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RfC: Telesur

Being involved in Venezuelan articles for some time, I will often encounter Telesur as a source. My question is, is Telesur reliable? ----ZiaLater (talk) 12:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

In past discussions, Telesur has been discussed as "propaganda" of the Venezuelan government and has been more recently described by a reliable source, Newsweek, as "routinely criticized as a biased media outlet that promotes unfair and incomplete reporting" and "has also been charged with being pushing favorable propaganda for its government sponsors, particularly Venezuela".[Newsweek] The founder Aram Aharonian initially predicted Telesur's "multinational backing will be reflected in its direction, which will make it impossible for one interest to dominate" though a decade later, Aharonian says "I think that this initiative was burned. Because instead of being a Latin American channel, as it had to be, it ended up being an external channel of Venezuela".

The Venezuela Conspiracy Theories monitor (yes, it has been cited by BBC) has endless amounts of conspiracy theories linked to Telesur, including several 9/11 conspiracies 12, how Obama created ISIS, links between "Masons" and "Zionists" with the Venezuelan protesters, Nutella bribery and that Hugo Chávez was assassinated. Telesur has also spread conspiracy theories about potential state bans of conspiracy theories. The Telesur page has been deleted twice by Facebook (Sputnik trying to defend Telesur) in a similar manner to that of Infowars and other conspiracy sites.

Hopefully some of these links are helpful and we can determine how reliable Telesur is. Thanks for your thoughts in advance!----ZiaLater (talk) 12:30, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I would have said not very reliable.Slatersteven (talk) 12:35, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I will add that RFCs are supposed to be neutral.Slatersteven (talk) 12:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: Just noticed this after I performed the edit. Sorry!----ZiaLater (talk) 12:39, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Comment: I would also want to apologize if this RfC entry does not seem neutral (I just realized this upon this entry). This is information that was available and I am not familiar with RfC procedure, so again, sorry.----ZiaLater (talk) 12:38, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

• As reliable as any other newsmedia outlet Either we accept that ownership of media implies a specific bias, in which case Telesur is biased, but so is the NYT or the BBC, or we don't accept that premise, in which case the ownership of Telesur is irrelevant. Now I'll preface this by saying, as always, that I feel we should not have as much dependence on newsmedia in general in current affairs issues, however the refusal to accept Venezuelan media sources as reliable while unquestioningly accepting American and British news sources as reliable is, in fact, a massive failure to adhere to WP:NPOV. So while my preference would be for us to slow the rate at which Wikipedia updates articles about recent events, any attempt to exclude a newsmedia communicated perspective on a political conflict on the basis of blanket reliability of a class of media (ex: state owned by states that we don't like (you'll note that few people are pointing out that the BBC is state-owned)) should be treated for the hegemonic propagandizing it is. Simonm223 (talk) 12:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Valid point, is there any evidence they actually falsify stories, or are just biased?Slatersteven (talk) 12:52, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I am not aware of any evidence of falsification of stories, and that goes double for the specific context of this RfC - which challenges their use as a source for information regarding the evolving political situation in Venezuela. And again, I'm not suggesting that they aren't biased. I personally subscribe to the notion that all newsmedia has an implicit bias described by their ownership. CBC has a Canadian state bias, BBC a British one, China Daily has a Chinese state bias and Newsweek, the Economist, the New York Times, and all the rest of the corporate owned news organizations have a clear and pervasive pro-capital bias. This is why I feel, on a general note, that newsmedia has become too pervasive on Wikipedia as a source. It's true that sources don't have to be neutral but we depend far too much in general on news as a source of truth regarding disputed current events. Now with that said, I think that as long as we allow the treatment of capital owned newsmedia as reliable, we should also allow the treatment of state owned newsmedia as reliable, even when we, as wikipedia editors, are not aligned with or fond of those states. Simonm223 (talk) 12:59, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I would like to point out here that BBC is actually public owned (yes, it does receive some state funds... but so do organizations that exist to investigate the UK government), and both CBC and BBC will frequently challenge their own country. And we can accept some state sources and not others - we can easily determine reliability and neutrality based on how a state source presents their own country. Does it ever challenge its government when something sketchy comes up? The amount of criticism the BBC gives British politicians and Brexit proves its NPOV and RS because of how it does not just unwaveringly promote the stance of its nation's leader. Comparatively, TeleSur will spin every report into making Maduro look good, including blatant lying. Kingsif (talk) 14:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I think they meant bias towards their country not the government specifically. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:54, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

The argument seems to be based on abstract generalizations. Telesur and the BBC or NYT are not similar, not if we compare their actual editorial behavior. Cambalachero (talk) 18:29, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

• Not reliable; they don't just bias, they lie to cover up the humans rights violations of the dictatorship. There is evidence of falsified stories on our own Wikipedia page. When even Rory Caroll and Nikolas Kozloff call it propaganda, that's pretty bad. And it's propaganda from a regime widely known and sanctioned for narcotrafficcing and other criminal activities and human rights abuses. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:18, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I might be missing it, I can see a lot about not saying stuff, nothing about outright lies.Slatersteven (talk) 13:20, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: Security and intelligence officials have been afraid that Telesur may be used by Russia for "fake news" and electoral interference. (Spanish) Allegations of "fake news" about Ukraine (Spanish). Alleged cooperation between Russian media and Telesur to disseminate misinformation. (Center for International Media Assistance) Telesur began rumor that El Chapo had placed bounty on Donald Trump. (Snopes) Just some information regarding Telesur and alleged false stories.----ZiaLater (talk) 13:40, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Except Telesur did not start the El Chapo rumour, they repeated it as fact (but then so did others). The others are better, but I am not sure I trust government bodies or statements any more then government run news organs. Can you give an example of then making up a story?Slatersteven (talk) 13:47, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

@Slatersteven: Except they did. The original "story" was part of "a satirical article". Telesur either repurposed the "story" or had some issue with fact-checking a self-described website used for "satirical purposes only".----ZiaLater (talk) 13:58, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

That just makes then no worse then the other sources that repeated it blindly (as they did).Slatersteven (talk) 14:12, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

This from the last RSN discussion: "Even those sympathetic to the Venezuelan government identify it as such (see, e.g., p. 29 of this book in which Nikolas Kozloff quotes Gregory Wilpert as saying that Telesur has a "widely-acknowledged reputation for being a vehicle for Chávez-funded propaganda")." Gregory Wilpert is an ardent chavista, and even he is calling it propaganda.

"Employees treated as if they work for a political party" (eg chavismo); is not a reflection of journalistic standards we expect from a reliable source. This is a pattern of not just mistakes, but intent.

Errors of omission when consistently contrasted with errors of commission show a deliberate pattern-- that is, lies. The difference in reporting a situation in Argentina vs in Venezuela (promoting peace) is a lie.

The incident with the Miami reporter was a propaganda designed to deceive: is that not called a "lie"?

Random google, first hit, here. Propaganda= they lie about something everyone who follows Venezuelan reporting knows: "shot by unidentified assailants on motorbikes", means shot by colectivos, which are the government's armed thugs. That entire article is a lie, to distort who is doing the killing. Here's another way they can lie in a report like that: saying someone is "under arrest for the murder". Under arrest has no meaning in Venezuela, where human rights violations, including throwing people in prison with no trial for crimes they didn't commit, are thoroughly documented by humans rights organizations. And, the person "under arrest", if they shot the right kind of person (anti-government) is released or never charged as soon as the hubbub dies down. "Possible paramilitary activity", well, yes, the paramilitary armed by the government: just another way of saying colectivo. Armed paramilitary thugs doing the government's enforcement.

Just some samples; I could read more articles and give you more if you want. Yes, they lie, but with relative ethics and morals, we call it something else. This is not just bias, like say the difference between National Review and The Nation. It is propaganda designed to further a criminal regime, human rights violations, and a dictatorship. IF you really want outright lies, then you don't understand the nature of propaganda, which is to take a less-than-half truth and twist it into something you can use to dupe people. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:07, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

This comment also touches on something that can be used as a comparative: I would, for the right info, use Venezuelanalysis as a RS. Yes, it's owned by a Chavista. But is it at least vaguely neutral and accurate on protest news for both sides? Yeah. Not trusting TeleSur isn't merely because it's a state source or because it supports Maduro. It's because it breaks all the rules of journalism to be Maduro's personal cheerleader, which any outlet could do, it just happens to be this one - and whether accurate or not (most likely not) we can't accept an outlet that we have no faith in to even try acknowledge the full picture. Kingsif (talk) 14:29, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

• Not reliable. I knew the BBC comparison would be drawn, so I would like to quote an excellent book that I've read: La devastación chavista: Transporte y comunicaciones, by Antonio Pasquali (ISBN 9788417014148). Pasquali precisely explains the difference between the state-owned/state-funded television networks in the United Kingdom and in Venezuela, explaining the concerns of bias that existed when it was founded, and that it could favor a government or another. He continues saying how currently the BBC is praised because of its journalist integrity and impartiality, quoting as one of the reasons that it relies on public resources and not advertisement. What's the point that Pasquali makes? The difference between a government and State, which at least in Venezuela are terms usually confused. The BBC was founded in 1922, 96 years ago, while both Russia Today and Telesur were founded in 2005, only 14 years ago; reading through Wikipedia:Perennial sources, it doesn't seem there are doubts about the reliability of the BBC. Telesur has not operated in Venezuela with a different funding other than from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, while I understand this is the same case with RT. I think it has also been discussed how former directors and journalists regret how Telesur has turned into an unreliable channel; when Argentina changed from government, the state retired its funding. Most important of all, I wanted to say this but not before explaining all of this: naming the CBC, the BBC, China Daily, Newsweek, the Economist, the New York Times, among others, only distracts from the main topic in question: Telesur, and it does not answer whatsoever on the question regarding its reliability.

Last but not least, I wanted to give my two cents on some of the lies and fake news published by Telesur: Progovernment protest in the Yaracuy state near a Metro station, where there isn't even a subway; quoting a White House official that doesn't exist (more information here); US military bases in Costa Rica; Student killed by security forces was killed because of antigovernment protests; Worker hit by tear gas cannister "fell" in a construction camp; Brazilian football team supports Lula da Silva. --Jamez42 (talk) 14:32, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

• Depends My general impression is that Telesur is not reliable for news about Venezuela (with the exception of reported statements of opinion from PSUV officials), but that their reporting outside the country is generally as reliable as any other mass media station. Before we toss aside the BBC comparisons, let's not forget that the BBC has admitted to using the British secret service to vet employee candidates and keep out "subversives", after lying about it for decades. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:26, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

That note about the BBC had no relation to the rest of your argument, as well as misrepresenting the actual facts which were trying to exclude 'radicals' - they take people from across the political spectrum, but not extremists who might put their own bias into reporting. Damn, you must really not like the BBC to bring them up for no reason other than to shade. Kingsif (talk) 21:44, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

• • See the section Telesur (TV channel)#Political bias. They are not biased just in Venezuela's own politics, but also in foreign countries according to their political relation with Venezuela. Macri, president of Argentina, is a vocal critic of Maduro, and they do not treat him any less harshly than they would with Guaido, Capriles or López. Cambalachero (talk) 18:34, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

• Not reliable. This is a Bolivarian propaganda outlet, as is widely acknowledged. See, e.g., Corrales 2016 ("Telesur is emblematic of the Venezuelan regime's efforts to disseminate its worldview as widely as possible"); Painter 2008 ("Telsur is more in the Latin American tradition of state-funded channels acting as official megaphones..."); Carroll 2013 ("Then, from around 2007, Telesur mutated into a mouthpiece for Chavez."). This not the kind of thing to build an encyclopedia from. Neutrality^talk 18:57, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
  • • Comment Then by such standard we should't rely on BBC, VOA, F24, etc... Lets not forget that CNN, NYT, Fox News, etc... are too guilty of propaganda, if you want to remove TeleSUR then you should do the same for other media outlets or do you have double standards and want to force such onto Wikipedia? Its not that wasn't already enough for Sputnik and RT, say what you want, but hypocrisy is evident. Just look at media conduct for support of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, remember the Gulf War? TeleSUR is not reliable according to people who don't like their reporting regardless if its true or false, lies or facts. RBL2000 (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Comment The New York Times is a capitalist propaganda outlet. News has bias. See my statement above. Unless we're going to blanket bar news sources as an RS (something I actually could get behind) having a bias should not preclude reliability. Simonm223 (talk) 19:04, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
    • This is so ludicrous I'm not even going to attempt to respond. Neutrality^talk 19:16, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
      • Because you can't, that is the truth and you can deny it. Their coverage is biased and propagandish. Lets not mention other media outlets like CNN nor American government being selective about journalists to have some or all control of the narrative. Media coverage of the Gulf War RBL2000 (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

      It is certainly not a very convincing argument for his case.Slatersteven (talk) 19:36, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

      User:Simonm223 So why did you oppose Epoch times? --Shrike (talk) 19:43, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

      • Neutrality has it right; if you start from the place that the NYT is propaganda, there is no place else for the discussion to go. (And I'm no fan of the NYT.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
        • We can start from BBC of all, look at their disgraceful coverage of Corbyn from supposed neutral unbiased news outlet. RBL2000 (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

References

• Comment. The Economist and Reuters, two allegedly reliable sources according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources, doing some unbiased reporting on Venezuela. emijrp (talk) 10:41, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Now I wonder how will people in here that assert TeleSUR is unreliable source are going to explain why Reuters and others are neutral/unbiased despite having Guaido prominently on their page and lets not forget that in many many media the prevalence of Pro-Guaido articles shows extreme bias, let alone when anything neutral or "pro"-Maduro gets only published in opinion sections like Bloomberg when experts in law like Noah Feldman are brushed off which is like brushing off Stephen Hawking when it comes to physics. RBL2000 (talk) 16:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

    Please see the False balance article (and the corresponding policy for Wikipedia articles at WP:FALSEBALANCE). Not all views deserve equal publishing space. — Newslinger talk 22:23, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

  • They did not place an image of Guaido because they endorse him in some way, but just because he's in the news. There's no conspiracy. Cambalachero (talk) 18:24, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

• Not reliable. Not only is it the fact that they are not reliable, this is not a debate of the likes of New York Times against Fox News, it's not that simple. Telesur is known for the fabrication of news for political gain or to divert attention to factual news, regarding the economic crisis (according to them, an economic war), the scarcity of public goods (a conspiracy of the few private companies left in the country with the help of the US), the murders of students during protest by the police (allegedly they were killed by "right wing" paramilitaries), and so on. Their job is the misinformation of the public, and to no matter what, present the Venezuelan government and their allies as the good guys fighting a long standing battle against bogus enemies. --Oscar_. (talk) 13:56, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

Notified: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Venezuela, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Latin America, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Politics — Newslinger talk 02:51, 3 February 2019 (UTC)

• • The false analogy fallacy is a common trick of left-wing supporters. When someone points to them something that is wrong with their stuff, they select a reputable and superficially similar item, and claim that "if you say that about us, you should say the same about them". Cambalachero (talk) 01:14, 4 February 2019 (UTC)

Options

As seen above in other RfCs and to keep my entry more neutral, which of the four options do you consider for Telesur's reliability?

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

Pinging users previously involved: @Shrike: @Simonm223: @Neutrality: @Rosguill: @Jamez42: @Kingsif: @SandyGeorgia: @Slatersteven: @Newslinger: I expect these options will give a more definitive answer regarding Telesur's reliability. Choose an option and share it below. Thank you for the good discussion!----ZiaLater (talk) 21:07, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 2: Telesur seems fine to me for reporting the statements of the Venezuelan government and its allies/supporters. I do not see what the issue with using it as a reliable source for those particular statements would be.Simon1811 (talk) 21:20, 1 February 2019 (UTC)WP:SOCKSTRIKE Galobtter (pingó mió) 16:34, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
• I think Option 3 Option 3 or 4 is the description that suits Telesur the best, given its history and the discussion above, specially on topics regarding Venezuelan politics and its allies. The arguments so far in favour of Telesur have addressed only bias or editorial line, but has not answered the concerns regarding its reliability. It has been established in the discussion that not only Telesur is biased, but usually misrepresents, omits or fabricates important information. However, it's also the case that Telesur has deleted erroneous news or corrected themselves in the past, which is why Option 3 is probably the most accurate. Pinging users involved in previous discussions: @Rsheptak: @Squidfryerchef: @SashiRolls: @E.M.Gregory: --Jamez42 (talk) 21:25, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2 Telesur is generally reliable for coverage outside of Venezuela, and for statements of opinion from the PSUV. It's also worth noting that Telesur used to be more reliable on all issues (including Venezuela) in its earlier years, and that it has become less reliable as a consequence of changes to its board of directors and advisory council, as well as Argentina's exit from funding the network. However, I'm unaware of a strict cutoff date at which point Telesur became less reliable. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 21:34, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:03, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

  Here is a clear example of Telesur, yes, lying. A photojournalist has charged that in the 23 February clashes, Telesur took her images and altered them to show the opposite of what she observed and photographed. She says that not only did they use her photos without permission; they altered the truth in those photos.[1] Changing to Option 4; Telesur is all over Wikipedia, and they lie. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:25, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

  Followup: here is an independent investigation of the photojournalist's claim that concluded she was right-- a clear example of Telesur's manipulation. AFP investigation and translation (which is not great, but good enough). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 Honestly, TeleSur is by and far worse than the Daily Mail, though I think the description in 4 is inaccurate for both of them. The Daily Mail is somewhat reliable for factual information - it's when it reports things that other news doesn't that you know it's lying. The same can be said for TeleSur except that it's less reliable for facts and may publish lies about a story that is told correctly in other news, making it Generally Unreliable (3). Note that generally, of course, means in general/for most things. The verbatim reports of half of Venezuela politician's words is an exception, not the rule, here. Kingsif (talk) 21:51, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 (first choice) or Option 3 (second choice). As I noted above, Telesur is widely acknowledged as a Bolivarian propaganda outlet. See, e.g., Corrales 2016 ("Telesur is emblematic of the Venezuelan regime's efforts to disseminate its worldview as widely as possible"); Painter 2008 ("Telsur is more in the Latin American tradition of state-funded channels acting as official megaphones..."); Carroll 2013 ("Then, from around 2007, Telesur mutated into a mouthpiece for Chavez."). Neutrality^talk 21:55, 1 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 We shouldn't use state media in countries that there is no freedom of press --10:45, 2 February 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shrike (talk • contribs)
• Option 4 --Oscar_. (talk) 13:58, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 for the reasons I've already stated in discussion. Simonm223 (talk) 15:04, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 If BBC, F24, VOA and other government news outlet are considered reliable so should TeleSUR. RBL2000 (talk) 19:27, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

  — RBL2000 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic. --Shrike (talk) 19:31, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3. The numerous unfavorable descriptions of Telesur in established reliable sources (from the section above) show that Telesur is a state-owned propaganda outlet similar to Sputnik (RSP entry) and Press TV (RSP entry), and should be considered generally unreliable. — Newslinger talk 23:00, 2 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 3 or 4. In addition to my above comment: Telesur is unquestionably partisan, and all of its statements should be attributed. Editors should take care to avoid using Telesur to add content that constitutes undue weight, especially when more reliable sources are available. — Newslinger talk 12:39, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
    • Option 4 per SandyGeorgia's evidence that Telesur publishes false or fabricated information. — Newslinger talk 06:55, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. This is akin to Press TV. Per RSF, in the very low ranked Venezuela - "Arbitrary arrests and violence against reporters by the police and intelligence services reached a record level in 2017." - which is extra-legal. In terms of legal framework - "A 2010 law provides for sanctions in the event of any content “calling the legitimately constituted authority into question.” This has led to arbitrary arrests and defamation prosecutions.". Any factual un-biased reporting from within Venezuela is close to impossible - and is surely impossible for this state-funded propaganda outlet. I will note one significant exception - Telesur is probably reliable (as Press TV and RT/Sputnik respectively) for the views of the current (and contested) Venezuelan regime. Icewhiz (talk) 10:53, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 Propaganda arm of the government, notable for slanted and false reporting about Venezuela. (Note that option 4 as written is unfair to the Daily Mail, a for-profit British tabloid that is not the propaganda arm of a government and which operates in a country with a free press.)E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:26, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 It is correct that bias is not, in and of itself, a reason to consider a source unreliable. But when that source distorts info, makes up facts and slander people to serve that bias, then it's not reliable. Not because of the bias, but because of the things done to serve that bias. And Telesur has crossed that line and burnt the bridges several times. Cambalachero (talk) 17:28, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2 I am still to see definitive proof they actually make up stories rather then repeat stupidity created by others. Until we decide (on a Wikipedia wide level) that biased alone if a valid reason to reject a source I cannot accept it as one to reject this source.Slatersteven (talk) 10:38, 5 February 2019 (UTC)

  Comment: I found this article explaining how Telesur's reporting of Argentina's problem has not been only ideology, but also plain false information, problem that worsened with Macri's decision to stop Telesur's funding. The examples of these news includes reporting that Mauricio Macri increased gas and tap water tariffs threefold, that his administration was releasing repressors from the military dictatorship and mistaking two important historic dates. This may not be precisely the proof you may look for, but I think it helps to show a pattern and that problem not only goes with Venezuela, but also Argentina possibly other countries; not only because of bias or omission, but also because of false information. --Jamez42 (talk) 01:26, 9 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 Seems pretty clear that they routinely publish misleading/false information. UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 10:56, 5 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 Burrobert (talk) 05:51, 6 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 emijrp (talk) 21:03, 7 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 Pamrel (talk) 11:49, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

  • The closing administrator should assign zero weight to the three posts above, which give no rationale whatsoever. Neutrality^talk 17:08, 8 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 2 It would be a mistake to blacklist TeleSUR when the need for Venezuelan-sourced news is at an all time high. Given the crisis, I'm amazed that their reporting has suffered relatively little. The comparisons to BBC and CBC seem apt. Connor Behan (talk) 08:15, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

  • "the need for Venezuelan-sourced news" has zero bearing in determining reliability of a source. We assess a source's reliability on their reception/acceptance in the real world, and especially by whether they have a reputation for accuracy (or inaccuracy) and strong editorial controls (or lack thereof). We don't make decisions on the reliability of sources based on subjective/arbitrary considerations about our "need" for them. Neutrality^talk 18:14, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 - It's the state media of a dictatorship. Not independent. Echoes state propaganda. Examples of this are legion, to choose one here's this piece on how food shortages are really the fault of "Venezuela's traditional elite". Infamously, when Venezuelan branches of McDonald's ran out of french fries they published an article accusing McDonald's of making "economic war" on Venezuela. The only reason I'm not proposing this as a Option 4 vote is that i don't think a special category for the Daily Mail should exist, but if you want to count this as an Option 4 vote, be my guest. FOARP (talk) 09:03, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 Richard Stallman left the TeleSUR advisory board in 2011 calling it a "boring propaganda machine"[2] and TeleSUR has only went more extreme after the current crisis in Venezuela. However, I don't think edit filters should be added that easily and the source might be useful in attributing the official Maduro position. --Pudeo (talk) 22:16, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3: On the one hand, it used to be more reliable than it is now, before previous sponsors and board members withdrew and with previous staff members. For example, earlier reports from Ecaudor were good. And it is generally reliable for sourcing statements of the Maduro government. These facts point towards option 2, careful use with attribution, avoiding it for reporting on opposition, demonstrations and other aspects of the current crisis. On the other hand, numerous examples of actual fake news and disinformation rather than simply bias presented in this thread point more towards option 4. So I think the middle position of option 3 is best. BobFromBrockley (talk) 15:46, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
• Comment: Reading through StopFake, I found that they contacted UNICEF about Telesur claims surrounding the Donbas conflict, with the UN office in Ukraine criticizing Telesur saying that their statements in their work "do not correspond to reality".----ZiaLater (talk) 10:46, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

  Putting example of charge that Telesur not only plagiarized a photo, it altered it to lie. [3] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:24, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 2 For the same reason as VA. Pokerplayer513 (talk) 21:52, 8 March 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2'. A very large number of media sources present false information when the country they are most closely affiliated with is involved in a geopolitical conflict. Al Jazeeras coverage of Qatar is questionable; but their reporting elsewhere is often quite excellent. The Indian and Pakistani media have been parroting nonsense put out by both their governments for the past several weeks, during the military standoff between them. Even the New York Times, which has as good of a reputation for reliability as any media outlet, was caught up in the "let's go to war" fervor in the United States before the start of the Iraq War, a fact the NYT itself acknowledged. Considerable evidence has been presented here that TeleSur is dodgy when it comes to internal Venezuelan politics. I see no evidence of systematic falsification outside of that. Even within Venezuela, TeleSur needs to be used as a source, with proper in-text attribution, because the government's viewpoint is frequently a necessary one to include. Absent further evidence I see no reason to consider TeleSur unreliable for material unrelated to the government of Venezuela. Comparisons to the Daily Mail are nonsensical. Vanamonde (Talk) 23:02, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  • The New York Times opinion page's position on the Iraq War in 2003 has nothing whatsoever to do with the reliability of Telsur in 2019. Neutrality^talk 01:06, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 or 4. Reporters Without Borders ranks Venezuela near the bottom of the Press Freedom Index. That alone is enough to cast serious doubt on any press the country. The fact that it's government-run in a country with a shit press freedom index almost automatically renders it unreliable for anything other than (A) Announcing the official position and claims of the government, and (B) uncontroversial reporting on utterly non-political matters. The fact that it's government run, with shit press freedom index, by a government in national crisis and near civil revolt, suggests that it would probably be wise to confirm the local weather report via external sources. Oh... and I think some people above might have noted Telsur's poor reputation for reporting. Yeah that might be relevant too. Alsee (talk) 23:03, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

To be checked

These need to be checked. It is particularly troubling that Telesur is used to source many BLPs. This is way too many, and suggest that we may need to blacklist Telesur. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:17, 2 February 2019 (UTC)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telesurtv.net&title=Special%3ALinkSearch
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telesurenglish.net&title=Special%3ALinkSearch

Closure

• As this RfC has run for over 30 days, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Telesur. — Newslinger talk 06:41, 4 March 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Venezuelanalysis

While we are at it, is Venezuelanalysis a reliable source?

Again, I will suggest the four options:

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

Thank you. ----ZiaLater (talk) 06:52, 11 February 2019 (UTC)— ZiaLater (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.

• Option 1 My impression of this source is that it's a reliable left-wing source. It's sympathetic to the Bolivarian Revolution, but it is more than willing to publish stories that paint the government in a poor light,[4] and I don't see any evidence that they've ever intentionally published false information. I see that the Wikipedia page for them has claims that could imply that a significant amount of content on the site comes directly from the Venezuelan government, but the pages that the citations go to are pages on Venezuelanalysis that 1) in some cases don't appear to exist anymore 2) were clearly labeled links to specific pages on the equivalent of a FAQ page and are completely separate from its actual factual reporting. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 07:19, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2: Bias or political leaning it not enough, does it have a poor reputation?Slatersteven (talk) 10:25, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4. As, per their about, much of the team is based in Venezula itself and since Venezula uses violence and legal intimidation against journalists operating inside Venezula to produce pro-regime pieces - RSF Venezuela - it is impossible for this site to accurately publish anything about the regime. Furthermore, the site itself does not appear to be much beyond a WP:SPS - it is a collection of pro-Chavez activists publishing their (+ pitches, which they state they accept) views on Venezula. There no indication that this little referenced website has a reputation for accuracy, and their openly stated aims (essentially - Chavez propaganda) would seem to be rather against such a reputation.Icewhiz (talk) 10:39, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 per similar reasons as Telesur. Venezuelanalysis consist mostly in opinion articles, like Aporrea, meaning it is mostly a blog. --Jamez42 (talk) 12:55, 11 February 2019 (UTC)— Jamez42 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
• NOTA See my TASS reasoning below. Collect (talk) 13:42, 11 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3, unreliable except for reporting on positions taken by Maduro/chavismo, except that even there, the reporting is distorted or they lie. Here is an very recent example (very similar to Telesur tactics, also Venezuela-controlled propaganda) of a blatant distortion/lie.

  Distortion #1. On 6 February, Venezuelanalysis published this piece, which (among other distortions) includes a map claiming that most of the world supports Nicolas Maduro in the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis. That map includes all of Africa in support of Maduro (something claimed by Venezuelan officials on 31 January). That is not only not true, but the African Union was so troubled by the Venezuelan misrepresentation of their position that they held a protest in front of a Venezuelan embassy, well before the Venezuelanalysis piece was published.[5][6][7] Note that their map also includes countries like Norway, Switzerland and India which have most decidedly stated their neutrality. Contrast the Venezuelanalysis claim to the scrupulously maintained and well sourced map and country list on Wikipedia. Venezuelanalysis furthered this lie/distortion even after they must have known it contained falsehooods.

  I will add more as I find time-- this is merely the most recent. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:44, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

• Option 3 per User:SandyGeorgia — Preceding unsigned comment added by FOARP (talk • contribs) 08:36, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4 Clearly unreliable, per others. I am undecided whether a filter is necessary or not. 252 uses is not a lot, but not insignificant either. feminist (talk) 13:49, 12 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2-3, pretty biased. Generally its "news" section reports are based on other published sources which it filters through its particular political lens, so far better to use the original sources. It fairly accurately reports the statements of the government and of foreign governments backing it, so could be used as a source for that, although for other things it should be used with caution and attribution. It also publishes a lot of opinion pieces under "opinion and analysis" which should definitely not be used for factual reporting. BobFromBrockley (talk) 23:15, 23 February 2019 (UTC)
• Option 5 - more reliable than North American news sources I happen to know first hand that CTV (Canada) has falsified reports of Canadian pro-Maduro protests to frame them as pro-Guaido. If our yardstick is "never distorts facts about levels of support" North American news sources fail on that front. Simonm223 (talk) 19:25, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Comment We should avoid whataboutism, reliability of other outlets doesn't have anything to do with the reliability of Venezuelanalysis. --Jamez42 (talk) 09:42, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Comment My point is that this is a double-standard. I have repeatedly said that I don't think Wikipedia should be using newsmedia sources for much of anything and that, especially in the case of unfolding political crises, we should be waiting until the crisis resolves to address what historians have to say about the situation. So Option 1 doesn't fit because I don't think any news source meets option 1. With that said, the other three options are problems in that they're implying that this source is less reliable than western news sources such as CTV, which I cited as an explicit example of Western media providing counterfactual and propagandistic reporting regarding Venezuela. So don't @ me with the tired trope of whataboutism when I point out that you're asking that we treat Canadian and American media's propagandistic slant as reliable but not that of Venezuela. Simonm223 (talk) 19:39, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

But then, I sometimes think I'm the only person editing political articles on Wikipedia who really cares about WP:NOTNEWS. Simonm223 (talk) 19:40, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4 (first choice) or option 3 (second choice). Venezuelanalysis is a Bolivarian propaganda outlet (see Bolivarian propaganda § Venezuelanalysis). Co-founder of Venezuelanalysis Gregory Wilpert is married to Carol Delgado Arria, who was Venezuela's consul-general in New York under Hugo Chávez and the Ambassador of Venezuela to the Government of Ecuador under Nicolás Maduro. Combined with Wilpert's admission that Venezuelanalysis has been receiving government funding, the conflict of interest is extremely clear, and Venezuelanalysis should be designated as a biased or opinionated source, as well as having all of its claims examined for undue weight before inclusion into an article. SandyGeorgia's example pushes me to support option 4 as a first choice. — Newslinger talk 23:12, 4 March 2019 (UTC)
• Option 2 - whilst the website definitely has a bias and additional considerations should be made when using the site as a source on, for example, the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, it doesn't seem enough to me to consider it WP:QUESTIONABLE. MrClog (talk) 19:08, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
• Option 1 or 2 - Coverage of Venezuela is extremely partisan and marking VA as unreliable will stifle discussion. Pokerplayer513 (talk) 19:13, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

We already have editors trying to delete the source from non-controversial comments on WP:IDONTLIKEIT grounds, citing source POV entirely unrelated to the topic. This is a perfect example of why these attempts to vote a POV contrary to the American hegemonic one off the island cause actual problems for the project (removal of sources from statements of undisputed fact). Per WP:YESPOV a source having a POV does not disqualify it. Again, I dislike the use of media and media-like sources for current issues. That goes for Venezuelanalysis, Granma, Telesur and China Daily to precisely the same extent that it goes for Washington Post, New York Times, CBC, Huffington, etc. But if the consensus of Wikipedia is that media sources, with their biases and tendency to interpret the world through those biased lenses, are allowable as sources, then the systemic treatment of Leftist sources as "unreliable" and Centrist and Conservative sources as "reliable" is a gross violation of WP:NPOV. Simonm223 (talk) 15:25, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

• Option 4: As per the info provided by Icewhiz and Sandy Georgia. Having a POV is not a problem, but if accuracy is dismissed to serve that POV's agenda, then it is a problem. And I wouldn't bother about the fate of the articles about the Venezuelan crisis: it is a topic of international interest, and we have loads of reliable sources covering every new development in it. We don't need Venezuelanalysis to write a good and complete article about it (or even a featured one, once things come to an end and the article gets a bit less busy). Cambalachero (talk) 16:28, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
• Option 4 per commented above. It is a propaganda site of the Venezuelan government, which, since the arrival of Nicolás Maduro to power, is engaged more and more in producing fake news to hide accurate data on the economic, political and social crisis. --Oscar_. (talk) 23:54, 6 March 2019 (UTC)

To be checked

Just like with Telesur above, articles that reference Venezuelanalysis should be reviewed, including in BLPs: --Jamez42 (talk) 10:07, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?target=https%3A%2F%2Fvenezuelanalysis.com%2F&title=Special%3ALinkSearch

Closure

• As this RfC has run for 30 days, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Venezuelanalysis. — Newslinger talk 04:52, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

RfC: Gawker

Should Gawker.com be deprecated as a source to strongly discourage its use on articles? wumbolo ^^^ 09:28, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. Gawker (RSP entry) is a gossip blog that has no regard for factual reporting, while its opinion articles can still be cited if properly attributed. Even the article Timeline of Rob Ford video scandal cites only one Gawker article and contains 226 other references. Gawker Media have fired journalists for not being clickbait-y enough, and they have had numerous controversies. The worst of the worst "journalists" were ever employed by Gawker. Since the new owner, the Gawker website had controversies again and is doing very poorly. This gossip blog is cited on hundreds of articles, many of them biographies, making me support its deprecation. I've been through the RSN archives and Gawker was always viewed as generally unreliable, generally unusable for WP:DUE material, and especially inappropriate on biographies (if Gawker has any use, it's on biographies so it doesn't have any use). Some blogs previously operated by Gawker Media are considered thoroughly reliable, but that is not relevant here and Gawker.com's unreliability does not help them. If this proposal fails, I wouldn't be surprised if it generated consensus that Gawker should be identified as generally unreliable (red) at WP:RSP. wumbolo ^^^ 09:28, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• Yes It is just a gossip site that care little or nothing for fact checking.Slatersteven (talk) 10:34, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• Is Gawker even still a thing? As far as I know there hasn't been anything published on Gawker since 2016, am I missing something? UnequivocalAmbivalence (talk) 10:45, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

  See "Gawker 2.0 Implodes as Its Only Reporters Quit". wumbolo ^^^ 10:55, 13 February 2019 (UTC)

• Yes. Gawker is the Web 2.0 analogue to the tabloid journalism publishers that have recently been unfavorably scrutinized on this noticeboard. While Gawker is best known for Bollea v. Gawker, the publication has been sued numerous times for defamation, as shown in "Here are all the people suing Gawker" and "For Gawker, Legal Issues Beyond Hogan". As Gawker focuses on rumors related to living persons, deprecation is appropriate here. Editors should also consider whether an opinion piece from Gawker constitutes undue weight before citing it in an article. — Newslinger talk 13:07, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• Comment - If this is a blog then isn't it already covered by the WP:RSSELF? Do we really need to RfC every possible source regardless of whether there is a real problem to be dealt with? What about WP:CREEP, which tells us only to make instructions where there is a real problem? FOARP (talk) 14:52, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• It (old Gawker.com) is Deceased That is, it was a blog, and ventured into areas which forced its own closure. It is RS for nihil. "Gawker 2.0" is a legally different site, under Bustle Digital Group. https://splinternews.com/here-are-the-media-chuds-joining-fake-gawker-1831782448 which announced the "new Gawker" as an actual editorial project and no longer a "blog" thus we can not judge such future material as a blog. https://guestofaguest.com/new-york/media/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-new-gawker so, honestly, we do not know more than "the old Gawker is pretty much deprecated" but no solid basis to deprecate the "new Gawker." Clear? Collect (talk) 15:39, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• No/Moot I can't really imagine many editors digging through Gawker's carcass for its dubious articles to be used as sources on Wikipedia. After all, it's dead, its brand is very tainted, Bryan Goldberg doesn't seem to have much success relaunching the site (good) – I don't see a need for a filter, but won't necessarily be opposed to one. feminist (talk) 17:37, 13 February 2019 (UTC)
• Yes - As noted above, its a tabloid blog with little to no editorial oversight or fact checking. Meatsgains^(talk) 03:08, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• No. Let the dead be at peace. There is no use depreciating something long since made irrelevant (under dubious circumstances one might say). Regardless, such circumstances lead me to conclude that it most likely should be an important primary source for articles such as Peter Thiel. I don't see any sense in depreciating it to be honest since it's not like they are going to write new articles like they used to. ―Matthew J. Long -Talk-^☖ 04:09, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• Yes – When a source is junk, we must mark it as junk. "Respect for the dead" has no bearing on Gawker's inappropriateness as a Wikipedia source. — JFG ^talk 08:47, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• Yes: crap sources are crap and just because they're dead doesn't mean that archived versions of them are still crap. SITH (talk) 18:24, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
• No'. No evidence presented to put it in the same category as the Daily Mail and Caller. Gamaliel (talk) 14:45, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, Gawker is not in the same category as DM and DC (which still report factual news most of the time, though without the consistency we need). As a gossip blog Gawker is in an entirely different league, and is much worse than either source. feminist (talk) 16:19, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

• NO - this is covered by WP:BLOG. There is no case made for a ‘deprecation’, which is without policy governance nor obvious effectiveness or benefit. Seems just empty posturing and adding cases increases any difficulty of discussion and further confusion about deprecation. Having a practice that looks like censorship by personal preference or local popularity or hidden reasoning needs a higher bar ... and part of that would be the nomination needs to do some work producing a case showing evidence and policy consideration. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 23:38, 20 February 2019 (UTC)
• Yes - the DM isn't perfect sure but it's a thousand times better than this tripe!, Gawker is nothing but a blog site and as such IMHO it shouldn't be used here in any form. –Davey2010^Talk 13:22, 24 February 2019 (UTC)
• No'
  per Markbassett, Collect and others. Gawker is not genereally RS, but deprecating it is unnecessary. Pincrete (talk) 10:35, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • No per Markbassett and Gamaliel. Guettarda (talk) 11:30, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes ask Hulk Hogan why. Just a blog spouting nonsense in my opinion. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 11:42, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
  • No/Meaningless, unless you're talking about the reliability of Gawker's successor blogs, e.g. Kotaku, io9, Jezebel, etc.. Those needs to be separately assessed in individual RfCs, and Kotaku is quite a reputable Gaming media source, albeit it has to be properly attributed per policy. Tsumikiria⧸ 🌹🌉 03:50, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Leaning no on this, per much of the above. The domain name is someone else now, and I don't see any evidence that people are regularly trying to use the old gossip site as a source here. PS: "blog" is publication format, nothing else. There are plenty of blogs that are reliable sources. What we don't want to see is self-published or user-generated content being used as if secondary sourcing. The former has some limited uses under WP:PRIMARY and WP:ABOUTSELF, and the latter isn't really usable. The various click-bait content farms ("10 Celebs You Didn't Know Were Gay") are basically UGC. They are written by thousands of pittance-paid pseudonymous or anonymous schlock workers with nearly zero editorial oversight. The blogs of major newspapers are written by their journalists and subject to professional editorial review and are within the reputation sphere of their newspapers. That both a major newspaper's blog and a worthless click-bait site are published with blog software is irrelevant. (But being published by a newspaper doesn't magically make a primary opinion piece into a secondary material; this was true before blogs existed – editorials, op-eds, advice columns, and most movie and book reviews are primary sources, because they are opinion pieces not factual research. Same goes for "news" that is just regurgitation of a press release, or nothing but quotations of talking heads and witnesses with no actual WP:AEIS work by the publisher.)  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:57, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Yes - It's better to draw the lines in the ground on this matter. Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 13:48, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • As this RfC has run for 30 days, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Gawker. — Newslinger talk 10:03, 15 March 2019 (UTC)

  RfC: Bustle

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

  There is consensus that the reliability of Bustle is unclear and that its reliability should be decided on an instance by instance basis (Option 2). Editors noted that it has an editorial policy and that will issue retractions. Editors also noted previous issues it had around reliability and that its content is written by freelance writers - though there is not consensus on whether this model affects their reliability. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 02:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  ---

  Which of the following best describes the reliability of Bustle?

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

  — feminist (talk) 07:39, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 2 or 3. Bustle is a content farm that employs interns to write articles for $10 an hour (see Business of Fashion article). That doesn't bode well for reliability. feminist (talk) 07:39, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 2: Do they have an editorial policy, and how robust is it?Slatersteven (talk) 11:01, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Context needed - In which articles is Bustle being cited, and for what specific statements? There is no such thing as a 100% reliable - or a 100% unreliable - source. Blueboar (talk) 12:06, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

    @Blueboar: Bustle is currently cited in 1,844 articles (see 1  ), a significant proportion of them being BLPs. feminist (talk) 17:52, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 3. Bustle is owned by Bustle Digital Group (bustle.company), which was founded by the co-founder of Bleacher Report in 2013. Bustle Digital Group acquired Mic in a 2017 bankruptcy auction and Gawker (RSP entry) in a 2018 bankruptcy auction. The company's journalistic reputation has been poor:
    1. "What Was This Bro Thinking? Bustle.com's Bryan Goldberg Explains Himself" (2013) from Forbes (RSP entry)
    2. "From Mars" (2013) from The New Yorker (RSP entry)
    3. "Is Bustle the Next Condé Nast?" (2019, archived) from The Business of Fashion, per Feminist

  The article from The New Yorker explains that Bustle's writers are not "seasoned professionals", but "hundreds" of "writers from the group of young women that is Bustle’s intended readership, those aged eighteen to thirty-four" who "are paid, but only part-time rates. (Interns get fifty dollars a day, while more established freelancers receive a hundred.)" The article from The Business of Fashion shows that Bustle is based on a non-staff "contributor model" similar to the ones used by Forbes.com contributors (RSP entry) and HuffPost contributors (RSP entry). After acquiring Mic, Bustle Digital Group laid off Mic's "entire editorial staff" and replaced them with freelance contributors. Bustle emphasizes quantity over quality, and should be considered generally unreliable. Additionally, I would avoid using Bustle for contentious information related to living persons or for establishing notability. — Newslinger talk 13:00, 16 February 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 2. This is a source I consider "borderline" marginally reliable, which is a better fit for option 2 than option 3. It is good to see that Bustle makes error corrections, as noted in the editorial policies that Wumbolo linked below. More reliable sources should be preferred when available. — Newslinger talk 21:00, 3 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Bustle Digital has editorial policies and Mic has editorial standards. wumbolo ^^^ 14:29, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 2. It's not a great source, but see here - their reputation isn't great, but isn't terrible, either (and a lot of the complaints focus on stuff unrelated to the accuracy of their reporting, like underpaying their writers or heavy-handed editorial controls.) I'd decide on a case-by-case basis and would generally try to find a better source when possible, but it's not a kill-on-sight source or anything like that (except perhaps for potentially WP:BLP-violating material, where it's clearly not good enough.) --Aquillion (talk) 19:02, 16 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Oppose Option 4, without a larger consensus on this "deprecated" system. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 13:55, 17 February 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 2 (i.e. the default for all but the worst sources -- Bustle isn't top shelf journalism, but it's not of the sort that we need one of these blanket decisions on). — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 21:10, 18 February 2019 (UTC)
  • NOTA per my iterated position that opinions must always be cited and ascribed as opinions, that "celebrity gossip" should always be "deprecated" and that anything else should be specifically discussed. This RfC is too broad by half. Collect (talk) 14:44, 19 February 2019 (UTC)
  • OTHER - Reliability should be determined for something particular, in a specific case and context. While generally I can reflect they seem to have decent editorial control and extensive coverage of some topics (e.g. feminism, personal interviews, lifestyles, fashion, tech) and just a modest left bias by wording choice but not so far as spot blindness or cheerleading... that as evidence just doesn’t take me to any of these choices, and I’d say it only excludes option 4. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 01:13, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

    So, Option 2 would be closest to your view, right? feminist (talk) 07:24, 21 February 2019 (UTC)

  • 2. -sche (talk) 06:06, 5 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 2 - it's always best to corroborate the information. ^{Atsme✍🏻📧} 17:05, 6 March 2019 (UTC)
  • As this RfC has run for 30 days, I've submitted a request for closure at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard#RfC: Bustle. — Newslinger talk 08:03, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

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

  Rfc: company-histories.com

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

  It seem another rip-off of International Directory of Company Histories. So, is this site had copyright problem thus WP:ELNEVER? RfC relisted by Cunard (talk) at 01:14, 25 March 2019 (UTC). Matthew hk (talk) 15:52, 23 February 2019 (UTC)

  • I would treat this article similarly to Fundinguniverse.com, which was discussed in a recent RfC, and Reference for Business (referenceforbusiness.com), which is currently being discussed on this noticeboard. I'm adapting my comments from those discussions here:

    Cite the original reliable source, but say where you read it. Company-Histories.com is very similar to Answers.com (RSP entry) in that it contains text from established tertiary sources. In this situation, most editors would reference the original publication in the citation, but link the citation to the Company-Histories.com page, and also include "– via Company-Histories.com" at the end. You can see an example of this at Hypnales § References ("– via Answers.com"). If Company-Histories.com contains any pages that do not indicate that they were republished from established sources, then those pages would be self-published sources, which are questionable. Additionally, if you can prove that the content in Company-Histories.com is not properly licensed, then it's a copyright violation and all links to it should be removed under WP:ELNEVER. However, a cursory search did not find any pages on Reference for Business that weren't sourced from Gale publications and Gale is known to license their content to other websites.

  — Newslinger talk 12:43, 24 February 2019 (UTC)

  I have viewed some link of fundinguniverse, which most of them are NOT using |via= and mis-citing fundinguniverse as source. Wikipedia should not encourage to cite pirate site which some academic journal web scrapper was black listed. Matthew hk (talk) 13:54, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

  None of the domains mentioned in this discussion are blacklisted (i.e. listed in the spam blacklist or the global spam blacklist). Are you referring to something else? — Newslinger talk 23:41, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  What is the different of some academic paper database (as re-publisher) what were blocked due to concern of copyrights? Certainly someone can written a code as web scrapper to rip-off the content of fundinguniverse, Reference for Business.com and company-histories.com, and made a new site and then other people by good faith insert the link to wikipedia. Among those three sites that "re-publish" International Directory of Company Histories, only the parent company of Reference for Business.com had somehow stated they had been licensed. So, if these sites keep on emerging AND most of them did not declare they are licensed (so far only one declared), how to tell which one did not have the copyrights problem. Or just make it stop, only one or two such mirror sites (what had somehow declared they have license) are white listed , and converted the existing links of other sites to those "declared". Or just have a lengthy project of verify them one by one with the offline hard copy and add back many missing information? All of those site seem originate from one copy, that somehow intentionally skip the author of the original entry in the books. Those entries most of the time are updated by different person as well as in the back of the book, they stated where the previous version are located, so it is odd that "licensed" content are not declaring the author as a minimum. Matthew hk (talk) 18:51, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

  Also for Reference for Business .com, the owner of the site had stated they are licensed some content from other sites, which presumably included St.James Press, the imprint of Gale for the International Directory of Company Histories. However, company-histories.com did not made such claim. Matthew hk (talk) 09:44, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  I'm not really sure if this noticeboard is the best place to ask about copyright infringement, since most of the discussions here focus on a source's reliability. There doesn't appear to be a noticeboard to discuss whether a source violates copyright, but Wikipedia:Copyright assistance lists Wikipedia talk:Copyrights ("Copyright discussion") and Wikipedia:Copyright problems ("General help/discussion") as two possible venues that might be more helpful. Since there appear to be numerous sites that republish Gale content, it would be useful to make a definite decision on all of these sites at once. If these sites are considered copyright violations, then you can directly request blacklisting at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist. — Newslinger talk 23:41, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

  RfC: Aporrea

  There is another main Venezuelan source I would like to propose to discuss, Aporrea.

  As in previous discussions, I will suggest four options:

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

  Many thanks in avance. --Jamez42 (talk) 23:12, 8 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 2 or 3: – While the website utilizes some user-generated content and has been accused of being a propaganda outlet,1 2 it has recently been more critical of the Chavista movement and censored for it.3 My main concern right now is that much of the website is user-generated and opinion-based, affecting its reliability. As the discussion progresses, I may clarify my position.----ZiaLater (talk) 01:05, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 3:

    Their "About us" page has nothing to indicate journalistic credentials or editorial oversight (in fact, it reads like an advoacy org) [8]

    User-generated content: [9]

    Not to mention their propaganda history. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:41, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  Fox News redux

  "Fox has long been a bane of liberals, but in the past two years many people who watch the network closely, including some Fox alumni, say that it has evolved into something that hasn’t existed before in the United States. Nicole Hemmer, an assistant professor of Presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center and the author of Messengers of the Right, a history of the conservative media's impact on American politics, says of Fox, 'It’s the closest we've come to having state TV.'"

  "[E]veryone ought to see it for what it is: Not a normal news organization with inevitable screw-ups, flaws and commercial interests, which sometimes fail to serve the public interest. But a shameless propaganda outfit, which makes billions of dollars a year as it chips away at the core democratic values we ought to hold dear: truth, accountability and the rule of law. Despite the skills of a few journalists who should have long ago left the network in protest, Fox News has become an American plague."

  References

  Still it has its defenders here. I guess so does the flat earth. Go figure. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 03:46, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  Can we please put a moratorium on reviews Fox News barring any clear evidenace that their routine news reporting has been broken to the point of unusability? Opinions are not sufficient for this, particularly in the current political climate. We just had this discussion in the last two months. --Masem (t) 03:49, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  Yes, this is ridiculous. If two opinion pieces in rival outfits was all it took to ban a news service, then we'd have to strip every single news source from Wikipeida. Maybe say no Fox News RFCs for a year. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 04:15, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  There has only been one uninterrupted Fox News RfC on this noticeboard (in 2010). To prevent these recurring discussions, I advise the editor who will start the next Fox News discussion to make it an RfC to definitively establish the reliability of Fox News. Due to editor fatigue, it would probably be better to wait at least a few months (or for a major new development) before starting this RfC. — Newslinger talk 01:36, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Can someone just close this? There's already been more than enough discussions on the topic. Despite the outright hatred some editors have for Fox News, the consensus is not going to change and providing biased opinion pieces does not help to make a serious argument--Rusf10 (talk) 04:29, 9 March 2019 (UTC).

  Whilst we do not have to discus this every 6 weeks consensus can change, and thus it is never final.Slatersteven (talk) 09:08, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  Characterising it as hatred is completely unacceptable. The idea that Fox's biased reporting is dangerous is completely mainstream and defensible even if it is completely repudiated by the right. The existence of Shep Smith does not offset the fact that Hannity is the station's most-watched show, and both it and Fox & Friends, recognizably opinion shows not news, are nonetheless interpreted as fact by white nationalists and other hatemongers. One hatemonger in particular. It is perfectly legitimate to question the effects of this on American political discourse, and in fact the late and unlamented Roger Ailes expressed exactly these concerns. Guy (Help!) 05:38, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  Which is why we recognize that the only real reliable content on Fox is their regular news reporting, not their analysis pieces, and certainly not their opinion shows like Hannity. Where they are reporting on something neutral, Fox wors just as well as any other mainstream source. --Masem (t) 05:44, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  The Jane Mayer article in the New Yorker is not an opinion piece. The Fox News defenders on this board insist again and again that the Fox News' news division is entirely reliable, yet this article documents how the news division spiked the Stormy Daniels story (after verifying it) in the lead-up to the 2016 election. That's not how a normal news division behaves. It's unclear to me why this doesn't alter their thinking about Fox News' news division. But this discussion is not going to go anywhere because these discussions always get side-tracked into completely irrelevant discussions about the RS status of Fox's opinion content (e.g. see Guy's comment and Masem's "that's opinion, not the news division" response), which has NEVER been disputed (Hannity is not considered RS anywhere on Wikipedia). Snooganssnoogans (talk) 09:56, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  Wikipedia's Fox defenders insist that it produces "news reporting" that is reliable. That's the news department that reported the Seth Rich murder conspiracy theory as fact, reported the Pizzagate conspiracy theory as fact, and reported—until Election Day—that there was a caravan that included Middle Eastern terrorists marching toward the southern border of the United States. (Somehow, after Election Day, the caravan disappeared from Fox News' radar.) Tell us again why articles from the news department at Fox can be considered reliable. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 19:12, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  
  Every single news channel has made errors and later corrected them. It is that which is important - even the NYT has used misleading headlines and articles from time to time. You can hate the 'editorial commentary', but the repeated result here has been that Fox News is as reliable as its direct competitors. Raising this issue a hundred times does not affect the positions of editors here in the past. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/08/cnn-trump-error-journalism-287914 https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/business/media/cnn-retracted-story-on-trump.html https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/cnn-boston-marathon-bombing-mistake-441551 This is why corrections get made. It does not make the sources evil. Collect (talk) 20:41, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  When has Fox News issued corrections or apologies for pushing any of those lies? — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:15, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  • "Fox News corrections" brings up several instances of Fox correcting their news reporting that they mistaken. They aren't covering for their talking heads, which we don't consider RS, nor would we expect similar corrections from other talking heads from other networks or sources, since those are opinions and analysis, not factual. --Masem (t) 00:21, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I also agree that a Fox News RfC has been long overdue, especially considering that its reputation has changed a lot since 2010, and I'd be in support of starting the RfC a reasonable amount of time after the current spate of RfCs ends, considering the amount of discussion Fox News generates here. Aside from political POV pushing, a major problem for Wikipedia is over-reliance on news sources in cases where non-news sources are readily available, e.g. news sources reporting on scientific discoveries and statistics. Finding and removing errors stemming from these news sources is arduous work, and some form of formal banning of sources prone to uncorrected errors would be a much better use of everyone's time. Daß Wölf 00:00, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
    • We just had a well-participated discussion on Fox News less than 3 months ago [10]. It is well recognized that there are parts of Fox News, like Hannity and other talking-heads shows, that are so far from being anything close to an RS, but Fox's normal reporting, w/o opinion, is factual and fine as an RS. --Masem (t) 00:18, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
      • You can keep saying that until you turn blue, but it doesn't make it true. Fox News is always a shitty source. It has no editorial guidelines to speak of, it does not routinely correct mistaken news stories, but it does frequently peddle lies and conspiracy theories of the far right as if they were fact. Too frequently for anybody with a lick of sense to consider it a reliable source. — Malik Shabazz ^Talk/_Stalk 02:15, 18 March 2019 (UTC)
        • https://www.foxnews.com/politics/statement-on-coverage-of-seth-rich-murder-investigation that looks like a retraction to me. Red Rock Canyon (talk) 04:40, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  I suggest we collect reliable sources and focus on them. --Ronz (talk) 22:05, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • https://archives.cjr.org/cover_story/dumb_like_a_fox.php
  • https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/fox-news-partisan-progaganda-research.php

  I suggest folding this discussion for a while. I've a more comprehensive RfC in the works. François Robere (talk) 18:38, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  I will be fully supporting the inclusion of FOX News (news, not talk shows) as highly reliable for the following reason: quite frequently, when I check a paywalled source (New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal) on the ProQuest database at my library, I end up sourcing instead to the very same factual story found on FOX News, because it is not paywalled, is freely available for our readers to verify, and contains the same or similar information every time. If my choice is to source something to ProQuest with no link for reader verification or to source something to FOX News that our readers can verify and it says the same thing, I will prefer a freely available source. Every news outlet makes mistakes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:48, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  Sandy, I'm really surprised. That's about the lowest possible inclusion criteria possible. By that logic, even the most inaccurate sources would be preferable to professional sources with a good record for fact checking, just because they don't have a paywall.

  Fox News has a terrible fact checking record and consistently ranks last for accuracy among the major news channels. It was not created by Ailes with the intention to be a normal "news" source, but to be a propaganda channel to promote the GOP party line, especially in opposition to Roger Ailes' personal enemy, The Washington Post. Ailes was part of the Nixon administration, and he deliberately chose to side with the criminals and oppose the source which exposed them. THAT is the agenda driving Fox News. Even with your eyes closed, it's obviously ONLY pro Trump/GOP/Russia/right-wing. The exception that proves the rule is Shep Smith. He consistently takes his colleagues to task for their falsehoods and misleading reporting. He acts like a real journalist, not a talking head pushing predetermined talking points regardless of the facts.

  The "every news outlet makes mistakes" whataboutism/false equivalence doesn't even begin to include Fox News, which is extremely partisan, is anything but "fair and balanced" (they have dropped that false slogan), and has moved into the White House and pretty much dictates Trump's policies and understandings. They certainly have Putin's approval and often push his party line. Fox always, with the exception of Shep Smith, couches facts in a bed of misleading commentary and falsehoods.

  In short, you're better than this. Sure, a paywall is irritating, but it has ZERO relevance to the reliability of a source, and, in fact, the best sources are often behind a paywall, so "zero" isn't accurate. Just clear your cache, switch browsers, or find the same info you find in a search from another source, when it quotes the Times or Post, and still use the Times or Post as the reference. It's not that hard. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 19:48, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  I repeat (because you seem to have misunderstood the conditional in my statement). If, when I check the library, I find that the sources say essentially or exactly the same thing (as I most often find they do), I will cite a freely available source over a paywalled source. And because so many sources are going to subscription, I often find only FOX is left, unless I want to go to some obscure local newspaper. I think the reader benefits more by being able to verify that a source is correctly reflected, whatever it is.

  And when I do all those tricks you mention, and search for another source, what often comes up is FOX, saying exactly the same thing as the NY Times is saying. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:52, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  • It it time already for our monthly discussion about Fox News? GMG^talk 20:05, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

    @GreenMeansGo: I'm trying to have a nice collection of Wiki-skeptics review this before I proceed. Feel free to go through it and leave your notes on the talk. Thanks. François Robere (talk) 22:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

    Umm... I mean... I don't like Fox. I don't know why my retired parents watch it. But I don't watch cable news at all. I don't have TV. The main incentive of a 24 hour "news network" is primarily to fill up time. So I judge them based on their print journalism, which does often differ markedly from other print journalism in it's political bias. But bias doesn't equal unreliable. We're not talking about Alex Jones saying that Obama is literally a demon. One of those is political bias, and the other is a clinical level of delusion, where we shouldn't use that source for any reason ever. But you also have to keep in mind that the print journalism is the primary thing we cite on Wikipedia. I don't recommend anyone watch CNN either. It's mostly time-filling garbage. But their print journalism is okay.GMG^talk 22:37, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

    I completely agree, I just think there's a difference between serious conservative journalism and sensational tabloid-style crap, which much of the FN website is. CNN may be boring and unenlightening, but FN's website can quickly pull you in towards blatant fallacies and conspiracy theories; in fact, intentionally so. François Robere (talk) 23:13, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Judge the print edition by how many times they refuse to correct an error. It's a source that's consistently conservative no matter who is in office. And it's ironic to hear people who think they disagree with Fox News bemoan state run institutions. Connor Behan (talk) 18:17, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  RfC: The Points Guy

  Which of the following best describes the reliability of The Points Guy?

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

  — feminist (talk) 09:17, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 4 or 3 for content involving credit cards, Option 2 for non-sponsored content. The Points Guy is a website with 20 full-time employees including 14 staff writers. They earn money via credit card referral links. Their Advertising Policy page lists out the companies they have a conflict of interest with, so we can assume that any articles that involve a company listed on that page are unreliable. As the website's disclaimer states that compensation from credit card companies may affect how these products appear on the website, we should consider any article containing mentions of such products to be default unreliable, and remove uses of such articles on sight. However, the site also covers news and reviews on airlines, travel and related topics, most of them written by staff writers. The Points Guy was added to the spam blacklist on 4 December 2018, following Newslinger's assertion that the site "consists solely of sponsored content". This is false: not all content on The Points Guy is sponsored. Taking the website's two most recent news articles, "American Airlines Further Restricts Service, Emotional Support Animal Rules" and "US Citizens Will Soon Need a New Travel Registration To Enter Europe", the articles themselves do not appear to contain any affiliate links, and their quality appears to be on par with other travel websites (Time Out, Lonely Planet et al.) or newer Internet properties that also contain native advertising (BuzzFeed, PopSugar, etc.). At least some of the current citations to The Points Guy seem to be appropriate, such as those on Lufthansa and O'Hare International Airport. Considering the existence of usable content on the website, blacklisting the whole website on the spam blacklist is inappropriate, but since there is no way to only blacklist sponsored content, I consider an edit filter (a la Daily Mail) to be the best solution: prevent editors from making mass/spam additions easily, but allow legitimate uses of the source. The filter should warn editors to ensure that the article they cite does not contain any references to credit card products or any company they have a relationship with. feminist (talk) 09:17, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 3: i would go for 4, except that being paid to write favourable material does not mean they have fabricated it.Slatersteven (talk) 10:42, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Not usable for sponsored material but reliable enough for straight reportage of fact. Collect (talk) 13:07, 9 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Option 4 appears to be a reasonable compromise, considering that there are usable articles on The Points Guy, even though they are a small minority of the site's content and can be replaced with more independent sources in most instances. For example, the subject of "American Airlines Further Restricts Service, Emotional Support Animal Rules" was covered by the Chicago Tribune, Business Insider, and a local ABC News site. (I'm selecting option 4 because The Points Guy publishes mostly sponsored content, not false or fabricated information.)

  I note that the site's advertising policy doesn't reflect the full extent of sponsored posts on The Points Guy. The site receives affiliate commissions for promoting co-branded credit cards (e.g. a credit card jointly marketed by Barclays and American Airlines, or by American Express and Hilton Hotels & Resorts), but the page only discloses the relationships with the banks, not the airlines or hotel chains (except Marriott International). There are examples of The Points Guy articles that don't promote a partnered financial institution, airline company, hotel company, travel agency, or airport lounge, but these articles make up only a very small portion of the site's content. — Newslinger talk 21:01, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  In my opinion, a better alternative to removing thepointsguy.com from the spam blacklist would be to add thepointsguy.com/news to the spam whitelist. The majority of the site's "News" section is still promotional, but it's better than the rest of the site (which is exclusively sponsored content). — Newslinger talk 21:21, 9 March 2019 (UTC)

  I'd note that their "Reviews" section (thepointsguy.com/reviews) seem reasonable as well. Flight and lounge reviews written by their staff should be usable as sources for "Services" sections of airline articles (e.g. Alaska Airlines#Services, Ethiopian Airlines#Services, WestJet Encore#Cabins and services). I would prefer sourcing a fact to The Points Guy instead of the airline's website. Note: Based on their website, credit card "reviews" are under the thepointsguy.com/guide domain; these can remain blacklisted. feminist (talk) 08:15, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

  Thanks for explaining. I've requested whitelisting of thepointsguy.com/news and thepointsguy.com/reviews at WT:WHITELIST § "News" and "Reviews" sections of The Points Guy (thepointsguy.com/news, thepointsguy.com/reviews). Please comment there if you would like to extend or change the request.

  While I have strong reservations about using The Points Guy's coverage of subjects that it has a close financial connection with, I don't think there has been a comprehensive discussion about what counts as sponsored content, and how it should be treated on Wikipedia. As ad blocking becomes more prevalent, more publishers are turning to native advertising as a source of revenue, and there are many cases where it is unclear whether an article is sponsored, or merely non-independent. Other examples of sources that promote the products they review include Wirecutter and Sleepopolis. This is something that should probably be discussed more broadly. ​— Newslinger talk 00:20, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  • I don't really know which option this counts as, but I would not normally use this website at all. Popular does not mean authoritative or reliable, this is basically just a heavily monetized blog. Guy (Help!) 05:28, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Note I have put the whitelisting discussion on hold, there seem to be some general reservations here (it is replaceable, it is reasonable, sponsored content). I prefer to wait to let this RfC run its course. We need to know now of the 'useable' information, how often it needs to be used, and whether we can handle that with individual whitelisting, or that blanket whitelisting is suitable.

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

  (for tracking) --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 05:37, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Option 2 for non-credit card content, Option 3 for credit card content: As noted by others, TPG has several credit card sponsorships and generally places the sponsorship disclaimer appropriately. The news section sometimes has factual reporting but one can usually find the reliable outlet from which TPG sourced its coverage. They sometimes use social media posts but not as egregiously as tabloids tend to do. The site probably should not be on the blacklist and the news section certainly should not be on the blacklist. — MarkH21 (talk) 21:21, 11 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I'm with Collect on this one, Option 1 for non credit card-related facts looks fine to me, but avoid for anything having to do with credit cards, and they're clearly both conflicted and willing to bend the truth. EllenCT (talk) 03:26, 16 March 2019 (UTC)
  • For anything credit card related they are clearly unreliable and should not be used - a warning edit filter (which is option 4 if I understand it) seems correct. I am not seeing the sort of evidence of editorial controls (e.g. fact checking, retractions, etc) I'd want for other coverage. However, reliable sources do attribute news to them so I would go option 1 for non-sponsored news and option 2 for other information (e.g. airport/lounge/airplane reviews). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 04:35, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  V question for Presidency lead ?

  I am looking for some more inputs and policy clarification about a V and LEAD question.

  Recently Presidency of Donald Trump copied a line from the lead of Donald Trump. (A proposer opened discussion a day before at the Presidency TALK here, and editor made an edit the next day here.))

  That however means the lead at Presidency is based on content and cites in some another article. It is not based on cites in the Presidency article and about the article’s topic and body.

  For V in Lead situations, please provide more inputs and policy clarification below about ‘the cites and content summarized are elsewhere’ question/situation. Thank you. Markbassett (talk) 05:20, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  Discussion

  • Possibly put a cite in the Presidency article to the Donald Trump section would be the simplest way to show where the line came from ? Markbassett (talk) 05:23, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Ledes are a summary of the article not a place to be adding new, sourced content. If it's not source in the article, remove it. If it is sourced, then include it. In this case, if it's not sourced, add an entire section to the article to support the clearly verifiable claim. If there's another article on all of Trump's lies, a {{main}} and summary in the main article are all that are needed. Walter Görlitz (talk) 05:25, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  User:Walter Görlitz the Presidency article has a section talking about the fact checker counting ... not an overview and obviously not about the campaign. Would the Presidency body having a note 'Main article' pointing to Veracity of statements by Donald Trump suffice ? Markbassett (talk) 05:48, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  That's a shame. Update the article to reflect the sources and then make sure it's in the lede. Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:08, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  • @Walter Görlitz: - the article does reflect the sources. You can check the subsection on Presidency of Donald Trump#False and misleading statements. starship.paint ~ KO 08:03, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  • So the article reflects the sources and the sources support the statement. Why is it a problem to include in the lede? Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:49, 13 March 2019 (UTC)

  • I don't see a problem, perhaps Markbassett can reply. starship.paint ~ KO 02:16, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

  • User:Walter Görlitz No, not based on content of the Presidency article. Proposed here was to copy from BLP based on RFC at the BLP here as shown below.

  I propose to add the following sentences to the lede. This mirrors the Donald Trump article, and is virtually identical to the version which achieved consensus in a recent RfC with the exception of the first wiki-link to Veracity of statements by Donald Trump. starship.paint ~ KO 03:59, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

  Trump has made many false or misleading statements during his campaign and presidency. The statements have been documented by fact-checkers, and the media have widely described the phenomenon as unprecedented in American politics.

  • It does not summarize the Presidency article body content, relative amount of content, or cites in Presidency of Donald Trump#False and misleading statements. But again, the question here is for inputs and policy clarification on the V and LEAD in this copied-line situation. The CWW mention from Marchjuly so far seems best fit to the events and situation. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 23:29, 14 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Markbassett - please don't write my signature when copying my quote. It's really weird to me, because I didn't write that here. Now, just because the lede sentence was copied from elsewhere doesn't mean that the body doesn't reflect it. The body, already had the relevant subsection on False and misleading statements, and it has been continually updated along with the information in the lede, and the lede does adequately reflect the most pertinent point of the subsection. starship.paint ~ KO 02:05, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

  • User:Starship.paint The history trail is clear this was put forward as a copy, and TALK at Presidency was pretty clear not a focus to summarize content in the Presidency article. The question here is for inputs and policy clarification in the copied-lines situation. If you’re suggesting an alternative of rewrite the body to fit the lead instead of LEAD guidance to summarize from the body, I like that less than simply capturing that it is a copy per CWW. I doubt LEAD clarification would like an alternative of ‘or go the other way and expand from the lead into the body’ better than CWW or view it as truly complying with the intent of LEAD, but will see if any chime in that feels like better general policy or something. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 03:07, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Markbassett Even if it was put forward as a copy, it does not mean it does not summarize content in the Presidency article. These things are not mutually exclusive. You can read the state of the article one month before I ever proposed that text in the lede, the relevant content to be summarized is all already there. starship.paint ~ KO 03:20, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Starship.paint there is no “if” about it’s being ‘copy’, put forward that way and wording is simple fact. And no, for the purpose of guidelines I believe the two *are* exclusive because the handling is. Either the basis in effect is it’s a copy with fixed wording and hence this thread and maybe CWW marking, or else it shows it is not by discussions on wording not based on copy and actual changes in text. Being handled by a stance of copy excludes individual edits, and being handled by a stance of individual requires actual TALK and edits - it is what it does. If you now think the basis should not be copy, then like any change to these article’s lead that would require you to start a new TALK thread proposing that change, and see if folks concur. Meanwhile it was put in as a copy, accepted basis is copy, and the question here is inputs and policy clarification for the case of a copy. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 02:22, 18 March 2019 (UTC)

  
  

  • (edit conflict) One Wikipedia article cannot be cited as a source for another Wikipedia article per WP:WPNOTRS; so, I don't think a citation would help here. What it sounds like to me is something having to to do with WP:CWW. Article content from one article can be used in another article (within limit) as long as it's been properly attributed per WP:PATT. If the original content in the "Donald Trump" article was written by someone who then added it to the "Presidency of Donald Trump" article (i.e. the same person did both), then the edit itself is probably sufficient for attribution purposes; however, if there are two different people involved, then the original creator needs to be attributed. This can either be done by edit summary or by a template on the second article's talk page. Now, whether attribution is really required depends on the nature of the content and how much original thought went into writing it. A simple statement like "Donald Trump is president of the United States" probably is so simple and generic that it probably doesn't require attribution since there are really only so many ways to make the same statement. -- Marchjuly (talk) 05:36, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  User:Marchjuly CWW looks promising to record the copy source. (WP:CHALLENGE not so much, but history is good...) The original source was created at Donald Trump lead by a RFC, not summary of that article content there or cites. So would the marking for this case be a hidden comment in Presidency of Donald Trump mentioning the line is copied and then the copied template at the Donald Trump article TALK page ? Cheers Markbassett (talk) 13:10, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  • As a matter of practice, I copy text from article A to article B verbatim with edit summary copied from article (whatever), and I use version history to get the actual version number of the source article. Then, in one or more later edits, I make whatever changes make sense to integrate the copied text into the new article. Third, I read the entire changed text to make sure that Article B, standing on its own and in my opinion, is neutral and passes verification with good citations to RSs. Please do not use the copied template, because edit summaries are perfectly adequate, so why clutter up the page? NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 11:27, 12 March 2019 (UTC)

  • When there is a well-sourced article about a related topic, that topic should be summarized in the main subject's article with a {{main}} pointing to article. Sources should be included. That section should then be summarized further in the lede. The lede itself does not need sources. The section in the article should have sources. The separate article should be well-sourced. Walter Görlitz (talk) 14:35, 12 March 2019 (UTC)
  • User:NewsAndEventsGuy. I’m thinking CWW would be template at TALK, and a hidden comment at the insertion (start and end of copied), yes? In this case, sources were WP — it’s copying text from BLP lead based on RFC there into Presidency lead based on TALK of copying, with mod of wiki linking to a third article expanding upon the topic. There’s been some later supportiveish additions at the Presidency article of 9 cites added at lead and a paragraph inserted at start of a body subsection. Any input or suggestions ? Cheers Markbassett (talk) 12:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  If the approach depends on the longevity of a hidden comment buried in article text, that's a guarantee that sooner or later attribution will be broken. With the passage of time, hidden comments are often cast adrift from the contextual placement in the article if indeed they were not sucked up by the periodical zamboni crew. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:26, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  touregypt.net

  Touregypt.net says "We are an American tourism company based in Lubbock, Texas" and they seem to have quite a few pages across their website about Egyptian history and culture. Since they don't appear to me to be a particularly authoritative source, I'm surprised to find that this website is used on > 500 pages, in some cases just in the external links section, but mostly as a reference. Either many editors find this website to be a suitable source, or its heavy use is the result of persistent reference spamming. Is touregypt.net a reliable source for historical information about Egypt and should it be this widely used throughout Wikipedia? Deli nk (talk) 13:41, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

  Spam. Tourism-related spamming is a huge problem. --Ronz (talk) 22:14, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Generally unreliable. These articles are self-published sources used as content marketing for a tourism company. — Newslinger talk 10:07, 23 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Agreed. Promotional/spam/unreliable. Deli nk, or anyone interested, I'd suggest insta-deleting touregypt from any external links, as well as removing the refs. As appropriate the refs can just be deleted where it's unneeded, or a replacement ref be put in it's place, or replace it with Citation Needed, or potentially delete whatever questionable info the ref was attached to. If you're willing to do some digging, you could try to hunt down some of the edits which added Touregypt. If one or more accounts added a bunch of them, you could post a spam warning to their talk or even pursue a block against the account(s). It's possible that identifying the account(s) would turn up additional spam to eliminate. Alsee (talk) 06:52, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  I have started removing links (leaving {{citation needed}} in its place where needed), but it's going to take some time and effort. No obvious spam accounts yet. Deli nk (talk) 11:07, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  I've removed it in the past a number of times. I doubt there's much spamming, simply editors without a clue about RS. It'll continue to be used without an edit filter Doug Weller talk 14:16, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Student Crowd

  Is Student Crowd a reliable source? See diff at University of Winchester. Thanks. Tacyarg (talk) 18:59, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

  I have a mixed opinion here. First, I think it's less a matter of "reliable" than "significant". Obviously the student reviews are not reliable sources, so the question is whether the rankings are significant. Student Crowd's website helpfully provides no information on how anything is reviewed or edited, or what qualifications any of their writers or other employees have. There are no obvious measures to filter out fake reviews. It's not promising. But then, looking through Google News searches and more directed sources, they are not infrequently cited by ordinarily reliable media. Specifically their rankings get cited. So on one hand, I'd be inclined to say that, "well if they are widely cited, they have a reputation for something something", and their opinion is significant. On the other hand, I suspect writers for Times Higher Education and some other sources just saw a popular website with a ranked list and cited it, and don't really have an informed opinion on it. But then on the third hand, maybe that doesn't matter. Someguy1221 (talk) 19:12, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

  In this case, I investigated the edit history of that editor and it has revealed that he's been exclusively making edits that was for the purpose of inserting the same domain or other junk links. I've reverted all of them. Graywalls (talk) 12:03, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  The only reliable information it conveys is something along the line of "the institution has a ranking of x on the website x" but when the discretion to introduce a statement sourced by this kind of website in the hands of editors, there's a general increase in susceptibility of article tampering by public relations professional or by those involved with the source or the subject to amplify a certain position. They have a tendency to aggregate and publish information that presents the subject in a favorable light or sometimes the source is added for the sake of promoting the review source. Graywalls (talk) 11:16, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Reviews from Student Crowd are user-generated content, and should not be used. The Student Crowd compilation article from the diff can be used for attributed self-descriptions of Student Crowd's own reviews under WP:ABOUTSELF (like a primary source), but only if Student Crowd's reviews are considered due weight in the article. Since Student Crowd's reviews and ratings are not notable accreditations, any reference to Student Crowd would be considered undue weight in almost all circumstances, unless the rating is covered by an independent reliable source. The neutral point of view noticeboard is the best place to ask questions regarding (un)due weight. — Newslinger talk 06:25, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  Is Margaret Barker a reliable source for the Book of Enoch or Seven Archangels? -addendum, and Hugh Nibley?

  She appears to be on the fringe of Christian scholars. This article in an LDS Journal also suggests she's not a reliable source.[11] Doug Weller talk 10:00, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  Adding Watcher (angel). Doug Weller talk 10:20, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  From what I can see she is "fringe" only to the degree of dating Enoch atypically early. Having read the LDS article, it's merely an occasion for expounding some of these views without any significant participation in LDS theology. Looking at GScholar I see she has one paper with 126 cites, another, 129. I'm having trouble dealing with the talk page because of the typical wall-of-text found around those articles, but I would prefer to find some commentary on her views before simply dismissing her. Mangoe (talk) 23:10, 20 March 2019 (UTC)

  Her work seems non-conformist rather than fringe. Xxanthippe (talk) 03:34, 21 March 2019 (UTC).

  @Mangoe and Xanthippe: thanks. I'd also like some reliable comments on her. She's also used here[12] in a different context. The editor also insists on using Hugh Nibley despite my telling them he's not an RS for anything but LDS views, am I wrong on that? Doug Weller talk 15:11, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  There is a short summary of her thesis and what I would characterize as an "orthodox" criticism of it here (see the section "1 Enoch and the Canon of Scripture"). I would tend to limit her to discussion of the texts themselves and be clear that her views are not widely shared. She seems to fall into the OT version of the Jesus Seminar "Thomas tells us about early Christianity" crowd, but I don't know that there's as strong a position there. She's obviously not someone to be cited outside this fairly narrow field.

  Nibley obviously should only be invoked as an authority on LDS views, and nothing else.

  There's something of a running theme in this in that uncontroversial statements and positions should be cited to generally accepted authorities, rather than to subsidiary writers whose views happen to agreee with the mainstream. Mangoe (talk) 14:15, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  Back again for POV pushing/ownership issues regarding War bonnet and Order of the Arrow

  In multiple instances, I've attempted to rephrase and/or eliminate blogs from War bonnet and Order of the Arrow as discussed in previous noticeboard discussions as well as individual talk page discussions at Talk:Order of the Arrow and Talk:War bonnet. User:CorbieVreccan has undone virtually all of them with what seems to be dismissive, unnecessarily aggressive, misleading, and/or POV-pushing edit summaries/rationales.

  Edit summary examples:

  • Deletion of sourced content and criticism per POV push.
  • Deletion of sourced content. Keene is one of the most-cited authors in the field, an Ivy League professor. WP is not censored.
  • Keene is an expert in the field and that is her official site. You are engaging in a POV push to censor criticism of the group.
  • Citation is there to source that there have been criticisms.
  • Disruptive editing, removal of expert sources on topic
  • Rv deletion of sourced content While this is an issue addressed below, he also reverted an inaccurate statement as well.

  Accusations of POV-pushing or censorship are laughable. I am not interested in pushing the "right" version, only in upholding the editorial standards of Wikipedia via WP:V, WP:RS, WP:N, WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and WP:NPOV. I've attempted numerous edits only to have blanket reversions of all changes. There is no discussion of such changes, only "no, not that"-type "arguments". To the contrary, User:CorbieVreccan openly admits he/she has an agenda to combat "systemic bias" on Wikipedia and is exhibiting ownership of whole classes of articles. He/she has stated that people can't properly edit such pages without his/her "Cultural competency" [which is required to evaluate [these] sources."]. I contend that our editorial standards are sufficient and that there exists enough reliable sources that we don't suddenly "need" to abandon our standards and resort to inclusion of zero-editorial-control/zero-editorial-standards blogs and WP:FRINGE opinions. Buffs (talk) 04:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  Case #1: Citations sourced to a blog

  This specifically references: www.nativeappropriations.com and the previous discussion. I don't care if Keene is a well-respected academic on par with Newton or 4th rate hack of a professor. The use of an individual's personal blog as a citation is strictly limited. If it is "often cited" we should use those peer-reviewed citations/conclusions. As such, the use of this blog should be confined to the pages on the author and the webpage itself. Other references should be removed/replaced. This was what I felt was the conclusion/consensus of the previous discussion. If others feel I'm incorrect in my conclusion, please let me know. Buffs (talk) 04:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  Please use the recommended format for this noticeboard.

  The past discussion which you link makes it clear that this specific blog can be used. --Ronz (talk) 20:53, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  How did you draw that conclusion? Buffs (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Case #2: Adding citations that do not apply to the statement they allegedly support/WP:SYNTH

  • [13]
  • [14]
  • [15]
  This is a related matter. In multiple instances, User:CorbieVreccan has inserted references that do not apply to the statements at hand in order to apparently bolster the accuracy of the statement via WP:CITEKILL. The best example of this is Order_of_the_Arrow#Concerns_of_Cultural_Appropriation which currently states

  The Order of the Arrow has been protested and criticized for engaging in cultural appropriation and spreading stereotypes of, and racism against, Native Americans.>

  The third reference is a book excerpt from page 126...but it doesn't mention anything about protests, criticism, racism, cultural appropriation, or stereotypes and, therefore, doesn't belong here. I've attempted to remove this reference and discussed it, but it is added back by User:CorbieVreccan under the guise that it is a valid reference: [16]

  Another is [17] where the same person continues to add a source that doesn't back up the given statement.

  Case #3: Fringe opinions stated as if they are widespread/strong minority opinions

  An additional problem is that none of these opinions have been demonstrated to be held by anything other than a WP:FRINGE minority. Given that most such statements are contentious, our standards should be higher. User:CorbieVreccan seems to believe that just because a source can be produced that backs up his/her personal opinion, that it should be included whether or not such an opinion meets WP:N, WP:RS, or WP:FRINGE criteria.

  The best example of this is Order_of_the_Arrow#Concerns_of_Cultural_Appropriation which currently states

  The Order of the Arrow has been protested and criticized for engaging in cultural appropriation and spreading stereotypes of, and racism against, Native Americans.

  The first reference points to a letter to the editor. I think it's fair to say that this opinion is indeed the opinion of the writer and has met at least some editorial controls. While it isn't ideal, fine. The second is an online paper that quotes the same person in the first reference as justification for the same opinion. The third is addressed in case #2. The last one is a personal blog. I see nothing to demonstrate that this is anything other than a WP:Fringe opinion. As such, it should be removed or, at a bare minimum, noted that these are the opinions of only a few people. Buffs (talk) 04:36, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  References

  This noticeboard is for discussion on the reliability of sources. The preferred format for starting a discussion here is to identify a specific source and the specific use of that source which is in question. Please consider using that format or something similar. --Ronz (talk) 20:50, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  Given that this is a wide-ranging problem, it has multiple components of problems:

  1. Blog as a source (I do not concur that the discussion was concluded as supporting a blog's inclusion)
  2. Citations added that do not support the given sentence (and being re-added without justification)
  3. Inclusion of WP:FRINGE opinions on these two articles via unreliable/dubious sources and WP:SYNTH.

  How would you suggest submitting them? Buffs (talk) 16:25, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Reliability Of IWMBuzz

  Hi, I actually wanted to know about the reliability of this publication IWMBuzz. Link is :
  IWMBuzz
  It was previously known as Indian Wiki Media and I have seen it been used as a reference under that name quite a few times. I would just like to know if it qualifies as a reliable source as there have been doubts raised about its reliability . In the already sparse field of News and Articles on Indian Telly Vision , it would be of great help if it can be classified as reliable - if it is indeed deemed one - as it is a treasure trove of information that we would otherwise have to spend hours scouring the internet for . Awaiting your opinions and replies ,

  Thank you --Peter025 (talk) 20:46, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  IWMBuzz is an advertising agency. (Its web site uses the expression "advertising agency" to describe itself.) It refers to the people it writes about as "clients", and says numerous things such as "We are committed to make your business grow"; there are many more examples. it is absolutely not an independent reliable source of information for anything, and there is no ambiguity about that at all. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 21:21, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  So even articles which are unbiased but are from this source would still not be accepted , am I correct JamesBWatson ?

  I also read somewhere on Wikipedia itself that if articles from reliable sources are short then a person could combine such references and create something like a unified reference which in turn may help attain notability , is this true? Would such a "unified " reference - consisting of a combination of shorter references from reliable sources - be considered as something derived from reliable sources? --Peter025 (talk) 21:27, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

  • It depends IMHO, it depends on the context. How is it being used? If we're talking about its founding date or where it's headquartered, I don't see a problem. If we are saying "Actor Xyz is the best actor in India", that's different. Buffs (talk) 21:45, 21 March 2019 (UTC)

    Thank you for the response Buffs, I am assume your response is to my question about unbiased articles from IWMBuzz. Can you/anyone please answer my second question about the unified reference ? and if your response was for the question pertaining to the unified reference then I clearly haven't been able to get what you meant, so could you go over that again? Thank you. --Peter025 (talk) 04:48, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

    In general, no. That would fall under WP:SYNTHESIS. Can you provide an example sentence? Perhaps we can walk you through how to properly reference the information. Buffs (talk) 15:41, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

  I would say no, it cannot be used to establish notability of its "clients". To be used to establish notability any source must be independent of the subject.Slatersteven (talk) 12:40, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  IWMBUZZ is not an independent source in regards to their clients or anyone connected to them. An advertising agency is unlikely to be reliable in regards to other people. Therefore I doubt IWMBUZZ would ever have any value for establishing Notability of anyone or anything. In regards to their clients, they may be reasonably reliable for basic non-promotional info such as date of birth. So it might be citable for some basic bio info. However any arguably favorable information would be presumably promotional and therefore not reliable. They have a financial interest in saying positive things.

  Regarding Notability: That requires multiple sources, each of which is considered Reliable, each of which is independent of the article subject, and each of which provides substantial coverage of the subject. It is hard to define exactly how long something has to be to qualify as "substantial coverage" - two paragraphs of decent length and containing substantial useful content is on the low end, but is often acceptable. In some cases we might accept multiple shorter pieces as collectively adding up to one piece of substantial coverage. Note that we don't actually unify them as a single reference - it just means that we might count Reliable refs with too-short coverage as a fraction of one item when looking for "multiple" sources to establish notability. Alsee (talk) 07:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Weather Underground

  I have seen some tropical cyclone articles using Weather Underground like Cyclone Idai [18]. I don't know if it is reliable or not but IMO it is not reliable because it appears to be a blog. --219.78.191.180 (talk) 10:00, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  Well any site that puts news and blogs under the same heading rings alarm bells with me. Also there are SPS issues here.Slatersteven (talk) 10:10, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  It's entirely member-generated data and there is no guarantee that those writing articles are experts. In this case Masters is a co-founder of the site. It's not clear what his doctorate is in, but we can assume it's meteological. The site's organizational structure is not a question. If additional, more clear sources can be found, use them, otherwise, I don't have a problem with using this as a RS. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:01, 23 March 2019 (UTC)

  Two sources at Eros and Civilization

  Hello, I am having to deal with an IP editor at Eros and Civilization who has used sources that I consider unacceptable per WP:RS. Its use of these sources can be seen in this edit.

  They are both online sources. The first source can be seen here. It is titled "Eros And Civilization Analysis" and at the top we see the words, "Disclaimer: This work has been submitted by a student." I think that this is an indisputable example of an unacceptable source for Wikipedia, but I would like to see other editor's views on that.

  The second source can be seen here. It is titled "The Psychoanalysis of Philosophy: Towards the Eroticization of Logos" and it appears to be a blog posting. It comes with text noting, "The following is an essay written for a course called “post-secular Jewish emancipatory thought,”". In other words, it is essentially lecture notes, written by an academic, but it would appear not published in a peer-reviewed journal, or anywhere else, for that matter. It might seem slightly better than an essay written by a student, but I think it is also clearly unacceptable. Again, I would like other editor's views. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:30, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Clearly not RS. Xxanthippe (talk) 01:31, 24 March 2019 (UTC).

  Since the IP editor is adding these unreliable sources to multiple articles - Herbert Marcuse (visible here) and Eros and Civilization (visible here) - I wonder whether technical methods could be used to prevent this? The problems involved in the IP's insistence on using non-reliable sources are multiplied when they involve more than a single article, and there is no good reason why we would let editors use a website that puts student essays online as a source. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 05:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Apply for semi-protection. Xxanthippe (talk) 05:27, 24 March 2019 (UTC).

  Not RS, and being spammed (i effect) to promote (I suspect) the work.Slatersteven (talk) 09:06, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Semiprotection has been applied. There's probably no need to discuss it any further here. But for the record, the two sources mentioned above are not reliable. The IP was also citing a third source which does appear reliable, but that source does not support(failed WP:V) what the IP was trying to say(WP:OR). Alsee (talk) 09:36, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Patents as reliable sources?

  I am not sure where to duscuss to what extent patents are RS. Please comment whether it makes sense to talk about patents in WP:RS. This is what I wrote in talk:String bag. Now it occurs to me the issue deserves a broader discussion, since a patent looks so official, solid, reliable.

  "Yes, patents are reliable sources about specific items they patent. They are not reliable sources about more general things. Any redneck may invent a better mousetrap. This does not make him an expert on mousetraps to be cited in wikipedia. He is an expert only on the mousetrap he invented. Basically, a patent is a self-published source, without peer review. The only professional review the patent gets is its novelty and other patentability issues." - Altenmann >talk 02:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Patents can be used as primary sources, which are allowed for uncontroversial self-descriptions. To avoid original research, any interpretations of patents should cite a reliable secondary source. — Newslinger talk 05:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Patents are PRIMARY sources. They authorship is by the inventors and (usually) a patent editor. The editorial oversight of the patent office is mainly limited to accepting or rejecting the patent (they may request corrections) - and is often very lax (you may patent nearly anything - until you try to apply the patent and challenge something in court... there's little oversight) - even from a novelty and patent-ability context. Some patents are complete and utter garbage (devices that won't work, quack science, hypothetical devices, etc.) - this obviously usually isn't the case when submitted by known authors/companies, but some small scale inventors may file and get through the process with a device that has no chance of working. Also in a mainstream context the conversion from a technical description to legalese (in the process, usually generalizing and widening the scope of the invention as much as possible) - often leads to patents which from a technical standpoint are close to incomprehensible. In short - possible for use in a limited fashion for attributed statements/descriptions by the author's of the patents in relation to their own devices. Icewhiz (talk) 06:58, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • All the above, its a primary source so could be used for non technical and non controversial statements, but for naff all else.Slatersteven (talk) 09:13, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) A patent is reliable for the fact that a patent exists, for it's patent number, for the title, for the inventor's name, and if appropriate perhaps for quoting a patent claim. That's about it. A lot of care must be used, I could get a patent claiming faster-than-light engine by smearing peanutbutter on a lightbulb. I might also get a patent for creating fire by rubbing two sticks together. The fact that a patent was issues doesn't mean the patent works, nor does it assure that anything new was invented. Basically a patent is a reliable source that someone holds a piece of paper with one-or-more claims printed on it and that paper has a government number stamped on it. Alsee (talk) 09:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Patents are primary sources - the number, names, dates are clearly usable. The claim which is finally accepted by the patent office is frequently incomprehensible, and the fist claim submitted is not generally what is accepted for the grant of the patent, nor is the value of a patent or usability of a patent asserted by the document, only that the office found it not to conflict with a patent already issued. Many applications go through a number of attempted claims. Recall that a claim in a patent, no matter how complex, consists of a single unreadable sentence. Quoting one in Wikipedia would drive sane persons up the wall. Collect (talk) 12:32, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • I agree with Alsee. Approved patents are reliable primary sources for their existance, and the basic information in them. They are often used inappropriately in Wikipedia articles for promotional reasons. --Ronz (talk) 16:33, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Sorry, I was not asking the question I should have. Patents have the "Background of the Invention" section, which describes the area to which the patent belongs, the purpose of the invention, prior art, etc. This part is clearly a secondary source, hence WP:PRIMARY argument is not applicable, hence all answers above are only partial.

  Therefore I invoked the "self-published" clause. Is this correct? Any other comments on the "Background" section of patents?- Altenmann >talk 17:10, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Ahh I think I understand, yes a patent is self published pinion.Slatersteven (talk) 17:05, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Another unanswered question is whether patents deserve a separate mention in the WP:RS guideline.- Altenmann >talk 17:00, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  The recommended format for this noticeboard is to give specific references and usage. Please give at least some examples so we're not wasting time.

  A patent application is the work of the claimant. The application is reviewed for the claims being patentable and coverage by other patents. Treating it as self-published should work in most situations. A patent generally should not be used to verify anything other than that the patent exists and the basic information in it. --Ronz (talk) 18:12, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Patents are a Reliable Source and have a Wikipedia Template to facilitate in-line citations. Patents contain a wealth of information. Patent examiners are experts in their field and conduct a thorough review (with substantive and editorial changes) prior to publication. Patents usually have a "Background" section which discusses the broad subject being discussed, current usage and practice; thus is a Secondary Source. Patents reference earlier work which might relate to the subject. they also list newer patents which use this patent as a source. They then go on to discuss the specific item or process which provides for improvement. The specific novel technical information might be considered as a Primary Source. Pkgx (talk) 18:14, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

    @Pkgx: Can you provide sources for any of that, because I believe there's strong, general consensus against it - enough for a WP:RSP entry. --Ronz (talk) 18:54, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  I heartily disagree with Pkgx's assessment. Even if patent examiners were experts in the fields in which they review patients (which they are not), they do not provide any form of editorial control for the background section. That section a WP:SPS and one doesn't know whether it was written by the inventors or patent lawyers. Eperoton (talk) 19:13, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Patent examiners rarely review the background section. Heck - they rarely do a good job on the claims section - patents are often thrown out on court challenges (e.g. by finding prior art - I once found a m.sc thesis in French which was published prior art to a patent issued 15 years later). Examiners devote very little time to each patent and usually concentrate on form. They are not domain experts (anymore than a patent editor is) - they have a general understanding of the field they work in, but not much beyond that. Is a patent a SPS? Probably not. However the editorial controls are very very weak (as evident in the very high rate of patents being struck when actually challenged in court).Icewhiz (talk) 19:26, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Precisely correct. And note that only the single last claim (generally the narrowest) is what the examiner has accepted. And it is rarely readable at all. Robert_H._Rines taught classes on Patents at MIT. Collect (talk) 21:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  There is (I think) a genuine discussion to be had here on the wider issue. Whilst (technically) a patent is not published by the writer there is little or no editorial control exercised by the publisher (thus making it much more akin to a news paper blog or op-edd).Slatersteven (talk) 08:53, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Every U.S. patent has a line in the database indicating which law firm represents the applicant (or, in rare cases, that the applicant is representing themselves). For example, if you look up U.S. Patent No. 10,237,622 for a "Page turning method, page turning apparatus and terminal as well as computer readable medium", you will see that the patent owner is Tencent, a world leader in various technologies, and that the law firm representing them with respect to this patent is Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, L.L.P., one of the leading patent firms in the world. It is highly likely that any patent written by Oblon attorneys for company like Tencent will have been written with meticulous input from both lawyers and experts in the field to insure that the background material is factually correct. I would have no problem relying on this as a source equal to a book on a technical subject produced by a typical author and publisher in the field. bd2412 T 13:59, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  There may indeed have been a number of people involved with writing the patent, but their goal is to create a patent that protects their product/invention - not one that is neutral or "accurate" in the encyclopedic sense. VQuakr (talk) 14:40, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Voice of America (VOA)

  VOA is not on the list of perennial sources (and I don't see much discussion on its reliability in the archives (aside from that it can be quoted with attribution link)). Can we get a consensus and add it to the list of perennial sources? Yaakovaryeh (talk) 05:19, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Then it does not need adding, if no one challenges it we do not need to have a go to page explaining why it is (or is not) an RS.Slatersteven (talk) 09:20, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  The stated inclusion criteria for Perennial sources is "repeatedly discussed sources", however you say you "don't see much discussion on it". That's an oops :) Alsee (talk) 09:23, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • I've removed "RfC:" from the heading of this section to prevent confusion, as this is not an actual RfC. — Newslinger talk 07:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Is wikispace reliable?

  It is the only source in List of Justices of the Wyoming Supreme Court, but it's dead anyways. THE NEW ImmortalWizard(chat) 15:47, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • (Non-administrator comment) You mean Wikispaces, a wiki hosting service? user-generated content is not a reliable source. Matthew hk (talk) 15:58, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  If its a wiki, as was said above, no. Its user generated content.Slatersteven (talk) 16:25, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Thanks Matthew hk and Slatersteven. I have since removed the source and tagged the page. THE NEW ImmortalWizard(chat) 18:09, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  • The content previously at https://wyomingstatearchives.wikispaces.com/ was produced by the Wyoming State Archives, an agency of the State of Wyoming, which merely used the website as a convenient repository for official biographies; it was not "user-generated". Unfortunately, the Wikispaces cite shut down and the information does not appear to have been backed up anywhere else. This is an unusual circumstance of Wikipedia having created a record of what was in a public document (albeit hosted in an unusual place), that no longer exists. bd2412 T 18:24, 24 March 2019 (UTC)
  • Since the Wikispaces site is dead, I have changed all the citations to directly reference the print documents available at the Wyoming State Archives. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:50, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  That is the best idea anyway.Slatersteven (talk) 08:38, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Removal of reliable sources

  My question is how we deal with persistent removal of reliable sources by unexperienced editors, such as case 1, case 2, case 3 and others. I tried to convey this here without much use.भास्कर् Bhagawati Speak 17:38, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  The dispute is whether Kamrupi dialect/Kamrupi Prakrit/Kamrupi language/Western Assamese/Western Asamiya/Western Assam dialect/Undivided Kamrup district speech is a modern speech which lacks history or a old language with literature.

  The relevant sources:

  • Upendranath Goswami (1970), A Study on Kamrupi: A dialect of Assamese, Department of Historical Antiquarian Studies, Assam Assam from ancient times, was known as Kamarupa till the end of the Koch rule (17th century) and ancient Kamarupa comprised the whole of North Bengal including Cooch-Behar, and the Rangpur and Jalpaiguri districts of Bengal. Its permanent western boundary is said to have been the river Karatoya in North Bengal according to the Kalika Purana and Yoginitantra, both devoted to geographical accounts of ancient Kamarupa. So the Aryan language spoken first in Assam was the Kamrupi language spoken in Rangpur, Cooch-Behar, Goalpara, Kamrup district and some parts of Nowgong and Darrang districts. As also put by K.L. Barua "the Kamrupi dialect was originally a variety of eastern Maithili and it was no doubt the spoken Aryan language throughout the kingdon which then included the whole of the Assam Valley and the whole of Northern Bengal with the addition of the Purnea district of Bihar”. It is in this Kamrupi language that the early Assamese literature was mainly written. Up to the seventeenth century as the centre of art, literature and culture were confined within western Assam and the poets and the writers hailed from this part, the language of this part also acquired prestige. The earliest Assamese writer is Hema Saraswati, the author of a small poem, Prahrada Caritra, who composed his verses under his patron, King Durlabhnarayana of Kamatapur who is said to have ruled in the latter part of the 13th century. Rudra Kandali translated Drone Parva under the patronage of King Tamradhvaja of Rangpur. The most considerable poet of the pre-vaisnavite period is Madhava Kandali, who belonged to the present district of Nowgong and rendered the entire Ramayana into Assamese verse under the patronage of king Mahamanikya, a Kachari King of Jayantapura. The golden age in Assamese literature opened with the reign of Naranarayana, the Koch King. He gathered round him at his court at Cooch-Behar a galaxy of learned man. Sankaradeva real founder of Assamese literature and his favourite disciple Madhavadeva worked under his patronage. The other-best known poets and writers of this vaisnavite period namely Rama Sarasvati, Ananta Kandali, Sridhar Kandali, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharyya, Dvija Kalapachandra and Bhattadeva, the founder of the Assamese prose, all hailed from the present district of Kamarupa. During Naranaryana's reign "the Koch power reached its zenith. His kingdom included practically the whole of Kamarupa of the kings of Brahmapala's dynasty with the exception of the eastern portion known as Saumara which formed the Ahom kingdom. Towards the west the kingdom appears to have extended beyond the Karatoya, for according to Abul Fasal, the author of the Akbarnamah, the western boundary of the Koch kingdom was Tirhut. On the south-west the kingdom included the Rangpur district and part of Mymensingh to the east of the river Brahmaputra which then flowed through that district," The Kamrupi language lost its prestige due to reasons mentioned below and has now become a dialect which has been termed as Kamrupi dialect as spoken in the present district of Kamrup.
  • Sukumar Sen, Ramesh Chandra Nigam (1975), Grammatical sketches of Indian languages with comparative vocabulary and texts, Volume 1, p.33 Assam from ancient times, was known as Kamarupa till the end of the Koch rule (17th century) and ancient Kamarupa comprised the whole of North Bengal including Cooch-Behar, and the Rangpur and Jalpaiguri districts of Bengal. Its permanent western boundary is said to have been the river Karatoya in North Bengal according to the Kalika Purana and Yoginitantra, both devoted to geographical accounts of ancient Kamarupa. So the Aryan language spoken first in Assam was the Kamrupi language spoken in Rangpur, Cooch-Behar, Goalpara, Kamrup district and some parts of Nowgong and Darrang districts. As also put by K.L. Barua "the Kamrupi dialect was originally a variety of eastern Maithili and it was no doubt the spoken Aryan language throughout the kingdon which then included the whole of the Assam Valley and the whole of Northern Bengal with the addition of the Purnea district of Bihar”. It is in this Kamrupi language that the early Assamese literature was mainly written. Up to the seventeenth century as the centre of art, literature and culture were confined within western Assam and the poets and the writers hailed from this part, the language of this part also acquired prestige. The earliest Assamese writer is Hema Saraswati, the author of a small poem, Prahrada Caritra, who composed his verses under his patron, King Durlabhnarayana of Kamatapur who is said to have ruled in the latter part of the 13th century. Rudra Kandali translated Drone Parva under the patronage of King Tamradhvaja of Rangpur. The most considerable poet of the pre-vaisnavite period is Madhava Kandali, who belonged to the present district of Nowgong and rendered the entire Ramayana into Assamese verse under the patronage of king Mahamanikya, a Kachari King of Jayantapura. The golden age in Assamese literature opened with the reign of Naranarayana, the Koch King. He gathered round him at his court at Cooch-Behar a galaxy of learned man. Sankaradeva real founder of Assamese literature and his favourite disciple Madhavadeva worked under his patronage. The other-best known poets and writers of this vaisnavite period namely Rama Sarasvati, Ananta Kandali, Sridhar Kandali, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharyya, Dvija Kalapachandra and Bhattadeva, the founder of the Assamese prose, all hailed from the present district of Kamarupa. During Naranaryana's reign "the Koch power reached its zenith. His kingdom included practically the whole of Kamarupa of the kings of Brahmapala's dynasty with the exception of the eastern portion known as Saumara which formed the Ahom kingdom. Towards the west the kingdom appears to have extended beyond the Karatoya, for according to Abul Fasal, the author of the Akbarnamah, the western boundary of the Koch kingdom was Tirhut. On the south-west the kingdom included the Rangpur district and part of Mymensingh to the east of the river Brahmaputra which then flowed through that district," The Kamrupi language lost its prestige due to reasons mentioned below and has now become a dialect which has been termed as Kamrupi dialect as spoken in the present district of Kamrup.
  • Kaliram Medhi (1936). Assamese Grammar and Origin of the Assamese Language. Sri Gouranga Press. p. 66. The language of the pre-Vaisnava and Vaisnava was the dialect of Western Assam while the language of the modern literature is that of Eastern Assam. This latter has been accepted by the common consent as the literary language of the country. Political power thus determined the centre of literary activity and also of the form of literary language.
  • Golockchandra Goswami (1982). Structure of Assamese. Department of Publication, Gauhati University. p. 11. The Eastern and Central dialects may be regarded as uniform to a certain extent in their respective areas, while Western Asamiya is heterogeneous in character, with large regional variations in the east, west, north and south. There must have been in early times as well, diverse dialects and dialect groups as at present. But then, there seems to be only one dominant literary language prevailing over the whole area; and that was Western Asamiya, the sole medium of all ancient Asamiya literature including the Buranjis written in the Ahom courts. This was because the centre of all literary activities in early times was in western Assam; and the writers were patronized by the kings and local potentates of that region. In the later period, however, even though the centre of literary activities moved to eastern Assam in the Ahom period, the writers continued to accept and use the existing model of the literary style of that time.
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  User:Slatersteven, User:BD2412, User:Guy_Macon, User:BullRangifer, User:Qono are above sources are reliable to use for the subject.भास्कर् Bhagawati Speak 07:16, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Has this not already been disused?Slatersteven (talk) 08:36, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Slatersteven they are deleted recently by some editors from both the articles in question without consulting here.भास्कर् Bhagawati Speak 09:16, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  If we have had a previous discussion on this (and I am sure we have) removal of RS does not have to be raised here again. Point them to the original discussion, and if they continue ANI it. If however (AND i am sure this was not the case) You are adding content previously deemed not RS then you should not keep doing it.Slatersteven (talk) 09:29, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Slatersteven yes we did have a recent RS discussion involving same editor which you helped in disposal which they did not agree, but subject and article was different. The current issue brought in for first time.भास्कर् Bhagawati Speak 09:40, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  @Bhaskarbhagawati: please notify editors you are having conflicts with. You should also engage in discussions in the talk pages—as repeatedly requested of you, here: Talk:Kamarupi_Prakrit#Restored_lede.

  Furthermore, you have misrepresented the other discussion on "Dravidian" in Assamese people.

  Chaipau (talk) 11:26, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Recuse. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Chaipau i am there for sometime, i asking here are above sources are reliable to use. Also in said earlier thread you had rejected what Slatersteven and others said.भास्कर् Bhagawati Speak 15:52, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  The paper is bad, a couple of writers are good. How do we treat it?

  Say we have a newspaper - let's call it the Fubar Times. The Fubar, like any other newspaper, employs dozens of reporters on several desks. There's a strong consensus among RS that the Fubar is a very, very bad newspaper. Some of the sources except a handful of reporters from the foreign affairs desk (not the desk itself, just the reporters), but all agree that the newspaper as a whole is biased and unreliable. My questions to you is: how exactly do we treat the Fubar? Do we WP:GUNREL the whole thing, as most sources suggest? Do we except specific reporters or a specific desk? If most sources aren't concerned with specific desks, can an editor (here) insist that we find sources that are? Or are do we accept the consensus that exists on the newspaper as a whole? François Robere (talk) 23:22, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  We really can't trust individual editors to judge whether a source is reliable, and having the community try to arrive at a consensus for each individual writer is unworkable. This isn't just a problem with The Daily Mail The Fubar Times. In may very well be that one writer at The Daily Stormer or The Onion is reliable, but we can't have individual editors deciding that itb is OK to use those as sources. If The Daily Mail The Fubar Times is unreliable, any reliable reporter working for them is just going to have to put up with being considered unreliable as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:55, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Apropos? How Fox News uses “news side” anchors like Shepard Smith to save its brand. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 23:58, 24 March 2019 (UTC)

  Interesting. I would like to exploit this article for two points.

  • It says "Fox simply has separate “news” and “opinion” divisions like other outlets." - I am wondering (lazy reader, me) whether our WP:RS rules draw the distinction between "news" and "opinion" pieces clearly enough. - Altenmann >talk 02:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)
  • It addresses the concern voiced above (consensus for each individual writer is unworkable) - of course, not for each individual one, but there are quite a few newswriters who are recognized in the world as trustworthy, i.e., we do noot need community consensus on their trustworthiness, only the consensus on whether their tr--ness is commonly recognized, i.e., in the very spirit of Wikipedia regarding "truth". - Altenmann >talk 02:31, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Per the first point, the words preceding are very important:

  "Fox’s ... public relations strategy relies on being able to point to people like Smith as evidence that the network isn’t purely a right-wing megaphone. Instead, the network brass argues, Fox simply has separate “news” and “opinion” divisions like other outlets." (My emphasis.)

  The point being that "the brass" are being deceptive. They have one or two people like Shep Smith as their token journalists they point at, to fool people into thinking that the other 98% of their business is legitimate. Well, that's not the case. They are just including that "person (or very few people) of a group so an organization can publicly claim to be" an objective and real news source, so you can safely believe everything else they say and do. It's amazing how many are fooled by this example of tokenism. Just because 2% is good does not somehow make the other 98% good. It's still a propaganda channel, which is the point of the article. -- BullRangifer (talk) PingMe 02:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  And the crusade against Fox News continues... Can you source your 2% statistic? Also, I should remind you that Media Matters' blog is not even close to being a reliable source.--Rusf10 (talk) 03:05, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  Crusades are motivated by religion; sourcing is based on evidence. Per WP:ONUS the question isn't whether he can source that 98%, but whether you can show that scathing reviews don't apply to some portion of the journalists. François Robere (talk) 08:40, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  @BullRangifer: No need to derail the discussion. I just want to know what policy says in such cases. François Robere (talk) 08:56, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  I don't think we can answer a hypothetical like this. Even source is different and needs to be evaluated individually. With few exceptions, I'd be very cautious to label any source, as either 100% reliable or 100% unreliable. If you have a particular source in mind, please let us know.--Rusf10 (talk) 03:07, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  That's an easy out. Don't we have policy on this? Policy is written in anticipation of hypotheticals, and just as well - otherwise you'd have no ability to apply it whatsoever. I want to know what the policy is without coming to RSN every single time, so do tell. François Robere (talk) 08:55, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  "Doctor, she's having a heart attack! What do we do?" - "No, no, wait. We have to discuss this. There's no procedure for 56 y/o Afro-American women of average build." - "But, doctor!" - "No-no, please. This is personalized medicine. We don't generalize."... BEEEEEP... François Robere (talk) 09:00, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  • Not a good hypothetical, however hypothetically speaking a desk inside of a source may be extra reliable or extra unreliable in relation to the rest of the source. If a sub-part of an organization has a reputation for fact checking, and we can reliability identify that sub-section from the rest of the organization - then sure - we could treat that sub-part differently. Icewhiz (talk) 13:33, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  We do take authors into account concerning reliability, even to the point of using blogs. As long as the authorship is not in question, we should be taking the author into account for anything better than blogs. --Ronz (talk) 16:23, 25 March 2019 (UTC)

  RfC on the Photographers' Identity Catalog (PIC)

  There is a section of an RfC on the List of Photographers talk page regarding the reliability of the New York Public Library's Photographers' Identity Catalog as a reliable source for nationality, birth dates, and death dates.

  The point of contention is that the PIC lists Wikipedia itself as a source of information. Though Wikipedia is one of more than twenty sources that the PIC uses, its inclusion raises concerns that using the PIC on Wikipedia is "circular".

  You are welcome to join the discussion at the RfC on the List of Photographers talk page. Thank you. Qono (talk) 03:54, 25 March 2019 (UTC)