Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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

RfC: Sixth Tone

I recently found the Sixth Tone, which is owned by a mainland Chinese media company. Although Chinese media is sources which should be with catious when it comes to political issues in China, should we include the Sixth Tone as a realiable source to discuss Chinese society and culture (especially when there is no other source to fully describe a non-controversial Chinese events such as introducing a Internet personality and Chinese government-accused controversy on Chinese Internet service, since state-run media and popular western media)? Relisted by ToThAc (talk) 17:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC), originally raised by Mariogoods (talk) 20:18, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject China, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Journalism, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Magazines. — Newslinger talk 02:37, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

• Additional considerations: Foreign Policy described Sixth Tone as an "excellent site" and they seem to be concerned with how fake news is spread. The site does seem to need more notablility, though, so I would most likely find a different source first. But as you say, there are not many other sources like this. I am on the fence.----ZiaLater (talk) 16:25, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

@ZiaLater: I agree with your opinion. It is hard to find sources which represent Chinese view while not engaging much in propaganda. And while we have The Paper, Sixth Tone uses English language. (I needed more Wikipedians to comment this)Mariogoods (talk) 23:15, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

Comment: Everything I've read (includiog articles I used as sources to write the Wikipedia article Sixth Tone as well as the Foreign Policy article) seems to support that Sixth Tone itself is accurate for non-controversial cultural matters. WhisperToMe (talk) 12:37, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

• Definitely not reliable for political topics. No opinion about non-political topics. Anything that is based in mainland China should have the same reliability as the Chinese Government for political topics, which is zero. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adoring nanny (talk • contribs)

In my opinion, the Sixth Tone should be used with caution to cite in political topics, especially Chinese political topics. But I don't think we should fully reject its report in political topics. Mariogoods (talk) 02:36, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Grayzone

Was recently questioned about the reliability of Grayzone. Grayzone began as the Grayzone Project of Alternet (see WP:RSP).

Note: One previous discussion was held and was not conclusive.

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

Thanks again.----ZiaLater (talk) 09:28, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Survey: Grayzone

• Option 2, that about tells me nothing about editorial policy or who writes for it. But looking at a sample of stories it all seems to be the same people some of whom appear to be editors of Greyzone. I think this is an example of some of it is SPS and some of it may not be, thus should be used with care.Slatersteven (talk) 10:06, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

• Comment: @Slatersteven: You are asking for more information? I believe you told me not to present a case during a previous RfC. I have done my research on Grayzone in the past and have my own opinion. If you wish to discuss this, would it be possible to do so on your talk page? Whatever is more appropriate, just trying to be as transparent as possible.----ZiaLater (talk) 11:00, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Any conversation about this matter should be kept in one place. If you wish to address my doubts please do so here so others can see.Slatersteven (talk) 11:05, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: What doubts to you have? Just want to reply in a proper manner.----ZiaLater (talk) 11:23, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

"But looking at a sample of stories it all seems to be the same people some of whom appear to be editors of Greyzone. I think this is an example of some of it is SPS and some of it may not be, thus should be used with care." how much clearer could I have been?Slatersteven (talk) 11:27, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: The main issue that Grayzone has with its editorial policy is its political ties. Russia often utilizes Grayzone editors and its founder Max Blumenthal to disseminate Russian propaganda according to StopFake. The founder, Blumenthal, has been a frequent supporter and contributor of RT and Sputnik. Janine di Giovanni has said that "Blumenthal’s views completely flipped" after meeting with RT and that Blumenthal "has attacked not only the White Helmets but also Bana al-Abed, a nine-year-old girl who lived in rebel-held Aleppo and ran a Twitter account with her mother. ... The man ... now accuses anti-Assad Syrians of belonging to al-Qaeda and has claimed that the White Helmets were affiliated with the Islamist group". Hopefully this explains some of their editorial view.----ZiaLater (talk) 11:49, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

@ZiaLater: Here is a small analysis by France 24 about the collaboration of the White Helmets with al-Qaeda: [1]. In addition to that, there are dozens of photos of White Helmets members carrying assault rifles. The White Helmets only operate together with Al-Qaeda, and every time Al-Qaeda had to flee an area because of defeat, the White Helmets fled together with them. Xenagoras (talk) 22:53, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

In addtion: The Southern Poverty Law Center has written "Blumenthal was not as clear of a spokesperson for Kremlin geopolitics before he appeared at the same RT gala as disgraced former National Security advisor Michael Flynn and the Green Party’s Jill Stein in December 2015. During that occasion, he joined a panel called “Infowar: Will there be a winner” alongside Alt Right anti-Semite Charles Bausman of Russia Insider. A month later, Blumenthal’s pro-Kremlin position crystalized with the founding of the Grayzone Project. ... With other Grayzone contributors, Norton has been criticized for downplaying war crimes and helping publicize false theories about rebels contaminating Damascus’s water supply".----ZiaLater (talk) 11:58, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 Near as my research turns up, this is basically a gussied-up personal blog for Max Blumenthal and his cadre of close friends; anything which I would trust from this source I would first crosscheck against more reliable sources; and at that point I would just use the better source. I would use attributed quotes per WP:ABOUTSELF but otherwise I would never use such a site for speaking in Wikipedia's voice. --Jayron32 14:53, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 It is a useful source of information and has a coverage and perspective that is not always available from other sources. I would attribute anything I used from the site. Burrobert (talk) 15:18, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

  What makes that perspective trustworthy? How can we know that the site's factual reporting is reliable? --Jayron32 19:05, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

  @Jayron32: They are possibly trying to make the "multipolar argument"? If someone today was told that smoking is unhealthy but then saw a 100-year-old smoker who attributes smoking to their longer than average lifespan, who would you trust? Having a perspective different from someone else does not make them reliable.----ZiaLater (talk) 04:03, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 or 3. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 16:05, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2. While Max Blumenthal has done some great journalistic work in the past, he's done some dubious work more recently too. We know nothing about Grayzone's editorial standards and it reads like a blog.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Bacondrum (talk • contribs) 23:39, 14 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3. Looks to be less reliable than Alternet, which is itself unusable. Guy (help!) 20:03, 15 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3. One could use this to attribute stuff to someone with WP:ABOUTSELF I think. I can't seem to find anything on fact-checking and would need more information on standards, the people behind it and whatnot. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 23:04, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

@MikkelJSmith2:, please read the "About" page [2] of The Grayzone for information on their editors, journalists and contributors. They have 2 editors plus 2 reporters plus several dozens of contributors. The Grayzone has published a correction on one of their stories so far, it can be read on the bottom of this article. The 4 editors/reporters all have a distinguished career of very good investigative journalism, including winning awards. Xenagoras (talk) 22:15, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1. Max Blumenthal is not the only journalist associated with this publication. Western state-mouthpieces like the NYT are considered reliable despite their obvious pro-imperialist bias, so why depreciate sources that dispute that narrative? Maybe Grayzone is pushing an agenda sometimes, but so are the western sources that are held up as infallible. LittleChongsto (talk) 16:36, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. It is a self-published site. Most of its contributors are also regulars with Russian state media (e.g. Anya Pamparil is an RT America presenter) and its agenda seems to converge 100% with the agenda of Russian state media. An informed glance at any of its articles shows several factual errors, suggesting little or no editorial standards or fact-checking. It is a partisan site which might be usable for the opinions of its contributors if they are noteworthy but not as a source of news or information. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:40, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. I found this article by Daily Beast (In Nicaragua, Torture Is Used to Feed ‘Fake News’) and I think it shows that the accuracy of Grayzone is worrisome. The article explains how The Grayzone Project published an article by "Charles Redvers", who, according to the article, lied about his background and identity. Redvers wrote about a video where 20-year-old Nicaraguan student Dania Valeska, after Sandinista militants besieged a church in Managua where she and two hundred other students sought refuge, was forced to recant, after being arreste, beaten and threatened to be killed. Redvers claimed that Valeska was "later shown to be play-acting", referring to the livestream she published during the attack, where gunshots could be heard and apologized to her mother, thinking she would die. Daily Beast quotes the United Nations as a rebuttal:

The United Nations human rights office disagrees. In an August 29 report, it noted that the threat to life was very real. “The church was subject to shootings by police and pro-Government armed elements for several hours, which led to the killing of two individuals and injured at least 16,” part of a crackdown the office said violated “international human rights law.” (The Nicaraguan government expelled the U.N.’s human rights team following the report’s publication.)

It is worth mentioning that Zero Hedge, which has been found to be unrealible for Wikipedia "due to its propagation of conspiracy theories" and because "it is a self-published blog that is biased or opinionated.", often quotes The Grayzone Project: [3][4][5][6][7][8]. In another instance, Grayzone even claimed that Democratic Socialists of America received financement by the United States State Department.[9]

As it has been pointed out, Grayzone is highly opinionated and a self-published site too. Its main contributor, Max Blumenthal, even responded once to an Al Jazeera report mocking victims of the Syrian Civil War. More information regarding Blumenthal's criticism here. Answering to other editors saying that other outlets are "Western state-mouthpieces" or have a "pro-imperialist bias" as a justification, two wrongs don't make a right. --Jamez42 (talk) 20:15, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

@Jamez42: Now that you mentioned Zero Hedge, Alexa Internet has some interesting metrics as well. The Audience Overlap shows that Grayzone readers often frequent Telesur (see WP:RSP) and the recently created Orinoco Tribune, which uses Telesur, Grayzone and Venezuelanalysis (see WP:RSP) as its primary sources. Looking at Grayzone's old domain name, "grayzoneproject.com", Alexa Internet shows that 47.1% of traffic sources came from Venezuelanalysis, 45.3% from Consortium News and 20.8% from MintPress News (see WP:RSP).----ZiaLater (talk) 21:03, 18 December 2019 (UTC) Edit: Apologies, this is a traffic source comparison and not where Grayzone received their traffic.----ZiaLater (talk) 23:08, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

Also, you can see from the MintPress website that Blumenthal is listed under "Frequent Contributors" and the GrayZone Project is listed under "News Partners".----ZiaLater (talk) 21:41, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4: Option 3: As the user who posted this RfC, I have patiently observed what multiple users have shared. Grayzone is a partner of MintPress News, with MintPress News itself being deprecated. Alexa Internet also shows an overlap with Telesur (also deprecated) and Venezuelanalysis (which was nearly deprecated, but ultimately found unreliable). Multiple users here have also said Grayzone is "less reliable than Alternet", that there are "several factual errors, suggesting little or no editorial standards or fact-checking", that "the accuracy of Grayzone is worrisome" and that we should "never use such a site for speaking in Wikipedia's voice". The allegations shared about Grayzone disseminating information about a possibly coerced and tortured protester in Nicaragua is also unsettling.

Responses arguing for the support of Grayzone did not argue in support of their reliability. One argued that Grayzone is "a perspective that is not always available from other sources", using a multipolar argument unrelated to reliability (different perspective ≠ reliable) that the Southern Poverty Law Center has already covered. Another user argued "Western state-mouthpieces like the NYT are considered reliable ... why depreciate sources that dispute that narrative? Maybe Grayzone is pushing an agenda sometimes, but so are the western sources that are held up as infallible". This user makes an irrelevant conclusion, using established reliable sources as a red herring to target when we are instead trying to determine if Grayzone itself is reliable.

After summarizing what everyone has shared so far, one can see that Grayzone should be deprecated.----ZiaLater (talk) 11:39, 19 December 2019 (UTC) Option 3 should be the best for Grayzone as editors have concerns about the reliability, though its usage is limited. Using this option is less prohibitive on the source and should help with any concerns with WP:ABOUTSELF.----ZiaLater (talk) 23:54, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

ZiaLater per your analysis and the comments that came after I think I'll have to change my vote to Option 3 it satisfies the concern that I had for WP:ABOUTSELF. I'll have to strikethrough my previous vote and write a new one though - MikkelJSmith (talk) 23:52, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

@ZiaLater: judging by "audience overlap" - judging news site X by what other news sites Y or Z their viewers also viewed is an irrelevant conclusion, using other sources as a red herring to target when we are instead trying to determine if Grayzone itself is reliable. Xenagoras (talk) 23:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 per ZiaLater's and Jamez42's excellent analyses. There is no reason to ever cite this on an encyclopedia; this is a self-published blog by a fringe-y figure. To the extent one wants to cite facts, there's no indication that the blog has any indication of consistent fact-checking, use by others, or any of the other requirements we require. To the extent one wants to cite opinions, a citation to the website would violate WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Neutrality^talk 20:02, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4, pretty well summed up by User:Jayron32 ("gussied-up personal blog for Max Blumenthal and his cadre of close friends), Guy ("less reliable than Alternet, which is itself unusable"), User:Bobfrombrockley ("its agenda seems to converge 100% with the agenda of Russian state media"), User:Neutrality ("self-published blog by a fringe-y figure"), and analysis by ZiaLater and User:Jamez42. This "cadre of close friends" do seem to re-publish each other's agenda, and no indication of more reliable authors at GrayZone have been given. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:27, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. Inherits Alternet's general-unreliableness, and what use by others exists is not great - mostly it focuses on Max Blumenthal's arrest, which implies that the site itself has little independent reputation outside of being, essentially, his blog. --Aquillion (talk) 23:36, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2 While there are some concerns with this source, there are some contributors who are respected university researchers. I think we should take it on a case-by-case basis. ~EDDY ^{(talk/contribs)}~ 01:29, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Which contributor is a respected (or even unrespected) university researcher? I couldn’t find any. BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:24, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

George Galloway is notable (as former UK MP, not as a researcher) and was interviewed on Brexit in a Grayzone video four days after you asked.^[10] Check out their channel, it's not only Max Blumenthal. –84.46.53.250 (talk) 00:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

While Galloway is "notable," I don't think he falls into the category of "respected university researcher." Per his wiki page, he's worked for Press TV and RT, both both considered generally unreliable and frequently described as disinformation outlets that uncritically report conspiracy theories. He's more of a controversial political figure. - GretLomborg (talk) 19:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Here's someone from academia: Jeb Sprague. --David Tornheim (talk) 20:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Even though the term "researcher" was used above, for this sort of thing I would really want a professor instead of an RA. Sunrise (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2 or 3 Should not typically be used because it primarily publishes investigative journalism (i.e., primary research) and opinion. Can be used for WP:ABOUTSELF or when they publish investigations whose notability is established by being taken up by other sources, e.g., Blumenthal's story about burning aid in Venezuela. Not frequently used, no need for deprecation. — cmonghost 👻 (talk) 04:45, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

• @Cmonghost: You do make a good point that it is not widely used on Wikipedia. Maybe we should go the way of Venezuelanalysis in order to be less prohibitive, though editors agree that there may be some inaccuracies here. Deprecation could also cause issues with WP:ABOUTSELF, so I am thinking about moving towards Option 3.----ZiaLater (talk) 05:12, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 Here[11] Grayzone says that reports on Chinese organ harvesting "rely without acknowledgement on front groups connected to the far-right Falun Gong cult . . ." Funny, Wikipedia's article Organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners in China sources include NYT, WaPo, CNN, the Economist, and so on. I will note that this is considerably worse than anything seen at certain sources that have been deprecated. However, as a general matter, I don't like deprecating sources, so option 3. Adoring nanny (talk) 16:25, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

The news source links China Tribunal to ETAC as per its website (the Guardian reports the same thing [12]), ETAC to Epoch Times, then Epoch Times to Falun Gong as per NBC [13] and the New Yorker [14]. The only part of the story that is original to the Grey Zone is taking people from the ETAC website and comparing them to those on the website of the Epoch Times, something which anyone can do with similar results (especially given the Grayzone has linked the relevant parts). The story's only claim that organ transplants were not happening was a link to a Washington Post article to that extent [15] and two words in an embedded tweet. El komodos drago (talk to me) 17:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 per Jamez42 and ZiaLater. It's basically a blog written by a politically-fringy figure that's closely associated with other deprecated news sites. I think deprecation is the best option to prevent it from being used to spread unreliable information. Any reliable facts it contains likely can be supported with more reliable sources that should be preferred anyway. WP:DEPRECATED#Acceptable_uses_of_deprecated_sources already provides an exception for a deprecated source to be used in WP:ABOUTSELF contexts. - GretLomborg (talk) 21:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 2 per Slatersteven, LittleChongsto, Cmonghost, Jayron32. The editor Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist, writer, author, and documentary maker, who has written for numerous publications, including The New York Times, Nation, Guardian, etc. (see his Wiki page). Reviews of his books have critical acclaim in many notable publications, but you wouldn't know it from reading the bulk of his Wikipage, because instead of an accurate summary of the reviews, those reviews have been cherry-picked for the juiciest quotes that are most likely to raise eyebrows and quotes from his harshest critics who call him an antisemite because he doesn't tow the line of being pro-Israel, and in Western politics it is criminal to criticize Israel. He probably agrees with the U.N. that Israel should be charged with war crimes. Let's see what Time of Israel--a publication I often see used as WP:RS--has to say about the U.N.'s decision to proceed with war crimes:

"Foreign Ministry vows Jerusalem ‘will not cooperate with this mockery,’ says ‘moral majority’ of states did not vote in favor of measure".

So if Blumenthal agrees with the U.N., apparently he is an immoral Self-hating Jew.

Some of the things Blumenthal writes about are shocking precisely because they are true, and the mainstream media will not share it. Like the fact that Maduro's troops did not burn the U.S. "aid" that was supposed to pass through the U.S. economic blockade, which is what nearly all the U.S. media said and never retracted. But Blumenthal showed footage that in fact the "peaceful" pro-Guaido activists were throwing Molotov cocktails that probably set the trucks on fire. Although the U.S. media got it wrong, they are not the "fake news" in this case, it's entities like TeleSUR that got it right that are liars and conspiracy theorists.

And indeed, many of the things Blumenthal says do challenge the corporate media's portrayal of events--which is why his award winning work is taken so seriously. He does not tow the line of the establishment, especially by not being a Zionist. Instead, he is labelled an "anti-semite" Jew by Zionists like Alan Dershowitz, Rabbi Marvin Hier, and Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.[16]. When a writer brushes up against the establishment by exposing certain things they are not supposed to, the "emperor's lapdog"--the establishment corporate media--is not going to like the experience. (Noam Chomsky) Those raised eyebrows are the result of Blumenthal and his writers at Grayzone telling uncomfortable truths that need to be told:

"If these institutions [media] condemn us, that's pretty good reason to think we are doing the right thing."

-Chomsky

--David Tornheim (talk) 07:04, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

As this RfC has run for 30 days, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Grayzone. — Newslinger talk 10:23, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

+1, I fondly recall waiting for 30 days after the last comment before having fun with NAC on c:+m:. –84.46.53.192 (talk) 04:21, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

References

• Option 2 -- I don't think I've ever cited Grayzone, but as the perspective is an outlier, I would attribute. (I assume someone has mentioned their "just let him talk" interview with Maduro.) 🌿 SashiRolls ^{t · c} 18:25, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 3 or 4 per the above analyses. On the founder (Blumenthal), it should be noted that the sources they cite are only a selection and multiple others haven’t been mentioned (e.g. see Max Blumenthal#Syria). Additionally, many of the arguments being used to support 1 or 2 for this source are fallacious, some on more than one level. For instance, the case described above as an irrelevant conclusion is also a tu quoque fallacy (which unfortunately is depressingly common in this context), and includes at least a couple of others as well. Sunrise (talk) 00:45, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 4 In additional all the above, Blumenthal has fabricated sources in the past and then claimed that the academic in question was intimidated into lying by a writer from The Atlantic [17]. --RaiderAspect (talk) 06:40, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 Saying that the Grayzone is not an RS because it has been quoted by non-RSes seems something of a problematic argument - non-RSes quote from RSes all the time, twitter accounts quote from BBC reports for example. The argument that the Grayzone should be deprecated because of its audience seems similarly dubious.

Grayzone is also a long way from one member of the general public's blog. Its masthead includes Max Blumenthal who has written for The New York Times RSP, The Nation RSP, Al Jazeera English RSP, and The Daily BeastRSP, winning various awards; Ben Norton who has written for The Intercept RSP including a piece alongside Glenn Greenwald (yep, the same one person who published the Snowden revelations); Aaron Maté who writes for The Nation RSP and is a regular contributor to The Hill RSP; and Anya Parampil. It also hosts pieces from guest contributors. The style of their content strikes me as about as far away from a blog as it could possibly get but that's in the eye of the beholder.

The Grayzone also covers stories like the Burning Aid one [18] which are later picked up by major newspapers [19].

While I will maintain that these are serious journalist using sources like video footage to shine a light of international affairs from an angle not normally seen you can argue against its use in Wikipedia. Just please for the love of logic do so for what they are and what they publish not because a blog quotes them from time to time and their audience might also read unreliable sources. El komodos drago (talk to me) 19:51, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

• 1) Writing op-eds for reliable sources doesn't imbue journalistic reliability on a writer. --Calton | Talk 01:34, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 because the two editors Norton and Blumenthal plus the two reporters Mate and Parampil plus several contributors have distinguished careers in investigative journalism and some of them won journalism awards for their work. The Grayzone conducts reporting on location in foreign countries and also publishes corrections like here. The Grayzone is independent from political or financial outside influence. Its independence allows it to get unique journalistic access to places and people, enabling it to have scoops. It is a valuable addition to the journalistic spectrum. Xenagoras (talk) 23:55, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 4, or Option 3 at absolute best. Fringy as hell. --Calton | Talk 01:34, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 Regarding the burning aid in Venezuela, the Grayzone has been credited by Glenn Greenwald with scooping the New York Times:

  While the NYT’s article and video are perfectly good and necessary journalism, the credit they are implicitly claiming for themselves for exposing this lie is totally undeserved. That’s because independent journalists – the kind who question rather than mindlessly repeat government claims and are therefore mocked and marginalized and kept off mainstream television – used exactly this same evidence on the day of the incident to debunk the lies being told by Rubio, Pompeo, Bolton and CNN. On February 24, the day the lie spread, Max Blumenthal wrote from Venezuela, on the independent reporting Grayzone site, that “the claim was absurd on its face,” ...He compiled substantial evidence strongly suggesting that the trucks were set ablaze by anti-Maduro protesters, including Bloomberg video showing them using Molotov cocktails, to express serious doubts about the mainstream narrative.

RfC: Is Paste a generally reliable source for politics-related topics?

Is Paste a generally reliable source for politics-related topics?

- MrX 🖋 16:41, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

For background, see the discussion above: #Endless problems on Media coverage of Bernie Sanders

---

• Note: Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources has it listed as a general reliable source. Not sure why subject matters after fact checking has been verified and accepted by a project.--WillC 17:12, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

  Sources can have different levels of reliability in different subject areas. See WP:RSCONTEXT for more details. The scope of WP:A/S is musical topics, not general political topics. — Newslinger talk 17:14, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

  RSCONTENT says they may, it doesn't say they are defacto unreliable for that context.--WillC 17:18, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

  It's not de facto reliable for politics, either. This RfC will determine what the consensus is. — Newslinger talk 17:22, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

  That I won't argue, but its use is to cover the publication of articles and the negativity of these articles. Not for an actual factual statement regarding politics. Since we are discussing context, the manner in which it is being used is relevant.--WillC 18:00, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

• No - Their political coverage is superficial, and very high on opinion and low on fact. They routinely quote mine other sources, add a bit of snarky commentary, and call it journalism.[20][21] Most of their politics content is written by Shane Ryan, who seems to be a Bernie Sanders devotee and critic of mainstream media.[22][23][24][25][26]. Paste's coverage of politics is on par with The Root, (defunct)Splinter News, and Salon (the later of which Shane Ryan previously wrote for)[27]. - MrX 🖋 17:16, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
  • None of that disqualifies Ryan or the source per WP:BIASED and WP:NEWSORG.--WillC 17:20, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
    • I believe it does, and I've listed several examples to indicate why it should not be used as a source for politics content.- MrX 🖋
      • Well this is where you are going to need to list that. Because Ryan being a fan of any politician doesn't make the source less reliable nor does being involved in opinion content. If that was the case, there would be no reliable sources.--WillC 04:03, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
• No, and people saying it is are being silly. It's a specialist source, and that speciality isn't politics. Advocates trying to rules-lawyer RS guidance to push it through have fundamentally misunderstood Wikipedia sourcing - David Gerard (talk) 17:24, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yes, per the comment of MrX. I did not find discussion on Splinter or Root, but there was some on Salon, with no consensus achieved, and a recommendation for adding attributions to its statements. If their politics content is written by the same person/people, then they should have the same treatment. Biased sources should not summarily be prohibited – not least because following such a guideline to a T would ban even so-called RS in politics such as CNN, (MS)NBC and ABC, given that they are for-profit entities with billion-dollar-scale political interests. Permit the political coverage of Paste Magazine, but attribute it as progressive or leftist in citations if such is the general sentiment of editors. As such, the discussion on this should probably not center around bias, but whether it can be trusted to be factual – and the fact that they have been deemed RS in other topics tells me they shouldn't be assumed without evidence to be untruthful. Selvydra (talk) 18:39, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
• No. It should not be used for factual statements. There's nothing to indicate it has a reputation for fact-checking and reputable reporting in politics. It may be used for attributed statements if they meet WP:DUE. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 20:01, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yes. It's already reliable for other articles on Wikipedia, thus I don't think it would publish falsehoods in other topics. It would be idiotic for their reputation for them to do that -- especially for a source that's been cited by WaPo, NYT and other RS. When looking at their politics page, I've seen similar analyses in different sources. Just with a quick look this article [28] has subject matter that's been featured in many news articles by RS in the past few weeks. Another example would be this [29], I've read similar pieces/arguments in the Hill. So, I don't think that we should paint the source with a big brush due to bias -- even if the tone of some articles is snarky at times (which I don't particularly like). And as for bias, we've had sources with bias used on the site. So, in the case of bias, Paste should probably be attributed. So, in other words, the same conclusion that was given for Salon. I think that would be fair for consistency too. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 22:10, 26 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yes: Obviously I find it reliable. Apart from Albums finding it reliable, which means that project has established credibility through factual accuracy, I'd like to point out a couple of things about the site. Particularly that CNN featured it during headlines and as per policy "The goal is to reflect established views of sources as far as we can determine them" which displays the viewpoint by CNN regarding Paste as a credible organization to lend time. Chicago Tribune has cited it and even listed it among the best magazines. The book American Directory of Writer's Guidelines has a section regarding the Paste editing behavior, including editorial content, fact-checking, and reliability. Paste was named "Magazine of the Year" by the PLUG Independent Music Awards in 2006, 2007 and 2008. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, Paste was nominated for a National Magazine Award in the category of General Excellence. Though they are minor awards, the organization is notable enough for an article. Washington Post, New York Post, and The Guardian have all covered Paste. To "reflect established views of sources" seems to be that Paste has a good reputation among sources or at least a reputable magazine. In fact, Guardian has employed Hari Ziyad for content and he has worked for Paste as well. Shane Ryan also writes for Paste and is the subject of the citation at stake. He is a New York Times bestselling author and written for ESPN The Magazine and Golf Digest in addition to Paste. These are just a little bit of the information I found through a simple google search. As for context regarding source, it appears Paste is moving beyond just music and film now as it has an official section for politics. Which means determining if it is fitting for this material. The policy says it may not be reliable but not that is automatically. I suggest the above material makes it reliable as is for all topics due to established factual accuracy as a generally reliable source in addition to other sources recognizing it and its editors as having credibility and reliability to do material of their own. Like before, the goal for RS is to reflect the views of the source. I feel the views regarding Paste and its editors is positive.--WillC 23:26, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

  Wrestlinglover, you forgot to link to the Albums page. Here's the link : Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources. MikkelJSmith (talk) 22:40, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• Yes as per the coverage of it in other reliable sources as detailed above, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 02:51, 27 December 2019 (UTC)
• Yes, reasonable politics-related WP:USEBYOTHERS across the political spectrum in eg. Vanity Fair, Vox, Vox again, New York Times, Fox News, The Colorado Independent, Snopes, The New Yorker, The Guardian. --Aquillion (talk) 04:27, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• I checked five of those sources: four (N Yorker, Guardian, Vox x2) do not cite Paste magazine for factual statements, but for explicitly partisan punditry (in the same way that those sources might cite op-eds from the Daily Wire and Breitbart as a reflection of where conservatives stand on a topic). One (NYT) cited Paste for its reporting, but that was for its arts coverage.[30] Here are the ways in which the four sources cite Paste: "the Chapo Trap House hosts have been lauded by Paste magazine as the “vulgar, brilliant demigods of the new progressive left”"[31], "Paste magazine labelled “Chapo Trap House” the “vulgar, brilliant demigods of the new progressive left.”"[32], " “This is classic Booker — stand out front on feel-good social issues, regardless of his past positions, and align with big money everywhere else,” wrote Walter Bragman at Paste Magazine."[33] and ""The Democratic establishment doesn’t want a Democrat as president – it specifically wants Hillary Clinton as president," writes Brogan Morris in Paste Magazine."[34] This is not a RS outside of its arts coverage. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:26, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  When looking at the sources posted by Aquillion, three of them that you didn't mention cite Paste for its political coverage : [35], [36] and [37]. MikkelJSmith (talk) 22:48, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• This source quotes a statement made by a politician to Paste (which RS also do with non-RS).[38] The Snopes piece does not cite Paste for factual information, it cites Paste because a person that they were fact-checking pointed them to a Paste article and they cite the website as part of a genesis of an unfounded conspiracy theory (just like they would with non-RS).[39] The Fox News is by the hack Brian Flood in Fox News's "entertainment" section which is solely devoted to misleading smears about other nets outlets. So, in short, the only RS that has cited Paste for its politics reporting is a piece by Fox News (an outlet that I've for years argued is not a RS, it's also an outlet that would not hesitate citing all kinds of non-RS from our RS perennial list) attacking CNN.[40] And the piece is petty as hell. CNN failed to mention that university students in the DC area who attended a Democratic primary townhall had also interned with liberal political groups? What is this: "Abena McAllister, who was described by Blitzer as “active in Maryland Democrat Party,” was listed by CNN’s chyron as a “mother of two.” However, she is apparently the chair of the Charles County Democratic Central Committee." It's exemplary of the kind of petty BS that Paste is used for on the Media bias against Bernie Sanders page. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:15, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  I skimmed the 2nd one so I missed that, sorry. As for the first of those, I will have to disagree that still seems fine to me. As for the third one, Fox News' website is RS, so I don't see why Paste wouldn't be used, but this does re-affirm my belief -- which I mentioned above -- that Paste should be attributed though due to its bias (just like Salon). MikkelJSmith (talk) 23:47, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

• " partisan punditry" = "partisan expert analysis". The point of RS is to establish to reputation of a source against secondary sources. Established sources crediting Paste in any way that is positive suggests they have a positive reputation regarding Paste which establishes credibility and reliability.--WillC 04:09, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• RS frequently cite the likes of the Daily Stormer, Breitbart News, Daily Wire, Gateway Pundit and InfoWars. Simply being cited is not what WP:USEBYOTHERS is about. It's about being cited for statements of fact. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 04:24, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• It clearly states the goal: "The goal is to reflect established views of sources as far as we can determine them." The problem with that argument is that the secondary sources list them with a negative reputation. These list Paste with a positive reputation. That is what makes one credible and the other just a child screaming into a bag.--WillC 05:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• None of the sources, with the exception of one NYT piece on Paste's arts coverage and a Fox News piece, cite Paste in a positive way. I don't understand your need to not budge an inch on anything. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:39, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• I don't have to when you don't read. Literally Vanity Fair, Vox, Vox again, New York Times, Fox News, The Colorado Independent, Snopes, The New Yorker, and The Guardian all referenced Paste in positive light, either using it as a factual source or as a source for opinions. None treated Paste as a bad source or pushed negativity towards it when referenced.--WillC 17:53, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• If that's your standard for positive light, then the Daily Stormer, Breitbart News, Daily Wire, Gateway Pundit and InfoWars have also been cited in a positive way in RS. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 17:58, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• Have they? And sources?--WillC 21:56, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• Per this standard, here are some "positive" USEBYOTHERS for Breitbart:[41][42][43][44]. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 23:19, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• No Couldn't find a corrections page on their site. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:32, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

  Adoring nanny, why would that disqualify their reliability? Genuinely curious, since some sources only correct below the article and they're reliable (i.e. they don't have a corrections page). MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:08, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Do they do that? Adoring nanny (talk) 13:03, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not sure. I was just asking you a question regarding that point. MikkelJSmith (talk) 19:44, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

• No Paste Magazine is only an RS for music, not for politics. Others have correctly noted that their news coverage consists of a small handful of opinionated writers. For an outside opinion, I see that MediaBiasFactCheck also notes they are left-biased: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/paste-magazine/ --MaximumIdeas (talk) 02:00, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
  • A bias doesn't negate reliability per WP:BIASED--WillC 04:09, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm seeing way too much conflation of bias and opinionatedness with unreliability. One does not automatically beget the other. If it did, CNN, MSNBC and Fox wouldn't be RS either (AT&T, Comcast and Fox Corp. have tremendous political interests – the difference is they purport themselves to be unbiased, while most leftist sites do not claim such). Selvydra (talk) 09:32, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
    • Which is really upsetting because it is an attempt to discredit in such an invalid way while remaining ignorant to arguments against such position. It is a very disingenuous position that is brought on by an editors own inherent bias. All media sources have a bias. To claim bias that does not impact its factual capabilities as reason to deny reliability of a source, would basically level all of Wikipedia's ability to source statements. Even scholarly sources maintain biases simply by covering specific subjects.--WillC 10:12, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
      • You two are right that the outlet could still be given a “reliable but biased” rating; the issue is that it also has no reputation for reliability in politics coverage, as numerous others have noted.MaximumIdeas (talk) 14:54, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

        The thing though is that as I mentioned above it was cited for its political coverage by Fox News (the reliable Fox News stuff not the Hannitys and whatnot) and another source MikkelJSmith (talk) 16:15, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

  MaximumIdeas, we don't use mediabias/fact check, it's considered unreliable. MikkelJSmith (talk) 14:21, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

  • MikkelJSmith, I’ve seen it cited in these discussions before. I know it’s not the end-all-be-all, but it seems to be an important voice and they have a staff of researchers looking into the outlets. Was there a formal decision I missed here that their ratings should not be mentioned at all? If so, please let me know. MaximumIdeas (talk) 14:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

    MaximumIdeas, I used to cite it too, but according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources it's unreliable MikkelJSmith (talk) 15:23, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

    • Thank you. MaximumIdeas (talk) 15:25, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
• No Doesn’t appear to have any credibility in the field of politics, especially in regards to factual reporting or journalism. Toa Nidhiki05 15:05, 28 December 2019 (UTC)
• No Not it's area of expertise. And of course it's possible to be reliable for one thing but not another. I might count as an "expert" in my professional field (where I have educational credentials and experience) but am no more than an uninformed layperson in plenty of others. Publications are the same way. Current American politics is not exactly a niche field lacking in sources; no need to stretch to include these out-of-scope resources. If anything, we should be significantly more restrictive on which sources we use in this area, as it is one where disinformation is rampant and reliable sources are plentiful.Just a Rube (talk) 13:01, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: The New Republic

Which option best describes The New Republic?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

Thanks! --Jamez42 (talk) 12:04, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

• Option 2: I am not seeing why this is unreliable, what am I missing?Slatersteven (talk) 12:12, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
• Before we proceed - What is the reason for this RFC? - David Gerard (talk) 13:04, 31 December 2019 (UTC) Furthermore - speedy close as malformed RFC, started with no context for question - someone please? - David Gerard (talk) 17:18, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I agree we need to stop these RfC's that are eliminating all WP:RS that is critical of U.S. regime change efforts in Venezuela. The same group of editors who dominate the Venezuela pages (e.g. [45]) have been eliminating these sources one-by-one with their !iVotes and often citing a connection to or supportive views of Maduro, e.g. Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR),TeleSUR, Venezuelanalysis, Grayzone, HispanTV. I have good reason to believe this editor wants the New Republic eliminated to make it easier to delete material that is unfavorable to Juan Guaido who he supported in this this edit war here. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:48, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Tornheim, please have a close look at WP:EDITCOUNTITIS (an argument based on that is unlikely to be sound). I know you read the discussions of how my editcount is inflated by the way I edit, the amount of cleanup I do, and the amount of intra-article copying and moving of text I was the one to do, after discussion. I certainly know you know that I no longer participate in those articles (precisely because of false examples of editors succumbing to EDITCOUNTITIS to attempt to discredit my editing, when I was the one doing all of the cleanup and consolidating between articles). I do follow RSN, and I will continue to participate here when I see marginal and state-sponsored sources being used inappropriately. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:42, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

The list includes:

Centre for Economic and Policy Research CEPR - RfC still running

Telesur deprecated in 2019

Grayzone - RfC still running

MintPress News deprecated in 2019

Venezuelanalysis deprecated in 2019

Burrobert (talk) 14:34, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

This is a tired and dumb argument about rfc's here. What is the point of this noticeboard if not to discuss reliable sources? If a source is debated then a discussion and survey is great, and if the result is a firm consensus that should set a precedent with that source lest something changes ie: new owners, new editorial staff etc. We save a lot of time/repetitive debates/edit wars etc by having a list of reliable sources. The debates been had, move on. I personally think these endless and inevitably frivolous oppositions to rfc's are disruptive. Bacondrum (talk) 02:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Options 1 or 2. It should be attributed for controversial claims or for things that other RS have not covered. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 13:51, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
• Close as malformed RfC. The original poster has offered no evidence one way or the other. This constant series of RfCs trying to anoint or condemn sources without context needs to stop. The long term effect is for those with one POV to vote sources with opposing POVs "off the island". This is a bad practice and does not help make better articles. Springee (talk) 13:57, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
• In this case, UNDUE. As with all matters of RS, one size does not fit all, and reliability of a source depends on the text being sourced. In this case, the author is Mark Weisbrot, a chavismo cheerleader, who has not evidenced fact checking or journalistic principles wrt Venezuela, and has been shown to be factually wrong multiple times. I can't fit that into the "Options" formulation above, but Mark Weisbrot is highly biased on Venezuela, and inserting opinions from him is UNDUE. I suggest those who want to insert anything said by Weisbrot should try to find similar at NYT, WaPO, or any of the other left-leaning mainstream media. I have not formed an opinion on The New Republic in general, but if it is like other sources that feature(d) Weisbrot's work (e.g.; The Huffington Post), we can look at how we rate their reliability, and the reliability of their contributors. We perhaps have the same situation here-- a source that demonstrates little journalistic concern about contributor opinion it publishes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:45, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

  Option 2, based on information below from User:Alcibiades979 and User:MaximumIdeas, as well as the examples of fringe reporting from User:Aquillion, then we would place New Republic similarly to how we place National Review. Separately the Weisbrot-authored opinion would be UNDUE and Option 3 according the scheme above. So, that yields Option 2 or 3. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:55, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Can we please discus the source, and not each other?Slatersteven (talk) 16:45, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Could someone please provide an example of what text is being proposed based on this source and at what article? In general, looking at the Weisbrot-authored article, an examination of all of the preposterous positions and demonstrably false claims (compared to more reliable sources) that it advances would be too lengthy to be of use here. What are the specifics so that DUE WEIGHT can be evaluated? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I think a significant number of us have been fearing this sort of source-silencing for a long time. I certainly was worried, with Wikipedia being as omnipresent as a source of information, that there were nowhere near enough protections in place to keep it from being used by schemers and agendists for profit and power. Now we see a part of it happening here.

No. The New Republic is a good source. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 17:12, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Jack Sebastian I'm just pinging you to remind you to vote for which option you think is best. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry. Option 1. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 14:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 or 2 The New Republic had a tumultuous time in the 2010s, but most of the coverage that I can find of it criticizes the publication's business and marketing decisions, not so much their actual journalistic quality [46] [47]. They've had managerial troubles, and our article for them documents a number of controversies involving individual writers and editors, but as of this year CJR is still treating them like a leading American news publication, even if they're not what they were in the 20th century. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:08, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I think its fair to say that very few media outlets have survived the fake news bombardment unscathed (which is an utter shame). Yes, the NR has had its share of controversies, but here's the thing: they always end up being on the right side of a news story, and they have survived crises that would have detonated other news agencies. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 19:17, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that this is less due to fake news and more due to the general influence of the internet on news media. TNRs trajectory over the past decade has mirrored Newsweek to an extent, with the caveat that TNR appears to have reversed some of their more disastrous decisions made 2014–2016 and now have new editorial leadership which seems to be less interested in picking up the clickbait market, whereas Newsweek took the full plunge._signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:53, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Contributor opinion (eg Weisbrot) is still distinguished from the source in which it is published (eg Huffington Post as a different example). To evaluate the contributor in this case, versus The New Republic in general, we still need to know what the proposed text is. In general, Weisbrot's writing often has demonstrable factual errors, but as a chavismo cheerleader, he is a good source on what Maduro/Chavez believe/state/think/do. Specifics, please? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:34, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 2 A lot of New Republic pieces read like opinion pieces. For example, as of right now on their home page, we have "A Unified Theory of the Trumps' Creepy Aesthetic"[48] which talks about Trump's "smirking melon-ball head", "impossibly accursed foods", and an aesthetic that is "always so shitty". I also couldn't find a corrections page on their site but did notice that they said corrections could be submitted as letters to the editor, which seems a little weird, but does also show some interest in correcting errors. So I can't exactly say that they are unreliable, but I can't really say they are reliable, either. Adoring nanny (talk) 11:54, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

• Comment @David Gerard:@Springee: I'm a little confused regarding the malformation of the RfC, since from what I gather RfCs have to be started in a neutral manner, without including own's positions.

As it was suggested before, the source was recently added to the United States involvement in regime change article, although I deeply regret that David Tornheim used their comment to attack and accuse me and other editors about unrelated topics. Browsing through the noticeboard's archives, it seems that the outlet's reliability has not been discussed in the past, so I want to know the community's position. Media Bias/Fact Check rates New Republic as having a left bias based on story selection and editorial positions that frequently favor the left. and high factual reporting due to proper sourcing of information and a clean fact check record., which is why I think attribution is needed and Option 2 best describes the outlet, but I've seen we don't depend on Media Bias/Fact Check to determine source reliability, another reason why I thought the RfC was the best option.

If needed, I can solve this issue, reopen the request for comment or close it, depending on the best option. Once again, many thanks in advance. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:29, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Jamez42, MediaBiasCheck is considered unreliable on wikipedia. See [49] - MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Not an attack. Everything I stated here is completely verifiable and has been observed by other editors in this RfC and elsewhere about the needless elimination of sources with these unnecessary WP:RfC's. These sources cover things outside the scope of the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis.

If you truly believe that what I stated above has no legitimacy, maybe it is best we take it to WP:AN/I. Would that be better venue for you? I am happy to open up a section there about my concerns. --David Tornheim (talk) 13:49, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, take it to ANI or user talk pages, we do not discuss users here.Slatersteven (talk) 13:56, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

@MikkelJSmith2: I know, which is why I said that we don't depend on Media Bias/Fact Check to determine source reliability and a reason of why I started the RfC. --Jamez42 (talk) 18:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Jamez42, oh sorry, I misread your paragraph. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

MikkelJSmith2 No worries, thanks for your input :) --Jamez42 (talk) 18:59, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

• Options 1 or 2. Pretty much agree with the arguments above. I would also like to add that interestingly this chart [50] puts it in the same ballpark as the Daily Beast, The Intercept, Mother Jones, the Nation and Vanity Fair. I'm not treating it as gospel, but based on other information I know about the source, that seems correct. So, reliable but biased would be the assessment here I think. - MikkelJSmith (talk) 18:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 3. The New Republic says in its own about section that "For over 100 years, we have championed progressive ideas." So they have a self-described left-agenda. Furthermore, they have no editorial policies separating their news from this editorial agenda. Given this, while it can be an RS for opinion or investigative reporting, it should be used with extreme caution when it comes to political reporting. Separately, am curious to hear from @David Gerard:@Springee: where in the guidelines it says that a description is necessary for an RFC. --MaximumIdeas (talk) 02:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable. Opinions should be attributed of course. Burrobert (talk) 05:22, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Options 2 or 3. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's purely opinion, no? I started reading through some articles and at first was put off by the fact that opinion wasn't labeled as such, until I did some research on the paper and found that it's purely opinion. This is even stated in its |about page: "We don’t lament intractable problems; our journalism debates complex issues, and takes a stance. Our biggest stories are commitments for change." So in this light it should be treated like any other op-ed source. It most definitely has a point of view, its writings use persuasive rhetoric to argue for that point of view. Alcibiades979 (talk) 06:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1: per Burrobert "Generally reliable. Opinions should be attributed of course.", per Slatersteven,Snooganssnoogans, Rosguill, and Jack Sebastian.

Still as I noted above--and others have concurred--I find serious problems with having these RfC's, when a standard post following the rules of WP:RS/N is all we needed in this case. I suggest we have a wider discussion about these RfC's and create limits on when they are launched and insist on a clear justification for them.

Perhaps, simply requiring in advance that editors show clear and convincing evidence that an RfC is needed, and requiring them to first make a request to hold the RfC here at WP:RfC--one that gains approval before it is permitted to be launched. These RfC's--especially when few non-involved editors show up (not the case here)--can have huge negative impacts on sourced material from the past and into the future. It can also create a strong POV problem if sources with a particular bias (all sources, including NYT, CNN, etc. have systemic bias) are eliminated by editors who do not like that bias. We cannot follow our key guideline of WP:NPOV if we continue to eliminate or deprecate publications that include opinions by experts, simply because the opinions have a particular bias that the editors who show up to the RfC do not happen to like, whether that bias is left, right, pro- or anti-nationalism, etc.

Also, these "fact-checking" sites have strong biases, and these are often used to "discredit" a publication in these RfC's, sometimes because of a single incident [to be exanded] I think these fact-checking sites may be even less reliable than the publications they are assessing. A single claim in one of these sites should not be the basis for deprecating a source. --David Tornheim (talk) 09:37, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with David Tornheim. I haven't see anything to make me think this isn't a generally reliable source but that doesn't mean we should treat every article as automatically reliable etc. My primary concern is there are too many of these RfCs recently and it seems their objective is to either anoint as "good" or "bad" a particular source. David's concern about systematic bias if too many sources are voted off the island or enshrined is also a concern. When someone comes here with an open ended question about a source I think the question that should be asked is, why are you asking? What have previous RSN discussions said? Can you provide an example of how this source is going to be used in an article? I don't recall ever working with/around the editor who opened this RfC nor do I recall dealing with The Nation as a source often enough to have an opinion on it (I had to look it up to see if it was left or right leaning!). Regardless, we simply need fewer of these blanket RfCs. It seems like far to many have come out since the Daily Mail was deprecated. Perhaps this noticeboard should have a rule stating that RS discussions must include context examples (what article is going to be used where) or have examples of previous RSN discussions before we can have a RfC to assign a stamp of good/bad on any general source. Perhaps we should spend a bit more time discussing if individual articles are making sound claims vs just assuming because it comes from "RS" it must be good. Either way, as it stands I'm opposed to RfCs such as this one. Springee (talk) 14:39, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

• Option 1 or 2. They're a complex case because their ownership and direction have shifted over time. On the whole they are generally reliable; they are often WP:BIASED, but the direction of that bias has swung back and forth over time, as our article on them discusses, so knowing the era a particular piece was written in and who wrote it is important if you need to determine if and how it's biased on the particular subject at hand. They have also occasionally published WP:FRINGE positions, especially Charles Murray's views on race science. That was a bit of an outlier and on the whole they are probably reliable due to their established reputation and relatively few scandals that directly impugn their journalistic accuracy, but it's important to pay attention to who wrote a particular piece there and to use in-line citations when necessary. --Aquillion (talk) 06:30, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1 leaning left or right is beyond irrelevant. Have they published falsehoods? Nope. Have they got good editorial standards? Yes. This is a high quality left leaning source (everyone has a slant, whether they accept it or not). Bacondrum (talk) 01:00, 11 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 either the website does not clearly label opinion content or it's all opinion, so it should be attributed in articles. buidhe 03:53, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

References

• Option 2: I do have to agree with concerns of a potential blur between fact and opinion, though it does have some editorial standards. Definitely should be a source that is attributed.----ZiaLater (talk) 12:13, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting. I've seen no report of specific factual errors in comments above. Everyone looks at a set of (who, what, when, where) facts and makes their own (why) interpretations. -- Yae4 (talk) 17:48, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 1; as others have said, I haven't seen any suggestion they make factual errors (except, presumably, with the low frequency that even the "best" sources occasionally make errors). If, as some have said above, reports from certain eras are biased in one way or another or need attribution, that can be discussed on a case-by-case basis (or brought up again here if and when there is an actual problem). -sche (talk) 07:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2, but only because I don't accept option 1 in relation to any regularly updated source The only sources we can confirm as "generally reliable" are "closed" ones like books that have been published in a finished state. I also despise the fact that many Wikipedia editors (most recently, in my recollection, here) would like to use popular news media (and "scholarly" sources in unrelated fields) as "generally reliable" sources even in cases in cases where they are definitely wrong. Lacking further information, options 3 and 4 in this case appear to be something only someone with a political axe to grind would buy in to. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:07, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
• Close as malformed RfC. Like Springee said. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:48, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: Metalheadzone

Which of the following best describes the reliability of Metalheadzone?

Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting

Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply

Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting

Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information

Supplemental information about the website: Publishes news about Rock and Metal bands both modern and old. Does have a page dedicated to user submitted news but the form seems to be down so unsure if there is user generated 'news' being submitted and published, or if any is, if it's being verified in any way. EliotWL (talk) 17:24, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see any indica of reliability there. It appears to be essentially a blog. Guy (help!) 01:47, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
• Strongly unreliable - we’ve already had a discussion and come to a consensus on the music WikiProjects. It’s listed at WP:NOTRSMUSIC] as a result of it. Sergecross73 msg me 18:55, 8 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 Their https://metalheadzone.com/about-us/ does not provide any indication of editorial oversight or policy. They do list at least two contributing staff, but no credentials are provided for them. I suspect that factual reporting could be considered reliable, while reviews may contain personal opinion rather than anything else. However, since it's on NOTRSMUSIC, I would stay away from its use. Walter Görlitz (talk) 21:26, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

• Even a “2” is pretty generous. As I mentioned in the WikiProject discussion, the head person who writes a vast majority of the articles has a disclaimer at the bottom articles that essentially states that he doesn’t have a great grasp on the English language. Which explains the extremely misleading or poorly worded headlines they frequently pump out. Sergecross73 msg me 00:59, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Why are we jumping straight to RfCs? - Ryk72 ^talk 06:13, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
  • If you look above There are two metal zines that no one has discussed, and have subsequently been archived. Perhaps EliotWL saw that and decided to have some actual input. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:38, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
    • Not reliable. Appears to be used in only 11 places.[51] On review of the site, I concur with JzG, above, I don't see any indica of reliability there. It appears to be essentially a blog. and Richard3120 here, It's literally a group of Turkish guys reposting anything they can find online related to rock and metal on their website. It seems to be 90% tabloid/Buzzfeed-style "shock! horror! nightmare!" exaggerated headlines that preface mundane anecdotes. - Ryk72 ^talk 07:26, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

• Generally unreliable Most of these articles have BLP considerations and this style of tabloid gossip can't be recommended. Dartslilly (talk) 18:54, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Why Wikipedia Is Much More Effective Than Facebook at Fighting Fake News

For the interested, Haaretz on WP:s deprecated sources. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 22:37, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Yup, Facebook believes in freedom of speech, we don't: WP:NOTFREESPEECH. Also, “anyone can edit” should be changed to “anyone can edit constructively”. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:47, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Nah... anyone can still edit... it’s just that nonconsructive edits will be removed or amended by other editors. Blueboar (talk) 23:36, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that anyone can attempt to edit _signed, Rosguill ^talk 23:45, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

Then certain things cannot be said, thus no freedom of speech. (soapbox alert) this at its heart if the problem with certain attitudes towards absolute Free speech. It is regarded as not only the right to be wrong, but the right to outright lie. This may be partially true, but us not allowing it is not different from me not being able to right for a major newspaper or walking into Number 10 to call Boris a liar to his face (or come to that to go into any of your houses and launch a foul mouthed tirade at your kids).Slatersteven (talk) 10:32, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Haaretz's choice to refer to deprecation as "delisting" halfway through the article is odd, and their phrasing suggests that we have some sort of immutable hierarchy of validity for various types of publications, but otherwise it's a good read. Their decision to counterpose our against Facebook's content moderation is interesting, and in an ideal world would motivate Facebook to try harder, although I'm not sure the comparison is entirely fair because the goals of the two platforms are rather distinct. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:50, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• What bothers me is that this article shows how most people have misunderstood what “deprecation” means... it is viewed by too many as being a “ban” on using certain sources. However, it is SUPPOSED TO BE a more nuanced “limitation” on usage. Almost every RFC that resulted in “deprecation” includes carve outs and exceptions... situations when the source IS acceptable. We need to do a better job of explaining that. Blueboar (talk) 23:46, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Based on the way that some editors are removing the two deprecated sites mentioned there from articles, it clearly does not mean limitation on use to them. I've seen editors remove it and add {{cn}} for innocuous facts. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:51, 9 January 2020 (UTC)

• Yeah it is a defacto ban. If it was meant to be or not really does not seem to matter unfortunately. PackMecEng (talk) 23:52, 9 January 2020 (UTC)
• I've seen the same thing as Walter. It's one of the reasons why I've universally opposed deprecation. Springee (talk) 00:52, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• All content, even innocuous facts, should be sourced to RS, unless they are clearly "the sky is blue" type facts. If a fact is only mentioned on unreliable sources, then we can't be sure it's true, and even if true, it doesn't have enough due weight. See my comment below. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:57, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• May I suggest you raise that point to the film project and TV project? It is their collected opinions that once a film has been released or TV program has aired the need for sources has ceased, going so far as removing sources that have been supplied up to that point. There are other projects that have taken similar stances, but those are the two that irk me most. However, WP:V does not support the ubiquitous need for sourcing you espouse. It only goes so far as to state "all quotations, and any material whose verifiability has been challenged or is likely to be challenged, must include an inline citation that directly supports the material." Walter Görlitz (talk) 02:20, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• Walter Görlitz, I find that rather disturbing. We don't accept IMDB because some of its content is crowdsourced and thus not reliable enough. Is "no source at all" somehow more reliable? They are on a slippery slope, and inline citations must be provided if any content is challenged.

I'm not sure if there is any discrepancy between what I wrote and the WP:V policy. The "inline citation" must still come from a RS, and that applies to all article content. Otherwise, basic facts that are of the "sky is blue" variety don't need such citations.

BTW, I'll happily modify my statement, so please continue to discuss and critique it. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:33, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

All the film and TV people are saying is that a film, TV episode or book is its own reference. But this only applies to what is actually in it. If you are acknowledged in the credits, then that is fine; but going beyond that by saying that we heard somewhere that you were a ghost-writer is WP:OR. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:39, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Well, those are primary sources, so one must be careful. We can use primary sources for uncontroversial facts, but not much else. For example, we cannot use them for interpretation. Without secondary RS, we cannot know what weight to give that information, so such content can be challenged. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:45, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Deprecation should have only one exception: "can only be used in its own article, and then only if it's not unduly self-serving." All our content, facts and opinions, must be sourced solely using RS, with that being the only exception. Since my research includes reading content from both RS and unreliable ones, I will often find details in unreliable sources which might be factual, so I then search RS for those facts. If I can find them, I'll use the RS. If they are not found in RS, I can't be certain they are factual, and even if they are, they don't have enough weight to be mentioned, since use in RS guides our determination of due weight. -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:20, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Just to give one example of an exception specified in RFC: Daily Mail - old reporting (from historical days when the Mail was under different management) is considered reliable. So, at a minimum, we are SUPPOSED to check when the report was published before we remove it. Context is important. It bothers me that people are ignoring this. Blueboar (talk) 00:34, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Good point. Is there a cut-off date at the deprecation notice? -- BullRangifer (talk) 00:44, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

No, it's just something someone said in passing in the RFC. Nor is it clear if this was before or after "HURRAH FOR THE BLACKSHIRTS" - David Gerard (talk) 07:19, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

• In Wikipedia terms, this is pretty straightforward: if, like OANN, a site has a history of publishing conspiracy theories or falsehoods without robust fact-checking and retraction, then including any content from that source puts Wikipedia editors in the position of arbiters of truth. We have to decide which stories are true and which are false, rather than allowing the normal process of journalistic checks and balances to do this. We can only do that by seeing if sources we consider reliable, say the same thing. And if they do, well, we should be using the reliable sources instead.

That's what deprecated means. You can't trust it without verifying from another, more reliable source, in which case why would you not use the more reliable source instead? Deprecated is not the same as "generally unreliable", it's a specific outcome we reserve only for sites that are sufficiently deceptive that we should never use them. I personally would never use the Washington Examiner for anything, but it's not deprecated. WorldNetDaily is. That distinction is valid and entirely consistent with the five pillars. Guy (help!) 11:36, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

A problem for Wikipedia

The point is made in Haaretz that the preponderance of right-wing sources among our deprecated list is interpreted by conservatives in much the same way as Twitter bans on hate speech: most of the affected sources are conservative, therefore this is anti-conservative bias. Obviously it's not, but there are more liberal Wikipedians than conservative (for reasons that are inherent to what Wikipedia is) so we need to work doubly hard to be sure we hold all sources to the same standard.

I have given this a lot of thought recently, and the discussion above re. the Haaretz piece highlights an issue I think we need to address more clearly: reliability versus bias (or, as Springee put it above, WP:V versus WP:WEIGHT).

• A biased source is likely to be treated as requiring attribution.
• An unreliable source is likely to be deprecated.

Bias and unreliability correlate (albeit rather asymmetrically, see below). We have deprecated only a few of the hyper-partisan left sources because, with a few notable exceptions, they are still more accurate than hyper-partisan right sources, so we treat them as biased (attribution required) rather than deprecated. Not always: AlterNet is generally more unreliable than the deprecated Breitbart. IMO AlterNet should be deprecated, and you could make an argument that based on current data Breitbart could be "generally unreliable" rather than deprecated (albeit that this would make little practical difference).

Our challenge as Wikipedians is to demonstrate that our decisions about source reliability are based on solid, rational, empirically factual grounds, and not on our politics. Part of that is ensuring that sources are treated similarly according to their position on objective bias / accuracy axes. Some sources only rate on political leaning, and that's dangerous for at least two reasons:

1. Fox News online and CNN cable have similar levels of bias but fact-checking shows CNN cable to be more reliable than Fox News;
2. Wikipedia treats bias and accuracy separately.

Bluntly, I do not think we should ever use any source outside the Ad Fontes "green box of joy" as a source of fact. That would put The Daily Beast, CNN cable, MSNBC, Mother Jones, The Intercept and so on outside the realm of usable sources for facts - at least in articles on current politics. In my view, nothing of value would be lost.

Background
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Right-partisan sources are more biased, more consistent with each other, and less factually accurate The way right-partisan media works has changed significantly since 2015. I have often referenced Network Propaganda, an excellent book that I think every regular here should read. This documents the different incentives that have driven asymmetric bias in American media. What the data shows is that right-leaning media is currently dominated by a positive feedback loop where social shares and hence advertising revenue are driven by the extent to which a source agrees with other sources in the bubble. Fox suffers penalties if it published accurate information that conflicts with the conservative narrative. Mainstream media is dominated by a negative feedback system of fact-checking. Washington Post will suffer if it published factually inaccurate stories however much they may align with liberal talking points. Hyper-partisan left sources are as ideology driven as hyper-partisan right, but they are likely to be contradicted or fact-checked by mainstream sources and, crucially, their audience is almost certainly consuming those sources, whereas consumers of conservative media often (and in many sources not just often but generally) are not. Sean Hannity probably does not care if the Washington Post rates his claims as Pants-On-Fire, but Rachel Maddow probably does. If you look at the Ad Fontes chart, a useful guide which rates sources on a continuum by both accuracy and bias on separate axes, what you see is exactly what that asymmmetry would predict: that the average of right-leaning sources is significantly more biased and significantly less reliable than the average for left-leaning sources. With the exception of the New York Post, IJR and Reason, pretty much all common right-leaning sources are now outside the region of mainstream journalism, and all have significant issues with factual inaccuracy and promotion of conspiracy theories. On the Ad Fontes chart, starting with New York Post and working left, there's a continuum of first increasing and then decreasing accuracy as you move from leans right through neutral and into leans left and on to partisan and hyper-partisan left. But if you go to the right, there's a huge gap before you hit the right-leaning sources. And 40% of American readers live in a world where these sources are True and anything that says otherwise is Fake News. I've read several scholarly sources that agree on this. That feeds into conflict here The result is that conservatives generally see unanimity between the sources they consider reliable, which may be unanimously contradicted by sources we consider reliable. A lay understanding of the psychology of cognitive dissonance is sufficent to understand this, and to know that we cannot fix it. We are doomed to have these debates forever because we cannot change the underlying mismatch between mainstream reality and that of the conservative media bubble. Mainstream has come to be seen as the opposite of conservative, and that's a real problem for us at this page, and for any editor active in current politics.

Proposals

I guess what I am arguing is that we should do a few things to formalise the way we conduct discussions that may result in widespread changes to the project and external commentary.

1. Segregate WP:RSP into two or three blocks: one for general websites (VHChartz, TV Tropes and the like), one for media, and one for actual fake news (News Front etc).
2. Introduce a template for RfC discussion of sources (that is, the entire source rather than one or a few uses of it for a specific fact).
   1. Include an assessment of impact. Deprecating WorldnetDaily, Occupy Democrats or InfoWars has no real effect on Wikipedia because no competent editor would use them anyway, but deprecating Breitbart and the Daily Mail had a substantial impact.
   2. Be explicit about the difference between bias and accuracy, and include this in debates.
   3. An RfC for any source with more than $THRESHOLD number of uses (perhaps 1,000?) should be advertised at WP:CENT.
3. Agree a consistent set of tools for assessing reliability, that minimises the possibility of political bias - so, look for right-leaning fact check sites, and exclude all fact-checkers that do not assess media from both sides of the spectrum.

What do others think? Guy (help!) 14:14, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not seeing the argument for any sweeping changes (and I'd even disagree with your "a problem for Wikipedia" framing.) The Haaretz piece largely praises our system; the way we do things now is working, on the whole. Our articles - the high-profile ones, the ones that get enough attention and focus to avoid getting hijacked by a single committed editor, anyway, which is the real risk but only happens on peripheral topics - are largely accurate, reliable, and evenhanded. Yes, if you zoom in close on the talk pages there's a ton of ink being spilled in the AP2 topic area, but if you zoom out most of that is actually pretty minor - it's being spilled over minor wording tweaks or a sentence or two that wouldn't be utterly unacceptable either way. Compared to the vast gulf in the world as a whole, we've actually done pretty well at finding consensus. A lot of other coverage says similar things - that Wikipedia has remained largely reliable in an era where many other online information channels are fracturing or showing their flaws. Our system is, mostly, working, so I don't see how that supports an argument for changing direction. Your argument mostly seems to be that people who live in a bubble of unreliable sources are going to look at our articles and see them as biased, but that's always going to be the case - it has nothing to do with the arcane intricacies of how we handle reliable sources, and everything to with eg. our article on Global Warming not saying what the facts-optional talking head on TV tells them it should. That is not something we can fix; the problem is not on our end. --Aquillion (talk) 08:54, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Aquillion, don't get me wrong, I am really not overblowing this, but there is no doubt that conservatives perceive a serious bias against them as a result of the majority of deprecated sources being conservative - there's a perception that we deprecate due to bias, and do this asymmetrically, whereas in fact we deprecate due to accuracy and it is merely coincidental that the most biased and most conservative sources are also the least accurate.

That's why I'd like to formalise the RfC process: to show that the assessment is fair. I agree that the issue of conspiracy theorising and outright falsehood in the right wing media bubble is very much not our problem to fix, but it is our problem to manage and I think we could do a better job of it. I am encouraged that you don't see this as a major issue, though - I would be happy to discover that I am being oversensitive to this form of criticism. Guy (help!) 09:25, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

If you followed that path, here is what you would see: First, to the extent that anyone pays any attention to the change at all, it would be covered, in the sources that the people you're trying to convince trust, as "Wikipedia admits it has a problem with bias against us, takes piddling efforts to fix it." Second, perceiving the change as a sign that sufficient pressure can get Wikipedia to reflect their views, the complaints about bias would increase sharply in volume. Third, nobody who thought the system was unfair before would think it was fair now, because what they actually want is, again, our articles on the hot-button topics they care about to reflect their view of the world (and because, again, by changing policy in response to complaints that it is unfair, you've given people with strong political preferences about our content and policy an added incentive to continue to be intransigent in hopes of extracting more concessions.) And, finally, all those practical issues aside, it would be a bad rationale to change our policies - our goal is not to appear fair, our goal is to be fair. One of the reasons we've been so successful at maintaining factual accuracy when so many other sites have failed is because we categorically reject the false balance of prioritizing the appearance of accuracy. Our job is to reflect the best available sources, not to sell Wikipedia to people (though I think that the site's success shows that maintaining that laser-tight focus on getting things right will, ultimately, be successful at winning people over.) --Aquillion (talk) 12:45, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Clarity and thoughtfulness surrounding the deprecation of sources seems like an excellent idea, but maybe not approaching from this direction? Conservatives may often be correct to "perceive a serious bias against them", but are so very often wrong in identifying the causes and horrid at arguing solutions. Sourcing policies on Wikipedia may allow bias to flourish in some areas, but as Aquillion points out working towards the goal of neutrality is "mostly working" on high profile articles. I'd disagree with him tho that this is the "system" working, i would say it is the result of competent and thoughtful editors expending a great deal of effort to make the system work.—eric 13:26, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I mostly agree with Aquillion's comments here, although I would consider perception to still be an important secondary consideration. To the extent that there's an issue here, I would say the easiest way to respond is probably to emphasize the counterexamples that people can point to. The articles tend to mention Occupy Democrats but I've never seen anyone cite MintPress News in this context yet; likewise, Telesur doesn't seem to get mentioned despite being very left-wing by the standards of the American "left-right" axis. If Grayzone (currently still under discussion above) is deprecated then it would probably also be a good example. If that approach is insufficient, or if those examples are challenged for some reason, I suppose there is also the option of making it clearer to outside observers by specifically deprecating a couple more of the thousands of other sources that unambiguously qualify for it. Fake news websites aren't limited by political alignment, after all. Sunrise (talk) 23:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

I do not think we need to separate out fake news. At the end of the day any actual fake news site should be depreciated if not out right banned. I think (part from perennial "but I like it" arguments) RSN works fine.Slatersteven (talk) 19:05, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

• Proposals 2.0, 2.2, and 2.3 are great ideas, in my opinion. Currently, editors are copying The Daily Caller RfC because it's linked in the instructions at the top of the page, as determined in the 2019 header text RfC. An RfC template could be edited as improvements are identified. For instance, it would be helpful to remind the RfC starter to provide links to past discussions and prominent examples of usage, and it would be helpful to remind RfC participants to consider context. I agree that bias and reliability should be evaluated independently, and that RfCs on frequently cited sources should be advertised on WP:CENT. — Newslinger talk 09:15, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

It was a good read, but paragraph 4 had a falsehood: "Like all decisions at Wikipedia, the addition of a news outlet to the list is determined by a community vote." Everybody makes mistakes. So, I see the site-by-site approach as almost doomed to failure. I agree Wikipedia has enormous problems, and I would not trust articles for anything. The only way to dig out the full story on most topics with any controversial aspects at all is to carefully review edit histories and talk page histories, and this defeats the whole purpose of having articles. I know equal time is not a thing here, but maybe every article deemed to involve controversy should have a certain, limited amount of space available for the proponents of different sides (possibly more than just two) to make their best cases, like debates. As it stands, the more persistent editors suppress almost everything they disagree with, almost including the existence of disagreement at all. Sorry to be so negative. -- Yae4 (talk) 19:52, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Your suggestion is incompatible with the undue weight policy, which states: "Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a 'see also' to an article about those specific views." There are other wikis that are more sympathetic to fringe views, but Wikipedia is not one of them. — Newslinger talk 20:05, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

When discussing possibly making major changes to solve major issues, referring to WP:IAR seems better than referring to current norms. I acknowleged "equal time is not a thing here," but that doesn't preclude allowing some amount of space to be reserved for presenting "minority" views, to lessen accusations of suppression. Anyway, the issue isn't just "theories" or "science" or even "ideas". Here is a simple factoid example. Let's say someone wants to "follow the money," and answer the question, how much is spent on mainstream climate science research and politics, compared with how much is spent on non-mainstream?

Climate_change_denial#Funding: roughly $900 million

Global_warming_controversy#Funding: TL;DR but has a couple numbers, 1.2 and 16 million

Versus:

Global_warming a couple mentions of funding of scientists who disagreed with "scientific consensus," but no number, and no link, so had to do a search to find:

Climate_finance#Flows_of_climate_finance "estimated that climate finance reached $437 billion"

Shouldn't it be easier to find both numbers in an encyclopedia, maybe in one place? -- Yae4 (talk) 15:08, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

"Both numbers"? You've pointed to four types of numbers, and seem to be conflating different things: CC denial funding goes to misinformation and advertising, Climate finance is “finance that aims at reducing emissions, and enhancing sinks of greenhouse gases ...." etc. so is financing action to stabilise the climate, not sums funding scientists of whatever views on CC. Of course, if a reliable secondary source puts together the comparison you seem to be suggesting, then you can cite that. . . dave souza, talk 17:48, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Dave souza, Previous editors took the trouble to include an easily found number for "denial" funding, but in Wikipedia I haven't been able to find a comparable number for "mainstream" science and politics funding. I did misunderstand the purpose of "Climate finance," so thanks for that. -- Yae4 (talk) 18:33, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of this page, which is about reliable sources – "original research isn't accepted here, and you can't ask others to do it for you. If you're interested in the complexities of funding, you may find Willie Soon's arrangements informative, but here the discussion is about assessing good sources. . . dave souza, talk 22:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Dave souza, I understand the purpose, but the process and measures for RS determination look completely arbitrary and biased in application, so I don't understand that, for sure. I'd already seen that article, but thanks again. -- Yae4 (talk) 22:44, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• My only contribution to this is a famous quote by Stephen Colbert: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias". This is not necessarily true in the world in general, but it certainly is true in the context of these sources. So if Bob ThreeHats is on his laptop, raging that we're not letting him says that Mexicans are planning to invade the USA to be part of George Soros' army based on something he saw on InfoWars/Rush Limbaugh/Breitbart, I really don't see why we should concern ourselves with the appearance of being fair to a person who's idea of being fair means endorsing his prejudice against facts.

Neutrality isn't painting a picture in dull grey when one side says black, and the other says white. See WP:LUNATICS, but apply it to politics instead of science. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:21, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Newslinger, Another comment Re: "Fringe theories" as applied to climate change. Wikipedia:Fringe_theories has existed since January 2006,[52] i.e. 4 years before Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Climate_change, but there is only one use of the word "fringe" in the Arbitration. By end of February 2006 (new article somewhat stabilized), among 3 examples, climate change was not yet discussed in "fringe theories."[53] Today, there is still no mention of climate change, aside from linking to the 10 year old Arbitration case. [54] Given that "fringe theories" is now being frequently applied to skepticism over climate change predictions etc., shouldn't the Wikipedia position be fully explained in some detail at Wikipedia:Fringe_theories? (Aside: I would suggest including a study that documents how many actively publishing, "climate scientists" have reduced their "carbon footprints" to zero or similar, demonstrating true belief, but I can't find one.) I would appreciate if someone who can explain the Wikipedia position would add a section. -- Yae4 (talk) 16:06, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

The fringe guideline isn't particularly at issue in ARBCC, and while the guideline includes examples, it's not a prescriptive list and it applies equally to topics not mentioned as examples. What is at issue is weight policy, as covered by WP:ARBCC#Undue weight. As for your aside suggesting "including a study that documents how many actively publishing, 'climate scientists' have reduced their 'carbon footprints' to zero or similar, demonstrating true belief" merely suggest that you don't understand science. So not a good idea for a section. None of which has any obvious relevance to discussion on quality of sources. . . dave souza, talk 17:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Ouch, add one more not-so-subtle personal attack by an admin to the count. Is there a list of designated admins or other editors who are certified as "qualified" to guide science articles? Saying the wiki-bias problem is about sources is a side step. The real issue is wikipedia has fixed positions on some topics, and "fringe theories" and banning sources with "voting" are just two of the wiki-lawyering methods used to pretend otherwise. -- Yae4 (talk) 14:30, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Why would you think that randomly introducing an unsourced non-sequitur that is quite obviously designed to imply some sort of hypocrisy or wrongdoing among climate scientists would be relevant to, or well-received in, this discussion? NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 14:53, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• I don't really see that the Haaretz piece actually indicates anything on our part that really needs solving. Disinformation and conspiracy mongering are currently a larger problem on the political right than the political left, though not to say that it is non-existent on the political left because it isn't. Much of that is probably historical accident, and you can certainly find plenty of instances where the situation was reversed (the French Revolution and the Soviet Bloc spring to mind). Neutrality looks biased to people who are biased. That's not really an "us problem". GMG^talk 16:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Something that I would argue does need solving is the fact that, over the course of 2019, the number of deprecated sources went from 6 to 26. I don't think 2019 was a worse year for fake news than 2018 or 2017. It looks more like editors are starting to ignore the intermediate levels of classification. Connor Behan (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
    • What I think has happened is that as some sources like the Daily Mail became deprecated, some editors went to other sources to pull similar stories as the Daily Mail; in those types of cases, other newspapers that are going to share the same type of information as the Daily Mail are going to be just as poor as the Daily Mail for the most part. So as more of these new sources get used, we see the need to also deprecate those. It's a small snowball effect. --Masem (t) 19:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

An example

David Gerard (talk · contribs) writes "The source is deprecated - see WP:THESUN - and should not be used at all - even as a placeholder. So I would like to discuss this clearly here. I have seen Gerard remove the source, even for uncontroversial sports reporting as well. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:33, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

See the sun RFC below.Slatersteven (talk) 17:35, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

No. This is the correct location. As you can see, @Blueboar:, @PackMecEng:, @Springee:, and @BullRangifer: have voiced opinion here and so the discussion belongs here, not in a new location that David Gerard wants to discuss it at. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:59, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Its an example of what? what has the sun got to do with the above?Slatersteven (talk) 19:06, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Did you read the article? "Another British tabloid, The Sun (published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Group), was added this past year, as were similar outlets in Iran and Venezuela. The same goes for the left-wing Facebook group Occupy Democrats, which was delisted as a valid source of information." There was a brief discussion about editors removing deprecated sources and tagging instead of fixing. Essentially equating deprecated with blacklisted. This is an example of an editor removing a reference to a site that we have deprecated rather than 1) tagging is as unreliable or 2) finding a source that could be used in its place. He goes on to complain about me below. Walter Görlitz (talk) 08:37, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: PureMédias

Since this is a source that's never been discussed before, I'd like some opinions on PureMédias:

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

Thanks. ToThAc (talk) 17:33, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

What's the usage that brings this question up? (Without that, this probably isn't worth doing an RFC on.) - David Gerard (talk) 17:41, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Oppose RfC on Principle Is this being used much? Have people raised a concern about its use? If no then why bring this up. Do we even have enough information to reach a conclusion one way or the other? My feeling is if a source hasn't been used much or discussed much by others then we have little on which to judge. It could be a relatively young source that will gain a strong, good or strong , bad reputation over time. However, if we have a RfC now, it might result in a thumbs down which would then keep the source out of Wikipedia even as it's real world use improves. Sorry, if we have little information on the source then we should look at specific examples of use rather than make a general proclamation. Springee (talk) 17:49, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

@David Gerard and Springee: Sorry, I must have forgotten to show you this source's usage. Here you go: ozap.com  . It appears to be used primarily for sources relating to French television, politics, and musical numbers. ToThAc (talk) 18:37, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but what provokes you to bring up the question? What's the editorial dispute concerning the source? - David Gerard (talk) 07:14, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

@David Gerard: Thing is, at first glance, it appears to be some sort of online database of people, somewhat like IMDb. ToThAc (talk) 03:13, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

It looks more Hollywood Reporter than IMDb. Maybe ask editors on fr: instead and bring that discussion here. SilverbackNet ^talk 05:10, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: What's on Weibo

Here is the link: https://www.whatsonweibo.com I believed that it meets the realiable source standards for Chinese social media-related issues. The website mainly focus on Chinese social media especially Sina Weibo. Also, could the source use in Chinese BLP articles?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated Mariogoods (talk) 23:40, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

This is a site independent of Weibo[55] but mostly regurgitates content from other news sources, and sometimes appends the Chinese netizen reactions on Weibo. Editor in chief Manya Koetse is a master's degree "sinologist".--Kiyoweap (talk)

• Option 2: The original news source available are what should be category 1. For Chinese wedding door games, ok; for Xinjiang re-education camps, I am not sure the Weibo netizen reaction is very meaningfully addition to the article.--Kiyoweap (talk) 21:54, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
• Option 2 – It looks like it has a fully professional editorial board, and their About page lists a litany of sources, including several generally reliable ones, citing or linking the site's coverage of Chinese social media. I would cautiously call it generally reliable for coverage of Chinese social media and pop culture trends, but would avoid using them for more serious news. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 03:20, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

New Leaf Publishing Group (publisher)

Are books published by New Leaf Publishing (or New Leaf Publishing Group) considered self-published? I didn't find much information about it, although it appears to be focused on religion. Can books published through it on seemingly other topics be used as sources like at Interdimensional hypothesis (unless I'm mistaken, this book attempts to cover UFOs using Biblical interpretations)? Lastly, I'm not sure if this is a correct association, but I've seen reference to "Master Books" in the description of one book published under it, would this really be Institute for Creation Research's, where Master Books redirects? These books are currently found as sources or in "further reading" for various articles (insource search for "new leaf publishing", insource search for "master books"). Thanks, —PaleoNeonate – 11:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

I started to remove some, will continue as time permits. In some cases books are authored by school teachers for a young audience, in other cases no particular information about the author is available. The book descriptions and reviews on Google Books often also reveal their creationist teaching. My impression is that these are not reliable for anything other than about the author's opinions (that may be WP:DUE for a particular topic if relevant and the author notable or expert in the field, with no better source available, with attribution)... —PaleoNeonate – 05:44, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Search on "New Leaf Publishing" yielded JSTOR 27784051, JSTOR 44114464 etc. and two Creationist books turned up: de Young et al, and Lisle, both published by "Master Books" as an imprint of the "New Leaf Publishing Group".

Don't think the WP:SELFPUB is the caveat that applies, even if the publisher only or primarily published works by this Institute. I think the problem is WP:FRINGE, that it is willing to publish ideas as legitimate even though they stray from academic mainstream consensus.

I suppose if Gary Bates is and all the rest were of nepotistic relation to the publisher family, SELFPUB may apply but I doubt that is the case. Dr. Jason Lisle is apparently a Ph.D. in astrophysics,[56][57], but I digress.

The source PaleoNeonate deleted in the article is Gary Bates, who believes alien visitors are actually demons.[58] --Kiyoweap (talk) 00:33, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes the quality of the books vary, with some promoting pseudoscience and evolution-denial and others only including Biblical reading encouragements and emphasizing that some scientists were Christian, etc. Exploring the world of mathematics contained evolution-denial despite being a decent introductory maths book (pp. 4, 98, 147), Exploring the world of physics (related talk page thread) seems like one of the better quality books, but still included flawed claims like scientific foreknowledge in Genesis. Better sources are fortunately easily found on the topic though, that are not disguised propaganda. —PaleoNeonate – 03:55, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

And others are like this one (I found it recommended on a talk page). —PaleoNeonate – 16:53, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

RfC: KenRockwell.com

Is KenRockwell.com a reliable source for statements about photographic equipment? Qono (talk) 02:12, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Used as a source in many articles on photography equipment, KenRockwell.com is self-published and has no editorial oversight. As far as I can tell, the author has not written any books on photographic equipment. As quoted in the previous listing, the text that used to be on the about page is telling:

Read this site at your own risk. I make a lot of mistakes. I have no proof-reader and there are plenty of pages, like this one, which have been around since the 1990s and may no longer apply or be correct. I'm just one guy. No mater how stupid something may be, if I don't catch it, it gets out there anyway and stays wrong for years until someone points it out. I can't track everything; I've written thousand of pages and write a few more every day.

Here is a link to a previous posting on this source, though no discussion was generated.

I want to discuss the source broadly, but here is a representative example:

• Source: [59]
• Article: Nikon F-mount
• Content: "E Lenses with manual aperture control like PC-E lenses allow manual diaphragm operation on all cameras, with possible unreliable metering on DSLRs without E-type support."

Thanks! Qono (talk) 02:12, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Qono, not a reliable source. Should be treated as a blog. Why the RfC is needed here? DBigXrayᗙ 03:49, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

DBigXray, thanks for your response. I am unclear if RfC's are meant for disputes only. I've started a conversation on the RfC talk page and would welcome your input there. Qono (talk) 00:06, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Question Do we have evidence of other reliable photography sources citing KenRockwell's blog? This might be sufficient to establish Rockwell as a subject mater expert. From there you may be able to argue this is an expert opinion that can be used with attribution. I think Rockwell's site is a good resource and one I've consulted when buying a camera. However, it's clearly a personal blog per Wikipedia's standards thus the only way for it to be considered usable, other than for ABOUTSELF, is to establish some level of expertise acknowledged by other sources. Springee (talk) 14:28, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

  The eligibility requirement is a little bit different than that. According to WP:SPS, Rockwell's "work in the relevant field" must have "previously been published by reliable, independent publications" for him to be considered a subject-matter expert. — Newslinger talk 20:52, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

  That sounds like the sort of thing we would normally apply to topic that is largely supported by academic texts. If Rockwell were interviewed or otherwise acknowledged by a respected photography magazine would that count here? This is a RS area I've been somewhat interested in for a while. For a while I've been considering doing some work on articles related to the sort of formula race cars that are typical of SCCA events. That is a topic with little academic sourcing. Trying to get facts/figures/opinions from experts is harder because they generally don't publish. I'm not sure if David Bruns has ever published anything on race car design but his Swift DB-1 was a car that changed Formula Ford across the world. A lot of the interesting design ideas associated with that car, things that made it successful, are voiced by people who's resumes make them clear experts in the field but not published on the subject. In this case I would not WP:IAR but rather bend them if reliable sources say Rockwell is an expert in the field. Springee (talk) 21:33, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Mint (newspaper) mirroring WP

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Mirrors and forks § Mint (newspaper) mirroring WP

 – NitinMlk (talk) 20:51, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Here's a quote from WP's P. V. Sindhu (dated 2 September 2019):

Having made her international debut in 2009, she rose to a career high ranking of no. 2 in April 2017. Over the course of her career, Sindhu has won medals at numerous tournaments on the BWF circuit, including a silver medal at the 2016 Olympics ... She is the recipient of the sports honour Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, and India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri.

And here's a quote from a Mint's article (dated 25 September 2019):

Having made her international debut in 2009, she rose to a career high ranking of no. 2 in April 2017. Over the course of her career, Sindhu has won medals at numerous tournaments including a silver medal at the 2016. Sindhu is the recipient of the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna award, and India's fourth highest civilian award, the Padma Shri.

So careless was the copy-paste by the Mint that they even forgot to complete the sentence after "2016". - NitinMlk (talk) 20:51, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• Is this the only article where this is known to have happened? WP:CIRCULAR is indeed a problem that can make this source unusable for Wikipedia. —PaleoNeonate – 13:12, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I have read just a handful of articles of this newspaper. So I can't say much regarding its overall quality. - NitinMlk (talk) 17:52, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• We need to keep note of the journalist concerned, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 23:01, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

  NitinMlk, Indeed as {u|Atlantic306}} says it is important to note the author. Please use Template:Backwards copy and post this on the talk page of the concerned article whenever you find such examples. DBigXrayᗙ 17:55, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

So what about its editorial oversight? Actually, this is the general problem with the newspapers from the Indian subcontinent. They don't care about accuracy, and their articles can be good, bad, or ugly. And it's up to us to sort out their mess. BTW, I looked at a couple of Pakistani articles today and ended up finding around half a dozen mirrors from Pak newspapers. I will post them here today. - NitinMlk (talk) 18:09, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The Hindu mirroring misinformation from WP

The Hindu had copied misinformation from WP, and they never responded to multiple emails from an experienced WP editor – see Wikipedia_talk:Noticeboard_for_India-related_topics/Archive_68#The_Hindu_copying_misinformation_from_WP. - NitinMlk (talk) 21:06, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

NitinMlk, Thank you for mentioning this, and adding the archive link. Paging previously involved discussants @Sitush, Abecedare, and DBigXray: in case they wish to add anything. Mathglot (talk) 21:55, 19 January 2020 (UTC) And Fylindfotberserk, not previously involved afaict, but who has his finger on the pulse of related topics, and may be interested. Mathglot (talk) 21:57, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Mathglot, Thanks for the ping. It is sad to see that the hindu failed to respond to the mails. I hope the email used was the right one. I will also suggest including N Ram, in the mail chain. He is on twitter. I regularly refer Hindu for the current topics, and I fing their reporting very factual. Regarding the article, since we have a conflict and we did not get a clarity from Hindu, I would suggest to disregard The Hindu article (a news source) in favour of the scholarly secondary source. DBigXrayᗙ 22:07, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@DBigXray: I don't know how it is with emails to big media companies these days, but I suspect that they are filtered by bot, and/or humans (more rearely), and simply considered less important. If anyone saw fit to write a letter (20th-century style, you know: paper, envelope, stamp, signature, all that stuff...) and address it to one of the top editors on the masthead, I'm guessing that would gather a better response. Typed/stamped letter : Email (21st c.) :: Telegram : Typed/stamped letter (20th c). I'll mail you a stamp, if you need one. Mathglot (talk) 22:13, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Suresh Nambath

The Hindu

Kasturi Building, Anna Salai, 859-860, Mount Road

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600002

+91-44-2857 6300
Mathglot (talk) 22:31, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

DBigXray, Apparently, you're not the only one whose email they don't reply to. See bold entry "Metadata" in section "Further information" here. Mathglot (talk) 23:11, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

DBigXray, thanks for your input. The Hindu used to have very high standards till around 15 years ago. It is still among the best Indian newspapers. But I have seen multiple cases like the above one from it. Having said that, other Indian/Pakistani newspapers are even more careless in fact-checking.

Mathglot, this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have seen many cases of blatant copy-pastings from all major Indian newspapers. In fact, the level of accuracy of Indian/Pakistani news media is inversely proportional to the popularity of this project. Unfortunately, for the last decade or so, this project has become their de facto reference site. - NitinMlk (talk) 22:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

@NitinMlk: Indeed, and it's only their laziness that makes it so easy to spot. What you say about the project is true far beyond Indian newspapers, and I've seen articles in various topic areas clearly leaning heavily on WP content as a crutch, but paraphrasing or summarizing just enough, that you can't quite prove it. This is becoming a more and more serious problem, and the solution isn't obvious, but good reporters on reliable media will have their own on-the-ground sources. The problem is trying to evaluate which are which. Mathglot (talk) 22:39, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

The journalists of the developed nations are taught from their early life regarding plagiarism and copyrights, which makes it harder to catch them. But the reverse is true regarding the ones from the subcontinent. :) - NitinMlk (talk) 22:53, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

• • I don't believe we should rule out national newspapers from India and Pakistan for a few examples of mirroring as this would be institutional bias. Where there is mirroring that obviously rules out the source for that particular article but the use of Wikipedia is prevalent in all media , in the western hemisphere as well, not by the better journalists but by the worst lazy journalists who may just make a better job of paraphrasing it. Therefore, a case by case approach is needed imv Atlantic306 (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Atlantic306, you have made valid points. The worst are the ones who just pick facts from this project. - NitinMlk (talk) 22:25, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

And, yes, we cannot rule out Indian/Pakistani news media, as a huge number of our articles are solely sourced to them, especially those of the present-day sportspersons, entertainers, and politicians. So, the case-by-case consideration seems like the only alternative. Having said that, scholarly sources should always be preferred over them. - NitinMlk (talk) 22:46, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Also agree that it should be case-by-case. Another thing to keep in mind, is that all large media companies are fallible and will have the occasional sourcing scandal, such as the NY Times and Washington Post. The key thing here, is what their reaction is: they stomp on such material heavily as soon as it is recognized, and are not afraid to criticize themselves for past actions, or to open up to reporters from other media, to criticize them. If The Hindu would respond openly and critically to DBigXray's missive, ideally in the pages of the newspaper itself, that would go a long way to mitigating the damage to their reputation. Mathglot (talk) 22:39, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Another example from The Hindu

Saina Nehwal won the inaugural edition of Philippines Open in 2006, thereby becoming the first Indian female to win a 4-star tournament. She also remains the sole Indian to win that tournament. The relevant news articles were published by all major Indian newspapers, including The Hindu, and the info was added at WP in 2006 itself. But an anonymous user vandalised it in 2014. And it remained as such for a long time. Here is the quote from the WP article as of 16 August 2015:

In 2006, Saina became the under-19 national champion and created history by winning the prestigious Asian Satellite Badminton tournament (India Chapter) twice, becoming the first player to do so. In 2006, Saina appeared on the global scene when she became the second Indian woman to win a 4-star tournament, the Philippines Open.

And here is the quote from an article of The Hindu dated 27 August 2015

In 2006, Nehwal became the under-19 national champion and created history by winning the celebrated Asian Satellite Badminton tournament (India Chapter) twice, becoming the first player to do so. She also became the second Indian woman to win the Philippines Open.

The journalist thought that the "4-star tournament" was just some excessive detail, thereby discarding that bit, although that was the main point, as no Indian female had won a tournament of that grading before. Anyway, they ended up making it more silly as 2006 was the inaugural tournament of the Philippines Open, and no other Indian has ever won that event. - NitinMlk (talk) 20:12, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I’m noticing a pattern... the WP material is uploaded shortly before publication in The Hindu... could it be the same author? Blueboar (talk) 23:21, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

MMmm a case of post editing sourcing? I think a warning may be in order. This however tells me its not really a problem with the sources.Slatersteven (talk) 12:56, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Blueboar, the content copied by the journalist was uploaded at least one year prior to their published article, e.g. see this revision of August 2014. In fact, the vandalised version copied by them was available from November 2014 onwards. In short, they check the latest version of WP articles to get facts and often copy-paste from them carelessly. It's been going like this for over one decade now. - NitinMlk (talk) 18:57, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Semantic Scholar clarification request

I am opening this request to seek clarification about linking to PDFs from Semantic Scholar through the OABOT tool, specifically if those PDFs do or do not violate copyright. In this way, this request for clarification is less about reliability, and more about if we can link to them without copyright infringement. I understand this topic was discussed recently here, yet I am raising this again as a result of a number of my edits, where I inserted links to these PDFs, being reverted, specifically as discussed on the OABOT Talk page here. I am seeking to follow copyright laws and uphold them here on Wikipedia, but my recent reverts seem to have conflicting arguments as to whether they should have been done or not, so I want to clarify this issue here before I take any action with either inserting more links to Semantic Scholar PDFs or reverting the reverts to my edits by citing the results of this clarification. Thank you. --- FULBERT (talk) 14:16, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

I hope this is the right place for this request for clarification to be posted, as I know it involves more an issue of reliability related to copyright than reliability alone. If it should be posted or pinged in another spot for discussion, please let me know and I am happy to do it there as well. FULBERT (talk) 15:41, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

This should never be part of a bot-automated process, as each link requires checking. It should be removed from the OAbot source list. Guy (help!) 16:14, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

My opinion is that they may or may not violate copyright, that we have no way of telling, and that because we can't tell we shouldn't link to them. My experience to back this up is that I tried searching for my own papers there and the second one I tried was clearly the publisher copy of an otherwise-paywalled paper, clearly not uploaded there by any author, provided for free download by semanticscholar even though it's still a paywalled paper. I think it's reasonably likely that semanticscholar obtained a license from the publisher to index the papers, extremely unlikely that it obtained a license to redistribute the papers open-access, and somewhat likely that it decided to go ahead and redistribute the papers that it obtained anyway despite not having permission. Alternatively maybe they intended to index but not redistribute and their software has a bug. But guesswork is guesswork. We need clear evidence that the publishers allow redistribution in order to avoid linking to pirate copies of papers, and we don't have that evidence in this case. We shouldn't default to assuming without evidence that anything we find on the net is free for the taking, just like we shouldn't assume that any object we find lying on the street is free for us to take and walk away with; that's pirate thinking. The evidence doesn't have to be anything as formal as an explicit statement of permission from a publisher, separately for each link: a link that appears to be the original publisher, a site controlled by an author of the paper, or an institutional repository of the author, can all be reasonably safely assumed to be legitimate. We can't just assume legitimacy for sites like citeseerx that pick up pdfs from anywhere, but citeseerx allows us to check in individual cases where they got the file from and whether that looks like the publisher or author. For semanticscholar, we don't even have that, we just have a bare pdf, and that's not good enough. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:44, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Update: Semantic Scholar says that the case I found of a paywalled pdf that they listed was a "mistake" and that it has been removed. (I didn't actually ask for it to be removed, but unsurprisingly that was the result of the query.) Given how easy it was for me to find it I suspect there are or were many similar examples. But I didn't get any information about how the mistake happened, how many other articles are affected, or whether the removal is of that article only or of a broader class of similar mistakes. My contact at SS is checking whether this is a one-off mistake or broader misclassification but I don't have an answer to that yet. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:53, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The answer to how this happened was "we crawl the web for open access PDFs" and that individual pdfs can be taken down on request. To me that means they cannot be regarded as free from piracy. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• I consider this too broad a limitation. If you link through them, you should check that what they are linking to is apparently free. DGG ( talk ) 05:00, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
• Thanks to David Eppstein we now have even stronger indicators that the website operates well within the bounds of legality in USA. It's not some pirate website but a trustworthy repository and it can be linked just like any doi.org or publisher URL. Nemo 07:48, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here. I'm not familiar with that particular website, but based on what I've read, one would need to check the status of an individual article to ascertain its copyright and license status and hence whether linking to it is appropriate. The other possibility for papers from years ago that are unavailable from many years ago would be to make a fair use claim. That could be difficult given that the links are to entire papers rather than portions of them, but a countervailing argument would be if there is no other practicable way to access the work even for a fee. Someone such as Moonriddengirl might be able to comment more knowledgeably on these issues. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:11, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Today I saw User:Citation bot start adding links to Semantic Scholar pdfs automatically. I undid a few but I'm confident there are a lot more like that that I didn't find. The edits are difficult to find in its history because of an unrelated bug causing the bot to emit long and uninformative edit summaries. Does it need to be blocked? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:38, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Climate Feedback and similar blog sources being treated differently?

Here we have Newslinger removing attributed, sourced material from a Forbes blog because it is considered "self-published."[60]

Here we have Snooganssnoogans restoring un-attributed, sourced material from a "The Guardian" blog,[61] which was acknowledged as true (blog source) in an apology here,[62] and strikethrough of personal attack here.[63]

Should similar blog sources be treated oppositely like this? Should they be used or not for this article, and if so, should they be attributed similarly? -- Yae4 (talk) 19:08, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

The word "blog" doesn't mean anything for reliability outside that it means typically one person wrote the content, and likely in a format that is more personable than hands-off/impartial. Whether a blog becomes reliable is then whether there is an editorial review of that blog before it is posted for fact-checking and the like.

It has been established the Forbes Contributor blogs are posted without any check by the paid Forbes staff. This makes these blogs self-published and thus not reliable. Guardian's blogs have been show to be processed by editors before they are published, and thus can be presumed reliable. --Masem (t) 19:17, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

That doesn't seem to quite match with Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#The_Guardian_blogs: "Most editors say that The Guardian blogs should be treated as newspaper blogs or opinion pieces due to reduced editorial oversight." -- Yae4 (talk) 19:25, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Right, they still have editorial oversight but they are written as opinions, so any claims or the like should be treated with attribution, but should not be considered wholly unreliable as with Forbes Contributor blogs. --Masem (t) 19:29, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Masem: it's been shown that that particular Guardian blog was done without full editorial control, see the WP:BLPN discussion. I'm not advocating reverting but hope the record is kept straight. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:39, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Peter Gulutzan, it's simply thatribution is wrong. It should be attributed to Dana Nuccitelli not The Grauniad. Guy (help!) 19:51, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Forbes.com contributor pieces undergo minimal editorial oversight, as established by the Poynter Institute, Columbia Journalism Review, The Outline, and BuzzFeed News (RSP entry). Editors from 10 previous noticeboard discussions show consensus that Forbes.com contributors are generally unreliable due to the site's poor reputation for fact-checking its contributors. Since The Guardian blogs (RSP entry) have not been shown to have the same issues as Forbes.com contributors, they are handled with WP:NEWSBLOG and WP:RSOPINION, which permit them to be used with in-text attribution. The text in Special:Diff/936739627 should have mentioned the author's name (Dana Nuccitelli), but the edit was otherwise compliant with policy. — Newslinger talk 20:24, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Newslinger, Dean Burnett has spoken about the level of control that the Grauniad exerts on its blog contributors> They have broad latitude but there is definitely oversight - it's largely post-publication not pre-publication, but it's there. Guy (help!) 09:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

A couple clarifications please: (1) Trying not to cast aspersions, but isn't using a term like "Grauniad" an example of using "derogatory, and insulting terms," or is this considered OK when directed outside Wikipedia? [64] (2) Isn't taking an isolated comment, from a long blog article with lots of details about a study, considered cherry picking or undue weight? Especially when the "highly respected and influential resource" comment is not also found in other, more reliable sources? -- Yae4 (talk) 15:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Not commenting about "Grauniad", but when dealing with non-ideal sources, the context and author also matter, of course. We should prevent accumulating the opinions of non-experts (even if attributed), or of non-notable people. In some cases WP:PARITY also applies, although when this is needed it could also be an indication that the topic lacks notability and so has little critical coverage. There's also the issue that in science, scientists tend to do their work more than educate about it, so criticism may come from a psychologist about fallacies, etc... So other than a little more oversight, this particular source would be from an "environmental scientist and risk assessor" according to the profile information (I personally don't know more about the author). —PaleoNeonate – 23:35, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

More about the author: Mr Nuccitelli has a BA in astrophysics and MS in physics according to his linkedin page; the decision whether he was an "non-expert" or an "environmental scientist" (at the time he wrote) has to be subjective. More about "The Grauniad" -- apparently it is just a nickname -- Guy said that Dean Burnett (who appears to be a regular Guardian blogger) says that bloggers get some oversight after they write but Guy didn't point to what Dean Burnett exactly said. If it was not referring to official Guardian policies, or if it was about regular bloggers rather than bloggers like Mr Nuccitelli, then it is not relevant, the evidence that I pointed to remains, that Mr Nuccitelli's blog lacked editorial oversight that regular bloggers got. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:01, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Yae4, the "Grauniad" spelling has a venerable history, it is a running joke in Private Eye, and Guardian readers like me embrace it. Guy (help!) 16:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Polls published by Center for International Security Studies (CISSM) University of Maryland School of Public Policy and Iran Poll

• Used and disputed in Qasem Soleimani article. Also used (CISSM1, CISSM2, Iran Poll) in a bunch of other Iran-related articles.
• Note:"In the past few years, the Center for International Security Studies (CISSM) at Maryland University has produced reports on polling surveys that have become popular among academics, the media and politicians in the West. The reports are mostly published under the name of Dr. Ebrahim Mohseni. In 2009, Mojtaba Khamenei helped Mohseni and Professor Mohammad Marandi to establish the University of Tehran Centre for Public Opinion Research (UTCPOR). Marandi — who studied in America and understands the mentality of Western media, politicians and writers — leads UTCPOR, which is monitored by the Iranian Foreign Ministry. He frequently appears on mainstream media, such as the BBC and Al Jazeera, among others, but one thing that these media organizations either do not know or fail to mention is that he is the son of Dr. Marandi, the head of Ayatollah Khamenei’s special medical team". "A significant amount of effort has been dedicated to presenting the polling surveys as a product of Maryland University. However, these are produced by Iran Poll. Iran Poll conducts research freely in Iran, which no other organization is allowed to do. ... this also reveals the monopoly Iran Poll has over the Western media when it comes to Iran, which demonstrates a troubling lack of critical assessment toward a polling institution supported by the regime in Tehran, which by its very essence cannot be neutral". Based on other polls by the same group, it is "claimed that Iranians believe the IRI is democratic while simultaneously claiming that Iranians do not want democratic forms of expression."Fair Observer.
• Comment: Examples of absolutely questionable poll surveys conducted by the mentioned institutes as well as their suspicious connections to Iranian officials could be found in the link above. Ms96 (talk) 09:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Comment: Here is a pdf of the surveySelfstudier (talk) 12:13, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Academic sources are more reliable than mainstream media. This poll was published in a highly reliable academic institution. Can't be unreliable. The reasons above are absolutely absurd and laughable.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 12:26, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Why are the reasons above "absurd and laughable"? Seems pretty valid to me. Please do explain. --HistoryofIran (talk) 18:19, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@SharabSalam: Most academic sources are usually regarded as more reliable than most news sources because academic sources such as university presses and mainstream journals have robust editorial oversight and reputations for correcting mistakes and withdrawing discredited works. Just as some newpapers are regarded as unreliable sources, being an "academic source" does not automatically confer status as a "reliable source". - Donald Albury 19:29, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• In the report itself, University of Maryland definitely takes ownership of that poll and makes certain claims about its methodology. The authors are listed as not only Ebrahim Mohseni, but also Nancy Gallagher (bio [65]) and Clay Ramsay (bio [66]). I'd tend to trust the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy and these seemingly experienced and qualified researchers over Fair Observer when it comes to analyzing the trustworthiness of political polls. Is there any other significant criticism of this polling organization? Red Rock Canyon (talk) 20:45, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon: Apart from that specific survey which is a joint CISSM-IranPoll work as repeatedly mentioned in the PDF above, a simple search shows that the two institutes are extensively interconnected and have published tens of joint surveys. For instance Majority of Iranians now want to quit nuclear deal, 85% of Iranians critical of US government, More than two-thirds of Iranians support Iran’s missile program, etc. Other cases could be found on IranPoll's site itself. Yes, there are other cases of criticism: In a questionable telephone poll it was found that "Iranians were happy with the way authorities had handled the protests, with roughly two-thirds saying police handled the protests very or somewhat well, and a slightly smaller about (64 percent) saying they used an appropriate amount of force" Irannewsupdate. It is noteworthy that 1500+ people were killed and 7000+ arrested in 2019–20 Iranian protests, including around 100 who were massacred in a small town in southern Iran. Other than that, remember that this telephone poll was conducted in a country where contact with foreign media had long been criminalized (b), Iran bans contact with foreign media (c), and even any simple contact with ordinary activists would be considered a criminal offense (d).

In one case, Iranian Students Polling Agency employees were arrested for a survey conducted after 2017–18 Iranian protests which estimated that >70% of Iranians are not satisfied with their country's situation (e), (f). Funny is, at the same time (after 2017–18 protests) IranPoll in collaboration with CISSM published a poll survey which concluded that <4.9% of the Iranian public opinion favored a change in the regime, which was heavily criticized:

• (g) (translation of the head: "Maryland university, or a branch of Islamic republic"),
• (e2) (translation of the head: "Another controversial poll survey about Iranian protests"),
• (h) (translation of the head: "Why the recent "IranPoll" survey is not reliable"),
• (i) (translation of the head: "How Maryland university had been able to conduct a poll survey in Iran"),
• (j) (translation of the head: "Maryland university survey, hazy and in a "security atmosphere=فضای امنیتی").

Other cases of criticism:

• "The Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM) polls are promoted and publicized by pro-Tehran groups in Washington" How an Iranian misinformation campaign has been adopted and promoted by the Obama administration;
• "It was a questionable choice, to telephone people who live inside Iran, under a dictatorship that controls communications." Questionable Telephone Poll conducted Inside Iran by Maryland’s CISSM;
• "Unsurprisingly, the organizations and people behind the poll have distinct ties with the regime’s institutions and its lobbies abroad. Ebrahim Mohseni, the CISSM “researcher” who designed the poll, is also the director of University of Tehran Center for Public Opinion Research, an IRGC-backed institution with a track record of promoting the views of the regime and the Revolutionary Guards ... Mohseni also works closely with the National Iranian American Council, a well-known lobby of the Iranian regime" Iran is using fake polls to discredit the nationwide protests. Ms96 (talk) 09:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

• Well that's something. But again, those have the same problems as the Fair Observer piece. The criticism you've posted is all from popular news sources. Is there any criticism coming from experts in the field of political research and polling? On the face of it, Washington Examiner, Iranian-Americans.com, or Irannewsupdate.com are far less trustworthy of organizations than the team publishing the polls. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 13:15, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@Red Rock Canyon: Have you seen this interview with Hosein Ghazian (sociologist, with expertise in Middle East and North Africa) by Deutsche Welle? I translate some parts: "One of the controversial aspects of this poll survey is its timing, conducted right after the protests when the people were overly afraid of freely expressing themselves ... It is naturally not logical to trust the data obtained on sensitive political issues under such circumstances ... But more problems appear when the questions are not well-created and there are fundamental problems in the design [of the survey] ... For instance, it is a survey containing 100 questions, which obviously makes the interviewees so tired during a phone call that there would be a comprehensive loss in the reliability of the results ... The quality of the data collected is questionable from a technical point of view."

Besides, It wasn't just Fair Observer, Washington Examiner, Iranian-Americans.com, and Irannewsupdate.com, I also mentioned VOA, DW, and Radio Zamaneh. Other cases could possibly be found upon further searching. Ms96 (talk) 15:23, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

I saw that, I just don't know much about those other sources because I don't speak German or Persian, though they appear to be just more popular news sources of similar quality. And VOA of course, which I think is always questionable. Perhaps you should let some other people reply, as the purpose of this noticeboard is to bring more editors into a discussion. And please stop pinging me. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 16:03, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Ah, sure! Thanks for participating anyway. Ms96 (talk) 16:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:DAILYMAIL alt redirect

Current consensus [67] is that WP:DAILYMAIL redirects to the well-known RFC, unlike WP:BREITBART which takes you to WP:RSP.

My question is, would it be controversial/not worth the bother to add a WP:DAILYMAIL (RSP) for Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Daily_Mail? Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 10:41, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Strikes me as a bit long to be useful. WP:MAILRSP is free. Do you think you'll use it? If so, just make it and use it. (I made WP:THESUN pointing to WP:RSP#The_Sun 'cos it saved typing.) - David Gerard (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Point. WP:DMRSP would be even shorter, and about as readable. But I see now we have Wikipedia:Citing Daily Mail already. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 20:43, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

Gråbergs Gråa Sång, I have no idea why the link can't simply be retargeted, especially since there's more than one RfC, but people seem adamant. Guy (help!) 16:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

RFC on SPLC in lead paragraphs

A discussion which includes the assessment of the reliability of the SPLC as a source of reference for Wikipedia article lead paragraphs is taking place here. Please feel free to participate. SITH (talk) 22:08, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

This is a question about sourcing, not lead sections, and so should surely be here - David Gerard (talk) 22:49, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

RFC on Michelin stars as a reliable source for notability of restaurants

Does a restaurant having a Michelin star rating, especially if its the only source, make the restaurant notable? I know the notability guidelines say top 100 and similar lists are not reliable sources, but I'm not sure if Michelin ratings would fit into that or not. The star rating system doesn't seem to give a detailed review of the restaurant receiving the rating. So I think that should disqualify it automatically, but even if there was details I don't think it would be a reliable source on its own or even with other better sources backing it up. I ask because I requested an article for the restaurant 't Brouwerskolkje be deleted due to lack of notability, but two people said the restaurant having a Michelin star rating was enough to keep the article. Although, the article lacks any other reliable sources. Let alone broad coverage. --Adamant1 (talk) 04:44, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it is the definition of making a restaurant notable. A single star rating from them can make it impossible to make reservation. Google "what does a michelin star mean"? Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:07, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Walter Görlitz. Michelin stars are a type of award that automatically prove notability. The same goes for a reference in Gault Millau. De728631 (talk) 05:30, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

If a restaurant receives a Michelin Star, it is virtually certain that the restaurant will receive significant coverage in many other reliable sources. The best of those sources should be added as references in the article and so your time as an editor would be better spent improving the article rather than trying to delete it, Adamant1. I am unaware of any Michelin starred restaurant that is ignored by other reliable sources, although perhaps I could be proven wrong. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 05:36, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't think any single source automatically proves notability. Since by definition notability is about "broad coverage" in reliable "sources", but that's just me. I know guidelines are malleable for people that want to make them that way. Ultimately, I'm perfectly fine with Michelin stars making something notable on its own if that's what the consensus is. That's why I asked. At the end of the day I'm not going to disregard other people's opinions on what counts or doesn't as a usable source, like some other people tend to do. --Adamant1 (talk) 06:14, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Let me see if I understand this correctly.

You came here of your own free will. You asked a question. You received a unanimous opinion from the first three editors who responded. Now you're going to lecture us on how we're wrong?

Did you read what we wrote? I did not write it meets our notability criteria (which was not the question you asked) I said it makes the subject notable (which is the question you asked). Cullen328 elaborated by making it clear that "it is virtually certain that the restaurant will receive significant coverage in many other reliable sources" which meets GNG. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:36, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

As long as we keep in mind that the Michelin star only grants presumed notability, one that can be challenged if one tries to find additional secondary sources where it would be expected to find them and cannot come up with any. As others have said, getting at least one star is near certain that the establishment had or will get more coverage, but we have an out in case that never happens. --Masem (t) 06:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Piling on here - a Michelin star is the top award a restaurant can get - there is no higher accolade (well, except two and three stars, obviously). For such a restaurant not to be covered in other sources following receipt of a star seems improbable - it should certainly be taken as a sign of presumed notability. GirthSummit _(blether) 06:45, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I am happy to agree with Masem here. Michelin as a single source cannot establish notability because we require multiple sources. However, a Michelin star is an extremely powerful indicator that additional reliable sources almost certainly exist. Maybe somebody can point to an example where that is not true, but I doubt it. In this particular case, I was able to find an English language book published by a university press that discusses this restaurant. I do not speak Dutch. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 06:49, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

And that is an important point , since Michelin is global, this means other sources may be in foreign languages, in print form only in that country, etc. so a proper WP:BEFORE effort is likely to require more than just searching the Internet. Personally, were I creating such an article, and the only source I had was from Michelin, I'd simply hold off until I could find at least one other secondary source (meeting the various notability guidelines does not require a standalone article to be created, only that it gives the allowance.). And this is highly specific to Michelin. We would not, for example, use Zagat because they rate everything (good or bad), and just getting a 5-star Zagat review means little towards additional sourcing. --Masem (t) 06:54, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• If a Michelin star means that there *should* be additional non-primary reliable sources elsewhere, then we don't really need to say that the Michelin star by itself is enough to prove notability since there should be additional sources elsewhere. At most, we should really just say "double check because it's probably out there somewhere," but addressing "what do we do if the only source on the restaurant is Michelin" with "well there just has to be sources somewhere" is responding to a hypothetical with further hypotheticals. Ian.thomson (talk) 07:06, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• That's partially true, but I do feel it's useful to have red-line notability guidelines for clear things like this, and a Michelin star is a pretty good one to go by. We have comparable notable-award rules in other notability guidelines, so I don't see why the Michelin star wouldn't qualify. --Aquillion (talk) 15:42, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• I would have to say yes. A Michelin star is the gold standard of a restaurant and confirms it is a noteworthy one. I think we can equate it to WP:NFO and WP:ANYBIO where it says receiving a major award makes something notable, this would apply here as a Michelin star is the highest award a restaurant can receive. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 07:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Not sure, at the the end of the day the Michelin stars are not an "award" they are a rating system in a travel guide (which has been subject to some criticism). So I err on the side of no not really a sign of notability.Slatersteven (talk) 14:02, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
• I would say that a Michelin star counts towards notability, but is not, on its own, enough to establish notability. I very much agree that a star means that other sources are extremely likely... and so WP:BEFORE is in play (and must be addressed by those wishing to delete in any AFD nomination). A star means we should hesitate before deleting. It makes it more difficult to delete, but does not mean an automatic keep. Blueboar (talk) 14:54, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
• Yes, per The C of E. Just like WP:NPROF or WP:NFOOTY this is effectively saying that, similar to a player playing professionally or a professor receiving a prestigious acadmeic award, the receipt of a Michelin star makes the presumption that the topic meets WP:GNG to be very likely indeed. Like any WP:SNG, individual cases may merit their own special consideration, but the bar for demonstrating lack of significant coverage in an AFD must be higher for these entities than for other run-of-the-mill restaurants. In particular, to nominate something like 't Brouwerskolkje for deletion one must be extremely sure that it's somehow escaped the notice of all reliable sources except for the Michelin guide.  — Amakuru (talk) 15:01, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
• I would challenge you to find a Michelin-starred restaurant that has no other sources. In the end WP:GNG is rooted in policy so is not optional. Guy (help!) 15:03, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • A side note: Notability is decidedly not policy (though is rooted in policy), but definitely, we're not going to IAR the allowance for a standalone article for a restaurant without some evidence of notability per WP:NOT#PROMO. Of which the Michelin star is definitely "some evidence". --Masem (t) 15:07, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
• Yes - apart from anything else there will be sufficient RS coverage in the Michelin Guide itself to meet GNG, plus there is bound to be other coverage in reviews. I wonder how many people commenting here have actually seen a red Michelin Guide? Johnbod (talk) 15:48, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
• Proposal This conversation is probably moot now that Cullen328 has found a book that discusses this particular restaurant in depth, but there seems to be general agreement here that the existence of a restaurant that has been awarded a Michelin star, but has never been written about in RS, is unlikely. WP:NRESTAURANT is a redlink - how about we create an SNG, with a single criterion - Any restaurant that has ever been awarded one or more Michelin stars is presumed to have been covered by reliable sources and is presumed notable. GirthSummit _(blether) 16:40, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
  • There is a area at WP:NORG that gives guidance for specific types of organization, where this single restaurant criteria can easily fit. No need for a separate guideline. But we probably want to make sure the editors that have crafted NORG are aware of this; NORG has to play a fine line between "notable" and "promotional" so getting their opinion would help. (I will ping them to this convo as to keep it in one place). --Masem (t) 01:57, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
  • I'd support the addition of this as an SNG. It may be out of scope for this discussion, but there are perhaps other top-tier restaurant recognitions that would be appropriate to include (I'm no expert, but De728631 mentioned Gault Millau as another candidate above). _signed, Rosguill ^talk 02:18, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• The only thing that determines notability is the existence of a substantial quantity of reliable, independent source material. It may be that a Michelin star indicates there is a good likelihood of such material existing, but if it in fact doesn't, the restaurant in question is not notable. There is no substitute or proxy for that. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:13, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
  • But it has been long established that WP does allow for the presumption of notability for a limited set of cases (those defined through the subject-specific guidelines) that allow for a creation of a standalone article as to put it to the wisdom of the crowds to help expand, and that we can delete such articles if it is clear through a thorough search of appropriate references that sourcing is just not going to come in the future. A Michelin Star test is a perfect example of how this model should work. --Masem (t) 02:18, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
    • Yes, and in areas like sports, those "presumptions" have had the effect in practice of filling the encyclopedia with garbage. I am therefore against any new such. Find sources first, start article after. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 02:20, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

      Seraphimblade has it exactly right. Unless there is coverage, what are we even going to write? A significant award or something like it increases the likelihood that sources may exist or will eventually emerge, but if it becomes clear that such sources do not exist, an article cannot be sustained. Vexations (talk) 02:59, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I think the point of presumed notability is that it is exceedingly unlikely that there won't be coverage. In the case that initiated this thread, for example, Cullen328 was easily (I assume - certainly quickly) able to find a reliably published book giving the subject in-depth treatment. I'm not an expert, but I find it difficult to believe that a restaurant that has been awarded even just one Michelin star has not also been subject to multiple reviews in RS. I'm not calling for a mass creation of millions of foodie microstubs, I just think that restaurants of that caliber are guaranteed to have been written about more than, say, a footballer who played a couple of games for Aston Villa in the 1980s. GirthSummit _(blether) 14:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, we would never allow mass creation of restaurant stubs using automatic or semi-automated tools that use a digital version of Michelin to fill in the details: such mass creation in the past is why we have 10,000s of stubby athlete articles. We want editors to create these and add some additional sources - maybe not enough to satisfy the GNG, but enough to show that Michelin isn't the only mention, so that mass creation should not be possible. --Masem (t) 14:44, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• Notability is not a binary proposition dependent on meeting simple "yes-no" criteria. Some things can give an indication that something might be notable or is likely to be notable enough for a Wikipedia article to be about it. However there is ONE and ONLY ONE set of criteria which decides if a particular topic is suitable for an article. That is significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the topic. Very simply put: unless we have enough source text to use to support a reasonable-length Wikipedia article, we should not write articles. Michelin stars may be an indicator that the source text is likely to exist, so that it would be worth it to start searching for said text, but Michelin stars by themselves are not source text. If the entire, total, and complete text of an article is "Such and such a restaurant received Michelin stars" and there's literally nothing else we can use to expand the article, we should not write that article. --Jayron32 14:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
  • This actually suggests a reasonable thing to add to our notability guidelines (or process), when dealing with subject-specific guidelines. We don't want editors creating articles that are basically one or two sentences that show how the SNG is met, and that's it. Stub articles created this way are useless. We want a tiniest bit of effort to show there's more about the subject even if the sources to support that don't meet the GNG. For example, a restaurant with a Michelin star may have some local area articles about it or the owner/chef/etc. that could be added but per NORG/AUD, those local sources add nothing to notability. But together with the Michelin star, you should have more than 2 sentences to write about the restaurant, and because it meets this proposed new SNG criteria, will be in no immediate danger of deletion. That could apply across the board, but that would need discussion beyond this topic. Key is that we can protect WP from mass creation of stubby articles based on one criteria, but just need to make that clear at the right policy and guideline pages. --Masem (t) 15:14, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• I think there is a distinction to be made between sources that demonstrate notability (a Michelin star), and reliable sources for content. It annoys me everytime I see someone say, "We don't care what an article subject has to say about themselves" because, really, sometimes a business' or person's own website or an interview with them or whatever really is the best source for a specific piece of content, however they don't contribute to notability. For a restaurant, the Michelin star contributes to notability but you need other sources for content. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 14:52, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  Right, but having indicators of notability does not force us to create an article. Content is the most important thing, and lacking independently-sourced content is something we don't want. And what an entity says about itself is marginally useful for banal, basic things like statistics and simple facts (dates, names, etc.) however that content is rarely also enough to build any article out of either. The value of independent sourcing is verification, vetting, editorial control, and evaluation of what details are and are not worth writing about anyways. Self-published material is useful for adding the sort of banal trivia like how many employees a company has, the brand names of their products, the date a person got married, what high school they went to, etc. None of that is particularly stuff that we can base the bulk of an article on, however. --Jayron32 16:21, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

They will be there, but as pointed out above, the long entry any starred restaurant will have in the rigorously independent red Michelin Guide would if need be suffice. Actually this is a far better source than most others that will be available (newspaper/magazine reviews and features). Johnbod (talk) 15:11, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• Two/three stars is going to be a pretty reliable indicator of notability (one less so, but still a good chance), but there should be no automatic notability indifferent to the broader question of sourcing. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 15:09, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• A Michelin Star isn't the equivalent of a sportsperson making a couple of appearances in EFL League Two or a professor who gets some minor local award, but that of winning an Olympic gold or a Nobel Prize. And that goes for one star, let alone two or three. It is absolutely inconceivable that any restaurant could gain this accolade without having attracted significant coverage in independent reliable sources. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Not quite [[68]], [[69]].Slatersteven (talk) 18:00, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, no one wants to book a spot at your table if you secure a playing spot in an ELF League Two squad, win an Olympic Gold Medal or a Nobel Prize, but your phone rings if you get a single star. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:28, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

That may be so, but it misses the point. We should not be encouraging the creation of Wikipedia articles based on awards won. We should be basing Wikipedia articles on reliable, independent source text. If, as you say, every Michelin starred restaurant has copious source text from which we could research to write a quality Wikipedia article, then the fact of having a Michelin star is inconsequential and needn't even enter into this discussion. Because we don't write articles using Michelin stars. We write articles using reliable source texts. --Jayron32 18:36, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I've been saying that for years, but there are multiple notability criteria, and their proponents, that disagree with you. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Jayron32, this is why every single SNG needs to be rewritten or deleted. GNG defines the sources necessary to meet RS and NOT, but SNGs are often written to support creation of directory-style completeness. They should be framed as an indication of the kind of person likely to have sources, or as an additional bar to inclusion, but too often they are written, framed and interpreted as a back door to allow articles on subjects that have no sources outside of directories and results lists. Guy (help!) 10:12, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Or we just start applying the statement "does not guarantee inclusion". Notability is rather more then being noticed.Slatersteven (talk) 12:16, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Neither of the sources offered by User:Slatersteven contradicts the statement that Michelin-starred restaurants invariably get significant conerage in independent reliable sources. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:59, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

No, but that is not what I was contradicting, I was contradicting the idea that this is some universally accepted badge of excellence like a Nobel prize.

Newspaper of record

Shouldn't we update WP:RS/P with the Newspaper of record (NOR) list (or reconcile them). I do AIV work, and knowing that say The Hindu is a newspaper of record for India is very useful (eg. tidying up from edit warring over "controversy" sections in Indic BLPs – happens often). However, our WP:RS/P doesn't have the full global set of NORs? It would be great to have the NOR article brought up to GA (even FList) standard (e.g. every entry updated, validated and sourced), and which would automatically be included as WP:RS/Ps? Britishfinance (talk) 11:28, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Britishfinance, I'm quickly pinging Rosguill here, just because this would seem to overlap considerably with some work they've been doing on establishing lists of reliable sources for different regions, so their view would probably be useful. GirthSummit _(blether) 16:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Girth Summit, thanks for the ping. I think that leveraging this information could be useful. I'm a little concerned that it seems like newspaper of record refers purely to the role of that newspaper inside that society, which would mean that we still need a vetting discussion for newspapers listed there: we probably shouldn't treat Izvestiya, Rodong Sinmu and People's Daily on the same plane as die FAZ. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Question... could Pravda be considered the “Newspaper of Record” for Soviet Union era Russia? Blueboar (talk) 17:22, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

  Blueboar, IIRC Pravda was just the Communist Party's polemical organ, whereas Izvestiya was the newspaper of record. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:38, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Pravda should be considered a newspaper of record, despite the fact that officially it is just a party newspaper. In Soviet society, Communist party was de facto a supreme state organ. It is definitely a reliable source for, e.g. information about Brezhnev's or Stalin's deaths. However, it is easy to give an example when Pravda, and even NYT are not reliable sources.

By saying that, I object to any blanket approval/disapproval of any type of mass-media. Any non-marginal newspaper can and should be considered a reliable/nonreliable source, depending on the context: even a local newspaper can be uses as a source for some non-controversial and low importance subjects (e.g. minor historical facts about some small town or local school). In contrast, even a top rank newspaper article is hardly a good source in an article about EPR paradox, CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, or the Holocaust. I already proposed to modify the policy to make it clear that non-marginal newspapers may be reliable, depending on a context, and to explain that relevant guidelines and WP:REDFLAG should be consulted to make a final decision in each concrete case. I suggest to renew this discussion and implement these changes.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:16, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose using Newspaper of record as a useful concept in Wikipedia's guidance. I checked the two Belgian newspapers in the page's list, which have the same reference (a 15-year old BBC news page): the reference does not justify inclusion of these newspapers in the list (neither are called "of record" in the reference, so their current inclusion in the list is pure and simple WP:OR). The BBC article lists Het Volk (which no longer exists: thus currently circulation zero). The BBC article does not mention Gazet van Antwerpen nor De Morgen, usually considered high quality newspapers (Dutch-language concept: kwaliteitskrant) in Belgium. Further, the reputations of these newspapers (as well those mentioned in the BBC article as those I additionally mentioned) varied over time. So no, "Newspaper of record" is useless as concept in Wikipedia's guidance, and Wikipedia's Newspaper of record article is badly written, so rather misguiding than helpful in the matter. --Francis Schonken (talk) 18:08, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

See my above comment. I see no problem to stipulate that newspapers of records are reliable for some concrete types of statements. Thus, newly adopted laws published in such a newspaper must be considered a reliable publication. However, op-ed materials about some controversial historical or political subject can hardly be treated as equally reliable sources, especially if that statement raised WP:REDFLAG. Definitely newspapers, including newspapers of record, do not meet RS criteria listed in WP:REDFLAG. These two examples are just extreme sides of a continuous spectrum. IMO, a policy and guidelines should explain that, except some obvious cases, no universal rules defining reliability of newspaper publications can be proposed.--Paul Siebert (talk) 01:25, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

The proposal is not to automatically merge the NOR list into WP:RS/P (I don’t know if they are all correct), but to take out the NOR candidates that are clearly valid and referenced (E.g. The Hindu), and add them. Per my starting comment, it would be great If someone (maybe me later), would bring the NOR article to GA-Flist status (ie where the examples were all clearly WP:RS/Ps), bowever, there are quite A lot of this list that could be easily merged into the WP:RS/P list without much fuss? Britishfinance (talk) 18:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

(@Britishfinance - Just a quick aside. You might want to amend your comments, and not use an abbreviation “NOR” for “Newspaper of record” (or perhaps use a different abbreviation) ... the issue is that the abbreviation “NOR” already has an established usage on Wikipedia (it stands for “No original research”, one of our core policies). Not a big deal, but I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what you are talking about.) Blueboar (talk) 19:36, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

• Judging from the examples at Newspaper of record#Examples for the countries I know, either the term has little meaning, or there's enough controversy about the meaning that the list is impossibly difficult to compile and unusable in practice. I doubt there's currently any useful guidance to be gained from this classification, from the point of view of the English Wikipedia policies. One exception could be the subclass "newspaper of public record", for instance in certain countries the public administrations are forced to publish a number of official acts (such as tenders) on certain newspapers, so it could be useful for the editors to know that they can look for certain "official" information on this or that newspaper's archive. Nemo 14:42, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose using this for anything. Most of these are reliable sources for most topics, but these newspapers tend to reflect the views that are prominent and/or popular in their own countries (such as portraying their own country in a positive light). Not the gold standard when we should be aiming for a global perspective. buidhe 21:09, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

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• askmen.com  
• AskMen

We have around 800 articles using this as a source. According to the article it's an aggregator. A lot of the references are to listicles, often of attractive women. It's owned by Ziff-Davis but I can't see any discussion of its editorial oversight. A lot of the content is declared as paid sponsored content, much of the rest looks like churnalism. Is this a RS? Guy (help!) 17:18, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Not very, on its best days it would be yellow-rated - tabloid quality - David Gerard (talk) 19:01, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

 Comment: Example Seinfeld: A XXX Parody reference in a GA2 pending #Filmography. –84.46.53.160 (talk) 06:24, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

• It doesn't seem to have an about page, or a staff page, or anything of that nature. All it has is a media kit page, which says several alarming things that give me the impression that they do not distinguish between advertising and other content. Adweek has a lot to say about them, too: This says they do have editors (which I couldn't find on their site), but notes that though the editors aren’t really interested in product pitches, a lot of the site’s health, sexual and divorce content come from PR pros. Here is a bit more about their writers, though it doesn't say much. But note the context, again; it seems like the unspoken reality of Askmen is that its pieces are often written by advertisers, without any disclaimer indicating this. These things make me think that it's probably not a good source - it approach is slightly more sophisticated than traditional churnalism but shares the same problems. --Aquillion (talk) 11:45, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  Aquillion, yeah, that's pretty much my impression. No journalism, just churnalism Guy (help!) 23:52, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

  Updated per Aquillion, I'm very paranoid. –84.46.52.225 (talk) 22:19, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Saudi sourcing problems

I ask editors to please be wary of some sources on subjects in which the Saudi government takes a strong interest. Sadly, there may not be reliable, independent sources of information available on many Saudi-Arabia-related subjects. This has been raised here before, at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 5#ArabNews, but that was 2007.

The Saudi Arabian government exerts very close control over the domestic media; it appoints editors, issues national bans on employing specific journalists, sends out guidelines on how stories are to be covered, requests that influential public figures make specific statements in support of the government on specific occasions, and so on. People who publish the wrong thing, or fail to publish the right thing, may be disappeared, arrested, imprisoned, kept in solitary confinement, tortured, or killed.

The result is a press that strongly resembles a government PR department, and publications that resemble press releases. With the best will in the world, I don't think that Saudi-government-controlled sources can reasonably be considered independent of the government. This includes any media outlet operating from a .sa website, and some Saudi-owned media outlets run from outside the country (Asharq Al-Awsat, for instance). In other countries in which there is little freedom of the press, and the censors are beholden to the Saudi government, the media also publish some stories which seem to come from the same copybook.

The Saudi Arabian government also attempts to exert control over foreign media (see Jamal Khashoggi and Jeff Bezos#Politics). Saudi Arabia is spending large sums on overt and covert influencers (those who do not declare their conflicts of interest). It seems to be doing this to improve its public image abroad, especially in the wake of Jamal Khashoggi's death, and attract tourists.

How did I come across this? I decided to rescue an abandoned AFC draft on a book fair. In my ignorance, I really didn't expect the topic to be that political, at least not to the extent that I'd wind up writing about torture... (crossposted to New Pages Patrol) HLHJ (talk) 19:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

HLHJ, in principle I agree but this needs a carefully worded RfC identifying specific sources and the areas for which they should be considered unreliable. Guy (help!) 23:51, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

HLHJ, agree. Add to the list, Al-Arabiya and CNN Arabic, they are all propaganda machines for the Saudi regime.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 00:14, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Does this need an RfC? I genuinely don't know, I haven't spent much time here. Agreed on the need for specificity. I think that "media produced inside Saudi Arabia, under Saudi media law" and "anything on a .sa domain" are clearly-defined categories, and would avoid having to re-RfC for each new publication. Media published abroad, with anonymous correspondents in KSA, exist and can be quite independent. Complete Saudi ownership of overseas media could in theory occur without Saudi control, but I don't know of an instance. Al-Arabiya is a Saudi-controlled domestic outlet, and in my limited experience not at all reliable on these topics; CNN Arabic I have not come across. It is based in Dubai, which might come under "beholden"; my (again limited) experience is that these are sometimes a bit better. HLHJ (talk) 05:47, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

HLHJ, yes, per my comment above. We don't deprecate without an RfC. Guy (help!) 10:09, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, it took me a moment to understand your comment. I was thinking that general policy, deprecating non-independent sources, seems to apply here; the only problem is that it may not be immediately obvious to an editor that, say, Arab News isn't independent. You are talking about an explicit "do-not-use" rule. While one could define categories of media, one could not produce a definitive list of media outlets (new ones keep coming out) or topics.

"Subjects of interest to the Saudi government" vary. People and policies win and lose government favour rapidly and unpredictably. The Saudi government changes the URLs of many webpages frequently, so it's often hard to go back and find out what they said a few months ago. Older media articles are also often only available through the Wayback Machine.

Examples of Saudi government position changes

Obviously it has an interest in portraying the Saudi government as capable, and Saudi Arabia as a thriving country in which nearly everything is going very well (and as an appealing tourist destination). I read a headline a couple says ago which said ~"Saudi Arabia excels in human rights". However, sometimes it can be more complex. For instance, until a few years ago, Saudi Arabia supported some groups of official clerics, who controlled the information ministry and the religious police. Then they ran a media campaign against them preparatory to transferring control of the ministry and stripping the religious police of most of their powers; the media were criticizing part of the government with support of a more powerful faction. Until a few years ago the Muslim Brotherhood were officially praised and members were appointed to official roles; the media followed suit. Now they are declared a terrorist organization, and condemned in the news. Relations to Qatar; once an ally to be praised, it can now be death to support them, or, sometimes, fail to oppose them actively enough. Yemen and Canada have also suffered abrupt reversals of esteem. Women driving was opposed, then supported (with the government explicitly honouring some activists in a public-opinion campaign), then it was announced that it would be permitted and and the activists who had called for it were arrested, so that activism to win concessions from the government would not be encouraged (this was in 2018; many are still in jail). Tourism was illegal in Saudi Arabia until recently, pilgrimage tours excepted; now the government is promoting it.

I'm trying to think of topics on which the Saudi government would probably be a reliable source. Generally, I'd take them as reliable sources on themselves; indications of the positions of the government, sources for self-fulfilling statements like official appointments, and sources for what Saudi media said about X. I would not use them to establish notability, any more than I would a press release. I'm not sure what other topics they'd be reliable for. Maybe I'd take them as a source on the location of Saudi cities, for instance, unless it becomes politically advantageous to claim they are further south or whatever (but not their size; they often seem to inflate statistics). Can you think of a better example?

The thing is, to know if Saudi media are an independent source on X, you have to understand all of the relevant current positions of the government, and that requires independent sources, who probably have better coverage. Any formal rule will need to take this into account. RfC phrasing suggestions? As an informal rule; if it's Saudi-controlled, don't use it for anything except WP:SELFSOURCE. HLHJ (talk) 17:44, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

I would vote support for your RfC.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 13:42, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

References

Longmont Times-Call and attributed opinion columns, particularly by Carl Brady, at Judith Curry?

• Longmont Times-Call
• https://www.timescall.com/opinion/columns/
• https://www.timescall.com/author/carl-brady/
• Some recent discussion focused on one particular quote.[70]
• I found no previous RSN discussions. Maybe it's "stellar"?
• Used in ~70 sources. [71] including at least 5 opinion columns [72].
• Endorsed Clinton in 2016; Romney in 2012. [73].

​ What is their "reputation for checking the facts," "meaningful editorial oversight," or "apparent conflict of interest"? -- Yae4 (talk) 19:38, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Note: the specific article that began the discussion is this one. Jusadi (talk) 13:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

To summarize my comments from the linked discussion, I believe that this source is not strong enough for a BLP due to its editorial context and authorship. The publisher is a local newspaper from Longmont, Colorado, and I have found no reviews of the source in general; I'd probably trust it for most statements. However, the article in question appears in an opinion column, and the publisher does not have a well-defined editorial policy on these opinion columns. By WP:NEWSORG, "Editorial commentary, analysis and opinion pieces, whether written by the editors of the publication (editorials) or outside authors (op-eds) are reliable primary sources for statements attributed to that editor or author, but are rarely reliable for statements of fact." In any case, while I do not think it appropriate to use this source for statements of fact, it might still be a useful source if the author were himself important in this discussion. However, this individual has no history (that I can find) outside of the opinion section in this particular local newspaper, so including his comments even with attribution doesn't appear worthwhile. Jusadi (talk) 01:52, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Actblue /Winred

14 articles link directly to actblue and 1 to Winred.

As these are campaign pages, I don't feel they should be used a reliable source to begin with.

But my bigger issue is, they are directly linking to a donate now page for specific candidates.

So Q1: Should all references be removed? Before I embark on removing all 15, I'd like some confirmation these are bad references.

Q2: What is the process for requesting that those sites ( and any others potentially) are on the banned list so that editors are warned/stopped from adding them as a reference?

Slywriter (talk) 21:31, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Slywriter, I vote nuke both. Anything significant will have an alternate source, and there are very few so the impact is low. Guy (help!) 23:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Should the NYT best seller list be deprecated?

• Can bestseller lists be bought? --The Los Angeles Times
• R.N.C. Spent Nearly $100,000 on Copies of Donald Trump Jr.’s Book --The New York Times
• New York Times Best-Seller List: Biased Or Just Plain Bogus? --Investor's Business Daily
• The convoluted world of best-seller lists, explained --Vox
• Behind the Scam: What Does It Take to Be a ‘Best-Selling Author’? $3 and 5 Minutes. --Observer
• This Book That Scammed Its Way Onto the Times Bestseller List Is Real, Real Bad --Electric Literature
• How To Get On The NY Times & Every Other Bestseller Book List --Scribe

--Guy Macon (talk) 22:38, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, those articles that are about the NY Times list are mostly about how a few publishers have gotten books onto the list (and most of them are about the same book) by secretly buying a bunch of copies of their own books. If the only way to manipulate the NY Times best-seller list is to buy lots of copies of the book, then that list is still doing exactly what it claims to be doing. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 23:06, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

According to Scribe is not the only way that the NYT list can have incorrect answers. There are also a bunch of ways to not make the list when you should -- which calls into question all of the lower-selling books that make the list simply because better-selling books were left out.

According to scribe, ways to not be listed as a best seller when your book sells more that the ones on the list:

• Be something the people running the folks running the list don't like, such as The Exorcist.
• Fail to be published by a big New York publishing house.
• Fail to get enough pre-orders. It seems that a book that starts slow and builds popularity isn't allowed on the list no matter how high the sales eventually get.
• Make your sales through traditional bookstores. If you sell 100X higher than the books on the list but do it through Bible Bookstores, no listing for you.
• Fail to get press in the media sources centered around New York City or that the coastal media elite read and take seriously.

--Guy Macon (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, interesting question. I'd say not, as there is sufficient documentation of the few cases of fraud that we can discuss it from RS in each case, but I would certainly not use the NYT list as a source for "best-selling author" (a phrase I think we should kill with fire anyway). Guy (help!) 23:48, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Should we assume that in every case of someone buying their way on to the NYT best seller list there will be a reliable source that documents it? If, as is claimed, Nielsen BookScan gives a reasonably accurate (but not accessible to most Wikipedia editors) record of cash register sales of books in bookstores and give widely different answers than the NYT on most books, that would seem to argue against making such an assumption. -Guy Macon (talk) 01:27, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Most of the sources you've presented are fairly measured in their criticism, saying essentially that it's very difficult to count every book sold, and each list has to make their own judgement calls with imperfect data. The NYT tries to catch books that are being pushed through bulk sales, but some inevitably slip through. Some of their decisions can be questioned, but there is no perfect list. Only the Scribe article by Tucker Max and the Dennis Prager opinion piece outright call them biased or wrong, and those are frankly just very unreliable sources. I don't think I'd use either of them for any factual claims about anything. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 01:42, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, the same criticism has always been applied to record charts and movie takings. Fraud happens. Mostly, though, fraud doesn't happen because the publisher has a vested interest in being trusted and looks out for these things.

So, in short, yes, I think we should assume that any meaningful level of fraud would be identified in RS, until the big expose that says otherwise. But it's unsatisfactory. What I find particularly annoying is the way bestseller lists are asserted as some kind of proxy for quality. Jeffrey Archer writes bestsellers, but they are unmitigated dreck. Guy (help!) 10:08, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

This could (it may still be the case) said about records charts, in fact I suspect any chart. So I would say, no no chart should be RS. But I do not think the NYT can be singled out.Slatersteven (talk) 13:18, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Good point. It is quite likely that the NYT is talked about not because it is worse but because it is prominent. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:40, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Guy Macon, I think the prominence makes it a bigger target for fraud as well, so a bit of both. Nobody would give a damn if someone made the Podunk Leader's best seller list, so there's no incentive to do it and no incentive to cover gaming if it happened. Guy (help!) 10:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Many charts are evidence of prima facie notability, i.e. that enough people cared for the thing in question to chart. And a link to officialcharts.com is perfectly usable as official evidence that a record was a hit in the UK. But, of course, we still need the RSes for a standalone article - David Gerard (talk) 21:52, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• The only useful thing to put in a Wikipedia article is about the book appearing on the NYT Bestseller list. The list itself is a perfectly and self-evidently reliable source for the books that appear on it. Whether or not articles should report a book's status on the NYT Bestseller List is a different question, but the presence or not on the list is reliably sourced to the list itself. --Jayron32 16:51, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

LFL360.com

The most-cited source in Legends Football League is lfl360.com  . Attempts to find out anything about it are stymied right now due to a database connection error on the site, which is hardly a good sign. Archives don't show any of the indicia of reliability. Is this a usable source? It looks, on the face of it, to be a mashup of WP:FANSITE and WP:PHWOOOOOOAAAAR!. Guy (help!) 23:46, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@JzG: I believe it is closer to WP:PRIMARY, which of course does not inherently make it reliable, with a large dose of FANSITE. Most of the writers involved were in direct contact with the league and it was featured on LFLUS.com, the main league website, after the first season. Essentially, it seems it was utilized by the league to write press releases (and maybe it was volunteer based). By 2019, it had actually replaced the "News" tab on the league's website. They are mostly used on the routine statements made by the league, which seems to fit PRIMARY: A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. But that is just my two cents as I have been digging for any non-primary sources and RS sources trying to clean it up. Yosemiter (talk) 03:06, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, I believe I saw a couple of articles on there in my sifting through sources written by mark Staffieri on the Canadian league (like this one). So perhaps he would know more about what kind of site it is/was. Yosemiter (talk) 03:32, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

Mostly I'm disappointed that WP:PHWOOOOOOAAAAR! doesn't exist - David Gerard (talk) 11:20, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

David Gerard, see also the deleted WP:HOTTIE. Guy (help!) 11:39, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

ok,not disappointed any more - David Gerard (talk) 12:51, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

The Washington Times

Hi, according to our article The Washington Times, "has drawn controversy for publishing racist content, including commentary and conspiracy theories about United States president Barack Obama" and "It has published material promoting Islamophobia", The Columbia Journalism said this about this newspaper, "The Washington Times is like no major city daily in America in the way that it wears its political heart on its sleeve. No major paper in America would dare be so partisan." In 1998 the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram wrote that The Washington Times editorial policy was "rabidly anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and pro-Israel." In a 2016 report, the Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations listed The Washington Times among media outlets it said "regularly demonstrates or supports Islamophobic themes." This is all from the wikipedia article of The Washington Times see history for attribution. You can also see other things like their support for Trump etc. The question is, is this a reliable source for the following paragraph.

However, a State Department spokesman reported that "Washington did not claim the exile group was involved in the assassination of scientists in Iran."

Here are some problems with this paragraph:

• The official is not named.
• The text in the quotes is not found in Google except in the Washington Times.
• We have a report from the NBC, a highly reliable source definitely more than this one, that says

  Two senior U.S. officials confirmed for NBC News the MEK’s role in the assassinations, with one senior official saying, 'All your inclinations are correct.'"

  [74]
• The paragraph starts with "However" which somehow makes all of the previous content claims weak although it is much reliable and much clear.--SharʿabSalam▼ (talk) 23:53, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
• I think the Washington Times is an unreliable source due to its history of bias and inaccuracy. There is no consensus for general exclusion, but if there's good reason to doubt a story in the Washington Times then it should be excluded. I never use it at all. Guy (help!) 10:03, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Guy, I wouldn't call The Washington Times a reliable source either, and the part in the article you're bringing up does seem fishy, if thats what youre asking. SageSolomon (talk) 23:10, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Obituary

• Leah Labelle Vladowski

Hello everyone! I have used the above obituary as a source for the Leah LaBelle article. It was published in The Seattle Times. I am thinking about nominating this for an FAC sometime in the far future (as I would ideally like to reach out to various editors for their opinion as I have never done a biography on the FAC level), but I was wondering if an obituary could be used as a source, particularly for a featured article? According to the FAC criteria, articles should have "high-quality reliable sources". Since the obituary was published in a reliable source, I would think it is appropriate for use, but again, I have never really worked on a lot of biographies so I am uncertain. Apologies in advance if this question about obituaries has been asked before. Thank you in advance! Aoba47 (talk) 20:01, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

A long form obit story like this (comparable to what the NYtimes may give), is reasonable. We want to avoid the short form obit common to most papers for the everyday average person as sources as those typically aren't written by the newspaper, but submitted by friends/family. A long form shows research by the newspaper itself, and then you just consider the reliability of the newspaper (of which the Seattle Times is just fine). --Masem (t) 20:05, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you for the response! That makes perfect sense to me. Hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. Aoba47 (talk) 20:19, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

• Long form obits in respected newspapers are excellent sources IMO. They give a good reality check on what's considered the most important facets of a life, and are a good guide to what can go in the lead. Guy (help!) 09:55, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you for the response! I just wanted to double-check. Aoba47 (talk) 22:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

eBaum's World

I'm curious as to whether eBaum's World can be cited as a reliable source as a reference on a Wikipedia article?--Bartallen2 (talk) 07:36, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• Not a chance - Does that site meet any of the criteria in the Identifying reliable sources guideline? No, it doesn't. So no, it cannot. This goes double for controversial claims about living people. I suggest that you review the Biographies of Living Persons policy before editing further. NorthBySouthBaranof (talk) 07:57, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The question is, what would you want to cite from eBaum's World anyway. In the past I have wanted to cite material from Know Your Meme because it is generally well put together information, but it isn't regarded as RS.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 08:08, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks everyone - I just wished to clarify that --Bartallen2 (talk) 08:10, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Dawn mirroring WP

Here is an example of the Dawn newspaper mirroring around 60% of its content from WP (Copyvio report: [75]):

These are relevant quotes from WP's version of 8 April 2012:

He suffered from poor health during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack at the age of 48, after recording approximately five thousand film songs for 583 released films. ... In 2003, 20 years after his death, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf awarded him the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the "star of excellence," ... He sang his first song in the Indian film Ibrat in 1951 and got recognition. His family moved to Pakistan and settled in Karachi in 1954, where he began participating in variety shows, music programs, and children's programs on radio. In 1954, he recorded his first non-film song, "Bunder Road se Keemari", written by Mehdi Zaheer for the popular Radio Pakistan show Bachchon Ki Duniya; the song was a hit and became the steppingstone for Rushdi's future. ... After the success of "Bunder Road se Keemari", Rushdi was offered songs as a playback singer for films and quickly gained popularity. He lent his voice to many hit films like Bara Aadmi (1956), Wah Rey Zamaney (1957), Raat Ke Rahi (1957), Yeh Dunya (1958) and many more.

Here is the relevant quotes from the Dawn's article of 11 April 2012:

He sang his first song in the Indian film "Ibrat" in 1951 and got recognition. His family eventually moved to Pakistan and settled in Karachi in 1954, where he began participating in variety shows, music programs, and children's programs on radio.

In 1954, he recorded his first non-film song, "Bunder Road se Keemari", written by Mehdi Zaheer for the popular Radio Pakistan show Bachchon Ki Duniya – the song was a hit and became the steppingstone for Rushdi's future.

The success of "Bunder Road se Keemari", opened new doors for Rushdi as he got offers for playback singing for films and quickly gained popularity. He lent his voice to many hit films like "Bara Aadmi" (1956), "Wah Rey Zamaney" (1957), "Raat Ke Rahi" (1957), "Yeh Dunya" (1958) and many more.

Unfortuantely he suffered from health issues during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack having recorded about 5,000 film songs for 583 released films.

In 2003, 20 years after his death, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf awarded him the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the "star of excellence."

- NitinMlk (talk) 18:16, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• There is no byline for this article so it could be a press release or sourced from elsewhere, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 18:54, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Dunya News mirroring WP

Here's an example of Dunya News mirroring nearly whole of its article from WP (Copyvio report: [76]):

This is WP's version as of 8 April 2012

Ahmed Rushdi, SI, PP (Urdu: احمد رشدی‎; April 24, 1934 – April 11, 1983) was a versatile Pakistani playback singer who worked in film music and was "an important contributor to the Golden Age of Pakistani film music." Rushdi is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers ever lived in south asia[1] and was a natural baritone, yet could sing high tenor notes with ease. Born in Hyderabad Deccan, he migrated to Pakistan and became a leading singer in the Pakistan film industry. He is considered to be one of the most versatile vocalists of the subcontinent and was capable of singing variety of songs. He is also considered to be the first regular pop singer of south asia[2] and credited as having sung the "first-ever South asian" pop song, "Ko-Ko-Ko-reena."[3]

In 1954, he recorded the official National anthem of Pakistan with several other singers.[4][5] Rushdi has recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema in Urdu, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi and Gujarati languages. He suffered from poor health during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack at the age of 48, after recording approximately five thousand film songs for 583 released films. Besides popular music, Rushdi also helped popularize the ghazals of Naseer Turabi.[6]

In 2003, 20 years after his death, Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf awarded him the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the "star of excellence," an honour given for distinguished merit in the fields of literature, arts, sports, medicine, or science.[7] A street in Gulshan-e-Iqbal, Karachi, also named Ahmed Rushdi Road.[8]

And this is the full article of Dunya News published on 11 April 2012

The 29th death anniversary of versatile playback singer Ahmed Rushdi is being observed today. Ahmed Rushdi was a versatile playback singer who worked in film music and was an important contributor to the golden age of Pakistani film music.Rushdi is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers ever lived in south Asia. He is considered to be one of the most versatile vocalists of the subcontinent and was capable of singing variety of songs. He is also considered to be the first regular pop singer of south Asia and credited as having sung the first-ever South Asian pop song‚ Ko-Ko-Ko-reena.In 1954‚ Rushdi recorded the official National anthem of Pakistan with several other singers. He recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema in Urdu‚ English‚ Punjabi‚ Bengali‚ Sindhi and Gujarati languages.He suffered from poor health during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack on April 11 1983 at the age of 48‚ after recording approximately five thousand film songs for 583 released films.In 2003‚ 20 years after his death‚ Ahmed Rushdi was awarded the Sitara-e-Imtiaz while a street in Gulshan-e-Iqbal‚ Karachi‚ was also named as Ahmed Rushdi Road.

- NitinMlk (talk) 18:22, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• There is no byline so this could be a press release or sourced from elsewhere, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 18:56, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The Nation (Pakistan) mirroring WP

Here's an example of The Nation mirroring half of its article from WP (Copyvio report: [77]):

This is WP's version as of 27 march 2011:

... was "an important contributor to the Golden Age of Pakistani film music." Rushdi is acclaimed as one of the greatest singers ever lived in south asia[1] and was a natural baritone, yet could sing high tenor notes with ease. Born in Hyderabad Deccan, he migrated to Pakistan and became a leading singer in the Pakistan film industry. He is considered to be one of the most versatile vocalists of the subcontinent and was capable of singing variety of songs. He is also considered to be the first regular pop singer of south asia and credited as having sung the "first-ever South asian" pop song, "Ko-Ko-Ko-reena."[2] In 1954, he recorded the official National anthem of Pakistan with several other singers.[3][4] Rushdi has recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema. ... Since 1976, Ahmed Rushdi was a heart patient and his doctors advised him to abstain from singing but Rushdi refused by saying that music was his life. When he had a second heart attack in 1981, he was composing a musical album in the voice of singer Mujeeb Aalam. His last non film song was "Aaney walo suno" which was a duet with Mehnaz. On the night of April 11, 1983, he had a third heart attack. He was immediately taken to the hospital but pronounced dead by the doctors.

And here is the quote from The Nation's article dated 12 April 2011:

He has recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema industry. He sang over 800 songs for 583 films till his death in 1983. Ahmed Rushdi , a master of all moods was adept at singing all styles, be it happy, comedy, tragedy, qawwali, lullaby, and patriotic, pop, revolutionary or folk numbers. He was an important contributor to the golden age of Pakistani film industry and considered as one of the greatest singers of South Asia. He is also considered the first regular pop singer of South Asia and credited as having sung the first ever pop song of South Asia 'Ko-Ko-Ko-reena. Since 1976, Ahmed Rushdi was a heart patient and his doctors advised him to abstain from singing but Rushdi refused by saying that music was his life. When he had a second heart attack in 1981, he was composing a musical album. On the night of April 11, 1983, he had a third heart attack. He was immediately taken to the hospital but pronounced dead by the doctors.

- NitinMlk (talk) 18:29, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• This one has a byline "from our staff reporter" so seems to be guilty of mirroring, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 18:58, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Atlantic306, do you think they would care about byline while copy-pasting such a POV mess? BTW, can you find any older version of this content anywhere else on the net? This query is also regarding your similar comments to other mirrors. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:15, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• • I dont think it would be from anything any older as it looks like a press release put out on the event of his death by his agent or marketing agency or suchlike, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:18, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

How can these be press releases when we already had the same content way before publishing of any of these mirrors? - NitinMlk (talk) 19:33, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Because the probable press release has been copied from Wikipedia, for all we know it could be the same person who wrote the press release who previously wrote the content on Wikipedia such as his agent, marketing agency etc, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:39, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

That would make them a clear case of copyvio as they (or that non-existent agent) never gave attribution to the relevant WP articles. I guess you know that the content of this project cannot be copied without giving proper attribution. - NitinMlk (talk) 19:54, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

The News International mirroring WP

First mirror

Copyvio report: [78]

This is WP's version as of 23 October 2014:

... was "an important contributor to the Golden Age of Pakistani film music." ... Rushdi has recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema in Urdu, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi and Gujarati languages and found unprecedented success as a playback artist from the mid-1950s to early 1980s. ... He suffered from poor health during the latter part of his life and died of a heart attack at the age of 48, after recording approximately five thousand film songs for 583 released films.

Here is the relevant quote from The News International's article of 11 April 2015:

Ahmed Rushdi recorded the highest number of film songs in the history of Pakistani cinema in Urdu, English, Punjabi, Bengali, Sindhi and Gujarati languages and found unprecedented success as a playback artist from the mid 1950s to early 1980s. He recorded approximately 5000 songs for 583 released films. ... Rushdi died of a heart attack at the age of 48 on April 11 1983. He was considered as a key contributor to the golden age of Pakistani film music.

• This one has no byline so it could be a press release or sourced from elsewhere, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:00, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Second mirror

Copyvio report: [79]

These are the relevant quotes from WP's version of 23 September 2019:

In November 2010, 27 years after his death, the Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari awarded him the Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the third highest honour and civilian award by the State of Pakistan, given in the fields of literature, arts, sports, medicine, or science. ... Murad produced eleven films under his father's company Film Art. He was the youngest film producer in the industry at that time. Most of his produced films were either Golden Jubilee or Silver Jubilee. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he produced films like Insaan badalta hai (1961) (his first film as producer), Armaan (1966), Ehsaan (1967), Naseeb apna apna (1970) and Mastana mahi (Punjabi film of 1971). However, after Mastana Mahi he produced no film except Hero which was produced in the 1980s and was released after his death.

And here is the relevant quotes from the The News International's article dated 2 October 2019:

... in November 2010, after a long period of 27 years after his death, the Pakistani government awarded him with Sitara-e-Imtiaz, the third highest honor and civilian award by the State of Pakistan, given in the fields of literature, arts, sports, medicine, or science. Murad produced eleven films under his father’s established ‘Film Art’. He was the youngest film producer in the industry at that time. Most of his produced films were either Golden Jubilee or Silver Jubilee. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he produced films like Insaan badalta hai (1961) (his first film as producer), Armaan (1966), Ehsaan (1967), Naseeb apna apna (1970) and Mastana mahi (Punjabi film of 1971). However, after Mastana Mahi he produced no film except Hero which was produced in the 1980s and was released after his death.

• This one has no byline so could be a press release or sourced from elsewhere, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

PS: I found these & the previously mentioned mirrors from Pakistani newspapers by just having a cursory look at two Pak articles, namely Ahmed Rushdi and Waheed Murad. So the situation of Pak newspapers seem even worse. - NitinMlk (talk) 18:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• It looks more like the use of a press release to me given that only one of these articles has a byline and that one possibly used the same press release, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 19:03, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

• I'm not going to respond to each of the substantially identical posts, so consider this note to apply to the the several above this from the same OP: This appears to be an issue for people copying Wikipedia without attribution, not on judging source reliability. Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks#Non-compliance process covers what to do in those situations. --Jayron32 16:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Uproxx again

Over at this AFD, it is claimed that Uproxx "is not a reliable or notability-making source" without stating any evidence at all. So far we've only had one discussion about this, and even then the discussion's implications were not sufficiently broad (they were talking video games, not politics). So I ask people here at WP:RS/N to renew the consensus on Uproxx's reliability - that is, what the site is generally reliable for and what it is generally unreliable for, whether or not it counts towards notability, and whether or not it is worth a mention at WP:RSP. I am neutral. ミラP 02:21, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

• Update: These editorial guidelines weren't brought up in the first discussion, so I wonder if it changes anything. ミラP 02:24, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
• Reliable it has a full staff, accepts corrections and there is no evidence presented that it is unreliable for media articles and reviews and nothing in its Wikipedia page Uproxx to ring alarm bells but probably use with caution for anything controversial, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 20:27, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Burgeon Law

Hello,

As you rejected my Draft:Burgeon Law stating

This submission's references do not show that the subject qualifies for a Wikipedia article—that is, they do not show significant coverage (not just passing mentions) about the subject in published, reliable, secondary sources that are independent of the subject.

I just wanted to as if the below link would be considered as a reliable source for the firm

https://www.zaubacorp.com/company/BURGEON-LAW-LLP/AAE-9171

The criteria for determining notability of organizations such as law firms is set out at Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies), where it states, "The primary criteria have five components that must be evaluated separately and independently to determine if it is met:

1. significant coverage in
2. multiple
3. independent,
4. reliable
5. secondary sources."

The link you provided does not meet any of those criteria. Please do not try to create an article for this entity until you have identified multiple, independent, reliable, secondary sources that provide significant coverage of the firm. - Donald Albury 14:29, 27 January 2020 (UTC)