Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Welcome — ask about reliability of sources in context!

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RFC: VDARE

Should VDARE be added to the sourcing edit filter to strongly discourage and deprecate its use as a source on Wikipedia? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:45, 17 November 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - The site is associated with white supremacy, white nationalism and the alt-right. The Anti-Defamation League says it posts, promotes, and archives the work of racists, anti-immigrant figures, and anti-Semites. There is essentially never a reason to use this extremist, racist, anti-Semitic site as a source for anything on Wikipedia other than opinions of white supremacists, where deemed relevant. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:46, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Agree - reliable for attributed statements of opinion (in limited situations), but not for unattributed facts. Blueboar (talk) 17:13, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Yes: a WP:FRINGE source that would not be appropriate in almost all situations. Please add to the edit filter. --K.e.coffman (talk) 17:44, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
• Yes: as per k.e.coffman and NorthBySouthBaranof. BobFromBrockley (talk) 00:22, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oh yes. Not in the least bit reliable. Guy (Help!) 19:34, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Seems unnecessary since it does contain any news articles, merely opinion pieces that would not be rs even if published in reliable sources. TFD (talk) 05:08, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - Not as common to see added as WND or other subjects of similar RfCs, but I also wouldn't say that it's unnecessary, since I've seen it added on at least a couple occasions. As I said above, I think the idea of an edit filter is a good idea to discourage people from adding it, promoting discussion in those few cases when it might be sensible to add (although off-hand I have trouble thinking of any outside of commentary about itself/its projects). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:56, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
• No. why ??? There is no need or purpose shown. (I see no cite using them nor anything on the article TALK.) Nor does this give a basis in policy, guideline, evidence, or an organized approach to support this. This appears to be a call for ad hoc ban by whim purely for show of appearances, or perhaps personal politics. So if it is not something that is presented, has no functional use, and has an appearance of being not reputable behaviour, then WP should not do it. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 04:54, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Here's the list. –dlthewave ☎ 17:09, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Looking over the mentions, it seems a lot of these citations are just for showing that such-and-such person writes for VDARE. I'm curious as to whether other editors think this is an acceptable use. Nblund ^talk 18:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I would see that as an acceptable use within the person's own article. –dlthewave ☎ 01:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Apologies for poor search missing the ~50 links to writers etcetera. That insource search also found it in a few places like Paleolibertarianism#References and the Paleoconservatism#Further reading which seem likely OK. OTOH, VDare being used at Brigitte Bardot and Governorship of Mike Huckabee seems a bit odd. But I'm still not seeing any real need or purpose for a block having been stated, nor an issue from the insource, nor prior discussion in RSN archives -- so I'm still at this is not reputable to block. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 21:58, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

• No - I disagree with TFD that they merely publish opinion pieces. Their bread-and-butter is racist pseudo-science like this and this. That said: it doesn't seem that most Wikipedians are citing them for statements of fact. If I'm vastly overestimating the potential complication here, then let me know, but I think an edit filter that flagged nearly-every potentially bad source could lead to some major technical issues, and so it should be reserved for cases where there is a demonstrable pattern of misuse that I'm not seeing here. Nblund ^talk 18:07, 27 November 2018 (UTC) Edit Striking through previous no vote, Newslinger's explanation addressed my concerns. Nblund ^talk 17:20, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

  Fears of technical problems can be remedied by setting the filter to warn, thus still allowing editors to use the site if they really want. Which is what is proposed btw. Regards SoWhy 15:44, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

User:Nblund - ? there seems something askew with your evidence... saying ‘disagree with TFD that they merely publish opinion pieces’ seems odd to then link two opinion pieces. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 02:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

@SoWhy: My concern was less with people being unintentionally blocked from adding a source and more with performance issues. I don't have any experience setting these up, but the guidelines mention that checking for external links is a slow operation. VDARE is a terrible source, obviously, but if we have an edit filter that checks for every terrible website on the internet, then we are probably going to end up with a very slow edit filter.

@Markbassett: Those articles contain expressions of opinion, but they also contain a number of pseudo-scientific claims that white people have high IQs, and that "diverse" young people don't value liberty. This is just racist nonsense, but it's the kind of racist nonsense that a naive editor might mistake for actual analysis. Nblund ^talk 16:42, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Nblund - the first opinion piece does not claim “white people have high IQs”, it says northeast Asians and American Jews are higher. (I don’t know how accurate those numbers are, but believe racial differences in IQ is scientific fact, not opinion.) The opinion part is the claim that social issues of African Americans is better explained by IQ differences than by “blaming” white racism, that racism happens to all minority groups and IQ is the determining factor. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 22:30, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Okay. Sure. I could have been more precise in summarizing the argument, but I assumed the fringiness was pretty self-evident. To be more precise: the article takes the stance that race and genetics are the primary cause of observed gap in IQ. The author also posits that race explains things like gaps in educational attainment, crime, and mental health outcomes. The author cites crackpot journals like Mankind Quarterly, a journal which exists solely to crank out the sloppy pseudo-science that no one in the mainstream scientific community takes seriously. This isn't just an expression of an opinion, it's promoting WP:FRINGE pop-psychology that is no more scientific than homeopathy. This is indicative of VDARE's general editorial mission. Nblund ^talk 23:37, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Nblund - the VDARE opinion piece is just a non-scientist WP:OPINION about their perception on a particular paper, it is not "psuedo-scientific" nor WP:FRINGE pop-psychology, and the paper may be a bit off-mainstream that was cherry-picked as an instance of one more easily picked on. However, by WP guidance the scholarly paper is more authoritative as an RS of expert voice by nature of being scholarly and peer-reviewed, but it is not sufficiently authoritative to state as fact. The VDARE piece - if not an Opinion article - would be RS for reactions to the paper or the theme, but that would be of less WEIGHT and is RS only for the credence the position has in open public. The linking of genetics or race and IQ and the importance of IQ is not just ancient Scientific racism, it is in actual recent scientific discussions (more fools they to open that can of worms). Try a BING of 'scientific studies of IQ and race, for the Slate article and pieces it links to such as this; the WP History of the race and intelligence controversy; and The Guardian The unwelcome revival of 'race science'. , "The Bell Curve" that individual cases excel, or more recent discoveries about intelligence and development ... there's plenty that both the VDARE piece and the piece it criticizes are oversimplifying past ... Maybe bet to say NEITHER tells the whole story or is particularly worth a cite. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 21:57, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're getting at here, but if you're suggesting that we should treat VDARE's white nationalist bloggers as though they have similar credibility to papers published in a mainstream scientific journals, then I don't think that's a proposal that even warrants debating. As the Guardian piece you cite makes clear, the racist science of people like Peter Brimelow has been repeatedly debunked, and its primary advocates today come from outside the scientific community. VDARE is not reliable for claims of fact about questions of science, human biology, or public policy, and their opinions are so wildly outside the mainstream that attending a dinner party with their editor is cause for a minor scandal. I struggle to imagine any scenario where citing them would be consistent with due weight and verifiability. Nblund ^talk 23:38, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

User:Nblund Irrelevant to topic. Opinion piece / blogger parts would not be up for cite anyway to worry about RS, and as not VDARE writing are not an indication of VDARE editorial RS. Talk like Banning VDARE for what a blogger said there is not on, nor if they report on a current spat (which here the RS says is still ongoing and “debunked” is too far) in a rightish way. Otherwise you’ve got almost Non-overlapping magisterium that BOTH a VDARE and scientific journal might be RS for different contexts of a topic. VDARE seems possible RS for info on the rightish position in the context of general coverage or reaction ... where they would have more authority than a journal article, because it’s the context of public reaction and that’s not at all what journals do. Scientific journals would have more authority in the context of scientific points, because that’s not at all what VDARE does. But mostly this is all just hypotheticals ... my post point that this all seems proposing to flag VDARE on no actual incident or need other than IDONTLIKETHEM. If you cannot make an argument without hypotheticals and hyperbolics, can just drop it. I think we have beaten the points out so... over & out. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 00:34, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Apart from being racists is there any evidence they are unreliable?Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• Comment The website has no reputation for fact-checking and should probably not be trusted as a source on either biology or medicine. But could we use it as a primary source for its controversial writings (such as in the website's own article) or on background information on its writers? For example, we have an article on VDARE columnist Steve Sailer, and it used a citation to the website's list of columnists. Dimadick (talk) 17:21, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
  • I think this would be allowed under WP:ABOUTSELF, but reliable secondary sources are still preferred. — Newslinger talk 06:25, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, this is a garbage website. As per the respected Yascha Mounk in his book The People vs. Democracy, page 145. However, we don't ban WP:BIASED sources just because they are biased. wumbolo ^^^ 14:22, 2 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. This blog publishes unsubstantiated discriminatory claims, and then presents them as facts. Here are some quotations:
  • "left-handedness is generally a product of something having gone wrong in development either due to a sub-optimal environment, mutant genes or a combination of the two. This leads to an asymmetrical brain (asymmetry being a sign of “developmental instability”), the over-use of the right hemisphere, and thus left-handedness. Consistent with this, sexual deviants such as homosexuals and paedophiles display elevated levels of left-handedness." (from "How Many Divisions Have The Transsexuals?")
  • "Medicare fraud is dominated by immigrants, mostly Soviet Jews, but some Muslims and Africans. Even the few Anglo names, when investigated, invariably prove to be Third Worlders" (from "Why MSM Won’t Name Medicare Fraudsters: They’re All Immigrants")
  • "With their mental instability, risk-taking and hyper-sexuality, mixed-race people are following a “faster Life History Strategy” than monoracial people. A fast Life History Strategy happens when, due to an unstable ecology, you adapt to “live fast and die young” in order to pass on as many of your genes as you can as fast as you can." (from "Mixed-Race People: Taller, More Intelligent, Better Looking? —But Also Crazy")

— Newslinger talk 04:19, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

The above quotes lean me towards it is not reliable, but being discriminatory or unsubstantiated does not mean "false" or "wrong". Can you provide some examples of them promoting provably false information?Slatersteven (talk) 11:02, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

That's not how science works - some claims are too dumb or obscure to bother refuting, and Wikipedia doesn't rely on sources that make unsubstantiated OR false claims. Nblund ^talk 17:04, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

No, but you have to demonstrate they are false. As this has not been done (or attempted) I have to assume it cannot be shown they publish false information, just information people do not agree with.Slatersteven (talk) 14:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No, we really don't. What you're doing here is reversing the burden of proof - if this were the policy, we would need to track down reliable sources to repudiate every fringe claim that came up, regardless of how implausible. No scientific journal is likely to publish a specific factcheck on the crackpot assertion that trans people are "madmen", but we can point to the scientific consensus around gender dysphoria to dismiss it as nonsense. Similarly, we're never going to get explicit refutations of VDARE's iteration of the various white genocide, George Soros, and voter fraud conspiracy theories, but we don't need to entertain the notion that these are any more accurate than any other versions of these long-debunked ideas. Nblund ^talk 20:09, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. Also please do this to American Renaissance if that hasn't already happened. jps (talk) 18:07, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. These folks have nothing good to offer humankind. Binksternet (talk) 01:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• No I do not like it is not a valid objections, nor is publishing opinion (and that is what they do). I have asked for some evidence they falsify information (which given some of the claims presented here should not be that hard, facts can be checked), and no evidence has been forthcoming.Slatersteven (talk) 14:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - "Ilhan Omar serves Islam master?" Not even a valid source for opinion. And why would there be a good reason to link to fashy trash websites? Give no opportunity for alt-right to promote themselves here. Tsumikiria (T/C) 01:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, do not add to the edit filter. The edit filter has to be run on every edit that is made to Wikipedia (including this one) and adding too many edit filters will cause performance issues, particularly to those with slower internet connections. To clarify: VDARE is horseshit and shouldn't be cited anywhere outside of the very rare cases where it can be used as a primary source. But it's simply not inserted in Wikipedia enough to justify the performance cost. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 01:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
  • As I mentioned in the WorldNetDaily RfC, since edit filters are processed on the server side, a new filter should have a negligible impact on performance. For comparison, there are over 9,600 entries in the spam blacklist, which is also handled on the server side, and they don't cause any noticeable performance issues. Don't worry about performance.​ — Newslinger talk 23:18, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Just a note: I'm convinced, but I think Bilorv and I may have gotten that impression from the the MediaWiki on Abuse Filters section here. Maybe that's out of date? Nblund ^talk 17:25, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The section states that edit filters which use the added_links variable can adversely impact performance. However, it looks like Special:AbuseFilter/869, the edit filter for the Daily Mail, uses added_lines, which doesn't have these performance issues. I assume that any newly deprecated domains can be added into filter 869 using added_lines, not added_links.​ — Newslinger talk 11:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, do not add to the edit filter. No valid reason for filtering has been produced. From a quick look at the "list" of refs., these are largely valid as evidence of blue-linked people writing for VDARE. As mostly an opinion site, much of the remaining material is unusable anyway. Is Wikipedia going to go around filtering all sites that have mostly unusable material? In any event, any improper citations can and should be cleaned up via the regular edit process; filters are not cleanup. The proposal seems a clear case of Wikipedia:I just don't like it. XavierItzm (talk) 12:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes As per reasons given by NorthBySouthBaranof. Autarch (talk) 19:04, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Nay It's possibly irrelevant, but I don't see strong evidence for anything that requires a filter. Saturnalia0 (talk) 03:38, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Fundinguniverse.com

• fundinguniverse.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

It seem was discussed before, but i found out instead of problem as reliable source, the site seem in fact pirated the content of International Directory of Company Histories, which despite the book is RS, the website and the pirated version may not be a RS. So, should all the link be clean up entirely and add the domain to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist? Matthew hk (talk) 15:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

I would say not, as I can find nothing about who they are, or how they verify their information.Slatersteven (talk) 15:23, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable. FundingUniverse appears to be a self-published tertiary source that doesn't disclose who its authors are. The "Further Reading" section at the bottom of each listing provides a bibliography that makes a great starting point for research, but content from the site itself shouldn't be relied upon for accuracy. — Newslinger talk 22:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, if you can show that the content is pirated, you should be able to remove external links to it under WP:ELNEVER. — Newslinger talk 05:37, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• The content reproduced in Funding Universe is not pirated, it is released by the copyright holder. The content is from old editions of International Directory of Company Histories, and the same content is also used by the websites Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and some others. One can determine the specific volume, date, publisher, and editor of the International Directory of Company Histories in question by Googling any sentence or long phrase (in quotation marks) of the content. They are always old volumes; Gale (the current copyright holder of International Dictionary of Company Histories) the keeps current volumes (the last few years) under copyright but releases content of the old volumes for general use. Softlavender (talk) 05:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I did not see any copyright notice of International Directory of Company Histories that release the content to that site. It sound strange. Matthew hk (talk) 12:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/terms.php. It just said the material was copyrighted but did not claim it received permission from the old publisher of International Directory of Company Histories. Also the first volume was published in 1988, they are not in the public domain. Matthew hk (talk) 12:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't matter that you can't personally find the info; what I stated is accurate. Gale publishes updated volumes of International Directory of Company Histories every year, and releases or sells the content of its various volumes from more than a few years back (a decade or more) to be reproduced by Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. The source is attributed on each article/page. You're free to contact them to verify: [1]. -- Softlavender (talk) 13:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

It sound lame to email the pirate site to ask them do you pirated the content.They make a poorly coded website that also made invitation to post ad on the website. Also, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/licenses.php is dead link or intended or unintended "Unable to connect to MySQL server." to display the page. Matthew hk (talk) 23:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Rfc: Fundinguniverse.com

Should Fundinguniverse.com be removed and blacklisted on questionable copyright and as self-published tertiary source of International Directory of Company Histories. RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 06:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC). Matthew hk (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• Not a Wikipedia RS. This is a somewhat preliminary answer, pending answers to questions below. There is no description of -- or really evidence of -- any real fact-checking or investigatory work done by the source. Most sources, and the company's own site, refer to the site as a service to get funding for businesses, not any kind of journalism. The primary WP:RS coverage of FundingUniverse is a 2011 Forbes magazine article claiming that they might be a ripoff and it appears the company changed its name at the same time. [2] It appears that the site scrapes content from the International Directory of Company Histories. Regardless of whether that is an authorized use, given the lack of any evidence or reputation of being a quality secondary source, it seems clear that the encyclopedia should cite the International Directory, not FundingUniverse.com. Chris vLS (talk) 17:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Not a preliminary answer anymore... thanks for the link, Matthew hk --Chris vLS (talk) 02:40, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

• Reliable. All content comes from the International Directory of Company Histories, and should be cited as such (not to FundingUniverse). Gale licenses the content of old (decade or more old) volumes of the International Directory of Company Histories to three different websites: Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. The volume number, publisher, and year of publication are listed at the bottom of each article. If the editor and page numbers are desired, do a Google search of any phrase within the article, or Google the company name and "international directory of company histories". I've generally found the International Directory of Company Histories reliable unless contradicted by more granular research, which, frankly, is sometimes not findable on the web if the company has a really long history. It's often good to double-check dates and dollar amounts, but by and large I find the International Directory of Company Histories at least 90% accurate, which is more accurate than most sources for business and industry content. Softlavender (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• Couple questions. (Summoned by bot.)

@Matthew hk: Could you please provide a link to the previous discussion for this source? Thanks! Chris vLS (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Do you have a source for the copyright status of the International Directory of Company Histories? Thanks! Chris vLS (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Chrisvls:, it was not well discussed in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 134#Funding Universe. But the first comment in that thread, is saying the website content is derived from International Directory of Company Histories, which imply tertiary source . Despite it also stated that fundinguniverse.com is listed in the web directory of some notable libraries. The status of the website would be like cnki.com.cn, which the site itself is not not reliable but an aggregator of reliable secondary source, with an ill problem of copyvio.

Also, it can't compare to other tertiary source such as answer.com, which requires people to make full citation on attributing the original author and source of the content that answer.com had bought from. See also, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 80#Company histories on answers.com. Matthew hk (talk) 23:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Gale licenses the content of old (decade or more old) volumes of the International Directory of Company Histories to three different websites: Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. To contact FundingUniverse to confirm: [3]. The volume number, publisher, and year of publication are listed at the bottom of each article. It's easy enough to find the editor and page numbers via a Google search of any phrase within the article. Softlavender (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Then why not use International Directory of Company Histories as the source? (invited randomly by a bot) Jojalozzo (talk) 02:17, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Unarchived from Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 252. {{Do not archive until}} tag added for 60 days. Cunard (talk) 06:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

RfC: The Sun

Should The Sun be deprecated as a source in the same manner as the Daily Mail (RfC), with an edit filter put in place to warn editors attempting to use the The Sun as a reference? feminist (talk) 16:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC) Addendum: note that this does not prevent The Sun from being used as a source. Users are merely warned when trying to use it as a source, but nothing prevents it from being added to an article. feminist (talk) 12:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Survey (The Sun)

• Support as nominator. The Sun is considered less trustworthy, less accurate and more biased than the Daily Mail in polls and surveys. (Ofcom News Consumption in the UK 2018, p 94, Ipsos Impartiality and Trust Market Content Survey 2017, p 14-16, BBC 2014, p 10-11) Prior discussions on the suitability of The Sun as a reference (see WP:RSP#The Sun) often compare its unreliability to the Daily Mail. It's clear that The Sun is at least as bad as the Daily Mail as a source, and should be deprecated the same way. feminist (talk) 16:42, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
  • I am swayed by the opposing arguments provided. I still think The Sun should generally be avoided as a source, and a filter may be helpful in that regard, though I am no longer convinced that something akin to what happened the Daily Mail ban would be ideal. I don't want editors to be bullied off the project just because they used an unreliable source, nor do I want non-contentious content referencing unreliable sources to be blanket removed or their citations replaced with {{cn}}. feminist (talk) 16:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support seems perfectly reasonable. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:53, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support of the "I thought they already were" variety. ——SerialNumber54129 17:11, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose all such "deprecations" as being past the slippery slope level. Especially since almost all "science and medicine articles" (in newspapers and the like) (appended parenthetical comment to avoid misapprehension) are based on press releases not otherwise checked in any way by extremely few major newspapers. I support deprecation of every single "celebrity gossip" site, however, for celebrity gossip. https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/science-by-press-release/ " Instead of presenting an accurate representation of medical research, medical journalists have become complicit in transmitting inaccurate or deceptive “puff pieces” designed to hype the supposed discovery and hide any deficiencies in the research." https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2014/dec/10/science-health-news-hype-press-releases-universities " Instead, in most cases when news stories made claims beyond those made in the peer-reviewed journal article, such exaggeration was already present in the university press release." https://www.imediaethics.org/telegraph-didnt-break-press-guidelines-bc-anti-fracking-error-came-from-govt-report/ "Even though the UK Telegraph’s article on a local British government report was inaccurate, it wasn’t a breach of press guidelines because the Telegraph accurately reported on the government report, and the report itself had the error." The errors are from reports and press releases which are now unchecked by most news outlets at all. Even The Times and The Guardian. Ban them all if this is the rationale. Collect (talk) 17:19, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

  You refer to a problem in one area for otherwise reliable sources, while this is about recurring issues regarding fabrication of stories in many topic areas. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

almost all "science and medicine articles" are based on press releases - I don't think that's correct. The biomedical information in most medical articles is built around quality (WP:MEDRS) sources, not press releases reported in newspapers. GirthSummit _(blether) 17:36, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I suggest you note that press releases are used by just about every major newspaper now - recall that staffing levels at newspapers in general are down more than 40% in less than a decade. Revenues for newspapers are down about 60% in the same general time period. For medical press releases see [4] back in 1998 - " Of the 1060 newspaper stories analyzed, 142 referred to journal articles; of these, 119 (84%) referred to articles mentioned in press releases and 23 (16%) referred to journal articles not mentioned in press releases (comparison of proportions, P=.03). Articles described first or second were referenced in more newspapers than articles described later in the press release (P=.01 by chi2 analysis)." Yep - newspapers even back in 1998 relied very heavily on those press releases, and did not do too much work as journals not mentioned near the top of the release did not get mentioned in articles.

[5] 2003 "Maryland. In a breakthrough discovery that may change the face of scientific communication forever, a researcher has found that, although journalists rely on press releases to bring important discoveries to their attention, they do not write news stories about every press release they receive. Even more striking is the discovery that press releases from scientific journals sometimes present incomplete information about scientific findings.

“I’m shocked, just shocked”, said the author of the article, which appears in the current issue of Science Editor. “I never would have guessed that journalists would have such blatant disregard for what they are told is news, and I never would have suspected that journals aren’t neurotically meticulous in their press releases.” ("fake" press release used for real article following)

(actual finding) Woloshin and Schwartz found that 23% of the press releases mentioned study limitations, and 65% quantified study results. (JAMA study)

In short - often the fault is in the press release sent out by the actual medical journal, and something an editor would not normally call back on. (read the full article - it also deals with specific newspapers)

[6] (covering the Guardian, Independent, Daily Mail, and Times) In 2008, researchers at the Cardiff School of Journalism, UK, discovered that 60 percent of the articles in British newspapers the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Times, the Daily Telegraph and the Independent had been copied from wire reports and press announcements issued by various corporations, businesses and universities. Three out of four such stories had also gone to print without being fact-checked, a trend that seems widespread: in 2012, an audit sponsored by the European Observatory of Journalism found factual errors in approximately half of all news stories published in Switzerland, Italy and the United States:60% - and including the "elite" newspapers in the same group. [7] "Most newspaper articles (72%) were written by named journalists (the unnamed journalist category refers to labels such as ‘Daily Mail Reporter’) and in nearly a quarter of cases were there was no clear identification of who had written the story (as is often the case with Nibs). Only 1% of stories were directly attributable to PA or other wire services (see Table 2.4). At first glance, then, these data suggest that the newspapers give the impression that they depend on their own journalists rather than wires or other outside sources." then " Indeed, 30% of the stories in our press sample replicated wire service copy almost directly, and a further 19% were largely dependent on wire copy. In other words, nearly half of all press stories appeared to come wholly or mainly from wire services. " Even where a "journalist" gets a by-line.

DM gets a hit "So, for example, a story about the health risks of eating oily fish (‘Why oily fish might not be so good for your health after all’, Daily Mail Reporter, Daily Mail, March 24th 2006, p7) directly replicates facts and quotations taken from two Press Association stories, and another from the regional news wire Mercury." but not for being "inaccurate" but for copying inaccurate material from what Wikipedia would normally accept as a "reliable source."

"Despite the covert nature of much PR activity, we expected to find examples of PR playing an agenda-setting role. However, in many cases the influence of PR goes much further. We found that nearly one in five newspaper stories and 17% of broadcast stories were verifiably derived mainly or wholly from PR material or activity (Table 2.6) – which suggests that the practice is rather more typical than John Lloyd’s critique suggests."

"For example, a Times story headlined ‘George Cross for Iraq War Hero’ (Michael Evans, The Times, 24th March 2006, p27) is an almost verbatim repetition of a press release issued by the Ministry of Defence. " also from The Times "An example of a print story that mainly consists of information from a single source of PR material is an article in The Times about a new league table of UK Heart Surgeons (‘Hand on heart, who is the best surgeon?’, Nigel Hawkes, The Times, 27th April 2006, p16). The article is almost wholly derived from a press release issued by the Healthcare Commission," uzw.

In short - even a decade or more ago, newspapers were dominated by press release material - and the situation is worse today by far (noting that US newspaper employment is down over 40% - and the number of actual newspaper journalists is down much more as the total "newsroom" count includes the "web editors.") Back in 1998 [8] " Like most news organizations, Business Week has no choice but to put its trust in the fairness and accuracy of its reporters, because neither money nor time allows for writers' work to be formally fact-checked. ", then "At the same time, newsmagazines are curtailing their fact-checking budgets and requiring their writers to verify those details once double-checked by others. And at many newspapers, those traditional sentinels of accuracy, editors and copy editors, are expected to focus more than ever on presentation of stories, less on their content." then " One more fact-checking caveat. Most researchers rarely trust newspaper clips. Not formally fact-checked before publication, say magazine staffers, they're just too prone to contain errors. "We're not going to trust that the New York Times has been fact-checked," says Forbes' Kroll. " Clear?

[9] from Forbes is fun to read - managing to note a newspaper which ran a headline "Amphibious Pitcher Makes Debut" But wait, there's more!

[10] The Times again " Karol Wojtyla was referred to in Saturday’s Credo column as “the first non-Catholic pope for 450 years”. This should, of course, have read “non-Italian”. We apologise for the error." In 2015 they should have caught it earlier. And delightfully The New York Times "An earlier version of this column misidentified the sea that God parted in the Book of Exodus. It is the Red Sea, not the Dead Sea." Although I suppose Lot parted the Dead Sea ...

What we have left? No newspaper is as assiduous in fact-checking as it was even 15 years ago. Even "elite" papers routinely use press releases without actually looking to the studies puffed. Silly proof-readers are no longer used at newspapers - they rely on automated spill chuckers. And thus the theoretical belief that "good newspapers always check facts" is gone with the wind. Sorry to burst everyone's bubble - but papers that used to have a dozen (low paid) fact checkers now generally have zero. Their old group of actual proofreaders - gone forever. One newspaper (?) [11] offers zero money for "volunteer proofreaders"! In 1909, New York City alone[12] had on the order of 1000 compositors and proofreaders. Many "working" proofreaders get well under $25K p.a. (bottom 10% get under $19K) In New York, a person at the proposed new minimum wage for fry cooks there will make over $30K p.a.

I trust the points are clear - so will leave with [13] The New York Times got rid of all its remaining 125 Linotype operators and proofreaders (many did both due to cutbacks) - by 1990. In short "elite" papers also run press releases. The main and substantiated difference is down to headline writing - and the job of the headline writer is the same as the "clickbait" writer - no more, no less. If anyone uses a newspaper article, note that the real journalist does not write the headlines. Until we have genuine amphibious pitchers in baseball. And not the fact that 49% of "science articles" as a minimum use such press releases as the source. Collect (talk) 21:18, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

So, you seem to be suggesting that citing The Sun is fine since, because no newspaper bothers to check facts any more, it's no worse than any other newspaper. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:26, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

As I said no such thing at all, I ask you to pay attention to what I wrote. Attacking "straw men" might be fun, but it rarely has any real value. Thanks. Collect (talk) 18:48, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Well, I "paid attention" by reading all of it. Now twice. And that was the message I personally got from it. Apologies if that was a complete misunderstanding on my part. I wonder could you possibly explain, for numpty nitwits like myself, how what you have written is relevant to The Sun. Yours, with the short straw, Martinevans123 (talk) 14:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

As a general rule of thumb, I would consider no newspaper to meet WP:MEDRS full-stop, unless it is written by an acknowledged expert in the field with the appropriate qualifications. And even then I might only go as far as saying it's a reliable source for an opinion. However, I can't remember the last time I saw any argument for using The Sun as a reliable source for medicine against other news sources. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:39, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

No newspaper which uses press releases from any source without checking them is really reliable for any material at all any more. And that means This proposal should include The Times and The Guardian and The New York Times. Sorry -- this proposal is fatally flawed and will lead to hundreds of blacklisted sources in the long run. Those who say "We all know The Sun is rubbish and we should excise all rubbish from the project are wrong, because at some other place and time, your own favored sources might well be considered "rubbish" by others. This is not really about WP:MEDRS at all. Collect (talk) 18:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Correct me if I am wrong, but I see this proposal not as a total ban of The Sun. I understand it as an attempt to save our time, because, as a rule, an attempt to use The Sun as a source may have two outcomes. First, it may face no opposition, and, as a result, we have some WP article that is supported by some The Sun article that ostensibly expresses some universal opinion. This discredits Wikipedia in eyes of educated public. In the second scenario, the discussion of The Sun starts on the talk page, and, after some time, the participants come here, and the verdict is "not a good source". Therefore, by applying a filter we just inform an editor about the problems with The Sun; that will save our time and improve the overall quality of the WP content.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:39, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

The question as posed is "Should The Sun be deprecated as a source in the same manner as the Daily Mail (RfC), with an edit filter put in place to warn editors attempting to use the The Sun as a reference?" As the DM is "deprecated" now to the extent that folks are told not to use it even for MECCANO illos, the case here is dang clear- A Ban on this source unless the editors agree to use it pretty much unanimously. This is far beyond your interpretation that it is only a suggestion to discuss the use on this page, as Andy has shown by actual example. Collect (talk) 14:27, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Exactly so. And this is the reason to re-open the DM ban as well, since it is (according to the people who support that ban, whilst denying that that is what it is) being interpreted far beyond what it was originally supposed to be. The effect has been that any editor using the DM for any purpose - even when it is just being used as additional support for something cited independently in other sources - gets someone coming in to delete it with no further justification beyond "Daily Mail, therefore delete". If this is not a ban then I would like to see what one looks like. EDIT: oh, and the editors arguing that this automatic ban reduces their work-load really need to explain why it was that their previous manual trawling of the pages of Wiki to expunge every reference to the DM was actually necessary, since so much of what they were doing was entirely unnecessary given that the references they were deleting weren't controversial or BLP. FOARP (talk) 21:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) Support as a Daily Mail-esque problem. — pythoncoder  (talk | contribs) 17:22, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support It is hard to find the border between facts and fiction in this kind of tabloids. Articles are filled with sensational details. Surveys provided by feminist are very informative. Cinadon36 (talk) 18:24, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose To do this is to either assume that editors are idiots, or to treat them that way anyway. Editors are here to make editorial decisions, not to be automated into just nodding past subjective value judgements made by a clique of filter editors.

Yes, the Sun is trash. And our editors can be assumed to either recognise that, or to have a damned good reason to be using it (you can't cover the Falklands Campaign without referencing their Gotcha headline).

I'm also concerned at the increasing bias here against UK newspapers. It's common currency that the Daily Mail is banned (it isn't) Even the Guardian and the Telegraph are getting described in the same terms. Yet Fox News and Russia Today go unchallenged? Andy Dingley (talk) 19:20, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

I responded in the discussion section below. — Newslinger talk 02:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Where do we draw the line? I think a better approach would be for editors to use the best sources available, which in most cases would exclude the Sun. TFD (talk) 01:09, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose If we ban a particular publication from being cited at all we loose the opportunity to highlight their poor coverage of events. IMHO it is much more preferable to allow these sources to be cited and then to provide other sources that demonstrate the contrasts in coverage. This is absolutely a slippery slope. Morgan Leigh | Talk 01:40, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support. Previous discussions established that The Sun is at least as unreliable as the Daily Mail. For consistency, The Sun should be subject to the same treatment. Three points of clarification:
  1. It's important not to misinterpret this RfC, which is not calling for a "ban" of The Sun. It's proposing an edit filter that shows a message to editors who attempt to use The Sun as a source, and asks them if they want to proceed. This RfC would not prevent any editor from citing The Sun as a source.
  2. This RfC asks for The Sun to be deprecated in the same way as the 2017 RfC for the Daily Mail. The 2017 RfC concluded that the Daily Mail's "use as a reference is to be generally prohibited" (not "always prohibited") and also carved out an exception where using the Daily Mail is acceptable: "it could make sense to cite it as a primary source if it is the subject of discussion". If this RfC passes, The Sun would still be usable as a primary source in the same way.
  3. WP:ABOUTSELF allows editors to use questionable sources, including The Sun, for information on themselves. This RfC doesn't change this.

— Newslinger talk 02:29, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• It's disingenuous to say that "An edit filter doesn't prevent a source being used". From the Mail, we've seen that this is persistently referred to as "the Daily Mail ban". It's reported by external media as "Wikipedia bans the Daily Mail". More locally, any use of it leads to "discretionary sanction" boxes being posted on your talk page (despite that DS box actually being invalid) and direct threats of blocking from a couple of persistent admins. This is a culture that few editors will persist through, far more than an advisory warning. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:00, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

  To match reliable sources, the word "ban" should be used in article space to describe the Wikipedia community's relationship with the Daily Mail where appropriate. However, this discussion is in project space, and the word "ban" is inconsistent with how the Daily Mail RfC was closed. Also, could you link to an example of these boxes? If editors are interpreting citations of the Daily Mail as a discretionary sanctions issue, then that should be corrected and any templates used solely for this purpose should be deleted.​ — Newslinger talk 11:58, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• Here's one of the later ones: October 2017, Request referencing WP:RSN List of banned UK newspapers? Andy Dingley (talk) 11:17, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Although there isn't (or shouldn't be) a DS template specifically for the Daily Mail, repeated attempts to add poorly-sourced content can fall under other DS areas such as BLP or American Politics. –dlthewave ☎ 18:08, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

The hostile warning on my talk page was rooted in Talk:Manny Pacquiao#Bible Quote Where another editor (I hadn't even edited the article) was repeatedly blocked for adding sources [14] from the BBC, Guardian and others, not the Daily Mail. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:34, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm now less concerned because the links didn't contain a discretionary sanctions box regarding the Daily Mail. It's true that there needs to be some sort of written guidance about what deprecation entails. Since there's no guidance, some editors are misinterpreting the 2017 Daily Mail RfC, and this needs to be fixed. However, in the interest of consistency, I'm going to maintain my "support" position unless it becomes clear that the currently active Daily Mail RfC will pass. — Newslinger talk 01:33, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:DEPRECATED now clarifies how deprecation affects sources. If you would like to add some behavioral guidance for editors, please do so. — Newslinger talk 12:28, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support per Newslinger. The sources like The Sun can and should be used (otherwise some users of readers may conclude Wikipedia is a biased resource), however, they should be used with cautions. In connection to that, I think Morgan Leigh, TFD, Andy Dingley should read the above Newslinger's post, because it seems they have misunderstood what deprecation means in this particular case.--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:39, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I understand exactly what the proposal means. and I agree with Andy Dingley about how discretionary sanctions notices are being misused. Wikipedia is becoming more punitive and combative. It's no wonder editors are fleeing in droves. Morgan Leigh | Talk 21:02, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Morgan Leigh>, we are always balancing between Scylla of anti-democratism and Charybdis of obscurantism. Yes, redundantly stringent discretionary sanctions may force some users who rely too much on the sources similar to The Sun to leave the project. However, if too much liberty will be given to this type users, the editors who prefer to use American Historical Review, or Science, NY Times may decide to leave the Wikipedia. And I have a feeling that the second scenario would have more negative impact on the project.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:27, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• No-one here is encouraging the use of The Sun, merely encouraging editors to engage more fully in selecting what should be used, rather than relying on automated and rigid controls. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:45, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
• I am totally not advocating for the use of The Sun. It's shit. What I am advocating for is making Wikipedia more friendly for editors Wikipedia is haemorrhaging editors. I contend it is because there is too much punitive action and not enough encouragement of users. I find it telling that you say the stringent use of discretionary sanctions may force users to leave, because my point is all about force. There is a lot of use of force on Wikipedia nowadays; Let's try to force users to do source checking instead of copy editing, Let's gang up on users we disagree with and call it consensus, Let's use discretionary sanctions to force this type of user to leave. This is the opposite of presuming good intent. It is also lazy. It's way easier to slap a warning notice on a users talk page and hope it will intimidate them into going away than it is to try to work with them to improve their ability to recognise a good source. If we want people to participate we must encourage them, not slap warning notices on their talk pages and label them "this type of user". Don't underestimate how intimidating a discretionary sanctions notice is for a new user. How about deploying a friendly "here's where to find help on recognising reliable sources" notice instead? What kind of source a person uses isn't a good indicator of who will be a good wikipedian. There are plenty of editors who use, and misuse, reliable sources that harass editors. Morgan Leigh | Talk 03:52, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Morgan Leigh&Andy Dingley, I am totally not advocating for the ban of The Sun. What I am advocating for is making Wikipedia more friendly for the users who want to use more reliable and high quality sources. In my opinion, editors should be allowed to use The Sun and similar sources, however, when they do that, they should be automatically informed that these sources are highly questionable. I agree that Wikipedia should be more friendly, but it should be more friendly towards the editors who are using best quality sources. It is really annoying when a user who takes information from the best quality sources, such as American historical Reviews, has to explain, again and again, that poor quality sources, such as The Sun, should not be treated in the same way as good sources. Therefore, it seems you incorrectly understand the problem: the question is not whether Wikipedia should be more friendly or not, or whether Wikipedia should be more friendly to those who wants to write a good quality content (or, at least, to improve their writing skills), or to those who are pretty satisfied with totally amateurish and superficial editing style.--Paul Siebert (talk) 05:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• when they [cite the Sun], they should be automatically informed that these sources are highly questionable.

Lovely. So how are you going to achieve this? Because when it was last attempted, for the Mail, it turned instead into an invitation for a couple of admins to bully and threaten blocks.

it seems you incorrectly understand the problem Well, that's because we're stupid Sun readers, isn't it, and you think we shouldn't be editing at all. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:27, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

"the editors who prefer to use American Historical Review, or Science, NY Times may decide to leave the Wikipedia" - I find it telling that the editors supporting a blanket ban (and this is what it is) of particular UK-based media are citing US-based media as examples of high-quality reliable sources. Again: just why is that media in a country with a history of robust freedom of the press going back centuries - the UK - is exclusively the target of this kind of blanket-ban? FOARP (talk) 21:49, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support per Newslinger. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 08:02, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support its reputation for unreliability is legendary (in fact at one time it was the trope of bad journalism) (as various satirical names such as the Snu).Slatersteven (talk) 11:31, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• Strong support per this. I can appreciate a counter-argument that The Sun is good for up to date sports results, and that those are pretty reliable - however, WP:BLPSOURCES correctly states, "When material is both verifiable and noteworthy, it will have appeared in more reliable sources.". And as Newslinger says, this proposal is simply putting up an "are you sure you want to cite the Sun" message - if it's to put the latest football stats and it's the only one online, then you could click "yes I am sure" and do it. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:34, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• Support provided that it's of the "are you sure?" variety and not a blanket ban. Comparisons to the Daily Mail are misleading; the Mail has a professional-looking website with the trappings of a legitimate newspaper, so readers (particularly those outside the UK who aren't familiar with its questionable accuracy) understandably don't realise that it's not a credible source and try to cite it. Nobody seeing the wall of tits-and-celebrities that constitutes the Sun website would be in any doubt that it's a ropey tabloid. ‑ Iridescent 21:08, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Have you seen the DM website? Its wall of tits-and-celebrities has become known generally (Private Eye) as the "sidebar of shame". Any publication that is seemingly required to use the phrase "peachy derrière" at least twice a day is a long way from a professional-looking website with the trappings of a legitimate newspaper. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:24, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

• Very Strongly Oppose Not just this motion, but the entire concept of blanket-banning sources that are actually media organisations with editors and professional reporters overseen by (and answerable to) a regulator. This appears to be yet another example of people who hate a publication because of its politics trying to get it banned (and let's be honest with ourselves, that's what is being proposed - if you include a DM reference, you get a warning and then another editor automatically comes in and deletes the reference with an edit summary saying "Daily Mail"). We should never have banned the Daily Mail completely either, just covered it with a general policy for tabloids. Meanwhile there's still no consensus on Russia Today, PressTV, China Daily, Global Times, Fox News, etc. not being reliable sources since they all have their partisans on this website. Why is it just UK media sources - that is sources from a country that has a history of a robust freedom of the press going back centuries - that get this treatment? FOARP (talk) 14:43, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Because press freedom and press reliability are not the same thing, and we can see the difference. This is not restricting press freedom in any way.Slatersteven (talk) 14:47, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

The effect of banning a source (and again, that's what the effect of this will be since that was what the effect was on the Daily Mail) is saying that it won't be included on Wiki which inevitably serves to deprecate that source. It was not justified for the Daily Mail. It is not justified for The Sun. Both are news organisations that also include tabloid content and have politicis that I disagree with. As for why press freedom is relevant, it is relevant because the reliability of the press in countries where the press is government-controlled and government-censored will inevitably be lower since it cannot be independent of government policy. Why, then, is it the media of a country which enjoys robust freedom of the press that gets almost exclusively targeted by these blanket, automated bans? FOARP (talk) 14:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Maybe it is because we have freedom of the press, so no one source represents an official (and thus POV pushing) agenda. Maybe it is because we do not worship out press (or press freedom) but rather see it as a privileged (and not a right) to publish a newspaper (or have it respected). Because we can speak our mind without some big brother telling us what to do. It is not about their politics, I have said many times we should ban all tabloid (using the UK definition) journalism, anbd in fact have gone further and said we should ban all press reports as RS until a certain period has elapsed between the report and the event. If "lie papers" what to be taken seriously as sources maybe they need to change their act, rather then expect us to try and shift through reams of lies, decent and gossip to find one reliable fact.Slatersteven (talk) 15:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Tabloid journalism =/= everything that appears in a tabloid. Let editors decide what content within a tabloid paper is and is not suitable for use. Let's trust editors rather than blanket-banning things using automated system that promote unthinking obedience. If the piece is "Freddie Starr ate my hamster" then it's clear that you shouldn't just rely on a single report in a tabloid paper to substantiate it. If the article is about Hydroxyl and you want to use quotes from this DM article, then why the hell shouldn't you? FOARP (talk) 15:54, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Because it takes up huge amounts of time on talk pages and articles trying keep out the chaff, time I (and others) are not being paid for. It means that "but its an RS" is not rallying cry to include every bit of dishonest tittle tattle that appears in a newspaper that we then have to fight tooth and claw to keep out. You only have to look at the fact this (and what happened to the Daily Myth) is not in fact a ban and see how much effort has been put into promoting that particular myth here.Slatersteven (talk) 15:56, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Not being paid for editing Wiki is NOT a valid reason for doing anything, other than not editing wiki because you should focus on your job. Since the only times I've seen DM references being deleted is when it was being used to substantiate something that was already covered in other sources anyway, I'm not sure whether most of the aggressive policing of DM references was necessary anyway, and not just editors choosing to waste their own time in a vendetta against that publication. As for not being a ban, well, it has been treated as exactly that in pretty much every discussion I've seen and that's no surprise when there are automated systems for stopping and deleting DM references. FOARP (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

This is the key issue: there are not enough editors or admins on Wikipedia to keep it running properly. These kinds of bans are being proposed to try to deal with the fallout of this problem. Rather than doing this we should be addressing the cause of the problem. I contend that editors are leaving Wikipedia because it is too punitive and combative. These kinds of bans create that impression. Rather we need to develop tools to help users recognise reliable sources. Wikimedia is rolling in cash, why can't it spend some one developing useful tools? Morgan Leigh | Talk 00:12, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• We should never have banned the Daily Mail completely either We didn't. Although you'd never know that, from how it's handled afterwards. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

It was basically an enabling act for people who wanted it gone from this site. FOARP (talk) 14:58, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. Is The Sun a good source? No. Should it generally be used? No. Should it be banned outright? No. It is better than RT and Press TV for instance. For some items it may be reliable - for instance, it probably is reliable for sourcing page 3 appearances. It probably is reliable for an attributed quote. For most content in the UK there are definitely much better sources, but this doesn't mean that banning this all together is the way to go. Icewhiz (talk) 16:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Well it currently gets only a single use at Page 3. But great to see you taking a more cultured stance here. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:44, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Support it makes many dubious claims and is a poor source to use, especially for any contentious claims. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 17:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose as per the arguments put froward by User:Collect. I do not think we should have effectively banned the DM either. Their record for inacurracy is not particularly shocking. Over the 4 year period since its existance IPSO received 4008 complaints of inaccuracy concerning the DM, 2/3 were rejected 10% were not pursued and there was a breach of rules found in 7 cases or 0.17% of cases, the Sun's figures are similar, 0.2% of 6047 cases. I have never read thes 2 papers as what they have to say does not interest me but I do not like the idea of a vote on banning them for inaccuracy without objective and non anecdotal evidence that shows they should be singled out as exceptional cases. They represent a popular culture that I do not associate myself with but that I respect. Dom from Paris (talk) 18:56, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Strong Support as per the nominator and others. Unreliable UK tabloid, which i am surprised does not already have warning to editors attempting to use it as a reference like the Daily Mail. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 20:18, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppopse per Collect. It is fine to list the Sun on some RS list as a questionable source to be avoided, but not on WP's blacklist. The blacklist should be for sites that should never be used, not even for RSOPINION, unless that site is actually part of the story. That hasn't been demonstrated for the Sun. It's not an RS for fact, but I'm not seeing the issues with its opinion pieces as their was with DM (where we learned they rewrote some opinion pieces), so still a valid RSOPINION work. --Masem (t) 20:34, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose. I don't care about public perception, and I see no evidence for publishing fabricated articles, which should be the bar for these bans. The oppose !votes above are convincing. (I am not watching this page, so please ping me if you want my attention.) wumbolo ^^^ 06:26, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose Most people may be distrustful of the Sun, but then again half the people in the West have IQ of below 100 and the wast majority wouldn't be able to calculate an integral or pinpoint the location of Djibouti on the map, so who cares about what these kinds of "people" think?
• Support Primarily because I'm not seeing a lot of compelling reasoning from the oppose !votes so far; there's a lot of "let's not blacklist this website" (something that, per the RFC question's specific wording, isn't being proposed) and "don't treat editors like idiots, even if this source probably should be deprecated because it's trash" (which seems counter-intuitive). As an aside, maybe if this proposal passes we'll get a fun editorial in The Sun complaining about how Wikipedia isn't reliable either, and how Sun journalists have not been allowed cite Wikipedia since such-and-such date (that literally happened with The Daily Mail -- I can fetch the link if anyone needs it). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose for the reasons listed by Collect. Oppose doesn't mean I (or other editors) think the source is generally reliable but we should use some common sense when evaluating articles from various sources. Do we think the average editors are so stupid as to need this sort of warning before using a source like The Sun? Where does it stop? No, this is something that should only be done in extreme cases. Let the existing policies and guidelines do their work. Springee (talk) 15:58, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
• Strong Support based on the arguments brought up by other supporting editors above. livelikemusic talk! 18:42, 30 November 2018 (UTC)
• Weak oppose per collect. Given the surveys feminist cites, the case to ban the Sun would be compelling, except it rests on the assumption we were correct to ban the Daily Mail. Like others, I see that as a mistake, and not just due to Collect's slippery slope argument. The DM may be less reliable than the best papers such as the FT, but I don't see the difference as that great. My mother takes the DM & I often read a few articles when I visit; many of them seem perfectly accurate. I also regularly read FT, and occasionally find statements which I know to be false. Granted, FT is overall more reliable, hence it's the source I most frequently add to articles. But the difference doesn't seem great enough to warrant banning DM. Some of you don't like what I'm saying and I can hear your thoughts. "Even if you're right about the FT vs DM Feyd, which we doubt, even FT is only a newspaper. We like to use much more reliable sources here on Wikipedia." Sadly, sources such as 'systemic reviews', listed at the very top of the hierarchy suggested by guidelines like WP:MEDS are in fact less reliable than FT. (See for example The Mass Production of Redundant, Misleading, and Conflicted Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses by arguably the world's most respected authority on the subject, John Ioannidis Much of the top tier sources Wikipedians value so highly are now near worthless in terms of accurately reflecting knowledge, as they say exactly what Biotech paymasters want them to say.).

Like Accademia at large, Wikipedia is in several ways over a decade behind rest of world. Probably most know that this past 10 years, there has been a substantial decline in the trust regular people have in experts. What you might not know is that it's not just the masses who have lost faith– the top 0.001% have too, e.g. the policy making elite. 15 years ago, if an expert was called to address a HoC committee and started talking about the scientific consensus or 'the literature', that would have been fine. Nowadays, (with some exceptions like global warming), we just humour the person, raise a few eye brows and make sure they don't get invited again. At least in my admittedly limited experience, instead of paying attention to things like meta analyses or those who still have faith in them, policy makers instead listen to individuals who we trust to provide an objective summary. Essentially scientists of marked integrity and intelligence, as close to someone like good Ioannidis as possible.

Just in case someone with rare discernment reads the above and takes it to heart, on a balancing note, it's not as bad as it sounds. MEDS may be flawed, but a bad tool is often better than none. Despite the millions Biotech spends each year on distorting science & it's public perception, the fact is massive reductions in infant mortality and relative flourishing of human life in many parts of the world would have been impossible without biotech. Also, as has long been the case with global warming, the best PR agencies are increasingly refusing to work for Biotech, so they only get 2nd rankers at best. They may succeed in getting hundreds of our science articles to say exactly what biotech firms want them to. But in the wider info wars theatre, it doesn't really matter. The poor shrills aren't even fighting with the right weapons. Hence for example even conservative administrations banning various pesticides this past year, despite the apparent mainstream scientific consensus that they are relatively safe. Probably the more serious consequence of Wikipedia's unsophisticated views on reliability is the way it empowers overzealous quality control types to waltz about the Wiki undoing hours of other peoples hard work with a flick of the revert button. And then if the other editor objects, slapping unwarranted DS tags on their talk page, and using a weaponised concept of Fringe to get them permabanned. I guess the point Im getting to is to echo Andy Dingley's point about editors not being idiots. If we want to be the best possible encyclopaedia we must rely partly on editorial discretion, not solely on a flawed hierarchy of sources. All that said, only opposing weakly as there's quite a bit of sense in feminists proposals and the arguments from Ritchie and other supporters. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

• OPPOSE. Why? There is no case made here of a shown need or purpose. Nor a basis for this in policy, guidance, evidence, or organised approach. This just looks like one of these proposals randomly made by someone on a whim. I don’t see any mention of actual problems or links to past RS/N talks. Looks like no need, no benefit, and no reputable approach so ... do not do it. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 01:50, 1 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:CREEP. All newspapers are much the same as, nowadays, they all tend to copy the same stories from each other. Having a blacklist of this sort is not a sensible approach because it would either have to be unworkably immense or absurdly arbitrary. For uncontroversial facts such as the result of a football match or the director of a movie, The Sun would be reasonably reliable and we shouldn't discourage such use when so many periodicals are putting up pay-walls. Andrew D. (talk) 17:11, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support lets endorse the popular decision by the City of Liverpool, and the nomination by OP. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose This is the same slippery slope that people warned about in the original DM ban discussion. Since that we've had Daily Mail, Breitbart, an attempt on the Daily Express now the Sun in the firing line to go on the naughty list. There is a pattern emerging and I don't like the look of it because it does give the appearance that this is more of a push to remove politically right leaning sources from Wikipedia. I don't see a good argument to ban the Sun here, just a load of WP:IDONTLIKEIT. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 21:15, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

  I mean, if the Express told me that the European Union flag was blue, I'd go on europa.eu just to double check. Sceptre (talk) 17:11, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• Support Shouldn't be using a tabloid for this stuff. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 00:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support deprecation: The Sun is in a class of its own in that an entire city has boycotted it for thirty years because it's unreliable trash. Sceptre (talk) 17:11, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support Let's hope the TS won't go down the way of Darth Mail and post something about only 100 out of 30M editors "voting" to ban it. ^Thanks, L3X1 ◊distænt write◊ 22:32, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support - Do we need a RfC for every sensational, untrustworthy and primarily-used-for-POV-content tabloids? Tsumikiria (T/C) 01:53, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support: The S*n has a long-standing reputation for printing falsehoods and lies, most notably following the Hillsborough disaster. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 02:35, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support I don't like the newspaper, and one good usage of it is to wipe the place where the sun doesn't shine, if you are really that desperate. But onto serious and objective matters: this 'newspaper' has never been reliable, has published falsehoods throughout its history, and continues to do so. talk to !dave 12:15, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support. It's safe to say that The Sun is not a source we should be using. It's barely better than supermarket tabloids by now. Guy (Help!) 16:46, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong support The Sun cannot be regarded as a reliable source, it has published falsehoods as headlines. For example: "FREDDY STARR ATE MY HAMSTER" - see The Guardian and The Telegraph as sources for Max Clifford planting the story. Autarch (talk) 22:18, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose ban of The Sun, a major British newspaper - as cited elsewhere, "The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws and the Daily Mail also is required to follow the IPSO Editors' Code of conduct with risk of enforcements actions for breaches." It is beyond nonsensical to ban one of the major news sources of the highly regulated and litigious UK media world, not to mention the WP:CREEP issues. XavierItzm (talk) 22:59, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support and Comment Comment: notice how many of the oppose !votes clearly indicate that they knee-jerk oppose any edit filter being put in place to warn editors attempting to use any source as a reference? This would imply that they oppose such an edit filter for Infowars or The Onion. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:49, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose It is a major daily in a country famed for its feisty and free press, a country, I hasten to add, that is also famed for the highly partisan nature of its press. I know of no newspaper that has not published untruths, but singling out a major, national daily is highly problematic.E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The Sun's circulation or politics is irrelevant here, regarding numbers of readers ~ a YouTube personality can have a Trillion followers ~ it does not make them any more reliable as a source. The question is the Sun a good reliable source for articles in Wikipedia, and the answer to that is simply No . The second point ~ It is wrong to single out the Sun. The Answer is ... No, we are already treating the Daily Mail the same and what we should do is ... go on to depreciate with similar edit filters all other substandard dodgy unreliable sources, including the Daily Express and The Daily Star and similar news sources in print, on the web and in the broadcast media around the world the same. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:09, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose: The general tendency to ban sources is clearly politically motivated and deleterious. Based on OP feminist's change of position, I have decided to weigh in against this "mise au ban". — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 00:33, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Can we leave baseless accusations of political motivations of other editors out of this. This thread about the tabloid The Sun is on the **RELIABLE SOURCES** noticeboard, hint we are considering the The Sun's **RELIABILITY** not its politics.

The are more than enough excellent high quality right of center new sources to serve Wikipedia, we do not need help from a ~

"a style of journalism that emphasizes sensational crime stories, gossip columns about celebrities and sports stars, ... junk food news, and astrology". ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 15:58, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Nay In the same matter of the Daily Mail, it should not. Saturnalia0 (talk) 03:40, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion (The Sun)

• Are there any newspapers in England other than the Times of London, The Daily Telegraph, and the Manchester Guardian that are considered reliable? I suppose we also have the BBC. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:00, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

Those two don't typically call themselves "of London" or "Manchester" any more, but there are obviously also The Sunday Times and the Financial Times. To those one would have to add at least The Independent and The Observer, and usually also the Daily Express and the Evening Standard. There is no good reason why most of the UK's regional newspapers should not be considered reliable, including of course, for example the South Wales Argus and The Herald (Glasgow) (although not published in England), along with very many more. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:03, 26 November 2018 (UTC)

• @Andy Dingley: So far, there are 3 other publications that have been deprecated in the same way as the Daily Mail. They are: Breitbart News (RfC), InfoWars (RfC), and Occupy Democrats (RfC). A deprecation for WorldNetDaily is currently under discussion. Aside from the Daily Mail, all of the other deprecations are for publications based in the US, so I don't really see an anti-UK bias here.

Also, Fox News has actually been contested repeatedly, but there was never consensus to deprecate it, and there also hasn't been an uninterrupted RfC on Fox News since the 2010 one. If you or any other editor have concerns about Fox News or RT (Russia Today), any editor is welcome to start new discussions or RfCs on these sources. — Newslinger talk 02:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

So you're conflating The Sun with Infowars? Even for The Sun that's excessive! More reasonable comparisons would be to equate the Sunday Sport with the Weekly World News and Metro with USA Today. None of these are good, but they're not InfoWars. I can't think of a UK equivalent to InfoWars, something that only exists to push a single agenda, more than simply being poor and low-brow journalism. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:04, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

The closest British equivalent to Infowars I can think of is Britain First's Facebook page (or has it been deleted now)? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:41, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Where did this "the UK media is unreliable" thing come from amongst (mainly) US-based editors? I mean, honestly.... And yes this is an anti-UK thing since this is our long-established print-media that is being attacked, not random conspiracy theory websites without real reporters, editors etc. like Breitbart and InfoWars. FOARP (talk) 21:20, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not conflating The Sun with InfoWars. My previous comment contains a list of publications deprecated in the same way as the Daily Mail, not an assertion that the publications are equivalent. In fact, the RfC for InfoWars is the only RfC in the list that was approved with a WP:SNOW closure.​ — Newslinger talk 11:58, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• For convenience, here are the 8 previous discussions of The Sun on this noticeboard:
  1. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 8#Amy Winehouse/The Sun & British tabloids (2008)
  2. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 26#The Sun/Matt Smith (2009)
  3. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 53#The Sun (2010)
  4. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 85#Tabloid Newspapers (2010)
  5. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 100#Query (2011)
  6. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 134#Is the British tabloid newspaper "The Sun" a reliable source? (2012)
  7. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 156#tabloids (2013)
  8. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 226#The Sun RfC (2017)

— Newslinger talk 03:16, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Given that the Daily Myth has won awards and the phone hacking scandal I doubt that in fact many of our scandal ragas are that reliable.Slatersteven (talk) 11:31, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• Question for the opposers - would you consider a compromise and propose a ban on The Sun for BLPs only? I have kept a link to BLPs that cite the Sun on my user page for quite some time, and occasionally go through and remove the worst examples. There are currently 75, including Olatunji Yearwood ("In September 2018, Yearwood was featured as a contestant on The X Factor UK (Series 15)"), Lee Ridley (comedian) ("I didn't have any friends as a child and my iPad saved me'"), Aylin Nazlıaka ("On 19 January 2017 she handcuffed herself to the podium, causing the first female fight in the TBMM"), Professor Green ("On 18 April 2018 Professor Green split from (Redacted)") and Peter Kay (""Peter Kay fans charged up to 62p per min to call about ticket refunds"). These have all been added relatively recently, and I am certain the additions were made in good faith. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:36, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• No, because this isn't about The Sun, it's about editors. Do we trust editors to make competent judgements or not? If we do, then we don't need it. If we can't, then we have plenty more problems with fruitbat.com websites than just The Sun, and we can't expect to auto-filter everything. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:25, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
• I would be a lot less resistant to this proposal if it hadn't been for how the Daily Mail has gone. It is "banned" according to common perception, despite the RfC not supporting that. A couple of admins, and several editors, use this as an excuse for outright bullying. We even see ridiculous edit-warring to remove DM sources when they're far away from the problematic areas - just the sort of thing that you otherwise claim is simply putting up an "are you sure you want to cite the Sun" message. The practical effect of such an RfC is far greater.

Quick example - I recently created an article on cranes. About as uncontroversial as it gets. As the DM, in one of its few virtues, often has a large media budget and a willingness to spend it on buying-in photographs, I cited it for Meccano examples of such.[15] This was twice removed, just for being the DM (no question as to the source content itself), and replaced by an incorrect source, to the wrong type of crane. That's the sort of damage that's excused here by dogmatic "thou shalt never link to an unfavoured source" policies which get to the point of actually harming the content corpus. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:33, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Excellent example. I would be glad to see a ban on any "celebrity gossip" column from any source at all, but the slope we are on is far from sensible, in my opinion. Collect (talk) 22:47, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• No, because I am opposed to the principle of bans in general. I know it's not a ban, but I agree with Andy Dingley that it has been used like one, for instance in the case of The Daily Mail. Wikipedia is too combative. We need to make it more welcoming. We need to move away from anything that can be used to harass or intimidate editors and towards things that reward editors. I agree with Blueboar that instead we should craft better resources for people to be able to learn how to recognise a good source. If we go down the road of banning things we will end up having to ban every single dodgy thing on the entire planet. It is just more efficient to teach people how to recognise reliable sources. Moreover it will produce a better result for the world in general. Banning will produce people who feel judged and who retreat into their echo chamber bubble. Helping people to recognise reliable sources will produce more discerning people. Morgan Leigh | Talk 04:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
• Non-oppose-voter comment We already have an edit filter which prevents the Sun from being used for BLPs. –dlthewave ☎ 16:54, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• What we need to do is devise better guidance for when and how to news media in general... not specific to any one outlet. Blueboar (talk) 13:24, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Basically - if the item is "celebrity gossip" in nature, sourced in whole or in part to "anonymous sources" or to "press releases" or the like - we should disallow it. In the first case as being violative of BLP principles in the first place. In the second because press releases are generally not "fact checked" in any way at all, and are therefore "self-published sources" which should be ascribed to the writers of the press release material, not to the newspapers which run them substantially unedited. Collect (talk) 22:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

We already have a policy: WP:RS. We should trust in Editors to make good calls on what is a reliable source for a particular subject. However, this isn't enough for some editors who just decided they hate a particular outlet for political reasons and/or like to be able to tell other editors not to use a particular source. The Daily Mail is a news organisation, I know people who have written stories for them. It's also a tabloid with some disgusting politics - let the editors sort the wheat from the chaff on this. FOARP (talk) 14:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

This is why the Daily Myth was (not) banned, precisely because we could not truth eds and it took huge amounts of work police. If it is worthy of inclusion (and if we are going to have to verify what the SNu or the Daily Rant have reported why not just use that source?). We lose nothing by (and lets go all the way) banning these sources other then work having to sort the wheat from the chaff.Slatersteven (talk) 15:32, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

1) We're supposed to be discussing this objectively, but its hard to believe it is really an objective discussion when people use derogatory nick-names for right-wing newspapers taken straight from the comments section of an Owen Jones Comment Is Free article.

2) An automated ban which flags any edit including a DM link to an editor who then goes and (in every case I've seen) deletes it doesn't create a work-load? And in how many of the cases where people 'had' to police DM references was it actually necessary and not just a case of "This is a DM reference and therefore should be deleted", which to be honest is the only time I've seen it applied?

3) Ultimately, if editing time used is the problem, then it's hard to see how the DM ban actually has much impact at all, it being one single EN-language publication of hundreds. This basically adds up to saying "Editing Wiki is hard work, therefore let's just automate deleting sources I don't like, rather than considering whether that was actually a worthwhile thing to be doing" FOARP (talk) 15:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

It creates less of a work load then (for example) this discussion (which is the kind we have every-time one of these sources is used). Nor is this deleting anything, it is a warning no more. But (as I said) this is the problem, "BUT ITS AN RS!", well just like smoking in the no smoking compartment if you are going to argue the same old reasons why we have to use it we just wont allow its use in the end. This has been brought about precisely because of the amount of effort it takes to prevent the more outrageous lies making their way onto Wikipedia. And I have considered whether that was actually a worthwhile thing to be doing, and yes it is.Slatersteven (talk) 16:07, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Not sold on this being necessary at all. Every time I've seen it applied it's not BLP stuff but articles like Double-nosed Andean tiger hound where the fact that one of the references substantiating notability was a DM reference so, if you chuck that out, the remaining references are supposedly no longer sufficient to meet WP:GNG. And yes, the logic applied is exactly as simple as "DM, therefore delete". We have a way, way bigger problem with random websites carrying garbage information than we do with the DM and other tabloids, but we (rightly) take the time to consider each source on its merits. Finally, if you doubt that the current policy on the DM isn't functioning as a ban, just try editing a DM reference into an article - even as one of a group of references all independently saying the same thing - and see what happens. If editors are wasting their time deleting DM references for absolutely no reason other than its the DM then that's their fault. They choose to waste their time like this. Doing the same thing to the Sun is just going to increase their workload. FOARP (talk) 16:19, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

I fail to see how not being able to use them (not that this is on the table) prevents us form covering when they are wrong, as surely they are not going to admit it (and thus this would be covered by another source)?Slatersteven (talk) 13:38, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

• Question is there a list of all sources deprecated on wikipedia somewhere? Openlydialectic (talk) 10:43, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

An unofficial list can be found here Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources/Perennial sources. Not sure how correct or up to date it is. It already lists The Sun as a sensationalist tabloid, and often compare the publication unfavourably to the Daily Mail. Generally unreliable: Editors show consensus that the source is questionable in most cases.Outside of specialized circumstances, the source should not normally be used, and it should never be used for information about a living person. Even in cases where the source may be valid, it is usually better to find a more reliable source instead. If no such source exists, that may suggest that the information is inaccurate. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:42, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Worth noting that the list functions quite well as a repository of previous discussions that can be referred to to show pre-existing consensus. It is not necessary - AT ALL - to add an automatic block on top of that. The only sources that have these automatic blocks are the Daily Mail, Breitbart, and Infowars. The Daily Mail really stands out from the other two since it is a long-standing media organisation with professional editors, reporters, and fact checkers, and has to answer to a regulator whilst Breibart and Infowars are purely internet-based conspiracy theorist sites. FOARP (talk) 12:12, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Not very independent regulation [[16]].Slatersteven (talk) 14:04, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Are you seriously using a legal challenge to the decision of a tribunal as evidence of it being biased? Show me one tribunal where no-one appeals their decisions and I’ll show you a country without the rule of law. FOARP (talk) 16:24, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Lets say this again, it is not a ban, so lets lay of the tabloid style hyperbole. If you want to (if it is so important to you) still use the SUN as a source, you are just going to be made aware of its poor reputation and that it may not be wholly reliable.Slatersteven (talk) 13:56, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Is that what happens currently with the DM? No, it isn’t. Instead any usage of the DM - however uncontroversial - leads to a warning and then someone coming in to delete the reference citing the “DM ban” as their justification for doing so. Per WP:DUCK, it it acts like a ban, is implemented as a ban, was clearly intended as a ban in the RfC, then let’s not pretend that it’s not a ban. FOARP (talk) 16:18, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The DM RfC doesn't allow for "uncontroversial" uses, though. "Its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited." The closing statement says that although some editors argued that DM is actually a reliable source for some subjects, "This appears to have been adequately addressed by the support !voters: if there are topics where it might be a reliable source, then better sources (without its disadvantages) should also exist and can be used instead." DM may be cited in rare instances "as a primary source if it is the subject of discussion." –dlthewave ☎ 16:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I think you are right. An addition filter is a bit one-sided. Ideally whenever an editor removes a DM source they should also be prompted to "find something better"? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:23, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I think it's high time that the DM block was put back to RfC. January of next year marks two years of it operating so is a good point to review it anyway. The block should never have been implemented without a time limit. No real evidence of general unreliability as ever submitted to substantiate the idea that it was generally unreliable - just anecdotes that could be compiled about any publication, particularly a tabloid. The change in the editorship of the DM is also a good justification to review it. An awful lot of the !votes in favour of the ban were WP:IDONTLIKEIT votes anyway. FOARP (talk) 18:12, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Can you please show what was lost as a result of not being able to cite the Daily Mail? Stories that only they covered that didn't skew isolated studies, or make questionable claims about living people, or consist of obvious propaganda? Just because WP:IDONTLIKEIT is an invalid reason does not validate WP:ILIKEIT as a reason. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:15, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The entire corpus of work of a publication that has been published for more than a century seems like a pretty significant source to say that you can simply do without because "other sources exist". The cranes example cited above was one where a DM reference was pointlessly removed. I've seen AfD discussions (e.g., the one for Double-nosed Andean tiger hound) where the fact that one of the two references substantiating notability was a DM reference was used as a grounds for deletion. Often works of art/books etc. are considered to require at least two articles covering them in a significant way to be able to avoid deletion and if one of those is a DM reference, this appears sufficient to get them deleted. Most articles on this site are uncontroversial, most uses of the DM are uncontroversial, but this doesn't seem to stop editors using the "ban" as grounds for deleting references to the DM.

Oh, and PS - what are you doing trying to imply that people who oppose this ban must necessarily like the Sun or the DM? Who has made an WP:ILIKEIT argument here? FOARP (talk) 18:28, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

[[17]] So we are in fact in the Sun (but not for this thread). There is no evidence this account was Ms Osamor but it does not stop the Sun claiming that (ohh and guess what [[18]], the DM dutifully following along). This is why they should not be RS, opinion and rumour as facts.Slatersteven (talk) 11:24, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

That is (at most) grounds for being careful when using the Sun (or any other tabloid - and yes that includes the Mirror - or is this only about right-wing publications?) for BLP. Not grounds for the blanket !ban being discussed here. FOARP (talk) 10:35, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It has been suggested below that we try a trial reinstatement to test if deprecation needs to be in place. Would it not make more sense to do a test run with deprecating the sun and seeing (form ally) what effect it has? It seems to be it is easier to prove a positive (it is making things better by stopping its use when even its promoters agree it is no good) rather then a negative (prove things have got better).Slatersteven (talk) 10:46, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

What the heck does "deprecated as a source in the same manner as the Daily Mail" mean, anyway?

We've had a string of proposals to "deprecate (source) in the same way at the Daily Mail", but there seems to be disagreement over what "deprecated" actually means. This seems to be a process that just sort of "happened", with no policy or guideline outlining when and how a deprecated source may be used. The DM RfC states in no uncertain terms that "...the Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited." The only exception mentioned in the closing statement involves using DM as a primary source for statements about itself. Is this how other editors understand it, and is this the intent of the "Support" votes? –dlthewave ☎ 16:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The Daily Mail RfC deprecates the publication in five ways:

1. The publication is designated as "generally unreliable".
2. Citing the publication as a reference is strongly discouraged ("generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist").
3. The publication is no longer used to determine notability.
4. The publication is no longer used as a source in articles.
5. An edit filter set to "warn" is to be implemented, which displays a message to editors attempting to cite the publication as a source, and asks them if they want to proceed.

The RfC notes two exceptions to the above:

1. If the publication is determined to be more reliable historically, its older articles may be excluded from deprecation.
2. The publication may be cited as a primary source if it is the subject of discussion.

Finally, as I mentioned before, the RfC doesn't override WP:V, which provides an additional exception:

1. The publication may be used for information on itself, subject to the conditions in WP:ABOUTSELF.

​— Newslinger talk 12:29, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Note also, that the Daily Mail RfC proposal !voted on, and then adopted said: "its introduction to an article could be accepted only upon there being a demonstrable need to use it instead of other sources." (This would seem to be the general meaning of "generally prohibited.") Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

All of the above has been incorporated into a new essay at Wikipedia:Deprecated sources (WP:DEPRECATED). — Newslinger talk 07:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

I was actually writing an essay on this myself, so all the content I had written has now been integrated. :-) Sunrise (talk) 07:50, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Proposal to revisit Daily Mail ban

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

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I am amazed by the fact that the DM is considered as being Generally unreliable. The exemples brought to the discussion were chosen to show the unreliability but how can we say it is generally unreliable. I would have understood better if it was said that certain cases were considered too serious to allow it to be used as a reliable source. I think that the effective blacklisting of a national daily paper is not something we should be voting on. To say that the DM is not banned is quite ridiculous when the WP:RSP says "The Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited, especially when other more reliable sources exist. As a result, the Daily Mail should not be used for determining notability, nor should it be used as a source in articles. Some editors note that the source may be used in rare cases where the newspaper itself is involved. The restriction is often inappropriately interpreted as a "ban" on Daily Mail." The phrase nor should it be used as a source in articles is without a doubt a de facto ban as as a source. --Dom from Paris (talk) 17:47, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

It's a national daily newspaper with professional editors and reporters, regulated by a watch-dog, in a country with very strong defamation laws (much stronger than, say, in the US) and a history of having a robust free press going back centuries. A general de facto ban is simply ridiculous. The tabloid nature of the publication warranted caution when using it for BLP but the complete ban was never, ever justified. The people saying "but the automatic ban saves me the work of manually removing all the references to it" need to explain why that was something worth doing in the first place since so much of the removal of DM references seems to be occurring where it is simply being used to support uncontroversial statements. FOARP (talk) 18:02, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

And it's been repeatedly sued (and successfully) under those defamation laws. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

You need evidence that it is sued considerably more often that sources considered not generally unreliable to even partly justify this ban. This has never been produced. FOARP (talk) 18:20, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)"this study demonstrates how sensationalism is instantiated through specific illocutions, semantic macrostructures, narrative formulas, evaluation parameters, and interpersonal and textual devices. Examples are drawn from a corpus of headlines of the ‘most read’ articles in the online outlet of the British mid-market tabloid Daily Mail compiled in early 2012"

"The Mail’s editorial model depends on little more than dishonesty, theft of copyrighted material and sensationalism so absurd that it crosses into fabrication."

"The Mail exhibits a political bias, is often guilty of sensationalism and deliberately drives a jingoistic agenda in order to be a rallying point for disaffected Leavers."

Even before the ban, it was already at the level that it could only be used when there's another source affirming the same material -- which makes it pretty pointless to include anyway. Ian.thomson (talk) 18:07, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

Hmmm... a study of headlines, an article by a former employee in the Dailymailonline.com New York office, and a piece on its stance on Brexit. Notice that none of these are actually evidence of general unreliability. For that we have IPSOS complaints and the ratio of them which are unheld which is ... only about as bad for the DM as they are for other publications. Yes, the DM does get successfully sued for defamation, as do other publications - what you need is evidence that the DM is more often successfully sued, and this is lacking. So, again, no evidence of general unreliability. FOARP (talk) 18:17, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

So, do you fancy organising a re-run of the RfC? I assume you've reviewed all the evidence of unreliability that was presented there? Maybe, a couple of years on, everything has suddenly changed for the better? Martinevans123 (talk) 18:25, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We're not here to relitigate the DM !ban. I'm just trying to clarify the meaning of what we're discussing, since editors are bringing up various situations in which (in their opinion) it would be appropriate to cite a deprecated source, which seems contrary to the outcome of the DM RfC. –dlthewave ☎ 18:27, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

The logic of Feminist's proposal rests on the assumpption that the DM RFC reached the correct outcome. So re-examing said DM ban is entirely valid here. I agree with FOARP. Perhaps now there seems to be a few editors about with a talent for weighing evidence, this is indeed a good time to revist the flawed DM ban? FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:49, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

I recently wrote an article about a poem The Horse (poem) where I added in the legacy section different uses and references to the poem by writers and journalists. On of the people I mentioned was Alastair Stewart who is I think a pretty well respected journalist who also happens to contribute to the Daily Mail. He wrote a long piece about horses poneys and cited the poem as capturing hos sentiments perfectly. This reference was removed [19] with the edit summary "Rm non-RS". Luckily there was another quote from him in another source saying something similar so I didn't fight it. This is the most uncontroversial use of the DM that I can think of it was a source to support what someone said written by himself. I doubt very much that the editor who removed this reference read what was written in the article or the source we are in a "kill it with fire" scenario which was the !vote made by one of the supporters. I think that we have gor to a point where this rfc should be revisited. Dom from Paris (talk) 08:28, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

I agree that it’s time to reopen it, however I also think we need to develop our arguments a bit more before doing so. Going off half-cocked and making sweeping assertions without evidence is what led to the ban (would people be happier if it was referred to as a “!ban”?) in the first place. We can discuss on our talk pages what the proposal should be before doing it closer to the two-year anniversary of the !ban. FOARP (talk) 09:18, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• So when we revisit the DM ban RfC, we should also be clear to distinguish between the DM on paper and the DM online website. There is some crossover, but particularly within the DM's own staff there is seen as a gulf between the two: a newspaper with some obvious problems, and then the web-specific content which is dominated by its celebrity fluff.

Is WP's issue for the DM with either: editorial bias, factual accuracy, or subject triviality? Andy Dingley (talk) 13:29, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

So when we revisit the DM ban...

WHEN? It'll take a more than a few disgruntled WP:IDONTLIKEIT malcontents to do that. --Calton | Talk 13:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Professional means you are paid, not dishonest or incompetent, and it is part of a self regulation body that had (even in its few short years of existence been accused of bias). But I have no objections to revisiting the discussion (though would rather it was longer then about a year). I suspect that much the same will be said as we did at the time (as well as pointing out how the DM's coverage of it s "banning" is a prefect example of why we need this was put in place in the first place (OH Crikey DM!).Slatersteven (talk)

How some in the outside world see Wikipedia's decision - theguardian.--Moxy (talk) 14:59, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

I would start with Enemies of the People (headline) and work from there. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:01, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

This amounts to declaring the DM unreliable for statements of fact (even uncontroversial facts) based on its political views. FOARP (talk) 12:38, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

• The key part about the Daily Mail is that is has repeatedly been caught completely fabricating material. Unlike biased sources (which are perfectly well allowed) the DM is generally unreliable because its editorial process deliberately encorporates dishonesty. Unlike many other tabloid-news with dubious reporting (Fox, Express etc) who while not having a particularly high reputation, do at least not have one for blatant falsity. So unless there is evidence the Daily Mail has somehow become more ethical in the intervening time, any re-consideration is a waste of time. Anyone who is surprised that the *current* Daily Mail is generally unreliable either lacks the required ability to judge what is a reliable source, or has spent the last 20 years under a rock. (Or has zero knowledge of the Daily Mail which would be acceptable for anyone outside the UK) Only in death does duty end (talk) 15:22, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

No evidence has been presented, either then or since then, that actually backs this up. WP:IDONTLIKEIT is not a valid argument. FOARP (talk) 12:38, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

And no evidence or anything other than a delayed WP:IDONTLIKEIT has been presented that contradicts the strong consensus that emerged from the original discussion. Don't like it? Too bad. That's not a valid argument. --Calton | Talk 13:39, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

A significant number of instances of it leading to disruptive editing has been cited above. Also the failure of any evidence of actual general unreliability being presented during the RfC has also been raised. These go a long way beyond simple dislike of the !ban. Let me point out that "it was decided, therefore it's been decided" is a circular argument and thus invalid. FOARP (talk) 14:46, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Lets leave the actual "unbanning" discussion for a new thread.Slatersteven (talk) 17:35, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

• Move to close this discussion regarding the Daily Mail ban. The reliability of the DM is not germane to the current proposal to deprecate the Sun; if the DM decision were to be overturned, it would not affect any other !bans or proposals that are based on it. Interested editors may open a new section regarding the DM if they so desire, preferably as an actionable proposal instead of a forum-style discussion. –dlthewave ☎ 03:30, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Agree with closing - I think the DM ban was wrongly decided, and it is germane to this debate that it was wrongly decided since that decision is being used as a justification for this one. However, the counter-arguments to banning the Sun do not require reopening the DM ban directly, merely discussing the fact that the DM ban was on unsafe grounds and that it will likely be reopened in future and therefore should not be treated as a settled issue is sufficient. Furthermore, as dlthewave says above, re-opening the DM ban requires a properly-prepared proposal and supporting arguments. FOARP (talk) 08:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with FOARP on all points. As you wish, so be it. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (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.

2nd RfC: The Daily mail

Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC? FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Survey (Daily Mail)

*No. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 13:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC) Note : !Vote removed due to abuse of process, and subsequent mangling of thread. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Rude. Voting doesn't open until 11 December. You may request an absentee ballot if needed. Please provide documentation of personal hardship and at least seven forms of photo ID. GMG^talk 14:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Will a note from my chemotherapy doc suffice? -Roxy, the dog. wooF 14:43, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Only if submitted in quintuplicate. (Also best of luck on recovery assuming that's not a joke.) GMG^talk 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Can a proposer actually restrict voting in this way? I have never seen an attempt to do so here before, and find it odd, which is why I already voted. The chemo is real, and I'm going to be fine. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer has close to zero power to enforce anything, but editors generally abide by reasonable requests like "Please keep threaded discussion in the threaded discussion section and !votes in the !vote section" or "Voting is not due to open until Tuesday 11 Dec. This is to allow plenty of time for both sides to develop arguments". Then again, while dogs definitely have a strong sense of etiquette, their rules are not the same as our rules... :) --Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

True - but we also ignore unreasonable requests, like demanding an RfC sit for a week before anyone ventures an opinion either way. RfCs open when posted. Guy (Help!) 18:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Hell no. The Mail is still the archetype of lazy and biased journalism in supposedly serious media. Also we don't do "voting", Wikipedia is not a democracy. They have had a new editor for, what, two months? OK, no editor could be as bad as Dacre but it is way too soon to say if there is any improvement and I will stick my neck out and say we will know it has improved meaningfully on the day the "sidebar of shame" disappears from the Mail online. And not before. Guy (Help!) 18:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I note that some people are treating this as a relitigation of the original RfC. It's not. The assertion is that the Mail has changed and that the guidance should therefore change. The original consensus that the Mail is unreliable stands, the opinions of a minority notwithstanding, this is about whether there has been meaningful change, and actually we should be reflecting the opinions of third party sources. I have not noticed any independent commentators saying that the Mail has become more reliable, the Mail's website is still packed with clickbait, soft porn papparazzi pics and press releases masquerading as stories,but the print edition may indeed be changing, early signs are that it is beginning to take a reality-based line on Brexit, for example. In time I think we could use the print edition again, though not web-only stories, ever. Guy (Help!) 16:16, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The evidence can never show a change, because the evidence (you know, not anecdotes sourced from blogs, but actual evidence from the regulator and from surveys) never showed it was especially unreliable compared to other UK tabloids in the first place. FOARP (talk) 22:00, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, but some of the opposers at the Sun RfC have valid concerns with how the restrictions are sometimes interpreted. These should be addressed. Editors should interpret the Daily Mail RfC in the context of the issues it intended to address, not as a ruling that justifies incivility and/or wholesale removal of non-contentious content and citations. The problem with this proposal is that it doesn't address the concerns raised in the Sun RfC. If some editors are harassing those who add the Daily Mail to articles (as Andy Dingley contended), this is not going to stop even if restrictions on Daily Mail usage were lifted. feminist (talk) 19:16, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Demur in several ways "Basically - if the item is "celebrity gossip" in nature, sourced in whole or in part to "anonymous sources" or to "press releases" or the like - we should disallow it. In the first case as being violative of BLP principles in the first place. In the second because press releases are generally not "fact checked" in any way at all, and are therefore "self-published sources" which should be ascribed to the writers of the press release material, not to the newspapers which run them substantially unedited." is my stated position, and one which, I suggest, has substantial merit. Collect (talk) 21:00, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Churnalism should not be used, period. It is advertising copy and it routinely misrepresents the facts of the case (almost always, in fact, in the case of university press releases for research). Guy (Help!) 22:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, and hell no - they need much more than two months with a new editor - they need a track record of not being a worse-than-useless source to overcome a long and extensively-documented history of literally making stuff up - David Gerard (talk) 00:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, provided it is not retrospective. Most news outlets have published incorrect stories and false facts at some point but the problem as far as the DM went was the editorial collusion in those false accounts. The new editor Geordie Greig was editor of the Mail on Sunday which was not subject to the Daily Mail ban. It is reasonable to assume he will bring the same practices and code of ethics to his current appointment. To make this simple, we should permit DM articles published from January 1, 2019 to be used as a reliable source. Just for the record I supported the previous ban because of the erosion of trust between Wikipedia and the DM, but a large plank of the case against them has collapsed with the appointment of a new editor, especially one with a good track record. The benefit of the doubt has to be given here otherwise Wikipedia is going to look partisan, especially now it has banned Breitbart. Betty Logan (talk) 07:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support removing the previous ban and replacing with new guidance - The statement that the Daily Mail was generally unreliable that came from the previous RfC had no grounding in evidence - it was based only on anecdotal evidence insufficient to sustain a general finding. Instead the evidence from IPSOS shows the Daily Mail to have been not substantially worse, in terms of complaints upheld, than sources generally thought reliable (e.g., in 2015 there were only 2 complaints upheld against Associated, owners of the Daily Mail, whilst 5 were upheld in that year against The Times - see here). New guidance should be produced covering tabloids in general, preferably on the basis that tabloids should be avoided for BLP or controversial statements unless there is a clear reason to use them falling within defined grounds (e.g., to quote someone's own opinions). The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always clearly was, there was never any good reason (other than WP:IDONTLIKEIT) to pick on the Daily Mail in particular out of all tabloid publications. FOARP (talk) 08:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

  Without going into the details of this discussion, one should note that IPSO is probably not a good independent source for this since they were founded and are paid by the newspaper industry. Even our own article about them (Independent Press Standards Organisation) reads in parts like an advert. Any decision about the (un)reliability of the Daily Mail should probably be based on sources independent from the UK newspaper industry. Regards SoWhy 15:19, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

SoWhy But in that case it should be a good means to compare those papers that do adhere to its guidelines to try and decide if the DM is any worse than any other of the papers that would help support its ban. If IPSO is biased towards the papers that adhere then it should be biased towards all of them. Don't forget that reliable sources such as the Guardian cite its findings and reports. If we can't use an independent watchdog should we just continue to rely on our own bias and gutfeelings about anecdotal evidence? Dom from Paris (talk) 16:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L we have not picked on the DM, we have also nominated other red tops. It is just that those who are defending these "news" organs have had more luck defending the others. I am sure that all of those who want this "ban" in place would like to see it extended to the Sun, The Daily Mirror and other similar scandal and OUTRAGE!!!!! rags. So not we are not singling it out.Slatersteven (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

L If so then the fact that you have failed to spread this ban to other publications indicates that the original ban itself was dubious and probably should never have passed. If people find a ban only palatable when it is directed at a particularly hated publication amongst left-wingers (who are possibly over-represented on Wiki), but not when it is directed at less-hated newspapers that are no better or worse in terms of content, that should surely trigger a re-think. FOARP (talk) 14:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

No, no more then if I charge someone with a crime and they got of it means the person before that was innocent. All it means is that this time the arguments were better (not more valid, just better put), or more support was rallied or... well any number of reasons.Slatersteven (talk) 14:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

If juries repeatedly refuse to convict, this is a sign that there is a problem with the law. Hey, there's even a name for this. FOARP (talk) 15:11, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

NO, it means that enough of the jury think the law is wrong in those cases (and no this was not been a universal finding, we have had at least one red tops RFC success). Now this is what this RFC is about, is the law still valid.Slatersteven (talk) 15:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki. The other red-tops were the real test, and it failed on them. Maintaining it now is just discriminatory. FOARP (talk) 15:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

AGF, I think you will find that most of us who voted yes in the first RFC (and are voting no now) have also supported the same treatment for all the red tops when it has been raised.Slatersteven (talk) 16:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

CDare to find one example of a user who has not done this?>Slatersteven (talk) 15:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• The automatic filtering of the DM should be deactivated as the politically-motivated censorship it always ways. Please remember to assume good faith. If nothing else, it is counterproductive to throw around accusations like that when you are, more or less, asking the same people who decided to restrict the Daily Mail in 2017 to change their minds. The original RFC you're trying to overturn here was closed by a trio of experienced, highly-trusted admins who evaluated the strength of the arguments (not just the numerical !votes) before coming to their conclusion. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong support. Reviewing the evidence for & against, the case to remove the ban seems over whelming. (Weak opinions: Id prefer a simple, retrospective lifting as banning even the Dacre DM seems unwarranted. But I can see the other side here, and if we were to have a cut off point, I agree Jan 2019 would make things nice and simple. Huh, if WP bans arguably questionable sources and reinstates them once they address concerns, this might encourage all sources make more effort to be reliable, which would be quite a pleasing side effect. As for a new guidline against tabloids, this seems rather non inclusive. Both the guideline and practice seem to already strongly discourage weak sourcing of controversial BLP statements, so theres a WP:Creep objection here. It's already ridiculously hard to save moderately notable BLPs from destruction without giving deletionists an excuse to dismiss any tabloid source. But only tentative about this view as I have relatively little experience with BLPs and may be misreading, maybe we really do need said guideline.) FeydHuxtable (talk) 13:44, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No In 2017 10 complaints were upheld against it. It continues to publish falsehoods and conjecture as if they are facts (even under its new regime, as shown below). It has had multiple complaints held up against it this year. I see nothing having changed since we had our last RFC. Until any figures are released we have no idea if the problems have been fixed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Simply balding stating that 10 complaints were upheld does not show general unreliability, not when other publishers, including publishers of RS newspapers with lower circulation, had even more. FOARP (talk) 14:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Err the fact we allow other "less reliable" publications is not a reason to allow this one, it is a reason to not allow them. The fact it that when we banned it the upheld complaints had increased, I see no evidence that trend has even peaked (let alone declined). The basis of this RFC is that the situation has changed, I see no evidence of that.Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that the DM is no worse that sources we believe to be reliable clearly is a reason to consider whether the reasoning under which it was found to be generally unreliable is flawed. The change in situation is not the only basis of the RfC. The lack of good evidence to support the result of the previous RfC is right there under no. 2 in the arguments. To my mind, it is the strongest point. FOARP (talk) 14:25, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

What the study of the publishers complaints rate?Slatersteven (talk) 16:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, the study showing that the DM was no worse in terms of complaints upheld than other publications considered RS. That one. Associated only have one big publication (the Daily Mail) and they had half the number of complaints upheld in 2015 that The Times did. FOARP (talk) 20:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes I oppose such bans (as already noted on this page). I also see the current ban / restriction as deeply flawed, particularly because it's so unclear as to whether it's a ban or not. Even if there is no wish to overturn it, we should improve and clarify our restrictions around it.

• Is this a ban or not?
• There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online.
• There is no statement of the precise problem with the DM, and thus the scope of the restriction. Is this factual inaccuracy or editorial political bias? It has been challenged for both, yet there are many uses where we would require accuracy but bias would not be an issue. We shouldn't conflate both for judging each and every use.
• What are the penalties for breaching it? At present, editors even discusssing it have been threatened with blocks. This is just bullying and needs to stop forthwith.
• Why single out the DM? If indeed (as claimed by some threats) it already goes further (the Mirror / Scottish papers for some). Why are Fox and RT, which are equally challenged, permissible?
• What are the exceptions to its permissible use?
• Should editors patrol new / changed articles and summarily strip any DM citations (the "crane case")?

Even if the ban stays, these points should be addressed. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "There is no current clear distinction between the DM as newspaper (even when reproduced online) and the even more celeb-heavy DM-online", what part of "Consensus has determined that the Daily Mail (including its online version, dailymail.co.uk) is generally unreliable, and its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited"[20] are you having trouble understanding? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:52, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

He's saying the 2017 RfC did't distinguish between the two publications, and you are merely reciting the part of the conclusion of the RfC that stated that this is true: it did not distinguish between the two. As such, it is indiscriminate. You are merely demonstrating the fact of what he said. FOARP (talk) 15:02, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, thankyou. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. The RfC clearly stated that both the print and online sources were unreliable -- because they are both unreliable. Andy Dingley, I have seen enough examples of you purposely misunderstanding clear wording to conclude that you are trolling us. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:00, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy, ANI is thataway. If you want to accuse editors personally of "trolling", then do it there, not here.

The restriction treats both paper and online equally. Now many people, including the DM's own staff, see the online platform as much less serious a form of news reporting, and it's certainly fuller of celebrities and their "peachy derrières". Given the ease of searching for and linking to an online platform, we have to be even more careful with it. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes The only proof that the DM is "generally unreliable" was anecdotal evidence. This is not supported by independent watchdog reports from IPSO. It is a trashy bit of newspaper with editorial opinions that can sometimes be outrageous but it is a newspaper that adheres to control by a watchdog, it was named National newspaper of the year 7 times in the last 23 years, and its journalists have won around 20 British Press Awards. I personally don't like it and would rather use other sources but I cannot support this continuation of this ban which makes Wikipedia editors seem biased. The Guardian article produced by User:FOARP is particularly pertinant and on that anecdotal basis we should see the Times banned as being unreliable too. Dom from Paris (talk) 14:10, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Needs more than two months to be considered more reliable. ^Semi_Hypercube ✎ 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I think it has changed sufficiently. I never supported the original ban in the first place because it did appear that the original decision was taken with a political view against right leaning sources rather than editorial concerns. Indeed we do still have GAs that are supported by DM sources and yet those ones were strangely untouched when the anti-DM purges were going around so clearly there is tacit acknowledgement of DM being reliable. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 17:04, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
• No It's far too soon to assess any substantial lasting change in a large newspaper with many diverse and controversial topics. The listed character witnesses for this change so far are politicians and opinion pieces, with a limited short-time view that can only speculate about a possible lasting change. Secondly, I strongly object to the unfounded allegations of general political motivations behind the previous RfC. Such repeated personalizing allegations are a violation of WP:AGF and counterproductive. Lastly, anecdotal evidence - within reason - is a perfectly valid argument for community-internal discussions. Wikipedia is not a court of law. GermanJoe (talk) 17:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The proposer of the 2017 RfC is on the record as comparing the Daily Mail to the Volkischer Beobachter, and there was repeated use of emotive language betraying anger at the publication during that RfC (e.g., "kill it with fire", "fake news", "right-wing propaganda"). It is hardly unfair to say that some of the editors were not voting objectively. Finally, the DM remains the only newspaper censored in this way despite being, according to IPSOS, no worse than any other UK tabloid in terms of complaints upheld. FOARP (talk) 19:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I reject your assertion that you can diagnose a persons internat mental state over the internet. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which is odd, because below you are carrying on about my (imaginary) secret agenda, apparently diagnosed through the internet. FOARP (talk) 08:34, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - Remove "the Ban" on the Daily Mail Reinstate the Daily Mail as Reliable Source. "The IPSO (Independent Press Standards Organization) is the independent regulator for the newspaper and magazine industry in the UK". As the UK regulator they "uphold high standards of journalism".
• The Daily Mail is one of IPSO's member newspapers and follows the IPSO Editors' Code, publishing corrections, and is subject to investigation and enforcement by IPSO.
• When any of IPSO's members is found violating their Rules and Regulations the members are subject to publishing corrections, paying fines, paying for the cost of the investigation, submitting quarterly statements, and ultimately termination of the newspaper's membership with IPSO.
• In identifying the most complained about publications in the UK in 2017, The Daily Mail had a complaint rate per circulated issue of about 0.32%. This compares to other UK newspapers that were also on the "Most Complained About Publications" list for 2017, including The Sun 0.35%, The Bristol Post 0.21%, The Times 0.14%, The Daily Telegraph 0.08% and The Telegraph 0.006% among others. The arguments put forth to maintain the ban are highly partisan and/or motivated by partisanship. Nearly every argument to continue or to initially propose a ban on the DM could easily be made about news sources considered mainstream such as the New York Daily News or even the so-called venerable New York Times.Wcmcdade (talk) 21:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong No The burden lies on the shoulders of those supporting lifting the ban, to provide evidence that DM is reliable. Being a member of various associations is not a criterion for reliability. Reliability is gained day by day, month by month and year by year. There is no evidence that the public considers DM a reliable source, no published articles in peer-reviewed journals consider DM reliable (at least I am not aware of any) hence we have no reason to do so. Cinadon36 (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The 2014 BBC trusted sources survey had the Daily Mail at 4.7 - in the middle of the table and higher than every other tabloid (see slide 11 here). The 2017 IPSOS MORI BBC survey returned the same result - Daily Mail the most trusted of all the tabloids (see table 5 on page 14 here). In as much as it is possible to confirm, the British public has always considered the Daily Mail to be at least no worse than any other tabloid, and actually better than most/all of them. The perception prevalent on these pages that the DM is somehow the worst of the worst is simply that: a perception, with no basis in fact.

PS - I also note than no evidence of any kind, other than anecdotal evidence, was presented during the 2017 RfC. You are therefore asking for a higher standard of evidence for removing the ban than was asked for for implementing it. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing has changed, why should this? Beyond My Ken (talk) 22:59, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - I support revoking the RFC. I will only engage in discussion on my talk page. power~enwiki (π, ν) 01:41, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - the ban is ridiculous, not evidence-based and is discriminatory in how it singled out the Mail for censorship yet still allowed countless publications of the same (or worse) quality. The UK's strict libel laws combined with press regulation almost inevitably make the Mail a more reliable source than similar quality publications from countries such as the US. Either the ban is lifted or countless others need to be introduced (and I very strongly favour the former).Shakehandsman (talk) 04:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes - there is no news outlet that is flawless, each article needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis. I would go one step further than Shakehandsman and say that any US source is likely to be less reliable. Jack N. Stock (talk) 07:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No- It's too early to know whether the Daily Mail has genuinely stopped printing complete bollocks and far right propaganda dressed up as news. I'd be open to revisiting this in six months or so to evaluate whether anything really has changed. Then it might be possible to say that "DM articles from such and such a date onward are OK but anything before then is still likely to be mendacious crap". Reyk _YO! 08:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Is "printing right wing propaganda" a justification for a ban of the kind that is - of all the newspapers in the world - applied only against the DM? Wiki even has a policy that explicitly states that "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective. Sometimes non-neutral sources are the best possible sources for supporting information about the different viewpoints held on a subject". FOARP (talk) 10:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not going to engage with this badgering. Reyk _YO! 11:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It was a fair question - simply being right wing, or even "right wing propaganda", is not a disqualification from being a reliable source per Wiki policy. Up to you whether you want to, or are able to, answer it. FOARP (talk) 12:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - review in six months and we can see if it has changed -----Snowded ^TALK 10:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing has substantially changed, and the prolix legal advocate-style brief below is, shall we say, less than convincing. The "partisan" bit is a particularly bogus argument. --Calton | Talk 10:46, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - nothing has changed, and to say the are worse examples than the Daily Mail is not a very strong argument. (To say that are sources that are even less reliable than the DM, does not make the DM any more reliable, maybe we should seriously remove more poor sources.) ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 10:58, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Nothing's changed as far as I'm concerned, I also disagree with reviewing in 6 months - We as a community made a decision so that decision should stick ... we don't need to keep revisiting this every year. –Davey2010^Talk 11:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No far too soon to judge if anything's really changed --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:16, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – We shouldn't use tabloids as sources as a matter of course. If the only available source for a given claim is a tabloid, then it's almost certain the issue isn't of genuine encyclopedic value in the first place. I have no first-hand knowledge to what degree the DM stands out as particularly bad among the rest of the bunch, but what I've seen was quite bad enough. Fut.Perf. ☼ 11:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

No-one here is arguing that tabloids are a particularly good source. They are arguing that an automatically-enforced ban of one tabloid in particular (the Daily Mail), which is the only tabloid banned in this fashion, should be removed. FOARP (talk) 16:42, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - it may have a new editor but it's still a tabloid, and tabloids make for very poor sources because of the amount of exaggeration and outright making things up that tabloids engage in. No tabloid should be used as a source on Wikipedia and most editors abide by that guidance; the difference with DM is that for some reason editors weren't seeing it as the unreliable source that it is. I think this discussion should be closed and not revisited for at least a year. Ca2james (talk) 16:02, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

But we don't have "a ban on tabloids". So why single out just one? Andy Dingley (talk) 16:18, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Of course. I checked the RfC and most of the older discussions, and I found zero (zero!) evidence that the Daily Mail is known for publishing false information. I'm very amused by the fact that we have a total of around 40 discussions here at RSN, and every discussion consists of pointing to a previous discussion and using actual gossip blogs like Gawker as "evidence" that the Daily Mail is unreliable. This is beyond me. wumbolo ^^^ 5:42 pm, Today (UTC+1)

Unfortunately this is the case. A list of blog-article anecdotes counts as sufficient "evidence" to ban a publication published daily for 122 years, but surveys and regulatory evidence counts for nothing. FOARP (talk) 19:39, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

We can do this with reliable sources, too. Here's a couple of anecdotes for the Southern Poverty Law Center: [21] [22] [23]. Here's for The New York Times: [24] [25] [26] [27]. For Fox News, see Fox News controversies, and for CNN, see CNN controversies and Fake News Awards. Winning a Pulitzer Prize is not enough anymore [28]. These anecdotal arguments really are slippery slopes to ban all sources in existence. I can only point to WP:NOTCENSORED to show that Wikipedia is not a tool for the censorship of the press, and that makes us no better than those who compromise the freedom of the press – one of the sources I cited above is Donald Trump, whose anecdotal story about CNN was awarded the "Overall Achievement in Undermining Global Press Freedom" by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Do we really want to be the next target of journalist advocacy organizations? We will lose all our credibility. wumbolo ^^^ 09:22, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Kill it. Kill it with fire. The preceding sentence is based 100% on the demonstrated unreliability of The Daily Mail. Anyone who reads anything else into it other than a strongly-worded expression of the strong evidence that The Daily mail is an unreliable source is simply wrong, and is trying to stuff words in my mouth. I would also note that so far nobody has documented any other UK tabloid repeatedly fabricating direct quotes or repeatedly stealing work from lesser-known publications, changing a few things to make the story more salacious, and publishing the resulting copyright violation under its own byline. If anyone ever posts evidence of another newspaper that does that, I will be happy to post an RfC asking that we don't allow it as a source either. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• Examples:

1. The Daily Mail has 'mastered the art of running stories that aren't true', Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales says
2. 10 Egregiously False Stories In The 'Daily Mail'
3. Daily Mail 'spits dummy' after Paul Barry calls out plagiarism
4. Plagiarism at the Daily Mail
5. A Sincere Apology From Cracked to the Daily Mail

--Guy Macon (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Anecdotes sourced in all instances but one from blogs (the one non-blog source is an interview on CNBC, not the views of CNBC itself). Not evidence that supports "general unreliability". And if you want to disprove the accusation of political bias talking about "killing it with fire" is unlikely to have that effect. FOARP (talk) 19:27, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Every one of those "anecdotes" contains links where you can personally verify the claims made. Any reasonable person who read, say, the Cracked claims[29] would look at the original Cracked article [30] and at the Daily Mail article published a day later[31] You don't have to trust Cracked as a source. You can look at the evidence yourself and draw your own concision. You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:51, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

"You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why" - and what, pray tell, is that? Let me guess, I'm a mole planted by Dacre on Wiki back in 2007 just for this very purpose?

Conspiratorial accusations, swearing, and insults (see below for examples) are not conducive of informed debate and will not help arrive at a consensus. If anything they merely undermine the arguments you make and provide further evidence for the argument that the ban is politically motivated.

Finally, I mean, Cracked.com as a source? Look, I love their lists but you really need to do better than a comedy website. If the supporters of removing the ban had used blog articles as evidence for their position you would have been all over it - but somehow it doesn't matter that all you have here is non-RS-sourced anecdotes? Whilst the statistical data from IPSOS complaints upheld, and the surveys of the general public, show the Daily Mail to be unremarkable in terms of accuracy? Every newspaper has had problems with accuracy and faked stories. The Mirror famously published fabricated photos of British soldiers supposedly abusing Iraqi detainees as a front-page exclusive - an incident that is about as serious as it gets in terms of fabricating a story - yet The Mirror is not subject to this ban. The Times hacked into an anonymous blogger's email account, doxxed him, and then lied about it - but The Times is (correctly) considered an RS. FOARP (talk) 08:32, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are comparing sources that fire people when they discover plagiarism with a source that fires people if they refuse to plagiarize. And Cracked is a fine source for a claim about what was and was not published by Cracked. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No I see nothing that was raised in the prior RFC that has changed. There is no worthwhile story the Daily Mail has ever covered that another, more reliable source hasn't covered without the taint of the awful problems. If it's only in the Daily Mail, and nowhere else, I wouldn't trust it being worthwhile to cover. --Jayron32 18:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

• And even if if appears to be worthwhile to cover, if it is only in the Daily Mail and nowhere else the odds are extremely high that The Daily Mail plagiarized it, added a few lies to make it more clickbaity, then posted it under their byline as if it was their work. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:56, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Changing the editor is not enough evidence that the DM has changed its ways.-- Pawnkingthree (talk) 18:24, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – Two months simply isn't enough time to know whether the source in question has had a long-term change in its status, one way or the other. I hate to sound like an RFA voter telling the candidate to come back next year, but I think that would be for the best here, as we would at least have more of a sample size to go off of. Giants2008 (Talk) 23:44, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Singling out one newspaper, which happens to be in the mid-range in terms of general reputation, is arbitrary. Mainstream media routinely report its investigative reporting. There are no policy or guideline based reasons for the ban. TFD (talk) 01:10, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes As it is subject to review by IPSO, and false stories will presumably be corrected. It is a problem with certain outlets that they will headline the lie and bury the correction, but this is not so much of a problem for Wikipedia as long as the correction is made. Looking at WP:DAILYMAIL, it is currently treated the same as InfoWars (excluding the global blacklist). I have not cited the DM while editing so the "ban" has not had much effect personally, but it does seem excessive. Hrodvarsson (talk) 01:42, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, but the problem here is that the "correction" is often posted a long time after the false story. For example in the case of this one, the story was published in December, and the correction in July. Black Kite (talk) 02:16, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, or at least not yet It is too early to evaluate whether the change of editorship of the Mail is going to make any difference to the causes for the ban in the first place. There are signs that this may be the case - it had 50 IPSO rulings against it in 2017 (though not all of these were for accuracy}, by far the worst of any national UK newspaper, but the stats show that there have only been 11 in the period Jan-Aug 2018 (which is as far as the stats go at the moment). Black Kite (talk) 02:13, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Not sure which 2017 stat you're looking at. The 2017 annual report shows only ten complaints being upheld against Associated (owners of the Daily Mail - see p. 22-23 here). Where does the "50 IPSOS rulings against it" stat come from? FOARP (talk) 11:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Actually out of 63 complaints only 24 were "Not upheld".Slatersteven (talk) 12:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Which 1) Doesn't add up to anything like 50 and 2) is meaningless as to the number that were actually upheld (AKA "rulings against it") of which there were only 10. The cases which were settled by the parties are simply that - cases which were settled by the parties, with no finding of wrong-doing on either side.

TL;DR - taking Black Kite at face value, he should flip his vote to yes, as he appears to have believed that 11 complaints upheld in 9 months (and I don't know where that stat came from either) was low enough to consider removing the ban, and the real figure for 2017 was 10 complaints upheld during the entire year. If, however, he can substantiate the claim that 50 complaints were upheld against the DM in 2017, then I promise you I will switch my vote to "not yet". FOARP (talk) 12:49, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

You are confusing IPSO rulings with sanctions (I make it 11, but 10 is close enough). However, since you are here for this reason "The one success was against a paper that is particularly hated by left-wingers, who may be over-represented on Wiki" I don't think it's worth engaging with you any further. Black Kite (talk) 00:01, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

So, you're not even going to try to justify that "50 rulings against it" stat which was your entire reason given for voting no? Just hide behind faux-outrage about a comment I made saying people on here hate the DM (which they clearly do)? Well yeah, very convincing. FOARP (talk) 22:24, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No - Of the thousands of newspapers that cover world news, this one stands out for its sensationalistic and false reporting. Supporters of lifting the ban have not made the case for why we would need a source like this when so many better ones are available.- MrX 🖋 13:26, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Nothing significant has changed. Also, I will reiterate what I said at the time - banning a source like this is an unusual step for when a source is in the weird place where they are unequivocally unreliable for virtually anything nontrivial that we'd want to cite them for (barring the few WP:RS exceptions where the reliability of the source doesn't matter, like WP:ABOUTSELF), yet a small but persistent minority stubbornly insists it is reliable and repeatedly tries to cite it excessively, far out of proportion to its terrible quality. The comments above (several of which seem to want to unban it not for policy reasons or because they think the formal ban is unnecessary, but because they are actually trying to claim it is generally reliable) show why the somewhat drastic step of a formal ban and edit filter are needed. --Aquillion (talk) 14:28, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, I suggest a speedy close of this and future discussions on the topic unless they have some indication that things have changed, either externally (in the world or the Daily Mail itself) or internally (within Wikipedia, its practices, or policies). The whole point of the massive, extensively-covered, carefully-closed WP:RFC last time was that the Daily Mail was a point of constant contention that needed to be firmly settled once and for all; raising it again (with some people suggesting another pointless RFC in just a few months' time) would defeat the purpose of that. By this point it is pretty clear that this RFC is going down in well-deserved flames; I can sympathize with people who oppose this sort of measure as a matter of policy, but I urge the people who somehow think the Mail is a reliable source to accept the consensus of the community, WP:DROPTHESTICK, and move on. While the Daily Mail has been a constant point of contention, at no point in Wikipedia history (as far as I'm aware) has there ever been remotely approaching a consensus that it is generally reliable. It is almost the standard example of a low-quality source. The RFC that saw it banned was the endpoint of years of discussions; this RFC has accomplished nothing but rehashing them and wasting everyone's time to reach, inevitably, the same result as every past discussion on the topic. Whether we should be formally banning sources and using edit-filters, in an abstract sense, might be a productive discussion. Whether the Daily Mail in particular is reliable is not (unless you have something really amazing to bring to the table; but, spoiler, one or two polls of dubious quality and some hand-waving about other sources is not it. All of this sort of thing came up in the last RFC and is not going to change anything here.) --Aquillion (talk) 14:59, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

    Opposing the motion to reinstate the DM as a reliable source is an entirely valid opinion, but it is simply not correct to state "nothing significant has changed". The Daily Mail has appointed a new editor for the first time in 26 years. Considering that all the problems occurred under the previous editor, then a change of editor is "significant". It is entirely reasonable to try and ascertain how much of the problem was attributable to the previous editor and how far the appointment of a new editor will go to rectifying those problems. Even if the discussion results in retaining the ban it should not be shut down prematurely. Betty Logan (talk) 15:27, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

There's something suspiciously-Brexit-like about trying to get something banned for years in multiple RfCs, finally succeeding at the 20-somethingth attempt, and then declaring that that decision can never, ever be re-opened. FOARP (talk) 17:45, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Bexit will never happen anyhow, so don't worry about either that or this. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• To be clear (since what you're saying here is unambiguously untrue), the Daily Mail has always failed WP:RS, and as far as I'm aware WP:RSN has always reached a clear consensus on this every time the topic came up. It was discussed repeatedly because the small number of people who incorrectly thought it passed WP:RS kept bringing it here, but it has never come close to passing WP:RS at any point; you can find references to the constant recurring topic of its unreliability (and it being used as a benchmark of unreliable sourcing) going back years in this page's history. The formal ban was an unusual step taken because of the situation of a source that kept coming up despite being unambiguously unreliable, causing repeated, circular discussions that consistently rejected any arguments for using it as a source outside of the most trivial of cases. The formal ban it passed the very first time it was proposed (with a good part, though not all, of the opposition being procedural in nature, ie. people acknowledged that it was not generally a reliable source but were unsure about taking the step of a formal ban and edit filter.) Also, I advise you to read and consider WP:BLUDGEON; the purpose of an RFC is to get broad responses in order to resolve an intractable dispute, not to have one editor trying to argue with the entire room. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

I am aware that it has a different editor, but I don't see how that alone changes anything. WP:RS is based on a source's extended reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; obviously a source's reliability doesn't change with every single staff rotation. --Aquillion (talk) 03:51, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Throwing out the consensus is not an improvement. We invite people to edit who have no idea what a good source is, thus we provide guidance that is developed in long experience with sources and through consensus. So, sure, improve on past consensus and refine it but there is no point in going backwards for a source that has long been deprecated (often by editors analyzing it as tabloid crap) even before the 2017 RfC. Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:44, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No – it's far too soon to conclude that the Daily Mail is now a reliable source, given the considerable evidence above and at the last RfC. We can revisit this in a year, but for now we have to continue to safeguard against false information and tabloid journalism. Bradv🍁 20:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, non, nyet, buxin The Daily Mail is not now nor has it ever been a reliable source. Simonm223 (talk) 20:09, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes. This was one of the more embarrassing en.wp moments in recent memory. I'll add evidence of what I perceive to be its continuing disruptive effect on the sausage-sewing floor (e.g. [32]). — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 20:53, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Quite. The only evidence ever cited in support of this ban has been a hand-full of anecdotes such as could have been given for any newspaper. The actual evidence all points to the Daily Mail being just average for a UK tabloid in terms of reliability and trustworthiness. FOARP (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• No Too soon, and it’s not as if we have a shortage of reliable sources that we can use. O3000 (talk) 21:04, 7 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes I opposed the original ban and still think it is bizarre that we have singled out a single publication (and one that is somewhere near the top of the tabloid pile) in this way. To me it seems hard not to conclude that many editors advocating a ban are motivated by the paper's editorial position, and comments above regarding the change of position re Brexit only reinforce this perception. GoldenRing (talk) 17:52, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

You claim it's 'top of the tabloids', so the worst then. Actually Brexit and change of editorship was first argued in this discussion by someone who is arguing to overturn the consensus guidance, which means your argument is that you and others in your position only have your position because you support the paper's editorial position. Neither is it the case the source has been singled out, we have multiple restrictions on sources per the perennial sources list that's linked in guidelines. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:24, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

• No, probably never. The Daily Mail, as of today, looks horribly untrustworthy as a source for encyclopedic articles to me. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:14, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• No it's gutter tripe, and should be closed down. If anything, we should be looking to do this kind of thing more often, disallowing utter shite sources which purport to have some level of gravitas just because they've been around a bit. Nonsense source, usually hysterical and always motivated by POV, not an iota of neutrality, kill it. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:54, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. Invalid RFC as the proposer presents no rationale or evidence for overturning a site-wide consensus. Gamaliel (talk) 14:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Tabloids are not suitable sources here. A leopard doesn't change its colors overnight. If there is no better source than the content in question does not belong in Wikipedia. In medical publishing it takes a good 5 years to build a reputation. Maybe we can revisit this in another 4 years. We still have a lot of work to do cleaning up the current DM refs.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:03, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, I see no reason to believe that The Daily Mail has improved its editorial standards to the point where it could be considered a RS. GAB^gab 17:48, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No I don't see any reason why we should reconsider this. The major reason seems to be that they appointed a new editor in September, which doesn't mean anything. The discussion below suggests that we should reverse the decision because of perceived bias, numbers of official complaints made and perceptions outside Wikipedia, none of which has any effect on the Daily Mail's reliability at all. There's also a suggestion that the Daily Mail would be a great source to use for a BLP, which is a really bad idea. I'd be quite happy to see similar restrictions on comparable publications. There are very few situations in which it is OK to cite tabloid newspapers, particularly for consequential statements. Hut 8.5 19:39, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No per above. Still a tabloid -FASTILY 20:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Revisit in ONE year. --QEDK (後 ☕ 桜) 21:04, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• No "In case of tabloid emergency, break glass to release an emergency application reference from the Daily Mail. Caution: DM should only be applied as a reference in cases of real tabloid emergencies." (Yeah, I think we're good here.)  Spintendo  03:02, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Strong oppose. I rarely see Daily Mail in the articles I tend to edit. Nevertheless, on more than one occasion I've removed text cited to Daily Mail's years-old legitimate-looking repost of a dubious statistic cited to a dubious and probably non-existing organisation. There's no doubt that a lot of what's written in Daily Mail is true and factual, but that's not the crux of WP:RS. Daß Wölf 06:25, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, Hell No, and Strong oppose (use all that apply, suggested daily dose of any of these approximately once every minute). This is still a tabloid. This should simply not be used, with a near-zero number of exceptions. Blacklist/AbuseFilter, remove all. Any specific use only after a consensus-reaching discussion on WP:RS/N for that specific case. That the site has changed will then be shown after a good number of such discussions, after which this may be a discussion that needs to be held. (and let this be a precedent for other, similar sites). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  So are you proposing banning all tabloids? Because at present only one of them is banned - the DM. FOARP (talk) 09:39, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

  According to WP:RSP, there are many tabloids that the Wikipedia community consider unreliable. Of course, most of those didn't need a sitewide RfC to decide that. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:51, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

• No If that's all the OP wanted was a yes/no reply. Unless there's some massive change to the DM since the RfC, then it's not going to change anytime soon. Lugnuts ^{Fire Walk with Me} 12:40, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No, do not overturn the RfC: Guy Macon and Aquillion make excellent points above. The bottom line is: the Daily Mail is not reliable. It should not be used as a reliable source. Some people in this argument bring up public trust or distrust; this is not relevant because facts are not the same as public opinion. The Daily Mail has done a good job of hoodwinking its audience into believing its crackpot hoaxes are good journalism. This doesn't make crackpot hoaxes true. Others point out the change in leadership; this isn't a reason to pre-emptively allow a source just in case it improves. WP:BLP is one of the most important policies we have and the Daily Mail's lackadaisical attitude to fact-checking and sources makes it unusable. — Bilorv_(c)(talk) 14:19, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No — nothing substantial has changed. XOR'easter (talk) 17:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No To consider a source reliable, the source must have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. The Daily Mail has no such reputation, even if the masthead has changed a bit. Give it at least a year before reconsidering. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 17:48, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, we have neutrality issues here as the two main right-wing UK newspapers are behind pay walls and their left-wing rivals aren't. I've seen no evidence the Mail is worse than similar newspapers with different views, we can't just ban on a "I don't like" basis which is what we are doing here. Which UK newspapers check their facts better? I can't think of any. ♫ RichardWeiss talk contribs 17:57, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. (EC) Still a big bag of shite. Oh and to address the above, sources are not required to be online, let alone not be behind paywalls - accessibility of sources is irrelevant to questions of reliability and has no bearing on neutrality at all. Secondly, 'Which UK newspapers check their facts better?' - pretty much every single one except for possibly the Sunday Sport, and thats only because it prints obviously made up stories like planes on the moon, compared to slyly fabricating quotes/interviews like the Mail. Granted when you knowingly print lies there is little need to fact check it... So they have that in common. Only in death does duty end (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No; why would we want to allow a shitty tabloid with a reputation for falsehood to be used as a source here? --MarchOrDie (talk) 18:29, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No way - Burden of proof is to show that it has changed and has become reliable. I see no such evidence and must assume it remains a dumpster fire unreliable. EvergreenFir (talk) 18:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No because we owe more to our subjects than to let their names be ruined forever because the first Google result that appears when someone searches for them is an unverified claim from the Daily Mail that otherwise would get lost in the results. If it is truly important, another source will report on it. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
• No and please use some common sense - no falsehoods or prolific publisher of such can belong to Wikipedia at any given time. Tsumikiria (T/C) 02:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Absolutely not. Rome wasn't built in a day, and the Daily Mail's reputation isn't going to be repaired within two months of having a new editor either. We decided to ban them as a reliable source not simply because they publish celebrity gossip and sensationalized headlines, but because they have a history of literally making things up. A news organization that is known for making things up cannot be trusted. Maybe if they make a long-term effort to not make things up, we can revisit their ban in several years time – but right now? Hell to the no. Kurtis ^(talk) 02:45, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Not yet - The new editor may have a reforming influence on the paper, but right now it's too early to tell. Kaldari (talk) 05:57, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes Britain is full of tabloids that have a sensationalistic approach, many with a left-wing perspective like Daily Mirror or Daily Record, which is not to say OTHERSTUFFEXISTS but that it is arbitrary or biased to single out just one source so that it couldn't be used at all even with care. It isn't a great source when it comes to some subjects and should be treated as such, but there's no reason to prohibit it completely. And there are subjects it is a decent or a good source. As mentioned in the older RFC, the Daily Mail for instance has had universally acclaimed theater and musical reviews, which may be surprising to some. --Pudeo (talk) 08:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Regarding UK Tabloids & Newspapers ~ politics of the Mirror or the Daily Mail is totally irrelevant ~ but the Mirror is not Left Wing it is as center-left tabloid that supports Labour, the only other center-left paper is the Guardian, the only national left wing paper is the Morning Star, see List of newspapers in the United Kingdom. If you have solid evidence that any other so called news source has a dodgy reputation like the Daily Mail, Daily Star, Sun etc. please start a RfC Here ~> Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. I totally agree with Insertcleverphrasehere below, just because another paper might be bad, has no bearing on the whether we should use such an unreliable source as the Daily Mail. People rely on Wikipedia we owe it to them to use the best sources always. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 17:16, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No "Other publications are also bad or worse" is not a reason to overturn this ban. I originally voted for the ban due to entirely fabricated interviews that they published, and it hasn't been long enough to verify that this sort of behaviour has ceased. — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)}_{(click me!)} 13:48, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. It is too soon to determine if this has become a reliable source. ZettaComposer (talk) 14:33, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• There's a cultural difference here between US and UK newspapers. Some of the UK newspapers are happy to print nonsense, and the ban should probably be either extended to include other papers, or modified so that multiple independent UK papers could be used, or modified so that UK papers can only be used if a direct quote is used. DanBCDanBC (talk) 16:56, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. Martinevans123 makes good points below. Deb (talk) 17:01, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. While the Daily Mail ban was unknown to me, I support keeping it. I cannot think when we might ever need to rely on this newspaper for verification of facts that need including in an encyclopedia article. Most of its content is garbage with no place in our articles. For the slim amount of its content containing facts that warrant inclusion, we inevitably can look to others on Fleet Street for the same content. And we can do so without needing to guess at whether the journalists, who rarely warrant the title, have done their job. It isn't nice to "ban" so prolific a source, and I agree it appears partisan, but reliability precedes our community's public relations. AGK ■ 19:10, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes. I am overall uncomfortable with outright bans on all but the most egregious of sources (and no, I do not think the DM falls into that category...that is reserved for InfoWars and the like). I would prefer to leave it up to the editors themselves to determine whether or not the DM is appropriate on an instance by instance basis. Certainly there will be many who will be vigilant about double-checking anything DM-related, and that’s fine. But that should be happening anyway. CThomas³ (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. A change of editor has not created substantial change within the newspaper. talk to !dave 11:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• NOOOOOPE. The Daily Mail is still unreliable. Kirbanzo (talk) 17:43, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• No they've made far too many dubious claims for such an overturn to have merit, regardless of who the editor is. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 00:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. I'm having trouble seeing why we would need to use it as a source. As things are, Wikipedia is already at its weakest when covering current events, and we should try particularly hard to avoid sourcing that is questionable when we do not yet have historical perspective. Add those considerations to the history of unreliability, and the threshold for changing the previous consensus has not been met. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, at least partially. The comparison above with Infowars is relevant--Infowars is dedicated to the pursuit of disinformation, while the Mail is better characterized as often reckless. That it contains junk does not invalidate the part that is not junk. It therefore has to be used with extreme caution, and the understanding that it needs additional verification in most cases, but it is totally unacceptable to ban it completely, or to make it exceptionally more difficult to use than other newspapers. DGG ( talk ) 02:14, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, lift the ban - The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws and the Daily Mail also is required to follow the IPSO Editors' Code of conduct with risk of enforcements actions for breaches. Really, there is very little good evidence that the Daily Mail is any less reliable than other sources. The current general ban on use of Daily Mail is, I believe, seriously biasing certain articles - particularly U.K. based ones - because the other two major right leaning newspapers are behind a paywall while left leaning ones are not, which almost guarantees that we are introducing major WP:NPOV issues to our U.K. political articles by this ban. It also makes Wikipedia less credible and look biased rather than NPOV. Finally, the Daily Mail is soon to be under a new editor (in Jan. 2019) who has a good track record of honest professionalism; the concerns of the previous RFC largely surrounded editorial behaviour of the outgoing editor are no longer an issue, so I think the ban should allow sources from Jan. 2019 onwards, for the sake of a NPOV at least. I do fear people are voting largely on political biases with a disregard for NPOV, we can do better than that, surely.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:10, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: Not any more. That changed with the Defamation Act 2013. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Literaturegeek: The are 8 Right of Center daily national newpapers in the UK, 3 (2 really as the Morning Star has limited circulation) Left of Center and 2 non political/centerist papers. However, political leanings of newspapers are *irrelevent*. The only thing that is important about a source is its reliability. Having reliable sources makes wikipedia credible.

(Paywalls are unfortunate, they do not stop a source being used, but simply weakens paper's usefulness as a source because it limits other editors ability to check what the source says....but this a separate matter...we are not looking at other papers ....we are looking at the Daily Mail...it does not matter if every other paper is behind a paywall ...we are discussing the Daily Mail). ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) The 2013 act did not change the main thing that makes UK defamation laws so strict - that is the requirement that it is the person who makes the allegedly defamatory statement that has to show the truth of it in order to rely on the defence that the statement was true. In, e.g., the US it is typically the other way round - it is the claimant that has to a show that the allegedly defamatory statement is untrue.

2) Pay walls do matter, since Editors almost never wish to pay to use a source.

3) The DM is the ONLY newspaper anywhere in the world that is banned by Wiki in this fashion. This cannot be justified simply by it being a tabloid as other tabloids remain unbanned. There is no need for a ban on the DM alone whilst there is general guidance not to use tabloid sources for BLP/controversial subjects.

The error is not the fact that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, but that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be poor unreliable sources. Useful guidance is rarely bad. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:57, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

4) The only high-quality evidence cited on this thread - the IPSOS decisions statistics and the surveys of the British public - show the DM to unremarkable in terms of trustworthiness. They are no worse than any other tabloid source. The belief that it is "the worst of the worst" is purely the result of ideologically biased analysis. FOARP (talk) 13:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1. The statement was that "The UK has amongst the world’s strictest libel laws". That statement is incorrect. English libel law is now broadly comparable with other countries. Northern Ireland still has bad libel law, but the statement that the UK has the strictest laws is simply not true anymore.

2. Paywalls don't matter, most of our medical content uses paywalled sources. They do lead to FUTON bias - and in fcat deprecating the Mail is a good thing from that point of view as it pushes towards a reliable-but-paywalled source instead of a crappy but free one.

3. The DM is not the only source we deprecate. It is the only one which has a print edition, but most of the DM's content is on the internet not print. And that would not be a reason anyway: I think there is reasonably strong consensus that National Inquirer, the Washington Times and sundry other print sources should also be deprecated. It is not only but first.

4. IPSO is an industry body, nonetheless, its figures clearly show that the Daily Mail and Mail Online have, between them, nearly 50% more complaints as the Sun and Sun Online, the next most complained-about - and most of those Sun complaints were, as far as I can ascertain, related to Hillsborough. So yes, the Mail is, by the objective measure you appear to prefer, worse than other UK tabloids.

You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. A much better approach would be to deprecate other, equally crappy sources, including The Sun. The number of facts which are genuinely significant and where the Daily Mail is the best available source is, it is safe to say, very small, and already handled under the existing guidance. Guy (Help!) 14:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

User:JzG, you wrote: You seem very determined to allow one of the worst published sources in the UK to be used on Wikipedia. There is no evidence it is the worst out of tabloids and newspapers; it is the largest, most popular newspaper in the U.K. so it will be more complained about and to ban it is madness. Why not also ban the BBC, New York Times or The Guardian who are well known for their biases and twisting of facts? Or is that unthinkable because of their political leanings? This ban is POV pushing, it is obvious. I edit almost exclusively medical content and all newspapers, including tabloids, are quite rightly banned, so lifting or maintaining the ban will have zero effect on articles I edit. I genuinely think I have never used the Daily Mail as a source in the ten plus years I have been an editor on this site. And I have no aspirations to start using the DM personally on Wikipedia. I have no horse in this race, as you implied. My concerns are about NPOV re. the general encyclopedia. Take BREXIT, for example; how can we cover that neutrally when we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN? We want a diverse range of sources to cite all viewpoints, per NPOV. If you don’t or can’t realise the damage this ban does to NPOV, well... good grief chief. This is a largely partisan ban that damages the encyclopedia for agenda driven reasons primarily and needs lifted.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 19:40, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Are you hinting that the BBC is leftist!? (see https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/bbc-bias-jeremy-corbyn-labour-centre-right-robbie-gibb-theresa-may-laura-keunssberg-andrew-marr-a7844826.html) Lets ignore the fact the clear majority of the press in UK are Right of Center, it is irrelevant. Here we are ONLY concerned with RELIABILITY of the source, NOT its political leanings, political leanings are irrelevant here _{(side note re POV claim: the was a clear leaning in the UK press towards BREXIT e.g. http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-23-uk-newspapers-positions-brexit)}. ... It is fallacious to say that it is wrong that the Daily Mail is the only bad news source that has this useful filter guiding editors, so we should lift the ban .... the error is more that we as editors have failed to add similar guidance on the use of other Tabloids and other Media Sources found to be equally poor unreliable sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 22:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The idea that the BBC is leftist is quite funny, but even more "we bias editors into choosing sources that are REMAIN?". Every mass market newspaper in the UK apart from the Mirror and Guardian supports Leave. Even more than that, the Mirror is very careful not to press the point, as it knows a lot of its readership voted to leave, and the Mail has changed course away from its very pro-Brexit stance under its new leadership. Black Kite (talk) 22:52, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

BOD, I do agree with the idea that guidance on the use of newspapers, tabloids in particular, should be authored by the community. I do agree, believe it or not, that the Daily Mail alongside other tabloids have their limitations and shortfalls and often other more reliable sources should be favoured. It is just this almost blanket ban on Daily Mail is really silly. The Daily Mail runs many articles which are nonpartisan and thus not at risk of sensationalism or bias, but if an editor wants to add a non controversial factoid to a wiki article sourced to the Daily Mail it is going to get reverted for no good reason other than this irritating blanket ban. Surely the sensible thing to do is write guidance discouraging tabloids but not outright banning them and not singling out the Daily Mail? I mean for medical articles sources in low impact journals are not outright banned but often discouraged in favour of sources in higher quality medical journals.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I understand what you say. Sometimes editors can be trigger happy. My own bias is influenced by the fact a close friend took a complaint about the Daily Mail, in regards to an abusive article about her (concerning a court case which she won) to the old Press Complaints Commission 10 years ago, and only received a very weak personal apology rather than a public one. I think the failing to enact on the Leveson Inquiry etc was a bad thing. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 00:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, lift the ban. People cite a number of inaccuracies by the DM. But all media have inaccuracies. For example, The New York Times, considered by some the newspaper of record of the United States, engaged in a major conspiracy to hide, dissimulate, and spin the Holomodor genocide that killed 7.5 million people in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The New York Times 60 years later conceded that it is "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper.". The New York Times own investigator in 2003, concluded the NYT gave voice to Stalinist propaganda. Even the owner of the NYT, Sulzberger Jr., said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors" (meaning, in his case, "my editors"). Now, some will argue the NYT's "introspection" proves the difference between it and the DM, but, what is easier than to show contrition for the actions of one's forebears? On the contrary, does the NYT face up to its daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today? How easily it will be admitting it sins two generations from now when all the principals are dead! (assuming it survives that long). Well, the same principle should apply to the Daily Mail, and it is extremely hypocritical to uniquely single it out from among all journals in the world when all journals and journalists have their own POV and spin and sensationalize ceaselessly. Besides, as cited by others, the DM has to content with Britain's extremely demanding libel laws and regulations: it cannot possibly be any worse than any other British media! End the ban already. XavierItzm (talk) 10:19, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

References

• Could you give us some clear examples of the NYT's "daily sins, omissions, spin, partisanship and peccadilloes of today" that it hasn't owned up to? Many thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:26, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The request that one bring up demonstrated evidence of its current problems is as outlandish as it would have been, in the 1930's, to bring you manifest sources that the New York Times was able to, in fact, win a Pulitzer Prize for being the mouthpiece of Stalin, the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Not a realistic proposition.

But the real issue is that all media has its own implicit bias and errors. Unless you believe, of course, that journalists are angels above all human concerns. XavierItzm (talk) 13:09, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - bans are a supremely bad idea and are always misused. There are always other, better sources that can be added to contrast what publications like The Daily Mail say. Also there was poor evidence for this ban in the original RfC. Wikipedia is becoming more punitive and less welcoming. If we want to stop loosing editors we need to make it a more positive experience for editors and putting warning boxes in front of them in ever increasing numbers is antithetical to this goal. Morgan Leigh | Talk 10:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh:The is zero harm in providing good guidance to new, inexperienced and other editors ~ that some sources are well known to be unreliable. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 11:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Morgan Leigh: Bans don't exist. The Mail is deprecated, not banned. We do the same with predatory journals, self-published books and multiple other classes of source that have a reputation for inaccuracy, bias, and lack of adequate editorial control. The handling of the Mail is fully consistent with this. Guy (Help!) 12:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

It's a ban. Please stop pretending that it is anything else. Per WP:DUCK - if it acts like a ban (and it does), if people treat it like a ban (and they do), and if everyone calls it a ban (and even the Guardian did) then let's not kid ourselves that it is not a ban. Post a reference to the DM anywhere on this site and it is highly likely that an editor will come into delete the ban with an edit summary reading "RM non-RS", without bothering to look at the article or at the reference being used. Re-post the reference and some helpful soul may post a DS notice on your talk page.

And let's also stop saying that this is about guidance! We already have guidance about using tabloid sources on BLP/controversial articles and do not need a ban to add to it. This ban is not about guidance - it is the opposite of guidance, it is compulsion. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I see. So now we rely on The Guardian to inform us on how we conduct ourselves. You're essentially saying "if editors routinely misuse a measure, that was agreed by means of a RfC, that's the way it has to stay - the misuse is self-justifed"? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP: If it IS inevitable that another editor (and maybe other editors) has to waste time removing stuff, why not provide guidance to halt the inclusion of questionable stuff in the first place. The DM maybe great in a minority of subjects, its overall reliability has damned its usefullness. The are plenty of other sources. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 13:31, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. The Daily Mail transgressed the press regulator rules no fewer than 50 times in 2017, making it by far the biggest offender of the year out of the publications monitored by IPSO.--Moxy (talk) 12:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow. You're literally relying on a ludicrously incorrect blog source to substantiate a point. On an RfC about reliable sources. On Wiki.

The real figure for rulings upheld against them was 10 (see the figure for Associated - owners of the DM - on p. 22-23 here). Counting the total rulings is completely bizarre methodology because it includes the rulings that were in the DM's favour and where no wrong doing was found on their part. Only the rulings against them are evidence of wrong-doing, and in that area the DM is unremarkable, especially when measured against circulation (more copies sold will always mean more complaints, even for publications that are identical).

Here's a tip - if a blog post cites all sorts of "facts" that cannot be found in the original, then they may well be lying through their teeth. FOARP (talk) 13:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Let me hold your hand ...pls review the attached sources reports. --Moxy (talk) 13:38, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Um, that's a 404 page. Not very good at this whole internet lark, right?

I include a link to IPSOS's 2017 annual report - the one in which they listed only 10 decision upheld against the DM's publishers - in my comment above, BTW, so why not just click on that? FOARP (talk) 13:42, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Paul Dacre still had a leading role at IPSO until July that year. IPSO is not an independent body in anything but name.

But yes, let's look at that report. The five most complained about publications were, in descending order: The Sun; The Daily Mail; Mail Online; Metro; the Mail on Sunday. Four out of five were Associated Newspapers titles. The three Mail titles received twice as many complaints as any other single news brand. They received an order of magnitude more complaints than anyone else in the list of most complained about publications, other than The Sun, which, to be absolutely clear, I would also consider a never-use source. Guy (Help!) 14:27, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

1) Number of complaints has to been assessed against circulation - it is inevitable that higher circulation papers receive higher numbers of complaints, since they have more eyes on them, you will note that the top five print publications (i.e., non-website) for complaints are also the top five print publications in terms of circulation.

2) The number of complaints includes multiple complaints about the same issue, as well as wrong and baseless complaints - only the ones upheld actually matter as these have been assessed and wrongdoing found, and for these the DM is not remarkable.

3) Dacre is on a committee at IPSOS, but the actual committee that adjudicates cases is completely separate and of a different make-up.

4) The idea that "IPSOS is not independent" has no real basis, IPSOS regularly makes decisions against the Mail and other newspapers, it's decision are open to judicial review and as yet no JR has found against them. FOARP (talk) 16:20, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Circulation is listed alongside each source in the IPSO report. The Sun and the Mail are comparable. The Sun's website has half the reach and got fewer than one tenth the complaints. Your fervour to reinstate links to this crappy tabloid is causing you to make bad arguments. Guy (Help!) 17:06, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@FOARP:_{Fun Note: IPSOS, meaning "themselves", is the magical formula of the Aeon of Ma'at as transmitted by Nema in her inspired magical work, Liber Pennae Praenumbra. :)} ... However the UK Newspaper regulator IPSO is not really independent, it is a self regulator paid for by its member publishers, including the Daily Mail itself. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 19:28, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes - lift the ban - however, Replace it with much stronger guidance limiting the use of news media sources (in general). Reliability depends on context. No source is ever 100% reliable or 100% unreliable. What is needed is clearer guidance to help editors understand when and how to use news sources appropriately... instructing them on the distinctions between news reporting and news analysis/opinion. We need clearer guidance on when information taken from a news source can be accepted as unattributed fact, and when it must be attributed. We need to instruct editors to look for subsequent reporting and retractions. We need to make it clear that a specific news story may contain errors or omissions that make it unreliable, while other news stories from the same outlet are fine. Do this, and there will no longer be a need to single out any specific outlet. Flawed reporting will be still be deemed unreliable (on an individual story level), while the reliable reporting can be accepted... regardless of outlet. Blueboar (talk) 18:37, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• [EC] How would such "stronger guidance" handle the problem -- a daily occurrence with this source, not much of a problem with other tabloids -- of an item appearing in The Daily Mail which is extremely reliable because TDM stole it from a reliable but obscure source, changed a few words here and there, added a paragraph of shit they made up which looks exactly like what a reliable source would report (except it didn't happen), and slapped their byline on the resulting unattributed plagiarism? Here is one such plagiarized story: [33] Imagine you are thinking of using that page as a source. Try to find where TDM stole it from in a reasonable amount of time. Can't find the original even though you know to look for plagiarism? Now explain how "much stronger guidance" would have helped you avoid linking to a clear copyright violation. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

I almost would support this, it if was in place before any ban was lifted. But I think we will still have the problem, too many news sources now make it almost impossible to tell news from opinion. What we need is stronger restrictions on the use of news media. I suppose one answer is if a news story contains one error it is not RS, regardless of the source.Slatersteven (talk) 19:05, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Pretty much everything of any significant length ever written by anyone ever contained at least one error. Not sure that would work. For myself I'm happy just saying that tabloid sources should be avoided for BLP/controversial subjects and leaving it there for editors to make their own decisions. The present automated ban is unnecessary and unhelpful. FOARP (talk) 20:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Strong no The Daily Mail is not reliable - examples: The Guardian, USAToday, The Guardian. The Daily Mail has had a new editor for only two months and the burden of proof is on those claiming that it has changed. Autarch (talk) 22:47, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The two Guardian links above both cover stories that a whole list of papers got wrong (including online Guardian in the first case). What the DM is uniquely accused of is 'dressing up' the wrong story with a great deal of emotive 'soap opera' detail - despicable, but why would WP be including that kind of tosh anyway? I didn't check out USAToday. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Details like "Following the verdict, Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away. Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days" are hardly "tosh". They are exactly the sort of thing Wikipedia editors use to make sure they get details like what jail someone was sent to right. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:32, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

So getting the verdict wrong (caused by an early poor/partial translation and the wish to be 'first'), which several outlets did, inc Gdn online, is OK, - but getting the prison wrong that they were supposedly, subsequently sent to is an unpardonable offence! Makes perfect (non) sense to me. It sounds like an argument for us not following the general press tendency to want to be first to publish - rather than indicating a particular problem with this source. Pincrete (talk) 13:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Whether is makes sense to you is your problem. It makes perfect sense to any reasonable person. The first kind of accidental error (getting it wrong and quickly correcting it) is, as you yourself admit, pretty normal. It usually doesn't lead to errors in any Wikipedia article unless someone is sitting their waiting for the first report so they can be first on Wikipedia -- and even then it is quickly fixed. The second kind of purposeful' error (making up details and fabricating direct quotes) only gets corrected in the rare cases where they made the first kind of accidental error along with their usual second kind of purposeful error. Normally, the error just sits there and gets repeated by other major media outlets. I don't know whether you are doing this on purpose (I strongly WP:IDHT suspect that you are) but you are cluelessly acting as if there is no difference between a real journalist who does his best, gets something wrong and then corrects it -- and who would be fired if he purposely fabricated a direct quote -- and a hack who makes shit up, fabricates direct quotes and sometimes publishes entire interviews that never happened, and maybe issues a correction if he gets caught -- and even then the correction is often months later. The Wikipedia community has spoken in one RfC and it looks like the current RfC will go the same way; we have examined what The Daily Mail does, determined that it is unreliable on a whole new level compared to other tabloids, and decided not to use it as a source. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:16, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

In this seven-year-old case the correction and apology came within slightly over one minute. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• No. I do not see what is supposed to have changed, either among the editorial community of Wikipedia or in the editorial practices of the paper. Drmies (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, lift the ban The Mail is a major daily in a country famed for its feisty and free press, a country, I hasten to add, that is also famed for (like Wikipedia) for the highly partisan nature of its editors. The charge is that the Mail's editing process published a lot of erroneous info. But I know of no newspaper that has not published untruths, not even the New Yorker. But singling out a major, national daily is highly problematic. A better approach is for editors to be more discrimination about which sources they choose to rely on.E.M.Gregory (talk) 18:05, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Fix. It is okay to cite an opinion published in The Daily Mail, according to three of the WP:DAILYMAIL closers, see the NPOVN archive of a May 2017 discussion and look for the words "Attributed opinions of the author were not considered in the RFC, and a reasonable exception from the ban appears correct here." -- but that is not in WP:DAILYMAIL itself so it's been missed sometimes. And the edit filter for The Daily Mail does not represent what the closers said. Of course I voted against the ban last time but see the way the wind is blowing so I'm just pleading for a close now that clarifies: WP:DAILYMAIL should be updated, misuse shouldn't be tolerated, edit filters should say exactly what RfC closers say. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 01:18, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes no evidence exists that the DM is especially wrong about facts that are within our remit anyway. We should be able to find a better way to discourage the use of tabloids. We should be willing to acknowledge that 'better sources' means not only sources that are more likely to be accurate, but also ones that give fuller, less contentiously phrased, less trivialised accounts of the subject covered. I cannot imagine any situation in which I would prefer to cite the DM (or any UK tabloids), but I am not persuaded that the de facto ban achieves anything. Pincrete (talk) 20:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. per WP:CLUE. Allowing this junk source would in no way help our Project. Alexbrn (talk) 20:38, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• No Lacks a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy as required by our longstanding policy. This is an encyclopedia. If the only possible source for a statement is the Daily Mail that is a strong indication that the material does not belong. Neutrality^talk 17:32, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. It's written by individuals who aren't experts in their subject areas, and their writings aren't reviewed by subject experts. Potentially useful for basic facts that are indisputable and that obviously get mentioned in solid secondary sources (e.g. "Joe Bloggs died yesterday, 16 December 2018"), but not more, just like any other newspaper. Treat it like any other primary source, and don't advocate the fringe theory that news reports about current events are secondary sources. Nyttend (talk) 22:38, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion (Daily Mail)

Suggested conduct for this RFC

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.

---

It may be helpful if we conduct this discussion in a deliberative manner, to improve our chances of arriving at a solid, evidence-based consensus. Going straight to voting with little preliminary discussion is good practice for some issues, but it is liable to elicit non reflective, "top of the head" opinions. Voting has therefore been postponed for 7 days to allow deliberation.

• Any editor who wishes to add arguments or evidence is welcome to do so in the relevant 'For' or 'Against' section, to whatever length they wish.
• If any editor wishes to add inline questions or counter points to the opposing side's section, they are encouraged to be as concise as possible.
• Voting is not due to open until Tuesday 11 Dec. This is to allow plenty of time for both sides to develop arguments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeydHuxtable (talk • contribs) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (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.

Arguments For lifting restrictions on the DM

Outline

1) The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017.

2) Relatively little high quality evidence exists asserting DM is generally unreliable.

3) Retaining the ban creates a dangerous WP:creep / slippery slope problem.

4) The DM is sometimes the best available source for certain topics.

5) Retaining the ban is damagingly partisan.

6) The ban is disproportionate to its objectives

7) The consensus resulting from the RfC was unclear

Elaboration and evidence

1) The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017.

The publication Wikipedia de facto banned in early 2017 no longer exists. While it may be true that the DM once had reprehensible operating practices, new editor Geordie Greig is cleaning up shop. Greig's appointment has been such a dramatic change that the Atlantic called him the "man who might change Britain" , John Major said he had "the power and the potential to change the political discourse of our country", and Lord Adonis claimed his ascension was "a revolution in the British media … very likely we will now stop Brexit". as summarised in The Guardian . These predictions seem to be holding true. Abundant sources written in the past few days confirm the DM really does seem to have turned over a new leaf, and is now "kinder and gentler" , e.g. Guardian article As late as mid summer, talk of a second Brexit referendum was widely regarded as fanciful. Since Greig took over at DM, John McDonnell has said a 2nd referendum now seems inevitable, while in the last few days even Gove admitted a second referendum is possible.

2) Relatively little high quality evidence exists asserting DM is generally unreliable.

There seem to be few if any high quality sources claiming DM is general unreliable , especially since the major improvements after the recent change of editor. Outdated opinion pieces from journalists & quotes from disgruntled x-employees, while not worthless, are far from top tier sources. Individual DM articles may contain falsehoods, but misleading info can be found in any type of sources, most definitively in the types of sources Wikipedians tend to consider most reliable. There is no totally satisfactory substitute for editorial discretion.

IPSOS, the media watchdog body, tracks complaints upheld against each publisher in each year. In 2015 only two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail, compared to nine complaints being upheld for Telegraph Media Group and Trinity Mirror (owners of the Telegraph and the Mirror respectively), ten being upheld against Northern and Shell (owners of the Express and the Star), and eleven complaints against News UK (owners of the Times, the Sunday Times, and the Sun). IPSOS also noted that "Associated was the most assiduous group at resolving complaints, having done so on 23 occasions". If the Daily Mail is the horrifically inaccurate source that it has been portrayed as being by some editors, then this is not immediately apparent in terms of complaints upheld or the attitude of the publication to those complaints. Whilst 2015 was a particularly low year for Associated, the statistics for 2016 (see pp. 16-17 here) and 2017 (see pp. 22-23 here) in terms of complaints upheld were also lower for Associated than for their main competitors. Whilst the total volume of complaints for the DM is high, it is not higher than for the Sun, and proportionate to circulation is not remarkable compared to other publications regulated by IPSOS.

3) Retaining the ban creates a dangerous WP:creep / slippery slope problem.

Al Jazeera is ranked less trustworthy and impartial than DM in several (not all) of the datasets reported in sources such as Ipsos Impartiality and Trust Market Content Survey 2017 & BBC trust and impartiality 2014 It would hopefully be unthinkable to ban Al Jazeera, but this example may illustrate how retaining the DM ban helps strengthen the case to ban various other useful sources.

One of the requirements of WP:CREEP is that "The proposal if implemented is likely to make a real, positive difference", however there is no evidence that this ban has created such a difference, unless you consider there being less citations of the Daily Mail as being, in and of itself, a "positive difference". Instead there is evidence that it has created a robotic, non-common-sense approach amongst some editors where references to the Daily Mail are deleted automatically without any analysis of whether this is warranted or an improvement of any kind. If anything, this actually points to the ban increasing editor's workloads since they were actively and explicitly encouraged by the RfC to seek out references to the Daily Mail and remove them - this is not time well spent.

TL;DR - Where's the evidence, per WP:CREEP, that the 2017 RfC made a "real, positive difference"?

4)The DM is sometimes a useful, even the best available, source for certain topics.

For an example of the DM being a useful source to improve a poetry article, see this diff The example I most remember where DM was the best available source was for the actress & former model Teresa May. One of the leading glamour models of the 90s, she worked with The Prodigy, stared in several B movies, appeared in numerous tabloids and mens magazines, appeared on TV shows like Men & Motors, GMTV, etc. She wasn't just important in entertainment – starting from the late 90s, she played a major role in the long process of rehabilitating the Tories image as the "nasty party". The single best online source for recording this was the DM. Due in part to said source being dismissed thanks to the ban, our article on this historic figure was destroyed. There must be thousands of other examples. With DM being the only large UK paper with a majority female readership, many may relate to articles of interest to women. Lifting the ban on the DM could help address our embarrassing lack of coverage on such topics.

5) Retaining the ban is damagingly partisan.

Many of the original RfC votes to ban DM were undoubtedly driven solely by the admirable and scholarly desire to avoid possible untruth being included in our articles. Yet given that at least until Greig took over as editor, the DM was regarded as a hugely powerful outlet for right wing opinion, and that several editors call it 'repulsive' , 'repugnant' etc, it does seem likely partisan sentiment played at least some role. In fairness, wikipedians commitment to NPOV makes us on the whole less partisan than most of the rest of the world. Still, our banning of DM is seen by many as a partisan act, adding fuel to the partisan inferno raging elsewhere.

To elaborate on why inflaming partisanship is so bad. Partisanship is maybe the primary reason why suffering is increasing for a substantial proportion of the world's population, despite what should be the fruits of ever improving technology. E.g. Hunger increasing both globally and even in several advanced economies, mental health issues increasing across the world, suicide rates increasing & life expectancies falling in several advanced economies. Societies are dysfunctional when populations separate into mutually suspicious halves on the left right spectrum. A fair view of said spectrum is that almost all on both sides genuinely want the best for everyone, just with different priorities. In relatively bi-partisan times, like the 50-60s, there can be vast improvements in living conditions for all sections of society, not regression for the poor like we have today. It may be satisfying for us lefties to win great victories against the right, as they can in various arenas of public opinion like Wikipedia or the twitter sphere. But perversely, it's left wing causes that suffer the most when we do so. This is why Hilary Clinton came to deeply regret her "deplorable" remark, and why Obama came to see his "guns and relgion" speech as one of his worst mistakes. Lets find it in our hearts to treat the political right with respect, if not out of genuine love for them, then as it helps the cause, and for WP:NPOV!

6) The ban is disproportionate to its objectives

The objective of the ban was to discourage the use of a source alleged, based on largely anecdotal evidence of recent behaviour, to be generally unreliable. To achieve this the entire corpus of work of a newspaper published daily for more than 122 years was subjected to blanket deprecation without a time limit or even scheduling a review after a particular time-period. A permanent ban, covering the entire history of a newspaper, for perceived recent behaviour, is clearly greatly in excess of the wrong that it is supposed to address.

7) The consensus resulting from the RfC was unclear

In previous discussions it has been pointed out that the result of this ban was not a "ban" per se. However, the fact that it has been reported as a ban outside Wikipedia in a source normally thought reliable, that it is commonly referred to as a ban by editors (or even jokingly as a "!ban"), and has functioned exactly as a ban since all new references to the Daily Mail are deleted, shows that the instructions resulting from the RfC were unclear since they have resulted in a sitaution which they were supposed to avoid - a blanket ban on references to the Daily Mail.

Credits: Most of sound arguments in the initial posting here were originally put forward by others, including Collect, Andy Dingley, DomFromParis, FOARP and the Colonel. Possibly foolish elaborations like contrasting DM with the sort of sources held up by WP:MEDS are mine alone. FeydHuxtable (talk) 10:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

8) It might lead any sceptics there might be out there in the real world to wonder if there really was an any-cabal on Wikipedia.

When contributing here, for example, I understood that I mustn't put that reference I found on the page into a proper format because then I might risk sanction for refusing to respect previous jurisprudence.

9) It forces wiki-contributors to stop what they are researching when they find a DM reference and go dig up another with a more neutered-friendly no cabal-approved headline.

This is absurd in the case of exclusives, such as this one. That diff led me to do a study / take a snapshot in time of Wikipedian sourcing for the benefit of this noticeboard. (NB: the results are frozen in time, they will have changed significantly since). In other less exclusive cases, like the one I mentioned above, it is also unnecessarily time-consuming. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:37, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Further evidence for #4: The @Emir of Wikipedia: alerted me, through their user page, to the fact that only the Daily Mail published the story of Laura Nunes' death at the Burj Khalifa. Otherwise, the Dubai police were very successful in keeping this information out of the press. if this article—9news.com.au—is to be believed: [34]) Since the Emir is being called out by this publication, I've pinged them so that they can add any further background that seems necessary for background. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 17:23, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Also untrue [[35]], [36], [37].Slatersteven (talk) 17:32, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

The standard procedure is to strike out incorrect comments like this @Slatersteven:. Unless of course you are stating that en.wp is currently wrong, or that the coroner's report is not to be believed... AGF, I'll let you correct your errors above... or provide proof that I'm mistaken, which none of the three articles above does. Be sure to also see the talk page I linked above, where Nunes' mother tries to get the wiki-story corrected. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 19:24, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

WP is not an RS, and may well be wrong. Especially as I have provided three sources that do mention this claim (on dated the same date as the DM "exclusive"), so it was not only the DM that reported it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

This claim has been verified to be false: the original article is dated the 16 May 2015, none of the other articles appeared until after the UAE cover-up began on 18 May 2015. Her mother's complaint about the Wiki cover-up is dated 29 December 2015 and can be found in Archive 11 of the talk page (this pursuant to the removal of the Daily Mail article and all reference to the suicide on 28 August 2015). Can this be compared to the Rothschild affair, where the High Court found the Daily Mail accurate in their reporting and Rothschild's SLAPP suit as frivolous? — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:31, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

So is the claim "they were the first to cover it" or "that only the Daily Mail published the story of Laura Nunes' death at the Burj Khalifa"? And I would argue that a suicide is not usually worthy of reporting, a Police cover up is. So this is why the DM should not be an RS, not everything it published is notable, and it often misses the actually important part of a story so as to get "exclusives".Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Acknowledgment of your error is requested @Slatersteven: in order to establish that we are all investigating the matter in good faith. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:55, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

OK, the DM were the first (FIRST) to report her suicide.Slatersteven (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Them being first is not a Good Thing. It is a Bad Thing. As we have seen with the Knox case, they are often first because they write the articles (including all sorts of made-up details and fabricated direct quotes) before they actual event happens. They also rather obviously have a bunch of prewritten articles for [celebrity] commuted suicide, [musician] overdoses with [drug], [politician] resigns over scandal, etc., again containing made-up details and fabricated direct quotes. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:22, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, I appreciate the acknowledgment that they broke (i.e. did the work on) the story of the suicide from 2014, which (weirdly) led the Dubai police (or Gulf News) to make something up on 18 May 2015, which two of the other papers reported. As you say, the key event is the cover-up, as Rob Davies noted in the DM's original article: Although the Burj Khalifa is a popular attraction among both tourists and those living in Dubai, Ms Nunes' death, on November 16 2014, has gone unreported until now. (One wonders how her SIM card magically disappeared from her Blackberry, of course, but one can speculate that this was just a courtesy to her wealthy Emirati ex.) All that said, this, like the work the Mail did on the story of Lord Mandelson, Nathaniel Rothschild and Oleg Deripaska [38] is anecdotal evidence that, in fact, they have gotten things right where powerful interests would have preferred that they didn't. This doesn't seem like a good reason to ban a national paper. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 13:34, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Arguments Against lifting restrictions on the DM

Many many of us in fact argued against it solely on its tendency to present opinion, speculation and out right misrepresentation as fact. I dislike the way this RFC has been framed.Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Outline

Nor do I think this has changed (as certain recent discussion at the DM about Wikipedia have shown). As nothing has substantively changed, and in fact they continue to be (quite literally in the UK) a joke means to my mind undoing the "ban" (as the DM put it) will in fact do our reputation for using only the best sources weakened not strengthened. I think our taking a stand over this issue did our reputation (expect among the Red Tops) no end of good as we had started to take a real meaningful stand against fake news (by which I mean news organs that have a willingness (and knowingly publish) pure speculation and opinion as fact).Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Elaboration and evidence

[39], not only is this not usable as a BLP (but try saying that if we do not "deprecate" the DM "but its an RS" will be the plaintive cry) but is a prefect example of why it should not be considered an RS. Speculation masquerading as fact, but they even (and have to have used) Wikipedia as a source despite (after the earlier spat with them) claiming (categorically) they do not use Wikipedia as a source. The dishonesty and representing opinion as news continues unchanged.Slatersteven (talk) 10:57, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

A note on quality control: the linked article (cached here), dated December 2, 2018, misspells Barack Obama as "Barrack Obama" twice, once in the bullets under the headline, and once in the article body. It has not yet been corrected. There are over 200 instances of this, and most of them are written in the Daily Mail's voice, not in reader comments or quotes from other people's writings. — Newslinger talk 07:09, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

In an independent report by campaignlive.co.uk, the Daily Mail was ranked the second most untrustworthy newspaper in the UK behind The Sun. When asked "I trust what I see in it", 46% of readers said "yes" (against 39% for The Sun). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

As to upheld complainants, well lets look at this year (as this is then one that has supposedly seen a change), well they will not have released the figures yet, so how about last year? [[40]], 10 up held complaints, a five fold increase.Slatersteven (talk) 14:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"The DM has changed dramatically - it is not the same source we banned in 2017". There has been a change of editorship to Geordie Greig, but only for the last two months. Hardly enough time to properly judge if there has been any change. But are we seriously suggesting that all news previously published by the Daily Mail has been re-assessed by the new editor and taken down or amended if necessary? Martinevans123 (talk) 14:53, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Interesting. There may be grounds to lift the ban, but with a side note that consensus remains generally against including the DM articles when they predate the change of editor. At this point I’d prefer an unconditional lifting, but this is something to reflect on. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Slatersteven there were 10 upheld complaints for the group but only 3 for the Daily Mail and only 2 for accuracy for the Daily Mail for 1456 complaints in total = 0.13%. In 2015 there were 402 complaints for accuracy and 2 complaints upheld = 0.50%. This means that instead of being multiplied 5 fold as you suggest the percentage of upheld complaints was divided nearly four fold. --Dom from Paris (talk) 14:31, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

In 2015 there were 44 complainants against Associated (of which 19 were dismissed), in 2017 there were 73, of which 24 were not upheld. So almost double the complaints, and 5 times the number sanctioned (for comparison in 2016 it was 64 of which 20 were found to not be a breach).Slatersteven (talk) 14:47, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Slatersteven Are we talking about associated or Daily Mail? Because if we are treating all publications from one owner in the same basket please don't forget that The Sun and The Times are owned by the same group. This is not about Associated Press but the Daily Mail from what I can gather. What we are talking about is accuracy here and the Daily mail. I have checked and double checked the figures and I stand by what I said, 2 upheld complaints for each year 2015 and 2017 and a multiplication of 3.6 times the number of complaints made 402 to 1456. Try using this to check them and you will see what I mean. [41]. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

In 2016 there were also 2 upheld complaints for accuracy for a total of 1895 complaints sent in. Dom from Paris (talk) 15:35, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Err, I was not the one who used the Associated press as the example to start with...look at the opening salvo.Slatersteven (talk) 15:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Ohh and it was not 1895 complaints in 2016, it was 3140. In 2017 there were 4847 received, but they now only list findings by company.Slatersteven (talk) 15:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

(you need to filter for accuracy which is the subject of the ban) I know you chose associated press and that is why I replied because I am just trying to understand why you have chosen to lump them all together rather than just deal with the subject of this discussion which is the Daily Mail and accuracy. (we can also add the mail online I suppose but this changes very little in terms of percentages of complaints received upheld.). you have knowingly chosen to take the Associated Press rather than just the Mail. You might be interested to know that The Times had 4 complaints for accuracy upheld in 2017 for 385 complaints = 1.04% which is twice as many complaints or 8 times more in percentage of complaints compared to the DM. In 2015 the Times had 3 complaints upheld for accuracy for 159 complaints in total = 1.89% (the Sun from the same group in the same period only had 1 complaint upheld for 1618 in total = 0.06%, 31 times less in percentage terms than The Times.) Dom from Paris (talk) 16:09, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I did not choose AP "IPSOS, the media watchdog body, tracks complaints upheld against each publisher in each year. In 2015 only two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail," the nominator did, I just looked at the same set of statistics but for following years.Slatersteven (talk) 16:26, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Obviously numbers of complaints is a function of circulation (the more people read who read it, the more complaints are made, and often multiple complaints are tendered on the same issue). The real measure is the number of complaints upheld since these are the ones where actual wrongdoing has been found, which is not remarkably higher for Associated than for the publishers of news sources considered RS. Every paper has had instances where stories have been fabricated - even some of the ones considered highly reliable like the New York Times (see Jayson Blair) and the New Republic (see Stephen Glass). Anecdotal evidence cannot support a general finding. FOARP (talk) 16:03, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that a publication participates in the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) is in my opinion conclusive evidence of its reliablity. Of course IPSO could be better, but it meets the threshold that policy requires. TFD (talk) 19:35, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

Why is was RFC'd stories like this [[42]] (2014), why is has not changed [[43]], [[44]] (2017) and [[45]] (2018).Slatersteven (talk) 16:51, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

While one of your sources mentions false stories published by the Daily Mail, it also mentions The Sun, the Brighton local paper The Argus, the BBC, the The Telegraph, and the Express as having published fake news stories. The most egregious and damaging fake news story published by most mainstream publications in this century was about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We are all still paying for that one. Certainly more important than whether the Queen reprimanded the Mayor of London, which was the no. 1 fake news story of 2017, according to your source (not published by the Daily Mail btw). TFD (talk) 20:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

The point was made "give us evidence they make stuff up", As every teacher who has ever lived has had to say "I do not care that the other boys are doing" (which is not in fact true, I am not the one preventing them from being treated by the same set of standards). I take this as starting as I mean to continue, we should not use any of the red tops. But I am happy to set a precedent.Slatersteven (talk) 16:11, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but I am not following you. The Daily Mail and other papers have made things up. Are you saying you don't care that other papers make things up, just that the Daily Mail does so? Then why ask for examples of other papers that have made things up? TFD (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

No, and I did not ask for other examples of papers making things up. I am not the one using "whataboutsim".Slatersteven (talk) 17:52, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

#: Their long titles are annoying frame-busters. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 21:07, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment Frankly, Wikipedia is over-dependent on newsmedia in general; WP:NOTNEWS is more ignored than observed these days. With that in mind, I'd say we should be more restrictive about what newsmedia to allow as an RS, not less. Simonm223 (talk) 13:54, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Closure proposal

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.

---

• Procedural close. Not a neutrally-presented RfC. ——SerialNumber54129 13:19, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Serial numbers above. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 13:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with SerialNumber as well. The editor who opened the RfC stated "Worse is when editors colludes in advance and open voting after posting detailed but one sided arguments" and then proceeded to posted a long string of one-sided arguments apparently compiled from a number of editors. –dlthewave ☎ 13:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Tend to agree a non neutral wall of text, that poisons the well by (off the bat) questioning the motives of other eds.Slatersteven (talk) 13:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree. Biased RfC. Needs to be re-framed. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close- this RfC is an immense, partisan wall of text. I would suggest suggest waiting at least a few months to evaluate whether Geordie Greig's reforms have given the Daily Mail the status of a reliable source. Two months after his appointment is too soon to know whether this has had a lasting effect. Any future RfC would need to be presented neutrally, instead of poisoning the well right from the outset. Reyk _YO! 14:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Do not close - This is the section was intended as the section for arguments against, so I have separated out the closure arguments from the arguments against the proposal. It is simply an abuse of process to try to close this discussion at this point, rather than argue against the point being made. The proposal at the top of the discussion is clearly neutrally framed, it states only "Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC ?". Would it make any difference if, as in the case of the 2017 RfC, the proposer had simply posted their arguments directly under the proposal in the form of a "support" vote? Finally, as for it being a wall of text, this is because there are significant arguments in favour of removing the ban. FOARP (talk) 14:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Sorry but this was part of his pitch on the RFC, so yes it should have been in the vote section and not party of the RFC launch. Moreover it (essentially) questioned the motives of other eddds and thus poisoned the well before anyone had even responded. Nor is a wall of text needed, much of what he said could have been said on one sentence (not, in some cases, two paragraphs).Slatersteven (talk) 14:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

IN fact this derail is a good example of why it should not have been done.Slatersteven (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

What on earth is the actual, functional difference between an editor putting it in the first support vote of their own proposal, and an editor putting it into a "arguments in favour" section? These are literally the same things just given different names. This is an example of the kind of Wikilawyering that is doing this site to death. FOARP (talk) 14:41, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The problem is it is a huge wall of text that you have to read, aft er having been told this is a problem (see below). He says this givers one side an advantage, on he then takes advantage of.Slatersteven (talk)

You're objection here is literally that the arguments in favour of the proposal are so substantial that they take a long time to read? FOARP (talk) 15:14, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No it is (literally) that it contains too many (as it a lot) of words, an unessential and unneeded verbosity that conveys no real information that a one sentence comment could not have done (or to put it another way, I can make this reply last for ever and just say the same thing 15 different ways).Slatersteven (talk) 15:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

WP:TLDR is literally a bad argument, and you're literally making it. FOARP (talk) 20:25, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• As long as the "Arguments in favour" section is clearly separate from the opening RFC statement, I don't see a problem. It's only the statement of the RFC itself that needs to be neutral - obviously the arguments don't. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:45, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Except it followed the initial question with this "Worse is when editors colludes in advance and open voting after posting detailed but one sided arguments . This gives the opening side a framing / agenda setting advantage, which at worst is manipulative, and at best reduces the chance of arriving at a fair, evidence based consensus."Slatersteven (talk) 14:55, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Hasn't that been fixed now? As long as it's addressed quickly, I see no need for being excessively bureaucratic and forcing this one to close and then open a new one. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:01, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

In what way fixed, it still says it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:04, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It has now been fixed, by another ed.Slatersteven (talk) 15:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close per above - David Gerard (talk) 14:59, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Part of the issue may be the structure of this RFC, which puts the opening comments in favour immediately under the proposition (thus making it harder to tell one from the other), looking at the Sun RFC (for example) we have the survey first, not the comments.Slatersteven (talk) 15:03, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, god forbid that people read the reasons for the proposal before going straight into the voting section, which is anyway delayed to allow for deliberation and won't even open for 7 days. FOARP (talk) 15:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No they should read all the arguments for and against, but neither side should have been given an advantage (as the OP puts it) of going first.Slatersteven (talk) 15:15, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

To point out the obvious, in the 2017 RfC the proposer did exactly that, they just did it in the guise of a support vote, which as the proposer they were in the position to post straight away. FOARP (talk) 15:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

They voted with a one paragraph comment.Slatersteven (talk) 15:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

And this is better because......FOARP (talk) 15:37, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Well for a start it means you can get to the counter arguments quicker, and thus get a more balanced view. As this RFC originally said, going first is an advantage, if you then present a wall of text you increase that advantage (which it also said). If the OP thought that then doing it was clearly something they would not have considered unacceptable if done in reverse.Slatersteven (talk) 15:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

So if you're not allowed to go first, who goes first? Or are you saying it's OK if your side goes first? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:46, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I am not saying someone should not go first, but it should not be with a massive wall of text *much of which does not seem to be about the DM's reliability and some of it , irrelevant, soap boxing) that appears (at least on quick inspection) to be part of the RFC's opening statement. The whole point is the OP said we should not do what he then when ahead and did, the fact this has been removed now just (to my mind) emphasis the fact the RFC was meant to be biased (and was as much as it could be).Slatersteven (talk) 15:52, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, so what you want to do is censor what and how much the opposing side can say? Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

No I am saying that bating straight off with bad faith wall of bludgeoning text make the RFC poisoned from the off. I am saying that making a one paragraph post criticizing the source is not the same as a multi paragraph lecture that flies of at wild tangents that have nothing to do with the reliability of a source, but rather wider issues in both society and alleged bias among fellow eds. I did not raise the issue of the other RFC, I did not use it as an example of what should be done here (nor did I post the original point about the side that goes first getting an advantage).Slatersteven (talk) 19:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You do know that WP:TLDR is not actually a good argument, right? As for a "bludgeoning wall of text", I mean honestly, you position here is that it's OK for the proposer to make a vote including arguments right after the proposal - presumably of arbitrary length - but when using a process that delays voting it's not OK to put the arguments in a section two paragraphs below the proposal that is clearly marked "arguments". FOARP (talk) 20:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I was not the one who made a point about "posting detailed but one sided arguments" (not that the arguments are detailed, they are just verbose, a sizable chunk having nothing to do with the actual question raised).Slatersteven (talk) 20:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - Unacceptably-biased structure and wording. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2018 (UTC)
• Keep open, do not close The opening statement "Is it time to lift the targeted restrictions on using the Daily Mail as a source, thus overturning the Jan 2017 RfC ?" is not problematic. I may change "Is it time to lift" to something like "Should we lift", but I like how the arguments are presented in its own section as it enhances discussion. It's no different from other RfCs with separate "Survey" and "Discussion" sections, except that this time the position of the two sections are swapped. feminist (talk) 15:47, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

  Note that if this is to run as a proper RfC, the survey should start now. Either that or the RfC template should be removed. It's common to present your arguments in a separate discussion before starting an RfC, but why include the RfC template if you don't want to start it yet? feminist (talk) 19:03, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

  I have removed the RfC template for now. Feel free to restore it if any editor wants to start the survey. feminist (talk) 19:06, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close, encourage the proposer to start over with a neutrally-presented RfC. The basic plan should be to make the actual question completely neutral, then put your arguments in a "support as proposer" !vote. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:11, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Which would be different to putting the reasons for the proposal in a section clearly marked “Arguments” because.... Furthermore opening the voting straight away prevents deliberation from both sides before voting. FOARP (talk) 17:22, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

The fact that you are still asking this question after a dozen different people have explained what is wrong with what you are trying to do tells me that you have no business posting RfCs. WP:CIR. Furthermore I have not commented on "opening the voting straight away". Please stay on-topic. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:51, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You're asking that the proposer puts their arguments in a !vote, which logically requires that voting already be open right from the start. It is not clear - AT ALL - why this is different in any way - AT ALL - to putting the arguments in a section marked "arguments". It is not clear why one is neutral and the other not. FOARP (talk) 19:37, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - Certainly no opposition to having an RFC on reinstating Daily Mail as an RS, but this has to be rewritten to be suitably neutral first. As it is right now, it's not.--WaltCip (talk) 17:15, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

What exactly is it about the proposal that you believe is non-neutral? It’s a one-sentence statement at the top of the proposal which does not advocate either way. The supporting arguments follow two paragraphs down in a section cvlearly marked “arguments” FOARP (talk) 17:26, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You clearly do not understand what a neutral RfC question is, as evidenced by your believe that inserting a large chunk of non-neutral material at the to is somehow magically made OK if you add the word "arguments". You should voluntarily withdraw this RfC, post a new one in your sandbox, and invite comments on how to make it neutral. If you aren't willing to do that, an uninvolved editor should close this RfC, based upon the strong consensus for a procedural close. --Guy Macon (talk) 18:08, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

You are correct that I do not understand what the difference between stating the reasons for a proposal in a section called "arguments" and stating the reason for your proposal in a !vote posted right at the top by the proposer as was done in the 2017 RfC. FOARP (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close. RfCs are not supposed to be extended soapboxes with demands for a week's wait before anyone ventures an opinion. This proposal is essentially the proposer's first significant activity on-wiki since July, I question whether this is a good-faith exercise. I'd expect, at a minimum, an increasing number of discussions at this board with consensus for individual links to the DM as evidence that standards have increased (which is also the way sites get deprecated, after multiple consensus "unreliable" debates). Guy (Help!) 18:11, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

It's not a week's wait until expressing an opinion. It's a week's wait until voting. This procedure has been used elsewhere on Wiki. FOARP (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

There's no need to question other editors good faith! I am an editor with over 10 years experience. If you read the Sun RfC above , both pro & anti DM ban editors were requesting a dedicated RfC for the DM. I thought I'd step up as I was fresh from my wiki break, and have some experience with RfCs where a little innovation seems called for. See here for example, a RfC I opened in a quite similar manner - it was well attended and a very cordial discussion. In this case, my efforts don't seem to have been so well receivedand I apologise for being the source of objections thanks to the way I framed this. Still, no need to ABF! FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:49, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

• Would anyone mind if I refactor this discussion to have the survey on top? feminist (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Not me, whatever ever changes you think would help are most welcome. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I doubt it will change anything since this just seems to be an abuse of process designed to stifle debate, but you can give it a try. FOARP (talk) 19:32, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

This process has become a joke. The thread itself has been mangled unrecognisably overmynight, such that it is pointless. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 08:22, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Wow. Let's break it down:

1) Someone proposes a procedural close objecting to wording under the RfC proposal, the wording is then removed.

2) More editors propose a procedural close objecting to the formatting of the RfC, the formatting is then changed.

3) Editors then propose a procedural close on the basis that changes have been made.

The only consistent thing here is the demand that this discussion be closed before it even begins.

Can an Admin please come in and assess this closure discussion? FOARP (talk) 08:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The wording was removed after many eds had asked for a close.

As far as I can tell not votes for a close have been made after the reformatting.

There was no request to close this before the discussion had begun, the request to close it was made after at least two eds had responded. What eds have asked for this to be close because changes have been made?Slatersteven (talk) 10:36, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

The comment from User:Roxy the dog directly above mine, in a discussion about closing, states that the discussion is now pointless due to changes (i.e., it should be closed). This statement came after the reformatting and obviously in response to it. As for "before it even begins" this is a common turn of phrase or colloquialism in the English language - which I believe (correct me if I am wrong) is the correct language of proceedings for this particular forum - to indicate that something is being done very early in a process (example).

You know it might help if you actually stated a ground for closure at this particular point, or withdrew your original proposal in order to expedite proceedings. FOARP (talk) 11:07, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

It might help if you read my comment with the grounds for closure (translated helpfully by me here as - "fucked up proposal") in it. -Roxy, the dog. wooF 11:12, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Which ultimately adds up to asking that the discussion be closed because the issues that other editors objected to in their closure proposals were addressed. FOARP (talk) 11:18, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I may be wrong it it can just as easily be read that there is no point in restructuring the RFC as it is already FUBAR, not that is her grounds for closure, just that she no longer see's any point in trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair.13:01, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

You may well be wrong. They stated specifically that "The thread itself has been mangled unrecognisably overmynight", that is, the modifications made after posting to address the concerns raised by other editors are the cause of them supporting closing. FOARP (talk) 13:13, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes I know that, that is what I was referring to. And no it does not say "that is why they support the close", it is response to a suggestion to re-structure it. Maybe you need to start AGF?Slatersteven (talk) 13:20, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

They also stated that their was comment was "with the grounds for closure". Can we stop playing this silly game? All the things that were objected to above were changed within hours of the proposal being posted and yet no-one withdrew their closure-proposal, and now the latest grounds for closure are that changes were made. I really don't see how this closure can be justified. This is a clear abuse of process just directed to shutting down debate. FOARP (talk) 13:56, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Do not close I don't believe this is non-neutral as the mover of this motion asserts. To me it looks like the RFC proposer is just outlining the common pro and con arguments that can/will be made but has included spaces beneath each one for people to include their pro/con arguments if he has omitted them before the opening of the RFC !vote. I would support keeping this open and running the RFC as proposed because this will be a intense discussion and it seems only fair that everyone can view all arguments in summary form. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Procedural close - for the reasons I've already given. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:40, 5 December 2018 (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.

Comments

Ownership of the Daily Mail

• Re "...two complaints were upheld against Associated, the owners of the Daily Mail", The DM is owned by Daily Mail and General Trust. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:14, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"DMG Media, formerly Associated Newspapers, is a national newspaper and website publisher in the UK. It is a subsidiary of DMGT." FOARP (talk) 14:27, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Ah, in that case I suggest changing "Associated" to "DMG Media" above. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 14:30, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Overturning consensus is a "nuclear option"

• The nuclear option of blowing prior consensus-up seems extreme, when what it seems your arguments point to is refining the editing guidance. Because blowing the consensus up entirely is not going to lead to less arguments about this source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:10, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we agree that there should not be no guidance on the DM after this RfC closes. The DM will still be a tabloid newspaper and under similar guidance to other tabloid newspapers. It just won't be the subject of an unjustified and unhelpful automatically-enforced ban. Getting to that point requires overturning the previous consensus FOARP (talk) 16:17, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Who is we? At any rate, your (singular) desire for no guidance actually makes little sense, as a matter of practice. It actually seems anti-consensus, because your desire seems to want to return to the days of multiple fights over this source, and it doesn't change the earlier practice of regularly deprecating this source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

For certain highly restricted values of "we". Guy (Help!) 22:24, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Umm, I think you misread my comment. “We” means me and you and I was stating that I at least thought we were in agreement that there should be guidance. This proposal is simply that the blanket, automatic filtering that takes place now be ended. The DM will then just be treated like every other tabloid newspaper is at present. FOARP (talk) 17:44, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

"This proposal is simply that the blanket, automatic filtering that takes place now be ended." As written, this is not a proposal to simply remove the edit filter. The proposal is to overturn the entire 2017 RfC which would include the general prohibition on using it as a source. –dlthewave ☎ 18:31, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Well, it's probably best you not try to speak for me. You say it is a tabloid, what do you mean by that besides it being generally unreliable. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:55, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm not trying to speak for you, merely understand your position. Hence my stating "I think....". I don't think Tabloids are generally unreliable as I don't think the evidence exists to substantiate that (anecdotes do not count). I do think great care should be taken when using them as sources for BLP or controversial subjects and the guidance should reflect that. Automatic deletion of the kind practically mandated by the present ban is unhelpful, unwelcoming to new editors, unbalanced since of the UK papers it is only applied to the DM, and censorious. FOARP (talk) 08:51, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "...unbalanced since of the UK papers it is only applied to the DM", show me evidence that any other UK newspaper does what The Daily Mail does, which includes:

• Completely fabricating direct quotes
• Photoshopping news photographs
• Stealing work from lesser-known publications, changing a few things to make the story more salacious, and publishing the resulting copyright violation under its own byline.

That last one is, by itself, reason to never allow The Daily mail as a source. And despite me asking over a dozen "all UK papers do that!" Daily Mail fanboys for evidence that any other UK paper does that, they have never given me am example -- and neither will you (Please prove me wrong with a documented example).

This last one was documented at [ https://gizmodo.com/that-viral-story-about-a-japanese-man-crushed-to-death-1792986533 ] several other examples are documented at [ http://tktk.gawker.com/my-year-ripping-off-the-web-with-the-daily-mail-online-1689453286 ].

Key quotes:

"The Daily Mail seems to have taken a sad story of a man’s death in Japan and added a few lies to make it more sensational."

"The Daily Mail story doesn’t link out to Nikkan Spa, or acknowledge at all where its information came from. The average reader would assume that all the information presented in the Daily Mail story was collected by the Daily Mail alone. It appears that nothing in the Daily Mail’s version contains original reporting, aside from the sensationalist errors that it introduced.:

Despite me asking over a dozen "all UK papers do that!" Daily Mail fanboys for evidence that any other UK paper does that, they have never given me a single example. I also searched for one, but only found more examples of The Daily Mail doing it.

Even if The Daily Mail had no other problems as a source, this alone would prevent us from ever using it as a source. We don't link to any sources that we know have a high probability of being copyright violations. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:53, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Every major paper has had instances where stories have been fabricated (see Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass for examples in publications general considered reliable). Anecdotes cannot support a general finding. Only statistical evidence can do this, and the evidence form IPSOS is that the DM is not remarkable in terms of the complaints against it that are upheld. FOARP (talk) 16:06, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Evasion noted. You have, as expected, failed to provide any examples of any papers doing what I documented The Daily Mail as doing. The examples you gave were both of individual reporters plagiarizing and fabricating and being fired for it when the publications they worked for found out about it. The Daily Mail tells their reporters to plagiarize and fabricate. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:28, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy Macon you might try and avoid the ad hominem "Daily Mail fanboys" to try and discredit those who do not agree with you. I for one detest the Daily Mail but I do not agree with its ban for objective reasons and I am not sure that there are many who have commented that have expressed any support for the paper. It is similar to those that treated me as "a warmongering fascist" because I was an army officer I would reply that I was not one but I was willing to fight and die to defend their right to call me one. There is no objective reason to ban the DM even if I hate it so I defend the right to use it as a source. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:34, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

And just to be clear I am a remainer (I live and work in France) and the DM did me a lot of personal damage when they supported the Brexit. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

And that is why some of us said this RFC was broken, that horse has long since bolted.Slatersteven (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

I think we have to many "ye...but" votes. Can we please either vote yes or no? I would not object to another discussion about modifying the results of the RFC, but this is not it.Slatersteven (talk) 16:37, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

There was also the Nightstalker case involving The Times, which involved a reporter hacking into the emails of an anonymous blogger, allegedly with the sanction of his superior, and, infamously, The Mirror's fabrication of photos of British soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq. The Times is considered an RS, The Mirror is not considered generally unreliable. But all of these are still, only anecdotes, and not statistical evidence of the kind required to substantiate a finding of general unreliability - for that we have the IPSOS statistics of complaints upheld that do not show the DM to be remarkably worse than any other UK publication.

Finally, can you please lay off the "Daily Mail fanboys" talk? I personally do not like the DM. I think that the 2017 RfC was very poorly reasoned and politically motivated, and has resulted in harm to the Wiki project. FOARP (talk) 16:39, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Not all editors who disagree with the ban are daily mail fanboys, but all daily mail fanboys disagree with the ban. The way to tell them apart is that the first group posts thoughtful objections based on evidence and reason, while the second group just makes shit up and throws it against the wall hoping some of it will stick. Disagreeing with me is fine. Claiming that other papers do stuff like this[46][47] without providing any evidence is not. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:48, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Can we keep it polite please?Slatersteven (talk) 16:50, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Agree with Slatersteven. Swearing and insults are not the hallmark of informed debate. I've already provided an example of another UK newspaper fabricating pictures of British soldiers abusing detainees - however there is no consensus against use of the Daily Mirror, because to make a finding of general unreliability requires more than anecdotal evidence. FOARP (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Stick It Up Your Punter!: The Uncut Story of the Sun Newspaper mentions a number of similar episodes: the paper scooped its sompetitors with a report that the UK had successfully recaptured South Georgia Island, although it had not happened yet and Liverpool fans were falsely reported as urinating on people's lawns. A person held in a Greek prison wore a Mirror T-shirt during his imprisonment and thanked the Mirror because it had helped him get released. The Sun changed the story so that the man thanked the Sun and replaced the logo of the Mirror in a picture of the man wearing the T-shirt with their own. The owners of the Sun also own Sky, Fox, the Times and the Wall Street Journal. TFD (talk) 14:57, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

MSNBC, the New York Times, the Associated Press, and CBS all ran the fakenews story that Bernie Sanders' supporters had thrown chairs at the Nevada Democratic Convention, according to Snopes.[48] The reporter who fabricated the story was fired, but mainstream media continued to report the story as fact. The Washington Post promoted the fakenews story that a picture of Bernie Sanders was actually a picture of Bruce Rappaport. The New York Times Judith Miller pushed the fakenews story that Iraq had WMDs, helping to build the case for a war that would lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths and cost trillions of dollars. TFD (talk) 15:36, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Most of the "falsehoods" attributed to the DM concern matters that WP has no reason to cover anyway! If they dress up 'human interest' stories cloned from half-way across the globe - what bearing does that have on us? Most of the UK tabloids are crap, they trivialise and write to a 'soap opera' narrative, but is there any reason to believe that they are more factually wrong about topics that WP should actually be covering? The DM - and all the UK tabloids are likely to give partisan, trivialised, contentiously phrased accounts of many news stories - but is there any reason to believe that the core facts of their coverage are more likely to be false? The tabloids are all bullies - but clever ones, who know who is likely to be able to fight back and what is likely to cause them to get "egg on their face". They sometimes make up - or falsely present the stories of the weak and are pretty despicable, but no one has offered any evidence that this affects topics that WP should be covering. I broadly agree with FOARP and others - general guidelines about the use of "tabloids" - especially for BLPs, would be more useful than 'banning' individual ones on a - seemingly - arbitary basis. Pincrete (talk) 19:30, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Re: "Most of the 'falsehoods' attributed to the DM concern matters that WP has no reason to cover anyway", not true. For example, The Daily Mail fabricated a news report on the end of the Amanda Knox trial, publishing a report with the headline "Guilty: Amanda Knox looks stunned as appeal against murder conviction is rejected". The Daily Mail had two news reports prewritten -- one for each possible outcome -- and accidentally published the wrong one. They quickly replaced it with the other one. Now before anyone complains, making such a mistake wouldn't be objectionable if that's all The Daily Mail did.

Here is the problem (and despite me asking again and again nobody has provided any examples of any other tabloid doing this); the news report contained this gem:

"As Knox realised the enormity of what Judge Hellman was saying, she sank into her chair sobbing uncontrollably while her family and friends hugged each other in tears. A few feet away, Meredith’s mother, Arline, her sister Stephanie and brother Lyle, who had flown in especially for the verdict, remained expressionless, staring straight ahead, glancing over just once at the distraught Knox family. Prosecutors were delighted with the verdict and said that 'justice has been done' although they said 'on a human factor it was sad two young people would be spending years in jail'. Following the verdict, Knox and Sollecito were taken out of court escorted by prison guards and into a waiting van which took her back to her cell at Capanne jail near Perugia and him to Terni jail, 60 miles away. Both will be put on a suicide watch for the next few days as psychological assessments are made on each of them but this is usual practice for long-term prisoners."

If Knox had actually been found guilty, would anyone using the Daily Mail account as a source on Wikipedia have noticed that all those details and direct quotes were totally fabricated? You can repeat the "all tabloids are equally bad" claim all you want (it is, after all, one of The Daily Mail's talking point that they keep trotting out when criticized), but can you show me an example of. say, the Sun fabricating an entire story about a major news event like that? --Guy Macon (talk) 20:22, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

It should be noted that overturning a consensus, resulting from a parochial discussion that had not been advertised at the Central Discussion template, is certainly not "nuclear". Concerning former ArbCom member @Nuclear Warfare:, who may or may not be related to ArbCom member @Gorilla Warfare:, it does not appear to me necessary to engage in such hyperbole. Substantive comment from these two "Wiki-insiders" is welcome. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:34, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion about evidence needed to show a positive effect of the ban per WP:CREEP

Where's the evidence? You know, I think it might be helpful if those editors in favour of keeping the ban could present evidence of anything positive coming from it. It's been in place almost two years now. It's a big, big change to permanently ban an entire publication, published daily for 122 years. Where is the evidence that this has had a positive effect? Thus far the only person who did this did so in the discussion about the Sun, but what they said was simply that it made removing DM references easier - but the response to this was to ask whether they had been removing references that actually needed removing to improve Wiki, or just searching for DM references and taking them out because they were DM references (a behaviour that I and other editors have observed)? No answer was forthcoming. I suppose we could also include the assertion that having the ban prevents discussions about the Daily Mail taking place. Quite obviously this is not true. Even excluding the present discussion, the DM ban has instead led to a wave of subsequent ban proposals based on it, in each of which the topic of the Daily Mail comes up. Are there any actual positive effects that have come form this ban? If not, how does this ban pass WP:CREEP?

Hard to say, as it is not used anymore. So we cannot say what it should have been used for. But if we look at other sources that are not considered RS, and the number of fights that occur at pages like SPLC or Russian interference in the US elections over sourcing then it might well have had a positive effect in keeping down arguments about "well we say she did X, the DM said it and it is RS". Tellingly even many of the yes votes acknowledge it is no good for BLP's (and others yes votes have expressed other concerns, they are hardly ringing endorsements).Slatersteven (talk) 09:38, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Where's the evidence?

Where's the relevance of that question? Answer: nowhere. It's not anybody's responsibility to jump through your rhetorical hoops. --Calton | Talk 09:57, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes, god forbid that anyone should have to actually justify the banning of a newspaper and show why it has been worthwhile. It's not like we have a policy that says that instructions have to have a "real, positive effect" to be justifiable. The ban was justified by the effect it was supposed to have. There is no evidence, or at least non produced thus far, that it actually had any significant, positive, effect.

If the drastic step of banning a newspaper was justified per WP:CREEP then there would by now - nearly two years on - be plentiful evidence of the positive effect, since a drastic action can only be justified by a equivalently drastic gain. Again: Where's the evidence? FOARP (talk) 11:00, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Define "positive affect", it has after all be removed form a number of articles where its presence was felt to be detrimental, is that not positive.Slatersteven (talk) 13:00, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

And many others where its effect was negative (including articles that were then put up for AfD because e.g., one of the two supporting references was a DM reference). A positive effect would be one that made Wiki a better place. Simply saying "my positive effect is less DM references" assumes that "less DM references" is in and of itself a good, and not simply the effect of editors robotically removing DM references without even looking at the article or the reference - I've seen this myself when one (amongst 2-3) references supporting a particular statement of fact was removed after I re-edited an old sentence by an editor who said simply "rm non-RS". In what way is that time well spent? Yet the 2017 RfC explicitly encouraged editors to go and do this. FOARP (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Have they, give an example of one article where the effect was detrimental (not where you were required to find a better source, or alternative source (that was the explicit purposes of the RFC, to force people to use better sources)) one where a vital piece of information had to be removed.Slatersteven (talk) 13:20, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

You've got the burden of proof the wrong way round: The ban itself has to show a "real, positive effect" per policy. Lack of such an effect means it should be removed. There is no requirement that it have a negative effect to be removed - just that it should lack a positive effect and therefore be a useless ban, since useless bans are in and of themselves a negative.

However, strictly for the sake of argument, it has already been shown that it has a negative effect of exactly the kind you've asked about in the arguments above at point 4). It wouldn't matter if it hadn't had this effect though: the mere absence of a "real, positive effect" is sufficient. FOARP (talk) 13:31, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

How exactly would you gather evidence that the ban shows a "real, positive effect" without removing it and seeing what happens? The "real, positive effect" is that unreliable or copyright infringing information is not posted? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:36, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The supporters of the 2017 RfC believed that it would have a positive effect. That effect - whatever it was supposed to be - should be a "real, positive effect" per WP:CREEP, and specifically one that required a ban to achieve it and which outweighed the negative effect of what it did (i.e., closing off the entire corpus of a daily publication with 122 years of history). Are inaccuracy or copyvio problems less now? Are there fewer RfCs? Even RfCs in which the DM is discussed? Clearly not - there's three RfCs open on this page right now in which the DM ban is referenced.

So, again: Where's the evidence? FOARP (talk) 13:44, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Well the DM ones are yes, you have said it is used less. As to RFC's, why are they here?Slatersteven (talk) 13:47, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

They are here because the topic of the Daily Mail did not magically disappear as a result of an RfC. They are here because of the problems that the 2017 RfC caused. So again: Where's the evidence of a "real, positive effect"? Wiki policy says there should be one otherwise this is pure WP:CREEP. Since the ban was drastic and carried a significant negative effect as it involved cutting off a major body of work, the benefit should be significant and thus easy to show evidence of, but there is no such evidence. FOARP (talk) 13:54, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Ignoring "but we no longer use it as a source for contentious or dubious information" does not make it go away, what is the positive effect. These RFCs are here because some people will not drop the stick about this. This is exactly why the RFC was launched, and why it was put into effect. The amount of time wasted on opposing its use for every blt of tittle tattle and dishonesty some user tried to include (usually on a BLPs but not always). All we now have is the odd (say two or three a year) RFC here, rather then one or two a day on random talk pages.Slatersteven (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

If it is only 2-3 a year, then why are there three here right now? And as for BLP/controversial content, there was already guidance not to use tabloid papers - papers which are not subject to this ban - for BLP unless necessary. Simply stating "there are less references to the DM and that's my positive effect" just assumes that less references are a good in and of themselves, but since the removal of DM references is being done robotically and without thought, in relation to non-controversial/non-BLP subject matter, then how is this a benefit? FOARP (talk) 14:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

because this is one of the two or three? A misapplication of the RFC result is not a reason to overturn it, but to better enforce it. There may well have been guidance, it did not stop it being used (or the arguments over its use), this (apart form the odd RFC) has stopped it. And it is not a question of less sources, but less poor quality ones, anything that reduced the overlreliance on (what ever supporters seem to accept) are hardly top line sources is a net benefit.Slatersteven (talk) 14:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

This is one of the 2-3 on this page, because the 2017 RfC is being used as justification to impose the same ban on the Sun and other newspapers. The thought of reopening it probably wouldn't have even occurred to me and the other supporters of the proposal if it wasn't continually being used that way, since using it that way requires begs the question of whether it was justified in the first place.

As for the RfC being misapplied - this is happening so widely that editors like me who didn't give a monkey's about the DM ban and didn't even know that it had happened are finding out about it from editors doing drive-by deletions of DM references on uncontroversial subject matter for no apparent reason. FOARP (talk) 14:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

My question was this: How exactly would you gather evidence that the ban shows a "real, positive effect" without removing it and seeing what happens?. Is that sufficiently clear? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:35, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

It should be clear from evidence before/after the ban. Or we could remove the ban and see what happens - that is not a crazy suggestion since the situation pre-2017 was hardly intolerable, was it? FOARP (talk) 14:50, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Well may be it should. It seems odd to me that, whenever a ban like this is imposed, the exact metrics and criteria, that will be used to demonstrate that it has provided a "real benefit", are not also agreed at the exact same time. Similarly, for how long measures should be taken to ensure all the effect is captured. I imagine that in most cases a law of diminishing returns would be shown - a dramatic benefit at first which will gradually plateau off. But it may depend on the measures chosen. Martinevans123 (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

An impact assessment was suggested as part of the 2017 RfC. Unfortunately it only went as far as analysing the number of DM references at that point. There was no real suggestion as to what the ban was supposed to achieve, other than simply discouraging citing DM references and encouraging editors to go and remove them, this being assumed a good thing in and of itself. FOARP (talk) 16:40, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Obviously a major flaw. If this current RfC is going ahead, and if it succeeds, criteria for jugding it's "success" will need to be agreed, won't they? Martinevans123 (talk) 10:25, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

It would be most desirable to agree on measurable criteria for success, except it would be challenging to prove any future improvement in said criteria really resulted from lifting the ban. Now the Foundation have started using AI and big data methods to measure such things, it would indeed be possible to track even relatively subjective improvements like the expected decrease in partisanship , the increase in the deliberative evaluation of sources or coverage of woman's interest topics. (Btw, the Foundation are currently interested in hearing from editors on ideas for this sort of measurement of community health and are even giving out grants, anyone interested could participate here ) But it would be impossible to draw a clear causal link with lifting the ban and any improvement with such indicators. We'd not be able to disentangle from the various other influences, both deliberate and unintended, internal to Wikipedia and external. Even if we had a sizeable improvement on all indicators, tabloid hating elitists would scream 'correlation does not imply causality', and in this case they'd be right to do so. FeydHuxtable (talk) 14:19, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

Of course there is the problem of observation, if people know they are being watched it will affect how they behave. In essecne this experiment would need to be blind.Slatersteven (talk) 10:43, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Questions about standards of evidence and timing of a review

@David Gerard: @SemiHypercube: @GermanJoe: @Beyond My Ken: @Reyk: @Snowded: @Bodney: @Calton: @Davey2010: @Dweller: I hope you guys/girls don't mind me pinging you, please don't think it's badgering but you have all !voted with the same reason more or less "nothing has changed it's too early to judge". I am genuinely interested to know why you think nothing has changed, what are your criteria and how in 6 months or a year or 2 years or 10 years we are going to be able to judge if things have changed. What yardstick are we going to be able to use? What was the yardstick that was used in the first RFC to say it is generally unreliable and can we apply the same criteria to a new RFC? I understand that those supporting the ban (let's call a spade a spade) came in with maybe 10 or so exemples of cases where there were accuracy issues. This anecdotal evidence was the basis for the ban and not any objective figures or report. How are we supposed to judge if there has been a change if it is only on the basis of anecdotal evidence? Dom from Paris (talk) 13:32, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

As my words pretty clearly implied, presenting actual evidence would be a start. What do you have? For the rest, you appear to be wanting me to make your argument for you - David Gerard (talk) 13:49, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The IPSOS complaints upheld data and the IPSOS/MORI and BBC polling showing the DM to be unremarkable both in terms of complaints upheld against it and trust amongst the general public (it comes middle of the table overall and first amongst tabloid publications in terms of trust) are both discussed above. FOARP (talk) 14:06, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

David Gerard I have already made my argument. You may not have seen my comments above but I pointed out above the percentage of upheld complaints for accuracy has gone down between 2015 and 2017 from 0.50% to 0.13%. There were 2 upheld complaints in both years (in 2016 2 for 1895 complaints = 0.11%). So I suppose we could say the number of complaints for accuracy rose from 402 to 1895 in 2016 and then dropped to 1465 in 2017 but as the percentage is so very small is that really important. Up to the end of August 2018 there has been 1 upheld complaint. This is the only yardstick that I know of that doesn't rely on anecdotal evidence. I may not have the same strict criteria as others because 0.13% or even 0.5% seems pretty small to me but this seems to be pretty concrete evidence of an improvement if that is what is needed. I'm more interested in knowing what it would take for you to consider that there has been a change from "worse-than-useless" to reliable. I am presuming that your !vote was based on something more objective than dislike for the paper so you could objectively change your mind if the right evidence was produced, I just wondered if you could say what that evidence could be. Dom from Paris (talk) 16:33, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Hi guys, I hope you don't mind me breaking up the comments section into subject headings. I think this makes it easier to follow since there are different discussions happening on different parts of it, but if you want to revert or edit the headings that's fine. FOARP (talk) 14:03, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes I do, we do not have to keep on refactoring this RFC.Slatersteven (talk) 14:04, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

As I said, I have no objection to reverting or amending, I merely thought it might be helpful. FOARP (talk) 14:08, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

I am not saying that creating lots of sub sections is not helpful, refactoring the RFC every day after people of posted is just annoying. It makes following what is going on that much harder.Slatersteven (talk) 14:15, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

OK Steve, I'm not proposing doing anything further. FOARP (talk) 14:23, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

The sun has a larger circulation then the Daily Mail.Slatersteven (talk) 17:54, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Bludgeoning

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

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WP:BLUDGEON says "Bludgeoning the process is where someone attempts to force their point of view by the sheer volume of comments, such as contradicting every viewpoint that is different from their own."

FOARP (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Is, by my count, at 60 comments regarding The Daily Mail. (I am at 16, which is at least twice as many as were actually needed to answer questions, clarify factual issues, etc.) Many of FOARP's comments make the same few points over and over again.

Enough is enough. Anyone who is likely to be convinced by FOARP's arguments has already been convinced. I call for FOARP to take a voluntary time out, keeping in mind that the alternative is likely to be a trip to WP:ANI and a topic ban from discussing The Daily Mail for the next six months. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:34, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Seconded Walter Görlitz (talk) 22:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• Thirded, though I'd make it twelve and someone else has to move any RFC on the subject. I am particularly unimpressed with the repeated midstream shuffling around of the RFC arrangement - David Gerard (talk) 23:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Let's see whether he volunteers to stop before deciding whether to ask for a six month or 12 month topic ban. Such a topic ban would forbid any edits made to any daily mail related RfC, but a ban from moving any RfC would be a separate request, and likely unneeded. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:36, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose I dislike discussing users actions anywhere but their talk page or admin notice boards. Nor do I agree that warnings (however they are written) should be posted here.Slatersteven (talk) 15:36, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• 60 edits does seem a little excessive, but not sure it was neccessary to go straight to threatening a trip to ANI. Especially as their contributions are almost all concise, well argued points. And always playing the ball not the man. We could do with more of that round here. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:52, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Slatersteven and FeydHuxtable. Pincrete (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Support - There is nothing more that FOARP can say that hasn't already been said. Any further excessive commentary is definitively bludgeoning.--WaltCip (talk) 21:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Comment / Oppose -- Members of the press should note the Original Poster's vote: "Kill it with fire" and their own "bludgeoning" (Wikipedia:WikiSpeak). It should also be noted by the press that Guy is a quintessential en.wp insider, particularly concerned with advancing a POV, concerning the Daily Mail. Cf. extensive off-wiki criticism, at, for example, Wikipedia Sucks. — 🍣 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 22:12, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose Silencing others is rarely a great idea, and I have seen disputes where single posters get way more total edits than are present in this colloquy. We can certainly be civil, I trust. Collect (talk) 23:06, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose There is an unfortunate trend lately to try silence people that one doesn't agree with. That is not how consensus is done. As long as the editor is lucid and not rude I see no reason to silence them. It is remarkably common to see editors jumping in and commenting in reply to every person who votes the other way than them on a given issue. It is disingenuous to single out one particular editor for this. Morgan Leigh | Talk 02:41, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• No. I will not "voluntarily" do anything on the basis of this thread, and this thread asking that I should should therefore be closed.

60 edits, in an RfC with multiple different debates is not grounds for anything. It is worth noting that only 29 of my edits are in the survey section - a number comparable to the number of interventions by Guy Macon in the 2017 RfC in the same section. There was no attempt at procedurally closing the 2017 RfC before it even began, but I expect that if there had been he would have been just as active in that as I was in the procedural close discussion here. Guy is therefore accusing me of something which, judged by the same standard, he has also done. No evidence beyond the edit count is produced above, and this is insufficient since a long, multi-part discussion with many editors involved will necessarily involve a large number of comments without devolving into bludgeoning.

The refactoring of the RfC is discussed above. This was necessitated by the procedural close proposal and without it this discussion may not have gone ahead. However, my contribution to that was small - one edit to remove language that editors believed was derogatory with the consent of the poster, and one edit to divide the discussion section into topics.

Guy Macon's behaviour in this thread is a matter of record. It includes rude and aggressive language ("Kill it with fire", "DM fanboys [who] just [make] shit up") and bizarre accusations of having a secret agenda ("You aren't fooling anyone, you know. We have all figured out what you are on about and why"). If he wanted me to volunteer to do something he should have done so on my talk page. If he wants to take this to ANI he should do that directly and not try to engage in further attempts at intimidation and stifling debate in this RfC.

All that said, unless some new issue arises here I doubt I will be commenting much further on this RfC as the discussion was clearly winding down even as when I wrote my last comment on this page four days ago. FOARP (talk) 09:55, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose- The danger with repeating yourself over and over, and replying to everyone with the same points over and over and over isn't that you could be banned. It's that people will stop listening to you. Reyk _YO! 10:14, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose - I actually disagree with FOARP on this but his comments are all concise and well-argued. If this does make a trip to WP:ANI the OP may well see a WP:BOOMERANG headed their way. WCM_email 10:19, 17 December 2018 (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.

link to a dead girl's CV

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

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There's something a little creepy about linking to a self-published CV at the site portfoliobox.net for the recently deceased Grace Millane, particularly for a homicide case. Should this be removed? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:04, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

If she is recently deceased BLP applies. However depending on its use, it counts as a self published primary source, and can be used as they usually are. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:09, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Even if her sole claim to notability is as a homicide victim? Can't quite put my finger on a policy but it seems in bad taste to me. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:13, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

It appears to be only sourcing basic background (schooling) information which would normally be an acceptable use of a self published primary source. My only concern is that it's functionally difficult-to-impossible to confirm the document uploaded to portfoliobox was uploaded by the subject. So personally I would remove it as unreliable. You are arguing notability though, and there is a good argument there for BLP1E, but that's an argument for an AFD discussion. Only in death does duty end (talk) 01:15, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

It's definitely BLP1E, no question of notability due to extensive press coverage. Background biogrphical info is arguably not relevant to the event which is the subject of the article. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Can it be confirmed it really is hers?Slatersteven (talk) 12:22, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

No reason to think otherwise, it is consistent with published details about her. Perhaps the best argument for removal is that this is an article about a crime, not a biography. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 23:38, 12 December 2018 (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 on sciencebasedmedicine.org

The use of sciencebasedmedicine.org (hereafter referred to as SBM) as a source has been discussed in various contexts[49][50][51][52][53][54][55] but if/when it may be used as a source is still debated, a particular point of contention is whether SBM is a self published source. Note that under wikipedia policy self published sources (SPS) and reliable sources (RS) are not mutually exclusive, SPS may be considered reliable if published by an expert in the field being discussed, but regardless of expertise SPS may never be used as a source for statements about living persons (other than the author of the SPS), see WP:BLPSPS.

So the questions are: Is SBM reliable as a source? And are articles on SBM never, sometimes or always self published sources? Note that this RfC is NOT about whether to change any policies, only about when(if ever), under current policy, SBM can be used as a source. Tornado chaser (talk) 15:34, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Plese keep focused on content, unsupported personal criticisms will be replaced with (Personal attack removed). Tornado chaser (talk) 15:49, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

!Votes

• I do not think this can be answered in the abstract. They generally appear to be experts (Doctors of Medicine and have reputations in their fields), also the publication is edited by experts, and the site and each one involved in the publication is publically subject to libel laws and subject to reputational damage for being wrong, so assuming we use them for discussing ideas, even attributed (eg, 'this theory is unsupported in the literature' not 'Fred is a criminal'), than they can be RS, including under BLPSPS. (see, WP:FRINGE). Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:03, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, it's clearly a reliable source; and No, it's not a self-published source - it has an extremely well qualified editorial board and an established editorial policy for submissions. --tronvillain (talk) 16:11, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes and No per tronvillain. I couldn't have said it better. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 17:03, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes self-published source. Whether it is ever RS is context-dependent. The important thing is that Science-Based Medicine is a blog according to Science-Based Medicine. And I looked at the ten posts featured on their front page today and saw that 7 were by SBM's editors (Steven Novella: 3, Harriet Hall: 2, David Gorski: 2) so the existence of a "submission guidelines" page is irrelevant -- if most posts are by the editors, then "editorial control" is merely "self-control". Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:51, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes (RS) and No (SPS). Per WP:USEBYOTHERS: reliable sources often cite it when dealing with quackery (New York Times, WaPo, and NPR, and The New Yorker) - I would say this places it on par with sites like Snopes.com. Gorski's posts might be considered "self-published" in the narrowest and most legalistic sense of that term, but it clearly isn't a personal blog or vanity press. It does allow user submissions that it puts through an informal review process, so it might be worth considering the author of a specific post rather than treating everyone on the blog as reliable and notable. Nblund ^talk 18:34, 12 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes (RS) (depending on context) and Yes (SPS). SBM is published by experts and is generally a reliable source for medical and uncontroversial scientific facts, but it is a blog and even describes itself as such. Policy is quite clear: 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. And group blogs are still SPS, so it is pretty clear that (barring some sort of policy change that is beyond the scope of this RfC) SBM must not be used as a source BLP content (other than the SBM authors opinions on stuff, where appropriate).

SBM articles on controversial/political/legislative issues constitute opinion pieces and should be attributed. Tornado chaser (talk) 20:22, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes SPS. It is clearly a blog and says so itself. So it shouldn't be used for BLP ever. Whether it is a reliable source depends on exactly what it is being used to cite and each case should be considered on its merits, with the biases noted. Morgan Leigh | Talk 03:34, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Yes, it's a reliable source; and No, it's not a self-published source. I think that some here are under the mistaken impression that all blogs are self published sources, but in reality group blogs with editorial oversight do exist. Most blogs are self published but not all blogs are self published. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes and of course No why are we wasting our time on this? Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:06, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes, it's a well-known reliable source; and No, it's not a self-published source, no matter how much some interested parties would like to bend the meaning of the term to make it fit. --Calton | Talk 16:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes (generally) - a reliable source and particularly useful for WP:PARITY purposes; *No not self-published in the sense of WP:SPS. Alexbrn (talk) 00:39, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• SPS depends on whether editorial oversight extends to ALL posts including those by editors and regular contributors. SBM is not clear on this: while submissions by non-regulars are oversighted [56], it apparently says nothing about posts by occasional or regular contributers [57] and/or editors [58]. Posts that get no oversight are (duh) SPS by definition. Either way, Yes it's RS for expert opinion, as it always has been. --Middle 8 (t • c | privacy • acupuncture COI?) 21:49, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes SBM is a reliable source. No it is not a SPS. Each author has their own separate private blog where they self-publish, and the difference in tone is quite marked, the content shows clear evidence of editorial input consistent with the site's claims of editorial review. SBM fulfils an especially valuable role for Wikipedia in critiquing stuff that is so obviously bullshit that no reputable journal would bother with a rebuttal. It also has expert commentary on poorly conducted scientific papers that make it into the increasingly lax world of the academic medical press nowadays (thinking here of Exley's antivax bullshit, for example, where they note the fact that Exley's "research" is funded by rabid antivaxers, as acknowledged in the paper but not as a conflict of interest). Guy (Help!) 00:03, 18 December 2018 (UTC)
• Yes it's reliable, No it's not a SPS. Blogs /= SPS. Black Kite (talk) 00:05, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

So... each vote should be two votes? As in "Yes, it's a reliable source; and No, it's not a self-published source" or "Yes, it's a reliable source; and Yes, it's a self-published source"? --tronvillain (talk) 15:57, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Tronvillain: Yes, it's a little confusing, but I thought it would be more confusing to do 2 RfCs on SBM. Tornado chaser (talk) 16:00, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: What about "Fred is a proponent of pseudoscientific propaganda"? Also, what does being subject to libel laws and reputation damage have to do with this? Any random blogger is still subject to these things, it doesn't mean that the source isn't self published.

I also am wondering what FRINGE has to do with the usability of SBM as a source, given that the RfC that proposed allowing an exemption to BLPSPS in order to debunk FRINGE claims was so strongly opposed that it was withdrawn by the OP[59]. Tornado chaser (talk) 17:35, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

First and Third question: as I said, it is a matter of particularized consensus discussion at the article, context is key, and, yes, sometimes we do have to discuss fringe in our articles. Second question, as a matter of reality, it is just not the case that the anonymous, or low profile, or broke, hack on the internet is subject the same way, and that point was primarily addressing reliability. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:59, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: That makes more sense, but I think it is pretty clear that FRINGE does not justify any exceptions to BLPSPS. Tornado chaser (talk) 18:44, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

By that standard, it seems like Snopes.com and the SPLC would be prohibited in BLPs as well. Both are considered generally reliable and both are used frequently in BLPs. To my mind, the WP:SPS is just meant to prohibit sources where there is no meaningful independent fact-checking, and so no one could stop a rogue blogger from libeling at will. In practice, I don't think anyone intended to have a general prohibition on certain kinds of web design formats or organizational structures. Nblund ^talk 19:52, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Are you saying that snopes is an SPS? As for the SPLC, being an activist group, aren't their claims usually attributed rather than stated in wikipedia's voice? SBM is very different from snopes, and I don't usually deal with SPLC sources in the areas I tend to edit, but I don't see much similarity between SBM and the SPLC iether.

SBM appears to be a group blog, and an expert blog. However, policy is quite clear[60] that group and expert blogs are still blogs that may not be used in BLPs (unless as a source for the blog authors' opinion). Tornado chaser (talk) 20:09, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

No, I don't think Snopes or the SPLC are really self-published, but I'm not seeing how you're drawing a distinction: Snopes started as the project of two private individuals and it is not a subsidiary of some established media group. SBS has a "blog" format, but it's not a "blog" in the sense that a bunch of random people write whatever they want without being subjected to fact-checking.

The SPLC does usually get in-text attribution. I think in-text attribution might also be warranted for SBS as well. Nblund ^talk 21:05, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

How do you know that SBM posts are subject to fact checking? Even if SBM is a blog, it can still be used with in-text attribution as a source for the authors opinion, just not for facts about other people. Tornado chaser (talk) 21:12, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Is it your position the 'Fred is a proponent of pseudoscientific propaganda' is fine to say in Fred's article as long as it is in say the Kokomo Tribune? Up above, you ask about the statement, 'Fred is a proponent of pseudoscientific propaganda' which almost certainly is not a fact, it is an opinion. That is, 'Doctor Expert opines, Fred is a proponent of pseudoscientific propaganda'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:42, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

@Alanscottwalker: Theories such as creationism are called pseudoscience in WP's voice, for example in the lead of Stephen C. Meyer, and when I tried to argue that it is an opinion to call something propaganda, everyone else said that if RS call something propaganda it is fact not opinion and would be misleading NOT to state in WP's voice![61] Here are other example of calling something propaganda and claiming it as fact not opinion [62][63]. So I do think it is possible that someone will try to use SBM as a source for the claim, in WP voice, that someone is a propagandist or a pseudoscientist. Tornado chaser (talk) 02:18, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

That seems a different issue about how wide-spread in sources the sentiment, 'Fred is a proponent of pseudoscientific propaganda' is expressed. That is a different issue than looking at one source. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:19, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@Tornado Chaser - I think it's reasonable to assume given that they have an editorial board, an 'informal peer review process' and a good reputation for accuracy. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but I read WP:BLPSPS as suggesting that true self-published sources just plain shouldn't be cited in relation to a BLP. I would certainly see a problem if we were citing facebook posts for BLP claims, even if we attributed those claims in text. Here's where I stand:

• If SBM says "Dr. X is a quack", or "Dr. X is bilking consumers" that claim should have in-text attribution unless there are lots of additional sources saying the same thing.
• If multiple sources say "Dr. X says flu shots contain anti-freeze" and SBM says "Dr. X is wrong", that seems like it could be reasonable to cite without in-text attribution, especially if we can also cite additional sources that support this claim - because it isn't necessarily a claim about Dr. X and because SBM has a decent enough rep for fact-checking to make non-medical claims.

In practice, I think there are probably very few cases where SBM is the only source calling someone out for unscientific claims. The main advantage of using it is that it helps editors avoid WP:OR issues when they connect a specific claim (this homeopathic medicine cures athlete's foot) with WP:PRIMARY established research (homeopathy doesn't work). Nblund ^talk 22:26, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Given that policy specifically states that even expert blogs are not ok for BLPs, I have a hard time seeing how SBM being generally accurate makes it an ok source for BLPs, and I think just assuming editorial oversite is a bad idea, at least Gorski's posts are SPS. As I understand it, BLPSPS distinguishes sources that are reliable for everything but BLPs and sources that are reliable for everything period. facebook is reliable for nothing, so that is not an SPS issue, it's just not RS at all.

I have encountered cases were it is hard to find any sources besides SBM calling someone out for unscientific claims, in these cases I believe including the content at all is UNDUE, but others would insist on including the content so we can expose and debunk pseudoscientists, to me this feels like a bit of a RIGHTGREATWRONGS mentality. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:48, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

@Calton: Please don't imply that anyone who thinks this is an SPS is acting in bad faith. Tornado chaser (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

I'm astonished that you would think this, given that pretty close to 100% of your edits are fringe advocacy. Guy (Help!) 23:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC) This was originally a response to Morgan Leigh's !vote, I moved it into the discussion section. Tornado chaser (talk) 03:24, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Please avoid personal attacks JzG. Morgan Leigh | Talk 05:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

it is not a personal attack to make an accurate assessment of an editors editing pattern where it is relevant. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:53, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

So does anybody know whether editorial oversight extends to regular contributers and editors? (cf. !vote here) --Middle 8 (t • c | privacy • acupuncture COI?) 21:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Related: is it MEDRS? WP:MEDRS says nothing about expert blogs &c., but being a guideline is a bit flexible. So I'd say it could be MEDRS for expert opinion, and moreso if there's editorial oversight, though obviously it's not as good as those with formal peer review (WP:MEDASSESS). (As for what kind of opinion it's MEDRS, WP:PARITY applies.) --Middle 8 (t • c | privacy • acupuncture COI?) 21:59, 17 December 2018 (UTC) | edited 22:05, 17 December 2018 (UTC); 23:20, 17 December 2018 (UTC))

@ Guy Marked differences in tone between SBM and authors' own blogs could as easily be "self-control" (cf. User:Peter Gulutzan's !vote). It shouldn't be that hard to determine which posts at SBM get editorial oversight (not counting from the poster) and which, if any, don't. @MastCell:? (edot:oops add signature) --Middle 8 (t • c | privacy • acupuncture COI?) 01:58, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

RFC: National Review

Do you think that National Review is a reliable source? It's being used as a source on the article for Josh Hawley 's place of birth, the source claims that he was born in Springdale, AR but I have some other more official sources which say he is from and a native of Lexington, MO. Here is a link to the source used: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/05/14/josh-hawley-senate-race-worthy-candidate-missouri/ . And here are the links to my sources which say that he's from Lexington, MO: http://ago.mo.gov/about-us/about-ag-hawley (this is an official .gov site), https://joshhawley.com/about/ (his official site). I participated in a discussion about it on the talk page there prior to this RFC but I'm being overruled, but I disagree with them so theirs no consensus.

So I would like some comments and feedback about National Review's reliability. 2001:5B0:4BD3:43F8:A40D:8771:7EEF:846F (talk) 21:31, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Two separate issues. Being a native of a location is not synonymous with birth location, nor is being raised in a specific location. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:34, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

The dictionary says otherwise: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/native 2001:5B0:4BD3:43F8:A40D:8771:7EEF:846F (talk) 21:45, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Sure, but not how it's used in this case. So, I'd say we have no reason to doubt the facts of the National Review story, the work of Miller, or the fact checkers at the article. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:55, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Theirs no reason to doubt the gov source, I'd rather go with an official source than the latter. 2001:5B0:4BD3:43F8:A40D:8771:7EEF:846F (talk) 22:33, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

This discussion is still open for comments if anybody else would like to comment, in general is National Review reliable? 2001:5B0:4BD3:43F8:A40D:8771:7EEF:846F (talk) 22:39, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

In general I think the National Review is not a great source - they engage in some motivated reasoning on some issues - but they are probably better than Hawley's campaign or .gov website - which have no real editorial oversight at all. Candidates have been known to fudge a bit around these issues. The Springfield News Leader also says that he was born in Arkansas. I would lean toward leaving it out unless there's some clarity. Otherwise, I would err in favor of the National Review. Nblund ^talk 23:31, 12 December 2018 (UTC)

Most of the content in the NR is editorials, which are usually not reliable sources wherever they are published. I see in this case the author is listed as the "national correspondent," so it is presented as a news story. I assume in this case the writer, John J. Miller, has sufficient credibility that we can rely on him to provide accurate biographical information. When there are conflicts between claims in reliable sources, it requires a little detective work to determine which claim is accurate - see what other sources say, maybe some address the issue of different birthplaces mentioned, maybe he was born in one place and grew up in another. TFD (talk) 17:21, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• Articles in National Review are reliable. Perhaps in this in case the birthplace was conflated with the hometown. Or perhaps this was a mistake. Even the most reliable sources make mistakes. But in general National Review is an edited, reliable publication.E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:08, 16 December 2018 (UTC)
• There is a need to distinguish between the reliability of the print magazine and National Review Online. Articles from the print magazine would be generally reliable, with opinion pieces usable as WP:RSOPINION. The National Review website is run separately and has much less editorial oversight than the magazine. Check the author of the article: if the article was written by a non-staff contributor, it would likely be unreliable, similar to an article written by a Forbes.com contributor. The article linked by OP was originally published in the magazine, so in this case the article would be reliable. feminist (talk) 10:46, 17 December 2018 (UTC)
• The National Review is reliable (with the usual treatment of opinion pieces). The online-only content (and note that much of the online content does end up in print) is probably more of a WP:NEWSBLOG - which are usable - but of lesser quality. Sources do make mistakes - true of event the best of sources. Icewhiz (talk) 10:51, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Independent Journal Review

Regarding this addition at Qanta A. Ahmed, I looked in the archives here for information on Independent Journal Review, and found a couple of discussions, from February 2017 and again in May–June 2018, that seemed to treat the site as a straight news source. However, according to a Business Insider profile of the company, the site has both a news division with (some) editorial oversight, and a blogging division, labeled "Community", with almost 2,000 active "members" churning out clickbait for "the redneck army", according to BI. So in evaluating this source for reliability, it would seem to be important to know which of these two sides of the website any specific piece comes from. The exact piece in question was one of the clickbaity ones (The site lets you add the author as a "friend" and view their "votes" and "badges"), which I judged as essentially a self-published source and therefore unusable for biographical content. Any thoughts? —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The author appears to have been staff - authoring dozens if not hundreds of pieces until 6 months ago. She is presently employed as a staff writer in Newsweek.[64][65] It does not appear this was part of the "blogging part" of IJR - nor is it marked as such. Icewhiz (talk) 09:45, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Apparently the "members" are not all contributors, so disregard that. However, the articles from their "news" side, like this one, are labeled "News" at the top, unlike the one in question. It's very odd. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 09:55, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The "News" tag seems to be mainly place on items that they reprint from the Reuters news wire. There's little reason to think this item by Fink did undergo IJR's usual editorial controls. In this case - this is rather straight up reporting of a an expert - Ahmed - who has been summoned as an expert to Congressional hearings on the issue (e.g. [66]). Icewhiz (talk) 14:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Good for her. That's not relevant to the reliability of this source, however. The fact that IJR's "News" is almost entirely Reuters articles doesn't exactly bode well for the state of their independent journalism. There are a few non-Reuters news pieces, such as here (republished from here) and here, for instance. But William Steakin seems to be the only person currently writing "news" at IJR. Since the Fink piece was published, they seem to have shaken things up a bit. The rest of their site consists of blog posts labeled "IJR red" and "IJR blue" – tailor-made to appeal to right- and left-wingers, I guess. Meanwhile, their "Team" and "About" pages seem to have vanished into the ether. If they had any editorial oversight at all, I'm not seeing any sign of it now. —Sangdeboeuf (talk) 02:52, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Removing profiles of journalists who left the NEWSORG (and work for a competitor) is rather routine. Reprinting news wire stories is also highly routine for much of the news content of many outlets - even WaPo and NYT reprint quite a few wire stories. Tagging wire stories differently from self-generated stories - is rather routine as well. So far - you've got absolutely nothing here beyond an IDONTLIKE of the content they chose to report. Icewhiz (talk) 06:50, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Art of Manliness

Hi folks, is a reference from Review a reliable source. Thanks. scope_creep^Talk 14:29, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

no its just another blog.Slatersteven (talk) 14:31, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Thats what I thought. I just had to hear it from the horses mouth. scope_creep^Talk 14:33, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, per the about page it is a blog. Galobtter (pingó mió) 14:43, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Not a RS It is a blog for essays on a particular topic. Given the puffery that the authors offer on the about page, it is not trying for a NPOV take. Chris vLS (talk) 23:42, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Amira Hass writing in Ha'aretz used in Halamish

This article by Amira Hass is used in Halamish for the statement that The Israeli Army issued an order in 1978 to seize privately owned Palestinian land from the villages of Deir Nidham, Nabi Salih, and Umm Safa and turned over 686 dunams to the newly established settlement. The article says

The settlement of Halamish was built in 1977-78 on an abandoned Jordanian base, on the road that connects Bir Zeit to other villages west of Ramallah. In 1978, the army issued an order to seize private land belonging to the villages of Deir Nidham, Al-Nabi Saleh and Umm Safa, and transferred 686 dunams (170 acres) to the new settlement.

A user has argued that because this is filed as an opinion piece that it is not a reliable source. Is Amira Hass a reliable source for that statement? nableezy - 19:56, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

The peice is clearly marked as an opinion piece - it is not an article.Icewhiz (talk) 20:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

• It is reliable. Opinions should be cited as opinions, whether or not they appear in an article labeled as an opinion piece. However, whether there was such an order issued in 1978 is not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact. For matters of fact we should consider the expertise of the writer. Since Amira Hass has hardly any equal in her deep knowledge of matters like this, statements of fact appearing in her article are reliable. Zero^talk 21:04, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

No, she is not a reliable source because she is not an expert on the subject. In any case, it makes no sense to use newspapers as sources for historical events. The role of newspapers is to report what happened yesterday, not what happened forty years ago. Zero0000, please see WP:NEWSORG. TFD (talk) 21:08, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Which subject is she not an expert in? She has several published works on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has received a number of awards for her reporting on the subject. See her profile as a visiting faculty member at NYU here. nableezy - 21:23, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Yes clearly seems to be reliable, her credentials appear impressive. ~ BOD ~ ^TALK 21:50, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, as corroboration for Hass, Peace Now maintains a list of military orders for seizing land for the establishment of settlements here. It lists, in 1978, military order ת/28/78 to seize 315.3 dunams of land for Halamish. nableezy - 21:32, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

Also, OCHA reports that in 1978 military order 28/78 was issued for some 600 dunums of privately owned land next to that camp were requisitioned for “military needs” and allocated to the settlement. nableezy - 21:35, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

If you have a bona fida source, you should not be advocating the use of an opinion piece by a far-left activist / journalist.Icewhiz (talk) 05:01, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

To use a favored quote of yours, WP:BLP please. nableezy - 10:04, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

But Hass provides further detail, naming the specific villages and the exact amount of dunams given to the settlement. Which is why Id like to continue using it. So, asking for more outside opinions on this, is she a reliable source for this material? nableezy - 10:09, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

• Not reliable This is an opinion piece. Facts need solid sources, not assertions in opinion columns.E.M.Gregory (talk) 17:28, 14 December 2018 (UTC)
• A source shouldn't be automatically thrown out just because it's an opinion piece. If the writer is clearly knowledgeable, as this one seems to be, and if the publication has a reputation for fact checking and editorial independence, we can accept it. I'm not saying we should in this case (I'm making more of a general point about principle), but we can't throw it out just because it's an opinion piece. (By the same token, you'd hope that the information would be verifiable some other, non-contentious way...maybe in one of her books?) Drmies (talk) 17:34, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Reliable for her opinion, not as a statement of fact. So this needs attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 17:50, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Slatersteven is right... an opinion piece can be reliable as a primary source for an attributed statement as to the author’s opinion, but it is not reliable as a secondary source for an unattributed statement of fact. Blueboar (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

What if the author is an expert on the topic? I understand opinions are opinions, but as Zero wrote above, this isnt an opinion. This is a question of whether or not an order was issued. Where she expresses an opinion of course that should be attributed, but this is not an opinion. nableezy - 19:18, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Newspaper opinion pieces aren't vetted and edited to the same degree aa an article. In fact, they often are not checked at all (beyond seeing they aren't advocating something illegal or grossly defamatory - though Haaretz did let Hass publish a piece advocating stone throwing that had quite a bit of blowback and calls for prosecution - [67]). Some of these opinion columns are written off the top of the author's head - with various figures and facts relying on the author's recollection. An expert might be get it right most of the time - but their error rate in an oped would still be far greater than in a non-opinion vetted publishing context (newspaper article, journal, book by good publisher).Icewhiz (talk) 20:55, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

But WP:RS says: When taking information from opinion content, the identity of the author may help determine reliability. The opinions of specialists and recognized experts are more likely to be reliable and to reflect a significant viewpoint. If Hass is an expert on this topic then for what she says is a fact, that there was this army order in 1974 and it had this effect, would be fine to include as fact, wouldnt it? I dont see how its relevant that she has opinions unpopular in Israel, what I am asking is what she reports as fact is acceptable to use as fact. nableezy - 22:02, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

nableezly, she is not an expert in history. She does not have any relevant academic degrees or publications. That does not mean that she is not an impressive journalist or that the books she has written are not reliable sources. It merely means that no special exception should be made for her columns. Note that all her awards were for journalists, except one for human rights, while none were for history. What's the problem anyway? If her facts are right, then source them to a history book. Who uses current newspapers as a source for history anyway? TFD (talk) 04:15, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

She is indeed no expert in history. Her main expertise is reporting the Palestinian perspective (and she has lived in a Palestinian city for many years) - as well as covering various activists and organizations. She might be great at evaluating what the man on the Ramallah street thinks, but she does not really have access to other areas.Icewhiz (talk) 05:51, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: The problem is finding the details that she reports on that military order in English is not all that easy. I can substantiate through other sources that such an order was issued and that the settlement in question was given that land, Ive offered them above, but I so far cannot find the detail that she provides on which villages the land was confiscated from. She is an expert on the Israeli occupation, and I think whether or not she is reliable for what a specific Israeli military order issued in those territories says falls under that expertise. nableezy - 07:09, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

No, she is not an "expert on Israeli occupation". She is perhaps an expert field reporter (and an opinion columnist) - presently in Ramallah, previously in Romania.Icewhiz (talk) 09:02, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

Even that incredibly inaccurate profile of her would accept that she is reliable for the contents of an Israeli military order. nableezy - 15:40, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

No, she is perhaps reliable for feelings and opinions in the Palestinian street. She has no access to current military orders (she might be able to reflect what Palestinians think of them), and orders from the 70s are well prior to her tenure as a field reporter. Opeds are opinions - usually unchecked or lightly checked.Icewhiz (talk) 16:41, 15 December 2018 (UTC)

@TFD:, newspapers are good sources for historical events, what makes you think different? After all, 40 years ago, it was also yesterday's news. Some newspapers also have a looking back column, such as "Forty years ago today"...--Auric talk 13:51, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

If you were an historian writing about the collapse of Communism in 1989 (about 30 years ago), you would find contemporaneous newspapers helpful, but would rely on many other sources as well. You also would find that a lot of news reporting at the time was wrong, even though it was the best information available at the time. For example, Ceausescu did not kill 100,000 demonstrators. Or take the case of whether Trump colluded with Russia. An historian writing 40 years from now will presumably have access to evidence not currently available and write a book that will be a better source than current news reports. TFD (talk) 18:13, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

I will note that Hass had lost a defamation case in court for reporting which was directly contradicted by video evidence of the report regarding Israeli settlers. Beyond bias, this definitely raises reliability questions (beyond this being merely an opinion to begin with).

• Not reliable as she not expert on the topic of land ownership --Shrike (talk) 20:03, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

References

• Go to college before you begin to propose that either an opinion or an un-reviewed non-scholar's piece is a reliable source on such a topic. And learn to distinguish news reports from secondary sources: encyclopedias rely on books by historians, not on news reports. Nyttend (talk) 22:43, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Frontiers journal article

So I have this publication lined up as a potential source for User:Jo-Jo Eumerus/African humid period, specifically for claims that humans may have been (part of) the cause for the end of that wet period. From what I know Frontiers is considered to be a somewhat dodgy publication but this article is sparsely cited among better sources (one of which comes to the opposite conclusion). So, would it be considered a reliable source? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:26, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Never use anything from Frontiers. If something's truly accepted knowledge, it will be easy to find in a reputable source. See also WP:CRAPWATCH. Alexbrn (talk) 20:29, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

Neil Degrasse Tyson

There is an ongoing discussion that may be of interest to the members of this board at [[68]]. Of particular interest to this board is if BuzzfeedNews is in general reliable, and in particular reliable for allegations of wrongdoing on a BLP ResultingConstant (talk) 18:11, 17 December 2018 (UTC)

Sources for mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht

An RS-related discussion is taking place at MILHIST regarding mentions of individuals in the Wehrmachtbericht WWII-era German propaganda broadcast. A recent RfC determined that being mentioned in the Wehrmachtbericht may only be described as an honor "when a reliable source that focuses on the mentioned person or unit specifically states that the mention was an honour", but additional work is needed to decide which of the existing sources are actually reliable for this purpose. –dlthewave ☎ 02:59, 18 December 2018 (UTC)