User talk:Dmarshal

I am going to have to retire this page because I no longer have the original email address that was used to set it up (uconn.edu), and wikipedia won't let me change it without a confirmation email.

David C. Marshall, 15 Feb 2022 Dmarshal (talk) 19:16, 15 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Dmarshal and welcome to Wikipedia. I saw your helpful edits to Cicada and Aggressive mimicry, and would like to point you to some guidance on saving your changes to articles. They offer tips to make it easier for other editors collaborating with you:

Regards -Eric ^talk 17:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Recent edit

In one of your recent edits, you added a reference to mronline.org. In case you didn't realise, the article says "Originally published: MintPress News". MintPress News is a deprecated source (see WP:DEPSOURCES and WP:RSP). CowHouse (talk) 03:46, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

No, I did not know that MintPressNews has been put on Wikipedia's list for suppressing politically inconvenient information. I will have to see what I can do to get this highly relevant information into this article, since Wikipedia seems to want to prevent that. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmarshal (talk • contribs)

In case you are unaware, deprecated sources include InfoWars and VDARE. Do you still think it is reasonable and appropriate to call it a "list for suppressing politically inconvenient information"? Please sign your posts on talk pages, using four tildes (~~~~). See WP:SIGNATURE. CowHouse (talk) 05:33, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I say that for two reasons: 1. MintPressNews contains some clearly worthwhile material. Even at this moment there is a piece on their site by Chris Hedges, a well-respected Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. What a terrible shame that Wikipedia would want to ban this. Essays should be judged by their arguments and evidence, not by the book cover. 2. I have heard that The Grayzone is a deprecated source, which is also a serious loss, since they report important establishment-challenging material when it comes to U.S. foreign policy. (It is in respect to that site that I first encountered the concept of deprecated news sources.) Dmarshal (talk) 06:24, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

MintPress republishes articles by Hedges but he does not write original content for the website. At the bottom of every article by Chris Hedges, it says: "Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy." CowHouse (talk) 07:34, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

But that does not explain why MintPressNews and The Grayzone are not allowed as the valuable anti-establishment voices they represent. Whereas, by pointing to important content on one of these sites, I have substantiated my complaint. If MintPressNews published such consistently and outrageously insane material that one needed to develop a censorship system like "deprecation" (which I can hardly imagine justifying in any situation), then figures like Chris Hedges would not publish there.Dmarshal (talk) 07:43, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like to know the reasons for deprecation, you should read the RfC linked here. I was responding to your argument about "worthwhile material" on the website, which is not in fact from the website originally so is of no relevance. Hedges having his articles re-published on a website does nothing to indicate that website's reliability. We can use the original source, if it is reliable, so there is no need to use MintPress at all. "Important content" from MintPress is only relevant if it is original. CowHouse (talk) 08:03, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, you have not yet given a meaningful response to my initial reply, other than appeal to authority. That may work technically, since this is Wikipedia's platform, but it does not counter my opinion about the way that authority is operating right now – which is what you asked about. I don't need to look at the linked document to know that it's a problem when I cannot cite an article presenting good information in Wikipedia due to a complaint about *other* allegedly false material that once appeared on the same site. Especially when I look at the Reliable Sources list and it's pratically a rogue's gallery of outlets that pushed 4+ years of claptrap about the unsubstantiated Russiagate conspiracy theory, and that's just for starters. For example, I wonder how many of those deprecated sources got there by publishing "false statements" like, oh, let's say, questioning the claim that Russia paid bounties to encourage killing of US soldiers in Afghanistan. We now know as of this past week that the Russian Bounties story was based on weak evidence, with the CIA finally walking that one back. Ironically, it turns out that when I look back a bit, MintPressNews published a story written by one of their staff writers that correctly questioned the Russian Bounties claim when it first arose in July, 2020 – an article titled "Afghan Bounty Scandal Comes at Suspiciously Important Time for US Military Industrial Complex" that still exists online and which can be used to replace my Chris Hedges example, which will allow us to sidestep this distracting issue of where the reporting originated. I won't link it for fear that this whole discussion would be deleted. So if the American public had been reading MintPressNews – which got it right – instead of the New York Times, in July of 2020, perhaps those US soldiers in Afghanistan would be out already, since the Russian Bounties story derailed Trump's attempt to pull out. [The irony goes even deeper – I just noticed that the July, 2020 MintPressNews article happens to link to the very article about Bellingcat that I tried to cite above, that began this discussion – in my judgement, that article is nearly as valuable as this one that got the Russian Bounties story right.] Anyway, when the many adherents of persistently damaging conspiracy theories like Russiagate and suchlike go onto the deprecated list, then I'll believe that protection of establishment narratives isn't a goal. But anyway I will look for a source that is not on Wikipedia's censored list, in my original case, since I have no choice.