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Is Peakbagger.com a reliable source?

Is Peakbagger.com a reliable source?

1. Source: Peakbagger.com (description page here, terms of service here)
2. Article: Crypt Peak (as a test-case, and maybe 5,104 other EN Wikipedia articles)
3. Content: Primarily the prominence and elevation of various mountain peaks, also appears to be relied on in some articles to substantiate a WP:GNG pass.

FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Background (Peakbagger.com)

Peakbagger.com is used on a large number of articles regarding various peaks, primarily to substantiate the height of them above sea level and their prominence relative to the surrounding terrain, but also in at least some cases it appears to be only source that actually talks about the feature specifically (other sources being about the climate or geology of the area in which the peak is, but not about the peak specifically).

I have discussed the reliability of this source with Ron Clausen, who has created a number of articles using this source, in a discussion that can be seen here, and we both agree that it would be useful to get some feedback from the RSN community about it's reliability. FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (Peakbagger.com)

• Unreliable under any circumstance - Based on the contact page appears to be a self-published hobby project, a lot of the data is apparently simply copied from GNIS with all that entails but other data has no clear origin and may have been submitted by individual climbers or comes from the author themselves. The terms of service page tells us that "Information uploaded to Peakbagger.com by site users, including ascent information, trip reports, provisional peaks, GPS tracks, and photographs, all becomes part of the master integrated Peakbagger.com database" meaning that the database is to an extent crowd-sourced. It also literally tells us that "The master Peakbagger.com database of peaks and associated content has thousands of errors in it, and text content, trip reports, and GPS tracks from the site's administrators and users are subjective and not necessarily authoritative" (my emphasis) - it straight up tells us that it is not a reliable source. Even if it were a reliable source for the height/prominence data, simple statistical entries in a database don't amount to significant coverage of the subject such as is needed to pass WP:GNG, and it would amount to a WP:PRIMARY source. For GNIS or other gazetteer data, the original gazetteer should be referred to directly.

I'd like to highlight that I think that most of Ron's work is OK and I like these articles about peaks, this is just about the sourcing in a lot of articles about peaks (not just his). FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Instead of making assumptions by using the word "appears", why don't you contact the webmaster to get the facts on the sources. Assumptions = unreliable, which is worse than the argument you are making. Interesting that you now encourage using GNIS data, but on my talk page you didn't.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

We have the website managers own words telling us not to use it, seems enough, no? And it's worth remembering that once a source is challenged the burden is on those who want to use the source to prove it's reliable, not the other way round - if you want to email them, please feel free to do so. As for GNIS, we have a consensus on here that certain pieces of data on it are unreliable (i.e., the feature classes) and it should anyway not be relied on to support a WP:GNG pass because it is not significant coverage. FOARP (talk) 08:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Where does the webmaster state not to use it (whatever you mean by "it")? Ron Clausen (talk) 04:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable By their own statements, this is a crowd-sourced, unchecked, and admits to having numerous unfixed factual errors. This source, as useful in general as it might be to hikers, is not an appropriate source for any information at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 14:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [1] The data which I use from the site is not crowdsourced. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable for factual information - Appears to be the classic hobbyist/WP:SPS website with no sourcing on the few pages I randomly sampled and no indicia of a reliability-establishing editorial policy. That, alone, seems sufficient for "unreliable" even if we interpret the "thousands of errors" statement as a generic "we take no responsibility if you hurt yourself because of our info" disclaimer. Seems to also contain trip reports, which might theoretically be used per WP:RSOPINION/WP:SELFSOURCE with the usual disclaimers, but I'm not familiar enough with either the site or the general topic to say whether that's a realistic prospect. -Ljleppan (talk) 15:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [2] But thanks for declaring it unreliable when you state that you are not familiar with this subject. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable when framed as "according to" etc.. it often receives notice in other reliable sources as being a significant source:
  • "Greg Slayden, founder of www.peakbagger.com, a national climbing registry where baggers can record their conquests." The Mercury News
  • "A website called Peakbagger.com, a major arbiter for the country’s “high pointers,” made the change to its database. As far as Peakbagger was concerned, Jackie Jones Mountain was now supreme."The Daily Beast
  • "He had read about Baker Mountain on peakbagger.com, a storehouse for people looking to summit prominent mountains. " The New York Times
  • "Before the advent of peakbagger.com, climber.org, and summitpost.com, climbers sought information about routes up peaks in guidebooks, in newsletter reports, and by word of mouth, still all good sources. "Sierra Club
  • "If you want more information and maps of these peaks, a good source is peakbagger.com." Elko Daily News

• Peakbgger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [3]

-- GreenC 17:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

These point to it being a useful source for Peak-bagging hobbyists, in a similar way to how Wookieepedia is a useful source for Star Wars fans and Memory Alpha is a useful source for Trekkers. It does not make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. FOARP (talk) 08:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

You failed to take note of the last bullet: Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [4] which is a Google search result showing all the reliable published books that reference Peakbagger.Ron Clausen (talk) 10:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Just because a book appears in a Google Books search does not mean it's a reliable source. For example the very first search result for me is "Stargate SG1 Compendium" published by PediaPress. If you actually search for "peakbagger.com" with quotation marks, you'll see a significantly reduced amount of hits, less than 50 based on my quick count. Some of the hits, e.g. The Mountain Encyclopedia, appear to simply list it in a large list of general websites related to the topic, rather than using it as a source or even making any explicit claim about its reliability. Others, such as 'The Making of Modern Baseball, Sports Nation: Contemporary American Professional Organizations, Indiana Courthouses - Southeast Edition and Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities are in so wildly different domains that they really can't be used to establish reliability here. To establish that multiple highly reliable sources view peakbagger.com as a reliable source, you'd need to provide clear examples rather than just linking to a Google Books search. -Ljleppan (talk) 10:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable, at best its a group blog edited by Greg Slayden but you have to squint really really hard to see that... Its a high quality hobbyist site but even the best of those are generally not WP:RS, especially for obscure hobbies like peak bagging. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable There are no errors in the data for peaks. The peak data comes from USGS data. Anything related to user contributed climbing information is not used on Wikipedia.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
  • How did you determine that the peak data comes from USGS? I can't find any indication of that on the website. Does that source also extend to peaks not in US? If the data comes from USGS, why not cite the original source of the data? -Ljleppan (talk) 22:19, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
    • The webmaster states "I added peaks by hand, or from large public-domain databases like the GNIS and BGN gazetters." GNIS and BGN = USGS. https://www.peakbagger.com/Contact.aspx As for why? Convenience, and parameters such as Prominence and Isolation data are not provided directly by from USGS, but derivations thereof. Prominence and Isolation are not something found in "published" sources, but can be obtained at these websites. I don't use Peakbagger or LOJ for peaks outside the US.Ron Clausen (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• That does say "by hand", though... not particularly reliable if you ask me. Surely there are reputable sources that would compile this information. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 00:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Again with the assumptions. Please tell us your reputable sources that compile Prominence and Isolation. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• The GNIS database is public domain and freely accessible. It also isn’t clear which data on Peakbagger comes from there and which doesn’t and instead comes from another source. And just to emphasise this: the website itself says not to trust it. If data cannot be reliably sourced, the answer is not to use an unreliable source, the answer is just not to include that data at all. FOARP (talk) 08:10, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• No, it doesn't say "not to trust it". It says there are thousands of errors in the site, a site which he says has millions of data points. Every data base and reliable source is going to have errors. If Peakbagger's elevation value for a given peak matches what's on the USGS topographic map, we know where the information came from.Ron Clausen (talk) 09:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry Ron, but it literally says right in the terms of service "The master Peakbagger.com database of peaks and associated content has thousands of errors in it ... there is no guarantee of accuracy". That's them right there telling you not to rely on their data, for the very good reason that it is not an authoritative source and is transcribed from other sources and/or provided by users (and it is not clear which is which). Now you're saying "don't worry, it's only thousands of error amongst millions", but how many thousands? This is a very useful source for hobbyists, but that doesn't make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. As for it matching USGS data, if that's so then why don't you just refer to the USGS data directly? And if you can't access the USGS data then how do you know this?

Let me take the opportunity again to say that I like your articles on peaks, especially the photos, and I think they're a net value-add for Wiki. I just think this specific source (and LoJ, though that's much-less-used) shouldn't be used. FOARP (talk) 10:13, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry, but you sliding down a slippery slope if you expect "guarantees of accuracy" from all reliable sources. Please provide a link to that Wikipedia policy requiring sources to guarantee their accuracy, and also a list of sources that you are aware of which do meet such a requirement. I can't recall ever seeing a publication which did. Ron Clausen (talk) 10:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not requiring that they give such a guarantee, I'm requiring that they don't literally tell us that they can't give such a guarantee because of all the errors they have. FOARP (talk) 10:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Can you provide a link to the Wikipedia policy that requires that? Ron Clausen (talk) 11:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• See WP:RS#Overview and WP:SOURCE: Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (emph. added). Are you claiming that a source that literally states it contains thousands of mistakes has a "reputation for accuracy"? -11:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)Ljleppan (talk)

• Thousands of errors in millions of data points. We don't know exact numbers, but for the sake of simplicity let's say 1000 errors for every one million data points. That works out to 99.9 percent accuracy. In my book, that's pretty accurate, reliable information. And that site is aware of the errors and fixes them (according Peakbagger, and my personal dealings with them when I pointed out an error. Ron Clausen (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• So what you're telling us is that you've found errors on there (more than once?) and they corrected them when you told them. Which sounds an awful lot like user-generated content. "Thousands" can mean many more than 1,000, they clearly don't know how many errors there, just that there are a lot. FOARP (talk) 12:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• You're missing the context. Thousands of errors in millions of data points. He doesn't say tens of thousands of errors, nor tens of millions of data points, so the numbers must be between two and ten. Let's take the worst case example that favors your side: 9,999 errors in two million data points. That's 99.5 percent accuracy. On the other hand the math for the flip side has 2,000 errors in nine million data points. That's 99.98 percent accuracy. Ron Clausen (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, over the last five years I found an error there. Coordinates for a peak were wrong, only because USGS had within the past year corrected a USGS error, and Peakbagger originally used that erroneous data from USGS, and the change was not caught by Peakbagger. All websites that I checked were still using the erroneous USGS data. Case in point: Pectols Pyramid. A quick search now and I found mapcarta.com and topozone.com and peakvisor.com all still using the erroneous location. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I don't understand: if USGS has more accurate data, and updates it more frequently, why aren't you just referring to USGS directly? Moreover you only know about this error because USGS is there as a reliable source. It seems that whilst the maths needed to calculate prominence/isolation are simple, determining what data to use is non-trivial and we shouldn't be relying on Peakbagger.com for it. FOARP (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Who claims USGS has more accurate data and updates it more frequently? If you don't understand, it's because you haven't paid attention. As I stated in my Talk page to you: "I have found plenty of stuff in "published" material that is flat out incorrect, and would not use. And stuff can be found in communities such as Summitpost that is excellent and correct (but I don't use). So the balancing act is to be accurate, which means using best data where it's found. GNIS is good for coordinates, but terrible at elevations, so that's where Peakbagger comes in." Ron Clausen (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable. It's probably fine for an external link but I don't see how we can use a source that is at least partially user-generated, otherwise curated by someone whose subject matter expertise has not been established (WP:SPS), and that by its own admission contains errors. I sympathize with Ron Clausen's position that 99.9 is pretty great accuracy, but the difference between this source and a reliable source is that we have no way to verify the reliability--we have no idea which data is accurate. I do have a question about "Prominence" and "Isolation"; I'm unfamiliar with those terms and their importance. Ron notes above that these are "derived", are they derived from the USGS data, and is this a mechanical calculation, or is something more involved? Mackensen (talk) 12:22, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Topographic isolation and Topographic prominence simple calculation, based on USGS data. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I would beg to differ about prominence: one has to identify the key col to compute the prominence. That is a calculation, but involving a graph of elevations. For a description of the algorithm, see [5]. I would not characterize it as simple. Wikipedia editors cannot perform prominence calculations under WP:CALC: it would be a violation of WP:NOR. We have to rely on Peakbagger for prominence and isolation, or use an alternative site. There are not that many of them. — hike395 (talk) 19:55, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable as the person is an expert in his field so can be used in Wikipedia as per the guidelines on SPS and blogs. No significant problems with using this source have been put forward and carrying out simple calculations is fine for such an expert on the subject, in my view Atlantic306 (talk) 01:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Could you expand a bit on how you determined that the editor behind the website is "an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications", given that others below seem to have reached different conclusions? -Ljleppan (talk) 09:02, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable for quantitative information: elevation, coordinates, location, prominence, isolation. Not reliable for ascent and travel accounts. To my mind, Peakbagger is the authoritative source for some of the quantitative information about mountains, and a secondary reliable source for other quantitative data. That doesn't mean there aren't errors on Peakbagger, but all "reliable sources" have errors and discrepancies.Smallchief (talk)
• Reliable per Smallchief and others for hard data such as prominence, isolation, elevation, coordinates and location. Likely to be more accurate and up to date than some official sources e.g. Ordnance Survey. Bermicourt (talk) 21:20, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable While FOARP, Ljleppan, Jayron32, and A. C. Santacruz are correct that Peakbagger does not pass WP:RS under the usual criteria for self-published primary sources, there is another way to establish reliability: via usage by other sources. In the small field of publications on orometry (e.g., elevation, topographic prominence and topographic isolation), the following papers treat the data in Peakbagger as "gold standard" data to incorporate or compare against:

  Arundel, Samantha T; Sinha, Gaurav (2020). "Automated location correction and spot height generation for named summits in the coterminous United States" (PDF). International Journal of Digital Earth. 13 (12): 1570–1584.

  Kirmse, Andrew; de Ferranti, Jonathan (2017). "Calculating the prominence and isolation of every mountain in the world". Progress in Physical Geography. 41 (6): 788–802.

  Kelso, Nathaniel Vaughn; Patterson, Tom (2010). "Introducing natural earth data-naturalearthdata.com" (PDF). Geographia Technica. 5 (82–89): 25.

  Wiens, John J; et al. (2019). "Climate change, extinction, and Sky Island biogeography in a montane lizard [sic]". Molecular ecology. 28 (10): 2610–2624.

Aside from WP:UBO, the 10+ years of WP usage of quantitative data from Peakbagger has uncovered no systematic biases or serious accuracy problems. — hike395 (talk) 02:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for these references, I only had time to check the first this morning, but made some quick observations. Notably, the study clearly acknowledges that peakbagger.com is not a provider of high-quality data: "Ideally, results would be compared to a higher-accuracy dataset. Unfortunately, such reference data are unavailable. As a result, for a reality check, results were compared to the following: nearby National Geodetic Survey (NGS) control points, where they exist, spot elevations manually collected from historical 7.5-minute USGS topographic maps, values published by Peakbagger (peakbagger.com), a mountain climbing website, and values by Topozone (topozone.com), which offers value-added USGS topographic data." It later notes that "Many tested summits were missing from the Peakbagger lists" and "Topozone values corresponded more closely to snapped summits than did Peakbagger values, but the difference is unclear because both products use basically the same source data, although Peakbagger contains some values derived from amateur Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) devices." I'll check the other references later today. -Ljleppan (talk) 08:01, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Continuing to check the references, Kimse and de Ferranti refer to peakbagger.com in a few ways. First, on page 790, they simply state that it exists as part of their description of previous works. Second, on pages 792-793, they refer to it for peak height data. They go on to note that the peakbagger.com height data seems to disagree with their other data in some cases, discussing in detail how their analysis/computation is affected by this disagreement. They present no argument why they hold the peakbagger.com data to be more accurate, only making a vague gesture at "accurate surveys". The third mention on page 798 is, in my view, the most notable a it suggest a conflict of interest between the authors and peakbagger.com, as the authors describe their own contributions to the database. Tangentially related, I found the following sentence on page 791 interesting: "Many voids were filled with samples from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer global DEM (ASTER GDEM), although a review of its properties showed that it has too many artifacts near water bodies, clouds, and high mountains to make it suitable as the primary database for our analysis." This appears to be a tacit admission that they are not confident in their underlying data for the whole globe. It's not completely clear to me from the paper whether this statement applies only to "norther parts of Scandinavia and Russia" or to a wider area.

The third reference (Kelso & Patterson, 2010) simply states they use peak name and height data from peakbagger.com in a single sentence. I believe it's notable that despite stating their website is intended for a mountain cartographer audience, they do not use any other data from peakbagger.com.

The fourth reference (Wiens et al., 2019) similarly only uses peak height data from the peakbagger.com.

In total, the references appear to contain one that acknowledges that peakbagger.com is not of very high quality, and three that only employ peak heights. Of the three height-only papers, Kimse and de Ferranti have a potential conflict of interest and also acknowledges that the peakbagger.com data disagrees with other data available to them. Based on this analysis, I don't think the references support a WP:UBO argument outside of peak heights, and even for peak heights it seems somewhat iffy. -Ljleppan (talk) 10:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

If the four articles cited above use Peakbagger data to one extent on another, then that is a recognition that the data is either reliable, the best available, or not available elsewhere, isn't it? If, in the four cited articles, only some Peakbagger data is used and some is not that is not an indication that the unused Peakbagger data is bad. It just means that Peakbagger data about, for example, prominence wasn't relevant to the author of the article.

Peakbagger is cited as a source on Wikipedia thousands of times. Let's look at just one article: List of the most prominent summits of the United States. Peakbagger is the source most cited for information about all 200 mountains on the list. Dozens of other articles about mountains use Peakbagger as their main source. Are we going to delete these articles not because they are inaccurate but because we have declared that Peakbagger -- often the only source or the best source -- is not up to Wikipedia's bureaucratic standards? Instead see: "Wikipedia has guidelines and policies -- not firm rules." To delete articles from Wikipedia sourced from Peakbagger would be counter-productive and destructive -- and would not make the encyclopedia one whit more authoritative. Our task is to compile and improve the encyclopedia not impose a rule that would do the opposite.Smallchief (talk) 13:32, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The reliability of peakbagger.com has been questioned, and the comment I replied to acknowledged that it does not pass the usual criteria for self-published primary sources. It was then suggested that it might be considered reliable through another criteria, and evidence for this position was presented. I argue above why I believe this evidence fails to establish reliability for all factual information, and at best establishes reliability for a minor subset of the data on the website. If you believe I have misread or mischaracterized the proposed evidence above, please let me know how and I'll happily reconsider my position and correct any mistakes I might have made. The fact that the source is currently referenced a lot in Wikipedia is immaterial for this discussion. -Ljleppan (talk) 13:53, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

So, what is your remedy? Shall we delete all the articles that use Peakbagger as a principal source? This is not just an intellectual discussion. A problem should be in search of a solution.Smallchief (talk) 14:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

This is neither the time nor the place for those hypothetical discussions, the need for which is dependent on both the result of this still ongoing discussion and the content of each individual article. -Ljleppan (talk) 14:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ljleppan: I believe your summary does not accurately reflect Peakbagger nor my UBO argument:

• Kirmse explains the details of his prominence analysis here. Kirmse clearly uses Peakbagger as a ground truth source of data to compare his output to. It is the best alternative.
• Kirmse uses DEM data which is contaminated with trees (DEMs find the height of object at scan time, rather than true ground level, a well-known problem in remote sensing). This causes Kirmse's height data to be less reliable than Peakbagger. Again, see Kirmse's explanation here.
• Quoting "many tested summits are missing from Peakbagger" is not a strike against Peakbagger. Because Peakbagger is curated, it cannot have as many summits as Kirme's system. The simple fact that Kirmse (a reliable source) used Peakbagger as gold-standard data should count in favor of Peakbagger.
• I cannot find any guidance in WP:UBO that specifies that specific data (e.g., prominence) be used, as far as I can tell. It just asks us to analyze whether the source is used by other reliable sources.
• I also cannot find any guidance about "conflict of interest" in WP:UBO. If Kirmse donated data back to Peakbagger, why is that a negative? Instead, wouldn't that show that Kirmse thought Peakbagger was a worthwhile source? If it were truly unreliable (e.g., like The Daily Mail), Kirmse would be less likely to give it data, not more. — hike395 (talk) 00:35, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hike395: Thanks for the link to Krimse's personal website/blog, I didn't see it linked from the peer-reviewed article. I'm afraid I'm still not too convinced by the way it's discussed on the page, see e.g. "In some areas, especially in Indonesia and Africa, Peakbagger's peak locations were very far off, enough to generate incorrect values even for ultra prominent peaks". In general, looking at all the various sources, I'm getting the impression that its data tends to be fairly accurate for the areas highly frequented by climbing enthusiast, but less so for elsewhere. Such data quality uniformity issues would be expected for a hobbyist source, and are one of the main reasons why I'm extremely wary of using these kinds references: it's going to appear accurate based on the things people will naturally check, but that deduction is not necessarily extensible to all data, nor is it possible to know for certain where that "uncertainty horizon" lies in the data.

Regarding the specific data aspect, I do concede might be reading the "for similar facts" part of WP:UBO rather closely (also, I'm not too familiar with how this has been interpreted historically), but I don't think my reading is unreasonable. I do find it notable that of the linked articles, the one that would have most expected to use e.g. the prominence data (the one providing a mapping service aimed at a mountain cartographer audience) does not do so. This might be simply resulting from the limited amount of prominence data available on the site prior to Krimse's contribution. Did the site contain prominence data in 2010s?

Regarding the conflict of interest, my point is that since the argument is about [[WP:UBO|use by others], does Krimse count as an other? In my understanding, the underlying UBO argument is essentially "there are verifiable reliable independent sources that hold peakbagger.com as a reliable independent source". I'm not convinced Krimse is "independent". -Ljleppan (talk) 07:10, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Ljleppan: I believe some of the assumptions you're making are incorrect:

• Wikipedia has been using Peakbagger as a source of prominence data at least since 2005, possibly before. See this diff, and the corresponding archive link. It has been a stable and durable source.
• The main editors of Peakbagger were Edward Earl (until 2015) and Greg Slayden (after). If you look at the history, Kirmse wanted to adapt their code to run at Google in 2014, and started to share his data back in 2015. Peakbagger had prominence data for at least 10 years before that.
• It seems to me that you cannot have it both ways. If Kirmse was a major participant in Peakbagger, then it would pass WP:RSSELF due to Kirmse's domain expertise. Instead, by his own web page, he was only tangentially involved starting in 2014. Hence the need for a WP:UBO argument, which I believe still stands.
• It's well-known that the published topographic data for mountains in the Global South tends to be imprecise. See, e.g., the uncertainty expressed at Cordillera Paine, which took a fair amount of investigation by WP editors. Or this discussion about the highest point in Indonesia. The accuracy of Peakbagger is limited by the accuracy and precision of the topographic data that they use. Claiming that they are a hobbyist site based on this is not warranted.

Thanks for being so thorough! — hike395 (talk) 15:10, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

@Hike395: And thanks to you for being so patient, especially considering that I lack much of the background knowledge etc. that others more familiar with the domain possess. I've thought about this for a few days now and have essentially two points I'd like to bring up. First, I don't believe Wikipedia's historical use of peakbagger.com is of significance for this discussion. Second, regarding "having it both ways", my position is essentially thus: Kirmse themself appears to be a reputable author, and if they were in editorial control over peakbagger.com, I'd be open to considering it an expert-produced WP:SPS. However, they are not in (sole) editorial control, and I'm not convinced the "editor-in-chief" fulfills the requirements in the same way as Kirmse does. At the same time, Kirmse is clearly affiliated with peakbagger.com. While this does not wholly invalidate their judgement w/r/t it's reliability, it does cause me concern regarding their impartiality in assessing the situation. Working in a rather niche field of academia myself, I'm sympathetic that this is made more difficult by the nicheness (is that a word?) of the topic: it's hard to make a very solid WP:UBO argument if the field of relevant "others" is very small. Its clear that you and others who are well-versed in the topic truly hold peakbagger.com to be a reputable site. But demonstrating that reputability is clearly an issue in this case. In general, given that the indicia of reliablity overall is so low, I'm still hesitant about any kind of blanket statement along the lines of "all factual data on peakbagger.com is reliable". On the other hand, I'm not sure what a suitable more limited statement would be. Frankly, I'm rather annoyed by the lack of citing sources on the site; if they attributed clearly where each peace of information came from, I would find this significantly easier. -Ljleppan (talk) 19:48, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable per Smallchief. That is to say, "for quantitative information: elevation, coordinates, location, prominence, isolation. Not reliable for ascent and travel accounts." The disclaimer for inaccuracy is very likely referring to ascent and travel accounts, and if not, it's a disclaimer highlighting the very very few errors in a very large dataset. Any dataset is prone to having a small percentage of errors, that doesn't make it unreliable. Being made by one person does not make it unreliable, it appears to be an authoritative resource, and wikipedia should treat it as such... except for the travel accounts, which are user provided and not reliable any more than some web forum post somewhere would be (that is to say, possibly useful as a primary source if the user commenting has some claim to notability). Fieari (talk) 02:24, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment @Smallchief, Fieari, Bermicourt, and Hike395: - I understand your position regarding the accuracy of statistics on this website. How do you see it's listings in terms of WP:GNG, does a listing on Peakbagger count as significant coverage in your view? FOARP (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd say it's a reliable source in terms of data, but obviously the blogs/comments are not. So it counts towards general notability. But we could also, by consensus, agree notability for mountains and hills based on a set of criteria such as height, prominence, etc, and only those that fall outside of that would need to pass the GNG test. Bermicourt (talk) 17:28, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I would say that the relevant notability guideline is WP:GEOLAND, which states "Named natural features are often notable, provided information beyond statistics and coordinates is known to exist." Peakbagger can only reliably provide statistics and coordinates: nothing else. Therefore Peakbagger cannot be used to establish notability of mountains, ranges, etc. — hike395 (talk) 00:55, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Agree. Peakbagger does not establish notability (nor, in my opinion, does a single source ever establish notability). However, Peakbagger, as stated many times here, is a reliable source for elevation, prominence, and other statistical information.Smallchief (talk) 01:18, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Basically this. I have nothing to add, Hike395 said it right. Fieari (talk) 06:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Different kinds of data in Peakbagger

FOARP is saying that Peakbagger is not reliable, because the terms of service says so. But peakbagger has multiple kinds of information in it. It has subjective trip reports, and it has quantitative data about the prominence and isolation. AFAICT, the terms of service are warning users that the subjective trip reports are filled with errors: people who climb mountains should take care not to overly rely on other climbing reports, because climbing is a risky activity. But Wikipedia editors are not using peakbagger for the subjective trip reports (which are clearly unreliable).

The main question, I think, is whether the quantitative data is reliable and accurate. There are very few sources for mountain prominence and isolation. Members of WP:WikiProject Mountains have been using Peakbagger's prominence and isolation data for many years, and have not found serious systematic errors (unlike GNIS feature data, where I was aware of the errors back in 2010, but got shut down). That's not a guarantee of accuracy by the website, but an empirical validation.

I also think there are two different issues being mixed together here:

• Should peakbagger be the basis of creating new articles, and used to check WP:GNG?
• Should peakbagger be considered a reliable source of prominence and isolation?

For the first question, we've had serious problems in creating articles based on geographic databases (FOARP has been extremely helpful in a major cleanup involving thousands of articles based on incorrect data in GNIS). I would be skeptical about creating new articles purely based on Peakbagger + ListsOfJohn + GNIS.

I would suggest that the discussion here analyze the reliability of Peakbagger for prominence and isolation. Either:

• Peakbagger is considered a reliable source of prominence and isolation, or
• We have to consider removing many of the prominence and isolation data points from WP.

Given this restricted question of reliability about prominence and isolation, what do other editors think? — hike395 (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

We are still fundamentally discussing a WP:SPS. Where does the data, for, say this page come from? What is the editorial policy that ensures it is correct? How about this page which states "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>"? I've seen nothing in this discussion that would have made me reconsider my original assessment of unreliable for factual information. If the result is that that Wikipedia needs to re-reference a lot of stuff, that is unfortunate, but that amount of potential work is completely immaterial for the reliability question. -Ljleppan (talk) 20:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>" was merely a suggestion/request by a user that the peak be added to the database, not that the user added the data. The webmaster is always the only one to add the data. The user generally wants the peak added to they can add it to their list of personal ascents.Ron Clausen (talk) 20:42, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Ron is correct: there is an editorial process from turning a user-submitted "provisional" peak into a peak in the full database, see here.

My issue here is: checked how? Checked against USGS information? And if that's the case, again, why don't we refer to the USGS directly? I'm not sure prominence and isolation really are so trivial to calculate that we can safely leave this in the hands of what appears to be an amateur website: the maths involved are relatively simple, but the choice of input data to use does not appear to be. FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: USGS does not provide prominence or isolation, so we cannot refer to USGS. As I've said below, there's no governmental source for prominence or isolation anywhere.

You're right, the computation is not trivial. I've found a peer-reviewed paper about running the computation at scale, by Andrew Kirmse, previously a Distinguished Engineer at Google who managed Google Earth. The results from the paper are provided in a website. Kirmse provides more details about the computation here. That detailed web page is worth reading. A few things to note:

• Kirmse refers back to both Peakbagger and ListsOfJohn as tests for his computation
• Kirmse's computation matches Peakbagger within 5% error 90% of the time. Kirmse seems to attribute the errors to problems in his own data.
• Kirmse based his algorithm on WinProm code by Edward Earl, published in Helman's book. Earl ran Peakbagger until 2015, when he died in a mountaineering accident. Peakbagger has the original (although less scalable) WinProm code. Because Earl came up with the prominence algorithm, I would not characterize Peakbagger as a "amateur website", but as a primary source for prominence and isolation data.
• Kirme's data is innately less accurate than Peakbagger. Kirmse (like GNIS) bases his computation on digital elevation maps, which are less accurate than Peakbagger, which bases the computation on the best point elevations provided by governments. In mountains where there are high spatial gradients, DEMs are definitely inferior.

Here's my conclusion. Peakbagger is a self-published primary source. The editors of Peakbagger do not appear to pass the bar of published subject-matter experts. Kirmse's paper appears to be a reliable peer-reviewed publication by a subject-matter expert. Kirmse is a secondary source for Peakbagger.

I don't want to propose any major changes to 5,000+ mountain articles without having other mountain editors participate in the discussion. @Droll, RedWolf, Volcanoguy, Buaidh, and Jo-Jo Eumerus: The reliability of Peakbagger has been called into question (see above). What is the best way to reliably source prominence and isolation data? — hike395 (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I entirely sympathise with not wanting to make changes to lots of articles. Indeed, I'm OK with leaving these articles generally as-is and filling them out slowly with information from e.g., newspapers to make them full notability passes. What I will say is we have a general problem with many thousands of GEO articles being written solely on not-very-reliable database data (primarily GNIS and GNS) and it is more important to make sure that we don't generate thousands more problematic articles and make the problem worse. FOARP (talk) 09:38, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It strikes me as a bizarre thought that once a prominence figure has been published in a newspaper (a reliable one, I hope) we can give it a full notability pass[es]. First, surely we are not discussing notability (are we?) but verifiability. Second, where do we suppose the newspaper reporter obtained their data? Is our increased reliance because we believe that if what they publish is wrong they may be criticised, sued or forced to a retraction? Thincat (talk) 12:03, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

FOARP If your goal was to prevent non-notable articles being made from geographic databases (which I heartily agree with), we didn't need to have this discussion. WP:GNG says that notability should be established by secondary sources. Geographic databases are primary sources: there is no analysis, just data. WP:GEOLAND says that if only basic statistics about a natural feature are known (as in a database), then the subject is not notable. We should not start articles purely based on Peakbagger and/or ListsOfJohn and/or GNIS.

By determining that Peakbagger is not a reliable source, we have to either throw out prominences and isolation on 5,000+ articles, or figure out an alternative reliable source. It's frustrating that Kirmse's prominence data is more "reliable" (according to WP:RS), but less accurate than the curated data in Peakbagger (according to Kirmse himself). I realize that WP:IAR shouldn't apply to this large number of articles, but I believe deprecating Peakbagger will make Wikipedia worse. I predict other editors at WikiProject Mountains will agree with that. — hike395 (talk) 13:03, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

From where does Peakbagger get its information? --Jayron32 13:13, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from Kirmse: Greg Slayden (the editor at Peakbagger) uses the WinProm program to determine the key col and nearest higher point based on a digital elevation map. He then uses USGS benchmark data (if available) or topo map data (if not) to compute the prominence, verifying that any benchmark corresponds to the named feature. Slayden does not appear to be a published subject-matter expert (by WP's definition). — hike395 (talk) 13:23, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

If that is the case, then his information is not reliable under WP:RS definitions. He is not an expert, his work is not checked by experts, and there's no review or editorial process for the information he posts. The information from the website should not be used at Wikipedia, and should not have been used at all. The "5000+ articles" issue is a problem caused by using an obviously unreliable source to begin with; if someone had been following the rules years ago those 5000+ articles would already be in compliance. --Jayron32 13:47, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

hike395 - I agree with you that it should be possible to address the problem of the creation of large numbers of GEO articles based on dubious sourcing at AFD. This is, however, not my experience at AFD. AFD is always far too late (often by a decade+ given how many articles were created circa 2008) to actually address the problem of article-creation based on purely statistical data. The many thousands of GEO articles sourced purely to GNIS/GNS, and created at a rate of 2-3 a minute in article creation campaigns, being the most obvious example.

Nobody said that these 5,000 articles would have to edited at once. We already have so much more dubiously sourced information, in such a large quantity on Wikipedia, that those 5,000 articles will not be a priority. What we need to stop is adding any more dubiously-sourced information. Ultimately, we do not have to have such data - hobbyists (who are the ones that this data is of interest to) can always just refer to Peakbagger directly. We can instead have more encyclopaedic information about the topic (e.g., it's history).

As a final point, if Kirmse's calculations don't match Slayden's, that points to these calculations being non-trivial to do given that if Slayden is a subject-matter expert then so surely is Kirmse. (EDIT: also entirely second what Jayron32 says - the 5,000 articles thing is an WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument) FOARP (talk) 13:40, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree with FOARP and Jayron32 above, especially the point about hobbyists. Santacruz ⁂ Please tag me! 13:58, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Subsection questions

I am going to add subsection questions below. It would be helpful, I think if those 'in the know' answer them with cites or links if possible Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC) : Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does prominence matter?

Topographic prominence is an objective measure of the "peakiness" of a peak. Many mountains are massifs, with many subpeaks. Prominence is a measure of how far down you need to walk from a subpeak before you go back up to the next main peak. Subpeaks with low prominence (e.g., 100 feet (30 m) are not considered significant peaks, and don't make it onto peak lists. See USGS link — hike395 (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Topographic prominence is related to how much climbing is required to reach a peak from a point that is higher, specifically from its line parent. In Colorado, 4352 meter Grays Peak has prominence of about 844 meters from its line parent Mount Lincoln. On the other hand, the only slightly lower 4349 meter Torreys Peak has a prominence of only about 171 meters from its line parent which is nearby Grays Peak.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 23:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Who does prominence matter to?

Readers of mountain articles may wish to know prominence, in order to tell whether the peak is a true peak, or simply a bump on a larger mountain. — hike395 (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Since prominence is somewhat related to the difficulty of a climb, it often matters more than elevation itself to climbers and mountain nerds like myself.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

I've been editing mountain articles for >18 years now, and I know of no governmental or international or standards bodies that compute either prominence or isolation. — hike395 (talk) 21:01, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic prominence, although they provide the elevation and topographic data required to calculate topographic prominence. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic prominence for them. The Sierra Club and the Colorado Mountain Club have historically only been concerned with summit elevation, although topographic prominence has more recently become a concern. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic prominence, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does isolation matter?

@Buaidh: you have added isolation data and lists to many articles, do you wish to answer this? — hike395 (talk) 21:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Topographic isolation is also known as radius of dominance, an apt description. Isolation is the minimum distance you would need to travel to reach a point of equal or greater elevation. In mountainous regions, isolation may be short for any but the highest summit. In relatively flat regions, the highest summit may have a very long isolation.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Buaidh: Why is topographic isolation something an encyclopedia needs to cover? Not seeing the argument for this being important without dedicated coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:31, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

An encyclopedia doesn't need to provide any statistical information about a mountain, but topographic elevation, prominence, and isolation are considered the three most significant measures of a summit.

Topographic isolation is discussed at the following:

• Topographic isolation on Wikipedia
• World Peaks with 1000 km of Isolation on peakbagger.com
• 25 Most Isolated Peaks In The World on mountainjourney.com
• Calculating the prominence and isolation of every mountain in the world at sagepub.com
• Visualize Prominence and Isolation of Mountain Peaks at wolfram.com
• Oregon's Most Prominent and Isolated Peaks at glassmountains.com
• Topographic Prominence-Isolation Concepts at cohp.com

Yours aye,  Buaidh  talk e-mail 20:22, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Who does isolation matter to?

High isolation summits present a wonderful challenge to climbers in regions that are not overrun with folks who try to collect as many high peaks as they can in as short a period of time as possible (e.g., the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.)  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:16, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic isolation, although they provide the elevation and horizontal position data required to calculate topographic isolation. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic isolation for them. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic isolation, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:54, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there documented custom in the relevant off wiki community for reliance on educated amateurs for this?

I think "educated amateurs" may be a biased way of describing it. As far as I can tell, there is a small community of GIS people who compute prominence. A history of the term is described here: [6] The USGS acknowledges the term, but does not offer its own computation. Mathworks (the company that makes Matlab) offers a library to compute prominence (and isolation, too).

One of the main people in the community is Alan Dawson, who published, and participated in creating Peaklist.com. An important book on the topic is by Adam Helman About the community, Helman states, "The community of prominence theoreticians, list builders, and climbers have reached a critical mass --- one that finally suggested the elaboration and publication of a book dedicated exclusively to the subject."

As far as I can tell, here is a list of websites that actually use the software and publish the results:

• Peakbagger.com
• Peaklist.com
• The Database of British and Irish Hills (http://www.hills-database.co.uk/)
• ListsOfJohn
• County Highpointers Association (www.cohp.com)

Trafford Publishing (Helman's publisher) is a well-known self/vanity-publishing imprint. I can't find any information that would substantiate TACit Press (Dawson's publisher) as an established imprint or not (EDIT: based on this, it looks to have been an amateur operation EDIT2: though based on this they were able at least to give ISBNs and the sourcing/editing/checking doesn't appear bad, though the book is essentially just a pamphlet for hobbyists). FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

References

RfC: tghat.com

Question: Which of the following best describes the reliability of tghat.com?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Less than generally reliable
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Reliable for their own opinion only
• Option 5: Other, please specify

— Platonk (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Option 4 added by Mathglot (talk) at 19:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Background (tghat.com)

The tghat.com website is being increasingly used throughout Wikipedia and is currently used in 143 articles since it was created just one year ago. Its use has engendered edit wars with several editors removing content sourced by it (as non-RS), and a few editors reverting the removals. There was a two-day discussion on RSN in July about tghat.com that discussed, though didn't resolve, the issue. As recently as five days ago, tghat.com has been added as an external link and asserted as a reliable source for a citation. The website's earliest Wayback Machine copy on December 10, 2020 shows it as a blog titled "Chronicling the War on Tigray". The website shows no sense of who is publishing the content. There is a Wikipedia article for Tghat which seems constructed with name-dropping rather than indications of notability. Other news media frame the website in terms of advocacy, not a news organization with an editorial staff, such as:

• "Tghat, a group of anonymous Tigrayans reporting on the damage done within Tigray during the current conflict"
• "Pro-Tigray Tghat"
• "Tghat was founded ... by concerned Tigrayans to chronicle and document the war"
• "News site Tghat, which is run by a group of Tigrayan activists living abroad"
• "Tghat, a news site run by pro-TPLF activists"

Examples of how tghat.com is being used in Wikipedia:

• 143 articles contain "tghat.com".

• 117 articles contain "A compilation of the verified list of civilian victims from different sources", a database/table which has a "source" column predominantly linking to Facebook or Twitter posts, other tghat content, and personal accounts. According to AP News the database is compiled by a single man and only contains deaths of ethnic Tigrayans, but not ethnic Amhara victims.

• 2 articles contain a blog post which is a google translation from an article published by Norway newspaper Bergens Tidende. This is probably a copyright violation.

• 9 articles contain "A Leaked Document: Delegation of the European Union to Ethiopia" (a blog post). This doesn't appear to have a "document" in it, and it was used as a citation in order to insert Tigray War information into the articles of 9 "places/locations".

• 6 articles contain A graphic footage of the Debre Abay massacre: What do we know about it? a blog post. This was added to two "location" articles where it doesn't really belong.

• 3 articles contain What happened in Aksum? My personal account (blog post). This was added to one "location" article where it was used to insert information about the Tigray conflict.

The above is not intended to be a comprehensive list of uses in Wikipedia, but is a subset showing the various ways tghat.com has been used.

(As a side note, though still deserving mention here, according to AP News the compiler of the civilian/non-combatant Amhara casualties is the Amhara Association of America, which doesn't have a Wikipedia article, nor is their website amharaamerica.org mentioned at all in Wikipedia mainspace, and yet the Amhara also have numerous civilian casualties during this conflict. I haven't found any Amhara 'massacre' articles in Wikipedia, while finding over a hundred Tigray 'massacre' articles. ADVOCACY or a NPOV/weight issue?)

— Platonk (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Update: The above counts have changed because 25 articles were recently deleted at AfD, most of which contained a link to tghat.com, and making the counts go down. Platonk (talk) 10:44, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (tghat.com)

• Option 4 reliable for their own opinion only. This implies use of WP:INTEXT attribution; e.g., "..and according to a member of Tghat, some-opinion-or-assertion-about-something." Mathglot (talk) 20:10, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 4: agree with Mathglot's reasoning both above and in the discussion below. Santacruz ⁂ Please tag me! 22:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable and attribute to Tghat when in doubt or Option 2: less than generally reliable per WP:USEBYOTHERS. The RS guidelines mostly evolved for rich-country sources without tight internet and telephone blockades. Wikipedia has a fundamental problem in working out how to cover knowledge encyclopedically, avoiding demographic bias, while still using good sources. There is no magic solution, but pedantic interpretation of guidelines will not help in evolving reasonable solutions.
  In this particular case, as can be seen by the text and sources in the current version of Tghat, Tghat has been used by multiple Western mainstream media and academic sources, both preprint and fully peer-reviewed. This is not "name dropping"; it's recognition that Tghat has gained a reputation as a sufficiently reliable source.
  Side issues on neutrality (1): while there is an LATimes claim that Tghat is "pro-TPLF", this is not very credible from looking at the site itself, which includes, for example, press releases by anti-TPLF political parties (clearly labelling them as such).
  Side issues on neutrality (2): massacres of Amharas. This is only related in the sense of whether we want to purge Wikipedia of all sources that might help overcome our demographic bias favouring rich-country sources. We do have Benishangul-Gumuz conflict, in which several cases have victims identified as Amharas; in Oromia Region: Gawa Qanqa massacre, Abo church massacre. Having more sources for these would be good, and the AAA site looks (based on an initial quick look) like a good source for articles such as these. In fact, it appears that among the currently known list of Amhara organisations, the articles that exist so far, Amhara Mass Media Agency and National Movement of Amhara, were both created by me, based on the best sources I could find. I wasn't aware of AAA at the time. There are quite likely some sources like these that we should rate "generally unreliable" or "Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated", but having a mix of sources that generally seem reliable and come from a mix of the different ethnic groups of Ethiopia is more in the interests of Wikipedia than refusing to use these sources. Boud (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

  Added 'or Option 2', as per WP:USEBYOTHERS as pointed out by Alaexis below, and keeping in mind that the editorship is reported on other web media rather than on the website itself. Boud (talk) 23:54, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

• Option 3: Generally unreliable Tghat is not reliable because it has verifibiliaty issues. Thgat claims to be a news site reporting on current events, not on psuedoscience, the proper context should be given, and not all biased opinions belong in Wikipedia. It heavily relies on social media, and is not independent from the subject it reports on. Reliable sources have used language to describe Tghat as being partisan, compromising it as independent source. As a new site it doesn't appear to have editorial oversight. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 4/5 and describe as being run pro-TPLF activists when summarizing it; the LA Times describes it as such. It is obviously WP:BIASED and, beyond that, definitely not usable for facts, but it shouldn't really be used for opinion either, since it seems that would be plainly WP:UNDUE. I'm not seeing any evidence of a reputation for fact-checking or accuracy (or even any assertion that they do any fact-checking or have any editorial controls); and they appear to be a personal website of no significant notability. Coverage is not WP:USEBYOTHERS - is there any indication that any reliable sources treat this list as reputable or reliable? Without that, the only place where it is like to be due is in an article specifically about the site. I would in particular strenuously object to citing it in any context discussing casualty figures - WP:RSOPINION is meant to be used to establish notable strands of opinion, not to introduce unverified facts to random websites that present them with no fact-checking. Demographic bias is real, but there are actual news sources, academics, and other high-quality sources that can be used for this. Simply creating a website and listing death totals on it doesn't make someone's opinion significant enough to include in an article - when it is included, it ought to be cited via secondary sources rather than cited directly. Also, dismissing the LA Times (a high-quality source) describing it as being run by activists based on "well I looked at the site and it looked neutral to me" is absurd; that is not how we evaluate sources. Unless someone can find an equal or higher-quality source disagreeing with the LA Times description, any WP:RSP entry absolutely needs to mention that specific bias. --Aquillion (talk) 05:34, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 per WP:USEBYOTHERS. The Associated Press checked some of their reporting and found it accurate. France24 were able to verify the video they posted. The information published by Tghat has been used by scholars. Not fully reliable due to concerns regarding bias and the editing processes raised earlier. Alaexis_¿question? 08:37, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3/4 doesn't seem to be a reliable news or similar organization as much as an advocacy group. That kind of group has their place, but generally not as a reliable source outside of independent confirmation or their own opinions. SamStrongTalks (talk) 19:36, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3 - For reasons of being a self-published, anonymously-run, and biased website. The website itself gives no indication of its ownership or editorship. Most of the blog posts are posted by the anonymous user "tghat", who posts no credentials and doesn't use any citations in their articles. Even if a blog post has a seemingly real world name on it, there is no verified-account indicator to ensure it is that person, and that they are a subject matter expert. The victim list is self-published by a single person (whose name we've known only since 10 days ago). Option 4 is worthless as there is nothing an anonymous source is going to say WP:ABOUTSELF, and everything else they would publish falls under WP:EXCEPTIONAL claims and is thus unusable. Ultimately, Wikipedia guidelines for reliable sources are there to make verification possible. Anonymous and self-published make verification impossible. Platonk (talk) 10:47, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (tghat.com)

Starting with WP:USEBYOTHERS, its estimation of the number of victims has been mentioned by the LA times [7]. They describe it as "a news site run by pro-TPLF activists". Alaexis_¿question? 20:31, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Where do you get that? The LA Times article you cited doesn't mention Tghat's victim database or information. It mentions Tghat in the sentence following a victim count by organization Seb Hidri, but doesn't tie the two together. Neither does the Wikipedia article Tghat, nor does the WP article Seb Hidri, nor even the website Tghat.com. Tghat.com has two articles mentioning Seb Hidri but even those articles don't tie the two together. Platonk (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Reliability and verifiability are certainly issues. The victim list appears to be a personal victim memorial. I can find no editorial oversight. References to Facebook, Daily Mail, and Twitter as sources are not appropriate. The site appears to be an advocacy for a cause that tilts the balance with a false validity.

Following a link such as UN Commissioner for Human Rights Owes Tigrayan Victims an Explanation I cannot verify who Teklai Gebremichael is, apparently a regular contributor. The link Is it a sin to be a Tigrayan? A graduating Tigrayan university student‘s lamentation contains an unknown editor's note: "The following message is written by a graduating student", identified as K. These are not reliable sources nor acceptable as an "External link". -- Otr500 (talk) 04:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Platonk, you are right about the victim count. The article says "Tghat, a news site run by pro-TPLF activists, reported on the Bora killings Jan. 12, along with another massacre that reportedly took place in an area called Debre Abay." Note that the Bora killings themselves are not in doubt, the same article reports them as facts earlier. So basically they say that Tghat reported on it 4 days after it happened. Alaexis_¿question? 06:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Alaexis, I think you're really stretching the imagination about what LA Times thinks about Tghat based on this single sentence. Please look again at WP:USEBYOTHERS: "How [they] use a given source ... The more widespread and consistent this use is ... established views of sources..." LA Times' single sentence, in its context, is not an endorsement of Tghat's veracity or accuracy. Platonk (talk) 07:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying that the use is widespread but it's not zero either. Are there reliable sources which explicitly call them unreliable or found inaccuracies in their reporting? By the way the absence of reporting on Amhara casualties is irrelevant. The sources can be biased or have a limited scope and still be useful. Alaexis_¿question? 09:31, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Without commenting on Tghat's reliability or lack thereof (I'll do that in a separate comment), asking whether there are reliable sources that call Tghat's reliability into question is backwards logic. There is no "presumption of reliability until disproved". There are thousands of activist groups, opinion writers, and individuals publishing their thoughts on blogs and websites, and The Guardian and The Times don't have departments paid to sit around investigating and writing evaluations of every person with an internet connection and an opinion. Mathglot (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot, you're completely right. The reason I'm asking is that if, by any chance, they are described as unreliable by reliable sources it would be a very strong argument for classifying them as unreliable here. The opposite is not true: if they aren't described as unreliable we would still need to establish their reliability. Alaexis_¿question? 20:08, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Aha, thanks for that clarification. With that understanding, I fully agree with you. Mathglot (talk) 20:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Alaexis: & @Mathglot: WP:IS is clear on biased sources, it still needs to be independent from the subject, the reliable sources descriptions of Tghat clearly tells they are not; a news site run by pro-TPLF activists, run by activists living abroad. A site run by activists siding(pro-TPLF) with a party to a conflict is advocacy and clearly show connection to the subject. Being called pro anything by reliable sources, already compromises Tghat as a independent/reliable news source in that context. Another concern is the reliance on social media, and after searching the site they have little or none reporting, that is not in some way related to the conflict in Ethiopia. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

You are misreading that. It's true that it needs to independent from the subject in order to be considered WP:INDEPENDENT (one of the attributes of fully reliable sources), but it does not need to be independent from the subject or unbiased in order to be used in citations at Wikipedia in certain contexts. See WP:BIASEDSOURCES: "Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context"; and: "Bias may make in-text attribution appropriate". If the specific context is "the opinions of Tghat activists", then the WP:BIASED source Tghat *is* reliable for that, and may be cited for their own opinions, per the WP:RS guideline previously cited. Mathglot (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Nope, not misreading that and it's again mentioned in WP:BIASEDSOURCES: When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. Does Tghat as a source meets the normal requirements? Independence from the topic is very shaky, what about the rest? Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 21:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Flat-earthers are WP:BIASED sources that are citable at Wikipedia articles on what Flat-earthers believe; Moon hoaxers are reliable for what moon-hoaxers believe, and Tghat is reliable for what Tghat believes, and needs no independence, editorial control, or fact-checking for that. The fact that they may be unreliable for all basic assertions of fact does not negate that, and that's what the rest of the guideline you quoted is about. Mathglot (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Incomparable contexts and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS, editorial oversight matters for a news site claiming to report on current events, level of independence matters. There is a long list of opinions from news sites marked as unreliable in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, biased sources can still be invalid through other aspects, such as verifibiliaty, also see WP:SUBSTANTIATE. Tghat is also WP:NOTRELIABLE for it's reliance on WP:NOTSOCIALNETWORK. There's are serieus reliability issues with this news site, comparison with Psuedoscience does not fit this context. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 23:32, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

You continue to misconstrue. Even articles marked "generally unreliable" or even as bad as "deprecated" at Perennial sources may *still* be cited nevertheless, as the guideline supplement you quoted very clearly states, and which agrees with all the others regarding WP:RSOPINION. I have no wish to debate you anymore; !vote your opinion based on your best interpretation of policies and guidelines, and hopefully everyone else will do the same. Have a nice day! Mathglot (talk) 23:49, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

We disagree and that's fine, have a nice day. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 00:32, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

• If the argument is that RS use tghat means tghat is RS, I don't see why one couldn't use forgo including tghat altogether and just cite the reputable sources covering the content. Tghat does not seem to be reliable. Additionally, this conflict is quite recent so we should be patient and remember that if tghat is the only site covering a massacre, it will be covered later in news and even later in academia if it is notable (WP:NODEADLINE). But back to the reliability topic, no I don't believe tghat is reliable based on how their content is created. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 21:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment - (Re the argument presented above about a scarcity of "rich country" media coverage and how we must bend our Wikipedia rules in order to allow Tghat as a source to reasonably cover the Tigray conflict.) A brief look in the Reference sections of Tigray War and Timeline of the Tigray War, finds such usual reliable sources as:

• Reuters, Al Jazeera, BBC News, New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, The Guardian

There are also numerous Africa-centric and Ethiopia-centric organizations mentioned in the citations, including:

• Europe External Programme with Africa: Belgian-based NGOs "involved in human rights issues particularly in the Horn of Africa and North Africa."
• New Business Ethiopia: "Founded by an award-winning journalist, Andualem Sisay Gessesse" (since 2009)
• Foreign Policy: "American news publication, founded in 1970 and focused on global affairs"
• Fana Broadcasting: "a state-owned mass media company operating in Ethiopia"
• African Arguments: "a pan-African platform for news, investigation and opinion." Editor and deputy editor named. Editor is an experienced journalist and editor.
• Ipi Global Observatory: "provides timely analysis on peace and security issues by experts, journalists, and policymakers. It is published by the International Peace Institute." Personnel are named.
• Addis Standard: "an Ethiopian monthly social, economic and political news magazine." registered, info given

There are also seemingly lesser-reliable websites used for citations, including:

• Ezega News: "the premier Ethiopian portal that provides the Ethiopian community at home and abroad information and data". (no names given)
• Eritrea Hub: Blog format, no about-us page. "Information about Eritrea and the Horn of Africa."
• Ethiopia Insight: "coverage of Ethiopian political and economic issues". No names.

There are dozens of other sources I didn't recognize and didn't click on. And this list is from just looking at less than 5% of the citations. My point being that we have a plethora of sources available to us that we can denote as reliable sources, and renders moot the argument that we need tghat.com and need to bend the reliable source rules because of alleged "demographic bias".

— Platonk (talk) 03:12, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

A lot of your sources are located in Addis-Abeba and some are government-affiliated so we should expect to get only one side of the story from them ("media coverage has become a “very sensitive” topic for the government, said Befeqadu Hailu, an Ethiopian journalist imprisoned for 18 months by the previous regime."[8]). It is well known that journalists are not welcome in the zone of conflict now ("Within hours, the internet in Tigray was shut down and journalists were blocked from entering the region."). It doesn't follow from this that we need to bend our rules but the argument that there are plenty of RS coverage is spurious. Alaexis_¿question? 06:35, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

@Alaexis: You cannot infer anything based on "Platonk's tiny sample". I did not select a sampling based on their physical location, but on the presence of citations in the references sections of the two main Wikipedia articles for the Tigray conflict. I just scrolled and picked the top few, then grabbed a couple others. When I had looked at enough to make a small list, I quit looking further. Go look at the references section yourself. I'm sure not going to spend hours combing through the over 600 references just to convince you of anything. My original point still stands: we have numerous international, American, European, African, and Ethiopian sources already being cited. I remind you that Wikipedia is not a newspaper, we are not journalists, and Wikipedia does not need to cover every little aspect of the Tigray conflict as it unfolds. No one is going to die because we don't use tghat.com here in Wikipedia. Platonk (talk) 07:10, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

You prepared this list as a response to the comment about the scarcity of data sources. My point is that this list in no way proves there is no scarcity, for the reasons listed in the NYT article I linked. Alaexis_¿question? 07:48, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

That wasn't its purpose. My point was that with over 500 editors having edited the two main articles [9] [10], that they have already found and cited sufficient RS sources without needing tghat.com. There are 784 citations in the Tigray war article and the timeline articles. Only 13 citations point to tghat-hosted articles and 15 to the tghat victim list. Comparing that to the other 756 citations — yes, I can confidently say there is no shortage of reliable sources such that Wikipedia editors would need to resort to using an anonymously-published website. Scarcity of reporters on the ground in the region is irrelevant to this specific RfC, unless one is trying to make the argument that somehow tghat.com writers are filling that role while no other reliable sources are. Platonk (talk) 11:32, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

The Tigrayan diaspora activists do not name themselves on the website itself, but Meron Gebreananaye and Gebrekirstos Gebremeskel are both named publicly on a website that publishes a variety of views by Ethiopian intellectuals. So the adjective "anonymously-published" is inaccurate. The lack of knowledge on how to make a website "look professional" with a "Who we are" page of key people does not make it anonymous.

As for Ethiopian sources of information, the number is small. Looking at two main articles alone does not seriously cover the topic; Template:Syrian Civil War has about 425 articles for a civil conflict in a country of 18 million people. This case risks extending across a country of 110 or so million people, in which federal government control of the international media and national media is getting tighter and tighter in the areas outside of the TDF-OLA controlled regions. The internet/telephone blockade and control of communication devices at border controls makes reporting from inside the Tigray extended region difficult. Reports on the Axum massacre with victim counts ranging from 100 (Ethiopian Human Rights Commission) to "thousands" (Associated Press) took about 40 days to reach the outside world. Adigrat University lecturer Getu Mak's early February testimony, about 70 days after the event, published by Tghat, was one of the first reliable reports that was consistent with later reports (e.g. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch).

So yes, there is a scarcity of sources for this field of knowledge as a whole, and the WP:USEBYOTHERS of Tghat information shows that generally, though not always, Tghat provides reliable information. Saying that the source is not needed because it's confirmed by others is reversing WP:USEBYOTHERS. Boud (talk) 23:48, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

Just a small comment on the "40 days" issue: there is no rush to add content to this encyclopaedia (WP:NODEADLINE), especially about contentious topics. Yes, it is important to have up-to-date information. But if major news outlets with long histories of reputable reporting are delaying their news items about certain events, it is probable that those events are highly complex and hard to get accurate information for. Therefore, WP should not jump the gun and use less reputable sources just because major reputable ones haven't published yet. Additionally, saying that because Tghat is RS because its report was then consistent with reputable reports is a post hoc fallacy. Finally, the idea that +600 sources is too few sources such that the use of tghat is necessary is almost probatio diabolica as the burden of proof for Platonk to provide even more than that or analyze all those 600 sources just to show tghat isn't absolutely necessary is an inordinate requirement when it is much simpler to prove or disprove whether tghat is RS period. Santacruz ⁂ Please tag me! 00:20, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

We don't have to jump the gun and there's no deadline, but we have had en.Wikipedia coverage of recent news become generally accepted since the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami that affected the south-east Asian economic tigers. We do have to make reasonable efforts to balance against our known demographic bias and the dominance of Western rich-country mainstream media. This is supposed to be an encyclopedia about the world, not an encyclopedia about how the West sees the world. Given that we do have generally reliable sources such as Tghat, there's no reason to restrict ourselves to a circular argument about the Western mainstream media being reputable because what they do is reputable. Post hoc fallacy is not an argument against WP:USEBYOTHERS; there's no claim that Tghat had a causal effect on later reports; the question is whether later reports agreed with Tghat's information. See WP:USEBYOTHERS for the details.

The 600+ argument is mostly an apples and oranges argument. Boud (talk) 02:00, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@Boud: Even if Tghat.com incorporated as an NGO, published bios of their main personnel and leadership, and was older than its current one year age, they would still be an advocacy organization and we would be limited in how we could use what they publish. The man who runs the website (Gebrekirstos Gebreselassie or Gebrekirstos Gebremeskel or however he spells his name today) presents himself as the manager of a website, a researcher and an activist — no credentials mentioned of being a reporter or an editor, or even an academic. And he isn't even located in Africa so one can't give him points for "boots on the ground and eyes front". A dozen brief mentions by reputable sources do not make tghat.com a "reliable source by proxy". Platonk (talk) 10:33, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

• Close has been requested. Platonk (talk) 08:14, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

References

GEOnet Names Server (GNS)

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.

---

Unarchived from archive 359 for further feedback/proper close

Which of the following best describes the reliability of the US's GEOnet Names Server (GNS) database?

• Option 1: The source is recognized as being generally reliable.
• Option 2: There is no consensus or additional considerations apply.
• Option 3: The source is recognized as being generally unreliable in most cases, though it can be used under certain circumstances.
• Option 4: The source is recognized as being not reliable at all and should be deprecated.
• Option 5: The source is:
  • Generally reliable for Locations/Coordinates
  • Generally unreliable for Feature Classes, particularly "Populated place"
  • Does not satisfy the "Legal recognition" requirement of WP:GEOLAND.
• Option 6: Same as Option 5 but including Toponyms in GNS as generally reliable.

FOARP (talk) 15:56, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Background (GNS)

Ten or more years ago, thousands of geographic articles have been created on English Wikipedia by importing database entries directly from the GEOnet Names Server (GNS). For example, a search for the phrases "by opening the Advanced Search box, entering" and "can be found at GEOnet Names Server" (i.e., instructions telling the reader to search the GEONet Names server for the ID code for the location the article is about) on Wikipedia returns more than 43,000 results. These largely refer to populated locations. Some of these articles have been expanded using other sources into full articles, others remain as stubs for which GNS is the only source. GNS's location classifications are assembled using substantially the same methodology as the GNIS database which was the subject of a previous RFC. Its classification of locations, especially as "populated places", therefore suffers from the same issues.
Additionally, a 2008 study of 26,500 South Korea toponyms uncovered around 200 Japanese names (see page 199 here), apparently as a result of using 1946 US military maps as a source (the Japanese-pronunciation names had apparently never been used on Japanese maps going back to 1910, so the US military - likely due to use of Japanese assistants in compiling their maps - are ultimately the source of these errors). The same study also noted that "There are many spelling errors and simple mis-understanding of the place names with similar characters" (see page 198), and also uncovered some very random English toponyms still present on the database but never commonly used. Therefore, at the very least, it appears that place names on GNS should ideally be confirmed in other sources, as it may for some countries have imported systematic errors from the old military maps that GNS is typically based on.

I have therefore adapted the previous GNIS survey (GNIS is the corresponding US-operated database for locations within the USA) to exclude toponyms from Option 5, but also added an Option 6 including GNS toponyms as generally reliable. FOARP (talk) 15:56, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (GNS)

• Option 5 as Nom (EDIT: and also Option 2 for locations / coordinates per Aquillion). The classification of locations in GNS is essentially the same as that of GNIS and as such the same analysis applies - it is inaccurate as to whether a place was ever populated and cannot anyway be used to justify claiming that a place has legal recognition, not least because it does not come from an authority in the country concerned because this is a US database for places outside the US. As for topnyms, the reported error-rate (~1% Japanese names in South Korea, and a unknown number of additional erroneous names from misunderstandings etc.) is hard to balance so I'd prefer just to leave it as an open question. At the very least, with toponyms, people should be aware that these were compiled mainly from old US military maps and in some cases systematic errors may have been introduced. As far as I've ever been able to determine the location data on GNS is accurate (EDIT: but is a primary source). FOARP (talk) 16:02, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• I'm going to say the same thing I said last time for GNIS: "generally reliable for information about place names of any kind, but cannot be used to determine notability for stand-alone articles in any way, even if it calls a place a "populated place"" In determining if a place is a valid topic for a stand-alone article, we need reliable, sufficiently indepth, sources. The fact that a place exists is not sufficiently indepth. We can generally trust the GNS (as much as any source), since it is a simple database of places and names, but we should not be creating articles that cannot be expanded if sufficiently in-depth sources don't exist. --Jayron32 19:36, 8 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5 disagree with the above comment because if a populated place the size of a village or larger can be verified through reliable sources such as an official census then it should be included to fulfill Wikipedia's role as a gazeteer regardless of the lack of indepth sources. This is particularly the case for villages in countries with limited internet coverage, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 03:44, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

  If that is the case, from where do you get the information necessary to write a sufficient article about said place? --Jayron32 13:17, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Jayron32 - I think it is important to remember that Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia and the ultimate goal here is to write encyclopaedia articles. There has never, ever been a consensus that Wikipedia should suddenly become something other than an encyclopaedia when covering geographical features. At most, it has been described as having "features of ... gazetteers" in WP:5P, which is an essay-level document, a phrase that was added as a un-discussed BOLD edit in 2008 and has never been substantially endorsed since as far as I've been able to determine. WP:GEOLAND refers to this section of WP:5P, but this is odd because WP:5P is supposed to be summary of the guidelines/policies, not a basis for them, meaning that this is essentially a circular reference. Having "features...of gazetteers" is anyway met by including the typical infobox information alongside encyclopaedic content - it does not require that we turn WP into a gazetteer. Anyway this is me getting a long way OT so I'll stop here. FOARP (talk) 14:45, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Having features of a gazetteer can mean "naming a populated place on a list of populated places". I've never said, and I will never say, that information about such populated places needs to be stricken from Wikipedia entirely, but having a stand-alone article should be reserved for topics that can support a stand-alone article. If all we can say about a place is that it exists and nothing more, it is sufficient to mention that it exists elsewhere. We don't have to give it a stand-alone article. --Jayron32 14:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree 100%. FOARP (talk) 15:10, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh, and one thing I would also add to my response to Atlantic306 is that census's are not generally reliable sources for whether a place is legally recognised unless they plainly state that a place is legally recognised by, e.g., stating that a location is a kind of legally-recognised location (e.g., that it is a type of location with e.g., a town council or mayor). We have had far too many situations in which someone has assumed that every location mentioned in a census was a legally recognised populated place when they were instead e.g., farms, pumps, factories, neighbourhoods, railway sidings, marshalling yards, railway stations, bridges, fords, wells, springs etc. etc. etc.. And even with that evidence, the goal is still to write an encyclopaedia article, because WP is an encyclopaedia and does not suddenly become something else when the topic is geography. FOARP (talk) 08:47, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Unfortunately you ignored the part of my comment that referred to the size and designation of the place as being at least a village. From most government census' there are at least two paragraphs of information available regarding population, education, occupations, number of families, local government and so on. Also, I believe you are out of step with current practice that is to include stubs on villages and towns regardless of depth of coverage providing they are reliably verified however disappointing that might be for deletionists, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:40, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I've just read your essay Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a gazetteer which is interesting but I don't think that all census' should be dismissed because of some poor ones, rather a case by case evaluation would be more accurate. Also i've seen senior editors and admin making the case that Wikipedia does have a role as a gazeteer, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:51, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Atlantic306 - I agree that gazetteers and census data should always be evaluated case-by-case. There's a continuum in both cases from single-line statistical data about a location to 1-200 word or more descriptive coverage, and there's things they're good for and things they're not good for. Most GNIS and GNS data is from the lower end of that spectrum. I think a very basic but passing article can be written based on data from the high end of that spectrum, but that many, many articles on Wikipedia at present are from the lower end of that spectrum. The reason they are kept is because of the idea that Wikipedia is a gazetteer and that any geographic location should get an article, which is something no consensus on here has ever determined. Even mentioning gazetteers in 5P was simply the result of an undiscussed BOLD edit. Anyway, I'm going OT again so I'll stop. FOARP (talk) 19:00, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• Option 2 for locations / coordinates, Option 5 otherwise. The most important thing to recognize about this source is that it is essentially always going to be WP:PRIMARY, which is the reason it can't be used for anything that would imply interpretation or analysis. This is also something that needs to be taken into consideration even when using it for locations or coordinates; they can't be used in any way that would carry unsourced implications or which involve interpretation or analysis. It can be used to fill out simple uncontroversial coordinates on articles, of course, but there needs to be caution about using it for anything else. --Aquillion (talk) 10:06, 9 November 2021 (UTC)
• option 6 as its primary purpose is to record toponyms. That said, my experience with it has not been positive. It seems to have a habit of copying from whatever maps might be available, and for instance when we were going through Somali villages, we found numerous cases where there was nothing at all at the spot given. Any use of GNS has to be checked against other sources. Mangoe (talk) 02:24, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Mangoe - Probably imported from some 1960's or earlier US military map. At least with GNIS the locals are more likely to try to get obviously-wrong information fixed, but who's going to complain in Somalia? FOARP (talk) 09:02, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

• I am absolutely with Jayron32 here. Geonet should never be a sole source for a standalone article. We recently had a disaster with Iranian localities imported from GeoNet which had in the end to be mass-deleted since there were serious doubts as whether those exist or ever existed. Geonet can be used for coordinate (and to be honest it is not better than Google Maprs, and certainly not better than the OpenStreet Map - yes, sure I am aware of how the OpenStreetMap is organized and that it is not a reliable source by any means). However, there is no way it can justify creation of a standalone article.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:26, 23 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5, and this is a demonstration of exactly why we should not have permastubs on "populated places" when there is not a substantial quantity of reliable, independent reference material about them. The "gazetteer" function could be fulfilled by lists when all we have is some basic database information about a place (coordinates, population, etc.), such as "List of populated places in Example County, Somestate" in the US, or by similar administrative divisions elsewhere. We can say "Yes, we should include gazetteer information about such places when we have it", and do so, without these masses of permastub pseudo-"articles". Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 06:05, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

It should be noted that nowhere presently on Wikipedia is it said that Wikipedia necessarily has a gazetteer function, nor has there ever been any consensus of any kind expressed anywhere that I've been able to identify saying it should. The term "gazetteer" was added to WP:5P in an undiscussed bold edit in 2008 and has recently been replaced with "reference works" after a talk-page discussion there. We include elements of reference works (a term that includes gazetteers) within encyclopaedic articles, and this includes lists of smaller communities within a larger community, but we are an encyclopaedia and do not simply become something else when writing about geographical locations. Even WP:GEOLAND#1 doesn't necessarily require that bare gazetteer listings be included as articles - instead it is assumed that a legally-recognised populated place will have enough sourcing for an encyclopaedic article to be written about it. FOARP (talk) 09:00, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, certainly, only the notable ones should be standalone articles, and we've always made a mistake trying to make the non-notable ones into individual permastubs. But I don't have any objection to a list for a particular administrative region, with the non-notable ones being simple list entries—population, coordinates, area, whatever data it is that is always provided in a census or the like. But I think people confuse "We should include this information" and "We should include this information in a standalone article." This is a case where I agree with the first, but not the second. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 12:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Absolutely. The problem is that there are a lot of users trying to inflate their created article count, so the articles get created anyway, and then it is vertually impossible to redirect them to lists, every discussion would at best end up as no consensus.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, people thought the fiction cleanup was hopeless for ever getting done, too—until it happened. So don't give up just yet. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 16:34, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

• Option 5 with the caveat that GNS sometimes was pulled from old, problematic sources, such as old war maps made by people not familiar with the area. GNS should be ignored if there are no sources from the area in question actually verifying that the places exist. Hog Farm _Talk 17:11, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5 per all above, and emphasizing that it is a primary source, and should never be the sole source for a stand-alone page. Levivich 19:52, 24 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2 whether it is RS depends on context; or option 5. So it seems official, and reflecting maps... but the map is not the territory (nor notability) and perhaps the United States spelling is Connaught while Britain spells it Connacht. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5 - Wikipedia is not a gazetteer. Databases in general are primary sources which can be used as sources for population, coordinates, etc, but significant coverage in secondary sources is needed in order to establish notability. –dlthewave ☎ 20:25, 1 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5 Would be happy to see any mass-produced articles sourced solely to GNS deleted. Reywas92^Talk 15:04, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3, just a bad database with frequently incorrect coordinates. Users will point to it in disputes as if it was the last word. I wouldn't even mind if Option 4 was the consensus. Abductive (reasoning) 03:39, 3 December 2021 (UTC)
• Option 6, though I agree with Hog Farm's caveat. Like all tertiary sources (which it is; someone called it a primary source, but it doesn't actually qualify as one), it is only as reliable as its own source material. I can't go with option 3, since "has some mistakes in it" doesn't translate to "generally unreliable".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  15:43, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
• Waffling non-vote Years ago I used this database in conjunction with creating entries for all habitable locations in Ethiopia, so I am very familiar with this source. What I found was that this database was full of duplicates, had mingled settlements, mountains, & other geographical locations -- such as isolated churches. (And I suspect its entries are drawn from sources of different levels of reliability.) Cross-checking its entries against other databases (such as the Ethiopian national census, which did list towns & villages it recognized), I often found the names it provided did not match with other sources. In short, I had to use it with care.
  That said, I did find it a help at times verifying these smaller settlements, & sometimes providing a clue to identify a community known by several dissimilar names, but I wouldn't trust its information without independent corroboration. Unfortunately, for some parts of the world GEOnet will be the best source we can expect. -- llywrch (talk) 20:55, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

(good humored 'dig') Oh, so it was you who created all that stuff I'm having to clean up! Platonk (talk) 21:16, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

• Option 6, generally reliable for these purposes. MB 16:10, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (GNS)

Notified: [[centralized discussion]]. FOARP (talk) 10:25, 23 November 2021 (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.

gotquestions.org and tektonics.org

I seek the deprecation of gotquestions.org and tektonics.org. See MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#gotquestions.org. tgeorgescu (talk) 17:48, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Reason: they're WP:SPS. What we won't do is quote amateur theologians who play hide and seek with their religious affiliations. tgeorgescu (talk) 23:21, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Am I correct in thinking this source is only used one time on the entire project? ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Kino-teatr and AlloCine

Hello, I would like to find out if the website https://www.kino-teatr.ru/ is considered a reliable source? As well as https://www.allocine.fr/, Thank you

About La voce Delle Voci, again

This Italian-language news website ([11]), although sells conspiracy theories ([12] (in Chinese)), and I had asked that it be deprecated (cf. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 359), no other Wikipedians responded, meaning this website is still not deprecated, despite some articles use it as a "credible" source (e.g. Camouflage passport & International Parliament for Safety and Peace). In here I made the same proposal again. Hope that Wikipedians who are proficient at both Italian and Chinese can verify my claim that it is unreliable thus should be deprecated and discuss whether or not to deprecate it. Thanks!😁--RekishiEJ (talk) 15:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC) fixed capitalization a bit and added the URL of the official website of La voce Delle Voci 15:32, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Politico update?

Due to the complexity related to WP:PIA, should there be there be changes to the WP:RSP listing of Politico similar to Fox News and Newsweek?

Below are a few proposals:

• Proposal 1: Create a note of a potential bias with current listing
• Proposal 2: Create a listing similar to the current Fox News listing specifically for Israel-Palestine topics, e.g. WP:GREL Politico (American politics) and WP:MREL Politico (Israel-Palestine topics)
• Proposal 3: Create a listing similar to the current Newsweek listing for the overall reliability of Politico, e.g. WP:GREL Politico (pre-2021) and WP:MREL Politico (2021–present)

Thanks for any support or comments ahead of time!--WMrapids (talk) 06:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (Politico)

Comment: Opening an RfC as recent changes could pose potential issues for WP:PIA related articles that have been subject to arbitration, requiring the community to take a look at updating an existing WP:RSP listing.

Knowing how controversial WP:PIA articles are, I do not even participate in them. However, the recent acquisition of Politico by Axel Springer SE has raised concerns about the company's journalistic objectivity. Haaretz has said that a "pro-Israel policy" now exists at Politico while FAIR wrote that pro-Israel advocacy was introduced and its parent company has "No semblance of objectivity".

Currently, I made an edit recognizing this new distinction of a possible pro-Israel bias.--WMrapids (talk) 06:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• These are concerns about possible bias rather than reporting on actual biased material, so I think it's too early to add such clarifications. FAIR, being a media bias watchdog, criticise everyone which does not mean we should add their every comment to the WP:RSP. As an example, should we say that the NYT is biased towards billionaires based on this? Alaexis_¿question? 06:57, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Alaexis: You are missing the point. The alleged support is not only sourced by FAIR and is more than a simple bias, it is now company policy. As Haaretz notes, Mathias Döpfner says that support for Israel, a "united Europe" and free market economics "are like a constitution, they apply to every employee of our company" and that workers who do not comply "should not work for Axel Springer, very clearly".--WMrapids (talk) 22:19, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• Worth noting that Haaretz's source, the WSJ, phrases it in a slightly more nuanced manner, as "support for ... Israel's right to exist", rather than "support for Israel", with the former appearing to be much more limited than the latter. On the EU and free market economics, though two match, although the WSJ phrases the later as "support for ... a free-market economy". BilledMammal (talk) 09:12, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• If there are RS stating that politico is biased in one field, then it should be mentioned at "perennial sources". Cinadon36 07:06, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Cinadon36: Well, Haaretz, currently recognized as generally reliable, has described Politico as "pro-Israel", which is why it is currently mentioned. Are you agreeing with proposal 1?--WMrapids (talk) 07:30, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes @WMrapids: I am for proposal 1. Apologies for not making that clear in my previous comment. Cinadon36 07:34, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

The Haaretz itself marked as biased regarding the conflict Shrike (talk) 10:26, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• The Haaretz source references an interview in the Wall Street Journal, where Springer CEO stated that he expects "Politico staffers to adhere to Axel Springer-wide guiding principles include support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy, among others." If we are to consider them biased on any one of these topics on this basis then we must consider them biased on all - but I don't believe that this is sufficient evidence for doing so. I would also note that FAIR (1 2) was a controversial source a decade ago; I don't know if things have changed since then? BilledMammal (talk) 07:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @BilledMammal: Thanks for bringing up the background on FAIR. It looks like one of those discussions was regarding a singular opinion on FAIR's website? Since there are multiple sources involved with the description of Politico and we are not using WP:OR, should there be less issues with this? Again, this discussion was created as a collective effort to make decisions on how to describe Politico as a source (especially in the context of WP:PIA), with this decision being based on descriptions from reliable sources.--WMrapids (talk) 22:43, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• Bad RfC. What is your brief and neutral statement? Make the case for the change in the discussion, not in the same section that you're introducing the RfC question. This should be procedurally closed if the RfC prompt isn't cleaned up. — Mhawk10 (talk) 08:12, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• I would think the discussion should also ask whether a note should be added to the RSP entry, rather than starting with a note added and asking if we should go further - particularly as the note says "recognized as", rather than the softer terminology used in the RFC statement of "possible". BilledMammal (talk) 08:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @BilledMammal: I can agree with the softer terminology and thank you for noting this. @Mhawk10:, not too familiar with RfCs and this was my best attempt of bringing up the issue at hand while trying to remain neutral, but I can move the details to this discussion section.--WMrapids (talk) 22:03, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• News Sources should not be used by encyclopedias I'm going to keep harping on this but I don't think news sources, like Politico, are relevant to an encyclopedia project. As such, on the basis of it being a news source, I'd recommend against its use on Wikipedia. Period. Simonm223 (talk) 13:35, 2 December 2021 (UTC)
• Bad RfC as above. RfC isn't for general discussion. As for not using news sources, that makes no sense to me. A large number of our articles are of necessity heavily based on news sources. Doug Weller talk 16:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Doug Weller: This is not just for general discussion, this is about changing a WP:RSP listing that was already determined through a previous RfC. --WMrapids (talk) 22:31, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Doug Weller: I am very consistent in my opinion that any article that depends on newsmedia to have "reliably" sourced entries is probably subject to far too much WP:RECENTISM to be treated as encyclopedic in scope. I am sure you will recall this is far from the first time I've decried the use of newsmedia to bulk up Wikipedia's vain attempts to be a news aggregator. Simonm223 (talk) 14:57, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• Elaborate on how it is WP:BIASED but otherwise wait and see. While the current version says a "small number" of editors consider it biased, this obviously changes that and we ought to discuss it and elaborate a bit on, more specifically, the ways that the new policy biases it - it seems hard to interpret an outright policy setting rigid ideological expectations any other way. But beyond a note about potential bias, that alone isn't enough to affect a source's reliability. We should come back later once there has been time for secondary sources to discuss the actual impact that this policy had on the accuracy of their reporting before we do anything beyond elaborating on their bias. --Aquillion (talk) 05:36, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

• @Aquillion: Not trying to put words in your mouth, but are you implying that you support Option 1? And did you mean "reliability" instead of "notability"?--WMrapids (talk) 20:51, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Oops, yes, reliability. And the current version already notes bias concerns, but I suppose I'd say 'option 1 in terms of expanding that note, since clearly this makes the bias concerns more significant; it just needs a few additional words per [13] mentioning that they have potential bias stemming from a controversial statement of guiding principles that requires support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy. It's important to note that the ideological requirements to work at Politico under the new management go beyond just stuff about Israel. I'd also note that while some people say we should wait and see to even note the bias, we do have coverage indicating that the policy changes introduce bias - we need to wait and see for more information about their reliability, definitely, but when a source openly declares their bias and says that people who don't share those views shouldn't work there, there isn't really anything left to debate or to wait and see on. --Aquillion (talk) 21:02, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• Bad RfC As per others. Also "Israel right to exist" is shared by every respectable newspaper on the right and on the left so I don't see any real bias issues --Shrike (talk) 17:19, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
• Bad RfC. Provide a statement that describes the situation in as neutral tone as is possible. This isn't optional, it's part of the RfC process. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 18:56, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: @Shrike: @Shibbolethink: Can you explain how the updated proposal is not neutral? This is easy to change without dismissing the proposals entirely. How else would you make a proposal more neutral when you have to raise an issue like this? Shrike, no one is arguing about Israel's "right to exist", this is about reliable sources discussing a possible pro-Israel bias, with one RS writing that "New Politico Owner Says Will Enforce pro-Israel Policy". So let's not move the goalposts on this. Notes of bias are present throughout the WP:RSP listings; an example of this would be the the WP:RSP listing for the Anti-Defamation League ("Some editors consider the ADL a biased source for Israel/Palestine related topics that should be used with caution, if at all").--WMrapids (talk) 20:40, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  I would want to see an overall landscape of how different sources view Politico, not just the negative criticism. That is one way I think it could be improved if it were reopened. At this point, I agree it is A) likely premature and B) not likely to achieve a lasting consensus on this issue. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 20:56, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

  The point is the premise of "Israel right to exist" is not sign of any bias as it supported by almost by everyone Shrike (talk) 05:37, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• This RFC is premature at this point and I believe it should be closed. If actual problems arise in the future we can revisit the issue then. Calidum 20:47, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• Just to be clear, while I can understand waiting and seeing in terms of reliability (which is more about their long-term reputation), when it comes to WP:BIAS, we already have several pieces (like the WSJ) describing the statement of principles requiring support for a united Europe, Israel’s right to exist and a free-market economy. If that isn't sufficient to consider a source biased, what sort of coverage are you waiting on? (ie. what would convince you, in terms of what we should wait for before running a second RFC?) Because AFAIK we have normally taken overt statements of intent from a company to cover particular topics in particular ways, coupled with secondary sourcing covering those statements, as sufficient to describe them as WP:BIASED in those areas. --Aquillion (talk) 21:10, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• I suppose it will come down to the question of whether these positions are "extraordinary" and indicate bias. Their full "Principles and Values" as of October 2021 are as follows:

1. We stand up for freedom, the rule of law, democracy and a united Europe.
2. We support the Jewish people and the right of existence of the State of Israel.
3. We advocate the transatlantic alliance between the United States of America and Europe.
4. We uphold the principles of a free market economy and its social responsibility.
5. We reject political and religious extremism and all forms of racism and sexual discrimination.

To me, none of these come across as "extraordinary", and many of them align with editorial guidelines issued by other organizations, such as the BBC on racism; it comes close in a few areas ("united Europe" and "transatlantic alliance"), but even there I don't feel the principles themselves cross the line, and so I would want to see the implications of that in practice before we rule on whether it is biased in such areas. BilledMammal (talk) 22:22, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

While it seems unusual to me to have an explicit editorial line like that at the level of the parent company, it is not really all that much different from a newspaper stating its editorial line outright. The Guardian describes its parent as a safeguard to its “liberal values”, for example, while the opinion pages of the WSJ are run under the banner of support for “democratic self-government and the freedom of individuals to make their own economic choices.” If Politico’s news content is shifted in after its acquisition by Axel Springer; then there might be ample concerns about WP:BIASED. But, such bias does not appear to be showing up thus far. — Mhawk10 (talk) 14:26, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Yes, we usually want RfC's to have more specific bullet points than this, but stepping back from the procedural nitty-gritty, I'd say it's pretty clear that we should note the owner's stated intent to push an ideological line. XOR'easter (talk) 17:05, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

  Do they plan to do this mainly through opinion pieces, or will this affect news coverage? If it is the former, then is it really unlike the British quality press? — Mhawk10 (talk) 23:15, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose This is a misunderstanding of the policy in question and the discussion it has triggered: Axel Springer, as a German publisher founded in the immediate aftermath of the war, adopted these principles and values to signal a clear break with Nazi ideology and to align itself with center-right politics during the cold war, supporting NATO and transatlanticism in contrast to ideas of the time to triangulate between the US and the Soviet Union.

The actual statements (see above) are vague, and you won't find a single mainstream US journalist who would disagree with them. "Democracy dies in Darkness", the Washington Post prints in its masthead every weekday. Should we note that the paper has an obvious pro-democracy (or anti-darkness) bias? That the issue has come up is mostly due to Springer's inability to find a good way of denying claims that they are abandoning those principles. When they say they "expect" staff follow these principles, it is meant as a descriptive argument supporting the decision not to make them sign the document in writing. And they want to avoid the latter because the whole act is a pompous anachronism that only barely works for their German employees, where they can point at tradition to legitimize it. --K. Oblique 12:12, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox revisited

I'm concerned that Vox does not clearly distinguish fact from opinion. For example, this recent article opens and closes with an opinionated statement about invasive species from the author's perspective (including the headline), although it presents attributed opinions from others. There are other examples, but I don't have the time to seek them out. The main page of this website also does not segregate op-eds, as other mainstream news sites like The Guardian do. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 16:48, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

That is correct. Vox should be treated as analysis or opinion source, which means that generally it should be attributed. It does not even pretend to be news, rather than "explanatory journalism".

In your example the author uses first person singular: "I posed this question to ..." The author is not introduced in their profile and does not seem to have any other articles under their belt for Vox.

Another random example, from the front page: "I will conclude by reiterating a point I've made several times before; that the most important question in Dobbs is not whether the Court writes the magic words "Roe v. Wade is overruled."[14] Millhiser does not seem to have strong journalistic credentials: before joining Vox, they wrote columns for Thinkprogress. And so on. Politrukki (talk) 22:42, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

My concern is that this is not mentioned in the website's WP:RSP entry. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 06:13, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this a problem and should be reflected in the RSP entry and color. WP:RSOPINION is toothless if people can just get around it by using outlets like Vox to recycle opinions as fact. Right-wing outlets that mix fact and opinion like this are considered unreliable, as are some left-wing ones, and that should be applied here too. Crossroads ^-talk- 08:53, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

What specific text in which specific Wikipedia articles is that Vox piece being used as a citation? --Jayron32 14:45, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

While I enjoy reading Vox, it is, by its own admission (see its about us and ethics pages), "explanatory journalism", which I like and value, but I also recognize is something different than straight news journalism. It's opinion/analysis. I'm not sure they do any actual news reporting or even real investigative journalism. I could be wrong about that, I haven't read everything they've published of course. But we shouldn't be citing to Vox analysis for statements in wikivoice. I agree it shouldn't be green at RSP, and the RSN threads linked there are old (2014, 2017, 2020) and/or don't really grapple with general reliability (especially the 2020 one). I don't think those linked RSN threads support a green listing as it stands now, but would support an RfC and would probably !vote to mark it yellow (use with attribution only). Levivich 14:58, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree Vox tends to wear its opinions on its sleeves, but when you distill out the facts, they are still reliable and engage in proper editorial practices. As more and more sources take this type of accountability journalism approach, I think we can't rule out their reliability, just know when the writer is speaking in a subjective voice versus an objective voice (eg per WP:YESPOV). We need editors to be fully aware of how to use such articles, not only from Vox but other sources in the future. --Masem (t) 15:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you think it should be yellow to alert editors to this? I fear if it's green, editors will just adopt it in wikivoice without question, and any editor who questions that will be told it's green at RSP, end of discussion. Levivich 15:21, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Given that what's happening with Vox is indicative of many other nominally reliable sources, I don't think it should change as the source is still good, but one just has to be more careful of what's included in wikivoice. --Masem (t) 16:05, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is exceptional in mixing opinion and fact, and does not even purport to do otherwise. Many editors are of the mindset that an opinion in a green-listed source becomes a fact that we can state in wikivoice, and this leads to laundering of POV into fact. I support Levivich's proposal. Crossroads ^-talk- 20:10, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Heartily seconded. It's position on https://adfontesmedia.com/ is not impressive, but I actually think it's overly generous. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 22:58, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Masem (and others), not always proper. Vox has edited this 2020 analysis several times. It has issued maybe four editor's notes, but hasn't actually corrected the article, except for some details; a poor journalistic practice that is sadly becoming a norm. The Washington Post reported on this (calls Vox "explanatory news site"). The Vox analysis was cited in this discussion. Has the piece ever been used in mainspace? No idea, but it could have caused a major blunder. Some editors in the discussion argued that Vox is a reliable source specifically because RSP says so.

I wish people would stop citing RSP like it's some kind of kind of religious document. I cite Vox sometimes, but rarely for stating some in Wikipedia's voice and never before careful consideration. Mainstream papers like The Washington Post publish pieces that are blogs or news analysis. We consider them less reliable for facts than news articles even though the publisher is the same. Politrukki (talk) 16:19, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Unless I am misreading, those updates reflect changes to the scientific consensus that happened after the article was published. Updates and corrections like that are laudable and are signs of a WP:RS, but it's especially absurd to blame them for not being able to see the future. --Aquillion (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Some language was softened, but editors did not do – and have refused to do – major corrections. Barclay asserted as fact something that was not established as fact. Barclay opined that "We'll need to be patient for Chinese investigators to get to the bottom of how the virus made the jump from animals to humans." That's just naïf pandering to China, which contributed to making it more difficult to get to the bottom of finding origins. Politrukki (talk) 11:55, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:HEADLINE has us well-covered here. Once you're past the headline, I don't see any issue with this one article. "Explanatory journalism" is not a reason to say a source is less reliable. Firefangledfeathers 15:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is more of an opinion magazine that also publishes news, rather than a news magazine that also publishes opinions. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 17:35, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

@力: I agree. This is an apt description. In full fairness, some well-trusted papers such as the Economist do publish a large number of editorial articles, but in that case the paper’s impartiality and factual accuracy is highly regarded - not to the same wide extent in the case of Vox. thorpewilliam (talk) 12:32, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

The headline is just covered by WP:HEADLINES. I don't agree with the argument that Vox largely publishes opinion, and especially with the argument that it leans more towards publishing opinion than most other online news sites today, which is simply wrong. See eg. the discussion of their data-driven explanatory news approach here. Nothing there, in their mission statement or articles indicates that they are primarily about opinion, and they have significant use by others that treats them as factual, nor has anyone actually presented any reason to think that beyond "it just reads to me that way", which isn't grounded in anything and which I certainly disagree with. Having a bias is insufficient to treat a source as opinion (though they are not unusually biased; eg. [15] puts them in the same category as the Washington Post, the New Yorker, NBC News, and so on). And in the absence of any other real evidence, some of the arguments above, by saying "it reads as opinion to me", are basically saying "I disagree with their analysis and the conclusions they make, therefore it is mere opinion and not staid factual analysis." That isn't how it works - their articles go through a rigorous fact-checking and editorial process comparable to those at other high-quality news sources, and are therefore appropriate to cite for facts in the article voice. It's also factually incorrect to say that they do not segregate opinion - they have a First Person section for that. In terms of WP:USEBYOTHERS, see [16][17][18][19]. The New York Times describes Vox as a site known for explanatory journalism and podcasts. The Washington Post describes it as a digital-news site. I'm not seeing any particularly compelling arguments above to question these usages and assessments. --Aquillion (talk) 21:29, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you understand that your argument "are basically saying 'I disagree with their analysis and the conclusions they make, therefore it is mere opinion and not staid factual analysis'" can be turned against you? I.e. you are simply treating Vox as straight news because you agree with their viewpoints. That's not how this works. You didn't address the usage of first person singular: if a Vox writer says "I", do they refer to Vox as a person? Has Vox shared their pronouns?

Take a look at this editorial: It's Not Just Jennifer Lawrence: Women In Pop Culture Are Under Attack by VanDerWerff. It's not labelled opinion/editorial, which it obviously is. I haven't even read the article, yet I know it's an opinion piece because smarter people have said so. In this paper the author explicitly calls it an editorial: "Similarly, the editorials connected the privacy needs of the victims and the privacy needs of "regular women." In Vox, ... VanDerWerff wrote". The Los Angeles Times editorial that is mentioned next is properly labelled opinion. (Another Vox editorial included in the study is mentioned by name only.)

What is "Evaluating the scale, growth, and origins of right-wing echo chambers on YouTube", the source you are citing? Preprint? Has it been published in some academic journal? Have you or A. C. Santacruz and XOR'easter who cited you read the source? It's some kind of research about Youtube channels. You say it "puts them in the same category as the Washington Post, the New Yorker, NBC News, and so on", but Vox Youtube channel is also in the same box with "Drunken Peasants", The Grayzone, "The Jimmy Dore Show", "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", and "The View" (apparently refers to The View (talk show)). In the same source BuzzFeed News, The Intercept, and ProPublica are labelled "far left". The authors didn't come up with the labels, but rather picked them from other sources. [23] used Ad Fontes Media and Media Bias Factcheck, [20] apparently labelled Vox per Media Bias Factcheck, though it's not 100% clear to me at this juncture.

Columbia Journalism Review published a piece that covers "best and the worst of recent works of data journalism". Tanveer Ali picks a Vox piece and obviously treats it as an example of the latter. Ali writes "The Vox author seems to be banking on the reader having preconceived notions of life in Tehran rather than explaining what qualities it shares with the St. Louis suburb. ... the reporting and evidence is sorely lacking in the Vox piece to tie the cities with this piece of data ... Other than clickbait, we don't see any reason for the Vox story to exist. [20]

In Information Today (Oct2014, Vol. 31 Issue 8, p17-18. 2p.) Mick O'Leary writes "Overall, Vox's explanations work well. The staffers are adept at breaking down extensive news stories into easily comprehended short pieces ... Vox is noticeably left wing. There is more than one way to explain a controversial story, and Vox's interpretations lean to the left. This is fine by itself, but people of different political persuasions may identify Vox as a leftwing site that's to be avoided". (Some of O'Leary's criticism that I have omitted is much outdated: missing "About" page, lack of editorial policy, the dominant role of Ezra Klein, etc.)

In Reason, Bobby Soave largely criticises the analysis of Vox's David Roberts: "It's also true that Vox, The New York Times, CNN, et al are closer to neutral than Breitbart or Fox News. But let's not pretend these outlets have ever been very interested in playing nice with conservatives. And in cases where they were willing to humor a conservative perspective, they are often punished for it.

Sometimes Vox publishes two pieces that largely cover a topic from two different viewpoints. For example in 2016 Matt Yglesias wrote a piece critical of a Associated Press story. A day later Jeff Stein criticised Yglesias: "On Tuesday, my editor Matt Yglesias argued that that [sic] there's an 'absence of any clear evidence of actual misconduct.' ... By some criteria, Yglesias is certainly right ... But the money in politics experts argued that these aren't the only standards of wrongdoing by which we can or should judge Clinton."[21] So the question is, which of these pieces, if any, we as Wikipedia editors should treat as news? I would say neither and to me this and similar incidents indicate that Vox is not consistently partisan.

By the way, Yglesias was smoked out from Vox for unrelated reasons. The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf writes in an editorial that Yglesias's "absence as a staffer ... will make the publication he co-founded less ideologically diverse at a moment when negative polarization makes that attribute important to the country".[22]

I don't think anyone is saying or should be saying that Vox never labels opinion pieces. LaundryPizza03 said "does not segregate op-eds, as other mainstream news sites like The Guardian do", which is true. The fact is that the type of Vox articles that are most commonly cited in English Wikipedia – and I'm not talking about "Recode", "The Verge", and such – are opinion/analysis articles that are not labelled such. Levivich wrote that "use with attribution only". I don't subscribe to that. My view is that editors should assume that Vox is publishing analysis/opinion and carefully consider whether a piece can be cited, not rely on a "green" RSP listing. If the answer is yes, then decide whether content should be attributed per NEWSORG, WP:RSOPINION, NEWSBLOG, and WP:BIASED. Politrukki (talk) 11:02, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Like Aquillion, I'm not seeing particularly compelling arguments to change the status quo in a significant way. On a case-by-case basis, it might be appropriate to cite a Vox item as attributed opinion, but that's really just business as usual. Concerns that "it's green at RSP" could end a discussion seem disconnected with how discussions actually happen around here. XOR'easter (talk) 21:55, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Concur. Vox is fine. Attribute if you're particularly concerned. A few editors here think that if they can claim "bias" then factual reliability doesn't hold, and that's not how anything has ever worked here - David Gerard (talk) 02:09, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. "Vox is fine", "A few editors here think that if they can claim "bias" then factual reliability doesn't hold, and that's not how anything has ever worked here". https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/ grades Vox as Hard Left bias, as "Mostly Factual", as it has failed two major fact-checks, while only publishing one retraction. "In review, Vox looks at the issues from a progressive liberal perspective, and there is also an anti-Trump tone in their reporting. Therefore, the majority of stories are pro-left and anti-right. Further, Vox publishes stories with emotionally loaded headlines." - EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Status Quo. Agree with @David Gerard here. All news is biased. What matters is their reputation for reporting facts accurately. And nothing about that has changed wrt Vox. — Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 19:00, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Disagree. "All news is biased." Actually, not it isn't. The wire services aim for pure objectivity and get the closest (AFP, AP, Reuters). Vox is in nowhere near the same category of these venerable institutions. "What matters is their reputation for reporting facts accurately" - their reputation for that is poor, graded as "Mostly Factual" by https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/vox/ - EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 21:10, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Encyclopedias shouldn't be news aggregators while I concur with @David Gerard that Vox is no more or less reliable than any other journalistic source I also am of the opinion that journalistic sources are inappropriate for an encyclopedia per my usual complaint regarding newsmedia and the proliferation of WP:RECENTISM - however I would make sure it's understood that I would say the same thing about the Guardian, the CBC, CNN or China Daily as sources. Simonm223 (talk) 17:01, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Aquillion's reasoning above. Don't see any compelling reason to reassess Vox. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 23:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Comment. Concerned with some of the language used here, such as "Vox is no more or less reliable than any other journalistic source". C'mon, we're better than that, surely? AP, AFP, Reuters, BBC - these are much more fact-based news outlets than the likes of Vox. I was excited when Vox rolled out, with its manifesto of "explanatory journalism", and I knew Ezra Klein's work. Thus I felt equally betrayed when it turned out to not only be below-par when it came to fact-checking, but more importantly fell into the same, safe, lazy NY/DC bubble of received opinion - for all the millions that was invested and all the talk of a new type of online journalism, turns out it's basically a re-hashing of what one can already expect to read on the NY Times opinion pages... but with only the left liberal pieces. I don't know what it is about the USA (being non USAianese myself), but the mainstream media just seem incapable of creating a news outlet that doesn't play party politics, and just, well, does what Vox was supposed to do, explain sh*t to people! Rant over! Vox sux. EnlightenmentNow1792 (talk) 22:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Concur with the rest, the status quo is fine. The presented article has two sentences at the end that can be described as the author's opinion, if anything this is restrained, most news publications publish similar articles in line with their individual editorial standpoints. Headlines in general are not reliable, which is already covered at WP:HEADLINES. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 10:53, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: At the very least, the listing should be updated to mention that Vox does not always distinguish fact from opinion in line with evidence provided, and that editors should determine whether an article is fact or opinion before using it. BilledMammal (talk) 21:53, 12 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Absolutely not; nobody has presented any evidence beyond "it reads as opinion to me." Compare to eg. The Atlantic ([23]) - whose RSP entry currently simply says they are "generally reliable" - that is a source with much more serious problems distinguishing fact and opinion, especially their ideas page, which many editors insist on trying to treat as news; but even the rest of their coverage has a tone essentially similar to the articles that have some people's heckles up above, eg. [24]. If we're going to accept editors just making general readings like that and are going to write them into RSP entries, then a lot of existing RSP entries need to be re-evaluated - and that's a decision we should make as a general policy so as to avoid situations where editors just lash out at statements they disagree with and accept eg. the Atlantic ending articles with stuff like In the age of climate change, in other words, the beaches must remain a playground for the rich—now more than ever to provide the author's opinion on someone's comments. --Aquillion (talk) 22:21, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The “Ideas” section of The Atlantic is very clearly labeled WP:RSOPINION. That people manage to confuse it for news coverage means that this might be something that should be explicitly added to RSP to better explain the way that The Atlantic breaks out its sections. If the problem is editors' media literacy in distinguishing fact claims from claims, then it might be ok to open a discussion on how to better use that publication. — Mhawk10 (talk) 13:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Every news article has to be parsed for fact/opinion distinction at the granularity of individual claims. That remains true whether or not it categorizes articles as news or opinion. For example, if a source says, "It rained on December 10, and that was terrible," the first part necessarily has the character of a fact, and the second part the character of an opinion. Sennalen (talk) 02:31, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Have I missed something? Have we suddenly accepted mediabiasfactcheck.com as a reliable source? Doug Weller talk 12:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Vox is a generally high-quality source and editors should have enough media literacy to understand what is fact and what is opinion. I'm seeing no evidence of factual errors or a problem in the professionalism of its writers or its corrections process (well, there is one bit of evidence presented above but it's not enough to show a systemic issue). Green is good. If editors don't understand what the green means then that is either their problem or a wider WP:RSP problem. I've found editors don't understand what yellow means ("I can blindly revert your addition of this source and filibuster on the talk page to keep it out of the article"). — Bilorv (talk) 00:56, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Status Quo and I concur that no media bias site is a reliable source. Nor is "well it reads like opinion to me". No journalist simply lists dry facts, which means that all journalism contains some element of analysis. (And even if they did, which facts and in which order would still contain an element of analysis.) Vox is no different. That makes them the same as other news sources, not different. Loki (talk) 07:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Discogs -- material backed by photos (typically discographies, track listings, and some credits)

Executive summary: the listing for Discogs at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources is way off base and needs a serious update, regarding material backed by photos.

---

So, Discogs is listed at "Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources" as "Generally unreliable" ("Outside exceptional circumstances, the source should normally not be used... 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"), and the blurb is "The content on Discogs is user-generated, and is therefore generally unreliable. There was consensus against deprecating Discogs in a 2019 RfC, as editors noted that external links to the site may be appropriate."

This is entirely accurate and correct as far as it goes.

HOWEVER

The discographies and track listings, when backed up by photos (which is usual), are extremely reliable. The photos are 100% legit and what could be more reliable than a photo. Of course the labels could be wrong, but so could title pages of books etc. -- vanishingly rare. And track listing etc. are the primary, or anyway a major, use of the source.

For instance, here is the track listing for The Who Sell Out. I don't know who writes those, but they could be made up or just sloppy I suppose. However, if you click on the "more images" link, you'll come to a photo of the labels on the vinyl disc, which backs up the written track listing (essentially 100% of the time) and also gives, usually, songwriting and producing credits and the catalog number etc. (There isn't a separate URL for the photos.) I haven't yet seen any record which doesn' have photos like this.

The back cover is sometimes shown too, which back covers are 100% reliable for their contents ("According to the liner notes, it was recorded at sea") and >99% for their statements ("It was recorded at sea") which is plenty reliable.

So, the rating and blurb is not true. 'We need to update the listing at Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources I would say.

Exactly how I'm not sure. Since half of Discogs is essentially useless and half is really reliable, I'd split it into two lines. Not likely as we're hidebound here, so let's assume one line. We'd want to rewrite the blub ("...except for material, such as discographies, track listings, and credits, when backed by photographs") or whatever. Then the icon... probably should be changed to, I don't know, "Generally reliable in its areas of expertise", it' "areas of expertise" being record labels and jackets. There isn't an icon for "Half the material is essentially useless, and half is very reliable", so that's closest I guess.

Yes? Herostratus (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

So I agree there's an issue here. Discogs is (1) a wiki made of user-generated content; (2) near-infallible in my experience, and a vastly more useful and trustworthy discography source than almost any edited redigestion. I'm not sure how to resolve this - David Gerard (talk) 19:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Isn’t this kinda how Wikipedia is, though? I don’t see an exemption for us citing our own good (or even featured) articles, for example, even though they have gone under peer review. Likewise, I don’t see a way around the problem of the reliability of sites that are user-generated with limited editorial oversight. — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:59, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

well, precisely. OTOH, citing listings from photos on Discogs is basically citing the sleeves as sources, which we do - David Gerard (talk) 20:07, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

However, if you click on the "more images" link, you'll come to a photo of the labels on the vinyl disc, which backs up the written track listing Ok, so the source here is the labels on the disc and other information present on the album cover (the "liner notes"), and Discogs happens to host a picture of this source. Even though liner notes are a WP:PRIMARY source, I guess they are the most reliable source for information about an album. IMO a rough proposed amendment could be "Although the information on Discogs is user-generated content, Discogs often hosts pictures of an album's liner notes, which can be used as a source". JBchrch talk 20:15, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

Sounds not-bad to me. "as a WP:PRIMARY source" - David Gerard (talk) 01:39, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Heh. The division of sources into primary-secondary-tertiary was lifted partly from academic practice; we're a serious publication but not an academic one, and a pretty unique one, and it's not especially useful to us, and counterproductive to the extent that it's hammered into editors' heads that primary sources are bad. Herostratus (talk) 03:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

If Discogs gets its content from its images of the album covers, labels, and liner notes, why cite Discogs as the source? The info may be cited directly from the albums using {{Cite AV media}}. Discogs is just being used as an image provider, and the image may linked directly with |url= (Discogs includes a "Permalink" for the actual image[25]) and identified with |via=Discogs for those needing proof. —Ojorojo (talk) 15:58, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

This is pretty much the argument I'm making. What do you think of adding these instructions in a footnote to the proposed text? JBchrch talk 19:39, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh dang I didn't see the permalink thing. So yeah that would be OK. Whatever works best. For my part I'd rather link to the Discogs page, because for one thing who is going to know about the photos (I didn't), and for another the Discogs page is formatted to be pleasing to humans (in theory anyway), while the photos aren't as easy to read. And the human-readable text is backed up by the photos.

But As long as we fix it that's all I care, I'll go along with anything. If you all want to recommend citing the photos directly, fine, whatever we can get agreed to and written up at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources under the Discogs entry. I'm tired of people being like "You can't ref stuff to Discogs". Herostratus (talk) 03:36, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

In my experience, Discogs is very good for primary information: the stuff which can be lifted from a label or sleeve. For want of anything better, I imagine it's OK for details of parallel releases; though as I've never seen the need to use those, I've never checked. My concern is about Discogs hyperlinks, e.g. for songwriters and personnel (which, as a DABfixer, is what I usually find myself looking at). They generally seem good; but there's no guarantee that, say, the John Smith credited on a recording is actually the John Smith (57) or whoever at the other end of a hyperlink, and I prefer to have confirmatory evidence if I can get it. I treat biographical information as pure UGC, and never touch it (though it can be useful as confirmatory evidence). Narky Blert (talk) 06:27, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

No, just cite the album jacket directly. Don't cite user generated photos/uploads. Sergecross73 msg me 14:04, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

• Per Sergecross73, the citation is the album jacket itself. Discogs is a nice resource to find pictures of album jackets, but it should not be cited anymore than you would cite "Google Books" for a scan of a book, you cite the original work. --Jayron32 14:06, 6 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Yes (yes!), but that means we also need a sea change in perception of discographical information. I can't tell you how many times I have seen people tag or blank discography sections for being "unsourced" - because people do not think of albums as published works (which they are) or things that act as sources of their own existence and content (just like a bibliography section). It is absolutely silly for us to have a line in a discography that reads "Foo Album (Foo Records, 1800)", and then an in-line citation to "Liner notes, Foo Album, Foo Records, 1800." But novice users find it absolutely irresistible to cite Discogs when this information is (typically frivolously) challenged in that way.

Another note, sort of following on David Gerard's comment above: all of this puts us in the unenviable position of telling people to look at Discogs all the time for basic discographical information (just as they would look at Google Books or a library catalog for bibliographic information), while also telling them they can never use it as a reference. That's a bit of Wikipedia pretzel-logic, but I suppose it will be consensus. Chubbles (talk) 14:17, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

I would argue Discogs is a means to verify any claims whenever liner notes are mentioned as a source. Users are providing scans/shots of published works. It's a self-published source in a way where caution is stressed on its reliability. – The Grid (talk) 02:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Discogs is very useful, and where I always begin when I start album articles, but I agree with the previous discussion, consensus, etc. I generally cut and paste the song titles, for example, and then confirm via the images, and so often--or often enough--things are misspelled, out of order (even when accounting for specific releases/countries), missing symbols, etc. Or the song lengths don't match up to the images, so there's the discrepancy of the images being "correct", and the linked page being "wrong". Minor stuff, but I don't think it's any kind of burden to continue to cite the AV way, if necessary, or for Discogs to be under the external links, but am open to the discussion. To add a somewhat related wrinkle, I've come across a few times where the Discogs images are quite poor, or not there, and yet the eBay ones are great, ha... Caro7200 (talk) 14:10, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

R to JBchrch: Yes, it's basically the same point. I use Discogs and several other sites for their images and don't find them difficult to read. I believe it's preferable to cite the actual album notes as the source and remove any doubt about the accuracy of an unknown user gleaning the details themselves. As long as Discogs allows other info to be included along with the basic album note material without any idea of where it comes from, it cannot be considered a RS. There is also the problem of the large amount of advertising and unofficial video links that are potentially copyvio.

Maybe clarify your proposed amendment with something like "Discogs images of album covers, liner notes, etc., may be used for details about the release, but Discogs itself should not be cited as the source, since it includes other user-generated material". This may seem like nitpicking, but some editors feel that any use of UGC sites should be strongly discouraged.

—Ojorojo (talk) 14:42, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Alright then, in the interest of a unified front, count me in too with instruction to cite only to the photos. It already warns about Discogs so the second sentence isn't necessary. We want to be both succinct and comprehensive, so I'll suggest that we just add something short like "...except for photographs" in the main body, then a Cnote link to a note at the bottom of the page where it lays out the details... how we are mostly talking about pics of covers and labels, how to use the the permalink button in Discogs, a recommendation of using the CiteAV template, a link to this discussion, and anything else needed. This is done often enough on rules pages.

Note that there's no requirement to cite track listings etc. We don't have to express an opinion on that one way or the other. If an editor is of the mind "I don't need a cite as the work itself is a cite", fine. IMO you're taking that chance that someone will come along and tag or delete the material as uncited but you can if you want. Discogs is there for if you want to cite. Herostratus (talk) 17:51, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Implementation (Discogs)

It seems like there is consensus that pictures hosted on Discogs may be used as primary sources, using the appropriate templates. I've boldly edited WP:DISCOGS the RSP entry for Discogs to reflect this: [26]. Feedback is welcome. (I have not added a link to this discussion since, as I understand it, this will have to be done once this discussion is archived.) JBchrch talk 19:43, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Is Discogs in the "auto-reject" bucket of any of the spam-fighting bots? We should change that if so. Chubbles (talk) 19:54, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

It might even be possible to have most of the existing citations "repaired" (e.g., to use {{Cite AV media}} with a |via= to Discogs) by bot or AWB. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Before making such changes, there's another issue to consider: WP:LINKVIO. Does Discogs have the right to host these images? Nikkimaria (talk) 03:34, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Discogs removes copyrighted images. JBchrch talk 03:42, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

It may well. But there appear to be a significant number of images that are potentially still covered by copyright yet still posted there. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

That's entirely possible, but I would argue that if a website takes a commitment of this kind and creates a dedicated channel to report copyright infringement, we may assume that it's not hosting copyrighted material, and that LINKVIO is respected. Otherwise, links to Twitter, Facebook and Youtube—any UGC, really—would have to be nuked as well. JBchrch talk 04:12, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Er, no, we really can't assume that. See YouTube's entry at RSP - it would make sense to add something similar to its third sentence for Discogs. Nikkimaria (talk) 11:43, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, yes, of course Discogs is hosting copyrighted images - tons and tons of them. But they are not doing so in violation of copyright, and the dedicated channel noted above is part of their obvious good-faith effort to respect copyright law. Chubbles (talk) 12:02, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

On what basis do you believe they are hosting tons and tons of copyrighted images but are not in violation of copyright? Nikkimaria (talk) 14:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Discogs is (principally) an informational site and its use of copyrighted images is permitted by fair use/fair dealing provisions. It's perfectly consistent with copyright law for information sources to host a great deal of copyrighted content and still comport with copyright. Chubbles (talk) 18:29, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes it is, but it takes more than just being an informational site to get there, and direct linking as proposed is potentially problematic. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes it does, but Discogs's use is consistent with it; users are informed of intellectual property requirements at the time of upload of images, the claim of fair use in the images is explained in that process, and as noted above they have a means of contact for rightsholders to address issues. What, specifically, is potentially problematic such that Wikipedia should be circumspect? Chubbles (talk) 02:15, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

All of those things are AFAIK also true of YouTube - why should this site be treated differently? Nikkimaria (talk) 02:41, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

To be honest, the wording at RSP about YouTube should probably change, since, as you correctly state, YouTube (now) informs users of its rights requirements and aggressively enforces corporate copyright controls. But that's another RfC entirely. If the worry is that linking to Discogs might run afoul of contributory copyright infringement...that seems awfully remote - about as likely as it would be for linking to copyrighted websites hosted at the Wayback Machine. Chubbles (talk) 13:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem with we really can't assume that is that this line of reasoning would lead us to prohibit links to Commons, because Commons hosts a lot of copyrighted content for sure. JBchrch talk 16:21, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

No one is proposing a blanket prohibition, just caution along the lines of what we've got for YouTube, and a bit more consideration around how we approach citation. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

I guess the consensus is moving towards a Youtube-like disclaimer. Since you have reverted my edit [27]: is there anything else that's you oppose about this addition? JBchrch talk 00:23, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Given this issue, I have concerns about the proposed citation method, unless what was intended was more along the lines of what Jayron suggested? Nikkimaria (talk) 00:27, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

• See, you don't link, or even need to mention Discogs at all. If you're looking at a picture of the liner notes or track listing on Discogs, you cite the original liner notes. We don't cite "Google Books" if we're looking at a Google Books scan of a book, we cite the book itself. Same deal here. --Jayron32 13:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Right. Anyone who has UGC or potential copyvio concerns doesn't need to add the permalink link to Discogs nor mention it in via= (books are cited all the time without links/mentions of google). —Ojorojo (talk) 14:27, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah the copyright thing is a good point. Regardless of what uploaders sign off on, I can definitely see the point that using an entire album cover (front or back) as a bridge too far.

Album labels are quite different I think. They are almost always mere mechanical listings not really works of significant craft, they have no real commercial value, and the label (unlike the cover) is an insignificant part of the whole package so for Discogs to publish it under fair use is legit (I would think). I'm not even sure that labels specifically are copyrighted, altho I suppose they would fall under under the general rubric "everything here is copyrighted"

As to the need, I don't know, but should we be really be writing body-text passages like

"In 1963, Smith released the LP Songs From All Over (Paul Morris wrote the track "Heart of the Night" which was released as a single), but in 1965 was back as lead singer with the Monotones on the double-LP Little Bit of Loving. Smith wrote most of the songs, including "Where Do I Get Off" which ran over 14 minutes and took up all of side 4. Smith, along with Allison Smith, were the producers for that song; Lloyd Wingate produced the rest of the album."

With no references whatsoever (on grounds that the records themselves are the source), and standing on that if contested?

I just don't think that's going to fly with some people. Like it or not. You're going to get tagged, your material is going to get deleted. As a fact on the ground books and films are treated differently I guess. Can't help that but it is what it is no use denying it.

So, what I'm thinking is: 1) DO make a note that disc labels (only) from Discogs are fine. 2) Do NOT imply that they are required to use, they are there for anyone who WANTS to use them. (If necessary, clarify this.)

By using "only", we're indicating that disc labels but not record jackets etc are in play. I'm saying this because we want to get everybody on board here. I think (hope) that most of us would agree that the disc labels are trivial fair use, but the record-jacket thing is contested. Even if you personally think that record jackets at Discogs are ok to ref too, in the interests of compromising to get consensus, let's put them out of play shall we? Perfect is the enemy of good enough. Herostratus (talk) 20:48, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't understand the "no references" point. If you're citing the record-jacket, you should cite the record jacket. If you're citing the disc label, you should site the disc label. You should provide enough details in you references that other are able to work out what you're citing. For example, since the details may vary in between different releases, you should specify which release you're referring to. But there's never any need to a link to the source, sources do not have to be online, or even easy to access and the absence of a convience link doesn't make the source invalid.

Although Jayron32 has already pointed this out, there seems to be remaining confusion about what editors are actually citing here. If discogs is simply hosting photos or scans of disc labels or record-jackets, they're not being used as a source. They are simply a convience link for the actual soruce which is the disc label or record jacket. Of course editors need to have actually seen the source in some way to be able to cite it, and generally they should be able to help others e.g. with a copy if needed to aide verification.

Google Books was already given as an example but this confusion arises in a lot of cases. For example with YouTube unless it's content specifically released on YouTube then most of the time YouTube is irrelevant. If the content appears to have been YouTube without the copyright holders permission e.g. a documentary, then the YouTube link is out. But if the documentary is reliable then it's fine to cite it without the YouTube link.

A few months ago someone was asking about a newspaper scan or photo on some user generated site which seemed to lead to similar confusion. As IIRC I pointed out at the time, if the newspaper was a reliable source than if there was sufficient information on the newspaper, date etc the article could be cited. The fact that the user generated site was not a reliable source was mostly irrelevant. The only relevance was if this scan was the only copy anyone on Wikipedia had ever seen, given we had no real idea of the providence of this scan, then possibly it should stay out until someone can independently verify the scan was accurate. Either way possibly the convience link of the scan would need to stay out, but that didn't make the source invalid.

This is perhaps the only issue where discogs seems to matter when it comes to reliability issues. Do we trust the process discogs uses enough such that if the only place an editor has seen the alleged record jacket is via an image on discogs, this is acceptable? I have no idea, but whatever we decide, although this touches on the reliability of discogs to some extent, discogs still isn't the source we are citing, it's still the record jacket or whatever.

Note that while we do not allow link to sites violation copyright, we generally do not forbid editors from citing a source just because they likely violated copyright to obtain it. E.g. we won't be linking to content from Sci-Hub and I don't think we should even be encouraging editors to use it in any way but if someone has I don't think this makes their citations invalid since despite the murky nature of Sci-Hub, it seems unlikely that they're modifying content. We don't generally ask editors how they obtained access to a source anyway, there's actually a fair amount of trust built into the system and ultimately editors do need to use their judgment on whether they can be sure the copy they obtained could have been modified in some way or even is simply fake.

Nil Einne (talk) 09:15, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

@Herostratus: If an explicit footnote in running prose is needed to an album jacket/liner notes/track listing/disc label or other paraphernalia alongside sound recordings, there's no reason not to do that. I can see where something like the track listing would be implicitly referenced to the track listing on the disc label, and wouldn't necessarily need a footnote, but in running prose if it needs one, just add one. For example, consider the GA-level article Kind of Blue. That article has citations to numerous versions of the album, and a lot of the running prose is cited to the 1997 CD edition. You can do it just like that. --Jayron32 17:35, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, right. I mean, I wrote a good article on the Dellwoods -- decent article, a few paragraphs, probably meets WP:NBAND with two major-label albums -- but it was PRODed and then nominated for deletion partly on grounds that the Discogs refs (to the labels, albeit indirectly) in the running text were no good. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources says "Don't use Discogs, period", and its hard to fight against a written rule.

The objection to Discogs was that, even if it were reliable, it's just faithfully reproducing the album tracklisting themselves, which in no way satisfies WP:GNG. It's neither independent (since the source is a work by the band itself) and it's not sufficiently in-depth (a listing of songs and albums is a trivial mention of the band). The article certainly wasn't deleted (well, redirected) because it cited discogs, but rather because it lacked any meaningful other sources. --Jayron32 04:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

What's the copyright position on linking to photographs? EddieHugh (talk) 20:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

See the last para of WP:LINKVIO. Nikkimaria (talk) 02:32, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Although album covers and liner notes are usually copyrighted, the labels on the records (often showing songwriters and durations) usually aren't. The WP upload info for the "Good Rockin' Tonight" image used below states that it's in the public domain (no copyright marks, etc.). I suspect that many singles images used in WP articles are also PD, but were identified as copyrighted to play it safe. —Ojorojo (talk) 16:07, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Concrete suggestion (Discogs)

So here is my suggestion. In the main rule we currently have

The content on Discogs is user-generated, and is therefore generally unreliable. There was consensus against deprecating Discogs in a 2019 RfC, as editors noted that external links to the site may be appropriate.

For the main rule here's my suggestion (bolded text is to show changes, not to be put in the actual text):

The content on Discogs is user-generated, and is therefore generally unreliable except for photographs. There was consensus against deprecating Discogs in a 2019 RfC, as editors noted that external links to the site may be appropriate. A 2021 discussion permitted the use of photographs^{[Note 1]}

.

Then, way at the bottom of the page, in smaller font, pointed to by the "[Note 1]", we can stretch out as much we want. So something maybe like:

By current consensus, photographs hosted by Discogs are considered reliable representations of the work in question. Generally, audio recordings do not need citations, as the citation is to the work itself (e.g <ref>''The Who Strike Out'' (1968 Decca edition), liner notes</ref>). However, as a convenience for the reader, a reference pointing to a photograph of a record/CD/tape label (only) hosted on Discogs may be included (although never required). Photographs on Discogs of anything other than labels should not be linked to directly, as there's no consensus that Discogs is necessarily hosting them legitimately. {{Cite AV media}} is the usual and recommended template for references any photographs, including photographs hosted on Discogs. (N.B. Discogs provides a "permalink" button for referencing individual photographs directly.)

Example of photograph of a record label, which may be linked to. This particular photograph is considered sufficient proof for the existence of the record, the performer, the (official) songwriter, the length of the performance, the record company and its location, and the record company's catalog number for that record

I think that ncluding a photo would help, for instance as show here. Not sure if footnotes can include image files.

I tend prolix, so maybe my suggestions are too long, and improvements welcome, but we do want to be clear about what we're talking about. You know how some people can ruleslawer. Any changes, fine, count me in, let's keep moving. Herostratus (talk) 19:56, 10 December 2021 (UTC) Edited and cut it down some. 04:51, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a bit confusing. Upon first read, I thought that it was condoning the use of images hosted on Discogs as images, but what we're really condoning is the use of information contained in the images. Therefore, something like this would be better imo:

The content on Discogs is user-generated, and is therefore generally unreliable. However, images of album labels and liner notes hosted on Discogs are reliable sources of the information contained in them.^{[Note 1]} There was consensus against deprecating Discogs in a 2019 RfC, as editors noted that external links to the site may be appropriate.

[Note 1] would be what you wrote above, I think it's good and doesn't need any changes. Mlb96 (talk) 09:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• I think this proposal is too technical and that few readers will understand what exactly can be linked and/or referenced, unless we draft a dedicated guideline, which I would oppose anyway per WP:CREEP. I think we need to either 1. make a clear-cut decision as to whether linking to pictures hosted on Discogs is allowed per LINKVIO or 2. just add a Youtube-like disclaimer and brief footnote about {{Cite AV media}} and {{Cite AV media notes}}, but no more. JBchrch talk 21:24, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• I'm really not seeing that any of the above proposals are an improvement; I think they will considerably increase confusion and rules-lawyering. Nothing presented has been better than the present RSP listing, rather than worse. The reference for the contents of the labels and sleeves is the labels and sleeves themselves; Discogs itself does no work at all here. The present RSP listing notes that external links are not forbidden. Nor do I see that there is actually a consensus for changing the listing - David Gerard (talk) 21:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, but I mean, a lot Wikipedia editors won't accept references to a work for music, as they do for books and films. They just won't, is all; I don't know why, but you can't make them. But there's proof in Discogs (and frequently nowhere else). But RSP says "Never use Discogs for anything, ever". So that's out. I mean I had a nice article on a band, band probably meets NBAND and all, nominated partly on grounds of containing several refs to Discogs. I explained the situation, but the response was basically "The rule is the we are not allowed to use Discogs, period, and you are not going to change my mind". And the article was indeed destroyed. So Discogs is out, it's toxic. No refs in running text is not going pass muster. So the only way around this is to not write articles about musicians, which I, having written several, will now do. I'm not up for working two days on an article just to lose it. How this is a win I can't see, but whatever. Herostratus (talk) 05:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Could you please link the AFD in question, so we can see the discussion you're talking about? - David Gerard (talk) 12:01, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Dellwoods. Herostratus (talk) 03:18, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

OK - so your characterisation of the AFD consensus is bizarrely hyperbolic. The actual objections are that the sources are self-published blogs and user-submitted Discogs, and nothing else. Looking at the version through the AFD, this appears to be the case. The trouble is a lack of RSes, not the use of Discogs per se - your characterisation of this dispute is obviously inaccurate just looking at the actual AFD responses and the actual article text that was nominated - David Gerard (talk) 16:13, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I think we can probably establish a consensus that Discogs entries do not establish notability, and are not reliable secondary sources, but the images are reliable primary sources for basic publishing information on discs and recordings, and so may be used to populate the content of discography sections. That summarizes how I would treat Discogs links in an AfD; the main rub here seems to be over whether we should link directly to Discogs or use Cite AV when there is a dispute over content. Chubbles (talk) 13:12, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I think I'd still like to see the original AFD at issue first; I'm reluctant to draw a claim of consensus on an issue of which we have no actual examples - David Gerard (talk) 13:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Close with no changes - the actual dispute at hand was grossly mischaracterised by the nominator; there is no substantive issue here that warrants a change to the RSP entry - David Gerard (talk) 16:15, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

There's no need to be insulting. The question at hand was a general point, I mentioned a particular AfD in passing deep in the text, you consider it important, but its not. The question at hand is a general one, whether photographs hosted on Discogs can be linked to, as a convenience to the editor and the reader. I'm seeing enough people saying "no" that it's not likely to become allowed, and fine, that's not excellent IMO but it doesn't come up that much to be very important I suppose. Herostratus (talk) 16:48, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

If you can think of a way of phrasing the fact that you grossly misrepresented the single example you were, eventually, able to give at all that you'd like better, then by all means give a phrasing. But you did, in fact, grossly misrepresent it, this is the key point regarding the proposal at hand, and there is no evidence of a substantive issue here that warrants a change to the RSP entry - David Gerard (talk) 19:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, your going on and on about an issue that you alone seem to care about makes it increasingly harder for me to assume you're just having a bad day. You've made your point and registered your !vote, and I don't see any use in going on about this, let the closer decide how much it matters. Herostratus (talk) 15:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Times of India is not that pro-government as mentioned ?

There are many articles printed and created by TOI which are not pro-government., as:

Manipur woman's Ujjwala gas connection 'taken away' for joining Congress rally

Why BJP’s choice of Karnataka CM is being questioned

Is India staring at stagflation?

Hindutva will push Covid failures to background in UP polls

BJP arm-twisted Sirsa to join party, feared arrest: Sukhbir Singh Badal

Hypernationalists hyperventing over comedy riffs on India do great disservice to the country

Why campaign against 'halal' meat reeks of bigotry

The arrest of two HW News journalists for ‘instigating communal tensions’ is among a series of steps the police has taken, along with slapping UAPA, to crack down on people who wrote about the unrest

How to win foes and get reforms through? Learn from past PMs

The lawyer-activist spent three years in jail without trial

The way India’s ‘pro-poor’ democracy works empowers middle strata of society at the expense of those who are at the bottom of the heap.

Ex-armyman Mohammad Latif — who was given a bravery award in 2005 for killing a militant with his bare hands — wants justice for his son, Amir Magray, who was killed in an encounter in Hyderpora last week

A morality tale starring MSP and you

They have dedicated cartoon series printed on their newspapers which mocks all parties, politicians, celebrities, situations.

https://twitter.com/CartoonistSan/status/1465871969614581761

https://twitter.com/CartoonistSan/status/1464425829425815555

https://twitter.com/CartoonistSan/status/1463698407772491785

https://twitter.com/CartoonistSan/status/1461524450352922626

I have read the past discussions linked at WP:TOI.

Times Of India tries to cover almost every state, and not all of their work is done by their best journalists. There are some articles, news which appear only in TOI, so it might seem they publish non-notable news. But when they give coverage to some crime in a small unknown village, some interview by some local MLA, new upcoming actor, regional film producer, they are trying to cover maximum areas.

Those who have some experience reading TOI, they know which are reliable and which are not that important articles.

The articles where the name of the journalist is present and mentioned TNN are always created properly with verification.

Some of their sub-sections are not that reliable. Like regional non-Bollywood entertainment sections of Assamese, Odiya, Bengali, Punjabi, regional TV gossips, city sections like Agra, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, and many other small cities. Even in these cases, all can't be termed as non-RS, as if the article is detailed along with the name of the journalist or interviewer being mentioned.

However, if it's related to serious crime, then they don't copy-paste from vernacular media but do their own investigation. TOI is not responsible for police', the witness' and victim's family statements, if they are found wrong due to fake complaints, wrong arrests by police. Knight Skywalker (talk) 12:40, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

Knight Skywalker, if you want to change the entry at WP:TOI you will have to start a new RfC. Though, I am fairly certain that it's not going to end up much different and could possibly get it downgraded further. I'll point out some things about the examples though, as they are not representative of TOI's usual coverage; most of these are from TOI Plus which tends to have relatively better editorial quality, a significant number of them are just op-eds from guest author, some of these aren't even "not pro-government" and one of them is from the Mumbai Mirror which is not covered by the entry. It doesn't appear too pro-government compared to some of the more blatant news outlet which have gone off the far end, but you'll still find it occasionally reproducing what the government says, without attribution and accepting it as fact, even when they might include verifiable falsehoods. Personally, I think more than its pro-government tilt, its propensity towards sensationalism and undisclosed paid news is much more problematic. The most recent discussion on it highlighted a case where they copied from Wikipedia without fact checking, which is a citogenesis concern. That said, at present it can still be used, though largely for uncontentious information, I would not recommend it for things like serious crimes. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 18:45, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

• A couple of months ago I found a story in TOI that seemed to exaggerate the number of attendees at an anti-Pakistan protest in Toronto. TOI claim "over a thousand", whereas local Canadian media reported "dozens". See diffs and more explanation here.VR _talk 04:40, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

All are human end of the day: Here is an example, might help to draw parallel and give some food for good thought if wished. The Edit dif @ the article Forced marriage#United States it is attributed to one news reporter Nancie L Katz of New York Daily News.

The earlier sentence in the article said "..Estimates are that hundreds of Pakistani girls in New York have been flown out of the New York City area to Pakistan to undergo forced marriages;.."

In the above mentioned edit dif it has been updated by User:Vice regent (VR)"..According to Nancie L Katz, thousands of Pakistani girls have been flown out of the New York City area to Pakistan to undergo forced marriages;..", with edit summary "...source says "thousands" not "hundreds"..".

The same reporter has used word "thousands of" like a phrase in earlier paragraph. Where crowds can not be counted any reporter gets opportunity to be subjective and guesstimate. Even on best of publications editorial boards too would have limitations. I have one academic study which accuses many prominent news publications of US and UK of bias to whom Wikipedians routinely consider reliable.

In case of forced marriages of Pakistani girls in U.S. some one had applied own mind and rationalised figure from thousands to hundreds. Do we have a problem of labeling in black and white like, Biblical inerrancy read inerrancy of so and so and errancy of so and so. Try to establish errancy on some sources for ever, and absolve some sources for ever. Because we (Wikipedians) believe in 'application of mind by Wikipedians' as 'encyclopedist' to the least. Such Wikipedia rules itself have got status of Biblical inerrancy.

Just simple good faith and application of mind without religious and political agendas can address the issues but some how..less said the better.

Anyways IDK, how much this discussion platform has been succeeding in developing wise tools catering to core encyclopedic objectives and how much succeeding in indirect blanket censorships.

Bookku, 'Encyclopedias = expanding information & knowledge' (talk) 06:45, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Can someone start a new RFC, only on TOI Plus, not TOI? TOI Plus articles should be considered reliable. I want to start RFC, but don't know the process. Knight Skywalker (talk) 04:29, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC Only on TOI Plus. This RFC is not on TOI. TOI + only

I have seen that TOI Plus has better language, work, editing than regular WP:TOI articles. Since their websites are the same, a separate RFC should be done only for TOI + articles. Knight Skywalker (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose redeeming TOI. I will allow TOIPlus however; checked a few of their articles from Google Cache and they appear to be better than their usual rubbish. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:49, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Reliability of protothema

How should protothema.gr be classified?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable

Currently, protothema.gr is being used 201 times through en.WP [28] Cinadon36 12:15, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Survey (protothema)

• Close/withdraw. RSP-itis again. This noticeboard is for discussing reliability in context, and these RfCs should only be for "perennial" sources. If there are specific content questions, then just raise them. Alexbrn (talk) 13:49, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Oh, I didn't know @Alexbrn:, what is the the relevant venue? I asked at "Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources" but I was told it was not the appropriate page. Cinadon36 09:20, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
    • At the top of this page it says "be sure to include the following information, if available ...". You haven't done that. If there are WP:V problems arising from this source not being sufficient WP:RS for some Wikipedia content, then tell us where. If, after some years, this kind of query becomes a pattern then maybe an entry in WP:RSP might be worth considering. So far, there's no evidence of an actual problem that needs fixing. Alexbrn (talk) 09:27, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
      • I haven't met any dispute regarding protothema.gr in en.WP, I removed it from various articles, I didn't get any reverts or other issues. As I see it, this is the best available noticeboard to discuss the issue and notify other editors to use it rarely.Cinadon36 10:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
      • @Alexbrn: after having a second thought, I suppose withdrawing the proposal makes sense. The trajectory of my line of thought, would end having multiple unnecessary fights on this noticeboard, for no practical reason. (as if we do not have already).Cinadon36 06:49, 10 December 2021 (UTC)
• Agree with Alexbrn. -The Gnome (talk) 11:07, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (protothema)

I am re-posting what I have posted earlier in this noticeboard, but got not replies.[29]

Proto Thema is not a reliable source in my opinion. It can be found 205 times across en.WP [30] There is sensationalism, lack of accuracy and their fact are not regularly checked.

• A report for European Commission, posted by prof Anna Triandafyllidou (see also here) is devastating for ProtoThema. You can download the report from here
• Media Bias Fact Check has a small essay on protothema.gr that supports the above view. [31]
• Fact checking site Ellinika hoaxes has 188 entries on protothema.gr. [32] Ellinika Hoaxes is the sole Greek fact-checking org listed on WP:IFCN's signatories list
• Another report (on greek media coverage of covid pandemic) shows the inadequate verifiability of protothema articles (see page 9 and esp page 14 use of links [33])

Worth noting that Protothema ranks among the biggest news portals in Greece in terms of articles posted per day and traffic. (see discussion here [34])

Poor fact checking plus sensationalism means does not stand against WP criteria for RS. I think it should be included at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources with the indication "Generally unreliable" Cinadon36 12:15, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Having reviewed all of the material you present, I am unable to get a grip on what they do wrong. The report from Triandafyllidou doesn't demonstrate a lack of fact checking and accuracy. Specifically, it is only about immigration, and while it makes it clear the paper is biased, and does not " reflect migration related diversity and promote migrant integration," that's not relevant. Media Bias Fact Check is terrible and I have not reviewed it, because it is worthless. I cannot read greek - if there is a specific hoax they are accused of hoaxing, that would be relevant data. Reviewing pages 6 and 14 of that subreport, the mentions of Protothema include them not taking the Coronavirus seriously... In January of 2020, and that they used... hyperlinks in Feb of 2020. Hipocrite (talk) 14:30, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Per the above, MBFC is not a reliable or well-respected fact-checking service in the journalism world. Legitimate journalism organizations don't think too highly of it, and we should not either. See WP:MBFC. --Jayron32 17:37, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

@Jayron32: exclude MBFC, other citations indicate poor fact checking, and there is no indication pointing that it is reliable or accurate. @Hipocrite: regarding fact checking, Triandafillidou marks the site as "medium". It relies on official reports and does not regularly cross check data. Is that enough for WP? I think not. Moreover, rest of the report shows that professionalism is lacking. Anyway, fact checking site ellinika hoaxes has many entries on protothema.gr. There are 188 articles/hoaxes regarding protothema.gr. Report on Covid pandemic, I think it could be ok not taken seriously back in very early 2020, but misinforming on vaccines indicates lack of accuracy. Cinadon36 08:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

• Having looked twice now, I am not seeing any actual claim of fake news. Could well be an issue but unless OP can provide specific links to specific instances, not really sure there is anything actionable here. Slywriter (talk) 17:29, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
  • @Slywriter: I thought I provided a link but I now see it does not really works, so here:
  • it was reported that 1 million ppl in Gr has been vaccinated, but it was not true
  • photos of horses during a fire in Greece, they were photos from California and Australia (but it was not stated in the article)
  • four foods that can exterminate SARS-Cov-2, but the study was not even conducted in guinea pigs
  • illegal immigrants take down a Greek flag, but in reality, they were French students visiting the island
  • 11 month old baby dies of marijuana overdose, but that was not the case, even though there was a temporal relationship.
  • Talibans decapitated female volleyball athlete member of the national team but she was not decapitated, and she was not a member of the national team
  • There are ~261 fake news spotted at Ellinikahoaxes. Should I post more? Cinadon36 20:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
    • For at least one of those, volleyball, a look at the live page of the website shows they corrected the record and stated were mistaken [[35]]. Corrections are a good thing, so I am not sure they merit such drastic action as being deemed unreliable. A second look, vaccinations, shows the live article does not contain the one million vaccinated language [[36]]. Honestly, I find the source of these concerns, Elinnikahoaxes, to be a troubling as their claims seem to be snapshots that do not reflect if corrections are made. Slywriter (talk) 21:19, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
      • Regarding the death of the volleyball player Mahjabin Hakimi, notice that protothema does not admit that it published an article containing fault facts. Yes, Ellinikahoaxes uses snapshot to prove the validity of their claim. I do not think that they shouldn't be doing so.. The overall argument is that protothema.gr does not fact check the claims/facts it publishes. Ellinikahoaxes has many examples, and Triantafillidou makes a similar case. I think the case for considering protothema as unreliable, stands strong. Cinadon36 22:00, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
        • But it does, twice. Once in the body saying previous reports of beheading were wrong and italicized text at the bottom that says "this article has been corrected...". Slywriter (talk) 22:08, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
          • It doesnt say "previous reports". It says "Ενώ αρχικά είχε μεταδοθεί ότι αποκεφαλίστηκε, αυτό δεν ισχύει." meaning "While it was initially announced that she was beheaded, that is wrong" It doesn't clarify by whom it was initially announced. Last line is "Το άρθρο έχει διορθωθεί σύμφωνα με τι πολιτικές του Facebook" meaning "the article has been corrected according to Facebook policies". Doesn't clarify which article. And what Facebook has to do with it? Strange wording. Nowhere does it says "our article was wrong" Cinadon36 22:14, 7 December 2021 (UTC)
            • Let's try a different approach, can you point to an article on wikipedia where the site is being used to support a false statement? Slywriter (talk) 13:37, 8 December 2021 (UTC)
              • I haven't reviewed that part; I tend to believe that it is irrelevant. Anyway, I remember once that I read somewhere in WP, that during a confrontation of Greek and Turkish navy, the greek islanders sang a psalm to God, and that forced the Turkish ship to flee. I checked the source (protothema) and it was there! Hilarious.[[37] (See paragraph/section under the title "Έτρεψαν τους Τούρκους σε φυγή με ...ψαλμούς" translating-->"They made the Turks run away using...psalms") Also, look here[38], in 2018, protothema copies el.WP (diff of inserting the text in 2011). So, since we have reliable evidence that there is a fact checking problem, why shouldnt we proceed to classify protothema as unreliable? Cinadon36 07:36, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

De-deprecate CounterPunch

Currently this left-wing magazine is deprecated for spreading conspiracy theories, yet it should not be for two reasons: (1) A Wikipedian claimed that it denies the existence of Holodomor (cf. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_355#CounterPunch_and_Al_Bawaba), yet that CounterPunch article does acknowledge that a famine occurred in Ukraine in 1932-33 (2) Novaya Gazeta spreads global warming conspiracy theory, yet it is still not deprecated.--RekishiEJ (talk) 14:47, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

CounterPunch was not deprecated for a single false statement, but rather for a long and repeated history of publishing false information. --Jayron32 14:59, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

This, even a broken clock is right twice a day.Slatersteven (talk) 15:14, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Denying the Holomodor was one charge (relating to one article) in a pretty vast list of dodgy articles. If you want to get Novaya Gazeta deprecated, start a discussion about that. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Have you seen the 2021 RfC? The reasoning there appears to remain solid. It is notable that a handful of editors there have been struck as socks post-fact, though, but their actual impact on the conversation seems to have been very marginal to low anyway. --Chillabit (talk) 16:36, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Novaja Gazeta is an independent newspaper that specialises in revealing corruption in Russia. It happens to be one of the few reliable newspapers in Russia. Russia Beyond is a pro-Kremlin publication. Let's assume that what says about Gazeta is true and not taken out of context. Would you deprecate a newspaper over one quote? It's a fact that The New York Times has promoted conspiracy theories. Let's assume that it has happened only once. Should NYT be deprecate over that one incident or would you say that NYT is still generally reliable? Politrukki (talk) 13:05, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

What has got to do with it?Slatersteven (talk) 13:18, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

What with what? Politrukki (talk) 14:31, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

• There was a lot of sock participation in that RFC (in addition to the struck ones, User:Inf-in MD was recently banned as a sock), which you could theoretically use as a rationale for a new RFC, but given how lopsided it was you'd probably also want to have an answer to some of the arguments made there, especially to the argument that it publishes fringe viewpoints preferentially - ideally one that wasn't presented at the time. "It publishes true things sometimes" isn't really enough unless you can somehow show that the overwhelming majority of what it says is accurate - otherwise, it's a "your honor, look at all the people my client didn't stab" sort of argument. You have to demonstrate that the things people took issue with were aberrations, not just that articles exist contradicting them. --Aquillion (talk) 06:12, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

Geez, tag me if you are going to reference my edits. The piece by Grover Furr is not any evidence that the magazine is reliable in the slightest, nor does this actually address the things that concerned some editors (me, for example) the most. That, of course being the plethora of (the-Jews-did-9/11 level) conspiracy theories that it has preferentially published. There was a pretty clear consensus in that discussion, even if you take be arguments made by socks away, based upon the analysis that several editors (including me) provided regarding the source’s dubious-at-best editorial practices. Making another RfC for this sort of source is probably not wise unless you believe you have a strong argument in favor of the site being one with editorial control, editorial independence, and a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (c.f. WP:BIASED).— Mhawk10 (talk) 22:31, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

If anything, the Furr piece is actually evidence that the magazine is unreliable. Furr is a medievalist whose contributions to the field of Soviet history amount to absolving Stalin of any and every wrongdoing, and no publication worth reading would even consider asking him to contribute. I mean, honestly, the man believes that the USSR didn't invade Poland. There are cranks, and then there's Grover Furr. Sceptre (talk) 23:14, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

I would agree; Furr's writings on the Soviet Union are absolutely bonkers. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

The discussion on Counterpunch was nonsensical from start to finish. Users took a website that never made any claim to editorial control and then decided that their editorial control was lacking. They presented an incredibly distorted picture of the website, using articles from 9/11 truthers as though they were what the website was all about but ignoring the large number of articles there saying that 9/11 truthers are insane conspiracy nuts (eg [39], [40]). It also ignored one basic truth here, nobody ever ever ever cited a Counterpunch article not written by an expert in his or her field. Nobody had ever cited any of the articles that were brought forth as though they were some great problem here. It was a very effective exercise in controlling the narrative at the start of the discussion with strawman arguments about what the site is used for. It was absurd, and it ignored the countless actual undisputed experts in their field who write on Counterpunch. A new RFC is needed, but I dont think questioning the close of the last one is productive. And now we have editors removing actual experts from our articles (David Price being author of Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists, published by Duke University Press, and writing about the FBI surveilling an activist academic.) But because it hosts material that some users find distasteful, while also hosting the opposing viewpoints, we should not use the work of actual experts. nableezy - 23:13, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

nobody ever ever ever cited a Counterpunch article not written by an expert in his or her field. Really? That's quite the claim. For an extraordinarily mundane example, let's look at radical centrism.

"Beware the Radical Center", is given prominent weight in the article. It is used to support the statements In 2017, in a 1,700-word article for CounterPunch entitled "Beware the Radical Center", Canadian writer Ryan Shah characterized radical centrism as a just-in-time "repackaging" of neoliberalism meant to sustain the political, economic, and social status quo.[139] He warned that political leaders such as Europe's Emmanuel Macron and North America's Justin Trudeau were creating a false image of radical centrist programs as progressive, and urged leftists to develop "genuine" policy alternatives to neoliberalism such as those advocated by British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Was this piece written by an expert? No. It was written by an undergraduate university student at McGill. I don't think any of us are questioning CounterPunch as a primary source for its own writing, but the way it's used in this article implies that the random piece has weight that it doesn't have and it's extremely fluffy. The reference to the article was added in this 2017 edit by someone who had made over 1500 edits at the time.

I don't see the value in claiming that nobody ever ever ever cited a CounterPunch article not written by an expert in his or her field. It's fiction, full stop. I don't see evidence that somehow editors have been particularly and extraordinarily squeaky clean with using CounterPunch (even in one of the more mundane politics-related articles). And honestly, the guidance that we should pick and choose from the source what is good and what is garbage was brought up during the discussion that took place and was generally discarded along the lines of WP:DAILYMAIL. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:47, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Then remove that one. Nobody is arguing a random person should be cited. The example I posted above of an editor removing an established expert however is not that. And pretending that is not what the bulk of the removals by any of the banned editors socking to remove it, or the users in good standing like Shrike doing so on patently partisan grounds, is silly. nableezy - 21:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nableezy: a few things. First, if you feel like an editor is WP:POVPUSHing by removing citations to a deprecated source, then you should make that accusation at the appropriate noticeboard or at a relevant user talk page, not here. Second, you've previously argued that nobody ever ever ever cited a Counterpunch article not written by an expert in his or her field. Do you still believe that to be the case? Third, I'm not making any claims regarding the majority of source removals; I haven't actually done the digging on that nor is it obvious to me how to conduct a systemic review. But if the vast majority of these removals that you see are coming in an extremely politically contentious field, then perhaps editors in that area should be striving to use more reliable sources rather than relying upon a magazine that has published multiple Jews-did-9/11 conspiracy theories (see points one and two of my bolded !vote in the deprecation discussion if you disagree with my characterization). Fourth, I agree that not every single reference to a deprecated publication should be purged; as WP:DEPS notes that citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately. Fifth, if you're going to challenge David Gerard's closure, there is actually a mechanism to do so. That mechanism is outlined in WP:CLOSECHALLENGE, and involves a challenge on the administrator's noticeboard. An informal discussion on RSN is not capable of overturn the community consensus on the publication's reliability established in a request for comment about two months ago. — Mhawk10 (talk) 17:50, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes I very much disagree with the charecterization that CP has published multiple Jews did 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the only thing you claim in your comment in the RFC is that one column references dancing Israelis or that one article in your view "seems to endorse the view" (note that it does not). I already said I do not think challenging the close makes sense, but that a new RFC is needed, hopefully one in which people are not fed some hysterical BS about what is actually on the site. Sure, some CP articles on WP are not written by experts. They should be removed. A ton of CP articles are written by established experts. They should be retained. nableezy - 19:55, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Really? The quote was More, the model of the Reichstag fire false flag has been readily replicated, not least in the 1954 Lavon Affair and, most spectacularly, in 9/11 (whence the five dancing Israelis at Liberty Park?). Practice makes perfect with false flags. Add extra-judicial murders made to order. Are you saying that the person writing this is not conveying the belief that the "dancing Israelis" were conducting some false flag operation on 9/11? I certainly hope not; that would be absurd.

The quote from the other piece was "In the Western World, Corporatism has become ‘subject’ to Zionism and in consequence Capitalist Democracy has been usurped by the power of a concentrated accumulation of resources – and this- no mere product of ‘happenstance’ – but rather part of a systemic scheme whereby the rich are to get richer and the poor to get poorer? When 2.3 Trillion Dollars can ‘go missing’ from an Economy and disappear down a ‘memory hole’ as part of a historical revisionism aka denial; when the very day after the gone missing is ‘announced’ and the Rabbi Dov Zakheim as Comptroller is not held to account because it ‘happens’ there is an attack on the Twin Towers (also WTC 7) and the Pentagon which becomes the focus of attention and a casus belli for war then something is seriously wrong – and psycho political abuse is in operation? Let us also not forget the ‘weapons grade anthrax’ – such the ‘memory hole’?" Are you saying that the author is not trying to connect Rabbi Dov Zakheim to the 9/11 attacks in the context of Zionism?

I strongly disagree that a new RFC is needed at this time. You were able to make your arguments in the RfC that happened two months ago; the fact that the community (and the closer) found them rather unconvincing does not mean that we need to rapidly run another RfC where the same base arguments are going to be made. — Mhawk10 (talk) 06:06, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Im also aware that CP has published articles very specifically disclaiming any such theory as plausible (eg [41], [42], [43] [44]). But, again, nobody is arguing that we should be using CP as though it confers any reliability. What you continue to completely ignore however is the actual scholars that write there, whose work is beyond reproach. Pray tell, what exactly is your argument for why Sara Roy writing in CP should be considered unreliable? Because thats something that actually has happened here. Did anybody cite Evan Jones for anything at all? Or is that just the first in the red herrings to distract people from the fact that actual scholars are published there literally all the time. Given the, in my view, absurd to the point of being deceptive framing of the RFC, and the sustained sock participation (Icewhiz for example voted four times in that RFC, care to guess which way?), I disagree with your view on if a new RFC is needed, and there seems to be healthy disagreement below as well. nableezy - 23:09, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• The prevailing argument was that articles by unquestioned experts can be discarded because the place that published them also published rubbish by other writers. That so many editors thought that is a logical argument is a sad reflection on this place. It is a fact that a large fraction of mainstream publishers, even some academic presses, could be subject to the same treatment. Zero^talk 04:34, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

  I wonder what proportion of the editors that advocated deprecation actually understand the difference between deprecation and just calling a source unreliable. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 04:51, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

• My question is, if CounterPunch is willing to publish 9/11 conspiracy theory bollocks, can it be seriously considered to have any editorial control or fact checking at all? The claims by people who support CounterPunch are essentially stating we should ignore it as a publisher and simply rely on the credibility of the author of the piece in question, effectively making it no better than if it had been a self-published blogpost. If a post by an expert on CounterPunch by an SM Expert is equivalent to it being a blogpost, then it is unusable for claims regarding living persons per WP:BLPSPS. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

I dont think any of the people who think CounterPunch should be usable disagree with anything youve written there. Ive always treated an article on CounterPunch as being the equivalent of a blog post, usable only if it is by an actual established academic expert. But a huge number of CP articles are exactly that, and theyve been excised in an honestly absurd way. nableezy - 05:27, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Well, you've recently added back CounterPunch to the Edward Said article [45] despite it being deprecated. The paragraph you were adding it back to was clearly about living people, so therefore if it is equivalent to a self-published blog post then it is a violation of WP:BLPSPS. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:31, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

The only living people in that paragraph are Barghouti and (perhaps) Dadak, neither of whom are mentioned in the CP article. Zero^talk 05:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Of course there is, Said himself. The claim that Said was spied on by the FBI is a claim regarding a living person. BLPSPS is very clear: Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 05:58, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Thats a curious understanding of what living means. I restored an unquestioned expert writing in the exact area of his academic expertise. About somebody who died some 18 years ago. nableezy - 13:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Are you kidding? Look at the first sentence in the article. Zero^talk 07:44, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

New RFC or not, unless we are taking the view that CP has massaged authors' contributions and I have not seen any evidence that they do things like that, in effect they are just a hosting for contributions, good and bad, and editorial judgement should be used as regards which one it is. Afaics, there is nothing wrong with the way the Said material is being used.Selfstudier (talk) 11:15, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

No we shouldn't use material from deprecated sources if these material is WP:DUE then it should appear in other sources and if it does we should use them Shrike (talk) 12:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

There is nothing in DUE that supports anything you just wrote. nableezy - 13:36, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, they don't host articles indiscriminately; they select which articles they wish to host. This makes them worse than a blog, as they choose to publish false information, including outright conspiracy theories, which reflects negatively on any article that they choose to host. BilledMammal (talk) 15:30, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you seriously hear yourself? Newspapers publish crackpots all the times as op-eds, we just dont cite those crackpots. That such a basic fallacious argument is the consensus view of this page right now reflects negatively on Wikipedia. People are seriously arguing that people like Neve Gordon ([46]), or Dean Baker ([47]), or a huge number of literal scholars writing in the area of their academic expertise where they are widely cited are somehow tarred for writing for CP. CP is cited in a ton of academic journal articles, are they likewise negatively viewed because of their association with the boogie man? You cant dismiss the views of scholars because of some other thing that appears on a website. It is antithetical to what used to be the purpose of this place. nableezy - 16:11, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Beat me to it. Blogs also publish crap so that's neither here nor there. This is simply about whether a given contribution is usable within our policies and some are.Selfstudier (talk) 16:16, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Deprecated is too harsh, given that it has occasionally contributors who are experts on the subject they're writing about. I support changing the RSN listing to WP:MREL. RoseCherry64 (talk) 17:33, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DAILYMAIL sometimes publish information by experts should we de-depreciate it too? Shrike (talk) 18:08, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Can you give an example of an expert like Neve Gordon or Dean Baker (as mentioned above) writing an article published under their names for the Daily Mail with very little or no editorial influence, where the style of writing is the same as you would find in articles by them published by outlets unanimously considered reliable? My argument isn't that they have published "information" by experts, they have published articles written by experts and those are fine to cite and I've not seen a convincing argument where those articles should be considered deprecated for citing due to the publisher. RoseCherry64 (talk) 18:54, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

During the RfC, BilledMammal wrote that the work, the creator, and the publisher all affect reliability. In this case, that means we have to take into account the fact that these sources choose to write a particular article for a publisher who regularly publishes false and fabricated information and not a more reliable publisher. I'd echo this view here—the publication does impact reliability, which is something that WP:SOURCE says, even if the author might also publish elsewhere. Good editorial oversight makes for good writing, even among experts, while shoddy editorial oversight degrades the quality of the work. (That's the whole point of peer review in the academic world, or the employment of fact-checkers in newsroooms). — Mhawk10 (talk) 19:04, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: if I'm understanding you correctly, are you saying that if an author "choose[s] to write a particular article for a publisher who regularly publishes false and fabricated information" that reflects negatively on the author's reliability? So authors who write for sources we've deprecated are not reliable even if they write for more reputable sources or simply their own blog? VR _talk 20:01, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

No, that is not at all what I am saying. What I am saying is that when an author decides to publish a particular work in a publication not known for fact-checking, that the published work is less reliable then when it is published in a publication known for fact-checking. The argument here is that because this particular publication has limited editorial oversight and preferentially publishes fringe/conspiratorial opinions, that the sorts of articles that authors might choose to run in the publication would tend to be more fringe/conspiratorial. WP:SPS material, even from experts, is generally not great for anything contentious anyway—but seeing that a work was published in CounterPunch makes the source less likely to be reliable for facts than works of the same author published elsewhere.— Mhawk10 (talk) 20:45, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Self-run blogs have no editorial oversight, yet are perfectly acceptable to use per WP:SPS which says Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. Your argument is directly refuted by our policy. nableezy - 21:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Articles published in CounterPunch are not self-published. BilledMammal (talk) 02:47, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I have literally no idea what that is a response to. nableezy - 02:55, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

To make an example, there are U.K. freelance journalists who have written for both WP:DAILYMAIL and The Guardian as a freelancer. Even though the author might have pieces in both publications, one is deprecated whereas the other is considered WP:GREL—even if the subject is something as mundane as crime beat reporting—because of the differences in editorial integrity between the two publications. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:50, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

These are not "freelancers", these are established academic experts. Scholars. Who create scholarship. That is an asinine comparison. Neve Gordon is author of books and peer-reviewed journal articles in the topic of his expertise. He is a distinguished professor, a scholar invited to the top universities on the planet. But you seriously compare him to a freelance journalist writing in the Daily Mail. Hey, here is Sara Roy being removed when she is cited for what she is likely the worlds foremost expert on, the economy of Gaza. But no, she is basically a freelance journalist writing in the Daily Mail. Not one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet on the topic of Gaza's economy under Hamas. That is the level of argument here. nableezy - 21:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

@Mhawk10: a simple question for you. Suppose an academic expert X writes content Y and publishes Y in (a) CounterPunch and (b) on X's personal blog. Would you agree that both are about as equally reliable? If so, then would you agree that if an academic expert writes in counterpunch that is similar to WP:SPS? VR _talk 02:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

This seems to be arguing against deprecation as a concept; "CounterPunch" in your question could be replaced with most deprecated sources. And the answer is the same for all of them; an article published by a publisher independent from the author can no longer be considered self-published, even if it is mirrored on a blog or similar; in such circumstances we continue to consider the publisher to be CounterPunch, the Daily Mail, or RT. BilledMammal (talk) 03:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I'll re-ask my question: is an article published by a deprecated source more, less or equally reliable as an article published by the author themselves? My answer is "equally". If your answer is "less", please explain why.VR _talk 03:13, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

If I have understood your rephrased question correctly: less. Per WP:SOURCE, the publisher impacts reliability, and so an article from an otherwise reputable journalist that is published in, for example, RT is not reliable, because in the case of RT and other deprecated sources the publisher has a negative impact on reliability.

If I have misunderstood the question: equally. Once an article has been published by an independent publisher, it is no longer a self-published source, even if it is mirrored on a blog or similar; if it is unreliable in RT, it is unreliable on the authors blog. The opposite is also true; if it is reliable in NYT, is it reliable on the authors blog - although citing the blog rather than NYT would not be best practice. BilledMammal (talk) 04:19, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd argue that the exact nature of the source's unreliability matters. For example, in the case of The Daily Mail, there were instances of them doctoring their own archives, i.e. they aren't even reliable for what they themselves say (and therefore are not reliable for much of anything). In the case of Counterpunch, there's been evidence provided that they do not fact check submissions and print fringe perspectives, but not that they deceptively misrepresent themselves or the authors published there. There's no substantive reason to treat an SME printed in Counterpunch worse than when they're self-publishing. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 06:11, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I would disagree, as articles are not independent of the publisher they are written for.

A principle from WP:SPS seems appropriate here; if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. If the only place we can find information is in a source such as the Daily Mail, RT, or CounterPunch, then it is probably not suitable for inclusion on Wikipedia, regardless of the credentials of the author. BilledMammal (talk) 08:34, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

The Said article actually has two Counterpunch sourced refs, the other being an article by Said himself (url dead, http://web.archive.org/web/20070930023922/https://www.counterpunch.org/said2.html to see it). You would say that Said writing about himself is no good because he wrote it in Counterpunch?Selfstudier (talk) 11:03, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Per policy at WP:V, deprecated sources can be used for WP:ABOUTSELF statements. BilledMammal (talk) 11:14, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree the the exact nature of the source's unreliability matters but think this description -In the case of Counterpunch, there's been evidence provided that they do not fact check submissions and print fringe perspectives, but not that they deceptively misrepresent themselves or the authors published there. - doesn't catch the arguments made in the RFC about the exact nature of Counterpunch's reliability. The problem clearly documented through a large number of examples there was not a simple failure to fact check submissions, but an editorial policy of - an active preference for - actively publishing material that challenges mainstream reportage, and therefore includes a considerable amount of dubious, fringe, conspiracist and disinfo content, including dangerous anti-vaxx material as well as antisemitic content. It is this that many editors considered pushed it from generally unreliable to deprecated status. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:31, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

The deprecation judgment, when not a pretext for nationalist POV pushing by suppression of contrarian material, has become an excuse for laziness. See CounterPunch cited? Strike the source on sight, without even analysing who wrote it. This is how Shrike reads this. His objection seems to be to elide anything from that source which reflects negatively on Israel’s occupation. CounterPunch, which has a long history as the fav target for ‘pro-Israeli’ socks at RSN, covers the I/P conflict closely, with details rarely reported in the mainstream press, and many of its authorities are academic specialists, or Israelis or Jews. That is discomforting ergo, as Nableezy noted, following that, to me, erratic discussion, we now have systematic removalist abuse at

• Gaza City they removed Sara Roy because she wrote in CounterPunch. I’ve actually read Roy’s monographs. They are recognized as authoritative in that field.
• At Edward Said Shrike removed a reference written by Edward Said himself for Counterpunch.
• Then removed David Price, an authority on FBI surveillance history, from the same article, because Price’s article was carried in CounterPunch.

Where does this censorious opportunism lead, of exploiting a debatable conclusion about CounterPunch to set up a Pavlovian reflex of cancellation at sight of anything, regardless of quality, associated with that webzine?

I wrote a good part of the article on Raul Hilberg – in my view one of the greatest historians in that trade since the year dot, and a personal hero. So I cited

• Norman Finkelstein, "Remembering Raul Hilberg". CounterPunch. 22 August 2007.
• Michael Neumann. "In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg", CounterPunch. 15 August 2009. (I even posted at RSN about this. No one objected. No one replied.)

In the way this deprecation judgment is being read, anyone can mangle articles like that on Hilberg by erasing Finkelstein or Neumann for writing their commemorations of that historian for Counterpunch.

The founder of CounterPunch was hostile to conspiracy theories, antisemitism, nutters of whatever description, as is its present editor, but as the editor of, not a ’ left-wing magazine’ (above), but a libertarian webzine that hosts views ranging from the Republican right to the heterogeneous left, including at times crap I scroll past. Like many who have had occasion to cite it here, I look at the quality of the piece and who wrote it.

As the deprecation is being manipulated, we can expect that wikipedia will slowly be shorn of trenchant and highly focused reports by Alexander Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn (the latter a widely published authority on Iraq), Uri Avnery, es:Gary Leupp (brilliant on the orient), Melvin Goodman, (incisive and with a deep professional grounding in American security doctrines) security, Ralph Nader, Andrew Levine, Winslow Wheeler (works from Capitol Hill- knows everything about congressional budgets),Naomi Klein, Brian Cloughley, Mark Weisbrot, Serge Halimi, Norman Pollack,Neve Gordon, Norman Finkelstein, Noam Chomsky, Michael Brenner, Sheldon Richman, Ramzy Baroud, Vijay Prashad, Robert Fisk, Gareth Porter, Mel Gurtov,Henry Giroux, Rodolfo Acuña, Ray McGovern, Deepak Tripathi, William Quigley, Michael Neumann, Michael Hudson, Tom Engelhardt, John Feffer, Jeremy Scahill, William Loren Katz, Andrew Bacevich, Edward Said, Tariq Ali, Bruce Jackson, Sam Bahour, Marjorie Cohn, Russ Feingold, Andre Vltchek, Lawrence Davidson, Lawrewce Wittner, Stephen Soldz, Lenni Brenner, Karl Grossman, Frank Spinney, Paul Krassner, Gabriel Kolko, Stan Goff, Diana Johnstone etc.etc. That implication, that these, for Wikipedia, if they choose to write for Cockburn's webzine, are personae non gratae, following on deprecation is dazzlingly obtuse.

So, ladies and gentlemen, can we wake up to the potential damage, and tweak the deprecation badge of shame, so that as commonsense dictates, that doesn’t become an enabling excuse for people with a POV drum to beat to cancel, erase, eviscerate scholars and writers of the quality listed above, and, by giving editors a warrant for gutting indiscriminately numerous pages of even uncontroversible material, allowing them blindly to throw the babies out with the barfwater?Nishidani (talk) 15:07, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nishidani: Having a hard time comprehending what you wrote here but some parts of it look important. Is the issue you raise that the deprecation was inappropriate, that the deprecation is being misused, that deprecation as a concept shouldn't exist, or some combination of the above? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:17, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks and my apologies. I had an urgent appointment for an afternoon of swilling slops at the local pub, and was rushing. I don't follow much wiki technical policy arguments. I opposed deprecation for the simple reason that far too many eminently quotable scholars, journalists of distinction, choose on occasion to publish there. The analogy with the Daily Mail collapses simply there. And yes I object to editors leaping at the deprecation in order to remove at sight (I suspect without even reading the articles or recognizing the qualifications of whoever writes them) any references to that webzine. In this case, I cited, for lack of time, just a few examples of abusively deleting Counterpunch references when their authors pass our strongest RS tests, and the deletions are simply POV dislike (WP:IDONTLIKETHAT. That's why so many I/P socks have militated over several discussions going back to 2008 to get any use of it banned.Nishidani (talk) 22:02, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Nishidani, your list, which I commented on in the previous RFC (11:55 am, 28 September 2021, Tuesday (2 months, 23 days ago) (UTC+1)), includes a number of names of genocide deniers and conspiracy theorists, among some significant writers. I argued for generally unreliable rather than deprecate because of the experts published, but the fact it has promoted so many antisemites and denialists is not a good argument against deprecation! BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:39, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

No Bob. I don't think you commented on my list in that RfC. My list mentioned 52 writers/journalists/thinkers. You said 5 of them- Gareth Porter; Ray McGovern ; Tariq Ali; Lenni Brenner; Diana Johnstone – had in their long careers once or twice published what you consider suspect material. Ray McGovern compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire. So what? Check it out. Is that cranky? Nope. Lenni Brenner is cited also by antisemites? So? As we all know from Antonio’s crack in the Merchant of Venice, 'The devil can cite scripture for his purpose.' - that is a cheap rhetorical trick of guilt by (unwanted) association; Gareth Porter, like Seymour Hersh and Theodore Postol, challenged a general consensus here and here. Maybe he’s wrong. But the articles are strongly reasoned and documented: Diana Johnston? Sure, I disagree. She has a record of excellence blotted by excess polemical zeal on at least two occasions. I don’t read widely to find, as your remark in that RfC assumes, confirmation of my own views or some ‘mainstream’ consensus. And Ali, Porter and Johnstone weren’t being cited from CounterPunch.

Disinformation is regularly disseminated by a large number of states, from the US, Australia and Israel to China and Russia and scores of others. Contrarian webzines like CounterPunch exist to query and question the mainstream. They may and, undoubtedly have at times, host stuff that proves decidedly wrong. They also publish eminently good exposes that time has proven to be correct (numerously with regard to the slanting of the New York Times on the Middle East).

You of course place your trust in what strikes me as a glaring partisan pseudo-analysis of CounterPunch by a blogger, i.e. a certain Elise Hendrick, 'CounterPunch or Suckerpunch?', Meldungen aus dem Exil, 2015, who, contradicting the impression by numerous wikipedians commenting on Counterpunch at RSN on several occasions, managed to conclude (certainly not by analysing all 55,000 articles it had printed from 1999 to 2015, but simply a minor sample), that Cockburn’s website ‘mainstreams a far right, white supremicist’ ideology. Interesting. That counts as a conspiracy theory, since it implies that unknown to most of its readers, it deviously turns leftists into suckers for the very ideology they find abhorrent. I completely, like most other readers, missed this, despite reading it desultorily for nearly two decades. Diligent research means reading a wide range of views, not narrowing one's focus to sites, newspapers, or writers within one's comfort zone. Nishidani (talk) 15:47, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• This discussion seems to really get to the heart of "what is deprecation" and how it has been used. I'm not a fan of how deprecation is often used. In most cases it seems to be used for sources that we decide we really don't like vs the Daily Mail case which was a special case where it was argued the source was both changing their own articles without notice and was falsely reporting things like quotes. Basically there had to be something that set the Daily Mail apart from run of the mill bad sources like Occupy Democrats and Infowars. I would suggest that only sites that have clear histories of inventing quotes/facts or modifying their previously published articles without notice should be considered for deprecation. Other sources may be unreliable because they have poor fact checking and a strong partisan bias etc. That makes them an unreliable source. Not one that should be deprecated. In context of this discussion, and without verifying the claims of others, it sounds like CounterPunch acts mostly as a publisher of the opinions of others with little editorial oversight. That makes them an unreliable source/one who's weight/reliability should be treated as if it were a self published work by the author. That doesn't mean it should be deprecated in my book. Again, I'm basing this on the claims of others made above. Springee (talk) 18:24, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Occupy Democrats is currently depreciated and Infowars is not just depreciated but actually blacklisted so it can't be added anywhere. That said, my recollection of the argument for the first depreciation during the Daily Mail discussions was that it is for when there is universal agreement that a source is basically, broadly unreliable to the point of unreliability while also having a number of people who continue to try and use it in clearly-unusable contexts, making a firmer statement against using it necessary. The key point of depreciation was not "extra-secret-super unreliable" (although it it's only for articles at the most extreme end of unreliable by definition), the key point was that it was a measure for when a broad enduring consensus that a source was generally unreliable had failed to keep it from being used. This leads to a paradox where the sources we depreciate are often not the most obviously unreliable (because there is no dispute over those at all and therefore no need to resort to depreciation), but the ones that are broadly agreed to be unreliable but which may appear reliable to some editors at first glance, necessitating the "hey, this source is unreliable, are you sure you want to use it" warning. --Aquillion (talk) 20:24, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

• Agree it should not be deprecated. For the most part, the articles are the same as articles that appear in major mainstream media and the authors are the same. The difference is that while the first publishes articles from writers across the policial spectrum, but mostly from the center, CounterPunch specializes on writers from the Left. Since the articles are mostly if not entirely opinion pieces, they would in any case be subject to the same standards as if they were published in any other publication, i.e., as self-published. TFD (talk) 19:46, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
• What facts are we unable to source without CounterPunch? What viewpoints are we unable to summarize? What articles are we unable to write? We shouldn't use a source unless its reliability is more or less unassailable, at least relatively speaking; there's no need to dip to the bottom of the barrel, we should be offering our readers the best sources. For what content is CouterPunch among the best sources? There are more scholarly and highly-reputable journalistic sources that cover history, politics, and current events, than we will ever be able to read and summarize; more is written every day than we summarize here. So why do we need to spend time debating CounterPunch, or any similar source? Levivich 07:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  I doubt anyone is arguing that CP is at all reliable (they don't actually produce anything afaics) but that deprecation is inappropriate because it knocks out all the good stuff at the same time. The latter may or may not be available elsewhere, I think that is not the point. I have said in one or two other places that I think we are a little too quick to deprecate, that should be reserved for egregious cases like the Daily Mail.Selfstudier (talk) 10:03, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

We shouldn't use a source unless its reliability is more or less unassailable-</ref>

That sounds fine in theory,-it would waste, if applied, 90% of articles on Wikipedia- and personally I try to adhere to that rigorously, meaning in the IP area for one, most of the facts on villages I am familiar with are not reported, because they don't attract much, if any coverage, in the mainstream press. By that standard The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post and Ynet should not be used because no one would claim that their reliability is unassailable' - it's a real test of patience to figure out the facts in their coverage of major incidents. No one is arguing that CP is reliable, but that many authors there have proven subject matter competence, and therefore shouldn't be prescriptively erased. Reliability in these cases should be relevant to the author not the vehicle they choose to publish for, and I gave over 50 names of important commentators who contribute to that webzine all of whose work, if cited from Counterpunch, is threatened with automatic excision. Winslow Wheeler's analysis of congressional budgets - he works there in that capacity - would be flamed etc.etc.etc., while we use persistently third-rate tabloids (Algemeiner Fox News etc., quite liberally) gave readers here examples of what deprecation and bots or editors could automatically remove from say Raul Hilberg: two important articles by scholars who knew him who wrote obituaries for him for Counterpunch. Nishidani (talk) 21:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Sally RooneySara Roy is such an unassailable source on the economy of Gaza. David Price is such an unassailable source on the US government surveillance of academic activists. Those two are literally the best sources for that material. nableezy - 20:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nableezy: I don't think that Sally Rooney is who you are referring to. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:04, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Youre right, sorry, mixed up articles. Fixed. nableezy - 21:14, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• CounterPunch should remain deprecated. The fact that experts publish on it sometimes is a case where WP:SPS applies. It has to do with the fact they're experts, not because of any

evidence that CounterPunch editorial has some quality or peer review process, unlike WP:RS. The fact there are experts is nowhere apparent from the fact they're writing for CounterPunch. So articles using CounterPunch shouldn't automatically have their references removed, but it does likely mean we need to explicitly state who we're citing, as an authoritative subject expert. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 11:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Provided the exception you just outlined there is made clear, then I have no objection, since that is my only reason for arguing against deprecation ie using that status as an excuse to erase or dispute valid (and attributed) sourcing.Selfstudier (talk) 16:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

But deprecation is used to erase or dispute attributed sourcing, and to make a a misleading warning appear for discouraging anyone who tries to restore. Some facts -- that deprecation merely means disapproval according to primary dictionary definiton, that closers of Daily Mail and Breitbart RfCs made clear that any opinions not just aboutself are allowed, that even the "no moratorium" closer ToThAc acknowledged there was a consensus that there should have been prior discussions or WP:RFCBEFORE -- have been ignored or misunderstood. I'm happy to see that a Counterpunch cite has been restored on the Edward Said article, Wikipedia needs more such. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 20:37, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

articles using CounterPunch shouldn't automatically have their references removed This is what deprecation implicitly does. Deprecation means that a bot automatically revert any edits which add references with the website URL from IP and recently registered users. counterpunch.org is on User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList.

You argue for deprecation but what you describe seems to be more like WP:GUNREL. Most self-published aggregator sources like arXiv, Blogspot, Medium are GUNREL, not deprecated and they do not get automatically removed by bots when added by new/IP editors. RoseCherry64 (talk) 20:39, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

A rampage of reverts is now underway to remove any mention of CounterPunch on Wikipedia, as this review of the deprecation decision is still underway. See See here below. This is essentially preempting the discussion, still open here, taking the prior conclusion as foregone. Is this acceptable? Nishidani (talk) 22:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not a review, it's an attempt to "nuh-uh" a deprecation RFC. You've been told already you'd need another general RFC to oppose it. Deprecated sources are meant to be removed, and constitute a backlog of workthat needs doing. So I'm doing it. You saying "but I don't want it to be deprecated!" doesn't mean it isn't deprecated - David Gerard (talk) 22:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since my attempt to deal with a specific source was undone by a user (who somehow was uninvolved enough to close the RFC, but is reverting to enforce his own close, and is voting in the follow up RFC), Ive started an RFC on the subject down below in #RFC: Counterpunch nableezy - 02:41, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Honestly it feels like you're beating around the bush. Individual cases can always be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, even for depreciated sources, but the standard is always going to be very, very, very high. If people think that there are generally going to be things published there that ought to be used as sources, the thing to do is to hold another general-reliability RFC and try to get it reclassified as "other considerations apply." I'm unsure whether another RFC would succeed, but I think that both the back-and-forth in this discussion and the heavy number of socks in the previous RFC are sufficient to at least justify another RFC, and it would avoid all these interminable discussions. (The socking in the other RFC wasn't itself sufficient to swing the majority, but the RFC was closed early as WP:SNOW, which probably wouldn't have happened as fast without the socks.) And in any case the argument that another RFC would be a waste of time is a bit meaningless when we're already wasting that time in two separate discussions - especially this one, which can't actually accomplish anything. --Aquillion (talk) 05:24, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Aquillion, individual cases can never be evaluated on a case-by-case basis for deprecated sources. (See Deprecated.) You are confusing it with Generally unreliable. If a source is deprecated we can have no confidence that the authorship of the article is genuine. There's like no chance that an article by Dr. Fauci in The Onion is real for example. Can you explain why this source should not be considered generally unreliable? TFD (talk) 05:59, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

No, even a depreciated source can be evaluated on a case by case basis; it is just that the standard for doing so is so high that using one is almost never justifiable. See WP:DEPS: Deprecation is not a blanket retroactive "ban" on using the source in absolutely every situation, contrary to what has been reported in media headlines. In particular, reliability always depends on the specific content being cited, and all sources are reliable in at least some circumstances and unreliable in at least some others. Citations to deprecated sources should not be removed indiscriminately, and each case should be reviewed separately; language elsewhere is similar (The source is considered generally unreliable, and use of the source is generally prohibited, emphasis mine.) And I say this as someone who spends time removing / replacing depreciated sources. The reality, though, is that, first, in cases where it would be justifiable to use a depreciated source, it is usually trivial to find a better source anyway, or a better source even exists already (anyone who has spent time removing depreciated sources can attest to this - part of my bafflement at the extended argument below is that a better source was easily found.) And, second, in cases where a depreciated source is the only source, it's usually something exceptional or controversial that we wouldn't even begin to consider making one of the exceptions. That is why I haven't weighed in on the RFC below directly - I think it is technically true that a depreciated source could sometimes be used subject to the restrictions of SPS, but it is practically true to that there is virtually no case where we would actually end up doing so, so saying "it can be used as a SPS" as some sort of sweeping statement is bizarre and misleading. As to whether or not Counterpunch should be reassessed, I am not sure - I haven't actually bothered to go over it in-depth because there's no point unless another RFC actually occurs - but one thing I would say is that it might help to focus more on how it is covered by others; it looked to me at a glance like the past RFC focused heavily on a handful of terrible things posted there. Those are not irrelevant, especially given the lack of any indication of a retraction, but the crux of RS is a source's reputation for fact-checking and accuracy; the reputation bit is key. Things editors find objectionable there - even stuff that is blatantly, obviously wrong and terrible - is secondary to how it is viewed by other RSes, and demonstrating that it largely has a good reputation, including but not limited to strong WP:USEBYOTHERS, could therefore support the argument that the examples shown in the previous RFC are aberrations. Of course, conversely, people might just show it has a terrible reputation; but the relative lack of any focus on that aspect was one thing that struck me as off about that RFC, relative to most other depreciation RFCs. Either way, again, if a significant number of people think the previous RFC reached the wrong conclusion, the thing to do is to stop talking about it and start another RFC; this discussion can't really overturn a formal RFC, and the discussion / RFC below is honestly a bit silly, since what it's really asking is for CounterPunch to be classified as "other considerations apply" without actually asking that. --Aquillion (talk) 06:22, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

See, this is the primary problem here. You are saying individual cases can be handled, and others are saying ABOUTSELF should be respected, but it is not the case. Down below David is not even addressing the individual case. Nobody is honestly. One person just voted no because it is deprecated, and nobody else has addressed the individual merits of the article. You have some people arguing that a source should be deprecated but that there should be exceptions, but others, admins in fact, literally edit-warring over these exceptions. I am actually fine with CP articles to be presumed unreliable. So long as evidence can be evaluated to overcome that presumption on a case by case basis as needed. Seriously now, the David Price piece is literally referenced in peer reviewed journals, books, news articles. All of them credit him and that article with uncovering the FBI surveillance, and it is the exact area of his academic expertise. But that even consideration of that is being refused. I dont understand how anybody cant recognize how insane this set up is. People are arguing deprecated is fine because the occasional source can still be considered, and then people are editing saying no source can be considered because it is deprecated. As far as the bit about reputation, youre missing an important part. CP is not the source, David Price writing in CP is the source. David Price, or Sara Roy, thats whose reputation for factual accuracy we are relying on here, not CP. It is the same as any op-ed. We arent putting our faith in the publication, we are putting our faith in the author. Just as we do for blogs or other SPS. The only thing that matters is did CP faithfully represent the author's words. If there is any evidence that they have ever manipulated a column, then sure, out every column ever it goes. But that is not the case. nableezy - 05:03, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

That's bout the size of it, there is no real difference between generally unreliable and deprecated except for the manual removal squads enforcing the second, someone I think even said that the problem with generally unreliable was that the sources weren't being removed "fast enough". If nothing else the discussions have shown the arbitrary nature of the classifications. Why not have a super deprecated and a bot that removes them indiscriminately? Selfstudier (talk) 10:14, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

And more to the general point, this place has really gone downhill since its become a polling place for how many people like or dislike a source. DAILYMAIL was such an extreme case that it should been treated like Bush v Gore, a regrettable thing that even the people voting for it were like oh no we cant have this again. But it apparently set a precedent that overruled the way we have always examined sources here. In context and on their own merits. Now its you need an RFC and then hit the polls. nableezy - 06:05, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

victimsofcommunism.org

victimsofcommunism.org is a website of an educational and research foundation with an academic council with research and education programs. It was previously discussed here, but just because people think it has an anti-communist bias (which it obviously does) isn't a valid reason to reject it as completely unreliable, per WP:BIASEDSOURCES. It certainly is a reliable source for it’s own views on communism, however biased some think that is, and the usage context in Mass killings under communist regimes is to present their attributed view: ”In 2016, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile ranges of estimates using sources from 1976 to 2010, and wrote in its Dissident blog that the overall range "spans from 42,870,000 to 161,990,000" killed”, where the linked article Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation makes clear in the first line of that article it is a ”non-profit anti-communist organization”. --Nug (talk) 03:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• It seems Nug forgot to mention that this source has been recently a subject of the RSN discussion. Nug is perfectly aware of the previous discussion, so I have no clue why he never mentioned it.

In addition to that, the problem with this source not its reliability. It is closely affiliated with the US authorities: It was established by the Act of Congress, and is currently lead by Andrew Bremberg, a former director of the Domestic Policy Council in the Trump's administration. In addition to this source, the article cites three other sources that are closely affiliated with the US federal authorities of with VoC. That creates a serious bias, for Wikipedia is not supposed to reflect official position of any state.

In addition,this source provides desperately obsolete data for the USSR, so it is unreliable for the USSR and for the total figure. The highest figures available from modern data (e.g. Rosefielde) are at least three times lower.

In addition, the link to this "source" is a dead link. This information is available only from some web depository, and it is not at the official site any more. Therefore, there is no proof that these figures reflect a current position of VoC. No matter if this source reliable or not: it does not say that anymore, so, strict;y speaking, it is not a source. Paul Siebert (talk) 04:34, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

?? I did link the previous RSN discussion above. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is also closely affliated with the US government and was established by an Act of Congress and is led by political appointees. --Nug (talk) 05:12, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

My bad, a blue colour is barely visible on my monitor.

However, your summary of previously expressed opinia is somewhat deceptive. Yes, majority of users pointed out that it is an extremely biased source, however, many of them noted its poor reputation in fact checking and accuracy, and their tendency to exaggerate figures.

WRT CDC, do you claim that CDC as a source is independent from the US government?

In addition, the main goal of VoC is not a study of Communism, but "educating Americans about the ideology, history and legacy of communism." In other words, this is not a neutral research institution, but the organisation that pursue some ideological goals in accordance with the policy of the US administration.

And, finally, you carefully avoid an answer to my criticism: it is no evidence that VoC figures reflect a current point of view of this organisation: its web site contains no such figures. I pointed your attention at that fact previously, why you restore a dead link? Paul Siebert (talk) 05:22, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The Foundation is a bi-partisan non-profit, the Act of Congress that created the Foundation was signed into law by Democrat Bill Clinton. Regardless of your personal politics, the source is acceptable per WP:BIASEDSOURCES, and usage in this context is appropriately attributed to them. There are no policy issues against using Wayback machine, even Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Notes and Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#References uses it. Nug (talk) 05:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

BIASEDSOURCES say that biased sources may be reliable in the specific context, and that is exactly what I say: it is reliable for the views expressed by organisations that have close ties with US administration, but not for figures themselves, and that is a proper context for its usage.

WRT Wayback mashine, the main link is not dead in your example. Paul Siebert (talk) 05:57, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The CDC also has close ties with the US administration, so this argument is nonsense. And the claim that it has a “poor reputation in fact checking and accuracy” is totally without any evidence what so ever. The Academic council is comprised of these scholars, many of them specialists in communist studies: Peter Rollberg (chair), Peter Boettke, Jonathan Brent, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, Paul A. Goble, Paul R. Gregory, Hope M. Harrison, John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, Mark Kramer, A. James McAdams, Sean McMeekin, Aaron Rhodes (editor of Dissident), David Satter, F. Flagg Taylor IV and George Weigel. --Nug (talk) 06:22, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

I share Paul Siebert's concern that the figures are not on the website anymore. JBchrch talk 06:35, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• If the figures compiled in 2016 are not on the website anymore, it appears as though the VoC memorial foundation doesn't stands by them anymore. The sentence should thus be removed from Wikipedia, especially if we identified methodological errors in the calculation. Mottezen (talk) 07:51, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Bias is not an issue and never is. I think this is usable with attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 10:13, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

They have stated that they include the entirety of the end-total global death toll resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic (which now stands at over five million) as part of their tally of historical victims of communism: 1 2 3 (see their executive summary for link 2, in which they make clear they are talking about the end total no matter what that is). Their TL;DR reason for this is "China and the W.H.O. lied, people died, it was all communism". You can make of that what you will, but it has made me rather skeptical of their judgement. I will grant that they haven't repeated this line since last year, though, to my best knowledge. Probably prefer better academic sources where possible. --Chillabit (talk) 12:55, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

OK and pushing Covid misinformation is enough for me to say no it is not an RS, it's political get in the way of factual reportingSlatersteven (talk) 13:23, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, that's enough reason to not take them seriously. Chuck 'em on the unreliable pile. XOR'easter (talk) 16:53, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Two notes. Firstly, if the source being used is currently a dead link, we cannot be sure the organization stands behind the opinion presented, and phrasing their support in the present tense is problematic. Further, if they attribute the entirety of COVID deaths to communism, I question the value of including deeply polemic sources in our articles. Is there no better source for the information you want to include? This one seems deeply dishonest. Hipocrite (talk) 13:26, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

Due to the dead link and their COVID-19 misinformation and politicization, without any reliable source giving secondary coverage to that article and not being a good tertiary source on its own in light of all this, it is undue and not a good tertiary source. Attempting to merge it with other more reliable U.S. government sources, which has been Siebert's argument for using this and similar sources, would be too close to OR/SYNTH without a secondary source doing it for us. All of this may be worth to mention, including their fringe COVID-19 Communist death toll, at Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation as their own views but not anywhere else. Davide King (talk) 16:09, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation is an advocacy organization, and it should be treated as such. Use in-text attribution, use secondary sources to ensure due weight, and be cautious with WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims. MarioGom (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Advocacy organizations are not reliable sources. Use scholarship. Levivich 03:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  I am not in favor of using this website, as expressed above, but sometimes advocacy organizations can be reliable, such as WP:SPLC. JBchrch talk 03:20, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• This idea that dead links no longer contain reliable information is incorrect. Because every link dies eventually. Links can be taken for many reasons that have nothing to do with reliability or "standing by" the data, it's the nature of online media. Otherwise we do we bother with archive links, delete ever citation when the link dies. -- GreenC 03:18, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

  This is true, but when an organization dedicated to anti-communism removes from its website the number of victims of communism, we might need to think about why that may be, and consider that it might not be just linkrot. (My personal and uninformed opinion is that it's probably because they don't want to host information that contradicts the "100 million" figure that they display prominently.) JBchrch talk 03:31, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

This is not the first time when this source is discussed here, therefore, in makes sense to collect all arguments in one place, to avoid their repetition. I checked the archived copy, and I found the "Works Consulted" section.

It is natural to conclude that these are the sources that were used for the final figure. Below, I analyse the quality of the sources from this list.

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew. Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.

Actually, this book was published in 1993: Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the 21st Century. New York: Collier Books, 1993. ISBN 978-0684826363. I see no evidences that the figure of 60,000,000 million is a recent addition to the 2010 edition. Therefore, this book is the old source. In addition, the author mentions this figure in passing, it is highly unlikely this figure was a result of his own research.

• Courtois, Stéphane, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel Bartošek, and Jean-Louis Marolin. The Black Book of Communism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.

This is a very controversial source, which was the subject of several RSN discussions ([48], [49], [50], [51]), and the figure of 85-100 million is the most criticised and controversial statements in this book.

• “Cambodians Recall Massacres.” AP, May 22, 1987. Per WP:NEWSORG, reliability of this source depends on context, and, since it is not clear what exact invormation VoC took from it, no judgement about its reliability can be made. The source looks desperately outdated.
• Fitzgerald, Mary Anne. “Tyrant for the taking.” The Times (London), April 20, 1991. Per guidelines, this source is reliable for the author's opinion. It is outdated too.
• Katz, Lee Michael. “Afghanistan’s President is Ousted.” USA Today, April 17, 1992. A piece of outdated news, which may or may not be reliable.
• Li, Cheng-Chung. The Question of Human Rights on China Mainland. Republic of China: World Anti-Communist League, 1979. What Is That Outdated Trash?
• Panin, Dimitri. Translated by John Moore. The Notebooks of Sologdin. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1976. This is an outdated estimate of Soviet death statistics. ALL researchers who study USSR, including even Conquest, reconsidered their old data in light on freshly discovered archival documents that became available after fall of the USSR. This source is never used by serious modern historians.
• Rummel, R. J. Death by Government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994. AND
• Rummel, R. J. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1990.

these two sources use the same data summarised by Rudolph Rummel. Rummel was a subject of the RSN discussions too ([52], [53] (this may be relevant too)), and a conclusion was that he is not reliable for figures. Some fresh source that supports this conclusion is Karlsson

"... there have been major differences between the results presented by radical spokespeople for the different paradigms. While Jerry Hough suggested Stalin’s terror claimed tens of thousands of victims, R.J. Rummel puts the death toll of Soviet communist terror between 1917 and 1987 at 61,911,000. In both cases, these figures are based on an ideological preunderstanding and speculative and sweeping calculations. On the other hand, the considerably lower figures in terms of numbers of Gulag prisoners presented by Russian researchers during the glasnost period have been relatively widely accepted."

I believe noone can question reliability of Karlsson.

• Tolz, Vera. “Ministry of Security Official Gives New Figures for Stalin’s Victims.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Report. May 1, 1992. (The figure of seven million direct executions under Stalin, given by a member of the security services heading a commission for rehabilitation, may be taken as an absolute baseline figure to which should be added the many deaths suffered by labor camp inmates and the deaths preceding and following the Stalin period.) - Again, that is a desperately outdated piece of news.
• “Top defector says famine has killed over three million Koreans.” Agence France Presse, March 13, 1999. - the same.
• Vickery, Michael. Cambodia 1975 – 1982. Boston: South End Press, 1984. Actually, Cambodia is the only non-controversial piece of information. Interestingly, it is so uncontroversial, that the state that stopped this genocide was Communist Vietnam, and the state that started a propaganda campaign explaining the scale and horrors of this genocide was Communist USSR (while US provided Pol Pot with a tacit political support). That is arguable the only reliable source in this list.
• Zucchino, David. “’The Americans … They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave.’” Los Angeles Times, June 2, 2002. - again, WP:NEWSORG.
• Matthew White’s website Necrometrics provides a useful compilation of scholarly estimates of the death toll of major historical events. - This is especially interesting. This source was authored by a self-described atrocitologist (who can explain me what does it mean?). However, what is interesting, this source takes information from: (i) Rudolph Rummel, Stephane Courtois, Zbigniew Brzezinski, i.e. the authors that are already named in this list.

Frankly, this desperately outdated sources that pick information from each other may be a reason why VoC removed this statement from their web site. The figures are outdated and unreliable.--Paul Siebert (talk) 22:25, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

No one is claiming their figures are up to date and reliable, it is just a mention of their attempt to estimate it in 2016 "In 2016, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation made an effort to compile ranges of estimates...". Given it was made back in 2016, web archive of it is entirely appropriate. Regardless of your personal politics the VoCMF is a significant and notable organisation, their view ought to be presented regardless of your personal opinion of it. How would WP:NPOV be achieved if all right-wing views are removed from a politically charged topic. That why we have WP:BIASEDSOURCES. --Nug (talk) 01:28, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You are actually advocating citing a source you acknowledge is outdated and unreliable in order to achieve 'WP:NPOV'? I suggest you read the first sentence of that policy: "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." WP:NPOV is achieved through citing reliable sources, not unreliable ones. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:41, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to have a poor understanding of policy. Read WP:BIASEDSOURCES: "Wikipedia articles are required to present a neutral point of view. However, 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. " Even if you think the view of Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation isn't objective, it can't be excluded if you want to achive NPOV. --Nug (talk) 01:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That is not how NPOV works. Achieving NPOV doesn't require citing this source (or any source, see WP:NPOV#Bias in sources: This does not mean any biased source must be used...), and we certainly don't include biased sources in order to counterbalance other biased sources. We don't cite think tanks or advocacy groups because they are not reliable sources, because they are not independent of the subject they are covering (unlike scholarship and journalism). It's not about bias, it's about independence, and though WP:BIASEDSOURCES is part of WP:RS and not WP:NPOV, let's not forget the rest of what WP:BIASEDSOURCES says: When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. This source does not meet the normal requirements for reliable sources because as an advocacy organization, it has a low level of independence from the topic. Levivich 02:15, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

The American Heart Association is also an advocacy organization, advocating heart health through its educational programs. I already pointed to the fact that VoCMF has an academic board, it has a research and educational program, what evidence do you have that is doesn't have a reputation for fact checking, apart from your personal opinion? --Nug (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

That's not the same kind of "advocacy". While the AHA might "advocate" for heart health, there is nobody on the other side advocating against heart health. Levivich 03:48, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

I won't comment on the rest of the RSN as I'd rather not involve myself with the whole communism assessment effort in the last few weeks (bless all of you with the patience to do so). I do want to comment that I am increasingly annoyed by marking all groups of people that hold an opinion, professional or otherwise, as equally guilty of advocacy. Advocacy groups have different characteristics, goals, and methods and they are not all the same. At this point I'm almost expecting to read someone say that the Arsonist Lobby Group (fictional) and the legislators of the US fire code are both advocacy groups and neither should be trusted. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 13:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

No, Nug, I do not have a 'poor understanding of policy'. You, on the other hand, seem to, given your apparent belief that 'balance' is to be achieved by selecting sources for their political perspectives, rather than for their compliance with elementary tenets of said policies. Frankly, I'm astonished that a contributor with your experience could have such a fundamental misunderstanding of such matters. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:38, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

NPOV means summarizing the available RS without distortion. If the available RS lean to the right, so too will the article content, probably, and likewise if they lean to the left. (For example, if the only places a book has been reviewed are the Wall Street Journal, the Economist and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, our article is going to read differently than if the reviews had been in the Guardian and the Daily Beast, and that's just how the cookie crumbles.) We don't aim for false balance by shoving mediocre sources under one side of the fulcrum. "Neutrality" doesn't mean saying one positive thing for every negative thing, or one left-wing thing for every right-wing thing. Sheesh. XOR'easter (talk) 03:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, okay, so you are advocating removing any viewpoints by Kristen Ghodsee, a frequent contributor to Jacobin, a leading voice of the American left, with respect to MKuCR? --Nug (talk) 03:55, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

XOR'easter is correct. Of course, Nug avoided to mention in their fallacy that as an anthropologist, ethnographer, and specialist in former European Communist regimes, she is used for her speciality in memory analysis, that being a leftist is not considered to be an indictment to reliability in academia, that she is backed by other scholars like Neumayer, and she is used to say uncontroversial things about the use of body-counting and criticism. So that is indeed a strawman and false balance on their part. Davide King (talk) 11:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Nug, please, keep in mind that that is a "Reliable Source Noticeboard". Whereas neutrality considerations are still important, the primary issue that we are discussing here is reliability of the sources, which includes a reputation of fact checking and accuracy. To cite NPOV in a discussion about WP:V is disruptive.

During this discussion, we must come to a conclusion if this source uses a fresh and recent information or an outdated and unreliable one, and if it treats this information correctly. After that, we may decide (here or elsewhere) if this source can or cannot be used in some concrete context.

Do you have any objections to the statement that it uses obsolete data and is heavily based on the (highly controversial) Black Book figures and (even more controversial) Rummel's data? Do you have any rational objections to that?--Paul Siebert (talk) 03:04, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

You seem to be labouring under some kind of misconception that the total death toll is some kind of precise number, but as you know, it can never be a determined beyond an estimate, and there are many different estimates. As Harff states "That is in fact an inevitable problem for those seeking reliable data on mass casualties. Few perpetrators make accurate counts of their victims. Estimates diverge widely … I fully understand what it takes to collect reliable, unimpeachable global data. It is impossible. … Over time I have become more critical of country experts who challenge systematic empirical studies. Case studies are scarce, of dubious accuracy, or non-existent for some episodes of mass death, and estimates vary greatly. Some episodes dating back to before say, 1918 happened in countries that no longer exist or in countries that did not yet exist. Colonial authorities in Africa and Asia kept scarce or no records of birth or death rates. Perpetrators seldom keep records of their misdeeds and if they do, as in Nazi Germany, death estimates often are greatly underestimated or attributed to circumstances rather than deliberate policies.". I already pointed to the fact that VoCMF has an academic board, it has a research and educational program, what evidence do you have that is doesn't have a reputation for fact checking, and are less reliable than say, William Blum? --Nug (talk) 03:33, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Nobody is expecting an exact figure for a death toll, but there are such things as really bad estimates. As for the rest, well, the Discovery Institute has a board and claims to conduct research and educational programs. The existence of such things doesn't say very much at all. XOR'easter (talk) 03:53, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

But we still cite the Discovery Institute as to their view on Intelligent design. --Nug (talk) 03:59, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

The difference, of course, is that we are using secondary, independent reliable sources to summarize their views, not the Discovery Institute themselves, which can only be reliable for uncontroversial "About" stuff. We have no such secondary coverage about this Dissident blog article, which makes it undue, especially when several of the sources they cite, we already mention them. Their 40–160-ish range estimates have not been picked up by any reliable or scholarly source, and considering they said that they are going to add COVID-19 deaths to the body count, it is moot; it shows their unreliability, and went into fringe territory and misinformation. Davide King (talk) 12:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@Nug: you are just unfamiliar with sources. There is a consensus among scholars that the number of Great Purge victims is about 1.2 million. There is some uncertainty, but it is minimal. There is a consensus that the number of GULAG deaths is in between 1.6 and 1.8 million, and the amount of people who passed through the GULAG system is 18 million, although if we include broader categories, the number of deaths may increase to 2.7 million. Even such an old school anti-Communist as Conquest recognized that. These are consensus figures, and to say otherwise is tantamount to claiming that the Holocaust killed, e.g. 10 million Jews. Only freaks may claim that.

A consensus figure of Great Purge deaths (including executions and camp deaths) is 1.2 million. Rummel says it was 4.3 million.

A consensus figure of GULAG deaths is 1.7 at most (ok, let's say 2.7, which may include deportation deaths). Rummel says that only post-Stalin camp deaths amounted to 6.8 million (according to all respectable scholars there were no GULAG in that time, and mortality in prisons was quite moderate, which means those 6.8 million were taken from this air).

A consensus figure for Soviet civilian deaths as a result of the policy of Soviet authorities during WWII (GULAG mortality, execution, etc) is ~1 million. Rummel says 13 million: that is bigger that all military losses and comparable with all civilian losses.

And so on, and so forth.

Note, I know the real figures, because it was me who added all (or a significant part of) this information to Wikipedia. I can prove that with sources. I can take (again) Rummel's "Death by government" from the library, and analyze each reference at this (or any other) Wikipedia page, and I can show that each source that Rummel uses the USSR is an obsolete piece of trash that is not recognized seriously by most (or all) experts in Soviet Russia.

I can do that, because I am familiar with sources, I know the present state of knowledge of this subject, and I want Wikipedia to be seen as a respectable informational resource, not a collection of various gossips and fairy tales.

In contrast, you can respond just with vague speculations that "noone can know for sure", and this your baseless assertion is the only justification of your persistent pushing of obsolete figures that discredits Wikipedia. Why are you doing that? Why are you not going to your library? Paul Siebert (talk) 05:37, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

They are RS for their views, not for those views being facts.Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Do I understand you correct that you said "VoC is a RS for the article about VoC, not about Communism"? If that is what you say, I, obviously, agree.--Paul Siebert (talk) 15:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Not quite, what I meant is they are an RS for their views, not for those views being facts. So this would be more an issue of undue than RS. So we could say "according to...".Slatersteven (talk) 15:57, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

As I understand it, the 'views' they held regarding the specific issue being discussed are sourced to an archived webpage. Is there any reason to assume they still hold them? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:02, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Irrelevant, they were pushing a conspiracy theory, that (to my mind) raises questions about impartially and fact-checking. Indeed if anything it makes it worse, as it (to my mind) implies they belived it when told to by their political masters, and now it's not being pushed by their political masters are no longer pushing it. That makes them a propaganda outfit, and thus need to be treated as such.Slatersteven (talk) 16:05, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Your argument is unclear. We can write "According to X, the Moon is made of blue cheese" only if there are serious reason to believe that the opinion of X is important and relevant to the article's topic. Therefore, we cannot put "According to VoC ... " at any article: we can do that only in a certain context, for example, in a context of anti-Communist propaganda, but not in a context of a neutral academic discourse.--Paul Siebert (talk) 16:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Hence why I said "So this would be more an issue of undue than RS".Slatersteven (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2021 (UTC0

Clearly not a reliable source for the reasons given above. And if it isn't clear that they stand by a statement, we can't even use that with attribution. Doug Weller talk 17:03, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

In this one instance yes, I am talking about the wider issue of general reliability. I think it is clear they are far too biased to be used for statements of fact, about anything.Slatersteven (talk) 17:14, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable, and the previous discussion concluded as much: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_329#Victims_of_Communism_Memorial_Foundation. Given the group's commentary on Covid-19, they seem to be approaching WP:FRINGE status. Should not be used in articles. --K.e.coffman (talk) 06:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable Arguments that as this organisation is "bipartisan" it is neutral are rather amusing! World politics exists between the Democrats and the Republicans, therefore if they agree something is true, it must be. In reality this source exists only to advocate a point of view that Communism is terrible and so cherry picks data to fit that pov. Things appear and disappear off its website but then come back in other places, it is not clear who writes which parts of its content and their qualifications. Its website is not organised enough to use securely, its official publications might be usable if prefixed with "anti-Communist advocacy group. the Victims of Communism memorial foundation states", but I would be very careful to find specific papers which have been cited by academics. Incidentally, I wonder why there is no Victims of Capitalism memorial foundation" in the USA? Boynamedsue (talk) 07:20, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable, per Doug Weller and K.e.coffman. Ought not to be used in articles. Vanamonde (Talk) 21:56, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable, per more or less all the arguments presented above, and per the previous discussion. Nothing in this discussion actually amounts to a serious claim that the source is 'reliable' per Wikipedia norms - instead inclusion of a clearly questionable source is being presented as as a means to make the article 'neutral' according to some imagined standard. That isn't how WP:RS works, it isn't how WP:NPOV works, and is fundamentally opposed to core principles of the project. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:10, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
• Unreliable. Putting aside the fact that they've pushed fringe views, there is no indication of any sort of fact-checking process or any degree of editorial controls on their website; they're not even purporting to make the basic effort that would let us start to consider whether a source is a WP:RS. They have no particular reputation for fact-checking or accuracy. There may be a few advocacy organizations that manage to pass WP:RS through these things, but the simple fact that something is an advocacy organization with a website obviously doesn't make them reliable. Similarly, I feel like people are turning WP:BIASED ass-backwards in discussions like these - bias alone does not disqualify a source, but bias alone certainly doesn't make a source reliable, either; some of the arguments above seem to basically say "the source is biased and you can't disqualify a biased source, therefore it is reliable!" The problem here isn't that the source is biased or even that they are an advocacy organization, the problem is that they are only these things, with no reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, editorial controls, or anything else outside of that that would make them usable as a RS. Also - and I am tired of belaboring this point, but it is necessary - WP:RSOPINION does not allow us to cite random unreliable sources just by slapping an in-text attribution on them; it is a subset of WP:RS. It defines sources that meet RS to an extent, but only enough for opinion; it is not something that allows RS to be ignored entirely, so some degree of a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy is still required. Otherwise, we could cite opinion to Reddit threads and random YouTube channels! The default standard for RSOPINION is eg. labeled opinion pieces in an RS, not just "is an advocacy org and has a website" - this is nowhere near that and is therefore a bad source even for opinion. --Aquillion (talk) 04:53, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
• Additional considerations apply. VoCom is an anti-communist think tank. Like the vast majority of think tanks, there are some things that it produces that should just be ignored when writing an encyclopedia: VoCom's numbers on the Communist Death Toll suffer significant methodological problems and should not be used in WikiVoice. That being said, that topline death toll number is a very small amount of what they actually do; I'd strongly caution users against trying to use this discussion as a proxy for how they feel about the current state of mass killings under communist regimes. Personally, I would recommend ignoring everything written by a think tank that isn't actually written in a report or academic style (random blog pages, even from the Council on Foreign Relations, are not generally good things to cite). However, it would be very sloppy to label the foundation writ large with one broad stroke.

The area of the foundation that is most reliable is the academic research produced through its study centers. They break down into three silos: China Studies, Latin America programs, and Poland Studies. Each silo appears to operate without much overlap in terms of staffing. The China Studies and Latin America programs seem to be well-run. I have some concerns regarding the Poland Studies staffing choices.

The foundation's China Studies fellows are both well-respected and well-accomplished. Adrian Zenz, who is a world-renowned expert on the abuses in Xinjiang and regularly publishes peer-reviewed works on the subject in respected journals, is a fellow at the foundation. Ethan Gutmann, whose work on Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China has been incredibly detailed and influential, is also a fellow in China Studies at the foundation. Matthew Robertson, the third China Fellow, is also the author of multiple peer-reviewed works on organ harvesting, such as this one published in the BMJ and this one in BMC Medical Ethics.

The director of Latin American Programs at the foundation, Carlos Ponce, is likewise a highly respected individual in the area of Latin American human rights work and has had significant experience at Freedom House before joining VoCom.

The Poland Studies fellows feel like a mixed bag. Chelsea Michta seems to be an expert on the Warsaw Uprising and memory politics following the fall of communism, and her thesis seems to be related to the topic area. Monika Brzozowska-Pasieka being in Poland Studies feels a bit odd; she appears to have most noted for suing Holocaust scholars for not being sufficiently pro-Pole. Anna Draniewicz seems to be an expert on the policial history of Polish-language films. seems like an expert on Polish history, while seems to be someone whose research on the Polish diaspora in the United States is respected. Maria Juczewska doesn't seem to have strong qualifications and her graduate research appears to largely have been biography writing on a notable Pole.

Many of the foundation's fellows are strong experts in their respective fields. This is particularly true for its China Studies programs, which are doing some of the most intensive research into the history of human rights abuses under the Chinese Communist Party's rule. That being said, there are definitely some odder characters in Poland studies and the methodology for its giant death toll figure is not rigorous.

Because of the above, I believe that there are some areas of the institution that are reliable and probably better than most WP:NEWSORG-level sources, while others are clearly unreliable. This leads me towards a classification that additional considerations apply, with the particular context of the source (the author, format, and relation of the content to the author's area of expertise) being something to consider when using it. — Mhawk10 (talk) 07:08, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

Completely agree with your point about MKUCR. Regarding your points, I feel that if the academics are reliable experts and have published quality work in peer-reviewed journals, one could cite the work in the journals. Others above have mentioned concerns about the editorial process of the organization, and if this holds I don't see a strong argument for finding it reliable as there is no guarantee except trust in the authors that the work they publish is reliable, I think. Note this is a strong opinion weakly held, though. Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 09:23, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

^Unreliable The site doesn't do any original research, it merely publishes information from other sources, without attribution. An obvious problem is that it presents a high estimate of victims of communism as fact. TFD (talk) 06:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable lack of reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (t · c) buidhe 20:21, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

India: A Country Study, Federal Research Division, Library of Congress

Source: Heitzman, James; Worden, Robert, eds. (1995), India: A Country Study (PDF), Federal Research Division, Library of Congress, p. 571

Statement in source: "There was some opposition to this move within the cabinet by those who did not agree with referring the Kashmir dispute to the UN. The UN mediation process brought the war to a close on January 1, 1949. In all, 1,500 soldiers died on each side during the war."

Discussion: Talk:Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948#6000 casualties figure

Statement to be supported: Result in infobox per this edit

Summary: This is a highly partisan topic and is subject to DS. The talk page discussion started by questioning Pakistani casualties quoted as 6,000 killed, citing Globalsecurity.org and a figure of 1,500 killed. There is no consensus as to the reliability of that source but it actually cites India: A Country Study (the subject of this post). The Indo-Pakistani War of 1947–1948 was initially fought by proxy until the ultimate engagement of both national militaries. It is unclear from the other sources cited precisely what they are reporting as casualties (ie national military casualties v total combatant casualties). The other sources are not great, in that they are largely Indian in origin. The subject edit would add the 1,500 figure to both sides. However, the reliability of the source (India: A Country Study) has since been questioned, citing WP:CONTEXTMATTERS.

Question: Is the subject source (India: A Country Study) sufficiently reliable to support the edit made to the infobox in respect to casualties.

Cinderella157 (talk) 11:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC) I have no ties to either country.

Comments (India: A Country Study)

• Not a reliable source for the purpose.

• That being said, what is the end-game? A majority of men employed by Pakistan were irregulars supplied with arms-stashes and money; who had recorded those casualties? There is a reason why even semi-official histories (see Shuja Nawaz et al) skips mentioning casualty-counts. TrangaBellam (talk) 11:47, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

• The time of the event is around late 1940's. This makes it very difficult to gather enough information on the casualty figures. Wikipedia was earlier quoting an indian figure which seems to have no official source and was not reliable enough. The 1,500 casualty figure estimate is the most neutral source on the internet neutral source at page 571 and is quoted by global security.org . It is also cited in some university work. No concensus can even be reached on global security.org not being suitable for being quoted. It has been cited in over 25,000 articles and also by Reuters and new york times as well as Washington Post which are considered reliable sources and its citation in some 25,000 articles on Google Scholar. It is only logical to quote both the 1,500 and 6000 figures as an estimate. Going by what TrangaBellam, that would mean removal of all the casualty section as this argument will even apply for the 6000 figure, which also it not a sure shot reliable source. Truthwins018 (talk) 13:49, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Not reliable for the purpose, as I already said on the article talk page. It looks to me that somebody sitting in Washington DC just made a wild guess. The Indian History of the War says the following:

During the long campaign, the Indian Army lost 76 officers, 31 JCOs and 996 Other Ranks killed, making a total of 1103. The wounded totalled 3152, including 81 officers and 107 JCOs. Apart from these casualties, it appears that the J & K State Forces lost no less than 1990 officers and men killed, died of wounds, or missing presumed killed . The small RIAF lost a total of 32 officers and men who laid down their lives for the nation during these operations. In this roll of honour, there were no less than 9 officers. The enemy casualties were definitely many times the total of Indian Army and RIAF casualties, and one estimate concluded that the enemy suffered 20,000 casualties, including 6,000 killed.

So, the Indian casualties were in excess of 3,000 and the Washington estimate misses it by a wide margin. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

The India country Study states 1500 Indian soldiers died, so it's off by 397 from the Indian History of the War. However, it's unclear whether it includes the J&K/AJK/GB/Chitral forces for either side and if it does, it would indeed be off by a wide margin. Cipher21 (talk) 20:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

There may be some confusion of terminology. Casualty is killed+wounded. It's apples and oranges to compare 1,500 killed with over 3,000 casualty. -- GreenC 03:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• This source doesn't rule out that the 1,500 figure is wrong. The 6000 Pakistani casualty figure and 3000 indian casualty figure still turns out to be an indian claim. The 1,500 comes out to be a seperate estimate of casualties, not related with }}. No official pakistani casualty figures were released and thus the source cannot be ruled out. Your source only suggests thats the indian killed figure be changed to 1,500-3000 and Pakistani be kept at 1,500-6000. Truthwins018 (talk) 19:03, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
  • The question that is being discussed is whether it is reliable for the purpose. I gave evidence that proves that it is not. The best you can do is to quote it verbatim in the body. It is nor reasonable to split it up into pieces and format it in whatever way. -- Kautilya3 (talk) 23:44, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• For the sake of including a neutral perspective I agree with using it. Currently, the article cites Indian figures. Cipher21 (talk) 20:40, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• I agree with including it, as a range. The source is widely cited by other reliable sources as noted by Truthwins018. Furthermore reliable sources are not required to cite their sources to be reliable. A research division within the Library of Congress is not faultless, I doubt any numbers are definitive, but it would require more than Wiki editors disagreeing with the numbers to exclude it from the article, particularly when given as a range. -- GreenC 03:37, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• Unreliable for the purpose. The source which is India: A Country Study is clearly not widely cited. The assertion that it is, is based on a different website called globalsecurity.org quoting it. The website globalsecurity.org which looks like a group blog, is the one being used as a source for an opinion in one NYT article and produces 25k+ results on google scholar (every result after the 8th is from the website itself). This is very marginal use in RS, not to mention its use is irrelevant to the actual query here. Searching for India: A Country Study itself produces similarly barebone results. The subject of the source is an overall profile of India and is not specific to the military history of the Kashmir Conflict. The topic area needs specialist academic sources, especially for things like casualty estimates. On a sidenote, looking at the infobox of the article, every single source without exception, that is cited for the casualties is similarly problematic in some respect or the other. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 08:06, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• Wide citation of global security.org has already been mentioned by SpicyBiryani on the talk page of 1947-1948 indo-pak war.The founder of the website is John Pike. John Pike is one of the worlds leading expert on defence in the world and more can be read about him in the sources cited.Global security also has a reputed range of staff with wide experience in the field of defence.Global security has been cited in Reuters by an article worked upon by Reuters Staff. It has been cited in CNN . It has been cited in Washington Post here, here ,here. It has been cited by NYT [54], [55]. Some of the book citations are:

• Fair, C. Christine. Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army's Way of War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014 ,ISBN 978 0 1998 9270 9.
• Cordesman, Anthony H. Al-Rodhan, Khalid R. Gulf military forces in an era of asymmetric wars. Westport, Conn. : Praeger Security International ,2007.
• Anthony H. Cordesman, Martin Kleiber, Iran's Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities: The Threat in the Northern Gulf

All the book citations may be viewed here. It has been cited in numerous books on National Security. [56]

As for the subject issue, The book does concentrate on one of the participants of the war. The killed figures are given in a seperate National Security section. We till date are not equipped with accurate figures of the casualties from the war. An indian version of figures are available. A neutral version is established from this source. It is only wise to continue with an estimated range of casualty figures which gives all the figures Truthwins018 (talk) 10:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

• I see merit in the arguments of those who esteem the source unreliable for the purpose for which it is being used on the main page. There is hardly any correlation between the reliability of a source and the magnitude of hits it gets on a search engine. The tangible criteria are enumerated and enunciated at WP:RS and there is no indication that this source, which uses a broad-brush to coalesce the two countries' casualties under a single sentence with unwarranted brevity, measures up when the yardstick of WP:RSCONTEXT is applied. Kerberous (talk) 12:27, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

References

• It definetely fulfils on the criteria of WP:RS. Your opinion WP:OR is irrelevant in the present criteria. The source directly cites the material and its under a seperate section of Natural security. Vaious citations of globalsecurity.org does increase its reliability especially by already considered reliable sources and none of the discussion was aimed at " magnitude of hits"Truthwins018 (talk) 14:03, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

Comment on The Daily Dot

WP:RSPSS lists The Daily Dot as "generally reliable for internet culture", and I would broadly agree. However, I still think that additional discretion is warranted when using the source.

As per the Wikipedia article for internet culture, the term is rather vague without well-defined boundaries which would make the statement "generally reliable for internet culture" to be somewhat problematic. The Daily Dot does sort their stories by category including by "Internet Culture", but the tag is also found in many articles that may not specifically be about internet culture (example 1 2) or where it merely touches upon it briefly and isn't the main focus. Secondly, while I agree that their straight news reporting on internet trends is usually good, a lot of their articles are highly opinionated without disclosure. Many of their features engage in heavy analysis and commentary (ex. attributing motives*, dubbing others "Karens" and things "cringeworthy" without quotes, etc.) without properly labelling such articles. They do have articles that are labelled as such, but many of them lack such delineation. They have also been mentioned in a previous discussion as well as the Wikipedia article to have a political slant in reporting. (*For clarity, I don't disagree with the accusations of being transphobic, but the article is also heavy on analysis/commentary as well as content that would pose BLP issues while not explicitly labelled as Opinion or Analysis)

While I don't think this means that it should not be considered "generally reliable", I still think that extra care should be taken when citing articles from The Daily Dot. They are great when breaking news about topics that are trending strictly in cyberspace, but I would generally take care to always default to attribution unless multiple sources are available - especially since they can be highly opinionated during reporting coupled with the fact they are often one of the only sources deemed reliable to cover certain niche internet topics.Dankmemes2 (talk) 22:24, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I support the DD concerns here. I think many editors take "reliable for internet culture" to mean reliable for anything on the internet. So if DD says the ideas that a public figure shares on Twitter are "-phobic" then this must be due/reliable etc. If DD tells us there is a new trend on Twitter where users post pictures of planking. Sure, it's OK for that. However, the concerns regarding mixing opinion and fact, lots of subjective claims treated as fact etc is a big concern and the source should never be used for things like contentious claims about BLP subjects. It would be a terrible source for things like BLPs of Gamergate participants. Springee (talk) 18:18, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think anyone in any previous discussions really substantiated (or even seriously argued) that there are serious problems with it outside of internet culture; that is just the bulk of what it writes and therefore most of its output. But it has strong WP:USEBYOTHERS, and nobody has produced any actual reason to question its reputation for fact-checking or accuracy, so I'm included to say that, no, it's definitely a WP:BLP-quality source, and would strenuously object to any removal of it on that grounds. If you want to change it status you need more than just asserting that you dislike its tone or conclusions. --Aquillion (talk) 21:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Disagreeing with a source's conclusions or tone isn't a reason to question its reliability; neither, as far as I am aware, did any of the previous discussions say it is not reliable outside of internet culture (that was just the main area that has been considered, since that is the bulk of what it writes.) Do you have any secondary sources questioning its reliability? It has significant academic WP:USEBYOTHERS where it is cited for statements of fact (eg. [57][58][59][60][61][62] - you'd need more than just "they call people Karens". (I will point out, since someone bafflingly claimed above that they are somehow a bad source for BLPs of Gamergate participants, that many academic sources cite them for specifically that subject, eg. [63][64][65][66][67][68]) And interpretation and analysis is what a secondary WP:RS is supposed to do; describing someone's motives is entirely appropriate. (eg. the New York Times regularly discusses the motives of politicians and characterizes their actions - [69][70][71].) Do you have any sources raising the concerns you have here, or is this just your personal opinion? Without that, I would honestly suggest removing the "for internet culture" bit from its descriptor to settle this and noting that it is generally reliable, though some editors have objected to its tone or believe it to be biased. --Aquillion (talk) 21:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

You do understand that the Data and Society stuff is not peer reviewed right? One of your accademic papers is about Pokemon Go. Other sources are using it as a news source for comments about on line trolling. I don't see an issue there. However, the original concern regarding the heavy mixing of subjective claims/assessment/editor opinion with fact is an issue. It's nice that a key word search can turn up examples but are they good examples that really say this is a good source or just examples where someone was trying to find any source to support a claim they are trying to make. (I understand this as the first time one of my papers was cited it was cited for something that was tangential to my actual research. It was an example of a bad citation.) Springee (talk) 04:50, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Ok, but as far as I can recall, you haven't presented anything to back up your concerns about the Daily Dot, ever. You've objected to it repeatedly but you've never substantiated that as anything but your personal gut feelings. I get that your gut tells you that this source has an unusual amount of mixing of subjective claims/assessment/editor opinion with fact (something I completely disagree with and don't think any of the presented examples really support, hence why I pointed to similar language from obvious WP:RSes), but even if you can object to one or two of the twelve citations to it I linked, I included multiple academic sources using it for what we would consider BLP-sensitive remarks in the specific area where you implied their reputation would be insufficient to support that usage. To respond to that you need to actually point to actual mainstream coverage of the Daily Dot that reflects your concerns, especially since I've demonstrated that its stature is sufficient that that coverage should clearly exist if your expressed concerns are grounded in fact. WP:RS is ultimately about whether a source has a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, not about whether you like their tone or agree with the language they use. --Aquillion (talk) 07:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Like I mentioned, I was not trying to argue in favour of ousting The Daily Dot from its status as "generally reliable" for internet culture - which is why I said I broadly agree. It was more of a comment. I've already addressed the internet culture issue, I'll focus on the opinion/analysis part. The Daily Dot indeed does do a lot of straightforward news reporting, and while most reliable sources do engage in explicit analysis and commentary, my experience is that DD articles often contain them explicitly in ones that are not labelled as such. For example, in the "attributing motives" example I listed, it was definitively claimed outright that JK Rowling makes it "absolutely sure everyone knows she doesn’t consider trans women to be women" in a news article not labelled as analysis or opinion. My issue with the article is not so much the tone or that they would come to that conclusion, but that the article engaged in such opinion/analysis and stated them like proven facts in a news article when they were based off tweets that didn't explicitly say what was stated. As you are likely aware of (given this is a heated topic), the claims that were made are currently highly contentious and disputed. I am aware that a source being opinionated does not mean it is not generally reliable and I know that mere disagreement (which is something that I don't with the said article in question as I think Rowling's statements are indeed transphobic and harmful, but that's irrelevant to the topic at hand) is not an argument against them. However, there's a difference between merely discussing or questioning someone's motives like the NYT articles appear to do (one of which was explicitly labelled an analysis, and from what I've read in the other I would also support using in-line citation) and stating assumptions or interpretations (especially one that would be contentious) outright in a news article as if it were an proven fact. And while having articles that dub others "Karen" and the like doesn't necessarily diminish their factual credibility, such characterization is in essence based on bias/opinion and should not be confused as straight news.

Additionally, The Daily Beast (ex. 1 2 3 4 5) and Mashable also enjoy frequent citation as fact in academic use (ex. 1 2 34 etc.), despite being listed as WP:MREL, and some of the examples you gave also contain sources that are not WP:GREL. Again, I am not disputing that The Daily Dot belongs in the WP:GREL category but my opinion is that the source problematically mixes analysis/commentary and users should default to in-line attribution when citing it. I'd support updating the summary/description on WP:RSPSS as such, but you may disagree. Dankmemes2 (talk) 09:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• This appears to be more just knowing how to apply YESPOV to a source when it engages in the mixed factual/editorial approach for its articles (which is the bread and butter of how the Daily Dot writes). That is, we as editors can be smart enough to understand to recognize when they engage in editorial statements and attribute those (if needed), while leaving their statements of fact appropriately. Their reliability on Internet culture is still fine, as they aren't wrong when they talk factually in their articles. --Masem (t) 22:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

This is perhaps a better way to address the original concern. When the Daily Dot takes a limited set of facts and uses them to call someone a troll, or just reports on what is realistically gossipy news we really shouldn't give it any weight for inclusion in an article that claims to be encyclopedic. Springee (talk) 04:50, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem with this 'trust people to use it correctly' approach is that it leaves ourselves wide open for POV pushing, whether the editor doing so is aware that's what they're doing or not. A lot of editors are of the mindset that just about anything in a source marked green at RSP, even statements that are highly opinionated, can then be treated as factual, and as something we can state in Wikivoice (and even that not doing so is whitewashing). Editors can thus circumvent the restrictions on opinion articles noted at WP:RSOPINION and launder opinions into facts. I suggest these outlets that mix opinion and fact need to be more clearly cautioned about on RSP. Crossroads ^-talk- 05:20, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

David Price writing in Counterpunch in Edward Said

Counterpunch was deprecated in this RFC, a decision that is being discussed up above in #De-deprecate_CounterPunch. But at Edward Said, David Price is used in writing in about his finding FBI surveillance of Said. Price is the author Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists published by Duke University Press, and he is professor of anthropology and sociology at Saint Martin's University and author of a number of peer-reviewed journal articles (see his ResearchGate profile for examples). This specific Counterpunch article is also cited in academic journals, for example this article in Third World Quarterly published by Taylor & Francis discusses Price's findings at length (page 753). The citation has been removed and then tagged as unreliable. Is this article by David Price, an established expert published on specifically the topic of the US government surveillance of academics, writing in Counterpunch a reliable source for his finding the FBI surveilled Edward Said in the article Edward Said? I would like to avoid the wider discussion on deprecation being right or wrong here, and focus on if this source is reliable in this context? nableezy - 21:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't want to discuss the deprecation of this particular source (in general I think we err on the side of deprecation too much) but I'd like to note that you can use other sources for this claim, for example The Nation, which is green now: [72]. Alaexis_¿question? 21:34, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Price's findings are covered in the Nation as well, which references his Counterpunch article (where it says "David Price is a professor of anthropology at St. Martin’s University in Washington State. As anyone glancing through his excellent book Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists will know, Price is expert at getting secret government documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Last year, on behalf of the newsletter CounterPunch (which I co-edit), Price requested the FBI’s file on Said."). Just like the Third World Quarterly article. My question is if Price's article itself is a reliable source for Price's findings. nableezy - 21:37, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes. The appropriateness of his CounterPunch piece can't be seriously contested (except as an inference from the deprecation designation, i.e. by ignoring the fact that he fits the best criteria advised by WP:RS). We need the deprecation review context to avoid the time-consuming bother of repeatedly coming here to justify the inclusion of fine scholarly sources because some editors are taking deprecation as holy writ and Price is merely one recent victim of that holy war of blanket good riddancy.Nishidani (talk) 21:42, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, instead use the source that Alaexis provided. It seems to be an example of depreciation working in practice, where information that does not belong on the encylopedia is kept out, while information that does can be found elsewhere; if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources. BilledMammal (talk) 21:48, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

We literally have Generally Reliable sources for the specific claim. There is absolutely no necessity to add a deprecated source to an article to achieve full NPOV coverage. You don't want to accept the broad general consensus to deprecate, but you don't get to enforce your personal lack of acceptance - David Gerard (talk) 21:50, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Your edit is obscene. Generally unreliable or even deprecated does not mean blacklisted and to be removed on sight. Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself for removing a source cited in a number of peer-reviewed works. nableezy - 21:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

It does, however, presume that the source is bad, and overcoming that is not achieved by revert-warring and personal attacks - David Gerard (talk) 21:59, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, and if you had even pretended to read this section you would see evidence to overcome that presumption. You are removing things you are not even looking at, and you should be stopped. nableezy - 22:01, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

That you put a claimed justification is insufficient to overcome the presumption. Also, you're literally declaring an intent to be an edit warrior here - is that what you meant to do? - David Gerard (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Excuse me, what? Where did I declare any such intent? And did you even pretend to read any of the sources you just removed? Or are you going to ignore our policies, which require that each source use be examined in context. nableezy - 22:10, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since apparently the only way to cite works published by scholars is to de-deprecate Counterpunch, and because we now have an editor in David Gerard going on an editing rampage removing unquestionably solid sources, I will start an RFC to that effect. nableezy - 21:57, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes it is a rampage that is disturbing because it is taking place while the de-deprecation review is current and not closed. No need to complicate this by opening a third venue. The gravamen of this spate of reverts while we are reviewing this, preempting the review conclusions, should be noted in the section above on de-deprecation.Nishidani (talk) 22:07, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, that's not how it works. The source is deprecated. As has been pointed out already, you'd need to rerun the RFC to reverse it - David Gerard (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:DEPS says exactly the opposite. nableezy - 22:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

If it was "unquestionable", multiple editors wouldn't be questioning it - David Gerard (talk) 22:09, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Where exactly is there any response to David Price writing in Counterpunch being a reliable source here? Who has questioned that? nableezy - 22:17, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

You have already admitted in this section we already have an RS for the claim that isn't Counterpunch. You don't need Counterpunch at all for this. You're just attempting to get a deprecated source in even when it's redundant - David Gerard (talk) 22:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No, I am attempting to use the actual source here. David Price is the person who uncovered the FBI surveillance of Said. He is an expert on the topic of the US surveilling academic activists. Why would he not be cited by us when he is cited in peer-reviewed journal articles? nableezy - 22:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

And we have editors in the other discussion saying it's OK (including myself) and up there and down here saying it's not. We can't go on like that. The deprecation "policy" needs an add.Selfstudier (talk) 22:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

The deprecation guideline already disallows the indiscriminate removal, despite the bluster of David when he says No, that's not how it works. The source is deprecated. It actually is how it works, WP:DEPS requires each use be examined, not indiscriminately removed. nableezy - 22:28, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

As I already pointed out to you at WP:ANI - your fourth thread on literally the same dispute - DEPS is an information page, listing the results of deprecation RFCs. It specifically disclaims being even a guideline, let alone a policy. It cannot require anything whatsoever. You're citing the explanatory text for an information listing as if it's hard policy. It is not - David Gerard (talk) 22:51, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

ANI is about your editing, not about any one source. Kindly dont muddy the waters here. nableezy - 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Note: Nableezy has brought this particular sourcing question to a fourth thread on WP:ANI - David Gerard (talk) 23:24, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

No I brought your indiscriminate removal of sources, including ABOUTSELF links and sources not Counterpunch but removed because you are editing in a careless manner, to ANI. Please do not muddy the waters. Your user conduct is discussed on ANI, not any source. nableezy - 23:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Am I not understanding this here, or is there a reason why you can't simply use the secondary citations? Counterpunch's reliability is irrelevant when citing a reliable secondary source describing or summarizing something published in Counterpunch (with the obvious caveat that that means you can only base the article on what is said in that secondary source.) In fact, that's the usual way we cover significant things that are written or which occur in unreliable publications. Whether or not you can cite it via SPS, it doesn't matter, because SPS is a weak way of citing things - if a better / non-SPS source exists for the same statement, removing the weaker source is obvious irrespective of whether the weaker source would otherwise meet the threshold for usability. --Aquillion (talk) 03:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I dont think it is a weak source here, it is specifically cited in other reliable sources, and WP:UBO would seem to say that if this specific article is treated as reliable by other reliable sources, then it is also reliable. I actually think this is a much better citation than The Nation, Cockburn is just relaying what the actual expert reported. We should cite the most authoritative source, and here it is Price. Also, the sources that cover it do so by covering Price uncovering the information from his FOI request and his writing about it in CP. The incident has weight, per its coverage in multiple sources, and the source is an established expert on this specific topic. Not even just generally anthropology and the relationship with the government and academics, but specifically on the US government surveillance of activist academics. Why wouldn't we actually cite him? nableezy - 04:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

A SPS is a weak source by definition - that's why WP:SPS says to use them cautiously. The strongest source is of course an expert published in a reliable publisher, but I would generally consider a secondary source describing the position of an expert to be a stronger source than a direct citation to the expert unless the place where the secondary source is published is noticeably weaker, even in cases where the expert was published in a RS, let alone in cases where the expert wasn't published in an RS. The secondary source adds the weight and reputation of its publisher, as well as the WP:DUE weight of the primary source receiving secondary coverage in a reputable source, while covering (and therefore reinforcing) the reputation and significance of the primary source in a way that lets us directly discuss it as part of an in-line citation without risk of synthesis. --Aquillion (talk) 04:49, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I disagree that a SPS by an established expert is a weak source. The use cautiously is in relation to SPS sources as a whole, including by non-experts. But what it says is Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications. They may be considered reliable, not weakly reliable, not so-so. When somebody has a history of academic expertise in a specific topic, and I dont see anybody disputing that Price is that in this specific topic, then they are the source. They are reliable. And it would honestly be silly to have in our article that David Price, writing for Counterpunch, uncovered the FBI surveillance program of Said and not cite that article. If people want to argue that SPS should not be used in general they can make that argument, but that isnt what our policy says. nableezy - 04:56, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

If I understand the situation, there are reliable secondary sources that point directly to Price's articles in Counterpunch. In most cases, when a RS goes "According to an article published in (other RS)" we should always follow the source and use the original ("other RS") article. In a case where we have a weak or non-RS as that "other RS", it is reasonable to include both the original article alongside the referring RS to provide both the original context and evidence that a reliable source trusts that work as well for this purpose. This is not always required, particularly if the original source is a clearly no-go as an acceptable source, but in this case, a Price article on Counterpunch is not going to be that critical an issue. --Masem (t) 18:50, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• David Price, as a Professor of Anthropology specialised in surveillance, is clearly exactly the kind of established subject-matter expert that WP:SPS goes out of its way to note may be considered reliable when published in other independent, reliable sources, like Price has been, in Anthropology Today and Critique of Anthropology. Unless there is specific evidence that Counterpunch doctors its op-eds/commentaries from subject-matter experts, it is rather moot whether Counterpunch is reliable, generally unreliable or deprecated, because Price is still a subject-matter expert. Iskandar323 (talk) 05:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC: Counterpunch

Should articles published in CounterPunch be treated as WP:SPS? Nableezy 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

initial question was phrased Should articles written by established academic experts (as discussed in WP:SPS) writing in Counterpunch be de-deprecated and treated as WP:SPS?

Notified: [[centralized discussion]]. Selfstudier (talk) 12:40, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes - In the above example we have an author of scholarship focused specifically on the topic of the US government surveillance of academics is writing about that topic, and whose column is covered in peer-reviewed journal articles (see cites here or this). Nobody is challenging that Counterpunch also publishes things that are not suitable as a reliable source. It however also does publish the work of numerous academic experts, and that work is being indiscriminately removed from our articles. If David Price wrote this on his geocities page it would be usable per WP:SPS. There is no reason to treat the work of an established academic expert as being less reliable due to it being on Counterpunch as opposed to it being on their personal blog. Nobody is arguing that Counterpunch articles by non-experts should be cited here. But here, we have a very real example of actual scholarship being removed from our articles. And that should be reversed. nableezy - 22:54, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

  Further comment. It is incredibly disingenuous to claim that usable sources are covered by existing allowances here, but where such allowances are explicitly allowed to claim that an ABOUTSELF source cannot be used because if you absolutely need a deprecated source, you don't have a source. This specific case, and many others like it, involves an actual expert source, with pristine credentials, published on this specific topic in peer-reviewed works or books published by academic presses. Users are expunging sources that are themselves treated as reliable by peer-reviewed works. This article is cited by a journal article in Third World Quarterly, it is covered in The Nation. Countless other Counterpunch articles written by noted experts in their field are likewise cited. But because other articles are not written by experts that makes these scholars somehow less reliable? The fact that the only answer to why should David Price or Sara Roy or Neve Gordon or Dean Baker not be cited in Counterpunch is "because Counterpunch is deprecated" is both circular and illogical, and this board should reject this blatant appeal to emotion and association fallacy. There are crap articles on Counterpunch? Cool, dont cite those. But this is the work of an established scholar, cited by other reliable sources, and it should be able to be cited here. It is silly that people are saying that Patrick Cockburn writing in the Nation about an article in the magazine he edited is usable to relay the contents of the material in the article itself, but the article, oh dear no cant have that. nableezy - 02:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  The William P. Quigley appears to be a case of an editor misapplying policy, and the correct response is to correctly apply policy, rather than using it to claim that existing policy is flawed. As such, I've restored the content, although I can see an argument being made that a spouses profession is WP:UNDUE. BilledMammal (talk) 02:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I tried that, however editors are using the deprecation decision (his own in fact), to claim that any usage is disallowed. I was initially trying to address one single source, one that is unquestionably reliable (written by a subject matter expert, cited by other reliable sources), but again, that was shut down on the basis of CP being deprecated. That level of circular logic is, as a matter of fact, degrading our articles. I agree with all of the people that say CP published a bunch of bullshit by unknown non-experts. And those things should not be cited. But, again, that is not all that they publish. And I still defy a single person to explain why, for example, this is not a reliable source. When people are using deprecation to remove obviously reliable sources, then I see nothing else to do but to challenge the deprecation. I posit that if people are aware that the decision to deprecate CP was not actually in keeping with what WP:DEPS says, that is that each individual source should be examined to see if it overcomes the presumption of unreliability, and saw that people are wholsale expunging sources like David Price ([73]), Sara Roy ([74]), Gabriel Kolko ([75]) Robert Fisk ([76]) and other expert sources and not antisemitic conspiracy theories and 9/11 truther articles as was reputed to be what CP was actually used around here for that they may well have said maybe deprecation is a bit much here. nableezy - 03:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

*No It's impossible to de-deprecate specific articles, deprecation applies to the medium the articles appear in. And Counterpunch as medium has already been deprecated for lack of editorial control and for pushing fringe articles. If the author is an established expert, it should be incredibly easy to find other actually reliable sources for the same claime. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC) EDIT: struck because the RFC question changed. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:41, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: Might I add that this is a duplicate discussion to this: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#De-deprecate_CounterPunch Whay are we discussing this here as well? Why are we discussing this on four different location? This looks more and more like forumshopping. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:05, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Because only a new RFC can overturn the old? The closer specifically said that a new RFC is required. So here is that RFC. nableezy - 23:11, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

hmm, I think in that case you should probably rephrase this RFC to something like "Should the deprecation of Counterpunch be overturned" because right now it's a bit confusing. Mvbaron (talk) 23:13, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. The RFC question is bad, and should be written as "Should articles published in CounterPunch be considered self published sources?", as that appears to be the neutral version of what the opening statement is asking. However, the answer is still no - articles published in CounterPunch are not self-published sources, and per WP:SOURCES the publisher of the work affects the reliability of the work, and per the recent RFC the publisher of the work is extremely unreliable, to the point that there was a strong consensus for deprecation. Further, WP:SPS tells us to exercise caution when using such sources: if the information in question is suitable for inclusion, someone else will probably have published it in independent, reliable sources and the principle would apply here; if the information is suitable, someone would have published it elsewhere, such as with the example provided, where the information is also obtainable from The Nation. BilledMammal (talk) 23:12, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, can change that. But I am only challenging the usage of established experts. Not non-experts. nableezy - 23:21, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I understand, but since WP:SPS only allows experts to be used, you still wouldn't be challenging the usage of non-experts. BilledMammal (talk) 23:26, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

I will change it with a note now. nableezy - 23:27, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment: Previous RFC on deprecation of counterpunch can be found here: [77] --Mvbaron (talk) 23:20, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Archive link: Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 355#RfC: CounterPunch BilledMammal (talk) 23:22, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes If the same article was published on Medium or Blogspot, it would be fine to cite. In this particular example, the suggestion that CounterPunch is unreliable, but it's fine to cite a piece by an editor of CounterPunch (Alexander Cockburn) that is basically a shorter introduction to Said's article that directly advertises the full article because it's in the Nation instead is kinda absurd. Anyone writing an academic work would cite the actual article instead of a summary. RoseCherry64 (talk) 23:25, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

Since the question was edited to be less about a specific example, to clarify, I have not seen any example where the publication have significantly twisted or edited articles submitted to them, so I would treat them as more or less as self-published articles speaking for the author, and not the publication as a whole. RoseCherry64 (talk) 23:53, 21 December 2021 (UTC)

• No - superfluous with previous RFC, where this editor asked this question specifically. Covered by existing allowances, in the remarkably few cases where it's allowed - David Gerard (talk) 23:30, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• No - to the new question: Counterpunch has editorial staff (see here: [78]) and their guideline to submission speaks about editorial control: What are the guidelines for submitting an article to CounterPunch? ... We don’t pay for web contributions, nor do the editors guarantee any response to submissions. I don't see how this is compatible with WP:SPS. Counterpunch has been deprecated in the previous RFC because of bad editorial judgements and a track record of published falsehoods. --Mvbaron (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
• Weak yes. As long as there is no evidence of misrepresenting experts' opinions, I think that it's reliable. As with other SPS, always DUE applies. The editor who wishes to add something from CP should be able to demonstrate that it's DUE. Alaexis_¿question? 06:45, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It has been noted below that CP is not really a SPS since they have some editorial policy and decide what to publish. I struck through the reference to SPS, otherwise my opinion is unchanged. Alaexis_¿question? 21:30, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. We should base our use of sources on the evidence for their reliability. Nobody has provided any evidence that CounterPunch mangles the articles written by its authors, or in fact has any involvement in the text of its articles other than deciding which articles to publish. So there is no reason to suspect that what is published is not the opinion of the author. When that author is an acknowledged area expert, the situation is almost the same as a publication on the author's blog. Indeed, it is no different to an op-ed by the expert in a mainstream newspaper. (The claim that mainstream newspapers "fact-check" op-eds is a wiki-myth.) In summary, whether we can cite an article in CounterPunch should depend only on the expertise of the author in the relevant field. Zero^talk 08:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• No and Bad RfC. The problem with CounterPunch is not that there is no editorial review (editors indeed do select the pieces that they want to publish before they appear on the website), but that the editorial review is awful. The publication is deliberate in pushing ideas from the fringes without doing much at all in the vein of fact-checking. Unless the author is on the editorial staff, it isn’t really self-published. We should stop trying to wikilawyer around deprecation here; if WP:DAILYMAIL had a history professor write an op-ed on a historical topic we wouldn’t dare think about citing it as a source for facts in a Wikipedia article—there is no “I really like the author” exception to deprecation. Self-published sources can also be deprecated, so this RfC isn’t even something that can change the relevant deprecation status of the source. And, substantially changing the RfC question after people have responded is a great way to irreparably taint an RfC. — Mhawk10 (talk) 12:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Drop the fatuous Daily Mail analogy. It's sand in the eyes, for a dozen reasons, most of which concern the fact that major scholars in their respective fields regularly express themselves on CounterPunch's site. Alexander Cockburn who set it up and ran it until his death, was a distinguished journalist with an excellent mainstream presence in major newspapers, not a tabloid hack.Nishidani (talk) 14:05, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Two people had responded, and both had asked me to change the question. And it has not been substantially changed. nableezy - 15:58, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes I am at a loss to understand the zealotry here. An opinion by a recognized expert anywhere (not just in Counterpunch, Countercurrents say, which is similar, is also SPS as a practical matter) shouldn't be dissed, only because of where they decided to publish it. If anyone wish to contest some material, they can do that, starting at the article talk page as usual, but no indiscriminate removals.Selfstudier (talk) 16:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Sorry, but an article published in a magazine with editorial control is per definition not self-published (not even "as a practical matter"). BUT such pieces by experts are all fine for use with attribution. The unique situation here is just that in a previous RFC counterpunch has been deprecated. If it weren't deprecated, we could just cite Price and all the experts normally (with attribution). Mvbaron (talk) 17:33, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  As per link I gave (2008!) "Countercurrents should be treated as an SPS, and we should follow the CounterPunch/FPM method of looking at the author's expertise for guidance." Deprecation should not have the effect of source deletion for an expert.Selfstudier (talk) 17:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Erm, that's just the opinion of one random editor from a 2008 post... But like I said, normally expert opinions are fine to cite with attribution - but no one really knows what our policy is for deprecated sources + an expert piece. Mvbaron (talk) 18:06, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Well that is currently being decided by one editor removing every expert view and ABOUTSELF link to CP on the basis of it being deprecated. If you are of the view that expert opinions from CP may be cited then perhaps you should rethink your oppose !vote, because the effect of deprecation, as enforced by the admin who is somehow uninvolved yet edit-warring to remove ABOUTSELF links and expert opinions and voting in this RFC, is that those expert views are being expunged indiscriminately. nableezy - 18:12, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

yeah nableezy, it really is an interesting problem... I believe that the Price piece is prima facie reliable (it's even cited in the book that I just added to the Said article). But I also believe that CP is correctly deprecated. Our deprecation policy doesn't really say anything about this. I might need to change my vote, but for now I believe deprecation trumps expert pieces - simply because it should be easy to find the expert opinion elsewhere. Mvbaron (talk) 18:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

OK then, as I commented in the De-deprecate CounterPunch section above, I would like to clarify that and hopefully this RFC will do so (by a consensus of random editors:)Selfstudier (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes per Nableezy and Zero. Very few editors here cite Counterpunch regularly. They do so after evaluating the quality of the article referred to, and the stature among their colleagues and peers. We cannot afford to impoverish our sourcing by a blanket veto that would deprive Wikipedia of work written by several scores of eminent scholars and journalists who fail to see the problems some wikipedians worry over and who choose to use that venue. As Selfstudier says, the intelligent solution is to leave challenges to the relevant talk pages, case by case (and the cases are few and far between). Nishidani (talk) 16:32, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  Very few editors here cite Counterpunch regularly is not a very convincing argument that the source is reliable… isn’t this a sign that editors generally have a low confidence in the publication? — Mhawk10 (talk) 23:06, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

No, it's a sign that editors are discerning and only cite what is written by established experts published academically in their field. Still hoping anybody can answer how this is not a RS. nableezy - 23:17, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Has anyone here read WP:DEPS? The answer is yes and we don't need an RfC to demonstrate that. Disruptive indiscriminate removals should be addressed at ANI. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:26, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Doesnt seem to be working, as those disruptive indiscriminate removals are ongoing despite attempting to address them at ANI. With the closing admin of the last RFC declaring WP:DEPS is not even a guideline and that even ABOUTSELF links are to be removed indiscriminately. nableezy - 18:35, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I have read DEPS, but it doesn't say anything about self-publishing and it also doesn't say that we can use deprecated sources for anything else than ABOUTSELF (unless in a local consensus ofc). But maybe I missed it? Can you point me to these two points? Mvbaron (talk) 18:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Just says V applies as usual. So round in circles.(I do think we are making too much of a meal out of "editorial control" here, the Mail is one thing, Cp quite another.Selfstudier (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I would say that the only effect of deprecation alone is to explicitly codify the source’s pre-existing status, as already determined by Wikipedia’s sourcing requirements. It does not inherently change how they are evaluated under those requirements. Deprecated sources should not be considered to be either unique or uniquely unreliable., from the lead of WP:DEPS, and Deprecation is a status indicating that a source almost always falls below Wikipedia's standards of reliability, and that uses of the source must fall within one of the established acceptable uses. Establishing new types of acceptable use requires a demonstration that the source is uniquely reliable in those particular circumstances compared to other possible uses of the source.Deprecating a source is a weaker measure than blocking or banning it, and the terms are not comparable to each other., from the section "What deprecation is and isn't" pretty clearly establishes how deprecated sources may or may not be used. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

• No - This has been discussed before. A SPS indicates that the author simply clicks a button and their article automatically gets posted. At CP, people submit their articles to the editorial staff. The staff don't indiscriminately post every articles that they receive. They actively choose articles that fit CP's ideological agenda--conspiracism, genocide denial, antisemitism, etc. (check the previous RfC for more examples and links). In other words, people go to CP to get published (FYI - CounterPunch even publishes books). Hence, this source not only fails WP:SPS but also fails every aspect of WP:RS. This is just an attempt to redefine the meaning of a SPS in order to ignore the consensus of the deprecation. If someone wants to use CP as a source (I seriously don't understand why) then stick to the expectations in WP:DEPRECATED#Acceptable uses of deprecated sources. Of course, other policies and guidelines like WP:WEIGHT, WP:FALSEBALANCE, and WP:FRINGE apply too. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 19:27, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

CP's ideological agenda--conspiracism, genocide denial, antisemitism, etc

Thanks. That gives the game away. Such a vapidly inane recalcitrantly contrafactual claim hardly needs rebuttal, though it should figure in any new edition of a work by the CounterPunch founders and editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair, their edited volume The Politics of Anti-Semitism as one more of the endless instances of the abuse of anti-Semitic accusations in order to silence critical dissent. As for what Cockburn who ruled the roost there for most of the period your 'data' is hacked from, he wrote The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts, where conspiracy mongers are dissected and mocked. Genocide denial was its 'ideological agenda'? Odd that its Jewish writers never noticed, and mourned the passing of the greatest historian of the Holocaust on CounterPunch. This is real sleaze smearing, a simpleton's approach to analysis, and should be ignored.Nishidani (talk) 21:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

it only "gives the game away" that they read the extensive sourcing for that claim in the previous RFC. If you can rebut it, you should, because at present it's well-backed - David Gerard (talk) 21:20, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, sure. We must pay attention to others, as they ignore our comments. No one troubled to answer my detailed remarks in the RfC point by point. I'd be quite happy to pull his patchwork case apart if some effort was made to answer the point above, regarding the contrafactual fatuousness of their generalization, which only tells me Swag googled the odd piece of crap out of over 60,000 articles and came up with his short list. It is contrafactual to use the terms he used when offspring of holocaust victims or camp survivors cannot see what his skimpy screed insinuated, since they publish there. It is profoundly obscene for an anonymous wiki editor to assert that specialist Jewish scholars of that Holocaust background cannot see what our singular Wikipedian caught, just as none of the several hundred writers or scholars broadly identified as of the left contributing to it are aware, that according to a 2015 blog of far greater pretensions to comprehensive analysis ( Cited by BobfromBrockley above), that they are all being 'suckerpunched' into supporting the radical far right which is, conspiracy again, the hidden agenda apparently of Cockburn and co. Nishidani (talk) 22:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

"Gives the game away" is right on the money.Selfstudier (talk) 22:39, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Swag’s swag re Counterpunch was a shabby Potemkin Village charade of googled diffs which, if checked, collapses its compiler's agenda. It was so poorly shaped that I never troubled to reply. I thought it wasn't worth the effort and that most editors could see through it. Nope.In the earlier RfC many voters were influenced by Swag's evidence. Over 2 decades, extrapolating from figures given Jeffrey St.Clair in 2015, CounterPunch has published over 70,000 articles. Swag's case consisted of the following skerricks and tidbits:

• (1) Jovan Byford, a Uk psychologist who has written on conspiracy theories says so.

Actually not only does CounterPunch feature many articles debunking conspiracy theories, but has hosted an article citing Byford’s work on the topic

As Jovan Byford notes in a https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9780230349216worthy and comprehensive study of the phenomenon: ‘conspiracy theorists, by definition, deal with imperfect evidence: they are concerned with matters that are inherently secret and which the most powerful forces in the world are working hard to suppress. Conspiracy theories can, therefore, never offer incontrovertible proof’. Tony McKenna Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory CounterPunch 27 September 2019

If you actually trouble yourself to check Jovan Byford, Conspiracy Theories: A Critical Introduction, Springer 2011 978-0-230-27279-8 p.148 he writes

It is therefore enough to glance at any contemporary conspiracy theory purporting to explain 9/11, the origins of HIV and AIDS, the New World Order, or the machinations of ‘the Lo0bby’, to realise that post-modern tongue-in-cheek playfulness and the ‘self-reflexive’ ironic tones are few and far between. On the contrary, the ideological single-mindedness of the conspiracy tradition, whether expounded on Russia Today, in yet another best-seller from Jim Marrs or on the pages of CounterPunch remains firmly entrenched in the realm where tales of clashes between civilisations, the implementation of truth, and battles between moral extremes are elaborated without even the smallest dose of post-modern irony.’

That is not an argument buttressed by any evidence. It is a throw-away line, which fails to address the consistent dismissal of conspiracy theories in CounterPunch’s record, cites no evidence from the mag and essentially redefines conspiracy as rigid viewpoints lacking post-modernist irony. Really? Most political statements about one’s party’s adversaries are conspiratorial by that definition. Useless as tits on a bull.

• (2) A Stanford researcher (Jonah G. Willihnganz) included CounterPunch on a list of prominent conspiracy sites Conspiracy Theory PWR 1 Fall Quarter 2008

Swag didn’t read his own link. Counterpunch is included in a short list, of hundreds, if not thousands, of websites, blogs, and newsgroups that promote, discuss, debunk, lament, praise, and vilify conspiracy theories.

In short another owngoal.

• (3)It has published occasional articles down to 2015 by

(a)Israel Shamir. True. He’s totally unreliable for anything, even his own life. Most of his 20 odd contributions are on Russia.

(b) 9/11 truther Paul Craig Roberts. This research paper frames Roberts, whose articles on CounterPunch have from memory been focused on a conservative right-wing opposition to US trade policies, in the following way:

Leftist intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn, along with activist organizations such as the antiwar movement, have generally gone out of their way to distance themselves from the Truth Movement (Bratich, 2008; Fenster, 2008). More frequently than not, they deride Truthers as conspiracy theorists whose ideas only serve to divide the left and distract their adherents from real and pressing problems of social injustice stemming from the country’s major political and economic institutions and policies. However, there is at least some sympathy for Truthers on the left. Recently, for example, the well-known leftwing newsletter Counterpunch strayed from its traditional policy by allowing one of its most popular contributors. Stephen M. E. Marmura, Likely and Unlikely Stories: Conspiracy Theories in an Age of Propaganda International Journal of Communication 8 (2014), 2377-2395 p.2388

The author clearly states that hosting Roberts’s article (Early doubts: The 11th anniversary of 9/11 on CounterPunch strayed from its traditional line, and from the known views of its editor A Cockburn.

(c)Wayne Madsen. Per Sonny Bunch March of the Conspiracy Theorists CBS News 26 September 2005. The CounterPunch article it mentions by Madsen appeared in CounterPunch on 1 November 2002, Exposing Karl Rove. It is a long list of incidents where Rove is reported as using disinformation and dirty tricks in numerous election campaigns to destroy honorable people. Not a conspiracy, politics.

(d) Mark Crispin Miller mentioned at Gabe Stutman NYU Professor Uses Tenure to Advance 9/11 Hoax Theory in The Observer 26 July 2017 as a person interviewed for CounterPunch radio, Miller attacks the loose use of ‘conspiracy theory’ to brand dissenting opinions. New York University hasn’t fired him for teaching a class to be wary of the mainstream 9/11 narrative. Why should CounterPunch be deprecated for allowing a venue for him? That’s what libertarians do, host even contrarian ideas they disagree with. Cockburn and his friend Louis Proyect attacked Miller’s 9/Trutherism belief om an article which also is critical of leftists who defend Assad.

• (4) John Feffer, Stephen Zunes Sharp Attack Unwarranted 27 June 2008 refers among many other sources, to an article by George Ciccariello-Maher, Einstein Turns in His Grave. Counterpunch 16 April 2008 which (a) argues that Gene Sharp‘s Albert Einstein Institute is partially funded by the US State Department and (b) reproduces Gene Sharp’s response to the critique, asking also Cockburn and St. Clair to publish corrections and retract those statements. Feffer and Zunes don’t tell you that. They simply say it is outrageous that CounterPunch should have published a piece which raised concerns about that institute’s independence. Ciccariello-Maher‘s evidence strikes me as flimsy, but he has his sources. Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, both at times contributors to CounterPunch, have of course defended Sharp’s integrity. That is how open democratic discourse functions – nothing argued is suppressed, but vigorously debated.
• (5) Nonsense claims documented in the, wait for it, Algemeiner. Yeah Adam Levick who? a CAMERA hack who works for a source I believe deprecated here. ‘Guardian Praises Anti-Semitic Site “Counterpunch” as Progressive. Algemeiner 25 July 2012.

• (5) The Algemeiner!

Readers of the Algemeiner are familiar with the fact that any criticism of Israel is ‘antisemitic’. It’s trash, written by a hack whose ire was roused by an article in the Guardian praising the progressive journalism of Alexander Cockburn and his family. No, the hack argues, they are (yawn) enablers of antisemitism. It cites 10 cases many without damning links, re Gilad Atzmon, Alison Weir (the so-called blood libel accusation is based on this article in Counterpunch, which lists numerous Israeli mainstream sources on the issue of unlawful organ use;

The article asserts Counterpunch made a cause célèbre of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel, No citation given where this occurred on Counterpunch. All I can find is this which examinees problems with his judicial record.

Alexander Cockburn’s Support Their Troops? 15 July 2007 is spun there for instance as an example of him acting as a cheerleader for 'mass-murdering Islamic Terrorists in Iraq'. Read the fucking article. The insinuation is crap, faked news etc.etc.etc.

Swag's proof therefore is just montage and sham, whose persuasiveness relies on editors not reading up and checking the supposed evidence, and the evidental skerricks are used to deprecate Counterpunch as antisemitic, genocidal, holocaust denying website. There are in all those diffs two to three possible cases of execrable judgement, in a record of 70,000. No doubt there are many more but the above doesn't prove it. Nishidani (talk) 22:14, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• No and Bad RFC WP:DEPS is quite clear there only small set of allowed uses of such sources. The reason why source was depreciated is exactly that to not discuss it every time if we should use it or not. We shouldn't as consensus in the last RFC has decided --Shrike (talk) 21:18, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

For the nth time, Shrike, the word is spelt 'deprecated', if you are paying attention. Nishidani (talk) 22:57, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

I for one think we should fully dump all of CounterPunch's dollar reserves _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, pr User:RoseCherry64; (I am frankly at a loss why anyone should vote no here; do you believe Counterpunch falcifies David Price?) Huldra (talk) 23:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
• No, and keep deprecated – Dr.Swag Lord, Ph.d makes the point that as CP has an editorial board, so cannot be regarded as "self-published" any more than the Daily Mail can for its columnist's articles. Given the people that they do publish — for example, Grover "Stalin literally did nothing wrong" Furr — I'm comfortable with the deprecation consensus from a couple of months ago. Sceptre (talk) 09:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

The last time Grover Furr was published in Counterpunch was March 2017, i.e. almost 5 years ago. More importantly, Counterpunch has also published articles by scholars in which they exposed and debunked Furr's work. Ijon Tichy (talk) 14:19, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

E.g.Louis Proyect What Caused the Holodomor? CounterPunch 24 March 2017. What's going on here displays the worst vices of the googler who fishes for damning clickbait torn of all context. Swag's 'evidence', apparently so persuasive to speedreaders who didn't distrust the mustering of specious diffs, if you check it, collapses. We are drowning in a superficiality that clogs all logical and evidential clarity. (Even more context Proyect, who died a few months ago, was a personal friend of both Cockburn and St. Clair, who hosted his columns while often mocking his Trotskyism)Nishidani (talk) 14:47, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

@Sceptre, you and some others make the same mistaken reading of the question. Nobody is claiming that articles in CP are self-published. Of course they are not; CP is the publisher. The question is whether those articles should be "treated as WP:SPS", which is different. Zero^talk 11:29, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

I would think that those editors recognize that, and their response is to point out that they are not self-published, with all that is implied from that. BilledMammal (talk) 12:54, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

The "editorial policy" thing is bothering me a bit: Every submission to our website is checked for accuracy, libel, copyright and style before it is posted. Any posted article that is subsequently found to contain factual inaccuracies, potentially libellous material or material that violates copyright is either amended or removed as soon as we become aware of this. For editorial style, we follow the Economist Style Guide. is obviously an editorial policy but it seems to be that just deciding what will and won't publish is not an "editorial policy" worthy of the name.Selfstudier (talk) 11:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes. I wouldn't have put it like that (SPS imposes limits on how a source can be used), but am in favour of de-deprecating articles by established experts published on the site. --Andreas JN466 13:18, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  This RFC can't even do that. We'd need a close challenge or an unambiguous RFC that asks the deprecation challenge again. Mvbaron (talk) 13:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  I don't see any reason why this RFC can't do that, if there is a consensus for it.Selfstudier (talk) 13:32, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  This RFC doesn't ask the question ("de-deprecate articles by established experts published on the site"). So it can't decide it, right? Mvbaron (talk) 13:45, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  Treat as SPS amounts to the same thing imo but even if that wasn't the case, it doesn't prevent a separate/additional consensus although most often done as a "sub RFC". A slightly awkward thing here is all the pieces are kind of related to each other, SPS, expert opinion, effect of deprecation, V, RS and so on.Selfstudier (talk) 13:52, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

  The RFC did ask that, until you objected to the question. nableezy - 16:03, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• Yes, and I don't think this is at odds with the previous discussion on the source, which correctly decided that articles are not reliable/significant due to publication. The closing summary read Most, if not all, respondents concur that the site is unreliable, more akin to a blogging platform than a news site. It is agreed by all respondents that they do, however, assert some editorial discretion in who blogs there. I think this suffices as an argument that CounterPunch articles are as reliable as the author is, just like with blogs. For an expert author, that makes it (sometimes) usable. I've not seen any claims that the website inserts conspiracy theories or otherwise tampers with submissions it receives, just selectively publishes some of them. Fundamentally, we have a very real example of actual scholarship being removed from our articles. And that should be reversed, to quote nableezy at the top of the discussion. — Bilorv (talk) 11:52, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Are you saying that a blog post would somehow qualify as WP:SCHOLARSHIP? And CounterPunch published both a print newsletter and a print magazine until 2020, so I'm not exactly sure that the statement is supposed to be interpreted broadly that it has always been a blogging platform. I'm really having trouble understanding how content submitted by external authors and compiled into a print magazine by a separate editorial team who exercises discretion over what content to include could be in any way considered to be self-published. This isn't a WP:FORBESCON situation. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:22, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

    a blog post would somehow qualify as WP:SCHOLARSHIP? That's what SPS is, essentially. You and some others are way too hung up on the publisher rather than the author Wikipedia:Frequently misinterpreted sourcing policy#Wikipedia over-focuses on publisher instead of author reputability Selfstudier (talk) 22:28, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. The site doesn’t really meet the definition of a WP:SPS, and I don’t see any particular benefit to the encyclopedia in creating a blanket exception here. There’s room to debate on a case-by-case basis whether a particular author’s credentials warrant allowing a citation to CounterPunch. Brendan N. Moody 12:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Except people are not allowing case-by-case examinations of a particular author's credentials on the basis of it being deprecated. Thats the entire problem here. Treating it as a SPS would allow for that examination, nothing more. nableezy - 15:40, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

So is your point that this is not actually a self-published source, but that it should be treated as such? — Mhawk10 (talk) 04:08, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, I think that has been fairly consistently my position here. My point is reliability of an article on CP should depend on the author. Like in the parent section of this RFC, where an obviously reliable source is being essentially shut down on the basis of deprecation. If we accept self-published sources by experts, the only part that should matter on an expert publishing on CP is if CP faithfully reproduced their words. And there is zero evidence that they have ever doctored a column in any way. Where we would accept an author writing on his or her blog, there is no substantive reason to not accept them writing on CP. nableezy - 04:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Then why not follow the guideline in the WP:Guideline on deprecation and seek an affirmative consensus to use the source in appropriate contexts? — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I tried that up above. People are shutting down discussion of the individual source in appropriate context on the basis of it being deprecated. Like I wrote above in the de-deprecate section, Im actually totally fine with CP being considered default unreliable so long as an examination of an individual column's reliability is conducted where needed to see if it can overcome that presumption of unreliability. Seriously, look at the parent section. The article in question is repeatedly cited as authoritative and factual in other reliable sources. The author is a noted expert on that specific topic. But it, and other literal world class scholarly experts on the topic they are writing on, are being expunged on the basis of CP being deprecated. You have people here saying deprectaed is fine because individual articles can be examined as needed, but the editors in article space disallowing any individual article to be examined. Do you think this piece is not a reliable source solely due to it being published in CP? Because that is what is being enforced here. nableezy - 17:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

nableezy you never tried opening an RFC at Talk:Edward Said about whether to include Price's piece... Mvbaron (talk) 17:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

No, I just opened an RSN thread on it in the parent section above here instead. nableezy - 17:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• No. CP is not self published. It has editors, and editorial policies. It occasionally re-published material published elsewhere, eg on blogs, but largely publishes exclusively. It occasionally publishes experts (often material they can’t get published elsewhere because fringe or because it fails other publications’ editorial standards) but it is not a site for experts to self-publish; expert contributions go through its editorial process. If the question is, “should deprecated sources be acceptable for use under the same exceptional conditions when SPSs are considered acceptable”, then that’s a very different question which should be raised at the correct forum. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:36, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

It is entirely untrue that often material they can’t get published elsewhere because fringe or because it fails other publications’ editorial standards, based on nothing at all but an editors imagination. The source under discussion up above is published on CP because the scholar wanted to publish it on CP, and the fact that the paper is cited as factual and authoritative over and over again belies the meme that CP articles are fringe or fail some other standard. It is a mantra that has been repeated without evidence, and pertinent evidence has been provided to refute it, but yet it continues to be repeated without change or evidence. nableezy - 15:38, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• It's not a different question, that is the question - "be treated as WP:SPS". This also seems as good a forum as any. Selfstudier (talk) 13:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment This seems to be the correct forum, afaics, Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Can we decide what the heck "deprecation" means, or alternately, use a different word? is a relevant discussion just closed at ANI with a closing note that here or village pump is a better venue for it. Is it necessary to transfer it here or is the link sufficient? Selfstudier (talk) 11:50, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  As part of that discussion, a draft RFC for discussion was created Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Deprecated_and_unreliable_sources, if anyone wants to run with that.Selfstudier (talk) 11:54, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Just highlighting an example of "when several people say emphatically that documentation isn't clear and/or doesn't match with practice (including practice about what actions we are/aren't willing to stop), maybe it's not useful to say 'it's totally clear and it's your fault if you can't see that'". In practice, deprecated sources are simply removed the overwhelming majority of the time. We've built a structure for deprecation that saves those who want to remove a source the hassle of making the same arguments over and over, giving a lot of weight automatically to the "remove" position. The idea that deprecation doesn't actually change how we evaluate sources is not rooted in wikireality. Maybe it shouldn't, but of course it does. The whole point of these RfCs is to consolidate arguments. Because the position of removing a deprecated source is so strong by default (as it should be), any exceptions need to be carefully spelled out in the documentation. Vague wording will automatically lead to the strictest interpretation given the nature of deprecation. Presently, the "acceptable uses" section is meaningful only insofar as it carves out possible exceptions for material an author or publication write about themselves. The language of that section is inadequate for carving out any other possible exception (such as for experts writing about their area of expertise in a lousy publication). If other exceptions are desirable, it should be changed to be more explicit, even if heavily qualified. ....but an RfC about a single source isn't the way to do that. No to this, because CounterPunch is not particularly unique in this matter. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  an RfC about a single source isn't the way to do that. Is the RFC mentioned above the way to do that? This one, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources. Selfstudier (talk) 15:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  tbh, I would say that an RFC at, say, Talk:Edward Said about whether to include Price writing in CP is the way to do it. Generalizing: If the source is deprecated but there are good arguments to include a piece by an expert somewhere anyways, then use local consensus at a specific article talk page (if needed per RFC). Mvbaron (talk) 17:15, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Tried that, and got this answer. We cant pretend that these exceptions that the people saying are not impacted by deprecation are in fact not impacted by deprecation when others are using deprecation to disallow those exceptions. nableezy - 17:18, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Right, an automated process would work better, I'm sure. In principle, that which is to be removed is first flagged and the flag signifies autoremoval in some time period unless a specified something is done to prevent it. This in general terms per the draft RFC not about Price issue specifically which is merely symptomatic of the general problem(s). Selfstudier (talk) 18:09, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• No Ultimately, I don't see any other way to answer the specific question that is actually being posed. The idea (as paraphrased above) that it is not actually a self-published source, but that it should be treated as such is a bizarre pretzel of logic that ignores the plain meaning of all the terms involved. Rather than calling a spade a spade, it attempts to redefine one particular spade as quasi-legalistically a not-shovel for rhetorical purposes. I think Rhododendrites is right: if there's an acceptable use case for deprecated sources that the current meaning of deprecation does not include, then that case should be added — but this is not the way to do that. Indeed, to me it seems more like trying to find an exploit in policy, getting content into the encyclopedia by the analogue of privilege escalation. XOR'easter (talk) 17:23, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Citing tweets by experts in order to dismiss a scholarly article in a peer reviewed journal is OK by you, right? Selfstudier (talk) 18:09, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  What does a dispute over the history of Babylonian mathematics have to do with the question of whether articles published in CounterPunch should be treated as self-published sources? If you're going to accuse me of hypocrisy, at least pick something relevant. XOR'easter (talk) 22:17, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I never mentioned any dispute. What I was referring to was your OK'ing of tweets from experts to dismiss a paper in a journal. Presumably if Price had tweeted his opinion instead of publishing it in CP you would have been OK with that as well?Selfstudier (talk) 22:21, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  You're not answering the question. If Price had written something somewhere other than CounterPunch, how would that make CounterPunch a self-published source? It's completely tangential to the question that the RfC actually asked. XOR'easter (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Nobody is saying CounterPunch is a self-published source. The question is should it be treated as though it were, where reliability of any one piece rests on the reliability of the author. nableezy - 23:35, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

• I am trying to ascertain how you would have treated Price's expert opinion if he had tweeted it? Selfstudier (talk) 22:34, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  That would be a matter of WP:DUE, WP:SPS, and all the other relevant policies and guidelines, as considered in the specific context where citing his opinion was proposed... and you still have not answered why it would have anything to do with whether or not articles in CounterPunch are self-published sources. XOR'easter (talk) 22:39, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I never said it did. That's the question in this RFC? "treat as SPS". What I conclude from your reply is that is strictly because the expert opinion is in CP that you say no, a bizarre pretzel of logic. We all know that already though, that's the point of having the RFC, right? Selfstudier (talk) 22:45, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) The question posed by the RfC is, to copy-and-paste, Should articles published in CounterPunch be treated as WP:SPS?. I'm saying no, they shouldn't. You seem to be trying for a "gotcha!" moment based on my opinion in a situation that wasn't even analogous. Surely I've said something in my years here that is actually hypocritical about this... but even that would just make me a hypocrite; it wouldn't make articles in CounterPunch self-published sources. XOR'easter (talk) 22:55, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  No gotcha, just trying to understand your position which is is basically "agree with current policy practice", right? Selfstudier (talk) 23:03, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I believe my position is in line with current practice, yes. XOR'easter (talk) 23:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Just to be completely clear about where I (and some others) are coming from, if the outcome here should be no then it is likely that we would then proceed (subsequently or in parallel) to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Deprecated and unreliable sources and/or another CP RFC, given the level of opposition that has been expressed up to now, I think the matter will not easily go away.Selfstudier (talk) 22:50, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  just make a close challenge - nobody has done that even. Mvbaron (talk) 22:52, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  I tend to agree with Nableezy that there is little to be gained doing that, it needs a new one but before we do that I think we need to have an in between step that clarifies all that has occurred up until now because as a number of persons have pointed out, there is a lot of confusion around this. Selfstudier (talk) 23:01, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

AllHipHop's reliability

allhiphop.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

I'm having a hard time believing that AllHipHop is a reliable source on account of mass-posting authors such as here. I strongly doubt that an article that says something such as "BKS has been able to move so fluently through the industry by maintaining a disciplined mindset when it comes to work ethics" is not some form of PR churnalism.[79] There's plenty of other very suspect looking articles, too—many of which appear to me to be fluff pieces of some sort, but I can't find anything on AllHipHop's website that suggests they accept these.

Since this is a rather heavily used source on Wikipedia, as well as other places, I'm curious if anyone can offer any insight into why these articles are being written in such a clearly promotional manner that reeks of paid-for PR, and if this is truly as reliable a source as its heavy usage might imply. (It's been added over 20,000 times on Wikipedia.) Perryprog (talk) 01:36, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Although I haven't yet found on the AllHipHop website where they openly solicit paid posts or press release submissions, there is an entire section of "sponsored posts": https://allhiphop.com/sponsored-posts/ so it appears that they do accept some form of consideration for content. —Scottyoak2 (talk) 02:14, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

It's rather poor quality. Have there been discussions about it? --Hipal (talk) 19:16, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

None of substance; see here. Perryprog (talk) 19:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

• It is listed as a reliable source at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 01:25, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The relevant discussion from WikiProject Albums seems very limited. --Hipal (talk) 01:33, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Secret Sound (Matt Marble)

I am working on an article about composer and pianist Katherine Ruth Heyman (1877–1944) and I'm currently gathering relevant sources to use. There are not a lot of sources that go into this great detail about her, but there is an episode of a podcast by Matt Marble, author of a biography on Arthur Russell which was published by a legitimate looking publisher and a PhD in music composition from Prinston University.

I probably wouldn't have any concerns citing an article by him, but I feel like citing a podcast is different, even though it's mostly just a narrated article. Obviously, I would include appropriate timestamps when citing it. My question is basically, is this a valid SPS for a professional in the field?

Marble, Matt (July 4, 2018). Her Dreaming Fingers (Katherine Ruth Heyman). Secret Sound (Podcast). 2. RoseCherry64 (talk) 10:44, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Off-topic: I'll ask here since it's related to using this source for my article. What abbreviation (if any) should I use in Template:sfn for timestamps using the loc parameter? I've just been putting the timestamp without any preceding abbreviation. RoseCherry64 (talk) 12:28, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Is HeroicHollywood.com reliable source?

There is not a simple discuss on reliability of HeroicHollywood.com [80]. What do you think about this website? Reiro (talk) 11:27, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

And I wonder whether Comicbook.com is appropriate source. Thank you.--Reiro (talk) 11:30, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

It doesn't appear reliable. It looks very heavy on the churnalism and hype. --Hipal (talk) 19:21, 23 December 2021 (UTC)

Sexual addiction

Hi, this is about [81]. Hotpine claims that the source would be unreliable for the claim made. tgeorgescu (talk) 06:27, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

The claim does seem very US-centric for what is a worldwide topic. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:30, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Yup, what happens in the US has impact for the rest of the world, because DSM is the Bible of psychiatry. tgeorgescu (talk) 06:34, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

That's not true. One of my relatives is a psychiatrist, and they tell me that the DSM is very US-centric in its use, and that they tend to use the World Health Organisation's International Classification of Diseases, which has wide use internationally. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:44, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

According to [82], DSM-5 is the Dutch de facto standard. It does say there is a difference between "diagnosis" and "classification".

[83] says that UK and France don't use the DSM-5.

And, frankly, even in the US, ICD is the law of the land, but DSM-5 is the de facto standard. tgeorgescu (talk) 07:18, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

In the UK the ICD is the official and most widely used standard. Hemiauchenia (talk) 07:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

News story explaining a specific film, based on the distribution company's resource.

• [84](Korean)

This news story explained 2019 film Joker, showing why Arkham Asylum is renamed Arkham state hospital, homage elements of The dark knight. The source of these is Warner Bros. Korea, the distribution company of that film. They handed out some explainations of Joker, news story above reported it. I think it is because it's difficult to contact English news stories from Collider (website) in S.Korea, briefly introduced some information in Korean language. (But renaming Arkham Asylum only looked there). Is it reliable? --17:00, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Saving Country Music

Bumping this since it got no attention last time...

I have seen Saving Country Music show up in a myriad of country music-related articles. According to the about page, it is written and published entirely by one person. This means that there is no editorial oversight or fact-checking involved. The content of such blog does lean a bit WP:POLEMIC at times with regards to the author's opinions on country music, not to mention the severe ego of the about page in such terms as "first journalist to discover Sturgill Simpson". By these standards, Saving Country Music is not a WP:RS.

In addition, most of the uses I've seen of it are for biographical information, peacocking a barely-notable artist, or unduly pushing the author's viewpoints. Given the nature of the site, it should clearly be at least deprecated, if not outright blacklisted.

Paging @Caldorwards4:, @ChrisTofu11961:, @Gatoclass:, @Martin4647: due to their history of edits related to the topic. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 17:31, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

@TenPoundHammer: I also find Saving Country Music to be an unreliable source. The word "editor" (used to the describe the person managing this website in this case) is a loose term. He/she appears to wear multiple hats, which is fine in some circumstances. Yet in this case the "editor" often does approach his writing from a non-biased standpoint. I have often avoided this website due to its biased language. When we evaluate media outlets for reliable sources we should consider whether or not they any professional journalistic background. If they appear not to, then their content should be avoided. In this case, Saving Country Music should be avoided. ChrisTofu11961 (talk) 23:35, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

While I won't pretend to have taken an in-depth look at the site in question, the fact that either it or its author have evidently been repeatedly cited in reputable journals indicates to me that it is reliable. However, given that it basically appears to be a one-man blog, it would probably be a mistake to give too much weight to it in articles, and certainly, claims made by the author about himself should be taken with a large grain of salt. Gatoclass (talk) 08:12, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I've got some familiarity with this particular website, and having read a few of its pieces before, I'd recommend against its use for most purposes. It's essentially a one-person blog, has a tendency towards the polemic, and a tendency to self-aggrandize. While I wouldn't say it should never be used, there's generally going to be better sources for things such as biographical information, and we need to make sure that usage here meets due weight, given the nature of the claims it makes itself (the Sturgill one is a good example) and the tendency to publish polemic-like pieces. Hog Farm _Talk 19:31, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Global Times and technology

I am keeping track of all kind of orbital launch vehicles in my userspace - User:Barecode/Launch vehicles and I just found a new rocket named Darwin-1 developed by Rocket Pi. Global Times says "Rocket Pi's founder, the firm also plans to launch its first liquid-fuel carrier rocket codenamed Darwin-1 in 2023" so I wanted to link that article but I'm not allowed. I noticed other articles about technology like one mentioning "Chinese smartphone makers saw a rapid expansion in the second quarter of this year, as Xiaomi ranked No.2 for the first time in the global smartphone market". Why are links to such articles not allowed on Wikipedia, not even in the user space? Is GT publishing false or fabricated information about mobile phones, computers, satellites or space launchers? -- Barecode (talk) 09:37, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Hej, check out WP:GLOBALTIMES. GT is a unreliable source, because it seems to publish false or fabricated information. User space use is certainly allowed though, but I suppose it doesn't make much sense because you won't really use it in mainspace anyways. What do you mean but I'm not allowed? Mvbaron (talk) 09:47, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Nothing prevents you from adding it to your userpage, you would just trip an edit filter once. Though these pieces can't be used for content in article and alternative reliable sources would be required; also I'd think propaganda related to technology, particularly space technology, is well within the interests of the Chinese government. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 09:57, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Mvbaron - I got this message: Error: Your action has triggered an edit filter An automated filter has detected that you are adding a link to a deprecated source, considered generally unreliable after discussion by the community. and since it was an Error and not a Warning I didn't try again. Now I tried again and I could save it. Yet the question remains: Fox News for example is banned for political and scientifical information only. Why GT is banned for any kind of information? I understand they are not reliable for politics (like Fox News) but does it publish false or fabricated information about technology or say for example weather or sports or reporting natural disasters?

Tayi Arajakate - I wouldn't be sure they fabricate facts about space technology in general and about rocket launchers in particular. Haven't noticed any false information until now in this regard. If they say they launched 53 rockets this year, the Western sources say the same for example. I'm just saying, I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything or to insist about this. -- Barecode (talk) 10:05, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem with the Global Times in specific is that beyond the issue of state control of media in China, it is also a low quality sensationalist tabloid and often makes misleading or exaggerated claims, to the point that in order to be certain of the accuracy of anything it publishes, one would have to rely on other secondary sources, at which point these secondary sources can be used and using Global Times becomes redundant. It just plainly fails the policy on reliable sources which requires that for a source to be considered reliable, it should have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.

Now, I understand that media outside China may not always cover certain details, so if it is necessary there are other higher quality Chinese sources which can be used for uncontroversial topics where the Chinese government doesn't have a stake, for example the newspaper China Daily (RSP entry) and the Xinhua News Agency (RSP entry); note the guidance in their entries. That said, space technology is something that is political so it might require higher standards for news, Hong Kong based outlets such as the South China Morning Post (RSP entry) could be better alternatives as they are comparatively more shielded from manipulation by the state. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 12:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

To clarify: Fox News for example is banned for political and scientifical information only is not true. The consensus is that there should be additional consideration applied when sourcing from Fox News on those topics, particularly for contentious facts. This is different than, say, Rolling Stone, where politics coverage in the magazine is considered to be generally unreliable ever since around 2011. Global Times is worse. It is considered to be so unreliable and prone to misuse by editors that it is deprecated as a source for facts. GT is generally more unhinged in its writings than Xinhua or People's Daily and its editorial line is more jingoistic than the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, which leads to the source being misused to try to convey what the central party actually thinks on an issue—it's really a CCP-run tabloid that faces all the pitfalls of tabloid journalism plus the pitfalls of being run by the Communist Party of China. Something like Caixin or SCMP are significantly better for Chinese technology than GT. — Mhawk10 (talk) 20:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Requests for comment for deprecation of Elon Musk's tweets

Older discussions: [1]

Which of the following best describes the reliability of Musk's tweets:

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

If option 3 or 4 is chosen, I suggest to make the tweets depreciated, since he is being used for referencing on many articles, by many users. For reference, Twitter itself is considered generally unreliable. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:39, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any examples where they are being used as sources, and not WP:ABOUTSELF? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 16:42, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

It's very easy to find one. Examples of which are SpaceX Raptor, Tesla Model Y, Tesla Cybertruck, etc. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:01, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Leaping straight to an RFC seeking to depreciate them is the wrong way to try and correct that, since we already have existing guidelines for citing tweets. I would close this and start a more general discussion pointing to examples of Musk's tweets being misused and asking for opinions on it (and help correcting it.) Also, have you tried removing / fixing it, and if so, did someone object - that is, is there an actual dispute? RFCs are for resolving disputes - if you just want to call attention to a problem you shouldn't use an RFC for that. Even if there is a dispute you'd want to discuss it first per WP:RFCBEFORE. And even if there was an RFC this one isn't really quite worded properly because it would be strange to depreciate one person's tweets, especially given that tweets are already considered generally unreliable for most things - again, an RFC isn't usually necessary to ask people for help enforcing clearly-existing consensuses, especially in the absence of any dispute. And even if you could make the case that there is something uniquely wrong with Musk's tweets that makes them unusable even for the very limited ways tweets are normally allowed to be used, it is really unlikely that they are being used so often that it'd be worth the time and effort to reach some formal conclusion on that via an RFC - RFCs like these are for sources that are being used hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of times across Wikipedia. --Aquillion (talk) 09:54, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Oh, now I get what RfC is supposed to be, I am in the wrong here. Feel free to close the RfC, and I will make another discussion at a later time. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:57, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Elon Musk's tweets are a reliable source for what Elon Musk has tweeted. There are some things they could be cited for, but even for material related to Tesla specifically he has not exactly been accurate (going private at 420 being the most obvious example, but there are plenty of other exaggerated or inaccurate tweets) I dont think that would be usable for factual material. But his tweets are certainly reliable as a primary source for what he has said, and subject to all the restrictions for using primary sources. This board used to be about examining a source in context, not trying to set these general rules that may or may not be relevant depending on the context. What exactly is somebody trying to source to one of Musk's tweets? nableezy - 16:44, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Some reasons may be WP:TOOSOON stuff, where someone want to update the information really quickly. In my experience, if the info is notable enough and considered true, it will get covered in other 3rd party reliable source. Musk's tweets are cited a lot, so I do an RfC to see what people think. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:04, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Not actionable. Agreed with nableezy here, the concept of deprecation isn't event plausibly applicable to tweets of a single person - which are inherently self published. (Twitter can't be deprecated either since it doesn't publish anything - at least to my knowledge) But again, for WP:SPS material, if the author is an established expert, these can be used with attribution. No idea if Musk is a subject matter expert with regards to something, I don't think so. Mvbaron (talk) 17:06, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Should be fine if related to Tesla or anything else Musk has influence over, but if the only source of something is his Twitter feed, include posting date and that it was posted there in prose. If it's a major statement, I would get a third party source. RoseCherry64 (talk) 17:17, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

• Option 5: Treat like every other verified twitter account of a living person. Elon Musk's tweets are self-published sources created by Musk. It's a primary source that can be cited when the exact words of the tweet are worthy to include but I don't think that we would ever use it for a contentious fact. It's also probably OK for extremely mundane things relating to Musk's companies (i.e. the date construction started on something), but I really don't see any justification to treat these as somehow more reliable than a company press release. Provided that users are able to understand that Elon Musk at times runs his account like a memelord does, and use appropriate caution, I don't see reasons to deprecate. — Mhawk10 (talk) 18:40, 25 December 2021 (UTC)
• I generally agree with Mhawk10 above. I would note that Musk uses Twitter not unlike Trump (when he was on Twitter) and we should be very careful about crediting anything he says as anything other that self serving etc. Springee (talk) 18:45, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Not actionable, you can't deprecate tweets from an individual. What you can do is replace or remove them where ever it is being used as a source for facts. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 04:58, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Would an edit filter be better in this case? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 05:01, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Filter 869 is already cramped and it isn't meant to handle subdomains. There is similar misguided use of various other social media accounts and the usage here isn't particularly high either, so there is no justification for why this is such an exceptional case that needs a filter. Twitter in general is also on XLinkBot's Revert List. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 05:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• As others have said, I don't think anything needs to be done/changed here. I'd also add that someone's tweet shouldn't carry any weight in an article unless it's been reported on by reliable sources. In that case, just cite the reliable sources. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:39, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion: Can Musk's tweets be cited for the activities of Tesla, etc?

• While this RFC is malformed, I think there is a more useful and specific question to ask (which the previous discussion focused on a bit) - can we use Musk's tweets as a source for the plans, goals, and activities of companies he owns? I would argue no - under most cases, such tweets are going to be intended to promote things in which Musk has a financial investment, which means that they are the very definition of unduly self-serving. It's not really acceptable to rely on the personal twitter feed of a business owner to cite statements that obviously promote that business (ie. making it sound like they have something big or noteworthy planned - if there is no secondary coverage, those plans are not significant and should not be on Wikipedia; preventing someone who owns a business from tweeting out some exceptional / amazing thing that then gets picked up on Wikipedia and boosts their stock price seems like the precise thing that the unduly self-serving restriction on SPS exists for.) Generally speaking, at least glancing over how Musk's twitter has been used, this means that almost everything cited to it right now needs to be nuked from orbit. Extremely unexceptional and non-promotional stuff like eg. "this person is in this position" or "we were founded on this date" could be cited to a SPS, but absolutely not stuff like "we're gonna put a man on the MOOOOOON, woo! We're gonna have flying cars and jetpacks capable of reaching Mars in every garage by 2024!" To be clear, I'm saying that I don't think Musk's twitter can be cited for such self-serving statements even if they are attributed to him, ie. it's not acceptable to use his Twitter and nothing else to cite a statement like On Twitter, Musk said that "our company is going to send a manned mission to Mars by 2030" or something. That is obviously a self-serving statement and requires an independent secondary source, fullstop. --Aquillion (talk) 09:59, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

  Hmm, pretty relevant to talk about my experience at writing Elon's topic, or more specifically, SpaceX Starship. There are many information that Elon or enthusiasts that details stuff about the launch vehicle, but as time goes on, I found that most of them are minor or just speculation. A lot of people think that Elon's tweets = noteworthy, but my experience told the opposite. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 10:03, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

The point is, it's not a matter of noteworthy. Musk's twitter is a WP:SPS. If Musk stands to benefit financially from something he tweets or says there (ie. if it makes his company sound good, or announces something exciting or groundbreaking or especially anything WP:EXCEPTIONAL) then we can't cite it to just that, we'd need a secondary source. It's very important to keep the unduly self-serving restriction of SPS in mind in a situation like this, because much of what Musk posts on Twitter is going to be overtly intended to be self-serving and therefore completely unusable (of course, we can still cite it via independent secondary sources - just not to Twitter directly.) --Aquillion (talk) 10:07, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes. Elon Musk's Twitter feed exemplifies self-serving. XOR'easter (talk) 16:48, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Clements Markham

• Markham, Clements Robert (April 1891). "Richard III: A Doubtful Verdict Reviewed". The English Historical Review. 6 (22). Oxford University Press: 250–283. doi:10.1093/ehr/vi.xxii.250.

This particular source is used in the Princes in the Tower article.

The Clements Markham article is quite extensive and at FA level. Thoughts? --Kansas Bear (talk) 19:15, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

RFC on apa.az use for Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh articles

Is www.apa.az website a reliable source for Armenia/Nagorno-Karabakh related articles? --Armatura (talk) 00:19, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Examples from its publications:

• Armenia's crimes condemned in Los Angeles-VIDEO
• Armenia continues “mine terror”-ANALYSIS
• Reasons and purposes of Armenian provocations on border-ANALYSIS
• International media and journalists in crosshairs of Armenian terrorism - ANALYSIS
• Illegal visit of German MPs to Khankendi: Armenia is committed to the ideology of fascism - ANALYSIS
• Why Armenia, in a difficult situation, is resorting to provocation? - ANALYSIS
• Finally, apa.az is happy to present what happened in Khojali as Khojali genocide (no wide international consensus for this term) without quote marks and yet it is so-called “Armenian genocide” in quote marks for widely recognised genocide that only Azerbaijan and Turkey deny.

The reason why apa.az got scrutinised is this talk page discussion. --Armatura (talk) 00:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment. I am not familiar with the topic area, but the impression I got from the three examples I read is of consistently strong bias and propaganda and poor journalism. I am not sure I would consider anything published by this site as reliable on this topic, unless supported by another completely independent source from another country not involved in the conflict. They also appear to be badly translated, or written by someone with a poor command of English, which could be part of the problem. Cheers, · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:10, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• No. They are not used by RS and Eurasianet writes that they get instructions what to write directly from the Azerbaijani government. Alaexis_¿question? 06:59, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• No - Based on the language that the website uses, I think it's pretty safe to say that it shouldn't be considered RS. The extreme bias, COI and advocacy just speaks for itself. ZaniGiovanni (talk) 12:52, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• Depends on context. In general, Azerbaijani and Armenian sources cannot be trusted on Nagorno-Karabakh related issues, as both are engaged in propaganda due to the conflict between the two countries. But if this news agency reports simple facts as, for example, inauguration of a railway station, or construction of a school, or a visit of a country official or his public statement, I see no reason why it should not be trusted. Grandmaster 13:04, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree regarding simple facts about Azerbaijan. The RfC question is however about its reporting on Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. Alaexis_¿question? 15:38, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Comment. In general, "news analysis" pieces are just opinion pieces with a different label thrown on them. Using these sorts of pieces are subject to WP:RSOPINION and the principle of due weight, but they should not be treated as news reporting. Reading through the website's news coverage in English, it seems like the site is just relatively low quality all-around. I can't say the same for its Azeri or Russian reporting, as I can't read either of those languages, so I can't comment more broadly on the site. I am seeing 580ish uses in articles on Wikipedia currently, ranging from Death of Michael Jackson and Occupy movement to Steve Cohen (politician) and 2014 Armenian–Azerbaijani clashes. — Mhawk10 (talk) 16:36, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: I haven't had the time to look into this source yet, but I would note the last two examples look to be APA quoting the Azerbaijani President, and so don't speak to the reliability of the source. I will say though that the Eurasianet article suggests there are significant problems with using the APA group, as well as Trend News Agency, Axar, and Sas. BilledMammal (talk) 01:47, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Lab leak theory: journal articles with Roger Frutos as an author

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.

---

This scholar has published at least two peer-reviewed articles which dismiss the COVID-19 lab leak theory based on statements by Shi Zhengli. To wit:[85] . . . . But staff members of the Wuhan Institute of Virology have all been tested negative indicating that no accident occurred there (Cohen, 2020).

[86] Furthermore, these experiments were conducted on viruses phylogenetically distant from SARS-CoV-2 and RaTG13 and no gain-of-function experiment was done on either SARS-CoV-2 or RaTG13 (Cohen, 2020). Not only the engineering of SARS-CoV-2 is merely a narrative but technical evidence indicate that no such engineering could generate a pandemic virus. There is today no evidence and no rationale to support this laboratory engineering narrative.

The Cohen source Frutos is referring to is this one [87]. The Cohen source reports that according to Shi, WIV staff members have been tested for SARS-CoV-2 and were reported negative.(emphasis added). The underlying Q&A on which the Cohen source is based [88] also has the following: Q: Did you do or collaborate on any gain-of-function experiments with coronaviruses that were not published, and, if so what are the details? A [from Shi]: No.

However, per [89], no Chinese citizen can say anything on this topic without the permission of the Government of China.

Various Frutos papers are cited extensively at COVID-19 lab leak theory and Investigations into the origin of COVID-19. How should we handle the Frutos papers? Adoring nanny (talk) 00:39, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• It seems you're asking about PMID:33744401 which is a multi-author peer-reviewed review article in a good quality journal. Wikipedia's purpose is to reflect the knowledge in such excellent sources, so WP:STICKTOSOURCE and WP:ASSERT its claims unless there is some RS saying that paper is suspect or which names and contradicts it specifically, or there are equivalent strength or better sources claiming other things on its claims. As policy says:

Source material should be carefully summarized or rephrased without changing its meaning or implication. Take care not to go beyond what the sources express or to use them in ways inconsistent with the intention of the source.

It is not our job to undercut high-quality sources on the basis of personal thoughts about the subject matter. Alexbrn (talk) 01:32, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Though we do not presently have an article on him, Frutos is a notable scientist, as shown by his citation record in Google, and an expert in the general subject field, and has published other articles on the origin of Covid19 and similar viruses. The journal is Infection, Genetics and Evolution, published by a major scientific publisher, and meting the criteria for notability of scientific journals. There is no reason not to use the paper as a reference. To say on WP that the paper made an unjustified statement, we would need another similarly reliable source saying so. The several steps in the analysis above (i.e, F in his paper made use of a paper by C that reported a statement by S that may possibly not have represented S's true opinion) amounts to Original research. The paper is open access, so anyone who wishes to make judgements can read it for themselves. That's why we have the policy WP:V. DGG ( talk ) 02:50, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

OK, I'll settle for more completely describing F's analysis, without attempting to say whether it is justified or not. Adoring nanny (talk) 02:55, 26 December 2021 (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.

ininet.org

Is https://ininet.org/ reliable? Does anyone know how is the content generated, and by whom?

It is used in very few places in wikipedia as far as I can see.

It is the only place though which I can find some details I need for another article. Aoziwe (talk) 05:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Given that it seems to be nothing but a random collection of uploaded documents about who-knows-what, no, it isn't a reliable source for anything. AndyTheGrump (talk) 06:13, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems on a cursory examination to contain at least some reasonably accurate and neutral information, but nothing appears to be attributed to any original source. Like AndyTheGrump says, it should not be considered reliable or authoritative. A bit like unsourced Wikipedia content, except that they do not even give a hint as to who wrote anything, who takes responsibility for the content, or who owns the site... · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:34, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Looking at the website further, I suspect that at least some of the content is copyright material, copied without attribution from elsewhere. If that is the case, it must not, per policy, be linked at all. AndyTheGrump (talk) 07:00, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks all. Aoziwe (talk) 01:11, 27 December 2021 (UTC) No longer watching so ping me if anything further.

WikiIslam

As noted in numerous places, the website WikiIslam has undergone a complete overhaul that removed much Islamophobic and otherwise objectionable content. This is noted in numerous places by Ex-Muslims of North America, WikiIslam's parent organization, here: https://twitter.com/exmuslimsorg/status/1374433601454972942 and here: https://exmuslims.org/wikiislam-overhaul-milestone-achieved/ inter alia, as well as on WikiIslam itself here: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam:Renovations. The article currently quotes, via a third source, an outdated mission statement, while excluding the current mission statement here: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam This has been noted numerous times on WikiIslam and the website of WikiIslam's parent organization, Ex-Muslims of North America. The current article cites Ex-Muslims of North America to prove that they took over the website; moreover, the Wikipedia page of Ex-Muslims of North America cites WikiIslam when talking about Ex-Muslims of North America's ownership of WikiIslam. As per WP:RS, and I quote, "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves". Numerous other websites including wikis such as RationalWiki have Wikipedia pages that cite the website itself when discussing the website. The overhaul has also been noted by academics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-wgfRLldKI and is verifiable on the website's changelog: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/Special:Log. Despite this, a cadre of editors have banded together to say that, despite Wikipedia's own policies, the obviously verifiable descriptions of these changes cannot be used as a source in the article; verifiably false information remains on the article, such as "A corpus of apostasy testimonies are featured too." and "The site also hosts a list of 101 "provocative" questions that are to be asked of any Muslim, to prove that Islam is not a "true religion"."--Underthemayofan (talk) 05:49, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• No: As Doug Weller wrote at the t/p, that's just not acceptable. Organisations and people lie by omission and commission about themselves or try in various ways to make themselves look acceptable. The reception section in our article provides a clear view on the nature of the site and using them as a source for their own article is a strict no-go territory.
  The "academics" quoted above have consistently deemed the site to be Islamophobic (see reception section) — in their latest seminar presentation (which is not peer-reviewed), they document WikiIslam's servicing the same old goals but in a "scientificised avatar"; the cherrypicking of arguments from the fringes etc. continue. Which is then used for propagating Islamophobia.
  Unsurprisingly, our OP misuses this line of reasoning to write that the website is offering scientific and valid critiques of Islam. He also proposes that we quote their mission statement as the second line of our lead :) TrangaBellam (talk) 06:02, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The issue is not "Islamophobia" per se, the issue is whether the overhaul took place, whether the material was removed, and whether WikiIslam currently contains the material that the Wikipedia article claims it does. WP:RS does not make a provision saying that "Islamophobic material cannot be used to reference itself" so whether or not it is an "islamophobic website" is not relevant to the discussion here. The Wikipedia article currently contains verifiably false information as per WP:RS and WP:V.--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:06, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The article currently quotes the mission statement from 2015, for some reason these editors want to keep the mission statement from 7 years ago but do not with to quote the mission statement today, again in violation of WP:RS.--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

If reliably sourced information becomes out of date it should be possible to mention that without removing reference to the earlier situation. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 06:42, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

User talk:Pbsouthwood I attempted to update the information while keeping the rest of the previous information in a historical context, but User:TrangaBellam reverted this without seeking consensus and then reported me for edit warring (and violated WP:AGF by accusing me of a conflict of interest). You can see the previous version here https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=WikiIslam&oldid=1061813731 , with the historical material kept in its historical content.--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

As user User:Louis P. Boog noted, this type of "censorship" "seems to me to go against everything Wikipedia stands for."--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:51, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

WikiIslam offers what academics have called "scientific" and "valid" critiques of the religion of Islam - And, you wonder why you are being reverted. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:54, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Those are quotes from an academic discussing WikiIslam here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-wgfRLldKI . On the talk page I offered an alternative quote from the video and to introduce a qualifiying statement from the video, rather than seeking consensus or adding context you just removed it. You also removed more material than this that was added by consensus, and removed the contextual information about the history of the website. "WikiIslam described its purpose in 2015 as "collect[ing] facts relating to the criticism of Islam from valid Islamic sources without the effect of censorship that is common in Wikipedia" and claims to have started as a result of the difficulty in "presenting 'correct' (i.e., critical) information on [Wikipedia]."" This is the mission statement from 2015, care to justify using WP:RS and WP:V how including this in the article but excluding the current day mission statement here: https://wikiislam.net/wiki/WikiIslam is reasonable?--Underthemayofan (talk) 07:05, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I won't reply further to your sealioning. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:09, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate that you're bowing out of the argument.--Underthemayofan (talk) 07:10, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Or that you are not worth to engage with. People who are paid to edit can seldom see their follies.

We include the previous mission statement because it has been covered by scholars. And, they read something more into it: "critical, as used on WikiIslam, meant holding preconceived negative opinions of Muslims and Islam."

If we include the current statement from their own site, we have no such observation on what it really means. TrangaBellam (talk) 07:22, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I am not paid to edit. Please review WP:AGF and stop violating it.--Underthemayofan (talk) 07:26, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

How do we tell the difference between removing something because it is no longer part of an organisation's belief and removing it because the organisation does not want it public anymore? Doug Weller talk 08:44, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

That's not the domain of Wikipedia. Wikipedia is about verifiability, not truth. Wikipedia provides info on what's on the site, determining "an organisation's belief" as it exists in their heart is beyond the purview of Wikipedia.--Underthemayofan (talk) 08:56, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

@Underthemayofan: Verifiability is a necessary but not sufficient reason to include something. Because we cannot tell if a statement about an organisation's belief actually reflects their beliefs and actions, we rely mainly on secondary sources to describe the organisation or individual. Your preferred version of the article relied basically on self-published material from WikiIslam.[90] I accept that you are not paid to edit by the way, and if you are just an ordinary editor there or take no part in it but support it you have no conflict of interest. Doug Weller talk 10:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

A current example is that many, perhaps most, white supremacists insist they are white nationalist. Doug Weller talk 09:57, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

So what is the question here? Wiki(s) are not reliable sources by definition. Cinadon36 10:12, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Its still a wiki, end of story.Slatersteven (talk) 10:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• All the discussion about bias, mission statements and overhauls is pointless… because the primary problem with WikiIslam is that it is a wiki. We don’t consider ANY wiki reliable (not even Wikipedia). So… Rather than citing wikiIslam itself, look to the sources that are cited in its articles. Some of those sources might be reliable by our standards, and you can cite those sources to support what you write here. Blueboar (talk) 13:17, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

  Indeed, linking WP:USERGEN for reference, —PaleoNeonate – 15:26, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

• Having looked into the issue in more depth… it illustrates how multiple policies and guidelines have to be considered and balanced against each other. So let me break it down:

a) We have multiple RS that have criticized WikiIslam (WI) and applied derogatory labels in doing so.

b) WI claims that they have changed their policies and renovated in response to such criticism.

c) Wikipedia editors are of mixed opinions as to whether these reforms have actually taken place.

Now to apply policy… first let us examine WP:V (and its subsidiary guideline WP:RS). What is verifiable fact is: a) Multiple sources have indeed criticized WI and labeled it derogatorily, and b) WI has indeed responded by claiming it has reformed. The derogatory sources are Reliable, and so WP can mention the derogatory labels and cite those sources. The fact that WI responded is reliably verified by Directly quoting (or closely paraphrased) under ABOUTSELF… however, what is NOT reliably verified by WI’s statement is whether they have actually reformed.

Now let us examine WP:NPOV… the key question is how much WEIGHT should we give a) the derogatory sources, and b) WI’s claims of reform? In the case of the derogatory sources, they are not only reliable, most are independent - and independence is a major factor in determining WEIGHT. So we should give them a fair amount of weight. In the case of WI’s response, self-statements do carry some weight (and so can be mentioned), but because they are not independent, they do not carry as much weight as independent sources. We do not put them on an even par.

Finally, we must apply our WP:No original research policy. This affects the question of whether WI’s claims of reform have or have not actually taken place. To answer this question, someone must analyze the content of WI today, and compare it to its content in the past. The key is that this “someone” must be someone external to Wikipedia. WE (the editors of Wikipedia) can NOT analyze WI’s content and draw the conclusion that it has (or has not) changed. For us to perform this analysis would mean that the conclusion is original to WP. We must look for an external source to perform the analysis.

My conclusion: the article should note (prominently) that WI is resoundingly criticized and mention the derogatory labels in the first paragraph. This should be followed up with more detail later in the article. WI’s claims that they have addressed the criticisms should also be mentioned… but only in passing and not in the first paragraph. Blueboar (talk) 16:36, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Blueboar, They never claimed to have renovated in response to criticisms (where did you see it?) - even if they had, WP:MANDY would have applied. Quite to the contrary, as our article already notes, EXMNA's press release spoke of a nine-year-long "tradition!" The site claimed in 2012 (or even earlier) to have renovated in response to Larsson but failed to influence academic reception — that page stands now deleted, fwiw. The current meta-pages do not mention any factor behind the renovation.

We already have, Three years later, they claimed to have purged a range of content—from polemical tracts and satires to testimonies and op-eds—of the site. cited to their About Us section - what more do you want? TrangaBellam (talk) 17:23, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Blueboar I think this is preeminently reasonable. I would like to include their mission statement and their statement that they are "neutral towards religions, world views, and issues of a political nature and likewise stays away from extremist, sensationalist or emotional commentary" and attribute it to the wiki in the 2nd paragraph. Would you be amenable to that?--Underthemayofan (talk) 20:45, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Mission statements are always promotional and I’m not convinced we should ever use them. I don’t see them as encyclopaedic. Doug Weller talk 20:48, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

The mission statement from WikiIslam in 2015 is on the Wiki right now.--Underthemayofan (talk) 20:50, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

I presume you mean the article. As I said, it shouldn’t be there. Doug Weller talk 20:52, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

If you are amenable to me removing the 2015 mission statement from the WikiIslam article, please state so in the talk page and I will remove that reference.--Underthemayofan (talk) 21:03, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

That portion is sourced to not only one but three independent reliable sources. Snuish (talk) 01:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

As User:Peter Southwood noted "If reliably sourced information becomes out of date it should be possible to mention that without removing reference to the earlier situation." And as User:Blueboar has frequently noted, for this purpose WP:ABOUTSELF should allow WikiIslam to be cited and attributed on this matter. On the basis of this consensus I would like to proceed with a sentence pointing out what the current mission statement is based on the page on WikiIslam containing it.--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:07, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Do you only read what you like to read? TrangaBellam (talk) 06:37, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Then it can be used. Doug Weller talk 10:36, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

• Underthemayofan, I suggest you propose a change on the article's talk page, complete with the references you want to use, and work towards consensus there. Be specific about the exact wording that you propose to replace, and how and why the references you propose reliably support the words you propose using. There is no way you are going to get consensus here to use the content of a open wiki as a reliable source without going into the precise details, and this is not the place to do that. · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:51, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

@Pbsouthwood: I agree, I have made some suggestions on the talk page. I am afraid to make any pages to the page directly as is because User:TrangaBellam got me a warning for edit warring (which I think was unwarranted). Your input and that of User:Blueboar would be highly appreciated.--Underthemayofan (talk) 06:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

 Comment: I think it is worth noting there's a concurrent discussion at COIN. --SVTCobra 08:11, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Demographics

Greetings, according to official data the population of Vlachs in Serbia as of 2011 counts as 35 330 [[91]], today one editor posted on their page 3 sources, 2 of them [[92]], [[93]] are from same authors who claim that quote:′′′ members of the community put forth unofficial estimates between 150,000 and 300,000.′′′ and one that [[94]] I cannot verify, seems to be a bit off since that kind of estimation would place Vlachs as second largest ethnic community in Serbia and also the regions in which they mostly live in Serbia (east) don′t count a overall large population [[95]], so are those sources reliable enough for a demographic estimation? Thank you. Theonewtihreason (talk) 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Source of study calling a "phase IIa trial" and my notes and texts there: "quackery nonsense"

Hi.
At https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Talk:Multiple_sclerosis&oldid=1062131102#Alternative_treatments:_some_news_(2014)_about_incense_and_more I did note to an alternative treatment with incense.
This "Talk" (title) now is removed into "history", the link here.
´Justifying´: "quackery nonsense" and ONLY "phase IIa trial".
Told here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Visionhelp#December_2021

Quote: "The results of the study have been published online in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry (DOI: 10.1136 / jnnp-2017-317101) since December 16, 2017.".
from https://www-uksh-de.translate.goog/Service/Presse/Presseinformationen/2017/Hilft+Weihrauch+bei+fr%C3%BCher+Multipler+Sklerose_-p-62549.html?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en
Best Regards, Visionhelp (talk) 18:37, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

This is a study of 38 people (with no control group!), a primary source, not the systematic review of multiple studies envisioned by WP:MEDRS. - MrOllie (talk) 18:49, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Arnold J. Toynbee

Is Arnold J. Toynbee reliable regarding the Greco-Turkish War and the Turkish War of Independence? I would've liked to add some of his stuff regarding Hellenic army atrocities during the war, but some user claimed that he wasn't because his "pro-Turkish stance". Beshogur (talk) 00:10, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd recommend you notify relevant WPs of this discussion as well as active editors in the pages you wish to use him in, Beshogur. Most editors that have this page watchlisted/happen to come across this discussion are not familiar with the context necessary to assess him as a source.Santacruz ⁂ Please ping me! 00:16, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'd prefer modern scholarship over someone who died in 1975, regardless of potential bias issues. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:29, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

While I would say that there is much fine work in history from before 1975, our article on Toynbee indicates that he is no longer a respected source, except in classical history, so I would be hesitant in citing to him. John M Baker (talk) 06:05, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I think Common Sense Media should be deprecated

Common Sense Media is a San Francisco-based non-profit organization that provides education and advocacy to families to promote safe technology and media for children. It reviews entertainment in terms of age-appropriate educational content, and it has also developed a set of ratings that are intended to gauge the educational value of videos, games, and apps.

But I think Common Sense Media is unreliable for the following reasons. I used rottenwebsites.miraheze.org/wiki/Common_Sense_Media which has a page on the wiki.

1. They are too gullible about lessons, believing that every media influences children. For example, on their Teen Titans Go! review they gave it a 3/5 in teaching positive messages, and they gave 13 Reasons Why a 4/5 due to the show supporting suicide.
2. As an advocate for education, they pander towards educational shows and they are biased against shows that entertain, such as Spongebob SquarePants.
3. They pander towards social justice warriors, meaning the source is ideologically biased and they pander towards media supporting their ideology. For example, they entirely neglect content containing sexual violence against men.Bsslover371 (talk) 01:27, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Bias does not make a source unreliable. And as we are generally using CSM for their opinions on media, that becomes less a problem with outright reliability and more if they are considered a DUE opinion to include on children/family media. --Masem (t) 01:38, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

• There was a recent discussion here that determined it was reliable for reviews of films, tv series, books and so forth but not for anything controversial and I still go along with that, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 01:43, 28 December 2021 (UTC)
  • WP:CSM in fact. --Masem (t) 02:03, 28 December 2021 (UTC)