Talk:Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies

Reactions and criticism

Responding to these two edits [1], [2] by Grayfell and David Gerard respectively

I think that offering public response and commentary (particularly if critical of a subject that may otherwise be considered safe and uncontroversial as in other academic contexts) offers value, but I also understand that sources of different levels of reliability should (or need to) be presented as such.

In the interest of not having an edit war, I thought it might be most appropriate to provide the opportunity for discussion here. If commentary was included but described as being from putatively bumptious sources, would that be appropriate? It wasn’t so valueless that CRWS thought it wasn’t worth responding to.

Happy to be told I am off base! Bluetik (talk) 16:50, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Hello.

There are a few related issues here. One is that generally articles should avoid WP:CSECTIONs.

Another is that saying "the CRWS has drawn both praise and criticism" is far, far too vague. Attributing this to "a round-table of scholars gathered by the Mercator Institute" sounds impressive, but it's also very vague, especially since no indication is provided for what the "Mercator Institute" is. Looking at that source closer, they don't appear to call themselves an "institute".

Further, per the source itself, it was not Mercator that gathered this round-table. The Mercator article (blog post?) was discussing a section of the CRWS journal titled "Roundtable".

The author of that Mercator article is listed on the site's staff page as a "Contributing Editor, Wokeness" which... yeesh. Unprofessional right-wing cliches like this indicates that this is pearl-clutching. I see no indication that any actual reporting is being done here, so at best this is non-expert opinion content from a non-notable source. So who cares? More importantly, why should readers care?

At a certain point WP:NOTGOSSIP applies. If reliable sources do not mention this, why should we? Additionally, we should resist the temptation to include responses to non-notable criticism. Such a response, especially a lengthy one, can imply that the originating criticism has more significance than is supportable. This is a subtle form of editorializing.

To put it another way, the norm is to cite primary sources only for basic details or to provide necessary context to information supported by reliable, independent sources. This doesn't appear to be either. Grayfell (talk) 21:11, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

This I very helpful, thank you

I hadn’t realized there was guidance to avoid critical article sections, at minimum, titled as such. I’ll keep this in mind for future articles as well (I might just search for articles with “criticism” as a section title and alter per the guidance you referenced)

On your second point, yes, I think the insertion of details on Mercator in the wiki article in the text made a couple mistakes, and also that the writer’s title is a red flag for a likely persistently biased source.

On a later point you make regarding the quoting of primary sources as being at risk of (or definitely, intentionally or not) editorializing.

To the broader point though, I guess my thinking is that academic sources are taken with a high weight both within Wikipedia and more broadly, and therefore, concerns about the rigor or bias of those academic outputs are of particular interest. What do you think?

Also, I’ve certainly seen unfavorable descriptions from openly biased sources on Wikipedia.

If I understand, reliable sources should be used over less reliable sources, certainly.

If critical information is only coming from a biased source, should it be rewritten per the above, (obviously contextualized both precisely and accurately as possible)

Or, should critical information from biased sources be generally avoided on and removed from Wikipedia articles? Bluetik (talk) 23:37, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an inconsistent relationship with the concept of precedent. The way I usually try to explain this is that since every article has its own set of sources, it will need to be evaluated on its own merits. There is no universal 'article' template that can be filled-in like a tax form or a role-playing game character sheet (although a lot of sports bios get very close). That lack of standardization means that a lot of discussions like this end up being repeated. That's not inherently a bad thing. If other articles have crit sections (for example), that may or may not be for a good reason. If you think this article needs a criticism section (by whatever name) than you can try and make that case, but now, at least, you know that it's something that has been discussed many times over the years.

To put it simply, I don't think this set of sources belongs in this article. There are a lot of other articles, with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Other articles will have other contexts. Grayfell (talk) 00:32, 7 July 2024 (UTC)

pretty much, yeah. I noted that it was Mercator because that was important if it was going to be noted at all, but concur with Grayfell that these just weren't quality relevant opinion sources rating WP:RSOPINION - David Gerard (talk) 23:00, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure thing, thanks. Totally understand the quality piece. How do you assess relevance? It seemed relevant to me Bluetik (talk) 23:38, 6 July 2024 (UTC)