Talk:Sticks & Stones (2019 film)

FT as RS for RT score

Moved to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § Rotten Tomatoes audience score

 – User generated scores are not reliable even if a secondary source reiterates it. —Srid^🍁 15:24, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

This edit[1] should be reverted, as its sole justification is that this FT article[2] cannot be used, yet I'd argue that even though it is an opinion piece, the cited figure of RT audience score of 99% can be used as a statement of fact. Now I could be wrong, so I have asked other editors at WP:RSN. —Srid^🍁 17:16, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

@Aquillion: - Here's another source[3], I quote: "viewers gave it a 99% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. ". This is not an opinion piece. - —Srid^🍁 17:50, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Article title

Hi. I noticed that some comedy specials tend to have "Comedian Name:" in front of the title, while this is being used by Netflix and databases such as imdb.com or rottentomatoes.com to identify the comedian's name in the title for all comedy specials categorically. Other sources however, use the title without the comedians' name attached in front of it.

• https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/59ngpb/you-can-definitely-skip-dave-chappelles-new-netflix-special-sticks-and-stones
  • Quote: "Dave Chappelle made a return to Netflix Monday with a new stand-up special, Sticks & Stones."

• https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/08/dave-chappelle-doubles-down-sticks-and-stones/596947/
  • Quote: "Early into Sticks and Stones, Dave Chappelle’s newest Netflix stand-up special,..."

• https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/chart-beat/8531968/dave-chappelle-first-billboard-chart-appearance-sticks-and-stones
  • "The soundtrack recording of his Netflix stand-up special Sticks & Stones debuts at No. 4..."

I believe there is no rationale for Wikipedia to follow this article title convention since it is not used by the majority of sources.--Concus Cretus (talk) 00:54, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

Audience response

We cannot cite Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB user scores directly; they're WP:USERGENERATED and subject to manipulation. And the secondary cites in the proposed section on them are all unusable - Newsweek, today, isn't an WP:RS due to its extensive decline. The other sources in that paragraph are all non-WP:RS, opinion pieces, or both. (Except Vox, which doesn't mention this film and is being used for WP:SYNTHESIS.) --Aquillion (talk) 23:58, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Since someone has objected, I'll go into more detail. Note that these were only added last September (with no discussion or consensus), so per WP:ONUS consensus has to be reached to keep it. Here's the problems:

• First, we absolutely cannot cite Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB user scores directly, per the above; they're WP:USERGENERATED. Rotten Tomatoes user scores are actually mentioned as being forbidden in the policy by name. They're easily-manipulated and mean nothing.
• Mitchell Blue is cited via Medium, which is a self-published source. That cannot be used.
• The other sources include The American Spectator, Blaze Media, Louder with Crowder, The Daily Wire (cited for an extensive block of text), Twitter (unusuable as a WP:SPS), RedState, the Media Research Center, and Twitchy. All of these are being cited for WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims about professional reviewers, based on essentially nonexistent evidence. These sources all share common features - they're not WP:RSes, they're WP:BIASed, and they're all biased in the same direction, in a way that gives them a political affiliation with Chappelle. None of this bias is disclosed when citing them.

There are one or two sources in there that are usable. But they're not enough to support a massive section like this, and we are, in fact, already covering positive receptions to him from higher-profile professional critics further up. What we can't do is string together a bunch of opinions from non-WP:RS WP:BIASED sources without disclosing their bias and then use that to WP:SYNTH up an implication that there's some big gap between critical and fan reception. If you want to cite the fact that some American conservatives supported Chappelle, it would be best to find a secondary source, but we could perhaps support a few sentences saying so specifically. The collective story of these sources, though, is "some American conservatives rallied to Chappelle", not "Rotten Tomato scores revealed a sinister conspiracy among reviewers." --Aquillion (talk) 19:39, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Everything mentioned above dismissing various user reviews could be applied to critical reviews as well, other than their axiomatic prohibition on Wikipedia, which is actually a great argument in favor of removing their prohibition. Also, Google Reviews lists a user rating of 4.7/5.0 stars (247 user account ratings) with 96% of Google users "liking" Sticks and Stones, Netflix themselves listed the special as the "most popular" standup special on its site for 2019, and Amazon lists the audio CD at 4.4/5.0 stars (18 user reviews). There 100% is a consensus among the common user (if not outright universal, uniform agreement) [sources available upon request]; the user reviews have 100% reached a nearly-perfectly-uniform consensus by every review source the world over. To not even mention this fact in an article over-flowing with critical review which is both mirror opposite and perfectly contradictory to popular opinion is doing a tremendous disservice to the common reader of the article, who would thus certainly be totally mis-informed about the contemporaneous, consensus, popular opinion. I'm loath to think what a future visitor to the page 50 years from now who wants to get an idea of Dave's popularity might think if they read this article, only to find it contained absolutely nothing about the universally polar opposite critical and user reviews, especially now that the difference has become a bit of meme unto itself; a topic unto itself for critical review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Msennello (talk • contribs) 13:18, 26 March 2020 (UTC)

I can understand mentioning positive audience scores if they have been noted by multiple, independent reliable sources, but as Aquillion stated, audience scores are easily subject to manipulation. To reiterate: unless a positive audience score has been noted by multiple, independent reliable sources, it shouldn't be mentioned on the article. That goes for Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb, Google Reviews, Amazon, or any other aggregator of audience reviews. WP:USERGENERATED makes it pretty clear that audience scores on their own aren't considered acceptable. —Matthew - (talk) 21:48, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

[4] User voted web polls are junk and I generally object to them being included, and if this was a film I'd point to CinemaScore PostTrak and even RelishMix, and if it was a regular tv show I'd say look at the ratings, but unfortunately we dont seem to have Netflix or Neilsen ratings for this comedy special. In this specific case I thought there would be adequate third party reporting to briefly mention the divergence between critics and audiences, and make it one of the rare exceptions. Specifically the early very low Rotten Tomatoes critic scores were met with very high rotten tomatoes audience scores. It isn't about mentioning the audience scores, it is about mentioning combination of an initially very low Rotten Tomatoes score and the reaction that. I'd trim back heavily and include less than half of what was there but I do think the bones of it could be salvaged, and the divergence between audience and critic scores acknowledged.

Newsweek establishes that the Rotten Tomatoes (early) score was zero, but that IMDB scores were high (and I'm not saying IMDB is okay, I'm saying it okay that we repeat what Newsweek reported). Washington Standard said "a wide ratings gap on Rotten Tomatoes between the critics, mostly negative, and the audience, mostly positive", and maybe the Washington Standard isn't a great source but using it only to indicate that the divergence did get coverage seems okay. (Vox reference is irrelevant. WP:COATRACK.) The thepostmillennial.com reference seems adequate but only as another example that the divergence was covered by multiple sources. Same goes for Spectator.org but I'm not suggesting we use these sources for anything other than confirmation that there was coverage.

Maybe you could change somewhere else in the article to mention that Rotten Tomatoes initially gave it 0% and there was a reaction, but restoring a very short Audience response section seems easiest. So I give Weak Support to including a very small amount of what was removed, and restoring only a very limited amount of Audience response.[5]. I do think the people who have added all this in WP:GOODFAITH need help cleaning it up and bringing it to a higher standard, but there are rare exceptions that allow the Audiences scores to be mentioned, and I think this might be one of them. -- 109.76.217.83 (talk) 04:38, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I would nearly say that the Newsweek article and CNBC article [6] previously mentioned at the top of this page (but not used on the main article) are two reliable sources and enough on their own. But again to acknowledge that there was a divergence. -- 109.76.217.83 (talk) 04:44, 17 April 2020 (UTC)