User talk:Valjean

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This page has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

Ashe Schow (November 25, 2015). "Wikipedia founder advocates for updating policies following 'The Hunting Ground' controversy". Washington Examiner. Retrieved February 8, 2020. Another editor, whose username is BullRangifer, suggested Wikipedia not become "a kangaroo court or lynching" by rushing to ban accounts who break COI. BullRangifer suggested following seven steps to determine whether "The Hunting Ground" crew member should be banned and whether his edits should be removed. Some of the steps included how he handled questions related to his edits and whether he stuck to discussion pages to ask for edits rather than making them himself.
Marcus Gilmer (October 3, 2018). "Wikipedia demotes Breitbart to fake news". Mashable. Retrieved October 5, 2018. Support. If anything, it's even more unreliable than the Daily Mail, as they at least use trained journalists, whereas Breitbart is a fringe propaganda organization which lets its extreme partisan bias get in the way of how it reports things, and whether it does so, just as Fox News does. It too should be deprecated, but let's start with Breitbart (and InfoWars). — BullRangifer 17:51, 8 September 2018 (UTC)
Alexander Hall (August 13, 2020). "Report: Wikipedia Editors Censoring Evidence Supporting Michael Flynn". NewsBusters. Retrieved August 15, 2020. Liberal user Valjean responded by condemning this revelation as 'conspiracy theories' and 'part of a cover-up,' even 'when it comes from the now-sitting government of the USA.' Valjean specified that 'Nothing coming from Trump's Justice Department, FBI, CIA, anything, can be trusted.' Breitbart alleged that Valjean, formerly under the name 'BullRangifer' has been 'previously involved in slanting articles about the Russia investigation.'
Raymond Sturman (October 23, 2024). "Top 5 Editing Conflicts in Wikipedia Pages on Religion". World Religion News. Retrieved October 24, 2024. Located on the Catholic Church Wikipedia talk page, the screenshot below details a recent discussion of the tension between the Roman Catholic Church and other branches of Catholicism. Editor 'Valjean' is protesting that the word 'Roman' has been removed from the title, arguing that there are other branches of Catholicism, while the Roman Catholic Church says it is the real Catholic Church.

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Dealing with "Clinton plan" conspiracy theory

CONTEXT:

#Dutch-obtained intelligence memos section
#January 3 edits section

INTRODUCTION:

copied from #January 3 edits section in response to User:Bladerunner24.

To deal with the "Dutch-obtained intelligence memos" section properly, we need to understand some history and motives behind the "Clinton plan" conspiracy theory.[1][2] It's much too large a topic for this article, but, because Durham mentioned the phrases "Clinton plan" (or just "plan" when referring to it), "Clinton campaign plan" (six times), and "Clinton Plan intelligence" (65 times) in his report, and many RS have commented on it, it's obviously relevant to this article and will need a section, just not one written the way it is now.

Before I can deal with that content here, we need to come to an understanding of what sources are reliable and unreliable, and to do that we need to also get into NOTFORUM territory (IOW more about policies and guidelines, while not strictly about this article). The discussion will be based on RS and compliance with DUE and FRINGE, so it's definitely within our purpose here at Wikipedia, but not strictly about the topic of this page. So hop on over to my talk page (Dealing with "Clinton plan" conspiracy theory) where we are free to discuss this stuff. There I'll share some sources with you and explain how this all relates to unreliable sources and fringe conspiracy theories, and how DUE weight applies to how we deal with it. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 14:05, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

END INTRODUCTION

There are two competing narratives, a contest between facts and lies, and Wikipedia is a mainstream encyclopedia that assigns due weight to sources and their related narratives. That colors how we deal with sources and write the article, or in this case the "Dutch-obtained intelligence memos" section.

The current section does not do the topic justice, includes primary sources and framing that treat the conspiracy theory as if it's true, and violates FALSEBALANCE by juxtaposing the competing views as if they have equal DUE WEIGHT. The section is thus misleading and violates several policies. It needs to briefly summarize the much larger "Clinton plan" conspiracy theory, and do it from the mainstream, non-conspiratorial, POV.

Durham unsuccessfully tried to prove the supposed "Clinton plan" was a Democratic plot to frame Trump and "fabricate the Russia collusion hoax".[3] Rather than confirming the plan, Durham's descriptions of the dubious nature of the hacked emails was described by The New York Times as a "debunking".[3] The theory reinterprets normal and legitimate campaign behavior and concerns about the revelations about Trump's Russia connections as if mentioning them was a plot to unfairly tie Trump to Russia. No, it was normal and legitimate. No plot or falsehoods about Trump.

Not only do Durham and Trump's top people launder Russian disinformation publicly as if it's true, Durham buried information favorable to Clinton.[4] That behavior is consistent with the mission he got from Trump and Barr, which was to undermine the conclusions of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation and all other investigations, and there are a number of them. He failed on all counts. He and his investigation are thus suspect and unreliable.

The "Clinton plan" conspiracy theory is a denialist, fringe, attempt to relitigate[5] and undermine the conclusions of all investigations into Trump-Russia matters. Therefore, the Durham Report, the annex, reports from Grassley, Gabbard, Bondi, Patel, Ratcliffe, and others pushing their POV, are a poisonous pit of quicksand pushing falsehoods. These people are pushers of conspiracy theories about nonexistent election fraud. They push the "Russia collusion hoax" conspiracy theory. These efforts by Trump and his intelligence chiefs have been described as an attempt to rewrite history.[6][7] Those are reasons to not trust them. They are not RS, and the .gov sources they use to push these falsehoods and conspiracy theories from are therefore unreliable and have little due weight.

They are at best highly partisan opinion, and have no reputation for fact-checking, a key RS demand. In fact, they write ideas that are proven to be false statements, and they are doing it on .gov domains. Such content has little to zero due weight, and should either be ignored completely or only get passing mention if, and only if, it is also mentioned in a secondary RS, and then using that RS's framing and descriptions of what the .gov source says. Falsehoods should never stand alone. Whenever possible, we do not "leave it up to readers" to determine if it's true or false. Primary sources are tricky in that way, and we do not start there or dwell there. Starting with primary sources is normally forbidden OR. Instead, we start with secondary RS, get their narrative, their framing, and their POV, and then we apply that and their descriptions to the content from primary sources that they choose to mention and quote. We do not use primary sources to perform forbidden OR without using secondary RS to frame it.

Our RS and VERIFIABILITY rules do not give .gov domains any special status, so their content must be evaluated by the same standards we use for any domain, whether it's a fly-by-night blog post by 12-year old unknown Johnny, a personal website, a Tweet, an oped, an editorial, a book, or an article in a major RS publication like WaPo, written by a renowned subject matter expert with an impeccable reputation. We treat .gov sources the same way we treatment all of them. .gov sources publish all kinds of stuff, from totally neutral and nonpartisan official research, to investigations and announcements, or even the dubious partisan talking points and fantasies of some politician that they wrote late at night.

Now feel free to discuss. I suspect what I've written above will inspire some questions from you, so let's start there. I can explain and provide sources. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:42, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Bladerunner24: -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 15:51, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

A kitten for you!

Thank you for all you've done!

Darer101 (talk) 22:39, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 22:40, 6 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Administrators' newsletter – January 2026

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2025).

Administrator changes

Fathoms Below

CheckUser changes

Oversight changes

Guideline and policy news

All general sanctions imposed by the community may now be enforced at the Arbitration Enforcement noticeboard (WP:AE) as a result of a recent RfC.
Due to the result of a recent RFC, the administrator recall process is amended to extend the deadline for a re-request for adminship to 30 days or the next administrator election, whichever is later.
Changes to the Access to Temporary Account IP Addresses Policy's disclosure rules include broadening the consecutive-blocks exception to cover all admin actions and removing the requirement to revision-delete permissible disclosures once they become unnecessary (instead requiring only their removal). See WP:TAIVDISCLOSE for more information.

Arbitration

Following the 2025 Arbitration Committee elections, the following editors have been elected to the Arbitration Committee: Aoidh, Asilvering, Girth Summit, Guerillero, HJ Mitchell, HouseBlaster, Izno, Sdrqaz, SilverLocust.
The arbitration case Pbsouthwood has been suspended.

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:30, 8 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]