Draft talk:Seth Dillon

Sources

The current draft relies a lot on WP:OR and WP:PRIMARY, we need to be especially careful with original research when it touches on a biography of a living person WP:BLP. Squatch347 (talk) 17:51, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Reliable Sources

@DisinfectingSunlight, you might want to review WP:RS for this article. I noticed in several places you link Knowyourmeme, Twitter, and substack. Those do not, generally, meet wiki's standards for reliable sources. I think your article would need to be signficantly rewritten if approved to match that policy. Squatch347 (talk) 20:44, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

First of all, thank you so much for reading and for taking the time to leave advice. This is the first article I've written. You are correct that the content of self-published sources shouldn't be taken as fact, and I want to make sure just as much as the next person that I have included only reliable information. However, in the cases where I linked to Twitter and Substack, those are the Twitter and Substack accounts of the person the article is about. So I am not citing the content but the fact that the subject said the thing in the article.

Just to note, WP:RS says, "Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves." I cite Twitter and Substack, but in each case, I cite these sources to verify a detail that the subject wrote something on Twitter. For example, I write that the subject of the article called Kyle Rittenhouse a hero following his acquittal. The statement from the article subject has quotation marks around it; I cited Substack because that's the platform on which he made this statement.

Like Wikipedia, I also am skeptical of the reliability of self-published material. But in this case, I cite self-published material to support that Seth Dillon said a thing, not the the thing he said should be taken as fact. But again, I understand that I'm at the bottom of a steep learning curve, so I am happy to hear out the wisdom of the council. DisinfectingSunlight (talk) 21:31, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Its a really good start for a first article, much better than my initial attempts when I was new. One of the things I struggled with most when I started editing Wiki was the complex relationship between the use of secondary sources, the prohibition on original research, and the limitation of certain sources. In almost all cases we don't want to be citing the speaker themselves for a couple of reasons. One, it almost always moves into original work. It is us writing the story and narrative of what is being covered which puts wiki on the line for the content (this is especially risky when it is a BLP given legal realities). Two, it isn't super clear if what is being said is really notable unless it is covered by a secondary source and opens up the article to the inevitable NPOV (neutral point of view) conversations that really bog down an article. You can see these considerations play out in a discussion on the Babylon Bee talk page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Babylon_Bee/Archive_1#Mailchimp_+_Reason_Article) about a lot of the same personalities referenced in your article. I would particularly look at Gorilla Warfare's comments, she is an admin that has provided some oversight of that page.

To balance the above I want to also say that it isn't that we can't use any of these sources, just that we need to be relatively judicious in their usage. IE a subject or event should be primarily covered by a RS secondary source and then twitter/substack can have a reference or two to add some additional specific language.

It might also be helpful to look through some other BLPs to see the kind of sources that generally don't get objected to. I'd also recommend reviewing the BLP policy here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons

Squatch347 (talk) 13:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Again, thank you for taking the time to share this information. I'm sure many of these details will be an ongoing conversation, and that's just fine by me. I want the information I add to be fair just as much as Wikipedia's staff and (hopefully) my fellow users do.

As I said, I'm sure this article will continue to change, so I don't expect any edits I've made to be the end of discussion. But I definitely saw where you are coming from as I read over my first pass. I took the approach of "tell people what happened, and let readers decide," which is why there were more and longer quotes. I can see now that I've gone through and summarized in areas where I'd previously used quotes that these details are clearer and less open to misinterpretation. DisinfectingSunlight (talk) 00:13, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I didn't want to step on any toes while it was under review, but would you be amenable to me making some proposed edits on the draft and we can work towards a future resubmission? Squatch347 (talk) 13:56, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

I certainly don't mind people improving the article, even while it's a draft. My purpose in creating the article was to make it so that people interested in learning about Seth Dillon, who is very politically engaged outside of The Babylon Bee, would be able to do so in a separate article. Anyone who wants to check my sources, add pertinent information, or improve upon it in good faith is welcome to as far as I'm concerned! DisinfectingSunlight (talk) 14:35, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good. It will probably take me a few days to get around to making some changes, but I'll make some then post the diffs here and we can talk them. Squatch347 (talk) 15:49, 25 January 2024 (UTC)