Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard

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RFC: Bitter Winter

Which of the following best describes the reliability of Bitter Winter?

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

Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 15:29, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: CESNUR is listed as unreliable on WP:RS/P, but there's nothing explicitly noted for the affiliated magazine Bitter Winter, which mainly focuses on oppression in China, and whose reliability may be different from CESNUR itself. From the section for Bitter Winter on CESNUR, I can see it being used by other WP:RS such as Le Monde, The Manila Times, Radio Free Asia, World, and the Department of State. This may call for a different evaluation of reliability than for CESNUR.Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 15:33, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

  The US Department of State is an arm of the US government, and would not be a reliable source for anything but the most mundane, uncontroversial facts. Here, we're discussing a publication focused on China. Any statements by the State Department about China have to be viewed as political, and are not necessarily accurate. Radio Free Asia is also an arm of the US government, and per previous discussions at WP:RSN, caution is advised for subjects that the US government could have a political interest in. During the pandemic, for example, RFA has promoted disinformation about the COVID-19 death toll in China, pushing figures that are a factor of 10 (here, 40k or more) to 50 (here, 150k) times higher than scientific estimates (approximately 5k). -Thucydides411 (talk) 21:43, 26 April 2022 (UTC)

  @Thucydides411: I'm not seeing where it says that RFA has promoted disinformation about the COVID-19 death toll in China. Is there a missing link? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:45, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

  I don't know what "it" you're referring to, but we've had this discussion a number of times already. You know the articles I'm talking about (and I linked them above). RFA's recent history of pushing disinformation about the COVID-19 death toll in China is absolutely clear. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:35, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

  Thucydides411 is quite obviously comparing scientific studies to RFA reports to indicate that we should conclude that the latter are unreliable. It seems to me you're asking that question rhetorically because you feel that it's necessary to have a source that explicitly accuses RFA of pushing misinformation. But that's not the case. Thucydides411's argument is, in principle, in an acceptable format: WP:OR does not apply to talk pages and other pages which evaluate article content and sources. However, I personally disagree with Thucydides411 on this: it could be a case of good-faith disagreement between sources or a case of early speculation on the part of RFA. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 21:01, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 I don't see any evidence that Bitter Winter is necessarily free from the concerns that plague CESNUR as a source of information. This doesn't mean that they aren't working in China and aren't the subject of unethical reprisals by the Chinese government. I don't see their work cited by those sources, I see that those sources are reporting on the basic facts about the source. There's something of a use-mention distinction here; the source is being mentioned and described, but not being used as a source of information by reliable sources. --Jayron32 15:59, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

  Upon closer inspection, it seems like you're correct that many of the sources in the article aren't relying on Bitter Winter for information but rather are reporting on Bitter Winter itself. However, it does seem to be the case that some WP:RS do cite Bitter Winter as a source for information, including Radio Free Asia 1 2 and Voice of America 3. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 22:29, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

  Both of which are U.S. Government funded sources, they are generally reliable, but with a caveat, from WP:RSP "Many editors consider that VOA is biased towards the interests of the American government and that its interference is enough to cast doubt on its reliability in some topics, particulary in news related to American foreign policies." for example. For non-politically-charged topics, I'd consider VOA and RFA fine. For one like this, no. --Jayron32 16:13, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1 The source is used by other WP:RS such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. There are no known examples of the source spreading misinformation and not correcting it. The only controversy I can see related to the source is a brief spat with ChinaSource that was seemingly resolved somewhat amicably with no conclusive evidence of falsehood being spread by Bitter Winter. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 13:14, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
• Bad RfC No indication where it's being used on Wikipedia that's causing a dispute. Even if there was, it could go on the relevant talk page. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:32, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 Looking at Bitter Winter it's clear that as well as being published by CESNUR its editorial staff is drawn from the same group of individuals. A look at some of their content suggests the same distorting advocacy that renders CESNUR unreliable. Cambial — foliar❧ 21:01, 24 April 2022 (UTC)
  • From what I can see regarding CESNUR, most of the objections to using CESNUR as a source are based on its stance in favour of new religious movements rather than repeated examples of false content. The main objection is a conflict of interest objection, not a truthfulness one. Given this, since Bitter Winter covers a different subject area—the persecution of religious minorities by the Chinese government, regardless of whether they belong to new religious movements—it may not be subject to the same conflict of interest considerations. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 14:42, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
    • I can only assume you’ve misread or misunderstood the objections. The comments above and below, including my own, refer to the problem of the group’s advocacy mission distorting its reporting of the facts. Its desire to achieve its ends frequently takes precedence over accurate and complete reporting, and leads to serious omission, distortion or alteration of the facts. These render it useless as an RS. Cambial — foliar❧ 09:41, 5 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2 Insufficient information available to pass judgement. What is the context? · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 09:11, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3. Not enough indication of any reputation for fact-checking and accuracy, which means we can only go by the reputation of the parent organization... which is terrible. It could perhaps sometimes be used for opinion but even that should be done cautiously for WP:DUE reasons. I don't think being cited by Radio Free Asia and VOA are sufficient in this context for the reasons outlined above - they're WP:BIASED sources with a bias that would specifically push them to rely on weaker sources, so they're not sufficient to overcome the problems with the publisher or the lack of usage outside of that bubble. --Aquillion (talk)
• Option 3. Bitter Winter is the house organ of CESNUR, an activist group working to hold China accountable for human rights violations. Their goal may be worthy, but the publication exists to achieve the larger goal rather than to print the truth. Binksternet (talk) 15:53, 28 April 2022 (UTC)
  • The consensus for outlets with a similar set of goals (e.g. VoA, RFA) is that they are generally reliable and able to be used, even for coverage on China. I don't see how this is any different. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 00:02, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
    • For RFA, the consensus is that it should be treated with caution for any subject that the US government has a political interest in. That makes use of RFA for any China-related subjects highly questionable. Just to illustrate the risks of using RFA for China-related subjects: during the COVID-19 pandemic, RFA has promoted disinformation about the death toll in China (inflating it by a factor of 10 to 50, relative to scientific estimates) which I discussed in a comment above. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:49, 29 April 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 with the note that their research/reporting is very well reported by WP:RS so there will still be a lot of legitimate uses here. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:45, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

  If the research/reporting is very well reported by WP:RS, WP:USEBYOTHERS applies, and it is most likely a reliable source. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 21:02, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  Except when it isn't as in this case, WP:USEBYOTHERS is a gate not a trump card. Zero chance in hell Bitter Winter is reliable. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:25, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting. It is not as if the Chinese Communist party is a white dove that benevolently oversees the country; Bitter Winter merely chronicles the government's abuses.XavierItzm (talk) 18:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3: No justification or context has been provided why Bitter Winter would be any better than CESNUR. I would put no weight on the usages by VOA & RFA due to the rationale provided by Aquillion. If RS do use them in more than a "According to X, Y happened" I would cite the RS directly. Jumpytoo Talk 22:33, 4 May 2022 (UTC)
  • Explicit justification has been provided in favour of the position that it would be better than CESNUR. [M]ost of the objections to using CESNUR as a source are based on its stance in favour of new religious movements rather than repeated examples of false content. The main objection is a conflict of interest objection, not a truthfulness one. Given this, since Bitter Winter covers a different subject area—the persecution of religious minorities by the Chinese government, regardless of whether they belong to new religious movements—it may not be subject to the same conflict of interest considerations.Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 10:30, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 if not option 4: One look at the site's coverage of Falun Gong, for example, tells me that this is by no means a reliable source and under no circumstance should it directly be used as a reference on English Wikipedia. It is an obvious WP:RS fail. :bloodofox: (talk) 16:46, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  Are there any particular articles that are factually inaccurate? If not, this seems to be a case of WP:IDONTLIKEIT applied to sourcing. Ipnsaepl28 (talk) 20:55, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  Well, there's the whole uncritically parroting every imaginable talking point from the notorious Falun Gong, for starters ("Falun Gong was successful and popular because, although this was later denied by critics, people found that it did deliver the health benefits it promised"—those pesky critics! "The CCP vehemently denied the practice, and successfully recruited international academics and journalists who insisted that either it never took place or was discontinued after an initial phase, although governments and international organizations did mention organ harvesting in their criticism of China’s abysmal human rights record." — those pesky international academics and journalists!). This entry reads like it was written by the group itself, complet with no mention of the New York compound, Shen Yun, The Epoch Times, extreme right-wing politics, Trump administration intermingling, hope that Trump would bring on the apocalypse, etc., just a bunch of doubt tossed on "critics", "scholars", and "journalists". Get outta here. :bloodofox: (talk) 03:22, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2 or possibly 3. They have an editorial board, along with regular contributors who all seem to be professionals [1]; there is an editorial control. The content does not raise any serious and obvious red flags as outright misinformation, at least for me (including even examples linked above). Yes, this is definitely a case of WP:BIASED. I think it might be useful as a source for human right issues, although not the best source. CESNUR does look suspicious (probably would be "3"). My very best wishes (talk) 21:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Okdiario

Should Okdiario (headed by Eduardo Inda) be deprecated as a source? It has not only been accused of being a manipulator and spreader of hoaxes, but it has also been sentenced several times by the Spanish justice. --KajenCAT (talk) 20:24, 1 May 2022 (UTC) Some examples:

• The most important Consumer rights NGO of Spain, Facua: [2] [3] [4] [5][6]
• Greenpeace (points out as one of the main spreaders of hoaxes in the media) [7]
• Others: [8][9][10] [11][12][13]

--KajenCAT (talk) 20:28, 1 May 2022 (UTC)

Comments

I am somewhat confused on a quick look. I randomly checked two of the sources shown. The Greenpeace link seems to be about WhatsApp. Are the two related? One Facua source is titled, "11,000 euros: After FACUA's complaint, they initiate a sanctioning process against Okdiario for a serious infraction". The infraction: "Eduardo Inda's newspaper violates consumer protection legislation by offering subscriptions with prices that do not include taxes." In my apparent ignorance to some point, I can not see a connection between these and the site being a "manipulator and spreader of hoaxes". I did see one but all news source have likely been guilty of printing things not exactly true, or even totally false.

The link states the source is a Spanish digital newspaper aligned with neoliberalism and Spanish nationalism. It is my opinion, at first glance, that editors should not be limited to sources that are aligned to a particular way or idea. The entire concept of balance, due weight, and neutrality depends on being able to view different points of view. It is reported that "Its editorial line is part of the political spectrum of the liberal ideology and the unity of Spain", which is in line with the article. It is expedient to take note of this. If a source is used to push a particular article in a direction not in line with Wikipedia policies and guidelines we can act to protect this encyclopedia.

RFC concerning New Eastern Outlook

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

---

Which of the following best describes the reliability of New Eastern Outlook ?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be added to Wikipedia:Deprecated sources?

HouseOfChange (talk) 15:25, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment none of the above, as the reliability of a source depends on context. The claims attributed to the DOS and the USDT don't belong in the lead section of the article. M.Bitton (talk) 15:42, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  This looks like a whole thing. Is there an article or talk page or some such that people should refer to for context? ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:47, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  would like some more context but generally NEO is Option 4, its an information operations platform which masquerades as an academic journal (much like say Mankind Quarterly but run by a state rather than a private group). Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:51, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  @ScottishFinnishRadish: this is my third effort, and if I screwed up the process here also, I apologize! Here are four relevant bullet points:

  • 2019 discussion on deprecating "Sites identified by reputable sources as state-sponsored fake news / disinformation".
  • Article New Eastern Outlook cites multiple RS identifying it as a "state-sponsored fake news / disinformation" website.
  • As of the 2019 discussion, the status of NEO as state-sponsored fake news was less clear than it is in 2022. (I just created article on NEO from a re-direct a few days ago.)
  • Lots more context in Archive 375

  I hope this is helpful and not too much of a wall of text. HouseOfChange (talk) 16:12, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  A quick look at those sources raises some questions such as: What makes the DOS and the USDT more RS (or less biased) than the Strategic Culture Foundation and SouthFront? M.Bitton (talk) 16:14, 6 May 2022 (UTC)

  @M.Bitton: It isn't one isolated, unconfirmed, recent claim from these sources. There's a 2020 report from Trump's DOS, confirmed in 2021 and 2022 by Biden's DOS and DOT, with two green check-marked RS (Wall Street Journal and Politifact) independently confirming the "disinformation" label. Searching EU vs Disinfo turns up 49 results for journal-neo[.]org including "13.05.2020 US might be developing weaponised insects" and "07.02.2020 Scientific evidence is mounting that the coronavirus is man made and targeting the Chinese race." HouseOfChange (talk) 04:35, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  @HouseOfChange: Incidentally, these are all related to Russia's declared enemies. Is the pursuit of academic excellence the raison d'etre of Trump's and Biden's DOS and DOTA? A search for "US might be developing weaponised insects" turns up some some interesting results. That's why I said that the reliability of the source depends on context. M.Bitton (talk) 12:46, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4. I wouldn't deprecate a source based solely on the opinion of one government... but fortunately we don't have to. describes it as a source of Russian COVID-19 disinformation; describes it as a "junk news" source. includes a note that in 2019, Facebook removed 12 social media accounts and 10 pages linked to the New Eastern Outlook and The New Atlas. These accounts and pages were removed for using fake accounts, creating fictitious personas, and driving users to “off-platform blogs posing as news outlets”. These, to me, say that this source publishes intentional disinformation while trying to appear reliable and respectable; that is exactly the sort of source that deprecation exists for. --Aquillion (talk) 04:41, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  It's also used by thousands of RS (see Google Scholar and books) for the various subjects that it covers. What Facebook does, including allowing praise of the neo-Nazi regiment Azov when it suits its political agenda, is neither here nor there. M.Bitton (talk) 12:46, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  @M.Bitton: can you dial back the nastiness a little bit? You're lashing out because you're losing an argument and that just isn't appropriate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:50, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Horse Eye's Back: There s no nastiness in my comments, therefore, I will urge you to refrain from casting aspersions. M.Bitton (talk) 14:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  How would you describe "What Facebook does, including allowing praise of the neo-Nazi regiment Azov when it suits its political agenda, is neither here nor there" then? Snark? Humor? Off topic comment? I just don't see how bringing up is constructive and not meant to be a dig at Aquillion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 14:58, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  Let me make it really simple for you: you either stop casting aspersions and misrepresenting what I said or you'll take a trip to ANI. Facebook was brought up, so it's only fair to remind the readers what it does when it suits its political agenda. M.Bitton (talk) 15:01, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  Why is that only fair? This is a discussion of New Eastern Outlook not facebook, whether or not facebook allows Azov to be praised or not has exactly zero bearing on the topic at hand. If you are being misrepresented then please clarify what you intended to communicate. Threatening ANI is uncalled for, such battleground behavior really isn't appropriate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:20, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  I suggest you take your time to read what I wrote again. 15:28, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  I can't make heads or tail of it, you seem to pinball from threats to irrelevancies without actually engaging with the topic at hand which is the reliability of New Eastern Outlook. Perhaps you would care to explain what Facebook's tolerance of pro-Azov posts has to do with their removal of New Eastern Outlook linked info-ops accounts? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:44, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Horse Eye's Back: Facebook, whose profit model makes it reluctant to remove false content of any kind, blocked NEO in 2019 for "coordinated inauthentic behavior," a kind of deception that isn't the same as posting deceptive content. On February 24, 2022 Facebook made a minor change to policy re Azov. I also don't see a connection beyond whataboutism. HouseOfChange (talk) 15:56, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  I was hoping for an explanation besides whataboutism or trolling but it doesn't appear that one is going to be forthcoming. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  I'm done here as I can't pretend to have a decent discussion with those who personalize the comments. M.Bitton (talk) 15:52, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

  Again I fail to see the connection, you weren't pretending to have a decent discussion before I engaged with you. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4. We have reliable sources that tell us exactly what kind of outlet this is. Even if we didn't, looking for just a moment at what they are writing about what they are calling the 'The Russian special operation in Ukraine' makes it pretty clear what is going on there. - MrOllie (talk) 17:16, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4 This is an easy one. Even if you don't want to believe the federal government, there is pretty much consensus in RS that New Eastern Outlook is a Russian propaganda site. Per Alexander Reid-Ross: Additional fascinating examples of Russian state systems percolating into the alternative media ecosystem are Redfish, the New Eastern Outlook...The publication of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, New Eastern Outlook produces conspiracy theories about Rothschilds and George Soros and Islamophobic material, and hosts articles by Duginist Catherine Shakhdam and conspiracy theorist Vanessa Beeley, among others. [14]. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 20:41, 7 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4 as per Aquillon and Dr Swag. Definitely a disinfo site made more dangerous by its thin veneer of academic respectably. 17:10, 8 May 2022 (UTC) (Above comment by Bobfrombrockley whose sig got messed up by something weird with the tildes. This sig-related comment in parens is by HouseOfChange. HouseOfChange (talk) 02:45, 9 May 2022 (UTC))

  Thanks HouseOfChange - trying to edit on mobile and failed badly! BobFromBrockley (talk) 08:17, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

  @Bobfrombrockley: The publisher IOS, despite its connection to Russian Academy of Sciences, has been run by Russian government since 2013 (coincidentally, year when NEO came online.) The IOS video page mixes scholarly stuff with titles like "Why does Russia help Syria" and "The failure of the American strategy in Ukraine." HouseOfChange (talk) 17:05, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4 Legitimate, reliable sources consistently describe this as a disinformation site. Its use should be deprecated. --Jayron32 16:13, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4 yup, it's bad. Added to WP:UPSD as a deprecated source, but I'll update the script if it ends up as something else. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:21, 9 May 2022 (UTC)
• Optopn 4 Russian disinfo, straight-up. Zaathras (talk) 23:18, 9 May 2022 (UTC)

References

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

TASS, Interfax (russian version) and RIA Novosti's reliability on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (especially on alleged attacks in russia)

as you can see in April 2022 Belgorod and Bryansk attacks's alleged attacks part sources, there are a lot of TASS sources and a couple Interfax and RIA Novosti sources, due to these sources being Russian state-controlled, id like to know if we can put them as Unreliable for Russian-Ukraine war related content.

-in addition to fake news, ria Novosti has also published "What Russia should do with Ukraine".

-TASS is probably one of the only sources (the rest being also Russian state-controlled media) to report on some of the alleged cases of "Ukrainian attacks on Russia", which is quite interesting, considering that i have seen no RS report on a lot of these alleged attacks (although not all of them, as Reuters and others have reported on some cases, but, still, a lot of cases reported by TASS havent been reported by any RS)

-Interfax has also spread news about Ukraine supposedly making a nuclear Dirty Bomb (Per this part)

187.39.133.201 (talk) 21:19, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

The underlying problem here is that some editors use this whole "it's ok to include if it's attributed" or "it's reliable for statements by the Russian government even if generally it's a garbage source" to do a run around our WP:RS policies. This is junk that would normally never be included but hey, as long as you put "according to Russian government sources" in front you can put in any ridiculous claim you want. Basically it's being used to platform various Russian gov disinformation or conspiracy theories and increase their exposure. I remember back in 2014 the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 became full of disgusting and false conspiracy theories ("the bodies were moved there from a nearby morgue", "it was false flag" etc) all justified on the basis of "bUt IT's aTTribUted!". Same thing is being done here. Basic rule should be "don't include unless it's ALSO discussed in multiple other reliable sources". Volunteer Marek 22:33, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

finally someone that agrees that the people using these TASS bs sources (and using bs excuses) are being quite annoying. 187.39.133.201 (talk) 23:00, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Cuts both ways. Plenty of editors feel that because reliable sources print verbatim text of Ukraine officials without any fact-checking or due dilligence that the corresponding Wikipedia article must be updated immediately and can point to the running bbc or cnn blog of the day to justify inclusion with attribution, only for it to be walked back a day or two laterSlywriter (talk) 23:24, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Sure. But if Ukrainian sources are discussed in other RS sources then that makes for the difference. Also, let's be clear here - Ukrainian sources ARE more reliable than Russian ones. We also have the same problem on the Attack on Snake Island article because some users insist on including Russian fantasies (hundreds killed! Helicopters destroyed! Ukrainian jets (that supposedly were destroyed two months ago) downed!) just because ... "it's attributed". It's straight up WP:GAME behavior. Volunteer Marek 23:34, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

Sure the sources are generally more reliable, but it doesn't mean that Ukranian government officials are always an accurate source of military maneuvers while in the midst of a existential crisis. Just as not everything a Russian source prints is a lie, not everything Ukrainian or Western sources publish is true.Slywriter (talk) 00:45, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

My general frustration is with Wikipedians increasingly rushing to cover Breaking news. It's impossible to do, articles will be wrong at times and the consequences are zero for doing so because "reliable sources" aka mass media cover everything these days and it's easy to find unverified information presented as fact especially in the immediate hours after an incident.Slywriter (talk) 00:49, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• Also discussed here: Talk:April 2022 Belgorod and Bryansk attacks#Sources. I'd like to stress that no conspiracy theories or disputable sequences of events are involved. The discussion is only about brief statements by Russian officials, coming from their official Telegram channels. Most of these statements are covered by both Russian and non-Russian agencies, and there is no substantial difference in coverage. The difference is that the Russian agencies publish these governors' statements a bit earlier (sometimes, a day before a non-Russian one does the same thing), and some of the statements (probably, considered of lower importance) aren't covered by non-Russian agencies. No independent party has questioned the fact that these governors actually make their statements, or suggested they were false. It's just that more noticeable events get coverage abroad, while some less noticeable receive only local coverage VanHelsing.16 (talk) 23:52, 13 May 2022 (UTC)

  If these events are covered by independent reliable sources then what's the problem? Just use the independent reliable sources. Volunteer Marek 01:45, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  Direct cites have greater fidelity and traceability. The third party coverage is what establishes notability, but may be processed or partial portrayals. Citing them would wind up convoluted indirect attributions such as ‘BBC noted Russian reports of 200,000 refugees crossing into Russia’ or ‘The London Times disputed Russian accounts of military progress’ — you’re getting what BBC said in talking about the item(s), not a link to what the Russian source said. Difference is of having RS be reliable as a source, something sure to be there and looked at by many instead of thinking it has to be a source of truth, Truth, or TRUTH. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 02:07, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  My opinion is that we should not use any Russia-based sources on this war. For example, they routinely attribute Russian attacks to Ukrainians. Just the last paragraph of this report[15] is wrong in multiple ways. Ukraine was not shelling LNR and DNR at this time, precisely because they knew Russia would use it as a pretext. The use of the verb "liberate" is just grotesque. Putin was "recognizing the sovereignty" of LNR and DNR within regions they have never controlled. The article also talks about the "conflict's escalation", rather than the "Russian invasion" of Ukraine. In fact, I'll start an RfC on TASS right now. Adoring nanny (talk) 15:39, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to adopt the Russian Wikipedia solution

Should points 10 and 11 of rules for mediation in Ukraine-related topics on Russian Wikipedia, as modified here, be implemented for the purposes of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine?

• Do not use the mass media materials of outlets based physically or online in Russia, Belarus or Ukraine [RUBYUA] that appeared after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to describe the invasion itself and related events. Some usages may be allowed if a specific edit request is made, only if independent secondary reliable coverage from outside these countries on the topic requested is unavailable, is published in what would otherwise be a generally reliable source at least two days after the event's occurrence (with the exception of official statements of government entities), and there is consensus to introduce it. In particular, avoid using sources liable to censorship by Roskomnadzor.
• The official statements of the sides shall be described according to independent, secondary, reliable sources [further mentioned as ISRS], limiting the scope of mentioning of the official position by the extent to which these positions are expounded on in these sources. Military advances should not be stated as fact unless confirmed by both sides of the conflict, either as separate statements as quoted in ISRSs, or by summary of the statements in ISRSs. All mentions of these positions shall be added with appropriate attribution, in a neutral form, without excessive citations and preserving due weight to them. The addition of the positions of the officials from one side that are not mentioned in ISRSs in order to balance the mentions of the positions of officials mentioned in ISRSs is forbidden, nor should independent assessments of ISRSs be balanced by the statements of officials denying said assessments. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Survey

Note. The fragments in italics are modifications of the currently standing version in the Russian Wikipedia. Basically, since enwiki (unlike ruwiki) does not have mediators, we are either left with admins or with starting RfCs purely for whitelisting purposes. Outlets catering to the audiences of RUBYUA but outside the countries (e.g. Meduza) will be exempt and should be assessed on their merits. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 16:37, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Comment. This is a sensible proposal which would limit the amount of breaking-news-style coverage on Wikipedia. The only issue I can see with it is that "independent, secondary, reliable sources" have almost no access to the areas occupied by Russia, DNR and LNR and therefore the coverage may end up unbalanced. Alaexis_¿question? 21:21, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Which is why the exception is there. Basically, if wants to write some section using Ukrainian sources from the occupied territories (for example by using articles like this one or this one, that's basically OK but because the quality of such reports may vary, this should be vetted via consensus. As for official statements, they are covered in independent secondary sources fairly well, so I don't see an issue with this one. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 22:25, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Szmenderowiecki, this certainly makes sense. One more thing, why do we need the last sentence? It seems superfluous considering that we already say that Russian sources should not be used unless there the criteria for the exception are satisfied. Alaexis_¿question? 08:06, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

It's for emphasis. In general, don't use RUBYUA sources, but particularly not Russian sources because of the "fake news" law (and which Belarus already started enforcing back in 2018). Ukraine doesn't as of now have criminal liability for making misleading/false statements and the censorship is far from being as bad, but it exists, and three TV channels were ordered closed without meaningful explanation. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 09:10, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

I'd suggest the following wording then "Do not use the mass media materials of outlets based physically or online in Russia (liable to censorship by Roskomnadzor), Belarus or Ukraine [RUBYUA] that appeared after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to describe the invasion itself and related events. Some usages may be allowed if a specific edit request is made, only if independent secondary reliable coverage from outside these countries on the topic requested is unavailable, is published in what would otherwise be a generally reliable source at least two days after the event's occurrence (with the exception of official statements of government entities)." This way it doesn't feel like the Roskomnadzor part is an exception to the exception. Alaexis_¿question? 11:26, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

support, but I'm not clear on what is being proposed. Would this be MOS, Guideline or policy? It seems commonsensical under NPOV to assume that there will be biased reporting from both sides, but as long as we are stating in the text who is making the claim, it seems fairly workable without special new rules. "Ukraine sources says X" "Russian sources say Y" is a fine way to trust the readers' ability to discern. This should've been how things are done all along. DolyaIskrina (talk) 21:23, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

On ruwiki, mediatorship rules serve partly as MOS and partly as guidelines, depending on the specific text of the points. For example, point 1 of the mediatorship FAQ reads like a typical MOS rule (itself a sort of guideline), while points 10-11 are more like guidelines. I envisage this to be a temporary guideline/MOS-like rule (let's say, for half a year), and, if it proves successful, can be made a template for next military conflicts and may possibly be promoted to part of policy on NPOV. It might be a rule imposed by ArbCom as part of discretionary sanctions, but there would first have to be some sort of articulable problem, and I try to avoid the war articles unless the quality was really bad.

The reason this is introduced is to limit additions of mutual finger-pointing of breaking news that only muddle the article with what might be irrelevant details. E.g. saying "Russians say Ukrainians attacked Belgorod <Russian ref>, while Ukrainians say Russians are bullshitting and are making false flag attacks<Ukrainian ref>" is a suboptimal way to refer to the actual events in the war. For example in WP:ARBPIA or WP:ARBAA2, IDF's, Palestinian, Armenian or Azeri claims are not taken for granted, and I don't see much difference in this one other than that we can afford Ukrainian sources some benefit of doubt, but not to the extent that would justify the treatment of UA resources on par with foreign media. Szmenderowiecki (talk) 22:19, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• This all seems a bit complicated to me. Can't this just be summarised as: "Russian state news sources are considered generally unreliable for content related to the 2022 invasion of Ukraine", which fits well within our established reliability processes. The second point I don't agree with introducing, because a) the section above doesn't show an issue relating to that (outside of the issue with Russian state sources in general); b) few military advances are agreed on by both parties. You can't even get a realistic death toll out of Russia; c) most of the RS reporting follows claims of either side or claims of allies of either side. The provision either means gutting our articles, or doing exactly what we're doing right now, it's not clear but either way the provision doesn't seem necessary. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• This proposal may be well intention but it creates more problems than it solves. Ukrainian sources are generally more reliable (of course not all of them) than Russian ones so why should they be treated equivalently? There might also be a couple Russian sources that are still reliable. Additionally, sources from outside the geographic area very often are, to put it bluntly, clueless about basic factual info. Confuse cities, people, developments, etc. The main problem overall is the WP:UNDUE space that is given to Russian claims, often absurd and ridiculous, as filtered through reliable sources. What we need rather is a higher bar for inclusion of Russian claims - only if they're WIDELY discussed and analyzed by RSs, not just restated here or there, should they be included. Volunteer Marek 06:53, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• I support the proposal that will at least make it certain that we should neither rely on the official statements of Ukraine, nor Russia unless they have been confirmed by both sides. A  strict balance is certainly necessary. ArvindPalaskar (talk) 12:31, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  'strict balance' of an agressor and a victim. No, no, no. Xx236 (talk) 06:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose in strongest possible terms. I could see some potential argument for rejecting sources from Russia (because they have strict press controls), but the argument for omitting sources from Ukraine entirely lacks any basis in policy. Would you accept a similar proposal to, for example, ban sources from within Israel or Palestine from the entire ARBPIA topic area? Should we reject sources based in the US that cover the Iraq or Vietnam Wars? It is possible that a Ukrainian source could be considered WP:BIASED (although even that, I think, should be on a case-by-case basis), and depending on context some would be WP:PRIMARY; but the solution to that is to make it clear that the source is Ukrainian in the text, not to bar it entirely, and I would strenuously oppose even making that much a formal requirement. Yes, sources close to a conflict have potential bias, but they can also be some of the best sources available; and it is insulting to imply that an entire nation is incapable of objective journalism with no basis beyond "well it concerns them." You need at least some argument for why there is a structural problem to sanction all sources based in an entire region; we might be able to make that argument for Russia or similar regions with strict press censorship, but for Ukraine, no. --Aquillion (talk) 05:26, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. confirmed by both sides of the conflict — as in "the war, according to Ukrainian sources, or the special military operation, according to Russian sources"? Also, per WP:NOTNEWS, why does 2022 Western Russia attacks (and other articles like it) even exist? Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:27, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose. per Space4Time3Continuum2x An unimportant person (talk) 12:25, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose As written, it also excludes independent statements and observations about conflict developments. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose There are no Russian independent media outlets left, as far as I can tell. Ukraine maintains a reasonably free press. Many Ukrainian outlets seem pretty reliable. I don't think reliable and unreliable outlets should be treated equivalently. Disconnected Phrases (talk) 19:04, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

• You can't use "free press" and "independent media" interchangeably. Read this article which proves that you are wrong. ArvindPalaskar (talk) 12:52, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

RfC on TASS

Which of the following best describes the reliability of TASS ?

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be added to Wikipedia:Deprecated sources? Adoring nanny (talk) 16:04, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

Option 4 This report[16] is wrong in so many ways that it is difficult to know where to begin. First of all, we have the use of the phrase "conflict escalation", as if the conflict escalated somehow by itself. How about the word "invasion". Near the end, we have the sentence Putin, in response to a request from the leaders of the Donbass republics for help launched a special military operation. Are they really that daft? Surely they realize that the initial impetus came from Putin, not from the LNR or DNR. Furthermore, we have the following paragraph: Since the beginning of the escalation, "a total of 2,738 fire attacks have been recorded, including 2,477 carried out with heavy weapons." During the reviewed period the Ukrainian military fired 27,006 pieces of ammunition of various calibers, including 27 Tochka-U missiles. Multiple rocket launchers Grad, Uragan and Smerch were also used.. Multiple issues here. Who can possibly arrive at such a precise count? How many of those were in fact Russian misfires or Russian false flag attacks? Note that Tass specifically says that the attacks were fired by the Ukrainian military. Lastly, we have the following passage: Tensions on the engagement line in Donbass escalated on February 17. The Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics experienced the worst shellings from Ukraine in months. Numerous reports in the media mention Russian attempts to provoke Ukraine and/or false flag attacks during that time.[17][18][19] I am unable to find any reliable reports of actual Ukrainian attacks from Feb. 17-23. Adoring nanny (talk) 16:04, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

• WP:RSP already lists it under Option 2 ("Unclear or additional considerations apply"), with a comment: In the 2019 RfC, editors argued that the reliability of TASS varies based on the subject matter. Editors consider TASS fairly reliable for statements of fact as stated by the Russian government, but also agree that there are deficiencies in the reliability of TASS's reporting on other issues. I can't see any reason to change the attitude. Of course, it's a Russian state agency and it uses propagandistic cliches promoted by the state — and we should avoid any of these on Wikipedia, regardless of the source. However, when it comes to statements such as "a Russian official said the following", TASS reporting is very accurate (i.e. the words of the officials are not falsified). Moreover, your argument about the inaccurate count of attacks is not entirely valid, because even TASS does not present it as the ultimate truth — in fact, the report says: "the office of the DPR’s representative in the Joint Center for Ceasefire Control and Coordination (JCCC) said on Friday." I.e. the data is provided by a side of the conflict, and TASS clearly states so, i.e. even this piece could be used to compare various estimates of the intensity of the attacks (for example, Ukraine said that XXX attacks were conducted[Ukrainian Source], while the DPR insisted that there were YYY attacks[TASS]; independent observers give the number NNN[another source]) VanHelsing.16 (talk) 16:46, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  I am aware that's the theory. I guess I think that when a source fabricates as thoroughly as TASS did here, deprecation is the correct way for us to handle it. Note also that the theory is not working in practice. See the above section #TASS, Interfax (russian version) and RIA Novosti's reliability on the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (especially on alleged attacks in russia) which notes it is used precisely on the Russian invasion. Furthermore, it's not really journalism when they just repeat someone's nonsensical statements without noting that it's a load of BS. Lastly, by the final paragraph where they have their false sentence The Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics experienced the worst shellings from Ukraine in months., it looks to me like they are saying this in their own voice. At a minimum, it's unclear that they are attributing it, and I could certainly see people reading it as a factual statement, not an attributed one. Adoring nanny (talk) 17:27, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  Adoring nanny, why do you think that the statement The Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics experienced the worst shellings from Ukraine in months is false? Alaexis_¿question? 18:10, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  For example, see [20]

  Russian-backed separatists have stepped up their shelling of Ukrainian forces, but Kyiv has told its troops not to return fire to avoid giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an excuse to launch an invasion.

  Adoring nanny (talk) 18:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  Thanks. I agree that the statement is *likely* false but I don't think we can have a definite proof at this point. Your video is at best indirect evidence. There was increased shelling and whether it was all false flag attacks or some of them were made by Ukrainians is hard to ascertain (Al-Jazeera had to walk back their initial statement) considering that it's an active war zone now. Alaexis_¿question? 19:18, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  But for TASS to be supported, we would need evidence that the statement is true. See also [21] about a related series of Russian fabrications and false flag attacks. Adoring nanny (talk) 21:14, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

  That's not how it works. If you're claiming that they published fake news the onus is on you to prove it. Alaexis_¿question? 20:26, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  I don't trust TASS because of general common sense considerations (it's owned by the state, that state is not a pluralist democracy where political parties can compete freely, Russia is ranked 155 out of 180 countries in the Press Freedom Index, many journalists have been murdered, etc.: see Media freedom in Russia), but I think that User:Adoring nanny has not proved that that article by TASS contains fake news. The invasion of Ukraine can be described as an escalation of pre-existing armed conflicts (Russo-Ukrainian War and War in Donbas) and the civilian casualty figure given by TASS/by the DPR’s representative - 113 killed and 517 injured - is quite accurate. Cf. HRMMU, Ukraine: civilian casualty update 13 May 2022: 117 killed and 481 injured on territory controlled by Russian affiliated armed groups. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 21:05, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  OSCE report, Fortune. "As documented by the humanitarian NGO Proliska, which is monitoring the conflict zone, one of the [separatists'] shells struck a kindergarten, leaving two employees with shell shock—but not injuring any of the children who were there. Proliska and journalists have also reported shelling by pro-Russian forces against the inhabitants of the Ukrainian town of Mariinka." Guardian. "The attack was part of an apparent coordinated bombardment by pro-Russian separatists in multiple locations across the 250-kilometre long frontline." Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 16:29, 19 May 2022 (UTC) Adding the OSCE report dated February 18. See the situation reports for Feb 17 on page 4–7. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 17:55, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  The February 17 OSCE map shows ceasefire violations both in the government- and separatist-controlled territory, so I'm not sure how it proves that the statement in question in wrong. Alaexis_¿question? 21:19, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  Colored dots on a map don’t tell the story. You have to read the pages I pointed out and the "Table of ceasefire violations as of 17 February 20221" on page 10–13. Sure, there were more dots as on the day before but it's inconclusive at best who was shooting at whom. I spent quite a while looking at TASS news releases: with very few exceptions nothing but "Putin/Peskov/Zakharova/the Kremlin Press Service/Rep.X/Y/Z said". For a change of pace: "the DPR's representative said/Lukashenko of Belarus said/the anti-coronavirus crisis center reported". There was one item that could loosely be described as news, the FSB stating that they had arrested a Muslim terrorist with bomb making material and that he had confessed, FWIW. TASS isn't a news agency, it's an extension of the Kremlin Press Service. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 19:31, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  Assuming this is true and this is all they do, how is it it related to their reliability, which is what this discussion should be about?

  Regarding the OSCE report, the table says the same thing as the map: there were plenty of explosions and other events in non-government-controlled areas. It doesn't necessarily mean that what Tass said is true, but it certainly does not contradict it. Alaexis_¿question? 19:52, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

  "According to TASS, a Key Russian lawmaker said ...". Properly attributed but it's the "let's throw it at the wall and see if it sticks" principle. When a source publishes statements by government officials—without context, analysis, evaluation, or any kind of journalistic input—they're the bullhorn for the primary source, not a secondary source. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:22, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with this. However, it should be also noted that we are routinely doing the same with Ukrainian sources. An Ukrainian official John Doe says X, a non-deprecated source echoes X - without context, analysis, evaluation, or any kind of journalistic input - and then we publish "according to John Doe, X is the case". Instead of deprecating TASS, perhaps we should engage in a discussion on what to do when a non-reliable source's statement - a statement by an Ukrainian or Russian John Doe - is reported "as such" by a source. The proposition "John Doe says X" is verifiable, but is it also notable? Should we publish it in an article dealing with X (say, war crimes), or should we only publish it in articles dealing with John Doe? Gitz (talk) (contribs) 22:30, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

  This is an example of TASS reporting what the Russian transport minister said, as reported by the New York Times, i.e. noteworthyness established by a reliable secondary source. The RS also added context (imposition of punishments) and analysis (rare acknowledgment). (It might still be WP:NOTNEWS for WP purposes.) The difference between Ukrainian and Russian sources at the moment is that there are independent sources on the ground in Ukraine, so there usually is some checking on official reports. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 12:14, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3, deprecation would remove a potentially useful source of quotes from Russian officials. It should not be used for statement of facts.Slywriter (talk) 17:52, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3/Status quo statement of facts are now dubious, given it is now illegal to report facts the Kremlin considers inconvenient. There is a time component involved in this however. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:22, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
• 3 at best, probably 4. This is basically a propaganda agency, and essentially nothing they report about the war in Ukraine is accurate. The only thing that gives me pause is that we sometimes need to make reference to false claims in TASS, so as a primary source for it's own and Putin's b.s. ("denazification", etc.), we need to cite it. It can't be deprecated the point we block posting of citations of it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:43, 14 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 /leave as is this issue was extensively discussed in 2019 and I see no reason to change, as per VanHelsing.16 comments above Ilenart626 (talk) 06:51, 15 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4, they've gone downhill in the last three years. Previously their bias was expressed through omission which isn't a problem for us, however disinformation (the traditional realm of RT and Sputnik) is a problem for us. Two or three years ago TASS started publishing RT and Sputnik style disinformation which has been immensely disappointing but leaves us no other option than to deprecate. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:47, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

  Do you have any proof for that? Alaexis_¿question? 16:58, 15 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 - reliable only for the position du jour of the Kremlin. Elinruby (talk) 07:30, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 basically only WP:ABOUTSELF for official Russian government positions, or to cite examples of Russian state propaganda, never for stating facts in Wikipedia's voice. --Jayron32 13:33, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 Dropping from 2 to 3 seems appropriate given the current circumstances. Selfstudier (talk) 13:56, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - generally unreliable for facts, reliable for Russian government statements. starship.paint (exalt) 14:20, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 - I agree with VanHelsing. This was discussed extensively in 2019. It remains a valid source for official Russian viewpoint, in which it is reliable for. Gorebath (talk) 17:41, 16 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. Definitely unreliable and occasionally out right fake. Volunteer Marek 08:22, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 or Option 3 It is a state-owned media that is still great for offering details about the Russian government. ArvindPalaskar (talk) 12:24, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4. If we need to report on anything that comes from it, we can do so through a reliable secondary source that provides appropriate context. There is no reason to link directly to this propaganda organ. It can be trusted for absolutely nothing. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:27, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 Use it to source a fact-free statement issued by the Kremlin, sure. Unusable in any other situation. Zaathras (talk) 19:44, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 with a caveat (status quo). I understand the concerns regarding the effect of the new censorship law however I see only one example in all Option 3/4 votes. It was provided by u:Adoring Nanny and while the statement in question is likely to be false we can't be sure about it. I will change my !vote to Option 3 if such examples are provided. Alaexis_¿question? 20:26, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  • Reuters. "The TASS, RIA and Interfax news agencies quoted "a representative of a competent body" in Russia on Sunday as saying Ukraine was developing nuclear weapons at the destroyed Chernobyl nuclear power plant that was shut down in 2000."
  • NY Times. "After Russia attacked an area near the nuclear complex in Zaporizhzhia, leading to a fire, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called it “nuclear terrorism.” But according to a Kremlin statement reported in Tass, the military seized the facility to prevent Ukrainians and neo-Nazis from “organizing provocations fraught with catastrophic consequences.”

  1. NY Times. Two false claims in TASS, original and translation ("Kremlin press office stated

  Thanks for providing examples. In all cases it's clearly attributed ("The Russian Federation's Ministry of Defence reported...", "Putin told Macron", "a representative of a competent body"). The last one is a bit dodgy but reporting news with attribution to anonymous knowledgeable sources is hardly unique to Tass. Alaexis_¿question? 21:32, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4 Both Reuters [22] and Getty Images [23] have cut ties with Tass, we should as well. Tass has recently begun publishing obviously false information/propaganda, like that Zelenskyy has fled Ukraine (Video evidence suggests otherwise) or that the Ukrainians are massacring civilians in Donbas. - MrOllie (talk) 20:41, 17 May 2022 (UTC)

  It says "A story published by the Russian News Agency Tass this week quoted a Russian lawmaker saying Zelenskyy “hastily fled” Kyiv for Lviv in far western Ukraine." Assuming the said lawmaker said it, why is it false? Alaexis_¿question? 08:45, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

  Quoting someone as cover for further spreading disinformation, i.e., without TASS saying that there are contradicting reports. USN continues, "It's one of many distorted claims to emerge from a Russian propaganda and disinformation campaign that aims to strengthen domestic support for the invasion and undermine the resolve of Ukrainians." From the other source (Politico): "Tass' uncritical reporting of information from the Russian government, which critics and media experts say is propaganda.", "Tass has parroted Russia government claims that Ukrainians killed civilians in the Donbas region and dumped their bodies into mass graves, a claim that news organizations and experts say is false." See also here. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 15:17, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  Not saying that there are contradicting reports is not good journalistic practice but it's different from reporting falsehoods. I totally agree that their reporting is selective but I think that the criteria for deprecation is publishing lies deliberately. Alaexis_¿question? 21:10, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 - generally unreliable for facts, reliable for Russian government statements. --Whiteguru (talk) 21:38, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 In other words, against classification attempts like this which are always overgeneralizations, even for the worst sources such as this. North8000 (talk) 21:45, 17 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2, I don't see any reason yet for changing this from the previous RfC, where the reliability of Tass varies based on the content. It was the same thing with its articles about Ukraine etc from 2014 onwards with strong pro-government bias and parroting claims by Russian government/proxies. So still, for such topics it is best avoided, but is useful for reporting what officials say. I would go for option 3 if it is clearer that in general it is more problematic. Mellk (talk) 00:45, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 or 3 Not usable for statements of fact relating to Russian government, and barely usable for statements of opinion where not covered also by WP:SECONDARY sources. Allow use for non-controversial topics relating to Russian culture and society. CutePeach (talk) 07:33, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 Nothing seems to have really changed since the last discussion. Azuredivay (talk) 19:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 That article by TASS is questionable but it's not fake news. "TASS fairly reliable for statements of fact as stated by the Russian government, but ... deficiencies in the reliability of TASS's reporting on other issues" seems a sensible assessment. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 21:16, 18 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 Cherry picking statements in news media is original research. Major American media supported false claims about Iraq in order to support an invasion in 2001-3, but they are still rs. TASS' claim that the Donbass republics asked for a Russian invasion is not necessarily false, considering that according to International recognition of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, they "declared independence from Ukraine" and the "central government of Ukraine regards the republics as being under terrorist control." Can Adoring nanny explain why they think these republics would not ask the Russians to invade? The issue seems to be which facts TASS chooses to emphasize, rather than whether they are true. WEIGHT is sufficient to prevent an over-emphasis of non-Western perspectives, we don't have to add another ban, particularly when there is no evidence for it. TFD (talk) 02:50, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  You mean the de-facto republics that have been formally recognized by Russia and the other de-facto states South Ossetia and Abkhazia? That article ought to be called "International non-recognition", judging by the long list of states and international organizations opposing recognition. As long as we're citing an unreliable source, i.e., Wikipedia, the 2014 Donbas status referendums says that a number of nations declared the referendums to be unconstitutional and lacking legitimacy. Even Belarus hasn't recognized them; they appear to be in the "supporting" column for "respectfully understand[ing] the decision of the Russian side to recognize". Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 13:06, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  I didn't name the article. If you want to re-name it, you need to go to the discussion on its talk page. Whether or not these defacto republics are legitimate is irrelevant to whether or not they asked Russia to invade. TFD (talk) 16:03, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 4 as first choice, no on options 1 and 2. The European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA) suspended TASS on February 27, stating that because of "the new media regulation enforced by the Russian government (Roskomnadzor), which is heavily restricting media freedom", TASS is not "able to provide unbiased news." On May 13, their general assembly voted to make the suspension indefinite. According to Reuters, TASS is "not aligned with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles" of acting with "integrity, independence and freedom from bias." This sentence on the reliable sources list currently reads like black humor: Editors consider TASS fairly reliable for statements of fact as stated by the Russian government. We do not need TASS for accurate reports on what the Russian government stated, and they are no more reliable than RT or Sputnik now. The last RfC was three years ago, before laws restricting freedom of expression were amended and incorporated into the Penal Code, making them punishable by up to 15 years in prison. RIA Novosti also needs to be looked at; the last discussion was in 2016. Space4Time3Continuum2x (talk) 11:37, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 nothing has changed since the last RfC. Being biased doesn't make it any less reliable than the usual RS whose coverage of the Ukraine war has exposed their bias. M.Bitton (talk) 12:22, 19 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2: If we discount any media coming out of Russia that is potentially subject to state propaganda then as of March (but more accurately, since long before) we've discounted all media coming out of Russia. And by that standard, all outlets in authoritarian regimes. It doesn't take an editorial genius to reasonably infer when state-run media might be factually unreliable. SamuelRiv (talk) 17:57, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

  @SamuelRiv: it has been repeatedly noted that our WP:RS policy does in fact de-facto preclude the use of most outlets in authoritarian regimes in most contexts. This is generally viewed as a feature not a bug. Personally I don't think its either but I do think its more or less inevitable given the inherent contradictions between wikipedia's core values and those of said authoritarian states. Authoritarian states are habitual liars, there isn't really any other model... To stop lying would undermine the legitimacy of the very party or entity which instituted the authoritarian system to ensure their legitimacy in the first place. This same problem occurs in non-authoritarian governments the difference being that non-authoritarian governments can not force independent media outlets to conform to their lies, in fact much the opposite happens... Nothing the independent media likes more than a nice big juicy lie. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:51, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2 - The "additional consideration" being that it is unreliable for any controversial events involving Russia. TASS is used elsewhere as well, where its reporting is accurate. No need to deprecate the source entirely. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 16:45, 22 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2 - The long-standing precautions about it as state-run media still seems valid and obvious, with recent events being an instance of where additional considerations apply. I don’t see anything changed about any areas where past cites were made, or anything to indicate where it was accurate is no longer true, or much for a generalisation past the topic of the Ukraine war. And as I said in recent discussion above, even on the Ukraine war I think a direct cite may still be best in some cases - just as usual WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 15:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 2/3 Generally unreliable, reliable for statements of the Russian state and pro-government politicians (and perhaps for uncontroversial minor facts), very unreliable for controversial facts on topics where the Russian state has an interest. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:05, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 - Generally unreliable, but reliable for official statements of the Russian government officials and state decrees. Grandmaster 21:12, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

  Comment. TASS is the official state news agency of Russia. I don't think TASS has any reason to distort statements of say president Putin or laws passed by the Russian parliament. Quite the contrary, this is where the official information is published, therefore TASS should be considered a reliable source to reflect the official position of Russia, with proper attribution. However, when it comes to general reporting, TASS is a propaganda outlet, and cannot be used for statements of fact. For reliable news coverage better use third party sources with a better reputation for fact checking and accuracy. Grandmaster 10:19, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3. Of course they also publish many outright fabrications (which would be option "4"), but I am against depreciating anything. My very best wishes (talk) 19:48, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 or 4. As others have stated, Reuters and Getty Images have cut ties with them. MBFC has them listed as mixed on facts, biased on politics, and limited press freedom. It has suggested they promote conspiracy theories and it also describes them as "100% Russian propaganda all the time."[24]Disconnected Phrases (talk) 05:43, 30 May 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4, roughly half a century too late. TASS is a propaganda operation. We can discuss what it says, as described in reliable independent sources, but not cite it as an authority. I learned this at school. I left school in 1987. Why are we still discussing this? Guy (help! - typo?) 00:53, 3 June 2022 (UTC)
• Option 4: The one good argument I've seen against it is that it does sometimes provide quotes from Russian government officials. I could see an exception in this case but to be honest I'm a little worried that a source that fabricates information as blatantly as TASS does might also not be reliable for the things we think they might be reliable for. Other than that, blatantly fabricating information is an instant deprecate vote from me. Loki (talk) 16:52, 4 June 2022 (UTC)
• Comment. Could the editors who voted Option 3 or 4 provide a few references to blatantly false information published by TASS? I guess those who voted Option 2 might be willing to change their vote if they were provided with some examples of fake news. So far I've seen opinions but no evidence. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:09, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Daily Mail and Beergate

At Beergate#Responses_to_Starmer's_and_Rayner's_statements, there is a paragraph about what the Daily Mail have said about as aspect of the story. This has been justified via a citation to a Guardian article that was criticising the Mail’s coverage. Elsewhere in the article, there have been attempts to cover what The Sun has said. This seems to me to be inappropriate, but what do you think, o learned noticeboard? Do you have advice for these situations? See discussion at Talk:Beergate#Daily_Mail_coverage and Talk:Beergate#The_Sun,_May_2021 plus edit comments. Bondegezou (talk) 13:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Not really an RS issue, if an RS says a non RS said something we can source it to the RS. This seems more of a wp:undue issue. Slatersteven (talk) 13:52, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

To be honest the whole article is WP:UNDUE. It should be a paragraph in the Starmer article. Black Kite (talk) 15:01, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Cool. Maybe we should also shrink Partygate to a one-sentence footnote in the Boris Johnson article? Martinevans123 (talk) 15:06, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Aye, but Partygate isn't just about Johnson, much as many would like it to be. Also Partygate wasn't 75% invented by the Daily Mail because their proprietor doesn't like Starmer's intention to cancel non-dom status. Black Kite (talk) 17:40, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

That's true. But I'd say 80%. Martinevans123 (talk) 17:50, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The discussion is a bit vague about exactly which of many edits are the controversial ones, but I look at the current Beergate page and see what I regard as problems. For its 15 January front page, the Daily Mail used pictures from the video under its headline "Starmer the Covid party hypocrite".[16] has a cite to The Guardian but WP:RS/QUOTE says cites for quotes should be the original i.e. Daily Mail. ... Labour had said that Rayner was not present, but on 30 April 2022 the Daily Mail said Labour acknowledged she had been there, and their initial statement had been a mistake. is an attributed statement but not about opinion so would only belong if the story was about Daily Mail rather than Rayner. She also retweeted a Daily Mail story ... John Nicolson, an SNP MP, characterised the photo in the Daily Mail as "disinformation", because Frank Dobson, who died in 2019, was at the event. is false, the cited source doesn't say the photo is disinformation, but says her tweet's usage of it is. These are little problems that will probably be cleared up when the recentism fades, but the talk page argument from Bondegezou against dave souza -- "You are using the Guardian citation to get around the rule that we can’t use the Daily Mail." -- is unfortunate because there is no hint where this "rule" is. Maybe it's undue, maybe there was something impolite about it, certainly it should be properly attributed, but suggesting that a quote of the newspaper cannot even be cited looks like a misinterpretation of WP:DAILYMAIL1 not a PAG. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Peter, the version of the Dorries / Nicolson bit you've quoted was from this revision by DeFacto, I've revised that to follow the sources. While I was content with the brief mention, the Cabinet Secretary responsible for tackling disinformation retweeting a link to a Daily Mail attack piece with a misleadingly cropped photo, and claiming it's ok as a generic stock photo, looks significant. In fairness, she's got a point about "the pictures of the PM with a birthday cake outside a school - not in cake free Downing St.", but I think the captions made that clear, and they didn't photoshop it into No. 10 to represent the famous cake ambush. . dave souza, talk 16:57, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

At least for me, if we have an RS explicitly pointing to a nonRS piece, all this being considered DUE to include, then including the cite to the nonRS piece immediately next to the RS cite is fair and reasonable. If there is concern this implicitly shows support of the RS, then perhaps bundle these ala "(nonRS cite) via (RS cite)". --Masem (t) 15:03, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

As I understand it, The Daily Mail essentially launched the recent investigation through its "investigative journalism" (or political attack angle), so I cannot see that we cannot mention the paper at all in this article. It seems to me, per WP:DAILYMAIL, this is an exceptional case - it says "The Daily Mail may be used in rare cases in an about-self fashion", not a perfect match to the current situation but should guide us there is not an entire blanket ban on the paper. I think using The Guardian as the source to describe Daily Mail involvement, not using a Daily Mail cite, is the correct approach. Rwendland (talk) 15:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the discussion so far. I take the point this is partly a WP:DUE argument. I don't see that the edit of concern is WP:DUE, and by edit of concern I mean this. The article is about Beergate, what Starmer did or didn't do. We can cover that topic using reliable sources: there's no need to use the Mail (or Sun). There is nothing in the Mail's reporting that isn't either reliably attributed elsewhere (in which case, we use those reliable sources) or isn't reliably attributed elsewhere (in which case, it's not reliably sourced and we shouldn't be saying it). Where the Mail first broke a story, we can say that, as we do in the fifth paragraph of the "Reports after police reopened investigation" section (where we cover The Mail on Sunday breaking the story of the leaked Labour schedule). However, the edit in question wasn't about the Mail breaking a story. It was just airing the Mail's headline/editorial line. The Mail's headlines/editorial line in response to political events provides no reliable information about reality: that is, it is not a reliable source. Using the Guardian article as an excuse to air the Mail's line, without actually describing what the Guardian article is saying, seems to me like a backdoor attempt to use the Mail despite our consensus that it is not reliable -- just like the earlier attempts to include The Sun in this edit. Bondegezou (talk) 17:59, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for these helpful pointers, the topic is a story that at the outset was reported by The Sun on Sunday, then when Partygate reached the point where other party leaders were calling on Johnson to resign, the Daily Mail (or the government using it as a mouthpiece) brought up "Beergate" as a counter-attack. Thus, both papers are a significant part of the story, and as primary sources are useful to clarify our understanding of points about their coverage shown in reliable secondary sources. Online versions of both papers could get altered, so reporting or listing by other websites can show what they said at or near the time, for example Wayback Machine archives. I think these are instances where primary sources, together with secondary source reporting on wording, help to explain the "controversy". If needed, can go through each point when time permits. . dave souza, talk 17:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The Daily Mail headline is from the print edition not dailymail.co.uk, but I can see a copy of the front page with pressreader.com. So the cite could be title = STARMER THE COVID PARTY HYPOCRITE, publication = Daily Mail, date = 15 January 2022, page = 1, authors = Daniel Martin and Andrew Jehring. If I'm understanding MOS:SIC, the quote capitalization should be as in the original. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:56, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

I think there is a distinction here to be made which may be significant enough to overcome the deprecation of DM as a source. "The Daily Mail may be used in rare cases in an about-self fashion." is relevant here; One of those rare cases could be thus: that the DM wrote something may be necessary to tell the full story of a situation, especially when other sources are noting the importance of what DM wrote. In that limited sense, citing the original DM piece should be fine alongside of the source which notes its role in the controversy. In this case, it's a use-mention distinction kind of thing; we aren't using DM as a source of information, we mention the the DM article as playing a role in the events at hand, and including the specific article at the center of the controversy, not because it is a good source, but because we discuss it in the text and it should be accessible for the reader for further inspection, seems valid. --Jayron32 18:10, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

But where (how?) do you draw the line? In any article on UK politics, you could say, “The Daily Mail said this,” using that justification. This would just end up giving the unwanted impression that Wikipedia sees the Mail as a reliable source. How do we decide when the Mail played a large enough role in events that this is appropriate, versus when this is just being used as an excuse to include the Mail’s (unreliable) version of (others’) events? With the edit under discussion, what the Mail said then isn’t significant for the article topic. Or do you disagree? Bondegezou (talk) 19:08, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

The DM through an archive can be a reliable source for its exact wording when the article in question is shown to be significant by a reliable secondary source which may summarise or quote from it, but will usually leave out a lot of the context. . dave souza, talk 19:27, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

@ Jayron32, thanks, that's what I tried to say in my edit summary when reinstating the Sun paragraph. Reliable sources show the significance of the Sun on Sunday article, from the Wayback Machine the reader can inspect it, and the points I quoted from it about the Labour response at the time being "The Tories’ clearly haven’t read their own rules", a workplace meeting, "They paused for dinner as the meeting was during the evening", ties in with the reliable secondary source saying "Labour’s line is, and always has been, that after a day campaigning, and an evening working in the office on campaign matters, Starmer had a drink while sharing a takeaway meal with party colleagues and that, although England was in lockdown, indoor gatherings were allowed for “work purposes” and that eating and drinking like this was allowed if “reasonably necessary for work”. I think that quoting that bit from the original primary source is reasonable, but even without quoting it, the primary source confirms that the secondary statement was true of that first publication. Comments? . . dave souza, talk 19:29, 18 May 2022 (UTC)

That what the DM wrote influenced this story is supported by several RSes, so has due weight to be added and sourced to just those reliable sources. However, as the DM is deprecated, I don't think we should use any additional information which could only be sourced from it, as that would be giving undue weight to stuff that is only mentioned in the unreliable source. -- DeFacto (talk). 06:34, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Now Bondegezou has pointed to the "edit of concern". It was not about the printed-edition Daily Mail headline which is still indirectly cited in the Beergate article. Instead it's an edit which among other things bases a Daily Mail quote on an article in The Guardian saying The Daily Mail, which had called for the police to reopen investigations, said that the decision to do so "placed detectives in the difficult position" of knowing their decision would have major political ramifications. ... etc. But Daily Mail actually wrote But his opponents said this had placed detectives in the difficult position ... In other words The Guardian distorted the quote to make it appear that's Daily Mail's statement of fact, and the edit of concern would put that in Wikipedia. I see this as a justification of the WP:RS/QUOTE guideline's words: To ensure accuracy, the text of quoted material is best taken from (and cited to) the original source being quoted. The original source being quoted is Daily Mail, and in this case The Guardian should not be used per WP:RSCONTEXT, the context being what Daily Mail actually said. Apparently the quote in that edit was removed later, and I don't see how it could be saved. However, for the printed-edition Daily Mail headline STARMER THE COVID PARTY HYPOCRITE: The original source is Daily Mail print edition, I supplied the material necessary for the cite, and since it is opinion it is possible to use it (RS/QUOTE only makes an exception if it is not possible). Citing just The Guardian would not meet the guideline's requirement. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:45, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree with Slatersteven. The ban on the Daily Mail only refers to using them as a source, it does not prohibit us from mentioning them if they are reported in a rs. In fact "Beergate" was broken by The Sun which is also a banned source. Avoiding mention of these sources in the article distorts the story. TFD (talk) 15:54, 19 May 2022 (UTC)

@ Peter Gulutzan, thanks for that information, I'd missed the ambiguity in the Guardian's account. Most of the quote was still in the article, but it had been changed into a paragraph on the source's comment on the Mail story. I've rephrased it to restore the focus while still pointing out the source's comment, and noted the headline wording; "The Daily Mail on 10 May said "Starmer accused of piling pressure on police"." Think it's brest to avoid the headline capitalisation if possible. . . . dave souza, talk 09:12, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• The issue really is not using the Mail, per se, but the fact that the article still doesn't really articulate the issue that Beergate is something largely orchestrated by the Mail through a slew of highly dubious headlines (some of which tell you exactly why it's deprecated). Black Kite (talk) 09:48, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Peter Gulutzan, The Four Deuces, and Black Kite: I'm not against discussing the Mail's role in reporting on the story. The article talks about the Mail's (and the Sun's role) in various places. But this edit isn't describing the Mail breaking a story. It's just picking out some Mail headlines to repeat them. Those headlines don't add anything to the article's factual reporting, because they're not reliable, so what are they there for? We could litter every UK politics article with "And the Daily Mail said this...", and we'd end up giving the impression that Wikipedia believes what the Mail says. There has to be some WP:DUE reason to be talking about the Mail.

So, yes, if we're talking about the Mail, we can apply WP:RS/QUOTE, but do we have some guidance over when we should be talking about the Mail? The edit in question wasn't adding in what the Mail said to discuss it. It was, it seems to me, just adding in what the Mail said to give visibility to it. Have I explained my concern here? Bondegezou (talk) 12:18, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Bondegezou, Peter Gulutzan, The Four Deuces, and Black Kite: – as amended in this diff, it's clear that we're using a reliable secondary source that discusses the shifting story promoted by the DM, part of showing both that the DM is promoting an unreliable [party] line, and that it's a significant player in the [fake] controversy. Takes longer if people delete properly sourced material rather than trying to improve the wording. . dave souza, talk 12:53, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

I guess that particular edit is arguably not a clear violation of WP:RS/QUOTE. But it doesn't fix the problems with the headline quote.Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:36, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

@Peter Gulutzan:, in light of the formatting issue with the headline quote and the lack of a usable primary source, I've paraphrased it. Hope that fixes the problems with that paragraph. Thanks, . dave souza, talk 03:38, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

• We can cite non-RSes via RSes that quote or cite them; that is to a certain extent the point of an RS. If we couldn't do that, we couldn't cite anything to anyone, because everything would ultimately come down to someone doing original research on primary data. The question in this case is whether it is WP:DUE, whether it should be quoted or paraphrased, and so on, not whether the Guardian is a RS for what the Daily Mail published. It is, however, important to pay attention to the context of the proximate source. If the Guardian source is like "here's a quote where the Daily Mail says something terrible and stupid and obviously factually wrong", it's a misuse of the source to pull the Daily Mail quote out and use it without that context. Part of the reason it's acceptable to cite a secondary RS quoting an otherwise unreliable source is because we trust the proximate source to verify what's said in that manner; if you omit the context from the proximate source then that is lost. --Aquillion (talk) 17:12, 20 May 2022 (UTC)

• @Aquillion: In this paragraph we now paraphrase or repeat DM quotes from the Guardian article, and show the context of the Guardian's opinion that the DM that day was inconsistent in saying Starmer was doing something wrong but superficially it was the right thing and he had no choice, and the DM had previously been pushing the police to put him in that position. . . dave souza, talk 03:38, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

The article still contains direct quotes of Daily Mail, including editorial and headline material. For that, Daily Mail is a reliable source, and an acceptable source (WP:NEWSORG), and the source that is necessary to "ensure accuracy" while not being "partisan secondary" (WP:RS/QUOTE), and a better source than The Guardian which has been shown to distort (WP:RSCONTEXT). The guideline should be followed or the quotes should be scrubbed. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:01, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

• Option 2: See if there is a local consensus to mention the topic or not, and if so then I suggest watch the context and just use a cite to Daily Mail. A WP:DEPRECATED deprecated source is not WP:BLACKLIST blacklisted, and the difference is that exceptions are allowed by local consensus. To quote sections of the DEPRECATED text: “ Deprecated sources are highly questionable sources that editors are discouraged from citing in articles, because they fail the reliable sources guideline in nearly all circumstances. “ and “Deprecated sources can normally be cited as a primary source when the source itself is the subject of discussion, such as to describe its own viewpoint.“ VERIFIABILITY should overrule lesser considerations, and a third or fourth-hand partial of the Daily Mail words just seems less desirable than a direct cite to the whole piece. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 22:02, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

@Peter Gulutzan and Markbassett: Thanks, have added the primary source archived from the online version of the date in question. Could also add its editorial, don't think that's so controversial. . . dave souza, talk 11:07, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for listening. I hope that the rest will also be properly cited eventually but Wikipedia has no deadlines. The important thing is that citing Daily Mail is accepted practice in some circumstances. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:00, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, I've got a bit further with that, as well as finding some more reliable sources, and together they help to explain the context of what happened. Work in progress! . . dave souza, talk 22:18, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

@Peter Gulutzan, Markbassett, and DeFacto: In progress, couple of setbacks.[25][26] which I've undone with reference to this discussion. Regarding the Sun, both secondary sources discuss this article, cite adds timing and responses from Con and Lab. . . dave souza, talk 06:49, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Setbacks? I removed refs to deprecated sources which added no value to the article. What is that a setback too? I don't see anything in this discussion excusing their use when they add no further value to the article, as in that case. -- DeFacto (talk). 07:59, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Again, I just think WP cannot cover it well without such sources, so I think seek consensus to either cover it with such or don’t cover it at all. Just my opinion that if one is to cover a British scandal, the British scandal sheets simply are the best source for what sensationalism was said and what mud was thrown. Between directness and that they have WP:WEIGHT in circulation, this seems an example of why DEPRECATED explicitly allows citing. But if consensus for here is to not do so, so be it. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 13:06, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Especially if reliable sources identify the tabloids as the source of the scandal, then there's no reason not to include those initial sources adjacent to the RSes that mention those being the sources. You can't use the tabloids in isolation, and it doesn't make sense not to provide the reader with the RS link and not a link to the tabloid to see how it initially came out from that source. --Masem (t) 13:23, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

DeFacto can you point to any policy or guideline to justify your removal of the cites? Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:07, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• @Peter Gulutzan, Markbassett, Bondegezou, and DeFacto: – Bondegezou, having started this discussion, you've now expressed 100% agreement with DeFacto's Obsession with the use of deprecated sources, despite their disregard of the advice given by editors here, and still no pointer to any policy or guideline to justify their removal of the cites. Instead, DeFacto has been edit warring to delete sources, justifying this with the Catch-22 argument of deleting sources if a "deprecated source adds nothing as the sentence is fully supported by the RS" [27] or "no extra value is evident as the RS coverage covers it unambiguously" [28], then where the primary source adds more, demanding "write what they say then, and support it with a reliable source".[29] Completely contrary to the advice here, and looking increasingly tendentious. I'll join the talk page discussion, and consider the best way forward . . dave souza, talk 17:26, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Update: commented at Obsession with the use of deprecated sources. Also, note diff where DeFacto removed the Daily Mail source discussed above, with the edit summary "that deprecated source adds nothing as the sentence is fully supported by the RS", summarily dismissing the advice given here. . . dave souza, talk 18:49, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Support Dave souza. See also deprecation history and WP:WHYCITE's wording "You also help users find additional information on the subject ..." Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:26, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! Article talk page discussion under way so am hopeful. . . dave souza, talk 17:06, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Here is a list of political topics on which the Daily Mail may be assumed to be offering honest and fact-based commentary, as opposed to naked partisan political activism:

None omitted. Guy (help! - typo?) 00:56, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

A narrowly defined condition, I agree with the statement that the DM is unsuitable as an honest source of commentary, but the question here is if archived copies of the DM and Sun are primary sources which provide context where secondary sources comment on the specific articles, and these primary sources are reliable for the date and time published, also giving the exact wording they used, points which can be misunderstood if taken out of context from a secondary source, which may be less reliable for the specific point. . . dave souza, talk 19:06, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: This is a massively overblown content issue. Almost all of the material in the article were supported by reliable secondary reporting that included references to the Daily Mail (and Sun) assertions. Since the content is already covered by WP:RSN sources, there is absolutely no need, or even utility, in also including the deprecated sources around. Iskandar323 (talk) 10:16, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

  Why are you overblowing it? My aim has been to comply closely with the reliable sources, while cross-checking against the primary sources for date/timing and exact wording of quotes.
  I appreciate you've made good faith edits, some of which are helpful, but in this edit you've introduced the mangled falsehood that "The Sun on Sunday published a story on the video on page 2 in its 1 May 2021 of its print edition," implying that The Sun on Sunday publishes in print on Saturday. Clue's in the name. On closer inspection, the Graun consistently says "1 May 2021 The Sun ran a brief story about the footage", with "ran a brief story" a link to the Sun primary source, and in an earlier article the Graun said "The Sun on Sunday picked up on the clip and published a brief article on page 2 of its print edition". Both statements are true, but superficially confusing. Using secondary sources already cited, I've corrected the article, so it's now in line with the primary source. Which provides a useful check when summarising secondary sources about that specific story as published originally in a deprecated [not banned] source. . . dave souza, talk 19:06, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Raping and killing a 1-year-old in Ukraine as alleged by Ukr. politician and reported by Daily Beast and Yahoo News

Hello, I'd like to know if this article and this article constitute reliable sources for the purposes of inclusion of these contents. Please refer to this discussion on the talk page. The points under discussions are the following ones: 1) Did "Daily Beast" and "Yahoo News" exercise some kind of independent journalist oversight over the allegations of war crimes made by Ukrainian ombudswoman Lyudmyla Denisova? Are they reliable secondary sources, or are they just the bullhorn for the primary source? 2) Allegations of war crimes made by ombudswoman Denisova are per se sufficiently notable in the article War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine? 3) War crimes alleged by ombudswoman Denisova, if not independently documented, are sufficiently verifiable? Based on the answers to these questions, the editorial issue is Option 1: publish or Option 2: not to publish that According to the ombudswomen a 1 year old boy died after being raped by Russian soldiers in a village near Kharkiv. A dozen other reported victims includes "two 10-year-old boys, triplets aged 9, a 2-year-old girl raped by two Russian soldiers, and a 9-month-old baby" who was raped in front of his mother. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:05, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I would say that the Daily Beast and Yahoo News are sufficient as sources for the fact that she said it. The way you speculate about them being just the bullhorn for the primary source sets off alarm bells in my head - that logic could be used to instantly disqualify any source reporting any statement by anyone and isn't grounded in policy at all; part of the purpose of an WP:RS is to decide which quotes and claims are noteworthy. That is to say, if an RS is acting as her "bullhorn", that is an appropriate editorial judgment for them to make and is enough to satisfy the bare minimum for inclusion. It does not necessarily require inclusion - whether they are WP:DUE is another question which has to be decided by comparing the weight of this quote to the weight of what's already in the page; I do tend to agree that it's worth being skeptical about including genuine but incendiary or exceptional claims and quotes reported in reliable sources - but "they're just reporting what she says" isn't a meaningful WP:RS objection. And this isn't the appropriate place to ask about due weight issues - try WP:NPOVN. --Aquillion (talk) 06:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Even at their most depraved, no one rapes a 1 year old. This is very WP:UNDUE, and very likely a fabrication/exaggeration. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE deals with fair representation of signficant viewpoints, in proportion to their prominence in sources. It has nothing to do with personal asssessments of the depravity of a given act, or the one's personal belief in the likelihood of it being fabricated. Nightscream (talk) 17:11, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Without commenting on the actual issue here, I'd just like to say that I wish I shared your optimism about humanity. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 06:27, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. The thing about Yahoo News is that they seem to rewrite news from other sources, which tend to be reliable. In this case the source seems to be the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and the Ukrainian ombudsman, which, rightly or wrongly, are being accepted as reliable on war crimes in Ukraine in 2022. There have been quite a few allegations of rape, although I hadn't seen these in particular, and they are particularly spectacular. I would at least verify the sourcing of the articles, just because; ie did they really say it. I'd be happier if the caliber of the sources was better. These are acceptable sources, but not extraordinary as these extraordinary claims would seem to require. Yahoo is rather mediocre and Daily Beast rather sensational, if usually accurate for a certain definition of accurate. As to Headbomb's comment, I would suggest that rape in this case most likely involved penetration with an object, at least for the smaller children, and at the risk of sanctimony point out that rape is about violence, not sexual attraction. TL:DR: reluctant yes, sort of. And my sympathies are with the Ukrainians, mind you. I think the elaborate gory detail may be rather undue, and have some BLP concerns if these kids live in small villages. Sure the identifying detail may already be out there, but should we ourselves memorialize it? Triplets is pretty specific. Personally I think I would say something about the ombudsman reporting multiple rapes of children, some very young. Elinruby (talk) 07:29, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

(a bit later) on re-reading I see that the Yahoo story at least has been filtered through the Twitter feed of Iryna Matviyishyn, a reporter for the Kyiv Post and a respected journalist, which improves my opinion of the Yahoo article's reliability. I still have UNDUE and BLP concerns however. Elinruby (talk) 07:44, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@Headbomb I wish you were right but you're not. Examples: [30], [31], [32], [33], [34], [35]. EvergreenFir (talk) 15:09, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Aquillion My "bullhorn for the primary source" was actually a verbatim quotation from a discussion we're currently having about TASS (here at RSN above), my point being that just like TASS merely echoes statements by politicians without scrutiny because TASS is politically oriented (they're government agents), so popular newspapers may report shocking statements because they are oriented by marketing purposes.

I'm not claiming popular newspapers are lying, but they could be reporting the ombudswoman's statements without scrutiny because they lack motivation; and the ombudswoman herself could be reporting army officers' allegations without scrutiny because of lack of motivation, and the army officers could be reporting someone's allegations without scrutiny for the same reason. The question is: should we report them as well without scrutiny? Even without official propaganda inputs, all wars create incredible tales that are nothing but the consequence of the real trauma - no mean intentions are needed. But the standard of Wikipedia should be higher than that: New York Times, BBC, CCN, Times, Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeiner, Corriere della Sera, they don't publish news about 1-year-old raped by the Russians. Should we?

With regard to sexual violence against children, I suggested we publish "On 13 May UK representative to the UN said that there were credible allegations of sexual violence against children by Russian troops [CBS]. The issue of sexual violence against children had already been raised by human rights activists and Ukrainian authorities at the beginnings of April [CNN]" I'm also perfectly fine with Elinruby's suggestion ("On 19 May Ukrainian ombudswoman Denisova reported multiple rapes of children, some very young"). By the way, her post on Facebook (the primary source of all this) was removed by Facebook, as she explains here and can still be read on her Telegam channel here.

Final note: on War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine this is a recurring problem. For weeks we've had an intercepted phone call, released by the Ukr. army, where a Russian soldier tells his mother that he likes torturing captured Ukrainians, recalls the heroic behavior of Ukrainians who, even under the most horrific tortures, do not submit to the invaders, and mummy reacts positively claiming that "Ukrainians are not people" and that she herself would be "high" in such a situation. Source: "Ukranskaja Pravda" and the "Mirror". So we editors there need some clear guidelines from this noticeboard. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 10:56, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Ukrainian Pravda is reliable, or so I was told here when I asked. Presumably *their* source was the Ukrainian military, which doesn’t make the claim necessarily true, but Pravda is being treated as reliable enough to correctly quote the Ukrainian military. They should be attributed. Given the level of disinformation the Russian population is subjected to, I don’t find this one all that extraordinary. This particular claim has circulated quite a bit though and it would be good to find a better English-language source than the Mirror; surely one is out there. I can’t keep British tabloids straight but I remember not being impressed with that one.Elinruby (talk) 12:39, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• More has been recently reported about it. See here [36]. My very best wishes (talk) 21:10, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

@My very best wishes: wow. Thanks for that, which would seem dispositive, as a) this is a reliable source and b) specifically mentions a waiver of privacy, so... much as all this disturbs me, I withdraw my earlier BLP hestitation, @Gitz6666:, and on second thought, for a war crimes article, it probably is not UNDUE. A war crime this definitely is. Elinruby (talk) 13:23, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I don't understand why this last source would be dispositive. Nobody actually doubts that Denisova said "a, b and c" in a Facebook post, later delated by Facebook and published on Telegram. Ukrinform says what the Daily Beast says: she made certain detailed and serious (but also extraordinary) allegations on social media. Neither Daily Beast nor Ukrinform verified or corroborated in any way a, b and c - they're just reporting that she said "a, b and c". So, should we publish?
If the answer is "yes", on what basis should we refrain from publishing the (equally detailed, serious and extraordinary) claims frequently made by Russian National Defense Management Center head Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev about Ukrainian forces using hospitals, schools, residential buildings and churches for military purposes without first evacuating people? These claims are reported by TASS, and TASS is fairly reliable as far as declarations by Russian authorities are concerned; in terms of independently verifying the claims, TASS is as useless as Ukrinform and the Daily Beast. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:03, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Nobody cares what the deranged Facebook bots deleted. The difference, to AGF that you are asking in good faith, is that the Russian government has a huge history of actual fabrication, not to mention claiming they aren't doing what they clearly are doing. Do you have *any* RS repeating these claims? That's what I thought. Elinruby (talk) 15:13, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

So after all your criterion is "we trust the Ukrainians". There's no point in quoting all those UNDUE, BLP, NPOV of ours, we should say it openly and make the life of us editors much simpler: we trust the Ukrainian government, that's it. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:19, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Scroll up and see the RfC about TASS on this page. Elinruby (talk) 15:47, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

• This is an NPOV issue. Normally, you'd expect such WP:EXTRAORDINARY claim to be covered by multiple mainstream sources. M.Bitton (talk) 14:04, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Ukrinform and Kyiv Post are mainstream. It is *not* an NPOV issue. Two government agencies say this and it should be attributed, but the RS are more than sufficient. Elinruby (talk) 14:54, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

The Guardian, the BBC, Al Jazeera and the likes are mainstream sources (Ukrinform and Kyiv Post are not). AFAIK, the WP:EXTRAORDINARY claim is not covered by multiple mainstream sources, therefore, making this a NPOV issue. M.Bitton (talk) 15:12, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I've explained to you a few times now that other languages exist and see no reason to punish my carpals to go through this with you again. Elinruby (talk) 15:18, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I won't sink to your level. Please, do me a favour and refrain from replying to my comments. M.Bitton (talk) 15:23, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

I am not replying to you. Just pointing out that you have a history of disparaging sources that are not in English. Mainstream != in english. I have heard this from you at least three times since the invasion began, and in my experience ignoring you doesn't work either. Elinruby (talk) 15:41, 24 May 2022 (UTC) (comment reinstated after being removed by M.Bitton with a misleading edit summary)

The claim that a polyglot could possibly look down on non-English languages is ludicrous, but what else to expect from someone who has a history of making baseless assertions? M.Bitton (talk) 15:57, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

A *history* huh. I suggest you explain that to me slowly at my talk page, or I might take that as a personal attack. Meanwhile, I just struck the comment about the edit summary. I didn't go back far enough in the edit summary to see that you changed your comment before I replied, so it probably seemed true to you. The beta feature I am using to avoid edit conflicts let me choose not to overwrite you, but somehow it only knew about the earlier version. So I do apologize for that, but meanwhile I await with bated breath an explanation of this history you speak of. And I don't know why anyone would disparage non-english-language sources (note; sources, I said sources...) but you do seem to do so consistently. Or is it just Ukrainian? In any event, I am trying to apply reliable sources guidelines. I am sorry you don't like them. Note: *this* is a reply. Elinruby (talk) 16:08, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

Since you used the word first, you take it however you wish. The rest of your unwanted comment will be ignored. M.Bitton (talk) 16:09, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

@M.Bitton: as per WP:GLOBAL, I disagree that only WP:RS like the BBC are WP:MAINSTREAM enough to cover these claims in an WP:NPOV way. Just like little known Rappler is MAINSTREAM for the Philippines, Kyiv Post is MAINSTREAM for Ukraine, and even if they are determined to be WP:BIASED for/against their governments, it would only affect how we use them to cover such claims, perhaps requiring attribution. If the BBC and other western sources don't cover these claims at all, then there will likely be an issue identified with them, but Wikipedia is not a WP:CRYSTAL ball, and whatever the issue/s are - if//when identified - they may/will be covered too. Considering that HRW and Amnesty have reported that war crimes like these are taking place, I strongly oppose your evocation of WP:EXTRAORDINARY in relation to the Ukrainian Ombudsman's claims. Saying that Elinruby has a history of making baseless assertions is absolutely a WP:PA and completely inappropriate. Please strike your remarks otherwise I will have to ping administrators here. CutePeach (talk) 09:47, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

@CutePeach: The sources "with an apparent conflict of interest" are mentioned in WP:EXTRAORDINARY. Since you think that their comments are appropriate, you're more than welcome to ping whoever you like, or better still still, take your concerns to the appropriate venue. M.Bitton (talk) 12:47, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

"An apparent conflict of interest" does not extend to simply being of the same nationality as the two government agencies making the allegation, especially with in-text attribution. Especially when one of them is the agency that would prepare the court case. We have RS that she said this, she is an official who is an expert in what she is saying. To question this is to question the validity of the democratically elected Ukrainian government. Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• Support the use of any WP:RS, Western or Ukrainian, covering the Ukrainian Ombudsman's claims of war crimes, be them true or false. WP:INTEXT attribution may be required till the ICC makes a ruling on these cases. CutePeach (talk) 10:10, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed as per CutePeach Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Just to understand your point: would you agree on having in the same article the following text?

Since early May Russian National Defense Management Center head Colonel General Mikhail Mizintsev reported alleged cases of use of human shields by Ukrainian military and paramilitary units:

• on 3 May at schools N. 6 and N. 7 in Mykolaiv and at apartment buildings in the village of Raigorodok, Kramatorsk district [TASS];
• on 6 May from the village of Tsyrkuny, Kharkiv region, to the front line with Russian troops at the village of Borshchova [TASS];"
• and so on, so on...

I'm asking this because TASS is accurately reporting statements by the Russian army. So if we agree that statements by Ukrainian officials that have not been independently verified are per se relevant, wouldn't we be bound to admit that the same applies to statements by Russian authorities? The argument "we trust the Ukrainians" is prevented by WP:NPOV, and neutrality is very important to Wikipedia and yet difficult to obtain in an article such as War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:02, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I would start by getting rid of "reported", which implies that the statement is probably true. Also, what does "since early May" mean? But you are trying to make the question whether TASS is reliable for reporting what the Russian military say. It may or may not be reliable for that. I have already referred you to the open RfC, which seems to be leaning to no, with some dissent. The main issue, in my mind, is that the Russian military and political leadership cannot be believed when they say the sky is blue. It isn't so much that "we trust Ukrainians", as you keep saying, as that we don't believe an organization that to this day claims that it is not invading Ukraine. Is Russia invading Ukraine? Elinruby (talk) 18:47, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

The Daily Beast and yahoo news are reliable sources that the claim has been made, but cannot be used as sources that the event actually happened. The fact that the story has not received wide attention means it lacks significance for inclusion. The UN special representative for sexual violence in the area says the report has not been confirmed. That's probably why major mainstream media have not reported it. TFD (talk) 11:44, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

nod. nobody is questioning the need for attribution. I originally had BLP concerns because we are talking about child rape and small villages, and triplets is pretty specific. However, the UKrinform source provided by My very best wishes specifically mentions a waiver of privacy for the cases it mentions so this to me means that for at least the cases that it covers, so I changed my mind about whether the detail might be undue Elinruby (talk) 15:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

By undue, editors are referring to a policy called Due and undue weight.It says, "Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Merely being mentioned in a few minor sources does not establish due weight for inclusion. It has nothing to do with BLP. TFD (talk) 03:00, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

You seem determined to make me explain the top of the thread to you. I originally expressed BLP concerns (identifying victims of child rape} AND undue concerns (“gory details”). I do realize that these are different policies thankyouverymuch. This was an aside to some unhappiness with Yahoo News as a source, which is the one concern that is actually relevant to this board. I later withdrew that after realizing that the tweet it quoted (in addition to the MoD and the ombudsman) was from a reporter from the Kyiv Post, which is NOT a “minor source” when it comes to Ukraine. Despite my opinion of Yahoo News, it is used extensively on Wikipedia, and in articles on this war in particular. I say this as someone who has copy-edited almost all of them. Obviously this claim requires care however, and concern for the victims is part of that. But for at least the cases mentioned in the Ukrinform article (also NOT a “minor source” when in comes to Ukraine; you should know this) the parents have waived privacy. As for undue: this is for an article on war crimes. Although I initially suggested something like “multiple reports of child rape, some of very young children” that was in part based on the BLP concerns. If we can talk about at least some of them the kids, then I think we can be a bit less euphemistic. The exact weight that should be given to this depends on rest of the page; there are multiple gang-rapes there already, for example, just not of infants. I haven’t touched the article in a week or more, so I don’t remember all the details, but it should be discussed on the talk page. Elinruby (talk) 12:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

There is nothing in WP:DUE that discusses gory details. I disagree that the Kyiv Post is a "major source" for an article with international significance. Sources used in the article include BBC News, the New York Times, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Agency in Ukraine, al Jazeera, the Guardian, Forbes, CBC News, AP, Reporters Without Borders, Le Monde, Reuters, and many other sources that have international reach. When something is significant to the story, then it receives attention in multiple sources. Of course one would expect more in depth coverage in media close to the event. But the article cannot include everything and we must be selective in what appears. The way we do that is determined by WP:WEIGHT: we include "in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources." Coverage in a local newspaper and a few minor Western news sources does not meet the criteria. TFD (talk) 21:54, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I think you are completely wrong to belittle all Ukrainian sources like that. You clearly aren’t following the invasion articles. Those two sources are *heavily* used, therefore there is a consensus that they are reliable. If you don’t like it perhaps you should start an RFC. Also there is no “point of view” when it comes to War crimes, there is true or false, and this is the Reliable Sources noticeboard not NPOV. The question is whether these sources are reliable. But, for the record, if this was controversial you would be somewhat correct, but there is here, and would also have been, weight with respect to all the other war crimes. Bucha. The people in the Mariupol theater. All the residential neighborhoods that were shelled. The war crime they just sentenced somebody to twenty years for. Shelling the nuclear plant and seizing it for Russia. Deporting hundreds of people to Siberia. Elinruby (talk) 06:34, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

yet it still seems to me that the fact that major news outlets (not only the English-speaking ones) have not covered the verifiable info "Ukrainian ombudswoman alleged X" suggests a bit of caution on our part. Maybe that news in not notable enough in an article dealing with X, or maybe X is not sufficiently verified to be reported by high quality publications. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 07:32, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

How could it not be notable? This is the woman who brings war crimes charges in Ukraine. If she can send someone to jail for twenty years it’s pretty insulting to the entire country to suggest that this requires verification. That’s for DRC Congo and Honduras. The “major” news sources mentioned above are almost all in the US, which has just had back-to-back mass shootings which have pushed everything else out of the news cycle. But in any event you asked if the sources are reliable. They are. Sorry if you don’t like it. The NPOV board is thataway Elinruby (talk)

The significance of information is not determined by what you consider important, but what reliable sources find important. If reliable sources fail to mention something in a well-covered story then it lacks significance. The assumption of course is that major mainstream media will cover the important facts of major stories, but that's policy and if you disagree with it, you should get it changed. I am not as you falsely claim belittling the Kyiv Post. I am merely observing that they cover more information than major mainstream media which we would expect because they are in the middle of the conflict. The New York Times in comparison covers more New York stories than CP24 or the Ottawa Citizen. That's because the New york Times is a New York newspaper. That doesn't mean that we cannot use the New York Times for the article on New York City, just that stories about New York that are not covered by other sources lack significance. The New York Times of course publishes "all the news that's fit to print." Unfortunately, Wikipedia articles have restrictions on length and cannot include everything about a subject in each article. The article on New York City for example does not mention all 110 mayors, although we have reliable sources mentioning each one.

I assume by the way that unlike you major reliable sources do not consider the claims noteworthy is that they cannot be confirmed. They have a lower level of credulity than you. They are not as ready to believe everything they hear.

TFD (talk) 14:33, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I suggest you strike the personal attack. I don't know why you always feel you have to do that; I guess it often works? You're still on the reliable sources board talking about neutral point of view. According to me you are wrong about that also, but the point is, these are reliable sources. They're arguing over at NPOVN about whether Ukrainian sources pollute the discourse on the war, which sounds like your kind of argument. As for here, I think you're wrong, and you're *definitely* off-topic Elinruby (talk) 16:27, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I believe that had Denisova provided some verifiable details, quality media would have been eager to publish the news. Instead she wrote on a Facebook post "1 year old raped!" without specifying where who how d'we know, has any investigation been made, etc., so quality media thought, and I think, better wait and see whether this needs to be published or it's just war talk. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 18:30, 28 May 2022 (UTC) (sorry I had signed when unlogged)

• There were many such cases, not only a couple noticed in the title of the thread, see here, for example. These claims have been reliably reported in multiple RS and acknowledged in sources like CNN (although CNN does not provide details). When cited as specific cases with details rather than as a general trend (CNN), they need to be attributed to Denisova. This is all. My very best wishes (talk) 19:39, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

P.S. [37] - Ukrainian parliament wants to fire her. That does make her claims about this weaker, although linked sources (like [38]) do not provide any specific examples of incorrect claims by her. My very best wishes (talk) 14:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I looked at those links (via online translator; I don't read these languages) and just to confirm, that first one is a Ukrainian source even though it's in Russian, right? I know it's a fairly large media outlet; it's just hard to keep track of which outlets are owned by Russia oligarchs. The second one does get cited a lot and treated as reliable from what I have seen. Minor quibble: It's not the parliament, it's the Servant of the People party, but I think they have a majority (?) there so maybe that doesn't matter. I kind of agree with the second one, assuming this is not what she is doing; some of those concerns are what I have been calling BLP concerns. I think we should probably confine ourselves to case where a waiver of privacy is specifically mentioned. That's one thing. I still think that this is no longer an RS question, since everyone agrees the claims should be attributed. I am not entirely sure what to make of these news stories, but I agree that nobody seems to be questioning her veracity, and wouldn't it be OR if we researched her political support? That's a question. I am not particularly versed in what is or is not OR. In any event, there are literally hundreds of likely war crimes to choose from for this article, so I am not sure how much space these statements should get, as I haven't been in the article in a while and really don't want to get bogged down in it. My thoughts are these. I do not agree that Ukrainian sources are somehow not high-quality, but there *are* sources in English and rather than engaging in hand-to-hand combat over this it may be better to use one of those, and in my opinion this should be in addition to rather than instead of the Ukrainian sources. Incidentally, somebody mentioned Le Monde; it does have a story in English about child rapes in Ukraine, but it's behind a paywall and this does not come up in the first few paragraphs, so I am not sure whether it is talking about these allegations or about something like the teenagers held captive and raped until they were pregnant. Bottom line, there are a lot of rape allegations. Mention a couple of the most solid-looking and moe on, unless somebody wants to start a dedicated article for this, which I am *not* advocating Elinruby (talk) 14:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Actually that source is very relevant for our discussion.
"Denisova has been in office since March 2018. On May 31, deputies of the pro-presidential Servant of the People faction collected signatures for her resignation. Member of the faction Pavel Frolov on Facebook spoke about the claims of the Servant of the People against the Ombudswoman. According to him, the official reported cases of sexual violence "in a perverted form" against the children of Ukrainian residents by the Russian military, who later did not find confirmation (...) Dozens of Ukrainian media employees previously wrote an open letter to Denisova urging her to report only those cases of sexual violence that are confirmed by the investigating authorities. According to journalists, the reports, which are not subsequently confirmed, cast a shadow on efforts to investigate the real crimes of the Russian military".
I think this settles the question. Next move should be to open a RFC on the Daily Beast quoting this as an example of sloppy journalism. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:03, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I am not sure I trust the Ukrainian parliament over RS, and also don't recall reading that any particular claim was disputed. You're aware that rapes are generally not prosecuted, right? I don't think you can dismiss ALL these sources. And I threw out the British tabloids and all sources I wasn't familiar with...Btw..Weren't you arguing a while back that sexual violence was not really a war crime? [39] [40][41] [42][43] [44] (passim) [45] (passim) [46]

teens: [47][48][49]Elinruby (talk) 15:46, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I see that you're constantly complaining about editors making personal attacks against you but, as far as I read, it is you the one who always makes personal attacks. No, I have never argued that sexual violence is not a war crime. Please provide a Diff. or apologise here. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 16:01, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

You disputed, with some tenacity, whether it was being used as a weapon of war and claimed that it was too much detail [50] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elinruby (talk • contribs) 31 May 2022, 16:09 (UTC)

No, I did not claim that "it was too much detail". The discussion I opened was about rape "used as a weapon of war" and not - as you are now admitting - about rape not being a war crime. So either you misunderstood or you misrepresented my argument. Please be careful because the ability of reading a text, understanding that text and summarizing it accurately is very important when writing an encyclopedia. Please sign your previous comment, which you had placed randomly somewhere else in this discussion. I moved it here where it logically belongs Gitz (talk) (contribs) 16:38, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Rape as a weapon of war is a war crime. See Bosnia. And you *did* say it was too much detail. In caps, even. Item four in a long list of reasons why we should not talk about this, Also, please do not move or alter my posts. I gave you permission to do that one single occasion when we had overwritten each other a couple of times trying to do the same thing, and I was pretty specific about where it should be moved to. If you feel that something I wrote is in the wrong place, the thing to do is to take it to my talk page, as I did to yours in that instance, when we just needed some clarity about who was going to to take care of it. I suggest you re-read the section, meanwhile, if you are doing to dispute that you said what you said. Elinruby (talk) 17:09, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Nobody ever disputed that rape as a weapon of war is a war crime. I have not the time of explaining to you a discussion to which you didn't take part. The discussion is here for everybody to read, and here it's off topic. You need to re-read WP:TALK carefully because you are placing your comments randomly, constantly talking WP:TALKOFFTOPIC, bickering, making a mess of the talk. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

You did! In your previous comment. You claimed that you did not dispute that rape was a war crime because you claimed that you in fact disputed whether it was used as a weapon of war. Then demanded an apology. And this was after you said that there were no quality sources, then after these were provided, that something something about the Daily Beast. You know what? It is simply projection to say I am the one who is bickering, and I have stuff to do. Cheers Elinruby (talk) 18:04, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I did a search for '"child rape" Ukraine' (quotes an effort to minimize returns about all the other rapes) and quite a few come back, even if you throw out everything ukrainian, which I don't believe we should do. At least one specifically mentions the one year old. Note that Zelenskyy has said also that very small children have been raped. Google returns will be different depending on where you are and what else you have been searching for, but Zelenskyy at least should come up. I am just having trouble taking the conversation seriously since I am completely convinced that we would not be having all this brouhaha if we were saying that Russian soldiers like puppies. The sources are reliable for news on Ukraine; attribution should be given. Elinruby (talk) 12:53, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

"Truth is the first casualty of war"- various

So on that premise, which of the sources is an independent identification of the alleged crime not relying on the Ukrainian government as a source?Slywriter (talk) 13:52, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

why would we discount the the Ukrainian government as a source, is my first question. Attribute, sure. Refuse to publish anything they say? No. Elinruby (talk) 14:15, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Because it violates WP:NPOV to say one side of the war can be attributed at will and the other side receives strict scrutiny. It's not just this topic, it's everywhere in the encyclopedia. Ukranian claims are immediately included with attribution, Russian claims are discounted as unreliable. Additionally, when newspapers are doing no fact checking and just reciting quotes, they are window-dressing for Primary sources, no different than an interview or press release.14:36, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The Ukraininan government is not invading another country while denying it is doing so. Elinruby (talk) 14:39, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Semantics. Russia does not deny its troops are there nor does it deny soldiers are dying, nor does it claim Belgium is actually destroying Ukraine. Its reference to a Special Operation instead of a war is not sufficient justification for violating WP:NPOV by claiming it means ALL statements by the Russian government are false and more importantly, that ALL statements by the Ukrainian government are WP:DUE. En-Wiki is a neutral observer and should be documenting history without WP:ADVOCACY for one side.Slywriter (talk) 14:51, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

It still claim it is not invading Ukraine. Still. Its written military doctrine is to lie about everything. There is a difference between neutrality with respect to points of view and acting as stenographers to known and likely falsehoods. It doesn't claim that Belgium is destroying Ukraine but it does claim that the Azov Battalion was. See the maternity hospital in Mariupol. Elinruby (talk) 14:57, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

False claim by Ukraine on sinking a ship was included on Wikipedia using attribution to justify its inclusion despite the source being a politician on telegram that was blindly parroted by MSM. Ukraine is just as likely to use hyperbole and propaganda. Difference is majority of editors want to believe Ukranian statements and dismiss Russian statements.Slywriter (talk) 15:22, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

An official policy to put out disinformation is on a whole other level than sometimes being wrong. I am not familiar with the details of that particular incident at the moment, but the POINTY question this has morphed into still boils down to this: we don't quote the Russian government or Russian military because they lie. All the time. As a matter of policy. The end. Elinruby (talk) 15:37, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Interesting that you link to a Wikipedia article that has better sourcing for the doctrine not being actual policy than for the claim that it is Russian policy. Anyway, extraordinary claims by politicans in a warzone should be treated with a healthy dose of scepticism as it is in their nation's interest to paint the enemy in the worst possible light. Hiding behind "but it's attributed" is not becoming of an encyclopedia.Slywriter (talk) 16:09, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The dispute about that doctrine is over authorship, and whether it is an original proposal, or on the other hand descriptive of what the author believes that NATO does and therefore must be answered in kind. There is no dispute that this is policy. We don't just say "but it's attributed", or we would quote the Russian military. If it were demonstrated that Ukraine was deliberately and consistently making false statements as a matter of policy, I would call for us not to quote them either. Meanwhile, if the UN can quote them, then so can Wikipedia. If France or Canada systematically made false statements, I would not support quoting those governments either, and for that matter I do so with great case when it comes to the Vichy government or the immigration system on the one hand, or the government-run boarding-school system or the environment on the other. I do not support relying on American military statements about the war in Iraq. And I have now reached the limit of my patience with Russian talking points and will stop responding here. Elinruby (talk) 16:30, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Shutting down discussion with that last line is a load of bullshit and pretty close to a personal attack. But, enough have been said to prove my point that the Ukranian government is held to a different standard.Slywriter (talk) 16:48, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Russophobia *is* a Russian talking point. This is a simple fact. That may not be why you are alleging it, but the fact is that this is their defense. But if all you want is a statement that they are held to a different standard -- absolutely. A history of dishonesty does make people doubt a country's veracity. Elinruby (talk) 16:56, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Nobody claimed "that Ukraine was deliberately and consistently making false statements as a matter of policy", but eventually it turned out that Denisova was making unverified allegations which caused controversy in Ukraine and might cost her office [51]. Had we published those gory and exceptional allegations we would have been tricked by war propaganda. RS/N was the right place to discuss this. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 15:13, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Her dismissal from position does not automatically invalidate any specific claims/statement she made in her official capacity (and she made a lot of them). The specific claims can be invalidated only by other RS, regardless to an official staying or leaving the office. See Veracity of statements by Donald Trump as a classic example of claims by an official widely disproved in RS. So far, I do not see anything of that nature about her claims.My very best wishes (talk) 16:21, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Mainstream Ukrainian publications are not RS but Facebook allegations in Ukrainian are? Just checking to make sure I heard that right Elinruby (talk) 15:59, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Here the open letter, "On communication about sexual crimes during the war" (in Ukrainian), by Hromadske Radio. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 16:16, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Are European observations of Raj era about population distribution reliable ?

Recently some of my edits related to Duars(now BTR) about population distribution of the region were removed http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1089464202&diff=prev by an editor because the author refers to works done by European officer-scholars. Reasons given by the editor is here Talk:Bodoland_Territorial_Region#problematic_text. In fact, Britishers were involved in the Duar war or Anglo-Bhutan war. So, in my opinion, The author referring to works done by officer-scholars then can't be problematic. What do you think? Thank you.

• Edit The source is a PhD thesis cum Published Book. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata, A research institute, contributed to Publish the book. Publishers :Anshah Publishing (2005) and Shipra Publication(2020).

Northeast heritage (talk) 04:11, 24 May 2022 (UTC) Northeast heritage (talk) 06:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC) (Edited)

This discussion has already taken place Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_172#Are_British_Raj_ethnographers_unreliable.3F. The consensus is these sources are unreliable. Read the last two comments by Boing!_said_Zebedee and Itsmejudith. Pinging Sitush and Fylindfotberserk for visiblity. Chaipau (talk) 12:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Obviously these are unreliable, as well as newer sources that have copied those or are largely influenced by them per WP:FRUIT. - Fylindfotberserk (talk) 12:40, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Fylindf... was already pinged by Chaipau in Talk:Bodoland_Territorial_Region#problematic_text and both of them have opposed my edits based on WP:RAJ . But WP:RAJ is all about castes/races and Our discussion is not about castes and races. Author writes about population distribution based on Political mission to Bootan (by Eshly Eden and others) and Francis Hamilton, An Account on Assam, p. 67; A Mackenzie, op. cit., pp. 9-10. This is purely historical, nothing to do with WP:RAJ. Northeast heritage (talk) 14:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• WP:FRUIT is an essay (and a terrible, poorly-conceived one with no useful applicability.) As a matter of policy, we cannot disregard an WP:RS simply because we dislike its sources - an WP:RS is an RS, and outside of the limited exceptions for citogenesis, policy provides no room for editors to second-guess it based on its own sources. If otherwise modern sources have mindlessly repeated the errors of older ones that is unfortunate, but trying to remove them simply based on that interpretation is getting into WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS territory - we have to reflect what the best available sources say even if we disagree with it. If you are certain they're wrong, the thing to do is to find equal or higher-quality sources specifically disagreeing with them. --Aquillion (talk) 19:10, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I totally agree with the consensus as per archived-discussion highlighted by Chaipau. I was neither discussing castes nor using any old sources. And we can't impose our assumption on any sources. Francis Hamilton is a well-known primary source and Political missions to Bootan is a collection of multiple reports. I am not any scholar to prove or disprove that these sources belong to the racist, casteist and biased category. I've seen these sources being extensively used by well-known scholars and I've not come across a negative review about them. So, We can't assume and impose any claim on these sources. Northeast heritage (talk) 14:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Hopefully, I am being understood. Thanks Northeast heritage (talk) 14:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Especially in the case of this part of the Indian subcontinent, such sources are not entirely reliable, but we may need to use them because they are literally all we have. Anything drawn from them should be given with the source, not stated as fact. The 19th-century population of what is now southern Bhutan became a very live issue some dcades ago, with the Bhutanese refugees crisis, & I went to a conference years ago where these sources were being argued over, in the absence of any other records from the period. I hadn't seen the 2014 discussion, but don't really agree with it. Frankly the same biases are if anything stronger (in different directions) in most modern sources, so where does that leave us? Johnbod (talk) 15:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
  • @Johnbod: I think we should not be using these biased sources at all in Wikipedia. It is OK for scholars to use them critically, as some linguists working on Boro-Garo languages are doing (especially Francois Jaquesson). But if we let uncritical scholars keep transmitting these old sources, as Das has done here, we end up transmitting not just the old biases, but also wrong information. (WP:FRUIT). In many cases, we do have alternative sources. Chaipau (talk) 15:45, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

There is another removal http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1089759489&diff=prev of cited text because the text use "Duar" term which was also the name for the same region in past. Northeast heritage (talk) 15:24, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

How can you say Das is an uncritical scholar. She had done a comprehensive study about the region. You've assumed to claim - her to be uncritical, you've assumed to claim - data on population is suspect. If Wikipedia agrees with your assumptions, Surely this long discussion will not be fruitful to me. Northeast heritage (talk) 16:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The sources

To clarify,

• the Political Mission to Bhutan is a collection of four narratives based on missions by colonial representatives in the years 1815, 1837-38 and 1863.[52] The mission that is relevant here is the one from 1863.
• This was reported without critical remarks in a PhD thesis by Smriti Das (1998) [53] (p27).

The source is more than 150 years old, for one. But that is not the primary problem. The ethnic ·reporting used here is about a region that was under the control of the Bhutan government at that time, not the British. The failure of the political mission led to the Anglo-Bhutan war (1864-65). Thus both the intention of the author as well as the reliability of information conveyed—ethnic composition of a foreign land—are suspect.

Chaipau (talk) 15:51, 25 May 2022 (UTC) (edited) 15:53, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Claiming the sources to be based on suspect is another suspect. So-called foreign land referred by Chaipau was part of Koch kingdom or at least the inhabitants (Kacharis and Meches supported by Historical chronicles) supported Koch kings and had good relation with Koch rulers. Bhutan was able to conquer up to Gohain Kamal Ali, Thus there was a conflict between Bhutan kingdom and Koch-Ahom kingdom. So, They were very much clear about population. Also, there was no fixed boundary and standing army, people were free to cross boundaries, of courses, European travelled up to the capital of Bhutan then, that's why they were able to discuss the issue with Bhutia kings. European had written about Bhutia also, leave alone tract between Bhutan and Gohain Kamal Ali, where there was no proper government at that time. Northeast heritage (talk) 16:02, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

A 150 year old source would not usually be reliable. However, a PhD thesis from 1998 is reliable, as it would be the critical reflection of a modern scholar. The implication of your argument here is that no document based on primary sources from the Raj era is reliable, and therefore no modern scholarship whatsoever is acceptable dealing with this period. This is clealry a flawed interpretation. As far is it goes, Das's thesis is almost certainly a reliable source, and the inclusion of claims she/he makes should be discussed at the article talkpage. Boynamedsue (talk) 16:04, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

@Boynamedsue: I have indicated the problem with Das's thesis. Many modern scholars today regurgitate old ideas. If we let these regurgitated facts in, we end up using the old unreliable information (WP:FRUIT) Chaipau (talk) 16:30, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Old information doesn't mean unreliable and New information doesn't mean reliable. Information are verified by scholars and published again and again. Yes old sources are unreliable because we discover new things with time. It's quite funny, If we consider old information to be unreliable, there will not be any history. Northeast heritage (talk) 16:37, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Do you have a specific reason to consider Das's PhD thesis to be unreliable, related to it specifically rather than the concept of history in itself? Boynamedsue (talk) 16:50, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I have already mentioned the specific reason—Das is just regurgitating what Eden said.

• Eden writes (1864): The whole of this tract is inhabited by Meches and Kacharis, the only classes apparently able to live there in consequences of the atrocities of the Booteahs and the malaria generated in these vast jungle tracts...[54].
• Das writes (1998): The tract was formerly inhabited by people, called Meches and Kacharis, the only classes apparently able to live in these malarial zone in consequence of the atrocities of the Bhutias. [55]

In other words, Das is just paraphrasing Eden. So you can't even use a construct such as "According to Smriti Das..." in Wikipedia and quote the thesis because that would not be true. The ghost of Eden is speaking through Das here.

But continuing with what Eden writes betrays the imperial intentions which makes this claim by Eden suspect. He continues: ...the malaria generated in these vast jungle tracts, which though perfectly healthy if cultivated, are year by year becoming depopulated through the short-sighted policy of the Bootanese Government... Obviously, the reason why Eden is setting up the situation in this way is because this tract of land could be settled by farmers and used for revenue generation. Nitasha Kaul writes (2021): I argue that the British annexation of Duars did not proceed from the Eden Mission, but rather the Eden Mission proceeded from the British desire to annex the Duars, a policy that existed for years before the 1860s[56] (p325).

Chaipau (talk) 17:58, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

What is the problem with paraphrasing? Does this prove the old (original) information false/unreliable? Are you saying - she should have manipulated the old information? She considered it worth mentioning, thus she took it and she gave credit. Are you saying - she should have manipulated the old information? This can't be an issue. This information fits in historical context, thus she took it. If you infer anything from WP:RAJ, it's WP:FRUIT. Please, use WP:RS to argue. Show us something recent which refutes what Das mentioned. Northeast heritage (talk) 18:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

This is how academia works. You read an older source, and if you believe it to be true, you state in your own voice that it is so, giving credit to the original author in a footnote. This is why she paraphrases. It is exactly what we do on wikipedia! Boynamedsue (talk) 20:10, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I am sorry I do not agree. I am intimately familiar with academia and nowhere in quality work have I seen a primary source just quoted without quotation marks (as if plagiarized). Even Wikipedia wants us to write a claim in our own words. It is impossible that the duars were inhabited only by the Koch and Mech peoples. There were Bhutanese from the mountains and other plains peoples. These were domains of the Goalpara zamindars. The Darrang Duars were shared between the interesting, because the Ahom kingdom controlled it for a few months in a year and Bhutan for the rest. This is given in Das (1998) itself, in the same chapter where Das parrots Eden. The simplistic picture painted by Eden is false. The information contained in the same chapter in Das is enough to contradict the sentence plucked from Eden. Chaipau (talk) 00:47, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

She doesn't use the exact words, she paraphrases and cites. That is not plagiarism. Below you state that you consider Das to be reliable, in which case this discussion should be moved to the talkpage of the article.Boynamedsue (talk) 06:17, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• Q: Das's advisor J. N. Phukan does seem to a recognized specialist in Assamese history, but is there any indication that Das's thesis, Assam-Bhutan relations with special reference to duars from 1681 to 1949, has been republished by an academic press, independently reviewed, or cited positively by later scholars? Note that those are some of the factors outlined at WP:SCHOLARSHIP when considering whether a dissertation should be cited, which should always be with care. A search on JSTOR, Google scholar and Google books didn't bring up anything relevant. Abecedare (talk) 20:47, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

This has been published, it seems, by Anshah Publishing House (2005).[57] This is a good work, in general, and I was the one who inserted it and used it in the article.[58].

Nevertheless, I am concerned that many of the scholars from that part of the world very often repeat Raj authors, myths, legends, etc., without any critical remarks. I was under the impression that WP:RAJ took care of that situation—that we assume Raj sources skeptically at first and accept them only if they are critically accepted in recent scholarship or are reasonable. This would allow us to use recent scholarship without the bad portions tainting the entire work. Das's work is one such example. Eden's writings are basically the groundwork for the coming Duars war and was in portions either partially true on totally false. There are also instances when these outdated and incorrect work get used for pushing political POVs. I wonder whether we need a wider discussion on this. We have had a number of such issues in the past.

Chaipau (talk) 22:32, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I can't agree because our discussion isn't about ONLY people (Koches, Meches, Kacharis in all duars and Meches and Kacharis in tract between Bhutan and Assam) who lived in the region and ONLY is not my addition and the context has been unnecessarily changed into politics. Eden et. al had written about what they had observed about people of duar region. Tribal regions of old times were very different from what we see today. Different tribal groups lived in different regions that's why in northeast places were/are known as Garo hills, Khasi hills, Naga hills, Kuki hills, tripura hills, Kachari duar, Cooch Behar etc. Also, When a region became part of some kingdom then that region mightn't necessarily be inhabited or occupied by the people of the conqueror kingdom. Regions were conquered to collect taxes, control trade etc. Imposition of today's politics won't change History. Northeast heritage (talk) 03:52, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Just like Raj-era scholars are known to have political motives in their interpretations, Similarly, so-called modern scholars of Assam aren't free from political motives. Northeast heritage (talk) 04:00, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I am not a scholar. I won't be able to counter so many assumptions (which, I think, We shouldn't discuss as per WP:OR or WP:FORUM). I am getting a headache. I won't be able to take part in this discussion anymore. Thank you all. Northeast heritage (talk) 04:08, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• I would suggest this discussion should be closed. The question here is the Reliability of the cited work, Which is Das's thesis. Chaipau states they consider this thesis to be a reliable source, therefore the discussion of how it is used in the article would be a matter for the talkpage of the article in question. Boynamedsue (talk) 06:41, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I do not agree that the issue is about the reliability of Das's thesis alone because (1) the sentence in Das is almost identical to Eden's, and (2) other sections in Das's chapter seem to add other ethnicities. Though this might seem like a hair splitting, we would like some general consensus on how this type of situations should be handled, since they appear more often than not. I would like to seek abecedare's comment on whether there exists a need to handle the issue of questionable information passing through sloppy scholarship in otherwise reliable sources here. If there is, I shall tag some additional editors who have faced similar situations in this area. If not, we may continue this in the talk page. Chaipau (talk) 14:09, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

In that case, you should start a new discussion, unconnected to this particular instance. What you really want to know is "can any source which accepts or repeats claims made by British writers living and working in India during the raj be considered reliable for that information?" The answer is, of course, likely to be "yes, on many occasions it will be". Boynamedsue (talk) 15:39, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Not true. The Raj claims on ethnicities, by default, are not reliable.Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_172#Are_British_Raj_ethnographers_unreliable.3F I have pointed this out a number of times here and in the talk page. Chaipau (talk) 15:48, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Final thought, She mentions the worth mentionable ethnicities of pre-colonial era (in historiography). There is difference between historiography and ethnography. We aren't using RAJ sources. We are using a source published in Independent India. Northeast heritage (talk) 15:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Yes, but that is slight-of-hand move to quote the near identical sentence that originated in Eden. You cannot use Das (1998) as a fig-leaf to cover Eden (1864). WP:FRUIT applies. One of the key sentences in that essay is Avoid sources that trace back to unreliable sources. Therefore, you cannot use this quote from Das 1998. Chaipau (talk) 16:10, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Avoid sources that trace back to unreliable sources quote refers to absolute unreliable sources. There is difference between absolute unreliable sources and unreliable due to being old and belonging to raj-scholarship. I would suggest our Wikipedia community to update the quote Avoid sources that trace back to unreliable sources by Avoid sources that trace back to absolute unreliable sources. Sorry if my suggestion is wrong.Northeast heritage (talk) 18:40, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• WP:FRUIT is just a poorly-conceived essay; it does not apply to anything. Policy, which defines WP:RSes, does not allow you to selectively disregard them because you have personal quibbles with their sources. If it allowed that anyone could disregard any source at any time by tracing what it says back far enough - I cannot underline enough what an awful and poorly-considered essay FRUIT is, expressing terrible opinions that have no basis whatsoever in policy or practice and which would cause endless problems if treated as anything but the joke they are. Now, a source might be a weak or bad one for any number of other reasons; but analyzing its sources does not generally come into it - that is trying to second-guess the source with your own WP:OR and has no place here. --Aquillion (talk) 19:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. Maybe I'm just not familiar with the way PhD dissertations are treated in the humanities, but I was under the impression we should avoid citing them unless they have received substantial citations and/or reviews. Merely being a published work shouldn't be enough. And if a (barely-cited) dissertation is the only source for particular info then that info should not be included at all, since we need evidence through discussion by multiple secondary RS that it is actually WP:DUE. JoelleJay (talk) 18:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

That is an accurate summary of the prevailing consensus about the use of doctoral dissertations and theses: They're often reliable sources but rarely are they noteworthy enough to warrant inclusion in an encyclopedia article. ElKevbo (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Agree, We need multiple secondary RS to satisfy WP:DUE but scholarship about the region is very rare. We are discussing a place which belongs to a state called Assam where the census isn't even published correctly. So, It would be very hard to give multiple citations. Northeast heritage (talk) 19:36, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

If there are not many or any reliable sources about a topic then it should not be included in this encyclopedia. ElKevbo (talk) 23:11, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your valuable input. I agree we should take care of WP:DUE. This thesis is also available as a published book, publisher- Anshah Publishing House and also used in China’s India War- Collision Course on the Roof of the World, publisher- OUP India. I would like to know if WP:RAJ and WP:FRUIT are applicable here as these two guidelines were used to counter my edits. Northeast heritage (talk) 05:07, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Is Anshah Publishing House a reliable publisher? ElKevbo (talk) 11:32, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I quickly searched the RSN archive and there is no prior discussion here on the publisher. I had not heard about it earlier. I searched for it on the web, and could find no website, though I could get a physical address. But the books published by it are available in online outlets, like amazon, abebooks etc. My take is that it is not the publisher that will give it added reliability, beyond it being a thesis with a known supervisor.

Having said that I would like say that to me this looks like a generally reliable source on a rare subject. Given the quality of PhD theses produced in its class, this is a rather comprehensive and solid piece of work. It is a thesis of the "literature search" or a review of "primary/secondary sources" type. As Johnbod has pointed out, we should probably hold on to whatever information we have here. Nevertheless, since it is an uncritical work, we need to be cautious and apply other Wikipedia rules, conventions, and guidelines as necessary. Chaipau (talk) 13:48, 27 May 2022 (UTC) (edited) 13:49, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

• I mentioned this above, but FRUIT is an extremely poorly-conceived essay. It does not apply here because it does not apply anywhere - WP:OR, unlike FRUIT, is policy, so is completely unacceptable to try and use WP:OR to dig into a source's own sources and use that as a reason to argue to exclude. Anyone who tries to cite FRUIT can be safely ignored outside of a brief reminder that it is not policy. --Aquillion (talk) 19:17, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

@Aquillion: Thank you for such an eloquent clarification.

More about The sources

Searchwork.standford.edu, catalogue.nla.gov.au and www.nlb.gov.sg say that Author is Smriti Das, Publisher is Delhi : Anshah Pub. House, 2005. and Contributor is an autonomous research institute - Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. This thesis is also published by Shipra Publication. It's plausible that Anshah Pub. House has closed its business. https://ir.nbu.ac.in/handle/123456789/195 University Library, University of North Bengal is also its publisher. I've gone through the chapter. Her work is comprehensive. She was very specific about the region. Her work is very much critical. Each and every line is properly cited in her narrative about the region. I think her Historiography is absolutely fine. I don't understand why Chaipau claims her uncritical and considers those tribal communities not worthy of being mentioned. Northeast heritage (talk) 16:01, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

In other places Das mentions other groups: Totos (p34); Kacharis, Assamese, and Bengalis (p35); Monpas (p36); Bhutia (p28) etc. So obviously Eden was making a false claim. Das also fails to point that when Eden wrote the report that the Assam Duars had already been in British possession for at least 20 years, since the 1840s. So when Eden accuses Bhutan of its policies affecting the demography, did he mean the two communities were present only in the Bengal Duars, which Bhutan had control over, or the Assam Duars as well, which was under British control. The information is there in the thesis, but Das provides no critical input to reconcile the differing accounts.

A reasonable sentence in Wikipedia would be "The duars were inhabited by the Mech, Koch, Kacharis, Assamese, Bengalis, Monpas and Bhutias.", but that would come with a hint of WP:SYNTH. It is best to avoid the demographics till new reliable sources become available.

Chaipau (talk) 14:16, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

You claimed her uncritical. You applied WP:RAJ and WP:FRUIT to PhD thesis converted to a Published Book by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata which is a misapplication of that policy according to Boynamedsue. You claimed -"I am intimately familiar with academia". Your critical understanding has to offer us "The duars were inhabited by the Mech, Koch, Kacharis, Assamese, Bengalis, Monpas and Bhutias.". Das' critical understanding has to offer us "The tract(BTR) was formerly inhabited by people, called Meches and Kacharis, the only classes apparently able to live in these malarial zone in consequence of the atrocities of the Bhutias. South from this, there is a plain which varies from 16km to 32km in width, and was chiefly occupied by Koches and Rajbongsis.. Are you able to see the differences? Doors or Duars and The tract (BTR) between Bhutan and Gohain Kamal Ali aren't the same thing. She refers to well-known communities. It is a wastage of everyone's time to argue on unnecessary things, For example - She gave example about Totos of Jalpaiguri district to explain about Bhutanese Administration. Monpas of Koriapar Duar of present Arunachal Pradesh. Assamese and Bengalis were officers because no Bhutia settled in the Duar areas, their offices aren't mentioned where and for which region, and how officers can represent habitation of mentionable community. It is well-know Assamese (Ahom) ruled from Rangpur and officers like Barphukans lived in Guwahati, and I don't know much about Bengalis because western part of Duar is in West Bengal which isn't part of our discussion. Multiple times she mention that no Bhutia settled in Duar areas and She mention about Bhutias taking possession of Duars under pressure of tibetan government. This is of course written which is the cause of Koch-Bhutan, Anglo-Bhutan wars. Thus, She is no way uncritical, She had written what is crystal clear about the region. She didn't speculate based on officers and invaders. Your speculations belong to Dooars. Please, Read both the sources (Das and Eden). It's crystal clear what is meant by the tract because just before the sentence list of duars within the tract they mentioned. Wherever Bhutanese violated the policies, It has nothing to do with habitation of people. Where they violated the policies is also written by Eden et. al. Just like we follow WP:NOTEVERYTHING, Similary all the speculations aren't scholarly. Hopefully, You are satisfied. Health is wealth, Stay safe, Thank you all. Northeast heritage (talk) 17:38, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

You are presenting a point of view. But that view should come from a reliable secondary source, not from editors. Unfortunately Das is not providing one. That is why Das is not critical - she has not critically examined these contradictory claims in different sources. Chaipau (talk) 19:19, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• I would like to request more experienced Wikipedian to observe if this discussion has become WP:GAME. Northeast heritage (talk) 19:08, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  We are seeking WP:CONSENSUS here on the reliability of Das and/or Eden on that sentence. I am not sure this is becoming WP:GAME. Chaipau (talk) 19:26, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  Das unreliable

  JoelleJay suspects Das is unreliable

  ElKevbo) agrees Das is unreliable, but is open to know more.

  Das reliable

  Boynamedsue has suggested that Das is unambiguously reliable, and Eden's reliability is immaterial.

  Maybe ...

  Johnbod suggests that even if Das is not reliable, we should be able to salvage something because this is rare information

  Abecedare thinks Das could be reliable but is seeking more information.

  Das is reliable here, but probably not in others

  Northeast heritage's position is that Das's claim based on Eden is the only correct information, whereas the other information in Das are not.

  Das is not reliable here, but reliable in general

  Fylindfotberserk's opinion is that this particular claim by Das is not reliable.

  My position is that there are seemingly contradictory claims in Das's chapter and Das has not provided any resolution. In other words, my position is a combination of Johnbod's and Fylindfotberserk's positions.

  I have pinged all the editors named here so they may correct me if I have stated their positions wrong.

  I would like to point out that your original notice was whether Eden is RS, not whether Das is RS. Nevertheless, our discussion has focused on Das. This is, I think, because there is no doubt that Eden is not RS.

  Chaipau (talk) 20:35, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

*Hopefully, more experienced Wikipedians do understand our stances just going through the discussion. Still, I am repeating my stance:- Eden et. al is a primary source. Das is a WP:RS secondary source (from 1998). WP:RAJ and WP:FRUIT can't be applied to Das' work." We already had a long discussion about the quality of Das' work. Just as you have stated Das is uncritical and Eden et. al is suspect, similarly your assumption Das's claim based on Eden is the only correct information, whereas the other information in Das not. on my stances is wrong. Instead, I have explained why your WP:SYSNTHESIS may be wrong and I've asked to add your speculations (if belongs to WP:RS) in other article Dooars. Lastly, Your wrong assumption about my stance make me feel like going via on-trial, I don't know if there is some guideline to avoid such situation. Northeast heritage (talk) 04:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I've shown there are no contradictory claims in Das' chapter while explaining your WP:SYNTHESIS. You add new issues without any proof to make the discussion longer. I'm not aware if this fall under Wikipedia policies.Northeast heritage (talk) 06:18, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I am using "critical" as given in the third meaning of the Webster dictionary here ("exercising or involving careful judgment or judicious evaluation"). Das has not provided a critical review of the demographics of the region. For example, she writes: "Most of the Katma and Lashkar were Kacharis, Assamese and Bengalis because no Bhutia settled in the Duar areas" and also "He then collected all the Bhutias of Duars, the Kacharis and Meches living between the..." These are definitely contradictory statements found in Das, and Das gives us nothing to reconcile them. You seem to prefer the first statement. But then the first statement also says the Kacharis, Assamese and Bengalis officers settled in the Duar regions. So which one do you prefer? How best do you want me to state your position. Could you please give me an example and I shall correct it. Chaipau (talk) 16:05, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Chaipau: Though WP:RSN is not place to discuss content dispute, I am giving my points. These two statements don't contradict. "He(Naranaryana) then collected all the Bhutias of Duars, the Kacharis and Meches living between the..." add this to the expedition of Naranaryana. "Most of the Katma and Lashkar were Kacharis, Assamese and Bengalis because no Bhutia settled in the Duar areas" add this to Dooars. Eden et. all had written their sentence in the present continuous tense. Eden et. al is eye-witnesses of 1800s. Historically there was no strong boundary. Duars region is larger than the BTR region. I believe that you are aware of surveys and censuses of the Raj-era where not a single Bhutia was reported. Wherever Bhutias lived went to Bhutan. You're free to write as per the source in the right context. Kamta and Laskar were officers just like today's officers. I believe we can't compare between when there was no well-recognised boundary (Naranarayan-era) and when there was a well-recognised boundary(Raj-era). Not only Kamta and Laskar, You can add British officers who administered this region. Also, Expedition of Naranayana doesn't confirm whether he was collectinng settled Bhutias or he was collecting migratory Bhutias. In Bhutia chronciles, they are said to be taking possession of Duars under pressure of Tibetan government. Your claim But then the first statement also says the Kacharis, Assamese and Bengalis officers settled in the Duar regions isn't true, She says Kacharis, Assamese and Bengalis had to be Kamta and Laskar officers because Bhutanese didn't settle. I already said officers lived where their rulers posted them and There is difference between Duar and BTR. Probably Kachari officers handled Kachari duar and Assamese(Ahom) and Bengali officers handled which weren't Kachari duar. Making multiple Bad Faith Assumptions to win an argument does seem to violate Wikipedia policy. If you have clear proof of Kachari, Assamese, Bengali officers settling in the BTR, Please add, but her comment doesn't prove so. Northeast heritage (talk) 16:48, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

@Northeast heritage: I agree with you that all you have said are possible explanations. There are probably more. It is unfortunate that Das does not help us pick the right one. That is the issue here.

I do not want to prolong this discussion. Let us wait for more inputs. Chaipau (talk) 22:18, 29 May 2022 (UTC) 16:31, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

My explanation was to show that there are no contradictory statements. Das couldn't find other mentionable ethnicities while doing her research, so she mentioned only well-known ethnicities. If historical documents support the existence of other ethnicities, it will be updated. I believe that scholarship is an incremental process. For example - There is Tripura rajmala which gives other than present narratives of Assam. There is an ancient Kachari chronicle in DHAS which is yet to be studied and published. Assam history will be written to reconcile with these chronciles. Then Wikipedia articles will also be updated. Northeast heritage (talk) 04:02, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

• Comment. India's northeast is one of the most active areas of modern Indian history writing. There is no reason to use Smriti Das's book, not because it uses British gazetteers uncritically, but because it is poorly written. Please examine the conclusion. I can't figure out what it is. Not only is it littered with spelling errors, but it reads like a high-school essay, an effort to fill space any which way. They paid tribute it says so they were tributaries. So please don't use that book. Please don't use the gazetteers either not because they are British but because they are old. Here are two modern books:
• Misra, Sanghamitra (2011), Becoming a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Identity in Colonial Northeastern India, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-61253-1
• Goswami, Uddipana (2014), Conflict and Reconciliation: The Politics of Ethnicity in Assam, Transition in Northeastern India, London and New York: Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-71113-5

Misra, a historian, was Peter Robb's PhD student at SOAS, and Goswami, a sociologist, was Tiplut Nongbri's PhD student at JNU. There are many other scholarly books. Best regards, Fowler&fowler«Talk» 10:57, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

If it is a question of accessibility, please ask at the relevant WP help desk and someone will get the relevant chapters for you. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

I think Misra's is the better effort. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 11:08, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

@Fowler&fowler: Thank you. I have read only one chapter which i found factual. So, I tried to use the book. I wasn't aware of her conclusions. I will no more use the book as there are reasons not to use it, but I doubt if there is any other source which can give a clear picture about the region. And I've learnt that WP:RAJ and WP:FRUIT can't be applied to WP:RS sources which i wanted to know. Northeast heritage (talk) 12:34, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Nah I don't think it is the WP:RAJ or the other link that is the reason. I don't entirely agree with those links. The British collected a lot of data, on caste, on population, on geography (the Great Trigonometric Survey was a monumental effort), on languages (Gierson's Linguistic Survey of India collected some marvelous [gramaphone recordings], dictionaries in many South Asian languages. Platts Urdu dictionary is still used by many people, including scholars. I remember the great Pakistani Urdu poet Fahmida Riaz saying somewhere before her death that she learned a lot from Platts. Absolute monumental effort. In almost every aspect of Indian life, the British recorded data. The censuses are used by all historical demographers. Before the British there is nothing like this data in Indian history.

The reason why we can't use them is that they are now WP:PRIMARY sources and we are not trained in their interpretation such as a demographer might, or a linguist might, ... It needs training to figure out what aspect of the data is reliable and what is not.

We rely instead on a modern book, which might be using the same British data, but whose author has some insight on how to interpret it, to separate the wheat from the chaff. That is the reason.

Das's book is a separate issue. It just seems poorly written. Too many red flags. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:07, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment. I agree with you that Das in unable to interpret the sources which has been the main source of confusion. To be clear, there are some sections of the thesis that does not require interpretations, which is where I want to retain its use.

Furthermore, though the British did well in some linguistic studies, their reports require significant interpretations especially in the area of northeast Indian languages/ethnicities, as Jaquesson has done here (see his comments on Hodgson). Chaipau (talk) 14:03, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you all. I've decided not to use the book as per discussion. This thread can be closed. Northeast heritage (talk) 12:52, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Thank you Northeast heritage for bringing up this discussion. I agree that Das and Eden both are not reliable sources. Requesting WP:CR. Chaipau (talk) 11:26, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

muckrack.com

Before I go and wipe out references across 200 articles, I figure I should confirm my suspicion that muckrack.com is not a usable source as it is user-generated.

example - [[59]]

Slywriter (talk) 23:38, 24 May 2022 (UTC)

"A centralized Public Relations Management (PRM) platform to help your team build media relationships, collaborate from anywhere, and measure success." sounds eminently wipe-able. Per WP-philosophy you should make some effort to replace while wiping, though. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:05, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

I think that their page for journalists ("Muck Rack provides free tools to help journalists like you automatically compile and showcase your portfolio...") is further evidence that Muck Rack should not be regarded as a suitable source. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:03, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

I would say it is an WP:ABOUTSELF source in BLPs and a usable primary source for e.g. noting that X journalist has contributed regularly to Y periodical, but I would not use it beyond there. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:14, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

The verified profiles, yes, a bit like LinkedIn. But there are also unverified profiles and they let people claim profiles through the web. --Seggallion (talk) 17:34, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Generally unreliable and self-published. Muckrack pages are generally made by a bot, without the journalist's input. It's wholly unreliable for attributing an article to a particular person, and the bot often gets confused when there are multiple non-verified journalists with the same name, leading to some problems given the lack of effective human oversight over the bot queries. It is not ok to use in a WP:BLP (per WP:BLPSPS), unless the particular MuckRack profile is verified and used in accordance with WP:ABOUTSELF. I personally would not place it as an WP:EL unless it were verified, owing to issues with its quality. — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 18:37, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Texas Attorney General's interview reliable or not?

Talk page thread: Talk:Robb Elementary School shooting#Texas Attorney General Ken_Paxton's comment removed

(Permanent link)

Proposed text and the source:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton responding to a question on why he resisted gun control, said that he believed shooters wouldn't follow the law, and he'd rather see citizens "armed and trained" so they could respond to events such as mass shootings. Republican officials have also called for increasing security presence in schools, limiting entryways into schools, and arming teachers and other school officials.

References

Texas AG gave interview to Newsmax, AG was quoted in The Texas Tribune, a reliable source. I believe that AG is the source here. Iamreallygoodatcheckers had added it But @Chesapeake77 has removed [60] [61] and is blocking this content claiming Newsmax is unreliable. Please help to determine if this can be considered reliable source or not? Venkat TL (talk) 18:20, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Hi, It was removed because the Texas Tribune article is using material from a NewsMax article (and the Tex. Trib. fully acknowledges this in the article).

PLEASE NOTE: The problem is NewsMax references and citations are BANNED on Wikipedia. If you go here (AND SCROLL DOWN) you will see a list of BANNED (and ACCEPTED) news sources for Wikipedia-- (Click Here and scroll down)-- WP:RSPSOURCES.

By all means, do go find another conservative news source to add balance to the subject in the paragraph. But it can't be a copy of NewsMax reporting because that is considered an unreliable source on Wikipedia.

Also, I did not "block" it, I reverted it.

Respectfully, Chesapeake77 ^{>>> ♥ Truth} 19:24, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Chesapeake77, while I agree re: Newsmax, in this instance, it's the Texas Tribune's reputation on which we are relying. They are entitled to find something pertinent and accurate on Newsmax, and it it passes their fact-checking and editorial processes, then it is okay for inclusion on Wikipedia by my lights. There may be other questions about whether the material is actually WP:DUE, but I would say it should not be reverted on non-RS grounds. As ever, just my opinion. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:30, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Sometimes a simple attribution can make all the difference in finding consensus. Just a possible suggestion. IMO Newsmax is very slanted, and if no other sources say it, it's probably just Newsmax's opinion. DN (talk) 19:38, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

NewsMax is indeed righteously deprecated. I not sure that extends to saying that the Texas Tribune (a gold-standard reliable source for Texas) cannot report what a politician says on their network, although I guess they could misleadingly edit the video. However, the fact that he said this is not exactly shocking and a few other sources have now published this, so rather than trying to parse this I would suggest using [62] or [63] or [64] Elinruby (talk) 19:42, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

• It should be perfectly fine to use the Texas Tribune source to verify that Paxton made those remarks in a TV interview with Newsmax. I'm sure this has been done before in similar scenarios. ––FormalDude talk 20:03, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
• Source is usable per FormalDude. Iamreallygoodatcheckers (talk) 22:58, 26 May 2022 (UTC)
• Source is fine, per the above. The source we are citing is reliable, and can be presumed to do their factchecking. While we don't cite NewsMax directly with good reason, quotes from interviews that have been cleansed by passing through the editorial controls of actual reliable sources are fine. --Jayron32 14:15, 27 May 2022 (UTC)
• The Texas Tribune is a RS. The fact that they are quoting NewsMax (which isn't) doesn't matter, because part of the purpose of an RS is to cover stuff for us that we wouldn't cite or describe directly - the presumption is that the editorial controls and fact-checking of an RS will handle any issues caused by the original source. The only caveat is that you have to pay attention to how the RS handles it and reflect that; if an RS quotes something but says it is blatantly wrong, then you have to include that or you're misusing the source - but I don't think that that's the case here. So WP:RS-wise it is fine. The question is WP:DUE, not WP:RS. --Aquillion (talk) 18:56, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Reliability of Euromaidan Press

Recently, a discussion has started between me and @Mhorg: about the reliability of Ukrainian English-language online newspaper Euromaidan Press. Mhorg argues that Euromaidan Press supports a pro-Ukrainian government agenda and should be considered propaganda, while I argue that, while being supportive of Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, Euromaidan Press is an independent and reliable source, which receives support from notable liberal democratic institutions like the International Renaissance Foundation and the Open Society Foundations and is mainly supported by readers' donations. I would like the topic to be clarified.--Karma1998 (talk) 13:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

Absolutely an unreliable and extremely biased source for everything related to Ukraine. "Euromaidan Press is an online English-language independent newspaper launched by Ukrainian volunteers in 2014"[65] Yes, "Ukrainian volunteers" or "activists" or people who already have a very precise vision of the world, that of Euromaidan (which is the name of the newspaper inspired by those events). Giving space to this source would be to pollute the debate, in the same way as Sputnik does for Russia.

For example, in 2014 this newspaper whitewashed the Azov Battalion, even when all Western sources referred to it as a neo-Nazi or far-right battalion.[66] And again.[67] There is not even a mention of a right-wing ideology of the battalion... it is presented as just any military formation.

Here an interview with Andriy Biletsky founder of Azov, described by many Western RS as an anti-semite, called "The White Leader". Not even a mention of his past in their articles... he is presented as just any commander of the war.[68]

Here we have an article about Right Sector, not even a mention to their links with Ukrainian far-right circles, presented as just any military formation. [69]

I hope I was clear enough, but other cases can be brought up as well, their site is full of biased articles. This is not independent journalism, it is biased journalism by activists who have a very clear political position. So no, it cannot be used for matters involving Ukraine, too much conflict of interest. Mhorg (talk) 14:10, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

conflict of interest does mean not “supports the Ukrainian government”. As per the name, they are in favor of democracy, yes, in an area where this is still controversial. What is the exact source and statement it is supposed to support? Elinruby (talk) 15:01, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Elinruby: there is a difference between "biased" and "unreliable". Jacobin and The Nation are clearly biased, but are not always unreliable.-Karma1998 (talk) 16:18, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

This is true also. Of course. But as a separate matter, “conflict of interest” does not mean what Mhorg seems to think it means. Elinruby (talk) 18:37, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mhorg: as for the articles you provided, these are simply articles about the war and the conflict. Their focus is not the ideology of the mentioned people. As for the comparison with Sputnik News, it's nonsense: Sputnik is owned and financed by the Russian government, while Euromaidan Press isn't-Karma1998 (talk) 16:12, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I read the discussion between Karma1998 and Mhorg and I think that context matters. Is Euromaidan Press reliable for statements of fact? Maybe it is (I'm not an expert and I haven't done research on this). Is it reliable for assessing the political situation and for value judgments? Maybe it is, within the confines of WP:BIASED. Is it reliable for assessing the academic standing of its contributors? Definitely not, as Euromaidan Press is not an academic outlet. So Anton Shekhovtsov's reliability as a source and his notability as academic (which I don't doubt) should be established elsewhere, on a different basis. And the same applies to Stephen F. Cohen - another author you were discussing about. His expertise in the area of his studies cannot be questioned on the basis that "The Daily Beast", "New Republic" and other news websites/magazines labelled his views as pro-Kremlin; while those sources can be used to argue that WP:BIASED applies, they can hardly disprove that he is a reliable source in his area of expertise. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 17:23, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

In my experience, mildly biased but mostly reliable - use for uncontroversial facts, and with attribution in controversial areas. BobFromBrockley (talk) 17:17, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I’m thinking it’s at least as reliable as the Huffington Post, for example. But this would be a discretionary sanctions article, yes? Elinruby (talk) 18:42, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

I will say in general the reliability of Euromaidan Press depends on usage. I will say that I disagree strongly with some other comments when people refer to it as extremist or government sponsored - that is patently wrong. This site, along with a few others like it, were set up by people in the mainstream of Ukrainian civil society to have more media outlets in English that cover Ukrainian news that are not government or oligarch financed. If anything, it probably reflects the systematic bias of Ukrainian "mainstream” civil society, which is pro-democracy, pro-freedom of press, pro-europe, anti-putin. anti-communist, etc. this is hardly 'extremist' from the POV of the usual systematic bias of wikipedia.

Some of the examples listed here are dubious. Obviously, Ukrainian media is going to spend more of a focus, when talking with military units engaged in an active operation on asking about details about said operation than focusing on ideology of (some) members of a 2000 troop battalion. In the context of 2014, this is especially true, since the Ukrainian media market was not completely disconnected from the Russian media market, and there was already a hybrid war (filled with large amounts of disinformation hyping up the "nazi threat" ; https://euvsdisinfo.eu/why-does-putin-portray-himself-as-the-tamer-of-neo-nazism/?highlight=nazi ), coming from the Kremlin to distract from the actual clear and present danger, which in hindsight, was the external threat intent on dismembering and incorporating their country.

Whether or not it is appropriate to use it or not depends on context. I think it's WP:BIASED for certain issues, WP:RS for others. Cononsense (talk) 23:47, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

There are a couple of short mentions in the archives, Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_201#Euromaidan_Press indicates a fair amount of bias, it is cited a fair amount in book rs, so possibly rs in general, pinch of salt if it is anything to do with Russia. Selfstudier (talk) 17:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Selfstudier: The articles mentioned there are all op-eds and one even has a disclaimer on it. We are clearly not supposed to judge the publication because of them.-Karma1998 (talk) 08:09, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

I mentioned them because we could consider an RFC on the reliability of Euromaiden if there were prior discussions about it without firm conclusions, idk if those relatively brief discussions would qualify, this current discussion would qualify, of course, in the event it is queried again. Selfstudier (talk) 14:13, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Selfstudier - I believe it's undoubtedly a partisan source..🤔 I would not use it. - GizzyCatBella🍁 18:44, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@GizzyCatBella: the articles mentioned by Selfstudier are op-eds and one has a disclaimer on it. They shouldn't be used to judge the publication.-Karma1998 (talk)

Thank you Selfstudier. At that time I didn't use the English wiki much, I could never find that discussion. However, for anyone who has a minimum to do with the issue of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis/war, knows very well that this source is "extremist" and extremely biased. Mhorg (talk) 20:35, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

@Mhorg: "Extremist" is totally nonsense. They are a liberal, pro-democracy newspaper. Labeling pro-Ukrainian newspaper as "extremists" only plays the tune of Russian propaganda, expecially if you want us give credit to notorious far-left Putin apologists such as Cohen. I agree with @Cononsense: about the reliability of the publication.-Karma1998 (talk) 08:13, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Do you have any evidence, sources, that Cohen was a "notorious far-left Putin apologist"? Selfstudier (talk) 14:19, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

@Selfstudier: as a matter of fact, yes I do.-Karma1998 (talk) 10:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Then open a new section here for Cohen and ask the question whether he is reliable for (some statements). Afaics it is quite clear from the discussion here as well as at Talk:Far-right politics in Ukraine that there is substantive disagreement with your thesis.Selfstudier (talk) 10:33, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

[70] (before he was a Putin apologist he was a Stalin/Lenin apologist), [71] [72] [73] [74] etc etc etc Volunteer Marek 13:13, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

They are clearly biased (for example calling the surrender of Azovstal defenders evacuation or running an article about Azov fighters loving "pets, books, and sports"). As with other biased sources they can be used provided that due weight is given to different perspectives. Alaexis_¿question? 18:50, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Sources are supposed to be evaluated with respect to a specific statement in a specific context. Neither the statement nor the context has been provided here, and if you go look at the article in question, it turns out that somebody is trying to impeach a writer because he has written for Euromaidan Press and Euromaidan has not signed on to the whole "Azov Battalion is evil" POV that some editors are pushing. It seriously doesn't work that way. First of all, Wikipedia is not censored and does not have ideological litmus tests. Even if Euromaidan were utter trash, with which I emphatically do not agree, would not affect whether one of its authors is an expert in a his field! Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, and was nonetheless a mathematician. This argument is simply wrong on a number of levels. It might be possible to say that someone who has written for RT or The Daily Stormer is not a serious journalist, since journalism requires objectivity, but a) this is not the place to do it and b) Euromaidan Press is not in the same league just because it supports democracy in Ukraine. Even an RT journalism might be reliable on the inner workings of RT. Possibly. Elinruby (talk) 13:18, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

It’s more reliable than The Nation and *definitely* more reliable than The Jacobin (which is mostly trash). Volunteer Marek 13:06, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Reliable for facts and for views of Ukrainians. Reuters did a good piece on them.[75] MBFC rates their credibility as high.Disconnected Phrases (talk) 06:18, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Is Hamariweb.com a reliable source?

Hamariweb.com. I found many Wikipedia articles cited this site. This site is very much popular and maybe 10 years old. I also want to cite this site in some of pages that's why I want to know that is this source reliable? Grabup (talk) 10:10, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

A quick glance at their website and I don't see anything obviously objectionable. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 15:22, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

The London Economic interview with Gary Delaney for his article

Could someone please respond to this?

Is this following 2015 interview with standup comedian Gary Delaney at The London Economic (www DOT thelondoneconomic DOT COM /entertainment/tle-meets-gary-delaney-10627/) reliable for biographical information added to Delaney's Wikiepdia article (specifically: where he went to school, his odd jobs before becoming a comedian, and his residence as of 2015)?

That info has already been in his Wikipedia article for some time, but the url is dead, and while there is both a live url and an archived version at the Internet Archive, I can't change it because it's on the blacklist, and I'd like to add it as an exception, if possible, to the whitelist. I couldn't even include the url in this post for the same reason, so I had to write out portions of the url in order to convey it here. Nightscream (talk) 14:03, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

Hello? Nightscream (talk) 17:12, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

Nightscream see MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist. As long as you believe it is reliable, you can make a case for whitelisting it. I'd say interviews with the person in question are generally accurate. X-750 _{Rust In Peace... Polaris} 04:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Songfacts.com

I saw a couple posts about it very early on in RSN's existence (including at least one I started back in 2011), but nothing since. To this day, I'm still finding literally hundreds and hundreds of articles that link to it. Their "About Us" page has a section titled "How can I contribute?" which implies that at least some of their material is user-generated. If you look up any song, they say "we get our info from interviews, books, magazines, etc.", but rarely is any individual songfact attributed to a source. Even if there is a writer team, there's no way to tell who wrote what, whether any given songfact was indeed user-generated, or what source is being used to attribute the info.

I've tried to get discussions started on this many times, but every single time it just fizzles out in a day. Given the giant number of links to what is supposedly a user-generated site, can we please reach a conclusion here? tl;dr: Is Songfacts.com a reliable source? If not, should it be deprecated? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:00, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• Ping @Martin4647:, @Caldorwards4:, @ChrisTofu11961:, @Hog Farm:, @Carbrera:, @Chiswick Chap: and other music editors. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:02, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
• It's listed in the unreliable sources chart down the page at Wikipedia:WikiProject Albums/Sources because it is user-generated based on a 2008 discussion, imv Atlantic306 (talk) 22:04, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  That alone should be reason to deprecate it. And yet it's still linked in nearly a thousand articles. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:05, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• Ive always assumed it's unreliable, for USERG reasons. And it's listed at WP:NOTRSMUSIC. Not much else to say. Sergecross73 msg me 22:16, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
• What about the songwriter interviews? Those aren't user-generated since they come directly from the artist(s). ResPM (T🔈🎵C) 22:21, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

• I was going to say the same thing: the "facts" on the website, 100% unverifiable and fail WP:USERG. But their interviews are conducted by their staff. I would say that these interviews are reliable, but the rest of the site no. Richard3120 (talk) 22:39, 28 May 2022 (UTC)

  I think there's enough context here to start removing links. Should we get a bot to do it? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  Only problem with Bot is can it tell difference between interviews and rest, since seems to be some belief the interviews are rs.Slywriter (talk) 15:25, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• Staff interviews are good. The rest of the site is largely WP:UGC. I used one of their interviews with Dave Mustaine. X-750 _{Rust In Peace... Polaris} 10:52, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  What about the staff makes them a reliable source in the Wikipedia context? It takes more than just a staff existing... Sergecross73 msg me 17:11, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  Sergecross73, it is because the staff are literally asking the artist in question. They are literally conducting an interview of the artist. What part about that is unreliable? Is it no different to another publication such as Loudwire, Blabbermouth or Metal Nexus conducting an interview? Also correction: It was with David Ellefson, not Mustaine. You can read it here, cross-referencing it with Ultimate Guitar gives the same story. So I'd say it's reliable. X-750 _{Rust In Peace... Polaris} 20:47, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  Uh, no, we generally look for things like editorial staff, editorial policy, writers with credentials, etc. I was looking more for something like that... Sergecross73 msg me 22:37, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

  Right... as for editorial staff, policy, credentials, many of the interviewers have personal bios (which can be found under the "Blog" dropdown), most have degrees, so I'd say credentials isn't an issue really. In fact, many of the authors on Songfacts have actually published other literary works with publishers such as lulu.com, another has had several published books and has reviews published in the Sunday New York Times. I think interviews are RS. X-750 _{Rust In Peace... Polaris} 23:52, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

• Its user-submitted content would fall under USERG, and so in that case no. However...two exceptions. One, as a convenience link to a lyric used as a primary source; second, artist interviews, if sufficiently illuminating, would be permissible under WP:SELFSOURCE, and so in that case I agree with X-750. Chubbles (talk) 23:14, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

  Would anyone be willing to help me clean up uses of it for a citation? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:44, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

  I reckon it'd be best for a bot to do it, however, I don't know if the bot can tell the difference between an interview and just generic song facts. I'm rather preoccupied with bringing Dave Mustaine up to good-article standards. X-750 _{Rust In Peace... Polaris} 11:17, 2 June 2022 (UTC)

From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right

Published by ibidem-Verlag has been described as A "self published vanity press source" over at [[76]], is this correct? And thus is this not an RS? Slatersteven (talk) 12:17, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The citation error has been corrected at 12:10 by Vladimir.copic so the point has been moot and so I’m not sure why you’re bringing this here now? Volunteer Marek 13:02, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Because when I posted this you were still raging it was a "self published vanity press source". Slatersteven (talk) 13:15, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Might as well close this, overtaken by events. Selfstudier (talk) 13:27, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I now agree, the issue has been (in this instance) resolved. Slatersteven (talk) 13:29, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Extensive use of baseball-reference.com / bullpen open wiki

There is a subsection of the baseball-reference.com site which is an open wiki. While I realize BR has been deteremined to be a reliable source, this part of the site seems to very clearly not be. Prior RSN discussions are limited - I was only able to find this. There are many prior discussions at WP:BASEBALL (ex: here here here, and here), and they include an explicit disclaimer of the site in their style advice page.

The Bullpen's disclaimers seem to be clear as well: "ABSOLUTELY no guarantee or warranty is given to the accuracy of the material within the BR Bullpen. These materials are produced and edited by users (hopefully knowledgeable ones) like yourself. While we hope you will find a great deal of accurate and helpful material on this section of Baseball-Reference.com, it is certain that there will be some errors both unintentional and intentionally placed there. These materials receive NO REVIEW by an outside panel of experts."

There are more than 3,000 references or links to this material in live articles or drafts. It is possible, given license on that site, that some links are necessary for attribution of copied material - obviously that will need to be retained, although there seems to be some historical questions about the compatibility of licenses. Before I start removing them, I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing something since this will likely cause some disruption. Kuru (talk) 18:07, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

The wiki seems like a splendid example of WP:USERG, and outside possibly the WP:EL section, should not be used, especially not in a WP:BLP. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 18:54, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

I'm usually all for WP:PRESERVE, but does an EL from one wiki to another provide any value? I'd remove them from an EL section.—Bagumba (talk) 18:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Before I start removing them...: Will you just be removing the citations outright, or also be tagging the statements with {{Cn}}'s?—Bagumba (talk) 18:58, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

1) Where it is the sole reference, remove it and replace with a CN unless the section is tagged already (if it's sensitive BLP material, then excise the statement instead of tagging). 2) where it is used in conjunction with other reference, remove it and check the others to make sure the statement is covered - if not, tag with a CN noting the part that is uncovered (or add a CN mid-sentence possibly). 3) evaluate corner-cases: external links that are extensive, possible attributions, and inline links that can be replaced with an internal link to another article. The only case were I'd remove it outright would be if it's a "decorative" inline link (the statement is covered by an existing source, and the link was just an external link to more info). I do all this by hand and evaluate each one; I don't really see a path on an automated approach that would catch the corners. Yeah, it will take a long time; hence discussion first before I spend that capital. Kuru (talk) 20:01, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable. —Bagumba (talk) 10:52, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I've been deleting B-R bullpen links for over a decade & was not surprised to find the first of your links was a 64.85 dynamic IP that was me before I registered. Back then, I was focusing on removing the link from Negro league pages, and a few others I found. What I did was, in general, if the statement was sourced at bullpen, I would simply change the ref to the ref used at bullpen. If it was unref'd at bullpen, and I could not find another ref, I'd just remove it. I think the only ones where I ran into trouble was all of the "Landis is a racist" statements, but eventually those all got ref'd by someone.

Also noting, that back in the day there was Template:Bullpen that was similar to Template:1902 Britannica, which said something like "Text of this article was copied from B-R bullpen under license such & such." Once I got all of those articles fixed I got that template deleted. You probably won't run into much opposition in my opinion, and it probably won't take you as long as you think. Rgrds. --Bison X (talk) 21:11, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

Are "Light & Life Publishers" reliable for anything?

I see quite a bit of use of this publisher.[77]

It's "About page"[78] says "We felt God’s hand on this company from the beginning and because of this our mission at Light & Life is to: Increase the personal knowledge of Jesus Christ and His Church through the written word, serve our customers efficiently, and bring ultimate glory to the life-giving Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Doug Weller talk 10:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

I would say it would depend on the author, and the topic. Slatersteven (talk) 10:36, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Are you sure the website is actually for the same publisher? Looking at the titles being cited, I have my doubts. AndyTheGrump (talk) 10:43, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm confusing two publishers. That was the first one I found and the easiest, but as I can see books by the Indian company with a similar name at JSTOR, those books are probably ok with the usual caveats.[79] Doug Weller talk 11:00, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Apologies for wasting your time, folks. But the books Fida Muhammad Hassnain published with them are only RS for him, so there's your usual caveat. Doug Weller talk 11:04, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Closer Weekly, Hollywood Life, Betty White's Memoir

I'm trying to gather enough sources to start a page for a historian at NYU. His name is David Ludden. His field is Asia, especially South Asia, but now also Global Asia. Well, ... all that is true, but he is also the son of Alan Ludden the 70s talk show host and the stepson of the actress Betty White of the The Mary Tyler Moore Show and whatnot else. He went to Andover, Yale, and Penn where he received his Ph.D., and was soon hired at Penn where he remained for many years chairing the department and so forth, about which Betty White in a memoir says, "Go figure." In pretty much all the work I've done on WP, I've used academic sources. And although I can find plenty scholarly reviews of his professional work, I'm a little stumped with the personal life bit. E.g. there's the story about David, Alan, and Betty acting in Critics' Choice in 1962, the play leading to Betty falling in love with Alan, etc. Anyhow, here are the non-scholarly sources I have the judgment on which I will leave to the mercies of the experts here:

• A Closer (magazine) especially Betty White Was a Stepmom to Late Husband Allen Ludden’s 3 Kids! Meet David, Martha and Sarah
• B This People Magazine story, although it doesn't have much
• C The book Images of America about Lakewood Theater in Maine, especially pages 108 and 109, the photo captions
• D Betty Whites memoir Here we go again: my life in television, Scribner, 2010, especially pages 140 and 141
• E Ludden's web page at NYU.
• F Ludden's personal web page at NYU

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Fowler&fowler (talk • contribs) 13:34, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Erm, what exactly is the question here? —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 12:49, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Can these sources be used for a Wikipedia biography? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:11, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

Very sorry, I forgot to sign. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 13:11, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

RFC: The Times article archive

This reference is currently marked as "failed verification" in the article of Titan the Robot. The talk page of the article is not frequented, so I ask for comments here if WP:V should be removed from that source. A pro-argument that I can see for WP:V is that the source is paywalled and no author is given (at least for me, as I don't have access beyond the paywall). I'm inclined to remove the WP:V, but I'm not familiar enough with the conventions of the EN-edition to do so without putting the issue up for discussion first.

I was always told that the standard is "verifiable" not "easily verifiable". That said, I personally try not to use paywalled sources. Have you checked to see if the article was archived? Is some other source available? Elinruby (talk) 16:03, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

An archive of the Times is available through Gale in the Wikipedia Library. Looking at it, it seems the full article is just those three paragraphs that are are practically viewable without a subscription through the Firefox reader mode, printable versions and other paywall bypassing tricks and websites. No skull or transformers are mentioned in the article. regards, TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 16:13, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the input, TryKid. I was so focussed on whether the source itself is considered reliable that I overlooked that the claim that is supposed to be verified by that source isn't even mentioned there.MiBerG (talk) 16:21, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Paywall is not an issue, and i fail to see why the time archive is less reliable than the times. Slatersteven (talk) 16:27, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

• To be clear, the text cited here is The face resembles a skull, and some have even compared it to a Transformer. Which is in the lead. Is that leadworthy? Even a source could be found, it seems a bit undue; and a quick search mostly turns up Wikipedia mirrors, so I'm not sure this is actually a significant observation. Does "someone once said, in passing, that it looked like a Transformer" really belong in the lead? Like, what are we even trying to verify here - that one person, once, somewhere, made this observation? EDIT: Also, looking at the history, the line was added here. Note that the citation currently affixed to it was already present but was used for a different statement than it is currently (It was designed by Nik Fielding, who runs Cyberstein from Newquay, Cornwall, England) - it looks like what happened was that that statement was removed, but the citation was left in and somehow ended up affixed to text it was never meant to be used for. I've deleted it and replaced it with the older text; there are too many problems here and no reason to think the source ever supported it or that the statement was ever anything but a personal observation by the editor who added it. Also, to be clear, the problem isn't anything to do with the Times or the archive or the paywall, the problem is that the source doesn't support this statement and I don't think it was ever intended to or asserted to do so, it just ended up adjacent to it by accident. --Aquillion (talk) 06:42, 31 May 2022 (UTC)

  Thank you Aquillion, I fully agree with you.MiBerG (talk) 01:20, 1 June 2022 (UTC)

Are the sources in 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers enough to establish it was a terrorist attack by a left-winger?

The background it at Talk:Terrorism in the United States where a new editor believes argues that the sources are sufficient. It's been added to Timeline of terrorist attacks in the United States. The argument in part hinges on whether this source[80] used in Terrorism in the United States establishes it as terrorism. It looks like a reliable source and has compiled it own database, but it says "only two incidents of domestic terrorism in the database can plausibly be attributed to a perpetrator with such sympathies. They are the December 2014 killings of two police officers in their patrol car in New York City and the July 2016 sniper shooting in Dallas, which left five officers dead and nine wounded." Note the word "plausibly".

The government database[81] also used in the Terrorism article does not include either of these, and at the moment that article says there were no instances of left-wing terrorism during the time period covers and also that there were 7 deaths.

The Dallas shooting article does not mention terrorism anywhere except the infobox which is sourced to [82] which I don't think backs the claim, [83] which doesn't seem to either, and [84] which does although I don't think the statement that the perpetrator was left-wing is established (this is from my reading of the article). Doug Weller talk 18:08, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll note that per Betteridge's law of headlines, the latter two sources indicate it's not domestic terrorism. On a quick glance, this seems like a case where the mainstream view (in particular, the GAO) is that it was a targeted mass shooting rather than domestic terrorism, though there are notable claims that it was terrorism which should be attributed to their source rather than wikivoiced. Bakkster Man (talk) 18:16, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

There's nothing I can see that labels the Dallas shooter as "left-wing". Only that his motives were ambiguous, and one author pointing to the "plausibility" as you said, which is not enough, in my opinion, to call them "left-wing" terrorist. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 18:17, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Agreed with pretty much all of this; the first source, if anything, undercuts the claim. The second source, a lawyer's blog, does not seem reliable to me, but does not support the claim. The CNN op-ed does support the claim, but seems to be a bit of an outlier. Even its authors hedge their bets by saying "seemingly motivated." That claim could be used with attribution but is absolutely not enough, by my lights, to state it as an uncontroverted fact in Wiki voice. Cheers all, and Happy Friday. Dumuzid (talk) 18:18, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Previous consensus in mass shooting articles is that the motive should come from the investigators, not media reports, politicians' speeches etc. The media has got it wrong in the past by jumping to conclusions. It's hard to dispute that Micah Xavier Johnson was some sort of crackpot with a grudge against the police, but the government does not appear to have classified the incident as left wing terrorism.--♦IanMacM♦ ^{(talk to me)} 18:29, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I consider Neiwert an expert and a reliable source when it comes to eliminationism and right-wing attacks on the left. He is a well-published journalist who often freelances and has maintained several personal websites over time. As the OP points out in their quote, Neiwert's usage of the word "plausibly" seems intended to narrow outliers of his central thesis, not to explicitly label those outliers. I feel Neiwert is a openly left-wing, but certainly an authentic journalist with a long track record of publication. BusterD (talk) 18:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

We really only should describe attacks as "terrorism" when this is a assessment by the law authorities overseeing the case investigation, since in most countries this is an "enhanced" crime that comes with additional penalties. Attacks can be said to be "suspected terrorism" from other expert sources (including newspapers) but that's prior to an official assessment. We're far to quick to jump to when newspapers and other people not in an authority position use "terrorism" inappropriately. --Masem (t) 18:35, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

During the overnight standoff that led to his death, the suspect told a hostage negotiator that he was upset about the recent police shootings of two black men and that he wanted to kill white people, especially police officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown said at a news conference this morning.[85] Terrorism is generally understood to be acts of violence conducted against civilians for political purposes. Killing white police officers who are guarding a peaceful demonstration certainly qualifies as terrorism, in the same way that Roof's attack on black churchgoers does.[86]. Johnson liked on Facebook the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), the Nation of Islam and the Black Riders Liberation Party, all listed by the SPLC as hate groups. [87]

What more evidence do we need to confirm the connection here? Yamazon3 (talk) 19:10, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

That is called original research, we only summarize what reliable sources say and so far, reliable sources do not say that this is an act of terrorism much less an act of left wing terrorism. PRAXIDICAE💕 19:11, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Reliable sources DO say that this is an act of terrorism, see this source: "Terrorism is generally understood to be acts of violence conducted against civilians for political purposes. Killing white police officers who are guarding a peaceful demonstration certainly qualifies as terrorism, in the same way that Roof's attack on black churchgoers does[88]".

I may be misunderstanding what original research is, and I apologize if that's the case, but it was my understanding that if someone says that a person has 2 quarters in their pocket, then it's acceptable to write that they have at least 50 cents in change in their pocket. Yamazon3 (talk) 19:39, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

it is not widely reported as terrorism or a left wing terrorist attack, the CNN article is also an opinion piece which can be attributed but cannot be used as a statement of fact. PRAXIDICAE💕 19:41, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

While we can of course rephrase statements (in part to avoid plagiarism, in part to be NPOV), making the jump from 'reliable sources don't use a particular label for an event, but we decided it fits the definition' is textbook WP:OR. That said, I'm confused how you equate 'killing police officers on duty' with 'violence against civilians'. Even by the definition you provided, this shooting wouldn't qualify because government officials engaging in official business arenot civilians. Bakkster Man (talk) 19:45, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Bakkster Man Good point! The source from GAO used in the header of the article[89] cites at least 8 fatal right wing attacks against police officers. Given that you're saying that attacks against police officers don't count, the claims regarding terrorist counts from them should not be considered valid. How should we edit the header of the Terrorism in the United States to remove the GAO counts? Yamazon3 (talk) 20:02, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Given that you're saying that attacks against police officers don't count. No, I said that according to the definition you provided, your argument was inconsistent.

Saying that because your personal definition of "terrorism" is different from the GAO's definition of "violent extremism" we should consider that authoritative source to be unreliable is more WP:OR. I suspect even worse, because it appears to be bad-faith and/or WP:POINTy. Bakkster Man (talk) 20:14, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

You are indeed misunderstanding what original research is, and your example misrepresents the argument. Substituting "at least 50 cents" for "2 quarters" is paraphrasing (assuming there is no further import to the fact of 2 quarters), but what you are doing is taking "2 quarters" from one source, relative measures of poverty from another source, and synthesising an assertion that the person is poor, when the reliable source doesn't actually state that.

For Wikipedia to call an act terrorism it must be adjudicated as such in some legalistic manner; a journalist's opinion is not sufficient to transcribe into Wikivoice. Such opinion might be sufficiently notable to be reported as such however. Captainllama (talk) 13:09, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

I forgot to add that the lead and and the first section of the body at Terrorism in the United States contradict each other and I’m not sure how to fix it. Doug Weller talk 18:37, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Do you mean the first paragraph of the lead contradicts the second paragraph, or what is the contradiction you're referring to? Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 19:28, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

The third paragraph of the lead in Terrorism in the United States makes the claim that all fatal terrorist attacks between 9/12/01 - 12/31/16 were attributed to either right wing or Islamic terror. After making that claim, it then states that no fatal terror attacks were attributed to left wing terrorism. These claims come directly from GAO. The first section in the body of the article claims that 7 deaths were caused by left wing terrorism between 2008-2016. Yamazon3 (talk) 19:32, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Sorry. The last sentence in the third paragraph of the lead is contradicting the start of the U.S. totals section Terrorism in the United States#U.S. totals. Doug Weller talk 19:33, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

I just rewrote the last sentence in paragraph 3 of the lead to Deaths attributed to left-wing groups were rare. Better? The citations following may need to be added/removed, though. Pyrrho the Skipper (talk) 19:54, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Pyrrho the Skipper Yes. Thank you! Yamazon3 (talk) 20:07, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

We can say that one report said none, another plausibly 7, but the table is a problem. Doug Weller talk 21:01, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

@Pyrrho the Skipper we can't say "rare" when the citation quotes the source as saying " According to the [US Extremist Crime Database], activities of far left wing violent extremist groups did not result in any fatalities during this period." I've rewritten the lead to include both statements and added the "plausibly" caveat to the U.S. totals section - that definitely should have been there in the first place. Doug Weller talk 09:14, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

Ah. @Masem@BusterD@Praxidicae@Dumuzid and probably others, going over this thread again I'm not clear as to whether we include the 7 deaths with the caveat or? And should we remove the mention of terrorism in the 2016 shooting of Dallas police officers infobox or call it terrorism because that one report says it is? I'm at a bit of a loss here. It's in the mass shooting category at the moment. Doug Weller talk 09:23, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

So, for me, this is indeed where I would come down. On Terrorism in the United States, I think I would keep the "no deaths attributed to left wing groups language" but perhaps append "by this report" or some such simply to make it very clear that we have contrasting sources. (I confess, I am not sure what the issue was with one of the tables?) As to Dallas, I would vote to remove terrorism. One CNN op-ed does not for me establish the link. "Mass shooting" is obviously fine. As ever, reasonable minds may differ. I hope everyone has a nice weekend. Dumuzid (talk) 15:27, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

TOI and India Today

I have read some article talk page discussions, some users are saying they are pro-government.

TOI recently became unreliable but their pre-2020 articles are mostly reliable and pre-2014 are fully reliable.

India Today's TV channel India Today is completely useless and also Hindi Aaj Tak is very bad, but their original magazine whose articles are online since 1975 is reliable for politics, crime, religion.

Even though the magazine and TV channel share the same website and name, but their content is not always the same.

As TimesofIndia is different than Times Now

Nabbharattimes Hindi newspaper is different than Hindi news channel Times Now Nabhbharat.

All of them started as reliable print media, but due to the decline of offline newspaper, and magazine sales, they started their news channel to earn money.

India Today printed magazine should be used as a reliable source. Ivan Tsar (talk) 07:41, 4 June 2022 (UTC)

climate-data.org is not a reliable source

The website lists weather data from almost all parts of the world, but it is very different from the weather data released by many official agencies. Taking the Japanese city of Hachinohe as an example, the temperature difference between the data released by climate-data.org and Japan Meteorological Agency exceeds 3 degrees Celsius, and the difference in precipitation exceeds 200 mm. In addition, a similar problem can be found in the French city of Ajaccio. Compared with the value released by climate-data.org and Météo-France, the gap is too large. 迷斯拉10032号 (talk) 07:43, 4 June 2022 (UTC)