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Usage of opinion articles on Epoch Times

I recently reverted a section on The Epoch Times (which itself is a deprecated source on WP) which cited three opinion articles on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's coverage of ET's peddling of conspiracy theories on COVID-19, which the editor has misrepresented as reports from Toronto Sun. Does these opinion articles constitute due weight on The Epoch Times article? [1][2][3]--PatCheng (talk) 09:02, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

You removed more than that. In the same edit you removed all of this, saying "Removed per WP:UNDUE. You cited several opinion columnists which fails WP:RS":

"On April 29, 2020 CBC reported that some Canadians was upset with Epoch Times's claim that China was behind the COVID-19. It described that the Epoch Times polarized people and advanced a conspiracy theory about the origin of the corona virus. The report noted an earlier version of the headline incorrectly stated "the Epoch Times claimed China made the virus as a bio-weapon". Since its publication, the CBC report's headline had been changed for three times. At the beginning, the headline included words 'racist and inflammatory', which was removed in the later versions of the headline.

"On May 1, 2020, an article on National Post defended the Epoch Times and argued that the corona virus did originate in China and reputable mainstream media outlets had reported the virus possibly escaped from a viral research lab in Wuhan. The article was titled with "Canada Need a better CBC". It commented that Epoch Times' suggestion that the virus could be accidentally released from a Wuhan lab does not justify CBC's hit piece and urged that Canada government should appoint serious leaders for CBC. The report said due to its extensive contacts in China, the Epoch Times has often led Western media in matters the China's Communist Party regime has tried to suppress, including the effort to cover up information about the coronavirus. The article also commented that China's Communist government quarantined Wuhan city but didn't inform WHO about the danger of COVID-19, which caused the world-wide pandemic later. Many governments in the world shared the same view with The Epoch Times that Chinese government was of "irresponsibility and dishonesty".

What's wrong with this source for instance?

And although this isn't NPOVN, I don't understand what was "undue". Doug Weller talk 09:20, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Doug Weller, we certainly should not be using Conrad Black, a convicted fraudster pardoned by Trump, writing in the National Review, as a primary source for opinion about the Epoch Times. Guy (help!) 16:02, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

[[@JzG: missed that. I agree entirely. We might use NR at times, but not that. Doug Weller talk 16:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The Conrad Black piece was in National Post not National Review. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:31, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

You don't understand how an article section detailing three opinion pieces is undue? The series of edits looks to be an improvement to the article. There is summary text in the COVID section for Some Canadians... CBC news piece. I'd argue PatCheng did not go far enough and Some columnists defended Epoch Times' coverage of COVID-19 and noted that criticism... citing the three columns is undue and should be removed. fiveby(zero) 15:38, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Now the section has "It [i.e. Epoch Times] has promoted anti-China rhetoric and conspiracy theories around the coronavirus outbreak, for example through an 8-page special edition called "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in areas of USA, Canada, and Australia. [cite to CBC.ca][cite to msn.com]" The msn.com cite is worthless, it doesn't say that anyone received that particular edition. The cbc.ca cite is dubious for saying "anti-China rhetoric" because, as the opinion articles point out, the opinion of a woman in Kelowna plus an anonymous postal employee isn't the same as a fact. The cbc.ca cite is also poor support for saying "conspiracy theories" because it was apparently influenced by their headline (PatCheng removed "The earlier headline also incorrectly stated the Epoch Times claimed China made the virus as a bioweapon." and later removed the cite which showed the headline). I think therefore that the stuff which cites the CBC story doesn't belong in the article, but it is also workable to point out what others think of the CBC story. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:14, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Peter Gulutzan, plenty of sources for this (and it happened in the UK and Ireland, too): [4], [5], [6]. What are you challenging? The fact of it being distributed or the fact of it being anti-Chinese conspiracist claptrap? Guy (help!) 10:07, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy, I do not see a way that I could make it more clear without repeating. We'll see whether other people bother to read. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:40, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The /opinion/ ones can probably be left-out, but the CBC April 29 article is a good source. Normally we don't need to include undue ET responses if independent sources don't also mention them. —PaleoNeonate – 06:46, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes - we don't need WP:MANDY-level denials not covered in third party sources. Guy (help!) 10:13, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello , I'd like share some view

1. There are also a lot of third-party media defending Epoch Times. Different views from reliable sources should be allowed in Wikipedia per WP:NPOV.-------Here are 3 examples: 1.True North: CBC article echoes Chinese Communist Party talking points、　2. CBC targets independent news outlet for 'racism' after it reports accurately on China、3. Exposing CBC's disgraceful story attacking anti-Communist China Epoch Times
2. "Weather Virus came/leak from Laboratory?" That's not "anti-Chinese conspiracy theory" but possibilityies for truth-finding. Chinese Communist Party CCP not equal to China. CCP is a Totalitarian regime , bad records on abusing biotech and genetic Engineering, persecute Chinese people, forcely harvests organs from living Chinese Prisoner of conscience for money.

1. Epochtimes's report did not say Covid-19 "a Chinese made bioweapon".' but maybe possibilities like leaking from China laboratory. and indeed, many mainstream media international or of Taiwan, even Hong Kong(also Pro-Beijing Madia) , also reported several possibilities. Taiwanese and Hongkongner are also Chinese people, That's irrelevant to anti-Chinese conspiracy.
2. Besides many mainstream media reported about Covid-19 and Wuhan laboratory, and wheather CCP have military biotech project.for example:
   1. 2020-6-14 Canadian scientist sent deadly viruses to Wuhan lab months before RCMP asked to investigate:Amir Attaran, a law professor and epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa said "It is suspicious. It is alarming. It is potentially life-threatening," said "We have a researcher who was removed by the RCMP from the highest security laboratory that Canada has for reasons that government is unwilling to disclose. The intelligence remains secret. But what we know is that before she was removed, she sent one of the deadliest viruses on Earth, and multiple varieties of it to maximize the genetic diversity and maximize what experimenters in China could do with it, to a laboratory in China that does dangerous gain of function experiments. And that has links to the Chinese military."
   2. 2020-06-04_Ex-head of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove says coronavirus 'is man-made' and was 'released by accident' - after seeing 'important' scientific report
   3. Taiwan's mainstream Central News Agency(a public Media owned by all people):2020-04-25_俄專家支持病毒人造論 稱中國科學家做了瘋狂事Russian experts support the theory of virus artificiality, claiming that Chinese scientists did crazy things
   4. Hong Kong's mainstream pro-Beijing Media report:2020-06-09_挪威研究稱新冠病毒部分人工製造 獲前英情報主管撐Norwegian research says part of Covid-19virus artificially , this view supported by former British intelligence director
   5. more example can be listed, also many chinese-language media reported, even pro-Beijing media in Taiwan and Hong Kong also reported some. Many expert keep the possibilities,also the USA and UK Government, and ex-vicehead(lead fight 2003 SARS) of Taiwan's DOH(Department of Health).
   6. Some media reported that France expert or China ex-officer concerned about wheather ChineseCommunistParty use the P4-laboratory for what? for risky research? for bioweapon? Many assumptions and doubts comes form--- CCP's opaque and deny international and WHO expert a field investigation in china. Wetrace (talk) 05:03, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

      IDK about the others but WP:DAILYMAIL is not an acceptable source. buidhe 06:45, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

1. 1. Thank you. Sources above not including DailyMail. In fact, many Taiwan Mainstream reported about Virus possibilities with laboratory. Wetrace (talk) 11:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Wetrace, those don't come across as anything close to the quality of sources that criticise Epoch Times. It's also pretty clear why a popular Taiwanese site would support the Epoch Times' anti-CPC agenda. Guy (help!) 15:25, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

All of the sources Wetrace cited are simply speculating, and there is no consensus regarding the addition of such items. There are other sources which dispute the lab leakage claims. [7][8]. Also in this reverted edit [9] Wetrace promoted a fringe theory about Obamagate not being a conspiracy theory, citing an opinon article from National Review--PatCheng (talk) 11:34, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

Hello, PatCheng,

1. How Virus spread? It can be discussion, not conspiracy. And indeed Chinese Communist Party's history was full of CCP's agenda and conspiracy against people and demoncracy, human rights.
2. It's not proper that your accusation of so-called "promote". One thing with several aspect to discussion, and many also from reliable sources. Wetrace (talk) 14:57, 20 June 2020 (UTC)

• Absolutely unreliable Why hasn't this been deprecated and blacklisted? Peddling conspiracy non-sense and the like is certainly not encouraging, and the entry at WP:RSP is quite unequivocal. What do sources do defend is that the virus originated in China (Bravo, Cpt. Obvious!), not the conspiracy theories about it. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:24, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources RfC at Falun Gong

There is an ongoing RfC about reliable sourcing and the phrase "new religious movement" over at Talk:Falun_Gong#RfC_on_describing_Falun_Gong_as_a_new_religious_movement. :bloodofox: (talk) 21:04, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Worldometers.info

Interesting CNN article about Worldometers ( https://www.worldometers.info/ ):

• The Covid-19 pandemic has catapulted one mysterious data website to prominence, sowing confusion in international rankings

Cited twice on COVID-19 pandemic, Twice on COVID-19 pandemic by country and territory, six times on COVID-19 pandemic in Iraq, twelve times on Pandemic, and 219 times on all Wikipedia pages. Is it a reliable source? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

No, does not meet the standard of RS due to shady and obscure practices and having a reputation for INaccuracy rather than accuracy. buidhe 03:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

PS it was already deprecated at WP:COVID-19: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_COVID-19/Archive_6#Not_using_Worldometer_as_a_source_in_all_COVID-19_related_pages and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject COVID-19/Current consensus ("Refrain from using Worldometer (worldometers.info) as a source due to common errors being observed as noted on

Wikipedia:WikiProject COVID-19/Case Count Task Force#Common errors. Link 1, Link 2") buidhe 05:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, so *this* was the media inquiry that both I and MarioGom were contacted for! Personally I was contacted via Reddit while MarioGom was contacted via email. As far as I know, he responded while I didn't.

Thanks for leaving a talk page message notifying me about this, but I'm afraid that I can't participate further in this discussion beyond saying not to use WOMC on COVID–19 articles/templates **only**. Deepest apologies. Cheers, u|RayDeeUx (contribs | talk page) 19:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Ping User:RayDeeUx, User:MarioGom, User:Doc James. The CNN reporter should be told about the current discussion. You can send the contact info to me here; I won't mention your name to any reporter. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:15, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, now hang on a moment–why should we get CNN reporter(s) involved? They only know about this WOMC situation because of the thread mentioned at WP:WORLDOMETER. Not to offend them, but they don't know as much about the situation as we do. Cheers, u|RayDeeUx (contribs | talk page) 23:57, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Basic politeness. If a reporter reports on something (The Covid-19 pages deprecating Worldometers but only on those pages) and the situation changes drastically (RSNB deprecating Worldometers on all Wikipedia pages) it is polite to let them know in case they are working on a followup article. I wasn't expecting any input from CNN here. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:11, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

---

I would like to get some more input here at RSNB to supplement the WP:LOCALCON noted above.

I don't think it is a good source, but if I start removing citations, someone is sure to quote [ https://www.worldometers.info/about/ ]:

"Trusted Authority

Worldometer was voted as one of the best free reference websites by the American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and largest library association in the world.

Worldometer is a provider of global COVID-19 statistics for many caring people around the world. Our data is also trusted and used by the " UK Government, Johns Hopkins CSSE, the Government of Thailand, the Government of Pakistan, the Government of Sri Lanka, Government of Vietnam, Financial Times, The New York Times, Business Insider, BBC, and many others. :Over the past 15 years, our statistics have been requested by, and provided to: Oxford University Press, Wiley, Pearson, CERN, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), The Atlantic, BBC, Milton J. Rubenstein Museum of Science & Technology, Science Museum of Virginia, Morgan Stanley, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Dell, Kaspersky, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon Alexa, Google Translate, the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), the U2 concert, and many others.

Worldometer is cited as a source in over 10,000 published books and in more than 6,000 professional journal articles."

Compare the above advertising claims with the CNN article:

• "Some governments and respected institutions have chosen to trust a source about which little is known."
• "It’s not clear whether the company has paid staff vetting its data for accuracy or whether it relies solely on automation and crowdsourcing. "
• "Edouard Mathieu, the data manager for Our World in Data (OWID), an independent statistics website headquartered at Oxford University, [wtote} 'Their main focus seems to be having the latest number wherever it comes from, whether it’s reliable or not, whether it’s well-sourced or not,” he said. “We think people should be wary, especially media, policy-makers and decision-makers. This data is not as accurate as they think it is.' "
• "Visitors can report new Covid-19 numbers and data sources to the website – no name or email address required."

In my opinion, that last quote gives us our answer:

• Worldometers.info is unreliable and all citation to it should be removed. Any claim made in an otherwise-reliable source that lists Worldometers as the source should also be considered to be unreliable.

Thoughts? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:06, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• I would agree with this. However, many more people participated in the COVID-19 discussions, so that consensus is stronger than what you're likely to get here. buidhe 16:07, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• True, but I cannot apply that WP:LOCALCON decision anywhere other than on the Covod-19 pages. If you look at

[ https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Search&limit=500&offset=0&ns0=1&search=Worldometers ]

You will see that the source is used on a couple of hundred pages. Someone should not be able to anonymously post made-up numbers to worldometers.info and have those numbers appear on Wikipedia. There are 65,536 people who agree with me on this. (Source: worldometers.info) --Guy Macon (talk) 18:58, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• The quotes from the CNN article above are very concerning. If it's true that user-submitted numbers show up on the site without oversight, then it's absolutely not reliable. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 20:22, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with Sdkb. Worrisome. I would err on the side of caution and consider this unreliable until we can confirm they have some kind of process and that this is not just user reported approximations (as it seems to be) + an aggregation of other sources (let's use those directly then). -- {{u|Gtoffoletto}}  ^talk 09:53, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Unless something has changed in the past month or so, I recall that we stopped using WorldOMeters as a source because some editors on here found that it was double-counting some cases which increased the number of reported cases beyond what it actually was. I haven't kept up much with the data aggregating sites but I believe we're still using 1point3acres? —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 23:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

..."We" meaning "the Covid-19 pages". Now the discussion is whether "we" as in "all of Wikipedia" should stop using WorldOMeters as a source. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:14, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Keeping track of coronavirus stats is only a part of WorldOMeters. Have other things like those noted on the live counters been found to be inaccurate? They list the sources used on this page. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 00:42, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

We don't have to play Whac-A-Mole with every different kind of statistic they provide. Unreliable is unreliable. Do they have a reputation for accuracy? No. Do they have a history of printing corrections and retractions? No. Do we know anything about them other than that their HQ is a private home? Not really. We have a reliable source that says "Their main focus seems to be having the latest number wherever it comes from, whether it’s reliable or not, whether it’s well-sourced or not. We think people should be wary, especially media, policy-makers and decision-makers. This data is not as accurate as they think it is".

Also, that's just too many statistics for a company being run out of a private home to verify.

If WorldOMeters provides a statistic and gives a source, we should check to see if that source contains the information WorldOMeters says it does, and if it does we should use that source. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:07, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• I did some poking around in probably April and decided Worldometers were aggregating data and drawing conclusions in ways that were almost certain to produce incorrect results except by sheer luck. Unless things have changed since then, no, unreliable. —valereee (talk) 11:40, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable per the issues raised by CNN (and we would not be needing this discussion at all if our COVID coverage complied with Wikipedia’s sourcing guidelines for biohealth content and Wikipedia’s policy that it is an encyclopedia, not a newspaper, and got out of the business of tracking newsy numbers). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:38, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC: The Red Pill Movie

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Attribution needed for opinions. Most users agree that the The Red Pill Movie is not reliable on its own, described as a documentary film that is not subject to any quality or reliability standards with respect to the information presented. Users in support of its reliability did not provide clear examples to support the source based on Wikipedia guidelines.--ReyHahn (talk) 09:38, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

---

Is The Red Pill (2016), directed by Cassie Jaye, a reliable source for subjects related to the manosphere or the men's rights movement? — Newslinger talk 00:19, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

There's a discussion going on about this film, The Red Pill at the Manosphere article. I think the film is one sided, dishonest and begging the question. Having shared my opinion of the film, I'd like to know what other editors think, is this a reliable source for the manosphere or men's rights movement articles? Official site here: [10] Reviews here: [11] Cheers Bacondrum (talk) 23:55, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Absolutely not except for attributed opinion of people who are filmed. We should avoid citing films anyway as they are difficult to verify. buidhe 00:16, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable per my comments at the manosphere talk page. To repeat them here, the film been criticized for lack of accuracy: From the outset, Jaye’s film is tilted in favor of the MRAs she interviews and lacks a coherent argument, not due to her own internal conflict but because the film is built on a fundamental misunderstanding of the relevant terms, including “rights,” “patriarchy” and “feminism.” ([12]), and there is no indication it meets requirements at WP:RS that it be recorded then broadcast, distributed, or archived by a reputable party. GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:45, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Well I don't think that's a fair counter argument to say the doc 'misunderstand the terms'...it presents a challenge to the meaning of those terms, yes, but a debate cant really be dismissed as misunderstanding if the arguments are coherent enough. I'd say enough factual basis supports the doc to say it has merit — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.150.142 (talk) 02:06, 11 June 2020 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that 76.109.150.142 (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. (diff)

  I am simply presenting one (of quite a few) sources that have taken issue with the accuracy of the film; it is not my criticism. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:10, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Thae LA Times article is a film review not an academic critique. Moreover the author doesn't seem to understand the issues from a factual view. In any case if it's a contest about what sources are reliable we certainly cannot rely on this opinion piece. Tony999 (talk) 07:42, 13 June 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that Tony999 (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion.

  I've presented it as just one example of many criticisms of this film's lack of factual accuracy (others found at The Red Pill#Critical response or a quick Google search). However I'm not sure I understand your objection—the film is certainly not an academic work, so why may only academic sources criticize it? GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:17, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable I'm familiar with the documentary mostly due to the author's TED talk. I suspect there is a lot of good information in it. However, I think it counts as basically self published. As such it can't be treated as a RS. A third party RS can reference it if it makes an important point and that would possibly make it DUE for inclusion but by itself, not a RS. Springee (talk) 00:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
• reliable The film interviews multiple feminists and doesn't treat them any differently to the MRAs, so it's hard to say it's biased. If anything, she started off being very biased against the MRAs by her own admission. We should not trust sources attacking the film for biased reasons. For example, The LA Times is known to be a very feminist outlet - so of course it would object to feminism being criticised. The point of the film is to actually investigate the movement - something very few people seem to do. If we are going to discard the film, then we also need to discard all other opinion pieces about the movement. TiggyTheTerrible (talk) 14:48, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Can you expand on how the film actually meets the policy requirements at WP:RS? GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:34, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Certainly. The film is published by a reputable mass-media cohttps://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard&action=edit&section=42mpany known as Gravitas Ventures, which is a part of Red Arrow Studios. It has also been vouched for by The Daily Telegraph, and Heat Street; the latter of which wrote an interesting piece on the reaction to the film. It may challenge the ideology of some commentators, but it is a valid and valuable source regarding what MRAs believe; it should be treated as a character study on the movement, at the very least. Especially since we now know that several of its most famous detractors didn't actually watch it before attacking it. TiggyTheTerrible (talk) 16:54, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

We have no evidence that documentaries from Gravitas should be regarded as reliable sources. This film appears to be more entertainment than journalism, and certainly not scholarly in any way. --Orange Mike | Talk 16:56, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Reliable sources on these men's movements seem sparse, if I'm honest. Major news outlets seem to conflate the names of entirely different groups - as if they were basically factions of the same thing, or all in it together. As far as sources go, this is actually the most accurate one I've ever seen outside of that article I linked above. TiggyTheTerrible (talk) 18:31, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Agreed with Orangemike on the lack of support for Gravitas being a publisher that make its documentaries RSes. As for the sparsity of sourcing that you're claiming, that's absolutely not the case. I just listed off for you eight separate, peer-reviewed papers that are currently in use at the manosphere article, and that's not even counting the book sources. I added most of those myself, and I only have access to two academic databases; there are far more out there that others who have broader access could add. We absolutely do not need to resort to poor quality documentaries due to lack of other quality sourcing; there is plenty. You have claimed that this is "actually the most accurate [source] you've seen", which seems to mean it fits your own opinions on the MRM, not that it in any way meets the requirements of WP:RS. You have also just discounted one of the academic sources as "biased" because it does not match your own definition of the MRM, despite it being a peer-reviewed paper by a professor of sociology. I'm not sure you are in a good position to be determining the reliability of sources in this topic area at all. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:28, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, of your eight peer-reviewed papers only two are relevant and the only one I was able to read featured multiple misconceptions and ideological statements about men's rights groups and what they want. This should not be surprising as these are Gender Studies journals you linked to - which are absolutely notorious for the poor quality of their work. The whole field has been disenfranchised in at least one country because of it. There was a prank a little while ago where some academics managed to get prominent Gender Studies journals to print Mein Kamph by changing 'Jews' to 'men' and 'Aryans' to 'women'. TiggyTheTerrible (talk) 22:23, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

You wrote on the manosphere talk page that "Only two of those even mention the men's rights movement", which I assume is what you're referring to here when you mention only two of the journals being relevant. I'll copy what I said there: Well, this article is about the manosphere, not just the men's rights movement. Some of these sources focus on the MRM, some on other manosphere groups, and some on the manosphere as a whole. I'm not sure where your claim that only two of these sources mention the MRM is coming from, unless you're only reading the titles—I'm pretty sure that every single one of these papers discusses the MRM in some capacity.

If you really want to start a discussion that gender studies journals are wholly unreliable, you can start another discussion here at WP:RSN; I look forward to replying there to that absurd claim. Otherwise we will continue to follow WP:SCHOLARSHIP. I will note that the journal you're referring to with your mention of the Grievance studies affair is not among the academic sources used in this article. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Could you please list what information that is being considered for inclusion if this is accepted as an RS in this situation? Arkon (talk) 19:51, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Information included is: who the men's rights movement are, the issues they are campaigning about, and the opposition they face. It's a good basic intro to what they say. TiggyTheTerrible (talk) 22:23, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Too vague for me to give a good opinion. Arkon (talk) 23:58, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

• I think the film is fine for attributed opinions and views of the films subjects, per WP:RSSELF and WP:ABOUTSELF, as long as those claims are not contentious. As far as I can see from the talkpage, the usage seems to be hypothetical. Can specific examples of sentences of where you would like to use the source be given? Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:42, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  As TiggyTheTerrible has said above, I believe they wish to reframe the entire article and the definitions of the "manosphere", "men's rights movement", etc. based on that documentary (which would contravene every other source in the article). This is what they did in their first edit to the page: [13]. As of yet TiggyTheTerrible has not been able to find a reliable source supporting their point of view, and so is trying to get this documentary accepted as a reliable source to rebut the much higher-quality sources used in the article's current form. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:05, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

  Not in Wikivoice, no. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:24, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  (Conversation about the scholarly sources moved to Talk:Manosphere#Scholarly sources. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:36, 11 June 2020 (UTC))

• Reliable Personally I think the documentary is rather surprisingly well done; it DID make me see the men's rights sphere in a different light- I still do think there are many flaws to be said, but I think the arguments were decent enough and well enough sourced. I watched it about a year ago, I remember jumping on google (lol and wiki) to fact check some of the things presented, and was surprised to see how much was true. I don't think it's all that one sided, nor dishonest. As for 'begging the question, I wouldn't agree...it used a lot of statistics and references to laws/government programs...one might disagree with the interpretation, but that's hardly assuming the truth of the conclusion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.109.150.142 (talk) 01:53, 11 June 2020 (UTC)— Note: An editor has expressed a concern that 76.109.150.142 (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. (diff)
• Attribute, do not use as proposed. It is certainly not more reliable than scholarly sources, and should 100% not be used for what TiggyTheTerrible is proposing, but it’s not plain wrong to the degree that it can not be used at all. Devonian Wombat (talk) 04:37, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

• Reliable I don't understand why this is even up for debate? The documentary may present points of view that you and I may disagree with but it does not misrepresent anything. We may also both disagree with many Trans-Exclusive Radfems but we won't say that their documentaries are "unreliable" for citation in articles about Radical Feminism. hendrixski (talk) 04:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC) — Note: An editor has expressed a concern that hendrixski (talk • contribs) has been canvassed to this discussion. (diff)

• Comment Is there canvassing happening here? It's pretty odd for an IP with no other edits (76.109.150.142) and an editor who's not edited in a year (and only edited six times in the past decade) and never previously commented at RSN or at Talk:Manosphere (Hendrixski) to suddenly show up here and argue that the documentary is a reliable source. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:05, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  Update: just found that a canvassing request was posted on Reddit: "The Red Pill Movie is up for review as a source. Is it reliable? Why don't you tell them (politely)" GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

  I've upgraded this discussion to an RfC to request opinions from a broader section of the community. — Newslinger talk 00:19, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable except for quotes: It's a documentary that interviews many people relevant to the topic, and so it's reliable as a source for the views of the people in it. However, it's also a documentary by one person who we have no reason to expect any particular editorial rigor from. She directed it, she's the presenter, she appears to own the production company, and it was funded on Kickstarter so she doesn't even really have any pressure to fact-check it from funders. Regardless of any slant, that alone makes it not a reliable source: it's about as reliable as any YouTube video. Loki (talk) 03:48, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable except for quotes, as above. This is basically a self published source - 'Gravitas Ventures' is a film distributor, not a publisher, and would not have filled any kind of fact checking or editing role. - MrOllie (talk) 12:24, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable - The existence of the film is significant, barely, but this isn't the same thing as being reliable. Anything the movie says which is important, quote or not, can be better supported by more reliable sources. Grayfell (talk) 01:36, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

• Not reliable - laughably unreliable, I wouldn't even use it for statements about its own content unless that particular content was noteworthy by inclusion in an RS, in which case use that. AsLokiTheLiar says, this is on the level of a self-published YouTube video with production values - David Gerard (talk) 16:44, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
• Not reliable as a self-published source by someone who is not recognized as a subject-matter expert. Quotes from the film can be usable as opinion if covered by a third-party RS – basically per Springee. (Ironically, watching the film pushed me more towards feminism than vice versa, but that's beside the point.) feminist | freedom isn't free 17:46, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
• Not reliable of course not, there are much better available sources including scholarly ones. If an independent source considered more reliable mentions it in a particular context, it could be used to mention it. —PaleoNeonate – 07:14, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
• Not reliable - can use more reliable sources that talk about the film to the extent including mention of the film makes sense. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 14:30, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
• Not reliable seems about right here. Quite aside from issues of accuracy, there is an inherent tension between narrative pace and factual nuance. I hope we don't cite Michael Moore films either. Guy (help!) 15:46, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Closure challenge

I have challenged the closure of this RfC at User talk:ReyHahn § Your closure of WP:RSN#RfC: The Red Pill Movie. — Newslinger talk 08:03, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

ReyHahn has amended the closing statement in Special:Diff/964053113 in response to my challenge. Thank you, ReyHahn. — Newslinger talk 09:42, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

The Life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., by Samuel Drew

Source: The Life of the Rev. Thomas Coke, LL.D., by Samuel Drew, published 1818 by J. Soule and T. Mason for the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States Link: https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Life_of_the_Rev_T_Coke_with_an_abstr/FjRfAAAAcAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA138 Article: George Washington and slavery

Seeking opinions on whether this work constitutes a reliable source generally on the subject of George Washington and slavery. My contention is that it fails pretty much all of the criteria in WP:IRS. It is near contemporaneous, having been published only 19 years after the death of Washington. It is dubious for having been written by a Methodist about a Methodist and for the Methodist Church, on the subject of slavery in the US when slavery was still legal and subject to significant opposition by the Methodists. Also of relevance is the fact that George Washington and slavery is currently a featured article, for which there is an expectation that sources should be high quality, per WP:WIAFA 1c. Thank you.Factotem (talk) 10:45, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I would say given its age it is dubious as a source for anything (after all if its worthy of inclusion why have not more modern sources taken it up?).Slatersteven (talk) 10:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

I have removed it.[14] This source by Samuel Drew seems fine to me, but it's superfluous, and we don't need unnecessary controversy and drama here. Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:06, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Erroneous information posted

Hello, what do you do when deliberately misleading information is published about a living person? I have tried to edit, but been blocked. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paulsmith996 (talk • contribs)

I will reply on your talk page.Slatersteven (talk) 19:04, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Pride.com

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There was a discussion back in January on the talk page of the article for ContraPoints, in which the reliability of Pride.com was briefly discussed. In the discussion, I asserted that the reliability of the website should probably be taken on a case-by-case basis. The site is said to prominently feature user-submitted content, but it also has an editorial director, and features content by established figures. For example, Jessie Earl, who has also written for The Advocate, has written articles for Pride.com. Fellow editor Bilorv agreed that the Pride.com article used on the ContraPoints page was an acceptable source in that case. However, I'd like more editors to weigh in, so perhaps a consensus regarding the site's status as generally reliable, generally unreliable, or marginally reliable could be listed at WP:RSP. This is my first time starting a discussion on this noticeboard, so I hope I'm doing this correctly. —Matthew - (talk) 13:28, 21 June 2020 (UTC) 16:39, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

• Marginally reliable or generally unreliable per discussion below, pending further information. Similar to Buzzfeed in style, which is categorised as "marginally reliable" on RSP. Potentially usable when the article in question is authored by a journalist known for their work at respectable publications. — Bilorv (talk) 18:46, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
• Whatever Buzzfeed is - see Discussion section for explanation. Loki (talk) 02:45, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
• Generally reliable on case by case basis. Loads of accomplished LGBTQ writers and editors thrown out of work as the news publishing world has contracted now submit independent articles exactly in this way. The standards have not dropped as much as the paychecks have disappeared. Gleeanon409 (talk) 01:46, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

@MatthewHoobin: Do you know what the process of having an article published on Pride.com involves? Do all articles have to be reviewed by an editor before being published, or can people just post content on demand, similar to Medium.com? Are there published editorial guidelines? Kaldari (talk) 19:28, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping, Matthew. For this to be a formal RfC, I think you need a template at the top of the section with the right category: {{rfc|media}}. You might want to move these comments into a discussion subsection after adding that. As for the source, I'm not even sure Pride.com has an about page. Learning more about its editorial policies would be good, but my inkling is that it's like Buzzfeed, where our consensus is "yellow" and begins Editors find the quality of BuzzFeed articles to be highly inconsistent. I think articles are only usable when written by a journalist known for writing for other respectable sources. A lot of their content wouldn't be usable by WP:NOTNEWS, yet more would be better sourced elsewhere and that leaves its main uses as reviews of TV/film/whatever made by significant critics and special cases, so far as I can see. — Bilorv (talk) 22:08, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Pride.com does seem reminiscent of Buzzfeed in its presentation. I haven't been able to find an About page on the website either. I've tried reaching out to Here Media, the company that owns Pride.com, via email to ask if they have any publicly available editorial guidelines. Hopefully they do and we just haven't been able to find them. The key term there is "publicly available" or "published", because if I get an email response just telling me about their editorial guidelines without providing me with any links, that won't be much help. —Matthew - (talk) 17:23, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

If you look in the sidebars, the Advocate is part of the same publishing company as Pride.com: Pride Publishing Inc. That company appears to be these people. That would normally lead me to the conclusion that the editorial policies are the same (and since the Advocate is reliable, so is Pride.com). However, if we take a look at the page describing all their "brands", the Advocate and Pride.com are described in very different language. Overall, I think I'd agree to categorize them the same as Buzzfeed based on how they're described there. Loki (talk) 02:45, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies. — Newslinger talk 01:07, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add the publisher Wiley to the CITEWATCH once and for all

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiley_(publisher)#Controversies — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.213.64.35 (talk • contribs)

• The linked section does not remotely support this action. (☎, ⛏️) Buidhe 09:22, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

https://raseef22.com/

I am not a heavy editor so apologises if this in the wrong place. I am trying to assess the reliable of this site as a source? I notice in one article it is used on - googling it leads to people discussing getting people to write article specifically so they can be used for sources on wikipedia. Is it an actual news source or more of a blog? --Cameron Scott (talk) 14:51, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Forbes.com contributor for Trollz (song)

Is "6ix9ine’s Persecution Complex Surrounding ‘TROLLZ’ Is Embarrassing—And Hypocritical" by Forbes.com contributor Bryan Rolli a reliable source for the Trollz (song) article? The article is the sole citation for the following text:

Following its release, Forbes's Bryan Rolli criticized 6ix9ine's "desperate attempts to inflate" sales, noticing "there are currently four different versions of the song available for download on iTunes (the original, an alternate edition, and clean versions of both), all discounted to 69 cents. 6ix9ine and Minaj are both selling a slew of music and merchandise bundles, including signed "TROLLZ" CDs, vinyl and hoodies". He also pointed out the three music videos: the official video and the lyric videos for both the original and alternate editions. Rolli concluded that 6ix9ine "exemplifies [the] willingness to forgive abusers because they're marketable".

— Newslinger talk 11:26, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

• Unreliable. As concluded in 11 previous discussions, Forbes.com non-staff contributors are the equivalent of self-published sources because they are not subject to sufficient editorial oversight. This lack of editorial oversight has been well-documented by the Columbia Journalism Review, the Poynter Institute, BuzzFeed News (RSP entry), and The Outline. For this particular case, Bryan Rolli is a non-notable freelance journalist that does not claim to have any academic credentials in the field of music (or music business), and is not a subject-matter expert. This case is exacerbated by the fact that the text in question includes claims regarding living people, which puts the text in violation of WP:BLPSPS. Use a reliable source, instead. — Newslinger talk 11:26, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable Unless the contributor themselves is deemed to be an appropriate expert in their field, we have determined all Forbes contributors to be inheriently unreliable for facts. --Masem (t) 16:57, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Non notable opinion and unreliable per Newslinger Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:29, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable Forbes contributors are essentially bloggers so they would need to be an expert in the relevant topic to be considered, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 00:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Business Insider on Falun Gong's Dragon Springs Compound in New York: Reliable Source?

Quick question: Does this source fall within the parameters of WP:RS?

• Pasley, James. 2019. "Inside Dragon Springs, the high-security compound in upstate New York that's home to a 'cult' tyrannized by China". Business Insider. September 9, 2019. Online.

I'm currently putting together a section for English Wikipedia's Falun Gong article on the group's headquarters, a compound referred to as Dragon Springs in Deer Park, New York. I'm not sure what the status is on Business Insider at this time. Thanks! :bloodofox: (talk) 21:40, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

While I am still curious about the status of Business Insider for these reports, I have added a section using clearly RS sources here: [15]. :bloodofox: (talk) 22:23, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

As is typical for this article, these additions were promptly scrubbed. The article seriously needs more eyes. :bloodofox: (talk) 01:07, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

An article written by creationists in what might be an RS

The text in question is "A small, Middle Bronze III-Late Bronze Age I fortress with a four-chambered, north-facing gate was unearthed at the site bearing evidence of destruction by fire." in Ai (Canaan). All three authors are creationists and part of the Associates for Biblical Research.[16] Stripling's academic affiliation is with the Bible Seminary.[17] accredited by the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools a creation of the Institute for Creation Research. Byers is a Dean at Trinity Southwest University which is unaccredited. We have an article on Bryant Wood. Doug Weller talk 17:46, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Not sure being a creationist disqualifies you in other fields of endeavour. As its a reputable journal and as this must have gone through the usual peer review usable with attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 17:59, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Slatersteven, it absolutely disqualifies you in any area of history beyond about 1,000 years ago. Guy (help!) 22:08, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

References

Since the subject is known as a young earth creationist, that generally makes publications even in peer-reviewed journals subject in terms of WP:FRINGE. That happens all the time in other fringe subject when a fringe scientist manages to get something published, often in low quality or "friendly" journals. Seralini affair comes to mind in the GMO subject, and I'm sure someone more versed in climate change denial could find similar examples. In those cases, it's generally considered best to avoid sources from that person unless corroborated by the largely scholarly community.

Looking at Ai_(Canaan)#Khirbet_el-Maqatir where the text is, I'd probably remove the quoted text with that in mind. I don't see anything the authors doing to easily overcome WP:DUE to be mentioned in the article, especially considering the first paragraph Bryant Wood has proposed Khirbet el-Maqatir, but this has not gained wide acceptance.. Kingofaces43 (talk) 18:02, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The dig at Khirbet el-Maqatir was licensed by the Israel Antiquities Authority, and the results were published in a respected, peer-reviewed archaeological journal. Regardless of the beliefs of the archaeologists involved, the check-and-balance of these two factors should be enough to let the sentence stand. As the entry originally read, there was very little to describe what was discovered at the site. The sentence that was added brought clarity using a legitimate citation.Wrighteward (talk) 19:34, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The bigger issue here is that this appears to be fresh results which haven't undergone the scrutiny of more time. If other archaeologists come out and say, "yes, we agree," then I'd be more willing to include this. There is too much in WP of people shoving the latest hot results into an article, only to have them not pan out and there being a struggle to fix that later. Mangoe (talk) 19:43, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm not convinced time is the bigger issue. But for the sake of argument, what would you recommend the minimum amount of time WP editors wait from when an article is published in a peer-reviewed journal until it is able to be used as a citation?Wrighteward (talk) 20:06, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Time in this sense would mean until it is cited by secondary sources in appropriate context for whatever the content is. That's normally how primary scientific sources are handled. That could mean a few months, or it could mean never. Kingofaces43 (talk) 20:10, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

At this edit I have copyedited this. The archaeological report appears to be acceptable and the result of many years' work, so I have left in a very brief report of its findings. I have attributed the speculation to its source - an independent report by two of the same authors, for which they give the authority of Bryant Wood's Associates for Biblical Research. This I would regard as reliable only for its own opinions, which is how I've used it. I hope this helps. Richard Keatinge (talk) 20:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I don't think time is a factor since this source isn't being used to assert that the article's hypothesis is true. While normally Wood and his associates would not be considered to produce RS, it is used in this article in more of an about-self fashion. In other words, using the Judea and Samaria Research Studies article by them to state that they have made a claim is consonant with our sourcing policies. It's equivalent to using a blog post by some-one to characterize that person's claims. It is not being used to suggest that this is a correct identification and the surrounding context makes it clear that this is an idiosyncratic belief. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:20, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

The title phrase "might be an RS" intrigued me, so I spent a small amount of time digging (Do you get that one? Archaeology? Digging? You're welcome.) "Judea and Samaria Research Studies" (JSRS) seems to me a minor platform for, as the journal claims, "original research dealing primarily with the regions of Judea and Samaria in the past and present." Only two issues are produced each year. JSRS appears to function largely as an in-house mechanism for faculty based at Ariel University (the publisher) or Bar Ilan University to publish their work: six out of seven of the senior editors and editorial board are based at those two institutions, and the few articles in English are dominated by authors from those same places. Based on the small sample size of articles available to me, the journal seems to be reliable. That said, the unquestionable in-house nature of the editorial staff, and by extension I assume the pool of peer reviewers, likely makes the journal an attractive target for "outsiders" with pseudoscientific agendas to push. I would not be surprised if the paper in question is ultimately retracted, but until that happens I believe we should cautiously treat it as a reliable, primary source. (PS - If anyone reading this is looking for something to do, several of the JSRS editorial board members have enWiki pages that, per WP:NOTCV, require something between substantial and massive trimming). JoJo Anthrax (talk) 20:48, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

There are two sources here, the fringe claim is from the unpublished The " Problem " of Ai in Joshua 7–8 and is of course unusable. The published work Excavations at Khirbet el-Maqatir: the 2009–2011 Seasons does not discuss Ai, Israelites or Joshua. Removing the section as the section content is from the unpublished work. fiveby(zero) 21:01, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Sticking to the issue of reliability, a sober account of fourteen years of perfectly mainstream archaeological techniques and findings is, I would suggest a usable primary source. The authors' motivation for doing all this work may be fringe, but that doesn't invalidate their hard factual findings. Perhaps it would be suitable for our currently non-existent article on Khirbet el-Maqatir? The fringe claim is indeed usable only for the fact that the fringe claim is being made. Separately, the whole thing may or may not be sufficiently notable to mention in mainspace, but that's a debate best left to the article's talk page. Richard Keatinge (talk) 21:18, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Richard Keatinge, This is like Thompson, Rivara and Thompson writing an article on the history of skull fractures. It might be correct, but you'd have to check every line for copncealed payload. Guy (help!) 22:17, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

With that in mind, this definitely a case where no one should be trying hard to reach for a primary source simply because it exists. Kingofaces43 (talk) 01:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Since the article was published in a peer-reviewed journal of an internationally recognized university, it meets rs. Peer review means that experts have reviewed the article and determined that among other things that they are confident in its factual accuracy. They not us determine whether the fact that the authors are creationists makes the article reliable. Sir Isaac Newton was an enthusiastic alchemist, which is a pseudoscience. If he wrote today, chances are that peer-reviewed journals would publish his articles about physics because they would meet the required standards.

I agree somewhat with Kingofaces43 though. We should generally avoid obscure primary sources, regardless of whether they meet rs. but that comes under REDFLAG and WEIGHT. If that's the only place that has published this information, it does not belong in the article.

TFD (talk) 03:10, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I am not sure you understand the issue. There are two sources involved: one, published describes the works at Khirbet el-Maqatir. It makes no claim of any connection to Ai (Canaan). Another, unpublished and fringe article by the same authors makes the connection. If the published work is usable on WP at all, it can't be used to bolster the fringe claims or describe structures of located at Ai, it does not make any claim that Khirbet el-Maqatir is related to Ai. fiveby(zero) 04:15, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Several good points here. Indeed, Fiveby has for excellent reasons removed the whole paragraph from the article on Ai. Checking for concealed payload - indeed necessary. I did read the article and it's a careful and sane account of fourteen years of painstaking archaeology. Before we label all issues here as "decided", I wonder if the published work, and the fringe claim, might both reasonably be used in an article about the fringe claims? Specifically, Associates for Biblical Research (Bryant Wood), who claim the fringe material? Rather as our page on Robert V. Gentry uses both self-published fringe material and the RS that he produced. These work together to produce a sad picture, a life wasted in diligent digging down the wrong rabbit hole. Richard Keatinge (talk) 07:05, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

A curious fact about that article is that Ai is not mentioned at all except as a keyword at the start and in the titles of some of the references. Since the identity of Khirbet el-Maqatir with Ai is a cause célèbre for Bryant Wood (not sure about the other authors), the failure to promote that identity again is way out of character. I have a theory I can't prove: the religious Jews who edit the journal wouldn't allow it, perhaps because (this part is true) Wood's theory requires a major revision of Biblical chronology. Be that as it may, since the article does not identify its subject as Ai, it is SYNTH to cite it in Ai (Canaan). Reliable or not. Zero^talk 07:27, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Cathy O'Brien (conspiracy theorist)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

It needs to be discussed that Cathy O'Brien's books are eligible for citation. I have done an extensive write up of her page with extensive citations. Her books are published under Whistle-blower laws and the Constitution of the United States of America. Her first document - Trance Formation of America - is uncontested before the US Congressional Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence oversight and is in law libraries around the world. Users keep blocking the write-up I did of her, which includes no bias of my own or any opinion. Instead I have stated pure fact from her life as documented. The fact anyone would want to silence this uncontested testimony would only align with extreme bias against fact, testimony, and what criminals have only done for decades. Her testimony is a matter of public record and should be on Wikipedia as I have written it - facts only. What was there was completely biased and non-factual. This involves intelligence agencies and criminal activity of the highest order, so Wikipedia, as a community and project for the people of the world should not show bias in favour of the criminals at such agencies. Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by AshleyCaprice (talk • contribs)

A cursory glance suggests that her books are full of absolute wild claims - maybe reliable sources have supported the idea that George W Bush is capable of generating holograms of lizard people depending on where he sits but I doubt it. Cameron Scott (talk) 15:19, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

She is a fringe conspiracy theorist who is not an RS for anything except her thinking it.Slatersteven (talk) 15:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)09

• Do you mean Cathy O'Brien (conspiracy theorist)? No. Guy (help!) 15:33, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Her document "Trance Formation of America' is in law libraries around the world. It is uncontested before congress. You cannot just take "a cursory glance". It is backed up by public courts records and facts. Anyone dismissing her testimony, regardless how traumatic it may be is clearly biased. --AshleyCaprice (talk) 16:19, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

AshleyCaprice, uncontested, perhaps, but only in the sense that nobody bothers to respond to obvious tinfoil-hattery. Guy (help!) 22:19, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

If you actually at least read my write-up perhaps you would be more informed and less biased. I wrote document facts only. What I wrote should be in the public forum here. --AshleyCaprice (talk) 16:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

One example: in a Nashville, Tennessee Juvenile Court hearing in 1991, Judge Andy Shookhoff stated in open court, "Laws do not apply in this case for reasons of national security." This was in Kelly Cox's case (Cathy's daughter). She was 11 years old. 11 years old and the national security act is invoked, but the judge did it in open court so that it is a matter of public record. Cathy's testimony is real. Wikipedia must document the truth, not biased lies such as her being a "conspiracy theorist". She lived it - lived through it. You must document the truth, or else continue to be concede and surrender to criminal activity making yourselves to be criminals. Wikipedia is meant for documented truth. --AshleyCaprice (talk) 16:34, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but the material you are trying to insert is cited only to O'Brien's books. And these contain so many WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims I wouldn't know where to begin. - LuckyLouie (talk) 19:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

No, @AshleyCaprice:, Wikipedia is not "meant for documented truth". It is meant for verifiable facts from reliable sources. There is no reliability to O'Brien's claims and it does not matter one whit how many libraries stock it or whatever other pseudo-legal nonsense she claims supports her writing. E.g., every book published in the United States is "published under...the Constitution." That's what the First Amendment does. "Uncontested before Congress" is equally meaningless - in what context, who presented it, did anyone care, etc. Please read the Core Content Policies before proceeding. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

You should begin by projecting your lizard-hologram to the Bush family residence to inquire if there is any veracity to these claims. - MrOllie (talk) 20:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I know exactly where to begin. At 15:35, 25 June 2020 (UTC} AshleyCaprice received a DS alert[18] after multiple previous warnings.[19] If she continues the behavior, report it at WP:ANI. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:46, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Documented truth and verifiable facts are the same thing. Cathy's testimony is verifiable you only need to look into it and at the testimony and evidence including provided by others. She isn't sued because she has over 3 tons of evidence. If they took her to court there would be mass public disclosure and the criminals convicted. The criminals all have her testimony it was sent to them all. If you cover up her testimony that is up to you but it is criminal itself and only continuing abuse. And its like writing nonsense about a science. Cathy's article is currently nonsense. If you are truly unbiased you would investigate properly, listen, spend time researching and let the correct facts - verifiable - be published. --AshleyCaprice (talk) 21:55, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

AshleyCaprice, that is not true. Anyone who knows the history of science can tell you about the genesis of the word fact and how it differs from truth.

Your argument is functionally equivalent to saying that because they have not sued David Icke, the Royal Family are lizards. Guy (help!) 22:22, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Because I'm either a glutton for punishment or insomniac, I decided to "investigate properly" one of the few testable claims you (AshleyCaprice) tried to insert from O'Brien's autobiography: That O'Brien met with Dick Cheney, George H. W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan in the White House. The records of visitors and meetings during the Reagan Administration are publicly available from the Reagan Library. Cathy O'Brien never was at any such meeting. Before you say, "Of course those records don't mention her, they were altered" think for a brief moment about what you're asking everyone else to accept here: Either everything, no matter how demonstrably wrong or fantastical or wild, that O'Brien has said about herself is right or literally tens of thousands of people and records are. This is why we have the Core Content Policies. O'Brien can say anything she wants and obviously does, or else you wouldn't have read about it and come here. We are under absolutely no obligation to give her another platform. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 05:57, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Look up fact in a dictionary and you'll see it means truth as everyone knows. Stop trying to manipulate semantics to pursue your agenda or twisted thinking. Either look at her evidence and testimony properly or admit you don't want to. If you dont want to you are only perpetuating what the criminal leaders want. Its appropraite to quote what Robert Byrd said to Cathy here as your attitutde perpetuates these criminals' thinking:

Senator Byrd: Mind control atrocities were "justified" by Senator Robert C. Byrd - Cathy's abusive owner in Project Monarch (p91 TRANCE) - as a means of thrusting mankind into accelerated evolution, according to the Neo-Nazi principles to which he adhered. Byrd "justified" manipulating mankind's religion to bring about the prophesied "world peace" through the "only means available" - total mind control in the New World Order. Byrd stated that the Vatican cooperated fully with mind control. Byrd also stated that the USA's involvement in drug distribution, pornography, and white slavery were "justified" as a means of "gaining control of all illegal activities world-wide" to fund Black Budget covert activity that would "bring about world peace through world dominance and total control." Byrd adhered to the belief that "95% of the [world's] people want to be led by the 5%” and claimed this can be proven because "the 95% do not want to know what really goes on in government." Byrd believed that in order for this world to survive, mankind must take a "giant step in evolution through creating a superior race." To create this "superior race", Byrd believed in the Nazi and Ku Klux Klan principles of "annihilation of underprivileged races and cultures" through genocide, to alter genetics and breed "the more gifted - the blondes of this world." (P118-119 TRANCE)

If you don't want to investigate her case properly or consider truth and facts admit it. Don't try to pretend you are doing the right thing. At least criminals admit who they are.

The right thing, the responsible thing is to spend time going through her testimony and what I have written and not allowing distortion and lies on her article. There are many articles on Wikipedia that are nonsense. At least in her case, where there is clear evidence you might find it in yourselves to be a good and reasonable person. If you dont want to admit it, but dont pretend you are a good person, and dont pretend you dont perpetuate criminal thinking in the leaders involved with this syndicate. Your attitude is not only irresponsible but harmful to humanity. It is sick making. Do the right thing and find it in yourselves to be good. If not admit your compliance with the criminals. Her case involves the highest levels of intelligence and cover-up due to the nature of the testimony and because of who the perpetraitors are and were. If you want to be complicit in the cover-up that is your choice, but have the guts to admit it. If you want to be a good and decent person, research it properly and stop perpetuating lies. --AshleyCaprice (talk) 06:00, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Owler

Does anyone have views on the reliability of Owler? Our article about the site explains that the content is crowdsourced, and I wonder whether it fails WP:USERGENERATED, which was also my concern when looked at the site itself. My query is prompted by this edit by Steinythefirst. Cordless Larry (talk) 12:41, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

I noticed this too, as the user has been using it as a (naked) ref for company stats on a lot of pages. I don't think that it meets guidelines for a reliable source; there's no provenance or verifiability of the data. I'm going to ask the user to stop adding it to pages until we work this out and decide if it should be removed from all pages. tedder (talk) 15:56, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

• Doesn't look as if it meets RS. Guy (help!) 16:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
• In general offering “competitive insights” doesn't mesh well with good journalistic practices, the crowdsourced part is just the icing on the cake and due to that I would consider them even less reliable than a normal business information service. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:17, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

There seems to be agreement here then. Does anyone want to help with finding and removing references to this site? Cordless Larry (talk) 11:51, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Cordless Larry, I have quite the backlog, see my user page ;-) Guy (help!) 10:04, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Understood. I was hoping Steinythefirst might offer. Cordless Larry (talk) 15:09, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm going to start doing it, but there are a LOT of them. And yes, it'd be nice if Steinythefirst stepped in. tedder (talk) 23:10, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for this. I don't use Owler often, and when I have it has generally been around the competitors listing, not for basic company information. I was about to use it once more, but will refrain in this case. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:14, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I think all of Steinythefirst's additions have now been reverted (thanks to Steinythefirst for stepping in with the last few as I was working through them). There are still other instances to be dealt with though. Cordless Larry (talk) 12:48, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Facebook

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Should Facebook be subject to a warn edit filter, and/or added to User:XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList, which reverts the use of a source in <ref>...</ref> tags (Note: Does not include external links) for unregistered and new users under 7 days old (Per the IMDb discussion on this noticeboard) to discourage misuse? Facebook is currently cited over 60,000 times on Wikipedia per facebook.com  . Facebook is currently described at RS/P as "Facebook is considered generally unreliable because it is a self-published source with no editorial oversight." 15 specific Facebook pages are currently on the MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist. Facebook is also specifically cited at Wikipedia:Reliable Sources as an example of "unacceptable user-generated sites" Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:31, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Responses (Facebook)

Please state clearly if you support or oppose the use of an edit filter, XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList, or both

• Oppose as it is acceptable for self source of minor details such as date of birth, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 17:17, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

That's odd. My facebook page has my date oif birth wrong. Thank goodness it isn't being used as a source for my date of birth. -Roxy the elfin dog . wooF 17:22, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

@Atlantic306: is this an oppose for XLinkBot/RevertReferencesList, which only reverts the use of sources in references for unregistered and new users with less than 7 day old accounts? Hemiauchenia (talk) 17:28, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support warn edit filter and XlinkBot Facebook is almost entirely user generated content, and is extensively used in WP:BLP articles, which require high quality sourcing, which Facebook falls far below. While I agree that it may be useful in limited WP:ABOUTSELF circumstances, Facebook links should be used only with caution by experienced editors and preventing new users from using Facebook would help curb problematic usage. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:15, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support per Hemiauchenia - Admittedly I've used Facebook I believe twice here so extreme caution should be used with it and I agree with Hemiauchenia only experienced editors should be able to add it and even then if should only be added if necessary and in exceptional circumstance. –Davey2010^Talk 20:42, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose since I oppose the use of edit filters in principle. Debresser (talk) 21:41, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both—the cases where Facebook should be cited are very rare, inexpienced users are most likely to misuse. I think the helpful effects outweigh the harms from this filter. buidhe 22:03, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support - I wouldn't spam-filter it (yet), it has its uses, but an edit filter is definitely appropriate. Do we have an edit filter as yet that completely blocks additions by IPs and non-autoconfirmed users? - David Gerard (talk) 22:44, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose setting such an edit filter to disallow. Support setting it to warn. Oppose the bot because it sounds needlessly bitey. — Wug·a·po·des​ 23:31, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose bot. When I saw this, I immediately thought of a potential use — a notable person who has a Facebook account but doesn't have anything close to an official website. In general, I believe it would be 100% appropriate to link that person's Facebook site: either the person doesn't care about his privacy and makes lots of stuff visible, or he does care and restricts what's online. With this in mind, bots shouldn't go around removing newly-added Facebook links, since a likely good-use situation exists. Maybe do a filter that warns and tags, but new users can still be productive in this kind of setting, so at most we ought to warn them that it's a bad idea most of the time, and make it so someone can easily go around checking such edits. Nyttend (talk) 00:41, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support: It is a social media website in which people can claim anything without any verifiability and others would believe them. Even its owner has admitted the spread of fake news and hoaxes over it and has done little to curb it. A website with such content should not be allowed here. Also if it is listed on WP:RS as unreliable, allowing to use it will give users and readers the impression that we don't follow our own policies. I disagree with Nyttend over a notable person having only a Facebook account. Even if they do, they can create a LinkedIn profile which would be more acceptable. Fully agree with David Gerald about an IP filter. IPs are mostly the cause of vandalism here and I've seen only a few IPs who contribute something worthwhile. They should be encouraged to create an account none-the-less. It is not like you have to pay to create an account. One can stay anonymous under an account as well. I also support the bot only if it warns the user after it removes the Facebook link from the article. If the User continues, they can be warned from an actual user and then reported at WP:ANI for disruptive editing.U¹ _quattro TALK 01:00, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support blacklisting - unless anyone can prove that Facebook is reliable enough. Not only is it unreliable due to the nature of content monitoring, but it is also being overrun by conspiracy theorists and fake-news-wielding communalists (people who discriminate by religion) in the USA and India respectively. RedBulbBlueBlood9911Talk 02:40, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose both, Facebook is still a useful, albeit unreliable, source, and including a warning filter for everybody would create the presumption that it should never be used, which is just plain wrong. Automatic reversion is also a bad idea, as that is Bite-y and would harm content more than help it, since there are quite common legitimate reasons to cite Facebook. this is an absolutely awful idea. Specifically, it would decimate articles on politics, very often a person has an account on there which serves as a campaign website. Also, this is not even going into the fact that Facebook can function as a perfectly good primary source. Blacklisting Facebook or putting a filter on it is an absurd overreaction that would have horrible consequences for Wikipedia. Devonian Wombat (talk) 02:50, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  Devonian Wombat, eh? No it wouldn't. It would simply remind people before they add Facebook to check WP:SPS. Guy (help!) 08:34, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

  That’s a good reminder for me to double-check what the person making the proposal is actually saying. Devonian Wombat (talk) 10:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support warn+tag as MediaWiki:Tag-deprecated source, oppose bot as only humans can verify whether a Facebook link is appropriate. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 03:47, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support filter for new users, oppose bot as it would be biting to automatically remove content that new editors think that they have added. – Majavah ^{talk · edits} 06:21, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support this. A "warn" filter doesn't stop it being used, but it will remind people that citing Facebook groups and other such crap is a Bad Idea. Looking at filter logs for 869, the XLinkBot addition is also justified. Guy (help!) 08:33, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both. There are legitimate use cases for Facebook links — for example, I've seen professional organizations make announcements on their Facebook pages before/instead of their own websites — so we should allow such links in principle, but guard against them being introduced willy-nilly. XOR'easter (talk) 19:56, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support including blacklisting or any other restriction. There is nothing reliable about Facebook, as it applies to being a source. Any information can be fudged, verifying accounts is not easy (and in some cases, not possible). Nothing about it qualifies as a primary, secondary or tertiary source. From the perspective of sourcing, it is actually less reliable than a forum. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:33, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose I think the reliability depends on who is posting on what on Facebook et al. For example WIN News posts news stories to their Facebook pages - example at "RUGBY UNION". Win News Sunshine Coast. Maroochydore: Win Television. 25 May 2020. Retrieved 26 May 2020. --RockerballAustralia (talk) 00:55, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

• I should've pointed out the stories are posted to those pages after they have been broadcast on TV. --RockerballAustralia (talk) 00:56, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose autorevert/blacklist, warning is ok I hate Facebook on many grounds but there is insufficient evidence given of these links being a bad enough problem to warrant interfering with editor judgment in such drastic ways. Per WP:PRIMARY, a self-published post usually isn't a good source; but per the same WP:PRIMARY, it sometimes is. Wikipedia should run on good judgment on these matters, rather than mechanized bots and filters. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 07:18, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support If the only good source for a claim is Facebook, then it is not notable enough. For discussing personal posts, it is not good enough per WP:BLP.--ReyHahn (talk) 16:47, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose both, but especially the bot, since auto-reversion is an extreme measure that should be reserved for specific, extreme cases. In general, I don't see any evidence of a problem requiring a solution here. An official Facebook page is not any more reliable than an organization or individual's website, but neither is it any less reliable. For the classic situation of notable person/organization using their Facebook page (alone) to post a noteworthy fact or statement, the best practice is what it always has been: to link to both the actual primary source and a reliable secondary source discussing it. But best practices aside, just as bad content is better than no content, bad sources are better than no sources. Quality is iterative, and any measure that discourages editors from providing the actual source where they found information is iterating us in the wrong direction. -- Visviva (talk) 20:36, 5 June 2020 (UTC)
• Warning may be helpful, automated removal or preventing of edits is opposed It's settled policy that there are limited situations in which specific material in Facebook might be acceptable as a source or external link. If editors want to change that policy then that should be done explicitly and clearly and not through the imposition of an edit filter or other technical means. ElKevbo (talk) 03:24, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both, and change the policy to get rid of this and other commercial "social media" apps completely, for multiple reasons. 1. Social media services are unreliable. 2. Social media services are not Web sites, they're apps: they won't load properly without running their non-free malware-spyware JavaScript, so anything sourced to them is unverifiable for everyone who cares about that; linking to them is incompatible with the Wikipedia idea of free culture. 3. Social media apps are inherently advertisements for their own services, making links to them spam. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 05:25, 6 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support edit filter. A spot check indicates that most of the existing citations to Facebook do not qualify under the WP:ABOUTSELF policy, and should not be used to support article content. — Newslinger talk 11:18, 6 June 2020 (UTC)

  Support both. Facebook does not exercise editorial oversight in any meaningful sense, which is why it qualifies under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Facebook is a hotbed of misinformation and disinformation. Although Facebook is explicitly listed under the user-generated content guideline, many citations of Facebook that do not meet the requirements of WP:ABOUTSELF are added by editors who do not understand that Facebook is generally unreliable. Both of the proposed measures will help rectify this. — Newslinger talk 14:31, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose both per Visvisa. Facebook is fine in certain cases, such as WP:ABOUTSELF information, and statements by organizations. In my experience, municipal- and county-level officials and departments often release statements on Facebook first, and sometimes only on Facebook. I also want to add that we've already drifted way too far from being the encyclopedia anyone can edit. We don't have nearly as many active editors as we should. We don't want to be scaring newbies off - oftentimes excellent contributors start out with well-meaning but misguided edits. The last thing we need is even more hoops for newcomers to jump through. Lastly I want to object to Goldenshimmer's 2nd and 3rd reasons for supporting these proposals. Verifiability doesn't mean it has to be free on a noncommercial website with no tracking scripts. That would block off almost all of the Internet. In research for articles I've written I've used material from numerous local newspapers whose websites look like 2004 came to life on my screen, with obtrusive ads blocking almost all the content so that I have to use "inspect element" in order to actually read the text. Many widely used sources are behind paywalls - The Times of London, the Economist, etc (I don't count NYT/WaPo/etc because their paywalls are easily bypassed by pressing ESC at just the right time during pageload). Sources don't even have to be on the Internet - books are widely used, and often they are more reliable than Internet sources. Our primary goal isn't to promote free-software culture. Our goal is to build the world's largest collection of easily accessible knowledge using any tools available to us, regardless of our personal feelings on their profit model or use of javascript. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 05:32, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

  CactusJack: 1. I think you misunderstood me: a Web site using tracking scripts doesn't necessarily make it inappropriate to use, mainly because of their ubiquity (as you point out). Rather, requiring these scripts to run is the issue. Most Web sites will work with such scripts blocked. Social media apps generally will not, and therein is the issue. — 2. I'm not sure why you bring up offline sources; I generally would consider them preferable to online-only sources because they have a longer lifespan and generally reliable access through libraries. — 3. Wikipedia's goal, at least as it presents itself, is first and foremost to promote free culture; it is "the free encyclopedia" after all — promoting free-software culture is an important part of free culture. —{{u|Goldenshimmer}} (they/them)｜Talk｜Contributions 05:56, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support edit filter: occasionally better than nothing for basic information about public figures per WP:SPS. An edit filter should not discourage these genuine uses, but instead discourage the much more numerous poor uses. — Bilorv (Black Lives Matter) 12:47, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both. Especially when dealing with biographical articles about living persons, at very least a warning about the general unreliability of such self-published sources, and very likely a revert, is appropriate. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 23:08, 12 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both. Not a reliable source, high probability information found there is factually inaccurate due to its reluctance to employ rigorous fact checking. Acousmana (talk) 19:03, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support edit filter, oppose bot. There are plenty of instances where Facebook is a reliable source for WP:ABOUTSELF type statements and some basic facts by organisations that are the subject of an article who have an official facebook page. I'm not aware there is any method of algorithmically determining what type of Facebook page is being cited from the URI. Thryduulf (talk) 13:15, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support edit filter on the grounds that, as others have observed, it may be an appropriate WP:SELFSOURCE for suitable material that isn't available anywhere else permissible, but in other cases it should be replaced with other sources or the material disincluded from the encyclopedia. Ralbegen (talk) 10:14, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both There are indeed some few legitimate uses (as there are also generally some legitimate uses for other sites which are on the bot list such as Youtube or others) but given the potential for spamming/misuse this seems like a good preventive measure. RandomCanadian (talk / contribs) 14:02, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
• Strong oppose both - The New York Times has a FB site. FB now has fact checkers and editorial oversight - they remove fake news. There are numberous business sites on FB, including cable & broadcast programs as well as digital publishers. I'm really concerned we're going overboard here. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 19:17, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Timely FYI from NBC affiliate WANDTV [20] "A Facebook page claiming to be Kohl's is fake, according to Kohl's. The fake page was created on Sunday...According to Kohl's this is a fake page and not associated with the company. They have reached out to Facebook to remove the spoof page." Today is Tuesday & at the time of me writing this comment, the fake Kohl's page is still active on Facebook (here [21]) It's likely that one of these days Facebook might get around to removing the fake Kohls page, but, it's still just anyone's guess as to when Facebook will remove it. BetsyRMadison (talk) 13:43, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support Both - Facebook is not a "news outlet," not a place for "reliable" information, and Facebook doesn't pretend to be either one of those things. In fact, Facebook doesn't pretend to be anything other than a giant blog whose mission is for people "to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them."[22] I underscore "to them" because the "to them" are individuals around the globe who litter Facebook with fake news, conspiracy theories, and propaganda; some of which is geared to incite violence and intentionally cause harm to public health. For example: "over 40% of the coronavirus-related misinformation it found on Facebook — which had already been debunked by fact-checking organizations working with the tech giant — remained on the platform despite the company being told by these organizations that the social media posts were false." [23] Like I said, Facebook doesn't even pretend to be a reliable source for information, so I do not recommend any encyclopedia using Facebook as a "reliable source." BetsyRMadison (talk) 13:26, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both Nothing published in Facebook qualifies as a primary, secondary or tertiary source. While we use care even when using blogs, using only those connected to and fact checked by major news sources, I can't imagine why we'd want to use sources that in theory are no more accurate than Wikipedia. Some editors have suggested that Facebook is reliable for a few small facts that are not available elsewhere. Considering that we strive so hard to keep our encyclopedia factual, why should we risk our integrity for a few small facts? If we can't find it elsewhere we don't need it. Gandydancer (talk) 14:33, 23 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support filter warning users of best practices, Oppose bot warning, most notable people and organizations worldwide use Facebook legitimately; for most, I believe, third-world users, Facebook *is* the Internet. Our view of social networking needs to evolve to welcome and transform Facebook citers into better Wikipedians. Gleeanon409 (talk) 11:12, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Weak Support Facebook is generally an unreliable source. However, there are situations where they are reliable. For example, if a politician makes a post on Facebook that says they are against abortion, that could be cited without any doubt as to whether the information was reliable. However, new editors are far too likely to misuse information from Facebook. For that reason, I support both proposals. Scorpions13256 (talk) 17:17, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Facebook can be useful as per Scorpions13256, it is about using the information on Facebook and double checking it against other references. This measure is just like putting a harness on an adult. New page reviewers can check this and raise the issue if Facebook is unreliable evidence on a page - older stuff we need to be vigilant of ourselves.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 13:03, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• Support both. It is private informative medium without any control. In addition we cannot know whether it is really written by a person who has Facebook profile or it written by his wife-husband, brother etc. Use informations from such a medium makes no sense. It is actually OR. Mikola22 (talk) 15:39, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

(Infomercial voice) But Wait! There's still more!! (News about The Daily Mail)

• Daily Mail fakes own historical front pages --Guy Macon (talk)

Quote from WP:DAILYMAIL: "The Daily Mail may have been more reliable historically"

We need to modify our handling of old pages from The Daily Mail to say that care must be taken to cite the original historical material and watch out for modern, edited versions. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:23, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Christ on a stick, what is wrong with them? This is exactly why some of us do not think the "discouragement" goes far enough.Slatersteven (talk) 15:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Strongly suggest removing the text "Some editors regard the Daily Mail as reliable historically, so old articles may be used in a historical context" from WP:RSP, or cautioning also that they literally fake their own historical articles. Never trust the DM - David Gerard (talk) 16:29, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

That's bizarre. Instead of using their own historical material, they took the trouble to invent fakes that look "old-timey" (and they buried a vaguely-worded disclaimer four pages down). Do they think that slightly yellowed images won't bring in the clicks? Is fabrication simply their instinctive course of action? In any case, I support David Gerard's suggestion. XOR'easter (talk) 19:55, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I could formulate a rewording ... but idiots try to drive trucks through anything that looks like an exception. So I'd suggest this behaviour is egregious enough to remove the sentence. If people want to argue it case by case they can show they went to a microfilm archive or something, 'cos we literally can't trust the online version or reprints not to make stuff up - David Gerard (talk) 22:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

That would be my take, There are archive versions not held by the Daily Myth. Thus any use if the DM must be independent of the DM.Slatersteven (talk) 22:36, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@XOR'easter:, in this case BoingBoing seems to be insinuating that the Mail may have been trying to make themselves look less pro-Nazi, so there is a motive beyond a contempt for journalistic integrity. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

To be fair it looks more like a case of "our readers are so shallow they cannot understand anything not couched in modern terms and style". What I do not understand is why bother to make so much effort to create a "Fakesimalie". They could have done a "Yay for us 70 years ago" without "faking" a front page so totally (such as "for King and Empire").Slatersteven (talk) 09:44, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Remove wording. This is yet another reason why we cannot trust this source. buidhe 01:10, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Done.[24] --Guy Macon (talk) 12:42, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

I would rather this had been given more time for wider feedback, not that I disagree.Slatersteven (talk) 12:53, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

• I am tempted to revert that for 2 main reasons: 1. The inclusion there is the result of two RFC's. The wording is a summary of those RFC outcomes. By changing the wording fundementally in that manner, it no longer reflects the RFC. What that change does is prohibit (at least that is what it will be taken to do) all uses of Daily Mail historical material. It certainly needs a bigger discussion than the brief one here. 2. Its using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The Daily Mail despite its more recent faults has plenty of decent reporting over the decades previous. We cite the original publication, not The Daily Mail's reworked version of it. A more appropriate response would be adding wording to ensure the material cited has been verified from copies of the orignal. We take it on good faith anyway that written sources we dont have access to say what the editor says they do, and any editor using this as an excuse to misrepresent sources would be rumbled pretty quickly. Only in death does duty end (talk) 23:07, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Personally I would we rather used a nuclear bomb over such blatant crappyness, but I get your point, and said as much myself early on. Yes I would rather you reverted and this was made a formal RFC to overturn the last two.Slatersteven (talk) 09:04, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

See [25].

Looks like I need to start a new Daily Mail RfC in order to make any changes to the Daily mail entry in the perennial sources list. --Guy Macon (talk) 09:51, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

See below - David Gerard (talk) 10:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

So we are using a situation source (Boing Boing) to determine the RSP entry of the Daily Mail, that seems rather odd. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 11:58, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

It would if that were an accurate summary of the above. Fortunately, it isn't - David Gerard (talk) 12:09, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

That is an accurate summary of the above and additionally there's no proof. According to a source as good as boingboing.net The Times (apparently the May 2 1945 New York Times is meant) said "London newspapers received the announcement of Hitler's death just as the early editions were going to press but the second editions went 'all-out' on the news, with long obituaries of Hitler and biographical sketches of Doenitz ...". Thus the copy with the label "4A.M. Edition" might well greatly differ from what ends up in archives, and layout might greatly differ too if the early-morning audience was more inclined to visuals. The boingboing.net accusation is far more plausible but in the absence of a reliable source, or a copy of a "4A.M. edition" that differs from the picture, it's not established fact. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:53, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

The term for it is historical negationism which has an illustrious history of practitioners. It is beyond the pale given it is an attempt to rewrite their own history as Nazi sympathizers. -- GreenC 13:20, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

RFC: Remove "reliable historically" sentence from WP:RSPDM summary

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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The WP:RSP summary on the Daily Mail includes the sentence "Some editors regard the Daily Mail as reliable historically, so old articles may be used in a historical context". However, the Daily Mail also presents altered versions of its historical content, as documented above. (At the bottom of the altered content was a small single-sentence disclaimer noting it had been "specially edited and adapted" - which was not noticed by many members of the general public.) This leaves readily available historical versions of Daily Mail content questionable - as well as its untrustworthiness per the 2017 WP:DAILYMAIL RFC and its 2019 ratification, the site dailymail.co.uk appears not to be trustworthy about the Daily Mail's own past content.

Suggested options:

1. Remove the "reliable historically" sentence from the summary on WP:RSP
2. Add a qualifier: "Note that dailymail.co.uk is not trustworthy as a source of past content that was printed in the Daily Mail."
3. Do nothing
4. Something else

10:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Suggested action on WP:RSPDM

• Remove the sentence - David Gerard (talk) 10:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Remove as the material they did publish might be reliable, they are just not reliable for having published it. But if it is reliable someone else would have written about it. Thus (and given the possibly of accidental or deliberate abuse) I have to change to remove, if they cannot be trusted over what they themselves have published they cannot be trusted over anything.Slatersteven (talk) 10:14, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per David Gerard's reasoning below. As a secondary consideration, we should be discoraging use of historical newspaper sources anyway. buidhe 10:39, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Remove, with the caveat that the print edition may pass, so a print archive might be acceptable? Guy (help!) 11:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

So (in essence) remove and add qualifier?Slatersteven (talk) 11:59, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I wouldn't even add suggested ways to use the DM, they'll be taken as blanket permissions - David Gerard (talk) 12:54, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

It doesn't look likely to pass, but an official WP consensus opinion that dailymail.co.uk is not a reliable source for the content of the Daily Mail would certainly be interesting - David Gerard (talk) 19:11, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

• Remove the qualifier, per Slatersteven, and also the notion that these sort of qualifiers confuse the situation. --Jayron32 14:29, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Add a qualifier (though perhaps not needed as obvious). If the dailymail is unreliable, that may extend to their own historical content. But if you pull a dailymail piece off a microfilm archive or online archives not run by the mail ([26], [27]) then there shouldn't be any problem in that regard.--Hippeus (talk) 14:32, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• In my opinion, the best answer is [A] just remove all mention of historical from the Daily mail entry of RSPDM, and [B] have the closing summary of the RfC you are reading now specifically mention that a microfilm archive or online archives not run by The Daily Mail is as good or as bad as the source where you read it. Having this subtlety in the RSPDM will indeed lead to misuse. Having it in the RfC closing summary will allow any editor to use the historical page (assuming that her local library's microfilm collection or www.historic-newspapers.co.uk are reliable sources for what was printed all of those years ago; if some other source starts faking historical newspaper pages we will deal with that specific source in the usual way). So I !vote Remove. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Bad RfC I will not say "support" or "oppose" because that might suggest respect for the WP:RSP essay-class page, which I do not have. It is in fact quite easy to see document images for back copies of the Daily Mail via Gale. (I did so for the May 2 1945 front page via my local library site for free, I assume that others have good library sites too.) WP:DAILYMAIL makes it clear that editors have a right to use such material in some circumstances, regardless what people say in this thread. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:44, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
• Remove the sentence, and add a statement that historical content on dailymail.co.uk may have been significantly modified from its original version. XOR'easter (talk) 00:08, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
• Add a qualifier It is possible to trust archives that were archived by trusted sources such as a national library, at the time of publication. Trustworthy archives exist as evidenced by the original BoingBoing post that found the original. -- GreenC 13:24, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
• Something else - Clarify, do not make false statements. PRESERVE the indication of where there is good content of Daily Mail. I do not see support given re their current print about history, but if you need precision that the good is historical items not current items about history, it should per WP:BATHWATER clarify the good is older published work. These might not be readily available elsewhere, as there simply isn’t much historical sources, and if the guide indicates the previously acknowledged good data is bad, then it’s just a case of the guide is giving false information. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:17, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

• There is certainly good content from the Daily Mail... but there is no indication of which content that is. The OP didn't point out the old content is good, but that it cannot be trusted. They aren't going to put warnings on their stories saying, "This content is okay, the rest is a bit dodgy." It's just not going to happen. This is how these papers compete with each other. They wind up people who otherwise like to believe they don't want to be informed about reality, but warned about reality. They aren't worried about Wikipedia. They are worried about Facebook and Twitter. It feels like they are being thrown out. They aren't even here. They've little to no interest in what this site represents. They just want to make a splash in the pond, not write an encyclopaedia. ~ R.T.G 10:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

• Add the reality, or what is the point? Anything less is just covering it up more. ~ R.T.G 10:08, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
• Add a qualifier that the Daily Mail may change their historical content, making it unreliable. Best practice would be to use another source, or link to a reliable archiving service. LK (talk) 01:19, 25 May 2020 (UTC)
• Remove per nom, or add a qualifier as the second-best option: since they're faking their own historical content, they're not a reliable source even for that. As for the idea of saying that historical content can be cited if one finds and cites the original in a library (and not the current Daily Mail's provably unreliable claims of what the original was)... under what circumstances is a (say) 1951 edition of the Daily Mail going to be both a and also the only reliable source we can find for something, anyway, and under what circumstance is information only reported in one so old edition of them going to be WP:DUE (or, in the case of an article as a whole, WP:NOTABLE)? I think, if anyone is trying to leave open some use of the Daily Mail as acceptable, I'd like there to be a concrete example of that being necessary and not just a contrived hypothetical. (Off-topic, discussing using very old documents as sources makes me think of Chizerots, which has three sources, from 1870, 1909, and 2008 respectively, discussing how "the most beautiful" among them is a "type [that] seems more Arabian than Berberic".) -sche (talk) 15:56, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
• Add a qualifier. The fact that the Dailymail online cannot be trusted for archives for its past copies does not make their past copies inherently less reliable. You can still find physical copies that can be used for archives. If someone can provide actual evidence of the Daily Mail publishing false stories historically that can be justify the removal of this section. However, that is not the case this situation just makes finding archives of the Daily Mail harder which does not affect reliablity. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 09:25, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
• Remove. The Daily Mail has never been a trustworthy publication. There is zero reason to ever source anything to it. Anything notable to include will be sourced elsewhere, and anything that only ever appeared on the Daily Mail is likely fake. No qualifiers; there's absolutely nothing usable about it. oknazevad (talk) 17:10, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

  Do you have any evidence that suggests this? How do you know say a 1905 archive copy of the Daily Mail is "likely fake"? Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 23:36, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

• Remove. In addition to the above, the clause as currently written also invites debate about what counts as "old", which isn't great in terms of guidance. The Perennial Sources page already has "Context matters" in the lead, and "generally prohibited" within the Daily Mail section, both of which already invite wiggle room for instances in which an old edition may be the best source. CMD (talk) 15:08, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
• Why are we discussing this - To be honest, this looks like Guy Macon returning, yet again, to this topic on which he has been so vocal for so long ("burn it, burn it with fire!"). We get it, you hate the DM, but what is the actual article-content issue being discussed here? None is presented. FOARP (talk) 10:40, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Clearly you failed to notice the fact that my explanation as to why we are discussing this has been in this thread fo over a month, so let me repeat it for you.

Let's talk about the basic error in thinking that led us here. Again and again I see people claiming that they "just know" that:

• The Daily Mail wouldn't lie about a direct quote,
• wouldn't fabricate an interview,
• wouldn't lie about whether the person who's name is on the top of an editorial is the author who actually wrote those words,
• wouldn't lie if that "author" has a sufficiently famous name,
• wouldn't lie if doing so would result in a lawsuit or fine,
• wouldn't lie about material being original and not plagiarized with a few errors thrown in to make better clickbait,
• etc., etc.

Those who "just know" that there are times when the Daily Mail isn't lying expect the rest of us to find, not just multiple examples of The Daily Mail lying. but examples of them lying in every conceivable situation.

Last month I had no idea that The Daily Mail might lie about the contents of their own historical pages but I knew from experience that they lie in all situations. Now I have an example of them lying in this new specific situation.

I am getting sick and tired of playing Whac-A-Mole. At what point do we simply conclude that those who "just know" that The Daily Mail doesn't lie in some situations "know" no such thing and that The Daily Mail will lie about ANYTHING? --Guy Macon (talk) 09:50, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree, every argument made about how the Daily Mail is sometimes reliable has been shown to be flawed. It is ridiculous we have this every time the Daily Mail is source or removed "but its reliable for this one thing". It just cannot be trusted for anything ever, at any time.Slatersteven (talk) 10:40, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Guy, you're not playing Whack-a-mole. There is no actual content issue presented here, just a bunch of hypotheticals. You're proposing overturning RFCs that you were the biggest proponent of because you don't think they go far enough. FOARP (talk) 10:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

• Add qualifier; perhaps a note that the dead tree version can be relied on as a historical document of the time. Although that might be hard to "police". (In which case, just Remove, as I doubt we would be losing much in the long-term.)——Serial ^# 10:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

Discussion on WP:RSPDM

I think we should just remove the sentence. It's ill-defined and not well supported in the RFCs themselves - when, precisely, was the DM not terrible? By what measure? - and IMO, encrusting a qualifier with further qualifiers is not clear. And qualifiers have historically been used by editors who want to use bad content as an excuse to add otherwise-unusable content - David Gerard (talk) 10:08, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I was thinking that there are things they are notable for (such as the photo of St Pauls), but then if its notable others would have noted it, we don't need to use the (well this) Daily Myth).Slatersteven (talk) 10:19, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

If the result here is "Remove", it would probably also make sense to include an explanation that prevents this from being interpreted as contradicting the original conclusions. Maybe something like, "The original WP:DAILYMAIL RfC left open the possibility that it may have been more reliable historically, but a subsequent RfC [link to this discussion] determined..." Sunrise (talk) 12:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

certainly - it'll be linked as a third listed RFC, link it from WP:DAILYMAIL which is the 2017 RFC ... there will be various sensible ways to handle it. The present text has been modified in uncontroversial ways before, e.g. I noted other "dailymail" domains which aren't the DM, and dailymail.com used to be a proper newspaper, the Charleston Daily Mail, which is in fact used as a source in Wikipedia, before the DM bought it from them - David Gerard (talk) 14:19, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

certainly not - that would modify the closed and archived WP:DAILYMAIL RfC even though the subject here (read the topic, read the questions) is not about that, and even if it were it would not be legitimate here. If you want to overturn what the closers concluded in WP:DAILYMAIL your recourse is WP:CLOSECHALLENGE. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:12, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I think WP:RSPDM in general is not as well written as it could be, and undermines itself in significant ways. In particular, it does not cite its sources or attempt to justify its objections. In order to find those sources we are presumably expected to trawl through a total of 45 separate discussions.

The Daily Mail is a well-established newspaper with relatively wide circulation. It is well known that it is biased, and it is also well-known to be disliked by precisely the sort of demographic that (one would assume) would edit Wikipedia. Given the zeal with which the DM is removed, it is quite easy for someone not intimately involved in the debate to conclude that the issue is not so much that the DM is unreliable, but that editors who denounce it do so for POV reasons. Particularly when the text being removed is something inherently subjective (e.g. a movie review) or where it is used as an example with explicit attribution (e.g. in a section on press coverage of an event).

It might therefore be useful to augment WP:RSPDM and WP:DAILYMAIL with a new essay, putting the reasons for our attitude to the DM and giving appropriate examples so that editors less familiar with the history can catch up and understand why it is being removed. Kahastok talk 15:10, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

No, that's nonsense. The DM has similar politics to the Times and the Telegraph, but - and this is the key point - those behave rather more like papers of record that aren't given to fabrication.

The primary objection that Wikipedia-type people have to the DM is that they are repeated, habitual liars who make stuff up, and are extensively documented as doing so. Do you really not understand that that's the problem? - David Gerard (talk) 22:24, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I suppose it's probably too much to expect you to actually read what I wrote before writing an abusive response. Kahastok talk 10:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• Seems just silly, RSP is lazy and obviously a blanket statement will be sometimes flawed by giving false conclusions. Instead of examining specifics of an item in context per RS, or dealing with Mail had some bits accepted as RS, this just further pursues the false dichotomy of everything published by X is bad in every way or everything published by X is perfect in every way. Silly. The real question should be at what point are we to just ignore the WP:RSP supplement entry in favor of using the senior guidance WP:RS and/or get actual specific judgement of WP:RSN instead ? Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:33, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

As this RfC has elapsed, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RFC: Remove "reliable historically" sentence from WP:RSPDM summary. — Newslinger talk 06:25, 7 June 2020 (UTC)

• Topsy-turvy logic - If I get the logic here, it's that the RFCs "proved" that the DM is a bad source that should be banned, but the proposers disagree with what the RFCs say now because they didn't "prove" that it was ever good. No, if you want to re-open this issue then you reopen the whole issue of the DM ban, you challenge the whole of the analysis of the RFCs, not just the parts you agree with. You want to over-turn an old RFC that basically banned a source (lets not kid ourselves that this isn't what happened or how it's being used - see the eradication campaign details below) because it didn't go far enough, when there was quite a lot of opinion voiced at both RFCs (dozens of editors in both RFCs - many more than have thus far spoken in favour of further extending the ban) that actually it was going too far, you cannot pretend that this ban is uncontroversial except for the parts you think didn't go far enough and that opposition to it never existed. The oppose votes in the previous RFCs must be taken into account here. FOARP (talk) 10:51, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Additional RfC Question: Under what conditions can we trust The Daily Mail?

(Background discussion moved from section above. See below for the actual additional RfC question)

Let's talk about the basic error in thinking that led us here. Again and again I see people claiming that they "just know" that:

• The Daily Mail wouldn't lie about a direct quote,
• wouldn't fabricate an interview,
• wouldn't lie about whether the person who's name is on the top of an editorial is the author who actually wrote those words,
• wouldn't lie if that "author" has a sufficiently famous name,
• wouldn't lie if doing so would result in a lawsuit or fine,
• wouldn't lie about material being original and not plagiarized with a few errors thrown in to make better clickbait,
• etc., etc.

Those who "just know" that there are times when the Daily Mail isn't lying expect the rest of us to find, not just multiple examples of The Daily Mail lying. but examples of them lying in every conceivable situation. Last week I had no idea that The Daily Mail might lie about the contents of their own historical pages but I knew from experience that they lie in all situations. Now I have an example of them lying in this new specific situation. I am getting sick and tired of playing Whac-A-Mole. At what point do we simply conclude that those who "just know" that The Daily Mail doesn't lie in some situations "know" no such thing and that The Daily Mail will lie about ANYTHING? --Guy Macon (talk) 15:55, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

You will of course believe that this is precisely a problem I keep hitting in DM removals. "Surely it's reliable for his words!" No, why would you think that, it's the DM - David Gerard (talk) 17:17, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Based upon the above, I propose the following:

There are no situations where the post-1960 Daily Mail is reliable for anything. See below for claims about itself.

• If TDM publishes an interview, that does not establish that the interview happened or even that the person interviewed or the person doing the interviewing actually exists.
• If TDM publishes material under a byline, that does not establish that the person named wrote it, even if the person s famous or a paid TDM contributor. TDM can and will fabricate any material and publish it under any byline.
• If TDM publishes material, that does not establish that TDM has the right to publish it or that it was not plagiarized from another publication. All material published by TDM should be treated as a possible copyright violation.
• If TDM plagiarizes material from another publication, that does not establish that TDM did not edit it, introducing false information.
• Regarding using TDM as a source about itself, we can write "On [Date] The Daily Mail wrote X", but we cannot use any internet page controlled by TDM as a source for that claim. TDM cannot be trusted to not silently edit pages it publishes without changing the date or indicating that the page was edited. We should instead cite the Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot for that page. For printed pages, we need to cite a source that TDM cannot modify, such as an independent online archive or a library's microfilm collection.
• (added on 19:54, 8 May 2020 (UTC)) In particular, the dailymail.co.uk website must never be used as a citation for anything, including claims about the contents of the dailymail.co.uk website or the print version of The Daily Mail. We are not to assume that what we read on any dailymail.co.uk page is the same as what was there yesterday, nor are we to assume that the content will be the same tomorrow, nor are we to assume that there will be any indication that a page was edited. We also are not to assume that users in different locations or using different browsers will see the same content.
• Even in situations where we have yet to catch TDM publishing false information, TDM is not to be trusted.

Note: I picked post-1960 because 1960 was when David English started his career at TDM. If anyone has evidence of TDM fabricating material before then, we can change the cutoff date. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Additional RfC Question Discussion

• Support as proposer. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:53, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support As it is becoming clear that they cannot even really be trusted for their own opinions.Slatersteven (talk) 16:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
• The "1960" date - or any other date, or possible or impossible excuse - will absolutely be taken as a green light for open slather on filling Wikipedia with DM cites - I base this claim on the spectacular examples of DM fans trying to find loopholes in the words "generally prohibited", including one earlier today who claimed that "generally prohibited" didn't mean completely prohibited, therefore his use was probably good.

So I would not support listing a date without strong support for the DM ever having been good at any previous time - that is, clear positive evidence, rather than a lack of negative evidence.

Examples of all the things they do would probably be good too.

I would also explicitly note that the dailymail.co.uk website (by name) literally cannot be trusted as a source for the contents of the Daily Mail, amazing as that sounds - David Gerard (talk) 17:10, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Point well taken. I just removed the "post-1960" wording. --Guy Macon (talk) 19:41, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

I also added a paragraph covering the possibility of TDM serving up different content to different users. There are documented cases of e-commerce sites giving you a high price if you are using an iPhone and a low price if you are using Windows XP, higher for Beverly Hills and lower for Barstow, etc. It would be technically possible for TDM to serve up different content regarding, say, Brexit to UK, US, and EU readers, and really hard for us to detect them doing so. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:07, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

See below for what DM advocates are like in practice. I could do with backup here from those who can actually read policy - David Gerard (talk) 23:34, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

• Support without the post-1960 wording - David Gerard (talk) 19:46, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support without the post-1960 wording, per above. Let's not waste any more time on this garbage source. buidhe 20:37, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
  • BTW, if people really want to get rid of DM references - talk on WP:RSN doesn't have any effect against dedicated DM warriors (and there really are dedicated DM warriors). The refs need to be got rid of, one edit at a time, and their removal defended (using literally our actual policies). This search is a good start - just start at the top and work down, judging usage and removing or replacing per the RFCs. If a few people even did ten a day, that would help improve Wikipedia greatly - David Gerard (talk) 20:43, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - please respect the seniority in guidance of RS and RSN, and a comment section within a RFC is not a valid RFC. What is in RSP is just some editors opinionating and phrasing, not necessarily a summary or strong consensus of views. If it was wrong in this case is just another example of such is imperfect and limited. I have always found the RSP idea simply too dogmatic and plainly a lazy and silly premise that there can be a perfect dichotomy of all-perfect or all-wrong that applies to all content of a publisher for all time. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:45, 16 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support It's important that we highlight the level of fabrication we're dealing with here, to help good-faith editors understand why the usual exceptions for attributed quotes aren't applicable to DM. –dlthewave ☎ 02:24, 22 May 2020 (UTC)
• Support without 1960 wording. There are zero places where the Daily Mail can be trusted. They're as bad as the National Enquirer. oknazevad (talk) 17:16, 2 June 2020 (UTC)
• Neutral - I'm of the mind that inclusion of content cited to any news or political source or advocacy should be determined on a case by case basis. I just now saw this YouTube video by Dr. John Campbell, who describes himself as a senior lecturer in nursing studies at the University of Cumbria. Maybe JzG can provide further insight. The only reason I included that link is because at 1:12 into the video, Campbell shows us an article that was published in The Daily Mail's news section. I don't know enough about the TDM to comment beyond neutral, and am simply not comfortable participating in RfCs about topics I know little to nothing about. I typically need more to go on than the opinions of colleagues, although I do take their views into consideration. I prefer having my own hands-on/eyes-on experience before making final decisions. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 17:41, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

  Atsme, the issue here is that we are not qualified to tell if a specific story in the Mail is bollocks or not. So we have to rely on a third party to validate it, and in most cases we'd then cite the third party instead. You simply can't trust the Mail. Maybe the new editor will change that, but with Dacre as ultimate boss still, it seems unlikely. Guy (help!) 18:55, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

• Support. You have to go really narrow to define a time when the Mail was ever dependable, and you have to start multiplying by j to find a time when it was ever not a rabble-rouser. In particular, any link to the Daily Mail necessarily monetises the "sidebar of shame", which I think Wikipedia really just should not do, out of respect for the reader. Guy (help!) 18:38, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
• Neutral I think Daily Mail, and to some extent the Daily Express both have right wing bias, and do sensationalise subjects - especially "Artic Freeze to Hit Country" and then you read the small print and its the shetlands only. However the DM does have some good journalism too, and for things like TV and book reviews they are very good - and a lot easier to find than other British newspapers whom seem to loose their reviews after a few weeks. Giving a blanket no no to DM I think is silly - editors should review the evidence per article against the other news outlets and decide if it's b*llsh*t or correct.Davidstewartharvey (talk) 12:53, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• What RfC? Guy Macon is free to write thread headings saying RfC but I don't see this in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/All (WP:RFC/A). In any case rewriting WP:DAILYMAIL would require a serious RfC with neutral wording, notifying in at least all the same pages and notifying all prior participants. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Is this unique to the DM?

Do other news sources do this? If so, we probably need to address it at the policy (WP:RS or WP:V) level. Blueboar (talk) 13:59, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Ish, I seem to recall that mock newspapers are common enough, but something tells me they are rather more obvious about not being genuine. But yes I can see this may need to be more general.Slatersteven (talk) 14:12, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

We would have to find a source that [A] Is willing to lie about/fake anything at any time, and [B] has been around for over 100 years. Infowars will lie about anything but nobody is going to believe a claim that something was published by Infowars in 1917. The New York Times might say "we published X in 1917" but they haven't shown themselves to be willing to lie about anything and everything. As far as I can tell, there is only one source that fits both [A] and [B]. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:06, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Mmm, the NYT flaws are something RSP supposedly should note, (e.g. they have a thing on for Trump,) and RSP supposedly was/is to capture RSN discussions, not go off and try to evaluate 100 years of publishing where there is no article usage in question. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:52, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Typically you'll see a scan or image and then the actual original text as text - you won't see the actual thing the DM did, which was to say in the headline:

Read history as it happened: Extraordinary Daily Mail pages from the day Adolf Hitler died 70 years ago this week

and then - as a tiny text box in the bottom right corner of the fourth cover image:

SPECIALLY adapted and edited from the original Daily Mail editions of May 2, 1945 and April 30, 1945

without even the original images. And with the text of the articles changed from the 1945 text.

If you wanted to claim this is something that other newspapers do, requiring a general solution, I think you'd need to first provide evidence of other papers doing this - David Gerard (talk) 17:21, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

No this is totally not unique. If you are from the USA, hear this, people know in the UK and Ireland that the tabloids are sensationalist. Sensationalism is not a dirty word in the newspaper media over here. All national sized newspapers are openly biased in one way or another. The least sensational is the London Times (not the Irish Times, the Irish-only national papers are almost as bad as the British ones). This does not mean they are like the National Enquirer or the Weekly World News. That is not what a tabloid is over here. The newspapers are all walking the sensationalist line over here. Like your TV news. Ours is the other way around. Our TV news is almost impeccable. Newspaper news used to feature a teenage girl with her boobs out every day. Get it. Understand. It's not a secret. Our TV news over here is like your National Geographic. They are impeccable, documentary style, highly esteemed. Our newspapers are like, boobs out, SPLASH SHOCK EVERY SINGLE DAY HEADLINES, every single day. You can rely on them for daily gambling news. Newspapers here are the actual authority on that. One of the less popular daily tabloids, the Daily Sport, is nothing but gambling and boobs. There have been sitcoms about British tabloids since maybe forty years ago. They are not ashamed of what they are. It is simply what they are. ZOMG LET ME ASK YOU AGAIN CAN I HEAR THIS RIGHT???? Yes. Just like that. It has muted over the years, but it is still obvious. They run conflicting stories, they sensationalise, *they are often an important informative part of culture*... not simply nonsense like the Weekly World News, always based in fact... but that is as far as they can be surely trusted. If they say a bomb went off, you can be sure one went off... If they say the sky has fallen down, yes, get your umbrella out. Do they receive letters from Elvis on Pluto... no that is not what people are saying about them. Can you trust them to word and check facts as an impeccable source of information? No!! They are sensationalist. They actually try to walk the line between being honourable and being in court. They are not ashamed of that. They exhibit personality, bias, seriously... people do not respect them at all... people love them... You've watched or seen Japanese gameshows, and thought, maybe a lot of the Japanese are actually crazy, right? But RTG... how is newspaper culture supposed to compare to crazy Japanese gameshows??? Well... we can't do Jerry Springer and Oprah like you can... can we. It's like having a different accent. We stress different words. We have different attitudes about different individual things. Overall, it's pretty much the same insofar as it can be. It's like getting to know a different city. It might be north-south. It might be east-west, or it might be none of the above. ~ R.T.G 17:34, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Re "Our TV news over here is like your National Geographic. They are impeccable, documentary style, highly esteemed", see [28] and [29]. I'm just saying. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:02, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

Okay, well you can't win them all, but the non-regional newspaper press defaults to popular sensationalism, not impeccable documentarianism. We rely on these sensationalist journals because they are popular and free on the internet, but they are off the cuff, and that is not what Wikipedia is trying to be. Good grief, did I delete the part where I pointed out that we have "newsagents" instead of "drugstores"? Newspapers are very useful to culture over here to inform people of incidents and events in the world around them, but they exist to sensationalise. ~ R.T.G 14:25, 13 May 2020 (UTC)

I just saw this discussion while trying to figure out what provoked the sudden onslaught against conservative RS and whole publications that led to the creation of WP:RS/Perennial. It has been consuming a great deal of our time and energy, and I'm not quite convinced that it's all for the good of the project. I don't know anything about the DM or which way it leans but I found the information provided by RTG rather enlightening. I was a bit taken back by the Skeptical Inquirer link that Guy Macon provided to counter RTG's opinion of NatGeo, so I did some research which quickly led me to this NYTimes article. I will also add the following: “Scientific results are always provisional, susceptible to being overturned by some future experiment or observation. Scientists rarely proclaim an absolute truth or absolute certainty. Uncertainty is inevitable at the frontiers of knowledge.” ~ National Geographic Magazine I'm of the mind that as editors of an encyclopedia, we should not let our biases be the determining factor in the sources we choose to cite. No source is perfect - in fact, I don't know of anything manmade that is perfect which is why we are always striving for perfection, and I see that as a good thing. It is when we stop striving and focus only on dismantling and destroying that concerns me. ^Atsme _Talk 📧 13:04, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

You are now at the stage of positing a conspiracy theory against "conservative" sources (actually against sources extensively documented as engaging in fabrication), and seem to be getting to the stage of WP:RIGHTINGGREATWRONGS and trying to out-post your perceived opponents. I urge you to reconsider whether this is the page for that sort of editing behaviour - David Gerard (talk) 15:33, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

User:RTG Agree, at least for recent history. Newspapers in the U.K. were more restrained and respectful before the 1970s. In the United States, for many years mentions have noted that television news switched to being entertainment and sensationalizing, and newspapers reliability and neutrality were in decline in the 1990s as another ‘death of truth’. Newspapers seem to largely be BIASED, going past individual specialties (e.g. Wall Street Journal covers business) into catering to their local market or playing to a subscriber audience. (e.g. NYT runs anti-Trump, Washington Examiner runs pro-Trump). In some ways that makes it easier for WP to find the POVs, but in general it is a WP issue as editors proclaim EVERYthing from NYT is not just RS but also TRUTH and WEIGHT because NYT said so — or proclaim EVERYthing from Mail is FALSE so not RS and large WEIGHT POVs get obliterated. Seems like 80% or so of what U.K. population sees is deemed non-existent right now. Unless it’s BBC or London Times, it just isn’t acknowledged to exist. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 20:15, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure what there is to be done about that. It seems maybe even dangerous, not to have any biases in media at all, and that is because the people themselves cannot be strictly trusted. The people themselves are no more worried about their information services building an encyclopaedia than the Daily Mail is. I struggle with it. What is the popular meme? Even if you tell the people the best thing to do they won't do it. Jimbo Wales has been trying to start a people-driven news service for years. The current iteration is https://wt.social/ ~ R.T.G 11:50, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

• It is not unique to the DM, but the reason we have these sorts of discussion (as I said way back in the original RFC) is that they have a specific combination of prominence and unreliability that is comparatively rare. We can't individually depreciate or ban every single unreliable source; the purpose of these centralized RFCs is to address a situation where a source that is patiently unreliable in any context where we would want to use it is, nonetheless, being extensively used by some editors who try to insist it is reliable. I don't think we can address that in a sweeping sense at a policy level because whatever category we create or define, a source's defenders will insist it doesn't fall into it. When there's a significant disagreement over the facts as they relate to a specific source, and it's leading to constant issues over whether / where it can be used on Wikipedia, a centralized discussion like this is really the only option. --Aquillion (talk) 15:25, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

• The issue is we're dealing with this is an emotive way ("Burn it! Burn it with fire!" to quote the leading advocate of these bans) stripped of any context. Let me give an example of a situation in which it is perfectly OK (in my view) to quote the Daily Mail in article: the film A Welcome to Britain, which taught WW2 US GIs about the UK was shown to a number of British newspaper critics who gave commentary on it. This included a reviewer from the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail reviewer's commentary (as a writer for a widely-selling newspaper) is obviously relevant to quote, alongside other commentary, in the article, as to how it was received. FOARP (talk) 09:01, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Blueboar, think of it as a Venn diagram. There are sources which present themselves as engaging in serious journalism, and there are sources that routinely make shit up, and the intersection is the Daily Mail. Guy (help!) 18:40, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

dailymail.co.uk reversion: eyes wanted

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Problem at For Your Eyes Only (short story collection) - see reversion with dismissive edit summaries, ignoring obvious policy issues, and personal attacks on Talk:For Your Eyes Only (short story collection). More eyes needed.

I'll flag more of these in this section as they come up - I assure you, this is an absolutely typical example of the genre: ignore all policy and guidelines, dive straight into the personal attacks - David Gerard (talk) 22:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Stop being a disruptive little edit warrior and stop with the outright lies. If you’d bothered to read the bloody message on the talk page, you’ll see that I said I would replace the source. Stop being such a dramah monger. - SchroCat (talk) 23:16, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

Please desist in your personal attacks - these are a violation of the policy WP:NPA. I believe my claims are fully supported by the material in the history and on the talk page - you reverted against policy and strong consensus, and made personal attacks. You also responded to citation of policy with citation of essays. Have you considered following Wikipedia hard policy, such as WP:BURDEN? - David Gerard (talk) 23:22, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

No personal attacks, and stop being so disruptive. I have said I will find a replacement in the morning (I first said it about 5 or 6 posts ago, but you've ignored it and kept disruptively pressing your point). Take your little crusade elsewhere until I've had the chance to look properly. It's 12:40am and I'm off to bed, but (for the nth time), I will look again in the morning. In the meantime, reflect that there are ways and means of doing things, and you are not doing things terribly well. - SchroCat (talk) 23:39, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

www.dailymail.co.uk is not an acceptable source. You say you have a better source? Then use that source. Do not re-insert any citation to The Daily Mail. Also, please don't make obviously false claims like "No personal attacks" when 23 minutes earlier you posted a personal attack ("Stop being a disruptive little edit warrior... Stop being such a dramah monger.") --Guy Macon (talk) 01:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

FFS... You really don't bother reading what people say, do you? "You say you have a better source?" I've not said that at all. On several occasions I have said that I will look for one,after a night's sleep. If you are looking for the best way to piss people off with your little crusade, you've found it: an inflexible approach of edit warring to instantly remove information that has been in place for several years, without allowing a few hours for that information to,be replaced? Get a fucking sense of perspective. As to the supposed PAs: I have given a fair description of your approach to this situation. Now back the fuck off for a few hours to allow for a search for a new source. - SchroCat (talk) 04:10, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Or you know, you get a sense of perspective and re-read WP:BATTLEGROUND/WP:CIVIL. Leave the unreliably sourced information out until you have reliable source to back it up. Like everywhere else on Wikipedia. The world will not end if those passages are missing from the article for a few hours. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:09, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Seconded. SchroCat, I don't even need to leave this thread to see you ignoring policy and being combative and disruptive. Guy Macon clearly read what you wrote, he fucking quoted your personal attacks! If "dramah monger" really does fall under WP:SPADE, then it would be perfectly reasonable for the rest of us to suggest that you're the one starting the drama as if out of some sense of blind entitlement, and being a hypocrite in expecting others to give you a few hours to bring in a replacement source instead of just letting the page not have that information during that time. Ian.thomson (talk) 05:26, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• He obviously didn't read it, given what I've said, but if you want to back up a disruptive process by using personal attacks to call me a hypocrite with a "sense of blind entitlement". then I guess the blindness is thick on the ground here and the PAs are fine to throw around. As I said on the talk page, the information has been in the article for several years, and to a source that is not banned (and yes, Headbomb, the world will also not end if those passages remain in the article for a few hours while an alternative is sought - particularly as some was removed and some left with a cn tag - no logic there at all. And I'll let you strike your sentence saying the information was "unreliably sourced": it wasn't). I had acknowledged that I was going to look for an alternative source, and yet that still gives someone the right to edit war, rather than a few hours grace to find an alternative? Common sense has been replaced with the crusading zeal way too much. You lot have an apexcellent way of pissing people off by not bothering with common sense and choosing the most inflexible and disruptive path that inconveniences readers. - SchroCat (talk) 05:49, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

BTW, I've struck the lie in the title: I am not an advocate for the Mail and never have been. I voted in favour of the ban of the source and I'm glad to see it being removed, but it's the manner and method of that removal that is disruptive. Find a different way to deal with it, rather than edit warring and then calling me a "DM advocate". (That also falls under NPA, but I don't expect anyone will bother with leaving stupidity messages to warn Gerard about civility with name calling). - SchroCat (talk) 05:54, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Looking at the 2017 RFC and 2019 RFC, I don't see you on either. Did you change usernames? - David Gerard (talk) 19:56, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• Comment This edit removed a reference to the Mail on Sunday. Has the Daily Mail ban been extended to the Mail on Sunday? While they have the same owner they are editorially distinct as far as I am aware. From what I recall of the discussion all the evidence of falsified stories/quotes related exclusively to The Daily Mail title and its online presence. Betty Logan (talk) 06:38, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Neither WP:DAILYMAIL or WP:DAILYMAIL2 covered the Mail on Sunday and there has been no RfC since then that would mean the source is unsuitable. Nice to know the disapprobation of the above (not to say the edit warring and grief) has been over the illicit removal of information cited to a source that is not deprecated. - SchroCat (talk) 07:06, 9 May 2020 (UTC) p.s. I've tweaked the title again to reflect the reality. - SchroCat (talk) 07:09, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

SchroCat,

• Did you make this edit?[30]
• Did that edit add the source www.dailymail.co.uk?
• Did you also add "work=Daily Mail" in that same edit?
• Is www.dailymail.co.uk the URL for The Daily Mail?
• Did I revert you with this edit?[31]
• Was my edit summary in any way unclear?
• Did you then edit war to re-insert the source www.dailymail.co.uk?[32] again?

These are simple questions. You should be able to provide yes or no answers to each of them, but please do feel free to explain, in detail, why your edits actually added (and were reverted for adding) The Daily Mail] but you are now claiming[33][34]that they only added The Mail on Sunday? --Guy Macon (talk) 08:56, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• Was this or this removing a banned source? Yes or no? Did this whole annoying mess start with the boundaries of WP:DAILYMAIL and WP:DAILYMAIL2 being pushed to delete information removed from a legitimate source? Why, when you removed the www.dailymail.co.uk source (rightly), do you feel it suitable to edit war to delete information cited to a legitimate source? These are simple questions. You should be able to provide answers to each of them.

And again, it comes down not just to the removal of information (some of which was removed illegitimately, some legitimately), but in the crass and inflexible way it was done. As the information has been there for over a decade, was it urgent that it was removed immediately, even after I had said I would look for an alternative after a night's sleep? Again, this is a simple question. You should be able to provide an answer for it. - SchroCat (talk) 09:04, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

A less easy to answer question is how many illicit removals have been made of information sourced to the Mail on Sunday? I do hope that a concerted effort is made to replace the information that should not have been removed. - SchroCat (talk) 09:27, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Evasion noted. I will take your refusal to give a straight answer as an admission that in this edit[35] you did indeed insert a citation to The Daily Mail. Again, please stop claiming that you only added a citation to The Mail on Sunday.

Re "Why, when you removed the www.dailymail.co.uk source (rightly), do you feel it suitable to edit war to delete information cited to a legitimate source?" First ONE REVERT IS NOT EDIT WARRING. Please retract your false accusation and apologize. Second, I am not required to carefully examine your edits and remove only those portions that violate Wikipedia policy. It is your responsibility to make edits that follow policy. If someone reverts an edit of yours that contains a policy violation along with other material, It is your job to create a new edit that only contains non-violating material. Instead you purposely re-inserted the citation to www.dailymail.co.uk -- a citation that you yourself admit is not allowed. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:15, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

"One revert is not edit warring": yes it is, despite the shouty caps and bolding, if there has been a back-and-forth a couple of times and you join in, then you were as guilty of edit warring and me and Gerard. So no, no retraction, and certainly no apology. As you seem to be trying to avoid any responsibility for removing information cited to a legitimate source, there is little I can (or wish) to say or do. But you keep telling yourself you are perfect and I am the bad guy, if that's the way you want to go. You were in the wrong for some of these actions. Your evasion on the question of how much legitimate information has been removed is noted. No surprises. I'm off; I'll leave you to have The Last Word - I'm sure you'll enjoy that. - SchroCat (talk) 11:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

And again you misrepresent Wikipedia policy. WP:EW says "An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions... What edit warring is: Wikipedia encourages editors to be bold, but while a potentially controversial change may be made to find out whether it is opposed, another editor may revert it. This may be the beginning of a bold, revert, discuss (BRD) cycle. An edit war only arises if the situation develops into a series of back-and-forth reverts." (emphasis added). Making false accusations against other editors is a form of personal attack. I think it is becoming clear that your behavior is something that needs to be dealt with at WP:ANI. Given the previous blocks in your block log for edit warring and personal attacks, an indefinite block is likely. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I misrepresent nothing. I was actually blocked for undertaking one revert in an edit war between two others, so feel free to take that case up on my behalf. And if you honestly think that going to ANI is a beneficial step, crack on and do just that. Or is it an empty threat and a way to raise my block log? Don't ping me to this page again, I really have no desire to discuss anyone so willfully obtuse who refuses to acknowledge that they have erred even in the slightest (I have admitted it, by the way: it's just you who are trying to evade any sense of doing anything wrong.) - SchroCat (talk) 12:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• Follow-up comment I think there are two issues that emerge from this discussion:

1. It appears that Mail on Sunday is not proscribed by either RFC, and as such citations to it should not be removed without further discussion.
2. There is then the manner in which the sources to The Daily Mail are being culled. While a consensus exists to remove it as source I cannot honestly say this edit exemplifies good practice. The problem with The Daily Mail is that it is untrustworthy, but much of what they report is still accurate. This was acknowledged in the RFC, and one of the arguments advanced by editors in favour of a ban was that an alternative source could be located for credible claims in most cases. Unfortunately this solution is being thwarted by an aggressive culling campaign. This edit removed legitimate encyclopedic information, which is probably to the detriment of the article. In the case of non-controversial claims that are not about living people would it not be better practice to simply remove the source and replace it with a {{citation needed}} tag? While SchroCat technically shouldn't have restored the source I get the sense from him that what he was really doing was restoring the information, and he eventually located alternative sources. Is this not the most desirable outcome?

Betty Logan (talk) 19:40, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Betty Logan, the Mail is deprecated. That means it's untrustworthy. If something is only in the mail, we can't use it; if it is in another source as well, use that instead. Don't use the Daily Mail as a source. Or any tabloid, for that matter. The print edition of the MoS may be considered reliable case by case. But is still a tabloid so a better source is always preferred.

I have two particular problems with the Mail as a source for Wikipedia. The first is how it's used, which is often for trivia, especially salacious trivia (that's their speciality, google "all grown up"). The second, and related, is the notorious "sidebar of shame". I have a serious problem with linking to any site carrying that kind of bullshit from any Wikipedia article. Guy (help!) 10:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

So a "quality broadsheet", e.g. The Times, The Daily Telegraph, etc., which quotes the Daily Mail as it's sole source would be acceptable? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:42, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Martinevans123, yes. They can be expected to have fact-checked it. But calling the Telegraph a "quality broadsheet" is a bit of a stretch these days. Guy (help!) 11:26, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

How would you describe it? Next on the list to be a banned? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy, no-one is claiming that the Mail should be retained as a source. Two RfCs (in which I voted to ban its use both times) have confirmed that. What we are talking about is two different things here: 1. Much of this grief started because Gerard edit warred to remove a citation from the hard copy Mail on Sunday. That should not have been removed, and he has still to account for that. 2. The process when information from the Damily Mail or dailymail.co.uk is flawed. In this case the information has been in the article for over a decade, and yet it was suddenly necessary to delete it immediately without providing an adequate window to find a replacement? No. That's just dumb. It doesn't help our readers and it annoys the crap out of people. I said on the article talk page right at the start that I would find a replacement, but this was ignored, and the edit warring continued. How does that help anyone? As it was, the information was finally left in the article overnight (UK time) until I was able to find a replacement in the morning. I cannot see any benefit in the inflexible, unthinking immeditate removal-without-the-option approach. The information is still in the article, and all now connected to a reliable source (two sources at one point). The best outcome has been achieved despite the fervour for the inflexible and immediate approach. - SchroCat (talk) 10:47, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I had always assumed that anyone removing a DM source was supposed to search for an alternative source, or add a {{cn}}, or both. Not just remove both DM and the info itself wholesale in one edit. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:01, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I do not recall that ever being said, and will make more work as at some point the unsourced material might have to be removed (per wP:v.Slatersteven (talk) 11:05, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

As opposed to "make more work" by having to search for the info and a fresh source all over again? Isn't one expected to search for a better source for information sourced to any unreliable source? Isn't that normal procedure? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Tagging with {{Deprecated source}} would also have had the desired effect of highlighting the problem. If such a tag had been left on there for a day or so, that would also have avoided all the kerfuffle; as it is there has been a lot more work invoved because someone edit warred to remove a source that is entirely legitimate`. - SchroCat (talk) 11:07, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

True, but it is a users choice if they wish to remove badly sourced information or tag it. There is no policy that even implies you should add back badly sourced information. We gain nothing with tags all over the pace saying "bad source" "dodgy information" "BorisJophnsonsaidit", we do however (I would argue) lose. Wikipedia has a reputation for unreliability. If our articles are littered with crap even we think is unreliable that image is hardly going to improve.Slatersteven (talk) 11:14, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

I certainly wasn't suggesting we "add back badly sourced information". Quite the reverse. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:35, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Martinevans123, no, the onus is on the person including content to find reliable sources. It's an instance of BRD. There have been attempts to claim this by people who fundamentally oppose the entire idea of deprecation, but it's not policy. Guy (help!) 11:27, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Some of this information was added when the DM was still considered to be WP:RS? Martinevans123 (talk) 11:35, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

So? If it is now a dodgy source its a dodgy source.Slatersteven (talk) 11:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

So Guy said "the onus is on the person including content to find reliable sources". I'm just saying that when it was originally added the person may well have been justified in using the DM as a reliable source. A person just removing the source now isn't adding anything. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:09, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

No they are removing something we now know cannot be trusted for information. What Guy said applies just as much to wanting to add information back (or indeed retaining information). This is why the DM was deprecated, because of its massive over use. We now have to clean up that mess.Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

But there is absolutely no need to do it in such an inflexible and disruptive way. When Gerard removed a legitimate source and edit warred on it, there was no mess to clean up. When two editors decided to delete information supported by the Press Association and a Scottish newspaper, we're crossing a line between responsible housekeeping and disruptive editing. The orginal title of this section was "‎DM advocate". I'd rather be called a cunt that a DM advocate, but such is the mindset of a small group of zealots that anyone who asks for an 8-hour moritorium on removal is the subject of abuse and lies. Your call on whether you think this is an ideal pathway for the inhabitants of the RS board to behave, but I suggest the approach needs a rethink. - SchroCat (talk) 12:24, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

We seem to be talking at cross purposes. It looks to me to be a rather odd case of WP:BRD. I'm just suggesting that removing material and a DM source wholesale, without any attempt to find an alternative source, might do more harm than good. Martinevans123 (talk) 12:37, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

True, but wp:brd is clear that once material, has been removed it is down to those who wish to include it to make a case at talk, not just add it back with a change of source (you are right, by the way, the new sources should have been enough as far as I can see). Thus (whilst) the DM part of this debate is about RS, the rest is not.Slatersteven (talk) 12:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Ah. So all those instances where I've followed David Gerard round and re-added stuff with a good source (and which he's consistently thanked me for), I should have instead taken to the Talk page? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:47, 10 May 2020 (UTC) And it's not like I've really "followed him round" at all. I've seen his standard edit summary about DM pop up in my watchlist and when I've gone to look at the deletion I've thought "oh that looks like a very reasonable claim, there must be at least one other RS source that supports that...."

That's taking a misreading of BRD too far for any common sense approach. If the source is being challenged, then replacing the source is sufficient, even if that is just replacing exactly the same information, including qquotes. - SchroCat (talk) 12:50, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

We also have wP:agf, I have no idea abvout this case but I have had trouble finding sources others have found. You are assuming no effort was made.Slatersteven (talk) 12:52, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

A more useful edit summary might say "I've looked for a better source and I can't find one, so am removing"? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:00, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Three things: firstly, I was talking in general about providing a different source when material is challenged. (Don't forget that the verification policy says that @Material that fails verification may be tagged with {{failed verification}} or removed". There is, written into policy, a way that information does not have to be unthkingly removed as a matter of course. It can be tagged for a short period to allow for a replacement to be made. Secondly, If it is removed, there really is no reason to have to discuss replacing it with an alternative source on the talk page. Replacing the information with a new source is entirely appropriate. Thirdly, it seems that a few people have said they can't find the information (although raising AGF is a bit of a straw man here). I found it in two sources and Sarah SV found two sources using variants of the quote made to different journalists; I also found another variant on the official Bond site. Just because the person desparately removing as many DM sources as quickly as possoble didn't find an alternative (and yes, that does pre-suppose they bothered looking), it doesn't mean the infomation isn't there to those who know how to look for things properly. - SchroCat (talk) 13:01, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

SchroCat, Oh, so David's actions resulted in better sourcing. So we're good then. Shall I close this? Guy (help!) 11:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, may as well gloss over the removing of a legitimate source and the sub-standard way people are demanding the immediate removal without thought to the loss of legitimate information. The lack of flexibility is always a given when a crusade is in progress. - SchroCat (talk) 11:49, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Can we please only discuss the DM, anything else just confuses the issue.Slatersteven (talk) 12:33, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

As long as we are clear that the Mail on Sunday (paper version, not online) should not have been removed. At. All. Neither should the other sources. Part of the problem is that I have seen no comment from Gerard to acknowledge that they were wrong to remove it in the first place and doubly wrong to edit war to remove it a second time. I hope this disruptive approach is not something that is going to be repeated. In terms of the DM info, allowing a short moritorium on finding a new source seems to be a common sense way of approaching this, rather than such an inflexible approach that is currently in favour. - SchroCat (talk) 12:44, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

This RFC is about the daily mail, only the DM and just the DM. If you have other RS issues start a new thread. If you have issue about user conduct this is not then place.Slatersteven (talk)

Actually this sub-thread is (currently) titled "dailymail.co.uk reversion: eyes wanted". Since its opening post it has been nothing to do with the RfC (as such it should never have been a sub-thread of the RfC in the first place; the topic of discussion has not essentially changed since the first post, given we are still discussing matters relating to the opening post). We can change it from a sub-thread to a full thread if you prefer? - SchroCat (talk) 13:10, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

As this is not (and does not appear to be) an RS issue, but rather an issue over user conduct this is not the right venue anyway.Slatersteven (talk) 13:13, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Very true. Once has to question way it was opened in the first place, and why a personal attack was used as the original title. Never mind - but I really don't have high hopes that this has made any difference, and will not be surprised when it inevitably happens again. - SchroCat (talk) 13:19, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Another unreliable source? (www.dailymail.co.uk and www.mi6-hq.com)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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In this edit,[36] SchroCat (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) replaced a citation to [ www.dailymail.co.uk ] with a citation to [ www.mi6-hq.com ]

[37] says "We are a not-for-profit fan website, maintained by men and women passionate about the subject."

[38] says "Want to join a community of Bond experts that has been growing since 1998? MI6 is made more diverse, engaging and current thanks to it's regular contributions by guest authors. We are constantly on the look out for authors, photographers, artists, videographer, podcaster or reviewers, all with a passion for James Bond in print or on the screen. If you have an original idea for a feature, or some tidbit to share, please get in touch with our team."

So, generally reliable or self-published fan site?

The quote "it relates to the fact that if you don't have that Quantum of Solace in a relationship" comes from [ www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-510171/Live-Let-Dye-Daniel-Craig-turns-clock-darkened-hair-007-photocall.html ] (25 January 2008). mi6-hq.com published it at [39] on 30 January 2008. This highlights one of the problems with replacing citations to The Daily Mail; if you search for other sources that say what DM said, you find a bunch of low-quality sources that pretty much parrot what was on the DM page a few days earlier. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:22, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Pretty obviously not an RS, no - David Gerard (talk) 22:25, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

I am getting the usual insults and refusal to follow Wikipedia policies at Talk:For Your Eyes Only (short story collection)#Replacing one unreliable source with another? (www.dailymail.co.uk and www.mi6-hq.com). Normally I would report this at ANI, but I am still recovering from my recent Cardiac Arrest and I don't think the stress would be good for me. Would someone else here be willing to file it? --Guy Macon (talk) 23:30, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

It gets worse and worse. He now claims that in the last few days you went to a library, found not just one but two sources that by an amazing coincidence just happen to contain the exact same quote from The Daily Mail that he edit warred to keep in, and yet for some inexplicable reason he cannot remember who Daniel Craig said it to or when he said it. Meanwhile, the person he says authored the source (Noah Sherna) doesn't seem to exist, but in yet another amazing coincidence, Sherna Noah writes for The Daily Mail.[40] --Guy Macon (talk) 01:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Don't lie. I have claimed nothing of the sort. I have also made no comment on who Craig said it to, so I am unsure where these falsehoods come from. I have advised exactly how you can verify the source, so try reading what I have said properly and use the link provided. - SchroCat (talk) 01:48, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, Sherna Noah works for the Press Association. The Guardian also has a version of the same quote; I've left it on the talk page. It appears to be the same point made during an interview with a different reporter. SarahSV ^(talk) 03:08, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, someone needs to read WP:FANSITE. Guy (help!) 10:21, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy, no they don't. Macon needs to ensure he posts all the facts and 1. doesn't miss out key points (like two other reliable sources were added shortly afterwards), and 2. he doesn't lie, like he has above (I did not claim I went to the library and I did not say anything about who Craig was talking to; feel free to look at the article talk page to find out where I have said either of those things. They are entirely false). BTW, FANSITE shortcuts to Wikipedia:External links, which isn't the guideline you are after - you mean WP:UGC, which advises against, but it certainly doesn't provide a blanket ban against all such sites. - SchroCat (talk) 10:50, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

SchroCat, mi6-hq.com isn't a fansite, then? Someone should tell the person who maintains it. Wikipedia isn't a fansite either. These articles would mostly be improved by being about half as long. Guy (help!) 11:25, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy, that's not what I said. I was pointing out the link you provided, to FANSITES, actually discusses the addition of fansites in external links, not within articles. The pertinent link on this occasion WP:UGC, which advises against, but it certainly doesn't provide a blanket ban against all such sites. - SchroCat (talk) 11:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

When you tell a person to verify a sources by going to a library, meanwhile refusing to say where you checked the source, a reasonable person would conclude that you checked it in a library. (later you decided to reveal that you checked in using an online source). When you repeatedly refuse to answer the simple question of where and when Daniel Craig said that, a reasonable person would conclude that you most likely can't answer the question. When you quote WP:UGC, claiming that it allows use of fansites (the actual wording is "Content from websites whose content is largely user-generated is also generally unacceptable") a reasonable person would assume that you are either incapable or unwilling to follow Wikipedia's rules (something we have already seen with Wikipedia's rules againstr personal attacks). When you repeatedly claim that if you make an edit that violates Wikipedia's sourcing policies, the person reverting you is somehow required to carefully search your edit for any portions that don't violate Wikipedia's policies, and you just flat out ignore it when you are told again and again that there exists no such requirement, a reasonable person would assume that you are either incapable or unwilling to even discuss whether you are following Wikipedia's rules.

This all started with you edit warring to retain [ www.dailymail.co.uk ] as a source and with David Gerard asking you to follow our rules.[41] and correctly identifying [42] that your behavior is typical of someone who fights to keep The Daily mail as a source. Your subsequent behavior here has demonstrated that he was right. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

"When you tell a person to verify a sources by going to a library": I didn't. I told you to go to THE library - the one we have on WP. I even fucking linked it for you. If you're not able to click on the link despite it being handed to you a second time, I do begin to wonder just why you are being so obtuse. Other inaccuracies here include "you quote WP:UGC, claiming that it allows use of fansites": you'll have to read what I said a little more closely. I said "WP:UGC, which advises against, but it certainly doesn't provide a blanket ban against all such sites", and actually there is some deliberate leeway in the wording of the guideline (for example, if such a site was being written by one individual who was a published expert in the area, then it would be a point for discussion). "incapable or unwilling to follow Wikipedia's rules" another tedious PA you like to throw out, and hopelessly wrong too, ditto the link to IDHT - all tiresomly inaccurate.

More nonsense follows; "This all started with you edit warring to retain [ www.dailymail.co.uk ] as a source". Again, that's a straight lie. This started when Gerard removed a reference from the paper version of the Mail on Sunday. A legitimate source. I'll keep repeating that a legitimate source was removed until it finally sinks in and you stop telling porkies. "your behavior is typical of someone who fights to keep The Daily mail as a source" Another straight out falsehood. I don't know how many times I have had to say that I support the ban on the Mail (that I voted for twice) and the idea it should be removed: it's the crass and inflexible way it is being done that it disruptive. Now, if you're done with trolling and telling lies, I'll leave you to it. There is nothing contructive to be had in listening to more falsehoods from you - you appear to be in competition with the Mail to see how many inaccuracies you can cram into each line. - SchroCat (talk) 15:46, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

[self-reverted] --Guy Macon (talk) 16:38, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, this is thoroughly out of order. SchroCat, it would be better not even to respond. SarahSV ^(talk) 16:51, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

• I have already asked you once not to ping me to this page. Stop. You are behaving like the worst sort of disruptive troll. Stop. - SchroCat (talk) 16:41, 10 May 2020 (UTC)
• mi6-hq.com? Is that Mike Corley? Guy (help!) 10:20, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Mike Corely appears to be focused on conspiracy theories involving MI5 persecution. I don't think he has much interest in James Bond, but of course mi6-hq.com is a fansite where anonymous users can post content, so you never know. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:31, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Can we please not discus 15 different sources in one thread?Slatersteven (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Daily Mail: The halving

In Q3 2018, there were 27,336 uses of the Daily Mail as a reference on Wikipedia. At this moment, there are 13,630.

The cleanup of the backlog of bad sources continues. Please use a search something like this one, and help improve Wikipedia. If a few people can each do even ten a day, that'll make Wikipedia a noticeably better place - David Gerard (talk) 21:13, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Daily Mail: It's below 10,000

This deprecated source's backlog has less than 10,000 entries remaining! Your assistance is most welcomed - start at the top of this list (or wherever you like really), and see if you can knock off five - David Gerard (talk) 19:20, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be sensible to remove the cited information when you remove the citation, if you doubt its validity? It doesn't make Wikipedia a better place if you replace thousands of inline citations with "citation needed" templates. It's my understanding that MailOnline citations can continue to be used, for non controversial info. Sionk (talk) 23:58, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I can assure you that editors have insisted on every possible response as the one and only sensible thing to do about deprecated sites: do nothing, add a tag, replace with a tag, do nothing unless you can replace the cite, remove the info, etc., etc., etc. But it completely varies case by case. It literally always depends and requires editorial judgement - David Gerard (talk) 00:58, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

most pleased to see others joining in with this, even if I can't work out who it is :-) Number as of this moment: 8,145 - David Gerard (talk) 15:24, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

7,646. Holy crap, we're knocking down this awful backlog - David Gerard (talk) 07:58, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

Mustang

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Discussion has moved to the article talkpage and two other noticeboards. Stale here. Montanabw^(talk) 16:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

---

There is currently a discussion over at the talk page for the Mustang article over whether the following footnote should be included in the article.

According to Claire Henderson, an ethnohistorian at Laval Univeristy Lakota Sioux oral history and the reports of early European explorers of the Upper Missouri River, there is a hypothesis that Equus was not completely extirpated from North America, but that the northern Plains Indians had domesticated and preserved a Tarpan (Equus ferus ferus) like horse prior to the arrival of the Europeans. (Yvette Running Horse Collin pursued this idea further in her 2017 PhD thesis The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth). However, no physical evidence such as bones dating after 8000 B.C.E. and prior to 1500 A.D.E. have been found.

This relates to the "horse continuity theory" in the americas, the (fringe) idea that horses in Pleistocene North America are the ancestors of living mustangs, despite the lack of genetic or archaeological evidence. This theory is often found on self published pro-mustang websites and blogs. The first source is "The Aboriginal North American Horse" (which is also cited in the Horses in the United States article) a statement given in 1991 by Claire Henderson, an ethno-historian at Laval University (I have been unable to find any other information on her other than this story relating to the statement in the Chicago Tribune) the second is "The Relationship Between the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas and the Horse: Deconstructing a Eurocentric Myth" a 2017 PhD thesis by Yvette Running Horse Collin in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Both studies have the same issues, both are arguably WP:SPS, don't have any evidence backing up their claims, only reasons to cast doubt, and rely on the oral tradition of various elders, and oral history is notoriously unreliable for long timescales. The latter paper also includes these wild quotes, among others

In keeping with the traditions of my Plains Indian ancestors, my education began with a spiritual experience I had involving a gift from an Indigenous “medicine man and woman” who lived on a New Mexico Pueblo. During a time when I was in desperate need of healing, they gifted me with two horses - a red roan mare that had been trained (according to their People’s traditions) to protect others during spiritual battle - and her four-day-old paint foal. My education continued with a vision that I experienced from my Ancestors. I gained this initial knowledge through firsthand observation, the utilization of all of my senses, and other experiential learning methods. Thus, began my role as a participant-researcher.

Scientists have discovered that horses emit “alpha waves” – the same waves emitted by humans during prayer - and they are beginning to recognize that the emission of such waves can be beneficial in treating brain injuries

I honestly was at a bit of a loss which noticeboard to post this to. I think much of the oral history (as I mentioned on the talk page) stems from the fact that horses spread much earlier into the American interior than colonists, and considering the hundreds of years that have passed this could lead to the impression that they always had horses. My own view is that neither of these sources are reliable enough to cite as an authority, even for a minority view and that the footnote should be removed entirely. Hemiauchenia (talk) 18:35, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

• Absolutely not These sources are reliable for oral history saying that it is true, but the WP:WEIGHT of such claims is nothing compared to actual scientific evidence. The content should be moved to an article dealing with oral history. buidhe 20:05, 14 June 2020 (UTC)
• No horses in America before Columbus. Definitely not. Oral history and visions of the ancestors emitting equine alpha waves is exactly what it sounds like. Plains Indians had horses before Europeans reached the upper Missouri, but that was centuries after 1492 and as everyone knows horses are faster than people. GPinkerton (talk) 00:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
• Comment this out of context discussion by an editor who is creating some drama over at the article misses the point that the existing consensus of the long-standing editors of this article agree that is it a fringe theory. However, we put it in a small end footnote because it is something that occasionally keeps being added back in. We tossed it out for some time, but it was recently put back in again, in part because of the actions of the above editor who initially appeared at the article, apparently supporting the “non-extirpation” position. In other words, the note was added to debunk thentheory, not support it. Montanabw^(talk) 06:29, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

Let's just wrap this up. As MBW said, the sources were not meant to validate the fringe theory, but to acknowledge the existence of it. I've revised the section to do what I think is better job of both acknowledging and de-bunking it.Lynn (SLW) (talk) 12:31, 15 June 2020 (UTC)

• Probably not - like any fringe theory (and in fact ALL content on ENWP) in order to be included in an article it requires a reliable source to discuss/acknowledge it. If there are no reliable sources that discuss it, then it doesnt go in an article. This is how all fringe theories are dealt with. If there are reliable sources that discuss it (and usually for fringe nonsense, dismiss it) then its acceptable to include it and what those realiable sources say about it. As there doesnt appear to be any argument about the reliability of the sources used, the fringe noticeboard is probably a better place to gain consensus on if it should be in the article or not. Only in death does duty end (talk) 12:49, 15 June 2020 (UTC)
• This is mythology not fact, on the face of it. Guy (help!) 10:15, 16 June 2020 (UTC)
  • Precisely. But thus a mention is in order, in context, which we are trying to do. There really isn't an editing dispute here. Montanabw^(talk) 18:18, 16 June 2020 (UTC)

    Montanabw, sure. Either way, not an RS question, but a content (WP:UNDUE) question, right? Guy (help!) 18:38, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

    • Pretty much. Horse taxonomy is a nightmare to sort out (pun intended). Montanabw^(talk) 04:25, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Parler

Parler is an article on a Twitter competitor that is having some disputes over sourcing, per Talk:Parler. More eyes would be welcomed - David Gerard (talk) 21:09, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Indian geostubs and OurHero.in

Hi I’m a new page reviewer and lately I’ve seen a lot of stubs created about villages in India that use odd-looking sources. The sources I’m familiar with are official census records and pin code directories. Lately a lot of them refer to a site called “OurHero.in”. Is there a consensus on what reference sites are reliable for villages in India? What is the view on the reliability of “OurHero.in”? Many thanks Mccapra (talk) 19:53, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Ourhero.in looks like a SPS, and seems to imply that its data is based of the 2011 Indian census. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:25, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Sorry what’s an SPS? Mccapra (talk) 21:20, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

A Self-published source. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Ah great, thank you very much. Mccapra (talk) 21:27, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Guardians of Democracy

I'm unsure if this article can be used as a reliable source for Timeline of the Donald Trump presidency (2020 Q2). The paragraph is located in June 1, and the exact sentence is:

After the press conference at the Rose Garden, Trump walks to the nearby St. John's Church, where an adjacent building had experienced a fire the previous night, in Lafayette Square for a photo op. In preparation for Trump's arrival, riot police and military police use tear gas and stun grenades to clear peaceful protesters assembled at the park.

It's from an independent news organization that I'm not familiar with, so I'm just checking. Thanks. Mgasparin (talk) 01:44, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Doesn't look usable to me. There's no mention of any editorial team on the website and all articles are anonymously credited to "Guardians of Democracy staff". Should be easy to find better sources for the St. John's Church affair. --RaiderAspect (talk) 05:18, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Looks like a blog that's run by an advocacy group. I see no signs of editorial control either. To my eye there's nothing in that source you won't be able to find on better sources. −−− Cactus Jack 🌵 05:23, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

• No evidence this is a RS. Guy (help!) 12:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable - Has a definite left-wing bias and thus anything it publishes should be heavily scrutinized. SolarFlash^Discussion 00:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

RfC: An Phoblacht

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Is anphoblacht.com   (369 uses—party organ of Sinn Féin) reliable? It is used as the only source to support content such as "In late May, a physical altercation between protestors and the police, involving more than 8,000 coal miners, involved demonstrations on a march to the federal capital, Madrid." (Anti-austerity movement in Spain) and "The bombing killed 12 bystanders and severely injured many more. Barrett was arrested with several others in a wide ranging sweep of sympathisers with the Irish Republican cause and was the only one found guilty." (in Michael Barrett (Fenian)) buidhe 09:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Responses (An Phoblacht)

• My personal opinion is that it's a republican propaganda outlet and should be: deprecated for anything related to the Troubles, generally unreliable for facts, attributed opinion is undue unless discussed by third party sources. buidhe 09:31, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Not an RS, as this is not an independent source but an actual party political publication.Slatersteven (talk) 09:37, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

• It's reliable as to the politics and strategy of the RM at that point in time, and for their own self-analysis, but not for external reporting. Certainly wrt the examples above, it seems unlikely that the information cited wouldn't be found in another reliable source. ——Serial ^# 09:41, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
• Reliable as a source for official statements from Sinn Fein and for de facto official statements from the IRA (yes, I know they deny the connection, but they'd never have printed anything claiming to be an IRA statement without clearing it with the Army Council), but not as a source for news reporting in general. ‑ Iridescent 09:54, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
  • I disagree with the last part, if they deny any connection we cannot claim there is.Slatersteven (talk) 10:00, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

I would consider official statements from the IRA published in An Phoblach to fall under about self, Iridescent is 100% right when they say An Phoblacht wouldn’t publish an IRA statement which wasn’t legitimate... Lets just say their fact checking in this one regard is impeccable. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 18:18, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

• Looks to be basically a SPS, reliable for attributed statements of the party but otherwise not so much. Guy (help!) 12:01, 18 June 2020 (UTC)
• I’d say reliable for the views of Sinn Féin but only with attribution and not for much of anything beyond that. Horse Eye Jack (talk) 17:53, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
• Reliable if used in accordance with WP:ABOUTSELF, and attribution may be needed depending on the content in question. I'd only use it with caution, and certainly not in Anti-austerity movement in Spain. FDW777 (talk) 18:13, 19 June 2020 (UTC)
• It shouldn't be considered an independent news outlet; it's a political publication by a political party. They're reliable for statements about themselves and unreliable for factual reporting apart from IRA statements as other editors have brought up, although I wouldn't classify that as WP:ABOUTSELF since it's rather inflammatory to make claims that Sinn Fein is the IRA. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 03:35, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
• WP:ABOUTSELF for Sinn Fein and the (Provisional) IRA. There's no shortage of academic sources that take the link between the two as given [43] [44] [45] while claims to the contrary seem to be overwhelmingly from primary sources. --RaiderAspect (talk) 06:10, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

That's why seasoned observers tend to use the term "Republican Movement", as it avoids being forced to take an extreme ideological position (between the Adams/McGuinness narrative of there being two discrete organisations and the wholesale "Sinn Féin/IRA" enbundlement of Paisley. ——Serial ^# 12:36, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

There's a lot of Irish republican sources that would probably disagree with that claim, and it would be better in the interests of WP:NPOV that we base the exemption on the commonly agreed upon fact that Sinn Fein and the IRA have been historically associated with one another rather than using WP:ABOUTSELF. I don't think we should endorse a certain viewpoint on a contentious political issue here when we have the opportunity not to do so and base our consensus on something else. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 04:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Apparently fake news site: publicserviceeurope.com

Found this as a ref talking about immigrants in the UK. I looked at the about page (archive), and the journalist photos appear to be stock images. First and last: [46][47] The other two appear to be widely used under all manner of names as well.

We currently have 29 uses. publicserviceeurope.com  

What's the process for obviously fake sites like this? - David Gerard (talk) 15:31, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Posting here should be enough. Looking for spammers while removing them seems a good next step. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:02, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Deprecate.Slatersteven (talk) 17:04, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Danlaycock: You used it here. Could you comment on it? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:11, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@DagosNavy: here, comment? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:20, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Leptictidium: here, comment? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:23, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@Silver seren: here, comment? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:30, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

@ThaddeusB: here, comment? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:36, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

What is publicservice.co.uk [48](added by an ip that added publicserviceeurope.com [49]? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:28, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Please stop pinging every user who has ever added it a source.Slatersteven (talk) 17:37, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I'm pinging editors who appear to have used it in good faith, in the hopes we can shed light on the situation, as Leptictidium does. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Then inform them on their talk pages, this will just create clutter here.

When I used that source, it used to be a different site. It then went offline and this must be a completely different site that bought the old domain name.--Leptictidium (mt) 17:40, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Deprecate and nuke from orbit.Slatersteven (talk) 17:42, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

Leptictidium is correct, that it used to link to a different website, that looks reliable. It appears publicserviceeurope.com was a mirror or expansion of publicservice.co.uk. There may be copies of the original references at archive.org or publicservice.co.uk. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 17:53, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• Definitively fake news sites have been added to the blacklist in the past. Others have been edit filtered. Guy (help!) 18:00, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• 8 years ago. I don't even remember doing it. The information being covered in my usage can easily be replaced with an alternative source. So i'm fine with deprecation of it. Silverseren^C 01:02, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with Liptictidium and Silver seren, my (btw uncontroversial, you can find that info elsewhere) citation dates back to 2012, and the signer of the cited page is not part of the current (and dubious) "staff". It seems to have been a hostile take over of the site since then.---Darius (talk) 15:22, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Daily Express 2000-2017 (Desmond era)

What do people think of the reliability of the Daily Express? Specifically between the years 2000 and 2017 when Richard Desmond was proprietor. The Daily Express is described at RS/P as "The Daily Express is a tabloid with a number of similarities to the Daily Mail." which is a somewhat lacking description. The Daily Express has been cited over 5,500 times on Wikipedia per express.co.uk  , and I'd have to imagine the vast majority of the citations are to this era. While the Daily Express has been recently discussed on this noticeboard, there was no discussion about the changes in ownership, and many sentiments attached to the Express under Desmond may no longer be valid under the new ownership. The paper during these years was right leaning and was noted for its staunch anti-immigration stance, its regular coverage of Princess Diana and exaggerated weather warnings. How do people feel that the reliability of the Desmond era compares to its previous incarnation as a left-wing tabloid prior to 2000, and has there been significant change since the 2018 sale to Reach plc, under the new editor Gary Jones? Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:45, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Shit-tier tabloid, should be Generally Unreliable at the very least. For trustworthiness, somewhere below the DM - it basically wishes it was the DM. Not sure I could quickly assemble a suitable collection of cited claims to deprecate it right this moment. I would not credit the changes in ownership until I see strong evidence they've done anything - the Daily Star hasn't changed under Trinity Mirror-as-was, for example - David Gerard (talk) 23:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

If your employer asked you to provide a summary of the COVID-19 pandemic or the current protests and present it to management, would you search through the Daily Mail, the Express, the Sun and the Mirror and cite these sources, or would you use broadsheets such as The Times? It's not that you couldn't do it with the tabloids, but the broadsheets are more detailed and informative. That's why better educated people are more likely to read them. The same applies here. We should always use the best possible sources available, which in some circumstances will include tabloids. TFD (talk) 23:39, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: What specific circumstances do you think citing tabloids is appropriate? Hemiauchenia (talk)

Look at a sample of the first four cites of the Daily Express, per "The following pages link to Daily Express":[50] what ABBA played at their 6 June 2016 reunion, what Ann Widdecombe wrote in her Daily Express column, information about Beachcomber (pen name), a column in the Daily Mail, and what Bing Crosby's son told the Daily Express what his father's last words were. (In the article about the UK election, the Daily Express is mentioned but not cited.) They all seem appropriate to me. TFD (talk) 00:07, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

I should note that for the record that I agree that the Daily Express in the Desmond era was Daily Mail tier and was somewhat baffled by the claim it was worse than the Daily Mirror, and I consider this a sort of toe-dipping about whether we should go ahead a call a full Daily Express depreciation RfC, which I would support. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:52, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I'd be inclined to support that too. But a few more smoking guns would help - David Gerard (talk) 15:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)

• Lets not go overboard, it is reliable for uncontroversial topics such as sport, music, television and film reviews so it should not be deprecated in my view but political or controversial coverage should be attributed, Atlantic306 (talk) 00:14, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• Yep, it was (and frankly still is) not absorbent enough to be really useful. It is (to be fair) not as bad as wither Daily Myth but its still one of the legendary red tops so mocked in this country.Slatersteven (talk) 08:16, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• Generally but not wholly unreliable. It should never be used for news coverage, but as the house journal of the UKIP right it's a legitimate source for opinion pieces. We try to avoid even opinion columns from the Mail, as they're known on occasion to have faked opinion pieces, but AFAIK that's never been an issue with the Express. ‑ Iridescent 08:24, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• The Express is in one way a generic crappy tabloid, but in another quite singular: it's obsessed with Diana conspiracies and UFOs. (alien OR ufo) site:express.co.uk gets over 400 unique results. It's also deep into Maddie conspiracies. I would trust it about as far as I could throw Richard Desmond. Guy (help!) 11:46, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
  • And a comet or asteroid is going to destroy the earth, another perennial Express story - David Gerard (talk) 15:34, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
• You start picking and choosing dates for sources, people will quite rightfully start arguing that the Daily Mail (and other "depreciated" sources in certain time periods are acceptable or suddenly unacceptable, The Guardian and it's pro-slavery stance during the US Civil War anyone?). All or nothing I say. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 15:48, 26 June 2020 (UTC)
  • • What Guardian do you mean? The Guardian is of course post 1959, having been the Manchester Guardian in the 1860s civil war, and it is even more anachronistic as it's remembered as a product of the 60s psychedelic era. Unless the US had another civil war around the 1960s? . . . dave souza, talk 16:47, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
  • No, it doesn't work like that; media outlets and in particular newspapers can change radically at very short notice. To stick with the UK press, the Independent of the 1980s is as impeccable a reliable source as newspapers get while the dubious website which has inherited the name, I wouldn't even trust to report the football scores; likewise, the pre-1969 broadsheet aimed at "an immense, sophisticated and superior middle class, hitherto undetected and yearning for its own newspaper" bears little relation to what it subsequently became. ‑ Iridescent 08:31, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
    • Also that is just what we did with the DM (Until it proved it could not be trusted even for that) allowing the use if it before a certain date. But perhaps the user has a point and we should not use the DE after 2000.Slatersteven (talk) 08:43, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
• Having had a look for the alleged support of The Grauniad for slavery, I noticed that allegations had a rather odd source, so I've removed the citation to "internewscast" which credits "Source: Daily Mail – Articles". Seems to be just a mirror of the DM. Haven't modified the text yet, but there are several articles in the Graun which can avoid the DM spin. . . dave souza, talk 17:35, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

pincode.net.in

• pincode.net.in: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

There is a prior discussion on websites giving pincodes here where many were determined to not be RS, found this one at Akrund supporting the stub.

Akrund is a small village in Sabarkantha district of northern Gujarat in western India.

Is this one any better? Jerod Lycett (talk) 03:46, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Indian newspapers - local editions & Sunday stories

What about the reliablity of the following four sources? What are the general rules in Wikipedia for citing from the following categories.

1. Vernacular Indian newspapers published & printed from small cities
2. The local "editions" of the above dailies printed from small towns
3. Indian English newspapers (usually published & printed from tier 1 cities)
4. The local "editions" of the above dailies printed from small towns and cities
5. Feature (or Sunday) stories or Op-Eds in 1, 2, 3, and 4

• Source -
  • [51]
  • [52]
  • And more.
• Article - Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan
• Content - Large portions of the article

VisWNThn (talk) 09:23, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

If you have questions on Reliable Sources in general please review The reliable source page. While I agree peer reviewed scholarly articles would be best for this information the current sources are more than reliable enough to be included in the article. Both the The Times of India and The Hindu are considered to be Newspapers of Record. Finally making blanket statements such as "Almost everybody in the world concur that newspaper reports from the low&middle income countries can be unreliable." as you did on my talk page and your other comment on my talk page leads me to believe you're approaching this information with a point of view that is preventing a neutral viewpointVViking_TalkEdits 14:17, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

It is not possible to make a generalised assessment for such a large variety of sources as you have presented. The Times of India (RSP entry) has been previously discussed on this noticeboard and there is a lack of consensus on its usage therefore should be avoided for that article at least, there is a whole plethora of issues with it which I could go into but that's a bit beyond the scope of this query. The Hindu on the other hand is among the best Indian English language news sources there is and can be used but with care. Op-eds in reputed publications can be used for the article if they come from subject experts, can't possibly comment on any other publication without them being specified. Although news sources should be avoided in preference to scholarly sources for historical articles pertaining to a period before the post-Independence era let alone from before the British Raj. For the article itself, I'd recommend replacing the news sources with scholarly sources if possible. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 06:28, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

• We are on the same side. It is not possible to make a generalised assessments for such a large variety of sources.

• Current sources (= newspaper/magazine articles) written by subject experts are more than reliable enough to be included in the article.

• I accept that the Hindu and the Times of India are organisations of international repute. I was just pointing out the subtle fall in quality when it comes to the local 'editions' of the same (outside Chennai or Mumbai, or any of the major cities)

• There are numerous peer-reviewed or scholarly sources for the subject (Thunchaththu Ezhuthachan). I hope we all will be using them.

Can I remove these newspapers articles and add some peer-reviewed or scholarly sources for the subject? The quality of the Wikipedia article on such a major figure should not be appalling. VisWNThn (talk) 07:11, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics. — Newslinger talk 07:42, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@VisWNThn: Okay, having looked at your contribution on the page. I'd say at least not in the way you are doing there, the sources can still be used for the article and need not be outright removed especially when the removal is contested. It also does not make sense to remove a citation while preserving the content it is being cited for. They should however be supported by scholarly sources if they are available and in case of any inconsistency between a news source and a scholarly source only then preference should be given to the latter. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 07:57, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Additionally, I'd suggest starting a discussion on the talk page for any specific removal of material which you are certain is inaccurate with an adequate justification, which should preferably be supported by scholarly sources. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 08:01, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@Tayi Arajakate:

Thanks. That is a nice way. Sorry for the trouble earlier! VisWNThn (talk) 08:03, 28 June 2020 (UTC)