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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Blue nutcracker (talk | contribs) at 17:49, 30 September 2024 (→Is this Retracted LA Magazine Article a reliable source?: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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    • RFCs for deprecation, blacklisting, or other classification should not be opened unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed. Consensus is assessed based on the weight of policy-based arguments.
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    • This page is not a forum for general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources.

    RfC: Universe Guide

    The reliability of Universe Guide is:

    –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:13, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Background (Universe Guide)

    Universe Guide is an amateur blog about astronomy that is cited on many pages about astronomical objects. This website has been discussed at this WT:ASTRO discussion, this WP:RSN discussion, and this WT:AST discussion, and there is general consensus that it is unreliable, and due to persistent usage, it has been suggested to be deprecated or blacklisted. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:13, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Survey (Universe Guide)

    By the way LaundryPizza, I'm sorry for not initiating the RfC myself. Just got problems a few days ago. SkyFlubbler (talk) 15:16, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 4 per above. I think over time we have to start to include more of this UGC, but this one seems to be poorly done. Maybe deprecate for now and come back and revisit in a few years if they improve. These things either improve over time or go away entirely. Lets take a wait and see attitude, and deprecate for now. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 03:55, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 4, from a look at the source it’s clearly of extremely low quality and seems to just make stuff up. The site decided for us that brown dwarfs are actually definitely stars and calls them brown stars. It says there’s no evidence NGC 474 contains planets and that a wormhole would be required to visit it. We use that page as a source right now. 3df (talk) 21:45, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Unicorn Riot reliability

    Is this website a RS?[3] Mhorg (talk) 23:15, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I'd be cautious. Their "About Us" makes no mention of editors, fact-checking, or even who their writers are. It's a nonprofit set up to report "underrepresented stories" and present "alternative perspectives"; The New Yorker quotes one of the founders as saying they have a "reputation as a clearing house for data dumps on far-right groups".[4] Schazjmd (talk) 23:29, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Just noticed we have an article on them. And I also see that a number of articles do cite them.[5] Schazjmd (talk) 23:40, 10 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    They're certainly biased to the left, but they're one of the few organizations that has on-the-ground coverage of social movements/protests in the United States and engages in investigative reporting of the far right. They have both an editorial independence policy and a correction policy. I would presume they publish under the Unicorn Riot byline rather than individual names because they operate as a collective. So yes, be cautious and attribute their reporting in-text. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A paper describing them as an "anonymous hacker and surveillance collective"[6].
    A paper describing them as "activist journalism"[7].
    They may have aspects that would lead us to treat them as a primary source. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 19:50, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Some news reporting is primary, some is not. We can't say the whole outlet is primary just because part of their work is invesitgative/on-the-ground reporting. voorts (talk/contributions) 11:40, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Biased but reliable. Their investigations are solid and used by others. They report on topics not covered by more mainstream sources. If other more reliable sources exist for a claim, those might take precedence; if not, this source is fine. BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:35, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If the source is widely agreed to be super biased, how could it be reliable? Seems to be Non-RS to me. These fringe left and right so called publications, which are just PR sites (think Breitbart) are not useful for us to reach NPOV, all we get is false balance. These far right and left websites are just laughable. Unicorn riot (as I type and the first time I have ever visited or heard of the site) is covering what appears to be a 4 person rally to ban astroturf. This is not what we need at wikipedia. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 04:01, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Please review WP:RSBIAS. voorts (talk/contributions) 04:08, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If something isn't notable (a 4 person rally), we'll not cover it, so this is irrelevant. UR is in no way comparable to Breitbart; Breitbart is (super)biased plus unreliable while UR is just biased. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:00, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My inclination is to agree with voorts and BFB here: Unicorn Riot is reliable for facts but biased. Loki (talk) 21:16, 20 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is a surprising amount of academic coverage of them, which mostly seems to treat them as what we would consider "biased but reliable", eg. [8], as well as some decent WP:USEBYOTHERS that treats its coverage as reliable, eg. [9] and a lot of other cites to its databases. In addition to obviously being biased (it's an anarchist activist outlet), it is described as "alternative media", so WP:DUE issues may sometimes apply. But it's sometimes usable with attribution when those things permit it to be. --Aquillion (talk) 15:41, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    RFC on The South African

    Which of the following best describes the reliability of The South African?

    Survey (The South African)

    • Option 2 They appear to be a standard news organisation, although the issues highlighted raise concerns about their quality. I can't find any other issues being raised, although search for information on them is made difficult due to their name. I don't think one issue is enough to declare them generally unreliable or deprecate them, but it does show the source should be shown more scrutiny if it's used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 (invited by the bot) Except in extreme cases, I'm against generalization (=overgeneralization) of any source. Which means "other considerations apply" is what nearly all should be. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:35, 12 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 Its news stories attributed to journalists seem largely reliable, or at least no worse than many other outlets we trust. However, we need to be aware of the possibility of wiki-mirroring in these articles. There also appears to be incipient AI use which may require further discussion if more examples become evident.--Boynamedsue (talk) 07:30, 15 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 3 I think having sat on the fence, I should cast my !vote. Had it been an isolated incident, I would have agreed with the above for option 2. However, based upon the evidence that I found that it has happened again (even after I informed them of the plagiarism), that suggests that it would be better to consider it unreliable since they have continued to copy Wikipedia. The C of E God Save the King! (talk) 06:59, 19 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion (The South African)

    • There are multiple publications that have very similar names, so it's not easy to search for information on the source. Also there appears to be two very different periods in its history - from 2003–2015 it was a freesheet distributed in London, but since 2015 it has been an online news source focused on the South African market. The BBC[10] and Stanford Libraries[11] both have media guides about South African news media, neither of which mention the The South African. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:09, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I've left a notification of the RFC on the Project South Africa talk page[12]. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 14:14, 11 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    RFC Jewish Chronicle

    The reliability of the Jewish Chronicle is:

    RFCbefore, Previous RFC Selfstudier (talk) 09:09, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Note (Jewish Chronicle)

    Existing RSP entry is green with the following commentary:

    "There is consensus that The Jewish Chronicle is generally reliable for news, particularly in its pre-2010 reporting. There is no consensus on whether The Jewish Chronicle is reliable for topics related to the British Left, Muslims, Islam, and Palestine/Palestinians; there is also a rough consensus it is biased in these topics. Where used, in-text attribution is recommended for its coverage of these topics."

    Editors may wish to comment on these issues specifically. Selfstudier (talk) 09:12, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Just a reminder but it's not technically possible to deprecate a source for a specific are of content and also a deprecated source is not more unreliable than an unreliable source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:07, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Well, there are clear wording differences between WP:GUNREL and WP:DEPREC, beyond the availability of technical means for the latter. Andreas JN466 12:28, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm just summarising Deprecated sources should not be considered to be either unique or uniquely unreliable. WP:DEPREC itself is a short summary of WP:DEPRECATE, but this is better discuss in the discussion section. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Survey (Jewish Chronicle)

    • Option 2 in general, Option 3 for WP:A/I/PIA area. The recent scandal gives rise to significant doubts over editorial control and practices which taken together with the lack of transparency over ownership and recent checkered history suggests we should not consider this source reliable without inline attribution at a minimum and unreliable for matters relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict.Selfstudier (talk) 09:31, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      You didn't seem concerned about funding in the case of Al Jazeera; you wrote I am not persuaded that any bias produced as a result of Qatari funding. Why the different approach here? In this case there could be donors or lenders we don't know about (which isn't uncommon for news orgs), but what could be worse than being owned by an absolute monarchy? — xDanielx T/C\R 16:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Please take your irrelevancies elsewhere, the discussion section maybe. Selfstudier (talk) 17:13, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      It's relevant because holding Jewish publications to a different standard would bias the topic area. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 20:43, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Al Jazeera is somewhat of a special case, as it has complete editorial independence despite being state-funded (a setup similar to the BBC). CVDX (talk) 13:20, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Almost all news orgs claim editorial independence, including RT for example. — xDanielx T/C\R 16:10, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Repeats comment about irrelevancies. Selfstudier (talk) 16:15, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 3 for Muslims, the British left and Israel/Palestine since 2016, option 3 for its entire output since 2020. The JC has had a long history of false reporting on Muslims, the British Left and Israel/Palestine (a complex of topics which frequently intersect). In the post 2010 period the JC frequently libelled individuals and published false information on these topics. Individuals were forced to resort to complaints to IPSO in order to get corrections published. Professor of Journalism Brian Cathcart writes the publication of falsehoods has been a characteristic of the paper’s journalism for years. The paper broke IPSO's code 41 times between 2018 and 2023, an astounding number for a small weekly paper, and paid out in at least four libel cases. All were against Muslims or people on the British left.
    IPSO lamented the paper's lack of cooperation with complaints in very strong terms The Committee expressed significant concerns about the newspaper’s handling of this complaint. The newspaper had failed, on a number of occasions, to answer questions put to it by IPSO and it was regrettable the newspaper’s responses had been delayed. The Committee considered that the publication’s conduct during IPSO’s investigation was unacceptable. Given the difficulty of obtaining corrections from the paper in cases where individuals are named, it is likely a large amount of false information has also been published where nobody is named, so the possibility of libel actions is eliminated, and the chance of IPSO cases is significantly reduced.
    The 2020 change of ownership, meaning nobody actually knows who owns the paper, combined with the false stories on Gaza, suggest we should not use the paper in any capacity until the question of ownership is clarified.Boynamedsue (talk) 09:52, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Just in addition to this, I feel, having read others' comments, a date of 2010 for the beginning of the qualification on reliability regarding political topics may also be valid, given that marked the period where Stephen Pollard took over. I would certainly consider extending it back that far in terms of BLP. However, the real collapse in standards occurred from 2015.--Boynamedsue (talk) 06:21, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 in general, Option 3/4 for WP:A/I/PIA area (Option 4 for WP:A/I/PIA coverage from 2024 going forward, given this year's string of fabrications and widespread concerns about journalistic integrity voiced in both the Israeli and international press). --Andreas JN466 11:17, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Explanation of Option 2 "additional considerations", as requested below:
      The current RSP entry says, There is no consensus on whether The Jewish Chronicle is reliable for topics related to the British Left, Muslims, Islam, and Palestine/Palestinians; there is also a rough consensus it is biased in these topics. Where used, in-text attribution is recommended for its coverage of these topics.
      Per Option 2, in-text attribution should in my view not just be recommended but required for any topics that are related to "the British Left, Muslims, Islam, and Palestine/Palestinians" but do not fall under WP:A/I/PIA. This should also apply more generally to assertions and allegations of antisemitism that do not fall under WP:A/I/PIA. Andreas JN466 07:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I also support comments by others that journalistic standards at the Jewish Chronicle appear to have dropped lower and lower over the past 20 years, with step changes in 2008, 2015 and after the change in ownership in 2020. Andreas JN466 11:06, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 4: major scandal for a prominent newspaper which should be immediately deprecated for the following reasons:
    1-Unknown owners who are likely right-wing ideologues;
    2-Publication of fabricated stories supporting Israeli premier Netanyahu's narratives;
    3-Allowance of an unknown freelance journalist who came "out of nowhere" to write these fabricated stories under a pseudonym and with a falsified resume
    4-The fired freelance journalist then making death threats to an Israeli reporter due to the revealing of their identity
    5-The resignation of the newspaper's most prominent columnists who have also stated that the JC's editorial line had become "sensationalist" and "unbalanced". Makeandtoss (talk) 11:17, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    These issues all relate to the period from 2020 to now. If it’s technically possible to deprecate for a specific timeframe only, is it right to assume you would argue for deprecating for this period specifically? BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:20, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I can continue mentioning how the JC was bought by right-wing owners in 2008 and how the newspaper played a prominent role in slandering pro-Palestinian voices as antisemitic including UK Labor Party former leader Jeremy Corbyn, and how it promoted the new antisemitism concept which included anti-Zionism. Also notable that JC had too many IPO violations since 2018. [13] Makeandtoss (talk) 12:58, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There was no change of ownership in 2008. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:34, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My bad, editorship* as mentioned in MEE article. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:53, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Are there any other sources deprecated because of the suspected political leanings of their owners? If not, are we going to start doing this? I might have some suggestions.
    2 & 3. are the points with substance to my mind. However, the JC have retracted the stories and cut ties with the writer, admitted the mistake and said they are reviewing their procedures for dealing with freelance journalists. This is substantially the same procedure as the Guardian announced faced with a very similar situation.
    4. It's baffling that you think that this has bearing on the Jewish Chronicle's reliability.
    5. Columnists resigning is not a criterion of reliability or unreliability. Nor, for that matter, is being "unbalanced". Samuelshraga (talk) 08:07, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There really is a world of difference between
    and
    Do please read them both and compare. Andreas JN466 08:21, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree re no.4. Re no.5, though, I think columnists resigning can be an indicator of unreliability if their reasons for resigning relate to criteria of reliability. Whereas some of the resigners (e.g. John Ware) have only mentioned a dislike of the editor's politics, most have mentioned being uncomfortable with the lack of transparency about ownership and many have expressed other reliability concerns, as the links already on this page show. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:59, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, Option 2 in general afterwards, Option 3 for WP:A/I/PIA area since 2020. This isn't about the current event, rather the current event appears to be the culmination of issues that have been growing for several years. Multiple external sources have commented on this, as have columnists that have recently ended their association with the paper. Oppose 4 in general. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:18, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, option 2 post-2015. It would be insane to deprecate a 183 year old publication, so strongly oppose option 4. I have argued in the talk section above that the IPSO breaches in the 2015-20 period should give rise to caution but not lead to option 3. I would urge those who are swayed by these breaches to read the actual rulings; you will find a couple of serious errors but the majority are fairly trivial and have been more than adequately corrected. I would argue against a generally unreliable status for antisemitism for that period because, prior to Jewish News taking off, the JC was the only UK Jewish paper and therefore the only outlet giving deep coverage to UK antisemitism. Designating it unusable means the whole topic can only be covered in a skewed way. I would therefore urge a formulation such as: “use with caution and attribution” for that topic in that period. Since 2020, the case for General unreliability, especially on Israel/Palestine, is strong, but even here we should explicitly note that there will be exceptions for authoritative contributors such as those who have resigned (eg Anshel Pfeiffer, Colin Shindler). BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:17, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

      the only outlet giving deep coverage to UK antisemitism

      The problem is that they make all sorts of highly dubious accusations of antisemitism, many of which appear to be politically motivated (i.e., in order to attack people who criticize Israel's treatment of the Palestinians). If the "deep coverage" is dishonest, then using it will not improve Wikipedia. -Thucydides411 (talk) 08:05, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      That may be your opinion but there are no RSs saying that as far as I know. If we had restrictions on
      BLP and/or ARBPIA in the relevant period, that would address that risk anyway. If we make them generally option 3, then we avoid the risk but also lose a lot of potential to cover antisemitism in UK society. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:56, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, option 2 post-2015 Bobfrombrockley really saved me a lot of typing. I also want to emphasize that we really need to be treating most sources, even our top sources like WSJ, NYT etc as green to yellow anytime we are treading into areas where bias etc could come into play. While fundamental facts (times, dates, etc) typically are objective, even good sources can have some bias in how much emphasis they put into certain aspects of a topic or even that they chose to cover a topic at all. This also applies when we look at how much scrutiny is applied to various sources. Outside of the false reports issue (which is hardly unique to this source) are they under the microscope because they are much different than other sources or because their politics disagree with other sources? As a rule we need to put less stock in "the color of a source" and more thought into what the source is claiming and what evidence they present for the claim. Springee (talk) 13:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Objectively speaking, they produce far more false reports than other sources. Including sources we deprecate, like the Daily Mail.Boynamedsue (talk) 13:44, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, Option 2 in general afterwards, Option 3 for WP:A/I/PIA area since 2020 as per ActivelyDisinterested. The Jewish Chronicle has issues stemming from its recent change in ownership, but those issues are much more clearly problematic, and more evidenced in third-party sources, for Israel/Palestine-related issues then issues outside that topic area. Loki (talk) 18:15, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, Option 2 in general afterwards, Option 3/4 for WP:A/I/PIA area, muslims, and the british left, especially after 2020 seems they used to do good work tho ive seen the ridiculous scandals in the wake of continuing israel palestine conflict. agree for same reasons as loki, springee, hope the org becomes more transparent soon. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 18:28, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 in general, Option 3 for muslims and the British left, Option 3/4 for WP:A/I/PIA area - Based on the provided background and latest developments, and considering JC's longstanding IPSO issues, undisclosed ownership that complicates the evaluation of the publication's impartiality, questionable editorial standards, etc etc. I've been following the gargantuan discussion preluding this RfC. These issues are not recent or limited to their latest scandal. - Ïvana (talk) 18:56, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 3 from 2015 onwards. No opinion for 2014 or earlier. In answer to queries about the year: 2015 was the year a general campaign of false allegations of antisemitism was launched against the British left and against Jeremy Corbyn in particular. Daveosaurus (talk) 04:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      What is your source for the JC having "launched" a "general campaign" in 2015? This was not mentioned in the previous discussion. If the JC actually engaged in a campaign at this time, then a secondary source would say so. I do see that a 2015 JC front-page editorial made claims of antisemitism about Corbyn. But an editorial (even an inaccurate one -- it's an editorial!) is not what means when one says a newspaper has a "general campaign of false allegations", which suggests misconduct. SamuelRiv (talk) 04:38, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It wasn't the JC in particular it was the British press in general. Restricting the Option 3 to 2015 onwards leaves earlier JC journalism able to be used if people familiar with the history of the paper consider it reliable. Daveosaurus (talk) 05:19, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify then, Davesaurus, you think the British press in general should be option 3 after 2015? BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:05, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 4. The unreliability and political bias of the JC has a long history. Their more recent opaque ownership and financing raises yet further concerns. By 2023 Brian Cathcart calculated that over the previous 5 years the JC had broke the IPSO code an astonishing 41 times* and had lost, or been forced to settle, at least four libel cases. There have been further cases since. This is all the more remarkable, because it has a relatively small circulation. By that metric the JC is substantially worse than other notoriously unreliable publications such as the Daily Mail which Wikipedia deprecated. However, irrespective of the final decision, it needs a strong warning of bias on all politically related, and non-Jewish religious issues. Andromedean (talk) 10:22, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 3 for 2020 onwards (dating to the change of ownership). Bias and IPSO complaints from earlier are recoverable issues. Mystery owners are not. The chain of accountability is important. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:43, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1. Bias isn't unreliability. A single scandal, with the freelancers dealt with, isn't an indictment of the whole publication. Andre🚐 19:30, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Andre, this isn't a single scandal, but multiple breaches of the IPSO code, libel cases, opaque ownership and funding, we are drowning in problems. By all means explain why these aren't relevant but please base your view around the evidence presented in the discussion. It's as if you haven't read anything or decided to insert a straw man fallacy! Andromedean (talk) 19:58, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Libel cases do not impact the publication's reliability unless they end in a judgment or verdict that is damning to the publication. There was an extensive discussion in the above thread about the IPSO and the ownership and my conclusion is that there's a bit of smoke but no fire (since the fire was extinguished by cutting ties and retracting the problematic material) as far as liability for the publication for the recent scandal, but the IPSO is a red herring since The Times also had a similar number of breaches, and I don't think it matters that it publishes more text, because that's not a metric defined anywhere. The relevant metric is a reputation for upholding accuracy and fact-checking. So long as Al Jazeera, a state-run propaganda outlet owned and operated by Qatar, is generally reliable, I'm not convinced that the ownership standard is one we care about. WP:NEWSORG nor WP:RS define this. The concern is whether the org stands by their fact-checking and corrects errors. Andre🚐 20:12, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      No. Policy on this is at WP:SOURCE. The publisher matters. Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:55, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      As it says there, "published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy." It does not mention having to know who owns the publication. Andre🚐 21:01, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      No. WP:SOURCE says the publisher affects reliability and it even identifies a specific reliable publisher. Also, here we have other sources saying that its unknown publisher is a real problem for the source. Three of its columnists quit because it does not have a reputation for reliability. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:17, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      That is a misread of the policy. Jewish Chronicle is the publisher, the question at hand here is whether they are reputable. It doesn't at all mention individuals or groups funding the ownership, that is irrelevant and a reach. The columnists quit due to the recent scandal. The publication has been around for many years, so its reputation is something at hand here for editors to weigh in on. Andre🚐 21:20, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      No. You misread policy. Jewish Chronicle is the source under discussion. Your contention that it is self-published only makes it unreliable. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:27, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      It is not self-published, it is a publisher. It is owned by a consortium[14] led by Robbie Gibb. Andre🚐 21:30, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      You just said again it is a self-publisher. Jewish Chronicle is the publication. If as you claim, Jewish Chronicle is also the publisher, then Jewish Chronicle is self publishing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:41, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Your argument makes no sense. Jewish Chronicle is both the publisher and the publication, just like most newspapers. Or technically the publisher is the consortium that owns it, but is also known as Jewish Chronicle. The New York Times is the publication published by The New York Times Co., also a privately owned and operated organization. Self-published is when an individual publishes their own book or article. Jewish Chronicle is the outlet. Andre🚐 21:44, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      We have mainstream sources across the board, from The Guardian to The Telegraph to The Jerusalem Post to Haaretz, telling us that the identity of the actual owner is unknown. You can't just sweep this concern under the carpet: it is being voiced by media professionals, including former contributors to the Jewish Chronicle, not Wikipedians. Andreas JN466 21:45, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Please show me where in the policy the identity of the owner is mentioned as anything pertaining to its reliability. Andre🚐 21:48, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      You just admitted that with the Jewish Chronicle, the publication and the publisher here are two different things, although you then pass it off as a 'technicality.' You go on to describe the publisher as the owner. Alanscottwalker (talk) 21:53, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, it's no different than The Nation, published by its namesake owner, The Nation Company, L.P., the Jewish Chronicle is both the publication and an eponymous group that publishes it. Andre🚐 21:56, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      So, the owner is the publisher. Publisher matters under SOURCE. And the publisher, here has been put in doubt. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:01, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Continued below. Andreas JN466 22:10, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Rather than clutter the survey, kindly take this to the discussion section. Selfstudier (talk) 21:44, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I would just answer this point simply by reiterating the quote by subject matter expert Brian Cathcart: the publication of falsehoods has been a characteristic of the paper’s journalism for years. The problem is not bias, though the source is biased like every newspaper, it is consistent and sustained inaccuracy used to support its biases.--Boynamedsue (talk) 06:12, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 with the additional considerations of: generally reliable or at least not noticeably objectionable pre-2009, and "use with caution" from 2009 onwards (Pollard era), most notably with respect to BLPs and politics (the source of almost all the libel cases and other complaints), given its significantly worse track record of inaccuracy and sensationalism in this area, and then option 3 for content related to ARBPIA and related politics (including the intersection of race, religion, etc.) from 2020 onwards (the period of uncertain ownership and further step up in the editorial murkiness/malpractice and political beholdenness). Iskandar323 (talk) 19:51, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 for now. I'm open to changing my !vote if other evidence emerges, but so far I'm only seeing a single story with serious accuracy concerns, which doesn't say much about the broader reliability of the 183 year old newspaper. The other evidence that has been provided against JC's reliability is IPSO complaints. Anyone can file an IPSO complaint, so only the ones IPSO (partially) upheld seem potentially meaningful. As TFD mentioned, there were four of those in the past two years, so I read through those. They all have some kind of merit, but seem fairly minor. One was about the text the Islamic Republic has repeatedly vowed to wipe Israel and Jews off the face of the Earth. Definitely imprecise, but we regularly see worse hyperbole from other biased-but-reliable sources. Another complaint took issue with the text Labour banned him from its list of potential council candidates, saying the candidate was rejected but not (permanently) banned. Also imprecise, but we see far worse errors from WP:GREL sources regularly. — xDanielx T/C\R 17:08, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I don't think anyone knows how many complaints the IPSO receives, only changes after a complaint was made. For all publications over the five years 2018 to 2022, IPSO investigated only 3.82% and upheld 0.56% of the remaining complaints. 1.41% were resolved directly by the complainant with the publisher during the process and 0.43% were resolved by IPSO mediation. For examples of complaints about the JC which the IPSO rejected see Thomas Suarez's Youtube video here Andromedean (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 pre-2015, option 2 post-2015 - just gonna second pretty much everything that Bob said. Somewhat lean option 3 for ARBPIA post-2020 but not strongly so, and complete deprecation, especially pre-2015, would be a mistake. The Kip (contribs) 18:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 per u:Andrevan. The newspaper handled the latest scandal involving Elon Perry properly by severing the ties with him and removing his articles. Other media outlets have also had similar issues [15]. The IPSO rulings are a nothingburger, other sources like The Times have had multiple IPSO rulings against them as well and others like The Guardian simply choose not to be regulated by IPSO. It would definitely by good to know who owns the newspaper but I'm not sure how it would be relevant. Alaexis¿question? 20:38, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1 per the arguments above. I previously had a somewhat lower opinion based on this scandal, but having read into it, it seems to me that the reliability issue has been sufficiently addressed. The political shift to the right is concerning on a personal level, and so is the departure of experienced and skilled journalists, but neither of those impacts the reliability for facts. The IPSO complaints are mostly the process working as intended, and the offending articles for this current scandal seem to have been removed (and are obviously, as any other thing written by such an author, unusable). The JC still has a reputation for fact-checking and reliability, and until that changes, it would not be reasonable to consider them unreliable, including in the I/P area. In addition, it has an important role of representing British (and other diaspora) Jews, and we should be highly cautious not to run out of centrist/right-leaning diaspora sources, including in the I/P area. I also find the argument about ownership entirely unconvincing: I don’t find it likely that there is any plausible ownership even close to comparably problematic to Al Jazeera, with the state in effect (though at least officially indirectly) both aiding Hamas and funding (with to be fair, no beyond-a-reasonable-doubt evidence of editorial control) a source we currently consider reliable for I/P. FortunateSons (talk) 11:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Whoa ... this calls for a bit of context:
      • Qatar sent millions to Gaza for years – with Israel’s backing. Here’s what we know about the controversial deal, CNN, 12 December 2023
      • ‘Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas, New York Times, 10 December 2023
        • Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials. For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them. During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials, according to several people familiar with the secret discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the payments to continue? Mr. Netanyahu’s government had recently decided to continue the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha.
      • What Is the Hamas Chief Doing in Qatar?, Der Spiegel, 2 November 2023
        • Qatar is one of NATO's closest allies in the Gulf and has even been designated as a "Major Non-NATO Ally." In 2011, then United States President Barack Obama personally requested that the Emir of Qatar take the leadership of Hamas into his country. At the time, Washington was seeking to establish a communications channel to the Iranian-backed terrorist group. The Americans believed that a Hamas office in Doha would be easier to access than a Hamas bureau in Tehran.
      • Qatar ranks about twenty places above Israel in the Press Freedom Index.
      Andreas JN466 12:02, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      All we need to do here is look at the editors who !voted anything other than 1 in the snow closed AJ RFCs. Selfstudier (talk) 12:25, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Selfstudier can you explain this comment about our need to look at editors? BobFromBrockley (talk) 05:21, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think its pretty clear, don't you? If some editors want to go on about AJ in this RFC then pointing to their comments at the AJ RFC makes sense, no? Selfstudier (talk) 08:13, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Israel's low press freedom rating probably has to do with its regular involvement in military conflicts, but in any case, why is it relevant here? No Israeli sources are being discussed. Qatar's rating of 58.48 isn't great, and that reflects a mix of state-owned (e.g. Al Jazeera) and independently-owned (e.g. Doha News) news orgs.
      Returning to the topic of JC, it seems very speculative to say that there might be donors or lenders we don't know about, who might attempt to exert influence, which might impact reliability. With Al Jazeera, it's hard to prove anything but there are many signs of Qatari influence, such as leaked cables where US diplomats discussed the use of Al Jazeera in diplomatic negotiations. — xDanielx T/C\R 17:00, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I agree it would be speculative for us to say that "there might be donors or lenders we don't know about, who might attempt to exert influence, which might impact reliability". But we have a wide spectrum of mainstream sources saying it, from The Telegraph to The Guardian to Haaretz to The Jerusalem Post. We have insiders like Lee Harpin, senior reporter at the JC till 2021, who left after the takeover and now
      • says the new owners wanted more views "well to the right of the Tory party",
      • that "The current predicament of the @JewishChron does not come as a surprise. Leadership chosen on ideological grounds by those who gained control of the publication. Communal orgs should have been raising concerns months and months ago",
      • and that "The rot is deeper and for regular observers and readers of the paper, its direction over the last few years has been tragic to witness".
      You'd have to bring counterarguments published by people with similar standing in equivalent venues, rather than arguing with the people here. Andreas JN466 18:33, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Fair point, there is an accusation of owner influence rather than mere speculation. That said, every news org has criticism from disgruntled employees, especially in the past ~20 years when many news orgs had to undergo major changes. Harpin's criticism actually seems much less concerning than, for example, Peter Oborne's criticism of The Daily Telegraph, which includes accusations of owner and advertiser influence as well as (frankly more relevant) a focus on clicks over reliability. One can find comparable accusations from disgruntled employees of most major news outlets. — xDanielx T/C\R 20:26, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, at least you know who the owner of The Telegraph is. ;) I take your point about disgruntled employees, but the JC does seem to have had rather a lot of them since the takeover, and the concerns have been echoed very, very widely, both in Israel and the UK, by outside observers. Lionel Barber weighed in today: [16] Regards, Andreas JN466 21:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 1. Option 3ers believe this isn't about a single event, yet can't point to evidence of unreliability beyond that event. Meanwhile, substantiated IPSO complaints are at the level of other major newspapers like The Times showing there isn't a pattern of disinformation like the Daily Mail. Al Jazeera is relevant because I'm sure we can all agree holding Jewish publications to a different standard than Muslim ones is wrong and will increase bias on wiki. It's bizarre that this standard is applied here to say that Qatari ownership of Al Jazeera can't impact its reliability but ownership of the JC does.
    RSN and RSP are a good way to skew article bias by designating sources supporting certain viewpoints as unreliable so as to remove them from articles in contentious areas. Judging publications individually is naïve in such an environment because editors will unconsciously create different standards for their favoured sources. We need to consciously ensure we're holding all sources in the Israel-Palestine conflict area to the same standard. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 21:14, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Chess:The times has 12 IPSO rulings against it and 5 for its website, which is shared with the Sunday Times, since 2018, publishing 312 editions a year. The JC has 6 for the jc.com, which have not been counted up to now, and 12 for its paper edition. This is over just 52 yearly editions.
    To suggest these numbers are similar is a clear misrepresentation of the facts, given the probability of a the JC publishing an actionable falsehood in a given edition is AT LEAST 6 times higher (we do not know how many of the website stories originated in the Sunday Times). This disparity is further compounded by the fact that the JC is around a third of the length of the times, and so produces many fewer articles. A generous calculation would be that a JC story is ten times more likely to be punished by IPSO than the Times.
    It is also clear from the rulings that the Times' corrections are spread over a range of topics, whereas all of the JC's false stories relate to the British left, Muslims and Palestine. This is more a campaign of disinformation by the JC rather than good faith errors. Boynamedsue (talk) 07:54, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    For reference, evidence of unreliability comprises points like the following:
    • Publishing a string of sensational stories described as "wild fabrications" or "wild inventions" in Israeli and British papers
    • Failure to vet (or knowing publication of) the falsified résumé of the freelancer writing these stories, who was instantly rumbled by Israeli journalists
    • Failure to conduct a proper investigation after the fabrication scandal
    • Failure to publish a transparent report on what happened (see e.g. [17] for comment)
    • Your claim that upheld IPSO complaints are running at the same level as for The Times is false.
      • For material published since 2020 The Jewish Chronicle has 5 listed under "v thejc.com", 7 listed under "v The Jewish Chronicle".
      • Equivalent numbers for The Times: 5 listed under "v thetimes.co.uk", 8 listed under "v The Times"
      • Equivalent numbers for The Daily Mail (deprecated): 6 listed under "v Daily Mail" (incl. "v Scottish Daily Mail, excl. "v Hull Daily Mail"), 11 listed under "v Mail Online"
      • The Times and The Daily Mail are daily papers, The Jewish Chronicle is a weekly, with far fewer articles per issue. Its collection of upheld IPSO rulings per article is an order of magnitude greater than for The Times and The Daily Mail.
    • Number of lost libel cases seems large relative to the size of the publication. We are writing an encyclopedia, not a gossip rag.
    • The owner of Al Jazeera is known. The owner of The Jewish Chronicle is not. This is a unique situation, and the paper has taken a turn to the far right under the new, anonymous ownership. There are multiple mainstream media reports saying this lowers confidence in the paper's reliability.
    • Multiple mainstream media reports (some listed in the Background section below) have deplored the loss of journalistic standards at the publication. Half a dozen of the paper's top columnists have left in despair.
    Andreas JN466 09:23, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If we're deprecating publications for a single freelancer fabricating stories let's get rid of the New York Times because of Jayson Blair and Judith Miller. Additionally, the New York Times also has anonymous owners as it's publicly traded. We only ban reliable sources based on their ownership if the ownership is negatively influencing the publication. Please point me to the cases where a source was banned because its owner was unknown, because asserting this is a unique situation because the paper has taken a turn to the far right means this is because of the views of the Jewish Chronicle.
    This is a very high standard for the Jewish Chronicle that we do not hold other reliable sources to. The New York Times has had journalists fabricate content. The result of their investigation was to fire the journalist. This is the same thing the Jewish Chronicle did,[18] so explain why you're not holding the Jewish Chronicle to a different standard when you say they failed to conduct a proper investigation after the fabrication scandal. Or say that the New York Times is unreliable as well.
    IPSO complaints are not a way to quantify unreliability. Complaints would only quantify reliability if they all represented the same flaw and were comparable across an entire industry, but IPSO complaints can be made for a variety of reasons and WP:GREL publications like The Guardian opt out of them. Your math shows that the Jewish Chronicle is an order of magnitude worse than the Daily Mail and that The Times is (5+8)/(6+11)=76% as unreliable as the Daily Mail. If you believed the Jewish Chronicle was 10x worse than the Daily Mail you wouldn't have !voted for "Option 2 in general". If the number of IPSO complaints had any statistical validity The Times would be at WP:MREL or below.
    RSP is very quickly devolving into a method to enforce groupthink, because declaring a source as unreliable or just WP:MREL means one can effectively prevent its viewpoints from being presented on Wikipedia. Additionally, because the standard for reliable sources is de facto "does it agree with other reliable sources?", we end up with a ratchet effect that makes it harder to prove a source is reliable as the number of reliable sources that source agrees with goes down. This eventually leads to a corpus of sources that uniformly agree on what the truth is.
    The only way to prevent selective exclusion of sources is to consciously question whether our standards are objective. You can't handwave this burden away when it's been brought up repeatedly by other editors. The reason why I !voted Option 1 isn't because I am disputing most of your claims, it's because you cannot show why similar evidence would prove unreliability for other publications. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 15:39, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Completely agree. Andre🚐 15:50, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    a) Most people are not suggesting deprecation and b) It's not just about rogue freelancers so lose the strawmen. Selfstudier (talk) 16:09, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    !voters aren't suggesting deprecation because the Jewish Chronicle is obviously more reliable than the Daily Mail. But the IPSO argument implies that the JC is 10x worse than the Daily Mail. Both cannot be true at once. I'm refuting the IPSO complaint counters with a reduction to absurdity that demonstrates why the number of IPSO complaints isn't a meaningful metric to evaluate sources on.
    Rejecting IPSO means the rogue freelancer story is the only evidence of false information being published by the source. You have provided no other specific cases.
    Columnists resigning due to changes in ownership/political slant can only prove bias on the part of the JC. As the editnotice you're supposed to see when editing this page says, bias is not a reason in itself for a source to be unreliable, but may require in-text attribution.
    The objective standard we should be following is whether a source can be used for citing false information on Wikipedia. We rank and categorize sources to prevent false information from entering the encyclopedia. You can write as much as you want, but if you can't give specific examples of false information, then you haven't shown the source is unreliable. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 19:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    All of the upheld IPSO cases found problems with accuracy – typically incendiary, false claims ascribing words to people they had not actually written or said. This sort of thing is apt to cause BLP problems here. I don't understand why you think such inaccuracies are irrelevant for our purposes, or do not qualify as "false information" (and please go a bit more lightly on the bold). Andreas JN466 20:28, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Reliable sources also have substantiated IPSO complaints. Our dispute is over whether counting the number is acceptable, because you haven't bothered analyzing their specifics. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 17:25, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    These IPSO rulings seem quite similar to me in nature (in one case, practically identical).
    You are proposing that the number of upheld IPSO rulings against a publication (proven inaccuracies, misrepresentations or libels) should be irrelevant to us. That is hardly sensible.
    Your previous post was a textbook example of circular reasoning – you said, "the Jewish Chronicle is obviously more reliable than the Daily Mail. But the IPSO argument implies that the JC is 10x worse than the Daily Mail. Both cannot be true at once. You start with the assumption that the JC is better than the Daily Mail, so if it collects ten times more adverse IPSO rulings per article than the Daily Mail, then that proves IPSO rulings don't matter. Absurd indeed – but not in the way you mean.
    The fact that these IPSO rulings generally occurred in a single topic area makes it all the more important to take note of the risk we would take by hosting the JC's truth claims unvetted and unfiltered by other, more reliable publications, here in our BLPs and other articles in that topic area. If the claim is important, another more reliable publication will pick it up, and we can cite that. That is responsible sourcing for an encyclopedia, given the substantial concerns about the JC voiced in the press. Andreas JN466 19:35, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You start with the assumption that the JC is better than the Daily Mail, so if it collects ten times more adverse IPSO rulings per article than the Daily Mail, then that proves IPSO rulings don't matter. Absurd indeed – but not in the way you mean.
    I'm pointing out your absurd double standard where you argue that the Jewish Chronicle is statistically worse than the Daily Mail, but then only !vote for Option 2. It makes it obvious that your !vote doesn't follow from your stated reasoning. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:14, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The IPSO and fabrication problems are limited to a specific topic area. The "special consideration" in my Option 2 vote is that Option 3/4 should be applied to that topic area where there is strong evidence of poor reliability. I would be happy to cite the JC on lots of other topics – music, the arts, film and theatre reviews, biographies of Jewish scientists, etc. Andreas JN466 08:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Chess Well, have a look what the NYT did when it discovered one of their reporters was guilty of fabrications:
    What we got from the JC is this nothingburger:
    To claim that this is in any way equivalent to what happened at the NYT is risible. You don't have to take my word for it, because we have journalists pointing this shortfall out in the mainstream press.
    • "Thinnest form of contrition" (Times of Israel)
    • "Though Wallis Simons apologised to readers, he offered no explanation for how the deception occurred. Just an assurance that standards will be tightened. This will not do." (Prospect Magazine).
    The concerns about ownership etc. are voiced in the British and Israeli mainstream press, across the political spectrum.
    Using the Jewish Chronicle for WP:A/I/PIA coverage after this episode is not my idea of due diligence. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." If they sort their operation out, we can always revisit. Regards, Andreas JN466 16:17, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What would writing a longer statement with a more detailed apology do? Elon Perry lied about his identity and his sources. He was caught within two months. The "transparent and exhaustive reporting" of the New York Times is full of florid prose about Blair's travel habits, counselling, and personal problems as he was a full-time employee of the New York Times.
    I don't think the Jewish Chronicle would have any of that information for a freelancer, so most of that article couldn't be written even if the JC wanted to. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:27, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    He was caught instantly by Israeli journalists when he made claims that Netanyahu's family then tried to give extra visibility to. (A similar PR effort was simultaneously underway in Germany, with the Bild Zeitung tabloid publishing a related fake news story: [19][20])
    Perry was caught by the simple expedient of Israeli journalists asking the IDF whether it really had the materials Perry claimed they had (they replied it was a "wild invention"), and then checking whether Perry really was a professor at Tel Aviv University (he was not). If the JC is unable to perform such simple tasks then it lacks basic qualifications for reliable reporting on such matters.
    The editor should have explained to readers how contact with Perry was established, why they did not fact-check his résumé given that he made some tall and easily disproved claims about himself, why they did not try to contact the IDF to corroborate Perry's stories (standard practice in reliable publications is to require two independent sources for news stories), etc. This is all basic bread and butter for mainstream outlets, and the JC is simply and evidently out of its league here if they can't or won't apply such basic due diligence. Andreas JN466 09:01, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 2 in General. Option 3 for issues relating to Palestine and the war in Gaza Its bias is very clear and overt. But as other editors have pointed out, this does not necessarily mean it deserves depreciation. However, depreciation and considering a source unreliable on a single topic are two very different things. For the same reason why editors are rightfully sceptical of Pro-Russian sources reporting on the war in Ukraine, it is best to be consistent and also treat with some scepticism the reliability of the Jewish Chronicle when dealing with Gaza and issues related to Palestine. Genabab (talk) 15:10, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 4 since 2024, Option 3 2015-2024— the problems with editorial standards at the newspaper have been ongoing for years and are only getting worse. (t · c) buidhe 23:08, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      The idea that JC covers antisemitism in the UK is not a good reason to keep the paper when it has lost any reputation for reliability in that area. We should be looking for scholarly sources to cover these controversies anyway. (t · c) buidhe 23:12, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      It's not possible on a technical level to deprecate a source for a period of time. It has to be all or nothing because the deprecation edit filter can't determine when an article was published. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:29, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      WP:DEPREC assessments are independent of the presence and feasibility of an edit filter. Andreas JN466 09:14, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think Buidhe makes a very pertinent point. If the JC is frequently libelling people and making false claims around antisemitism, the fact it is the only source reporting on some cases of alleged antisemitism means these claims should generally not be included in our pages. Especially in cases of BLP.Boynamedsue (talk) 17:56, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Option 3 for WP:A/I/PIA (including antisemitism) and Muslims, option 2 for other issues, per comments above and below (including mine).VR (Please ping on reply) 23:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      While it is a legitimate !vote that it be deemed unreliable on antisemitism (I have above argued that this would be a mistake, while Buidhe and Boynamedsue have made the argument for such a ruling), I just want to additionally argue that antisemitism in general should not be covered by AIPIA, only antisemitism directly related to Israel/Palestine, which I believe was the case in all of the relevant IPSO breaches. Personally, I think it is dangerous to not be able to cite the UK's only Jewish newspaper on the topic of antisemitism in the UK, without any evidence that it is unreliable on this topic in general (as opposed to antisemitism directly related to Israel/Palestine). At any rate, I think you'd need to present an evidence/policy-based argument rather than use ARBPIA. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:22, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I'm confused. Don't any of the other 4+ Jewish newspapers in the UK cover antisemitism? What's this "only XYZ" business about? And if the others don't cover the same incidents as the JC, perhaps that's indicative of the types of incident that have gotten it into libel and defamation territory. Iskandar323 (talk) 17:37, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Background (Jewish Chronicle)

    Discussion (Jewish Chronicle)

    • This articlel, from The Guardian, should be relevant. At lot of it seems to be from Elon Perry, whose articles they've recently retracted en masse. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:02, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I am concerned with, as are several of the reports on this, about their vague, inadequate response. The statement they made is more like a cover-up: 'we won't tell you the details, we've 'memory holed' this so it will go away, just trust us.' As I suggested in the prior discussion, we should expect when something like this happens that the outlet 'reports the hell out of it'. We should know from them who and why touched off the investigation, who was involved, what was false, what can't be confirmed, where it leads, what charges that preceded the investigation and arose during it could be validated, denied, or for which there is no evidence, what was their investigation, what didn't they investigate, why, what processes went wrong in their organization, what the fixes are, etc. etc. etc. We should also expect disciplining of the editors involved. - Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:06, 22 September 2024
      For reference, this was the statement summarising the investigation, published one day after the announcement that an investigation was underway. --Andreas JN466 11:25, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I should have linked those in my comment for others' sake. That's what my comment refers to as inadequate, to say the least. Instead, they are 'sitting on the story', not reporting perhaps among the most important news, in the outlet's history. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 11:39, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment These additional qualfications add nothing, since they already apply to every other news publication.
    For all green-lighted news media, they are considered generally reliable for news and additional considerations apply for all other information they publish. See News organizations: "News reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact (though even the most reputable reporting sometimes contains errors). [However] [e]ditorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (invited op-eds and letters to the editor from notable figures) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact."
    Also, per Exceptional claims require exceptional sourcing, "Any exceptional claim requires multiple high-quality sources."
    No one has pointed out how this source has caused damage or even that there has been any discussion in articles about specific claims linked to it.
    TFD (talk) 18:52, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I have no doubt we should do a better job of making the policies cabining news clear everywhere (including on the perennial sources page) -- indeed, one of the reasons I think that page may be unclear (despite the extensive introductory hand-wringing), is it likely suggests in its format, news and other types of sources are the same (we should probably breakout news outlets from others, although I don't want us to then suggest all other sources are the same--perhaps sectioning would be better). But "editing notes" is what we should collectively give, and it only makes sense on Wikipedia that there would be collective editing notes, especially concerning its most plainly used but also difficult to use source, news. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:03, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Objection: There is no cutoff year offered in the RfC, despite many or most in the prior discussion saying that there was a distinct and recent change in JC's reliability, with several sourced dates offered. So voters have added cutoff dates themselves -- but where on earth did the 2015 cutoff year come from? It's not been mentioned at all in the previous thread in the context of when problematic behavior actually occurred. All I could find is User:Bobfrombrockley's 17 Sept comment comparing the total number of complaints since 2015 for the JC and The Times. They do not say why 2015 is the cutoff -- presumably it is because IPSO began in September 2014, so that's the first year of their reporting. That is not the first year in which problematic behavior was reported by the JC -- as far as I can tell the first year in which secondary sources report problematic behavior, or report that JC internally was concerned about such behavior, was 2019. This is not the same as picking a year arbitrarily and counting the IPSO violations thenceforth -- we are taking a RS article that cites either internal communications about violations, or a particular violation as a bellweather event, for their own judgement that JC has dropped standards after that particular point. No such source has said 2015. SamuelRiv (talk) 00:47, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think Option 2 is supposed to cover it case by case after 2015 onwards, especially for non I/P stuff, and Option 3 for PIA after 2020 should be a clear enough point where facts from TJC should not be sourced for I/P issues. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 01:17, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      As per the discussion above, the 2015 date stems from a time where TJC started to receive a number of IPSO complaints. We are not writing an article here; RS are not specifically needed to make an argument that a source is unreliable for one reason or another. Cortador (talk) 08:13, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Please see my direct response to your !vote above (but reply here): what is your source -- because it was never said in this thread -- that there were "a number of IPSO complaints" in 2015? What is your source that the number of IPSO complaints in 2015 was significant compared to others? (Compare to the years we have sources for that IPSO complaints were significant, the years that alerts internal and external were raised.) SamuelRiv (talk) 12:32, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I have not voted in this poll yet. Cortador (talk) 10:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I think 2015 makes sense as a transition from green to yellow status as this is when the run of IPSO complaints began which all relate to the controversy over Antisemitism in the British Labour Party which began that year. This is when Brian Cathcart seems to start with his denunciation (although his main target is IPSO), so if you see the IPSO complaints alone as grounds for option 3 then it makes sense to start then. But there's also a strong case that 2015-20 was marked, not marked by general unreliability, but issues that call for additional considerations, e.g. extreme caution on the topics of the British left and Muslims or perhaps Israel/Palestine (although nobody has really given an argument for that specifically). Apart from Cathcart, all other RSs take 2020/2021 as a starting point: the mystery owners, compounded by the appointment of an amateur and highly ideological editor a year later. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:40, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      As far as I can tell the only direct relationship JC bears to the antisemitism controversy is their front page editorial against Corbyn. While that's significant, it's an editorial. Does that speak to reliability, in 2015? (Much less unreliability in news coverage of the left, Muslims, or I/P in 2015, the year of the editorial?) SamuelRiv (talk) 12:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment I think we have a problem here already, because people who are !voting option 2 are often not saying what they mean by it. I would invite them to clarify, or we are giving the closer a bit of a hospital pass. Option 2 covers a lot of ground, my own !vote is effectively option 2 prior to 2020, but the important part is exactly what considerations users think should apply.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:24, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      This is a very good point. Quite a few editors have !voted for option 2 for the whole period from 1841 to 2015 without indicating what extra considerations should apply, which isn't a usable conclusion. (For me, the additional considerations that should apply after 2015 is attribution and caution on the British left and Muslims, especially for BLP stuff.) BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:43, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      The previous RFC close mentioned pre 2010 and I chose not to date my comments on the grounds that stuff that old can in all likelihood be sourced better elsewhere and if not, one would have to ask why not. Selfstudier (talk) 17:30, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment It concerns me deeply that despite the mountain of evidence against the Jewish Chronicle (JC) editors are still attempting to find periods and categories it might be considered reliable so as to grant exemptions. This privilege wasn't granted to the deprecated Daily Mail which has a long history and covers a wider subject range. If exemptions are granted, we need to ensure exclusion of a broader range such as politics and all other religions, not just Israel, Muslims and Labour. With regard to timing the JCs more extreme lurch to the right can probably traced to Stephen Pollard. Only two years before being appointed editor in 2008, he used far-right rhetoric like “preserve Western civilisation” from the threat of “Islamists.” and “the Left, in any recognisable form, is now the enemy” in his blog. Fast forward to today and the JC are promoting Donald Trump. This is an endemic problem not a temporary one. Andromedean (talk) 09:58, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Surely the issues with Pollard relate to bias not unreliability? We consider the Telegraph or Wall Street Journal reliable sources, despite plenty of that rhetoric. And despite what he wrote in his blog in 2006, he still published lots of left-wing opinion in the JC. More importantly, it's not a "privilege" if a long-running newspaper that has not been accused of serious improprieties in its close to two centuries is assumed to be generally reliable; it's our default for all legacy media (e.g. regional print newspapers)unless evidence is brought against it. With the Daily Mail, the downgrading decision was based on a massive body of evidence of uncorrected fabrication and plagiarism that went back a long time. It's not comparable. BobFromBrockley (talk) 11:59, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Yes, but I notice that on the Reliable sources/Perennial sources noticeboard a comment is often made regarding bias, notability, sensationalism, propaganda as well as reliability. Isn't this the area to discuss this? Andromedean (talk) 15:45, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      I would say no. Pollard heralded in the period of reduced reliability and presided over the initial accumulation of IPSO complaints. It is obviously harder to tell how the publication performed prior to this (the 2014 formation of IPSO), but there is no particular reason to consider that it was likely any better. The paper was first successfully sued for damages under Pollard in 2010,[21] and Pollard is synonymous with other woes for the paper. Everything from 2009 onwards deserves a sharper lense. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:58, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Your citation for "The paper was first successfully sued for damages under Pollard in 2010" actually refers to a blogpost he wrote for a different publication, The Spectator, in 2008, prior to his arrival at JC. I guess the point might still stand that this reflects poorly on him as a choice of editor (The Spectator is yellow on RSP) but not in the way being sued for damages would be. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:11, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Part of that is news especially, "old news", is assumed to have ever-limited shelf life for much of what Wikipedia does and wants to do. Alanscottwalker (talk) 13:08, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      The first draft of history, as they say. The problem is that for many Wikipedia topics that is all there ever is; and even for topics that scholars subsequently do write about, the scholarly sources often don't make it into Wikipedia as the article is full already. Andreas JN466 14:00, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      The theory is that merging or updating or replacement should occur to render the long view (not sticking to a first draft). So that, the 'British left in the 1980s' is essentially a differently useful topic than the 'British left today'. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:12, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Comment: Whilst I take on the earlier advice that this RfC isn't a simple vote count, it would be highly challenging to assess it fairly due to the multitude of categories editors have inserted. To carry out the analysis fairly and avoid double or partial counting would require a model and qualification in set analysis! Do we need technical or independent assistance or agree to stick with simpler categories? Other RfCs must go through the same difficulties. My view is that there's no need for dates, although I could be convinced to give it a pass prior to Pollard, if only for my sanity!Andromedean (talk) 18:25, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Well, the closer generally looks to see if there is a rough consensus among the vagaries of participants differing expressions of thought, not any mathematical certainty. Alanscottwalker (talk) 18:38, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Continuing the discussion with User:Andrevan from above: As User:Alanscottwalker already mentioned to you, WP:SOURCE explicitly points out that one of the four aspects of a source that can affect reliability is the publisher and its reputation. An anonymous owner creates the impression of having something to hide. This has impacted the reputation of the Jewish Chronicle, as evidenced by the media reports linked above. --Andreas JN466 22:08, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes. Anonymous can have no reputation. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:15, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If such standard were applied to all sources, we'd have to mark as unreliable any source for whom we don't know all the board members. The sources you provided do list a number of people. A silent partner in any venture is not unusual or a sign of unreliability. The Companies House listing for Jewish Chronicle Media Ltd also suggests no change in its status from a private limited company. Instead, the only change that appeared to have been made was to remove Gibb as a person with significant control, replaced by Jonathan Kandel, a former tax lawyer whose LinkedIn page says he now works as a senior consultant for the Starwood Capital Group, an international private investment firm.....The Jewish Chronicle’s ownership structure, in which several key figures remain anonymous.... Since 2020, the only shareholder and director was Robbie Gibb, a former Downing Street comms director. But he was not bankrolling the loss-making paper, which according to its latest accounts required a loan of £3.5 million. In March, the paper announced it would be becoming a charitable trust. Gibb recently resigned as director, replaced by the Labour peer Lord Austin, Jonathan Kandel, a prominent lawyer, and Joseph Dweck, a senior rabbi. The shareholding was split up, too. But the people ultimately responsible for The JC’s debts remain unknown. Andre🚐 22:20, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    We should be concerned when sources say it is a concern. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:35, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is, again, a misread of what it means by "publisher," it means the outlet, not the ownership of the outlet; ownership isn't mentioned. If you find an article that was published in the Jewish Chronicle, that was published by the Jewish Chronicle, and it will be reputable or not based on what we decide here, but nowhere is that extended to mean the reliability of the shareholders of the company. Andre🚐 22:15, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No you don't understand publisher. The publication is the Jewish Chronicle, either it has a separate publisher or it does not. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:21, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As I just said, it is called "Jewish Chronicle Media Ltd." The fact that we don't know all the shareholders is not relevant. I think we're going around in circles so let's agree to disagree. Andre🚐 22:23, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The ownership does matter. It has to matter to the publisher. But more specifically, it matters to the sources that have taken issue with it. As Jayen already pointed out, this problem was not identified by Wikipedians, it was identified by sources. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:29, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The sources also say, Not all of the contributors have resigned. “For me, this incident is not reason enough to give up on a paper that’s been a powerful and essential voice for our Jewish community for 180 years,” says Naomi Greenaway, deputy editor of the Telegraph Magazine and Jewish Chronicle columnist. “But I have a lot of respect for the journalists who have resigned, and I’m glad it’s triggered The Jewish Chronicle to interrogate their editing processes. The shame is that for a paper that does give a platform to those on all sides of the political spectrum, these resignations will ironically mean it loses that balance on the Left. “From my experience, they are a tiny team, juggling a huge amount on a shoestring budget and generally the calibre of content punches way above what would be expected from their resources. But they’ve dropped the ball and they know they have massive lessons to learn from it.”....“The @JewishChron has cut all ties with the freelancer in question and his work has now been removed from our website. Readers can be assured that stronger internal procedures are being implemented. Andre🚐 22:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know what you are responding to. That does not address publisher. It also continues a vagueness, apparently she, an editor, has no idea what went on and what the fixes are or what lessons are learned. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:41, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The question at hand is whether the publisher, Jewish Chronicle Media Ltd, and its associated publication, have a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. That quote substantiates that in fact, its reputation may still be intact, though that is for editors here to determine. As to whether the company contains, among the named individuals, some anonymous individuals AFAIK is not something discussed anywhere in wiki-policy. Andre🚐 22:43, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No. It does not. She is not a reliable source for her own employer in such a matter. Alanscottwalker (talk) 22:47, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It had a reputation for fact-checking, up until circa 2009, when Pollard took over, it was bankrupted by libel cases, and then taken over. The JC of today is no longer the JC of yester-century, but the shell of a long-cherished brand, and the point of this RFC is to make that very distinction in terms of source quality. Iskandar323 (talk) 04:02, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Has any RS reported it was bankrupted by its four libel cases or was this speculation? Lot of newspapers suffered financially in the same period, as lots of the RS commentary on this case notes. BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:20, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    An interesting quote from John Ware, part of the consortium that acquired The Jewish Chronicle in 2020, appeared this weekend in The Times. Ware told The Times:

    • "I, and some others, repeatedly asked to be told who the new funders were. We were told that wouldn’t be possible. I was assured that they were politically mainstream and I trusted those assurances because I trusted who gave them. I didn’t want the paper to fold so I allowed my name to be used, having been told it would help. I had zero managerial, financial or editorial influence, control or input, nor ever have had. It was just a name."

    Ware stopped writing for The Jewish Chronicle in February 2024, due to concerns over the publication's new editorial line under Wallis Simons, and defected to the Jewish News. --Andreas JN466 13:10, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    That's indeed a damning quote, but note his resignation is not due to reliability issues just editorial political position: “To be frank, I became unhappy with the JC’s political drift. Whilst it was doing new and important stuff on extremism, I felt too often it glossed over the fragmentation of Israeli society, which is accelerating and which really matters to the Jewish community here and should matter everywhere. It’s a very big and developing story.” BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:26, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The anonymous consortium member quoted here a few months ago – who said some remarkably similar things to what Ware has now been saying on the record to The Times – also declared the JC's editor was "behaving like a political activist, not a journalist", especially in social media, and that coverage of Israel had become a case of "my country, right or wrong".
    This may or may not have been a different member of the consortium – after all, the sources are saying several of its members eventually became uneasy about their involvement – but it is clear that even within the consortium that was ostensibly owning and running the JC, concerns arose whether the JC was about propaganda or journalism.
    John Woodcock, Baron Walney, another consortium member, also confirmed to The Times that he has had no involvement whatsoever in any oversight structures for the JC. Andreas JN466 16:37, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Lee Harpin, a former senior reporter at the JC, left the paper in 2021 and a few days ago published a scathing piece about "Leaving the Jewish Chronicle" on his Substack. Alan Rusbridger quotes Harpin as saying that after the new owners took over, he was told they wanted more views "well to the right of the Tory party". --Andreas JN466 10:13, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    • Comment:A few days ago we seemed to be converging on a general consensus (unreliable on certain subjects after a certain date). However, since then the following editors User:xDanielx, User:The Kip, User:Alaexis, User:Fortunatesons have given the JC a clean bill of health. Their arguments are based on one or more of the following opinions: the JC has a long standing service to a minority (what possible relevance is that to post 2010/15 reliability?), unknown ownership and funding isn't as bad as state funding (yet like the BBC, Al-Jazeera claims to be independent and is only partially funded by it's government), the IPSO rulings don't look that bad did you read the bizarre examples of failed ones? , by focussing on the latest scandal, and ignoring the following lawsuits and rulings.
    • falsely accusing a peace activist for harbouring suicide bombers
    • disclosing details a family members without good reason
    • reporting false links to terrorist activity
    • making untrue allegations about their own regulator, the IPSO. Note in another case the IPSO considered the JCs conduct during their investigation “unacceptable”.
    • falsely accusing a councillor of a) antisemitic comments, b) launching a vicious protest & c) interfering with a vote
    • falsely accusing someone of a conspiracy to intimidate, threaten or harass Jewish activists in a meeting, when he wasn't even present.
    • falsely accusing a country of repeatedly vowing to wipe Jews off the face of the earth
    • falsely accusing a Rabbi of holocaust denial when they clearly knew in advance this wasn't true.
    I would be interested to hear a response, particularly if they think these legal cases aren't that bad? Andromedean (talk) 11:47, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I haven't looked into all of these claims, some seem like fair concerns, but a few points -
    • Some it just seems like matters of opinion, like Suarez who takes issue with being called a "Israel hate author" (other sources have made similar claims), or claims about antisemitic comments. At best they show JC is WP:BIASED.
    • Publishing info about family members doesn't relate to reliability.
    • reporting false links to terrorist activity doesn't seem accurate, they stated that Interpal was listed by the US as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, which is factually accurate (albeit unbalanced without mentioning Interpal's denial).
    We have to keep in mind that JC voluntarily submits to IPSO regulation, which provides a highly accessible venue for complaints, giving them leverage to extract apologies or small payouts. Other outlets like The Guardian opt out of IPSO regulation, so claims about libel have to go to real court, which is much less accessible and which involves a much stricter legal standard of libel.
    JC also receives more scrutiny than most sources due to its controversial positions. If AP or Reuters made a mistake like writing banned rather than rejected, in an otherwise uncontroversial report, we'd never hear about it because noone would care. I'm not convinced that JC makes more factual errors than most news outlets. — xDanielx T/C\R 17:16, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    However, since then the following editors...The Kip...have given the JC a clean bill of health.
    I voted virtually the exact same way as ActivelyDisinterested, Bobfrombrockley, Bluethricecreamman, LokiTheLiar, and Springee (and not far off from Selfstudier and Jayen466), which was that it was reliable up to a certain point (hence why full-scale deprecation would be a problem) and not so reliable afterwards, especially for ARBPIA. That is very clearly not option 1 akin to the others listed. What in the world do you mean by I've "given it a clean bill of health??" The Kip (contribs) 03:39, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Andromedean, forgot to ping in initial response. The Kip (contribs) 03:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair enough, not option 1 across the board for you, but that brings me back to how difficult it will be for an assessor to make a judgement with all the exceptions to this and that. I also believe that Option 2 could be used with almost any publication on non-political issues. However, it's mainly geopolitics and national politics which dominates references to the JC, and is the motivation behind many of the other controversies. Typically editors are advised to find other sources where they exist in such cases. Andromedean (talk) 08:20, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Andromedean, I primarily responded to the latest Eylon Perry debacle and the IPSO rulings since these were the main arguments in the Background section. I'll review the links you've shared and respond here (and possibly amend my !vote). Alaexis¿question? 07:27, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Andromedean, I've looked at the lawsuits and rulings section of the wikipedia article. First of all, as you probably know England has rather peculiar laws on defamation which put the burden of proof on the defendant and (imho) have been abused by a lot of unsavoury characters. Whatever you think about the merits of this law, this means that the same article would not necessarily be considered libelous if it were published elsewhere where the burden of proof is on the plaintiff.
    Second, most of the section and most of your examples have to do with IPSO rulings which is again, the system working as it should resulting in the newspaper removing content (amongst other remedies). I agree that they published a number of articles that turned out to be incorrect but since they took appropriate measures following the decision of the regulator, I don't think we need to downgrade them. This definitely confirms their bias, but that's hardly news for anyone here.
    Regarding some of the specific examples you've mentioned.
    • Publishing details of the family members of the defendant without valid justification has no bearing on the reliability.
    • falsely accusing a country of repeatedly vowing to wipe Jews off the face of the earth - it was in an opinion column which we would not use for statements of fact per WP:RSEDITORIAL
    • reporting false links to terrorist activity - if you're referring to Interpal then it's not obviously false. In spite of the court ruling in the UK this organisation seems to be still designated as a terrorist organisation by the US, Australia and Canada.
    Alaexis¿question? 09:47, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • This finding by Independent Press Standards Organisation is concerning: "Therefore, at the time of publication, the allegations against the complainant remained unproven. By reporting these allegations as fact, rather than identifying them as unproven claims made by multiple sources, the [Jewish Chronicle] articles failed to distinguish between comment, conjecture, and fact". There are about 12 other complaints of inaccuracy in which IPSO ruled against JC.VR (Please ping on reply) 23:24, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Fabrications and Resignations: A Crisis at Britain’s Jewish Chronicle The NYT has joined in the reporting round. Selfstudier (talk) 08:34, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks. From the NYT article: "To Israeli national security journalists, the reports bore the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign by sources in the Israeli government. Such stories, one said, are often placed in friendly publications outside Israel because their reporters and editors are less likely to subject them to intense vetting." (My emphases.)
    The NYT report also mentions that the fabrications stayed up even after the Israeli Defense Forces had debunked them. They were only retracted after columnists quit. Andreas JN466 09:04, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Institute for the Study of War

    Institute for the Study of War is described on its own WP page as being an ultra-hawkish neoconservative NGO. It has been used as source by on 2024 Allenby Bridge shooting, in a report that is mostly cited to Israeli military and figures tweets at the end. Tagging @The Mountain of Eden: as the inserter of the material. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:04, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Bias is not unreliability. Is there any evidence of unreliability? In the Institute’s talk page, the nearest claim to that is The Intercept (a biased reliable source) describing it as “of dubious objectivity”. The content is the NYT using it as a source, which is in fact evidence of use by others. I don’t know about its reporting on Israel, but having followed the war in Syria very closely I can confidently say ISW was one of the most reliable sources for facts about that conflict. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:31, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, uncritically and exclusively reporting on claims propagated by the Israeli military, an institution known for long-term disinformation, makes it pretty unreliable for the Arab-Israeli conflict topic area. Makeandtoss (talk) 12:40, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you present some evidence of this? What do RSs say about its reliability? BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:55, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    ISW's Ukraine coverage has been very good, lots of good technical analysis without much polemic. Can't speak for I/P. GordonGlottal (talk) 03:13, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Obviously, an institution directly involved in a war is not a reliable source for information about the war due to conflict of interest concerns. Also, there has been many documented incidents in the past year about Israeli disinformation and misinformation, including the decapitated babies lie, to cite one example, which was first made by an IDF spokesperson, propagated by Netanyahu and eventually parroted by Biden.

    Makeandtoss (talk) 13:08, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    How is the ISW directly involved? Why should we be particularly concerned about this specific think tank passing on IDF disinformation? Has any source suggested it has? BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:18, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I was referring to the institution of the Israeli military which is undeniably unreliable. Propagating their claims and critically and exclusively by ISW makes it also unreliable. Not to mention it’s Hawkish neoconservative background and content which was described to be unreliable by the Intercept. Makeandtoss (talk) 14:56, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Why are you saying ISW propagate Israeli claims uncritically and exclusively? The report you link does have a bunch of footnotes to IDF claims, but it also has footnotes to Iranian claims.
    Intercept didn't say unreliable; they said "dubious objectivity". But that seems to be outweighed by the large number of RSs (including e.g. Al-Jazeera, that isn't pro-Israel) that seem to treat it with respect. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:17, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Because as you said the footnotes are mostly IDF tweets, which is clearly very lousy research. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:32, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I would be wary of content that is found only on the websites of such NGOs and has not made it into any mainstream publication. Andreas JN466 13:04, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Examples of use by RSs: [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35]
    These all relate to Ukraine, so refining the search to include Israel and exclude Ukraine: [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] BobFromBrockley (talk) 13:21, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree the Institute is well cited by RS, and usually without caveat or criticism. Still, I question why we should go directly to such a source rather than a mainstream media source presenting information from them with attribution, as your examples do. A thinktank like that is more like a primary source than a secondary source, or rather something intermediate between the two.
    Highlighting content from such a source that has not been deemed worthy of mention by any secondary sources risks straying into OR territory. YMMV. Andreas JN466 13:44, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's a good point, and I often ponder about that with the niche topics I'm interested in where the underreporting from mainstream sources can be frustrating and so we turn to second tier sources. I definitely agree that we shouldn't use it instead of better sources, but to determine it a bad source I'd need to see a more persuasive case. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:24, 22 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think they're very much still a secondary source (in relation to most topics). It sounds like you're getting at them being a WP:BIASED secondary source? I think that's fairly typical of NGOs though - most are reliable for facts but have political agendas of some sort. — xDanielx T/C\R 17:45, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't see why a thinktank would be a primary source. I think it's a secondary source by definition, since it performs analysis of publicly available data.
    Of course, not each and every study by a thinktank would get quoted by other media, so I don't see why it would be necessary to only quote other references that quote the thinktank.
    I think the only question that we need to be concerned with would be: does this thinktank have a record of providing unreliale inforation? From what I am seeing so far in this discussion, the answer is "no", which means it should be listed as a WP:RS. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 02:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If the best thing that can be said about a source is that they don't have a negative reputation, then that sounds at best WP:MREL. Some more context on what exactly is being supported would be helpful. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:10, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In this case we have evidence of positive reputation, per WP:USEBYOTHERS. BobFromBrockley (talk) 06:52, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In this case, ISW is being used in the article linked by the OP as a secondary source for Kata'ib Hezbollah claims. That seems exactly appropriate to me. BobFromBrockley (talk) 07:01, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @The Mountain of Eden: Thinktanks are often financed by, or closely allied with, one of the stakeholders in the events at issue, be it a government or an industry (tobacco, arms, etc.). That colours their reporting, and it distinguishes them from press sources that are – at least nominally – independent of government and industry. (That is why it is important to know who owns or finances an outlet, which is a key factor in the case in the preceding section.)
    Example: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also cited in the article under discussion (it was actually mislabeled in the reference as The Institute for the Study of War) is, according to Haaretz, "known for its ties in the U.S. and Israeli government".
    I think we would agree that government statements are primary sources, and newspaper reports are secondary sources. So I hope we can also agree that a thinktank with close ties to a government is somewhere in between an independent secondary source and a primary source.
    Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (my emphasis). Andreas JN466 14:49, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Employees of thinktanks are not government employees. Ties could be receiving grant money. By that same logic, public universities have ties to governments, as they are partially funded by the government. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 14:54, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, universities traditionally have strong rules about academic freedom, and for good reason. Thinktanks do not have them. If you are working for a thinktank financed by the tobacco or oil industry, you are far more restrained in terms of what to research and publish than if you work for a university.
    There are levels of academic freedom, and they are generally greater in universities than in thinktanks. Of course there are states that constrain academic freedom in universities, but that generally causes visible controversy. Not so in thinktanks – if you are not a good fit for their agenda, they won't hire you or get rid of you, and that is considered fair enough. A thinktank has a mission; it is not a university. Andreas JN466 15:00, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Bias has to be shown. Mere connection is not sufficient. So far, I have not seen anything in this discussion saying that the Institute for the Study of War puts out tainted studies. The Mountain of Eden (talk) 15:04, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, you were speaking in general terms above:
    • I don't see why a thinktank would be a primary source. I think it's a secondary source by definition, since it performs analysis of publicly available data.
    So I answered in general terms. Speaking generally, there is a difference between an advocacy organisation like a thinktank, and a purely scholarly source, even though both may analyse publicly available data.
    Speaking of The Institute for the Study of Wars, one of the sources in our article says:
    The recent creation of the Institute for the Study of War47 is the most direct example of the strategic potential of an advocacy tank in this case. The initiative was taken in response to the 2007 stagnation in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A group of companies from the military sector make up the core founders and donors of the ISW, which deploys an aggressive strategy reminiscent of the defunct PNAC:
    • Direct links with political leaders thanks to the make-up of the board
    • Storytelling practices, producing, for example, the Surge: the untold story, a feature documentary on the importance of increasing the dispatch of troops to Iraq
    • Use of all possible communication techniques: rhetoric, slogans
    • Conferences and events attended by high-ranking politicians and military leaders
    • Agreements with the media
    The PNAC was a neocon thinktank. So I think, in general, there may be good reasons to be wary of direct recourse to thinktanks. Media and, where available, scholarly sources provide a worthwhile filter. Andreas JN466 15:26, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This discussion has been a little bit cross-purpose. There's no doubt ISW, like all think tanks and advocacy organisations - but probably like all sources period - has an agenda. The issue that concerns this noticeboard is whether that agenda leads it to be unreliable. To make that case we'd need to provide some evidence of unreliability, and there has been no evidence provided so far. The question of primary and secondary is a different question again. The primary sources for the involvement of KH in this incident are those in footnotes 6-7 of the ISW report: the official Telegram channel of KH and the Telegram of a KH spokesperson. ISW, passing on the contents of those Telegram channels, is a secondary source. The question for this noticeboard is can we trust ISW to be reporting them accurately. I see no reason not to. BobFromBrockley (talk) 16:33, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think you solved the issue well by finding a secondary source and adding a reference to that. The combined references – one Arab, one from the US – satisfy WP:DUE in a way that the thinktank reference alone did not. This also helps increase confidence in reliability. Andreas JN466 12:37, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:USEBYOTHERS is a strong evidence of reliability. "Dubious objectivity" is about bias, not reliability. Btw they do a reasonably good job of covering the Russian-Ukrainian war and their materials are used extensively there as well. Alaexis¿question? 09:26, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    That is only one indicator, which clarifies: "If outside citation is the main indicator of reliability, particular care should be taken to adhere to other guidelines and policies, and to not unduly represent contentious or minority claims." There has been no other RS connecting the 2024 Allenby Bridge shooting with Iraq's Kata'eb Hezbollah; therefore, this is a minority claim as well from an unreliable source, with dubious objectivity per the Intercept. Makeandtoss (talk) 15:39, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Are you referring to their endorsement of the attack? I see that now there is one more source for that so this became a bit of a moot point probably. Alaexis¿question? 07:35, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:USEBYOTHERS is categorically not strong evidence of reliability... It is the weakest evidence of reliability which can be provided. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:34, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Reliable with attribution but I would never use them without attribution. Their bias is undeniably large but I would argue against those who say that its significant enough to tank their reliability completely. One caveat is that I would avoid using them for anything resembling breaking news, they're just not the source you want for that... Their sweet spot is that middle ground between breaking news and when people actually get around to publishing books. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:33, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Is this Retracted LA Magazine Article a reliable source?

    Looking for comments on the reliability of this source: https://web.archive.org/web/20200526081806/https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/shen-yun-trump/ It is an article from LA Magazine written by Samuel Braslow titled: "Inside the Shadowy World of Shen Yun and Its Secret Pro-Trump Ties". It was retracted by the magazine due to a defamation lawsuit as, according to this article on the case, it contained false claims.

    It looks like there have been several discussions about whether to keep this source and the quotations attributed to it in several pages.

    See the discussions here which have been going on for about a year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Shen_Yun#Retracted_LA_Mag_article and apparently the "centralized discussion" from a year ago here which didn't seem to end in consensus from what I could read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Li_Hongzhi#Braslow_piece_in_Los_Angeles_Magazine

    In all cases though it seems to me the majority of editors involved in these discussions believe it should be removed, there seems to be no clear consensus from what I can tell, as there are other editors arguing that the source and the quotes should be kept.

    My concern is that, from what I understand both of those pages are about living persons, and the quotations are contentious (based on the edit history of both pages and the discussions) and the source seems (at least to me and some other editors) to be a poor source given the reasons above.

    Personally, I don't think retracted articles that have been subjects of lawsuits for containing false information constitute reliable sources, and I'm confused as to why some other editors insist on keeping it up. But I am a new editor, and perhaps there is some rule I'm not aware of. So I'd like to know what everyone else thinks, and if I'm wrong maybe I can learn something new about how wikipedia works. I don't want to misrepresent the other side of the argument, but from my understanding, the argument is that wikipedia is not censored or that legal threats shouldn't be rewarded so the article should stay.

    For some context, below is the content included in the articles that uses the braslow article as a source:

    The Shen Yun article says:

    Los Angeles–based investigative reporter Samuel Braslow described Shen Yun's background in March 2020: "Both Shen Yun and Epoch Times are funded and operated by members of Falun Gong, a controversial spiritual group that was banned by China's government in 1999 [...] Falun Gong melds traditional Taoist principles with occasionally bizarre pronouncements from its Chinese-born founder and leader, Li Hongzhi. Among other pronouncements, Li has claimed that aliens started invading human minds in the beginning of the 20th century, leading to mass corruption and the invention of computers. He has also denounced feminism and homosexuality and claimed he can walk through walls and levitate. But the central tenet of the group's wide-ranging belief system is its fierce opposition to communism. In 2000, Li founded Epoch Times to disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers. Six years later he launched Shen Yun as another vehicle to promote his teachings to mainstream Western audiences. Over the years Shen Yun and Epoch Times, while nominally separate organizations, have operated in tandem in Falun Gong's ongoing PR campaign against the Chinese government, taking directions from Li." Editor Chris Jennewein of MyNewsLA wrote that Los Angeles Magazine was sued for defamation in May 2020 by the Epoch Times, referring to Braslow's news report. Los Angeles Magazine pulled the piece from their website in July, as ordered by federal judge George H. Wu, and published a retraction notice in the September 2020 issue of the magazine.

    The "Li Hongzhi" article where the "centralized discussion" was says:

    According to a March 2020 report by Samuel Braslow published in Los Angeles Magazine:

    In 2000, Li founded Epoch Times to disseminate Falun Gong talking points to American readers. Six years later he launched Shen Yun as another vehicle to promote his teachings to mainstream Western audiences. Over the years Shen Yun and Epoch Times, while nominally separate organizations, have operated in tandem in Falun Gong’s ongoing PR campaign against the Chinese government, taking directions from Li. Despite its conservative agenda, Epoch Times took pains until recently to avoid wading into partisan U.S. politics. That all changed in June 2015 after Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator to announce his presidential candidacy, proclaiming that he "beat China all the time". In Trump, Falun Gong saw more than just an ally—it saw a savior. As a former Epoch Times editor told NBC News, the group’s leaders "believe that Trump was sent by heaven to destroy the communist party".

    (Los Angeles Magazine retracted Braslow's article in September 2020 after Falun Gong filed a defamation lawsuit in May.) Blue nutcracker (talk) 03:36, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Sidenote: I think RFC generally refers to a very structured process, see WP:RFC. And in general, if you do start an RFC, it should only be after discussion on here has failed. And arguably, an RFC for a single magazine article for a single wikipedia dispute on this page is not the best place to start it. You may want to start it on the talk page. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:03, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • In general, a retraction is still a retraction, and unless there is clear information that the article was true and that the Shen Yun/Epoch Times did truly shady stuff and/or overpowered with money, we shouldn't use the article.
    Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:06, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Looking for LA Mag retraction, they have retracted other articles before for poor reporting practices as well. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 04:07, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    First of all, this editor is leaving out that our Epoch Times article in fact reports on the curious case of this retraction (Shen_Yun#History).
    Second, just about all of the above quote can be cited to any number of other sources that are today readily available. It would just necessitate light modification. Media sources regarding Falun Gong and its extensions Shen Yun and the Epoch Times (among others) are very easy to find now.
    Third, the fact that Falun Gong/Shen Yun went after Los Angeles Magazine for its reporting would seem notable to me. And I'm not alone: Here's for example a news report on it. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:14, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree. If there is something whose sole source is this retracted article then it probably shouldn't be on Wikipedia. Alaexis¿question? 09:19, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If elements of the quote can be cited to other sources, that would probably be ideal. My initial impression is that it's a bit of a wall of text, and sources an additional step removed may aid in summarising the most pertinent elements. Alpha3031 (t • c) 13:00, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Content shouldn't be solely sourced to a retracted article, and I don't think it's a good idea to be second guessing why an article was retracted. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Woops, thanks Bluethricecreamman for sharing about the RFC procedure. I just saw several sections titled like that and thought it was simply a title others were using! To answer bloodofox point, if you can cite the above quotes to any number of other reliable sources readily available, then there seems to be no point in arguing in favor of using this retracted article as a source. But more importantly bloodofox, can you tell us why you think this retracted article from a magazine with apparently a reputation of poor reporting practices is a reliable source? Blue nutcracker (talk) 01:10, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I covered it all above. Other editors should be aware that Blue nutcracker is yet another WP:SPA focused on Falun Gong-aligned edits. The account's first edit was August 24 on the Shen Yun article ([45]) . :bloodofox: (talk) 01:18, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Can you stop the personal attacks and focus on the topic please? Blue nutcracker (talk)
    The statement "WP:SPA focused on Falun Gong-aligned edits" is an objectively true statement. Other editors absolutely should be informed and aware that they are interacting with an account with these properties. Sean.hoyland (talk) 02:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The guideline WP:CONTEXTMATTERS should be followed. The guideline tells us to examine the context. In this case, the context is that Los Angeles Magazine was accused of slander and they crumpled in the face of expensive court proceedings initiated by an aggressive, lawsuit-prone group: the Falun Gong. The magazine opted for a settlement which was cheaper and less trouble than defending their integrity. Afterward, the magazine erased all articles that they had published about Falun Gong, not just the 2020 piece by Braslow. For instance, they published a piece about Shen Yun in 2019 titled "Just How Big Is Shen Yun’s Marketing Budget?" This piece is now stricken from the magazine website, despite the fact that it was not challenged by Falun Gong as slander.
    The freelance journalist Samuel Braslow is his own reliable source, cited on Wikipedia more than a dozen times. He performed the research, and he documented his findings in the article. His findings should stand because of context: everything he wrote about Falun Gong and Shen Yun is true and correct according to scholarly writings by Heather Kavan or James R. Lewis (both cited in the Falun Gong and Li Hongzhi articles), and similar investigative news pieces such as NBC News items "Trump, QAnon and an impending judgment day: Behind the Facebook-fueled rise of The Epoch Times" from 2019, and "How the conspiracy-fueled Epoch Times went mainstream and made millions" from 2023. The supposed "slander" written by Braslow is completely true. Nobody credible accused him of journalistic malpractice.
    The facts of the slander case and magazine retraction made the news on its own. Local Los Angeles news outlet mynewsla.com wrote two pieces: "Epoch Times Files Slander Suit Against Los Angeles Magazine" and "Judge Orders Los Angeles Magazine to Remove Article from Website". This means that the lawsuit and retraction can be described on Wikipedia. Mynewsla.com described the supposed slander as including the accusation that Falun Gong members "had furtively pumped nearly $10 million in [Facebook] ads through a hidden network of fake accounts and pages", which fits quite well with what is described in NBC News's investigative piece from 2019. Context matters. The context here is that Braslow's work is legitimate, relevant, useful and objectively accurate. Binksternet (talk) 03:48, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Sean.hoyland Why don't you tell us what you think about this issue? Do you believe this article is a reliable source? Why or why not? I'd be glad to hear your opinion. Binksternet when you say: "In this case, the context is that Los Angeles Magazine was accused of slander and they crumpled in the face of expensive court proceedings initiated by an aggressive, lawsuit-prone group: the Falun Gong. The magazine opted for a settlement which was cheaper and less trouble than defending their integrity." did you read this somewhere? It'd be great if you shared the source here so we could all take a look. If everything braslow wrote about is completely true according to the other sources you named, and they are reliable sources, why not use those other sources instead? I agree that the lawsuit and retraction are notable and can be mentioned in the article. But I am still not convinced that this article is a reliable source and we should be quoting from it in the manner we are doing in the article. Blue nutcracker (talk) 06:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What I think about this issue is that the Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct's prohibition against "Systematically manipulating content to favour specific interpretations of facts or points of view" is far more important than a question about a source. Sean.hoyland (talk) 08:09, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know what you're talking about. Other uninvolved editors in this noticeboard seem to have agreed so far that the source isn't reliable and shouldn't be used like it is in the article. As several of us have said repeatedly, if you have other reliable sources to support the content, just use those instead of this one. Would you, Binksternet and bloodofox be open to the following compromise: we can replace the above quotes with something like:
    "Investigative journalist Samuel Braslow wrote an article titled: "Inside the Shadowy World of Shen Yun and Its Secret Pro-Trump Ties"[14]. Editor Chris Jennewein of MyNewsLA wrote that Los Angeles Magazine was sued for defamation in May 2020 by the Epoch Times, referring to Braslow's news report.[22] Los Angeles Magazine pulled the piece from their website in July, as ordered by federal judge George H. Wu, and published a retraction notice in the September 2020 issue of the magazine.[23][24]"
    The above is essentially one new sentence, mentioning the braslow article, followed by what's already in the article, which I assume everyone agrees with, describing the lawsuit and retraction. This would address your concerns of not omitting mention of the article, it's lawsuit and its retraction, but doesn't quote from article or use it as a source. Can you tell us your thoughts on this? Blue nutcracker (talk) 08:24, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Braslow's investigation brought new information to the topic; he did not stop at summarizing the situation as previously published. We would be remiss not to cite facts from his article. Binksternet (talk) 15:10, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The LA Mag article contains glaring factual errors, such as saying that Epoch Times was founded by Li, but it was founded by John Tang [46]. Also there is no evidence that LA Mag retracted due to financial reasons.
    Brawslow's quote as currently cited mostly concerns a living person. Even if we consider Braslow's piece as a self-published source after retraction by LA Mag, per WP:RS/SPS, we should Never use self-published sources as independent sources about other living people, let alone the factual errors. Thomas Meng (talk) 12:18, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Editors should be aware that this is another WP:SPA that produces only Falun Gong-aligned edits in these spaces (the account's first substantial edit was in 2020 on the Falun Gong page, citing policy and stating that "associating Falun Gong with the Epoch Times is inappropriate"). This account has a long history of arguing for every Falun Gong-approved position one can imagine and will not make an edit that reads as remotely critical of the new religious movement. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:43, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Epoch Times was started by John Tang, certainly. But Tang was answering the needs of his messiah, Li Hongzhi. Braslow's assertion that Li started Epoch Times connects the dots between messiah and acolyte, with Braslow assuming that Li was the motive force, and Tang was the agent. Not an unlikely or far-fetched scenario.
    It's obvious that LA Mag folded because the case was too much trouble and too much money. The case was settled before any of the facts were examined. It never went to jury trial. Note that Australian scholar Heather Kavan has described Falun Gong as extremely coercive, using street violence, personally targeted scare tactics, and engaging frequently in lawsuits. It's not unlikely that LA Mag publishers were subject to personal threats in addition to the lawsuit. They could have stood their ground, defending Braslow and the magazine's own integrity, and this path would have had a good chance of succeeding, because the article's facts are in line with previously published descriptions of Falun Gong behavior. But this path would have cost a lot of money.
    Which living person was negatively affected by Braslow's article? It can't be Li Hongzhi, who has been described in similar terms by many other writers. And Braslow did not name any other Falun Gong adherents. Instead, Braslow described the Shen Yun organization and its Falun Gong DNA. Binksternet (talk) 15:10, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Since you brought it up: actually RSes overwhelmingly describe Falun Gong as a strictly peaceful spiritual practice, including the U.S. Congress and this Pulitzer-Prize-winning series of stories that illustrate how in the face of torture, forced school expulsion, etc. Falun Gong practitioners peacefully appealed for an end to the persecution by the CCP (see last article in series, Death Trap). Scholars similarly describe Falun Gong as peaceful, including David Ownby, Benjamin Penny, and Andrew Junker. There is not one single instance where Falun Gong practitioners resorted to violent means to counteract persecution.
    Regarding Braslow: actually per WP:BLPSPS, it's not about whether a living person is affected negatively or not; rather, it's about Wikipedia's quality standard for sources about livign persons in general—it doens't allow self-published sources. Thomas Meng (talk) 13:38, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Note the account's insistence on Falun Gong-approved terms like "spiritual practice" and not what WP:RS overwhelmingly use: "new religious movement". Tread with caution regarding how this account presents or summarizes sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 20:46, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You would appear to be using this noticeboard to advocate for Falun Gong, please keep your commentary contained to what is relevant to wikipedia and abstain from promoting or advocating for Falun Gong. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:42, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm no fan of Trump but if a magazine retracts an article then we can't say it is a reliable source for the article. The reason does not matter. All that would matter is if another reliable source stood up for it in its place. So a fairly straightforward no would be my answer. NadVolum (talk) 15:23, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My first thought is that since the article got retracted, it’s not a “published” article anymore for Wikipedia’s purposes since it requires “reliable, published sources.” WP: RS.
    I thus don’t know if it’s necessary to analyze the possible reasons behind the retraction. There could be many considerations like financial, reputation, or actual inaccuracies. Additionally, as reported by Mynewsla.com, a federal judge issued a permanent injunction enjoining the magazine from publishing the article. Defamation cases for public figures and entities usually require a higher threshold, such as actual malice. So if we were to get into all the reasons, we would have to analyze all possibilities and considerations, including why the magazine agreed to removing it even though they could recover litigation costs if they won. Thus my take is that absent a report by a reliable source stating the real reason for the retraction to be one unrelated to factual accuracy, we shouldn’t get into the context and should just treat it as an unpublished source. 23impartial (talk) 02:31, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem with that stance is that Wikipedia would be letting Falun Gong game the system to remove negative publicity. They should not be allowed to decide which sources must be suppressed. Braslow's investigation was legitimate and relevant to the narrative about Falun Gong. This is a case where we must push back against Falun Gong's manipulation, and accept the word of an honest career journalist. Binksternet (talk) 21:44, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is an interesting point @23impartial, I think Wikipedia:Published says archived material seems to be ok to use. So in principle if the article can be accessed from a web archived link it might be still considered published. But I don't know for sure if a retracted article actually counts as published or not. It would be an interesting question for the talk page of the Wikipedia:Published page. I might ask there at some point if time allows. But I did see Retraction in academic publishing which seems to indicate that, at least in the context of academic papers: "it may be necessary to remove an article from publication..when the article..is the subject of a court order". This seems to equate retracting with "unpublishing" but I could be wrong. Blue nutcracker (talk) 17:49, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Given that so far all uninvolved/uninterested editors seem to have unanimously agreed that the LA Magazine article is not a reliable source, do we have consensus at this point? Or do we need unanimous approval from all involved editors for a consensus? If there is no consensus yet, I am happy to continue the discussion to reach a consensus, but given that both pages seem to be about living persons, should we remove the contentious material while we continue our discussion? It seems to be in line with WP:BLPREMOVE. Also, looks like this discussion might be archived in a few days. To continue our discussion, should we continue it on the talk page as before, or can anybody suggest any other avenues we could use? Thank you everyone for your participation so far. Blue nutcracker (talk) 00:03, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think your interpretation of BLP is wrong (or at least as its expressed in this edit summary is [47]) Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:47, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your feedback. Do you think this LA Magazine article is a reliable source? and can you tell us why or why not? Looking forward to your input! Blue nutcracker (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You appear to be mocking and ignoring my input. I think the context is worth examining and examining your claims about the applicability of BLP is part of that. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:26, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Not at all, I assumed you posted here because you were interested in participating in the discussion and was inviting you to give us your take on it. Blue nutcracker (talk) 20:36, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I am participating and giving my take... You appear to be mocking and ignoring my contribution thus far. I think that you are overplaying the BLP angle, I also think that the concerns raised about FG effectively gaming the system are legitimate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    As you may have already noticed, it has been really hard to keep this thread on topic (The topic is: Is this Retracted LA Magazine Article a reliable source?), and it's starting to devolve into walls of texts littered with accusations, and I'm trying my best to hear everyone's opinions to see if we can have some sort of consensus or reach a compromise. So while I appreciate your contributions so far, how can I help count your contribution toward a consensus if you haven't provided it so far? I am just confused at this point. Thank you for providing your input so far, but if you don't have a particular answer to "Is this Retracted LA Magazine Article a reliable source?", I won't be able to continue this particular conversation we are having. Otherwise it will be very hard for any other editors in the noticeboard who may want to participate to catch up with the thread Blue nutcracker (talk) 23:38, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    None of this is off topic, FG apparently gaming the system is part of the topic. In that context I lean towards some sort of useful reliability. What is your opinion on whether or not FG is gaming our system? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:11, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • The thing to do in this case is to cover everything in the article via secondary sources, using the tone and focus of those secondary sources (ie. if there are things they still treat as fact, we should treat them as fact; if there are things that they attribute, we should attribute.) The retracted article can still be cited as a courtesy link but probably shouldn't be relied on as the sole source for anything significant; however, conversely, the fact of its retraction should not be used as a rationale to remove anything from the article when other sources cover it. And in particular, if a secondary source, especially one written after the retraction, chooses to rely on the retracted article, they are still usable as long as they are not retracted. I think it is extremely unlikely that the key points lack secondary coverage at this point, so there should be no serious removals from the article, just minor rewordings and potentially attributions to reflect the new sources. The lawsuit has, realistically, produced a Streisand Effect and our article should reflect that in the sense that the massive number of sources covering the lawsuit inevitably mention the things that sparked it and we can and should cover those things via those sources. --Aquillion (talk) 02:57, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Agreed. Just don't use the retracted article and look for other sourcing. if enough folks are covering the retraction of the article, we could possibly include info about the retraction in a wikipedia section too without relying on the retracted article as well. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 05:01, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
      Sounds pretty reasonable to me. I would just ask Binksternet and Bloodofox to please provide all the sources they're aware of that repeat the claims so we can use them. In the absence of that, I can try to rewrite the paragraph in question citing the NBC articles provided by binksternet above. We can probably also move that paragraph into the Media Reception section as it seems a little odd to be in the History section in my view, but that's beside the point for this thread I suppose. Blue nutcracker (talk) 09:58, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Summary of the Discussion so far

    To make it easier for anybody who might still be interested in contributing to the discussion, and to aid in determining consensus, I will attempt to summarize the discussion so far. If you feel I have misrepresented your take, please feel free to clarify.

    Editors from the Notice Board

    From Bluethricecreamman, Alaexis, ActivelyDisinterested, NadVolum and 23impartial, it seems that the general sentiment is that the article is not a reliable source as it was retracted by the magazine.

    Alpha3031 seems to believe the quotes are too long and more sources are necessary, but I am not sure if that means we should not use it as a source.

    Editors from the Shen Yun Talk Page

    Is a reliable source: From :bloodofox: and Binksternet, the general sentiment is that there appear to be other sources readily available that support the claims in the retracted article.

    Binksternet has provided two articles from reporter Brandy Zadrozny of NBC News that appear to contain similar claims:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending-judgment-day-behind-facebook-fueled-rise-epoch-n1044121

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/epoch-times-falun-gong-growth-rcna111373

    Is not a reliable source: From Thomas Meng and I, the article is not a reliable source because it was retracted by the magazine as a result of a lawsuit for containing false information according to this article on the case and the fact that the article is no longer publicly available in LA Mag website.

    Thomas Meng has provided some evidence that the article actually contains false information. To cite Thomas Meng: "The LA Mag article contains glaring factual errors, such as saying that Epoch Times was founded by Li, but it was founded by John Tang [48]"

    Editors who's contribution is currently missing or unclear

    From what I can tell: Sean.hoyland and Horse Eye's Back have yet to provide input on whether the article is a reliable source. I appreciate your interest in the thread so far and it would be helpful for us to have your input. I hope this summary makes it easier for you to see where you might fit in the discussion so far.

    Suggested Compromises

    So far I have suggested the following compromise, I quote:

    we can replace the above quotes with something like:

    "Investigative journalist Samuel Braslow wrote an article titled: "Inside the Shadowy World of Shen Yun and Its Secret Pro-Trump Ties"[14]. Editor Chris Jennewein of MyNewsLA wrote that Los Angeles Magazine was sued for defamation in May 2020 by the Epoch Times, referring to Braslow's news report.[22] Los Angeles Magazine pulled the piece from their website in July, as ordered by federal judge George H. Wu, and published a retraction notice in the September 2020 issue of the magazine.[23][24]"

    The above is essentially one new sentence, mentioning the braslow article, followed by what's already in the article, which I assume everyone agrees with, describing the lawsuit and retraction. This would address your concerns of not omitting mention of the article, it's lawsuit and its retraction, but doesn't quote from article or use it as a source.''

    If you agree with this compromise, or if you have other ideas please let us know.

    Where to go from here

    Given that these threads get archived in 5 days and it's been almost 5 days, I would like to know:

    Based on the above, do we have consensus on the article not being a reliable source?

    If not, should we remove the contentious material while we continue the discussion as per WP:BLPREMOVE?

    Also, once the thread gets archived, where should we continue the discussion? The Shen Yun talk page? The "centralized" discussion in the Li Hongzhi talk page? Or is there some other avenue we could use? Thank you everyone for your interest and continued participation so far. Blue nutcracker (talk) 08:00, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    "appear to contain similar claims" — we really need a crackdown on these Falun Gong-aligned WP:SPAs. There are two unabashed examples right here. :bloodofox: (talk) 08:24, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm sorry, but why should we mention Braslow's article in the articles on Li Hongzhi and Shen Yun? If the facts reported in this article are confirmed by other sources (like the NBC links above) then let's just report them citing NBC. Why do we need this discussion at all?
    Braslow's article should be mentioned in other articles if it's notable by itself, that is, there are secondary sources that discuss it, but this is a different matter. Alaexis¿question? 09:41, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Is the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media reliable?

    There's a dispute on the reliability of this journal here. The journal is apparently peer-reviewed, and I don't see signs that speak against general reliability. Input is welcome. Cortador (talk) 08:05, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    A note from reading the discussion, although it might be original research to look into the reliability of a source it's not WP:OR as that only applies to article content. Editor should look into and question the reliability of apparently reliable sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:50, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd say this is analysis, as dismissing a claim bases on another source a source cites means diverging from the conclusion the first source came to. Cortador (talk) 14:28, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Analysis of sources is also allowed, as I've said in my comment below editors aren't as authoritive as academic sources but that doesn't mean that they can't evaluate the reliability of source - including critiquing it's use of sources. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 15:19, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The journal seems reliable, that doesn't guarantee that the article is reliable but it's a strong indicator that it is. Although The Daily Beast isn't considered a great source for Wikipedia content external sources do not have to follow Wikipedia's policies. So the article writers who are academics with backgrounds in the area, and the people who peer reviewed the article (who I would expect to also have an academic background in the area) thought the source reliable enough for it's purpose in their article. However at the same time we should always be cautious of source washing, bad sources don't become good sources just by repetition.
    Personally I don't see the details as overly contentious, but as with all things involved in the American culture war nothing is simple. Is the source reliable? Probably yes. But this is a contentious topic in a BLP article so it wouldn't hurt to find something else. There are quite a few reliable media sources stating the same as well as other academic sources I'm sure. Also given the content already has a couple of references does it need another? -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:18, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think there is also a question of weight. Why should this source be included? The source was originally added to support the label "right wing" in the opening sentence. Unless there is a concern about the current sourcing, why would this additional source be needed? The same source was added later to support that someone had called Pool "extreme right". Is this a characterization that we should give weight to? Why is this specific paper being used? In the talk page discussion the paper was described as high quality but it's it? Lots of low quality papers are also published. How would we decide which papers are which? If this paper did a comprehensive study of Pool's statements and then reached this conclusion with explanation I think it would be of more value than when a paper is included seemingly because it supports a label an editor wanted to include. Including an academic paper to support the papers primary conclusions is far different than including the paper for an incidental claim made by the authors. This is especially true if the overall conclusion of the paper wouldn't change if the authors removed the quoted phrase. Springee (talk) 16:23, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On How would we decide which papers are which? it can be useful to see if and how often the paper has been cited by others. This has been citing but not to any great extent.
    On the issue of "extreme right" labels can be used but should be widely used by reliable sources to describe the subject. So if this is the only source using the "extreme" label it shouldn't be used. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 16:56, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That's not relevant for general reliability - the source was originally removed for being a supposed "garbage source". Cortador (talk) 20:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems relevant for the reliability of the source for the claim in question. Springee (talk) 20:42, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Then it should have been removed giving a better reason. Cortador (talk) 21:01, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    All I can say is that I was not the editor who removed the source, and that I would not have classified it as garbage. This doesn't change my comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:31, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The earlier comment by ActivelyDisinterested, we should always be cautious of source washing, bad sources don't become good sources just by repetition seems relevant. I am always cautious about the use of academic research for content which is not the explicit result of the research.
    In this particular instance, the political categorisation of the article subject is an assumption of the academic paper, not an outcome, result or conclusion of it; carrying no greater reliability or weight (both terms plain English) than the source which the paper references. In which case, we should likewise reference that source, not the academic paper. Rotary Engine talk 23:16, 23 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Determining to include a claim like that in your publication based on another source is research. The DB article doesn't contain that exact statement; it is something the paper concludes from its content. Cortador (talk) 04:23, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That sentence shouldn't be read in isolation from the rest of my comment. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:52, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm reminded of a different discussion where some outlandish figures were sourced to a historian, they weren't from the historian but rather were in a quote the historian then refuted as being outlandish. This is similar to points better explained by Nil Einne below. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 12:59, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Completely uninvolved in the dispute but decidedly COI as someone who has published in JQDDM. In the world of quantitative and computational social science, it has a good reputation. It provides a rare outlet for quantitative description, in contrast to a lot of social science journals that want splashy causal results. Because of that dynamic, a lot of the best data-based evidence doesn't get published because it doesn't lend to such a causal claim or, on the other end, it pushes researchers to publish statistically dodgy causal claims in order to get a paper accepted somewhere. So this exists as a place to publish bodies of evidence about a domain of digital media both for its own sake and for other people to use in their causal studies. In other words, it's a pretty conservative approach to scholarship that uses peer review to check data, methods, and descriptive statistical claims, and that outright rejects any paper that makes a causal claim. It would be expected to see new evidence and new claims based on that evidence, but it would be strange to see anything especially controversial come out of that publication.
    But all that is whether it's generally reliable (the question in the heading). Looking at the particular claim, it's used for a "right-wing" label for Tim Pool. The paper, on a quick scan, doesn't look to be producing a list of people who are right-wing but rather include Tim Pool in its dataset among its right-wing sources imported from MBFC. Whether MBFC or Daily Beast (which is cited as part of the literature review), this is fundamentally a question of what to do when a detail in a generally reliable source comes from sources Wikipedia prefers not to cite directly. Usually, AFAIK, we defer to the reputation of the academic journals and involved peer review as the site of reliability. As an aside, while we don't allow citing MBFC directly [for good reason], there are hundreds of peer reviewed journal articles which do so (as well as its peers like Ad Fontes, NewsGuard, AllSides, etc.). Any study that isn't producing such a bias rating but rather wants to study differences in groups of media producers/consumers or the content of stories therein needs some ready-to-hand metric, and MBFC, et al. provide that. A while back I started an essay along the lines of "Deep down, nearly all research on media bias comes down to someone just watching and deciding" (alternately titled "media bias charts all kind of suck, actually"). I digress. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 18:30, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I'm mostly in agreement with Rhododendrites. The point of RS is that we trust them to do their job right and ensure the claims they make are adequately supported. This includes deciding which sources they themselves trust as being sufficient to make claims. I'm unconvinced we should generally be second guessing these decisions. There will be some exceptions e.g. when there is substantial new information from when the RS we're using was published about the source they seem to be relying on but generally.

    An important point is that since we don't expect RS to cite their sources generally, it becomes problematic when effectively a lot of the time we're trusting source A to have made the right decision to trust source X just because they didn't tell us they trusted source X; but not source B because they they told us they trusted source X. Especially since a lot of the time source which tell us their sources are better than sources which don't. (Although I'd acknowledge peer-reviewed primary research which would cite their sources may not be better than secondary sources like media reports which often don't.) And for a media report, I don't think it's even always accurate to assume that just because they link to some other source it's their only source. After all the stock answer when someone complains an RS is wrong because they didn't they didn't cite where the info came from is that we don't require it.

    That said, I think it is important we distinguish between sources which have decided a claim originating elsewhere is correct/accurate and a source which is simply reporting it happened. So the wording the RS uses is important, especially for a media report. If an RS says "it's been confirmed" or simply makes a claim in their voice, then this surely means the RS has decided the claim is correct even if they link to the Daily Mail. By comparison, if a source says "according to the Daily Mail" or "the Daily Mail reported", this doesn't mean they've decided the claim/s in the Daily Mail are accurate just something worth of reporting. In the latter case, it's still generally fine to reject the info outright. With the former IMO we should normally not do so. Note IMO the same principle applies when it comes to anonymous sources. If some media reports something from an anonymous source as simply something an anonymous source told them, I think we have to be careful about including it. If it media organisation is clearly accepting the anonymous source as accurate or correct, that's a different thing.

    Talk:Kevin Sydney#Morph is not confirmed to be Non-binary is IMO a very recent example of the application of trusting the RS. Gizmodo said "Empire Magazine, it was also confirmed". As I said in the discussion, as Gizmodo seems to be a clear RS (WP:RSPS), I don't think we actually need to worry that much about what was said in Empire Magazine. As it turns out, Gizmodo's decision is IMO fair enough since it seems Empire Magazine got the info from the people creating the source. Yes they didn't quote exactly what was said or by who for the part in question, but I think we should be trusting Gizmodo was right to feel that when Empire Magazine speaking with those two people, this means the info came from one or both of them, and their summary was accurate.

    Note importantly I originally said Empire Magazine was probably an WP:RS but assuming it's the publication in our article, I'm actually starting to wonder. Or at least for reviews which this isn't. And to be fair, since the problems are they might be too beholden to large media companies and skew their coverage in their favour; it doesn't seem whether a character is non-binary is the thing we'd have to worry about. I mean the whole point is the info came from those who created the show. Either way though, I don't think Empire Magazine possibly not being an RS means Gizmodo's statement should be in doubt.

    To be clear, I'm not saying we should never consider the originating source or what it said when an RS has decided to trust it. I gave the earlier example of where new info suggests the originating source is in far more doubt than it might have been when the RS decided to trust it. Besides that, if the claim made doesn't seem to even be supported by the originating source or what it the originating source says seems to be quite different from what the RS says than I think yeah perhaps the RS cannot be trusted. Although even this needs to be applied with care e.g. could there be multiple editions, if it's a very long source has the person read carefully? (A lot of the time, a full text search might not be enough given the various wordings that might be used unless the RS directly quoted the originating source but the quote is no where.) And as the Morph example IMO illustrates it can be frustrating when someone insists the claim isn't in the originating source or for some other reason isn't supported but when you actually check out the sources their claims don't add up.

    Nil Einne (talk) 06:56, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Yes. Reliable. Others have spoken at length. But, we rely on researchers who reliably publish to look at all kinds of things that we could not publish without their research. For our purposes, that's what they exist for. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:47, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Help confirm about book review by Dr "Philip Lewis"

    • Online publisher of the book review: The Center for Muslim - Christian Studies OXFORD
    • Book reviewed: Patel, Youshaa. The Muslim Difference: Defining the Line between Believers and Unbelievers from Early Islam to the Present
    • Reviewer: Dr. Philip Lewis.
    • Google search: 'Dr "Philip Lewis" Bradford University' suggests Dr. Lewis was lecturer or lectured at Bradford University. 1
    If this is him https://www.montgomerytrust.org.uk/book-a-lecturer/lecturer-profiles/dr-philip-lewis/ he is retired. Slatersteven (talk) 13:42, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes that seems to be. Bookku (talk) 13:46, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    In general, unless there is significant evidence saying otherwise, a source is probably reliable.
    Please just WP:BOLDLY do the draft.
    If the source isn't self-published or a blog or it's in red in WP:RSP, its probably good enough until someone throws a ruckus in your talkspace. You should not worry about getting approval for every source. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 23:58, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Many thanks.
    I suppose book reviews by academics of peer academic are positively helpful in achieving balance we expect in confirming a source as reliable sources. Bookku (talk) 06:54, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Also Reviewer Yahya Birt @ muslimviews.co.za

    Please also help confirm whether following review article @ muslimviews.co.za can be used as RS.

    Bookku (talk) 10:06, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Neurotree

    Is Neurotree a reliable source? I have come across it used to support the statement Leal comes from a long line of researchers that can be traced back from mentor to mentor all the way to Sir Isaac Newton in L. Gary Leal. There was a previous discussion here, but no conclusion. On the one hand it is contributed to by volunteers, but on the other hand the Wikipedia article suggests that some published sources have gone into the project. Thanks. Tacyarg (talk) 18:56, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    That it's maintained by volunteers would usually make me lean no, but the multiple journals/publications/studies/etc it's been cited in (per the lead at the Neurotree article) feels like enough to pass WP:UBO, thereby making it reliable. The Kip (contribs) 18:59, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    UBO wouldn't override SELFPUB, so we would still want assurances of some sort of editorial process. Though, I'm not sure people would consider any of this academic genealogy stuff all that contentious (of course, I could be wrong) so it could be sufficient to support these claims regardless. Then again, it could be argued that it might be undue weight, but again I don't really see the harm. Alpha3031 (t • c) 09:52, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    as someone in a neuro-adjacent field, I think its fine to fill in the gap and has enough ubiquity we should be able to use it. Agree with Kip. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 20:49, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    No. It is not reliable for us. We aren't qualified academic researchers, we rely on qualified academic researchers who reliably publish to look at things like this database and other information. And only when they do, we cite their publication for their analysis of it, not the database. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The Jerusalem Post

    In the past month the Jerusalem Post has repeatedly propagated a false claim in its articles several times, calling the Lebanese Ministry of Public Health, "Hezbollah-run," despite it not being affiliated with them and the fact that it is headed by an independent minister. [49] [50] [51].

    It is worth noting that this is the same newspaper that propagated the false claim last year that a dead Palestinian child was a doll, which, although it retracted and apologized for, puts into question its fact-checking processes. [52] For example, on 12 October 2023, it published an article that it had confirmed seeing evidence for babies had been burnt and decapitated during the Kfar Aza massacre, that is still online with no retraction despite being debunked. Also, in 2020, Reuters revealed that the Jerusalem Post allowed an online deepfake to write bylines smearing a Palestinian couple over their activism. [53]

    The JP is being used extensively in articles related to the unfolding war on Lebanon, such as in 23 September 2024 Lebanon strikes, where it has been used 11 times. Their reporting on the ongoing escalation seems to heavily propagate Israeli military figures and claims. Makeandtoss (talk) 10:30, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Also see Talk:Gaza genocide/Archive 5#ICJ case delay sought by South Africa where JP has propagated and doubled down on what appears to be a fabrication.Selfstudier (talk) 10:43, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    At this point unclear. Andre🚐 16:06, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hezbollah is de facto in control of Lebanon and runs much of the hospitals in southern Lebanon. This is the Jerusalem Post showing its bias that we're all aware of.
    It's worth noting that most news publications didn't remove their coverage blaming Israel for the Al-Ahli Arab Hospital explosion despite it being debunked as well.[54] Newspapers typically get stuff wrong during wars due to the nature of modern information warfare. Has the Jerusalem Post been unreliable beyond the normal standards for the area? Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 16:01, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Often, it doesn't matter tho because you can usually find a better source for anything they publish. Selfstudier (talk) 16:12, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with the question Chess is asking. More to the point, are there any reliable sources that question whether JPost is reliable? Andre🚐 16:16, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a good criterion. When there is a broad range of reliable sources pointing out that there is a problem with the reliability and journalistic standards of a publication, then we should take note of that. Andreas JN466 16:24, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    FWIW, I had a look what, if anything, there is on the Jerusalem Post. I found the following:
    The last one is somewhat concerning but not so concerning that I would say we shouldn't cite the Post.
    We do however need to be aware that at present, according to Reporters Without Borders, "Disinformation campaigns and repressive laws have multiplied in Israel." (Israel country report.) Andreas JN466 16:47, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The Jerusalem Post wasn't involved in the deepfakes. They received an email from someone claiming to be a student at the University of Birmingham. Newspapers are not experts on state-of-the-art AI technology and I don't see how they'd foresee a scam that was literally impossible 5 years ago. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:44, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The “Oliver Taylor” pieces were op eds (“hot takes”) not news pieces, and 45 other publications also ran these op eds. Some of the 46 (including JP) removed them when Reuters uncovered it. Reflects badly on JP but wouldn’t affect us.
    The Gaza “doll” story is more serious, however. Although that too was removed with an apology, and does not seem to be a pattern. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:12, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't like this criterion. Assuming that because there's a disagreement between reliable sources, one of those sources is no longer reliable is what promotes groupthink. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:32, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Chess: Note that the article regarding the debunked myth of beheaded babies that is still online has the assertion that JP had both seen and confirmed evidence of decapitated babies. So it was not a reporting of a third-party claim, but an internal fabrication that has not been retracted yet. So I don't think this is an appropriate analogy with the hospital incident.
    Also Hezbollah running most of the hospitals in the south, or Hezbollah having influence in the government, has nothing to do with the Lebanese health ministry being "Hezbollah-run." So this is clearly another false claim being propagated for political reasons. Makeandtoss (talk) 11:01, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Hezbollah is a part of the current Lebanese government and is known for its influence on the Lebanese politics in general (some have called it "the most powerful single political movement in Lebanon").
    So you can't definitely say that the ministry is *not* Hezbollah-controlled just because it's currently headed by a minister from another party. Having said that, if this is the only source that claims this, we definitely shouldn't use this characterisation on Wikipedia. I'm not sure if anyone has suggested to do it. Alaexis¿question? 20:26, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think a certain amount of caution is appropriate with JP. It is definitely lower tier than BBC, CNN, AFP, Reuters, etc, and should be a second preference after them. Where we use it, we should seek to triangulate with other sources. But I don’t think there’s a pattern of unreliability that would make us presume against ever using it. The whole topic is fraught with biases and we just need to always be vigilant and avoid being hasty with our article in this area. BobFromBrockley (talk) 09:15, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Agreed. Andreas JN466 20:02, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    i think the question to ask is if the error is systemic? god knows the nytimes was a mouthpiece for bush propaganda during the iraq war including all the lies Judith Miller published. we can def sort through the unsupported and untrue articles if other reporting disproves it as long as error isn’t systematic Bluethricecreamman (talk) 12:49, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    JP is not a systemic problem, it's just nationalistic jingoism (everybody that Israeli arrests in the West Bank is a terrorist for example) and sloppy journalism in general with some reasonable stuff sandwiched in the middle. ToI is a better source for most of what you would find in JP. Selfstudier (talk) 13:33, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    MassLive

    Is MassLive [55] reliable? I am unable to find a defined fact-checking policy anywhere or anything that can help me determine its overall reliability, but they are owned by Advance Publications which also owns Wired, a reliable source as per WP:RSP. Jurta talk/he/they 19:20, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    MassLive is the website of The Republican, so I'd assume so. Seems like a fairly standard city/regional paper. The Kip (contribs) 20:19, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    According to WP:RSP, "Wired magazine is considered generally reliable for science and technology", so I wouldn't assume that Wired is reliable for all types of information. I would thus not assume that MassLive is reliable because they're both owned by the same company. Based on the company's profile, I would say that MassLive is reliable for local events and issues. 23impartial (talk) 02:12, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course, should've been obvious two websites with different topic coverages wouldn't share the same mutual reliability. I figured the relation would've been worth mentioning, though. Jurta talk/he/they 13:42, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, absolutely. It is important to consider the relation 23impartial (talk) 18:09, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Japan Forward

    Seeking opinions on the reliability of Japan Forward, a publication by the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun.

    My own analysis: I suspect the source is unreliable for politics, society, history, and economics.

    • Open editorializing and downplaying of Japanese war crimes [56][57][58][59]
      • To be clear, I think there's a need for skeptical conversations about the extent of Japanese war crimes, but it's grossly inappropriate to editorialize and take "us vs. them" perspectives whilst doing so. The analysis should be detatched and not be made explicitly persuasive.
    • Editorializing on other topics as well [60][61]
    • Open nationalist bent: "We aim to reveal the true face of Japan to non-Japanese speakers in areas ranging from politics and economics to culture and society, actively reaching out to show the rest of the world the diversity of Japanese perspectives and the international efforts undertaken by Japanese people, corporations, and groups." ([62])

    The source also discusses more neutral and trivial things like sports and entertainment; I don't have strong opinions on whether those articles are reliable. They seem fine. seefooddiet (talk) 20:20, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    For news, if it looks like an editorial, then you can probably treat it as WP:RSOPINION. A publication that fails to distinguish the two would probably be questionable, there doesn't need to be a discussion here to challenge and remove it where it seems appropriate, though from what I can see about half of current use seem to be for sport. Alpha3031 (t • c) 10:33, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd argue the source falls under WP:QUESTIONABLE. J. Mark Ramseyer ([63]) has been widely rejected outside of Japan. That's just one example; the opinions in these articles are consistently considered fringe on contentious topics. seefooddiet (talk) 14:30, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    It is unreliable. Even aside from downplaying war crimes it self-admits to having a concerning editorial goal of propaganda ("to reveal the true face of Japan to non-Japanese speakers")[64], which additionally makes it unreliable in the general sense. It should be deprecated. Symphony Regalia (talk) 21:25, 29 September 2024 (UTC) This looks bad even by Japan's general standard for reporting on Japanese war crimes (which is pretty low). Maybe this source could be used for something fairly harmless such as sports coverage, but Japan Forward is generally unreliable for anything approaching politics or history, and likely also social issues. Cortador (talk) 07:38, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    vcoins.com seems to be plagiarism from wikipedia itself

    On the Edict of Milan page, in the final paragraph in the Text section vcoins.com is linked to as a source. However, looking at the source, it says the exact same thing as the wikipedia page. Indeed, the entire vcoins article is taken from wikipedia, and the writings on wikipedia predate the article. I cannot find any earlier publications of this article from vcoins from other sources, so the entire thing must be plagiarized. Looking at other articles on the website, even from other authors, shows that the articles were simply taken from wikipedia. This entire site does not look particularly repubtable, and should probably not be used as a source on wikipedia. ChromiumEarth (talk) 06:22, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Such sources are covered in general by WP:CIRCULAR, and so can be removed. The content was previously tag as {{citation needed}}, and someone tried to fix that with this source[65]. A good faith edit, but one that didn't evaluate the source very well. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Are these sources appropriate for a private limited company specialising in Fintech?

    Do these sources meet all 4 of the criteria to be considered for a private limited company: in-depth, reliable, secondary and strictly independent of the subject?

    Which?

    Best prepaid travel money cards 2024 Discover which are the best prepaid currency cards to save money on your trip

    https://www.which.co.uk/money/credit-cards-and-loans/credit-cards/prepaid-euro-and-dollar-card-reviews-ag0Bt7D7bxKL

    Finextra

    Currensea smashes crowdfunding target

    Travel debit card Currensea has raised over £1.7m from 760 investors in just four hours on crowdfunding platform Seedrs.

    https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/44400/currensea-smashes-crowdfunding-target?utm_medium=newsflash&utm_source=2024-7-2&member=81820

    Fintech Finance

    Travel Debit Card Currensea Smashes Crowdfunding Target in Just Four Hours as It Raises Over £1.7m on Seedrs

    https://ffnews.com/newsarticle/funding/travel-debit-card-currensea-smashes-crowdfunding-target-in-just-four-hours-as-it-raises-over-1-7m-on-seedrs/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20Currensea%20raised%20over,a%20total%20of%20%C2%A311m.

    City AM

    Fintech advised by former Amazon and Visa executives to launch travel card

    https://www.cityam.com/fintech-advised-by-former-amazon-and-visa-executives-to-launch-travel-card/

    https://www.cityam.com/london-fintech-currensea-launches-product-for-small-businesses/

    Electronic Payments International

    Travel debit card Currensea raises over £1.7m on Seedrs

    Currensea smashes its crowdfunding target in just four hours raising the company's value to £28.5m

    https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/travel-debit-card-currensea-raises-over-1-7m-on-seedrs/

    Yahoo Finance!

    Travel debit card Currensea raises over £1.7m on Seedrs

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/travel-debit-card-currensea-raises-091509093.html

    Pymnts

    Currensea on Offering the Ability to Decouple From Banks While Giving Back

    https://www.pymnts.com/next-gen-debit/2022/currensea-offers-ability-decouple-banks-while-giving-back SarahHunnings24 (talk) 12:36, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    That source isn't Yahoo Finance, it's an article re-listed by them. Cortador (talk) 20:16, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Funding announcements are usually presumed routine and trivial. See WP:CORPROUTINE, and the rest of the CORP guideline. Also yeah, the Yahoo article is literally the same article as the Electronic Payments International one, it even says so at the bottom. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:15, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't say it's in-depth coverage. Alaexis¿question? 20:28, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Good to know thank you - would you say that Yahoo Finance as general source is okay or not? SarahHunnings24 (talk) 08:57, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yahoo publishes some original work, which is generally considered reliable, but most of what it publishes is copied from elsewhere (and a link is provided to the original at the top or bottom). Base reliability on wherever it got the material. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:27, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Raksha-anirbeda

    This source seems suspicious.

    Claim: "The missile officially entered operational service in September 2023, as the world's longest range and most powerful extant ICBM system." in the article "RS-28 Sarmat".[1]

    Jeaucques Quœure (talk) 14:07, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The source is kinda rubbish but it also doesn't actually say it's the longest range. The closest thing it comes to saying most powerful not in the headline is that it has a an unmatched payload capacity. Alpha3031 (t • c) 04:33, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The RS-28 is said to be liquid fueled. If that is the case, the fueling delay before launching makes it a sitting duck. A use-or-lose-it destabilizer. Disinformation. — Neonorange (talk to Phil) (he, they) 09:10, 29 September 2024 (UTC) —[reply]

    References

    1. ^ Mahajan, Neeraj (2023-09-06). "Satan-II: The Deadliest Nuclear Missile in the World". raksha-anirveda.com. Retrieved 2024-05-27.

    Blocking Yahoo Finance and MSN so the actual articles have to be cited

    I regularly come across articles that cite Yahoo Finance or MSN as sources, whereas those are actually just articles from other outlets they host. Citation tools like Citer also generate citations citing Yahoo Finance/MSN and won't detect the actual outlet, which is often just presented as a logo i.e. not detectable as plain text. I think both sites should be blocked as sources, not because they are inherently bad/unreliable, but to have editors cite whatever articles they host directly. Cortador (talk) 20:22, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Yahoo Finance, at least, does publish original articles, such as https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wall-street-fears-lower-than-anticipated-iphone-demand-as-shipping-times-shrink-202345884.html and https://finance.yahoo.com/news/super-micro-computer-stock-plunges-on-report-of-doj-probe-185516211.html to pick two recent examples.
    Also what do you mean by blocked as sources (like what method of blocking)? I've encountered older articles where the MSN or Yahoo source is the best URL to provide, even if the reference should probably the original source as the work= and Yahoo/MSN as the via=? Skynxnex (talk) 20:46, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I wasn't aware that Yahoo Finance had original content. This may be the first original article I've ever seen from then. I suggested blacklisting them as a source, but if they do original reporting, that won't be an option. Cortador (talk) 05:48, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is annoying but a bit unavoidable. The original source should be used if possible, or do the |work= / |via= switch as Skynxnex suggests. I don't think the sites should be blocked, as they could be useful courtesy links. It's just something editor should keep an eye out for, as there's no immediate way of knowing what the actual source is without checking it. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:17, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • We should definitely encourage people to use the actual site, and maybe write bots that can detect those and tag or indicate them somehow so they can be fixed... but I think a technical block would be a mistake, since it could cause some newer / more inexperienced editors to dip entirely and not add something at all. An addition cited to MSN / Yahoo is still better than no source or no addition. --Aquillion (talk) 02:50, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Comicbook.com

    Entertainment news website launched in 2007, formerly owned by Paramount Global. Was mentioned in a discussion about DYKG over at VG/S, but no conclusion was reached. It's used on over 12,000 articles. That being said, is this website in any way reliable for info related to entertainment? — 💽 LunaEclipse 💽 ⚧ 【=◈︿◈=】 22:01, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Depends on what claim it is used for. Ramos1990 (talk) 23:45, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Ramos1990, can you please elaborate? — 💽 LunaEclipse 💽 ⚧ 【=◈︿◈=】 00:35, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What a source is being used for matters as to if a source is reliable or not. Blogs and primary sources may be reliable sources depending on what the sources are being used for. From what I see on comicbook.com, they have an editorial team on news for gaming, anime, etc. They conduct interviews with people in industry and since a lot of news gets funneled by fans first, I don't see this as any less of a source in general. Ramos1990 (talk) 02:40, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Gregorian Bivolaru

    How about https://www.crikey.com.au/2024/09/27/cult-misa-survivor-story/ ?

    I have no specific edit in mind, but I want to know if Crikey is WP:RS. tgeorgescu (talk) 18:49, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    unless/until someone disputes it, assume its reliable..
    I see no discussion about that source in the talk page. Bluethricecreamman (talk) 18:53, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, the website looks like a newspaper, but I don't know if it is legit or just yellow journalism.
    And since we speak of a highly controversial WP:BLP article, I don't want to take unnecessary risks. tgeorgescu (talk) 19:16, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The Wikipedia article on the source, Crikey, gives some details. Looks like it should be treated like a standard news organisation unless there are specific concerns. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:23, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Obviously with any BLP be cautious. For instance if the source attributes a statement you should do the same, and look out for sources 'not' saying something ("It's has been rumoured", "Sources have said", etc). -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 19:27, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The Music Trades

    I did not encounter The Music Trades until yesterday, when I used the Wikipedia Library to access Gale ([66]) and EBSCO ([67]). The editor is a subject matter expert; it seems legit. Reliable/not reliable? (Apologies if The Music Trades has already been discussed; I couldn't find anything.) Thanks! JSFarman (talk) 21:07, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    It seems obviously reliable to me; is there a reason you think it might not be? voorts (talk/contributions) 21:11, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Only that it was new to me and I have been reading music industry trades for a gazillion years. Thank you! JSFarman (talk) 21:27, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    JSFarman, a gazillion years?. [citation needed] Cullen328 (talk) 08:10, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Cullen328, ok, fine, maybe not a gazillion years, but I was quoted in Billboard almost 40 years ago and that's gotta count for something. JSFarman (talk) 17:02, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    JSFarman, it certainly does. Cullen328 (talk) 17:05, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Reliability of Airfleets.net

    Hello. Airfleets.net, a website which tracks fleet data from airlines and aircraft information, is used in almost 600 articles. My main concerns are the website's lack of sourcing and information on editorial oversight. This topic has been discussed on the noticeboard but they haven't gained much participation: [Archive 21] [Archive 205]. A recent discussion that I had opened at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aviation#Reliability of Airfleets.net didn't receive many comments but agreed that it was leaning unreliable. I'm hoping that there could be more discussion to further discuss this topic. Aviationwikiflight (talk) 11:59, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Sources should have a reputation for accuracy and fact checking. I'd agree with the project aviation discussion that it doesn't look to be user generated, but that beyond that it's difficult to tell as it doesn't state how it gets its information or what (if any) checks it does.
    In some of the past discussions there was meantion that it could be self-published, but I can't find anything to show that's the case or who the author would be. Another way to show reliability is if they are considered reliable by other reliable sources. I can find a few uses as a citation in reliable academic works, but not enough to be completely convincing. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 20:17, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    RfC: using photos of record labels from Discogs?

    Discogs is entirely deprecated as a ref. But should the text in photos of record labels and album jackets (only) be made an exception? Herostratus (talk) 20:34, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Survey (Discogs images)

    • Yes. Lets think this thru: works are their own refs, and the photos are accurate representations of the actual work to a 99.9% level of confidence. The label text is not user-generated absent an elaborate hoax, so who uploaded it is immaterial. It is as impossible to mislabel these photos as it is for a movie title screen etc (you can't pass off the label of record X as being the label of record Y). The alternative is continue our current practice: assume the article editor has not made a mistake, and to verify the reader has to get a copy on eBay or whatever. This is not better.
    • Yes. How would anyone ever know that an editor is using Discogs vs. a copy of the album that they own? voorts (talk/contributions) 20:43, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Primary sources are reliable about themselves and users can include courtesy links for the aid of verification. This is true in all case. As to Discog it's not deprecated, it's unreliable as it's user generated. The primary images it hosts don't make it anymore or less unreliable. This is the same as with the primary documents that ancestry/com hosts, they are reliable in a primary way even if the rest of ancestry/com isn't reliable. None of this changes anything, the references aren't to Discog they are to the primary object (the album in this case), any link to an image on Discog is just an aid for verification purposes. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 21:13, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I discussed this below. Herostratus (talk) 02:47, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • The source is the physical record itself, so Discogs only has to accurately convey the contents of the records. This isn't something it's guaranteed to do, since anyone can upload a photo claiming to be of the record. I agree with ActivelyDisinterested that Discogs should only be treated as an aid for verification purposes, not as a guaranteed accurate representation of a work. Chess (talk) (please mention me on reply) 02:51, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I discussed this below. "not as a guaranteed accurate representation of a work" just isn't so, if one thinks it thru. Herostratus (talk) 02:47, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Anyone can also upload a scan claiming to be of a book, or upload a picture claiming to be of the subject of the article, and yet that is widely done too. Cortador (talk) 05:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    • Yes. As of now, we rely on some editor just using the information from a copy of the album they presumably have at hand. I support this provided this is limited to actual scans.
    • Is that even making an exception? If you find a photo of an album on ebay, amazon, or Jeff's Music Blog, we don't need consensus that those are reliable sources to use it, right? — Rhododendrites talk \\ 13:25, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion (Discogs images)

    N.B.:earlier discussion was here: Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources# Could we talk some horse sense re Discogs? Headcount was 3-2, maybe 4-2.

    N.B.:The RfD is not proposing that these photos be required to ref, just that the editor is allowed to use them if she wants to without another editor deleting them as disallowed.

    • We kind of do this already a lot, we include a link to Discogs in the "External links" section, in fact we even have {{discogs release}} etc. to facilitate this. Problem is this removes the link down away from the the material being ref'd -- bit less than excellent. And if the editor doesn't include that, the reader is usually going to go to Discogs anyway if she wants to verify; it's just more work. Second, c'mon: hella editors are using Discogs to get their info anyway (I know I do) and that can't be stopped. So the current situation is kind of kabuki, and that also is sub-excellent. Herostratus (talk) 20:34, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    NB: if an editor provides a proximate link to a Discogs photo -- attached directly to a line of data-- just as a courtesy, whether as a bare URL or using a citation template, it will be indistinguishable from a ref. Other editors will see them as refs, and possibly tag them for {{better reference}}, but far more probably delete them, and perhaps the material also as being now unref'd while they're at it I believe we can count on this. (it still wouldn't be unreffed, but it might seem so to the casual editor not knowing the rule for works). And in fact since using Discogs as a ref is clearly prohibited at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, you might be in for a scolding. So I wouldn't do it.
    As I said, an external link at the bottom of the article is extra work for the user and just more mediocre. Why do that. But that is currently the only use allowed by Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources.
    Re "anyone can upload a photo claiming to be of the record" and "[is not necessarily] a guaranteed accurate representation of a work", that just isn't true. A photo of the label for "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" can't actually be a photo of the label for "Love Me Do". It's flat impossible. Of course, as anywhere in the 'pedia, we are indeed subject to be fooled by an elaborate hoax using photoshop skills. But we assume no elaborate hoaxes absent some indication of such, and to do so regularly would be kind of paranoid... And for instance photos (putatively) taken and uploaded without modification by Wikipedia editors are far likelier to to hoaxes or just wrong and for good or ill we accept those. I guess we would accept a photo of a record label taken by an editor to be shown in an article to be sufficiently reliable, why can't she upload to Discogs and use it as a ref.
    Re "The primary images it hosts don't make it anymore or less unreliable. This is the same as with the primary documents that ancestry/com hosts". I did not know that birth certificates or whatever that Ancestry hosts are considered unreliable, that is a different issue -- I suppose the birth ertificates for two different Joe Smiths might be indistinguishable etc. This doesn't apply to the matter at hand.
    Vetting reliable sources is tricky if you drill down. Most sources are reliable for some things, and not others. But if the Daily Unreliable were to host material that -- by some magic -- we were certain was true to 99.99% confidence, yeah we could use it I'd think. The label photos are 99.99% sure of being accurate, n'est-ce pas?
    Sure our rules have to be blunt instruments ("Do not use the Daily Unreliable, period"), we can't get overly nuanced. but if it is possible to make a rule less blunt by logical proof of an reasonably broad exception, and an editor has bothered to do it, it would be mediocre to just be like "enh whatever nah". Herostratus (talk) 02:47, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    PulseSports

    I'm coming to ask about the reliability of the source Pulse, specifically Pulsesports.co.ke for Sports related content on Wikipedia. Specifically, this source is being used on Armand Duplantis currently to support a statement in the lead that Duplantis is the "Greatest of All Time". The only thing I could find in the archive about Pulse in general was this brief comment Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_446#Nigerian_News_Sources saying the puff prose we'd expect from PulseNG or even Vanguard if we're looking at the entertainment section. I have no experience with the website, but the content seems rather informal. There are other, better sources such as the Associated Press that are being used to support the statement that Duplantis is the "Greatest of all Time". There is currently an RfC on the Duplantis page about whether or not "Greatest of all time" can be included in the lead, which I left a comment on, but have not voted on. As I was looking through the sources, I was concerned about the reliability of this particular source and so wanted to get opinions. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 21:29, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Pulsesports.co.ke and Pulse.ng are both parts of Pulse.africa. I would handle them the same way, they are reliable but may have undisclosed promotional articles. So the details in the article are likely reliable, but should be handled with caution. I would say that it shouldn't be used to verify exceptional statements such as "greatest pole vaulter of all time", but is that an exceptional statement in this case? There are multiple other sources saying the same, including the Olympic website itself. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 10:00, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It was less a case of "it is an exceptional claim", but more just a general question about the reliability of the source. For instance, if there are better sources that make the same statement, it seems more prudent to use them, since the only other mention I had seen of something relating to this source said they were known for "puff prose". I'm not really contending whether the claim is accurate, just whether or not the source is appropriate for use on Wikipedia. A source can make a true statement and still be inappropriate for usage, as far as I know, so I just wnated to know what the opinions of the source was. Brocade River Poems (She/They) 04:16, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Showbiz411

    Is Showbiz411 an RS for material about living persons (other than material about the person who is writing the material in question)? This was asked before, but not addressed.

    Many examples across the project. But one is in the Tom Cruise article. fn 128 2603:7000:2101:AA00:14D1:B1C7:E218:EA9A (talk) 23:44, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    In general they are likely reliable with caution. Their chief editor is Roger Friedman, formally of Fox and the Hollywood Reporter. However they're use in articles about living people for anything negative should be avoided unless collaborated by other sources, as they are ultimately a celebrity gossip site.
    In the Tom Cruise article it's used to verify an attributed statement from Friedman about a Vanity fair article and is further backed up by an article from CBS news, so it's use look ok. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:50, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    AccuWeather for damage estimates

    On Hurricane Helene, I added a claim from the Associated Press that referenced an AccuWeather estimate of Helene's economic impact, that estimate being of 95-110 billion 2024 USD, into the article's infobox. One editor, @CycloneIns, reverted my edit citing unreliability, and after I reinstated, another editor, @Zzzs, re-reverted it. The estimate is currently still in the article (in section Impact#United States).

    My understanding, reading through previous RSN entries, was AccuWeather was unreliable for their longer-term forecasts, which I can stand by. However, no discussion as to whether AccuWeather as a whole had come up (except for a sockpuppet's, which will be ignored). Apparently, silent consensus is that AccuWeather is generally unreliable for estimates, the discussion of which I had never been party to, and I'm opening this RSN thread to see if we can't get this sorted and set in stone for the future. Is AccuWeather reliable for damage estimates? GeorgeMemulous (talk) 01:15, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I read the article on the associated press and not only it mention Accuweather claim, but it also mention Moody’s Analytics claim of $15-26 billion. So I get that they mention Accuweather claim, but since they mention Moody’s as well, it looks like they just showing the different organizations on what they *think* what the cost could range in. If AP just mentioned Accuweather claim then I think it would make a case on reliability, but you could argued that they mention Accuweather claim not fully on reliability but on how Accuweather is a well known weather organization. Not sure if being well known makes a good case of reliability or not. TheHumanFixer (talk) 01:28, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Given that the source describes the Accuweather figure as a 'preliminary estimate', regardless of whether they are reliable or not there seems little reason to include it. More accurate estimates are likely to be forthcoming when people have had the opportunity to assess the damage. AndyTheGrump (talk) 01:47, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Infoboxes are very good for displaying simple information quickly, but are very poor at giving context to information. Giving an estimate of $15–110 billion, as would seem appropriate given the information, is also so overly broad as to be uninformative. Used in the articles text where it can be contextualised, such as who is making the estimates, is a better idea. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 09:36, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Some more context: The estimate was 95 - 110 billion by AccuWeather. This was an estimate of total economic loss, as stated by AP. Moody's Analytics put the 15 - 26 billion dollar estimate on property damage alone. Total economic loss is used more often and it's where we get the 100+ billion dollar cost for Hurricane Ian. It's the one used by NOAA's monthly Billion Dollar Disaster report, which, when that's issued in October, will give a more reliable estimate to the disaster's cost. GeorgeMemulous (talk) 12:56, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Also, I'm specifically here to ask whether AccuWeather's estimates are reliable in general, not whether or not this specific estimate belongs in the article's infobox. Silent consensus is that AccuWeather isn't reliable, so I want to settle this here so a more formal decision can be made and to avoid arguments like this in the future. GeorgeMemulous (talk) 12:59, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Accuweather damage estimates are not reliable are often bloated way out of proportion compared to other estimates. I don't see any reason why we should change our stance on the estimates now. We have not used them in articles since I started in the tropical cyclone project seven years ago. Noah, BSBATalk 00:53, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There are two references to AccuWeather estimates I can easily find: one at Hurricane Harvey#Economic loss estimates (65 million over the NOAA estimate) and the aforementioned estimate at Hurricane Helene#United States 2. I don't exactly doubt the estimate's unreliability, moreso the fact that they are very much used in these articles in context. GeorgeMemulous (talk) 12:55, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Grenada

    There has been a debate with User:Lord Dim 1 regarding Grenadian honours system, in particular whether King Charles III is sovereign of Grenada's orders or not.

    They initially cited the claim to the Grenada Monarchist League's site [68], but being a WP:SPS the League's site is not reliable. I removed the source [69], but they quickly re-added the content [70] this time citing it to "www.gg.weboffice.gd", which claims to be the website of the Governor-General of Grenada.

    Now, per the official website of the Government of Grenada (and the League website - see their contact section), the official website of the Governor-General is "www.gov.gd/index.php/government/governor-general". That weboffice site initially copied content from Canadian GG's site and has now plagiarised content from the League's site.[71][72] I challenged the source [73], but they reverted the edit [74] saying: "Been in contact with the GML, who gave permission to the GG’s Office to utilise sections of their website on a provisional basis".

    This has been going on at articles: Order of the National Hero (Grenada), Order of the Nation (Grenada), and Order of Grenada.

    The same user changed the website of the Governor-General from the official one to that weboffice one at the GG's article. [75]

    So, I'm interested in knowing whether https://grenadamonarchist.org/ and https://www.gg.weboffice.gd/ are considered reliable sources on Wikipedia or not. Peter Ormond 💬 17:56, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    For some added context on the Governor-General’s Office’s website gg.weboffice.gd: it was previously listed on the Wikipedia article Governor-General of Grenada and removed 15 February 2024 (by myself) because the website had been taken down (evidently for remodelling). When the website was brought back online, I re-added it, as that was the previously listed official website. Lord Dim 1 (talk) 23:05, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the Governor-General of Grenada article, here is a partial timeline of the website parameter: Changed by InternetArchiveBot in October 2017 with this edit to go from gov.gd to web.archive.org; Changed by CaribDigita in March 2022 with this edit to go from web.archive.org to gov.gd; Changed by Lord Dim 1 in June 2022 with this edit to go from gov.gd to gg.weboffice.gd; Changed by Lord Dim 1 in February 2024 with this edit to go from gg.weboffice.gd to gov.gd; Changed by Lord Dim 1 in September 2024 with this edit to go from gov.gd to gg.weboffice.gd which is the current link. It was the 'previously listed official website' because of your 2022 edit. --Super Goku V (talk) 06:47, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Back track. The official government is always : www.gov.gd. Usually the OPM's page has a list of links to the official government sites whenever parties switch. It appears the monarchy has since removed their separate kingdoms sub pages. Grenada's was "royal.gov.uk/grenada" In terms of whether the Kingdom of Grenada vested their national honours in the Monarchy, two spots usually clears that up. The Constitution may state status on 'national symbols' vestment. The other spot is many Caribbean nations logged their national symbols into the www.WIPO.org in the E.U. so that it's legally protected under international patent in case of war or invasion(s). CaribDigita (talk) 10:13, 30 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard&oldid=1248644626"