldn't say if that a normal practice in Asia or a publication fee under another name. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:39, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I found the relevant discussion in Archive 9 of the Yasuke talk page where they believed Naude's book was self-published. Generally there is equivalent skepticism that it is a reliable source in that archived discussion to what is here. Simonm223 (talk) 13:58, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

OK I think something strange is going on unitedscholarsacademicpress.com wasn't registered until several weeks after the book was published (28 Oct 2024 v 12 Oct 2024). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The easy way out would probably be to assert that a publisher that's published all of one book probably doesn't have much of a reputation of anything. Also, I don't think this "City University of Paris" is a real university which is a red flag. Alpha3031 (t • c) 17:18, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Note: Not to be confused with Paris Cité University / Université Paris Cité which is one of the top universities in France. Alpha3031 (t • c) 17:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Published 1 or maybe 2 books since the book they have listed as "under review" is available for purchase on Amazon today, with what is obviously their cover art. Simonm223 (talk) 17:41, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The Amazon listing for the second book doesn't mention United Scholars Academic Press[73] (instead saying it was "Independently" published), this was true of the Amazon listing for The Real Yasuke but that has been updated since this thread started. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:48, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

So it begins to look like it was self-published, then a publisher was made up (with appropriate sounding name) to give it some credibility, but still remains an SPS? Slatersteven (talk) 17:51, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

The second book was published as a free ebook through Amazon, it's author is an assistant professor at the University of Suwon (the same university as the other author). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Honestly I think it's a vanity press to let self-publishers present like they published for an academic press in exchange for a $300 reading fee. There's a "review panel" who appear to be made up. There is a consistent style in branding and cover art as in I think it's the same font on the back cover of both books. Both books are by working teachers at the University of Suwon in South Korea so there's probably the key commonality. Simonm223 (talk) 17:57, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

There is more than just the reading fee. As I mention above, the FAQ says "Additional fees may apply for typesetting, editing, and cover design services." And it looks like this is a print-on-demand-and-ebook company, so there is no inherent printing cost to cover. Seems to meet the duck test for a vanity press.

One thing I'm finding interesting is on running the book's ISBN from the Amazon listing through ISBN hyphenators, it comes back with 978-1-76378-110-8 -- note that 110. It means this publisher appears to have bought a block of 1000 ISBNs (it would be cheaper if you're starting out to buy a block of 100 or even of 10, at least in my experience with US purchases), and marked this with 110, rather than starting at 001.

Tried searching for one of their review team, "Brant Inner". Got zero hits that referred to a person by that name. This is a professor who has avoided detection. Hmmm.... -- Nat Gertler (talk) 03:21, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

For our purposes I think we should treat it as self-published until more is known about the publisher. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:04, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Also, interesting, the review panel? None of them appear to have ever published anything. Like, for instance, there's a Lu Honghua at the department of geography for East China Normal University but they study geography, not linguistics. There's a geneticist in the United States named Zhao Li Juan but nobody with expertise in ancient & modern Chinese. Prof. Brant Inner doesn't seem to exist at all. Neither does Li Ji Zheng or Yumiko Shibui. Simonm223 (talk) 17:52, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Yea, I just did the same check and was going to post about Inner. Slatersteven (talk) 17:56, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

City University of Paris, meanwhile, is a project of Alaric Naude [74] Simonm223 (talk) 18:04, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this looks well iffy. Slatersteven (talk) 17:25, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Given that the publisher appears to have only existed as long as the book it has published, and that the books author is not a professional historian, I don't think this should be used as a source for Wikipedia's purposes.

Until the publisher has more of a reputation to back up the works it publishes then those works should be considered self-published for evaluation purposes. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:02, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree we can put this to bed. Right now we have a book published by a non-expert coming from a press that is "supported by" a private business college incorporated in France by the same person who published the book. This press has published 1-2 books both from teachers at one college in Korea. The review board appears to be artificial. I'd say it's possibly the most convoluted attempt to conceal self-published status I've ever seen. But I'd say, for the purposes of Wikipedia, this book is WP:SELFPUBLISHED. Simonm223 (talk) 18:17, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Impressive effort, but still SELFPUB--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 02:38, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

• It seems pretty clear to me that this book is a self-publication in disguise and its author is a fringe researcher. I also think that this "paper" he published on an iffy platform offers some valuable context about where Naude stands on mainstream science, or as he calls it, "Ideological Orthodoxy", which he directly compared to the "Third Reich and the USSR" for its activities against dissident researchers. This is indistinguishable from the same sort of over-dramatic rant that you would read from a flat-earther truther or any other modern conspiracy theorist who thinks that liberal academics are trying to subvert Western civilization and suppress their "brilliant" pseudoscientific research. The fact that Naude just became a "published" expert on Yasuke, the latest culture war talking point among anti-woke activists in 2024, is just the cherry on the top. Badbluebus (talk) 20:39, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

CCN - ccn.com

I've been seeing CCN (not to be confused with CNN) being used as a source on some articles, such as EDX Markets ([75]), Modern Terminals ([76], with an entire paragraph devoted to their reporting on the company joining the TradeLens project), and Cryptocurrency and crime ([77]). However, I have concerns about their reliability as a source, specifically with the use of inflammatory language in their articles/headlines, as well as rage-baiting/fear-mongering/misinformation.

Most of these examples are from years ago and may not reflect their current editorial stances, and are from one contributor, but here they are anyway:

• Fall Guys Developers, Stop Making Preposterous Excuses - "Mediatonic is cowardly for not mentioning their agreement with Sony."
• Minecraft Steve Comes to Smash Bros Ultimate & the Internet Is Furious - "People who’re complaining about the choice don’t know what they’re talking about." "People who are mad about the inclusion have forgotten that children actually play Smash and that Nintendo isn’t there to please them personally."
• Nintendo Encourages Scalpers With Super Mario 3D’s Limited Release - "The Big N has bought this on themselves with their money-grubbing attitude."
• ‘Limited’ Super Mario 3D All-Stars is a Disgusting Nintendo Cash-Grab - "Nintendo is still pulling this vile, anti-consumer rubbish. I won’t be surprised if Nintendo releases all three games separately, at full price each, after its ‘limited release.’" "Any company that is continuously pulling moves designed to squeeze their beloved franchises for cash deserve criticism."
• Pokemon Sword and Shield Evolutions Leaked – and Boy, Do They Suck - "We now have definitive proof that these are the three worst starter Pokemon we’ve ever seen." "Now, there’s nothing wrong with furries or anthropomorphic characters in general, but having two humanoid final evolutions feels astonishingly lazy."
• Clownish Pokemon & Star Wars Reviews Expose Gaming Industry’s Dirty Little Secret - "Game reviewers need to stop behaving like clowns and start being more critical with their reviews." "So here’s the thing: game journalists are to blame. So are publications for pushing them down this route. But we also have to point fingers at game publishers that withhold review copies – or ad revenue – from reviewers who don’t lick their boots."
• Pokemon Sword and Shield Critics Need to Put Up or Shut Up
• Whiny Pokemon Fans Aren’t First Gamers Begging Trump to Punish Devs
• This Pokemon Sword and Shield DLC Will Make You Hate Game Freak Even More
• Nintendo Switch’s 2020 Game Lineup Is Unbelievably Sucky - article's original publication date was January 12, 2020, far too early in the year to make any judgment about whether or not Nintendo's 2020 is "sucky".
• Time to Realize Anti-Consumer Nintendo Doesn’t Care About You - "Clearly, Nintendo just don’t care about their customers." "Time and time again, Nintendo manages to prove how little they care. Any company that would legally wage a costly fight to deny customers the right to a refund is a scummy company in my books." "Hug your Mario blanket and turn on your power brick lamp all you want. Nintendo don’t care about you. Nintendo doesn’t care about anyone but themselves. Never forget that."
• Good Guy Nintendo Goes Full Monster after Embracing Microtransactions - possibly the WORST ONE out of all these "articles", because it makes baseless claims that Animal Crossing: New Horizons would include microtransactions because of a notice saying it will contain in-game purchases - this notice is included on ALL games that allow you to purchase NSO memberships from within them, but the author would rather fear-monger and spread misinformation than actually do their research.

All of this makes me believe that CCN is an unreliable, garbage news source. What say you? The Grand Delusion^{(Send a message)} 21:21, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

I see their about us page [78]. It seems to not have too much editorial oversight, which is the basis of a reliable source on wikipedia... Ramos1990 (talk) 01:11, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I have seen their terms of use. They seem genuine. This was earlier Crypto Currency News and their reporting was OK. It is now part of Find.co, so the rartionale and links for discussing this are no longer relevant. Vedicant (talk) 21:29, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Are church published sources self-published?

Are sources published by a church considered self-published? Does the level of church body involved change anything? Does the relationship of the person involved change anything? Traumnovelle (talk) 00:39, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

depends on context and what you are trying to do/claim. Which source are you talking about, and how are you trying to use it? Bluethricecreamman (talk) 00:41, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

More context is needed by Traumnovelle. How you use it matters. There are exceptions. For example, WP:SELFPUB says "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications." Ramos1990 (talk) 01:08, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm asking in general if works produced by a congregation member and published by a church are considered self-published or not. Traumnovelle (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Specifically books, I should have clarified. Traumnovelle (talk) 02:03, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you need to know if it's self published. It sounds like you're talking about something that may not be self-published, but unless the church has some sort of reasonable editorial team, does not gain reliability. If you have a specific issue for which this is a question, then please bring specifics. -- Nat Gertler (talk) 02:26, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

This is obviously dependent on more specific contextual information. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 02:29, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

This probably depends on scale. Someone who is Catholic, writing a book about the Catholic church, which is also published by the Catholic church is likely to have gone through some editorial control simply because of the scale of the Catholic church. While someone writing a pamphlet about their local church, which is then published by that church, isn't as likely not have any oversight. In either case the work wouldn't be independent, whether they would be reliable would depend on the context. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:24, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

No, as a lot depends on what it is, who wrote it, who edited it etc. Slatersteven (talk) 13:11, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Some churches publish material that states that if you reject their teachings you will go to Hell. I hope we will not consider them reliable sources on this topic.  --Lambiam 14:55, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

As an attributed opinion I see no issue, we just do not state it as a fact, using those sources. Slatersteven (talk) 15:00, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Right at the top of this page it states: Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports. Without context any answer you get will be of little or no value. For example, the same source may be useful for non-controversial matters (who was the minister, and when) but not for controversial matters (of doctrine or heresy).

As to the comment on teachings and of going to Hell: MOS:INUNIVERSE would cover this. Daveosaurus (talk) 06:03, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Any day not living under Cardassian rule is a good one

Nana Visitor is an actress that played the character of Kira Nerys at the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine TV series. She has written the book "Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek", about the portrayal of women during all the Star Trek franchise, both in general and down to each lead female character (meaning, it's not just a memoir of her time playing Nerys). Can this book be used as a source, or is there a conflict of interest there? I'm asking about articles about her character, articles about the DS9 TV series and the other female characters and actresses in it, and articles about other TV series from the franchise. Cambalachero (talk) 15:36, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes there is A COI, but as an expression of her views (and in full attribution) I see no issue. Slatersteven (talk) 15:42, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

At the very least probably due inclusion as a source under WP:ABOUTSELF but could you explain how you would like to see the source used? Simonm223 (talk) 15:49, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree with Slatersteven. Sergecross73 msg me 15:53, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Not a COI, unless you're her, but WP:PROPORTION/WP:ABOUTSELF etc ("I was the best woman on Star Trek ever."). While some content might need "according to Nana Visitor...", it seems likely to me that such a book might be useful for some uncontroversial facts too, and those would not need in-text attribution. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:47, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The Batch / deeplearning.ai - an AI/ML newsletter founded and written by Andrew Ng

Hello! I'm asking about The Batch [79], an AI and ML newsletter written by Andrew Ng as part of his series of online learning courses deeplearning.ai, one of the most prominent authorities in modern AI. The newsletter was founded in 2019, and it was deemed unreliable back in 2021 (according to [80], "A large portion of the sources used are not reliable, notably The Batch, which appears to be the personal blog of Andrew Ng."). Now, in 2024, I believe that The Batch is much more established and reliable than it was three years ago. I see links to the newsletter being used as references across the AI/ML space by prominent leaders in AI, and deeplearning.ai / The Batch is already used in multiple Wikipedia articles (for example, Regularization (mathematics)). I'd like people's thoughts on this, especially from those also in the modern AI/ML space who have heard of the newsletter and/or the author before!

As an aside, Deeplearning.ai is also very well-known for its deep learning courses [81] with massive followings on YouTube [82], Twitter [83], and LinkedIn [84]. Not that it means anything, of course, but it does show that it's not just some tiny blog written by a tech enthusiast.

Thanks for your help! GregariousMadness (talk) 18:39, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Just a quick note how a source is used on Wikipedia, or how many followers it has, has no bearing on it's reliability.

WP:USEBYOTHERS does though, and it is used in several seemingly reliable works. Do you have any links to it being used as a reference by 'leaders in AI'? It would help establish if it's reliable. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:53, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! Deeplearning.ai itself is highly reputable in the AI/ML community, with multiple industry partnerships with AWS, NVIDIA, Azure, Google Cloud, etc. [85] [86] [87].

As for direct links, it's difficult for me to search for them on social media (because a search on Twitter searches any mention of "deep learning" or "AI" or "batch" instead), but it's worth mentioning that The Batch is the official newsletter of deeplearning.ai that's posted on the deeplearning.ai Twitter every week ([88]). They have a less formal, editorial blog that's separate from The Batch that is much less notable or reliable ([89]); the newsletter, on the other hand, is written by Andrew Ng himself. GregariousMadness (talk) 19:20, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Social media and company partnership aren't what I was looking for. What's needed is other reliable sources using The Batch as a reference, for instance in a book for journal article. Andrew Ng might be considered reliable per WP:ExpertSPS, if he has been independently published by other reliable sources as an expert in the field. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:38, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Understood, I'll continue to search. And to answer your question, Andrew Ng is – and has been – one of the most influential figures in artificial intelligence, being listed in the top 100 influential people in AI in 2023 ([90]). In the meantime, as per WP:ExpertSPS, would you say that a direct quote from the newsletter is valid? (It was reverted because we were uncertain whether The Batch was reliable before I asked this question in this noticeboard.) This is what I had written:

In his 2020 assessment of 15.ai in artificial intelligence newsletter The Batch, computer scientist Andrew Ng wrote:

"Voice cloning could be enormously productive. In Hollywood, it could revolutionize the use of virtual actors. In cartoons and audiobooks, it could enable voice actors to participate in many more productions. In online education, kids might pay more attention to lessons delivered by the voices of favorite personalities. And how many YouTube how-to video producers would love to have a synthetic Morgan Freeman narrate their scripts?

However, he also wrote:

"...but synthesizing a human actor's voice without consent is arguably unethical and possibly illegal. And this technology will be catnip for deepfakers, who could scrape recordings from social networks to impersonate private individuals."

GregariousMadness (talk) 19:49, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

ExpertSPS would require that he had been previously published in AI, but all I can find by him is the chapter in Architects of Intelligence by Martin Ford. His other works on AI appear to be self-published.

He would be reliable for his own words, but verification doesn't guarantee inclusion. You would need to discuss on the talk page whether Andrew Ng opinion on a matter was due inclusion, it's a NPOV matter not one of reliability (see WP:DUE and WP:BALASP). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:01, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I see, thank you for the insight. Does his inclusion in the top 100 influential people in AI not count as being published in AI? [91] I didn't include the link initially because I didn't see your question, so I wanted to make sure before I made a post on the talk page if WP:ExpertSPS already applies. GregariousMadness (talk) 20:05, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

No. 100.36.106.199 (talk) 11:57, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

What about his Google Scholar page? [92] GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:22, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

This question does not make sense in the context of the conversation; what are you asking? 100.36.106.199 (talk) 16:03, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I've done a search on Google News and found a number of journal articles that use The Batch as a reference – I've posted them in the thread below! GregariousMadness (talk) 20:54, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Do you have any links to it being used as a reference by 'leaders in AI'? It would help establish if it's reliable.

I've found this post on LinkedIn supporting the reliability of The Batch:

Written by Martin Vechev: [93]

Andrew Ng's The Batch, one of the most read newsletters in AI, highlights our work on COMPL-AI (https://compl-ai.org/), the first automated framework for evaluating LLMs w.r.t EU AI Act compliance. COMPL-AI was developed in collaboration between Bulgaria's INSAIT - Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology, our lab at ETH Zürich and LatticeFlow AI, a deep-tech company with presence in Zurich, Sofia, U.S. and elsewhere.

I'm looking for more direct references of the newsletter by top AI leaders, but it looks like the vast majority of discussions around it are from its target audience (those who are looking to learn more about AI). Nevertheless, I don't think this should take away from its notability and reliability as the official newsletter of deeplearning.ai. GregariousMadness (talk) 20:27, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

We need to be able to demonstrate that it is used by others - and isn't just influential on Twitter - to establish notability. Simonm223 (talk) 20:28, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I agree, but does the above post by Dr. Martin Vechev not qualify? He is a major top leader in the AI space (founder of DeepCode and LatticeFlow) and linked it in his post above. GregariousMadness (talk) 20:30, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Again it's all just social media stuff. And frankly there's very few circumstances under which social media is usable by Wikipedia for anything at all. Simonm223 (talk) 20:33, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

That's fair. I think it would be very difficult to find a print book or journal post referencing an online newsletter, but maybe someone else can aid me in my search.

As an aside, what are your thoughts on including the above statement by Andrew Ng as a direct quote? Would something like what I posted above be valid as per WP:ExpertSPS? GregariousMadness (talk) 20:35, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

After a bit of searching, found many seemingly legitimate sources that use The Batch as a source (I did a search on Google News for the term "deeplearning.ai newsletter "the batch"").

[94]

The rise of synthetic data comes as AI pioneer Andrew Ng is calling for a broad shift to a more data-centric approach to machine learning. He’s rallying support for a benchmark or competition on data quality which many claim represents 80 percent of the work in AI.

“Most benchmarks provide a fixed set of data and invite researchers to iterate on the code … perhaps it’s time to hold the code fixed and invite researchers to improve the data,” he wrote in his newsletter, The Batch.

[95]

And in the June 7 edition of The Batch, Ng admitted that the AI community is entering an era in which it will be called upon to be more transparent in our collection and use of data. “We shouldn’t take resources like LAION for granted, because we may not always have permission to use them,” he wrote.

[96]

In an issue of his DeepLearning.ai newsletter, The Batch, titled “It’s Time to Update Copyright for Generative AI, a lack of access to massive popular datasets such as Common Crawl, The Pile, and LAION would put the brakes on progress or at least radically alter the economics of current research.

[97]

And today, in an issue of his newsletter The Batch, Ng wrote that “My greatest fear for the future of AI is if overhyped risks (such as human extinction) lets tech lobbyists get enacted stifling regulations that suppress open-source and crush innovation.”

[98] (Lists The Batch in its references)

[99]

For evaluating general-purpose foundation models such as large language models (LLMs) — which are trained to respond to a large variety of prompts — we have standardized tests like MMLU (multiple-choice questions that cover 57 disciplines like math, philosophy, and medicine) and HumanEval (testing code generation). We also have the LMSYS Chatbot Arena, which pits two LLMs’ responses against each other and asks humans to judge which response is superior, and large-scale benchmarking like HELM. These evaluation tools took considerable effort to build, and they are invaluable for giving LLM users a sense of different models’ relative performance. Nonetheless, they have limitations. For example, leakage of benchmarks datasets’ questions and answers into training data is a constant worry, and human preferences for certain answers does not mean those answers are more accurate.

source: https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/issue-251/

I also found some posts about The Batch from non-social media affiliated enthusiasts:

[100][101] [102] [103] GregariousMadness (talk) 20:50, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Substack and blogs don't add anything, the Venture Beat articles are stronger - more like that would be good. Just for reference web posts and journal articles are not the same. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:14, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Got it! On the lookout for more. As for the first link, it was a post on NVIDIA's official technical blog written by Gerard Andrews [104], so I believe that should be reliable. That, plus the three Venture Beat articles in my previous post, plus the following articles that use The Batch as a reference:

[105]

Google Brain cofounder and Stanford professor Andrew Ng says he tried but couldn't coax ChatGPT into coming up with ways to exterminate humanity."To test the safety of leading models, I recently tried to get GPT-4 to kill us all, and I'm happy to report that I failed!" Ng wrote in his newsletter last week.

[106]

I liked what Andrew Ng had to say in his The Batch newsletter this week about Meta’s Galactica, in the aftermath of controversy around the model’s potential to generate false or misleading scientific articles:

[107]

“That we can replace such fundamental building blocks of LLMs is a sign that the field is still new and much innovation lies ahead,” Ng wrote in a blog called The Batch.

Do you think these are enough to establish notability and reliability of The Batch? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:26, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Another one I found:

[108] (quoted from The Batch: [109])

Andrew Ng wrote, “Sometimes GPT-3 writes like a passable essayist, [but] it seems a lot like some public figures who pontificate confidently on topics they know little about.”

[110]

Generative AI output became more like itself over time, with less variation. They reported their results in “The Curse of Recursion,” a paper that’s well worth reading. (Andrew Ng’s newsletter [Link to The Batch] has an excellent summary of this result.)

GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:45, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Nevermind I should just have check Google Scholar[111], I'm just being a bit slow. He would be reliable as a self published source. You may still want to attribute states from The Batch, for example "Andrew Ng in his newsletter The Batch said....". -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:02, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

No problem! Yes, I'll attribute that Andrew Ng wrote it in his newsletter. Thanks for the help. Does an admin need to mark this question as resolved? GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 22:09, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

This isn't an admin board (and I'm not an admin), it's just a board to ask advice. No worries though, it will get automatically archived in a few days. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 22:49, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Treat as a SPS, which means that it doesn't count towards notability (which is what matters in the context you linked [112]) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Notability is no longer in question for the subject, so that won't be necessary. In the unlikely event that any questions for the current sources arise, though, I think the above analysis indicates that The Batch can safely be used as a reliable source to re-establish GNG. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 22:12, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

You think wrong, it absolutely does not and I would question the competence of any editor who came to that conclusion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:54, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Adding onto this post before it gets archived: While working on the article for Deeplearning.ai, I found a testimonials page on The Batch itself, with examples of top leaders in the AI space using it as a reference: https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/about/. I think this, along with the above examples of reputable news sources using The Batch as a source, makes this newsletter reliable on matters pertaining to artificial intelligence. GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Nothing in https://www.deeplearning.ai/the-batch/about/ would suggest that The Batch is reliable for Wikipedia's purposes, what people think about it on social media is not part of any Wikipedia policy or guideline.

Andrew Ng is reliable as an expert self-published source, because of his publishing history on the subject. However reliability is not inherited, if other authors posted on The Batch it would have the reliability of Andrew Ng's posts.

The question of reliability and notability are separate subjects. I have no opinion on any question of notability, and discussions about notability should be had elsewhere. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 00:52, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

References

National Rifle Association

Is the NRA (National Rifle Association) considered a reliable source for firearm and other related topics? They issue a magazine that I get and was wondering if they could be used. If you have any questions or need more information just let me know. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 20:52, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

@Sheriff U3 What's the magazine? PARAKANYAA (talk) 21:03, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

I get the American Rifleman, but they have a lot more too. You can see all of the here. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 17:33, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I think that would be fine for facts about guns. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:09, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It might be reliable for their attributed opinion and basic facts, but I doubt it's good for stating anything contentious as fact (given how heated gun issues are in the US). By basic facts I mean the description or dimensions of a firearm, date of events, how many of a certain weapon was sold in a particular year, etc. Opinions may not be due for inclusion, for instance Firearm is a global article and the NRA is a strictly US organisation (see WP:DUE and WP:BALASP). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:55, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Yeah I would agree with this. I think for most facts about guns they'd probably be fine - but associated controversies or BLPs I would be very very cautious. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:02, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Concur. If they're talking about the design, history or specifications of guns they're reliable. If they're talking about the social context of guns it might be attributable to the NRA if their opinion is due but should not be used to state things without attribution. Simonm223 (talk) 19:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I would say that they are generally reliable for firearm and other related topics, though I would cite them with attribution so at least the reader knows the source of the stated information is coming from the NRA. Iljhgtn (talk) 04:29, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree with everyone's comments so far. Context matters. It is a US organization, but can be useful for firearm data and information. Ramos1990 (talk) 21:15, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Bit of a wide spread here (NRA approved joke)... For basic information about firearms, their history, their use, their accessories, their manufacturers, etc they have historically been and remain reliable. What they aren't reliable for is politics (now less than ever, but never great). There are of course some topics (like firearms law) which falls into both categories, this I would be very cautious with... Attribution is I believe necessary. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:52, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Ok thank you your feedback @ActivelyDisinterested @Horse Eye's Back @Iljhgtn @PARAKANYAA and @Ramos1990.

Based off all your feedback it sounds like the NRA is ok for facts about firearms their operation, features, accessories, makers, and general history. But it sounds like that they should not be used for gun laws, which I may add makes sense as questions about gun laws should be answered my a lawyer or attorney. Also it sounds like they should not be used for politics.

If I have come to the wrong conclusion then please let me know. Thank you for everyone for their comments. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 18:24, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Not that they should "not be used for gun laws" or "politics", but that they should be used with attribution. Iljhgtn (talk) 18:47, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Ok thank you for clarifying that. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 19:15, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I think that is a good summary of it. For non-contentious firearms/shooting/hunting/etc type information, material that isn't political in nature, I would treat them as an outright RS. For things related to law and politics I would treat them as biased but a reliable perspective. That is, if the NRA says a given gun law will have the following negative impacts [list], then attributed inclusion may be fine. Clearly they have a biased perspective but it's also one that is unlikely to be presented in most US news sources. Springee (talk) 08:46, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

They have a lot larger scope of information than most realize, with "firearms" and "politics" being only 2 of the many areas. Of course statements of opinion need to be attributed but that's about it. North8000 (talk) 14:36, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

@North8000: can you name a topic area other than firearms in which you would consider them a generally reliable source? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:02, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure what topic @North8000 may be referring to. But the NRA does have some stuff on hunting & reloading so he may mean that. But I think that the current discussion has covered everything that I need to know.

Thank you to all for your timely answers and opinions. User Page Talk Contributions Sheriff U3 21:07, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

(reply to above question) I don't consider ANY source to be generally or categorically reliable or unreliable...I reject such over generalizations. Actual reliability is knowledge and objectivity on the item which cited it. And of course one could say everything about NRA is firearms related. And my comment was more more info on areas other than the guns themselves and politics. With all of that said as a preface.....Some of the other areas are straightforward factual information on firearm history, straightforward factual info on itself (present and history) current and previous laws, a wide range of training fields, indoor and outdoor range design, firearm safety, the specifics of the NRA organization, history of NRA, firearms, reloading techniques,chemistry and physics, ballistics, current defensive uses of firearms, dozens of hunting-related topics etc., info about firearm, ammunition and accessory manufacturers and history of such, history of (small arms) firearms in warfare, dozens of competitions topics including sports and events. Also info on all of the dozens of firearm-related shooting sports. Also info on all of the people and publications involved in all of the above. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes. This is a good summary about my perspective here too. Thank you. Simonm223 (talk) 13:01, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Source at Draft:Adrien Nunez

I am working on Draft:Adrien Nunez. Is the Artistrack.com a WP:RS. I want to use this article, but it feels like it may be a press release.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 21:17, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

It's an advertorial, it's states that it's sponsored at the top of the article. Most of it won't be usable as it's overly self serving in it's language, and it wouldn't be independent in notability terms. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:46, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Thx.

Resolved

-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:07, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

However, NY Post and SB Nation fan blogs are certainly not RS for BLPs...those should be removed from the draft. JoelleJay (talk) 02:35, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Rockpasta.com

Is the website rockpasta.com [113] a reliable source for music articles? It is being used on the article for Comfortably Numb, and a search of Wikipedia ([114]) shows that it is currently being used on eight articles, the aforementioned one included. My problem with the website is that a lot of signs point to it being unreliable -- the source being used on the page that I noted ([115]) does not have a last name provided for the author, and their "about" page ([116]) does not claim to perform fact-checking or even provide a list of staff. If you ask me, this appears to be a content farm -- based on the articles presented on their homepage ([117]), it seems like another one of those Alternative Nation/Far Out Magazine-type rock clickbait sites, and as such should not be cited on Wikipedia. However, I would like to know what others think, given that, based on searching this noticeboard, this website has not previously been discussed here. JeffSpaceman (talk) 00:19, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I think your assessment is pretty accurate. There's no way to properly assess reliability, as there's just not enough information given by the site to make that assessment.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 01:54, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

DBpia.co.kr

Is the website DBpia.co.kr It is an website which is made and controled by Nurimedia. It is a website that publishes academic papers. Some papers are available for free and others are available for a fee. All the papers are credible papers that have passed the screening process. You can see papers against the background of various languages such as English, Chinese, and Korean. Most of academic papers are written by University Professor. Jo HyeonSeong (talk) 04:45, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

This is going to depend on the papers. Looking through a few examples many appear to have been published in academic journals, and would likely be considered reliable. If the haven't been published in a journal reliability could come down to who the author is, see WP:EXPERTSPS.

Given how wide ranging the papers are I don't think a simple answer is possible. A real answer would depend on the full context, what exact content is to be verified to which specific paper. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:37, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

The site isn't inherently reliable or unreliable, it's just a host for academic papers. seefooddiet (talk) 07:47, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Yonhapnews (연합뉴스)

Yonhap News is a South Korean news agency. It is the largest news agency in South Korea and has been designated as a "national news agency" by legal requirements. Other domestic media companies also have reprint contracts, so it is a reliable media company. Do you agree this statement?

Kang Taeho (talk) 04:56, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

No source is always reliable, the best rating is just generally reliable. As major news organisation it would be covered by the general guidelines (see WP:NEWSORG), as well as the caution about using opinion pieces (per WP:NEWSOPED). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:44, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

As an aside the legal statutes of a country have no part in assessing whether a source is reliable or not. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:46, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't source what I'm about to say but I'll just note that Yonhap has a reputation for being a source of laundered sensationalism and rumors about the DPRK and, purely in my personal view, is unreliable about that specific topic. Again, though, for our purposes on WP, the preceding is irrelevant as I can't provide a fuller explanation at this moment in time. I offer it only as public elucidation. Chetsford (talk) 04:33, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Korea/Reliable sources/Archive 2#Yonhap News - reliability questioned?, WikiProject Korea had a discussion on Yonhap's reliability. We concluded that the source is still mostly reliable, but unreliable betwen 2019 and 2021 due to an undisclosed sponsored article scandal. Overall, we rate it as reliable on WP:KO/RS, although we have that caveat to the reliability.

As for reporting rumors on the DPRK, that's more of a systemic issue in global press. I wouldn't say YNA is better or worse at it in my view; most sources globally are bad with it. seefooddiet (talk) 07:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Insight(인사이트)

Insight is a curated news site in South Korea. It is the No. 1 Facebook subscription media in Korea, but it is an internet media site that is called one of the two major mountains of pseudo-media and yellow journalism in Korea along with Wikitree, a similar media outlet.

I know this media is unreliable, but I wonder how much trustworthiness it has. Constructive opinions are welcome. Kim jong min (hanyang) (talk) 05:02, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I can't find much information about them, but there headlines make me think of the advice about tabloids. How many social media followers it has doesn't matter.

Do you have any links to reliable sources calling it 'pseudo-media' or 'yellow journalism'? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:54, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

China People's Daily (PRC newspaper)

China People's Daily (PRC newspaper)

I think that if you want to know what is happening within China and the Chinese government's decisions and other publishing issues, you can check here. This is a news media founded by the Communist Party of China itself. Peter011008 (talk) 05:10, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

I would have thought it's a similar situation to the prior discussions on Xinhua News Agency and China Daily. Reliable for the positions and opinions of the Chinese government or the Chinese Communist Party, less so for details outside of those areas. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:05, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Agreed that it makes sense to treat it as we do WP:XINHUA or WP:CHINADAILY. - Amigao (talk) 20:51, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Unreliable for anything beyond aboutself (which would only apply to the party in this context). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

better sources exist. if none do, could be used with attribution. most reliable about self or official government stance Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

WikiShia.net

Is WikiShia a reliable source? It's linked to in almost 100 articles.

It's a wiki, which would typically qualify it as user-generated content. However, contributions are "supervised" and restricted to people pre-approved by the Ahl al-Bayt World Assembly, so "user" in this case seems unclear. I'd still lean towards classifying it as UGC and therefore unreliable.

In addition, its neutrality seems doubtful as it's self-described as "preaching the school of the Ahl al-Bayt (a)" and Shia Islam, although it seems to aim for neutrality within Shia teachings.

If WikiShia is decided to be an unreliable source, should all references to it be removed?

User-generated content is also discouraged in external links; should links to WikiShia pages be removed from external link sections as well? Trebuchette (talk) 05:43, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

IMO, no it's not. Straight out removal might not be the best solution in every case anyway, it would depend on content/context. Ideally the refs should be looked at with a scalpel approach, "this content needs removal", "here we can use another source instead" etc. But that takes time and effort. tagging is an option. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 06:33, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

It should be replaced with better sources on a academic by case basis, removing content only if it's unverifiable by other sources. In many cases it includes references in it's articles, these could be checked and used to replace the reference to WikiShia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:09, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Generally unreliable as UGC, note that UGC doesn't require open access. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:45, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Circularity and interviews with wikipedians regarding allegations of bias in wikipedia

Moved to Draft talk:Antisemitism on Wikipedia#Circularity and interviews. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:04, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Current Affairs (magazine) + Lehi Free Press

See also: Wikipedia:Source assessment/Tuttle Twins

• "The Tuttle Twins and the Case of the Really Bad Libertarian Propaganda". Current Affairs. September 2020.
• "Lehi Author Teams With Angel Studios to Create Tuttle Twins Animated Show". Lehi Free Press. October 12, 2021.

I found both of these sources on this userspace page which was created on November 19, 2021. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 17:51, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Your link to the Current Affairs article is dead, this is the updated link:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2020/09/the-tuttle-twins-and-the-case-of-the-really-bad-libertarian-propaganda -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 18:29, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Current Affairs should be reliable and useful for notability (as that is the context here), I'm less certain of Lehi Free Press. LFP might be marginally reliable, but it doesn't appear to be fully independent of the subject and so wouldn't contribute to notability. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:20, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

GameFAQs

According to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Video_games/Sources#Unreliable sources, the last discussion regarding GameFAQs occurred in 2011. At that time, the site's database of release dates and developers/publishers for games was deemed to be unreliable due to several entries not being entirely accurace. I believe the accuracy of this database has improved greatly in the 13 years since then, to the point where I now consider it to be reliable for major titles released from the third generation onward. I therefore would like to start another discussion about this.

To start with, I should mention that the release years of three of the five "letter N" games Miremare mentioned here have since been corrected. However, the remaining two games' years have not, nor has the developer of Nightmare. From this, I gather that the database still isn't perfect, but I still feel it's much better than it was in 2011. 100.7.34.111 (talk) 22:37, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The problem is that it still fails WP:USERG Sergecross73 msg me 00:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Nothing really to discuss here. It's a WP:USERG site, with all the content being user submitted. It's unreliable by its nature. -- ferret (talk) 03:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't buy that. I need proof GameFAQs is still doing this, otherwise I won't believe you. 100.7.34.111 (talk) 12:31, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/contribute tells me it still has user generated content. Slatersteven (talk) 12:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Well in that case, I believe it should be added to WP:RSPSS so that nobody else makes the same mistake I've made. 100.7.34.111 (talk) 12:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It's already on WP:VG/RS, which you found. The perennial source list isn't meant to contain every source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:14, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

By that logic, sources such as IGN and Polygon should only be on WP:VG/RS, and not on WP:RSPSS. Plus, WP:RSPISNOT is irrelevant here - all I'm asking is for exactly one source to be added to WP:RSPSS, and I don't see the harm in that. 100.7.34.111 (talk) 13:23, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Because A, RSP is about sources that regularly get discussed. and B, if we did this for them we would have to do it for every source (this is why it is restricted to A). Slatersteven (talk) 13:28, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

But it's always about just one source that is why RSPISNOT is relevant. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:00, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It doesn't matter if you "don't believe us". The onus is on you to persuade people that things have changed, not the other way around. Please take the time to understand how Wikipedia identifies reliable sources, and how our WP:CONSENSUS-building process works. Sergecross73 msg me 15:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Naval News

Naval News is a fairly frequently cited website (n=930) across Wikipedia's naval and military related article set. A surface-level look at the front page might give the appearance of reliability; however underneath the hood there appear to be several issues with it that would merit being assessed as a marginally reliable source at best. While their core editorial staff listed here are generally fine (notably H I Sutton is a generally accepted expert on submarines, as is Chris Cavas on surface warfare, they have a number of former Janes Defense journalists on staff. etc.), a large plurality if not a majority of their articles are written by non-expert freelancers with few qualifications and apparently minimal fact checking. I had thought at first it was maybe a one-off or an internship or something like that, but it seems to be a regular practice.

• For instance this NN article came up a few times during the creation of what is now our AIM-174B article. The NN author, Carter Johnstone, is currently a college freshman (a high school student at the time of writing) with no experience whatsoever relating to the subject matter and has written several articles for the site. In particular, the Naval News piece included speculation by Johnstone as to whether the weapon was developed under a special access program, which had made its way into an early draft of our article.

• This article from a "freelance writer" in Kerala, lists no qualifications whatsoever other than being really interested in the subject. Again, speculation from one of their articles -- in this case, that "It is likely that the development of this missile is closely associated with the submarine launched K4 and the land launched Agni-1 Prime ballistic missiles" had made its way into the Long Range – Anti Ship Missile (India). The source does not elaborate on their basis for this claim.

• There's several other examples, e.g. this one also from a "young military writer" who is a grad student in law, again with no apparently established subject matter expertise or history on this beat other than "he's familiar with it" and is categorized as a regular contributor.

Additionally much of the outlet's content is now openly just republications of press releases, published under a "staff" byline.

I do not think the site quite merits a generally unreliable status, given the strength of their expert contributors, but am seeking confirmation that it is of marginal reliability and suggest that attribution to the author be a requirement. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 01:30, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

After giving this a surface level look, but without sinking too much time into getting too strong of an opinion (see what I did there, little naval humor), my take is that it should be depreciated. At minimum it should be yellowed, but considering all things I would say the whole thing should be red with maybe a special notation that pieces from editorial staff are generally reliable.

Seems most of the content could be considered SPS at this point. The phrase "It insists upon itself" comes to my mind somehow.

My $0.02(USD) = If sources like New York Post are depreciated even with an editorial staff that is generally agreed to meet RS standards, then I cant see how an org that publishes with Editors seemingly only responsible for verifying their own works while "staff" have little or no oversight verifying their work should continue to be considered much of an RS, especially on a somewhat niche topic that is less likely to have other orgs and sources expose errors or issues in their veracity. TheRazgriz (talk) 22:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm basically right there with you -- agree with your logic, but my concern about fully deprecating it is that it would make it much more difficult to use the works from the portion of the site that are experts. And as a niche-case argument, there may be times where the existence of the press releases themselves are citeable (though not as to the truth of their assertions). It feels to me like the options of "A) Marginally reliable (yellowed) and requiring attribution," vs. "B) Generally unreliable (red) but reliable for certain authors with attribution," more or less get you the same result, but all things being equal given the moderate popularity of the source I'd prefer to start with a more minimal shift and if it continues to be a problem we can always come back and adjust further. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 00:19, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I think we both agree that WP:RS is often, perhaps ignorantly or accidently, misused as it is. We both know the way it typically get applied is green get the "Citation is valid as RS per WP:RS" treatment, and anything else automatically gets the "Removed, invalid citation. Source not reliable per WP:RS" treatment. I think few of us are left that actually try to split the hairs anymore and use it as intended.

My final opinion is:

1) There should be immediate action taken to depreciate the source to yellow status via proper mechanisms, and;

2) Further discussion (probably within the talk pages in the articles the source is most often used) about if it should be further depreciated to red status with either notation for editorials being reliable, or if Editorial Staff should be split into a separate, green listing.

Considering the sheer volume of citations made across the site form this source, it seems due. TheRazgriz (talk) 01:23, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm on board for all of that, and appreciate you taking the time to comment. Would love additional opinions if there are any other interested parties, but I understand how niche subject areas can be a challenge in that regard so I won't hold my breath. ⇒SWATJester ^{Shoot Blues, Tell VileRat!} 04:49, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The proper mechanism would be multiple discussions with multiple editors involved, for the most part this noticeboard is for general advice and third opinion not the categorisation of sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

There appears to be some WP:USEBYOTHERS in published works, it's limited but from reliable publishers. It seems likely the output is of varying quality, so the WP:RSCONTEXT of when it's used will be important. Contentious or exceptional claims should probably be avoided. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:03, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

"Science-Based Medicine" blog

There is a blog which previously received RS attention back in 2021 and the emerging comment on the RSP list said, "Science-Based Medicine is considered generally reliable, as it has a credible editorial board, publishes a robust set of editorial guidelines, and has been cited by other reliable sources. Editors do not consider Science-Based Medicine a self-published source, but it is also not a peer-reviewed publication with respect to WP:MEDRS. Since it often covers fringe material, parity of sources may be relevant."

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/

I do not see how their content could be viewed as anything other than "self-published", even with a supposed "robust set of editorial guidelines", the content is not peer reviewed. I believe the source should be reviewed again, not deprecated most likely, though their reliability seems wildly unreliable, but at the very least a renewed discussion around the source and its quality should be updated for 2024.

Option 1: Generally reliable

Option 2: Generally unreliable

Option 3: Generally reliable with attribution

Option 4: Reliable for some things, not others, but should be used with care when citing claims, and should take care not to use Wikipedia:WIKIVOICE.

Iljhgtn (talk) 02:54, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 1/Bad RFC - there is no real change from previous discussions, and there doesn't seem to be anything different. At the very least, would be better to have a discussion, as per WP:RFCBEFORE with evidence presented of the change in reliability rahter than jumping directly into an RFC. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Has there been any WP:RFCBEFORE for this RFC that I've missed? If not this should be procedurally closed. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:11, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

I was not part of the earlier conversations and feel we need a broader consensus on the subject. This source also has lots of COVID-era discussions from around 2020-2022 that need to be looked at again. Now, in 2024, would be a good time for such a review. Iljhgtn (talk) 19:12, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

So has there been any new discussion since the last RFC or not? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 02:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Quick look through the RSN, there is this discussion [118] about SBM and comparing to other sourcing wrt to Lab leak hypothesis... earliest about whether SBM is reliable or not is [119]... I think no.

To OP, I suggest getting more info about why SBM should be revisited beyond vague "I disagree" as the reasoning... Bluethricecreamman (talk) 03:03, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

To be clear I'm not saying an RFC shouldn't happen at some point, but before it happens new discussion should take place. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 03:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 1 default to the last RFC, as I'm not seeing anything new being argued here. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:09, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Much of the publishing world is not "peer reviewed" but put through editorial process. Let's not try to redefine "self-published" to mean "not peer reviewed". -- Nat Gertler (talk) 19:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

It is a blog though. Self-described as such even. Maybe we at the very least should make a distinction about some parts of the site that are most "bloggy"? Iljhgtn (talk) 19:40, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

There is no agreement among editors about what constitutes a SPS (see, eg., this summary of one discussion). Whether a source is generally (un)reliable is a distinct issue from whether it's SPS. FactOrOpinion (talk) 21:13, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Indeed there are lots of things which call themselves a "blog" these days and which aren't. SBM is a publication of the New England Skeptical Society and is not SPS. Many Wikipedia editors seem confused about SPS and seem to want to redefine it in a weird maximalist way to encompass things with the Wrong POV™. I recommend reading self-publishing to them. Bon courage (talk) 11:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

The New England Skeptical Society is an amateur society... The people who write here are its members, that is amateur self publishing. This isn't an academic society or even a professional one, these are amateurs participating in a hobby. Steven Novella is a founder and president of the New England Skeptical Society, the "Founder and Executive Editor" of the Science-Based Medicine blog and the NeuroLogicaBlog as well as the primary contributor to both. Thats not normal or indicative or editorial independence. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:20, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

It was declared "not an SPS", despite literally being a blog, because people wanted to use it on BLPs. PARAKANYAA (talk) 22:15, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

fair enough... arguably, though, this RFC isn't asking if the blog is SPS or not though, which is entirely different from whether it is reliable or not. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

They're basically saying that because they're an SPS they're unreliable. Strange argument given the previous discussions (at worst they'd be an EXPERTSPS that can be used for non BLPs), but it's still because they're an SPS so it's still the crux of the issue. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:52, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Maybe an Option 3 then, saying that the source could be used for non-BLPs would suffice then? Iljhgtn (talk) 02:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I was overly involved in the prior RFC, so I don't want to get too involved this time. But the essence is that SBM acknowledged that some of their authors published directly without editorial oversight. ("... we allow trusted authors to publish without prior review for the sake of efficiency and timeliness" [120]) That makes it an SPS in terms of BLPs. This does not mean that it is unreliable, or it can't be used per WP:Parity - only that it can't be used as a source of information regarding living people. Beyond that I have no opinion about it regarding reliability. - Bilby (talk) 03:36, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that is all that needs to be updated then. Since the thought first occurred to me from a BLP. Iljhgtn (talk) 03:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Although SBM's editors can publish without prior review, their description suggests that those articles undergo review after publication and that review can result in various actions (e.g., clarification in the comments section, corrections to the body of the article, retraction). So although an article may initially be a SPS, it arguably doesn't remain so. Moreover, guest columnists cannot publish without prior review, so the judgment about whether a given article is/isn't a SPS might vary with the author. FactOrOpinion (talk) 06:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree. I think guest authors can be assumed not to be self-published. I think we need to assume articles by regulars are self published though, for the sake of BLP, and especially articles published by the editors, unless there is an indication that they went through independent review at some point. Otherwise, outside of BLPs, the main editors are experts in their fields, so the situation is different. - Bilby (talk) 07:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

The only people listed as current editors are Gorski and Novella. Is there anyone else we would exclude? Alpha3031 (t • c) 11:37, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

In that case I am happy with it being only those two for BLPs when looking at new articles. I do not know what other contributers can publish directly. Historical articles might be different. - Bilby (talk) 12:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think just clarifying that this source cannot be used for BLPs would be an improvement and a welcome clarification. Iljhgtn (talk) 13:07, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

While SBM ought not to be used for biographical details, it often is used on articles about BLPs as a parity source for information about a person's ideas or the reception of their work. A blanket 'cannot be used for BLPs' would be misleading. MrOllie (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Well, it is a bit stronger than "ought not", as an SPS can't be used to make a claim about a living person unless it is written by the subject. But it is true that you can use it to say "this idea is not consistent with scientific consensus", because that is not about the person, althought not "this person believes something that is not consistent with scientific consensus". - Bilby (talk) 13:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Actually, the editors have retracted someone else's article once, so, articles older than a few days have undergone editorial oversight. SBM is an important resource for medical fringe. Calling it SPS with the consequence of it being unusable would make lots of articles worse.

If deletion of SBM citation would lead to fringe claims in BLP articles being uncontested, the fringe claims would also have to be deleted. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

They did retract it, yes. Does that mean that everything published by one of the various editors, that was allowed to be published directly, has also gone under editorial oversight since then? Can we tell when it happens and when it does not? Or how long it takes to happen if it does? That said, SMB seems to me to be perfectly usable to contest a fringe claim. That's not a BLP concern. I just question it as a means of assigning a belief in a fringe (or otherwwise) claim to a living person. - Bilby (talk) 15:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

That seems reasonable. Issue ofc is that this RFC does not ask if SBM is SPS, just if its reliable. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 16:14, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• Whenever this comes up I have to ask, "what is the article about someone whose snake oil has been described accurately as such this time?" The general misunderstanding of the BLP policy is that it bars sources from being used on BLP articles. It does not. It bars certain sources from being used about the living person. E.g. Science based medicine is routinely used to debunk the bullshit that various health nuts promote. It is perfectly fine to use SBM to say 'X claims their product Y gives benefits Z, there is no scientific basis to this.' What it is not used for is 'X is a habitual liar who lies about their products'. Despite both statements being entirely accurate, the BLP policy allows us to do the former, not the latter. This has been discussed multiple times and its not going to change any time soon unless you a)get the BLP policy rewritten, b)snake oil salesmen cease to exist. Only in death does duty end (talk) 17:12, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  That is an interesting point. Where could I cite that exact policy which you claim "has been discussed multiple times and its not going to change any time soon"? I am not contesting your comment, I am just interested in where and how to cite that claim. Iljhgtn (talk) 18:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Several links at WP:SBM, two of which are amongst the longest discussions 2018, 2021. There are also many old conversations at WP:FTN, for example 2022. Also various long conversations at WP:BLPN 2018. In the last link JzG summed it up best "SBM has been discussed here repeatedly: it is a reliable source for critique of quackery. It has a good reputation for editorial quality and is written by known expert contributors. It is challenged routinely by people buffing up the articles of charlatans, and every time it comes here, the decision is that it's reliable". Psychologist Guy (talk) 20:09, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Have to agree with this assessment. So much of this RFC seemed to me like reasoning backwards from "I want to use Science Based Medicine on BLPs" to "therefore its not an SPS".

It is a group blog, and generally reliable (and particularly useful on matters that are definitively fringe), but it is an SPS and not suitable for third party BLP claims. Void if removed (talk) 10:33, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 3a - Generally reliable with attribution, but SPS. It is fine for eg. rebutting the sourced claims made by third party BLPs, but not fine for establishing facts about third party BLPs. While they're good on traditional quackery, they have come unstuck in recent years with lower quality contributions like this 2021 piece about the NICE evidence review on puberty blockers, which is quite misleading about what evidence was excluded and why. Eg, of fourteen supposedly illegitimately excluded studies, they were all excluded for legitimate reasons, but presented here as suspicious. For example:

• One was after the date cutoff
• One (De Vries 2014) was considered but according to an NHS stakeholder review it remained excluded from the final NICE evidence review as the relevant population and follow-up time points were included in the de Vries et al. (2011) study
• Six didn't report outcomes sufficiently
• One isn't even a published study, just a protocol for a prospective one

Etc. On top of that the general thrust has aged badly, since everything the NICE review concluded has been substantiated and reinforced by other subsequent systematic reviews (eg. Zepf et al in 2023, Taylor et al in 2024 as part of the Cass Review), and astonishingly multiple times this SBM article cites GenderGP approvingly, one of whose directors was struck off, and the other who has now lost her license after years of controversy.

Another piece by the same author contains swipes like this:

Dr. Hillary Cass, lead on the much-maligned and internationally criticized (and deservedly so) NICE Review

The two citations for this? The author's earlier piece (above) - so citing themselves as an authority for "much maligned" - and an essay on ethics which complains low quality studies were excluded from the NICE review (thus missing the point of excluding low quality results from the review synthesis).

It goes on to say:

The ill-conceived and GC-adored NICE review, which condemns gender-affirming medical care for youth as low quality, is linked and referenced in the NYT article and has influenced the NYT critique of puberty blockers. The review was commissioned by Dr. Cass, mentioned earlier, on whose recommendation England’s National Health Service proposed restricting gender-affirming treatment for trans youth to research settings.The review was also thoroughly criticized in the scientific community for, among other things, not understanding what “low quality” actually means in context.

The citations for this here are: GenderGP (again), a personal activist blog, a letter to the editor that doesn't mention the NICE review, and a 2021 letter to the editor that claims the NICE review was unrepresentative, which as multiple subsequent independent systematic reviews have shown is demonstrably false. These are not convincing sources. Not only would we never hold SBM up against such a high quality WP:MEDRS, the poorly substantiated and partisan hyperbole repeatedly attempting to undermine the NICE review does, I think, somewhat call into question the reliability of this SBM contributor.

While SBM are sometimes the only ones taking the time to writing about fringe topics, here a guest contributor is offering strong WP:PARTISAN opinions on something that isn't fringe, but is a top-tier WP:MEDRS, and getting it completely wrong, while backing that up with terrible sources. That should be cause for a little skepticism IMO. I think SBM are solid on antivax and autism quackery, but less so when they wander into this territory. Void if removed (talk) 12:47, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I have noticed substantial issues with the SBM tone, they tend to use a lot of insinuation and emotionally charged language, which doesn't bode well for our NPOV policy of dispassion. Additionally, editors will often point to this as a form of WP:PROPORTION and it can distort POV. SmolBrane (talk) 18:44, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Great points @Void if removed. I don't think this qualifies to fully deprecate the source, but it sure does call in to question the reliability of this self-publishing blog. Iljhgtn (talk) 04:45, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, I wouldn't go anywhere near that - just that they are reliable and useful when talking about things that are fringe, but I find it questionable to give opinionated guest contributors with a vested interest in a topic a platform to cast unwarranted aspersions on non-fringe sources. Void if removed (talk) 10:23, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 3. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with this source but it's opinion/advocacy, not research or news. Not disparaging the expertise and editing, but we should treat it the same way we would if the author had published in a reputable op-ed section or magazine, not like a journal or news section. GordonGlottal (talk) 13:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Well put. SmolBrane (talk) 22:36, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 1, per bluethricecreamnan Snokalok (talk) 16:54, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Option 1, though attribution should probably be used in most use cases anyways. Most sources in general that aren't being used for explicit biographical background info should have attribution. Silverseren^C 00:51, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. Attribution would be a NPOV violation in many cases and a WP:PROFRINGER's dream if (for example) we had to make it look like BEMER therapy being dubious was "just" the opinion of SBM. Whether or not to attribute in any instance is determined by WP:YESPOV, which is part of WP:NPOV and therefore non-negotiable and not subject to RfCs. Bon courage (talk) 01:10, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 - per @Bon courage above, we don't need to relitigate reliable source to accommodate WP:PROFRINGE editors who take offense when their fringe topics run into the face of science and are trying to wiki lawyer their way out of some sources being used to show why something is fringe. Raladic (talk) 01:26, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Comment: to anyone voting option one, how is this not an SPS? Its reliability aside, our biggest rule on SPS is that we cannot ever use them for BLP statements unless they are about self. Saying it is reliable doesn't make it not an SPS when it is a blog. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:21, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Because, per the last RfC "it has a credible editorial board, publishes a robust set of editorial guidelines, and has been cited by other reliable sources". There may be a wrinkle whereby the editors-in-chief can publish straight to pixel without additional oversight, which is what has been discussed. But if the RfC was about whether SBM was an SPS it should have been framed that way, rather than (yet another) attempt to torpedo its reliability so as to open the fringe floodgates of hell. Bon courage (talk) 02:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

"...rather than (yet another) attempt to torpedo its reliability so as to open the fringe floodgates of hell." Because this one blog is all that holds back the "fringe floodgates of hell" now is that right? Most impressive. 😂 Iljhgtn (talk) 04:42, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

It's one of a very few sources which bother to comment on the grift, fraud and quackery out there in science/medicine allowing articles on such topics to attain WP:PARITY (it used to be QuackWatch, and in future no doubt it will be some other source). These sources are always very unpopular with a certain constituency of Wikipedia editors. Bon courage (talk) 11:48, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3/4, I believe this blog may be generally reliable for NON-BLPs only. I will say that the Gorski writer for the SPS does seem to be able to just write some articles and then publish them with himself as the scrutiny. Now, he may be reliable, but that effectively merges into the level of a primary source or self-published, and should not be usable for BLPs at the very least, even if generally reliable on other "science" related topics outside of BLPs. There are many areas that would still cover, but biographies of LIVING persons tend to have many extra rules for a reason. It has long been the case that those who sit on differing sides of a political aisle hold special venom, even the scientifically-minded among us humans, for those who disagree with deeply held beliefs. Thus, the main recipient of libelous claims does tend to be directed it would seem towards the biographies of LIVING persons, who also have other factors at stake. The rule then should likewise be consistently applied again for this blog, and I will even venture to say that I think the "floodgates of hell" will still be held at bay, even if the closer decided to rightfully deem the source "Generally reliable", but "not for BLPs"...Iljhgtn (talk) 04:56, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  those who sit on differing sides of a political aisle This is a false framing. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has recently switched aisles, but SBM has exposed his pro-quackery propaganda before and after the switch. SBM is about the conflict between medical science and medical pseudoscience, not about US politics. SBM's statements do not become tainted by politics just because US politics has moved into its field by becoming tainted by charlatans. Pseudoscience does not magically turn into not-pseudoscience-but-a-legitimate-political-position because US politicians embrace it. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:30, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. Nothing has changed since the last time this was discussed. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:30, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• I guess if we really are doing the numbers thing, I'll pop in an option 1. There is enough evidence of pre- and post-publication review that the source derives reliability from both a review process and, in many cases, the subject matter expertise of the author of individual articles, which is a step up from many other sources we treat as generally reliable in their area of expertise. Reviewing the concurrent discussions, I don't think there's likely to be firm consensus on the nature of the type of organisation in general (science advocacy group), but in that case we'd fall on existing practice of treating the source on a case-by-case basis. It may be appropriate to treat articles by Gorski and Novella as self-published, in which case we should take care statements so sourced are exclusively medical ("XYZ is not supported by the medical literature") and not biographical ("and therefore ABC is a crank for supporting XYZ") and it may also be appropriate to treat early reports with caution (like WP:RSBREAKING), but this is largely in line with how we treat other reliable sources.

Contra SmolBrane, the tone of our sources is generally not an issue. We should not take a carbon copy of the tone of our sources, especially sources of different genres, but this is again, the same for other sources we consider generally reliable (e.g., WP:NEWSSTYLE). We do have a consistent editorial tone for certain subject areas that may disappoint or disgruntle some editors, but this is in accord with our policies and guidelines (WP:GEVAL, WP:FRINGE) and not in contravention to it. Current policy is that we ought to take an anti-fringe line and judgement (not discretion, this is not optional) should be used to exclude fringe theories where inclusion would unduly legitimise it. In some cases, attribution may be appropriate, but this should be decided on a case by case basis. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 3/4 (although I object to the atypical format) this is a SPS where most of the articles published fall under EXPERTSPS so in general are usable (the main authors/editors are David Gorski, a published expert in medicine and the study of pseudoscience as a social phenomenon, and Steven Novella also similarly qualified). I would also note that SBM has a sister blog, NeuroLogicaBlog[121] which is rather widely used on wiki[122] and has complete overlap in terms of author/editors/subject matter so should be part of the same discussion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:16, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

WhoWhatWhy - any opinions?

The website WhoWhatWhy and its employee/founder Russ Baker has been the subject of at least three previous discussion at RSN [123], [124], [125].

Both WhoWhatWhy and Russ Baker have entries on WP, however, I'm not sure how helpful they are in researching the reliability of either as they both appear to have been massaged and I seem to recall (but could be wrong) that WhoWhatWhy has previously recruited volunteers to edit its WP page and Baker himself has previously ginned-up his followers with allegations that he's being "smeared" as a conspiracy theorist on WP.

Thus far most of what I've found are red flags:

• On a 2014 episode of the UFO and Bigfoot radio show Coast to Coast AM, Russ Baker appeared as a guest to argue that the FBI was secretly behind the Boston Marathon Bombings. [126]
• Boston Magazine in 2015 described Baker [127] thus: "Baker has abandoned the mainstream media and become a key player on the fringe, walking that murky line between conventional investigative journalist and wild-eyed conspiracy theorist—a term that, unsurprisingly, he despises, although in December he did an “Ask Me Anything” for Reddit’s “Conspiracy” board. Since April 2013, Baker and his online nonprofit news outlet, WhoWhatWhy, have been raising provocative questions about the Boston Marathon bombings. Questions like “Does New Boston Bombing Report Hint at Hidden Global Intrigue?” and “‘Boston Strong’—A Feel Good Distraction from a Darker Truth?” and “Is Officer Collier’s Killer Still at Large?”
• Baker's magnus opus was a book called Family of Secrets which Los Angeles Times reviewer Tim Rutten described [128] this way: "Baker’s coherent explanation of the world purports to be “a secret history” of a vast conspiracy stretching back more than a century in which a cabal of rich, interconnected men -- mainly involved in oil and gold extraction -- have used, first, private intelligence agents and then, later, the government spy agencies they helped found to manipulate . . . well, just about everything."
• Columbia Journalism Review describes [129] WhoWhatWhy thusly: "Despite these investigations, Baker would be the first to admit that he’s made it easy for the mainstream media to disregard him and the site... “I have always talked openly about assassinations and things like that, and that is the electrified third rail,” Baker says. He even appears at assassination conferences and defends doing so, despite the damage he realizes it does to his reputation and to the site’s credibility. Conspiracy theories aren’t the only things that make Baker and WhoWhatWhy vulnerable to the criticisms of more staid, corporate journalists.
• Its 2019 operating expenses were $290,000 [130] which suggests the only professional staff of this operation may be Baker and one or two others. This seems supported by its own website where it recruits for volunteers to do everything from "Editorial Manager" to "Research Assistant" [131]
• The site sometimes publishes lightly-labeled satire pieces per Snopes [132].

However, I'm curious if there's been any evolution as to perceptual reliability as to this site since the previous RSN discussions? Or any other opinions? Chetsford (talk) 04:04, 1 December 2024 (UTC); edited 20:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Being notable has no bearing on being reliable. What matters is a reputation for fact-checking, which he (seems to admit) he lacks. Slatersteven (talk) 12:23, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, edited my comment to clarify I'm noting they both have WP articles only to the extent it's done to discourage editors from using them as a source gauge to respond to this question. (Not to suggest the presence of either is an indicator of reliability.) Sorry for the confusion. Chetsford (talk) 20:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The Jewish Press - Damascus atttempted coup rumour presented as fact

How reliable is The Jewish Press?

Yesterday: unreliable report that claimed that an attempted coup d'état took place, titled with no ambiguity at all: Attempted Coup D'Etat Taking Place in Damascus. Some time earlier than 1 Dec 2024 00:29:14 UTC The Jewish Press published an article by Hana Levi Julian that presented multiple pieces of evidence that an attempted coup d'état was taking place in Damascus on 30 Nov 2024. Wikipedians cannot find any corroborating sources and half a day after the initial report, at 1 Dec 2024 11:40:45 UTC, the source shows no signs of an update and is still visible on the home page of The Jewish Press as of 1 Dec 2024 11:46:52 UTC.

The most relevant RSN comments on The Jewish Press that I could find:

• (nb: Jewish Press is not wp:rs but it doesn't matte here. ...) per Pluto2012 01:59, 28 August 2015 (UTC) - Avraham describes TJP as a tabloid; tabloids are usually unreliable;
• There's also The Jewish Press. It's extremely right-wing, but it is an established publication. per GreenEli 18:38, 22 November 2022 (UTC).

Being extremely biased does not make a source unreliable, but being established does not make it reliable either. This particular case of the supposed coup d'etat attempt asks readers to trust the newspaper

• that speculation grew refers to journalists communicating with multiple trusted local sources, or at least a mix of trusted and arbitrary citizen-on-the-street sources;
• that Local sources said Brigadier General Hassam Louka, chief of the regime's general security directorate was attempting to oust President Bashar al-Assad refers to communications with a sufficient number of independent serious local sources;
• that Scharo Maroof's toot Coup in Damascus is confirmed is a trusted source (Scharo Maroof does appear to exist, at least online, as a Kurdish journalist, but is neither WP-notable nor Wikidata-accepted); and
• that Clashes were reported between the Syrian Republican Guard and the Syrian Arab Army's 4th Division in the Kfar Sousa district of Damascus, with gunfire directed at various government buildings is highly specific and means reports from serious local sources, not just "I heard it on the Internet".

It does appear that there was some "fire behind the smoke", in the sense that there were some gunfights between government forces and sleeper cells (SDF or HTS, depending on various unreliable sources) in Damascus, but this report states outright that the fight was between two different Assad government forces.

If there were any fact-checking and editorial quality control, then this particular article should have been blocked by editors or at least given a lot more nuance about being unconfirmed rumours.

Is one highly misleading article enough to qualify The Jewish Press as unreliable? Any other specific evidence? Boud (talk) 12:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Just to answer you second to last question, no one article is not enough to question the reliability of a source. Especially when it was only published a few hours ago.

Newspaper, all of them, are likely to sometimes publish sensational articles. How they respond to criticism of doing so, and how events unfurl is more important than any article they publish.

This isn't to say they The Jewish Press is reliable, this is the first I've heard of them, but long-term consistent behaviour is what makes a source reliable to unreliable not one specific article they publish. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:08, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

wp:primary comes to mind as does wp:notnews. Slatersteven (talk) 13:10, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Yep and also yep. The rush to include breaking news is at odds with being an encyclopedia. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:04, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

"If the coup attempt is not confirmed to be real, then we'll have at least one solid case for proposing The Jewish Press at WP:RSP." [133] It's exciting to find one solid case, but per Chess in the open Jerusalem Post RfC above, are you sure you don't want to wait until that discussion closes before starting another Jewish/Israeli source RfC? Safrolic (talk) 15:51, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

This is not an RfC, especially since I could only find tiny snippets of earlier discussions. It's true that in that comment I wrote "WP:RSP" rather than "WP:RSN", but that comment was more of a TODO-reminder/hopefully-someone-will-do-this than an authoritative instruction; after checking the guidelines, I saw that RSN should precede RSP. Boud (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• Reliable yes, biased, also yes, but still generally reliable according to The Forward and other sources. Iljhgtn (talk) 19:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

• Online edition is Generally unreliable. The website doesn't have any staff reporters, it is entirely aggregation written by freelancers with no fact-checking process. There's never any reason to cite it over the RS they're cribbing from.
• Print edition is Generally reliable. This is a weekly put out by the same organization. Very little content overlaps. It's mostly non-news stuff but they print some serious journalism, including original content, about Orthodox Jewish interests. There is at least one full-time staff writer (Baruch Lytle) and an editor looks it over before it goes to print. Political content published 2018-2021, under former EIC Eliot Resnick, should be treated with caution. This is still a relatively low-quality source. GordonGlottal (talk) 01:20, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Thanks - this seems to be the subthread about TJE that goes beyond this one particular article. For convenience, here's a link to The Forward. Boud (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• sometimes a reliable source does a mistake, see WP:WSAW. Publishing a single unsubstantiated rumor probably isn't enough to deprecate. Questions of dueness/bias, as per above, remain useful to decide. no clue what jewish press is, but a single wrong isn't enough to call any source's reliability into question. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:36, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Fair point: WP:WSAW descibes this nicely. Boud (talk) 13:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Obviously it is not reliable for this particular exceptional claim. We will see if it publishes corrections or is proved to have been right to a degree over the next weeks and months. If no correction appears, then we might revisit this in terms of reliability.Boynamedsue (talk) 08:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Initial reporting on coups is almost always BS because 90% of the coup is trying to convince people that the coup has succeeded or failed. Once people believe the coup is successful or unsuccessful they'll acquiesce and it actually will be successful or unsuccessful.

WP:BREAKING is applicable here because of the nature of information warfare.

And yes, there's an obvious pattern here as to what sources are being examined. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:58, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Vanity publisher?

I am not sure why this source is being removed from a certain part of Second Bahmani–Vijayanagar War (1375–1378) but not as a whole, as far as I can see it looks fine. Please clarify if I'm missing something. For other editions see: [134][135] Garudam ^Talk! 20:28, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

If you reply to the editor who removed it and then started a talk page discussion at Talk:Second_Bahmani–Vijayanagar_War_(1375–1378)#Not WP:RS, that editor will probably explain their reasoning. Schazjmd (talk) 20:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Certainly, but the issue of reliability remains. Can you verify if the source pass WP:RS & WP:HISTRS? Garudam ^Talk! 21:28, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The book appears to have been published by Popular Prakashan, which as far as I know isn't a vanity press. However I can't find in pages 33–34 that back up your edit, is it from a different page number? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 03:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

No, there shouldn't be any different page number as it wraps the conflict in these two pages. Garudam ^Talk! 10:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

There it supports the claim for "retreat of Bahmani force":

Mujahid raised the siege and after extricating himself with great difficulty retired to his army besieging Adoni.

Garudam ^Talk! 11:03, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

So a retreat from a siege, but the content states the result of the campaign was a retreat. These don't seem to match up. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Mhm. The author is not WP:SCHOLARSHIP to be frank and fails in following WP:RS and WP:HISTRS, which is why I've excluded it from the page. Noorullah (talk) 17:08, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

The reason for excluding this source from the section of the page was initially attributed to it being a vanity publication, which it is not. Now, it is being claimed that the source fails to meet the WP:SCHOLARSHIP criteria. The author, however, is a renowned professor, which should support the credibility of the work. Garudam ^Talk! 17:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

"Now it is being claimed?" I've had that up as a reason since the start. [136] [137].

More over, how are they a renowned professor? They've published no more books [according to google books], they aren't on google scholars for this book. [138] [139] Noorullah (talk) 17:42, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

External links showing who the author is would help? If it can be shown they are a history professor it would certainly add to the sources reliability.

I would also restate that the source and the content don't appear to align, but that could be solved by rewording. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

As far as I know, the publisher's credibility should be sufficient to establish the reliability of the work. This is similar to cases like Tony Jacques and John C. Kohn, where the publishers are well-known and reputable, even though the authors themselves may not be established in the scholarly field. For the book in question, I could only find from its cover that the author/editor is a professor at several universities. Garudam ^Talk! 13:14, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Just found that his books are available on the library shelves of the Osmania University [140]. Hope that helps. Garudam ^Talk! 13:27, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Going by what the preface says in the 1978 edition [141], it seems clear that the editor's expertise isn't that relevant to the published work by his own admission. Going by the list of books, he does seem to have been involved in research on history in economics (something they also noted). But that's still a very different field probably why he said what he said. So I don't think it matters what universities he was at etc. The preface also suggests that the author wasn't a recognised expert at the time nor did he have much academic experience in the field. (I don't know what the literary prize was but since the work had disappeared I don't think it would make him a recognised expert.) And however justified this may have been, the author published virtual nothing of his work meaning he expertise received minimal prior judgment. So I don't think either the author or editor give any automatic credence to the work. Perhaps the publisher does but IMO it's unlikely this is sufficient. Considering the age of the work, I think if this was a good, well recognised source there should be some sign of that by now. Are there any reviews of the book? Is there much WP:USEBYOTHERS? If there's little of that IMO there's insufficient evidence of it being a decent reliable source and it should be used sparingly or not at all. Note that I'm only referring to works with M.H. Rama Sharma as the author and M. H. Gopal as the editor. It's unclear to me what the connection between those earlier works and that by P. Sree Rama Sarma [142] Perhaps it's explained inside but there's no full text preview so I haven't seen that. Nil Einne (talk) 13:36, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I'd also note that the editor's notes on how they approached the editing and why, as explained at the end of the preface also suggests it was intentionally limited. And while it was still quite an effort, a lot of that seems to have been spent on improving and fixing the sourcing which isn't something that matters much to its use as a direct source. And the authors approach while not terrible, isn't the best for a great RS. Nil Einne (talk) 13:50, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

BTW, am I the only one a bit confused why the preface doesn't seem to mention the earlier 1956 publication? Or indeed reading you'd think it didn't happen. Nil Einne (talk) 14:03, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

• Also to add - the source does not directly support the content. You dont need to get into arguments over if the source is reliable or not. With military campaigns they usually have a defined end-point on which most scholars agree - for this to source that the campaign ended in a retreat, you would need to show that the campaign ended at/shortly after. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Anyone know anything about Al-Kindi?

Journal publisher based in England according to their website. I'm having a look at a source that I assumed would be fine but then went down a bit of a rabbit hole and am wondering if the publisher is on the up and up. Website is opaque on ownership, has no information about who reviewers are, has a lot of up-sells like editing services at $0.06 a word and lists every academic indexing service, basically in the world, as "partners". Are these guys shady? Simonm223 (talk) 01:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

They charge $150 to publish process an article[143]. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 03:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Yeah but that's kind of normal, unfortunately, for open access at least. Even Springer does that. Simonm223 (talk) 10:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I've still not been able to find anything definitive about the general reliability of this publisher. They tend to name their journals very closely to other, more established, journals which has thrown up a lot of chaff but their journals also don't appear in the predatory journals lists I was able to access. Simonm223 (talk) 20:59, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

This is the same issue I ran into to. Unfortunately unless they are obviously junk it's difficult to tell a journals reliability without specialist knowledge. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:12, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I suppose I could find some of their journals in domains where I do have specialized knowledge and have a deep read... but I'm not sure I'm that concerned over the presence of one Alaric Naude citation regarding the linguistic history of the tetragrammaton to bother. LOL Simonm223 (talk) 13:03, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Unreliable sources used in Article: The Little Panda Fighter.

There are some sources in the article The Little Panda Fighter that may not be reliable. Source 4 on the article is an Amazon listing and source 6 and 7 are YouTube videos and YouTube is one example of unreliable sources. For this reason, there was a deletion discussion about a month ago. An administrator had closed the discussion as keep, but the problem was that during the deletion discussion, the article's references have not been replaced with reliable ones. Thankfully, during the deletion discussion, some editors have found reliable sources and made replies that linked them in the deletion discussion. To find the reliable sources, see the deletion discussion (Now archived) at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Little Panda Fighter, and read the comments that link sources that they say are reliable and we can replace the unreliable sources with reliable sources. NicePrettyFlower (talk) 03:23, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

The Amazon link is reliable per WP:PRIMARY, as it's a link to the DVD fornthe release date ofnthe DVD. A better source would be preferable.

I've removed the YouTube link, but on WP:BALASP grounds rather than reliability. That some random YouTuber made a video about is undue for inclusion, at least unless a secondary source reports on it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking for when it comes to the sources that were found in the deletion discussion, if you want them added to the article WP:DOIT. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:22, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that's why I said YouTube is an example because Amazon is sometimes reliable if it's for DVD, but I am just telling people that Amazon links should be removed if it's unrelated to an article, that Amazon link should be kept since it's on-topic and added for education, but YouTube should not be referenced at all. NicePrettyFlower (talk) 00:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Dong-A Ilbo (동아일보)

The Dong-A Ilbo is an old newspaper company in Korea. Created during the Japanese colonial era era, it now operates the broadcasting station Channel A. In fact, it was said to be the overwhelming No. 1 in the newspaper industry, with no second place. As it is old, I think it will be a reliable source. Do you agree this statement?

This page was used as a reference by a Dong-A Ilbo article.Jeong Ahram (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

as per top of page:

Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:29, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

The Dong-A Ilbo boasts a long history, but I believe its credibility has declined in recent years due to its tendency to address issues from a biased perspective. Additionally, its use of sensational headlines to attract readers resembles traits of yellow journalism. Kang eunyeong (talk) 05:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

WP:KO/RS WikiProject Korea classifies it as a reliable source. I also wrote the Wikipedia article for The Dong-A Ilbo.

The paper is pretty conservative and nationalist. In the 1970s, The Dong-A Ilbo blank advertisement incident led to a lot of its more left leaning employees being forced out of the newspaper, and the paper's remained fairly right-wing since.

I think the paper's reliability demands more solid research before we can classify it. It's possible the paper has had scandals that affect its reliability. I've used the newspaper as a source probably over 200 times, and have never had issues with its reliability though. I've used it mostly for more mundane topics however. seefooddiet (talk) 08:05, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Dispatch (디스패치)

Dispatch is a media specializing in Internet entertainment in Korea. It is an unrivaled media in terms of information gathering power on entertainment, sports, and social issues in Korea. It was established on December 29, 2010. It directly covers and exclusively reports issues in overall fields such as entertainment, sports, and society. The story of the celebrity scandal, which is reported on January 1 every year, is drawing national attention. For this reason, people are waiting for New Year's Day. In the days when there was a search word chart, related keywords were ranked for several days. In addition to rumors of love affair, the media are focusing on the events and accidents of the entertainment industry. Xisuux (talk) 04:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

as per top of page:

Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports.

also, wikipedia is not a gossip site, so even if Dispatch is reliable, any material that is too gossipy will be removed. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Is SBS News a reliable reference?

SBS News is the news department of SBS (Seoul Broadcasting Corporation), one of the three major TV stations in South Korea, providing a variety of news content. With its timely and professional reports, it is favored by Korean audiences and may be a good reference for articles related to South Korea. Babaibiaobin (talk) 04:30, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Jeong Ahram, @Xisuux, @Babaibiaobin please do not use this noticeboard to get permission ahead of time for sourcing. Use your best judgement, look at WP:RELIABLE to decide what is reliable.

Generally, if there is disagreement by others about the reliability of the source in a specific article, then discuss it on the talk page. And if the discussion does not resolve the issue, you may post it here. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Is 'hankookilbo(한국일보)' a reliable press?

Hankook Ilbo, established in 1954, is one of South Korea’s longstanding daily newspapers, covering a range of topics such as politics, economy, society, and culture. As a legacy media outlet, it has a significant historical role in shaping public discourse and providing news to the general public. Its credibility depends on factors such as accuracy, impartiality, transparency, and its ability to adapt to contemporary journalistic standards.

A key point in its favor is its reputation as a general news source aimed at a broad audience. Over the years, it has built a name for diverse and in-depth reporting, contributing to its longstanding presence in the South Korean media landscape. Furthermore, its efforts to transition to digital media demonstrate its adaptability in a rapidly evolving news environment, providing timely updates through online platforms.

However, like many traditional news outlets, Hankook Ilbo has faced criticisms over the years. Even if Hankook Ilbo tends to maintain a relatively moderate stance and is perceived as more politically neutral compared to other newspapers such as Chosun Ilbo or Hankyoreh, Some argue it may show political or ideological bias in certain article. Trust in traditional media has also declined globally due to increasing polarization and the rise of alternative online outlets. To assess Hankook Ilbo’s reliability, one must consider its track record, whether it adheres to fact-checking and correction policies, and whether it remains transparent about its editorial processes. Ultimately, the debate should explore whether its strengths in journalistic experience outweigh these criticisms and how it compares to other media outlets in its handling of issues such as neutrality and accountability. Kang eunyeong (talk) 04:37, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Jeong Ahram, @Xisuux, @Babaibiaobin, @Kang_eunyeong please stop spamming with random Korean sources.

We cannot provide permission or prohibition ahead of time for any of these sources. Use your best judgement. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:42, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

If I may ask, are you all students? I see you all working on assignments on the talk page of @Hanyangprofessor2. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:44, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

On the surface, the center is so strong, but the radical multiculturalism is quite strong compared to any media company. In the 2010s, short-term foreign workers are regularly published articles containing claims to ease immigration thresholds, expand refugee recognition, advocate and legalize illegal immigrants, and give permanent residency to second-generation illegal immigrants beyond just pro-multicultural tendencies. Jeong Ahram (talk) 05:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

if you are writing to fulfill an assignment or discussion, this is definitely the wrong place. Please check with your professor, but I doubt this is what they have in mind. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:26, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

@Bluethricecreamman Hmmm, I am happy to revise the assignment if it is not helpful for the community, but I thought RSN is a place to discuss reliability of specific sources (newspapers, etc.) without the need to look at particular examples (ex. I see #RFC Jerusalem Post above). Since many Korean or Chinese sources have never been discussed at RSN, I thought it would be useful to have them mentioned here, so they show in the search archives for folks who want to know if they are good (the next step would be to link the discussions from Wikipedia:WikiProject Korea/Reliable sources / Wikipedia:WikiProject Taiwan/Resources (WP:CHINA does not seem to have a relevant page, so it may be created based on this activity and similar discussions too). Granted, there is not much point in asking about mainstream SK newspapers which are generally ok-ish (i.e. reliable, if hardly Pulitzer-winning), but then, what is mainstream can vary - there are less than ideal Falun Gong or CCP-affiliated sources in the case of Chinese sources, for example. _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 06:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

No RSN is for third party opinion or when editors need advice about the reliability of sources. It's definitely not for categorising sources. Unless there is legitimate disagreement on a source it shouldn't be discussed here. This would be a better fit as part of WikiProject -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:12, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

So which WikiProject can be tapped for categorizing sources? Or do you mean the "country" one like China and Taiwan for Chinese-language, Korean for Korean? Many of them are not very active :( _{Piotrus at Hanyang| reply here} 02:56, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The students could do the work of discussing and evaluating the sources to then contruct a list. Most sources will never be discussed, because the first check is an editors good judgements. What do you think of the source? Can you back up that judgement, and how does it relate to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines? If those questions are discussed and answered, well then you could list the discussions and you have a sources list. Add those lists to the relevant projects and you've made them more active and useful.

Wikipedia's editors should be 'tapped' their time is not a resource for anyone else's use. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 06:36, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

@Hanyangprofessor2: Generally, making long lists categorizing uncontroversial sources is something to try and avoid. It happens anyways, but it's more of a flaw with our processes than something to emulate. The Israel-Palestine topic area is a bad example of how WP:RSN (or any process on Wikipedia) should work, as virtually every source ends up as controversial due to the contentiousness of that area.

Something you may wish to consider is reaching out at the Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. There's an independent non-profit (meta:Wiki Education Foundation) that can provide support to instructors, and they monitor that noticeboard.

One of the most common assignments is to evaluate an existing article which involves examining the reliability of sources in-context. [144] This has generally been more appreciated by the community/students, because you'd be directly improving content, and your students would have very visible contributions. Generally, the community is appreciative of contributions that directly create better articles.

In particular to your situation, it's very valuable to incorporate content from a foreign language source into English Wikipedia articles as most editors are limited to English sources. That's the source of the inactivity issue you identified. Identifying reliable Korean-language sources and using them in articles would probably benefit the encyclopedia far more than just creating a list of them, as there aren't enough editors who can read those sources. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 00:37, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Views on The Conversation as a source to claim a living person supports white supremacy

I recently encountered this article being used to support the claim on the page about Graham Hancock that Archaeologists and skeptical writers have accused Hancock of reinforcing white supremacist ideas and while I generally support using The Conversation as a source, given that WP:BLP states that we should be very firm about the use of high-quality sources in general and given that claiming someone is supporting white supremacy is probably the most contentious thing we can say, it probably should require sources of the highest quality (and more than one of them, but that is a separate issue), e.g. papers of record, news agencies, groups or academics that track racism and/or extremism. While I agree that it is generally reliable, I am just not sure The Conversation fits the bill.

This is especially the case as WP:THECONVERSATION summarises previous discussions as The Conversation publishes articles from academics who are subject-matter experts. It is generally reliable for subjects in the authors' areas of expertise. however WP:SPS states Never use self-published sources as third-party sources about living people, even if the author is an expert, well-known professional researcher, or writer from which I conclude that the source (in this case The Conversation)'s reliability should be judged independently of the authors' and it appears previous discussions have not done that.

I also note that in previous discussions The Conversation has been regarded by several editors as only as reliable for uncontroversial topics, where I feel this should be regarded as a controversial topic.

So is The Conversation a reliable source to claim a living person supports white supremacy? ~ El D. (talk to me) 17:19, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

yes with attribution. by any stretch of imagination it is not SPS.

i think WP:PUBLICFIGURES applies. its not that the conversation cant be used to assert someone is a white supremacist in appropriate wikivoice, only that there needs to be multiple sources all claiming it. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 17:23, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Attributed to those who made the claim (the Archaeologists and skeptical writers) should be fine imo, per WP:INTEXT. If there are any alternative POVs to that, they should also be added for balance. CNC (talk) 17:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

As with the above, yep, attribution, but not as fact. Slatersteven (talk) 17:34, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

This isn't a self-published source so WP:SPS and WP:BLPSPS don't apply. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Nobody is claiming that Graham Hancock is a white supremacist, but that some of his ideas are drawn from white supremacist sources (e.g. claims regarding the mound builders). This is a significant enough aspect of the commentary surrounding Hancock's work that it undoubtedly warrants inclusion in the article, though of course could quibble about the wording. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I think a reader would generally understand from the article that "Archaeologists and skeptical writers" claim he is a white supremacist, but that is somewhat besides the point of whether or not The Conversation is a reliable source for that. Best wishes, ~ El D. (talk to me) 21:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Their expertise they are generally reliable for are predominately arts, culture, sociology, etc. I think they are fine for light-weight political topics, though probably not as reliable for in-depth politics. The claim fundamentally comes down to WP:RSOPINION, thus also becomes somewhat irrelevant the claims that are being made when otherwise requires attribution. CNC (talk) 21:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

He's not claiming that Hancock is a white supremacist: the relevant passage is:

Most glaring to scholars investigating the history of Hancock’s pseudo archaeology is that while claiming to “overthrow the paradigm of history,” he doesn’t acknowledge that his overarching theory is not new. Scholars and journalists have pointed out that Hancock’s ideas recycle the long since discredited conclusions drawn by American congressman Ignatius Donnelly in his book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World, published in 1882. Donnelly also believed in an advanced civilisation – Atlantis – that was wiped out by a flood over 10,000 years ago. He claimed that the survivors taught Indigenous people the secrets of farming and monumental architecture. Like many forms of pseudo archaeology, these claims act to reinforce white supremacist ideas, stripping Indigenous people of their rich heritage and instead giving credit to aliens or white people. Hancock even cites Donnelly directly in his 1995 book Fingerprints of the Gods, claiming: “The road system and the sophisticated architecture had been ‘ancient in the time of the Incas,’ but that both ‘were the work of white, auburn-haired men’.” While skin colour is not brought up in Ancient Apocalypse, the repetition of the story of a “bearded” Quetzalcoatl (an ancient Mexican deity) parrots both Donnelly’s and Hancock’s own summary of a white and bearded Quetzalcoatl teaching native people knowledge from this “lost civilisation”. Hancock’s mirroring of Donnelly’s race-focused “science” is seen more explicitly in his essay, Mysterious Strangers: New Findings About the First Americans. Like Donnelly, Hancock finds depictions of “caucasoids” and “negroids” in Indigenous American art and (often mistranslated) mythology, even drawing attention to some of the exact same sculptures as Donnelly. This sort of “race science” is outdated and long since debunked, especially given the strong links between Atlantis and Aryans proposed by several Nazi “archaeologists”.

Where in this passage does Dibble call Hancock a white supremacist? Dibble is trying to make a nuanced point here about how Hancock draws from sources that have attempted to delegitimise the achievements of indigenous people by attributing their creations to white people/Atlanteans, which was often historically associated with white supremacy (e.g. the Mound_Builders#Pseudoarchaeology). Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

If Dibble is not claiming that Hancock is a white supremacist, then the article needs to be reworded as that is how it currently reads. If you say someone is 'reinforcing' white supremacy, I think a reasonable reader would understand that to mean they are a white supremacist. It's a bit like if someone said I was pro-marmite and I said, "oh, I'm not pro-marmite, I'm just reinforcing the pro-marmite side." But that is rather besides the point of whether or not The Conversation is reliable in this context. ~ El D. (talk to me) 14:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

I cosign this view here. Apply the logic to any other subject matter, and it holds. If a reader would read "Johnny reinforces Christian Nationalists views", well I struggle to imagine who would read that and come away thinking "Well, that doesn't mean Johnny IS a Christian Nationalist". It is asking too much of the reader, and not enough of the source or of the WP editors citing it. TheRazgriz (talk) 14:43, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

The Conversation is a good example of why "blog" is not t he same as "SPS", a relevant question in relation to the Science-Based Medicine thread above. While many SPSs use a blog format and many blogs are self-published, there are many examples of blogs with expert authors and rigorous editorial controls, and The Conversation falls into that category. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:27, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

I mean, I remember reading a 2018 piece from The Conversation which completely uncritically stated the Khazar hypothesis of Ashkenazi ancestry as essentially fact [145] when most reputable sources reject it, so obvious caution is needed the writer of the piece is pushing minority views. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:12, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

This exact piece about the "Khazar theory" is what came to mind when reading through this. FWIW I personally never source any information, on WP or in the rest of my life, from The Conversation. My take is basically "If it's on The Conversation, either I can find a much better source for the information, or it won't be a well supported piece anyway, so either way: any other source is better than this." I'm not asserting it is unreliable...I'm just saying it doesn't have the highest standards compared to other options. TheRazgriz (talk) 01:58, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

While Elhaik’s genetic theories are considered fringe by most scholars, his work was published in peer reviewed genetics journals before it got to The Conversation. On such a contentious topic, it would be better to use the most robust sources and also identify what constitutes due weight from looking at a range of good sources, but this doesn’t make The Conversation any more unreliable than the scholarly journals its authors also publish in. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:25, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I think WP:WSAW applies. Obviously that Khazar theory article by conversation is a horrifically wrong piece, but most pieces on whole seem well-corroborated.

In general, I think main issue is you need multiple sources to claim a person is a white supremacist/racist/etc on a wiki article in appropriate wikivoice, not just the conversation article. Otherwise, the opinion of a single writer on the conversation is almost certainly undue and likely to violate WP:PUBLICFIGURES. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:48, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

As I have elaborated above, Dibble did not claim that Hancock is a white supremacist, nor does Graham Hancock's article state as such. Hemiauchenia (talk) 03:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

It's an OK source IMO, but the wiki text really needs to be changed from Archaeologists and skeptical writers... with attribution to clarify that there are a single archaeologist (Flint Dibble) and a single writer (Jason Colavito) making these links to white supremacist ideas. Dibble says that "scholars and journalists" have noted Hancock's recycling of ideas from Donnelly, but Dibble is the only one arguing that "these claims act to reinforce white supremacist ideas" - he is not asserting that these other people have made the same connection. This is a controversial BLP issue, although with multiple sources I think it's DUE, but it needs to be handled accurately. Astaire (talk) 05:36, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Note that the Society for American Archeology has made that connection, too, in this letter. However, this might be considered self-published, depending on how the current RfC on the papers from organizations goes.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 10:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

thecommunemag.com

I've come across links from thecommunemag used as reference in many articles in the areas where I mostly edit. This site's links are listed in Google news but it does not feel like a proper news media to me. Many of its articles give me the impression that it functions more as an attack site, aiming to defame and target those who criticize the ruling party of India. A very similar site like WP:OPINDIA (OpIndia) is blacklisted in Wikipedia.

• This site has an article titled "The Difference Between Hindus And Muslims". This article has sentences such as, For a Muslim man, sex is unlimited. ..The fear of blood goes off and they become accustomed to its spilling from childhood., Five-times namaz at the neighbourhood mosques breeds brotherhood and open communication channels of all kinds. In this network, everyone is either an active soldier or a member of a sleeper cell, to be activated at an appropriate time., etc.
• The site has titles of it's articles attacking people who's politics don't seem to align with the ruling party. Examples include article titles addressing people and organisations with words such as "Fake News Peddler", "Rabid islamist", "Leftist rot", "Filtered Bigot", "Rabid Propoganda Machine", "Venom-Spewing Tirade" etc.
• Republishes articles from blacklisted site WP:OPINDIA.[146][147]
• The site has a side panel in article pages asking for donations which claims that they are not funded by George Soros or his proxies or any political parties.

There hasn't been any discussion about this site in this noticeboard. Are the links from this site considered reliable sources for use in Wikipedia, or if not, what should be done with the existing links. - SUN EYE 1 17:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Yikes. Deprecate that source if it's being used on Wikipedia. Simonm223 (talk) 20:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Fairly obviously should not be used here, and probably for the best to remove references using it. The laundering of OpIndia pieces is bad enough by itself, not even delving into the rest of its drivel. The Kip ^(contribs) 05:21, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

RfC: Times of Israel

What is the reliability of the Times of Israel?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Generally unreliable with deprecation

Previous discussions: [148] [149] [150] Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Survey (Times of Israel)

• Option 1. The Times of Israel is a generally reliable newspaper of record and is a benchmark for the area as a whole. I'm starting this RfC because other editors have indicated both on and offwiki they see the Times of Israel as WP:MREL or less. I want to determine if that is a widely held position. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. I broadly agree with Pluto2012's views expressed in the last discussion on this. Reliable for Israeli politics, not reliable for events that are part of the Israel Palestine conflict, broadly reliable for events in other countries (where those events do not relate to the Israel Palestine conflict). ~ El D. (talk to me) 20:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Any chance you could link to or quote Pluto2012's comments? I can't see that name in the last discussion. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Sorry, my mistake, discussions were listed newest to oldest. They write:

  It depends what for.
  Times of Israel is an Israeli site of information with a clear editorial line. It is certainly reliable for the meteo or when reporting some scandals in Israel ; and it is certainly not for events about the colonisation, the Arab-Israeli relations, ... and for events about what happens in other countries...

  I would probably be broader than that and say that they are generally reliable for Israeli politics. I can't say I am an expert on Israeli newspapers, but that would be my viewpoint from what I have read. ~ El D. (talk to me) 14:06, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 For two reasons. First per El komodos drago and second because we should not ever be treating a newspaper as generally reliable in all circumstances. Simonm223 (talk) 20:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  Read Wikipedia:Reliable sources#News organizations. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 23:16, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  You can assume I have read that and think it requires significant revision as it is out of synch with the spirit of WP:NOTNEWS. Simonm223 (talk) 15:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  @Simonm223: So, your argument isn't based on policy? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 01:54, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  No. I may be stricter with newspapers than general but my argument remains in line with El D within the context that I think newspapers are, generally over-used. Simonm223 (talk) 02:24, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I'm confused about how WP:NOTNEWS, which deals with our coverage of events on Wikipedia, intersects with WP:NEWSORG, which is about how we judge the reliability of news sources. Could you go into a little more detail about the conflict here? Safrolic (talk) 02:27, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  The wide allowance of news sources as reliable sources leads to a preponderance of "notable" news events. These news events are frequently rife with WP:RECENTISM and there's rarely any consideration in the long-term lasting impact of these events. WP:NOTNEWS tells us that Wikipedia is not appropriate for breaking stories and yet, through the wide-spread over-use of news sources, we routinely have articles that are breaking news stories wearing a lampshade of encyclopedic relevance. I think this is off-mission for Wikipedia.

  It's been something of a perennial complaint of mine and I'm largely resigned to being the minority opinion here because I know that widespread use of news sources is very convenient - especially when people are interested in topics with minimal academic significance. However it does mean that, when people ask whether news organizations are "generally reliable," I'm not going to say an unconditional yes.

  In addition, the option 2 - reliable with additional considerations - is about as high on the reliability scale as we should go for any source since reliability should always be treated as context-specific. If you look at my conversations at this noticeboard on academic sources you'll see I generally strongly prefer working with journals and books from university presses but, even there, I don't automatically assume reliability in all circumstances. Nor should we. Ever. So to summarise my position:

  1. General reliability is a misnomer, all reliability is conditional.
  2. I believe Wikipedia over-uses news sources and that this has had a deleterious effect of creating articles about topics of little long-term relevance.
  3. I think that academic presses have higher quality control standards than news organizations and should generally be preferred in all circumstances.
  4. Wikipedia should use fewer news organizations as sources and WP:NEWSORG is too permissive IMO.
  5. This specific news source does not seem reliable for matters related to the conflict between Israel and Palestine although it seems as reliable as other news sources on other topics. Simonm223 (talk) 14:40, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  The text of GREL indicates "generally reliable" just means factually reliable in most cases, it's not like it's something that prevents scrutiny if a source says something that's patently ridiculous. We have WP:ROUTINE as well, and that's not all that closely related to reliability. Alpha3031 (t • c) 14:58, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  GREL is not policy. Simonm223 (talk) 15:02, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  OK, but it is the definition of "generally reliable" used, so... Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:08, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Comment I am not convinced we need an RfC at this moment. I feel constant RfCs on sources relating to Israel/Palestine are a waste of people's time. It's a very biased news source, which means it needs to be used with great care, especially on Palestine. We could say that about almost any paper in the Middle East.Boynamedsue (talk) 21:00, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

  On one hand, you're probably right. On the other hand, it's too late now. RfC's on a contentious topic are a little like avalanches, once they get started, you get a pile of opinions and then some poor administrator has to close it. More than once, I've seen someone a random question about why RSP says something, and it gets to the point where everyone is chipping in with their opinion on the source, and we have to have an RfC anyway... Best wishes and have a nice day, ~ El D. (talk to me) 21:17, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 While bias is fine, the Times of Israel has occasionally displayed bias on the subject of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that has reached extremes that may impact its factual reliability. A non-holistic list of research on this point includes:

- A 2021 peer-reviewed study in the International Journal of Communication found the TOI "framed protesters as violent and responsible for casualties and attempts to dehumanize them".[151]

- A 2024 peer-reviewed study in the American Journal of Arts and Human Science found that "The Times of Israel ... frame narratives to consolidate unilateral Zionist control and normalize militarized policies." [152]

Further, the subdomain blogs.timesofisrael.com appears to be citizen journalism with minimal or no gatekeeping and should be avoided. Chetsford (talk) 21:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

These are both analyses of how media frame issues, i.e. they're accounts of bias not of unreliability.

The first also analyses al-Jazeera and find it frames narratives in a biased way too. Al-Jazeera is repeatedly affirmed this noticeboard to be reliable so your argument for downgrading ToI should only be persuasive to those who think al-Jazeera should be downgraded. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:35, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

"These are both analyses of how media frame issues, i.e. they're accounts of bias not of unreliability." Like I said: "While bias is fine, the Times of Israel has occasionally displayed bias on the subject of the Israel-Palestinian conflict that has reached extremes that may impact its factual reliability."
"The first also analyses al-Jazeera..." This is a thread about the Times of Israel. Chetsford (talk) 21:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Can you give some substance from these articles that shows it is so biased that its reliability is impacted? I'm not seeing that here. What I take from these articles is that ToI is typical of news media in framing the world according to its ideological preconceptions, i.e. there is nothing there that suggests we should treat it differently than any news source. BobFromBrockley (talk) 21:46, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Source 2 discusses "hidden ideological agendas ... advanced under the guise of objective reporting" and "thinly disguised propaganda". We routinely deprecate propaganda outlets. Source 1 aligns with essentially identical conclusions. And frankly, as I mentioned these are just a snapshot from a smorgasbord of studies that examine a level of such extreme bias by TOI that it warps the reliability of the Who What Why narrative. I'll leave it at that as I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Chetsford (talk) 22:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Source 2 is striking in its vagueness. Emotionally charged dehumanization served exclusively nationalist security agendas through visceral identification rather than structural critique of governance denying Palestinian self-determination. Inhibiting balanced perspective on political grievances guaranteed indefinite escalation cycles while normalizing oppressive policies as the sole means of control. Basically it says that ToI uses words like “terrorist” instead of “resistance” to talk about Hamas, and humanises Israeli victims but not Palestinian victims. If we used ToI’s language we would not achieve NPOV, but source 2 gives no instance where using ToI reporting would lead us into inaccuracy. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:06, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 The ToI is generally fine as far as Israeli news sources go. It obviously has a particular perspective on the issues it covers, including the Israel-Palestine conflict, but no evidence has been presented that this is any worse than that of the UK Telegraph or Al Jazeera for instance (both reliable per RSP). For any coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict we should be seeking to use a pleurality of sources from a diversity of perspectives. If the blogs lack editorial control they should be treated like WP:FORBESCON as generally unreliable. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:49, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 for news reporting, the blogs are generally unreliable as ToI disclaims any editorial review or control over those contents. nableezy - 21:53, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 when comparing coverage of events domestic or abroad to other listed RS, there is parity on facts of the content. There is certainly no more apparent bias or other RS issue with ToI than with Al Jazeera, for example. From coverage of Isr-Pal conflict, it seem they report from perceived/assumed authorities and what their reporters can gather in the field, not much different than US sources reporting with statements from the Pentagon and field reporters. TheRazgriz (talk) 22:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Generally reliable and they should especially be used for covering the Israeli Palestinian conflict. They were one of the first news outlets reporting on the Killing of David Ben Avraham. In regards to that story, they were one of the most balanced and neutral in their reporting compared to Haaretz, JPost, MEE, etc. Their editors also go back and correct/update their articles/headlines if there was a mistake. In this article, the editor’s note says, “This article has been corrected and updated. An earlier version cited, in the headline and the text, a foreign press reporter who visited Kfar Aza saying she was told by an IDF commander that the bodies of 40 babies, some of them beheaded, had been found at the kibbutz. This claim has never been confirmed.” Wafflefrites (talk) 23:06, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. As I said in the previous discussion, This may not be obvious to most editors, but the central use-case for TOI is as aggregation of Hebrew-language media. Many stories are only available in English via these outlets, and they are usually reliable translators. NOTE: This is to the exclusion of specialized legal, religious, or military subjects. TOI does not have the expertise to translate these articles correctly (no one with legal, military analysis, or Orthodox-religious higher education on staff) and the result is often seriously distorted. Although w/r/t religious and technical detail a similar concern attaches to every daily newspaper, I would never prefer TOI for any claim that a monolingual outlet had equal ability to report. For example, I spoke with Jacob Magid last year for a story regarding UN diplomacy. He had badly misunderstood his source, unlike mainstream outlets. There is no reason to use TOI for such a claim. Anyway, there's a category of such publications for every foreign language, and it does no one any good to restrict our citations to equal-quality foreign-language sources that most editors can't even evaluate. GordonGlottal (talk) 23:13, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 This is one of the better Israeli sources, the expected bias but a clear step up from the JP. Selfstudier (talk) 23:33, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 I will echo what others have already said, Times of Israel is a generally reliable source with the standard consideration of potential bias, though no more then any other source in the topic area. - Butterscotch Beluga (talk) 00:13, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per Selfstudier. Questions about bias/dueness always especially in topic area, but reliable enough. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 02:50, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 agree with Selfstudier. Rainsage (talk) 04:21, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 per all above. Fairly standard, comparatively balanced outlet - if TOI somehow isn't considered GREL, then we need to re-evaluate a lot of other GREL sources. The Kip ^(contribs) 05:15, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 for Israel-Palestine and Option 1 for general. GrabUp - Talk 05:26, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 largely per the arguments above, particularly Hemiauchenia. I reject the notion that newspapers cannnot be GREL, and this specific one has a sufficient history of accurate and respected reporting without major red flags. FortunateSons (talk) 11:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable, without caveat. Iljhgtn (talk) 12:09, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 yeah agree with GrabUp, Option 2 for Israel-Palestine and Option 1 for general. Baqi:) (talk) 14:54, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• This feels a little out of nowhere, just saying. Alpha3031 (t • c) 15:14, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Tis a bit, not sure this really needed an RFC, still we're here now. Selfstudier (talk) 15:57, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  There's a fair amount of controversy with many supporting WP:MREL. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 18:08, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Is there anywhere in articlespace where it being in a yellow coloured box or a green coloured one somewhere in projectspace would matter one way or the other? Because I assume if the source says anything weird, it would end up here anyway, no matter what colour the box is, when it actually happens, and then we would have the benefit of, oh, I don't know, some context maybe?

  Like sure, if we're having this RFC we're having this RFC I guess, but I really don't get what these more abstract discussions (that seem to be a thing now) are actually going to resolve. Sure, I don't actually do much related to CT/A-I, I've more or less avoided the topic area thus far, but is contested addition or removal of this source something that actually happens? Are people using this source and then getting it removed by other people that think it's MREL? Are people removing the source running into cases where they're getting reinstated?

  More to the point, could there be something more specific than "this entire source, in general", or even "this entire source, as used in the A-I topic area" that could be considered a nexus for contested additions or removals? Are people worried about DUE? I'm not sure there's really any consensus on whether we'd apply colour coding for that (what counts as "additional considerations" is pretty vague) or, again, whether the pretty colours would even matter either way. Alpha3031 (t • c) 07:42, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I broadly agree with your statements, and I would like to see evidence of onwiki misuse before degrading reliability of a source. That being said, I wanted to hear what the other side had to say, which is why I started the RfC.

  The impact of these discussions is that only generally reliable sources count for WP:DUE, at articles for deletion, for assessing WP:COMMONNAMEs when at requested moves, and in many other places onwiki. Marking the Times of Israel WP:MREL means it's less reliable (therefore having less weight) for the purposes of those discussions, and reducing a source's reliability can be a strategic maneuver beyond whether it can be easily cited in articles. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 08:26, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1: Times of Israel is generally reliable for factual reporting, particularly on Israeli domestic affairs, with standard journalistic practices and clear editorial policies. however, for Israeli-Palestinian topics (Option 2), additional sources are recommended due to its Israeli perspective, reliance on Israeli official sources, and imbalanced coverage depth between Israeli and Palestinian viewpoints. For non-I/P coverage, it can be used similarly to other mainstream reliable sources.Cononsense (talk) 16:31, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Do you mean to say "Israeli-Palestinian conflict" topics? As written, Option 2 for "Israel-Palestine" is a proposal to make it WP:MREL for anything relating to Israel and Palestine, including domestic affairs. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:04, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

  Nobody’s disputing that it’s biased, which is what the argument for #2 you’ve laid out seems to rest on. The question is whether that bias affects reliability, which thus far little hard evidence has been given in support of. The Kip ^(contribs) 19:21, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 2 for Israel-Palestine topics, Option 1 otherwise. It's a newspaper of record, but caution must be taken when a national newspaper discusses a war that nation is in. MultPod (talk) 16:39, 3 December 2024 (UTC) Not EC, but responded to FortunateSons (talk) 19:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 for I-P topics; Option 1 otherwise - For reasons laid out by Jannatulbaqi, Cononsense, & MultPod. NickCT (talk) 18:28, 3 December 2024 (UTC)
• Comment It's not typically standard for the reputable free press of a country to be presumed unreliable on any reporting about a war involving that country. The NYT isn't presumed unreliable when the US goes to Afghanistan, for instance. "We should never treat a source as generally reliable under all circumstances" is also not an argument typically made about other sources. Safrolic (talk) 01:24, 4 December 2024 (UTC)
• Comment Although TOI adheres to good journalistic ethics and attributes the statements by the Israeli military that it reports on, I think that editors would be wise to limit the extent to which we regard the publication of IDF statements by the TOI as an indication of the notability or veracity of those statements. I think this is especially relevant as it applies to the designation of individuals as terrorists or the use of the presence of terrorists as a justification for a particular military action. The TOI is all too willing to repeat IDF claims that terrorists are hiding in every hospital, school and aid vehicle in Gaza while making little effort to independently verify those claims. As MultPod said, caution must be taken when a national newspaper discusses a war that nation is in. This is especially true because, contrary to Safrolic's comment, there is press censorship in Israel (a fact that the TOI itself acknowledged in its coverage of the October '24 Iranian strikes) and, especially in the current war, a record of retaliation by the government against independent and critical elements of the press. Unbandito (talk) 02:50, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  @Unbandito: Would you be in favour of treating all Israeli sources as WP:MREL due to the pervasive press censorship in that country? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 03:14, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

  I think 'press censorship' can refer to very different phenomena. In some countries, press censorship means managing everything the press is allowed to say about the government or other issues. It can mean telling the press they aren't allowed to show images of women singing or with their hair uncovered. In other countries, 'press censorship' means that while the country is at war, their media can't report details that impact immediate national security, like the specific location a missile landed in minutes earlier, or an ongoing military operation outside the country's borders. Some governments restrict all communication between their citizens and the outside world to ensure that foreign reporters can only hear their preferred viewpoints, while in other countries, censored media organizations are freely able to leak censored information to foreign outlets and then quote the international media for their domestic audience. Which kind of press censorship are you ascribing to Israel? Safrolic (talk) 03:32, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 per Selfstudier and others. Nobody has presented evidence of unreliability. Most advocates of option 2 have not indicated what additional considerations should apply, except to triangulate with other sources on anything contentious, which should go without saying for any source in the I/P topic area, so I see no case made for anything other than general reliability. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:13, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Prepublication articles with well known authors

Hello,

I was curious what the policy on pre-publication articles that have subject matter expert authors as first/last author (Eg: produced by a well known lab) that have not finished undergoing peer review. Would in the case of a well regarded subject matter expert being last author and produced by their lab acceptable for inclusion or would you suggest waiting until it has fully undergone peer review?

Example: (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.07.08.602609v1.article-info) (pre-print) first author: F Rivera(Sinai, UofF), last author Eric Nestler(Mount Sinai) Lab: Nestler lab at mount sinai TransNeuroP512 (talk) 20:02, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

would be WP:PRIMARY and without peer-review, see WP:ARXIV.

You could use it if you argue the authors are experts, but folks would ask if its WP:DUE to include bleeding edge, non-peer reviewed results instead of the academic consensus from WP:SECONDARY sourcing such as literature reviews. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 21:11, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

These are considered self-published sources so the subject matter experts would have had to have been previously published in the field by other independent reliable sources to be considered reliable (see WP:SPS). Even then as Bluethricecreamman mentioned other factor still apply. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 23:52, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

Daily Trojan Reliable Source

Is the "Daily Trojan" a reliable source? If so, what for? If not, why not? Here is a link to a page of theirs. Thanks! XZealous (talk) 06:41, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

The more relevant question is are opinion pieces and/or letters to the editor, in the Daily Trojan, reliable for anything other than their author's opinions? WP:RSOPINION is pretty clear on this.

For context see Talk:International Churches of Christ#USC "apology". TarnishedPath^talk 09:11, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

WP:RSSM has a little guidance. WP-article at Daily Trojan. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 11:00, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

My take is that a student journalist writing "Another group on campus, the Los Angeles Church of Christ, has been accused of cult activity" and a letter from campus officials criticising that article, with no secondary coverage, doesn't really merit inclusion. Cordless Larry (talk) 11:28, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

Yep, that's covered by WP:WEIGHT. TarnishedPath^talk 11:33, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

In WP:RSCONTEXT[153] the source is not reliable. The Dean is not offering an apology as stated in the content, they are criticising the output of the student paper. Also USC did not 'note' anything, they simply published a letter to the paper without any comment on it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 11:33, 4 December 2024 (UTC)