Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

Welcome — ask about reliability of sources in context!

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

RfC: Slovenski Narod newspaper

Note: this is the second re-listing.

source: The source in question is an article in the Slovenian newspaper Slovenski Narod from 1904. The full edition is available from the Digital Library of Slovenia here where it can be downloaded as a PDF. For those without a grasp on South Slavic languages, the text can be highlighted, copied, and pasted into a web-translation for a decent idea on what is being stated. The article in question within this newspaper edition is "Položaj v Macedoniji" which is based on a conversation with revolutionary leader Hristo Tatarchev.

article: I added this article as a source to the article of Hristo Tatarchev (and was promptly reverted).

content: I used the source to support two sentences I added: diff. I essentially paraphrase two points explicitly stated in the article, one being that Turkish reforms were insufficient in his view and the other that his organization would never allow Macedonia to join Serbia or Bulgaria.

I look forward to any guidance from uninvolved editors regarding why this source can or cannot be considered reliable for the purposes I had attempted to use it. Thanks. --Local hero ^talk 05:49, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi, I am the other editor involved in this issue. The article in the newspaper is used by User:Local hero in historical context. However per Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history), historical scholarship is generally not:

• Journalism
• Opinion pieces by non-scholars
• Popular works that were not reviewed, especially works by journalists, or memoirs—these may be useful to supplement an article that relies upon scholarly sources
• Any primary source, etc.

Per Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (history), to determine scholarly opinions about a historical topic, consult the following sources in order:

• Recent scholarly books and chapters on the historiography of the topic
• "Review Articles", or historiographical essays that explicitly discuss recent scholarship in an area.
• Similarly conference papers that were peer reviewed in full before publication that are field reviews or have as their central argument the historiography.
• Journal articles or peer reviewed conference papers that open with a review of the historiography, etc.

That means if somebody want to use such a primary source (newspaper clipping in a language that is unclear to all the readers of the English-language Wikipedia and older then 100 years) it must be supported by recent scholarly books in English, etc. Thanks. Jingiby (talk) 06:10, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I’ll quickly note that the page you reference is not a Wikipedia policy and that this newspaper source is not a “clipping” as the full edition is available. Looking forward to input from uninvolved editors. --Local hero ^talk 06:19, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I will clarify that the idea backed by this newspaper's article contradicts with a lot of secondary WP:RS cited in the same article (Hristo Tatarchev).Jingiby (talk) 06:26, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

I somewhat concur with Jingiby here. Newspapers are hardly a good source about history anyway and such news stories are presented without context (an invitation to OR). We do not know, if this newspaper was reliable sources for this topic even back then (ethno-nationalistic POV pushing was one of the main reasons for existence of such local newspapers). In any case, if the only source for this information is this newspaper, it is certainly an undue information and should not be included in the article. If this information is mentioned in higher quality source (eg. history book), then use that source (discussion about due weight applies here, but that is out of scope of this noticeboard). Note useable sources are not restricted to English language, which is preferred, but not required. Pavlor (talk) 10:32, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the input, Pavlor. I can't think of a POV that a Slovenian newspaper would have to push in 1904 Ottoman Macedonia. Slovenski Narod was apparently the first daily Slovene newspaper, in print for over seven decades. Another user had originally added this source to the article but was reverted by Jingiby. I took a look and it seems legit, but hoping to get guidance here as to whether it is RS.

With regard to your other point, I am not able to find it in books. I was only able to find it stated in places like the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle's website (link). --Local hero ^talk 00:26, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Is Crunchbase News (not the Crunchbase database) a reliable news source?

Crunchbase News (https://news.crunchbase.com) has its own editorial and has a disclosure on how their newsroom is independent from the Crunchbase public / user-generated database. Here is their explanation: https://news.crunchbase.com/about-news/ I know that Crunchbase itself is not a reliable source because it is a user-generated database per WP:CRUNCHBASE, but what about the Crunchbase News? Is it reliable for the purpose of verifiability? Z22 (talk) 19:26, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

How should we list it on WP:RSP?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Additional considerations apply. For example, do not used to satisfy Wikipedia:Notability, only for Wikipedia:Verifiability. Check author is Crunchbase News staff (not a guest author). Check content if it is just pulling a press release.
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

I think Option 2 is reasonable. If caution is given, certain contents can be useful knowledge. For example, here is an example that shows a certain level of analysis of Crunchbase News by comparing and contrasting two approaches in attracting companies to New Jersey. We should not just deprecate Crunchbase News in a broad brush. Z22 (talk) 12:55, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (Crunchbase News)

This was previously discussed here. It's a business boosterism source. This is similar to its original parent, TechCrunch, which is not regarded as generally reliable either - per WP:RSP, "Careful consideration should be given to whether a piece is written by staff or as a part of their blog, as well as whether the piece/writer may have a conflict of interest, and to what extent they rely on public relations material from their subject for their writing. TechCrunch may be useful for satisfying verifiability, but may be less useful for the purpose of determining notability." That is, it's business boosterism spam and not a Reliable Source. It may not lie as such, but that doesn't make it WP:DUE, and it has already-noted issues in that regard.

In my experience, Crunchbase at all is an absolutely reliable way to find spam and advert-like editing, whose article subject should often be deleted, and Crunchbase News is no better. If you write an article dependent upon either, you should find actual RSes.

I see absolutely nothing that Wikipedia would have to gain from putting in a special carve-out for the questionably-reliable section of a deprecated source - David Gerard (talk) 21:32, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Crunchbase and TechCrunch have been separate since 2015. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:33, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Clarified to "its original parent" - David Gerard (talk) 21:39, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

Removed "RFC" tag - you're conspicuously not bringing up a case you have in mind - David Gerard (talk) 21:40, 24 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I have been an editor for quite some time but still new to initiating an RfC process. Please let me know if I still miss something. Thank you. Z22 (talk) 13:03, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Literally per the top of WP:RSN: Please be sure to include examples of editing disputes that show why you are seeking comment on the source. - David Gerard (talk) 14:43, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

Here's a good example. Crunchbase News was used to simply source the headquarters and employee count for a company. Pretty uncontroversial stuff, that can easily be verified using other sources, yet the info was removed along with the Crunchbase News source. [[1]] I restored the missing info, and started a discussion on the editor's talk page, with a request to not remove further Crunchbase News sources and accompanying info until consensus is reached. Despite this, the editor removed the info again. [[2]] He also replied that he felt he could ignore consensus, citing WP:BUREAUCRACY. [[3]]. Not wanting to edit war, I moved on. This discussion and its limited participation shows that the community does not unilaterally agree that Crunchbase News sources should be removed. And stating that this isn't a big deal because Crunchbase News isn't used that much ignores the fact that the sources have been removed. Unless we go through the editors' edit history, there's no way to know how many of them were Crunchbase and how many were Crunchbase News. As this mass erasure continues, I'm still waiting to see even a few examples of how even Crunchbase is incorrect. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 19:21, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (Crunchbase News)

• No carveout for the news outlet. Churnalism is only a slight laundering of straight-up press releases, presented to readers as being actual journalism rather than a promotional imitation of journalism, and is a net negative to Wikipedia that should not be enabled or encouraged. The content of Crunchbase News is barely-churned press releases (e.g., examples previously used as supposed sources on Wikipedia: [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]) with a bit of the sort of "analysis" that's indistinguishable from boosterism (e.g., [9]). You'd have to be really stretching to consider this in any way comparable to independent third-party journalism on the companies. Even if we declare that the "news" site isn't technically deprecated, it's the sort of stuff that's at best a slightly worse version of the primary sources it's based on. If you want verifiability, use the original press releases. Unusable for notability - it's precisely the sort of promotional boosterism that leads to funding rounds having been considered not usable for notability or WP:CORPDEPTH - and barely usable for facts. Even in non-spam articles, Crunchbase or Crunchbase News adds information primarily of interest to the company's boardroom. As far as Wikipedia goes, Crunchbase is in practice a trashy source largely used for puffery, and looking for Crunchbase links is a good way to track down promotional editing. Wikipedia will gain nothing from a special carveout only useful to promotional editors - David Gerard (talk) 14:48, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
• No carveout for the "News" site per the above. It's churnalism/boosterism; if anything they say is worth saying, someone else will say it. The one argument in the prior discussion that I could in principle find persuasive was that they had been linked to by Forbes (and in a staff-written item, not a "contributor" one). But I'd need to see a sustained pattern of multiple reliable sources treating it as reliable and using content from it in a serious, in-depth way, rather than merely giving a link to back up a number. Reliable sources link all the time to things we wouldn't call RS: press releases, social-media statements, etc. We can't just assume that reliability is transitive. XOR'easter (talk) 20:20, 25 October 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 - generally reliable. While the regular Crunchbase site itself is sometimes user contributed, similar to IMDB, there's no indication that it's any more or less accurate that professionally curated databases such as Bloomberg. It is a handy way for different corporate funding announcements to be consolidated to see a company's total funding to date. If any info is incorrect, it can be easily fixed. I encourage anyone writing it off to point to data errors. For the source under question here, Crunchbase News is a separate editorial entity, and while some of its corporate coverage is seeded by press releases, the writers usually provide additional background and info, including interviews. I also encourage those in opposition to the news organization to come up with 2-3 instances of Crunchbase News reporting that has been shown to be inaccurate. As XOR'easter pointed out, there's an example (which I identified) where a Forbes journalist references Crunchbase News' reporting. See the blue link on [[10]]. If it's good enough for a major news organization, volunteer amateur editors striving for accuracy should be afforded the same opportunity. If concrete examples of inaccuracy don't exist to justify removing good information en masse, isn't this just at best WP:IDONTLIKEIT, and at worst disruptive and harmful to the encyclopedia? Is it better for editors of company articles to source Crunchbase for a total funding number, or have to hunt down sometimes up to 6 or 7 different funding announcements in sources besides Crunchbase, and source them all, and then do WP:SYNTH to get the total? Over the past year, I've seen many Crunchbase sources removed from the articles I've written or contributed to, and not one has been inaccurate. So in conclusion, we need examples of inaccurate info before either Crunchbase or Crunchbase News can be deprecated. Pinging @David Gerard: as a courtesy, even though I know he'll see this anyway. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 20:49, 26 October 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 or do not list at al1 - go ahead and use it, per prior discussions in Archive 350 and 321 etcetera. This is a different animal than Crunchbase or blog and was noted as having RS qualities. But I have to point out also this seems Option 1 if listed as there seems no reason to ask this question or have any RSP listing let alone restrict it in any way as there seems not to be specific disputes let alone “perennial” questions here, and WP does not have much usage of the news.crunchbase.com to have a discussion *about*. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 12:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 They appear to have editorial staff and publish good content. LondonIP (talk) 00:21, 29 October 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1 as a publication written by professsional staff. General caveats for corporate coverage apply: reliability is not the same as notability (either in the WP:N sense of whether a topic should have a standalone article, or in the sense of whether a piece of information is worth mentioning in an article). feminist (+) 10:30, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Joshua Project

Is the demographic data published by the Joshua Project reliable? Alaexis_¿question? 13:54, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

It's been discussed many times in the past Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 350#Joshuaproject.net,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 226#Duane Alexander Miller, Believers in Christ from a Muslim Background: A Global Census,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 163#Joshuaproject.net,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 80#Reliability of the Joshua Project as source,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 74#Joshua_Project,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 27#Is Joshua Project reliable?,
Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 15#Joshua Project. As far as I can gauge it, the consensus has been that it's unreliable. It's still being used so I'd like to add it to the WP:RSP list. Alaexis_¿question? 13:54, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

From the above I agree that an RSP entry is a good idea. A potential summary may include: Religious advocacy group, cites unreliable data sources. Often the RSP talk page is enough to agree on what to write... —PaleoNeonate – 03:56, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

• Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated. You cannot trust any of that website's claimed population numbers for ethnic groups even to an order of magnitude. The real population might be 0 because there is literally no such ethnic group: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Jawa Pesisir Lor. 61.239.39.90 (talk) 07:22, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Reliability of theaerodrome.com

Which of the following best describes the reliability of theaerodrome.com?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable

The website theaerodrome.com is currently referenced in over 500 1500 articles chiefly related to World War I aviation ([11] search), including articles assessed as GA-class (e.g. Friedrich Ritter von Röth). It has been previously discussed on WP:RSN twice, first here and later (very briefly) here. A recent attempt to establish local consensus at WT:MILHIST was closed with instructions to discuss the topic here. -Ljleppan (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC); upd. reference count 07:55, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

NB: I'm new to both RfCs and WP:RSN, so please let me know if I have made any procedural mistakes, if this is not the proper format/forum, or you have a suggestion on how to better phrase the options above. -Ljleppan (talk) 15:01, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• Note that 80 of the cites are actually to the website's forum (see theaerodrome.com/forum  ) which should be removed regardless of whether the main website is deemed reliable. The forum cites are on my list of sites to remove. FDW777 (talk) 15:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) The website appears to be a WP:SELFPUBLISHed resource, with an anonymous editorial team (i.e. the contact email is simply webmaster@... and there is no page listing the editorial staff). The website's main content consists of pages for individual aviators and aircraft models. Notably, the pages for individual aviators and airplanes do not contain by-lines (e.g. [12] and [13]). As such, this main content is effectively anonymously authored. In addition to the general anonymity of the editorial team, there is no indication of what the editorial or fact-checking processes related to the published content are. Some of the website's subpages list more general articles, which are hosted on the website's forums (see e.g. section "Articles" on this page). This publishing method blurs the line between user-generated content and staff-authored editorial content. While these articles contain by-lines, at least some of them appear to be copies of content published originally by 3rd parties in unrelated venues, e.g. this article being this report also available at Project Gutenberg and these articles being scanned copies of books/booklets. I have not investigated whether any of these constitute WP:LINKVIO. Some general articles appear to be original content and are published with by-lines (e.g. [14]), but there is no indication that the same authors are behind the unattributed pages related to the individual aviators, aircraft or medals listings -Ljleppan (talk) 15:27, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Note that of the two scanned books/magazines, one is a US book published in 1919 and so is OK to link to as it's public domain (how useful it is as a reference is a different matter), while the final one is a copy of a 1990 magazine and so most definitely isn't ok.Nigel Ish (talk) 15:50, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3: Not a reliable source -- a self-published resource by a non-expert; no indications of a reliable publishing process or fact checking. The site appears to be someone's personal project. --K.e.coffman (talk) 15:41, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
• I followed a few links, and what we have here is another hobbyist site, with authors like "Dan San Abbot" and "John". No evidence of an editorial board that offers oversight, etc. Option 3: not to be used. Drmies (talk) 18:30, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3. This is a non-professional self-publishing exercise, AKA a fansite. So, generally unreliable. It could be primary-source reliable for certain things, e.g. an interview they publish with an aviator might contain some WP:ABOUTSELF statement, and the interview would likely be good enough for that. But it's not a reliable source for general claims about the world, like airplane specs or someone's achievements.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:48, 13 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 3. Tweaked version from my contribution to the Milhist discussion. I don't think that this website meets the requirements of WP:RS. All three (author, publisher and source) need to be reliable. If one argues they are rarely wrong about a detail, if that is accurate, that only meets the third requirement. We still need to know about the author and the publisher, and I can't see anything above that says that the authors (obviously they vary, but only a couple of them are published aviation authors) and the website as publisher (reputation for quality copy-editing, fact-checking etc) are reliable. I recommend that it is considered unreliable and deprecated. If the website has list of sources used for a given article on a pilot (which it does in some cases), then examine those listed secondary sources (assuming they themselves are reliable) and use them to source the article. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 08:58, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 2. The main criticisms aired above stack up. Also, there are idiosyncracies in the Glossary, such as; "Barrage balloon: A small spherical captive balloon raised as a protection against aeroplanes." where aerodynamically-shaped kite balloons were also used, "Airship: A motor-driven balloon of elongated form; should not be applied to "heavier-than-air" craft." where the use of "airship" to describe a large aeroplane was common enough up until the WWI period, or "Fin: A fixed vertical plane generally fitted in front of the rudder..." where (when fitted, often not the case in WWI) it is more usual to put it the other way round and say that the (fixed) fin provides a mounting point or hinge for the rudder. So even if the claims of respectable oversight are true, their peer review process leaves much to be desired. Nevertheless, it is a useful site and should be acceptable to support and expand on content cited from other, more reliable sources. In other words, it is a source where any given citation must be taken on its individual merits; does a byline identify the author, is the context for the cited factoid appropriate, etc. The forum, of course, is off-limits, and so too should the Glossary be. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 09:06, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Thanks for your comment, Steelpillow. Just to clarify your position, does your statement the forum, of course, is off-limits extend to the articles linked from the "Articles" box of e.g. this page? Note the addresses of the individual articles are .../forum/.... -Ljleppan (talk) 09:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

    In general, just because a url includes a certain file path, or a certain piece of authoring software is used, this does not define the status of the destination page. These articles are locked out of the forum discussion and logically form part of the static site, which indicates at least a degree of sanity checking by an admin. But a trustworthy author's byline is still necessary. — Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 12:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

    • Of the authors listed in the "articles section, Frank Olynyk is a published author in aviation history, who is a co-author with Chris Shores et al on the multi-part History of the Mediterranean Air War 1940–1945 and would count as a trustworthy author, while the contemporary personal accounts are just being hosted by theaerodrome.Nigel Ish (talk) 23:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• Option 3 - I see the site as "generally unreliable", per the comments above. While the site may be useful for finding some information, as well as citations to the same, those citations (when reliable themselves) should be examined and used for in-line verification of content instead of using this site.--John Cline (talk) 08:41, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Citogenesis incident

Hi,

the other day, I followed a citation in an article to a published work, which in turn cited "WK 2011", which turned out to refer to a 2011 version of the article in question. Based on what I've found in the meantime, it looks like this involves dozens of other articles as well. Your username appears in the Wikipedia:list of citogenesis incidents, so I'm hoping you can deal with this in an appropiate way, or notify the appropriate person. Here's the overview:

Between about 2007 and 2013, a series of books authored by Peter Baofu was published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. The titles follow the general pattern The Future of this: Towards a New Theory of that: [15]

The publisher is a bit dodgy, according to their article; and these books are dodgy by the standards of that publisher, I think: Quite a lot of the prose was copied verbatim from Wikipedia, paying no heed to whether that content was cited or not. The only upside is that this author does credit Wikipedia.

Later on, people started citing those books in the articles they'd been cobbled together from. A Wikipedia search for the author currently yields 35 hits: [16]

I've only checked a handful, but I'd be very surprised if the pattern described above doesn't hold for practically all of them. I did wonder whether the citations might have been intended as product placement, to steer Wikipedia readers to the books. Across the ones I checked, this does not seem to be the case, though; the responsible editors and the timestamps are quite different for each one. So the likelier explanation is that occasionally, someone applies a tag to one of the passages appearing as-is in one of the books, and then someone else coming across the tag, and googles the former, and finds the latter at google books, and fails to wonder about the "WK" attribution there, and adds it as a ref... and voila, circle closed.

So this seems to be more benign than many of the listed citogenesis incidents, in as far as there's no deliberate fabrication at the root of it all, only originally uncited content. Let me know if you need any extra information, or if I can be of any further help with this issue.

- 2A02:560:42E7:3600:A538:6E0A:4565:830F (talk) 13:57, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm reposting this from my talk page - I don't get on as much as I was able to in the past so this could benefit from someone who can take more immediate action. In any case, this is definitely something that needs to be looked into. ReaderofthePack(formerly Tokyogirl79) (｡◕‿◕｡) 16:43, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Easy enough to see how this can happen. Almost every day I get an email from academia.edu telling me that I have been cited in a publication. Which is strange, as I haven't published in a scholarly journal in more than 45 years. Some of those notices result from one of the academic authors who share my name. Many of them result from an "author" following the attribution rules, and listing me as a contributor to a Wikipedia article they have incorporated into a book. Maybe an essay on what to watch for in sourcing would help. - Donald Albury 18:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
  • @Donald Albury: I get similar emails. Probably for the same reasons - my only article on Academic.edu is one published in the UK Skeptic Magazine. There also seem to be quite a few Doug Wellers. Doug Weller talk 09:27, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• Don't feel too flattered – emails keep arriving saying my name "is mentioned in an Early tetrapods paper uploaded to Academia", to find out what it's about they want me to "upgrade" i.e. pay money. My guess is a rather rough 2006 illustration, much improved by Pixelsquid in the current article, has been re-used by them. Since I'm no expert, rather surprised they couldn't do better, but am not paying to find out more. . . dave souza, talk 19:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Yep, these look like benign instances of {{cn}} tags getting filled too carelessly. In other words, they're pretty much exactly what the cartoon warned us about. I've been working my way through the list; most are redundant or easy to replace, though we'll need replacement citations in a few cases [17][18][19]. XOR'easter (talk) 20:15, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Well, I've gotten the list down to Wuxia, Carriage, Deforestation, and Creativity (religion). XOR'easter (talk) 03:33, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• OK, I've rewritten the relevant section of Creativity (religion) to avoid citing Baofu. XOR'easter (talk) 17:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)
• Anyone feel like tackling the last three? I don't know when I'll get the time. XOR'easter (talk) 14:14, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Wuxia has been debaofued.

- (OP) 89.183.220.246 (talk) 14:56, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! XOR'easter (talk) 18:44, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Carriages have four round wheels but now zero circular citations, leaving only Deforestation.

- (OP) 2A02:560:421E:4400:60C4:A40A:3BA3:7860 (talk) 13:48, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Great! XOR'easter (talk) 15:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Cambridge Scholars is not known for strong editorial oversight. It does not surprise me that they would do this. (t · c) buidhe 04:48, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

To expand on this, they seem to have been flipping in and out of the various publication ranking systems I have easy access to. For example, the Norwegian system classified them as level 0 (not a proper scientific publication venue) in 2020, but level 1 (meets basic criteria) in both 2019 and 2021. The spotty track record makes it pretty difficult to make any general statements beyond "consider every work carefully and in isolation". -Ljleppan (talk) 13:11, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Just don't use anything by CSP ever. They're garbage vanity press/predatory publisher. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:26, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Encyclopedia of Life

Hi all

I'm exploring doing a fairly large outreach project with Encyclopedia of Life and I wanted to know if there has been any discussion about it being a reliable source? I can't find anything in the archive. Currently EOL is used 7,764 times on English Wikipedia as a reference.

For reference EOL is run by taxonomists in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, it collates data from many large biodiversity databases e.g Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), Barcode of Life (BOLD), Catalogue of Life (COL), Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), a full list of imports is available here.

Thanks very much

. John Cummings (talk) 12:37, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I can't find any previous discussions about EOL in specific either, but the list of participating institutions does look promising. Based on a very cursory look, I'd view it as reliable but WP:TERTIARY. The level of citation such as on this page is impressive. -Ljleppan (talk) 13:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

It seems to be spearheaded by the Smithsonian Institution, which I would consider any work by them to be reliable in this field. This looks like a rock-solid source in terms of trustworthiness. This is not an amateur passion project, this is a professional, well-managed, trustworthy site run by a highly respected educational and research institution. No issues at all. --Jayron32 13:53, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks very much, this is helpful, if there's any questions I can ask them which would be helpful to understand the reliability better please let me know. My main question I have so far is how up to date the information is. John Cummings (talk) 14:34, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a "contact us" information page here. Someone there can probably answer your questions. --Jayron32 13:22, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, I already have a meeting scheduled with them, I'm just trying to get as much information as I can about Wikipedia guidelines especially about species as I can before I meet with them. John Cummings (talk) 13:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia's main project covering taxonomy and living things is Wikipedia:WikiProject Tree of Life. I'm not all that familiar with it, but it appears to be a very active project; you may try to post some questions there if you still have some. --Jayron32 17:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I found this discussion shortly after removing EOL as a source from Poa cita because EOL's info seemed plainly wrong. I documented this at Talk:Poa cita#Encyclopedia of Life as a source. I see that @CycoMa: asked about EOL's reliability two weeks ago at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biology#Encyclopedia of Life and Talk:Baccharis articulata#reliability of EOL. Some food for thought at those discussions. Nurg (talk) 08:57, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Is it just me, or has EOL not been functioning very well for some time? Like ½ the time i just get a blank page instead of the information I want. --awkwafaba (📥) 12:40, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Awkwafaba I've not experienced any issues with accessing EOL before and I've been using it quite a lot recently. John Cummings (talk) 13:10, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Looks like it is constructed by experts to select and curate trusted databases, and update its information through expert intermediation, and fully cited. Also, FYI, in case you have not read it, before your meeting, you may want to get your hands on at what appears to be a published 'proof of concept' article: Parr, C. S., N. Wilson, P. Leary, K. S. Schulz, K. Lans, L. Walley, J. A. Hammock, A. Goddard, J. Rice, M. Studer, J. T. G. Holmes, and R. J. Corrigan, Jr. 2014. "The Encyclopedia of Life v2: Providing Global Access to Knowledge About Life on Earth." Biodiversity Data Journal 2: e1079, doi:10.3897/BDJ.2.e1079. -- Alanscottwalker (talk) 14:12, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• If the above recent objections are related to the fact that it calls itself "collaborative", that appears to just be a recognition that multiple well-respected organizations are contributing to it, not that it is an "open editing" free-for-all like Wikipedia. They appear to have editorial oversight and the site is well curated. Also, I will note that reliable is not a synonym for "perfect" or "errorless". The most reliable sources available in the world still have errors, and if you have found that one of their entries is in error, don't use that one entry (i.e. if other also reliable sources clearly disagree with EOL, use those instead). But on the balance, excepting individual demonstrated errors, I would trust the site. --Jayron32 14:56, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Re-open Forbes discussion

The current distinction of Forbes print copy being reliable and Forbes.com being unreliable does not appear to be a useful guideline for most Wikipedia editors. Especially since all of the articles (print copy version or dot-com version) are generally accessed through Forbes.com anyway. My own experience is that the articles are almost always reliable and match one-for-one on numbers reported with other reliable sources. This leads to what appear to be unhelpful edit challenges about reliable sources. This results in editors needing to mechanically redo sources which match up one-for-one with other reliable sources, and then switch them for no other reason than this "red light"/"green light" policy on Forbes.com being red-light and Forbes print edition being green-light. Many editors are losing much edit time in re-doing sources apparently for no reason. If Wikipedia editors are losing their contribution time to this odd distinction of a red-light and green-light policy for Forbes, then should the distinction be re-evaluated? ErnestKrause (talk) 18:54, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• The distinction isn't between "print" and "online", it's between items by Forbes staff proper and those by "contributors". I'm pretty sure that almost every Forbes "contributor" piece I've seen added to any article anywhere was pointless bloviating. I don't see any reason to change the status quo represented at WP:RSP. It's too bad that we can no longer tell two categories of page apart from a split-second glance at the URL, but that's life. XOR'easter (talk) 19:13, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Unless there is evidence that Forbes' "contributors" now receive proper editorial oversight, I agree that there's no need to change the guidelines given at WP:FORBES and WP:FORBESCON. "It's inconvenient" is no reason to throw out our long-established guideline that self-published sources aren't generally reliable, and blogposts without editorial oversight are effectively self-published, no matter whether the blog is hosted on forbes.com or wordpress. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:19, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• The only real issue is that you can no longer easily tell by the URL if a Forbes online article is from paid staff or a Contributor, so editors going around blinding removing Forbes online sources are creating problems. Forbes clearly has bylines for who is staff or not so it does require a check of this. --Masem (t) 19:22, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Please don't call WP:FORBES or WP:FORBESCON guidelines. They are parts of an essay-class page. Guidelines are what's in WP:GUIDELINE. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 19:35, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• It’s not just “contributor”. I also avoid using sources with the “Forbes Tech Council” byline, such as [this one]. If it’s not staff, it should be avoided. But Forbes versus Forbes.com is not the issue, as pointed out above. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:49, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Currently, Wikipedia is formally separating Forbes as distinct from Forbes.com, with Forbes green-lighted and Forbes.com red-lighted in the list here: WP:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. ErnestKrause (talk) 21:58, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
  • The page you link does nothing of the sort, if you read the actual text - David Gerard (talk) 22:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• Agree with David Gerard. Additionally, I don't really see a need to change the status for either Forbes or contributors. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 22:31, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• The problem with Forbes is that two contributors in the same topic area can have drastically different reliability, for example in defense/security with HI Sutton (very high quality) and David Axe (very low quality). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:41, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• WP:RSP#Forbes says no such thing, ErnestKrause. Platonk (talk) 23:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• WP:RSP#Forbes.com contributors does say that exactly as I presented it, Platonk, David Gerard. You need to read both separate listings side by side to see why Wikipedia editors are losing contribution time by needing to redo edits due to the link I just provided causing Forbes.com to appear to be blacklisted. ErnestKrause (talk) 23:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Your failure to understand the difference between Forbes Staff and Forbes Contributor content is the issue, not Forbes.com vs Forbes print. You have been repeatedly told this yet you appear to not understand it at all. Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:28, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I think you are being confused by the titles of the redirects WP:FORBES and WP:FORBESCON. WP:FORBESCON does not stand for "Forbes.com" (it's spelled with an N rather than an M, for one thing), it stands for "Forbes Contributors". Hemiauchenia (talk) 23:34, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

No failure to understand this on my part. My GAN for BTS is currently being challenged for about a dozen FORBES (FORTUNE) cites using contributor Hugh McIntyre, who writes for both Forbes and Billboard. There is nothing appreciably wrong with any of his work, and his numbers and stats match up directly with all other sources. Still, because of the full blacklisting of all Forbes.com contributors currently by Wikipedia, I am required to mechanically change-out each one of his citations and replace them with the exact same data from other sources. That sounds like wasted editor contribution time for all those editors who wrote the original citations using McIntyre. McIntyre is entirely reliable when writing for Billboard magazine, but Wikipedia says he is fully unreliable and unusable when writing as a contributor for Forbes. A better formulation of Wikipedia's ambiguous stance about Forbes vs Forbes.com contributors would be helpful for the other 12 editors who contributed their time to writing the BTS article and using McIntyre. My link above is to WP:RSP#Forbes.com contributors and not to WP:RSP#Forbes. ErnestKrause (talk) 00:37, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Well you're not very good at communicaton your ideas clearly. Fortune is a separate publication from Forbes, not even published by the same company, so again I am confused. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Firstly, there's nothing "ambiguous" about the advice given at WP:Forbes and WP:FORBESCON; you just don't agree with it. Secondly, the fact that a particular source gets facts right does not make it reliable. If I write a blogpost, it doesn't matter how right my facts are – as I am not an expert with a history of publications in the field, I'm not a reliable source.

Thirdly, if your particular Forbes contributor is an expert with a history of publications in established reliable sources in the field, then per WP:SPS even self-published sources by them may be considered reliable except for BLP issues.

(Fourthly, if you think the advice given at Forbescon should be changed, it might help if you proposed a change!) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:07, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

I concur with all four of these points. XOR'easter (talk) 15:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

If you are both asking for a response to item four just listed above, then it can be presented in short form. A better and more consistent policy for Wikipedia would be either to designate both the magazine and its website as reliable, or to designate them both as unreliable. The current 'mixed' policy used by Wikipedia leads only to lost contributor editing time for Wikipedia editors who develop edits from Forbes sources, only to be asked to remove their edits after being told about caveats about some bad apple editors at Forbes. Either designate both the magazine and its website as reliable, or designate them both as unreliable. ErnestKrause (talk) 19:01, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

This is not a problem at Wikipedia's end, but at Forbes' end - they deliberately confused the Forbes magazine and staff content with blogs by random bozos. Wikipedia editors can distinguish them easily: if it says "staff" or "from the print edition", it's the RS; if not, it's blogs - David Gerard (talk) 19:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not some bad apple editors; it's a bad barrel. If people didn't add bad sources in the first place, we wouldn't have to waste time replacing them. XOR'easter (talk) 20:34, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand in what sense it would be either better or more consistent to have a specific exception to WP:RS for articles published by Forbes' staff or Forbes' contributors? The current advice at WP:FORBES and WP:FORBESCON is just an explanation of how our reliable sourcing guideline (in particular News reporting from well-established news outlets is generally considered to be reliable for statements of fact and Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for checking the facts or with no editorial oversight) applies to these sources.
I'm also baffled at how you think changing that advice would in any way solve the problem? How many people are aware of (and bother to check!) WP:RSP yet are unable to comprehend Check the byline to determine whether an article is written by "Forbes Staff" or a "Contributor", and check underneath the byline to see whether it was published in a print issue of Forbes? If you are conscientious enough to check RSP, you'll be able to check whether or not the article you want to source is produced by a contributor or an author; if you aren't, then changing the advice given there will make no material difference to you. If the advice instead said "Forbes is generally unreliable" then the people who are currently citing Forbes' contributors will continue to do so, happily oblivious to the change (and we've created a bunch of work for editors to replace references to Forbes' staff articles for no real benefit). Changing our advice to say that blogposts without any fact checking or editorial oversight are generally reliable – and contradicting WP:RS in the process – is, it should be obvious, a non-starter. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:21, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

RfC: Prabook.com

Prabook.com is an openly editable wiki that describes itself as a place to make a encyclopedic profile for any person, not just those notable enough to be included in an encyclopedia like Wikipedia. It’s content is a mix of automatically scraped details from other sources, and contributions from anonymous editors. It allows individuals to “lock” a profile, but has no mechanism to ensure it is only locked by the subject of the profile.

This iteration of Prabook.com appears to be founded in 2018 (per Valery Tsepkalo#Prabook), but there are earlier posts at RSN about a similar-sounding website.

How should we list it on WP:RSP?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Additional considerations apply. For example, do not used to satisfy Wikipedia:Notability, only for Wikipedia:Verifiability.
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false, fabricated, or unverifiable information, and should be deprecated

I have already removed it from several articles where I’ve found it used as a source, but would like to formally propose deprecating it per WP:USERGENERATED. Thanks, Politanvm ^talk 23:38, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

• Option 4 - As a self-published database it would rarely be usable in Wikipedia, but the fact that it has been edited by anonymous people for which we cannot determine who or whether they are qualified, it should be excluded entirely. Deprecate. Platonk (talk) 23:45, 17 November 2021 (UTC)
• Comment - Is there a reason this is an actual RFC? Is this being used as a source on a wide scale? On it's face is unreliable, we don't need this whole rigamarole. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:04, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Prabook.com  , finds that is currently used in a whopping... 1 article. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:08, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

That's because the nominator removed it from all the other articles. I removed it from the last article after someone reverted nom's edit. Platonk (talk) 00:12, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Well how many articles was it in originally? If it's only a handful it was removed from, why not just move straight to blacklist? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:15, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I removed it from ~10 last week and it appeared on a few more since then, so not too many. I wasn’t sure if the formal RfC was needed to blacklist/xlinkbot/edit filter, but I’m happy to withdraw the RfC if it’s overkill. Politanvm ^talk 00:21, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that a full RFC is necessary, since I don't think blacklisting it as a source will be contentious. I'm firmly on team blacklist. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 00:25, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment seems that if it fits under the same heading as sites like find a grave or IMDb, in that it often contains factual information but may also be subject to inaccuracies because it’s open to anyone that edits. I think we just need to treat it the same way we treat the above two sources, in that we may want to put it in as an external link or something like that, but not as a citation. It seems like “blacklisting“ is more for stuff that is often false and/or defamatory. Montanabw^(talk) 01:05, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Comment. It's a mystery to me where they get their data. I suspect they scrape from one or more Who's Who-s, since I inevitably find that any old biography I want to write has a Prabook entry with identical data to some Who's Who entry from ages ago. But I also don't see a clear need for a RfC, because it's not often used as a source. If we have deprecated Who's Who, as it appears we have, we should deprecate this as well. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 02:46, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Why the RfC? Is this an issue in doubt? Why are editors being asked to spend time considering this? Alexbrn (talk) 03:24, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 5, which would be "close this as not being useful". We do not need an RfC and formal listing for every random website used a handful of times, and that dilutes the usefulness of the list and is wasteful of volunteer time for people to read and comment here. It is clearly user-generated and clearly unreliable, and we don't need an RfC to determine that, let alone formal deprecation (which, similarly, should be resolved for the worst of the worst actors, generally those who deliberately and knowingly publish falsehoods). If it were nonetheless used in hundreds or thousands of articles, it still might make sense to spell out its unreliability explicitly, but ten? Let's not have more like this, please; it is abundantly clear that this site does not meet the RS guidelines without having to hear it in a formal RfC. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 03:30, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  • (Replying to you, but to respond to the other comments asking why I filed an RfC) I thought this might be overkill, but I filed an RfC because a long-term well-respected contributor suggested it might be appropriate in some cases, and I thought it possible that other contributors might agree. In terms of the number of times its been used, there are about a dozen that I noticed over the last week, but a RSN discussion about a previous iteration of Prabook noted 200 uses (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 211#Prabook as user-generated content), so I’m not sure how many times its been removed without someone noting. I thought it would be helpful to have a clear-cut reason to deprecate it and have XLinkBot help keep it clean. It seems to be added to a few articles a week, and I didn’t see harm in adding it to the list. Politanvm ^talk 03:41, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• @Politanvm: Try listing it here: MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#Proposed additions. Platonk (talk) 04:03, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  • Thanks @Platonk, I’m not sure that’s the right spot for this, since it doesn’t seem to be deliberate spamming effort, but rather unrelated good-faith editors using Prabook believing it to be a reliable source. I’ll just keep an eye on it for the next few weeks to see if it continues to pop up. Politanvm ^talk 04:10, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

  • Is it even used in article space at all? Alexbrn (talk) 04:14, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

    • Not since I’ve removed the instances I’ve found. It was used a few more times over the last week. I’m not sure if there’s a way to search revision histories to see how often its been used but removed ad-hoc. Politanvm ^talk 04:18, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• Comment No need for this RFC. This is not a debatable site; it's a self-published wiki-type site, which is already a clearly unreliable source. Not every source needs to be added to RSP; the list (and discussions such as this) are for sources where there is some reasonable contention as to whether or not it meets some definition of reliability. Editors not reading or understanding policy is not "reasonable contention" and this RFC is pointless. If you find it, it should probably be removed, and if it is continuously added back, the media blacklist is the correct place to go next. --Jayron32 13:13, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• As has already been said, this is a standard user-generated site and use case is low. MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#Proposed additions would be the proper place to bring it, if it is being persistently cited. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 13:42, 18 November 2021 (UTC)
• Comment: Prabook is inherently unstable as a user-generated, tertiary, source (just like Wikipedia) and thus generally unreliable, but from what I've seen, a good amount of content is mined from published directories like Marquis Who's Who and other Who's Who works, which can vary in their reliability, but have the reliable permanence of ink and paper (right or wrong, the information never changes). Many of these books can be viewed and verified at Internet Archive , e.g.Who's Who in Science, Who Was Who in America. Prabook entries often nod to this by statements such as "recognized as a Marquis notable". So the source of information in Prabook isn't always a mystery, even if not credited. But of course, the original directories should be cited in place of Prabook. --Animalparty! (talk) 23:08, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Should the text that appears alongside YouTube videos be considered reliable?

Recently, a large number of citations have been added to Led Zeppelin song articles with links to YouTube song videos as the sources.[20] The videos are accompanied by supplemental text, which is being used as sources for "Personnel" sections in song articles. The videos (actually only audio) themselves appear to be "official": the upload information includes "Provided to YouTube by Atlantic Records" and "℗ 2012 Atlantic Records", but also includes the disclaimer "Auto-generated by YouTube".[21] (click on "SHOW MORE" right below "Provided to YouTube by Atlantic Records")

The problem is, sometimes the information is incorrect. For example, the linked video text includes "Unknown: Andy Johns", but the actual album liner notes indicate "Engineers: Andrew Johns, London; Terry Manning, Ardent Studios, Memphis, Tennessee".[22] It seems that an "official" upload by Atlantic Records should at least contain the information that the record company itself lists on the actual album. So, although the video may have been provided by Atlantic, it appears that the supplemental text may not have been, or, is something less accurate than the album liner notes. Should the text that accompanies YouTube videos be considered reliable? Pinging 80s Sam, who added the citations, for their input.

—Ojorojo (talk) 16:20, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

As it is "auto-generated" I suspect ita not reliable, as it obviously is not being either fact-checked or has any editorial oversite.Slatersteven (talk) 16:23, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Good heavens no. In theory, if some YouTube account were to say "all our comments are checked and edited by these known people, who stake their good reputations on the accuracy thereof," then maybe there'd be a hint of a possibility. But just good heavens no. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:25, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

No, it's frequently wrong - David Gerard (talk) 20:56, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

• No, these are auto-generated based on AI, similar to Google Knowledge Graphs, and subject to numerous unchecked errors. Personnel should only be sourced either to liner notes (in many cases) or to reliable published material otherwise (i.e. something like Mark Lewisohn's The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions). There is no evidence this text is reliable, even if it is posted under "official" videos. --Jayron32 14:50, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• My instincts tell me they are about as reliable as the CC captions. As everyone else has put it, no way. Scorpions13256 (talk) 02:29, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• It looks like all this user is adding to those songs is the names of the band members and their instrumental/vocal contributions under "Personel." It's an odd way of going about sourcing it, but...does this particular info really NEED a source? That Robert Plant sang, Jimmy Page played guitars, John Paul Jones played bass, and John Bonham drummed in Led Zeppelen is kind of a BLUESKY thing, ain't it? And if it does need a cite, the albums themselves could be used as sources, right? 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:515:ADE:B2DC:BDFA (talk) 03:49, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Things sometimes get more complicated, with specific types of keyboards, guitars, Page or Jones on mandolin, who sings backup, etc. To go with the standard "A on vocals, B on guitar, C on bass, D on drums" may give an incomplete picture or actually be wrong (I was surprised to find that the instruments on several Beatles songs were played by different members). If it's worth adding to an article, it should be properly referenced (bios, reviews, album notes). —Ojorojo (talk) 15:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

It also isn't always, or even often, true. I mean, officially in the Beach Boys Brian Wilson played bass, Carl Wilson and Al Jardine played guitars, Dennis Wilson played drums, and Mike Love played random other instruments. In reality, on the recordings they mostly just sang, and the Wrecking Crew recorded most of the instruments. Similarly, while we all know the Beatles official instrumentation, there are plenty of times when Paul played drums or guitar; when John or George played bass, when any of them or someone like Nicky Hopkins or Billy Preston played keys, etc. Recording is a complex process, and we shouldn't assume that the convenient roles of band members necessarily plays out in the recording process. --Jayron32 12:19, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Is Peakbagger.com a reliable source?

1. Source: Peakbagger.com (description page here, terms of service here)
2. Article: Crypt Peak (as a test-case, and maybe 5,104 other EN Wikipedia articles)
3. Content: Primarily the prominence and elevation of various mountain peaks, also appears to be relied on in some articles to substantiate a WP:GNG pass.

Background (Peakbagger.com)

Peakbagger.com is used on a large number of articles regarding various peaks, primarily to substantiate the height of them above sea level and their prominence relative to the surrounding terrain, but also in at least some cases it appears to be only source that actually talks about the feature specifically (other sources being about the climate or geology of the area in which the peak is, but not about the peak specifically).

I have discussed the reliability of this source with Ron Clausen, who has created a number of articles using this source, in a discussion that can be seen here, and we both agree that it would be useful to get some feedback from the RSN community about it's reliability. FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (Peakbagger.com)

• Unreliable under any circumstance - Based on the contact page appears to be a self-published hobby project, a lot of the data is apparently simply copied from GNIS with all that entails but other data has no clear origin and may have been submitted by individual climbers or comes from the author themselves. The terms of service page tells us that "Information uploaded to Peakbagger.com by site users, including ascent information, trip reports, provisional peaks, GPS tracks, and photographs, all becomes part of the master integrated Peakbagger.com database" meaning that the database is to an extent crowd-sourced. It also literally tells us that "The master Peakbagger.com database of peaks and associated content has thousands of errors in it, and text content, trip reports, and GPS tracks from the site's administrators and users are subjective and not necessarily authoritative" (my emphasis) - it straight up tells us that it is not a reliable source. Even if it were a reliable source for the height/prominence data, simple statistical entries in a database don't amount to significant coverage of the subject such as is needed to pass WP:GNG, and it would amount to a WP:PRIMARY source. For GNIS or other gazetteer data, the original gazetteer should be referred to directly.

I'd like to highlight that I think that most of Ron's work is OK and I like these articles about peaks, this is just about the sourcing in a lot of articles about peaks (not just his). FOARP (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Instead of making assumptions by using the word "appears", why don't you contact the webmaster to get the facts on the sources. Assumptions = unreliable, which is worse than the argument you are making. Interesting that you now encourage using GNIS data, but on my talk page you didn't.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

We have the website managers own words telling us not to use it, seems enough, no? And it's worth remembering that once a source is challenged the burden is on those who want to use the source to prove it's reliable, not the other way round - if you want to email them, please feel free to do so. As for GNIS, we have a consensus on here that certain pieces of data on it are unreliable (i.e., the feature classes) and it should anyway not be relied on to support a WP:GNG pass because it is not significant coverage. FOARP (talk) 08:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Where does the webmaster state not to use it (whatever you mean by "it")? Ron Clausen (talk) 04:35, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable By their own statements, this is a crowd-sourced, unchecked, and admits to having numerous unfixed factual errors. This source, as useful in general as it might be to hikers, is not an appropriate source for any information at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 14:45, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [23] The data which I use from the site is not crowdsourced. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable for factual information - Appears to be the classic hobbyist/WP:SPS website with no sourcing on the few pages I randomly sampled and no indicia of a reliability-establishing editorial policy. That, alone, seems sufficient for "unreliable" even if we interpret the "thousands of errors" statement as a generic "we take no responsibility if you hurt yourself because of our info" disclaimer. Seems to also contain trip reports, which might theoretically be used per WP:RSOPINION/WP:SELFSOURCE with the usual disclaimers, but I'm not familiar enough with either the site or the general topic to say whether that's a realistic prospect. -Ljleppan (talk) 15:04, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [24] But thanks for declaring it unreliable when you state that you are not familiar with this subject. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:55, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Reliable when framed as "according to" etc.. it often receives notice in other reliable sources as being a significant source:
  • "Greg Slayden, founder of www.peakbagger.com, a national climbing registry where baggers can record their conquests." The Mercury News
  • "A website called Peakbagger.com, a major arbiter for the country’s “high pointers,” made the change to its database. As far as Peakbagger was concerned, Jackie Jones Mountain was now supreme."The Daily Beast
  • "He had read about Baker Mountain on peakbagger.com, a storehouse for people looking to summit prominent mountains. " The New York Times
  • "Before the advent of peakbagger.com, climber.org, and summitpost.com, climbers sought information about routes up peaks in guidebooks, in newsletter reports, and by word of mouth, still all good sources. "Sierra Club
  • "If you want more information and maps of these peaks, a good source is peakbagger.com." Elko Daily News

• Peakbgger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [25]

-- GreenC 17:17, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

These point to it being a useful source for Peak-bagging hobbyists, in a similar way to how Wookieepedia is a useful source for Star Wars fans and Memory Alpha is a useful source for Trekkers. It does not make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. FOARP (talk) 08:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

You failed to take note of the last bullet: Peakbagger.com is frequently referenced by reliable books and magazines: [26] which is a Google search result showing all the reliable published books that reference Peakbagger.Ron Clausen (talk) 10:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Just because a book appears in a Google Books search does not mean it's a reliable source. For example the very first search result for me is "Stargate SG1 Compendium" published by PediaPress. If you actually search for "peakbagger.com" with quotation marks, you'll see a significantly reduced amount of hits, less than 50 based on my quick count. Some of the hits, e.g. The Mountain Encyclopedia, appear to simply list it in a large list of general websites related to the topic, rather than using it as a source or even making any explicit claim about its reliability. Others, such as 'The Making of Modern Baseball, Sports Nation: Contemporary American Professional Organizations, Indiana Courthouses - Southeast Edition and Planning Support Systems and Smart Cities are in so wildly different domains that they really can't be used to establish reliability here. To establish that multiple highly reliable sources view peakbagger.com as a reliable source, you'd need to provide clear examples rather than just linking to a Google Books search. -Ljleppan (talk) 10:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable, at best its a group blog edited by Greg Slayden but you have to squint really really hard to see that... Its a high quality hobbyist site but even the best of those are generally not WP:RS, especially for obscure hobbies like peak bagging. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:22, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• Reliable There are no errors in the data for peaks. The peak data comes from USGS data. Anything related to user contributed climbing information is not used on Wikipedia.Ron Clausen (talk) 22:01, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
  • How did you determine that the peak data comes from USGS? I can't find any indication of that on the website. Does that source also extend to peaks not in US? If the data comes from USGS, why not cite the original source of the data? -Ljleppan (talk) 22:19, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
    • The webmaster states "I added peaks by hand, or from large public-domain databases like the GNIS and BGN gazetters." GNIS and BGN = USGS. https://www.peakbagger.com/Contact.aspx As for why? Convenience, and parameters such as Prominence and Isolation data are not provided directly by from USGS, but derivations thereof. Prominence and Isolation are not something found in "published" sources, but can be obtained at these websites. I don't use Peakbagger or LOJ for peaks outside the US.Ron Clausen (talk) 23:07, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

• That does say "by hand", though... not particularly reliable if you ask me. Surely there are reputable sources that would compile this information. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 00:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Again with the assumptions. Please tell us your reputable sources that compile Prominence and Isolation. Ron Clausen (talk) 00:19, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• The GNIS database is public domain and freely accessible. It also isn’t clear which data on Peakbagger comes from there and which doesn’t and instead comes from another source. And just to emphasise this: the website itself says not to trust it. If data cannot be reliably sourced, the answer is not to use an unreliable source, the answer is just not to include that data at all. FOARP (talk) 08:10, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• No, it doesn't say "not to trust it". It says there are thousands of errors in the site, a site which he says has millions of data points. Every data base and reliable source is going to have errors. If Peakbagger's elevation value for a given peak matches what's on the USGS topographic map, we know where the information came from.Ron Clausen (talk) 09:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry Ron, but it literally says right in the terms of service "The master Peakbagger.com database of peaks and associated content has thousands of errors in it ... there is no guarantee of accuracy". That's them right there telling you not to rely on their data, for the very good reason that it is not an authoritative source and is transcribed from other sources and/or provided by users (and it is not clear which is which). Now you're saying "don't worry, it's only thousands of error amongst millions", but how many thousands? This is a very useful source for hobbyists, but that doesn't make it a reliable source for an encyclopaedia article. As for it matching USGS data, if that's so then why don't you just refer to the USGS data directly? And if you can't access the USGS data then how do you know this?

Let me take the opportunity again to say that I like your articles on peaks, especially the photos, and I think they're a net value-add for Wiki. I just think this specific source (and LoJ, though that's much-less-used) shouldn't be used. FOARP (talk) 10:13, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Sorry, but you sliding down a slippery slope if you expect "guarantees of accuracy" from all reliable sources. Please provide a link to that Wikipedia policy requiring sources to guarantee their accuracy, and also a list of sources that you are aware of which do meet such a requirement. I can't recall ever seeing a publication which did. Ron Clausen (talk) 10:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I'm not requiring that they give such a guarantee, I'm requiring that they don't literally tell us that they can't give such a guarantee because of all the errors they have. FOARP (talk) 10:44, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Can you provide a link to the Wikipedia policy that requires that? Ron Clausen (talk) 11:08, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• See WP:RS#Overview and WP:SOURCE: Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. (emph. added). Are you claiming that a source that literally states it contains thousands of mistakes has a "reputation for accuracy"? -11:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)Ljleppan (talk)

• Thousands of errors in millions of data points. We don't know exact numbers, but for the sake of simplicity let's say 1000 errors for every one million data points. That works out to 99.9 percent accuracy. In my book, that's pretty accurate, reliable information. And that site is aware of the errors and fixes them (according Peakbagger, and my personal dealings with them when I pointed out an error. Ron Clausen (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• So what you're telling us is that you've found errors on there (more than once?) and they corrected them when you told them. Which sounds an awful lot like user-generated content. "Thousands" can mean many more than 1,000, they clearly don't know how many errors there, just that there are a lot. FOARP (talk) 12:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• You're missing the context. Thousands of errors in millions of data points. He doesn't say tens of thousands of errors, nor tens of millions of data points, so the numbers must be between two and ten. Let's take the worst case example that favors your side: 9,999 errors in two million data points. That's 99.5 percent accuracy. On the other hand the math for the flip side has 2,000 errors in nine million data points. That's 99.98 percent accuracy. Ron Clausen (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• Yes, over the last five years I found an error there. Coordinates for a peak were wrong, only because USGS had within the past year corrected a USGS error, and Peakbagger originally used that erroneous data from USGS, and the change was not caught by Peakbagger. All websites that I checked were still using the erroneous USGS data. Case in point: Pectols Pyramid. A quick search now and I found mapcarta.com and topozone.com and peakvisor.com all still using the erroneous location. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I don't understand: if USGS has more accurate data, and updates it more frequently, why aren't you just referring to USGS directly? Moreover you only know about this error because USGS is there as a reliable source. It seems that whilst the maths needed to calculate prominence/isolation are simple, determining what data to use is non-trivial and we shouldn't be relying on Peakbagger.com for it. FOARP (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Who claims USGS has more accurate data and updates it more frequently? If you don't understand, it's because you haven't paid attention. As I stated in my Talk page to you: "I have found plenty of stuff in "published" material that is flat out incorrect, and would not use. And stuff can be found in communities such as Summitpost that is excellent and correct (but I don't use). So the balancing act is to be accurate, which means using best data where it's found. GNIS is good for coordinates, but terrible at elevations, so that's where Peakbagger comes in." Ron Clausen (talk) 21:09, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Unreliable. It's probably fine for an external link but I don't see how we can use a source that is at least partially user-generated, otherwise curated by someone whose subject matter expertise has not been established (WP:SPS), and that by its own admission contains errors. I sympathize with Ron Clausen's position that 99.9 is pretty great accuracy, but the difference between this source and a reliable source is that we have no way to verify the reliability--we have no idea which data is accurate. I do have a question about "Prominence" and "Isolation"; I'm unfamiliar with those terms and their importance. Ron notes above that these are "derived", are they derived from the USGS data, and is this a mechanical calculation, or is something more involved? Mackensen (talk) 12:22, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Topographic isolation and Topographic prominence simple calculation, based on USGS data. Ron Clausen (talk) 12:49, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I would beg to differ about prominence: one has to identify the key col to compute the prominence. That is a calculation, but involving a graph of elevations. For a description of the algorithm, see [27]. I would not characterize it as simple. Wikipedia editors cannot perform prominence calculations under WP:CALC: it would be a violation of WP:NOR. We have to rely on Peakbagger for prominence and isolation, or use an alternative site. There are not that many of them. — hike395 (talk) 19:55, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Different kinds of data in Peakbagger

FOARP is saying that Peakbagger is not reliable, because the terms of service says so. But peakbagger has multiple kinds of information in it. It has subjective trip reports, and it has quantitative data about the prominence and isolation. AFAICT, the terms of service are warning users that the subjective trip reports are filled with errors: people who climb mountains should take care not to overly rely on other climbing reports, because climbing is a risky activity. But Wikipedia editors are not using peakbagger for the subjective trip reports (which are clearly unreliable).

The main question, I think, is whether the quantitative data is reliable and accurate. There are very few sources for mountain prominence and isolation. Members of WP:WikiProject Mountains have been using Peakbagger's prominence and isolation data for many years, and have not found serious systematic errors (unlike GNIS feature data, where I was aware of the errors back in 2010, but got shut down). That's not a guarantee of accuracy by the website, but an empirical validation.

I also think there are two different issues being mixed together here:

• Should peakbagger be the basis of creating new articles, and used to check WP:GNG?
• Should peakbagger be considered a reliable source of prominence and isolation?

For the first question, we've had serious problems in creating articles based on geographic databases (FOARP has been extremely helpful in a major cleanup involving thousands of articles based on incorrect data in GNIS). I would be skeptical about creating new articles purely based on Peakbagger + ListsOfJohn + GNIS.

I would suggest that the discussion here analyze the reliability of Peakbagger for prominence and isolation. Either:

• Peakbagger is considered a reliable source of prominence and isolation, or
• We have to consider removing many of the prominence and isolation data points from WP.

Given this restricted question of reliability about prominence and isolation, what do other editors think? — hike395 (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

We are still fundamentally discussing a WP:SPS. Where does the data, for, say this page come from? What is the editorial policy that ensures it is correct? How about this page which states "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>"? I've seen nothing in this discussion that would have made me reconsider my original assessment of unreliable for factual information. If the result is that that Wikipedia needs to re-reference a lot of stuff, that is unfortunate, but that amount of potential work is completely immaterial for the reliability question. -Ljleppan (talk) 20:12, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• "this peak was submitted to the Peakbagger.com database by <name>" was merely a suggestion/request by a user that the peak be added to the database, not that the user added the data. The webmaster is always the only one to add the data. The user generally wants the peak added to they can add it to their list of personal ascents.Ron Clausen (talk) 20:42, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Ron is correct: there is an editorial process from turning a user-submitted "provisional" peak into a peak in the full database, see here.

My issue here is: checked how? Checked against USGS information? And if that's the case, again, why don't we refer to the USGS directly? I'm not sure prominence and isolation really are so trivial to calculate that we can safely leave this in the hands of what appears to be an amateur website: the maths involved are relatively simple, but the choice of input data to use does not appear to be. FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@FOARP: USGS does not provide prominence or isolation, so we cannot refer to USGS. As I've said below, there's no governmental source for prominence or isolation anywhere.

You're right, the computation is not trivial. I've found a peer-reviewed paper about running the computation at scale, by Andrew Kirmse, previously a Distinguished Engineer at Google who managed Google Earth. The results from the paper are provided in a website. Kirmse provides more details about the computation here. That detailed web page is worth reading. A few things to note:

• Kirmse refers back to both Peakbagger and ListsOfJohn as tests for his computation
• Kirmse's computation matches Peakbagger within 5% error 90% of the time. Kirmse seems to attribute the errors to problems in his own data.
• Kirmse based his algorithm on WinProm code by Edward Earl, published in Helman's book. Earl ran Peakbagger until 2015, when he died in a mountaineering accident. Peakbagger has the original (although less scalable) WinProm code. Because Earl came up with the prominence algorithm, I would not characterize Peakbagger as a "amateur website", but as a primary source for prominence and isolation data.
• Kirme's data is innately less accurate than Peakbagger. Kirmse (like GNIS) bases his computation on digital elevation maps, which are less accurate than Peakbagger, which bases the computation on the best point elevations provided by governments. In mountains where there are high spatial gradients, DEMs are definitely inferior.

Here's my conclusion. Peakbagger is a self-published primary source. The editors of Peakbagger do not appear to pass the bar of published subject-matter experts. Kirmse's paper appears to be a reliable peer-reviewed publication by a subject-matter expert. Kirmse is a secondary source for Peakbagger.

I don't want to propose any major changes to 5,000+ mountain articles without having other mountain editors participate in the discussion. @Droll, RedWolf, Volcanoguy, Buaidh, and Jo-Jo Eumerus: The reliability of Peakbagger has been called into question (see above). What is the best way to reliably source prominence and isolation data? — hike395 (talk) 15:40, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Subsection questions

I am going to add subsection questions below. It would be helpful, I think if those 'in the know' answer them with cites or links if possible Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC) : Alanscottwalker (talk) 20:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does prominence matter?

Topographic prominence is an objective measure of the "peakiness" of a peak. Many mountains are massifs, with many subpeaks. Prominence is a measure of how far down you need to walk from a subpeak before you go back up to the next main peak. Subpeaks with low prominence (e.g., 100 feet (30 m) are not considered significant peaks, and don't make it onto peak lists. See USGS link — hike395 (talk) 20:59, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Topographic prominence is related to how much climbing is required to reach a peak from a point that is higher, specifically from its line parent. In Colorado, 4352 meter Grays Peak has prominence of about 844 meters from its line parent Mount Lincoln. On the other hand, the only slightly lower 4349 meter Torreys Peak has a prominence of only about 171 meters from its line parent which is nearby Grays Peak.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 23:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Who does prominence matter to?

Readers of mountain articles may wish to know prominence, in order to tell whether the peak is a true peak, or simply a bump on a larger mountain. — hike395 (talk) 21:00, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Since prominence is somewhat related to the difficulty of a climb, it often matters more than elevation itself to climbers and mountain nerds like myself.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

I've been editing mountain articles for >18 years now, and I know of no governmental or international or standards bodies that compute either prominence or isolation. — hike395 (talk) 21:01, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic prominence, although they provide the elevation and topographic data required to calculate topographic prominence. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic prominence for them. The Sierra Club and the Colorado Mountain Club have historically only been concerned with summit elevation, although topographic prominence has more recently become a concern. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic prominence, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:53, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Why does isolation matter?

@Buaidh: you have added isolation data and lists to many articles, do you wish to answer this? — hike395 (talk) 21:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Topographic isolation is also known as radius of dominance, an apt description. Isolation is the minimum distance you would need to travel to reach a point of equal or greater elevation. In mountainous regions, isolation may be short for any but the highest summit. In relatively flat regions, the highest summit may have a very long isolation.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:02, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Who does isolation matter to?

High isolation summits present a wonderful challenge to climbers in regions that are not overrun with folks who try to collect as many high peaks as they can in as short a period of time as possible (e.g., the Southern Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada.)  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:16, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Are there national or international organizations, who deal with it?

Government agencies are not concerned with topographic isolation, although they provide the elevation and horizontal position data required to calculate topographic isolation. Most mountain climbing organizations rely on other sources (e.g, peakbagger.com and Wikipedia) to calculate topographic isolation for them. If a climber or organization finds a discrepancy with a calculated topographic isolation, hopefully they will let us know.  Buaidh  talk e-mail 00:54, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there documented custom in the relevant off wiki community for reliance on educated amateurs for this?

I think "educated amateurs" may be a biased way of describing it. As far as I can tell, there is a small community of GIS people who compute prominence. A history of the term is described here: [28] The USGS acknowledges the term, but does not offer its own computation. Mathworks (the company that makes Matlab) offers a library to compute prominence (and isolation, too).

One of the main people in the community is Alan Dawson, who published, and participated in creating Peaklist.com. An important book on the topic is by Adam Helman About the community, Helman states, "The community of prominence theoreticians, list builders, and climbers have reached a critical mass --- one that finally suggested the elaboration and publication of a book dedicated exclusively to the subject."

As far as I can tell, here is a list of websites that actually use the software and publish the results:

• Peakbagger.com
• Peaklist.com
• The Database of British and Irish Hills (http://www.hills-database.co.uk/)
• ListsOfJohn
• County Highpointers Association (www.cohp.com)

Trafford Publishing (Helman's publisher) is a well-known self/vanity-publishing imprint. I can't find any information that would substantiate TACit Press (Dawson's publisher) as an established imprint or not (EDIT: based on this, it looks to have been an amateur operation EDIT2: though based on this they were able at least to give ISBNs and the sourcing/editing/checking doesn't appear bad, though the book is essentially just a pamphlet for hobbyists). FOARP (talk) 09:06, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Love Reading Website

I have been informed that Love Reading is a user generated site. It looks like a 'reliable source' to me but I'd be interested in another opinion. Thanks.--Joenthwarls (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

Do you have any specific statements would you want to cite from a specific page of Love Reading for a specific Wikipedia page? -Ljleppan (talk) 22:31, 19 November 2021 (UTC)

*Unreliable No it's not a reliable source for literary (book) reviews. Firstly, it's an affiliate internet bookshop and a commercial enterprise so the primary intent of the site is commercial, which is a red flag. Notice the "compare prices" link to *eight* different affiliate marketing platforms on each book page. Secondly, LoveReading is a "vanity" review site. There's no editorial process. *Anyone* can get their book (even self published books) reviewed packages starting at £120. See here: https://www.lovereading.co.uk/your-book-reviewed . Also, most of the "reviews" are appear to be based significantly on the publisher's blurbs, or press releases, to the extent that much the content of the "reviews" can be found on other sites and Google searches will reveal the "review" content is not unique. On many pages, much of the "review" content is actually derived from and quoted from other more credible literary review sources. See here: https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/17739/The-Midnight-Guardians-by-Ross-Montgomery.html and here: https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/book/9781912650828/isbn/No-Said-Rabbit-by-Marjoke-Henrichs.html. This is a good indication that WP editors should be using these quoted sites and/or authority sites in children's literature such as "The School Librarian", " The Bookseller", "Books for Keeps", "The School Reading List", "Booktrust" or significant national press sites such as "The Spectator", "The Guardian" or "The Sunday Times Book Review". Finally, there's no evidence that the "reviewers" have any authority in the field of literary criticism, and in most cases, the name of the "reviewer" is not even detailed on the "review". There is further evidence on the various "LoveReading" sites, that the reviews are in fact unsolicited and user generated content. No editorial process or authority checking is detailed. See here: https://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/review-panel Tonyinman (talk) 00:12, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Gothamist caught copying text from Wikipedia

The New York Times reports that four articles from Gothamist, a news site owned by WNYC, used language from Wikipedia entries and articles in Salon and The New York Times without credit, according to a comparison of the pieces and the original sources.. The articles were, per the NYT, all published by the same individual. The four articles are enumerated in the NYT article and have all been pulled offline at this point. No Wikipedia articles appear to have referenced them.

The individual accused of plagairism served in several roles, including senior editor of WNYC’s race and justice unit and as host of National Public Radio news program "All Things Considered", according to the NYT report. I'm not quite sure how to respond to this; editorial oversight at WNYC seems to have failed to a good extent in editing one of its senior editors if the NYT report is true, though the eventual issuing of a retraction indicates that there is editorial oversight. I'm a bit skeptical of the remainder of the individual's reporting in that unit. The only partial analogue to this I see on WP:RSP would be the listing for Der Spiegel, but that was for fabrications rather than copying from Wikipedia.

How should this reflect on reporting from WNYC and its affiliates more generally? Are there additional considerations that should be taken for articles that come from its race and justice unit more broadly, or should additional considerations only apply to articles created by former senior editor whose articles now face retraction? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 06:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• I suppose I don't see a broader issue here given that the articles weren't referenced here, which would have created a circular referencing problem. People and institutions make mistakes; WYNC appears to have done the right thing, editorially, albeit after the fact. Mackensen (talk) 12:27, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• Copying from WP should certainly lower the reliability of Gothamist as a news source. After all, we don’t consider WP reliable, so how could a source that copies from us be considered reliable? Correcting the mistake after the fact is good, but not enough to off-set the negative. Blueboar (talk) 12:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
• If it was a problem with one writer, as seems to be the case, I'm not sure that it should affect how we treat the organization more broadly. An infraction by one individual isn't the same as an institutional dedication to fabricating claims. Make a note of it and see if Gothamist has more problems down the line, I suppose. XOR'easter (talk) 16:51, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
  • Regarding An infraction by one individual isn't the same as an institutional dedication to fabricating claims, I agree. The senior position that the individual held within the editorial structure of WNYC, however, bites me a bit more than if this were simply a lone journalist on the ground. Would this indicate something along the lines of diminished editorial oversight under this particular individual, which could then affect the reliability of articles that the editor reviewed? If this were a mere staff journalist, I'd understand limiting the scope, but I feel like there's something different when senior editors at an institution do this sort of thing. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 17:23, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
    • I understand the concern, but it still seems too grand an inference from the information we presently have available. XOR'easter (talk) 01:54, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
• We had a similar situation in the video game area where one writer for a major site otherwise deemed reliable was found to be plagarizing. However, the site helped in that they redacted all of their articles, leading us to also redact the articles that had been used on WP. The site otherwise maintained its editorial reliability and hasn't changed how we used it. I think checking to see if work was plagarized is not something usually done by the editor's desk most of the time, but a good reliable source when caught will do all the necessary redactions and similar steps to eliminate the problem article. --Masem (t) 19:26, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Isolated problems require isolated solutions, if one author was the problem then we proscribe the Author not the source. If however future reporting on this case suggests that the issue is more systemic than this we can have a broader discussion at that time. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:29, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Reliability doesn't mean infallibility and even the most respected publishers will have this type of problem which they will then go on to correct. No action is required. TFD (talk) 20:11, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Is quebrada.net a reliable source?

1. Source: https://www.quebrada.net/ A website focusing on reportage of Japanese Pro Wrestling and MMA events.
2. Article: Unsure if has been applied yet. I'm considering utilizing this as a source for entries related 90s Pro Wrestling and MMA in Japan. Currently main target is Shoot Wrestler Volk Han.
3. Content: I am considering using https://www.quebrada.net/matches/volkhanhalloftalent.html as citation for Volk Han regarding his Pro Wrestling and MMA career. Professional English language sources on this person are quite limited and details of his career is quite protected in Japanese-language works.

Um, is this the correct place to talk about this, here in wikipedia? -- TrickShotFinn (talk) 12:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

This is a fine place to ask, but there are probably not many wikipedians who are both familiar with professional wrestling related sources and continuously watch this noticeboard. As a general observation, the website appears to be a self-published source, which has an very important consequence for use in biographies of living people: Never use self-published sources—including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets—as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject of the article (see WP:BLPSPS). –Ljleppan (talk) 12:45, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Got it. Man, writing about "secretly influential" stuff is hard. -- TrickShotFinn (talk) 09:27, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Yep; while the policies are in place for a good reasons, they can be frustrating. I searched Google Books for a bit and there were a few books about Japanese Pro Wrestling, but they too seemed to be self-published. Perhaps there are magazines that would be useful? -Ljleppan (talk) 09:45, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

AJ+ (operated by Al Jazeera)

As described on Wikipedia, AJ+ is an online news and current events channel run by Al Jazeera Media Network. I have recently observed this channel to publish, via its Twitter account, a three minute propaganda piece regarding the Kenosha unrest shooting which tells outright falsehoods. In particular, it explicitly claims that Rittenhouse brought a semiautomatic weapon across state lines - a statement known to be false and which has been acknowledged in RS to be false for over a year (1 2) and which is currently treated as a particularly important myth to debunk (e.g.). This is, after all, the entire basis for Dominic Black facing charges.

Given this egregious disregard for truth, which appears to derive from a strong partisan bias, I urge that AJ+ cannot be treated as a reliable source. I further argue that incidents such as this reflect negatively upon the parent organization, Al Jazeera. 174.93.70.56 (talk) 00:08, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Nah. The weapon across state lines talking point has been mentioned all over by journalists of all kinds of media outlets that we consider generally reliable, and I don't think we should do any mass deprecation based on this single issue. MarioGom (talk) 00:26, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

AJ is hardly the only media source to repeat this particular claim (it has, unfortunately, been repeated by a LOT of news sources that we consider reliable). So let me ask… are there other situations where AJ has misstated facts to this extent? If not, then I would suggest we call it “unreliable for reporting on the Rittenhouse story” … without calling it “generally unreliable”. The same would be true for the other outlets that repeat the claim. Blueboar (talk) 00:41, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

From what I can tell, their written coverage hasn't repeated the claim in question. XOR'easter (talk) 00:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

This is in general why WP:NOTNEWS is a thing, breaking news is *always* going to be wrong to some extent. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 01:29, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Not to nitpick, but that statement about Wikipedia is not a newspaper is simply not correct, at all. "Not a newspaper" is about... what WP is not; it makes no mention of the reliability of newspapers nor anything else of the kind. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:515:ADE:B2DC:BDFA (talk) 02:48, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

"Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events." is the language you are looking for that says we should avoid including breaking news stories and wait for that to filter to something that has had time to get the facts right. --Masem (t) 22:28, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Have other outlets continued to spread this lie (not a "talking point", as it is not in an way a justified description of reality, and not something they have any real excuse to get wrong) after the dismissal of the gun charge, indeed after the trial? If it were up to me, I'd deprecate all kinds of media outlets instead. They ought to know better. I agree in principle that this sort of thing can reasonably be tailored to the topic; but it comes across to me that when other sources have been deprecated generally, the people voting against those sources have had at most one example to point to. 174.93.70.56 (talk) 00:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Um.....I very sincerely doubt that any source has ever been deprecated here because of one single instance of misreporting. As for "they ought to know better" - perhaps, but how does any news organisation acquire 95+% of their information? By tapping into the reporting by the "top level" news agencies. Once a false story gets into circulation and widely repeated, it's very difficult to stop its propagation. As for your railing accsations of "lies", it is clearly an honest error that resulted from a commonm sense assumption...and really, whether you've carried a gun across a state line and killed two people with it, or whether you get your buddy that lives on the other side of said state line from you to buy the gun for you, then cross over into that state, pick up the gun and then kill two people with it...I know it makes a difference to the courts, but to everyone else in the world that is a petty detail. 2600:1702:4960:1DE0:515:ADE:B2DC:BDFA (talk) 03:06, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

This relates to the point I made about Fox News a few days ago. Although this is a talk point in a video on Twitter rather than simply a headline which is clearly not an RS, I think generally we should be careful about stuff posted by RS on social media. In a lot of cases the standards tend to be more lax. And especially for Twitter, TikTok or Instagram, the medium is more tailored for brevity which can lead to excessive simplifications etc. (Although I acknowledge this is simply an error.) If AJ+ only posts content on social media, I don't know if we quite have to deprecate them but I don't think we should use them much anyway and should take particular concern with stuff that only seems to be mentioned by them especially if there's no reason to. (If it's a story that hasn't received much attention elsewhere then maybe.) And I don't think it tells us much about the standards at Al Jazeera in general. Nil Einne (talk) 10:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Nil makes a very good point… We tend to consider social media accounts and postings unreliable for facts (except in rare SPS situations). And I could see an argument that AJ+ is really a social media account rather than a news outlet (or perhaps it is the social media account of a news outlet). It blurs the lines. Blueboar (talk) 14:58, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

It's not the social media account of Al Jazeera; the content seems to be created separately and AJ+ appears to have its own website that seems to very intentionally create short-form videos as its core "news and storytelling" purpose. I have no prejudice against news organizations that primarily use video as their form of communication, but I do think that they should be evaluated for editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 23:04, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

In some ways, it would appear that AJ+ and Al Jazeera have different reliability. We would consider video news made by WP:NEWSORGs to be within their scope, as far as I am aware. I don't think it's simply an issue of social media postings on Twitter, as some indicate above. AJ+ has an extensive collection of short videos on Youtube that deal with politically sensitive historical topics; if we were to encounter a video made by 60 Minutes or BBC Newsnight published on YouTube, I imagine that we'd evaluate it based upon the reliability of 60 Minutes or BBC Newsnight as a news source rather than simply assuming it's generally unreliable because we found it on "social media". Why does YouTube matter here? Well, that same video that the IP linked to on Twitter also appears on the AJ+ YouTube page at this link. I'd find it rather odd that we'd apply one set of reliability standards to analyzing reliability of 60 Minutes content posted on YouTube and another set of standards to AJ+ content posted on YouTube. I also think that we shouldn't write this off as the mere postings of a social media account on a medium that reduces quality for the purposes of brevity, as others above have suggested. And, AJ+, after all, does have a website that apparently also includes both reporting in a written medium and videos that are literally links to its YouTube, so the source probably needs to be evaluated more broadly if there are issues with fact-checking and accuracy in its video productions. Perhaps an RfC is in order to see if AJ+ and Al Jazeera should be treated as if their reliability is different? — Mikehawk10 (talk) 21:51, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

In the broad picture I think it makes sense to avoid using anything posted to social media even by a verified RS as absolutely reliable since these may not have the editorial scrutiny of published works. That said, most good RSes when they use social media usually include a link to a their story with more details, and that's what we should be using. --Masem (t) 22:30, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I mean, I think that this Video from 60 Minutes unquestionably has the same reliability as 60 Minutes that's hosted on its own website. I don't think that we should be using tweets from news organizations; there's something analogous in reasoning to WP:HEADLINE that apply inasmuch as most social media posts are written to grab readers' attention quickly and briefly; they may be overstated or lack context, and sometimes contain exaggerations or sensationalized claims with the intention of attracting readers. But, I don't think that standalone videos, like the one brought up by the IP, are the same sort of thing. If the video is standalone (i.e. is not an excerpt of something longer that it links back to), then the purpose of the video is to actually tell its viewers what the news is with a strong degree of fact-checking and accuracy (or it should be, if it's a reliable newsorg). Videos from AJ+, being that they don't tend to link back to their website and don't appear to want to attract readers to any other longer article, probably should be evaluated by the typical reliable sourcing standards. If they're not reliable, then we should probably modify WP:RSP to indicate that AJ+ is not reliable and should be evaluated separately from the remainder of Al Jazeera-related content. — Mikehawk10 (talk) 22:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure, long-form videos on YouTube are fine, and I agree that treating social media like Twitter or Instagram (which are meant to be short, concise messages, not long-form works) should be treated like HEADLINE. (But that's a broad statement, not specific to the AJ+ situation) --Masem (t) 22:50, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Ignatievka Cave

On Ignatievka Cave, another user has aggressively pushed the citation of a newly-published (but I believe reliably published) reference on the dating of the material of the cave, has removed other sources stating that the dating is less well agreed upon, has rewritten the article to state that the cave material definitively has the date given in the new reference, and has refused to answer questions on their behavior on talk, instead casting wild personal attacks. More experienced eyes on this article would be welcome. I'm bringing this here both because I think this board has people with the appropriate experience of sourcing and because the dispute concerns the removal of prior sources and the appropriate use of sources (although not the reliability of the newly added sources). —David Eppstein (talk) 02:30, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• Would this not be better solved at WP:DRN, David Eppstein? Or better yet, starting an RfC on the talk page of the article before engaging in the noticeboards. If I understand correctly you are not here to discuss whether a particular source (or group of sources) is reliable or not, which is the point of this noticeboard, and have more issues with potentially disruptive editing by the user. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 21:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

It concerns the removal of other sources in the same edits. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:00, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but the issue you are bringing up here is not the reliability of those sources, is it, David Eppstein? From what I can see in the talk page the consensus is both the sources removed and added are reliable, no? A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 22:05, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Pëllumb Xhufi

Can the Albanian historian Pëllumb Xhufi be considered a reliable source for the purposes of the article Petros Lantzas? In that article, several users are insisting on using a paper by Xhufi as a source. I personally think he shouldn't be used, given that he has been criticized by multiple Albanian historians for falsifying sources, as can be seen in his bio on sq.wiki [29]. He is also on record saying the Tepelenë Internment Camp of the Hoxha regime was "not bad", despite the deaths of hundreds of people there. My impression is that such sources should not be used, but I would like the opinion of the community. Khirurg (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Khirurg is trying to remove a Xhufi (2016) paper published in Studime Historike, an important journal of the Academy of Sciences of Albania from Petros Lantzas[30][31][32] Pëllumb Xhufi has never been criticized for "falsifying sources". There is no paper by any Albanian historian which says such a thing or has such an accusation. The sq.wiki does not say such a thing at all. It has a comment by a political activist who says that the medieval Albanian ethnonym should not be translated from medieval documents with the modern ethnonym. Can you cite a peer-reviewed paper such an accusation? No, you cannot. You have misused WP:BLPTALK with spreading such found less accusations. And made it even worse with spreading rumors that an academic has said that internment camps were not bad. He has never said that: “Kampi funksionoi si kazermë ushtarake deri në vitet -60. Ai qe ndërtuar nga italianët, ishte ndërtesë solide me tulla. Në dokument [e CIA-s] shkruhet se kushtet ishin ‘no bad’ jo të mira,” shtoi ai ndërsa pranoi e Tepelena ishte në thelb një kamp pune të detyruar [The camp functioned as a military barracks until the 1960s. It was built by the Italians, it was a solid brick building. "[The CIA] document says the conditions were 'no bad'," he added, while acknowledging that Tepelena was essentially a forced labor camp] and Shqipëria ka pasur kampe edhe me te këqija dhe represive si ai i Spaçit apo Burrelit, shtoi Xhufi, dhe Tepelena nuk ka qene përfaqësuese. Albania has had worse and more repressive camps like that of Spac and Burrel, added Xhufi who said that that of Tepelena was not representative of the situation.[33] Khirurg distorted his comments in such a way to make it seem as if he was defending internment camps. This should be treated on grounds of BLPTALK. Khirurg is spreading rumors about a reputable academic and member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania in a content dispute that he wants to remove him as a source. In 2020 Xhufi became member[34] of the Academy of Sciences of Albania. The paper is WP:RS because it was published in a peer-reviewed reliable source (Studime Historike). Durraz0 (talk) 11:47, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

this is the latest paper Xhufi published internationally. It is about the Ottoman Balkans and was published in a new book by the University of Toulouse. Durraz0 (talk) 12:39, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

References

Xhufi has never justified or downplayed internment camps. His comment was against those who compare labor camps in Albania and elsewhere to Nazi death camps. ideatorët e projektit janë duke e propaganduar si “Aushvici shqiptar” dhe si “një kamp i shfarosjes në masë”. .. U mundova t’i këshilloj të heqin dorë nga marrëzia për ta propaganduar këtë kamp të shfarosjes në masë, sepse Auschwitz, Mathausen, Dachau apo Birkinau ku janë asgjësuar e djegur në furrat naziste miliona hebrej e antifashistë nga e gjithë bota, nuk e kanë shokun në asnjë vend të botës, e nuk e kanë as në Shqipëri interview Translation: the creators of the project are propagating it as "Albanian Auschwitz" and as "a mass extermination camp". I tried to advise them to give up absurdity to propagate this as a mass extermination camp, because Auschwitz, Mathausen, Dachau or Birkinau, where millions of Jews and anti-fascists from all over the world were annihilated and burned in Nazi kilns, have no comparison in no other country in the world, not even in Albania The people who try to do such comparisons in Albania are often tied with neofascists ideas. It's sad that this was brought to wikipedia in such a distorted way to make Xhufi seem like an apologist for labor camps. Ahmet Q. (talk) 12:37, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Is Tank Magazine a reliable source for archaeology and religion?

It's being added a lot by Timeismotion (talk · contribs) - I started a discussion at WP:FTN because some of the material is fringe, but there may also be a COI issue and of course refspamming. Doug Weller talk 10:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

According to our article, Tank Magazine is a fashion and culture magazine. In fields with such an abundance of academic sources like archaeology, I can't see why we would ever want to use Tank Magazine when we can use academic journal articles and books published by academic presses.

Looking in particular at Timeismotion's edits, this seems like a deeply questionable use of Tank Magazine, for instance. Why are we citing a review in a fashion magazine by an author with a BA in journalism as a source on the "scholarly reception" of a work of history, archaeology, and anthropology? Tao Lin isn't an academic and doesn't have relevant expertise, and the review isn't in a scholarly journal. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 15:02, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

No, it self-evidently isn't RS for such subjects. Blatant promotional refspamming. AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto: the editor is clearly promoting Tao lin as well, eg Kmart realism sourced to what seems a blog.[35][36]. Mentions of him in articles here. Interestingly enough, his article says "The Atlantic described Lin as having a "fairly staggering" knack for self-promotion." He's obviously very notable, but is being promoted by this editor and at times inappropriately. As an aside, I see Gawker is used several times as a source in his article. Looks like he may have been editing the article himself in the past.[37] [User:Doug Weller|Doug Weller]] talk 16:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Using Unz as an external link or a source for a quote?

Here is a search for Unz. I haven't checked many, but the first few are all ELs to people's works, while at H L Mencken it's a source for a quote. Doug Weller talk 14:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I think there is concensus for UNZ that a major issue was WP:COPYLINK and that their reprints weren't authorised, so probably not. Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:10, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

It depends. The Unz periodical archive (which is separate from, and predates, the controversial Unz Review, despite now sharing the same web domain) consists of large amounts of scanned public domain material, similar to the Internet Archive or Biodiversity Heritage Library, and possibly some material still in copyright. Anything published in the U.S. prior to 1926 is public domain in the U.S., as are post-1926 works whose copyrights weren't renewed after 28 years, or for a variety of other reasons. So this 1924 article by Mencken is 100% free (in the US) to be re-hosted, reprinted, repurposed, etc. To my knowledge there are no concerns with the faithfulness or accuracy of the scans, as the archive was initially praised by publications across the ideological spectrum.. Addendum: Some indexed content is clearly marked as under copyright and not publicly displayed, for instance here and here. And many of the outgoing links appear to simple author pages (e.g. William Kristol), not articles themselves, which is similar to {{Internet Archive author}} or links to journalist pages, which might be considered per WP:ELYES if no other "official" links exist. --Animalparty! (talk). 20:18, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

References

RfC: tghat.com

Question: Which of the following best describes the reliability of tghat.com?

• Option 1: Generally reliable
• Option 2: Less than generally reliable
• Option 3: Generally unreliable
• Option 4: Reliable for their own opinion only
• Option 5: Other, please specify

— Platonk (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Option 4 added by Mathglot (talk) at 19:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Background (tghat.com)

The tghat.com website is being increasingly used throughout Wikipedia and is currently used in 143 articles since it was created just one year ago. Its use has engendered edit wars with several editors removing content sourced by it (as non-RS), and a few editors reverting the removals. There was a two-day discussion on RSN in July about tghat.com that discussed, though didn't resolve, the issue. As recently as five days ago, tghat.com has been added as an external link and asserted as a reliable source for a citation. The website's earliest Wayback Machine copy on December 10, 2020 shows it as a blog titled "Chronicling the War on Tigray". The website shows no sense of who is publishing the content. There is a Wikipedia article for Tghat which seems constructed with name-dropping rather than indications of notability. Other news media frame the website in terms of advocacy, not a news organization with an editorial staff, such as:

• "Tghat, a group of anonymous Tigrayans reporting on the damage done within Tigray during the current conflict"
• "Pro-Tigray Tghat"
• "Tghat was founded ... by concerned Tigrayans to chronicle and document the war"
• "News site Tghat, which is run by a group of Tigrayan activists living abroad"
• "Tghat, a news site run by pro-TPLF activists"

Examples of how tghat.com is being used in Wikipedia:

• 143 articles contain "tghat.com".

• 117 articles contain "A compilation of the verified list of civilian victims from different sources", a database/table which has a "source" column predominantly linking to Facebook or Twitter posts, other tghat content, and personal accounts. According to AP News the database is compiled by a single man and only contains deaths of ethnic Tigrayans, but not ethnic Amhara victims.

• 2 articles contain a blog post which is a google translation from an article published by Norway newspaper Bergens Tidende. This is probably a copyright violation.

• 9 articles contain "A Leaked Document: Delegation of the European Union to Ethiopia" (a blog post). This doesn't appear to have a "document" in it, and it was used as a citation in order to insert Tigray War information into the articles of 9 "places/locations".

• 6 articles contain A graphic footage of the Debre Abay massacre: What do we know about it? a blog post. This was added to two "location" articles where it doesn't really belong.

• 3 articles contain What happened in Aksum? My personal account (blog post). This was added to one "location" article where it was used to insert information about the Tigray conflict.

The above is not intended to be a comprehensive list of uses in Wikipedia, but is a subset showing the various ways tghat.com has been used.

(As a side note, though still deserving mention here, according to AP News the compiler of the civilian/non-combatant Amhara casualties is the Amhara Association of America, which doesn't have a Wikipedia article, nor is their website amharaamerica.org mentioned at all in Wikipedia mainspace, and yet the Amhara also have numerous civilian casualties during this conflict. I haven't found any Amhara 'massacre' articles in Wikipedia, while finding over a hundred Tigray 'massacre' articles. ADVOCACY or a NPOV/weight issue?)

— Platonk (talk) 20:23, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Survey (tghat.com)

• Option 4 reliable for their own opinion only. This implies use of WP:INTEXT attribution; e.g., "..and according to a member of Tghat, some-opinion-or-assertion-about-something." Mathglot (talk) 20:10, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 4: agree with Mathglot's reasoning both above and in the discussion below. Santacruz ⁂ Please tag me! 22:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)
• Option 1: Generally reliable and attribute to Tghat when in doubt. The RS guidelines mostly evolved for rich-country sources without tight internet and telephone blockades. Wikipedia has a fundamental problem in working out how to cover knowledge encyclopedically, avoiding demographic bias, while still using good sources. There is no magic solution, but pedantic interpretation of guidelines will not help in evolving reasonable solutions.
  In this particular case, as can be seen by the text and sources in the current version of Tghat, Tghat has been used by multiple Western mainstream media and academic sources, both preprint and fully peer-reviewed. This is not "name dropping"; it's recognition that Tghat has gained a reputation as a sufficiently reliable source.
  Side issues on neutrality (1): while there is an LATimes claim that Tghat is "pro-TPLF", this is not very credible from looking at the site itself, which includes, for example, press releases by anti-TPLF political parties (clearly labelling them as such).
  Side issues on neutrality (2): massacres of Amharas. This is only related in the sense of whether we want to purge Wikipedia of all sources that might help overcome our demographic bias favouring rich-country sources. We do have Benishangul-Gumuz conflict, in which several cases have victims identified as Amharas; in Oromia Region: Gawa Qanqa massacre, Abo church massacre. Having more sources for these would be good, and the AAA site looks (based on an initial quick look) like a good source for articles such as these. In fact, it appears that among the currently known list of Amhara organisations, the articles that exist so far, Amhara Mass Media Agency and National Movement of Amhara, were both created by me, based on the best sources I could find. I wasn't aware of AAA at the time. There are quite likely some sources like these that we should rate "generally unreliable" or "Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated", but having a mix of sources that generally seem reliable and come from a mix of the different ethnic groups of Ethiopia is more in the interests of Wikipedia than refusing to use these sources. Boud (talk) 23:25, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Discussion (tghat.com)

Starting with WP:USEBYOTHERS, its estimation of the number of victims has been mentioned by the LA times [38]. They describe it as "a news site run by pro-TPLF activists". Alaexis_¿question? 20:31, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Where do you get that? The LA Times article you cited doesn't mention Tghat's victim database or information. It mentions Tghat in the sentence following a victim count by organization Seb Hidri, but doesn't tie the two together. Neither does the Wikipedia article Tghat, nor does the WP article Seb Hidri, nor even the website Tghat.com. Tghat.com has two articles mentioning Seb Hidri but even those articles don't tie the two together. Platonk (talk) 02:13, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Reliability and verifiability are certainly issues. The victim list appears to be a personal victim memorial. I can find no editorial oversight. References to Facebook, Daily Mail, and Twitter as sources are not appropriate. The site appears to be an advocacy for a cause that tilts the balance with a false validity.

Following a link such as UN Commissioner for Human Rights Owes Tigrayan Victims an Explanation I cannot verify who Teklai Gebremichael is, apparently a regular contributor. The link Is it a sin to be a Tigrayan? A graduating Tigrayan university student‘s lamentation contains an unknown editor's note: "The following message is written by a graduating student", identified as K. These are not reliable sources nor acceptable as an "External link". -- Otr500 (talk) 04:28, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Platonk, you are right about the victim count. The article says "Tghat, a news site run by pro-TPLF activists, reported on the Bora killings Jan. 12, along with another massacre that reportedly took place in an area called Debre Abay." Note that the Bora killings themselves are not in doubt, the same article reports them as facts earlier. So basically they say that Tghat reported on it 4 days after it happened. Alaexis_¿question? 06:30, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Alaexis, I think you're really stretching the imagination about what LA Times thinks about Tghat based on this single sentence. Please look again at WP:USEBYOTHERS: "How [they] use a given source ... The more widespread and consistent this use is ... established views of sources..." LA Times' single sentence, in its context, is not an endorsement of Tghat's veracity or accuracy. Platonk (talk) 07:47, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm not saying that the use is widespread but it's not zero either. Are there reliable sources which explicitly call them unreliable or found inaccuracies in their reporting? By the way the absence of reporting on Amhara casualties is irrelevant. The sources can be biased or have a limited scope and still be useful. Alaexis_¿question? 09:31, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Without commenting on Tghat's reliability or lack thereof (I'll do that in a separate comment), asking whether there are reliable sources that call Tghat's reliability into question is backwards logic. There is no "presumption of reliability until disproved". There are thousands of activist groups, opinion writers, and individuals publishing their thoughts on blogs and websites, and The Guardian and The Times don't have departments paid to sit around investigating and writing evaluations of every person with an internet connection and an opinion. Mathglot (talk) 19:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Mathglot, you're completely right. The reason I'm asking is that if, by any chance, they are described as unreliable by reliable sources it would be a very strong argument for classifying them as unreliable here. The opposite is not true: if they aren't described as unreliable we would still need to establish their reliability. Alaexis_¿question? 20:08, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Aha, thanks for that clarification. With that understanding, I fully agree with you. Mathglot (talk) 20:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Alaexis: & @Mathglot: WP:IS is clear on biased sources, it still needs to be independent from the subject, the reliable sources descriptions of Tghat clearly tells they are not; a news site run by pro-TPLF activists, run by activists living abroad. A site run by activists siding(pro-TPLF) with a party to a conflict is advocacy and clearly show connection to the subject. Being called pro anything by reliable sources, already compromises Tghat as a independent/reliable news source in that context. Another concern is the reliance on social media, and after searching the site they have little or none reporting, that is not in some way related to the conflict in Ethiopia. Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 21:15, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

You are misreading that. It's true that it needs to independent from the subject in order to be considered WP:INDEPENDENT (one of the attributes of fully reliable sources), but it does not need to be independent from the subject or unbiased in order to be used in citations at Wikipedia in certain contexts. See WP:BIASEDSOURCES: "Common sources of bias include political, financial, religious, philosophical, or other beliefs. Although a source may be biased, it may be reliable in the specific context"; and: "Bias may make in-text attribution appropriate". If the specific context is "the opinions of Tghat activists", then the WP:BIASED source Tghat *is* reliable for that, and may be cited for their own opinions, per the WP:RS guideline previously cited. Mathglot (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Nope, not misreading that and it's again mentioned in WP:BIASEDSOURCES: When dealing with a potentially biased source, editors should consider whether the source meets the normal requirements for reliable sources, such as editorial control, a reputation for fact-checking, and the level of independence from the topic the source is covering. Does Tghat as a source meets the normal requirements? Independence from the topic is very shaky, what about the rest? Dawit S Gondaria (talk) 21:55, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Flat-earthers are WP:BIASED sources that are citable at Wikipedia articles on what Flat-earthers believe; Moon hoaxers are reliable for what moon-hoaxers believe, and Tghat is reliable for what Tghat believes, and needs no independence, editorial control, or fact-checking for that. The fact that they may be unreliable for all basic assertions of fact does not negate that, and that's what the rest of the guideline you quoted is about. Mathglot (talk) 22:21, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

• If the argument is that RS use tghat means tghat is RS, I don't see why one couldn't use forgo including tghat altogether and just cite the reputable sources covering the content. Tghat does not seem to be reliable. Additionally, this conflict is quite recent so we should be patient and remember that if tghat is the only site covering a massacre, it will be covered later in news and even later in academia if it is notable (WP:NODEADLINE). But back to the reliability topic, no I don't believe tghat is reliable based on how their content is created. A. C. Santacruz ⁂ Talk 21:43, 22 November 2021 (UTC)