Talk:The New York Times/Archive 7

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Liberal?

A few edits have been made recently that add to the first sentence of the article that NYT is liberal. Is this accurate or do we need consensus before we can add this claim? X-Editor (talk) 14:04, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

I believe this is the most recent edit in question. The Fordham ref looks like a blog, whose author conflates the NYT with National Geographic magazine for rhetorical effect, with some handwaving about how NYT readers ostensibly expect it to be "sensitive about notions of language and power". That's an essay, not a source for the paper's editorial slant. The CJR ref looks like a Marxist's complaint that the NYT doesn't lean far enough to the left. Neither of those refs seems like a solid definitive source for the claim that the Times is a "liberal" paper.
If this discussion is going to get anywhere, the first thing to do is reach agreement on a working definition of "liberal" in this context. Just plain Bill (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
@Just plain Bill: I was able to find this article from WaPo that says that NYT’s audience is more liberal according to Pew research, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the content in NYT itself is liberal. X-Editor (talk) 19:31, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
That 2014 Pew study shows up on media article talk pages every so often, but extrapolating from an audience survey to saying, in Wikipedia's voice in the first sentence of the lead, that a publication has a "liberal" editorial slant is more of a stretch than WP policy allows. Just plain Bill (talk) 12:42, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
@Just plain Bill: Agreed. X-Editor (talk) 13:01, 6 May 2021 (UTC)
I've reverted. Consensus for such a characterization should be obtained on the talk page since it's historically been a controversial thing. Eddie891 Talk Work 14:54, 5 May 2021 (UTC)
Left or Left-center would be an appropriate description of the current paper. Keep in mind they've never endorsed a Republican Presidential candidate.
[1] (just 3 days after this discussion)
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
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I mean I can go on, but these are all clear indications of leftward bias. There's no need to omit it. The overall facts are generally accurate, but the manner of publication is an issue. Buffs (talk) 22:03, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
@Buffs: Some of the sources you have provided are unreliable, but you would still need to get consensus first for claiming that the NYT is left or leaning left based on the reliable sources you have provided. X-Editor (talk) 05:31, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
  • Those are almost all unreliable sources (New York Post, Media Bias Fact Check, Allsides, Adfontes, the Heritage foundation, a student paper, Fox on politics), or opinion pieces (the NJ.com piece, the Reason piece, the heritage piece, the WSJ piece), or in some cases opinion pieces from unreliable sources. Most of them are also severely biased (The Post, Fox, WSJ, the Heritage Foundation, Reason). None of them are usable for statements of fact in the article voice. --Aquillion (talk) 13:42, 4 June 2021 (UTC)
"People don't feel that way"
"Here are some examples of how they feel"
"Those aren't reliable sources"
"How aren't they reliable sources? That's LITERALLY them saying how they feel"
  • Does this mean they are 100% accurate across the country? Of course not. But that wasn't the point I was trying to make. Buffs (talk) 15:59, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
    It was not Aquillion who "unilaterally decided that they are untrustworthy" but consensus through Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources. They are not reliable because they may lack fact-checking, get key and uncontroversial facts wrong, etc. There may well be a liberal bias but certainly not in the way you interpret it or in a left-wing way, and most generally reliable sources are able to remain reliable because their bias does not affect them to get most things right. All sources are biased but the ones you used are either self-published, lack fact-checking, and their bias affect them in a much bigger way that simply does not make them reliable for facts. Davide King (talk) 03:50, 28 August 2021 (UTC)
    "there may be a liberal bias...but not in a left-wing way"? DenverCoder9 (talk) 08:19, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
"Is the New York Times a liberal newspaper? Of course it is." This quote is taken from Daniel Okrent in a New York Times editorial. The paper itself claims to be liberal; I don't understand the reticence to use a label that the newspaper uses to describe itself. (https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/25/opinion/the-public-editor-is-the-new-york-times-a-liberal-newspaper.html). I note that Blaze Media is properly characterized as a conservative media company, and Pod Save America is properly characterized as a liberal political podcast. Why should Wikipedia refrain from using these labels when appropriate? Other evidence:
Two sentences after "Of course it is [liberal]" Okrent addresses criticism of the paper from the left. If you want to call the New York Times "liberal", that would be fair. However, do not conflate that with the left. 71.185.178.141 (talk) 02:53, 20 August 2022 (UTC)
"liberal" and "left" generally refer to "Democratic" in the United States. Are you saying you'd agree to add "liberal" to the lede? DenverCoder9 (talk) 08:20, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
Yes, Allsides characterizes the paper as "Lean Left". I suggest we add something along those lines to the lede. Pakbelang (talk) 23:26, 6 August 2023 (UTC)
@SPECIFICO please comment. Pakbelang (talk) 23:54, 21 August 2023 (UTC)
My view is that such labels are frequently misleading and iimprecise. The Times' editorials may be liberal but readers are likely to think we are (baselessly) saying its news reporting is biased. So I don't support such a description in the lead. SPECIFICO talk 02:42, 22 August 2023 (UTC)
Your worry about readers not understanding the literal interpretation of the text is not relevant. Many, many news organizations have their political slant listed in the lede. DenverCoder9 (talk) 03:15, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
The news reporting is not documented by RS as having such a "slant". SPECIFICO talk 13:01, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
It absolutely is: moreover, sources at Times have said as much.
1. When it became clear that there is good evidence that the Times leans to the Democratic Party (point 1), you brought up a separate point about being misleading (point 2).
2. I'm speaking to the substantive point (point 2) you attempted to make about being misleading.
3. You ignore this, and switch points again rather engaging in substantive discussion about point 2.
You are toggling between objections, unable to justify any of them. 17:41, 26 August 2023
This is not substantive discussion. (UTC) DenverCoder9 (talk) 17:41, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I want to offer my summary of the discussion so far about adding the possibly-true fact "the New York Times has a liberal slant" to the lede (statement X)
1. No editors have offered reliable sources against statement X
2. The debate has been purely about the reliability of sources corroborating statement X
3. Editors for inclusion have stated and shown reliable sources
4. Editors against inclusion have stated that corroborating sources are "almost all unreliable", not that there are no reliable sources.
On almost any other page, this is well past the point statement X would have been included. DenverCoder9 (talk) 18:02, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
More reliable sources:
The New York Times is generally regarded as having a liberal slant. DenverCoder9 (talk) 18:44, 26 August 2023 (UTC)
I support adding a short sentence along the lines mentioned by @SPECIFICO: The Times' editorials have been characterised as tending to "lean left" (using the sources cited by @Denvercoder9. We can also add something along the lines that its news reporting is considered to be reliable. Pakbelang (talk) 00:28, 29 August 2023 (UTC)
I second your original suggestion of adding "lean left" to the lede and not limiting the discussion of slant in the body to editorials.
Many of these reliable sources do not limit their analysis to the editorial section.
It is a broad point about the Times coverage. DenverCoder9 (talk) 15:46, 16 September 2023 (UTC)
What sources do you have for your assertion? SPECIFICO talk 23:28, 22 September 2023 (UTC)

230,000+ char change

What's going on with the change today? It looks like contemporary topics were cut down to a bare minimum (with some pretty bad summaries), while the history section was expanded with ridiculous amounts of detail. This size edit is pretty much impossible to properly review. I think it should be reverted and proposed changes should be made incrementally. And for that level of detail about history, it should be a separate article. Hist9600 (talk) 19:01, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Courtesy ping @ElijahPepe sawyer * he/they * talk 19:15, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Changes cannot be made incrementally because the citation system goes against what has already been established; I used shortened footnotes to divide the topics. The length of the history section has already been discussed and it will be split once the article is finished. If you have an issue with content, WP:BEBOLD. I have deliberately avoided contemporary coverage of the Times because the paper is nearly two hundred years old. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 19:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Should be split now, rather than later, imo. Eddie891 Talk Work 21:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
I'll echo what Eddie891 said. On one hand, it's an impressive amount of work. And normally, there's a fair amount of leeway for people remodeling an article to go nuts. But this is wildly, WILDLY too large, a rendering issue too large (which makes teling other editors to BEBOLD awkward when one of the effects is making it harder to edit!). It really needs to be split sooner, rather than later - ideally before it was even moved into the namespace. The split doesn't have to be perfect - you can absolutely keep working on it after the split. SnowFire (talk) 21:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
Regarding history, I agree that it should be split, preferably into at least one article but more likely two or three. (I suggest separate articles for the NYT in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries.) – Epicgenius (talk) 21:23, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
(In particular, the prose size of the History section alone is 28,000 words. If this were split out, and a 7,000-word summary added to this article, you'd still have 14,000 words: 7,000 summarizing the history and 7,000 for everything else.) – Epicgenius (talk) 02:34, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm concerned about the sheer size of this article, echoing the comments above. The article, which is a high-traffic & important topic, is (as of writing this) over 464,000 bytes and nearly 36,000 words. To be frank, I don't think this size is appropriate for mainspace, and it's rendered this article pretty inaccessible to both readers and editors. I can't properly load diffs because of the size, making reviewing changes to the article nearly impossible. ElijahPepe's work is genuinely very admirable and impressive, but this desperately needs to be split, ASAP. sawyer * he/they * talk 03:49, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

I'd suggest moving the new history content to a single subarticle and restoring the original language of that section here, with adaptations for summary style. It's an excellent contribution but I agree too long and warrants its own page. Reywas92Talk 15:03, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed (though we almost certainly need more than one article for the NYT's history). – Epicgenius (talk) 23:25, 16 January 2024 (UTC)

@ElijahPepe I think there's a pretty clear agreement in this section that this content should be split, and sooner rather than later (especially because it raises accessibility concerns with how large the page has gotten). Are you willing to do so? If not, I will do it in the next few days. Eddie891 Talk Work 13:56, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

@Eddie891: I have established a general framework for how the history articles should be spread out. Removing content should be discussed for each section in this article and the main history article. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 23:26, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
No, it doesn’t make sense to discuss every single thing to be split. The point here is that this is a highly visited article, and leaving it so long impeded the reader’s experience. We shouldn’t wait until a perfect split is achieved, but do it and reassess. Eddie891 Talk Work 00:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
Callousness will also impede readers' experiences. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 04:01, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
I find myself in agreement with Eddie891 here, this article pretty urgently needs splitting. The current length comes in at 471,003 bytes and because of the length and number of citation and SFN templates, the page takes a very long time to render and edit. The history section alone is around half the page length at 218,923 bytes, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be that long when History of The New York Times was created almost a month ago. Even that article is too long, currently coming in at 366,627 bytes, but that's a discussion for another talk page.
Rather than adding new content to other sections, I would strongly suggest as a matter of urgency re-writing and condensing the current history section in summary style, so that this page becomes slightly more manageable. Sideswipe9th (talk) 03:53, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
@Sideswipe9th, regarding The history section alone is around half the page length at 218,923 bytes, and there's absolutely no reason for it to be that long when History of The New York Times was created almost a month ago. Even that article is too long, currently coming in at 366,627 bytes, but that's a discussion for another talk page, I and SnowFire proposed splitting the history section into three pages above. However, it seems like all of the info in the "History" section of this page was merely split out to the History article. The History article really should itself be split into three articles, and these articles should be summarized here.
By the way, the reason that wikitext of the History article is 360,000 bytes, while the wikitext of this page's history section is only 210,000 bytes, is because the pages use shortened footnotes. The "Works cited" section alone is 165,000 bytes of wikitext, which actually loads pretty quickly. It may be the images that are slowing down loading times. Epicgenius (talk) 14:55, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
It may be the images that are slowing down loading times I don't think it's the images. If I use my browser's developer tools in network capture mode, it takes a little over 10 seconds for the article text to be generated by the server before being sent to my browser. The actual transfer of the article text and all of the images takes about less than 50ms, once the article text is generated.
I'd agree that the history article also needs splitting in to three or four parts, depending on how you want to delineate the 20th century content. I'd probably split it into four; 19th century, first half 20th century, second half 20th century, 21st century, as the 20th century content seems quite long in and of itself. Sideswipe9th (talk) 16:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Regarding image loading times, that is interesting. Might just be my Internet connection - the whole page loaded within 3 seconds for me earlier this morning.
Splitting the history into four pages may be a good idea as well. SnowFire proposed three (19th, early 20th, and late 20th to present), but we're barely in the third decade of the 21st century, so a dedicated page on 21st-century history may well be appropriate. Epicgenius (talk) 17:32, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
The fun coincidence with splitting History of The New York Times into four articles, is that each article will cover a roughly 50 year time period; 1851-1900, 1900-1950, 1950-2000, 2000+. Honestly I think there's enough content on just the 20th century history of the paper to have two lengthy articles. Sideswipe9th (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Seeing clear consensus here, I've re-added the History as it was before this addition. There were a couple copyedits I did during that re-add, happy to discuss those as well. There is already a nearly identical history section at History of The New York Times so no article content is being lost. Soni (talk) 22:22, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
  • Oh and full disclosure, I learnt about this page from seeing Sideswipe9th's edits and discussing this article offWiki. However I was not asked to edit this, just decided to edit of my own interest. So we should be pretty clear from canvassing or similar. Soni (talk) 22:41, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
    I see ElijahPepe has reverted your edit. On the one hand, the history section does need to be seriously trimmed, but on the other, I don't think just restoring the pre-expansion version is the best way to go about it. Prior to ElijahPepe's expansion, the history section put undue weight on certain aspects of the NYT's history. For example, New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) and The Pentagon Papers (1971) each got their own subsections—the latter with four paragraphs—while the period between 1935 and 1963 got a single paragraph.
    My suggestion would be to take some text from the existing History of The New York Times article and try to summarize each section as, at most, one paragraph with 100-150 words. That article has 33 subsections, so summarizing the history article that way would probably result in this article having a History section with 3,000-4,500 words. This would still be a lot, but not enough to overwhelm readers; the rest of the article combined has 7,000 words, so it would be on the long side of WP:SIZERULE (10,000-11,500 words total). Nonetheless this would be drastically more readable compared to the 35,000 words that this article has now; WP:SIZERULE says a page should almost certainly be split at 15,000 words.
    I also understand that summarizing the history section could take a while, so I'm not opposed to restoring the old history section for a short time while the History article is summarized. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:59, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
    @Epicgenius I was happy to do that, but it's nearly impossible to edit an article when there's 450K characters to work through, basically crashing my browser while editing. It took me about 20ish mins just to get the basic restoration done, that's how badly the load and readability was being.
    I think we absolutely should do this, summarise each section from History in the main article. I just believe that while we complete said summary (probably a few hours to a couple days of work), the article needs to be in pre-expansion version, or it becomes literally impossible to edit. Soni (talk) 00:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
    My bad, I did not realize it was literally crashing your browser. Yeah, in that case, restoring the old history section for now might be the best way to go about this. – Epicgenius (talk) 00:05, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
  • @ElijahPepe I am confused by your comment asking to "discuss in the talk page" when that's exactly what I did, just here.
There are 6 editors in the above discussion that requested first reverting to 250K char article - @Hist9600, Eddie891, Sideswipe9th, Epicgenius, Reywas92, and Sawyer-mcdonell:, and just you who preferred we work from the 450K+ char version first. (Sorry for unnecessary ping, please correct me if I misrepresented your takes)
You cannot both invite others to edit the article above, while reverting any changes without discussion. And finally, like I said above, the article contents are nearly identically present in History of The New York Times as well, so we should not be replicating the content doubly regardless. If the article is under work, it should be in draftspace. If it's not under work, the mainspace article should reflect consensus, which is clearly in favour of readability (while we continue to fix simple enough errors such as shortened vs not reference format).
Please do not revert again without consensus.
Soni (talk) 23:58, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
This is not how this should be done. The article is significantly worse and this is not what this article should look like. I now need to drop everything that I'm doing on this article to deal with this. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 00:29, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I have now reduced the article size to 11,000 words. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 00:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
@ElijahPepe Seeing the discussion below... Nobody except you seem to think the article should stay in it's current state. I am reverting back, if only to actually allow myself to physically edit this page. I am happy to work with you to re-add the content that needs to be added, but we need to start from the pre-data dump version. Or we use a Draftspace page instead of throwing everything into mainspace. Soni (talk) 02:13, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Please consider reading WP:OWN. No one person has full editorial control over any article. You seem to consider your preferences on editing style more important than others, which is unhealthy at best and detrimental to articles at worst. WP:CONSENSUS might also be helpful to read.
To me, both wordcount and the overall character size matter. One helps readability, while the other helps browsers. And the article after your 2nd revert fails both. At first glance, I am seeing "just" the History section at 23K words, so this is very obviously not 11K words for the "entire article". It is also not 'roughly 100-150 words per decade' as @Epicgenius: suggested above. Just 1850-1900 seems to be roughly 3000 words alone.
All you've done is restored nearly a large proportion of the parts that needed to be cut, while completely ignoring my request to not crash browsers "while we edit this down". Roughly 15 mins into loading this, my browser still fails. I request another editor to revert this change while we sandbox this, rather than locking editors out completely. Soni (talk) 00:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
@ElijahPepe: the history section of this article badly needs a drastic cutdown, as Soni stated above trying to edit this article is causing his browser to crash. That is not a good sign for article length. You also don't have to do all of this alone, there are other editors here, like Soni and myself, who are willing to help with this. But as with the section below on transphobia, you're saying that you're having to "drop everything" to work on this. That is also not a good sign. Wikipedia is fundamentally a collaborative environment, but between statements like this and the requests in edit summaries to other editors that they should "hold off on reverts or significant overhauls" collaboration with you on directly improving the article seems incredibly difficult.
Perhaps you could explain to us what your intention is with regards to the article and its content? Just under a month ago you added 230,000 characters from your sandbox to an article that was already over 221,000 characters long. What is your long term goal here? Are you wanting to bring this article to GA or FA status? Are you trying to re-write the article so that it is more up to date and more concise? What can other editors do achieve this goal faster? Is this perhaps such a significant undertaking that we should instead restore the already lengthy version of the article from 1 January 2024 despite its flaws, and instead work on this together in a sandbox so that when there's a consensus that the draft is in a good enough shape to "go live", all of the changes can be made to this article in a single edit? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm looking to take this article to featured article status. I don't need help in taking it there, but I'm willing to try to reduce the article size. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
@ElijahPepe: Ok, that is not a good sign. As I said in my last reply, Wikipedia is fundamentally a collaborative environment. We are at our best when we're working on content together. No one editor has ownership over an article, article content is always decided via consensus.
Now wanting to bring this article to FA status is a great goal, however based on just the content you added on 14 January, even in isolation from all of the rest of the content in the article, I would quick-fail at FAC per WP:FACR#4 alone, without even needing to look at any of the other criteria. The content that you're adding is far too long. The history section goes into a lot of unnecessary detail, and even prior to the creation of the history of article did not comply with summary style.
Additionally, the review process that's required as part of FAC is collaborative. You will receive a lot of feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, and in most cases will be required to act upon it. It is not an easy process to go through at the best of times, and being resistant to letting other editors help like in this discussion is not going to help that.
So with that all said, again I ask, how can we help? Staying out of your way is not a realistic option here. Even if those of us who are here now disengage from the article and talk page, there will always be some new editor coming along to edit the content. And if you resist those changes, I guarantee that in the medium to long term it would not end well, and I don't want to see that happen. So, how can we help? Sideswipe9th (talk) 01:48, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
The only two things that need to be done are expanding several sections that have little to no content and reducing the size of the history section. Reverting to the old history section is not an option. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 01:55, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Even if we completely excised the history section, this article would still be borderline too long per FACR#4. There is around 10,000 words all of the other sections combined. Adding more content elsewhere isn't going to help the page length issues and is only going to compound the issue. If you're wanting to bring this article to FA, then per summary style you need to bring the article down to between 8,000 and 12,000 words total across all sections. That means a lot of content will have to go into dedicated spin-off articles, the history of article is a good start but even that needs to be split into at least 3 or 4 parts. To adapt your phrase, adding more content is not an option at this time.
So, how can we help with that? Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:06, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Up to your interpretation. Re-adding content that ruins the citation style and breaks several citations is not the place to start. I am done trying to argue this. It is patently obvious reducing content over time is not an option. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 02:25, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Restoring that version is only a temporary measure, while we work collaboratively on an improved version either here on the talk page or in a sandbox somewhere. It's an interim measure so that folks like Drmies can actually just load the article for reading. Blanking an entire section, as you did in this edit is not helpful in this circumstance. While blank sections are acceptable in a sandbox or draft space while an article is in the process of being created, they are never acceptable in a live article. That's why we have orange templates like {{blank section}}.
It is patently obvious reducing content over time is not an option. That's because you're not letting us help you. You're not giving us any of the information we need in order to share the load. You want to take this article to FA? Great, lets do that together. Collaboration is a fundamental part of the FA process, and the more you work well with others now, the easier it will be to eventually pass the article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 02:35, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not looking for help at the moment. Condensing the history section is a great idea, because the history section at present is insufficient. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 03:03, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

User talk:ElijahPepe, if you want to bring this up to FA status you will have to a. trim this considerably (I can't load it or read it) and b. give up ownership, since FA review is the clearest example of collaborative editing. Drmies (talk) 02:19, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


Discussion about deleted citations

 – Soni (talk) 18:08, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
  • I’m happy with any just so long as the policy is to convert out of style citations, not to delete. Snokalok (talk) 01:02, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
In that circumstance, I deleted the citations because there were three of them when one was sufficient and I prefer Vanity Fair for coverage of The New York Times. It was quicker for me to copy and paste one of the references I had written for Klein already than to write a new one. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 02:58, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Three is better for a contentious topic, which this very much was, and deleting citations simply because they’re from the guardian and not vanity fair is, kinda insane without any further logic? Snokalok (talk) 09:45, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
Especially because your citation was, as others had said, an opinion piece, compared to stronger reporting from non-Vanity Fair sources Snokalok (talk) 09:50, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
I deleted your citations because they weren't in shortened footnote form. I used the opinion piece to cite a figure that had not been updated in other sources. If quotations are truly contentious, might I suggest {{Efn}}? elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 16:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)
@Snokalok @ElijahPepe Can I request both of you to take specific past edits to another section? The main reason we created separate sections for each of this is to not get bogged down by wall of text when deciding big picture overalls for the article. The exact references in the previous edit will not affect whether we use SFN, Harvard FN or something else. Soni (talk) 16:17, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

@ElijahPepe, today you removed a citation from The Guardian saying that it was "yellow-tagged in the JavaScript script I'm using". WP:RSP lists The Guardian as green-tagged for "generally reliable", with only its blogs yellow-tagged for limited use. It's also one of the UK's newspapers of record. The article you removed does not appear to be a blog post, but a news article. Your rationale for removal appears to be flawed.

You also said it was done "per talk page" - where is the consensus for this? There's this thread from several days ago with @Snokalok where you guys were going back and forth about the citations in this section, but the discussion peters out with no consensus. Certainly not one where I would say "per talk page". I understand wanting to convert the citation to sfn, but removing it entirely seems unwarranted. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:34, 19 February 2024 (UTC)

Apologies, I got buried in work stuff. Anyway yeah, just, convert it if you want that citation format so much. I don’t see the issue there Snokalok (talk) 21:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure your blanket revert was the best idea either. Can people please discuss things rather than just blindly removing content or reverting changes? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:13, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
I mean I’ve discussed this at length, general consensus has consistently been that the sources I implemented are better, but Elijah has repeatedly “determined” on his own that a Vanity Fair opinion piece is a better source and repeatedly kills any other source.
@ElijahPepe Snokalok (talk) 01:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Look, Elijah, you’re the one who wanted and implemented SFN in the first place. I’m not opposed to that. But if a necessary source isn’t in that style, convert instead of deleting it, because the last time you deleted, we got like three citation needed tags and the entire paragraph had to be blanked AND like three editors in addition to myself all simultaneously wrote ANI posts about it because you wouldn’t discuss. You repeatedly deleting instead of converting and asserting that any source that’s not in that style has to be killed even if it leaves info unsourced, makes it seem like a possessive ownership thing, as was discussed at length on ANI.
So just, convert it. Easy solution. Snokalok (talk) 01:45, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Deleting the sources had nothing to do with shortened footnotes; three citations for quoting a letter is excessive. The Vanity Fair article was not an opinion piece and fairly summarized the content. I chose it because I had already written citations from Klein and it was easier to copy and paste one of those than to write a new one. This is a moot argument because the references have been converted, though I still question why one citation would not be sufficient enough. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 02:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
1. Everyone else seems to agree the vanity fair citation isn't enough and the ones I implemented are. Three citations isn't unreasonable. If it was more, I'd perhaps agree with you, but there's nothing wrong with deploying three sources for something like this.
2. Yeah I'll be honest I tried to write a new citation for the other sources as well, it was so much more difficult than an inline ref citation, and honestly the system implemented is not my jungle to navigate so I didn't want to throw a wrench in things. I figure, it very much is both a jungle you created and unilaterally implemented, and one you thus know how to navigate, so you actually know what you're doing in writing this, and the burden should more rightfully fall on you to perform. But really more than anything this is a "Do the dishes" problem, I don't care who does it, just so long as someone does. But smashing the dishes in favor of everyone sharing a small side-plate because it's already clean, is not the answer.
@ElijahPepe Snokalok (talk) 02:17, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
@ElijahPepe Sorry, html error. Try reading it now. Snokalok (talk) 02:18, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
I’ll add that until this is settled, too many citations is wildly preferable to too few Snokalok (talk) 02:40, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
Everyone else has not agreed on that. Not sure why you're still reverting my edits when I have already converted those references to shortened footnotes; are you looking at the edits themselves? WP:CITEVAR explicitly states to follow the citation style. elijahpepe@wikipedia (he/him) 05:11, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
No, I'm agreeing to the fact that the sources I implemented are better sources than yours, which everyone but you has been in agreement on. As for WP:CITEVAR, I agree, we need one citation style, but until then, having no sources for something is worse than having mixed-style sources for it. Again, it's your jungle, just convert it, no one will stop you. Snokalok (talk) 14:26, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
WAIT OMG YOU CONVERTED THE SOURCES. I DIDN'T NOTICE BECAUSE THE CHARACTER COUNT WAS THE SAME BUT OMG. THANK YOU @ElijahPepe Snokalok (talk) 14:28, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
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