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Editor arguing that sources aren't ok because they aren't primary sources - arguing that Dark Enlightenment isn't anti-egalitarian

Margarof (talk · contribs) is unhappy with either Curtis Yarvin and Dark Enlightenment should not refer to Dark Enlightenment as anti-egalitarian. They've reverted me and User:Grayfell. HEre[1] they removed the term because aren't primary sources. They also removed these sources with no explanation abd added " a movement which the sociologist Paul Gilroy claims is anti-egalitarian." (Replacing the use of the term as a description with a "claim". At Dark Enlightment they objected to sources for the same reason.[2]. I'd rather not enter into an edit war with someone who doesn't understand our policies and guidelines.(eg the undiscussed moves of Kanye West pages that User:Muboshgu has reverted.

References

Doug Weller talk 15:54, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm one edit away from an indef block. – Muboshgu (talk) 15:55, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Glottolog unreliable for linguistics

Based on a recent discussion with @Austronesier: and @Arctic Circle System:, I had reason to look into Glottolog, a project I was aware of and had assumed to be reliable. However, what I found convinced me that Glottolog is an entirely unreliable source, that represents a WP:FRINGE view in conflict with virtually all linguistic scholarship, and that it should not be considered a reliable source on Wikipedia. I first looked at North Germanic and there are so many obvious errors that it's hard to know where to start (and I don't intend to provide a full list of glaring errors), but classifying 'Old East Norse' under 'West Scandinavian' (and hence in a different group to Swedish and Danish, its direct descendants) is perhaps the worst. Next, I took a look at some other language groups at Glottolog, and it gets even worse. Suggesting that the two divisions of Scottish Gaelic are Church Gaelic and East Sutherlandshire Gaelic is straight out "flat earth"'level, and in very sharp contrast to the entire field of Celtic linguistics. Glottolog's invention of a "Munster-Leinster" dialect also contradicts the entire field of scholarship. More bizarre WP:FRINGE claims for the Romance languages, where Glottolog pretends that Romanian and Tuscan Italian (two entirely separate languages) are more similar than Tuscan and Corsican (a Tuscan dialect). For Sardinian, it engages in some complex but hilarious reclassification in which Sassarese Sardinian becomes closer to Norman French than to other Sardinian dialects. Again, there is not one linguistic source I'm aware of supporting these hilarious claims, and tons of good research contradicting it. In short, no linguist could take Glottolog's classification serious. I know the site is run by two linguists, yet it is not peer-reviewed. Quite clearly, it is severely lacking in academic rigour. For some languages it appears correct (for example, the Slavic languages look ok to me) but it really is a hit and miss, and it flat out contradicts all modern scholarship for so many languages that it's impossible to rely on it. For this reason, I propose that Glottolog be considered an unreliable source. Jeppiz (talk) 19:41, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Triple hyperbole aside (Glottolog is an entirely unreliable source, that represents a WP:FRINGE view in conflict with virtually all linguistic scholarship), I agree that Glottolog is not perfect and shouldn't be overly relied on; actually only for preliminary quick'n'dirty solutions when peer-reviewed sources are not at hand. Glottolog is a) as good as its sources (the choice of which often can be contentious) and b) as good as the reading of these sources by the Glottolog linguist(s) Hammarström (et al.), a reading that occasionally is superficial or even erroneous. They are open for criticism, and I have pointed out errors to them a few times, with quick response. Maybe this is better discussed in WT:LANG, since we have a short assessment of this source (and other comprehensive online sources like Ethnologue) in the section Wikipedia:WikiProject_Languages#Interpreting_online_sources_of_data. –Austronesier (talk) 19:56, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

(ec) I don't really think most of the illogical statements are really due to "fringe" or "flat earth" reasoning, but rather to an intransparent mixture of statements on the basis of incompatible or contradictory criteria – like when classificatory statements that are supposed to apply to a whole language (i.e. a range of dialects as a whole) are mixed in with classificatory statements that apply to only one standard form within that range, under the same name; or when genetic statements about ancient language forms are mixed in with statements about portions of modern dialect continua or sociolinguistic registers. I just checked the section on "Greek" and it's indeed chaotic – though one can understand each individual ordering decision on its own, in some sense, the combined effect is utterly bizarre. While I certainly wouldn't suspect the authors of fringe leanings (Haspelmath is a top-notch scholar in the field), I agree we shouldn't be using it as a standalone source for things like linguistic classification or genetic trees, without a good deal of extra research on its criteria and methods. Fut.Perf. ☼ 20:01, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

Agreed, much of the hodgepodge is a result of grafting diverse (and sometimes mutually contradicting) classifications one on another. Nevertheless, Glottolog is good in its conservative assessment of long-range proposals—remember Ruhlen's Guide to the World's Languages? :) –Austronesier (talk) 20:04, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

@Austronesier:, thanks, though I stand by that 'triple hyperbole' ;-) There are simply so many errors in Glottolog's classification that 'entirely unreliable' is the only conclusion. In no way do I accuse the linguists involved to be fringe, I'm sure they are doing their best. Still, trying to create classifications for languages outside their own areas of expertise (I'm sure we all agree no linguist is an expert on all languages), and for which they have a limited knowledge of the academic literature, creates problems like these. Regarding the Celtic languages, I know the literature well enough to understand what happened. Dorian's work on East Sutherlandshire Gaelic (a marginal dialect now extinct) is the best known work on Gaelic dialectoΓlogy - and apparently the only one known to Glottolog's curators. But there is an entire literature on Gaelic dialects by linguists such as Borgstrøm, Oftedahl, Ó Murchú, Watson, Holmer, Ternes, and many others. Again, there's no accusation of bad intentions but - and I have to say - I do find it a case of hubris to put out something without knowing the literature in the field. Having published quite a number of academic works myself, having a decent h-index, and sitting on several academic editorial boards, I've rarely come across a case of academics making as broad claims as Glottolog does, with so poor sourcing. I dare say that no two linguists in the world , no matter how good could, could aspire to know the literature on all languages and accurately classify them all (I myself most certainly could not). As for Wikipedia, I don't see the need for Glottolog. There are good, reliable classifications for all languages I know. They are not all at the same place and accessible in one click, like Glottolog, but we should still prioritise accuracy over ease of access. Jeppiz (talk) 20:37, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

For WP purposes we should definitely limit its use as a source. Naive trust in Glottolog (usually by laypeople who fall for its taxonomic appeal) brings more harm to WP than benefit (see e.g. this discussion), especially if articles are already based on high-quality specialist sources. –Austronesier (talk) 21:17, 15 November 2022 (UTC)

If I may ask, how would a layperson trying to contribute to these articles go about finding better sources on classification and determine which sources should be used when some are contradictory? I've been trying to find better ones, but it's often difficult to find papers on this subject, let alone papers that aren't locked behind paywalls and can't be found elsewhere, and/or are confusing to someone without a lot of prior knowledge. I don't know if I'm not looking hard enough or if I just haven't found the magic words I need to put into Google Scholar to get it to spit out the results I need. It gets quite confusing. ~Red of Arctic Circle System (talk) 09:27, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

• The taxonomical information on Glottolog can't be trusted, its organisation is weird for the exceptionally well-known families, god knows what is lurking in the less well-known areas. I don't see any evidence for reliability. Articles published there are as reliable as their author, if we can identify an author.

In answer to @Arctic Circle System, there really is no substitute for the academic papers in a lot of cases, I did an update of the list of language isolates which was only possible because I had a temporary contract at a university and therefore access to a large number of papers and academic texts. Even "unofficial" ways of bypassing paywalls have become much more difficult of late. Boynamedsue (talk) 09:20, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Much of the weirdness stems from the use of ISO-coded languages as primary data points. This is bound to fail terribly when these data points were created within a dialect continuum based on sociolinguistic criteria. Such criteria do not necessarily match comparative-historical criteria, yet comparative classifications are grafted onto these data points in Glottolog.

From my own observiations: Glottolog is actually much better with less well-known families. Africa is covered quite accurately, Austronesian is pretty good too (as I mentioned above, I actively "complain" to Hammarström when I see an error), Sagotreespirit can probably better comment about the accuracy in the South American area; Kwamikagami has good insights about how Glottolog works and also about its limitations. –Austronesier (talk) 10:56, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

@Jeppiz: The first three examples you give are dialects. I agree any italicized entries in Glottolog are completely unreliable, as I believe we still say at Wikiproject Languages. As I've said elsewhere, the dialects, i.e. those entries formatted in italics, are not from the sources listed, but blindly copied from MultiTree, where they were put together by undergrad students at EMU who generally knew less than we do. Glotto is starting to replace the dialects per RS's, but unfortunately I don't know how to tell where they have and where they haven't. Also, the tree format is misleading: where families are intended to contain a complete list of the languages they contain, the same is not true of the dialects. Scottish Gaelic is not bifurcated into Church Gaelic and East Sutherlandshire; rather, those are two entries at MultiTree that were placed (provisionally) in Scottish Gaelic, pending confirmation by RS's.

Glottolog started years ago with an outline consisting of the languages of Ethnologue and the dialects of MultiTree; not sure about the family membership, that may have been Hammarström's from the start. They've gone through and redone all families and individual languages per scholarly sources (indeed, Ethnologue and ISO have been revised to follow Glottolog's revisions in many cases), but they haven't yet gotten to the dialects other than in a few cases. IMO we should therefore completely ignore italicized entries such as Old East Norse, East Sutherlandshire Gaelic and Munster-Leinster. Where the dialects are now supported by RS's, those sources are listed and we can refer to them directly. If you come across any cases where WP copies G's treatment of dialects, please feel free to delete that material as unsourced.

For your other two cases, sources are given. You may disagree with those sources, but unlike Ethnologue they are listed for reference. For example, with Sardinian, G's source Jones (1988: 314) says, the dialects of Gallura and Sassari (spoken along the northern coast) can be classified as varieties of Italian, though they show some affinities with Sardinian. Gallurese is a variety of Southern Corsican whereas Sassarese is a hybrid dialect which evolved during the Middle Ages as a result of the close contact between the native Sardinian population of Sassari and the maritime powers of Pisa and Genoa.

Similarly, Agard (1984: 250) is a family tree of the Romance languages where "Sardo-Corsican" is a subbranch of Southern Common Romance, rather distant from the Italo-Dalmatian subbranch of the Italo-Western branch of Common Romance. If you have a state-of-the-art consensus classification of the Romance languages, we could perhaps recommend it to Glottolog. My impression is that Hammarström gives greater credence to classifications that take into account historical considerations, such as Jones (1988) above, than to the simplistic lexico-statistical comparisons that many sources rely on.

I suspect that obscure language families are going to be more coherent in G than better known ones, at least within the limits of our knowledge of them and available sources, because there are fewer contradictory sources to reconcile. Also, Hammarström has put more effort into many obscure languages and families, where he's done his own lexical and grammatical comparisons to fill in the gaps or reconcile conflicts in the sources, because the scholarly material is so poor, than into major, well-established families, where he trusts standard sources to get it right and doesn't expect to be able to do better himself.

The sad fact is that there is no true RS for the world's languages. For example, neither Ethnologue, Glottolog nor ISO are RS's for Chinese. AFAICT, there is no RS for the Chinese languages anywhere in the world's literature. None of the major ISO/Ethn/Glotto "languages" in the Chinese family are actually languages, and AFAICT the research to fill out the family does not exist. And that's for Chinese! But of the sources available, Glottolog is the best, assuming you know to ignore the dialects. At least it provides the sources it's based on, so we can go directly to those sources. It's certainly a good place to find sources on individual languages and classifications. — kwami (talk) 19:23, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised that Glottolog is being discussed on this noticeboard. Glottolog is not perfect, but what else do we have? It's the most comprehensive open-access bibliographic database of world languages that currently exists, and is more useful and more accurate than Ethnologue in many ways. Ethnologue has a lot of inaccurate information that never gets updated, runs through opaque bureaucracy, and has many other issues that Glottolog doesn't have. Plus, Glottolog and Ethnologue are the two most reliable and comprehensive sources that we have for the world's languages, and neither are WP:FRINGE. All other websites are really incomplete databases (MultiTree and others). Please keep in mind that linguistics databases are generally poorly developed compared to bioinformatics. — Sagotreespirit (^talk) 02:19, 24 November 2022 (UTC)

According to Shobhana Chelliah, Glottolog seems to be a reliable source (and especially a "comprehensive bibliography"), see: Supporting Linguistic Vitality in Why Language Documentation Matters. (btw: should we add Ethnologue to Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Perennial_sources? see also Ethnologue#Reception,_reliability,_and_use.) A455bcd9 (talk) 20:30, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

I've just checked what other RS say about Glottolog. For instance this paper: "For this assessment, the expert classification from Glottolog (Hammarström et al., 2018) is used as gold standard." Similarly, Lyle Campbell mentions in "Language classification and cataloguing endangered languages" that Glottolog and ELCat are two reliable classifications.

I would conclude that: "Glottolog is a reliable language bibliography. Its classification is generally reliable, except for entries formatted in italics that are not from the sources listed, but copied from MultiTree. A455bcd9 (talk) 08:10, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The secret societies of all ages and countries

Torture chamber quotes 7 times The secret societies of all ages and countries by Charles William Heckethorn as a reliable source. Heckethorn was a writer, his biography does not mention any academic study or writing. Xx236 (talk) 12:43, 30 November 2022 (UTC) The book is not quoted in any other page describing 'secret societies'.Xx236 (talk) 14:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The real subject is 'Avignon Inquisition' [3] L’inquisition d’Avignon du Moyen Âge à la fin du XVIIIe siècle by Mrac Venard (I have no access to the paper).Xx236 (talk) 12:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Palais des Papes quotes 'she-devil with flashing black eyes who glories in the gory past when the building was used as a torture chamber' (Dickens).

Both articles are about history, not about English protestant literature.Xx236 (talk) 13:04, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

I may get access to that paper by Venard, what information should I check? Pavlor (talk) 13:11, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The alleged tortures in the Palais the Papes - regarding this subject. But I believe that the subject 'Avignon Inquisition' deserves at least a section in Roman Inquisition.Xx236 (talk) 13:28, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I have no institutional access to this one. Pavlor (talk) 13:46, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Another sources are in Italian:

• Andrea Del Col: L’Inquisizione in Italia. Mediolan: Oscar Mondadori, 2010, s. 319-322, 434, 774. ISBN 978-88-04-53433-4.
• M. Venard, Avignone, [w:] Adriano Prosperi (red.): Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione. Tomy I-III. Piza: Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, 2010, s. 126-127. Xx236 (talk) 13:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)
• I would think that Heckethorn is not a reliable source on this matter, and that the references and footnoted text removed. Not only is there the question of his qualifications as an historian, but to the extent that his book is cited in a handful of academic publications per Google Scholar, those citations are usually skeptical, including whether his narrative on the Freemasons is taken from an opera rather than any reliable scholarship, See [4] and that his work has other errors. See [5] Though not directly relevant to this particular work, there is a contemporaneous review of one of his biographies that severely criticizes his accuracy. [6]. So, I think his writing should be regarded with extreme skepticism as to its historical accuracy. Banks Irk (talk) 18:55, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Retract

• Source: American Bar Association with link to link to ABA news
• Article: Alan Dershowitz
• Content: "In November 2022 Guiffre retracted her allegations against Dershwitz." Diff
• Discussion: Talk:Alan_Dershowitz#Source_falsification and Talk:Alan_Dershowitz#Edit_warring_1R

Thanks! Jtbobwaysf (talk) 23:35, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Per the talk page discussion, issue is not whether ABA is an RS, it is whether use of the word retract(ed/ion) is NPOV when considering the balance of mainline sources.Selfstudier (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

Has also been argued in the talk page discussion that it is not an RS. Jtbobwaysf (talk) 23:44, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

When one source uses a word that the considerable majority of sources do not use, the main issue is not the reliability of the single source. The main issue is one of cherry-picking sources. This is not the right forum. Zero^talk 00:13, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Its a trade magazine, sure for a respectable profession, but a trade magazine nonetheless. Would prefer sources more independent from the subject, that being the law and lawyers. nableezy - 00:36, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

I searched "ABA Journal" on Jstor and it's cited and referred to in quite a few publications, and it was indexed on Jstor until 2018. I can't find any indications of its lack of reliability. I don't see how being a trade publication would affect its reliability, besides possibly being biased on some topics. The question of whether this is the most WP:NPOV description though isn't for this noticeboard I think Tristario (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

Its covering its own members. I dont think thats independent coverage. nableezy - 02:25, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a consensus on Talk:Alan_Dershowitz not to use the word retract, perhaps for different reasons, but nonetheless. The talk page discussion that led to this notice has been closed and I believe this notice is moot and need not continue.--agr (talk) 21:04, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

RfC: Behind the Voice Actors (incorrectly setup, please see proper RfC below)

See the most recent previous RfC on this source here.

Which of the following best describes the reliability of the website Behind the Voice Actors?

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

My statement: How on Earth did this manage to get listed as reliable this year? That they claim to do research does not make them reliable, since we have no way of checking that they did indeed do research and they are quite happy to list credits without any sort of public source. That their response in their FAQ to "your credit is inaccurate" is to defend their honour rather than provide information on a correction-submitting process is not a good sign, in my opinion. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is no correction-submitting process, which is a severe problem for any source hoping to be considered reliable, especially as I know for a fact, using actor's websites as sources, that their credits for at least one video game are wrong. If we have no means to know if they are actually doing research and fact-checking, yet keep them as a reliable source, why shouldn't we allow every random website that claims to have a fact-checking process as a source? I know someone will bring up the green tick, but if a credit has a green tick that means there's another, almost certainly better, source we can use. I appreciate this comes very soon after a previous RfC on the same site, but I wasn't aware of that until today and it seems to have been waved through based simply on its own claims of accuracy. Eldomtom2 (talk) 19:14, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

Can you post the video game that has the wrong credits? DarmaniLink (talk) 21:41, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

It is the Harry Potter video game series. Most of them I can find no source for, some I can find circumstantial evidence against, and a few I have solid evidence against - for example the character of Peeves, who BTVA claim was voiced by Chris Crosby but who was actually voiced by Jonathan Kydd - see his site. But this is not directly relevant except that it illustrates the problems of treating a source that keeps all their internal workings private as a reliable one.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 23:08, 26 November 2022 (UTC)

I was confused on how to set up an RfC; please see the proper section below.--Eldomtom2 (talk) 11:08, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

BigBlueHistory.net: self-published Kentucky Basketball website

Author Jon Scott runs a self-published Kentucky Basketball website. The site hosts a statistical database as well as articles written by Scott.

Author was profiled in 2009:

• https://www.kentucky.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/mark-story/article43990185.html
• http://www.apbr.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1979 (full text of above article)

The author is a chemical engineer by training. He does not appear to have any authored articles or works published by reliable sources. His self-published website (specifically mainly the statistical database) is sometimes cited by reliable sources.

In addition to the statistical database, he also writes history articles and publishes them to his website. The 2009 profile describes the reason for writing his articles as:

Initially, he says his aim was correcting what he saw as "misconceptions" that appeared in some of the national media over both Kentucky's history of NCAA probations and the debate about Adolph Rupp's stance on race.

His website describes the articles as such:

I believe most every home page should bring something new to the internet rather than recycle the same information. In that vein, I have included my thoughts on some of the misconceptions that surround Kentucky basketball. Some have questioned me as to why someone would want to concentrate on what is sometimes negative or hard-to-defend areas rather than relive the many good aspects of the Kentucky Basketball program. My main answer is that while I generally don't like to dwell on the negative, I attempted to cover these topics because many of these issues simply are not covered anywhere else and some of the stories are important to tell. I could have put together material which illustrates the amazing accomplishments of such a storied program that is Kentucky Basketball, however much of this has been covered before in books, special edition memorabilia and videos spanning many decades. Most of this information is off the top of my head although I have gained much information from the Lexington Herald Leader along with other newspaper archives, magazines and books. If you have any facts or statistics to support or disprove me, I would appreciate hearing about it.

The website is currently linked from Wikipedia around 400 times.

Per the author's stated intention to "correct" the "misconceptions" found in reliable sources, I contend this source's self-published articles are unreliable and biased. Another editor, however, contends that the self-published author is an "established subject-matter expert" and thus a reliable source eligible for use on Wikipedia. See talk page: Talk:Helms_Athletic_Foundation#Jon_Scott_is_an_established_subject-matter_expert.

The page in question is Helms Athletic Foundation, which I have recently rewritten via reliable sources. The author's article "The Truth Behind the Helms Committee" was previously the main source. The table footnote sourced to BigBlueHistory.net is still in contention, and I feel should be removed.

The source's article "Adolph Rupp was the biggest racist there was" is also highly contentious and currently used as a source at Talk:Adolph Rupp, Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball, Glory Road (film) and elsewhere.

I have no opinion about the reliability of the website's statistical database, just the articles.

Opinions appreciated on this source. PK-WIKI (talk) 23:00, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

The concern by the editor above is not about basketball in the state of Kentucky. The concern is about the Helms Athletic Foundation (HAF). Jon Scott is a subject-matter expert who has researched and brought to light the history of the HAF. The HAF was known for naming annual national champions in the sports of college football and basketball.

Jon Scott is a subject-matter expert in college basketball history and has co-authored a book on the subject. He is also a member of the Association for Professional Basketball Research. He publishes a website, BigBlueHistory.net, which is a container for a large amount of his work. An internet search for “Jon Scott” and Kentucky and basketball turns up numerous instances, including major newspaper accounts, of his work being cited, not only for its accuracy, but also for its premier status as the foremost and most exhaustive compilation of its kind. His website is not a fan blog or a blog at all.

Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established subject-matter expert, which Jon Scott clearly is. At the particular web page (“The Truth Behind the Helms Committee”) cited in the article on the Helms Athletic Foundation, Scott acknowledges his collaborations with other reliable experts Phil Porretta, Patrick Premo, NCAA head statistician Gary Johnson, the LA84 Library (which holds the former records of the Helms Foundation) along with numerous other historians.

Further, it appears that the above editor seeks to minimize the valid criticism of the HAF that the organization, in fact, was not a committee of experts, but rather, the handiwork of a single individual, Bill Schroeder. The HAF was known for naming annual national champions in the sports of college football and basketball. This editor has edited articles to remove references to the fact that the HAF selections were the work of the individual, Bill Schroeder.

In particular, a motivation appears to be the promotion of the major college football teams in the state of Washington. The University of Washington football team was named by the HAF as its national champion for 1960, a choice made by no other major selectors of champions. Thus, the HAF choice of Washington in 1960 is widely dismissed. The editor apparently seeks to rectify a grievance regarding this circumstance by whitewashing references to the significant research done by the expert Jon Scott regarding the provenance and history of the HAF, which has shattered the mythology that surrounds the HAF even to this day. By hiding “The Truth Behind the Helms Committee”, the aggrandizement of the standing of the 1960 Washington Huskies football team, as well as other HAF selections, will become easier. Jeff in CA (talk) 08:22, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

That Jon Scott has "co-authored a book on the subject" seems to refer to the "Wildcat Tip-Off 2011-2012" ebook. This ebook is a publication of "A Sea of Blue", the SBNation Kentucky Wildcats fan blog. SBNation blogs have previously been discussed on this noticeboard.

The publisher for the ebook is "Logistek, LLC". The introduction of the ebook lists "Glenn Logan, Editor and Publisher" and his bio:

Glenn Logan is a lifelong University of Kentucky basketball fan. He is a small business owner, freelance writer and managing editor of the SB Nation University of Kentucky weblog AseaOfBlue.com, one of the largest and most popular UK fan sites on the Internet.

Glenn Logan is the owner of Logistek, LLC. This work appears to be a self-published ebook, not a book published by an established publisher independent of the author(s).

PK-WIKI (talk) 19:33, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

• Given the numerous times that Scott is cited in books, I am willing to accept that he is a subject-matter expert on Kentucky basketball. I don't see anything that would indicate that he is a subject-matter expert on any broader sport-related field, since he does not appear to be cited by other authors on anything else - including on the Helms Athletic Foundation. But it does not appear that he has been independently published, since his only book is a self-published ebook. Thus, his self-published articles fail the requirements for reliability under WP:SPS. I'd also note that his website seems to be a mix of self-authored articles, statistical and historical tables and copies of reprinted articles from other authors and sources. If the reprinted articles are from reliable sources, the original sources might be used, with appropriate attribution. What motivations may underlie the question are irrelevant to the reliability of the source. Banks Irk (talk) 21:12, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Other sources at List of highest-grossing media franchises

Are these sources reliable? Doesn't seem like these were discussed at this noticeboard. Were/are used at List of highest-grossing media franchises.(I'm still checking the sources at this page) Charabiz was discussed before

www.statisticbrain.com (I've removed this for now, also used in a few other articles [7]

www.comichron.com

markethack.net Timur9008 (talk) 11:57, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Did you try emailing the editor to find out their method for gathering information for their list? That would be my first move because a media source is only as good as the journalist editor they hired and the methods (or lack thereof) they personally used for their publication. CaribDigita (talk) 16:10, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

The primary editor of the list User:Maestro2016 was banned from Wikipedia. He was banned for misuse of sources. Hence I'm cleaning the page up. While I orinally created the article years ago It looked way different then now. Timur9008 (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Are recommendations and guidelines published by health agencies of European governments generally considered reliable?

If I have questions regarding the use of recommendations published by health agencies of European governments especially the National Board of Health and Welfare (Sweden) and the Council for Choices in Health Care run by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, should I discuss them at the Wikipedia:Neutral point of view/Noticeboard or should I discuss them here? Also, do these sources warrant starting an Rfc? StellarHalo (talk) 15:47, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Please don't 'start an RfC'. We aren't going to give a definitive yes/no answer regarding the reliability of 'recommendations and guidelines published by health agencies of European governments'. Useful discussions on reliability of such sources (like almost all others) have to revolve around specifics: which exact source is being cited, and what for. AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:55, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Indeed. It depends on the "agency" and it depends on the claim. Specifics please! Bon courage (talk) 16:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

1. This recommendation and particularly this line from page 3 "For adolescents with gender incongruence, the NBHW deems that the risks of puberty suppressing treatment with GnRH-analogues and gender-affirming hormonal treatment currently outweigh the possible benefits, and that the treatments should be offered only in exceptional cases"
2. This recommendation and particularly the fourth paragraph of section 7: "Alaikäisenä aloitetut muuntohoidot ovat tutkimusnäytön valossa kokeellisia. Alaikäisten sukupuoliidentiteetin tutkimusryhmissä tehtyjen tutkimusten perusteella on mahdollista harkita transsukupuolisen identiteetin varmistuessa hormonaalisia muuntohoitoja ennen täysi-ikäisyyttä, mutta asiassa on käytettävä suurta harkintaa eikä palautumattomia hoitoja tule aloittaa. Tietoa hormonihoitojen mahdollisista haitoista kertyy hitaasti, eikä niitä raportoida systemaattisesti. Tietoa hoitotoimenpiteiden hyödyistä ja haitoista on hankittava luotettavissa tutkimusasetelmissa."

StellarHalo (talk) 16:12, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

And what proposed Wikipedia-article text were these sources intended to be cited for? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:33, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I have not decided to edit transgender topics yet but maybe something along the line of "For minors with gender dysphoria, the NBHW has determined that the risks associated with puberty blockers and hormone therapy exceed the potential benefits and so, the agency recommends that these treatments should only be prescribed in rare cases." and "Council for Choices in Health Care has determined that in light of available evidence, gender reassignment of minors is still an experimental practice. They further recommend that hormone therapies must be done with great caution and that no irreversible treatment should be started." StellarHalo (talk) 16:50, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Both statements appear to be true - the bodies concerned have made such statements. Properly attributed, as the opinions of such bodies, they might be appropriate, but that would very likely depend on the context. A context which you have entirely failed to provide. I see no reason why this noticeboard should even concern itself with hypothetical questions regarding unnamed articles. If you think there may be an issue with a specific edit, discuss it on the talk page of the article concerned. That is what the talk pages are for. AndyTheGrump (talk) 17:02, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

I concur with @AndyTheGrump.Cinadon36 18:31, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

European Societies usually publish guidelines and are superReliable (and superCited usually which is a reflection of their reliability) Each country might have different guidelines and their reliability varies depending on country or other factors (authors). Why use a regional practice guidelines when topics are covered by more reliable parties (European or american)? Cinadon36 17:55, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia cannot truely make any health claims. It isn't really qualified to do so in current structure. And for example- under U.S. law, I know you have to be careful about seeming to give-out medical advise that could guide somebody. To my mind, Wikipedia can only reference another qualified reliable source and point folks to there as-to see whst that source says to my mind. But you cannot use that method to make any sweeping claims because one method for one person, could be problematic or detrimental to another and Wikipedia isn't in the business of pushing medical self help. So I'd say if you want to reference it just be intentional. i.e. 'Under the published health guidelines of the x-y-z on (this date) and regulations comprise one form of proposals which are listed.' I'd say that would be about as close as you might be able to get. and provide a link to those regulations the person can then goto that site to see the full list for themselves. Wikipedia shouldn't paraphrase anything from it. CaribDigita (talk) 16:29, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

With all due respect, this seems a bit confused. I agree that Wikipedia should not make any health claims itself, but paraphrasing of reliable literature is kind of what we do here, and not problematic, in my opinion. I quite agree that regulations are not generally of much use other than to verify their own existence, but I cannot imagine using them for much else. Again, as noted above, this is all heavily context dependent, and I think it best that we try to stick to discussing specific instances. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:38, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

Depends what you mean by "health claim". Wikipedia can certainly say (e.g.) that smoking cigarettes increases the likelihood of lung cancer (cited to an appropriate source). Wikipedia cannot however give medical advice; that is a baked-in legal position per WP:MEDICAL. Bon courage (talk) 16:54, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

• It is not a health claim to report that X governmental health agency recommended Y, appropriately attributed. These two sources are clearly reliable for that purpose here , but both sets of guidelines are primary sources. While the use of primary sources is not totally prohibited, it would be the better practice to utilize a reliable secondary source such as a newspaper story, reporting on the guidelines, instead of citing the guidelines themselves. Banks Irk (talk) 18:16, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I need to correct myself here after considering Crossroads' note below. Per WP:MEDASSESS a governmental agency-issued practice guideline is indeed a secondary, not a primary source, and moreover, is considered among the most reliable of secondary sources on medical issues. Banks Irk (talk) 18:55, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

• Yes they are, and are pretty much inherently WP:DUE as well. I believe these would usually be considered secondary sources as they are often written as reviews of evidence gathered in primary sources and studies. Crossroads ^-talk- 18:28, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

https://www.iol.co.za

I've previously raised questions about the quality of Independent Newspapers as a WP:RS, especially post-2020.[8] Once one of South Africa's great media groups, it appears as if IOL is now using Wikipedia as a source. See this article that uses the phrase "According to wikipedia".[9] This calls into question its reliability and adherence journalistic standards and at the very least indicates that it's a potential source of WP:CIRCULAR references. Park3r (talk) 07:04, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

The source should be based upon its merits to my mind. According to how I read this, you claim it used the terminology "according to wikipedia". I did a quick 'find' on that page and the only paragraph I could quick-search for "wikipedia said" the following and I only grab it because it is relevent to the topic at hand and I'm using assumed fair-use: "According to wikipedia, African Transformation Movement leader Vuyo Zungula tabled an official motion on 14 June 2022, that parliament investigate President Cyril Ramaphosa by forming a Section 89 Committee Inquiry over allegations the latter had violated section 89 of the Constitution."

My thought is how does that immpune full integrity of the media source? Unless it is totally untrue? and only Wikipedia claimed this??? Did you check the South Africa parliament website under that timeframe to see if it is true? or false? In order to support your claim here that the media source is giving out bad unreliable information? CaribDigita (talk) 16:05, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

I have no issue with journalists using Wikipedia for background research, however, there’s no excuse for a “serious news outlet” directly quoting Wikipedia for a basic fact in 2022, knowing it’s user generated. It’s not my job to check the South African parliament website, or any other, to confirm the accuracy of a journalist who quoted Wikipedia: quite the opposite-the journalist should be using those sources to verify what’s in Wikipedia, and then quote the sources directly if needed. Furthermore, it seems to be part of a pattern of deterioration, rather than an isolated incident (see previous discussion). Finally, regardless of its status, it can’t be used as a source for articles like 2020 Phala Phala Robbery because the outlet has admitted to using Wikipedia as a source, making it a clear case of WP:CIRCULAR referencing. Park3r (talk) 20:37, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

LGBTQ Nation

Should the online magazine LGBTQ Nation be considered a reliable source? I don't know much about it, but I know that it's cited pretty extensively in the article Matt Walsh (political commentator), and some of the LGBTQ Nation articles cited there seem rather flimsily argued. It's an obviously biased source, but beyond that they seem to have a noticeable tendency to "strawman" their perceived political enemies, including Walsh. Here are some examples, from the Matt Walsh article citations:

• From "Anti-trans troll Matt Walsh says Black mermaids aren’t “scientific” in on-air meltdown": Walsh’s laughable take is just the latest in the racist online commentary around Bailey being cast as the character. The backlash has led many families to post heartwarming videos of Black children seeing Bailey in the role for the first time to counter the vile racism with unbridled Black joy. - leaving aside whether the article is justified in calling Walsh's commentary racist, is this the kind of writing style you'd expect in a reliable source?
• From "Right-wing media giants say LGBTQ bar patrons are responsible for their own murders": After the shooting, conservative podcaster and transphobe Matt Walsh said that drag shows, like the one held at Club Q on the night of the shooting, exist to let queens “satisfy their fetish for cross-dressing in front of children” and to “indoctrinate children into queer theory [and]… turn your children queer, that is the goal.” Ignoring the fact that Club Q only allows patrons ages 21 and up... - that's a huge deal if true, because it would mean that Walsh is basing his whole argument on a falsehood. But no, the nightclub did host all-ages drag brunches.
• From the same article: [quoting Walsh] “By their version of events, it’s causing this much chaos and violence. Why do you insist on continuing to do it? …If the effort to have men crossdress in front of children is putting people’s lives at risk, why are you still doing it? Is that important to you?” According to Walsh, drag performers shouldn’t exist because right-wingers who listen to him will just shoot up more clubs. - clearly Walsh was making a rhetorical point ("By their version of events"), but the article is ignoring that qualifier to make it seem like he's saying something much worse.

Just a small sampling, but I wonder what others think about this website. Korny O'Near (talk) 18:22, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• I don't think we need that particular website to source the obvious fact that Walsh is an extreme transphobe and homophobe, so it may be moot. Black Kite (talk) 18:54, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• LGBTQ Nation mixes fact and opinion, so it would be a WP:QUESTIONABLE source where all opinions should be attributed and it should not be used to cite claims about living persons. I agree with Black Kite that this website isn't necessary for this particular article and it shouldn't be difficult to find a more authoritative source confirming these claims. If there isn't a better source for a specific claim, then it's probably not notable enough to include in the article. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:04, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• It's a point in their favor that they are covering the Sam Brinton story[10]. That said, I wouldn't use them as the source for a statement that someone is transphobic. They are simply too close to the issue, frequently say that about people they don't view as being on their side, and fail WP:INDEPENDENT on that question. I think it's fine to use them for occasional attributed opinion. No article should ever rely on them heavily. Adoring nanny (talk) 19:14, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

  How are they too close to the issue exactly? I don't think WP:INDEPENDENT says if an LGBTQ focused paper calls somebody transphobic, we can't believe them. Also, can you give any examples of them just saying "that about people they don't view as being on their side?" I have seen no evidence they just pull the descriptor out of a hat. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 09:30, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  It's a statement of opinion. Per WP:WIKIVOICE, we should "prefer nonjudgmental language". "Transphobic" is judgmental language, so we would need stronger sourcing for it. Adoring nanny (talk) 13:47, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  All adjectives are statements of opinion if you don't believe them. Nonjudgementally speaking, I can think of much worse things to call many transphobes, but if someone repeatedly advocates against the trans community or expresses prejudiced opinions towards them, the neutral descriptor is "transphobic", unless another succinct term for that behavior exists. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 15:51, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  As a for-example, here is an article where many analysts say Putin is "desperate" not to lose in Ukraine.[11] "Desperate", like "trasphobic", is a statement of opinion about someone's state of mind. Nonjudgmentally speaking, I can think of much worse things to call Putin. Yet at Vladimir Putin, we don't call him "desperate". Adoring nanny (talk) 16:10, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  "Transphobic" is a descriptor of reality and concrete actions, not a state of mind. Whether someone is "desperate" or not is a question only they can really answer, sure. In contrast though, comments, positions, and even people can be factually transphobic. For example, saying "drag shows exist because drag queens are fetishists and pedophiles and are trying to groom your children into being queer", as in the 3rd example in the original post, is factually and objectively, a transphobic statement/view. A person who regularly supports such views and makes such statements is transphobic, there's no need to guess their mental state, just look at their actions. I don't think anyone would argue that saying "gays are going to hell and shouldn't be allowed to get married" is not homophobic, or a person who repeatedly says that is not homophobic, or legislation targeting equal marriage or nondiscrimination protections is not homophobic, or saying "miscegenation is a sin before god since we need to protect the white babies" is not racist, yet for some reason "transphobic" is considered uniquely judgemental. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 17:58, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  "Desperate" can also be judged from actions. I don't think anyone who mobilizes 300,000 men in the immediate aftermath of string of military defeats, lies to them and their families that they will get certain pay and training, and rushes them to the front line within weeks of getting drafted, only to see many of them get killed within days, is anything other than "desperate". But neither your opinion nor mine is how we do this. Adoring nanny (talk) 18:18, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  Adoring nanny, are you suggesting that sources engaging in canpaigning on a political or social issue fail WP:INDEPENDENT on that issue? Becsuse if you do, that would have implications far beyond LGBTQ Nation. Newimpartial (talk) 17:59, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  Not necessarily. But when we are getting into statements of opinion, extra caution is required. Adoring nanny (talk) 18:19, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

• Here's a question for the OP. Are we using this for a source that says "Matt Walsh did XXX" or are we using it as a source for "<Insert source name> says that they didn't like that Matt Walsh did XXX". Those are very different things and we need to decide for what purpose are we citing the source before we can decide if it is appropriate. --Jayron32 19:30, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

  Well, I'm not sure - this of course goes to the different levels of reliability. But their seemingly factually inaccurate statement that the Colorado club never had events that allowed children does cast doubt on them as a source in general. Korny O'Near (talk) 20:17, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

  I contacted them about it, see if they edit it (archived original). Though they may have intended "patrons" to mean people buying alcohol, or whatever, so could end up being more of a clarification than a correction. It is a good sign if a source issues corrections, and they often do so from reader contact; other time I (successfully) contacted a source about an error was this article in The Hill, though the error was much worse and thus demanding attention, as they had implicated a website in a terror attack. Chillabit (talk) 21:13, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

  That's great - it will indeed be interesting to see what their correction/clarification policy is, if any. Korny O'Near (talk) 01:06, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  Based on this, they do apparently have one. Chillabit (talk) 04:52, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

• I agree with Black Kite. There are undoubtedly far better sources covering the same material. Even if we're using them as a source for attributed opinions, there almost certainly are opinion pieces in stuff like The New Yorker or The Atlantic that we should use instead. TPOD (talk) 21:05, 29 November 2022 (UTC)

• It is a reliable source. If LGBTQ focused/run newspapers can't be trusted to report on LGBTQ issues, who can? Or can only cis-het people write about LGBT issues objectively? There is no strawmanning of Walsh. To refer to your own examples:

1) Yes, the writing style grievance is "laughable". Calling a grown adult saying mermaids (AKA mythical half-fish people) can't be Black is "laughable" at best.

2) The "falsehood" is not the issue, whether or not they allowed people under 21 in at certain times does not in any way make Matt Walsh said that drag shows, like the one held at Club Q on the night of the shooting, exist to let queens “satisfy their fetish for cross-dressing in front of children” and to “indoctrinate children into queer theory [and]… turn your children queer, that is the goal.” less of a ridiculously bigoted thing to say. His "whole argument" is that drag queens are fetishists and are trying to groom children into being LGBT. I reiterate, whether or not drag queens performed in front of minors, that's blatantly bigoted. We shall see if they correct the record, but this is making a mountain out of a molehill.

3) Bigot A massacres X minority. Bigot B says "by their version of events, publicly existing as X minority is met with violence, If you don't want violence, why exist publicly?". Bigot B is no less of a bigot for adding the their version of events part. I honestly cannot comprehend how that argument makes any sense.

In short, LGBTQ Nation is a reliable source, this is ridiculous, and was only started after Korny O'Near tried to argue on the Matt Walsh (political commentator) article that LGBTQ Nation is an unreliable source which has a "political agenda" and has reason to "magnify Walsh's perceived ills", as if a single stance he's taken against the LGBT community hasn't been homophobic/transphobic. Notably, every single citation to LGBTQ Nation in the article is an attributed view, or factual statement, so I'm not sure what the point of this even is. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 09:26, 30 November 2022 (UTC)TheTranarchist

The "falsehood" is not the issue, whether or not they people under 21 in at certain times does not in any way make [...] less of a ridiculously bigoted thing to say -- Why would a source publishing falsehoods not be an issue that effects their reliability? That seems like a really strange thing to say. This discussion is about the reliability of LGBTQ Nation, not about trying to determine how bigoted Matt Walsh is. Endwise (talk) 07:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

• From their About Us page they are an advocacy magazine. Advocacy magazines fall into the Biased Sources, and are also questionable sources around topics of their advocacy. (This is due to the advocacy nature of the organization, which prevents independent oversight on the subject, which is a requirement to be considered not self-published). So reliable for their opinions when they are due, but should not be used on BLP's. --Kyohyi (talk) 14:04, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  From their about us page, they are an online news magazine, reporting on issues relevant to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer community. [They] have a pro-LGBTQ point of view, but [they] don’t shy away from keeping a critical eye on the movement itself. They also happen to be owned completely by past and current workers, who are themselves LGBT. I see no advocacy here, they only say they're pro-LGBT (LGBT people exist and should have equal rights is, I would hope, a fairly neutral and obvious position, especially coming from a group of LGBT people who aren't exactly going to be writing an anti-LGBT paper). Even then, they immediately follow that with stating they aren't shy of criticizing the LGBT movement itself.

  You say they're self-published because their "advocacy" prevents independent oversight on the subject. They have editors and contributors, ie "independent oversight", like any other magazine. The only difference is all their workers happen to be LGBT, their main customers are LGBT, and they focus on LGBT issues. They are not self-published in any sense of the term, unless your definition of "independent oversight" means edited by straight cis people. TheTranarchist ⚧ Ⓐ (talk) 16:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  yeah, saying they're biased because the About Us page declares they're "pro LGBTQ" is like discounting the Washington post since they declared they're pro democracy. Sativa Inflorescence (talk) 18:50, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  Like every other Pro-whatever group, they have a COI with respect to their Pro-whatever stance, it has nothing to do with the sexuality of their writers, staff, editors or anybody else. And to compare them to the Washington post is laughable. The Washington Post doesn't have a Pro-whatever stance on it's about us page, it has a commitment to finding and telling the truth, this is ideologically neutral. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  This strikes me as diametrically opposed to the guidance in WP:BIASEDSOURCES. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:13, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  Care to expand on that? Biased sources says reliability is contextual. I am saying that the context of an advocacy group publishing content in line with their advocacy is self-published content. If they were publishing something not related to their advocacy, then the self-published context doesn't apply. Note: Self-published only means automatically unreliable for BLP content, unless they are talking about themselves. They may still be reliable on non-blp content depending on context. --Kyohyi (talk) 19:28, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  I'd be happy to expand. The first logical leap I see is that the phrase "we have a pro LGBTQ point of view" makes one an advocacy organization. That does not follow for me, especially in this context, where the publication seems to be trying to be open about its policies (whether they are I don't know). Secondly, you say the context of an advocacy group publishing content in line with their advocacy is self-published content. Can you point me to some authority for that? Or is it your own formulation? Either way, WP:BIASEDSOURCES explicitly contemplates checks for the normal requirements for reliable sources which would seem to be utterly unnecessary in your scheme, at least as to the area covered. I simply don't see your approach here as supported by either policy or internal logic. That said, I am wrong plenty. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 19:37, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  It would probably be best to look up Advocacy journalism, since that is exactly what they are doing. Them being open about their policies is independent of whether or not they are an advocacy group. For how self-published sources are defined, I point you to our policy WP: V Specifically note 9 "Self-published material is characterized by the lack of independent reviewers (those without a conflict of interest) validating the reliability of the content", and now we go to conflict of interest. If I write an article selling my companies products, and my boss is the fact checker, does my boss have a conflict of interest with regards to the factual nature of my article about our products? The simple answer is yes, because both my boss and I have an interest in selling the product. If my product is pro-whatever advocacy (This also applies to anti-whatever advocacy), the situation is the same. The writer, and the reviewer, are not independent with respect to the product of advocacy. If an advocate were to write a piece of advocacy that was published in the washington post we wouldn't have the same issue since the washington post as an organization is not in the business of selling advocacy. --Kyohyi (talk) 20:08, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  I see multiple problems here: foremost that having a viewpoint does not make one automatically an advocacy group nor does it create a conflict of interest per se. If it did, we might well deem the Catholic Church to be an anti-LGBTQ advocacy group and declare it has an untenable conflict of interest in the field of religion (I would not subscribe to either of those predicates). Your definition here entirely swallows WP:BIASEDSOURCES--in your formulation, this section is (1) unnecessary; and (2) simply wrong, since the bias would create a lack of independence making it self published and thus analyzable that way. If a magazine like The Nation or National Review makes its political affiliations known, must it then be considered self-published when commenting on politics? Where there is a close financial or personal relationship, then certainly, a conflict pf interest analysis is appropriate. But a statement that "here's where we come from" does not come close to that for me. Moreover, it's easy to come up with a reductio ad absurdum argument here: if Author X submits a paper on renewable energy for a blind review, and it is randomly assigned to Reviewer Y who thinks positively of renewable energy, the paper is now self-published. To be clear, I haven't really looked in to the bona fides of this particular publication, but I don't think the rubric you present is helpful. It should be analyzed, I think, under normal WP:RS policies, and if it passes muster there, one can debate whether it would be appropriate to use with attribution, etc. Again, reasonable minds may differ. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 20:33, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  I wholeheartedly disagree that this swallows WP:BIASEDSOURCES and highlight an example of a biased source. Note per our policies source isn't just the publisher, it is also the writer, and the example I have of an advocate who got an opinion published in the washington Post would be a biased source, but not self-published. The reality is a lot of content is self-published, again per WP: V "Most pages found in general search engines for the web are self-published or published by businesses small and large with motives to get you to buy something or believe a point of view." But again self-published is less of an issue unless we're dealing with BLP's, when we're not dealing with BLP's we can weigh the expertise of the author and organization to determine if it's viewpoint is worth including. Next reductio ad absurdum misses the organizational relationship between the writer and the reviewer, and the product being sold. It is the relationship of all three that maintains the conflict of interest, not just the reviewer having the same views as you. Basically the writer and the reviewer in the publication are in the business of selling the point of view. A blind review process is not in the business of selling a point of view. --Kyohyi (talk) 20:52, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

  I'll stop blathering at you now, but suffice it to say I think we just assess per WP:RS and go from there. We shall see where consensus takes us. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 20:54, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

• A biased magazine of opinion which appears flimsy on the facts and writes in an outlandish and dramatised way is not the kind of source we should be using for statements like Walsh is an outspoken opponent of the LGBTQ movement, specifically the transgender community or His commentary is sometimes described by media outlets as trolling (both sourced to LGBTQ Nation), that much is quite clear. It's probably okay to use them as a source for opinion/criticism about him, for instance in statements like LGBTQ Nation denounced the book, calling it "anti-transgender". Endwise (talk) 07:21, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

New York Post on Hunter Biden's laptop

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.

---

We have previously determined that the NYP is generally unreliable. I don't argue with that. However, I think it has earned a carve-out on the subject of Hunter Biden's laptop. It broke the story, accurately. For that act, it was locked out of Twitter. Much of the rest of the media declared the story fake. The Post stuck to its guns and has repeatedly been borne out. Just as we consider Tass reliable for quoting Russian officials, I think the NYP should be considered reliable on the subject of Hunter's laptop. Adoring nanny (talk) 04:41, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Nope, that's not how it works, though given that there has been some corroboration about the existence of the laptop, the NYPost can be at least mentioned as a necessary part of the story. Nothing has yet shown the entirety of the NYpost's story to be true. Masem (t) 04:51, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Which portion of the story are you arguing is not credible?[12] Adoring nanny (talk) 05:00, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

All we know that is credible is the existence of the laptop, but not any of its contents. Masem (t) 05:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Seriously? This was a story written by a staff reporter who refused to put his name on it out of concerns of its credibility. [13] ––FormalDude (talk) 04:56, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The story says at the top "By Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge". I don't know if that was there originally, but it's definitely there now. Adoring nanny (talk) 05:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Per the source I provided above, they had little to do with the reporting or writing of the article–it was written mostly by Bruce Golding. ––FormalDude (talk) 05:07, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Why would continually reporting on a topic deemed fake by all other news sources make said source reliable? Just because tabloids akin to the Daily Mail drone on about a conspiracy doesn't suddenly make it a reliable source on that topic. It's precisely because such sources produce disinformation and keep focusing on said false claims that they are considered unreliable in the first place. Silverseren^C 05:15, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

a topic deemed fake by all other news sources -- that's incorrect. Modern sources do not regard Hunter's laptop or the emails reported on by NYP to be fake. Endwise (talk) 05:25, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

It is true that the laptop isn't fake and newer RSes have affirmed its existence, but what the contents of the email and what implications they have have yet to be fully corroborated. Masem (t) 05:27, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Actually, the email focused on in the article linked by Adoring nanny above has been verified for a while now. One of the verified emails from Pozharskyi, which was the focus of one of the initial stories from the New York Post, was written on April 17, 2015. It thanked Hunter Biden “for inviting me to DC and giving me an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.”[14]. The implication that Joe Biden acted corruptedly is the claim RS treat as fake. Endwise (talk) 05:38, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

That being said and with all due respect, the very first line from that source [15] says..."Thousands of emails purportedly from the laptop computer of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, are authentic communications that can be verified through cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies, say two security experts who examined the data at the request of The Washington Post."..In the meantime and over the course of the discussion on the TP, attempts to try to address even the possibility of a verification issue on the article page have been seemingly stymied IMO. I doubt many of the sources being used to make this claim in wiki-voice would pass the smell test here at RSN. The reason being is that context matters. Just because a source uses the words "Hunter Biden's laptop" is not in and of itself confirmation by said source. DN (talk) 07:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

WaPo wasn't able to verify all of the emails through their analysis, but they were able to verify the email that formed the basis of the NYPost article linked by Adoring nanny above, as I said. Additionally, for some more recent forensic analysis, see the one commissioned by CBS News. I just wanted to correct some misinformation; talk page discussions about whether we should say it's Hunter's laptop in wikivoice is a completely separate issue (FWIW I actually agree and think it should be worded "generally believed to belong to Hunter Biden"). Endwise (talk) 07:28, 4 December 2022 (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.

Newly created Ruslan Kotsaba

Editors are welcome to contribute to the discussions on the talk page of the newly created article on the Ukrainian journalist, conscientious objector and prisoner of conscience Ruslan Kotsaba. The article was recently created by me and I have not yet finished working on it, nor has it been reviewed by NPR. Topics: RS, OR/SYNTH and also POV. Gitz (talk) (contribs) 12:18, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Sandeepweb.com

I will appreciate opinions on whether this review is reliable enough to be considered for inclusion to an article on the book (or the author). The website appears to be a now-defunct one-man-blog with no known editorial policy. Shatavadhani Ganesh, the author of this particular review, is an engineer by training and a poetic performer of some renown. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:15, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Sam Bankman-Fried

My concern is about using the contents of an interview in the article Sam Bankman-Fried. Bankman-Fried made comments in a YouTube interview, and his comments were widely reported in reliable sources (which were cited when his comments were included in the article). There is a discussion at Talk:Sam Bankman-Fried#Amend All References To Democrat Donations regarding whether this is permissible, with User:FeralOink commenting, "Just because he said it about himself in that youtube interview... (which I confirmed was not done by a journalist or any established news media organization; note that she did make that clear once I dug around) does not make it suitable for inclusion in this BLP." It would be appreciated if others with expertise in the interpretation of policy could provide clarification. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 16:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, Magnolia677, for taking the initiative to raise the issue. It is important to get clarification from WP:RS noticeboard about the suitability of including SBF's (Sam Bankman-Fried) primary-sourced statements about his actions, innocence, etc. wrt FTX as provided to a citizen journalist in a youtube interview.--FeralOink (talk) 17:37, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't think it's an issue of the reliability of the source. Does anyone doubt that it was SBF who gave this interview and made these claims? The proper question is the one of due weight: should we include this information in the article and how much weight should it be given there. Alaexis_¿question? 18:26, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Here's why it might be an issue of source reliability. If an ad hoc youtube interview is WP:RS, the decision to include and the weight to give will likely be intractable, because 1) SBF says many things which are deceptive or lies, depending on who is asking; AND 2) "Does anyone doubt that it was SBF who gave this interview and made these claims?" Maybe. A week prior, SBF gave an interview to Vox by Twitter DM, also late at night. The journalist was incredulous that it was SBF, not a hacked account as his lawyers told him to avoid the press because he's the focus of U.S. Federal investigations. She could confirm it was SBF the next day because she was a member of the press. Tiffany Fong's interview of SBF was on her personal Youtube channel; she is unassociated with any news media. Tiffany also asked SBF why he was talking to her. As WP editors, we can't be certain it was SBF. We need WP:RS guidance, one way or another. (In contrast, this news analysis of NYTimes' live interview of SBF on 11/30/2022 is clearly secondary and reputable.) Magnolia677, might we wait a bit, for any other input? I do appreciate your response, Alaexis.--FeralOink (talk) 02:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

WP:ABOUTSELF specifies that in order to be included: the material [must be] neither unduly self-serving nor an exceptional claim. Obviously, we can't report any of SBFs statements as fact, given his track record. Hemiauchenia (talk) 02:29, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the phrase you've quoted is mainly about material stated in wikivoice. Clearly an interview with Bankman-Fried in which he said X is reliable as a primary source for us to say "Bankman-Fried has said X". And in any case, we do have a reliable secondary source quoting Bankman-Fried about the relevant claims. IMO the real question here is about due weight, not reliability. —Mx. Granger (talk · contribs) 04:14, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with your second point - I didn't think about it when I wrote my comment. However, it seems like RS treat the interview as legit [16]. Regarding the first point, it's true a lot of what SBF says is false or deceptive. We should never report what he said in wikivoice. On the other hand, I don't see much problem in saying "SBF said he donated $X million to Republicans," subject to WP:DUE. Alaexis_¿question? 08:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Garnik Asatrian on ethnic issues

I have checked a previous entry on the reliability of Garnik Asatrian ([17]). No editor responded to this entry. Though, I found some interesting points on Asatrian here and would like to get the opinion of other editors on his reliability in ethnic issues. I am listing the notable points made in this entry below:

1. Asatrian was disqualified as a source in German Wikipedia.
2. Asatrian is a member of the "Armenian nationalist" Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnaksutyun as per here [18]:

   "As far as I am aware, Garnik Asatrian has changed his opinion on this matter. Now he has joined another Party - Dashnakutuune - and has been a member for two years already."

   Also here, Asatrian says that he is a part of the party ([19]):

   "I am not speaking as a Dashnak, I am speaking as an Armenian."

   (He is talking about a political issue regarding Ter-Petrosyan.)
3. Also, there are other criticisms of him that can be found on his own page, but these are not that straightforward.

Would his membership to an ethnonationalist party and other circumstances make him a biased and unreliable source for disputed topics on other ethnicities? Ayıntaplı (talk) 22:37, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Asatrian is a leading scholar in Middle Eastern-related studies, being the founder of the multidisciplinary peer-reviewed academic journal Iran and the Caucasus (link to the website [20]), which is in turn published by Brill Publishers, one the world's most prominent publishers in academic journals/books. His work is routinely cited in other prominent works, such as the recent The Cambridge History of the Kurds. He has also worked with Encyclopædia Iranica, even authoring an important Kurdish related article for them [21]. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I have asked a clear and specific question here. I'd like to underline that an author published by reliable publishers does not make them invulnerable from discussion of their reliability. For example, in Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_332#Mehrdad_Izady_for_Kurdish_issues, although Mehrdad Izady has taught in Harvard, and his work was published by reliable publishers, he was eventually concluded to be unreliable. The point above has been made before on independent discussions, and getting confronted by the same people does not help the discussion in any way for any outcome. I would really appreciate if independent editors could take a look at the details above and comment on the reliability of Asatrian given these circumstances. Thank you. Ayıntaplı (talk) 14:50, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Comparing Izady to Asatrian is frankly outrageous. The latter occupies a much more prominent position in scholarship. Not to mention it was demonstrated that Izady engaged in pseudo-history. Also, please behave properly, I am not "confronting" you, and insinuating that I am not neutral is pretty disruptive. I am one of the few people who edits in this area, surely I have the right to participate, even if you don't like what I am saying. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:57, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

What do other reliable sources say about Asatrian's work? A455bcd9 (talk) 14:58, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

There are some notable information on Garnik_Asatrian#Views_and_criticism. Ayıntaplı (talk) 15:04, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I checked the only RS mentioned in this section that criticizes one of Asatrian's work. This RS concludes (last paragraph, p. 168): "In no way does it diminish the quality of the material they have gathered or the importance of the hypotheses they have posed, which, in addition to broadening our knowledge of Yezidi theology, bring a great deal of valuable information on how the Yezidi people are perceived by their neighbours the Armenians." (could be added to Asatrian's article btw)

So based on this RS alone, Asatrian looks reliable to me. A455bcd9 (talk) 15:40, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

For context, this quote comes from here ([22]), where the lack of any iconography in the book by Asatrian is discussed. Ayıntaplı (talk) 15:58, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Thank you, A455bcd9, by the way for your time searching for this quote. Also, what would be your opinion on his credibility in topics outside of his specialization in Kurdology, such as Azerbaijanis, given his membership to a well-known historical nationalistic political organization that has its own militant bodies? Ayıntaplı (talk) 16:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't know if his political affiliations are relevant. I think the most important is how other reliable sources perceive him. A455bcd9 (talk) 16:12, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

I have italicized the word "confront" as to excuse my questionable language. I mentioned "independent" editors, because we had a discussion earlier. Ayıntaplı (talk) 15:02, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

The disqualification on German wikipedia is per se irrelevant. His being a member of a nationalist party might mean that he's biased but it doesn't mean he's unreliable. You'll need to provide concrete examples of him publishing falsehoods or espousing fringe views. Alaexis_¿question? 11:45, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The Duran

Is The Duran an RS? Currently used for a statement of fact in Julian Assange (currently n.422), for multiple statements of fact in National Guard of Russia, and with attribution in Kadyrovites. BobFromBrockley (talk) 12:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I checked theduran.com, and I can't find anything that looks like an "about us" page or any kind of credentials for the editors or authors of the articles, which mostly seem pseudonymous, and I find no page describing their editorial policies, etc. etc. This fails the CRAAP test rather spectacularly; so no, I wouldn't say this is a reliable source in any way. --Jayron32 14:52, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

RFC Related to Reliable Sourcing

I'm requesting input at Talk:Jason_David_Frank#RFC:_Cause_of_Death, specifically on a dispute related to Wikipedia's reliable-sourcing policy; one user has suggested a few implications of the policy that I don't think are supported by text or practice. TMZ has reported that, per anonymous "law-enforcement sources," Jason David Frank died by suicide. The aforementioned user has said that this report cannot be included on the JDF page. There are three aspects of this dispute, all related to WP:RS.

1. Does WP require an official statement from family or law enforcement? (According to the user: "we 100% . . . need an official statement from his management team or law enforcement.")
2. If an authority itself relies on anonymous sources, can that authority be cited? (According to the user: "Doesn't matter if it's a death, sports transaction, or whatever per that policy, no citations based on anonymous sources.")
3. Is TMZ an unreliable source? (Note: WP:TMZ, an essay, has some thoughts on that subject; it recommends explicitly attributing information to TMZ.)

Given how differently he and I read existing policy, I think third-party perspectives would be helpful.--50.86.94.196 (talk) 08:09, 27 November 2022 (UTC)

TMZ is pretty unreliable. They reported, for example, the death of Kim Jong-un [23]. And never corrected or retracted. For WP:BLP, which applies to recently deceased, it's a big no. MarioGom (talk) 07:59, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

That's a misleading characterization of the linked article, which clearly states that these were just "reports" by others, and includes a disclaimer in bold face: "TMZ has not confirmed that." Yes, one can and should criticize them for giving too much attention to rumors, but this particular article seems to have been factually accurate. Regards, HaeB (talk) 18:57, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

1930s Polish book used as stand-alone source for claiming someone is Polish despite modern academic sources saying otherwise

1. Source: Brensztejn, Michał (1934). Dionizy Paszkiewicz pisarz polsko-litewski na Żmudzi (in Polish). Vilnius.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
2. Article: Dionizas Poška
3. Content: diff
This Polish book from the 1930s is being used as the sole source to describe Dionizas Poška as Polish, despite at least 8 English-language sources (listed here, with quotes provided for most of them) calling him Lithuanian as well as Samogitian, which is a regional Lithuanian group. On Talk:Dionizas Poška, I told Marcelus, the user who keeps adding that source to claim Poška's Polishness, that I was removing that source due to WP:RSUE (Brensztejn's book contradicts English-language WP:RS, which say he was Lithuanian) and WP:AGEMATTERS (multiple articles, books from the past several decades should be followed instead of a single 1930s book). I will point out that this is the second time I am writing to WP:RSN about Marcelus adding claims about a person's Polishness based on a questionable source - the first one was on 16 July 2022, also about another Lithuanian. Cukrakalnis (talk) 20:10, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

Situation is very similiar, Cukrakalnis is questioning every source that goes against his idea of Lithuanian purity of the 19th century figures. I'm not claiming that Paszkiewicz wasn't Lithuanian or Samogitian, but he also was a Polish writer, half of his works are written in Polish. These things aren't mutually exclusive. The source in question isn't controversial in any sense. Marcelus (talk) 21:17, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

WP:RSUE does not mean that where an English-language source and a non-English source contradict one another, we should only report what the English source says; that would be a gross violation of WP:NPOV which is just as fundamental a policy as WP:V.

That being said, a single source from 1934 is obviously not equal in quality to eight sources, several published by highly reputable university presses, written since 2000. That goes doubly so in this case since Poland occupied part of Lithuania at that time. Wikipedia's job is to report what the modern consensus is, not what it was in 1934; if that is that Poška was Polish, or Polish-Lithuanian, it should be possible to find some reliable sources published in the last thirty years or so which support that. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 10:50, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

First of all Poland never occupied any part of Lithuania. Polish prewar borders were internationally recognised and the there was no military administration in any part of the country. Putting that aside, there are multiple sources that describe Poszka's complex identity, for example:

• Virgil Krapauskas "Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Historicism", p. 48: At best Poška and Jucevičius fill in the historical gap between the early nineteenth century when the University of Vilnius was the intellectual center for a hybrid Lithuanian culture, influenced and dominated by a form of nascent Polish nationalism, and the late nineteenth-century Lithuanian national rebirth, which clearly distinguished the difference between a Pole and a Lithuanian
• Piotr Łossowski "Przyjaźn która sprawdziła się w biedzie" (p. 119): In the first half of the nineteenth century, we encounter an interesting and unique phenomenon, when many creators of Lithuanian literature defined perhaps to a large extent as both Poles and Lithuanians. Such was, for example, the Samogitian nobleman Dionizy Paszkiewicz-Poška. He swore allegiance to the May 3 Constitution and was an ardent servant of the Republic. This by no means prevented him from fruitful work on the ethnography and language of the Lithuanian people. (mine translation)
• Even Brensztajn who is presented here as some kind of "Polish chauvinist", called Poszka "Polish-Lithunian", but also described him as Lithuanian patriot and Samogitian regionalist.

Marcelus (talk) 19:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Poland did occupy parts of Lithuania, as various quotes from WP:RS I collected here attest.

After looking through Krapauskas' book (the same from which Marcelus quoted), these excerpts are very clarifying:

Poška had no idea what Lithuania would be, but he knew that it had once been a large Grand Duchy. He also made no references to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, only to Lithuania. He did not have the clear Lithuanian national sen­timents of Daukantas, but he was more Lithuanian than Mickiewicz. (p.52)

Poška’s biographer, Michal Brensztejn, labeled him a “regjonalista žmudzki” [a local Samogitian], that is, a Pole with a local provincial character. The fact that Poška wrote primarily in Polish and did not hate Poles does not mean that he belonged to that group of Poles who like Mickiewicz and Narbutt believed Lithuania was dead. Much like Daukantas, Poška encouraged the use of the Lithuanian language and the writing of a Lithuanian history with Lithuanian interests in mind. Unlike Daukantas, Poška did not mind if a Pole like Lelewel wrote Lithuania’s history, nor did Poška have any agenda to replace the Polish language in scholarship, but Poška demanded that any future historian writing about Lithuania not malign it. Poška believed that only someone who knew the language and, more importantly, had a feel for the country could write the history of Lithuania. History should be written from within. He believed Lithuania’s history should have “a Lithuanian citizenship and patriotic spirit to it.” And yet he had an intuitive understanding that a new “scientific” history was needed to educate the peasants. Other than Daukantas, no one in the Samogitian movement dared dissociate him­ self from Poland and its culture. Of course, living in a time before Lithuanian nationalism, he could not foresee a Lithuania separated from Poland. Yet, Poška’s concerns were solely with Lithuanian culture, language and history and not with Poland. (pages 52-53)

Even the quote from Łossowski stills calls him a Samogitian noble instead of Polish-Lithuanian. Cukrakalnis (talk) 19:32, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

As I said, I never claimed that he wasn't Lithuanian or Samogitian; these things aren't mutualy exclusive. Marcelus (talk) 21:04, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Stop claiming he's Polish when he is not. It is mutually exclusive. You repeatedly ignore the absolute majority of what is written about these people by most WP:RS as well as me and then you repeatedly sidestep the core of the issues. Such an approach is very dishonest. Cukrakalnis (talk) 22:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

A person writing their works in a certain language does not make them part of the group to which that language is typically associated. That I wrote many English-language essays in university does not make me English, so Poška writing in Polish does not make him Polish. Oscar Milosz wrote most of his work in the French language, but considered himself to be a Lithuanian, not French, poet. Brzenstejn's book is controversial, because it has aroused controversy. You can't claim in a middle of a discussion that the discussion is not taking place, that is a lie. Cukrakalnis (talk) 09:58, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

This book is worth reading to understand the entire issue better and why we have here this continued issue with the characterization of people from the once mighty Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Quote:

By the eighteenth century, Poland had assimilated Lithuania to the point where Lithuanians needed to either invent a history based on ethnicity or be lost forever. The book details the Lithuanian's successes at redefining their nationalism in ethnic terms and recounts their fight for identity against the Polonized Lithuanian elites who held loyalty to the history of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. As the first published work dealing with Lithuanian historiography, Krapauskas provides an English-speaking audience with information previously available only to Lithuanians and scholars of Lithuania.

I totally understand the Lithuanian side.

Polish historiography will describe these historical people Polish (rarely Polish-Lithuanian)

Lithuanian Historiography will describe them as Lithuanians (very rarely, almost never Polish-Lithuanian)

The question is how should we approach this problem? I tried to find a solution but so far unsuccessfully. Perhaps this is a chance for yet another shot at it.

Can you @Cukrakalnis provide the link to the previous discussion from last year?GizzyCatBella🍁 15:01, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

PS - I also tried this edit at the affected article. Interested editors please monitor what’s gonna happen 🤔 - GizzyCatBella🍁 15:16, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The discussion from last year that GizzyCatBella is referring to was Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard/Archive_95#Language_in_the_former_Polish-Lithuanian_Commonwealth.

As for GizzyCatBella's edit here, I would say that calling him "Polish-Lithuanian" is WP:UNDUE, with only one, very old, source given, which is the one being addressed here and now (If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true, or you can prove it). Among the 8 contemporary sources I mentioned on Talk:Dionizas Poška#Stop_adding_"Polish"_when_most_sources_say_he_is_not, there are even two sources written by Poles, which called Dionizas Poška a Lithuanian poet. Cukrakalnis (talk) 15:47, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

References

Futurism

Futurism, used as a source in Elysium Health, in this diff. I'm leaning not reliable because statement could be seen as promotional ("Elysium’s Scientific Advisory Board includes eight Nobel Laureates"), article has previously been tagged for undisclosed payments, the Futurism article has no author's name, and the Futurism site has no article on Wiki (it is listed at Futurism (disambiguation)). But would welcome more information, thanks. Tacyarg (talk) 00:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• Comment: This particular article has a note at the bottom reading Futurism fans: To create this content, a non-editorial team worked with an affiliate partner. We may collect a small commission on items purchased through this page. This post does not necessarily reflect the views or the endorsement of the Futurism.com editorial staff. This is standard boilerplate similar to the one used by The Verge, a reliable source, to distinguish an ad from a news piece. I would say this article shouldn't be used but as a whole I don't see any problems with the website. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)^{Talk to Me!} 06:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that, I hadn't spotted it. I'll remove this particular statement and ref. Tacyarg (talk) 01:03, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Indiafacts

https://www.indiafacts.org.in/: 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

Used to be https://www.indiafacts.org/: 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

The website describes their mission to facilitate empirical, fact-based, and data-driven analyses of the increasingly negative gaze on Hindus and Hinduism. Their about-us page shows one editor (Ramesh Rao) and five advisors. The only notable figure among the advisors is Koenraad Elst (please read our article) whose claim to fame lies in being a far-right Hindutva apologist, pushing fringe revisionist histories, and peddling Islamophobia. Rao, the editor, has been described by other scholars as "one of Hindutva’s most vocal and popular contemporary advocates", a "far-right apologist", and "an admirer of Elst".

The website has not been favorably cited (or discussed) by scholars. One considers it to be part of a Hindutva ecosystem that attacks universities not conforming to the diktats of the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party while another notes the website to have "threaten[ed] secular writers with legal writs".

All that being said, do editors feel that the site pass WP:RS? For example, can we use reviews published over the website as a claim to notability (WP:NBOOKS)? Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 06:03, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Drmies:, fyi. Thanks, TrangaBellam (talk) 09:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Assuming everything you've said is true, it sounds like the "empirical, fact-based, and data-driven analysis" is not being applied, according to scholarly sources, at the very least on the subjects of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu nationalism. With that said, a source can be unreliable in some topics and reliable in others, like how Fox News was found by the community to be unreliable in American politics areas or science areas but generally reliable otherwise. Are their book reviews considered to be of high quality by other sources? If not, then I don't think they can be argued to qualify for WP:NBOOKS, especially considering the concerns raised about Hindu nationalist bias. casualdejekyll 19:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

@Casualdejekyll: There's hardly any coverage of the site by scholars or MSM except for the citations, I located. So, there is nothing specific (positive or negative) about their book reviews, in particular. I like your approach and note that the book-under-question is itself in the fringe Hindu-Right territory. TrangaBellam (talk) 06:08, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

That doesn't sound like it would count for WP:NBOOKS, then. casualdejekyll 14:34, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

WP:LTA writing articles at LA Weekly and guardian.ng?

See these articles, which are close paraphrases of each other:

• https://www.laweekly.com/joseph-carrillo-creates-new-genre-of-studio-album/
• https://guardian.ng/life/ultimate-celebrity-blackout-how-joseph-carrillo-came-up-with-genre-bending-studio-album/

At first I thought those were spoof sites, but no, those are the actual LA Weekly and guardian.ng. For background, "Joseph W. Carrillo" is prolific self-promoter and block evader User:Josephwcarrillo who claims that they are a world famous Celebrity Singer-songwriter being targeted by COINTELPRO, Mc Carthyism, or the Hollywood Blacklist (sorry, can't find a public diff, but see private Special:AbuseLog/29384894 and Special:AbuseLog/29550196). I don't know if it's just a game to them, or there's another explanation which wouldn't be appropriate to say in public, but this has been going for years.

Now, the sockpuppetry is easy to deal with. That's not why I'm here; I'd prefer to WP:DENY anyway, but felt the background was necessary. The question for RSN is: can anything from these sites be trusted anymore? If they'll publish what is basically a poorly written press release, and not tag it "press release" or "contributor" or "blog" or anything like that; if they'll say "Carrillo is a world-famous a-list celebrity and singer-songwriter" in their own voice, what won't they publish? They both seem to have been respectable at some point. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 22:28, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

LA Weekly's "guest author" and guardian.ng's "editor" seem like thinly veiled admissions of paid material - I'd say instead of getting rid of them entirely a better course of action would be to restrict them to only articles with a real byline. There's also the fact that LA Weekly has gone through multiple changes of ownership - perhaps pre/post owner change makes a difference. casualdejekyll 22:34, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I don't see "guest author" anywhere at the LA Weekly piece. The byline is just "Written in collaboration with Pau Castillo". Yes, "Written in collaboration with" is part of the author's name. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:25, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't see it explicitly called out in the article either. I did see this in the LAWeekly policies, FEES: The Site may impose a fee on the posting of Content in certain areas of the Site. Users uploading Content to fee-based areas are responsible for such Content and for compliance with these Terms. Under no circumstances will the Site provide a refund in the event that Content is removed from fee-based areas for violation of these Terms. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:37, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I was referring to www.laweekly.com/guest-author/written_in_collaboration_with_pau_castillo/, but I'm realizing now that that's kind of unclear. casualdejekyll 14:36, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

Wait, you mean to tell me they're not an a list celebrity? There are a number of services and people online who will get an article published on a number of publications like these. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 23:09, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

reliability of The Hitavada

https://www.thehitavada.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

https://www.ehitavada.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

The Hitvada is used as a source a lot of times. But how much reliable can it be considered? Thanks a lot. —usernamekiran (talk) 06:27, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

For the uninitiated like me, the publication appears to be a century-old newspaper and (hence) passes NEWSORG easily. TrangaBellam (talk) 08:41, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Jankriti International Magazine

Any journal out of India that has "international" in the name is suspect. Unfortunately, this fits into the pattern.

This now-defunct monthly journal appears to have been the endeavors of a Ph.D. student from Mahatma Gandhi Antarrashtriya Hindi Vishwavidyalaya, who is listed as the lone editor; note that the address for correspondence is a hostel room! It is not clear when the magazine shut down but it had been never included in the white-list of non-predatory journals maintained by University Commission of India or any other international bibliographic database of repute. A single article from its dozens of issues has been cited by other scholars.

To summarize, the publication appears to be more of a student magazine than a peer-reviewed journal. So, I ask the participants of this thread about whether they agree with my assessment and whether the publication can be treated as RS. Thank you! TrangaBellam (talk) 06:48, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Given the nature of the magazine, it appears to be student run (the hostel address looks to be on campus),

it may be better to look at the reliability of the author's than the magazine as a whole. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 23:19, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

claim that Curtis Yarvin "has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery"

This WP:BLP violation claims that Curtis Yarvin has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery. Two sources are given, neither of which names a specific observer, nor provides quotes from Yarvin's writings, nor describes a specific event. This seems slanderous. Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20180310152947/http://www.dailycamera.com/news/boulder/ci_29730782/controversy-surrounds-speaker-curtis-yarvin-at-boulder-programming Article: Curtis Yarvin

content:

He has been described as a modern-day supporter of slavery, a description he disputes.

I removed the material and other editors reverted. sbelknap (talk) 19:54, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

So, probably libelous rather than slanderous, but best to leave the defamation talk aside. It certainly seems as if he has been described that way, but more context would likely be good thing--say, from this Vox piece. Cheers, Dumuzid (talk) 20:07, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

All of this is about a 2018 controversy with a speaking engagement. It's phrased in the article as if it's an ongoing label by high level sources. The Daily Camera is small. Vox has been decided to be a "partisan source in the field of politics." So these are not great for such a contentious label. Really this should be phrased as a controversy which petered out. EDIT: sorry it looks like it was 2016. Nweil (talk) 23:07, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

If Yarvin has "been described this way" why do we not learn from these sources who did the describing? Anonymous sources are not appropriate for an outrageous claim in a biography of a living person. sbelknap (talk) 02:55, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

source evaluation for Witt BLP

Can I get an objective pair of eyes on this site with regards to propriety of use in the BLP at Monica Witt. It feels like original research (an employee's anecdotes), and have removed it for the moment out of an abundance of caution. Thanks for any help! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 03:49, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

The source is basically advertising spiel for a business, written by an employee of the company doing the advertising. I'd don't see any reason to doubt what amounts to personal recollections, but with a BLP it's probably best to use a much better source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 22:27, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

That was my same intuition, yes. Thanks so much! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 12:34, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

thedirect.com

Would some you folks who regularly contribute here and are knowledgeable about reviewing sites please take a look at this one and give an opinion on whether or not it could be used as a source? Thanks - wolf 01:34, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, it does have an editor,[24] a corrections policy,[25] and I easily found an example of an issued correction,[26] so it looks pretty decent at first glance. What were you looking to use it for though? Cause it all really depends on what exactly the source says and how exactly it's used on Wikipedia. The site appears to have a narrow focus, mainly covering super hero franchises, so it's likely to report details on a level beyond what's appropriate for Wikipedia, and carry less WP:WEIGHT than broader outlets. Siawase (talk) 08:54, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I used this report from The Direct, along with 3 others, to add content about the poor box office performace of the superhero film Black Adam (film). I've since found 3 more sources, and an additional source has the film listed at List of biggest box office bombs, but one editor has reverted, and is stymieing the discussion process by continually focusing on the relibility of this ref. The report itself appears correct and is inline with several other RS, and as the site has the features we look for, I decided to use it and belive it should be able to be used. I came here hoping to put that point of the dispute to rest. Thanks - wolf 15:26, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Yup. It looks pretty good to me, though as usual, I personally know nothing of its reputation. That said, for something like this in its core area and something that does not appear particularly contentious or freighted, I would think it's an appropriate source to use. Just an opinion from a guy who should be working! Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 15:32, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

That article at thedirect has been updated to include the contradictory reporting from deadline (guess they really are good with updates/corrections) so it could no longer be used to unambiguously call the film a bomb. This seems like a case of WP:RSBREAKING where it's probably better to wait for the dust to settle. Siawase (talk) 19:21, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, I do appreciate it, but I didn't really want to focus on a single content dispute. This article aside, I just wanted to enquire about the general reliability of the site, and see if anyone here found any reason it could be considered unreliable. Thanks again - wolf 19:48, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

I think thedirect.com is generally reliable in its coverage of popular culture, and would have no qualms about using it to support a claim in that field. BD2412 T 20:08, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

Friesian.com

Pages on this website are currently used as sources or external links in several articles, such as belief, sexism, Karl Popper, terms for Syriac Christians, Militia Act of 1903, and season.

The site has been used in various corners of Wikipedia since WP's early days, probably because it hosts a lot of information on a wide variety of subjects such as philosophy, history, and language and was a handy resource back in the 2000s, when not nearly so many academic RSes were available online. But despite presenting itself as the proceedings of a philosophical "school", it is clearly the work of one man, a retired community college philosophy professor who is prone to adding new and tangential political polemics to long-standing pages, so a page that Wikipedia cites today might end up with a rant added to it tomorrow. (The current fourth and fifth paragraphs of the site's front page demonstrate this pattern.)

This site is certainly an SPS, and I'd argue the only thing distinguishing it from a blog is its lack of a blog-like structure. It might be worth citing as one of a range of viewpoints on philosophical topics, but by his own admission, the author's preferred school of philosophy has few if any living adherents aside from himself, so I'm not certain it merits even that much attention from Wikipedia. 67.170.60.91 (talk) 07:15, 8 December 2022 (UTC)

• Yeah, this is a WP:SPS by someone who is a non-recognized expert, bordering on WP:FRINGE. Google Scholar shows single-digit-to-no citations for his works, a red flag that this isn't a widely-respected mainstream source. --Jayron32 13:47, 8 December 2022 (UTC)
• Non-expert SPS, should be gently shown the door. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:52, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Is citing the source code as references okay?

I cited this source code as a reference for the page about constant-Q transform, especially with variable-Q bandwidth calculation. However, this begs the question, are source codes a reliable source for algorithms and is there any concern about citing this type of page? 180.253.8.202 (talk) 01:50, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

In general, you should not do this, though the link to the source code may be an acceptable link. The only time I would see the source code being a reference would be if it were like additional material prepared as part of a published peer-review paper as the origin of the algorithm, but even then, an external link would be better there. Masem (t) 01:56, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

@Masem: So citing the source code as references on Wikipedia pages where there's no paper about these new algorithms is WP:OR right? Because there's no paper on a VQT bandwidth calculation that exactly follows this JavaScript source code being cited as references on the CQT page. 180.253.8.202 (talk) 02:06, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Yes, it should not be cited as a source. Masem (t) 02:16, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

Back then when I was expanding the article about CQT, particularly with variable-Q bandwidth calculation, I didn't realize that Wikipedia is not a forum for original research and now I know it. But I'm not here to post the WP:NOR issue on this Wikipedia article to WP:NORN yet because I know forum shopping is WP:DE (pinging Masem to make sure no misunderstandings). 180.253.8.202 (talk) 02:38, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

If you're citing source code directly, then you can only use it to support claims that non-experts can understand from looking at the code.

Code like this:

main( ) {

extrn a, b, c;

putchar(a); putchar(b); putchar(c); putchar(’!*n’);

} 1 ’hell’;

b ’o, w’;

c ’orld’;

is not going to be an acceptable source for a statement like "The first "Hello, World!" program was published in the 1970s". It could be a reliable source for a statement like "This program uses the putchar input/output system." WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:56, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Bilgitopya

Is the Turkish-language Bilgitopya generally reliable? This page has been used to support this statement at Nagihan Karadere. Thanks. Tacyarg (talk) 20:19, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• With the caveat that I am depending on the Google translation of the site to English, I don't think it is reliable, and certainly not for a BLP. The "About" page indicates that it is a group blog created less than 18 months ago, and run by a small group of friends. Although it states that the writers are subject-matter experts and that there is editorial oversight, all of the authors and editors are anonymous, so it is impossible to confirm the accuracy of that statement. I doubt that the material cited is at all controversial, but there must be a better source to confirm that the person participated in a popular reality TV series. Banks Irk (talk) 21:13, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I've removed it and added some other sources which I hope are better. Tacyarg (talk) 23:53, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

BLP - subject publishing in questionable source

Horse Eye's Back has been asking about a source I used on the Gary P. Gillum page on my talk page. The source is a book of near-death experiences, which Horse Eye's Back described as a "fringe popular religious text." The part I quoted is part of a chapter shown to be written in Gillum's own words; I used it in the context of "Self-published or questionable sources as sources on themselves". Horse Eye's Back argues that because it is not published by Gillum himself, that the policy does not apply. However, if we assume that approach, it would mean that we can't use interviews of subjects as primary sources, since they are usually not published by the subject themselves. Opinions? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:53, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Rachel Helps (BYU) has not shown the chapter to be written in Gillum's own words, if they had we would not be having this discussion. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 16:55, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

That is not what you said earlier, Horse Eye's Back. I wrote "Gary Gillum himself wrote the portion that I cited, but there wasn't a good way for me to show that in the citation template." Then we continued the discussion. And I believe the argument, which I thought was interesting, still applies. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:08, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm missing the part where you provided a WP:RS which confirms that the chapter was written in Gillum's own words. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:10, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Sorry, I misunderstood your comment. The only source we have to prove that the chapter is, in fact, quoting Gillum's words, is the book itself. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:22, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

A book which we both agree is not a reliable source? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:37, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

For our reference, can you link to the source or provide the bibliographic information? It may qualify under WP:ABOUTSELF or maybe not; it would help to be able to assess the source directly. --Jayron32 17:02, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Sure, its this book[27] about Mormon near-death experiences used to argue for the existence of the Mormon heaven as described in their scriptures. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:06, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Chapter 18 on "Personal Revelation" presents the experiences of Gary Gillum and Joe Swick in their own words. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 17:08, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Here through reading the thread on Rachel Helps's talk page. The only content I can see that was sourced to the book was the sentence "Gillum's third marriage ended in divorce." That doesn't seem overly controversial and self-serving, and I don't see a reason why it can't be sourced to an interview with the subject if other sources can't be found. ~Awilley (talk) 17:13, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The phrase which started the conversation was "In 1963 Gillum had a near-death experience after a car accident. He saw an intensely colorful place and felt that he had a choice to return to his body or not. His spine was fractured and he had internal injuries, but he recovered." Fringe claims are generally viewed as both controversial and unduly self serving. The source also isn't an interview per say, its supposedly based on an interview but that's not the same thing. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 17:19, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I *think* this could be altered to make everything that isn't verifiable a claim by changing "He saw an intensely colorful place..." to "He said he saw an intensely colorful place..." I'm not sure that it alters the argument, but perhaps is a slightly better way to use the source?Naraht (talk) 17:36, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I did not see that text. If that is to be in the article it should be rewritten as, "Gillum wrote that in 1963 he had a near-death experience after a car accident. He said he saw an intensely colorful place and felt that he had a choice to return to his body or not. His spine was fractured and he had internal injuries, but he recovered." WP:SAID ~Awilley (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Gillum didn't write it, Gibson did based on an interview they apparently conducted with Gillum. "Gibson wrote that Gillum told him that in 1963 he had a near-death experience after a car accident. According to Gibson he said he saw an intensely colorful place and felt that he had a choice to return to his body or not. He said his spine was fractured and he had internal injuries, but he recovered." would be accurate but that doesn't work without the source being a WP:RS which it isn't. Its a work of religious pseudoscience. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 19:36, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

I think that it is a reliable source as a primary source about Gillum's own experience and what Gillum tells us about himself (that he had a near-death experience in 1963 after a car accident and that he and his third wife divorced). I don't consider it evidence for the claim that one religion is more legitimate than another. I consider it similar to an interview on a blog. I took photos of the seven pages of the chapter in question and am happy to email them to any interested parties (they are through Google photos, which is blacklisted). Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Do you mean what Gillum tells Gibson about himself? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

The core of the book is arguing that these NDE are in conformity with Mormon religious beliefs, no? I don't think its possible to read the text in a way which doesn't advance the claim that one religion is more legitimate than the others. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 21:39, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

• A couple of points. First, I don't have access to the book or excerpts, so I have no idea whether the passage in question was written by Gillum or the author. That may not matter either way. Second, I have serious questions about whether the source is reliable. The author's profile states that he is an engineer by education and profession, and that near death experiences are his hobby, as it were. The publisher appears to be a specialty publisher that only publishes works on Mormon religious matters, and from all appearances is run out of a modest private home in suburban Salt Lake City. The publisher's president is Dwayne S. Crowther, another author of religious books. I have no idea if it is some kind of vanity press or not, but it is highly suspect, and not the kind of source that I would use for a BLP. Third, as for WP:ABOUTSELF, it applies to questionable and self-published sources. I think that the more reasonable interpretation of that guideline is that it would apply to questionable or self-published sources, so that it might be invoked in this article, but bottom line, I don't think this is a reliable source for a BLP, even for something as mundane as a retired librarian's divorce. Banks Irk (talk) 20:15, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

  I'm fine to leave it out, but I am curious about the implications for other interviews (since many podcasts are essentially self-published by someone who is not the subject of the interview). I have used podcast interviews as sources for a handful BLPs, but it sounds like it depends on the perceived reliability of the podcast itself? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:01, 6 December 2022 (UTC)

  This is not a podcast, the difference is with a podcast we can be fairly certain that the words are the subject's its just the editing that can be problematic. With a written one we don't know that either the words or the editing is an accurate reflection of reality. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:21, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• The only time an interview can't be used is to establish notability. Outside of that, and unless the subject has publicly stated the interview contains false information or misrepresents them somehow regarding the information in question, it's perfectly acceptable to use content from an interview as a source for facts, comments, or other information within the article. HEB needs to stop beating this very dead horse. To sum up: Interviews can't be used to establish notability, but they are generally acceptable outside of that as sources for facts in the article. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 18:20, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Clearly that's not true because interviews can be fabricated, for instance I just posted an interview on my blog with the Wikipedian Nihonjoe and in that interview they said that we can't use this sort of source. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:17, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

Now you're being facetious. If you actually did do that, then it would be false. Interviews have long been used as sources in all sorts of articles here about people, companies, and so on. They can't be used to establish notability, but they are often used for simple facts about a topic. Generally speaking, though, personal blogs (such as yours, if you even have one) are not considered reliable. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:31, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

And reliability wise the difference between a personal blog and the book in question here is what? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:32, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

That's already been addressed by others, above. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 20:39, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm confused, those others appear to be saying that the book is an unreliable source. From a reliability standpoint they're both unreliable sources, no? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 20:46, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

• Reeling back some of this, I dont see where the facts that @Rachel Helps (BYU) is trying to add are in dispute. This isn't contentious, it's not politics. This is nitpicking about inane technicalities. I think the book is fine for the sources as sources on themselves material. Nweil (talk) 20:59, 7 December 2022 (UTC)

  I expect that the article will end up being deleted, but I'm inclined to agree with @Nweil here. Someone had an experience. He, a religious person, attributes it to his religious beliefs; an atheist experiencing the same thing would attribute it to the weird and wonderful ways that the human brain responds to suboptimal conditions, especially hypoxia. We shouldn't be censoring the fact that he had a bog-standard Near-death experience (bright colors, feeling of floating, choice to live or die) just because he constructed a religious explanation for his experience.

  I think in this instance it is particularly relevant to include this experience because it seem to explain the main narrative arc of his life: He was raised Lutheran, he had a near-death experience in 1963 that he said aligned better with Mormonism than with Lutheranism, he converted to Mormonism in 1969, and he worked in LDS-related jobs ever since. Next up, we censor the Conversion of Paul the Apostle, because it's just some guy saying that he had a life-changing religious experience involving bright lights, and you really can't put that sort of "fringe popular religious" stuff in a serious encyclopedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:20, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

  It would be a BLP violation for us to invent a narrative arc to a person's life which isn't found in a WP:RS. If we had no WP:RS for the Conversion of Paul the Apostle we would not cover it, does that argument mean something special to you? Horse Eye's Back (talk) 18:39, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Ghostarchive.org

Why are we allowing the use of Ghostarchive for citations in Wikipedia? According to the Wayback Machine, ghostarchive.org is barely over one year old. There's not even an article on Wikipedia about Ghostarchive, yet there are already over 66,000 wiki articles containing citations with it. With a website that young, how do we have any prediction that Ghostarchive will still be around even next year (after hundreds of thousands more wiki articles are using it)? Isn't this a potential maintenance nightmare? There is no information on the website nor in their terms of service to indicate who owns or operates it (List of Web archiving initiatives indicates it has 1 employee). Editors have been using Ghostarchive for their citations for sources that are new and extant on the internet. Thoughts? Grorp (talk) 00:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Not the right forum. Ghost is not a source it's a web archive. -- GreenC 01:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@GreenC: It would be more helpful if you would direct me to where better to post this concern. After wading through all the various noticeboards and help 'places', this is where I thought it was best presented. Do you have an alternative suggestion, GreenC? Grorp (talk) 09:43, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

In such cases, I could try the Wikipedia:Village Pump for a start. --- ❖ SilentResident ❖ ^{(talk ✉ | contribs ✎)} 10:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp: this topic has previously been discussed at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_387#archive.is/archive.today and the broad consensus was that, whilst not perfect, it is good enough. Ghostarchive is able to archive sites that archive.org can't reach or is simply unable to process. Either way, these archive sites are not providing the citation, merely reflecting it. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:17, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp

how do we have any prediction that Ghostarchive will still be around even next year 1 year ago someone said that as well. People say the same thing about archive.today due to the Russian war, and Archive.org because of the copyright lawsuit.

The site will not last forever and no website on the internet will. Webcite lasted ~15 years before it went. Bigger companies that have lasted for longer have fell. And there are many videos uploaded in 2006 on youtube that are simply just gone.

There is no information on the website nor in their terms of service to indicate who owns or operates it Wikipedia largely consists of editors that don't give out their names. So I never really understood why it matters for archive site owners.

Ghostarchive is able to archive sites that archive.org can't reach or is simply unable to process. Thank you JMF. If you look at the make up of the Ghostarchive links, it is either Instagram/Facebook, Youtube, or paywalled news sources. With the exception of recently Youtube, web.archive.org has difficulty archiving these. Hence where archive.today/ghostarchive.org comes in. People use ghostarchive alongside the Wayback machine, not as a replacement for the wayback machine. For many of the citations, its either archive.today and ghostarchive.org, or nothing. Would you rather have nothing?

Questions like "why not use web.archive.org instead of ghostarchive.org" miss the entire point. Rlink2 (talk) 20:53, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Also, Ghost uses a technical solution https://Webrecorder.net no one else has (other than https://conifer.rhizome.org/ ) making it great for sites like Facebook that have elements that require click through to view. It does have a niche. And archives die sometimes none are immune. My dealings with the owner of Ghost were very positive he seemed trustworthy, reliable, technically astute and committed --- GreenC 21:12, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2: No, what's missing is a writeup in Wikipedia-space guiding editors to which archives to use for which functionality, instead of berating me, or GreenC kneejerk reacting on me for "wrong forum" (though he civilly answered for the earlier similar archive.today topic on this same board). All these answers above are great, but unless and until someone compiles them and makes them available for editors to read and understand, they'll be buried in the noticeboard archives in a few days and this query will be asked again by another. Grorp (talk) 02:00, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The more I look into this, the more suspicious it all looks. GreenC has written that he has connected with the owner of Ghostarchive and personally spoken many times with the owner of Archive.today. So too has Rlink2. Rlink2 has written at least twice that Ghostarchive can bypass paywalls,[28][29] which is a violation of copyright laws, specifically DMCA laws. And GreenC added the Ghostarchive section to WP:List of web archives on Wikipedia just a month after Archive.org first picked up the website.

If a website requires a subscription to read their copyrighted content, then it is a violation of their copyright to go around the paywall and offer up the information to everyone for free (see Yes, It’s Illegal to Cheat a Paywall, 2015). And Wikipedia is not okay with that. Per WP:COPYRIGHT#Linking to copyrighted works: if you know or reasonably suspect that an external Web site is carrying a work in violation of the creator's copyright, do not link to that copy of the work ... Knowingly and intentionally directing others to a site that violates copyright has been considered a form of contributory infringement in the United States ... Linking to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work sheds a bad light on Wikipedia and its editors.

This is a morass I don't feel inclined to delve into further, but I felt strongly enough to at least point out (a) a potential close connection between Archive.today, Ghostarchive, Rlink2, and GreenC, and (b) a very strong copyright violation risk by using any links to a specific archive article that had pierced a paywall in any manner.

In January 2022, the community raised concerns about Rlink2's speed and volume of edits and perhaps a COI connection to "alternative archive sites". Rlink2 promised to "slow down" and to NOT use alternative archive sites, and yet today they are still adding numerous Ghostarchive.org links to Wikipedia each day, several per minute. Combined with the copyright violation risk, I would say this practice needs a new looking at by administrators or the community.

Grorp (talk) 02:06, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

"And GreenC added the Ghostarchive section to WP:List of web archives on Wikipedia just a month after Archive.org first picked up the website" .. yes I did, because I do a lot of archive work with WP:WAYBACKMEDIC and InternetArchiveBot where new providers show up. I'm also the original author of WP:List of web archives on Wikipedia so of course I maintain it. I am also a disclosed employee of Internet Archive ie. the WaybackMachine, which should give you pause that I am in a conspiracy with archive.today and Ghostarchive. These are non-profit entities, we work together to do what is best for Wikipedia and sometimes it requires communications. If you look at the percentages, archive.today and ghost combined make up probably less than 5% of all archive links on enwiki, I don't see how anyone is going to get upset with that, indeed might wonder why so few. As for Copyright, this is a long term known issue that effects every archive provider including Wayback. Anyway suggest assuming good faith a little more. -- GreenC 02:35, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp

(Edit Conflict)

kneejerk reacting on me for "wrong forum" I saw nothing wrong with his reply. I think he was just being succient and to the point.

Rlink2 promised to "slow down" And I did. Quite significantly, as a matter of fact.

and yet today they are still adding numerous Ghostarchive.org links to Wikipedia each day I actually started this run 3 days ago. Before that i was doing a PDF run that was all web.archive.org. So not every day. The vast majority of my edits have nothing to do with ghostarchive. And a significant portion have nothing to do with archival at all.

If a website requires a subscription to read their copyrighted content, then it is a violation of their copyright to go around the paywall and offer up the information to everyone for free Usually the paywalls work by having the information embedded in the page response, but just hiding it. So it is like a "fake paywall". It doesn't bypass the paywall on purpose, it is rather a side effect of archiving the page. If you use reader mode on your phone the same effect would have been achieved. Regardless they all work with DMCA so if a publisher wants their page removed, they can easily do so, I believe.

a potential close connection You forgot to reference the portions where both me and GreenC also said we had communicated with the Internet Archive. GreenC also works for the IA as stated above. All of these websites are free. Ghostarchive.org doesn't have ads on it, nor do they even ask for donations. Archive.today has ads now but I think its because of the Russian Ukraine war, before that there were no ads.

If you look at the percentages, archive.today and ghost combined make up probably less than 5% of all archive links on enwiki, I honestly find it amsuing that so much lines of text have been written about these two websites, yet it isn't even significant on enwiki. All this time talking about websites which already have wide acceptance could be used to write 50 FAs and maybe 20 GAs (Good articles) to go with it.

a very strong copyright violation risk by using any links to a specific archive article that had pierced a paywall in any manner. I believe this has also been talked about. Rlink2 (talk) 02:55, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@Rlink2: Just because a computer program can get around a paywall, or even accidentally get around a paywall, doesn't reduce/mitigate the actual copyright violations taking place. There is a world of difference between a human using an internet browser in reader mode and being able to see an article ordinarily behind a paywall and a computer program scooping up a copy and permitting it to be displayed to anyone on the internet, on demand, in perpetuity.

Though I didn't know GreenC had anything to do with Archive.org and now see their disclosure, I don't see any similar disclosure on your User page. I seem to recall several others asking you directly if you had any relationship or COI with Ghostarchive or Archive.today, but several times you sidestepped their direct questions while never quite denying it. I'm not going to try reading that megathread in full to ensure I am precise, but that was the gist I got when I read some of it earlier, and your lack of clarification on this thread tells me there wasn't any such disclosure or denial then, either. Grorp (talk) 04:39, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

@Grorp

Just because a computer program can get around a paywall, or even accidentally get around a paywall, doesn't reduce/mitigate the actual copyright violations taking place. The computer program is not "getting around" the paywall. If someone gives you a page with invisible ink, and you find a way to make it visible, is there anything wrong with that?

There is a world of difference between a human using an internet browser in reader mode and being able to see an article ordinarily behind a paywall and a computer program scooping up a copy and permitting it to be displayed to anyone on the internet, on demand, in perpetuity. Reader mode can be used at any time so they are the same thing. In fact reader mode is way easier to use than archives, and it comes bundled with the browser so the existence of that is worse than an archive.

I don't see any similar disclosure on your User page. All I said was that I talked to the owners of the site. I didn't say I was paid by them or I worked for them. Even then, how is that a bad thing? Others pointed this out too. You started out by saying "we shouldn't use this site because we don't know the owners", yet when people do actually try to find more info about them you are also complaining. Using your logic, you would have an COI with Amazon because you talked to their customer support once.

Even on the COI page it states under "Practices not regarded as COI": Consultants for mission-aligned organizations: When an organization like an educational non-profit – one that largely shares our mission of sharing knowledge – seeks someone to help facilitate an informal collaborative relationship, that is often a mutually beneficial situation. (emphasis is mine)

So what you are describing as a COI, isn't even a COI. How would this supposed relationship be a bad thing?

By your same logic, anyone who is intrested in Addison Rae and edits her Wikipedia article is automatically connected with Addision Rae.

while never quite denying it. I flat out said I didn't work for any of the archive sites (not even in an unpaid manner). Rlink2 (talk) 05:03, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Myself and many others have known Rlink2 for a while. He is not an undisclosed COI. It's not a crime to add links to non-Wayback providers. My impression is don't like these sites for whatever reasons is your real concern. The question is why so much dislike when they make up such a small number overall, and provide niche services. -- GreenC 05:04, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

aswangproject.com for Philippine mythology

is anyone familiar with (or willing to look at) the Aswang Project as a source for Philippine mythology? I think the About Us page, while somewhat casually stated, might amount to a statement of authorship and an editorial policy. My issue is simply that I am not certain that it's an authoritative source, and while I am somewhat interested, I don't want to sink a lot of copy-editing into a page that has accuracy problems, and the page does cite the source at least three times. Any thoughts appreciated. Elinruby (talk) 17:34, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

I see 50 results when I search the Philippine mythology article for "aswang project" and looking at a sampling, most of the posts are by Jordan Clark who also runs the project, so these would fall under WP:SELFPUB. I'm not sure the few posts that have another author should be considered differently, since the editorial policy isn't clear.

And while the about page mentions Clark having edited a book, at the Amazon link[30] the publisher is listed as "The Aswang Project" so this would be self-published as well, so Clark is not qualified as a subject matter expert per Wikipedia's policies.

One of the other authors, Daniel De Guzman, appears to have published only fiction and is not an expert per Wikipedia criteria either. Siawase (talk) 11:01, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Thanks Elinruby (talk) 11:24, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

My addition to the WP article on Croatian history rejected on the basis of unreliability of the source

Recently, in the WP article about Croatia, I added new information about the Croatian rulers, which was missing in that article and therefore the article was incomplete. Wikipedia member Miki Filigranski rejected my edits based on his opinion that my sources are not reliable. The reason he gave is this: revert, good faith but badly edited with unreliable sources. I believe that it was not about bad editing, but about adding new and unknown historical data to the article about Croatian history, based on verified and reliable sources of information. I also think that before such an action, a discussion should have been started on the talk page and a consensus of other editors of the article should have been sought, which was not done. That being said, I started a discussion on the talk page and got this response from him to my remarks: Before making major edits please read WP:RS and other related editing policies on citation style, editing style and so on. Most of these and possibly even all of them cannot be considered as reliable because exist more credible and reliable, actual, historiographical sources. Other articles from Wikipedia aren't sources for citation, while Croatian Wikipedia is known for having low-average quality. Anyway, this kind of articles should have only an abstract, basic and most relevant information in their section, while those which scope is only history must have more information. In this regard, I can state the following: 1. Before starting the work, I was informed about the Wikipedia rules and I am clear about the importance of the reliability of the source, and I pay attention to that in my Wikipedia work. 2. So far I have edited several Wikipedia articles and there have been no objections to my writing or editing style 3. My sources of information for this article are from Croatian national, state and historical sites and are therefore reliable 4. There are no pages on the Internet about Croatian history in the Croatian language that are more reliable for Croatian history 5. I did not use another Wikipedia page as a source for my article 6. I don't understand what relevance the quality of the Croatian Wikipedia has to the article on the English Wikipedia 7. I believe that my text contained only abstract, basic and most relevant information about Croatian history

My sources: [31]https://web.archive.org/web/20170901042156/http://www.hupi.hr/povijest/glave.html [32]http://www.hrvatskarijec.rs/vijest/A20818/Hrvatski-knezovi-i-kraljevi/ [33]https://sites.google.com/site/republikahrvatska1232/hrvatski-vladari-i-njihove-vladavine

Article: Croatia

WP:DIFF https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Croatia&diff=1122945641&oldid=1122945062 DanielCro (talk) 15:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

After talking with Miki Filigranski, I accepted part of his arguments and would like to add some more sources for review and ask for your opinion:

[1]https://www.enciklopedija.hr/Natuknica.aspx?ID=15823

[2]https://www.enciklopedija.hr/Natuknica.aspx?ID=37767

[3]https://www.enciklopedija.hr/Natuknica.aspx?ID=62489

It is about the Croatian encyclopedia, a very credible source in my opinion, and I believe that very important Croatian rulers are mentioned, significant for Croatian history, and that they should be included in the wikipedia article about Croatia due to their relevance and importance. DanielCro (talk) 16:37, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

In general, a good encyclopedia can be a good source, but on WP, WP:RS history books and similar is the preferred source if they are available, see WP:PST. In our terminology, the history books are secondary sources and the encyclopedia is a tertiary source. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 12:51, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

• Looks like you are both acting in good faith, and at least trying to do things the right way. Have patience and keep discussing potential sources on the article’s talk page. Blueboar (talk) 16:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

Twitter as a source query

@Addicted4517: asked this on Wikipedia talk:Verifiability. "It has been argued to me on the talk page of the List of Impact Wrestling personnel that Twitter can be used as a primary source to simply confirm an individual's position with a company. My argument is that better sources are needed but I was informed that this is not needed if the account is verified. Another set of eyes may be needed on this but I am not sure which is why I am here instead of in the admin stream. The section concerned is referees. My main gripe is that none of those people listed are notable, which means that the section shouldn't be there at all, but I will leave that to any fresh eyes that wish to look at it." I asked the same Wikipedia talk:Verifiability#Twitter for jobs. --HHH Pedrigree (talk) 07:34, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

So, my opinion is that as soon as Musk changed the blue checkmark system to a pay service, and stopped actual identity verification, then all bets are off on the trustworthiness of Twitter "official" accounts. Basically, for $8, anybody can pretend to be an "official" account and tweet anything they want. Whatever limited utility Twitter had as a primary source for WP:ABOUTSELF-type statements is entirely out the window, and we should no longer user Twitter for anything. --Jayron32 13:31, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Agreed entirely, though since we have already seen that and there's so much turmoil, I would argue we should treat that as immediately effective. It can be revisited in the future if there's a reason to do so. Happy Friday! Dumuzid (talk) 13:44, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but that system has now ended and only lasted about a week? — Czello 14:02, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Czello, that seems to be the case, but Musk has said it will return. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 14:06, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

We can only deal with what is, which is (as Czello pointed out) we're back under the old rules regarding verified accounts. I'd just chalk it up to Uncle Elon trying an experiment which didn't work. Now should things change down the road, we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. But until we get to that bridge (should it reemerge), we should just keep going as we've been going - it's all we can do. Vjmlhds (talk) 15:29, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Vjmlhds -- I certainly understand this approach, but I would respectfully disagree. To my mind, sites aren't reliable until they show themselves as unreliable, it's the other way around. We sort of presume unreliability unless we can check off the factors at WP:RS. That said, Twitter used to be reliable in certain limited circumstances, but then very much lost that reliability during the initial blue check chaos. Has it regained its previous reliability? I don't think we can assume that. Are there some remaining inconsistencies from that time? Who knows? For me, Twitter lost its reliability and I have yet to see a reason we should assume it. As ever, though, reasonable minds may differ on the subject. Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 15:36, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Dumuzid, while I do understand your point, you can't just throw the baby out with the bath water. Whatever one feels about Musk, it can't change the facts of the situation at hand, which are that after a brief foray in a new format, the original format (which had long been accepted as reliable) has returned. Can't play the "it was reliable then, but not now" game, because that opens Pandora's Box to where any source which is usually deemed as reliable, can be questioned based on the eye of the beholder. As long as the traditional Twitter rules are in place, we should just proceed as normal. If Uncle Elon changes things up again, we can always revisit this conversation. But for now, the best course is to let sleeping dogs lie. Vjmlhds (talk) 16:08, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Vjmlhds -- I promise to stop belaboring this, and I realize consensus may well be against me, which is fine. I just want to note that I wouldn't say it was purely in the "eye of the beholder," but I guess my thinking would be "wait and reevaluate after major disruptions." Cheers. Dumuzid (talk) 16:48, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

As it stands any account that has the This account is verified because it is notable in... should be considered reliable for aboutself comments. If it becomes impossible to tell the difference between paid checkmarks and non-paid checkmarks, then it will no longer be reliable for such facts. Anything from non-verified (check marked) accounts should be considered unreliable, whatever happens. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:36, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

Regardless of what twitter does, if Foo company links to their Twitter page then it's clear intent that the Twitter account is run by the company and usable with all the traditional caveats. Slywriter (talk) 19:14, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

True, but for individuals it might become more of an issue. They don't tend to have official websites that can confirm their official Twitter account. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 20:25, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

I agree with @HHH Pedrigree on the main point: If no independent reliable source thinks that naming referees is important, then Wikipedia shouldn't, either. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

It's not the job of "independent reliable sources" to decide what is or isn't notable/important. Their job is to verify statements made. If we as editors say ABC is XYZ, our job is to then find a reliable source to verify it. The purpose of the source is to back up the claim made by the editor. It is not the job of the source to decide if something is notable/important or not, just if that a claim is true or not. Notability and importance are in the eye of the beholder, as one's parameters may not be the same as another. There is no outside source that can say if so-and-so is notable, important, or not, because there is no outside source whose job it is to be the all-knowing arbiter of notability/importance. As an example, Dave Meltzer is a good source if you want to know if Mr. X is a referee in Impact Wrestling. It isn't Meltzer's job to decide if Mr. X is notable or not. I think the collective we as Wikipedia editors sometimes get into a bad habit of trying to apply Wiki guidelines to things that are outside of Wiki's boundaries. Vjmlhds (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

BTW, if you want to get rid of Impact's referees, then you'd better do the same to WWE and AEW (and any other article that list a company's referees as well). Can't pick and choose which promotion's referees are notable or not since they all do the same job. And getting back to the main point that started this whole shebang, if you are a referee for a wrestling promotion that airs on national TV every week, that makes you notable anyway because of the job you have and the exposure you get from said job. Vjmlhds (talk) 00:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

From Wikipedia:Neutral point of view, the policy that primarily controls what is important enough to include in an article:

• "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."
• "In principle, all articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy."

Note the absence of any policies that say anything like "you can put ABC is XYZ in an article, as long as you can find any reliable source to verify it". There's even a whole section at WP:V that's titled Wikipedia:Verifiability#Verifiability does not guarantee inclusion.

The article-writing process is to first read good sources, and then decide what to put in the article; it is not to put whatever "claim made by the editor" you feel like having in an article, and then find a source to back it up.

I also suspect that you will want to spend a while contemplating the principle behind WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. But to answer your implied question, if the only reliable sources that mention any referees' names for any of these articles is a self-published, non-independent source, then I'd be happy to see them all removed. OTOH, if one business's refs get talked about in reliable sources and another one business's refs don't get talked about, then we talk about the refs in the first article and not the second. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:02, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

The dirty little secret about Wiki policies is that there are so many of them, they wind up cancelling each other out, because they all find a way to contradict each other, and then we wind up in discussions like this, where we the editors through consensus basically get to make things up as we go along. When you strip out all the Wiki-ese, it's all pretty much the time honored tradition of throwing enough stuff up against the wall and hoping something sticks. I also get his feeling if Uncle Elon didn't buy his shiny new toy and upset the apple cart, we wouldn't be here even having this discussion. What that boils down to is this...Musk - by virtue of designing electric cars and rockets in his day job - has a bit of a mad scientist streak in him. He took his new toy in his lab, performed a week long experiment, and it didn't work, so he gave it an antidote and it went back to normal. Vjmlhds (talk) 05:36, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm curious as to why this has only become an issue recently. Not just with Twitter as a source, but the referees thing as a whole. It seems like a bit of a one man crusade, honestly. I also feel like people as of late are doing a lot more to try and keep information off here than put information here. I feel like we're doing things in reverse order to how they'd make sense to a normal person.

Specifically, if I see Referee X on TV show 1 every week, their Twitter indicates "Yo, I work here," that should be it. Instead this entire argument seeks based off of "I'm dubious about the statement Referee X made about their place of employment, they say they work for the company on Twitter, but I'm trying to question that for some reason, because I don't watch the weekly show they appear on you need to prove to me as someone who doesn't watch that you're correct, I'm gonna keep shifting goalposts." Why are we looking for reasons to argue against established fact? I can't work out the point in that. If Referee X is on TV for Company 1 every week and their Twitter which is considered a credible source per WP: Twitter says the same, that's established fact, not something which requires "Nope, not good enough because... I say it isn't."

And we've had the notability of people debate. You simply do not have a match without a referee. By that train of "logic," there's no point in having wrestlers there either. SkylerLovefist (talk) 06:35, 10 December 2022 (UTC)

I've got to say I don't understand why we have an article for List of Impact Wrestling personnel anyway - surely this doesn't pass WP:LISTN, as clearly no sources are talking about this subject as a whole. You'll find sources talking about the company, individual people, and probably a list of all of the active wrestlers, but if we are having to go down as far as individual people's own tweets about themselves, is this even a topic that warrants retaining? I feel like this has had a bit of a scope creep from just covering which wrestlers should appear at shows. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:20, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The Cultural Gutter

• Kamikaze Hearts (film)
• Source in question

This article uses a source called The Cultural Gutter for reviews in the critical response section:

L.A. Weekly wrote in 1986, "drags you to a certain place — the world of lesbian-junkie porn stars — and keeps you there for 80 minutes. If you’re excited by that place, or even if you find that place disturbing, you’ll like this film because it’s so relentlessly inside the world of naked bodies, make-believe, addiction, despair, two-bit sleaze and two-bit dreams."

Johnathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader described the film as "Alternately distressing, instructive, contestable, and fascinating".

MartinPoulter and I both have voiced concerns over TCG’s reliability, and there hasn’t been any discussion about it here before, so that’s why I’m coming here. Two questions:

1) Does this source work for backing up the two statements I’ve shown?

2) There is more information in the source than has been used in the article. Should editors continue expanding the article with information from this source? ◇HelenDegenerate◆ 21:41, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

The Cultural Gutter as a book:

• https://culturalgutter.com/sponsors/
• https://press.etc.cmu.edu/index.php/product/the-cultural-gutter/
• https://www.amazon.com/dp/0557958393
• https://books.google.com/books?id=nulfAgAAQBAJ
• https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Borden, Carol
• https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/journal_contribution/The_Cultural_Gutter/6686945/1
• www.l u l u.com/shop/carol-borden-and-chris-szego-and-ian-driscoll-and-james-schellenberg/the-cultural-gutter/paperback/product-14521662.html

you could contact the public libraries where the quoted sources are published, for photos of the 1986 microfilm

....0mtwb9gd5wx (talk) 23:53, 12 December 2022 (UTC)

Human rights in Ukraine

Page watchers needed, please. Thank you. Elinruby (talk) 02:10, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Radio Free Asia

There has been much debate on whether or not Radio Free Asia is a reliable source of information. Some have argued that its close connection to the US government and the CIA makes it inherently biased and therefore not a credible source.

Critics of Radio Free Asia point to its funding, which comes largely from the US government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). The BBG is an independent federal agency that is responsible for overseeing the United States' non-military international broadcasting. Critics argue that because the BBG is funded by the US government, it is not impartial and therefore cannot be considered a reliable source of information.

Additionally, there are concerns about Radio Free Asia's close connection to the CIA. The CIA has a long history of using media outlets as a way to disseminate propaganda and advance its own agenda. This has led some to question the credibility of the information provided by Radio Free Asia, as it is likely that the CIA has some level of influence over the content that is produced.

In light of these concerns, it is clear that Radio Free Asia cannot be considered a reliable source of information. Its close ties to the US government and the CIA make it inherently biased and susceptible to being used as a tool for propaganda. For this reason, it should be banned as a source on Wikipedia. 2A01:598:89F3:7D41:FC9A:495B:8D48:E0DF (talk) 10:53, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

There was a well-attended RfC last year which produced the current status. If you think that something has changed or if there are arguments which were not made then, you can open a new RfC. Alaexis_¿question? 11:06, 14 December 2022 (UTC)

• Generally reliable accurately describes this well-established news organization. At risk of repeating myself from last time, even though RFA takes U.S. government funds, the consensus among RS seems to be that RFA is a reliable news agency. Highly reputable news organizations often cite specific numbers published by RFA, and even use RFA as the sole source for their reporting, as I note below, and noted in the prior RfC on this topic that took place in March of this past year and the abortive RfC that took place this past September.

Multiple RS have used RFA as their sources, including The Wall Street Journal (1, 2) and The New York Times, which has both cited it as the basis of their reporting (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and directly republished stories written by RFA. As can be noted by clicking through the links, these sources cite RFA even when China is the subject of the events depicted in the articles themselves.

There are reliable sources that have explicitly upheld the reliability of RFA as it pertains to issues of controversy, including the Uyghur genocide. According to The Atlantic, "from the day China’s detention campaign began in earnest, RFA’s Uighur Service—the only Uighur-language news outlet in the world that is independent of Chinese government influence—has frequently been at the tip of the spear of coverage. From the RFA offices in Washington, D.C., its team of 12 journalists has broken hundreds of stories, sometimes bearing sole witness to China’s alarming and escalating crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups in the country." The magazine regularly cites reporting from RFA as a source for news in China, even on topics of controversy (1, 2). In other times The Atlantic has reported that RFA provides "independent news to many rural Cambodians".

The Financial Times has also used RFA's reporting in order to write its own stories (1, 2, 3, 4).

The Times has used RFA's reporting to write its own stories about events in North Korea, Burma, Xinjiang (1 2 3 4 5), Chinese technological surveillance, Chinese dissidents, Tibetan riots, and more.

The Economist has also been quite explicit in praising RFA's work, even in the geopolitically contentious area of the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The RS that report this are not limited to those RS that are based within the United States and the United Kingdom. Al-Jazeera has also repeatedly used RFA as a source for their reporting on topics of controversy within China (1, 2, 3, 4) and Burma (1). Spain-based El País has used RFA as a basis for its reporting on the events in Xinjiang. RFA has even been cited by Argentina-based Clarín on topics involving North Korea.

It seems to be generally reliable based upon the fact that other generally reliable news agencies regularly cite the group, even when the topic of the stories are the subject of public controversy. And, if The New York Times feels that RFA is reliable enough to directly republish their journalism, then I don't see why we have much of a case to say that RFA is anything but generally reliable for reporting facts on the ground. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 07:57, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Moreover, I also don't see it reasonable to deprecate or "ban" ABC News (Australia), Al Jazeera, BBC News, CBC News, Deutsche Welle, France 24, NHK, NPR, PBS, Radio France Internationale, Raidió Teilifís Éireann, RNZ, and SBS World News just because they all either directly or indirectly receive substantial funding from their respective governments. Editorial control, a reputation for fact checking and accuracy, and editorial independence are key for determining a WP:NEWSORG's reliability, and neither OP nor others have presented meaningful evidence against those three criteria for RFA writ large, despite repeated discussions on this publication. — Red-tailed hawk _(nest) 08:10, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Oddity Central

I see that this source is used in many articles but I question its reliability.

Which of the following best describes the reliability of the website Oddity Central?

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 Roost^T_C(please ping me when replying) 14:12, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 but without the word "generally" -Roxy the dog 14:23, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3 but without the word "generally" (with apologies to Roxy for flagrant copying) -- clearly a self-published source, and the author does not claim or seem to have any particular qualifications or expertise. He also says "I know my grammar and spelling aren’t always perfect, but most times I post on the run, without proof reading my articles" which does not give one hope about fact checking. All due respect to the author, and good on him for publishing, but it's a no on Wikipedia. Happy Friday! Dumuzid (talk) 14:27, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3, modified per Roxy. Absolutely nothing to suggest this is a remotely reliable source for anything. The 'about' and 'disclaimer' pages seem to suggest that this is essentially a one-person effort, sourcing stories from elsewhere. Option 4 is a possibility, but frankly not worth looking into since we have no reason to concern ourselves with such questions when the source shouldn't be used anyway. AndyTheGrump (talk) 14:36, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Bad RfC. No evidence of a dispute on a talk page or a requirement for noticeboard attention, non-neutral introductory sentence. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:56, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

  I removed the word RfC from header. Sorry for creating bad RfC. Roost^T_C(please ping me when replying) 14:59, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• Not Reliable This is a self-published blog by someone with no subject-matter expertise, and should not be used as a source or reference. You can simply remove references to this source where they occur in Wikipedia articles. Banks Irk (talk) 15:41, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Per all of the above, you are allowed to remove unreliable sources without asking permission. The source is clearly not a reliable source per WP:RS. --Jayron32 15:46, 9 December 2022 (UTC)

• Exactly. Which is what I decided to do over the past few days. This discussion can be closed now because there are no longer any references to OddityCentral.com in any articles. Banks Irk (talk) 17:18, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

• Option 3 The about page doesn't give an credibility to it being a reliable source. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested ∆transmissions∆ °co-ords° 18:41, 9 December 2022 (UTC)
• Option 3, we should treat it like other non-expert SPS. Horse Eye's Back (talk) 00:33, 16 December 2022 (UTC)