Talk:1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division

republika.pl hosting notability

Once again I see that the article is supported by republika.pl hosting service once again. Let me inform you that this source is banned per WP:RS. Could you, administrator Piotrus, acknowledge that this web based recitation (as per "Opracowano na podstawie:") is areliable ACCADEMIC source? Or should we call it another tygodnik?--Lokyz 20:00, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

The source is not banned. It's a perfectly acceptable hosting service.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  23:06, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

It is not considered a reliable source. Here is an example of the message that is placed on a user page when a link to it is inserted:[1]

"Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia, x! However, your edit here was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove spam from Wikipedia. If you were trying to insert a good link, please accept my creator's apologies, but note that the link you added, matching rule republika\.pl, is on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Wikipedia. Please read Wikipedia's external links guidelines for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! AntiSpamBot 02:21, 10 August 2007 (UTC)"

The user is directed to User:AntiSpamBot/Reversion reasons, which states: "Angelfire, Members.AOL.com, or similar free hosting sites: These sites are blacklisted out of WP:RS and WP:EL concerns. Please make sure that all sources cited are reliable, as per Wikipedia's reliable sources guidelines." Novickas 12:35, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Bot stupidity is not the same as source being unreliable. Let me suggest you go and create some content instead of nitpicking reliable stuff created by others.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  16:08, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I hope you do not think that bot has intelligence? Someone is writing rules for bot, and it means that republika.pl is banned.--Lokyz 16:22, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

No, it just mean you need to read up more on our policies. If in doubt, go to WP:RSN. -- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  16:48, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Besides, republika.pl is not a source, it's an internet sevices provider and hosting service, much like yahoo or any other host. Whether pages hosted there are reliable is a different story. By comparison, one might not like offset paper, but that doesn't mean that anything printed on it is by definition unreliable. //Halibutt 18:14, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Blacklisted doesn't mean banned. A web hosting service may host anything – from reliable sources to rubbish. If a bot removes a link beacuse it suspects spam, it means that you should check the link and evaluate the website on its own merits, and not delete it on the grounds of being hosted on a wrong server. If it turns out that the link was added in god faith, then you should notify the bot owner of the bot's mistake. — Kpalion^(talk) 18:17, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Note that no bot has removed the link; Novickas line of reasoning - as far as I can understand it - is that anything hosted on republika.pl is unreliable - but the reason for this argument escapes me. PS. Republica.pl is also not blacklisted - meta:Spam_blacklist blacklists only a single of its subdomains "republika.pl/stranasmer" which as can be seen from [2] was used by some porn spammer.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 18:32, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

My knowledge of regexp and Perl is rusty now, but I believe that stranasmer, which has a forward slash (/) in front of it, is the only sub-page of republika that is permitted, not the only sub-page that is banned. The rule in the spambot page is "republika\.pl\/stranasmer". I inserted a link to republika myself, as part of an earlier protest against the use of this domain as a reference, and had no messages or problems. The bot may not run very often; its frequency is not mentioned at User:AntiSpamBot/FAQ. That may be why some established users ([[3], [4], [5]) have had recent problems linking to its pages (note these do not link to stranasmer) while others, including Piotrus and myself, have not. The spambot rule seems to be that actual removals of links to these sites are applied only to new/unregistered users. Technical clarification would be good, although it seems well-established that links to this site are discouraged. The evaluation of a website's reliability is not delegated on WP to individual readers, per Kaplion's "evaluate the website on its own merits"; guidelines are used. Novickas 20:52, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Krzysztof Janikula's reliability

The quality of the source is by far more important than were it is hosted. If the source is written by an otherwise reliable scholar and the work happens to be posted at the dubious site, it would be better to find the work at a more reliable location but if none is available and the authenticity of the work's being what is claimed is not doubted, we would have to live with what you have. So, the real question is who is Krzysztof Janikula, the author of this reference, is he a reliable scholar and if so, why would a reliable scholar choose to write for republika.pl. If he wrote it for something else, a scholarly journal or smth, we would need to link there, not to a free hosting site. --Irpen 20:11, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't take very long to see that Krzysztof Janikula is not in Google Scholar or Google Books, and has a very limited presence on plain Google. But - going to the second part of the clause - is the authenticity of the information questioned? I honestly don't know how accurate it is; I just don't want to see anything referenced to dubious sources, regardless of whether anyone has questioned its details or not. WP:Reliable sources states "If all the sources for a given statement or topic are of low reliability, the material may not be suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia." Novickas 21:19, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Then you should nominate this article for AfD, if you feel it is a hoax.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 22:10, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Piotrus, please stick to the subject. The question is how Krzysztof Janikula is a reliable scholar. Once we can figure this out, we can move on. --Irpen 22:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the section heading above and the RfC below I am under impression that the question is rather different. As for discussing reliability of the author, I suggested WP:RSN above as a better forum.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 22:33, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

OK, I added a new section heading if this was bothering you. Now, could you answer the question? --Irpen 22:37, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Based on [6] and [7] Janikula seems to be an amateur historian, with several publications online related to Polish and maritime history. His piece cited here cites two printed sources. Unless his claims are contradicted by more reliable, academic scholarship - or seem just plain controversial and dubious - I see no reason to remove his source from the article.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 22:43, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Since when "amateur historians" with no degree in the field, no publication in scholarly journals or by scholarly publishers are reliable sources for the encyclopedia? --Irpen 18:48, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

They are better sources then no sources, a problem common in many articles, such as S.P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, Hertsaivskyi Raion, St Volodymyr's Cathedral, St Volodymyr's Cathedral ownership controversy or Order of Friendship of Peoples just to name a few. May I suggest we concentrate on adding references to such articles first? And certainly I am all for replacing Janikula with more reliable scholar - by all means, if you can, please do so.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 19:50, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I hope you do realize that you used the invalid WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. As for those articles, they are very old and were written at times of much more lax referencing standards. We have many more and they are being fixed in due course. None of the articles I write now or wrote for many months, if not years, are unreferenced or referenced to "amateur historians". So, the questions stands. You either re-reference this stuff or remove it. Feel free to retaliate against the articles I wrote you listed above. I did not plan to work on them now as I am busy with others, but I will put other issues aside if you choose to attack those. That said, please remove the dubious source and rewrite the text accordingly. Thanks, --Irpen 20:01, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

I will improve this article one day. If you want to delete it or remove content, please gain consensus first, preferably at WP:RSN.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 23:17, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

RFC

Republika.pl appears in about 60 articles on mainspace, including histories and biographies [8]. It is listed as a purveyor of malware, as well as spam, in software protection sites.[9] Novickas 13:34, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

As was explained to you above, only a single subdomain of it is listed as such. To call the ste a purveyor of malwareis as accurate as to claim that all of wikipedia articles are hoaxes (per Henryk Batuta hoax) precented.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk} 19:47, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

If the blacklist applied only to Stranasmer, the bot would not have made these recent removals:

• September 2, 2007 - reverted link to http://www. bramasmierci. republika .pl/ [10]
• August 10, 2007 - reverted link to http://www .crai. republika .pl/vor.htm [11]
• June 14, 2007 - reverted link to http://www. itoswiecim. republika. pl/en/worth_seeing.html#zabytki" [12]

Piotrus could continue to protest this policy at Wikimedia; he succeeded in getting it lifted once before [13]. Objections were raised -"Piotrus, please request removal of links in the appropriate section above; note that requests to remove Republika.pl have been repeatedly denied in the past (search "Republika" in the archives index)"[14]. It was reinstated in February 2007 [15].

Hoaxes are removed as they are found. This policy goes a step further and tries to prevent damage by blocking links that the community has found undesirable. Novickas 16:59, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Image copyright problem with Image:Bitwa niemenska.jpg

The image Image:Bitwa niemenska.jpg is used in this article under a claim of fair use, but it does not have an adequate explanation for why it meets the requirements for such images when used here. In particular, for each page the image is used on, it must have an explanation linking to that page which explains why it needs to be used on that page. Please check

• That there is a non-free use rationale on the image's description page for the use in this article.
• That this article is linked to from the image description page.

This is an automated notice by FairuseBot. For assistance on the image use policy, see Wikipedia:Media copyright questions. --13:14, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Dead link

During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!

• http://www.republika.pl/rzeczna2004/wojna%20roku%201920.htm
  • In 1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division on 2011-05-25 06:53:04, 404 Not Found
  • In 1st Lithuanian–Belarusian Division on 2011-06-10 04:00:00, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 04:01, 10 June 2011 (UTC)