Talk:Steele dossier

RfC about use of unverified

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

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Per the discussion here, do you support:

1. Removing the word unverified as a qualifier for the term allegations. An example of possible wording in the lede would be:

The Donald Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence dossier that was written by Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 intelligence officer. It contains allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the period preceding the election.

Sources

2. In the lede, describing that some of the information in the document is verified. An example of possible wording is:

The Donald Trump–Russia dossier, also known as the Steele dossier, is a private intelligence dossier that was written by Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 intelligence officer. It contains allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the period preceding the election. Some of the information in the dossier has been independently corroborated.

Sources

Please respond with:

• Support Both Remove both unverified and also include that the some information is verified
• Support 1, Oppose 2 Remove unverified, but do not include in the lede that some information is verified
• Oppose 1, Support 2 Keep unverified, but support adding to the lede that some information is verified.
• Oppose both Oppose changes. Keep unverified and do not include information in the lede that some of the information is independently verified

Casprings (talk) 07:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• Support Both: As OP - As mentioned above, large parts of the information in the document are now verified. We should reflect that fact. We should drop the use of unverified and include information that information in the document has been independently verified. Keep verified as a qualifier is unneeded, as an allegation suggests something is unverified per its definition, and pushes the article towards a POV as it adds an unneeded discrediting qualifier. We should not do that, especially when other information in the document is independently verified.Casprings (talk) 07:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

  Ummm... what? How can "unverified" be a discrediting qualifier if it's true that the allegations are unverified? As you posted this RFC, you should know that "unverified allegations" in this paragraph specifically refers to allegations of misconduct and collusion, of which there's no public evidence. Politrukki (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, Oppose 2. Some of it's been verified, some of it's not been verified. Is there any source that describes the approximate verified to unverified ratio? Can we truly say "most of it's verified" or "most of it's unverified"? If not, then we shouldn't try to give either impression. ^Falling_Gravity 08:25, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

The proposed wording does not say "most of it's verified". Nice try though. Volunteer Marek  05:39, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose both The thrust of the dossier (and what everyone cares about) is that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. None of those major allegations have been substantiated, and describing the dossier as unverified is clear and accurate. I could be convinced on the first suggested change, but to do both would be far out of bounds. Gabrielthursday (talk) 16:51, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

  @Gabrielthursday: I agree that using "unverified" is appropriate, but, to be specific, option 1 is about allegations of misconduct and collusion, not about describing the dossier as a whole. Politrukki (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, Oppose 2: I favor a simple "allegations" without opening the can-of-worms about verification - way too complex for the lede. --MelanieN (talk) 17:20, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1. Version 2 includes unnecessary repeat (read 2nd paragraph currently in the lead). My very best wishes (talk) 17:25, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1, Oppose 2: Allegation assumes unproved. Some…has been corroborated is problematic unless it is close to an explanation of "some". Keep the lead clean. O3000 (talk) 17:41, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose both: The current lede is preferable. Four options in this EfC will make evaluation difficult. It should be restructured. James J. Lambden (talk) 22:10, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I have a feeling it will be possible to come up with a consensus even with four options. --MelanieN (talk) 23:33, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Anything is possible but it is not ideal. Three of the four listed options include changing the lede. One of the three includes each of the other two - is rank implied e.g. if not A then B? Are options that support or oppose only A or B allowed? If some specify rank and others do not and oppose/support-only are allowed (we already have one) we have 10 possible options: A not B, B not A, A before B, B before A, A and B, A only, not A only, B only, not B only, neither. A yes/no question would be much more clear. James J. Lambden (talk) 04:38, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, Oppose 2, without affirming WHAT has been verified, it's a bit pointless to say that 'some' is, apart from being unhelpfully 'muddling'.Pincrete (talk) 23:31, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose both – Most of the dossier is garbage, which is why no reputable newspaper wanted to touch it before BuzzFeed spilled the beans. The few things that have been confirmed are either of no importance or had been independently reported prior to being incorporated in the dossier. — JFG ^talk 23:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Honeat question: has anything been shown as false?Casprings (talk) 00:18, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

See Top 10 things to know about dossier - the author of the article is credible, and the information needs to be included in this article (which should be renamed to Steele dossier). Get the story right. ^{Atsme📞📧} 15:06, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

• Can't prove a negative. Logic 101. We may as well say "my dossier asserts that Casprings had a glass of orange juice this morning", and ask skeptics "can you prove that Casprings did not drink that juice this morning?" — JFG ^talk 02:04, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Bunkum. It is most certainly possible to prove something false. Hell, most logic and math theorems rely on that approach. In fact, there are lots of claims in the dossier that could easily be proven false ("Person A was in place X at time T") if they were indeed false. So asking "has anything been shown as false" is a perfectly legitimate question. You need to go back to Logic school Volunteer Marek  05:45, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

JFG this is not the Bizarropedia. Incidentally, lead does not float in water. I just proved it. Casprings, what did you have for breakfast this morning? SPECIFICO talk 01:26, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• It gives locations and times of meetings. You can certainly show you were not or couldn’t not have been at a location for a meeting. That is done all the time.Casprings (talk) 10:05, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• See Anthony Cormier, "This Is The Inside Of Trump's Lawyer's Passport," BuzzFeed News, May 5, 2017: "Many news organizations attempted to verify or debunk claims in the dossier, including that Cohen was in Prague around that time. A BuzzFeed News reporter spent three days visiting about 45 hotels in the city and found no evidence Cohen had stayed in any of them during that period. Cohen has said that he couldn't have been in Prague because he was visiting the University of Southern California with his son on a college baseball recruiting trip. He posted a photograph from his daughter's social media account showing the two of them together in Los Angeles on the final week of August." That said, Steele's time frame of "August/September 2016" is so vague that it is virtually impossible to definitively falsify.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 11:54, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, Oppose 2 - Fallingravity's position is correct. Neutrality^talk 05:02, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1, Oppose 2 Support Both (changed per Carter Page. 01:26, 9 November 2017 (UTC)) Simple and neutrally conveys RS reporting. Editors, please, do not present your OR ruminations on the dossier here. They're quite corrigible, distracting, and irrelevant. SPECIFICO talk 16:54, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose both - keep the long-standing "unverified allegations" as the summary or bulk is that. The couple disproofs and couple supports are minor amounts that should be down in the detail section. They are not sufficient to move the overall view of mostly unverified. Also, the phrase more accurately portrays the dossier as it was constructed, a collection of rumors that is not within itself supported further. Can also support phraing from RS with NYT phrasing "unverified" or "unsupported" and Guardian 'dodgy dossier'. Also, "unverified" seems more neutral covering rather than listing various significant WEIGHT (by Google count) of phrasings to prefixes 'fake' or 'false' or 'politically motivated'. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 19:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1, Oppose 2. For reasons described above. "Unverified" is not entirely correct, nor is "verified". Furthermore "unverified" is an unnecessary qualifier for "allegations". #2 too strongly implies to the average reader that the majority, if not entirety, of the dossier is factual. Jtrevor99 (talk) 23:16, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
• A big problem for this RfC is that it was started, and most !votes were made before the November 2nd testimony of Trump's former foreign policy adviser Carter page to the House Intelligence Committee, in which he corroborated parts of the dossier. Volunteer Marek  05:38, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support both in light of Carter Page's testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on Nov 2, which further corroborated some of the info in the dossier. Volunteer Marek  05:48, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support both, per Carter Page's testimony confirming previously denied details in the dossier, such as a meeting with Rosneft officials (mentioned on pp. 30-31 of dossier, which alleges a deal, supposedly made with Trump's "authority", that Trump would get 19% of Rosneft if he lifted the sanctions). Trump's own actions and numerous declarations have always been very open about wanting to lift the sanctions. Immediately after he won the election, the money was transferred to a Cayman Islands account, but we have no evidence Trump has received it. Here are some links which describe the sale and transfer of funds through shell companies, a Russian bank (in an illegal - in Russia - transaction that could only happen by Putin's direct command and intervention), various businesses, and Qatar, some of which have significant connections to Trump's business interests: 1 2 3 4 5 It is only because of the detective work by numerous skilled investigative journalists that we could find out about what happened to the money. $11 billion is a whole lot of money! -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:29, 8 November 2017 (UTC) (Revised and sourced to ensure no BLP violation. -- BullRangifer (talk) 16:37, 15 November 2017 (UTC))

Page confirmed meeting with Andrey Baranov, Rosneft's head of investor relations. But, I don’t think he confirmed any offer of a stake in Rosneft. O3000 (talk) 15:35, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Is Baranov mentioned in the dossier? Is Page's statement "Beyond a shadow of a doubt, there was never any negotiations, or any quid pro quo, or any offer, or any request even, in any way related to sanctions" consistent with the dossier? Politrukki (talk) 19:16, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose both rewrite per WP:PUBLICFIGURE with inline-text attribution to RS and include updates that include factually accurate information less the editorialized opinions, innuendos and projections. Examples of sources to include: this update, and this one. ^{Atsme📞📧} 16:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Your first source is not RS. Neither of your sources actually support your !vote. And what in the world does WP:PUBLICFIGURE have to do with this? Are you just posting random sources and policies?  Volunteer Marek  17:01, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

My first source is as reliable as every other source that has been cited in this article so stop the fallacious claims. You also seem to have forgotten that we are still talking about BLPs and in particular WP:PUBLICFIGURE so you might want to refresh your memory about what is and isn't acceptable regarding "well documented" allegations. Then run over to OR and read the policy on primary sources and how to handle allegations against a BLP, and you might also want to read V. I seriously doubt unsupported claims by "anonymous sources" fit the bill as being either factual or reliable, especially when it involves "opposition research" that was paid for by the opposing political party with intent to smear a living person, not to mention a political party that is currently under the microscope because of allegations by the former head of the DNC, Donna Brazile, that the primary was rigged. If there was anything substantial in that dossier about Trump, he would have been indicted by now. Don't forget, in the US a person is innocent until proven guilty so you might want to refresh your memory about that part of the BLP policy as well. ^{Atsme📞📧} 00:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

"I seriously doubt unsupported claims by "anonymous sources" " - except that's false. The sources here are secondary sources. Hell, some of them are not even anonymous. Like a guy named Carter Page. Once again you are making completely false and almost incomprehensible comments which consist mostly of just randomly throwing out various Wikipedia policies without rhyme and reason, and pretending that you've somehow "proven" something. That's not how this works. Volunteer Marek  22:01, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Daily Caller is in no way a RS for anything other than its own opinion in its own article. We are allowed to cite unreliable sources in that context. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:33, 9 November 2017 (UTC),

Atsme, none of your arguments are usable as you're not dealing with RS policy, but seeking to deal with your real world POV and right great wrongs. We use what RS say, regardless if they mention anonymous sources, are negative, etc. We use them, attribute opinions, etc. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:46, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, but your WP:IDONTLIKEIT argument bears no fruit, and neither does badgering editors over their iVote. Refresh your memory and read WP:NEWSORG, WP:NOTNEWS,WP:RS again. And please, discuss your POV arguments in the Discussion section that was established for that purpose, not here in the iVote section. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

It's. Just. Not. Reliable. It's garbage. In fact it's garbage that hires white supremacists and racists. No freakin' way you get to use that source. Volunteer Marek  21:57, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

If there was anything substantial in that dossier about Trump, he would have been indicted by now. ding-ding-ding. C'mon Atsme. Is the dossier admissible evidence under the US Constitution? Holy cannoli. That's why the investigators have to check it out. SPECIFICO talk 01:19, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

political party that is currently under the microscope... - More like under the microphone booktour. She's already retracted, btw. SPECIFICO talk 01:33, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

SPECIFICO, please use the Discussion section to ring your bell and in the future, please avoid putting dings in the iVote. Dings in the finish look like hail. ^{Atsme📞📧} 12:42, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

You may respond in either section, but I haven't heard you rebut either of the points I made above. Meanwhile, more: I dispute that the dossier has been the central focus of media reporting on this +and+ the weight of RS description is an absolute WP standard that's independent of any WP user's stance. You may feel more comfortable with media that reject the mainstream view, but that doesn't de-mainstream it. SPECIFICO talk 22:14, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, weak support 2 - The first is factual, verifiable, and neutrally worded. The second is technically verifiable, but I'm entirely not comfortable with the word "corroborated" which tends to validate the dossier more than I think is warranted. BullRangifer does make some points worth considering about the recent Carter Page bean spilling.- MrX 02:00, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support 1, oppose 2 - The word "allegations" is fairly neutral and doesn't imply that the allegations are true or false; the other paragraphs of the lead explain that well enough. Saying Some of the information in the dossier has been independently corroborated. is deliberately misleading from my point of view. Some of the contents of my personal diary have been independently corroborated. So what? power~enwiki (π, ν) 06:04, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

You not the president of the United States? If you and your diary were notable, then the fact that some of the contents was independently corroborated would indeed be something to include. You're sort of making a point against yourself there. Volunteer Marek  22:03, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

But saying that "some of it has been verified" doesn't tell us anything with regards to whether any particular statements have been verified. Especially in this case, where there's good reason to believe that some of it is not accurate. This is still the "piss-gate" dossier. power~enwiki (π, ν) 22:17, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support 1, oppose 2 - My thoughts are essentially the same as power~enwiki's. Much of the allegations in the dossier are unverified, but some are. The use of 'allegations' without qualifiers is neutral as to the truth of those allegations. Saying that some facts have been independently corroborated is unhelpful and misleading, some facts in Star Wars can be independently corroborated, it doesn't mean that Jedis really fought the Sith long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. Cjhard (talk) 22:55, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support Both Allegations is clear enough and But it appears as though US intelligence officials do take some chunk of what Steele found quite seriously. "Its broad assertion that Russia waged a campaign to interfere in the election is now accepted as fact by the US intelligence community. CNN also reported earlier this year that US investigators have corroborated some aspects of the dossier, specifically that some of the communications among foreign nationals mentioned in the memos did actually take place." Other sources also report corroboration. (Officials said some of the information in the dossier has been corroborated, but other parts - matching our wording) The fact that some of it has been corroborated is true and it'll require quite a stretch to think that wording implies "piss-gate" is true.  Perhaps additional qualifiers can be given for the corroborated though if it's confusing-which I don't think so. Galobtter (talk) 09:12, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose both. I was going to say that "unverified" is unnecessary, but changed my mind after reviewing sources. Many reliable sources deem it necessary to add that the collusion allegations are unverified/unproven/unsubstantiated, so keeping the qualifier would seem due to avoid confusion.

1. "That assertion is unproven — as are many of the other claims in the document. That includes the overarching claim that Russian government officials allied with Trump employees and campaign aides to help his election." The Washington Post
2. "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians" Chicago Tribune
3. "yet unproven allegations that the Russians had wanted Mr. Trump to win the election, that Russians had shared valuable information about Hillary Clinton with the Trump campaign" PBS
4. "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians on hacking the emails of prominent Democrats" AP
5. "The specific claims about campaign collusion have not been verified" The Hill
6. "dossier containing unverified allegations about collusion between President Trump and Russia The Hill
7. "document ... which contains unverified allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia" Newsweek
8. "There has been no public corroboration of the salacious allegations against Mr. Trump, nor of the specific claims about coordination between his associates and the Russians." The New York Times
9. "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians on hacking the emails of prominent Democrats" AP
10. "The dossier is a compendium of unsubstantiated allegations of questionable real estate deals, secret coordination with Russian operatives who hacked Democratic targets during the election ... No evidence has surfaced so far that Trump aides or campaign advisers were involved in Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election" The New York Times
11. "35-page 'dossier' alleging Russia has been 'cultivating, supporting and assisting' Trump for at least five years and fed his campaign 'valuable intelligence' on Clinton. The major allegations in the dossier ... remain unsubstantiated" Bloomberg

[emphasis mine] Note that these excerpts are specifically about the collusion allegations rather than comments about the ("unverified", "unsubstantiated", etc.) dossier as a whole. I have, for example, omitted sources which generally say that allegations about Trump's ties to Russia are unsubstantiated. Strongly oppose 2 as the juxtaposition would improperly imply that some allegations of collusion have been corroborated – and we already have the third paragraph which goes into more detail about what has been corroborated. Politrukki (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Threaded discussion

• Comment. Casprings recently attempted to change the lead to "partially verified accusations of misconduct and collusion" based on his own misunderstanding of what reliable sources state. Although RfCs are supposed to be neutrally written, Casprings's description of the "Oppose" position ("Keep unverified and do not include information in the lede that some of the information is independently verified") is non-neutral and again seems to conflate the allegations against Trump with the parts of the dossier that have been corroborated (unspecified conversations between foreign nationals, a Russian diplomat's role as an undercover spy, and at least some of the content on Carter Page). While I wouldn't fight too hard to retain the "unverified" adjective in the second sentence if editors consider it redundant, the lead already states that "In February, it was reported that some details related to conversations between foreign nationals had been independently corroborated, giving U.S. intelligence and law enforcement greater confidence in some aspects of the dossier as investigations continued."TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 08:19, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• Comment There are both NPOV issues with the lede, and some stylistic issues. Yes, it is a "private intelligence dossier" but it is also opposition research commissioned by political adversaries via a skeezy political outfit. The first sentence, apart from the term "unverified" puts the dossier in the most respectable light possible. The details of its release don't belong in the first paragraph, and arguably not in the lede at all. The prior opposition research by the Free Beacon - which did not include the dossier - is peripheral information and doesn't belong in the lede. We need to be wary of the lede reflecting the narrative of one side of a very divisive and partisan issue. Gabrielthursday (talk) 17:11, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
• @Volunteer Marek: I support removing the word "unverified," as do you, but I think it was improper for you to remove the word from the lede [1] while this RfC is going on. I am going to restore it until consensus is clear. --MelanieN (talk) 20:20, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
• Comment This has been open for a week. Discussion has died down (the last comment was 3 days ago), and the option "support 1, oppose 2" has 8 supporters while "oppose both" has 4. IMO it's too early to do a final close of this RfC, but I think that trend is sufficiently strong to remove "unverified" for now, pending further discussion. --MelanieN (talk) 22:02, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
  • Comment While this is hardly a hill to die on, I don't think removing "unverified" has generated a consensus. While what constitutes consensus can vary, there are a number of editors (quite apart from myself) who have given reasonable arguments, and I don't believe any minds have been changed. I don't think this merits changing the status quo. Gabrielthursday (talk) 17:10, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
    • I agree we don't have a final consensus. RfC's generally are allowed to run for several weeks. My change is temporary until we do get an official closure. However, the trend seemed strong enough (and is even stronger after today's comments) to make the change in the interim. --MelanieN (talk) 01:14, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
• I have added my voice in support of BOTH, per Carter Page's testimony. That changes everything. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:31, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Added mine in opposition of BOTH per a deeper look into the spin, all the anonymous sources that are providing the "so-called dirt" and to this day, there is nothing brought against Trump. All verifiable factual data predates the Trump campaign. It is time to be patient and not allow allegations to be stated in WikiVoice as fact. ^{Atsme📞📧} 17:06, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

• Still inadmissible arguments as you're just stating your real world POV to right great wrongs. We use what RS say. We attribute what needs to be attributed, and we do state them. We don't leave them out because you don't like them. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:49, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Read WP:WL as it contains some relevant similarities to your fruitless argument. I've already pointed out to you above the relevant PAGs that may serve as positive reminders for you. ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:39, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

FORUM discussion, of which I myself was also guilty. --MelanieN (talk) 22:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
@Atsme: I have seen you make this argument twice now: If there was anything substantial in that dossier about Trump, he would have been indicted by now and to this day, there is nothing brought against Trump. That argument is worthless; it proves nothing. The way these special counsels, and federal prosecutors in general, work is that they patiently develop their case, commonly for years, before bringing charges. Look at Manafort: the FBI has been looking at those money laundering charges for years, and they told him months ago he was going to be indicted, before finally bringing the indictment. It is clear that Mueller is building his investigations in the usual way, starting with lower-level offenders, then using them to see if there is evidence against higher-ups. That's a slow and methodical process. BTW based on the Nixon precedent, I predict they will NEVER bring actual charges against Trump, regardless of what they find. At most they will describe him as an "unindicted co-conspirator" and leave it to Congress and the constitutional process of impeachment to deal with any crimes they discover. Bottom line, this article (and the dossier itself) do not accuse Trump of any crimes, so there is really no point in your arguing that he hasn't committed any. And the fact that he hasn't been charged doesn't prove a thing one way or the other. --MelanieN (talk) 15:51, 9 November 2017 (UTC) @MelanieN: I'm pleased that you're reading my comments but then I've always believed you to be a good listener (reader). Now I'm asking you to please just read me out (that sounds weird). I realize few appreciate the points I've been making because as you've alluded to, there remains the belief that something more is going to happen over time, slowly, methodically, eventually climaxing with "evidence against higher-ups"; the perfect synopsis for a suspense thriller with a cliffhanger that forces readers to buy the sequel. Sorry, but this ole pragmatist is not buying into it - my motto is no expectations = no disappointments. While I agree the dossier is the MSM's central focus for the time being there is still so much unsupported speculation about it that WP:NOTNEWS and WP:RECENTISM are at play here. My other concerns follow: WP:NOT per the section Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion specifically #1 - Advocacy, propaganda, or recruitment of any kind re: the provided explanation for propaganda describes it as information that is not objective and is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, often by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented. While the policy says we can objectively report about such things, there must be an attempt made "to describe the topic from a neutral point of view." Imbalance and undue do not a neutral article make. I don't deny that there have been times when my concerns over NPOV have been heard but there are more times they were not. I get it that the Steele dossier is all the buzz this month and that we have our differences regarding what is and isn't NPOV, so please forgive my occasional use of other presidential scandals to drive home my point. NPOV issue: the name of this article vs a neutral name, such as Steele dossier. We certainly don't have an article titled Barrack Obama-Fast and Furious, or Bill Clinton and the blue dress. You called my argument worthless ouch! but ironically, the claims against it are based on arguments that are noncompliant with PAGs, specifically WP:NOT. Now scroll down to #3 in the same section - re: the part that states "Articles must not be written purely to attack the reputation of another person." From my perspective, unsupported allegations by anonymous sources combined with heavily weighted negative statements hand-picked from biased RS while omitting the denials and other views is a form of attack that speaks volumes to our readers. The entire Content section is based on negative, unproven information. The Steele dossier should be a paragraph in the Fusion GPS article until there is substantial evidence produced to warrant otherwise. The article is primarily cited to the NYTimes, CNN, WaPo, and numerous other sources that are unquestionably left of center...some further than others...some of which contributed to the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016. Regardless, the most balanced sources actually do present information that brings a level of neutrality to their own articles, most of which has been excluded from our WP article. I'm not saying we cannot cite biased sources, but we shouldn't be citing nothing but biased sources and picking out only the negativity when there actually are balanced aspects in the article that are being omitted in our article. Another concern about so much of what's included in this article is addressed in WP:BALL which states: Predictions, speculation, forecasts and theories stated by reliable, expert sources or recognized entities in a field may be included, though editors should be aware of creating undue bias to any specific point-of-view. #1 cautions (my bold): "expected future events should be included only if the event is notable and almost certain to take place." Your argument is based on a prediction that may take years to resolve, and you admit that "they will NEVER bring actual charges against Trump" which further strengthens my argument against the imbalance and negative weightiness of this article. Atsme📞📧 21:38, 9 November 2017 (UTC) Wow, what a load of verbiage, none of which relates to the minor point I objected to - your claim that it is somehow significant that Trump has not been charged with anything! This is all FORUM stuff, requiring either a long response or none. I am going to go with none. I was already treading into FORUM territory when I objected to your argument and I think I will hat this whole digression. --MelanieN (talk) 22:20, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

^{MelanieN, I told you brevity was not my friend. So on what forum does it belong? Atsme📞📧 23:18, 9 November 2017 (UTC)}

A political discussion forum. Not Wikipedia. --MelanieN (talk) 00:34, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

• Updated my view after Doc Page testimony. SPECIFICO talk 01:29, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Just curious...are you referring to this? If so, what part made you decide to update? Was it his disclosure about the misuse of taxpayer dollars to supplement "the illicit activities of large private media organizations and their executives to deceive US Voters" or was it something else? ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:39, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• So this needs to be closed..looks like 1 has consensus while 2 doesn't. Galobtter (pingó mió) 13:12, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

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

The Republicans never funded the dossier

@Al-Andalus: You have added false information to the lede in this article. After I removed it, you restored it. You should not have done that since this article is covered by WP:Discretionary sanctions, which include a warning that you "must not reinstate any challenged (via reversion) edits without obtaining consensus on the talk page of this article." The false information you added is that the dossier "was commissioned and initially funded by The Washington Free Beacon for fellow Republican adversaries of then-primaries candidate Donald Trump". That is not true. The Free Beacon stopped funding any research on Trump in May, and the dossier was commissioned in June. Please self-revert this claim. (I cannot revert it again, because the Discretionary Sanctions also prohibit reverting something more than once. But if you self-revert it you will no longer be in violation of the DS.) You can then discuss it here if you want. --MelanieN (talk) 19:44, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I restored an earlier version. Gabrielthursday (talk) 20:37, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

@Gabrielthursday: Thanks, but the version you restored still contains the error about it being funded by the Washington Free Beacon. --MelanieN (talk) 20:51, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

All fixed now. --MelanieN (talk) 20:22, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

No, it is NOT all fixed now. As soon as 24 hours had passed, Al-Andalus re-inserted the information in slightly changed form. Now it does not say that the Free Beacon commissioned and funded the dossier, which was plainly false. Now it says The investigation into Trump was initiated by Republican-backed conservative political website The Washington Free Beacon during the Republican primaries., which is true but disingenuous: saying "the investigation into Trump" was initiated by them leaves a misleading impression that the "investigation" means the dossier. I think the lede should not mention the Republican funding or the Free Beacon at all, since it was peripheral to the subject of this article, namely, the dossier. The historical involvement of a Republican source is explained in the article text; it should not be in the lede because it is not a major part of the story. I am not going to remove the sentence again so as not to edit-war; instead I am seeking consensus about whether this sentence should or should not be included in the lede. --MelanieN (talk) 19:41, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Pinging other editors active on this page, for their opinions: @Gabrielthursday, Casprings, FallingGravity, My very best wishes, Objective3000, James J. Lambden, Pincrete, JFG, TheTimesAreAChanging, Neutrality, SPECIFICO, and Markbassett: --MelanieN (talk) 19:48, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Reading through the sources, it appears clear that the Washington Free Beacon initially funded research and that the DNC continued the funding after the Beacon dropped out. What I can’t nail down is when Steele became involved or if either the Beacon or the DNC knew of his involvement or the likely end product at the time he began work. What seems clear is that both the Beacon and the DNC were performing opposition research and that the dossier was at least part of the end product. As far as I can see, there is nothing illegal about creating this document and opposition research is common practice. So, I’m not sure that trying to pin down who knew what when matters that much. Clearly both the Rs and Ds expected something to come from the funding. If RS nail this down at some point, it would be worth including. Until then, the finger-pointing is a bit annoying. Seems all we can do is point out that funding for opposition research came from two sources, and the dossier was commissioned by Fusion. Just some random thoughts. I’d like to hear from others before having a solid opinion. O3000 (talk) 20:27, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Objective, the timing is pretty clear. The Republicans stopped paying Fusion in May, and the counsel for the Dems took it over. The Russian hacking of the DNC was revealed in June. It was then - in June - that Fusion decided to do some Russia research and hired Steele. Since this article is specifically about the dossier - not the oppo research in general - then that timing matters. --MelanieN (talk) 21:40, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

OK. It’s likely that the dossier may have never been commissioned had the Beacon not originally hired Fusion. But, I suppose that’s happenstance and not worth mention in the lead. O3000 (talk) 21:45, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I agree and have (partially) reverted. The lede should focus on the subject of the article Donald Trump–Russia dossier. We do not know whether the opposition research conducted by Fusion prior to the hiring of Steele influenced or was included in his dossier. Elaboration is appropriate for the body but not the lede. James J. Lambden (talk) 20:43, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

MelanieN - I think the coverage WP:WEIGHT is generally about that DNC or Clinton paying for it. The website payment mentions is down at the level of FBI payment mentions, too minor for even a tail mention in the lead. Seems often enough to deserve mention in the history. But the early details sound like it may not been 'the dossier' but rather a background on all Republican nominees, and then Fusion remade and re-marketed an effort for a negative dossier. For a feel of coverage, here are the top hits from misc British sites in general leftish to rightish order

BBC Clinton team and Democrats 'bankrolled' Trump dirty dossier

Guardian Report: Clinton campaign and DNC helped fund Trump-Russia Steele dossier

Mirror Hillary Clinton's campaign paid for research that led to Trump 'dirty dossier'

Independent (#2) Firm behind Trump-Russia dossier got initial funding from conservative website

Times Trump hits out over Clinton link to dossier funding

Telegraph (FBI was #3) Conservative website funded research that led to Donald Trump Russia dossier

Sun Hillary Clinton’s campaign ‘helped bankroll’ research for ‘golden showers’ dossier on Trump

Daily Express Donald Trump dossier accusing him of links to Russia 'was paid for by Hillary Clinton'

Daily Mail Hillary Clinton defends funding Steele dossier on Donald Trump

(Daily mail next) A YEAR of Clinton lies about the 'golden showers' dossier exposed as Hillary's lawyer is under fire for falsely denying paying for it

Cheers Markbassett (talk) 21:20, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

(pinged) Agree with most commenters here: the timing is clear, Republican-funded opposition research predated the start of the dossier, and is therefore off-topic / UNDUE for the lead section. — JFG ^talk 22:45, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

(pinged) Fully agree that this is barely relevant background information that deserves a mention in the body of the article, so long as there's no implication the previous opposition research informed the dossier. There isn't even any evidence afaik that Steele looked at the opposition research Fusion GPS had previously done on Trump, much less that it affected what he put together, much less that it was a significant influence. Gabrielthursday (talk) 04:07, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

It looks like we have consensus not to include anything about the Republican funding in the lede. Al-Andalus, please take note of this consensus and do not add it again. It would help if you would participate in these discussions, but in any case, do not violate consensus. --MelanieN (talk) 18:33, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

It seems to me that the research that resulted in the document started here. Rather or not it predates it is not relavent, if this is the start of its development.Casprings (talk)|

Sources that show funding originated from GOP backed groups:

• Newsweek: Website With GOP Ties Funded Research on Trump Dossier
• New York Times: Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier
• Britbart: Anti-Trump Dossier Original Funder Paul Singer an Open Borders Establishment Republican Billionaire

This is a wide range of sources that show the same thing. This should certainly be in the lede. If the research that was foundational to the document started with Conservative media, that fact should not be hidden in the article and it should be included in the lede.Casprings (talk) 22:48, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Casprings that’s too low WP:WEIGHT for lead, and note all 3 say they got a general internet survey — not Mr. Steele, nothing that was in or led to the dossier. These cites say they did not fund the dossier. Markbassett (talk) 02:24, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

"that’s too low WP:WEIGHT for lead" - but trying to push the Daily Mail, Daily Express and the Sun, as you tried to do above, is legit for establishing due weight? Volunteer Marek  05:00, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I second Casprings’ argument. All sources of good repute, both from liberal and conservative media (even extreme right wing Breitbart), concede that research that was foundational to the dossier started with Republican-backed conservative media. Had it not been for that fact (i.e. some segments of the conservative camp dislike of Trump) the dossier would not even exist because of an interruption in the sequence of events to the coming into being of the dossier. Everyone had a hand in why the dossier came into existance; Republicans, Democrats, and an independent party. That fact is being hidden in the article by those who want to make it seem that 1) the funding of the dossier was somehow illegal, and 2) those responsible for funding it were Democrats, and that therefore 3) Democrats did something illegal. This is a fictitious point of view that one side is trying to paint. If funding of the dossier is going to be included in the lead at all, when It is entirely irrelevant who actually funded the dossier in any case (because there was nothing illegal about it in any event, and therefore that fact is not noteworthy), then it must be stressed that everyone had their hands in the pie. Or it should not be included at all. if it had been entirely the Democrats that were behind the funding of the dossier (which is not true) and if had it been the Democrats that started the sequence of events that led to the dossier’s creation (also not true), then that perhaps would be noteworthy even if not it was not illegal per se. However, that was not the sequence of events as per the facts themselves. It’s disingenuous to mention the Democrats in the lead, when they were merely the intermediate step in the sequence of events. There was a step before the Democrats (ie republicans) and a step after the Democrats (ie Fusion GPS themselves). Al-Andalus (talk) 02:34, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Nobody is implying there was something illegal about the dossier. It was part of opposition research, which is legal and all candidates do it. The time sequence is what matters here. Some Republicans were doing opposition research on Trump during the primary, but they stopped doing it long before Russia became an issue or a subject to be researched. Questions about Russia arose on June 14, 2016, when it was revealed that (to quote the Washington Post) Russian government hackers penetrated the DNC. That's what gave Fusion the idea to investigate whether there was something going on with the Russians. That was a new idea; previous research had primarily focused on his business activities, and probably on attempts to find out if there had been any sexual hanky-panky or other embarrassing material that could be exposed. Russia was a new angle. So Fusion hired a Russia specialist, who focused his investigation on "has there been contact between Russian and the Trump campaign?" as well as "Do the Russians have something on Trump, have they compromised him?" That's the subject of this article - Steele's research and Steele's report. The fact that some other group had previously hired the same firm to do oppo research - but was long gone when Steele was hired - has no connection with this dossier. At least not enough of a connection to put in the lede. The previous Republican funding is clearly explained in the article text. --MelanieN (talk) 23:22, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

The idea that the Republican funding was separate from the dossier is a recently clarified point, not understood until the last couple weeks. Now that we're getting the two phases of opposition research separated, the Republican part should still be included, but only as the historical precursor to what later led to the creation of the dossier. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:57, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

I would agree.Slatersteven (talk) 10:29, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Can you provide a source which explicitly says that the Republican funding was separate from the dossier? From what I've read, while Steele came on board later, without the initial Republican funding there never would've been a dossier. So no, not separate. Volunteer Marek  05:02, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

That's speculation. The Clinton campaign was obviously going to do opposition research on Trump. If they hadn't hired Fusion GPS, they would have hired someone else. And that someone else would probably also have decided "we need to look for Russia-connected material" after the Russian hacking was revealed in June. --MelanieN (talk) 01:21, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Sure, but I still need a source for the current interpretation. Volunteer Marek  16:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes - WaPo clearly states that before the agreement with Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary. It was after that, when Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele. The article begins with "The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier." ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:08, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

And here's another one that's easier to read: Time quotes the Washington Free Beacon who funded the first bit of research on Trump: “The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele.” ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:16, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Exactly. The Republican funding (we now know the funder) was a precursor, part of the history of anti-Trump opposition research, but the dossier followed it. It was all done through Fusion GPS. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:53, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Did the WFB hire Fusion GPS?  Volunteer Marek  16:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, we already have it included here. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:02, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

And the smell of bacon at Waffle House made me decide to order a BLT; therefore, according to your analogy, the precurser to my decision was the customer who ordered bacon before I arrived not the fact that Waffle House keeps bacon on hand because that's part of their business and I was hungry. There has to be a precurser...hmmm...the precurser could also be the pig, or the farmer who raised the pig, or the grocery store that sold me the bacon...and that sums up the strength of your argument. ^{Atsme📞📧} 15:07, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Not sure of your point, but mine was in agreement with yours; they were two phases of oppo research, and not connected by donors or investigators, only by Fusion GPS. No need to be defensive. We agree. -- BullRangifer (talk) 17:02, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Must be Ptsd from editing political articles, my apologies BullRangifer. ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:22, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Reputation in the Intelligence Community

This section has major NPOV problems. I haven't time at the moment, but we are missing quotations from Comey ("salacious and unverified) and Mike Morrell [2] and James Clapper ("The [Intelligence Community] has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions.") These are all far more significant figures than the analysts currently quoted. Gabrielthursday (talk) 21:56, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Morrell is already quoted in the "Veracity" section. Note that one of Morrell's objections—that Steele paid his sources—is rather weak; it's normal for spies to pay their sources, and we should actually be more wary of the unsolicited information freely offered up to Steele in December 2016 (after both the election and David Corn's October 31 Mother Jones report discussing the dossier).TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 03:37, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Casprings just nuked the whole section. User:PackMecEng restored it. Discussion time, folks. --MelanieN (talk) 18:54, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

Gabrielthursday, you seem to be proposing that we should use old and outdated views based on lack of information instead of much newer and better views based on the fact that most of the dossier's claims have been verified. You should also read the dossier. The "salacious" golden showers part is on the first page. That's it. The sensational press reports have given undue weight to that, and ignored the rest of the much more serious content. We should not make that undue weight error here. It's quite inaccurate to label the whole thing as "salacious" when it's not. -- BullRangifer (talk) 07:05, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

What are RS NOW saying about this, what indeed do Comey and |Co now say?Slatersteven (talk) 10:28, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Recent additions

@Al-Andalus and Volunteer Marek: Within the span of a few days, the sentence "It is unknown the extent to which the allegations in the dossier have formed a part of the ongoing 2017 Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections." becomes the sentence "At least part of the dossier has formed a part of the ongoing 2017 Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, and a team of Special Council investigators has met with the dossier’s author, Christopher Steele." I find it incredible that something that is unknown becomes known in the course of a few days. Does interviewing Steele somehow count as integrating the dossier into the investigation? Is there something here I'm missing? ^Falling_Gravity 22:24, 4 November 2017 (UTC)

it is known that the dossier has formed a part of the investigations. What is unknown is the extent. What is difficult to understand about that? We know the earth is covered by water. What we don’t know is how many litres exactly. Just because we don’t know the exact amount doesn’t mean we shouldn’t mention the earth is covered with water. Some water-haters might want to pretend it’s actually liquid mercury. Al-Andalus (talk) 02:45, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Simply looking at cited source [3], it tells: The FBI has confirmed some parts of the dossier and Special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into other details as part of an investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign. So, I do not see any problems with both versions which are not mutually exclusive. My very best wishes (talk) 02:52, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

If anything, Republican spinsters in the media over the last day have made it a talking point to paint the fact that the dossier has been included as any part of Mueller’s investigation as somehow being a wrongful act on muellers part. Yet here we have people trying to omit the fact that the dossier has formed a part of mueller’s investigation at all. Meanwhile, legal experts say that if mueller hadn’t or insnt including the leads in the dossier in his investigation he would be derelict in his duty. Which is it? Al-Andalus (talk) 03:03, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

You created duplicate content; FallingGravity removed it in both places [4]. I think the dossier being used by Mueller certainly worth mentioning and well sourced. My very best wishes (talk) 03:15, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

I think it could belong in the article, but it's already mentioned in the lead: "giving U.S. intelligence and law enforcement greater confidence in some aspects of the dossier as investigations continued." Per WP:LEAD: "The lead should stand on its own as a concise overview of the article's topic." Adding an additional paragraph musing on how it's unknown how much the dossier factored into the investigation or the extent of the dossier played is unnecessary; maybe an additional sentence would do. I have no objection to restoring the paragraph to a different location, but I think somebody with more time should have a look at it and its sourcing. ^Falling_Gravity 04:36, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

OK, I reincluded this as separate section. Welcome to fix if needed. There was also something about Mueller going interrogate a bodyguard of D. Trump about the "most salacious" claims in the dossier. My very best wishes (talk) 23:01, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

"Corroborated"

This edit summary (diff) suggests dossier claims were corroborated by Page's testimony. I assume this refers to the Sechin meeting from the (poor) Business Insider source. But CNN's take is different: "During his sworn testimony, Page denied a key claim from the infamous dossier but acknowledged talking to a high-ranking official from the Russian energy giant Rosneft.", "No public evidence has emerged to corroborate this specific claim in the dossier." Thoughts? James J. Lambden (talk) 06:43, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

It's based on several sources provided in the article. And it isn't limited to the Sechin meeting. Sources refer to key parts of his testimony as "corroboration". Now, can you self-revert and undo your 1RR violation?  Volunteer Marek  06:54, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Which sources and which parts? Be specific. James J. Lambden (talk) 07:11, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

In addition to Business Insider, we also have Newsweek (which you removed as a source - violating Wikipedia policy) ("his comments also appear to corroborate sections of the controversial document and raise new questions over his meetings in Russia.")

Oh, and here's our man Chuck Ross in the Daily Caller. Not a reliable source but worth quoting for illustrative purposes:

"Some of what former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page disclosed in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last week matches up loosely with allegations made in the infamous Steele dossier"

"Page’s statements about a trip he made to Moscow in July 2016 included details that are laid out in the dirty document"

"Steele’s document did nail down something that Page revealed for the first time in his House testimony"

"Page revealed some new details about his Moscow visit that resemble other allegations in Steele’s report"

"While there is still no evidence to support the allegations made about Page in those two memos, parts of two other Steele reports ring true."

 Volunteer Marek  07:38, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

User:Volunteer Marek - I'm just not seeing 'corroborated' as a valid paraphrase from these phrases 'some...loosely', 'dirty document', 'resemble other', 'no evidence to support'. The English is good at least, but the lines seem to be exaggerating Vanity Fair and really something 'corroborating' would be mentioned and pull more from other, larger, and better sources. Markbassett (talk) 23:50, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe cuz you're squinting really hard not to see it. "matches up". "details that are laid out in". "nailed down". "resemble other allegations". Etc. You're trying to set a standard which is ridiculously high. Volunteer Marek  14:09, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I posted the following link above in the iVote section in response to another comment (having now provided 3 articles that provide an opposing view to the current claims) but since the corroboration angle is still lit up down here, I think we need to clarify some of the misinformation and innuendos so it doesn't spread any more than it already has - at least we will have some balance to this POV-ridden, improperly named article. See Top 10 things to know about dossier by Mollie Hemingway.^{Atsme📞📧} 15:14, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Just picking out random stuff that make me question the analysis from link there that talks more about how the dossier is garbage (which is what we're talking more about, from the same author)(feel free to hat i guess): Clinton and other opponents for “several years,” a bizarre thing for the Kremlin to do with someone who only announced his candidacy in June 2015. Trump had ran multiple times for many years; it's not unreasonable for him to run, and trump could've told the kremlin he was going to run..In what way would learning about his infidelities or indiscretions be a blackmailing situation? Surely those outlandish claims would be on another level, enough for blackmailing The only problem was that Cohen had never been to Prague and Kosachev said he hadn’t been there in five years. Are we trusting their words? Galobtter (talk) 15:49, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the fact that you keep referring to garbage sources like the Federalist to back up your outlandish claims is not exactly helping your argument here. Volunteer Marek  20:59, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

But an op-ed piece in the Concord Monitor is just fine, right? 😂 Mollie Hemingway authored that piece in the Federalist, so be careful about your comments per BLP. ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:08, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I'd agree to cut that out. Seems undue weight of a minor opinion piece. Galobtter (talk) 06:21, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

VM - if the picked lines have a mixed message, then the summary isn’t simply ‘corroborated’ for them. And I think if the events were a strong support, then big coverage would have said so. Squinting any way I can, most I get is a partial or maybe supportive, but not ‘corroberate’. Markbassett (talk) 03:25, November 12, 2017‎ (UTC)

1RR and DS violation by Lambden

Article talk pages are for discussing article improvements. WP:AE is thataway→
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
User:James J. Lambden violated 1RR as well as that restriction on consensus changes on this article; First revert Second revert Additionally, that second revert restores changes were made by consensus. Since I expect there's gonna be some deflecting coming soon (Lambden has a tendency to accuse others of what he's guilty of himself) let me address my edit. In particular my adding of the "corroborated" to the lede. The addition of that word was based on new information - Carter Page's testimony on November 2nd - and new sources (Newsweek in lede, several other sources in the text). As such it's not a revert since it is based on new developments which have not been previously covered. Regardless, Lambden's reverts cover not just the use of that word in the lede but other changes to the article as well. Volunteer Marek  06:53, 8 November 2017 (UTC) This violation of DS by Lambden, is also in addition to removal of well sourced information [5] for... basically no reason what so ever. Except of course POV and IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. That in itself constitutes WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, discretionary sanctions or no discretionary sanctions. Volunteer Marek  07:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

1RR and Consensus Required DS violation by Volunteer Marek

Article talk pages are for discussing article improvements. WP:AE is thataway→
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
In his recent series of edits VM violated 1RR and Consensus Required on this text: Version reverted to: [6] VM's 1st revert: [7] VM's 2nd revert: [8] and Consensus required here with respect to the Business Insider paragraph: VM's addition: [9] My removal: [10] VM's restoration without consensus: [11] The edit VM complains about [12] is the one in which I reverted his multiple DS violations. James J. Lambden (talk) 07:10, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Can you please stop mimicking my comments? It's an obvious taunt and a form of WP:HARASSMENT. And like I predicted above - you're trying to use the "I'm going to accuse you of what I'm guilty of myself" tactic as a way of deflecting attention from your own disruptive behavior. Volunteer Marek  07:22, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Notification of DS violations are not mimicry although they are inappropriate for an article talk page in my opinion. Can we agree to remove them? James J. Lambden (talk) 07:27, 8 November 2017 (UTC) You formatted and wrote your "notification" to exactly resemble mine. It's mimicry designed to provoke and taunt. Volunteer Marek  07:30, 8 November 2017 (UTC) No editor who writes this gets to complain about hurt feelings. Hat please. James J. Lambden (talk) 07:37, 8 November 2017 (UTC) You didn't hurt my feelings. You are however trying to WP:HARASS me, just like you have tried to harass several other editors (User:Snooganssnoogans, User:NorthBySouthBaranoff, User:SPECIFICO and a few others whom you've deemed to be "politically inappropriate" in your WP:BATTLEGROUND approach to editing Wikipedia). This kind of behavior short circuits collaborative efforts and makes it difficult to improve the encyclopedia. Hence, it is disruptive (and yes, it's also obnoxious and creepy). You have also been repeatedly asked to not comment on my talk page - leaving a notification, even if completely bad faithed, is one thing, but making taunts with full knowledge that you are not welcome there is also incivil and abusive behavior. Volunteer Marek  07:43, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Volunteer Marek's DS violation is clear and straightforward, and his aspersions against James J. Lambden are beyond the pale. (In addition, the canvassing above is questionable at best.) Volunteer Marek was just let off the hook for another clear-cut DS violation in October because—while all parties acknowledged the violation—no admin was actually willing to sanction Volunteer Marek. I did not comment in that particular case because I generally agreed with Volunteer Marek's edits and because I strongly believe that the "consensus required" DS should be rescinded from most articles; however, any honest observer can see that countless editors have been topic banned for a fraction of what Volunteer Marek alone is routinely allowed to get away with. Have we all just accepted that Volunteer Marek is above the law?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:22, 8 November 2017 (UTC) Oh nonsense. I expected better from you. Volunteer Marek  17:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Carter Page testimony

I am looking at the edit, and it seems that the info was important and well sourced. Obviously, it should be included on the page. Any objections? My very best wishes (talk) 17:15, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Not if you're using SYNTH to draw the conclusion in the 2nd paragraph. ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:10, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that 2nd paragraph was removed in the latest series of edits, and it was not restored by VM [13]. Personally, I do not know if that was WP:SYN, I did not follow this story very closely. However, the removal of phrase in the lead ("some, but not all, of which have been independently corroborated") seem to be wrong. One does not even need a ref in the lead. I think this is simply a matter of fact that some claims have been corroborated. My very best wishes (talk) 15:25, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I would not oppose restoring some of the material such as Rosneft allegations as long as we say that they are unverified allegations.

The lead changes you propose are not fine. It is WP:SYNTH. Just because some details in the dossier have been corroborated does not mean that any allegations of misconduct or collusion have been proved.

The last sentence of current testimony section ("In October 2016, after being informed of his trip by Page...") seems irrelevant as Page said, and it has been corroborated, that Sessions did not react to Page's words. Politrukki (talk) 16:16, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

And strike or rework or drop the first para line about testimony confirmed parts of the dossier. Generally he was denigrating the report, not literally confirming ot. Markbassett (talk) 05:40, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

More importantly, I'm glad this happened. "Unverified" really had to go in any case. Prinsgezinde (talk) 12:08, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Article title and bias of sources

Agree, Markbassett and Prinsgezinde. Would like your thoughts about the name of this article since the title is POV-laden and has caused a bit of confusion over the initial contracting of Fusion GPS to do opposition research on other candidates for The Washington Free Beacon. As evidenced in this Snopes article the dossier was nicknamed the Steele dossier. Other acceptable names to satisfy NPOV include Trump dossier or Steele dossier on Trump.

Furthermore, the attention should be on the various investigations the dossier has triggered and actually resulted in evidence that support the allegations being made. We now know that Fusion GPS executives are being uncooperative with the investigation and have pleaded the 5th; the Clinton campaign funded part of the Steele dossier, there was Russian interference in the 2016 election favoring Clinton, and the FBI also funded part of that dossier. There is little to no information in the article that provides factual evidence about Trump, only allegations, which is what this article focuses on, creating POV, weight and imbalance issues. RS have referred to the Steele dossier "as demonstrably false" and provides a list. According to The Federalist, the dossier was used as the reason the FBI spied on American citizens. We've learned that the Clinton campaign could face "hefty fines" for their part in it. There are numerous other articles that provide information we can cite to get this article in compliance with NPOV (balance & weight), including evidence based facts, not just allegations, but for some reason those facts are getting lost in the interpretation. Time, Politico, WaPo, [14] ^{Atsme📞📧} 16:21, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

"Furthermore, the attention should be on the various investigations the dossier has triggered and actually resulted in evidence" - Uh, what?

"there was Russian interference in the 2016 election favoring Clinton" - uh, what???

" the FBI also funded part of that dossier" - uh, what?????

Wikipedia is not a fake news website. I'm really starting to doubt if you should be even editing this article.

(the Federalist is nowhere close to being a reliable source so who cares what they called the dossier. Also most of the other claims in your comment are nonsense as well.) Volunteer Marek  16:38, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

From what I've gleaned from experience, the prevailing POV here and on all other Trump related articles is that no center or right leaning source is a RS. The double standard is suffocating. Anyway, I disagree but choose not to debate it. There actually are other sources that are as reliable (if not more so) than WaPo and the NYTimes, they just publish the information from a different perspective. ^{Atsme📞📧} 19:35, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

You have also gleaned incorrectly. Center or right leaning sources are perfectly fine. But the DailyCaller and TheFederalist are still unreliable. Not because of their politics. But because they're junk. They hire white supremacists and racists and/or they publish fake news. Actually that Federalist piece you linked is a good example as its chuck full of outright falsehoods. Given that right above you've managed to make a laundry list of wacky conspiracy theories I'm not surprised that you'd want these sources to be considered reliable. But they're not.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Volunteer Marek (talk • contribs) 20:05, November 10, 2017 (UTC)

Atsme, interesting. May I ask what "center" sources are deemed not to be reliable, and separately, what "right leaning" sources are not deemed to be reliable, on Trump related articles? I'm a bit skeptical that such a double standard actually exists.- MrX 19:46, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

MrX, save us both some time, and review the article References and make us a list of the center and right of center sources you see and how often such sources were cited vs center left all the way to progressive left. ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:42, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Atsme, we should not be thinking in terms of opinions and POV's -- we should be evaluating the editorial integrity and rigor of mooted sources. This POV stuff is not helpful and it's not what policy tells us to do around here. SPECIFICO talk 20:45, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

It's a discussion based on my observations which I am as much entitled to express as anyone else here. You can disagree; however, I'm growing weary of my comments being hatted, muted, and criticized at almost every turn. A TP is for addressing issues editors have found in the article, and as a veteran editor, I happen to know what is and isn't compliant with our PAGs. Those who do not wish to engage in civil discourse regarding the issues I've mentioned, then you can simply quietly observe. That is how TP discussions work to resolve problems, not by attempting to silence an editor for bringing them up. ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:58, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Respectfully Atsme, I'm not going to "save us both some time" by spending my considerable time proving or disproving your assertion. You made the outlandish claim. Either substantiate it, or expect such comments to be treated with the disdain they deserve.- MrX 21:04, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue when all anyone has to do is read the References cited to what was added, compare it to what was excluded, and how it was worded in the article. Quick example: #60 is an op-ed from a local news source. BuzzFeed is cited in the lead, and they were sued over the dossier. The following sources were cited multiple times: NYTimes - WaPo - Politico - The Atlantic and CNN who is known for not getting the story right as we can see in this article. There's the AZCentral (part of USA Today), NBC, ABC, Vanity Fair, NY Daily News, AOL, Business Insider, and I can go on and on. Where are all the center and center-right sources? ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:41, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Center sources BBC and The Independent are cited three times each. Right leaning Fox News is cited twice. Right-leaning The Telegraph is cited four times. Right-leaning Wall Street Journal and The Times are cited once each. Of course, you're also free to edit the article with any center and right-leaning reliable sources that you can find. Your original claim was "... the prevailing POV here and on all other Trump related articles is that no center or right leaning source is a RS.".But you have provided no evidence of that, and I have just provided evidence that refutes it. You can't just make things up and expect to be taken seriously.- MrX 22:10, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

BBC is left of center - see the sources cited in our own WP article Criticism of the BBC; See this site which provides a balance and makes a pretty decent call when an article hits center, left or right. On average, the following is closer to accurate: Fox News² leans right ✅; The Independent³ leans right ✅; The Telegraph⁴ leans right ✅; WSJ¹ - center left; The Times¹ - center left. Review the statements that are actually cited to those sources. We're talking about a 44kb article with 3980 words of readable prose. I'll wait for all the "breaking news" to die down before I attempt to make any edits. My eye is trained to see articles more from a copyedit/GA/FA reviewer perspective so I'll wait for all the breaking news to subside, and the facts to be substantiated before I attempt to make any edits here. Have a great weekend!! ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:17, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

Uh, WSJ "center left"? Seriously? The Times "center left"? Lol. What the hell is that allsides website anyway? Best I can tell it's user generated content. Sorry, no. Volunteer Marek  06:18, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Yet another one that doesn't agree with you, VM? Rhetorical, no need to respond. It's all good. ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:22, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Atsme, you're trying to push some user-generated content website as authoritative on what "bias" particular sources have. This is silly. It's not how Wikipedia works. I don't know why we're even discussing it. Volunteer Marek  21:18, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

^{VM, read the U of M link in my response below this one. Atsme📞📧 21:42, 11 November 2017 (UTC)}

All of this is completely irrelevant, and as has already been pointed out to you, the PRC chart does NOT actually show what you think or claim or claim and think it shows. Volunteer Marek  01:05, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Time - it's really obvious; U of M, but read the commentary; Forbes has an interesting view; as for FOX News & WSJ, you might want to get caught up a bit. Happy editing! ^{Atsme📞📧} 20:53, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Atsme, those are nonsense. e.g. "Forbes" is from their blogger section, written by a non-notable pundit. I do agree with you Hannity has sold out to the Left, but one example doesn't clinch the deal. SPECIFICO talk 21:01, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

😂 good'un, SPECIFICO. So if you're not happy with Forbes, don't focus on it - read the others - unless you don't like the University of Michigan, Pew Research, Media Bias, and the NYTimes. ^{Atsme📞📧} 21:12, 11 November 2017 (UTC)

Ah yes Accuracy_in_Media#Controversies also mediabiasfactcheck on it (extreme right, mixed factual reporting). Here's a quote from the article:

In short, she is a globalist insider who sees the green hysteria as a viable way to control people and their lifestyles.

We warned back in 2007 in our column, “Rupert Murdoch Picks Liberal Son as Successor,” that James Murdoch was maneuvering to take control of Fox News. We also noted that James Murdoch “buys into global warming hysteria,” and that his liberal philosophy on environmental and other matters “could become the party line” of the Fox News Channel. Really picking out the best sources. If saying climate change is real is pushing the leftist agenda or whatever...............Also why don't you stick to one site e.g mediabiasfackcheck (which I'm fine with) and use that. WSJ is listed as right of center there and The Independant as left of center, which seems right to me, as I see clickbait anti-trump headlines from the independant. Galobtter (talk) 05:24, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

I really don't think picking on the few center right sources cited in the article will resolve the NPOV issues and the fact that not all significant views in all the sources have been presented according to WP:BALANCE, WP:WEIGHT, and WP:NOT. The fact that the Steele dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and the allegations originate from anonymous sources/Russian spies is what speaks volumes. The title of the article is POV, the Contents section is undue, and I can go on and on. ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:32, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

All sources have bias. What's most important is factual accuracy. https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ also mentions "factual accuracy" for each source, so notice that. That most RS used here are center to center-left is because of an interesting phenomenon, and it makes a lot of sense. These two articles explain it: On the Liberal Bias of Facts and The Facts Have a Well-Known Center-Left Bias. IOW, facts and knowledge have become identified more with the left-wing than the right-wing, as explained below, all based on RS, not opinions. (Note my liberal use of the words "tend to" below. )

The cause and effect is that left-wingers are generally better informed, largely because they tend to gather their news from multiple sources across the left-center-right spectra, unlike right-wingers, who tend to use fewer sources, most from the right and extreme right; left-wingers tend to use fact-checkers more, and during the election campaign they were much less likely to be fooled by fake news (as attested by the creators of that "news". They gave up on targeting the left and focused on GOP and Trump supporters.); left-wingers tend to be better educated; most scientists [therefore] vote Democrat and are atheists; right-wingers tend to distrust, denigrate, and hate fact checking websites, even to the point that Trump told his followers not to trust them. That way he could deceive them with his alternative facts and keep them from learning the real facts.

It's perfectly fine to use biased sources without it affecting NPOV at all, since NPOV doesn't relate so much to content as to avoiding biased editorial behavior. Editors must present content with the biases found in the sources, without editorially censoring them or whitewashing them. If a right- or left-wing source is factually accurate, then it's a potential source here. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:03, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I was actually criticizing the source you used in your comment, not in the article. Also WP:BALANCE says and are relatively equal in prominence, describe both points of view and work for balance.. If all prominent reliable sources are "left-wing"....(then again if "left wing" means believing in climate change then any source that very reliable has to be "left wing") The main thing is to get the opinions based on the prominence of the viewpoints. What sources are used for the facts shouldn't matter. Galobtter (talk) 04:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Hi, User:Atsme please read and familiarize yourself with WP: Competence is required, a very important policy you may have missed. If you think using Trump's name in the title is "POV-laden," and that "we now know there was Russian interference in the 2016 election favoring Clinton(!!!!!!)", editing political articles isn't for you. This is not a place to spew obvious nonsense. Infamia (talk) 10:34, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Article title

Atsme, I tend to support the idea of a title change to Steele dossier. Also, the content section needs expansion so it's complete. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:04, 13 November 2017 (UTC) "Steele dossier" seems good to me. SPECIFICO talk 03:09, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Sounds good. That makes 3 supporting it. The most common name is the Steele dossier. I'm ok with however you want to present it for local consensus or whatever else you think is best. ^{Atsme📞📧} 03:19, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

I also support Steele dossier; I don't see any discussion of a proposal similar to this in the archives and the name is used by the press, for example at [15], [16], [17]. This one [18] says Trump-Russia Steele dossier, which is too wordy. Fox uses [19] "Fusion GPS dossier", which I feel is less clear. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:32, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

WaPo's Conclusion at the bottom of the article calls it the Steele dossier - and their conclusion is as near to NPOV accurate as I've seen. ^{Atsme📞📧} 03:43, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Seems good to me too. As far as I can see, it is the most common name when the dossier is given a name (and not simply referred to as the infamous dossier). nytimes too Galobtter (talk) 04:24, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Comment 1. I request that this go through a move request. 2. I think there is bemifit to the reader in having Russia and trump in the title for the reader to find the article.Casprings (talk)

I think in a google search it still will come up at the top so I don't know how much of a benefit. At the very least I think it should be "Trump-Russia dossier" which is what is sometimes used and is shorter. Galobtter (talk) 04:24, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Due to the way our redirects function, we can use all combinations of titles as redirects, and the actual article will always be found. Google will quickly settle on the real article because it will be content rich, using all the key words in abundance. That will then be found at the top of searches. Many of the most RS, such as The New York Times, refer to it as the Steele dossier. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:12, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 13 November 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. While the majority of participants were in favour of some sort of move, there was clearly a consensus against the proposed title and no clear agreement about any of the alternatives offered. No prejudice against a future discussion on one of the other possible titles. Jenks24 (talk) 10:18, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

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Donald Trump–Russia dossier → Steele dossier – The term Steele dossier is widely used by the news media, and more unambiguously refers to the specific topic that the article is about. power~enwiki (π, ν) 06:12, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• Support Per my above comment. Galobtter (talk) 06:17, 13 November 2017 (UTC) Striking, see below, not sure if actually common name. Also steele dossier isn't exactly the clearest name unless you know who the dossier author is. Trump-Russia Dossier seems the best to me. Galobtter (talk) 18:34, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support per my comments above. Many very RS use this title, and other combinations can be used as redirects. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:20, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• It's obviously not an unambiguously clear choice, so I withdraw my support. The current title is descriptive, but a simplification to Trump–Russia dossier would be nice. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:34, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose less recognizable, is there another Donald Trump Russia dossier out there? In ictu oculi (talk) 08:35, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support Definitely how media describes this now.-- Netoholic @ 11:30, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support per WP:COMMONNAME, as most sources call it the "Steele dossier". — JFG ^talk 11:54, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Do most sources call it the "Steele dossier"? Compare hits: "Trump dossier" at 164,000, "Russia dossier" at 45,900, and "Steele dossier" at 39,300. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:41, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

As far as I can see most sources when giving it a name give the name as Steele dossier. Others simply say "the dossier" and don't give it a name. Galobtter (talk) 12:59, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Evidence? That appears to be contradicted by the above links, which would suggest avoiding an uncommon neologism. Sławomir Biały (talk) 16:07, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Huh that wasn't how I remember it was when I did the search before. "Trump-Russia dossier" could be an alternative that is at least not such an unwieldy name. Galobtter (talk) 16:16, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Among the many terms that refer to the Dossier in the media, "Steele dossier" is one of the least common (see above). "Donald Trump-Russia dossier" is clear and unambiguous, both the terms "Trump dossier" and "Russia dossier" appear widely in the media. Yet neither of these is a good title for an article (see earlier RfC). I also think, for the same reason as my opposition to "Trump dossier", that "Steele dossier" is not a good article title. No one who is not already familiar with the subject of the article has any idea what a "Steele dossier" is, and likely to mistake it for fancy designer briefcase. Sławomir Biały (talk) 12:41, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Common name, for a while now that it has been getting more scrutiny that is what RS have been referring to it as. PackMecEng (talk) 14:25, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Support - Steele dossier is the widely known name which explains the redirect to the current POV name. The correct way to do it is move it to Steele dossier and create a Trump dossier redirect and remove the POV name all together because it implies there is a connection between Trump & Russia when, to date, no collusion has been proven. ^{Atsme📞📧} 14:27, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

1. GQ ”For one thing, it seems to confirm that the ‘’’Steele dossier’’’ is being investigated thoroughly…”
2. Vanity Fair “THE DIRTY TRUTH ABOUT THE STEELE DOSSIER”
3. NYTimes ”The so-called Steele dossier of research into President Trump’s connections to Russia…”
4. CNN ”US intelligence community last year took the Steele dossier more seriously”
5. Salon ”…central role played by the "Steele dossier," … ^{14:40, 13 November 2017 (UTC)}

The dossier talks about trump and russia -> donald trump - russia dossier. That title does not say anything about whether the ties are true. All it says is that there is a dossier about trump and russia. No need to delete it. Galobtter (talk) 14:51, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

It's implied; therefore, not neutral. Per a comment by MelanieN on my TP which helped me to see things from a much broader perspective regarding NPOV: "About your RfC: You were prevented by WP:Neutrality from putting your argument ("if the president says something, that means it isn't classified") into the questions themselves." I believe that naming an article using a president's name in connection would fall in that same line of thinking. ^{Atsme📞📧} 17:58, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Comment: The current name is POV? is this a joke? I'm legitimately asking. Can you possibly be serious here? Using Trump's name on a dossier about him is POV? That's seriously your view?Infamia (talk) 10:12, 14 November 2017 (UTC) ^{Blocked sock}

• Support per WP:COMMONNAME.- MrX 18:30, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• Follow up comment Actually, why not just Trump dossier? Trump dossier seems to have the most hits on google by a factor of 4-1 vs. either Steele dossier or Trump-Russia dossier. Also commonly used, as here: Also, contra the unusual beliefs suggested above, none of these names are "POV".Infamia (talk) 10:09, 14 November 2017 (UTC) ^{Blocked sock}

References

Trump dossier is not specific enough - people can't be sure what it is about. Galobtter (talk) 10:46, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

• The above user has been blocked for abusing multiple accounts, most likely it's Kingshowman. SkyWarrior 16:27, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. This is less descriptive and less recognizable name. However, it could be renamed to Trump dossier per WP:COMMONNAME. That is common name - see results of Google search [20]. My very best wishes (talk) 15:19, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose See my above comments. Agree w/ My very best wishes. Trump-Russia dossier or Trump dossier are good. The former is more descriptive and clearer so I prefer that. Galobtter (talkó tuó mió) 15:28, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose No evidence provided that Steele Dossier is the common name. According to Google Trends, Trump dossier is the common one - [21]. If there is a need to change the article title to another, it would be to Trump dossier, although it could be argued that Donald Trump–Russia dossier is close to Trump dossier and more specific and therefore may stay. Hzh (talk) 19:17, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per MVBW. Support rename to Trump Dossier.Casprings (talk) 22:07, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

You can't say there is no evidence provided - I provided 5 major MSM sources above and there are many more. Trump dossier would work as a title if Trump authored it but Steele authored it. Just yesterday, the headline in WSJ for Kim Strassel's article reads: Fusion GPS 'Steele Dossier' A Political Dirty Trick For The Ages. Steele dossier is widely known - it's the redirect now to this article because nobody knows how to find it under the current name. ^{Atsme📞📧} 23:18, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no evidence presented that it is the common name - that means you have to show the most sources used that name, not simply some sources used that name. The evidence I provided shows that Trump dossier is the common name, not Steele dossier (the most recent peak for the week of October 22-28 gives 60 for "Trump dossier", 9 for "Steele dossier", 1 for "Donald Trump-Russia dossier") Perhaps it may change in the future since Google Trends shows that preferences can change over time, but for now there is no evidence that Steele dossier is the common name. You can always propose changing it if thing changes in the future. Hzh (talk) 23:38, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• Well, stats for redirects tell a story: Steele dossier=1,006 pageviews whereas Trump dossier=983 pageviews. Not a giant difference, but now that more news sources are saying Steele dossier, the spread will increase. Name it Steele dossier and keep the redirect for Trump dossier. ^{Atsme📞📧} 01:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Common name does not refer to Wikipedia page view, page view is not used for determining common name as set out in WP:COMMONNAME or in search engine test per WP:SET. As already shown Google Trends gives Trump dossier as the common-used name. Checking it Google News, "Trump dossier" gives 144,000 hits, while "Steele Dossier" gives only 26,200 hits. Hzh (talk) 01:57, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Well that's good to know, but it's not a convincing argument. The Google hits count didn't do a thing for WP because the Steele dossier still got more page views. ^{Atsme📞📧} 02:25, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

It is not for you to declare by yourself here that what is recommended according to Wikipedia policy is something unconvincing. Wikipedia policy and guideline are the only basis on which we can discuss this, if you want to challenge any policy or guideline, then by all means do it in their talk pages, not here. In any case, given that Donald Trump–Russia dossier gives pageviews of 306,804 over 90 days -[22], attempting to claim that there is something significant about 1,006 pageviews for Steele dossier and 983 pageviews for Trump dossier is odd. It seems that you think someone searching for Steele dossier on Google will go to the redirect page, that is not true (it gives a link for Donald Trump–Russia dossier). Pageview of redirects here only reflects how webpages are used by a small subset of Wikipedia users, for example, which wikilink they used, or perhaps a wikipedia user may be more familiar with Trump dossier but did not know what a Steele dossier is, therefore would search for it rather than Trump dossier. Pageview of redirect therefore may not reflect the usage of the general population or the media, and irrelevant when determining which is the common name. Hzh (talk) 03:06, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Read WP:IAR. I really don't care which name this RfC determines to be the best - Steele dossier or Trump dossier - but having said that, your insistence that it be Trump dossier is equally as much a declaration by yourself as what you're claiming about me, so relax. Let the RfC run its course and hopefully common sense will prevail. ^{Atsme📞📧} 03:32, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

You can ignore all rules if you like, but there is still no evidence offered that Steele dossier is the common name. Evidence that Trump dossier is the common name is not something I declared by myself, but Google. Hzh (talk) 04:19, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

• It has two common names, Steele dossier (by the author) and Trump dossier (by the target). However Trump dossier is a lot more common (as Google search shows) because the target is a lot more notable. This is textbook example of WP:COMMONNAME. My very best wishes (talk) 20:30, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
• While Trump dossier is also used, it's very ambiguous. Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections is technically a Trump dossier. I also see usage of "so-called Trump dossier" [23] and "anti-Trump dossier" [24]. power~enwiki (π, ν) 20:34, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

There is no way to consider "Russian interference" as a "Trump dossier". This is a big geopolitical play to undermine US and Europe [25]. My very best wishes (talk) 20:43, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. Personally I have never heard of the "Steele dossier", even though this has been a big topic in the news, and the current descriptive title describes the topic perfectly as it is. No need to change this per oppose comments above.  — Amakuru (talk) 16:52, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Semi-protected edit request on 15 November 2017

This is not an official document but a research based on available sources and it is dependent on unverified information by the author. This is merely a summed up collection of opinions. Bdragomir (talk) 00:11, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

✗ Fail - That's not an edit request.- MrX 00:15, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

RS with lots of info about Steele and the Dossier

Three sources, with refs already prepared:

• Guardian journalist has book coming on Trump and Russia By Associated Press

Luke Harding, a journalist who has reported on the so-called “Steele Dossier” compiled on Donald Trump has a book coming out Nov. 16.

Vintage Books told The Associated Press on Monday that Luke Harding’s “Collusion: Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win” will be a detailed narrative on Trump’s connections with the Russians.

• How Trump walked into Putin’s web

The inside story of how a former British spy was hired to investigate Russia’s influence on Trump – and uncovered explosive evidence that Moscow had been cultivating Trump for years. By Luke Harding, The Guardian

• Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90% accurate

The respected ex-MI6 officer told Guardian journalist and author Luke Harding that his FBI contacts greeted his intelligence report with ‘shock and horror’. By Julian Borger, The Guardian

These sources are very rich, drawing largely on a book coming out on November 16, 2017. There are many bits of important information, and lots of good quotes. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:09, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

More:

• The five most interesting claims in the Donald Trump dossier

Two more:

• The Ex-Spy Behind the Trump-Russia Dossier Left a Clue for Mueller Christopher Steele told a reporter that one real-estate deal might be key to understanding the collusion case.
• Fusion GPS co-founder: Steele didn't pay sources for dossier on Trump By Manu Raju, Jeremy Herb and Katelyn Polantz, CNN

BullRangifer (talk) 06:42, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

References

This is interesting. Unfortunately, I do not have the book. I would suggest to improve/expand "Content" section of the page per "five claims" article: claim #1 should be included; claim #2 - should be included, even though it is well known from other sources; claim #3 is already included; claim #4 - not sure, this is something no one really denied, almost a matter of fact; claim #5 is that Michael Cohen, a Trump's lawyer "allegedly traveled to Prague in August 2016 to further “coordinate” the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia and to clean up the evidence of collusion and how to make final payments from both Russia and Trump to hackers" - this is something really important. My very best wishes (talk) 03:44, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Contents section 1

To make some progress in building an outline, we need to address ground rules. Our sourcing policies allow that the subject of the article is a RS for its own opinions even if it's otherwise a totally unreliable source for other purposes. This would apply to biographies about people, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine nonsense, and articles about documents, books, etc.

The next thing to consider is how much weight to give each item in the outline. That is determined by the weight in outside RS. Basic mention is allowable from the original source, but any deeper description and comment would need outside sourcing. Each item would have at least two sources, one for the original dossier, and more for deeper descriptions.

I propose that we create a basic outline right here by going through the dossier and creating a few sentences summarizing each of the 16 (plus December) reports, including their page numbers and dates. For ease, here are two good sources to use for this task:

• Original dossier as released by BuzzFeed. This isn't easy to copy from, and even the text version is filled with flawed Optical character recognition typos.
• A clean copy that's easy to copy from, without the typos.

Feel free to copy this to your own sandbox and work on it, then report back. Go for it! -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:35, 20 November 2017 (UTC)

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Outline (they aren't always in chronological order)

Report	Page(s), Date	Actual content of report	Very short summary
1	1-3, 20 June 2016	Only for workspace, not article.
2	4-6, 26 July 2016
3	7-8, No date
4	9-10, 19 July 2016
5	11-12, 30 July 2016
6	13-14, 5 August 2016
7	15-16, 10 August 2016
8	17, 10 August 2016
9	18-19, 20 October 2016
10	20-21, 22 August 2016
11	22-24, 14 September 2016
12	25-26, 14 September 2016
13	27, 14 September 2016
14	28-29, 12 October 2016
15	30-31, 18 October 2016
16	32-33, 19 October 2016
17	34-35, 13 December 2016

Has anyone been working on this? I have finished all 17 sections in my own sandbox and am ready to copy it here for further input. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:52, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

The lede is very misleading

The lede says, in part:

"The dossier was produced as part of opposition research during the 2016 U.S. presidential election. After Trump emerged as the probable Republican nominee, attorney Marc Elias of the Perkins Coie law firm retained American research firm Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research about Trump on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and Clinton presidential campaign."

Except this is only partially true. Elias took over the opposition research initially funded by the news-site The Washington Free Beacon which is financed by conservative billionaire Paul Singer. The way the lede is written, it suggest that Elias on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC - and no one else - was involved in the financing the dossier. By leaving the lede this way, Wikipedia is deliberately lying by omission. I write "deliberately" because it has been reported over, over, and over, over, and over again that the Clinton campaign nor the DNC initially funded the Steele dossier; yet lede implies that Clinton and DNC were the sole financiers of the Steele dossier. This is false: you know it's false, I know it's false, and the verifiable facts prove it's false yet this critical nugget of information (i.e. that The Washington Free Beacon initially funded the dossier) is buried deep within the article itself. Usually when I see bias on Wikipedia, I just look the other way, but this one is so egregious and shameful that I just had to write something. What bothers me is that by omitting this critical piece information from the lede, Wikipedia is willingly (or unwillingly) perpetuating ignorance and obfuscation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.178.22.85 (talk) 04:04, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Two issues to discuss:

1. You have violated a very important policy here. You have accused editors of "deliberately lying". No, you MUST assume good faith. Instead of accusing, ASK why this situation exists. There is a very good answer. It's because YOU have misunderstood the following:
2. There are two phases to the history of this article due to two phases of opposition research, the latter of which led to the development of the dossier:

A. The prehistory of the dossier was the opposition research funded by Singer and The Washington Free Beacon. It did not produce any part of the dossier. It came later.

B. When they stopped their support for opposition research, the DNC and Clinton campaign took over the funding and Fusion GPS also sought the help of Steele, the top professional on the subject. He is the one who created the dossier, which is the main subject of this article.

I hope that clears things up for you. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:07, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Contents section 2

Continued from #Contents section 1. Here is what I have prepared. It's in two formats, the first with the actual summaries, and the second without them, IOW what we would include in the article. To ease editing and discussion, they have their own subsections. Let's work on each one and develop a short summary that does the job. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:45, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

The media and the intelligence community have stressed that most of the accusations in the dossier have not been verified.

In the lede, who has “stressed” this? Most recently, the “stress” I have seen is on the parts that have been verified and that this verification gives crediablity to the rest. As currently worded, this is not neutral in its wording. Casprings (talk) 13:30, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Good point. Sourced reports from immediately after the release on January 10 held that view, and right-wing and Russian sources still push that view, but mainstream RS and ALL intelligence sources have changed their tune as time has passed. The dossier has proved to be accurate enough to be used as the "road map" for official investigations. That would not be the case if its allegations were still largely unverified. That wording needs to be brought up to date. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:23, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

If you can't give any specific examples of anything that has been verified in recent months, the comment above is mere WP:OR. McCabe just testified that the dossier remains largely unverified. I see that Casprings is again trying to force his POV into the lead despite being shot down in a previous RfC, and have challenged his recent edit under DS accordingly.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 06:05, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Well for one, George Papadopoulos and his meeting and knowledge of the emails was confirmed yesterday. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html?_r=0 That said, the media is not "stressing" that it is unconfirmed and that needs to be taken out of the lede.Casprings (talk) 12:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes, it is. Papadopoulos is not mentioned in the dossier, so there is no way that anything about Papadopoulos could possibly "confirm" anything in the dossier. Again, your comment amounts to nothing more than "Not A=A." (BTW, The New York Times report is taking about "Hillary emails," which may or may not be the DNC/Podesta emails. It's quite possible that the Russians and other foreign intelligence had access to Hillary's emails from her time as secretary of state due to her mishandling of classified information.)TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Per the close here: Talk:Donald Trump–Russia dossier#RfC about use of unverified, "not verified" should be removed as should the stressed part. Not verified literally means the same as unverified. I would ask, User:Sandstein to weigh in. Casprings (talk)

Consensus was to remove the word "unverified" as a qualifier for the term "allegations" as in "contains unverified allegations". The text at issue here, "The media and the intelligence community have stressed that most of the accusations in the dossier have not been verified" is similar but not quite the same, because it contains the qualifier "most", and an attribution of this view. As somebody who's otherwise not familiar with the article, that's all I can say. Editors will need to decide whether the RfC consensus also applies to this wording through further discussion, I suppose. Sandstein 18:27, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Some of us, including me explicitly supported removing "unverified" from (what was then) the second sentence because it was considered redundant with the "stressed" part later in the lead. No-one was commenting on anything but that one phrase in that one sentence. For you to spin that as a "consensus" to delete both "unverified" and the "stressed" text—after your main proposal, that Wikipedia affirmatively declare the dossier "verified," contrary to all RS, was resoundingly shot down—is utterly ridiculous and makes me think that I was wrong to try to compromise by supporting removal of "unverified" from the second sentence. No, if you want to introduce even more radical changes to the lead, you're going to need a new consensus.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:18, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Per Caspring -- not "unverified" does not entail "verified". This requires nothing more grade school logic, certainly not more RfC. SPECIFICO talk 21:24, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Ukraine

SPECIFICO has redacted the fact that the Trump administration recently took a harder anti-Russian line than the Obama administration ever did by approving lethal arms sales to Ukraine, which makes the controversy over the Trump campaign's role in modifying an amendment to the GOP platform that in fact strengthened the platform's anti-Russian line seem even more ridiculous than it did previously. (BTW, why doesn't Putin just use the pee-pee tape to make Trump stop?) She described this content as "SYNTH POV not on topic" for a paragraph devoted to the Ukraine/GOP platform issue. However, the sources disagree with her. For example, according to The Washington Post:

During the 2016 GOP convention, the Trump campaign beat back efforts to have the Republican platform endorse lethal assistance to Ukraine. Trump campaign officials pushed to soften a proposed amendment to remove the language 'lethal defensive weapons' and replace it with 'appropriate assistance.'

Trump has now decided that lethal defensive weapons constitute 'appropriate assistance.' His decision to approve small amounts of weapons sales likely won't fundamentally change Putin's calculus or the trajectory of the war in Ukraine. But it's one sure sign that Trump's foreign policy views are evolving—or at least being influenced—as his presidency progresses.

In light of the above, SPECIFICO should stop second-guessing one of America's papers of record and withdraw her objection.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 18:38, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I was just about to endorse your position TheTimesAreAChanging but then I noticed the WaPo piece is an opinion piece rather than news. I may be the last Wikipedian active in political articles who continues to support that distinction. Anyway, maybe you can find a news source about it? I could look if you want. Anythingyouwant (talk) 18:43, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

By that logic, the entire paragraph on Ukraine should be purged immediately, because the source (Natasha Bertrand in Business Insider) is clearly not hard news reporting. Along with much of the rest of this article!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

TheTimesAreAChanging, maybe so. I just started looking at this article, and couldn't get past the first sentence before finding problems. Opinion pieces should not be used unless they are deemed noteworthy by other sources that are reliable secondary sources, and they should never be the basis for statements in wikivoice. According to WP:OR, "examples of primary sources include ... editorials, columns, blogs, opinion pieces...." That policy also states, "primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them". Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:52, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

The Los Angeles Times makes the same point in its reporting on this matter.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 10:31, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

What does the article say about the dossier?Slatersteven (talk) 18:44, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

The dossier claims that one of Putin's pre-conditions for releasing the DNC emails through WikiLeaks was that the Trump campaign sideline the Ukraine issue at the RNC. The notion that a major Russian covert operation was predicated on a symbolic document like the GOP platform is absurd on its face, but given that this is one of the dossier's central factual claims it would be seriously misleading to omit this crucial context.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I take it from this then it is you (and not the source) making the link.Slatersteven (talk) 10:47, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Op-Eds use SYNTH all the time to provoke thought or discussion. WP does not. SPECIFICO talk 19:03, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Even if one were to search for a significant opinion to support this as an attributed POV, this one is weak. It doesn't tie Trump personally to the decision and there's no evidence that he was even aware of it. Sources tell us this is a continuation of previous US policy and also report that many other foreign policy steps have been taken without POTUS' direct involvement. SPECIFICO talk 19:14, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

"It doesn't tie Trump personally to the decision and there's no evidence that he was even aware of it." Lolwut? "Another senior Trump administration official said that Trump personally approved the decision to allow the issuing of the license after being presented a decision memo by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. While there was never a formal ban on such weapons transfers, the decision was discussed internally as a lifting of the de facto Obama administration restrictions, the official said." Of course, the big change came a few days after the Wash Post article, when the U.S. finally agreed to directly supply the Javelins.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:45, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Removal of comments

I do not think this removal was appropriate. Such opinions do belong to the section about "reputation" of the dossier. But unfortunately, this page has the notorious "consensus required" editing restriction. Therefore, anyone has a cart blanche for removing new content at will. This is wrong. My very best wishes (talk) 19:10, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

So make a case for it's inclusion. As far as I know no consensus was reached for exclusion.Slatersteven (talk) 19:10, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

The burden of achieving consensus lies with the editor that wants to make the change.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:38, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

OK. Here is text in question.

Julian Borger wrote in October 2017:

The fact that Steele’s reports are being taken seriously after lengthy scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators has far-reaching implications.... Senate intelligence committee...had come to a consensus in supporting the conclusions of a US intelligence community assessment in January this year that Russian had conducted a multi-pronged campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, in Trump’s favour.

It is a finding that echoes the reports that Steele was producing seven months earlier. Trump has called the assessment a 'hoax', but there is no sign the three agencies that came to that conclusion, the CIA, FBI and NSA, have had any second thoughts in the intervening months.... But as every passing month brings more leaks, revelations in the press, and more progress in the investigations, the Steele dossier has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it.

Jonathan Chait wrote in December 2017:

As time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out. In general, there is a split between the credibility afforded the dossier by the mainstream media and by intelligence professionals. The former treat it is gossip; the latter take it seriously....[W]e should probably be giving far more weight to the possibility that the darkest interpretation of Trump’s relations with Russia is actually true.

I think these quotations reflect the growing consensus that most claims in the dossier were real and are taken seriously. The quotations are recent, well sourced, made by experts, and on the subject of the page. Why anyone would like to remove them? Maybe one could make a summary instead of direct quotations, but they look like a definite improvement.My very best wishes (talk) 19:21, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

References

Actually, the DS notice says "challenged (via reversion)" -- in this case the rationale for the removal was that it was "longstanding content" in which case some argue it's not "reversion". If on the other hand one finds this was a reversion because it removed another editor's content, then this was a 1RR violation, due to this revert. As they say in Alabama, ya pays yer money .... I think these are noteworthy, representative opinions and can be restored. SPECIFICO talk 19:23, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Wait a minute, weren't you just saying that opinion pieces are bad because they use WP:SYNTH? Chait and Borger's opinion pieces contain no new facts (they are nothing more than clever word games to pretend that A=not A; i.e., that "Russian interference" somehow proves there must be a pee-pee tape), and copy/pasting huge blockquotes is just not how encyclopedic writing is supposed to be done. BullRangifer added this content mere hours ago, so it certainly isn't longstanding.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:37, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

WP:SYN only applies to editing in WP, but not to RS. Authors frequently do synthesis of data, which fine. But perhaps one could use more sources, make a better summary, etc. - I have no specific judgement about this. My very best wishes (talk) 19:43, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Tell that to SPECIFICO.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Please re-read my remark above. You appear to be the only one here who did not understand it. SPECIFICO talk 04:24, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Not commenting on the substance, but just style, this is excessive blockquoting. Use wikivoice or paraphrase with inline attribution, as appropriate. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:26, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. My very best wishes (talk) 19:36, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

I have no problem with revisions which improve it. The quotes are a bit long, but I couldn't figure out how to shorten it without losing essential information. Anyone is welcome to propose improvements, but complete deletion violates WP:PRESERVE, which is a POLICY here, so complete deletion violated policy. Properly sourced content should be edited to improve it, (almost) never just deleted.

Although the part about SYNTH is regarding different content, opinion pieces are GOOD because they do the synthesis for us. We actually want that type of content. It is editors who must not synthesize content in an improper manner. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:34, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

That also sounds reasonable. I think this is good quotation. Brief direct quotation can be good in cases when there is a dispute what exactly the sources tell. My very best wishes (talk) 20:54, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Borger doesn't seem to be talking about any activity or collusion by Trump or Trump’s campaign, and Chait is a liberal commentator whom we can quote but not massively and with undue weight. So I have edited the material accordingly. Anythingyouwant (talk) 22:07, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

The radical revisions, with introduction of personal commentary, has also introduced POV OR by trying to limit which part of the dossier that has "gained credibility". No, the fact that the dossier wrote seven months before the official reports, that the Russians had interfered to help Trump, was only one part which gave it more credibility. There is nothing in the source which limits it to that fact. On the contrary. Please don't do that.

I appreciate an attempt to shorten the long quote, but this didn't improve it, and didn't even shorten it. The end result is still 68,301 bytes long! It would be better to let the source speak for itself, rather than introduce POV OR. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:20, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Also...both quotes emphasized that the "dossier has generally gained in credibility" with the passage of time. That has been removed from the second quote, rendering the purpose of using it null. This needs to be restored: "As time goes by, more and more of the claims first reported by Steele have been borne out." They are many claims, not just the one about Russian interference. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:23, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article still says Steele’s report “‘has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it’”, we don’t need to list every source or commentator who agrees with that. You say, “They are many claims, not just the one about Russian interference”, but you haven’t pointed to any other such claims described by the cited sources that have gained in credibility. Anythingyouwant (talk) 06:13, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't need to. We use the citation as authority, not mine or your opinions. Note that I did not include my opinions in the content, unlike you. Your inserted commentary is still OR. It adds your editorial opinion into the content, and, without any evidence from the source, claims that the "gain in credibility" is only related to the fact that there was a "campaign to interfere in the 2016 election". The source is talking about the whole dossier and does not make such a limitation, so it's better to just let the source speak and readers can jump to their own conclusions. Editors are not allowed to insert their own opinions. That's OR and an NPOV violation.

You also claimed that the content was too long and should be shortened, and yet the end result is the same length, largely because you added your own opinion after removing essential, cited, content. That's wrong. Please restore the complete quotes until a better revision can be agreed upon. -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:51, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Here’s the present language in the Wikipedia article:

British journalist Julian Borger wrote in October 2017 that "Steele’s reports are being taken seriously" by investigators and gaining credibility because, for example, Steele was correct “that Russian [sic] had conducted a multi-pronged campaign to interfere in the 2016 election, in Trump’s favour”.[78] Liberal commentator Jonathan Chait wrote in December 2017 about the dossier that mainstream media "treat it as gossip" whereas the intelligence community "take it seriously".[79]

This seems like a fair summary of those two sources. Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:04, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Dossier did not start the Russia investigation

Per:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/us/politics/how-fbi-russia-investigation-began-george-papadopoulos.html

need to note. Casprings (talk contribs) 17:48, December 30, 2017‎ (UTC)

Wow! This is fascinating. We already new that British and other foreign intelligence learned through their monitoring of Russian targets that Trump's campaign was scheming with the Russians to steal the election, and were alarmed enough to alert American intelligence, which was way behind the curve. I had no idea that Australia was also involved. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:03, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

I’m not aware that “British and other foreign intelligence learned through their monitoring of Russian targets that Trump's campaign was scheming with the Russians to steal the election”. What’s your best cite for that? Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:11, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

This and this are pretty good. This is old news, telling of events from before we knew of the dossier. The Australian angle is new. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:27, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Those two articles are from April 2017, User:BullRangifer. The second one (from CNN) merely rehashes and refers to the first one (from the Guardian). The Guardian article discusses alleged “contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told.” Please note that Russian spies often try to cozy up to US presidential campaigns, often without wearing lapel pins saying “I’m a Russian spy.” The Guardian article also says, “The issue of GCHQ’s role in the FBI’s ongoing investigation into possible cooperation between the Trump campaign and Moscow is highly sensitive. “. Notice the word “possible.” Not “probable”. Not “proven”. And neither article remotely says “Trump's campaign was scheming with the Russians to steal the election”. Please try to be more circumspect, thanks. We need to be careful not to mistakenly use Wikipedia to accuse people of criminal behavior or treason. Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:47, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

As explained below, this is about events in 2015, and the very slow reaction of the FBI, who didn't start acting until 2016. My comment is a synthesis of this information and information from the dossier. It is not for inclusion.

Here's the situation we're looking at. Let's say that the two of us are putting a puzzle together. When we are finished, we have a complete picture, except for a few missing pieces. We can easily see the picture, but it would be nice to see how the missing pieces show some connections between the pieces around the holes. Well, someone else we don't know hears of our "missing pieces" dilemma and offers some help. They present us with a handful of puzzle pieces, and they happen to fit exactly! But we're skeptical. We ask: "Can you prove these pieces were made by the same company which made our puzzle?" "Can you prove they belong here?" They cannot do so, but the missing pieces certainly do explain the rest of the picture in a manner not done without them, and it all makes sense.

That's the role of the dossier. Not only does it contribute to proven facts, it also explains them. It is theoretically possible that another explanation is true, but not very likely. Even without the missing pieces, the main picture remains the same. My statement takes into account all the evidence and sources we have. Because the "unproven" allegations in the dossier have such strong explanatory value, I personally treat them as likely true, but I'm not a RS for article content. Fortunately there are RS which do make the same synthesis, and we are allowed to use them. You don't have to believe them, but I do. -- BullRangifer (talk) 21:41, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

"GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious “interactions” between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said"

" a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump’s inner circle and Russians"

" the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump’s team and Moscow ahead of the US election"

Etc. Volunteer Marek 21:06, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

In other words, "Not A=A." Brilliant!TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:14, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

No, in other word, Papadopoulos. Volunteer Marek 04:58, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Casprings, in what manner is this relevant to this article, and, if so, how and where should it be mentioned? It would help if we could see how this would work. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:02, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm guessing this part:

"The information that Mr. Papadopoulos gave to the Australians answers one of the lingering mysteries of the past year: What so alarmed American officials to provoke the F.B.I. to open a counterintelligence investigation into the Trump campaign months before the presidential election? It was not, as Mr. Trump and other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by a rival campaign. Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America’s closest intelligence allies."

Volunteer Marek 07:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

That would be the part.Casprings (talk) 13:52, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Contents section development and mention in lead

Old version

The following long and awkward sentence of mine, which was moved, does need improvement and more sourcing. While it's factually better than the previous version, it isn't optimal:

"The dossier contains allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the period preceding the election, much of it detailing alleged cooperation between the campaign and Russians to interfere in the 2016 presidential election to benefit Trump."

New version

That sentence is streamlined and greatly shortened below, and other significant subjects added, including all the necessary references. Here is a short version for the lead, and the rest can be used in the Contents section:

For lead

A major theme of the dossier is numerous allegations of misconduct and conspiracy between Donald Trump, his campaign, and the Russian government during and preceding the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the purpose of interfering in the election to help Trump win. It also alleges that Trump is vulnerable to blackmail, but is being spared as long as he continues to co-operate. Also alleged is that Trump will receive a 19% stake (ca. $11 billion) in Rosneft oil company on condition he lifts the sanctions on Russia after his election.

For Contents section

More specifically, the dossier alleges that Russia has cultivated Trump for many years and that there exists an "extensive conspiracy between [Trump's] campaign team and Kremlin, sanctioned at highest levels and involving Russian diplomatic staff based in the US." It also alleges that the hacking of the DNC servers was performed by Romanian hackers controlled by Putin and paid by both Trump and Putin, and that Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, arranged "deniable cash payments" to the hackers during a visit to Prague. Trump and Cohen have denied the allegations. Also alleged is that the "Kremlin [was] behind recent appearance of DNC e-mails on WikiLeaks, as means of maintaining plausible deniability."

It alleges there was an "[a]greed exchange of information established in both directions. TRUMP’s team using moles within DNC and hackers in the US as well as outside in Russia. PUTIN motivated by fear and hatred of Hillary CLINTON." It also alleges that the Kremlin has enough "embarrassing material" on Trump "to be able to blackmail him if they so wished", but it has "promised not to use" it "as leverage, given high levels of voluntary co-operation forthcoming from his team". It also alleges that Trump's representative, Carter Page, arranged a quid pro quo deal with the Rosneft oil company, in which Trump will receive a 19% stake (ca. $11 billion) in Rosneft in exchange for lifting sanctions on Russia after his election. Page confirmed this was Trump's intent and made the deal with Trump's "authority".

Commentary

The quotes are the actual allegations from the dossier, and multiple RS cite and describe them in detail, using names, so we have no BLP concerns when using the names with secondary RS.

Function of the dossier

The dossier describes "how" and "why" the Russian interference in the election was "planned" and "ended up working", and shows "why" domestic and foreign intelligence agencies trust it as the largely accurate "roadmap" for their investigations. It provides the explanatory framework for many proven events. Many of these "unproven" allegations explain the reality they have uncovered. Short of complete confessions or actual video tape and/or audible recordings, many of these allegations will likely forever remain "unproven", but their "shape" so exactly fits the individual holes in the whole "puzzle" that it is pretty safe to assume that Steele's sources were very good. That's why the "dossier has generally gained in credibility, rather than lost it" with the passage of time.

• "As I understand it, a good deal of his information remains unproven, but none of it has been disproven, and considerable amounts of it have been proven." Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee

The dossier also provides the "who" by naming several Trump associates and describing their roles: Paul Manafort, Corey Lewandowski, Michael Flynn, Carter Page, and Michael Cohen. Jill Stein, Bernie Sanders, and Lyndon LaRouche are also named. Numerous high profile Russians are named.

The campaign, election of Trump, actions of Trump and subordinates, and the myriad lies told by all members of his campaign, all prove it to be largely accurate intelligence. After "forgetting", lying, and gradually recollecting under duress, admissions have been forced out of them, all showing that they were attempting to hide a whole lot. Innocent people don't act this way.

Terminology used

Note that the word "collusion" is NEVER used in the dossier. It is also the "wrong word" to use. "Conspiracy" is the right word. Rather, the primary source uses the following terms:

• "extensive conspiracy between campaign team and Kremlin";
• "well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership";
• "TRUMP campaign/Kremlin co-operation";
• "Russians apparently have promised not to use ‘kompromat’ they hold on TRUMP as leverage, given high levels of voluntary co-operation forthcoming from his team";
• "As far as ‘kompromat’ (compromising information) on TRUMP were concerned, although there was plenty of this, he understood the Kremlin had given its word that it would not be deployed against the Republican presidential candidate given how helpful and co-operative his team had been over several years, and particularly of late."
• "secret";
• "secret meetings";
• "secret TRUMP campaign / Kremlin relationship";
• "secret liaison";
• "secret contacts";
• "ongoing secret liaison relationship between the New York tycoon’s campaign and the Russian leadership";
• "secret dialogue";
• "secret discussions";
• "secret TRUMP-Kremlin liaison";
• "importance of TRUMP’s lawyer, [blank] in covert relationship with Russia";
• "[blank] engaged with Russians in trying to cover up scandal of [blank] and exposure of [blank] and meets Kremlin officials secretly in the EU in August in pursuit of this goal";
• "need to cover up Kremlin’s TRUMP support operation";
• "[blank] now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of TRUMP’s relationship with Russia being exposed."

I have [blanked] some names above to avoid BLP issues, not because we don't have numerous secondary RS which do use the names, but because I haven't added them right after each line. So, just to avoid any problems, I have blanked them. This isn't being considered for inclusion anyway, at least not right now.

"Treason doesn't even begin to describe it."

The deal made by Page with Rosneft has received the strongest reaction I have seen due to its nature. These words have been used by Jacob Weindling:

"A potential scandal so big, words don't exist to convey it.... A lot of this report speaks for itself, but I want to take a moment to stress this potential revelation. In exchange for dropping sanctions that were levied for invading an ally, the president of the United States would receive a personal stake in a Russian oil company. Treason doesn't even begin to describe it." (Emphasis added)

Let's work on this. -- BullRangifer (talk) 20:09, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

References. Must be open for them to "work".
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
References

Discussion

Please bring forward any wordings you find awkward or possibly wrong. Let's work to improve this. -- BullRangifer (talk) 04:31, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Why is there a citation needed tag in the lede? Volunteer Marek 08:07, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

I objected to an unsourced editorial statement that "The dossier primarily discusses possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election," rather than compromising ties between Trump and Russia. BullRangifer then rephrased the text to more closely match the body, but Anythingyouwant added a tag to the revised sentence. In my opinion, the tag is no longer necessary.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 08:20, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

The sentence is probably correct, but since we are footnoting the lead, readers would be well-served by a footnote so they can confirm and find elaboration. Anythingyouwant (talk) 08:25, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Lead needs copyediting

The definition of what the dossier actually is is not given until the seventh sentence; Donald Trump is linked in said sentence (implying it was meant to be the second or third sentence), but in the previous sentence he is referred to as "Trump himself" I considered moving it around myself, but then realized that there's a high probability this has already been discussed extensively and the current poor layout is a compromise that wasmade without care for how it would actually appear to the reader. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 19:13, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Fixed, Thanks. Anythingyouwant (talk) 19:38, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

"It contains unverified allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump and his campaign and the Russian government during the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the period preceding the election" was originally the second sentence, as can be seen from earlier revisions. That should be restored.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 20:01, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

RFC on lead

Per this RFC and this discussion, should the following sentence in the lede include:

1. The statement “most of the accusations in the dossier have not been verified.”
2. State that the media “Have stressed” number 1.

“The media and the intelligence community have stressed that most of the accusations in the dossier have not been verified.”

Please answer for as follows.

1. Yes, Yes
2. Yes, No
3. No, Yes
4. No, No

Casprings (talk) 20:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Survey

• No, No Sources are stressing how much is verified, not unverified. See http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39435786, https://www.aol.com/video/channel/news/58dd25ce9e451054817f3572/ . also, given recent news , its very hard to say what is verified and as(if) more becomes verified it gives more legitimacy to the rest, as such, the sentence is pov.Casprings (talk)
• No, No I think it is completely unclear what we are talking about. The lead must be a lot more specific and describe which exactly specific allegations were proven correct/incorrect/unproven/whatever. My very best wishes (talk) 21:32, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
• Keep long-standing summary of article body in the lead. Even if Casprings, from his vantage point as a Wikipedia editor, is correct that the dossier might possibly be verified in the future, such speculation falls squarely under WP:CRYSTAL. BTW, the following representative sources may be of interest to editors:TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Sources:

Oppose both. I was going to say that "unverified" is unnecessary, but changed my mind after reviewing sources. Many reliable sources deem it necessary to add that the collusion allegations are unverified/unproven/unsubstantiated, so keeping the qualifier would seem due to avoid confusion. "That assertion is unproven — as are many of the other claims in the document. That includes the overarching claim that Russian government officials allied with Trump employees and campaign aides to help his election." The Washington Post "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians" Chicago Tribune "yet unproven allegations that the Russians had wanted Mr. Trump to win the election, that Russians had shared valuable information about Hillary Clinton with the Trump campaign" PBS "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians on hacking the emails of prominent Democrats" AP "The specific claims about campaign collusion have not been verified" The Hill "dossier containing unverified allegations about collusion between President Trump and Russia The Hill "document ... which contains unverified allegations of misconduct and collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and Russia" Newsweek "There has been no public corroboration of the salacious allegations against Mr. Trump, nor of the specific claims about coordination between his associates and the Russians." The New York Times "It contains unproven allegations of coordination between Trump's advisers and Russians on hacking the emails of prominent Democrats" AP "The dossier is a compendium of unsubstantiated allegations of questionable real estate deals, secret coordination with Russian operatives who hacked Democratic targets during the election ... No evidence has surfaced so far that Trump aides or campaign advisers were involved in Russian efforts to disrupt the 2016 election" The New York Times "35-page 'dossier' alleging Russia has been 'cultivating, supporting and assisting' Trump for at least five years and fed his campaign 'valuable intelligence' on Clinton. The major allegations in the dossier ... remain unsubstantiated" Bloomberg [emphasis mine] Note that these excerpts are specifically about the collusion allegations rather than comments about the ("unverified", "unsubstantiated", etc.) dossier as a whole. I have, for example, omitted sources which generally say that allegations about Trump's ties to Russia are unsubstantiated. Strongly oppose 2 as the juxtaposition would improperly imply that some allegations of collusion have been corroborated – and we already have the third paragraph which goes into more detail about what has been corroborated. Politrukki (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2017 (UTC)

Discussion

See Beavers, Olivia. “House Intel panel subpoenas McCain associate over Trump dossier”, The Hill (December 27, 2017): “Certain parts of the dossier have either been confirmed or proven false, while other parts of the memo compilation remain unverified.”
See also Lee, Michelle. “Trump slams FBI, attacks Steele dossier”, The Washington Post via Mercury News (December 26, 2017): “Officials have said that some of the information it contains has been corroborated, but other parts – including the most salacious claims about Trump's behavior – remain unverified.”
Anythingyouwant (talk) 21:15, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Even for you, Casprings, this is one of the most biased and malformed RfCs I've ever seen. "Most of the accusations in the dossier have not been verified" is a FACT, not an opinion, but "The media and intelligence community" qualifier actually serves to attribute and thus water down that claim—not to strengthen it, as you appear to imply by confusingly reversing the language. By reversing the language and creating four options when only two are needed, you have created an RfC that is simply incomprehensible. What is Yes, No a vote for? "The media and intelligence community have stressed."??? Why can't you just file a normal RfC without weird POV insinuations and options that make no sense whatever?TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 21:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)