AfterEllen as a reliable source

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A WP:RS/N discussion took place in July 2020 with the following closure: "There is general agreement that AfterEllen is reliable, but that it should be used with context." Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 00:20, 20 July 2020 (UTC); updated 07:14, 31 July 2020 (UTC)Reply

Site down?

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It appears the AfterEllen web site is down, and a journalist at competing site AutoStraddle are speculating that the company/site has gone out of business. Source: https://twitter.com/theheatherhogan/status/1334199284808503296?s=21 Others suspect a technical error. No update seems needed at this time but worth watching. LegalTech (talk) 00:14, 3 December 2020 (UTC)Reply

I just attempted to amend the History section to reflect the coverage of this, but my edit was flagged as unconstructive. I want to ammend the end of the history section to the following:

In June 2020, Joelle announced the promotion of Jocelyn Macdonald, managing editor of AfterEllen, to Editor in Chief.[1]

In December 2020 AfterEllen experienced technical difficulties and was inaccessible for over a week, prompting Out (magazine) to publish an article speculating about the website's demise. Then co-owner Gaye Chapman issued a correction that the site would return shortly.[2] The upgraded version of the site that has returned is missing all articles posted from the site's inception up to the December 2020. Via her personal twitter account Chapman has issued repeated assurances that this back-catalog of articles will eventually be restored.[3][4][5]

In February 2021, the AfterEllen twitter account announced that Gaye Chapman had reached a settlement with Joelle, becoming sole owner of the site. Throughout this process Joelle maintained access to the AfterEllen twitter account and used it in ways that were unrepresentative of site's outlook.[6] 49.197.48.215 (talk) 23:59, 7 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

"my edit was flagged as unconstructive." I did a revision history search of your IP address — 49.197.48.215 — and there is no record of an edit being made to this article under it. If you have been accessing Wikipedia with different IP addresses and any of them has been flagged as having made disruptive edits, using one of them again will be detected by editors who monitor IP addresses that have created problems.
As for the information about the website being down for a week and some people in LGBT media dancing on its grave, this is valid information and can be included because the source used is Out magazine; and until found to be otherwise, Out is acceptable. The issue of the back catalog can use one of the Chapman tweets, but citing Twitter can only be done in a restricted capacity and using it as the only source is not acceptable (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Twitter), which means that all the other Twitter citations cannot be used. There needs to be more than just Twitter to support the information about Chapman becoming the sole owner of the site. The statement about Joelle using AE's account "in ways that were unrepresentative of site's outlook" is a statement that needs better support than someone at AE bitch slapping Joelle. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 21:30, 8 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
The Official AfterEllen twitter account isn't "just twitter" though. The problem with the outage and return of AfterEllen is that the only place the people involved are talking is in ephemeral social media posts and twitter likes. Near as I can tell what happened is that Joelle's politics took a turn for the alt-right (especially during 2020) which the staff and freelancers working for AfterEllen were uncomfortable with. They managed her out, which created some kind of backend drama and/or cashflow issues that climaxed in the site outage and the absence of the backlog on the returned incarnation. This is pretty much impossible to summarize without relying heavily on twitter scuttlebutt, but I think some more than desirable twitter citation is justified to capture the broad strokes. 49.197.48.186 (talk) 02:11, 11 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Unless you have a reliable published source to back it up, your statement about Joelle and the "drama" is your POV and nothing more than gossip. You're using this talk page to spread unsubstantiated accusations.
The issue regarding Twitter, a user-generated social media platform, as a source is not going to bend. It is an across-the-board reliability policy. WP:UGC. WP:CCPOL. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 11:29, 11 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
And again the Official AfterEllen Twitter Account isn't a reliable source? After all it does seem to be linked elsewhere in the article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AfterEllen#cite_note-55. You can catch The Owner Of The Website alluding to the political aspect of Joelle's departure here: https://twitter.com/my_real_name/status/1363226425994604550 49.195.113.80 (talk) 21:36, 11 May 2021 (UTC)Reply
Did you skim over what I said? Read it again: "...citing Twitter can only be done in a restricted capacity and using it as the only source is not acceptable (see Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Twitter), which means that all the other Twitter citations cannot be used." One tweet about it is enough. I don't give a flying squirrel about gossip and social media chatter, what I care about is the editing of articles according to Wikipedia's standards. This article gets no exception to the reliable sources policy that all other articles are obligated to comply with. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 23:36, 11 May 2021 (UTC)Reply

References

  1. ^ Joelle, Memoree (June 8, 2020). "A Farewell From Your Editor in Chief, and Here's to New Beginnings". AfterEllen. Retrieved 9 July 2020.
  2. ^ "It Sadly Doesn't Look Like AfterEllen Is Dead Quite Yet". www.out.com. 2020-12-02. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
  3. ^ "https://twitter.com/my_real_name/status/1335856062222635008". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-05-07. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  4. ^ "https://twitter.com/my_real_name/status/1362758668932902918". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-05-07. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  5. ^ "https://twitter.com/my_real_name/status/1359778625151664130". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-05-07. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  6. ^ "https://twitter.com/afterellen/status/1362622101237026817". Twitter. Retrieved 2021-05-07. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)

A new "is AfterEllen a reliable source" discussion (July 2023)

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The last one was in July 2020.
New discussion at WP:RS/N > "Is AfterEllen a reliable source for BLP reporting?".
Presented as a question about use in a BLP ... come see where it goes. Pyxis Solitary (yak yak). Ol' homo. 02:14, 3 July 2023 (UTC)Reply