Talk:Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung

Third-party sources

The following statements have been tagged "Third-party source needed":

• "The Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung states its political alignment to be "Prussian conservative."
• "The newspaper itself objected to this association and a description to that effect in a German Wikipedia article, issuing a press release which took issue with this classification."
• "and publishing an article in support of their position by the French political scientist Jean-Paul Picaper".

In my view, this is not appropriate, because the statements are reporting what the (legal) person actually stated about themselves with no significant interpretation.

• A link to a press release issued by the subject should be perfectly adequate to support the statement that the subject published such a press release.
• A link to a newspaper article issued signed by the author should be perfectly adequate to support the statement that the author wrote such an article.
• A statement by a person about their political alignment should be perfectly adequate to support a statement about the person's professed political alignment.

It is therefore absolutely proper to use the original source of these statements. This is especially true where we are talking about a dispute concerning alleged manipulation of or by Wikipedia or Wikipedia editors. In my opinion, it would be at least bordering on the unethical to insist on using only third-party references when stating what the subject professes their political alignment to be (as opposed to what others claim it to be). Third-party claims about the newspaper's real political alignment are also stated – and in fact given more prominence, I think.

Since much of the commentary on this subject is by right-wing and left-wing activists, I think we need to be especially careful to keep partial value judgements to a minimum, to disinterestedly report what the involved parties say, and be pragmatic about the sources we use. In this specific case, I do not think it is appropriate to use either right-wing or left-wing commentary that is formally independent but partial, in preference to the original sources, when reporting what the originator actually claims. The statements are not about what is actually true. --Boson (talk) 01:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Totally agree with you. I've removed the tagging, as everything is OK per guidelines as it stands.Estlandia (dialogue) 12:04, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

Self-published or questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves, especially in articles about themselves, without the requirement that they be published experts in the field, so long as:

1. the material is not unduly self-serving;
2. the material does not involve claims about third parties (such as people, organizations, or other entities);
3. the material does not involve claims about events not directly related to the subject;
4. there is no reasonable doubt as to the authenticity and source of the material;
5. the article is not based primarily on such sources.

The material is self-serving because the PAZ kind of advertises itself in "Wer wir sind". It does involve claims about third parties, namely German Wikipedia and the authors that classify the PAZ as "new right". And half of the sources this article relies on are published by the PAZ itself. Therefore it is more than expedient to request third-party sources, as every article on Wikipedia must be based on third-party sources. --RJFF (talk) 16:08, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

But this applies to "information about themselves", whereas the references were not used to support information about themselves (e.g date of birth, sexual orientation, etc.) but information about what they profess. Similarly, if a person professed to be a Christian, we should be able to report that claim based on their own statement. If a reliable third-party source claimed that their adultery, convictions for theft, and support for the death penalty indicated that they were not really a Christian, that might also be worthy of note but we should not require a third-party source for a statement about their professed faith. If the Pope says he is a Roman Catholic, that is his professed faith. If a newspaper says its political alignment is conservative, that is its professed political alignment.

It is quite proper to report what a newspaper states to be its political alignment and to support this by quoting or paraphrasing their actual claim. It would be quite different if they said "Wikipedia is unreliable" and we used that to support a statement that Wikipeda is unreliable.

As regards "self-serving", note the word unduly. It is not unduly self-serving for a newspaper to state its political alignment on its own website.

It is misleading to state that half the sources are self-published. It needs to be borne in mind that

• the article article is a stub, with 7 sentences and 6 references.
  • Of the 6 references, 2 refer to evaluative statements by political opponents and 2 are to statements by the newspaper opposing these evaluations.
  • The remaining 2 references support statements of a directly factual nature; one of those is for what looks like a neutral source, while the other is from what looks like a political opponent.

I think that is reasonably balanced, if anything slightly in favour of political opponents. To add more references to campaigners against right-wing publications like the PAZ would give them undue weight in this context. The article is, after all, about a right-wing newspaper.

--Boson (talk) 17:50, 6 March 2012 (UTC)