Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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Before posting, check the archives and list of perennial sources for prior discussions. Context is important: supply the source, the article it is used in, and the claim it supports. Additional notes: RFCs for deprecation, blacklisting, or other classification should not be opened unless the source is widely used and has been repeatedly discussed. Consensus is assessed based on the weight of policy-based arguments. While the consensus of several editors can generally be relied upon, answers are not policy. This page is not a forum for general discussions unrelated to the reliability of sources. Start a new discussion

Fundinguniverse.com

• fundinguniverse.com: 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

It seem was discussed before, but i found out instead of problem as reliable source, the site seem in fact pirated the content of International Directory of Company Histories, which despite the book is RS, the website and the pirated version may not be a RS. So, should all the link be clean up entirely and add the domain to MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist? Matthew hk (talk) 15:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

I would say not, as I can find nothing about who they are, or how they verify their information.Slatersteven (talk) 15:23, 21 November 2018 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable. FundingUniverse appears to be a self-published tertiary source that doesn't disclose who its authors are. The "Further Reading" section at the bottom of each listing provides a bibliography that makes a great starting point for research, but content from the site itself shouldn't be relied upon for accuracy. — Newslinger talk 22:52, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
  • Also, if you can show that the content is pirated, you should be able to remove external links to it under WP:ELNEVER. — Newslinger talk 05:37, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

• The content reproduced in Funding Universe is not pirated, it is released by the copyright holder. The content is from old editions of International Directory of Company Histories, and the same content is also used by the websites Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and some others. One can determine the specific volume, date, publisher, and editor of the International Directory of Company Histories in question by Googling any sentence or long phrase (in quotation marks) of the content. They are always old volumes; Gale (the current copyright holder of International Dictionary of Company Histories) the keeps current volumes (the last few years) under copyright but releases content of the old volumes for general use. Softlavender (talk) 05:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I did not see any copyright notice of International Directory of Company Histories that release the content to that site. It sound strange. Matthew hk (talk) 12:32, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

http://www.fundinguniverse.com/terms.php. It just said the material was copyrighted but did not claim it received permission from the old publisher of International Directory of Company Histories. Also the first volume was published in 1988, they are not in the public domain. Matthew hk (talk) 12:35, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Doesn't matter that you can't personally find the info; what I stated is accurate. Gale publishes updated volumes of International Directory of Company Histories every year, and releases or sells the content of its various volumes from more than a few years back (a decade or more) to be reproduced by Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. The source is attributed on each article/page. You're free to contact them to verify: [1]. -- Softlavender (talk) 13:14, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

It sound lame to email the pirate site to ask them do you pirated the content.They make a poorly coded website that also made invitation to post ad on the website. Also, http://www.fundinguniverse.com/licenses.php is dead link or intended or unintended "Unable to connect to MySQL server." to display the page. Matthew hk (talk) 23:16, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Rfc: Fundinguniverse.com

Should Fundinguniverse.com be removed and blacklisted on questionable copyright and as self-published tertiary source of International Directory of Company Histories. RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 06:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC). Matthew hk (talk) 23:12, 1 December 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• Not a Wikipedia RS. This is a somewhat preliminary answer, pending answers to questions below. There is no description of -- or really evidence of -- any real fact-checking or investigatory work done by the source. Most sources, and the company's own site, refer to the site as a service to get funding for businesses, not any kind of journalism. The primary WP:RS coverage of FundingUniverse is a 2011 Forbes magazine article claiming that they might be a ripoff and it appears the company changed its name at the same time. [2] It appears that the site scrapes content from the International Directory of Company Histories. Regardless of whether that is an authorized use, given the lack of any evidence or reputation of being a quality secondary source, it seems clear that the encyclopedia should cite the International Directory, not FundingUniverse.com. Chris vLS (talk) 17:57, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Not a preliminary answer anymore... thanks for the link, Matthew hk --Chris vLS (talk) 02:40, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

• Reliable. All content comes from the International Directory of Company Histories, and should be cited as such (not to FundingUniverse). Gale licenses the content of old (decade or more old) volumes of the International Directory of Company Histories to three different websites: Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. The volume number, publisher, and year of publication are listed at the bottom of each article. If the editor and page numbers are desired, do a Google search of any phrase within the article, or Google the company name and "international directory of company histories". I've generally found the International Directory of Company Histories reliable unless contradicted by more granular research, which, frankly, is sometimes not findable on the web if the company has a really long history. It's often good to double-check dates and dollar amounts, but by and large I find the International Directory of Company Histories at least 90% accurate, which is more accurate than most sources for business and industry content. Softlavender (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
• (Summoned via bot:) Reliable per Softlavender (with the stipulation that citations should name the International Directory of Company Histories while linking to the text on fundinguniverse.com). It seems that after more than five weeks, the nominator has still not been able to substantiate his main argument, namely the concern that the content in question might consist of copyright violations. As for "self-published tertiary source of International Directory of Company Histories", that secondary argument seems to be based on misconceptions regarding the linked policies: There is no prohibition against the use of tertiary sources, in fact they can make very useful references depending on the situation. And the nominator seems to be unfamiliar with very definition of "self-published" as used in Wikipedia policies: As explained in the first sentence of Wikipedia:Identifying and using self-published works, this term refers to circumstances where the author and the publisher are the same, which is clearly not the case here. Lastly, there are apparently quite a few books (from established publishing houses) that cite this source. Regards, HaeB (talk) 20:55, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

• Cite the original reliable source, but say where you read it. Fundinguniverse.com is very similar to Answers.com (WP:RSP entry) in that it contains text from established tertiary sources. In this situation, most editors would reference the original publication in the citation, but link the citation to the Fundinguniverse.com page, and also include "– via Fundinguniverse.com" at the end. You can see an example of this at Hypnales § References ("– via Answers.com"). If Fundinguniverse contains any pages that do not indicate that they were republished from established sources, then those pages would be self-published sources, which are questionable. However, a cursory search did not find any pages on Fundinguniverse.com that weren't sourced from the International Directory of Company Histories. — Newslinger talk 22:51, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

• Couple questions. (Summoned by bot.)

@Matthew hk: Could you please provide a link to the previous discussion for this source? Thanks! Chris vLS (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Softlavender: Do you have a source for the copyright status of the International Directory of Company Histories? Thanks! Chris vLS (talk) 17:43, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

@Chrisvls:, it was not well discussed in Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 134#Funding Universe. But the first comment in that thread, is saying the website content is derived from International Directory of Company Histories, which imply tertiary source . Despite it also stated that fundinguniverse.com is listed in the web directory of some notable libraries. The status of the website would be like cnki.com.cn, which the site itself is not not reliable but an aggregator of reliable secondary source, with an ill problem of copyvio.

Also, it can't compare to other tertiary source such as answer.com, which requires people to make full citation on attributing the original author and source of the content that answer.com had bought from. See also, Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 80#Company histories on answers.com. Matthew hk (talk) 23:24, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

• Gale licenses the content of old (decade or more old) volumes of the International Directory of Company Histories to three different websites: Encyclopedia.com, ReferenceForBusiness.com, and FundingUniverse.com. To contact FundingUniverse to confirm: [3]. The volume number, publisher, and year of publication are listed at the bottom of each article. It's easy enough to find the editor and page numbers via a Google search of any phrase within the article. Softlavender (talk) 19:59, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
  • Then why not use International Directory of Company Histories as the source? (invited randomly by a bot) Jojalozzo (talk) 02:17, 18 December 2018 (UTC)

• Unarchived from Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 252. {{Do not archive until}} tag added for 60 days. Cunard (talk) 06:33, 16 December 2018 (UTC)

• @HaeB: Wikipedia did not prevent to use tertiary source, but WP:ELNEVER. You can't request people to read the hard copy of the International Directory of Company Histories, but it is not encouraged to share pirated site anyway. If citation should mention International Directory of Company Histories anyway, so why not throwing out the url due to copyright concern. The dilemma would became , if the website content are the same as the book, there is no problem to not use the url. If the content was difference from the book, then it had a serious problem on the reliability of the site. Matthew hk (talk) 20:09, 2 January 2019 (UTC)

Since everyone point out that it should cite the book and some of them point out to cite where i read the source with |via=, it seem did not stop me from replacing the ref to proper offline citation just like this edit Special:Diff/877536822 as i literally got that physcial book in SLWA to verify and type the names of the authors back. Matthew hk (talk) 08:30, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Google News usage and Google Scholar usage. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:48, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Why are more right wing sources considered unreliable than left-wing sources?

From Mike Godwin's Facebook:

“When observing right-wing conspiracy theories, we saw positive feedback loops between the core of that network—composed of Fox News, leading Republican pundits, and Breitbart—and the remainder of the online right-wing network. In those cases we saw repetition, amplification, and circling of the wagons to criticize other media outlets when these exposed the errors and failures of the story. By contrast, the mainstream media ecosystem exhibited intensive competition to hold each other to high journalistic standards, and a repeated pattern of rapid removal of content, correction, and in several cases disciplining of the reporters involved. Moreover, in none of these cases did we find more than a smattering of repetition and amplification of the claims once retracted.” NETWORK PROPAGANDA, page 220.

This is a very succinct explanation of why the right wing media are much more likely to be considered unreliable for Wikipedia. Their agenda is tribal, mainstream media may lean left but it is committed, for the most part, much more to truth than to tribe. Guy (Help!) 16:25, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

It can't be helped if reality appears to lean left. Jackhammer111 (talk) 05:24, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Ha PackMecEng (talk) 16:41, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Who?Slatersteven (talk) 11:25, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

That's exactly what the Nazis would have said. Guy (Help!) 15:49, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I'll have a go at this ... Is it because the right wing is more unreliable than the left? -Roxy, the dog. wooF 16:22, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well shit, I guess we are both Nazis huh? Curses you foiled our evil plan etc... PackMecEng (talk) 16:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Guy was making an ironic reference to Godwin's Law rather than a personal attack. Fences&Windows 23:58, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

@Fences and windows: Apologies, I was joking as well. Does not come through well on the internet huh? PackMecEng (talk) 00:58, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

No, sarcasm is always perfectly clear on the internet and only an idiot fails to spot it. Ian.thomson (talk) 00:59, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Oh I was joking too. Hence the deliberate Godwin. Guy (Help!) 11:22, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I will say that it's not really a question that left-leaning sources are more reliable when it comes to factual/objective content, as per the above. Where the problem that I believe underpins a lot of the issues on WP presently the over-reliance on the opinions of left-leaning sources, given them more weight not simply because of numbers (as per WEIGHT) nor because the person is an established expert whose opinion does carry weight, but because they are opinions from reliable sources. An opinion from any source is an opinion , reliable or not, barring the exceptional case of something like Daily Mail caught actually altering opinions. Unfortunately, editors are far too dismissive of opinions because they come from an unreliable source, rather than question if the opinion should belong per WEIGHT. (Of course, there's the whole NOT#NEWS and RECENTISM aspects at play as well). --Masem (t) 01:13, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• A guess based only upon my observations. There exist a massive number of far right wing radio stations and other sources with enormous viewership. There exist few far left venues with tiny viewership. Fewer folks on the left appear to gain enjoyment from this sort of self-gratification (not to say many don’t). That is, on the right, there is massive competition for audience. On the left, most outlets fail and disappear, leaving little competition. The result is that right-wing outlets become more extreme to “out-right” their competition. Then again, there is the question of what is right and left, and this varies by country and time. Let me put it another way. There is no question that there exist an enormous number of actual conspiracies. But, we’ll likely never know about most of the ones that actually worked. That is, most conspiracy theories are sans evidence and ridiculous. And, far right and far left orgs push them anyhow. Only, there are so many more popular far right sources. So, they lose credibility in the minds of folks that edit an encyclopedia. I’m not trying to evaluate the “truth” underlying any philosophy. I’m just throwing out random thoughts. Delving more deeply would require looking into the nature of the sociology behinds various belief systems – which is not our job. O3000 (talk) 01:58, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Agreed it is a more interesting and in depth topic than one that could be covered by quoting a Facebook post. PackMecEng (talk) 02:27, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Godwin is quoting from a full book, which does have rather indepth analysis of this (from google books preview). He just pulled a short section from it for Facebook. --Masem (t) 21:40, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Does it matter though? A certain controversy (it became the subject of an ArbCom case) would tell you that left-wing media promote groupthink and censor journalists who question a general narrative. Shouldn't our goal be to review the reliability of sources regardless of political leanings? If this results in sources on a particular side of a spectrum being over-represented, so be it. Re: Masem's concern: as long as there are enough reliable right-wing sources to use in a particular article, it should still be possible to write a good-quality article that gives equal weight to both sides of the spectrum where relevant. For US politics maybe cite both the NYT and WSJ for opinions, or both Politico and The Hill. For UK politics cite both the Guardian and the Telegraph. feminist (talk) 16:51, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

• Category error: The Times is not "left-wing" and the Journal (in its reporting, not necessarily its editorials) is not "right-wing". Both are centrist newspapers, one with a slightly liberal editorial stance, and the other with a somewhat more conservative editorial stance, but neither generally allow their editorial positions to effect their reporting, and neither deviates very far from a moderate position. What's being discussed here are actual "right-wing" and "left-wing" sources, not vaguely liberal and somewhat conservative ones. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:50, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Which of coarse neatly brings us to why this is an invalid (the OP, not the above post) is invalid. What am American might consider "left wing" a European might well consider "slightly right of center". So we need to know what we mean by "left wing" and "right wing". If we mean extremists on both sides, is there an imbalance?Slatersteven (talk) 09:51, 24 December 2018 (UTC)

"The liberal bias of facts"

Main page: User:BullRangifer/Reliable sources, Trump, and his editors here

Liberals and RS are a natural mix, as liberals are more adverse to fake news than conservatives. Unlike right-wing sources, left-wing sources can be fairly partisan and yet rate well for accuracy. Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman has noted why this applies mostly to liberal sources:

• "On the Liberal Bias of Facts"
• "The Facts Have A Well-Known Center-Left Bias"
• "Facts Have a Well-Known Liberal Bias"

There are several reasons for this: liberals tend to get their information from a much wider variety of sources than conservatives; Democrats are generally better educated than Republicans; and liberals tend to follow the evidence and change opinions more easily than conservatives, as their labels imply.

The consequence is that left-wingers/liberals and their sources will tend to be closer to the truth and facts than right-wingers/conservatives and their sources. In a sense, it's reassuring that the truth and facts are more favored by the common people than by the aristocracy, a connection which harkens back to the origins of the terms used for the left–right political spectrum in the French parliament, and the supporters of the American Revolution, who were left-wing liberals. The left-wingers/liberals sided with the oppressed common people, republicanism, democracy, revolution against the status quo, and human rights for everyone, while the right-wingers/conservatives sided with the aristocratic and wealthy ruling class, monarchies, autocracy, preservation of the status quo, and full rights only granted to the ruling and propertied class. And so it is today; some things never change.

The two sides are not two sides of the same coin, but are radically different in several ways. Scholarly data analysis, published in the Oxford University Press book Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics, shows that "liberals want facts; conservatives want their biases reinforced. Liberals embrace journalism; conservatives believe propaganda.... The right-wing media ecosystem differs categorically from the rest of the media environment." The authors have documented that the right-wing media ecosystem is more susceptible to "disinformation, lies and half-truths", results documented by numerous other researchers and authors.

Another difference of special relevance to Wikipedia, especially under (and because of) Trump, is that Democrats tend to favor RS and real news, whereas Republicans tend to favor unreliable sources and fake news, as demonstrated very clearly during the 2016 presidential campaign and Trump administration. Fake news and false stories helped elect Trump. It was generally rejected by Democrats, and therefore directed mostly at Republicans, who swallowed it, with Fox News and right-wing media amplifying it. A deliberately disinformed base voted for Trump. The Russians have a long history as experts at spreading disinformation, and the Trump-Russia alliance and its production of fake news to aid Trump and fool his supporters is being investigated.

Note that the name of the political party favored by the ruling class can change, as evidenced by the fact that the Republican and Democratic parties have changed their views and support base throughout history, with a nearly 100% exchange of positions since the days of the civil war. (See Southern strategy for more information.) -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 04:36, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Sources

Although I do appreciate the post above; I agree with many points; and I have made a copy for friends who think Fox News and right-wing talk shows are of equal quality to the so-called "liberal" media (e.g. CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, PBS), I see an absence of mention of some serious reliability issues with major media in general as noted in our articles Media bias, Media bias in the United States, especially the concerns raised by Noam Chomsky and others of corporate and power bias. Our article on U.S. media bias mentions both claims of general liberal U.S. media bias and conservative U.S. media bias. I suggest anyone interested in learning more about the topic of media bias take a look at these articles and their sources for more information. --David Tornheim (talk) 06:03, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• We happen to be in the middle (or perhaps near the end) of a great renaissance of right-wing populism in the U.S. and the world at large, which has resulted in there being a good deal more right-wing sources than left-wing sources (especially so since the costs of publication are now entirely negligible due to the existence of the Internet). In fact, the vast majority of what people -- primarily people of the right -- call "left-wing" sources are, in actuality, centrist mainstream sources with a slightly liberal editorial point of view, and are not in any meaningful sense "left-wing" at all.
  On the other hand, the "right-wing" sources are, for the most part, truly on the right, and many of them on the far right. What the far-right and the far-left (what there is of it) have in common is that neither is particularly happy with the status quo, and they wish to make great and significant changes to it. To this end, they have a tendency to propagandize and to distort the facts to support their view of the world. True left-wing sources are as guilty of this as true right-wing sources are, but since there are so many more far-right-wing sources than there are far-left-wing sources, it simply looks, in general, that right-wing sources are less reliable than left-wing sources. When adjusted for their actual position on the political spectrum, and for their number, I suggest that sources equally far from the center are as equally unreliable on both sides of the spectrum.
  This fact might have been more obvious at a time when there were more actual "left-wing" sources, say in "the Sixties", that politically turbulent time from around 1963 to 1975ish, when publishing your ideas was a great deal more difficult, time consuming and expensive. If the Internet had existed then, it's likely that the,re would have been websites for the Weatherman, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army and its ilk, the many groups of the New Left, and other extremely fringe organizations, and they would have been just as unreliable then as right-wing sources are now. Combine this temporal disparity with the pronounced "liberal bias to reality" as explained above by BullRangifer, and you have a relatively clear explanation for our current state of affairs. Beyond My Ken (talk) 10:56, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• There is another complicating factor, which is the right-ward drift of the Republican Party in the past decades. In the post-World War II world, both parties were essentially centrist, with different centers of gravity. The Republicans were a moderate-conservative party with a liberal wing, and its center of gravity was slightly right of center. Similarly, the Democrats were a moderate-liberal party with a conservative wing, and its center of gravity was slightly left of center. Liberal Republicans were less liberal than liberal Democrats, and Conservative Democrats were less conservative than Conservative Republicans.
  The first indication of change came with the Goldwater presidential nomination, but the spectacular failure of that bid put a hold on the party moving to the right -- for the Nixon era, it remained pretty much where it had been (and Nixon's domestic policies were liberal). The big drift began with Reagan and to a lesser extent with the elder Bush, continued during the Clinton years, and picked up speed during the Bush (actually Cheney) administration. The influence of the Tea Party played a major part as well. By the Obama administration, the Republican party had pretty much landed where it is now, and was essentially a conservative-ultra conservative party with a small moderate wing and significant outliers into the far-right.
  Meanwhile, the Democratic Party had not shifted that much at all, but the radical change in the Republican Party has moved the apparent political center point to the right so much that it appeared to be much more liberal than it had been previously, especially to people on the other side of the line. It is only now, since the candidacy of Bernie Sanders and with the current attention being paid to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, that we may be seeing a Democratic drift to the left. Whether that survives or continues remains to be seen.
  The reason this is all important in terms of the question at hand, is that the shift of the Republican Party to the right, and its numerous outliers to and connections with the far-right, gives the current far-right political "cover" in a way that, for instance, the John Birch Society never did. This then requires that the media pay attention to the far-right's tropes and memes, no matter how distorted and unfactual they may be. Because this stuff is "out there" in the public, and because the major players are not seen as part of the political fringe, but have connections to and relationships with mainstream Republicans, they have an apparent gravitas that requires the mainstream media -- which believes above all in fairness, but doesn't hesitate to ignore fringe ideas -- to talk about those concepts, and they don't just go away. People then try to cite them, only to come up against the bare fact that much of what the far-right puts out is not simply political opinion or commentary, it's plain, downright false information, which becomes abundantly clear when checked against non-ideologically driven sources. So, in that respect, right-wing sources -- or, at least, far right-wing sources -- are generally unreliable.
  Now if someone would find me a far left-wing source that the media pays any attention to at all, we could compare them, but I don't think such a beast exists. Beyond My Ken (talk) 15:06, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• In other words, it's the very success of the far-right in injecting itself into mainstream political discourse which has led to its reputation for unreliability. If no one was talking about those sites, no one would be citing them, and their unreliability would not be well known. Beyond My Ken (talk) 21:37, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Breitbart is a very notable example of this. In 2014, according to Pew Research, "Just 3% of respondents get news from Breitbart in a typical week, and its audience is decidedly conservative: 79% have political values that are right-of-center (by comparison, 26% of all panelists are right-of-center)." I wish we had statistics for the reach Breitbart now has because of Trump, but its reach must have grown exponentially, even though it's still just as, or more, fringe and outlandishly unreliable.

Trump has elevated the profile of disinformation sources by huge margins. He gets his news from extremely unreliable sources, especially Fox & Friends. In 2016, Trump's favorite sites included "Breitbart, Daily Caller, Newsmax, the Gateway Pundit, and the Conservative Treehouse". Now such sources are literally writing our foreign policy and causing Trump to listen to them and make decisions with international consequences.

He's doing all he can to elevate falsehoods and Russian propaganda to the same level as truth, a very dangerous situation. Many RS discuss how he's attacking the very concept and existence of truth. We have gotten "fake news (Trump)" (meaning something entirely different than real fake news) and "alternative facts" from the Trump administration. Giuliani even came up with the ideas that truth isn't always truth, and Comey's 'truth' is different from Trump's 'truth'. Once the populace no longer trusts the media, and gives up on figuring out what's true, then they just accept what the loudest speakers tell them, and that is always the authoritarian leader, a status which is Trump's wet dream. This is NOT normal in America, but it's normal in lands whose leaders are Trump's best friends: Russia's Putin, the Philippines' Duterte, Turkey's Erdogan, Hungary's Orban, Egypt's el-Sisi, China's Xi Jinping, North Korean's Kim Jong Un, and Syria's al-Assad. It is not accidental that he has praised all of them and sees them as model leaders. This isn't a small bit of writing on the wall. It's a huge sign he's painting, telling us where's he's going.

So Trump has elevated the status of the worst sources to unheard of levels. Wikipedia must firmly resist the attempts of his editors here who try to do this here, and they really are doing it. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:39, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

• Protecting the accuracy and reliability of Wikipedia is important all the time, no matter where the disinformation is sourced from, but there is no disputing that we are currently in the middle of a huge shitstorm of disinformation, almost all of it originating from the far-right, and there is a concerted -- if most probably not actually organized or coordinated -- effort to skew Wikipedia in that direction. Anyone who deals with articles that concern those people can see it happening on a daily basis. Beyond My Ken (talk)

True, but tangential to the thesis of the book, which argues, with what seems to be pretty solid data, that there is a substantive difference between the right wing media bubble and the rest of the media, including left-wing media. There used to be a normal distribution of cross--citation and social sharing, so WaPo cites WSJ and WSJ cites WaPo, and both cite HuffPo to a lesser degree, and HuffPo cites WaPo more than WSJ, and so on. But there is now a near-total disconnect between the right wing media and the rest. The distribution is now bimodal, and it's asymmetric. WaPo and WSJ might both debunk a conspiracy theory on InfoWars, but Fox doesn't - and in fact Fox may well amplify it. And this changed during 2016. Breitbart was taking market share from Fox, so Fox appears to have consciously separated itself from the mainstream. The GOP base do not like being told that right wing figures are lying, and they will punish such disloyalty. And this is exactly what happens as democracies head into dictatorship, which is why so many people are losing their shit over it. Guy (Help!) 11:33, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Among low-quality sources, the most popular websites are right-wing sources

The "Discussion report" column of the current issue of The Signpost covered the recent deprecation RfCs. I'm reposting my response to the column here, as it's pertinent to this discussion:

---

This caught my attention: "apparent left-wing bias in deprecating mostly right-wing sources (out of the 5 deprecated/banned sources on WP:RSP, only Occupy Democrats is listed on adfontesmedia.com as left-wing)". I've previously avoided discussing Ad Fontes Media's "Media Bias Chart: Version 4.0", since it's a self-published source. However, assuming the chart is accurate, a close look at the low-quality publications in the chart reveals why most of the currently deprecated sources have a right-wing bias.

The following is a list of the sources in the Red Rectangle ("Nonsense damaging to public discourse"), which includes sources that fit these classifications: "Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info", "Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info", and the lower half of "Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion". All sources with an "Overall Quality" score of 19 or lower are included in the chart. (The raw data is available at adfontesmedia.com.)

Source	Status at WP:RSP	Overall Quality		Political Bias		Alexa Rank	Uses
Daily Mail (MailOnline)		19	Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion	13	Skews Right	197	1
Breitbart News		8	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	34	Most Extreme Right	259	1
The Daily Caller		12	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	24	Hyper-Partisan Right	743	1
The Daily Wire	N/A	16	Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion	28	Hyper-Partisan Right	2,700	1
InfoWars		1	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	44	Most Extreme Right	3,412	1   2   3
WorldNetDaily (WND)		4	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	36	Most Extreme Right	4,897	1   2
The Gateway Pundit	N/A	12	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	35	Most Extreme Right	5,797	1
TheBlaze (Blaze Media)		8	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	27	Hyper-Partisan Right	6,642	1
AlterNet		18	Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion	-23	Hyper-Partisan Left	14,007	1
Twitchy	N/A	14	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	29	Hyper-Partisan Right	15,499	1
Palmer Report	N/A	8	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	-34	Most Extreme Left	17,879	1
RedState	N/A	11	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	29	Hyper-Partisan Right	25,295	1
Guacamoley	N/A	17	Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion	-20	Hyper-Partisan Left	28,289	1
Wonkette	N/A	12	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	-34	Most Extreme Left	44,023	1
National Enquirer		6	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	10	Skews Right	95,781	1
Bipartisan Report	N/A	13	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	-27	Hyper-Partisan Left	132,478	1
David Wolfe	N/A	2	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	-32	Most Extreme Left	156,314	1
WorldTruth.TV	N/A	1	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	20	Hyper-Partisan Right	199,437	1
Patribotics	N/A	1	Contains Inaccurate/Fabricated Info	-40	Most Extreme Left	375,449	1   2
Occupy Democrats		9	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	-30	Hyper-Partisan Left	1,102,908	1
Forward Progressives	N/A	15	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	-25	Hyper-Partisan Left	5,147,500	1
Conservative Tribune	N/A	12	Propaganda/Contains Misleading Info	35	Most Extreme Right	N/A	1   2

Note: There is a discrepancy with Ad Fontes Media's data table and chart. PJ Media had an "Overall Quality" score ("Vertical Rank") of 17 ("Selective or Incomplete Story; Unfair Persuasion") in the table, but its position in the chart is around 27 ("Opinion; Fair Persuasion"). I excluded PJ Media from the above list.

When the list is sorted by "Alexa Rank", it's clear that among low-quality sources, the websites with the highest traffic are right-wing sources. Assuming that Ad Fontes Media analyzed all of the most popular publications, it's reasonable to conclude that, due to their popularity, low-quality far-right sources are more likely to be discussed and deprecated on WP:RSN than low-quality far-left sources. — Newslinger talk 14:21, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

As someone who is prolific at editing American Politics, I have never encountered most of the hyper-partisan left sites that are cited there (on Wikipedia or elsewhere). The most common ones are AlterNet, Wonkette and the Palmer Report, but for the latter two, it's extremely rare that I've seen them. I of course delete all of them when I encounter them. Hyper-partisan conservative non-RS such as DC, the Blaze, DW, DM, WND and Breitbart come up ALL the time on American Politics articles. It makes sense that sites of dubious quality that are frequently used on Wikipedia come up on the RS noticeboard. Why should anyone bring up a site that's never cited on Wikipedia to the RS noticeboard? Snooganssnoogans (talk) 14:45, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

One reason right-wing news webaites are more popular than left-wing ones is that the Right is, at least in the U.S., that the Right is far larger. Another is that left-wing sources generally differ from mainstream sources by the stories they provide, while right-wing sources tend to use alternative facts. So while a left-wing site might have attacked Obama's Middle East policies by documenting the suffering of people living there, right-wing sources published stories claiming he was a Muslim. TFD (talk) 20:38, 26 December 2018 (UTC)

This table seems unfair to me, in that most of the sources like WND and Infowars are online backwaters obviously "foaming at the mouth" in a way that needs no expert with divining rod to confirm. National Enquirer is the closest thing to Daily Mail in terms of reputation and size, and even so, we're talking about the difference between a British tabloid and an American tabloid, which is a whole other level of sensationalism. I mean, the Enquirer routinely runs lurid headlines with preposterous claims to amuse people leaving a supermarket, and nobody expects them to be true. The whole stop-and-go notation for whole newspapers regardless of year or author let alone topic is antithetical to the idea of a user edited site where individuals make decisions. Wnt (talk) 16:37, 29 December 2018 (UTC)

​Please note that the table wasn't constructed to make an argument for or against the Daily Mail. It just tries to explain why most of the currently deprecated sources are right-wing sources. Although Ad Fontes Media puts the Daily Mail in the "Nonsense damaging to public discourse" classification (0-19 reliability score), the Daily Mail (19) is still rated much more highly than WorldNetDaily (4) and InfoWars (1). In the Daily Mail RfC, editors are expressing their opinions on where to draw the line (if any) for deprecation. — Newslinger talk 02:03, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

As others have suggested it may simply be they are just used more often, and so action needs to be taken more often. Also (as others have pointed out) left wing "doddgey" sources tend to be taken less seriously by their readership (as they often make it clear they are satirical, or at least humourous)) then right wing ones.Slatersteven (talk) 15:48, 1 January 2019 (UTC)

• Providing such Table as list of sources to avoid (at the level of an essay, rather than a policy) could be helpful. However, based on the reasoning in this Table, Daily Mail is actually better than a lot of other sources, some of which are used in Wikipedia. My very best wishes (talk) 17:24, 3 January 2019 (UTC)

  We already have a table that summarizes community consensus at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources (WP:RSP). We don't have a table for all of Ad Fontes Media's ratings, but it shouldn't be too difficult to make one if editors would find it useful. — Newslinger talk 10:26, 4 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you! This is good to know. However, creating such lists of bad sources actually goes against our manin policy that overrides WP:consensus. Something published by reputable author in Daily Mail can be treated as a reliable source. My very best wishes (talk) 00:18, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

No problem. It's important to recognize that WP:RSP uses the phrase "generally unreliable" instead of just "unreliable" or "always unreliable". There are exceptions to any generalization, and editors can defend the use of generally unreliable and deprecated sources by invoking the verifiability policy, which takes precedence over the reliable sources guideline. These exceptions are rare, per existing consensus. — Newslinger talk 00:29, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

• Re: Something published by reputable author in Daily Mail can be treated as a reliable source -- yes it can, but why? There are multitudes of reliable authors who publish in reliable publications. Why go to DM in the first place? --K.e.coffman (talk) 00:33, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Because when you write something about a relatively low-notability subject (or a person), you frequently can find references only in sources like Daily Mail or something similar. My very best wishes (talk) 17:06, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

So maybe that might be an indicator they are not in fact notable if only slightly iffy sources give a damn?Slatersteven (talk)

• I think the point has been made elsewhere that we don't have Palmer Report etc. on this list because people know better than to cite them. A lot of people try to add far-right sources to articles, but most leftists who come here seem to be content to go with sorces generally considered reliable. Which is, of course, the point of the book. The continuum from centre right to far left is just that: a continuum. Most facts are covered across a variety of media. ut right-wing "facts" that are not true, are not covered in the reality-based press other than as the lies they are, and far-left lies get fact checked, debunked and dropped.

I found that links to Occupy were outnumbered easily ten to one y links to InfoWars, when I was purging them. Despite the leftish skew of Wikipedia's editor base, addition of hyper partisan leftist sites was never as widespread as abuse of hyper-partisan right wing sites. It's possible that false balance and both-sides-ism may be a cause here. Guy (Help!) 13:32, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

General comments: Greetings!: Content with sources are generally considered reliable unless contested or blacklisted. This is sometimes settled locally with current policies and guidelines but sometimes help or some dispute resolution is needed on source reliability. Getting into micromanaging if a supposed generally accepted site leans one way or the other or leans "too far" (do we have a measurement) one way or the other needs to be watched. Looking at the many "wing" titles, as trying to determine a political stance with all the branches such as conservative, liberal, and many "in between" (newer ones attempted to be created all the time) left wing, right wing, center wing, including the "extremes" offered (extreme left, left of left, so far left, radical left (and the same with the others), does not necessarily render a source questionable. If a source leans extremely "too far" one way or the other to be a political or biased opinion it will likely have other red flags to question reliability and certainly appear here. This is when a discussion should follow.

I can understand keeping a check on sources to make sure some addition is not purely a political agenda (satirical, humourous), or blacklisted. I went to provide a source to a questioned sentence (tagged as "citation needed") to discover that it was blacklisted. I looked and it was "Oh crap, that is bad", so I am glad eyes are looking out. The "false balance and both-sides-ism"('s) will likely be an issue for the duration. The chart is just for comparison but it is now "out there".

My point is that a site that has editorial over-site and one million subscribers should not be discounted as a source because it may be considered leaning one way or the other. I see references (Google book links) to "a" book that may have very limited readership (maybe specialized) and horrible over site being used daily. If a view is presented on Wikipedia that has two different angles of looking at it we cover both for neutrality. The same can be said for some sources. That would be a good reason to have two sources on one sentence or paragraph. I just ran across a paragraph in an article with three sentences and sixteen references. That is extreme. Thank you, Otr500 (talk) 22:49, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

I completely agree with your argument that a source should not be considered unreliable solely because it is biased or opinionated. This subject has come up many times on the perennial sources list, and can be confusing. Two key points:

1. There is an inverse correlation between a source's bias and its reliability. This is illustrated in the graph, where the most reliable sources tend to be the least biased, the least reliable sources tend to be the most biased, and the rest of the graph is shaped in an upside-down "V".
2. Despite this, WP:BIASED and WP:IS § Biased sources advise editors to evaluate a source's reliability independently from its bias. Unreliable sources should be discouraged for use, while biased sources can be used with attribution.

​— Newslinger talk 07:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, I just had run across that Fox was brought up for consideration as not being reliable and I REALLY don't want the remote possibility of censorship either way. I have not dug into individual sites being on a "list" but sometimes a "warning" alerts me. I would think there would be a shortcut or easier linking for someone to find "depreciated" sites. I didn't even know about Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Perennial sources until I received a warning on a source "again" and looked around. Someone wanting this info would have to go to RSN and see "Before posting" (but what if I just want info?) so many might not see it. Typing in "Depreciated" or other search terms does not suffice. It is amazing considering I add references regularly. I guess I just didn't like DM as a source so avoided using it. Anyway, "connectivity" would be a good reason why links should be more easily found to sites blacklisted or depreciated so an editor can either avoid them from the start or dig deeper. Just a thought! Otr500 (talk) 15:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Otr500, there is an explanatory essay with a list of deprecated sources at Wikipedia:Deprecated sources (WP:DEPS). Please note that the word used is deprecated, not depreciated. I've created redirects from Wikipedia:Depreciated sources, WP:DEPRECIATE, and WP:DEPRECIATED to make this essay easier to find. — Newslinger talk 22:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• WOW! Thanks so much. I corrected the spell check thing (need a "silly me" emoticon). It actually "corrected" the spelling to the wrong word meaning I have been using the wrong term ---a lot. So for unaware idiots like me thanks for the redirects. Now I wish I knew how to find all the "wrong words" I used to correct them. Otr500 (talk) 16:15, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Ritterkreuzträger Profiles series

Is the Ritterkreuzträger Profiles series a reliable source for mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht? –dlthewave ☎ 17:39, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

A recent RfC determined that mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht WWII-era German propaganda broadcast may be included in relevant articles when a reliable source that focuses on the mentioned person or unit specifically states that the mention was an honour. Two of these mentions are sourced to the Ritterkreuzträger Profiles series by UNITEC Publishing:

• Schumann, Ralf; Westerwelle, Wolfgang (2010). Ritterkreuzträger Profile Nr. 8 Joachim Müncheberg – Der Jäger von Malta [Knight's Cross Profiles Nr. 8 Joachim Müncheberg – The Hunter of Malta] (in German). UNITEC-Medienvertrieb. OCLC 706989728. ASIN B003ZNZTGY  (18 May 2014). {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (used at Joachim Müncheberg)
• Steinecke, Gerhard [in German] (2012). Ritterkreuzträger Profile Nr. 11 Hans Philipp — Einer von Vielen [Knight's Cross Profiles Nr. 11 Hans Philipp — One of Many] (in German). UNITEC-Medienvertrieb. OCLC 802538281. ASIN B008AIT9Z6  (4 January 2013). {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (used at Hans Philipp)

The series was previously discussed at RSN and is currently under discussion at MILHIST. –dlthewave ☎ 17:40, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

Most people who took part in discussion had no idea what is the Wehrmachtbericht and whether it was on honor or not. What K.e.coffman wrote is original research and misleading. Wehrmachtbericht was a honor. There are 1,182 individual soldiers mentioned in the Wehrmachtbericht, out of millions of soldiers who served in the German Army.

I quote from a research paper who deals with the Wehrmachtbericht and the German fighter pilots[4]:

’’To examine the effects of public recognition, we focus on mentions by name in the German Armed Forces daily bulletin (Wehrmachtbericht). This is for several reasons: Mentions were rare, and reserved for recognizing spectacular accomplishments such as a particularly high number of enemy ships sunk or fighters shot down. Second, mentions became known instantly over a wide area, being broadcast on the radio, published in the press, and distributed at command posts throughout German territory. Third, mentions in the daily bulletin were largely unexpected. There was no mechanical rule that entitled a pilot to being mentioned. Fourth, mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht are a fleeting form of recognition, providing the recipient with no tangible token of appreciation beyond elevating his status in the eyes of others. For all these reasons, we consider the mentions in the daily bulletin an ideal source of identifying variation for analyzing the effects of status competition.

Mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht were embedded in an elaborate system of awards and medals operated by the German armed forces.’’

My view on this is clear that for all mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht the Wegmann, Günter, ed. 1982. “Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Gibt Bekannt‐‐”: Der Deutsche Wehrmachtbericht: Vollständige Ausgabe der durch Presse und Rundfunk veröffentlichten Texte. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag should be used and is very reliable as is used as a source for K.e.coffman favorite book The Wehrmacht By Wolfram WETTE which deals with war crimes and propaganda (see chapter 5 notes The Legends of the Wehrmacht’s “Clean Hands”). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.234.46.144 (talk • contribs)

Comparable to Mentioned in dispatches? - Donald Albury 22:28, 20 December 2018 (UTC)

In some respects, Donald, I would agree. Especially in that they were named in widely distributed official government bulletin as MiD recipients were in the London Gazette. It also appears that they were in fact treated as an honour per the research paper linked above and other sources already discussed at WT:MILHIST. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:48, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

No, not comparable because the available sources do not make this connection. If such sources exist, this matter can be raised at Talk:Mentioned in dispatches#Question on the Wehrmacht Report or Talk:Wehrmachtbericht. At present, neither article mentions the other. --K.e.coffman (talk) 21:51, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Frankly, that they were similar is BLUE. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:01, 22 December 2018 (UTC)

Then it should be easy to provide sources attesting to such. This can be done at Talk:Mentioned in dispatches#Question on the Wehrmacht Report, as this discussion is somewhat off-topic. The RfC is about Ritterkreuzträger Profiles from UNITEC-Medienvertrieb, not the Wehrmachtbericht itself. K.e.coffman (talk) 05:14, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

• I see no reason why not. Nothing has been produced here so far to make me question the reliability or accuracy of the content of the books themselves, the reliability of the authors, or of the publishing house, and I have attempted to find criticism of the works online and came up empty. Perhaps others with better German skills can find something, and I would be happy to revise my position if such was forthcoming. The publisher has about 180 different titles on specialist military subjects including the French Air Force and Cold War military exercises as well as this series. Titles from this press (and from this series) are held by state and university libraries in Germany including the Bundeswehr University Munich, and it seems to be a publisher similar to the Bloomsbury Publishing imprint Osprey Publishing, a specialist military publisher, not academic quality but nevertheless reliable. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 06:48, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• As this research paper says[5][6]: “Mentions in the daily bulletin were amongst the highest form of recognition used by the German armed forces. A typical report would only mention major events at the different fronts, listing gains and losses of territory or individual battles. Mentions were rare. During the entire war, fewer than 1,200 men were recognized in this way (Wegmann 1982), out of 18 million German men who served. Mentions by name were introduced in April 1940. One of the first soldiers receiving this recognition was Erwin Rommel for his role in leading the German armored thrust into France in the spring of 1940. A typical example of Wehrmachtbericht mentioned in dispatches is Hans‐Joachim Marseille’s mention on June 18, 1942: First Lieutenant Marseille shot down ten enemy planes in a 24 hour period in North Africa, raising his total score of aerial victories to 101. (Wegmann 1982)”

The principal awards for valor were the Iron Crosses and the Knight’s Cross. In addition, soldiers could receive a mention in the daily bulletin. This was one of the highest forms of recognition available in the German armed forces. Like Meintioned in Dispatches wikipage it differs from country to country. In Wehrmachtbericht some soldiers were mentioned multiple times, not necessarily because of receiving the highest award for valor the Knight’s Cross, but also by spectacular accomplishments such as a particularly high number of enemy ships sunk or fighters shot down (see the example above). Then there were also units and ships who were mentioned. Wegmann, Günter, ed. 1982. “Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht Gibt Bekannt‐‐”: Der Deutsche Wehrmachtbericht: Vollständige Ausgabe der durch Presse und Rundfunk veröffentlichten Texte. Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag had been used as a source for The Wehrmacht By Wolfram Wette and in the research paper above. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DiorandI (talk • contribs) 00:52, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Who is the publisher, do they have a good reputation? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slatersteven (talk • contribs) 11:29, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Using sources that are beyond reproach is the best option. Misterbee1966 has already provided sources of this kind to show the report was an award. That is enough. The editors of MilHist chose to disregard those sources, despite advocating the exclusion of such mentions on the basis that reliable sources are lacking. It is a strange stance. Dapi89 (talk) 12:47, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

I don't think that its a good idea to re litigate the long-running RfC on the Wehrmachtbericht here, not least as it ended in a fairly clear consensus and this it isn't an appropriate venue for the re-litigation to occur. The question asked at the top of the thread is whether some German-language sources are RS. Nick-D (talk) 23:07, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• Comment on author de:Gerhard Steinecke who wrote Ritterkreuzträger Profile Nr. 11 Hans Philipp — Einer von Vielen [Knight's Cross Profiles Nr. 11 Hans Philipp — One of Many]. According to his German Wiki article, Steinecke studied history in Berlin from 1965 to 1970. He was the museum director of de:Schloss Kuckuckstein and later in Nossen. In 1984, he was released out of politcal reasons (not stated which) by East Germany. Following the German reunification, he wrote a variety of books about the history of Meißen, Philipp was born in Meißen, and other history related topics, see also Literature by and about Gehard Steinicke in the German National Library catalogue. Professor Jonas Flöter, in his book Eliten-Bildung in Sachsen und Preussen: die Fürsten- und Landesschulen Grimma, Meissen, Joachimsthal und Pforta (1868-1933) [Elite Education in Saxony and Prussia: the Prince and Country Schools Grimma, Meissen, Joachimsthal and Pforta (1868-1933)], thanked Steinecke for his contribution, see pages 11, 470, 471. MisterBee1966 (talk) 18:26, 23 December 2018 (UTC)

Has the content of the de.wiki article been verified? It appears to be entirely unsourced. –dlthewave ☎ 23:51, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• Cheap military pulp serial with an emphasis on images. These works are popular history, directed at a certain audience. Editorial oversight is completely unclear and unlikely. If there is virtually no reference to these publications, neither critical nor endorsing, that does not speak for their reliability, but for their neglibility. --Assayer (talk) 01:04, 7 January 2019 (UTC)
• Not reliable - Editors wishing to attribute Wehrmachtbericht references to these sources have failed to demonstrate their reliability or compliance with the inclusion requirement. "I don't see why not" is not a strong argument, particularly for a source that was added before the more stringent criteria were established. –dlthewave ☎ 18:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945

Is Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 a reliable source for mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht? –dlthewave ☎ 05:24, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

A recent RfC determined that mentions in the Wehrmachtbericht WWII-era German propaganda broadcast may be included in relevant articles when a reliable source that focuses on the mentioned person or unit specifically states that the mention was an honour. Three volumes of Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 appear as sources for mentions in a number of articles:

• Stockert, Peter (1996). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 1 [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 1] (in German). Bad Friedrichshall, Germany: Friedrichshaller Rundblick. ISBN 978-3-9802222-7-3. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (used in Hermann-Friedrich Joppien and Josef Priller) (Amending to add Heinrich Bär) –dlthewave ☎ 19:43, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• Stockert, Peter (2012) [1997]. Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 2 [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 2] (in German) (4th ed.). Bad Friedrichshall, Germany: Friedrichshaller Rundblick. ISBN 978-3-9802222-9-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (used in Friedrich-Karl "Tutti" Müller and Friedrich Geisshardt)

• Stockert, Peter (1997). Die Eichenlaubträger 1939–1945 Band 3 [The Oak Leaves Bearers 1939–1945 Volume 3] (in German). Bad Friedrichshall, Germany: Friedrichshaller Rundblick. ISBN 978-3-932915-01-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help) (used in Theodor Weissenberger)

–dlthewave ☎ 05:26, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• As in the above RfC, I see no reason why not. Nothing has been produced here so far to make me question the reliability or accuracy of the content of the books themselves, the reliability of the author, or of the publishing house, and I have attempted to find criticism of the works online and came up empty. Perhaps others with better German skills can find something, and I would be happy to revise my position if such was forthcoming. Stockert's works on Oak Leaves recipients are held by state and university libraries in Germany, as well as the Bundeswehr University Munich library, and Friedrichshaller Rundblick appears to be a small publisher of historical books, with about 80 titles. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 07:04, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Have you confirmed that the source describes the mention as an honor? This content was added before the new sourcing requirement was in place, so we cannot presume that it complies. –dlthewave ☎ 23:30, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

• These books are very reliable especially for awards including mentioned in dispatches. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DioandI (talk • contribs) 01:18, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

Again same question as above, who are they? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Slatersteven (talk • contribs) 04:31, 21 December 2018 (UTC)

• Not reliable - Editors wishing to attribute Wehrmachtbericht references to these sources have failed to demonstrate their reliability or compliance with the inclusion requirement. –dlthewave ☎ 18:27, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogger and Tumblr, etc.

Is this a reliable source for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Blogger and Tumblr? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Banana19208 (talk • contribs) 05:25, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Banana19208, I don't quite understand what the word "this" means in your question. Are you asking about a particular article or source? — Newslinger talk 07:30, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

Wholly depends on context, Bert Terribles (confirmed) facebook (for example) page would be an RS for what he says, not for it being true, nor for the purposes of establishing his notability.Slatersteven (talk) 10:55, 6 January 2019 (UTC)

The problem I have with that is the (very widespread) use of "$SUBJECT tweeted $THING, source, Tweet where $SUBJECT said $THING". It's a primary self-published source, obviously $SUBJECT think it's significant but unless it's commented on by other sources it probably isn't. We could fill entire articles with bullshit that emanates from some verified accounts, none of which is true, none of which is commented on or rebutted by reality-based sources because it is self-evident bullshit. So as with any other self-published source we should only use it for something we would normally include anyway (birthday, for example) and not for anything that amounts to a contentious or promotional claim. Guy (Help!) 08:53, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I would only cite facebook as an agency of publishing the primary source, but those sites themselves are not reliable by themselves. But it is a rare case to cite primary source, such as football transfer, citing the secondary source that reporting the tweet of transfer and the original tweet as primary source. Matthew hk (talk) 08:45, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

• i have removed rfc from the title as the thread was not tagged with {{rfc}}. Matthew hk (talk) 08:56, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Just an opinion: I am not a fan of "spreading" Twitter drama on an encyclopedia. We could close Wikipedia and turn it into a Trump (Twitter finger King) or other movie star tweet site that could last forever. As not being a dictionary or repository for news and drama I will use my new favorite quote of the month/year: "We could fill entire articles with bullshit that emanates from some verified accounts, none of which is true, none of which is commented on or rebutted by reality-based sources because it is self-evident bullshit." (by User:Guy). Otr500 (talk) 17:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

For More Reliable Sources

Hello everybody,

There is an urgent need to discuss this with you.

We all felt sorry for what happened to the German magazine “Der Spiegel”. Years of lies and misinformation by a famous and trusted reporter. What do we need to do to trust all the sources that Wikipedia is based on??? Alex-h (talk) 14:53, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

Do you have a specific concearn?Slatersteven (talk) 09:42, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm guessing they mean Der Spiegel#2018 fabrication scandal. The answer is, we will continue to be taken as much as the rest of the world is. We don't do our own research, we only use what reliable sources publish, wo when reliable sources are fooled, we will be too.--GRuban (talk) 16:46, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• No need to panic. We have WP:EXTRAORDINARY. wumbolo ^^^ 09:05, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Both replies are excellent advice! Otr500 (talk) 22:44, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Audio Assemble (audioassemble.com) for mumble rap designation in Cardi B article

In the Cardi B article, a page from Audio Assemble (audioassemble.com), "The Top “Mumble” Rappers in 2018", is currently being used to support the claim that Cardi B is a mumble rap artist in the infobox. Is Audio Assemble a reliable source for this information?

On its about page, Audio Assemble describes itself as "a web site that was created so that people can easily and qucikly learn how to use Pro Tools recording software, and everything that comes a long with it". It also lists four "main goals":

There are four main goals for Audio Assemble.

1. Help all levels of protools users to understand their software better.
2. Help educate musicans and producers on the best types of equipment to use
3. Help musicians and producers have the edge in their career by providing a free avenue of information directly relevant to their career and passion
4. Have Fun

Pinging LilliamPumpernickl134, who added this content to the article's infobox. — Newslinger talk 01:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Also pinging Cornerstonepicker, who removed it. — Newslinger talk 04:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Unreliable considering that genre warring is a common issue on music biographies, a high-quality source (or sources) would be necessary to establish that a musical artist is part of a specific genre. Add to the fact that the term "mumble rap" is considered derogatory, and I would prefer a much higher quality source than "Audio Assemble" (cited in only 1 article) for a music BLP like Cardi B. feminist (talk) 14:22, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

  I agree with your assessment. Audio Assemble is clearly a low-quality source, and their field of expertise (if you could even call it that) does not include commentary on musicians. With frequent spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors across many pages, Audio Assemble's editorial process is not very robust, if they even have one at all. — Newslinger talk 07:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: The Daily Caller

Which of the following best describes the reliability of The Daily Caller?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail

— Newslinger talk 10:16, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Note: If you support option 4, then you are also supporting option 3. Option 4 is a subset of option 3, since all deprecated sources are also considered generally unreliable. If I had the chance to rewrite the RfC statement, I would have renamed option 4 something along the lines of "option 3A". — Newslinger talk 15:49, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• 4 [shifi] $ A personal preference for facts over personal profit. cygnis insignis 12:34, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

*Option 4 give some of the stuff I have read they are deeply problematic.Slatersteven (talk) 12:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 for the issues regarding preference for profit over fact, for the issues of the obvious extreme right skew and for bordering on WP:NOFUCKINGNAZIS territory tbh. Simonm223 (talk) 13:09, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 I'd place them somewhere between HuffPost and Breitbart, which means that it should generally be avoided for facts, but its opinions fall under WP:RSOPINION. This means a blacklist is inappropriate. feminist (talk) 13:09, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • I also agree with Blueboar's point that context matters. feminist (talk) 16:06, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Actually, I'd go with Option 5 as well. feminist (talk) 16:14, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • ... and if you insist that we have to pick one from Option 1-4, I'd still say Option 3 is closest to my view. feminist (talk) 04:35, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 5: Context matters. How a source is used, and what it is used for has to be considered. The Daily Caller is primarily a news analysis and opinion outlet (as opposed to a news reporting outlet). As such, it should be treated similarly to the way we treat op-ed pages in old fashioned "dead tree" (print) news outlets... it is certainly reliable when used as a primary source - supporting attributed statements as to the opinion and analysis of its contributors.

Whether it is reliable for some specific fact ... a lot depends on the reputation of the specific contributor (some have a better reputation for fact checking than others). Yes, the Daily Caller does make mistakes (as do all news outlets)... however, it has a fairly good reputation for acknowledging those mistakes and issuing corrections - and issuing corrections is an important factor in determining whether a news source is "generally" reliable (or not). Blueboar (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

For the purposes of the perennial sources list, "option 5" is equivalent to option 2 (unclear or additional considerations apply). Context always matters regardless of how The Daily Caller is assessed. WP:ABOUTSELF allows the use of questionable sources for uncontroversial self-descriptions even under option 3 (generally unreliable for factual reporting) and option 4 (publishes false or fabricated information; deprecated). — Newslinger talk 01:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 I can't think of a specific case where having this as a source is worth the trouble it's caused and will probably continue to cause. PeterTheFourth (talk) 13:25, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

  Can you give some examples of the “trouble” it has caused? Blueboar (talk) 13:47, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Blueboar: My pleasure. PeterTheFourth (talk) 20:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

And how did this “cause trouble”... were editors trying to cite these reports? Blueboar (talk) 20:53, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• 1 In fact, this is my opinion on a great many sources. Opinions must be cited specifically as opinion is the corollary to this position. The main problem is that most journalists now rely on press releases for almost everything they write. Indeed in a study of "medical articles" almost every newspaper used press releases for a vast majority of their articles, and I doubt that this is then untrue of almost any topic where press releases exist. Factcheckers on articles being written are virtually non-existent any more. For any publication. Ask Der Spiegel. Collect (talk) 14:23, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 based on the usual source. This does not contradict Collect's point that churnalism is a huge problem in all media these days. Michael Marshall lists a number of tells, the most obvious of which is the prominent naming of the article's source in the third paragraph, with a lack of any other obvious corroborating or independent source. "Your house is in danger from zombies!" with, in para 3, "According to Fred Undead, marketing director of Undead's Zombie Insurance Policies Lts, the risk has been recognised by a large increase in policies against zombie apocalypse". But Daily Caller is not just doing that - churnalism certainly makes vast swathes of the Caller's not-obviously-bullshit content actually bullshit after all, but the core issue is the usual right wing bubble problem of positive feedback and ideology being given greater precedence than factual accuracy. Guy (Help!) 14:39, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • It's one thing to consider Ad Fontes Media while determining the reliability of a source, another thing to be completely reliant on it. You're going to have to provide more evidence than that. feminist (talk) 16:13, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Bad question. No reason was presented for bringing this up. It's an established news source and overriding WP:RS policy for yet another ban should not be the result of an out-of-nowhere RfC with zilch evidence of a problem or dispute that affects Wikipedia seriously. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:49, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The above is a valid point, is there any evidence this is causing problems here that need to be solved?Slatersteven (talk) 15:02, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The most recent discussion of The Daily Caller on this noticeboard is a 2018 RfC that was closed without extended discussion (possibly because it asked for a general assessment of 3 very different sources). In that RfC, most editors asserted that The Daily Caller is unreliable. The second-most recent discussion is from 2013, which is stale under WP:RSP standards. The purpose of this current RfC is to gauge current consensus, as there is reason to believe that past discussions are out of date. Note that the current RfC's opening statement links to the WP:RS guideline, and asks editors to express opinions according to that guideline. I didn't explain my reason for starting this RfC in the opening statement, because it is supposed to be neutral and brief. — Newslinger talk 01:05, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 5 While I can find examples of inaccurate reporting and controversial backgrounds for some of its editors, I cannot find any informed commentary about the general accuracy of their reporting. So why not say there is no evidence that it is a reliable source? In that case each time it was used would have to be evalutated on a case by case basis. I cannot think of any reason why it should ever be used. If it is the only source for a story, the information lacks weight. And there are obviously better sources when stories are well covered. TFD (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 Not quite as loopy as Infowars or Worldtruth, but their bias is massive and their lack of respect for accuracy not far behind. This is one of those sites that makes me wonder why we're always selecting out the Daily Mail for criticism and letting these even worse ones through. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:00, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 5. It is not well-established so context matters. BLP considerations apply to all sources so we shouldn't be emphasizing it for TDC. The website is similar to e.g. Vox which is generally considered reliable because of the couple of Pulitzers it won, even though it's young. I'm not convinced by the above comments and I especially oppose the horrible option 4. wumbolo ^^^ 18:04, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  Oppose option 4. The DM RfCs do not set a specific precedent and we have to look at each source individually. While the DC has published false information, it doesn't seem serious enough to blacklist it. Headlines shouldn't be examined at RSN. wumbolo ^^^ 10:12, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

  For clarification, The Daily Caller has not been awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and it has published opinions/columns attacking Pulitzer Prize winners (e.g. "Credibility Of Pulitzer Prize Takes A Hit By Rewarding ProPublica’s Liberal Bias", "Will WaPo Have To Return The Pulitzer For Wesley Lowery’s Ethical F**kup?", and "Wesley Lowery Brags At A Party: I’m Getting A Pulitzer!"). — Newslinger talk 02:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

  I did not say that it did. I compared TDC and Vox, which are similar at a glance, but differ in reliability because of the high-quality journalism at Vox. wumbolo ^^^ 09:03, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

  I didn't think you would say that, but your sentence could be read that way because the word "it" could refer to either publication: "The website is similar to e.g. Vox which is generally considered reliable because of the couple of Pulitzers it won, even though it's young." versus "The website is similar to e.g. Vox which is generally considered reliable because of the couple of Pulitzers it won, even though it's young." Just a clarification, not an accusation. ​— Newslinger talk 09:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

  I also can't find any information about Vox winning a Pulitzer. Did you mean something else? — Newslinger talk 09:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

  I misremembered this Vox discussion, sorry. Also, I believed that "e.g." worked as a comma and I apologize for the ambiguity. I have striken my !vote because it was based on a false premise, and I have written just a !vote opposing option 4 until I can decide to support a specific option, after more evidence is presented. Thank you very much for understanding and checking my !vote. wumbolo ^^^ 10:12, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 The Daily Caller is hot garbage. See below. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose 4 Perhaps I have missed something but I see nothing here that has shown an issue on Wikipedia. I see instances where they are unreliable and others where they are fine. Without evidence of an issue what is the point of this RFC? PackMecEng (talk) 14:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 If it wasn't enough before, their story about a nude selfie of a new member of Congress they don't like, that was fake, convinced me to !vote. O3000 (talk) 21:01, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Objective3000, At what point was that story unreliable?... was it their initial version that reported how other people (not them) thought the photo was real... or was it the subsequent (clarified) version where they explicitly make it clear that the photo is fake? Blueboar (talk) 21:52, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, they did have to reverse it after criticism, so quickly that they goofed the first time and broke links. They have been attacking this person and ran this story with the typical “some people say” language found in bad sources. O3000 (talk) 21:58, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

To stress what is discussed below, the problem text that was changed was strictly limited to the headline that was used. And headlines are not considered in any way an RS regardless of the source behind it. --Masem (t) 22:08, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Understood. But, if they’re willing to include the photo, and put that in the headline (which is as far as some folk read); that appears well over the irresponsibility line. I was wavering between options 3 & 4 and was pushed over the line by this, even though we don’t use headlines. O3000 (talk) 22:17, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Are you saying that we should judge the reliability of a media source by its headlines... regardless of how accurate and reliable the actual reporting is? Blueboar (talk) 22:31, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4. Softlavender (talk) 02:54, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 - Highly-partisan site which ignores general principles of journalism in order to attack perceived ideological opponents and defend perceived ideological allies. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 19:54, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 I thought it was obvious that this website is extremely unreliable due to its unmitigated devotion to being unethical and flat-out lying. Somehow they make Fox News seem reasonable and measured. Trillfendi (talk) 07:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated as in the 2017 RfC of the Daily Mail. Routinely falsifies claims, see https://www.politifact.com/personalities/daily-caller/

  Only two false statements in total? That is impressive. wumbolo ^^^ 20:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

100% of statements evaluated are false? That is indeed impressive. Just not in a good way. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 18:56, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 Pretty much the antithesis of a reliable source. Their extreme and unabashed political slant aside, it's not a great sign when most of the article about them is devoted to well-sourced instances where they deliberately published falsehoods. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 18:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 By my reading, there's no real difference in option 3 vs. 4 in terms of reliability, but that generally unreliable sources are WP:DEPRECATED when there's a real risk that editors might cite them. I think that risk might exist with the DC partly because of its popularity and partly because they once had pretensions of doing serious reporting. Still: I actually haven't turned up a lot of instances where they've been cited improperly, and I'm worried that we're venturing down the path of creating a sort of endlessly contentious media shitlist when we don't need one. Nblund ^talk 19:52, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Discussion

We need evidence to support option 4. (Which was there in the Daily Mail RFC). Having a far-right bias is not the same as fabrication of material. --Masem (t) 16:19, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Senator Senator Bob Menendez rape allegation, turned down by multiple RS as being dodgey?Slatersteven (talk) 16:55, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Snopes provides plenty of examples. The problem though is that this is anecdotal evidence. No one expects that any reliable source, except holy writings, to be 100% accurate. You need to determine the inaccuracy rate and compare it with a similar publication we consider reliable or find a journalism textbook that evaluates its reliability. TFD (talk) 17:38, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I can accept that a source can be considered dodgey or generally unreliable based on the impression that other sources give to it, as part of determining whether to select from options 1-3 above. Jumping on a few words of text from an internal memo to blow that into a full-blown controversy, that's a good reason to call something unreliable - but let's not pretend that other sources don't do that. Just that most other good sources try to back it up with as much evidence as possible before making the accusation, whereas the DC in the case of Menendez jumped immediately. But that's all reason to keep the source unreliable particularly for contentious topics, but not unusable where they are reporting on less contentious material.

I'm specifically looking to find a case where they have publish outright factually wrong information, fully mis-reported people's words, or other true fabrications of the news (and without the editorial responsibility of correcting their mistakes), as was shown in the previous DM RFC, as to make the work as a whole untrustworthy. --Masem (t) 18:12, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

For persistence, their climate change denialism would seem to be the longest running. Any meta-commentary I've read also seems to mention US politicians and their mix of whitewashing those they like and simply making up stories about those they don't, but I'm no follower of US political infighting. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:28, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I really really don't feel comfortable blacklisting a source (aka effectively Option 4) based only on their bias or POV. If they are outright making up/fabricating stories (in contrast to exaggerating on trivial but truthful events as with the Menendez story) that's one thing, but that should be shown. --Masem (t) 18:58, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

@Masem: Today provides evidence of The Daily Caller presenting false info. They shared a fake nude photo purporting that it was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. See here for more. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:08, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• I don't read that Vice article that way at all. First, its a headline, which for any source we have determined should never be treated as RSes since they are often written by a completely different person. Secondary, as Vice points out, they replaced the headline when it was called out to them, which shows a minimum of journalistic integrity. The body of the DC article never made the claim, as Vice points out. So no, that's not evidence. (And further, I read the original DC headline that it has used cautionary language, not claiming it as fact in DC's voice as being such a nude, but that it was what a online user claimed.) --Masem (t) 21:22, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
  • @Masem: So, at best, DC passed along a nude photo from an online user claiming it was AOC after it had been debunked by Reddit, titling the photo with her name, and adding the headline "Here’s the photo some people described as a nude photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez." "Some people"? That's how they do journalism? – Muboshgu (talk) 21:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)
    • That's tabloid style, and that's a good reason to already slot the DC as generally unreliable especially around BLP articles, but I'm specifically focused on trying to identify why it should in Option 4 that would effectively blacklist it if we're mirroring the 2017 Daily Mail RFC. Sleazy presentation and reporting is sleazy, but it is not creating false information that shows that we should bury DC from any use. --Masem (t) 21:52, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The Daily Caller article says, "New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has enemies, and they’re not shying away from releasing a phony nude picture of the newest, youngest member of Congress."[7] (My emphasis.) Sure it's bad taste and the original headline (“Here’s the photo some people described as a nude photo of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”) uses weasel-wording. But headlines and photographs are not reliable sources regardless of the publication.

Here's a recent misleading headline from the New York Times: "Veselnitskaya, Russian in Trump Tower Meeting, Is Charged in Case That Shows Kremlin Ties." The headline in CNN is "Russian lawyer at Trump Tower meeting charged in separate case." The NY Times article falsely implies that she was charged in connection with collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.

Note: at the bottom of the CNN article it says, "CLARIFICATION: This story has been updated to reflect that Veselnitskaya was charged in connection with the money-laundering case." So apparently they too originally published a misleading headline.

TFD (talk) 21:48, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

So... regarding the supposed AOC story, the DC reported it accurately (explicitly saying it wasn’t AOC)... but Vice reported inaccurately (by claiming that the DC said it was AOC, when the DC didn’t actually say that). Good case for perhaps saying Vice is unreliable... not a good case for saying DC is unreliable. Blueboar (talk) 22:32, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

Blueboar: the DC changed its headline. The original said that "some people" said it was AOC, without acknowledging that it was fake. DC's explanation for the AOC headline is that “eager editor made a misjudgement as to the framing.” (emphasis mine) - which doesn't speak very well for their editorial process. On a similar note: The Daily Caller also claimed Alica Machado was a porn star. The Bob Menendez story was apparent fabrication which DC still appears to have never recanted. They also employed Charles C. Johnson, who almost exclusively traffics in nonsense. It's difficult to imagine a scenario where they would be a usable source for news. Nblund ^talk 22:40, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

The original headline never acknowledged it as fake, but never acknowledged it as real. I agree that there's much better ways they could have presented that initial headline, but the headline wasn't declaring the photo was real. And again, headlines should never be touched or considered in context of RSes; they are written by people at these place to grab your eyeballs, not to necessarily fairly summarize the story. So this is really not a strong piece of evidence that shows fabrication of news stories. --Masem (t) 22:50, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

I understand that - I was specifically responding to Blueboar's claim that Vice mis-characterized the headline - they didn't. Headlines shouldn't be cited, but it's worth noting that the "editorial process" appears to have made the article less factual, rather than more factual. I don't believe the DC has been caught red-handed in the process of fabricating a quote (is that the consensus standard?) but they've got a long history of "reckless disregard" sins against journalism: Charles Johnson's claim about David Kirkpatrick were based an obviously satirical source - and the DC's "corrected version" only half-assedly says the claim "appears to be a fabrication". The discussion of DC's work in this report, especially the article discussed on page 120, seems to indicate that it the outlet is actually involved in creating fake news, rather than just passing it along. I'm dubious about the usefulness of deprecation all together, but I have a hard time imagining any scenario where we would consider them trustworthy for anything of note. Nblund ^talk 23:30, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

My primary concern here, in the wake of the 2017 Daily Mail RFC, is that we have editors jumping to want to blacklist (spam filter) sites that should absolutely be treated as unreliable sources in cases of BLP or contested topics, but where they still may have some, possibly yet identified, utility for other features, such as being a fair RSOPINION source. DM was blacklisted because of clear evidence showing they were altering opinion pieces, eliminating even RSOPINION uses, but since then, I've seen people use the same logic that because a site is on the blacklist that RSOPINION can never apply and strip these sources out when they are only being used for RSOPINION (eg like Breitbart). Identifying DC as a highly unreliable source per Option 3 seems like a no brainer, but before we take Option 4, making sure that is fully justified if they are truly fabricating material to make it wholly unusual to blacklist them for all of WP. --Masem (t) 23:37, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• For the sake of getting some third party criticism of the DC in here... The Columbia Journalism Review has written about it several times. In several places it notes how The DC tries to take itself seriously and talks up its own journalistic integrity/rigor, but CJR tends to undercut that kind of claim (my sense is it CJR might be a little more forgiving if not for this). Some of CJR's critical quotes:

• July/August 2011: "But when The Daily Caller has reached for the big scoop, the results have been less impressive. Headline-grabbing exclusives—mostly intercepted e-mails and tweets and attacks on media rivals—have exploded across the web before fizzling under scrutiny. Sexed-up headlines burned above stories too twisted or bland to support them. Quotes were ripped out of context, corrections buried, and important disclosures dismissed."
• July 9, 2014: "The Menendez “scoop” isn’t the first instance in which the Caller has seemingly strayed from its stated journalistic mission. In 2011, the site reported that the Environmental Protection Agency was preparing to hire more than 230,000 new employees, which would amount to a mind-boggling 1,300-percent growth in its workforce. It did not walk back the claim, even when it was shown to be untrue. The next year, proving hyperbole plays online, it called President Barack Obama “a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble.” Employees have tweeted racist and sexist remarks, for which the Caller has subsequently apologized. This doesn’t mean that all the Caller’s journalism is suspect, but it does suggest that the site isn’t what Carlson said it would be."
• September 8, 2018: "...the dream of a rogue outlet of hard-hitting, conservative journalism was never realized. And the site withered from there. Right now the site highlights sensationalist stories about “illegal aliens,” justifiable homicide, and a hit piece on Beto O’Rourke."
• Then there are a number of articles on specific stories, like this one about Obamacare from 2012. And this one from 2011, with the subheadline "Daily Caller mistakes opinion for fact." — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 23:00, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

{Note that these articles were not written by the Columbia Journalism Review, but by individual contributors.) Reliability is not a bipolar dichotomy, but a continuum. These articles have a similar theme: Tucker Carlson has failed to achieve his goal of combining the reliability of the New York Times with a conservative editorial position. No one questions that. I think though that David Uberti's comment in the Columbia Journalism Review is probably a good description: "This doesn’t mean that all the Caller’s journalism is suspect, but it does suggest that the site isn’t what Carlson said it would be." Ironically, his story itself contained an error, since corrected, that the sources used were Cubans. That would seem material, since Uberti said he thought they were working for Cuban intelligence. Incidentally, most of the problem reporting at the Daily Caller dates to 2011-2012, just after it was founded in 2010. There were similar problems in other online news sources when they were initially founded. TFD (talk) 02:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

The Menendez story happened in 2014, the Machado story happened in 2016, and the AOC story happened today. I don't see anything that indicates that they have a long-term trajectory toward reliability: in 2017 they published a piece by Jason Kessler without noting his connections to the United the Right rally, and they kept another white supremacist on the editorial staff until just a few months ago. Nblund ^talk 02:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@The Four Deuces: without disagreeing with most of what you've written, I'm not sure what you mean by these articles were not written by the Columbia Journalism Review, but by individual contributors. Are you saying they operate like Forbes "Contributors"? Or that they are on the website rather than the magazine? If the latter, that's not true of the first of the three. For the other two, is the CJR website considered less reliable? (actually asking, not rhetorically). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 04:00, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

In journalism, publications invite writers to present opinions. For example, they may ask pro-Clinton and pro-Trump writers to explain the last election. Those writers express different opinions and do not represent the opinion of the publication. You might for example read an opinion piece in the New York Times by John Bolton that says the U.S. should remain in Syria until the year 3030 and another opinion piece by Rand Paul that says they should leave next week. That does not mean that the esteemed paper says they should leave next week or in a thousand years but that they have published articles by two different writers who disagree with each other.

Nblund, a lot of horrible people are reporters. It has no relevance to whether or not they are accurate. Newton was eccentric, but I am not tempted to test the laws of gravity.

What worries me is that the criterion for banning news media is not reliability but ideology. The Daily Caller, the Sun, the Daily Mail are not great news media but they meet Wikipedia's criteria. If we want to ban right wing publications, let's put that into policy. Because using anecdotal evidence can be used and will be used against any publication. Let's not forget that the most reliable media promoted the false narrative that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and links to al Qaeda. That fake news story was used to justify a war that led to over one million deaths and cost the U.S. trillions of dollars.

TFD (talk) 08:27, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Exactly. Should we ban The Washington Post because Muslim Brotherhood supporters contribute opinion pieces to it and aren't properly described in the byline? Not to mention that Jamal Khashoggi worked for them. wumbolo ^^^ 09:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

"Muslim Brotherhood Supporters"? And blaming newsmedia (which issued corrections and followups as soon as the falsehoods became known) for the false pronouncements of the Bush administration, when Colin Powell has even admitted that the administration lied to him and fed him false information so that he would appear genuine by saying things he believed true based on them withholding the full story from him? (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/colin-powell-u-n-speech-was-a-great-intelligence-failure/) TFD, Wimbolo, I am getting the feeling that you're not really describing things in accuracy here and I can't help but feel that you're doing so deliberately. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 12:42, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

For the record, considering the tendency of Wikipedia to ascribe reliability to media ventures that make profit and the consequent tendency to treat far-left media (eg: itsgoingdown.com, newsocialist.com, rabble.ca) as unreliable, I'd suggest being stricter about far-right sources isn't outside the bounds of current policy at all. However I've also been quite clear that I'd like to see WP:NOFUCKINGNAZIS adopted as policy, and that would as a side-effect make the vetting of racist and nationalist far-right news sources much stricter. Also, I've often mentioned that I feel Wikipedia is nowhere near strict enough about newsmedia content in general. In particular I find the dependence on news for recent political articles creates WP:RECENTISM and constant WP:NPOV problems; often we'd be better off saying nothing, or expressing only a brief summary about current political events until such time as they become matters of historical record. Whereas, the tendency to treat whichever preferred news source's 24 hour news cycle churnalism as fact is the current de-facto political method. Simonm223 (talk) 16:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

This, exactly. There's a unsettling trend that editors want to outright ban sources with extreme views because soley of extreme views. That should not be the case, though one can argue and demonstrate how extreme views generally may points towards fabrication and outright lying to get their view to work. To say we should blacklist a work because their viewpoint is so far off center is not really acceptable while at the same time editors routinely ignore RECENTISM and write about the current public opinion. It creates a feedback loop not geared towards the long-term. Hence why my concern on DC here is if they have actually falsified or faked stories that makes them wholly unreliable to be blacklisted. --Masem (t) 16:22, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I have no idea if this is the intent, but the kinds of "NotosourcesIhate" (why not "NoCommieSources" or "NoIslamistsoruces") attitudes tends to turn me off their arguments. I have no issue if we can all extremists sources of any political persuasion, but not if we single out one side for being "FeCKNGGGG!wrong", and indeed resorting to such language tends to turn me off as well. If you cannot argue without getting angry and shouting "Semprini!" I really start to wonder how much validity your argument really has.Slatersteven (talk) 16:28, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I'm pretty clear that my objection was with news media in general being a snake pit of WP:NPOV and WP:RECENTISM problems such that anything that isn't a top-shelf source shouldn't be used. And the DC is definitely a bottom-shelf media source. However credit where credit is due, that was a great Monty Python callout there. Simonm223 (talk) 16:45, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

And that is my point, you started off "TRUCKINGNAZIS" then said something I agree with, but it looked like your main point (the one you started of with) was "FundingNAZISLIKETHIS". If you had just made your point about the press in general I would have agreed. Your argument read more like "I hate their politics, but better make it sound like I am being all reasonableness" then "They are unreliable". This is why tone, attitude (and language) are so important (I suppose I could write an Essay "no Fucking fucking" about it). Note I am not being clever, but this is what spell checker wanted, so why not.Slatersteven (talk) 16:51, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we need to worry about the ideology here: The Daily Caller paid someone to report on an event that they themselves were organizing, without disclosing the connection. When they were caught, they initially kept the articles up, and then scrubbed his byline without explanation.

Here's my question: is there any scenario where we would look at original reporting from the DC that isn't covered elsewhere and conclude that it is reliable enough for inclusion on WP? Original reporting like this article, where a journalist heroically struggles to work "George Soros" and "Fusion GPS" into the same sentence, or this, where an anonymous source reports that David Malpass is a great guy? Would we ever trust any of this? Right leaning outlets like the National Review and Washington Times employ journalists who do some worthwhile reporting in niche areas - which I think is what distinguishes them from outlets like the Daily Caller that really have no apparent interest in actual news. Nblund ^talk 17:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Every major news outlet does original reporting. Here's TDC's exclusive interview with Trump about Brenda Snipes [8], and here's CNN summarizing it [9]. What if CNN didn't mention the interview? We would have to cite TDC. wumbolo ^^^ 20:40, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I don't think there is any scenario where we would look at original reporting from any source that isn't covered elsewhere. If it isn't then it lacks weight for inclusion. Something that Trump said which was ignored by CNN and the rest of the mainstream media would be too insignificant to mention. In this case we would only report the parts of the Daily Caller interview that mainstream media carried. Banning the Daily Caller will not keep out material, allowing it as a reliable source will not introduce material. IOW whatever we do will have no effect on article content. TFD (talk) 21:12, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

• Option 2 Biased, but not fake news. It should be used with caution. — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  18:55, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

"There's a unsettling trend that editors want to outright ban sources with extreme views because soley of extreme views." says Masem. I submit that this is incorrect, multiple people in multiple discussions on this page have described their objection not in terms of "soley of extreme views" but with regards to real concerns about the reliability of information provided on sources like the Daily Caller and Fox News. Mastcell and I provided detailed lists of reasons why we found Fox News to be problematic in terms of RELIABILITY issues, and each accusation that editors like us are merely engaged in some sort of "I don't like it" on the views is the definition of strawman tactics and incivility. Please treat us with the respect we deserve for discussing in good faith the FACTS involved rather than just blanket accusing people of viewpoint bias to shut down discussions with a heckler's veto. But to quote Mastcell directly from his comment (emphasis mine), "I and an IP editor both presented evidence, above, that FoxNews is both politically biased and unreliable. My hope was that we'd have a discussion about that evidence, but I've gotten used to disappointment." 73.76.213.67 (talk) 12:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Also many of us have argued that all news media should be be seen as not inherently reliable, its just that we have to start somewhere. Personally I would like to see all news media depreciated for a given period after an event (and by that I mean no news stories released before a given time period).Slatersteven (talk) 13:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Comments: The above is a suggestion that make too much sense but politics (of this supposedly neutral board) would likely not favor. "All news media" can be unreliable and end up giving retractions and redactions all the time. On this board I am seeing attacks, even sort of masked as satirical or "jokes", See: Why are more right wing sources considered unreliable than left-wing sources?" and "The liberal bias of facts", and we are considering if "right" or "right-leaning" (see Fox below) media should be "censored" depreciated. I can see discussions that portray someone leaning "right" as being uneducated or less educated, for the wealthy, and smears in that direction. That should likely be on a user page or essay and not here. I don't mind getting into these types of discussions but this is where serious consideration should be centered on the general "reliability" of sources brought here regardless of politics.

Unless the name is changed to something like "Liberal political news reliable source noticeboard", or consideration of "suggesting" two political type sources be used on every instance (classifying the political stance of sources), then the actual "reliability", "depreciated", or "unreliability" is far less confusing than a multi-tier RFC with "options" that seemed to be considered. All news sources will be biased: This is argued because it is true. Trying to make a determination of reliability based on the political stance of editors here is paramount to censorship. If a site gives "fake" news it should be blacklisted. Since we are likely not going to discuss "suggesting" The Wikipedia Breaking News Department to wait for sources to be vetted, before reporting breaking news, then "cleanup" after the fact would be the only option and not a topic of this board. Thank you, Otr500 (talk) 15:38, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia really want to be a platform for the same organization that gave Jason Kessler a platform to promote Based Stickman and only pulled it after somebody died? [10] - as well as inaccuracy this isn't a run-of-the-mill conservative media source. It's the shallow end of the neo-fascist pool. Simonm223 (talk) 15:51, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Irrelevant, I agree it should not be an RS, but the issue should (and only) be reliability, not POV.Slatersteven (talk) 15:55, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Just because a source is deemed reliable or in this case, not deemed wholly unreliable, does not mean WP is committed to repeating everything that work publishes. If we know a part of an RS is bogus information, we can overlook it. --Masem (t) 15:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

My comments were about using "political bias, one way or the other, as a means of classifying the "reliability" of a source. Most news media declare that the opinions of the reporters may not be the opinion of that media vehicle. Yes, that is just legal mumbo-jumbo to mitigate possible lawsuits, and no, we don't want "fake" news advanced on Wikipedia. To me, tearing down any historical statues or monuments is a mistake. I can't even imagine why there would be a need for a "white civil rights" group or rally, and think words like "white supremacist" should only be used to denote some historical context, and has no place in our society as well as "white nationalists". All of these conjure up meanings of a person or organization that does, or may, promote (or agree with) some possible genocide. That is why any Wikipedia editors that check sources should at the very least be given an "atta-boy" and a very good reason to have this noticeboard. However, since not one person on here can claim with credibility that certain sources are always unbiased, then trying to take a Wikipedia political stance as reasoning for excluding or deprecating (spelled it right this time) a source, because of a political stance or leaning, can lead to censorship.

I didn't vote for Obama and so far survived. I also didn't vote for Trump and hope to survive, but I support border security, as did Congress during Obama's term. This means I am for border security regardless of the political arguments being left-wing or right-wing, though I pretty much stay away from "political" articles and don't care for "breaking news". Where does that politically place me and maybe others just wanting to source content? The way I see it, this does not matter because unless content provides undo bias, that would be article content concerns and not reliability of a source. My question would be, when a source is "deprecated" do editors go about removing all these sites "per consensus at AFC discussion" or seek to replace such sources or tag them? If a source shows bias but is otherwise reliable is that not an indication of needing balance over "permission" to remove a source by using a "maintenance" scheme? I have suddenly become bored of apparently trying to crusade for "equal treatment" of sources from a political point of view. Have fun, 12:26 pm, Today (UTC−6)

I'm suggesting that the extremity of the position DC holds, combined with its history of falsification both point toward unreliability. Fascism is not a doctrine known for truth and honesty. Simonm223 (talk) 18:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

And this kind of argument will put people off of your stance. Wikipedia is not a soapbox, nor is it a place to fight the great fight.Slatersteven (talk) 18:59, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

New Noise Magazine

I'm positive this must have been queried before, since it makes masses of reviews. However I wasn't able to find it in the searches, so apologies for any duplication.

Is New Noise Magazine reliable - it's hard to tell any/the degree of editorial control. Feels quite professional but then there's a bunch of reviews that let this side down, so I'm reticent to try and extrapolate from content quality. Nosebagbear (talk) 17:40, 10 January 2019 (UTC)

• Seems usable for reviews. Their About page indicates that they are a professional print publication, and it's currently cited in around 500 articles. feminist (talk) 04:19, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Marginally reliable. New Noise Magazine has an editorial team. They claim to be distributed in Barnes & Noble's physical stores, but I'm unable to verify this online. Their website's copyright footer of 2018 is a little concerning. I agree that this publication may be usable for reviews, but it should probably be evaluated case-by-case depending on the quality of the individual review and the availability of reviews from more reputable sources. — Newslinger talk 23:20, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Is the Britannica a reliable source for this text at Timeline of the history of the region of Palestine?

The text is "c 1050 BC – Due to the defeat of the Israelites in a battle, the Philistines capture the Ark of the Covenant. After about seven months the Philistine city leaders decide to return the Ark of the Covenant to the Israelites" which is sourced by https://www.britannica.com/place/Shiloh-ancient-city-Palestine this]. Which indeed backs the text. My issue is that this is stated as a fact. Probably not as bad as the line above which claims the conquering of Canaan as an undisputed fact though. Doug Weller talk 14:24, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, it is clearly presenting the Biblical narrative (as opposed to actual finds) - won't be the first source to do so on locations mainly known from the Bible and whose identification is uncertain. I would say Britannica is genetally reliable (even though they are missing an "according to the bible" here)Icewhiz (talk) 14:39, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Sure, but feel free to add more sourced info (or even replace with better), Britannica is just saying that when one considers "Shiloh", this is what the story is, not unlike, say, Tell el-Amarna -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:57, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Generally it is RS (I myself am not sure it is all that reliable (Murry et all), but RSN has declared it so), so yes.Slatersteven (talk) 15:09, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

@Icewhiz, Alanscottwalker, and Slatersteven: maybe I wasn't clear. The timeline article is presenting this as historical fact, no caveat, as does the Britannica which is the source, and that's ok? I can't agree. Doug Weller talk 22:07, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, change the Wikipedia article, or remove under NPOV, or put better source needed tag. Our articles are suppose to summarize multiple sources, not hang on one source, eg. Shiloh (biblical city) uses multiple sources. There are ancient stories about places, you and I know that no-one today knows if those things happened - we do know that people in the past wrote them down. The EB article is not a timeline, of course, it's just an entry on Shiloh, but fit for purpose is more an NPOV thing. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

This shows the problem with using tertiary sources for articles. We don't know what sources EB is using hence we do not know if they are referring to the biblical narrative or known history. TFD (talk) 01:31, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

? Many WP:RS do not identify their sources. Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I just ran into this article on the Philistines.[11] The first sentence of the entry states as fact that "Philistine, one of a people of Aegean origin who settled on the southern coast of Palestine in the 12th century bce, about the time of the arrival of the Israelites." This is a typical problem with encyclopedias, there's a tendency to take one pov and state that as fact. We'd never get away with a sentence like that. Doug Weller talk 16:41, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

It's an inherent problems with the Philistines (and other groups) - which are primarily known from their contact with other people (who documented them) - as opposed to self-documentation - nothing much they have written on themselves survived. There's a bit of archaeology - lots of theories - and not much definitive that isn't from the bible. They are far from the only group of people known primarily via out group attestation (e.g. Huns for instance). The writing of some nations enters the copying canon (e.g. Roman Latin records, or the Hebrew Bible), others survive by dint of writing on stone faces or clay tablets, and others fade from history with close to nothing of their own language preserved in writing. Icewhiz (talk) 17:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

National Public Radio

Is National Public Radio a reliable source to use in this context?

SCD is officially an impartial humanitarian NGO, with no affiliation to any political or military actor and a commitment to render services to anyone in need. Like all NGOs operating in opposition-controlled areas, SCD negotiates humanitarian access with organisations such as local councils, provincial councils, and armed groups, with relationships varying widely from governorate to governorate. It is nonetheless regarded as pro-opposition by National Public Radio and Andolu Agency.

This concerns a discussion on the on the Syrian Civil Defense page, and the input of uninvolved editors is needed.GPRamirez5 (talk) 22:34, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

You are asking the wrong question... the issue isn’t reliability, but Due weight... yes, the citation reliably supports the statement - the NPR article is being cited as a primary source to verify that NPR does indeed hold the opinion that SCD is aligned with the opposition. The question you need to ask is whether NPR’s opinion is relevant or important enough to mention. Why should the reader care what NPR thinks? Blueboar (talk) 23:55, 11 January 2019 (UTC)

I would think that readers would care because it's one of the five most trusted news sources in America. GPRamirez5 (talk) 01:24, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

This seems like cherry-picking. Neither of the sources explain what they mean by pro-opposition or why they use the description. Since the SCD receives most of its funding from the same Western governments that support the opposition, while it is considered a terrorist group by the Syrian government and its Russian allies, it probably could be described as pro-opposition. However, we would need a source that provides an analysis. Incidentally, attributions should be made to the authors of the articles not to the publishers. And use of the term "nonetheless" violates no original research. TFD (talk) 02:04, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with GPRamirez5 that NPR is a reliable source in this context and also that is a highly respected source. That makes it an especially useful source when citing controversial content. As for "cherrypicking", that would be the case only if several other reliable sources reject the assertion that it is a pro-opposition group, and those sources were being excluded from the article. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:10, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Cullen, who puts it well. Softlavender (talk) 03:02, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I also agree with Cullen. This is the best way of looking at this issue. Simonm223 (talk) 17:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

References

The source is probably reliable, but the summary is misleading. A single publication by NPR noticed SCD in passing. This not an official position by NPR, as citation implies ("It is nonetheless regarded as pro-opposition by National Public Radio"). My very best wishes (talk) 06:03, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Just a passing mention: Many of the dead are reportedly women and children. Death tolls vary, with the Syrian Civil Defense, a pro-opposition group also known as the White Helmets, reporting at least 42 fatalities. The rest of the article does not mention the group at all. The Banner talk 08:20, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Which is why I think the issue we should be discussing is the question of Undue Weight rather than the question of reliability. Blueboar (talk) 15:38, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

"This is not an official position by NPR, as citation implies." I'm not sure how one would determine the official position of NPR, other than by what they report. I suppose I could email NPR for an official statement, but that would be Original Research.

Also could commenters avoid using bullets and honor the format that's been established here? It's a little disruptive. Thanks.GPRamirez5 (talk) 15:53, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Regarding issues of cherrypicking, the Associated Press also considers WH/SCD pro-opposition, or to be precise, "opposition-run."

"The opposition-run Syrian Civil Defense, first responders also known as the White Helmets, said the blast occurred in the village of Sarmada..." GPRamirez5 (talk) 16:35, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

References

Well, as you are not sure, do not misrepresent - you seem to assume NPR has an official position. That is an assumption, and should not be written that way. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 16:20, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Right, but I didn't raise the issue of "official position." That was My very best wishes. I simply wrote "regarded as." If you'd like to change "regarded as" to "reported as," I'm sure we could accomodate you.GPRamirez5 (talk) 16:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

"NPR" is incorrect attribution. This should be attributed to Alexis Diao, an editor of NPR whose name appears in the publication. Is she a reliable source? I have no idea. Maybe the "pro-government organization" is her personal opinion. My very best wishes (talk) 02:28, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

This is not an opinion article. It's a news article in one of the most trusted news institutions in the country.GPRamirez5 (talk) 11:06, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

This is indeed not an opinion article, and this is NPR - not the specific reported. And yes - it is a WP:RS. Furthermore, I will state that finding additional mainstream sources calling the White Helmets pro-opposition (or opposition affiliated) is easy - it is close to being a WP:BLUE situation (the white helmets were/are a well organized outfit running in opposition controlled areas - the did/does not allow them to operate in areas they controlled - and white helmets and personnel were fearful for their lives after the regime conquered turf. e.g. this well publicized event in 2018). Icewhiz (talk) 11:38, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

You should credit the reporters, and you can say they reported for NPR or AP or some other outlet if those matter, but it is bizarre misrepresentation and incorrect to eg., write NPR "regards", because that phrase turns it into NPR opinion, not news. Alanscottwalker (talk) 12:11, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

• Again, the problem here is DUE WEIGHT, not reliability. Why is NPR’s view of this group being singled out and highlighted? Is NPR’s view representative of a widely held view? Is it a minority view? Is it a view that is unique to NPR? We need to discuss why the article is mentioning NPR in the first place. Blueboar (talk) 14:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Generally reliable. NPR (National Public Radio) is a generally reliable source, with a similar reputation as BBC Radio RSP entry for BBC (RSP entry). This particular case, as others have mentioned, concerns due weight, and is better discussed at the neutral point of view noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 15:12, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

  Actually no, the issue in part is corporate misrepresentation, so it is for this board. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:18, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

But if NPR’s view does not pass UNDUE, then we no longer need to worry about the question of misrepresentation. We would simply remove any mention of NPR and its view from the article. So, my recommendation is to first resolve the UNDUE issue, and come back to this question only if necessary. Blueboar (talk) 16:06, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Even though the NPR article is a news report instead of an opinion piece, I would attribute the "pro-opposition" designation to "Alexis Diao of NPR" rather than NPR itself. — Newslinger talk 15:35, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

User:Newslinger- why? GPRamirez5 (talk) 17:56, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

​I've struck my previous comment after further consideration. If Mohamad Misto, Adham Kako, and Selen Temizer do not need to be attributed for the Anadolu Agency news report, then Alexis Diao should not need to be attributed for the NPR news report. Since this is contentious, something like 'However, SCD has been described as "pro-opposition" in NPR and Anadolu Agency news reports.' might be better, since this is a more specific claim that is clearly supported by the sources. Whether to include this sentence is still an issue of due weight, and is better suited for the neutral point of view noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 18:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

If we consider that the AP has used this description (indeed, an even firmer description) along with Anadolu Agency and NPR, I don't see how it's an issue of WP:UNDUE. NPR hasn't expressed a fringe position.GPRamirez5 (talk) 19:05, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Also, in this paragraph and elsewhere in Syrian Civil Defense, the contradictory source is the White Helmets' own website, raising issues of WP:PRIMARY and/or WP:SELFPUBLISH.GPRamirez5 (talk) 19:26, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

This is not an issue of reliable sourcing but an issue of due weight and synthesis. The two pertinent questions are: Does a passing mention warrant a statement on the page, and if so does the way in which that is mentioned violate the rules against synthesis. The proposed phrasing ("SCD is officially an impartial.... It is nonetheless regarded as pro-opposition...") uses the passing description "pro-opposition" as a rebuttal to the official position, when no such rebuttal is explicitly stated by the sources. This is, in my view, a pretty clear violation of WP:SYNTH which states "Do not combine material from multiple sources to reach or imply a conclusion not explicitly stated by any of the sources." Regardless, this issue should be worked out on the talk page of the article in question (Where discussion was ongoing until the issue was raised here and editors stopped participating there). UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree with this: the passing mention of "pro-opposition", which is clearly a contentious statement, should not be taken out of place and imply NPR supports it. This is unfortunately a trend with sources to throw labels to assume they stick if they speak of the label in a factual tone (as NPR does), and we should not be applying it ourselves without question or presume a one-mention passing in NPR presumes NPR supports that position. --Masem (t) 17:04, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, most uses of "nonetheless" by Wikipedia editors demonstrates synthesis. But the idea that something is only one policy or another is stilted -- all three core policies work together and yes something can be improperly representing a source and undue and synthesis. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:19, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the purpose of the NPR reference is to acknowledge the contentiousness, not to mask it. Undue weight occurs when the statements in the first half of the paragraph, which are sourced to the White Helmets' website itself, stand in isolation, presented in Wikipedia's voice. Notation of the opposing view, present in mainstream sources, is an advancement of NPOV, not a diminishment of it at all.GPRamirez5 (talk) 17:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

That is precisely the problem. The source does not mention any such contentiousness, so using it to prove contentiousness is a clear violation of synth. It is also important to note two things about the beginning half of the paragraph. One is that self published sources are generally considered reliable as sources of information about themselves. Secondly, it is in fact not presenting the material directly from the source in Wikipedia's voice, as it adds the conditional "officially", attributing the statement to the group and not to Wikipedia. It is a small but important distinction. It would be an entirely different matter if the first sentence read "SCD is an impartial...", which would be stating the information from the source strictly in Wikipedia's voice, but that is not the case. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 18:09, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Nonsense, there is no problem there. If credible sources are contradictory and contending, then the article must reflect that in order to be NPOV.GPRamirez5 (talk) 01:00, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

It's not nonsense, it's a core Wikipedia policy and your proposed edit violates it for the reasons I stated. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 03:16, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

There isn't any argument about the policy, of which we are in agreement. Those who want to challenge me on interpretation can take it up on the NPOV noticeboard. In the meantime, can we get some consensus on the reliability of National Public Radio?GPRamirez5 (talk) 12:29, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Usually, NPR can be considered reliable. However (like all news media sources) it will, on occasion, report something that turns out to be an error, or cross the line and report opinion as fact. Thus, a specific report may be be deemed unreliable for supporting a specific fact or statement in Wikipedia. Context and specifics matter. We can never say that a news source is 100% always reliable (nor 100% always unreliable). We have to look at the specifics, and at what other sources say. Blueboar (talk) 13:07, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The Tab and Bristol24-7 on Milo Yiannopoulos

Is Bristol24-7 a reliable source for BLPs? Context: I replaced a citation to The Tab with a citation to Bristol24-7, because The Tab is a student publication with negligible editorial oversight, and thus use of this article would fall under WP:BLPSPS. A Google search revealed this this Bristol 24/7 article and this Independent "opinion" piece (unusable per BLPSPS). The question is, is Bristol 24/7 a reliable source for the statement "After protesters attempted to have him banned from the university, the event became a debate between Yiannopoulos and The Daily Telegraph blogger and feminist Rebecca Reid."? feminist (talk) 11:15, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Side note: The Tab is currently cited to 139 articles and would probably need pruning. feminist (talk) 11:21, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

If it helps evaluating, the About page for Bristol 24-7 appears to show adherence to journalistic standards (https://www.bristol247.com/about-us/), including being externally monitored/accredited by IMPRESS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMPRESS). So I would initially assume it to be reliable journalistically? 73.76.213.67 (talk) 14:38, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

genealogy site - FindMyPast

Hello. I haven't come across Find My Past before, nor this noticeboard, so I hope I'm asking in the right place. It came up on a talk page re genealogy. Is there a view on using FMP? --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 14:14, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

The content there is based on official records of births, marriages, and deaths, and the like, so I don't see a reliability issue. The only potential problem really is potential misinterpretation of information found there, e.g. finding someone with the same name as someone else someone is searching for and assuming them to be the same person. --Michig (talk) 12:03, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable. I found four previous discussions of Findmypast and compiled a perennial sources entry. Public records such as birth and death certificates are usually allowed under WP:BLPPRIMARY as long as they're used to support a secondary source instead of interpreted on their own. (For deceased individuals, the policy on primary sources applies.) But in this case, editors raised two concerns that are specific to Findmypast:
  1. The records of birth and death certificates include the date the birth/death was recorded, not the date the birth/death actually occurred.
  2. The document records on Findmypast are transcribed, and the transcription process may introduce errors. More recent documents are transcribed digitally, which reduces (but doesn't eliminate) the rate of error.

Also, as with other genealogy sites, such as Ancestry.com (RSP entry), FamilySearch (RSP entry), and Geni.com (RSP entry), Findmypast should not be interpreted with original research. Different individuals can share the same name, and it takes a secondary source to confirm which individual a particular document refers to.

The proposed use case for Findmypast on Talk:Cunt § Cunt as a surname is not acceptable, since supporting the sentence "Although never common, Cunt has also been a surname in both Great Britain and the United States, dying out in the early twentieth century." with a list of 8 people with the surname "Cunt" would be original research, as explained by Galobtter. A reliable secondary source needs to interpret the source before it would be due in the article. — Newslinger talk 14:31, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your responses, and for adding FMP to the list of dubious sources. --Carbon Caryatid (talk) 12:22, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Using historical sources to establish notability

Sightings of various unidentified creatures, monsters or "cryptids" were often presented as factual accounts by respectable publications in the early 20th century, but have been virtually ignored by modern reliable sources. A prime example is the Dingonek: The Journal of the East Africa and Uganda Natural History Society (1912) and Maclean's (1918) published credulous accounts using language such as "His evidence on the score of the latter, the dingonek, is very positive and believable", "Thnt (sic) this monster does exist, however, there can be no particle of doubt, as the testimony of authoritative eye-witnesses cannot be reasonably discredited" and "It would appear as if there was another zoological prize of a startling character awaiting collection". Are these publications considered reliable for factual statements or to establish notability per relevant guidelines such as WP:NFRINGE and WP:RS AGE? What if newer RS coverage does not exist or is limited to fringe sources? If these do indeed establish notability, how would one write a balanced article using only outdated or fringe sources? Please note that editors have presented these sources to establish notability at AfD and Deletion review, and Dingonek is currently sourced entirely to period pieces due to the unavailability of acceptable newer sources. –dlthewave ☎ 19:16, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

I would think they are reliable for the assessment of notability, that at the time, people thought those creatures were real, but obviously today we see those as fringy, so we should not treat their accounts as fact. --Masem (t) 19:23, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

Exactly... historical sources demonstrate notability, but not factuality of the topics. See our article on Prester John for an example of how to deal with ideas that people once thought were true, but now are now considered nothing but legend. Blueboar (talk) 20:26, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

The difference is that Prester John, and even other creatures/monsters/cryptids such as Bigfoot, are treated with a critical eye by recent sources. We're able to include modern expert views in those articles. On the other hand, there don't seem to be any sources that present a current mainstream view of the Dingonek. –dlthewave ☎ 21:29, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

There is not statute of limitations that says that before a certain date we cannot use a source. As to why recent sources do not cover them, well contact them and ask why. We should not judge notability on whether or not it is regarded as notable to day. Also whilst there maybe no "mainstream" sources there are modern sources, "mainstream" does not mean "notable", something can be "fringe" and still be notable.Slatersteven (talk) 10:44, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

• WP:NFRINGE is applicable in these cases only to supposed scientific claims that the animal exists. It does not apply to folklore or mythology, which this topic appears to have its roots in. Nor does it apply to people writing about what other people claimed to have seen, which is the focus of additional sources (still old) that I identified on the article's talk page. We can't go around deleting articles on creatures of folklore and mythology just because some modern pseudoscientists make claims that they actually exist, or because some old sources make dubious claims. The crux of notability of such supposed creatures is not whether there is evidence that they exist in nature, but whether there is sufficient coverage of the folklore, mythology, and/or popular culture aspects of the subject to make them of encyclopedic interest. I'm not suggesting this particular topic is notable or otherwise, but it appears to be the local version of 'river monster' folklore, of which variants exist among many cultures. --Michig (talk) 11:11, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

Which sources describe the folklore and mythology of the Dingonek? –dlthewave ☎ 13:02, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

I didn't claim there were any, in this case it falls more into the popular culture field due to the wide and repeated reporting of Jordan's tales over a long period, but if you read all the sources available you'll find that after claiming to have shot it, Jordan stated that the Wanderobo people told him that it was a Dingonek, and that the Kavirondo people believed in a creature in their area that he believed to be the same thing (the Lukwata - a mythical river/lake monster) so there is a basis in folklore that is not covered by WP:NFRINGE. --Michig (talk) 13:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

There is a virtual statute of limitations in older sources which slowly transforms them from reliable secondary sources to less reliable primary sources. Because knowledge changes over time and what was once considered true may no longer be so. We no longer accept theories about race, sexual identity, etc. that were orthodoxy of years ago and those books are only relevant for what people believed at the time.

In practical terms, if you had a lot of books about hobgoblins from the 17th century but no modern historians have used these texts, then you could not write an accurate article. You would not for example be able to determine what witnesses actually saw if the authors claimed people had seen hobgoblins. TFD (talk) 19:30, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

As sources to verify facts about hobgoblins, absolutely, but for a discussion of 17th century beliefs in, and claims about, hobgoblins, those sources would be fine. --Michig (talk) 19:52, 13 January 2019 (UTC)

They would be primary sources of 17th century beliefs, while notability is determined in secondary sources. Any use of them would therefore be original research. Certainly historians could make use of them and we could use their reports as reliable secondary sources. Note too that not everyone in the 17th century shared the same belief system. TFD (talk) 03:42, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

If something was reported credulously 100 years ago in a very reliable source and then drops out of anything resembling a WP:RS for the next century I'd say it fails WP:LASTING so it cannot independently establish notability. However it could still be used as a reliable source for information on the topic if lasting significant coverage is shown through a variety of sources. Simonm223 (talk) 17:11, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

"It may take weeks or months to determine whether or not an event has a lasting effect", we have sources for this covering a period of around 5 years.Slatersteven (talk) 10:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Five years between 1913 and 1918. Then nothing. That doesn't look like WP:LASTING to me. Simonm223 (talk) 11:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Excerpts of the book were published in the Liverpool Echo ("Go to Sleep When the Lions Roar", 7 February 1958, p. 10). [[12]], 1932 (also 1932 *[[13]].Slatersteven (talk) 13:37, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Minhocão (legendary creature) is another example. Since newer sources are sparse, the article is written entirely from a 19th-century perspective. –dlthewave ☎ 18:57, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Notable Names Database

Should the Notable Names Database be added to the sourcing edit filter to strongly discourage and deprecate its use as a source on Wikipedia? wumbolo ^^^ 20:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. This might be stale according to WP:RSP but I am convinced that this should be deprecated; I'd like to point to a comment here from exactly ten years ago by DreamGuy: As far as I am concerned, that one should be in our black hole list (emphasis mine), seemingly predicting the deprecation of the source. As for the arguments, there is no evidence that NNDB does any fact-checking of its content. It is full of gossip like suicide attempts, drug use and criminal records, and it is connected to notorious gossipers [14] [15].
  I don't know what Jack Schofield meant with this article in The Guardian [16], but it kind of shows ironically that this is not a good website and should be avoided. It also mentions its feature to generate "lists" of people with various attributes, e.g. lists of alumni, which I do not want to see used on Wikipedia. NNDB also has a feature to generate "maps" of people's connections, a well-known tactic by conspiracy theorists.
  This website is like IMDb but much, much worse. There are many Wikipedia biographies (I think thousands) that cite this website and I believe that an edit filter would help new users to avoid this website. While there may not be much evidence of fabricating facts, this source has almost zero WP:USEBYOTHERS and it has an unknown way of getting its information [17] [18]. Note that I'm citing blogs because no serious reliable source bothers to talk about this website, even though I've found a handful of articles in Adweek, Los Angeles Times etc.
  I would not oppose adding this source to the spam blacklist as well. This website has a Wikidata property, but I don't know if it is relevant here. There's also a forum thread about the reliability of NNDB [19], which unsurprisingly does not find any evidence of reliability or a measure of accuracy. wumbolo ^^^ 20:44, 12 January 2019 (UTC)
• Yes. NNDB (RSP entry) is a tertiary source, and some of the sources it draws its information are questionable. From a cursory search, it looks like most of the biographies on the website cite Wikipedia as a source (e.g. Mark Hamill, Patti Smith, Jesus Christ), which makes NNDB an unacceptable circular source. This was previously brought up in a 2007 discussion. NNDB also frequently references IMDb (RSP entry), which mostly incorporates user-generated content. Altogether, NNDB is not usable as a source because it's based on sources that would not be acceptable in Wikipedia. The fact that NNDB is used to support claims in numerous biographies of living persons (uses of nndb.com  ) leads me to support its deprecation. — Newslinger talk 01:16, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Yes because there is actual evidence of harmful use of NNDB as a source. feminist (talk) 04:21, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Yes Editors may use the site to identify info on a Bio page but they absolutely must collaborate that with a known RS ad use those RS for the citations. --Masem (t) 04:43, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
• Weak yes only because by nature it focuses on people, otherwise I would have preferred it to remain discouraged but not deprecated. @Wumbolo: This website has a Wikidata property, but I don't know if it is relevant here. (NNDB people ID P1263) It's not relevant; Wikidata is using it for authority control. They also have a property for Quora. @Feminist: What harm are you talking about? — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  21:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

  The main problem is that this source is mainly used on BLPs, which generally require more stringent sourcing standards. feminist (talk) 14:28, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Fox News

Consistent with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_220#Daily_Mail_RfC and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#2nd_RfC:_The_Daily_Mail, I propose that Fox News should be taken in the same category.

A review of the site's mainpage today shows that not one story carried is anything other than an opinion piece, but none of them are actually marked as "opinion" (or the other category that reliable news organizations sometimes use, "analysis") as such on the link. Primary story at the moment: "It just got worse" (captioned under a picture of James Comey) GREGG JARRETT: Want more proof of FBI corruption? Read thisIT JUST GOT WORSE MARK PENN: How 'Deep State' is worse than feared"

Secondary story showing: "Millenial Mouthpiece (captioned under a picture of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez) MICHAEL KNOWLES: Ocasio-Cortez, the voice of an ignorant generation"

Historically, Fox News has major factual accuracy problems and fails often to issue appropriately placed and prompt corrections in addition to the site's constant failure to clearly identify editorial/opinion content as such. For instance, the Politifact file on statements from Fox News indicates that less than half of the analyzed statements were at least "mostly true". (https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/tv/fox/) Much like other sources which Wikipedia deems irredeemably problematic with facts, Fox News was not created for the purpose of news, but for the purpose of blatant propagandizing (see: https://www.newsweek.com/roger-ailes-television-revolution-and-his-decision-changed-american-politics-612176, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/how-roger-ailes-built-the-fox-news-fear-factory-244652/, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-roger-ailes-polarized-tv-news/). In modern times Fox employees leaving the company have described the "news" room as "like an extension of the Trump White House." (https://money.cnn.com/2017/10/31/media/fox-news-employees-russia-mueller-coverage/index.html)

Their current attacks on the FBI & various investigations read very much like their approach to the Seth Rich conspiracy theory that they promoted out of known-unreliable white supremacist sources such as Daily Caller and Gatewaypundit.

What’s notable in that is how unapologetic the language of the retraction is—both considering the length of time the story was allowed to remain on Fox’s site, and even more especially because of the speed and the volume at which it was amplified. That’s in one way unsurprising: The story that was framed as evidence of the mainstream media’s collusion had become, in fact, evidence of the mainstream media’s restraint. The story whose subtext was the mainstream media’s inherent untrustworthiness had proven its real subtext to be the opposite.

And it took days to obtain even that terse retraction.

On Friday, a day after it first published the comments suggesting Rich’s connection to WikiLeaks—from Rod Wheeler, the former detective who had been hired by the family to investigate his death—the Fox affiliate clarified its story, writing, “What he told FOX 5 DC on camera Monday regarding Seth Rich's murder investigation is in clear contrast to what he has said over the last 48 hours. Rod Wheeler has since backtracked.”

The story on Fox remained. It retained its chorus-like status. (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/fox-seth-rich/527850/)

The largest problem with Fox News, its website and content remain that Fox deliberately obfuscates the line between actual news reporting and editorial content such as "opinion" or "analysis", either by failing to clearly mark the editorial content or by mixing the editorial content into the news reporting (such as this article on Ken Ham's "ark encounter" theme park which mixes in a majority of editorial content and fails to adhere to basic editorial standards such as requesting a statement from all parties mentioned https://www.foxnews.com/faith-values/ken-ham-offers-free-admission-to-schools-after-atheist-group-warns-against-ark-encounter-field-trips). This leads to editors repeatedly trying to insert problematic content into Wikipedia, claiming that since Fox News has been called a "reliable source" by a subset of editors that the editorial content that dominates Fox's website and programming and continually leaks into its purported news content is somehow reliable and factual. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.76.213.67 (talk) 15:37, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd just like to note that Fox News has been discussed many, many times, including within the last year. See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources#Fox_News for more information. While consensus can change, these discussions should not be blindly ignored. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 15:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

A review of the site's mainpage today shows that not one story carried is anything other than an opinion piece, but none of them are actually marked as "opinion" (or the other category that reliable news organizations sometimes use, "analysis") as such on the link. Nearly every major news site does this, it is approach called "opinionated journalism" that is designed to help humanize some news stories. (see this opinion from NYTimes from 2008, as this practice does go back a ways). FOX News may use it more frequently than others, but using that blurring between news and opinion cannot be a reason to eliminate a source as reliable, otherwise we'd have to start knocking off several major sources. As noted above, FOX has been discussed a lot, and there are certain analysts associated with the network that should be avoided but when they are covering news, they are generally factual and show journalistic integrity. Just like with any other RS, if they make contentious claims towards a person or group, that should be corroborated with a different RS before including. --Masem (t) 16:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• More or less, what Masem said. A Quest For Knowledge (talk) 16:28, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I think it’s OK to use as a source their actual news hosts. Problem is, their website. I look in a couple times a week and it’s more than slanted. It still regularly attacks Hillary Clinton, even though the election ended two years ago. But then, they’ve been regularly attacking the Clintons for 20 years. Nothing wrong with negative stories. It’s just that it’s constant. Their current bugaboo is Ocasio-Cortez, who they have been attacking constantly and she’s only been in office eleven days, using the words Communist and ignorant to characterize her generation in the first sentence. They also constantly attack the FBI, claiming again today that there is proof they are corrupt and claiming that there is a deep state, a clandestine government made up of hidden or covert networks of power operating independently of a nation's political leadership. Then there are all the stories of crimes, nearly all committed by folks with darker skin. Yesterday the top two stories attacked Democrats and the FBI. Day before, again attacked the FBI with a pic of Comey and the tag “Total Sleaze”. Previous day, attacked CNN and Ocasio-Cortez. Day before, top story attacked a Democratic donor. Problem is, if you can’t trust the website, where do you source their news hosts? O3000 (talk) 16:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Even those sources in the left, particularly CNN, seem to open up on a full page of Trump attacks from their website, their news broadcasting a bit toned down. That's not to say that CNN and others try to fact check moreso before slinging mud, but they still sling it when they can. This is what opinionated journalism gives up, particularly when we have the open conflict between Trump and the press. I'll stress as I've elsewhere that WP's best defense against this is to keep RECENTISM in mind: we should not be trying to document the mudslinging but wait for that to die down and see if there's anything of reasonable value to report. (eg, at this point, we should be able to fairly write about FOX's attacks on Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign without having to engage in the day-to-day mudslinging that went down). For FOX or CNN or any other source, if we keep ourselves away from the bickering and only report on objective, major news points, we'd not really have to worry about this approach FOX does or CNN does or the like. --Masem (t) 16:53, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Trump is the POTUS. It makes perfect sense for CNN to report heavily on the shutdown as it affects vast numbers of people. Question is, why does the Fox News site ignore such an enormous story? The only mention today was: “Dems vacationing during shutdown”. It’s not a story about the shutdown; It’s a story about Democrats in Puerto Rico. O3000 (talk) 17:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, expect, the CNN front page has one headline in the lede that is about the shutdown, the rest seems focused on the report relating Trump and Russian involvement. But the point is not so much what the front page of these sites are, just their general overall impression: FOX verbally attacks Democrats and the press that support them and ignores the problematic aspects around Trump, CNN attacks Trump and his close allies, and tent to treat Democrats with high respect regardless of what they do. That divide is fine; the whole point is when you strip away the verbal attacks and opinions, are the core news elements reliable? For CNN, that's not really of any question, whereas with FOX we do have to be careful of whom is doing the reporting as they do have a few people in bylines that tend to exaggerate on facts. Not enough to make all of FOX unreliable at that level, but just caution to be used particularly on BLP and contentious subjects. --Masem (t) 17:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Setting aside the "both-sides-ism" problems with your argument Masem you are drawing massively false comparisons. If you look at CNN's headlines on the front page, they clearly label links with "Analysis:" and "Opinion:" to delineate the factual-reporting articles (such as "Trump lashed out at Mulvaney during meeting with Democrats", an article of factual reporting that also provides a link to the initial sourcing from Axios) from clear opinion pieces (such as "Analysis: The question Trump still hasn't answered" and "Opinion: America's week of zero"). The issue is Fox's either deliberate decision to, or utter inability to, clearly differentiate editorial from factual content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.76.213.67 (talk)

Is that actually a problem? PackMecEng (talk) 17:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

CNN may be more rigorous here, but other sites have news reports that include opinion and analysis but are not given a byline of such - that's what opinionated journalism (or as the AP puts it, "accountability journalism") does. That it happens does not make a source suddenly unreliable, but for us at WP we just need to be more careful about such reports. If an apparent "news" piece includes something that is clearly opinion of the journalist, we should make sure to treat it as opinion or analysis, whether that's CNN or FOX or NYtimes. --Masem (t) 17:44, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, CNN ran a negative story about Democrat Tulsi Gabbard today and yesterday and has numerous stories having nothing to do with politics. And yes, I think it does make a difference if you fail to mark stories analysis or opinion. I’m not trying to defend CNN. The Fox News site is simply not a reliable news site, unless the FBI really is a sleazy organization trying to overthrow the gov’t, millennials are ignorant communists, and nearly all crime is caused by immigrants. Their actual news programs are usable. O3000 (talk) 17:54, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Masem put it better than I did. It is more about us being diligent and confirming the distinction. Not well labeled is not a reason to exclude a source. PackMecEng (talk) 17:56, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Here's a story on FOX's front page about the FBI [20]. I read through that, it seems "objective" in that there's seemingly no opinion from the journalist that wrote it, so that's completely a usable piece (if we had to use it). Yes, it is written slightly in a tone that favors Trump, but that's not changing its reliability. And its certainly corroborating stories from other RSes (eg WaPost CNBC). So we can evaluate stories on FOX's website and find they are reliable for fact. From my experience, those stories on FOX's website that are unlabeled opinion are really really easy to pick out. For example, this is clearly more opinion/analysis due to the conversational tone it takes despite lacking the byline of "opinion" or "analysis". That's something that if in question can be handled in talk page consensus. --Masem (t) 18:05, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, as I said, I think it is OK to use Fox News. I just think folks should be warned about using the site, or they’ll add to the Millennials article that millennials are ignorant communists. O3000 (talk) 18:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Basic question, which I don't see answered above. Per Reliable sources:News organizations: "Signals that a news organization engages in fact-checking and has a reputation for accuracy are the publication of corrections and disclosures of conflicts of interest." Do we have these signals in Fox News' case, or not? Dimadick (talk) 18:15, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Dimadick that's precisely the problem. For instance if you check the (opinion) article "GREGG JARRETT: Want more proof of FBI corruption? Read this", the frontpage does not indicate that it is an opinion piece (as opposed to CNN where every opinion piece is clearly labeled "OPINION:" in the link text). And the Jarrett piece - like every Fox opinion column - does not include a standard "The views expressed in this commentary are their own" disclaimer anywhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.76.213.67 (talk • contribs)

That the front page or other headline-listing page does not list it as opinion, but it is labeled as an opinion column on the actual article itself is fully acceptable. That's definitely not a reason to ding FOX as unreliable because they don't consistently make sure links to opinion pieces are noted as opinions. --Masem (t) 19:09, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

You're ignoring the point in bold, but I kind of expected that after reading your other comments now.

Are you sure you are not looking at the opinion page? When I go to the main page I find only news articles. The article "JUST GOT WORSE MARK PENN: How 'Deep State' is worse than feared" is clearly labelled as "opinion."[21] TFD (talk) 18:47, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

I can't find anything equivalent to NYTimes errata pages, but they do have a policy of requesting corrections [22] and they clearly have made voluntary corrections to stories based on third-party sources when searching "fox news corrections". How thorough they are is hard to tell but they do seem to have it. --Masem (t) 18:51, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• (edit conflict)Deprecate it Fox news is at the forefront of a movement in inaccurate and biased news so dire that there's a whole genre of articles talking about the detrimental impact of Fox on its regular viewers. If something can only be sourced to Fox it's not notable. If something has any other sources, then there are better sources. Simonm223 (talk) 18:47, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• Cite opinions as opinions As ever - the idea that the sources any group does not "like" should be "deprecated" is an extraordinarily bad slope for Wikipedia in the first place. And the fact is that Fox News as a channel handles both opinion and straight journalism and is in precisely the same category as ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN. If we remove all "wrong thought" from Wikipedia, the issue is clear - those who would remove all "wrong thought" are actually ignoring the concept of WP:NPOV from the get-go. Collect (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• I think you may have misinterpreted my intention. And to be clear, I don't actually like ABC, NBC, CBC, MSNBC or CNN. In fact I'd be tempted to deprecate CNN as well. At play here are two factors, one which I'll admit is a personal bug-bear but not in the direction you may be expecting:

1. Wikipedia is too dependent on newsmedia. I say this a lot. I'm pretty serious about it. I don't believe we're able to properly adjudicate WP:LASTING when people jump on WP:SIGCOV based on an immediate reaction from the 24 hour news cycle. WP:NOTNEWS has become something of a joke as a result.
2. Fox is less reliable than the average news source. As has been shown below by MastCell in some detail, Fox has a pattern of inaccurate reporting that would be concerning even without the ideological baggage. So when I say that it should be deprecated, it's not because it's a Republican rag. It's because it's a rag of any sort. And we shouldn't be using them. Simonm223 (talk) 19:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

This isn't a discussion of "wrong thought" or any such talk radio buzzword. It's a simple matter of two primary requirements of reliable journalism: to (A) engage truthfully with due diligence, editorial control and fact-checking of their journalistic content and (B) to in good faith make sure that editorial/opinion/analysis content is clearly labeled as such. These are the same factors in which the Daily Mail failed and in my view Fox has routinely failed at them as well, to the point of not being reliable without having to check against other sources - which as Simonm223 above pointed out means there are then better sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 73.76.213.67 (talk • contribs)

Your "B" is not a requirement of our RS policy. --Masem (t) 19:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

As a matter of common sense, any reasonable person would expect a reliable source to clearly differentiate factual reporting from opinion pieces. (If you can't be sure whether a reported item is intended to be factual or simply an unsubstantiated opinion, then how can you confidently use a source?) But even as a legalistic policy nitpick, you're wrong: WP:NEWSORG covers the distinction between factual reporting and opinion, and the need to handle them differently—which presumes that reliable sources draw such a distinction. MastCell ^Talk 20:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Nothing in NEWSORG says that a RS must identify an article as a news report or as opinion. Only that we only use news reports for factual information, and present opinions as opinions. And we have to recognize that not every work is going to have bylines. We sometimes have to use WP editorial review to determine if an article without a byline is meant to be taken as news or opinion, even moreso now in the age of opinionated journalism which blurs the lines. (for example, an unmarked opinionated piece from the NYTimes today) It's not that hard to tell the difference between an article written to present a journalistic tone versus a conversation tone (a strong sign of an opinionated or analysis piece), and it should be very obvious when it is contentious claims towards anyone being treated as blatant fact that we've found an opinionated piece rather than journalism. Mind you, much of this concern goes away if we have more editors respecting NOTNEWS and RECENTISM - what the press thinks in the short term has little encyclopedic value until that itself is part of a news event (as for example in the case of FOX and Seth Rich). --Masem (t) 20:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

You raise some good points Masem. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:56, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• No. Sites like the Daily Mail and InfoWars don't just make occasional errors or exhibit editorial bias, they're completely uninterested in reporting news, and what little they offer in terms of original reporting is vastly outweighed by the huge risk that any story they publish could be wildly inaccurate. Fox News certainly has problems, but there is still some faction within the organization that is dedicated to accurate reporting. They issue retractions (even if they're half-assed) when they get things wrong, they hire actual journalists, they have a set of editorial standards. Users should always be cautious with any source, but deprecating Fox News would mean getting rid of a lot of good quality reporting. Nblund ^talk 19:19, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

FoxNews is a perennial topic here, and I don't think the question is as simple as a yes or no, despite the usual reflexive both-sidesism. Leaving aside the opinion material and focusing on the news operation, FoxNews clearly inhabits a more respectable place on the spectrum compared to partisan lie factories like InfoWars or Breitbart. On the other hand, there is ample reason to question whether FoxNews has an adequate reputation for fact-checking and accuracy to qualify, under site policy, as a reliable source. There have been a disturbing number of incidents in which FoxNews has reported something—inevitably something which serves a partisan political goal—only to have the item in question turn out to be false. And not merely false, but so obviously false than any competent journalistic outfit would not have run it in the first place. A few examples:

• Less than a week before the 2016 Presidential election, Fox News published a bombshell report indicating that Hillary Clinton's email server had been hacked by "five foreign intelligence agencies", and that the FBI investigation of the Clinton Foundation had found evidence of wrongdoing which would result in Clinton's indictment. Both statements served to amplify Trump campaign talking points, and were presented as news, not opinion. Both were completely false. And the false reporting stemmed from poor journalistic practices, as outlined in this summary from the Washington Post.
• Fox's role in covering the murder of Seth Rich has been widely described, and raises serious questions about its journalistic credibility. FoxNews published a phony story which fueled conspiracy theories (many of which were advanced here, on Wikipedia, by editors citing FoxNews as a "reliable source"). The private investigator hired by FoxNews to push the story later claimed that FoxNews was operating a coordinated effort with the White House to smear the murder victim (Rich) and to "shift the blame from Russia." In an ensuing legal case, the judge found that FoxNews and the PI had "embarked on a collective effort to support a sensational claim regarding Seth Rich’s murder", thus "perpetuating a politically motivated story not having any basis in fact." (see PBS, New York Times).
• An interesting forensic analysis of fake news demonstrated how quickly and credulously FoxNews picked up and ran with phony Russian propaganda (see coverage in Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
• More general questions about the credibility of FoxNews have accumulated (e.g. "Fox hit with new charges to its credibility", AP), and several FoxNews hosts have quit the channel out of frustration that hard-news reporting has been marginalized in favor of a "relentless blind defense of Trump" (see Politico).
• As far back as 2012, The Atlantic summarized a number of false stories on FoxNews, with the false stories focusing on unsurprising targets: Muslim nations, PETA, Sarah Palin critics, transgender individuals, Barack Obama, etc. ([23]).

While even the most reliable sources make occasional errors, this pattern of publishing and promoting partisan falsehoods is distinctly different from anything that our typical high-quality sources engage in. As a result, I think it would be incredibly irresponsible to treat FoxNews as an entirely reliable source for matters of fact, particularly when those matters involve incredible or "bombshell" claims, living people, or partisan talking points. And if a claim appears only in FoxNews, and not in more reliable sources, then it should be treated very skeptically. As a reminder, with regard to the Seth Rich case, a number of editors here played a role in promoting a false conspiracy theory that caused real harm and suffering to the family of a murder victim. It happened because they treated FoxNews as a reliable source, despite evidence to the contrary. They should have known better then, and I don't think there's any excuse now. MastCell ^Talk 19:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for that very well-written summation of issues. A few more things might need adding to it:

≥Fox News's deliberate use of conspiracy theories against the accuser(s) of Brett Kavanaugh: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/fox-news-kavanaugh-727504/

≥Fox News's habit of picking up falsified stories by credulously using as sources "bridging sites", in effect source-laundering, and ignoring the journalistic responsibility to fact-check claims by "passing the buck" and merely "reporting what the bridging sites are saying". https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/conservative-media-fox-brietbart-infowars/

≥Our data repeatedly show Fox as the transmission vector of widespread conspiracy theories. The original Seth Rich conspiracy did not take off when initially propagated in July 2016 by fringe and pro-Russia sites, but only a year later, as Fox News revived it when James Comey was fired. The Clinton pedophilia libel that resulted in Pizzagate was started by a Fox online report, repeated across the Fox TV schedule, and provided the prime source of validation across the right-wing media ecosystem. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/11/06/blame-fox-not-facebook-for-fake-news/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.677e6afe132f) - Yochai Benkler, interviewed about the Harvard research book Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics.

I invite others to add anything else that might have been missed here involving the pattern of conduct on the part of Fox News. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 20:12, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks—I find these discussions more useful when they're data-focused, rather than just a hodgepodge of random opinions. I chose to stick to unimpeachably reliable sources in my summary, mostly because I don't feel like opening a second argument about whether Rolling Stone or the Daily Dot are reliable when they criticize Fox's reliability. That said, the book by Benkler et al. is an excellent academic summary of the issue, and underscores the problem: FoxNews amplifies right-wing falsehoods, and sometimes even originates them, to an extent that should make any responsible editor think twice about using it as a source here. In fact, that book should probably be used as a source for our article on FoxNews, as high-quality academic sources are relatively lacking there. MastCell ^Talk 20:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

A book by New York Times journalists about the (becoming less credible as time goes by) sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh: [24]. Who is being biased here? wumbolo ^^^ 20:29, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Your link and comment add nothing to an understanding of whether FoxNews is or is not a reliable source. If you don't have anything constructive to add, please don't post this kind of silly flamebait. It's hard enough to keep a discussion focused here as is. MastCell ^Talk 20:32, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Here is a reply by Donna Halper, a media historian, on Fox's reliability: "Fox News is the media arm of the Republican Party....But having said that, when analyzing Fox News, we must differentiate between the network’s commentators (who generally are not trustworthy) and its reporters (who generally can be trusted)....Fox news reporters....report the news and to try to be accurate....[They] tend to be very reliable and ethical."[25] TFD (talk) 20:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The link directly to her answer is https://www.quora.com/Is-Fox-News-a-reliable-and-unbiased-news-source/answer/Donna-Halpe Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:26, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The point I (and the IP) are making above, at length and with numerous supporting citations to reliable published and academic work, is that it's not at all clear that Fox's news reporting can be trusted. If you disagree, please elevate the discussion and bring something more to the table than Quora posts. MastCell ^Talk 20:30, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

User:MastCell, sorry, I thought I mentioned it was a post by Donna Halper, a media historian. Halper is an associate professor at Lesley University, where she teaches Media Analysis, Introduction to Communication, and Introduction to Journalism.[26] Previously she taught journalism at the University of Massachusetts Boston, Amherst and other universities. Do you have any sources of journalism experts commenting on Fox News reporting or are we expected to bow to your superior analysis? BTW, the article, "JUST GOT WORSE MARK PENN: How 'Deep State' is worse than feared" is clearly labelled as opinion. TFD (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

If she's a prominent academic, then surely she has better venues than Quora in which to share her views. Cite those. I listed a bunch of published third-party reliable sources—specifically to forestall "that's-just-like-your-opinion-man" responses—and the IP cited a scholarly book published by the Oxford University Press and written by three prominent academics. A Quora post, no matter whose, is not a comparable source. MastCell ^Talk 22:18, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:SELFPUBLISH "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable third-party publications." -- --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:22, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Erm... so you believe that a professor's Quora post carries comparable weight to third-party reliable sources and published scholarly treatises? If so, I'm posting on Quora more often. MastCell ^Talk 23:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

The problem is that outside Wikipedia and Quora, no one is interested in the question of whether or not Fox News is a reliable source. If you have "third-party reliable sources and published scholarly treatises" where someone has answered the question, then please provide them. In the meantime, this is the best source we have that answers the question. TFD (talk) 17:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

There are plenty of high-quality sources addressing FoxNews's reliability, a number of which have been presented in this thread. Hell, Oxford University Press just published a book on the subject, written by three prominent academics. It's just bizarre to insist that a Quora post is the best available source. Bizarre. MastCell ^Talk 01:57, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

For at least the first three cases, Fox removed/corrected said stories after their reliability was brought into question. I am not sure/unable to tell if they issued formal errata or made apologies - eg being open about what they did - but still taking down bad articles on notice they are wrong is part of journalistic integrity we want. So on that basis, there's nothing wrong with FOX News.

Now, obviously, that's an absurd statement, but it points to things that need repeating across all sources and topic areas: that NOT#NEWS /RECENTISM tells us to hold off on including "breaking" controversial stories until we can tell what the overall picture is, and that we should seek corroboration to make sure we have the right story. Even if it is a anonymous source reporting through the NYTimes, we should wait to see if that is a story corroborated by another RSes. (See JzG's section above comparing left- versus right-leaning sources).

So the issue is that in the long run, FOX is reliable, albeit for certain specific commentators, in that what stays posted on their site is generally correct. But its those stories that are controversial that they jump on as breaking news based on inside reports with little corroboration which later prove out to be misunderstanding, exaggerations, or bad information given to them that they redact or apologize for that cause the problems, and only because WP editors jump at adding those stories against the advice of NOTNEWS/RECENTISM. If this was better held up across the board, FOX would not be as problematic as being made out here. --Masem (t) 21:06, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose The long-standing consensus is that Fox News is a reliable source. Partisan as it may be, it's still reliable enough that deprecating it would not be very helpful, as we never put up reliable sources for deprecation. SemiHypercube 21:00, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

  I'd just like to point out that saying "consensus said no in the past therefore we can't re-assess consensus" seems more like a tautology and not a valid argument. The point I propose and that Mastcell has provided ample following sourcing for is that Fox News's standards and conduct have declined enough that it can no longer be deemed reliable. After reading the Daily Mail discussions your same tautology was proposed towards that newspaper, that somehow it remained reliable based on having been reliable once upon a time in the past. But users today are warned against using Daily Mail as a source (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Daily_Mail) despite your (incorrect) assertion that "we never put up reliable sources for deprecation". 73.76.213.67 (talk) 21:10, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

  No, I'm saying that while consensus can change, the previous discussions should be considered, and since the consensus after about 10 discussions is that it's reliable, this could be saying something. Additionally, 73.76.213.67, was this edit done by you, or are you under a shared or dynamic IP? SemiHypercube 23:09, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Ewww. Not mine. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 02:10, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Additionally, if you're going to compare Fox News to the Daily Mail, you should probably read this article to see what the you're comparing this to. As noted above, at least Fox News seems to have some interest in actual news reporting and sometimes checks facts. SemiHypercube 23:20, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

• Weak support. "Long standing consensus" about any news org isn't set in stone if it's clear the reliability has degraded. I wouldn't be opposed to lowering it a notch at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, that is, make Fox News yellow and Fox News talk shows red. Yellow would be appropriate, as it means use with caution. ~Anachronist (talk) 21:39, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. Fox News obviously has a bias when it comes to political topics, but news quality and accuracy, as well as the pretense of neutrality, have declined considerably across the board in recent times. Other news sources that are regularly used on Wikipedia have the same issues or worse, particularly local news outfits that been reduced to bare minimum staff and now essentially do no fact checking whatsoever. Looking just at bias, there are sources on the other end of the political spectrum that are equally biased, but still widely used throughout Wikipedia without being questioned. The problem needs to be addressed as a whole, without focusing on a single source and instead take on consideration of deprecating many widely used biased sources. Deli nk (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
• (1) Fox News talk shows should clearly be given a red color on the perennial sources list (and it would be helpful if editors could identify the parts that are just opinion drivel on the Fox News website - for example, 'Fox News Insider' gets frequently cited in Wiki articles and looks like a straight-up news source but it's usually just written-up quotes from what the conspiracy theorists and fringe folks say on the talk shows). (2) The news department has a history of falsehoods and disreputable behavior. The Seth Rich conspiracy nonsense was the obvious instance. Fox News refused to retract that story for days even though it was debunked by multiple other news sources within 24 hours. Fox News also never explained what was wrong with its reporting, something that normal news organizations do when they fuck up stories.[27][28] Normal news outlets also often fire or sanction individuals involved in massive stories that go wrong. The news department also has a bizarre focus, as it ignores the kinds of stories that normal news outlets provide extensive coverage in favor of bizarre non-stories and in-depth in-the-weeds coverage of whatever faux controversy that Republicans have stirred up. I've frequently seen Fox News being used to fill space in various articles on faux controversies about liberals to suggest wrong-doing and scandal where there was none. The Fox News news department should be considered 'generally unreliable' and coverage by Fox should not be considered an indication of WP:DUE given their obsession with stories about liberal non-controversies and absence of stories of actual conservative scandals. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:08, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Regardless of other points, dinging a source due to what focus it decides to give the news should not be a mark against its RSness. Otherwise, we should ding WSJ for focusing on stories that mostly deal with business, or political stories that affect businesses (which is of course illogical). And of course, if we take obsession over a topic as a problem that would ding CNN and numerous other sources that have solely harped on Trump for the last 3 years, pushing other more serious news to the wayside (which again is illogical). --Masem (t) 22:16, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
    • There is a difference between substantive focus and partisan hackery. WSJ has in-depth business coverage, Scientific magazine has in-depth science coverage, and outlets like CNN, Politico and Fox News spend a lot of energy on American politics. What I'm referring to is a lopsided obsession to give in-depth coverage of faux controversies and to exclusively do so when it revolves around one side of the political aisle - which leads to in-the-weeds reporting that insinuates scandal and wrong-doing when there is no substantive basis for it (and this reporting is then used to fill up the Wikipedia pages of these faux controversies - which is a huge problem). And what we're talking about here on this specific point is the news department at these two news outlets. I don't think there is any disagreement that the pundits on both channels (e.g. Don Lemon) should generally not be used for factual reporting. I have no idea what Don Lemon focuses on in his shows, because I don't watch his or any other CNN show, and no one tries to cite him and other CNN pundits in Wikipedia articles. The news department at CNN (and the punditry shows also AFAIK[29]) goes after both sides. The same can not be said about Fox News. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 22:36, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
      • Biased reporting does not say anything about reliability; a point in the Daily Caller discussion above. Biased reporting can lead to problems with reliability, no question, but one has to show that by other means. Just saying a source is biased doesn't directly cause us to say its unreliable. There are proper way of dealing with the rush-to-report-before-getting-facts-straight that FOX does, but that's already ingrained in policy through RECENTISM and other policies as I've described above. --Masem (t) 22:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
        • I and an IP editor both presented evidence, above, that FoxNews is both politically biased and unreliable. My hope was that we'd have a discussion about that evidence, but I've gotten used to disappointment. MastCell ^Talk 22:57, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
        • I agree that the challenge here is to show in a clear and convincing way that the bias does lead to reliability problems and to document these reliability problems extremely thoroughly and in great detail. At some point, I might put together the case that the news department at Fox ought to be downgraded in reliability. It's just very time-consuming. In particular, because most of the attention of other RS is on Fox News' opinion content (which makes sense given that this is where most of outrageous stuff is, what most people watch and where the President's informal advisors are), not the straight-news stuff. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:07, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
        • I would think MSNBC is a better comparison to Fox than CNN. And. I have never, and probably will never, use MSNBC as a source. But, to my knowledge, MSNBC has never allowed its hosts to approach the irresponsibility of Fox hosts. For example, the most popular Fox host, Hannity, pushing the Pizzagate conspiracy. Think about it. Pushing as real the concept that Hillary and the Democratic Party ran pedophilia clubs in the basement of a pizza joint with no basement. This causes real damage. And, even after it was debunked, and a man shot up the pizza joint to save these mythical kids – he continued to claim on Fox that it was true. I felt sorry for the nut that believed Fox and shot up the restaurant. And the Seth Rich conspiracies. And the continuing claims that the FBI is secretly trying to overthrow the government. And the fact the Fox host recently spoke at a Trump rally. You can say that there is a separation between the news and the conspiratorial hosts. But, the channel is named Fox “News”. You don’t see the Washington Post or The Guardian claiming conspiracy theories about a political party running pedophilia rings or murdering people are true. I can’t take seriously an organization that does such as a source for an encyclopedia; and I think there are plenty of reliable sources without resorting to such. A bridge too far for me. O3000 (talk) 23:22, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
          • In general reply to MastCell, Snooganssnoogans and Objective3000: I personally recognize exactly the issues with FOX news being brought up, that there are several parts of their opinion team and some reporters that rush to present questionable information without the same scrutiny that other RSes generally use, and this gives makes them have to backtrack a lot, redacting articles that are shown to be wrong. They do have a seemingly wreckless approach to reporting. But if you look at what remains in Fox News' archives on general news reporting a month or so after a story has broken, there is generally no issues with their approach; they may be biased to the right, but still cover most situations with a comparable objectivity with other RSes when you factor in any bias that the RSes have. It is their on-the-spot reporting of material they haven't yet corroborated that they feel supports their general support for the GOP/Trump/etc that is a huge problem for WP, as long as we have editors that routinely ignore NOTNEWS/RECENTISM to post these stories the second they drop.
          • In that mindset, we can blame FOX or we can blame WP editors to rush to the point, or both. To me, the problem is more on those editors that rush to add information, which also happens with sources that aren't FOX news too. Editors want to rush to add in accusations made towards people and groups as soon as they are made before giving time for full understanding of the effect of those accusations, for example. And that's just the tip of the iceberg about how we have begun putting too much weight on breaking news sources in controversial topics. This is not a FOX news problem, this is a WP problem. The statements being made here to single out FOX news won't deal with the underlying issue. I'm all for putting as many cavaets on the use of FOX news - make sure information is corroborated if possible; if its highly controversial, definitely wait to see if it even pans out; don't take any stories from certain talking heads there as anything close to reliable, and so forth. But it's burying the real problem of how we exactly should be using current media sources and how we write articles on events and topics still being covered in real time. We should be telling editors to be much more selective and wait and see for all sources, not just single one out that tends to rush to the publishing line with sometimes disastrous results. --Masem (t) 01:37, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
            • And all of that is a good argument for coloring Fox News as yellow rather than green. It can be used, but with caution, and corroboration. ~Anachronist (talk) 03:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose per the reasons I stated above. I would point out also that the IP who started the thread began with a false claim about opinion pieces appearing as news stories on the front page. Of the two examples provided, bothnMark Penn's article[30] and the article on Ocassio=Cortez[31] are clearly labelled as opinion. and neither appear on the front page. It would be ironic to ban a news source as unreliable by relying on false information. TFD (talk) 22:24, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Sorry, but your claim that the IP made a false claim is incorrect. Both appeared on the front page and were not labeled there as opinion. They were labeled opinion in the articles – but I read both at the time and didn’t notice this in either article. Here’s the web archive link. [32] O3000 (talk) 23:31, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

They are no longer there.[33] I note that despite the IP's comment that "not one story carried is anything other than an opinion piece," in fact the vast majority are news items, which is why I wondered whether the IP had wandered to the opinion page instead. (Since you provided the link you can check yourself.) If you follow the links I provided to the two articles you will see that they are clearly labelled opinion, and that should be clear from the article headlines. Opinion pieces are carried in all mainstream media and are not considered reliable sources. I concede it should have been labelled opinion on the "Hot Topics" page, but don't see how that affects reliability. TFD (talk) 00:35, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

But, as I demonstrated, they were there. The Fox page constantly changes. Claiming that the OP made a false statement is not wise. The point is that the Fox News main page continually makes demonstrably ludicrous statements not labeled as opinion on that page – where people read it. The primary aim of the Fox News site does not appear to be the furtherance of fact. As I said, we shouldn’t use MSNBC as a reliable source for fact. But, they as far as I can see, don’t approach the conspiracy theorism of Fox. No one there is claiming the Republican party runs pedophilia clubs or anything approaching what Fox News has allowed. I think that both should be avoided, even though MSNBC has, to my knowledge, never made such claims. O3000 (talk) 01:04, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

1) Regardless of the source, headline statements are not to be taken as RSes, so the fact that a headline is factually wrong or misleading has zero weight on the reliability of the source. 2) Whether or not a headline-listing page calls out opinion vs news vs analysis is also immaterial for us. CNN may be sticklers in that labeling, but the NYTimes article I pointed out above as being opinionated reporting [34] is currently listed on the politics page without a statement that it is opinion or analysis. We have to be aware that news or opinion may not be distinguished even by a byline on the article page. That in no way causes the entire reliability of a site to disappear, simply that we have to use extra scrutiny as WP editors to know what a piece should be treated as. Basically, this whole point is a rabbit's trail not demanded anywhere in policy or guidelines. --Masem (t) 01:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

All true, but doesn’t the fact that a site labeling itself as a “news” site allows extreme conspiracy theories, time and again, on its front page give us pause as using them as a source? If something is worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia, one would expect that it would be published in multiple sources. Let us use those less questionable as opposed to a site that has a reputation of publishing conspiratorial nonsense on its main page and broadcasts on a daily basis. I’m not saying deprecate like The Daily Mail. Although Fox may actually be more dangerous. I’m just saying that WP:5P2 and WP:V demand more of us. O3000 (talk) 01:36, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I would say much of this should "if it smells like BS, we should avoid it, regardless where it came from, until that can be confirmed." FOX news reports that an inside source said Hillary earns $20 gazaillion a day from her investments? Yeah, we should wait to even think about using that source. But same applies to other sources if they are publishing information that appears to be contentious and does not have corroboration. See my reply above about this being more a WP problem than a FOX News problem. --Masem (t) 01:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, I don’t think the NYT or WaPo, Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel would publish such on their front pages. And, we have differing olfactory craves. But, it’s been a nice chat, I knew it wouldn’t go anywhere, and I won’t be !voting on this.:) regards, O3000 (talk) 02:02, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Masem let me see if I understand your position correctly. You believe that DESPITE the numerous and egregious counts of non-reliable behavior by Fox News, the small smidgen of actual news content that still exists makes them count as reliable? That despite the entirety of their daily-show spectrum, the mixing of "Fox News Insider" conspiracy nonsense into their "news" content on their website, their failures to properly mark opinion content and to have clear disclaimers that editorial content is the position of the author only and all their other violations, that "Well Shep Smith is still sometimes a journalist so that makes them OK". Does that accurately sum up your position?

Because I wouldn't have said Fox was completely unreliable a couple years ago but it's literally gone beyond the pale now. I think it's ridiculous that we play the game of pretending that Fox has any reliability left when it requires digging up a checklist and triple-checking the URL to make sure that it isn't a false-marked opinion piece from a conservative think-tanker or a "Fox News Insider" piece masquerading as real journalism. Honestly can you provide a list of the "still reliable journalists" you say are at Fox that would require even two hands to count, let alone taking off my socks? 73.76.213.67 (talk) 02:47, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Nothing in our RS criteria requires a source's website to have clear, unmistakable lines between news and opinion. We'd prefer it if sites did this, but it is by no means a requirement. And I'm having a hard time finding any article on FOX that reads as opinion or analysis that isn't marked as opinion or analysis in the article's byline - as I point out above, other sources do often publish opinionated reported (which mix news and opinion) without an opinion byline, so even if FOX does it, we can't ding FOX for that and not ding others.

Looking at articles that are at least a month old and outside anything one would consider a controversial area, there seems to be little question to FOX's accuracy and reliability. Even their political news (not opinion) seems correct, just with a GOP-bent. Those articles seem to be mostly done by those that aren't the onscreen personalities of FOX News, but the actual journalists they have.

And to stress a key part of the Daily Mail case: DM was found to absolutely fabricating news as well as opinion. This is different from jumping on a few anonymous tips and running with them - fabrication is outright beyond the pale. We know FOX will latch on to inside tips and exaggerate their relative importance until the tips are proven wrong, but that's not fabrication of news. To me that just means, don't use FOX news for breaking news that seems controversial and which only is corroborated by FOX news. But that's true for any source, in the first place. --Masem (t) 15:18, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Masem, FoxNews was also found to be fabricating news. They concocted and promoted a phony, politically motivated conspiracy theory around an innocent murder victim (Seth Rich). A judge found that FoxNews and its partners had "embarked on a collective effort to support a sensational claim regarding Seth Rich’s murder... perpetuating a politically motivated story not having any basis in fact." That's actually an order of magnitude worse than anything that the Daily Mail has done, to my knowledge. I'm confused by the contradiction between your stated criteria for reliability and your ongoing defense of FoxNews as a reliable source. MastCell ^Talk 18:31, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

There's a big gap between perpetuating a conspiracy theory, and factually making up a story. Certainly, not saying was Fox did report on was ethically or morally right, but they weren't creating falsehoods, but instead trying to overanalyze, find links that don't exist or can't prove, etc. Ultimate they did backoff and apologize for the story and did face legal penalties, but it wasn't anything akin to a fabricated story. And yes, other RSes jump on this too, though as pointed out by JzG's analysis above, they are usually going to verify all sourcing to make sure they don't end up with egg on their face. But any time documents that mention "Trump" and "Russia" come out of the various intelligence agencies, the media jumps on this - they aren't reporting anything made up, but their analysis teams are doing the same red-string pulling to try to figure out where that fits into the whole puzzle. But that's where recognizing the difference between news and opinion/analysis reporting is important. --Masem (t) 18:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

So it is your belief that a reliable source can knowingly promote and perpetuate phony conspiracy theories, as long as it doesn't originate them? MastCell ^Talk 18:50, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

As long as it is recognized that this is not a practice limited to FOX News (just that the example of how FOX dealt with the Rich story above is one of the most egregious cases, and far more intense than the type of perpetuating that happens from left-leaning sources), and that when any RS promotes such material without corroboration, that we should absolutely avoid including it or least making sure it is not presented as fact if it must be included, until more clarity and corroboration is known. WP editor are not stupid: we should be able to avoid using any source that is promoting unsubstantiated BS on the basis of RS, NOTNEWS and RECENTISM. Doesn't make the whole source promoting it bad, just that we should apply more caution. For FOX news, that means that, say, 10% of their stories are something we should really pay attention to for problems, whereas that number goes does to 1-2% for NYTimes, CNN, etc. Whereas the DM, that number is easily closer to 25-50%, putting much of what they print into doubt. --Masem (t) 19:36, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. I'm unconvinced by the discussion and examples above that anything has changed since the last time this was discussed and consensus was not to deprecate Fox News as a source. Gnome de plume (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose - as with any news outlet, individual reports can be deemed factually inaccurate (and thus unreliable) without needing to call the entire outlet unreliable. Fox’s analysis and opinion coverage is often quite biased (common in today’s media) but its actual news reporting is, on the whole, accurate. Massem’s comments about recentism are also very relevant. Fox does correct itself when a flawed report goes out. Blueboar (talk) 01:41, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. It would be best to avoid Fox News for political opinions, but even though that's the kind of thing everyone likes to talks about, Fox is a news source that presents non-political (or less political) news really no differently than other news outlets. For example, I see that Fox News' current top world news story now about a Polish mayor being stabbed is not significantly different from CNN's coverage of the same topic. I don't see any reason to avoid using one of those stories as a reference for facts about the event compared to the other. Edgeweyes (talk) 03:27, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose CNN, NYTimes and the Amazon Post are as unreliable as any news sources out there, having to retract their "stories" countless times due to hasty needs to get to print, poor oversight and lack of integrity. They constantly slam anything not towing the left wing agenda, CNN in fact looks like an attack site designed to malign anything that isn't left wing biased. Journalism as a rule is going to be dominated by the left as journalism is a liberal arts discipline, attracting creative writers, zealots and agenda driven POV pushers. But nothing beats watching them trash each other![35], [36], [37], [38], the Amazon Post has only endorsed democratic Presidential candidates since 1976.--MONGO (talk) 13:25, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

You do realize that Amazon is not connected with the Washington Post? O3000 (talk) 13:32, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

To Mongo: Your Fallacy Is False Equivalence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence), with a side order of BothSidesIsm (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bothsidesism). If I didn't know better from a quick review of your edit history I'd think you were a "Poe" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law). Particularly egregious in demonstrating lack of good faith in your comment is your insistence on the slur/slander/sneerword (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pejorative) term "Amazon Post". Well, that and the obvious lack of english grammatical skill you display as the expression is "toeing", not "towing" the line. In fact, I think I could point to your comment here as a good example of the sort of behavior that rogue, entirely-unreliable outlets such as the Daily Caller and Fox News engender by spreading just said slanders and nonsense as you are repeating here. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 13:39, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

In case anyone is wondering here are some edits that make me think Mongo is not a "Poe" and is in fact just incompetent:

≥(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Donald_Trump&diff=prev&oldid=877920303) ranting about "a bunch of far left zealots"

≥(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Donald_Trump&diff=prev&oldid=877741997) I mean this is barely coherent speech.

≥In truth basically everything contained in this thread (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Donald_Trump#Proud_to_shut_down_the_government) In truth pretty much everything here, including the sections MrX had to shut down directly. It's pretty patently obvious here that Mongo isn't interested in facts in this matter, just attacking anyone he believes is "towing the left wing agenda" or some other nonsensical slur. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 13:49, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Cute...I don't recall attacking you directly and the fact that you attack me directly proves you must feel defensive. Now where I have seen a named editor who has spent this much time slamming FoxNews...sure looks familiar.--MONGO (talk) 14:40, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I just don't think anyone who rants with slurs like "Amazon Post", "towing[sic] the left wing agenda", "a bunch of far left zealots" or maligns respected news agencies as "zealots and agenda driven POV pushers" is engaging in good faith and the basic competence required of this encyclopedia. Conservapedia's at a different web address and I understand their standards are more on the level you're displaying... 73.76.213.67 (talk) 15:02, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

You should have stopped at "I just don't think"...as that would be correct in summarizing your editing history...perhaps you'd like to tell us what your username is?--MONGO (talk) 16:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

And you vandalize more articles like you did here and here I'll move swiftly to get your IP blocked, troll.--MONGO (talk) 16:14, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I was asked about the first one above and that's not mine. I'll happily state the same regarding the second. However, since you apparently have a lack of ability to engage civilly (as demonstrated by your calling me a "troll" and "vandalizing troll" in your edit summaries as well as your deliberately-provocative removal of a comment I left on another page) I will not engage with you further. I'm hopeful you will realize how you are behaving and apologize, but I'm doubtful. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 17:55, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I was born in the morning but not yesterday morning. So you expect us to believe that the talkpage comment you made here today "It seems that Pat Buchanan has a long history of anti-semitism" is unrelated to this, changing a persons last name from Cortez to KKKortez and this calling the person an "anti-semite" and this are from a completely different person who makes the same arguments and uses the same IP? Bullshit.--MONGO (talk) 18:17, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

• Support Most news is now little more then opinion dressed up as fact. Fox is about as bad as it comes like this, and in many ways the DM is just aping Fox in print.Slatersteven (talk) 13:34, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose Their news side meets every part of WP:RS. The issue of some not being able to tell their news side from commentary is something to deal with here, not ban or deprecate. While false balance is being thrown around a lot, it is a valid argument. To say Fox is unique compared to their peers is not correct. Also a long the lines of getting things wrong and having to put up corrects or retractions. That is what you want from a RS, they should do that when they make a mistake and is part of what makes them a RS at all. No source gets everything right but a RS makes corrections when they are wrong. We just need to make sure we separate their news side from their opinion side, which is getting harder everywhere. You see discussions all the time with most sources asking if the article is news or opinion. PackMecEng (talk) 13:58, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose: Maybe even snow close. All news media is biased. That does not equate to unreliability in any way. "Fox News talk shows" should be considered as some "political" point of view, vetted, and used when there is balance. I would have to look at CNN or CNBC (etc..) talk shows but likely they will be extremely biased in the view of the host, that will likely lean towards the particular media's stance. Otr500 (talk) 15:48, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose I think a line needs to be drawn between "Organizations with a clear bias in their editorial content, but which still do actual journalism" and "Organizations which don't do any actual journalism". I think Fox's editorial stance on most issues is abbhorant, and many of their broadcast programs are rage-u-tainment for the right, with little valuable journalism there, but we shouldn't be citing any of that shit anyways. Insofar as Fox does seem to have an actual news department reporting actual news, I don't think an outright ban on using it is needed. We should never use their opinion pieces as equivalent to actual investigative journalism, but unlike the Daily mail, they seem to do real journalism. I am unconcerned with how the marketing of FoxNews affects how they choose to organize their website, but rather mostly on whether or not I can trust the journalism to be reliable. Insofar as it exists there, it's fine. I've not seen where the journalism wing of FoxNews has the sort of rampant disregard for actual investigation or as DM does... --Jayron32 16:25, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
  • Jayron, I've already said way too much in this thread and I don't want to badger you, but I respect your opinion and I wanted to follow up. What's your view of Fox's role in the Seth Rich case (for instance)? I've presented a bunch of links/cites above, but briefly, Fox's news operation (not opinion) concocted and promoted a phony, politically motivated conspiracy theory smearing an innocent murder victim. And this wasn't the work of one bad apple, like Jayson Blair, but an organized institutional effort and a sustained violation of basic journalistic norms. I've outlined other extraordinary lapses in my original post above, but the Rich case alone should give anyone pause when it comes to Fox's news operation, at least in my opinion. I'm curious whether you agree. MastCell ^Talk 18:46, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
    • Sorry; I was unfamiliar with that particular case. I think that would be very troubling if it were shown to be true. I think my general statement holds for discussions like this; the idea that we can (and should) separate commentary from journalism, and assess an organizations journalism wing from its opinion writing wing. I'm afraid I can't comment on the validity of your story regarding that issue. If it were shown to be a widely-covered, frequent problem (as it is with DM) it could throw my assessment of the news division into question as well. --Jayron32 19:11, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
      • Jayron, the Rich case is as I described; FoxNews acknowledged (but did not apologize for) its lapses in journalistic integrity, and a judge found that FoxNews and its partners had "embarked on a collective effort to support a sensational claim regarding Seth Rich’s murder... perpetuating a politically motivated story not having any basis in fact." That alone should give anyone pause if they're thinking of citing FoxNews. As far as a widely-covered, frequent problem, I presented evidence that such a pattern exists here, higher up in this thread. Note, again, that all of these instances involve Fox's news operation, not its opinion content; I agree with you about the importance of separating the two, but it appears that neither one is particularly reliable. MastCell ^Talk 01:44, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. The appropriateness of using Fox News as a reference should be evaluated on a case by case basis, just like other news sources. TimBuck2 (talk) 17:00, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

  ...which is basically an argument for deprecating it from green to yellow. ~Anachronist (talk) 04:51, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

  So you feel all news outlets should be yellow? PackMecEng (talk) 14:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Fox news should be considered default-unreliable, per the compelling arguments put forward in Network Propaganda. However, the bar is lower than it is for the Daily Mail as there are genuinely good journalists at Fox (Shep Smith, for example) and the website is less shitty than the cable channel. I don't really know how to handle that in a blanket guideline, but I do know that the howls of rage we got when the Mail was blacklisted would be as nothing to the abuse and vandalism we'd get for blacklisting Fox. Guy (Help!) 17:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

  @JzG: Huh. Wasn't expecting you to oppose deprecating Fox News. You also do bring up a good point of how deprecating Fox would be practically opening Pandora's box to Wikipedia, we'd receive so much vandalism and abuse. SemiHypercube 21:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

To be honest, neither was I. I think this is a case for discretion with the default being to exclude. Fox was always biased - it was founded, after all, by Roger Ailes, because he believed the real villains of Watergate were the Washington Post - but there is decent evidence that they were pushing back against the far right fake news / bullshit agenda until 2016, some parts of Fox still do that, and while they have clearly moved tot he right to take back market share after Breitbart started eating their lunch, their reportage still has the potential not to be irredeemably bad. I feel this would be a Rubicon for Wikipedia, and one we are not yet ready to cross. Guy (Help!) 23:50, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Support. With the exception of Shep Smith (consistently good) and Chris Wallace (he occasionally dares to do a good job), Fox News should be deprecated for politics. Those two hosts are the rare exception which proves the rule. The other hosts are abominable and totally unreliable.

We don't save a source because only two out of a dozen+ of its hosts are good.

As noted above, Fox employees leaving the company have described the "news" room (not just any room) "like an extension of the Trump White House."[39] The situation is worse now, to the point where the influence of Fox News and Fox & Friends on Trump and the GOP cannot be ignored. The tail is wagging the dog:

"Fox News is no longer the propaganda arm of the Republican Party.
The Republican Party is the legislative arm of Fox News." -- David Atkins

Deprecate it, which is not a total ban. When Smith and Wallace are accurate, they can still be used for politics. (The rest of the hosts should be blacklisted for politics.) -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02:02, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

For our purposes, "The Republican Party is the legislative arm of Fox News" actually doesn't sound as bad as "Fox News is the propaganda arm of the Republican Party". The former statement simply means that one of the US's two major political parties rely on Fox News when formulating their positions, it doesn't make them biased. It makes Fox News sound like The New Republic in its heyday. Not to mention, the reliability (or lack thereof) of Fox News's political coverage says nothing about its reliability on other topics. feminist (talk) 16:19, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Sources

• Snoppose per Jayron32: ...a line needs to be drawn between "Organizations with a clear bias in their editorial content, but which still do actual journalism" and "Organizations which don't do any actual journalism". Fox News is on one side of the line, Daily Mail is on the other. For every major mistake made by Fox News, I'll show you one made by CNN. For every 5, I'll show you one by NYT or WaPo. All news is biased, all news makes mistakes; reliability doesn't mean flawless. Levivich (talk) 06:43, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• So you are asserting that you can find a case in which a judge ruled that CNN had " "embarked on a collective effort to support a sensational claim regarding [a] murder... perpetuating a politically motivated story not having any basis in fact."? Your claims of parity aren't supportable by the evidence, thus you have a false equivalence on your hands. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 06:49, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
• But this isn't about ordinary bias or occasional mistakes. This is about constant deception and propaganda. Your whataboutism and false equivalence really don't cut it here. Just as Trump is in a class of his own for record-setting dishonesty, Fox News is in a class of its own, as it's primarily a propaganda network which occasionally gets it right, and inexplicably doesn't fire Shep Smith for not following the party line. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 06:54, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

It is very interesting how Fox News's defenders tend to use some variant of a "liberal media conspiracy theory" argument and insist that Fox News's falsification problems are somehow comparable to a large set of other, far more reliable news outlets combined. I mean, I suppose I could take the Daily Enquirer and if I stacked up enough other newspapers and channels I could probably make a claim similar, but it relies on a simple false premise because it's comparing raw numbers of incidents rather factoring the rate and egregiousness.

If you are trying to claim that Fox News is somehow reliable because you can add up a number of retracted errors from CNN, NYT, Washington Post and some other number of outlets compared to one SINGLE outlet (Fox), you have already lost your argument because you've demonstrated that Fox has an enormously sized incident rate compared to the industry. In essence you've demonstrated precisely why Fox needs to be viewed as unreliable because its incident rate for unreliability is so egregious.

However, this exercise is demonstrative of part of the problem with the news ecosystem. REAL news outlets compete with each other on a level playing field. Fox News, since it was founded as a propaganda outlet and not a true news organization, takes the tactic of attacking the reliable news organizations as a whole, pitting themselves in a "Fox vs Everyone Else" battle that their adherents then mirror in discussions like this one. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 14:17, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

In case anyone reading this was confused by my comment, I didn't say "combined." Fox News is about on par with CNN–both are cable television stations that also print stuff on the web–but below real newspapers like NYT, WaPo, WSJ, LATimes, Boston Globe, etc. Second-tier media like Fox and CNN have generally been considered reliable and should continue to be. It's not top-tier journalism, but it is journalism. Levivich? ! 07:02, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: I have found Fox Business to be reliable. But Fox News must be taken with a large grain of salt, and probably should be deprecated, especially if inflammatory or if contradicted by more reliable sources. The issue is that there seems to be a vast difference between what airs on the TV channel Fox News, and what they report in print articles (online). The print articles are generally a lot more reliable, probably because they are more susceptible to lawsuits, whereas the increasingly opinionized drivel often (but not always) spouted on the air is just that -- opinionized drivel. Softlavender (talk) 07:10, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

  Exactly, any edit filter would only discourage citing Fox News print articles, not its TV channel. feminist (talk) 16:27, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose further narrowing political angle of news sources until there is clear evidence Fox news is largely fraudulent (rather than present a point of view). Even if there were some vague questions about the source I think it is too important to keep some balance in what are regarded as facts. —DIYeditor (talk) 10:25, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose. It's been a long time since I've paid any attention at all to Fox News, so when I saw this request last night I looked at their website. I read news stories that would be comfortably at home at any other news website such as cnn.com (Netflix is raising its prices, new details about a kidnapped girl's ordeal, etc.) I see no reason why these articles shouldn't be considered reliable sources for these topics. Peacock (talk) 15:21, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Meanwhile the top story on Fox's website is this (https://www.foxnews.com/politics/beto-orourke-mocked-after-offering-few-answers-in-wide-ranging-policy-interview), which is precisely the sort of unreliable stuff that motivated me to post the question. Source-laundering from an illegitimate source (Daily Caller) which misrepresents a Washington Post article, and making claims that O'Rourke "suggests we might need to ditch the Constitution" which is not supported by the original interview. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 16:10, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The Fox article does not make the ditch the constitution claim. The Fox article says "Other commentators were less forgiving. "This last bit – where he suggests we might need to ditch the Constitution? – is wild," wrote senior Huffington Post political reporter Kevin Robillard." What the Fox article says about O-Rourke's comment is "The Washington Post portrayed him as equivocal and unsure on a variety of substantive policy issues -- and included a comment that seemed to question the modern-day relevance of the U.S. Constitution.". Which is inline with the Washington Post article saying “Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships . . . and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?”. PackMecEng (talk) 16:27, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Oppose. The only effect of an edit filter would be to warn (and thus discourage) editors from citing the Fox News website. The Fox News website is generally considered more reliable and less biased for news than the TV channel. Its straight news reporting is often good and comparable to other news outlets. Heck, we don't even treat RT with the filter. feminist (talk) 16:25, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

"Heck, we don't even treat RT with the filter" but we probably should, and that illustrates why proposals like this are important. The wikipedia policy on Reliable Sources as it exists, allowing sources of such unreliability as Fox News and RT, is as it stands a joke. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 16:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

That is my take, just because we do not not deprecate one bad source does not mean we should not deprecate another. One reason why many of these sources are not deprecated is because of the "but what about..." line of argument. We have to start some where.Slatersteven (talk) 16:38, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Edit filters should only be employed when the source is so bad as to be usableunusable under WP:RSOPINION, much less RS. That was shown for the Daily Mail as they were found to have changed/altered statement of opinion from third-parties, making any of their opinion pieces unreliable for opinion. But even if you think we should stay away from FOX's news side with a ten-foot pool, their opinion pieces that otherwise aren't chasing down weak theories and conspiracies are still find as RSOPINION. There is zero reason to call out for use of an edit filter for Fox News, only that we alter the table of sources to note the numerous caveats before using FOX News for factual information. It's already been shown that once you add these sources to an edit filter based on on failing RS ad not RSOPINION, that editors will strip out use of RSOPINION of that source, which is not proper or what consensus said. The edit filter should only e used for the absolutely unusable sources. --Masem (t) 16:41, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Masem, I assume you mean unusable under RSOPINION? Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:12, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, corrected. --Masem (t) 21:32, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The point is that there has been much discussion on RT, with suggestions to blacklist it raised many times, and yet RT was never blacklisted. RT was deemed a legitimate and useful enough source that blacklisting would be harmful (a view I disagree with). I think most editors would trust Fox News over RT, for obvious reasons. feminist (talk) 16:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• I agree that FOX news regularly publishes opinion pieces as works of journalism. If Fox is used for a factual information, there will be other more reliable alternatives than Fox. If Fox is the only source of the information, it should be noted in the article as "reported by Fox news"--DBigXrayᗙ 14:29, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
• I agree with Feminist above that and my opinion on Fox news has not changed and is similar to what it was last year.[40] Whether it is a reliable source for a subject or not it will really depend on the subject. Excelse (talk) 14:38, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
• I also want to note that the proposing IP has been blocked, and appears to have made a similar proposal before under a different IP (as noted on their talk page) and the proposal was SNOW closed. SemiHypercube 15:31, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Is Cosmopolitan a reliable source?

Is the women's magazine Cosmopolitan generally a reliable source? I'm asking because I noticed it was missing from the useful guide WP:RS/Perennial.  — Mr. Guye (talk) (contribs)  19:49, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

It might help to know why you're asking, is it for a specific edit as sourcing? 73.76.213.67 (talk) 20:13, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

There is one previous discussion of Cosmopolitan on this noticeboard from 2017 that only garnered one response: "Usage of "serious" articles from Buzzfeed, Teen Vogue, and Cosmopolitan". I'm not familiar enough with the magazine to offer an opinion. — Newslinger talk 22:45, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

Cosmopolitan (magazine) might be good sources for articles on women's fashion, but you wouldn't cite them for articles on astronomy as much more reliable sources are available at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_91#Philippi. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 23:03, 14 January 2019 (UTC)

But maybe pop culture, so again we need to know what.Slatersteven (talk) 14:06, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Cosmopolitan (magazine) might be good sources for articles on women's fashion, but you wouldn't cite them for articles on astronomy as much more reliable sources are available You could say the same thing about most any other magazine, like GQ or Esquire but Cosmopolitan isn't just "women's fashion" and is generally considered a reliable source. Why is this even being asked? Only a troll would be attempting to use a magazine of this nature for something totally unrelated, as in the example above. Praxidicae (talk) 14:16, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

It's interesting how the two examples of "any other magazine" you compared Cosmo to are both men's magazines. feminist (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I am going to ask all users to get off their horses before this escalates quickly.Slatersteven (talk) 14:21, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

All of those magazines contain some serious articles of high quality on various subjects, just as Playboy always had at least one top quality article. The high quality articles can be used. Teen Vogue has had an excellent political series by Lauren Duca. It's worth checking them. As Slatersteven mentions, it always comes back to what the article or quote is used for. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02:59, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• This is obviously a case-by-case situation, and cannot be adequately answered in the absence of further information about the situation (articles and information) involved. Softlavender (talk) 07:13, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with all of the above. Cosmopolitan's value as a source can only be judged by asking "What text in Wikipedia is being cited to what article in Cosmopolitan". Without knowing that, we can't know if the source is reliable for the purpose it is being used. --Jayron32 12:56, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
• OK for non-contentious facts but higher-quality sources are preferred where available. Cosmo is not a serious publication and does not pretend to be one. For women's fashion, something like WWD or any serious fashion magazine/publication (Vogue et al.) would be much better than Cosmo, and for celeb news, well, we'll have to consider whether it's worth including in an article. It's just like how Variety or The Hollywood Reporter are preferred sources for film articles over, say, Empire or New York. But I'd say Cosmo is OK for WP:N and usable for product reviews. feminist (talk) 15:05, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
• Added to RSP per OP's request. feminist (talk) 15:23, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Cosmpolitan is politically biased and a bit of a partisan source in recent years. Per our article on it: "In September 2014, Cosmopolitan began endorsing political candidates. The endorsements are based on "established criteria" agreed upon by the magazine's editors. Specifically, Cosmopolitan will only endorse candidates that support equal pay laws, legal abortion, free contraceptives, gun control, and oppose voter identification laws. Amy Odell, editor of Cosmopolitan.com, has stated that under no circumstances will the magazine endorse a political candidate that is pro-life: "We're not going to endorse someone who is pro-life because that's not in our readers' best interest." " Dimadick (talk) 17:18, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Refusing to say "I support this candidate" is not the same as not telling the truth.Slatersteven (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Am I allowed to have a good belly laugh at the irony? Here we have someone who appears to argue that Cosmopolitan be deemed unreliable because their editors openly created a clear criteria by which the magazine would or not, on its editorial page, endorse political candidates. Compare that stance with their comments in the Fox News discussion above... 73.76.213.67 (talk) 21:21, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

To be fair, Dimadick's comment did not make a statement on whether Cosmo is reliable or not. It simply suggests that Cosmo is a WP:BIASED source, which is fine. feminist (talk) 03:03, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

• This just means that we should be careful with the political sections. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:14, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

  We don't cite political opinion anyways. Just because the editorial board at a publication decides to endorse certain political stances doesn't mean the journalism of that source can't be trusted. "Don't cite opinion pieces" is a near universal principle regardless of the source. Bias is a universal condition of humanity. Having a bias is like facing a direction; you literally can't face no direction, you're either looking N, S, E, W, Up, Down, etc. Well, bias is the same thing. It's just the direction of the bias that changes, not its presence or absence. The point-of-view of opinion pieces published by a journal has no bearing on the reliability of the factual reporting done by that publication. --Jayron32 20:37, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Starsunfolded.com

Not sure if this is the best place for this but I'd like to start a formal discussion on blacklisting starsunfolded.com as it is patently unreliable and has no encyclopedic use on this project but is far too prevalent in mainspace, particularly BLPs. Starsunfolded is more or less a blog and is basically an aggregate site which appears to takes largely from other unreliable sources or Wikipedia itself. Example. Praxidicae (talk) 14:02, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Yep reads blogish to me.Slatersteven (talk) 14:08, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

https://starsunfolded.com/about-us/ "Movie buffs" seems to be the problem. Celebrity gossip sites are not reliable sources as a general rule. I am amused by the inclusion of "caste" for each Indian star. It does not state nor imply that it uses Wikipedia, though. Collect (talk) 14:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

It doesn't however I've come across several uses of this on WP where the only time the information occurs on the internet is WP and then there. Praxidicae (talk) 14:24, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

This is actually an "informal discussion" but the site does appear unreliable. Otr500 (talk) 15:54, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it's a blog that should be treated as unreliable and inappropriate for external links. I briefly looked at it a few years ago and didn't see any blatant spamming.

Currently, there are less than 50 instances of it as a ref. Unless there's been a spamming campaign, with someone cleaning up most of it, I don't see this as something to blacklist or even XLinkBot. --Ronz (talk) 17:46, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

I have been cleaning up these links often - there is no SBL yet because I wanted to discuss it before requesting it, hence my post here. There isn't a COIBot report because it goes far beyond the max link limit: 1280 records; Top 10 wikis where starsunfolded.com has been added: w:en (844), w:hi (49), www.wikidata (40), w:id (34), w:bn (27), commons (26), w:ur (22), w:kn (20), w:mai (19), w:pa (16). 844 times on enwiki alone.Praxidicae (talk) 11:44, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Then some help from a bot would be a good idea. I don't have a good feel for the threshold for XLinkBot let alone blacklisting. --Ronz (talk) 16:50, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

It needs to be blacklisted because of wide spread and significant abuse and the fact that it's widely used in BLPs...Praxidicae (talk) 18:06, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Reliability of models.com, just as a source for images of magazine covers

I want to ask a limited question concerning photographs of magazine covers posted at models.com, such as for example this one showing model Kätlin Aas on the cover of Vogue Netherlands December 2018. Would it be reasonable or unreasonable to conclude, based on this page in models.com, which they say is sourced to vogue.nl, that Kätlin Aas was the model shown on the cover of Vogue Netherlands in December 2018? HouseOfChange (talk) 00:47, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

This is a wink-wink-nudge-nudge situation. For purposes if we argue models.com is unreliable but otherwise is just a clearing house of cover images and they are not faking those, then you can cite the magazine itself as the source for this without mentioning models.com. We assume you are accurately reporting the source (the magazine) but we don't ask questions about how you got the source, if that makes sense.

Of course why not just source to the magazine's website itself? [41] That eliminates those questions. --Masem (t) 01:01, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I would like to be able to cite models.com in cases where the original source is not so easily found. It seems to me it would be hard for someone to post a fake magazine cover publicly at models.com without being very likely to be discovered by whatever model or agency or photographer etc. had done the real cover. HouseOfChange (talk) 01:58, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

WP:V does not require a source to be "easily found", just that it can be found. --Masem (t) 03:02, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Per Masem, the source is the original magazine. Models.com just reproduces the magazine cover faithfully. It is not the source. The source is the magazine itself; you don't need to bring models.com into it. If you had found the magazine cover in a google images search, you wouldn't cite "google images search" either. Cite the original magazine and be done with it. You don't even need to link to Models.com at all. People don't need to be able to read your sources directly from links in the Wikipedia article, you just need to give them enough information to find the source somewhere, like a well-stocked library. --Jayron32 20:32, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

(Thanks for bringing up models.com. I've been running into it far too much in questionable situations for my liking during the past year.) Generally, I think models.com should be treated as an in-world, promotional, primary source, that contains mostly user-submitted content. Concerning magazine cover photos: Why would we care? Mention of magazine covers without independent sources (and models.com is not independent) would in most cases be a BLP/POV/SOAP violation. --Ronz (talk) 04:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I was wondering that, why is a magazine cover worthy of inclusion?Slatersteven (talk) 10:19, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Ronz: I agree that models.com is user-submitted content, but it's a public professional site whose content isn't anonymously submitted. Therefore a model or agency submitting a fake image of a magazine cover to models.com looks very unlikely. @Slatersteven: Because NMODEL is specified only vaguely by NENTERTAINER, evidence of notability can be supported by notable shows, notable campaigns, notable cover appearances, etc. IMO. HouseOfChange (talk) 14:42, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Ahh, no it would not be usable (to my mind) for establishing notability, as appearing on a magazine cover is not (as far as I know) a pass for notability anyway. Does the site forbid "mock ups" for example, are "fake" magazine covers prohibited?Slatersteven (talk) 14:47, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Appearing on a few top-notch magazine covers would generally create a presumption of notability for a model (as generally cover appearances have textual coverage as well in the body of the magazine itself and elsewhere). I would think that an image hosted on models.com is a fairly strong indication that the cover existed - probably a bit better than archive.com or a newspaper clipping image hosted on some random location.Icewhiz (talk) 15:04, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Appearing on a few top-notch magazine covers would generally create a presumption of notability for a model That seems a rather dangerous assumption to make, unless there's general consensus somewhere? Sounds similar to what is in WP:NMODEL, but given the problems we already have with articles about models, I think something much more specific is needed so it wouldn't be exploited. --Ronz (talk) 17:24, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

As above I am not sure that is a valid notability criteria. For example it might be an advert , or a list of...all kinds of things. If they have coverage in the mag would that not be the go to source?Slatersteven (talk) 17:28, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

If a model has been on the cover of Elle, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue - then I'm fairly certain she's notable. Are the covers sufficient to establish SIGCOV? Probably not. But they are a 99%+ indication that SIGCOV is out there. Icewhiz (talk) 17:35, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

The problem is we can source those covers. The question is not if they are RS, but if this site is. Given no one can answer the simple question "do they allow edited covers to be uploaded?" then I do not think we can say they are an RS. I also note even you seem to accept that being on a magazine cover is only an indicator they might be notable, not that they are. Thus we go back to the old one of "why use a second rate source when a first rate one will do the same job". Thus it is not the cover, but what is inside that should matter.Slatersteven (talk) 17:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

I am considered about the idea that a model appearing on a cover of a magazine like Vogue etc. is a sign of notability. If the cover clearly shows that part of that issue is an in-depth story with that model, then use that story as the sign of notability. But if the cover only shows the photographed model but otherwise does not allude to any further coverage of the model, that's not really a concrete sign for presumed notability. However, that I think it getting off track from this question. I really don't think you should use models.com if it is user contributed, but you can certainly bounce off that to find and cite the actual work instead. --Masem (t) 18:13, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Might be worth reading [42]. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:15, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

thegamer.com

Hello everyone. I am working on a potential project for the Rugrats episode "A Rugrats Kwanzaa", and I was wondering if the following source is reliable enough for use on Wikipedia (here). I would use it to cite how the episode was intended as a pilot for a potential spinoff that was never produced. Thank you in advance! Aoba47 (talk) 12:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

My research indicates the spin-off was to be called "The Carmichaels" and was to be about the family of Suzie Carmichael. Here is an article from what looks like a reliable source from 2001 announcing the spin-off. This article in Variety mentions it briefly, and is scrupulously reliable as well. However, neither draws a connection to the Kwanzaa episode as specifically designed to be the branching point for the spinoff. As far as I can tell, the series never got past the speculation stage. --Jayron32 13:03, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Thank you for the links. It is useful information to add to the Rugrats article itself. The source that I have linked above is the only one that I can find that links the episode with the spinoff, though I do remember coming across a more reliable source in the past but I cannot find it again for some reason. It is probably best to leave it out of a potential "A Rugrats Kwanzaa" article until further sources are found to prove whether it is true or not (I am leaning more toward no if more credible sources did not cover this connection). Thank you again! Aoba47 (talk) 13:17, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Are you really sure that you want to use a clickbait listicle site? You would probably be better off finding the sources that they plagiarized their content from. 73.76.213.67 (talk) 14:32, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

• Good point. I will do further research on it. I am aware that is not the ideal source, so that is why I asked on here. Aoba47 (talk) 14:45, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Membership number from the organization

Is an organization's self-reporting on a its number of members reliable? In other words, if the organization says it has 1,000 members on it website can we source that in our article? It seems to me any secondary source would generally rely on self-reports from the organization. The only other source I can think of that might be more reliable is public tax forms, SEC filings, 501(c)(3) filings, etc., that are submitted under penalty of perjury.

1. Sons of the Revolution
2. membership = ~5,000 (in 2015)
3. source = Bush, R. Mitchell. "President's Message | Sons of the Revolution". www.sr1776.org. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
4. Previous discussion:

• Talk:Sons_of_the_Revolution#Number_of_members
• Talk:Sons_of_the_Revolution#Source/Site_out-of-date

--David Tornheim (talk) 17:41, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

As long as it is attributed I see no reason why not.Slatersteven (talk) 17:42, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I'd add that it should not be in Wikipedia's voice, and that any reliable refs that dispute the numbers might deserve more weight than their self-report. --Ronz (talk) 18:08, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I thought "not be in Wikipedia's voice" was covered by must be attributed.Slatersteven (talk) 18:12, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Yep. Looks like it's being used in an infobox. What's the solution? Move it from the infobox to the article body so it can be properly attributed with both the source and date? --Ronz (talk) 18:50, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

That would be my suggestion.Slatersteven (talk) 18:53, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The infobox is supposed to be a summary anyways. There should never be information in ANY infobox which is not already discussed, explained, and referenced in the text. If there is a "membership" parameter in the infobox filled out, I would expect the text would discuss it, and would say something like "According to XXXX, the organization claims a membership of YYYY" or something like that. That would justify an infobox entry. If that text is not in the body of the article, it should not be in the infobox. That should be true of ALL infobox information always. --Jayron32 18:55, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Unless there has been any contestable debate in the sources about the number of employees that put doubt into the number stated by the company, it is perfectly fine to present, with citation to the company's website, to present the company size as fact in WP's voice. Primary sourcing is not an evil, and as long as the company's reputation is not of concern, there is no reason for WP to place doubt on basic operating facts like this, and use it in the infobx.

I would only be worried about treating it as fact if we have a case where a company has claimed its has 1000s of employees, but independent parties assert the company only has dozens with the rest as independent contractors, or something like that. Then that's a case to treat neither value as reliable and talk about that in the body. --Masem (t) 19:05, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

That's true, but my point was mainly that the infobox is a summary of article text, and should not be the only place information appears. Anything in the infobox should be in the text somewhere. --Jayron32 14:20, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

While policy-correct, it is not standard practice, and some information doesn't always fit appropriately into the body. The infobox on many publicly traded companies with required SEC filings have infobox rows for the last annual revenue, etc. nearly always sourced to the annual report, but seemingly never is mentioned in the body. I'm not saying that's right, but that's just what practice ends up being. That's probably a discussion for elsewhere. --Masem (t) 15:53, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Seems like a proper resolution Ronz, the most reasonable suggestion is to move "membership" out of the infobox and into the body of the page. In addition, Jayron32 is correct in saying that the "membership" count in the infobox needed to be included in the body first before placing it in the infobox. David Tornheim Adding "membership" content to the body retroactively to support the information in the infobox does not appear to be a compromise based on these suggestions. Regards.72.218.185.31 (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I have deleted the information in the infobox (but not the WP:BODY), based on this and the below comment by DBigXray. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:01, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• Infobox is suitable for undisputed factual evidence. These numbers should be added in the infobox only if they are vetted by secondary independent reliable sources. If the numbers are only available from the primary source or SPS, then it must be taken out of infobox and mentioned in the body as "self reported". --DBigXrayᗙ 14:33, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Even though I am not convinced this is the standard way to do this, because of the mixed messages, I have taken this approach.[43] --David Tornheim (talk) 15:01, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

David Tornheim, That is a good move. The justification is simple, organisations often try to inflate their membership numbers due to WP:COI, so unless vetted, they should not be taken as facts. --DBigXrayᗙ 15:14, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

And if it is a caste-affiliated/representative organisation (which the present example is not), ignore their claims anyway. - Sitush (talk) 15:19, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Please discus the matter in hand.Slatersteven (talk) 15:25, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I do agree that orgs might inflate numbers. (For the record, I have no connection or particular interest in that org, and I don't have the impression the original editor who put it in does either). One of the questions I raised above is how it is really possible to vet the data independently. For example, with the ACLU, the membership number is given by this Washington Post article, but my guess is that Washington Post writer just got that number from the ACLU rep. they were talking with. It's possible that the Washington Post did some further fact checking before publishing, but it's not clear to me what else they could do, since membership lists are private. I did suggest that various public tax filings might be a more reliable source since they are submitted under penalty of perjury, but those are WP:PRIMARY too.

If I am correct that the Washington Post simply got the number from the ACLU without any further verification, do you still feel that it is more reliable simply because Washington Post is secondary? I have had discussions with editors at WP:AfD where we felt that material that could easily traced to a press release was not much better than WP:PRIMARY and self-reported. In this example, there were a number of articles on the subject but we concluded they were all based on the same press release(s). I changed my mind to delete the article after this discussion with DGG. --David Tornheim (talk) 15:41, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

I am not sure it is easy to say, as we cannot know where they got the information from. But one reason why a secondary source is more reliable is because it has no reason to lie about it. And as long as it has a reputation for fact checking we have to assume it does check its facts.Slatersteven (talk) 15:47, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• I feel being a secondary source has its own checks and balances. The WaPost journalist would have raised eyebrows or might have entirely denied printing the numbers if he would have felt it was highly inflated or unreasonable. We might not know, but the subject might also have shared some sort of evidence on the numbers to convince WaPost that WaPost did not publicly release. --DBigXrayᗙ 15:48, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

We need to keep in mind how a third-party independent source is going to get membership information from a private company or organization. It is completely unreasonable to expect that employee/membership count can be determined from any private entity by a source not associated with it. More often than not, if a third-party source publishes such a number, it is going to be based on information they got directly from the entity or from the entity's own published materials. Of course, if this is being done by the NYTimes or similar high quality RS, that generally means that source presumes the number is correct, which is good, but still doesn't address the potential issue of over-inflation. This is where we can only really go off what the entity claims and add the necessary sourcing so that if it is wrong, we have our citation to show that it was not WP OR making this a problem. --Masem (t) 16:09, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

"Material based on press releases is not reliable for notability because the very appearance of the material is instigated by the PR agent. Whether what is said in the press release can be trusted can vary. Any reasonably reliable newspaper knows that, and knows it much more thoroughly than we do. A news reporter knows that they are always dealing with potentially unreliable sources, and their reputation depends on how well they judge that. If a reporter is dealing with an organization representative reporting membership figures, or unverified financial figures, or claims to have accomplished something, the reporter must know that what they are being told may or may not be accurate. My understanding is that If they report it as being told to them, they're not making a judgment--they're saying that the reader should know what the organization says about itself. If they report it as a fact, it means they think its accurate--normally based on comparing other sources and their professional judgment. The analogy is with the size of the crowd at Trump's inauguration. All news sources report what the president said. All of them I think, even Fox, gave other figures also. (I'm talking about the content of the stories, not the headlines. Reporters do not write the headlines, which represent a blend of editorializing and hooks to get readers to read the story. (one of the things I dislike about our citation style is that it emphasises the headlines by linking to them--I think this can be very seriously misleading.) No news source is truly neutral; no source of any kind is truly neutral; you cannot write about something without forming a judgment and deciding how to express it. (Our idea of NPOV is a total oversimplification, and this applies also to the best news and academic sources.) There is an exception: sometimes there are truly objectively documented numbers, like the circulation figures for a publication that is mailed, or for web standings, or for audited financial reports. (And even here there are limitations that the source or the auditor might be cheating. There are also limitations about whether the method is truly scientific.) My own attitude is of skepticism; it's not enough to avoid saying anything in WPs voice, but the sources and quotations we choose, and the way we write our sentences and organize our paragraphs are affected by what we want to say. DGG ( talk ) 02:16, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for all the comments from everyone. This was a far more interesting and valuable discussion than I had expected! --David Tornheim (talk) 04:39, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Influencewatch and onenewsnow.com

ModerateMike729 has recently added content to American Immigration Council sourced to the conservative websites influencewatch.org and onenewsnow.com (see diff). I question whether these partisan sources are sufficiently reliable for claiming that the organization is "funded by George Soros", especially considering the OneNewsNow article being cited is based on a WorldNetDaily story. IntoThinAir (talk) 18:24, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Dubious as I cannot find any kind of editorial control. But might be I+OK if attributed "according to...".Slatersteven (talk) 18:40, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

I can make that addition. I thought ONN was sufficiently reliable, but if I'm wrong I could also certainly self-revert. ModerateMike729 (talk) 19:14, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

As far as I can tell they have something of a reputation for publishing poorly researched material and not checking sources.Slatersteven (talk) 19:19, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

In general, I think editors should be extremely skeptical of any article that characterizes George Soros as some kind of an international puppetmaster - it's an anti-semitic trope that has been debunked repeatedly. Neither source appears reliable. If this is covered by more noteworthy mainstream media outlets, it might be worth considering, but not based on this stuff. Nblund ^talk 19:52, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Fair enough, but I should note that InfluenceWatch wasn't specifically listing Soros, or pushing any kind of anti-semitic trope. Rather, it simply included the Open Society Foundation among the list of all institutional contributors, which I noticed ONN picked up on. ModerateMike729 (talk) 21:31, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

• Biased or opinionated. Influence Watch and OneNewsNow are owned and operated by the Capital Research Center and American Family Association, respectively, both of which are conservative advocacy groups. Any claims they publish, especially controversial ones regarding living persons (including George Soros), should not be included in articles without attribution of the parent organizations. Whether to include the claims is also a question of due weight, which is typically discussed at the neutral point of view noticeboard. — Newslinger talk 22:45, 17 January 2019 (UTC)
• Dubious at best Per Newslinger Simonm223 (talk) 14:35, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Book written by an involved police officer

One user has been frequently insisting that this source http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/publication/nightsoffalsehood/ which I deem as horrible source is a reliable source for writing about the incidents where this person has a COI in anything about Punjab insurgency and Khalistan movement. This source is being used too much in those articles and related subjects. Writer is Kanwar Pal Singh Gill who is alleged of human rights abuses and has been convicted of sexual harassment and his writings are highly non-neutral as you can read through this source and is certainly not inclined to present the events in a neutral way as his writings show. Should this source be considered reliable? Harmanprtjhj (talk) 01:36, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

It is reliable for their views, and thus we could say "according to...".Slatersteven (talk) 13:24, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• Sources are not required to be neutral (in fact, most sources are not)... our job is to balance what different (non-neutral) sources say. As Slatersteven notes, the best way to do this is to use attribution. When the various sources disagree about a topic, explain who says what. Blueboar (talk) 13:35, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• As I had noted in the recent ANI thread Harmanprtjhj continues his WP:Tendentious editing to whitewash, Sikh terrorism related articles. Here as well he is trying to present a biased one sided picture, without saying how it was used in the article in an effort to get a blanket ban on the source he believes that conflicts with his whitewashing.
• Gill received a Padma Shri award, India's fourth-highest civilian honour, in 1989
• He has authored more than 11 books, [44]
• The book Punjab, the knights of falsehood is mostly centered around events from 1978 to 1987 which does not overlap with his tenure.
• While Gill headed the Punjab police from 1988 to 1990 and from 1991 to 1995. The sexual harassment is an entirely unrelated event as far as this book is concerned.
• Excerpt from his book that is being called "horrible" without any reasonable logic is an excerpt from a reliable and highly cited book (8110 Google books)Punjab, the knights of falsehood / K.P.S. Gill., Har-Anand Publications, c1997. Subjects: Sikhs -- Politics and government, Punjab (India) -- Politics and government. Summary : Political outline of Punjab and the involvement of the Sikhs in its making. Language : English, ISBN 8124105693 National Library of Australia's online catalogue
• As expected from any respectable publication, Gill provides citations and references to everything in his book. If any incident or fact was wrongly mentioned in his book, then it would have been all over in the media. which is not the case here.
• The book is currently used in wiki articles only as references for facts & incidents, and not for any opinion or commentary.
• IMHO there is absolutely no grounds to claim that this book is unreliable. --DBigXrayᗙ 13:37, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Lets not comment on users.Slatersteven (talk) 13:39, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• I would say this is unreliable for discussing anything other than the subject's own views about the incidents which would require attribution. Excelse (talk) 14:30, 18 January 2019 (UTC)
• May be used with caution. Can be presented as the view of an involved party. Jehochman ^Talk 14:33, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

• If you directly attribute the cited material to the source, so that anything you put in Wikipedia from that source is not in Wikipedia's voice, you should be fine "As written by the officer themselves in their own autobiography yada yada yada" is more acceptable than just speaking in Wikipedia's voice with no direct attribution and only a footnote to the book. When in down, tell the readers where you got the information from so they can decide how much weight to give it. --Jayron32 20:27, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Jehochman and User:Jayron32, thanks for the kind comments, can you please elaborate the reason behind such a comment ? Is any factual information from this book incorrect? Also I would like to hear from you, how does Wikipedia war related articles handle such issues ? Knowing that most of the war related books are written by high ranking military officials from one side or the other, unless it is a quote or a commentary/opinion from the author that is being added into the article, I have never seen attributions to every piece of factual information evidence in the wikipedia article that is cited to the particular book by the military officer. [I have already noted in my comment above that The book is currently used in wiki articles only as references for facts & incidents, and not for any opinion or commentary.]--DBigXrayᗙ 21:21, 18 January 2019 (UTC) [struck at 21:44, 18 January 2019 (UTC)]

Don't use a source known to publish falsehoods! The idea that I would allow this source with caution indicates that there's no indication of falsehood. The problem is one of bias. Somebody involved in the events will have all sorts of cognitive processes that will alter memory to favor a desired outsome. That's how human brains works. We need to be a little skeptical of such sources. Use with care. Jehochman ^Talk 21:24, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Jehochman thanks for elaborating, I agree with the general comments that you made above. But for this particular case I don't see them to be applicable. "Don't use a source known to publish falsehoods" right, but what falsehood did you find in the book ? "Somebody involved in the events" Again I would note that Gill was not involved in the events described in the book. The book Punjab, the knights of falsehood is mostly centered around events from 1978 to 1987 which does not overlap with his tenure. because Gill headed the Punjab police from 1988 to 1990 and from 1991 to 1995. If you are making this claim, under the assumption, that a Police officer will follow the line of the government, please note that Gill has heavily criticized the actions of the government (e.g. Operation Blue Star, Sikh riots) in his book as one of the "biggest blunders" done by the government. So, lets not make general assumption based observations. Unless this book is found to falsify factual information, we should not really be making such comments about the book. --DBigXrayᗙ 21:34, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Stop trying to badger editors out and accept what everyone has said about an obviously unreliable source. You are the only person endlessly advocating this misleading book. The book is so factually incorrect that I can create a grand list of lies and fabrications found in this book. But then I also don't feel like I should be spending that much time to analyze a very unreliable source. Harmanprtjhj (talk) 01:58, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

A number of us have said it can be used with correct attribution.Slatersteven (talk) 16:19, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Just because someone is a law enforcement officer doesn't mean (a) they are telling the truth or (b) capable of stepping back from a situation when describing it. Works by people involved in an incident etc at the time are effectively primary and need to be treated with care, for reasons such as Jehochman mentions. This is particularly so in a situation such as that of Gill, who has been a controversial figure in and out of office. Use him if there is no alternative but think hard about whether it is necessary and, if it is, attribute it in the prose. - Sitush (talk) 16:30, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Which is why we say "according to..." and then include any counter arguments.Slatersteven (talk) 16:32, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

A question related to the Daily Mail

In considering that DM is treated as a blacklisted source, should information published in other RSes that point back to a DM story as the originating point be considered tainted by the DM and thus these individual stories be unusable for WP? (Or at least the parts that tie back to the DM information?)

Specific case in point: with news that we have a new Ghostbusters film coming, DM published a piece [45] that includes statements from actor Ernie Hudson that would be considered appropriate for inclusion if they came from any other source but DM. Several other sources (Esquire, Consquences of Sound among others) are repeating the information from Hudson all linked to the DM story. My gut says we should consider this information tainted due to DM, and wait for a corroboration from an independent source before adding it. --Masem (t) 16:18, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

My gut goes the other way; when another source reuses content from DM, they are staking their own editorial reputation upon that usage, and for sources generally considered scrupulously reliable, that's good enough for me. We're not saying that material published in DM is guaranteed to be wrong. If it has been republished by sources we would normally trust, then it has passed that source's trustworthy vetting process, and we can trust it. It's the material that is unique to the DM that I worry about. If real journalists have vetted it, I'm no longer worried. --Jayron32 20:24, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

It can be looked at both ways. --Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:37, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

Hmm, I can see that, but I think it's like a net sum game, and we have to consider the quality of the RS repeating what the DM said. If it were the NYTimes repeating DM's information, that would be more than enough to me to offset the DM reliability issue. On the other hand, at least in the case of these Ghostbuster stories, I feel most of these sources are mid-tier RS, and not strong enough to get over the potential reliability problems of the DM. --Masem (t) 20:53, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

If they're attributing the report in-text to the Daily Mail, they may not have verified any of it. Case in point: Consequence of Sound was one of the outlets that had a write-up on that fake Dwayne Johnson interview where he supposedly bashed "generation snowflake" - Johnson presumably could have told them the whole interview was a fabrication if they had asked him to confirm the story. Nblund ^talk 20:57, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

That's my impression when I've come onto mid-quality RSes quoting or reiterating information that has a dubious edge on it from a low-quality blog or from social media, information that would require insider information. These mid-tier sources seem to report without some corroboration of their own. --Masem (t) 21:23, 18 January 2019 (UTC)

A reliable source reports content from the Daily Mail – SemiHypercube

NO, as they are RS and thus are presumed to have checked the story.Slatersteven (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

Paul K. Longmore's The Invention of George Washington

Past discussion: Talk:George_Washington#Washington's_ambition_and_reputation

Source: The Invention of George Washington, by Paul K. Longmore, published in 1999 by the University of Virginia Press.

Article: George Washington

Content:

Longmore argues that the "myth of Washington as reluctant politician" began at the time of Washington's appointment as commander of the Virginia Regiment in 1755.

Sourced to p. 67.

According to Longmore, Washington had learnt to be careful of his reputation, avoid soliciting the job and instead make the job offer come to him. This was, Longmore asserts, a tactic Washington would employ in his subsequent military and political appointments.

Sourced to p. 32.

Background

There has been extended discussion about whether George Washington was genuinely reluctant to become involved in politics after the Revolutionary War, or whether he adopted an image of reluctance as a political tactic. On the TP I have suggested a narrative, of which the above is an extract, which attempts to discuss both these points of view in a neutral and balanced way, per WP:NPOV. One editor has consistently opposed the use of Longmore's book as a source, claiming repeatedly that it does not cite facts, (example - the book actually has some 75 pages of citations at the end) and is opinion and speculation (example). In 2001 Don Higginbotham included Longmore's book in a list of three that he describes as "[arguably] the best Washington scholarship of the last fifteen years or so" (pp. 3-4) in the introduction of George Washington Reconsidered (pp. 3-4). Factotem (talk) 07:40, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

I realise that statements beginning "Longmore argues..." and "According to Longmore..." can obviously be sourced to Longmore, and that context is an important factor in determining the reliability of a source. The issue I'm hoping to clarify here is a wider issue of whether there are reasonable grounds to exclude the statements above specifically, or this source generally, on the unsupported assertion of a WP editor that the work is a historian's "speculation" or "opinion" and therefore carries no weight. Factotem (talk) 11:18, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

My take is that as long as any controversial or unique vow is attributed an opinion by a notable historian is worthy of inclusion.Slatersteven (talk) 16:17, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Rateyourmusic, Discogs, and Last.fm

Should the user-generated music databases Rateyourmusic, Discogs, and Last.fm be added to the sourcing edit filter to strongly discourage and deprecate its use as a source on Wikipedia? Ilovetopaint (talk) 11:29, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

None of these should be cited as sources, but discogs.com is a reasonable external link. --Michig (talk) 11:31, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

I agree, sorta, as it's debatable whether we really should be linking to Discogs. My opinion is that links to RYM and Lastfm should be banned on all articles (with some reasonable exceptions), and that links to Discogs should simply display a warning as such. --Ilovetopaint (talk) 11:38, 19 January 2019 (UTC)

No user generated content should not be RS.Slatersteven (talk) 16:15, 19 January 2019 (UTC)