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What (exactly) does "Deprecation" mean?

(Title was: "What (exactly) does "Depreciation" mean?) --Guy Macon (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

We have had a lot of discussions recently about whether some source should be “Depreciated”... and as I read them, one thing stands out: I am not at all sure that we are in total agreement about what “depreciation” actually MEANS. At one extreme, we have editors who seem to think it means a blanket ban on using the source, and that we should nuke it when found. At the other extreme, we have editors who seem to take it more as a “caution”... and that depreciated sources can be used in limited situations. I think we need to reach a consensus on what “depreciation“ means, before we have any further discussions on specific sources. Blueboar (talk) 22:25, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:Deprecated sources. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:29, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

That doesn't exactly represent a consensus though. GMG^talk 23:12, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

But that essay is probably the place to start if someone wants to formalize that consensus, right? I actually don't think there's much disagreement on what deprecated sources are: they're sources that are so consistently unreliable that they should generally not be cited in Wikipedia except under exceptional circumstances. There are disagreements on whether they should be nuked-on-sight, but I don't actually know if we need to have a consensus on that question in order to keep having deprecation discussions. Nblund ^talk 23:23, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

I guess that depends on whether the difference causes a mess or not. GMG^talk 23:25, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Doesn't it? I think it gets linked in discussions that suggest depreciation nowadays, so I'd argue that any discussion that reaches a consensus to depreciate a source is finding a consensus to, well, do that. Giving it its own page just provides an easy way to summarize what such RFCs are suggesting without a wall-of-text. --Aquillion (talk) 07:19, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Blueboar, a deprecated source is presumptively unreliable. Put simply: if a better source exists, please use it instead; if no better source exists the content should probably be excluded altogether. Guy (help!) 11:29, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

BTW, the term is deprecation, not depreciation. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:30, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

The first two sentences of Wikipedia:Deprecated sources (WP:DEPS) provide a brief summary:

Deprecated sources are highly questionable sources that editors are discouraged from citing in articles, because they fail the reliable sources guideline in nearly all circumstances. These sources may be subject to restrictions, including an edit filter.

Historically, deprecation has been proposed through a formal RfC on this noticeboard to ensure a well-publicized discussion. Deprecated sources are a subset of questionable (and generally unreliable) sources. The main difference between a deprecated source and a non-deprecated questionable source is that technical measures (including auto-reverts by XLinkBot and edit-filters set to warn) are typically used to actively discourage the use of deprecated sources (see WP:DEPSOURCES for a full list). These measures are rarely used for sources that are considered questionable, but have not been deprecated. — Newslinger talk 01:18, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

As a reminder, deprecated sources are also subject to WP:ABOUTSELF and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS. — Newslinger talk 01:41, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I feel that definition is missing at least the software meaning of the terms, and which I've seen it used here (eg like with Daily Mail), in that it was at one point an acceptable source, but due to consensus changes here and/or external situation changes, no longer is such a source. What's important with this is that this may mean that earlier versions of that source are fine, while later versions should be avoided (eg the question being asked about Newsweek right now on RS/N). Deprecation does not mean the source must be removed (it definitely should not be added unless essential) but understanding why deprecation happened would explain what is the right approach to deal with existing entries. --Masem (t) 15:15, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, Daily Mail considered harmful... Guy (help!) 15:26, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

From WP:DAILYMAIL decision : The Daily Mail may have been more reliable historically, and it could make sense to cite it as a primary source if it is the subject of discussion. These seem to be good points, but should come up very rarely. Editors are encouraged to discuss with each other and apply common sense in these cases. I 100% agree that if we're talking an article from DM dates post 2010, avoid it at all costs, but the decision would allow for older users when the DM wasn't a flat out tabloid. This is how deprecation works in software frequently: older, complex code is based on deprecated features that are no longer supported but still function, so its fair to use it there, but new code should avoid these deprecated features. --Masem (t) 15:29, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

That's a good point, and the phrase "reliable historically" is noted in both WP:RSP § Daily Mail and WP:DEPS § Daily Mail. However, from a glance at the list of currently deprecated sources, I think the Daily Mail's historical reliability is more of the exception than the rule. Setting aside the three print tabloids (Daily Mail, National Enquirer, and The Sun), the remainder of the deprecated sources were established recently enough to lack a substantial history that could be evaluated differently. — Newslinger talk 21:48, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

My point is that "deprecated" never has really meant "remove with all vigor", even in the case of the Daily Mail. If DM was to be forbidden in all cases, there is other language that could be used. Deprecated gives the intent that we should be going through all links that we use from that deprecated source, determine if they are allowed to stay by the reasoning of the deprecated decision and if not, either carefully take the time to replace with more appropriate sourcing or otherwise remove the information that was strictly dependent on that source. Deprecation from a software side has never meant to be a full immediate wipe of all versions of the deprecated without thinking since this can have other unintended consequences. If it is truly the case that enough users like JzG feel that DM is harmful to keep around, they can organize an effort to review each DM entry for replacement as to rid ourselves of bad DM uses in the most expedient but human-reviewed way possible. --Masem (t) 22:34, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

• Agreed. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:57, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, that's exactly what I do. I tag as deprecated unless it's redundant to a better source already in place, in which case I remove; some time later (usually months) I review the tagged sources and either replace with a better source or, if it looks like trivia, just remove it. This is similar to the approach I have taken for years with predatory journals, which has reduced the levels of citation to such journals from tens of thousands to a few hundred at most, and with Breitbart.

The one big difference between the Mail and, say, a SciRP journal, is that the latter cites are very often added by IPS that coincidentally are associated with one of the authors' institutions. Weird how that goes. So the Mail is not spam and I treat it much less aggressively as a result.

There are, at least in theory, valid uses for the Mail, I just don't find many of them. It's more likely to be stories about footballers illustrated with pictures of their girlfriends in bikinis, which fits delightfully with the "sidebar of shame". And when the sidebar goes I will be happy to reconsider whether the new editor is putting the paper on a more secure journalistic footing. Guy (help!) 11:38, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Then you're fine, I just get the tone from how heavy you come on DM being harmful (which is fair enough) that it might imply more hasty methods that may be harmful themselves. Your method described above is safe and appropriate and how I would expect we handle something "deprecated". --Masem (t) 15:35, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, did you read the linked article? It's old school geek-speak. As in "GOTO considered harmful". Always inviting the riposte: "sez who?" Guy (help!) 15:54, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I admit I presently did not recall hearing that term and mistook the statement for something else. Fully agree with your point with that and do apologize for suggesting you might not be taking the proper care with removing DM links. I can see nothing wrong with how you are handling it, in assuming good faith that you are checking, and that we agree on the ultimate goal of minimizing the use of DM articles save where DM is the focal point of the situation. --Masem (t) 01:04, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, no offence taken, my friend. As one who grew up on CompuServe and Usenet, I am used to people not getting my references :-) Guy (help!) 13:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• The crux of this is whether deprecation means to avoid creating more of a problem, or else to immediately remove all the instances of it. The off-wiki sources are clear on this. It's a term widely used in technology industries for just this situation. WP:DEPS agrees. There are cases when we might wish that a source wasn't ever cited, but it has been, and immediately just removing all uses of it (and maybe removing significant blocks of content too) would make things worse. It's a common problem in technology, it's particularly a problem with formal specifications.

But on this page, a couple of editors are advocating immediate bulk removal, on the basis that a source is "deprecated". That's not what the word means. It's not what policy supports. It's not what specific RfCs have decided. Andy Dingley (talk) 22:06, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

So, let's speak in specifics, not meta-level abstractions. Please explain e.g. why the Daily Mail is a good enough source to keep in any circumstances; and your own recent defence of News of the World - David Gerard (talk) 23:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I've never defended the NotW. You know that. So for you to make such a statement indicates that you have as flexible a relation with truth as the Mail itself does. I'm very disappointed in you. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:56, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

And yet, your actual editing was to do precisely that thing - you didn't even want it even tagged as a bad source. Your reasoning - such as anyone could extract it from you - turned out to be personal animosity and extended personal attacks on another editor, and never mind a single thing about the quality of the source itself - despite many people asking you repeatedly, in a massive one-against-many.

The trouble is that when you do a thing, you do the thing, even if the reason is that you hate another editor so much you feel compelled to oppose even their good ideas. You can't come here and then deny that you did the thing you did. The edit history exists.

You still haven't given a reason why deprecated sources shouldn't be removed, and indeed why claims based on the deprecated source shouldn't be removed. They're deprecated because they're sewage-quality sources.

If you insist that - despite your repeated attempts in discussion to hold back work on removing these sources - you don't support continued use of these sources, please list your work to reduce their use in practice - David Gerard (talk) 08:11, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• David, you are so insistent on misrepresenting anything that I've written here that I cannot explain that without being forced to assume the worst bad faith on your part. I have never defended the NotW or the Sun. I'm not against their removal. But I am against their removal in a way which is either badly done, or which leaves the overall content in a worse state. In particular, I have seen JzG do this over and over on a number of targets, and to do so in a way which is a gross failure of WP:CIR. Read above for the second-to-latest one where he takes WoodElf to ANI with all sorts of accusations for edits that simply didn't happen. Anyone who takes on the task of making bulk, gross changes to our content in any way has it incumbent upon them to at least check that their results match what their intentions had been, and Guy shows no sign of ever doing that: therefore he's not a fit person to be doing it.

We need to discuss sensibly what "deprecate" means in the WP context, agree what we're actually deprecating, then what sort of actions to take after that. I note that you've been removing NotW sources yourself, but you seem to be doing them at a slower rate which indicates some sort of editorial judgement going into each one, and I'm perfectly happy with that. To do them at Guy's typical rate of less than 5 seconds each (which seems to be our agreed rate for determining "'bot-like") and to do them simply as cite removals leaving the content dangling would not be the same thing at all – and that's what I don't support. Although I see that today you've started on the DM at one-a-minute rates citing an RfC which doesn't say "remove on sight" to remove them on sight – and that's much more of a problem.

As to " please list your work to reduce their use in practice " then you can stop that sort of tactic right now. That's sheer clique-building: "Only those engaged in the action are allowed to comment on the action" and we do not work that way here. Partly because it produces WP's wort feature of all, the wagon-circled self-sustaining and unchallengable cliques. But mostly because it's an incompetent and uncontrolled way to work: decide what's going to be done before starting to do vast quantitites of it, otherwise we get trapped into WP:FAIT. And if your implication is instead, "You don't have enough edit count to be challenging Me", then you can shove that one too. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:00, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

It appears that David Gerard has accurately described your behavior, and has backed up his description of your behavior with diffs showing the behavior. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:21, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

So, a specific allegation at last: you're claiming that JzG is removing sources by bot, and you can back that claim up?

Even then, that's a claim about a specific editor's behaviour - and it belong at WP:ANI. Where you have, again, been told repeatedly is the place to take your claims of that sort, and which you keep refusing to do, then continuing with the personal attacks. It is not a discussion point for deprecation in general, and if you aren't trying to divert discussion of deprecation, you should probably stop behaving like you are.

Your last paragraph seems to answer that you're not doing anything yourself then - ok - David Gerard (talk) 11:08, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• " you're claiming that JzG is removing sources by bot,"

<sigh> So this continual misrepresentation is just an attempt to goad me into an uncivil reply, which you can then use at ANI? That's rather pathetic. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:27, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Your literal words, which I am responding to are: I note that you've been removing NotW sources yourself, but you seem to be doing them at a slower rate which indicates some sort of editorial judgement going into each one, and I'm perfectly happy with that. To do them at Guy's typical rate of less than 5 seconds each (which seems to be our agreed rate for determining "'bot-like") and to do them simply as cite removals leaving the content dangling would not be the same thing at all – and that's what I don't support. If you're not accusing JzG of cite-removal by bot, then you need to write more clearly - David Gerard (talk) 13:28, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Are you having trouble with the phrase "'bot-like"? It's widely used on WP and generally well understood. For someone who has been here some time, I'd have expected you to be familiar with the concept. See WP:MEATBOT or even Commons:COM:BOT#Bot speed, where it's stated in more detail (and although Commons is not WP, their interpretations are helpful and non-contradicting here). Users may still be editing manually, but if they do this at such a rate that their basic accuracy starts to fail, then we have long considered that to fall under the same rules of conduct as for doing the same thing with 'bot automation (and that line has usually been seen at being around 5 seconds per edit).

The more and faster edits you are making, however you do them, the more pressure is on the controller of those to ensure that they're still accurate and appropriate. WP:FAIT also applies, and Guy has been criticised for using that in the past (the castles case). Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

So you're accusing him of behaving functionally indistinguishably from a bot for Wikipedia purposes? And - and you haven't answered this one yet - are you accusing him of doing this bot-like editing to remove sources indiscriminately?

Because if you are accusing him of doing that, then that's an actionably bad thing for him to have done - assuming that you can show it (with diffs and so forth).

And if you aren't accusing him of doing that - what are you accusing him of doing?

The hard part here is getting you to actually state your claim that is the root cause of you going on and on and on about JzG, and not about the nature of deprecated sources.

I'm having to play twenty questions with you here because you're repeatedly using discussions of deprecation as a launchpad for endless not-quite-specific personal attacks on JzG, but without actually clearly stating an actionable claim against him. We could save a lot of back and forth if you could state your problem with him, that violates a Wikipedia rule or guideline, in a sentence, with what should be done about it - and not keep, every damn time, derailing discussions of deprecation of sources with something that's functionally indistinguishable from personal animosity - David Gerard (talk) 15:45, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

David Gerard, I am in fact using AWB, and removing (rather than tagging) ONLY where the source is redundant - i.e. adjacent to other refs supporting the same text. That's only a small minority of cases. Mostly (rough count something over 90%) I am just tagging. And the last run removed 100% manually - I opened the article and edited on Wikipedia. There have been previous cases where I have discussed a removal of a source, nobody has ventured an opinion, and there has been feedback later. In response, I have changed the way I work. But this is not really analogous, as those were half a dozen self-published sources, of which one was claimed (albeit still with no actual proof, I note) to be reliable. I have removed that one form my list and not looked at those sources since anyway.

The problem here is different. The source is deprecated, and there is a genuine difference of opinion on what deprecation means and whether it should happen at all, which is why (and I am amazed that I keep having to point this out) I am NOT removing sources in AWB UNLESS they are redundant to other sources. Some of it is relitigating past consensus. Some of it is complaining that the consensus is fine as long as we don't actually do anything about it. There are tens of thousands of links to these tabloids, thousands of them on biographies or supporting biographical information. I think that's a problem worht fixing. Guy (help!) 15:55, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Can you please explain Reinhard Marx (Church Militant) in the context of "I am NOT removing sources in AWB UNLESS they are redundant to other sources.". You remove a paragraph which appears to represent a substantial statement of Cardinal Marx' position on refugees, somewhat contradicted by the following paragraph.

I would claim three things here: that statement is important - our coverage of Cardinal Marx is incomplete and unrepresentative without it. That it's a large claim, not a small one. The sort of thing which is likely to have been covered by multiple sources, although German Catholicism is not an area of my expertise. Also it appears to be the sort of claim which is so clear as to be hard to misrepresent, i.e. even the Church Militant was probably accurate in its statement here.

I don't care how you make these edits, I care what their result is. Now yes, I agree that Church Militant appears to have so much POV bias that it is useless as a source. If you claim "I did not use AWB to make that edit", then your claim above is literally true. No doubt you can claim that BLP permits any content to be removed. But yet – is your edit here really improving the article?

BLP does not merely mean "All statements must be reliably sourced", it also requires us to observe NPOV and to be careful in our selection of statements, so as to accurately reflect the overall description of our subjects. Selective removal goes against that.

You stated initially, " I propose to tag and then remove the couple of hundred links we have to this site." (WP:RSN#News of the World). You have since claimed, "I only tag them" and "I only remove them if they're redundant". Yet that's not what you stated you were intending to do. Nor is it what you did with Cardinal Marx. So which should I believe?

And just for clarity, I have no problem with anyone bulk-tagging deprecated cites as "better source needed" and leaving the cite, or removing that cite if it really is redundant. But either removing the content without some human review, or removing the last cite to leave content unsourced – that's what I've been against all along. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

That's really obviously an WP:UNDUE extended quotation cited to at best a primary source. It's aggrandisement for the subject, and adds nothing encyclopedic to the article. It's a perfectly reasonable editorial decision to make. You might disagree editorially, and that's fine - but in terms of claiming malfeasance, then if this is the best you have for a smoking gun, it's not very good, and you've hung four paragraphs of ranting which isn't really very well supported by the best example you could find - David Gerard (talk) 20:20, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

lol, Andy is now adding back the Daily Mail as a source on articles. Apparently the DM is just the source on hijabs. WP:POINT. This is probably not a good way to demonstrate your previous claim that you weren't posting here in support of the use of deprecated sources - David Gerard (talk) 00:24, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I eagerly await Andy Dingley's explanation for the above edit. I will make popcorn. If it was anyone else I would have issued a warning and, if the behavior continued, opened up a case at WP:ANI. I refrained because I am biased against Andy Dingley. I think my bias is legitimate and based upon past behavior, but then again, I would say that, wouldn't I? It is not often that someone disagrees with their own opinions... --Guy Macon (talk) 06:13, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Arguably, Andy's approach - keeping the DM source in there until a better source can be found, rather than removing the source and leaving a CN in place - is the better way to handle deprecation if we are talking from a software concept. Even if the DM source is sloppy or incorrect, the text within it and context in the WP article can help locate a much better source. Losing the source reduces how easy a replacement can be found. --Masem (t) 06:18, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

"Arguably", but not actually. I think you're going a bit far off into the meta-level theory there, and working way too hard to keep the deprecated source in - David Gerard (talk) 07:41, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Any mass action - like mass removal of DM links - should be done in a way to minimize disruption. Stripping out DM links to content that is not immediately problematic and leaving behind CN is more disruptive than leaving the DM links in, with a "deprecated" notice, to be fixed by others later. --Masem (t) 13:55, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

If it's from the DM, it's sufficiently problematic to be removed. Misleading people with bad sources is bad. I've quoted the relevant parts of the WP:DAILYMAIL decision below; I ask you to please re-familiarise yourself with it, rather than keep coming up with reasons to resist it - David Gerard (talk) 17:15, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

If there was a time-expediency expected in either DM RFC closure, it would have been made clear. There isn't any, so we should be reasonably slow and careful with how DM links are removed, only after assuring either that there is a replacement source for it (including existing sources) or that the content sourced to it is removed with care as to avoid disruption. As RGloucester points out below, most DM cites were likely added in good faith when DM wasn't questioned. Those *still* must be removed or replaced, but there's no deadline for when that is to be completed by. --Masem (t) 17:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

David Gerard, if that isn't a [[WP:POINT] violation I don't know what is. The one area where the DM is likely to have strongest consensus against any use at all, is in respect of Islam. And Andy also restored material based on Bored Panda. That website is funny, the edit is not. Guy (help!) 13:49, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Whether or not we agree with Andy's approach, it directly contradicts the decision of the community in the RfC. Nowhere was there any consensus for retaining DM links for the reason above, and certainly not for putting them back after they were removed.

In those rare cases where we want to retain the ability to use the DM source to help us find a better source without violating the RfC. We can do it like this:

 {{Citation needed|reason= https://www.dailymail.co.uk/Turn-out-that-everything-in-The-Onion-is-true removed per WP:DAILYMAIL |date=November 2019}}

...which gives us:

In cases where the claim is removed as well, we can replace it with

 <!-- Claim "Everything in The Onion is true" and reference https://www.dailymail.co.uk/Turn-out-that-everything-in-The-Onion-is-true removed per WP:DAILYMAIL --> 

--Guy Macon (talk) 07:50, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

or put it on talk, or something. But I've been doing a lot of DM removal lately, all by hand, applying a small amount of thought to each individual edit - if the fact is likely true, just remove DM and add a {{cn}} if needed; if not, remove the cite and the claim, and don't trust the DM, it's actively misleading. Over the course of several hundred? removals, I've really seen zero cases where there's reason to jump through hoops to keep the DM link lying around somewhere - David Gerard (talk) 08:16, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Let's take the case where no existing use of DM is valid per the DM decision (used on BLP, etc.) The point when using the word "deprecation" is that we recognize all those uses need to go, but outright, blind removal of all uses could create more problems than leaving them in. Namely, we lose the citation on a statement that might be true and useful to retain in the BLP. That's where we need a human to check each use, see if there's a better source to support the same fact or otherwise remove the questionable fact and work the prose so that it doesn't leave the article hanging. I would strongly suggest getting a bot to run through and add {{Deprecated inline}} after each DM citation (for example), which will alert readers and point them to WP:RSP to see if they maybe can help fix. This again is similar to software space solutions, where one can add in code comments to call out deprecated function calls so that future developers can find alternate solutions. --Masem (t) 00:13, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Namely, we lose the citation on a statement that might be true and useful to retain in the BLP. Yet again, you seem to greatly misunderstand WP:BLP - we don't keep statements in a BLP because they might be useful, and we especially don't if the statement was cited only to a source that we deprecated because it frequently lies and just makes stuff up, especially about living people! We remove the statement from the tainted source - David Gerard (talk) 14:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I would assume that if we have a case where we have a highly contentious or dubious statement within a BLP which only relies on DM, and there's no other context about that statement, then it would be reasonable to remove that statement without having to go source hunting for a replacement or to leave behind a CN. But if we're talking a more pedestrian fact - one that still may be challenged but not something of significant doubt, then that's the point where leaving the DM link with some "deprecated" tag is reasonable (for example, outlining a footballer's career via team history). DM was not deprecated because 100% of their material was false; I would argue that somewhere between 80-90% of their material is still factually true and corroborates with other more reliable sources. But it is the fact that that 10-20% misleading/untrue information is far too high for us (we'd want something that's 1% or less) so we've depreciated it. DM links are not like copyvio links in that they present immediate harm to WP, but they need to be ultimately scrubbed to their essential uses to "complete" the RFC's deprecation approach, there's just no time factor here to remove. --Masem (t) 13:54, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

And yet, the consensus is that the links don't belong here and need to go. On BLPs - or any material concerning a living person, which as far as I can see way too many DM cites do - any cite to such a poor source does in fact need to go immediately. On any other subject, the generally prohibited in WP:DAILYMAIL means the onus is on the editor who wants to keep it. DM links themselves do, per WP:DAILYMAIL, constitute harm to Wikipedia - and the only reason they haven't been scoured already is that there's so damn many of them. Stop working so incredibly hard to throw up spurious obstacles to removing cites to a known liar of a source where the clear consensus is that it literally cannot be trusted - David Gerard (talk) 20:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Masem, what I do is this:

1. If the DM is one of a number of sources, remove the DM (I use DM as a proxy, it is the majority case).
2. If the DM is the sole source and it's a biography and potentially contentious (e.g legal) I either replace with a better source or remove the content and the source.
3. If the DM is the sole source and it's not a biography and probably not contentious (e.g. team sports results) I tag it and move on for now.

And all the above suggest to me that this is exactly in line with what everyone - including my critics - wants! Guy (help!) 15:58, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

To me it means do not use, avoid. That also means if it has been used we should not use it.Slatersteven (talk) 14:14, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

We know that's what you think it means. However that's at odds with both the dictionary definition, the common definition outside WP and also WP:DEPS. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:30, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Which is why I said "to me".Slatersteven (talk) 15:34, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I think that's a pretty reasonable concise summary of the first paragraph of WP:DEPS - David Gerard (talk) 15:50, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

• Please, please don't remove the Daily Mail without first evaluating whether the content it was supporting can reasonably exist without such a citation. I think JzG's approach, as written above, is sensible. What is not sensible is an edit like this, which leaves behind text that was produced from the Daily Mail without actually attributing that text to its source. RGloucester — ☎ 01:21, 13 November 2019 (UTC)
  • You'll be pleased to know I did, and thought at the time that was fine. If you disagree - which is also fine - why did you put back the source, rather than remove the text - David Gerard (talk) 07:40, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Great, so we now we have a section called 'Airport battle' without any indication of when or how the battle started. I despise the Daily Mail as much as the next person, but please be sensible. If you're going to remove the Daily Mail, you need to work to compensate for its removal rather than just wreck articles. And yes, I do but the burden on the person making the change. RGloucester — ☎ 09:18, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I've sorted it out myself, as other sources were easily available. I really don't appreciate your flippancy, however. RGloucester — ☎ 09:30, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

"flippancy" - no, it's bafflement at you putting back the deprecated, known-untrustworthy source which I'd left as a {{cn}}, then complaining I hadn't removed the text in question from the deprecated, known-untrustworthy source, which you were then making look like it was cited when it really wasn't trustably cited. We literally can't trust the DM, so the text was functionally uncited already - David Gerard (talk) 11:07, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

It was 'cited'. At the time the text was added, the Daily Mail was not deprecated. When whoever wrote that text inserted it, they did so in good faith. The relevant text was directly tied to the Daily Mail citation, so removing the citation whilst leaving the text creates a vacuum of attribution, which is in no way desirable. I am not sure why, if you think the Daily Mail is untrustworthy, that you'd want to leave material produced from the Daily Mail in an article WITHOUT indicating that it was originally from the Daily Mail. That makes no sense whatsoever. That's exactly how fake news starts to spread. Instead, the correct thing to do is to check whether other sources, which are reliable, support the text. If they do, insert them, and remove the Daily Mail. If they don't, remove the text. You did not do this. Your second edit was even worse than your first edit. Instead of bothering to check whether the relavent material was supported by other sources (it was), you simply removed it, destroying the flow of the whole paragraph without making any attempt to repair it. Please, please, be more careful. Replacing the Daily Mail with reliable sources is a noble mission, but simply removing such citations is not adequate. You must consider the nature of the material supported, check reliable sources, and make efforts to repair any prose damaged by removal of the Daily Mail. RGloucester — ☎ 15:47, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

That it was added in good faith at the time does not mean it was a good source that should have been kept. You can disagree with the editorial decision - which should not be conflated with whether the DM should be kept, because it almost never should - but this claim is bizarre - David Gerard (talk) 17:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• I would agree with RGloucester here. WP:DAILYMAIL does not support the bulk removal of DM sources, without replacement, as is being done at present. Same with hijab.

Also there have been a lot of actions lately where someone says here "I will only tag cites, or remove redundant ones." (which seems to have general suport), but then goes off for a run of blanket removals, contradicting all of WP:DEPS, WP:DAILYMAIL and what they've personally posted here. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:31, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Literally the text: Volunteers are encouraged to review them, and remove/replace them as appropriate. That's what I'm doing. Your replacement of it, and RGloucester's, directly contradicts also literally the text: its use as a reference is to be generally prohibited. Using it as a reference at all on a general topic is prohibited - David Gerard (talk) 12:13, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

• as appropriate is clearly the stumbling block.

Also "generally prohibited" means "permitted", rather than "never permitted". This is not a blanket ban. WP:DAILYMAIL has never gone that far. Maybe WP:NotW would do (and even then, some self-referential primary uses might still be viable).

Neither RGloucester nor myself are adding the DM in these cases, we're simply opposing what we see as inappropriate removal in favour of a vacuum.

For Guy's edits, there's also the problem that he does them in rapid blanket runs without time for study of each, and also that he denies he does this. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:56, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I would strongly suggest you drop the "bot-like" claims here if you are talking indirectly about JzG. One can load up multiple pages in a time in a browser, check each one, then rapid fire "publish" each change. The process JzG and their contributions show they are sticking to that in good faith in dealing with DM, the changes too complex to be just be non-human-oversighted, and JzG is clearly on board with treating deprecated as "remove with care" rather than "remove immediately". --Masem (t) 14:04, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

"generally prohibited" means "permitted", rather than "never permitted" - looking for loopholes is unhelpful behaviour. If you're not trying to support the continued use of deprecated sources, you probably need to stop working so hard to support the continued use of deprecated sources - David Gerard (talk) 17:15, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

"Generally prohibited" means that there is an increased burden on the person intending to use a source in a new cite, or retain the source that is proposed for removal. It basically means that every specific instance needs to be expressly justified to the satisfaction of others, and that the presumption is that any use of the source is invalid except in cases where it has been discussed and agreed to be valid. --Jayron32 19:23, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions of deprecate: "to not approve of something or say that you do not approve of something | to say that you think something is of little value or importance" (Cambridge), or "1. to express disapproval of 2. play down | belittle, disparage 3. to withdraw official support for or discourage the use of (something, such as a software product) in favor of a newer or better alternative (Merriam-Webster). Against that some editors are saying we should use an essay or care what the word means to them -- but Wikipedia editors are not dictionaries. When the real effect is not merely deprecation but prohibition, questioners should say. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 15:24, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Formatting the general source RFCs

Looking at the 10 RFCs open on this page now, and putting on my WP:RFC-regular hat, I think that the format this page recommends for RFCs has some problems. This bit isn't the problem:

• Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting
• Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

The problem is that this neutral-sounding question encourages some editors to omit any mention relevant context, which results in good-faith editors being hit with "gotcha" comments about disputes that they would have mentioned if we had encouraged transparency, and maybe some others hoping that nobody will click through to their contributions before replying. I think that we need to ask the posting editors provide this information:

1. Whether the source is currently used in any article (e.g., Special:LinkSearch results for a website).
2. Whether there have been any previous RSN discussions.
3. Whether there are any current or recent disputes about the source.

The suggested content can be added to Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Example formatting. Does this seem sensible? Are there any other pieces of information that should normally be included? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:13, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Even before I saw your question, I added a note to the header just now that RFCs should include why you're even bringing the question - because recent RFCs without the "why?" have all been asked why. So something that requires context would be good. - David Gerard (talk) 10:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Agree, context should always be part of the question. Sometimes the context may be broad, but should still be made explicit. - Donald Albury 14:29, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Listicles

I recently reverted the removal of a source that was premised on the source being a "listicle". We have no standard barring information that happens to be reported in articles published in otherwise reliable sources that happens to be in the form of a "list"; and indeed, if the source is generally recognized as a reliable source, there is no principled basis that I know of for deeming information presented in a list format as automatically less reliable than that presented in any other format. On the other hand, I recognize that some less reliable sources are prone to throwing together poorly researched materials into a listicle as clickbait. Should we have some formal delineation of what makes material presented in a list format reliable or unreliable? BD2412 T 18:45, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The "reliability" of the listicle is based on the source it comes from; if the work is known to be clickbaity, then the listicle is probably not reliable, whereas if it comes from a normally reliable site, its okay. But I would caution that material from a listicle is routinely not considered what we'd expect of "significant coverage" for matters like notability, UNDUE weight, etc. --Masem (t) 19:00, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I was asking about the reliability alone, but it is useful to highlight the other concerns in case a novice happens to read this thread. BD2412 T 19:34, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikimedia Project Grant Proposal on *Disinformation*

I'm proposing a Wikimedia Foundation Project Grant to study *disinformation* and provide actionable insights and recommendations.

Please check it out and endorse it if you support it.

Meta:Grants:Project/Misinformation_And_Its_Discontents:_Narrative_Recommendations_on_Wikipedia's_Vulnerabilities_and_Resilience

Cheers! -Jake Ocaasi ^{t | c} 20:16, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

New rating for commentary?

Is there any support for assigning a new rating "commentary/opinion" for sources that are mainstream and have a good reputation but offer exculsively opinion and analysis, without any purely news/non-opinion pieces, so their entire output would be handled by WP:RSOPINION? I am thinking it would be a good designation for sources such as Reason.com, New Statesman, or New Republic (RSP entry). Commentary sources that have a reputation for fake news (such as Quadrant (RSP entry)), would be rated "generally unreliable". The reason that I am proposing this is that WP:RSOPINION is frequently ignored and such as rating would make it easier to follow our guidelines not to cite commentary pieces for facts. buidhe 12:33, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

I have no particular opinion on how this should be handled, but I'm frustrated at how WP:RS is sometimes selectively interpreted to validate WP:FRINGE theories or WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims that sneak into opinion pieces published by otherwise generally reliable sources. --MarioGom (talk) 12:37, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

This is often fringe advocates forum-shopping here - David Gerard (talk) 13:52, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Help

Can someone experienced in RS issues please help by giving an opinion at the discussion of deletions, taking place here? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Oxiris_Barbot

Thanks. --2604:2000:E010:1100:5DD2:277C:F8D6:E2AC (talk) 17:48, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Hi. This is not the correct forum for this. Please ask this question at the Wikipedia:3O to begin the dispute process. Thanks! Galendalia _{CVU Member} \ ^{Chat Me Up} 18:06, 15 May 2020 (UTC)

Closing summary for Panam Post

A RfC on PanAm Post was archived. But the talk was never closed, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_296#RfC:_PanAm_Post. Does that mean that there is no consensus?--ReyHahn (talk) 09:38, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

No. The consensus was "Generally unreliable for factual reporting". There is no need for a closer when the outcome of an RfC is clear. On the other hand, the fact that so few people participated is concerning.

There aren't very many places where it has been cited. I advise that you go through them all replacing each with a better source if you can find one, then come back to RSNB with a list of claims that are found only in the PanAm post. Avoid the overused RfC format and just ask a simple question about claim A and source A, claim B and source B, etc. --Guy Macon (talk) 12:45, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

@Guy Macon: I politely disagree, why do you say The consensus was "Generally unreliable for factual reporting"? I showed that the publication is notable, and it is partially reliable as some of their investigations are confirmed by AP or supported by Forbes. Also about 4/5 of the articles cited by others and described as a problem are correctly labeled as "opinion". I am not supporting the publication, I was advocating for "unclear or consideration apply", but I just wished some impartial user could provide some conclusions.--ReyHahn (talk) 15:29, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I am an impartial user. My conclusion is that the consensus was clearly against you:

• 0 !votes for Option 1: Generally reliable for factual reporting
• 2 !votes for Option 2: Unclear or additional considerations apply
• 4 !votes for Option 3: Generally unreliable for factual reporting (includes all !votes for option 4; anyone who thinks a source publishes false or fabricated information also believes that the source is generally unreliable for factual reporting)
• 2 !votes for Option 4: Publishes false or fabricated information, and should be deprecated

I stand by my previous advice. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:46, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I have to disagree again, WP:NOTDEMOCRACY and WP:NOTVOTE. Anyway, let us put the arguments aside. Are just some RfC left open without a closing summary? --ReyHahn (talk) 15:51, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

I've previously requested closure of this discussion at WP:RFCL § Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 296#RfC: PanAm Post. RfCs with low participation on this noticeboard are frequently left unclosed, but this one received enough participation that a formal closure could be useful, especially considering the disagreement here. — Newslinger talk 17:29, 11 June 2020 (UTC)

Is there a similar noticeboard on es.wikipedia.org?

• I want to add a conspiracy theorist, biased and in some cases fake news newspaper but it's in spanish, should I post it here or is there a Spanish version of this noticeboard? Fvoltes (talk) 00:21, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Not according the inter-language links, unfortunately, though this is something perhaps worth bringing up on the Spanish administrators noticeboard, as it has an active enough editor base to sustain such a board long term. Is it being used on the English Wikipedia? If so, then it should be brought up on this noticeboard as all of the wikis are separate and independently run, so it wouldn't be of their concern unless it was used on their wiki. if it is being used on eswiki then it might be worth asking for it to be added to their blacklist. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:34, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Great, thank you! Do you know where I find Spanish adminsitrators noticeboard? Fvoltes (talk) 16:45, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Fvoltes: It's here Hemiauchenia (talk) 16:52, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Waste of time

What's the point of responding to an RS discussion, involving many editors, if it's archived by the bot because there were no additional replies after 5 days? It should have first been closed. If another discussion about the same source is created in the future, what's the use of responding to it when nothing will come of it? And because the previous discussion was blown off, perhaps only those waiting for another discussion about the same subject will jump at the opportunity to tilt the balance of opinion. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 00:10, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary: It's usual for most non RfC discussions, even substantial ones to not be formally closed unless they are disruptive, feel free to unarchive the discussion (I presume it is the AfterEllen one?) if you think that is necessary. Read Wikipedia:Closing_discussions#Which_discussions_need_to_be_closed for further guidance. Kind regards. Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:17, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Pyxis Solitary, editors who patrol the noticeboard read every single discussion that gets archived. These discussions are then indexed in the perennial sources list. Most RfCs are closed after archival, some of them in response to filed requests for closure. Feel free to file a request if you would like a specific discussion to be formally closed, even if the discussion is archived. — Newslinger talk 00:18, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Hoops and hurdles. Got it. Txs. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 00:25, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

@Pyxis Solitary: would you like me to put in a formal closure request for the AfterEllen discussion? Hemiauchenia (talk) 00:39, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

That's a very generous offer. I would certainly appreciate your going out of your way to do so. Thank you. Pyxis Solitary (yak). L not Q. 04:26, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

Tracking domains

I wonder if there is interest here to have a template like the {{LinkSummary}} here at WP:RSN with search tools regarding the domain/site? That also facilitates tracking of discussions on the same domain (as is being done in the LinkSummary template), you can just click a tracking link in the current discussion and be presented with all discussions regarding the site. That also would be helpful in discussions that occur sometimes at the spam blacklist/spam whitelist with sites where there are both reliability and spam/abuse issues, making it much easier to find such discussions back. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:17, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

It would also help on Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources#Sources - where you then have a 'tracking' link linking to all discussions on these sources. I am talking about links like 'tracked' in

• suite101.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

showing you an overview of links to discussions in the archives where the domain was mentioned before. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:25, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

I like it. It will be very useful.

Question #1: do we want invoking the template to create a new entry in the search list? A lot of times I look to see how many times a spam URL has been linked to on Wikipedia only to see page after page of it being linked to in spam reports on user talk pages because they use a template. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Question #2: we have templates like Template:User link and Template:Pagelinks (I have no idea why they are named differently., Should this be named Domain Link or Domainlinks?

Question #3: should we have one version for all uses of a domain (example.com, www.example.com, sales.example,com) and another for specific URLs (www.example.com/spampage but not www.example.com/otherpage?) We could call that URL Link. Should it catch both www.example.com/spampage and example.com/spampage but not sales.example.com/spampage? --Guy Macon (talk) 16:35, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

• I think this would be very useful. {{Domain uses}}, which has a shortcut at {{duses}}, implements three of the most common link search methods, but it would be nice to have a template that includes a broader set of tools. — Newslinger talk 03:31, 8 May 2020 (UTC)

@Newslinger and Guy Macon:, things like {{duses}} and {{Domain uses}} are fine, but I am sure there are more (custom) searches possible to help you in assessments of sites ('does the site appear on Beall's list?'). Also, such links do not make you find the discussions back.

I do have the tendency that if sites are discussed in an abuse related discussion on ANI, on user talk pages, in copyvio discussions, in SPIs or whereever, that I add a {{LinkSummary}} to the top of these discussions, as that helps us in assessing future discussions (e.g. if a site is discussed on ANI for abuse, and 2 months later I get a discussion to delist it from the blacklist I know that the broader community may have concerns about that). I can imagine that there will be cases where you may be interested to know that a site has been discussed for spamming/abuse issues elsewhere as well and that you might want to be able to find these discussions in an easy way. Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:12, 11 May 2020 (UTC)

Ideally, the information needed by the person looking for past discussions would not clutter up the information used by the person nuking spamlinks on multiple pages. The obvious way to do that is to not have http:// or https:// in the mentions that exist to track previous spam discussions. That way only actual spam will show up in a link search. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I am still interested in bringing this forward. What about:

• Domain example.com: search insource (http & https) - domain usage report (track discussions) • advanced search

(feel free to edit {{RSourceSummary}}). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:05, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Andy NGO blp violation

Have editors forgotten about WP:BRD?

I serenaded that was a violation of WP:BLP. I think our guidelines permit me to remove this without checking with the editor who added it, but I think best practices are that the editor should be asked to remove it themselves. I did that and they refused, so I removed the edit.

The addition of the claim was a bold edit My removal of the claim was a revert

The next step should be discussion here. I don't think I should start the discussion I think it should be started by those who think my revert was improper. However, two editors have tried to undo the edit, restoring a BLP, and failing to open a discussion. I think they are supposed to open the discussion but in the interest of moving forward, I'm opening it.

I'm not going to post the edit here as that would itself constitute a BLP violation. A claim was made about a living person, which was negative and unsourced. That's grounds for removal. This is clear cut.

The only thing that's not clear that is whether the edit should be modified to remove the problematic aspect. I already suggested to the original editor that fixing it that way would be acceptable to me, but they declined so let's start with a clean slate, without the edit and determine what if anything should be added back.--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:08, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

By the way, in case anyone is thinking about invoking 3RR, make sure to read the policy specifically the section that identifies exceptions:

Removing contentious material that is libelous, biased, unsourced, or poorly sourced according to our biographies of living persons (BLP) policy.

--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:12, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

While the most egregious word has been struck through (not sufficient in my opinion), the remaining claims are not supported by the source. I won't be surprised if someone can find the source to support a softer claim, the source provided doesn't make that assertion. It should be removed immediately.--S Philbrick(Talk) 00:36, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Unsigned quoteboxes

I noticed that with this edit François Robere added several unsigned {{quotebox}}es to the right margin of this noticeboard. While quote boxes are commonly seen on discussion pages, they are usually used inside another template such as {{Archive top}} rather than as a standalone box. An unsigned box to the right of other editors' comments could mislead readers into thinking that the person whose comments appear beside the box posted the quotebox when they did not. Wikipedia:Noticeboards § Suggestions for success says "Sign and date all contributions, by appending four tildes "~~~~" to the end of every message. This simplifies page administration by allowing automatic archiving of older messages."

While these quote boxes were removed by this edit, I was thinking maybe we need some clearer guideline on the matter. – wbm1058 (talk) 14:37, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

How is this an RS matter?Slatersteven (talk) 14:38, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

It's a question on whether this is an appropriate practice on the RS noticeboard. I don't think this sort of thing (posting quote boxes without explanation) is appropriate. wbm1058 (talk) 14:49, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

People post all sorts of things to the boards, including the occasional image. I think the expert quotes give valuable context, and they're more likely to be read than sources "hidden" within the lengthy WP:WALLS of the discussion. I can tell you I received several "thank you" pings and emails for them, so they seem to constitute a positive contribution. François Robere (talk) 15:25, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

To editor François Robere: Sign your contributions, it really isn't difficult. If I see any exceptions, I will remove them as an admin action. Zero^talk 15:34, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

I actually suggested to do so,[1] but someone removed them and I'm not going to fight over it. François Robere (talk) 15:41, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Test pattern

You can make sure the image stays with the comment using {{clear}}. Even if the comment is short, the image only appears to the right of the one comment.

--Guy Macon (talk) 21:07, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Notice how this reply appears below the image?

That's because it is a reply to the comment with the image and thus is after the {{clear}}. Look at the page source to see how I did this. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:07, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Sarup & Sons

I am wondering if someone who knows more than I do would go over and check the Sarup & Sons discussion on the main noticeboard. This publisher appears to be a prolific copyright violator, but I am not sure what course of action is best—RfC, remove all citations to this source without a formal RfC, something else? Is there a way to edit filter by publisher? (t · c) buidhe 10:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Which main noticeboard? TFD (talk) 15:59, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

WP:RSN, where no one else seems interested in responding to the OP's concerns (t · c) buidhe 01:07, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Source review

Does anyone here know where I can request a source review for one article? I need someone to go over the sources of articles and comment on their quality before I take it to FAC. Shahid • ^Talk2me 21:22, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

SCMP RfC

The SCMP RfC that was archived a while ago is currently unclosed and there is no notification at WP:RFCLOSE. Hemiauchenia (talk) 19:51, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

@Hemiauchenia:, I have unarchived and closed the RfC. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 06:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Hemiauchenia (talk) 06:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

China Daily

Hey all- I would like to see an assessment of China Daily. I suspect China Daily will be judged below the credibility of Xinhua but above China Global Television Network. Geographyinitiative (talk) 02:08, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I already asked this a few months ago, see Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_305#China_Daily but it got little response, I would suggest a RfC. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

re Fox News

FWIW, just saw this interview with the author of the new book Hoax:

[Interviewer:]"You mention in the book that Fox News does not have a traditional standards-and-practices department like other news organizations do. Even I have encountered this as a columnist for CNN Opinion. Just this past weekend, the standards department made me rework an op-ed. I was like, 'But it's an opinion piece!' They still had issues because they had our common best interests in mind. Could you share with people what standards and practices do traditionally? And by contrast what is going on at Fox News?"

[Author:]"For the journalists who remain there, it's this really awkward, tough, sometimes hostile environment. I think the lack of standards and practices speaks to this problem. There is not a unit, a desk or a division that's charged with vetting news before it gets onto the air. There are some informal processes, but there's not that official checks and balances system that CNN has. And every other outlet has — forget about CNN — at the New York Times or Washington Post, there are reasons why there are editors and vetters and researchers. That structure just doesn't exist at Fox."

Just a data point in case people are still going with "but the news section is reliable" or something. I suppose they're already deprecated tho. Herostratus (talk) 02:45, 16 September 2020 (UTC)

They aren't deprecated yet according to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources but with recent coverage I think another RFC is due. Instances such as telling their staff not to use the term "president-elect" [2] and continually promoting election-centered conspiracy theories [3], along with faking images in the BLM protests [4] are strong evidence that they're generally unreliable at a minimum. IHateAccounts (talk) 15:52, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Global Times

I don't mean to beat a dead horse, but I think I have another good example of the unreliability of the Global Times that might be added here[5]. In this article, [6] the so-called "Buzhage county" does not exist. It may refer to a township in the area, Buzaq Township. The point is, there's a non-existent county referenced in a news article to allay fears that Uyghur graves are not being destroyed. I sent them a message in English asking for clarification but never got a response. Geographyinitiative (talk) 11:53, 20 September 2020 (UTC) (modified)

@Geographyinitiative: It's probably a typo: the Mandarin name of the township is "Buzhake". Calling it a "county" vs. a "township" is also sloppy. But I'm equally or even more worried about the CNN article that the Global Times is responding to: [7]. The Global Times went and took photos of what they say is the relocated cemetery. The CNN article talks about "destruction" and "raz[ing]" of cemeteries. If it is indeed true that they're being relocated to make room for development, as the Global Times and the Chinese government claim, then CNN's article would be extremely misleading/propagandistic. This is a case in which I would be very careful about taking CNN's reporting at face value. I also wouldn't take the Global Times' claims at face value, but we should be aware that propaganda goes both ways when it comes to China, and that outlets like CNN have their own strong biases. -Thucydides411 (talk) 17:06, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

​A dead horse killed my great-uncle on my mother's side, so I have an abiding hatred of dead horses, and I'll join in.

A typo or machine-assisted translation error seems quite plausible to me given that the GT article also, for example, uses the term “innominate graves”. I concur with Thucydides411 that even reliable sources can show strong bias—our definition of RS does not mean “unbiased”—but considering what I've seen of relocations of Han communities in China in English and French media, or relocations of communities and cemeteries outside of China for that matter, I should think it's quite possible for “destruction” and “relocation” to accurately describe the same process. I also note that the GT article does not really respond to one of the CNN Uyghur expert's statements that,

People would come to a shrine or cemetery from all over the Uyghur region for the annual pilgrimage festival... People pray for health and blessings, meet neighbors, share communal feasts and shop at carnival-like markets.

...except in saying that, at this one cemetery out of 100 evidently mentioned by CNN, people definitely didn't let their children go anywhere near the cemetery and the local government totally received tons of complaints about it.

in a late October huge thread on Western/Anglosphere-aligned versus geopolitically-Other sourcing at JIMBOTALK Thucydides411 and I discussed GT and since I went to the effort of analyzing an article I'll reproduce my comments here for RSN-posterity; you could read their responses there, or perhaps they'd like to respond here too.

Is the problem with the Global Times really just with their editorials, though? Just to pick this story off the the front page they're showing me right now, the proof it offers of Guo Wengui being a criminal isn't links to other coverage of their own on him or details of any domestic Chinese prosecution of him, but simply the mention that he's got Interpol red notices out against him, without also mentioning the many problems with the use of Interpol red notices documented in our article on them.

Guo seems like quite the shady guy to me based on other stuff I know, though I'm unaware of the basis for the kidnapping and rape charges our article on him mentions (cited to this Metro article and a paywalled WSJ article; the Global Times article does not mention kidnapping or rape and seems to imply it's all about corruption), and he's being held up in that article as an example of the US becoming a the haven of criminals as a Chinese official puts it, but this seems like a rather weak and non-journalistic indictment. My impression has very much been that the Global Times's problems run deeper than their editorials.

and then

We know from our own article that he's been charged with criminal offenses; we don't have to take some kind of tabula rasa attitude here. Like they're not trying to imply he's a fashion fugitive. (Though actually, that guy was a criminal anyways.) The Global Times not even committing to identifying him as a criminal doesn't move them higher on the journalistic integrity scale here, it moves them lower.

They're indicting Guo entirely with vague handwavy characterizations and the Interpol red notice, not through any information on any domestic Chinese legal process, and not with links to their own coverage in English or Chinese. And doing a site-scoped Google search about Guo I can see why they don't link to other coverage, because none of it sounds very journalistic either.

--‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 18:08, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Struthious Bandersnatch and Thucydides411: I just want it noted for the record that in Thucydides411's comment, the sentence "The CNN article talks about "destruction" and "raz[ing]" of cemeteries." implies by its context that the CNN article talks about "destruction" and "raz[ing]" of cemeteries in Xinjiang/East Turkistan. This implication is not in the CNN article. There is an analogy in a quotation that uses the word 'razed' in reference to a cemetery outside of Xinjiang/East Turkistan, and that's all. Therefore, the sentence "The CNN article talks about "destruction" and "raz[ing]" of cemeteries." is technically true, but could easily confuse readers into believing that CNN article talks about the "raz[ing]" of the cemetery in Xinjiang/East Turkistan, which it does not. I propose that Thucydides411 should modify their comment such that it reads something like "The CNN article talks about "destruction" of cemeteries." or something similar. The problem is: once you do that, then putting the word 'destruction' in scare quotes is obviously silly, because that cemetery was definitely destroyed. A fact about the destruction of a historic cemetery is not misleading or propagandistic. If we actually take the article at face value, there's no problem. Thus it seems that the whole comment from Thucydides411 leans on taking one word from a quoted analogy out of context. The CNN article didn't say Xinjiang/East Turkistan graves are being razed. Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

The CNN article quotes someone comparing the alleged "destruction" of a cemetery to the hypothetical "raz[ing]" of Arlington national cemetery. The article uses the word "destruction" or "destroy" 13 times. If the claim being made by Global Times - that the cemetery was relocated to make way for urban development - is true, then the use of the term "destruction" and the comparison to the razing of a national landmark is extremely misleading. Propaganda most often has a kernel of truth, but presentation, language and lack of context can take a true statement and severely distort it for political ends. There's a big difference between "Chinese officials push through economic development projects with little regard for local residents' objections" and "China is systematically destroying cemeteries in order to erase a minority's culture." It's possible that the latter is true, but CNN is clearly trying to push that angle, and is leaving out context and using emotive language to do so. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:43, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Just note that the sentence you wrote seemed to conflate into one category what you call "the hypothetical "raz[ing]" of Arlington national cemetery" with the actual destruction of this cemetery, as if CNN was actually saying that cemeteries were being razed in Xinjiang/East Turkistan. CNN was not actually saying that cemeteries were being razed in Xinjiang/East Turkistan. According to what I know, this was a religious pilgrimage site in southern Xinjiang/East Turkistan and was more than a normal cemetery that you just relocate. The point is that this ancient cemetery does not exist anymore and on its face, the CNN article didn't say it was razed. Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:52, 19 November 2020 (UTC) (modified)

PS I did come to the same conclusion that Thucydides411 reaches here several months back- that "Buzhage County" almost certainly refers to Buzaq/Buzhake Township. It's about 15 minutes away from the site of the cemetery, and there's no county with that name. However, the fact that (1) there is a translation bot error that didn't get corrected by a human and (2) when noticed by a reader (me) the blatant error was not corrected gives me a little bit of concern about this source. I am sure that if the CNN article had said "Buzhage County", they would have responded to my email and changed the article to read Buzaq or Buzhake Township pretty quickly. While I have made ten+ minor corrections to the online version of the Taiwan dictionary of Mandarin Chinese (教育部國語辭典), none of the corrections I submitted to mainland China sources for anything get a response. Geographyinitiative (talk) 22:03, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Global Times should correct their spelling error, but the bigger concern I have here is with the propagandistic tone of the CNN article. There is a major difference if the relocation of cemeteries is being done for practical economic reasons (similar to the flooding of cultural artifacts and the relocation of over a million people during the construction of the Three Gorges Dam) vs. if it's being done in order to deliberately erase a culture. The view that the CNN article is clearly pushing is the latter. If we end up downgrading every Chinese source, we'll end up only hearing the latter view, and will probably end up with highly distorted coverage of China. The SCMP RfC just closed with a note that we should be cautious about using it for coverage of mainland China. I think that's a very serious mistake, because the SCMP is a high-quality newspaper that has far more expertise and nuance when reporting on China than outlets like CNN. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

But we already know that the modern Chinese state is trying to erase and/or sinicize their minority cultures, we don’t need CNN to tell us that... What sort of fringe conspiracy theory are you trying to push? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 22:26, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

Therefore it doesn't matter if CNN is distorting this issue? -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:11, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

What specific claims does CNN make that are distortions? Perhaps you can find inspiration in CGTN’s feature piece "By following CNN, we find how they make fake news about Xinjiang” [8]. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:15, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I've already explained above. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:25, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

You do not do so explicitly, humor me: present just one example (it need not be longer than a sentence) which you can clearly show is a distortion by providing a competing WP:RS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:30, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

As I explained above, the CNN article refers repeatedly to "destruction" of cemeteries, and quotes someone comparing that to the hypothetical "raz[ing]" of Arlington national cemetery. It is unclear which is true: that this is targeted destruction of a culture, or that cemeteries are being relocated as part of economic development projects, as Chinese officials claim. But what is clear is that the CNN article is meant to strongly advocate the former interpretation. As often with reporting on China from major American outlets, a good deal of skepticism is warranted. The more we downgrade and deprecate Chinese sources, the more distorted Wikipedia's coverage will become, because it will come largely from sources with the same political biases. SCMP is highly knowledgeable about China and is a high-quality newspaper, but the recent RfC was closed with a warning about using it for mainland Chinese topics - which is precisely the area in which it adds the most value (along with its reporting on Hong Kong). -Thucydides411 (talk) 00:02, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I don’t think I see a linked WP:RS in there or above. Do you have a source that supports the contention: "It is unclear which is true: that this is targeted destruction of a culture, or that cemeteries are being relocated as part of economic development projects, as Chinese officials claim. But what is clear is that the CNN article is meant to strongly advocate the former interpretation.” Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:32, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

"Authorities in Xinjiang in China’s northwest are destroying burial grounds where generations of Uygur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group’s identity. In just two years, dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in the region, according to an AFP investigation with satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance. The analysis indicates that the government has exhumed and flattened at least 45 Uygur cemeteries since 2014 – 30 of them in the past two years. And in September, AFP visited 13 destroyed cemeteries across four cities and saw bones in at least three sites." [9] South China Morning Post Geographyinitiative (talk) 00:50, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

"Destroy"

"China is destroying burial grounds where generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group's identity in Xinjiang. In just two years, dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in the northwest region, according to an AFP investigation with satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance." [10]

"There is consensus that Agence France-Presse is generally reliable." (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources)

"Some editors consider CNN biased, though not to the extent that it affects reliability."

"In the 2020 RFC, there was consensus that SCMP is generally reliable."

"Relocate"

"China Global Television Network was deprecated in the 2020 RfC for publishing false or fabricated information. Many editors consider CGTN a propaganda outlet, and some editors express concern over CGTN's airing of forced confessions."

Geographyinitiative (talk) 01:55, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: ...the propagandistic tone of the CNN article [...] vs. if it's being done in order to deliberately erase a culture. The view that the CNN article is clearly pushing is the latter. This isn't Triumph of the Will or Alexander Nevsky or Red Dawn. The way they're “pushing” the fact that it's destroying what the UN would call “cultural heritage”—which, again, is by no means exclusive of “practical economic reasons”, the U.S. has committed tons of both cultural genocide and exterminating-everyone genocide while simultaneously accomplishing practical economic goals amongst its indigenous populations, so in addition to lots of other poor reasoning you're hammering on a false dichotomy here—is by interviewing Uyghur experts on the cultural importance of the original cemeteries.

The fact that GT responds with a “debunking” article which weakly says, of one cemetery, that parents didn't want their kids to go there anyways, is at least circumstantial evidence supporting CNN's reporting. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 02:06, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I didn't say it was "Triumph of the Will", but it may be similar to CNN's coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq War - biased for nationalistic and political reasons, and to be used with caution. -Thucydides411 (talk) 10:11, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Except that you haven't actually made any cogent argument for bias, nor for how exactly this would be inadequately-inquisitive false-details yellowcake or Iraqi aluminum tubes reporting (the circumstances of which are exculpatory of at least some news outlet, btw, unlike for example GT simply failing to give any details about Guo Wengui's alleged crimes—failing to even allege that he's a criminal—as I mention above), beyond “pushing” the false dichotomy... and by pointing to the national origin of CNN, the fallaciousness of doing so supposedly being the basis of your defense of all and sundry otherwise-crappy sources. --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 12:51, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Quality news sources are good for reporting what happened yesterday, but often fail in analysis. Where the facts are unclear, reporters have to use their judgment on which sources to rely upon. It's much better to use academic sources, where experts can better determine what the facts are or explain any doubt that might exist. The problem is that before those sources become available, "reliable" news media are all we have. We can't balance that with sources deemed unreliable or deprecated. One thing we should be careful about though is that whenever media provide intext sourcing (such as by saying "according to"), that we use the same qualification. So "X says they saw a cemetery being destroyed" should never be interpreted as a cemetery was destroyed. Incidentally, the news sources ask the Chinese government for comment, but received none. We should certainly report what they reply if they do. But we can't take that reply from unreliable sources. TFD (talk) 02:31, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Quotation from AFP with my emphasis: "China is destroying burial grounds where generations of Uighur families have been laid to rest, leaving behind human bones and broken tombs in what activists call an effort to eradicate the ethnic group's identity in Xinjiang. In just two years, dozens of cemeteries have been destroyed in the northwest region, according to an AFP investigation with satellite imagery analysts Earthrise Alliance. Some of the graves were cleared with little care -- in Shayar county, AFP journalists saw unearthed human bones left discarded in three sites. In other sites tombs that were reduced to mounds of bricks lay scattered in cleared tracts of land. ... According to satellite imagery analysed by AFP and Earthrise Alliance, the Chinese government has, since 2014, exhumed and flattened at least 45 Uighur cemeteries -- including 30 in the past two years." AFP article "There is consensus that Agence France-Presse is generally reliable." (Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources) Geographyinitiative (talk) 12:21, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: still waiting for that WP:RS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:27, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

I've already explained the issues to you. I think we run a danger of drifting into geopolitically biased coverage of China topics. Overly broad reliable sourcing decisions have led us in that direction. I've argued with you before about whether any mainland source should be considered reliable, and I think it's clear where our positions lie. I think your position must lead inevitably to Wikipedia's coverage becoming systematically biased. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Thats not a WP:RS... All I’m asking for is a WP:RS which supports the contention that "It is unclear which is true: that this is targeted destruction of a culture, or that cemeteries are being relocated as part of economic development projects, as Chinese officials claim. But what is clear is that the CNN article is meant to strongly advocate the former interpretation.” Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:54, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

The CNN article doesn't provide any evidence for their interpretation. It's an assertion (targeted destruction of a culture) against an assertion (relocation to make room for economic development). You say you know the first interpretation is true. I don't know how you know that. -Thucydides411 (talk) 22:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

You don’t provide any evidence for your interpretation, but unlike CNN you need to. A quick google doesn’t find a single WP:RS which disagrees with CNN’s “ interpretation.” Some, like the The Atlantic [11], in fact go much further. Again, I’m asking you to provide a single WP:RS which either supports your point or directly disagrees with CNN’s “interpretation” and supports the Government's “economic development” line. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:09, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Unless anyone has any actual evidence, this is a pointless discussion. We could have had this discussion in 2002, and we would have written article after article declaring that Iraq definitely had WMD. After all, countless sources that shared the same systemic bias made the same ungrounded claims. Systemic bias is my concern. -Thucydides411 (talk) 23:18, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

So not a single WP:RS to support your position? Obviously this is an important discussion, it doesn't become pointless just because your assertions about a WP:RS have been challenged and you can't support them. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 23:45, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

What's my position? I haven't made any definite claims. All I've said is that the propagandistic tone of the CNN article is troubling, and that we should be aware of the bias that CNN and similar outlets have. There's a risk of systemic bias here, in which coverage of China in Wikipedia could become heavily skewed. -Thucydides411 (talk) 13:15, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

We haven't established that the CNN article has a propagandistic tone... That would be a definite claim. Do you have a WP:RS which calls CNN’s tone on the issue propagandistic? This is after all Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, when you post bullshit its going to be called out. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 15:37, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

I've explained my views on the CNN article above. The aggressive edge of your comments is unnecessary. -Thucydides411 (talk) 19:42, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Thucy, you are not being asked for an "explanation". You are being asked for a source. Please. SPECIFICO talk 20:06, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

While there is implicit Western biases on how the China government does things and that the reporting CNN, AFP and others does will bias against the China gov't when it comes towards human atrocities, this seems like a case that we should be presenting that CNN + AFP via investigative and on-the-ground observations shows what appears to be destruction of graveyards, to which, via the GT , the local gov't has claimed is only relocation. But we should be look for other sources that are stating the Chinese gov't response, such as, what appears to be this "The Times" source (can't see the whole thing) - but which appears to be taken as a very thin/poor excuse. (Also keep in mind the Guardian first published about these in 2019 [12]). In other words, we state what CNN+ others reports as an assertion from their evidence, and what the Chinese gov't says as a counter-claim. That's the closest of "doubt" we can put to the RSes of CNN et al without other RSes talking to that point. --Masem (t) 20:20, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Question: Is GT a reliable source for the official positions of the PRC government? Answer: No, I believe Wikipedia says it is a conspiracy mill. Geographyinitiative (talk) 16:43, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

We may have to accept that a deprecated source due to be China-state owned (and thus being highly dubious) may still be the only valid source for statements directly from the Chinese gov't being their voice (and take these statements only skin-deep as claims of the Chinese gov't), but I would definitely say we want non-deprecated sources whenever possible to state these to avoid the use of the deprecated sources. --Masem (t) 16:57, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

@Thucydides411: Unless anyone has any actual evidence, this is a pointless discussion. We could have had this discussion in 2002, and we would have written article after article declaring that Iraq definitely had WMD.—I'd certainly agree that it's quite notable when someone doesn't even try to present evidence for claims they advance; though I wouldn't say it's not pointless, because it establishes a paper trail of that behavior.

You are attempting to imply en passant, as it were, without directly saying so, that aspects of the CNN reporting such as the testimony of Uyghur cultural experts is fabricated in the way that evidence offered to the UN and international media by the Bush Ⅱ Administration was fabricated.

But it's your implied contention which is unsupported by evidence. Without even an explicit claim that specific things CNN presents are fabricated, much less an actual attempt to demonstrate that to be so, the word for what CNN is presenting is “evidence”.

Unless of course you want to go all-in on the move you've been telescoping: to proceed to asserting, "sure, it's destruction of a culture, but it's accidental destruction of a culture for economic purposes!" --‿Ꞅtruthious 𝔹andersnatch ͡ |℡| 20:52, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

RfC for Business Insider?

Business Insider is listed as no consensus at WP:RSP. AFAICS, there's never been a formal RfC for it. I see it crop up all the time, especially on AP2 articles, and I'd like to see a firmer consensus one way or another. Is there a special procedure for listing RfCs at RSN, or do I just start a section called "RfC: Business Insider"? Thanks for any pointers. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 19:44, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I had also been thinking about creating a RfC for business insider for a while. RfC's need special templates, which a bot will use to copy the RfC over to various lists, which can be copied from other active RfC's (dont forget to blank the RfC ID) and then be augmented with relevant tags. I would recommend using the 1-4 options for clarity. Hemiauchenia (talk) 20:31, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, See Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:_Business_Insider. Will be interesting to see what other editors think. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 21:42, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Procedures for checking reliability of sources for non-anglophone countries

What should we do about sources in foreign languages? I have had two situations where a source was questioned (one time an Argentine source I was bringing, one time a Hungarian language source which I was questioning), and the situations have been quite complex to manage. I am particularly concerned about small regional publications and websites, what is the procedure to ensure the source is reliable? Boynamedsue (talk) 19:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Bring them to WP:RSN and we'll do our best, seems to be the way it's been done so far. Obviously it's not going to work all the time, but we often have speakers of the language and/or local knowledge to hand - David Gerard (talk) 19:51, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Small regional media should only be used as sources for local news. If something big happens in a small town, then it receives national or international coverage. So WP:REDFLAG should never be an issue. It shouldn't be too difficult to quickly assess whether a publication is a reliable source for local news. How old is it? Who writes their articles? Do national or international publications ever pick up their stories through wire services? Have they won awards? Does it look like it's reliable? For example do they have headlines like "Senior Perez' cow wins first place at state fair" or ones like "Senior Perez' cow abducted by aliens?" TFD (talk) 20:14, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers. Will have a think. Boynamedsue (talk) 22:14, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Cite Unseen update

Examples of Cite Unseen in action on citations

Recently updated Cite Unseen, a user script that adds icons to citations to denote the nature and reliability of sources, and I figured editors here may be interested. The recent updated added icons to citations that are editable or from advocacy organizations, as well as sources from WP:RSP ( marginally reliable, generally unreliable, deprecated, and blacklisted; generally reliable is also available, but opt-in). This is in addition to other icon categories, such as state-controlled, opinion pieces, press releases, blogs, and more.

Just note that Cite Unseen is here to provide an initial evaluation of citations and point out potential issues, but it's not the final say on whether or not a source is appropriate for inclusion (see usage for more guidance). ~SuperHamster Talk Contribs 00:41, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Template:Source conflict

Template:Source conflict (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) FYI, a new template has shown up. -- 70.31.205.108 (talk) 01:24, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Moved to WT:Cleanup § Template:Source conflict

MediaBiasFactCheck

(As this doesn't deal with the suitability of a source for article it's out of scope for the noticeboard itself, which is why I'm posting it to Talk.) We've already established that MediaBiasFactCheck is not reliable (WP:MBFC) for use in articles. However, it regularly appears in RSN discussions. Is MBFC reliable for evaluating the reliability of other sources? Chetsford (talk) 06:45, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Unreliable In addition to the great breadth of evidence described in the numerous previous discussions about its suitability for articles (that it's a site run by amateurs with questionable credentials or competence and which admits it doesn't employ the scientific method of content analysis), I also note that it's currently rating PRNewswire - a corporate press release distribution service - as "highly factual" [13]. Chetsford (talk) 06:45, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
  • It says: "Based on simply republishing press releases we rate PR Newswire as factual". The site evaluates how reliably PR Newswire copies existing information, and not how reliable the information itself is.--Renat (talk) 09:18, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
    • Incorrect. According to the blogger's so-called "methodology" [14], all of his "highly factual" ratings across the entire site mean that "the source is almost always factual" [15]. Advertising (press releases) is not factual, and is not designed to be factual. In the Hantszich Taxonomy of Media, advertising is a form of entertainment. Die Hard is not a documentary of a bank robbery in Los Angeles. Chetsford (talk) 18:55, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

MBFC is not the end-all of media ratings, but it is very useful signal. If it rates a site's factual reporting low or very low, then it is very likely that the site is unreliable. MBFC may be run by amateurs, but Wikipedians are also amateurs and anonymous to boot. ImTheIP (talk) 08:25, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Exactly! Sometimes some editors here act like they are professors-super experts and judge everything when they know nothing.--Renat (talk) 09:26, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Generally Reliable, but you need to think before taking information from there, because the site provides only superficial information. Scientific Reports: "It [MBFC] has been regarded as accurate enough to be used as ground-truth for e.g. media bias classifiers fake news studies and automatic fact-checking systems." University of Notre Dame, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf in cooperation with Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics, Qatar Computing Research Institute in cooperation with Sofia University, University of Padua, Cornell University, Association for Information Systems, Political Communication (journal) use MBFC in their scientific work and make conclusions based on data, provided by it.--Renat (talk) 08:32, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

This is, in my opinion, a severe misrepresentation in how MBFC was used. In this article [16], for instance, it was used as a comparative source - not as "ground truth" - and was only mentioned once in the 9,000 word article. This article [17] (creatively described by you as being from "Cornell University") was an undergraduate term paper. I could go through these one by one but they all have the same issues. It's basically a fluffer cyclone of legitimate looking cross-references to validate an invalid source. Like all fluffer cyclones, if you go through the component sources one by one, you find none of them validate what they're alleged to validate but are simply a tidal wave of EXT-LINKS that create the appearance of legitimacy through sheer volume of references. Chetsford (talk) 09:05, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Read this: [18]. It clearly says "While its credibility is sometimes questioned, it has been regarded as accurate enough to be used as ground-truth for e.g. media bias classifiers fake news studies and automatic fact-checking systems. And it gives 9 references why. You may want to check them too.--Renat (talk) 09:23, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

"You may want to check them too." I literally just did. Chetsford (talk) 18:38, 28 December 2020 (UTC)

• Unreliable, as reliable as any personal opinion. The silver lining is that they appear to use mostly reliable sources as a basis for their assessments, but themselves are arbitrary and inconsistent in their classifications. They also extensively source descriptions from wikipedia and might even be taking pointers from us for their classification itself. For instance, they moved (31 March 2020) Swarajya from "Centre-Right" to "Questionable and extreme right" around the same time as it was deprecated here (March 2020). Tayi Arajakate _Talk 10:03, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It might be just a coincidence.--Renat (talk) 10:11, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Not Unreliable, I would only use as one of several indicators as to reliability of a particular source.Selfstudier (talk) 10:37, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

It was not hard to find half a dozen scholarly rs willing to use mbfc this being the best of them.Selfstudier (talk) 20:00, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

• Literally some guy's blog - the only thing it has going for it is an impressive-sounding name, and anyone using it as an argument here is showing defective judgement - David Gerard (talk) 11:29, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable If they are not reliable for use in articles, they are not reliable for use in determining the reliability of sources. I note that David Sivak who rated the reliability of CNN as "mixed" was the fact check editor at the Daily Caller, writing a column called "Check Your Fact." His column has come under criticism in articles from Vox[19] and Science Mag.[20] I notice that MBFC groups both Jacobin, which publishes mostly socialist writers, with CNN, which supports centrist Democrats together as "left bias." But there's a huge difference in their editorial perspective. TFD (talk) 11:52, 27 December 2020 (UTC)
• Comment MBFC is the same blog run by a guy with a BA degree who recently rated the Epoch Times as "highly factual" [21] (in addition to his current rating of PR Newswire as "highly factual"). It was changed to not factual only after widespread attention was focused on Epoch Times due to its propagation of QAnon. The content of Epoch Times didn't change, the only thing that changed was the attention given to its conspiracy theorizing. In other words, this is literally just a guy who puts his finger in the air, gets a general sense of the way the winds are blowing, and then slaps up a "rating." If there's no breeze, he takes his best guess ... and his best guesses aren't very good. Chetsford (talk) 18:46, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
• Unreliable The odd research paper that uses it because they need to get a data set from somewhere doesn't outweigh the issues raised in the comments above. Also, Scientific Reports is an amazingly crap journal given who owns it. Our article on it only begins to catalogue its problems. XOR'easter (talk) 19:42, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

References

References

false dichotomy

It seems like trying to group sources into merely two categories (reliable and unreliable) is an oversimplification we should try to evolve beyond.

Realistically we won't have any sources utterly unreliable (wrong 100% of time) or utterly reliable (right 100% of time) and instead have a spectrum of varying degrees of reliability.

Both as a whole (averaged accuracy of all articles) as well as subdivided (accuracy by particular authors, accuracy by particular subjects)

Shouldn't we instead strive for some kind of numerical rating which we should be constantly adjusting?

We should not expect the reliability of a source to remain static, as there should be fluctuations in how accurate a source manages to be over time:

• some which start out bad could get better over time
• some which start out good could get worse over time
• some might stay roughly the same on average but maybe fluctuate 5-10%

Either way there should be some means by which we assess this, an independent feedback system.

Otherwise we end up with a circular "A supports B supports C supports A" type thing where we inevitably might just treat accuracy like some sort of weight-of-numbers thing. WakandaQT (talk) 08:21, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Every source is reliable for something. I do have unease about how the community seems to want to be moving to decision-by-checklist, and note the ever-present confusion between reliability and neutrality seems to be intensifying in recent months. Alexbrn (talk) 09:16, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

No source is reliable for everything. On the other hand, there are some sources that are reliable for absolutely nothing, e.g. non-notable self-published sources whose articles and authors receive no coverage in reliable sources. Many sources are reliable for some things, but not others. On the perennial sources list, the word generally in "Generally reliable in its area of expertise" and "Generally unreliable" makes it clear that these classifications are not the same thing as "utterly reliable" or "utterly unreliable". A previous discussion on introducing more tiers of reliability did not result in consensus. I don't think it's feasible to predict how a source will evolve over time, since a source's reliability depends on how the source is received by other reliable sources. — Newslinger talk 09:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

We used to have much more nuanced discussions of reliability, but over the past few years, we've moved increasingly towards a two-tier classification: "reliable" and "deprecate". These often appear to be knee-jerk decisions made on the basis of some recent hot topic that people feel strongly about - such as Fox News' politics coverage getting labeled unreliable because of its coverage of the Seattle CHAZ/CHOP. We need to get back to considering reliability in context, taking into account the biases, expertise, etc. that a given source has. -Thucydides411 (talk) 11:55, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

A journal on North American geology might be the best source for that topic, but not for 19th century French literature, and vice versa. However many editors will use passing references in sources about totally different subjects just because it supports what they think should be in an article. My concern is that giving grades to sources will only encourage them. TFD (talk) 13:36, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps the better option would be to remove the grading from the RSP list. Basically keep it as a pointer to previous discussions but not treat things as always green/yellow/red etc. Often I think this should be done at the article level. For example, while we say Politifact is generally good, I can think of two examples that disprove themselves. Mother Jones is often seen as good but if one looks at on of their early break out articles, Pinto Madness, it turns out much of the article was long on hype and poor on facts. Springee (talk) 14:09, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Proposals related to the perennial sources list belong at WT:RSP. Feel free to submit this suggestion there. Many editors appreciate the reliability classifications, so expect the suggestion to meet strong opposition. — Newslinger talk 14:17, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Mother Jones is a good illustration of the failings of RSP: It's rated green, but if I load up the website and look at their featured article right now, this is what I get: "It All Began With Russia: Donald Trump’s Four Great Betrayals of the Nation". The opening line is, "Donald Trump has betrayed the United States at least four times." This article is not labeled "Opinion" or "Editorial". It would obviously be crazy to state any claim sourced to this article in Wikivoice, but according to our RSP rating, this article should be reliable. If Mother Jones had a different political outlook, I very much doubt that it would be rated "green". I don't think we should deprecate Mother Jones (we use deprecation far too widely), but its rating is a sign that something is wrong in RSP. -Thucydides411 (talk) 14:38, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

If you disagree with the community's consensus on Mother Jones (RSP entry), feel free to start a new noticeboard discussion on this source. The new discussion would then be factored into the list entry. — Newslinger talk 11:06, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

Hyperbole in media is so common that no one bats an eye anymore. For example, here's a bunch of dudes who think that the capitol was not only stormed but also sacked: [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. I think one just have to assume that some claims, like the one about Trump, are not meant to be taken literally. Trump has obviously not (yet) been found guilty on four or more accounts of treason whatever MJ says. ImTheIP (talk) 03:09, 24 January 2021 (UTC)

I think you point in general about hyperbole is correct, but maybe you pick the wrong example. What when on at the Capitol was certainly unusual and people could say it was sacked. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:45, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

The concept isn't perfect, but it's helpful for general guidance. These lists tend to help newbies understand our concept of reliability. Many struggle at first, but are helped by editors who point at the list and say "Generally try to use sources like this, or not like that". And the lists that I help maintain are constantly being discussed and revised, to remove entries that dive in quality standards, or add them if they've improved. Many have qualifiers for scenarios too. ("Don't use for BLPs." "Don't use articles prior to 2010." "Don't use the amateur user/contributor written articles." Etc.) It's not a perfect system, but it's certainly a net positive. Sergecross73 msg me 16:49, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

You are assuming newbies take note of it. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 19:45, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

RFCs for RSN/P listing gone wild?

It seems there is an increasing number of RfC aiming to deprecate sources where no context is discussed, no reference to related edit disputes, no previous RSN discussions, where mere bias is used as an argument supporting deprecation, etc. I've seen similar concerns before by other users, and it seems the problem is getting worse. --MarioGom (talk) 11:12, 7 January 2021 (UTC

I have been on WP for a while but I am relatively new to these boards. It's my impression that people are taking the RSP list as a bible of good (or bad) sourcing and so the idea then is to get entries into or out of that list. Like you, I had the idea that it was specific cases, is source X good for statement Y sort of thing, I'm sure that is still the case but the other is trending.Selfstudier (talk) 11:57, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

I think your comment may have been triggered by the current RfC related to China Daily. After looking at the instructions for this noticeboard, I think your comment is well founded. For example we are told (I have added emphasis):

• "This page is for posting questions regarding whether particular sources are reliable in context ".
• "Please be sure to include the following information, if available:

Content. The exact statement(s) in the article that the source supports.

Source. The book or web page being used as the source.

Please be sure to include examples of editing disputes that show why you are seeking comment on the source ".

So it appears that RfC’s should generally arise out of editing disputes, and not be created because an editor considers a source is unsuitable. In relation to the China Daily RfC, some additional points are:

• The way in which the RfC has been established seems to breach our guidelines for neutrality. Firstly the title, "Deprecate China Daily" is not neutral. Secondly, the introduction to the RfC pushes the deprecation case and so is not neutral.
• The RfC was changed midstream. It was set up by one editor who asked whether China Daily should be deprecated. A second editor later changed the RfC by adding the standard four options.

Burrobert (talk) 12:32, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• We seem to have forgotten that the “P” in RSN/P stands for “PERENNIAL”. Before we even consider listing a source at RSN/P, it needs to qualify as “perennial”. That should mean that the source has repeatedly been discussed on this notice board, prior to any discussion as to whether to list it at RSP/P. Blueboar (talk) 13:01, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Blueboar:, I agree. Although some discussions for RSN/P don't follow that rationale anymore. There was even one RFC that succeeded at listing multiple sites at once, preemptively and without substantive individualized discussion (here) and a current ongoing RFC with the same intent.

  @Burrobert:, I didn't intend for this discussion to be about China Daily, although that's definitely one good example. MarioGom (talk) 13:24, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• @MarioGom, Burrobert, and Blueboar: in the old days (like, two years ago) we would approach reliability on a case-by-case basis: does this article support the claim in hand? Or in some cases, is this a conspiracy blog / alternative medicine quack factory, and not a newspaper? Since the Trojan Horse of the Daily Mail, however, we're now deprecating major media outlets from China and Russia en mass. I raised the issue [29] at User talk:Jimbo Wales, but got no reply from Jimbo. And as you can see the process is continuing. -Darouet (talk) 21:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

What do you intend? This page is for discussing improvements of the wording of the noticeboard. Removing anything pro-deprecation would improve but would need a specific proposal. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 16:23, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

Peter Gulutzan, I don't have a specific proposal (yet). This is an initial informal discussion about the issue, and hopefully we can come up with some improvements. MarioGom (talk) 16:59, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

@Burrobert: which RFC do you refer to on that archive page you linked? There are several and I'm not seeing any that look inappropriate. The only one that looks close to the "China Daily" discussion is Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_281#RfC:_CNSNews.com, which was confirmed again in 2020 at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_295#RfC:_Media_Research_Center_and_its_arms_(CNS,_Newsbusters,_MRCTV). IHateAccounts (talk) 19:05, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

IHateAccounts, oops, I fixed the link. I meant Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 281 § RfC: Deprecation of fake news / disinformation sites. As well intended as it was, it seems it was preemptive, without individualized discussions, no prior disputes, etc. MarioGom (talk) 19:11, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

IHateAccounts It is not archived. Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RfC:_Deprecate_China_Daily? Burrobert (talk) 19:42, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

That discussion was quite a mess. Led to a publication being improperly deprecated, later overturned at a subsequent RfC. Jlevi (talk) 20:37, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• I think in general it's valuable for us to have a place to get consensus on whether a source is actually a news organization, for example, before we have to deal with a whole bunch of citations to it and the outcome of AfD debates based on the reliability of various sources. Clearly the actual use of the source on Wikipedia should bear on these discussions; maybe what's needed is a template for opening the discussions that includes a link to search for citations to it on Wikipedia (at least, if a website) to seed the discussion better? FalconK (talk) 23:30, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

  Falcon Kirtaran, current instructions already require that these discussions include not just links to citations on Wikipedia, but links to specific disputes. Maybe we should start by speedy closing discussions where there's no dispute or specific example that helps evaluating context. Anyway, using a template would also be useful. In the case of RFCs, it could include a field for a list of links to previous discussions. MarioGom (talk) 23:49, 7 January 2021 (UTC)

• Discussions on general reliability are explicitly authorized in Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 6 § RfC: Header text. I agree that the four-option RfC format is preferable to a question that asks whether a source should be deprecated, since the former tends to result in more nuanced responses. — Newslinger talk 21:53, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

I asked the closer of that discussion (Eggishorn) about rationale in December 2019 but did not challenge. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 00:15, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• I agree that these RFCs are getting out of hand. The Screen Rant and Raw Story ones currently being discussed are examples of this, where the person introducing the question gives no real rationale for why it should be discussed (even the BI started this way). We don't need an RFC for every single news source out there; the guidance at WP:NEWSORG is good enough for most news sources. -- Calidum 03:44, 11 January 2021 (UTC)
• Dear deity yes! The number of RfC is way out of control. Perhaps a clear rule like min of 4 discussions at least 2 months apart before any source can be added to the list. A big problem with the list seems to be the idea that if you can get something declared green or yellow or red it becomes a rubber stamp to use/reject any material from that source. So rather than ask/answer if this specific article is acceptable for this claim in this article the objective seems to be to create a universal list of OK/not OK sources. Time to scale it back. Springee (talk) 20:56, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

  If you would like to propose changes to the inclusion criteria for the perennial sources list (WP:RSPCRITERIA), the correct venue would be WT:RSP. — Newslinger talk 22:43, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

  Springee: Agree 100 %. Editors are capable of evaluating newspaper sources on a case-by-case, claim-by-claim and article-by-article basis, as happened before the advent of RSP. Originally a good idea for combating conspiracy or quack websites, it's now become a vehicle for removing dozens of newspaper sources on the basis of poorly-argued and politicized RfCs. -Darouet (talk) 14:36, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

MarioGom, I completely agree with your initial post in this section. I think we should insist that the instructions at the top of the RSN page be more strictly followed going forward. Each new section should include "Links to past discussion of the source on this board...The book or web page being used as the source...The Wikipedia article(s) in which the source is being used....The exact statement(s) in the article that the source supports.".AmateurEditor (talk) 07:08, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I second that. Alaexis_¿question? 10:49, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Move "Search RSN" closer to top of header?

Dunno about you guys, but most of my visits to RSN are to search the archives. The search box is small and fairly far down the page (couple of screens). We may want to consider moving it up, and making it full width. Thoughts? Please ping me in replies. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:52, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

• Sounds good to me Novem Linguae and I concur - there's a lot of bureaucracy at the top. Anyone on hand who knows a good layout that will work? - David Gerard (talk) 10:27, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
  • One option is to make the search/archive box full-width, and insert it somewhere closer to the top, such as immediately above "While we attempt to offer a second opinion...". However, since the "more" button to expand/collapse the archive box does not work on mobile devices, anyone on a smartphone will always see the full list of 300+ archive links, and that may be an issue when it pushes the other content downward. — Newslinger talk 10:33, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
    • yeah, that's the sort of issue I was thinking of - David Gerard (talk) 10:39, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

      I think the search box code is custom, and not permanently attached to the archive box. Perhaps we could rip it out and give search its own box. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:06, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

      The search box is part of Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Header, but there are going to be layout challenges regardless of which template it's in. Another option is splitting the search box from the list of archives. The search box could be positioned higher, while the list of archives could be positioned lower (since the list is always expanded for mobile devices). — Newslinger talk 15:52, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

      Another option is splitting the search box from the list of archives. Yes, this is what I meant. I think this solves the concern mentioned above about mobile devices not being able to collapse the archive list. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:28, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

      Alright, I updated the header. Tested and working. Feel free to take a look. –Novem Linguae (talk) 16:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

      Looks good on desktop! - David Gerard (talk) 18:04, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

      Also looks good on mobile. Thanks for implementing this. — Newslinger talk 13:05, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Should I launch an RfC about The Motley Fool?

Hi, I have started an "informal" discussion about The Motley Fool two days ago. So far the opinions have been pretty evenly divided, and so I am wondering whether it would appropriate to launch an RfC at this stage. Thanks--JBchrch (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

Probably not? I'd be more inclined to support an RfC if there were examples of people conflicting over this source while editing article-space. If these conflicts don't exist, it's likely than an RSN/RSP discussion wouldn't be helping anyone. Jlevi (talk) 22:11, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

I dunno, let this play out a bit - David Gerard (talk) 22:34, 18 February 2021 (UTC)

It looks like the discussion has resulted in four responses. It is not evenly divided. The fact that the question was broad, and each respondent stated essentially the same thing: it depends how they're used.

If you asked if it could be used to support a specific set of claims, you might get a more uniform response. Why don't you try that? Walter Görlitz (talk) 06:57, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Thanks — I don't have any specific claim that I want to check besides the various finance articles I am seeing and considering working on. If the consensus you're seeing is that it depends on the context, then I'll keep that in mind moving forward.--JBchrch (talk) 11:08, 22 February 2021 (UTC)

Proposed addition to RSN header

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'd like to propose the following addition to the noticeboard header, as an action informed by this discussion. (I'm pinging User:Renat, User:ImTheIP, User:Tayi Arajakate, User:David Gerard, User:The Four Deuces as they participated in it; kindly ping anyone I missed.) I propose we add to the header, below the bar that begins "Please focus your attention on the reliability ...", the following notice:

Unreliable sources (e.g. Media Bias Fact Check) are generally not useful in evaluating the reliability of a source.

Clarification: The proposal would only add a reminder to the header. The reminder would not impose a restriction or mandate on editors. Chetsford (talk) 03:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC); edited 17:00, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support There is a consensus that Media Bias Fact Check (WP:MBFC) is unreliable. And yet it is frequently invoked in discussions on RSN to evaluate the reliability of other sources. Per this discussion, there seems to be a sense of agreement that using it in that way is inappropriate. But at this very moment it is the center point of discussion in four separate threads, and this is pretty usual. Each time it's brought up it derails the entire thread into a discussion as to whether or not it should be used and the same arguments are revisited again and again so that many threads devolve into discussions of MBFC instead of the subject of the thread. The proposal would simply add a point of reference to remind editors that unreliable sources are generally not useful in evaluating reliability and mention MBFC as a specific example. It would not impose any mandate or restriction on editors. This might help focus discussions and keep them on track. Chetsford (talk) 03:08, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I agree with the concept. It should however be wider. Are there other sites that editors use? There are other wrong ways editors identify reliable sources, so perhaps we should identify them all before adding a section. One example is cites in Google scholar. A scholar may for example cite a QAnon blog for information about a demonstration they supported. In that case the scholar has used their expert knowledge to sift out the wheat from the chaff. On the opposite end, some editors provide comments by the U.S. State Department or CIA for denigrating sources. As we know that U.S. ambassadors from Adlai Stevenson to Colin Powell misled the UN. TFD (talk) 04:10, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Ad Fontes Media is the other source that people generally use. Its better regarded than Media Bias Fact Check (as it does an independent poll of volunteers) but is still methodologically questionable. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:20, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The Ad Fontes methodology is still light years better than whatever masquerades as methodology at "Allsides", though. IHateAccounts (talk) 04:45, 8 January 2021 (UTC) (struck sock puppet comment)

NewsGuard is another big one. Have no opinion on on its reliability. I think that The Economist bragging that it it rated "reliable" by NewsGuard is a bit embarrassing considering that it is such a well regarded magazine anyway. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:48, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

The Economist has issues... such as laundering op-eds by people with major conflicts of interest under their "no bylines" policy. IHateAccounts (talk) 03:56, 9 January 2021 (UTC) (struck sock puppet comment)

• Comment Isn't this an attempt to circumscribe editors freedom to bring whichever arguments they want to the discussion table? I wrote before that I think MBFC is a very useful signal, almost always more reliable than anonymous Wikipedia editors opinions about sources. You may disagree, Chetsford, but I don't think you have the right to vote that opinion (that MBFC is useful) out of existence. ImTheIP (talk) 10:23, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support and I apply the same reasoning to the US Department of State. People mentioning them in comments may be ok, but starting RFCs prompted by US Department of State reports or MBFC ratings should be a speedy close on procedural grounds IMHO. --MarioGom (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

@ImTheIP: It's just some guy with a bachelors in communications, and no evidence of an effective fact checking methodology whatsoever. Your comment seems to indicate that you have fundamental issues with how Wikipedia determines the reliability of sources. I'd take a wikipedian who was familiar with the source over MBFC anyday. Hemiauchenia (talk) 10:42, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

Some guy with a bachelors in communications, who operates a media ratings website, and whose ratings have been relied on in research beats the opinions of anonymous Wikipedians every day of the week (no offense intended - I'm one of them). Here's just some of the research where MBFC's ratings are considered authoritative:

• Predicting the Leading Political Ideology of YouTube Channels Using Acoustic, Textual, and Metadata Information
• Predicting the Topical Stance and Political Leaning of Media using Tweets
• Pandemic Pulse: Unraveling and Modeling Social Signals during the COVID-19 Pandemic
• A calibrated measure to compare fluctuations of different entities across timescales
• Analysis and Detection of Unreliable Users in Twitter: Two Case Studies
• Findings of the NLP4IF-2019 Shared Task on Fine-Grained Propaganda Detection

In all these papers, MBFC's ratings are used as "gold labels". What that means is that the researchers treat MBFC's ratings as if they were the truth and they calibrate their systems based on them. One would assume that ratings that are widely used to develop automatic media ratings systems would also provide useful signals to Wikipedians when manually rating sources. At the very least, attempts to "ban that argument" seems misguided. ImTheIP (talk) 11:14, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

References

I see now that Renat made a similar argument which was dismissed by Chetsford as "a fluffer cyclone of legitimate looking cross-references to validate an invalid source." Well, Chetsford did not address the claim in the Nature article: "While its credibility is sometimes questioned, it [MBFC] has been regarded as accurate enough to be used as ground-truth for e.g. media bias classifiers fake news studies and automatic fact-checking systems." Chetsford has previously argued that if an RS considers a source reliable then it is an RS. That logic, combined with the evidence presented, implies that MBFC is not "ban worthy" or deserving of a warning header. ImTheIP (talk) 11:35, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

It is not a Nature article, it is in Scientific Reports, an open access journal published by Springer Nature, and has nowhere near the reputation that a Nature paper has. Two of your links are to ArXiv, which is a repository for self-published pre-prints, which are unreliable unless published. The Springer link is an entry in a compilation of conference submissions. Acl is the proceedings of a workshop. Reliable sources are allowed to use unreliable sources cautiously, but we shouldn't be using them as we aren't a reliable source. Hemiauchenia (talk) 21:54, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

As I wrote in the footnote, that is a quirk with computer science in general, and deep learning in particular. Even seminal research ([30][31][32][33]) is published on arXiv. And when it comes to CS, conference papers and proceedings are just as prestiguous as journals. In fact, presenting at ACL probably beats most journals out there. No, Scientific Reports is not Nature, but it is still a highly respected journal with a 5-year impact factor of 4.576. Chetsford and others advanced a PageRankesque argument, namely that if an RS considers a source reliable then that increases the reliability of that source. Since reliable sources relies on MBFC, MBFC cannot be completely useless. ImTheIP (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

Scientific Reports is not highly respected. See the "Controversies" section in our article on it, which is not even complete. And yes, good work can appear on the arXiv, but it's not suitable for use here until it passes a peer review of some kind first, whether that's publication in a journal or in conference proceedings with comparable standards to a good journal. XOR'easter (talk) 22:06, 20 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose I'm persuaded by ImTheIP arguments, this restriction is overkill. I agree that you can't just say MBFC say's its OK so must be OK but if several of these orgs are expressing the same view independently then I think that's worth something, at least a pointer if nothing else.Selfstudier (talk) 11:47, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Thanks, Selfstudier. I've added a clarification to the proposal since it was buried in my Support !vote ... this would only add a reminder of the consensus of past discussions to the header, it would neither impose a restriction nor mandate on editors. In other words, any editor could relitigate MBFC in every single RSN thread if they wanted. Chetsford (talk) 17:02, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Sure, OK. Avoiding relitigation is good, banning that is fine:) I don't really think of these orgs as rs in the usual sense, just a possible input to a discussion and not every discussion. Selfstudier (talk) 17:55, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

• Comment Support Might be useful to remind editors that it's not some kind of an oracle but just another source of information with its own agenda and biases. For the most part I agree with their evaluations but I found a rather dubious claim: A factual search shows the New York Times has made false claims in reporting, but always makes corrections to those stories as soon as new information is available. Further, failed fact checks occurred on Op-Ed pages and not straight news reporting. I wonder why they didn't mention the 2002 Iraqi WMD article. It wasn't an op-ed and while the correction was made it was arguably too late. Alaexis_¿question? 14:26, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Media Bias/Fact Check (RSP entry) is a self-published source. In past discussions, the community has determined it to be generally unreliable. It is still a useful source for research, as it frequently links to reliable sources that discuss the publication in question. However, citing MBFC does not make an argument any stronger than if the same argument had been presented without citing MBFC. — Newslinger talk 21:59, 8 January 2021 (UTC)

  @Newslinger: Did you post this in the wrong discussion? --Hipal (talk) 00:57, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

  Nope, my comment was in support of the proposed note ("Unreliable sources (e.g. Media Bias Fact Check) are generally not useful in evaluating the reliability of a source."). I have noticed MBFC being cited in noticeboard comments that do not cite other sources, and I have pointed out the consensus on MBFC in these situations. A note in the header would clarify the consensus on MBFC, although it makes sense to refer to "unreliable sources" in general instead of singling out MBFC. — Newslinger talk 01:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Oppose. This opposition doesn't just apply to MBFC but to basically any source. Per WP:OR editors are explicitly allowed to do things like OR to make a case for something on a talk page. So if part of the case is citing MBFC or for that matter, the Daily Mail, editors should be allowed to. That doesn't mean other editors will be persuaded but I'm not sure how we can make a practical rule against making unpersuasive arguments. Springee (talk) 03:05, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Just a minor point of clarification - and I do understand where you're coming from and, even as proposer, only cautiously disagree with you - but this would not be a rule or policy, or even a guideline. It would only be an informational note that individual editors could observe or ignore at their discretion. If it were adopted, individual editors could continue to argue for the reliability of sources on the basis of a source's analysis by MBFC, by The Daily Mail, by information received via trance seance, etc. Chetsford (talk) 04:32, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support Similar to others' points. Wikipedia can be a great starting point for a student's research, but if it winds up in their citations, then it means they haven't gotten the point of the exercise. Wikipedia:paper as MBFC:RSN, from my perspective. Rather than having this discussion on half of posts, why not make it even clearer with a big sticker at the top? Jlevi (talk) 04:40, 9 January 2021 (UTC)
• Comment I'm just making a further note of explanation here, as I think there's some confusion. This proposal does not create a new policy or guideline. It simply adds an informational note to the noticeboard header. Editors would not be prohibited from mentioning MBFC in discussions on RSN if this were adopted. This is like when you're driving and there's a sign that says "Scenic View." You are not legally required to pull over and look at the view. The sign just lets you know it's there. This is just a note to make editors aware there have already been a number of discussions about MBFC. But they're free to ignore it and continue referencing it, if they fancy. I would strongly oppose any policy imposing a punitive restriction. Chetsford (talk) 04:47, 9 January 2021 (UTC)

But the idea of the proposal is still to foster normative behavior and to pull the rug from under those who use MBFC. Someone argues "liberty.news is rated untrustworthy by MBFC.[34] I don't think it should be used." and the next person answers "Lolz. Read the banner at the top, you dweeb!" I think settling debates by majority votes in reasonable. But using majority votes to settle what types of arguments are permissible is not. ImTheIP (talk) 10:56, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

That horse has bolted, rug already pulled:) As soon as anyone puts "MBFC rates...", response "GU, one man blog...no good" is automatic. Putting another nail in the coffin won't make that much difference.Selfstudier (talk) 13:09, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

You have a point. That said, anytime someone cites MBFC I already immediately say "Lolz - no it isn't --- WP:MBFC". Chetsford (talk) 03:02, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

• Support as an informational header. I've seen MBFC being cited to from time to time as an aspect of one's argument. Although they can be useful for research, such a reference own its own does not make an argument more convincing and often leads to discussions getting sidetracked into a discussion about its reliability. An informational note would be helpful in alleviating this issue. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 20:42, 12 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose per Springee. Regards  Spy-cicle💥  ^Talk? 11:36, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Call it informational if you want. I'll call it potentially stifling if I want. See, that's called allowing legitimate editors to express whatever opinions they want on talk pages / noticeboards. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 17:30, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
• Support I think the header can be quite helpful, especially for new editors whose first instinct might be to cite MBFC. As noted above, the header is not a restriction and no one would be sanctioned for citing MBFC, which would be severe overkill. Dr. Swag Lord (talk) 05:40, 18 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose, mostly because this is both unneeded, and will lead to stupid debates. Lots of rebuttals to bunk nonsense and junk sources are made on private blogs and 'non-formally published' sources. We can, and should, use those to guide our opinions. It's one thing to take a nutjobs' blog to say Einstein was wrong. It's quite another to use a smaller researcher's blog detailing their experience with a specific publisher to show that said publisher shouldn't be trusted and inform our judgement. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 02:35, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

• "Lots of rebuttals to bunk nonsense and junk sources are made on private blogs and 'non-formally published' sources. We can, and should, use those to guide our opinions." I agree and I even, sometimes, refer to MBFC myself to background a source. But, when I unearth potential information there, I note and explain it in the discussion, linked to the original RS. I don't make a high-level bombing run dropping "Reliable per MBFC" across the thread. That's the only thing this seeks to discourage (not prohibit, just discourage). Chetsford (talk) 20:09, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

Closure proposal

@Chetsford: Considering the WEIGHT of opinions expressed (most strikingly) by ImTheIP and Headbomb and your clarifications the fact that the proposal is non-binding provision (i.e. «reminder») I can assert for sure that the WP:CONSENSUS here is rather subtle. May be it worth to take this proposal into a different venue like WP:VPPOL to make this actual provision of WP:RS (or some essay?) with real force to reckon with when assessing sources? I'm asking you because I'm going to close this discussion as having no-consensus. --AXONOV (talk) ⚑ 16:41, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

Alexander_Davronov - I'm very sorry for my delayed reply. I agree with you that there is no consensus here. Given that, I think your directional advice is sound and closing it now as no consensus is well-advised. Thanks for handling this. Chetsford (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Kreately.in

Should this link be blacklisted as a site with an agenda - https://www.altnews.in/who-runs-kreately-alt-news-investigates-the-factory-of-hate-and-misinformation/ - it is used on several Wikipedia entries — Preceding unsigned comment added by 171.61.68.222 (talk • contribs) 11:15, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

It was used on three articles, I've removed it. The place to propose blacklisting is WT:BLIST, and it's usually reserved for those which are persistently added. Also to note is that, it is a self publishing source which are not considered reliable regardless of its contents. Tayi Arajakate _Talk 12:36, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Forbes advisor

Hi, discussing a new type of Forbes "Advisor" source that has been proposed to be used and is discussed here Talk:Ethereum#Vis-à-vis_Bitcoin. The source appears to be novel, in that it contains both a contributor and an editor, as well as an advertiser disclaimer (click the "Advertiser Disclosure" link at the top of the page):

The Forbes Advisor editorial team is independent and objective. To help support our reporting work, and to continue our ability to provide this content for free to our readers, we receive compensation from the companies that advertise on the Forbes Advisor site. This compensation comes from two main sources. First, we provide paid placements to advertisers to present their offers. The compensation we receive for those placements affects how and where advertisers’ offers appear on the site. This site does not include all companies or products available within the market. Second, we also include links to advertisers’ offers in some of our articles; these “affiliate links” may generate income for our site when you click on them. The compensation we receive from advertisers does not influence the recommendations or advice our editorial team provides in our articles or otherwise impact any of the editorial content on Forbes Advisor. While we work hard to provide accurate and up to date information that we think you will find relevant, Forbes Advisor does not and cannot guarantee that any information provided is complete and makes no representations or warranties in connection thereto, nor to the accuracy or applicability thereof. Here is a list of our partners who offer products that we have affiliate links for.

In my opinion, it falls in line with the rest of the contributor sources (not ok to use), but Hocus00 is advocating for its use. Note on the rest of cryptocurrency articles we have an informal consensus not to use any contributor sources, industry sources, or other iffy stuff due to potential for COI and promotional edits. Cryptocurrency articles are subject to WP:GS/Crypto. It appears that the source is being used to anchor most of the text for this section Ethereum#Comparison_to_Bitcoin which as few other sources (except for the last sentence in the section). Thoughts? There is RSP on related issues at WP:FORBES (ok to use) and WP:FORBESCON (not ok to use). Where does this novel mongrel fall? Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 17:19, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I think this particular article is a RS because it was written with editorial oversight per WP:FORBES. Specifically, a Forbes Editor is a co-author (Benjamin Curry). I think our usual Forbes analysis should apply (if it's written by a 'contributor', it's not a RS; if it's written by staff with editorial oversight, then it is an RS). Hocus00 (talk) 19:59, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Jtbobwaysf: I think this should be posted on the actual noticeboard rather than the Talk page. Hocus00 (talk) 01:31, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree, thanks! I have struck above per your comments and opened at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RFC_Forbes_Advisor Thanks again Jtbobwaysf (talk) 09:09, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

References

Kirkus Indie discussion archived twice

• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_330#Kirkus_Indie
• Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_331#Kirkus_Indie

Noticed while pulling together past discussion: #2, #3

I'll add an entry for Kirkus Indie as unreliable, non-independent, and non-weighty. Since Kirkus has never shown any dispute over its main brand, it probably doesn't really need an entry, though perhaps it might make sense to have one to avoid confusion.

Not sure of the preferred way to handle archives, so I'm mentioning it here.

Jlevi (talk) 04:14, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd say just delete one of them, doesn't matter which one. Hemiauchenia (talk) 04:20, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

done Jlevi (talk) 04:29, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Fullfact.org

After Nick-D made an important point on the usefulness of https://fullfact.org, I'm wondering how reliable it is. What do you think? --Firestar464 (talk) 12:32, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

I think you should ask the above question at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard, not Wikipedia talk:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. --Guy Macon (talk) 00:25, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Question re process

I'm not terribly familiar with the process here on WP:RSN.

As discussions persist for a few days or a week..., how are they typically tied up? Does someone wander by and do formal closes? Do formal closes need to be requested? Do they just age off the board and eventually get moved to some archive as just a record of a discussion; but perhaps with no summary? Something else? (Full disclosure: I recently initiated the RSN discussion for the "Starship Campaign" website.) Cheers. N2e (talk) 18:31, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

N2e, generally speaking, the discussions are archived without further action. For most RfCs and particularly high profile discussions, they're kept up until formally closed before archiving.

I keep tabs on the results of discussions of interest to new page reviewing at WP:NPPSG, but these aren't formal closures, and I try to keep my assessments more epistemically conservative than I would for a formal closure (i.e., if it looks close it's listed as no consensus, even if a formal close might be able to tease out a consensus after fully considering arguments) _signed, Rosguill ^talk 18:39, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Rosguill! That is super helpful. So in trying to figure out what to do with the extant instance, the "Starship Campaign" website which I brought here for discussion, there's not been a lot of input. But both editors who've commented have questioned the sites veracity/usefulness to support claims about the build of those prototype rockets in South Texas. (and I would agree; but I haven't said so yet in the RSN discussion; maybe I should...) So, based on what you said, maybe we just let it quietly end, get archived, and then try to have some other discussion on an article Talk page? Or would it be better for someone to try to summarize any consensus before this hives off to the RSN archive? N2e (talk) 23:44, 23 June 2021 (UTC)

N2e, participating directly if you haven't already is a good idea. Since it sounds from your description here like there's a rough consensus that the source is subpar, I would wait a few days and then pick up making whatever changes or discussions are called for at relevant articles based on the result. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 00:54, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Rosguill, thanks. I made my view explicit on the RSN page. I will take your advice, wait a few days for others to weigh in, and then go to relevant article pages and Talk pages. Cheers. N2e (talk) 02:27, 24 June 2021 (UTC)

Are these sources considered reliable?

Hi there, I would like to ask if biographies from Broadwayworld.com like this and genealogy from Famouskin.com like this are considered reliable. Many thanks--Fulinati (talk) 17:45, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

The usual starting point is to look at what the site does editorially.

Broadway World looks like it's volunteer-written and takes in reader contributions. There's no details on the editors. I'd find it questionable in general. The bio looks very short and not very usable, even if we knew where the details came from; I'd be reluctant to trust it.

FamousKin is a personal genealogical site. So I'm not sure it would pass muster as an RS. The author looks to be an enthusiastic genealogist; if his site was widely cited by RSes as a good source, that would give it credit. The site says: "The ancestor reports on this website have been compiled from thousands of different sources, many over 100 years old. These sources are attached to each ancestor so that you can personally judge their reliability. As with any good genealogical research, if you discover a link to your own family tree, consider it a starting point for further research. It is always preferable to locate primary records where possible. FamousKin.com cannot and does not guarantee the accuracy and reliability of these sources." So I'd go through the sources themselves, and see if they pass Wikipedia RS standards.

- David Gerard (talk) 19:24, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

I cannot improve on what David Gerard has already written and fully agree with the assessment. Walter Görlitz (talk) 00:26, 18 August 2021 (UTC)

Softlavender's revert where I corrected the question.

Hi Softlavender. I do not want to revert anymore in case I am edit warring. Anyways, you reverted my correction of Mikehawk's post where I added fluent/fluency because I am not just questioning whether The Telegraph is right in reporting whether or not Adrian Zenz can speak Mandarin Chinese but I am trying to see if they're right in saying he can fluently (as I have argued for in the replies). It would be very nice of you to revert the edit so that other editors are not misled by the title that was quite short. Thanks. ButterSlipper (talk) 11:58, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

• ButterSlipper, you are not allowed to edit other people's posts period. See WP:TPO. Softlavender (talk) 12:03, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

• Kk, thanks. ButterSlipper (talk) 01:34, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Reliability question

I need to assume that this sources aren't considered reliable?: ([35][36]) I don't see them listed at WP:RSN.--Filmomusico (talk) 16:19, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

Paper Magazine

Is Paper Magazine (papermag.com) reliable? GogoLion (talk) 01:01, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

I see zero on that website to suggest any editorial oversight or selection. Just looks like they post every single piece of celebrity stuff they can locate. Canterbury Tail talk 01:23, 16 September 2021 (UTC)

Coming to this late, but like many magazines, there is a difference between the print magazine and the blog. I don't know about the blog, but (and I can verify this personally) print issues of the magazine (although they are on hiatus post-COVID) are fact-checked and follow a standard magazine editorial process for features, etc. The Kim Kardashian cover story is an example of a fact checked feature. Gnomingstuff (talk) 01:30, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Re-open Verifiability dispute on Harry Partridge

Could the verifiability dispute on Harry Partridge [37] please be re-opened? The other editor involved closed it because the article ended up being redirected as the result of an AfD, but I will draftify and/or try have the article undeleted so I think the discussion might as well be held now instead of later? (less waste of time that way, so we don't have to restate the facts/our opinions) 101.50.250.88 (talk) 05:29, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Five options

I have some concerns about Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources in general (all sources are reliable for something, even the WP:DAILYMAIL [which is reliable – not WP:DUE, but reliable – as a primary source for statements about the exact words that they published in any given article]), but today I'm concerned again about these standardized RFCs not lining up with reality. I think the problem is that editors aren't being given the option that they actually want for many options, which is roughly "biased but not a liar".

Consider the old joke about a race involving US and Soviet cars. The US car wins the race. The Soviet press reports it like this: "In an international competition, the Soviet car came in second place. The US came in next to last". This statement is true. This statement is factually correct. This statement is also extremely biased. But we're not letting editors choose an option that obviously aligns with that. The choices are "It's complicated" (this isn't complicated) or "They got the facts wrong" (which isn't true).

I think editors want an option that will let them declare that a source's main problem is its bias, rather than its facts. I think if we offered that as an explicit, separate option, then we would get a more accurate understanding of the problems. What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the standard 4 choices is something of a blunt instrument. Then again, all sources are biased, aren't they, so that's a bit difficult to pin down as well. And we don't usually write sources off for bias unless it's extreme.Selfstudier (talk) 23:23, 1 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes we can all agree the standard 4 choice system is terrible. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 20:29, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

The four-option RfC format is popular on this noticeboard, because it allows editors to convey their opinions in a way that can be easily assessed by the RfC closer. I would not say that "we can all agree". — Newslinger talk 01:01, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

Is it "popular", or is just reused because editors believe that it is the established process. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:41, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

The four-option format is optional. Editors who start RfCs on this noticeboard are free to choose whatever format they wish, as long as the RfC statement meets the requirements in WP:RFCST. RfC respondents are also free to respond however they wish, and do not need to select an option in their comments. The RfC closer will evaluate all of the responses regardless of the format they are in. The four-option format is popular because editors prefer to use it. — Newslinger talk 08:01, 29 March 2021 (UTC)

Do they prefer to use it, or do they use it because they believe that it is the established process? Those are two different things. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 21:00, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree it's terrible, and wouldn't call it standard, but unfortunately we cannot all agree. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 23:46, 9 March 2021 (UTC)

It's bad. It completely casts aside nuance. It leads to a process of voting rather than actual discussion. Typically the battle is between partisans of Option 1 and Option 4. The use of that template stems from the idea that the DM ban was some kind of "gold standard", when it was not anything of the kind. It was a deeply flawed and partisan decision, and what we have seen is the same flawed process play out again and again. FOARP (talk) 16:20, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Reliability and bias are two separate metrics. Sources that are more biased tend to be less reliable, which is why the presence of "extremist" content is an indicator that a source is questionable. However, there are biased sources that are considered generally reliable – e.g. Common Sense Media (RSP entry) and Reason (RSP entry) – as well as generally unreliable sources with no clear pattern of bias – e.g. NNDB (RSP entry) and self-published sources as a whole. Because "reliable sources are not required to be neutral, unbiased, or objective" (WP:BIASED), a source's reliability is evaluated independently of its bias.

If an editor's believes that a source is biased but is not sure about the source's reliability, they can still participate in a four-option RfC to say so without selecting an option. Alternatively, they can select "option 2" (unclear or additional considerations apply) and elaborate on the source's bias in their comment. The suggested fifth option would effectively be the same as the existing "option 2", but presented with different wording.

Finally, WP:ABOUTSELF does indeed allow any source to be used for uncontroversial self-descriptions, subject to a list of restrictions and an examination of due weight. However, the fact that WP:ABOUTSELF exists does not preclude editors from evaluating the general reliability of a source outside of the limited use cases that WP:ABOUTSELF would cover. — Newslinger talk 01:01, 7 March 2021 (UTC)

• I think the RfC format is meh. I also think we need some actual guidelines on what these discussions should look like. Having closed a number of discussions on here, it's amazing how often reliability and bias are mixed up. The evidence considered appropriate is inconsistent between discussions, where in one discussion IPSO data of complaints are accepted, and in another found to be 'not relevant'. In some discussions people link to articles from other sources to prove the reliability (or lack thereof) of another source, sometimes just multiple articles of the same incident, and sometimes that source is of questionable reliability itself. Many RfCs about sources tend to fail to demonstrate actual issues onwiki, and not infrequently there are discussions where many votes fly in before a single descriptive comment with evidence is made... In some cases where there are actual issues, the discussion reaches no consensus, IMO partly as a result of poor presentation of evidence.
  We need a standardised process that determines when a source may need to have its reliability status changed, and guidance on what kinds of evidence should be presented, and also what kinds of evidence are not fine. Given that we've now got the experience of countless RfCs on source reliability, it should be easy to document the good parts of existing practices in this matter. RSN RfCs should be evidence-based and evidence-first. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:31, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

The good parts - ask "Is X a reliable source for statement Y in article Z?" and get answers from people with better knowledge of the subject (esp. local language/subject matter expertise).

The bad parts - asks "Is X a baddy bad bad terrible media organisation because it says bad things about something I like?" (followed by a million Option 1 and Option 4 votes, results in automated warning messages to everyone who wants to use that source and automated reversion of editors adding that source without even bothering to look at the context it is used in).

There clearly isn't any consistency in these general RFCs. Looking at this list here, sources that are obviously not generally reliable and which have documented instances of fabrication (e.g., China Daily) are spared the deprecation warning message because "It's useful" (where?) whilst other sources that are no worse are deprecated. There has been an obvious split between the treatment of US and UK media organisations - National Enquirer didn't get the edit filter, Fox News didn't get deprecated, but all nationally-distributed UK tabloids have been deprecated + edit filter except the Daily Mirror. There is also a clear left-right split in treatment. as every nationally-distributed UK tabloid deprecated + edit filtered except the Daily Mirror, which also happens to be the only left-leaning nationwide UK tabloid. Some of the subjects for deprecation are simply bizarre. Taki's Magazine has a circulation in the low thousands if that and no evidence of problematic use on Wiki was produced in the RFC, there was also no actual endorsement of the edit filter/auto-revert in the RFC but it seems to have been applied anyway.

And even the sources endorsed as "generally reliable", well, what does this even mean? I !voted Option 1 for the The Jewish Chronicle, but I wouldn't go to them for news about football. FOARP (talk) 07:42, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I have to agree with both of the above. There is an ideological slant when it comes to things like this. Often I find that in RfCs, while there are some legitimate concerns, there tends to be a lot of bandwagon jumping to get sources that tend to have right-leaning ideologies depreciated. It just becomes a popularity contest. Sources should be taken on a case by case basis. If it's emerged that a story printed in one source (aside of editorial judgements) is fake news/fabricated and can be proven by other sources, then just ban that particular page or adapt article to say for example "The News said that X happened, however this has been disproven upon further investigation by GTV and the Daily Bugle". The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 08:10, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

Reviewing the current list of deprecated sources, I'm not sure we have any noticeable bias against right wing sources, though a more in depth investigation of this list might be required (split out the state propaganda outlets, split out the conspiracy theory pushers, split out the self-published sources, and the consider what is left). What I do wonder is if we are being generally too quick to deprecate, but I need to give more thought to this question. BilledMammal (talk) 23:31, 29 September 2021 (UTC)

• I am increasingly thinking that we need to hive WP:BIASED off from WP:RS, and create a new guideline to better explain when it is appropriate/inappropriate to use biased sources... and HOW to do so when appropriate. We need to separate the issue of bias from the issue of reliability - while they are often overlapping problems, they are not the same problem. Blueboar (talk) 12:45, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
• RSP listings have notes, and additional considerations coming up in discussions are often added there. I don't think adding more options would solve anything, and actually it can make things worse, by giving even more weight to categorical results instead of nuanced additional consideration notes. MarioGom (talk) 10:39, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life

Moved to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard § Pinkvilla, Meaww & Bollywood Life

 – Tayi Arajakate _Talk 02:01, 3 October 2021 (UTC)

Arb request filed

People here may be interested in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Amendment request: Fringe science and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, DGG ( talk ) 17:02, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

Help needed

I've (almost) blanked the noticeboard and I can't revert it because there are blacklisted links. Can someone help me or should I just remove/change the links manually? Alaexis_¿question? 13:38, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Why do you want to blank the noticeboard? Firefangledfeathers (talk) 13:55, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I certainly don't! User:Seraphimblade has already helped me. Alaexis_¿question? 13:57, 3 November 2021 (UTC)