Talk:Twitter Files/Archive 3

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Background section

User:Soibangla: don't know how strongly you felt this change was needed; there's two conflicting needs, one is to offer comprehensive background and context, and the other is to avoid the background section becoming a huge part of the article. I think that tipped us over that line; is there anything else you think should be kept beyond the Sussman stuff? DFlhb (talk) 01:21, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I think it's important to briefly show the long history of the alleged FBI/Clinton/DNC "Russia hoax" that Trump has promoted into 2022, with a lawsuit, which he and his supporters have characterized as the "real collusion," and which now dovetails into the current narrative of FBI/Twitter/Biden collusion as part of a supposed sweeping deep state operation. This now includes the involvement of Baker, upon Musk's discovery that Baker was involved and worked for the FBI in 2016 and had a witness role in the Sussmann case that conspiracy theorists were confident would blow the "real collusion" wide open. Twitter Files didn't suddenly come out of nowhere, it had a long deep state narrative that preceded it, and that narrative is not supported by the many reliable sources across other Wikipedia articles. I don't see it's "a huge part of the article," as there's still the Bari Weiss stuff coming, and presumably much more analysis and reactions. soibangla (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

@DFlhb: I tend to agree with you. Excessive “background” that is ostensibly added to put things into perspective can quickly appear like proselytizing with bias. Greg L (talk) 03:03, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

"Appear" to whom? Those with their own bias? Is the content inadequately sourced? Is it inaccurate, misleading or defective in a way that can be specified? Can it be tweaked rather than chucked? soibangla (talk) 03:16, 9 December 2022 (UTC) soibangla (talk) 05:06, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

What in the world is that diff? Was someone editing the wrong page by mistake? I do not see any reason to include a paragraph of random stuff about QAnon in this article -- is the reasoning that it's about American politics, so it's relevant to Twitter, because Americans post about politics there?? jp×g 05:47, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

a paragraph of random stuff about QAnon? um...no? soibangla (talk) 06:04, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeah; the main problem with it is that the link to QAnon and the "deep state" is tenuous, and attempts to frame it as a marginal narrative, when it's very pervasive among even mainstream conservatives.

Conservatives mainly believe that the government is involved because of these three things:

1. the Zuckerberg FBI warning, which conservatives saw as the FBI deliberately trying to suppress the story; keep in mind that the FBI had the laptop for a year at that point, and therefore knew its contents.
2. the 51 intel officers that attempted to frame it as Russian disinformation, and were echoed by the Biden campaign; which Vox later said was never backed by evidence (one could uncharitably say, discredited); conservatives perceived this as an attempt to control the narrative
3. the year-old news about the DHS disinfo board (which conservatives saw as aptly-named), and more recent revelations about it, which went utterly viral in conservative social media & television circles

I concede the above is OR, but I doubt the majority of editors are as familiar as me with conservative thinking — I monitor that space very closely. It would be good (and far more relevant) to include the above in the Background section, as long as it can be reliably sourced without OR or SYNTH, as a way to explain the "government involvement" claims; which can then be described as baseless where appropriate. DFlhb (talk) 06:39, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

the link to QAnon and the "deep state" is tenuous but the reliable source [1] discusses it a bit, yet I did not use that as the preface of my paragraph, but only briefly at the close of the paragraph; it is not a paragraph of random stuff about QAnon, discussion of QAnon comes late in the story, and that's how I treated it. Nevertheless, major QAnon influencer Liz Crokin was at MAL this week, where Trump "heaped praise on...Michael Flynn—who has become one of the most high-profile QAnon influencers in recent years," who was also at MAL this week. The paragraph does not contain attempts to frame it as a marginal narrative, though a perusal of our various relevant articles show that it is, in fact, a marginal narrative, but that's not suggested in this paragraph. The key, but not only, reason the paragraph should be included is:

Fans of Trump suspected there was more to Twitter’s actions. They believed the FBI and the Democratic National Committee, which they believed colluded to rig the 2016 election with allegations of the Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russia, were meddling in the 2020 vote as well: the Deep State in action.

For convenience, here's the paragraph in question:

The Russian government exploited social media extensively as part of its interference in the 2016 presidential election to boost Trump's candidacy. Since that election that Trump won, he and many of his supporters promoted a narrative that the FBI, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee and others colluded to fabricate allegations of Trump collusion with Russia, so as to prevent his election and damage his presidency. This narrative extended into the 2020 election season, after Twitter withheld distribution of the story on the Hunter Biden laptop, characterizing it as a deep state operation that now included social media and the Biden campaign, to defeat Trump. The narrative was boosted by news during the Twitter Files release that Musk had fired deputy general counsel James Baker for his involvement in the decision to withhold the laptop story and later vetting documents for the Twitter Files project. Baker had previously been general counsel for the FBI when he was a witness for, but not implicated in, the failed John Durham prosecution of Michael Sussmann on allegations he worked with the 2016 Clinton campaign to advance a Russian collusion narrative against Trump. The deep state narrative was promoted by influencers in the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Maybe take another read of the Wired story? soibangla (talk) 14:59, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I’m surprised soibangla didn’t seek a lower profile after nominating this article for deletion only one hour after it was created. The nomination was WP:Snowballed because the nomination was wildly contrary the sensibilities and general consensus of the wikipedian community.

The background information that soibangla added amounts to editorializing and is a bit too tangential for this article. It therefore isn’t sufficiently encyclopedic. Wikipedia is a general-interest encyclopedia and isn’t a venue to use to slant or bias the reader so they interpret properly cited facts in a preferred or desired context. We have ample hyperlinks in the article if the reader wants to follow up on a related topic.

This article, more so than nearly any other, is right now under the general public’s microscope precisely because of soibangla's nomination for deletion received national headlines. We need to adhere particularly closely to Wikipedia's values and rules and push back on partisanship. This article is about the “Twitter files” and we follow what the WP:RSs are writing about after each release from Musk. If soibangla wants to editorialize and “put things in context,” he/she can go on Twitter and extol the important background information and history lessons there. Greg L (talk) 14:43, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Or perhaps you might go on Twitter or some dumb podcast[2] to take shots at me. soibangla (talk) 15:08, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Greg L, I'm happy to consider any responses you might provide to the specific questions I previously posed to you:

Is the content inadequately sourced? Is it inaccurate, misleading or defective in a way that can be specified? Can it be tweaked rather than chucked?

soibangla (talk) 16:54, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with Greg L. soibangla is basically ubiquitously trying to shape the wiki in an "opinionated" way, his (or hers). Recusing oneself would have been maybe more cautious, especially since his/her emotionality exudes from the comments in all his/her comments in the talk section.

These comments are not appropriate for this Talk page. Bring it to my Talk page and maybe I'll discuss it. Or maybe not. soibangla (talk) 19:11, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh, come on, Soibangla. Do you really expect people to bring things to your talk page if you immediately delete them, like you did here with me? And that was accompanied by this edit summary: HAHAHA. You did the very same thing recently to JPxG here, where you didn’t respond in a collegial and responsive manner and instead just ignored it by reverting. Given that tendency of yours, which can come across as insular and resistant to peer pressure, people will instead attempt to hash things out where the sunshine of an open forum sanitizes the behavior of editors a bit so we can have a proper collaborative writing environment.

It’s not too much to ask that you listen to others’ comments and respond productively and in a collegial fashion. Greg L (talk) 19:07, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Seems a convenient way to deny/ignore your own, evident bias in the topic. There remains the fact that no good will come from a factious editing and trying your best to bludgeon other users' edits with your imposed view of the currently unveiling story. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.160.155.143 (talk) 01:26, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

NPOV template

Iamahumanborninearth (talk · contribs) has added an NPOV template to the article, but has not initiated any talk page discussion, outlining their objections, as required by WP:NPOV dispute#Adding a tag to a page. Anyone want to weigh-in? Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 11:58, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Removed in this edit. Iamahumanborninearth or anyone else needs to raise specific objections on this talk page when placing that tag. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:03, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The Twitter Files page is based on the claims made by three journalists (Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and Michael Shellenberger) and the related information provided so far via Twitter with allegedly more installments and material still promised to be made public. These journalists have made several claims which have to be reported on the Twitter Files page. That’s the whole purpose of having a “Twitter Files” page in the first place. Denying the integration of the asserted and documented claims done by the authors is a POV neutrality infringement, biasing the whole purpose of the page. I’ve respectfully pointed this out several times to no avail, so I’m raising the issue again - it’s not about defining whether the claims/allegations are true yet. It’s about stating facts as reported by the journalists that launched the coverage and are reporting on the “Twitter Files”. Saying that, e.g., Matt Taibbi claimed that (quoting here) “[...] the Slack entries in Part 3 contain multiple, clear displays of cooperation between Twitter and federal law enforcement and/or intelligence [...]" is simply describing that these are his unequivocal and undisputed words (he wrote them, so by definition, we can (I'd say we ought to) report that he wrote them!) and is in no way misleading or fake news. What is also true is that we would still not be claiming that what he wrote has been universally verified or accepted by anyone. These are 2 different aspects that must be distinguished. Some editors seem incapable of recognizing the issue, and very keen only on focusing on the latter, then dabbling in quibbling the most extravagant of cavils in WPs policies to avoid confronting the issue - this, in my humble opinion, harms the neutrality of the article at its core and that's why I'm raising this as a WP:NPOV violation.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.163.249.30 (talk)

Content > Planned releases on other topics

This section is supposed to be about the content of the disclosures, isn't it? Yet with the official tweet deleted, all we are left with is: "On December 10, 2022 Musk threatened to sue any Twitter employee who leaked information to the press. This was expressed in an all-hands email to Twitter employees with employees being given a pledge to sign indicating that they understood him.[refs]"

And this is surely only relevant here if we can word a hook to hang it on; if we can make the angle explicit. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 19:05, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

We can change the section title, dropping planned would do it. Unfortunately WP:BLP required us to remove the tweet, kind of shocked at the lack of competence of whoever added it in the first place. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:36, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's bad. Primary sources can be used only for uncontroversial and simple statements of fact, not BLP stuff. (Also ABOUTSELF in the author's own bio.) IOW, not Twitter, Taibbi, or Musk. All those things can and (often) should be added using secondary RS that show us the due weight to give that content. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:45, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Very true, the tweet is from today so we should not have to wait long for secondary coverage. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:50, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Then we can quote it using the secondary RS as the source. That's how we can still fulfill our purpose to document the "sum of all human knowledge," including fringe nonsense and stuff that might otherwise violate BLP. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 19:55, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

As it stands, there is no link to the content of the disclosures. The statement is in limbo. We really need an RS that says something along the lines of "here we have Musk maintaining one thing and yet here he is doing something else. And no, we can't make that link ourselves. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:01, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Have you not read the sources? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:03, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

You can't just rely on what you or other people may have seen in, and deduced from, the sources: you have to actually use that content in the wiki article (which should stand on its own merits), explicitly making the link. You may know it's hypocritical; I may know: but this entry does not make that clear. And that is surely the reason for including this information. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 21:31, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. I think your point is spot on, Esowteric. Greg L (talk) 22:18, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

What is your proposed text? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:40, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I've amended the wording (just a draft proposal), as follows: On December 10, 2022 Musk threatened to sue any Twitter employee who leaked information to the press, despite his claims to be a "free speech absolutist" who believes that "transparency is the key to trust", and having himself released internal emails to selected journalists.[refs] This threat was expressed in an all-hands email to Twitter employees with employees being given a pledge to sign indicating that they understood him.[refs] Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 09:16, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

No. This is a pretty blatant attempt to use RS to lead a reader by the nose to a particular conclusion.Slywriter (talk) 12:58, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Care to suggest an improvement? I think that Esowteric does a pretty good job, but of course there's almost always room for improvement. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:56, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, drop the quotes and report the facts of what happened in the email without reference to other events/statements. If the quotes are WP:DUE, cover them separately. As it stands despite, believes and having releases are all weasel statements that tell the reader how to feel about his email to workers, which is standard run of the mill corporate policySlywriter (talk) 16:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't see how WP:NPOV lets us do that, we can't violate neutrality that egregiously. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:08, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I can't access the first source but Independent reads like an opinion piece, not a news article. And separating out the statements does not violate NPOV unless the statement is going to be attributed to the reporter writing it, so that it's clear it's their opinion of the matter and not wikivoice. Slywriter (talk) 16:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The Independent's title makes the link / hypocrisy quite clearly: "Free speech warrior Elon Musk reportedly threatens to sue Twitter staff if they leak to media". "who believes that "transparency is the key to trust" has already been removed. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:23, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

While the headline does say that, I would point out WP:HEADLINE. That a piece's headline (or subhead) is extremely pointy is not relevant to how we ought write articles; the guideline correctly notes that headlines are often overstated or lack context, and sometimes contain exaggerations or sensationalized claims with the intention of attracting readers to an otherwise reliable article. In general, headlines are not the sort of thing we should be citing. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 20:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I merely quoted the headline and subheading here to show the story's overarching angle. I also quoted from the text Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:06, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

And given that the angle of the story was something like "do as I say, not do as I do", my use of the structure "... despite ..." seems fair. Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 20:23, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Subtitle: "World’s wealthiest person suggests staff could face ‘full extent of the law’ for leaking to press after he gave access to internal messages and emails to select media". Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:27, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The piece does not appear to be marked opinion, its a news article unless you can present a WP:RS which says it isn't. You can't make your own rules. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:29, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Text: "The new owner of the social media company – who has repeatedly endorsed free speech absolutism and asserted “transparency is the key to trust” and that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” – has ordered staff to sign a document acknowledging the warning, according to reporting from Platformer managing editor Zoe Schiffer." Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Last I checked, we can evaluate a source on a talk page and question whether the source can be used in wiki-voice to make statements of fact. So kindly, do not attempt to gatekeep opinions you disagree with by inventing rules of discussion or implying I have created some rule. The source looks like an opinion piece and reads like an opinion piece. Others can disagree and life will go on, but saying that violates no rule of wikipedia Slywriter (talk) 16:40, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

We have a community consensus that they're generally reliable. There are two ways forward for you: either you provide a WP:RS which says that this is an opinion piece or you challenge the reliability of The Independent at WP:RSN. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:44, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I've generally trusted The Independent over the last 30-or-so years. It was a respectable national newspaper in the UK and has since gone digital-only. This piece looks like basic reporting to me, with a catchy story angle along the lines of "do as I say, not do as I do." Esowteric + Talk + Breadcrumbs 16:56, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, Esowteric. Though some editors advise caution when citing the online version (and that would especially be the case on Twitter-related issues at the moment), The Independent is considered to be an RS for use on Wikpedia. Like all RSs, The Independent, provides a secondary, reliable source to establish relevance and filter the meaning of a primary source. And it’s always helpful when the cited article provides a hyperlink to the primary source (which could be a Tweet) or an image of it so there is no mistaking the subject matter being covered. Greg L (talk) 19:32, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi Red-tailed hawk. I removed the article-wide {{POV}} tag, but please feel free to add a {{POV section}} tag if you feel it's still warranted. I couldn't quite follow this discussion except to say that I don't think there's an active dispute about the neutrality of the article overall, just maybe a specific paragraph or section. --MZMcBride (talk) 23:13, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Replacing "troll-like behaviors" with "tweets which detract"

Soibangla

The problem is "troll-like behaviors" is neither a direct quote from the Business insider article, nor the Forbes article. It could be replaced with a paraphrase, but it needs to reflect the source used. Insider references tweets, not accounts. Forbes doesn't directly reference the 2018 policy. I believe the language of my edit better represents the source used, although it would be an improvement to replace it with a better source.

Here is the actual text from Business Insider:

"Twitter first announced in 2018 it would effectively hide some tweets from conversations and search results, according to The Washington Post's Will Oremus. Twitter at the time said it would look at the way other individuals reacted to an account in order to avoid showing tweets that "detract" from conversations." Amthisguy (talk) 23:14, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree. Assuming the facts that “troll-like behaviors” wasn’t text by the cited RS, it treads a bit too far into editorializing. Greg L (talk) 23:17, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Well here's what they said:

What we’re talking about today are troll-like behaviors that distort and detract from the public conversation on Twitter, particularly in communal areas like conversations and search. Some of these accounts and Tweets violate our policies, and, in those cases, we take action on them. Others don’t but are behaving in ways that distort the conversation.

[3] soibangla (talk) 23:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Soibangla. The primary source uses “troll-like behavior”, so it seems fine by me. As long as the secondary RS is discussing that particular part of the original Tweet, and the author of the secondary RS is addressing the meaning of that particular paragraph (the one containing “troll-like behavior”) so the quote isn’t being taken out of the intended context, I don’t see anything wrong with quoting the primary source. I don’t think I fully understand Amthisguy’s concern. Greg L (talk) 23:50, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The issue was the article lacked an in-line citation to the source of the quote. I'll add it, along with the other half of my edit which hasn't been objected to. Thank you. Amthisguy (talk) 00:07, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorting out a weird problem with posts getting miscounted and deleted with other edits

Hello everyone.

The wiki engine appears to be having trouble with new sections accidentally deleting previous ones. I suspect the various servers are struggling to stay in sync. Try modifying this section (and rename it) instead of clicking the “New section” tab.

Greg L (talk) 01:45, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I think I know why this is happening, and it's due to how "edit section" links work. The URL I'm typing stuff into right now is Talk:Twitter_Files&action=edit&section=56, i.e. this is the 56th section on the talk page. Normally, if someone edits a page while I'm editing it, I will get an edit conflict when I save -- but this doesn't happen with section edits. That is, I can edit section 56, and in the meantime, someone else can edit section 30... and if their edit adds a new section, then 31 will become 32, 32 will become 33, etc -- and section 55 will become section 56. So when I send the server my edit to "section 56" it will just nuke whatever was there. I don't know if there is a way to overcome this. jp×g 01:56, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

It may have been my use of a horizontal rule {{hr}} inside my post. That might be fouling up section counts. I fixed that this time. Greg L (talk) 02:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

But Soibangla purposely deleted my whole post just moments ago, with an edit statement of “What part of WP:NOTFORUM eludes you?” I asked him on his talk page not to do that again. He deleted that request, which is his right. The concept of

“ The best response to bad speech is better speech ”

…must not have registered.

And I see he deleted my post earlier too, accompanied by an edit summary that read “…right-wing blowhard glad-handing and congratulating himself…”. At least he didn’t call me a Nazi, so Godwin's law hasn’t yet applied.

Looking over the history on this talk page, it appears that Soibangla has had a long and exceedingly bold history of unilaterally taking it upon himself to decide what he will permit to be discussed here. I think we need to keep an eye on that sort of behavior. The hotter the topic, the more we need vigorous debate, not censorship and hiding entire discussion threads behind WP:NOTFORUM curtains.

If my below “thank you” to the community offends Soibangla’s sensibilities, he can have an admin delete it or (better yet) respond with a thoughtful post of his own that informs. I received two “thank yous” in response to it, so it seems to be a 2:1 consensus in favor of my post here not being banned from this talk page (irony intentional). Greg L (talk) 04:03, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Oh, Soibangla, please desist with using WP:NOTFORUM as a pretense for deleting others’ posts like this. That policy is obviously intended to apply to WP:ARTICLESPACE. The whole point of talk pages is to express views and great leeway is afforded to posts on talk pages, including political and editorial policy views that might “trigger.”

Wikipedia has a long history on its talk pages of having I.P. editors weigh in with some left-field suggestion and the proper practice is to just read them and move on; they eventually get archived along with everything else. You know this, don’t you?

If you disagree with another editor’s sentiments, try writing something cogent, illuminating, and thoughtful in response. If post is a personal attack, take them to ANI. And if you see a post that expresses a view that triggers you, just suck it up. Greg L (talk) 04:23, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I also found your cringe-inducing pontificating on irrelevant matters embarrassing and grossly inappropriate and have deleted it, per policy. Please save such stuff for forums, or better yet, your diary. 174.197.133.171 (talk) 04:29, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

PS: the fact that you state “Notforum is clearly meant to be about article space” indicates you may be fundamentally unfamiliar with policy. Look at the top of this page, where is posted NOTFORUM. Not forum is specifically meant to outlaw posts such as yours where editors just discuss their thoughts on the topic rather than how to improve the article, as if anyone cares about your feelings or ill-considered political views. No one cares. 174.197.133.171 (talk) 04:42, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

You aren’t fooling anyone by logging out and editing as an I.P. on the precise same topic that triggered you. If you delete my posts another time, Soibangla, the only proper recourse will be to report you to ANI. This is a friendly warning. Greg L (talk) 04:54, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Fourth release, this time by Shellenberger

American author Michael Shellenberger releases 'Twitter Files Part 4'

Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:51, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

And, we've got part 5 now as well. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 19:58, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Red-tailed hawk. I’ve worked separately with three Chinese mechanical engineers over the years and I understand their worldview. That just-released internal email had an impact on me and I hope the following quote from the article makes it way into our Twitter Files article: Maybe because I am from China, [but] I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation.

Maybe The Twitter Files will one-day provoke Congress to build upon Marsh v. Alabama, which held that trespassing laws could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on a town's sidewalk even though the sidewalk was part of a privately-owned company town. Key point here regarding editorial content of this article: I hope other wikipedians here will be on the lookout for Marsh v. Alabama and related statutes and case law being discussed by RSs in connection with The Twitter Files. Anytime the privately owned equivalent of a public square begins internally asking “Should this sort of topic be permitted to be discussed?? Let’s go ask the CEO,” we’re—as the Chinese employee wrote—at risk of destroying the public conversation. Greg L (talk) 20:46, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Are there sources that connect Marsh v. Alabama to this? — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 21:47, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

There remains intense interest in this article (click “Logarithmic scale” under “U.S. Senate”), so I hope other wikipedians here will be on the lookout for Marsh v. Alabama and related statutes and case law being discussed by RSs in connection with The Twitter Files. If the RSs discuss it, we may. I haven’t dug for any but seem to recall that recently a member of congress mentioned that Congress should consider laws governing censorship on privately owned public-discussion venues. As I recall, the musings of that congressman was in response to Twitter. Of course this article isn’t about Twitter in general; it is specifically about The Twitter Files, which is Musk-released documents regarding past Twitter censorship. Accordingly, it’s not a stretch to anticipate than an RS would cover the legal regulation of privately owned public-discussion venues (à la Marsh v. Alabama, but it wouldn’t be that particular Supreme Court decision as that is established legal precedent) in an article on The Twitter Files. Greg L (talk) 22:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Trespassing laws are criminal laws enforced by the government - ergo their enforcement falls under the First Amendment. Twitter banning an account involves no government action, therefore does not implicate the First Amendment. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:15, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Well… shucks, counselor. Matters of law are complex and I’m certainly no Constitutional scholar (though I might play one on Wikipedia, along with a thousand others). I do, however, know that other Supreme Court rulings like Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins further buttress the principle that there are limits to the extent private businesses may limit speech rights. That was a case about high school students who were trying to solicit signatures for a petition at a mall. Now, in that case, the Supreme Court held that a state constitution (California’s) afforded free speech rights beyond those of the U.S. Constitution.

My point with mentioning Marsh v. Alabama wasn’t that it was specifically governing with regard to Twitter, but to illuminate the broad concept that with true 18th-century public town squares and other “public forums” long replaced by 20th-century (privately owned) malls, and those now replaced by 21st-century digital town squares (also privately owned) the extent to which private enterprise may decide who may hand out pamphlets on their property and what sort of messages they will permit can most certainly be limited by statute. That’s all.

Thus, it didn’t surprise me in the least that a U.S. congressman would be talking about legislation along these lines. So I propose we doff our Wikipedia-grade powdered wigs and just keep an eye peeled for how Congress deals with this issue and—especially—keep an eye peeled for what the RS’s cover on that topic. Greg L (talk) 04:56, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

the extent to which private enterprise may decide who may hand out pamphlets on their property and what sort of messages they will permit can most certainly be limited by statute - that's a speculative opinion at best, and I don't think this line of speculation is helpful here. Might as well speculate that Tesla's tanking stock will soon force Elon to sell Twitter to the Saudis. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:52, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Not at all speculative, NorthBySouthBaranof; just insufficiently cited, which apparently resulted in failure to overcome skepticism. I was going off memory. Per Reuters – U.S. Senator thinks Twitter and Facebook may need a license to operate, twas U.S. Senator Lindsay Graham. And, our very own article: Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins – Relevance to cases involving online forums, very handily connects the dots from A) what I wrote above and B) to what you just declared was purely “speculative”.

It took me only 20 seconds to locate the Reuters article to find out which lawmaker it was, and only 30 more seconds to find Wikipedia’s very own article specifically connecting Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins to Twitter. You could have done the same, NorthBySouthBaranof, before declaring what you think isn’t “helpful here.” Not that you don’t have a right to express your opinion. Thanks for that.

Now let me make myself clear: I agree with you; both Marsh v. Alabama and Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins established that there is no 1st Amendment “U.S. Constitutional” right at the federal level requiring that those with political speech must be accommodated on private property when the speakers and/or messages are contrary to the wishes of the property owner who has Great Wisdom©™® to know what speech is “helpful here,” as you put it, and what speech people need protection from and can’t be allowed to hear.

It’s equally noteworthy that Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins established that many state constitutions, including California’s, do give their residents a constitutional right to free speech on private property that serves as a public forum; which is to say, private venues equivalent to a town square. And, of course, as Senator Graham is intent upon, legislation can fill in the gaps not expressly enumerated in the U.S. Constitution.

I think you missed both my broad point about what lawmakers are contemplating, why they are contemplating it, and how that relates to Twitter Files. Senator Graham took his stance before Musk made his first release of The Twitter Files. Now that evidence is coming out in droves demonstrating what Graham and most other Republicans and Republican lawmakers long suspected, this issue of political speech over privately owned “public forums” will undoubtedly become much more topical as it relates to this article.

Accordingly we wikipedians should A) understand the relevancy of “political speech on privately owned public forums”; specifically as it relates to Twitter and The Twitter Files, and B) be on the lookout for articles discussing both.

So, as I wrote in my previous post (and taking a cue from the waitress “practicing politics” in Billy Joel’s The Piano Man), I propose we doff our Wikipedia-grade powdered wigs, just deliver the drinks to tables, and watch what Senator Graham and other lawmakers do because legislation based on these principles of free speech is being discussed. Greg L (talk) 19:34, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

References

The Economist/Guardian misleading snippet "on Twitter's right-wing bias contradicting Weiss"

Claim: "Twitter reported in 2021 that there was "statistically significant difference favoring the political right wing" in every country except Germany, which is in contradiction to Weiss' claims of left-wing bias."

Sources

The Guardian - source [4]

The Economist - source [5]

Upon reading the sources it's clear that this is a completely "straw claim" since it refers to an unexplained right-wing bias related to the Twitter algorithm and obviously does not refer to the human bias around which the Twitter Files released information is built on.

The Guardian

- "... Twitter said it wasn’t clear why its Home timeline produced these results and indicated that it may now need to change its algorithm ...

- The post acknowledged that it was concerning if certain tweets received preferential treatment not as a result of the way in which users interacted, but because of the inbuilt way the algorithm works.

- "...Further root cause analysis is required in order to determine what, if any, changes are required to reduce adverse impacts by our Home timeline algorithm,” the post said"

The Economist

- The algorithm did give extra amplification to news sources that independent groups like Ad Fontes Media classify as conservative.

- Twitter's algorithm gave most of these sites extra exposure"

Not only the snippet doesn't belong to the page (unwanted algorithmic vs deliberate human bias) but the way it is reported is misleading with respect to the sources' contents reported. Please notice, in fact, that The Economist article makes it clear that this "exposure boost" must be intended as a variation (or rate of change) of the exposure provided and that must be intended on average and not for all conservative media/newspapers (→ this picture extracted from The Economist article shows is quite clearly → [6])

Moreover, in fact, the Economist article significantly adds that:

→ "The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (still) appeared most often, whereas more partisan sources like the Nation or the Daily Wire received less exposure"

→ "Right-leaning sources on the right did get larger boosts on average, but the difference was small".

→ "Factual accuracy was a much better predictor of the algorithm's behavior. After combining reliability scores for each site from several independent sources, we found that the algorithm gave the biggest boosts to the least accurate sites, regardless of their politics"

→ "Left-wing sites with poor accuracy scores, like tmz, were amplified more than credible, conservative ones like the Wall Street Journal"

Conclusion: what is portrayed by the articles, especially the Economist, is more complex and can't be included as a trivial report to simply contradict what Weiss is claiming to be a human bias (and not a minor & unwanted algorithm bias). Doesn't belong to this article page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.32.8.179 (talk) 00:22, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Dear I.P. I think I agree. I note that when I click the first link you provided, Twitter admits bias in algorithm for rightwing politicians and news outlets it has a yellow banner at the top stating that This article is more than 1 year old.

What is significant—and what your point seems to be if I understand you correctly—is that article hails to a time when Twitter was still under original management. So when Twitter responds, as reported in The Guardian as follows: Twitter said it wasn’t clear why its Home timeline produced these results and indicated that it may now need to change its algorithm, we would be ill-advised to disregard common sense and common knowledge about the general nature of corporate culture and CYA tactics when Twitter P.R. brass over a year ago profess utter bafflement over how in the world their algorithms could somehow be biased.

I hope I have correctly interpreted your point, and if I have, then I agree. And if I haven’t understood you correctly, then this much seems clear: Outdated citations that precede the release of The Twitter Files mustn’t be used in a manner that purports to rebut The Twitter Files. Greg L (talk) 01:43, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Intentionally-misleading edit

I must report that this edit appears to be intentionally misleading.

The edit was inserted into the "Part 1" section of the article, with a partial quote [...] the Slack entries in Part 3 contain multiple, clear displays of cooperation between Twitter and federal law enforcement and/or intelligence [...]. The clear intent is to imply that this quote applies to material in Part 1.

However, what, exactly, was removed from the quote? A look at the actual post reveals the context.

The true, complete quote is After not seeing it in the first batch, the Slack entries in “Part 3” contain multiple, clear displays of cooperation between Twitter and federal law enforcement and/or intelligence.

This entirely and completely changes the meaning of the quote - because it clearly and explicitly demonstrates that Taibbi saw no evidence of cooperation between Twitter and federal law enforcement and/or intelligence in regards to the Hunter Biden laptop affair. In fact, it refutes the entire point of the edit.

There is no reason to remove that part of the quote unless the intent was to mislead editors and readers. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:47, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for your contribution to Wikipedia NorthBySouthBaranof :)

About the 3rd publication by journalist Taibbi. If you’re not familiar with the Twitter’s official Slack channel he is referring to. Which is titled "us2020_xfn_enforcement". Related extract at https://archive.md/0VBnD#selection-1831.0-1932.0 This Twitter's channel is not to be confused with other non-Twitter channels. I agree with you that it would not be appropriate to use non-Twitter channels, which are not authorized by Twitter for publication. In comparison, the Twitter’s channel Taibbi is refering to is appropriate for using as a source. As the message in this Twitter's channel are both approved for publication by both Dorsey and Musk, and ultimately own by Mush as present lawful owner of Twitter.

Both you and all are welcome to join the discussion about this shared Twitter’s official internal Slack channel, which is titled "us2020_xfn_enforcement". If this is of interest to you below at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Twitter_Files#Executive_Roth_In_Twitter%E2%80%99s_Slack_Channel

As for your claim that my contribution seems "intentionally-misleading". This Wikipedia document might be of interest to you about "Assume good faith" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith

I’m looking forward to your future Wikipedia contributions :)

Francewhoa (talk) 00:27, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

They (namely, some of the editors proactively contributing to the page) won't allow you to make the edit, citing Fox News as an unreliable source in [[WP::RS]] . I would rather see more (again, assuming good faith) contributors join the discussions here. As I've mentioned in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Twitter_Files#Government_involvement section, it seems to me that the possibility of having an accurate recount of what's being told via the tweets (since Twitter is the original source from which the page should be built around) is being crippled, given that the same editors aren't allowing to even quote the very journalists covering the Twitter Files. 37.163.249.30 (talk) 00:40, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Yep, this is why Wikipedia is such a joke 2A02:8109:1A3F:C906:BC4C:6A27:2C19:2325 (talk) 08:09, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

---

As for your claim that my contribution - No, the edit in question was made by the IP user 37.163.249.30, not by you. Unless you are acknowledging that the IP is you? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 01:28, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 December 2022

"The decision to take action on the content came in the midst of Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections and generated an outcry from then-President Trump and conservatives who saw it as politically motivated.[41]"

Suggested edit. "The decision to take action on the content was justified by Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections. It generated an outcry from then-President Trump and conservatives who saw it as politically motivated.[41]"

"(I)n the midst" makes it sound like it was done in real time in 2016. Clearly inaccurate and prima facie ridiculous. How did was an action in 2020 made in the midst of a 2016 event?

The literature clear reflects decisions "justified by".... Not "in the midst of".

Edit "in the midst" to "as a response to" Rev Lovejoy (talk) 00:10, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Been since changed to "in the wake of", which I think works. ◢  Ganbaruby!  (talk) 22:04, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

News18 - basic factual errors, doesn't appear to be a reliable source.

I object to the use of this article by "News18" - there are basic factual errors in the story which render it inappropriate for use.

Specifically, the article contains this line: Earlier, Musk had revealed ‘Twitter Files’ and ‘Twitter Files 2.0’, highlighting how Twitter took orders from the US President’s office to suppress the story about Hunter Biden’s laptop that was published in the New York Times - a direct quote from the story, literally all of which is factually false. There is no evidence contained in the files that "Twitter took orders from the US President's office to suppress the story about Hunter Biden's laptop" (Taibbi explicitly said he found no evidence to support that claim) and the story was not published in the NYT, but rather in the New York Post. These basic factual errors indicate that this particular article - if not the entire source - fail to meet reliable sourcing guidelines (at least as to this topic) and should not be used here. The article clearly was not fact-checked or edited appropriately. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 02:43, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it contains an incorrect name of the paper in which the story was printed. That being said, CNN-News18 is, in general, a reliable Indian news organization that is well-established—and CNN itself is generally responsible for the foreign reporting produced by the outlet. But you are right in that it's somewhat surprising that they'd screw up the name of the paper. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 02:57, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

It's not merely an incorrect name - did you ignore everything else I said before that? The article makes an outright false claim about the contents of the files. This is a significant factual error and/or misrepresentation. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:01, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Additionally, the following statement found in the article: In conclusion, Taibbi tweeted that Twitter did not receive any moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans in general is also false - a misrepresentation/stretching of the truth. What Taibbi actually says is: Examining the entire election enforcement Slack, we didn’t see one reference to moderation requests from the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, or Republicans generally. We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here. There are key, major differences of fact here - notably that Taibbi's tweet states the opposite of what the article says - he, in fact, says that he was told that Twitter did receive moderation requests from the Trump campaign, Trump White House, or Republicans generally. What he says is that he didn't see any of those requests. So it would be fair to state that Taibbi says he was told that such requests existed but that he found no evidence of them in the files he reviewed, but he explicitly did not come to a conclusion that no such requests existed. These constitute two separate and significant factual errors and/or misrepresentations of what Taibbi has reported. I submit that the article cannot be said to be a reliable and truthful accounting of the Twitter Files. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 03:09, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Another instance of News18 in our article says "When it comes to the coverup of the Hunter Biden story, the evidence is stacked against President Joe Biden, his family, and the Democrats." News18 appears to be among those who believe Biden was POTUS in Oct 2020. It's really bad.soibangla (talk) 03:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I'd agree that both of these are significant factual errors that should keep us from relying on the source for this particular article. Slywriter (talk) 03:29, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Considering their misrepresentation of the content of this article's topic, I'd agree that CNN-News18 is not a reliable source for this particular topic. Their analysis is pretty embellished to boot as well. EmilyIsTrans (talk) 05:16, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

• Yikesaroo! This website doesn't look so great. They seem to be from India, so maybe they are more reliable about things happening over there. Or maybe they are reliable for things over here, and they just assigned this article to a dweeb... and then had it edited by a dweeb... at any rate, it seems fundamentally unusable here for reasons mentioned above. jp×g 10:23, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Yeesh, I'm surprised that I had no idea how terrible this article was when I was using it to expand the paragraph for Part Three. It's gonna be difficult to find antother source, I believe, due to most of the sites reporting on Part Three being conservative sites that are considered marginally or generally unreliable. SomeNeatGiraffes (talk) 14:17, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

BLP caution

Remember that Matt Taibbi's tweets are a self-published source, and that when discussing his personal interpretations of the contents of the material (as well as his choices of what to post, what to screenshot, and what not to disclose), we must be careful to avoid making claims about other identifiable third parties based upon those tweets and documents. To do so would be a clear violation of the Biographies of Living Persons policy. Specifically, making claims about who Yoel Roth did or did not meet with, and what they may or may not have discussed, is right out until we've got reliable secondary sources exploring the matter. The internal documents screenshotted are, at best, ambiguous about what occurred. We are not a breaking news source and we can afford to wait for mainstream reliable sources to appropriately report on the issue. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 22:09, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, and emphasis on "reliable secondary sources exploring the matter," not WP:FOXNEWS which is serving as his stenographer. soibangla (talk) 22:17, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

This is important and needs to be said. As a general rule of thumb, I don't think anything in an encyclopedic voice should be sourced to tweets (aside from uncontroversial WP:ABOUTSELF cases where i.e. someone is saying what their birthday is, which is definitely not the case here). jp×g 22:39, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I've removed the content sourced to tweets. Citing (talk) 23:41, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it needs to be totally removed --after all, this is a story breaking exclusively from Twitter -- just that it needs to be cited with attribution. For example, we can say "Joe Sixpack claimed in his Tweet that the Dems were in disarray", or whatever: we just cannot say "The Dems were in disarray<ref>https://twitter.com/JoeSixpack/12345678901234567890</ref>". jp×g 03:27, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Joe Sixpack's tweet of a slack message not reliable enough for WP:BLP, and there's no need to break unverified news/interpretation as we're WP:NOTNEWS. Better to wait for reliable sourcing. Citing (talk) 03:59, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@JPxG: Please demonstrate where in WP:BLP and WP:V I can find your claimed exception to our reliable sourcing policies and guidelines for a story breaking exclusively from Twitter. Twitter posts are the literal definition of a self-published source and undergo no fact-checking or vetting process prior to publication. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:07, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

User:JPxG, you couldn't be further from policy on that. Please read my explanation of the policies involved. As Citing wrote: "Wait for reliable sourcing." -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 04:25, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@NorthBySouthBaranof: @Valjean: Can you link a diff about what specific edits to the article you are talking about? I am saying that there exist circumstances under which article content can be cited to self-published sources (like Twitter); we do not have a stone tablet from God saying "thou shalt not cite tweets". jp×g 04:43, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

There is absolutely a stone tablet from God Jimbo which says "thou shalt not cite tweets" when that content is about a living person. WP:BLPSPS is unequivocal: Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article. I created this section because tweets were being used as a source for claims and statements about Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter's Trust and Safety program. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 04:48, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Claims about Yoel Roth, or claims about what Matt said about Yoel Roth? jp×g 05:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Bro, that's a distinction without a difference. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:34, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

This is false. Claims about what someone said can be true regardless of whether the statements are true or false: do you think that this article exists because we have reliable sources claiming clairvoyance is real? jp×g 05:43, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

It is absolutely not false when it comes to material related to living persons. We are explicitly prohibited from republishing a random dipshit's accusations about someone made on Twitter, or Tumblr, or Facebook, or Medium, or any other self-published source. What part of Never use self-published sources as sources of material about a living person is difficult for you to understand? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:46, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Let me phrase it another way. Let's say we had a biographical article on you. If I wrote on Medium that "jpXg is a pedophile," should we include that in your biography? "In a Medium post, NorthBySouthBaranof said that jpXg is a pedophile." Would you find that problematic? You should, because it's flagrantly defamatory and unsupported by any reliable source, and thus has absolutely no business being in your biography. Any random dipshit can self-publish anything they want on the Internet, including falsehoods, distortions, lies, libel, misrepresentations, and the like. Such self-published material is not fact-checked or reviewed by anyone, and we have no way of knowing whether or not it's just completely-fabricated bullshit. The job of a Wikipedia editor is explicitly to filter out such nonsense, and publish in our articles only what can be verified in reliable sources, per the Verifiability policy. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 05:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

If you accused me of being a pedophile in a Twitter thread that was notable enough to have an encyclopedia article written about it, this would obviously be a notable addition to an encyclopedia article about that Twitter thread. If the accusation were high-profile enough, it could even be a notable addition to other articles: here is a quote from Elon Musk.

Vernon Unsworth, a British recreational caver who had been exploring the cave for the previous six years and played a key advisory role in the operation, criticized the submarine on CNN as amounting to nothing more than a public relations effort with no chance of success, maintaining that Musk "had no conception of what the cave passage was like" and "can stick his submarine where it hurts". Musk asserted on Twitter that the device would have worked and referred to Unsworth as a "pedo guy".[273] He deleted the tweets,[273] and apologized,[274] and he deleted his responses to critical tweets from Cher Scarlett, a software engineer, which had caused his followers to harass her.[275] In an email to BuzzFeed News, Musk later called Unsworth a "child rapist" and said that he had married a child.[276][277]

I don't know how to explain the difference between a person making a claim and the claim being true, as this is a basic property of language. I am also unclear on the current topic of disagreement: I am referring only to things that you and I have said in this discussion, not to the personal character of Matt Taibbi or Yoel Roth (I am not personally acquainted with either).

Regarding your edit summary ("You really, really, really don't understand how Wikipedia works, do you?"), I do not wish to respond. jp×g 06:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

If you accused me of being a pedophile in a Twitter thread that was notable enough to have an encyclopedia article written about it, this would obviously be a notable addition to an encyclopedia article about that Twitter thread - only if there were reliable secondary sources discussing that specific accusation. If reliable sources ignored my batshit-crazy, baseless claims about you, then so would Wikipedia.

You will note that the section you quoted includes an array of citations to reliable secondary sources. Those sources are the difference between something we can include, and something we cannot include. The point here is that we cannot include something if the only source is a person's Tweets. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 06:10, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, that's how it works... If today is really your first day learning that now you know and hopefully won't violate BLP in the future. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:28, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Like I said, I am not entirely sure what specific diff or claim is being talked about. Perhaps someone could link it to me? jp×g 21:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

JPxG, you touch on the crux of the matter: an accusation "in a Twitter thread that was notable enough to have an encyclopedia article written about it,..." How do editors know the tweet is "notable enough"? The mere existence of an article here does not bestow notability or due weight on every random tweet on that subject. Only the subject of the article has such notability, and that notability was proven by the abundant use of independent secondary RSes.

We know a tweet is notable enough for use here when independent RSes quote it. Then, and only then, do we have an opening to maybe quote the tweet. So what we're telling you, AGAIN, is to wait until secondary RSes tell us what weight to give such a quote. Without them, we don't even know if it has enough weight/notability to justify using it here.

You've been here long enough to know this stuff. What is going on? How could you not know this? Do we now have to examine all your article edits to see if you've been violating policy all along? I hope not. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:19, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to go through my contributions if you like. I am saying that, in general, it is acceptable (per WP:ABOUTSELF) to cite Matt from Twitter's tweets on the topic of "what Matt from Twitter tweeted", in an article about "what Matt from Twitter tweeted". So far, it sounds like you are claiming that there should be references or direct quotes of any tweets from him whatsoever in the entire article, which does not seem reasonable to me. I suppose there are cases in which this might not be true, which is why I have asked someone to provide a specific diff to indicate what they are talking about. jp×g 07:18, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Just the News and WP:FOXNEWS

Albertinon, by my read Just the News is characterizing Taibbi's words. Fox News is generally unreliable for politics articles, especially a high profile and highly contentious topic. We need to adhere as closely as we can to what the presenters actually said, and both these sources are dubious in that regard. I think I was being generous by only tagging them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Twitter_Files&curid=72416457&diff=1127470365&oldid=1127469263

soibangla (talk) 22:33, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Hi, I'm not sure if you wrote this after I reverted or not. To expand on the point I explained in the summary; I am looking to quote the introduction by the author who launched the release since it is extremely important for basic context, but Wikipedia policy is against original research and based on that policy we are not supposed to quote directly "that he tweeted", rather a source that says "that he tweeted". Ultimately, we only need a source, even a questionable one, that copy pasted his tweet or even screenshoted it. I used these sources as they are not deprecated, which should be sufficient as I quoted the unreliable source policy. The fact that I haven't yet come across a reliable source showing these particular tweets is not that strange, as each release is incremented and a media article picks the ones they want to quote, also they're intent on the content, not on the intent, whereas for a encyclopedic article it's paramount for context. Hope that explains it, and I'm open to discussion obviously. Albertinon (talk) 23:19, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

I am aware there's a lot of opinions in the articles, but I'm not citing that. Albertinon (talk) 23:23, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

Albertinon Well I'm not sure I follow all that, but I wish we could avoid those sources, particularly in this article. soibangla (talk) 14:56, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

It's just the tweet as it is, is all I'm saying. I agree they're best avoided but the policies are clear as to what extent the are regarded as questionable. From my pov do change source if you come across one. Albertinon (talk) 15:36, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Please comment here before removing the new sources. thanks. Albertinon (talk) 17:18, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I propose archiving this talk topic as the matter has been resolved. Albertinon (talk) 18:36, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

A reminder...

• As noted above, Fox and JTN are not to be used for this type of subject. (JTN was started by John Solomon (political commentator), so we're dealing with a very biased political agenda website like Newsmax, The Daily Caller, or Breitbart. They are simply a very poor source.)
• Tweets are not RS. They are self-published primary sources. (To make things even worse, in this case, the whole project is fraught with selection bias created by the involvement of very politically biased people like Musk and the three people he has selected to present the project. They have no interest in telling the whole story or being fair.)
• Tweets cannot be used "alone" as a source, only as presented/quoted by a RS, and then using the RS as the reference.
• Only secondary RS can be used as they indicate which of the used tweets have due weight for mention. (We are not documenting every tweet they use. Independent RS make the choice for us.)
• To avoid OR and SYNTH violations, the RS should also be discussing the tweets in the context of the Twitter Files.

There are probably more considerations (like BLP), but that's all for now. Carry on. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:05, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I appreciate your explanation. I have changed the sources. Albertinon (talk) 17:15, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. Keep up the good work. 👏 Valjean (talk) (PING me) 17:18, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Reordering article content to comply with WP:NPOV

I posit we need to reorder much of this article's content in order to comply with the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view policy. This affects almost every paragraph (!) that this article contains.

For an example, we can start right at the Lead section;

"The first installment, presented by Taibbi on December 2, 2022, showed elements of the deliberation process Twitter took regarding content moderation related to a New York Post article on the Hunter Biden laptop controversy in October 2020, as well as some other content. Taibbi tweeted that federal law enforcement gave Twitter a "general" warning about foreign hacks and leaks but that the Twitter files showed "no evidence ... of any government involvement in the laptop story." Taibbi also did not say any Democrats had asked Twitter to suppress the story."

1. "Taibbi also did not say any Democrats had asked Twitter to suppress the story." This sentence is here to counter the conclusions made by the authors or by Elon Musk. This should be in a seperate Lead paragraph that would deal with criticism/ criticism on Musk's reactions.

2. "Taibbi tweeted that federal law enforcement gave Twitter a "general" warning about foreign hacks and leaks but that the Twitter files showed 'no evidence ... of any government involvement in the laptop story.'" This is also here to counter Musk's claims, because if this comment is here to detail the content of the tweets, it would be cherrypicking which is not allowed, so we would have to detail in short all the points of the tweets that are detailed at length in the relevant subsection in Twitter files#Content.

And so on the entire article from top to bottom: the paragraphs are built in a way that counters the content either without, before, or during stating the actual content of Twitter Files. Albertinon (talk) 16:09, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

NPOV means we accurately, and without using our editorial bias, document how RS tell the story. We do not write hagiographies here or tell the story "only" from the POV of Musk, et al. That means that Musk's story is presented with the "counter" balance provided by RS. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 16:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Take this RS https://edition.cnn.com/videos/business/2022/12/03/smr-musk-taibbi-twitter-files.cnn . It "tells the story" in a clear way by first and foremost stating the facts as they are, the facts which are important in presenting the Twitter Files content to the world: by quoting them as they are. I feel @Valjean that we and many other editors have a mutual interest in ensuring the content is of the standard expected of Wikipedia by the world. Albertinon (talk) 21:32, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Which is why we need this content, but it needs reordering. I.e. What is Twitter files= content of tweets, What are the counter arguments= counter arguments. The example above demonstrates that the criticism is interwined with the content, in a paragraph that is dedicated to citing the Twitter Files releases content. Albertinon (talk) 16:23, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

We're supposed to entwine criticism with content, separating them out would be weird and stilted (not to mention a NPOV violation). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:26, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

according to that logic we can merge all reactions into the content as well. Albertinon (talk) 17:20, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree, Albertinon. If the source of a story was written by Donie O’Sullivan from CNN, there would be a basis to suspect that the editorialization accompanying the facts was biased. And if that were the case, then balancing a statement in the article with the point of view of supplementary reliable sources would be wise.

The media has now admitted to a mea culpa over having for years believed statements by high government officials and politicians that the Hunter Laptop story was a Russian-fabricated hoax. They now admit that there exists a faithful, uncorrupted, bit-by-bit image copy of the original Hunter hard drive and it contains real, non-fabricated emails.

So be patient; the next Congress will be holding many hearings—with witnesses under oath—intent on getting to the bottom of exactly who was responsible for what insofar as concealing wrongdoing and squelching the ability of conservative voices to be heard on privately owned venues used as public forums. This article will inexorably reflect the truth; it’ll just take some time as the story is increasingly uncovered. Greg L (talk) 17:00, 16 December 2022 (UTC)